Nancy Thompson

Nancy Thompson (6 July 1965 - 27 February 1987) in Springwood, Ohio)

Elm Street
Nancy is a teenage girl attending Springwood High School. She has been having nightmares about a mysterious, disfigured man in a red and green sweater with knives for fingernails, which he scrapes along things. She finds out that her friend Tina had a horrific nightmare the night before as well. Nancy isn't bothered about it, and reassures a distraught Tina that "everybody has a bad dream once in a while." Nancy, Tina, and Glen Lantz, Nancy's boyfriend, have a sleepover to comfort Tina. Rod Lane, Tina's rebellious on-off boyfriend, crashes the party and stays for the night, taking Tina to bed. While Rod and Tina are asleep, Tina has another horrific nightmare, getting caught by the mysterious figure and brutally murdered in her sleep while a disoriented Rod screams for help. When Glen and Nancy find Tina's body, Rod has disappeared.

Shortly afterwards, at the police station, Nancy explains to her father, a police lieutenant, that the reason for the sleepover was that Tina has had a horrible nightmare and didn't want to sleep alone, and that she thought Rod and Tina had settled their differences. Rod becomes the chief suspect for the murder. The next day, Nancy goes to school since she did not get enough sleep the previous night. While walking to school she is accosted by Rod, who swears that he is innocent. Rod is apprehended by her father and locked away in jail. At school Nancy falls asleep in class and has another nightmare, but manages to escape from the creepy killer by burning her arm on one of the heating pipes in the terrifying boiler room in which her dream is taking place. She is sent home from school only to find that the arm she burned in her dream is actually burned. A visit to Rod in his jail cell, who insists he didn't touch Tina and that he saw 4 razors cutting her at the same time convinces Nancy that he is innocent and that something more sinister is afoot.

That night, she falls asleep in the bathtub and is once again attacked, but she discovers a bottle of Stay Awake pills which she decides to use to combat sleep. Her boyfriend Glen appears and she asks him to stay awake and guard her while she goes to sleep to try and find the person stalking her in her dreams. Unfortunately Glen also falls asleep and Nancy is once again nearly killed. She and a skeptical Glen rush to the police station to talk to Rod, but he has been killed in his cell, strangled by his own bedsheets. To everyone except Nancy, it appears to be a suicide. At Rod's funeral, she tells her father:

"I don't know who he is, but he's burned and he wears a weird hat and a red and green sweater, really dirty...and he uses these knives like giant fingernails."

- Nancy Thompson

Nancy's mother takes her to a Dream Therapy Clinic, where she has another horrible nightmare. This time, her arm is badly cut four times but she finds that she has taken something out from her dream, the killer's battered hat. She learns from her mother of Fred Krueger, a serial killer of children who was burned to death by vengeful parents after he was freed from prison on a technicality. Nancy becomes convinced that he is exacting his revenge on the children of his killers from beyond the grave. Her mother then says he's dead and can't get to her now and proves it when she shows Nancy the four clawed glove Krueger has been using in the dreams of the children. With that she assures Nancy that she can sleep now.

However, Nancy instead forms a plan with Glen to bring Krueger out from her dream, knock him out and have him arrested. However, Glen succumbs to sleep and is brutally killed, sucked into his bed and spat out in a fountain of gushing blood. Nancy has to face Krueger on her own, setting booby traps and luring him out of the dream world into reality. When he returns to finally kill Nancy, she turns her back on him and drains him of all his energy, causing him to disappear. However, Krueger is far from vanquished and kills Nancy's mother at the very end of the film.

Diaries
Although not physically present in the film, Nancy's looming presence from the first film exists. The Walsh family now reside in the old Thompson house, where 5 years earlier, Freddy and Nancy battled. A teenaged Jesse Walsh (who inhabits Nancy's old room) and his girlfriend Lisa, discover Nancy's old diary—which chronicles to them the events of Nightmare on Elm Street. It tells them of the murders of Nancy's friends, and also reveals to them what Krueger's strengths and weaknesses are. This later helps Jesse and Lisa to conquer Freddy in their own struggle with him.

Between the events of Nightmare on Elm Street 1 and 3, Nancy escapes the nightmare (at the end of the first film) only to find her mother dead. Nancy is certain that Freddy Krueger is responsible, but her father refuses to believe it. The tension causes a rift between the pair and eventually results in Nancy and her father going separate ways. Her father becomes an alcoholic, seemingly to try and wash away the memories. Nancy is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she becomes convinced that Fred Krueger is dead.

Nancy decides to help others having pattern nightmares, making ground breaking research and being highly praised by other doctors. She then applies for work at Westin Hills hospital, where children from Elm Street have been reported as having nightmares as well. She is accepted into Westin Hills and so begins the events of A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors.

It is unknown if she had any more encounters with Freddy in between 1 and 3, although it is unlikely.

Westin Hills
Six years later, Nancy returns in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. This time she is a new doctor at Westin Hills (Freddy's birthplace) where she meets Phillip, Jennifer, Joey, Kincaid, Will, Taryn, and Kristen Parker, teenagers who are having the same problems as she used to have. She also befriends Neil Gordon. She soon befriends Kristen Parker, acting as a sort of mother for her, collecting her belongings from her home to be taken to Westin Hills. When Kristen is about to die from Freddy, Kristen pulls Nancy into her dream. Nancy is quick to react and stabs Freddy in the eye. Freddy then looks at Nancy, the only one to have ever escaped him and they have not seen each other in over 6 years. Freddy is just about to kill the both of them, but Nancy manages to tell Kristen to pull them out of the dream. She does so.

After talking to Kristen about her power, she then talks to her new friend Doctor Gordon, to try and convince him to use Hypnocil on the children so that they will have no nightmares. Gordon says no which angers Nancy. Then the next day, Gordon gives in and says yes to the Hypnocil. However Nancy now has a new plan. She realizes that these are the last Elm St. children of the parents that burnt him alive. This tells her that if Kristen has a dream power then they all must. After Nancy persuades Gordon to believe in Freddy, Gordon says he wants proof so Nancy Gordon uses hypnosis to put them all to sleep, so that they can all figure out what there dream power is, and Nancy tells them about the dream powers. Kristen pulls them into her dream where they find their inner strength. Nancy's plan was to get them to enhance on their dream power so they could gang up and beat Freddy. However she soon loses her job within the four days along with Gordon, after two of her patients die and one falls into a coma.

Neil and Nancy find out from a nun (Sister Mary Helena) that Freddy's bones must be laid to rest, and only her father now knows where they are. They go to him at a bar and try to convince him to tell them where the bones are. But only Neil manages to get him to tell him because Nancy had to go back to Westin Hills to save Kristen, who was already sedated.

Whilst all that happens, back at Westin Hills, Will, Taryn, Kincaid and Nancy find Kristen in the dream world, but are soon separated. Will and Taryn die, and Kristen, Nancy, and Kincaid are the only ones left. Nancy finds Kristen and Kincaid in turn finds them. They then find a staircase leading to the boiler room where Joey is being held. They find Joey, who is now hanging from a hole, Nancy grabs him, saving his life, but is also being pulled in. However, Kincaid uses his dream strength to save them whilst Kristen holds off Freddy. They save Joey and then fight Freddy, who beats Kristen and Kincaid easily. While he's distracted, Nancy then shoves a metal pole right through Freddy's torso. Freddy, however, is only hurt for a second before pulling it free of his body and licking his own blood from its end. Nancy is shocked at how powerful Freddy has become, and Freddy then reveals that he has gotten stronger from using the absorbed souls of his young victims, meaning that all the children he has killed in the past six years have gradually made him more powerful. Freddy rips open his sweater, revealing the tortured faces of his enslaved victims as they scream and writhe within his scarred flesh. Just as it seems Freddy is about to kill his attackers, he suddenly senses that his early remains are being disturbed, and uses his power to animate his own bones, and uses them to kill Donald and severely beat Dr. Gordon with a shovel before returning to the dream-world.

Nancy and the others end up in a hall of mirrors, where Freddy uses multiple reflections of himself to attack them all at once. They only just survive when Joey saves them with his dream power - a powerful, glass-shattering scream. Donald then appears and tells Nancy he has "crossed over," apologizes for what he has done, and says he will always love her. The two embrace, but the ruse ends when Donald changes into Freddy who stabs Nancy in the abdomen, and subdues Kristen after she tries to save her friend. Nancy saves Kristen by stabbing Freddy in the stomach from behind with his own blades. As this occurs, Dr. Gordon rouses himself enough to shove Freddy's bones into the burial pit, and douse them with Holy Water as he reads Freddy his last-rites. Weakened by his own blades and the last-rites, Freddy is seemingly destroyed in a burst of holy light. It is too late to save Nancy, however, and she succumbs to the wounds Freddy inflicted, but as she passes, Kristen promises to "dream (Nancy) into a beautiful dream, forever and ever"

The remaining Dream Warriors, along with Neil Gordon and others go to Nancy's funeral, where Gordon discovers that the nun that helped them is Amanda Krueger, Freddy's mother, who had died many years before. That night, Neil returns home to presumably visit Nancy in his dreams, and in the final shot we see a light suddenly snap on inside Kristen's model of the Elm Street house on Neil's dresser.

Nancy's headstone is seen next to Donald Thompson, Roland Kincaid, and Joey Crusel's during Kristen's funeral.

Her soul was absorbed by Freddy after he killed her. At the end of the next movie, it was released by Alice Johnson.

1994 film
To some extent Nancy comes back in Nightmare 7, being that the actress Heather Langenkamp played Nancy. The plot focuses on an evil spirt that has been locked in Freddy Kreuger's character throughout the films. Now that Freddy is dead, the spirit is running free in the real world in the form of a slightly upgraded Freddy Krueger where he plans to kill actress Heather, her son Dylan Porter, her husband Chase Porter and friends to make her pay for "defeating" him in the films. He ultimately fails to do so, however and is defeated once again.