William Afton

William Afton, also known as the Purple Guy, is the main antagonist of the Five Night's at Freddy's franchise and is portrayed by PJ Heywood. He was once the co-founder of Fazbear Entertainment and was a wealthy businessman and inventor, who eventually went insane and became a serial child killer after the death of his youngest son and used his signature animatronic bunny suit as a means to lure children to their deaths. The character made his first appearance in Five Nights at Freddy's 2 through minigame cutscenes and appears periodically throughout the franchise. From Five Nights at Freddy's 3 and onward, he has mostly appeared as a corpse stuck in his bunny suit commonly referred to as "Sprintrap" after an accidental snapping of spring locks holding the suit together.
He has received generally favorable reviews from critics and fans alike, and has appeared in numerous novels, comics, fanart, merch, and the upcoming live action film adaptation of the first game portrayed by Matthew Lillard.
==Character Biography==
===History===
Born in the city of Hurricane, Utah, Afton inspired to become an inventor of entertainment after witnessing a roadside attraction involving a live bear doing tricks and wanted to recreate the same magic he had experienced there as a young child. Later on in his life, Afton got his degree in engineering and eventually teamed up with a fellow engineer he met along the way by the name of "Henry Emily" and both started a new pizza entertainment business by the name of "Fazbear Entertainment" and opened up their first chain of restaurants under the name "Fredbear's Family Diner", utilizing animatronics that doubled as wearable costumes held together by sensitive mechanisms known as "spring locks". But on one day, his eldest son put his youngest son into the mouth of the Fredbear animatronic as a "prank" during his birthday party, causing the mouth to clamp down shut from the tears of his youngest child seeping into the spring locks, leading to his eventual death.https://screenrant.com/fnaf-series-lore-biggest-best-reveals-afton-family/
Driven by guilt and sadness, Afton slowly went insane and took his revenge out on Henry's daughter "Charolette" and murdered her in cold blood, causing him to eventually kill five more children with the help of his spring lock bunny suit and stuffed their bodies into animatronic suits in one of the spinoff locations under the name "Freddy Fazbear's Pizza". Eventually, the restaurant went under a Police investigation and discovered the remains of the children after several odor complaints, and Afton was ruled out as a potential suspect of the crime but was eventually dismissed from the case due to a lack of proof. Knowing the obvious, Henry completely cut ties with him, causing Afton to create his own company under the name "Afton Robotics" and was made to use the animatronics as a front to hunt and murder children. But his plan eventually backfired on the first day of opening, where his daughter, Elizabeth Afton, gets too close to one of the animatronics and gets snatched and killed by it, causing him to shut down the business, opting to instead make it a rental company and falsely citing the closure as the result of a "gas leak". In another fit of anger, Afton tried to get Henry's business closed by once again killing five children at one of his new locations using the same bunny suit, which eventually lead to the closure of the new restaurant. The murders overshadowed the franchise's reputation and lead to all of the restaurants shutting down. After witnessing the animatronics move on their own thanks to them being haunted by the victims of Afton, he broke into one of the abandoned locations and disassembled the animatronics and melted their suits down in order to create new life and resurrect his son and daughter, but while doing so, the ghosts of his victims corner him in a safe room where the old suits are kept in, causing him to hide in his old bunny suit. But due to constant water seeping through the building and leaking onto the suit, the spring locks snapped, causing him to be forever trapped in anguish and pain in the very suit he used to murder, and boarded away in the same room for the next thirty years.https://screenrant.com/fnaf-lore-canon-fan-theories-speculation-confirmed-story/
After thirty years of being trapped in the room, his body is uncovered from the room by people who converted the restaurant into a haunted house labeled as "Fazbear's Fright: The Horror Attraction". After a week of operation, the building is mysteriously set on fire, causing major destruction to Afton's permanent body and leading him to getting thrown into a random alleyway, where he's discovered and salvaged for money for a new Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. After a week of being in the new restaurant, the place is set on fire by Henry Emily, who also lured the other possessed animatronics related the establishment, destroying all of the animatronics and freeing their spirits.
Sometime in the future, his consciousness is digitally acquired from the wreckage of the building from a machine he's kept in and is accidentally released into a Virtual Reality port making a "hilarious" recreation of the accusations made against the company via minigames. A play tester by the name of "Vanessa" is brainwashed by a virus of Afton into rebuilding him again. He eventually awakens and attempts to attack an animatronic named "Glamrock Freddy" and a kid named "Gregory", but his plans are foiled, and he gets taken away by an amalgamation of animatronics to an unknown fate.https://screenrant.com/five-nights-freddys-security-breach-blob-game-theory/
==Reception==
The character has received generally favorable reviews critics and fans alike for his character design and the complex lore surrounding him. He has inspired countless fan animations and fanart of him and has had countless theories made about him and his role in the overall story.
Category:People from Hurricane, Utah
Category:Company founders
Category:Businesspeople
Category:Inventors