10 Comic Characters Who Totally Changed After Appearing On Screen
2. Mister Freeze
Mr. Freeze began life as 'Mr. Zero', an inept joke of a Batman villain whose origin was nothing more complex than accidentally spilling chemicals on himself. A forgettable villain of the week, his gimmick was that he loved low temperatures and had a gun that could freeze things. Ironically, he just wasn't very cool.
That all changed with Batman: The Animated Series. The show gave him a new look and a new name, rebranding Mr. Zero as the admittedly equally silly-sounding Mr. Freeze. However, it was his new tragic backstory that turned him into the unforgettable conflicted villain he is today. In perhaps the most extreme version of the 'women in refrigerators' trope, it is revealed that everything Freeze does is motivated by his desire to save his wife Nora, who remains cryogenically frozen until he can develop a cure for her incurable disease.
Alongside this Shakespearean tragedy of a backstory came Shakespearean language, with the writers having Freeze spout such beautiful prose as:
"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... I'm beyond emotions. They've been frozen dead in me."
Freeze's debut episode of the cartoon won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program, and this far superior version of the villain was immediately adopted by the comics.