There they go, here we stay.
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William "Billy" Hitchcock is a main character in Final Destination and a survivor of the Volée Airlines Flight 180 plane crash. He is a senior student at Mt. Abraham High School and was among the students aboard the plane for the school's annual field trip.
Billy is the fourth survivor of Flight 180 to die.
Biography
Billy was born in the fictional town of Mt. Abraham, New York and attended Mt. Abraham High School. He is very foolish and clumsy, which causes him to be a main target of Carter Horton's bullying. He is one of the students qualified for the school's annual field trip to Paris.
Final Destination
While Carter and Terry are walking inside the airport, Carter throws his bag to Billy, and he falls to the ground. Later, Billy boarded Flight 180. He finds his seat by his ticket and sits down. Billy then eats candy and laughs as the plane takes off, and everyone starts clapping. After Alex has a premonition that plane will crash, Billy is caught in the middle of Alex and Carter's fight and removed from the plane along with the others. Billy tells Mr. Murnau that he was stuck in the bathroom and had nothing to do with the fight but is ignored. Billy then watches the plane take off as Alex and Carter start fighting and makes a comment about their unlucky position.
Suddenly the plane explodes just as Alex predicted, and Billy watches in horror. He is then soon picked up by his parents. Later, Billy appeared at the the memorial service where he asks Alex a bunch of questions thinking he is a psychic, but Alex ignores him. Days later, Carter nearly hits Billy with his car as he is riding his bike. Billy follows Carter to a coffee shop, where they run into the others, and they all witnessed Terry's abrupt death. That same night, while Billy is riding his bike he sees Ms. Lewton's house explode and Alex fleeing the scene and he tells the FBI agents.
Later, Billy finds Carter at the memorial site, as he is engraving Terry's name into the tombstone, until Clear arrives. They drive in Carter's car and pick up Alex who explains that Death is killing off the survivors one by one.
Death
Realizing that he is next on Death's list, Carter stalls his car on the railroad tracks, wanting to die on his own terms. When an oncoming train arrives, Alex, Clear and Billy get out of the car. Carter changes his mind at the last minute but finds himself trapped inside his car. Alex manages to save him seconds before the train smashes into the car, and Billy began insulting Carter, believing he was still next.
However, as he was still standing next to the railroad, a chain underneath the train swipes up a piece of shrapnel from the car wreckage which is sent flying in Billy's direction. He turns around as the shrapnel slices his head off from the jaw up. After the train passes, his body collapses to the ground.
Signs/Clues
- When Carter is driving Alex sees the reflection of the train, out his window.
- During the opening credits, in a book of French history, there is a picture of a guillotine.
- After barely passing his driver's test, his instructor told him, "Young man, you're gonna die a very young age." His eventual death did indeed involve a car.
- Billy almost had his head crushed after he fell off his bicycle (due to Carter's reckless driving) and another car nearly ran him over.
- When Carter is driving to "take control" the reflection of the train, Alex sees out his window has the number 747, which is the type of plane that Flight 180 was.
- While he is looking up at the plane taking off, the reflection of the plane is shown across his face. It is flying in a line right where the piece of the car shrapnel decapitates him later on.
- Throughout the film when he went clumsy and fell to the ground, the action is similar to one after his decapitation.
- While Billy, Carter and Clear are driving to Alex's home, Carter sarcastically threatens to "kill Billy" after he constantly expressed fear of his imminent death, foreshadowing Carter's subsequent actions indirectly causing Billy's death.
- While Carter is trying to "take control", Billy's hat falls off his head, mirroring the top half of Billy's head falling off the bottom half.
- Carter punches Billy's mouth, leaving a sore on his lower lip, which looks like blood dripping down his chin, which is a bloody injury Billy got. And when people are sometimes shortly before their death, Death will get them shortly after they got a bloody injury. (Tod Waggner for example)
Final Destination 2
Shit. The call about the train wreck, that saved my life?... That was the night I scraped up Billy Hitchcock.
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Billy was mentioned in Final Destination 2, by Officer Thomas Burke, a survivor of the Route 23 pile-up, who says that he was supposed to go to the scene of a robbery with his partner, but his chief ordered him to clean-up Billy's remains, and he avoided a shoot-out that took the life of his partner.
Final Destination 5
Oh, Excuse me Um... Those passengers who got off the plane earlier, what was that all about?
Passenger, explaining to the Flight Attendant. A kid had a panic attack and wanted off the plane. Said he had some kind of vision. 'Flight Attendant, in reply. |
Billy's arm is briefly seen in Final Destination 5 as he's being thrown off of Flight 180 moments before it explodes.
Appearances
- Final Destination (portrayed by Seann William Scott)
- Final Destination (novel)
- Final Destination 2 (in a photo) (portrayed by Seann William Scott)
- The Final Destination (opening credits) (CGI image, not actor)
- Final Destination 5 (Archive footage) (portrayed by Seann William Scott)
Trivia
- Billy is the only one of the survivors who personally witnesses the explosion of Flight 180. A fight has just broken out between Alex and Carter, who are being restrained by a pair of security guards and Tod, Terry, Clear and Ms. Lewton are focused on Alex and Carter while Billy watches as the plane flies away. He can be seen flinching when the plane explodes and then screaming "Oh shit!" and ducking before the shockwave shatters the airport windows.
- Billy's death is referenced in the opening credits of Final Destination 5 when a bloody chain crashes through the screen.
- Billy's surname is a reference to director Alfred Hitchcock, who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres and directed many classic horror-thriller films from the 1950s and 1960s.
- Billy was originally the fifth survivor on Death's list, but Carter's death was intervened by Alex, and Death skipped him.
- In the original script, Billy was written to be fat, to give him more of a nerdy feel to him, but this was eventually re-written when Seann William Scott was cast in the role.
- In the script of Final Destination, Billy is described as: BILLY HITCHCOCK, heavyset with a New York Rangers jersey.
- Billy Hitchcock's death is somewhat similar to Frankie Cheeks from Final Destination 3 as their casualties are the result of the main protagonists own brushes with death. (With Alex & Carter barely escaping a train crash & Carter's car shrapnel subsequently killing Billy while Wendy & Kevin almost dying in a car accident with a truck, with Kevin's car engine killing Frankie.)
- Billy's death is also similar to Joshua Cornell III's death as both were decapitated from the jaw up by something flung towards their direction.
- The scene where Carter elbows Billy was not in the original script, the scene was put into the film because Scott had a sore lip at the time of filming and the directors had to find a way to cover it up.
- His death gained the Golden Chainsaw award in Dead Meat's kill count for Final Destination.