Nora Fries - History On Batman: The Animated Series

History On Batman: The Animated Series

After marrying Victor Fries, a cryogenics researcher working for GothCorp, Nora is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Fries uses the company's equipment to cryogenically freeze his wife until a cure can be found. GothCorp CEO Ferris Boyle cuts the funding and later goes into Fries' laboratory to shut down the project personally with some security guards. According to “Heart of Ice” and “The Batman Adventures Holiday Special”, Nora is presumed dead after the resulting scuffle, which destroys the lab. However, in the episode "Deep Freeze" Nora is revealed to still be alive within her chamber.

Victor, who has by then become Mr. Freeze, eventually retrieves Nora's chamber and keeps it in his cave in the Arctic until Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero, when Nora's chamber is broken. No longer frozen, Nora does not have long to live. In desperation, Freeze bribes an old colleague into helping her. This leads to Freeze hunting down Barbara Gordon, one of the few women on hospital records with Nora's rare blood type. Freeze plans to use Barbara for a fatal organ transplant to save Nora, but Batman intervenes. Nora is ultimately cured by Dr. Francis D'Anjou of Wayne Enterprises.

According to The New Batman Adventures episode "Cold Comfort", Nora waits for the missing and presumed dead Freeze for some time before she decides to marry her doctor. This subplot is expanded in Batman Adventures, a comic series based on Batman: The Animated Series.

The web cartoon Gotham Girls also reveals that Nora has a younger sister named Dora Smithy. Dora is very close to Nora and hates Victor Fries for keeping her sister in a coma. Dora's campaign against costumed vigilantes and villains results in her becoming one herself in the series finale.

By the time of Batman Beyond, Nora is not seen; however, when Mr. Freeze (whose frozen body slows his aging to an almost immortal level) returns to his normal human self of Victor Fries in the episode "Meltdown", he starts a Nora Fries Foundation in memory of his wife.

Nora Fries has never had a voice actress; in her only appearances in the animated series, she is always unconscious (usually floating in the cryogenic tank). The only time she is only seen awake is in photographs, in issues of Batman Adventures and at the end of Batman & Mr. Freeze: Subzero, when a report is shown of her recovery. Jason Hall, who wrote her appearances in Batman Gotham Adventures #51 and Batman Adventures #15 establishes Nora as being a scientist herself. Nora's personality and reason for her devotion to Victor is further developed in that issue. Nora feels guilty over the fact that Victor neglects his condition while tending to her own, which results in his body deteriorating to only a head. Nora's new husband, Francis D'Anjou, is jealous of Nora's lingering feelings for Victor and hides all of the letters that Victor writes her. Once Nora finds out that Victor still cares, after finding one of the letters, she tries to pursue him. Nora is shown to be deeply in love with Victor and tries to make their relationship work, but Victor's criminal past keeps it from happening.

During a later appearance, D'Anjou is abducted by Grant Walker — a man who had forced Freeze to subject him to the same treatments as he had undergone — to research a cure for his condition, forcing Nightwing and Batgirl to team up with Mr. Freeze to stop Walker after Batman is incapacitated. After Walker is defeated, Nightwing and Batgirl remotely deactivate Freeze's body to stop him killing Walker, but Freeze simply ejects his head and escapes.