A producer of the FNAF Movie just confirmed something many fans suspected about Bonnie.
There’s something unique about the large, guitar-playing animatronic bunny compared to his other bandmates in Five Nights at Freddy's—a controversy only he faced. For many members of the general audience, it’s something that might have easily flown under the radar.
But, for a long time, there’s been some heavy discourse about Bonnie’s true color.
Bonnie is Actually Blue... For Real
In the November 2023 issue of SFX Magazine, Five Nights at Freddy’s Lead Designer Robert Bennet revealed what many audiences already suspected: Bonnie is actually blue.
Bennet admitted how the original designs for the movie “made Bonnie purple,” but that changed when it was clarified by FNAF game creator and film producer Scott Cawthorn that “Bonnie is blue:”
“… We had to figure out what the textures and colours were. Bonnie’s interesting, because in all of the media that I was looking at when I was researching it, he’s purple. When I did the original designs, I made Bonnie purple. Well, I didn’t realise that Bonnie is blue. It had something to do with the lighting in the first game. When you look at the plushies, and all the toys, Bonnie’s usually purple. But ['FNAF' Game Creator] Scott [Cawthon] was the one that was like, “No, he’s blue.’ So that was a lot of back and forth to get that nailed down correctly.”
So, where did the confusion come from? Well, due to the lighting in the first few games, Bonnie came across as purple—which led to an inconsistency in the animatronic’s color across various portrayals.
In the same magazine, Bennet was asked what everyone thought of the iconic animatronics coming to life. He shared how “everyone loved them” and that they were consistently giving “a little show-and-tell for whoever was visiting:”
”What did people think of them? Everyone loved them. Our little workshop was right outside the main door of the set and we’d always have the actors, and anyone who was new, come in. Almost every other day we’d have to do a little show-and-tell for whoever was visiting.“
The production designer also revealed that Scott Cawthon admitted that they were “exactly what [he] wanted them to look like:”
“Josh Hutcherson came in a couple of times and looked at everything. Scott Cawthon, when he came down, he was there about a week before we started filming, and he was so grateful: ‘This is exactly what I wanted them to look like. This is what I imagined they would look like.’ It’s Scott that you want to make happy, and I think the fact that he was so impressed with everything made the work worthwhile.”
Will the Purple or Blue Debate Ever Cease?
While Five Nights at Freddy’s creator, Scott Cawthorn, can say the original intention was for Bonnie to be blue, there’s no getting around the fact that the character has been depicted as being both colors across a handful of canon projects and merchandise.
As X user Derpy_Horse4 detailed in a long rant on Bonnie’s color back in June 2023, the original model for the character in the game is purple, notably when no light lands on it. However, when light hits the texture/fabric (which is called its specular color), that’s when the blue can be seen.
Either way, even with this official comment from Cawthorn, fans likely won't stop arguing about the topic any time soon. One thing is for sure, though: the Bonnie seen in FNAF is blue.
There is another Bonnie color in the movie, however: yellow. Technically speaking, Will Afton’s Springtrap was formally Springtime Bonnie—a variant of the animatronic that isn’t in the midst of a never-ending, heated hue debate.
Five Nights at Freddy's is now playing in theaters worldwide and streaming on Peacock.
