20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise
1. Freddy Was Almost Way More Gross
When designing Freddy Krueger, Wes Craven wanted him to look incredibly gruesome to the point that he would be downright hard to look at. Originally, his teeth would be sticking out of the flesh on his jaw, parts of his skull would be visible through his skin, and there would be pus seeping through his sores at all time. Gross.
Luckily, makeup artist David B. Miller changed Craven's mind and told him they should tone it down, although that was mainly just because he thought it was impractical and they wouldn’t be able to pull that effect off convincingly. They would have to combine the use of a real actor and puppets to make his appearance the way Craven wanted it, and so they just scrapped that entire idea.
So how did they settle on the final design? Miller went through photos of burn victims from the UCLA Medical Center to inspire Freddy’s face, but ultimately a lot of the inspiration came from a much less insidious origin: pizza. Yeah, Miller explained that he was at a restaurant one night having pizza, he started playing around with the pepperoni and the cheese, and out of nowhere he just made Freddy’s face in his food. The rest was history. Thanks, pizza!