Well, this is interesting. Looks like someone on Reddit "just" posted a new theory surrounding how Robert Englund's Freddy Kruger achieved his dream powers in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street series. While I've seen more than a few people mention that this is a "new" theory regarding Freddy and his dream powers, to be thorough here, the Reddit post where this comes from is two years old. That said, it just recently resurfaced and has become a thing in the horror community so let's get into it here.

The theory states that this.

"In the original NOES Freddy is not quite as powerful as he would seem to be in later films, this is probably meta, due to the budget and special effects limitations of the time, yet we may have a better answer.

A deleted scene from A Nightmare on Elm Street states that Nancy had a brother and it is implied he died from Freddy Kreuger in one way or another. So here is what we know. Freddy kills and absorbs the spirits of children who have powers in their dreams, and he was doing it even before Nancy and her gang. The only ability we are shown him being granted by the dream demons is the ability to travel through dreams and be "eternal" with no mention of the crazy abilities he has in the dreams.

One could logically assume that many of Freddy's more outlandish abilities, such as walking on the ceiling in the first movie or shapeshifting a whole bunch in the third, are actually dream powers he stole from kids whose souls he consumed.

There was likely a kid who could fly in his dreams and another who could be anything he wanted, and after Freddy absorbed them he uses their abilities to increase the zaniness of the kills. This also explains the increasingly strange ways in which he is killing people, he is trying out his new powers.

This also fits in line with Alice being the Dream Master in number four, she can rival Freddy because she is absorbing the powers of her friends instead of Freddy absorbing them. So when he was defeated in number three he lost all of his powers except being able to show up in your nightmares and kill you. Thus even though he was stealing souls throughout the film, since Alice was getting the powers, he was still pretty screwed."

Now as a massive fan of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, I don't know if I can say that this particular theory holds water (or blood), but I will go ahead and put it out there that I love the idea. It makes enough sense to me, and while I don't think Freddy's powers even NEED to be explained, as far as explanations go, this one sounds better than the "Dream Demons" from Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. But the best thing about this theory is that it puts even more power in the hands of my favorite horror movie heroine, Lisa Wilcox AKA Alice Johnson AKA The Dream Master from director Renny Harlin's aptly titled fourth entry in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. What do you think? Let us know below!

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master was directed by Renny Harlin from a screenplay written by Brian Helgeland, Ken Wheat, and Jim Wheat based on a story by William Kotzwinkle and Brian Helgeland based on characters created by Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner. Robert Shaye and Rachel Talalay produced, and the flick was distributed by New Line Cinema back on August 19, 1988. This theoty comes to us via Reddit.