The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie cast don’t play the original games – because they’re too hard and/or they’re too scared!

For a movie series based on a beloved line of video games, you’d think that the cast of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 would all be avid gamers, right…? Well, the truth as revealed during the San Diego Comic-Con 2025 panel for the movie turns out to be very different indeed… and bad news for anyone who’d been hoping to challenge the on-screen Mike Schmidt to a play-off anytime soon.

“I tried playing the first game one time and I was not good, so I stopped playing. I said it! I said it,” Josh Hutcherson admitted. “I like to be good at things, but if I’m not, I just stop doing them instantly,” he explained. “I was very bad at this game! I was very frustrated, and I was like, ‘I’m going to live it.’”

“I have a confession,” added Theodus Crane, who plays Mike’s best friend Jeremiah in the movies. “Horror games freak me out, and I haven’t tried yet. I’m going to! It’s been a long and winding road, man, but horror games? I just turn it off. I just turn it off. But I’m gonna give it a shot — it’s like, if this many people love it, it might be worth giving it a try.”

Piper Rubio, who plays Mike’s little sister Abby in the series, admitted, “I’ve only played the first one all the way through, and most of Security Breach because I kept getting stuck in the daycare because I kept glitching through the floor.” She did want fans to know, however, “I am going to play the rest of the games. I’m not stopping there.”

At least one of the movie’s cast is a fan of the games, though: Teo Briones, who joins the franchise with FNAF2, said that he “immediately said yes” when offered the role because he’d played the games as a kid. “The fourth one is the one in the bedroom, right?” he said to cheers from the crowd. “No matter how many times I play that game, it is so genuinely horrifying. The first three games, I feel like, you play through them a couple times you get over it. The fourth game, no matter how many times I play it, it’s always terrifying for me.”

Well, if Briones survives FNAF2, now we know how producers can terrify him for a third movie.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 will be unleashed in theaters December 5.

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Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.