u/GalacticBeast603

This is less of a proper story and more of a shower thought.

Let's set the stage: what if some escapist toys (perhaps the Joyless?) exposed what happened in Playtime Co. and led to the company's worldwide shutdown and the arrest of people like Eddie M. N. Ritterman and Leith Pierre. However, there are still many feral toys and something needs to be done with them.

So, here's where this AU's title starts making sense: the Playpark, being a place where children could play and have fun, is turned into a rehabilitation centre where good people would try to return the childhood to the experiments; mostly trying to undo Ms. Gracie's brainwashing, as I'm not sure how reversing the surgery would go, although that could also be a plot point.

Obviously, this isn't a picture-perfect fix, but that opens up many possibilities.

Firstly, undoing the conditioning would be very hard and could lead to many side effects:

• For those who participated in the Hour of Joy, they could feel guilty for slaughtering their kin after regaining awareness. Some could end up depressed, maybe even bitter.
• What if someone clings so hard to the idea of a toy that they'd feel like their identity is being taken away, driving them aggressive?
• Connections with the Prototype could also complicate things. How do you convince someone that their god isn't a god at all. A kid could regain its humanity but still believe in the Prototype. Would that kid start a cult or beg for their savior to return?
• Reminding children of their pasts could awaken hidden trauma: this could be the case for Oliver/Prototype and possibly other abused orphans.

Side effects aside, there's also society's view of the toys. Some could be supportive of the Rehabilitation Centre initiative, but others may be skeptical, claiming that the toys are broken beyond repair and should be eradicated. Others may question where do the toys go after regaining their humanity and if it's even possible. More views would probably also emerge, though I'm not sure how that would go.

Here's another idea: some guilty employees, if they're still alive, could try to atone for their sins by working in the Rehabilitation Centre, hoping to fix the mess they've made. This, however, opens up a whole other can of worms: how would the toys react if they realize that the ones helping them are the same people who condemned them to this nightmare? Our player character could be one of those people, though they'd likely be more talkative in this AU.

It's also possible that some new main villain will emerge instead of the Prototype. Perhaps some toy would have a very radical view, stating that reversing the conditioning would only increase suffering and that the PTRC needs to be torn down from the inside. Taking this even further, this character could generalize that the only way for the toys to be understood is for the adults to be turned into toys and see how it is to be one.

I think that there's a lot of potential in a concept like this, maybe even as a spin-off or sequel of this game if anyone survives it. What do you think?

I've seen a lot of swap AU ideas floating around, so I decided to make one myself. I tried to do some unique swaps and I hope that you'll enjoy this storyline, as I'm focusing more on the lore/plot rather than the designs:

BACKSTORY

For starters, Molly founded Playtime Co. in this universe, swapping with Elliot. Elliot divorces her and Poppy Ludwig, their biological daughter, dies shortly after from a terminal illness. Molly invents the Poppy Gel and starts experimenting. In a rush to bring back Poppy, she skips testing and turns Poppy into Experiment 1006: The Angel (I'll explain that title later on). The Angel is a functionally immortal being, but she lacks a human personality. She recognizes Molly as her creator, not as her mother, behaving almost robotically.

Later on, Molly adopts Oliver from Playcare, which is built in the meantime, turning him into 1007/Ollie, a king-themed jack-in-the-box toy. I made him king-themed because he is renowned as "Molly's King", the experiment superior to 1006. Ollie's personality survives the transfer thanks to an updated formula. This leads to his purpose: restoring the Angel's humanity. But the plan fails and the Angel/Poppy attacks Ollie during their first meeting, forcing Molly to repair the latter with mechanical parts. Molly tries again and again, but the Angel's aggression never stops. Out of ideas, Molly initiates the Young Geniuses Program and a promising mind soon appears... but this time, it's not Harley!

Instead, a youthful Gracie Green joins the program and quickly catches Molly's attention thanks to her knowledge of psychology. Gracie is enlisted as a therapist to help the Angel become human again. Gracie talks to the Angel through a screen (because she'd get attacked otherwise), but her tactics are closer to brainwashing than therapy, so a concerned Molly removes Gracie from the YGP.

Molly spends most of her time with Ollie, since he is easier to interact with and generally nicer, but the Angel grows bitter over her creator favoring Ollie, so when Molly confronts the Angel in person, she is killed by Poppy in an outburst of rage. Ollie hides in his box and survives. 1006 and 1007 stay hidden in Playcare until Eddie M. N. Ritterman finds them, replacing Leith.

Eddie and Leith kick off the BBI, bringing back Gracie and other scientists from the YGP. The experiments are agonizing like in our universe, but focus more on the mental side and "maturing" towards immortality. A big issue is that they struggle to recreate Ollie's successful transfer of the mind into an immortal vessel, birththing experiments with mental defects or corruption, for the lack of a better word. Because of this, the scientists take a closer look at the original Poppy Gel and how Molly developed it, hoping to recreate the success.

To rebuild it, they repeatedly take apart and reassemble the Angel and Ollie, which only worsens the former's mental state (Ollie isn't feeling well either). The Angel grows so hateful of Ollie, the scientists and the experimentation that she begins to innitiate the Hour of Salvation, this universe's version of the Hour of Joy. She finds a mole in Jessica Newman, who swaps with Preston in this universe and takes his role as the guilty scientist, among many others. Another mole is Theodore Grambell, who becomes BBI Bubby Chumz (I swapped the Smiling Critters for the Wrongside Outimals - more on that in my CH3 section), who acts mostly like he did in our universe.

Eventually, after months of conspiracy, THOS kicks off and ends like in cannon - the factory is overrun by experiments and most employees are either dead or captured. Leith escaped to the Tokyo facility, but he was the only surviving executive in this AU. Jessica is turned into an amalgamation with a Candy Cat head while Preston, who doesn't feel guilty one bit, is found and killed by the Angel, who later creates the Better Place and takes the Orphans there. I'm not sure who the Player would be, but they'd return in 2005 with a letter telling them to "Find the Crown", having survived the Hour of Salvation.

CHAPTER 1: A WARM WELCOME

Chapter 1 plays out mostly how it did in our universe, but with a few key changes. Every left hand is a right hand in this AU and vice versa, so we get a red left hand and a blue right one. Kissy replaces Huggy, taking his role of the aggressive factory guard. Instead of a Poppy Flower mural, we find the mural of a crown which leads to Ollie's room, themed after a castle. We crank up his box and he springs out, ending the chapter.

CHAPTER 2: FROZEN IN DOUGH

CH2 kicks off like normal, but with Ollie kidnapped by Doey instead of Mommy. One important thing is that Doey in this universe is made from only one child, that being Jackie, who has the same backstory as in our universe, but after the transfer, he went slowly insane from his injuries, showing increasing hostility to workers, along with sneaking out of containment, since he was made of shapeshifting dough. We lose our red hand to him and get the green one as a replacement. Musical Memory has a different layout, as we deal with Pianosaurus instead of Bunzo Bunny. He approaches us from ahead, with ropes holding him back.

Whack-a-Wuggy is called Whack-a-Critter, with Nightmare Critters popping out of the holes. Then, a friendly Huggy helps us instead of Kissy, with the walls in the Barry section being pink instead of green. Statues features Yarnaby instead of PJ, making the game much more intense due to Yarnaby's speed. He tries to climb up after us, but fails and we anger Doey, who later morphs into his monstrous salamander form (but shrinked) and Hide & Seek begins.

We end up escaping Doey briefly, finding Ollie trapped inside a pile of dough. Doey is lured into a freezer (which replaces the furnace) by Ollie's wind-up melody and gets trapped inside, frozen rock solid. A mechanical hand wrapped in poppy flowers and nerves drags Doey's frozen body away with its needle-like fingers.

In the ending, Ollie redirects the train shortly after we start it up, which crashes like in canon.

CHAPTER 3: DEEP WATERS

This is where things get interesting. A slimy red tentacle pulls us out of the train, dropping us into the Trash Compactor. Once we escape it, we find the ringing walkie-talkie and pick it up. A young girl known as Poppy answers it, explaining the story of the eight Wrongside Outimals (Giblet is the eighth one, because I don't have any other ideas for him in this AU, lol) and Playcare being Bubby Chumz's church and hunting ground.

The Gas Production Zone is replaced by a tunneling sewer system where Red Ink is produced and spread beneath Playcare thanks to Bubby Chumz, who spreads it like how an octopus does with its ink. The children than inhale the Ink's fumes from above and fall asleep, suffering from intense nightmares. Bubby stalks his prey as a fish, swimming through the Red Ink, and turns himself into an octopus to grab the prey with his tentacles Anyhow,. we get the Grabpack 2.0 with a swappable left hand and do some puzzles.

Side note: with Bubby Chumz being the main mascot of Playcare in this world, the place has more underwater-themed decorations, such as plastic coral reefs.

Upon reaching Home Sweet Home we find a room fully submerged in Red Ink and promptly fall asleep. The nightmare mentions a girl's body found in Molly Ludwig's estate and we later get jumpscared by a Nightmare Kissy, seeing Bubby swim around in his fish form on the way to the room with the TV. Back awake, we can catch a glimpse of Huggy staring at a picture of Jeremy Hartmann (I believe that Jeremy became Huggy and that carrier over into my AU). We also gain diving goggles to protect us from the ink's effects.

Later, in the school, we have to contend with Chum Chompkins, who boasts a far more grotesque design than in canon. The original Chum in this universe was mute due to a surgical failure and his brothers were created as a solution. The original Chum ate his brothers following THOS, which is why we can see their remnants in Chum's stomach during his jumpscare. Instead of being a weeping angel, he only moves when the player does.

We accquire the Flare Hand and go to the Playhouse, dealing with mini Wrongside Outimals along the way. We then find a cell with Goober Gutz hanging in it, missing his arms. Goober Gutz, due to being indecisive, couldn't pick a side in time and sat out the Hour of Salvation, being labelled as a heretic by Bubby and subsequently punished. Outimals crawl into Goober after his speech, turning him wrongside out and the chase ensues.

The rest of the game plays like normal, just with the characters swapped, until the bossfight with Bubby. He floods the sewers with Red Ink, making us hallucinate a skeletal kraken-like entity (Nightmare Bubby Chumz) that chases us. In the bossfight itself, Bubby attacks us from below and we need to fend off his tentacles with the Flare Hand, than avoiding his fish form as it swims around. We then stun him with the green hand, he turns wrongside out and the cycle repeats until we defeat Bubby, who is taken by the Angel when she tears his zipper mouth and pulls him up.

We then start up the elevator and Huggy is attacked by someone (probably the Angel), with us and Ollie going down into the Prison.

CHAPTER 4: SAFE HAVEN

Not much changes in chapter 4's beginning, until we reach that moving cell. Instead of the Doctor, we're greeted by the Counsellor, a computerized Gracie Green. She considers us someone who can "be her joy" and Gracie brings us into the prison. The whole location is a lot more colorful, resembling the conditioning rooms from our chapter 5. This is because, with Gracie's presence, the toys were reconditioned in their cells so that they'd behave better upon being released. With the colorful theming, Leith disguised the Prison as an area of rehabilitation for distressed orphans from above, so Warrenbach was far less reluctant to build it.

The Counsellor's tests are far more psychological in comparison to Harley's, as she tries to condition us step-by-step to see if humans can be conditioned despite not having toy bodies (this will be important later). She puts us under pressure with a horde of Mini Kissies and PJ-Pug-a-Pillar, whose design resembles Dolly Grub in this AU. PJ would be made from a very clever girl who was brainwashed by Gracie as the first pass in complete conditioning, with Gracie ultimately considering her a pathetic example of methods that can be improved. PJ is very animalistic and easily angered in this universe, chasing us with determination.

Upon escaping PJ for the first time, we fall into a pit where Bunzo Bunny gets 8 seconds of screen time before being ripped apart by a friendly Mommy Long Legs. She is very motherly and caring even for us, stretching her elastic limbs to bridge gaps. We can then slide on those limbs like ziplines by gripping onto them. We eventually reach Safe Haven, reuniting with Ollie and Huggy and catching a glimpse of the Angel. Mommy cares deeply for the toys within, considering them her real family, with her obviously being the mother. She is sometimes strict though and scolds Ollie for his dissapearence.

One thing that is important in this universe is that Ollie has a bit of a superiority complex, given how he was treated by Molly back in the day. Remember that conversation between Poppy and Doey which we could eavesdrop upon in our chapter 4? Here, we can do the same thing with Ollie and Mommy. MLL is more openly opposed to destroying the factory and fiercely defends her "kids", telling Ollie that he is [...] just another imperfect toy who doesn't know what's best for my children.

Ollie then gets to talk to us in private and explains how he can prove himself better by doing what is (in his mind) the right thing: destroying the factory. Behind Mommy's back, we plant the explosive in the foundation, avoiding Mini Kissies along the way. Mommy is busy searching for us, sounding like a child playing hide and seek. Once we leave the foundation, she finds us, being friendly and intimidating at once. She tells us about the Omni-Hand owned by the Counsellor and No Man's Land. Mommy has a deep hatred towards Gracie, because the Counsellor would brainwash some of Mommy's "babies" into becoming loyal servants. She tells us to destroy the Counsellor and fetch the Omni-Hand.

She tries to help us but is stopped by a heat trap which partially melts one of her arms, a defence set up by the Counsellor. Mommy can't go further and we walk into No Man's Land alone. There, we go through a stealth section with PJ in hot pursuit. Her chase sequence ends with her long body getting tangled on a chain and she falls face-first into a pit of molten metal.

During our time in the Secondary Labs, which were abandoned when a scientist accidentally flooded with Red Ink (we use damaged diving goggles to get around, so the oxygen mechanic is still here), we save a yellow Mini Kissy and bond with it over the course of this section, with Gracie teasing us over us loosing someone to the factory, just like Harley did.

The Counsellor suddenly forces us to feed the yellow Mini Kissy into the Bad Toy Box and then we're jumped by a red Mini Kissy, replacing Baba Chops. Upon escaping her, we get dropped into the maze with the Counsellor's bodies chasing us around. We escape the maze and find a large main body instead of a brain-in-a-jar. This main body is distinguished by Gracie's ID card on it, her brain in the centre, and the head of a Candy Cay which she wields like a trophy. We go through an actual bossfight with the Counsellor and while she's distracted by us, she forgets to keep the heat traps on, letting Mommy in. Mommy strikes, smashing Gracie's brain and defeating her. We fetch the Omni-Hand and take the trolley back to Safe Haven, only to find out that there is no Safe Haven left, as the Angel redirected the explosives in the meantime, since Mommy was out dealing with the Counsellor.

Before we get to the finale, we can find a VHS tape or note that documents MLL being made from three girls: one being motherly and somewhat obsessive over those she cares about, another being strict and breaking up fights, and a very young girl who just wanted to play. In a way, Mommy is a whole family in a single person.

She is found crying over the dead toys in Safe Haven, her beloved kids taken away, with the two older/parent personalities crashing out on us. Mommy's face opens up, revealing spider-like mandibles and six green eyes, each pair belonging to one of MLL's subjetcs. The bossfight begins and we have to use hydrogen canisters to explode them onto MLL and use the heat waves to melt MLL piece by piece. We eventually trap her under the hydraullic press and melt her completely, with her saying Sorry, child before her demise.

We then make it to Shelf Ventilation Block B6 and the fake Poppy Persona fades into the Angel, who scares Ollie into jumping away. Huggy loses an arm and we fall deeper into the caves. Upon reaching the Labs Entrance, we listen to a tape recorded by Eddie and then see Kissy Missy banging on the door.

CHAPTER 5: BROKEN THINGS

The first ten minutes are more or less unchanged, but with Kissy chasing us instead of Huggy. We crash into Floor 0 and need to evade Ruined Critters. In this universe, the Nightmare Critters were released first and cherished by teens, but the Smliling Critters didn't appease that target audience, which preferred the edgier NCs. Thus, the Smiling Critters failed and were completely recalled, their bigger bodies banished to the bottom of the factory.

We get Glowby, who is sky blue and shaped like a crescent moon in this world. Then a critter gets the jump on us, but we're saved by a very battered mini CatNap plush. CatNap guides us to his hideout, then sending us to the Boilers to get a new grabpack. After some puzzles, we run into Chum Chompkin's swap, aka Miss Delight. I even made up some lore for her in this AU: she was a co-star in Gracie's conditioning prior to the creation of Exp. 1354, but unlike Gracie, Delight considered the tactics horrible and fought back during THOS, then happily joining the Prototype. Eventually, she became CatNap's informer due to being indebted to him.

The two tell us about the secret backup and unlike canon, the Angel doesn't interrupt and we head to Sweet Street, which is called Sour Street by the toys due to its reputation, being a lot more ruined and bleak. We encounter Ollie and Huggy, but the two (along with us) are attacked by the Doctor, who is an actual doctor toy in this universe (I imagine him wearing a purple plague doctor mask as a way to cover up the toy face, which Harley considered unfitting for his genius).

The Doctor takes us to the dollhouse, which is a toy hospital in this world. Huggy and Ollie are imprisoned, CatNap was taken to another room and Miss Delight mysteriously vanishes, really escaping from the dollhouse at the Angel's behest. The Doctor tells us to collect surgical tools around the hospital along with bringing some "patients", toys who the Doctor was "playing" with, really doing strange things with their bodies, such as carving stuff into their skin (ouch). We run into Ollie and Huggy in the basement and help them escape, getting a purple key from the Doctor's room, in which we find a document that mentions him being made from Harley Sawyer. Upon setting the two free, the Doctor recaptures us, claiming that we need to be "cured".

Instead of a tea party, we have a visit to the doctor's office, with the Doctor planning to use the collected tools to turn us into a toy and modify the others. CatNap has already been modified, much to the others' horror. The Angel interrupts, making her grand reveal and takes Ollie, promising to fix him (she does not trust the Doctor to do that for her). The Angel accidentally shatters Ollie's box, forcing him to crawl around from now on. Huggy retaliates and sends the Angel running.

We get chased out of the hospital by the Doctor and defeat him by dropping that metal cloud onto him, but it's gray and not blue. The player then stumbles upon a broken Ollie, who's missing his box and one of his eyes, being tended to by Huggy and CatNap. Both of them encourage Ollie to keep going and CatNap congratulates us on defeating the Doctor. Along the way to the secret backup, we learn more about the his lore.

We go through the replacement of conditioning, the surgical labs, where the toys were made. Instead of brainwashing tapes, we come across Harley's instructional videos for the other scientists to successfully transfer the orphans into new bodies. We found out that Harley carried out most of the procedures, not minding it one bit, believing that he actually gives the orphans a purpose in life. During THOS, he was captured and the Angel turned him into the Doctor, believing that someone so powerful shouldn't continue to exist with such horrible wisdom in her kingdom (she actually wants that power to herself). The Angel got the Counsellor to brainwash the Doctor into believing that he is an actual doctor. He still retained his belief of giving the orphans a purpose, now referred to as "curing". He genuinely thinks that he can help those "in need", but everybody avoids him in his isolation, driving him mad. In his insanity, he did all those messed up things to the toys that made it into the hospital, not being aware of the danger.

Kissy chases us one last time and fails to reconcile with Huggy, as both are killed by the Angel. Ollie and CatNap run into the train, with us doing so shortly after. We crash the train and the Angel survives, stabbing us and throwing us into the Poppy Gel upon catching Ollie. We are saved by CatNap and make it to the Data Centre, where we find the backup of Gracie Green/The Counsellor.

FUTURE

I'm not quite sure how chapter 6 would go in this universe, since it's not out yet, but I have a few ideas:

• The Angel wants to break Ollie and drain his his humanity so that he'd be hollow like her and finally understand how it is to be like her.
• The Angel is called like that because she believes she can make the orphans transcend into something beyond human (really just hollow like her), like an angel giving them "salvation" and freeing them from human suffering.
• The Angel is running out of time because the mental state of both the orphans and the remaining toys is deteriorating fast (they're immortal but suffering internally) and she quickly needs to learn how to modify the citizens' minds before they go insane and try to leave the Better Place.
• Gracie wants to brainwash the still human orphans into a "divine state of being" where they don't need immortality because they'd care about other things in this state. This reflects Gracie wanting to escape the past with her family, which is abusive in this AU, and have something to look forward to besides imminent death, not by avoiding it but by making her life happier. Same goes for the others.
• The Counsellor will go into Glowby, attempting to manipulate us into joining her side and abandoning our allies.
• CatNap and Ollie are revealed to have a shared past.
• The game ends with everything being blown up, but Gracie being stuck in the rubble, her circuits damaged by the collapse, living in a "happier state of mind", really just forgetting what came before. In short, her hubris got the better of her.

That's it, thank you for reading this monstrous wall of text and I hope that you enjoyed it!