You are confusing mid round win poses with victory poses.

The kori blade was a victory pose

The "freeze myself" was a mid round win pose.

I have not seen the ice clone one you speak of so I am not sure which one it would be. Can you clarify?

There are two different Mid-round poses.

There's the normal one and a Mid-round pose that gives the opponents some distance if you're too close to him/her.

You got to remember that round animations differ from the distance of both fighters.

The Ice Clone Smash is when Sub-Zero is too close to the defeated opponent.
The Self Freeze is when he's at a sweep distance of the defeated opponent.

Variation does not play a role in it.

Here's the Self Freeze as the Grandmaster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVCSrwtrimY

Here's the Self Freeze as the Cyromancer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4nw0unwl24

I'm not confusing them, maybe not the best phrasing but I know a victory pose when I see one as the chamera clearly changes and the match is over :P

The title mentions both of them because I wonder if this would affect both or them, one or none.

So far I'm only seeing the Clone Smash mid round pose with Grandmaster variation (on the combo videos on another thread, check Sub-Zero fights he does it a couple of times, he also got what looks like an updated customized breaker where he provoques an ice shatter explosion) and I would be surprised to see the Clone pose on a variation that can't use clones.

And maybe this means victory poses are also subject to change as I'm not sure how Grandmaster and Unbreakable Sub-Zero froms a Kori Blade just for a victory pose but not for regular moves (that said, I would like to see the Kori Blade involved on all playstyles and let Cryomancer have the other weapons).

*facepalm*

Don't understand why they facepalm or de LOL gif on the next comment? It's possible that as you said it's the "close to opponent" mid round animation, but still, we've only seen that one with Grandmaster variation (the one that actually uses clones) and never with any other variation. The game is still in development and even more animations could be added (Sub-Zero didn't have the ice explosion parry on previous builds IIRC).

It also would make sense for Cryomancer and Unbreakable to not use the animation that uses the clone and so far they aren't using it (and I'm not sure it's a "close to opponent" thing as he ends up almost on the same position where he started after shattering the clone with a punch).

We're talking about the team that made 2 or more intro dialogues for every pair of characters which could range from 600 to 900 lines, so it wouldn't be crazy to think they made extra animations for mid rounds and victory depending on variations even if it's just for some specific ones.

And... I stand corrected as in the streaming Sub-Zero did the clone mid round animation with Cryomancer making my guesses BS :P