YMMV / Batman: The Animated Series E14 "Heart of Ice"

• Anti-Climax Boss: While Mr. Freeze is more than a match for Batman throughout the episode, after a brief fight during the climax, Batman quickly defeats him by spilling a thermos of hot chicken soup over Freeze's containment suit helmet. The massive temperature difference cracks the glass and leaves him powerless, struggling and gasping for breath on the floor.
• Catharsis Factor: Batman exposing Boyle and leaving him trapped in ice is considered one of the most powerful moments of BTAS.
  Batman: (disgustedly) Good night... humanitarian.
• Cry for the Devil: Done brilliantly. Mr. Freeze is almost completely unemotional, coldhearted and willing to kill anyone who stops him from getting revenge. But his backstory shows that he was trying to save his wife Nora when a heartless exec (who's lauded as a philanthropist) destroyed the lab for wasting money, permanently altering Freeze and nearly killing his wife. The show treats him with an enormous amount of sympathy (his famous "Never again" monologue) and the target of his vendetta, while not dying, gets his long overdue justice. The episode is always rated as being one of if not the best episodes of the series and benchmark for animated television — there's a reason it won an Emmy.
• Growing the Beard: This is generally regarded as the episode that gave the series its well-known popularity, for the mature tone and for reinventing Mr. Freeze as a tortured soul rather than a walking gimmick.
• Harsher in Hindsight: This episode is already sad. Freeze's arc just gets worse and worse as the DCAU goes on and expands it. He manages to save Nora who is miraculously alive but still frozen, who then thinks that her husband is dead and marries someone else — the comics reveal that her husband was hiding all of Freeze's letters to her after she recovered. His body decays to that of an immortal, severed head, making him lose all of his previous standards and going on a murderous rampage. When he gets a second chance in the future and decides to turn a new leaf, the doctors that regrow his body try to kill him, and Freeze snaps again. His last scene is apologizing to the new Batman Terry McGinnis, saying he's the only person who cared about him before letting a building collapse on him. Now try rewatching this episode knowing all of this happens.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: This episode establishes that Victor loved Nora beyond belief. In Batman Beyond, he opens a charity foundation in her name.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Mark Hamill playing Ferris Boyle, who is the opposition to a tragic villain who was motivated by saving the love of his life from dying, but ends up severely injured and forced to wear a life-support suit, and his efforts to save his wife end up being in vain. Come the release of Revenge of the Sith, we learn that Darth Vader had a pretty similar origin story (just replace "ice" with "fire" for his reason for wearing a life support suit), making this a retroactive Actor Allusion to Hamill's Star-Making Role.
• Jerkass Woobie: Mr. Freeze goes about his quest for vengeance quite callously, but his backstory is so tragic one can't help but sympathize with him.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Ferris Boyle, Victor Fries' jerk of a boss who interrupted his attempt at saving his wife because he was using company equipment without permission, turning him into Mr. Freeze. In a show about costumed maniacs, he is considered to be among the most despicable characters.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ferris Boyle starts crossing this line when he interrupts Victor Fries' cryogenic experiment that can save Nora's life, even though Victor warns it could kill her. But when does he permanently cross it? By kicking Victor into a collection of chemicals that started his transformation into Mr. Freeze and leaving him and his wife to die. Even Batman is horrified at what the newly named Humanitarian of the Year did and leaves him encased in the iceberg instead of breaking him out with the coldly delivered line:
  Batman: (disgustedly, without bothering to unfreeze Boyle) Good night... Humanitarian.
• Narm Charm: The sight of Batman defeating Freeze by cracking his glass helmet open with a canteen of chicken soup. Yes, it's unintentionally funny and out of place in an otherwise tragic episode, but it's also a Combat Pragmatist moment that's totally in-character, and makes use of actual science via thermal shock; which can crack or outright destroy brittle matter by suddenly introducing something hot to something cold.
• One-Scene Wonder: Ferris Boyle only appears in this episode, but leaves an impression as one of the evilest people in Batman lore.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Prior to this, Mr. Freeze was a gimmicky, forgettable, Captain Cold knock-off c-lister of a villain from the Silver Age. This episode turned him into a Tragic Monster and one of Batman's most popular adversaries.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: On the DVD Commentary, Bruce Timm sang the praises of the animation studio which did the episode. He noted that the script's directions said "You can suggest Freeze's bubble-helmet with a simple outline if your budget won't allow for anything more elaborate", but the studio went and added the subtle frosting around the edges of the helmet, frame by frame, at great cost, out of pocket. It's not a massively noticeable detail, especially to the untrained eye, but it gives Freeze that much more life.

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