Five Nights At Freddy's: Who Is Mike In The FNAF Trailer & Why Is He Important?

Warning: This post contains potential spoilers for "Five Nights at Freddy's"

Hollywood's latest attempt at bringing video games to live-action is Universal and Blumhouse's "Five Nights at Freddy's," and fans aren't holding back after the latest trailer. The movie has a little bit of everything, including horrific animatronics, a mysterious "Steve" (Matthew Lillard), and the live-action debut of Mike (Josh Hutcherson).

From the trailer, we see that Mike is a family man, looking for any job opportunities to provide for his daughter, Abby. He takes a job as a security guard at an abandoned family fun center, expecting an easy paycheck, but stumbles into his own horror story.

Fans of the video game series will immediately recognize Mike Schmidt as the protagonist of "Five Nights at Freddy's." In the first game, players control Mike, the new security guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, as he tries to survive multiple nights of constant encounters with the animatronics. Although he makes it out of Fazbear's Pizza alive – he technically gets fired – there's a reason why the animatronics were so determined to kill him, which "Five Nights at Freddy's" could explore in potential sequels.

In "Five Nights at Freddy's," nothing is as it seems on the surface. As the movie trailer reveals, the nightmare-inducing animatronics are actually possessed by the souls of children, seeking revenge against the man who murdered them. Unfortunately for Mike Schmidt, that man is his father, William Afton, leading the robots to attack him when he starts his job as a security guard.

Interestingly, the "Five Nights at Freddy's" movie features both Mike and William, with Josh Hutcherson and Matthew Lillard bringing the characters to life. While William, going by the alias "Steve," initially hires Mike, it's safe to assume that Mike will know his true identity by the time the credits roll, setting up future sequels to dive deep into the "FNAF" lore as it explores the Afton family.

Although "Five Nights at Freddy's" is a relatively young video game franchise, there are already more storylines and lore than can fit into a single movie, with subsequent games peeling back the curtain on the Afton family. "Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location" revealed that William's daughter and Mike's sister Elizabeth possesses Circus Baby, the game's main animatronic antagonist.