Man flexing to display a large 'Mr. Cool Ice' skull tattoo across his back with 'ICE' lettering on both forearms

Mr. Cool Ice

2005viral photosclassic

Published September 6, 2026

Mr. Cool Ice is the self-chosen alias of Tommy Steinberger, a German man from Mainz whose body is covered in skull tattoos and his own nickname inked across it. Photos of him shirtless and flexing first surfaced on the tattoo site BME in August 2005 and spread across English-speaking message boards over the next decade, turning him into an internet curiosity known well beyond Germany.

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Overview

The character built around Steinberger centers on a handful of stark photographs: shirtless flexing shots that show off dense skull ink and his self-branded 'Mr. Cool ICE' lettering across his body 1. Boards passed the images around as an artifact of unfiltered self-expression, with commenters split between mockery and grudging respect for a guy who tattooed his own nickname on himself and clearly did not care what anyone thought 1.

In Germany, Steinberger leaned into the character. He was a regular talkshow guest on Die Oliver Geissen Show and Britt with segments on extreme body modification, then let Sensor Magazine tour his 45-square-meter Mainz apartment across from the Hauptbahnhof, where the same skull motif carried over into the interior decor 2 (translated from German).

Origin & Background

Platform
BME (source) / message boards (viral spread)
Creator
Tommy Steinberger
Date
2005

Tommy Steinberger, a trained decorator from Mainz, gave himself the nickname Mr. Cool Ice and had it tattooed across his torso alongside dozens of skull designs 2 (translated from German). The earliest known online post of the now-famous shirtless flexing photographs went up on the body modification blog BME on August 28, 2005, under the title 'What's cooler than being cool?' 1. Commenters on that post already mentioned seeing him on a German TV talk show, suggesting the pictures were circulating locally before English-speaking boards found them 1.

How It Spread

Over the next decade the Mr. Cool Ice photographs made the rounds on Democratic Underground, pocketfives, and Something Awful, where a 2012 thread post kept the image alive on the forum 6. On September 14, 2008, YouTuber iancities cut the stills together to a Jonas Brothers song, and the upload went on to pull more than 42,000 views 3. On July 28, 2011, YouTuber JeremyUte uploaded a clip of Steinberger's appearance on Die Oliver Geissen Show, the German daytime talkshow, and the video cleared 63,000 views over the following years 4.

Sensor Magazine published a home tour interview on September 24, 2010, in which Steinberger delivered his motto: 'Everyone should do what they want and not apologize for it. You can't please everyone anyway' 2 (translated from German). On June 6, 2018, Redditor Somf_machine posted an English translation of that interview, giving the images a second wind with a non-German audience 5.

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