While both the Transformers and Five Nights at Freddy’s franchises contain sentient robots, there was never really a solid connection between them–that is, until now, with one brand-new Transformers villain that has seemingly taken direct inspiration from FNAF.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is a horror video game series created by Scott Cawthon. In the game, players play as an anonymous security guard who has to survive five nights working the night shift at a Chuck-E-Cheese-style restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. While that seems like it would be a breeze since a kids’ restaurant isn’t exactly a prime target for intruders, it isn’t the potential for robberies that should have the night-shift security guard on edge, but what is inside the very restaurant they’re guarding: the animatronics. As revealed throughout the series, the co-founder of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza murdered five children years before the events of the first game, and he stuffed their corpses inside the animatronics. With this vile act, the angry spirits of the dead children possessed the very animatronics their bodies were stuffed into, becoming murderous creatures of the night–ready to kill anyone who crosses their path.
In Transformers: Last Bot Standing #2 by Nick Roche and E.J. Su, readers are continuing the journey that was established in the previous issue: a lone Transformer on a distant world who forgot who he was sets out on his own to find the truth, only to discover that he is the last of his kind and any other Transformer he comes across is an enemy that must be destroyed. While this Transformer–whose name is later revealed to be Rodimus Prime–was living his life as a vehicle rather than a sentient alien robot during the period of his life when he had forgotten who he was, Rodimus was used by a humanoid alien named Shib. Now that Rodimus had awoken, Shib didn’t want to leave his side and instead insisted on helping Rodimus on his quest of self-discovery. However, when a group of Transformers finds Rodimus and convince him that they are not his enemies, Shib finds that she should not have stuck around as she might as well have been thrown into a FNAF level–and one Transformer in particular solidifies that.
Transformers’ Spine-Shucker is as Scary as a Five Nights at Freddy’s Animatronic
One of the Transformers that was with the group who found Rodimus is named Spine-Shucker, and if the name wasn’t chilling enough, this Transformer decided to take the form of a giant, robotic bunny. Spine-Shucker is incredibly reminiscent of the animatronics in Five Nights at Freddy’s, but it isn’t just the look of the character that makes Spine-Shucker a perfect potential candidate for FNAF. Like the other Transformers Spine-Shucker travels with, this bunny Transformer consumes people and breaks down their bodies into biofuel. Essentially, this Transformer that looks like a giant robot bunny killing anyone it comes across, just like the FNAF animatronics.
While the animatronics in FNAF don’t kill to survive like Spin-Shucker does (since they are simply possessed by the angry spirits of dead children and aren’t, themselves, alive), the reason ‘why’ these separate humanoid robot animals kill people isn’t as important as the grim truth that they are, in fact, killing people, and in truly grisly ways. Both the animatronics in FNAF and Spin-Shucker in Transformers look kid-friendly, but they won’t think twice about ripping and crushing a human body within their machinations for their own twisted purposes–proving that Transformers’ horrific new villain has gone full Five Nights at Freddy’s.