She first appears in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) as a teenager hunted in her dreams by enigmatic serial killer Freddy Krueger.

[2][1] The origins of Nancy began with a conversation that Wes Craven had with his daughter Jessica, which led to him reevaluating his 1982 film Swamp Thing and the way he had portrayed women up until that point.

[6] Craven approached Langenkamp in 1986 to ask if he could include her Nancy character in the A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors script that he was writing.

[14] Mara stated her portrayal is different than the original, performed by Langenkamp, and refers to her as "socially awkward and timid and really doesn't know how to connect with people".

[16] The character's hair was supposed to be entirely gray and white, and Wes Craven had a wig made but was ultimately unsatisfied; deciding for Nancy to have a streak of gray—which would remain in both Dream Warriors and New Nightmare.

[17] For the 1984 film, costume designer Dana Lyman conceptualized Nancy's white pajamas that the character wore during her encounters with Freddy.

In this film, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) is a middle-class teenage girl with divorced parents and is dating a boy named Glenn Lantz, who lives across the street from her.

[20] After her friend, Tina Gray has nightmares and her mother leaves town, Nancy and Glenn decide to have a sleepover in order to comfort her.

Nancy realizes the teenagers inhabiting the hospital are the surviving children of the parents who killed Freddy when one of the patients, Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette), pulls her into one of her nightmares.

After several nightmares of a disfigured man, Craven tells her she is the target of an ancient entity taking on a scarier form of Freddy.

When people in Nancy's high school begin dying in their sleep, she joins her boyfriend Quentin Smith (Kyle Gallner) in an investigation into their shared nightmares.

Nancy's mother (Connie Britton) admits to them that all the kids in the preschool were molested by a man named Fred Krueger, the school gardener.

[30] The character appears in the 1991 short story collection The Nightmares on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger's Seven Sweetest Dreams.

In the story "Asleep at the Wheel," Freddy and Nancy are long dead, and they are considered urban legends or the result of mass hysteria due to Springwood's infamous history.

The pretentious band Nancy Thompson Grave Watch, which includes songwriter and guitarist Ian, rents the dilapidated house at 1428 Elm Street for musical inspiration.

Nancy makes an appearance in the final issue of the crossover comic series Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors.

Englund interprets this large following as a result of Heather Langenkamp having a "Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz element to her", as well as the community identifying with the "strong" and "survivor" aspects of her.

[38] Jada Toys included Nancy alongside Freddy in the release of the die-cast model car of the 1958 Cadillac from the original film.

[40] Artist Matthew Therrien included Nancy alongside Freddy in his "Final Girls & Cinema Survivors" digital series.

Muir describes her dysfunctional home life as attributing to her preparedness and courage to face the dark truth (Freddy Krueger).

He cites her interactions with several male characters, noting she is not submissive to any of them and is, therefore, self-reliant and in control of her sexuality, unlike many other popular heroines within the genre.

[2] Writer Shannon Keating states she surpasses the stereotypes of this trope coined by Clover and refers to Nancy as Freddy's equal in audience popularity.

[46] Psychologist Kelly Bulkeley compares Nancy to Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz in that they both find their inner strength within their dreams to conquer what's troubling them in the real world.

[48] Film critic James Berardinelli writes that A Nightmare on Elm Street is Nancy's story rather than Freddy's and attests similarities to Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley in Alien (1979) due to her resourcefulness.