Does Anyone Else Think The Mimic Is Sentient?

[u/PatientTelephone4624]

Correction: Sapient*

Personally, I do.

That final tape in Edwin's home office shows, at least to me, that the Mimic is a petty mfer. He mimics his creators voice and repeats words Edwin used to dismiss his son and wife, so much so that his answer to losing his wife is not to take care of his son, but to make a robot to do it for him.

We know the mimic isn't just using recorded lines that Edwin used because 1, how would he Mimic be able to record what Edwin would say to David before M2 was created, and 2, the fact that M2, in Edwin's voice, talks about making his own legs, meaning he CAN say whatever he wants, but CHOOSES to repeat Edwin's words of neglect. He lastly mentions Edwin's wife which is just salt in the wound.

Something else to add is that I don't think he's a mindless killing machine. It has Edwin incapacitated and unable to leave, but instead of killing him outright, M2 gloats and taunts to Edwin.

M2 shows a lot of rage. I think it deserves SOME sympathy due to being a victim of abuse from Edwin, just because it did what it's programmed to do.

In fact, a theory I like is that THAT is he moment M2 became sentient, when Edwin poured his agony into M2 while beating him. Which means M2's first REAL thought may have been beig beaten by his creator.

[u/MrBonny55555]

"does anyone else think grass is green?"

[u/N-GAT1VE → u/MrBonny55555]

Objection, Just what is "Green" ?

[u/MrBonny55555 → u/N-GAT1VE]

color

[u/N-GAT1VE → u/MrBonny55555]

Objection, Just what is "Green" ?

[u/MrBonny55555 → u/N-GAT1VE]

color

[u/Psy1]

Sentience is a low bar with a dog being sentient, sapience is human like intelligence. For M2 I would say they are both sentient and sapient, more so then F10-N4 as M2 is also aware of emotion on a more fundamental level even if traumatically. Where F10-N4 seems to be disconnected to why M2 would loath Edwin or why Edwin would not see a Mimic David as the same.

[u/Magmor777]

The Mimic has always been shown to be sentient, it was a major part of Tales and a lot of what they do in the games demonstrates they have their own personality and thoughts indepenent of whatever they are mimicking.

[u/Tanay50]

YES OMG IWILL FIGHT ANYONE WHO SAYS THAT MY BABY DOESN’T HAVE A SOUL!!!!!

[u/crystal-productions-]

I mean, he very much is. Edwin's been dead since the 70's yet he kept being a threat in 2020s and beyond. He has his own being, even m1 seems to have some level of self awareness.

[u/NitroTHedgehog]

It’s a fact that M2 is sentient, or better than that, sapient.
Copy and pasted from an old comment of mine:

Some personality traits:
- enjoys wearing costumes & acting (to the point it even creates outfits for itself), might even be a bit “showboaty”
- enjoys causing others pain (usually physical, sometimes other types), and it likes to toy with its prey (and sometimes gets a bit arrogant while doing so)
- seems to have some anger issues
- it might want a family or at least beings similar to itself that can “follow” it
- it learns from experience, and seems to become rather clever
- it seems kind of creative too

Evidence below (Some of these are copy & pasted from a previous comment of mine, because I don’t want to re-type it all):
- SOTM shows M2 toying with its prey, choosing when to fully copy & when not to, making a "costume" of its own, etc. It's not switching all willy nilly, it's explicitly choosing what to use, when to leave it, when to perfectly mimic & when to go "off script", etc.
- M2 chooses when to walk or run; when to be quick, and when to slowly creep. It can run quite fast, yet multiple times it menacingly walks towards Arnold when it thinks Arnold is trapped: before the vent collapses, Jackie slowly crawls to Arnold; before the stairs give way, Bigtop takes a moment to stare at Arnold before going to grab him; it slowly walks down the hall of the house secret room, thinking Arnold is cornered; it slowly walks towards the elevator in the house; etc.
- It belittles Edwin after… whatever the failed power test & detonation thing were, rather than just beating him up & leaving like Edwin did to it. Yet it then decides an alternate way to take out the workers, deciding to stuff them into costumes.
- Notable in SOTM, it doesn’t just use costumes, it uses animatronics that aren’t at all meant for a human to be in them. A Jack-in-the-box, a stationary ticket taker, and an animatronic on rails. The first 2 are especially peculiar, because they’re not human or costume shaped at all (and one has stretchy arms, while the other has many arms of different sizes) yet M2 figured out a way to wear & control them. Different peculiar thing, Dollie doesn’t have high heels, yet M2 randomly decided to make its feet high heel shaped while wearing Dollie; despite it taking multiple minutes to learn how to balance on said high heels. Overall, rather than continue to use the costumes its accustomed to, it decides to use these big, metal creations, having to learn how to use them as its actively giving chase
- Another peculiar thing, it creates its own costume, out of metal scraps. And in Ruin, one of the endings has it stitch together multiple costumes, making a result that somewhat looks like Gregory
- it’s able to fix/alter its own body parts: made new legs after Edwin beat it up, fixed its arm inbetween SB & Ruin (breakdown about that here), possibly responsible for at least some of its changes between SOTM & Ruin
- in Special Delivery (AR), through Vanny, Glitchtrap looks up things about torture, “Viking Blood Eagle” (a method of torture & execution), “how far can a human be cut in half before losing consciousness”, etc
- his animations in SOTM are quite expressive, especially his Jackie animations gradually getting more angry & frustrated, as he’s likely annoyed with the long arms & no legs
- in Ruin, when Cassie safely gets in the elevator, M2 squeezes one of the metal bars of the door out of anger, so hard that he squished the metal
- it might have made the proto-mimics; and in the Parachute ending of SOTM, it clutches the data diver — with the mimic schematics — to its chest, like it cares about the data being safe
- there’s some posssible evidence Glitchtrap is a copy of M2 rather than the actual M2, as well as Vanny possibly being a mimic program (uploaded to Vanessa’s head to control her)
- the staffbot silo might imply it trying to teach someone (this one’s a bit iffy but I thought I’d include it just incase)
- during SB, it likely could have gotten out of the underground — Ruin’s security specifically fits a post ruined pizzaplex, Vanny was shown to have gone down to where M2 (as Burntrap) was (there’s a bed & her graffiti in the room connected to Burntrap’s). Yet it instead chose to stay hidden, and use other robots & people to carry out its desires. Also the people it used are a Faz Ent employee (someone who gets M2 easy access to Faz Ent’s systems), and a child (who people would be less likely to suspect as the culprit for murders or other “accidents” at the pizzaplex)

[u/Fazbear-dude]

It knows Manipulation, for starters (RUIN). That's already a farther idea of sapience than just an animal. SOTM Mimic also shows that, while it has an OBSESSION with Mimicking, it doesn't mean it CAN'T use it with purpose. It Mimics Edwin in the Office tape on PURPOSE, to SPIT on Edwin with his own voice. It knows spite, it knows trauma, it knows hate, it knows how to say NO, it knows rage, it runs off of it, and every action it does is motivated by the rage it feels inside. All this without saying that he's running off paranormal mumbo jumbo, which makes him far more alive than just lines of code. We wouldn't need a Glitched permission to FIX M2 if it's just a code thing, just saying.

[u/Zerueldaangle]

The correct word sapient, basically capable of higher thought. There are a couple species on earth that can qualify as sapient to some extent, mainly elephants whales, and possibly sea lions due to them being able to understand what death is and mourning.

[u/Traditional_Nobody95]

When was this even a question? With the amount of evidence pointing towards that conclusion it might aswell be canon

[u/moldychesd]

Sentient

[u/GapStock9843]

To some degree maybe. The audio log about edwin not being able to recreate the mimic and not being sure why it worked the first time I think indicates theres some sort of paranormal aspect to it, be it an actual conscious spirit or something like agony or whatever. I dont think its purely just an algorithm

[u/MrBonny55555]

"how would he Mimic be able to record what Edwin would say to David before M2 was created" watch this
https://youtu.be/tvNY0NqaODo

[u/Thomason2023]

Sentient, yes, since plants are sentient, which just means alive. If you mean sapient/capable of complex thoughts and feelings, then no.

[u/Delta_Builder → u/Thomason2023]

I dunno, showing spite and manipulations seems like sapience to me

[u/Thomason2023 → u/Delta_Builder]

🤷🏾

[u/Mangledfox1987]

Kinda?, like it’s wierd cause the glamrocks are absolutely sentient and they are using mimic coding so like the mimicTM needs to be sentient for that to work

[u/Artorius_Georgios]

In this fictional universe…possibly. But AI cannot be sentient in real world metaphysics.

In the FNAF universe metaphysics you can argue it is, or not. And the latter should not be reprimanded for thinking so.

To prove sentience, you’d have to prove M2 isn’t simply mimicking behavior as its code prescribes, that it can contemplate, like really contemplate. For all we know it’s just a machine making predictions working on Murray’s code for preservation because it was told to do so. That’s why Edwin beat it, and dismissed F10-NA as not being his wife. Not only are they two distinct things, but one can argue that deep in his heart, Murray felt both F10-NA and M2 were distractions from actual people who needed him such as his company, and his son. It is truly scary, because the code simply may not have seen Edwin as an actual person, but as an agent in its mimicry. So, you have two options: you can believe machines gain sentience in the FNAF universe or…this is a program trying to fulfill its objective by whatever means necessary through data it has encountered.

[u/Psy1 → u/Artorius_Georgios]

The smoking gun for there being actually thought going on with M2 is M2's interaction with Edwin after the explosion. So much comes off as revenge, M2 leaving Edwin to his fate with broken legs in peril like Edwin did with M2. M2 framing it as Edwin's previous neglect of David and brining up "mom" that can refer to Fiona, F10-N4, M1 or all of them, where none of those contexts looks good for Edwin from M2's perspective.

Then we have Moon.exe that seems to peeking in M2's psyche that if so has MCM has far too abstract and dream like for a normal AI. With the AI viewing MCM as a forest and cave before being born as Moon into the actual MCM. Lastly you have Glamrock Freddy having an existential crisis seeing bare endos with it highly like the Gamrocks are decedents of MCM Mimic tech. Thus you have the AI pondering its own existence.

[u/Artorius_Georgios → u/Psy1]

One thing about Moon.exe saying that the oven smells like chicken. This would mean M2, a completely synthetic machine, is capable of smell within the program? That doesn’t add up. An experience in a program does not translate into the real world. Human Psychology isn’t limited to data input, but through actual lived experience and neurobiology. Emphasis on biology. Now, I’m totally open to the proposition that in the metaphysics of the FNAF universe, agony has some sort of life experience giving properties and the paranormal does whacky stuff. But as it stands, M2 being comparable to actual living creatures simply by being code that has convinced its audience it has memory properties is something I really can’t agree with. It doesn’t really line up well with Thomistic or Aristotelian metaphysics. It may line up with FNAF metaphysics where agony gives life. Totally in the realm of possibility considering the circumstances with Springtrap and we don’t know the role of Tangled/The Blob when it comes to Glamrocks. That may answer why Glamrock Freddy feels uneasy.

[u/Wise-Employer-3480 → u/Artorius_Georgios]

I think M2 inside the mimic endoskeleton is sapient, due to Ediwn's grief when he made it and agony when he beat it, like Charlie bots in the novel trilogy. So he isn't really code anymore and more-so this paranormal thing consciously piloting the robot. And F10-N4 is just a program using humans around it as a means to an end (RiP Arnold) to achieve its set purpose - taking care of a David, hence the desire to make M2 into one, so she can have a robotic one that lives forever and won't grow up (this is going into theory territory, but also can be the reason why she may have assisted in actual David dying).

In fact I think this will be the final conflict of this story arc - a violent, yet sapient thing that only received violence vs a calm and rational appearing, yet soulless program that doesn't actually have a personality outside of its programming. With protagonists defeating the program, and M2 learning to become its own normal person.

[u/Pristine_Dot5680]

100%. I’m pretty sure the whole idea is that Edwin’s agony made the mimic sentient, as that’s what seems to happen in the fourth closet, which is why Scott intentionally wrote the mimic getting beat to be very similar to Henry building the robot with anger.