Sure, we know some of the gangsters-in-suits types will be in Fox’s Gotham, but series executive producer Danny Cannon is determined to get some of Batman’s more colorful villains in there, too – namely, Mr. Freeze.

Speaking with Digital Spy, Cannon – who also directed the series pilot – said that at this stage, the writing team was simply trying to find a way to bring a grounded, realistic version of the ice-powered nemesis to the show.

“My first conversation with [showrunner] Bruno Heller about the villains in this show is always that they need to be very credible and relatable and the science behind them needs to be real.”

Part of that comes from Cannon’s time as a veteran of CSI, where CBS kept a handful of scientific and medical consultants around to help make the death and carnage in the series a little more plausible. Cannon told Digital Spy that he held on to just one of those stories from the CSI days which might help Mr. Freeze’s origin work in the world of Gotham.

What could that mean for the frozen inventor turned cold-blooded criminal? Mr. Freeze (AKA Dr. Victor Fries), was introduced back in 1959, with modern versions of his origin story establishing him as a cryonics expert who is forced to survive via a suit of refrigerated armor following an accident attempting to preserve his terminally ill wife, Nora.

His Batman: The Animated Series arc might be one of the most heartbreaking in the entire series: after years of committing crimes in order to restore his frozen wife, Freeze’s body was destroyed by the suit that was keeping him alive, reducing him to a head in a jar on spider legs. From the sounds of it, Gotham might not be the kind of universe where that kind of elaborate weirdness could occur.

Gotham will premiere on Monday, September 22 on Fox.

[Source: Digital Spy]