Freeze Ray

aka: An Ice Gun

This is such a cool weapon!

"In this universe, there's only one absolute... everything freezes!"

— Mr. Freeze, Batman & Robin

Any gun that almost always generates Instant Ice. Sometimes it causes Harmless Freezing, and sometimes not.

The mechanism varies from gun to gun. Some freeze rays operate by spraying a target with a sheet of ice or snow, like an icy version of a flamethrower. Some spray a stream of liquid, e.g. liquid nitrogen. Most commonly though, freeze rays fire blasts of coldness as laser beams to freeze the target.

Note that coldness doesn't quite work that way; coldness isn't energy, but rather lack of it (from the point of view of our environment's parameters). As such, you can't transfer coldness; you make things cold by transferring heat away from them. But, it isn't really worth getting into heated debates over the mechanics of the Freeze Ray. So what if it's another example of writers giving Conservation of Energy the cold shoulder? They've been getting along just fine over the years thanks in part to the Rule of Cool.

Real world physics experiments which require extreme cold near absolute zero use lasers to perform 'atom trapping', slowly punting the target with photons to stop it bouncing around uncontrollably. If your target isn't a blob of already-supercold gas comprising a few dozen atoms though, you'll find this technique less than useful.

Frequently toted by An Ice Person, dressed in An Ice Suit, in order to Kill It with Ice.

Does anyone else feel cold?

A Sub-Trope of Impossibly Cool Weapon^note Pun not intended and Ray Gun. In video game, this can be a handy way of creating Frozen Foe Platforms.

---

Examples

Anime and Manga

• Tekkaman: The Space Knight has... OH NO! A FREEZE RAY!
• Mazinger Z: It is one of the weapons of the titular Humongous Mecha: its helmet's horns shoot freezing beams that turn the enemy into a chunk of frozen, brittle ice. It is called REITOU BEAM!!!. It is also used in Mazinkaiser.
• Daimos has the Freezer Storm, head-mounted Freeze Rays that made-up the first part of the Finishing Move of the eponymous mecha after its Mid-Season Upgrade.
• Chrono's Durandal in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha TheMovie 2nd A's is depicted as this, being a Boom Stick that comes with multiple Attack Drones, all capable of firing ice beams that could freeze a monster the size of a small island and the ocean surrounding it.
• Fairy Tail: Gray's Ice-Make magic can also freeze objects. As shown when he managed to freeze Fukuro's flames after he ate Natsu.

Asian Animation

• In the first BoBoiBoy movie, BoBoiBoy Ice makes his debut on the battlefield, and his primary weapon is an ice cannon.
• Happy Heroes: In Season 8 episode 23, this is one of the things Careless S. has invented. It becomes useful when Happy S. indirectly causes a tornado and a wildfire after defeating a dragon summoned by Huo Haha, threatening the plant people.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Mighty Little Defenders, Weslie uses a gun that shoots ice. The gun cannot be used if there is a full moon outside; otherwise, the user will be unable to move for a while.

Comic Books

• Mr. Freeze from Batman. The exact size and shape of Freeze's Freeze Gun has varied wildly over the years; when it first debuted, it looked more like a teakettle than anything. Since then, it's been portrayed as everything from the standard futuristic-pistol design to a massive two-handed cannon connected to a backpack to a tiny, unassuming-looking device mounted on the wrist of his armor.
• Captain Cold from The Flash comics claims to be an exception. He doesn't use a freeze ray, he uses a cold ray, by which it seems he means that it freezes things not by spraying them with cold fluids, but by directly stopping the motion of the target's atoms. The difference is largely semantic though, as for all practical purposes it does the same thing as any other freeze ray.
• Batman and the Outsiders #6, "Death Warmed Over!" The team battles the Cryonic Man, a villain with a backpack full of liquid nitrogen attached to wrist-mounted sprayers that he uses to freeze the Outsiders solid.
• In Empowered, Thug Boy used it against Willy Pete, an Ax-Crazy fire elemental. He got better.
• Wonder Woman
  • On the cover of Wonder Woman #162,◊ Minister Blizzard has frozen Steve Trevor with his freeze ray gun and is about to do the same to Wonder Woman.
  • The villain Byrna Brilyant (the Blue Snowman) uses a variety of weapons with freezing abilities.
• Golden Age Green Lantern foe the Icicle wielded a freeze ray. His son internalized the cold powers and became An Ice Person.
• Iron Man foe Blizzard wears a battlesuit that shoots freeze rays from its gloves.
• In The Powerpuff Girls story "No Business Like Snow Business," Mojo Jojo uses a Zamboni with ray cannon that shoots out ice and snow. He turns Townsville into a winter wonderland in the middle of summer, having cornered the market on winter goods.

Film — Animated

• Gru from Despicable Me wields a freeze ray he invented, making for a comical opening scene of him cutting in line at the coffee shop by casually zapping people while shouting "Freeze ray!!" Conveniently, the Harmless Freezing effect allows him to be a villain without actually killing anyone.
  • The prequel Minions shows a much younger Dr. Nefario demonstrating the gun to a young Gru (and freezing his own hand) at Villain-Con, which implies Gru actually got the gun (or perhaps stole it) from him. Minions: The Rise of Gru contradicts this, through, as not only Gru meets Dr. Nefario for the first time in the movie, he also uses a cheese ray early in the movie as a Call-Forward.

Film — Live-Action

• Predator 2: Peter Keys' team has "nitrogen guns" (liquid nitrogen backpacks attached to sprayers), which they plan to use to freeze (and thereby capture) the Predator.
• There are some examples from the Godzilla series, tanks that shoot freeze rays, the Super X-3 has freeze missiles and beams, and Kiryu had an Absolute Zero cannon in his chest. They are the few weapons to actually work on Kaiju.
• Will Stronghold had to build one for a Mad Science class in Sky High (2005).
• Suburban Commando has a freeze weapon that two hoods find and use to rob a bank. It's the source of the Memetic Mutation "I WAS FROZEN TODAY!" Ramsay, however, is immune to the effects because he chugged antifreeze (it's that kind of movie).
• Mister Freeze (again) from Batman & Robin. In the film, he also creates a much larger version using the Gotham Observatory's telescope, which he then uses to freeze the entire city.

Literature

• Lisa couldn't help but slip one of these into her arsenal in Lone Huntress, though most people consider such a thing to be exceedingly impractical. Since Powered Armor already protects against temperature extremes, it can only freeze someone wearing normal clothing. It's main use is by futuristic paramedics, freezing trauma victims to slow their body functions before thawing them out in an ER (where they can be treated for hypothermia, in addition to whatever else ails them). Lisa mentions that she finds it useful for putting out fires.
• In David Gerrold's The War Against the Chtorr series of novels, the protagonist is scouting with his commander. The commander has a flamethrower while the protagonist has a weapon that shoots liquid nitrogen. Which comes in handy as they're trudging through huge dunes of alien plant dust. The spray weapon is able to compact the dust so they can walk on it. The flamethrower, as it turns out, has a more explosive reaction to that environment.
• George Zebrowski and Charles R. Pellegrino's The Killing Star has a weapon of mass destruction that's the inverse of an atomic bomb. Instead of converting matter into energy, it does the opposite, which means sucking huge amounts of heat out of the ambient environment to form a tiny amount of matter, leaving behind a frozen hell.
• Castle Brass in Michael Moorcock's The History of the Runestaff has such a defensive weapon. Among many others.
• A handheld (or hand-mounted) weapon in Mikhail Akhmanov's Fighters of Danveys called the Freezer fires a shot which, at a specific point, creates a micro-singularity (i.e. a tiny black hole), which instantly drains the area within a several-meter radius of all heat. Yes, Space Is Cold. Oh, and there's a rapid-firing version of the weapon.
• In Sonic vs. Zonik, Sonic has an Energy Gun on him that when fired freezes the target for a while (i.e. Badniks and Zonik). But it costs and costs ten rings per use.
• In Cordwainer Smith Instrumentality universe, there is a staff-like weapon which drains heat from the opponent, freezing him or her on the spot and then slowly releasing the absorbed heat via radiation. In the short story The Dead Lady of Clown Town an Instrumentality soldier kills Underpeople and robots with it during a riot.

Live Action TV

• A Comedy programme on the BBC had a man come in with an invention where he froze the dragons (of Dragons' Den) after they refused to fund production of his gun which heated chicken instantly (and also did the reverse). He then nicks their cash.
• A few Super Sentai/Power Rangers weapons have had this.
• Warren's freeze ray in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which turns people into popsicles.
  Guard: What are you boys doing?
  Warren: Uh, we're with a tour group. The Get-the-freeze-ray tour group. Must've gotten separated.
  Guard: Museum closed five hours ago.
  Warren: Huh! Guess we just lost track of time, we should probably get the *freeze ray* out of here.
• Mr. Freeze(again) in the 1960's Batman (1966) show.
  • His standard weapon is a rifle-like device that spews out a stream of freezing gas at short range.
  • In the episodes "Ice Spy"/"The Duo Defy", Mr. Freeze creates an ultra-powerful version called the Thermodynamic Ice Ray Gun that can freeze large areas of effect at long range.
• Warehouse 13 has a variation in Claudia's insta-freeze snowglobe.
• In The Flash (2014), Leonard Snart gets his hands on a "cold gun" created by Cisco in case Barry turned out to be evil, figuring that a gun that slows down molecules is the only real weapon that can stop someone with Super-Speed. It also explains how a guy with a cold gun can be a match for someone who can outrun lightning: just being in the area where it's being used saps Flash's powers to a significant degree. Snart (whom Cisco dubs "Captain Cold") learns to use the gun quite effectively both against the cops and Barry. He gives Barry a Sadistic Choice, when the latter corners him on a train: Barry can either chase down the bad guy, or save a train full of people that's about to be derailed by the cold gun. Naturally, Barry chooses the latter, but Snart doesn't run away and nearly kills Barry. Cisco tricks Snart by threatening him with the prototype cold gun (it's actually a vacuum cleaner with some LED strips attached).
  • His counterpart from the 1990 series had the BFG version. He's just as effective with it, despite it looking pretty unwieldy.

Tabletop Games

• Champions supplement Classic Organizations, "Red Doom" section. The NPC Cold Warrior has a power pack backpack that can condense water out of the air to create ice. He uses it to create ice bolts and entangle opponents.
• GURPS Warehouse 23. The Greys (space aliens) have a Freeze Ray device that can fire a beam of focused cold at the target, freezing it solid and coating it with ice.
• Space 1889 has a freeze ray as a possible invention. Living creatures hit by the ray are frozen solid and thaw out one hour later with no ill effects.
• In Rocket Age the Ancient Martians experimented with freeze ray technology and a few may still be found in working order.
• In Warhammer 40,000, the Space Wolves Chapter of Adeptus Astartes have access to unique Helfrost weapons. These arcane devices focus a powerful laser through rare glimmerfrost crystals, resulting in the targeted area being instantly frozen to near absolute zero.
• Pathfinder and Starfinder have "Zero" guns; high-tech energy weapons that deal cold damage and come in Pistol, Rifle and BFG sizes.
• Arduin Trilogy: Volume III The Runes of Doom. If a living target takes 100% of its Hit Points in damage from an icer weapon (hand, rifle or semi-portable), it will be frozen solid.
• Fabula Ultima has the Freezing Shot, a rare ice-elemental gun that inflicts the Slow status effect to whatever it hits.

Theater

• In Sonic: Live in Sydney, Robotnik captures Sally with a freeze ray after using new boots to distract her.

Toys

• BIONICLE: Thok carries one to channel his innate ice powers, which he cannot access under normal circumstances.

Video Games

• The Freezethrower from Duke Nukem 3D, which allows you to kick your frozen enemies into pieces.
• Metal Slug Code J introduces a whole new weapon to the roster, called the Ice Gun which can turn enemies into solid blocks of ice before breaking apart. A later update of the game gives you the "Blizzard", which freezes lava pits!
• The Ice Beam from Metroid games. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes has a Palette Swap of the beam in the Dark Beam (which only freezes with charged shots).
• Like everything else, it's summonable in Scribblenauts. It temporarily traps things in blocks of ice. Freezing is harmless, so it's a good way to deal with hostile creatures you're not allowed to hurt.
• The shotgun in Painkiller has this as its secondary fire mode: Ideally, this can be used to first freeze an enemy, and then fire the shotgun to instantly shatter the monster, often sparing lots of time.
• Putrefaction has a freeze gun as one of the last, and best weapons you can obtain. It's also the only weapon capable of harming putrid spirits, ghostly enemies otherwise immune to bullets - you freeze them, turning the putrid spirits into a physical form, and switch to another firearm to blast them apart.
• Different attacks from the Ice type in Pokémon, like Ice Beam or Blizzard, have the chance of freezing your opponent solid.
• BioShock: While the player character can eventually acquire ice powers, freezing enemies can also be done via the chemical thrower when using liquid nitrogen. However, this only freezes the target in place, dealing no damage.
• In the first stage of In the Hunt, your submarine had to navigate a series of icebergs with these attached. They couldn't kill you, but they would make your character temporarily immobilized. Interestingly enough, they would do this to enemy subs too.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has the appropriately named Cryocopters and later Cryo Legionnaires who fire sprays of liquid nitrogen in a cone (and naturally, have heavy Austrian accents). There is also the Kill Sat superweapon version Cryoshot/Cryoblast/Cryogeddon. These are mostly harmless in that they deal no damage and a frozen unit will eventually thaw out, but frozen objects will shatter if hit with the slightest damage, and for air units (done by cryo legionnaires garrisoned in a multigunner turret/IFV) the result is not something to laugh at since they will immediately come crashing down when frozen.
• War Front: Turning Point: an earlier example. The Soviet Union, with their can deploy air-dropped freeze bombs and "Ice Spitter" Tanks in advance of an attack force; the metaphor used in-game is "canned Siberian weather". Frozen units recover after a time, but are very vulnerable to damage and immobile.
• One of the bosses in Final Fantasy Tactics had a magic gun that shot blocks of ice.
• Mass Effect not only has Cryo Ammunition - a cooling laser collapses the ammunition into a Bose-Einstein Condensate that snap freeze an impacted target - but the appropriately named M-622 Avalanche heavy weapon from Mass Effect 2 which uses a mass effect bubble that carries a larger condensate payload that “explodes” on impact. Essentially a hand held ice cannon.
• In Crysis, the aliens have freeze rays, and Prophet makes a human-usable weapon out of one of them. In addition, the Ice Sphere flash-freezes the island, creating a cold wasteland.
• Prime Target has a Nitrogen blaster that fires ice-cold orbs which freezes enemies on the spot. Hit them with another weapon and Literally Shattered Lives ensues. The only enemy type who uses this weapon are henchwomen mooks, and if you happen to get yourself frozen the screen from your POV turns blue-green for several seconds.
• The Freeze Ray Gun is one of the martian weapons that can be found in Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams. It's powered by raw radium and immobilizes the targets.
• Crusader: No Regret has the BK-16 "Crystallizer" Molecular Inhibitor Rifle which works in a different manner from other freeze rays. The aptly-named Crystallizer instead fires a self-contained field that brings the molecular motion of any target to a screeching halt, effectively exposing them to a few minutes in Absolute Zero. The kill animation is bloodless yet still looks and sounds painful to emphasize how it is not Harmless Freezing. The corpsicle can then be shattered with additional weapons fire or an explosion.
• Purple hands out freeze-rays late in the game (starting at the appropriately themed World 5). Their function is to freeze enemies for use as a stepping stone. No side effects! Unless it's a boss, or a breakable block.
• The Medusa Gun in Will Rock is a variation: it shots a strange, blue gas that turns enemies into stone statues and break them.
• In Luigi's Mansion, this was one setting that the Poltergust 3000 was eventually upgraded to. The freeze ray setting is necessary for fighting Drippy Ghosts, and the Boss Battle with Boolossus.
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game features the Stasis Stream, which uses "order-reversing particles" to slow down ghosts and crystallises them in a form vulnerable to the secondary fire mode Shock Blast. Despite the obvious connection to a freeze ray by the other Ghostbusters, Egon clarifies that it has nothing to do with cold.
• More of a Freeze Rod/Bomb, but the Thermal Tazer and Thermal Shok Bomb in XCOM Terror From The Deep both use intense cold to render their targets unconscious.
• The Alien Hunters DLC for XCOM 2 adds the Frost Bomb, which causes Harmless Freezing. It works on every enemy that gets caught in the blast radius, even Alien Rulers, robots and Avatars.
• In Riddle School 5, this is the ultimate plan of Viz. He planned to freeze all the planets using a ray that harnessed Zack's coldness. Fortunately, it backfired on him.
• The Creonites' freeze weapons in Total Annihilation: Kingdoms. They have a similar effect to the Taken for Granite petrifying spells, except that the target turns to ice rather than stone.
• Toki Tori's Freeze-o-matic turns enemies into blocks of ice. On land, they can be used as platform but underwater they float up. Either way they can block your path if you're not careful, causing a need for a reset.
• The third Resistance game features a straight-forward liquid nitrogen thrower. To make things just a bit more interesting, its secondary fire is a compressed air shotgun blast, which does minimal damage under normal circumstances, but against frozen enemies...
• In LEGO Rock Raiders, you can arm your Rock Raiders with freezer beams to defend your base. They don't work very well against rock or ice monsters (the laser beam works much better), but they're devastating to lava monsters.
• The puzzle game Dr. Brain: IQ Adventure had a freeze blaster you could use to freeze enemies in place temporarily.
• Simon of Rogue Galaxy has flamethrowers as his weapon of choice, but some of his guns shoot ice instead.
• The Ice elemental damage in BLOODCRUSHER II slows enemies and can turn them into a Human Popsicle
• Fracture features one, the appropriately named ALM-37 Deep Freeze.
• Spelunky has a Freeze Ray. While not as powerful or long ranged as many weapons, once frozen an opponent can be shattered for a OHKO (including the Shopkeeper). Also, anyone frozen in midair will be shattered by falling.
• Blizzard Buffalo from Mega Man X3 uses a huge one as his Desperation Attack. This doesn't damage X, but will freeze him in place, allowing Buffalo to ram him and shatter the ice for extra damage.
• In Kirby: Squeak Squad, the leader of the titular gang, Daroach, has a fancy cane that serves as one of these.
• Warframe The Glaxion, a freeze ray released in update 14.5. It turns enemies into ice statues when killed, which easily shatter upon impact from repeat attacks and other weapons.
• The Cryolator from Fallout 4 sprays enemies with a cryogenic compound (heavily implied in-game to be liquid nitrogen) in order to freeze them. It can also be modified to shoot chunks of solid ice.
• In Overwatch, Mei's main weapon is an ice gun that can fire off a freezing spray that freezes enemies solid as well as firing icicles and can create a wall of ice.
• Prismata has several units that can freeze defenders, allowing bypass defenses and hit your opponent's vulnerable backline.
• Deep Rock Galactic: The Driller can unlock the Cryo Cannon as one of his main armament options. While the damage is significantly lower than his usual flamethrower, freezing enemies solid completely paralyzes them, nullifies their special abilities (which means the usual explosive glyphids will die quietly), and it triples any damage directed at them. As such, it's perfectly viable to bring down arctic hell on your enemies before just leaving them to your sidearm, your teammates/Bosco, or your pickaxe. Or, in the Macteras' case, just let gravity do the rest.
• Horizon Zero Dawn has Freeze arrows and Freeze bombs that Aloy can use, and numerous machines like Glinthawks, Snapmaws, and Frost Bellowbacks that use ice attacks. In The Frozen Wilds expansion, Aloy can also get a new weapon, the Ice Rail. Initially it functions somewhat like an ice flamethrower- blasting enemies with a spray of ice at close range, but it can be upgraded to add a secondary firing mode that uses a charge-up shot to fire powerful, long range ice bolts.
• Crying Suns: The Sub-Zero battleship weapon freezes a target squadron for a few seconds, inflicting no damage but leaving the target at the mercy of nearby enemy squadrons.
• Gift: Gift's Magic Staff shoots these when charged with Blue Crystal energy.
• The plot of the first Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures tie-in console game involves Lord Betrayus stealing a weapon called the Frigidigitator, a giant freeze ray with the power to cover entire landscapes in snow and ice. It's powerful enough to do this even to the Netherworld, which is covered in volcanoes and lava. It's even capable of temporarily freezing lava solid.
• In Batman: Arkham City, the Penguin takes possession of Mr. Freeze's gun upon imprisoning him, allowing him to fill his hideout, the Iceburg Lounge, with actual ice. Later on, Batman deals with the gun again while battling Mr. Freeze, who uses the weapon to neutralize Batman's strategies after every attack.
• Kaiju Wars: The experimental Freezer weapon is a mobile cannon which fires beams of heat-sapping blue energy. It won't actually freeze a kaiju solid, but it will hurt them and lower their movement speed for a turn.

Web Comics

• Gunnerkrigg Court. Just because if you release laser cows (robots), it's a good idea to equip them with something fire-suppressing as well.
• Adventurers!!: Tesla, the party's gun-wielder, gets a freeze gun at one point (she refers to being in the party as "the Gun-of-the-month Club"). It shoots flames. Karn doesn't see what the problem is.
• In Our Little Adventure, Emily has a magic spell called 'Frozen Ray' which does just this. It's an ice version of Angelika's 'scorching ray'.

Web Original

• Dr. Horrible has a "freeze ray", although of course his freeze ray stopped time; it was Johnny Snow who had the "ice beam."
• SCP-2424 ("Hostile Walrus Cyborg ''research ongoing''"). In the anomalous Video Game Eskimo Moe, the enemies known as Goonters (intelligent penguins) have pistol-like devices that can fire a freezing ray.

Western Animation

• Mr. Freeze from the DC Animated Universe (restating it because Mr. Freeze as we currently know him was created for Batman: The Animated Series). He reappears in Batman Beyond. Once, Bruce himself uses Freeze's old gun, which he keeps as a memento, against Inque. The second time, Inque learns to destroy the gun first. In another episode, Derek Powers clones Freeze and implants the villain's memories into the clone. When Freeze has a relapse of his condition, he dons an upgraded suit, which has freeze rays built into the arms.
• The pilot of Young Justice (2010) features four ice-themed villains — Mr. Freeze, Killer Frost, Icicle Jr. and Captain Cold. Mr. Freeze and Captain Cold have freeze ray guns; Killer Frost and Icicle don't have them, instead generating freeze rays through their hands.
• Robot Chicken had a sketch parodying a similar situation to the Young Justice example above. Several different cold-themed villains with freeze-rays show up, one after another, to steal the same priceless giant gem and they all start bickering over who has a better thematic claim to it. Eventually, yet another villain destroys a wall with his freeze-ray in order to burst in, and the combined structural damage they've all done making their entrances collapses the entire building on top of them.
  Mr Freeze: It took me six years of research to build my freeze ray. How do you high-school dropouts keep making them?! Are they as easy to build as HAM radios, and I'm just some asshole?!
• There's a freeze weapon of some sort in Hanna-Barbera show Speed Buggy, prompting Speedy to complain, "who put the anti-freeze in my carburetor?" I'm pretty sure there's an episode to go along with it.
• Variation: The Arborians' ice arrows in Filmation's Flash Gordon.
• Space Ghost
  • The title character fires one from his Power Bands in "Lokar - King of the Killer Locusts" against Lokar's metal-eating locusts. He does it again against a giant ant/spider hybrid Insectoid Alien in "The Web".
  • In "The Heat Thing", Jan and Jace use the Phantom Cruiser's "cold units" ray to seal the title monster into a lava pit.
  • "The Iceman". Antagonist Title. They have an Ice-Ray Projector that can be used to create a wall of ice between the Ghost Planet and its sun as well as encasing Space Ghost in ice.
  • "The Meeting". Metallus' Freeze Robots fire beams of cold that cover the Phantom Cruiser in ice.
  • "The Final Encounter". Space Ghost uses his Freeze Ray against the Sultan of Flame's fire demon, but unfortunately his technology is useless against the Sultan's magic.
• The physical impossibility of such a device is mentioned in an episode of ChalkZone, but Rudy draws one up anyways, reasoning that imagination overrides logic in a realm composed of animated chalk drawings.
• Heloise on Jimmy Two-Shoes has one. Among its uses: freezing Jimmy to keep him around.
• In Men in Black: The Series, MIB agents often use the Icer, a freeze ray which is frequently used to non-lethally subdue and capture enemies. Special notice should go to the fact that it can freeze fire.
• Transformers: Animated: Blitzwing can do this in his Icy and Random personalities.
• The 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode "Return of The Fly" has Bebop and Rocksteady equipped with freeze guns.
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode "Baby-Sitter Jitters" features Robotnik's "Reversible Melt-O/Freeze-O Ray", pairing this trope with its inverse. However, the two modes aren't used in tandem to any significant effect: early on, Robotnik is hit by the "Freeze-O" mode and trapped in a block of ice, while in the climax the "Melt-O" mode makes a hole in a thick metal door that's trapping Sonic and Tails.
• Filmation's Ghostbusters had a gizmo called the Fright Freezer. Sometimes it was a handheld gun, while at other times it was mounted on the Ghostbuggy.
• Young Samson and Goliath episode "The Colossal Coral Creature''. The villain Darvo uses a freeze ray to solidify a cloud in an attempt to destroy a plane that Samson and Goliath are riding on.
• Birdman (1967)
  • "The Pirate Plot". The pirates use a freeze ray to encase in ice several armed officers of the ship they're attacking.
  • "Skon of Space''. The title villain uses a "cold ray" to freeze Birdman solid.
• The Venture Bros. - in "Trial of the Monarch" he uses a ray that freezes Brock in green ice - but this is total fiction in the Venture boys' loopy testimony. Later, though, the Guild of Calamitous Intent does freeze the entire courtroom long enough to rig the verdict.
• In the second Care Bears special, Professor Coldheart invents a freeze ray called "The Careless Ray Contraption," which he uses to freeze all the kids in town.
• In Johnny Test in "Johnny vs Brain Freezer" A coffee guy/science student gets angry about not winning 1st place in the science fair so he gets a blaster, combines it with his coffee machine, and becomes the Brain Freezer and starts freezing people.
• In MAD an alien asks a person to take him to his people's leader in which he responds mockingly by pretending to call the president on his cellphone and insulting the alien's proposition. The alien then responds by saying "I think you're making fun of me." The guy replies "Where do you come from the genius planet?" The alien then freezes him with his gun and the guy says "I regret nothing."
• Olaf from Kaeloo owns one of these. He uses it in Episode 104 to freeze Kaeloo and Mr. Cat alive and put them in People Jars.
• The Flamin' Thongs: In "Freeze a Crowd", Holden builds a nuclear-powered air-conditioner to combat Whale Bay’s hottest day ever. When he’s unable to turn it off and they can’t get out of the house, the Thongs face freezing then thawing out in the Whale Bay of the future.
• She-Ra: Princess of Power: The Horde had energy batons given to its Troopers (a creative work-around since Lou Scheimer didn't like guns being portrayed in cartoons) which could fire either a laser beam, a stun bolt, or a freeze ray. Various other Horde Weapons, including on Horde spaceships, also had freeze rays.
  • Catra's mask had a hidden power, revealed in the episode "Magicats", which would fire a freeze-ray if the phrase "freeze fire!" was uttered.
• The Transformers: Several Autobots and Decepticons had weapons that approximated a freeze ray, including Warpath. Cliffjumper's Glass Gas gun approximated some of the effects of a freeze ray, but wasn't ice-based in nature.
• Ready Jet Go!: In "Mindy's Ice Rink", Sunspot builds a freeze ray for Mindy, so she can make her own ice rink.
• Rocky Kwaterner Big Bad professor Torpille is determined to refreeze Rocky to turn him into a museum piece, and to this end has invented several tools and weapons to instantly freeze anyone or anything. Including freeze rays.

Real Life

• Using directed energy to lower temperatures may sound absurd, but on a molecular scale, cold is just slowness. Lasers have demonstrated an ability to produce cold, given very, VERY specific circumstances. See: Atom Trapping.
  • Specifically, a photon is more likely to be absorbed by an atom if it's just the right wavelength. If you make the laser just a bit redder, it will be blueshifted from the point of view of the atoms moving towards it, and hit them, slowing them down.
  • Not exactly an energy ray, but if you hold a can of compressed air upside down, the can sprays a jet of very cold liquid. It's fun as a novelty, but that's about it. This is because the sudden drop in pressure causes the propellant ^note which sits in the bottom of the can and expands up to push out the can's contents to spread its energy over a wider area, making it colder. The propellant most often used? Nitrogen, in this case liquid nitrogen. It should go without saying that letting this touch you is probably a bad idea.
  • Lasers can super-cool plasma. Find a way to launch the plasma, and you've got this.
• Ironically, a flamethrower without the pilot light can become a freeze ray depending on the fuel used. Many designs use Napalm engineered to be hyper stable when not exposed to an open flame, and as a consequence tend to sublimate (producing extreme cold) very aggressively when not confined to a pressurized tank. As an added bonus (for the shooter) the target won't be able to heat themselves up or they risk the opposite problem of frost bite.
• At its basest, a Super Soaker filled with liquid nitrogen can be this. Still, it is not recommended to try this at home, since the quality and durability of plastic in water guns can vary, and many plastics become extremely brittle in the presence of extreme cold. Combine this with the fact that liquid nitrogen does very...unpleasant things to skin on contact, and you have a painful trip to he hospital waiting to happen if your impromptu freeze ray shatters in your hands.

---