History Headscratchers / FridayThe13th

** As frustrating as it is, this actually isn't known. ''Jason Goes to Hell'' provides a tiny hint in the form of a cameo from the ''Necronomicon'' from ''Franchise/TheEvilDead'', which is found in the Voorhees family home. This led to many suggesting the possibility of Pamela attempting to bring Jason back to life using arcane arts and having ultimately succeeded. As to why his mother didn't seem to have any idea of him being alive, a possibility is that she ''did''; after he was resurrected, she could have been keeping him in isolation just as she did before his drowning, and they could have even been working together during Mrs. Voorhees' killing spree in the original. Of course, this is all purely speculation, and there is ultimately nothing that actually confirms what happened.

** The video game seems to offer an explanation to this. After Tommy killed him in ''Part IV'', the police refused to believe that Jason was the killer because the idea of him somehow being alive even after evidently drowning as a kid sounded ridiculous to them, so they blamed the murders on some John Doe who used Jason as a persona. So, they chose to get cremate of the body without ever identifying it so that they could be done with it. Obviously this didn't happen as Jason was buried instead, but the game also reveals that while he was institutionalized after ''Part V'', Tommy met Alan Hawes who somehow knew where Jason was buried. How is never addressed. Now, why it was buried instead is never explicitly answered in canon, but there was actually an unused alternate ending to ''Part VI'' where Elias Voorhees paid the city to bury Jason instead, supposedly out of respect for his wife and child. As this scene was never filmed or used, its ambiguous as to whether or not it is canon.

* As hideous as Jason is, why do some people (or at least I) find Jason scarier with his mask on than without it?

*** A plot point in Part 6 was Crystal Lake getting renamed to Forest Green because of the association with Jason Voorhees and his murders. The lake itself is supposed to be huge enough that the camp itself, the training facility in 2, Higgin's Haven in 3, the Jarvis house in 3 and Tina's house in 7 (unless that's supposed to be the Jarvis house) all border it.

** The video game seems to offer an explanation to this. After Tommy killed him in ''Part IV'', the police refused to believe that Jason was the killer because the idea of him somehow being alive even after evidently drowning as a kid sounded ridiculous to them, so they blamed the murders on some John Doe who used Jason as a persona. So, they chose to get cremate of the body without ever identifying it so that they could be done with it. Obviously this didn't happen as Jason was buried instead, but the game also reveals that while he was institutionalized after ''Part V'', Tommy met Alan Hawes who somehow knew where Jason was buried. How is never addressed. Now, why it was buried instead is never explicitly answered in canon, but there was actually an unused alternate ending to ''Part VI'' where Elias Voorhees paid the city to bury Jason instead, supposedly out of respect for his wife and child. As this scene was never filmed or used, its ambiguous as to whether or not it is canon.

* In the original: If Pamela Voorhees' ultimate goal was to stop the camp's re-opening... Why didn't she just kill Steve and be done with it (other than the obvious "She's insane" handwave)? No yuppie funding, no camp revival.
** It's probably not just about closing the camp, it's also about sending a gruesome message to neglectful councilors everywhere. Also,keep in mind Pamela's a vengeful sociopath who blames the entire camp for her son's death. Just listen to the speech she gives Alice. In her twisted mind, ''everyone'' associated with Camp Crystal lake is guilty.
** It's mentioned in the first film that she initially does just try scaring people away. Attempts before Steve were stopped with various fires.
** Killing Steve alone wouldn't just stop someone else from opening it. Even long after the fire incidents mentioned above, Steve still tried to reopen the camp. By causing a massive bloodbath at the camp, it would be enough to make anyone else who was going to attempt a reopen think twice.
** And yet, straightforward options like ''razing the camp facilities to the ground'', making it far too costly for any would-be future camp operators to bother with, never enter her mind. Face it: the woman simply enjoyed killing people; being pissed at the counselors was more excuse than motive.
** It's also possible that she's reluctant to do ''so'' much damage to the area that she'd be destroying whatever few locations there still remind her of any ''positive'' experiences (however few) she might've had there, back when Jason was an infant and hadn't yet been subjected to bullying for his mental and physical abnormalities. After all, if she'd '''really''' wanted to render Crystal Lake unsuitable for a summer camp, she could've swiped a few truckloads of toxic waste and dumped them in the water, turning the whole lake into a Superfund site and causing the whole area to be abandoned.
** And re: Betsy Palmer's motivation she gave the character - Jason was the result of a TeenPregnancy that Pamela's parents disowned her for, so she has a hatred of premarital sex. Thus her main targets are young people who are more likely to do it before marriage. Pamela doesn't seem to have anything against Steve, and she only kills him because he stumbled upon her rampage in the middle of the night. She just wants to punish young people and do it herself. Sure she could have burned the whole place to the ground, but that doesn't allow her to pick off the counsellors one by one and enjoy it as much as she appeared to.

* In the second movie how did Jason manage to track down Alice? Did he just look her up in the phone book?
** The expanded universe explains her house was at or near Crystal Lake, her having moved there to confront her trauma. Jason could easily have seen her walking around some day and recognized her (as it's also official he saw her kill Pamela).
** And even in the film itself, she's on the phone with her mother arguing about moving back home. Perhaps she took an apartment in the town nearby and that's where he found her. She did seem pretty persistent about Jason being "still there" at Crystal Lake, so maybe she took the cops there to try and prove she saw someone and he followed her home from there.
* In ''Part III'' Jason is shown attacking Chris in a flashback with a knife. However after he loses it he just keeps chasing her and then... she wakes up at home. So... what did he do to her? He obviously neither killed nor mutilated her and, considering that it's [[SexIsEvil Jason]], it's unlikely he raped her either. Did he just drag her around the woods then dump her when he noticed she'd passed out? Why?
** Well, Jason has always been a rather territorial creature. Maybe he had found her trespassing on "his" turf and just wanted her off of it.
** Jason doesn’t think sex is evil. Where is this reasoning coming from? He obviously raped her. This was pre-zombie Jason after all.
** It's less that he thinks sex is evil and more that it's not really on his agenda due to the fact that he has the mind of a child. If he did rape her I'd call it an example of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness.
** This is mentioned in Chris' page on the franchise's wiki site, but there is no source sited so I can't say if it's genuine or not. Either way, it describes that after she passed out, Chris actually woke up in Jason's arms while he was dragging her through the woods and was able to fight him off and free herself. She ran through the woods until she lost him and eventually ran into Crazy Ralph. Allegedly, this is what causes Ralph to resume his whole prophet of doom thing in ''Part 2'' even though, at the time, the original Crystal Lake killer was dead by the events of those movies and no one was yet aware that Jason was alive and thus there didn't seem to be any reason for Ralph to continue warning people of any kind of danger (other than the whole crazy thing). The wiki never explains how Chris ended up back home, however, just that she conveniently forgot all about the details of her escape after she had recovered.

* In part 2 Jason was strong but not insanely strong, his killings were mostly by element of surprise and in the end struggled to subdue the final girl's boyfriend [[spoiler: who survived the fight]]. Come the next movie that supposedly takes place mere days after, he is suddenly strong enough to not only dispatch everyone with easy, but at one point he squeezes a guy's head so hard ''his eye rockets out of his socket''. On top of that Jason was heavily wounded at the end of Part 2, so, if anything he should be ''weaker'' here. He also somehow grew much bulkier between movies, but that can probably be chalked up to TheOtherDarrin. I wonder specifically if there can be an in-universe explanation for this, since I know [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the real one]].

* First movie. Is there any explanation of why Jason's body was never recovered from the lake in order to be given a proper autopsy and funeral? Also, if he was NotQuiteDead to begin with, why didn't he just came back to his mother?
** Presumably his body was never found. It's said in part 2 that he saw his mother decapitated. He probably got lost and just had to survive alone and somehow managed to all those years. Why wasn't he crying out for help or anything? It's pretty much established that young Jason was mentally disabled so it can be chalked up to that. He survived on instinct, but didn't have the brains to do the logical thing to be found.
** Its because Jason was indeed dead according to the filmmakers. It was just an AssPull to crash in on the first film’ss success. Jason being disable doesn’t hold water either since he shown to be more intelligent than that by founding Alice and sneaking into her house unnoticed. The later sequel said that he just came back from the dead.
* First movie also. Just how did a sixty year old woman manage to lift Bill long enough to shove an arrow through his eye and into a wooden door to pin him to it? For that matter, how did she even accomplish the arrow shove? That would take some serious amount of force.
** Crazy old lady strength?
** Presumably with the same logic of how Jason was able to walk off drowning, a machete to the shoulder, a hanging, and an axe to the head in the first few movies when he was supposedly an ordinary human at the time. Maybe whatever curse that seems to have afflicted Jason, his mom, and Roy Burns seems to give them unreasonable strength.
** She probably lured him onto the archery range and ''shot'' him full of AnnoyingArrows, then cut his throat when he staggered back to the building to try to escape and/or warn Alice. Then she propped the body against the door and drove one more arrow into it, probably with a hammer.
* Also regarding the first film: around seventeen minutes into the movie, there is a shaky camera shot from behind some trees that initially appears to be a MurdererPOV accompanied by a scary musical cue, which on first glance seems to imply that Pamela Voorhees is stalking Alice when she goes to talk to Bill. However, taking the narrative directly at chronological face-value and considering the fact that Mrs. Voorhees is driving her Jeep toward rather than away from the camp when she appears in the following scene to pick up Annie makes it appear as though Pamela is driving from the opposite direction (making it extremely unlikely that she was just at Camp Crystal Lake in the previous scene). Of course, this seems like it could be an easy potential {{Retcon}} of the EpilepticTrees scenario that it was actually Jason rather than Pamela spying on Alice in that moment (be it in his undead child form from Alice's "dream" or as a fully-grown adult, depending upon which explanation a fan chooses to accept), which would in turn possibly explain how he knew what Alice looked like to target her in the opening sequence of he second film. However, that was almost certainly not the intended implication of the filmmakers at the time. Was this actually supposed to be Mrs. Voorhees's POV (which might explain how Pamela deduces where to target Annie in the upcoming scene, since Alice does mention to Bill that she has not arrived at the camp yet)? Was it simply intended to be an initial false POV shot to establish a suspenseful atmosphere, and make viewers question when the killer's POV was or was not actually stalking victims later in the film? Some third possibility?
* In Jason Goes to Hell, only a relative of Jason can destroy him, right? What would have happened if the coroner had destroyed the heart instead of eating it? Would Jason still come back somehow? What if you cremate all of Jason's remains.
** I guess they're going for: "the coroner simply could not have overcome his urge to eat that heart, nor could anyone not of Voorhees blood." Assuming your hypothetical is a possibility, maybe someone inhales some dust from Jason's cremated ashes or something, and the same result happens.

* In the sixth film, if Tommy intended on cremating Jason’s body, why would he bring a hockey mask?
** He wants to end Jason permanently for closure. He probably brought the hockey mask as a symbol of "Jason as murderous monster" and planned to burn it along with Jason's corpse, symbolically destroying not just Jason Voorhees' body, but the ''idea'' of Jason Voorhees and Tommy's Jason-related trauma.

* So, in part 8 why ''Does'' Jason spend half the movie terrorizing a boat instead of New York? Where the New York scenes just too costly?
** That's exactly it, in fact. Early drafts of the film had scenes on the Brooklyn Bridge, in Madison Square Garden (where the "boxing scene" that is reduced to being on a random rooftop was meant to occur), on the Statue of Liberty, etc. It quickly became clear that all of this was way beyond the purview of the film's limited budget, and it was pared down repeatedly until we get sixty minutes of "Jason Goes On a Cruise" and the final section of scenes in random alleyways in Toronto-I-Mean-New-York-City. They could only afford a few scenes in actual NYC, such as the shots of Jason in Times Square (where Kane Hodder liked to prank folks by standing statue-still, in costume, until someone came close enough to jump scare them). You can find all of this referenced in the documentary "Camp Crystal Lake Memories" and in many behind the scenes media about the film.

* How did Brenda die? The last shot we see where she's alive, she is standing directly in front of the archery range. Yet, the next time we see her dead body, no arrows. In fact, there are no visible injuries. Just blood smears across her skin and nightgown. Was she arrowed to death, or what?
** Arrows are the most likely culprit, but Pamela could have killed her any number of ways. In the script, Marcie was supposed to be shot to death at the archery range, but obviously they changed it to her getting an axe to the face in the outhouse. Maybe Pamela just approached her as she did Alice, pretending to be a helpful figure (she could claim that she was following the same crying child Brenda was) and strangled her or something while she was distracted.

** The video game seems to offer an explanation to this. After Tommy killed him in ''Part IV'', the police refused to believe that Jason was the killer because the idea of him somehow being alive even after evidently drowning as a kid sounded ridiculous to them, so they blamed the murders on some John Doe who used Jason as a persona. So, they chose to get cremate of the body without ever identifying it so that they could be done with it. Obviously this didn't happen as Jason was buried instead, but the game also reveals that while he was institutionalized after ''Part V'', Tommy met Alan Hawes who somehow knew where Jason was buried. How is never addressed. Now, why it was buried instead is never explicitly answered in canon, but there was actually an unused alternate ending to ''Part VI'' where Elias Voorhees paid the city to bury Jason instead, supposedly out of respect for his wife and child. As this scene was never filmed or used, its ambiguous as to whether or not it is canon.
* In "Jason Goes To Hell", why does Jason's spirit look like a [[Franchise/{{Alien}} chestburster]] or eel type thing? Why not just some kind of ghostly version of Jason?
** The director of that installment was trying to write around trademarks to suggest Jason was a deadite from the Evil Dead franchise. Hence you can make the argument that was the deadite that has been controlling Jason's dead body or basically the Jason we know is a combination of the real kid Jason who drowned and that deadite's fusing together.
* In ''Jason X'', why did nobody ever investigate or go looking for Rowan and Jason after they were frozen? They were contained in a government facility, so someone had to have known it existed and taken notice of the lack of contact from there after everyone was killed or frozen alive. So, why did it take almost five centuries for someone to find it?
** Well Jason at least was frozen, not harming anyone better to not poke the sleeping bear and potentially wake him up and presumably records where lost/forgotten over the centuries so when the new team came to explore they had no idea what they were walking into.
* I know this question about "Jason Lives" may seem outta nowhere, but.... ''who the hell brings an ACTUAL machete to a paintball game''?
** Some dumb office jock who wants to show off their supposed "manliness" to everyone, presumably.
* How close was Wessex County hospital to Crystal Lake that Jason was able to find his way back so quickly? Or was the Jarvis house not even located at Crystal Lake?

* Also regarding the first film: around seventeen minutes into the movie, there is a shaky camera shot from behind some trees that initially appears to be a MurdererPOV accompanied by a scary musical cue, which on first glance seems to imply that Pamela Voorhees is stalking Alice when she goes to talk to Bill. However, taking the narrative directly at chronological face-value and considering the fact that Mrs. Voorhees is driving her Jeep toward rather than away from the camp when she appears in the following scene to pick up Annie makes it appear as though Pamela is driving from the opposite direction (making it extremely unlikely that she was just at Camp Crystal Lake in the previous scene). While this seems like it could be an easy potential {{Retcon}} of the EpilepticTrees scenario that it was actually Jason rather than Pamela spying on Alice in that moment (be it in his undead child form from Alice's "dream" or as a fully-grown adult, depending upon which explanation a fan chooses to accept), which would in turn possibly explain how he knew what Alice looked like to target her in the opening sequence of he second film, that was almost certainly not the intended implication of the filmmakers at the time. Was this actually supposed to be Mrs. Voorhees's POV (which might explain how Pamela deduces where to target Annie in the upcoming scene, since Alice does mention to Bill that she has not arrived at the camp yet)? Was it simply intended to be an initial false POV shot to establish a suspenseful atmosphere, and make viewers question when the killer's POV was or was not actually stalking victims later in the film? Some third possibility?

* Also regarding the first film: around seventeen minutes into the movie, there is a shaky camera shot from behind some trees that initially appears to be a MurdererPOV accompanied by a scary musical cue, which on first glance seems to imply that Pamela Voorhees is stalking Alice when she goes to talk to Bill. However, taking the narrative directly at chronological face-value and considering the fact that Mrs. Voorhees is driving her Jeep toward rather than away from the camp when she appears in the following scene to pick up Annie makes it appear as though Pamela is driving from the opposite direction (making it extremely unlikely that she was just at Camp Crystal Lake in the previous scene). While this seems like it could be an easy potential {{Retcon}} of the EpilepticTrees scenario that it was actually Jason rather than Pamela spying on Alice in that moment (be it in his undead child form from Alice's "dream" or as a fully-grown adult, depending upon which explanation a fan chooses to accept), which would in turn possibly explain how he knew what Alice looked like to target her in the opening sequence of he second film, that was almost certainly not the intended implication of the filmmakers at the time. Was this actually supposed to be Mrs. Voorhee's POV (which might explain how Pamela deduces where to target Annie in the upcoming scene, since Alice does mention to Bill that she has not arrived at the camp yet)? Was it simply intended to be an initial false POV shot to establish a suspenseful atmosphere, and make viewers question when the killer's POV was or was not actually stalking victims later in the film? Some third possibility?

* From "Jason Lives" onwards, why doesn't Jason act like the average zombie after being resurrected?

** It's probably not just about closing the camp, it's also about sending a gruesome message to neglectful councillors everywhere. Also,keep in mind Pamela's a vengeful sociopath who blames the entire camp for her son's death. Just listen to the speech she gives Alice. In her twisted mind, ''everyone'' associated with Camp Crystal lake is guilty.

** The expanded universe explains her house was at or near Crystal Lake, her having moved there to confront her trauma. Jason could easily have seen her walking around some day and recognized her (as it's also offical he saw her kill Pamela).

** Out of Verse because keeping realistic clothing damage between multiple films would be nearly impossible, it's probably supposed to be the same outfit and the props department didn't give a shit. It's hard enough to keep things consistent in one movie. Inverse Jason is larger than your average male but not monstrous. It's not difficult to believe that he's able to scavenge enough clothing from the two parks (Crystal Lake and whatever the neighboring Camp from Part III - edit: Higgins Haven) and the surrounding city. It's not entirely clear how far Jason's territory extends and he only seems to change between flicks which other than the first few films are implied to be years apart, usually long enough for the notoriety of Jason to die down some. A few years is more than long enough to grab one or two outfits and Jason is shown to be clever enough when he needs to be.

** Well Jason at least was frozen, not harming anyone better to not poke the sleeping bear and potentially wake him up and presumably records where lost/forgotten over the centuries so when the new team came to explore they had no idea what they were walking into.

* In ''Jason X'', why did nobody ever investigate or go looking for Rowan and Jason after they were frozen? They were contained in a government facility, so someone had to have known it existed and taken notice of the lack of contact from there after everyone was killed or frozen alive. So, why did it take almost five centuries for someone to find it?

* In "Jason Goes To Hell", why does Jason's spirit look like a [[Franchise/{{Alien}} chestburster]] or eel type thing? Why not just some kind of ghostly version of Jason?

* In "Jason Goes To Hell", why does Jason's spirit look like a [[Franchise/{{Aliens}} chestburster]] or eel type thing? Why not just some kind of ghostly version of Jason?

** The video game seems to offer an explanation to this. After Tommy killed him in ''Part IV'', the police refused to believe that Jason was the killer because the idea of him somehow being alive even after evidently drowning as a kid sounded ridiculous to them, so they blamed the murders on some John Doe who used Jason as a persona. So, they chose to get cremate of the body without ever identifying it so that they could be done with it. Obviously this didn't happen as Jason was buried instead, but the game also reveals that while he was institutionalized after ''Part V'', Tommy met Alan Hawes who somehow knew where Jason was buried. How is never addressed. Now, why it was buried instead is never explicitly answered in canon, but there was actually an unused alternate ending to ''Part VI'' where Elias Voorhees paid the city to bury Jason instead, supposedly out of respect for his wife and child. As this scene was never filmed or used, its ambiguous as to whether or not it is canon.

** The video game seems to offer an explanation to this. After Tommy killed him in ''Part IV'', the police refused to believe that Jason was the killer because the idea of him somehow being alive even after evidently drowning as a kid sounded ridiculous to them, so they blamed the murders on some John Doe who used Jason as a persona. So, they chose to get cremate of the body without ever identifying it so that they could be done with it. Now, why it was buried instead is never explicitly answered in canon, but there was actually an unused alternate ending to ''Part VI'' where Elias Voorhees paid the city to bury Jason instead, supposedly out of respect for his wife and child. As this scene was never filmed or used, its ambiguous as to whether or not it is canon.

* Something I mentioned on the ContinuitySnarl page but am wondering if there's any WordOfGod about: In part V, when Tommy is worried Jason is back, the Mayor tells him that Jason was cremated and is "nothing but a handful of ash". Obviously, this would be disproved in Part VI. So, did the Mayor just lie to make Tommy feel better? If so, how did he learn Jason was really buried and where is grave was? And if it's just a {{Retcon}}, does that mean all of Part V is non-canon?