2003’s Freddy Vs Jason was a film many horror fans have been waiting for since the 80s, and for the most part, it was a highly entertaining film.  Even Entertainment Weekly kinda liked it.  Not everyone did of course, but it was mostly a surprise.  As a hardcore fan of the Friday the 13th series, one can’t help to point out how one-sided the film is.  It’s hard to argue that it isn’t basically a Nightmare On Elm Street movie guest-starring Jason.  After all, the plot surrounds Freddy getting antsy that the kids in Springwood aren’t dreaming about him, thus not being scared, and thus not being able to kill.  Why Freddy needs for the kids to know who he is to be able to enter their dreams is still an unanswered question, it was never a problem in the previous films.  However, because of this problem, Freddy taps into Jason while the big lug is dormant and cons him into going to Springwood to stir up some teenage slaughtering terror, only to bring up murmurings of Freddy’s name (which somehow causes him to enter dreams again).  The con works, and Freddy’s finally able to terrorize kids again, but now Jason’s stealing the body count, so Freddy’s gotta get rid of him, thus we start to get the slugfest we’ve been waiting for.  Even in the Dreamworld, Freddy has a tough time with Jason…until an awfully convenient plot detail emerges: Jason is afraid of water.

Every Friday The 13th fan: “What?”

He is so afraid of water he won’t touch it; a spray of water is like a barrier he won’t cross.
Again, every Friday The 13th fan: “WHAT?”

It’s okay folks, it’s subliminal!  Oh wait, no it isn’t.  That’s the lazy way to describe it.  To have that as a subliminal fear, Jason would’ve had to show signs of that prior in the real world and he just wouldn’t have been aware of it.  However…

The above is one of many hot nubile chicks that gets naked to frolic in the water that Jason has NO problem going in after, often snatching them from under water.
Even in the ridiculous Jason Takes Manhattan…he’s swimming from the sunk boat in the middle of the ocean somewhere outside of New Jersey to Manhattan island.  It’s pretty damn obvious he’s had no problems with water just because he had that accident as a child (supposed drowning, actual drowning, depends on who you ask).  Nothing previously would suggest water would cripple Jason down into a bald Chunk from The Goonies, or if this was subliminal, him walking around the banks of the water rather than walking right INTO the water to get after his prey.  It took years and finally I realized how this has happened.
Now, Freddy is a smart chap, that’s part of the fun of his character.  He’s smart and fun.  He must’ve had a continency plan set up ahead of time before he decided to con Jason into running amok in Springwood.  Judging by his surprise at seeing Jason clam up at the mere sprinkling of water in the dream world, Freddy may not have known the details involved, but I’m damn sure now he had his shit prepared ahead of time.  Before making his way into Jason’s hibernating corpse, it is safe to assume Freddy was moping around constantly in the dreamworld, unable to kill teens for many years, until he conjured up this plan.  He must’ve known about Jason’s unstoppable record, going on rampages until briefly stopped, but never killed (though many tried).  It was until Freddy encountered a man who seemed to know how to probe around in people’s minds that he realized he can make his plan work finally.  Freddy seemed like a fearless Juggernaut, so he wanted this man to probe Jason and find what deep secrets he could have so Freddy can use them against him.

This man was Cobb, an extractor and an expert in dream sharing, something Freddy was familiar with, especially due to the events in The Dream Warriors and The Dream Master.  With Cobb’s profession of jumping into other people’s dreams, taking out secrets, and selling them to the person’s rival, Freddy knew this was the guy.  He likely followed Cobb around in his limbo state with his wife Mal, creating their great world together, studying just what kind of dream rogue this Cobb truly is.

When it was time to make his move, Freddy began trying to make contact with Cobb, bringing up the job of a lifetime.

Of course, there was Freddy’s own appearance that, rightfully so, made Cobb initially suspicious, thus kept turning the evil burnt dream Imp feeling rejected.  Freddy would eventually try again with a more humane looking approach, but with some authority to boot.

And to his surprise, it worked.  He talked Cobb into going into Jason’s dream state to look for clues on how to bring the slaughtering giant down in case he got out of control.  Now all he had to do is sit back while Cobb got his crew together and invade Jason’s hockey-mask hidden head.  Since the task sounded easy, everyone assumes Jason is an idiot retard, everyone was on board pretty quick.

Things didn’t go so well for their first trip.  Luckily, Freddy isn’t in control of these dreams, so when they die, they wake right back up.  Freddy believes this is because of that blasted dream contraption the government made for Solders to train that Cobb uses, and is plugged into.  No wonder when his signature self got so frustrated with Cobb not listening with the first few attempts, Freddy killed him, but Cobb kept coming back.

Cobb’s crew dived back into Jason’s head, and got farther.  Freddy monitored from afar, but what he didn’t know is that while they searched far and wide in Jason’s head, they kept coming up with nothing.  Nothing scares this garden-tool loving behemoth.  Cobb couldn’t come forth to tell Mr. Krueger that, no way.  After several attempts, he finally decided to try something most think is impossible but he knows is perfectly possible.  It’s just extremely difficult.  During the maze of Jason’s mind, Cobb witnessed memories of Jason’s drowning, and an idea sprung from there.

What if Cobb performed an inception on Jason Voorhees?  He did it before after all, he knows it can be done.  All he has to do is dive in as far as he can into Jason’s dreamy state and plant the seed of Jason being afraid of the thing that was the most traumatic to him as a child: drowning in Crystal Lake?  Sure, Cobb noticed that the rotten bastard didn’t seem to flinch at anything, and the memories show he’s had no problem with water before, but what if he made it seem like it was subliminal, make Jason slowly realize he’s actually afraid of water.  It seemed like an impossible task, but Cobb knew he could do it.  How could he make it seem like a genuine thought though?  He roamed Jason’s memories around Crystal Lake.

Then it hit him.  Jason drowned because he wasn’t a very good swimmer.  Why wasn’t he a very good swimmer?  He was at a summer camp on a lake, while his mother was employed at as a cook there, so he surely was at the camp many summers.  Perhaps she mothered him too much to really try swimming lessons?  Cobb started from there.  He thought of his buddy Eames to play the part of Jason’s mom, convincing Jason that water is bad, very bad, and that he shouldn’t mess with swimming lessons.  But given that Jason’s intellect, while cunning as a predator, doesn’t seem to process things too well, Cobb decided to do it himself.  Besides, his crew was beginning to hate him for the constant slaughtering they were subjected to each time they dived into Jason’s head.  Plus, according to memory, all one had to do to pretend to be Jason’s mom was put on a damn sweater.

All Cobb had to do was play with a distant memory of Jason’s, and it’ll take care of itself from there, badabingo!  Of course, tracing far back proved to be another task, as he had to keep going without getting slaughtered.  But he made it.  And then he put on Mommy’s sweater to do the job.

It was itchy at first, it’s not quite the suits he’s used to, but he thought he got the hang of it.
When his inception was set and done, he had to make one last test, and by doing that, he needed to see a reaction from Jason.

Success!
Now Freddy has something to go off of.  Now about that payment.

That son of a bitch bastard from 1000 maniacs tricked Cobb into doing a job for free?  Well, fuck telling Freddy exactly what that fear is, let him figure it out for himself.  Mention pretending to be mommy and it’ll go from there.  Freddy wasn’t too happy about the vagueness, but given the results in the film, he thought Cobb’s crew did a bang-up job making Jason a total wuss around water!
Now that sequence makes sense.  Thank you Nol-Tang!

Caution: this is outright parody.  The author (for lack of a better term) of the article loves the films of Chris Nolan, and the studios that lets him do his thing, this is not a slam on his awesome work, so please WB, be kind