#fnaf mangle

Wellll, my memories are slightly more canon divergent than the games, but I was actually ghost child too! Instead of Jeremy getting bitten by me, there was essentially an accident that…. Let’s say involved a malfunction near a child instead.

Some memories are fuzzy, but I don’t exactly have a lot of fond ones ^^

Paint online doodles

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In my version Mangle is a birthday clown and just like in the canon Mangel gender is yes

talk some shit below

I can't remember if I ever wrote this theory, but I have had it in mind for a while.

Mangle's gender has been disputed by fans for a long time now. Ever since FNAF 2 came out. Many fans have just accepted their own headcanons or fandom headcanons, but nobody actually knows what Mangle's intended, canonical gender is. Scott Cawthon has never disclosed it.

When asked about Mangle's gender, we just got this:

Scott sure loves trolling the fandom, doesn't he?

I think part of the reason Scott Cawthon trolled the fandom when it came to Mangle's gender is that he kinda already went through the "what gender is this character??" thing back in FNAF 1 with Bonnie and Chica. There were some people who, despite it being obvious with Chica's name, didn't exactly know whether she was supposed to be a girl or a boy. With Bonnie, I still meet some people who aren't hardcore fans who actually still think he's a female, since they played FNAF 1 once and didn't really think of it. But, yeah, those two characters had confusion surrounding their gender. I think Scott probably found it funny that people were always trying to figure out what genders his characters were, even if it should have been obvious, or at least was obvious to him.

Now...that doesn't answer the question, does it? The question is: What do I think his original intention was for Mangle's gender?

Easy: Male. I think Scott's original intention was for Mangle to be a male animatronic, plain and simple. Mangle was part of the same line of animatronics as Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, and Toy Chica. None of them had their genders changed, but all of them had their appearances somewhat changed. Toy Bonnie is an example of a character whose appearance changed quite a bit. His design looked a bit effeminate. Mangle looking more feminine doesn't mean anything when you look at it that way. I think Mangle was always still supposed to retain the same gender as Foxy, seeing as Mangle is a Foxy variant. No different than the Toys when it comes to that.

However, I think Mangle had a different function. Mangle wasn't called "Toy Foxy" before they were Mangled- they were called Funtime Foxy. I think the reason why Mangle is white-and-pink is that Funtime Foxy was supposed to be a clown, and that the design is supposed to resemble clown makeup more than the other animatronics, which would also explain the lipstick. Sister Location Funtime Foxy had a similar design, and he had a circus clown look (and a ringmaster attitude), so that really lines up with his design as well, and he is presented as a male.

On top of that, Phone Guy also calls Mangle a "he" multiple times in FNAF 2. This is what really made me think Mangle was originally supposed to be gendered as a male character, but the clown makeup stuff I just mentioned was something I have taken into consideration more recently (though I always acknowledged that feminine =/= female in FNAF 2, thanks to Toy Bonnie's design).

So, I think Mangle was originally intended to be a male, and the fandom really tripped over themselves trying to figure out this gender. I think Scott trolled everyone because, in his mind, this might have been obvious based on Phone Guy alone.

However, there is more to add to this theory. Much, much more. While I do think that was his intention for the original animatronic itself, I think it has escalated into something...more...and maybe has even been retconned.

In UCN, Mangle's voicelines are a mixture of male and female. One thing I didn't mention is that Mangle is obviously...well...Mangled. They're a mess of animatronic parts, and it's clear that there are parts belonging to more than just one endoskeleton. Due to this, there's a possibility of parts belonging to a female animatronic being attached to Mangle. These could just be spare parts for one of the Chica models, or perhaps an animatronic that was never released in the pizzeria, or one that was just never used. I think the fandom forgets that spare endoskeleton parts are common, and that it doesn't mean that it's meant for a whole new animatronic with, and can also just mean to have an existing one's casing slapped onto it if one of the others gets damaged or something. In FNAF, a lot of the time, it seems that these are just spare backup endoskeletons for suits or casing to be used on. One of these could have simply been used for Mangle. Then again, the parts themselves aren't obviously "male or female," since they all are meant to be universal to fit into the suits and casings of the withered animatronics and toys (however, it is worth noting that, in Security Breach, male and female animatronics do have a different design, but that is something for a totally different essay). The voice box, however, can be. And the voice box is likely attached to the endoskeletons. This could mean that the second endoskeleton head has its own voice box, separate from Mangle's original head, and both simply speak in unison since they are attached to the same main board. Makes sense to me.

Alternatively, Mangle's voice box might not be its original voice box. Maybe it got damaged and was replaced with a feminine one. Or, more likely, it got damaged or had loose wires from being messed with, was never replaced, and didn't sound proper, resulting in it being messed up.

The last theory is that Mangle does have one malfunctioning voice box, and the multiple overlapping voices have less to do with the faulty wiring and more to do with the spiritual aspects of Mangle possibly being haunted by multiple victims. It could be because Mangle is a mangled mess of two animatronics, with both of them being haunted. FNAF AR really nudges the theory in this direction (it sounds like more than just two are in there at that point). Obviously, this does make me raise an eyebrow and does force the question of there being another animatronic that we didn't know about, as opposed to it being just a spare endo, but it doesn't totally discredit that idea either. There's nothing to say that different suits had different endoskeletons in them during different murders, which could also explain Endo-02 being haunted as well. So, I suppose it doesn't change too much. It is possible that there are more than just two!!

But...then there's the retcon I want to mention, which does have to do with FNAF AR.

In FNAF AR, we hear Mangle's voice once again. However, it doesn't sound quite the same as UCN. It has one voice that can be said to be the "main" voice in the game. Mangle's voice sounds overwhelmingly feminine in this game. The main voice you can hear sounds really feminine. There are a few times when Mangle speaks that you can hear multiple overlapping voices, and it does sound like multiple people speaking. Specifically, when Mangle said, "We can hear you! We can smell you!" The second line has multiple overlapping voices of multiple genders.

Mangle does say one thing that makes me think more than just two separate endoskeleton parts were used on them, or that more than just two spirits reside in them.

"I am now so many pieces of people, making me the fox I am today!"

I think that this could mean both spiritually and physically. Different endoskeleton parts were likely used on them, not all being from the same one. Maybe old parts were discarded and just simply put on Mangle rather than being tossed out when they were done with. After all, Mangle didn't need to be in perfect condition once they gave up on repairing it. They were just to be put together and taken apart. Maybe they were used as a mini scrapyard. We also have to take into account remnant, and how, at least by FNAF AR, remnant was an established part of the lore, and having an animatronic with remnant from various parts could indeed make it haunted by multiple entities. FNAF AR makes remnant an important part of the game, so that makes sense.

However, I do want to go back to talking about the main female voice. In FNAF AR, it seems to be implied that the main original gender is female. Obviously, as stated earlier, I firmly believe that Scott intended Mangle to be a male character from the beginning, only for it to fly over the heads of all the fans, many of whom were young and thought "pink-white = girl!!" at the time, to be fair.

I don't know if this has more to do with Scott or the studio. I do think the fandom has a huge influence over that decision, seeing as Mangle is portrayed as female by a huge portion of the fanbase. But it does look like they chose to portray the main persona in a more feminine light in AR, even if they didn't entirely do that in UCN. They didn't make the voices overlap equally. Mangle's stood out as feminine, and the other voices chimed in at times. This makes me think they deliberately decided to do this, though I don't know what prompted this decision or, again, if this was Scott's doing or the studio's interpretation of the character. I do think it was influenced by the many, many feminine portrayals of Mangle in the fandom.

I wanna briefly point out that Mangle being in ladies' night in UCN, before FNAF AR, doesn't discredit Mangle, the animatronic, originally being a male as per Scott's intentions. By this time, Mangle has a shared consciousness of multiple male and female spirits, so it makes sense for them to be there.

Overall, my interpretation is that Scott originally, back when he created the game, intended Mangle to be a male character. The spirits are of various genders, though I don't know if he always intended that to be the case, or if the fandom's behaviour regarding gender gave him the idea to have multiple spirits with different genders in one body. It's hard to say. Then, I think something shifted, and Mangle was given a more feminine portrayal with overtly more female traits in FNAF AR. I don't know how much of this was Scott's doing or the studio's. In his own game, he cast the voices and did it himself, but in AR, he relied a lot on the studio to do things, so it's hard to say how much creative freedom or casting control they had there. Which would mean Mangle's canonical gender really is not up to interpretation, even if their original gender wasn't meant to be initially, but Scott was amused by the fandom and...well...let them do whatever they wanted.

As for me, I'm used to portraying Mangle as a female character, even if I really believe that they were originally meant to be a male. FNAF AR didn't help with this interpretation. It's hard not to see Mangle as this after portraying them as such for a long time, and I think my personal Mangle versions will always be female. If I ever met Scott Cawthon, I would show him this essay and eagerly see how he reacts and try to see what he makes of it, because I really wouldn't be surprised if this is kinda how it went lol.