up booby traps like Nancy did against him. According to Englund, part of it later ended up being used in the pilot episode of Freddy's Nightmares after the script had been lying around unused for a few years. Writing Wes Craven has said, about the direction that he and Bruce Wagner wanted to take the franchise in, that "we decided that it could no longer be one person fighting Freddy. It had to be a group, because the souls of Freddy's victims have made Freddy stronger". He also called Heather Langenkamp to ask her if he may include her character Nancy in the script, which she agreed to. In interviews with cast and crew in the DVD extras, it is revealed that the original idea for the film centered around the kids separately traveling to a specific location to die by suicide. Later it would be discovered that the common link between the youths was that they dreamed of Freddy Krueger. Since suicide was a taboo social issue, the storyline was abandoned. Some aspects of the idea remained in the film. In Craven and Wagner's original script, the characters were somewhat different from what was eventually filmed. Nancy was not a dream expert nor any kind of mental health professional. Kristen (named Kirsten in this script) only stayed in the institution for a short while, she had a father and her mother was named Alice. Neil's last name was Guinness and his character was much younger. Dr. Simms' last name was Maddalena, Taryn was African-American, Joey was the one who built the model of a house and had trouble getting around (although he did not use a wheelchair), and Philip was a thirteen-year-old. Will's name was originally Laredo, he had long hair, did not use a wheelchair, and was the one who made the clay puppets. This script also described the ranch house where Krueger was born and that is the house that shows up in the kids' dreams rather than the Elm Street house. Wes Craven specifies the house in his original script to be "an architectural portal to [Freddy's dreamscape]. It is virtually a limitless world of the human psyche in all of its dimensions ... So you can enter this other world through the house or dreams or madness or hallucinations or special psychic states that various people have". Contrary to the film, Donald Thompson knew from