Final Destination Deaths Ranked by How Bad They Would Hurt

A lot of people have died throughout the Final Destination movies. It’s a tally that rivals Jason Voorhees’ body count. Considering there have been a dozen Friday the 13th films and only five Final Destination installments, that’s pretty impressive. And, just as some of the Friday the 13th deaths look more painful than the others (the liquid hydrogen kill in Jason X and the speargun to the crotch experienced by Paul in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter come to mind), some Final Destination deaths look like they’d be a horrible way to go out.

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To begin, some qualifiers. Given how many people have perished throughout the five Final Destination movies, not all of them were considered for inclusion here. First, none of the deaths seen in the premonitory visions that kick off each narrative count. Second, if the death was off-screen, it was still subject to inclusion, but the audience has to see the aftermath. That means that deaths that occurred between films were not eligible. This includes the first film’s protagonist, Alex Browning, who got bonked on the head by a falling brick. The only franchise to get more elaborate with its characters’ final scenes is Saw, where the first installment had a character cut through their own leg and then live. But all in all, Final Destination isn’t far behind. Let’s begin with the ones that, comparatively, are rather painless.

4. The Not-So-Bad, All Things Considered

Final Destination has pretty elaborate deaths, especially for the first installment of a horror film franchise, but casualties only grew more complex from there. For the most part, they’re swift ways to go out. For instance, Terry Chaney is run over by a bus, Carter Horton has a billboard slam into him, and Seann William Scott’s Billy Hitchcock has his head sliced in half by a chunk of metal. There are two characters who go out in more elongated ways, but more on that later.

Final Destination 2‘s quick deaths are brief when it comes to impact, but not in build-up. The first film’s death scenes had build-up as well, but the sequel kicked off the trend of combining even lengthier unfurling with even more grotesque finales to that unfurling. The exceptions are reprising character Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) and newcomer Eugene Dix, who die instantaneously when an oxygen tank in a hospital explodes.

Instantaneous is also the word to describe Lewis Romero’s death. While lifting, two weights slam against both sides of his head. The same goes for Perry Malinowski (who is impaled by a flagpole), Ian McKinley (crushed by a cherry picker), Kevin Fischer (crushed by a train), Julie Christensen (smashed by a flying train wheel) and the film’s protagonist, Wendy Christensen, who is run over by the same train.

For the most part, The Final Destination is filled with swift deaths for its characters. Examples include Cynthia Daniels, who is bisected by a car hood and Nadia Monroy, who essentially has half her body obliterated by a flying tire. Then there’s Samantha Lane, who dies when a lawnmower runs over a rock, which is then shot through her eye and head just as she’s about to conclude a shopping trip. Those are all both quick and unlikely, the same of which could be said about being crushed by a falling bathtub, which is how Jonathan Groves exits the picture. More likely in the real world is being run over by an ambulance (George Lanter), being run over by a truck (Janet Cunningham), and getting hit by a truck (Lori Milligan and Nick O’Bannon).

Final Destination 5, an infinitely superior film, has more elongated, extremely painful demises than swift, merciful ones. But, on the latter front, Agent Jim Block is shot (by Peter Friedkin, not Death) three times, Dennis Lapman has a wrench fly into his face, the aforementioned Peter Friedkin is impaled by the film’s protagonist, and Molly Harper—the film’s other protagonist—is sucked out of Flight 180 (the fifth film reveals itself in the third act as a prequel) and bisected by the plane’s wing.

3. The Slow-Burns, Without Fire

Final Destination‘s Tod Waggner, the first post-vision death, goes out slow, but it looks more deeply uncomfortable and frightening than outright painful. He’s strangled by a clothesline that is positioned over his family’s bathtub. It’s tough to watch, but there’s one death in James Wong’s franchise-starter that takes the painful cake.

Circling back to the trend Final Destination 2 kicked off, the first sequel has quite a few instances of elongated build-up followed by a swift result. For instance, Evan Lewis gets a falling fire escape ladder to the head, Tim Carpenter is squished by a free-falling glass panel, and the airbag in Kat Jennings’ car sends her had back towards a once-narrowly,avoided broken pipe. All quick, but painful enough to make Clear Rivers and Eugene Dix’s demises look like they got off easy (not to mention the button scene featuring Noel Fisher as Brian Gibbons, who dies via exploding grill).

2. The Slow-Burns, Sometimes with Fire

Kicking off the nearly-most painful Final Destination casualties is Valerie Lewton’s from the first film. Lewton was the only non-teen to die post-premonition, and the one who found herself most disbelieving of the concept that Death is working its way through the survivors of Flight 180. Her death scene begins with vodka leaking out of a mug, short-circuiting her computer. The monitor explodes, sending an internal part into her necks. After she pulls out the computer part, bleeding profusely, the vodka from the mug catches fire and follows a trail until the whole bottle explodes. In an attempt to put out the fire, she reaches for a towel but accidentally pulls a knife rack along with it, and one of the knives goes into her chest.

Final Destination 2‘s Rory Peters gets one of the most memorable send-offs. Just after Kat’s death, her lit cigarette ignites a trail of gasoline leading up to a van. The van explodes, the force of which sends a wired fence flying towards Rory, who is quadrisected. There are deaths that we’ll get to later that put their protagonist through a more prolonged experience, but having your arm sliced off, your chest removed from your midsection, and your midsection removed from your legs is pretty rough.

Speaking of rough, what the fence does to Andy Kewzer’s back in The Final Destination is a craggy nightmare. And as far as nightmarish final moments on Earth go, Candice Hooper’s spinal cord snap in Final Destination 5 is almost unbearable to watch (thanks in no small part to the bone jutting out of her thigh).

Olivia Castle’s death is almost one of the franchise’s worst. She’s having eye surgery, and the laser ends up discharging into her eye. But she manages to free herself from the operating table. Unfortunately for her she takes a tumble out a nearby window. In other words, it’s an example of a Final Destination kill where the build-up is more pain-laden than the literal execution.

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1. The Absolute Worst-of-the-Worst

The first truly unbearable death of the Final Destination franchise occurs in the second film. Nora Carpenter has to watch her son, Tim, get smooshed into what amounts to a puddle, but that’s only the beginning of her suffering. For those with a of elevators, quite common and understandable, Nora’s offing is a nightmare. Her hair gets caught on the hook of a mannequin arm (which is in a box of mannequin parts held by a pervy man who just got finished sniffing her hair). She tries to run out of the elevator, the doors close on her neck, and it begins to ascend. The elevator gets jammed by Nora, whose neck is now being squished from three directions, it tries to keep moving several times, and finally succeeds, decapitating her. Most of the series’ decapitations are swift, this sequence is the opposite.

The first individual Death comes for after the rollercoaster accident in Final Destination 3 isn’t alone in her demise, and that’s the only solace. Ashley Freund and Ashlyn Halperin go to a tanning salon run by a distracted owner. Through a typically fateful series of events, they get trapped in their respective tanning beds and the audience watches their skin burn off. Worse yet, the goggles on their faces are flammable, and melt into their eyes.

This pair of deaths is without a doubt the most excruciating the franchise has to offer, but there are some in the next two movies that give the sequence a run for its money. And, as for the remainder of the third film, Frankie Cheeks’ head shredding via a truck’s engine fan doesn’t look much more pleasant than death by malfunctioning tanning bed, nor does Erin Ulmer’s offing by repeated nail gun shots through the head.

The Final Destination is the weakest entry of the franchise for multiple reasons, from weak writing and weaker performances to sometimes laughable CGI. When it comes to the CGI, it’s a flaw that takes away some of the impact from the film’s death scenes. Even still there are some winners, at least in terms of the audience truly feeling the character’s pain. At the top of the heap is Hunt Wynorski, who has his internal organs sucked out of his rectum and into a pool drain. Ouch.

That said, there’s no more surefire a way to get in this “worst-of-the-worst” section than death by flame. It’s hard to fathom a more agonizing way to go out. This includes Carter Daniels in The Final Destination, who is dragged behind his garbage truck only to have the gasoline spilling out from behind it ignite, move down the chain dragging the man, and then cover the man himself. The subsequent explosion is essentially mercy. Though, judging by the look on the face of his burning head, which flies towards George Lanter (played by Mykelti Williamson, AKA “Bubba” in Forrest Gump), one would never know it.

As for Final Destination 5, the most painful award goes to Isaac Palmer’s offing by Buddha statue. Not because of the statue, but because of the dozens of acupuncture needles that precede it. The franchise shows that Death has a sense of humor, we’ll just have to see if 2025’s Final Destination: Bloodlines sees it retain that sense of humor (and up its sick game, of course).