Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 trailer reveals William Afton’s backstory

The new trailer for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 has revealed surprising details about William Afton’s backstory and confirmed Skeet Ulrich’s character.

The first movie quickly became Blumhouse’s highest grossing horror movie, making $297 million at the box office in 2023, and the sequel is doubling down on the scares and the lore if the new trailer is anything to go by.

For anyone who hasn’t visited Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza in the games before, players take on the role of Mike Schmidt, a security guard who has to deal with the murderous animatronic mascots inside the restaurant during his night shifts. Josh Hutcherson plays Schmidt in the first movie (and he’ll reprise the role in the sequel) opposite Matthew Lillard as Afton, the creator of the animatronics.

But a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in the Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 trailer confirms new details about Afton’s backstory.

William Afton backstory teased in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 trailer

Although Afton was killed at the end of the first movie after being locked into the Springtrap suit, Lillard is returning via flashbacks that show how he terrorized his daughter, Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), when she was a young girl.

It’ll also look closer at how he murdered children and locked their bodies in the suits years before the events of the first film, as Skeet Ulrich’s Henry Emily explains that his own daughter was murdered.

As fans of the games already know, Emily was originally Afton’s partner in creating the company behind the infamous restaurant. A newspaper clipping shown in the trailer explains how Afton was a young prodigy who had grand ambitions for his animatronics and was planning to “experiment with new ideas and technology.”

We even get to see Springtrap in the new footage, as he lurks around in the dark restaurant with a knife. The creepy trailer also shows off old, ruined versions of the animatronics, who are called the “Withered” in the games.

As well as fiercely hunting Mike and Vanessa, the terrifying robots start attacking the local townspeople, which is a surprising departure from the previous movie.

But fans were quick to start theorizing about how the films will add to the games’ lore surrounding Afton. One commenter on Reddit wrote: “That newspaper is really weird. I wonder if William tried to cut Henry out and make it seem like he was the sole creator of the characters and robots. Because there is not even a single mention of him in there, and that just feels wrong to me.”

Another responded saying that would be “true to the character,” before a third person suggested that the film might recontextualize Afton and Emily’s backstories altogether: “If you look at William’s outfit in the newspaper..his outfit looks similar to Henry’s outfit in the games…could be they switch side… like emily is the businessman and william is the engineer?”