Final Destination/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


YMMVs for the film series:

  • Alas, Poor Scrappy: In the second movie, even if you don't like Kat, you can't help but feeling sorry when she dies some moments after showing empathy for her companions of misfortune.
  • Angst? What Angst?: So you've just seen your best friend die. Some bizarre freak accident not only killed him, but smeared the contents of his body across a 200 foot radius. The most horrific thing ever has just happened to your best friend. Your response? "OH MY GOD! I'M NEXT!" On the other hand, most of the main characters of every film just seem to be acquaintances at best, so it isn't that unreasonable in most circumstances.
  • Author's Saving Throw: After a poorly received 4th installment, the producers brought on an entirely new writing staff, a new direction to the series, and fan favorite Tony Todd back as Mr. Bludworth.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The Final Destination
      • Why can't we be friends? reaches new levels of awesome when it plays as a racist dies a horrible, firey death.
    • Final Destination 5
      • ACDC's "If You Want Blood" playing over a montage of the series' death scenes at the end of 5.
  • Complete Monster: Death. It's understandable that he wouldn't want people to cheat death when they were scheduled to die, but come on! Dying of a brain embolism in their sleep isn't good enough?
  • Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: The series has this problem involving the second variant of this trope. There's no point in getting emotionally attached to the characters or rooting for them to make it, because the rules say death will not be cheated and they're all going to die.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: This recent news report.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The poster in the main page. "No accidents. No coincidences. No escapes. FINAL DESTINATION."
  • Just Here For The Gruesome Deaths
  • Magnificent Bastard: Death of course.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • A Running Gag on the internet is to state the reasons behind all of the bizarre deaths in the movie is due to "Kira being very bored".
    • The film having the same name as the Super Smash Bros. stage have led to mutations of the "No items! Fox only! Final Destination!" meme involving the film.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Crossed by Peter in Number 5 when he kills Agent Block and goes after Molly anyway even though he doesn't need to kill her now. Sam gives him what's coming within minutes.
  • Narm: The car wash almost-death in The Final Destination can come across as ridiculous if you know that people have ridden through car washes on the tops of cars with no ill effects. MythBusters proved you don't even need to hold on to the car.
  • Nightmare Retardant:

"Ok, this isn't scary at all. Why? Because the best Final Destination deaths are simple, like someone getting hit by a bus. Not THIS, which is so implausible that it's just not scary at all!"

    • The fourth movie had the status of having basically every death involve either over the top Gorn or just kind of dumb. This led to some thinking the deaths had turned from "Oh god that could happen to me." to "Haha, look at that dumb guy's guts."
  • Paranoia Fuel: The series thrives off this, taking everyday situations and making them deadly. Remember, the smallest action can create a chain reaction which ends with you getting your head cut off or your house exploding.
  • Sequelitis: The second and third films are arguably better than the original, but many fans seem to hate the fourth one. The fifth one completely averts this.
  • Special Effects Failure: In Final Destination 5, the appliance used to simulate Peter getting rebars through his face in the opening disaster looks horribly fake.
  • Spiritual Successor: More or less with The Omen, only with Death instead of The Antichrist doing the weird deaths.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While the previous sequels are of varying quality, Final Destination 5 is one of the better sequels to come out, actually adding new mythology to the series, a feat not seen since Final Destination 2. It is also the best reviewed of the franchise, with the only "Fresh" rating in the series on Rotten Tomatoes.
  • They're Just Hiding:
    • Wendy, Kevin and Julie from Final Destination 3.
    • Kimberly and Thomas from Final Destination 2; some people just outright refuse to acknowledge the bonus feature mentioning their deaths on the Final Destination 3 DVD, even though it was proven canon.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Whereas the dumb black-hating redneck received a spectacular and humiliating end in the opening 20 minutes of Number 4, an Asian-hating war veteran in a hospital -- granted, not on the list -- enacted this scene and got off scot-free:

Orderly: You feeling okay, Mr. Suby?
Suby: Ha! What do you care? You know how many of your kind I killed in Korea?
Orderly: I'm Chinese, sir.
Suby: Pfft! Same difference!


YMMVs for the books and comic books:

  • Jerkass Woobie: Brut in Looks Could Kill. Sure, he's an asshole, but he's an inbred whose entire family was slaughtered when he was only a baby, and he spent the first six years of his life in a foster home being raped and abused. Yeah.
  • The Woobie:
    • Arlen from the book Dead Man's Hand.
    • Chardonnay from Looks Could Kill.