*audible wink*

In this video, I explore the number of ways in which the new Dead by Daylight x Five Nights at Freddy's collab contributes to and expands on the established lore of the games. By heavily revolving around and contextualizing "Follow Me", detailing Springtrap's unique origin, as well as truly acknowledging his significant longevity, the DBD collab presents us with a question hardly pondered and long left unanswered by theorists: What exactly was Springtrap doing in the safe room all those years?

In the seemingly obvious character description for Springtrap in Dead by Daylight, we find what may very well be the to key to answering this question. This is precisely what I explore in my "DBD x FNAF Lore Implications" video and I do so by working off of my previous one, "Nightmare Theory". In that video, I proposed that William Afton experienced a "long sleep" between his initial springlocking and his much later debut to the world as Springtrap at Fazbear's Fright. Dead by Daylight appears to back up this claim since shortly before the black fog finds and envelops Springtrap, he is said to awaken disoriented and unsure of how much time had passed since the night the springlocks tore through his flesh and "everything went black".

With Nightmare Theory, I further proposed that Afton's "coma", which he spent trapped in a vulnerable position and at the mercy of the angry spirits of his victims, was not just an uneventful period of rest for him, but instead the perfect opportunity for his wildest nightmares to manifest a curated torture for him to endure within his mind night after night after night, year after year after year... I believe Dead by Daylight backs this idea up in the collab as well: Springtrap slowly comes back into consciousness again, "his body a pillar of agony", and before he even begins to process the world around him, he immediately makes note of the peculiar fact that... "The ghosts that had tormented him were gone..."