Trivia / Final Destination

• Breakup Breakout: Out of all of the main protagonists from the entire series, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the only one so far to have become a successful actress, with hits such as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Birds of Prey (2020) etc.
• California Doubling:
  • The first, second, and fifth films are set in upstate New York, while the third film was set in Pennsylvania. All but the fourth entry were filmed in and around Vancouver, British Columbia.
  • The fourth film, meanwhile, was set in Pennsylvania and filmed in Louisiana.
• Distanced from Current Events: The 9/11 reference in Final Destination 3 (a picture of one of the towers covered by a shadow of a plane), which was considered tasteless and offensive by critics, is removed from the TV version of the film.
• Franchise Killer: Though there was another one after it, The Final Destination was the film that brought the series past the point of no return.^note Or, if you prefer, to its final destination. It was the biggest hit in the franchise since the first, largely thanks to the addition of 3D, but it was so poorly received by critics and fans alike that people stayed away in droves from Final Destination 5, leading to that film's failure driving the final nails into the coffin (despite generally being considered a much better movie). Eventually an aversion: a sixth movie has been in various stages of development since 2019, with the plan as of this writing that it will start production following the conclusion of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike.
• Keep Circulating The Books: Only a few copies of Death of the Senses, the third book in the novel series, were released, due to the majority of them being recalled due to the wrong author being credited in one place. Even the Final Destination wiki has little information on this one due to its rarity. Recently, however, a PDF upload of the book has been made available.
• Orphaned Reference: The first death featured Tod getting startled by a shadow in the mirror, and the water he slipped on in the bathroom retreating back into the toilet to make his death look like a suicide. This is left over from when all the deaths were planned this way, but the filmmakers changed their minds to have the others as accidents.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: Ali Larter dyed her hair brown and it is so in the original ending. When they decided to change said ending, Clear's hair is now blonde after the Time Skip. This carried over to the second film, where Clear is still blonde even when she's in a padded cell.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick wrote the original script as a spec script for The X-Files in order to get a TV agent. He did got his agent, but never submitted the script to The X-Files after a colleague at New Line Cinema suggested he write it as a feature film. This script was adapted into what would become the first Final Destination movie.
  • Alex was going to be in the 2nd movie, but negotiations fell through with actor Devon Sawa, so he was killed off.
  • Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were considered for Alex and Clear in Final Destination, two years before they would lead Spider-Man.
  • In the early stages of Final Destination 2, Tim Carpenter was envisioned as a 5-7 year old, but there was uneasiness in making a movie where such a young character gets killed in a gruesome fashion. In the movie proper, he was born 1986 and met his end on May 14, 2001, still making him the youngest victim in the series.
  • A draft of FD3 had Kimberly and Thomas, the survivors of FD2, making cameos in the final scene with Wendy, Julie and Kevin on Train 081...only to be killed with them during the derailment.
  • There was a seventh book in the novel series titled Wipeout, but it was cancelled shortly before its scheduled publication date due to Black Flame having financial problems.
• Word of God: It is stated in Final Destination 3 that Kimberly and Thomas, the only survivors of Final Destination 2, died five years ago, just before the last three people of Final Destination 3, thus sealing the really complicated rift created by their survival.
• Working Title: Flight 180. This was changed due to Executive Meddling on the grounds that it was too similar to other plane-related films like Con Air and Air Force One.

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