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William Afton is a fictional character and the primary antagonist of the Five Nights at Freddy's media franchise created by Scott Cawthon. Afton was introduced as a minor character in Five Nights at Freddy's 2, and his role was significantly expanded in Five Nights at Freddy's 3 and subsequent installments.

William Afton is depicted as a businessman and entrepreneur who co-founded family entertainment center holding company, Fazbear Entertainment. A serial killer, Afton murders several children throughout the series' fictional timeline, usually whilst wearing mascot costumes. In Five Nights at Freddy's 3, he dies after being crushed inside a malfunctioning animatronic-costume. Years later, he is resurrected with his mummified corpse fused to the animatronic, making him an undead cyborg named Springtrap.

Since Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location, the character has been voiced by PJ Heywood. In December 2022, Matthew Lillard was cast as Afton in the forthcoming Five Nights at Freddy's live-action feature film, serving as the film's main antagonist. In February 2023, Lillard revealed that he had signed a three-film deal to portray Afton across a Five Nights at Freddy's film trilogy.

Fictional character biography
William Afton was a roboticist and entrepreneur who co-founded family entertainment restaurant company Freddy Fazbear Entertainment, Inc. alongside his business partner and friend, Henry Emily. He also founded Afton Robotics LLC, the company which provides Fazbear Entertainment with its animatronic mascots. He was married to an unnamed wife and had three children: Michael, Elizabeth, and an unnamed third child.

In 1983, at Fredbear's Family Diner, one of William and Henry's pizza and family entertainment venues, Afton's youngest child was accidentally killed after being shoved into the mouth of a bear animatronic by his older brother Michael. William eventually murders Henry's daughter, Charlotte, and becomes a serial killer. It's been implied Charlotte was the first death in the franchise, even before Afton's youngest child.

At an unknown point in time, William murders five children and stuffs their dead bodies inside animatronic mascot suits, causing their spirits to possess the animatronics. William gets away, but the suits eventually start leaking blood and mucus, leading to Fazbear Entertainment's closure by health officials.

In an attempt to evade the authorities' ban of his restaurants, William opens a new pizza restaurant called Circus Baby's Pizza World. This time, he creates animatronics designed specifically to capture and kill children. One day, William's daughter Elizabeth is accidentally killed by an animatronic called Circus Baby. This led to the restaurant's closure, and William converts it into Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rentals, a rental service which rents animatronic characters for parties and events. William secretly leaves instructions for his eldest son Michael to go to Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental and "free" Elizabeth.

Some time later, William returned to an abandoned Fazbear location to dismantle the original animatronics. He finds himself haunted by the ghosts of the five children he killed in that location. William attempts to hide in an animatronic costume, but the suit's electronic mechanisms activate, crushing him to death.

Years later, the now-adult Michael finds his father's instructions and goes to Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rentals to investigate. Michael discovers that Elizabeth's ghost is haunting the Circus Baby animatronic. Michael attempts to dismantle it but gets seemingly killed and possessed by it. After some time, the animatronic exits his body and Michael regains independence of himself and sets out to discover the fate of his father.

Thirty years later, Afton has become an undead mascot monster dubbed Springtrap and is brought into a horror attraction called Fazbear's Fright that later burns down. Henry and Michael manage to lure Springtrap, as well as several other Fazbear animatronics, to the newest Freddy Fazbear restaurant and set the place on fire, destroying all the animatronics and freeing the souls of the murdered children as well as killing themselves.

Years later, a holding company acquires the Freddy Fazbear brand and opens a new chain of restaurants. When the company scans circuit boards left from the fire, William's dead soul returns as a computer virus called Glitchtrap. Glitchtrap corrupts the mind of a security guard called Vanessa, turning her into deranged serial killer Vanny. With Vanny's help, Glitchtrap manages to hack the PizzaPlex into turning all the animatronics aggressive and attempts to download himself into the remains of his old Springtrap body. Shortly after entering his physical body, he is attacked by a gigantic abomination known as the Blob that grabs him and drags him into the unknown.

Five Nights at Freddy's video games
In the first game, Five Nights at Freddy's, William's existence is alluded to via a series of newspaper clippings mentioning a series of murders in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, and a suspect arrested for the killings. In the second game, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, William is revealed to have imbued the animatronic known as "The Puppet" with the soul of Charlotte Emily, repeating the action with several other children to inhabit the rest of the game's animatronics.

In the third game, Five Nights at Freddy's 3, William is featured as the main antagonist as the animatronic "Springtrap". In the first four mini-games, William dismantles the four animatronics in which he has trapped the souls of the kids as they attempt to enter his safe room; however, in the fifth mini-game, William is chased into his safe room by their souls and puts on the Spring Bonnie suit in order to fight them. However, the suit malfunctions due to its faulty springlocks and crushes William to death. In the main plot, set 30 years later, Springtrap serves as a monster in a horror attraction. Springtrap is freed after the attraction burns to the ground. In the fourth game, Five Nights at Freddy's 4, William makes a cameo appearance in the "Night 3" minigame where if the player returns to the dining room where a man in a Fredbear suit previously appeared, where William is seen forcing another employee into a Spring Bonnie suit.

In the fifth game, Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location, William Afton, revealed to be the founder of Afton Robotics LLC, is interviewed about an animatronic he designed named Circus Baby, over a hidden function that led to his daughter Elizabeth's death and her soul being trapped within the animatronic. William orders Michael to infiltrate Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental in order to retrieve Circus Baby and with her Elizabeth's soul, only for the animatronic to "scoop" Michael and use his body to host herself and several other animatronics as "Ennard".

Between the events of Sister Location and the sixth fame Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, Baby is expelled from Ennard after Elizabeth's awareness is restored and makes a new body dubbed "Scrap Baby", while William himself inhabits an updated animatronic dubbed "Scraptrap". While seeking more children to kill, both are trapped within Freddy Fazbear's Pizza Place by Henry Emily, Charlotte's father, who burns the restaurant, along with both of their chassis, to the ground, apparently killing them all.

In the seventh game Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted, William is revealed to have been digitally revived after being burned to death in Freddy Fazbear's Pizza Simulator, after his soul was infused into the animatronic chips of the Scraptrap suit he was wearing, which were then used to create "The Freddy Fazbear Virtual Experience". Now known both as Glitchtrap and the Anomaly, taking on the form of an animatronic rabbit, William inadvertently causes one of the game's testers to commit suicide, before attempting to escape from the game by merging with the player's avatar.

In the eighth game Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, William (now known as Burntrap) returns as the final boss, with Vanny as his right hand and follower.

Other appearances
A red-eyed and degrading variant of William Afton's Springtrap form appears throughout Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery. Afton is also mentioned in the game's "Faz-Facts" files. Various easter eggs in Ultimate Custom Night heavily imply that the player character is William Afton himself, trapped in a purgatory-like state after the events of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator.

Five Nights at Freddy's novel series
William Afton first appears in the Five Nights at Freddy's novel series in Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes under the guise of security guard Dave Miller, before becoming Springtrap at the end of the novel and returning as the main antagonist in both The Twisted Ones and the final book The Fourth Closet. Afton additionally appears in the Fazbear Frights anthology novel series, in both the Stingers and the short story The Man in Room 1280.

Five Nights at Freddy's feature film
In December 2022, Matthew Lillard joined the cast of the forthcoming Five Nights at Freddy's feature film. Later that month, Lillard was confirmed to have been cast as the live-action William Afton, who would serve as the film's main antagonist. In February 2023, Lillard revealed that he had signed a three-film deal to portray Afton across a Five Nights at Freddy's film trilogy.

Reception
Since the release of Five Nights at Freddy's 2 in November 2014 and Five Nights at Freddy's 3 in March 2015, William Afton and Springtrap have become one of its most iconic characters, with USgamer praising the depiction of Afton's relationships with his daughter Elizabeth and two sons, and Kotaku describing his Springtrap form as "genuinely terrifiying", with various fan films and memes being made about the character. In April 2020, Jack Black wore a Glitchtrap mask headpiece on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, additionally singing the theme music from the character's appearance in Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted on the social media platform TikTok in September 2020, which subsequently went viral. On the character's return in Security Breach, Afton was ranked by Comic Book Resources as their third most "roastable" video game villain, with "their constant failures, refusal to adapt, and lack of imagination make them laughable", while Slate criticised William Afton's return as "defeat[ing] the purpose of the sixth game and is a slap in the face to Michael Afton's character development", deeming his presence "quite unnecessary", although "appreciat[ing] the nostalgic lore" his appearance provided.