Warner Bros. Montreal has revealed that Mr Freeze's design in Gotham Knights is based on medical equipment.
Although we're currently seeing a ton of new Gotham Knights information being released, we know surprisingly little about its roster of villains. Aside from the Court of Owls, the only villain we definitively know about is Mr Freeze, who was revealed in the game's first gameplay trailer. Now, Warner Bros. Montreal has given a bit more information on the character and how he was designed.
In an interview with IGN discussing Mr Freeze's inclusion in the game, Character art director Jay Evans said, “When we get a villain like Mr Freeze, I mean the guy's got so much history, it's a challenge for our team when we get it. It's, ‘Where do we go from here?’ Because we look at all the past (versions of the character) that have been done really well. For us, the kind of jumping-off point was, 'where does he fit in our Gotham City, on a technological kind of level'? So he is the most advanced technology piece in our Gotham.”
More interestingly, Evans revealed that, although Mr Freeze is the most technologically advanced part of Gotham, his design is actually based on medical equipment, “A lot of our reference was medical equipment. Molded, cool, almost sci-fi shapes with part lines and product design influences. But then, he's still understandable. There's still mechanical connections. It's still relatable. It's not just sci-fi blobs where you have to use your imagination.”
Character art director Jianli Wu went into further detail on how the team made Mr Freeze their own without deviating from the source material too much, "The dome, the goggles, his face, the lore of Mr. Freeze is iconic. We don't want to deviate from that, because everyone, when they see that, they know it’s Mr Freeze. But we elevated the tech level a little bit, and we want to bring our own flavor into his design. We want to be faithful to the IP and, but at the same time, we want to bring something new to the table."