﻿Cowabunga, dudes! I’m Moose,
and this week on How to Kill, we’re tackling our first ninja.
But not just any ninja.
I’m talking about the leader of the fearsome Foot Clan himself:
Oroku Saki,
A.K.A. the Shredder.
Ever since the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ debut in 1984,
the Shredder has been a serious thorn in their shells,
and every time the tubular teens think he’s gone for good,
he returns to wreak havoc on New York City.
So gas up the Party Wagon,
crack open some ooze,
and don’t even think about anchovies,
because today, we’re gonna show you
How to Kill Shredder
Creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird had no idea how iconic their evil ninja would become.
The idea came to Eastman after he looked at a big-ass cheese grater and thought:
‘Wouldn’t this be cool on a bad guy’s arms?’
He called him ‘Grate Man’ and ‘The Grater’ before Laird stepped in and suggested ‘Shredder,’
thank you, Peter.
But even with all the elements in place for an arch-nemesis,
the creators killed him off in his very first appearance.
And yet, the Shredder still reared his spiky head in nearly every adaptation that followed,
so for this ‘How to Kill,’ we’re gonna run through how he’s died in each medium,
starting with
The Comics
In the shockingly violent first issue of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’
Splinter’s ninja teens face off with their sensei’s sworn enemy on a Manhattan rooftop.
After Leonardo impales Shredder with a katana,
the turtle leader offers him the bloody blade to commit an honorable seppuku,
or ritual suicide.
But the sneaky Shredder pulls out a thermite grenade,
and when Donatello bats it back at him,
Shred-head falls off the building and is blown to smithereens.
This rooftop rumble would be recreated in Turtles adaptations for years to come,
usually with a less lethal result,
but even this grisly original demise wouldn’t last for long.
A few issues later, the Foot Clan returns in full force,
and a resurrected Shredder beats Leo within an inch of his life.
The turtles flee to Casey Jones’ cabin in the woods,
and build their strength for their final showdown.
As he faces off against Leonardo,
Saki reveals that the Foot brought him back to life using ninja magic,
and a colony of worms that absorbed the memories from his corpse and formed them into a brand new body.
I find that a little hard to swallow!
Not like talking turtles, right?
If you can accept talking turtles, magic talking rabbits, and aliens that are just brains in robot bellies,
you can accept magic worms that bring people back to life.
The two warriors clash in mid-air,
and when they land,
Leo is still standing,
and the Shredder’s lost his head.
The turtles burn his body on a raft in the Hudson River,
ending his menace once and for all.
Well, at least until a half-Shredder, half-shark clone returns to stalk the sewers,
but that’s neither here nor there.
Decapitation is also effective against Shredder’s rebooted incarnation in the amazing IDW comics.
This version of Oroku Saki grew up with Hamato Yoshi in feudal Japan,
murdering him and his four sons who would later be reincarnated in animal form.
After hibernating in ooze for hundreds of years,
Shredder returns to seize control of New York City,
but he falls in final battle with Splinter.
In defeat, he commits seppuku by impaling himself with his trademark claws,
leaving Splinter to finish the job with one swift stroke.
It’s pretty violent stuff,
that might even warrant an R-rating if Shredder went out that way in
The Movies
The first ‘Ninja Turtles’ film is one of the greatest comic adaptations ever made.
It was the perfect marriage between the gritty comics and the lighthearted cartoon,
adapting elements like the ‘Return to New York’ storyline from the original run,
and bringing them to life with Jim Henson’s incredible animatronics.
Just like the first issue, the movie climaxes with a rooftop showdown,
only this time, Splinter himself twirls his ancient enemy off the roof and into a garbage truck,
leaving him to die like a dog without honor after Casey Jones nonchalantly crushes him into a squishy red paste.
OOPS!
Oops indeed.
But, as we learned in the sequel,
Shredder somehow survives his trip through the trash compactor,
and returns to uncover the secret of the Ooze,
which basically boils down to:
“If you chug a bottle after a Vanilla Ice concert,
you’ll mutate into a seven-foot tall monster that looks suspiciously like WWE Hall of Famer Kevin Nash.”
This is where the big boys play, huh?
Look at the adjective! 'Play!'
The Super Shredder tangles with the turtles beneath a rotting old dock,
and even though they can barely scratch him,
Oroku Saki is his own worst enemy.
Shredder! You gotta listen to reason! You're gonna destroy us all!
THEN SO BE IT.
In an ooze-induced frenzy,
Super Shredder brings the entire structure down on himself and his amphibian enemies.
The brothers survive,
Man, I love being a turtle.
but the Shredder is shredded for good.
He’s nowhere to be seen in ‘Ninja Turtles 3,’
and in the 2007 CGI film that followed-up the live-action trilogy,
Oroku Saki is still six feet under,
and his foster daughter Karai is running the Foot Clan as the new Shredder.
Now, the Michael Bay films gave us an interesting take on the Shred-Head.
SHREDDER!
Originally, he was going to be an American mercenary named Colonel Schraeder--
Shredder, Schraeder...
and later Eric Sachs.
But after fan outcry, Sachs was split off into his own character,
leaving this big, Transformers-looking Shredder as the main antagonist.
Even though April kicks him off a skyscraper, he survives the first film,
and in ‘Out of the Shadows’ he receives a makeover that brings him more in line with his cartoon counterpart.
The last we see of him, Shredder is frozen by Krang and shipped off to a zoo in Dimension X,
and since the movies are being rebooted once again,
it doesn’t look like he’s coming back any time soon.
And speaking of reboots, there’s a new animated series right around the corner,
so let’s see how to shred the Shredder in
The Cartoons
Clearly, the Shredder from the wacky 1987 series couldn’t die,
unless you count spamming him with divekicks until he fell over a guardrail.
I made another funny! Ha ha ha.
I mean, they had to make all the foot soldiers robots to satisfy the censors,
so we were never going to see any decapitations or ritual suicide in Saturday morning cartoons.
It's a bummer, I know.
The 2003 series was a lot more serious,
but I was still pretty surprised when they showed Leonardo slicing off Shredder’s head with a katana.
Then I was even more shocked when his body stood up and walked away.
Turns out this Shredder is an alien named Ch’rell,
also known as Oroku Saki, and the Shredder!
a member of the Utrom species that inspired Krang in the ‘90s cartoon.
An intergalactic warlord responsible for the deaths of millions,
You are not fit to judge me! I am the Shredder! I am invincible! NOOOO!!!
he landed on Earth in feudal Japan,
where he build a robot exoskeleton inspired by ancient legends.
Ch’rell’s last canonical appearance was in the mega-crossover ‘Turtles Forever,’
where he was obliterated by a beam from the Technodrome.
Of course, that’s just one of the several Shredders that showed up in the 2003 series.
There’s the Cyber Shredder, a digital engram of Ch’rell’s personality brought to life by a living computer virus,
which was subsequently ended by a blast from Donatello and Casey and April’s great-grandson from an alternate future.
But both of these villains were inspired by a far more ancient evil,
a Japanese Tengu demon, the first Shredder.
He seduced a warrior named Oroku Saki to his side,
then the two beings merged and plunged Japan into an age of darkness.
And when the Tengu Shredder emerged in modern times,
it took a full-scale assault from the Turtles and their allies to destroy him for good.
Karai sapped his powers, Hamato Yoshi’s spirit stabbed him with his own trident,
everyone turned into dragons for a hot minute,
then Yoshi sliced him in half, ending the ancient evil for good.
Lucky for us, the 2012 animated series only had one Shredder,
a badass criminal mastermind with a burned-up face.
After getting the entire shit kicked out of him by Splinter,
What's this?!
Shredder receives an I.V. drip of Ooze to survive,
mutating him into a monstrous new Super Shredder.
Leo and Saki exchange blows,
and the monster falls to the leader’s blade,
but Shredder wouldn’t rest in peace for long.
His disciple, Tiger Claw, resurrects him as a rotting zombie,
but the undead Shredder comes to a sober realization.
We do not belong here, demon!
He sacrifices himself to seal away the evil demon Kavaxas,
finally dying an honorable death.
It’s a fitting end to the turtles’ most fearsome foe,
in one of their best animated outings yet.
The new ‘Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ series is taking things in a different direction.
The Foot Clan is still around, but instead of the Shredder,
they answer to an evil alchemist named Baron Draxum.
And while I can’t wait to see a villain voiced by John Cena face off against some wisecracking ninjas,
And who doesn't love my one-liners? They fire up the team, right guys?
Oh, boy.
I have a sneaking feeling that the Shredder won’t be far behind,
just waiting for a fresh serving of his favorite dish.
Tonight, I dine on turtle soup!