Post-Crisis version
Following the 1985 "Crisis on Infinite Earths" storyline that rebooted DC Comics' continuity, Mr. Freeze's origin is retroactively revamped to match the one conceived by Paul Dini for Batman: The Animated Series. Dr. Victor Fries is a brilliant expert in cryogenics in Gotham City. As a child, he was fascinated with cryonic preservation and its potential to preserve and prolong life, and liked to freeze animals. His parents are horrified by his "hobby" and send him to a strict boarding school, where he is miserable, bullied and abandoned by his parents. As a result, he feels detached from humanity until going to college and meeting Nora, the woman he ultimately marries.
Eighteen months after Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, Nora contracts a fatal disease, so Fries begins developing a freeze ray for GothCorp to preserve her in suspended animation until a cure can be found. Fries' boss Ferris Boyle decides to tell the Mob about the gun, leading Batman to create a team of specialists to help him do his job better. As Fries puts Nora in suspended animation, Boyle interrupts and tampers with the experiment, resulting in an explosion that kills Nora. Fries survives, but the chemicals in the freeze ray lower his body temperature to the point that he must wear a cryogenic suit to survive. He swears revenge on those responsible for the death of his wife (whom he talks to often) and becomes Mr. Freeze, the first superpowered villain whom Batman faces in this continuity. Eventually, Batman's operatives find Freeze, who shoots one of them with his freeze gun, but Batman eventually apprehends him.
During the "Underworld Unleashed" storyline, Mr. Freeze sold his soul to Neron in exchange for cryokinesis and temperature control where the latter ability enables him to survive in warm temperatures without use of his cryogenic suit. While planning to freeze the elderly to preserve them, Mr. Freeze was secretly planning to steal their assets causing his henchmen Ice and Cube to get concerned. Though Batman defeats Mr. Freeze, he ends up getting away. He would somehow revert to his pre-upgraded appearance causing him to sport a new cryogenic suit and wield a new freeze gun.
Initially locked in Arkham Asylum, Freeze was eventually transferred to the Gotham State Penitentiary, from where he escaped and attempted to steal technology from S.T.A.R. Labs until he was stopped and returned to prison by Batman.
During the "No Man's Land" storyline, Mr. Freeze sets up a base in the sewers which is stumbled upon by Gearhead and Tommy Mangles. Mr. Freeze finds them and uses his freeze gun on them after getting information about a storage room with canned food in it. He and Ratcatcher were defeated by Robin and arrested by Detective Mackenzie Bock with the Gotham City Police Department also bringing the frozen bodies of Gearhead and Tommy Mangles into their custody as well.
Freeze's crimes tend to involve freezing everyone and everything that he encounters so he forgoes alliances with the other criminals in Gotham, preferring to work alone. On rare occasions, he has worked with another member of Batman's rogues' gallery, usually, as an enforcer for Gotham's mob bosses, such as the Penguin during his reign or Black Mask during the return of Jason Todd.
In one of his notable team-ups, Freeze constructs a cryogenic machine for Hush so that Hush might take revenge on Batman, Freeze's equipment allowing Hush to preserve Catwoman's surgically removed heart to use as a means of threatening her life.
During the "Infinite Crisis", Mr. Freeze appears as a member of Alexander Luthor Jr.'s Secret Society of Super Villains.
After Batman's death, most of the Arkham inmates were freed by a new Black Mask. Freeze was among them and he started working on a project called Ice-X Protocol when the GCPD tried to capture him. He stunned them with his gun and captured Gordon, taking him to his secret lair. Gordon managed to break free and defeat Freeze by causing an explosion that weakened Freeze. After his capture, Freeze was taken to Iron Heights Prison.
During the "Salvation Run" storyline, Mr. Freeze is among the villains who are sent to another planet by a Boom Tube by the Suicide Squad.
Mr. Freeze later fashions a sub-zero machine for Nyssa al Ghul in exchange for the use of her Lazarus Pit. He attempts to restore Nora to life without waiting for the adjusting needed in the pool chemicals; she returns to life as the twisted Lazara and escapes. She blames her husband for her plight, and she estranges herself from him.
In September 2011, "The New 52" rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, during the "Night of the Owls" storyline, the Court of Owls sends assassins known as Talons to kill 40 of the most important citizens of Gotham, including Mr. Freeze. Red Hood, Starfire, and Arsenal choose to save him, and subsequently remand him into Batgirl's custody. Batman Annual (vol. 2) #1 introduces a new origin for Mr. Freeze. Here, Victor Fries' fascination with cryonics began when he was a boy and his mother fell through the ice of a frozen lake. The ice was able to keep her preserved long enough for help to arrive, thus sparking his lifelong obsession with cold. It is later revealed that the accident left Fries' mother in constant pain, and Fries ended her suffering by pushing her into the same frozen lake. In this new origin, Nora was never Fries' wife. Her name was Nora Fields, a woman born in 1934. When Nora was 23, she was diagnosed with an incurable heart disease, so her family placed her in cryogenic stasis hoping that a cure would be found in the future. Fries, having written his doctoral thesis on Nora, took on a position as a cryogenic researcher and technician at Wayne Enterprises, the facility that housed Nora's body. Eventually, he fell in love with Nora and became dedicated to finding a reliable method for slowly thawing cryogenic subjects. However, Bruce Wayne ordered the project to be shut down, as he began to feel uncomfortable with Fries' obsession with Nora. Furious, Fries hurled a chair at Wayne, who dodged the attack; the chair smashed into an array of cryonic chemical tanks, the contents of which sprayed onto Fries and transformed him into Mr. Freeze.
The Court of Owls uses Freeze's cryogenic-thaw formula to revive their Talons, and then they try to kill him. Freeze survives but is captured by the Red Hood and sent to Arkham Asylum. He escapes shortly afterward and rearms himself with the Penguin's help. Freeze decides to kill Bruce Wayne and takes Nora, whom he believes to be his wife so that they can leave Gotham City behind forever. Infiltrating Wayne Enterprises, Freeze has a brief fight with Nightwing and Robin, but he subdues them. Then, Freeze goes to the penthouse, where he finds Batman and the frozen Nora. Batman defeats Mr. Freeze by injecting his suit with the thawing formula, which he had intended to use to revive Nora from suspended animation.
During the "Forever Evil" storyline, Mr. Freeze appears as a member of the Secret Society of Super Villains at the time when the Crime Syndicate arrived from their world. The Scarecrow later visits Mr. Freeze to let him know of the war going on at Blackgate Penitentiary. The Man-Bats are able to bring the remaining Talons to Mr. Freeze after the Man-Bat and the Scarecrow steal them from Blackgate. Mr. Freeze and Clayface later encounter the Rogues when they land in their territory. Mr. Freeze tells Mirror Master he is not interested in capitalizing on the bounty on their heads, only to use the Weather Wizard to create optimal conditions for him to freeze Gotham. As the Rogues are fighting the two, Black Mask (alongside his False Face Society) arrives to capture the Rogues to receive the bounty.
In 2016, DC Comics implemented a relaunch of its books called "DC Rebirth" which restored its continuity to a form much as it was prior to "The New 52". In Doomsday Clock, Mr. Freeze is among the villains who meet with the Riddler to discuss the Superman Theory. When the Comedian crashes the meeting, Freeze's helmet is punctured by a bullet shot by an unseen combatant. In the "Ends of the Earth" story arc of All-Star Batman, Freeze has awoken many people who have been held in cryogenic stasis — using them as an army to steal resources for his research to cure his wife Nora, himself, and all of these people — and plans to release deadly bacteria held in one of the world's oldest ice cores to make a new world, but Batman has injected himself with a cold-resistant virus that becomes airborne when his skin is exposed and is able to kill the spores.
In "Dark Nights: Metal", Mr. Freeze was given a special playing card by The Batman Who Laughs that gave him innate cryokinesis. Mr. Freeze and his frost monsters fought different superheroes who moved through his domain. Robin is the one who defeated Mr. Freeze and he regressed back to normal when the threat of the Dark Multiverse was sent back to its own dimension.
Several years later, in "Year of the Villain", Lex Luthor gives Mr. Freeze a vial that would cure and furthermore revive his frozen wife. Freeze had to kidnap several women who matched his late wife's characteristics in both mental and physical states, going as far as modifying their DNA to hers to experiment with the vial before reviving his wife. In the end, it worked and his wife came back to life cured. She soon took up the name "Mrs. Freeze". After Mrs. Freeze betrayed him, Mr. Freeze turned to Batman for help. During the fight, Mrs. Freeze used a syringe on Mr. Freeze, which started to heat him up while also eradicating the special nanites that kept him cold without the assistance of his cryogenic suit. Batman places Mr. Freeze in the same cryogenic state that Nora was in while Mrs. Freeze flees to the northern parts of Canada.
