10 Batman Fates Worse Than Death

6. Mister Freeze Becomes A Spider Robot Head... Thing - The New Batman Adventures

Mister Freeze Batman Beyond
Warner Bros.

One of the best things about Batman: The Animated Series was how it humanised the Dark Knight's rogues gallery. Plenty of episodes were great at tapping into the tragedy of most of the Bat villains, but none arguably more so than Heart of Ice, the seminal story that forever redefined Mister Freeze, and turned him into a truly legendary character.

Victor Fries was the subject of several endings over the course of the DCAU Batman shows, the first of which arrived in SubZero, a 1998 film that ended with Freeze roaming the Arctic, safe in the knowledge that a procedure funded by Bruce Wayne had saved his wife.

Victor seemed to be at peace, but it wasn't to be. He returned with a vengeance in TNBA, as it was revealed that the procedure that led to his icy condition had caused his entire body to deteriorate, leaving nothing but his head intact. Fries retains his cryo suit, but when not inside of it, he navigates his surroundings courtesy of some nifty little spider-legs that sprout out of the base... and it is the exact opposite of dignified.

After years of pain and hardship Fries thought he'd finally gotten his happy ending, only to be confronted with an entirely new level of body horror that only got worse in Batman Beyond.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.