Imagine going out to get some ice cream while there is a psychopathic serial killer disguised as an ice cream man just to kidnap and kill you and then turn you into ice cream.
Well. It's been a long time since I’ve made a proposal here. Anyway, here we go.
What’s The Work?
Ice Scream is a mobile horror app series created by Keplerians Horror Games. It was basically one of those games that were based on or inspired by Hello Neighbor and Granny. The series, which involves 8 games, is about a child-hating serial killer disguised as an ice cream man, Rod Sullivan, having a history of freezing overweight children with his icy breath and then capturing them to take them into his factory where he kills them and turns them into ice cream for his business. The protagonist of this game, J. Brown, witnesses Rod kidnapping his friends, Charlie Owens, Liz Owens, and Mike Carter in each of the three games and he does his best to rescue them from Rod. However, Rod successfully captures the kids where there was a whole saga about them trying to escape his factory and take him down at once. This game was so good that even popular YouTubers like DanTDM, ThinkNoodles, BijuuMike, etc have played this game.
Who Is He? What Has He Done?
Rod Sullivan is the main antagonist of the series.
Having to get physically and psychologically bullied in school by his old classmates for being fat after eating his father's ice cream, and lost his adoptive father in a car crash, Rod gained a path of wanting to get revenge on them for the suffering that he had to go through because of them, and after he earned a secret ingredient unknowingly from Sister Madeline, Rod disguised himself as an ice cream man to give his classmates a sample of his ice cream which caused all of them to gruesomely explode to death as an act of revenge. Now, while they did deserve it for bullying Rod and shaping him into the sadistic, children-hating serial killer he is now, this would be the start of Rod’s psychopathic nature which would extend even as an adult.
During the 70s to 80s, Rod became a serial killer under the disguise of an ice cream maker and would stalk and capture numerous fat children and kill them for his experimental tests, and to turn them into ice cream so he could serve them for his ice cream business and find the special ingredient just to gain his so-called dignity back. His modus operandi is that he drives his ice cream van around the city to find any fat children and when he attracts them to the van he makes it look like he is going to give them some ice cream, when in reality, he grabs his victims and freezes them with his icy breath which freezes them for an extended amount of time. After that, he locks them in his cage and takes them to his factory. When taking them into the factory, he takes them into the Extraction Room, and puts them into tubes of pink liquid to store them, and kills them by squeezing them to death while he uses their remains to make his ice cream, and uses them to feed his customers. In case he doesn't have enough room for the Extraction Room, he locks them in the cage and then takes them into the room to kill them and turn them into ice cream for his business. The ice cream he makes also has some absurd effects. If a child eats the ice cream for the first time, then they forcefully become fat, and when eating it for the second time, they explode into smithereens and die. For adults, they explode immediately. In the factory, where he takes his child victims, he has also built robots, the Mini Rods, to aid him in his goals, guard the place, and alert whenever they see an intruder. He has also made bigger robots like Boris, who was a security guard watching over the place before he was temporarily destroyed, thanks to J. leading him into this trap before being repaired by the Mini Rods in the 8th game, and trying to attack Liz in one of the levels, and Mati, who is the chef that assists Rod in creating the secret ingredient for his ice cream, and will try to attack Charlie if she spots him in the 4th and the 8th in one of the levels.
So in the first game, Rod lures Charlie to his van and freezes him with his breath, captures him, and locks him inside his ice cream truck. J. witnesses this, and he follows Rod around these places, which include a cafe, a playground, a garage, and a parking lot. Most likely places where he is trying to find more overweight children for his ice cream. Luckily, J. finds all the clues to finding the key to Rod’s van and opens the cage to free Charlie. Rod drives and is never seen again until the 2nd game. This time, it's Lis. Charlie’s twin sister. Rod plays a trick on Lis by trying to get his ice cream multiplied times as an annoying joke to piss her off when in reality, it was just a distraction to freeze her and capture her in his van so he can kill her and turn her into ice cream. So of course, he travels through many places to find any victims or any suspects. The stall again, a circus, a graveyard, and a movie theater. Once J. solves all puzzles and finds the key again, he unlocks the cage and frees Lis. However, because of her dumbass not jumping out of Rod’s van because of believing that she would get a sprained ankle even though she was getting kidnapped by a deranged serial killer 💀💀. So because of this moment, this caused the 3rd game and the rest of the games happened. I mean seriously, who wouldn’t jump out of a moving truck of a killer ice cream man just not to sprain their ankle? Like come on! It’s worth it more than getting killed by a serial killer disguised as an ice cream maker. Anyways, speaking about the 3rd game. Rod comes back again, waiting for children to kidnap, and Mike was one who confronted him with a freeze ray that he built, though Rod had the upper hand and smacked the weapon away, caught him, and forced fed him to eat his “special ice cream”. Which forcefully turned Mike into a fat kid, and when he tried to run away, Rod caught him, froze him with his icy breath, and captured him in his ice cream truck. So, yet again, he drives in these locations, the Stall, which features his new pet crocodile that can attack the player when near it, a shopping center, the circus again, a train station, and a camping place. J solves all of the clues to find the key to Rod’s can and finds Charlie and Lis, saves Mike, and reunites his friends. However, while J hides, Rod freezes Lis, Charlie, and Mike, and takes them to his factory. Once J. tastes a sample of the secret ingredient he stole from Rod to turn himself fat and have himself kidnapped and captured by Rod to save his friends from his factory.
The fourth game continues with him taking J., locked in a cage, in his factory with his three other friends, so he can take them to the Extraction Room and kill them via squeezing them to death so he can turn them into ice cream. J. finds his way out of the cage and along his way he goes through the robots he built, the Mini Rods and Boris, J. enters the control room and saves his friends. Rod sees that the kids are free and chased after them. Luckily they escaped through some pipes that led them to three different rooms (and for the heads, I am going to say this in order of the release dates of the games of Ice Scream: Friends based on the characters). Mike ends up in an engine room, Charlie ends in a kitchen, where he also encounters Mari the chef robot, and Lis ends up in a Laboratory, where Mike travels in the place with her to save and Charlie follows Rod out of town to and inside his van, with a newly-built ice cannon on top to freeze his child victims to have an easier way to capture them, to find the keys to free Lis. Lis is free, everyone is reunited but thanks to Charlie’s distraction, Rod has found the kids and tried to break the door down in the control room, but the kids found a way to escape and soon when he breaks in, he finds them missing. With all the times of failing to catch the kids leaving him in a pissed off state, he locks the factory doors out of spite to prevent the kids from escaping his factory and wants to kill them personally when they push him to his limits. The kids managed to power up the generators in the factory and they have an option to escape the factory and go home, to which Rod tries to locate the place that they are going and gets away with his actions. However, this is no longer canon due to the True Ending update. The other canon option is that the kids, can go to the Extraction Room and free the captured kids in the pink tubes before Rod kills them and they found all of the key cards to free the kids and Rod desperately makes his final attempt to kill the kids in the top of the floor and when confronted by them, he built a freeze ray to freeze them all and kill them once and for all. He starts by freezing the door and freezing Mike, and J., Lis, Charlie, had to fight back and had to destroy Rod’s freeze ray by hitting the weak points and managed to break it down. The door is unfrozen, so is Mike, and the kids manage to defeat Rod and escape the factory, which will later result in Rod’s despair and eventually death.
Heinous Standards
So we have villains like Mr. Meat, a PE villain, who cannibalized many people for his business and turned them into pigs and even killed his own daughter, Rebecca, one of the bad endings, and Sister Madeline, who performed many experiments on many children and was the one who corrupted Rod into the man he is. Does Rod stand out enough, yes.
Rod is a serial child murderer who has a long history of kidnapping children and taking them to his factory where he can take them to the Extraction Room where he takes victims and kills them via squeezing them into pop and uses their remains to serve them as ice cream for his business. The worst part is that anyone who eats ice cream is also given bad side effects. For any kids who eat it for the first time, they forcibly turn the child fat, and if they eat it the second time, they explode to death. For any adults who eat this, they don’t need to turn fat in the first part, they just explode without a second chance of eating the ice cream. The worst part is that anyone who eats his ice cream, which is made out of children, are unintentionally cannibals, making Rod capable of committing enforced cannibalism. Mr. Meat had done the same but none of them were confirmed to be children, Sister Madeline harms children too, but she never commits cannibalistic acts like these two. The fact that Rod had force fed Mike, a 13 year boy, into eating his ice cream made out of children, means that he did the same to a child.
While his acts of kidnapping and killing children and the side effects of his ice cream remain offscreen, these do not count as Offscreen Villainy nor FH. As there is evidence and established patterns that are shown in the game. The first game reveals that he had experimented, captured, and killed children and turned them into ice cream, and the side effects of what happens to both kids and adults who eat his ice cream, him singing his goals, “I’m going to kill some kids today. I’m looking for the chump plubby ones. I’m going to find me some chubby kids, and we’re gonna make some ice cream fun”, him mentioning to Mike about “not remember the names of all the children he kidnapped”, as well as force feeding Mike into eating his ice cream, which showed one of the side effects of what happens any kids eat his ice cream, and that's forcibly turning them fat, also let's not forget that the ice cream is made out of fucking children, making Rod capable of making a child forcibly a cannibal, him having many cages in his factory, which indicates that J., Mike, Lis, and Charlie weren't the only children he kidnapped, the Extraction Room being evidence to where he takes his child victims to kill them, and is revealed to what happens to them, and that is being squeezed to their deaths until they explode where he uses their parts to make his ice cream, a police officer, talking to J’s mother on the phone, in the intro of the game confirming that there have been missing children in the neighborhood and that J’s mother heard that there was an ice cream truck sound, making it clear that Rod was behind this, the final update revealing that he puts children in these tubes of pink liquids where they are floating in them unconscious before he kills them, to which J. and his friends believe that they need to save them before it's too late, and the fact that J. and his friends establish a pattern for his killing spree due to not being the first victims he kidnapped.
So yeah, no Offscreen Villain and Fridge Horror here.
Preventions?
Tragic/Insecure/Sympathetic
Long story short, he is way too tragic and sympathetic to the point where it was one of the reasons why he was removed from being Near Pure Evil.
So being raised by his mother, Sister Madeline, she was very abusive towards him and even forced him to dress up as a girl, due to her being unsatisfied that her daughter was reincarnated as a boy by Nazarath.
That is until the other nuns had another parent adopt him, Joseph Sullivan, a famous ice cream maker, who didn't seem to care too much about Rod and only used him for the secret ingredient that nuns gave him for Rod. When adopted by Joseph, he was pretty neglectful towards Rod despite the fact that he loved and respected his adopted father. When having to eat some of his dad’s ice cream despite being told not to, it turned him fat, and it resulted in him frequently getting physically and psychologically bullied by his classmates for being fat which caused him to go through depression.
It would become worse when Joseph was killed in a car accident, thanks to Sister Madeline brainwashing one of her minions into killing Joseph. Rod found a newspaper that revealed his adoptive father had been killed in a car accident, which left him in a more depressed state. All of this plays a big role in shaping him into the child-kidnapping serial killer he is now.
The abuse of his mother, which he didn't know that was his mother back then until the final game, is what made him not care too much about his mother and made him feel like he was abandoned by her, the kids in his school bullied him in his childhood is which made him gain a more vengeful side of him, and even when growing up, he used the secret ingredient that he unknowingly received from Sister Madeline to trick his old classmates into eating his ice cream that caused them to explode to their well-deserved deaths. For the kids he kidnapped and killed, even though they have nothing to do with his tragedy, it's implied that he grew up to hate fat children was because they gave him reminders of his past of being bullied, and he kills them as a way to cope with his trauma and insecurities of his past, and his father’s death is the reason he became an ice cream maker just like his dad.
Which all of this together plays too much of explaining why he is who he is now.
The final game also makes it clear that he is still shown to be affected by his tragic past, which causes him to have a panic attack and makes him want to kill the kids so he can get rid of his bad memories of his past.
This also extends to an extremely sympathetic death, where he talks about his background. He talks about how he’s been thinking about how tough his past has been due to how the bullying from his old classmates got to him and having to kill them out of revenge, how his adoptive father Joseph, who he considers his main family was guilty for turning him fat and how he never cared about Rod, only using him for the secret ingredient for fame and money, and that his real mother, Sister Madeline, someone who actually cared for him despite her being abusive towards, and his real father was the demon Baphomet, actually being Nazarath. He falls into a moment of despair where he realizes that he can't undo his past mistakes that turned him into the monster he is, and believes that his life, revenge, and dreams are meaningless.
This nihilism had caused him to become suicidal to the point where attempts to commit it, the gods, Nazarath and Raindrop freeze time to discuss Rod’s fate and the latter asks the former that he gets another chance but decides to give him a path of redemption due to the mistakes he that he committed.
Which unfortunately they unfreezes time and have Rod fall in the tube of poisonous ice cream to commit suicide and sad music plays throughout his death scene. Sister Madeline having to be distraught when seeing her son trying to commit suicide, pulls Rod out of the batch and is happy to see her son Rod after such a long and apologizes to him having to put himself through such as hell. As they both get crucified to stone, Rod’s last words are “You…are…my mother?” as they both die and Sister Madeline accepts their death. Wishing to meet Rod in the afterlife, implying they both went to Heaven.
Care
He cares about two people.
The first being his adoptive father, Joseph Sullivan. Who he respected and cared and he wanted to be an ice cream maker just like him. When hearing that his dad died from a car accident, this left him depressed and crying when he saw a newspaper revealing Joseph’s death. This is also the reason why he used the facade of an ice cream man for his role as a serial killer since he wanted to be like his father. The fourth game revealed that he built a factory that was dedicated to his father. He also was genuinely sad when having to believe that his father, who he considered his main family, didn't care about him and only used him for self-benefit considering he was the only person who he had to take care of and nurtured him.
The second person he cares about is his pet crocodile, which a note reveals how much he cares about her, “My precious crocodile has grown up and is now a mother. When she's more calm, I’ll take her back to the factory to keep me company. I need to clear the dam area and prepare it for her children. Who will be the next little crocodile to earn my tiny hat?”. Which should be enough to show that he cares about his pet crocodile, even feeding her fish.
Remorse
During the moment before his final moments, he shows a great amount of remorse for his actions, admitting that he realizes that he can’t undo his past mistakes. This remorse would also be one of the reasons for his suicide attempt. To sum up the remorse, Raindrop, one of the gods who stopped time, alongside Nazarath, to decide whether Rod should live to have a second chance or not, had claimed that Rod showed “true repentance”. The fact that she also thinks that Rod deserves a second chance, implies that he is capable of redemption. If Nazarath had agreed that Rod deserves a second chance and saved him from his death, he would become a better person, or at least try to. But since he believed that Rod committed too many mistakes to be redeemed, he instead unfroze time and let Rod die.
Final Verdict?
Weak yes. It was a fun ride playing this game, it's a shame it was the end of the series and had a sad ending to the final game.