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10 mar 2023 · Matthew Lillard's FNAF Role Explained - Who Is William Afton. William Afton is the primary antagonist of the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise. While Afton's crimes are mentioned in the first game, he first appears officially in FNAF 2.
- Senior Writer
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By Lex Briscuso
Updated: Oct 29, 2023 6:46 pm
Posted: Oct 29, 2023 2:10 am
Full spoilers follow for the Five Nights at Freddy's movies.
After many, many years of waiting, Five Nights at Freddy’s (review) has finally made its inevitable screen debut—and naturally, at the center of the film’s story lies the franchise’s sinister villain: William Afton. His involvement, which was never explicitly referenced in any promotional material or coverage of the movie as it was in production, is a major third-act reveal. And let’s be real here, any fan worth their salt knows there’s no FNAF without Afton. His inclusion in the film is paramount to the core of the story, and his epic final-act reveal definitely will send a little excited chill down any die-hard’s spine. I know I was happy to see him, in all his evil glory.
Having Afton as the franchise’s pervasive antagonistic driving force will no doubt propel the franchise through a slew of sequels, and for fans of the story, the idea of exploring what becomes of Afton and his legacy, which is quite the wild ride, could be really compelling if the powers that be do his story justice. (Fingers crossed.)
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That said, for those who have never played the game, Afton’s history—and thus the sordid history of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza itself—might be a little fuzzy.
Five Nights at Freddy’s follows Josh Hutcherson as Mike, a young man struggling to keep himself and his little sister, Abby, afloat. He meets with a career counselor named Steve Raglan to try to secure some work that will help him look respectable on paper to a judge while also providing for himself and his sister.
Raglan is played by none other than horror icon Matthew Lillard, who seems a little shady when he presents Mike with his limited job options, namely a night security gig at a rundown pizza parlor that was shut down in the ’80s. (Yep, that would be Freddy Fazbear’s, the once-beloved children’s spot you’ve been hearing so much about lately.) Naturally, once Mike is on the job, the Freddy Fazbear's animatronic characters that are the hallmark of the place have their eyes on him in sinister fashion at first, but things change when Mike is forced to bring Abby with him to work one night. More on that later.
Toward the end of the film, once Mike and Abby have been fully entrenched in the world of Freddy’s—and what that means for the restaurant's animatronic inhabitants, known as Freddy, Chica (and her sidekick Mr. Cupcake), Bonnie, Foxy, and a second Freddy called Golden Freddy, a game favorite who makes subtle appearances in the film—Raglan and Afton converge when a sixth animatronic called “the Yellow Rabbit” is introduced in the final act… it turns out Afton, who was posing as a career counselor to lure unsuspecting folks into the dangerous job, is actually inside the suit.
Does the film nail this reveal? Well, folks who are familiar with the expansive FNAF lore might not exactly be surprised, but they certainly will feel some sort of satisfaction with the William Afton revelation. It’s a fun, albeit a bit typical, surprise that gives Lillard a little bit of a deserved spotlight of menace. And the reveal is definitely playing right into fans’ hands. Take or leave the movie itself, but you have to give them props for everything involving Afton, really.
I’m glad you asked, because he is the center of the FNAF franchise, and the one who started it all. In the games, Afton is the owner, proprietor, and creator of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza—and a serial killer responsible for the murder of at least 12 children over a 10-year period. He’s the main antagonist for the franchise for the original set of games, and the one who killed the four children whose spirits have possessed the Freddy’s animatronics since the pizzeria was shut down.
They drag Afton to the back room as the building starts to shake and crumble, and they leave him in the room to meet his fate—or not.
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Afton and his best friend Henry Emily opened the first Freddy Fazbear’s together in the early ’80s, using the animatronics Emily designed and built himself as the centerpieces for the restaurant’s overall concept. You know, a kind of Chuck E. Cheese type thing.
But Afton had a major affinity for Emily’s creations, particularly one called Spring Bonnie. Bonnie is a blue rabbit who is one of the regular Freddy’s animatronics, but the Spring Bonnie version of her is yellow. Remember “the Yellow Rabbit?” Exactly.
Afton was known for wearing the suit around the pizzeria, having manipulated the inner workings of it—a slew of metal parts that control the animatronics elements—in order to wear it and not be impaled by the mechanical parts. But in 1985, Afton kidnapped and murdered five children by luring them to the back room of Freddy’s wearing Spring Bonnie’s costume.
Years later, Afton came back to the dilapidated Freddy’s building to destroy the animatronics—which only served to free the spirits of the kids inside the building. They came for their killer, but they weren’t able to physically harm him. Instead, they cornered him in a back room, where he found Spring Bonnie’s suit again. So much time had passed, Afton didn’t realize that there was damage to the springlock technology inside the suit, which ended up crushing him to death when all of the internal parts snapped into place.
The children’s defeat of Afton, at least to some degree, is a bit different in the film. In the movie, there’s a wall of children’s drawings of the characters, including one central picture of five children and Spring Bonnie. Knowing they need to get the animatronics to turn on Afton after he reveals himself, Abby draws the animatronics a picture of what he actually did to them, as they can’t remember. They then turn on Afton and cause his suit to crush him, but apparently only enough to torture him. They drag him to the back room as the building starts to shake and crumble, and they leave him in the room to meet his fate—or not.
One big clue about how Afton’s reveal will affect any potential FNAF sequels is in his signature line, which is also his last in the film: “I always come back.”
Five Nights at Freddy's
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
Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted
- Lex Briscuso
7 set 2023 · Scream and Scooby-Doo actor Matthew Lillard steps into the shoes of William Afton, although the trailers would have us believe he's just playing a mild-mannered career counselor in pretty...
15 set 2023 · Matthew Lillard is set to portray William Afton in the Five Nights at Freddy's movie. Lillard is technically cast as "Steve Raglan," but the fanbase has widely decided that his true...
- Senior Contributor
4 feb 2023 · The arguably biggest role, however, has gone to Matthew Lillard, who will play William Afton, the main villain of the entire story of Five Nights at Freddy's, who is the orchestrator of...
16 dic 2023 · Matthew Lillard, who portrayed overarching villain William Afton, knows exactly why -- and his logic makes sense. Ahead of the home release for FNAF, which is available now on Digital, 4K...
28 ott 2023 · Only Matthew Lillard, the man behind Scream’s brilliantly crazy Stu Macher, could have ever played William Afton in Five Nights at Freddy’s. Or, at least, that’s the view of the film’s director Emma Tammi, who shared her thoughts with us in an interview celebrating the release of FNaF.
