Everyone On Five Nights With Freddy’s Was ‘A Little Obsessed’ With One Character [Exclusive]

For the uninitiated, Mr. Cupcake (sometimes named Carl) is a cupcake animatronic with pink frosting, a single candle, buck teeth, and eyes. His frosting top lifts up like a jaw, but he mostly stays relegated to the plate Chica holds. In the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie, he graduates to a major player. He flies off the plate and attacks unsuspecting vandals, he is put inside air vents to shimmy around and terrorize Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), and he even moves on his own without the assistance of Chica. The film makes the best of him, and I asked Tammi when the creative decision came to upgrade the character.

“Cupcake is just so cool,” says Tammi. “I can’t remember a defining moment where it was a decision to let Cupcake just — we were always incorporating him because it felt like such a missed opportunity not to.” Given the massive size of the animatronics, much of the action in “FNaF” is limited by the spatial needs of Freddy, Bonnie, Foxy, and Chica. With Cupcake’s small size, it gave them the opportunity to have him sneaking around smaller spaces and catching people by surprise. “I mean, what a cool freaking character,” expresses Tammi. ‘And then the way Cupcake came out in terms of the design and build process with Jim Henson Studios was just so amazing. I think everyone was a little obsessed with Cupcake, and I think for good reason.” And she’s right. Whenever Cupcake did anything on screen, the theater erupted with joy. It’s incredible how much power can be exerted by the intentional narrowing of the eyes on a robot dessert. 

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” is now playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock.