History YMMV / ANightmareOnElmStreet

* OnlyTheCreatorDoesItRight: The installments with Wes Craven's involvement tend to gather more praise from fans and critics.

* MisaimedFandom: It is truly disturbing how many 12 year old girls on Website/DeviantArt draw cutesy anime-esue fan art about Freddy Krueger falling in love with their DistaffCounterpart OC of him they made. Who knew skinless demonically powered child rapists are so "cute"?

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: While you honestly can't blame the parents of Springwood for burning Freddy to death, this act of vigilantism ultimately allowed Freddy to become a powerful dream demon who would kill hundreds and by the end of the series, poses a global threat

* NarmCharm: Freddy's make up isn't exactly a realistic despiction of what a burnt person would look like, but the look has become so iconic fans love it anyway. To the point that when the remake tried to go for a more realistic make-up, it was criticized as "generic".

** As the original series goes on, Freddy's burned skin goes from horrfying to looking like a mild skin condition.

* HarsherInHindsight: In perhaps the only time this particular method of death would apply here, Wes Craven passed away in his sleep.

* HellIsThatNoise: Freddy's claws against a steel object in the first film. It seldom ever returned in the sequels.

* PeripheryDemographic: Despite Freddy getting most of the attention, and the slasher genre being typically marketed towards teenage and young adult men, the series has a notable feminist following due to its strong female protagonists who teenage girls easily relate to. This includes their lead actresses [[GirlsNeedRoleModels who encourage this demographic]].

* EvilIsCool: Freddy.

** Amanda Krueger.

* VillainSue: 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).

* {{Sequelitis}}: Outside of primarily ''Dream Warriors'' and ''New Nightmare'', every one of the sequels receives a sizeable amount of dislike.

** Believe it or not, Freddy has an extraordinarily high amount of fangirls. The fandom likes to portray him as a [[TheWoobie woobie]] whose terrible past and upbringing were responsible for his psychosis, and that [[PapaWolf his love for his daughter]] was genuine enough to push him off the deep end when she was taken away from him. The fact that Robert Englund has said on multiple occasions that Freddy represents neglect doesn't help this image either.

* HilariousInHindsight: Depending on how you define ‘hillarious’, the strong resemblance between his design and that of the [[Manga/AttackOnTitan Titans]].

* MisaimedMarketing: Though the marketing of his R-rated movies to said 12 year olds doesn't help. This was particularly prevalent with the heavy promotion leading up to the fourth movie, which downplayed his more gruesome aspects for mainstream appeal as a TotallyRadical comic villain. This included an "interview" on MTV, his own rap number, and even a cheesy pop album (because [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fapwDPKzXLE "happy feet dancing to the beat"]] is apparently [[SoundtrackDissonance fitting music for a serial child killer]]).

** In contrast to the [[AssholeVictim typical slasher victims]], Freddy's victims tend to be troubled teenagers whose problems are only exacerbated by the adults refusing to acknowledge Freddy's threat. This is especially evident in ''Dream Warriors'' in which the main crew are stuck in a mental institution due to being accused of self-harm.

* MoralEventHorizin: Freddy Krueger crosses the line when he murders his own wife for discovering he was the Springwood Slasher.

* CompleteMonster: Freddy Krueger, known as the [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast "Bastard-Son-Of-A-Hundred-Maniacs"]], is the dream-invading, SerialKiller antagonist of the franchise who was a [[WouldHurtAChild child killer]] BEFORE he became a ghost. He kept a scrapbook of the "Have you seen this..." pictures of his child victims [[{{Squick}} and licked them.]] After his death he makes a deal with demonic forces to become, in his own words, "the stuff nightmares are made of." He uses his newfound powers to find increasingly creative ways to torture and murder his dozens of victims for his own amusement by using their primal fears against them, all the while cracking sick jokes. Then he harvests the teenagers' souls and keeps them in a perpetual AndIMustScream state inside his body to drain them for energy. Even in the utterly {{Narm}}-filled ''Film/FreddysDeadTheFinalNightmare,'' he had his moments, like when he taunts Tracy by appearing as her [[ParentalIncest sexually abusive father]] ("Give daddy some honey...no one has to know..."). Freddy is one of the few SlasherMovie killers with a distinct and talkative personality, and has always simply been a sadistic monster that extends his victims' suffering [[ForTheEvulz for its own sake]].

* DracoInLeatherPants: Believe it or not, Freddy has an extraordinarily high amount of fangirls. The fandom likes to portray him as a [[TheWoobie woobie]] whose terrible past and upbringing were responsible for his psychosis, and that [[PapaWolf his love for his daughter]] was genuine enough to push him off the deep end when she was taken away from him. The fact that Robert Englund has said on multiple occasions that Freddy represents neglect doesn't help this image either.

* MisaimedFandom: It is truly disturbing how many 12 year old girls on Website/DeviantArt draw cutesy anime-esue fan art about him falling in love with their DistaffCounterpart OC of him they made. Who knew skinless demonically powered child rapists are so "cute"?
* NightmareRetardant: 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.

* ParanoiaFuel: 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 [[AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent completely different]]'' when that can cross over into the ''real world''.

* TheWoobie: Amanda Krueger.

** JerkassWoobie: Freddy might have a sympathetic backstory, but his monstrous actions outweigh TheWoobie side, however.