10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About Jason Voorhees

One of the biggest mysteries in Friday the 13th is just what Jason Voorhees IS, exactly. The first movie is pretty grounded, with no supernatural elements, until after Mrs Voorhees has been vanquished and all seems peaceful, the rotted corpse of the young Jason leaps out from the lake, pulling Alice out of her canoe into the depths below.

It’s a brilliant cliffhanger that should have been built upon in the next film, but the sequel instead opts to introduce an eyebrow-raising retcon – he didn’t drown, he made it to the shore and lived alone in the woods, before being brought out of hiding to avenge his mother’s beheading, which he supposedly witnessed.

Not only does this make minimal sense, it also blunts the impact of that final jumpscare, and makes Mrs Voorhees’ motivation moot.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, but one you’ve got to accept for the sake of adult Jason taking centre stage. For the next three movies, he was less of an undead monster that couldn’t be killed, and more of an unstoppable brute that was just really, really hard to kill.

His death inThe Final Chapter was supposed to be definitive, but in the sixth film he is accidentally reanimated with a bolt of lightning, Frankenstein-style. From that point on, he was officially an immortal zombie.