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

If you needed any further proof that Robert Englund is the man, look no further than the fact that he improvised many of Freddy’s iconic lines. This happened quite a few times throughout the series, but the best example is from the third movie, Dream Warriors. 

For the scene where Freddy kills Jennifer by smashing her face into a TV, Englund was supposed to say, “This is it, your big break in TV!” That’s an acceptable line, and Englund stuck to it for the first take. Then when director Chuck Russell was getting an alternate angle of the same scene, Englund decided to try his own version of the line: “Welcome to prime time, bitch!”

Isn’t that just so much better? Russell wasn’t sure which one to go with, but he ended up choosing Englund’s version, and it went on to become one of Freddy’s defining lines of the franchise. It was also one of the most obvious examples from the first few films of Freddy being intentionally funny and ironic before he kills someone, something that would be amped up more and more over the sequels and would become a huge part of Freddy’s character. 

Given Englund’s tendency to improvise lines like these, he’s partly to thank for that.