Characters / A Nightmare On Elm Street Freddy Krueger

Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger

^{Click here to see him when he was human}

Played by:
Main actor: Robert Englund
Minor actors: Leslie Hoffman, Stacey Alden, John Saxon, Michael Bailey Smith, Danny Hassel, Chason Schirmer, Tobe Sexton, Paula Shaw, Rick Lazzarini (Womb Freddy)

"When I was alive, I might have been a little naughty, but after they killed me, I became something much, much worse. The stuff nightmares are made of."

The primary villain of the series, and the most often recurring character. Born of a nun who was raped by a group of mental asylum patients, he became a child murderer as an adult, claiming many lives until the parents of Springwood got their revenge on him by burning him alive. He makes a deal with three demons to become a powerful ghost with the ability to manipulate dreams. In death, Freddy turns out to be an even worse nightmare than he ever was in life as he continues to hunt the now-teenage children of the lynch mob that killed him.

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A-F

• Abusive Parents: Freddy was on both the receiving and giving ends of this before his death. His birth mom abandoned him while his foster dad beat him with a belt. He also subtly threatened to kill his young daughter if she told anyone about him being the Springwood Slasher or murdering her mother in front of her.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • His powers only work to their full extent in the dream world, and he's noticeably less capable against lucid dreamers that are capable of controlling their own dreamscapes.
  • Being forgotten. He needs to be feared to have power, and if everyone forgets he exists, he's stuck in Hell and can't resurrect.
    • Related to the above, since he needs to be feared to have power, Freddy can be weakened if his target grows a backbone and stands up to him.
  • Holy objects can harm him, but no one ever thinks to use them against him.
• All of the Other Reindeer: When he was a child, other kids bullied him for being "the bastard son of 100 maniacs".
• Allegorical Character: Of Generational Trauma. While Freddy was a child-killer when he was human, as a Nightmare Weaver he had since become Springwood's Dark Secret and the adults of the town have since tried to suppress the truth of his existence rather than confront it. At best, the adults ignore or gaslight the kids into thinking that Freddy is nothing more than a figment of their collective imagination. At worst, the adults will arrest, drug and/or institutionalize the kids (as was the case in The Dream Warriors and Freddy vs. Jason), doing everything they can to control the kids while leaving them all the more helpless against him.
• Appropriated Appellation: He was called the "Springwood Slasher" during his child-killing days.
• Arch-Enemy: It's easier to list people who don't want him dead for good, but there's plenty of characters who have the most personal vendetta against him.
  • To Nancy Thompson, having lost her friends and mother to Freddy. She was also the first person to have defeated him, causing him to despise her greatly and ensure her death in the third film. All non-film media depicts her as a spirit of some sort to aid in stopping Freddy.
  • Extended media tend to build up on the hate between Freddy and Alice Johnson, as she's the only Final Girl to have survived him across two different movies and challenges his title as "Dream Master."
  • Jason Voorhees was just an unrelated slasher who Freddy manipulated to help him return to Springwood. Once Jason starts killing more than what he needed, Freddy reveals he had used his mother's likeness to use him. After that, Jason is fixated on killing Freddy, to the point where the only reason he attacks Lori and her friends afterwards is not because of his usual "kill them all for mother" mentality, but because they're in his way of revenge on Freddy.
  • To Lori Campbell. She was just another list of people Freddy had tormented until the reveal he killed her mother right before an apparent attempt to rape Lori herself. After that, Lori refuses to leave until she sees Freddy dies.
• Archnemesis Dad: To his daughter eventually.
• Asshole Victim: The people of Springwood burned him alive for the murder of their children. One could argue that his fate was less than what he really deserved.
• Alien Blood: In the dream realm, his blood is shown to be green when he slices two of his fingers off. Possibly discolouration from blood decomposition, given that he's dead. Averted in the waking world though.
• Ax-Crazy: Killing is like breathing to him.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: In a flashback to his childhood in Freddy's Dead, it's revealed he killed a class pet with a hammer.
• Bad Humor Truck: Freddy's Nightmares reveals that Freddy operated out of an ice cream truck at times. After he's let out of court, the first thing he does is go and retrieve it.
• Bald of Evil: He has no hair due to his burns and is as bad as they come.
• Bastard Bastard: Freddy isn't called "the bastard son of a 100 maniacs" for nothing. He was conceived when dozens of insane inmates in a mental asylum raped his mother Amanda, a nun who was working there. Freddy was a child murderer in real life, and became a spectral nightmare killer after his death.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Whenever Freddy's defeated, it's mainly by exceptionally lucid dreamers who can shift the reality and fabric of their dreams just as much as he can. His underestimation of this doesn't help either.
• Berserk Button: Two. Alice Johnson pushes one by mocking him as a Dirty Coward in Dream Child, and Jason Voorhees pushes the other by stealing his kills of the Elm Street children.
• Big Bad: Naturally. However, he was possibly subservient to the Dream Demons since they are the ones that gave him powers. Though he cuts his ties to them in the comic series Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash and becomes the Big Bad once more.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: His blade-fingered glove started out this way, when he was still alive and his glove was merely a homemade murder weapon. In dreams, it evolves into more of a built-in weapon, which alternately appears on his hand whole when he sheds a disguise, or sends its blades springing out from his (or a puppet's, or a possessed boy's, etc) fingertips.
• Body Horror: Every visible inch of his skin is covered in burns, with his ears and nose appearing to be slightly melted. At several points throughout the series, he lifts his shirt to reveal that his torso is a mass of screaming faces, which are capable of independent movement and can even contort in ways which are painful to him.
• Brought Down to Badass: Whenever he's pulled into the real world, he loses his Reality Warper status and Nigh-Invulnerability, but as shown when it happens in Freddy vs. Jason, he's still Made of Iron and able to put up one hell of a fight.
• Brought Down to Normal: At the end of Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: Nightmare Warriors. And how so? In the original timeline Freddy was let go after someone forget to sign the warrant, and after a Timey-Wimey Ball, an FBI agent signs the warrant, leading to Krueger's arrest and the fact he never became the Nightmare God that he once was.
• Card-Carrying Villain: As a hardcore sadist and demonic enforcer, he's quite frank about literally having become "the stuff nightmares are made of" and takes pride in his reign of terror throughout Springwood.
• Characterization Marches On: In the first film, he only has a handful of lines, none of which display the morbid wit that would go on to define his character.
• Child by Rape: He was conceived when his mother, a nun working at an insane asylum, was accidentally locked in a room with dozens of inmates and raped repeatedly over several days. For this, he was called "the bastard son of 100 maniacs".
• Combat Pragmatist: Yes, he will kick you in your balls. Yes, he would appear as a dead loved one or parent to kill you.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Freddy often seems to enjoy his own pain. He regularly injures himself just to freak his victims out, laughs his ass off while Alice repeatedly punches him in the face in The Dream Master, and in Freddy's Dead, is shown in a flashback cutting himself and laughing while his foster father whips him with a belt, even asking for more before overpowering said foster father and killing him with a razor blade.
  Freddy: You wanna know the secret of pain? If you just stop feeling it, you can start using it.
• Costume Evolution: In the first film, his sweater's sleeves were solid red. Freddy's Revenge onward gave him striped sleeves to match the torso.
• Covered with Scars: Or in this case, covered in severe third-degree burns.
• Create Your Own Hero: His gleeful sadism and playing with his victims creates a number of formidable heroes to rise up against him, most notably his antithesis and arch enemy Alice Johnson, the Dream Master. Who never would have become the threat to him she was if not for Freddy trying to use her, greedily desiring more victims' souls after killing Kristen, the last of the Elm Street children.
• Creepy Child: Young Freddy is shown to have been pretty creepy himself in various flashbacks, and he loves to populate his nightmares with pale, creepy children who represent his former victims.
• Crusty Caretaker: Pre-death Freddy worked as a janitor while being a serial killer on the side.
• Dark and Troubled Past: While his personality makes it hard to see, Freddy was shown to have had a hard-knock life before becoming the Springwood Slasher, having been abandoned by his mom as soon as he was born, being sent to various orphanages throughout his childhood, and eventually ending up in the care of an alcoholic asshole who he eventually murdered during his teen years.
• Dark Is Evil: He's a Dream Weaver who only shows up when his victims are asleep so he can warp their dreams as he sees fit. More often than not, his kills happen during the night because of this.
• Deadpan Snarker: One of the first slasher villains to crack jokes.
• Deal with the Devil: How he got his powers; as revealed in Freddy's Dead, as he was being burned alive, he was approached by three Dream Demons, who search the world for the most evil soul and give them the power to turn dreams into reality. Before his demise, Freddy accepted their offer to "be forever," and the rest is history.
• Death by Origin Story: The "Their own death" version as he became a supernatural terror after the citizens of Springwood burned him to death after he got off for his crimes thanks to a paperwork error.
• Demonic Possession: A power demonstrated in Freddy's Revenge and Freddy vs. Jason.
• Demon of Human Origin: Although it's never stated exactly what Freddy has become since his death, his Deal with the Devil was brokered with a trio of actual demons and involved turning himself into an undead monster who could invade people's dreams. But then, Our Demons Are Different.
• Dirty Old Man: Likes to come on to young women, especially the female protagonists. Assuming Freddy vs Jason is set in the same year it was released, that being 2003, and Lori being most likely to have been around 18, Freddy might have been 26 when he died, but had he lived, he'd be old enough to be her grandfather as he comes onto her.
• The Dreaded: While not being afraid of him isn't enough to stop him entirely, he relies on the masses' fear and belief in him to keep his powers strong. Without this, he's significantly weaker.
• Dream Weaver: This trope is what Freddy Krueger's powers ultimately boil down to, as he can enter dreams at will and alter them to his choosing.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: His appearance went through quite a few revamps before settling on his best-known look. In the first film, his sleeves were solid red and only his face was burned. The second film added the stripes to his sleeves and had the burn scars extend all the way down his body, and also gave him a hooked nose, and his khakis changed from brown to the black he would exclusively wear in later films (barring Freddy vs Jason), but he also had red eyes and a bladed hand (instead of a glove) that would not appear in the sequels. Later installments would keep a mostly consistent design, albeit with some minor alterations from film to film (i.e. the color of the glove, the size and shape of his burn marks, etc.)
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first movie, he is referred to as "Fred Kreuger" by several people (and the credits). From the second movie onward, he's called "Freddy" by everyone.
• Emotion Eater: Freddy lives off the fear of others. In comics, he's encountered people who idolize or worship him, but he ends up getting them killed. He wants people to fear him. Those who actually like him are useless.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He appears to love his daughter, Katherine, as much as Freddy Krueger is capable of loving anything. But that's really not saying a whole lot as he has no qualms in trying to murder her when she tries to kill him for good.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In a slightly bizarre moment while hosting the television show, he grimly condemns drug use as "the real nightmare".
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Freddy has a sick sense of humor, as his idea of fun is to give someone a particularly painful and creative death. He constantly makes bad jokes about his victims, usually with cheesy one-liners before their deaths or afterwards if he's feeling especially cheery.
• Evil Is Hammy: Freddy likes to "play with his food" like a cat with its prey and he enjoys every second of it. He uses his Dream Weaver powers to put his victims in elaborate (and in the continuing sequels, borderline-cartoonish) scenarios and finish them off with a pun-based Pre-Mortem One-Liner.
  Freddy: Welcome to prime-time, bitch! [Shoves Jennifer's head through a TV screen]
• Evil Is Petty: Especially in The Dream Child, where he frequently goes out of his way to torment Alice by flaunting his kills in front of her and generally just harassing her when he can. Of course, this is largely because he genuinely hates Alice, but since he could end up hurting the unborn Jacob, who he aims to turn into a Fetus Terrible, he can't actually do anything to her, and she's still the Dream Master while he's weakened from having his souls released, and as such has good reason not to try and face her directly.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: Freddy Krueger somehow managed to become an undead dream-dwelling human monster just by being really nasty to kids. Freddy's Dead reveals that he was given his powers upon dying by several nightmare demons.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Justified, because he was burned to death.
• Evil Laugh: Because of Freddy's sadistic pleasure out of all of this. His laugh is generally the last thing your hear. In the first he barely even has any lines, he mainly just laughs, but a very disturbing laugh, the type of laugh that haunts your dreams (ironically).
• Evil Sounds Deep: In the first several films, less so in later sequels.
• Evil Feels Good: Freddy's loving every moment of his villainy.
• Extra Parent Conception: Freddy is called the bastard son of a hundred maniacs, assuming that isn't hyperbole. In Nightmare 5 one of the maniacs is shown to look exactly like pre-death Freddy, hinting that this is indeed his biological father.
• Faux Affably Evil: Freddy usually addresses his victims in an almost friendly way, and is good at making a sardonic joke every now and then.
• Fetus Terrible: In The Dream Child, a nightmarish flashback to his birth depicts him as one.
  Nun: Sister, this is one of God's creatures. Take solace in that.
  Amanda: That is no creature of God!
• Flanderization: He cracks one dry joke in the first movie that really only makes him creepier. After Freddy's Revenge, he becomes increasingly more comedic until his entire personality is based around making bad puns and putting his victims through absurd and cartoonish nightmare scenarios. Sometimes, you might even forget that he's supposed to be a vile child killer.
• For the Evulz: Freddy kills people simply because he can kill people. The revenge thing is just a bonus. Heck, after he killed off all the children of the parents who killed him originally, he starts looking for any way he can to reach new victims because he just loves killing people that much.
• Freudian Excuse: In Freddy's Dead, the filmmakers try to explain away his evilness by giving him a horrifically awful childhood. His mother (who was a nun) gave birth to him only after being raped repeatedly by one hundred patients at a mental asylum she worked at. His adopted father was a sleazy pimp who beat him up daily (and who Freddy later murdered with a razor blade). He was bullied by kids at school, and gave signs of being a textbook sociopath by killing the classroom hamster, for which he never was punished or got help with. Then he shuffled through life as an adult from one low paying job to another, until he decided to express his rage at life by killing the kids of his former bullies. Notably, he even tries and uses this to his daughter Maggie in Freddy's Dead as a means of explaining he was not evil and he was made into this way. It doesn't work.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Freddy may have had a crappy childhood, but it doesn't justify the fact that he's a sadistic psychopath who gleefully kills people For the Evulz. When he attempts to use his Freudian Excuse as an attempt to explain that he wasn't evil and circumstances made him a monster, Maggie doesn't go for it.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: In his case, quite literally.
  Freddy: You shouldn't have buried me. I am not dead.

G-P

• Ghostly Goals: Freddy started out avenging his own death, but after he succeeded, he decided to stick around and continue killing (he was, after all, a sadistic serial killer even before he died; even with his revenge complete, he probably saw no real reason to stop killing).
• A God Am I: Freddy believes himself to be a god and, to the people whose dreams he warps, it is not an unreasonable belief. It's best summed up by this exchange from the first movie:
  Tina: Please, God!
  Freddy: (brandishes claws) This is God!
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Look at him!
• Guest Fighter: Freddy has made playable crossover appearances in both Mortal Kombat 9 and Dead by Daylight.
• Hate Sink: Prior to the Villain Decay he underwent in the sequels, Wes Craven intended Fred Krueger to be a dreadful, irredeemable monster of the lowest order. In the original script he would have been a child rapist in addition to a murderer. To further make him stand out from other iconic slasher villains, he revels in bullying his victims in whatever way he can, tormenting them with the images of their dead friends.
• Healing Factor: One of Freddy's many powers in dreams.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Freddy is viciously misogynistic. It's rare there's a woman in the films he won't call a bitch at some point.
• Hellfire: Freddy was able to summon this in the second movie when he was outside of the Dream World.
• Hero Killer: He kills Nancy Thompson at the end of Dream Warriors, and Kristen Parker early in The Dream Master. Both were significant threats to Freddy and responsible for defeating him previously.
• Holy Burns Evil: As suggested by the tune sung about him and shown in 3, holy items are one of the few things that can actually harm him. Unfortunately, few people actually think to use them against him.
• Home Field Advantage: He's virtually unstoppable in the dream world.
• Humanity Ensues: When Freddy is dragged into the real world in Freddy's Dead, he briefly becomes human again. He turns back into his standard form pretty quickly though.
• Iconic Outfit: His brown fedora, red and green striped sweater, and knife glove.
• Identical Grandfather: In Alice's dream of how Amanda Krueger was raped, one of the 100 maniacs looks exactly like pre-death Freddy, and is played by Robert Englund too. Before Alice is assaulted by the maniacs, a shot briefly lingers on his face, hinting that this is in fact Freddy's biological father. It's also hinted that this is actually Freddy himself in disguise, although why he would take on the guise of his father is unclear.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Many female characters who come across him, such as Tina, Nancy and Lori, become a target of his lust. The men aren't safe from this either.
• Immortality: Technically a spirit rather than a physical being, he can't die. Even if killed, it is shown his spirit simply returns to captivity in Hell, or just waits until another victim dreams. As promised by Hell's Dream Demons, his spirit cannot ever truly die.
• Invisibility: Freddy can turn himself invisible at will. He uses it in The Dream Master to attack Rick.
• Ironic Fear: Fire. Although he enjoys his living in Hell and enjoys setting fire to various victims, it's often shown that fire is something he's truly afraid of following his physical death, and is one of few things that can truly harm him, even in dreams.
• Ironic Nursery Rhyme: The song associated with him, sung to the tune to "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe."
  One, two; Freddy's coming for you
  Three, four; better lock your door
  Five, six; grab your crucifix
  Seven, eight; gonna stay up late
  Nine, ten; never sleep again (later movies change this to "Freddy's back again")
• It Amused Me: Why he does what he does, it amuses him.
• It's All About Me: Exaggerated. Freddy is so ridiculously self-centered that he's a sadist without reason and has no concept of anyone beyond himself. If anything, it'd be more surprising to see him actually care for someone else, because he most certainly never does.
• Jerkass: What really separates Freddy from all the other famous Slasher Movie villains is how much of a plain asshole he is. Most other killers/monsters at least have a token flimsy reason for doing what they do (Michael Myers from Halloween kills because it's in his nature to do so, Jason from Friday the 13th does it because his mother tells him to, etc.), but Freddy openly admits that he just does it because it's fun.
• Jerkass God: Despite possessing unlimited power within dreams and more-or-less being a Dream God, he uses his power and pride to mess with his victims and carry out petty murder tasks rather than anything too substantial.
• Joker Immunity: He's died at the end of every film, but something always manages to bring him back in time for the next installment.
• Just Toying with Them: With his power over the dream realm, Freddy could kill his victims in an instant. But he enjoys instilling terror and anguish in them, allowing them to try and run from him in order to draw their deaths out as much as possible.
• Kick the Dog: Cruel and Unusual Deaths aside, Freddy LOVES doing this to all of his victims. For instance, he would give them a false reassuring hug (as in the case of Nancy, Roland or Greta) as he killed them.
• Lack of Empathy: Freddy has absolutely no empathy, compassion, mercy or love for anyone and doesn't have the slightest remorse over all the horrible things he's done, even being proud of them.
• Large Ham: Averted in the first two films and New Nightmare (though he did make the occasional sick joke here or there), but played straight in the rest of the film series with Freddy's Dead being the one where he is at his most hammy.
• Laughably Evil: The sequels turn him into this, making him a Large Ham who constantly makes wisecracks and spouts one-liners as he kills people. However, the sheer sadism and brutality of his kills means that his comedic value doesn't detract from what a monster he is.
• Lean and Mean: Just because he's skinny as a rail, that doesn't mean he's not dangerous.
• Looks Like Orlok: Freddy Krueger's appearance is somewhat vampiric, with his bald head, sharp teeth, gaunt frame, and prominent nose. In fact, Robert Englund even once stated that he based some of Freddy's movements on Orlok's.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: In keeping with his sadism, nothing makes Freddy happier than terrified screams of agony.
• Man on Fire: This is how Freddy Krueger died at the hands of the parents of Springwood. In the original film, Nancy sets Freddy on fire when she pulls him out of her dream and lures him to the basement.
• Mind over Matter: Freddy can easily move objects with his mind in the dream world. He even plays an ad-hoc game of pinball with Jason's body in Freddy Vs. Jason.
• Motive Decay: His motive in the first three films is a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for his death. As the series goes on, he becomes more and more sadistic to the point that he inflicts death and misery purely For the Evulz. Granted, it's established that Freddy was always a sadistic child murderer, even in life.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Is it ever. He was simply a human serial killer when he was alive. After his death he became an undead abomination with near-godlike powers and a bodycount eventually numbering in the hundreds.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: K Names.
• Never My Fault: His "revenge" plot is based on the fact that the children's parents killed him because he killed their children. Essentially, he's blaming them for killing him and not himself for giving them a reason to do so. It's not like he really cares regardless, anyway.
• Never Sleep Again: It's in the rhyme about him. As in never sleep to never dream of him and die.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: A running joke in the series is that Freddy's powers are pretty much limitless, as far as changing from film to film. It does make sense however. Since Freddy has effectively become the king of nightmares, his powers in the dreamscape would be virtually unlimited. On the rare occasions he manifests in the "real" world, he generally gets his ass kicked (most notably, at the end of the first film).
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Justified, because he's dead (no body to feel pain with). Even when he's pulled into the real world, he laughs off getting impaled through the stomach and getting the crap beaten out of him by Jason Voorhees.
• Nightmare Dreams: Freddy's modus operandi.
• Obviously Evil: His whole appearance just screams "evil". This is actively embraced by Freddy, since he can look any way he wants to in dreams. He loves being a monster.
• Off on a Technicality: How he walked away from the child murders he committed before he died; depending on whether you go by the films or Freddy's Nightmares, it was either because the judge failed to properly sign the search warrant or because the arresting officer neglected to read him his Miranda rights.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Freddy became increasingly worse over time. He was always a sadist, but at first he pretended that he wanted revenge for his death at the hands of a lynch mob until he just dropped all pretense and continued killing when this goal was already completed. With nothing to stop him, he eventually murders every child in Springwood and drives their distraught parents to utter madness. With the entire town destroyed, he just creates another "Elm Street" in a neighbouring city and reveals that he'll never stop killing until everyone's dead.
• Opportunistic Bastard: He doesn't have any plans when it comes to killing. He just steals any opportunity he can to do so; and while potential victims are sleeping is just one of his more common methods.
• Our Liches Are Different: Freddy is technically a sort of "astral lich". He would definitely qualify as a powerful sorcerer, and his appearance just screams "undead". Also, killing him tends to involve some rather unusual methods, most often dragging him onto our plane, and, even then, nobody has ever managed to kill him permanently. An easier parallel is that Freddy is some sort of ghost or a demon (he is in service to nightmare demons after all).
• Pædo Hunt: In the original film and Freddy vs. Jason, it's strongly implied but not stated outright that Freddy is a pedophile in addition to being a child killer. Wes Craven originally wanted to make him one, but in the end decided not to in order not to be accused of exploiting then recent news headlines about pedophiles at day cares, et al.
• Playing with Fire: Despite being killed by fire and being deeply afraid of fire, Freddy has been shown to conjure up fire at will.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Not only does he kill, he's also immensely sexist toward women, and Freddy vs. Jason has him call one of the leads, who is an African-American woman, "dark meat." This is continued in Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, where he frequently uses ableist slurs towards Jason.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: For a demonic serial killer, he's improbably well-versed in pop culture.
• Practically Joker: Like The Joker, he's an Ax-Crazy Laughably Evil Large Ham threat. It's even better considering the fact Englund was one of the considerations to play Joker in Tim Burton's Batman (1989).
• Pungeon Master: This is basically Freddy's trademark.
• The Pursuing Nightmare: One of his favourite tactics throughout the franchise, for in the event that he doesn't just torture a dreamer to death on the spot, he enjoys slowly hunting his victims across his labyrinthine boiler room - or kicking up the pace into a literally nightmarish pursuit through dreams. Indeed, the first film begins with Tina being stalked through the boiler room, and it's not until their second meeting that a proper chase ensues. Worse still, Freddy's Nightmare Weaver powers allow him to complicate the pursuits by teleporting, turning himself into a monster, or just delaying his victims in some way - as Nancy discovers in the first film when the floor under her feet turns to glue.
• Psycho for Hire: Freddy is implied to be this to the Dream Demons who gave him his power.
• Psychopathic Manchild: More and moreso each entry, Freddy behaves less like a sinister dark force and more like a cruel, mischievous kid who plays with his victims like toys until they break. Perhaps best emphasized in Freddy's Dead, where he sucks a boy into a video game and acts all giddy as he drives the kid through a maze of digital death.

R-Y

• Reality Warper: He was able to partly manipulate the outside world, like re-animating his bones. However, by Freddy's Dead, he had gotten so powerful that he was able to erase Springwood parents' memories and make other adults into mindless people who go about their daily lives if there were kids there. He reaches his peak in Freddy's Revenge, where, upon possessing Jesse, he's able to alter things in the real world; he goes completely nuts at the pool party, boiling the water in the pool, creating a wall of fire around the yard, making himself temporarily intangible before jumping out from under the floorboards, and blowing up the barbecue and most of the electrical appliances that are there.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: His eyes are red in Freddy's Revenge and he's a dangerous Serial Killer.
• Red/Green Contrast: Wes Craven had read that red and green are the two most difficult colors for the human eye to see when placed right next to each other, so he gave Freddy the iconic red-and-green stripped sweater to make his appearance that much more fundamentally disturbing.
• Resurrected Murderer: Freddy Krueger was a serial child murderer burned alive by the parents of his victims. Making a deal with the Dream Demons, he stalks the dreams of their other children to kill them in real life.
• Resurrective Immortality: Freddy Krueger is killed several times by the heroes, but he returns each time. As Freddy himself put it in the fourth film — "I. AM. ETERNAL!" In the sixth film he says "In dreams. I. Am. FOREVER!" The dream demons who are the source of his powers promised him that he would indefinitely resurrect no matter what anyone does to him.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: His initial motive throughout the first three films, and the early part of the fourth. See Sins of Our Fathers below for more details.
• Rubber Man: Stretching limbs are one of many of Freddy's powers.
• Sadist: A key part of his character: he's a murderous psychopath and loves every minute of it.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: His powers are greatly heightened by the fear of his victims. Their fear that he is an unstoppable nightmare monster causes him to be an unstoppable nightmare monster.
• Self-Made Orphan: He killed his foster father when he was young. Fate of his foster mother is unknown. His murders also caused his own mom to kill herself, if this was Freddy's plan however, is unknown.
• Self-Mutilation Demonstration: One of Freddy's freakier habits is to show off his invulnerability by wounding himself: cutting off fingers, slashing open his side, peeling off his own scalp, etc. In this case, it's as much to squick out his victims as to demonstrate the futility of trying to hurt him.
• Serial Killer: He was one both in life (as the Springwood Slasher) and the afterlife.
• Shapeshifter Default Form: He's an accomplished shapeshifter in the dream world, regularly appearing as other people, mechanical devices, and a host of other forms. While he can look however he wants, as a nightmare ghost he prefers to appear as his post-death burnt self, probably to scare his victims. His true form in the real world are his skeletal remains, but it remains to be seen if he even has a true spectral form (though the novel Protege implied that the demonic visage that he briefly assumes during the "YOU!" scene in Freddy vs. Jason is it).
• Shapeshifting Seducer: Eerily Freddy uses this tactic on Joey in Dream Warriors by disguising himself as a hot nurse, showing that he's an equal opportunity deviant.
• Sinister Schnoz: He's a murderous monster with a rather pointy nose.
• Sinister Scraping Sound: Freddy with his claw on most anything.
• Sins of Our Fathers: His killing sprees throughout the first three films, and the early part of the fourth, is to kill the children of the lynch mob who originally burned him alive. After killing Kristen Parker in The Dream Master, he's only in it For the Evulz from that point onwards.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Inverted. For an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer who is the epitome of a stereotypical sadistic villain, he doesn't swear often. However, he will do it on occasion, just for further emphasis on how apathetic he is towards other people's lives.
• The Sociopath: For sure. To Freddy, humans are just his playthings.
• Stop Worshipping Me: As explored in the tie-in comic New Line Cinema's Tales of Horror #1, Freddy is disgusted by the idea that he has 'fans'. He has no desire to work with others or be worshipped in any way as these people are useless to someone who requires fear or needs to make the kill himself.
• Super Mode: "Super Freddy" from The Dream Child, which he conjures up to mock the comic book fan Mark.+
• Superpowered Evil Side: Freddy himself became this to Jesse Walsh when his spirit latched onto him. Jesse physically transforms into Krueger periodically and manifests some of of his dream powers in the waking world, and it really doesn't get more evil than that.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Done quite a bit throughout the films:
  • "Welcome to Prime Time, bitch!" from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master: "I've been guarding my gate for a long time, bitch!"
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child: "We'll see, bitch," "Die, bitch!", and "Bon appetit, bitch!"
  • Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare: "Kung. Fu. This, Bitch."
  • Freddy vs. Jason: Twice. "Welcome to my world, bitch!" and "Let me handle this, bitch!"
• Til Murder Do Us Part: In Freddy's Dead, it's revealed that he killed his wife when she found out about his murderous tendencies.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: As if trying to infest people's dreams wasn't bad enough in the first film, he gradually grows beyond merely killing people in their sleep and tries to take over other people's bodies, among other things, so he can grow beyond that.
• Transformation of the Possessed: In Freddy's Revenge, he possesses Jesse by messily transforming his body into his own shape.
• Troll: He constantly makes bad jokes about his victims, usually with cheesy one-liners.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Several times it's shown that Freddy can't handle a fair fight very well, likely because he's rarely if ever in one and mainly preyed on little children in life. When up against someone who can actually fight him on even footing he normally has to rely on dirty tricks and exploiting their fears to win, or relying on his Nigh-Invulnerable status to keep him safe. Rick and Alice both use him as a punching bag with martial arts powers and Taryn was able to get the upperhand on him in a knife fight, with Freddy having to cheat to win all three fights. While he was able to face Jason fairly evenly, it's clear Jason is likewise unused to an even fight either.
• Undead Abomination: He was originally a mortal man, albeit an exceptionally depraved and murderous one. But after his death and with a little help from the Dream Demons, he becomes something much worse than any simple ghost, a being capable of taking over the dreams of others at will and warping reality to gruesomely kill his sleeping victims in the waking world as he does in their dreams, devouring their souls to increase his own power.
• Villain Ball: Rather than kill his victims outright, he prefers to draw out their torment for his own amusement, overconfident in their inability to effectively fight back. This has given many of his victims a chance to escape or find the means to defeat him, and Jason stole one of his kills because of this. A notable aversion: because he recognized Nancy as a threat since his defeat in the original movie, in Dream Warriors, he simply stabs her in lieu of his usual elaborate kill sequences.
• Villain Decay: He was truly menacing, serious, and evil in the first film. The sequels, however, increasingly made him a campy, Laughably Evil Large Ham. This was reflected in his marketing — he cut an album of cheesy pop songs, guest-rapped on a hip-hop track by The Fat Boys about his antics, was rapped about in a different Will Smith track, and was subject to all kinds of tie-in merchandise including yo-yos. It took years and the return of Wes Craven to address and attempt to reverse this.
• Voice Changeling: One of Freddy's many powers, as he demonstrates at one point in Freddy's Dead.
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: Via his dream powers. One of the things he enjoys doing most to torment his victims is pretending to be someone close to them so he can scar them emotionally before going in for the kill.
• Was Once a Man: Once a human serial killer, he turned into something resembling a nightmare ghost/demon after his death.
• Wrestler in All of Us: During his fight against Jason, he manages to hit a leaping elbow drop. Notably he does this by jumping on his back while Jason is standing, rather than while Jason is lying on the ground, making it more like a Muay Thai strike than a wrestling move.
• Would Hurt a Child: Explicitly prefers it; indeed, he was originally killed by the furious parents of Springwood because he was a Serial Killer murdering their children. While he is perfectly capable of killing adults (as seen in the first three films and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare), he chooses to take his revenge by killing their teenaged children instead, apparently to rub in how killing him didn't protect their kids from him after all.
• Wolverine Claws: Freddy's primary weapon is a glove with blades attached to each finger.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Any damage he inflicts on his victims in the dream world crosses over to the waking world.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: His victims have their souls absorbed into his body, to remain there permanently. Freddy then siphons off their souls' power to become even more powerful himself. A few films end with them being freed. One notable example had this happen followed by them tearing him apart from the inside out.

The Entity

The Entity/"Freddy Krueger"

Played by: Robert Englund

"Miss me?"

In Wes Craven's New Nightmare, an ancient shape-shifting demon has taken the form of Freddy Krueger for the past decade until the end of the series initiates his release into the real world.

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• Ancient Evil: The Freddy Krueger in this film is an ancient entity of evil, which according to Wes Craven has existed in various forms throughout history.
• An Arm and a Leg: If the opening dream is any indication. The glove in the opening is an all-metallic robotic appendage designed by Heather's husband Chase, for which the movie Freddy had to chop off his right hand before attaching. The one that the Entity steals is clearly of the same make, having also been made by Chase, however, it has artificial coverings of skin, blood and bone.
• Badass Longcoat: He wears a dark blue one.
• Child Eater: Freddy tries to eat Heather's son Dylan alive before she stops him.
• Darker and Edgier: Unlike the Freddy of the mainstream continuity, this Freddy is depicted as being similar to Wes Craven's original intentions for him: a serious, vicious menace rather than a comedic goofball.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The few times he does crack jokes, they're more disturbing and sick than funny.
  "Freddy:" Hey Dylan, ever play skin the cat? (starts dragging Julie along the ceiling and carving into her)
• Evil Sounds Deep: It has a very deep voice. Much deeper than the original Freddy.
• For the Evulz: He has no motivation other than the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: "Freddy" wears a pair of leather pants.
• Jack the Ripoff: Is a demonic entity masquerading as Freddy.
• Knight of Cerebus: As soon as he shows up, he does away with all the comedy and Villain Decay Freddy was put through in the sequels and becomes the vicious, bloodthirsty menace Wes Craven always intended.
• Looks Like Orlok: Even more so than the mainstream Freddy. There's even an Homage Shot of his shadow on the wall while he stretches out his clawed arm.
• Murder by Cremation: How The Entity is beaten.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Has been for countless centuries.
• Our Slashers Are Different: In-Universe, Wes Craven considers the Entity to be a different being from the real Freddy. Notably, the only known method of defeating the Entity is to trap it in a new story, a weakness that doesn't apply to the mainline Freddy.
• Organic Technology: The signature finger knife glove is something that his hand is taking the shape of ratter than something he wears, based partially on an in-universe attempt to reboot Freddy that includes him making a cybernetic prosthesis rather than a removable glove.
• Overly-Long Tongue: "Freddy" attacks Heather with it.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Freddy Krueger himself, but he's not really "Freddy" so much as Evil Itself taking on the form of Freddy, and there needs to be a script made to contain it.
• This Was His True Form: When the entity is seemingly destroyed at the end, it goes from looking like Freddy to a stereotypical demon.
• Would Hurt a Child: Obviously. It outright tries to kill one at one point. Given that its host form was a serial child murderer, this comes as no surprise.
• Wolverine Claws: This incarnation of Freddy has organic claws, with an extra one on the thumb.

Freddy vs. Jason

Think you're so smart. Huh, bitch!?

Played by: Robert Englund

"Welcome to my world, bitch!"

In Freddy vs. Jason, after the police had covered any hints of his existence, Freddy Krueger is no longer feared and has lost all of his powers. However, he meets Jason in Hell and comes with a new plan for terrorizing Springwood.

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• Asshole Victim: He goes through a lot of pain, but it's impossible to feel sorry for him considering what he did to others.
• Attempted Rape: He pulls Lori's skirt up with his index blade while she writhes on the floor, the only reason he didn't commit the deed was she woke up and brought him to the living world in time. It should be noted this is the only time in the films he decides to rape his victim instead of straight forward killing them.
• Brought Down to Badass: He loses all of his powers in the real world, but he is still menacing. Even after having his head shoved into shredding windows and then thrown in the air, he comes back a few seconds later, still as deadly.
• Catchphrase Insult: Bitch!
• Continuity Nod: Here, he references his abilities of previous movies:
  • Just like in Freddy's Revenge, he can takes control of one's body for committing crimes. In this case, it's Lori's father.
  • He can pull multiple people in a dream just like in Dream Warriors.
  • When dragged into the real world, he loses his powers but is still very resistant, as introduced in Freddy's Dead.
• Darker and Edgier: In comparison to his role in the three previous films (not counting New Nightmare) he isn't as comedic, with his murders being a lot more violent in both a mental and physical sense.
• Evil Is Hammy: He enjoys talking to his victims, usually to mess with them or simply because he loves listening to his own voice.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: A significant plot point in Freddy vs. Jason. Trying to control Jason Voorhees was never going to end well.
• Fragile Speedster: When pulled into the real world in Freddy vs. Jason, he's this to Jason's Mighty Glacier. He can easily dodge most of Jason's attacks and gets in lots of good hits, but one punch from Jason sends him flying.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Multiple occasions shows that he is aware of being in a movie.
  • The exposition scene is literally Freddy narrating his life and describing his motivations to no one in particular.
  • He mentions events of previous films that are supposedly discontinued in this timeline.
  • In the middle of the movie, he looks at the audience and explains his situation.
  • He winks at the audience at the closing scene.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: As revealed in Freddy vs. Jason, Freddy's power is entirely dependent on how many people know of and fear him; when the people of Springwood eradicated every trace of his existence, he was no longer able to kill teenagers.
• Gone Horribly Right: In Freddy vs. Jason, he brought Jason Voorhees Back from the Dead and set him upon Springwood, knowing that he himself would be blamed for Jason's killings, which would give him enough power to escape Hell and go about haunting Springwood again. The plan works, but Freddy never anticipated that Jason would continue to intrude on his territory and steal his potential victims.
  Freddy: Everyone forgot! That's why they weren't afraid anymore! That's why I needed Jason to kill for me, to get them to remember! But now he just won't stop!
• Ironic Echo: When attacking Lori in her dream he says the following thing, and Lori throws it back at him when he is the one under her control in the real world.

"Welcome to my world, bitch!"

• Made of Iron: In the real world.
• Manipulative Bastard: He sets off the events of Freddy vs. Jason by posing as the mother of Friday the 13th villain Jason Voorhees to trick Jason into resurrecting from the dead once again and heading for Freddy's hometown of Springwood, Ohio. Freddy banks on Jason's inevitable killing spree being blamed on Freddy by the town residents (if no one remembers Freddy, he can't harm anyone), and he is proven correct.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Inverted. He is introduced as a real threat but Jason quickly outclasses him. He fails to kill nearly every single one of the protagonists. But those latter aren't any less safe because Jason is coming for them.
• Not Quite Dead: During the closing scene, his severed head smiles and blinks at the spectator, followed by his insane laughter.
• Our Zombies Are Different: When in the real world, he appears made of flesh but is essentially an animated burned corpse, which explains why he is able to shrug off major injuries. In contrast, Jason is also a zombie but in a different way.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: In addition to the misogyny he displayed in his home series, this film makes Freddy a racist as well, calling Kia, an African-American girl and herself a Politically Incorrect Hero, "dark meat".
• Un-person: Freddy vs. Jason states that after it became known that Freddy grows more powerful based on how much he is feared and by how many people know of him, the town of Springwood tried to erase all knowledge of his existence and his murder spree to spare their children. Those who had any knowledge of Freddy were institutionalized and put on Hypnocil. It worked so well that Freddy brought Jason back to stir things up.
• Villainous Valour: During Freddy vs. Jason, Freddy puts up a good fight against the superstrong Jason Voorhees even when he's technically just a weak, disfigured, physical ghost thing when not in the Dream World.
• Would Hurt a Child: And this movie is probably the most explicit depiction of Freddy's attacking children:
  • The opening shows him when he was a human approaching an abducted little girl with his claw. Later, she is shown with her eyes gouged out in a nightmare.
  • He also tortures Jason when is he brought down to his child-self in a dream, given the context this could be almost justified, but still.

Remake Continuity

Freddy Krueger

Played by: Jackie Earle Haley

"Why are you screaming? I haven't even cut you yet."

In A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), this version of Freddy was a gardener at Badham Pre-School, who was loved by all the kids there. He was also a child molester who used his position to have his way with the children. After the parents learned of his crimes, they chased him into an industrial park where they trapped him inside a building and burned him alive. Years later, he returns to kill all those who attended the pre-school, except for Nancy, as he has different plans for her.

This version of him in Mortal Kombat 9 can be found here.

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• Adaptational Heroism: Seems to be set up as a Freddy who was wrongfully killed for a crime he didn't commit, which would make him better than OG Freddy by several magnitudes, but then subverted HARD when it's revealed that, if anything, he was even worse.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Kinda. Freddy's attitude is much angrier and more bitter here compared to his more Faux Affably Evil mainstream counterpart.
• Adaptational Villainy: Yeah, like Freddy Krueger couldn't be a bigger asshole. He's always been very evil, but where the original series portrayed Freddy as a Serial Killer preying on children before he died (with a bad backstory to boot), the remake portrays Freddy as a child molester who sexually abused his victims. It's heinous no matter how you slice it, but remake Freddy may be considered even worse (or at least Squickier) because Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil. And what he plans to do to Nancy is way worse.
• Alien Blood: He is shown bleeding black when he gets his throat cut.
• Bald of Evil: The fire that claimed his life burned off his hair.
• Big Bad: He is the main villain of the film.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When he was alive, the children adored and looked up to him as the friendly gardener who would play games with them. It was all a ploy to earn their trust.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: He knows the brain can still function for seven minutes after the heart stops, and gladly takes advantage on it to play with his victims.
• Deadpan Snarker: Less so than his original self, sure, but he just wouldn't be Freddy without his usual sadistic one-liners:
  Nancy: Fuck you!
  Freddy Ooh, sounds like fun. It's a little fast for me. How about we hang, first?
• Death by Origin Story: Like the original, its the "Their own death" version, except the citizens of Springwood didn't even bother to try him, instead defaulting to vigilante justice for his crimes.
• Dream Weaver: As usual, he can enter his victims' dreams and alter then to his preference.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: What he was planning on doing to Nancy.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He makes many sadistic "jokes" that only he laughs at.
  Freddy: Why you screaming? I haven't even cut you yet. (Chuckles)
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: He's hideous, both inside and out.
• Evil Redhead: "Evil" is probably an understatement and, in life, he had red hair.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Yep, he still has a deep voice; not shocking given that his actor was Rorschach.
• Ghostly Goals: The movie flirts with the possibility that Freddy is the ghost of a once-innocent man seeking vengeance on those who wrongly accused and killed him, but it turns out that he really was that evil from the start, and his revenge here is completely without justification.
• Guest Fighter: This version of Freddy has made playable appearances in both Mortal Kombat 9 and Dead by Daylight.
• Hate Sink: He's even more detestable than his original counterpart, which is no easy feat. For one, as a result of returning to the first film's roots, this Freddy lacks the goofy (though no less sadistic) personality OG Freddy eventually developed. And he's explicitly a child rapist, something that was merely implied with the old Freddy, which adds another dimension of vileness. Also, we're not really given much information on this version's backstory, whereas the original was shown to have had a traumatic childhood, with his birth mother leaving him to go through years of teasing for how he was born before winding up in the care of an asshole.
• Off with His Head!: It doesn't work, though.
• Pædo Hunt: The remake explicitly makes him out to be a child molester, even after a lot of misdirection saying otherwise.
• Red Right Hand: The burned skin, what else?
• Stalker with a Crush: He comes across like this, wanting Nancy all by himself and killing anyone that gets in his way.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Subverted. The film raises the possibility that maybe in this timeline, Freddy was actually innocent of his crimes and is the soul of a wrongly murdered man seeking vengeance but it turns out that he was ultimately a monster in life too.

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"Every town has an Elm Street."