What Jenny Died Of In Forrest Gump

Jenny’s AIDS diagnosis was confirmed in a planned sequel to “Forrest Gump” that would have brought the character up to the 1990s. Throughout “Gump,” the character unwittingly stumbled into various notable historic events and unwittingly invented small pieces of Americana the audience can chuckle at. He met multiple presidents, gave Elvis Presley the idea to shake his hips, and penned the phrase “s*** happens.” The sequel would take a similar approach, putting Forrest at a dance competition with Princess Diana, and, in a truly bizarre idea, on the roof of O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco during his infamous 1994 chase. It’s notable that Zemeckis’ original film was released in L.A. theaters the week after the Simpson chase. 

Roth also said that the film would have been more of a tragedy, beginning and ending with unbearably sad events. At the end, for instance, Forrest would be left obliviously waiting for a Native American friend who had just been killed in the Oklahoma City bombings. And at the beginning, Forrest, Jr., played in the original film by Haley Joel Osment, would be diagnosed with AIDS, having caught it from his mother. Roth’s grim tale, it seems, was meant to feel like a bleak satire of the original. He said: 

“It was gonna start with his little boy having AIDS. […] And people wouldn’t go to class with him in Florida. We had a funny sequence where they were [desegregation] busing in Florida at the same time, so people were angry about either the busing or [their] kids having to go to school with the kid who had AIDS. So there was a big conflict.” 

It seems that Roth wanted to mock the kind of conservatism that the first filmed so heartily endorsed.