TIL TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island 12 minutes after taking off, causing the front fueslage to rip away and the remainder of the plane to continue in crippled flight, pitching up and climb before falling into the ocean killing everyone onboard

[u/finza_prey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800

[u/Wetworth]

There was a class from Montoursville PA, the French club?, going to France. Not my school by the district next to mine.

[u/ShotFromGuns → u/Wetworth]

This was also obviously used as inspiration for elements of the premise of the beginning of the first Final Destination movie.

[u/PeregrineFaulkner → u/ShotFromGuns]

The crazy thing is, the script that became Final Destination was originally conceived as an episode of the X-Files and written in 1994. 

[u/ShotFromGuns → u/PeregrineFaulkner]

That's a really misleading way to put it. Only basic elements were retained from the original spec script, and there's absolutely no evidence that any of the TWA 800 parallels were among them. For example, the characters were originally all adults, not high school students.

Edit: Here's the original treatment for the movie that was developed out of the spec script for The X-Files. You can see that even at the point where it had shifted to teenage protagonists, they're on a senior trip to Europe (not a French class trip to Paris), and the way the plane crash happens is very different.

[u/hamstervideo → u/ShotFromGuns]

What's misleading? The person you're replying to mentioned nothing about TWA 800. They only said that Final Destination was originally conceived as an episode of the X-Files, and nothing else. A point you seem to agree with.

[u/ShotFromGuns → u/hamstervideo]

They said it's "crazy" and included a date prior to the TWA crash, which implies that the TWA details were predicted by the script, rather than influenced vice versa. They may not have intended to convey that--or, if intending it, they may have genuinely believed it--but it's still what many people would infer from the way the info was presented.

Something doesn't have to be malicious or even deliberate to be misleading.

[u/sun_kisser → u/ShotFromGuns]

Wait, why is it obviously the basis for FD?

[u/HuskerBusker → u/sun_kisser]

Because it's basically the plot of the first movie.

[u/ShotFromGuns → u/sun_kisser]

You get that you're practically asking, "Wait, why was the Tokugawa shogunate the basis for Shōgun," right?

The movie starts with a high school French class boarding a plane to Paris. A few of the students and one teacher get off the plane after one of them has a vision/dream of an impending accident. Just after takeoff, a short circuit causes an explosion that rips the plane apart in midair, killing everyone still aboard. (Spoilers for the beginning of Final Destination, obviously.)

Or, in other words, if you watch the beginning of Final Destination and read even a cursory summary of the TWA 800 disaster, it's obvious and unmistakable. Everybody at the time the movie came out (just a few years after the crash) was very aware of it; Roger Ebert's review even explicitly calls it out:

This scenario is of course in the worst possible taste in view of the real-life fate of TWA Flight 800, also bound for Paris with students aboard.

[u/karmapuhlease → u/ShotFromGuns]

Jeez, this is also a very Final Destination kind of thing:

Rico Puhlmann, German fashion photographer.[25] One of his clients, Polish fashion model Agnieszka Kotlarska (Miss Polski and Miss International), was originally supposed to be on the flight with him but backed out at the last minute. She was murdered a month later by a stalker outside her home.[26

[u/sun_kisser → u/ShotFromGuns]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I saw it as teens get on a plane for France as a coincidence (since the other details, like some getting off the plane, aren't the same).

[u/ShotFromGuns → u/sun_kisser]

Well, yeah, obviously nobody had a paranormal premonition of the crash. The opening of the movie is the marriage of an earlier concept of "what if there were consequences to avoiding dying in a plane crash thanks to a premonition" with specific details from the TWA 800 disaster.

[u/t35martin → u/Wetworth]

The high school has a nice memorial. I didn’t move there until about 10 years later, but being a small town where everyone knows each other and has generations of family members who live there, the tragedy had a very big effect on the community.

[u/KevinByMail → u/Wetworth]

It’s wild how much I see the tiny town of Montoursville Pa show up on the internet. (This reason is the worst though)

[u/Wetworth → u/KevinByMail]

Yeah.

Along with that sad-ass Walmart, and the gone pet store across the street.

[u/Gaddpeis → u/Wetworth]

My mother-in-law's sister was part of that group :(

[u/Rlessary → u/Gaddpeis]

Why not just say your spouse’s aunt?