Michael Bay perhaps doesn’t get enough credit for being a purveyor of horror in the 2000s. Even though he didn’t direct any of them, he put his weight behind them. He produced not only The Purge for Blumhouse, but also a series of slasher remakes in the early 2000s such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street and 2009’s Friday the 13th, which still ranks as Jasoon Voorhees’ final appearance on screen until a new movie gets made. That movie is what we’re here to discuss today though as Bay might have not-so-stealthily created a bizarre, shared universe with his biggest franchise.
As was brought to our attention recently by Twitter user @RickDaSquirrel_, 2007’s Transformers, which Bay directed, and its sequels appear to share the same universe as 2009’s Friday the 13th. Yes, really. This is certainly not the first person to point this connection out but it’s a crazy bit of trivia worth sharing. So, how are these films connected, exactly? It all goes back to actor Travis Van Winkle, who plays a character named Trent DeMarco in Transformers, pictured below.
Trent played the jock boyfriend of Megan Fox’s character Mikaela, who later gets pulled into the Autobots vs. Decepticons action by Shia LaBeauf’s Sam. Trent doesn’t get a ton of screen time but he has a couple of key scenes early on in the film that show us who he is. He’s a football playing, polo shirt wearing douchebag, to put it lightly. Well, it just so happens that Mr. Van Winkle also was cast as one of the leads in Friday the 13th. His character’s name? You guessed it! Trent.
As it turns out, Trent in both films shares a lot of similarities. Not just because he’s being played by the same actor but the way he dresses, acts and carries himself generally all lines up. Also, not for nothing, Trent gets murdered by Jason at the end of the film. Meanwhile, Trent did not make an appearance in 2009’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen or any of the other sequels. Coincidence? We think not.
I mean, would this really be all that insane? The fact of the matter is that Jason Voorhees wouldn’t even be the craziest thing that exists in this universe, one that has seen Earth visited by sentient alien robots multiple times. If this was intentional by Bay (and it must have been), it may not have been that he fully intended for the films to literally occupy the same universe. But they’re not crossing over onto one another’s turf. It also makes for a fun little bit of “What if?”
For more, get the latest on what’s going on with the Friday the 13th franchise.
