i've figured it out

er fanart by arles48

[spoilers ahead for Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree, and all the Five Nights at Freddy's games]

Queen Marika of the Golden Order, god of the Lands Between and mother of all the demigods, is a critical figure in the story of Elden Ring. Attention is drawn to her status as a mother: most major bosses are her children, by birth or marriage (and possibly also by birth).

In SotE, it is revealed that Marika originally hailed from the Land of Shadow. We learn of the creation of jar saints, beings made from aggregate flesh "blended harmoniously" together with the bodies of the shamans, Marika's lost people, for the purposes of creating a God. It is suggested that Marika may be a jar saint herself, an aggregate of the many creatures found in the Land of Shadow: giants, hornsent, rot-worshiping pests, beasts, giant snakes, golden hippopotami, etc.

Assuming this to be true, Marika carries her (tragic and traumatic) past inside her in a very literal way. Despite the near-perfect control over life and death she achieves in her godhood, her children are born deformed: Morgott and Mohg are cursed with horns (like the Hornsent), Radahn with red hair and gigantism, Messmer with giant's flame and an abyssal serpent parasite, Malenia is rotting away, etc. etc. Even when her children are not physically marked, they suffer: Melina is burned away by giant's flame, Rykard feeds himself to a giant snake, Godwyn is slain by nox assassins (to whom Marika is distantly related). Again and again, Marika's children hold a mirror to her past - to her enemies, to her family, to the Land of Shadow within her flesh.

In SotE, the Hornsent Grandam NPC curses Marika -- and isn't it interesting that the character specifically called out as a grandmother has beef with the mother of the gods? Marika was made by the Hornsent - she was born of their experiments. Marika's children are, in some way, grandchildren of the Hornsent. And yet Marika put the Hornsent to the pyre, and orchestrated the genocide of their people in return for their genocide of the Shamans. The relationship between parent and child is a violent one: an injury to be repaid, a cascading trauma response, an infected wound that poisoned not just Marika, but her children too. All the violence Marika endured and inflicted in her lifetime belongs to her, and she cannot help but pass her curses along to her children.

[minor digression: one of the DLC bosses is the Mother of Fingers, an alien who birthed the strange finger-creatures in the lands between. When you fight her, her womb (or an equivalent) has been damaged, and she can only give birth to tiny, malformed finger-creepers. If the parallel wasn't obvious enough, Count Ymir has this to say about her:

They were each of them defective. Unhinged, from the start. Marika herself. And the fingers that guided her. And this is what troubles me. No matter our efforts, if the roots are rotten, …then we have little recourse.]

 

You know who this reminds me of?: William Afton, the serial-murderer-slash-mad-scientist-slash-immortal-furry-antagonist of the Five Nights at Freddy's games, and how his obsession with death and Chuck E. Cheese systematically destroyed all of his children. In fact, there are quite a few parallels between Elden Ring and FNAF:

First, Afton's youngest son died at the hands of an animatronic he helped create. / Godwyn the Golden, Marika's son, was the first demigod to die, and at the hands of the Nox, to whom Marika had ties.

• Afton's youngest son doesn't die immediately and goes into a coma. We play thru this coma in FNAF4, fighting nightmare animatronics. / Post-mortem, Godwyn the Prince of Death is also dreaming, and we can enter his nightmares to slay the lich-dragon Fortissax.
  

Then, Afton's daughter Elizabeth dies at the hands of an animatronic constructed to resemble her, and comes to haunt the animatronic. / Another of Marika's children, Lunar Princess Ranni, dies and moves her soul into a creepy doll.

• Elizabeth is killed by an animatronic which Afton created to study the powers that govern life and death (by killing children and turning them into haunted metal sludge) / Ranni kills herself by stealing the rune of death, which Marika removed from existence with her ability to control life and death.

Finally, Afton's eldest son Michael suffers years of abuse at his father's hands, leaving only to return years later to burn down his father's grim legacy. / The Tarnished are children of Marika who have been stripped of Grace (her favor) and sent away from the Lands Between. The player is a Tarnished who returns to the Lands Between to right the chaos fomented by the shattering war.

• Michael is experimented on and tortured by his father with illusion discs. We play thru this torment in FNAF4, fighting illusory animatronics / Marika's powers include illusion (the marika's mischief item disguises oneself as an object) which extend to Grace (a golden light that only those she wishes to guide can see) and possibly the Erdtree.
  
• The Tarnished must die in their other lands before being returned to the Lands Between (for example, the loathsome dung-eater has been executed by hanging in the intro cinematic) / Michael dies and returns to life inexplicably after being filled with and emptied of animatronic parts. He's often described as some kind of zombie.
  

By now I've likely already convinced you that Elden Ring and FNAF are the exact same story, word for word, but just to drive things home:

All of Afton's children bear his sins in one way or another -- all of them die, and all suffer strange half-deaths, just like he inflicted on the 5/6 children he murdered in a pizza parlor in the 80s. Much like how George R R Martin made Marika's traumatic upbringing a physical force in the world via the concept of jar saints, the FNAF animatronics are also animated by trauma made physical: Remnant is the metalloid substance which causes souls to haunt metal (discovered and harvested by Afton in his pursuit of eternal life / much like the Hornsent were pursuing godhood thru jar saints!!!!), but there is also Agony, another ghost-metal-fusion substance in the universe, which is created by strong emotions. In both cases, Afton's violence is inflicted on others thru the animatronics (including his actual daughter, who haunts a specific animatronic)

Afton also has one more "child": an AI called "The Mimic". The AI learns from a young age to copy all of Afton's actions, including the serial-killing, so even after his death the AI goes on to continue killing in his name. / In Elden Ring, the Mimic Tear is a boss/spirit ash that copies your equipment and stats.

• The Mimic was created by Afton to perform in his place in a mascot suit, a very important role he assumed in his wildly successful pizzeria franchise, Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria & Games. / The Mimic Tear was created by the Nox (remember them?) in their attempts to "forge a lord": basically, create an artificial Elden Lord to usurp the Golden Order.
• Afton's many robotics experiments took place in a secret bunker underneath his house, which we explore in the 5th game, FNAF: Sister Location. / The Nox were banished underground for treason, where they formed a matriarchal society mirroring Marika's reign above: a Sister Location....
  
• Much like mimicry in Elden Ring, the introduction of AI clones (paired with illusion disks) to the FNAF novels mostly served to prop up wild fan theories and make understanding the narrative that much harder
  

In Elden Ring, the loathsome dung eater is a character. This is a direct reference to me, consuming FNAF lore theories.

Marika's reign is the Golden Order. Her favor is the Grace of Gold. Her power always resides in and is represented by gold. / In every FNAF game, some sort of easter egg exists that points us to Fredbear, the character who preceded Freddy Fazbear. Fredbear differs from Freddy in two important ways: 1) he was a mascot suit, designed to be worn, and 2) color, leading fans to initially nickname him golden freddy.

• Fredbear predates the location where FNAF1 takes place, going back to an establishment called Fredbear's Family Diner. At the time, Afton was a performer, and wore a golden rabbit suit to match golden freddy. This era of FNAF is heavily associated with the color gold, and precedes the chaos of Afton's murder spree and haunted animatronics, etc -- it was Afton's Golden Order.

Marika did not create her golden order alone. She had her Elden Lord at the time was Godfrey, who waged war in her name and was instrumental in uniting the Lands Between under her. / Afton did not build Fazbear Entertainment Inc. alone. His partner was Henry Emily, an engineer who actually did all the heavy lifting to build their revolutionary animatronics.

Finally, In Marika's childhood in the Land of Shadow, she would have encountered the divine beast dancing lions, which are (like irl lion dancers) large animal costumes piloted by multiple people, and, like, c'mon

At this point, there is no uncertainty: George R R Martin and Miyazaki were clearly heavily inspired by, or perhaps collaborated directly with Scott Cawthon to write the story of Elden Ring as a video game adaptation of the complete Five Nights at Freddy's canon. Personally, I lean towards the latter: it's too similar to simply be an homage, and I can only imagine Mr. Cawthon could have (easily) sued by now if FromSoftware hadn't asked him for explicit permission to use his characters and story and settings and just change the names around a little bit.

But that's just connecting things we already know. What does this revelation tell us about either or both games? Quite a bit, actually:

• In the Tales from the Pizzaplex novels, there is a great tree called the Storyteller's Tree. Much like the Erdtree, its vast root network allows it to absorb information from and control the entire pizzaplex (in other words, the lands between pizza and arcade games). Inside this tree, however, is not Afton (i.e. Marika), but the AI mimic of Afton. Likewise, in Elden Ring, Radagon is found inside the Erdtree in place of Marika. This is conclusive evidence that Radagon is actually a mimic created by the Nox.
• We can also make predictions: In Shadow of the Erdtree, we follow Miquella into the Land of Shadow to uncover Marika's origins. In the next game -- FNAF: Secret of the Mimic -- expect to see references to Afton's own parents, his abusive upbringing, and the shocking reveal that he was actually a stitched-together frankenstein's monster creature the whole time.
  
• In Elden Ring, Marika and Godfrey are married and have multiple children. This is a reference to how William Afton and Henry Emily were intended to be gay lovers from the beginning, confirming the popular fan theory.
  

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