12 Movie Franchises That Ruined Their Iconic Character

10. A Nightmare On Elm Street (Freddy Krueger)

In Wes Craven's original A Nightmare on Elm Street, dream-invading killer Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) was a genuinely terrifying murderer with a penchant for sick gallows humour.

Unfortunately it wasn't long before the sequels started to lean into the comedy a little too eagerly, stripping away Freddy's terror in the process and making him more of a campy ghoul than a truly fearsome figure.

As the one-liners got cornier and the kills more elaborately silly - such as Freddy emerging out of a TV and shouting, "Welcome to prime time, b*tch!" - the scare factor became inversely proportional.

Though the 1994 meta-sequel New Nightmare did bring Freddy back to his terrifying best, it technically wasn't canon, and more to the point, Freddy vs. Jason returned the character back to his sillier roots. This role was then dispassionately rebooted in 2010 with Jackie Earle Haley thanklessly playing the part.

Freddy is a quintessential example of a horror icon who was Flanderized and transformed into a wise-cracking cartoon.