Dead by Daylight Teases Major Horror Franchise Killer Coming Soon

Dead by Daylight’s creators shared a new teaser this week for the game’s next Chapter, and if things play out as people expect they might, we may finally see one of the most requested horror franchises come to the game. The brief, 15-second teaser has inspired hopes that the Hellraiser series will soon come to The Fog when Chapter 21 releases. There are those who aren’t convinced, however, and instead think the teaser is pointing to something much different: Five Nights at Freddy’s.

You can check out the teaser below to make the call for yourself before we dig into what other people had to say about this teaser and why both theories have their merits. The teaser shows an old TV screen filled with static and the occasional splatter of red imagery on it before the TV cuts off entirely. Up in the top-right corner of the TV are some numbers that notably come together to say “1987,” a year which is important to both the Hellraiser and Five Nights at Freddy’s theories.

Hellraiser has long been a licensed property that people have wanted to see in Dead by Daylight, so people have naturally been conditioned to look for Hellraiser hints in these sorts of teasers. However, it’s the Hellraiser suspicions are looking pretty reasonable right now. The debut movie, Hellraiser, released in 1987 which connects back to the only numbers shown in the teaser. People were also quick to reply with the scene below from the movie that similarly features a static-filled TV.

While this is the teaser people have been waiting on, Behaviour Interactive has been dropping more hints recently, too. Some of those came in the form of audio files while others were hidden letters. These hints apparently came together to blatantly spell out “Hellraiser,” though we haven’t personally seen all those hints to verify that ourselves.

For those thinking this might be related to Five Nights at Freddy’s, the TV alone is the biggest bit of evidence for that theory. TVs and monitors are synonymous with the Five Nights at Freddy’s experience across the franchise’s games as people watch monitors for incoming threats, so it’s not a bad guess. There are also references to the year 1987 within the franchise lore, but Hellraiser still seems to be the stronger guess of the two.

These teasers are typically followed by a reveal not long afterwards, so we’ll know soon what Dead by Daylight’s 21st Chapter holds.