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| “ | Time to play! | ” |
— Jackie's most common quote.
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Jackie in the Box, or just Jackie, is a large jack-in-the-box style animatronic who acts as the first major antagonist in Five Nights at Freddy's: Secret of the Mimic. Acting as sort of the face and mascot of the game, Jackie was first properly revealed at 2024's PAX West as a physical prop, and was heavily promoted in the game's marketing.
She spends the majority of her screen time in the game being piloted by the game's main antagonist and titular character, the Mimic.
Appearance[]
Normal[]
Jackie is a large animatronic clown with long, orange, spring-like arms and red curly hair tied into pigtails. Her mask is curved into a large grin with red lipstick, and she also has a large red nose, matching eyebrows and eyelashes, blue eye-shadow and bright pink cheeks. The inside of her mouth is colored pink and has a large grey speaker in the center of her tongue. She wears a white shirt with frilled shoulders, a large red bowtie and red buttons. On her head, she wears a large white party hat with a yellow frilled rim, orange puffball on top and small black diamonds scattered around on it. Her wrists have blue and yellow cuffs on them, and the tips of her fingers are colored light blue. Notably, she is missing the entire lower-half of her body, with only a large blue tube connecting it to her box. At the top of this connecting tube is a large white tutu with red lines and diamonds decorating it. Finally, she has large cylindrical green eyes.
Jackie's music box is a large light blue box with a dark blue diamond pattern, and gold trimming. On top of the box's lid is a large red bow, and the front of the box has a decorated hand-crank used to open it.
Chase[]
Before Jackie begins to chase the player, she will rip herself out of her own box, severing the connection between her torso and the blue tube, leaving only a bit of fabric and some metallic framing and wiring. This also causes Jackie's tutu to become disconnected from her body. After she begins to pursuit of the player, Jackie's eyes appear to fall out to reveal the Mimic's spiraled orange eyes underneath. Her body begins to appear much dirtier as well as a result of having to drag herself along the floors and walls of the facility.
Damaged[]
Near the end of her chase, due to a door shutting on her head, Jackie becomes heavily damaged, losing her clown nose, and the right side of her face. Her mask, now broken open, reveals the metallic shell beneath, with cracks all around the broken area. This damaged state also results in her becoming visibly dirtier, with cracks in her lower jaw, scuffs all over her face and arms, and large gray scratch marks all over her shirt from sliding along the ground. Additionally, she gains black tear-like smudges beneath her eyes, and dark rings lining her arms.
History[]
Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted 2[]
In a small content update for Help Wanted 2, Jackie made a cameo appearance through her announcing that it was "time to play" before offering the player a puzzle to complete. Upon the puzzle's completion, Jackie is unlocked as a gallery statue.
FNaF: Secret of the Mimic[]
The player first encounters Jackie hidden inside her box inside a broken-down showroom. The progress forward, the player must pull the crank off of Jackie's box, winding it up in the process. After the player winds the box fully, Jackie will pop out and scream "time to play" before resting in a static pose. Minutes after the player leaves the room and continues forward, Jackie will suddenly appear in the doorway to a small office the player is located in, revealing to have drug her box all the way over. After failing to enter the room to catch the player, Jackie rips her upper half off her box and begins to approach the player, announcing once more that it's time to play. Just before she gets to the player, the Digi-Typer addresses Jackie, causing her to leap towards it and beat it mercilessly before tossing it through a nearby wall. Jackie then continues her approach on the player, prompting the player to head through the hole in the wall that the Digi-Typer's body made, causing them to both fall.
As the player traverses this new area, Jackie will constantly swing around them from behind bars in the wall, stalking the player. Eventually, Jackie will pop out of a vent in front of the player, prompting a chase sequence in which she uses her spring-like arms to propel herself forward. Jackie continuously destroys the area behind the player as they run, pulling down catwalks, breaking through the floor when the player crawls under it, all the while spewing distorted versions of the original animatronic's voicelines. Eventually, the player finds a large mechanical door that they can drop on Jackie just before she makes it to them, causing Jackie to become stuck and damaged, giving the player time to start up the generator nearby.
If the player takes too long to start the generator, Jackie will break loose and move rapidly towards the player, almost guaranteeing their death. If the player is successful however, they will be able to enter one final vent in which Jackie will loop around to appear in front of them and finally get ahold of the player. Jackie will attempt to move closer to the player upon grabbing them, only for the two's combined weight to cause them to fall into the main security office. Upon waking back up in said office, Jackie is nowhere to be found.
While Jackie never appears again physically, her lines are continually spouted by the Mimic during the game's final two segments.
Speculation[]
Jackie has a lot of notable similarities to Nurse Dollie, particularly in both name and appearance, with them both having a hinged jaw, a seam down the face, and a name ending in "ie". As well as this, lines in the game suggest Dollie was not the only "recycling auto-mation" animatronic made in the facility, which could suggest that Jackie was also made as a part of this line, simply having a different purpose than Dollie (entertainment over busywork and nursing). Though all of this remains unconfirmed.
Another point of speculation involves the idea that Jackie is a variant of the Marionette. This is due to the fact that the two have several similarities between them. Both appear to be loosely (or directly in the case of Jackie) inspired by the Jack-in-the-box toy, the box they come out of is decorated to appear as a giant, primarily blue, gift box, and the music of their boxes and that Jackie herself plays is "My Grandfather's Clock". On top of this, both are clown-like characters with white faces and rosy cheeks, have elongated limbs, and gain tears they had previously lacked (Marionette upon possession and Jackie upon getting damaged and covered in what appears to be oil). Additionally, Jackie gains stripes along her arms in her damaged state extremely reminiscent o Marionette's, and her temporary jumpscare scream in the games' files is that of the Nightmare Bots' scream, who are based on a version of the Marionette. Despite the clear similarities however, nothing has been confirmed regarding the connection between the two.
In addition to the above speculation, Jackie is seen to have many visual similarities with the unidentified Paper Pal in Five Nights at Freddy's 2, with the Paper Pal's long red arms and blue legs matching up somewhat to Jackie's spring-like orange arms and matching blue lower-body segment. Though like before, there is no current confirmation to their potential connection.
Trivia[]
- Jackie's eyes in the anniversary announcement are actually reused textures from Mimic's mascot appearance in RUIN, though they went unused there.
- Jackie's design holds many similarities to the Funtime animatronics, being a white-colored, circus-themed animatronic with a speaker and implied faceplates built into her design.
- However, there is currently no confirmed correlation, and it's possible that these similarities are merely a coincidence.
- Jackie's model in Help Wanted 2 lacks a normal map, meaning her only textures are the base colors for her.
- It is entirely unclear what happens to Jackie after the events of her chase, as other characters are given an explanation for why they do not continue to pursue you, but Jackie simply disappears after the vent collapses with her in it.
- The fact that her suit cannot be found in the office the player falls into suggests that the Mimic had taken it when leaving, though the suit strangely never appears again despite this.
- Jackie, for the character chosen to be the face of the game, has a considerably low amount of screen time compared to the other major antagonists, only appearing briefly before her chase sequence and completely lacking any hostile encounters before her chase sequence like Big Top, Dollie and the Mimic.
- This could imply that Jackie's role as the main face of the title was done purely because she is the first enemy encountered.
- It is unknown why this is the case, as Jackie's damaged form is never seen anywhere after Arnold wakes up from the fall that ended the chase sequence, suggesting that she is still somewhere within the facility despite never appearing.
- The only line from Jackie that can be heard in-game without the Mimic's corruption is the initial "Time to Play" line she shouts upon popping out of her box, as every line of hers after the Mimic begins piloting her body is distorted or has a lower pitch.
- Jackie's jumpscare scream is actually two audio files layered over each other, with one being Jackie's own scream, and the other being the Nightmarionne S.T.A.F.F. Bot scream.
- This was possibly done late into development, as the Nightmare Bots' scream is still labeled as a temporary file for Jackie, despite being technically used as part of her jumpscare.
- Because of this, Jackie is the first and only character to require two separate audio files for a single jumpscare.
