Here's a question on characterization I've always wanted to ask. How do you feel about Victor Fries? What do you like in terms of his personality and backstory? Early on he was nothing but a petty criminal, however BtAS gave him the tragic Nora story, which paved way for more development. Problem is, you can't really write him as a "villain" anymore can you? Beyond your usual "Heart Of Ice" story, any other time he's evil no longer makes sense. Not when everyone's reminding him about Nora.
Mr. Freeze is fairly unique among all of Batman’s foes in that the entire reason for his villainy is his devotion to his wife. Many of the villains have tragic pasts–Scarecrow had an extremely dysfunctional upbringing, Killer Croc was abused as a child and mocked for his appearance, Poison Ivy was experimented on and then abandoned by a manipulative man she was in love with–that serve as an explanation for why they later became villains, but often their motivations tend to be self-serving, vengeful, or based on warped logic. Victor, however, only became a villain because he truly felt he had no other choice.Â
That said, Freeze does take a bit of a more rage-driven direction after he’s irrevocably separated from Nora. In a story from The Batman Adventures called “White Christmas”, Freeze escapes from Arkham Asylum on Christmas Eve and plunges Gotham into a snow-storm, causing numerous problems for the city’s citizens. He even threatens to kill Batman before finally revealing the reason for his behavior.Â
And then you have “Cold Comfort”, an episode of The New Batman Adventures where Freeze goes on a rampage and rids people of their most prized possessions: he destroys a dinosaur skeleton painstakingly pieced together by an archaeologist over the course of decades and an artist’s masterpiece painting, and threatens both pets and children. Nora had since recovered and remarried after failing to reunite with a distant Victor, and he later reveals that years of living in the freeze suit had caused his body to decay until the only part of him that was still alive was his disembodied head. Because Victor felt great pain and misery over his staggering losses, he wanted others to feel that same despair as well, and attempts to nuke Gotham with a reverse fusion bomb because nothing would hurt Batman more than to see his beloved city destroyed. In his own words, Victor wanted to “steal hope”.
“Ironic, isn’t it? After all I did to keep my wife whole, I end up like this. You understand now why I could not return to my Nora. My treasure. There’s no hope for me… or you or your city. Everyone’s going to feel my loss.”
In the Batman Beyond episode “Meltdown”, Freeze gets a second chance at life when an experimental procedure gives him a new body that allows him to live without the use of his temperature-controlled suit. Overjoyed, he takes the opportunity to make amends for the damage he caused in his past and expresses genuine remorse towards his victims, and even begins a relationship with the doctor who performed his operation. But when it’s revealed that the procedure was a failure and the doctor calmly attempts to terminate him despite his pleas, Freeze escapes before returning in his suit and ruthlessly killing the doctor. At the episode’s conclusion Terry McGinnis tries to save Freeze from perishing in an explosion, but he refuses and sadly tells Terry that he’s the only person who cares whether he lives or dies.Â
So while Freeze was originally driven solely by the selfless desire to keep his beloved wife alive, I do think he fully has the capacity to be a villain even without Nora being in the picture. The greatest tragedy of Victor’s life is not what happened to his wife, but that he was forced to be a villain for so long that he lost himself entirely and no longer knows any other way to exist.Â
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