What Are the Rules of Final Destination? (And How Some Skip Death)

The Final Destination horror franchise, like so many others, is built around a unique set of rules. Each film involves the characters cheating death only to meet their demise in an even more grisly fashion. It’s an easily blockbuster formula that propelled the franchise to five total movies (with the sixth movie, Final Destination: Bloodlines, set to premiere this summer) and over $650 million at the global box office. Though a new movie hasn’t been released in over ten years, the franchise is finding new success on streaming but that doesn’t make the rules of how Final Destination even works any less confusing at times.

Final Destination: Death’s Design Explained

It’s implied in the Final Destination franchise that “Death” knows when and how everyone will die, but that there’s a way to cheat it. Every Final Destination movie follows a similar structure where a group of young adults are on a path toward explosive and violent deaths, but when one of them has a premonition of what’s going to occur they manage to be spared…for a time. What becomes clear about the survivors of every Final Destination movie is that even though they cheated death, this has only put them in death’s crosshairs. As a result, death comes for them…though he does it by following a specific order on a list.

What Death’s Design reveals is, yes, characters in Final Destination can escape death, even if they’ve already escaped it once before, but they always come back around to the bottom of the list again. The rules are even explained in the first movie very quickly, with the late Tony Todd’s William Bludworth opining it all in a way that only he can.

“Your friend’s departure shows that death has a new design for all of you,” Bludworth says after the initial death in the first Final Destination. “Now you have to figure out how and when it’s coming back at you. Play your hunch, Alex. If you think you can get away with it. But remember the risk of cheating the plan, of disrespecting the design… could initiate a fury that would terrorize even the Grim Reaper.”

In short, you’re on the list, and if you mess up the list, it could trigger an even worse death down the line.

How Final Destination Added New Loopholes to Death’s Design

RELATED: Final Destination Deaths Ranked by How Bad They Would Hurt

In the 2003 sequel, Final Destination 2, there’s an attempt to add a new wrinkle toward defeating Death’s Design. Tony Todd returns and notes that “only new life can defeat death,” implying that a pregnant woman who was meant to die and cheated death could then give birth to her baby and “invalidate the list” and “force death to start a new.”

Knowing that one character in the film, Isabella, was in the original premonition and is in fact pregnant, the characters of Final Destination 2 try to use that as a means of disrupting death’s design. The big twist of course is that Isabella never died in the film’s iconic premonition, so the birth of her baby has no change to the list. Death wins again.

2011’s Final Destination 5 put another new stamp on the rules of Death’s Design, with the group running into Tony Todd once again he reveals that if they wish to get off death’s list, the need to “let Death have somebody else” in their place, allowing them to live the rest of that person’s years that they had left and let to death take that person in their place.

Naturally, in true Final Destination fashion, this twist leads to another twist. One character manages to kill someone else to steal his remaining time, only to find out that his victim was going to die from a brain aneurysm in the not-too-distant future, leading to another comical death in the franchise.

The short answer is, there is no escape, and Death always gets its due even when the franchise adds new rules.

What Is Final Destination Streaming On?

Currently you can watch all five movies in the Final Destination franchise on HBO Max. The sixth film will premiere in theaters this summer, and since it’s a release of Warner Bros. Pictures it will no doubt join the other five movies later this year on streaming as well.

For more coverage on all things HBO Max — including all of the latest HBO Max news, all of the latest HBO Max rumors and leaks, and all of the latest HBO Max deals — click here.