Universal Studios and the Jim Henson Creature Shop Team Up to Bring the Terrifying Fun of ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ to Life for Horror Nights 2025

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Five Nights at Freddy’s and the Halloween Horror Nights haunted house.]

Halloween Horror Nights is truly the most highly anticipated annual event for horror fans, and 2025 is bringing the endless scares, inescapable chainsaws and undeniable fun to Universal Studios Hollywood on select nights from September 4th through November 2nd. With eight haunted houses, both inspired by well-known horror properties and created from original twisted ideas – including Five Nights at Freddy’s, Terrifier, Fallout, WWE Presents: The Horrors of The Wyatt Sicks, Jason Universe, Poltergeist, Scarecrow: Music by Slash, and Monstruos 3: The Ghosts of Latin America – scare zones, stilt-walking crows, The Purge: Dangerous Waters live stunt show, a Terror Tram taken over by Blumhouse characters, a chef-curated menu of themed food and drinks, and showings of the all-original horror anime short Chainsaw Man: The Chaos, based on the popular Japanese manga, you won’t escape what’s lurking in the dark.

Collider, along with a handful of other press outlets, was given a peak behind the scenes of the Five Nights at Freddy’s house where we learned from John Murdy, Creative Director and Executive Producer of HHN for Universal Studios Hollywood, all about what went into bringing the giant animatronics to life in scenes from the film. We’ve compiled the highlights and included some of the cool details that you should look out for. All images have been taken by Christina Radish.

‘Five Nights at Freddy’s House

Inside Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Place, you’ll come face to face with Freddy, Chica, Bonnie and Foxy, who will be up to all sorts of mischief as you walk through the house.

• The creative team started curating the slate for Horror Nights 2025 in March 2024, and since their fans had been asking for Five Nights at Freddy’s for years, they wanted to finally fulfill that wish. Hollywood and Orlando always collaborate, but the houses coast to coast are different based on how different the spaces are. However, this time around, they had to function like one big team, co-conceiving the house together, and the houses are very similar with only minor differences. Hollywood took care of all the audio for both houses while Orlando took care of the video elements.

• The house is based on the first Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, and they hit everything that they were hoping to, including working with the Jim Henson Creature Shop to create the animatronics for both coasts. Since there is no way to have people in the character suits for 45 minutes at a time, they had to use a combination of animatronics and puppets. Within the house, you’ll come across fully functional animatronics for Freddy, Chica, Foxy and Bonnie.

• You’ll enter through Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Place, which has accurate flooring and custom-printed carpet to match the movie. On the stage in the center, you’ll find Freddy, the most sophisticated animatronic ever built for Horror Nights, with functioning eyebrows, eyeballs, ears, head, mouth, arms, etc. When it’s showtime, everything will be alive with a disco ball, lights and Freddy doing his thing to The Romantics “Talking in Your Sleep.” There will be a moment when Freddy powers down, but then his head turns and his eyes light up, and you’ll realize something isn’t quite right.

• The ghost kids connected to the animatronics will also appear throughout the house to provide classic jump scares. You’ll also see the guys who broke in and trashed the place from the movie.

• When you go into the kitchen, you’ll run into Chica and ghost kid Chica will be causing the fan to turn and pots to rattle. Cupcake will be making noise in the refrigerator and pop out to surprise guests. You will also come across puppeted arms in the hallways that can reach out to grab you.

• When you reach the security station, there is no scare in that particular scene. There will be a programmed audio and lighting sequence with security monitor shots of the facility. No one is around, but then the switch gets thrown and, all of a sudden, the characters look into the camera. You will also hear Cupcake trying to break through the vent. On the table in front of the monitors is a tin foil ball and a red and white striped cup as homage to the movie.

• You’ll pass by an Employee of the Month board made up of photos of Five Nights at Freddy’s content creators. They had cameos in the film, so they got permission to use photos of them on the wall in the house.

• The house will have smells but not gag smells. You’ll get the scent of pizza and an oily smell in the tech room. It’s more about acting like there’s something still lingering in the environment since it was a family entertainment center.

• Down one hallway, you’ll come across a Foxy animatronic that’s on a track. That way, it can keep moving forward toward you, as you make your way down the hall. You’ll come across Freddy utilizing a trick that was inspired by the Mega Chucky in the Chucky Horror Nights house. There’s a track above the performer’s head on a traveler and the performer is strapped in. The monitor for the performer to look at is in the character and they have shoes within the feet of the character, so that they can take steps. You’ll also find Bonnie in the janitor’s closet, where he’ll raise his arms to grab a victim.

• The finale sequence of the house takes place inside the storage room. In the first part of the storage room, you get attacked by Foxy, and then by ghost kid Foxy who is hiding in one of the video games. In the second part, you’ll come across Freddy Fazbear, and Chica and Cupcake. And the last character that tries to attack you is Yellow Rabbit, which is also a Mega Chucky style scare that can take steps toward you. You can see the face, beard and clothing of the person who is supposed to be inside of the Yellow Rabbit costume.

Halloween Horror Nights is at Universal Studios Hollywood on select nights from September 4 – November 2, 2025. Check out the trailer: