Why Five Nights At Freddy’s Should Have Been Rated R

In the same vein as its implied violence, there’s a ton of additional lore for «Five Nights at Freddy’s» that’s not presented outright to players. Instead, they learn it through books based on the series or brief lines of dialogue in the games. For example, the first game tells you your eyeballs and teeth pop out if shoved into an animatronic suit, but never really shows this happening. For example, the first game tells you your eyeballs and teeth pop out if shoved into an animatronic suit, but never actually shows this happening (though one deathscreen does appear to show us a non-bloody aftermath). The movie could have depicted that in all of its gruesome detail rather than leaving it to the audience’s imagination.

With most of the games’ information coming via dialogue and newspaper clippings, a movie would be a perfect avenue to explore the greater «Freddy’s» lore in vivid detail. After all, there’s the old movie adage of «show, don’t tell,» and showing all of these horrible things would sear them into the audience’s minds better than characters explaining what happened to one another.

At the end of the day, it makes perfect sense for the creatives behind «Five Nights at Freddy’s» to want to keep it PG-13. It’ll likely be more profitable in theaters that way, and it appeals to a major demographic playing the games. But if the first movie proves to be a success, there’s always a chance the sequels could get more gruesome as time goes on.