A Nightmare on Elm Street/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Sweet dreams...


  • The entire premise of the series. Wes Craven takes a fear that pretty much all of us have had at some point -- the idea that being killed in your dreams can result in you dying for real -- and embodies it in the menacing, knife-fingered figure of Freddy Krueger.
    • Even Robert Englund, his portrayer, admitted to having nightmares about him.
    • Also, the numerous Nightmare Sequences in the films also add to it- given that the whole theme and point of A Nightmare on Elm Street is Nightmare Fuel. It's also Based on a True Story. And the character of Freddy Krueger is based on a homeless person that scared Wes Craven as a kid. Wes Craven describes the story in a DVD special feature:

"When I looked down there was a man very much like Freddy walking along the sidewalk. He must have sensed that someone was looking at him and stopped and looked right into my face. He scared the living daylights out of me, so I jumped back into the shadows. I waited and waited to hear him walk away. Finally I thought he must have gone, so I stepped back to the window. The guy was not only still looking at me but he thrust his head forward as if to say, 'Yes, I'm still looking at you.' The man walked towards the apartment building's entrance. I ran through the apartment to our front door as he was walking into our building on the lower floor. I heard him starting up the stairs. My brother, who is ten years older than me, got a baseball bat and went out to the corridor but he was gone."

  • A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984):
    • There's a lot of them, considering they're slasher flicks, but the most famous two are Tina's death in which she's brutally dragged across the ceiling of her bedroom and when Glen is pulled into his bed and turned into a geyser of blood.
    • Any scene involving the dream version of Tina's body in the original as well.
    • As tacky as the scene was, at the end when the car hosting the colors of Freddy's sweater whisks away the shocked kids in it while the happy mother waves goodbye before she is sniped through the window while children are singing the eerie song... That scene just...why.
    • The Dream Clinic scene. This is one of the rare times we see what goes on when a person is attacked by Freddy in the real world perspective without any visual effects or camera tricks. Marge fears that Nancy may be losing it from seeing her friends die, (YMMV on whether or not she was afraid of Nancy figuring out the truth about Freddy Krueger and his murder.) so she sends her to Katja Institute for the study of sleep disorders. Nancy's hooked into an EEG and EKG machine to monitor her while the doctor and Marge monitor her sleep through the monitors and the observation glass. When she goes to REM everything seems good at least according to the Data the Doctor is looking at. He even mentions that a Nightmare will show as a plus/minus 6 if she was having a typical nightmare whereas a 3 that she's currently at; is normal for dreamers. However when the camera is focused on Nancy you can hear Freddy's Claws scraping and the sound of Water dripping from a boiler room, whilst Nancy twitches in tandem with it. From the observation room, both the Doctor and Marge watch in terror as Nancy starts having a violent seizure screaming as Freddy is attacking her. To make matters worse the readings the Doctor is getting is off the charts going from 10 to 15 to 30, which never happens. When they can take no more the Doctor and Marge try to wake her up successfully. Nancy's awake confused and more scared than ever and having a streak of white hair from the stress. When the doctor tries to sedate her, she pushes him away inadvertently revealing fresh new cuts on her arm which scares Marge more. Nancy also reveals she pulled something out of her dream, by pulling Freddy's hat out from under the covers. Which she says she grabbed it off his head when she was struggling against him. What makes this scene scarier than most of the scenes in the series is that, take Freddy out of the picture and it's exactly no different than any other nightmare study video. To make it more of a mind screw, Marge tries to dismiss her claim later on, but can't think of a rational reason for Nancy to have Freddy's hat. Even calling Donald about it before Nancy confronts her over her knowledge of it's owner.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge:
    • Freddy cutting and tearing his way out of Jesse's body.
    • When Jesse walks in on his sister singing the "One, two, Freddy's coming for you" song.
    • The entire premise of the movie. What's worse than fighting an undead reality-warping dream demon that's killing your friends? Having that dream demon possess you to make you kill your friends.
    • Earlier in the movie we're presented with an example of Paranoia Fuel. When Jesse begins dreaming of Freddy he sees him inside the basement from the outside of his house. Imagine the idea of going outside your house at night for a minute, when everyone's sleep. Then you look into the basement window and find a strange man who somehow managed to get inside and is taking out a glove fitted with knives on each finger out of the boiler. You have no idea how he got inside, your family is still in the house, and you've got no idea if you're fast enough to get inside before either running into him or before he gets to your sleeping family.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors:
    • The "flesh marionette" scene.
    • The scene where Kristen snaps out of her dream with the killer bathroom fixtures, and realizes she's got a bleeding wrist and a bloody razor blade in her hand. Maybe it's just paranoia talking, but for a split second she's so disoriented, she may not have been sure she hadn't genuinely gone crazy and slashed her own wrist while hallucinating. At least you can fight Freddy, but your own insanity...
      • What makes things worse is the following factors. First off, her mother Elaine despite seeing what appears to be her daughter committing suicide, she dismisses it later on not long after Kristen is committed to Westin Hills, as her trying to get attention. Making Kristen feel more helpless. Second, her first on screen freakout. Accodring to one of the Nurses, Kristen was doing just fine until they tried to make her sleep. We see the freak out in all it's glory as Doctor Gordon, Doctor Simms, Max the head orderly and another orderly try to restrain and sedate her. She knows at this point no one would believe that an undead monster is after her, so she does all she can to keep them at bay. Kicking Gordon in the balls when they managed to get a hold of her, preventing him from using the sedative. Then arming herself scalping, cutting Max's arm, to fend him off. All while whimpering and screaming bloody murder, because she knows if they sedate her, Freddy will get her. Also she risks bleeding to death as the orderly warns Gordon that she threw her stitches out in the struggle. When Gordon does manage to get through to Kristen, she's sobbing and reciting the last verses of the Freddy Rhyme. With Nancy Thompson making her first onscreen appearance in the first movie, finishing the line. While, Nancy's intervention has cooled things down, giving Kristen hope that someone out there finally get's what she's trying to say, her sudden appearance shocks both the staff and to an extent the audience, whom upon first watching had no idea she was coming back.

Dr. Gordon: Kristen, put the scalpel down. Nobody's gonna hurt you.
Kristen: Five....six....grab your crucifix....seven...eight....better stay up late....nine ten.....never......NEVER!!!
Nancy: Never sleep again. Where did you learn that rhyme?

  • A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master:
    • Debbie's death involves her turning into a cockroach in what is clearly a very painful transformation before being crushed in a roach motel. Also, take note that out of the entire movie, Debbie's death was the longest and the most elaborate Krueger inflicted.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child:
    • Literally from this line.

Freddy: "Fuel injection!"

  • A Nightmare on Elm Street 6: Freddy's Dead:
    • Even the much-maligned sixth film gave Freddy some straight-faced, creepy moments, such as his standing in a windswept cellar doorway and gloating "every town has an Elm Street", and later threatening his long-lost daughter with the line "I didn't need a glove to kill your bitch of a mother, and I don't need one to kill you." Despite the jokes, Robert Englund could always make Freddy terrifying again at the drop of a dusty old fedora.
    • How about when Tracy meets Freddy in her dream, appearing as her father, who molested her and it is implied she killed in self-defense. He proceeds to feel her up, try to make her kiss him, and triggers her to the point that she bashes his face in with a kettle, which does absolutely nothing to phase him.
  • Wes Craven's New Nightmare
    • New Nightmare would see Tina's death revisited, as Freddy kills Julie in a quite similar manner.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
  • Other Works
    • The first episode of Freddy's Nightmares when it turns out that the events of the episode are just a product of the main character's broken neurons misfiring as he's dying after taking a bullet to the brain.
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