Jeremy Fitzgerald

Jeremy Fitzgerald is a Tribute representing District 1 who was reaped for Arena 15.

Before the Games
Jeremy’s a guy who grew up without having much in the way of life goals or motivation. He was perfectly fine with just coasting by, barely above passing grades in high school and not bothering with post secondary education, preferring to skip classes to hang out at the smoke pits. Despite suffering occasional bouts of insomnia, it was never something he considered serious and he was more of a night owl anyway. He moved out shortly after his parents separated, staying at cheap apartments with friends and getting by on various minimum wage jobs - some not lasting more than a week due to his lazy, unproductive attitude. All in all, it’s a very boring, uneventful life.

One day after having a rough time finding a new place to work, Jeremy spots an ad in the newspaper looking for a night shift security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria. It’s half decent pay for 1987, so he applies and is hired on the spot - interesting, but he needs the cash, and the ad didn’t specify training or experience necessary. He’s known about the restaurant for a while, and all the mysteries surrounding it (most notably the missing children incidents, frequently covered by the local papers and missing notices all over town,) but hey, a paycheck’s a paycheck.

It’s barely an hour into his first shift that Jeremy begins to realize something’s up. The guy calling him on the phone every night (who never gave his name and is thus referred to in Jeremy’s notes as "Phone Guy,") leaves him advice and information on how to get through the night, but he doesn’t exactly sound like the most trustworthy person. But what’s worse is the animatronics - specifically the ones that Phone Guy said should not be active at all, when in fact, they are. Terrifyingly so.

That, combined with what he knew about the missing children case before, Jeremy begins to take note of everything: he writes down events and occurrences in a notebook he keeps on his person, everything from the peculiar static on the prize room camera to the strange behaviours of each animatronic every night to Phone Guy’s increasingly shady messages left for him. He starts to suspect that the Freddy Fazbear company is trying to cover something up, something big. Someone here is responsible for the missing, and likely murdered, children. And he’s determined to figure out who.

Newspaper articles from FNAF1 mention two children having gone missing, and a suspect arrested as a result, but three more children go missing after that. It’s pretty clear that whoever that guy was, he’s not the one responsible, and the real killer is still out there. Maybe even still working for Freddy Fazbear’s, a theory Jeremy starts to really believe in once the monitor starts showing him strange videos every night just before 6AM. At first he believes the monitor to be malfunctioning, somehow playing footage from the arcade cabinets, but when he starts to pay closer attention, he realizes that he’s being shown something: the story of the missing children, what happened to them, where their bodies are, and the one responsible - a mysterious, creepy looking purple figure. And wouldn’t you know it, Freddy Fazbear security uniforms are all purple.

As the week progresses, the animatronics grow more aggressive, and Jeremy becomes increasingly suspicious of this guy on the phone - and increasingly more paranoid in general. He starts suffering from nightmares and as a result, insomnia, forcing himself to stay awake as he begins putting all the pieces together. As he believes it, Phone Guy is the most likely suspect for the missing children, judging from his tone and odd hints dropped in his conversations and the fact that he’s been with the franchise for obviously quite a long time. He seems more fond of the animatronic characters than he does the customers, despite making a particular note about not trusting one character in particular - the Puppet. The Puppet’s behaviour is so drastically different from the other animatronics, only kept at bay through a music box rigged to be wound up from the office, and with Phone Guy’s nervous clues ("I never liked that Puppet thing ... it was always thinking, and it can go anywhere.") he starts to wonder if there’s a particular reason for the animosity between the two. And what other possible reason could there be, if not a murderer being wary of the spirit of one of his victims?

When his five nights come to a close, Freddy Fazbear’s is suddenly on lockdown to the public, due to an unspecified incident. Jeremy knows there’s more to the story, and manages to break into the poorly closed off building for a sixth night, searching for any more clues and information he can manage. Sure enough, the animatronics are even more aggressive trying to get into the office, and Jeremy starts seeing hallucinations on top of everything else (though those are more likely brought on due to lack of sleep,) but he’s determined to solve the case. Somehow, Phone Guy finds out that he’s broken into the restaurant and calls him again, sounding nervous as he explains the situation. According to Phone Guy, someone had used one of the yellow suits, and none of the others were functioning properly anymore. But he doesn’t reveal anything more than that, and Jeremy doesn’t trust him at all. Phone Guy then immediately and suspiciously changes the subject, and says that Jeremy will need to show up for the day shift the next day, to keep a close eye on the animatronics during a birthday party. At this point, Jeremy believes he has almost all the information he needs, ready to bring his findings to the police, but one more shift for any remaining clues shouldn’t be the worst thing. Maybe he can even get a good look at the guy he suspects.

The day definitely doesn’t start out well at all. His insomnia returned full force due to the case and just barely escaping death every night, so Jeremy had barely slept at all the entire week, and had been awake all night fending off the haunted animatronics just a few short hours before starting the day shift. He’s uncoordinated and exhausted, but determined to make it through the day. Apart from the occasional hallucination from the corner of his eye, all seems well - but Phone Guy had been right, something was definitely off with the animatronics. It’s something that Jeremy realizes a little too late, when suddenly one of the animatronics - affectionately referred to by the staff as Mangle - is up on the ceiling above him. He tries to dissuade the bot, while at the same time attempting to clear the room of customers, but it’s too little too late and Mangle quickly swoops down and clamps its jaws around Jeremy’s head. Why those animatronics were designed with sharp teeth, the world will never know.

Despite the severe injuries, Jeremy survives the initial attack. He’s rushed to the hospital and treated, but after extensive surgeries and treatments, he emerges from the hospital weeks later a changed man. The bite had been so damaging that it was necessary to remove an entire section of the frontal lobe of Jeremy’s brain, and while he made it out alive, it resulted in significant personality changes and side effects. Exhaustion, fainting spells, hallucinations, emotional outbursts and bouts of memory loss become common for him throughout his remaining days. With further surgeries and treatments, Jeremy manages to live a new life away from Freddy Fazbear’s, but only for a handful of months. Despite their best efforts to treat him, Jeremy suddenly collapses one day while staying at his mother’s, and it’s only hours later after being rushed to the hospital that he is declared brain dead.

Jeremy never finds out what happens to Freddy Fazbear’s pizza chain after the incident, and he never discovers that he’d been chasing after the wrong suspect. While the Phone Guy didn’t exactly come off as very trustworthy, he was not the killer, as it’s revealed later with the release of FNAF3 that the two die very different deaths at different times. Phone Guy is heard in FNAF1 being caught by the animatronics and shoved into a suit, while the so called Purple Guy is eventually caught by the dead children’s spirits, and after climbing into an old suit to hide, accidentally sets off the spring locks causing a spectacular and incredibly painful failure, resulting in his death. The children’s spirits are able to move on, and everything Jeremy worked so hard on was for naught in the end.

During the Games
Jeremy arrives after his canon death, and right in the middle of Arena 15. Still believing he's dead and this is an incredibly strange afterlife, he wasn't given enough information to really determine what is real and what is not. He's told only one thing: kill, or be killed. He spent most of his time in the arena trying to keep to himself, avoiding other tributes and hiding when he can, when he receives a sponsor gift from an anonymous source wishing him luck and apologizing for his being here. While suffering from hallucinations and exhaustion, he meets Ellis, and later Luna, who help calm him down and teach him a little more about Panem's ways.

Unfortunately, Jeremy doesn't last much longer in the arena. He's injured in a quick scuffle and runs for safety when he stumbles upon a familiar haunted pizzeria, and he can't stop himself from being drawn to it, morbid curiosity overpowering his fear. It's all for the worse when an even more familiar animatronic rams into his chest and shatters his ribcage, sending him further into terrified delusions and a slow, painful death. Sandy Marko meets him here, taking pity on him, and ends his suffering.

Jeremy returns to Panem after being revived, even more lost and confused than he had been at the start.

Abilities

 * He can stand on his own two feet for a while.
 * He can hold things.
 * Sometimes he can say a complete sentence without stuttering.
 * He can do one pretty convincing impression of a scared rabbit.

Miscellaneous

 * Token: Mangle's eyeball.
 * Functions better after some hot cocoa and chicken soup.