Monster in the Ice

This is an Ice Queen you do not want to defrost.

"Mayday... mayday... can anyone hear me, over? This is US Station 31; can you read me? We found something in the ice. We need some help down here. Can anybody hear me? We found something... we found something... we found something..."

— Trailer for The Thing (1982)

In more fantastical sorts of settings, when traveling through or across glaciers or icebergs, one may see vast, dim shadows deep in the ice. They may be vague and obscure at first — a vast curve here, a sharp edge there — but on closer inspection the image soon resolves itself into the shape of a vast monster, entombed in ice like a bug in amber.

In some instances, the things in the ice remain inert set pieces. In this case, they typically serve to illustrate the timeless, ancient nature of the place they are found in, or to give a sense of deep history and of ancient, long-gone things. Other times, however, the Monster in the Ice will break free at some point, miraculously still alive and hungry after hundreds, thousands or millions of years spent frozen, and promptly rampage through the modern world. This is often a direct result of human meddling with the creature's frozen tomb, as people recklessly try to extract it to use for their own purposes or to display as a trophy before realizing they cannot actually control it. This is often also used as part of a Green Aesop when human-caused global warming, or a similar environmental disturbance, is what thaws out and releases a horror that should have stayed safely frozen, in which case it often ends up overlapping with Space Whale Aesop.

There is a particular tendency for this to be applied to primordial creatures, especially dinosaurs and similar beings, as a way to explain how a given monster endured into the present day. In these cases, this typically overlaps with Fossil Revival. Note here that the Earth was entirely free of permanent glaciers or arctic ice until well after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs.

How these things got into the ice in the first place will rarely be explained in detail, as it would require them to remain still for long enough for a considerable mass of ice to gather and form around them. This may be explained through the creature having been frozen mid-hibernation or similar, but may result in puzzling situations when a creature is shown frozen mid-movement or in an active pose. In some cases, the creature may have been artificially sealed in the ice to keep it safely canned away from the world.

When the Monster in the Ice is still alive, this will almost certainly be a case of Harmless Freezing, and may also be a source of Living Dinosaurs. See also Human Popsicle for when people try to replicate this effect as a form of one-way time travel and Cryo-Prison for when this is used as a way to imprison criminals. Often overlaps with Sealed Evil in a Can and Dug Too Deep or, if the monster in question is revealed to be Good All Along in a plot twist, a story's Big Good, or a Non-Malicious Monster, with Sealed Good in a Can. May be revealed by a Giant Eye of Doom if the characters discover the creature by accident. Frequently found in Mysterious Antarctica.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Doraemon: Nobita and the Winged Braves: The Prehistoric Monster Phoenixia is a dinosaur-like abomination frozen underneath a glacier by the first generation of Birdopians, before the story's main villain attempts to revive it to Kill All Humans by blowing up the ice.
• Fairy Tail: In the Sub-Zero Emperor Lyon Arc, Natsu's team travels to an island where a demon named Deliora has been hidden after being frozen in magical ice that can't be broken or melted except by a spell that takes three years to prepare. Unfortunately, the spell is set to be completed soon after they arrive. The spell succeeds but, thankfully, the magic ice had been sapping away at the demon's energy for seven years at that point, so all he can do when he's freed is take his last breath before being Reduced to Dust.
• Monster Rancher: Moo's original body has been preserved this way. Same goes for the Phoenix.
• One Piece: The corpse of the evil giant Oars was found frozen on the Land of Ice after he had died of the cold from wearing nothing but a Loincloth. Gecko Moriah would use this body for what he dubbed Special Zombie #900.
• The☆Ultraman: The pilot episode has the discovery of four monsters called Seagras in an ice shelf, which crashes on the Antarctic coast, awakening from their frozen slumber and immediately going on a rampage. Luckily that was minutes after Choichiro Hikari had bonded with the series' ultra, Ultraman Joneus — cue an ass-kicking debut from the Ultra.

Comic Books

• Asterix, Asterix and the Griffin: A Roman expedition sent to find the griffin for Caesar's menagerie discovers it in Sarmatia (modern-day Ukraine), where the locals revere it. But instead of the eagle-lion hybrid they were expecting, they instead discover it's a Styracosaurus frozen deep beneath a lake (so deep that only its silhouette is visible). The Romans are furious with the shaman they forced to guide them, as so ridiculous-looking a creature can't be brought to Caesar.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In one story, Uncle Scrooge starts melting tunnels through the Antarctic glaciers to find new mineral deposits beneath them. As he and his nephews explore the new tunnel system, they find a variety of Mesozoic creatures sealed in the ice, ranging from fern leaves to fishes to entire dinosaurs.
• In Thefurther Adventures Of Indiana Jones #19, Indy encounters (and becomes an ally to) a tribe of modern cavemen living the Himalayas, where they worship a dragon frozen in the ice. The dragon inevitably breaks loose and Indy has to find a way to freeze it again.
• Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1977) starts with Godzilla frozen this way in Alaskan ice. His opponent Yetrigar is also frozen in ancient ice until nuclear testing frees (and mutates) him.
• The Incredible Hulk: A variant. Inside Bruce Banner's mind, the Devil Hulk's prison is a massive cave of ice where he's chained up, to stop him getting free and destroying the entire world. Or not, as it eventually turns out.

Fan Works

• Under the Northern Lights: A variant. Karhu-Akka, an ancient godlike being from the dawning days of the world, is at first implied to slumber within the Everfrost Glacier, but this isn't strictly correct — she is the Everfrost Glacier itself, her watery body having become ice when she became still and at rest. Either way, Celestia and Luna are very careful not to wake her up, as this would result in considerable destruction from both her inadvertent movements and the thawing of all that ice.

Film — Animation

• Ice Age:
  • In the first movie, while crossing a network of tunnels through a glacier, the characters come across a variety of bizarre creatures frozen in the ice, including a series of sloth ancestors leading up to Sid's species, a giant fish, a carnivorous dinosaur caught mid-charge and an alien flying saucer.
  • Ice Age: The Meltdown: The film's villains, Maelstrom and Cretaceous, are a pair of Mesozoic sea monsters that were sealed in ice for ages, only to be released as the Ice Age's glaciers begin to melt.

Film — Live-Action

• The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms: The titular monster, the rhedosaurus, was frozen in Arctic ice since the early Cretaceous and is thawed out by nuclear testing. The real-life example of mammoths frozen in Siberian ice, with their coats still intact and the meat still edible, is also brought up, although the skeptical Dr. Elson points out that the mammoths weren't alive.
• The Deadly Mantis is a giant praying mantis buried in an Arctic iceberg. It goes on a rampage after a volcanic eruption in the South Atlantic somehow causes ice way up in the Arctic to break apart and melt.
• Giant Monster Gamera: Ripping directly from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Gamera is awakened by an accidental atomic detonation in the Arctic, freeing him from the ice.
• Godzilla:
  • At the end of Godzilla Raids Again, Godzilla is buried in a snowy avalanche, and this partly carries over into the next film, King Kong vs. Godzilla, which is set several years later and begins with Godzilla accidentally being released from inside an iceberg.
  • Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!: After being defeated in ancient times, the Orochi was lain to rest in an ice cave near Mount Fuji to reincarnate as a good monster next time. When Godzilla threatens Japan in the present day, he's awakened prematurely as the three-headed monster Ghidorah to fight him.
  • Godzilla: Final Wars: In the prologue, Godzilla is defeated by the Gotengo trapping him inside an Antarctic glacier. Fifty years later, an Alien Invasion with an army of kaiju threatens the Earth and the humans decide to release Godzilla from his frozen dormancy to fight back.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters: King Ghidorah was frozen in the Antarctic glaciers for eons, before being awakened and unleashed by ecoterrorists.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Eternals: The titular Eternals are immortal aliens who've been on earth since the dawn of human civilization, tasked to defeat monstrous Deviants. They were under the impression that they defeated the last of Earth's Deviants about five hundred years ago, so they're surprised when new ones turn up in the present day. It's later revealed that these "new" Deviants were frozen in ice in Alaska for millennia and were thawed out due to glacial melting (though, in this case, it's due to the impending Emergence of a Celestial rather than climate change).
• Both the titular monsters from Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus were first discovered frozen in a glacier. Inevitably, both monsters thaws out thanks to a stray helicopter crash, and proceeds to go on a rampage.
• Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale: In prehistoric times, Lapland was ruled by the evil Santa Claus (here portrayed as a huge, demonic Santabomination). The Sámi defeated Santa by tricking him onto a lake covered in thin ice, where he fell into the frigid water and ended up frozen solid. They later pulled the ice block out of the lake, covered it in saw dust to stop it from melting, and buried it beneath a mountain to prevent him from ever escaping. However, in the present day, Santa's elves are trying to free Santa from his icy prison. Unlike most examples of this trope, Santa never manages to escape.
• Reptilicus: The titular monster is discovered frozen in the permafrost of Lapland. A chunk of its tail is dug up, transferred to an aquarium in Copenhagen, and placed in refrigerated storage for study. Of course, mishandling allows the tail to thaw out and it resumes cellular activity, eventually regenerating into a full-blown kaiju that goes on a rampage.
• The Super Inframan: The monsters have been hibernating in an ice cave for ten million years since the ice age ended, until the monster monarch, Princess Dragon Mom, arrives on earth to conquer the planet and awakens the monsters to be her servants.
• The Thing: At the start of the film, a Flying Saucer which is carrying the Thing crash-lands in the Antarctic, leaving the Thing frozen in the ice for more than 100,000 years, per Norris' estimation. It's then dug out of the ice by the Norwegian expedition (depicted in the 2011 prequel), and subsequently encountered by the Americans when the last Norwegians try to kill the dog-Thing.
• The Thing from Another World: Arctic scientists discover a flying saucer buried beneath the ice, but accidentally destroy it with thermite trying to dig it out. They manage to retrieve the frozen alien inside, but it accidentally gets thawed out when a superstitious watchman covers it with a blanket, not realizing that it's an electric blanket that's plugged in. With the ice melted, the alien immediately revives and escapes.
• The Tomorrow War: The Whitespikes are these, with the ship carrying them having crashed in Siberia during medieval times and subsequently remaining in the ice until human-caused climate change freed them, whereupon they decimate humanity. The present-day protagonists are ultimately able to locate and destroy them, preventing this from happening.
• Transformers: Megatron was discovered by Archibald Witwicky in the Antarctic ice, where he'd been frozen for thousands of years. He was removed from the ice cave and transported to Hoover Dam, where Sector 7 has been keeping him frozen up to the present day, until Frenzy thaws him out.
• Universal Horror: This is a recurring theme in the Frankenstein (1931) sequels.
  • Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man: Lawrence "Larry" Talbot, the titular Wolf Man, discovers Frankenstein's monster frozen in a block of ice under the ruins of Ludwig Frankenstein's home, and thaws it out in the hopes that the monster can assist him in finding Dr. Frankenstein's notes so he can use them and die permanently. The monster isn't much help though.
  • House of Frankenstein: The monster, having been re-frozen at the end of the previous film, is discovered in another block of ice in this film, along with Larry Talbot.

Literature

• In the Cthulhu Mythos story "Cold Water Survival" by Holly Phillips, adventurers setting up a base on an iceberg that's split off from Antarctica realize that various Eldritch Abominations frozen in the ice are slowly thawing out as the berg travels into warmer regions.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: One book has Greg admit the idea of thawing prehistoric creatures is cool, but that there are some things that should stay frozen. His illustration depicts a cruise ship passing by a large iceberg and being surprised at the sight of a mammoth-dragon hybrid creature frozen inside ice that is cracking.
• The Divine Comedy: The Devil is a ragged beast trapped inside the ice in the center of hell.
• World War Z: Zombies can be frozen without killing them, so even though almost all of the Zombies were killed, people living in arctic places still face the risk of thawed-out zombies attacking during spring.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who often uses this trope in regards to creatures from Mars. Two out of three Martian villains, the Ice Warriors and the Flood, have been sealed in ice and break free at some point. The latter breaking free ends with the base it's in exploding to keep it from spreading to Earth.
• House of Frankenstein (1997): Frankenstein's monster is found frozen inside an ice block found in the Arctic and brought as an exhibit to Grimes's nightclub, where naturally he escapes and havoc ensues (especially when it turns out Grimes is a vampire).
• Red Dwarf: At the start of "Epideme", the crew finds an abandoned ship in the middle of an astro-glacier, with one of the dead bodies contained within being completely encased in ice. As it turns out, said ice block contains a corpse that is reanimated by an Affably Evil sentient virus contained within that freezes its victims when there is no one else to infect. Said corpse proceeds to infect Lister, leading to the crew trying to save his life before the virus kills him.
• Ultraman: Towards the Future has the Gigasaurus, a prehistoric Brontosaurus-like monster discovered in an ice shelf, which is revived by the Gudis virus into going on a rampage.
• The X-Files: "Ice" revolves around a scientific expedition to Alaska who discover strange worm-like organisms frozen in the ice covering an ancient impact crater. The worms infect the scientists, mind-control them, and make them kill each other, and Mulder believes them to be of extraterrestrial origin.

Pro Wrestling

• WCW Monday Nitro: One of the most infamous moments in wrestling history involved a block of ice carved "from the north face of Kilimanjaro", containing a huge wrestler called the Yeti. When he finally came breaking out of the ice, the Yeti looked more like a Bandage Mummy and attacked Hulk Hogan in a stiff manner that looked like Yeti was humping him.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Father Llymic is an entity from the Far Realms that was sealed within a magical prison of ice, which freezes under the sun and melts in the darkness. As long as the sun keeps shining in the sky, Father Llymic remains trapped. Should his influence spread far enough to bring about The Night That Never Ends, though, he will break free and end the world.
  • Levistus, an archdevil who rules over the fifth layer of the Nine Hells known as Stygia, is magically encased in the creatively named Tomb of Levistus, a giant, indestructible iceberg within his own domain, as punishment for attempting to overthrow Asmodeus and take over the Hells a long time ago. In a twisted bit of political chess on Asmodeus' part, this actually serves to eliminate two of his greatest enemies at once: Although Levistus is trapped in the ice, he is still technically the ruler of Stygia, conducting his business telepathically or via his minions, which prevents another scheming archdevil, Geryon, from seizing Stygia for himself and also going after Asmodeus as he can't harm Levistus as long as he is stuck behind the ice.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Marit Lage is an immensely powerful Eldritch Abomination that rampaged through Dominaria in the ancient past, before being sealed in the heart of the Ronom Glacier. The card Dark Depths represents her icy seal, and after certain conditions are met — i.e. the costly "unsealing" process of removing ten ice counters from it — Marit Lage herself enters the field of play.
  • Thing in the Ice depicts a ship towing an iceberg into port with an immense monster frozen within. The card comes into play with four counters on it, with one being removed any time the player uses magic; when all counters are removed, the monster breaks free and reveals itself as a monstrous, destructive kraken.
  • A staple effect for blue is to tap something and prevent it from untapping either temporarily (usually with an instant or sorcery) or permanently (usually with an enchantment), and sometimes this is represented as ice. Often this is showed off in the art with human-scale creatures, but Encase in Ice shows a frozen dragon. In such cases, defrosting the monster takes a spell or creature ability that destroys enchantments, which will allow the creature to untap normally and go right back to causing problems for your opponents.
• Numenera: Niress, an immense, tunnel-riddled and inhabited iceberg, is seeded through with masses of black ice known as Frozen Cores, which range from being the size of a room to the size of a city. Frozen Cores always hold something sealed in stasis, which can be released through the use of appropriate devices. Inquisitive explorers may be rewarded with the discovery of treasure, powerful artifacts, information on prior worlds or other unique rewards... or may just as easily release a rampaging titanothaur, a swarm of destructive nanites, a psychic parasite, or some other horror that would otherwise have remained sealed in its icy prison.
• Warhammer: The Storm of Magic supplement mentions that Carnosaurs, immense dinosaurian monsters that once roamed the world but which are now largely restricted to the jungles of Lustria and the Southlands, are occasionally found frozen in glaciers as far north as Naggaroth and Norsca, entombed there since the earliest ages of the world.
• Warhammer 40,000: Old One Eye is a powerful Tyranid monster that was believed dead after being shot in the eye, but was later found frozen in a glacier and went on a new rampage after being dug out. It eventually went missing again, but its body is rumored to have become once again entombed in ice on a different world where it is worshipped by a Genestealer cult.

Video Games

• Blue Stinger: One area is a cold-storage room that's a maze of ice blocks. You can set the temperature outside of the room; setting it high enough lets you just swim through the room... but there's an alien monster frozen in one of the ice blocks, and setting the temperature high enough to melt the ice unfreezes it, forcing you to fight it.
• Dinosaurs For Hire: A boss fought in a bio-lab is a T. Rexpy frozen in a wall of ice that starts breaking loose as you enter the boss arena. The fight has you shooting at a button on the other side of the screen while avoiding the boss' attacks, which releases nitrogen gas and re-freezes it back to its original state.
• Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: In the level "Blurry Flurry", the Mega Squeekly enemy from the previous game can be seen in the background encased in a giant block of ice.
• Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: In both a Mini-Dungeon located in Snowy Mountains and the postgame Bonus Dungeon, there are FOE that are encased within large walls made of ice: Patrol Bat in the former, and Moth Lord in the latter. In both cases, it's possible at one point to melt the walls and thus bring back these creatures to life.
• Final Fantasy VI: The frozen Esper discovered in Narshe is the catalyst that kicks off the entire plot. In the second half of the game, you can fight it to obtain it for your use; because it's frozen in ice, it attacks with ice magic but is weak against fire attacks.
• Flight Rising: This is part of the Ice Flight's motif. They use icebergs as frozen prisons for creatures influenced by the Shade.
• Season 9 of Fortnite reveals that underneath the icy mountain of Polar Peak, a Kaiju had been imprisoned and frozen within. After the volcanic eruption at the end of season 8, where a lava rock unveils the creature's eye gazing out from within the ice, the creature remains trapped but awake, before eventually breaking loose, destroying the mountain and escaping to sea with the Polar Peak castle still attached to its back.
• At one point in God of War (PS4), Kratos and Atreus must work together to break three walls of ice blocking their path. Each one visibly contains a monster to fight, with a Stonebeard among them.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Goht, the boss of the Snowhead Temple, is frozen solid when Link enters his boss chamber, and needs to be defrosted before being fought.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Inside a grotto located in the interior of Ice Ring Isle, there are enemies encased on chunks of ice. They can be melted with Fire Arrows, and defeating all enemies will unlock a treasure chest with a valuable Rupee within.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: The boss of the Temple of Droplets is the Big Octorok (actually just a normal-sized octorok, but it looks big since the dungeon is Minish-sized). It and the Element of Waters are both initially frozen, but thawing the Element also thaws the boss, forcing you to defeat it.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Icy mountain areas contain large chunks of ice scattered about the landscape, often blocking off passages and roads unless Link melts them with fire arrows or fire-infused weapons. However, many of them also contain monsters frozen within them, visible as dim outlines from the outside, and if the block holding them is melted through they will break free and attack.
• Legends of Runeterra: Several follower cards play into this trope.
  • The Ancient Yeti is partially trapped in a glacier with only its head able to move around. Every round, the cost of the card decreases by one, showing that the ice is slowly losing hold of the massive creature.
  • Frostguard Thralls are trolls transformed by Lissandra the Ice Witch into mind-controlled soldiers, which she then reserves inside blocks of ice for when they're needed. Instead of being summoned like regular units, Thralls are played as landmarks (Frozen Thralls), and every round a timer depletes to signal that the ice around them is thawing, allowing them to finally enter battle after eight rounds. Several cards can speed up this timer, including Countdown skills and the Draklorn Inquisitor who lets the thralls be summoned after only four rounds instead.
• In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Samus can find several frozen Reptilicus on Bryyyo as she follows Rundas's trail. The ice encasing them gradually displays greater traces of Phazon as an indication that Rundas is losing control of his Phazon-enhanced abilities.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War: During the Carnán questline, Carnán, Talion and Celembrimbor come across a group of Orc acolytes who were sent by Sauron to enlist the aid of Tar-Goroth, a Balrog that had been recently reawakened by Talion and Celebrimbor's forging of the New Ring. Tar-Goroth has other ideas, and rampages across Mordor until Talion, Celebrimbor and Carnán catch up to him. After battling with the giant fire demon, Carnán uses the last of her life force to seal Tar-Goroth away underneath the icy surface of a frozen lake. One of the surviving Orc acolytes later tries to resurrect him again, but Celebrimbor and Talion slay the Orc before he can do it, leaving Tar-Goroth to remain frozen forever.
• Ōkamiden: The boss of the penultimate dungeon (the Ice Room) is a wrathful dragon called Mizuchi that has been encased on ice since an unspecified period of time. Chiberasu and Manpuku end up bringing it back to life by accident, and can only leave the dungeon after defeating it.
• Persona 2: Combined with Human Popsicle and Sealed Evil in a Can, there is a group of evil aliens frozen beneath Xibalba. Upon entering the room, Maya Okamura unfreezes them and they immediately attack your party.
• The Secret World: Between the three major story missions, the player is flung into a frozen dreamworld where a mysterious voice whispers to you with offers of rewards in exchange for your allegiance; it's not until the end of the main story that this realm is revealed to be Antarctica, where a Gaia Engine has been buried deep beneath the ice... and each engine contains one of the Dreamers, essentially serving as a prison to contain its powers and a music box to keep it asleep. In Issue 12, it's revealed that the Antarctic Gaia Engine has been dug up and transported to Tokyo, where it is now hidden deep beneath Orochi Tower.
• Star Fox Adventures has Galdon, the boss of DarkIce Mines, who is frozen when you first enter his arena until you have Tricky thaw him out with his Flame command. It's explained in the original Dinosaur Planet that Garunda Te froze him a few years before the events of the game using a waterfall. The reason why Fox and Tricky have to melt him is because Scales placed one of the sacred Spellstones into one of his frozen claws.
• Subnautica: Below Zero has two monsters in one: much of the plot revolves around an enormous frozen Leviathan. The Leviathan is very much dead, but it happens to be carrying an ancient form of the Kharaa bacterium, which is still alive.
• Super Mario Bros. 3: In one of the last levels of Ice Land, Mario and Luigi find Munchers within meltable ice blocks. While this suggests that using the Fire Flower in the level is a bad idea (since the fireballs are hot enough to melt the ice and revive the Munchers), there's a hidden area in the level with a special powerup (the Hammer Suit) that requires melting two frozen Munchers and then turning them into coins by pressing a nearby P Switch.
• Syberia: There are rumors that there are frozen mammoth remains under the arctic ice, and a native tribe, the youkols, are still living off the meat, skin, and ivory of these remains. In the second game, it's revealed that these mammoths are still alive.
• Terror of Hemasaurus: At the start of the campaign, the playable monster is shown frozen in a glacier that crumbles due to global warming — the Church of the Holy Lizard having sent it back in time specifically to set this up.
• Warcraft: The first Lich King, Ner'zhul was this, his soul sealed into the Frozen Throne and the Helm of Domination. Upon Arthas shattering the ice and becoming the Lich King himself, the Frozen Throne then becomes his actual throne.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2: The Superboss Tyrannotitan Kurodil was frozen in ice by hundreds of Ice Blades 300 years before the main story. The party's Blades can unfreeze it and fight it just for the sake of a challenge and some nice rewards.

Webcomics

• Blood is Mine: The purpose of Zone Fifty Bunker B is to contain the Eldritch Abomination that awoke From a Single Cell in a failed government experiment, now frozen and cut into multiple blocks of ice as an extra precaution. That happened over a century ago and the structure still stands there with the frozen creature inside when the protagonists stumble onto it.
• Paradox Space: In "Night at the 100DSEUM", the crowning piece of Equius' collection is the Sweati, a gigantic yeti-like creature frozen in a block of its own sweat, which he found sealed inside a glacier during a mountain expedition and brought back home after digging it out. It's set free when Terezi, driven past her breaking point by a night spent tasting nothing but sweat, starts furiously hacking at it and accidentally shatters the ice.

Web Original

• Friends at the Table: The ultimate evil of the COUNTER/Weight series is Rigour, an ancient Mechanical Abomination by way of a Humongous Mecha that a MegaCorp unwittingly excavated from the frozen planet of Ionias, having laid entombed in ice for thousands of years following the last time galactic civilization attempted to kill it. Even trapped and dormant, its presence compels the workers digging it up to overwork themselves to the point that their health begins to fail, and as soon as it's free, it picks up right where it left off in trying to enslave the galaxy.

Western Animation

• Dragons: Riders of Berk: In one episode, the dragon of the week is a Skrill found frozen in an iceberg — and unlike most other dragons in the franchise, that thing cannot be tamed. Unlike all the other dragons who are portrayed as quirky and highly intelligent animals, the Skrill is near demonic in how relentless it is in its assault, and how incredible its lightning Breath Weapon is. In the end, the only option Hiccup and Toothless have is to freeze it in an iceberg again.
• DuckTales: In the Pilot Movie "Treasures of the Golden Suns", while exploring a penguin civilization in Antarctica, Mrs. Beakley and her granddaughter come across a giant "prehistoric woolly walrus" frozen in ice. Later, when Scrooge McDuck and the nephews free themselves from the penguins' prison with a tuning fork, the shattering noise from the fork also frees the walrus.
• Frankenstein Jr.: In "The Unearthly Plant Creatures", a villain named Plant Man frees three giant carnivorous plants from a glacier. He then commands them to attack Frankenstein Jr. and Buzz Conroy.
• Ghostbusters, The Real Ghostbusters: In "Cold Cash and Hot Water", Jim Venkman (Peter's father) finds one of these in Alaska; it turns out to be Hob Anagarak, a very powerful demon encased in a block of black ice. The black ice can't be melted except with the use of special magic spells.
• Gravity Falls: A Freeze-Frame Bonus in "Irrational Treasure" reveals that Time Baby, a gigantic time-devouring infant who would be introduced in the next episode as the tyrannical ruler of the distant future, was discovered frozen in an Antarctic glacier sometime in the past. The report on its discovery reads "Fortunately glaciers never melt, so we should be fine."
• The Little Mermaid (1992): Young Ariel finds a selection of dinosaurs frozen in the Arctic and frees them with her father's trident. This inexplicably lets them breath underwater as they rampage through Atlantis.
• The Secret Saturdays: In the Season 1 finale, the gigantic cryptid thought to be Kur (actually a Red Herring) is discovered frozen in the Antarctic ice along with its symbiont cryptids, awakening and breaking free thanks to Argost's efforts.
• Superman:
  • The New Adventures of Superman: In "Prehistoric Pterodactyls", after millions of years frozen in Arctic ice, two pterodactyls are freed and immediately go on a rampage.
  • Superman Theatrical Cartoons: In The Arctic Giant, a Tyrannosaurus rex is thawed out of a block of ice and goes on a rampage. Of course, this being the 40s, it looks more like Godzilla than an actual T. rex. Though it averts being a Notzilla by predating the Kaiju by 14 years, making for a case of Older Than They Think.
• The Unstoppable Yellow Yeti: A large dinosaur-like monster named Bill is sometimes seen frozen in the glacier leading up to Monster Mountain, with only his arm free from the ice. Gustav's on friendly terms with him, and in the series finale, he's freed from the ice, allowing him to speak to the characters.
• The World of David the Gnome: One episode has David visit a civilization of gnomes in the Arctic. One of their primary jobs is harvesting leather from the skin of a frozen mammoth.
• Young Justice: In "Downtime", a glacier holding Starro the Conqueror is excavated by the Atlanteans. During a fight involving Black Manta who covets the contents, Starro's preserved arm is broken free, but the glacier and most of the creature are promptly blown to kingdom come. It's revealed in later episodes that Starro was alive enough for the Light to create Mind Control chips from its surviving tissue.

Real Life

• There have been many cases of mammoths found frozen in ice and extremely well preserved. In fact, the word "mammoth" may come from the Estonian "maa mutt", meaning "earth mole", because of how often their half-buried remains were found, and they were thought to be subterranean animals. Over time, we have found permafrost mummies of many other ice age mammals such as woolly rhinos, bison, horses, wolves, bears, and no less than four cave lion cubs, and paleontologists predict that with global warming, more will come to light.
• One worry scientists have about melting glaciers, ice caps, and permafrost is that hibernating bacteria and other pathogens within the ice could become active again if thawed and cause a pandemic.

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