When Secret of the Mimic came out, it's my opinion that this should have forced a general reconsideration of certain staunchly held theories about the current storyline. The debunking of TalesGames should have opened the door to a lot of other options, including some that had fallen out of favor. The line of thinking that I'm about to propose was at one point somewhat popular but was largely abandoned, not because of new evidence, but because new narratives started getting proposed that people just simply liked better. But as we now know, those narratives were based on the shaky foundation of assuming the Tales books were in-continuity with the games.

One of the things that got confirmed by SOTM was that the Silver Eyes narrative parallels that MatPat and other Youtubers noticed early in the current arc are 100% valid. Edwin's story is very similar to Henry's story from the Fourth Closet. Edwin has his own story and personality, but the broad strokes are the same.

So, we as the player have explored a mall with a Freddy's in it, we've visited an underground Freddy's and been chased by an amalgamation of the four band members, and we've seen the story of an inventor who, stricken with grief, attempts to replace his lost child with a robot, only to realize too late what he's done and teaches it anger in his attempt to destroy it. So what's left from the Silver Eyes?

One thing is going back to Circus Baby's. And the other thing is to find out that the female character we've been following from the beginning is a robot.

Vanessa is that robot in the current story.

Why Vanessa Is A Robot

Alberi Di Legno painting, a unique asset, right next to the Stafftons.

The Staffbot Silo features a painting called "Alberi Di Legno." This translates to 'Wooden Trees,' which sounds a bit redundant at first, but refers to an Italian Christmas tradition where fake trees are made from real wood. So a representation of a dead thing is created from the once living remains of that thing. This painting is right next to the Afton Staffbot family and has a post it note (which shows up throughout the silo) stuck on it that says "why is I" in binary. So the being who wrote all these post-it notes identifies with this painting, and the Afton family staffbots next to it.

It's pretty widely believed that Staffbot Silo is home to a robot that became more human like. There are several post it notes that relate to Vanessa. One is a drawing of a security guard, another "the sky," which is something Vanessa mentions liking in the therapy tapes. Most of the notes are about having fun at a birthday, which is reminiscent of Happiest Day, something that is theorized to be a way for Afton to control the kids' spirits.

When you go to the Staffbot Silo, Vanny is nearby. So this silo is one of her hideouts. In this silo, a robot was taught how to be more human, and they were made to believe that they were an Afton. This is what the Alberi de Legno painting means and why it's right next to the Staffton Family.

In the Princess Quest minigames, Vanny is the princess. The Arcade Conspiracist tries to save the princess by playing the arcade games, then goes to the Pizza Place for the employee training week where Help Wanted 2 happens, then he finally meets the princess after beating Princess Quest IV, who he helps destroy Glitchtrap. Then she leaves him down there.

There is an odd sequence which occurs several times in Princess Quest where the princess creates a shadow version of herself using a red brazier. The shadow is able to do things remotely that the princess can't do. Vanessa is that shadow. She is an artificial construct made by Vanny to do things that Vanny can't be publicly seen doing.

The Princess uses a red brazier to create a purple, shadow version of herself to do tasks that she can't do herself

Vanessa wears purple nail shadow and a purple jacket. She orders the material to create the Vanny suit. She infiltrates the security network and schmoozes up the head of IT to learn vulnerabilities in the system. She is the one who actually lets Glitchtrap into the Pizzaplex systems. Vanessa is said by Luis to have two sides, but that's because she's being remotely controlled. Sometimes she's herself, and sometimes she's being controlled by Vanny.

State of play image on top, and Freddy & Friends image on bottom

In the Sony State of Play trailer for Security Breach,, there is a shot where Vanessa has one yellow eye and one green eye. This could maybe be called a lighting artifact if it didn't happen again. In the 4th Freddy & Friends short, Vanessa again has yellow eyes (at timestamp :18). As Jtop has said, the Freddy & Friends shorts are a part of Security Breach, so they can be considered to be significant.

We have seen this elsewhere, with Helpi in Ruin. Helpi normally has blue eyes, but when being controlled by an outside force has yellow eyes. Vanny's face again shows up in Ruin, and it's generally believed that Help Wanted 2 happens around the same time as Ruin. So we know Vanny is still active. Roxy's scene of being crushed by the forklift is being watched by Nightmare Staffbots, hinting at Vanny's involvement in the events of Ruin.

The Mimic of course, also has yellow eyes. M2 specifically usually has orange eyes, but when the Mimic is in it's 'default' state, they are yellow. Vanessa is a Mimic as well, and the yellow eyes she has aren't metaphorical, that's what she looks like when she's being remotely controlled by Vanny. She is M3, the 3rd Mimic endoskeleton.

But Mimics are supposed to Mimic things right? So what is she mimicking? As I have explicated before, M1 & M2 aren't just different designations for the endoskeletons, they are also processes. M1 is the process by which a supernatural presence possesses a code of its own volition. M2 is the process by which someone alive can attempt to force a departed soul to possess an artificial body. So M3 is a new process. It is the process by which a new, sentient being is created from possessed code and generative AI. It is not a person clawing their way back from death, nor a person forcing a deceased soul to return to the living, but rather something new created from something old.

Vanessa is a robot who believes herself to be a whole new person, but she is actually mimicking what Elizabeth Afton would have been like if she had grown up. She is an endoskeleton created with Elizabeth's personality chip and then taught what it is like to grow up. She became a security guard like her brother, and developed the daddy issues that Elizabeth would have inevitably had. This is why the brazier in Princess Quest is red, because the purple shadow was made from the remains of Circus Baby.

Why Does Vanessa Exist?

In 'The Storyteller,' a giant artificial baobab tree houses a supercomputer that is running the Mimic1 program. As I detailed in this post there are a lot of similarities between the Storyteller Tree and the Staffbot Silo. In 'The Storyteller,' when Mimic1.exe goes online, the Glamrocks become corrupted and start acting like how we see them in Security Breach.

In the FNAF AR emails, it is Vanessa that lets Glitchtrap into the system by faking higher level credentials and tricking the IT people. The Mimic needed Vanessa to get herself into a position of importance in order to have the Pizzaplex get corrupted by Glitchtrap.

You could argue that the therapy tapes demonstrate that Vanessa already has an established backstory, but the therapist that mentions this backstory also says that Vanessa's biographical information was hacked into. So it could be that everything this therapist says is false information that she got from Vanessa's hacked bio.

So the Staffbot Silo is a way to devise a method for how the Mimic gets into the systems. Vanny creates a robot that believes itself to be human, then artificially controls that robot through psychological conditioning and remote control when necessary. So it is Vanny who lets in Glitchtrap by controlling Vanessa.

The scrapped AR emails are mentioned in the therapy tapes, so they are likely still canon.

This is why Luis says in the FNAF AR emails that she seems like two different people. Because sometimes she is Vanessa, and sometimes she is being controlled by Vanny. We hear this in Security Breach when, right before Gregory leaves, she goes through a series of rapid personality changes when talking to Gregory over the intercom. However, she never actually sounds like Vanny during this sequence.

Furthermore, she orders artificial fur and torture devices for Vanny. She schmoozes up to Luis to learn vulnerabilities in the IT system, She deals with the police when they come to the Pizzaplex. She is an artificial shadow that does the things that Vanny can't be seen doing. Which brings us to who Vanny is.

Why Vanny is Patient 46 and Not Gregory

Firstly, 'GGY' and 'Escape the Pizzaplex' are not canon to the games. So if that's the main reason you believe that Gregory is Patient 46, I think it's on you to demonstrate why they should be considered as such.

As established earlier, Vanny is the player character of Help Wanted. I think this helps recontextualize a lot of Patient 46's dialogue. The player character of Help Wanted is taken over by a virus while testing Fazbear's VR game. Fazbear seems to be of two minds in the modern day. On the one hand, it does seem like they did everything they could to enable the Mimic. But in the AR emails, they do genuinely regard Glitchtrap as a threat and anomaly. So they want Mimic technology, but they do not want their systems being corrupted.

When one of their contracted beta testers gets her mind taken over by a virus, it was in their best interests to figure out what was going on, and to what extent the Help Wanted player was corrupted and what lasting effects that might have had on her. This is why P46 is in therapy in the first place and why the therapists treat her as if she's a child. They do not know exactly the long lasting effects of digital consciousness transfer, and they're trying to figure it out, but Vanny isn't giving them very much to go on.

This is also why it was necessary to build Vanessa. P46 is being kept under scrutiny and can't be seen doing anything overtly suspicious.

All of Vanny's hideout look like this, which is more like P46 than Gregory

Patient 46 is said to have had a "great childhood," something that you would not say to a 10-11 year old like Gregory, who is still going through childhood. Patient 46 has had 72 sessions since she started therapy, meaning that she had been in therapy for a long time, quite a bit longer than Vanessa, who has only had 39 sessions. P46 is said to be fascinated with masks, something that Gregory is never shown to care about. She is said to be good with self-dialogue, something that Gregory never demonstrates. P46 is more comfortable in dark places, and all of Vanny's hideouts are dark. P46 is said to be non-sociable, but Gregory seems fairly outgoing.The techs in the Pizzaplex are able to trace the glitches in the system back to P46, which would only make sense if P46 had some kind of signature in the system to begin with. This makes more sense if she was a contracted beta tester than a kid who comes in there sometimes.

As for why Vanny and Vanessa were never confused with each other, despite apparently being physically similar, I think it's likely that Vanny has differently colored eyes from Vanessa. The two times we see Vanny without her mask, the Fire Escape and Princess Quest endings, we don't see her eyes. This would also fit the general idea that when Elizabeth possesses something, it changes that character's eye color.

Who is Vanny?

This is the most speculative part of this whole theory, which is saying something.

Vanny could just be a random woman who got swept up in all of this. She doesn't have to be anyone significant. But I think that's less likely. So who is she, if Vanny is anyone at all?

Vanny is Charlotte Emily...granddaughter of Henry and named after her late aunt who was slain when her father Sammy was just a boy.

Patient 46's parents died in some kind of accident. Unlike some people, I don't think this was Glitchtrap's doing, I think it was really an accident that served as catalyst for her arc. Her parents die in a tragic but ultimately mundane accident. This occurs close to the time that Henry sacrifices himself to take down Fazbear Entertainment, an act that is baffling to her. Some time later, though, Fazbear re-establishes itself under new management. Charlotte doesn't understand why, but she knows that her grandfather tried to sacrifice himself to prevent this from happening. She tries to get a job there, but the new, smaller, more inscrutable Fazbear Entertainment LLC isn't hiring. However, one of their contractors is. The one working on the video game that's supposed to white-wash Fazbear's history.

Charlie has Henry's ability to create artificial life

Charlotte inherited a lot of her grandfather's technical prowess. So she is able to get a job at Silver Parasol as a beta tester. There, her worst fears are confirmed as it seems like the evil that her grandfather sacrificed himself to stop is indeed threatening to come back. She listens to Tape Girl without discernment and tries to stop Glitchtrap the way that the tapes say to. This of course doesn't work, and instead Charlotte gets taken by Glitchtrap. From then she is his Puppet. The original Marionette was made to bring the Crying Child back, but the new, living Marionette is seemingly made to bring Afton back. This is why Vanny is associated with the Nightmare Staffbots, and why the Vanny mask vaguely resembles the Puppet mask. She started calling herself Vanny due to constantly being hooked up to the VANNI Network through the mask that she created. Vanessa, then, is so-named because P46 calls herself Vanny, not the other way around.

Vanny Will Return

In Ruin, Vanny's face is painted on several surfaces in the Pizzaplex. There appears to be someone from the outside controlling the Pizzaplex systems to manipulate Cassie. From sending her a text message to come to the Pizzaplex in the first place, to carefully staging a walkie-talkie where Cassie could find it, to remotely controlling Helpi, to crushing Roxy with a forklift, there are several instances of someone manipulating things from afar. M2 is never shown to be able to do these things, and F10-N4 was being controlled by the MXES entity so it's likely not them.

Roxy was crushed by a go-kart in SB, and now Nightmare Staffbots are driving karts near where Roxy was crushed. Vanny controls the Nightmare Staffbots.

Why would Vanny do this if she was freed from Glitchtrap? Because of the Candy Cadet story in HW2. As I have theorized earlier, the 'young woman with a scar' who goes back to fight a witch but gets eaten by her, is Vanny. After being freed from Glitchtrap, she tried to stop the Mimic once and for all, but underestimated it again and got taken over by it again.

So that means in the next main game, Vanny will be back. It seems very likely to me that we will be playing as Vanessa, which would be the first time we've done so. So it will be a robot version of Elizabeth (who doesn't know that she's a robot or Elizabeth) facing off against an alive but evil version of Charlotte, a complete role reverseal from 'The Fourth Closet.' I predict that there will be a sequence where Vanny and Vanessa confront each other in a mirror maze, given how important mazes have been to Vanny, and that a mirror maze is used in 'The Fourth Closet.'

Movie Clues

Although I don't think the movies are meant to be clues to 'solve' the lore, I do think they can give insight into where Scott Cawthon's head is at, especially as he was writing the current games arc at about the same time he was writing the movie.

In the first movie novelization, Vanessa's eyes literally change color and her personality shifts so quickly that Mike describes it as like a switch being thrown. It seems unlikely that Vanessa is a robot in the movies, given that we see her go to the hospital. But movie novelizations are often written from an earlier version of the movie, so it's possible that Scott Cawthon originally intended Vanessa to be a robot, but then dropped the idea for the final movie.

Vanessa being possessed by an evil version of Charlotte

The second movie though, is one of the things that made me more confident with this theory, It ends with Vanessa being controlled by an evil version of Charlotte, exactly what I'm proposing for the games. Once again, while this may not be a 'clue' for the games, it could very well be an indication of where Scott's head is at.

Wrapping It Up

tl;dr: Vanessa is a robot, made from the Mimic program and Elizabeth Afton's personality chip and she is able to be remotely controlled by Vanny, who is both Patient 46 and Charlotte Emily. This will probably come to a head in the next main game.

I don't really expect this to convince anyone that's not already open minded about these things. It's really more of a prediction of what will be revealed based on environmental clues and narrative parallels to The Silver Eyes trilogy. And it's an alternative way of looking at things which largely goes against the current consensus. If I had to give this theory a name, it might be VanessaPuppet. So let me know if you think that any of this has any validity.

i jokingly said “I want a kid to beat up Messi” 🙏💔

One psychological hurdle to believing DavidTOYSNHK, WillFallFestFire, and other related theories that people will sometimes express is that "Afton doesn't have to be behind every bad thing that happens in this series."

But, for better or worse, that's not how it works. Afton is this series' Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. Everything bad that happens can be traced to either him or Fazbear, the evil corporation that he runs.

Edwin Murray is selfish, neglectful, and bad at managing people. Did he deserve to have his wife and child die, and to lose everything including the house and company that his father built because of these shortcomings? No, but possessing these personal failings opens the door for a greater evil to take hold in your life. This is the most consistent motif in the Fazbear Frights and Tales From the Pizzaplex books. Someone will have a moral failing, sometimes major but usually minor, refuse to confront or rectify this failing, which causes Fazbear's greater evil to target them in some way, which typically results in them dying or their life being destroyed.

This isn't any different from Friday the 13th where teenagers engaging in carnal pleasures at inappropriate times opens the door for Jason to target them. Is something they deserve to die for? No but it's an inevitable result of their actions in the Friday the 13th universe.

Afton and Fazbear aren't just passively evil, enriching themselves at others' expense. Afton is an active force of evil that seeks to destroy innocence and happiness.This is actually pretty realistic to real life serial killers. Afton takes advantage of the trust that children put in him, and Fazbear covers up for their serial killer CEO even when it hurts their bottom line.

So in the FNAF universe, any personal failings you might possess potentially mean that your life or someone close to you could be destroyed by Fazbear. This is what the FNAF 2 movie tries and (imo) fails to convey, that Charlotte dies because of the lack of vigilance of the parents. It's also why MMMCI makes sense to me, because it shows that Afton targeted vulnerable kids.

And it's also why DavidTOYSNHK makes sense. Because it's the clearest example of how Afton chooses his victims, and takes the recurring motif of Frights and Tales to its logical extreme.

I was thinking about the theory I posted the other day, about Nightmarionne being the torturer in UCN, and TOYSNHK merely being the jailer, and that led me to a really obvious conclusion.

The current games' story arc is inspired by The Living Tombstones FNAF 2 song.

It's obviously not one-to-one, but a mother whose son was lost to the Purple Guy, who then becomes the Puppet to try and bring him back, is the current story. SOTM also came out the same year as the FNAF 2 movie, where Charlotte's arc was changed to be more similar to "It's Been So Long" so that it made sense when the song played at the end of the movie. And UCN itself is a reference to one of the oldest fan theories, namely Game Theory's 'you are the killer' FNAF 1 theory. So we know that Scott Cawthon pays attention to popular theories and sometimes incorporates them into his games.

Fiona's connections with Nightmarionne are well known at this point. Nightmarionne is all over the Pizzaplex, there are black and white wires throughout the Pizzaplex representing F10-N4's reach, the Nightmarionne collectible room is almost certainly about Fiona, and Fiona herself was a puppeteer before she came to MCM. Whether she literally is Nightmarionne, or Nightmarionne is some kind of manifestation of her vengeful impulses, the point is that the two are linked somehow.

And this solves one of the oldest mysteries about TOYSNHK, which is: what makes the vengeful spirit "The One" Afton shouldn't have killed? There's nothing obviously special about any of the major TOYSNHK candidates, so why are they singled out? But if you pay attention to who refers to the vengeful spirit as "The One You Shouldn't Have Killed," they're all characters that can be linked to Fiona. So it's not TOYSNHK himself that's saying Afton shouldn't have killed him specifically, nor is it some impartial force of cosmic justice. It's David's mother that's saying it.

And for 50 years, the AI that Fiona's soul empowers has been sleeping underneath the different locations that have seen one tragedy after another, all the while longing to see her son again, her sanity slowly eroding. Who knows what something like that might do to see her child again?

I think it's very likely that Andrew from Fazbear Frights is a "first draft" version of David. The Frights books were made to look to the past, which includes UCN. So when UCN introduces the idea of The One You Should Not Have Killed, and then a year or two later, Andrew is introduced and acts like how TOYSNHK is described in UCN, it seems like this is a clue that we should look for someone who is like Andrew in significant ways.

However, I haven't actually read the Frights books. I only know about them through FNAF theory videos. So I'm not up on everything about the Stitchline. That's why I'd like to know if there are more parallels that I don't know about.

Some similarities that I do know:

1. Andrew wears an alligator mask, and Monty the alligator originates from MCM.

2. Andrew's soul shattered into multiple pieces of technology including a dog animatronic. Bub the dog is a character that had a springlock suit in MCM.

3. Andrew is a victim of Afton who was killed before the MCM under unknown circumstances. Under DavidTOYSNHK, David is also an early victim of Afton who died under currently unknown circumstances.

But what else is there beyond that.

This is a somewhat radical view of Moon.exe. Most people think that Moon.exe is wholly about M2 or, as Gibi proposed, M2 being born from M1. But I have come to a different conclusion. It's entirely about the journey that the M1 endoskeleton takes and how Arnold is the one that completes that journey.

First things first: the starting area. The starting area is a girl's bedroom. It has a flower on the wall like the pink bedroom in FNAF 4, and has a Roxy rodeo hat which has flavor text "you wore this hat until it fell apart." The Roxy hat is one of the first collectibles that you can get in the game, so it's supposed to set the stage for the rest of Moon.exe.

A flower on the wall

A Roxy hat with no gameplay utility

This room does not look like David's room or any other bedroom that we've seen in the series. The appearance of the Roxy Rodeo hat suggests that it is supposed to be Fiona's room. My personal theory is that Moon.exe was made by Henry to commemorate Fiona's memory for David, but that it became warped by all the agony in MCM. Regardless, it either is Fiona's bedroom or it's supposed to be the Mimic's interpretation of what Fiona's bedroom might have looked like.

There is also a note in the bedroom.

https://preview.redd.it/4zxjf38dlw8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd10276a0ab778bd731eb2be11f911464710c84c

This letter, asking to bring back the Sun, is an immutable part of the starting area of Moon.exe. Even if you collect no collectibles, the note on the desk will still read, "can you bring back the Sun?" So the point of the in-universe game Moon isn't for M2 to find an identity, it's to bring back the Sun. This is the question that is asked at the beginning of the game, and it ends with the player character talking to the Sun.

When exiting this room, the player character does several tasks. They take the key from the Sharpay plushie and take the hedgehog mask from the scary monster in the closet. They then sneak out wearing the mask. I think this is important too. The player character escapes on their own. They're not brought to life as some kind of experiment. This is closer to M1 than it is to M2. Edwin had heard Fiona's voice being mimicked by his AI software even before it was attached to any particular machine, and we can link this to the player character of Moon escaping the starting room that they had been trapped in.

The player character wanders around a bit until they meet a baby owl being menaced by an alligator. When you save the owl from the alligator the two of you become inseparable. This is M1 saving David from Edwin's neglect. M1 was created by Edwin for the purpose of becoming a babysitter for David. It's actually unclear if Fiona always possessed M1, or if she only came to possess it after M1 was assigned to be his babysitter. But I think it was always possessed by her, because of something else that we see in the starting area.

https://preview.redd.it/7ze0v5laax8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ed0f090e8edfa1a2c0e9a07102ff31a4e5884737

One of the collectibles that we can find is a purple phone through which you can hear a child crying about being neglected by a male figure. Even though this phone isn't necessary to completing Moon.exe, I think it's supposed to show that one of the impetuses for Fiona's spirit leaving the bedroom was to help David. Then, after we save the Baby Owl, the Owl stays with us the entire time. So that suggest that there was never a point where David spent time with a non-possessed M1. He went straight from trying to spend time with his father, to spending time with M1 instead.

Eventually the player character and David come to a cabin the woods and it's this part that makes most people think that Moon.exe is about M2. Because it's here that we meet Sun. This minigame is supposed to be about bringing back the Sun, but here we meet her halfway through. So how can that be?

This is where we come to another contentious proposition. Sun here is F10-N4, meeting the M1 endoskeleton. F10-N4 and M1 existed at the same time. We know that Research and Development was completed in the middle of 1975, and F10-N4 seems to have built into it as an integral part of R&D. We know that F10-N4 says to Edwin that she has "had to watch my child grow up, through this machine." Both of these things suggest that F10-N4 was around and active before David died. Given that the player character perceives Sun as being old, despite the fact that Fiona probably wasn't even 30 when she died, this could suggest that F10-N4 is a house for the original code that Fiona's spirit possessed, and is thus older than M1.

Sun gives the player character a task, to repair three masks in her cabin.

https://preview.redd.it/lfwh18eoax8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=30824d4b801756563afced752e32c2ce503c8db2

The three masks are characters that we know that Fiona worked on, Fredbear, Spring Bonnie and Foxy. Fiona was involved with the development with the springlock suits, which included Fredbear and Spring Bonnie. And she worked on the Foxy puppet show. The repairs involve making aesthetic repairs and minor modifications to all three characters, showing that Fiona's touch was reflected on these characters even if they were primarily designed by others and all became associated with Fazbear eventually. This reinforces that the player character is M1, because we have to mimic something that Fiona did.

And then comes the last mask, and the main reason that people think we play as M2.

https://preview.redd.it/p23i900vfx8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=42bd7d1475d1b57cc73a4aeae9780ca678cade6b

The Baby Owl that's been with us since leaving the house "flies away." and leaves behind a mask that will "make the Moon think we are the baby owl." So, since we're wearing a mask that is supposed to make the Moon think we're David, the very purpose that M2 was created for, how does this not make us M2?

For one thing, Sun is wrong here. The Moon reacts to seeing the player character wearing the Owl mask by weeping. It doesn't think we are David, but it also doesn't react to the player character the same way that Edwin reacts to M2 when it actually starts mimicking David. And also, it's Sun that sends the player character to the caves. The player character doesn't go there on their own volition, but rather because Sun directs us to. Basically nothing about this actually matches what little we know about the creation of M2.

When we go down in the caves, the first thing we see is a statue of the Baby Owl.

https://preview.redd.it/4au47k8ajx8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efcbf2258d830db2c43ba990791f7c17ad230249

It says, "you will bring him back, no matter the cost." This isn't M2's motivation. M2 resists becoming David after Edwin traumatized it. This is M1 and F10-N4's motivation. F10-N4 says that to Edwin in the Parachute ending, that the only thing that matters is getting her 'child' back.

The player character goes through a series of caves, which are probably supposed to be B1, B2, and then the actual caves under MCM that we see in Ruin. There, the player character rebuilds themselves into Moon. Notably, they specifically do not have to rebuild their legs, unlike M2. It's possible that parts of M1 were used to build M2, to increase the chance of possession. This could also be what the Baby Owl mask is. Some part of David imprinted onto M1, which was then used to build M2.

https://preview.redd.it/x8ws4avfkx8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=01ddc885cf7891c632981ae983e974520d600506

The line "It glows and glows until you know nothing but white..." has, I think, been overlooked. The character that we know that is associated with Moon that is surrounded by white light is, well, Sleepy Moon down in Basement 1. We the player character know nothing but white light because we are surrounded by Sleepy Moon's light. Because we are Sleepy Moon.

Then we go from the fantasy setting of the forest cave to Murray's Costume Manor. Helper reinforces what I said in the last paragraph.

https://preview.redd.it/qi64xtffmx8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0f9ee5f9a2d0a8f0e66ae3e08bb0dd102285bfea

We the player character, who started off as some lingering spiritual aspect of Fiona, have now been split in two, M1 or Sleepy Moon in B1, and F10-N4 or Sun in R&D. We are Sun and Moon.

We then bring peace to the four main personas that M2 assumes throughout the main game of Secret of the Mimic. It's worth noting that the four personas represent the physical trauma that M2 went through. Jackie has a destroyed lower half, Big Top gets around entirely with it's arms, Dollie has nonfunctional legs which were made functional, and Chica gets around on roller skates, demonstrating dexterity on legs after having rebuilt them. So by bringing peace to them, we symbolically bring peace to the M2 endo.

There are some other weird lines to mention. One is when you're again in the Welcome Show.

https://preview.redd.it/fz2omoy0ox8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0fb6dc7a8c35b246a1a42be89598352af7e863cb

The other animatronics stare with orange eyes. This is another sign that we aren't M2, since orange eyes are primarily associated with M2 and we can't be staring at ourselves. Another thing is this.

https://preview.redd.it/saqt0wu9qx8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6ceca2e2e968e6a07d26a83db60c85e98e66ba1e

The toy soldiers in the Birthday Showroom apparently "know what you've done." This might mean nothing, just that they know we stopped Jackie. But it also might mean that the soldiers know that we the player character had something to do with David's death.

We get up to David's room and place his toys in the right boxes in order to sleep the Tiger. So after symbolically bringing peace to M2, we must now bring peace to the White Tiger. After putting the pieces together, the closet opens and we see an upgrade machine.

https://preview.redd.it/qpxwishlrx8h1.png?width=1258&format=png&auto=webp&s=14c0b27f47364c19b6e0cdc18819f097eba0643a

There is no consensus on what these machines actually are, but I think they're Turing tests. Tests designed to determine if someone is a man or machine. I think that's why the Mimics can't just upgrade a data diver on their own, for some reason they get confused by these things. Every once in a while, Edwin shows prudence like this, so it makes sense.

So if this is made to separate man from machine, then what does that mean when we complete it?

It means that we stop being the player character of Moon.exe, and start being Arnold again. The challenge at the beginning of Moon.exe, was to bring back the Sun, and now we have done that.

https://preview.redd.it/ovdn9i3nsx8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=83b84eef06e5ed3e3f14d88b62047c12e1e12613

https://preview.redd.it/shmruirnsx8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e9a6f212689feccaacb33a9d5c223825f4d9919

https://preview.redd.it/alffw6sosx8h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=95d602c978b136145c0516dd763735ea61b3d116

I don't think this is F10-N4 or the character of Sun, or anything like that. I think this is literally the pure essence of Fiona, the one untainted by agony and bad AI programming. The part of her remaining spirit that doesn't engage in Machiavellian schemes and just wants to fix what Edwin couldn't. By completing the final upgrade, we are no longer in the realm of the purely physical, we are a living human, Arnold, talking to a deceased human, Fiona. F10-N4's dialogue does not change at all if you have the Glitched Permission, and this Sun doesn't use the manipulative language of F10-N4. She says you have completed my tasks, and we have been completing Fiona's tasks all night long. Many of the times when Arnold had to be walked through a task, it was a recording of Fiona talking to him.

In the original cut opening of Secret of the Mimic, Arnold mentions that he has a wife and kid but that they are separated and he hasn't seen in kids in a long time. The clear implication is that he's a mirror of Edwin, someone who lets his work dominate his family life. Even in the final version of the game, it's clear that Arnold lets Fazbear yank him around like Edwin did.

So when Arnold gets the Glitched Permission and enters into David's room, he basically becomes the Dad Who Stepped Up. He is fulfilling the role that Edwin intended to fulfill with M1, but which Edwin should have done himself. Interestingly, there is no Moon imagery in David's room. There's a sun and stars, but no moon. That's because Arnold is the Moon. We are stepping into the symbolic role that the Moon/M1 was created to fulfill. Arnold overloads M2 with positive memories, which allows it to fulfill the role that it was created for and become David, and then we put David to sleep, just like a babysitter is supposed to do.

So, what do you think? Do you agree that this is at least a plausible interpretation of Moon.exe, or am I off-base?