A Nightmare on Elm Street/Nightmare Fuel

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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.
  • 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...
  • 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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