Afton the Undying and the Stitchline Conundrum

So this was originally going to be a rather simple post going over Afton's seeming regeneration between appearances, but in order to have the full picture I finally did something I've avoided doing up until now: I read some Frights stories. The Man in Room 1280 and all the Stitchline Epilogues specifically. And ohhhh boy, what an experience that was.

Let's start with my original question: what causes Afton's regeneration?

After his "death" Afton lay abandoned in the Freddy's safe room for 30 years. During this time he made no attempt to escape, and as far we know, just lay there dormant. All that's left on his body is his skeleton, which has a reddish tint, and some strangely well-preserved and illogically scattered chunks of organic matter. He also is unable to talk (something further confirmed by UCN) and despite his soul being aware of where he is, he's forced to abide by the endoskeleton's programming to follow noise.

The next time we see Afton is after the Fazbear's Fright fire, where he can be seen emerging from the rubble looking not that worse than he did in FNAF3. The odd thing at this point though is that we know extreme heat can neutralizes the effects of remnant, which is what allows for "possession" to happen. How the fire didn't have this effect on Afton is unexplained, but quite noteworthy.

After an indeterminate period of time passes, Afton shows up at Henry's trap. Here he looks very different. He's completely changed the Spring Bonnie suit, and not quite visible in this photo, his "corpse" inside has completely changed. The bone structure is different, his bones have returned to a white-ish color, he has gained new chunks of matter all over, and overall appears to have more organic matter than he did as Springtrap, with the exception of his missing left arm. He also can talk now, and has an audible heartbeat. Furthermore he seems to no longer be bound by the endo's programming. He's fully in control at this point.

So what caused this change?

The easy answer is remnant. It's be demonstrated multiple times to have healing properties on living matter. The most obvious example of this is Michael Afton, who after having his skeleton and organs removed, was able to recover after Ennard left him as a pile of rotting skin. We see him walk, talk, and more, indicating a complete regeneration of his skeleton, brain, vocal chords, and more.

There's a notable difference between the two though. Michael's remnant came from the scooper; pure liquid metal remnant kept at an ideal temperature, the exact same kind of remnant we see Dr. Talbert use in Frights to heal (what he thinks is) his daughter. While remnant can seemingly be created by any combination of memory, emotion, and physical object, the only kind we've seen that causes regeneration is when it is in a liquid metal form. It's not impossible to assume Afton made his way to his bunker and used some on himself in-between FNAF3 and FFPS, but we have no evidence of him doing so, so I don't like to assume that's the case. In which case we're left with a mystery as to how Afton seems to be regenerating.

This leads us into The Man in Room 1280. Set quite a long time after FFPS (in other stories the fire was implied to be a while ago) we see that Afton's corpse in still, for all intents, alive. He has a pulse, heartbeat, his lungs breath, and he displays awareness of his surroundings, despite being described as little more than a charred skeleton with a thin layer of skin over it. He also notably has his left arm back (again indicating that his body is regenerating itself), and is said to be constantly leaking unidentified black and green liquids in addition to blood. Once again we're left questioning why the fire didn't burn out any remnant left in his body, only this time we might have an answer.

Andrew's spirit is also present, haunting Afton and causing him to have terrible nightmares. It's possible Andrew is the one keeping Afton alive (and this certainly lines up with UCN), but at the same time, Afton's spirit is fighting back. While reviewing brain scans, the head nurse remarks

"Two signals," she jabbed each lobe, "means two living things. Two entities. They're both vying for control of the brain; that's why they're present in all of the lobes. But they're at odds with each other. We think they're tormenting each other."

So Afton's soul is still aware, and actively fighting against Andrew's. Andrew is indeed partially keeping Afton alive (he foils several attempts to kill Afton), but Afton's soul is also fighting for it's own survival. He also still has a level of autonomy, illustrated by his desire to go to the Fazbear Distribution Center. When taken there, Afton's body explodes into a pile of unidentified liquid.

So while it seems Afton is being kept alive by Andrew, he's also kind of not? The other problem with Andrew is that if Andrew's spirit has been attached to Afton since he (Andrew) died, why wait until now to torment Afton? What was he doing during all those years Afton was in the safe room, or during FNAF3? When did his spirit attach to Afton?

(Side question time, but what's the significance of the Distribution Center, why/how did Afton know what would happen when he went there, and why didn't Andrew make any attempt to stop him from being moved there?)

After Taggart puts the Stitchwraith together, and some shenanigans later, Jake has collected all the items Andrew infected when Afton exploded and is planning to destroy them. Before they can do that though, Afton emerges from inside the junk and attempts to keep Andrew from moving on. Jake gets Andrew to move on and Afton decides instead to create a monstrous body out of the trash.

What's interesting about this body is that despite being made from trash and old animatronic parts, Afton in this body also seems to be regenerating organic matter.

"The skidding devolved into a snarling wet popping sound. It reminded Larson of the autopsies he sometimes had to attend. A corpse made a similar sound when its ribcage was being parted and its organs were being removed."

and later in the story:

"Then unidentifiable fluids began spilling from the deconstructing trash. As they flowed, Afton stumbled backward, one short step from the end of the dock. Larson's legs gave out. He dropped to the deck and sat with both hands pressed to his lower stomach, his eyes wide and staring as blood started pouring from the trash rabbit's mouth. The blood sluiced over the plastic, metal, bone, and wire, and it mixed with the other fluids to flow like hot tar onto the warped planks of the dock."

Afton falls apart after Eleanor drains his remnant/agony and ditches, with the pieces of his new body falling into the lake. Also Charlie's there too for some reason but didn't really do anything?

In later epilogues we learn that Eleanor was also present at the hospital, feeding off the agony of the Afton/Andrew battle, which brings us to another possibility: is Eleanor the one keeping Afton alive? She is a parasitic entity that feeds on remnant, and Afton is a prime source of that, but she's also not present with him all the time. She's all over the place feeding, and we don't have any proof of her being around, or what she was doing, prior to the FFPS fire.

The other notable thing that happens during the Trash-Afton fight is that at one point Larson gets stabbed by Afton, something Jake is concerned about.

"The detective would know, of course, that he'd been stabbed, but he'd think that was all that had happened. He would think the injury was bad, but what he didn't know was that the injury itself wasn't the problem. The problem was that when the trash monster stabbed the detective, it infected him with the spirit of the horrible man who animated it."

Jake would later channel energy from a battery pack to heat up his animatronic hands and use it on Larson's wound, curing the infection. Once again showing us that remnant can indeed be removed by heat. But what is this infection, and what effect would it have had on Larson? Presumably when Afton exploded at the Distribution Center he infected the toys there much like Andrew had, but what would've happened when he infected a living being?

Everything Afton did was to find a way to make himself immortal. Was this how he planned to do it? Become a living infection that could take control of both the living and machine? But if so, when did he learn how to do this? It is notable in FFPS that he knows the whole thing is "a trap", but says he couldn't resist checking it out, implying that it wasn't his main goal. So what was his main goal, and could it have been related to what he does in Frights? What was he doing before he got caught in the fire?

But none of this really answers the question that sent me down this entire rabbit (heh) hole: why is Afton regenerating his body? His remnant survived two fires that should've burned it away, but how? Andrew? Eleanor? Is he a mutant with healing powers?

It isn't only in the main continuity either, as in Silver Eyes he's also shown to have survived a springlock accident that should've killed him.

(Other side question, but is he just... not wearing clothes under the suit?)

So what going on with this guy and why is he so hard to kill? This ended up being way longer than I intended, but thanks for reading lol