Springtrap is the strangest entry on the Dead by Daylight roster, and not because of the rabbit suit. Behaviour Interactive announced him as Springtrap, the game calls him The Animatronic, and the character inside the suit is William Afton. All three are correct — and that split is why most of what players repeat about this chapter is half-right.
This guide applies to Dead by Daylight Patch 10.1.2a, live as of 24 September 2026. Every power value, perk line and score event below comes from Behaviour Interactive's published patch notes, from 9.0.0 on 17 June 2025 to the 10.2.0 Public Test Build posted on 15 September 2026. PTB changes are labelled and kept separate from what is live — which matters more than usual right now, because the biggest change to this Killer in over a year is sitting on a test server with no release date and is already being written up elsewhere as though it shipped.
Quick answer: The Five Nights at Freddy's Killer is William Afton, "The Animatronic", announced by BHVR as Springtrap. He released 17 June 2025 with Patch 9.0.0 as a Killer-only chapter — there is no FNAF Survivor. He moves at 110% / 4.4 m/s with a 24-metre Terror Radius, costs 500 Auric Cells, and as one of the game's 19 licensed Killers he has no Iridescent Shard price at all. His power, Fazbear's Fright, is a throwable Fire Axe that blocks healing until it is pulled out, plus a map-wide Security System of 7 doors and cameras both sides can use. His perks are Help Wanted, Phantom Fear and Haywire — and Help Wanted is being rebuilt on the 10.2.0 PTB, not on live.
Who is DBD's Springtrap, and why is he called The Animatronic?
Behaviour Interactive's launch announcement on 17 June 2025 is unambiguous about the name it went to market with: "Dead by Daylight: Five Nights at Freddy's includes a new Killer, Springtrap. Purchasing this add-on unlocks an exclusive Stack of Pizzas badge and the Vent Crawl banner."
In game, that Killer is listed as The Animatronic, the same way Michael Myers is The Shape and Pinhead is The Cenobite: licensed characters almost always get a generic in-game title while the licensed name lives on the store page. The human identity is William Afton. So if you searched "dbd springtrap" and landed on "The Animatronic", it is the same Killer under its in-game name.
Two more naming traps. "Freddy" in Dead by Daylight does not mean Freddy Fazbear — the Killer players call Freddy is The Nightmare, Freddy Krueger. And the chapter shipped with no Survivor. BHVR's launch list contained exactly three items: the Killer, the Stack of Pizzas badge, and the Vent Crawl banner. Five Nights at Freddy's is one of the game's Killer-only chapters, alongside Ghost Face, Leatherface, Hellraiser, Chucky, Tokyo Ghoul and Jason. Our complete Dead by Daylight killers list breaks down all 44 by original versus licensed.
What does Fazbear's Fright actually do?
Fazbear's Fright has two halves that most guides cover as if they were one power. They are not, and they are balanced very differently.
The first half is the Fire Axe. From the 9.0.0 patch notes, verbatim: "If the Axe hits a Survivor, the weapon becomes embedded in them, leaving the Survivor vulnerable. Survivors must remove the Axe before they can be healed." That last clause is the whole point of the weapon. An embedded Axe is not damage — it is a healing lockout, and throwing it into a Survivor who is about to be healed buys more time than the hit itself does.
Removal carries real score, which is how you can tell BHVR intended both sides to engage with it. Patch 9.0.1, on 26 June 2025, added three score events: Do It Yourself, 350 Survival points for pulling an Axe out of yourself; Friend in Need, 500 Altruism points for pulling it out of someone else; and Door to Door, 100 Survival points for entering a Security Door.
What is the Security System, and why do Survivors ignore it?
The second half of the power is the map feature, and it is the most unusual thing this chapter added to Dead by Daylight. From 9.0.0, again verbatim in structure: 7 Security Doors spawn randomly across the map, each fitted with a Camera, and both Killer and Survivors can use them.
For Survivors, Camera View cycles every camera on the map, lets you travel to the door you are looking through, and can reveal the Killer's aura. Overuse depletes a limited battery, forcing a reboot when it runs dry. For The Animatronic the doors are a travel network: he moves between them with or without battery power, exits from any other door, and moving to a door a Survivor is already using grabs them.
That last rule is why experienced Survivors treat the camera system as optional, and it is the loudest complaint on the subreddit. Players describe the cameras and doors as "an optional mechanic for survivors" that should be "like Xeno Turrets or Hux EMPs, integral to stopping the killer instead of just a random extra". Fair as a design note — but as advice it is backwards. Because the doors are optional, most teams never contest them, which hands the Killer a free travel network. Use the cameras in short bursts to locate him before committing to a generator, never as a place to sit.
The chapter also shipped its own map, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Our full Dead by Daylight maps and realms list covers where it sits in the rotation.
What are The Animatronic's three perks on Patch 10.1.2a?
These are the live values right now. Numbers are shown as Tier I / II / III.
Help Wanted. Damaging a Generator makes it Compromised, and only one Generator can be Compromised at a time. When a Compromised Generator is completed, your successful basic-attack cooldowns are 25 / 25 / 25% faster for 40 / 50 / 60 seconds. The percentage does not scale with tier — only the duration does.
Phantom Fear. A Survivor inside your Terror Radius who looks in your direction screams and has their aura revealed for 2 / 2 / 2 seconds, on an 80 / 70 / 60 second cooldown. A long-cooldown information perk, not a chase perk.
Haywire. Exit Gate switches at 80% progress or higher regress at 80 / 90 / 100% of the gate-opening speed, with the lights flickering randomly while regressing. It only works at the very end of a match, which is why it rarely appears in serious builds — see our best killer perks tier list for perks that earn a slot.
One interaction from 9.0.0's fix list: Help Wanted and Machine Learning used to stack when activated multiple times, and that stacking was patched out. Anyone still recommending the double-cooldown combo is working from 2025 information.
What is the 10.2.0 PTB doing to Help Wanted?
On 15 September 2026 BHVR posted the 10.2.0 Public Test Build notes containing a full rework of Help Wanted. It is not live. BHVR has published no 10.2.0 release date. Live players are still on 10.1.2a with the one-Generator version described above.
The PTB text, verbatim, reads: "Whenever you damage a Generator, it is compromised." / "Your successful basic-attack cooldowns are 25% shorter for 100/110/120s (was 40/50/60s)" / "Generators not being repaired regress at 150% speed for 100/110/120s (NEW)" / "Other Generators lose compromised. (NEW)" / "Up to 3 Generators can be compromised at a time. (was 1 Generator)".
Read the shape rather than the numbers: the duration roughly doubles, the Compromised cap triples, and the perk gains a regression component it never had. If it ships unchanged, Help Wanted stops being a niche chase-cooldown perk and becomes a genuine slowdown perk. PTB values are proposals, though, and BHVR has adjusted them between test and live many times.
Phantom Fear and Haywire are untouched in the 10.2.0 PTB. If you see a tier list crediting this Killer with a three-perk overhaul, it is wrong. For everything else in that build, our 10.2.0 PTB breakdown has the full list.
What has actually changed since launch?
Patch 9.5.0 (17 March 2026) touched Help Wanted and the Endo CPU add-on, but only in the "descriptions updated" section — wording, not balance. Several third-party pages list it as a Help Wanted buff. It was not.
Patch 9.6.0 (28 April 2026) is the real one, a set of quality-of-life buffs to the power's tempo:
- Axe recall from the environment: 6 seconds, down from 7
- Axe recall from a Survivor: 8 seconds, down from 10
- Battery consumption per Camera in use: 6%, down from 7%
- Battery consumption when a Survivor teleports: 12%, down from 15%
- The Grab Axe action moved from the Attack input to the Power input
That last change is not cosmetic. Moving Grab Axe off the attack button removed a class of misinput that used to cost players entire chases.
The same patch moved two add-ons in opposite directions. Restaurant Menu (Common) had its minimum Axe-retrieval-time reduction cut from 20% to 10% — a nerf. Access Panel (Very Rare) had its Killer Instinct reveal radius around Security Doors widened from 4 metres to 6 metres while aiming — a buff.
One correction, because it circulates: the 9.6.0 line "Increases the Chain bound window by 20% (was 50%)" belongs to The Mastermind, under the Egg (Gold) add-on. It has nothing to do with The Animatronic.
How much does Springtrap cost, and can you buy him with Shards?
He costs 500 Auric Cells, the standard price for every character in the game. What he does not have is a shard price: the Iridescent Shard route exists only for original BHVR characters, which is why licensed chapters list a dollar price and Auric Cells only while original chapters add an "or 18,000 / 9,000 Iridescent Shards" line.
The Animatronic is one of the 19 licensed Killers out of 44, so the answer is a flat no. Nor do Bloodpoints help — they cannot be exchanged for Auric Cells, Iridescent Shards or Rift Fragments.
Which Five Nights at Freddy's characters are actually in the game?
One Killer, one map, and a set of cosmetics. That is the entire footprint, and it is the most misunderstood thing about the chapter.
BHVR's patch notes confirm three outfits by name: Yellow Rabbit (9.0.1, fixed again in 9.4.1 on 3 February 2026), Glitchtrap (audio fixed in 9.3.0 on 25 November 2025 and again in 10.1.2 on 8 September 2026), and Blighted Springtrap (a Mori animation fix in 10.0.3 on 21 July 2026).
Every one of those is an outfit worn by the same Killer, not a separate character — the same pattern that catches players out across the licensed roster, where HUNK is a Legion outfit rather than Resident Evil chapter content and most Silent Hill "characters" are cosmetics.
Popular community requests — Foxy on The Blight, Vanny on The Legion, a Freddy Fazbear Killer — are requests. None of them exist. One Killer, one map, some shirts is the honest inventory of the chapter. For a licensed chapter that did ship a Survivor, compare the Alien chapter.
How do you counter The Animatronic?
Four things, in order of how much they matter.
Pull the Axe out before you try to heal. Healing is blocked while it is embedded, and the 500-point Friend in Need score event exists to push teams toward co-op removal — if two Survivors are together, the healthy one does the pulling.
Do not sit in Camera View. The Killer can travel to a door a Survivor is occupying and grab them outright. Short bursts only.
Play the battery, not the doors. The system reboots when the battery runs dry, and each camera burns 6% while each teleport costs 12%. Four Survivors cycling cameras will drain a shared resource and leave the team blind at the worst moment. Assign it to one person.
Break line of sight against Phantom Fear. It only triggers when you look at him inside his Terror Radius — and at 24 metres that radius is shorter than the 32-metre standard, so you are often inside it before you expect to be.
He sits in the middle of the roster rather than at the top — see where he lands in our September 2026 killer tier list.
Keep reading:
- Every Dead by Daylight killer, ranked and listed
- DBD killer tier list, September 2026
- 10.2.0 PTB patch notes breakdown
FAQ
Is Springtrap the same as The Animatronic in Dead by Daylight? Yes. Behaviour Interactive announced and sells the Killer as Springtrap, the game lists him as The Animatronic, and the character inside the suit is William Afton. All three names refer to one Killer.
Is there a Five Nights at Freddy's Survivor in DBD? No. BHVR's launch announcement listed exactly three items in the chapter — the new Killer, the Stack of Pizzas badge and the Vent Crawl banner. Five Nights at Freddy's is a Killer-only chapter.
Can you buy Springtrap with Iridescent Shards? No. He costs 500 Auric Cells and, as one of the game's 19 licensed Killers, he has no Iridescent Shard price at all. Only original BHVR characters can be bought with shards.
Is Freddy Fazbear a killer in Dead by Daylight? No. The Killer players call "Freddy" is The Nightmare, Freddy Krueger, from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy Fazbear appears only as part of the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza map.
Was Help Wanted buffed? Not on live. As of Patch 10.1.2a it still compromises one Generator at a time and shortens basic-attack cooldowns by 25% for 40 to 60 seconds. The three-Generator rework exists only on the 10.2.0 Public Test Build, and BHVR has published no release date for it.
Is Glitchtrap a separate killer? No. Glitchtrap is a cosmetic outfit for The Animatronic, confirmed in BHVR's own 9.3.0 and 10.1.2 patch notes, as are Yellow Rabbit and Blighted Springtrap. None of them change his power, perks or stats.
Do Survivors have to use the Security Doors? No, and that is the central complaint about the chapter's design. The cameras and doors are entirely optional for Survivors, unlike the Xenomorph's turrets or the Singularity's EMPs. Ignoring them is viable but hands the Killer an uncontested travel network.
