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10 Biggest Fears the 'Final Destination' Movies Gave Us

Published 1 week ago9 minute read

The movies are notorious for creative, outlandish, and completely unhinged character deaths. Even among other franchises, Final Destination gets extra points for creating elaborate sequences that put audiences on the edge of their seats. This year, New Line Cinema is releasing a sixth installment in the franchise, Final Destination: Bloodlines, which will no doubt imbue a whole new generation with extremely specific fears.

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final-destination-bloodlines-updated-2025-film-poster.jpg
Final Destination: Bloodlines

May 16, 2025

109 Minutes

Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein

Lori Evans Taylor, Guy Busick, Jeffrey Reddick, Jon Watts

Craig Perry, Jon Watts, Dianne McGunigle

Whether the new movie is good doesn't really matter. Even when a Final Destination movie isn't scary as a whole, there's always at least one death that sticks in the viewer's brain. Some of the fears the Final Destination films instill are general — common fears that many people who haven't seen the movies would consider anxiety-inducing. Others are oddly specific events that viewers might never have thought to worry about if not for this beloved (and stressful) horror franchise.

Here are the 10 biggest fears the Final Destination movies have instilled in us forever.

Hunt (Nick Zano) getting sucked into the pool drain in The Final Destination.
New Line Cinema

In Final Destination 4, Nick O'Bannon (Bobby Campo) saves his friends from a gruesome accident at the racetrack. Unfortunately, death comes up with a particularly grisly do-over for one of those friends. Hunt Wynorski (Nick Zano) is at a country club pool when he confiscates a water gun from a swimmer, placing the water gun near a lever that turns on the pool's drain system.

When Hunt's lucky coin goes into the pool, he goes in after it. It does not go well. He gets stuck, and the drainage pressure sucks all his organs out and spits them out via the pump. While the movie hasn't caused audiences to swear off swimming altogether, it has impacted the way they look at swimming pools. Some fans make a point of staying away from the drainage system whenever they go for a swim, considering Hunt's demise to be one of the bloodiest in the franchise. Ir seems that aquatic horror never gets old.

boarding pass in Final Destination
New Line Cinema

Final Destination is the movie that started it all. When Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) and his high school classmates board Flight 180 for France, everyone is excited to go on the big trip. Then Alex has a vision of the plane exploding in the sky and announces that everyone should get off the plane. This results in several students leaving or getting kicked off the flight. The plane then explodes midair shortly after takeoff, just like Alex's premonition said it would.

​​​To this day, plenty of Final Destination fans see the number 180 as a bad travel omen. The number repeats throughout the franchise, appearing on a highway mile marker, seat numbers at a racetrack, and in the name of a consulting firm. There are a ton of fan theories about the significance of this number, but the impression remains the same: 180 means danger. Fans do not like it when this number pops up in their vacation plans.

devon sawa in final destination

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Final Destination 3 takes place at an amusement park, where Wendy Christensen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has a premonition of a roller coaster disaster. This causes her to raise the alarm, keeping several friends off a roller coaster that ultimately derails. In speaking up, she saves their lives...at least for a time.

Plenty of people were probably afraid of roller coasters before they saw Final Destination 3, but the movie certainly didn't help. The rickety, temperamental reputation of amusement park equipment doesn't help, either. The roller coaster is designed as a thrill ride, but it's probably not supposed to scare people as much as it does now that everyone has watched this movie.

lawnmower in Final Destination 4
New Line Cinema

Lawnmowers pop up more than once in the Final Destination franchise. In fact, there's one in the upcoming Final Destination: Bloodlines, but the ride-on lawnmower in Final Destination 4 is the one that drew first blood. Samantha Lane (Krista Allen) lives through the McKinley Speedway crash predicted by Nick O'Bannon (Bobby Campo) but dies later in the film after a trip to the hair salon.

Samantha is on her way out the door when a ride-on lawnmower drives by and kicks up a rock. The rock goes through the lawnmower's exhaust pipe and kills Samantha instantly when it shoots directly through her eye (because Final Destination movies love eye horror). Lawnmowers are a pretty average thing people see in their daily lives and, while they do have sharp blades, it was this scene which ignited a new fear: debris shooting out from beneath the lawnmower.

Tony Todd as The Barker in 'Hell Fest' (2018)

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Tod in tub Final Destination
New Line Cinema

While Alex manages to save some friends from the Flight 180 disaster in Final Destination, his best friend, Tod Waggner (Chad Donella) has complicated feelings about living. Tod's brother George (Brendan Fehr) is the one who told him to go check on Alex after Alex was kicked off the plane. This saved Tod's life, but tragically, George died in the explosion. Tod doesn't survive for long, though. He is the first survivor on whom death comes calling.

Tod is alone in the bathroom when he slips on the wet floor and gets tangled in the clothesline over the tub. Unable to free himself while his feet slip on shampoo, the clothesline asphyxiates him. Audiences vividly remember Tod's feet sliding around in the tub and while he wasn't taking a shower in this scene, the image remains haunting.

Final Destination: Bloodlines is centered around a family gathering that goes horribly awry, forcing survivors to look far back into the past of their lineage. The trailer alone has audiences cringing, especially with the way clips are cut together. There is a piece of glass that features prominently that is certain to do some serious damage.

Movies love to show audiences a rusty nail or piece of glass before a character steps on it and Final Destination: Bloodlines leans into that. During the family barbecue, broken glass really gets around. It's in the ice, then a drink. It's loose in the grass waiting for a bare foot. The way the audience sees it way before the characters do makes the whole thing very tense. Viewers will probably be checking their ice-filled beverages for glass after watching this one.

In Final Destination 2, college student Kimberly Corman's (A. J. Cook) vision saves several people from dying in a traffic accident on Route 23, including lottery winner Evan Lewis (David Paetkau). Unfortunately, Evan's luck doesn't last long. He's the second survivor to die after the accident and the scene in which his demise unfolds is an elaborate one filled with fake-outs. After accidentally dropping a fridge magnet in the microwave and getting his hand stuck in the sink fishing around for a ring that has gone down the drain, his apartment catches on fire. He flees via the fire escape, landing on the ground only to have the ladder fall directly through his skull, impaling him in the eye.

Sometimes, a movie moment manages to freak audiences out without really doing anything. This is definitely the case with the garbage disposal. Viewers see Evan's hand moving around the disposal while he's looking for his ring and it's the kind of fake-out that makes you cringe. The idea of the blades turning on and tearing up his hand is viscerally disturbing. People who have seen this movie do not put their hand down the kitchen drain without thinking twice.

Final Destination 2 elevator
New Line Cinema

Nora Carpenter (Lynda Boyd) and her son, Tim (James Kirk), are initially saved in Final Destination 2 after Kimberly's vision spares them from a traffic accident on Route 23. When death comes for Tim after a dentist appointment, Nora is distraught. It is Nora's death, however, that audiences remember vividly.

After the survivors meet to discuss what is happening, a forlorn Nora leaves using the elevator. A man with a box of prosthetics and hooks stands in the elevator behind her, and she doesn't notice when one of those hooks gets caught in her hair. Nora receives a call that death is coming for her next and, in her panic, tries to rush out of the elevator. With her head still stuck inside, the doors close on her neck — decapitating her. The scene left an impression on audiences, and most fans remain reluctant to ever stick any part of their body halfway outside an elevator door for this reason.

Ashley and Ashlyn's tanning bed kill in Final Destination 3
New Line Cinema

Wendy manages to convince most of her friends not to get on the roller coaster in Final Destination 3, saving their lives. Any Final Destination fan knows that this is just the beginning, though. They escaped the big opening accident, but Wendy and her friends are far from safe. Death is coming to collect.

Tanning beds were popular among teenagers in 2006 and the movie capitalizes on this fact. After surviving the roller coaster derailment, best friends Ashlyn Halperin (Crystal Lowe) and Ashley Freund (Chelan Simmons) go to a tanning salon together. Both of them meet a horrible fate when their tanning beds malfunction, burning both teenagers alive. Their skin peels off and their goggles fuse to their eyes. It's horrifying. Plenty of people today cite this scene as the reason they won't go to tanning salons anymore.

Logging truck Final Destination 2
New Line Cinema 

The big accident at the start of Final Destination 2 takes place on a highway. Kimberly has a vision of a pileup, during which a log slips off a logging truck and smashes through the front window of a car, killing the driver. This event sets off a series of chain reactions that kill everyone on the road. There are some grisly moments in this sequence, but that logging truck is infamous.

It is an indisputable fact that the logging truck incident in Final Destination 2 is the single most referenced scene in the whole franchise. It might not be the most gruesome, but it's incredibly effective and continues to be referenced on social media all the time. A person can easily choose to avoid tanning beds, but who hasn't been stuck on the road behind a truck with heavy cargo at least once? There's something unavoidable and visually unnerving about it. the concept strikes a chord. Even people who haven't seen the FInal Destination films have heard about this sequence.

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