How The Five Nights At Freddy's 2 Credits Scene Sets Up A Third Movie

Warning: This article contains spoilers for "Five Nights at Freddy's 2." 

Director Emma Tammi's "Five Nights at Freddy's 2" is so heavy with lore and mythology that it will make your head spin. Only those intimately familiar with the "Five Nights at Freddy's" video games created by Scott Cawthon will be able to make sense of it, as the "Five Nights at Freddy's 2" script (written by Cawthon) includes characters, scenes, and conceits from the games that are never adequately explained. For example, by my estimation, there are three different versions of Freddy Fazbear, the killer pizzeria robot, each operating by a different set of supernatural rules.

The villain of the first "Freddy's" movie was William Afton (Matthew Lillard), a serial killer whose M.O. was to lure children to his Freddy Fazbear's Pizza restaurants and murder them in the back room. William liked to wear a yellow rabbit suit while committing his crimes, designing himself to look like one of the animatronics that he built. The Yellow Rabbit is a big part of extended "Freddy's" game lore.

The Yellow Rabbit is a large part of "Freddy's 2" as well. William's daughter Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) has a lucid dream partway through the movie where she has visions of her monstrous father stalking her in the rabbit suit. This occurs while she's helping her would-be boyfriend Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) evade various other Fazbear animatronics that have gone haywire and fled out into the streets. 

The film ends with a sequel tease involving the Yellow Rabbit ... although it's pretty limp. It's implied that there is an animatronic version of the Yellow Rabbit — not one with William Afton inside — and that it will come to life just in time for "Five Nights at Freddy's 3." 

To reiterate, the mythology of "Five Nights at Freddy's" is massively complex. In the first movie, it's explained that the Freddy Fazbear pizzeria animatronics are able to live and walk around because they are possessed by the ghosts of William Afton's victims. In the second film, there are new, shinier robotic versions of the animatronics, but they seem to be artificially intelligent terminator robots. Each of the animatronic animals — Freddy, Foxy, Chicka, and Bonnie — appear to have personalities of their own, but they also end up being possessed, this time by the same, singular ghost. It's never clearly explained, but ghosts seem to serve as the batteries for the Fazbear gang. 

And if that's the case, then the twist at the end of "Freddy's 2" makes a skosh of sense. In the "Five Nights at Freddy's 2" mid-credits stinger, we see a trio of idle criminals — previously unseen in the movie — breaking into the abandoned Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. They mention that the building is slated for demolition the next day, so they have to hurry to salvage whatever 1980s artifacts may be left behind. In the film's present day of 2002, Freddy Fazbear's has become an object of camp admiration, so any toys or genuine merch these intruders can salvage would fetch a pretty penny. 

The looters find some merch, along with a scary additional artifact. They uncover a slightly worn out, partially skinless Yellow Rabbit animatronic. They cover it with plastic (to protect it from a leaky roof) and run out of the room excitedly, going to get their van in order to pack it up. When they leave the room, the Yellow Rabbit's electric eye begins to glow, implying that it may be alive.

Because it's the Yellow Rabbit, the implication is that the living animatronic is possessed by the spirit of William Afton. The events of "Five Nights at Freddy's 2" are activated by an animatronic called the Marionette, which is, itself, possessed by the ghost of one of Afton's victims. It's said that the Marionette's ghostly powers kind of leaked into multiple animatronics at once, allowing it to "puppet" them all from a distance. It also seems that Afton's spirit — active because of the earlier dream sequence — is drifting somewhere through the ether. Either Afton's spirit, or the spirit of his victim, have now animated the Yellow Rabbit animatronic. 

That means, quite clearly, that the Yellow Rabbit will become the central villain in the inevitable (?) "Five Nights at Freddy's 3." 

It should be noted that "Freddy's 2" also features a few cameos from previously unseen animatronics. There is a chubby ladybug-like creature that only appears in one scene, and later, Mike is stalked by a big-eyed young boy robot. These two creatures don't play a large role in "Freddy's 2," but there's every reason to believe they will join the Yellow Rabbit on a killing spree in "Freddy's 3." Because the lore of the "Freddy's" video games is so confusingly complicated, though, any number of new characters could appear to assist Afton's rabbit-shaped ghost. When the film finally does come out, we here at /Film will be here to report on it. Fingers crossed that we like the next one more than the current one.

"Five Nights at Freddy's 2" is now playing in theaters.