SubZero Details That Will Give You Chills

One could easily be forgiven for thinking “SubZero” was always meant to be a Mr. Freeze story. After all, the film was released less than a year after “Batman & Robin,” which also features Freeze as a major villain — something that was definitely not coincidental, as “SubZero” co-writer Randy Rogel explains in “Back Issue!” #99.

Yet despite the tie-in potential, Mr. Freeze was not going to be the original antagonist of the second “Batman: The Animated Series” film. Instead, it would have been another villain from “Batman & Robin” — Bane. Rather than be a growling henchman to Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze, however, Bane would have been the lead foe, portrayed much closer to his comic book roots. Or as Rogel put it to the Watchtower Database YouTube channel, “Why don’t we make Bane basically the Terminator and you can’t kill this guy?”

Ironically, it was the casting of the real Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the cold-themed criminal in “Batman & Robin” that put the Bane story on the back-burner, as Warner Home Video consequently asked that the film instead be Freeze-centric. Eventually, Bane would indeed make it into a DCAU feature film: “Mystery of the Batwoman,” acting as a villainous lead alongside the Penguin and Rupert Thorne.

One could easily be forgiven for thinking “SubZero” was always meant to be a Mr. Freeze story. After all, the film was released less than a year after “Batman & Robin,” which also features Freeze as a major villain — something that was definitely not coincidental, as “SubZero” co-writer Randy Rogel explains in “Back Issue!” #99.

Yet despite the tie-in potential, Mr. Freeze was not going to be the original antagonist of the second “Batman: The Animated Series” film. Instead, it would have been another villain from “Batman & Robin” — Bane. Rather than be a growling henchman to Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze, however, Bane would have been the lead foe, portrayed much closer to his comic book roots. Or as Rogel put it to the Watchtower Database YouTube channel, “Why don’t we make Bane basically the Terminator and you can’t kill this guy?”

Ironically, it was the casting of the real Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the cold-themed criminal in “Batman & Robin” that put the Bane story on the back-burner, as Warner Home Video consequently asked that the film instead be Freeze-centric. Eventually, Bane would indeed make it into a DCAU feature film: “Mystery of the Batwoman,” acting as a villainous lead alongside the Penguin and Rupert Thorne.