Freddy Krueger () is a fictional character and the antagonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street horror film franchise. Created by Wes Craven, he made his debut in Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) as the malevolent spirit of a child killer who had been burned to death by his victims' parents after evading prison. Krueger goes on to murder his victims in their dreams, causing their deaths in the real world as well. In the dream world, he is a powerful force and seemingly invulnerable. However, whenever Freddy is pulled back into the real world, he has normal human vulnerabilities and can be destroyed.
Freddy is commonly identified by his burned, disfigured face, dirty red-and-green-striped sweater and brown fedora, and trademark metal-clawed, brown leather, right hand glove. This glove was the product of Krueger's own imagination, having welded the blades himself before using it to murder many of his victims, both in the real and dream worlds. Over the course of the film series, Freddy has battled several reoccurring survivors including Nancy Thompson and Alice Johnson. The character was consistently portrayed by Robert Englund in the original film series as well as in the television spin-off Freddy's Nightmares. In the 2010 reboot of the original film, Jackie Earle Haley plays Krueger. The reboot portrays him as an undead groundskeeper accused of molesting the students.
The character quickly became a pop culture icon going on to appear in toy lines, comic books, books, sneakers, costumes, and video games since his debut. In 2003, Krueger appeared alongside fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees in Freddy vs. Jason. Wizard magazine rated Freddy the 14th-greatest villain of all time;Wizard #177 the British television channel Sky2 listed him 8th, and the American Film Institute ranked him 40th on its "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains" list. In 2010, Freddy was nominated for the award for Best Villain (formerly Most Vile Villain) at the Scream Awards.
Appearances Film In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy is introduced as a serial child killer, Fred Krueger, from the fictitious town of Springwood, Ohio, who kills his victims with a bladed leather glove he crafted in a boiler room where he used to take his 20 victims. He is captured, but is set free on a technicality when it is discovered that the search warrant was not signed in the right place. He is hunted down by a mob made up of the town's vengeful parents and cornered in the boiler room, where he is burned to death. His spirit lives on within the dreams of the mob's surviving children – a group of teenagers and pre-adolescents also known as the "Elm Street children". He preys on them by entering their dreams and killing them, fueled by the town's fear of him.
Freddy is apparently destroyed at the end of the first film by protagonist Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), but the last scene reveals that he has survived. He goes on to antagonize the teenage protagonists of the film's sequels, including Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton), Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette), Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox), and Lori Campbell (Monica Keena).
In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, more of Freddy's backstory is revealed by the mysterious nun who repeatedly appears to Dr. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson). Freddy's mother, Amanda Krueger (Nan Martin), was a nun and a nurse at the asylum. At the time she worked there, a run-down wing of the asylum was used to lock up hundreds of the most insane criminals. When Amanda was young, she was accidentally locked in with the criminals over a holiday weekend. They managed to keep her hidden for days, raping her repeatedly. When she was finally discovered, she was barely alive and pregnant. This earned Krueger his nickname as "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs". Freddy also reveals that he gains strength from the souls of those he kills.
In Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, it is revealed that Freddy was adopted by an alcoholic named Mr. Underwood (Alice Cooper), who abused Freddy throughout his childhood until finally Mr. Underwood was murdered by the teenaged Freddy (Tobe Sexton), becoming his first kill. Freddy tortured animals and engaged in self-mutilation, and became a serial killer by murdering the children of people who had bullied him when he was a child. Prior to his murder, he was married to a woman named Loretta (Lindsey Fields), whom he also murdered after she discovered his secret. He also had a daughter, Katherine/Maggie (Lisa Zane), who seeks to end her father's horrific legacy once and for all, killing him at the end of the movie.
Freddy's original murder is also shown on-screen in this film, and the reason for his continual survival explained. The mob of parents douses the building he is in with gasoline and sets it on fire by throwing Molotov cocktails, burning him alive. While his body dies, he is offered a deal to live forever within his victims' dreams by a trio of "dream demons" who wish to make him their willing instrument of evil.
After a hiatus following the release of The Final Nightmare, Krueger was brought back in Wes Craven's New Nightmare by Wes Craven, who had not worked on the film series since the third film, Dream Warriors. New Nightmare coincided with the approaching anniversary of the release of the first film, and occurs outside the continuity of the other films, being set in the "real world" of the film's cast and crew.
In the film, Robert Englund, who portrayed Krueger throughout the original film series, takes the role of a fictional version of himself. He and the main character, Heather Langenkamp (also playing a fictionalized version of herself), are stalked by an ancient demonic entity that has assumed the Freddy character and is hunting the creators of the films. Speaking to Langenkamp about his own dreams, Englund describes this embodiment of Freddy as darker and more evil than the version portrayed by him; he struggles to keep his sanity intact in the face of Krueger's torments and goes into hiding with his family.
The entity also haunts Wes Craven's dreams, to the point that he sees future events related to Krueger's actions and then writes them down as a movie script. Craven tells Langenkamp this entity has appeared in various manifestations throughout the ages, such as the old witch from Hansel and Gretel, and can be captured through storytelling. It sees Langenkamp as its primary foe because her character Nancy Thompson was the first to defeat it, making her the "gatekeeper" between the film world and the real world. In order to stop it from crossing over into the real world for good, Langenkamp must play Nancy one last time and defeat Freddy.
Krueger's attempts to cross over to reality cause a series of earthquakes throughout Los Angeles County, including the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Langenkamp, with help from her son Dylan (Miko Hughes), ultimately succeeds in defeating the entity and trapping it in the film world. The film's postmodern and metafictional genre elements are considered a precursor to Craven's 1996 film Scream.
In 2003, Freddy battled fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) from the Friday the 13th film series in the theatrical release Freddy vs. Jason, a film which officially resurrected both characters from their respective deaths and subsequently sent them to Hell. As the film begins, Krueger is frustrated at his current inability to kill as knowledge of him has been hidden in Springwood, prompting him to manipulate Jason into killing in his place in the hope that the resulting fear will remind others of him so that he can resume his own murder spree.
However, Freddy's plan proves too effective when Jason starts killing people before Freddy can do it, culminating in a group of teens learning the truth and drawing Freddy and Jason to Camp Crystal Lake in the hope that they can draw Freddy into the real world so that Jason will kill him and remain "home". The ending of the film is left ambiguous as to whether or not Freddy is actually dead; despite being decapitated, when Jason emerges from the lake carrying his head he looks and winks at the audience. A sequel featuring Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) from the Evil Dead franchise was planned, but never materialized onscreen. It was later turned into Dynamite Entertainment's comic book series Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash.
In the 2010 remake of the original film, Freddy's backstory is that he was a groundskeeper at Springwood Badham Preschool who tortured and sexually abused the teenage protagonists of the film when they were children. When their parents found out, they trapped him in a boiler room at an industrial park and set it on fire with a Molotov cocktail made out of a gasoline canister, killing him.
As a spirit, he takes his revenge on the teenagers by haunting their dreams; he is particularly obsessed with Nancy Holbrook (Rooney Mara), who had been his "favorite" when she was a child. Krueger's power comes from his prey's memories and emotions upon remembering the abuse they suffered at his hands. His bladed glove is made out of discarded pieces of his gardening tools. Nancy destroys him at the end of the film by pulling his spirit into the physical world and cutting his throat; the final scene reveals that Freddy's spirit has survived, however.
Television Englund continued to portray Krueger in the 1988 television anthology series, Freddy's Nightmares. The show was hosted by Freddy, who did not take direct part in most of the episodes, but he did show up occasionally to influence the plot of particular episodes. Further, a consistent theme in each episode was characters having disturbing dreams. The series ran for 44 episodes over two seasons, ending on March 10, 1990.
Although a bulk of the episodes did not feature Freddy taking a major role in the plot, the pilot episode, "No More, Mr. Nice Guy", depicts the events of his trial, and his subsequent death at the hands of the parents of Elm Street after his acquittal. In "No More, Mr. Nice Guy", though Freddy's case seems open and shut, a mistrial is declared based on the arresting officer, Lt. Tim Blocker (Ian Patrick Williams), not reading Krueger his Miranda rights, which is different from the original Nightmare, which stated he was released because someone forgot to sign the search warrant in the right place. The episode also reveals that Krueger used an ice cream van to lure children close enough so that he could kidnap and kill them. After the town's parents burn Freddy to death he returns to haunt Blocker in his dreams. Freddy gets his revenge when Blocker is put under anesthesia at the dentist's office, and Freddy shows up and kills him. The episode "Sister's Keeper" was a "sequel" to this episode, even though it was the seventh episode of the series. The episode follows Krueger as he terrorizes Blocker's identical twin daughters and frames one sister for the other's murder.
Season two's "It's My Party And You'll Die If I Want You To" featured Freddy attacking a high school prom date who stood him up 20 years earlier. He gets his revenge with his desire being fulfilled in the process.
Video games Freddy's first video game appearance was in the 1989 Commodore 64 game A Nightmare on Elm Street, published by Monarch and developed by Westwood Associates, which was followed by the 1990 NES game A Nightmare on Elm Street, published by LJN Toys and developed by Rare.