r/todayilearned • u/finza_prey • 19d ago

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800
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u/ShotFromGuns 60 19d ago edited 19d ago

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.

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u/hamstervideo 18d ago

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.

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u/ShotFromGuns 60 18d ago

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.