“A Nightmare on Elm Street” curiosities

The list

In her first nightmare, how did Freddy manage to slice Tina’s nightgown?
Tina stands in front of the oven and suddenly, Freddy appears behind her. In that moment, she wakes up. So, how come that her nightgown has four slices on the front even though Freddy’s glove wasn’t even near that place?

What are the rope jumping girls in the beginning supposed to be?
At first, it looks like another dream scene. But then, the camera moves right and we see Glen’s car arrive. Some minutes later, when the camera shows the meadow again, the girls are not there anymore which means that they were not just some normal girls playing there (which would be strange anyway since the fog disappeared with them). So, what are they?

Does the jump rope song refer to human or to nightmare Freddy?
“Three, four, better lock your door” seems to imply a normal killer. But “Five, six, grab your crucifix” alludes to a demon or spirit. And “Seven, eight, gonna stay up late” refers to a dream killer even more. Same with the line “Nine, ten, never sleep again” since this seems to mean: “If you fall asleep now, you’ll not fall asleep ever again.”

Did Glen have a nightmare of Freddy too?
When Nancy and Glen are at Tina’s house and Nancy describes that she dreamed about a guy in a dirty red and green sweater, Glen looks as if her description sounds very familiar to him. But in every other scene, he seems to be completely unaware of Freddy’s existence other than the fact that Freddy is part of Nancy’s nightmares. (And even this he doesn’t really seem to get.)

Where does the red and green blanket in Tina’s mother’s room come from?
After having sex, Tina and Rod go to sleep and Rod covers himself with a red and green blanket that suddenly appears under their light blue blanket. That’s not a dream scene, so why is it there, especially since later when Tina is killed, we don’t see that blanket anymore?

When the cross falls off the wall, is that just a coincidence or does Freddy do it?
And if it is him, why does he do it anyway?

When Freddy throws rocks at her window, why does Tina leave the house?
I mean, o.k., it’s a dream, but she doesn’t know that. So, what do you do in the middle of the night when you hear someone say your name and throw rocks at your window? Of course: You leave the house all by yourself to check what’s up. Either Tina is the most stupid girl in the history of horror movies or she had a really good reason to do what she did.

How does the cop who shadows Nancy disappear that quickly?
He’s probably supposed to be a red herring, so that the viewer thinks this is another dream again. But since it’s the real world, where did he hide?

Why is Rod lurking behind the bushes?
He’s the suspect of a murder, so shouldn’t he hide in a safe place? What does he expect from sitting there in bright daylight, waiting for Nancy just to tell her that he didn’t kill Tina?

Why does Nancy sing the jump rope song in the bathtub?
In the boiler room, Freddy told her his name. (“Come to Freddy!”) I don’t know about other people, but if there was someone trying to kill me, I guess I wouldn’t chant his name with a song.

What is Nancy’s plan when she goes to sleep to “look for somebody” and Glen has to watch out for her?
In her dream, she goes to the police station and sees Rod in his cell. And she encounters Freddy. So? What was her plan? What did she want to accomplish? Did she just want to look if Freddy is indeed going after Rod? In this case, it was a lucky coincidence anyway that she saw Freddy entering Rod’s cell since he could have already killed him or he could have decided to go for him some hours later.

What’s the deal with Glen appearing behind a tree when Nancy calls for him?
Did he fall asleep and they are both in the dream now? Unlikely, since in this case, it wouldn’t make any sense for him to just disappear behind the tree again. Or does Nancy talk in her sleep, Glen answers and his appearance in the dream is a projection? Or is it just an illusion created by Freddy?

Why does Freddy have two voices?
There’s his normal voice and the deep demonic one. From the beginning of the movie until Nancy’s dream in the school, he uses his normal one. From the dream where she goes to look for Rod until the end of the movie, he uses the demonic one. So, what’s the reason for the change?

How do Freddy’s powers exactly work when it comes to influencing things in the real world?
Obviously, Freddy can not only do harm to the person dreaming of him, but he also has the ability to change inanimate objects in reality. In Rod’s dream, Freddy moving the bed sheets to hang him happens in the real world as well. Same with slicing Tina’s nightgown. And later, he even manages to create a whole blood fountain in Glen’s room. But when he fights Nancy in her room where he jumps through her mirror and destroys one of her pillows, this has no influence on her real-world room where everything is still tidy when she wakes up. So, when do his actions have an effect on the real world and when not?

Why does everybody attend Rod’s funeral?
Glen, Marge and Don still think that Rod murdered Tina. So, why did they come?

What’s with Tina’s funeral?
Did she get one? Did it happen off-screen?

What was that visit in the dream clinic good for?
They wanted to watch Nancy’s sleep, had a little chit-chat about dreams and then Nancy dreamed of Freddy, got her arm cut and brought the hat out. But other than that, the visit in the dream clinic seems to have no further relevance anymore.

What does Marge’s justification for having installed the bars mean?
When Nancy asks why there are bars in front of the windows and Marge says it’s for security and Nancy asks: “Security? Security for what?”, Marge answers: “Not for what, from whom.” What does that mean? From her point of view, there’s no need for security from a person. Doesn’t she think that Rod killed Tina and that he committed suicide? Does she suddenly think that, yes, there is a murderer out there? Or is she just lying to Nancy and the real reason for the bars is to trap Nancy because Marge thinks she starts going crazy? If that’s the case, then great job: When your daughter imagines a killer who’s after her, confirm her delusions by telling her that the bars are a security device against an actual murderer.

How is it possible that Nancy was awake for seven days?
When she says it, the last time we saw her sleeping was in the dream clinic and that was one day ago. And if she doesn’t count short naps, why does she even bother to mention what the record is?

How can Freddy call Nancy on the phone even though we don’t see her falling asleep or waking up?
Yes, I know it’s a micro-dream. The screenplay says so. But there’s no way the viewer can find this out by just watching the movie. So, from an 80s perspective where you couldn’t just go to the internet and download the screenplay, how is the audience supposed to interpret this scene or know its actual meaning?

Don’t the booby traps pose a danger in case Marge decides to get up and go downstairs?
Pretty careless of Nancy, isn’t it?

Aside from Freddy himself and his clothes, what can be brought out of the dreams?
Even though he lives in a dream world, Freddy himself is real and not just a figment of the dreamer’s subconsciousness. The rest of the dream world, however, seems to be some kind of illusion where Freddy can make things appear at will. So, is it possible to bring other objects from the dream into reality? Like, if Freddy created a pile of money or an atom bomb. Or what would happen if you grabbed dead Tina in the body bag? Would you have a zombie-like Tina in the real world then? The scene where Nancy pulls Freddy out implies that those additional things wouldn’t work since she also holds that rose trellis when being in her room again and it immediately disappears. But in one of the previous scenes, after Nancy and Freddy were fighting in her room and Freddy sliced her pillow, she saw a single feather flying out of the window after she has woken up. That was the first allusion to the fact that things from the dream can be brought into reality. So, which objects can be brought to reality and which ones can’t?

When Nancy brings Freddy into the real world, where is he in the first moments?
Between Nancy waking up (where we see a good portion of the room from above) and Freddy appearing from next to the bed, where is he?

What are Freddy’s powers in the real world?
He can’t teleport since he has to break the door open and he has to walk up the stairs in the cellar when he’s on fire. And unlike in the dream, he feels pain. But he can still somehow walk in super speed since he moves from the cellar to Marge’s bedroom without anybody noticing it (It’s not teleportation because we see his fiery footsteps.) and he can create a hole with a thunderstorm in Marge’s bed and disappear and reappear into and from the bed. So, what are the rules behind it? Why does he lose certain powers while retaining others?

Why did it take Nancy so long to find out that she has to turn her back on Freddy and stop being afraid to defeat him?
When Nancy brought Freddy out of the dream, she tried to inflict physical harm on him. Only in the last scene does she try the way that Glen already told her hours ago. Why does she suddenly change her tactic at this specific moment?

Why does Nancy demand her mother and friends back?
It doesn’t matter if the final confrontation between Nancy and Freddy is really a dream as she says or if it takes place in the real world: There’s no way Nancy would get her killed mother and friends back. What does she expect? That killing Freddy somehow turns back time? Or that the dead are somehow magically resurrected? Where did she even get that idea from? Kill a murderer and all of his victims will come back to life? That would have never worked. And if she now thinks that the whole past days were all just one long dream, her mother and friends weren’t killed in the first place since then, even the story of a dream demon who can kill people for real is just part of that one dream and she will wake up no matter if she defeats him since there wouldn’t be any supernatural stuff involved at all.

How come that the Balinese way of defeating monsters in dreams actually works on Freddy?
Does the movie want to say that in its universe, all dreams are as real as the ones with Freddy? I don’t think so, otherwise people would constantly die of dreams and it wouldn’t be anything special to them. So, why does turning your back on a fictitious monster in a dream that’s nothing more than a film in your head and an invention of your subconsciousness actually work on a real dream demon who has even been an ordinary human once and who now lives in a literal parallel dream dimension?

Why isn’t Freddy ultimately defeated when Nancy turns her back on him?
She manages to defeat him, but it doesn’t even take 10 seconds until he comes back. (Not on-screen, but he builds that whole nice dream scenario to trick Nancy.) I could understand if it wouldn’t work at all. But it does work: Freddy dissolves into light and isn’t able to stab Nancy from behind. But then, he is back in an instant.

Why doesn’t Nancy wonder that after defeating Freddy, she immediately finds herself in front of the house?
Even if the previous scene was a dream, shouldn’t she be a bit suspicious about the fact that she doesn’t wake up in her bed, but finds herself in front of the house, fully dressed? Shouldn’t that be a clear giveaway that this is just another dream?

Why does Freddy kill Marge in the last scene?
According to her behavior (not wanting to drink anymore and not realizing that Nancy is trapped in the car and crying for help) you can see that this is obviously not the real Marge. Just like Tina, Glen and Rod in this scene, she’s merely an illusion created by Freddy. The real Marge was already killed some moments ago when a burning Freddy strangled her in her bed. So, why does Freddy kill that dream illusion of Marge? Nancy is already trapped in the car and doesn’t see it anymore, therefore it can’t even be a way to scare her. So, what is the purpose of that action?