Jason Voorhees

Overview

Jason Voorhees is the antagonistic killer central to the Friday the 13th film series. As a child, he attended the summer camp at Crystal Lake, at which his mother Pamela worked as a cook. However, tragedy struck when he drowned in the lake. Devastated, Pamela lost her mind and killed two camp counselors the following summer, believing that the counselors were at fault for not paying attention to her son. Years later, Pamela strikes again and murders a new batch of counselors as the camp's new owner prepares to reopen it. At the end of the first film, Pamela is killed.

Jason's actual debut as an antagonist came in Friday the 13th: Part 2. Long considered dead, Jason had actually not drowned in the lake. Instead, he went into hiding and lives as a hermit in the woods nearby. To hide his disfigured face, he wears a burlap sack over his head. In Friday the 13th: Part 3, which is set in the same week as Part 2, Jason steals a hockey mask from one of his victims. This hockey mask has become an iconic trait of the characters.

Incapacitated rather than killed in the previous movies, Jason is killed in Friday the 13th: Part IV - The Final Chapter by Tommy Jarvis, who stabs Jason repeatedly with a machete.

After a copycat imposter takes over for Jason in Friday the 13th Part V, Jason returned from the dead in Friday the 13th: Part VI - Jason Lives. Desiring to burn Jason's body, Tommy Jarvis unearths the corpse in a fit of rage and stabs the corpse with a large gate spear. However, the pole is stuck by lightning, and Jason is resurrected. Part VI contains Jason's first and only encounter with children, whom he uncharacteristically showed mercy to. Tommy manages to defeat Jason by wrapping a chain around his neck while the other end, tied to a large rock, is thrown in the lake. Jason is then dragged into its depths, where he lays dormant.

In Friday the 13th: Part VI! - The New Blood, Jason is accidentally raised from the lake by a girl with psychic powers. She eventually confronts him and puts him back in Crystal Lake. Jason is resurrected again in Friday the 13th: Part VIII - Jason Takes Manhattan by an electrical cable. He follows a group of graduating high school seniors on a cruise to New York, and in the process kills the majority of them and the crew. Upon arriving in New York, he continues his hunt until he's melted by toxic waste in the city's sewers.

Through unexplained resurrection, Jason returns in 1993's Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. The F.B.I. sets up a sting to take Jason down by having a female agent be bait to lure him out. She has him chase her to an open part of the woods where the F.B.I. blows him up after a fire-fight. With his body destroyed, Jason's spirit possesses and moves between human bodies to find his niece, whom he needs in order to resurrect. After finding her and getting his old body back, he's stabbed by a mythical dagger that opens a portal to Hell to take him down for eternal damnation.

While technically not the tenth movie in the series, Freddy vs. Jason (2003) is the next movie in the time-line. Freddy Krueger has lost his ability to haunt people's dreams due to the lack of fear of him in his hometown of Springwood, Ohio. Krueger brings Jason back to life to murder teenagers in the hope that Jason's murders will lead the town's residents to assume Krueger is back, thus giving him the power to return to the children's dreams. Eventually, Freddy loses control of Jason, and they fight. While both killers are killed in the final confrontation and sent back to Hell, Jason is painted as the victor.

In Jason X (2002), Jason Voorhees is captured by the government. He survives multiple execution attempts (electrocution, gas, firing-squad, hanging) and the government decides to research Jason's unique ability to regenerate. Jason eventually escapes captivity, but is frozen along with the film's protagonist. Five hundred years later, Jason and the girl are discovered and brought aboard a space ship, the Grendel, to be taken to "Earth 2". After his awakening, Jason wanders the ship and kills most of the people on board. Though he is severly wounded at one point and thought dead, he is inadvertantly subjected to a nanomachine procedure that rebuilds him as a cyborg. He eventually gets ejected into space and burns up in Earth 2's atmosphere, leaving no trace of his body and ending his evil once and for all.

Gaming History

Jason's first video game appearance was in Friday the 13th, released for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum. Players search for a safe haven on a map, and attempt to draw fellow camp counselors to its safety. Unfortunately, one of these teenagers randomly turns out to be Jason.

Next, Jason appeared in Friday the 13th on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1989, courtesy of publisher LJN and developer Pack-In-Video. Players control one of several playable camp counselors, each with their own speed and agility, as they attempt to save their fellow counselors and camp children from a rampaging Voorhees. Once Jason is "killed," he revives--just like in the films--and returns to stalk the counselors and children once more. Jason must be defeated a total of three times before he is truly dead.

in 2006, Jason returned to gaming via a mobile phone game entitled Friday the 13th. This time, players were given the chance to take control of Voorhees himself, slaying various undead monsters repeatedly. There is no story to speak of; just kill, kill, and kill again.

Jason was confirmed to be a downloadable guest character in Mortal Kombat X on March 13, 2015 (a Friday).

Mortal Kombat X Ending (spoiler)

In his bloodlust rampage, he meets with the current ruler of the Netherrealm, Liu Kang. The revenant martial artist offers Jason a bounty of slaughter in return for loyalty. But Jason's simple reply is to tear revenant Liu Kang asunder.