Warning: this entry contains spoilers for Five Nights at Freddy's video game series.

About

The Man Behind the Slaughter refers to a series of ironic memes referencing a line from a fan-made Five Night's at Freddy's song "It's Been So Long" by The Living Tombstone. The line "the man behind the slaughter" describes the main antagonist of the series William Afton (aka The Purple Guy), with memes referencing the character in one way or another, often by including the line in the caption.

Origin

On December 4th, 2014, Israeli YouTube musician The Living Tombstone released a single based off the plot of the 2014 game Five Nights at Freddy's 2. The chorus of the song references the main antagonist of the series Willaim Afton (also known as The Purple Guy), describing him as "the man behind the slaughter." The video received over 92 million views in six years (shown below).





It's been so long

Since I last have seen my son,

Lost to this monster,

To the man behind the slaughter.

The song did not see use in memes until on December 31st, 2019, Instagram user hd_chungles posted a recaptioned webcomic edit based on the song that received over 173,000 views and 20,000 likes in three months (shown below).





Spread

In the following days, the meme received viral spread online with multiple reposts on Twitter, Instagram and iFunny. On January 8th, 2020, YouTuber The Acid Muskitears created another recaptioned webcomic edit of the song that received over 342,000 views in three months (shown below, left). On January 14th, 2020, iFunny user CoasterCrusader posted a Barnacle Boy's Sulfur Vision meme referencing the lyric (shown below, right).





The meme format did not see viral spread until March 2020 when it gained popularity on iFunny, Twitter and Instagram. For example, on March 7th, 2020, iFunny user TheEliteDidNothingWrong posted a GIF Caption that received over 430 smiles in three weeks (shown below, left). On March 12th, iFunny user RemingtonV2 posted a PogChamp edit that received over 3,000 smiles in two weeks (shown below, right).





Various Examples





Search interest

Know Your Meme Store

External References