The Freddy Theory
This is just something I thought about after Predator: Hunting Grounds came out, following the trend of really popular horror licenses getting their own multiplayer games that star them as a hunter hunting other players... It got me thinking..
What if Dead By Daylight is Freddy's story? (albeit, it's probably not but it's still fun to think about so hear me out). Freddy's one weakness in the movies is either being pulled out of the Dream World, or being Forgotten. Freddy's introduction in Freddy Vs. Jason describes this perfectly:
"The children still feared me, and their fear gave me the power to invade their dreams, then that's when the fun really began! Until they figured out a way to forget about me, to erase me completely. Being dead wasn't a problem, but being forgotten, now that's a B*TCH! ... I can't come back if nobody remembers me! I can't come back if nobody's AFRAID!!"
What if Freddy figured out a way to avoid this problem?
The realm of the Entity, the killers, the campfire, the trials, the auris, the endless cycle, all of it. What if it was all made up? What if it was all a dream...? If Freddy played the fool, by dulling his powers and making it look like something old and dark, primordial, beyond comprehension was the one pulling the strings nobody would know. He could disguise himself as the other killers and still have his fun, without the problem of them fighting back. Without the survivors knowing what they were truly up against so they wouldn't try to wake up or forget him, because he wasn't the main character it was all this "Entity".
By pretending he was just another cog in a much grander and darker scheme he would appropriately distract the survivors, fixate their attention on the wrong things on trying to fix generators, cleanse Hexes, escape trials, seeking to understand "the Entity" and its mysterious machinations such as the "yearly purge" of the Hallowed Blight, mysterious entry diary logs and descriptions from a "Benedict Baker" and "Vigo" people we've never actually seen or heard from before yet have somehow left messages behind. That they may have some secret knowledge nobody knows about and how to escape.
Using his ability to warp reality in the nightmares of his victims, he would give his future victims something to fear. A greater fear than even himself, the fear of the unknown.
Leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, setting the survivors loose on a wild goose chase, Freddy would be completely safe, completely free to torture his victims completely, utterly, and thoroughly. And when they had completely lost their mind? When their senses and emotions were overwhelmed to the point they felt nothing anymore he tossed them aside into "the void"
...Of course this might be completely contingent on Survivors being forced into some kind permanent state of sleep. This is where things start to get hazy, but It could be that all the Survivors that are caught in Freddy's web of lies are all people in a coma. Dwight, Meg, Claudette, Jake, all separate individuals with their own histories who suffered their own unfortunate accidents at the wrong time. Or maybe Freddy made a deal with some evil, maybe the demons who gave him his power to force victims into such a permanent sleep. Or a deal with some secret government agency or organization to put people to sleep and keep them in a permanent coma forever. Such an organization might claim a moral high ground, "the needs of the many" and all that, sacrifice a few individuals to be Freddy's personal playthings forever, to protect hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lives from being slaughtered in their sleep.
It's a compelling idea, given Freddy's ability to warp reality and bend it completely to his will in the dream world.
Comments
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I mean, Freddy's bio is from a neutral narrator and explicitly describes how he was taken into The Entity's realm like everyone else, plus he somehow has people from the 70s like Laurie Strode running around with professional esports gamers, I don't believe Freddy's ego could ever take enough of a backseat for him to pretend he's not the guy running the show, and Survivors getting hurt in the dream world would hurt them in real life and thus kill them the first time they got hooked.
Though, this is a fun thought experiment, and hey, if you want to run with this further, maybe consider "Freddy" from Wes Craven's The New Nightmare, as I think there's maybe more potential in that creature or perhaps its "species" to accuse of being the secret orchestrator of Dead by Daylight.
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That Freddy was literally called "Entity Freddy", so that does add more to the theory.
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Yeah, I would agree Freddy's got a bit of a pompous personality, but that's why I said he "figured out a way to avoid this problem" (of being pulled out of the dream world or forgotten). This would have been after the fact, when he's been forgotten or "killed" after like 6 movies or something, those times would have been learning experiences for him to try a different approach, to taking a backseat role in his own story or a more subtle approach.
Also if I'm not mistaken, Freddy's reality warping abilities extend to being able to create illusions of people and animals, things that are alive. So he could create the illusions of different people from different time periods like Laurie Strode from the 70s, or The Huntress from WW2. This theory basically runs deep with conspiracy that most everything, even some of the killers or survivors are illusions Freddy has created to build this small little patch of paradise to populate it and make it convincing enough that it's really something else. Because again, he's basically all powerful in the Dream World.
Although yeah, I'll admit it's not a perfect theory, just like you said more of a fun thought experiment.nIt's been awhile since I've seen New Nightmare, so I can't exactly remember the explanation behind how Freddy exists in that movie. But if it would help push this theory further along I'm all for it
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The explanation behind New Nightmare Freddy is that he's some kind of ancient, primordial creature that feeds on fear and wants to become real- So, it takes the shape of a fictional character (Freddy) and subtly feeds the Nightmare crew new ideas for movies and keeps encouraging them to make endless sequels so it can grow in power. When The New Nightmare happens, it's absorbed enough fear to actually gain abilities comparable to Freddy and it's working on claiming its first real human victim.
If I was going to try and brainstorm a way you could contrive this into its own theory, let's say The Entity is some kind of larger, more powerful caregiver for these creatures, and every single Killer as presented is actually one of these entities. All the Killer Bios are stories, not literal events, and the Trials are in fact for the Killers, making their different takes on creating fear increasingly real until they can eventually leave The Entity's Realm into reality.
The Survivors, meanwhile, would be random individuals (or perhaps actual actors in the cases of the licensed ones, so Laurie is actually Jamie Lee Curtis, ecetera) who have had their "roles" as shown in the bios imposed onto them by The Entity. (we know the fog can screw with people's minds, the observer mentions in one of the new DbD mobile cutscenes that some Survivors percieve every single Trial as their first one)
This adds an extra double meaning to the Observer. He THINKS he's viewing people's memories, but he's quite literally in a library, reading books, without realizing he's in the Fiction section. Maybe The Entity actually wants him there, as having an "Observer" to these events is exactly what makes them real. The Observer believes in these "memories" so much they have completely overtaken his normal perception of reality, so he'd be the perfect vessel for that kind of purpose.
There's probably a lot of other nitty-gritty stuff I'm not thinking of right now as to how you could run with this theory, that's just a jumping off point for anyone else who wants to run with this idea.
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I like the idea, it's definitely something completely different from what I had in mind but it hails from the same kind of original concept or thought. Very cool to think about
Though in all seriousness, I just want to point out that I do like Dead By Daylight's own original lore, the story they have crafted so far is very compelling some of their best work lore-wise came from the original Hallowed Blight event in 2018. It sucks we won't see another event on par with that (because the withering blight sucked) for at least another year. I just think these other theories that seek to explain the mystery which only end up adding to the mystery are fun non-canon stories to think up
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