Batman's Most Vengeful Foe: Mr Freeze | Batman The Animated Series 

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One detail I really like about BTAS Mr. Freeze is he's the one rogue who has no clear beef with Batman. We don't even see him during the trial. His vengeance and his grief is so personal that nothing matters but his wife and the man who did this to them.

I remember the first time I watched “Meltdown” and I heard his line: “Believe me, you’re the only one who ever cares”, I broke down too.

"Boyle puts on the facade of a humanitarian, but inside, he's soulless." Just like most corporate leaders, really.

What BTAS did for Mr Freeze is they took a silly villain and completely changed him into a tragic cold figure with a heartbreaking origin. I would say all of the episodes that featured Mr Freeze were some of the show's best ever especially Heart Of Ice which is a chilling classic

There is a quote that sums up TAS Mr Freeze very well: 'Heroes sacrifice themselves to save the world. Villains sacrifice the world to save the person they love.' Freeze will do anything, even endanger innocents, to save his wife Nora. And yet, despite his cruelty, he is not completely heartless. In all 3 of his stories from BTAS, Freeze confronts someone who is far worse than him. The Selfish Boyle, who turned Victor into a frost zombie, the deluded Walker, who wanted to Freeze the world and give himself immortality and the greedy surgeon who wanted money. Freeze, despite claiming to have no emotions, displays clear emotions in each of these stories. Grief, anger, joy, sadness and despair. And in his subsequent stories after heart of ice, he shows a more compassionate side. He stopped Walker and his mad plans to Freeze the world, adopted the Inuit child and told Batman to save him and Nora at the climax of Subzero. Even in his final appearance in Beyond, Freeze saved Batman from Blight and forced him to leave before the building blew up. He was a man driven by revenge, but under the right circumstances, he could be driven to heroic acts. Honestly Paul should have just let Victor's story end after subzero. It Honestly felt kinda petty how he and the rest of the crew brought Freeze back, only to turn him into a remorseless monster. I mean, it is like they wanted to give the team from subzero the finger for giving Freeze a happy ending, without their permission. I know a little extreme but that's how I see it. The fact that Timm wanted Nora to stay dead and keep Freeze as a Vengeance obsessed criminal really speaks volumes about how the crew viewed both Victor and Nora. Arkham knight, while I do not care for it, at least gave Victor and Nora a definitive ending, even if it was very bitter sweet.

Ive always loved the line "Think of it, Batman. To never again walk on a summer's day with a hot wind in your face and a warm hand to hold. Oh, yes. I'd kill for that." It really shows how you really don't realize what you have until it's gone.

Batman 's line to Ferris Boyle... "Good night... Humanitarian!" Still hits hard!

This is why Cold Comfort is the only stain on an otherwise perfect Mr.Freeze record. I do love most of the New Adventures, but this is an undeniable misstep. Freeze was happy, even if he was dying or losing his body, he wouldn't come back to terrify Gotham unless it involved his obession over Nora.

Honestly I'm glad they changed Mr. Freeze Honestly he is just not the most vengeful, but the most tragic and saddest villain. No matter what happened, the universe would screw him over. He stopped commiting crimes twice only for fate to keep pulling him back. He is also so brutal since we actually see him murder people on screen which is also chilling when you think about it.

I loved Meltdown's end to Freeze and how Terry thinks he's really changed, or trying to, and Bruce expects him to go back to old ways... And after all of that, the exchange back in the cave Terry: I guess you were right, after all. Bruce: We both were.

I can't help thinking that Freeze's final outing brought him full circle to his original trauma. Nora's not involved this time, but instead it's his own life threatened by a cavalier industrialist's disinterest in human life. In that context it's really no wonder that he snapped as hard as he did.

Meltdown is such a great send off for Mr. Freeze at least.

I think his Beyond design is honestly the best rendition of the character I've ever seen

Arkham games treated Freeze justice while also giving him and Nora a bittersweet ending in Knight.

I think it is possible to make Mr. Freeze a villain while keeping Nora but to this right, you need Nora to play a bigger role as a person trying to save her husband, but thanks to his crimes, people reject him and some attack him out of revenge and these attacks harm Nora, which turn in back to crime and dedicate himself to purge the criminal underworld violently in an attempt to clean his criminal record but his method was highly questionable and horrific. In the next episode which could be a recon of Cold Comfort, we see Mr. Freeze return to crush the wealthy class and corrupt leaders of Gotham, and Batman and Nora try to stop him before it's too late but unaware of both, Mr. Freeze revival it's too late for him and if he wanted to return, what kind of life it would be if he just a head in a jar and this is the only way he can avenge Nora if he eliminates the corrupt who encourage the criminal underworld to fester, so he could to forces on revenge against his past over Nora who is still alive. That is my opinion but what do you think.

I think that Freeze's actions in the Batman-Superman Adventures make sense when you consider the fact that in Batman Beyond, he's indicated to have severe systemic organ damage similar to Derek Powers/Blight. *The brain is an organ.* Blight is shown to have sudden severe outbursts of rage he didn't have before the accident that made him what he is, and they get worse as time passes. It is very likely that Freeze's condition had similar effects on his mind. I think that is one of the more important things to consider when it comes to some of Batman's villains. Joker, Clayface, and Mr Freeze were once different people before the accidents that created their villain identities. But after the accidents that created them... how much of that person is left? When the brain has been warped by outside forces, it can be difficult to say if the person after the accident is the same as the one before it, or a completely new person. Clayface's brain is literally playdough, and we can't begin to imagine what that fundamental material change to his brain did to him as a person. Is he still the person he once was, or is he just a blob of animate clay that has fooled itself into thinking he is still the same person in a similar vein to Swamp Thing? It is likely that, by the time of the Batman-Superman Adventures, whatever was left of the man he once was is long gone, leaving only a monster thinking itself to still be a man. The Joker, in TAS, was once a career criminal who was dunked in acid and got his skin bleached and hair turned green, going insane afterwards. In a Year One comic, it actually goes into how exposure to that chemical didn't just disfigure him physically, but also twisted him mentally. If the same goes for TAS continuity, is Joker the same person he was before the accident that created him, or did the man he once was die in that acid bath? I think that the same may be the case for Mister Freeze. It is already clear in TAS that he's not the man he was before the accident. Even at his worst he wasn't anything like he was in Batman-Superman Adventures, but the reveal that his body is literally coming apart could easily be the explanation for that. However, unlike the Blight example above, the damage done to his brain is not just leading him to cold rage, but also a bitter despair and a suicidal depression. The damage done to his body and mind were already severe enough to start with. However, the fact that after several years it is becoming worse would mean that his mental state would get worse with time. The mind isn't separate from the body, and anything that impacts the brain changes the person we are. By the time of the Batman-Superman Adventures, there is likely nothing left of the man he once was, with him instead becoming a monster raging at the loss of everything that made him human.

I like the angle some writers take on Freeze's motives where he's the most... normal, I guess, of Batman's villains. Not that he's well-adjusted, but he's way less prone to supervillain theatrics, and being driven by a specific loss means there's a pretty narrow set of things that will get him invested. It's been fun seeing him in Ram V's current Tec run as an outsider who doesn't care about the villain drama.

Lots of people talk bout how Batman’s rogues represent different parts of him. But since nobody I’ve seen has mentioned Mr. Freeze, I might as well. Freeze embodies Batman’s dedication and obsession. As much as Batman’s life is tied to “The Mission”, Freeze is tied to “Nora”. Freeze is what would happen if Batman devoted himself fully to that mission and cast everything else aside, becoming the most efficient and ruthless version of himself. A Batman with no room for anything beyond his goal. No room to take an orphaned boy just like himself in: A Batman who’s cold and dead inside.

I always imagined that Nora's terminal diagnosis has given her a deep understanding of the value of life. I think it only makes sense that she'd be opposed to the extremes Fries.

I must admit I have mixed feelings about the episode "Cold Comfort" myself. On one hand it was probably the only way they could give Freeze a reason to actually appear again in what was essentially the new series at the time after his appearance in Subzero. On the other hand it definitely sucks that they had just given Freeze is happy ending just to turn him into a bad guy all over again. Honestly, had no one in the 80s or 90s ever heard of character growth?

I definitely think Freeze’s arch is best ended in a bitter sweet way like Subzero. I really liked how they handled it in the Arkham Knight DLC and how it gave Nora some agency in the story. I regularly will switch back and forth between preferring Micheal Ansara and Maurice LeMarch as my favorite Freeze voice

Pre-BTAS, Mr. Freeze was campy. Post-BTAS, Mr. Freeze is now tragic.

"Believe me... You are the only one who cares..." That final line always sticks with me. I find Freeze to be a very relatable villain. One of the more empathetic examples of what we turn into when pushed to a breaking point.

It's interesting to me how Freeze had originally had a terrible revenge plan, but after Batman foiled it: He got a good revenge plan.

Thank God they retconned the horrible New 52? Comics where Nora is saved and you learn she was just some completely random woman Freeze was obsessed with that had no relation to him at all. She was just a random frozen woman he became attached to and they had never met before. That was quickly redone and they were written to be married again lol.

I love how Batman beyond 's new suit looks. His face being little more than shadow in the glass, with the only detail being his goggles really denotes how much of a shell of the man he once was he'd become.

Victor fries is the best supervillain in animated Batman history, while his original comic self wasn’t that great but was funny, his newer incarnations are so tragic and incredibly written mostly that he’s able to transcend the screen and still be popular after Batman and robin, and I’m saying that as an ENJOYER of that film, so let’s everyone let that sink in and have a happy holidays, hopefully a wonderful new year too, much love to the world ❤

I hope Matt Reeves does something with Mr. Freeze in his Batman movies and gives this underrated character the love he deserves.

i also think it was a stupid idea to bring Mr. Freeze back after Sub Zero but at least it gave us Meltdown one of my absolute favorites Beyond episodes

When it comes to original concepts and creations for the DCAU, are you more of a fan of the creation of Harley Quinn or the reinvention of Mr. Freeze?

You know a great detail in Meltdown? How they foreshadowed that Mr. Freeze's condition would return. His "cured" cloned body was bald, yet the baldness was brought on by his frozen condition; he had hair before he became Mr. Freeze.

The frozen billionaire head thing was semi-accurate. They actually froze the whole bodies, but as funding and space got to be a bigger issue.... It happened, it just wasn't the original plan.

Batman: Subzero is in my opinion a more proper Batman & Robin movie then well... Batman & Robin, and the ending of it gives me so much love for the character of Mr Freeze where it seems he was finally at peace Its really hard for me to accept TNBA's take on Mr freeze to even be canon even if they try to explain Nora's fate in the newer comics, It does feel like a Strong end to a Villain who lost so much to finally accept Nora being alive and cured just to live the rest of his days in Isolation is such a beautiful send off to the character.

Michael Ansara's voicing of Mr. Freeze is up there with Adam West voicing The Grey Ghost. He brought Mr. Freeze to life for me.

Yeah, both the visual design and story of his Batman Beyond version really surpasses his TNBA version. I also like Bruce and Terry's response to Freeze's end. With Terry thinking Bruce was right about not trusting Freeze, but Bruce saying that they were both right, since Terry was the ONE person who without any prior bias, wanted to see the best in him.

While at the time I thought the spider head thing was pretty damn cool, as I got older I ultimately came down on the side of not liking the direction of the character arc (though I agree Beyond redeemed it somewhat).

It’s still a bit weird how in subzero they kidnap Barbara because she has the same rare blood type as Nora (I know he lied about the transfusion, but it still seems to be the reason), but then it’s shown that that blood type is AB negative. While that is the least common blood type in the US, anyone with AB- blood can also receive blood or organs from anyone with O-,A-, or B- blood, all of which are more common than AB-. The only blood type that can only receive itself is O-

what a great character, I still remember watching heart of ice as a small child back in the early 90s and while I didnt pick up most of the episode my god, it hits you like a truck when you are an adult what a masterclass of writing in television

I actually really love how in the movie Barabara is never subdued by Freeze. You kind of expect her to be simply beacuse she isn't 1. costumed 2. Batman. I expected she would be subdued and Batman And Robin would come just in the nick of time to fight Freeze and save her. I was plesently surprised by how much ass she kicks as just Barabara.

I liked the inclusion in the first episode of the line "Revenge is a dish best served cold," which is both thematically relevant and a nod to Michael Ansara's time as a Klingon on Star Trek the Original Series.

Personally I'm most fond of Freeze being one of the few Batman villains motivated by love. It's not Nora who turns him evil *or* good, but his love for her. He's unable to process his emotions. I prefer when his relationship is at least initially wholesome - it makes him feel tragic, as opposed to the more obsessive types Batman has dealt with before. Mr Freeze is defined by how his love and emotions change him, and it is through those he becomes a cold villain. And only through the source of his pain being healed, *or* him processing the emotions away from the pain (such as his condition) can he be redeemed.

“Revenge is best served cold Batman.”

dont tell me phantasm is 30 years old. in my head it came out no more than 10 years ago

New Batman and Freeze V Blight was a great fight.

Personally I just like to imagine that Cold comfort never happened and it was never explained how Mr. freeze ended up like he did in Batman Beyond.

I completely shriveled up when you said Mask of the Phantasm and 30th anniversary in the same sentence.

You know, I completely missed the boil thing. I thought it was because it hints to his true nature as an unsightly, pus filled, and painful sore.

Can I just say, Freeze is an example of how tragedy and trauma can lead people to harming others, like seriously, the fact that Ferris only cared once he pulled a gun just to live really says a lot about how bad Frieze was treated before having the series of life ruining experiences happen to him, it is truly tragic that we still know there is potential redemption with him compared to Boyle

I really liked how Batman Arkham Knight tied up Victor Fries' and Nora Fries' story.

Such a perfect video for this season. ❄️ I loved every single minute of yet another thorough, engaging and enjoyable analysis of a BTAS villain, Mr. Freeze being one of my definite favorites. For someone that revisits SubZero promos from VHS releases and Cartoon Network on a regular basis, taking a trip down memory lane from Heart of Ice, Deep Freeze, The Batman Adventures Holiday Special and the aforementioned SubZero to Cold Comfort, Batman Gotham Adventures, Batman Adventures, and ultimately Meltdown, was such a joy (I prefer to ignore the events portrayed in The Adventures Continue). Thank you so much for your amazing content as usual, Serum. This one is no exception. 🤩 Happy Holidays.

mr freeze is my favorite villain ngl i really felt for the more sympathetic versions of him

I won't lie I never got to experience the btas series. But freeze being this way is the saddest villain to me

I hate the NBA episode where Freeze starts ruinning everything random people love and try to commit genocide just because he could no longer be with Nora, as if those people were at fault because of it. He went from someone who just wanted to save his wife to a petty jerk that wanted everyone to suffer just because he couldn't be with his wife.

The vengeful spirit, the one you should not have frozen.

I might make an animation or a written concept and publish it onto RU-vid as a video for feedback. I'll of course focus more on Nora and Mr Freeze's relationship because when Batman does the cool action scenes and the detective work, he'll do it, and everyone will clap at the animation quality and choreography and just general heroics but I just want to make them the protagonists with Ferris Boyle being the Antagonist. Batman is just a third party in all of this. Overall, I just want to focus on those 3 and have Batman swoop in to stop Mr. Freeze's insane plan. Batman/Bruce Wayne will have his own animated series in my universe, but for the beginning's sake, I want to pull a Scott Pilgrim Anime and focus on the other characters. I want to make 4 alternate universes. Each version go with 2 premises and explore how they would go in two ways, one being Victor's morality vs his grief, and if he gets Nora back or not, what will happen to him shortly after?

Cold Comfort was the weakest Mr. Freeze episode by far. They should have focused on Nora Fries's recovery and the time she spent in Gotham waiting for Victor to return before finally moving on with her life. It could have focused on Mr. Freeze unable to move past the trauma, or his fixation on the idealized version of his wife rather than the real, maybe flawed Nora. Instead she's another background detail combined with some sci-fi body horror. We could have jumped from Subzero straight to Batman Beyond and the storyline would have been unchanged.

its nice to see he got a fantastic adaptation on the Arkham games as well

What id have done to bring back freeze is make it a copycat villain. Like, some sick individual saw all freezes crimes and decided "hey i could do better" Alternatively, someone who was injured in a previous freeze crime wave. Maybe freeze *had* managed to clear his name, just for this once-victim of his to feel the need for revenge, framing victor as being back at it again

I haven't watch btas as a kid nor did grew up with it but you made learn why is this show is special, Mr freeze is great but I kind of wish they expand on Nora a little bit more

I had Batman sub zero on vhs as a kid and it was like my favorite movie.

Legit Thats the only movie i owned from the animated series For a reason So good Best villain forever

They gave Mr. Freeze a good end, a bad return, but fix it with a sad emotional end. He is truly a great villain.

He's also one of the best boss fights in any Batman game; Arkham City demonstrated how you were supposed to think like Batman; calculate methods to subdue him without repeating the same method while constantly avoiding pursuit in a closed off room.

Man i got a joke. Looks like mr freeze is now a ice cube head and he's body is now a broken ice Borg

Great video essay. Thanks for doing it and sharing it. I totally agree: Mr. Freeze - easily the most complex and interesting of DC Animated villains.

9:28 It doesn't really beg that question. In "Heart of Ice", Victor outright says "Once a cure has been found", indicating that there wasn't a cure for Nora's condition at the time. There was also the file containing all the medical records and blueprints of the tank as well, which described Nora's condition as "terminal". That's literally the reason why Victor froze her, so he'd have time to either search for or manufacture a cure.

If they make another Robert Pattinson Batman sequel i hope its Heart of Ice and i think Giancarlo Esposito is the perfect mr freeze.

One does wonder why Bruce didn’t look into things after meeting Freeze and help Nora before Subzero.

As AWSM as his Batman Beyond episode was, I like to think Sub Zero was the actual ending for Mr. Freeze.

I know you prefere BTAS (so do I) but could you do an essay about Terry Mcguiness? He's such an interesting character and (in my opinion) the greatest posible succesor for the Dark Knight

Mr.Freeze is my first and favorite Batman villain, I first watched BTAS Thanks to that movie Sub Zero. A tragic film with such a hopeful ending, and my neurons were activated when the credits rolled

I love your stuff. Do you plan on doing more on Batman Beyond?

I don't think I ever saw the straight to DVD Mr.Freeze movie, so seeing him in the show felt normal.

Ok usually when characters say “ your the only one who cares “ they usually mean other then themselves in some capacity, but mr freeze is being literal he doesn’t care and its really sad seeing someone get that beaten down.

Again, BTAS just makes everything better. Really broke my heart, poor Victor 😢

Oh my gosh how did I not make the boil freeze connection. I was always thinking boil the zit lol

Ahh one of the most "Grey" of Batman's "Gallery" of all of the DCAU not to mention the most Sympathetic outside of for example of the worst case of Typecasting due to dwarfism in Babydoll and the tragic girl sadly only known as "Ace" but he still did crime though he seems the most redeemable due to sympathetic possibility of Batman pooling his funds as Bruce to revive Nora where Boil didn't give a care if Victor wasn't so darn stubborn on his vengeance

Are you aware of the Webisode series that involves Nora being a supervillain? It was created within the DCAU, and involves some convoluted story about all the men disappearing if I recall correctly. It may be hard to get ahold of now, though knowing your connections, maybe not. It's worth a watch, I don't recall how long it is, but it can't be more than a hour in total. Edit: Oh my mistake. What I'm thinking of is Gotham Girls, specifically Season 3 of it, when the show tried to become serious. The season has a overall serious story that links into Subzero. Anyhow, this involves Dora Smith, who is Nora's sister. If you haven't seen it and can track it down, it's worth a watch.

I think we all wished there were most stories featuring some of batmans iconic villains, but I think some are tragically only worth 1 episode or 2 at best. Freeze certainly feels that way, you can only really use him once, you could always make his episode a LONG multi-part episode... These guys even made a movie of it, but you can't easily make multiple stories for him, for doing so will severely risk diluting him. I think Gotham made that all too obvious to me, Freeze certainly stopped being interested when Nora was gone and suddenly he some random goon for hire?

That’s why I’m glad that in the Arkham series he somewhat got a happy ending and got to be with Nora.

In Cold Comfort he looked like the lovechild of a Necron and a Cenobite

This was one of my favorite episodes of the series. The whole discussion between Bruce and Terry regarding Victor Von Frieze really shows the generational argument regarding their views. Terry is the new guy and he really wanted to give Frieze a chance. The thing that got me was what Bruce said to him, he gave him his last words and he left it at that. Terry had see things for himself. Because Bruce had seen it too many times. He understood him better. At that moment what I felt about the BTAS I always saw Bruce being sympathetic. And always was even though he still had to do a job. Until BBBS I was really hoping that he changed. But that was the whole set up. There was never going to be such a thing. When he went on that rampage it literally sent chills up my spine.

My personal favorite take on Dr.Iceberg here is the Arkham Series where I think there made a less Long winded journey to a more Focused one. In Origins we see Essentially ’Heart of Ice’ but in a more Cinematic amd Dramatic take. Setting him up as the Anti-Villain we all Love. In City,They Show what I think would’ve happened if Freeze Was a character that wasn’t bound by comic book rules. He appears in the game,Aids Batman Since he never had personal Beef with Batman. And in his side mission he gets a sorta of happy ending by getting his Wife Back to him. And Then we Have Knight and This is Probably my Favorite Ending for the Character.(I like Mr.Freeze ending in Beyond but this just feels more Natural to me) Freeze is a Twisted Reflection of Batman’s Origin Story and Motivations in a way. Just Like Freeze does everything for Nora,Bruce Does everything so that No Boy has to Watch their Parents get killed in front of them. So In Knight we get the Twisted Deconstructed ending for said Motivation.Its Heavily Shown that Were Martha and Thomas Alive,They would’ve been much better off if Bruce Wasn’t Batman. And Nora is the very same with Victor. Once she’s back she prefers to just Die Beside him rather than Living on and Causing Both Her and Victor Misery by Trying to prolong her condemned Life. With them seemingly accepting Death by the time that Bruce ended KnightFall. I think that the Story of Freeze’s Beggining,Middle and End were much more Focused here and It was a pretty good Take on the BTAS version of him.

So, _Sub-Zero_ really makes me think that someone knew who the Cryonic Man (a lesser-known Bat-foe who reads very similar to the BtAS Freeze several years before BtAS) was. It's very hard to see the similarities as a coincidence once you've both read up on that character and rewatched _Sub-Zero_

Excellent excellent video

Ferris Boyle's parents must be so proud of how their boy turned out.

12:50 oh my god

great work!

I really like Mr. Freeze in the Batman Animated Series due to the fact the he is a tragic person where he is caused to be deformed by Gothcorp including Ferris Boyle, all he cares about is Nora his wife to have a cure, is angry on how people don't show compassion for him dealing with his wife illness, and many others. Also what I liked about Mr. Freeze was how he would rely on Nora wanting him to be a better person despite his flaws. Also what made me sad was in the New Batman Adventures was how it didn't explain on how Mr. Freeze became more cruel, but I think in my opinion is that his body was weakening where he couldn't go find proper help for him to have a fixable way for his body and Nora moved on where she didn't even appreciate Mr. Freese's commitment to her. But what I liked about Batman Beyond was how Victor wanted to be a better person and helps protect Terry McGinnis, New Batman from danger. I consider Mr. Freeze an anti hero, but a tragic person because he does bad things in order to help his Wife Nora and is disappointed on how people aren't sympathetic to him for dealing with his wife's health and not liking corruption in the world where the wealthy influences in corporations causes problems in society.. I would have liked seeing a DC Movie of Mr. Freeze's origins and going after the corporation that caused his deformed including his wife's illness to progress faster.

There might be some momentary discomfort is my favorite beyond line. I’m glad they gave Freeze a proper ending. Smart

I always thought "boil" was more like a blemish rather than a hot pot of water. Mostly because he was so disgusting lol

while this topic's been done so many times you hammer in the point of the character's motivations, something I've rarely seen in those videos, and you've done it so well!(also if I may ask, where do you get those clips of the series in such high quality? all of my sources aren't that kind clearness to the video quality).

fries v... Boil. literally hot v cold.

I do like how in this boyle dosent just go wait you created cryonics, screw the other project we will be rich.

Unlike the Gotham the TV show, Nora was the most justified in bringing back cause she was always on the blurred line between suspended animation and giving up the ghost

If we can forget the new btas version of freeze and just go from the original to Batman beyond. That is within character I believe

On your point about Nora not being shown as much more than a blank slate. I think it’s fine in this case. Reason being that you can read into it that we don’t know what Nora wants, we only know what Victor wants. It highlights his character flaw of being selfish in his actions.

I love this channel!!!!!!!

Thanks!