Grant Walker

Grant Walker
Species:	Human
Hair:	White
Eyes:	Black
Base:	Oceania
Rogue of:	Batman
Abilities:	Post-augmentation: Immortality Cybernetic super-strength
Voiced by:	Daniel O'Herlihy

"Look at me, Mr. Freeze, I'm an old man! I've created wonders in my lifetime, there is still so much to do! I want to change as you have! To become, like you, a being of blessed, eternal cold!"

Grant Walker was a famous theme-park mogul.

History

Walker built his fame and fortune with a series of well-loved theme parks. One of his original "Visioneers" who designed and built his parks was a young Karl Rossum, an electronics genius who went on to become the CEO of Cybertron.

On the surface, Walker seemed like a man who wanted to make people happy by giving them a place to forget their troubles. Underneath, however, Walker developed a megalomaniacal disorder and became obsessed with the idea of making the whole world as idyllic as one of his amusement parks – by force, if necessary.

As Walker grew older, he feared that he would die before his grand vision was achieved. He became keenly interested in Dr. Victor Fries's work, and the accident that made him the criminal Mr. Freeze. Walker realized that Fries' aging process had been slowed so much as to make him practically immortal. Walker was eager to trade his own humanity for immortality, so he had Freeze broken out of prison and brought to his newest theme park, Oceania, pleading with him to replicate the process on Walker. Freeze was aghast why anyone in their right mind would actually attempt to duplicate that accident. Fries attempted to talk Walker out of it by saying that one rotten day as a normal human was far better than being frozen forever. Walker's ace in the hole was Nora Fries, whom his agents had saved from death from the explosion at the GothCorp lab in which Freeze had believed she perished. Walker promised he had the means to save her life, and all Freeze had to do was grant his request, which he reluctantly did.

Grant Walker after his mutation.

Once the transformation was completed, and Walker was installed in a cryo-suit similar to Freeze's own, Walker wasted no time in preparing his grand scheme: targeting a gigantic, cannon-sized cold gun at Gotham City, planning to freeze it, and ultimately the rest of the world, while a group of his loyal followers inside Oceania would be the only survivors of the human race. With the world frozen, neither Fries nor Walker would require cryo-suits.

However, Batman prevailed on Freeze's better nature, and Freeze helped him and Robin to escape captivity and sabotage Walker's plan, also by playing upon Freeze's pining for Nora. Batman and Robin convinced Freeze that if Nora regained consciousness, there is no way she would love a man who aided and abetted a megalomaniac like Walker. The cannon malfunctioned, and Oceania was destroyed by ice sheets and submerged beneath the ocean.

When Walker regained consciousness, he was alone and trapped in a block of ice that he could not break, even with his cybernetic strength.

Background information

• Grant Walker does not appear again in the animated series. He does appear in several issues of the tie-in comic book Batman: Gotham Adventures, as the "second Mr. Freeze". In those comics, Walker escapes the ice after several years of imprisonment, an experience which drives him insane, and goes on a rampage, including kidnapping a team of Wayne Enterprises scientists commissioned to find a cure for Freeze's condition.

• In deleted material meant for issue 15 of the tie-in comic Batman Adventures, Walker is killed by a robotic doppelganger of Mr. Freeze made by Nora Fries's new husband, Francis D'Anjou, to frame Victor Fries.

• There are four obvious parallels between Grant Walker and Walt Disney:
  • Walker refers to his theme park designers and builders as his "Visioneers", a reference to Disney's "Imagineers".
  • There is an urban legend (which was later pushed as truthful when it wasn't by then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner) that Disney wanted to be cryonically frozen before his death, in order to continue his work. In actuality, however, Disney was cremated, which is the polar opposite of cryogenic freezing. Cryonics was not studied until after Disney died, thus making such a concept impossible to begin with.
  • In 1966, the final year of his life, Disney drafted plans for Epcot, which would be a self-contained city. Walt Disney had continued working on the plans even until his illness consumed him as a way to keep his mind active. The plans were later constructed as the Epcot Pavilion. Although the concept was to be self-contained, Disney made no remark that Epcot would be crime-free or utopian.
  • Walker's facial features also strongly resemble Disney - moustache, hair, and his habit of raising one eyebrow, which Disney was known for.
  • Walt Disney's inspiration to build a reputable theme park was inspired by an earlier experience taking his own kids to a carnival that had litter, peeling paint, rude attendants, and nothing for parents to do except stare into space. His vision included an idea where young and old could enjoy the rides and forget their troubles. Disney had also prohibited the sales of newspapers in any concessions, considering them too depressing.

Appearance

Batman: The Animated Series

• "Deep Freeze"