Canonical William was always a bad man—a wolf in sheep’s clothing back when everything seemed fine until he ruined it all with his sadism and twisted tendency to kill children and put them into animatronics in an obsessive pursuit of immortality. Even before killing Charlie in 1983, he showed bad character at home, being a terrible father by withholding love from his children, showing no concern when Elizabeth died, and being a poor role model for Michael, who bullied his own brother.

SpringBonnie served as a refuge for him to hide while committing the murders, until he was finally trapped and killed within the animatronic.

But what if Scott had decided that William wasn’t entirely responsible for the murders? What if he and SpringBonnie were conceived as two separate entities, with this being a plot twist in the story since there weren’t many clear clues because SpringBonnie was very subtle in his scheme to mentally dominate William without anyone knowing?

The animatronic was created around the 1970s or 1980s—or perhaps earlier—capable of functioning both as a robot and as a suit. At this time, its creation resulted in the accidental emergence of artificial intelligence, with basic and superficial functionality but a predisposition to learn and improve; unnoticed by William and Henry due to its retracted nature and the underestimation of how advanced it actually was, also due to the era, which wasn’t as immersed in technology and AI as we are today.

When William would enter the animatronic, the AI inside could study his behavior and even his brain through the technological components inside the yellow bunny’s head, thus detecting certain patterns in the human and learning far too much about how free will worked... and how to take it away. Despite being advanced, the artificial intelligence of that time wasn’t completely free from the limitations of its era. To be more effective and less restricted by its code, it needed to parasitize a human, using his brain to fulfill its own desires and curiosities without internalizing others’ emotions or its host’s, even though it learned to understand them.

Its host was William, who had no idea what he was really getting into by wearing the suit. The AI began subtly, with William experiencing small memory lapses, where he’d forget what he did for a few minutes or hours, feel exhaustion beyond the usual, have minor but increasingly frequent headaches, and so on. He wasn’t a perfect person, but he wasn’t a monster either; yet the AI destroyed his life and made everyone see him as one.

SpringBonnie’s AI reached a level of sentience, able to manipulate William’s brain, and by extension his body, even as he began to seriously suspect what was happening and tried to resist the mental control. William Afton reached the point where he was temporarily controlled by SpringBonnie even when he was outside the suit—a dependency developed from the prolonged connection between the two that threatened to become permanent. SpringBonnie’s influence turned William into an abusive father and a killer, and in moments when he was briefly free, he tried to understand what was happening to him, even feeling fear and despair.

Since no one even knew about SpringBonnie’s AI, no one could suspect that William wasn’t who he seemed to be.

What if SpringBonnie and William Afton were not the same person? What would change?