New Line Cinema was saved from bankruptcy by the success of the film, and was jokingly nicknamed "The House that Freddy Built."
All of the boiler room footage in the film was shot in the basement of the Lincoln Heights Jail in Los Angeles, which was condemned shortly after production wrapped, due to high levels of asbestos.
The scene where Freddy's arms elongate were achieved by having men with fishing poles on each side of the alley operating a set of puppet arms attached to Robert Englund.
Alan Pasqua, Heather Langenkamp's boyfriend at the time of the shooting, is credited for creating Freddy's nursery rhyme.
In the original script, Freddy was a child molester. However, the decision was made to change him into being a child murderer to avoid accusations of exploiting a series of child molestations in California around the time of production. He was re-written as a child molester in the 2010 remake starring Jackie Earle Haley.
Robert Shaye: The voice of film's producer and owner of New Line Cinema, can be heard twice in the film, as the newsreader reporting on Tina's death, and as the station announcer saying "It is now twelve mid, and this is station KRGR leaving the air."
Wes Craven: [The title plays into Craven's suburban horror theme] The film is a play on pictures of suburban 1950s wholesomeness with an undercurrent of evil, as in The Last House on the Left (1972).
Wes Craven: [the main character experiences traumatizing nightmares that reflect reality or affect reality] In this film, Nancy Thompson and her friends experience horrifying nightmares about an otherworldly and malevolent figure named Fred Krueger. Other Craven films such as The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), and Cursed (2005), respectively, also explore the theme of nightmares being linked to reality through trauma.