Dave’s life has never been happy. He’s never had any meaningful relationships of any kind, and after spending years in retail/customer service jobs, his basic ability to like or even just tolerate other people is long gone. Lacking love or connection, he has instead found hollow meaning in his long-running stay with Fazbear Entertainment, and clings to it as his final lifeline. Despite his hatred towards his job, it is the basis of his fragile identity. This is why Dave has never quit, no matter how awful things get-as far as he knows, there is nothing else waiting for him in life. He has no ambitions, nor dreams, nor family whether blood or chosen. His years on the earth have blurred together. He couldn’t tell you much about his own memories, nor what he was like as a child. To Dave, the first twenty or so years of his life may as well have never happened.

Then

In 1992, a year or so before the events of FNAF1, Dave’s entire world is thrown off balance upon learning that Kieran Caldwell (aka Phone Guy in canon) is set to quit within a week. Having worked alongside him for the past decade, Dave cannot accept him leaving, and lashes out furiously in response. In the main timeline of my canon, after days of reflection, he decides that he wishes to leave the job alongside Caldwell despite his lack of direction or plan; Dave then easily becomes attached to the idea of them forging a new life outside of Fazbear Entertainment. Unfortunately, Caldwell still meets the same bloody end as he does in game canon, devastating Dave and destroying the hope he had for such a short time. Trapped in grief and despair, he ends up staying at his job as a form of self-punishment. For the next year, Dave’s mental health spirals further, until even the one friend he has left can no longer be in his presence. He dies sometime in 1993 or early 1994 still lost in the depths of anger and hopelessness.

Now

Despite his death, Dave’s powerful and profoundly negative emotions keep him from moving on. Tied to an existence he always hated, his bitterness twists into malice and violence; he takes the form of Shadow Freddy and Shadow Bonnie in his second life. His role in leading the original animatronics to their dismantling was purely for the sake of vengeance, as he blames them for the death of Caldwell. Dave is still a ghost even in present day, still haunting both Fazbear Entertainment and the technology he once worked with.