A Nightmare on Elm Street/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: In Wes Craven's New Nightmare, has Freddy really escaped into the "real world" and is haunting actress Heather Langenkamp, or has Nancy lapsed into psychosis due to mental trauma suffered in previous films, and is mercifully deluded that she is merely an actress who portrayed someone going through those horrible events? (Getting temporarily better just so she can fight him off one more time before returning to her delusional safe haven.)
    • Or has Freddy finally managed to claw his way into the "beautiful dream" Kristin sent her into at the end of the third film, where she's an actress and Freddy is just a hammy pop-culture icon?
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Following his performance in Watchmen, Jackie Earle Haley became pretty much the only person in the world people might actually accept as replacing Robert Englund as Freddy.
  • Badass Decay: Freddy never joined the good guys (who would want him?), but as the series went on, he became quite the jokester, and became much more goofy and playful with people's dream sequences than he was in the first few films. This came to a head in Freddy's Dead, where he turned someone's dream into a Nintendo game, where you can tell he's having a great time.
  • Non Sequitur Scene - In the fourth film, Freddy is resurrected when Kincaid's dog pisses fire on his grave. It might be considered a joke since the dog's name is Jason.
    • The second movie is the Non Sequitur Scene Episode of the series.
  • Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Samuel Bayer, the director of the remake, accused its detractors of doing this. Had he just been making a comment about how much of the criticism was coming from people who hadn't actually watched the film, then he would in all likelihood have been 100% correct—unfortunately, the way he phrased his comments made it clear that he thought no-one who had anything bad to say about the remake, including professional critics, could possibly have watched it. Naturally, this led to an Internet Backdraft, and even several critics commenting how silly his remarks were.
  • Complete Monster: Freddy Krueger. Especially evident in the original film, "New Nightmare" (actually a demonic entity that took on Freddy's persona), and the remake. The final film reasons away his transformation into a monster...but it was shown that he showed signs of being a psychopath even in his childhood.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: "Running From this Nightmare" by Tuesday Knight (who also plays Kristen) from Nightmare on Elm Street IV, if you like your 80's pop music Darker and Edgier.
    • Though they were beat to it by Dokken in Dream Warriors with "Dream Warriors".
    • The Freddy's Nightmares opening theme.
    • Kool Moe Dee's "Let's Go" which covers the entire credit sequence of Dream Child.
    • No love for I'm Awake Now by the Goo Goo Dolls?
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Believe it or not, Freddy has an extraordinarily high amount of fangirls. The fandom likes to portray him as a woobie whose terrible past and upbringing were responsible for his psychosis, and that his love for his daughter was genuine enough to push him off the deep end when she was taken away from him, even though part of the reason he was bullied in the first place was due to his psychotic behavior, and he chose to murder his abusive foster parent for pleasure instead of self-defense. The fact that Robert Englund has said on multiple occasions that Freddy represents neglect doesn't help this image either.
    • The remake's version of him is starting to rapidly gain a reputation for this as well. Despite being a child molester who sleazily reminisces on his deeds and an Ax Crazy murderer, particularly delusional fans portray him in a far more sympathetic light in fanfiction where his obsession with Nancy (and any lead female OC for that matter) is downgraded to Stalker with a Crush status.
    • Should probably be noted that the Pseudo-Freddy of New Nightmare actually does wear tight black leather pants.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Johnny Depp tagged along to auditions for the first film with a friend. Wes Craven asked Depp to read as well, and Depp was cast other than the friend he was supporting. But fret not about the friend. 26 years later, Jackie Earle Haley would go on to play Freddy in the remake.
  • Holy Shit Quotient:
    • Original: Glen's death.
    • Freddy's Revenge: The opening bus ride.
    • The Dream Master: The zoom out revealing Kincaid isn't just in a junkyard, he's on an entire planet covered in a labyrinth composed of scrapped cars.
    • Dream Child: Alice dreams of her womb and her baby. She's happy at first, until she realizes Freddy is there too, and has been feeding the souls of his victims to make the baby evil like him.
    • Freddy's Dead: The house Tracy, Carlos and Spencer go into exploding into an exact replica of 1428 Elm Street.
  • Ho Yay: Pretty much the entirety of Freddy's Revenge.
  • It Gets Better: New Nightmare.
  • Misaimed Fandom: It is truly disturbing how many 12 year old girls on Deviant ART draw cutesy anime-esue fan art about him falling in love with their Distaff Counterpart OC of him they made. Who knew skinless demonically powered child rapists are so "cute"?
  • Motive Decay: Subverted; after slaughtering the children of the parents of Springwood responsible for killing him, the film franchise changes Freddy's motives to collecting souls to increase his powers, occasionally trying to find a way to transfer his powers into the real world, and sometimes just killing for the sake of killing.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Even Robert Englund admitted he had nightmares with Freddy Krueger...which thankfully didn't end with him dying.
    • The fifth movie can certainly qualify. Even if it's one of the more maligned sequels, it has a noticeable amount of content edited out of its subsequent VHS and DVD releases, particularly Dan and Greta's death scenes.
  • Nightmare Retardant: At the end of the first film, when Freddy drags what is supposed to be Nancy's mother through the little window in her front door as a final scare. It's a hilariously obvious mannequin.
    • The whole concept becomes significantly less scary when you remember that Freddy only kills in one suburb (a fictional one at that), though it does get worse in Freddy's Dead, in which he states that "every town has an Elm Street" and makes clear that he's planning to expand his reach to the whole world.
  • Paranoia Fuel: In Dream Warriors, one of the characters is having a dream where he is making out with a hot nurse...who turns out to be Freddy in disguise. Sweet dreams, everyone.
    • It was going to be even worse originally: Freddy's head was going to be on the naked nurse's body.
    • The premise alone qualifies, obviously. It's one thing when you fall off a cliff in your dreams and wake up safe at home seconds later. But it's completely different when that can cross over into the real world.
  • Retroactive Recognition: ANOES was the first movie Johnny Depp played in.
  • Sequelitis: Outside of primarily Dream Warriors and New Nightmare, every one of the sequels receives a sizeable amount of dislike.
  • Squick: Some of Freddy's methods wander into this territory, especially in Freddy vs. Jason.
    • The most disturbing example; disguising himself as a human-like nurse in The Dream Master. A make up-free Robert Englund in drag is suprisingly more disgusting than any violent act Freddy could dish out.
      • Perhaps the Squickiest moment of the series had no gore and no violence: on a television talk show in New Nightmare, Heather Langenkamp (as herself) is asked if she could trust her child around Robert Englund, simply because he plays Freddy.
    • Damn near everything to do with him in the remake. Even before he was burned, his interactions with the children are unbelievably uncomfortable to watch, especially if you actually allow yourself to picture him hurting the kids.
    • Dream Child, so squick it's the only Nightmare movie to have an unrated version.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: The NES game published by LJN (but developed by Rare) was giving a scathing review by The Angry Video Game Nerd, while the PC game published by Westwood, based on Dream Warriors, isn't well known to the general public.
  • The Scrappy: Dylan in "New Nightmare". How much peril do you have to get yourself into before you actually realise you should run from the undead serial killer? No... I didn't mean climb into a lit furnace....
    • Technically, he didn't have anywhere else to run. It was either get away from Krueger in the only avoidable spot left to run to, or stay and get killed. The proverbial "rock and a hard place".
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The whole "special powers in your dreams" thing never amounted to much. At best, characters just briefly delayed their deaths by bombarding Freddy with attacks that were just minor annoyances, and in the end its not the powers or teamwork that beat him, its Neil shoving his corpse into a hole and attacking it with holy water and a crucifix.
    • "New Nightmare" has Freddy Krueger escape into the real world and they didn't ever consider having Robert Englund fight him?
    • They did, actually. Rumor has it, a scene was written wherein Freddy confronted Robert Englund, appearing as a spider or something similar, but obviously )plans for) it got scrapped. However, the movie hints at Freddy sort of replacing Robert Englund, with Robert sort of phasing out as Freddy shows up more, so while it is indeed a wasted opportunity, it was at least considered and rather justified in its removal.
  • Villain Decay: Freddy got less and less scary/menacing in the sequels, resorting to outright gimmicky and comical methods of doing in his victims in the later movies. (New Nightmare and Freddy vs. Jason are generally regarded as exceptions.)
    • It could be seen as part of his Character Development. In the first film, he's generally quiet. It's his first time using the powers, so in a demented way, you could say he was nervous. In 2 he's still relatively "in the shadows" but is also bit more playful ("You got the body... I got the brains"). By 3 he's been killing for a good amount of time. He's tormenting them while having a good time. This goes for the fourth and fifth films as well. By the sixth movie, where he's the silliest, he's just having a good time. Why does he need to worry? He's all powerful in Elm Street. Though this may count as Wild Mass Guessing...
    • It could also be a weird case of Becoming the Mask: Freddy needs fear to access dreams, so he lets a few victims live through their first few encounters, ensuring they'll talk to their friends about the scary freak they've been dreaming about. He starts making wisecracks and taunting these chosen survivors because it makes him seem more powerful, free to gloat and toy with them with impugnity. In time, he starts to enjoy the taunts for their own sake, and does them naturally rather than as part of a deliberate pose.
  • Villain Sue: From about the third film onwards, Freddy was pretty much undefeatable except when he chose to be. It got to a point where audiences met Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare with total cynicism (note how hard the title has to work to establish that he's really going to die in this movie).
  • Vindicated By Video: The first movie did solid box-office business for a low budget 1984 movie, but it was the home video sales that really demonstrated what a money-maker Freddy could be.
  • The Woobie: Amanda Krueger.
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