Line #46 Trivia/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012


1	!{{Trivia}} tropes for ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012''
2	!!Trivia with Their Own Pages
3	[[index]]
4	* [[WhatCouldHaveBeen/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012 What Could Have Been]]
5	[[/index]]
6	----
7	* ActingForTwo: "Trans-Dimensional Turtles" has Rob Paulsen as both [[spoiler:The 1987 Raphael and the 2012 Donatello]].
8	* ActingInTheDark: At [[https://youtu.be/T51rh2Kh62k 46:00]] in this interview, Creator/ChristianLanz mentioned that he recorded 6-7 episodes before he found out about the fate of his character Xever, namely that [[spoiler:he would mutate into Fishface]]. He only found out a year later when doing ADR for the fight scenes.
9	* AllStarCast: Aside from some legends in the voice acting community (Creator/RobPaulsen in particular makes his return to the TMNT franchise after twenty years), the show also has legitimate movie stars (Creator/JasonBiggs, Creator/SeanAstin, Creator/KellyHu, Creator/SethGreen) slumming it to play cartoon turtles. Creator/MaeWhitman as April, Creator/GregCipes as Mikey, and round out the cast with lower key TV and movie stars. Then again when Creator/AndreaRomano is working with the voices, this should be no surprise.
10	* ApprovalOfGod: Stan Sakai approved of Yuki Matsuzaki's performance as Miyamoto Usagi.
11	* AscendedFanon: Both Leo X Karai and April X Donnie were popular but completely {{Crack Pairing}}s. This show is the first to put explicit ShipTease between them.
12	* CastTheRunnerUp:
13	** Creator/CoreyFeldman auditioned for Raphael before Creator/SeanAstin was cast. Feldman previously voiced Donatello in ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1990'' and ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesIII''. Feldman would later go on to play Slash in "Slash and Destroy".
14	** Creator/ScottMenville read for the part of Donatello before the casting of Creator/RobPaulsen. Menville would eventually go on to voice Donatello in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOuSCfJgpd8 Turtles Take Time (and Space).]]"
15	* ChannelHop: "Raphael: Mutant Apocalypse" and "Monsters vs. Mutants" were televised exclusively on Nicktoons, before the series' finale, "Wanted: Bebop and Rocksteady", premiered simultaneously on both Nickelodeon and Nicktoons.
16	* ContentLeak:
17	** Character bios were leaked a year before the series started; while most of it seemed to be based on an earlier period of development and was thus scrapped in the series itself, Splinter and Shredder's bios helped people to figure out Karai was really Miwa, Splinter's daughter, long before Season 1 had ended.
18	** Near the end of Season 2, renders of new incarnations of Bebop and Rocksteady leaked on the internet. Certain design aspects helped clue people in on the characters having already appeared in the series.
19	* CreatorsPest: Writers Russ Carney and Ron Corcillo both admitted to being a bit ambivalent toward Leonardo, with the former considering Leo "[[https://twitter.com/RCoA/status/1196941313892966400 irreparably one-note]]", and the latter feeling all the writing team had to work with was "[[https://twitter.com/RonCorcillo/status/1292328344260718592 he's the leader]]". This experience ultimately played a part in the personality overhaul for Leonardo in ''WesternAnimation/RiseOfTheTeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'', to try and move away from his StandardizedLeader characterization.
20	* CreatorPreferredAdaptation: According to executive producer Brandon Auman, franchise co-creator Kevin Eastman considers this series to be the best incarnation of the TMMT.
21	* DawsonCasting: The youngest Turtle voice actors are Creator/GregCipes (31) as Michelangelo, followed by Jason Biggs (35) as Leonardo, Sean Astin (42) as Raphael, but the winner is Creator/RobPaulsen voicing Donatello at age 57. Jason's follow-ups as Leo (Dominic Catrambone and Creator/SethGreen, who are 42 and 40 respectively) also count. Creator/MaeWhitman comes closest to her character April's age at 25. [[note]]If she was playing a traditional adult-aged April she'd be just right.[[/note]]
22	* DiagnosisOfGod: The creators confirmed that their version of Michelangelo has ADHD-PI (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder predominantly inattentive).
23	* ExecutiveMeddling: Ciro Nieli [[http://www.comicsbeat.com/sdcc17-tmnt-cast-crew-talk-samurai-rabbits-and-series-finale/ says]] that he really wanted to use The Flaming Carrot, but Nickelodeon told him that "nobody wants to see a guy with a carrot for a head".
24	** Nickelodeon aired "Raphael: Mutant Apocalypse" in the middle of the fifth season, even though it was originally intended to be the series finale, before declaring it an alternate dimension. The 1987 crossover arc aired on Nickelodeon as the series’ final episodes instead.
25	** Splinter was supposed to [[DeathByAdaptation die very early on]], but Nickelodeon vetoed it due to how dark it sounded.
26	* FakeBrit: [[spoiler:When Doctor Rockwell gains his intelligence back and can speak]], we have American actor Creator/TomKenny giving him a British accent.
27	* FakeNationality: Splinter/Hamato Yoshi, who is Japanese, is played by Creator/HoonLee, who is Korean.
28	* FlipFlopOfGod: While Ciro intended "Raphael: Mutant Apocalypse" to be the series finale, other staff members have a different opinion. One of the writers [[https://68.media.tumblr.com/fa89f61ed498e56874305f83a0400e3e/tumblr_inline_owrsa644yj1rp2ees_540.png considers the end of season four and the Kavaxas arc to be the finale.]] Character designer Felipe Smith refers to its setting as [[https://twitter.com/TMNT/status/910956947708489729 "In this reality"]], while the TMNT Twitter (which is run by Nickelodeon) calls it [[https://twitter.com/TMNT/status/911251308409212928 "A tale from beyond,"]] indicating that it has been rendered [[CanonDiscontinuity non-canon]]. They reinforced this by referring to it as [[http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles-Tales-V3-Final-Chapters/23776 "another dimension"and a "special"]] in an official press release for the final DVD, cementing its status. [[WordOfGod Brandon Auman]] halfway flip-flopped by declaring that [[https://twitter.com/auman_brandon/status/955529834192502784 it was up to the audience whether it was an alternate universe]] and that [[https://twitter.com/auman_brandon/status/958767414342172672 it could be seen as one,]] allowing everyone to be happy.
29	* LateExportForYou: The show originally aired in Japan on TX Network in mid-2014, but it failed to gain traction there initially, and only the first season's dub was completed before the show was temporarily shelved. However, in September 2015, the show was added onto Amazon Prime in Japan, and the show's dub was completed there. The dub eventually started airing on TV again on Disney XD from May 2017 to September 2019, with the series finale having already been aired in the United States by the time Season 2's first few episodes had aired on TV in Japan.
30	* LyingCreator:
31	** Before Slash's debut, his voice actor claimed that Slash would be an ally to the Turtles, and the perfect companion to Raph, [[spoiler:a description that would come to fit better Casey Jones]]. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope And then "Newtralized" happened]] where Slash ''did'' make a HeelFaceTurn and become an ally.]]
32	** Some months before "The Wrath Of Tiger Claw" aired, some scenes from a storyboard were leaked on tumblr [[spoiler:where Splinter tells Karai that she is his daughter and later it is seen her confronting Shredder about this]]. When people asked Ciro Nieli if these scenes were real, he said no. Comes the episode with this same exact scene and now people is left wondering, specially because the other leaked scene was [[spoiler:a kiss between April and Donatello that also turned out to be a real scene come in “A Foot Too Big”.]]
33	** At Comic-Con 2013, Ciro Nieli claimed Irma would be Mikey's love interest. [[spoiler: Unless there's a real Irma out there, there's no chance of that.]]
34	* OrphanedReference: At one point, "Stockman Industries" shows up as a FreezeFrameBonus in the second season, but so far no mention has been made of Stockman actually owning his own company.
35	* TheOriginalDarrin: The 1987 Turtles are voiced by their original actors, after being unable to reprise their roles in ''WesternAnimation/TurtlesForever'' due to that film being produced by the non-union Creator/FourKidsEntertainment.
36	* TheOtherDarrin:
37	** Dominic Catrambone voices Leonardo in the season two episodes produced after "The Wrath of Tiger Claw" instead of Jason Biggs (due to his wife's pregnancy), just as he voiced him in [[VideoGame/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2013 the show's first tie-in video game]]. After that, from season three onwards, Creator/SethGreen takes over the role, where it is explained in-universe that Leo received throat damage in his fight with Shredder (in addition to Biggs's wife's pregnancy, Biggs also made jokes about the two missing Malaysia Airlines flights in 2014 plus sex abuse jokes about UsefulNotes/ThePope and mocking the death of a ''Bachelorette'' contestant, comments that cost him the role of Leonardo and led to Leo superfan Green replacing him).
38	** Professor Rockwell's actor went from Creator/FrankWelker to Creator/TomKenny in season three, though this is more because [[spoiler:Rockwell has finally regained his intellect and can talk again]].
39	** Kraang Prime is played by Roseanne Barr in the first two seasons, but by Rachel Butera in the third season.
40	** Joan Grody has gone through three different voice actors in the Hebrew dub.
41	** Even considering Creator/JamesAvery's passing in 2013, the 1987 Shredder is played by Creator/KevinMichaelRichardson in the fifth season's three-part crossover, making him the seventh actor after Dorian Harewood, Creator/JimCummings, Townsend Coleman, William E. Martin, and Load Williams, to have portrayed that incarnation of the character.
42	* PlayingAgainstType:
43	** Creator/NolanNorth as The Kraang. While Nolan is no stranger to voicing {{Mook}} characters, he doesn't typically do it for what is implied to be a species [[HiveMind with a singular mind]] and comical quirks.
44	** Creator/RogerCraigSmith, who usually voices characters that are clever and skilled in combat, as [[IdiotHero The]] [[TheLoad Pulve]][[LoonyFan rizer]].
45	*** He goes even more against type as Mutagen Man, the mutated Pulverizer who primarily speaks [[HulkSpeak rather simply]], [[TheBrute is all about brute force]], and is almost completely insane.
46	** Roseanne Barr as alien overlord Kraang Prime.
47	** Corey Feldman as Slash, the mutated Spike.
48	* PostScriptSeason: The fifth season, which even has its own unique title: "Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". [[WordOfGod Brandon Auman]] confirms that "Owari," the season four finale, is the ''true'' series finale of the show and all of season five is just side stories.
49	* PredecessorCastingGag:
50	** Season 3 has Renee Jacobs, the actress who voiced April in [[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987 the original series]], voicing April's mother.
51	** Minae Noji, who played Karai in [[Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2014 the 2014 film]] plays Tang Shen, Master Yoshi's wife [[spoiler:who in this version is also Karai's mother.]]
52	** Also a downplayed example with this series' Mondo Gecko (Mikey's similarly TotallyRadical mutant friend) voiced by 1990s movie Michelangelo's actor Robbie Rist. More directly invoked in that prior to meeting, the 2012 turtles only used the catchphrase "Booyakasha." It's Robbie's Mondo that introduces them to the iconic "Cowabunga" which they all use interchangeably with Booyakasha after.
53	* ProductionPosse: With Ciro Nieli as showrunner, he brought over many people who worked with him on ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003'', ''WesternAnimation/SuperRobotMonkeyTeamHyperForceGo'', and ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes''
54	* PromotedFanboy:
55	** Executive producer and show-runner Ciro Nieli, who was mainly a fan of the Mirage comics.
56	** Creator/GregCipes is on record stating that [[http://tv.ign.com/articles/2012/07/14/comic-con-new-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-brings-the-fun the 1987 series was his favorite show growing up]].
57	** Creator/SethGreen, who voices Leo starting from the third season, is a professed fan of the character.
58	** Yuki Matsuzaki had read ''ComicBook/UsagiYojimbo'' while growing up in the United States and was anxious to portray the protagonist of the comics. Stan Sakai even said that [[ApprovalOfGod he perfectly nailed]] Miyamato Usagi.
59	* RecursiveAdaptation: As with all the previous entries being based upon the comics but having comics of their own, this show has a comic book adaptation as well.
60	* RefittedForSequel: Due to coming after Season 4, ''Tales of the TMNT'' integrates one of Ciro Nieli's earliest ideas for the series, which was [[spoiler:to kill off Splinter, leaving the Turtles to face the world alone.]]
61	* RoleReprise: The crossovers with the [[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987 1987 series]] bring back most of the characters' original actors to reprise their roles.
62	** The 1987 Turtles' appearance at the end of "The Manhattan Project" has Cam Clarke, Barry Gordon, Creator/RobPaulsen, and Townsend Coleman reprise their respective roles as Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
63	** The same goes in the Latin American Spanish dub, except all the characters, Shredder and Krang included, retain their voices. The only replacement here was Rocksteady, since he was replaced from Israel Magaña to Diego Estrada instead, as the former moved to Cuernavaca.
64	** "Trans-Dimensional Turtles" once again features the 1987 Turtles played by their original voice actors, with Creator/PatFraley joining the fun by reprising his role as Krang.
65	** The three-part episode GrandFinale features the original voice actors back as the 1987 versions of the Turtles and Krang, only this time Barry Gordon and Cam Clarke also get to reprise their roles as the 1987 versions of Bebop and Rocksteady.
66	** In the Swedish dub, Leo Hallerstam voices Raphael from season 2 onward after previously voicing the character in the [[WesternAnimation/{{TMNT}} 2007 movie]].
67	* ScheduleSlip:
68	** This series is pretty bad about this. Release dates of the episodes have a somewhat bad tendency to jump around to another date or be several weeks or even months after the most recent episode, and the show has a really bad tendency to almost always go on at least a month-long hiatus after airing three to four episodes. Particularly noticeable with "Parasitica", which had been announced to be a week after "Pulverizer Returns!", but then got delayed to June 1st, and ''finally'' aired on July 20th. The episode was, however, aired in other countries, but went through similar problems.
69	** It happened again with "Turtles in Time" which, after a month long hiatus, was announced to air on June 28th, 2015. When the episode airdate came, "The Deadly Venom" was rerun instead, and the wiki relisted "Turtles in Time"'s airdate back to "To Be Announced." It finally aired on August 2nd, 2015.
70	** The fourth season had a serious problem with ScheduleSlip, with the "City at War" arc starting about 6 months after "Earth's Last Stand", and having a major break during the fall. After three wham episodes, '''another''' lengthy hiatus began. The fourth season has had the longest airtime of all the seasons thus far, having started in fall 2015 and ended in February 2017, and was upped from a 20-episode slate to the previous seasons' 26. However, the final four episodes of the season had aired in South Korea in December, weeks before they were aired in the United States in February 2017. This case of ScheduleSlip mixed with those airings led to spoilers regarding the end of the fourth season surfacing on a few sites such as Tumblr, which infuriated showrunner Brandon Auman, who wrote those episodes.
71	* ScrewedByTheNetwork: In an odd example, episodes 115 to 121 aired on Nicktoons rather than Nickelodeon. Otherwise averted for the rest of the show, as it remains one of the rare shows in the 2010s to (mostly) stay on Nickelodeon throughout the entire run.
72	* SelfAdaptation: Stan Sakai, the creator of ''ComicBook/UsagiYojimbo'', wrote the first episode of the three-parter in the fifth season that dealt with that series' world and characters.
73	* ShortRunInPeru: The final episodes of Season 4 aired in December of 2016 in South Korea, a fact that irritated Brandon Auman, the writer of those episodes, due to the fact that it resulted in numerous key events being spoiled on the internet.
74	* ShowAccuracyToyAccuracy:
75	** They made the Turtles non-identical for the first time to reflect the show appearance. Also worth noting is a line of zipline playsets coinciding with the second season, which used more ziplines and even put them in the OP.
76	** Also in the OP and several eps is Mikey's skateboard, which has the same colors as the Sewer Spinnin' Skateboard toy... [[Film/AustinPowers at 1/8]] [[YourSizeMayVary scale.]]
77	** For some strange reason Kirby's figure of [[spoiler: mutant form is named "Kirby Bat" even though Mikey named it "Wing Nut" in the series itself, much to Donnie's displeasure.]] What makes it so odd is that this means they ''chose'' to use a LateArrivalSpoiler over keeping the preexisting characters name, see the MythologyGag spoilers. However, [[spoiler:Mikey does use the "Kirby Bat" name in "The Lonely Mutation of Baxter Stockman".]]
78	* SpoiledByTheMerchandise: Bebop and Rocksteady being in the series was [[ContentLeak leaked]] during the second season, which allowed people to put together who was going to become the iconic duo due to sharing numerous design similarities with two human characters: Anton Zeck and Ivan Steranko.
79	* ThrowItIn:
80	** Donatello's stress moments.
81	** During auditions, voice actors were given concept art of their characters with the scripts to help them visualize what they were saying. While auditioning for Xever/Fishface, Creator/ChristianLanz accidentally grabbed the art for Snakeweed (in his human form) and ended up giving "Fishface" a Creator/AntonioBanderas-esque Spanish accent. The crew found this choice unexpected and bizarre, but loved it. It wasn't until months later for ADR recording that Christian learned what Fishface ''really'' looked like and explained what happened to the crew.
82	* TieInCereal: The 2012 series had [[https://images.freshop.com/00016000472983/4d12ac79d980cc547608769b35fa8d11_large.png its own cereal]], though it was nothing more than a Advertising/{{Trix\|Rabbit}} knockoff, the kernels shaped like the turtle's faces.
83	* TorchTheFranchiseAndRun: Ciro Nieli admits the "Raphael: Mutant Apocalypse" three-parter, which features the Turtles failing to stop a Mutagen bomb in a flashback and the heavily implied deaths of almost all of the supporting cast, was done so that nobody could continue this series after it was finished. However, other crewmembers and Nickelodeon themselves seem to disagree with that assessment, with the last outright [[AlternateRealityEpisode calling the story an alternate universe,]] rendering the arc non-canon. The next series in the franchise would be a new continuity anyway, rendering the attempt a moot effort.
84	* {{Typecasting}}: Creator/RobPaulsen ''himself'' has gone on record saying that if you have to do a TMNT revival, then you also ''have'' to have Greg Cipes as Michelangelo. Even before that, Michelangelo holds the same role in the Turtles that Beast Boy (Also played by Cipes) held in ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003''.
85	* WorkingTitle:
86	** "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012S1E1RiseOfTheTurtlesPart1 Rise of the Turtles]]" was originally "Day One".
87	** "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012S1E9TheGauntlet The Gauntlet]]" was "[[SpoilerTitle Enter]] [[EnterEponymous Shredder]]".
88	** "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012S1E10PanicInTheSewers Panic in the Sewers]]" was "Mojo Rising".
89	** "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012S1E11MousersAttack Mousers Attack!]]" was "Mouserthon".
90	** "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012S1E12ItCameFromTheDepths It Came From the Depths]]" was "[[SpoilerTitle Leather Head]]".
91	** "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012S1E13IMonster I, Monster]]" was "Rat Trap".

Context Trivia / TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012