The Friday The 13th franchise has made it clear that being a Crystal Lake camp counselor is a poor career choice, but how many have actually survived Jason Voorhees’ many massacres? The original Friday The 13th featured Crystal Lake camp counselor Alice (Adrienne King) as the final girl, who was forced to kill Pamela Voorhees in self-defense. Poor Pamela was driven to madness after the tragic drowning of her son Jason, and she blamed Crystal Lake’s camp counselors for this. When the camp was due to reopen, she took murderous steps to make sure it stayed shut.
While Friday The 13th’s first killer was Pamela, the adult Jason Voorhees became the lead slasher for Part 2. The Friday The 13th movie series became hugely successful during the 1980s, with a sequel pumped out nearly every year. Jason himself racked up a huge body count during that time, which is now well into triple figures. Sadly, the franchise is on something of a hiatus, with the rights being tangled up in a messy lawsuit.
That means that 2009’s Friday The 13th remake is – to date – the last entry. Rewinding to the very beginning of the series, it was Pamela blaming Jason’s “death” on Crystal Lake camp counselors that really kicked the bloodshed of the entire saga. Poor Alice was later the victim of a vengeance-seeking Jason in Part 2’s opening scene. While Crystal Lake has been Friday The 13th’s major setting for most of the franchise, only a handful of the sequels have really focused on camp counselors – which is about the same number of survivors from the latter group too.
Friday The 13th Part 2 and Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives have both featured Camp Crystal Lake open for business. Part 2 also features one of Friday The 13th’s best final girls in Ginny, who uses a combination of strength and smarts to take Jason down. While she ultimately survives, the fate of her fellow Crystal Lake camp counselor and love interest Paul is famously up for debate. Outside of Ginny, another surprise survivor is resident comic relief Ted, who lucks out simply by deciding to stay at a bar and continuing to get drunk when the others leave; this decision spares him the gory fate.
Jumping ahead, Friday The 13th Part VI – featuring zombie Jason – is the only entry to actually feature children at the camp. While the many teenagers taking on Crystal Lake camp counselors’ duties do their best to make it a fun outing for the kids, many of them are quietly – and messily – killed by Jason throughout. By the end of Jason Lives, only Megan Garris is left alive among the counselors. That means in the original Friday The 13th timeline, a mere three characters survived Jason. While Alice had no luck in Part 2, it appears she survived in the remake timeline. A character credited as “Camp Counselor” is seen decapitating Pamela, but while she’s not named in the movie, this appears to be Alice; the remake also makes no mention of her fate afterward, implying Jason didn’t seek revenge later on.
