• Abusive Parents: Every incarnation of Afton that is a father is shown to be an absolutely horrible one. His Novel Trilogy counterpart, the least awful one, hit his daughter for interrupting his work; his film counterpart forces his daughter to assist him and then tries to kill her when she resists. In the games, he at the very least neglected his children^note He's conspicuously absent during both the Crying Child and Elizabeth's deaths and is heavily implied to have been abusive towards Michael at least. And that's not even to mention how he tries to kill his own son as Scraptrap.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • After the Custom Night update for Sister Location, a debate was sparked, as to whether he, or his son, Michael, was possessing Springtrap, which was ended when Word of God confirmed William as the one inside Springtrap in response to MatPat's "final" FNAF theory, which was further solidified in FFPS.
  • Did he really love his daughter, or was he planning on making her his successor? In Pizzeria Simulator's cartoon cutscenes imply that he has problems in forming a genuine smile, so he might not actually feel anything. Baby's motive in PS doesn't exactly help his case (and he notably never acknowledges her presence). Not to mention that he's aware Elizabeth is possessing Baby and he lets his employees shock her.
  • His connection to Burntrap and Glitchtrap is very unclear at the moment. Is he one or both of them as a Virtual Ghost? Are they actually the Mimic? Is Burntrap the Mimic controlling his body? Is Glitchtrap a non-Mimic AI copy of his? Recent updates to Help Wanted 2 include Glitchtrap memories heavily connected to the Mimic but not obviously connected to William, generally indicating the Mimic option is true, but nothing's been outright confirmed as of yet.
• And I Must Scream: A frequent victim of this.
  • The first of his deaths was slow and painful, but afterwards his soul was left trapped in Springtrap's suit, which was barred up and left to rot for three decades.
  • Implied to be what's happening in Ultimate Custom Night, with the place being a coma-induced nightmare, a netherworld where he is tortured for his crimes by one of his former victims. Oh, and his physical body is most likely immobilized thanks to Henry's fire, so even if he woke up he can't go anywhere.
• Animal Motifs: Rabbits; his main costume is the Spring Bonnie suit, as he uses it to gain the trust of children before killing them. When he dies in Five Nights at Freddy's 3, his soul becomes bound to the Spring Bonnie springlock suit and he becomes Springtrap. In Five Nights at Freddy's VR: Help Wanted, Glitchtrap - a computer virus that either is Afton or pretends to be him - presents itself in the form of an old-fashioned Spring Bonnie suit. His rabbit theming ties in well with a killer Beneath Suspicion; who would suspect a timid herbivore to be a killer when surrounded by bears, foxes, and gators?
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Charlotte Emily, his first kill. Across every continuity she exists in, she's shown to be Afton's single biggest pain in the ass. In the games, she guides his other victims' spirits in their undead state as the Puppet and tries to undo their suffering with Happiest Day. In the novels, an android copy of Charlie is his greatest enemy who causes his transformation into Springtrap. In the Frights, the Puppet is the one who kills Afton with her mask's expression being that of joy and satisfaction.
  • Charlie's father Henry is also one to a lesser extent. He is Afton's best friend that he backstabbed by killing his daughter, causing a chain of events that would cause even more deaths and ruin all they worked for together. By Pizzeria Simulator, Henry is alive only to fix Afton's wrongs and finally kill the bastard. Even in alternate continuities, Afton drove Henry to suicide in the Novel Trilogy and something similar to the sixth game happened in the Frights.
• Archnemesis Dad: Implied to have a very negative relationship with his son Michael. He was more than likely abusive towards him given how he treats his children across all continuities, and years later he sent his son on a mission that got his guts pulled out. Michael has a few questions to ask after this. In Pizzeria Simulator, where we're heavily implied to be playing as Michael, Afton tries to kill us.
• Arc Words: "I always come back" or something close enough (like "He will come back. He always does." in the trailer for 3), and not even necessarily in the "he won't die" sense; he keeps returning for every game in the series, and every pizzeria, even as a living human. However, there is some form of irony to be taken in the fact he first said that in the game that possibly killed him off for real. One way or another, the quote is big enough to have made it into the movie.
• Ascended Extra: His role seems to become larger with each game, until he finally kicks the bucket. In the first game, he is only mentioned in newspaper clippings that you are unlikely to look at in one of the rooms. In the second game, he appears in several minigames you may end up playing after you get killed, and is alluded to in Phone Guy's phone calls. In the third game, he is the Big Bad. In the fourth and fifth game, he designed the animatronics trying to kill you — the first set to torment children, the second to outright kill and kidnap them, resulting in his daughter's death. In the sixth game, he is one of the two Big Bads and has influenced his daughter to follow his murderous ways; in the follow-up, he actually becomes the Villain Protagonist in what is his final confirmed outing.
• Asshole Victim:
  • William's first death — and imprisonment inside Springtrap — was horrifying, yes, but his role in the span of things garners little sympathy.
  • The same goes for his defeat and torture in Ultimate Custom Night, where he is tortured in a death loop for eternity, with every animatronic that can speak admitting he's a bastard who deserves what's coming to him.
• Ax-Crazy: From what we can tell, he seems to be very violent and sadistic. Contrary to what his actions might imply, however, his sole appearance in Sister Location depicts him as Faux Affably Evil with a Mask of Sanity to boot.
• Big Bad: He is the man behind the slaughter of many children, and the cause of every bad event surrounding Freddy's in some way, shape or form. Even after death, his influence lingers from beyond the grave.
• Body Horror: He is often almost always depicted with outsides matching his insides. But of course, all of these injuries were caused by freak accidents.
• Card-Carrying Jerkass: It's made clear when he's physically present in a story that he clearly loves being a jackass to people and, if he's aware of anything, he's aware of that. This is best shown just before his first death when he laughs at the ghosts of the victims stuffed into the first game's animatronics in the third game's final arcade-style post-night mini-game.
• Characterization Marches On: He's gone through so many changes that he's pretty much an entirely different character nowadays.
  • Before Sister Location, he was your average security guard working at a children's restaurant, who occasionally killed some of the children in secret.^note The fact that nobody even knew his name, leading to him simply being called "Purple Guy", didn't help at all. Although it is implied in FNaF 2 that he has technical skills, and can wear a Springlock Suit easily.
  • Sister Location establishes he owned his own robotics shop, and implied he designed at least some of the animatronics seen throughout the series. Since some of his animatronics had children-killing mechanisms built in, he was now a Mad Scientist as well. It's also later established he knew the man who seemingly started Fazbear's in the first place, and that he actually was the co-founder.
  • Assuming you believe the "Afton is Glitchtrap" theory, Help Wanted and Security Breach make him into a Virtual Ghost and imply he's now got some sort of special powers over both people and technology. In essence, he's pretty much a supervillain.
  • Springtrap in his original appearance has a malicious yet relaxed expression on his mask and a fluid body language that befits William's nature as a scheming killer, but is at odds with him being a zombie in horrifying pain. In Help Wanted, Springtrap instead shambles around with glowing wide-open eyes and a more pronounced Slasher Smile to make him look absolutely unhinged 100% of the time.
• Child Hater: His victims are primarily children. While the reason behind his preference and apparent fascination in such victims isn't clear, he still qualifies by default regardless.
• Color Motifs: Afton is a very evil person who used a very friendly costume to kill people. As such, this contrast is emphasized by Afton being tied to the color purple and the spring suits being yellow, forming a pair of direct complement, or the opposite, colors.
• Cool Car: The "Bring Cake to Children" minigame shows that he had a pretty sweet looking purple car. Purple is a pretty uncommon color for cars, and it matches his purple sprite.
• The Corrupter: It's implied he corrupted Elizabeth as an explanation for her sudden personality change in Pizzeria Simulator; doubly so to Vanny if he is Glitchtrap.
• Deader than Dead: Afton is seemingly killed for good at the end of Pizzeria Simulator when the Cassette Man/Henry sets the fake pizzeria ablaze to destroy the remnant. Any subsequent appearances by Afton are implied to be the Mimic pretending to be him. Maybe...
• Death Is Cheap: He's been killed at least two times, first by being crushed inside a metal animatronic suit and left to rot for thirty years, only to then burn in an electrical fire. And, as Sister Location reveals, he's still alive after that. Subverted in the sixth game, where he finally meets his end and is sent to Hell.
• Determinator: Credit must be given where it is due — the guy is an absolute monster, but he simply won't stay down. He managed to come back after a brutal death and being stuck in one room for 30 years. It takes being completely incinerated twice to finally destroy him for good and destroy his physical body beyond repair. And, depending on who Glitchtrap really is, his soul might live on far after his physical body kicks the bucket.
• Didn't Think This Through: His Fatal Flaw, as detailed below. In essence, while Afton does admittedly come up with some brilliant plans that do work (such as exploiting the fact that the animatronics can't enter into the safe room to ambush them from there), the moment that another variable enters the equation is the moment that spells his doom, as Afton isn't good enough at improvising another plan to pull him out of the situation the first one put him in.
• Eternal Villain: Good old Billy has started to cross into this through sheer Implacability and Joker Immunity. The bastard has transcended life and death and keeps returning from defeat after defeat, to quote the man himself.
  William: I always come back.
• Evil Brit: As of Sister Location and onward, his voice is known, and it clearly has a British accent.
• Eviler than Thou: It's not immediately obvious how much influence William has over the plot of the franchise at first, but as one searches through his story, it becomes very apparent that he is the most influential character in the whole franchise and completely outshines every other villain, animatronic or human, in sheer evil and scope, despite the animatronics being promoted as the series' mascots. By all means, it's completely correct to say nearly every other villain throughout the games is who they are because of William Afton.
• Evil Former Friend: Was best friends with Cassette Man/Henry Emily and co-founded the entire Freddy’s chain with him before murdering his daughter Charlotte and kicking off his string of other child murders. He was also considered a close friend by Edwin Murray, who was happy to work with William and Henry on their restaurant mascots, which changed when Edwin realized too late that William was just using him.
• Evil Gloating: A big fan of this. This goes as far as the second game, where he will say "You can't" in response to the player trying to save the children if you bump into him.
• Evil Old Folks: In a way. While his physical body has stopped aging for obvious reasons, he was old enough to own his own robotics company before he died, and is at least 30 years older than that as Springtrap, with an ambiguous time passing after that.
• Evil Sounds Deep: In Sister Location, he has a deeper voice than most other male characters in the game. Coupled with his Evil Brit accent, he sounds quite menacing. His voice sounds even deeper in the sixth game, where he is already Springtrap.
• Expy: According to PJ Heywood, his voice was inspired by Hannibal Lecter, in that he is always unnervingly calm even when about to kill someone.
• Eyes Are Unbreakable: Even after becoming Springtrap and Scraptrap, his eyes remain untouched.
• Fatal Flaw: Throughout all of his reincarnations, the one consistent flaw he maintains is a lack of foresight. He simply does not think two steps ahead of his current goal, preferring to focus more on immediate satisfaction or panicking when things turn against him. His fear and arrogance lead to him getting crushed within the springlock suit, he forgoes just going through Fazbear's Fright's exit in favor of killing a nightguard (assuming what remains of the suit's primitive A.I. lets him leave), and he walks into the pizzeria simulator even though he knows something is fishy about it just because he can't pass up the chance to kill more people.
• Faux Affably Evil: Wears a smile wherever he goes, and death, bare minimum as a threat, usually follows. He may appear as not-so-threatening at first glance outside of his suit, but in it, one can see his presence as the vile, deranged bag of disease for what it is. When we finally hear him speak, his voice is full of this trope too, and he rarely, if ever, talks down to others outright in the games.
• Foil:
  • To Ralph, the Phone Guy. They're polar opposites in many respects. William's actions would imply he detests and despises everything Fazbear Entertainment stands for. He cunningly murders children out-of-sight in a place where they are supposed to be happy, all with a constant smug grin. He's the CEO of a robotics company, and carefully chooses his words with a menacing voice. Phone Guy's lectures, however, show he adores the animatronics and the establishment, knowing they hold a special place in children's hearts. He breaks no rules and enjoys reminding others about the rules. He's only a lowly worker and while his speech is informal, it's very cheerful. And they both die because of what they do. After death, the Phone Guy stays this way, but Afton actively refuses to die several times before his implied final demise (assuming the Mimic is Glitchtrap/Burntrap).
  • He's also this to the Cassette Man, Henry. While Henry is doing what he does to release the soul of his daughter and the other troubled souls in the animatronics, William accompanies Baby/Elizabeth in trying to kill Mike and several more children. Afton is also an example of the worst of humanity (violence, jealousy, and selfishness), while Henry demonstrates the best of humanity (atonement, justice, and sacrifice).
• For the Evulz: We still don't have a concrete motivation in the games^note The closest we have is the implication that he went mad over the death of his children, but as Secret of the Mimic shows he was still an absolute bastard well before then, but the novels give us a small clue... because it's fun, his personal life sucks, and killing people is great for stress relief. This bastard still has it out for children for entertainment. This is then made crystal clear in the Fazbear Frights books, where he's said to have a "never-ending need to inflict pain" that shows he's a complete sociopath who loves tormenting innocents.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Any time he's not busy being the central threat, Afton is the guy who masterminded the events that result in the animatronics to kill you. Assuming Glitchtrap is the Mimic, he keeps the role beyond the grave.
• Hated by All: He is despised by nearly every character in the series: Henry for killing his daughter and his horrific experiments; the animatronics for rather obvious reasons, but especially Charlotte; even his own son Michael Afton went after him when he tricked him into getting scooped and bodyjacked. The only one who seemed to care for him was his daughter Elizabeth, but the events of Pizzeria Simulator imply that he was grooming her into becoming a killer.
• Hates Everyone Equally: He's a Serial Killer who primarily targets children and is clearly only the co-founder of Fazbear Entertainment so he can earn the perks of working with someone like Henry Emily in a corporation that profitable, but even besides his clear hatred for both children and Henry, seemingly no one is safe from being targeted by William's sheer misanthropy. He seems to be fine with killing just about any child on sight and even his own family is basically worthless to him. And worst of all, he seems to know how much of an asshole he is.
• The Heavy: The central villain of the series who caused everything bad, both heroes and others villains doing what they do because of him.
• Hope Spot:
  • As he's being cornered by the ghosts of his past victims, he sees possible salvation: his old trusty tool of murdering, the Spring Bonnie suit! He hops inside to save himself… and only succeeds in orchestrating his own demise. Whoops.
  • After surviving the third game, he managed to stumble upon yet another pizzeria which could contain possible victims, accompanied by his equally bloodthirsty daughter. However, it was all a ruse by his "old friend" Henry/Cassette Man and Mike to end his reign and legacy of terror once and for all.
• Humiliation Conga: First, his daughter died simply out of curiosity, by meeting a specific animatronic while she was completely alone — allowing it to kill her (and to add insult to injury, the animatronic was one of his own killing machines). Second, he got found out by the ghosts who he murdered and met the same fate as with his own children. Third, the restaurant he worked with turned into a scare mansion, turning his life's work into a universally-despised urban legend and a mere profit scheme. And finally, karma comes back to bite him in the form of Cassette Man/Henry, his old friend, and by extension Mike, his own son he left to die, when Henry leaves him and his daughter Elizabeth/Baby in an inescapable maze to be immolated, with Mike bringing them there in the first place. Let's just say there is no sympathy to the monster to begin with.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Though all of his forms are almost as well-known as Freddy and friends, it's easy to forget that he only first made an appearance in Five Nights at Freddy's 2, with allusions to him only existing as very well-hidden secrets in the first game.
• I Have Many Names: Aside from "William Afton", his identities as a zombie animatronic also include "Springtrap" and "Scraptrap". And that's excluding his numerous fan nicknames, most famously "Purple Guy".
• Implacable Man: As noted in the Invincible Villain entry below.
• Invincible Villain: Afton is just too integral to the series' lore to be killed off permanently and every time he's "killed", he comes back stronger than ever. Gets crushed by the springlock suit? He comes back as Springtrap. Gets burned alive in the third game? He comes back as Scraptrap. Gets burned alive again? According to the Frights books, one of his victims keeps him alive and then tortures him in his coma. To hammer it down, the mere possibility that this asshole is gone for good is because another villain might have taken his Big Bad spot. And even then, various artificial replicas of Springtrap continue appearing in Fazbear Entertainment's VR games or delivery service, letting the man stay in the franchise, even if through fakes. To quote the man himself:
  Afton: I always come back!
• Ironic Death: With Help Wanted 2 implying he killed Fiona by starting the fire at Fall Fest in the 70s, his death by being burned alive is highly ironic.
• Ironic Hell:
  • His fate as Springtrap has shades of this. He's crushed to death in the Spring Bonnie suit, just as he did to his child victims. After this, his spirit is left trapped in Springtrap and left locked in a room at Freddy's for decades, leaving him trapped in his preferred method of murder and entombed in the place he'd committed his crimes at. Whether it is ironic or what he actually intended is up to speculation.
  • It's implied in Ultimate Custom Night that the game is William's personal hell, as he is tormented by the animatronics (both real and imagined) that he helped create, his various victims for all eternity, and two versions of himself, cursing the names of Henry and Michael or screaming for Mike to help him for eternity. A horrifying fate, but for him, fitting. However, it's later implied that this is actually a nightmare; one way or another, it still fits, just in a less-literal Hell.
• It Amused Me: Aside from searching for immortality, a lot of William's actions seem to come down to this. The murders he commits clearly bring him joy and amusement and he will never pass up an opportunity to claim more lives. Even when not committing evil acts this mentality seems to dictate his actions as despite knowing that he was walking into a trap in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator he did it anyway because he thought the whole situation was intriguing.
• It's All About Me: The one thing consistent in all of William's appearances is ultimately how selfish he is and how little he values any life that isn't his own. Even his own children are treated as more assets to his cause than anything.
• Jerkass: William is not a nice person, to put it lightly. Him being a Serial Killer who Would Hurt a Child is not even the start of just how big of a jerk he is. His family relationships suggest he has the smallest capacity to care somewhere, but his negligence towards their well-being suggests not even his family is immune to his apathy.
• Joker Immunity: "Dies" (emphasis on the quotation marks) at least two times in the series, and even though both could easily have been final out-of-universe given their presentation, he just came back for more. It's not even confirmed if his last death put him down for good or mildly delayed him.
• Karma Houdini/Karma Houdini Warranty: Zig-zagged between the two. Faced no punishment for murdering children, and possibly framing the day shift guard in 2 (assuming the two aren't one and the same), and ultimately went completely unpunished… and then his last trek on covering his tracks ended poorly. Very poorly. His actions also caused Elizabeth, the only person he may have cared about, to die. He doesn't care about his fate, though, but Henry kills him in a fire. And, depending on if he's Glitchtrap or not, the karma-loop might continue after this (if you're curious, Glitchtrap is likely on the Karma Houdini Warranty side due to Help Wanted 2 killing him off).
• Karmic Death:
  • In the final cutscene in FNAF 3, you play as one of the childrens' ghosts. You can find and corner William, along with the souls of the other four children. In a panic, he will jump into the Spring Bonnie suit that he wore while luring the children away. Everything seems fine and dandy for him, until… well, let's just say there's a reason it's now called Springtrap. Though it turns out, bloodbath as his death was, it was more of an inconvenience for him.
  • Dies for the second time at the hands of Henry/Cassette Man (the father of the Puppet, one of William's victims) and Mike, his own son, in Pizzeria Simulator. Cassette Man even states there's a special place in Hell for his kind of evil. He apparently survived this, but given that what follows is eternal torture in his nightmares, the theme of karma catching up to him still keeps.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • He programmed the animatronics in Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location to kill children when they're alone. Baby accidentally killing his daughter could be seen as this.
  • When cornered by his victims' ghosts, he hides inside the same Spring Bonnie costume he used to lure them to their deaths. However, his haste + the passage of time + his Evil Laugh + the moist and wet room = several broken springlocks and one dead serial killer.
  • He betrayed the trust of his friend Henry/Cassette Man and sent his own son to die in Sister Location. That more than comes to bite him in the ass when Henry orchestrates a plan that kills him for the second time. Michael, even if unaware of the plan, was also involved.
  • While it's not clear which position he had in Freddy Fazbear's Pizza besides co-founder (he was probably the day shift security guard, at least for the second game's location), it's very likely that he took full advantage of the very lax policies of the management regarding injuries and disappearances, even possibly getting away with his murders and causing someone else to took the blame for them. This, however, ends up biting him back when the management decide to wall his corpse up in the safe room rather than retrieve it, effectively forcing him to languish there for decades in the guise of an undead monstrosity.
• Lean and Mean: One of the only features that has remained constant throughout the games is that he's tall enough to outright dwarf most, if not all of the animatronics. Even after his demise, he's pretty tall.
• Mask of Sanity: What little we see of him before becoming Springtrap paints him as a charming man who no one ever suspected of being a serial child murderer. As Springtrap and especially as Scraptrap he's dropped the mask entirely and openly revels in the thought of claiming more victims.
• Mutilation Conga: Over the course of the series he's impaled and/or crushed by springlocks, rots away into the zombie like Springtrap, is possibly damaged in the fire at the end of 3, leading him to become the even more run down Scraptrap, and he's finally permanently burned to death in Pizzeria Simulator. If he is Burntrap then the fire left him a burned out husk barely able to walk who's caught in several more fires and is dragged away by the Blob.
• Mysterious Past: Nothing is known about his earlier life that could give us any explanation for how he developed into the sadistic maniac we see today. All we know for certain is that he was a genius engineer and businessman who owned Fazbear Entertainment alongside Henry and had a wife and three children. He also founded Afton Robotics, LLC at some point.
• Not Quite Dead: Fazbear Frights heavily implies that he survived the Pizzeria Simulator fire and that Ultimate Custom Night is All Just a Dream induced by one of his victims in an attempt to gain revenge.
• Promoted to Playable:
  • In World as both a human (though that character's info as "Purple Guy" claims not to be Afton himself) and Springtrap. He keeps his Badass Normal status there as the former as well. He's also an In-Universe Game-Breaker, which was why he was sent to the Halloween Update.
  • If you take the theory that Ultimate Custom Night is an Ironic Hell or torturous nightmare for Afton into account, then he becomes playable in the main game line for the first time.
• Purple Is Impure: His primary color motif is purple, and his moral corruption proves instrumental in ruining the lives of his victims, his family, and others around him.
• Rasputinian Death: He is impaled and possibly crushed to death with several of his limbs ripped and torn apart, his skull is punctured on all sides, and his eyes have been popped out of the sockets from pressure. After decaying in a sealed room for anywhere from a few months to decades, he is eventually freed. Unfortunately for him, his freedom is short-lived, as the attraction ignites from faulty electrical wiring and burns down, presumably with him still inside it. And the ending of Sister Location reveals that he survived that. And then, another building (the setting of Pizzeria Simulator) burns down, this time a maze with no exit so he can't escape, to do him in. And it's completely possible he's still alive after this.
• Resurrected Murderer: A serial child-killer who died after being crushed to death inside the Spring Bonnie suit. He comes back from the dead after his soul possesses the suit and serves as a recurring villain afterwards.
• Sadist: He clearly enjoys killing children, judging by that sadistic smile he's seen with. His Slasher Smile stays with him in all of his forms.
• Satanic Archetype: William Afton has so many parallels with Old Scratch and considering that the creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s is Christian, this is not a coincidence:
  • William was originally a high-ranking CEO of a robotics company before he fell from grace.
  • As a human, he lured in his victims as the (then) light colored SpringBonnie before brutally murdering them. The angel of light parallels would go to the friendly looking Glitchtrap.
  • He is a creator of a group of creepy looking Animatronics, of which he himself is trapped with.
  • His (first) death and imprisonment within the Spring Bonnie suit has parallels to Satan being cast into Hell.
  • One of his arch-enemies is, ironically, named Michael, who is the arch-nemesis of Satan.
  • He is known to go by various names and aliases, much like how in some myths and folklore, Satan goes by different names.
  • His highjacking and gradual deterioration of the Glamrock Animatronics bare to mind Demonic Possession.
  • Acts as a corrupter and tempter to those who are unfamiliar with his true nature.
  • He is commonly associated with fire.
  • He is associated with yellow and purple. Although, benevolent versions of these color motifs also manage to put a stop to him.
  • He is, in some occasions, done in by his own family or creations.
  • Cannot be easily destroyed and he will always come back.
  • His Springtrap and Burntrap forms resemble the more classical portrayals of Satan as a Big Red Devil.
  • Is sealed away (again) by The Blob, barring parallels to Abaddon sealing away Satan in Revelations.
  • He makes deals and alliances that end with him screwing people over.
  • He also embodies all the Seven Deadly Sins as stated below.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: William takes full advantage of his status as a co-founder (and as Secret of the Mimic implies, former CEO) of Fazbear Entertainment to easily get close to children by knowing where the suits and restaurants are located to set them up. This is also why he avoids getting found out, as he pretends to be an inconspicuous employee in plain sight. These connections, however, end up doing him in during the events of Pizzeria Simulator, as Henry, the other co-founder of the company, knew William would be lured into his fake restaurant, being his former ally.
• Secondary-Color Nemesis: He's famously portrayed by a purple sprite, owned a purple car, and as Springtrap, the color of his Spring Bonnie suit has decayed into a sickly green.
• Serial Killer: He's "the Purple Guy", the figure seen throughout the minigames that has killed the children at Freddy's.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Across all of the continuities, Afton is shown to indulge in all seven:
  • Pride: He believes that he is smarter and greater than everybody else. This works against him in Pizzeria Simulator, where he walks into Henry's trap, thinking he will be able to escape it.
  • Envy: He is implied to be extremely jealous of better engineers such as Henry and Edwin, and usually tries to claim their work for himself.
  • Greed: He is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who uses unethical practices to acquire as many resources as possible, such as how he sabotaged MCM.
  • Gluttony: Killing one person is never enough for him. He always seeks to kill more, even if it comes at risk to him.
  • Wrath: Hurts the people around him through his anger, be it the night guards, his business associates, or his family members.
  • Lust: Specifically bloodlust. His desire for bloodshed and violence was always there but it became harder for him to hide it after getting springlocked.
  • Sloth: He is very neglectful toward his family, with his marriage failing and being absent from the lives of his children. This neglect gets Elizabeth killed when he doesn't keep her away from Circus Baby.
• Slasher Smile: He's only ever not smiling if he's working or being cornered by the spirits of his victims.
• The Sociopath: Mr. Afton ticks off all the boxes: Lack of empathy; he doesn't care quite by and large who he kills, and even his friends and family are at most pawns to be used (with the possible exception of Elizabeth). Lying manipulator; his intro speech in Sister Location is really well composed, but also doesn't address the question asked of him at all. Constant need for stimulation; the only reason that seems to be given why he kills children is that he likes it and he's able to. Brilliant but also lacking foresight; while he is behind the creation of the Funtime animatronics and has in-depth knowledge on the springlock suits, he displays a severe lack of forward-thinking: he decides to climb inside the springlock suit even when the condition it's in makes it highly likely to kill him, and even as Scraptrap knows that the pizzeria isn't what it seems but can't resist the opportunity to kill more kids. Both of these examples lead to his death. He seems to be of the low functional type since he has a single-minded obsession with killing people, even after being turned into Springtrap. It gets to the point where he knows the pizzeria in the sixth game is a trap but can't resist going there anyways if it means claiming more victims.
• The Spook: Who is he? Where did he come from? Why does he kill children? Why does he target a very specific pizzeria for his murders? Why does he come back to destroy the animatronics? Why/how does he come back as Springtrap? Sister Location adds a little more information on him: his name is William Afton, he built the Circus Baby gang (to abduct children, of course), and he had a daughter. Had being the keyword here. That said, his motives are still a mystery.
• Suddenly Voiced: At the beginning of Sister Location, in the very same cutscene that names him, he speaks aloud, explaining some of the new features of the Funtime animatronics. He lets us hear his voice more in the following games.
• Technician/Performer Team-Up:
  • The novels describe him as the Performer to Henry's Technician, running the business side of things while Henry builds the animatronics (though in practice he's only ever seen being a lesser Technician to Henry).
  • Downplayed in the games, where both of them are shown to have engineering skills and business acumen. His Performer side finally gets to shine in Secret of the Mimic where he rakes Edwin into a crooked business contract to scam him out of his entire company.
• Tom the Dark Lord: "William Afton" isn't all that unique of a name, nor is it any special. Heck, many real life serial killers tend to have pretty normal names, so Billy isn't that far off.
• Too Clever by Half: Demonstrates this quite frequently. While incredibly cunning and manipulative, a prodigy in mechanical engineering, and scarily competent at everything he does, overconfidence and being considerably lacking in foresight is his downfall many times throughout the series. Easily the two most apparent instances of this in the series proper would be hiding in a Springlock suit while literally surrounded by moisture that could (and does) loosen the locks, and investigating the pizzeria from the sixth game even when he knew something was up. Also, the fact that he primarily uses his prodigious skill as a mechanic as a means to murder people instead of literally anything else, although it's ambiguously suggested he has an unspecified Freudian Excuse and/or a mental disorder to explain why he acts this way.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Mr. Afton, what did you think was going to happen when you hastily climbed inside of a potentially hazardous animatronic suit? The same suit that goes off with just the slightest bit of breath and moisture. In a dilapidated room filled with rain and rainwater?
  • Even more so applies to walking into a trap disguised as a pizzeria even when you're fully aware that something was off about it!
• Trash Talk: In Pizzeria Simulator his comment upon killing his own son is that it was "easier than he expected".
• Villain Ball:
  • Averted for most of the saga; William covers his tracks quite well. The only reason he gets caught is because he goes back to the pizzeria after it shut down, to destroy the bots for some reason. Then he's confronted by the ghosts of the children he killed. In a moment of panic, he jumps into the Spring Bonnie suit — but notices his surroundings. There is water from rain leaking through the roof, to the point, there are even large puddles on the floor… which he ran through several times while running from the pursuing ghosts around the room. This man knew full well the risk of moisture on the spring locks but went for it anyway. Snap. It's a miracle the locks held out long enough for him to laugh at his assumed victory. Even then, if he hadn't laughed at the children, he might have lived.
  • Played straight in Pizzeria Simulator. Unlike Molten Freddy, Scrap Baby, and Lefty, he knows full well that the pizzeria is a ruse, but plays along anyway, because he regards it as "interesting". It doesn't end well for him…
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • When finally cornered by the ghosts of the children, he FLIPS OUT with fear.
  • The face that Scraptrap makes in Pizzeria Simulator when being cooked alive says it all.
  • You might or might not hear an audio of him being tortured in the secret Old Man Consequences ending of Ultimate Custom Night, and it doesn't exactly sound pretty.
• Villain Decay: Ironically, this terrifying Mad Scientist Serial Killer's track record in villainy took a complete nosedive after becoming the supernaturally-powered cybernetic zombie. Notably, he failed to secure a single confirmed kill from the moment he got springlocked until his final death: he spent all of 3 trying and failing to get a single night guard, and he let himself be played for an idiot in 6 with the false promises of children to slaughter and then fails again to kill the single night guard he does meet (implied to be the same one, even). Lampshaded by the Puppet in UCN, who states she doesn't fear or even hate him anymore, now that he's proven himself to be nothing more than a pathetic man in a bunny suit who spent his entire life victimizing innocent, defenseless children.
• Walking Spoiler: Almost everything about Afton is a major spoiler in some way.
• Wicked Pretentious: He's the co-founder of a rich fast food company along with his more law-abiding friend, Henry Emily, and he speaks with a posh English accent, but beyond that, William's a selfish and despicable fiend who is responsible for everything in the franchise.
• Would Hit a Girl: Women are not exempt from his murders. In the movies he stabs Vanessa, his own daughter and only has the barest shocked reaction to it before getting back into character, while he killed Charlie, indirectly Elizabeth, Cassidy, Susie, and possibly Fiona in the games.
• Would Hurt a Child: All of his confirmed victims were kids.
• Yellow Is Cheerful: Played for Horror. When he lured his victims to his death, he wore the friendly Spring Bonnie costume, a yellow rabbit, which is how he made them trust him.

William Afton / "Purple Guy"

Appearances: Five Nights at Freddy's 2 | Five Nights at Freddy's 3 | Five Nights at Freddy's 4 | Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location^note Voice only; not seen in person | Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator

• Abusive Parents: While how much he cared about his daughter is unknown, whatever care he might have had wasn't enough to stop him from abandoning her to her fate once she was killed by Circus Baby, on top of torturing her with control shocks to keep her line. He more clearly despises Michael, as he seemingly sent him on a suicide mission as either a test of loyalty or as a long drawn out execution, and outright tries to kill him in Pizzeria Simulator.
• Accidental Murder: While his other child murders are very intentional, his daughter's death at the hands of Circus Baby was a complete accident.
• Ambiguously Related:
  • He is all but explicitly confirmed to be the father of the child we play as in the FNaF 4 minigames, enough for everyone and their mother in the fanbase to treat it as canon and to be seen as ridiculous for suggesting otherwise: he was watching over the gameplay bedroom, owned the Fredbear Plush, is the Orange Guy walking into the house eerily similar to the one in the 4 menu screen, the 4 minigame house has a girly bedroom that could easily be Elizabeth's, and Security Breach features a bunch of S.T.A.F.F. Bots at a table, all of which are incredibly similar to the Aftons: The father with a tophat (Afton), the wife represented by Ballora (Mrs. Afton, who's theorized by some to be haunting Ballora), the daughter represented by Baby (Elizabeth), a son wearing a cap (Michael), and a bot missing their head (The Child, who died to a bite in the head from Fredbear). And that's excluding how it was later explicitly confirmed he created the Nightmare Animatronics.
  • It's hinted that Vanessa from Security Breach is his daughter. Her last name starts with an A, her father is named Bill (short for William) and was abusive, she's blonde with green eyes like Elizabeth and Vanessa is even his daughter in the film continuity. It also helps we don't have a known date for when Afton got springlocked, meaning he could've easily made it to the XXI century and had Vanessa before his sorta-death.
• Ambiguous Situation: In the fourth game, we see him putting someone in a suit. Whether this was him framing someone, trying to kill them via springlock failure or helping an employee while doing his day job is unknown.
• Badass Normal: Seemingly normal, at any rate. As much of a monster he was, he still single-handedly snuck around and dismantled all of the original animatronics while they were actively hunting for him. Unfortunately for him, this ended up biting him in the ass by releasing the children's spirits, thus allowing them to kill him and move on. This gets even better in World, where he's a playable character — and a pretty good one at that.
• Blank White Eyes: Many of the minigames have him with distinct white irises. It's downplayed (and overlaps with Glowing Eyelights of Undeath) when he's seen inside Springtrap, as he still has black pupils.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He has enough engineering knowledge to know how to make animatronics as advanced as the Funtimes, and enough knowledge of how to use remnant to extract it via the Scooper he made. But, a huge chunk of the robots and designs he used to make his company were stolen from Edwin's designs, making him a huge plagiarist who built his empire with stolen ideas.
• Bring It: In the second game's "SAVETHEM" minigame. The shape is deliberately vague, but either Purple Guy is holding some sort of weapon as he pounces on Freddy, or holding his palm out in a beckoning gesture. Either one fits a predator who leads children astray. After the third game's reveal of the springlock suits, it's also possible that he's holding the hand-crank used to switch the suit into "costume mode". This is made more likely by the knowledge that the springlock suits were part of Purple Guy's M.O.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: CEO of a robotics company by day with a side gig as a serial child murderer. However, the true extent of his "corrupt businessman" side only becomes visible in Secret of the Mimic, where William tricked Edwin into signing a contract that he knew he wouldn't be able to complete in time, before sabotaging the project by changing the designs and requirments every time Edwin was close to finishing, to ensure that he can't complete it, leading to Edwin overworking his employees and William inviting those employees to come work for Fazbear Entertainment. Because of this, the project he signed on to was never finished, and Fazbear Entertainment used that contract to gain legal ownership of all of Edwin's designs and inventions (including the Mimic), as well as the land on which Edwin's house was built. The real kicker? He managed to get Henry in on it.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: After being confronted by the ghosts of his victims, he desperately puts his Spring Bonnie suit on in an attempt to scare off and/or armor himself against the ghosts. However, the suit's spring locks activate and he's slowly crushed and impaled by the faulty spring locks. According to the novels, it took 5 minutes to kill him. Afton says so in The Silver Eyes, and while it's a non-canon adaptation, there's few reasons to believe the springlock failure is in any way different.
  William: And if you trigger those spring locks, two things will happen: first the locks themselves will snap right into you, making deep cuts all over your body, and a split second later, all the animatronic parts, all that sharp steel and hard plastic will instantly be driven into your body. You will die, but it will be slow. You'll feel your organs punctured, the suit will grow wet with your blood, and you will know you’re dying for long, long minutes. You'll try to scream, but you will be unable to: your vocal cords will be severed, and your lungs will fill with your own blood until you drown in it.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Downplayed, since the animatronics he creates are at least superficially part of an (loosely) honest business, but the fact still stands that the end goal that he puts his practically revolutionary skill in mechanics towards is killing children, usually ruining the credibility of the business said skillset goes towards in the process. He could have had a long, admirable career as a businessman, roboticist, and restaurant owner if he didn't like murdering children so much.
• Cutscene Boss: After terrorizing players for five nights as Springtrap and in numerous minigames as the 8-bit Purple Guy, the final minigame sees him driven back into his costume room by the ghosts of children he killed and stuffed into animal suits. With nowhere to run, he jumps into the Springtrap suit... which immediately breaks the spring locks due to the moisture from the rainwater in the dilapidated room, making him die gruesomely as the ghosts look on.
• Dead All Along: By the events of the third game, William's corpse has been rotting inside Springtrap for a long time. His spirit still haunts it, though, and it seems like he only kicked the bucket after the first game was over.
• Death by Irony: In a number of ways:
  • William killed children and destroyed animatronics while disguising himself with one of the animatronics' suits — he was also killed by one of those suits.
  • William disguised himself with the Spring Bonnie suit and used it to kill five children without setting off the springlocks that kept the endoskeleton in the suit from skewering him. Then in a fit of panic, while being cornered by the ghosts of the first five children he murdered, he hides in said springlock suit. The same suit that goes off with just the slightest bit of breath and moisture. In a dilapidated room filled with rain and rainwater.
  • Throughout the minigames of the third night, he uses a room hidden from the animatronics to keep himself safe. He ends up dying in that room, and spends the next couple decades in it.
  • The ghosts of the children tried to kill adults by stuffing them into dangerous suits. He killed himself by hiding in one of those suits in an attempt to escape the ghosts.
  • Sister Location amps this up a bit; it is implied that his daughter also suffers a nasty one, as she is killed by her father's child-murdering animatronics that he had so desperately tried to keep her away from.
    • The very same game also implies Afton knew about the ghosts haunting the animatronics, which indicates his shock that they manifested even after their dismantlement shows he knew far less about the supernatural than he thought.
• Demoted to Extra: Appears briefly in the fourth game, simply doing his day job as a security guard. Justified, as he has no role in torturing the child and whoever we play as in the nights... but he is heavily implied to be their father. And then completely subverted when "Dittophobia", after years of speculation, confirmed the Nightmare animatronics were made by William Afton as part of his experiments. Whether the gameplay is the actual events or some trauma-induced nightmare recreating them, good ol' Willy went straight into being the Greater-Scope Villain like always.
• Dying Alone: William's eventual fate as revealed in the pixelated ending movie of 3. The revenant children scare him into donning the defective Spring Bonnie suit, the locks fail when he mocks the ghosts from inside a wet room and a possibly wet suit, and he is mangled from the inside out — still twitching even as the children fade away. No one is there to witness his final, agonizing moments. Subverted in Pizzeria Simulator, where he dies accompanied by his daughter, his son, his old business partner, one of the children he murdered, and Molten Freddy.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In Sister Location, it is revealed that William had a daughter who was killed by Baby. He warned her not to get close to Baby, possibly because he knew she was an unassuming murder weapon. He sent Michael down to the location to save Elizabeth after her death and there are some implications he made Baby as an expression for his affection for his daughter. It's still rather questionable how genuine it is, as it's later implied he was raising her to be his successor rather any genuine care.
• Evil Brit: Sort of? In his first voiced appearance, he speaks with what seems like a Received Pronunciation accent, and his son Michael certainly has a British accent. But Ultimate Custom Night's larger sample size gives us inconsistencies a little too specific for Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping, indicating something more like a Transatlantic accent. PJ Heywood has stated that he modeled his performance after Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.
• Evil Genius: As of Sister Location's intro, he's smart enough to build high-tech intelligent robots that can dispense ice cream, inflate balloons, and grab children inside them and kill them. Heck, this is just building upon FNAF 2, which heavily implies that he tampered with the animatronics' facial recognition.
• Evil Is Bigger: Relative to the other characters — especially his cameo in 4, where we see him next to another adult — his sprites indicate someone tall.^note To be clear: no matter what shot he's in, he utterly dwarfs every other character on-screen. This includes the Puppet.
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: In the 8-bit minigames his appearance is only seen in purple, hence his nickname Purple Guy. A dark colour, but only enough to distinguish him from the mostly dark background. The only thing to glow are his white eyes.
• Evil Is Petty: The likely reason he killed Charlie. Henry and him were partners so it's very likely he knew who Charlie was. Additionally, he kills her very differently then the other kids, just popping out of his car and stabbing her before throwing her corpse into an alleyway instead of stuffing her in an animatronic which was his experimental goals. (The only reason she possesses the Puppet is because said Puppet found her body.) Pointing to the reason he killed her was just to spite his partner.
• Evil Laugh: The only instance in which William shows any emotion other than menace occurs in his appearance in 3, when he cowers in terror from the ghosts of his victims. Once he dives inside the Springtrap suit, he has the temerity to laugh at them… which, alongside the moisture within the room filled with rain, only aggravates the weakened support locks, causing the suit to crush him.
• Evil Mentor: He might've accidentally became one for the Mimic, who - if you believe he's Glitchtrap - copied his behavior as a Serial Killer and continued his legacy.
• Fatal Flaw: Obsession. Despite everything he's capable of (such as inventing a variety of revolutionary animatronics, being a legitimately successful businessman, and even finding ways to cheat death in almost every appearance), the only thing Afton ever does with these talents is try and kill children.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: He was one for a long time, as he was largely The Ghost, and even when he did appear, he didn't speak or show any significant characterization. Sister Location and Pizzeria Simulator finally avert this by having him speak and delving into who he is.
• Genius Bruiser: Smart enough to build animatronics that count how many children are in the room and capture them if alone, and strong enough to overpower and disable the animatronics, though he had the element of surprise.
• The Ghost: Throughout the franchise, his appearance has always been left a mystery.
  • He's first mentioned in a randomly-appearing newspaper headline from the first game, which doesn't give any details about him besides his gender and the fact that he murdered children.
  • The second game identifies him as a vaguely-defined purple 8-bit sprite, which doesn't tell body features or clothing, unlike the animatronics.
  • The third game does show him as a rotting corpse inside Springtrap, which is barely visible in the costume and doesn't indicate what he would've looked like in the living flesh.
  • We might see his real appearance (albeit stylized as a 50s-esque cartoon) in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator's cutscenes, where he wears a purple business suit, is constantly smiling, has a cleft chin just like Springtrap's, and even wears what looks like a night guard's uniform in one picture.
• Hidden Depths: For a brutal and sadistic Serial Killer, he appears to be one heck of a technician, if Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location is of any indication.^note This matches up with the idea that he tampered with the Toy animatronics' facial recognition in 2, even if it's not fully confirmed. He's also not completely heartless, since it's revealed he had a daughter that he loved enough to try and keep safe from his murderous creations. He failed.^note However, that last bit could have been subverted in Pizzeria Simulator, which implies that he may have wanted to keep Elizabeth alive only to make her become Daddy's Little Villain.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Ultimately killed himself attempting to hide in the Spring Bonnie springlock suit, stuffing himself into one of the suits like he had done to the children he was hiding from. He apparently built Baby and possibly the other Sister Location animatronics with a feature that would make them horrifically murder children provided that no one else is looking. To our knowledge, the only kid ever killed by this was his own daughter, whom he specifically warned to stay away from Baby.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Among all the animatronics and the supernatural occurrences, this monster, a human, is the cause of everything.
• Karmic Transformation: More like a Karmic Reincarnation, actually. He ended up condemned to the same fate his victims were left in: becoming the very animatronic that he was crushed and/or stabbed to death in.
• Killer Cop: He was with the company since Fredbear and Spring Bonnie were in operation, and seemingly masqueraded as the dayshift security guard at Freddy's during Jeremy's week. From what Phone Guy tells Jeremy his first night, he was the nightguard before him, but got saved by being moved to the day shift after complaining to management about the Animatronics' killer nature.
• Kill It with Fire: Help Wanted 2 suggests his first victim may not have been a child at all, but Fiona, Edwin's wife, after he started a fire at a Fall Fest in the 70s.^note Springtrap appears as the antagonist after the whole Carnie area is burned to the ground, implying Afton's involvement in the event that is very likely to have killed her.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: Heavily hinted, but never outright stated, to be the Child's father in the fourth game.
• Mad Scientist: He held full responsibility for the creation of the respective animatronics and how he got hired to the Pizzeria to receive his funding for it. Not to mention the camera system in the Private Room, which shows footage of the fourth game's bedroom and Plushtrap area, implying that he watches children in these rooms, observing from the Private Room, which is most likely his office. Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator definitively establishes him as one, as the Scooper's blueprint reveals a reservoir for a substance known as "remnant", which is implied to be what allows a soul to remain after death.
• The Man Behind the Man: He is directly behind the entire situation with the animatronics, as they are haunted by his victims, and he ultimately died and wound up haunting the Springtrap suit, lasting longer than any of the others. He's also all but outright stated to be the Child's father from 4, is confirmed to be the father of Michael / "Eggs Benedict" from Sister Location and is the creator of the animatronics from both games.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • William is somewhat presented in this light in Sister Location, in that he favored having his creations murder for him, and that it's implied that he used Michael as a scapegoat to go to the underground facility the game takes place in.
  • As shown in the Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator Fruity Maze minigame, this is part of his MO as a serial killer— gaining the trust of children so they would follow him, allowing him to kill them without alerting anyone. It's implied that he's been observing the little girl who frequents the pizzeria's arcade, exploiting the child's emotional vulnerability over the tragic death of her dog by telling her that her dog's not dead and he can show her where her dog is if she follows him...
  • When looking at the circumstances for Elizabeth's villainy in Sister Location and Pizzeria Simulator, one interpretation is that William wanted Elizabeth to continue his legacy by orchestrating more tragedies in the Fazbear Entertainment chain. This opens up the possibility that he may have used reverse psychology to tempt Elizabeth to go to Baby, in order to immortalize her by trapping her soul in the animatronic.
• Meaningful Appearance: Almost every depiction of Afton is completely purple, hence his common (and previously only known) name of Purple Guy. There is no exact explanation for why he is shown this way, but one reason could be the fact that due to the backgrounds of the games being totally black, Purple Guy had to be drawn purple to not totally blend into the background, since he's meant to be a Sinister Silhouette. Additionally, purple colors were commonly used to depict other arcade characters in the shadows or as "shadowy" people, with Purple Guy seemingly operating in the night and in the dark Fazbear restaurants, which would make sense.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: One interpretation of him, if he's somehow still alive or in full haunting control of Springtrap, considering the number of years that passed since his demise.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: By destroying the animatronics, he ended up releasing the spirits of the children he killed, which eventually led to his own death.
• No Name Given: In the first four games, all we know about him is that he's male and was at one point employed at the restaurant. He was later given the name "William Afton" in The Silver Eyes, however, which carried over into the main games with Sister Location; Pizzeria Simulator even calls him such in the credits instead of Springtrap.
• Not Me This Time: Subverted. He seemingly has no (direct) connection to the events of the fourth game, only making minor cameos. Then it's revealed he created the Nightmare animatronics, and heavily implied he's the protagonist's father.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Explodes in a fountain of pixellated blood once the suit caves in on him. Of course, given the actual amount of damage the suit did to him, the size of the pool of blood under him is quite realistic for someone killed while surging on adrenaline.
• Parental Neglect: Is heavily implied to be the neglectful father to the Crying Child, leaving him to his bullying brother (implied to be Michael). His cameo makes this worse, where he seems to ignore his distressed son while at work.
• Pet the Dog: Possibly. Considering it has likely been a few years between the events of William's last message to Edwin and the events of Secret of the Mimic, it appears as though William kept his word and didn't touch Edwin's house despite now owning the land it stands on. Assuming he didn't move into it at a later date and that the "Parachute" ending is not the canonical ending, that is.
• Purple Is Powerful: Another reason the minigames might depict him as purple, since he's completely invincible, emphasizing the physical power he holds to be capable of effortlessly dismantling the animatronics and the metaphorical power he holds over the franchise's dark and tragic secrets.
• Rage Within the Machine: While an employee and co-founder of the Fazbear restaurant chain, he maintains a pathological hatred towards the establishment. This ends up getting him killed when he returns to the last restaurant, which had been closed for some time, specifically to dismantle the animatronics.
• Returning to the Scene: He returns to the FNAF 1 location to destroy the animatronics and therefore rid himself of any remaining evidence. This actually led to his death.
• Robot Master: Sister Location's intro reveals that the animatronics of Circus Baby's Pizza World were built by Mr. Afton. Dialogue from Baby and information gleamed from unlockable blueprints heavily implies that they were built to assist him in his killings, with (among other things) Funtime Freddy's blueprints including, "Voice Mimic/Luring".
• Self-Disposing Villain: He was never convicted for his crimes^note the newspaper clippings in FNaF 1 state that the suspect of the murders was caught and charged, suggesting that he either framed someone else or managed to avoid punishment, and if he hadn't come back to destroy the animatronics, then he would most likely have gotten off scot-free for his crimes.
• Slasher Smile. In all of FNaF 2 and all but the final minigame of FNaF 3, he's seen with a big smile on his face.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Implied. While he's never had an on-screen appearance besides a purple game sprite and his own corpse, judging by Mike's appearance in the Sister Location custom night cutscenes and the fact that the Funtimes mistook him for William, Afton looked like a perfectly normal guy. A "normal" guy who happened to be a mass murderer.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Played with. While everything that happens in the franchise are the result of his willful actions, he probably didn't intend for the children he murdered to possess the animatronics and start murdering night guards themselves. He still doesn't feel a bit of remorse for it, though, and later turns to making animatronics specifically to murder children as part of his experiments on life after death.
• Villain Protagonist: Easter eggs and books suggest that Ultimate Custom Night is his torturous nightmare after Pizzeria Simulator.
• Villains Out Shopping: His appearance in the fourth game show him putting someone in a suit... but seeing how there's another person wearing a Fredbear suit nearby, it's completely possible that William is simply helping out a fellow employee.
• Wicked Toymaker: Designed deadly animatronics meant to help him in his murders, and to lure kids into his restaurant.

Springtrap

Appearances: Five Nights at Freddy's 3 | Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location^note In The Stinger for the Custom Night DLC | Ultimate Custom Night | Five Nights at Freddy's VR: Help Wanted | Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery | Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted 2^note As a cutout

• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Wore a purple bowtie and buttons as Spring Bonnie, but lost them due to wear and tear over the years. A single button is still visible on his chest, however.
• And I Must Scream: The rare screens show the suit is causing pain to Afton and he's trying to take the mask off because it hurts that much. You can even hear him moaning and grunting when he's roaming the halls! It's hard to blame him when he shows up in Pizzeria Simulator with a dramatically altered/entirely different Spring Bonnie suit, given that he's clearly more comfortable wearing it.
• Artificial Zombie: Springtrap is the pseudo-reanimated corpse of William Afton wearing the suit, with his spirit trapped in the suit. This is a major contrast to the other animatronics, which, despite the hints that they're stuffed with corpses, have their usual endoskeletons with no hint of human material inside.
• Black Eyes of Evil: The "costume mode" lenses over his eyes give his sclera a dim, blackened appearance, contrasted by the sickly green-yellow glow of his irises.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Practically a walking example of this. While you would see blood in the minigames of FNaF 2, and 1 gave us that lovely image of Mike's eyeballs poking out of the front of the mask, Springtrap's innards are gorey, grimey, and nauseating to behold. And assuming you get one of those rare splash screens, you'll be beholding him a whole lot.
• Body Horror: He looks like a rotting zombie, so this goes without saying. Turns out this is because he is a zombie, as Afton's corpse is inside him.
• Came Back Wrong: William's body following his death is now zombified and rotting in a torn-up Spring Bonnie suit. Not that it hinders him.
• The Cameo: Appears for a split second at the end of the last cutscene in Sister Location, showing that he survived the burning of Fazbear's Fright.
• Chekhov's Gun: Phone Guy's recorded messages talk extensively about the safety precautions required to safely operate springlock suits, and what will happen when these precautions are not followed. Come Night 5's end-of-night minigame...
• Clingy Costume: It's a bit hard to take off this suit when your innards have basically been Iron Maiden'ed to the inside of it. Oh, and just so you know, Afton is in complete agony when wearing this suit and the rare screens show he wants to take it off.
• Composite Character: Is on the game's icon like Freddy,^note Other similarities to Freddy include making a distinct noise, having a Slasher Smile, taunting the player, and moving fairly quickly. makes poses similar to both Withered Bonnie and Toy Bonnie (both of whom he resembles, being a decayed Bonnie animatronic), is referred to with a menacing nickname like Mangle, is in a state of disrepair like Foxy (complete with exposed shins), is distracted by noise like the Puppet, and is (or more accurately, was) colored gold like Golden Freddy. Finally, like all the others, he serves as the can for a dead person.
• Confusion Fu: Because Springtrap is the only real threat in 3, he compensates by having far more erratic movement than the animatronics of most other games, being able to wander all over the building instead of following a set path and thus keep you guessing where he went after leaving the current camera. Not helping is the fact that he has a small chance to outright ignore audio lures.
• Cyborg: An explicitly paranormal example, being a human murderer whose body and spirit was merged with robotic technology.
• Doppelgänger Spin: If the ventilation fails and your vision starts to fade, you'll hallucinate several Springtraps on the cameras. Hope you remembered where the real one was!
• Dramatic Unmask:
  • Upon starting the game, it's possible to find a picture◊ of Springtrap ripping his head open to reveal William Afton's mummified skull.
  • Inverted in the end minigame. William, having been cornered by the spirits of the children, stuffs himself into the one and only suit he can find to hide in: the Spring Bonnie suit.
• Easily Detachable Robot Parts: Springtrap is an animatronic that can be dismantled and held back with spring locks so it can be worn as a costume. The animatronic can be "rebuilt" and still work fine.
• Evil Is Visceral: The innards of this model are rusted-out and decrepit, making it hard to discern the sinewy flesh from the suit's workings.
• Evil Laugh: Lets an exhilarated cackle loose in Special Delivery if he successfully catches you.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: As revealed in Special Delivery (and technically Pizzeria Simulator even if that was Scraptrap), his voice is both raspy and deep. There's no doubt it's because of the damage to his vocal cords.
• Facial Horror:
  • The randomized loading screens reveal some of the damage done to William's head when this bear trap of a costume clamped shut on him. Hooks were driven into his cheeks, giant grapefruit-size eyes exploded from his sockets (or were smashed into them), and a neck attachment shot up his larynx and through the roof of his mouth, spearing it open.
  • If one assumes the Burntrap seen in Security Breach is the original Springtrap suit instead of a recreation, then it has lost both its eyes and jaw in the incinerator at the end of Pizzeria Simulator. The top half of the head is being held on by the aforementioned hooks, the lower part of Afton's mummified head is exposed, and his eyesockets are clearly empty, barring twin purple sparks glowing in the depths of the empty socket.
• Failsafe Failure: When the failsafes on the rabbit costume... well, failed, robot endoskeleton parts pierced and crushed his body, as shown by the reservoir of blood around him. And yet, according to the minigame, this did not kill as quickly as one would hope.
• Flawed Prototype: Spring Bonnie was one of two suits designed as an animatronic-suit hybrid. One can use a hand-crank on the animatronic to recoil and compress the animatronic parts into the sides of the suit, with a spring lock holding the animatronic parts in place. This allows an entertainer/performer to climb into the suit and wear it. The parts must be tightly compressed and the spring locks secured, or else the animatronic parts will break loose, leading to death/grotesque maiming of the person wearing it.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Unlike all of the other animatronics before him, averted, as he has five fingers since the suit was meant to be worn by a human.
• Ghostly Gape: Though obscured by the teeth of the suit, opening up Springtrap's head reveals that Afton's mouth is permanently speared open by the animatronic parts.
• Glasgow Grin: His chaps are torn up, making his big teeth even more apparent.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: His glowing white eyes inside his rotting eye sockets are relatively unique to the series, and given that he's William Afton, seeing them in your face is the absolute last thing you want.
• Green and Mean: Is a rotten yellow-green due to decades of neglect, and is very, very mean.
• Guest Fighter: After much anticipation, Springtrap appears as a playable Killer in Dead by Daylight, with the moniker "The Animatronic".
• Hair-Raising Hare: A zombie-looking animatronic rabbit possessed by the franchise's overarching antagonist. Need we say more?
• Haunted Technology: He's a Fazbear Entertainment animatronic, what did you expect? Though, unlike the first two generations, he's actually haunted by the soul of an adult.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Springtrap is without a doubt the most iconic character in the series after Freddy Fazbear himself, and only appeared three games in.
• Icy Grey Eyes: As opposed to the original Bonnie's Red Eyes, Take Warning, Springtrap's eyes are a dead, grey color.
• It Can Think: Springtrap's movements while active are disturbingly fluid and human-like, in contrast to the jerky shambling of the previous animatronics. He also takes every path he can to get into your office, while the older generations only used preset routes. Sister Location's final cutscene implies it, and Pizzeria Simulator confirms it. And how can it do this? Because it has the soul of a child-murdering psychopath bound to it.
• Kill It with Fire: Zig-zagged. At the end of 3, Fazbear's Fright burns to the ground, but Springtrap managed to escape at least moderately unscathed. Then in Pizzeria Simulator, Henry lured him, Lefty, Baby, and Molten Freddy into an inescapable maze and set it on fire, and, well... can't get lucky twice, as they say..
• Last of His Kind: He was hyped up as this in the buildup for FNaF 3. Because he's stored inside a room that nobody bothered to open, Springtrap is the only real Fazbear animatronic left intact when Fazbear's Fright opened 30 years after the chain closed, the others having been disassembled as props. He is also the last of the classic "animatronic-suit" hybrids designed to retract their endoskeleton and let an actual person wear them. There was a reason for that. But as more games kept coming out, he eventually left this area as more and more faces from the past started showing up.
• Meaningful Name: The reason he is called Springtrap? According to the final minigame, getting stuffed into the suit was a trap sprung on William Afton with springs trapping him inside.
• Monster Clown: His clown skin from Special Delivery features him in a giant clown costume, complete with a painted face and comically large hammer.
• Mummy: An… odd example. From what the images of William's corpse show, it was somehow mummified after being locked into the suit. This is likely cause Scott Cawthon had trouble modeling anything looking sufficiently bloody-looking, making his body look dry.
• No OSHA Compliance: Spring Bonnie is a walking "fuck you" to safety — his suit was designed to be both a functional animatronic and a suit worn by humans. However, the method of shifting the animatronic parts out of the way was… not very safe (simply breathing could loosen a lock and kill/injure the user), and it was hastily retired after multiple spring failures. William found this out the hard way.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Well, in this case, Paranormal Half-Human Zombie Robot.
• Not Quite Dead: Sister Location's Golden Freddy cutscene shows that Springtrap is still moving, and the soul inside him is still alive following the Fazbear's Fright fire.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Unlike the animatronics in the previous two games, it's never been explicitly stated what Springtrap will do to you if he catches you.
• Obviously Evil: Up to the reveal in Night 5, it's rather clear that, whoever this animatronic is possessed by, they're only killing you for the thrill of catching another victim than for a more misguided reason like the Missing Children in the first game. Then the mini-game at the end reveals it's William Afton.
• Offscreen Teleportation: As per usual for the animatronics, Springtrap moves and attacks when not being watched, taking advantage of when the cameras briefly become defective. It is, however, more understandable to have him in your face when you were repeatedly blacking out from a faulty ventilation system. Also, the control monitors aren't large enough to cover the whole screen, so you'll catch glimpses of Springtrap moving towards the door and then the inside of the office before he forces either monitor down to growl at you.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: "Springtrap" is just a nickname that is never used in the marketing of Fazbear Entertainment^note Until the company tries to convince the public that the events of the first six games were fabricated rumors and conspiracy theories, officially using the character and name "Springtrap" as part of their character lineup. His real name is "Spring Bonnie". And his real name is William Afton.
• Our Slashers Are Different: While the other animatronics could range from your standard Killer Robots to borderline Eldritch Abominations like Golden Freddy and the Shadow Animatronics, Springtrap is something right out of a Slasher Movie. He's an undead Implacable Man who is utterly relentless in his pursuit of you, he's technically wearing a mask (though, he didn't have much of a choice in that department), and he is utterly silent as he tracks you down. He even takes some cues from more well-known slasher villains, such as being being an implacable zombie, using some kind of magic to possess something "innocent", and having killed children before being killed for his crimes and resurrected.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Springtrap is a wearable animatronic that contains the corpse of William Afton/Purple Guy. Even after Afton's death, Springtrap carries out his murderous intentions.
• Predecessor Villain: Spring Bonnie was once the co-star of Fazbear Entertainment alongside Fredbear back when all they had of a chain was Fredbear's Family Diner. They were quickly overtaken in popularity by Freddy and Bonnie.
• The Punishment: The ghosts of William's victims leaving him to die in the triggered Spring Bonnie suit should be a textbook case of Laser-Guided Karma, but unfortunately his spirit is no less capable of possessing an animatronic. And unlike the kids who had no sense of self during possession and were willing to pass on, Springtrap is entirely lucid and more than willing to continue his killing spree. In bringing their killer to justice, the kids inadvertently created a supernatural, mechanical monster worse than their own animatronics ever were.
• Rage Helm: The foam around the helmet has withered to resemble an evil grimace, when the human inside's actual expression is one of abject agony.
• Red Right Hand: One of his most notable features is the missing half of his right ear.
• The Reveal:
  • The fifth night's recording from Phone Guy heavily implies that it was Spring Bonnie, and not Golden Freddy as was previously thought, whom Afton wore as a suit to lure away and murder the Missing Children, thus adding another layer of irony to the final minigame. Speaking of said final minigame, Afton's corpse is revealed to be inside the Springtrap suit.
  • Sister Location gives us an even bigger shocker. The final Custom Night minigame reveals that Springtrap is still alive.
• Revenant Zombie: While Springtrap doesn't ever speak in FNaF 3, it's implied that Afton can still think, even as a zombie. He's shown to be more meticulous than the more "feral" classic robots, his jumpscare is more of a sinister approach, and some of his actions seem like he's almost... playing you. Later confirmed in Pizzeria Simulator, where Afton is shown to be alive, well, and out for blood.
• Robotic Psychopath: He's William Afton after getting trapped inside the Spring Bonnie suit and left to die, causing him to possess the suit and use it to keep up his general routine of killing any living thing he comes across.
• Schmuck Bait: When multiple and simultaneous spring lock failures occurred at one of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza's sister establishments, the springlock suits were decommissioned. When William Afton tried to hide inside Spring Bonnie one last time...
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Fazbear's Fright crew found him inside a room in the first game's location (one that was not included on the maps programmed into the animatronics, nor visible to the security guard), and brought him over to Fazbear's Fright as one of the attractions. Though the Spring Bonnie animatronic is unable to contain the murderer inside.
• SkeleBot 9000: Much of this animatronic's foam covering is gone, and his metal feet are completely bare. His fixed rictus and missing eyelids evoke a skull.
• Stealth Expert:
  • Unlike the other animatronics, which usually appeared front and center on the camera feeds, Springtrap usually stays in the corners of rooms, making it difficult to notice him on the camera feeds.
  • In Ultimate Custom Night, he tries to enter from the vents but can't be heard in them at all, and only shows a small area of his face when he reaches the mouth of the vent before attacking.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Springtrap has pale golden eyes due to decaying for three decades, and he's an undead walking corpse of the franchise's Big Bad stuck inside of a rotting springlock rabbit suit.
• Undead Abomination: He is essentially a zombified cyborg. But not only does he retain his homicidal tendencies, he's now strong enough to kill his victims without the use of any type of weapon.
• Undercrank: Had this in the trailers something fierce. The ending implied that these twitches were actually William Afton's death throes as the Spring Bonnie suit sliced and diced him.
• Was Once a Man: Like other possessed animatronics, though in a more cruel fashion: He started out as a normal, if very evil man named William Afton, until his Cruel and Unusual Death in the Spring Bonnie costume. Now, he's a terrifying, undead hybrid of man and machine.
• You Are Already Dead: The moment you see him sprint past your peripheral vision while you're bringing up the monitor or maintenance panel, pray that the clock is close enough to tick to 6 AM. Or don't pray at all, since he has the tendency to attack you the moment you lower the monitor or the ventilation goes down. Same goes if you see him disappear from Vent CAM 14 or 15 (which lead straight to the Office) after you seal them, since that means he's already in your Office, hidden from your view.^note You can save yourself if he's looking at you from outside the office, though you need very fast fingers to pull it off. If he peeks at you through the door, play the audio cue at CAM 01, while if he appears behind the windows, play it at CAM 02.
  You may not recognize me at first, but I assure you, it's still me.
• Zombie Gait: Averted with the original Springtrap in 3, who was surprisingly nimble for an undead corpse in a decaying mascot suit, but played straight with his In-Universe recreation in Help Wanted, where his movement is a heavy-limbed shamble as opposed to the slow deliberate walk of the other animatronics..

Afton / "Scraptrap"

Appearances: Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator | Ultimate Custom Night | Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach^note On the "Mad Science with Dr. Scraptrap" arcade machine

• Admiring the Abomination: Does this to the rest of the animatronics. Which makes sense, since he helped make them like this.
  "Fascinating, what they have become..."
• All There in the Script: The end credits don't even try to hide that he is William Afton. And who may blame them?
• An Arm and a Leg: He lost his left arm after the Fazbear Fright fire and appears to have sharpened a remaining bone into a weapon.
• Ax-Crazy: While this is true for every version of Afton, Scraptrap is notably the most unhinged and violent of his appearances, constantly talking about how eager he is to kill more kids.
• Becoming the Mask: In 3, the rare boot-up screens depict Afton trying to escape the Springtrap suit by attempting to pull off his mask. Here however, it seems that he fully embraces his presence as an animatronic character by (at least depending on your interpretation of how he changed his appearance) putting on a new suit after the old one was presumably destroyed by the fire.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Of Pizzeria Simulator, alongside his daughter. Scrap Baby seemingly does everything to make him proud, but she was the one that was teased the most and has the last words before the Cassette Man intervenes.
• Canon Discontinuity: Downplayed. Security Breach largely ignores this design, and instead bases "Burntrap" almost entirely on the original look for Springtrap, to the point where the mascot head has reverted back to the FNAF 3 design and the missing arm has returned. While the reason for this is unknown, the fact that Scraptrap's design was almost universally disliked among fans probably had something to do with it. In-universe, the arm could at least be explained as being a replacement, seeing as he has parts from a more-advanced Glamrock endoskeleton. Things get more confusing once it starts being implied Burntrap is not Springtrap, but an impersonator called the Mimic.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: The end credits refer to him as William Afton, and not Springtrap. This particular appearance of him is also officially copyrighted under the same name. This is most likely to help quash the theory that it was William's son Michael in the Springtrap suit, as well as a Continuity Nod to the Novel Trilogy, where he ditches the Springtrap title and uses his original name in Five Nights at Freddy's: The Fourth Closet. Subverted in Security Breach, where a certain arcade game calls him Scraptrap.
• Curiosity Killed the Cast: He knows that the pizzeria is a lie, but still can't resist going to it regardless. The Cassette Man was banking on this to lure him into his death trap.
• Death by Genre Savviness: He knows there's something more to the Cassette Man's instructions to salvage him for parts, but decides to play along. It doesn't seem to occur to him that he's being lured into a deathtrap.
• Death or Glory Attack: In Ultimate Custom Night. Stop him, and he'll leave you alone for the rest of the night. Fail, and…
• Dem Bones: The majority of his rotting flesh and muscle is gone, leaving parts of his skeleton exposed, especially his skull. His left arm is also reduced to a single sharp bone, presumably having fallen off in the time between 3 and Pizzeria Simulator.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: It's implied that he's aware that the pizzeria is a trap, but goes through with it anyway, as the prospect of murdering more children was too good for him to pass up.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Well, not literally, but Cassette Man strongly implies that Hell is where Scraptrap is going once the building and everything within it burns to ashes. And considering he murdered a handful of, if not many children, it can only be expected.
  Cassette Man: For most of you, I believe there is peace, and perhaps more, waiting for you after the smoke clears. Although, for one of you, the darkest pit of Hell has opened to swallow you whole. So don't keep the Devil waiting, old friend.
  • Double subverted in Ultimate Custom Night, which is implied to be the end result of the Vengeful Spirit dragging him away from Hell to subject him to an Ironic Hell of their making for all eternity.
• Failed a Spot Check: Assuming that the protagonist is Michael Afton, Scraptrap somehow missed the fact that he was being salvaged and lured into a trap by his own son. Granted, it's implied that William thought his son was dead and really didn't give a hoot about him regardless, and we also knew to acknowledge the fact that Michael has been zombified, but still… However, one bit of dialogue implies he's aware of the ruse. Despite also expecting an exit.
• Fatal Flaw: Bloodlust. While he's definitely the one animatronic who knows that the pizzeria is not what it seems, he plays along with the mirage anyways simply because he didn't want to miss the opportunity of causing another round of murders. This leads to his glorious defeat, where he gets a vicious Pre-Mortem One-Liner from Cassette Man as the flames consume him in full.
• Genius Bruiser: Like any good animatronic, he's perfectly capable of jumping you for a slaughtering, but he's also the only one to suspect that there's more to the new pizzeria than anyone's letting on. Too bad for him, that didn't help him survive the inferno any better.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Averted in a dark hilarious way. In the true ending, Scrap Baby has a monologue about how she will make her father proud by "doing what [she] was created to do", but Afton doesn't reply, meaning he either didn't hear or he simply didn't care enough to interrupt her and ruin the moment.
• Irony: Despite bragging about how he always comes back, in Ultimate Custom Night, if you manage to fend him off once, he will never attempt to attack you again for the rest of the night.
• It's Probably Nothing: He dismisses his suspicions regarding the pizzeria because he wants to kill more children For the Evulz. He ends up being incinerated as a result of it actually being a trap from Henry.
• Killed Off for Real: If the Mimic really is ripping off his legacy following Pizzeria Simulator, this is the final version of Afton before he's officially taken out of the picture, having been incinerated by the Pizza Place fire and implicitly ending up tortured in an endless hell during the events of Ultimate Custom Night.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: William Afton died a long ago, is now haunting the suit he died in as Spring/Scraptrap, and has survived a large fire. We hope you beat 3 (and to an extent Sister Location) before playing this game, otherwise you're going to be a little bit lost.
• The Man Behind the Man: Elizabeth is determined to kill more humans and manipulate their souls to follow in the footsteps of her father. Too bad Cassette Man was playing both of them like fiddles.
• Monster Progenitor: Whether directly or indirectly, all of the other animatronics are active because of his own actions, though he didn't become an animatronic himself until long after they were created.
• Sanity Has Advantages: The thing that ends up killing him for good is the fact that the protagonist and the Cassette Man played on his lust for murder to sucker him into walking to his own death. Afton even knows there's something off about the new pizzeria, but is simply so Ax-Crazy that he falls for the ruse anyway.
• Sssssnake Talk: He drags out his s's.
• Stealth Expert: As with his previous appearance, though there are no cameras for him to hide from this time. This is part of his mechanic in the Ultimate Custom Night; he is undetectable until the vent rattles and the lights flash, at which point you have a fraction of a second to stop him. Otherwise, he'll get you.
• Suddenly Voiced: He can speak now, and is voiced by William Afton's voice actor from Sister Location, PJ Heywood.
• You Don't Look Like You: His head doesn't look even remotely similar to his previous one. It's implied that he attempted to repair himself either after suffering damage from the Fazbear's Fright fire^note even though the secret ending revealing he survived back in Sister Location used his design from 3, relatively unmarked from the flames or due to degrading over time. He's more than happy to let us know that it's still him, though.

William Afton / Dave Miller / Springtrap

Appearances: Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes | Five Nights at Freddy's: The Twisted Ones | Five Nights at Freddy's: The Fourth Closet

^{Click here to see Springtrap}

^{Click here to see him in The Fourth Closet}

• Abusive Parents: He is abusive towards his daughter Elizabeth, physically abusing her when she tries to show him a drawing she made.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the graphic novel. When shown in his security guard disguise, he looks perfectly normal, even well-dressed, even if he has a slightly unsettling expression in all his scenes, and still has his springlock scars. In the novels, he's described as unkempt and filthy, with bags under his slightly unfocused eyes, thin and sick-looking with sallow skin, and his uniform is dirty, torn, and too big for him due to him having been rounder during his murder spree and yet having lost a big amount of weight by the events of the first novel. What's more, he doesn't even appear to have lost any weight at all in the comics - while the novels describe him as Formerly Fat, a picture with Henry shows him being just as thin back then.
• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. Afton here definitely stays a human being and never comes Back from the Dead, simply surviving his accidents, while the game Afton more clearly dies and resurrects, thus making him a supernatural threat while the novel Afton remains a Badass Normal. However, he is still no slouch, returning in the Springtrap costume, separating himself later, and continuing his experiments into immortality.
• Ambition Is Evil: Afton doesn't care about what he has to do to achieve what he wants, that being to cheat death.
• Arch-Enemy: To Charlie, as his actions drove her father Henry to grief-stricken suicide and started his killings by murdering her brother Sammy, and is actually her murderer instead.
• Asshole Victim: Nobody mourns his passing at the end of the trilogy. Even before this, he spends the entirety of the last book in near-constant pain, and Jessica tells him she feels no pity for him.
• Big Bad: A role he naturally reprises from the games. All the pain and tragedy in the trilogy is because of him.
• Big Fun: Subverted. In the 80s he was chubby and is said to have had a lively, cheerful demeanor, but it all was a front to hide his own hate and sadism. And when he returns 10 years later, he's lost a huge amount of weight and isn't even bothering with the cheery facade anymore...
• Body Horror: He managed to surgically remove the animatronic shell in The Fourth Closet, but the endoskeleton is still fused to his body and the springlock failure left him crippled and mangled.
• Card-Carrying Villain: When Jessica tells him that there's a hole in Hell waiting for him, Afton simply smiles and agrees with her, boasting that he's turned the Devil away before and that he intends to keep it that way.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Co-founder of two pizzerias and is also a serial killer, primarily of children. He even builds the second one specifically as a cover for his abductions.
• Covered in Scars: His torso is described as "covered in scratches", due to surviving a springlock failure in the past. It gets significantly worse after he survives a second one.
• Drunk with Power: How he describes being Springtrap; he was on a power trip while trapped inside the costume, but after being extracted he is left in constant pain, disfigured, and has re-identified as William Afton.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: William’s daughter Elizabeth still loves him and cares for him in The Fourth Closet. He doesn't return the sentiment, caring more about her usefulness to him than her feelings.
• Evil Cripple: In The Fourth Closet, William is heavily injured after getting out of the Spring Bonnie suit and is in a wheelchair. He mentions that every movement and every breath causes him immense pain, and not moving is somehow even worse.
• Evil Evolves: After the second spring lock accident, robotic parts implanted in William’s brain allow him to remotely control his animatronics.
• Evil Genius: William is not only a prodigy in robotics and engineering, but also has a fascination with the scientific process. The Fourth Closet also shows him to be an Insufferable Genius, as William brags about his intellect on multiple occasions.
  "I am a brilliant man, make no mistake."
• Eye Scream: One of his eyes is missing in The Fourth Closet, with only a piece of metal sticking out of the empty socket.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: His voice is described as such in the third book and accompanied by frequent wheezing and coughing. A result of the severe injuries he sustained by becoming Springtrap and then removing the costume.
• Faking the Dead: In The Twisted Ones, William is revealed to have survived the springlock accident from the end of the first book.
• Fat Bastard: He was a hefty lad hiding sadism back during the murders. Not so much when he resurfaces ten years later.
• Formerly Fat: During the murders he's noted to have been plump. When he resurfaces ten years later he's lost significant weight.
• Faux Affably Evil: William speaks very politely and is well mannered, as well as answers questions honestly, but it's clear he only does this to manipulate people. His child victims wouldn't have trusted him so easily if he didn't know how to act friendly. Even in death, they still think Bonnie is their friend and it takes Carlton quite a bit of convincing to make them realize that he's their murderer.
• Freudian Excuse: While we still don't go too much into his personal life, it doesn't appear to be too pleasant, as he felt mistreated most of his life. It's implied that he feels empty and bitter, and out of envy he wants others who wronged him to feel the same way.
• Given Name Reveal: Initially introduced as the security guard "Dave Miller", the end of the book reveals his real name to be William Afton. In a meta sense, this was also the first time in the franchise that Purple Guy's real identity was unveiled and subsequent iterations of the character then used the same name.
• Hijacked by Ganon: William is absent for the majority of The Twisted Ones, being believed dead for most of the book while the titular animatronics are the main focus of the story. The protagonists uncover that they were created by Afton partway through the book and only near the very end does he return to reveal himself as the one who was in control of them all along.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Similarly to the games, he is eventually killed when the Springtrap suit crushes him to death, his preferred method of murder. Unlike the games, however, it wasn't a result of shoving himself into it. Charlotte was the one that undoes the suit with him inside.
• Immortality Seeker: His ultimate goal. While he certainly derives sadistic glee in kidnapping and killing children, and that seems to have motivated his original killing spree, in the present he is attempting to recreate Henry's success with Charlie in an attempt to cheat death.
• Informed Attribute: He's portrayed as running the business side of the pizzerias while Henry does the engineering, but we never see him doing any business work nor does he display any skills related to it. The games neglected to bring this side of him into his character until Secret of the Mimic and focused more on his technical skills.
• Killed Off for Real: He gets dragged into a furnace by the end of The Fourth Closet, where he burns to death. As mentioned in Adaptational Wimp, this Afton being a Badass Normal means he simply dies and that's where it ends.
• Lean and Mean: When he resurfaces ten years later, he's very thin and tall, and still a massive bastard who's ready to kill even more people.
• Mad Scientist: More explicitly than in the games. He spends his time in The Fourth Closet running experiments on the fused endoskeletons of the Fazbear gang, makes his daughter kidnap more children for further experiments and is trying to obtain immortality by figuring out how possession works.
• Mortality Phobia: The one thing that William truly fears is death. Even in The Fourth Closet, where he spends every moment in immense pain, he prefers his current predicament over dying. His goal in the last book is trying to figure out how his victims possessed the animatronics so he can become immortal.
  "I have faced my own mortality... I knew I was dying and through every broken fragment of my body I was profoundly, immeasurably afraid."
• Not Quite Dead: Charlie and Jessica find his rotting corpse fairly early on in The Twisted Ones, his victims having stuffed him into a small closet. Now convinced that he's truly dead, they leave his body behind when they exit the partially torn-down pizzeria. They should have checked a little bit more thoroughly.
• One-Winged Angel: He considers becoming Springtrap to be this, though he later admits that his survival just left him overconfident at the time. It's actually more a case of Clipped-Wing Angel, since even though it did make him a lot more dangerous in that moment, the damage he sustained became significantly more problematic down the line.
• Taking You with Me: Knowing that his time is rapidly running out, Afton tries to kill the remaining kidnapped child for one last experiment, smiling to himself that it will at least be "like old times" even if it doesn't work. Thankfully, his previous victims pull this trope on him before he can go through with it.
• That Man Is Dead: He rejects his Dave Miller persona and his real name after becoming Springtrap. And then rejects his Springtrap persona after leaving the suit.
• Villains Love Entertainment: William enjoys theater, singing and dancing, only truly coming to life when he's in his Spring Bonnie costume. The only reason why he lets Jessica live when she meets him in The Fourth Closet is because he finds their conversation amusing, wanting to show off his work.

Adventure Springtrap

Appearances: Five Nights at Freddy's World

• Fun Size: A very cute, chibi version of Springtrap.
• Lighter and Softer: Lampshaded in the loading screen. Adventure Springtrap is much nicer-looking than Springtrap in the mainline games. Mostly because the Purple Man's body is no longer inside him.
• My Future Self and Me: Alongside the game is also the Spring Bonnie suit that killed Afton. Subverted with Purpleguy, who clarifies he's not Afton.
• Spikes of Doom: Adventure Springtrap's signature skill is Springlocks, which crushes an enemy inside the infamously unstable Spring Bonnie hybrid suit, dealing massive damage.

Purpleguy

Appearances: Five Nights at Freddy's World

• Gotta Catch Them All: He's unlocked by collecting all the cupcakes in the FNaF 57: Freddy in Space minigame.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: He's not actually the Purple Guy himself, but just a game sprite that represents him. He's also much friendlier than the real deal, willingly lending his aid to the player when his code is retrieved from FNaF 57: Freddy in Space minigame and even sharing a secret with them regarding another way to access the Halloween Update Backstage.
• One-Hit Kill: His Slasher has a 10% chance to inflict 99999 points of damage. Fitting, since he's (a digital graphic of) a serial killer.
• Purple Is Powerful: He's a mostly purple sprite, one of the eight characters you "weren't intended to have" and has access to Slasher, the single highest-damaging attack in the game if it lands.
• Stylistic Suck: Lampshaded in his dialogue screen. Even the Crying Child got a 3D model, while he remains a sprite.

William Afton / The Man in Room 1280 / The Amalgamation

Appearances: Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights^Stories"The Man in Room 1280", Stitchwraith Stingers 6 and 7 | Five Nights at Freddy's: Into the Pit^note Cameos only

• Adaptational Abomination: Even excluding the Amalgamation, the game Afton definitely wasn't a supernatural spirit with a Touch of Death caused by The Power of Hate.
• Adaptational Badass: This Afton is actually the strongest we've ever seen him even though he was a weak soul barely clinging on to life. Afton has the most overtly supernatural powers out of any version in the franchise, being capable of infecting dozens of toys with his agony and malice, is powerful enough to kill a man with just a touch and he ultimately becomes a massive One-Winged Angel threatening the whole city.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Eleanor hauls ass upon the Puppet's arrival, Afton's body language makes it clear he's begging her to not leave him to die. She does not listen.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's a little unclear whether he is stuck in the remains of the Agony at the bottom of the lake, unable to move on and too weak to even escape much less be a threat, or if his soul passed on without the aid of Eleanor to keep him anchored. The writing implies the former, but it's never clarified for certain.
• Arch-Enemy: Like in canon, the Puppet. She sticks around just to kill him, orders Larson to bring her to him, and proceeds to move on shortly after Afton dies.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Eleanor, the two working together to bring Afton back to glory and spread even more death and suffering, using Andrew's agony to spread sentience and evil into numerous toys to cause chaos; Afton was even implied to have created Eleanor with the agony of his murders. That said, it ultimately becomes clear that Eleanor is the bigger bad between the two.
• Big Bad Wannabe: William was pretending to be stronger than he really was. In reality, his soul was barely clinging onto reality while something far worse, later revealed to be Eleanor, has been helping him.
• Body Horror: The description of his condition is not pretty. He is little more than a charred corpse only held together by supernatural malice. It's mentioned that you can see his lungs expand and contract, and his black heart beating in his chest. It does not get better when he becomes the Amalgamation, as all of the parts it's made out of are not where they should be, on top of having animal corpses in it.
• Broad Strokes: It's implied he went through events similar-ish to the game Afton's in the past, though this one's story lasts even after Pizzeria Simulator.
• The Cameo: Threefold in the game adapation of Into the Pit:
  • In the "Collect the Hats'' arcade game, collecting all five hats and then passing through the wall on the middle left platform will lead to a hidden area where Afton in his Purple Guy sprite tries to bait Balloon Boy into jumping into a Bottomless Pit by dropping the last party hat into it.
  • Calling the number 7774648 on the phone will treat the player to a lovely audio rendition of William's Evil Laugh followed by his springlock failure.
  • Collecting all of Oswald's father's items and then entering the party room on Night 5 to rescue the girl inside will have her drop a scratched photo on the ground afterwards. The text implies it to be a photo of William and Henry, which is confirmed by an achievement icon and an unused sprite in the game files.
• Canon Character All Along: After tons of implications, Epilogue 6 confirms that he's William. However, whether he's the game version of William or another adaptation is up in the air.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: The years have not been kind to William. This continuity's equivalent of the Pizzeria Simulator fire has left him little more than a burned corpse, kept alive only by Andrew's direct intervention; furthermore, the years of psychically battling Andrew have led to his spirit being severely weakened. Epilogue 7 reveals that the only reason he was able to assemble the Amalgamation was because Eleanor was helping him to do so.
• The Determinator: Credit where it's due, even as a charred husk that is incapable of movement and psychologically tortured 24/7, Afton still refuses to give up on his murderous habits.
• Disc-One Final Boss: There are eleven books, which equals eleven epilogues. Afton is killed in the seventh one.
• Evil All Along: Throughout the titular story, the nurses at Heracles Hospital tried to dissuade Father Blythe from helping the man in room 1280 and even made multiple discreet attempts to kill the patient because they were convinced he was pure evil. Their reasoning isn't entirely accurate, but they were still ultimately correct, as the man turned out to be an infamous serial killer.
• Face Death with Despair: According to the narration, his face changed into the one of despair and disbelief once the Puppet started destroying his body.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Afton murdered Andrew and later used their connection to spread his agony and malice to several items in a Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center. He himself is far too weak to do much killing on his own anymore and Eleanor is a far greater threat, but most of the supernatural dangers throughout the anthology are Afton's fault to some degree.
• I Am the Noun!: When asked what he even is anymore, considering he's barely human now, his only spoken line is "I am agony."
• Killed Off for Real: The Puppet destroys the Amalgamation and tears it into pieces before tossing the whole thing into a lake, which successfully killed Afton, for good.
• Ludicrous Gibs: The only reason why what remained of his body held together for as long as it did was because Andrew forced it to. When Andrew separated from him, Afton's body outright burst apart into an unrecognizable smear of blackened guts and blood, much to the horror of the priest next to him.
• Mechanical Abomination: It's hard to find a more fitting term to describe a fifteen-foot-tall amalgamation of various Fazbear Entertainment products, each part being used in the wrong place, powered by the soul of a long-dead Serial Killer and evil incarnate.
• Mind Hive: The Amalgamation consists of William Afton and Eleanor. Afton seems to control the body, while Eleanor keeps it together. Even before this, Afton managed to sneak his way into the Stitchwraith body shared by Jake and Andrew without them noticing his presence.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: William technically died long before the events of the series, but his spirit was still bound to his burned and broken body by Andrew, one of his victims. He used the kindess of a priest to get Andrew distracted at a Fazbear Entertainment storage facility, which finally allowed Afton to die. But rather than finally pass on, Afton used this opportunity to infect the items in the building and followed Andrew into the Stitchwraith body to begin a new killing spree.
• One-Winged Angel: The Amalgamation is the single strongest and biggest form William had in the entire franchise.
• The Quiet One: This version of Afton is noticably less talkative than any of his other ones throughout the franchise, speaking only a single line.
• Touch of Death: While Afton does not have control of the Stitchwraith, his presence within it means that any person it touches is instantly killed by being overloaded with his agony.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Lasts one main story and two epilogues before the Puppet kills him, this time for good.

William Afton

Appearances: Five Nights at Freddy's: Tales from the Pizzaplex^Stories"Dittophobia" (Voice only; not in person)

• Broad Strokes: It seems like he lived through a relatively similar version of events as the game timeline, including creating Baby's rental service and becoming Springtrap.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The corrupt owner of Afton Robotics who experimented on an innocent kid for ten years.
• Faux Affably Evil: He gently manipulates and convinces Rory into staying inside his prison with just a pre-recorded message.
• Final Boss: Of the Tales from the Pizzaplex books, serving as the main antagonist of the final non-epilogue story "Dittophobia".
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of "Pressure", having been long dead but the story's antagonist Earl is trying to be a Jack the Ripoff.
• Mad Scientist: Kidnapped the innocent Rory and experimented on his fear responses for ten years straight.
• Manipulative Bastard: He uses a pre-recorded tape from Rory to convince him that he should go back to his false delusion of a life instead of setting himself free. It's been implied that has happened numerous times before.
• Monster of the Week: The antagonist of "Dittophobia" as the one who created the Nightmare animatronics.
• No Name Given: He is never addressed by name in "Dittophobia", but it's easy to figure out who "the voice" is supposed to be.
• Serial Killer: He's mentioned to still be a child killer in "Pressure".
• Villain Has a Point: The reason why his manipulation of Rory works is because he's telling the truth: Rory ran away from home because he was a bullied outcast in school with a workaholic father and Neat Freak mother who didn't pay attention to him, will have to learn ten years worth of education that he missed in his absence when he was already doing poorly, and his lack of social skills will become even worse after spending ten years in a hallucination and still having the mind of a seven-year old boy despite being almost an adult now. Despite Rory's Best Friend Wade telling him that his parents are still looking for him, those simple truths convince Rory to stay in Afton's facility and continue living the delusion of a simple boy haunted by nightmares.

William Afton / "Steve Raglan"

Appearances: Five Nights at Freddy's (2023) | Dead by Daylight^note As a skin | Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (2025)

^{Click here to view his Steve Raglan persona}

^{Click here to view him in the Yellow Rabbit suit}

A supposed career counselor named Steve Raglan, this older man appears to be related to the pizzeria of local legend. He seems friendly enough, but everyone has a few skeletons hiding in their closets...

The film's version of William Afton who, after his murders, returned to the now-abandoned Freddy's under a new identity of career counselor, hiring people to work as security guards at the pizzeria so they could be killed by the animatronics.

Tropes for this version of the character on the film's character page.

William Afton / The Animatronic / Springtrap

Appearances: Dead by Daylight