Death Design

Death's design

Clear's following of the design

Death's design, also known as the chain, is a special design that is created by Death. According to William Bludworth, death's designs had some rules, but it's not clear how he knew them. During the survival days of Clear Rivers, she following of the design, and marked them on the wall in her room of the Stonybrook Institution Psychiatric Treatment Center.

Premonition

Main article: Premonition

The people who had the premonition could see how the people on death's list died in the disasters, but it's unknown whether the premonition had something to do with Death.

Order of Death

Death would killed people through different orders. In Final Destination, the death order was followed the explosion ways in Flight 180. In Final Destination 2, the death order was turned backward of the premonition, which caused by the Flight 180 survivors. In Final Destination 3, the death order was still based the order of death, but also on the seating on Devil's Flight and the photos taken gave clues to how they might die. In The Final Destination, the death order was followed the order in the premonition, except Jonathan Groves who died out of order by not changing seats.

Cheating Death

Intervention

Intervening in someone's death can hinder the design, and cheat death, but it will only skip the one who being saved. After the first turn, it will still turn back to the one who was saved before. This rule can't defeat Death at all.

New life

According to William Bludworth, only new life can beat Death. In an alternate ending of Final Destination, Clear Rivers had a baby with Alex Browning (although he is dead), so she and Carter Horton beat Death. In Final Destination 2, Kimberly Corman mistook the meaning of new life. She thought if her heart stopped beating for a couple minutes, and then being saved was considered a new life. But her action was proofed wrong, since Thomas and her were still killed by a wood clipper at last, so it's clear that they didn't beat Death. In addition, although one of the survivors - Isabella Hudson - had a baby, she was not meant to die on Route 23, so she couldn't help Kimberly and Thomas with "cheating" Death.

Steal another's life

According to William Bludworth, if you kill someone who is not in Death's design, you as the person who was to already be dead but had cheated Death, receive the remaining life left from the person you killed. Peter eloquently calls this "kill or be killed".
Three instances of this occur in Final Destination 5. Nathan kills Roy, receiving his few remaining days; Roy having an illness that would have killed him shortly anyways. Nathan thus dies shortly after, but not in the original order of death planned by Death, only as the time of death for Roy originally. Peter kills Block, avoiding Death's schedule. Similarly, Sam kills Peter, avoiding Death's schedule. Sam dies shortly after, as Block had been scheduled to die not long after his actual death.

Suicide

If it's not your time to die, Death won't let you kill yourself. This happened to Eugene Dix and George Lanter. It was also tested by Carter Horton when he wanted to "gain control" of his life. He drove his car fast through the traffic trying to kill himself (he would probably kill Clear, Alex and Billy too), but stopped on train tracks waiting for the train to claim his life. Eventually he said "its not my time to die", and unsuccessfully tried to start his car. However, it's revealed in Final Destination 5 that if it's not your time to die, you can't suicide, but you can killed by the others.
In Final Destination 3, Ian McKinley had a theory: if the last person on the list commit suicide, then the rest of the survivors would truly beat Death's design. The last one on the list, Wendy Christensen never listened to Ian anyway, so it is unknown whether or not Ian's idea is true. However, in an alternate ending of The Final Destination, the last one on the list, Nick O'Bannon thought to know how he could defeat death by commit suicide. He jumped out of the mall and landed on a police car and was dead. Nick's action revealed the result of Ian's theory, and that only the last one on the list can suicide whenever they want. But after Nick's death, Lori Milligan and Janet Cunningham who were the only survivors on the list, crushed by a fan and died. This confirmed that although the last person on the list suicided, but the rest of the survivors still couldn't beat Death.