In 1986, thirteen years after the events of the first film, two high school seniors, Buzz (Barry Kinyon) and Rick (Chris Douridas), race along a desolate stretch of Texas highway, en route to the Texas-OU football game at the Dallas Cotton Bowl (stadium). Heavily intoxicated, they use their car phone to call and harass on-air radio DJ Vanita "Stretch" Brock (Caroline Williams). Unable to convince them to hang up, Stretch is forced to keep the line open. While passing a pickup truck, Buzz and Rick are attacked by Leatherface (Bill Johnson (film and television actor)), who emerges from the back of the truck. Leatherface rips up the roof using his chainsaw. After a short struggle, Rick tries shooting Leatherface with his revolver but Leatherface fatally slices off part of the driving Buzz's head, and the car ends up crashing and killing Rick.
On August 18, 1973, five young adults – Erin, her boyfriend Kemper, and their friends Morgan, Andy, and Pepper – are on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert after traveling to Mexico to purchase marijuana. While driving through Texas, the group picks up a distraught and severely traumatised hitchhiker they see walking in the middle of the road. After they try to talk with the hitchhiker, who speaks incoherently about "Leatherface", she pulls a loaded revolver out of her pocket and shoots herself in the mouth.
Following The Texas Chain Saw Massacre the people of Newt, Texas, led by Mayor Burt Hartman (Paul Rae), burn down the farmhouse of the murderous List of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre characters#The Sawyer Family in an act of vigilante justice. The arsonists are proclaimed heroes of the community, and the entire Sawyer family is killed. However, an infant, Edith Rose Sawyer, is found by one of the townsmen, Gavin Miller, who promptly murders her mother, Loretta Sawyer. Gavin and his wife Arlene take the child into their care and raise her as their own daughter.