Ruin Endings Explained
Once you've conquered the Pizzaplex for a second time in Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach - Ruin, your first thought will probably be: "Well, what on Earth just happened?" After all, It wouldn't be a Five Nights at Freddy's game if you weren't left with way more questions than answers.
Luckily, you've come to the right place. Below, we'll run through Ruin's story and three endings, giving you some answers to the game's biggest mysteries. If you want help getting each ending for yourself, check out our Endings guide. Otherwise, let's break our latest adventure into the depths of the Pizzaplex down. Be warned that there will be full spoilers for the Ruin DLC and Security Breach in general ahead.
Ruin Endings Explained
To fully explain what happens in the final moments of Ruin's story, let's first go back and recap everything that's happened so far in the story.
If you just want to skip straight to the endings themselves, jump to the endings explained section.
The Story So Far
Our second adventure into the Pizzaplex takes place long after the events of Security Breach. The giant mall has been abandoned in the time since Gregory and Freddy ventured through its halls, falling into a state of disrepair and ruin. Graffiti covers the walls, robots lay in tatters and the bright neon lights of the mall's attractions have gone dark.
We start our new tale by stepping into the sneakers of a young girl named Cassie, who has ventured to the Pizzaplex in search of her best friend and former playable protagonist: Gregory. Calling her to the mall to save him, Gregory is in trouble, begging Cassie to head to the sinkhole beneath Roxy Raceway where he's allegedly been captured by an unknown threat.
Determined to bring her friend back home, Cassie delves deeper into the Pizzaplex, finding the shattered ruins of all its colourful mascots. After a violent run-in with a severely worse-for-wear Monty Gator, she winds up in Monty's Gator Golf, where she's presented with a strange mask.
Looking strikingly similar to the mask worn by Vannie in the previous game, this stylish piece of bunny-themed apparel is much more than a fashion statement. It gives Cassie the ability to access the digital inner workings of the Pizzaplex, all through the power of augmented reality. Guided by an AI assistant known as HELPI, she's told she needs to hack through the building's security to open her path towards the sinkhole and save Gregory.
However, she's not alone in this digital world. Constantly pursuing her is a monstrous computer virus known only as The Entity. This terrifying AI bunny hunts Cassie at all times, attempting to prevent her efforts to hack the Pizzaplex's security and stop her from reaching the sinkhole.
Dealing with the Entity, Cassie manages to delve deeper into the Pizzaplex, rebooting Sun and Moon in the Daycare, narrowly escaping the Entity on the catwalks of Monty Golf and hacking security systems to weaken the Pizzaplex's digital defences. The entire time, the AR world and the real world begin to blend for Cassie, who finds herself transcending reality while in the digital world, crossing large gaps and even crossing through portals while connected to the Vannie mask.
Eventually, she reaches Glamrock Salon, managing to evade a malfunctioning Chica and find Roxy, who's still pursuing Gregory after he took her eyes during the events of Security Breach. She disables Monty Gator by electrifying him in a flooded tunnel and continues her mission to deactivate all the security systems in the Pizzaplex.
Her adventure finally takes her to Roxy Raceway, where she comes face to face with Roxy again. After a tense game of Cat and Mouse, Roxy grabs Cassie, but when our protagonist talks to the animatronic, her killer instinct disappears. She seems to recognise Cassie, releasing her and allowing her to escape.
Free from Roxy's clutches, Cassie is instructed to disable security systems in the attractions around Roxy Raceway to free a path to Gregory's location. She heads through Bonnie Bowl and eventually reaches Fazer Blast, where she's ruthlessly pursued by the Entity and comes across a headless version of Glamrock Freddy, who has turned into a monster. She escapes both attractions by the skin of her teeth, returning to Roxy Raceway.
There, Gregory tells her that there's one final security system that needs to be disabled: Roxy herself. Cassie finds the animatronic trapped beneath a forklift and prepares to disable her. However, Roxy is far from hostile when she sees Cassie. Speaking to one another in an emotional exchange, Roxy remembers Cassie from a birthday party the child had at the Pizzaplex, claiming that she's excited about her next party and hopes her friends will come to celebrate this time.
Cassie disables Roxy, sobbing as she heads through the entrance to the sinkhole and pursues Gregory's trail. Her path leads her to an elevator that takes her far below the Pizzaplex and to the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza Place location buried beneath the mall.
As was established in Security Breach's Afton ending, this pizzeria was the setting of Five Nights at Freddy's: Pizzeria Simulator, and was burned down after Afton's business partner, Henry, attempted to kill William and all of the haunted animatronics by trapping them in the burning wreckage. The Pizzaplex was built atop the ruined eatery, with Gregory and Freddy finding and exploring it during the final moments of Security Breach's Afton ending. While there, they found a resurrected version of William Afton in the ruins and destroyed him. However, Ruin seems to hint this ending isn't canon, and so when Cassie enters the area, it's relatively untouched. While exploring, she finds a path leading down to the very depths of the Pizzaplex.
At the bottom, she comes across a sealed concrete door next to a large metallic box labelled M.X.E.S. Accessing a computer beside the box, she decides to fully disable the Pizzaplex's security, at which point she sees the Entity get sucked into the box and disappear for good. And with that, it's time to get stuck into our three main endings.
Standard Ending Explained
All of the game's three endings begin with Cassie entering the concrete room next to the M.X.E.S box, at which point she realises she's made a grave mistake.
From the shadows, a large, metallic creature appears. Speaking in Gregory's voice, it throws a walkie-talkie onto the ground in front of Cassie, revealing that it's been the one guiding her this whole time. Just as it's about to attack, Roxy rescues Cassie, giving her time to escape.
As she does, the (allegedly) real Gregory calls Cassie, telling her that he was never in the Pizzaplex. He then instructs her to follow his directions, which he's being given by a "friend". Managing to evade the creature, Cassie runs to a nearby elevator and begins ascending to safety.
Hacking into the elevator's intercom, Gregory reveals that the digital Entity we've been battling throughout the events of the game was put in place to guard this monster, which has lived below the Pizzaplex for years. However, Cassie's efforts to save Gregory have freed it, allowing it to freely roam the Pizzaplex.
Gregory forgives Cassie, but tells her that she can't leave the Pizzaplex as it'll compromise his location. In the coldest act possible for a ten-year-old child, he then drops the elevator, seemingly killing Cassie and burying the secret of the monster beneath the Pizzaplex for good... or so it seems. As the credits end, we hear a short voice line, as Roxy calls out to Cassie, implying she survived the fall. So, what did that all mean? Well, although it may seem pretty nonsensical, we actually do have a lot of clues as to what might be going on in the Pizzaplex.
The Mimic
The first thing we need to cover is what exactly the nightmarish monster in the basement is. Although the game's timeline is usually kept separate from the extended universe lore, in this instance, our answer comes straight from the Tales from the Pizzaplex book series.
Among fleshing out a lot of Security Breach's lore, this series also introduced a new villain to the franchise: The Mimic. Created with incredibly complex AI systems, this animatronic has the ability to learn from its environment, watching and replicating what it sees. In the book's storyline, it was invented by a technician who wanted to find a playmate for his son to alleviate the child's boredom while he worked. He taught it to learn from others in the hopes of creating the perfect friend.
After the creator's son was killed in a car crash, he took his pain and grief out on the Mimic. The technician beat it almost to death, unleashing all his anger on the animatronic, which learned from the experience. Later, the Mimic was shipped to the Pizzaplex, where it was used to help clean up the remnants of the Freddy Fazbear Pizzeria location in the sinkhole. The workers there decided to use its self-learning capabilities to speed up the cleaning process, teaching it how to dismantle animatronics. However, learning from the violent beating it took from its creator, it decided to use its newfound dismantling abilities to dismantle its human co-workers, ripping them to pieces.
It was left buried in the Pizzaplex, where it had the ability to hack into the computer systems of the mall and began to learn from unlikely sources. The top one on that list is Glitchtrap, with the AI emulation of the murderous William Afton being one of the few sources of information it could learn from.
For those that need catching up, Glitchtrap is a haunted AI program first created during the events of Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted. It was an emulation of the spirit of William Afton: the main villain of the franchise, owner of the Freddy Fazbear's company and a sinister serial killer that murdered children and stuffed them in animatronic suits. Glitchtrap used his powers to possess Vanny in Security Breach, indoctrinating her and forcing her to do his bidding. With the presence of the Mimic now confirmed, it seems a long-standing theory about Afton's resurrection has been confirmed, revealing how the serial killer survived being burnt to a crisp in Pizzeria Simulator.
Although this is largely speculative, it seems pretty likely that the Afton Ending of Security Breach isn't canon, and the Springtrap we faced in the final fight wasn't actually William Afton. Instead, it was the Mimic, with the Afton Ending showing what could've happened if the Mimic was left unchecked beneath the pizzeria, emulating Afton to the point where it virtually became a reincarnation of the undead serial killer.
As for why it isn't fully embracing its Afton persona during Ruin, there are various hints throughout the DLC that the Princess Quest ending is the true finale of Security Breach. In that ending, Glitchtrap's virus would've been destroyed, preventing the Mimic from learning any more about Afton. You can read more about how the signs point to Princess Quest being canon in our Which Security Breach Ending is Canon guide.
To move away from speculation, we know that the Mimic was clearly watching the events of Security Breach, mimicking Gregory's voice and hatching a plan to lure Cassie to the basement. The Mimic's plan is actually perfectly foreshadowed and explained by Candy Cadet when you meet him in the ruins of the Pizzeria. He tells you a story of a boy and his mother who catch a monster and lock it in their basement. The boy is scared of the monster, so his mother comforts him with a lullaby.
One day, the mother leaves the house, and the boy hears his mother singing the lullaby from the basement. He unlocks the basement door to search for his mother only to meet a grisly fate. In this scenario, it seems the monster is the Mimic and Cassie is the boy, so who is the mother?
Who Locked The Mimic in The Sinkhole?
The next major question is why the Mimic is sealed behind a concrete wall. In the books, the monster was left to rot in the Pizzeria, but wasn't locked away.
It seems our answer comes from Gregory's knowledge of the Mimic and understanding of the M.X.E.S system. After the Mimic attacks Cassie and she escapes, Gregory regales her with a ton of details about the Mimic, noting that it's been trapped for a very long time. He also reveals that M.X.E.S was a security system designed to keep the Mimic hidden. In short, the M.X.E.S system was good all along.
It appears Gregory and, from what we can infer, Vanessa and Glamrock Freddy's head have been hard at work concealing the Mimic's existence. All three escaped the Pizzaplex in the Princess Quest ending, and together, it seems they are safeguarding the world from the Pizzaplex's most sinister resident.
As for proof that the trio locked the Mimic away, not only do we find Gregory's backpack down in the room with the M.X.E.S box, but his walkie-talkie from the original game is the one being used by the Mimic. It appears Gregory and his allies trapped the Mimic to prevent it from getting free, and Vanessa (being a talented programmer) created the Entity to ensure it never escaped. However, Gregory left his walkie-talkie behind, giving the Mimic the opportunity to lure someone down to his location and break him out of confinement.
The Scooper Ending
Now we know what the Mimic is, let's cover the other two endings, starting with the Scooper ending. This ending plays out largely the same as the original ending with one key difference.
Throughout the game, Cassie has been using the cameras to access a secret feed into the Mimic's bunker. Here, she's been unlocking doorways, clearing a path to an unknown room.
By the time she reaches the Mimic, things are slightly different. When she meets the terrifying creature, it's not just an endoskeleton like before. In this ending, it's wearing several traditional mascot outfit parts. You could suggest that our handsome new friend is just getting dripped out, but there's actually a more interesting lore-related context behind this fashion switch-up.
In the books, the Mimic uses its abilities to trick its victims, luring them with alternate voices and killing them by dressing in costumes and attacking them while disguised. Considering these outfits are likely very old Freddy Fazbear mascot outfit pieces (they seem fitted for humans and not animatronics, meaning they're probably from long before anything we've currently seen on the timeline), it seems to be a demonstration of the Mimic's powers, with it disguising itself in whatever it can find... I mean, nice try buddy, but you arguably stick out more as a haunted lion mascot than you did as a big robot skeleton man.
Regardless, the disguised Mimic chases you to the area where we originally found the elevator, except this time, a new path is open. It's the route through the locked doors that Cassie has been unlocking over the course of her journey.
Sprinting down it, she eventually reaches a large chamber, locking herself in a room at the end of the path. Here she finds a button, which she presses. It activates a large arm in the chamber, which grabs the Mimic and drags it into the darkness. When the smoke in the room clears, we see the Mimic lying motionless on the floor. And that's the end. Credits roll shortly afterwards.
So, what is the apparatus? Well, this appears to be a much more advanced version of the Scooper machine used in Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location. There, William Afton used the contraption to extract the endoskeletons out of the animatronic suits, allowing him to harvest Remnant for his experiments. It's definitely interesting that there's a Scooper Room in the Mimic's bunker, but there's currently very little else to go on. For now, it seemingly kills the Mimic, and that's all that's important.
Safe Spot Ending
The final ending we need to discuss is the Safe Spot ending. This one starts in the exact same way as the other two, but offers a slightly more sombre conclusion. While running from the Mimic, Cassie takes a wrong turn and finds a cardboard cutout of Freddy Fazbear. Noticing that it can be phased through, she puts on the Security Mask.
The game then cuts to a happy image of Gregory, HELPI and Vanessa. They're all smiling and eating ice cream as Cassie tells them that she found a safe place to hide. However, as the scene begins to fade, we hear Cassie crying in the background.
Whatever happened to Cassie, the AR image of Gregory and his friends is clearly a false reality. For one, HELPI isn't an animatronic and is only a part of the digital world. But the cutout is also down a dead end and Cassie's sobbing indicates she's far from safe. It seems in the real world, her fate is sealed.
