Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional character and the primary anta gonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street

film series. He appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) as a disfigured serial killer who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams, causing their deaths in t he waking world as well. However, whenever he is put into the real world, he has normal human vulnerability. Krueger was created by Wes Craven, and had been con sistently portrayed by Robert Englund since his first appearance. In the 2010 re make he was portrayed by Academy Award-nominee Jackie Earle Haley. Freddy is a vengeful spirit who attacks his victims from within their dreams. He is commonly identified by his burned, disfigured face, red-and-dark-green strip ed sweater, brown fedora, and trademark metal-clawed brown leather glove on his right hand. Wizard magazine rated him the 14th greatest villain,[2] the British television channel Sky2 listed him 8th,[3] and the American Film Institute ranke d him 40th on its "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains" list.[4] Robert Englund has said many times that he feels the character represents neglec t, particularly that suffered by children. The character also more broadly repre sents subconscious fears. For example, Englund is on record as saying that in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, Freddy represents the main characte r's repressed homosexual desires.[5] In 2010, Freddy won an award for Best Villain (or Most Vile Villain) at the Scre am Awards. Contents [hide] 1 Appearances 1.1 Film 1.2 Television 1.3 Video games 1.4 Other media 1.5 Appearance 1.6 Clawed Glove 2 References 3 External links [edit]Appearances [edit]Film Freddy is introduced in A Nightmare on Elm Street as a child killer who is set o n fire by the parents of his victims. While his physical form dies, his spirit l ives on in the minds of a group of teenagers living in his old neighborhood, who he preys on by entering their dreams and killing them. He is apparently destroy ed at the end of the film by protagonist Nancy Thompson, but the last scene reve als that he had survived. He went on to antagonize the teenage protagonists of t he next five films in the series. After a hiatus, Krueger was brought back in We s Craven's New Nightmare by Wes Craven, who had not worked on the film series si nce the third film, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. In 2003, Freddy battled fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13 th film series in the theatrical release Freddy vs. Jason, a film which official ly resurrected both characters from their respective deaths and subsequently sen t them to Hell. The ending of the film is left ambiguous as to whether or not Fr eddy is actually dead; despite being decapitated, he winks at the viewers. A seq uel featuring Ash Williams from The Evil Dead franchise was planned, but never m aterialized on-screen. It was later turned into Dynamite Entertainment's comic b ook series "Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash." In the 2010 remake of the original film, Freddy is further described as a pedoph ile who had sexually abused the teenage protagonists of the film when they were children. When their parents found out, they set him on fire and killed him. [edit]Television Robert Englund continued his role as Freddy Krueger on October 9, 1988, in the t elevision anthology series entitled 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 consisten t theme in each episode was characters having disturbing dreams. The series ran

for two seasons, 44 episodes, ending March 10, 1990.[6] Although most of the epi sodes 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 dea th at the hands of the parents of Elm Street after his acquittal. In "No More Mr . Nice Guy", Freddy's acquittal is based on the arresting officer, Lt. Tim Block er, not reading him his Miranda rights, which is different from the original Nig htmare that stated he was acquitted because someone forgot to sign a search warr ant 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 t he town's parents burn Freddy to death he returns to haunt Blocker in his dreams . Freddy gets his revenge when Blocker is put to sleep at the dentist's office, and Freddy shows up and kills him.[7] The episode "Sister's Keeper" was a "seque l" to this episode, even though it was the seventh episode of the series.[8] The episode follows Krueger as he terrorizes the Blocker twins, the identical twin daughters of Lt. Tim Blocker, and frames one sister for the other's murder.[7] S eason two's "It's My Party And You'll Die If I Want You To" featured Freddy atta cking a high school prom date who stood him up twenty years earlier. He got his revenge with his desire being fulfilled in the process.[9] [edit]Video games Freddy Krueger's first video game appearance was in the Nintendo's 1989 game A N ightmare on Elm Street.[10] Freddy Krueger later appeared as an extra playable character for Mortal Kombat ( Komplete Edition) in 2011/2012, where he was voiced by Patrick Seitz, making him the second non-Mortal Kombat character to appear in the game, the other being K ratos from the God of War series.[11] [edit]Other media Freddy Krueger has appeared in several spinoff comic books, as well comic book a daptations of the films which adjusted various aspects of Freddy's backstory: The character has also hosted his own television show, Freddy's Nightmares, whic h was an anthology series similar to The Twilight Zone. In the Robot Chicken episode I Love Her Freddy Krueger is portrayed as a father whose daughter bought him the fedora and sweater from the school bazaar and made his clawed glove to scratch his back, after his daughter bought a tie from the school, Freddy goes on a rampage destroying items at the school bazaar and the p arents incorrectly believe his is a child abuser, he is granted immortality whil e burning only wanting to remove the sweater, he last said "At least I have my c omplexion." Freddy also made several guest appearances on the syndicated puppet show DC Foll ies in 1988. Freddy Krueger appeared in A Nightmare on My Street by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. Robert Englund reprises his role of Freddy Krueger in The Simpsons episode "Tree house of Horror IX." In addition, the episode "Treehouse of Horror VI features a parody of the Nightmare On Elm Street series with Groundskeeper Willy portrayin g a Krueger-like villain. to our front door as he was walking into our building on the lower floor. I hear d 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."[12] Freddy's back story is revealed gradually throughout the series. In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the protagonists learn that Freddy's mother, Am anda Krueger, was a nun who worked in Westin Hills mental hospital caring for th e inmates. Freddy was conceived when she was accidentally locked inside over the Christmas holiday and gang-raped by a group of the inmates, thus making him "th e bastard son of 100 maniacs". Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare depicts Freddy 's traumatic childhood; he displayed sociopathic behavior at a young age and was often teased by classmates. He was adopted as a child by an abusive alcoholic n amed Mr. Underwood, who taught him how to torture animals and inflict pain on hi mself. Freddy eventually murdered him, with no apparent consequences, and became a serial killer. The film also reveals that when Freddy reached adulthood, he m arried a woman named Loretta, with whom he fathered a daughter named Katherine.

After the birth of his daughter, he tried to lead a normal life, but his murdero us nature eventually overcame him, and he murdered 20 children on Elm Street bet ween 1963 and 1966. He later murdered his wife after she discovered the evidence of his child killings, which Katherine witnessed. She told the authorities and Freddy was arrested for the murder of his wife and the Elm Street children. In 1 968, he was put on trial, but released on a technicality, leading to his death a t the hands of the parents of his victims. In his dying moments, the Dream Demon s came to him to offer him immortality in exchange for being their agent, which Freddy accepted. His daughter, Katherine, was later moved out of Springwood, ado pted, and renamed Maggie Burroughs. In Wes Craven's New Nightmare, Freddy is characterized as a symbol of something powerful and ancient, and is given more stature and muscles.[13] Unlike the six movies before it, New Nightmare shows Freddy as closer to what Wes Craven origin ally intended, toning down his comedic side while strengthening the more menacin g aspects of his character. Throughout the series, Freddy's potential victims often experience dreams of you ng children, jumping rope and chanting a rhyme to the tune of "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" with the lyrics changed to "One, Two, Freddy's coming for you", often a s an omen to Freddy's presence or a precursor to his attacks. [edit]Appearance Freddy Krueger's physical appearance has remained largely consistent throughout the film series, although minor changes were made in subsequent films. He wears a striped red-and-green sweater (solid red sleeves in the original film), a dark brown fedora, his bladed glove (see below), loose black trousers (brown in the original film), and worn working boots, in keeping with his blue collar backgrou nd. His skin is scarred and burned as a result of being burned alive by the pare nts of Springwood, and he has no hair at all on his head as it was presumably al l burned off. In the original film, only Freddy's face was burned, while the sca rs have spread to the rest of his body from the second film onwards. His blood i s occasionally a dark, oily color, or greenish in hue when he is in the Dreamwor ld. In the original film, Freddy remains in the shadows and under lower light mu ch longer than he does in the later pictures. In the second film, there are some scenes where Freddy is shown without his glove, and instead with the blades pro truding from the tips of his fingers. As the films began to emphasize the comedi c, wise-cracking aspect of the character, he began to don various costumes and t ake on other forms, such as dressing as a waiter or wearing a Superman inspired version of his sweater with a cape (The Dream Child), appearing as a video game sprite (Freddy's Dead), a giant snake-like creature (Dream Warriors), and a Hook ah smoking caterpillar (Freddy vs. Jason). In New Nightmare, Freddy's appearance is updated considerably, giving him a gree n fedora that matched his sweater stripes, skin-tight leather pants, knee-high b lack boots, a turtleneck version of his trademark sweater, a dark blue trench co at, and a fifth claw on his glove, which also has a far more organic appearance (see below). Freddy also has fewer burns on his face, though these are more seve re, with his muscle tissue exposed in numerous places. Compared to his other inc arnations, this Freddy's injuries are more like those of an actual burn victim. [edit]Clawed Glove Wes Craven claims that part of the inspiration for Freddy's infamous glove was f rom his cat, as he watched it claw the side of his couch one night.[14] In an interview he said, "Part of it was an objective goal to make the character memorable, since it seems that every character that has been successful has had some kind of unique weapon, whether it be a chain saw or a machete, etc. I was also looking for a primal fear which is embedded in the subconscious of people o f all cultures. One of those is the fear of teeth being broken, which I used in my first film. Another is the claw of an animal, like a saber-toothed tiger reac hing with its tremendous hooks. I transposed this into a human hand. The origina l script had the blades being fishing knives."[15] When Jim Doyle, the creator of Freddy's claw, asked Craven what he wanted, Crave n responded, "It's kind of like really long fingernails, I want the glove to loo k like something that someone could make who has the skills of a boilermaker."[1

4] Doyle explained, "Then we hunted around for knives. We picked out this bizarr e-looking steak knife, we thought that this looked really cool, we thought it wo uld look even cooler if we turned it over and used it upside down. We had to rem ove the back edge and put another edge on it, because we were actually using the knife upside down." Later Doyle had three duplicates of the glove made, two of which were used as stunt gloves in long shots.[14] For New Nightmare, Lou Carlucci, the effects coordinator, remodeled Freddy's glo ve for a more "organic look". He says, "I did the original glove on the first Ni ghtmare and we deliberately made that rough and primitive looking, like somethin g that would be constructed in somebody's home workshop. Since this is supposed to be a new look for Freddy, Wes and everybody involved decided that the glove s hould be different. This hand has more muscle and bone texture to it, the blades are shinier and in one case, are retractable. Everything about this glove has a much cleaner look to it, it's more a natural part of his hand than a glove." Th e new glove has five claws. In the 2010 remake, the glove maintains its original look, but it's metal brown and has four finger bars. Freddy's glove has appeared in the 1987 horror-comedy Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn above the door on the inside of a toolshed. This was Sam Raimi's response to We s Craven showing footage of The Evil Dead in A Nightmare on Elm Street, which in turn was a response to Sam Raimi putting a poster of Craven's 1977 film The Hil ls Have Eyes in The Evil Dead. The glove also appears in the 1998 horror-comedy Bride of Chucky in an evidence locker room that also contains the remains of the film's villain Chucky, the chainsaw of Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Mass acre, and the masks of Michael Myers from Halloween and Jason Voorhees from Frid ay the 13th. At the end of the movie Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday, the mask of the ti tle character, Jason Voorhees, played by Kane Hodder, is dragged under the earth by Freddy's gloved hand, thus setting up Freddy vs. Jason. Freddy's gloved hand , in the ending, was played by Kane Hodder.