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 striped sweater, brown fedora, and trademark metal-clawed brown leather glove on his right hand. Wizard magazine rated him the 14th greatest villain, the British television channel Sky2 listed him 8th, and the American Film Institute ranked him 40th on its "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains" list.
Robert Englund has said many times that he feels the character represents neglect, particularly that suffered by children. The character also more broadly represents 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 character's repressed homosexual desires.
In 2010, Freddy won an award for Best Villain (or Most Vile Villain) at the Scream Awards.
Freddy is introduced in A Nightmare on Elm Street as a child killer who is set on fire by the parents of his victims. While his physical form dies, his spirit lives 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 destroyed at the end of the film by protagonist Nancy Thompson, but the last scene reveals that he had survived; he went on to antagonize the teenage protagonists of the next five films in the series. After a hiatus, Craven was brought back in Wes Craven's New Nightmare by Wes Craven, who had not worked on the film series since the third film, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.
In 2003, Freddy battled fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees 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. The ending of the film is left ambiguous as to whether or not Freddy is actually dead; despite being decapitated, he winks at the viewers. (A sequel featuring Ash Williams from The Evil Dead franchise was planned, but never materialized on-screen. 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 is reimagined as a pedophile 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.
Wes Craven says his inspiration for the basis of Freddy Krueger's power stemmed from several stories in the Los Angeles Times about a series of mysterious deaths: All the victims had reported recurring nightmares and died in their sleep. Additionally, Craven's original script characterized Freddy as a child molester, which Craven said was the "worst thing" he could think of. The decision was made to instead make him a child murderer in order to avoid being accused of exploiting the spate of highly publicized child molestation cases in California around the time A Nightmare on Elm Street went into production. Craven's inspirations for the character included a bully from his school during his youth, a disfigured homeless man who had frightened him when he was 11, and the 1970s pop song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright. In an interview, he said, "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."
Freddy's back story is revealed gradually throughout the series. In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the protagonists learn that Freddy was conceived when his mother, Amanda Krueger, was gang-raped by a group of mental patients — thus making him "the son of 100 maniacs". Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare depicts Freddy's traumatic childhood; he is adopted as a child by an abusive alcoholic named Mr. Underwood, who teaches him how torture animals and inflict pain on himself; Freddy eventually murders him and becomes a serial killer. The film also reveals that Maggie Burroughs is Freddy's biological child.
In Wes Craven's New Nightmare, Freddy is characterized as a symbol of something powerful and ancient, and is given more stature and muscles. Unlike the six movies before it, New Nightmare shows Freddy as closer to what Wes Craven originally intended, toning down his comedic side while strengthening the more menacing aspects of his character.
Throughout the series, Freddy's potential victims often experience dreams of young 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 as an omen to Freddy's presence or a precursor to his attacks.
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