10 Most Tragic Batman Villains

The DC Animated Universe changed a lot about DC Comics, even back when it first hit airwaves with Batman: The Animated Series. By far the most important change it made to Batman's rogues gallery was its tragic reimagining of Mr. Freeze, which came in the Emmy Award-winning Heart of Ice.

What had for decades been another mad scientist with a weird gimmick was turned into a good man whose heart was frozen by a cruel world. Originally a brilliant scientist by the name of Victor Fries, his only goal when it came to anything cold was to preserve the body of his wife, who was sick with an incurable illness, with the idea being that she would remain frozen until a cure could be found.

But since he was technically using company equipment without permission, his boss came in and ordered the machine turned off, which would assuredly doom Victor's wife. His boss, rather than listen to his pleas, chose to instead kick him into a table covered in the chemicals Victor used to preserve his wife Nora, mutating his body to only be able to function in extreme cold.

You would think his life couldn't get any worse, and indeed this point is where other interpretations that use this origin diverge, but the DCAU doesn't stop there. His wife eventually IS cured... and then runs off with her doctor, leaving Victor alone.

His body breaks down from the chemicals inside it over the next several years, culminating in the episode of Batman Beyond that focuses on him, where he finally dies after being betrayed by everyone one last time, telling Batman that he was the only one who cared whether he lived or died.

The life of Victor Fries is a life of perpetual misery, and how Gotham takes good people, tears them apart, and leaves them to pick up the pieces. Who else could possibly be more tragic?