Thanks to the ubiquitous success of the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises, Michael Myers and Jason Vorhess have become undeniable pieces of the horror genre. Silent killing machines with a triple-digit kill count between them, Jason and Michael are more forces of nature in their respective films than actual characters.
Even when they meet other similar characters (as in Freddy vs. Jason), they end up coming to blows. But that doesn’t mean every incarnation of these monsters is without feeling. In fact, the Adult Swim sketch show Robot Chicken once suggested that Michael and Jason could easily become best friends if they got the chance.
How Robot Chicken Turned Jason & Michael Into Best Friends
Robot Chicken has poked fun at Jason Voorhees repeatedly over the years, recasting the Friday the 13th villain into a childish and giddy mass murderer. By contrast, Michael Myers has appeared a few times in sketches across the course of the series, he’s more or less portrayed as he is in his films. But the sketch “Horror Friends Forever” from Season 6’s “Botched Jewel Heist” completely reinvented both killers in a more comical and sweet-natured light — albeit it while keeping them vicious killers. In fact, it’s that connection that bonds the pair.
The segment opens like a typical slasher film, with a pair of promiscuous college students heading off to sleep together. Both Jason and Michael reveal themselves, and both politely offer the kill to the other. Eventually, Jason does the deed but splits one of the victim’s heads in half, splitting the kill and leading to the pair to become best friends. They spend their days talking over cookies and milk, going on tandem bike rides, and murdering anyone who crosses their path. The pair is eventually shot dead by the girlfriend of one of their victims (played by Evan Rachel Wood), and in their final moments hold hands, with the blood pooling into the shape of a heart.
Why Jason & Michael Being Friends Makes a Lot of Sense
Neither Jason nor Michael have ever shown much true personality in their films. The lack of humanity is what defines much of the horror behind Michael’s blank mask, while Jason’s murderous drive is his only true guiding star. The pair, however, have a lot in common, even beyond their place in the horror lexicon. Both are nominally unkillable slasher villains who thrived in the same era of filmmaking. Both are, at heart, very damaged children. Michael’s cold affectations arose in his youth while Jason’s death as a child prompted his mother’s vengeful crusade against camp counselors. Jason set off his own rampage when he formally took over the series from his mother Pamela in Friday the 13th: Part 2.
Casting the two as unlikely buddies works for the characters on one level, and is a silly subversion of the usual result of introducing two horror icons into the same film. Jason’s own encounters with other franchises — such as the aforementioned Freddy vs. Jason or his comic book confrontations with Ash Williams from the Evil Dead series — usually come to far more violent ends. But Jason and Michael finding a kindred soul is a far more interesting and oddly endearing thread, as the pair seem to be genuinely happy together. They even seem to actually die in the sketch’s end, as they both briefly resurrect as they often do in their films — only to collapse again now that they know they’re with their best friend. It suggests that at the end of the day, empathy is what can stop these kinds of monsters — something that’s even touched upon in Halloween Ends, highlighting how the sketch is pretty on-point about these two horror icons.