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Franchise / Friday the 13th

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Over 150 kills and counting.

"There's a legend around here. A killer buried, but not dead. A curse on Crystal Lake, a death curse. Jason Voorhees' curse. They say he died as a boy, but he keeps coming back. Few have seen him and lived. Some have even tried to stop him. No one can."
— Opening narration of Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

Friday the 13th, a Villain-Based Franchise of Slasher Movies (with twelve installments and a thirteenth stumbling through Development Hell), revolves around a hockey mask-wearing, machete-wielding Psychopathic Manchild zombie named Jason Voorhees. Local legends say Jason drowned at Camp Crystal Lake due to the negligence of the teenage camp counselors, and decades later, the lake and surrounding campgrounds — considered "cursed" by locals — become the setting for a series of mass murders staged on or around Friday the 13th (Jason's birthday).

Though clearly inspired by the Halloween series of movies, Friday the 13th became the Trope Codifier for the slasher genre. The films typically start with a Developing Doomed Characters sequence: a group of teenagers — typically counselors or vacationers — have come to Crystal Lake for various reasons, some of which involve sex and drugs. This group, as well as other minor characters, end up hunted down and killed in a variety of ways — and none of the living members of the group grow wise to this until the Final Girl (and occasionally a Tagalong Kid) discovers the bodies and forces a confrontation with the killer.

While each movie follows the previous one (and sometimes start directly after the previous film), the series doesn't have many recurring elements aside from Jason and the Crystal Lake location. Parts 4, 5, and 6 buck the trend, as they feature the character of Tommy Jarvis. As a boy (in the fourth film), Tommy managed to kill Jason with a machete in self-defense to save his sister, but partially loses his mind when he sees Jason's fingers twitch and continues to hack away at his body; when he grows up, Tommy dedicates himself to the destruction of Jason at any cost — but in an ironic twist, Tommy's quest to eradicate Jason inadvertently becomes the catalyst for Jason's resurrection as an undead being.

Jason's infamous hockey mask serves as one half of the Hockey Mask and Chainsaw trope; Jason never actually uses a chainsaw in any of the films, which include:

  • Friday the 13th (1980) — A mystery killer stalks and murders counselors at Camp Crystal Lake as they attempt to prepare the camp to be reopened. As famously pointed out in the opening of Scream (1996), the killer of the movie is Jason's mother, Pamela Voorhees. She blamed the counselors of the camp's previous incarnation for letting her son drown in the eponymous lake (since they were too busy having sex to watch him), and did not want the camp to reopen. Despite the quality of its sequels, numerous critics and fans consider Friday the 13th an effective horror film. It is also the most positively received of the series.
  • Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) — Counselors at a training camp next to the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake end up murdered. Do you sense a pattern here? Even though this film is dangerously close to basically being a remake of the first one, it features the first occurrence of Jason as the killer; he uses a pillow case to cover his head in this film. He wouldn't put on the hockey mask until...
  • Friday the 13th Part III (1982) — A group of vacationing teenagers reside at a lakeside home in Crystal Lake, where a recovering Jason is residing - unknown to them. Originally shot in 3-D, the film randomly features shots of various things flying towards the camera — along with a couple of (very cool) three-dimensional kills. Jason puts on the hockey mask in this film. This was the intended end to the series, but it survived, returning in...
  • Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) — Having to revive himself and escaping from a hospital, Jason returns to aim towards a group of teenagers partying at a summer house in Crystal Lake, across from a family residence. This film became a Series Fauxnale when it performed so well at the box office that the series continued despite the intent of the producers to end the franchise. The film also marks the return of Tom Savini who did the gore effects from the first film, and featured Corey Feldman as a young Tommy Jarvis, and Crispin Glover as one of the ill-fated teenagers.
  • Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985) — A mystery killer targets teenagers and adults alike at a halfway house for troubled teens — including a teenaged Tommy Jarvis, who has arrived there to recover from his encounter with Jason four years prior. The film is notably recognized from its negative reception from fans in regards to the film's twist ending, as well as having one of the harshest removal of gore from the film thanks to an upswing of Moral Guardians at the MPAA.
  • Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) — Tommy Jarvis, now somewhat stable, sets out to destroy Jason's remains once and for all, in hopes to remove his hallucinations of him forever. This movie may involve the biggest case of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero EVER, since Jason is resurrected by a lightning bolt and heads straight back to Crystal Lake, now renamed to Forest Green, to resume killing once again. This is the first of the series to now have Jason as an undead, even more powerful being with supernatural abilities. Unlike the rest of the series, there's little to no nudity at all present in the film. The film is also notable for being the only one with children present at the camp, considering the camp is now finally open unlike in the first and second films.
  • Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) — Jason returns once again to stalk and kill teenagers residing at some houses on the shore of Crystal Lake. Amidst this time he battles a psychic woman named Tina over the course of the film. You'd think people would know better by now. A Nightmare on Elm Street makers New Line and Paramount wanted to make what would become Freddy vs. Jason with this installment, but after negotiations between the studios broke down, a girl with Psychic Powers (Tina) became the lead protagonist. Considered by many fans to have suffered the worst violence/gore cuts of all the films in the series.
  • Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) — Jason kills teenage graduates on a boat leaving to New York City. Who knew that Crystal Lake had become an ocean? Due to budget restraints, most of the running time is spent on Jason killing on the boat rather than in New York, but even Jason stalks the survivors through Manhattan for, like, thirty minutes. The filmmakers shot this film mostly in Vancouver, and it shows. Noted for its Gainax Ending, especially since the writer/director has said it was supposed to be a Grand Finale.
  • Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) — The government finally kills Jason, but his evil heart helps to partially resurrect him. Jason, now an evil spirit, jumps from body to body as he seeks out his last living relatives so that he can kill them before they can kill him. Due to the box office failure of Jason Takes Manhattan, New Line acquired the rights to facilitate the long-planned crossover with Freddy Krueger, and was the series' main distributor until the 2009 remake. This film became another Series Fauxnale, and went completely off the rails thanks to the "body jumping hellspirit" gimmick and an entire supernatural backstory it made up for Jason. In the final scene of the film, the bladed glove of Freddy Krueger drags Jason's hockey mask down to Hell, which set up the crossover film that would come ten years later. Jason, in his own body at least, only shows up twice during the film (at the very beginning and at the very end).
  • Jason X (2001) — Jason Goes To Space. Teenagers (and Space Marines) end up stalked and killed on a spaceship after they pick up Jason's cryogenically frozen body at an abandoned Crystal Lake research facility in the far future. After Jason fights a robot, he becomes a robot and kills more people. Essentially an Affectionate Parody of the franchise, it's also remembered for one of the best death sequences in the series (a woman has her face frozen in liquid nitrogen before Jason smashes it to pieces). David Cronenberg makes a brief appearance.
  • Freddy vs. Jason (2003) — Jason teams up with, then turns on, Freddy Krueger; this leads them to stalk and kill a bunch of teenagers before they fight each other, but in the end, they settle nothing. If you consider the statistics, Jason technically won with over twenty kills to Freddy's one. Word Of God also differs on who ultimately won and what the ending of the film means, depending on which "God" you talk to. The film takes place after both Jason Goes To Hell and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare; Jason X and Wes Craven's New Nightmare have no bearing on the film's story, though some fans consider it a prequel of sorts to Jason X.
  • Friday the 13th (2009) — A continuity reboot of the franchise; if you've read this far, you already know the plot. Essentially a loose remake of the first 3 movies, with the first movie being essentially summarized in 60 seconds of the opening credits. The filmmakers intended to give Jason more personality and emphasize a "menacing survivalist" nature, as Jason had numerous traps and secret passages set up around Crystal Lake.

A sequel to the 2009 reboot lingered in development hell for years, but as Warner gave the rights back to Paramount, it seemed to finally be on its way – until it was then officially cancelled in February 2017 due to the failure of Paramount's then-recent franchise horror release Rings.

However, following the success of 2018's Halloween, it was reported that the long-awaited thirteenth installment of the franchise was in development at LeBron James' production company, SpringHill Entertainment. Because of murky rights issues within the franchise, however (Victor Miller, who wrote the original 1980 film, regained ownership of his script as recently as September 2018, but not the Jason character, who developed into his current state over successive installments), it's not a guaranteed thing... yet. A later complication came in September 2021, when Miller won an appeal to reclaim the domestic rights to the franchise, but with Cunningham retaining the foreign rights of the original and intellectual property from its sequels (most notably, Jason in his most recognizable form), it's uncertain what it could mean for the franchise's future. A prequel series, Crystal Lake, was announced in 2022, set to be released on Peacock with Miller as executive producer.

There are also:

Comics

Films

  • His Name was Jason (2009) — An hour and half-long documentary done in the 'house of horrors' style and narrated by Tom Savini. While not exactly bad, its relatively short length meant there wasn't much focus on individual films and once Never Sleep Again (made by the same guy) came out, a demand arouse for a similar documentary about ol' Crystal Lake resident. Which led to...
  • Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (2013) — Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Very similar to Never Sleep Again, this definitive documentary gives in-depth information on every movie in the franchise (reboot included) and the TV series and touches upon nearly everything Jason-related. It lasts six and half hours, is narrated by Corey Feldman, and interviews as many cast and crew members involved in all of the films as they were possibly able to get in contact with.
  • Friday the 13th: Vengeance (2019): A fan film where Tommy Jarvis has gone missing, and his older daughter now has to find her with the help of a group of friends affected by Jason.
  • Never Hike Alone (2017): A Fan Film revolving around hiking blogger Kyle who wanders into Camp Crystal Lake and faces off with Jason. Available free on YouTube, it opened to near-universal acclaim.

Literature

  • The Camp Crystal Lake Series of young adult novels (all published in 1994):
    • Mother's Day
    • Jason's Curse
    • The Carnival
    • Road Trip
    • Followed seventeen years later by the e-book The Mask of Jason Voorhees, which acts as a proper ending for the series, a sequel to Jason Goes to Hell, and Canon Welding with the unrelated TV series.
  • The Friday the 13th series published by Black Flame:
    • Church of the Divine Psychopath (2005)
    • Hell Lake (2005)
    • Hate-Kill-Repeat (2005)
    • The Jason Strain (2006)
    • Carnival of Maniacs (2006)
  • The Jason X continuation novels published by Black Flame:
    • The Experiment (2005)
    • Planet of the Beast (2005)
    • Death Moon (2005)
    • To the Third Power (2006)

Tabletop Games

  • Freddy vs. Jason Forest of Fear Game (2010)
  • Friday the 13th: Horror at Camp Crystal Lake (2020)

Video Games

The franchise also slapped its name onto a horror anthology series — Friday the 13th: The Series — which had very little to do with the films, and a series of horror novels.

The Friday the 13th film franchise contains examples of the following tropes:

    open/close all folders 

    A-L 
  • Abandoned Area: Camp Crystal Lake, when someone isn't trying to reopen it.
  • Abandoned Camp Ruins: Like the above trope described, Camp Crystal Lake.
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: Screw katanas, machetes have the sharpest blade in the world!
  • Action Girl: Some of the Final Girls count rather nicely. Of particular note are Tina, Chris, Trish, Alice, and Ginny.
  • Alternate Company Equivalent: Jason is undeniably New Line\Paramount's version of Michael Myers. Both are enormous men wearing white masks and blue or grey work clothes, both kill with either their hands or whatever harmful objects they find, both are virtually immortal and have superhuman strength, both of them primarily target teenagers, both of them move extremely slowly when being observed but astoundingly fast when off-camera, and both of them kill on a certain day because of something that happened during their childhoods on that day.
  • Anachronism Stew: Through Word Of God and careful attention to dates and mentions of the passage of time, such as Tommy aging 5 years between 4 and 5, and Jason apparently spending 10 years trapped in the lake between 7 and 8, the series inadvertently took place in the early 2000's in 1988.
  • The Artifact: Let us ask you a question: When was the last time you saw a hockey mask that was being worn by an actual hockey player? Probably years, since most hockey players wear helmets these days, not masks. And yet, hockey masks are such an iconic part of this franchise that Jason nevertheless keeps managing to find outdated sports equipment to wear.
  • Artifact Title: Largely averted; Three quarters of the films are explicitly set on Friday the 13th, with another couple of early entries that occur just prior to or just after the 13th.
  • Asshole Victim: These are slasher films, so it's to be expected that there's at least one per movie, with Dr. Crews from the seventh film being the biggest example and Sheriff Garris from the sixth film and Joey B. from the ninth film being ranked the least terrible to point of actually defying this trope.
    • Averted with the first 2 films, however, where the characters are genuinely nice people, and are even close friends in some cases.
  • Axe Before Entering: No door can hold Jason out.
  • Back from the Dead: Jason, as of Part VI and all subsequent movies.
  • Berserk Button:
    • When Jason supposedly drowned at Camp Crystal Lake, his mother Pamela killed many of the counselors who were working at Camp Crystal Lake years later.
    • Jason has his own buttons: if you killed his mother in the first film, then may God have mercy on your soul. In addition, if you so much as disrespect his mother in any way (posthumously or not) or make light of his physical deformities, he will fuck you up.
    • In Jason Goes to Hell, many of his victims insulted him before being killed
      • And to a lesser extent in JGTH, when Robert said he kidnapped his half-sister's corpse, fucked her daughter and had plans to reveal on TV that Jason kidnapped his half-sister's corpse to fuck it, Jason wasn't happy one bit.
  • Big Bad: Jason Voorhees in most of the movies, exception being Pamela Voorhees in the first movie and Roy Burns in Part V.
  • Bloody Hilarious: Depends on whether or not you find Jason's ever more elaborate killings scary or laughably over the top, such as the time he nailed a victim's body to a door simply to spook the final girl.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Jason himself. He's the antagonist of every movie in which he appears as an adult, but deep down, he's a mama's boy who desperately feels the need to satisfy his mother's wishes. She always was and remains the only person who didn't treat Jason like a freak, an abomination, or both. When the Crystal Lake camp counselors indirectly caused Jason to drown due to their negligence, his mother felt that the right thing was to Pay Evil unto Evil, and Jason is only following her lead because of how close he was to her. All in all, Jason probably feels like he's doing nothing wrong every time he brutally murders someone, since it's all in honor of his mother, who he may view as a good person. Word of God also states that Jason has some semblance of "conventional" morals as well, such as never harming anyone under the age of 13, and not harming animals (presumably, except for sustenance).
  • Canon Welding: The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis is found in the Voorhees house in Jason Goes to Hell, implying it was used to resurrect Jason after his drowning. The Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash comic confirms this.
  • Chainsaw Good: Averted by Jason himself - despite many MANY media references that combine the hockey mask with a chainsaw, he never used one as a weapon. Closest was a tree trimmer.
  • Character Development: Over the course of three movies, Tommy Jarvis goes from Tagalong Kid to Broken Bird to Zen Survivor. Definitely the exception, rather than the rule.
  • Chase Scene: Lot of running will happen when Jason makes himself properly known.
  • Cool Mask: Jason's hockey mask all the way.
  • Curiosity Killed the Cast: The popular setup, starting in Part II, is that someone goes somewhere they shouldn't, which draws Jason's attention and starts the killing. This was quickly abandoned, as Jason's Crystal Lake "territory" becomes a bit slipperier in III and IV, and after that Jason's dead and people have moved on, so no reason to expect him to turn up again in VI and beyond. Played straightest in Jason X, where Jason set loose as the result of what amounts to a school field trip.
  • Curse: The one consistent thing that seems to be vaguely alluded to throughout the series is that Crystal Lake itself is cursed.
    • There are multiple people in town such as Abel and Crazy Ralph who seem to be given messages from god to warn everyone they can find, and to keep people away from the lake, to prevent further carnage. Mrs. Voorhees herself repeatedly stresses that it's the location itself which is tainted.
    • On top of that, the curse seems to be connected to the death and loss of loved ones, especially between parents and children, which drives the grieving party into a murderous rage, as seen in Mrs. Voorhees, Jason, Roy Burns, and even Tommy Jarvis himself seems to struggle with this.
  • Death by Mocking: The practical joker or bitchy Alpha Bitch character has a low chance of survival. The largest exception comes in Part II, where the joker stays at a bar drinking all night, managing to avoid the murders at the campground entirely.
  • Determinator: Jason, especially in Part VIII where he shoves off all the easy potential victims just to get the remaining protagonists.
  • Developing Doomed Characters: After a kill or two, the typical FT13 film will then start developing the actual cast, most of whom will die near the end.
  • Disappeared Dad: Jason's father was originally slated to have a cameo in The Stinger to Part VI, but the scene was dropped, making this a literal example.
  • Disposable Woman: Most of the Ms. Fanservice characters (for most of whom Sex Signals Death) who end up Drop Dead Gorgeous thanks to Jason.
  • Don't Go in the Woods: At least, not the woods around Crystal Lake/Forest Green. Crazy Ralph will happily spell it out for you.
  • Dramatic Unmask: Usually in the climax of the movie, subverted in Part VI where Jason is seen without his mask when he's revived.
  • Dynamic Entry: A Door or window ends up broken in almost every movie:
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • In the first movie, Jason is not the killer, his mother is. He is also seen as a young boy. Jason only appears at the end, when he pulls Alice into the lake. He also doesn't don his iconic hockey mask in Part II, instead covering his face with a white burlap sack with one eye hole in it. He eventually dons the hockey mask in Part III.
    • Parts 2, III, and The Final Chapter feature Jason as being much more in control of his actions and malicious, apart from hearing his mother's voice. He sets up booby traps and ventures away from Camp Crystal Lake to kill more people, (possibly) rips a dog in half for no reason other than because it was there, and early in the development of III, he'd sexually assaulted Chris. The latter was taken out due to Dana Kimmel's objections, leaving only an implication that it happened.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Even though he is an undead killing machine, Jason still cares for his mother. He even had a shrine for her!
    • This was going to be subverted in Jason X where he was supposed to kill the image of his mother in the holographic display showing Crystal Lake just to show how evil he has become. The idea was scrapped.
    • In the reboot, Jason refrains from killing one female because she resembles a younger version of his mother. So instead he keeps her as a prisoner in his lair.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Word Of God states that Jason would never harm children or animals.
    • He tried killing Tommy in The Final Chapter (though they later tried to justify it by claiming Tommy was just barely older than Jason's no kill cut-off point) and Rennie in a childhood flashback (which may have been a hallucination) in Part VIII though. He might have killed Muffin the dog from Part II, the ending is somewhat confusing.
    • On the other hand, in Part VI, he stands in the middle of a cabin filled with running, screaming children and never even takes a swing.
    • Well, the current comics forgets about the no animals part but this was a cast of Comically Missing the Point since it makes Jason a monster rather than a normal (although deformed) child messed up by assholes.
    • He killed a pregnant woman in Part III (although the lady in question didn't appear pregnant at all, being just two months).
    • Actually, in Part II it's mentioned that Jason killed wild animals for food.
      • That was a necessity. He won't kill them out of general sadism like Michael Myers.
      • In Part VIII, Jason was originally scripted to kick Rennie's dog, but Kane Hodder himself refused to do it on the grounds that Jason wasn't bad enough to hurt animals.
    • In the "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" comics, Jason actually did spare and protected a physically deformed boy who was being hunted down by a inept drug addicted corrupt cop, who the boy witnessed killing two camp counselors by mistake while trying to shoot Jason. Although he also slaughtered a bunch of children.
  • Evil Makes You Monstrous: The progression from a man to an unkillable undead demon.
  • Extremely Short Time Span: Part II, Part III, and The Final Chapter apparently all take place over the course of a weekend.
  • The Faceless: Subverted. Jason is consistently masked, but in almost all the movies he appears in, he'll lose it for a good look at his face. Said face is not particularly consistent, due to Jason usually taking quite a few nasty hits before dying at the end of a movie, and after his death, Jason spents his time rotting.
  • Fanservice: The series' overall reputation for nudity is kind of overblown: there's none worth mentioning in parts 1 and 6, and only split-seconds of nudity in 3, 7 and 8. However, 2, 4, 7 and 10 have service-y scenes, and 5, 9 and the remake are practically boobular.
  • Final Girl: In order, Alice, Ginny, Chris, Trish, Pam, Megan, Tina, Rennie, Jessica, Rowan, Lori, and Whitney. Tommy serves as a rare male version in Parts IV through VI.
    • The "virginal" aspect of the character is subverted a bit with Alice, who used weed in one scene and Ginny, who has offscreen sex.
      • In the sequel, it is implied that Ginny did not have sex. Her boyfriend left a note telling her to beware of bears as a throwback to a joke involving women and their menstrual cycles. The implication is that they did not have sex because she was on her period.
      • Which still implies she has had sex, which is a slight subversion.
      • It's also implied that Alice had a relationship with Mr. Christy. Not explicitly a sexual one, but there are a few references to "last night".
      • In Jason Goes to Hell , Jessica and her love interest Steven completely avert the virginal aspect, seeing as the two had a child together outside of wedlock.
      • The Final Girl of Friday 6 also subverts this aspect as the more sexually active Megan survives and the virginal Paula dies.
  • Gainax Ending: All of the films tend to end on a bit of ambiguous insanity that likely happened within characters' heads.
  • Head Crushing:
    • Friday the 13th Part III: Rick gets his head crushed barehanded by Jason so hard one of his eyes pops out of its socket towards the audience in one of the silliest bits of 80s 3D filmmaking.
    • Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives: While investigating Crystal Lake, Officer Pappas encounters Jason and attempts to shoot him, but the bullets have no effect and Jason kills Pappas by crushing his skull. Pappas' efforts did buy enough time for one of the young children at the camp to flee, however.
    • Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood: While Ben is outside looking for his friend Michael, Jason catches him and crushes his skull with his bare hands. This scene was heavily censored in the theatrical version, cutting away as soon as he starts to bleed. The uncut scene shows the entire head-crushing complete with blood pouring from his eye sockets.
  • Healing Factor:
    • Jason X reveals that part of the reason that Jason is as unstoppable as he is is because he is able to regenerate himself; at one point, Rowan remarks that she had previously subjected Jason to electrocutions, firing squad, gas, and hanging, all to no avail.
    • It was taken further in the Avatar Press comics, as Jason is shown to be able to immediately grow lost tissue back from a grenade blast.
  • Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: Jason is responsible for the first half of the trope, but believe it or not, he's never used a chainsaw in any of the movies. (Some have tried to use a chainsaw against him, though.)
  • Hollywood Darkness: Frequently. How else can the audience enjoy the gory kills and copious nudity?
  • Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday:
    • Double-whammy as the first movie takes its place on the titular day and Jason's birthday.
    • It's Michael's birthday during the first night of Part VII.
  • Idiot Ball: Beginning with Part VI, anyone who wants to re-open, work for or vacation at the camp at Crystal Lake. Don't they ever see a pattern around the place?
  • Immune to Bullets: Jason has been shot so many times he's practically Made of Lead.
  • Impending Doom P.O.V.: Used in the first films.
  • Implacable Man: Guess who. In the earlier films in the series, Jason at least felt some pain when struck or stabbed, but once he got resurrected in Part VI, all bets are off.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: For a backwoods mutant, and later zombie, Jason is an extremely good marksman.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Jason managed to kill one of his victims with a party horn.
  • Intercontinuity Crossover:
  • Invincible Boogeymen: Jason Voorhees is practically nigh-unstoppable and will kill everything in his path once he sets his eyes on a target. The only defense is slowing him down or running. The lion's share of the movies is spent trying to find some way of putting him down for good, and success is usually only found at the very end of each installment. While he can die, he never stays dead, as a subsequent film will end up reviving him somehow so he can spread further terror.
  • Iron Butt Monkey: Out of the plethora of horror villains, Jason gets the most abused. which says something.
  • Joisey: Camp Crystal Lake — and therefore, the bulk of the series — takes place here, which may explain why the big class trip in Part VIII was to New York.
  • Jump Scare: The movies almost always contain a particular Your Princess Is in Another Castle! version at or near the end, involving someone leaping into frame from an unexpected location (usually underwater) and grabbing someone else.
  • Leitmotif: Chi-chi-chi-ah-ah-ah =/= Ki-ki-ki-ki...ma-ma-ma-ma...
    • The strange thing about Jason's Leitmotif that it's really his mother's in the first movie where she hears her son saying, "Kill them, mommy."
      • This makes it a Bootstrapped Leitmotif.
      • This sound has become so associated with Jason, that one of the major criticisms of the remake was that, for some asinine reason, it was removed.
  • Like Mother Like Son: And how?

    M-Z 
  • Machete Mayhem: The franchise is a Trope Codifier for it.
  • Made of Iron: It's amazing how much punishment Jason has gone through.
    • First of all, he supposedly drowned in Crystal Lake. However, this is arguable whenever or not Jason did drown after all.
    • Then, he took a machete through his shoulder.
    • After that, he was hanged.
    • Shortly after, he took an ax to the head.
    • Moreover, his own machete is lodged halfway through his head vertically. Though to be fair, this actually did kill him, he just came back.
    • A quarter of his face gets mauled and his neck snaps by a rotor of a motorboat.
    • He was shot numerous times.
    • He was caught inside an explosion.
    • He drowned in a flood of toxic waste.
    • Then he got blown apart by mortars.
    • He got sent to hell by a magical dagger.
    • ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY
    • Part VII getting the biggest load with Jason getting shot at and electrocuted. Then he gets several plantpots chucked at him, a roof collapsed on him, a light smashed into his head sending him smashing through a staircase, nails chucked at him and being set on fire and a house exploding around him. EVEN THEN he still chases the final girl only to be drowned again.
    • And the list goes on...
  • Made of Plasticine: It's amazing how little punishment Jason's victims can take...
    • Subverted with one particular character in Freddy vs. Jason who takes quite a bit of damage from Jason, before meeting his doom at the hands of someone else
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The exact circumstances of how Jason survived his childhood drowning. While Part 2 presents it as a case of Never Found the Body, Jason Lives also presents the theory that Jason did indeed drown and has always been a supernatural entity.
  • Menacing Mask: The series has one of the most iconic examples of this trope in the form of Jason's hockey mask, which has become practically synonymous with the slasher villain archetype since it first appeared.
  • Menacing Stroll: Jason has the delightfully paradoxical ability to outrun any of his victims without actually moving faster than a slow lumber. In certain movies it borders on outright teleportation.
  • Mighty Glacier: Zig-Zagged. In the first three films he appears in, Jason could and would run down his victims, and was quite speedy. Once he was ressurected as basically a zombie, he got a lot slower, but a lot stronger and tougher. CD Graham and Ken Kirzinger, in particular, gave Jason the sense of an unstoppable juggernaut who will get you. . . eventually.
  • Mobile Menace: Hand-in-hand with the above. As Jason got visibly slower, his ability to move rapidly when no one was looking at him improved dramatically.
  • My Car Hates Me: Some of the movies has a scene where a car refuses to start, or at least takes long enough to build tension.
  • Nigh-Invulnerability: Jason progresses into it in Jason X, being given regenerative powers, explaining why he can't be kiled. When he morphs into Über Jason, he becomes Made Of Diamond. In Freddy Vs. Jason, it's outright stated that he's immortal. Jason has the partial justification of being dead to begin with (he drowned as a kid).
  • Night Swim Equals Death: For anyone who skinny-dips at night in Crystal Lake.
  • Not Quite Dead: Repeatedly, many times in sequences that may or may not be All Just a Dream. Notably, Part II, III, and IV all take place within a few days, and Jason was "killed" at the end of each one, only to right back at it at the start of the next movie (with the exception of IV, his death there actually stuck for a whole movie and several years in-universe).
  • Noodle Incident: The actual concrete facts of what really happened to Jason as a child, whether or not he had ever actually drowned at all, and why his mother never realized he was roaming the campgrounds himself all this time is never fully explained by a reliable source in any of the movies. And the writers don't plan to go deeper on it because it's simply easier to roll with it.
  • Numbered Sequels: Parts II to III, and V to VIII.
  • Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Parts IV to VIII have the subtitles The Final Chapter, A New Beginning, Jason Lives, The New Blood and Jason Takes Manhattan. Sequels after Part VIII dropped the Friday the 13th moniker and were called Jason Something for a while until the remake restored the original title.
    • This was because Parts 1 to 8 were produced by Paramount, who then sold the franchise, but not the "Friday The 13th" moniker, to New Line Cinema. The next three films were not allowed to use "Friday The 13th," until New Line acquired those rights too, in time for the remake/reboot. Right now, the franchise and title are owned by New Line, who also own the "A Nightmare On Elm Street" franchise, which was the only reason Freddy vs. Jason could have been made at all.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted between movies. When you have that many installments, you're bound to have a few repeated names. One notable example: The girl who gets killed with gardening shears to the eyes in Part V has the same name as the Final Girl in Part VII, Tina.
    • In Part VIII, there are even two characters with the same first name (Jim).
  • Peek-a-Boo Corpse: There's always a few ready to scare the main characters in the climax.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: Jason.
  • Resurrected Murderer: Jason Voorhees spends the first part of the series as a living but savage murderer. After he's killed in the fourth film, he's brought back as a zombie by lightning in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.
  • Say My Name: There are plenty of moments when characters call out each others names. Murder usually ensues.
  • Shooting Superman:
    • Armed characters will insist on shooting, stabbing, clubbing, or punching Jason over and over, even when it's clearly not doing jack-squat to stop him. Usually he'll just stand there and soak up the blows, then finish them off once they've gotten it out of their system.
    • It finally works in Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X. But not for long, as in both cases Jason gains new abilities after being shot to hell that allow him to return (becoming a small demonic entity in the former, being revived by malfunctioning technology in the latter).
  • Significant Birth Date: Surprise surprise, guess who was born Friday the 13th?
  • Slashed Throat: Plenty of deaths.
  • Slashers Prefer Blondes: Alice is actually a rare subversion and one of the few blonde Final Girls there are. Played straight with her death in the sequel though Final Girl Ginny is also blonde. It's worth nothing that the series mostly subverts this trope, with most of the Final Girls being blonde such as Alice, Ginny, Trish, Pam, Tina, Jessica and Lori. Likewise Final Boy Tommy Jarvis is also blonde, and survives three movies.
  • Sliding Scale Of Silliness Vs Seriousness: Starts out as a serious, if derivative, horror franchise, but starts taking itself less seriously, adding more Self-Deprecation and self-aware humor, around Part VI.
  • Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Tommy is played, in succession, by a 13-year old, an early twenty-something, and a 28-year old, in an in-universe time period of about five years.
  • Status Quo Is God: Several sequels attempted to add a Sequel Hook that hint at Jason becoming a Legacy Character, or attempted to have Jason Killed Off for Real.note  However, Jason proved to be such a popular character that replacing him or kill him off permanently became basically impossible and these were almost always abandoned with little reasoning.
  • Stock Footage: First three sequels open with footage from previous movies.
  • Stopped Numbering Sequels: Did it twice, for both "final chapters".
  • Teen Horror: Together with Halloween, this series is the reason why slasher villains are often specifically identified as targeting dumb teenagers.
  • Tempting Fate: After the second killing spree in the series, you'd think they'd stop trying to reopen the camp at Crystal Lake (see Too Dumb to Live below)....
  • 13 Is Unlucky: It's right there in the title, the whole idea being that come the 13th everybody is doomed.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Several times, Jason proves hi trusty machete doesn't actually need to be in his hand to be lethal.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Many, many characters. Such as Ginny who gets her hands on a chainsaw, hits Jason with it - then, when he falls over, she drops the chainsaw and hits him with a chair instead.
    • Most of the victims, period, as they go to Crystal Lake, by then aware of the fact that there have been multiple murder sprees but completely ignoring it anyway.
  • Trope Codifier: For the slasher movies.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Jason in Freddy vs. Jason, though the plan doesn't go as well as Freddy hoped.
  • Victory by Endurance: Jason uses this in Part VIII, where he faces against a teen boxer in Good Old Fisticuffs. Jason never even throws a punch and soaks up punishment upon punishment until the boxer gets tired. Then Jason decapitates him with one punch.note 
  • Villain-Based Franchise: The franchise is centered around Jason Voorhees. Not entirely however, since in the first film the killer was Pamela Voorhees, and in A New Beginning, the killer is a copy-cat murderer.
  • Villain Protagonist: Later movies start to treat Jason as this. He's definitely preferable to all the stoned, screwing, generic teenagers...
  • Villainous Legacy:
  • The Voiceless: Jason, though are few moments when he opens his mouth.
    • Part III has Jason opening his mouth for the first time in the whole franchise (as an adult, at least):
      Jason: "(gets stabbed in the hand) Ow!"
    • In Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason lets out a roar oddly enough when he takes his mask off.
    • Near the end of Jason Goes to Hell Jason possesses a character and pretends to be them for a bit, actually speaking one line.
      Jason: Freeze! Get the Hell away from her Ed!
      • Also in that film, he makes a lot of noise at the beginning as the military guns him down.
  • White Mask of Doom: Jason's hockey mask in its early appearances, over the time it becomes more yellowish and worn-out.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Freddy vs. Jason reveals that Jason had hydrophobia (a fear of water) as a kid. It doesn't affect him as an adult, but when Freddy gets his claws on his inner child, things get ugly. Part VIII's protagonist also suffers from it, due to a childhood trauma.
  • Willing Suspension of Disbelief:
    • The only way any of the movies after the first one would be even possible would be if the audience just accepts that somehow Jason didn't actually drown as a child, ran away to live in the woods for some reason, and everyone just assumes that the missing kid drowned without looking for a body, including his own mother.
    • An alternative is explored in that Jason's body was posessed by that little black eel monster you see in Jason Goes To Hell. You still need to give your suspension of disbelief two weeks off at Christmas though...
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Jason is one of the most notable slashers in horror history, but somewhere deep (very deep) inside is a Momma's Boy deeply misses her and feels he has to please her. To varying degrees this was always the case thanks to him often being portrayed as a deformed manchild with mental deficiences and a murdered (even though she deserved it) mother. Being bullied as a child by his fellow campers and dying entirely thanks to the uncaring attitudes of the camp councillors adds to this. Several movies even add that it's not really his fault; it's either a demonic possession or a curse on the lake itself.
  • World of Ham: With Jason an an exception, most of the other characters, including Jason's victims and Asshole Victims before their deaths, spent most of their screen time Chewing the Scenery from the fifth film to beyond.
  • You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: Jason Voorhees was at first a regular human slasher villain (although Made of Iron), but after his resurrection as a zombie he starts to shrug off nearly all damage inflicted on him. The tenth movie hand waves this by explicitly giving him a Healing Factor.

The various licensed novels have examples of:

    Friday The 13th Camp Crystal Lake 
  • Amusement Park of Doom: The Carnival, the third Tales from the Crystal Lake book, has Jason turning a carnival into a charnel house, with lots of gruesome descriptions of the carnage.
  • Combat Pragmatist: In the "Tales from Crystal Lake" book "Mother's Day", Jason, while in the body of a hunter, simply shoots an escaping victim with a shotgun. In the sequel, Jason's Curse, he again uses a gun to kill several characters while possessing another man. Also in "Hell Lake", he begins his assault on the prison by gunning down several guards with a hunting rifle.
  • Creepy Gas-Station Attendant: The gas station owner in the Tales from the Crystal Lake book Mother's Day turns out to be a Captain Ersatz of Norman Bates.
  • Evil Mask: Anyone who puts on Jason's hockey mask in Tales from the Crystal Lake books becomes possessed by him.
  • Fog of Doom: All Tales from the Crystal Lake books feature a yellow fog which seems to make everyone feel more negatively, lubricating the lethal intentions of whomever finds Jason's hockey mask as well as the Final Girl.
  • Jack the Ripoff: In Road Trip, a state trooper, driven off the deep end by catching his best friend in bed with his wife, makes plans to kill them, and make it look like Jason's work. He succeeds, but is killed by the real Jason (who is possessing a guy) shortly after.

    Friday the 13th (Black Flame) 
  • Alpha Bitch: Tina Chen in Jason's Curse. Although she (begrudgingly) goes along with Kelly's plan to trap Jason, she spends most of her time being bitchy to Kelly and boyfriend Miguel, and later almost sleeps with Kelly's boyfriend, Doug.
  • Attack the Mouth: In Hate-Kill-Repeat, Jason kills Penelope Thawne by jamming his machete down her throat.
  • Bad with the Bone: In Hate-Kill-Repeat, Norwood Thawne arms up with his own wife Penelope's bones and makes a weapon out of them to fight against Jason.
  • Beneficial Disease: The titular virus of The Jason Strain is intended to be an Immortality Inducer, using a modified strain of Herpes Simplex because it's impossible to get rid of. After Jason is infected, it becomes a zombie plague.
  • Bespectacled Cutie: Edward Daimler, an FBI agent in Hate-Kill-Repeat, mentions that his new partner suddenly goes from hot to absolutely adorable when she briefly puts on a pair of reading glasses. It turns out to be an act and costs Daimler his life.
  • Break the Cutie: Meredith Host from Church of the Divine Psychopath who's bubbly, innocent and just seems perpetually happy, actually managing to befriend the surly Final Girl of the book. Things quickly degenerate when she witnesses her parents be butchered in front of her by Jason, with the leader of the mad Jason-worshipping cult they were apart of (thought it was just a regular church group) saying they deserved it; she also winds up dealing with lots of self-hate over being a closet lesbian due to her religious upbringing and near the end winds up almost being raped by one of the aforementioned mad cultists, who had grown steadily more obsessed with her. Though she's saved at the last minute by one of the soldiers sent out to track down and kill Jason she still dies quite horribly when Jason randomly shows up seconds later and splits her head open before the soldier can even get a shot at him.
  • Cat Scare: Church of the Divine Psychopath has a scene where the soldiers hunting Jason in the dark woods are all startled by a raccoon, right before Jason comes out of nowhere and attacks.
  • Chainsaw Good: Both "Hate-Kill-Repeat" and "The Jason Strain" feature Jason killing people with a buzzsaw and an electric bone saw, respectively. He even uses an actual chainsaw while possessing a man in "Jason's Curse"
  • Convenient Miscarriage: Near the end of Hate-Kill-Repeat, Halo Harlan, the teenaged protagonist, who had earlier discovered she was pregnant, miscarries when Jason nonchalantly punches her in the stomach.
  • Deadly Game: The Jason Strain has several Condemned Contestants put on a Southern island, with the winner getting a reduced sentence and transfer to a cushy minimum security facility. Along with Jason (a "special guest") the roster includes the framed main character, a mass murderer, a white supremacist, two serial killers, an Angel of Death nurse, a black widow, a serial rapist, a mob boss, and three street gang members.
  • Eye Scream: Walter Hobb from Church of the Divine Psychopath gets one of his eyes damaged when one of the druggies smashes his face with a baseball bat, but gets over it and is quite competent as a soldier, even managing to make it to the end alive.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Hate-Kill-Repeat features a character managing to blow up a car simply by shooting its gas tank, in an attempt to stop Jason.
  • Evil Versus Evil: In Hate-Kill-Repeat serial killers Norwood and Penelope Thawn come to Crystal Lake specifically to try and "recruit" Jason in the belief that he shares their beliefs and kills those who violate their moral code. Since Jason ultimately just kills whoever's convenient, he swiftly kills Penelope and Norwood sets out to get revenge.
  • Final Girl: The Blake Flame novels, in order, include Kelly Mills, Gretchen Andrews, Hayley "Halo" Harlan, Alexandra Coyle, and Alice Witney. The majority of them subvert the usual expectations of a final girl, with Kelly being promiscuous and foul-mouthed, Halo being teenaged and pregnant, and Alexandra being a bodybuilder convicted of murdering her cheating ex-boyfriend.
  • Fingore: Hate-Kill-Repeat ends with secondary character Tom Sheridan losing half the fingers on his left hand when he deflects Jason's attack before main protagonist Halo Harlan draws Jason away for a final rooftop showdown (of course, considering what Jason usually does to people, 'just' losing a few fingers to him is lucky).
  • Halfway Plot Switch: The Jason Strain starts off with Jason on an island where people kill each other to win their freedom. Then, he is kidnapped by scientists, which leads to the novel turning into a story about zombies when their experiments go wrong.
  • Hollywood Silencer: When the Thawns kill the swingers at the beginning of "Hate-Kill-Repeat", the gun that Penelope Thawn uses is described to make a soft "phut" because of the Suppressor on the gun.
  • Hope Spot:
    • Near the end of "Carnival Of Maniacs", Jason takes off his mask and puts it on the Jason obsessed rock-star who bought him off the internet. The guy cries with joy, until he realizes that Jason only put it on him to kill him with said mask . Also crosses over to Too Dumb to Live.
    • In Hate-Kill-Repeat, Chuck Waylon manages to trap Jason in the freezer by sacrificing a colleague of his to get the killer inside the room in the first place. Then the security chief comes and has his crew let Jason out, getting themselves killed and causing the carnage to escalate incredibly fast.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Jason is defeated in Hate-Kill-Repeat when he is forced off the roof of a hotel building and lands on the phoenix statue in the fountain in front of the building; the statue's wings are spread so that there are eight 'feathers' pointing upwards, with all eight of these impaling Jason's body to the extent that one goes into his head.
  • Improvised Weapon User: Oh, where to begin... While prevalent in all of the novels, Jason really gets creative in Carnival of Maniacs, in what he uses. At first he kills one of the three goths by shoving the kid's cellphone down his throat. But it's his attack at the music video set that plays this trope to a T. He uses a crowbar,arc light, a cymbal off a drum kit, a keyboard plug, headphone cord, a mic stand, and his own hockey mask to deadly effect.
  • Incompatible Orientation: Kelly Mills is left feeling uncomfortable when her younger friend Meredith Host admits to having a crush on her, as she likes Meredith as a friend and wants to help her but doesn't feel that way about her.
  • Jawbreaker: In Hate-Kill-Repeat, Jason impales a man with a flagpole, and then finishes him off by ripping his lower jaw out.
  • Mundane Luxury: Sissy Keene, a hillbilly Boxed Crook from The Jason Strain enjoys her time in prison, because she gets running water, a flush toilet, and a "tee-vee right there in her cell!"
  • No Zombie Cannibals: The zombies in The Jason Strain never attack each other or Jason, the Zombie Progenitor, since they seem incapable of registering a fellow undead entity. The same seems to be true for Jason, who is completely apathetic towards the zombies he is creating, his acknowledgement of them never going beyond shoving some aside when they get in his way.
  • Pet the Dog: The Thawnes are immoral murderers with delusions in their minds, but they do spare a family of two adults and two children they come across due to seeing them as good people. Too bad Jason kills all four of them later anyway.
  • Powerful Pick: The second diver that Jason kills in Hate-Kill-Repeat goes by way of pickax hrough his eye.
  • Psychosexual Horror: The franchise famously uses a lot of sex scenes and it's usually how Jason Voorhees is able to catch and kill his victims. Sex actually does play a role in how Jason originally died, Jason drowned in a lake because the camp councilors left them unsupervised as they ran off to have sex.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica: In Church of the Divine Psychopath, a bunch of government agents (all them, more or less, screw-ups) are sent to Crystal Lake to hunt down and kill Jason Voorhees, though a few members of the team realize this is probably nothing but a Snipe Hunt and good publicity stunt. But, this being a Friday the 13th story, things inevitably get worse.
  • Religion of Evil: Church of the Divine Psychopath has Eric Long, head of a cult who praises Jason as an instrument of divine vengeance.
  • The Scourge of God: Played with in Church of the Divine Psychopath. Eric Long resurrects Jason with the intent of ridding his flock of sinners, believing Jason to be an instrument of divine vengeance. Of course, Jason being Jason, he begins massacring everyone in his path, including Long.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
    • In Hate-Kill-Repeat, Tom Sheridan is a marketing executive attending a company retreat with his colleagues, but realises during the holiday that he doesn't like who he's becoming in his job and is equally uncomfortable with his so-called friends. When Halo Harlen shows up looking for her older sister and most of Tom's colleagues ignore her, Tom rejects them all as jerks and offers to help Halo search (which saves his life when Jason shows up later and slaughters most of Tom's now-former colleagues).
    • In the same novel, a minor character named Chuck Waylon escapes the hotel when Jason starts wreaking havoc inside, only coming back with the rescuers to envision the carnage on the rooftop. The novel ends with Jason about to get himself off the statue just as Waylon and paramedics are about to lift him off it.
  • Sexy Stewardess: Two are featured at the end of The Jason Strain, and were presumably hired by Caleb Carson simply for their looks. Jason hacks one to death, and stabs the other in the face with a broken bottle.
  • Sinister Minister: Eric Long in Church of the Divine Psychopath, who regards Jason as an instrument of divine vengeance even when Jason kills him.
  • Slime Ball: The TV exec in The Jason Strain is a complete greaseball, expecting sexual favours from his female staff Or Else, and having utter disdain for everyone older than 20. Oh yes, and his million-dollar idea is to have condemned murderers fight to the death on national TV in exchange for, not a pardon, but a commutation of sentences from Death to Life in Prison (it's rigged so that the prettiest girl wins).
  • Stealth Sequel: Church of the Divine Psychopath is ultimately revealed to be this to Jason Goes to Hell, depicting the FBI sting operation that led to Jason's apparent death at the start of that film.
  • Walking Wasteland: Jason has this power in Jason Strain. Small animals and plants just drop dead if they stay close to him for too long, and all of his victims become zombie-esque figures.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Not explicitly shown, but in Hate-Kill-Repeat Jason kills a family that includes a small boy and an infant before waiting for the father to come so he could finish him off last.
    • And in Jason's Curse, Big Red Gleason, possessed by Jason, kills at least two children and possibly an infant by stomping and kicking them to death.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: The Thawnes in Hate-Kill-Repeat think that Jason shares their fixation on killing those who break their moral code. They only realise after they've met Jason that he just kills whoever's in his vicinity and his chosen victims met their criteria just by chance.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: In The Jason Strain, Jason is kidnapped by scientists and ends up exposed to an experimental virus which reacts negatively with him, giving him the ability to reanimate his victims as zombies

"People forget... he's down there... waiting."

 
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Alternative Title(s): Friday The13th, Tales From Camp Crystal Lake, Friday The13th Church Of The Divine Psychopath, Friday The13th Pamelas Tale, Friday The13th Hate Kill Repeat, Friday The13th The Jason Strain

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