Charlie Delgado is a character in the novel Final Destination: Dead Reckoning. He is a survivor of the Club Kitty accident and is a wealthy sorority man at his college whom Jess had a crush on. Charlie is the richest college student around and is very handsome, able to earn himself a girlfriend with just one glare of him. However, Charlie is also spoiled and insensitive to his dates (in one case, he cheated on Cassie's sister immediately after their first date). Charlie had two sorority girlfriends named Heather and Amber, both of whom he cared little about. Both of them attended a concert at Club Kitty to watch The Vipers (led by Jessica Golden) perform. During the performance, Jess saw a horrible premonition of the club collapsing and killing everyone inside, including Charlie. After Jess freaks out and causes a stir, Amber asks Charlie to go out for a smoke. Minutes later, the club collapses and kills dozens, including Heather. After the accident, Amber visits Charlie for a special occasion, but Charlie, clearly not wanting to have any company while he was tuning up his car (and because he accidentally mistook her for Heather) brushes Amber away. A few minutes later, Charlie knocks down the handbrake of his car and despite several attempts to stop it, he is unsuccessful and the car runs over Amber. Charlie was deeply upset over her death, blaming himself for the accident several times over until Jess managed to convince him it was just an accident.
Charlie was the third survivor of the Club Kitty accident to die.
Death
After talking to Jess and realizing that Eric Prescott may be in danger, Charlie, Jess and Jamie head off to their campus to find him before Death claims his life. Charlie rushes over to the campus and arrives just to find an ambulance at the scene (one of the security guards, Jason, was injured after a painful shock). While Jess heads inside to see what happened, Jamie and Charlie stay inside the car. Charlie and Jamie talk to each other briefly before Charlie tells Jess she called him "nice" and that they only wanted to stay friends. Angry at Charlie and thinking he was trying to steal Jess from him, he gets out the car brandishing his cellphone. Charlie quickly follows him inside the building to get his phone back. Jess and Jamie find a drunken Ben inside and force him to show him what happened to Eric, which leads them to a locked door. After picking the lock, they try to head up the stairs, but can't due to Eric's unconscious body blocking the door on the other side. As the three continue to try and get through, Charlie suggests to use the elevator (which was broken after Eric recklessly cut random wires). After the call button lights up, he presses it a few times and the door opens. As he is about to walk inside, he ignores Jess' protests and steps backward, falling down the shaft because the elevator was stuck a few floors higher than where they were. Charlie only sustains a minor injury and Jess screams for help. Just as Charlie says he'll be fine, a loud creak is heard and moments later, the emergency brakes are cut and the elevator comes crashing down, crushing Charlie to death.
In a dream she has sometime later Jess encounters Charlie, and the other club survivors claimed by Death so far, in the entity's realm. Apparently, the elevator broke his neck to a certain degree and severed off one of his hands. Charlie, despite being dead, tried to force Jess to have sex with him in the realm, which Jess denied.
Signs/Clues
- In Jess's vision of the club collapsing, Charlie was killed when a girder swings down from the ceiling and smashes into him.
- The night before meeting with Charlie, Jess looks through a book that described what to do if trapped in an elevator.
- Before ending up in Charlie's house, Jess and Eric encountered the homeless man, who tells them that they are all dead. First the girl, then a boy. The boy would be Charlie.
- Before taking a nap at Charlie’s house, she reads in the newspaper about a man who was trapped in an elevator for three days.
- In Jess' dream, she sees Charlie's body without a head.
- Charlie was almost killed after trying to stop his car from rolling down the driveway shortly before Amber died. After tying the car to a shelf, the shelf shoots off the wall and flies at his head. Jess screams his name and he ducks at the last second.
- While Jess is driving with Charlie, the Hummer ahead of them has a sticker that reads, "Elevate Your Expectations" and shows an elevator with a HumVee driving out of it.
- While sitting in his car, Charlie hears Aerosmith's "Love In An Elevator" and is reminded that Amber loved their music and was listening to it before she died.