Yeah, that should have been better than it ended up being. It and all its sequels were just excuses to build the most elaborate Rube Goldbergesque deaths possible. Which is a shame; that particular construct could have worked much better, IMHO, in a slightly different context that wasn’t simply about Death being cheated and exacting his vengeance. I’ve been toying with an idea about gods (particularly the one known as Fate) taking a few decades off work, and then coming back and finding out the Ship of Destiny (such as it is) has veered too far off course without her hand on the tiller, and so she has to set things right by making certain people die (or otherwise removing them from the equation) and helping others succeed, using the weirdest and most incredibly unlikely (and yet still barely physically possible, at least individually) coincidences and happenstances. People struck by meteorites and having to dodge several falling pianos and open manholes, that kind of thing.
One of these days I’ll finish it.
