9 Genuinely Subtle Ways Movies Planned For The Sequel In Advance

4. Bait-And-Switching The Villain - Friday The 13th

Friday the 13th may not be a great horror film, but in a sea of soulless slasher flicks, it did boast one genuinely subversive twist which set up a sequel in a most unexpected and disarming way.

Throughout the movie, the audience is led to believe that the unseen murderer killing horny camp counsellors is Jason Voorhees himself, the young boy "drowned" at the camp over 20 years earlier.

But of course, it's revealed at the end of the film that the killer is in fact Jason's mother Pamela (Betsy Palmer), driven mad in her quest for revenge against the counsellors who allowed her son to drown.

Though a final nightmare sequence hints at Jason still being alive, the plot thread isn't actually picked up in earnest until the sequel.

Had Friday the 13th not been the box office smash that it was, it would've functioned perfectly as a standalone movie with one creepy final glimpse at maybe-Jason.

But as the film was such a stonking success, the producers were able to run with that nightmare and make Jason the eventually iconic franchise antagonist - though he didn't actually get his signature hockey mask until the third movie.