Hey so staring at my ceiling in the middle of the night, had a thought about the actor Matthew Lillard and his movies, specifically: Scooby-Doo, Scream, and Five Nights at Freddy's
I thought to myself, what if there was a way to connect them all? (Since fans like to look at live action William Afton and go "Shaggy!" or "Scream!" as a joke) Then my brain started to brain and cook up an AU
AU where the Mystery Gang breaks up and go their separate ways, but Shaggy doesn't know what to do with himself now that all his friends are gone comes up with a plan. The Mystery Gang will surely come check out a strange Mystery that's happening in a small town. So takes the role of Scream (also pretending to be a student named Stu [he was hungry when thinking up a name]) and gets some buddy to be the second Scream (once the Gang comes back, he can't be caught running around as Scream) but the plan goes wrong, instead of terrorizing the town, his buddy ends up killing as Scream. He loses it, anger disguised as a malice smile. (The Mystery Gang solves ghosts/monsters terrorizing towns, NOT murders!) Knowing there's no way the Gang will come back now, Shaggy "Stu" goes about letting off the steam as Scream but once it looks like the town thinks his Scream is dead, he skips town
Understanding he went about it all wrong, he decides to start over. This time, he goes over all cases they solved before, what the perps had in common. They were usually old men with a failing business who came up with a spooky gimmick for insurance! So that's what he needs to do!
Shaggy gives himself a sketchy old man name this time: William Afton. He browses for a business that would potentially fail, when he met Henry Emily. Henry was an entrepreneur and had the idea for animatronics as entertainment. William thought it was a brilliant idea (Shaggy thought it was something that'd get old by the time he's hits the old man age). They expanded the idea to be a diner (because he was hungry) and it's off to a great start.
It frustrates Shaggy he has to wait a few years, so he decides to distract himself, gets a wife, has some kids, but he can't bring himself care about them. They’re nothing like the Mystery Gang.
He focused on his work, making it look like he was checking on the business when in reality he was calculating when it would be begin to fall trend wise, when the Bite of 87 happened.
Another death destroyed his plans, frustrated he had to start over AGAIN, Henry however assured they could just make new place and new animatronics, it won't be from scratch. Henry made the mistake of saying how they might have to rebuild the trust in the Freddy's brand. If they had to rebuild trust, that meant there’s doubt in the brand, which sets up for the business failure.
It's that moment a light bulb goes in his head. It doesn't matter how the business fails, so long as once it does, that's when he can put on the mask and make it spooky.
And the death of children seem to be the fastest way to go out of business.
That's why he never gave up the properties, kept the buildings, and hiring security guards that'd quit
He was waiting for the Mystery Gang to catch wind of it and investigate
