Back in the heyday of Murray’s Costume Manor, married couple Edwin Murray, Jr. and Fiona Murray – a pair of bright and engaged creatives that otherwise would have been utterly hopeless in the dating department had it not been for their shared employment at MCM – headed the renaissance for the company under the direction of the founder, Murray, Sr. When they weren’t caring for their newborn David, they pitched what would become some of MCM’s most recognizable mascots to date, including Chica, the trendy, roller-skating chicken that did wonders for the audiences of younger girls, and the pirate foxes Roxy and Foxy, two household names in the town of Hurricane, Utah for their marketability for younger boys. It was during this time that the company hired Henry Emily as head engineer for Murray, Jr.’s more eccentric personal projects. But for the company, not only were MCM’s creative intellectual properties becoming more and more popular in the state, the boom of growth for the company attracted outsiders and shareholders. However, MCM would never be able to fully realize their new attention. It was a sudden, tragic event to everybody but the company’s founder. Though to Murray, Sr., the illness had progressed all too slowly. He’d known exactly when he would die, and decided not to tell his surviving family until he was hospitalized. The full control over MCM would be passed down to Murray, Jr. in a premeditated move just weeks before his death. The losses for MCM’s value were gradual at first, but steeply declined once it was clear that the company was heading towards a fast death in the hands of the still-grieving Edwin Murray, Jr. Not many outsiders were still interested in Murray’s Costume Manor by now, except for William Afton. The trend of animatronic entertainment was still meddling until William entered the fray. Fredbear's Family Diner flourished by seamlessly swapping out their animatronics with mascot suits that allowed live actors to directly interact with people. Afton incorporated his business and created a small chain inside Salt Lake City. And when he heard the news of a disasterously failing business with famous intellectual property, the advantageous businessman struck.
It started with a sudden leaking of information. Murray’s Costume Manor started losing employees who had either been fired by Murray, Jr. for selling off the company’s properties, or were suddenly working for William with better pay than before. Murray, Jr. was in a deeply vulnerable state after the death of his father, and had very little to bargain with by the time William first spoke to Murray, Jr. directly. The negotiations were short and they ended in some millions of dollars to Edwin for full ownership of MCM. When William was auditing Murray’s Costume Manor, he put all his trust that the head engineer Henry Emily – who had just snuck all of MCM’s copyrights and animatronic blueprints and given it to Afton – will continue to be enticed by the promise of wealth and the realization of all his efforts that went limp under Murray, Jr.’s ownership. Further- more, Emily had been facing serious difficulties as a single father after the high school sweetheart he’d gotten pregnant years prior fled from their home together without another word. He was struggling to feed himself and his toddler with just the pay from MCM and the increasingly neglectful owner, Edwin Murray, Jr. So, the ease that he had in stealing his own blueprints from the company’s research and development workshops made it all the more difficult to resist the bigwig from Salt Lake City promising nearly twice his current salary. Now, Henry Emily couldn’t have known what kept that eclectic son-of-the-founder CEO holed up in his manor just over the hill, communicating to his company’s employees only through e-mail (which Henry had insisted was only a fad for the time). But if he had, and if he knew what would come of him and his family by partnering with William Afton, he certainly would never have gone through with his mutiny against Murray’s Costume Manor.
For a time, Henry Emily continued his work on building stronger blueprints for standalone animatronics while William Afton continued his, handling the grime that comes with a growing business. No matter what Henry comes back with, William’s biggest note is that the designs must be large enough to fit a live actor inside. With these incessant notes, Henry would go over countless iterations until finally he presented brand new technology to make William happy. He called them springlock animatronics, suits that could function as the typical stationary audio-animatronic, but could be cranked back to allow enough room for a worker to be fitted inside, integrating the live entertainment and animatronic show perfectly. The blueprints were a miracle for William, who’d been having his own troubles at home. Years ago, William had been adamant – almost obsessively so – that his wife Clara had cheated on him, and that their first child was illegitimate. He threatened divorce on his wife and moved out of their home for a month, but nothing came of this fight. But, the commotion alone would slowly crumble away at his and Clara’s relationship, but not before having another child not so long ago. William was now panicking at the sign of depression in his company’s stocks, so he swiftly okayed the production on Henry’s prototype springlocks in the midst of talks with divorce lawyers and settlements from poor working conditions at Fredbear’s. In the spring of 1979, one of the more profitable Fredbear’s locations was chosen for renovation, and in the summer would reopen with the state-of-the-art Fredbear and Springbonnie springlock suits. To say that these springlock suits were a success would be the understatement of the decade. Fredbear’s Family Diner blew any and all competition out of the water with their dynamic entertainment, launching chain restaurants across Utah, though the company would grow increasingly negligent of the quality of each location. For as brilliant as these springlock suits were, they had a massive critical flaw; when too much moisture entered the springlock mechanisms, they had a tendency to clamp shut on the worker inside, sometimes resulting in injury or maiming. The only reason that Fredbear’s wasn’t immediately closed after these scandals were because of William’s cover-ups of the really terrible incidents, the constant overworking that Henry and his small team the company had accrued were subjected to to offer band-aid solutions without abandoning the springlock gimmick altogether or being given the proper time and funding to create any safer alternative designs.