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Fazbear Frights #1: Into The Pit is the first installment in the Five Nights at Freddy’s Fazbear Frights anthology series. In total, there are 12 Fazbear Frights books, the last of which was released in April of this year.
Each book in the Fazbear Frights series contains three stories, as well as an epilogue that tells one long story known as a “Stitchwraith Stinger.” While this anthology series has officially come to a close, the upcoming anthology series, Tales from the Pizzaplex, will presumably take its place for the foreseeable future.
Into The Pit contains the titular story “Into The Pit,” as well as “To Be Beautiful” and “Count the Ways.” As the first book in the series, Into The Pit also has the first Stichwraith Stinger story, which introduces the premise of the epilogues’ overarching narrative.
Into The Pit’s three stories are somewhere between a short story and novella length, making them quick, fun reads for fans of the FNAF franchise who want to dive deeper into its expansive universe. The relationship and connections between the Fazbear Frights series and the canon of the FNAF games are unclear, giving readers the chance to explore some of the more unique sides of this weird, twisted world.
Bottom Line Up Front: Fazbear Frights #1 At-A-Glance
Into The Pit
A boy named Oswald finds himself alone for the summer in a town with nothing left to do. Upon discovering a ball pit in the local pizzeria that allows him to time travel, however, Oswald finds himself visiting the old Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza in 1985.
Unfortunately, the yellow rabbit that no one else seems to notice takes an interest in him, and before long, Oswald gets caught up in this strange creature’s idea of “family.”
To Be Beautiful
Sarah always longed to be one of the Beautifuls: the pretty, popular clique that rules her high school. When she finds a life-sized, mechanical doll in the local scrap yard that calls itself Eleanor, Sarah’s new robotic friend promises to make all of her wishes come true.
Sarah can finally have what she always wanted as long as she never takes off the heart-shaped necklace that Eleanor gives her—no matter what.
Count The Ways
Millie is a melancholic fourteen-year-old obsessed with death. Once she climbs into the stomach hatch of a strange animatronic, however, the thing seems more than happy to help her face her own mortality sooner rather than later.
Into The Pit Synopsis
“Into The Pit” tells the story of a ten-year-old boy named Oswald who is left with no friends in a desolate town for summer vacation.
As Oswald’s dad drives him to his last day of school, Oswald reflects on how the town has deteriorated over the years since the local mill closed. A lot of the town’s residents lost their jobs, causing families to leave and search for work elsewhere.
Oswald’s best friend, Ben, moved out of town when his father found a new job, leaving Oswald with no one his own age to hang out with. He spends his last day in class doodling strange, mechanical animals, including bears, bunnies, and birds.
Over dinner, Oswald’s dad suggests that he spend his summer days at the library rather than staying home alone all the time.
He offers to give Oswald lunch money for pizza and a soda at Jeff’s Pizza, which serves a good slice despite its run-down and somewhat creepy atmosphere. Not one to turn down free pizza every day for a whole summer, Oswald accepts.
At Jeff’s Pizza, Oswald takes note of the pizzeria’s painted-over murals, the empty show stage, and a strange ball pit that he can only assume is crawling with every germ under the sun. He orders a slice of cheese and an orange soda, which quickly becomes his regular order since it’s pretty much the only thing his lunch allowance will buy.
Oswald makes the best of his long summer days by reading library books at Jeff’s Pizza, but as the weeks begin to drag on, he gets more and more bored without any friends in town to hang out with. One morning, Oswald wakes up in a particularly bad mood, which escalates into a fight with his dad during their typical morning drive.
After a miserable day, Oswald decides to hide from his father when he arrives to pick him up at Jeff’s Pizza. The ball pit makes for an excellent hiding spot, so he climbs in despite the dust, germs, and other strangely sticky substances, submerging himself completely in the gross plastic.
When Oswald gets up, however, he finds himself in a bustling arcade full of flashing neon lights and retro game cabinets. Not only is this arcade packed with other kids, but everyone around him is dressed in 80s fashion. Oswald also spots a trio of animatronics performing on stage, including a brown bear, a blue rabbit, and a yellow chicken—all of which resemble the mechanical animals Oswald had been sketching.
The mural on the wall, which had been painted over in the present-day Jeff’s Pizza, depicts the band above the restaurant’s name: “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.” Oswald meets two kids, Chip and Mike, who invite him to hang out with them. In the corner, Oswald spots a strange man in a yellow rabbit costume, but nobody else in the restaurant seems to notice him standing there.
After a few rounds of skee-ball, Oswald figures he should get going before his dad starts to really worry, so he dives back into the ball pit to try and return the way he came. Once Oswald climbs out of the pit, he finds himself back in Jeff’s Pizza. According to his phone, no time had passed at all while he was at Freddy’s.
Over the next few days, Oswald continues to use the ball pit to visit his new friends at this bizarre pizzeria from the past. He continues to notice the creepy rabbit man, but mostly, he’s just happy to have kids his own age to hang out with again—not to mention access to a cool arcade where time doesn’t pass.
One morning, Oswald asks his dad about the old arcade that existed before Jeff’s Pizza, but his dad seems to get nervous when the subject is brought up.
When Oswald climbs back into the ball pit and arrives at Freddy’s that day, he finds the restaurant in total chaos. Amidst the panicked sounds of running and screaming, Oswald spots the man in the rabbit costume, who beckons him into a private room.
Inside, the rabbit shows Oswald a row of dead children, who Oswald assumes are his victims. He suddenly suspects that the rabbit intends for him to join them, so he runs. Narrowly escaping the rabbit, Oswald dives back into the ball pit and reemerges in Jeff’s Pizza, only to find his father standing over the pit searching for him.
Oswald’s dad scolds him for hiding, but all of a sudden, the rabbit’s arms reach up from the pit and drags Oswald’s dad under the surface. After a brief struggle, the rabbit rises from the pit with a creepy grin. He guides Oswald back to his dad’s car and locks the door, driving back to the house without needing directions.
To Oswald’s horror, no one else seems to notice anything strange about the yellow rabbit, and Oswald’s mom insists that the rabbit is Oswald’s dad when he tries to tell her that something’s wrong.
The rabbit impersonates Oswald’s dad pretty well, too. It does some household chores, drives Oswald to his first day at school, and even serves frozen pizza and Oswald’s favorite fruit punch for dinner. Oswald manages to escape from the house and run back to Jeff’s Pizza. He finds his dad unconscious in the ball pit and hoists him back to the surface, but the rabbit catches up with him and grabs him from behind.
Oswald fights the rabbit as it tries to attack him and his dad. During the struggle, the rabbit gets caught in the ball pit’s netting and hangs itself, leaving nothing more than an old, empty costume behind. Oswald’s dad wakes up and asks for an explanation, but Oswald decides to lie, telling his father that he must have hit his head while searching for him in the pit.
To Be Beautiful Synopsis
Sarah, an extremely self-conscious high schooler who’s obsessed with becoming prettier, wants to be one of the popular girls at school, who she refers to as “Beautifuls.” Between their flippable hair and expensive fashion, they’re everything Sarah wishes she could be when she looks in the mirror.
Sarah’s long-time best friend, Abby, expresses disdain for the Beautifuls. When Abby tries to reassure Sarah about her looks and tells her to be herself, Sarah storms off, feeling that Abby is judging her for becoming more superficial in recent years.
After failing to dye her hair blonde and accidentally dumping her lunch all over her crush in the cafeteria the next day, Sarah avoids the bus and walks past the local junkyard on her way home from school. There, she spots a hand sticking out of a scrapped car. With no one around to stop her from entering, Sarah approaches the car and pulls the hand from the wreckage, revealing a life-sized, mechanical doll.
The doll’s beautiful green eyes, pink cheeks, red pigtails, and sleek body somehow remind Sarah of the supermodels she always aspired to look like, so she takes the doll home and turns it on. When the doll springs to life, it introduces itself as Eleanor.
Eleanor thanks Sarah for rescuing her, offering to fulfill her wishes in exchange for her act of kindness. The only thing Sarah wants is to be beautiful, which she admits to Eleanor. The doll asks for twenty-four hours to come up with a plan to make Sarah’s wish come true, and Sarah agrees.
After school the next day, Eleanor gives Sarah a pretty, heart-shaped pendant on a silver chain. She makes Sarah promise to never take the necklace off, saying that as long as the pendant stays around Sarah’s neck, she’ll wake up a little more beautiful each morning.
Eleanor sings Sarah to sleep as part of the necklace’s weird wish-fulfilling requirements. When she wakes up in the morning, Sarah notices that her arms are more slender and toned, and her fingernails are painted a lovely shade of pink.
Over the next few days, Sarah not only begins to look better, but she begins to feel better as well. Her mom compliments her appearance and confidence, and she makes up with Abby after their fight earlier in the week. The boys at school begin to notice her, and her long-time crush strikes up a flirtatious conversation despite the fact that their last interaction left him covered in her lunch.
Eventually, Sarah asks Eleanor to change the appearance of her face as well. The next day, her brand new look finally gets her noticed by the Beautifuls, who ask her to sit with them at lunch. After a conversation that seems like more of a test than the start of any sort of friendship, they invite her to go to the mall with them on Sunday.
Abby, however, is quick to warn Sarah that the Beautifuls are shallow, which makes Sarah feel like she’s being judged yet again. After another fight with her friend, Sarah runs into her crush once more, and he asks her out for ice cream.
Her new looks give her some new confidence as well, and the date ends with another invitation to pizza and a movie on Saturday night. After a fantastic weekend that fulfilled all of her most beautiful fantasies, Sarah wakes from a nightmare to find Eleanor standing over her, watching her sleep.
At school the next day, Sarah slips in the cafeteria and falls, only to be laughed at by her beautiful new friends. Their laughs quickly turn to screams, however, as Sarah’s body begins to transform before them.
Sarah reaches for her throat and finds that Eleanor’s heart-shaped pendant fell from her neck when she slipped. Her legs have already been inexplicably replaced by old, rusted parts and mechanical pieces, and after taking her pendant back from Abby, she rushes home to try and find Eleanor.
The doll, however, is nowhere to be found. Sarah desperately searches the house as her body continues to turn to scrap, but when she reaches the garage, she discovers bags of her own bloody body parts in a storage cabinet.
Eleanor, finally revealing herself as Sarah becomes all but immobile, presses a heart-shaped button on her chest that’s identical to Sarah’s pendant. She transforms into Sarah—the “old” Sarah—and leaves the real Sarah to collapse into a rusty pile of parts on the floor.
Count The Ways Synopsis
Unlike the first two stories in Fazbear Frights #1, “Count The Ways” isn’t written in chronological order, instead skipping back and forth in time.
The story begins as fourteen-year-old Millie Fitzsimmons wakes up trapped in the dark torso of a talking animatronic. It seems to know an alarming amount about her and her personal life, including her nicknames, her preference for gothic fashion, and above all, her daydreams about death.
This scene of Millie inside the animatronic is cut and woven throughout the rest of the story. The animatronic bear, which had apparently been designed as a killing machine (according to the bear), kindly gives Millie the option of choosing how she wants to die. Unfortunately, it insists on killing her even as she expresses her desire to live.
Millie, whose parents moved to Saudi Arabia for her father’s new teaching job, had recently started living with her somewhat eccentric grandfather. He lived in an old Victorian house that was filled with junk from his various collections, but he did his best to make Millie feel at home despite her frequent brooding.
A week before winter break, Millie meets Dylan, the new boy in school. His alternative fashion and interest in the more morbid side of literature cause her to start crushing on him pretty quickly, and she’s soon looking up “love poems” instead of “death poems” online.
Mostly, Millie seems happy to finally have someone in her life who makes her feel seen and understood.
When Millie’s grandpa invites her to the school holiday bazaar, however, Millie sees Dylan holding hands and acting couple-y with a girl from her government class. She finds her grandpa and gets him to take her home, but she can’t stop herself from crying on the drive back.
When Dylan greets her at lunch the next day, Millie lashes out at him for leading her on and dating someone she describes as “blonde and basic.” Dylan defends his girlfriend, expresses his disappointment in Millie for judging people based on their appearance, and leaves her alone at the table.
Over winter break, Millie informs her grandpa that she won’t be celebrating Christmas. Her grandpa tries to get her to open up about her feelings, but she storms off instead, and he retreats to his workshop with a twinge of anger in his own voice.
On Christmas Eve, Millie reluctantly greets her visiting family at her grandpa’s request, but they get on her nerves as soon as she steps out of her room. She goes for a walk to cool down, but she sneaks into her grandpa’s workshop to warm back up with his space heater once the night air gets too cold.
Millie notices an animatronic bear tucked away in the corner of the workshop; its white and pink paint turned gray with age. When she hears her cousins playing nearby, she climbs into the bear’s stomach hatch to avoid being subjected to further Christmas cheer.
Back at the house, Millie’s grandpa calls the kids in for dinner. When Millie doesn’t return, he attempts to call her cell phone, but it rings uselessly in the pocket of the coat she left hanging in the hallway. Figuring that she’ll come back when she’s ready, Millie’s grandpa arranges her presents into a big pile for her under the tree.
Stitchwraith Stinger #1 Synopsis
The first “Stitchwraith Stinger” epilogue of the Fazbear Frights series introduces Detective Larson, the investigator assigned to the Stitchwraith case.
While working late one night, Larson finds himself reflecting on his ex-wife, Angela, who took their seven-year-old son, Ryan, when she left. He was an absent father, often putting his work before his family, though he still seems to think of his job as more than just a job despite the fact that it caused a rift in their family.
Larson’s reflection is interrupted by his boss, Chief Monahan, who tosses him the file of a case that none of the other detectives will take. Larson doesn’t want it either, and he laments that his decision to work late got him stuck with investigating a ridiculous urban legend.
Chief Monahan, however, seems to be taking this “Stitchwraith” case seriously. Apparently, a local girl named Sarah had disappeared a week earlier, and dozens of eyewitnesses had reported that they saw her turn into garbage.
According to the file, the Stitchwraith is a shrouded figure that lurches around with a hulking gait, searching through trash and dumpsters for reasons unknown. While it seems to ignore other people unless provoked, the situation became more serious after five bodies were discovered, all with black, bloody tear-tracks on their faces.
Larson recognizes two of the victims as having previous criminal charges, and Chief Monahan agrees with his suggestion that they may have tried to mug the Stitchwraith. The file also contains several images caught on security footage, one of which shows the Stitchwraith digging the torso of a mannequin from a dumpster.
Its face is visible in another image, but instead of a human face, it wears what appears to be a mask or bandages with features drawn on in thick, black marker. Larson also notes blood stains around its mouth.
Chief Monahan reveals that they already have a match on this thing, but unfortunately for us, this first entry of the Stitchwraith story ends before we can learn any more.
FNAF Into the Pit Synopsis: FAQs
Question: Is Into The Pit Appropriate for Kids?
Answer: In general, I would say that the Fazbear Frights’ 12+ age rating is a good guideline for Into The Pit. The book is written for an audience of teens and young adults, so it contains relatable ideas and themes for young readers at a level that’s relatively easy to read and enjoy.
That said, these stories do incorporate some aspects of body horror, light gore, child murder, and death, as well as some potentially upsetting or triggering topics such as body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation.
However, the content of Into The Pit doesn’t contain anything more graphic or intense than the horror portrayed in the FNAF games themselves.
I would put Into The Pit on par with similar anthology series like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which I personally loved around age 10-12. These FNAF-inspired tales read like quick thrillers, so they’re similar to the types of urban legends or ghost stories that get passed around a campfire or lunch table.
Question: Should I Play FNAF Before Reading Into The Pit?
Answer: I would definitely recommend playing FNAF before reading Into The Pit or the other installments of the Fazbear Frights series. This anthology draws on a lot of the concepts, characters, settings, and imagery of the FNAF games, which makes them potentially difficult to understand if you’re unfamiliar with the series.
The horror, plot twists, and details included in these stories are a lot more impactful if you know the story of the games. Into The Pit draws on parts of the series that appear most prevalently in the first five games, including FNAF 1-4 and Sister Location.
Question: Is Into The Pit Available as a Graphic Novel?
Answer: Fazbear Frights Graphic Novel Collection #1 will be released on August 2, 2022. This first graphic novel adaptation of the series covers three stories from the anthology, including “Into The Pit,” “To Be Beautiful,” and “Out Of Stock,” which originally appeared in Fazbear Frights #2: Fetch.
A second Fazbear Frights graphic novel collection is scheduled for release on March 7, 2023, which will include “Fetch,” “Room For One More,” and “The New Kid.”
Conclusion & Closing Thoughts
Overall, I really enjoyed the first installment in the Fazbear Frights series. All three of Into The Pit’s stories expand on aspects of FNAF in a way that feels very true-to-form for the franchise, but at the same time, their unique structure and style takes FNAF’s horror in an entirely new direction from the games and novels.
As a long-time lover of both horror and short stories, I thought Into The Pit was really effective, evoking some genuine chills and at least one hand-to-mouth gasp that actually made me put the book down for a second to think about what just happened.
I would definitely recommend picking up Fazbear Frights #1 from your local library or bookstore, especially if you enjoy quick, bite-sized horror that packs a twisted punch.
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