We like to think that every single shot of our favorite movies was carefully crafted to serve the story -- out of love for the cinema, a sense of artistic integrity, or a burning desire to see Van Damme do the splits just one more time. And sometimes, that's true. Your favorite scene might be a work of art for art's sake alone. Other times, it'll turn out that your favorite scene is really only there to serve as a giant middle finger, perhaps to some arrogant caterer who refused to make mini-cheesesteaks for the craft services table. For example ...

6 Producer Bob Shaye Won't Stop Messing With The Nightmare On Elm Street Movies

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New Line Cinema, founded by Bob Shaye in 1967, is often referred to as The House that Freddy Built, due to the breakout success of New Line poster boy Freddy Krueger. And that's fairly surprising, because while the bulk of A Nightmare on Elm Street was solid and inventive horror, that ending was plain terrible. In case you need a refresher: After defeating Freddy, young Nancy leaves home, thinking the nightmare is at last over. But somebody wasn't done: Nancy's mom suddenly transmogrifies into a budget sex doll, right before Freddy takes her from behind. That sounded dirtier than we intended.

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Don't mock her. She has a terminal case of Stretch Armstrong Syndrome.

The movie wasn't supposed to end that way. Writer/director Wes Craven, foolishly hoping to create standalone horror haute cuisine, and not 114 subsequent horror Twinkies, had always planned on a solid ending. But when Shaye insisted on a "hook" to leave the possibility of a sequel or 10, the crew gave it to him ... by quickly slapping some makeup on a "squishy" stand-in dummy and yanking it through a window in a scene that Freddy Krueger himself gigglingly described as "pretty silly shit."

But still, Shaye got his way. That scene was shot spitefully, but not solely out of spite -- for that, we look at A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. Shaye hounded director Jack Sholder relentlessly, because he wanted to play a specific role in the film himself. Sholder denied Shaye, insisting he "needed a real actor" for the part, because they were making a movie, not a producer wankfest. Shaye threatened to fire him for it. Since a paycheck trumps integrity every time, Sholder caved and gave him a part.

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Spoiler: It wasn't the part Shaye wanted.

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"We used to be able to call people gay as an insult, you see."

Sholder sent Shaye -- with his two young daughters in tow -- to Maynard and Zed's favorite sex shop downtown to pick out his own wardrobe for the big scene. Here is a still from that scene, featuring Shaye as "really gross bondage guy" on the right.