10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Freddy Krueger
2. He Was Originally Even Nastier (Somehow)
It's hard to imagine, given how much of Freddy’s stepfather-murdering, demon-fathered backstory we’re privy to thanks to the first film’s myriad sequels of varying quality, but Craven actually toned down the character’s unforgivable actions when drafting the film’s script.
Working as a groundskeeper, Freddy was originally intended to be a child molester but a highly publicised spate of recent similar cases in the director’s home state of California led him to jettison this element in favour of the no less awful but far more far-fetched child murderer we got.
The (correctly) maligned 2010 remake toyed with this idea, initially hinting at an interesting angle that Jackie Earl Haley’s iteration of Freddy may have been an innocent man caught up in a McMartin Preschool style mass hysteria-prompted witch hunt, now driven by revenge for his wrongful murder—only to then reveal in grossly exploitative and tasteless terms that nope, Freddy’s a paedophile, in what was another of many tacky missteps made by the deeply flawed flick.