Which popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character actually came from a comic of their
own?
And which well-known sitcom creator wrote the show's iconic theme song?
Keep watching to find out
"You really think that'll get his attention?"
"You'll see just act like you're trying to break open the candy machine."
"With pleasure."
Today, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are such a part of pop culture that you don't
think twice about how ridiculous the concept is, but in the beginning, the bizarre concept
of slow-moving reptiles fighting crime was more obviously absurd.
Creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird pulled from three different popular comics of the
'80s to come up with the concept: Marvel Comics' Daredevil for the gritty ninja elements, New
Mutants for the "teenage mutant" thing, and Dave Sims' Cerebus for the animal aspect.
In fact, it's almost canonical that the truck that almost hit young Matt Murdock is the
same one that knocked a bunch of turtles and ooze into the sewers that fateful day in New
York City.
The result, as far as the comics were concerned, was a send-up of the era's most popular genres.
When it comes to naming things, the parody becomes even clearer.
Daredevil's Hand Ninjas?
They become the Foot Clan.
And Daredevil's own sensei, Stick, became the Turtles' sensei, Splinter.
This unserious element is one reason why the show's main villain has the not-so-threatening
name of "Shredder".
Part Doctor Doom, part Kingpin, The Shredder is a villainous mastermind as adept at fighting
as he is at scheming.
"What do you know of the Shredder."
"We swore to terminate the Shredder to avenge Master Yoshi."
"Terminate, with extreme predjudice."
That reputation, however, doesn't come close to excusing his ridiculous name.
In a world where turtles can be named after famous Renaissance artists, naming a villain
after an office supply is a strange choice.
With such a silly name, this is one bad guy who really set himself up for a lifetime of
humiliating failure.
Maybe the most bizarre thing about the Shredder is that he has a perfectly fine real name,
that he could use instead of his ridiculous alter ego.
"Your hairy little friend knows me as Oroku Saki.
But you may call me The Shredder."
"A kitchen utensil?"
Action cartoons have to ride a fine line between showing the cool fight scenes that fans want
while keeping everything more or less child-friendly in the eyes of Broadcast Standards & Practices.
BS&P is a department at each television network that's tasked with making sure that content
abides by their larger standards.
In the case of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that created a bit of a pickle for the creators:
both Raphael and Leonardo use stabbing weapons, which meant that their fight scenes would
have to stay away from them using their signature weapons on their opponents.
An elegant solution was to keep the Foot Soldier character designs that Laird and Eastman had
created, but replace the ninjas themselves with ninja robots.
By re-establishing that the Turtles were smashing robots and not slicing people in half, the
cartoon was able to stay surprisingly accurate to the ninja action featured in the comics.
"Check those dudes out."
"Dudes, not, they're robots."
"Robots?
Let's rock!"
To make things even more complicated, viewers in the UK weren't allowed to see nunchucks
in a kids' cartoon at the time, resulting in heavy edits on Michelangelo's scenes.
The overall censorship was extreme enough that the entire theme song had to be changed,
instead calling them Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.
As much as the show was censored for perceived violence, they sure seemed to miss just how
horrifying the various characters' journeys could become.
"All I lack is a body.
A body which you have failed to provide for me."
The cartoon delighted in constant mutations for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' human characters,
with Baxter Stockman's gruesome transformation into a Fly-Man easily ranking among the worst.
Even besides the Cronenberg-esque transformation of Stockman, there were dozens of mutants
and transformations, almost always accompanied by the person's horror at what their formerly
human bodies had turned into.
"He's so cute!"
Deeply rooted body horror is a bit of a heady subject for a Saturday morning cartoon, but
maybe not an uncommon theme after all.
And that's without considering the Turtles' own body dysmorphia — after all, we're talking
about humanoid turtles that are also teenagers.
Talk about weird hormones.
"Leonardo, Michelangelo…
"That's Me.
"Donatello, and Raphael."
The Turtles' names have become as iconic as the signature weapons they wield, but the
deeper meaning behind them is actually pretty shallow.
The Turtles are named after Master Splinter's favorite Renaissance artists, but the names
themselves don't actually reflect any of the Turtles' personalities.
Michelangelo the Renaissance painter was known for the Sistine Chapel; Michaelangelo the
Ninja Turtle is known for being a party dude.
Beyond that, if you were to name the four greatest painters of the Renaissance, Botticelli
would arguably edge out Donatello.
Botticelli, after all, was known for "The Birth of Venus," which defines the popular
conception of Renaissance art to this day.
Donatello was much better known for being a sculptor, rather than a painter like his
Turtle-named contemporaries.
Which is probably why Venus De Milo, a female ninja turtle, was introduced in 1997's live-action
Ninja Turtles : The Next Mutation.
"We are a thousand miles below the surface of the earth, do you realize how hard it is
to get a decent snack down here?"
While the original Ninja Turtles animated series is known for being fairly kid-friendly,
the last few seasons were so dark that they almost seemed like an entirely different show.
Besides the new villain Lord Dregg, the Turtles find themselves mutated into new forms, the
Channel 6 building is blown up, and the sky literally turns red — a detail that led
fans to refer to the final three seasons of the show as the "Red Sky" seasons.
The show's pivot to darker episodes and a more classically alien-looking villain seemed
to be a gambit to compete with Power Rangers, which had started to siphon off the young
fanbase for TMNT — or at least that was the fan explanation for the changes.
Regardless, it wasn't able to overcome its declining ratings, and the show ended at season
10 with a tone miles removed from the relatively light antics of season one, episode one.
"You fight without honor, assassin."
The Turtles had plenty of allies — human, mutant, and robot alike.
One of the most memorable, however, was the samurai rabbit Miyamoto Usagi — or as the
cartoon referred to him, Usagi Yojimbo.
As comics aficionados are no doubt already aware, Usagi is actually the lead of another
beloved, long-running black-and-white comic about anthropomorphic animals, titled — you
guessed it — Usagi Yojimbo.
"Whoa!
Talking pigs and rabbits!
I find that a little hard to swallow."
The thematic overlap between Usagi Yojimbo and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is obvious
at first glance.
To their credit, the Turtles haven't been shy about embracing the similarities between
the two universes, both of which launched in 1984.
In fact, the characters have had crossovers in nearly every TMNT iteration since the beginning.
In the cartoon, Usagi makes an appearance in two episodes — "Usagi Yojimbo" and "Usagi
Comes Home" — which features him visiting the Turtles' dimension and getting embroiled
in samurai hijinx.
He even got a couple of action figures in the original toy line.
If there's one thing that every fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles knows and loves,
it's the theme song.
It's a relentlessly catchy tune, played over colorful opening credits that showcase some
great animation while lyrically highlighting the Turtles' respective personalities.
To put it simply, the song is a hit.
The awesomeness of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song really shouldn't surprise
anyone, considering who co-wrote it: proven hitmaker Chuck Lorre, the creator of Two and
a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.
And even though he's since gone on to massive success as a sitcom king, Lorre is still proud
of his old song's longevity, telling IndieWire,
"We wrote it in an afternoon and we recorded it in an evening.
[...] And it's still alive!
How cool is that?"
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Heroes in a half shell, Turtle power!"
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