Hockey Mask and Chainsaw

"BARTYOUWANNASEEMYNEWCHAINSAWANDHOCKEYMASK?!"

"Everyone thinks Jason uses one of these, but he never does."

— The Cinema Snob reviewing Friday the 13th Part 2 (as a girl carries a chainsaw)

Advertisement:

A common reference of a Slasher Movie serial killer: a big guy wielding a chainsaw and wearing a hockey mask. Enormously common in parodies and tributes of the genre.

This is something of a Dead Unicorn Trope, since it isn't actually based on any single slasher movie character. It's actually a Composite Character between two of the most famous Slasher Movie killers: Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th series and Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series.

While it might seem like a case of Shallow Parody, even the people who know a lot about horror films use this trope, so that's not the case. It's just as likely just a Captain Ersatz of the two, since neither of them are in the public domain.

Note that while wearing a mask while using a chainsaw is generally a good idea even when using it to cut up the things it's intended for (sawdust and splinters can end up flying everywhere when using a chainsaw on wood), a hockey mask would not be a good choice of one (because it doesn't include eye protection).

Advertisement:

A Sister Trope to Sackhead Slasher (drawing on Jason's pre-hockey mask iteration).

---

Examples:

Advertising

• Nike's infamous chainsaw commercial from the 2000 Olympics featured a villain with a chainsaw, and with a white plastic mask more like Michael Myers' from Halloween. Contemporary news reports when the ad was pulled described it as a hockey mask, however, because this trope created that expectation.
• Brazilian ad website Catho had an ad where someone in such an attire was hired to cut vegetables for a pizza place.

Anime & Manga

• Irresponsible Captain Tylor has a marine named Jason who wears a hockey mask and uses a chainsaw as his Weapon of Choice. He also tends to be blamed whenever something breaks and there's a Running Gag regarding him always being sick on Fridays.
• During the first part of the manga and Season 0 from Yu-Gi-Oh!, Kaiba forces Joey (Jonouchi) to fight to the death with a serial killer known as "Chopman". The guys is a mountain of muscles with a leather-mask and prone to use sharp and big weapons, particularly, chainsaws. Images.
• America from Axis Powers Hetalia has this as his costume◊ in the Halloween sketches 2010.
• Played with in episode 139 of Urusei Yatsura featuring the never-before-seen members of the gardening club who are obsessed with their tomatoes. At one point the episode becomes a horror movie parody with one of them wearing a creepy white mask and another one wielding a chainsaw and wearing a tomato mask that covers the whole head.

Comic Books

• The first Post-Crisis appearance of Superman villain the Prankster had him as the host of a kids TV show which was cancelled for being a bad influence on children. Cue Prankster threatening Galaxy television boss Morgan Edge with a pig mask and chainsaw, while ranting that this was what kids were watching these days, and compared to that what were a few pranks?
• Hack/Slash: When a big knife is not enough to get the job done, Vlad will switch to a chainsaw. Although his mask is a respirator rather than a hockey mask, visually it conveys the same impression.
• In "Saturday the 8th Part 5: The Final Beginning" In Cherry #3, the slasher not only wears a hockey mask and wields a chainsaw, but is also wearing Freddy Krueger's striped jersey and battered hat.
• This bizarre German Club Nintendo comic, "Super Mario in the Night of Horror", features Wario making a pact with a demon who unleashes several creatures drawn in a more realistic style than usual Nintendo characters. Among them there's a Jason expy (or even the man himself) wielding a chainsaw.

Advertisement:

Comic Strips

• A Sunday strip from Bloom County once showed Bill the Cat in an old horror movie, in which he is pursued by a maniac wielding a chainsaw and wearing a hockey mask.
• A Sergio Aragonés strip in MAD has a bunch of hockey-playing kids inviting a man with a hockey mask and a duffel bag to play with them. He reaches into his duffel bag and pulls out a chainsaw.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Blob (1988), a horror film is shown in a theater, and the killer in the Show Within a Show wears a red hockey mask and uses a chainsaw.
• Seen on Clark Griswold in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. He's wearing the mask for safety reasons while he uses the saw to shorten the ridiculously large Christmas tree, but the reference is obvious, since he's also undergoing definite Sanity Slippage at this point in the film.
• Friday the 13th:
  • Jason Voorhees never actually used a chainsaw at any point in the series, his Weapon of Choice instead being a machete. However, the Turkish poster for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives uses this combination.◊ He still uses only his trusty machete in the film.
  • Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the only movie where Jason uses a gas-powered weapon, taking a hedge trimmer to some poor sucker's belly.
• The notorious Friday the 13th rip-off Bloody Murder has a villain who uses this combination. Hilariously, the chainsaw is clearly not even on in one of the scenes, even though you can clearly hear chainsaw sound effects.
• Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol shows the team putting a scare into some new recruits using Hightower as a voodoo houngan trying to revive his brother, who lies "dead" in a body bag. After some chanting, the brother (played by Tackleberry) awakes, firing up his chainsaw to cut his way out of the bag. And he's wearing a hockey mask, of course.
• Eight Legged Freaks has a brief, humorous scene where the heroine yells at the townsfolk to get ready. One of them has a chainsaw and hockey mask. Funnily enough, there's a second guy with a chainsaw right next to him — but he has a catcher's mask, instead.
• Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th: Played with. The killer starts out wearing a hockey mask, but this morphs into the Ghostface mask when he accidentally catches fire. Later he totes a chainsaw to kill someone.

Literature

• Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies, the third book of the Cineverse trilogy, has one of said bunnies return from the grave with a chainsaw and hockey mask.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules has Greg and Rowley getting chased by a guy with a hockey mask and a chainsaw in the Crossland High School haunted house.
• The closest Jason Voorhees ever came to actually using a chainsaw as a weapon was in the novel Friday the 13th: Jason's Curse. Jason himself doesn't use it, but a man possessed by Jason (through his cursed hockey mask) kills one of his relatives with a chainsaw.
• Sonic The Hedgehog In Castle Robotnik sees Sonic meeting a large rabbit called Jase with such a combo in an underground passage and is chased into darkness. Bumping a scraping through the darkness he uses the constant reeving of the chainsaw to figure out how close the rabbit is. In the end the rabbit ends up falling down a hole and leaving a big mess after the machine has done it's work.

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of Charmed, Phoebe was tormented by a recurring nightmare about a chainsaw-wielding murderer wearing a hockey mask. She thought it was a manifestation of Cole. It turned out that it stood for a metaphor of her self-harming behavior.
• Mad TV: In the "Apollo the 13th: When Jason Takes NASA" sketch, hockey-mask wearing Jason Voorhees invades the moon shuttle and kills a person with a chainsaw.

Music

• At one of his concerts Eminem appeared while wearing denim salopettes and a hockey mask, and wielding a chainsaw.
• Alice Juban, a subunit of the Japanese idol group Kamenjoshi (literally, "Masked Girls"), wear hockey masks and wield prop chainsaws as part of their gimmick.

Theme Parks

• The first Bill & Ted show at Halloween Horror Nights (1992) gave Jason Voorhees a chainsaw, which accidentally cut down a balcony on the western set while swinging at the duo.

Video Games

• In Battle Arena Toshinden 3, the Mid Boss for the chainsaw-wielding David is Judgement, a former childhood friend who has now become this trope.
• Inverted in Dead by Daylight, where the Trapper is wearing a leathery facemask, and carries an improvised machete. The other Dead by Daylight killers are aversions, with no hockey masks and only two chainsaws — the Hillbilly, a Leatherface Expy, and, um, Leatherface himself.
• Subtly done in Dead Island. There's a non-zombie enemy who is clearly supposed to be Jason, with a hockey mask and machete, beefed up health and one hit kills. In his house, you can find a unique Chainsaw, among some other horror references.
• The second boss in Double Dragon II for the Game Boy (a different game from the arcade and NES versions subtitled The Revenge).
• Final Fantasy:
  • When Edgar uses the chainsaw weapon in Final Fantasy VI, he has a random chance of doing an instant kill attack, which also changes the attached sprite to him wearing a hockey mask.
  • Vincent Valentine's Hell Masker Limit in Final Fantasy VII turns him into hockeymask wearing maniac with a chainsaw.
• In Persona 2, an optional boss in Eternal Punishment is a Stalker with a Crush who wears a hockey mask and chainsaw.
• One of the enemies in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin sports this ensemble.
• In Splatterhouse, Rick wears a hockey mask and can sometimes use a chainsaw. In sequels, the mask was redesigned to look more like a skull, but the similarities to Jason's signature mask were still pretty apparent.
• Grand Theft Auto
  • One mission in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has Tommy and some others pulling a bank heist disguised in hockey masks and coveralls, after which the outfit is permanently unlocked for the player. One of the melee weapons available in the game is a chainsaw. The possibilities are endless...
  • Used in Libery City Stories, where Tony has a similar outfit. There's also one mission where he's ambushed and attacked by dozens of masked maniacs with chainsaws.
• Cemetery stages in Gex feature burly enemies of this type, who for added benefit also wear a red and green striped t-shirts.
• Kid Chameleon has Maniaxe, an Expy of Jason Voorhees, who can throw hatchets at enemies.
• The chainsaw-wielding Dr. Salvador in Resident Evil 4 wears a burlap sack mask similar to Jason's first appearance in Friday the 13th Part 2.
• The level "Boo! Haunted House" in The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures has none other than Jason himself (in his notorious cyan and purple incarnation) running back and forth with a chainsaw.
• Stitches, the Frankenstein's Monster of Heroes of the Storm, has an alternative "Psycho" skin which has him with a hockey mask and a chainsaw. To complete the horror movie picture, he is also wearing a torn-off Michael Myers jumpsuit and is holding a machete, a pickaxe and a slipknot at the same time.
• An enemy in Virtual Boy Wario Land is a fish who wears a hockey mask with a chainsaw going right through it like a swordfish.
• The Chainsaw Maniacs from Zombies Ate My Neighbors.
• In Megami Tensei II, the demon Redrum and its Palette Swap Friday sport hockey masks and wield chainsaws.
• Luigi's Classic Mode path in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which is themed after Luigi's Mansion specifically and horror generally, has one Multi-Mook Melee stage where he fights a horde of Mii Fighters, several of whom are costumed like this.

Web Animation

• One of the titular Dumb Ways to Die in the Public Service Announcement of the same name is to "invite a psycho killer inside." The video depicts a door opening to a sprite wearing a hockey mask and armed with a chainsaw and Freddy Krueger glove.

Web Comics

• The last panel in this strip of The Non-Adventures of Wonderella.
• One of the homicidal sprites in Kid Radd fit this description.
• Skin Deep has a Halloween arc where Myra is introduced this way. It ends up that she's an employee of a corn maze.

Web Original

• Macabre horror-Mons Mortasheen is definitely referencing this trope with its chainsaw-hockey-masked mascot creature, the Chainsaw Kid. Yes, that is the proper syntax; its chainsaw is its mask.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • When Bart Simpson is threatened with death by Sideshow Bob the family gets put in Witness Protection. Bart is in his room trying to go to sleep when Homer bursts in screaming: first with a butcher knife to cut him a brownie...
    Homer: BARTYOUWANTSOMEBROWNIESBEFOREYOUGOTOBED?!?!
  • ... and again to show off his stuff:
    Homer: BARTDOYOUWANTTOSEEMYNEWCHAINSAWANDHOCKEYMASK?!?!?!
• At the end of the Looney Tunes short "Box Office Bunny", Daffy and Elmer end up in a horror movie where the killer has a mask and chainsaw.

• The Tiny Toon Adventures film "How I Spent My Vacation" features the chainsaw-wielding "Mr. Hitcher" who at one point wears a hockey mask.
• In the Halloween episode of Total Drama Island, the contestants' challenge is to survive a slasher movie scenario, with the antagonist known only as "The Escaped Psycho Killer With A Chainsaw and a Hook", whose weapons are a chainsaw and a hook. The "slasher's" hockey mask stops the contestants immediately noticing that Chef Hatchet is playing the part. Later, a real Escaped Psycho Killer with a Chainsaw and a Hook, who is white to tip the audience off that he's not Chef, who is black, appears and menaces Gwen. Because the whole thing is Played for Laughs, Chef's chainsaw is mounted on a hockey stick and the real killer is a wimp despite his imposing appearance.
• GrojBand features Kon and Kin dressing up as "chainsaw maniacs" in "Girl Fest". With Kon donning the hockey mask and chainsaw cliché.
• In the The Fairly OddParents!, Vicky dons these at one point, though Timmy barely reacts.
  Timmy: Phew, it's just a goalie. (Vicky removes the hockey mask) AAAAHH!!! VICKY!!!
  • In "The Big Fairy Share Scare!", Chloe's wish that everyone in Dimmsdale should want to share causes Vicky to give her chainsaw to a hulking brute in a hockey mask who proceeds to wreak havoc.
• Mr. Cat dons these in the pilot of Kaeloo. He winds up chopping off Quack Quack's arms.
• The Loud House: in "Jeers for Fears", Lynn dresses up in this combo when scaring Lincoln and Clyde.

---