10 Disturbing Backstories Behind Your Favourite Movie Characters

3. Freddy Krueger Was A Product Of Gang-Rape (A Nightmare On Elm Street)

The apparent origin story of A Nightmare on Elm Street's antagonist Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is well-known to fans both casual and hardcore.

Fred Krueger was a child killer who, after being acquitted on a technicality, was hunted down by a mob of angry parents and burned to death, his spirit living on in the nightmares of teenagers ever since.

But there's much more to it than that, as revealed in the third film, Dream Warriors, but mostly forgotten by all but the most dedicated fans.

The threequel revealed that Freddy's mother, Amanda Krueger (Nan Martin), was a young nurse working at an asylum who was accidentally locked into a room harbouring the asylum's most dangerous criminals.

Over the weekend, Amanda was raped repeatedly and only barely clinging to life when discovered, but also pregnant with Freddy.

This is why Freddy is commonly referred to as "the son of a hundred homicidal maniacs", given the ambiguous - and horrifying - nature of his parentage.

Nobody was ever expecting a sunny genesis for the horror icon, but even so, this is a whole new level of messed up beyond a child murderer getting his just desserts.