Thomas Burke was the secondary protagonist of the horror film Final Destination 2. He was a New York State Trooper and one of the survivors of the Route 23 pile-up disaster.
History[]
On May 13th 2000, Burke was on duty near Route 23 when traffic was held up at the on-ramp. When he went to investigate, he found that an SUV being driven by one Kimberly Corman had parked in the on-ramp, preventing anyone from getting onto the highway. Burke asked Kimberly to vacate her car and she warned him that a terrible accident was about to happen that would result in dozens of deaths. As Burke took Kimberly aside to talk to her, the disaster she had warned about unfolded.
Following the accident, Burke took Kimberly down to the police station for questioning. She told Burke that she had experienced a premonition and that Burke was one of the people who had died in the vision. She went on to tell him about how she had looked up the phenomenon online and learned about Alex Browning and how he and his friends had gotten off the doomed Volée Airlines Flight 180 before it exploded, only to die one by one in a series of bizarre accidents that were supposedly orchestrated by Death itself, who had been hunting those that had cheated it. Burke and the other survivors didn't believe Kimberly's claims, but after the mysterious death of Evan Lewis, the remaining survivors decided to work together to try and cheat Death.
The survivors later met with Clear Rivers, the last survivor of Flight 180, who suggested that they talk with the mortician William Bludworth. Bludworth explained that only new life could defeat Death, leading Kimberly to believe that pregnant survivor Isabella Hudson could save them, however this proved false since Isabella was never meant to die in the pile-up anyway.
After Clear and Eugene's deaths, Kimberly sacrificed herself for Burke' safety by driving a van into a lake, however Burke rescued her and sent her to a hospital for recovery where she was revived and granted new life. This completely ruined the design and saved her and Burke. Having finally cheated Death, they went to a picnic with the Gibbons family, who told them how their son Brian Gibbons was saved from Death by one of the survivors. To everyone's surprise, Brian was then blown up when the barbecue grill he was standing over suddenly exploded.
Fate[]
While Burke survives the events of Final Destination 2, the "Thrill Ride" DVD release of Final Destination 3 included a special feature called Choose Their Fate, which included a scene of Kimberly and Burke dying in an incident set five years after their prophecized deaths. In said incident, Kimberly went to a hardware store to ask for directions, where she encountered Burke. As they greeted each other, an unmanned vehicle began to drive down the road until it crashed into the store, nearly killing Kimberly and Burke. They rushed outside the back door at the last minute only to come into contact with a wood chipper, Kimberly got her coat caught inside the machine and was slowly sucked in. Burke tried to save Kimberly, but in the process, he got caught in the machine as well.