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"Ge-Get ready for a surprise!"
Beware that this page may contain spoilers for related material. If you are new to anything, like if you have not played the games or read the books yet, please read at your own risk! |
- Not what you were looking for? See the game of the same name.
“Steve's dream of a video game programming career and starting a family lead him to take a job that seems too good to be true.” |
Help Wanted is the first story in Tales from the Pizzaplex 2: HAPPS and chronologically the Tales from the Pizzaplex series' 4th story. It was written by Elley Cooper.
Characters[]
Humans[]
- Snodgrass Family
- Steve Snodgrass
- Victoria
- Avery
- Abigail
- Amanda
- Gilbert Hurlbutt
- Brock Edwards
- Matt
- DJ Dan
- Saylor Thrift
Animatronics[]
Locations[]
- Cap'n Ernie's Fish Boat
- Gas Up
Plot[]
Steve is a janitor working at the Gas Up, far from the video game graphic designer job he hoped to acquire with his digital art and design skills. He spends his free time working on family-friendly video games, having released two already online. He also frequently texts Amanda, a girl he met on a dating site. One day, Steve is approached by a talent acquisition agent for Fazbear Entertainment named Brock Edwards. Steve is familiar with the company and its old restaurants, and is also aware of the murders that occurred there, along with the paranormal events. Having seen Steve's previous games, Mr. Edwards offers him a job in creating four horror games based on accusations of the company as a way for them to rebrand and move on from them. Mr. Edwards adds that Steve would be moved to a more spacious and luxurious home with personal servants to do his chores as an added bonus for his work, and also to prevent the game from being leaked. Steve rejects the offer due to him wanting to remain a family-friendly developer, as well as being morally conflicted on creating games based on events that were most likely real and not wanting to be far away from Amanda.
The next day, Steve receives a message from his dating app from an extremely beautiful woman named Victoria. She asks him to visit her house on Saturday, so Steve cancels his plans with Amanda and visits his friend Matt for advice. Upon seeing Victoria's picture, Matt gives him the okay to see her. After traveling through many country roads Steve arrives at a neat little white cottage and knocks on the door. When no one answers, he enters and is surprised to find that the house is empty. He hears a soft, steady mechanical whirring which quickly turns into a loud, high-pitched ringing. Victoria appears and the sound stops, but eventually another high-pitched screech fills the room. Steve looks up and sees the red light flashing on the smoke alarm, but when he reaches up to disable it he passes out.
Steve wakes up in the same house but now filled with furniture and pictures of Victoria. Victoria enters and explains that she put him on the couch after he got dizzy and passed out. Steve is confused, and Victoria explains that he has memory loss because of a car accident he had a few years ago, and she shows him a picture of their wedding. Later, Steve wakes up to two children excited for pancakes. He acts normal until he can get Victoria to say their names, Abigail and Avery. Victoria asks if he will fix the leaky faucet, and when he comes back, she hands him a letter telling them their house is being foreclosed on. Later, Mr. Edwards arrives at the house and tells Steve his offer is still open. Steve asks if he can work from home, and when Mr. Edwards says yes, he takes the deal.
That night, Steve hears a rumbling sound coming from the living room. He investigates only to find Abigail repeatedly bumping into a coffee table. She returns to bed and Steve notices that the doors in the house never properly close, and when he gets back into bed Victoria asks why he got up, having not heard the noise. Victoria reminds him that their children sleepwalk, which they get from him, just without the night terrors. Over the next few nights Steve feels haunted by nighttime visions and fears, but he uses these feelings to work on the first Fazbear Entertainment game, turning the tiny attic into his office.
Steve hears whirring and rumbling inside the walls, and since he hasn't fallen asleep he thinks it must be real. His bedroom wall begins to form a large bubble which pops, splattering an oily, black substance all over the room. Steve wakes Victoria up to flee but Victoria doesn't see anything and convinces him to lie down, but the noises in the walls prevent him from returning to sleep. DJ Dan, the music man, announces a heavy blizzard that traps the family inside. After five days, the snowfall is still heavy and the ringing is getting worse. While eating dinner, Steve asks if Victoria checked the weather only for DJ Dan to report that the National Weather Service has reported three more inches of snow with a temperature of 15 degrees. As he tells everyone to stay home and stay safe, Steve decides to finish the second game.
By the time Steve returns downstairs, everyone is asleep. He looks in a mirror and when he takes off his shirt he finds small, shallow cuts on his arms, chest, and belly. He takes a shower and waits on the couch. When the refrigerator door opens and he hears the cabinets slamming he runs to the kitchen to find Avery getting a glass of water. Avery returns to his room and Steve returns to the couch only to hear skittering inside the walls. The walls pulsate as a hole appears and a creature's tongue pierces Steve's forearm. He runs down the hall as a green serpentlike head pukes out snakes. He makes it to his room and uses a chair to block the door, and he tries explaining what happened to Victoria but she doesn't believe him. The next day Steve discovers that the snakes are gone. After breakfast he returns to his office to work on the third game, noticing that the high-pitched ringing in his head stops whenever he's working on the game.
After dinner, Steve hears DJ Dan on the radio reporting more snow, bringing up Valentine's Day. Steve apologizes for not having anything to give Victoria, and DJ Dan's song ruins the moment for him, but when he tries to change the channel it's all static. Victoria says that only the pop channel reaches them from out in the country. Steve goes back to work, finishing the third game and starting the fourth. Eventually he returns downstairs only for the walls to pulsate and the ceiling to crack, revealing an extremely large spider. Its abdomen splits open and hundreds of small spiders swarm Steve, and his screams cause Victoria to run to his aid. When he looks, the spiders are gone. The ringing in his head gets louder and he tries to leave the house, but it gets even louder. He thinks it's the fire alarm and breaks it, hoping it will stop.
Although ringing has stopped, Steve is still surrounded by the sound of DJ Dan on the radio, and he can now hear the sounds of wheels turning and gears grinding. The house is different too, with tread marks on the floor and hinged trapdoors on the walls and ceiling exactly where the creatures attacked him. Steve hides in a closet and sees that Victoria is actually a robot with a human face. He thinks about saving the kids, but they are revealed to also be robots. They call out for Steve but eventually stop and DJ Dan chimes in. When the trio go into the kitchen Steve tries to escape but has to quickly hide in the bathroom. Victoria finds him in the bathtub but he quickly pushes her back and runs to the bedroom, leaning against the door and using a chair for extra support.
Steve sees the radio in the bedroom and DJ Dan claims he's trying to help. He reminds him of how sad and lonely his previous life was, and that he was happy with Victoria and his children. Steve rebuts that they weren't real, but DJ Dan says everything he felt for them was real and he needs to let himself be happy. Steve brings up the night terrors, and DJ Dan says they weren't real and were just there to inspire him. Steve asks how he can be happy, and DJ Dan tells him to push a red button on the radio, as it will let him create his own reality as he wants it to be. With DJ Dan promising a life of bliss, Steve presses the button, causing a high-pitched ringing to fill his head. He falls to the floor as the room spins, but suddenly everything is still. Steve looks up to see Victoria in the doorway, wearing the same dress she was in when they first met, and he hugs her. Steve feels a bliss so great that he "barely felt the continuous stabbing in the vicinity of his heart."[1]
Speculation[]
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"I was the first! I have seen everything!"
This section archives a lot of theories and speculation, which usually occurs from pre-release media, or just things that are still unknown, so please keep that in mind while reading. The page will continue to be updated with the most accurate information as more solid evidence is supplied. |
- Steve Snodgrass, while he has yet to appear in any of the games himself, shares a lot of similarities to the indie game developer mentioned in Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted.
- The story being titled Help Wanted only seems to further suggest the possibility of the two being connected.
- In Five Nights at Freddy's VR: Help Wanted, HandUnit says this: "We know that Fazbear Entertainment has developed something of a bad reputation over the last few decades, and while it's true that some stories associated with our name were loosely based on actual events, the majority of them were total fabrications from the mind of a complete lunatic (lawsuits pending)." This has further implications when you consider that Steve is subjected to illusionary tricks via machines and trapdoors that not only causes him to be sleep deprived, but also clearly mentally unstable.
- The noise Steve hears when confronting the illusions could be a call-back to the Illusion Discs, which had the same effects of warping a person's sense of perception and their view of reality.
- Steve's house has many similarities to the house from Five Nights at Freddy's 4 and Dittophobia; they both are described as bare, dirty houses with basic robots on tracks and nightmares that look frighteningly realistic as long as the house is functional. Steve breaking the smoke machine is similar to having the gas off, until he pressed the radio button and turned it back on. DJ Dan convincing him to getting back to the game also parallels the cassette tape keeping Rory in the experimental chamber.
Trivia[]
- One of Steve's games, Chip Off the Old Block, could be a reference to Scott Cawthon's game Chipper & Sons Lumber Co, which served as inspiration for FNaF.
- DJ Dan plays a song on the radio by an artist named Saylor Thrift,[2] who is most likely a reference to popular music artist Taylor Swift.
- This is the first story in the Tales from the Pizzaplex series to not mention Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex.