20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise

Who knew a guy wearing a colorful sweater could be terrifying? Ever wonder how Wes Craven came upon that idea? Well, it turns out Craven picked this specific sweater with those colors because it was scientifically proven to be scary. 

Craven read an article in Scientific American while working on the screenplay which said that these particular shades of red and green were the two most clashing colors to the human eye. It’s difficult to recognize these colors when placed side by side, and so something about Freddy’s outfit would be subliminally upsetting, even if audiences weren’t exactly sure why. Now that’s how you manipulate viewers in an effective way.

Craven also said he wanted to put the villain in an outfit with colors that were recognizable because he knew he wanted Freddy to transform into different objects, and so putting him in iconic colors would help identify him during those scenes. The director was also partly inspired by the DC Comics character Plastic Man, who would often transform into objects but you could tell it was him because of his unique outfit.

So there you go: the costume that has become so iconic as to appear practically every single Halloween was created because of DC Comics and just a little bit of science.