Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980) is one of the most iconic franchises of the slasher era, but the timeline of the events quickly becomes convoluted — and the problem begins from the very first sequel, Friday the 13th Part 2. With the Friday the 13th prequel series Crystal Lake on the way, there’s no better time to look back at the timeline. The low-budget film that Cunningham made in response to the huge success of John Carpenter’s 1978 horror masterclass Halloween was given a strong marketing push by the studio. The television commercials and print ads created audience awareness uncommon for such an under-the-radar film with no marketable stars. The violent shocker ended up grossing nearly $40 million domestically, easily making the top twenty film releases that year.
Friday the 13th spawned seven sequels under the Paramount banner, as well as three New Line Cinema follow-ups (sans the Friday the 13th title) after they acquired the rights to the Jason character. There was also a reboot from Platinum Dunes. Though the original eight films were made in quick succession, adhering to a loose continuity, the timeline of events was often left up to the whim of the assigned screenwriter. Going in sequential order, and disregarding novelizations, comic books, and video games, the cinematic Friday the 13th timeline is both wildly inconsistent and rarely representative of its title date. Below is the entire Friday the 13th franchise in chronological order, including the canon events outside the movies.
The Peacock Friday The 13th Prequel Will Flesh Out The Early Timeline
Peacock recently confirmed that there is a Friday the 13th prequel series on the way, titled Crystal Lake. What the upcoming TV show will essentially do is flesh out the earliest parts of the Friday the 13th timeline, most likely focusing on Jason’s mother or possibly Jason Voorhees in early childhood. Prolific television producer Bryan Fuller, the man responsible for major projects like Hannibal and Star Trek: Discovery, is in charge of the show. Fuller is joined by the writer of the first Friday the 13th movie, Victor Miller, as an executive producer. A24, the indie studio that pumped out hits like Midsommar, X, and The Witch, will be bringing the new slasher series to the small screen.
NBC Universal’s top exec Susan Rovner has expressed excitement over the new TV series, especially regarding working with Fuller on fleshing out the Jason Voorhees prequel story. A24 and Fuller are sure to breathe fresh life into the Friday the 13th franchise, which hasn’t seen a new installment since 2009. Crystal Lake will be an expanded prequel and a drama series, bent on retroactively exploring Jason’s hunting grounds. Unfortunately, this means that the hockey-mask-wearing Jason won’t be present, but it could possibly look more into his early childhood or his mother’s beginnings as a murderer. Due to a longstanding legal battle over the rights, the prequel series can only draw inspiration and story threads from the first Friday the 13th movie, but not any of the sequels.
1957, 1958, 1962: Pre-Crystal Lake Massacre
In the original Friday the 13th, a very specific timeline is created regarding the events that happened before Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) murdered seven Camp Crystal Lake employees, including owner Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer). Kindly truck driver Enos (Rex Everhart) offers up the years of significant bad luck events that have haunted Camp Crystal Lake over the years. “A boy drowned…” in 1957. A year later, sometime in 1958, two counselors were murdered — as seen in the opening of Friday the 13th. Though no specific date is given, it is interesting to note that there was a Friday, June 13th in 1958. In 1962, the camp almost reopened, but “the water was bad”. There is also a mention of some fires that affected the camp as well. These occurrences, aside from the 1957 drowning, are inferred to be the work of Mrs. Voorhees in an attempt to keep the camp closed.
June 13th 1980: Friday The 13th
After the opening credits of Friday the 13th, a graphic reads: Friday, June 13: The Present. One would assume that the present would mean the year the film was released: 1980. Since June of that year did, indeed, have an actual Friday that fell on the 13th, it’s a safe assumption that the original film takes place on this specific date. While the true age of Jason when he drowned is unknown, Mrs. Voorhees states that “today is his birthday”. This gives some weight to her choosing this particular date for revenge, though later films would not place much significance on an actual date. After the original film, the Friday the 13th date in the titles became more of a symbolic reference.
August 1980: Friday The 13th Part 2 (Pre-Credit Sequence)
Final girl Alice Hardy (Adrienne King), the sole survivor of the Crystal Lake Massacre, is killed by Jason. According to Paul (John Furey) in Friday the 13th Part 2, Alice went missing from her apartment two months after the tragic events.
1983: Friday The 13th Part 3 in 3-D (Flashback)
Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmel) reveals to her boyfriend, Rick (Paul Kratka), that she was attacked by a deformed man (Jason), prompting her to leave Crystal Lake.
Spring 1985: Friday the 13th Part 2
Paul also reveals that it has been five years since Alice has gone missing. This is where the timeline begins to unravel. Director Steve Miner, who would go on to direct the heavily re-written Halloween: H20, has stated that they intentionally moved the timeline forward several years to give Jason a chance to get older, but this reason doesn’t make much sense. Jason is clearly an adult in the opening segment, which took place the same year as the original film. Friday the 13th is set 23 years after Jason supposedly drowned, so at the very least, Jason would have been in his early 30s at that time.
Though Part 2 takes place five years later, at a training camp for counselors on Crystal Lake, the specific date is never mentioned, already making the title purely symbolic. Looking at the actual calendar year for 1985, there were only two months that did include specific Fridays that fell on the 13th—September and December. Given the rather arbitrary time jump, it seems screenwriter Ron Kurz could have worked in a fictional date to match the film’s title, but the “bad luck/birthday” angle was quickly abandoned.
Spring 1985: Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3-D
Picking up the day after the events of Friday the 13th Part 2, this 3-D entry follows unstoppable killer Jason Voorhees as he terrorizes young adults in a family cabin near Crystal Lake. Aside from Chris mentioning her ordeal with Jason in the woods two years prior, there is no specific date to these events. Jason’s reign of terror — which began the previous night at Camp Packanack, the counselor training camp — and ostensibly ended at his forest hideaway, simply continues.
Spring 1985: Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter
Unlike the ending of Part 2, where Jason was nowhere to be found, his presumed dead body is taken from the farmhouse and delivered to the morgue. The killer, who has changed body type, clothing, and choice of mask in the two days he’s been stalking, is still alive. The third night of the slasher villain’s epic spree has him murdering his way out of the morgue, only to find his way back to Crystal Lake the next day. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter takes place primarily on day four of the 1985 killing spree.
Adding more confusion to the timeline is the introduction of Pamela Voorhees’ tombstone, discovered by a fresh set of young victims. The stone reads: “Pamela Voorhees, 1930 – 1979, At rest.” Much has been made of this decision, which contradicts the original film’s 1980 date – when she was killed. Some fans have gone as far as retconning the entire timeline to explain this mistake, which is a bit extreme considering the comic book logic of the series as it progressed.
Another odd timeline discrepancy in Friday the 13th 4 (which features a kill based on real life) happens with the character of Rob (Erich Anderson). It turns out that Rob’s sister was Sandra (Marta Kober), the counselor-in-training who was impaled in bed with her boyfriend in Part 2. Rob appears to have been investigating Jason’s antics for a while, even carrying with him a half dozen articles on his crimes. His sister was killed a mere three days before, based on the timeline, which makes his knowledge of the killer — an unknown phantom until two days prior — highly unlikely. It also makes multiple articles on Jason Voorhees rather suspect. In the filmmaker’s defense, the franchise was in its fourth year, making the official timeline easy to forget.
1985 – 1991: Crystal Lake Becomes Forest Green
At some point after Jason’s four-day massacre, Crystal Lake changes its name to Forest Green to distance itself from the tragic events.
1990: Friday The 13th: A New Beginning
After another five-year-jump, the fifth chapter in the slasher saga begins with The Lost Boys star Corey Feldman reprising his role as Tommy Jarvis in a nightmare sequence. Having killed Jason for certain in the previous installment, Tommy continues to have nightmares about that fateful night. 12-year-old Tommy is now 17, and played by actor John Shepherd, who is sent to a halfway house where the patients are systematically killed by someone wearing a hockey mask.
1991: Friday The 13th: Jason Lives
Though not exactly clear on the timing, Jason Lives picks up about a year after A New Beginning. Tommy, now played by Thom Mathews, is still in the care of an institution; this is referenced by his friend, Allen (Ron Palilio), in the beginning of the film. Hoping to stop his hallucinations of the killer, Tommy drives to the cemetery where Jason is buried. In a fit of rage he uses a cemetery gate rod to stab the corpse; lightning hits the rod, which inadvertently awakens a zombified Jason. Jason’s tombstone simply has his name written on it, avoiding any continuity issues. However, Deputy Cologne does mention that the date is Friday the 13th, which would not have worked in the context of this timeline. However, there was a Friday the 13th in June of 1986, the year the film was released theatrically.
October 1991: Friday The 13th: The New Blood (Flashback)
A “flashback” at the beginning of the film reveals Jason still at the bottom of the lake before focusing on the Shepherd lake house. A young Tina (Jennifer Banko) runs from the house after hearing her father yelling at her mother. A calendar outside the front door shows that the date is October 13. However, the 13th did not fall on a Friday in October of that particular calendar year. Tina ends up killing her father through a telekinetic rage, a weird slasher sequel trend, sending him to the bottom of Crystal Lake.
2001: Friday The 13th: The New Blood
A teenaged Tina (Lar Park-Lincoln) returns to the lake house several years later as part of her therapy. Though there are no specific ages given, Tina is at least 8 to 10 years older. Director John Carl Buechler has stated that Jason was at the bottom of the lake for at least ten years before he was reawakened, so we will give him the benefit of the doubt. Through her telekinetic powers, Tina reawakens the dormant Jason, who proceeds to murder several more people.
2002: Friday The 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan
Jason is once again reawakened from a respite in Crystal Lake, this time from an electrical line. He hitches a ride on a cruise ship, taking a group of graduating seniors to New York. Given the year of the film’s release, 2002 Manhattan looks a lot like 1989 Vancouver. This is the true end of the Friday the 13th-branded timeline, but a psycho killer won’t stay down for long. Plus, the franchise was too popular and successful not to continue — it just did so without studio Paramount.
2006: Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday
When New Line Cinema took over the Jason character, the original timeline seems to have been disregarded. Since the actual film was released four years after the final Paramount production, 2006 is a speculative bet, though the entire movie looks like a ’90’s Canadian television series. Jason’s background is filled in with busy nonsense, including a half-sister and the Necronomicon. When Freddy’s glove reaches up to take Jason’s mask down to hell for a planned shared universe, time no longer seems to matter.
2006: Freddy Vs. Jason
Though the timing is sketchy, this long-in-planning match-up supposedly takes place mere months after The Final Friday. Though made an entire decade after that release, it seems that the two slasher titans, Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, were only forced to share space in hell for the time span of a summer break. Though the series’ timeline is incoherent, at least all of the films happened in chronological order until this release.
2010: Jason X (Beginning)
Super killer Jason is still alive, but was captured and cryogenically frozen. Before being frozen, Jason was taken in for study, and went on one last killing spree after breaking free of his restraints.
2455: Jason X
The frozen killer is discovered and inexplicably taken aboard the Grendel, a spaceship on its way to Earth Two. Jason thaws out and begins another reign of terror—this time in outer space. The 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th, directed by Marcus Nispel, condensed the first three films—more or less—into a modern retelling. The original Pamela Voorhees Crystal Lake massacre, referenced visually at the beginning of the film, takes audiences back to the original date on the timeline: Friday, June 13th 1980. As this is the ideal way to end the convoluted slasher timeline, Jason’s murder spree then picks up roughly 30 years later when the reboot was released.