Tina Gray (''A Nightmare on Elm Street'')

In film

In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Tina is first seen being stalked through a school boiler room. She is then attacked by a disfigured man wearing a blade-fixed glove. Tina awakens from the nightmare, but her mother points out four mysterious slashes in her nightgown. The following morning, Tina is consoled by her best friend Nancy Thompson and her boyfriend Glen Lantz. Later that night, Nancy and Glen sleep at Tina's following her mother's out-of-town departure; the sleepover is interrupted by Tina's boyfriend Rodney Lane. Falling asleep, Tina finds herself trapped in her final nightmare. Tina discovers rocks being thrown at her window and her name being whispered. She goes outside to investigate. Outside, Tina enters an alley and hears a noise behind her and is horrified when she sees Freddy Krueger. She chased into her backyard, crying out for Nancy to let her in. Tina is killed in her bedroom making it look like her boyfriend killed her. After her death, Freddy begins to use images of a murdered Tina to taunt Nancy in her nightmares. When Nancy falls asleep in school, Tina appears inside a bloody, transparent body bag calling Nancy's name. Her body is dragged across the hallways luring Nancy into Freddy's lair. Subsequently, when Nancy discovers that Freddy is about to kill Rod in jail, Tina appears once again in the bloody body bag, calling her name. Once Nancy seemingly defeats Freddy by stripping him of his power, she steps outside the next morning where Tina is shown alive. When Nancy enters Glen's car to go to school, the top comes down and suddenly locks them in.

Although Tina doesn't physically appear in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985), she is referenced when Jesse Walsh and Lisa Webber discovered Nancy Thompson's diary and began to read some of the pages. Archive footage of Tina is shown in the meta-sequel Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994).

In Freddy vs. Jason (2003), Tina appears during flashback scenes in Freddy's introduction. However, she was originally meant to have a larger role. In the original script written by Damian Shannon and Mark J. Swift, Tina appears in Lori Campbell's first nightmare of Freddy Krueger. Bloody, affixed to the ceiling, and still clothed in her blue nightshirt, Tina tells Lori the following: "Freddy is coming back. It's okay to be afraid, Lori. We were all afraid. Warn your friends...warn all your friends." However, this version of the script was scrapped and Tina was excluded from the final version of the film.^[4]

In the 2010 reboot, Gray is renamed Christina "Kris" Fowles. Kris is shown going to the Springwood Diner to meet with her ex-boyfriend, Dean Russell, who falls asleep at the table and is murdered in his dream by Freddy, although in the real world it appears that he cutting his own throat. At Dean's funeral, Kris discovers a photograph of them as children, but doesn't have any memories of him before high school. Kris finds herself as the target of the disfigured man when she falls asleep and begins to do what she can to stay awake. Jesse Braun shows up at her house to keep her company while she sleeps, but Kris is murdered by Freddy in her dreams.

A claymation version of Tina appears in the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010).^[5]

In literature

Tina appears in the novelization of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street.

In merchandise

Tina is included in NECA's "Ultimate Freddy Krueger". Her face, replicating one of the dream sequences from the film, appears as a side item featured in the package.^[6]

Conception

In Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy: The Making of Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street,^[7] Amanda Wyss noted the parallels between Tina and Marion Crane from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho stating:

"The neat thing about my character, I thought, was that she appeared to be a little bit of a red herring. You almost think Tina's going to be the heroine at the beginning, in a way. It's a little bit of a nod to Hitchcock, I think. And I found that interesting and fun."

When discussing the differences between Nancy and Tina, Wyss noted that she viewed Tina as a victim of a dysfunctional home life, saying:

"I think Tina was living in a home where her mom was drinking and there was just not that much value on life. She simply looked for ways to escape the life that she had. Whereas I think people pictured Nancy as the girl that got straight A's in school, and she did what was in front of her, and she did it well. But I don't think Tina was as much of a survivor. I just don't think she had the tools to fight the force of Freddy."

In Welcome to Our Nightmares: Behind the Scene with Today's Horror Actors^[8] by Jason Norman, Wyss described Tina as a very difficult character to portray stating, "Tina is a full and complex character and she was very challenging to play. I prepared for my role by really sinking into every detail about her in the script and just letting her come alive within me."

Casting

Wyss was sent the script for A Nightmare on Elm Street and brought in to read for Wes Craven. Subsequently, she was called back to read lines with Heather Langenkamp. Craven was impressed with the chemistry between the two and cast her as Tina and Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson.^[9]