There aren’t many horror movie franchises with kills as consistently creative as the Final Destination movies. That’s because unlike most horror movies, which have a human or creature killer of some kind, the bad guy in Final Destination is Death itself. With a capital “D.” And when Death wants you dead, especially when you cheated Death out of its kill list after having a psychic vision, Death will do ANYTHING to end your life. No matter how elaborate, implausible or ludicrous.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of – if I may editorialize – one of the best and most consistent horror movie series ever, let’s take a look back at all of Death’s Designs. These are the kills in the Final Destination series that are clearly the work of Death itself. Any Designs that don’t end in actual death don’t qualify, but Designs that kill an unexpected (or unintended) person do. The one exception is the psychic massacre visions, because those are some of the best and most gruesome kills in the series!

SPOILERS, obviously, lie ahead!

40. I’ve Got My Eye On You (The Final Destination)

A mom goes into a hair salon, where Death clearly conspires to kill her with a variety of hair-styling accoutrements. But in the end, she walks outside, makes a joke about keeping her eye on somebody, and gets a rock shot through her eye socket by a nearby lawnmower. The gag that Death’s Design doesn’t work out the way the audience was led to believe is often very effective, scary and/or funny in the Final Destination movies, but in this case the ultimate death is an anticlimactic letdown.

39. Splish Splash, I Was Killed by a Bath (The Final Destination)

After narrowly averting death, one of the victims in The Final Destination winds up in a hospital room underneath a bathtub, but the floor gets soaking wet and the tub falls through, crushing him just as he thought he was safe and sound. In the most cartoonish of the Final Destination movies, this one is about as satisfying – and as ho-hum – as an anvil dropping on a coyote.

38. Why Can’t We Be Friends? (The Final Destination)

A racist gets dragged behind a truck, while on fire, and the truck explodes. His severed, fiery head gets fired into the sky and lands on the lawn. It might have been effective, either in its irony or its grotesquery, if Death’s Design hadn’t also including playing “Why Can’t We Be Friends” by War the whole time. That’s what turns an on-the-nose but satisfying death scene into a bad joke.

37. Flagpole Killa (Final Destination 3)

After a long, drawn out scene with a victim getting dragged by the neck by a frightened horse, Death switches targets and, suddenly, and randomly, frightens another horse, which causes a flag pole to snap and impale somebody else. There’s nothing terribly wrong with this scene but it’s so sudden, and the movie moves on so quickly, that it just doesn’t have much of an impact. Except for the flap pole, of course.

36. Death Washes Its hands (Final Destination)

After the initial airplane explosion in Final Destination, we get our first good look at “Death’s Design,” in which one of the survivors is taking a shower while Death manipulates the bathroom environment to make him accidentally hang himself. It’s a creepy scene in a vacuum, and dramatically it helps keep the other survivors in the dark, since there’s a plausible explanation for what happened. But after five sequels this became the most baffling kill of all, because Death actually clears out the water in the bathroom afterwards, to make it look like he killed himself instead of falling prey to an accident. Why would Death go so far out of its way to cover its tracks? What, is “Death” worried about getting caught?

35. Box Office Bomb (The Final Destination)

Another potentially terrifying scene undermined by The Final Destination’s awkward goofiness. Construction work at a shopping mall leads, in a roundabout way, to a massive explosion in a movie theater, killing everyone watching the film. What a horrifying idea, especially when you think about how many people probably saw that scene in a movie theater themselves. But timing the explosion to an on-screen explosion, so that the two synch up perfectly, is so ludicrous you can’t even laugh. Instead, you just wonder why Death – itself, the entity – has such a dorky sense of humor.

34. When BBQ’s Blow (Final Destination 2)

Final Destination 2 had an impressive balance of ghoulish humor and genuine scares until the final gag, in which an exploding barbecue sends a severed arm onto a shrieking person’s plate. It’s not a bad kill, especially in a vacuum, but it’s significantly sillier than the film that preceded it, and plays a bit too much like a Monty Python routine.

33. A Taste of Cherrypicker (Final Destination 3)

If you’re going to thumb your nose at Death, maybe don’t do it in a Final Destination movie. This kill starts as a fireworks fake-out, before our victim falls prey to an unexpected falling cherrypicker. By this point in the series the irony has already been done to death (ha!) but at least the actual kill is gruesome and fun.

32. No Escape (Final Destination 2)

After a couple of freaky fake-outs with a hand down a garbage disposal and an exploding apartment, our victim slips and falls under the fire escape. The ladder falls and gouges his eye out, in a nicely disgusting shot. There is nothing wrong with this sequence whatsoever, but it’s only setting the stage for crazier and crazier kills later in Final Destination 2. It’s practically designed to be improved upon later.

31. Dude, Where’s My Head? (Final Destination)

Another one of Death’s more sudden kills, in which Seann William Scott unexpectedly gets his head chopped off by debris kicked out by a nearby train. Not the grossest or cleverest kill, but bonus points for so unceremoniously killing Scott, who was one of the most famous members of the cast.

30. Your Insurance Doesn’t Cover Explosions (Final Destination 2)

Oh good, everything’s fine and Death is going to leave us alone. Except that’s never how it works. Death is still coming and, in an unexpected twofer, it kills a new character and the only surviving protagonist of the original. It’s a satisfying, big and dramatic exit from the franchise for Ali Larter, and a stern reminder that this franchise isn’t based on recurring characters, it’s based on unexpected deaths.

29. Man on a Barbed Wire (Final Destination 2)

Just seconds after one of the better kills in the series comes one of the better throwaway kills, in which the first victim’s cigarette sparks an explosion that sends barbed wire shooting through someone’s body, cutting it into three pieces. A gross visual effect, a sudden gag, a satisfying piece of Death’s Design.

28. Race for Your Lives (The Final Destination)

The opening massacres in the Final Destination movie are all pretty harrowing, but the bright visual scheme, corny 3D visual effects and kooky tone of The Final Destination rob this otherwise shocking speedway disaster of its morbidity, and scares.

27. Acupuncture Punctures (Final Destination 5)

Sometimes Death’s Design is unnecessarily complicated. In this scene from Final Destination 5, a guy undergoing acupuncture falls over, shoving the needles into his body. That’s visceral as hell, but the scene keeps going until a Buddha statue crushes his head. You had us as at “needles into his body,” Final Destination 5. You had us at “needles into his body.”

26. Better Weight Than Never (Final Destination 3)

Yelling out “Fuck Death!” is probably tempting fate even in the real world, but in Final Destination 3 it’s just asking for it. So it goes with a jock whose head gets crushed by weightlifting equipment at his gym. It’s a scene with a vicious sense of humor and brutal comic timing, amplified by turning the gym – a place many of us go to every day or week – into a minefield.

25. X-Ray Violence (The Final Destination)

Yet another Final Destination ending where it seems like Death has given our heroes a free pass, only to reconvene months later to wrap up its loose ends. The Final Destination ends with the horror version of that scene from Spider-Man 2 where Doctor Octopus throws a car at Peter Parker through a cafe window, except there’s no superhero to save anybody. Instead, the screen goes black and the victims turn into x-rays, so instead of watching their viscera, we’re seeing what the collision is doing to their bones and teeth. It’s surprisingly effective.

24. A Hell of a Hook (Final Destination 5)

In Final Destination 5 we learn that if you kill someone, they can take your place in Death’s Design. One of those murders doesn’t count for our list – since it’s just one person killing another person and Death (apparently) didn’t get its own hands dirty – but in this gross workplace mishap, it seems one victim accidentally switches his own elaborate death for someone else’s. They fall chin-first onto a hook. It’s twisted.

23. The Wrench Connection (Final Destination 5)

We’ve seen no end of head smashings, punctures and decapitations, but this image of a head only half chopped off, in the middle, is so distinctive that it really sticks in your craw. Or, you know, your skull. And it comes right after another impressive kill, so it’s a satisfying bonus.

22. Déjà Vu All Over Again (The Final Destination) 

One of the most famous kills in the franchise is just someone getting unexpectedly hit by a bus (we’ll get to that later), so doing the same gag again would normally be pretty lazy writing. But although the kill itself is merely functional, one of The Final Destination’s best gags is repeating one of Death’s Designs from the original film while the victim is literally talking about déjà vu. And THEN, as a few minutes later, revealing that was just a premonition, and watching it happen a second time. It’s déjà vu all over again! And for a dose of extra irony, this time they’re killed by an ambulance!

21. The Human Spaghetti (The Final Destinaton)

Many of the 3D gags in The Final Destination fall, ironically, pretty flat. But this impressively grotesque death scene involves a guy getting knocked into a metal fence so hard that it turns into a giant spaghetti maker, leaving sloppy rectangular chunks of the victim on the floor. The kill itself is relatively standard. The gore, on the other hand, is impressively inventive.

20. A Deadly Thing Happened on the Subway to the Forum (Final Destination 3)

Yet another Final Destination finale in which all the survivors get killed, but there’s no denying that this one – though not particularly novel- is especially visceral and mean. A subway disaster full of people getting dragged outside and skidded along the walls would make anybody wince.

19. The Eye a Laser Mars (Final Destination 5)

Some of the best Final Destination kills play off our pre-existing anxieties of everyday situations, or at least the urban legends we’ve heard about worst case scenarios. In this segment someone is getting laser eye surgery, which would make anyone feel pretty vulnerable, but Death’s Design kicks in and supercharges the laser until it’s burning out an eyeball. The actual fatality comes from falling out a window afterwards, but for once it’s the fake-out that stands out more.

18. This is Bus (Final Destination)

Let’s be honest, the premise of the Final Destination series is a little far-fetched. So how do you prove to the characters that Death is coming after them? You have someone die right when they’re explaining it. Getting hit by a bus may be pretty rote by the bizarre standards of this franchise, but the twisted sense of humor and smart narrative placement make it one of the best and most popular kills in the film.

17. An Airbag to Remember (Final Destination 2)

Again, Death has a bad sense of humor. So just when you think you’ve escaped with your life, and a pole failed to puncture your head in a car accident, naturally that’s when your airbag suddenly blows and knocks your head back into the pipe. It’s a kill that’s so sudden, so gross, so cruel, you can’t help but admire it.

16. Dead Pool (The Final Destination)

One of the better kills in The Final Destination works not because it’s plausible but because we’ve all heard urban legends about it happening. A guy gets sucked into the drain at a public swimming pool, and it looks like he could drown, but then he gets sucked in so hard the pump shoots out a geyser of blood and offal. It’s absolutely absurd, but at the same time it’s exactly what we were always told would happen, and that makes it effective.

15. Broken Back Dismountin’ (Final Destination 5)

Is Death going to kill a gymnast by having her step on a tack during her routine? No, Death is going to have someone else step on that tack, distracting the victim in the middle of her dismount. It’s not very likely that her body was made out of toothpicks, because she collapses into a crunched up pile of bones, but by making an already dangerous sport graphically violent, this design really nails the landing.

14. So Who’s Next? (Final Destination)

Before Final Destination became a series, it seemed like maybe, just maybe, the story could have a happy ending. But as we learned at the end of the original film, Death never quits, it just takes a few months off for… “reasons,” apparently. We don’t see the heroes die at the end of Final Destination, but someone was about to get crushed just before the credits rolled, leaving the audience breathless and, perhaps, in a pique of existential despair as we ponder the inevitably of death.

13. Fast Food Fan (Final Destination 3)

This kill is great because you kind of see where it’s going, a domino effect car crash at a drive-thru, but the actual death is much more bizarre and meaty than you imagine. This victim doesn’t just get in a fender bender, they get in a fender bender where an engine dislodges and the fan chops up their head. It’s wildly gruesome.

12. A Bridge Too Final (Final Destination 5)

A salient commentary about crumbling American infrastructure? Perhaps, or perhaps a crumbling bridge is just a really scary place to die. The deaths in this opening massacre are impressively varied, but extra kudos to the guy who managed to die by getting melted. He was already on a collapsing bridge, so that’s just adding grievous insult to grievous injury.

11. Nailed It (Final Destination 3)

Death’s Design is extremely elaborate this time, and involves an entire hardware store full of murder weapons, including a runaway forklift, wooden stakes, a hammer and a ton of other stuff you’d find at, well, a hardware store. One death is averted but another victim gets knocked headfirst into a nail gun, which proceeds to make Swiss cheese of her skull. The set-up didn’t go where you expected, and where it went was memorable and scary.

10. Actual Kitchen Nightmares (Final Destination)

Death really wanted this teacher dead, and by this point in Final Destination it no longer cares about making anything look like an accident. Everything in this house is out to kill the victim in this scene, to the point that Death itself becomes not just a force of nature but, as we confirm all throughout the franchise, a cosmic prankster.

9. Portrait of a Lady on Tire (The Final Destination)

Here’s a fun reversal of expectations. By the fourth film in the franchise we all know this moment. This is the moment where everyone escapes the initial massacre, after somebody has a vision. But as the massacre takes place behind them, one of the survivors gets decapitated right then and there by a flying tire our psychic never saw coming. That makes this Design unlike a similar gag in Final Destination 2, in which several of the would-be survivors died pretty much how they would have anyway in Death’s original design (so we’ll be only be counting that as one entry). After a lackluster intro to The Final Destination, this is a surprising and effective kill.

8. Flight Night (Final Destination)

Before the Final Destination movies settled into a formula, the original film was unlike any other horror movie. Structured like a slasher, certainly, with extremely elaborate kills, but also a horror movie where the biggest and craziest horror sequence happens at the beginning. Final Destination’s inciting incident is a horrifyingly detailed explosion where people get sucked out of an airplane and have their faces melted off. It’s unusually epic for a modestly-budgeted horror movie, and it’s just as scary as ever.

7. Memoirs of a Combustible Tan (Final Destination 3)

One of the classic Final Destination kills. It works for the same reason the shower scene in Psycho does, because it’s a situation where the victim is already vulnerable before the nightmare starts. It also works because it’s natural extension of a day-to-day activity, turning something frivolous into something deadly. Also because it’s just gross.

6. You Must Be This Tall to Die (Final Destination 3)

Coming up with elaborate massacres to open a Final Destination movie is tricky because each one needs to be big, inventive, gory, and distinctive. The roller coaster disaster in Final Destination 3 is one of the best because it transforms a ride that simulates fear into an actual horror show. What’s more, the twisting tracks, momentum and elevation gives the filmmakers multitudinous ways to shoot the gory action, making it a thrill to watch.

5. That Escalated Quickly (The Final Destination)

It’s frustrating that this particular kill gets completely averted by a psychic vision, but the construction explosion in The Final Destination leads directly to a sequence where an escalator gets damaged and turns into a giant human meat grinder. It’s a perfect example of nightmare logic, a literal interpretation of every urban legend you ever heard about someone getting their shoelace stuck. And unlike the other kills in The Final Destination it doesn’t seem to be played for laughs. It feels practically apocalyptic.

4. Elevator to the Gallows (Final Destination 2)

Who among us hasn’t thought about, however briefly, how freaky it would be to get an appendage trapped in a moving elevator? Final Destination 2 is the ultimate cinematic example of this everyday nightmare, made all the more disturbing by the shocked faces of all the bystanders desperately trying to stop an unthinkable death, the look of panic growing in their faces the whole time.

3. Oh, The Pane, The Pane (Final Destination 2)

Final Destination 2 didn’t hold back. After an extended and breathless sequence in which a kid at the dentist nearly dies in his chair – as if the dentist wasn’t already scary enough – the kid exits the building and gets brutally splattered by a gigantic pane of glass. It’s not a cartoon gag. You can see the viscera squish on camera. It’s the ultimate example of Death’s Design being more exciting and horrifying than we expected, made all the more shocking by the fact that this horror movie just killed a child at a time when that was still shocking in a horror movie.

2. Live Freeway? No. Die Hard! (Final Destination 2)

The freeway massacre at the start of Final Destination 2 is a masterpiece of cinematic brutality, a complex set-up with a complete ensemble cast, and a series of elaborate dominoes that build in severity until everyone is getting pulverized on the highway. It’s the worst and yet most amazing traffic accident in movie history. And only an astoundingly clever sequence ever managed, arguably, to top this high point of the franchise…

1. Flight 180 Does a 360 (Final Destination 5)

It’s hard for horror movie franchises to surprise you after five movies, but the ending of Final Destination 5 was a scream. By this point we knew that the last scene in a Final Destination movie, where all the survivors count their blessings, inevitably leads to one last massacre. But the big twist, that the last massacre in Final Destination 5 was the FIRST massacre in the original Final Destination, is fiendishly clever. Not only does it close the franchise’s loop, it gives the audience an opportunity to experience the kind of foreshadowing usually reserved exclusively for characters in Final Destination movies. Add in one last ghoulish reveal, that the other survivor was living on borrowed time anyway (which he discovers right before plane wreckage falls on him), and you’ve got one hell of a finale to the franchise. So far, at least…