Freddy’s Dead, aka A Nightmare on Elm Street 6, features a surprising cameo from sitcom legend Roseanne Barr and her then husband Tom Arnold. One of the oddest pop culture phenomenons to come out of the 1980s was the rise of Freddy Krueger. A character that murders children in brutal ways for the sheer fun of it should be absolutely impossible to like, especially when it’s heavily implied that molestation was also part of his modus operandi. Yet thanks to the charisma and likeability of Robert Englund, and scripts that just got sillier, Freddy transformed from fearsome villain into horror genre mascot.
Englund played Freddy pretty straight in the first two A Nightmare on Elm Street films, but it was in a A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors that Freddy’s “showman” side first emerged. After lines like “Welcome to primetime, bitch!” and “what’s a matter Joey, feeling tongue tied” went over well with fans, Elm Street’s producers decided to up the amount of Freddy quips in each subsequent installment, with stand-up comedian Freddy reaching his apex in 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.
With Freddy spouting terrible one-liners like “no screamin’ while the bus is in motion” and “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little soul too,” it’s all too appropriate that Freddy’s Dead played host to an out of nowhere cameo by sitcom stars Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold.
Why Roseanne Barr & Tom Arnold Cameoed in Freddy’s Dead
In the first act of Freddy’s Dead, several characters head to Springwood for various reasons, including mysterious amnesiac John Doe, who believes himself to be Freddy’s son. It of course turns out that Freddy had a daughter instead, but as the characters explore Springwood, they happen upon a strange childless couple, played by Barr and Arnold. Barr’s character is all too eager to take the teens home, as Freddy’s Dead reveals that Freddy has managed to systematically kill off nearly every child in Springwood by this point. Arnold’s character reminds her that children only draw Freddy’s attention, and pulls her away from the group.
It’s a completely odd moment that immediately draws the viewer out of the story, and unlike Johnny Depp’s own cameo in the film, isn’t a sly in-joke reference to a prior Nightmare film. It turns out that Barr and Arnold were actually big fans of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and jumped at the chance to appear in one of the films. In media coverage of the time, Roseanne also said that she thought the cameo was a fun chance to do something very different than her and Arnold’s usual gigs. Amusingly, the pair are said to have come to regret their decision, as the short scene took an entire day to film.
More: Why A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Ending Makes No Sense
