Death (Final Destination)

""You can't cheat Death. There are no escapes.""

- William Bludworth, mortician

Death is the main antagonist in the Final Destination series. It is never seen, never shown as a being, never even speaks to someone. However, it's presence is always felt, always lurking where no one thinks it would be. As Death is never seen as a character in itself, it can be assumed it is a spirit or a vengeful force of nature trying to complete it's route.

Behavior
The plot remains the same throughout the franchise (except in the Looks Could Kill novel): a teenager and his/her friends is about to participate in an important event, but he/she has a terrible premonition that shows a terrible accident happening in the event that kills everybody on it. He/she then freaks out, getting some people out of the location with them, right in the moment the accident happens as expected. However, after one of the survivors is killed in a terrible "accident", the protagonist begins to notice Death wants revenge, killing the survivors in the order they were supposed to die. Usually, one of the victims is saved, but in the end (or after some seconds), he/she is still killed as intended due to "Death's list", resulting in the protagonist and some friends being killed in the end (or in the space between the sequels).

Weakness
Mortician William Bludworth from the 1st movie stated in the sequel that "only new Life can defeat Death". In other words, if one of the intended victims has a baby, thus creating a new Life, the chain will be broken due to the baby being an interference in the pattern, as Death cannot kill a being that just began a new life. The interference would cause Death to stop the pattern and spare the remaining (if not all) victims. However, the only times this theory is shown are in the 2nd movie by Isabella Hudson, a pregnant woman that witnessed the pile-up at Route 23. Protagonist Kimberly Corman thought that protecting Isabella long enough so she could have her baby, would save everyone from being killed, but another premonition from Kimberly shows that Isabella was never meant to die in the pile-up, resulting in a big explosion that kills Eugene Dix and Flight 180 survivor Clear Rivers. The other time is in the Looks Could Kill novel, where Sherry Pulaski regrets having to kill her friend, Cabernet, and allows her to have her baby, removing herself from Death's list.

Death's List
A term given to Death's pattern, this is the reason why every character in the movie dies in the end. It follows the order the victims were supposed to die in said accident, but is also a pretty malleable list. In Final Destination 2, the list is reversed to kill the survivors from Route 23 backwards, killing the last survivor of Flight 180 in the end and gaining a clean slate. Another detail of the list is the possibility of one of the victims being saved, but still being in danger due to the pattern: if Death manages to miss someone (or "skip" someone as it's usually refered to), it will immediately move to the next person on the list and so on until it reaches the protagonist. If him/her survives or dies anyway, not only the list doesn't stop, but it begins all over again so it can kill the previous survivor (again changed in the 2nd movie when Kimberly was the first one to die and she was saved by Officer Burke).

Embodiment
Although Death is never seen in person, it will sometimes appear in the novels as a solid embodiment. For example, in Looks Could Kill, Death appears as a tall, african-american man wearing a gray suit, that has shiny white teeth and gray hair, carrying a cane with a skull ornament on top. However, it is implied that this is only a form chosen to deal with humans personally. It's true form, as said in Dead Reckoning, is a massive abomination made of many shifting corpses of many species.

Premonitions
The accidents seen by each movie and novel's main character, before they "cheated Death":

Movies

 * Volée Air Flight 180's explosion, seen by Alex Browning (Final Destination)
 * Route 23's massive pile-up, seen by Kimberly Corman (Final Destination 2)
 * Devil's Flight Roller Coaster's derailment and McKinley Subway Cart 081's derailment, both seen by Wendy Christensen (Final Destination 3)
 * McKinley Speedway's massive car crash and Theater 13's explosion, both seen by Nick O'Bannon (The Final Destination)
 * Unnamed suspension bridge collapse, seen by Sam Lawton (Final Destination 5)

Comics

 * Hotel Grand Tzolk's explosion, seen by Carly Hagan (Final Destination: Spring Break)

Novels

 * Club Kitty's collapse, seen by Jessica Golden (Final Destination: Dead Reckoning)
 * Number 4 Mornington Crescent's explosion, seen by Juliet Collins, and South Hill Metroline's bombing, seen by Patricia Fuller (FD: Destination Zero)
 * 32nd Street's train crash, seen by Daniel King (FD: End of the Line)
 * Merlin's Tower's elevator crash, seen by Allie Goodwin-Gaines (FD: Dead Man's Hand)
 * Coral Clipper Yatch's sinking, seen by Sherry Pulaski (FD: Looks Could Kill)
 * A massive murder made by an unnamed assassin, seen by Jack Curtis (FD: Death of the Senses)

Trivia

 * Even though someone escapes Death in the movies (usually who saw the accident before it happened and a/some friend/love interest), they are always killed off-screen between the sequels. There is also times when they are killed during the movie, leaving absolutely no survivors. In the comics and novels, however, the characters usually die as well, or their fates are left unknown.