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roxtron · 4 months

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Soo after getting back into fnaf I finally got to play SB and Ruin for myself, and honestly I’m a bit shocked by the debate about who cut the elevator, I thought most people would be in agreement it’s more likely to be the mimic than Gregory but it looks like some of the fandom is pretty conflicted. So for fun I wanted to go through most of the evidence I’ve seen to try and argue why I think it can’t be Gregory.

Of course I could be wrong, anyone could, that’s the nature of this series. I think it’ll be interesting to see where the story goes from here, regardless of which path they take. But here’s my take on it.

I wanna try to keep this more structured than pure rambling so first I wanna go through evidence that suggests it was the mimic. Obviously the first note is the most obvious piece of evidence everyone points out, the subtitles.

While some people think it’s an error or a glitch that the subtitles overlap, or argue that the files state this is the real Gregory, I don’t think that’s enough to disprove it. Why would they want to spoil if it was Gregory or not if that’s meant to be questioned? If it was supposed to be clear-cut that Gregory did cut the elevator, I feel like they’d make it more obvious. The static cut matching with the subtitle ‘glitch’ is way too convenient. And spoiling a plot twist would just defeat the whole purpose.

If it was a glitch, it would’ve been patched. I’ve seen some people argue they experienced this glitch in their playthroughs during SB, but the only times I’ve seen that is when two characters’ dialogue overlaps. I’ve only seen it with separate characters, and the only time I can remember it happening with the same character is if it was intended to be two different scenes, like if I were to get a dialogue trigger for an area while the cutscene dialogue was still playing. (By that I mean the dialogue for the last trigger was still playing by the time I activated another dialogue trigger, the player was likely meant to let the original dialogue finish before starting a new one.) I know it can also happen when you mute the game and it lets all the dialogue overlap, but that’s because they’re separate lines being played at the same time because they’re not playing at all, if that makes sense. Maybe this is because I played SB post-Ruin, but I feel like the argument that it’s a common glitch doesn’t really hold up, especially because this is an ending cutscene, you’d think there’d be more priority on making sure it works as intended. And if it were a glitch, why did everyone get it? Don’t most glitches only happen to some people and not others, and that’s why they don’t usually get caught in development? I know I went off on a long tangent with the subtitle glitch here, but I dunno. I just don’t think it’s a good enough excuse considering other evidence.

Anyway, moving on to stronger pieces of evidence, something plenty of people have pointed out from searching out-of-bounds with youtubers like RyeToast, the battery pack.

The mimic was left right outside the elevator, and the battery powering it right there. Obviously I’m not an elevator mechanic, I wouldn’t know the exact logic behind it, but I’d assume all he would need to do is cut the cords to let the elevator fall.

Some people have argued that’s not how elevators work, since it wouldn’t fall, it would just come to a stop, but I think some people are forgetting about location here. This isn’t a commonly used elevator like the ones that lead to the atrium or attractions, it’s an old elevator in a mostly abandoned building underground. When you use the main elevator to get down there in the base game, Freddy even mentions the elevator doesn’t seem safe, and likely won’t survive more than one trip.

(Though that line still confuses me, considering in that ending they go back up the elevator to get back to the surface. So does he mean one trip there and back?? If that was what he meant then how was the elevator still running by the time of ruin?

Regardless of which ending is canon, they would’ve used the elevator once there and back to trap the mimic in the first place, and then cassie would’ve used it again to get down there.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding Freddy, maybe it was just a gameplay mechanic so you couldn’t go back since it’s endgame stuff, I dunno. Just found that worth mentioning.

Either way, the point is the elevator probably doesn’t have those safety protocols that would make it come to a safe stop.)

That aside, how would Gregory do it? Sure he can hack into communication devices to try to contact Cassie, but that’s all he’s done. It’s not like there’d be a system he can hack into where all he has to do is type a command to cut the elevator. Sure he’s been hacking into all kinds of shit, but there’s nothing he’s hacked into that’s directly resulted in any action similar to this one. Sure he could hack a bot and make a bot do it, but do you really think there would be any bot nearby for him to even attempt that? It just doesn’t make any sense.

I feel like if there’s anything Steel Wool has been consistent with it’s environmental storytelling, we didn’t exactly guess how the mimic got trapped based on dialogue or text. It’s because of the way the vent collapsed, the way the backpack was placed, the fact the walkie talkie had to have been left in a rush, no way they would’ve purposefully given the mimic a communication device to try and manipulate someone with.

So if they took the time to show the battery being right outside the door, right next to the mimic, but never showed us any kind of examples for how someone could remotely cut an elevator like that, it kinda points in one direction a lot more than the other.

Anyway, this section might be a bit all over the place, but I wanna look at some people’s arguments for why it wasn’t the mimic, and attempt to debunk them where I can, which will inevitably lead into further evidence I didn’t include in the first section.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence for why it isn’t the mimic is the voice, some people theorized the mimic may be running some sort of program to splice the audio together, and that’s why he’s only copying specific lines/clipping together sentences towards the end of the game. While that could be true I honestly don't think it is.

While there’s subtle hints throughout the game that it isn’t actually Gregory talking to us, I’d argue that’s what a lot of them are, subtle. Some people point to the camera system using Cassie’s voice as a lure as evidence it can mimic people’s voices. But it wasn’t copying the voice, it was just playing a recording. Every time Cassie's voice played it was that one line from the beginning, “Gregory, are you there?” But it was never a unique line of dialogue she’s never spoken.

I honestly think it’s just a developer choice for that moment to really hit. If you’ve spent the whole game believing this is really Gregory, then by the time you get to Roxy Raceway and he asks you to kill Roxy to save him, all the glitching in that audio lets the realization hit. And I imagine it gives Cassie doubt too, but if you think about it, she’s already hit the point of no return. It’s too late to turn back now, she’s deactivated almost all the nodes, spent an entire night in this place (since it was still daylight when the game starts, but nighttime when we get to the wrecking ball area.) And considering how empathetic she’s shown to be, would she really just walk out because she thinks it isn’t him? Don’t you think there’d be at least some part of her that says “what if it is him, and I’ve just left him here to die?”

Meanwhile when Gregory’s voice was used on the camera systems.. It’s honestly hilarious, I’m surprised nobody talks about it. Maybe it’s because I spent longer in Roxy Raceway than most players did, but his lines definitely fit with his personality. They’re all so taunting, and considering they’re used only against Roxy, I believe they were actually recorded by him, not the system mimicking his voice. The mocking “I’m so scared and alone!” “I’m here, you just can’t see me.” And FUCKING “Marco.. Polo!” (That one’s so evil it always makes me laugh.) You gotta admit that’s definitely something Gregory would do.

Sure the mimic can copy his voice, but it can’t really copy his personality all that well if you read between the lines. The majority of the mimic’s lines for Gregory kinda fall into a few categories. Whiny, demanding, and monotone. With it being more whiny and scared than usual to try and get Cassie to believe it’s really in danger. It being more demanding to get Cassie to push forward. (Strong example being the Monty Golf catwalks, for some reason I struggled to find the Nodes there and he was constantly giving lines like “You really need to get back to redirecting the gondolas” or something along those lines. Trying to get you back on task.) And finally monotone, a lot of his lines can come across as more objective statements than anything, very little emotion involved.

Gregory’s never that whiny or afraid from what we see in the games, sure he has his moments, but in Security Breach his overall attitude isn’t being afraid, just done with this shit. It’s a bit more complicated than that but playing this game in retrospect with that knowledge makes it really interesting. Trying not to spoil the twist for other people led me to looking into all the voice lines, thinking “is that really something Gregory would say?” And the majority of the time, no, not really. I was practically scrambling at points to try and explain some voice lines to my friends trying not to spoil them. It’s not as much of a consistent personality as it is a split, he acts differently when the situation calls for it. Which, duh, that’s how human behavior works, but I hope you get what I mean when I say that.

I got a bit sidetracked but back to the idea the mimic is splicing audio together. While it’s an interesting point that would explain some cut-together dialogue..

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Plus, it’s horror, sometimes characters have to be oblivious for the show to go on, y’know? I think this moment was intended to hit that way. The final confirmation something is definitely off, but as the player, you still don’t know what exactly it is. Because that’s not the reveal, you never find out what’s really been talking to you until you see the mimic in person. It’s another way to draw you in, keep your curiosity. If it did seem like it fully was Gregory players may start to question it in a way that wants them to turn back, but if it’s made clear this probably isn’t Gregory it leaves you to wonder, what the fuck is it?

Point is, I think it was just a developer choice, not something we’re supposed to take as evidence. And my main reason for that is, it’s kind of immediately contradicted.

If you go back and watch the ending over again, he does mainly use pre-recorded lines, but if you look at what he says when Cassie frees him, it’s not pre-recorded. It goes from the pre-recorded, more upbeat and thankful “You saved me!” to monotone, stating it as fact. “You saved me.” If he were splicing together sentences, then where the fuck did that line come from? Maybe I’m just not as observant as I thought, but as far as I’m aware the only pre-recorded “You saved me!” is the one he uses first. The second one is nowhere to be found in SB. It kinda disproves the idea he’s splicing sentences if he immediately after gives us a new line that isn’t spliced. It’s an interesting theory for sure, but I don’t think it adds up.

I was going to go more in depth on the tech stuff happening here but I realized I’ve made this section long enough already so I’ll put it into this section, I don’t think it’s something his character would do.

Now initially I was gonna cut straight to characterization and whatnot, and I will get to that later, but I’m gonna start by going through the tech stuff.

Every time Gregory tries to contact Cassie in-game, it’s usually through a separate piece of tech. I’ve only heard the lines separate from the game, and I’m definitely not data-mining myself, so I can’t prove that this line is the real Gregory, but..

I think one of the first times he contacts her is when you first see Roxy crying in her salon. For one, the timeline would match up. When he talks during the end of the game he says he’s been trying to contact us all night. But Cassie walked into the pizzaplex when it was still bright out, likely in the middle of the day since it doesn’t seem to be sunset, although that could just be my interpretation. If Gregory had been trying to contact her “all night” then it seems like he didn’t realize what was going on until much later in the game. If I’m remembering correctly you don’t see the wrecking ball through the ceiling revealing it’s nighttime until at least halfway through the game.

(Although side note, I’m not sure how the mimic first contacted Cassie to lead her to the pizzaplex in the first place. The game makes it seem like the walkie talkie is the first time they talked but she wouldn’t be here in the first place if she wasn’t told to come here beforehand. Personally I think she was sent a message with the dialogue in the trailer, though I think we’re all collectively confused what device she would’ve received that message from.)

Anyways, if that point is one of the first times he’s contacted her, it would make a lot of sense. If it was the mimic calling to Cassie again, why would it not be from the walkie talkie when it’s still right there in her hand? If it was from the walkie talkie, why would it sound like it was coming from a distance, and why would Roxy run in the opposite direction? Whatever he was attempting to contact her from, it clearly wasn’t the walkie talkie.

Then there’s the rare voice line with the staff bot.

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Once again, he’s trying to contact her through a robot, not the walkie talkie. There’s a possibility he may be able to access the walkie talkie’s signal, but he can’t speak through it. I initially thought he might need cameras for this, and that point kinda stands for the mimic chase, but for this? All he has to do is listen in on the walkie talkie conversation to know which area of the pizzaplex is in. And if he had no way to access the walkie talkie’s signal, how would he even find out about this whole situation? If he found out sometime that night it seems likely to me that he somehow came across the signal and realized what was going on. And if he had 0 access to the walkie talkie.. Wouldn’t it be pretty inconvenient if he’d hacked a staff bot in Roxy Raceway to talk to her while she’s running around Bonnie Bowl?

I’ll talk about that voice line again later but for now I wanna move on to the other lines of dialogue, the last time he’s able to contact Cassie, finally through the walkie talkie.. Is the moment the mimic is busy fighting Roxy and chasing Cassie. I’ve seen some people try to argue even that wasn’t Gregory but that wouldn’t make any sense. If he was still talking on the walkie talkie during the chase wouldn’t she recognize the sound is coming from behind her.. And not the walkie talkie.. Plus, again, the files argument, with other lines being referred to as Grimic and these lines being labelled Gregory.

And this might get a bit too theoretical but here’s my idea, the mimic used a signal jammer to prevent Gregory from communicating with her. That’s why he kept hacking separate signals like the staff bot. Considering he supposedly gives Helpi a signal jammer to prevent M.X.E.S (though to be fair that doesn’t last, it’s still established he can do this.) I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the walkie talkie’s signal was jammed so he couldn’t talk through it, the only times he does talk through it is while the mimic is busy. Even after Cassie gets in the elevator Gregory still might not fully trust the walkie talkie won’t cut him off now that the mimic isn’t busy anymore, that might explain why he hacks into the speaker system when, again, the walkie talkie is still there, isn’t it? Unfortunately for him I think that plan doesn’t work out, the mimic takes over and speaks for him. I think one of the biggest pieces of evidence is cut voice lines.

Getting sidetracked for a bit..

If you look at some of the voice lines labelled to be Gregory, there’s an alternate line for the elevator scene. While the final game says “But we can’t risk being followed.” the cut line instead tells her “But make sure it doesn’t follow you.” This feels a lot more in character, a warning to her instead of a goodbye. I think this may not be a cut alternate ending, but it may be how the conversation would’ve gone if it was Gregory talking. What Gregory meant to say vs. what the mimic told Cassie. While this isn’t solid proof I think this interpretation makes a lot of sense, especially considering all the other evidence.

Another detail about her being tricked, considering the missing posters in Roxy’s salon, this might be the first time she’s talked to Gregory in a long time. He might’ve just left after SB and just stopped talking to her because of how complicated everything’s gotten, thinking it’s better for her not to be involved in all this. Would anyone really want to have the conversation of explaining all that? Telling her the truth about him getting trapped in the pizzaplex, almost murdered by Vanny and the animatronics on multiple occasions?

And another side note, if Gregory had told her what happened to Freddy, wouldn’t she also be questioning that whole situation? She doesn’t seem to have any reaction to the prototype on his foot, just hoping he’s functional. The only endings where Freddy doesn’t escape the pizzaplex are the endings where his whole body is destroyed. (Except the escape ending where Gregory just leaves and gets killed by Vanny after, but that’s not canon for obvious reasons.)

As much as it sucks to be kept in the dark she clearly has been, she has no idea about Vanny or the animatronics being destroyed from what Gregory did to them.

Her only note about seeing Vanny on the cameras being “hey, she’s wearing my mask!” as if it wasn’t worn by her first. And her “What happened to you?” when she sees Chica.

If he were to get the fire escape ending, Freddy dies after pushing himself and Vanny off the roof. While that already feels not-canon because of Vanessa most likely being freed and with Gregory during Ruin, even if you’re one of the people that assumes that ending means Vanny isn’t Vanessa, regardless of argument on that theory Freddy would be broken, and outside the pizzaplex, not in fazerblast.

If he gets the bad Vanny ending, Freddy is fully dismantled with his head still attached and left behind. So why would he have no head in Ruin if that were the ending, especially when the work tables suggest there were technicians trying to repair the animatronics in between SB and Ruin. You’d think putting his head back on would be the first repair they’d make if the head was still there, and this was our Freddy.

TLDR here, point is if Gregory had told Cassie what happened to Freddy, through whatever canon ending that would be, Cassie would’ve known that wasn’t the real Freddy. Personally I think the prototype foot suggests a lot more that this is a red herring, not the Freddy we know, rather than just a retcon.

Sorry for the long tangent, I know it was a bit sidetracked from the main topic here.

Even her Dad’s kept her in the dark regarding secrets like this considering the whole “My Dad wouldn’t tell me what happened to Bonnie.” Whether he knew what happened or not is a different story, but clearly she’s already been kept in the dark about stuff like this. After all it’s a heavy topic to get into, and with Gregory, considering some people still hate him for dismantling the animatronics I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he might worry Cassie would be mad at him for it. Whatever you feel about his character, in his mind it was self-defense. Extreme self-defense, but still. In his mind, the animatronics have spent all night trying to kill him, so if he harms them, it’s really just an eye for an eye, isn’t it? Those upgrades would help Freddy and whether this was his main motivation or just a part of it, upgrading the only animatronic helping him would definitely increase his chances of survival.

But finally I wanna move onto more emotional arguments. It doesn’t seem to fit his character with what we’ve seen so far. Some people will say “wtf are you talking about? If he’s willing to kill the other animatronics he’d be willing to kill Cassie.” But I disagree. I think it’s missing an important part of his character. Yes, he’s been shown hurting other people. The other animatronics, Vanny, but I don’t think he would ever hurt someone he cares about. That’s the difference. The other animatronics were trying to kill him, so was Vanny. It’s not like he antagonized them first or did all this unprompted. He had a reason, and he had no emotional connection.

But have we ever seen him hurt anyone he cares about before this? He never has and I don’t think ever would hurt Freddy. In all the endings something bad happens to him, he cries, in some endings he’s able to do something to fix it, but in others, he’s clearly upset by the loss. Even in cut voice lines, apparently he originally would’ve been crying when Freddy got kidnapped by Moon. He clearly cares about Freddy, and does his best to make sure they can both escape. That’s the balance here. If he really was just a terrible character that doesn’t care about anyone, why would he be so distressed when something happens to Freddy? Why would he bond with him in the first place? Theoretically he could’ve just viewed Freddy as a tool, he is a robot after all, but he didn’t. He bonded with him and cared about him as he would for another person.

Why give her directions for how to escape, why take the time to explain things to her? If he knew how it was going to end, why do any of this at all? I think if you were forced to kill your best friend, you’d probably sound more stressed than that. And it’s not like that’s any sort of voice acting issue, there’s clearly good direction given for there to be a clear difference between the mimic and Gregory during most scenes. He’s had stressed voice lines before, including the lines he has in Ruin, it just doesn’t make sense for him to seem like he doesn’t care at all when he’s been desperately trying to contact her.

If he really was the one to drop the elevator, if he purposefully killed her, why does he seem so cold? If he had to kill Freddy for whatever reason I’m sure he’d be crying about it. Even in the escape ending where he leaves without Freddy he’s crying, and that’s not even an ending where Freddy gets hurt as far as we’re aware. So if Cassie was his best friend, someone he cared about enough to go through all this trouble to help her in the first place, to spend all night trying to contact her, guide her to the elevator.. If he really didn’t care about her, why do all this? Why wouldn’t he just assume she's dead and move on.

You could argue it’s because he was trying to prevent her from freeing the mimic before it was too late, but if that’s the case why would he give her directions when the mimic’s already been set free? Even in the elevator he directly tells her “You shut off the security, and now it’s free.” So if he knew/believed the mimic had already escaped, why kill Cassie ‘so it can’t escape.’ Even if that were also true, that’s not the only escape route. The mimic could still use the elevator Cassie used to get down here in the first place. He’d only be cutting off 1 of 2 exits.

It’s so contradictory, if it were true I sure hope it has a good explanation in the next game. And again, the voice lines.. He sounds so panicked during them, through the mimic chase he’s yelling the directions, repeating himself, he’s clearly not calm during all this shit. He clearly cares about her. And for me, especially the rare voice line shows it. If you go back and listen to it again, the initial “Cassie is that you?” sounds a bit more panicked than the typical mimic calling out to Cassie, but at the end? After the voice glitches, that final “Cassie. Is that you?” It just sounds so full of despair to me. It’s a level of emotion the mimic never really displays for Cassie, it only sounds worried for its own safety, never concerned for hers.

Maybe I’m too invested, after all I get far more attached to characters than the lore itself, but from what we’ve seen of these characters I just feel like it would be really out of character if this was all meant to be taken at face value. If it was Gregory that cut the elevator, if he somehow managed to do it, and barely seemed to regret that choice.

I think even if he did there’s still an argument to be made in his defense, after all we don’t know what the mimic has done to him in the games, we don’t know what it’s capable of, what he’s so afraid of. While sure we know about the mimic from the books, considering the questionable canonicity from books to games being the same timeline, and considering (as far as I’m aware) Gregory isn’t directly shown to have a connection to the mimic in those books.. Whatever he’s done in the games we haven’t seen yet, whatever happened that led Gregory to seal the mimic down there in the first place, it had to be pretty bad to cause all this. For such extreme security to be put around it, for him to leave things in a hurry, desperate to get out of there. Whatever happened clearly left some scars, whether those are physical, emotional, or both.

But that’s all I’ve got. I still find the other theories interesting, and I’m not denying they could be true. Look at the series we’re talking about here. But, with the evidence we’ve got, personally this is my take on it. I can only hope it’s true, but if I’m wrong, oh well I guess lol. I think Gregory’s definitely going to come back one way or another, whether he’s just down there to try to trap the mimic again, or if he’s going back to save Cassie, or both! I hope however he does come back it can clear up a few things. If you read all the way through, thanks, I know I ramble a lot, and I appreciate you taking the time to go through this, whether you agree with me or not.

#fnaf theory #fnaf sb ruin #ruin dlc #fnaf ruin #fnaf security breach ruin #fnaf security breach #fnaf sb #fnaf gregory #tbh i did talk about freddy for a little so #glamrock freddy #glamrock freddy prototype #i think that's all tags i can come up with to add onto this #ik this has probably been argued to death and i'm definitely late to the party #but i feel like i brought at least a few original observations to the conversation #soo #beating a dead horse #my analysis

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