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Throughout each of the Five Nights At Freddy’s games, we’ve all faced many harrowing threats. From robots built specifically for murdering children to a giant scooper removing your insides, we’ve seen it all. However, throughout all of these, there’s been one big, consistent baddie pulling the strings: William Afton.
Afton is a character who keeps dying but never seems to really stay dead, kept alive by pure spite and the remnant flowing through him.
But despite his eternal catchphrase, “I always come back,” it seemed like in the aftermath of FNAF 6, he was finally gone, and while the next big bad would be under his control, she would still be her own unique character.
As you know from this article, that didn’t happen. Peepaw Willy found a way to come back, and Vanny got rushed out as a shell of the villain she could’ve been.
This brings us to Burntrap: the hidden final boss in one of Security Breach’s many lackluster endings. In this FNAF Burntrap Guide, I’ll be taking a look at what Burntrap is, how he came to be, and the hidden truth that many think is lurking behind that melted rabbit suit.
Bottom Line Up Front
Burntrap is a recreation of William Afton created by Vanny by building an animatronic body for the Glitchtrap virus to pass into. His body is built from endoskeleton pieces and what is assumed to be parts from Glamrock Bonnie.
However, many fans believe that the Glitchtrap virus and Burntrap’s body are not actually Afton himself; but instead the Mimic, an animatronic and computer program from the Tales from the Pizzaplex book series, due to an uncanny amount of similarities and oddly specific details.
Physical Appearance and Personality
Burntrap’s design is similar to that of other William Afton appearances. He looks like a far more rotted version of Springtrap or Scraptrap, with decomposing veins and innards weaved throughout his animatronic body.
Though he mostly appears to be an old endoskeleton with a corpse entangled in it, based on clues in the game and a few mismatched pieces, as well as Glamrock Bonnie’s mysterious disappearance, it’s highly likely that Vanessa used pieces of the disassembled Glamrock animatronic on him as well.
Matted, charred fur and flesh line the endoskeleton he’s superimposed over, with his left leg not matching the rest of his body. Both the physical body and mask of the animatronic have rotted away, conforming to fit a far more human head shape in its place, even as that crumbles away.
Though I initially believed most of Burntrap’s body was made from the remains of Scraptrap, it now seems as though this is another clue to him being the Mimic based on the events of the most recent epilogue.
Burntrap doesn’t have much personality in the one game he appears in, but considering he’s based on William Afton there are many inferences we can make. Afton’s personality was cold and calculating, even towards his own children.
He hid behind trustworthy mascots and his status as an employee to lure children to their deaths, and in Help Wanted Glitchtrap’s behavior shows us what this could’ve looked like.
Appearances
Though past incarnations of him appear in other games, Burntrap only shows up in one optional section of Security Breach. In what many presume to be the canon ending, Burntrap traps you in an underground security office where you must survive until the Blob finishes him off.
Gameplay and How to Beat
This segment plays pretty similarly to the original games, with some aspects being unique to Security Breach. You have to watch where Afton is on the security monitors and press the right buttons to set him on fire before he can take control of Freddy.
Getting to the Fight
However, there’s a bit of a leadup to get to the final boss fight of the game. Once you venture down under the Pizzaplex, you’ll find the ruins of the FNAF 6 Pizzeria, and the room leading up to the final boss fight. This room is filled with generators you’ll need to turn on, and though they’re technically optional, I wouldn’t skip them.
These generators turn on the charging station for Freddy, and while you can progress without charging him, it’s a pretty dumb mistake to make.
There are two endos in this room, and once you activate the second generator, they’ll become active. If you’re bad at dealing with endos, you can always hop in Freddy, run down the hall fast, and then hop out to turn on each generator. But this isn’t the ideal way to get this done, especially with Freddy’s power being so low.
The best way to get through this segment is by walking down the hall backward, slowly and carefully, while making sure to keep an eye on the endos the entire time.
Only turn away from them to flip the generator switches, and watch out for the security bot at the end; it won’t kill you, but it is annoying as hell and allows the endos to get closer. If they get too close, you can stun them with the Faz Cam, but you can’t charge it here, so I’d recommend only using it as a last resort.
If you find this section too hard for you, you can also dash to the end, turn on those generators, and go back for the ones that activate the endos last.
Once you get through the doors at the end of the hallway, turn on the last two generators and enter the charging station. Explore the ruined pizzeria as much as you want, and when you’re ready, drop down into the big roped-off hole by the charging station.
You’ll want to stay inside Freddy for this segment, or, like me, you’ll get a surprise jump scare and have to restart all the way back at the generator room. Speaking of which, if you die at any point, the game will start you at the generator room again, which can get insanely frustrating.
Once you get down there, go past the blob and onto the wooden board, and the cutscene will trigger, showing the goopy old grandpa himself, and you’ll be thrust into the boss battle.
Burntrap’s Boss Fight
Phase One
For phase 1, Afton mostly tries to take control of Freddy and send the other animatronics after you. When one of them is on their way, Freddy will warn you to close the doors or vent. When you need to close one, you’ll want to make sure to watch the power meter at the top, because if it runs out, things can get chaotic fast.
Watch for Afton on the monitors and burn the right room to keep Freddy safe, and follow his instructions for the other animatronics while making sure to conserve power.
Chica and Monty are easy as they pop up at a door or vent and leave after a while. Roxanne, on the other hand, can be a bit harder.
The doors aren’t enough to hold Roxy, and she’ll burst into the room. Freddy tells you to hide, but if you aren’t watching for Afton on the monitors, he can gain control of Freddy, leaving you nowhere to go.
In this instance, I found you can usually stay crouched behind the cot (Roxy is blind) without moving, and she usually won’t get you. However, though she may not be able to get to you, she’ll still stay there and try.
The only way to get her to permanently leave the room is to get in Freddy and use Chica’s voice box (if you, like me, struggled with this, the button on PC is actually the left mouse button, not the right as every website says).
If you’re able to catch Afton in time, it’s best to hide in Freddy when Roxy comes, though he tended to run out of power often for me, leaving me exposed.
This section essentially plays in a loop; Afton shows up on a monitor, you burn him, animatronics come in. It seems like the amount of time he sends them out is randomized, but usually, he’ll shift to phase 2 after one round of each animatronic.
Steel Wool has done a good job patching out most of the game’s bugs, but this section is still the buggiest, so you’ll want to watch out for that.
Phase Two
In Burntrap’s phase two, he won’t send out any more animatronics. However, tendrils from the Blob will burst through the ground, and, as you progress, the ceiling.
Dodge the tendrils and survive as more burst out. It’s best to stay crouched and near the main monitor during this section. I had to burn Afton around three more times before it cut to a cutscene, and I knew I had finally beaten it.
Burntrap’s Origin
To learn more about Afton, you can read our William Afton Guide, but to understand Burntrap, we really just need the basics of Glitchtrap.
Help Wanted gave the big reveal that when creating the VR game, Fazbear Entertainment scanned in some random old circuit boards believed to have come from Springtrap’s suit, creating a self-replicating AI duplicate of the man behind the slaughter himself.
So, while the real Afton is burning in hell, a little piece of his soul is out there corrupting the youths and doin’ a silly little jig.
After possessing Tape Girl/Vanny in Help Wanted, Glitchtrap made her get a job as a security guard at the Mega Pizzaplex. From there, she’d have access to all of the building’s resources and locked areas, allowing her to get wherever he needed her to go.
Using these resources, she made the Glamrock animatronics dig out a buried location under the Pizzaplex, where the burned ruins of the Pizzeria from FNAF 6 resided. Using scraps from different endoskeletons, Glamrock Bonnie, and Afton’s charred corpse, she built a new body for Glitchtrap to transfer himself to.
The Mimic Theory
The epilogues and latest books for the Tales From The Pizzaplex book series weave a story of an animatronic known as the Mimic. Recently, a really popular theory has been that Burntrap is actually this Mimic animatronic- because if he isn’t, the stories we’ve been reading don’t really have another way to connect to the games.
The story of the mimic goes like this: Edwin, an engineer working for Fazbear Entertainment in its earlier days, is so busy working on animatronics that he doesn’t have time to spend with his four-year-old son.
He builds a program called Mimic1 to make an animatronic friend for his son that will mimic whatever it sees. His son and the Mimic quickly become best friends, and he gives him a white tiger plushie to match his own that he carries around.
But as we all know, kids don’t usually stay alive in the world of FNAF, and one day Edwin’s son is killed by a van. After his death, the Mimic continues to… well, mimic him, sending Edwin into a violent rage as he attempts to break the animatronic.
Edwin’s actions teach the Mimic to be violent, and when Fazbear Entertainment sends workers to collect animatronics from Edwin’s workshop, it kills them.
The Mimic learns more and more violent behaviors and ends up killing eleven employees after being taught to rip limbs off old animatronics. At some point, seven kids sneak into the pizzeria, and it brutally hunts and tears them apart. This is the last we hear of the Mimic animatronic- but not the last of the Mimic.
The Mimic returns once more in The Storyteller arc of Tales From The Pizzaplex. Mr. Burrows, the CEO of Fazbear Entertainment decides to axe the entire creative department in exchange for an AI- an AI that is specified to create VR games.
The Storyteller AI is housed in an animatronic white tiger head inside of a giant tree, which reminds Edwin of his dead son.
Edwin drops down into the tree, landing in front of the white tiger head. He peers inside, only to find that the Storyteller is running his code- Mimic1. Both Edwin and Mr. Burrows die in the tree, and eventually it’s taken down and roped off from the rest of the Pizzaplex.
However, before it can be destroyed, the AI transfers itself into a VR attraction, giving itself a new virtual body; similar to how Glitchtrap transfers himself not only into the consciousness of beta testers but into the new Burntrap body.
Burntrap’s Connection to the Mimic
There are more than a few uncanny coincidences relating the Mimic to both Glitchtrap and Burntrap. For starters, the glaringly obvious total takeover of the Pizzaplex. In Security Breach, Burntrap is connected into the entire Pizzaplex, giving him complete control.
The most obvious way this manifests is his grip on the animatronics- while they’re still themselves, they act far more childish and evil, with their worst traits being dialed up to eleven.
For example, normally Roxy is self-conscious and worried about what people think of her- under Afton’s control, she’s cartoonishly jealous, obsessed with being the biggest star.
Similar things happen in the events of the Storyteller arc. The Mimic takes over the Pizzaplex and his control changes the way the animatronics behave- specifically making them act childish, bratty, and immature. And just like how Afton is connected to the Pizzaplex through the foundations of the old pizzeria, the Storyteller tree housing the Mimic is wired throughout the entire Pizzaplex.
Many of the clues towards Burntrap being the Mimic come from visual storytelling with his design. Burntrap often keeps one arm at his side for no apparent reason, similar to how the Mimic keeps an arm at its side to mimic when it used to hold onto its white tiger plushie.
Even more telling is the structure of Burntrap’s body, which I and many other fans originally believed to be the remnants of Scraptrap after the fire in Pizzeria Simulator– Afton’s digital consciousness returning to his original rotted body.
However, in the latest epilogue for Tales From the Pizzaplex, the Mimic hunts down the remaining kids who snuck into the Pizzaplex, and one moment in this is particularly interesting. In the hopes that it won’t register them as people, two of the kids hide inside the animatronic costumes.
The Mimic follows and doesn’t see them, registering them as costumes and putting one on, killing the child inside and fusing itself to her dead body.
This detail feels especially important- because it basically confirms that the Mimic is Burntrap. These books exist to clarify the stories of the games- and the focus on the Mimic, especially the detail of fusing with a corpse, feels like Scott trying to tell us that the Burntrap and the Mimic are one and the same.
Mimic is already built from an old endo like the one Burntrap is on, and adding the corpse is no coincidence.
My Thoughts
Based on all the evidence, I honestly don’t think there’s much possibility that Burntrap isn’t the Mimic. The theory was initially only built off of the way he curls an arm off to the side, which was flimsy at best and never enough to convince me, but with everything we’ve seen since, it checks out. It would even make Glitchtrap’s VR form make more sense- an imitation of Afton’s suit, not the real deal.
All of the details discussed add up together, but even more than that- I don’t think the books would focus so much on the Mimic if he wasn’t important enough to be a major antagonist in the future.
At first, I didn’t really like where everything with the Mimic was going. To be honest, FNAF jumped the shark a long while ago, and theories about it jumped it even further. If I have to hear another middle-aged white guy try to tell me that not only is Gregory a robot but also the crying child, I might just lose it completely.
Afton is a chronically overused and worn villain, to the point that I can’t say anything about him scares me anymore.
When they brought him back as Burntrap, I was ready to tap out of the series. You can only hold onto the same tired villain for so long- and that’s why I really like the Mimic theory. Even if it’s acting like Afton and mimicking him, it’s something different.
FAQs
Question: Who is Burntrap in Five Nights At Freddy’s?
Answer: Burntrap is Glitchtrap from FNAF VR, transferred into a physical body made up of an endoskeleton and a rotting corpse. Some believe Burntrap to be William Afton’s consciousness placed into a more decrepit version of his charred remains, but far more likely based on the stories of the books is that he is the Mimic acting like Afton.
Question: What game is Burntrap in?
Answer: Burntrap only appears in FNAF Security Breach so far, but his previous incarnation Glitchtrap is the main antagonist of FNAF Help Wanted, and it is assumed he will return in Help Wanted 2.
Question: How do you beat Burntrap in Security Breach?
Answer: Burntrap won’t enter the room you’re in, but will try to control Freddy and send other animatronics in to attack you. When you see him on a monitor, press the button near it to set him ablaze. Pay attention to the doors and vent and lock them if something approaches, and when an animatronic enters the room, hide inside Freddy.
Question: What happened to Burntrap?
Answer: If you survive long enough to get the canon ending, Burntrap is pretty much instantly devoured by the Blob, making an already useless villain feel like he had no point being there at all.
Conclusion
The people behind FNAF are trying something new, and, regardless of if it works, I can appreciate an attempt at breathing fresh air into what has become a stagnant and stale antagonist.
Mimic may be acting as Afton- but based on its history and lore, it’s something far more dangerous and threatening. The Mimic heightens the stakes- especially as many believe it to be imitating Gregory’s voice to call to the player in the new Ruin DLC.
It reminds me of the original two Terminator movies- a villain nearly indestructible, always one step ahead of its victims, able to be anything it needs to to get the kill. For the first time in a good while- I’m genuinely excited for what the future of FNAF holds.