The character’s backstory begins with a tragic incident involving his mother in the early 1940s. During a Christmas holiday, a young nun named Sister Mary Helena (a/k/a Amanda Krueger) was trapped inside the Westin Hills psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. For days, she was raped and tortured numerous times by the one hundred patients confined there. When she was found, she was barely clinging to life and was now pregnant. Months later, after a breech birth, Frederick Charles Krueger was born and given up for adoption.

Fred was placed with an abusive alcoholic named Mr. Underwood (portrayed by Alice Cooper in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare) who abused him physically and emotionally. As time passed, Freddy began to exhibit sociopathic behavior, which included killing small animals. He was often ridiculed by classmates, which made him an outsider in social circles. In his late teens, Freddy was shown to enjoy the beatings and associated pain with pleasure. He also learned the "secret of pain" from self-mutilation and killed his adoptive father.


Later in adulthood, Fred Krueger married a woman named Loretta and soon had a daughter named Kathryn. The Krueger family was shown to reside in Freddy's childhood home at 1428 Elm Street. Kathryn was still a little girl when children from the neighborhood went missing and were found dead. Soon after, Loretta learned that down in the basement of the house, Freddy had a secret room where he kept many different tools of torture, newspaper clippings, versions of his famous glove, and more. Promising that "she won't tell," she was killed by Freddy in front of a very young Kathryn, "for snooping in daddy's special work." Freddy worked at the local power plant, where he had killed the 20 missing neighborhood children in the boiler room. The police were unable to solve the cases and newspapers dubbed the mysterious killer the "Springwood Slasher".


In 1966, Freddy was arrested for the murders of the missing children. Young Kathryn was put into foster care, and was later adopted. Because the search warrant was not signed correctly, all evidence was considered inadmissible and Krueger was released in 1968. After Freddy's trial, Amanda Krueger hung herself in the tower where she was raped. Later that same night, the neighborhood parents took the law into their own hands, finding Krueger in his boiler room and burning him to death. As the flames engulfed the boiler room, Freddy was approached by three Dream Demons. These demons search the land of the living to find the most evil soul, and in turn, give that person the power to turn dreams into reality. Freddy accepted their offer to "be forever." Freddy's remains were taken to Penny Brothers Auto Salvage and locked in the trunk of an old red Cadillac. Presumably to help erase Krueger's existence, the Thompson family moved into the house on 1428 Elm Street. Adopted by the Burroughs family, young Kathryn was taken away from Springwood and her records were sealed.

Thirteen years later, Krueger was shown to become something of a local urban legend. The Elm Street parents remained tight-lipped about the events of the decade before, and all of their children were now teenagers. In the closing months of 1981, the children of Springwood (specifically those teens whose parents had formed the mob that killed Krueger) began systematically dying again — this time in peculiar ways, as they slept. The parents were shown to often ignore and/or deny the pleas of their terrified kids, who regaled tales of a mysterious burned man named Fred, who was terrorizing them in their dreams.

As long as his victim was dreaming, Krueger could inhabit and control their dreams, twisting them to his own ends. Any physical harm done to a person in this dream world would carry over into the real world, allowing him to easily commit multiple murders. Krueger often toyed with his victims by changing his form and surroundings, usually resembling the boiler room where he was burned. His powers increased as more and more kids believed he existed. At the height of his powers, he could cause severe damage in the real world. This included possession of humans (as shown in the second Nightmare film and Freddy vs Jason) or his corpse (as shown in the third).

In a person's own dream, Krueger could also use their deepest fears and personality against them, which became a trademark in the films. A few victims managed to use their own imagination to consciously manipulate their dreams against him (a technique known as lucid dreaming), but this had little effect on Krueger, who was completely in control of their dreams already. These kids were known as "dream warriors". Another of Krueger's powers involved absorbing the souls of his victims into his own body after they had been killed, which served to make him more powerful. As he gained a victim, their face would appear on his chest.

Krueger met three notable adversaries in the period before Freddy's Dead:

Nancy Thompson, the daughter of the family that moved into his old house. Nancy was the first of the Elm Street children to learn about Krueger's past and the first to vanquish him. She returned in the third, only to be killed by Freddy, who had taken the physical form of her father as a disguise.

Kristen Parker, a girl with the ability to bring people into her dreams.

Alice Johnson (who became the Dream Master), gained Kristen's power and the dream powers of her friends. Out of all these girls, Alice is the only one (supposedly) who has remained alive. After removing the souls Krueger gained over the years he was left powerless. A year later, Alice became pregnant and Krueger started using the dreams of her unborn child to kill again. Alice vanquished him with the help of Krueger's mother, Amanda. After Krueger was contained, Alice supposedly moved away before he was released and caused the events of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.

In the aftermath of Maggie sending Krueger back to hell, Springwood sought to revitalize itself. Freddy returned briefly, killing at least a few people (as seen in Freddy vs. Jason). Figuring out how Krueger operated, the authorities and town officials covered up any and all traces of his prior existence, which included blacking out obituaries and quarantining anyone who had ever dreamt about, or had any knowledge of Krueger. As a result, Springwood returned from obscurity and subsequently repopulated with no ill effects.

Meanwhile, Krueger remained in limbo, completely unable to escape the boundaries of hell, thanks to the complete ignorance of his existence to the people of Springwood. Due to the fact that no one so much as knew of him, much less feared him, Freddy was unable to gain enough power to escape from hell. Thus, Freddy hatched a plan to resurrect the immortal killing machine Jason Voorhees. First, at the conclusion of Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday, Freddy pulled Jason's abandoned mask into the ground. Then, in the guise of Voorhees' mother, Pamela, Freddy manipulated Jason into rising up from the dead once more and to go to Elm Street to kill the teenagers in order to fool the residents of Springwood into thinking that he (Krueger) was back.

Voorhees committed a few murders, which (as planned) were then blamed on Krueger. As a result, Krueger began to get his equilibrium back. A small group of youths and a sheriff's deputy discovered that it was not Krueger who had committed the murders, but it was already too late. Enough fear fell over Springwood to make Krueger strong enough to haunt the town again. While this took place, Freddy encountered Lori, the virgin daughter of one of his past victims and began invading her dreams the most. The problem, which Krueger had not counted on, was that Jason would not stop killing. He became irate when Jason continued to slaughter "his kids." Thus, a bloody fight ensued between the two murderous icons that raged between the dream world to the waking world at Jason's old haunt, Camp Crystal Lake. One of the youths, Lori, entered the dream realm to lure Freddy into the real world, only to learn he killed her mother and was almost raped by him. The finality of this fight was deliberately left ambiguous by the writers of Freddy vs. Jason. It ended with Jason walking out of the waters holding Krueger's decapitated head, which winked to the audience before the credits rolled, followed by Freddy's laughter heard after the screen fades to black, seemingly indicating that his reign of terror was not over.