PinkyPills Controversy (Five Nights at Freddy's)

Note: Due to the nature of PinkyPills wiping a lot of her older posts and comments from both Reddit and DeviantArt, there won't be many direct links to those posts. Instead we'll be relying on any archives, screenshots, etc that have been saved over the years.

Why are we making this post:
As of recent, information surrounding her has began to resurface which has sparked discussion on if PinkyPills should still be involved with the franchise or not. This post will not discuss whether or not she should or not, we will not be picking a side, instead we'd like for you to come to your own conclusion given the information presented below.

However with many users understandably being misinformed on the matter as there's been a handful of misconceptions spread around, the most popular of which being that she was fired by Scott and that she was the one who created the fanfiction done featuring Barney Miles. We'd like to take a moment and discuss a handful of the examples we've seen being brought up not only here but places like twitter, so people are more aware of what's going on and have more context.

CW/TW: Please be advised this post contains discussion of NSFW imagery involving minors "people/characters under the age of 18", Pedophilia, NSFW fantasies/fetish, Child endangerment, Strong language, and discussion on what is NSFW/sexual artistic freedom in general. If any of this makes you uncomfortable please take heed when reading.

Who is PinkyPills:

Claudia Schröder, better known by her online alias "PinkyPills", started off as a popular fan artist in the community who would post their own comics and standalone art pieces across various platforms such as Reddit and DeviantArt. Nowadays, you might recognize her most as one of the main freelance artists Scott has contacted to work on various pieces of media for the franchise:

The covers for Tales from the Pizzaplex 4-8, the cover of Fazbear Frights Graphic Novel Volume #3, and doing all of the illustrations for The Silver Eyes: Graphic Novel.

The original artwork for created The Official Five Nights at Freddy's Coloring Book, The Official Five Nights at Freddy's How to Draw Book, and most recently a handful of assets that were used in The Character Encyclopedia.

And most importantly, various assets for Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, Ultimate Custom Night, Freddy in Space 2, Security Breach: Fury's Rage, and Freddy in Space 3: Chica in Space. As well as being one of the designers involved with the creation of the Glamrock animatronics and Vanny in Security Breach.

Tracing Allegations:

This is without the doubt the most well known, widely discussed, and debated topic in this thread.

On 12/4/2017, the game "Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator" was released on steam. This was the first game in the series that PinkyPills had released on, working on artwork for the Fruity Maze minigame, and in particular the various advertisements seen in the office gameplay. Upon release, people started discussing the possibility of whether or not the hands and feet of the Lally's Lollies and Fiztime Pop Soda advertisements were traced or not, pointing out similarities with artwork of Mickey Mouse.

On 1/7/2024, PinkyPills made a response to this on her website talking about how many users were upset about the similarities and understandably concluded that the art must have been traced and thus stolen, as well as stating that it was true that she did draw inspiration from Mickey Mouse to create the designs used in the advertisements. At that time, feeling it would be be amusing to draw a parody of a well-known character, and that the community might appreciate it, mentioning Cuphead's popularity as an example.

She then states that when she became aware of the controversary, she immediately contacted Scott and informed him of her mistake. She then received a prompt response, which for contractual reasons, she can not disclose the contents of.

Following this, she talks about how more of her previous work were compared to pre-existing art from other franchises, stock photos, etc. She then explains that instead of commenting on the accusations at the time, she decided to delete all relevant artworks as a consequence.

Lastly, she mentions that while she can not address each individual case where one of the artworks in question resembled another image. She states that the reasons for the parallels were due the usage of stock photos as reference, redrawing characters with vector-based media, using very famous poses, or in the case of what happened with FFPS, the intentional parody of another character.

In her response, PinkyPills mentions that some of her previous work had been speculated to have been traced in the past. The following is a list of a handful of examples most frequently brought up during discussions, make of them as you will.

On 11/2/2016, PinkyPills posted a piece titled "Ballora PinUp". This piece has been frequently compared to a pre-existing stock photo.

On 6/6/2016, PinkyPills posted a piece titled "FNaF Tarot – Complete." This piece has been frequently compared with the original renders from FNaF World.

In particular, people have pointed this out with the Toy Chica art.

As well as the artwork of Balloon Boy and JJ.

PinkyPills posted a piece titled "Sweet Dreams". This piece has been frequently compared to a pre-existing piece of the Joker from Batman.

PinkyPills posted a piece of art of Classic Foxy, This piece has been frequently compared with a frame of Foxy from his FNaF 1 jumpscare.

However, there are two particular instances we will be going over in-depth as they're some of the few instances in which Pinky has directly responded to the claims about particular pieces. Otherwise, she has been known to either ignore such allegations or block those who bring it up.

On 3/16/2017, PinkyPills released the first page of her comic "Daydreaming". Upon release, people began pointing out the similarities between the final panel and a stock photo of a hand using a calculator.

Pinky's responses to these accusations consisted of the following: She ruled off a lot of the comments as people looking for ways to make her look bad either due to jealously, immaturity, or people being a bunch of "drama teenies". She expressed that she wished she could disable comments on the post, finding a lot of the people commenting dumb, and would openly respond to people saying that she blocked them.

She also stated that she felt tracing wasn't anything bad nor did she admit to doing so, and that overlaying an image over another one doesn't prove anything.

If you'd like to read through the majority of her replies from that thread on your own, here is a link to an imgur thread compiling them.

On 8/31/2016, PinkyPills posted artwork of Mangle titled "September PNG". Upon release, a user asked PinkyPills directly if she had traced the endo head. They also decided to overlay the two to make sure it was just a coincidence, and expressed that they weren't sure.

PinkyPills replied to this stating that she never traces and that she probably used the image as the reference. The user replied pointing out the usage of the word "probably" to which PinkyPills responded by stating she had worked on the head awhile ago, she didn't need to explain herself for the way she worked, and that the images didn't match. Another user replied disagreeing with her to which she ended the discussion by saying "No they don't. There are several details what obviously DONT match. Anyway I never trace, end of discussion."

If you'd like to read through the majority of her replies from that thread on your own, here is a link to an imgur thread compiling them.

The comic series "Daydreaming":

On 3/16/2017, PinkyPills released the first page of her comic "Daydreaming". The comic lasted for 6 pages and depicted her version of William staring at an injured girl through a window and fantasizing about her.

This comic would become the subject of contention in the community after people expressed their concerns with the depiction of William in the comic, feeling William's fantasy was sexually fueled. This idea would spread more when previous messages made by PinkyPills on Steam and DeviantArt were uncovered. With the former being a comment she made on the steam forums in 2015 about how she believed Purple Guy was a pedophile,while the latter was of an interaction between her and LadyFiszi where she asked if Fiszi's take on Purple Guy had a boner or not.

On 1/6/2024, She made a response stating her goal at the time was to portray the madness in the mind of a child murderer and offer an explanation for those horrific crimes, and that her intention was never depicting him as having sexual thoughts upon seeing the girl. She follows this up by stating that once she became aware of how unsettling the comic appeared to the community as a result of it being misinterpreted, she deleted it from all of her social media channels.

In regards to the Steam Forum post, she states that it has nothing to do with the 2017 comic. As well as mentioning that at the the time, "The Silver Eyes" hadn't been released and that William was only known as the "Purple Guy" with no additional information on what he was like.

She ends the response stating that she regrets not handling the topic with more sensitivity and understanding and that she hopes such incidents will not be repeated.

Comments and artwork about Scott Cawthon:

On 8/7/2016, A user by the name of MrMechabre made a post titled "Confess your sins, FNaF Fans". One of the users who commented on that thread was PinkyPills where she confessed to a handful of things such as finding Springtrap cute, she had played World for more than 100 hours, and that she was collecting bootleg photos of FNaF plushies.

However, the two that have sparked discussion in recent time were her admitting to starting frequent discussions about sex in the FNaF Forums on steam, as well as stating that when she touches herself, she thinks about Scott Cawthon. With many users expressing that they found that behavior, especially in regards to the former, inappropriate and unprofessional.

On 3/16/2024, PinkyPills posted artwork to her twitter account of Scott Cawthon in the outfit seen in the video "Matpat's Final Theory" by The Game Theorists.

A twitter user replied to the tweet with a photo of her old confession comment and with the caption "admirable that you have made a drawing with one hand", PinkyPills then responded asking how one could draw with two hands. She would on to clarify on both Reddit and Twitter that there was nothing sexual intended with her statements and that people just thought it was a dirty joke because of a comment she made years prior.

History with LadyFiszi:

For those unaware, LadyFiszi is an artist who formerly worked on the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise. She was the first member of the community to be brought on to work on the series officially, starting off with artwork for merchandise and then transitioning to doing stuff for the games and books.

While she is fairly controversial these days for a number of reasons we will not delve into here, that wasn't the case at the time of the original announcement. The announcement was pretty well received, with PinkyPills being one of the few vocal critics regarding Scott's decision.

One of the most frequently posted things from this era is a comic that was posted shortly after that announcement, which would allude to the recent events. The comic depicts PinkyPills talking to her Chica plush about the news of someone being chosen to create official art for the FNaF series. In the comic, Pinky is depicted as being upset about the news, being shown as jealous, and starts to ramble about how she's gonna prove her worth. While the Chica plush just calls her a snowflake and states that Scott likes the artist's art more than hers.

It's been speculated that this comic was a means for her to vent or that she was trying to be self aware and make fun of herself, but it's unknown what the intention of the comic was as PinkyPills has not publicly addressed it since as far as we're aware.

On May 10th, 2016, PinkyPills would leave a comment about LadyFiszi getting hired on DeviantArt.

In her comment, PinkyPills states that she wishes she could say something like congratulations but that the news had made her incredibly jealous and angry. She then states that she always had a lot of mercy in her comments, going on to say LadyFiszi's art isn't very good and her skills are kind of average, stating that she feels LadyFiszi has too much time on details like shading and lighting before stuff like anatomy. Expressing that she finds her skills with human anatomy a horror and that it breaks her heart seeing Scott working with LadyFiszi to see that somebody she feels just spams the internet with his average quality artwork and somehow manages to get that kind of notice. Ending the comment by saying that she hates her for that.

LadyFiszi would reply to this saying that she can understand how PinkyPills feels, as she has felt similar thoughts before with other artworks. She also acknowledges that she struggles with anatomy and that her technique isn't the best, however clarifies that she wasn't chosen for those. She was picked because she was able to capture the atmosphere of the world he created, and that she would only draw animatronics instead of humans. She ends her reply by saying that while PinkyPills is understandably angry, saying these things to her face is pretty rude.

PinkyPills would respond to this by saying she wishes she could say she is sorry or something, but LadyFiszi doesn't deserve the job by her mind. She then states that she knows many people will gate her for this, but she doesn't give a shit. She then says Scott must have gotten really rusty during the years with his artistic skills if he called that atmosphere, and that LadyFiszi only won with quantity because she only has 4 or 5 pieces. PinkyPills would then go on about how she wishes she had more time for fanart, she would have created so much if it would have helped to catch Scott's interest, and that it would have been better than LadyFiszi's stuff. How she would draw everything for him, as much as he wants, and that would pay on top to work for him.

She then goes on to claim that this isn't about the business anymore and is instead about the honor, stating that she has had experience for years as an illustrator and concept artist in the game industry with a lot of high ranked clients, and now "such a silly little thing like" LadyFiszi "who obviously has too much freetime" gets that chance. PinkyPills then remarks that she takes Scott's decision as a personal insult and as an insult for every professional hard working 2D artist and that this is the first time in her life that she is hating on somebody, and that it really comes from her deepest heart.

And here is a link to an imgur album showcasing the messages in full.

At some point afterwards, the two would talk once more publicly on reddit. With PinkyPills posting a comment talking about how she really wished she could see what Scott saw in Fiszi's art, stating that she went through her in anger three weeks prior, and could only find a single image she deemed 10/10.

LadyFiszi then clarified that Scott had stated he didn't hire her for the professionalism and that he could have hired any professional if he wanted to, but it was because of her animatronics.

PinkyPills then replied back stating that she knew that. Then continuing by mentioning how she could name at least 10 fanartists who she felt did better, more realistic, and more accurate art, and that she wouldn't have gone so mad if someone with professional skills were hired. She then states that she followed Fiszi's work for a long time for entertainment and that while it was better than the average stuff going around, she did not feel she was good enough to work for a AAA-developer and that she would never accept her as a professional, and that every real designer or artist would tell her the same. She admits that's there a lot of jealously, but says not to take it personally. Then goes on to say she figures that Scott saw her attempts to sell her fanart on her store and that he pitied her like "when parents pin the drawings of their children to the fridge."

At some point before 8/7/2016, PinkyPills apologized to LadyFiszi going off what was said in her confession comment, and the two seemed to have been on better terms afterwards.

On 2/27/2023, A post was made by the moderator team titled "Regarding the Situation with LadyFiszi" which went over a lot of information surrounding LadyFiszi that had come to light. Which was made with the intent of clarifying misinformation that had been spread around, and serving as a way to let users come to their own conclusion of what they thought of the situation.

At the end of the post, we had mentioned that LadyFiszi was banned from the subreddit and that there were no plans to unban her at that time.

PinkyPills saw the post and was not happy about that She left a comment expressing that she was baffled that LadyFiszi has been banned, and went on to say in a reply that all of the "issues" surrounding her and LadyFiszi had been spoken through with Scott.

She expressed that she felt the community had been pumping up issues from years prior, and that she stood with Fiszi. Mentioning that despite a troubled past, they are friends now, and that if LadyFiszi was going to be banned, we'd have to ban her too, and that would change nothing expect the community losing two more content creators. She would then leave a few replies with rebuttals against the points made about LadyFiszi's fanfiction.

Afterwards, she deleted all of her comments and replies on the thread. She'd clarify in a now deleted twitter post that she was asked by Scott to stay out of the topic.

Disney pin-ups:

On 11/3/2017, PinkyPills would make a post to r/Moana titled "At the beach. (artwork by me)". Which a PinUp depicting her nude in the sand laying on her chest. Upon posting it, several users expressed that they felt that the post was uncomfortable and creepy. With Pinky responding to a few messages in a joking manner.

Two people expressed concern regarding the age of Moana in context to the post, PinkyPills responded by asking if they had a problem with the female body and stating that there wasn't anything sexual in the post.

In response to another person stating they felt uncomfortable by the post, PinkyPills responded by saying that PinUps are nothing sexual and that if seeing a simple naked body made them feel uncomfortable then there was something wrong with them.

On 11/16/2017, PinkyPills made a follow up to her previous post titled "Moana – The Judges Have Spoken (yes, I gave her pantys :P )". This updated version of the artwork gave her panties and had various characters from the movie such as Tamatoa, Pua, and Maui ogling at her and holding signs rating her. This was met with similar backlash to the last, with Pinky mainly responding stating that "it was one more reason for me to rub it in your face ;)"

On 4/4/2024, A handful of other PinUp pieces done by PinkyPills resurfaced on Twitter consisting of artwork done of various other Disney princesses such as Snow White, Jasmine, and Pocahontas. Like with last time, many users began to express that they feel uncomfortable with them, finding these pieces more explicit due to instances of a character grabbing their bare breast and one piece being of a character tied up as an example and expressing concern due to the fact several of the characters depicted in these were canonically minors.

Previous Subreddit Bans:

On 10/18/2016, [A user by the name of robotchickenking made a post ranting about a kid in their class who wouldn't shut up about Five Nights at Freddy's being bad.] (https://old.reddit.com/r/fivenightsatfreddys/comments/586yld/this_annoying_kid_in_my_class_who_wont_shut_up/) In the post, one of the things that was brought up that frustrated them was the kid referring to Sister Location as FNaF 5.

This would lead to many people in the comments of the post discussing and debating on if Sister Location was Five Nights at Freddy's 5 or not, with two of those people being PinkyPills and myself. We had gotten into a discussion where I was of the stance that Sister Location was part of the main series and not a spin off, while PinkyPills disagreed. This eventually devolved into a heated argument where I felt Pinky was being condescending and not providing any actual counter arguments to my points and PinkyPills felt I was annoying her for no reason over something that she felt was an obvious fact.

For clarification, this was long before I became a moderator, so I was just a normal user at the time. At some point later on, one of the moderators, TheFrodo, would join the discussion and briefly have their own exchange with PinkyPills. This would lead to her being temporarily banned for Rule 2 from the subreddit for a couple days.

Here are some screenshots of a few of her now deleted comments that were managed to be archived.

On 1/26/2018, After reevaluation from the moderator team at the time, PinkyPills was banned indefinitely due to the mod team finding several instances of "tracing" and heavy referencing that was deemed too 1 to 1 with the original source material being found in her previous artwork. On top of issues stemmed from her attitude towards those who would bring those instances up or give her any criticism, with her even trying to egg on and rile up those she'd get into discussions with.

Either a month or two later, PinkyPills sent an appeal to the subreddit modmail and was unbanned.

PinkyPills and her interactions with a FNaF DeviantArt group:

On 11/2/2017, PinkyPills would try and submit an art piece titled "Let That Hair Down" to a Five Nights at Freddy's DeviantArt group. The art piece would be rejected as it was deemed too suggestive, with PinkyPills being told to read the rules.

PinkyPills would reply simply saying "Party poopers!" to which a moderator would respond that's not the type of response to give someone who isn't comfortable with the sexualization of characters, especially in a place where young minors can access it.

From here on out, the following is the testimony of one of the moderators from that group who wishes to remain anonymous. We ask that you do not attempt to reach out to, stalk, or harass this person or anyone involved with that DeviantArt group. They are trying to move on from this situation and we were granted permission to share their story. So regardless of where you stand on the matter, we ask that you leave them be.

Following the events that occurred, their interactions with PinkyPills reportedly became sexual and that she had started encouraging her friends to sexually harass them. They went on to mention that she had also repeatedly tried to continue submitting risqué or sexual artwork even after their initial confrontation, which would consistently get rejected as there was a clear rule against adult oriented content and they had even redirected artists to another group that did allow it. It was said PinkyPills was told countless times that there was a large amount of kids in their group.

Unfortunately, we were unable to get any screenshots of the events mentioned in the testimony as they no longer use DeviantArt and it's been said that PinkyPills had deleted them long ago. However screenshots of the initial confrontation do, which we link here in a imgur album.

Miscellaneous:

The "About artistic freedom, pornography and breasts." post:

On 8/15/2016, PinkyPills made a now deleted post to the subreddit titled "About artistic freedom, pornography and breasts." where she discussed her frustrations with the fact her artwork had been removed twice despite having the NSFW tag during the second attempt. She states by her mind it wouldn't need a tag in the first place, but that even with one it was still taken down which she can't do much about. She then says she doesn't accept that and would like to hear a statement by the moderators as she feels she drew Toy Chica "EXACTLY" the way she looks in the games, slightly lifting up her bib. PinkyPills follows this up by stating it was a shame that a fellow artist by the name of Bizounette couldn't show their drawings because the moderators didn't know what porn was.

A user then replied expressing that they felt PinkyPills was adding boobs to a character that didn't have them and making them act provocatively, which they felt didn't had much a place with a series about a haunted kid's pizzeria. PinkyPills replied saying we didn't know what was under her bib, asking what the problem was if a child saw breasts, and then commenting that she felt the user's models didn't have much to do with FNaF either.

What followed was a heated discussion between the two about whether or not the user was letting their personal preferences set limits on what someone can do, if PinUps were sexual by nature or not, and what the difference between the user's personal work and the Toy Chica art were. It eventually ended with the two telling each other to read through the thread again and that they thought the other was avoiding a lot of what was said.

At some point, another user posts their own comment disagreeing with several points in the post. In particular that PinkyPills drew Toy Chica exactly like her in-game counterpart and that the original post wouldn't need a tag. They also state the whole point of a pin-up is to be suggestive, so her post would be fine as long as it's tagged. PinkyPills then replies arguing that pin-ups aren't suggestive, bringing up the origin of the term, and that porn and pin ups are two different things.

From here on out, both users from before would reply and share their disagreements with the points PinkyPills was making, with the main recurring instance being them clarifying that they weren't saying boobs = porn but saying that giving them to a character who doesn't have them and making it the focus of the piece was questionable. Pinky would argue against this by mentioning that real women with breast that size existed and that other FNaF characters had them too, so it wasn't an issue and that they simply had an issue with breast.

Eventually, both discussions would end with the following. The first user would admit to being a sarcastic butt to her because they felt she was full of herself, while PinkyPills would make several replies consisting of "I'm not talking to you anymore" and one where she stated she doesn't respect them anymore.

Then the second user would reply to PinkyPills' last comment of that chain stating that they found her hypocritical and questions how anyone could respect her given she hates everyone who proves her wrong or has a different opinion than her. PinkyPills would then reply admitting she was drunk, that she loved them, and that people like them challenging her each day makes her reflect on her actions and habits. As well as remember why she she chose that job and "loves drawing titties".

Here is an imgur album containing the now deleted post and both comment chains, for those who want to know what happened in more detail.

As for why the Toy Chica post was removed in the first place. From my understanding after talking with a former moderator, the reason was the following:

The reason why it was removed was because it was intentionally suggestive/provocative. They never had an issue with "female shapes and breasts" nor did they think it was pornographic, if they did then every Ballora post would have been removed. It was just clearly a suggestive pin-up where she had given Toy Chica human-shaped breasts to be more sexually explicit. I was also told that had Toy Chica looked exactly like she did in-game like PinkyPills claimed, it probably would have been left up.

Argument over the Artist Flair:

For context, early on in the history of the subreddit, there were special text flairs given out by the moderators for people who frequently posted artwork, fangames, stories, etc to the subreddit. From our understanding, they were removed due to them causing strife and people who didn't have them would get upset.

On 8/31/2016, PinkyPills posted artwork of Mangle titled "September PNG". One of the moderators at the time, Squidnow_Amiibo, left a comment wondering if people reporting the post for Rule 4 were just messing around. PinkyPills then responded by saying she hoped they drowned in reports.

What followed was the two going back and forth, Squidnow asking why, and PinkyPills stating it's because she was upset her "Titty Chica" post was removed and that she didn't like them because they didn't want to give her an artists flair. Squidnow then brought up that they had remembered complimenting her art and asked if she could provide a link to where they said she didn't deserve one. Pinky then rebutted with "and I want 1 Million €." and that they were both out of luck, and to look up the reddit history themselves.

Squidnow pointed out that they were unable to find anything and felt Pinky hated them for no reason. Pinky follows this up by saying that she tells them not to put words in my mouth as she said she didn't like them, not that she hated them. She then recounts her perspective of what happened stating that when she was new there, Squidnow told her not to ask for a flair and that she would get it when she was "ready". PinkyPills felt this was pretty rude, given it would take her 6 weeks to get one in the end.

Squidnow replied stating that they felt she being quite hypocritical by saying "don't put words in my mouth", because she told people they said "you didn't deserve one" when they said "you will get one when you're ready", and that any other mod would've said what they said given she had just started posting there.

Here is an imgur album containing the full comment chain.

Missing Children Incident Artwork:

On 8/30/2022, PinkyPills posted artwork on her twitter of the Missing Children with the caption "#InternationalDayoftheDisappeared2022"

For those unaware, The International Day of the Disappeared is a day created to draw attention to the fate of those who have gone missing through conflict, migration and natural disasters, and to show solidarity towards all who have been affected. The International Day of the Disappeared is held on August 30th of each year.

Upon the release of the post, many users would react finding the usage of the hashtag very insensitive and disrespectful. PinkyPills would quickly delete the tweet and repost it 37 minutes later with a new caption saying "thanks for bringing the previous unsensitive hashtag to my attention, I am so sorry!-"

However, many users still expressed criticism towards the post. In particular, arguing that Pinky should have held off longer before reposting it, so it was no longer on the 30th.

Conclusion:
All in all, we'd like for you all to come to your own conclusion on the matter. This thread will be the only place in which discussion of the matter will be allowed at this current time, however please remember to keep the guidelines in mind when posting a comment. Make sure to be respectful and civil to people even if you strongly disagree with them on a matter.

We also ask that you do not reach out to, stalk, or harass ANYONE mentioned in this post regardless of how you may feel about the matter. We're only mentioning everything here for the sake of transparency.

Which also for transparency, we'd like to mention that PinkyPills is currently banned from the subreddit and there are no plans to unban her at this time.

We'd also like to clarify that we do not have any contact with Scott, so we have no clue if an official response to the situation will be given by either him or PinkyPills. That is entirely their decision and given previous instances, might not occur. This post was made with the primary intent of informing people of the situation and letting them come to their own conclusion.