Trivia / Friday the 13th

Subpages by entry:

• Friday the 13th (1980)
• Friday the 13th Part 2
• Friday the 13th Part III
• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
• Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning
• Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
• Friday the 13th: The Series ^note Sort of, see the "What Could Have Been" entry.
• Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
• Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
• Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
• Jason X
• Freddy vs. Jason
• Friday the 13th (2009)
• Never Hike Alone
• Friday the 13th: The Game

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Trivia tropes with their own pages:

• Referenced by...
• Troubled Production
• What Could Have Been

General examples:

• Artifact Title: In addition to a decent number of films not actually being set on the titular "Friday the 13th", the general bad luck mythos associated with the date never plays a thematic role in the series.
• Baby Name Trend Killer: "Jason" was one of the most popular boy's names in The '70s, but after this series took off, fewer parents wanted to name their sons after a violent, murderous manchild from a series of very bloody horror movies. The name still lingered in the top 50 for quite some time, but it took a noticeable slide as The '80s wore on.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • A strange variant. While Jason's primary weapon is a Machete, he's only used it a few times, the most of such being in Jason X. In addition, he has used either his strength or a vast assortment of objects, but many people claim he used it most often in Part V, despite those kills being from Roy Burns. Mortal Kombat X subverts this to some end by using 48% of his fighting styles (Slasher, Kill For Mother, his X-Ray, Go to Hell, and Blood Bath), while everything else uses his strength.
  • Another variant; while the uninitiated mostly know Jason as "the guy with the hockey mask who kills people with a chainsaw", Jason has never wielded a chainsaw in any movie appearance. They've even been wielded against him and he still hasn't used it to retaliate.
• California Doubling: Crystal Lake is located in upstate New Jersey, but only the first film is shot there. The rest of the series doubles Connecticut (Part 2), California (Part III, The Final Chapter, A New Beginning, Jason Goes to Hell), Georgia (Jason Lives), Alabama (New Blood), Vancouver (Jason Takes Manhattan, Freddy vs Jason), and Texas (the reboot).
• Channel Hop:
  • The first film was produced independently, but picked up by Paramount Pictures in the US and Warner Bros. internationally. The next seven films were produced and distributed by Paramount worldwide. Then after the mildly received Jason Takes Manhattan, the original producers got the rights back and sold them to New Line (who were later purchased by Warner Bros), who were planning to cross over with their own slasher franchise, and ended up producing Jason Goes to Hell, Jason X, and Freddy vs. Jason. The 2009 reboot was co-produced by New Line and Paramount, who owned the "Friday the 13th" title, and was distributed by Warner Bros. in the US and Paramount overseas (basically a reverse of the original film). Then Warner Bros/New Line licensed the rights back to Paramount in order to co-produce Interstellar. In-between, Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes worked on the reboot and was on board for a Paramount-produced sequel, but the poor box office numbers for Rings led Paramount to scrap the sequel and let the rights lapse back to New Line/Warner Bros. in 2018. Then the rights to the original screenplay reverted to Victor Miller, tying the franchise up in legal hell for years.
  • On home video, Columbia-TriStar distributed Jason Goes to Hell on VHS and Laserdisc through their deal with New Line. In 2013, Warner Bros released an entire franchise Blu-ray boxset, licensing the first 8 films from Paramount (they were handling their catalog on disc at that point), but it fell out of print when their license lapsed. In 2020, Scream Factory released another complete franchise boxset (with updated transfers for 1-4 and JGTH, along with more bonus content), licensing 1-8 from Paramount and the other four from Warner.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: A minor example, but in the Family Guy episode "We Love You, Conrad", Jillian's wedding to Derek inexplicably sees Jason ordaining the ceremony, and when two little girls run past the altar, he brutally murders them with his machete. This is despite the fact that Jason has a strict moral code to never kill children.
• Creator Backlash: Victor Miller, who wrote the first film, was unhappy about the filmmakers' decision to make Jason Voorhees the killer in the sequels.
  Miller: Jason was dead from the very beginning. He was a victim, not a villain.
• Executive Meddling: Almost every film in the series had the violence toned down by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). As such we've never really gotten to see the movies like how the filmmakers intended. The two major exceptions being the first movie, which was released uncut in foreign markets, and Jason Goes To Hell, which was released with the intention of doing an uncut release for home video.
• Franchise Zombie:
  • Believe it or not, they really did mean it at the time when they titled the fourth movie The Final Chapter. Producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. was getting sick of the series and slashers weren't doing as hot as they used to at the box office, so they decided to end it with a Grand Finale. We all know how that turned out.
  • Most fans would point to the New Line era as the franchise's real zombie period. After Jason Takes Manhattan flopped, Paramount sold the series to New Line, who wanted to get a long-awaited crossover with A Nightmare on Elm Street off the ground. In the fourteen years between Jason Takes Manhattan and Freddy vs. Jason, New Line made Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X, two Friday films that are both divisive at best. Jim Isaac and Sean S. Cunningham both stated that the main reason why Jason X was made was to revive audience interest in the series before Freddy vs. Jason came out.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Darcy DeMoss is an interesting case of this. She was up for a role in Part V that ultimately went to Debi Sue Voorhees. In the audition, she was asked to take her top off, but stated that while she had no issue doing nudity, the filmmakers would need to contact her agent and negotiate for it, so the role went the significantly chestier Playboy Bunny Voorhees. Darcy DeMoss then got cast in Part VI, where her main scene involves her having sex with her boyfriend in an RV. During the filming of this scene, the director realized that he was making a Friday the 13th film with no nudity, and asked DeMoss if she'd be willing to play the scene naked. She replied that contracts had already been signed and she wasn't willing to renegotiate on the day, so the scene went ahead with her clothed. What really pushes it into this trope, however, is that while she managed to "escape" nudity in Friday the 13th — a franchise renowned for its gratuitous nudity — the majority of her other work shows she really doesn't have a problem doing nude scenes. Just negotiate them properly in advance.
• Meaningful Release Date: Friday the 13th for many installments, naturally.
• Missing Episode:
  • The full, uncut death scenes of a majority of the earlier installments (the ones from Part II and Part VII being major examples) are gone for good save for still images.
  • Finally averted with Part II, as the uncut gore footage (assumed to be lost forever) was recently found and was released in the 2020 Scream Factory Blu Ray set.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Jason's unmasked face looks different in every entry of the series, ranging from slightly misshapen to fully rotted.
  • Jason himself. Only once as the same actor returned to play Jason in more than one film, that actor being Kane Hodder (who played Jason in Parts VII - X).
• What Could Have Been: Regarding the presence of the TV show Friday the 13th: The Series here. Although never confirmed as a certainty, Word of God has stated that at various points it was discussed whether or not to have a hockey mask appear in the show, whether as one of the items being sought or a background prop. It was even considered to appear in the very last episode and be unequivocally revealed to belong to Jason Voorhees. Eventually this plot thread did get picked up on by William Pattison (writing as Eric Morse), the author of a series of YA novels from the 90's involving the mask as a cursed artifact that turned anyone who wore it into a Serial Killer at Camp Crystal Lake. Almost two decades later he returned to the series in 2011 to self-publish an e-book, The Mask of Jason Voorhees, that brought it to a conclusion and also tied the two series together by having Ryan and Micki appear to try and prevent Jason's resurrection and recover the mask.
• Word of God: According to the composer Harry Manfredini, the famous background Jason chant, ("ki ki, ki, ma ma ma") is supposed to be short for "kill, mommy."
• Jason has always been played by a career stuntsman. Stuntsmen are not actors. They don't usually get big roles in movies, nor do they need to pull off dramatic performances. Since they're filling in for the stars, they don't even become well-known by the public. Friday the 13th is one of the few exceptions.
  • This is a combination of his action scenes, and the fact that you don't see his face or hear any dialogue from him.
  • That said, once filmmakers started taking the character of Jason seriously, they looked for stuntmen who could also craft a physical performance behind the costume, mask, and makeup, leading to Kane Hodder playing Jason multiple times (the only actor to do so), despite him being notably shorter than most other Jasons, because he gave the character such a terrific physicality.

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