Springtrap is the primary antagonist of Five Nights at Freddy's 3 and one of the most pivotal figures in the entire franchise's lore. He is the undead, decayed physical manifestation of William Afton—the sadistic co-founder of Fazbear Entertainment, serial killer, and mastermind behind the murders of the missing children who went on to possess the pizzeria's animatronics. In 1993, following the closure of the final Freddy Fazbear's Pizza location, Afton returned to the abandoned restaurant to dismantle the classic animatronics in an attempt to destroy the evidence of his crimes and harvest their supernatural essence, known as Remnant. However, this act inadvertently released the vengeful spirits of his young victims. Cornered, panicked, and driven by a desperate need for self-preservation, Afton hid inside a rusted, unsafe "Spring Bonnie" suit—a dual-function mascot costume that relied on highly volatile mechanical springlocks to hold back its animatronic parts. Due to the damp, leaking roof of the building, a drop of water triggered a catastrophic failure of the springlocks, snapping the metal endoskeleton pieces directly back into Afton's body, crushing and impaling him in a slow, agonizingly painful death. The spirits vanished, leaving his corpse to rot inside the sealed safe room for thirty years until 2023, when the creators of "Fazbear's Fright: The Horror Attraction" salvaged the withered suit, unknowingly awakening Afton's soul which had fused with the machinery to become Springtrap. He is cold but very patient. With his iconic line "I always Come Back." Stubborn but somewhat true. He does come back.
