I've talked before about how the FNAF movies seem to be taking a lot of cues from the novels. Stuff like Mike's constant dreaming about finding his little brother, the pizzeria being abandoned, William operating under a false identity to keep an eye on Freddy's, Foxy stalking Abby, the drawings, the kids dragging William away after the springlock failure... all of these are things lifted straight from The Silver Eyes.
And now, here we are heading into FNAF 2, and already we're starting to see direct correlations to The Twisted Ones in the trailer. Such as the strong presence of Balloon Boy (who is basically his own mob in the book), the Toy animatronics roaming around and hunting people down (like the Twisted animatronics do), Abby fiddling around with electronics parts and seemingly trying to rebuild or reconnect with her friends (like Charlie is working on building and understanding robots), and the FNAF 2 location having a large underground facility through which water flows (which is basically exactly what we get in the book except there's also a waterfall and mushrooms).
And then there's Mike and Vanessa. Who are out on a dinner date (!!!!!!!!) at a nice restaurant, catching up on life. Exactly like John and Charlie do early on in The Twisted Ones. (Like, literally, down to the catching up on life because it's been a year. This is not subtle.) Now that on its own is wildly interesting, but there's another detail I want to add.
When I was reading the FNAF movie novelization, one thing I noticed is that Mike has this thing about building stuff. He wanted to go into construction, he used to like playing with building blocks as a kid, he really enjoys making the fort bc it plays into those sensibilities of his, and he even gets a job in construction at the end of the film. And that made me think about John.
John in the novels is another male lead in FNAF, and he also ends up getting a job in construction in The Fourth Closet (not that it’s his first choice, but still). It's a tiny parallel, but it feels important, especially given how the movie novelization has been shown to hold a lot more canon information than we originally thought. (A lot of cut scenes are scenes that are still in the book... and of course Schmelly being hinted at in the book and now being more of a thing in FNAF 2...) The movie draws a LOT from the novel trilogy, and given how Mike and Vanessa are the leads of the movie, and the way John takes a protagonist role in TFC, and the way Vanessa seems to be Charlie-adjacent as her father’s only daughter, especially in the novel, which describes her in such a way that it nearly makes her sound like a robot with a personality disorder, and makes the Ella suit sound even more like Circus Baby, and even states that Vanessa’s face is blurry on camera the first time Mike sees her…
I dunno, guys… I’m suspicious.
