10 Horror Movies That Changed Their Franchise

by Andrew Pollard

1. Friday The 13th Part 2

Friday The 13th Part 2 Jason
Paramount Pictures

The first Friday the 13th movie famously features Pamela Voorhees slicing her way through the counsellors of Camp Crystal Lake, with her on a skewed mission of revenge for the death of her young son Jason years prior.

For Jason, he tragically drowned due to the counsellors of the day being too busy having sex and partying. And in that 1980 picture, Mrs. Voorhees' rampage is brutally brought to a halt when she's decapitated by Alice Hardy during the film's closing moments. While Jason would later jump out of the lake to startle Alice, it's implied that this was merely a hallucination.

So, while Friday the 13th establishes that Jason has been dead for years, things clearly changed vastly for the IP when Friday the 13th Part 2 rolled around one year later. Here, we find the adult, hulking form of Jason Voorhees as the one cracking skulls at Camp Crystal Lake - and this would reshape Friday the 13th in a way that has made it one of the most successful franchises in horror history.

It would take until Friday the 13th Part III for Jason to get his iconic hockey mask, but it was Part 2 which first put the character in centre-stage and changed the literal face of the series.

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Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks/Saints, Jamie Hayter, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.