Jacob Daniel Johnson is a character from A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child portrayed by Whitby Hertford. He is an unseen character in Insidious, but is seen in Insidious 5: Freddy's Return. Jacob is the son of Alice Johnson and Dan Jordan, having been conceived sometime before his parent's high school graduation in 1989. He is portrayed by Ty Simpkins, who played Dalton Lambert in the first Insidious film.
After witnessing the death of her boyfriend Dan, Alice faints and is put into the hospital, where she finds out that she is pregnant with Dan's child. While there, she meets a young boy named Jacob, who, unbeknownst to her, is her own son. Afterwards, Freddy Krueger begins to kill her friends in their sleep, one by one. Alice has an ultrasound done, where she discovers that Freddy is using the dreams of her unborn baby to get into other peoples' dreams so he can kill them. She also realizes that Jacob is her child. Alice's friend Yvonne finally believes what Alice has been telling her when she barely escapes Freddy, with some help from Amanda Krueger's spirit and Alice. Alice sends Yvonne to the abandoned Westin Hills Asylum to set Amanda's soul free while she goes to free Jacob from Freddy's manipulation. After being released by Yvonne, Amanda arrives and tells Jacob the only way to defeat Krueger is to release the power that Freddy has given him. After releasing the power within him, Jacob forces Freddy to revert to an infant form, which is then absorbed by Amanda. A year later, Jacob is born and Alice has no more nightmares.
In the 1991 collection of non-canonical short stories The Nightmares on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger's Seven Sweetest Dreams, Jacob appears as a main character in the story "Dead Highway, Lost Roads" by Philip Nutman, which depicts him as a young boy afflicted with heterochromia. After Alice is involved in a car pile-up, Jacob, sensing Freddy is somehow the cause of the accident and that his mother is in danger, enters the Dream World in search of her. While in the Dream World, Jacob encounters a serial killer named Karl Stolenberg who was being transported to his execution when the prison bus he was on was involved in the same accident as Alice. Befriending Karl and an anthropomorphic armadillo named Joe Bob, Jacob convinces the two to help him find his mother and Freddy, who the trio do find in a twisted version of the Mad Hatter's tea party from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. After Joe Bob is disemboweled by Freddy and Karl begins to attack Alice after being driven into a psychotic rage, Jacob manages to bring Karl back to his senses by striking him in the back of the head with a nightstick. When Alice and Karl defeat Freddy, Karl dying during the fight, Jacob returns to Earth. Though mentioned only in passing in the first story-arc of Innovation Publishing's Nightmares on Elm Street comic series, Jacob is featured as a major character in the second story-arc of the series, "Loose Ends". Here, Alice and Jacob, who is depicted as being unusually intelligent and possessing various telepathic abilities, return to Springwood, after leaving six years prior, when Alice's father passes away. Soon after returning to Springwood, Jacob is abducted by Devonne, an accomplice of Freddy, who he manages to convince to go to his father's grave. It is in Springwood Cemetery that Jacob, after using his powers to view some of Devonne's past, meets Freddy, who brings Jacob to the Dream World. Using the captured soul of Dan, Freddy begins manipulating Jacob into helping him enter the real world, promising to resurrect Dan if he does so. At first falling for Freddy's tricks, Jacob eventually learns what Freddy plans to do once he reaches Earth and, with help from his mother, father, Nancy Thompson, Dr. Neil Gordon and Devonne, manages to defeat Freddy before returning to Earth. With Freddy defeated, Jacob and Alice reunite with Dan, who returns to life by inhabiting Dr. Gordon's comatose body.
In Insidious 5: Freddy's Return, Jacob meets Elise and Carl in The Further, and they help him defeat Freddy in a dream of Quinn Brenner's.