Trivia / Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

• Acting for Two: Kane Hodder plays both Jason in his regular form and the FBI agent the coroner-possessed Jason kills offscreen. Technically he's Acting for Three, as his arm was the one portraying Freddy in the final scene.
• Ability over Appearance: Originally, Joey B and Shelby were male and female respectively. After Rusty Schwimmer's audition for Joey put the filmmakers into hysterics, they cast her and retooled the characters.
• Blooper: If you pause the first time Duke's note is shown, you can see◊ that it says "I have what you want" and is written in pen, rather than◊ "I have your baby" and being written in thick black marker like we later see when Steven finds the note.
• Cameo Prop:
  • The book found in the Voorhees house and the dagger Jason gets stabbed with are props borrowed from the Evil Dead movies.
  • The director said the Evil Dead props are the same ones In-universe with Pamela Voorhees summoning a Kandarian demon to resurrect Jason and Jason being stabbed with the Kandarian dagger.
  • The Crate from its namesake story from Creepshow can be spotted inside the Voorhees house.
  • The jungle gym from the original version of the The Birds can be seen on the backyard of the Voorhees house during the final battle.
• Channel Hop: The first film in the series to be produced by New Line Cinema, who would hold the rights until the 2009 reboot.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Erin Gray, who played Diana Voorhees was reportedly disgusted by the scene where the Jason worm slides into her vagina before he’s reborn, angered that they shot the scene without her acknowledgement or permission.
  • Producer Sean S. Cunningham has spoken out against the film in recent years, citing the body hopping plot as a terrible idea that strayed too far from the series, but stuck with it at the time because he felt that fans didn’t want to see another Jason hack & slash film again. He was wrong. He also admitted that it was a bad idea to allow the young and extremely inexperienced Adam Marcus to direct the film.
• Creator's Favorite: Adam Marcus' favorite character is Creighton Duke.
• Creator Killer:
  • Jason Goes to Hell effectively killed the career of director Adam Marcus before it had even started. Marcus, who was only 23 at the time, wouldn't direct another film for over six years, and wouldn't be allowed anywhere near a high-profile franchise until Texas Chainsaw 3D twenty years later.
  • Aside from two straight-to-video films and a producer's credit on the 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left Sean S. Cunningham hasn't done much outside of the Friday the 13th franchise since this movie.
• Dear Negative Reader: A less aggressive example as even Adam Marcus is aware of the controversial opinions regarding his film, but on some occasions he has responded to those who hated the movie by saying that there’s 8 other movies that do the exact same thing and that they can go and watch those over bitching about Jason Goes to Hell.
• Executive Meddling: Reports from the set and interviews with cast and crew suggest that producer Sean S. Cunningham held a great deal of leeway on-set and over first-time director Adam Marcus, effectively ghost directing large portions of the film and even taking over post-production.
• Flip-Flop of God:
  • Over who came up with the body hopping plot. Adam Marcus states that it was Sean Cunningham’s idea to "get rid of that damn hockey mask" and to make it feel less like the past 7 sequels. Meanwhile, Sean Cunningham claims that Adam Marcus is a liar and that it was his idea to change up the status quo, as he felt fans didn’t want another standard Jason sequel.
  • Regarding the film's name, the Crystal Lake Memories book and documentary state that they couldn’t use the name Friday the 13th because Paramount only sold them the Jason Voorhees name, not the series trademark. However an earlier book detailing the making of the series, The Making of Friday the 13th, says that it was deliberate on their part and that they could’ve easily called it Friday the 13th Part IX, but chose to be creative with the name. When the film was first announced as in the pipeline in Fangoria magazine, the title given was Friday the 13th: Jason Goes to Hell. For what it's worth, all Jason merchandise from 1993 on states "'Jason' and Friday the 13th are registered trademarks of New Line Cinema."
• Franchise Killer: While the failure of the previous film had already caused Paramount to flog the franchise off to New Line Cinema, this film finished the job and threw the series into a hiatus that lasted for nearly a decade. One could say that it really did send Jason to Hell.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: An incredibly odd example. Despite the Unrated Cut being available on previous LaserDisc, VHS and even DVD releases, the official HD and Blu-ray release omitted it in favor of the more tame R-Rated Cut. The Blu-ray itself, along with Jason X are only available on the out of print complete collection box set and hasn’t seen a standalone release in the US. The only way to get it is through the (already hard to find) region free release from Austria. Both the Unrated Cut and Blu-ray would eventually be rescued when Shout! Factory released a Collector’s Edition in October of 2020.
• Orphaned Reference: At one point, Duke asks Jason if he remembers him, implying the two have a history together. That's because in an early script, Duke's girlfriend was killed by Jason, and the reason he knows so much about him is because he wanted revenge.
• The Other Darrin: Kane Hodder plays Freddy Krueger (or at least his arm) instead of Robert Englund.
• So My Kids Can Watch: According to Adam Marcus, Erin Gray joined the film due to her son being a fan of make-up effects.
• Troubled Production: It's generally agreed that the film had a troubled shoot, though exactly how troubled and who was to blame remains disputed. Producer Sean S. Cunningham claims that first-time (at just 24 years old!) director Adam Marcus' inexperience caused him to badly mismanage the shoot, including letting through obviously flubbed scenes without retakes, shooting lengthy sequences entirely in slow-motion, and forgetting to film important lines of dialogue, requiring Cunningham to reshoot nearly half the movie. However, others involved with the production have claimed Cunningham's accounts to be grossly exaggerated, and instead place the blame on Cunningham himself for being a Pointy-Haired Boss during production. The one thing that all the accounts seem to agree on is that Marcus did not get along well in the slightest with lead actress Kari Keegan, who reportedly threatened to quit several times during filming. The end product did a little better than Jason Takes Manhattan at the box-office, though not by a whole lot (albeit it had a smaller budget, making it an overall more profitable venture).
• Word of God: Adam Marcus has said that, despite similarities in the concept, he didn’t base the film off The Hidden, nor were he or his team even aware of its existence during the writing process.
• You Look Familiar: John D. LeMay had played a different character in Friday the 13th: The Series, although that had nothing to do with the movies aside from the title.

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