Freddy Krueger's most creative kills all stem from his fear: fire. Several years before the events of A Nightmare On Elm Street, he killed many people and was known as the Springwood Slasher. The parents of his child victims wanted to get revenge on him and tried to kill him in a boiler room by setting him on fire.
In Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) it is established that Krueger gets his powers from dream demons and can be killed by pulling him out of the dream world. His secret daughter Maggie (Lisa Zane) ends up luring him into reality, blowing him up with a pipe bomb, and freeing the demons.