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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | There is a complicated system of checks and balances that control the world, invisible to the human eye. As you were responsible for intersecting with the fates of the individual survivors, your presence is necessary to bring about their harvest. It is imperative that those who escaped their deaths be reclaimed by me, in the exact order in which they were originally slated to die. And that all six be taken before the birth of the child. | „ |
| ~ Death explaining his "system" to Sherry. |
| “ | You can't cheat Death. There are no escapes. | „ |
| ~ William Bludworth describing Death. |
| “ | In death, there are no accidents, no coincidences, no mishaps… and no escapes. | „ |
| ~ William Bludworth. |
Death, also known as the Grim Reaper, is the main antagonist of the Final Destination franchise.
It is the primordial force of nature signaling the end of life. However, in Final Destination, Death is portrayed far from an amoral collector of souls but a sadistic, powerful and unstoppable death god that designs horrifying tragedies for humanity to die in, ranging from mass fatality events to freak accidents for its own amusement. Death also kills anyone who survives them because their survival disrupts these designs. This transgression is otherwise known as "cheating Death". Typically, Death kills its victims via gruesome Rube Goldberg-like mechanisms, using its servants if necessary.
What Makes It Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- While most portrayals of Death paint it more as a neutral, sometimes even gentle reaper of souls, Death here is explicitly shown to be an extremely malevolent entity who takes a sadistic pleasure out of killing humans just for its own amusement.
- While Death never has a full physical appearance, it is still fully characterized as a pointedly sadistic, petty, egotistical entity lashing out furiously at those who manage to escape its designs, hunting down not only the survivors of said disasters, but also their families and children too.
- Furthermore, the fact that Death brutally subjects Erik Campbell to the one of the series' most drawn out and painful fates shows that it has enough agency to break its own rules to spitefully kill someone not even meant to die yet, further establishing how petty it truly is and how it is willing to break the rules just so it can get what it wants.
- Additionally, it will not let its victims commit suicide at their own terms so it will kill them the way it wants.
- If one of its targets saves someone's life, it will go after that person, too.
- It has a habit of waiting some time past its attempts to kill its targets before attacking them again if they survive it long enough simply because it wants to give its victims the false hope they escaped from it.
- Overall, it is responsible for every single tragedy we see on-screen as part of its grand design. If anyone manages to escape their given fate, Death angrily hunts all the survivors down and kills them in often violent and needlessly gruesome ways in retribution for them inconveniencing it.
- While it does spare Kimberly Corman and Thomas Burke once the former manages to be revived, it is not portraying Death as being honorable, but rather as Death not being able to do anything about it since Kimberly technically died, and her coming back counts as her having a new life, meaning Death has no choice but to finally relent, not out of any sense of mercy.
- It is also shown to have a sick and dark sense of humor, as it assigns its victims to die in poetically ironic ways, such as designing the racist Carter Daniels' fate to be set on fire and blown up while being pulled by his own tow truck as it played War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?" on the radio, even jumping straight to the line, "The color of your skin don't matter to me / As long as we can live in harmony".
- While one could interpret this as Death having standards against racists and racism, this is not the case at all, as the narrative goes out of its way to show Death enjoys ironic fates instead.
- This also shows Death enjoys toying with the people who are on its list, as it intentionally causes these ironies by leaving clues about who and how someone is going to die next or when it's about to strike, such as playing songs that relate to how its victims would die, and leaving various elements in the environment such as written pieces mentioning Death and the infamous number 180 which it uses many times.
- Among the many ironic ways Death assigns its victims to die are those that show how extremely competent Death is with using reverse psychology against its victims to turn them into unwitting servants, with prominent examples being Tim and Nora, whose deaths wouldn't have happened the way they did if it wasn't for the protagonists trying to warn both of them about their deaths after witnessing the signs given by Death itself about how they were going to die, only for them to become the actual cause of their deaths along with what the signs showed would involve in their deaths.
- While Death is trying to take the lives of those who were already determined to die, it is not portrayed as it trying to "balance the book", nor is it ever seen as justified, as Death kills them all in very unnecessarily brutal ways out of spite just for inconveniencing it.
- Since Bludworth mentions how whenever someone dies, there are no accidents, coincidences, mishaps, or even escapes, it implies that anyone who ever died in the franchise is killed by Death itself, meaning Death's kill count possibly surpasses billions or even trillions.
- Furthermore, considering it is literally the Grim Reaper itself (or at least an entity behaving like it), it is pretty reasonable to assume that it is responsible for every single death in human history, thus possibly doubling its body count to unimaginable levels. This doesn't even mention the possibility that deaths caused by other humans (i.e. war, homicides, etc.) could also be orchestrated by Death itself.
- This could also mean it is the reason why any living organism dies in the first place.
- Furthermore, considering it is literally the Grim Reaper itself (or at least an entity behaving like it), it is pretty reasonable to assume that it is responsible for every single death in human history, thus possibly doubling its body count to unimaginable levels. This doesn't even mention the possibility that deaths caused by other humans (i.e. war, homicides, etc.) could also be orchestrated by Death itself.
- In Final Destination Bloodlines, it is confirmed that Death can kill people simply via heart attack or other painless natural causes, due to one of the Skyview survivors Paul Clarke having had his cause of death listed as being due to a heart attack. This proves Death can reclaim souls via more pacific or natural ways if it wished to, but still chooses to kill its victims in unnecessarily brutal, gory and cruel ways purely out of sadism.
- Not only has it gotten away with all of it's crimes and never once suffered karma for them in any of the movies, but it always wins in the end, proving that death is unstoppable.
Background[]
- It attempted to cause the Skyview Tower incident which would gotten various people brutally killed if Iris failed to warn everyone.
- As a result of Iris preventing the incident from happening, Death then gets her husband killed in a presumably gruesome way, this led to Iris becoming paranoid and insane to the point she would deprive her kids of freedom, fearing Death could also go after them. This ended up ruining her relationship with her family and eventually made her distance herself from them.
- It planned to kill everyone who was meant to die at the Skyview Tower and would even go after their descendants, too, since their deaths at the tower means their descendants were never meant to exist.
- It gave Iris cancer so her death would be inevitable.
- While ambiguous, there is a possibility that Death might be the true unseen responsible for Clear's father's murder either by influencing the events that lead to his death or even by somehow inducing his then-killer to target him, especially if we take William's aforementioned saying about Death into consideration.
- If this were to be made canon, then Death would be indirectly responsible for ruining Clear's and her family's life, as she mentions to Alex that her father's death irreparably damaged her family's structures with Clear's mother even becoming utterly disillusioned with life.
Final Destination 5[]
- It causes the North Bay Bridge to collapse, killing 86 people.
- It causes a nail to fall from an overhead air vent, which leads to Porter stepping on it, getting injured and knocking over a bowl of chalk powder that was blown into Candice's eyes by a fan while she was swinging on a bar, which causes her to lose grip and fall on the ground head first, cracking her neck, folding her spine, and even exposing some of her bones, killing her brutally.
- It causes Isaac to fall on the ground face first while acupuncture needles were on him by getting him to panic once he notices a small fire nearby. This leads to the needles painfully stabbing his body before it traps him in the room with a larger fire and finally killing him by crushing his head with a Buddha statue.
- When Olivia goes to have eye surgery, it uses the eye laser's high power to mutilate her right eye and attempt to burn her left eye, causing her to burn her hand while using it to protect herself from the laser.
- It then uses a teddy bear's eye to trip her, causing her to fall out of the building and onto a car. It also pops out her left eye, which gets run over by a car.
- It attempts to kill Nathan by stabbing him with a construction hook, which Nathan dodges and causes it to kill Roy instead, stabbing him through his chin and head and leaving his corpse hanging.
- It kills Dennis by lunging a wrench through his head.
- Its actions cause Peter to go insane over his own safety, which leads to him becoming Death's servant and trying to help it kill Molly. This leads to Peter shooting Agent Block to death and trying to kill Molly to leave no witnesses. This makes Death responsible for Peter turning into a killer.
- This also forced Sam to kill his former friend, Peter, to save Molly, although this would inadvertently cause Molly to enter Death's list, as Sam saving Molly's life means she also cheated Death.
Final Destination[]
- Two weeks later, it causes Flight 180's explosion, killing 287 people, including Sam and Molly.
- What's even worse is that there was a baby on the plane, yet Death still went on to kill everyone on it regardless.
- It then causes one of the plane's wheels to fall and crush Nathan to death once the extra lifespan he got from causing Roy's death expired.
- It also causes Carter Horton to accuse Alex Browning of being delusional and refusing to believe that the latter saved the former's life.
- It decides to taunt Tod's upcoming death to Alex by causing a torn newspaper to move towards him to show Tod's name.
- It causes Tod to slip on water and strangle him with a clothesline. After killing him, it would make the water go away to make Tod's death look like a suicide.
- It kills Terry by causing a bus to run her over.
- It causes Valerie to spill an alcoholic drink onto her floor and into her computer, which makes it explode and stab her neck with a glass shard, then setting her house on fire by causing the computer to shoot electric sparks on the spilled drink. It then makes her accidentally stab herself in the torso with a kitchen knife and finishes her off by exploding the oven, making a chair fall over to push the knife deeper.
- It attempts to kill Carter by getting him run over by a train, though Alex saves him, but it still led to his car being destroyed.
- It uses the train to throw a leftover piece of shrapnel toward Billy, decapitating him from the mouth up.
- It attempts to kill Alex by giving him tetanus from a rusted fishing hook when he went into hiding in Clear's cabin.
- It tries to kill Clear by using an electric power cable, which ended up shocking various appliances inside the house, putting her life in danger.
- As Alex goes to Clear's house, it causes lightning to strike a tree to make it fall on him, trapping him in a pond and almost drowning him to prevent him from saving Clear.
- When Clear tries to escape with a car, it knocks over an object to prevent her from driving away.
- It uses the power cable to fight Alex and attempt to kill him.
- It sets the car on fire with Clear still inside, making her unable to get out since she would die either by being shocked by the power cable or blown up by the car's explosion. This forces Alex to grab the power cable and get himself injured just so Clear could escape.
- It waits six months before attacking again so Alex would think it's no longer after him.
- It causes a bus to break an outdoor pole lamp which led to it dismantling a neon sign, making it swing towards Alex, which would have killed him if Carter hadn't pushed him out of the way.
- It kills Carter by swinging the sign back at him.
Final Destination 2[]
- It caused a brick to fall on Alex, killing him.
- Alex's death led to Clear having to stay in a mental institution to avoid Death killing her.
- It gets 18 people killed in a massive highway pile-up, which included Kimberly's friends.
- It starts a fire in Evan's kitchen before closing windows in an attempt get him killed in an explosion.
- After Evan barely escapes, he slips on some tossed-out spaghetti and falls back first on the glass-covered ground, allowing it to stab him through the right eye with a ladder.
- When Tim goes to a dentist appointment, it causes a fish tank to leak water into a power outlet to damage the electricity, which turned off the oxygen and caused him to lose the ability to move due to inhaling only nitrous oxide; then, it caused a fish prop to fall into his mouth in an attempt to suffocate him.
- It also tries to use the leaking water to electrocute Nora in the waiting room.
- It causes Tim's death by giving Kimberly a sign about his death involving pigeons, causing her to play an unwitting role in Tim's death as she tries to warn both him and Nora about the pigeons, which led to Tim angrily scaring them out of revenge for interrupting his dentist's work, making them fly at nearby construction workers who accidentally drop a giant window pane on him, crushing him to death.
- It attempts again to kill Clear by having a ball bounce on a lever, which set loose a canoe that falls toward her, which could have stabbed her.
- Just like Tim, it makes Thomas unwittingly play a crucial part in killing Nora, as it gives them a sign showing that a man with hooks will kill her, making Thomas call her to try and warn her, which makes her hair get caught by one of the prosthetic arm hooks a man was carrying and getting her head stuck between the doors of a defective elevator, which slowly and painfully decapitates her.
- When Eugene attempts to take his own life so he can die the way he wants to, it prevents him from shooting himself so it can kill him the way it wants him to die.
- It causes a fireman to inadvertently activate the airbag in the car to push Kat's head into a PVC pipe splitter to impale her.
- It causes a van to explode, sending barbed wires flying into the air that slice Rory into pieces.
- It tries to suffocate Eugene to death by depriving him of oxygen in the hospital.
- It sabotages some equipment in a hospital, which led to an explosion that kills Eugene and Clear. This explosion also causes damage to the hospital and could have endangered other people.
- Before this, it is revealed that it showed Kimberly Isabella driving out of control to throw her off on the order, which would also very indirectly be the cause of Clear's death.
- It kills Brian by causing the grill to explode. This led to his severed arm falling onto the table and terrifying everyone who was sitting there.
Final Destination 3[]
- It causes a roller coaster crash that kills seven people, possibly also causing the theme park to get closed down and causing people to lose their jobs.
- When Ashley and Ashlyn go to a tanning salon, it causes a shelf to fall between their tanning beds to prevent them from escaping while increasing the temperature, brutally killing them by causing their skin to burn and boil before being incinerating them with fire once the UV lights got too hot.
- It causes a truck to crash into Kevin's pick-up truck, which led to its engine and its fan popping out and truncating the back of Frankie's head. This also put Wendy and Kevin in danger as they were right behind Frankie's car and Death had caused another truck to block their doors to get them stuck inside the car.
- It crushes Lewis's head with weights because he insulted it and because he was next on the list. This highlights how petty it is.
- It uses various tools at Ian's workshop to try and kill him with wood planks, though Wendy saves him.
- It makes Erin slip on the floor by blowing wood splinters into her eyes and uses a nail gun to shoot nails into her head.
- It makes a rope wrap around Julie's neck and gets her dragged by a horse in an attempt drag her into into sharp objects that would have fatally stabbed her had Kevin not used a sword to cut the rope in time.
- It kills Perry by causing a flag to impale her.
- This is even worse when one realizes that Perry wasn't even one of those who got off the rollercoaster before it derailed, meaning Death killed her solely because she was likely in the way of the next victim.
- It tries to kill Kevin by burning his face with a propane tank.
- It causes fireworks to blow by Ian, which also endangered Wendy, Julie and Kevin, before making a cherry picker fall and brutally crush Ian.
- Five months later, when Wendy, Kevin, and Julie get into a train, it uses a rat to sabotage the rail track to make the train crash, electrocuting the rat in the process.
- This further proves that Death will get out of its way to harm innocent beings if it means further its schemes, regardless of if they are on its list or not.
- It kills Julie by causing a metal wheel to fly at her.
- It knocks Kevin out of the train so he would fall and be shredded to pieces between the train and the tunnel walls.
- The train crash also killed presumably most of if not all of the people in the train except for Wendy, even though they most likely weren't even part of its list.
- It got Wendy killed by causing another train to run her over.
The Final Destination[]
- It causes racecars to crash into each other and explode which sent large amounts of debris that would obliterate people. It's later confirmed that it got 52 people killed. This included Cynthia, which devastated her husband, Carter, and Nadia, who was splattered by a tire, destroying her head and severing one of her arms.
- It causes Carter to be dragged by a chain from his tow truck and uses gasoline to set him on fire with sparks emitting from the chain being scraped against the road before blowing him up into pieces.
- It then made his head land right in front of George just to terrify him, similar to how it made one of Brian's arms land in front of his mother.
- When Samantha says she has her eye on her kids, it causes a lawnmower to hit a rock, sending it flying through her head through her right eye, showing its twisted humor.
- What's worse is that it did this right in front of her kids, likely permanently traumatizing them and ruining her family's lives, assumably just like it did Clear's.
- It launches a gas tank to push Andy against a metal fence so hard that it gutted into his flesh and killed him.
- When Janet goes into a carwash, it sabotages machines to keep the car in place and breaks a water pipe to fill her car with water in an attempt to drown her. When Janet puts her head out of the sunroof to breathe, Death then turns the car wash back on to make her head move towards the brusher so it can destroy her head before Lori and George arrive in time to save her.
- It causes a pipe to fall in an attempt to crush Janet's head.
- When Hunt dives into the pool to retrieve his lucky coin, it activates a pool pump to use pressure to pull him into the pool's drain so hard it disembowels him.
- It has water overfill a hospital room, causing the ceiling to collapse and crush Jonathan with a bathtub.
- It causes an ambulance to run over and hit George so hard, he explodes.
- It causes a fire in an attempt to burn flammable barrels to create a massive explosion in the movie theater and kill various people, including Janet and Lori.
- After said explosion, it would have also killed Lori by shredding her in the escalator's gears.
- When Nick puts out the fire, it starts another fire and uses a nail gun to shoot nails into Nick's arm and pin him against the wall to make sure he can't interfere, then shoots the nails at the barrels to make it flow towards the fire.
- It nearly got everyone in the movie theater killed had Nick not activated the water sprinklers to put out the fire and save their lives.
- It is also severely implied that the lives of the people meant to die in the theater are now doomed as they are now on Death's list due to Nick's intervention.
- It waits two weeks before causing a truck to kill the three remaining survivors of the McKinley Speedway crash. This leads to the truck crushing Janet's spine and rib cage, running over Lori and decapitating her against a pole, and slamming Nick against the wall, breaking his skull and making his teeth fall out once his jaw smashes into the floor.
- What's even worse is that it is theorized that both of Nick's premonitions are nothing but a trick because Death had always planned for them to die from the truck. This can be proven by Nick saying, "What if us being here, right now, was the plan from the beginning?"
Final Destination Bloodlines[]
- It managed to kill 138 people who were supposed to die at the Skyview Tower and their descendants as well, with only Iris and her family being left.
- When Iris is busy talking to her granddaughter, it attempts to burn the plant pots to kill her because it thinks she is distracted.
- It kills Iris in front of her granddaughter by impaling her with a weather vane through the back of her head and destroying her jaw.
- Additionally, it's even possible that it was Death's plan all along to lure Iris out of her cabin by using Stefani as bait because Iris desperately wanted her to believe her.
- It causes Howard to step on a sharp glass shard to make him fall to the ground and uses a lawnmower to mulch his face while the rest of his family watches in pure horror.
- This is even worse when one realizes that this was during a family reunion.
- It burns down Erik's tattoo shop and puts him in danger for no reason, though it could presumably be a warning not to meddle in its plans to kill his family.
- Others speculate that this was simply Death being tricked into going after Erik since Stefani wrongly stated that he was related to the Campbells and therefore would be next on the list.
- It's unknown how Death realized its mistake while attempting to burn Erik to death at his workplace, however.
- Others speculate that this was simply Death being tricked into going after Erik since Stefani wrongly stated that he was related to the Campbells and therefore would be next on the list.
- It uses a soccer ball to knock Julia into a trash can before having a garbage truck take her into the back of it. It uses the the compressor to slowly crush her to death.
- When Erik attempts to kill Bobby via anaphylactic shock and then revive him to break Death's design, it turned on an MRI machine to brutally tear out Erik's piercings before pushing a wheelchair against him to slowly and painfully impale him with the wheelchair's spokes while also folding him in half backward and internally crushing him inside the MRI. What's even worse is that Erik was never part of Death's kill list since he wasn't blood-related to the Campbell family, but it still kills him in a very gruesome manner just because it's angry at him for trying to ruin its design.
- It causes a spring to rocket out of the vending machine and strike Bobby in the head, killing him.
- Even worse, it made the spring drill a hole in his head before making his head split into two once Bobby collapsed to the ground.
- When the remaining Campbell family members attempt to enter Iris's cabin to survive, Death opens the gas flow from the oven and blows a fire spark inside the cabin to ignite an explosion and destroy the cabin so they have no place to protect themselves from it while also trying to kill them at the same time.
- Since Stefani is still in the RV, it knocked the RV underwater with the explosion, attempting to drown her.
- It makes a light pole fall on Darlene, fatally squashing her.
- It tries to prevent Charlie from saving Stefani by causing the knife he was holding to cut through his finger.
- It uses a penny (in fact, it was the very same penny it planned to use to cause the Skyview Tower incident before Iris intervened) to sabotage a train track, which leads to a train being derailed and crashing through a neighborhood, endangering more people and destroying their houses. It then causes logs to fly from the train and crush both Stefani and Charlie to death.
- It had given William Bludworth cancer and most likely had the disease kill him when it was done killing the Campbells, thus finally ending its hunt for the Skyview Tower survivors.
Trivia[]
- This the second version of Death itself to be counted as Pure Evil.
- Death is also fine with killing pregnant woman with babies still in the womb, given how he tried to kill Iris Campbell in the skyview tower when she was pregnant. This just makes Death even more sick and twisted.
- Death did not become Pure Evil until after Bloodlines was released.
- The spin-off novel Final Destination: Looks Could Kill, Death takes corporeal form, and explains that its work is necessary, as too much new life could rip apart "the very fabric of reality." However, the novel is of ambiguous canonicity, especially following the release of Bloodlines which de-canonized other supplementary material (it states that Kimberly Corman is alive, when she was stated to have died in an extra included in the DVD release of the third film), and showed that a survivor giving birth does not save them from Death's list, when the novel strongly implies the opposite. But if firmly canonized, it might strip Death of their Pure Evil status due to making it well-intentioned.
- That said, there is no guaranty such novel would actually affect its status as Pure Evil, since even if its work is truly necessary, that wouldn't explain why it feels the need to kill its victims in such disturbing ways when it could kill them via more natural causes or much cleaner fates, meaning Death still is doing what it does out of sadism, much less so necessity.
- Death is also implied to be a satanic force rather than an amoral agent. For example, Death signifies its presence to the visionaries with satanic-related imagery, with Alex Browning from Final Destination seeing a van that says '666' on the roof before the Flight 180 explosion occurred. The many references to Hell or demons as such with The Devil's Flight Rollercoaster in Final Destination 3 and Car 6 starting the McKinley Speedway disaster in The Final Destination indicated this further.
- Like Satan, Death also uses servants to carry out its homicides and according to many visionaries, feels like a dark unnerving presence.
- If ever confirmed, this would explain why Death is so needlessly sadistic and cruel in the first place, and would possibly make it even worse.
External Links[]
- Death on the Villains Wiki
- Death on the Ultimate Evil Wiki
- Death on the Final Destination Wiki
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 Pure Evils
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