FILM · 1981
Friday the 13th: Part 2
33 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (33)
- #001
After the premiere of Friday the 13th (1980), Adrienne King encountered an obsessive fan numerous times, which turned into a stalking ordeal, and she chose to quit acting after this film. She later returned to the profession in 2010 with the film Psişik Deney (2010).
- #002
According to co-producer Dennis Stuart Murphy, the idea of putting a sack over Jason's head in Part 2 came from the costume designers, who thought it was a ready-made item Jason could reasonably and easily obtain.
- #003
Warrington Gillette's agent told him he had landed a role as Camp Counselor (Paul), and he auditioned but did not get the part. The producers liked him and, knowing he had attended stunt school, asked him to be Jason.
- #004
According to Adrienne King, there was no script for her scene, so she did not know her character died. She arrived on set, learned Jason would kill her, and they needed her to improvise a phone conversation entirely. So everything about Alice talking on the phone with her mother about her struggle to move on with her life, which was about to end, was not written in advance.
- #005
In the scene where Jason crashes through the window and grabs Ginny, actor Warrington Gillette was genuinely injured. He tried to force his way through the window, but it did not break, and he ended up hitting his head against the glass very hard.
- #006
The first Jason scene in the film is a shot of Jason's legs walking down the street toward Alice's house. This is the only time in the series that Jason is played by a woman: the film's costume designer, Ellen Lutter.
- #007
One shot of the notorious double impalement was cut to avoid an "X" rating, but a bloody photograph of this censored shot appears on the back of the videocassette box. Footage of the censored portion was finally recovered in 2020 from an old VHS of the bloody images Carl Fullerton had kept for his portfolio, and it was included in Scream Factory's deluxe film collection.
- #008
Amy Steel's character Ginny was originally meant to die, but the producers decided someone had to survive. They liked Steel's performance and wanted to sign her for the third installment. Her agent told her not to do it, saying he would get her better roles, and she chose to listen. Years later she shared that she regretted this decision. Although she took a few more roles here and there, she largely gave up acting and instead became a marriage and family therapist.
- #009
The plot of Part 2 shocked many people associated with the original film. Betsy Palmer, Tom Savini and Sean Cunningham made public statements about how stupid it was that Jason had been alive all this time and, if so, why he never told his mother, which would have prevented all the murders in Part 1.
- #010
During the climactic fight between Jason and Ginny, Jason raises the machete to block Ginny's swing. Amy Steel said that on the first take the timing was off and she accidentally struck Steve Dash's finger, causing him to have to go to the emergency room. Steve Dash has photos of himself being treated in the emergency room in full costume, with the fake machete still on his shoulder. After his finger was stitched up, he returned to set that night and insisted they finish the scene. She said they put a rubber cover on his finger and applied makeup to make it look dirty.
- #011
Amy Steel stated that she found shooting the "window scene" difficult. The shot was repeated three times, and her terrified reaction was genuine. Because the shot was in slow motion, a high-speed camera was used, and every time she heard the film start she became tense and frightened.
- #012
In an interview with Screenrant, Adrienne King explained that she did not know Alice would die until she arrived on the film set, saying: "I told them I would do whatever was needed for the sequel, I was theirs and I was very happy - and I never got a script. I didn't even get a script. Then a car picked me up and little did I know, but I got there and the crew was almost gone. Everyone was gone. I wasn't aware, but they had actually already shot the film."
- #013
(At about 1 hour 3 minutes) Right after Jeff and Sandra are killed, Ginny and Paul leave the bar and pass a man in a raincoat entering it. This was Bill Randolph, the actor playing Jeff. He convinced director Steve Miner to let him make a cameo in the scene, since no one would think of it because his character had been killed on screen.
- #014
In the scene where Jason chases Ginny and Ginny jumps out of the forest, Steve Daskawicz fell onto a pickaxe and broke his ribs. Another time he fainted, and on yet another occasion Amy Steel cut his finger while they were shooting the final scene in which she fights him with the machete. He eventually went to the hospital, got stitches and returned to work.
- #015
The actors stayed in cabins on set. John Furey, Bill Randolph and Russell Todd came to Lauren-Marie Taylor's cabin to prank her. They scratched the screen window and hyperventilated until they passed out.
- #016
Although Warrington Gillette is credited in the titles as playing Jason, in most scenes the character was played by stuntman Steve Dash. Gillette plays the unmasked Jason only in the sequence where he bursts through the window. Dash was upset that he was not named in the credits, since he held most of Jason's screen time. When archival footage from this film was used in the next sequel, only Dash is listed in the credits as playing Jason.
- #017
In almost every Friday the 13th film there is a prankster or comic relief character. In Friday the 13th Part 2 there is Ted, played by Stu Charno. In the middle of Part 2, Ted tells Ginny and Paul he is going into town to get some beer. Ironically, these characters avoid the massacre by not missing last call. Because he stays in town all night chasing beers and girls, he manages to escape Jason. Ted, who spends the rest of the film going to parties and partying, is one of the only characters to survive the massacre. In both Friday the 13th films, all the characters introduced except the final girl are killed (and sometimes there is a final girl and a final boy). Ted is not the final boy or girl; he just goes to parties, and oddly enough, for a slasher film, that saves him.
- #018
Betsy Palmer was very surprised when director Steve Miner asked her to reprise her role as a guest star, since she had assumed Jason was dead. She shot her lines in half a day, and a new model of her head was created by the makeup effects team. She claimed she never saw the final film.
- #019
This film has one of the longest pre-credits sequences in cinema history, at about eighteen minutes in some versions.
- #020
Jason in this film is dressed to look exactly like the hooded, sack-wearing killer from The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976). The only differences are that his sack has a single eye hole and his shirt has a slightly different plaid pattern.
- #021
Jason's original name was Josh, but screenwriter Victor Miller decided it wasn't scary enough and changed it to Jason.
- #022
Alice and Crazy Ralph, the only two survivors of Friday the 13th (1980) and both eventually killed by Jason, are never mentioned by name at any point in this sequel.
- #023
During a break in filming, two girls tried to use the phone in the phone booth used by Jeff and Sandra in the film, which greatly amused the cast and crew. The phone was actually fake, and the girls left angrily, assuming it was out of order.
- #024
48 seconds were cut by the MPAA to avoid an X rating.
- #025
The film takes place five years after the first film, which was set in 1979, according to Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984). That means this film is set in 1984. In both summers, the 13th Friday fell in July, and this film takes place exactly five years after the events of the first film.
- #026
Amy Steel went to a sound stage to record her scream so it could be edited in the film's final scene.
- #027
Lauren-Marie Taylor was genuinely in love with Tom McBride, her on-screen boyfriend, but at the time she was unaware that he was gay.
- #028
At a horror convention in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in 2003, Betsy Palmer said she had never appeared in another Friday the 13th film after the first one. Apparently she had forgotten about it. Palmer was in Los Angeles while Part 2 was being shot in Connecticut. She was hired for one day and filmed in front of a black screen.
- #029
Scott is the first victim killed with Jason's signature machete.
- #030
Steve Miner, associate producer of the first film, stepped in to direct this film after Sean S. Cunningham chose not to return to the director's chair for the sequel. Tom Savini was offered the chance to return to do the effects, but he chose to work on The Burning instead.
- #031
Walt Gorney, who played Crazy Ralph, was seen many times on set walking around and talking to himself. It is possible he did this just to get further into character.
- #032
In the third draft of the script, originally titled Jason, Terry's night walk and skinny-dipping scene is longer and has no cuts showing what the other characters are doing. Throughout the entire scene she is still being watched by someone, and she is not shown taking her clothes; instead, she notices her clothes are gone as she comes out of the lake and walks into the woods, wanders around calling for Scott, thinking he is the one messing with her again, and only when she finds him dead does it emerge that the person watching her was Jason, who grabs her from behind. Near the end, when Ginny finds Jason's naked body in his bed, there is a jump scare, but nowhere in the script is it mentioned what happened to him.
- #033
In a deleted part of the ending, after the camera zooms all the way in on Mrs. Voorhees's head, her eyes open and she smiles at us, indicating that Jason killed Paul. This was cut because it looked too fake. Because it was cut, it is no longer considered evidence that Paul was killed.
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