Characters / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Hamato Clan

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) characters index
The Hamato Clan | Allies and Civilians | The Foot Clan (The Shredder's Inner Circle) | The Kraang | Other Villains | TV Show Characters

As a whole

The Hamato Clan

Mon of Clan Hamato

The Hamato Clan was one of the oldest ninja clans in ancient Japan. At some point, a bitter feud between them and the Foot Clan developed and would lead to centuries of warfare. At a certain point in the late 20th century, the Hamato Clan would finish off the Foot Clan, rendering them functionally extinct, save for a lone survivor in the form of the infant Oruku Saki, who would be adopted by the leader of the Hamato Clan. Sixteen years ago, the Hamato Clan was on the verge of ending when the chosen heir in Hamato Yoshi was divided between leading the clan or starting a new life in the United States with his new family in Tang Shen and his daughter. However, betrayal would come when Oruku Saki would discover his origins and fully enraged by this and the loss of Tang Shen, exploited the decision to rebuild the Foot Clan, with most of the Hamato Clan defecting to join their former enemy. The conflict would see the patriarch and Tang Shen dead with Oruku Saki fleeing with Yoshi's daughter, Hamato Miwa and Yoshi presumed deceased. Yoshi fled to New York and a year later decided to adopt four pet turtles for company. Right as he left the pet store, he was trapped by strange men and splashed with Mutagen by accident. The small turtles eventually became anthropomorphic, while Yoshi, due to touching a rat last, mutated into a giant rat. He decided to adopt the four as his sons and train them in ninjutsu, carrying on the Hamato Clan's legacy. Fifteen years later, the Turtles go on their first mission and find the beginnings of an alien conspiracy. It would be the first of many adventures that would change the Hamato Clan forever.

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• Adaptational Jerkass: Downplayed with the Turtles themselves. Make no mistake, the Turtles in this series are still heroes and willing do the right thing, but they are much more prone to squabbling and infighting, and their personal flaws^note Leo's rigidity and desire to have everything his way, Donnie's bordering-on-entitlement crush/obsession with April, Raph's anger and Big Brother Bully behavior for absolutely no reason, and Mikey's refusal to recognize when he's at fault are given more focus, making the Turtles come off as much meaner and less reasonable than they are in most incarnations. It also doesn't help that the Turtles in this series have a bad habit of occasionally putting themselves and their desires over other people (including their family) and making morally questionable actions, such as betraying Karai despite a greater threat being on the loose or most of them agreeing to let Pulverizer spy on the Foot despite the threat. Fortunately, they get much better on these fronts through Character Development, but it's still noticeable.
• Adaptational Wimp: The Turtles suffer from this hard in the series. While they are still skilled ninja, the Turtles are more prone to losing fights, pulling a Badass in Distress, receiving a lot of humiliating beatings, and/or being forced to retreat during battles compared to most versions. It also doesn't help that in the rare moment any one of them or the group as a whole manages to win an impressive victory, none of them seem to retain their experience or newfound skills in future battles and continue to remain inept when fighting a new Monster of the Week or even one of their old foes like the Shredder, Xever, Bradford, or Tiger Claw, whom the Turtles should be able to solidly defeat after multiple seasons worth of battles but yet... still have trouble against them even by the time of the final season. To put it into perspective, the only enemies who don't subject them to at least one Curb-Stomp Battle across the entire series are... the Purple Dragons, who have been subjected to an even bigger dose of Adaptational Wimp. Also, pretty much the only Shredder they can fight without being put in life-threatening danger is the goofier, less competent 1987 Shredder, whom Leo and his 1987 counterpart easily dispatch together in "The Big Blowout".
• Aesop Amnesia: The Turtles have a terrible tendency to forget what they learned after being beaten up by the Shredder in "The Gauntlet", which is that they should be less arrogant and a little more aware of their limits. Splinter or the situation usually slaps them in the face at these times.
• Airplane Arms: The Turtles consistently run like this.
• Badass Family: The Turtles and Splinter, undeniably so. As a team of highly trained ninja, this should go without saying. April and Casey (who are both considered part of their clan) are no exception.
• Badass in Distress: They have an unfortunate tendency to get themselves captured by the bad guys.
• Badass Normal: Well, in comparison to most other mutants anyway. The Turtles all rely on their martial arts training, incredible teamwork, and iron will against mutants and other villains who may have more unnatural capabilities that can be used in battle.
• Back from the Brink: After the Shredder's raid on the Hamato Clan, the sole survivor was Hamato Yoshi himself, unaware that his daughter survived and was being raised as Karai. After Yoshi's mutation, the Turtles would increase this number to five, April becoming an official Hamato Clan kunoichi in Season 4 and having a strong allyship with Casey Jones, the Mighty Mutanimals and various others.
• Bash Brothers: The Turtles (along with Splinter) are each pretty good on their own, but almost unstoppable when they work as a team. It helps that they have been training together for 15 years.
• Black Eyes of Evil: The Turtles get them while being Brainwashed and Crazy in "Parasitica".
• Blank White Eyes: When the Turtles get serious, their eyes white out, which lets you know it's time to kick butt.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: All of the Turtles except for Michelangelo suffer being this in "Parasitica".
  • It happens again in "Pizza Face" to everyone except for Mikey.
  • It occurs a third time in "A Chinatown Ghost Story", which is the first time in the series that Mikey is a victim of this trope.
• Brother–Sister Team: Leo and Karai (who, in this version, is Master Splinter's own long lost birth daughter).
• The Clan: While originally a prosperous clan, Saki's Face–Heel Turn led to its near destruction after inducting most of its grunts into the Foot, killing Tang Shen and adopting Miwa as Karai after Yuta passes away, leaving Yoshi as its sole survivor.
• Color-Coded Characters: As with most versions, the Turtles are this due to the colors on their bandana masks: Leo is Blue, Donnie is Purple, Raph is Red, and Mikey is Orange. Splinter is Magenta-ish due to his robe. April is Yellow via her yellow headband and t-shirt and Casey is Black due to his sweatband and jacket.
• Combat Parkour: The Turtles in this adaptation are more agile and prone to acrobatics than their other versions. It's helped by the show's faster animation.
• Competitive Balance: Primarily the games based off of them, but alluded to in the show itself. They're all fast and strong, but compared to each other:
  • Mikey is Medium Power, Low Defense, High Speed, and Medium Range, making him a Fragile Speedster and a Glass Cannon.
  • Donnie is Low Power, High Defense, Medium Speed, and High Range, making him akin to Stone Wall.
  • Raph is the Mighty Glacier with High Power, Medium Defense, Low Speed, and Low Range (Subverted by throwing his Sai).
  • Leo is balanced all around making him the Jack of All Stats. And he throws swords sometimes too.
  • In terms of overall fighting ability, the ranking is usually Leo or Raph as the best, Mikey, and then Donnie. Though as the series goes on, it becomes pretty clear the most skilled one is Leo, who displays growing proficiency with multiple weapons (such as the bow and arrow and trident), learns techniques the others do not (the healing hands), and finally manages to do what even Splinter could not: kill Shredder.
• Create Your Own Villain: The Turtles have a rather bad habit of this. The biggest example is the mass accidental dumping of mutagen all over New York in "The Mutation Situation".
• Decomposite Character: Most other versions of the Hamato Clan were splinter-groups of the Foot Clan, having been formed when Hamato Yoshi either died (Mirage Comics and the 2003 cartoon) or banished from the Foot (the 1987 cartoon and the IDW comics). Here, the Hamato Clan and the Foot Clan were ancient enemy clans, both trying to eradicate each another, only for them to reform later on by their surviving members.
• Divergent Character Evolution: The previous versions of the Turtles more or less had the same design with only different weapons and coloration (whether it be their bandanas or their own shade of green on their bodies). This adaptation goes through a little more effort to diversify the Turtles via giving them their own body types, eye colors, and physical quirks.
• Drives Like Crazy: Discussed; Donnie makes Leo the designated driver of the Shellraiser on the grounds that he's the "least likely to crash into something just for fun". Raph and Mikey admit that he's not wrong.
• Enraged by Idiocy: While they're a loving family, Mikey has a recurring habit of testing everyone's patience with his buffoonery, especially Raph and Donnie.
• Family of Choice: Splinter is the adopted father to the Turtles and April and Casey are honorary members of the Hamato Clan.
• Feuding Families:
  • Understatement. Splinter is forced to admit that they as the Hamato Clan are at war with the Foot Clan of Shredder.
  • In Vengeance is Mine, it turns out that Splitner and Shedder's blood feud is nothing new. As Splinter reveals, the Hamato Clan and Foot Clan possessed a bitter feud between each other that lasted centuries. This conflict is just the latest of that long feud.
• Four-Man Band: Michelangelo, while not necessarily the Only Sane Man, he is certainly the most normal out of the four turtles balancing work and play. Donatello is The Smart Guy. As The Leader of the group, Leonardo is the Casanova Wannabe trying to impress his sensei, team, and the residents of New York City. Whereas Raphael who is misunderstood by his peers is the Butt-Monkey by default.
• Game Face: The Turtles alternate from having animated eyes (first used in the 1987 series) to all-white eyes (from the comics and the 2003 series) once it's time to throw down... or for Rule of Funny.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: The Turtles have these, which function as both direct grappling hooks to pull themselves up and tools to create ziplines.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Let's just say Splinter's lessons aren't exactly gentle.
• Hidden Weapons: Leo, Mikey, Donnie, and Splinter all have secret weapons.
  • Leo's katanas have Kogatana knives hidden in their scabbards, which is Truth in Television.
  • Mikey can combine his nunchucks to form a kusarigama.
  • Donnie's bo staff can fold its end to become a naginata.
  • Splinter's cane houses a sword inside.
• Hypocrite: While the individual members have their own moments of this, all four Turtles fall into this collectively in "Enemy of My Enemy." When Karai approaches them to make an Enemy Mine against the Kraang, they all make a big deal over whether or not she's trustworthy, since the last time they trusted her, she meddled with Kraang tech, ended up creating a super-mutant, and happily abandoned the Turtles to clean up her mess. In the end, the Turtles are the ones who end up betraying Karai this time, not the other way around, by using the alliance as an opportunity to make an assassination attempt on the Shredder.
• Logical Weakness: Being cold-blooded, the Turtles are vulnerable to cold temperatures. In "The Invasion", the Foot Clan takes advantage of this by ganging up on Leo and knocking him into a pool/pond of freezing cold water.
• Made of Iron: The Turtles and Splinter are this. They somehow survive and tolerate heavy blows that would normally kill the average person in real life, and emerge unscathed (if not, only a few minor injuries like small cuts, scratches and scars).
• Metamorphosis: The Turtles mutated from ordinary turtles to humanoid turtles.
• Named After Somebody Famous: The Turtles are named after iconic Renaissance artists.
• Non-Indicative Name: Related to the Theme Naming above. Even though the Turtles grew up Asian American via being raised in New York by a Japanese immigrant, their given names would make you think they're Italian. Casey Jones made this mistake when he first met them. Splinter explains he actually named after his favorite artists.
  • "Lone Rat and Cubs" briefly elaborates on them, saying that he wanted to be an artist growing up with the European Renaissance being his favorite period of art, thus naming the Turtles after them.
• Nothing Up My Sleeve: Those hand wraps aren't just for show. Splinter and the Turtles have knives, blinding powder, and other gadgets hidden under them. Leo even has lock picks hidden inside his.
• The Remnant: 16 years prior, the Shredder rebuilt the Foot Clan by converting a majority of the Hamato Clan shinobi, sans Splinter and his father, to the Foot Clan. By present day, the Hamato Clan now consists of Splinter and the Turtles, with April and even Casey becoming such as allies to where they're honorary members. With Splinter's death, Leo leads the Hamato Clan now.
  • In a greater sense, it's heavily implied they were pretty much the last ninja clan around once the Foot Clan was wiped out. Tang Shen even notes on it being the End of an Era for ninja. Deconstructed as it was likely this mentality that Shredder exploited to convince most of the Hamato to join in rebuilding their ancient enemy.
• Replacement Goldfish: After losing his wife and daughter to the Shredder (unaware that Miwa was alive and was being raised by the Shredder), Splinter came to see the turtles as his new family, this being the only thing keeping him together after all of the tragedy in his life. This later extends to April, who Splinter gives the tessen that was meant for Miwa, later inducting her into the clan as an honorary member.
• The Team: It consisted of the Turtles and their master Splinter at first, but grows over time.
  • Leonardo is the Leader, who is levelheaded in addition to eagerly volunteering for the role and then growing into it properly. Raphael is the Muscle, and he's also Leo's Lancer and foil for leadership. Donatello is the Brains; he's the go-to turtle for engineering, hacking, and biology. Michelangelo is the Wild One and goes between Plucky Comic Relief to full on Cloud Cuckoo Lander. Splinter is their father figure, master, and Big Good behind the scenes. In this series, April joins fairly early on as The Heart in addition to being aged down from being the Token Adult in most other incarnations. Casey finally caps off the team as The Sixth Ranger via acting as a second Big Guy alongside Raph or Donnie's romantic Rival.
  • Other recurring parts of the dynamic include Team Pet the regular turtle Spike, who is later replaced by Ice Cream Kitty. They also have Signature Team Transports in the form of The Shellraiser and, as of season three, the Party Wagon.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: This is common for everybody, especially the Turtles.
• Technicolor Ninja: see Color-Coded Characters
• Took a Level in Badass: It's subtle, but each of the Turtles have gradually improved in skill and ability over the course of the series. While they were already badasses at the start of the series, they still had difficulty against certain enemies, most notably Bradford and Montes (when they were still in their human forms). By the end of season two, Mikey alone was able to take on both Rahzar and Fishface in "Vengeance is Mine" (albeit not unscathed) and Leo kills the Shredder in the season four finale.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Pizza, as per usual. It's justified by pizza being the first real food they tried when they first go to the surface. Unlike the 1987 series, they don't subsist solely on pizza: Mikey was going to make omelets in "The Gauntlet". "Cockroach Terminator" presents that the Turtles enjoy eating ramen noodles.
• True Companions: Badass Family plus friends.
• Voice of the Legion: Leo, Raph, and Donnie when Brainwashed and Crazy in "Parasitica".
• Vindicated by History: An in-universe example. In "Turtles in Time", Renet is awestruck to meet the Turtles and reveals that in the future, they have saved the world many times and are now considered legendary heroes.
• Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: They start out as this. While trained in ninjutsu their entire life, the bulk of the Turtles' fighting experience comes from training in a dojo one-on-one. In their first fight with the Kraang, a real street-brawl, they repeatedly get in each other's way and find their opponents to be stronger than expected, enabling the Kraang to escape with April. Splinter himself muses that while he trained the Turtles to fight, he never taught them to fight as a team.

Hamato Leonardo

Voiced by: Jason Biggs (Season 1, first half of Season 2), Dominic Catrambone (S2E18, S2E20-S2E26, video games), Seth Green (Seasons 3-5)

The Leader in blue. Does anything it takes to get his ninjas through.

"Gentlemen, I have a bold and daring plan!"

The leader of the Turtles group and almost always in control, Leonardo often finds his job challenging and thankless, but his brothers know they can depend on him as much as he does to them.

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• The Ace: He's The Leader and The Paragon. Although, all of this overachieving is nicely offset by the fact that he's a giant dork and still doesn't really get that much respect from his brothers.
• Aesop Amnesia: Play with. Throughout the first two seasons, he repeatedly allows his infatuation with Karai to cloud his judgment during missions, often with horrible results; no matter how often this happens and how often everyone, including Karai herself, tells him that she's "bad news" and can't be trusted, it ends up happening again. On the other hand though, he ends being ultimately right about her, so his persistent belief in her, even when she lacked any, trumped it.
• Amazon Chaser: Karai, a kunoichi that kicks his ass the first time they meet, is the closest thing to a love interest he has. See In Harm's Way for more.
• Arch-Enemy: By default, Shredder is Leo's; Leo is the only other character besides Splinter to regularly take on Shredder solo, though he only starts working up to getting into a draw by season three. For a while in the first two seasons, Karai also is this, but that ends after Karai discovers her true parentage, while Shredder remains the enemy that is just beyond Leo's reach in terms of combat. This changes in season four, as Leo proves to be a match for Shredder at this point and he becomes the one to end Saki's life.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In the Season 4 finale "Owari", he dishes one out to Shredder while letting out his fury and grief at Splinter's death, especially after Shredder remarks that it was Splinter's destiny. It actually makes Shredder hesitate for a few seconds.
  Leo: You're a monster! A demon! Is that your destiny?!
  Shredder: No... I... I...
• Asleep for Days: After his beatdown at Shredder's hands in "The Invasion", he spends the three-month Time Skip unconscious.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: All of the Turtles clearly improve as the show goes on, but it's most obvious with Leo. As of "I, Monster", he's the only one of the Turtles to successfully land a blow on Master Splinter and holds his own going one on one later on. In later episodes, he's the one who frequently plays bait for high-level foes to give his brothers time to regroup and strike back together. If the Turtles come across a team of enemies and have to deal with them one-on-one, they either consciously or not leave the strongest foe for Leo to take on solo, even if that foe is Shredder himself.
• Badass Adorable: He is a very adorable badass ninja.
• Badass Driver: Leo drives the Shellraiser. He was designated for it because Donnie had to operate the machinery and felt like the other two could deliberately crash the vehicle on something.
• The Berserker: When he's faced with the entire Foot Clan in the Season 2 finale "The Invasion", having been worn down by a horde of Foot Bots and exposure to freezing water, how does he respond to being attacked by Rahzar, Fishface, and Tiger Claw? He does so by brutally beating the tar out of them in less than ten blows.
• Big Brother Instinct: Leo has this towards his three younger brothers.
• Big "NO!": He yells out one in "The Legend of the Kuro Kabato" when Stockman-Fly brings down a giant billboard on his brothers.
• Blue Is Heroic: Another tradition well kept, representing his more traditional heroism and smart leadership compared to his brothers. His royal blue bandana is indicative of his calmness, spirituality and reliability.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In "Parasitica", "Pizza Face", and "A Chinatown Ghost Story", Leo gets brainwashed by the main villains of those episodes.
• Brother–Sister Team: He works best alongside his older half-sister Karai, as shown in the "City at War" arc (second half of Season 4) when they secretly fight together to successfully topple the Sherdder's Foot criminal organizations all throughout New York City. The first 4 episodes of Season 5 also has both of them as the main focus, working together to find out more about the reborn underground Foot Clan lead by Tiger Claw to resurrect Shredder and retrieve the last few key items (the Shredder's helmet and his heart). Their romantic relationship and teamwork is again seen in the "When Worlds Collide" two-part episode saga.
• Broken Ace: He was beaten so hard in "The Invasion" that his voice was completely screwed.
• Butt-Monkey: Yes, even Leo gets this from time to time, mostly in regards to how very few people seem to respect him or his leadership skills.
  • Hell, in "Trans-Dimensional Turtles", in which they meet the 1987 Turtles, 1987 Leo gives the Turtles orders to fight and 2012 Leo protests that he's the one who leads his team, only for his entire team to follow 1987 Leo's lead without hesitation, leaving 2012 Leo heartbroken.
• The Chains of Commanding: Examined most prominently in "New Girl in Town" and again in "Fungus Humungous".
  • A major theme in the first half of season four with everything that has happened is examining the effect on Leo. With Splinter gone and only having one chance to save the Earth from the black hole generator, it's taken a toll on Leo to the extent he often visits a holodeck-like area on the ship where he talks to a Splinter formed from his memories.
  • In "End Times", he's feeling the stressful, taxing burden of leadership weighing down on his shoulders even more than before and April seems to be the only one who realizes it; Leo even comes right out and says he "can't do this anymore."
• Character Development: Falling to the Shredder at the end of Season Two, his long recovery at the beginning of Season Three, and having to replace Splinter as sensei of the Hamato Clan makes him way more serious and somber than before.
• Child Soldier: This applies to all the Turtles, but it's most obvious in Leonardo, who essentially serves as Splinter's lieutenant but a general on the battlefield. Now consider that every time he leads a mission, he or his brothers may be hurt or killed if he makes a mistake, and he, like them, is only fifteen years old.
• Continuity Snarl: His new actor in the third season is Hand Waved as damage to his throat from his beating at Shredder's hands in "The Invasion". He retains Seth Green's voice in flashbacks in "Darkest Plight" and "Lone Rat and Cubs".
• Dating Catwoman: Leo and Karai connect from their very first fight. Now, if only she weren't his bitter, mortal archenemy's daughter... or technically his own half-sister, being the long lost birth daughter of Hamato Yoshi/Master Splinter, his own adoptive father figure and sensei.
• Deadpan Snarker: Leo is surprisingly shown to have a sarcastic and snarky sense of humor in this adaptation.
  Raphael: We're giving up? Again? Are you kidding me?
  Leo: Yes! It's all part of my hilarious 'Let's All Live' routine!
  • And:
    Leo: "Mousers"?
    Baxter Stockman: Mousers! Mobile Offensive Underground Search Excavation and Retrieval Sentries!
    Leo: Seems a little forced.
  • Also, his interaction with Raph after he finds out about Karai:
    Raph: So what’s with the girl who tried to kill you?
    Leo: She didn't try to kill me, she saved me.
    Raph: She threw a knife at your head.
    Leo: No, she threw a knife near my head.
    Raph: She's in the Foot Clan.
    Leo: Nobody's perfect.
• Decapitation Presentation: A G-rated version in "Owari", where he displays Shredder's helmet to his brothers, April, and Casey as a trophy of his victory before dropping it on the ground. The fifth season reveals that Leo did indeed behead Shredder.
  Leo: Shredder... is finished.
• Determinator: Which helps him a lot as the series goes on.
• Disney Death: Strangely, twice, in both parts of "Showdown".
• Dual Wielding: He wields twin katanas, as with most versions.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite proving again and again that he's the only one who has what it takes to be a good leader, he notes that his brothers only seems to follow his lead when they feel like it. It may have much to do with him being not as outspoken as previous versions. In "New Girl in Town", he gets so sick of the lack of appreciation that he decides to let Raph be leader.
  Leo: I've had to make every other decision and I'm tired of it! Those guys have no idea what kind of pressure I'm under and all they do is complain. Is it too much to ask for a simple "Thank you"?
• Emotions vs. Stoicism: Unlike the previous versions, this version of Leo usually doesn't bother with being stoic.
• Evil Costume Switch: Leo switches his traditional blue bandana for a black one and a spikier, slightly "eviler" looking costume—one reminiscent of his infamous "City Fall" getup—while hanging out committing crimes (against Shredder) with Karai and Shinigami in "Broken Foot". It's not the result of brainwashing however, as he's willingly helping Karai sabotage the Shredder's operations. He returns to this outfit in "Owari" (with his brothers donning similar costumes) to take on the Super Shredder.
• The Face: As always, Leo acts the most classically heroic of the Turtles as a result of being their leader.
• Fanboy: He adores the Star Trek style cartoon Space Heroes. His brothers try to use this to get him to snap out of his Brainwashing in "Parasitica", but it doesn't work.
  • Leo takes this to the extent that, in season five, he's the only Turtle who is excited at the prospect of watching Space Heroes: The Next Generation, which repulses both Donatello (who points out the show was cancelled for teaching incredibly bad morals, even worse than its predecessor) and Michelangelo.
• Flirty Step Siblings: With Karai.
  Leo: Karai, it's us!
  Karai: Leo? [silence for a while] Took you long enough.
  Leo: Well, we got tired of waiting for you to escape on your own.
  Raph: Is this a rescue or a romantic comedy? Come on!
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Leo is the responsible to both Mikey and Raph's foolish.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil:
  • In "New Girl in Town", he repeatedly insists that Karai isn't as evil as she appears and believes there must be some good in her. He realizes otherwise in "The Alien Agenda" when Karai meddles with Kraang tech, accidentally creates a monstrous super-mutant, and then abandons the Turtles to clean up her mess, all while mocking Leo to his face for trusting her.
  • He falls into it again in "The Wrath of Tiger Claw", where he instantly believes Karai's claim that she now believes that Splinter is her true father and blows off Raph's objections. It never once occurs to him that Karai might be lying until she, having actually discovered the truth from Splinter, confesses and reveals the tracking device she just activated to lure Tiger Claw to their lair.
  • Ultimately subverted as of season four since Karai has reformed and is now an ally of the Turtles.
• Good Is Not Soft:
  Leo: No more Mister Nice Turtle.
  • The other Turtles occasionally do stab or attempt to critically injure their mortal enemies with the respective bladed versions of their weapons, but Leo, perhaps mostly because his weapons are two long katanas, most easily adopts moves intended to cripple or kill enemies. In fact, in "Owari", he beheads Super Shredder.
• The Leader: As per tradition, Leonardo is the leader of the TMNT. However, this adaptation does a really good job of showing why it has to be him.
• Hand Wave: In-universe, his voice in the third season onwards is explained as a result of the damage to his vocal cords during his fight with the Shredder in "The Invasion". Then again, turtles DO have redundant systems in their bodies.
• Handicapped Badass: The first few season three episodes have him using a crutch since he's still recovering from the beating Shredder inflicted on him and it still doesn't stop him from doing all he can to keep his family safe.
• Healing Hands: As of "The Deadly Venom", he is learning this from Master Splinter and used it to heal his brothers and Casey from the poison. For bonus points, they're actually called "Healing Hands" in-universe.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Just like most versions, he’s the heroic leader of the Turtles and wields two twin swords.
• Heroic Spirit: It comes with being both a determinator AND a borderline Ascended Fanboy of TV heroes, even though his favorite show's protagonist is a bad example of them.
• Hidden Weapons: His katana scabbards have kogatana knives hidden in them, aside from the ones hidden in his hand wraps.
• Honor Before Reason: At least Raph thinks so anyway. As a result of being unique from his brother's weapons (Bo-Staff, Sai, and Nun-Chucks), Leo's weapons are the only ones specifically designed to deliver killing blows, though Leo is much too honorable to want to do so.
• Horrible Judge of Character: In "The Wrath of Tiger Claw", he's perfectly willing to believe that Karai really does believe that Splinter is her true father and never once considers the possibility that it might be a trick... until Karai, after discovering the truth, confesses that it was a trick.
  Karai: I-I can't believe it. You're telling the truth! All these years, the Shredder has been lying to me!
  Leo: Wait, you can't believe it? I thought you did believe it. If you didn't believe it, why did you come down here?
• Hypocrite:
  • In "Slash and Destroy", when Mikey ruins Raph's magazine, Leo tells Raph that he shouldn't be so materialistic, even though he attacked Mikey in "Parasita" for wiping his comic book on his butt when Mikey was only doing it to get him away from a mutant wasp egg (and ignoring the fact that Mikey saved the day).
  • In "Battle for New York", Leo calls out Slash for using the other Mutanimals as bait (really it was just Pete) when he's done the same thing using Mikey and Raph a few times before and also allowed Donnie to use April for the same purpose in "The Gauntlet".
  • In “The Moons of Thalos 3”, Leo judges Raph and Mona’s relationship and finds it weird that Raph’s in love with a newt. However, he has feelings for his step-sister, Karai.
  • In "Trans-Dimensional Turtles", Leo says his 1987 counterpart is not allowed to order his team even though he's commanded other people outside of his jurisdiction such as Dogpound and Fishface in "Baxter's Gambit" and the Mutanimals in "Clash of the Mutanimals" and "Annihilation Earth!".
• It's All My Fault: In "Vengeance is Mine", Leo blames himself for Karai's mutation.
  Leo: This is all my fault. I should have stopped her when I had the chance. I'm sorry, Sensei. (Splinter doesn't answer) Sensei?
  Splinter: [broken-hearted] We should go home, my sons.
• In Harm's Way: Leo is an adrenaline junkie. Although, it’s not to the extent of being a Blood Knight. He's overjoyed at having to fight actual ninjas (instead of old robots), his idea of a good time is a duel on top of a building, and the kinds of girls who catch his attention are the ones who throw knives at his head.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: His eyes are blue. They help solidify his youth and inexperience in this adaptation.
• Jumped at the Call: When Splinter opines the need for a leader in "Rise of the Turtles, Part 1", Leonardo raises his hand and asks if he can be it. It takes Splinter less than a minute to grant him his wish. Deconstructed later though when Leonardo begins to show signs of regretting his choice when the burden of responsibility takes its toll on him, like it would any 15-year-old.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Leo has a pair of katana, as per tradition.
• Kid Hero: All of the Turtles are this, but Leo fits the trope best because of his responsibilities.
• The Kirk: His leadership style tends to lean toward this—not surprising, since his main source of inspiration is an expy of Captain Kirk—but he'll occasionally wander into The McCoy territory when he's showing mercy at the expense of winning and even The Spock when he's being coldly calculating.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": He is like this when confronted with his favorite sci-fi show "Space Heroes".
• The Leader: He is the Levelheaded and Charismatic type. He's the most balanced and mature of his brothers, and he knows how to use people's skills. However, his brothers (especially Raph) don't initially buy it.
• Love Makes You Dumb: He has an obvious crush on Karai and it repeatedly clouds his judgement on missions during the first two seasons. It reaches a head in "The Wrath of Tiger Claw" where, despite Karai doing such things as kidnapping him and attacking him with Footbots and deliberately targeting April to make Splinter and the Turtles suffer, when she approaches him, claiming that she now believes them that Splinter is her true father, Leo is perfectly willing to take her at her word and never once considers the possibility she may be lying until Karai does discover the truth from Splinter and admits it was a trick, revealing the tracking device she just activated to lure Tiger Claw to their lair.
• Master Swordsman: He's still very much learning to be one (especially when compared to his 2003 counterpart). As the series progresses, he's showing encouraging signs of mastering it. His experience with kenjutsu (Literally "Sword Technique", kenjutsu refers specifically to a branch of Japanese martial art and sword fighting, mainly focused on using a katana. It has been largely supplanted by the more sport-oriented Kendo and the drawing-cutting-replacing based Iaido/Iaijutsu), in which he uses in the Niten Ryu style of kenjutsu, makes him a skilled and excellent swordsman.
• Meaningful Name: Leonardo's name is Italian, meaning "Strong as the Lion/Lion-Bold".
• Named After Somebody Famous: Once again, as per tradition, he is named for the famous Renaissance artist master, Leonardo da Vinci.
• Nice Guy: Behind only Mikey in this regard. Leo is very compassionate and by far the most level-headed of the group. That doesn't mean he's a pushover, though.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His allowing his brothers to attempt to take down Shredder while they were having an Enemy Mine with Karai not only backfires, but causes Karai to develop full-blown hatred for Leo and his brothers. Leo even acknowledges that he blew it.
• One-Man Army: There are plenty of examples of him being this throughout the show, but most it's prominent in "The Invasion".
• The Paragon: Discounting the above moment, Leonardo is consistently the most moral of the Turtles and is the most concerned with being honorable and noble. This sometimes works against him though, and he has come under criticism from Raphael due to his way of doing things.
• Promotion to Parent: After Splinter dies, Leo succeeds him as the sensei to the rest of the clan, including dishing out discipline to Raphael for talking back to him in "The Forgotten Swordsman". These new responsibilities weigh heavy on Leo in the fifth season.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He is the blue to Raphael's red, as reflected by the color of their headbands. It frequently causes him and Raph to butt heads when Leo's stoicism clashes against Raph's hot-blooded impulsiveness.
• Reverse Grip: He is much more prone to this than most versions.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: His beliefs that there was good in Karai are proven to be completely false.
  • Not so much when Karai is dismayed at his decision to turn on her father; she clearly wanted to hold on to their shaky truce just as much as Leo.
  • Come "The Wrath of Tiger Claw", Leo is ultimately proven right about Karai.
  • Even with the above example, Leo is the one most likely to show empathy and fairness when dealing with enemies. That's why it's a big deal when he makes less than honorable choices.
• Spirited Competitor: This is why he prefers fighting other ninja over the Kraang.
• The Strategist: Donnie is undoubtedly the Smart Guy of the team, but Leo is no slouch either. He's the one who usually comes up with the plans whether they're high-level missions or just impromptu ways to get out of temporary jams.
• Talented, but Trained: While all four of them are skilled ninjas, Leonardo is the most dedicated of Splinter's students, taking to Splinter's lessons much more easily than his brothers, is the most likely to train outside of their usual training under Splinter and often uses his authority as leader to get his brothers to train while out on patrol.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Implied. He drops this in "Owari" after Shredder kills Splinter and brings a wrathful Leonardo to his mansion's rooftop; in this episode, he is not only out to end the Shredder, but Leo succeeds, finally defeating Oroku Saki in combat after having trouble with him throughout the show.
• Took a Level in Badass: All of the Turtles go through this, but this trope is most obvious with Leo. He goes from being barely able to defeat Tiger Claw one-on-one to being able to fight him and Karai to being able to take on Rahzar, Fishface, Tiger Claw, and the entire Foot Clan and win. Shredder himself had to step in and beat him down. In "Owari", Leonardo manages to kill the Shredder, even while he was a super mutant!
• Tranquil Fury: The precursor to a lot of Leonardo's CMOAs. He's as prone as any of his brothers to berserker rages, but when he goes all laser-focused and quiet and pupil-less, it's time to run like hell.
• Vetinari Job Security: A key plot point in "New Girl in Town". Sick of constantly being second-guessed and not receiving any appreciation for his efforts, Leo hands his leadership over to Raph, who is firmly convinced he can do the job better. Raph soon cracks under the pressure and, while fighting Snakeweed, he can't think of any better plan but "go for the head" and freezes up completely when Mikey is injured. After they escape, Raph confesses to Splinter that he can't handle being leader and now realizes what Leo has to deal with every day.
• Vocal Evolution: His fight with Shredder's forces in "The Invasion" permanently damaged his vocal cords, making his voice sound deeper and different. This is the In-Universe explanation for Seth Green replacing Jason Biggs and Dominic Catrambone.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Zigzagged. While most of what Leonardo does is to please Splinter, he sometimes disobeys Splinter or even do the opposite of what he says if Leonardo believes otherwise. An example would be how in "Vengeance is Mine", Leo stages a rescue for Karai against Splinter's wishes.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: He constantly attempts this on Karai early on, insisting she's not as bad as she claims to be. Of course, he repeatedly fails to get through to her, leading to her doing such acts as create a monstrous super-mutant by mistake and ditch the Turtles to clean up her mess and target the Turtles and April for heinous acts as Revenge by Proxy against Splinter, all while mocking Leo to his face for thinking any different of her. It takes her finding out about her true parentage in "The Wrath of Tiger Claw" for it to finally sink in.
• You Are in Command Now: After Splinter's death, he becomes the new leader of the Hamato Clan, and Splinter's spirit outright tells him that he is the sensei now.

Hamato Donatello

Voiced by: Rob Paulsen

A fellow who has a way with machines.

"That's incredibly stupid! Or brilliant... or both."

The brains of the bunch, Donatello is the Turtles' go-to Turtle for gadgets and new vehicles, and his tech savvy is never out of demand during their conflict with the Foot Clan and the Kraang. His love for April is what drives him, though how much she may reciprocate is up for debate, especially when Casey arrives on the scene.

---

• Accidental Truth: In "Mikey Gets Shellacne", when Mikey first reveals his zits, Donnie examines them and jokes that they're going to spread throughout his body until he basically becomes a giant zit and explodes. Later, they get worse and it's revealed they're the result of Mikey stupidly rubbing a reject batch of retro-mutagen on his skin. Donnie does another examination, and discovers that the zits are spreading through Mikey's body, and he will explode if they don't fix things fast.
• Actor Allusion:
  • His English VA is Rob Paulsen, who played Raphael in the 1987 version. As a result, a lot of the sarcastic quips that would normally be delivered by Raphael in that version come from Donatello in this one.
  • The Japanese dub was done by Hiroshi Tsuchida, who's known for his main role in Ninja Sentai Kakuranger as Saizo aka Ninja Blue.
• Affectionate Nickname: Apart from the usual diminutive "Donnie", friends and family often call him "D."
• All Love Is Unrequited: April has yet to reciprocate or even really notice Donnie's feelings for her until later seasons where she has kissed him on the cheek a few times and then kissed him on the lips in season three.
• Badass Adorable: He is a nerdy skilled ninja after all.
• Badass Bookworm: He is the brains of the group and an effective fighter.
• Beware the Nice Ones: In contrast to previous adaptations, where he almost never got angry, vexing this version of Donnie is liable to produce a sudden violent outburst. When Karai tries to kill April in "Target: April O'Neil", Donnie disarms and defeats her in five seconds flat.
• Big Little Brother: Despite being younger than Leo and Raph, Donnie is the tallest out of the Turtles.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: He says "Booyakasha" three times and "Like a turtle do" (Mikey's phrases) once.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In "Parasitica" and "Pizza Face", Donnie gets brainwashed by the main villains in those episodes.
• Brain Uploading: During the alternate Mutant Apocalypse arc, Donatello's body is badly wounded and near destroyed by the mutagen bomb. However, he was cybernetically linked to his robot Metalhead Mark II, leading his consciousness to be transferred into the robot.
• Brains and Brawn: His fighting dynamic with Mikey, who is a more talented fighter than Donnie but is also a Cloudcuckoolander.
• Butt-Monkey: He suffers from this very often in the first season. While not entirely gone, the later seasons have toned it down a lot.
• Character Development: In the third season, he becomes aware of how forceful his advances toward April are, and calms down about it. He even pulls back more and exerts more control of himself around Casey Jones, who he's gotten at least a bit more amicable with.
• Childish Tooth Gap: He has one, although he's more dorky and not exactly childish.
• Cloud Cuckoo Landers Minder: He is often paired with or seen entertaining Mikey and assigned to watch The Pulverizer. He is somewhat exasperated by this.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Anytime Casey is around April, Donnie gets a little upset. This is toned down in season three.
• Crush Blush: This happens almost every time he interacts with April.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Justified. He's a teenage mutant ninja turtle, which means most people would scream at him than pay him for his ideas, and trying to go public with your inventions when nearly everything in the city is trying to kill you or your family is a rather unwise idea.
• Deadpan Snarker: Usually to Raph or Mikey. This version of Donatello is notably less of a Gentleman Snarker than the previous versions and more of a typical Deadpan Snarker.
• Demonic Possession: He falls victim to this in "Race with the Demon".
• Disney Death: In "The Power Inside Her", a possessed April actually disintegrates him. However, once she snaps out of it, she manages to literally pull Donnie back together.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Veering into stalker territory. His laptop wallpaper is a photo of himself with April, he uses his robot to get a closeup of her face without her knowing (at least, that was the intention), and he has a flowchart dedicated to getting her to hang out with him.
• Flanderization: His crush on April was there from the very start, but he wasn't nearly as obsessive or a borderline stalker as he is in season two. This was eventually amended in season three, with his crush on April becoming more the subject of brief jokes instead due to him realizing his behavior in previous seasons.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: He is the responsible to Michelangelo's foolish.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Give him enough time and resources and he can make almost anything.
• Geek Physiques: He's noticeably tall and skinny and has a gap in the front of his teeth. Karai lampshades this in "Enemy of My Enemy", much to Donnie's annoyance.
  Donnie: And I'm not scrawny! I'm svelte!
• Genius Bruiser: He is both an effective ninja and a genius in many fields of science.
• Hard Head: His cranium must be Made of Iron, seeing how often he gets hit in the head or the face. Especially the face. Donnie getting grabbed by the face has become a running gag. The Kraang, Leatherhead, Dr. Rockwell, Leatherhead, the Shredder, a disembodied Kraang arm, and Spy-Roach have all shown complete disregard for Donnie's personal face.
  Donnie: Why do you keep grabbing my face? What is wrong with my face?!?
• Innocently Insensitive: Although many of the actions to woo April can be considered as stalkerish, this is mainly due to having no social skills, instead of being a pervert or malicious. Donnie does pull back from his worst behavior in season 3.
• Irony: He can make remarkably boneheaded decisions despite his IQ. Splinter calls him on this in "Mutagen Man Unleashed".
• Insistent Terminology: He constantly states that the go-karts he's been working on are to be referred to as "Patrol Buggies".
• Interspecies Romance: He wants to have this with April. They've shared the occasional hug, she's pecked him on the cheek, and she has actually kissed him at the beginning of season three playfully.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: After chasing after April throughout the first two seasons, he decides in "A Foot Too Big" that he's had too many Stalker with a Crush tendencies towards her and tells her that he'll stop. And then she kisses him... on the LIPS!
• Jerkass Realization: He gets one in "A Foot Too Big", when Bigfoot's Stalker with a Crush attitude towards him causes him to realize that he's been doing the same thing to April.
• Layman's Terms: He is often the one doing the translating which he is sometimes visibly annoyed by.
• Longing Look: Often gives these to April.
• Love at First Sight: He falls for April right away.
• MacGyvering: Unlike most versions of the Turtles, Donnie's devices in this adaptation are much grungier and less clean in aesthetic, showing just how improvised they are. Weapons made from sodas, manhole covers and garbage bundles, giant mechs made from tractor parts and much more.
• Mr. Fixit: He can fix almost any piece of tech he finds.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Argued with Leo about the team evacuating New York during "The Invasion" arc, as he believed his turtle mech was sufficient to ward off the invasion. It wasn't - by a long shot - and as a direct result of this hesitation Leo was nearly beaten to death and took nearly a year to recover back to fighting form. Donnie himself acknowledges and feels guilty for this.
• My Greatest Failure: The whole 'mutagen man' fiasco.
• Nerdy Nasalness: Donnie's nasal voice only emphasizes his nerdy nature. His voice actor even invoked this trope during an interview:
  Rob Paulsen: Donatello sounds a lot like me, only a bit nerdier. Don't tell anybody.
• Nice Guy: Especially in regards to April.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In "Heart of Evil", his fixation on taking down Vizioso ends up allowing the Foot Clan to recover Shredder's heart, providing Kavaxas with all of the pieces he needs to resurrect Shredder.
  • In "The Frankenstein Experiment", he assists Dr. Frankenstein in creating the creature with the ulterior motive of collecting some of the doctor's synthetic blood, which he hopes to use to Find the Cure! for a vampirized Raph. In the end, all Donnie succeeds in doing is providing yet another monster for Savanti's army.
• No Indoor Voice: Only Raph can outdo him in this regard.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: He gets hit with this in the fourth season. While on Earth, Donnie's a Gadgeteer Genius and Omnidisciplinary Scientist, he soon finds himself overshadowed by Professor Honeycutt, discovering that Earth is about 3000 years behind the standard transdimensional concepts of physics and he's effectively a "galactic idiot" in comparison.
• Not in the Face!: Leatherhead has quite the habit of grabbing Donnie by the face during his Unstoppable Rages, which Donnie lampshades often.
• Number Two: Played with in this version. Whereas in previous iterations (including the original comics) he was second-in-command, this series has the role transfer from him to Raphael over time. Raph's first few attempts at leadership without Leo around are disastrous, forcing Donnie to step in and tell him what to do to at least get them out of the situation alive. Later on, Donnie tends to lead situations that rely on his particular expertise, but otherwise he leaves the leading to Leo or Raph.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: He seems to know a lot about multiple scientific fields, ranging from engineering to biology.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Gets this compared to his brothers; he lacks their pure athleticism and is more of The Smart Guy in the group. Compared to regular people, however, he's a trained ninja and Badass Bookworm.
• The Professor: See above.
• Purple Is Powerful: Sort of. Compared to a regular person, he's a 15-year-old Badass Bookworm Ninja. Compared to his brothers, he's the scrawny Smart Guy.
• Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: In "Turtle Temper", since Vic has been nothing but a Jerkass to them, even as they try to rescue him from the Kraang, Donnie openly asks the others why they're risking their lives to try to save him.
  Donnie: Remind me why we have to rescue this guy.
• The Reliable One: Donnie's intelligence, dilligence and good heart means that he is this big time. Much of the solutions and accomplishments of the team, such as retromutagen and their inventions have been thanks to him. However, this does mean that much of the burden is put on him, sometimes by himself. Lampshaded by Splinter in "The Creeping Doom".
  Splinter: Donatello often puts too much burden on himself, sometimes the best solution only arrives when you take a step back from the problem.
  • It also means he beats himself up when he feels he's let the team down. He goes on his team and proclaims he failed during the events of "The Triceratons' Revenge". However, the others assure him it was thanks to him they are alive.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: There are subtle hints of this trope between him and Casey, with Donnie as the blue oni. Played Straight with Mikey, his blue to Mikey's red.
• Revenge Before Reason: He falls into it in "Heart of Evil", where he becomes so obsessed with taking down Don Vizioso for nearly killing him previously that he repeatedly jeopardizes the team's efforts to retrieve the Shredder's heart and nearly gets himself killed.
• The Smart Guy: Once again as per tradition.
  • In "The Triceraton's Revenge", he has been feeling plenty of doubt of being able to help out as this when he feels he Can't Catch Up to the Fugitoid (apparently, Earth science is 3000 years behind the standards of the galaxy).
• She's Not My Girlfriend: He gets this a lot from his brothers regarding April. He teases Leo in the same way down the line regarding Karai, finally seeing the fun in the gag.
• Ship Sinking: In the third season, Donnie decided to give up on getting April's love, when he realized that many of his actions could be interpreted as bullying. Subverted, when she kisses him, which may indicate that her feelings weren't completely one-sided.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Maybe because he hasn't been around other girls, but he's very April-sexual.
• Skewed Priorities: In "Karai's Vendetta", he's fully prepared to abandon their mission at the Kraang's Underwater Base to go back to the city and save April from Karai. The others get him on track by reminding him if they don't destroy the base, then the Kraang will poison New York's water supply and kill everyone, including April.
• Stalker with a Crush: His relationship with April has shades of this at times. He goes back to being just sweet and tender towards her after season three. She seems to be starting to reciprocate his feelings, as well.
• Suddenly Shouting: He does this whenever he's stressed.
• Sweet and Sour Grapes: After he declares he's no longer going to be such a Stalker with a Crush, April takes him to first base.
• Teen Genius: He is a 15-year-old, well-trained ninja who is a technological genius, acquainted with alien technology, and well-versed in fields such as biology and chemistry, seen when he invents retromutagen (with his brother's help at least).
• Verbal Tic: Longer than most, but when asked a question while stressed, Donnie often goes into Sarcasm Mode before Suddenly Shouting.
• Weak, but Skilled: Donatello lacks the pure athleticism of his brothers, but compensates with cleverness.
• Wrecked Weapon: His bo staff gets snapped in half on a regular basis in the first few seasons.

Hamato Raphael

Voiced by: Sean Astin

Has the most attitude on the team.

"Was that supposed to sound tough or stupid?"

Count on Raphael to throw the first punch. He's the most disagreeable Turtle, but there's no arguing that he genuinely does love his family and would do anything to protect them.

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• Absurd Phobia: He's fought aliens with lasers, ninja mutants, alien dinosaurs and the Shredder... yet cockroaches make him scream like a little girl.
• Aesop Amnesia: Several episodes center on him trying to work out his anger issues. Something goes wrong because Raph generally can't control his temper and he realizes how much of a problem it can be, but then another episode puts him back at square one.
• Aloof Big Brother: Partially inverted. As per usual, Raph is younger than Leonardo, making him an aloof little brother. However, he is older than Donatello and Michelangelo, playing straight for them. He has averted this in season three as he's much more social with his family and seems to have taken charge due to events in from the previous season.
• Amazon Chaser: He falls for this adaptation's version of Mona Lisa, mainly because of how much bigger and stronger she is than him.
  • Also this: "That Alopex is really something, Chompy. But she's no Mona Lisa."
• Animal Lover: Raph has been shown more than once to be very friendly to animals (for example, Spike and the pigeon in "Showdown, Part 1"). The notable exception to this seems to be horses, who he consistently has trouble dealing with. It's arguably a Running Gag.
• Anti-Hero: Mainly of the Pragmatic Hero variety, but in "Never Say Xever", he goes a bit more towards He Who Fights Monsters.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Sometimes, though it usually comes back to bite him.
• Badass Adorable: Just like his brothers, Raphael qualifies to be one due to his design and skilled abilities as a ninja.
• Badass and Child Duo: He and Chompy arguably form this.
• The Beastmaster: Not only is he a bud to non-mutated creatures, but it seems that he can control them a fair bit, given that in "Follow The Leader", he gets a swarm of pigeons to help out in not getting detected.
• Big Brother Bully: Towards Mikey and Donnie sometimes, but he gets better about it. By season three, he's more Brutally Honest than anything. He still occasionally messes with Donnie and Mikey though.
• Big Brother Instinct: Towards Michelangelo, all the time. Raph is able to overcome even his fear towards a Terminator-esque Cockroach mutant the second Mikey's in trouble. He shows this towards Donnie occasionally as well, such as trying to keep him from embarrassing himself more than he already has, or ditching Spike when Donnie is missing. And yes, this even includes Leonardo, especially in regards to Karai and the last battle of "Showdown". It seems that this instinct is what makes him a great second in command but a poor leader; he's not willing to sacrifice his brothers and doesn't want them hurt.
• The Big Guy: As with many of other versions, Raphael is the strongest of the Turtles; whenever there's a need for brute strength, he's the turtle to call.
• Big Little Brother: While shorter than Leonardo, Raphael is the stockiest and heaviest of the four brothers. Averted with Donnie and Mikey, as he only has one older brother.
• Blood Knight: He's the most violent of the Turtles for a reason. The best example of this is when he very nearly drives his sai through Casey's skull when they first meet. Lucky for Casey that he managed to snap out of it just milometers before the impact.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In "Parasitica", "Pizza Face", "A Chinatown Ghost Story", and "Clash of the Mutanimals". Raph gets brainwashed by the main villains in those episodes.
• Character Development:
  • He's becomes much less abrasive towards his brothers as time goes on, Donatello and Mikey in particular. He also finally accepted Leonardo as The Leader (although if he has any legitimate problems with Leo's decisions he will make said problems knows).
  • Basically, he started out as an aloof bully in season one, turns into a pretty decent guy to his family in season two, and becomes the Team Dad in season three due to the Hamato Clan believing Splinter was killed and Leonardo falling into a three month long coma. For the remainder of the series he's still aggressive and abrasive, but much more open to others than in the beginning and has an easier time showing affection.
• Chekhov's Skill: In "Target April O'Neil", he effectively uses one kusari-gama as Mikey uses the other to trap Chromedome.
• Color-Coded Eyes: The only one to keep his green eyes from the 2003 series, since this eye color is usually associated with Hot-Blooded characters.
• Cool Big Bro: Can be this towards his brothers, especially in later seasons.
• Deadpan Snarker: He is one of the most common users of snark in this adaptation.
• Dope Slap: He frequently did this against poor Mikey and Donnie. So much so that it's lampshaded by Mikey in Turtle Temper.
• Dramatic Irony: In "The Wrath of Tiger Claw", he's not too concerned when the newly Heel-Face Turned Karai is defeated by Tiger Claw and dragged back to the Shredder, stating that the Shredder raised her and is most likely welcoming her home right now. Instead, the Shredder, after confessing that Splinter is indeed her true father, locks her up in a cell.
• Dual Wielding: Just like most versions, Raph wields two sai.
• Face–Monster Turn: In "The Crypt of Dracula", he's turned into a vampire by Dracula and becomes evil, antagonistic, and hostile as a result, affiliating with Savanti's monster tribe. He is restored back to normal when Mikey stakes Dracula.
• Face Your Fears: He does this in "Cockroach Terminator".
• Fatal Flaw: Anger
• Flechette Storm: He makes use of his shurikens far more often than the others. Leo even calls on him specifically to make a few throws.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: He is the foolish to Leonardo's responsible but he is also the responsible to Michelangelo's foolish.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: Somehow builds a pair of weaponized flamethrowers out of found objects in the woods. Uses them as an alternative to his sais.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: In "Plan 10", Raph accidentally switches bodies with a Kraang.
• Furry Confusion: He has a pet turtle, a fact that only becomes weirder when it mutates into the mutant turtle Slash.
• Good Is Not Nice: Despite his bad temper he IS still one of the good guys.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has a small, yet noticeable lightning bolt-shaped chip/crack on the upper left side of his plastron shell. His shell, and body in general are by far the most scratched and scarred of his brothers', especially his worn and tattered headband. "Lone Rat and Cubs" reveals he cracked his shell when he was run over by a shopping cart as a baby.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: To the point an episode was based around teaching him to learn to control it better.
• Heroic BSoD: After losing Spike/Slash the end of "Slash and Destroy", Raph briefly falls into it. Fortunately, Master Splinter snaps him out of it.
  • Hit with it harder in "Evil of Dregg"; Mona Lisa betraying them was such a colossal emotional blow it crushed his passion for fighting. It has reignited when she confessed her love for him.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: In "Rise of the Turtles, Part 2", he rips an arm off of one of the Kraang's robot suits and uses it to barricade a door, resulting in him getting looks from his brothers and Leo calling him "seriously twisted", which Raph takes as a compliment.
• He Who Fights Monsters: In "Never Say Xever", he starts to show signs of this when he viciously condemns Leo's showing mercy, and expresses views more appropriate for someone like The Punisher. Ultimately subverted by the end of the episode, where he can't bring himself to actually throw Chris Bradford off of the roof.
• Hidden Depths: He seems to have something of a soft spot for non-mutant animals. He's also shown to have enough intelligence to build himself flame throwers, and is likewise shown to be a decent artist.
• Hot-Blooded: To help contrast his calmer brothers.
• Hypocritical Humor: Mocks Casey's fear of rats, only to hide in his shell when Mikey shows him a cockroach. Pointed out by Mikey.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: In "Riddle Of The Ancient Aeons", Raphael (under the influence of the corrupted Aeon Crystal's Hate Plague) says he undermines Leonardo's leadership so much because he always believed that he was Splinter's favorite and felt jealous of him.
• Interspecies Adoption: He, a mutant turtle from Earth, ends up adopting Chompy, an alien who looks like a turtle.
• Interspecies Romance: With Mona Lisa, a salamander-like alien.
• Jerkass Ball: Depending on the Writer, his Hair-Trigger Temper can come across this way when he really does seem to be freaking out over something minor or is being outright unreasonable (or in a couple early episodes when his temper outright makes him The Load by exacerbating situations or distracting him from the team's missions). To his credit, this usually leads to a Jerkass Realization when it happens, and he tries to apologize and make amends.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • In "Karai's Vendetta", when Donnie is fully prepared to abandon their mission to destroy the Kraang's base to save April from Karai, Raph quickly points out that if they do so, the Kraang will poison everyone in New York, including April.
  • In "A Foot Too Big", when Donnie is complaining about Big Foot always bugging him and following him everywhere, Raph points out that Donnie does the same thing to April. Donnie even acknowledges he's right and makes efforts to change.
  • In "Mutant Gangland", he calls Splinter out for his constant favoritism over Leo when his Sibling Rivalry with Leo happens and not seeing how everyone else slacks off all the time.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He may come off as an irritable, violent, and obnoxious jerk, but he does care about his brothers. He just doesn't want anyone else to know he cares.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Hurt his family or friends in any way and he WILL beat the shit out of you or die trying.
• Knuckle Cracking: Of the neck variety.
• The Lancer: Once again, as per tradition towards Leo.
• Leader Wannabe: In "New Girl in Town", Raph constantly second-guesses Leo and is firmly convinced that he'd be a better leader, to the extent Leo gets sick of it and hands the position over to him. It doesn't take long for Raph to crack under the pressure, unable to think of any better strategy to deal with Snakeweed than "go for the head" and freezing up when Mikey is injured. When they escape, Raph has a better understanding of what Leo has to go through every day and admits to Splinter that he can't handle the leadership position.
• The Load: In "Turtle Temper", Raph serves as this due to his Hair-Trigger Temper, which leads to him abandoning the other three in the middle of a fight with the Kraang to argue with Vic, leading to Vic being captured by them. After this, Leo and the others agree that Raph's temper is out of control and force him to go home until he reins it in.
• Made of Iron: "Slash and Destroy" shows he can take a lot of punishment and still keep fighting.
• Meaningful Name: Raphael is also the only brother to have a Hebrew name, whilst all three of his brothers' names are Italian. He is the only turtle to not have an o sound at the end of his name. These things are because the Turtles were named after the common English names for the four Renaissance artists, and unlike the others, the artist Raphael is not usually called by his Italian name Raffaello. So it seems like he's always the odd man out amongst his brothers.
  • Additionally, his common nickname is Raph (many confusingly misspell it for Ralph). Once it's said out loud, it sounds a lot like "wrath". Fitting for the turtle with the shortest temper.
• Morality Pet: He's the only one who can get into Slash's good side before the latter's Heel–Face Turn.
• Murder by Inaction: In "Owari", he destroys Xever's robotic legs and disconnects his gill respirator, leaving him to suffocate on the shoreline. Of course, come season five, it turns out Xever survived.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: He is the "power" based brother in this series for a reason.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The 2003 version of Raph also had a crippling fear of bugs, especially cockroaches (though this Raph has yet to be eaten by one as 2003 Raph was).
  • Halfway during the Halloween themed monsters story arc, he's attacked and bitten by Dracula and progressively turned into an evil bloodthirsty vampire (along with April, Casey, Donnie, and New York's populace) but returns to normal when Mikey impales the vampire lord, curing him. In Volume 4 of the Mirage comics, Raph was bitten by a vampire there as well, but rather than become a vampire, the vampire venom mixed with the mutagen in his blood and turned him into a Kaiju-esque beast.
• The Napoleon: Raphael is shorter than Leonardo and Donatello, his stocky frame only helps to make him look shorter, plus he's got the temper to match.
• Named After Somebody Famous: As per tradition, Raphael is named for the famous Renaissance master, Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino.
• Number Two: In the episode "New Girl in Town" when Leo temporarily resigns his role as the leader, he does so poorly at it the first few times that Donnie has to take over. He eventually falls into the role over time.
• Official Couple: The other Turtles only have varying amounts of Ship Tease with their crushes, but Raph and Mona are officially together whenever they're together.
• Only Sane Man: He comes across as this during the Turtles' missions, as he is the only one not easily distracted and not prone to geeking out for one reason or another.
  Raphael (interrupting Leonardo and Donatello arguing about a bomb that will explode within 4 minutes and fifteen seconds): Boy, I sure hope this argument goes on for another four minutes and fifteen seconds!
  • And earlier in the same episode, when the Turtles are ready to escape the Kraang building, Leo starts signaling April with a bird call... despite the Kraang already shooting at them.
  Raphael: What are you doing!? (Calling up) April, throw the rope!
• Papa Wolf: Also counts as this to an extent.
• Playing with Fire: He eventually builds himself a pair of flamethrowers that he'll occasionally use in combat.
• Pressure Point: He is the only Turtle to pull it off.
• Promotion to Parent: Arguably in season three, where he's become the Team Dad due to the clan thinking Splinter died in "The Invasion" and Leo going into a three month long coma. Once the Hamato clan are reunited, he steps away from this position.
  • He becomes Chompy's surrogate father, with it even being acknowledged by other characters, such as Casey jokingly referring to him as "Dada Raph."
• Properly Paranoid: In "The Wrath of Tiger Claw", he calls out Leo for bringing Karai back to the lair in response to her claiming to believe that Splinter is her true father. He's proven right: Karai was lying and had activated a tracking device to bring Tiger Claw to the Lair.
• Real Men Wear Pink: One of the stronger Turtles and constantly showing his manliness, but he's also quite the artist.
• Red Baron: In the alternate Mutant Apocalypse Bad Future, he's known as "Red Stripe".
• Red Is Heroic: Another tradition well kept, as reflected by the color of his headband.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He is the red to Leonardo's blue, as reflected by the color of their headbands.
• Running Gag: Because he loses his temper easily, he ends up quitting the team, but ultimately he comes back in the end. In "Mutant Gangland", it revealed that he quit the team 27 times.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: He does this when he sees a cockroach.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Implied. Unlike his brothers, who are either Oblivious to Love or stuck in a Love Triangle, Raphael has a clear romantic interest in Mona Lisa, and only her, throughout the series.
• Team Dad: As mentioned above in Promotion to Parent.
• Theme Naming: Seems to have inherited Splinter's love for Renaissance art, naming aliens on the space adventure Mona Lisa and Picasso.
• They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite his usual Big Brother Bully role to Mikey, his care and protectiveness over his youngest brother is shown regularly. There are several incidents where Mikey gets seriously injured in fights and Raph is the one holding or comforting him, and Raph overcomes his fear of bugs to save Mikey from a giant mutant cockroach.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: He's shorter than most humans and his girlfriend Mona Lisa is an alien taller than him.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In "Operation: Breakout", he's noticeably nicer to Donnie and Mikey.
  • As he undergoes Character Development, Raphael works through his anger issues and becomes more of a team player over time, while surviving a large amount of traumatic experiences with his family and friends. The end result is that Raph generally becomes a friendlier and more well-adjusted (if still gruff) turtle and a better big brother with each passing season.
• Tsundere: Raph can be Tsun-Tsun towards his brothers, but is Dere-Dere towards Spike. Anytime he is Dere-Dere to his brothers, it's most likely going to be a CMOH.
• Unstoppable Rage: When he sees Shredder apparently kill Splinter in "The Invasion", he goes into an absolute fit of pure unadulterated anger and very nearly punches Mikey during it. Mikey is luckily able to calm him down before he does anything irrational.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: His dynamic with Leo much of the time - they genuinely enjoy hanging out and being friends with each other as well as brothers, he will spend months at Leo's bedside (or rather, bathtub-side) when Leo is in a coma, and by later seasons has no qualms about hugging Leo or even saying he loves him - but he will also fight with him, physically and verbally, at the drop of a hat, and even by late Season 4, Splinter has to stop him from bashing Leo's face in during a routine sparring match.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In "Cockroach Terminator", he is revealed to have a paralyzing fear of cockroaches. Raph even says this trope almost verbatim several times in the episode.
• Wolverine Claws: He sometimes uses his sai like this, but he later made himself a pair of claws during his vision quest. He can use them in conjunction with his flamethrowers to create burning claws.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: His word for word reaction when he sees the mutant roach come back for more in "Cockroach Terminator"... AGAIN.

Hamato Michelangelo

Voiced by: Greg Cipes

One of a kind. You know just where to find him when it's party time.

"Booyakasha!"

The wise guy of the Hamato Clan. Expect him to touch or break things he shouldn't, but you can also count on him to come through when it's most important.

---

• Achievements in Ignorance: In "Battle for New York", his goofy attempts to make retro-mutagen for the Kraang's victims not only succeed, but the batch he creates can even turn mutagen into retro-mutagen. Donnie is in absolute disbelief when Mikey admits he has no idea how he did it.
  Donnie: Are you kidding me? You do one awesome thing, and you can't even remember how you did it?!
• Adaptational Dumbass: Downplayed. Michelangelo is usually depicted as the most laid-back and even bumbling member of the turtles in most versions, but he is a complete idiot in this series. From nearly getting the Turtles killed by Shredder because he wasted all their smoke bombs previously for the most trivial of reasons, to nearly getting himself killed by pouring experimental goo of Donatello's on himself that was clearly labeled as toxic and dangerous. The episode "Journey to the Center of Mikey's Mind" even revealed he never mentally matured past the age of six.
• Aesop Amnesia: Despite repeated reminders from personal experience that Mutagen definitely is not a toy to fool around with, he keeps screwing off with or near it. Even after his Too Dumb to Live moment below, he somehow keeps forgetting this.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: His brothers clearly view him as one.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Mikey himself acknowledges it in "The Pulverizer".
• Attention Whore: Often overlapping with why his brothers get annoyed with him so much.
• Badass Adorable: He is a friendly, silly, and adorable badass ninja.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He is the most affable of his brothers, but not a pushover.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Despite his goofy attitude, Mikey is still a trained ninja.
• Big Damn Heroes: In "Parasitica", he not only cures his brothers of their Brainwashing, he also then saves them from the Parasitica wasps. He also pretty much lampshades this trope repeatedly to his brother's mild annoyance.
• Bifurcated Weapon: Unusually, he can combine his two nunchucks into a kusarigama.
• Big Brother Worship: Has shades of this with all three older brothers at times, but a particularly prominent (and cute) example is his tendency to mess around in Donnie's lab and do mock "experiments", suggesting he's trying to imitate Donnie.
• Big Eater: Especially when pizza's involved. "Journey to the Center of Mikey's Mind" shows us a morbidly obese Mikey as a representation of his gluttony, implying that this is what he would look like if his eating habits ever caught up to his physique.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He's every bit as good a fighter as his brothers and Splinter even says that he has more natural talent than all of them, but is also the most laid-back and prone to goofing off.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In "A Chinatown Ghost Story", Mikey gets brainwashed by Ho Chan.
• Brains and Brawn: Is generally the Brawn part of the equation when he and Donnie team up on fights.
• Broken Pedestal: He was a Hero-Worshipper of Chris Bradford and loved hanging out with him... until he discovered that Bradford was one of Shredder's disciples and was just pretending to be his friend to track down Splinter and find their lair.
• Butt-Monkey: Like Donnie, he often suffers from this.
• Cassandra Truth: Mikey is the first to discover the true nature of the Kraang, and when he tells his brothers, no one believes him. When they see it for themselves, Mikey quickly goes off on an "I told you so" routine.
• Chain Pain: His nunchucks can convert into kusarigama.
• Character Catchphrase: "Booyakasha!" He occasionally uses the classic “Cowabunga” after meeting Mondo Gecko.
• Chekhov's Skill: He once tried out Leo's swords in "The Pulverizer Returns", but failed miserably. He uses a sword again in "Target April O'Neil", but this one was a bit different and he actually knew how to use it this time.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: And how. It even helps him understand Dimension X's weird laws of physics in "Into Dimension X".
• Cooldown Hug: He gives a particularly heartwarming one to Raph when the later enters Unstoppable Rage mode upon seeing Splinter's supposed death in "The Invasion".
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Mikey has a bad habit of experimenting with his cooking or eating whatever he can get his hands on (sometimes he likes it, sometimes he doesn't), but in the end, he's the one who cooks everyone's breakfast.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: No matter how weird he acts, he is still a well trained ninja after all.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right:
  • None of his brothers believe him when he discovers the Kraang are alien brains... until they see it for themselves. Mikey spends the rest of the episode ranting about how he told them, but they didn't listen.
  • He gets it again in "Buried Secrets", when he attacks April's long-lost mother due to feeling something was off about her. No one believes him, calling back to other outrageous stories he's told before (like the time he said tiny elves stole his Nunchucks and replaced them with mozzarella sticks and the other time that him and Ice Cream Kitty enter a break dancing contest). He's soon proven right: April's mother is in fact a clone of her created by the Kraang, but the experiment had Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Cuddle Bug: His main hobby beside ninjutsu seems to be inflicting unsolicited physical affection on people.
• Dance Battler: He sometimes uses dance moves, a common one being spinning on his hand.
• Deadpan Snarker: Less so than his brothers and Splinter, but he does snark occasionally.
• The Ditz: He often acts like this, which results in him on the receiving end of a...
• Dope Slap: He gets it a lot, usually from Raphael.
• Dumbass Has a Point: He has his moments.
  • In "I Think His Name is Baxter Stockman", when the group, having been grounded, is sneaking into the lair after being curb-stomped by Stockman's Powered Armor and are caught in the act by Splinter, all Mikey can think to say is that they were "hit by a bus." When Donnie calls him out on this, Mikey asks him what he was supposed to say.
  • In "Mikey Gets Shellacne", when the group is trying to figure out where Dogpound took Stockman, Mikey suggests that they're at Stockman's old lab, but the others immediately blow him off, believing it simply doesn't make sense. Mikey goes there on his own, and it turns out Dogpound and Stockman were hiding there.
• Even Nerds Have Standards: He absolutely adores both Crognard the Barbarian^note a parody of Thundarr the Barbarian and He-Man with a trio of Designated Hero protagonists and Super Space Force 5^note an extremely poorly dubbed parody of 5-man mecha anime like Voltron, but he doesn't like Space Heroes^note a parody of Star Trek: The Animated Series with a Designated Hero main character much, if it all and is verbally disgusted by Space Heroes: The Next Generation, which Donatello notes was cancelled for being even worse than its predecessor.
• Excellent Judge of Character: He shows to have good judgement of character at times as he realizes that something was wrong or off with anyone who is closet to him, as shown with a Kranng duplicate of Apirl's mom and that two of the Mighty Mutanimals were acting strangely.
• Fluffy Tamer: He honestly thinks Leatherhead - the giant mutant alligator with anger issues - is "cute" and a "pussycat". He also successfully talks him down from an Unstoppable Rage multiple times.
• The Fool: Similar to being The Ditz, he ends up as this a lot too.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: He is the foolish to Donatello and Leonardo's responsible.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Lampshaded in "The Gauntlet".
  Donnie: Why do I always get stuck with Mikey?
  Mikey: Hey!
  Leo: I don't want him. And I'm in charge!
  Mikey: Hey!
  Donnie: Well, then make Raph take Mikey.
  Raph: Over my dead body!
  Mikey: You know, I'm starting to get the feeling nobody wants to be with me.
• Fun Personified: As a Kid-Appeal Character and the most lighthearted member of the cast.
• The Gadfly: He acts like this a lot.
• Giver of Lame Names: Most of the time, he's the only one who thinks the names he gives out are cool.
• Groin Attack: He attempts one on Metalhead, with predictable results.
• The Heart: Towards his siblings. It's subtle, but it's there.
• Hermit Guru: He becomes one in the Mutant Apocalypse timeline where he's gone all hilly-billy with long hair and lives in isolation.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Amusingly invoked in "The Pulverizer Returns" when Mikey decides that using Leonardo's katanas automatically makes him become the leader of the team, much to Leo's annoyance.
• Hidden Depths:
  • "Parasitica" shows that, in a pinch, he's got a fairly good memory and ability to follow the typically long-winded instructions given to him by Donatello before the Wasp's Mind Control takes effect.
  • "Mikey Gets Shellachne" also indicates that he's the best cook of all the brothers.
  • There are some hints that he's insecure about his place in the team.
  • He realizes during his time in Dimension X that the Kraang language is based around sound, which he learns to exploit through high-pitched screams. If nothing else, his ability to identify and replicate the exact notes needed demonstrates he has pitch perfect.
  • In "Journey to the Centre of Mikey's Mind", the largest of his different personality traits (but not the dominant one) is Anger.
• I Warned You:
  • After his brothers see the Kraang's true nature first hand in "Rise of the Turtles", Mikey pretty much spends the entire rest of the episode rubbing it in their faces that he was right all along.
  • This happens again with "Mom-Thing", with him being the first to call her out on her creepy behavior and he got another chance to rub it in everyone's faces at the end of the episode for not believing him.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: They go a long way toward making him look adorable.
• Innocently Insensitive: At times.
  • In "New Friend, Old Enemy", when Mikey wants to befriend humans, April states that they're already friends with a human: her. Mikey responds that April doesn't count; they saved her life, so she has to like them. The look on April's face during this exchange says it all.
  • In the second season, the way he tells April that they were the ones who accidentally spilled the mutagen that turned her father into a giant bat just makes one want to punch him in the face.
  • Another prime example would be when they discover that April is actually a mutant hybrid of human and Kraang DNA. April is understandably shocked and frightened by this discovery. So what does Mikey say? "Aw, yeah! Welcome to the family!"
• It's All My Fault: While he generally tries to duck responsibility for his actions, Mikey has had moments of this:
  • At the end of "New Friend, Old Enemy", he says it word-for-word when he finds out that Chris Bradford, whom he had befriended, is actually one of the Shredder's minions, and he's accidentally revealed the existence of himself and his family to their worst enemy.
  • In "The Creeping Doom", he openly admits that it's his fault that Donnie is losing his intelligence since he was messing around in Donnie's lab and makes efforts to fix things.
• Jumped at the Call: He loves everything about what he does.
• Katanas Are Just Better: He briefly uses Leonardo's Katanas in "The Pulverizer Returns". According to him, by virtue of having them, he's the leader. Nobody else is amused.
• Keet: Very high energy and talkative.
• Kid-Appeal Character: Bright orange, childlike personality, constantly making jokes and having fun. He's often used to make a light-hearted joke at the end of the show's more serious or depressing episodes.
• KidAnova: He is the only one of the four that has more than one love-interest; Renet and Shinigami.
• Kiddie Kid: "Journey to the Center of Mikey's Mind" explains why Mikey acts like a little kid; he is one, at least in his head. His mental-self is no more than six and his imagination looks like a small child's toys and drawings.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: He's repeatedly shown to like cats, and he ends up adopting Ice Cream Kitty.
• The Load: Several episodes in the first couple of seasons are based around Mikey getting himself into trouble due to carelessness, impulsiveness, or outright naivete, and his brothers having to rescue him. Happens occasionally later on too, but it's rarer. Special Mention to "The Creeping Doom" in Season 3, when he turns Donnie into The Load with his fooling around.
• Morality Pet: As stated above he is this to Raph.
• Never My Fault: Has a habit of this. From saying that Donatello shouldn't have trusted him with the T-Pod (something Mikey himself wanted to test) to drinking Retro-Mutagen and blaming Donatello for not telling him that it was dangerous (the container of which had multiple signs on it telling Mikey specifically to not drink it). This is the negative quality Mikey shares with Shredder, who NEVER takes responsibility for anything he does.
• Nice Guy: Though often Innocently Insensitive and socially awkward (especially in the beginning of the series), Mikey is a very friendly and caring guy. It's telling that he often acts as Morality Pet not only to Raphael but to Leatherhead as well.
• The Nicknamer: To the point he gets annoyed when one of their foes gives himself his new name, or even one one of his brothers does it without him. You'd think it's his desire in life to give mutants nicknames, and he absolutely does not care if the mutated person likes it or not.
• Nicknaming the Enemy: He gives virtually every mutated enemy of theirs a nickname; Dogpound/Rahzar for Chris Bradford, Fishface for Xever, etc. Humorously in "The Pig and the Rhino", his naming the mutated Anton Zeck and Ivan Steranko Bebop and Rocksteady was a case of Line-of-Sight Name.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: A terminal case — since he tends to speak before he thinks, you can pretty much count on him to say the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time.
• Plucky Comic Relief: His main role.
• The Pollyanna: In the episode "Metalhead", he describes himself as being a glass half-full kind of guy.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He is the red to Donatello's blue.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: As per Rule of Funny in some episodes.
• Sinister Scythe: Builds a pair of kama as an alternative to his nunchaku. Thematically similar to his kusarigama chain.
• The Slacker: When he isn't being too high energy for his own good.
• Smarter Than You Look: As shown in "Parasitica" and lampshaded repeatedly.
• Surfer Dude: Moreso than in the 2003 series, but less so than in the 1987 series.
• Team Chef: Revealed in "Mikey Gets Shellacne", where his brothers try to make breakfast without him and fail spectacularly.
• Too Dumb to Live: Seriously, he finds a glass container filled with goo in Donatello's lab. It's labeled "Super Cooled" and Mikey thinks it mean that it will make him "Super Cool". Somehow completely failing to notice the large array of warning labels making it clear that the goo is toxic, (one even saying, "Mikey, Don't Eat Me") he puts it on himself. It turns out to be a failed attempt to create a Retro-Mutagen, causing him to break out in zits that would have caused him to explode if Donnie hadn't cured him.
• Totally Radical: As usual for Mikey.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Pizza. He was the first to try it and tried to convince the others it tasted bad so he could keep the rest for himself. From then onward he is the most obsessed over pizza, often seen eating it more than his brothers, talking about it more than his brothers, having his own one-off arch-nemesis in the form of a pizza-themed mutant (Pizza Face) and a Triceraton psionic extractor revealing that it is the only waking thought he has.
• Variable-Length Chain: Aside from his trademark nunchaku, which he can combine them into a kusarigama. That the kusarigama is frequently shown to be longer than both the nunchaku put together doesn't seem to matter.
  • Of course, it may possibly be an extendable chain.
• Vetinari Job Security: His status as Team Chef, as displayed in "Mikey Gets Shellacne".
• Vibrant Orange: As usual, Mikey is the most playful and energetic of the four Turtles and wears an orange mask.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Frequently.
  • Inverted far to the other end in Dimension X.
• Youthful Freckles: To emphasize his childlike nature in contrast to his brothers.

Splinter/Hamato Yoshi

Voiced by: Hoon Lee

Click ^here to see Hamato Yoshi

Taught them every skill they need to be one lean mean green incredible team.

"We choose what holds us back and what moves us forward."

Once the leader of the Hamato Clan, Hamato Yoshi's idyllic life with his wife Tang Shen and daughter Miwa was forever changed when his rivalry with his friend Oroku Saki went too far, and Saki took everything from him. Yoshi relocated to New York alone and ended up mutated into a humanoid rat alongside his new pet turtles, who he raised as his own sons. Fifteen years later, when the Turtles are old enough and trained in ninjutsu enough to go to the surface, the threat of Saki raises its' head again, and the ancient war between the Hamato and Foot Clans begins anew. While his sons are the primary combatants, Splinter continues to train them and shelter them at home, as the mystery regarding the disappearance of his daughter begins to unravel and the flames of his own rivalry with Shredder continue to be fanned.

---

• Action Dad: He is the Turtles' adoptive father and master ninja mentor.
• Adaptational Badass: Splinter has usually always been the most powerful mortal hero on the Turtles' side, but Splinter in this series ramps it up. He's a nearly unstoppable One-Man Army and is the only member of the main cast to be able to singlehandedly go toe-to-toe with Shredder and win.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Downplayed. Make no mistake, this Splinter is no less loving of his sons than any other incarnation. But, at the same time, he's not above messing with their heads whether it's to help them learn or simply for his own amusement. He's also somewhat of a hypocrite who has the tendencies of overreacting to an extreme degree towards some of the mistakes the Turtles make when fighting above ground and occasionally being borderline physically abusive. The reason the Turtles all fear disturbing him is because his default reaction to their fighting, being disruptive, or doing anything to otherwise provoke his wrath tends to be beating the shit out of them with a flurry of advanced ninjitsu techniques. It certainly keeps them in line, and is Played for Laughs as Tough Love, but at the same time, most versions of Splinter have never lifted a hand to the Turtles in anger. This is somewhat justified as he earnestly wishes to be a good father. The Turtles also likely know this sort of cordial discipline is to be expected in a martial arts upbringing. He acts so strictly towards his sons because he already lost one family, so he refuses to lose another.
• Age Lift: This version of Splinter/Hamato Yoshi is much younger than previous versions, but nevertheless still qualifies as a Cool Old Guy.
• And Then What?: He points this out to Shredder during their fight in "Showdown" while calling him out on his Revenge Before Reason. As he points out, Shredder has had nothing but his hatred for Splinter keeping him going all this time, and if he succeeds in killing him, then Shredder will have nothing left.
• Animorphism: From the human Hamato Yoshi to a giant anthropomorphic rat.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Despite being a mutant and knowing about aliens, other dimensions and the supernatural, he believes in "Darkest Plight" he was hallucinating from a fever and head injury, not that he was speaking with the Rat King's ghost.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In "Owari", Splinter appears to Leonardo as a spirit after his funeral, telling him he has attained a higher spiritual plane of existence. In a rather unique example, he implies this is what happens to everyone (or at least those of good) who die.
  Splinter: Passing into death, we merge with the whole of life. We become one in all of nature. In all of the universe. Even with you.
• Beyond Redemption: Splinter is the one of the few characters who attempts to redeem Shredder. Despite the fact the Shredder is responsible for the death of Tang Shen, his daughter being kidnapped and raised as Hamato Yoshi's enemy, and the many attempts to destroy his current family, Splinter tries to reason with his former brother-in-arms whenever he gets the chance. This all changes, however, when Shredder mutates himself into Super Shredder and kills Splinter in their final battle. After this, the spirit of Splinter tells Leonardo that he needs to end this feud for good, all but stating that Shredder must die to keep their loved ones safe.
• Big Good: He’s the Turtle’s master and adoptive father, as well as the leader of the Hamato Clan.
• Bilingual Bonus: He can speak fluent Japanese as shown in his fight with Tiger Claw.
• Blade Catch:
  • He does this with two fingers with a kama that April lost hold of while trying to find her a weapon in "Baxter's Gambit".
  • He does it again in "Showdown". With his teeth.
  • And again in "Earth's Last Stand", this time, catching Shredder's claws from behind.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In "Pizza Face", Splinter gets brainwashed by the main villain as a result of eating pizza.
• Broken Ace: At first glance, he appears like an infallible force of wisdom, honor, and good, but whenever his past comes up, he becomes plagued by indecision and fear.
• Brutal Honesty:
  • Dismisses the Pulverizer as a "doofus", but to be fair, he's right.
  • In general, he holds back nothing when criticizing his sons. Of course, it's all for their own good.
• Cane Fu: One that looks to be made of jade/emerald and a sword is hidden inside.
• Character Catchphrase: "WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?"
• Code Name: He was going by Splinter before being mutated in this series.
• Confusion Fu: A bit of an odd one. Normally, he relies on traditional martial arts to fight and defeat his opponents. However, when he's pressed against the wall or sufficiently pushed, his rat instincts will kick in and he'll proceed to run all fours, scratch and bite like an angry rat would (a notable moment being when he snaps Shredder's metal blades). However, he's able to maintain discipline to switch out between this feral fighting and traditional style so fluidly that not even Shredder can counter well against it. While his weapon appears to be a cane, he's also got a few tricks hidden in it. Not a surprise to a fellow master ninja, but to anyone else...
• Cool Old Guy: He displays these traits rather often.
• Combat Pragmatist: See the image quote.
  Splinter: [surprise attacks Leo and pins him by the neck with his staff]
  Leo: OW!
  Splinter: Was that fair?
  Leo: No!
  Splinter: Did I win?
  Leo: ... I see your point.
  Splinter: Seek victory, not 'fairness'.
  • Which is justified and goes into Fridge Brilliance as he knows that some warriors, like the Shredder, would sooner drop out of a fight than play fair. He wants his sons to be willing to do anything to keep themselves safe, even if it means stooping to their level once in a while. Adding to that, they're dangerously outnumbered and sometimes outgunned. He uses pretty much every and any possible advantage in his battles.
  • Also Justified: he's teaching them to be Ninja. Ninja aren't exactly known for playing fair.
• Composite Character: Just like in the 1987 series, Hamato Yoshi mutated into Splinter. He's also the one who bought the Turtles from the pet shop instead of simply finding them in the sewer, taking the place of Chet in most other versions. Unfortunately, he shares another of the original Yoshi's traits; having Shredder be the one to end his life (the death only sticks as of "Requiem").
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Just about every fight he's in that isn't against Shredder ends up one of these in his favor.
• Cursed with Awesome: Being a rat, he's able to move far faster when he embraces his inner rat, shown in his fight with Shredder.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  Donnie: All due respect, Sensei, but I can't keep fighting advanced alien technology with a six-foot staff. I was kind of hoping to upgrade my weapons.
  Splinter: A seven-foot staff? Interesting.
  Donnie: Actually, I was thinking of something a bit more hi-tech.
  Splinter: Ah! A solar-powered staff!
• Determinator: He's lost both his family and his humanity, leaving him with no choice but to live in the sewers of New York with four mutant turtles. And he's managed to make a new life and family out of it. The show does not gloss over this.
• Disney Death: Splinter gets three of these as both a human and a rat. The first one is when his house in Japan collapses on him before the Turtles pull him out, leading Shredder to think he is dead, the second is when he's knocked into the sewers by Shredder in "The Invasion", only to be rescued by Snake Karai, and the third is when he attempts a Heroic Sacrifice/Taking You with Me with Super Shredder in "The Super Shredder/Darkest Plight", only to survive the fall and be rescued by the Turtles, again. But then he dies for real a few episodes later.
• Drunken Master: In order to teach the Turtles unpredictability and using their intuition in "The Tale of Tiger Claw", Splinter drinks heavily before sparring with them, beating each of them using a drunken martial art style.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Downplayed, especially in comparison to other mutants. All his fighting prowess comes from his time before mutating but he can make good use of his tail to get the better of the Turtles in training sessions. Also uses his rat teeth to snap Shredder's blade in their fight, and running on all fours to chase down his opponents.
• Enemy Mine: Convinces Shredder to join him to try to stop the Triceratons from destroying Earth. The minute he turns his back to Saki, he's killed. Shredder misses on the second time after time travel.
• Facial Markings: As a rat, his fur pattern creates this effect.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: In "Requiem", he's impaled through the chest by Super-Shredder, who proceeds to toss him off the top of the Wolf Hotel building.
• The Gadfly: He sometimes gets a kick out of riling his sons up.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Best shown in "It Came from the Depths." He agrees with Mikey that Leatherhead should be shown compassion, and tells Mikey to try to befriend him, but also reassures the others that they'll keep him restrained so he doesn't hurt anyone; he's "compassionate, not insane."
• Good Is Not Nice: He can be pretty no-nonsense and tough on his sons when he wants to be, but only to teach them important lessons. There's also his lines to Leonardo in "Showndown, Part 1":
  Splinter: With the world at stake, the only thing of importance is that you complete your mission, no matter what you have to sacrifice...or who.
  • This is best shown in "Earth's Last Stand". When Shredder tries to figuratively and literally backstab him as he did in "Annihilation Earth", Splinter is able to catch the blade after getting a warning from Leo. Splinter is so furious that Shredder would so brazenly endanger the planet if it meant fulfilling his deluded revenge that he beats the ever-loving crap out of him. The next time we see Shredder, he's bedridden and in intensive care.
• Good Old Ways: Subverted: Donny expects Splinter to be this when he wants to upgrade the Turtles' gear and use technology to give them an advantage. Splinter has absolutely no issue with hits and encourages it, as it's nothing ninja haven't always done.
• Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of "The Super Shredder", when pinned by Shredder at the edge of a cliff, with robotic foot soldiers surrounding his loved ones, Splinter uses a throwing knife to detonate a batch of smoke bombs, the resulting blast breaking the rock. Shredder attempts to escape, but Splinter grabs his leg and the two (presumably) plummet to their deaths.
  Splinter: SAKI! WE DIE TOGETHER!!!
  • The next episode reveals that both of them survived, though Splinter was badly wounded.
• Honor Before Reason: This version of Splinter makes a point of consistently averting this trope. First, when he urges Leonardo to seek victory, not fairness. Then again, when after Leatherhead is brought to the lair and he tells the Turtles it's important to show compassion, his response to whether or not they'll still chain him up is:
  Splinter: Of course. I'm compassionate, not insane.
• Hypocritical Humor: He always likes to give his children an important aesop about being good ninjas and good people, but he also likes to break said aesops a second after saying it, subverting it most of the time.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Shredder impales him with his blades through the back the moment he turns his back to him, killing him in "Annihilation Earth!". It's averted in season four after time travel, where he catches the blade after warning from Leonardo. However, in "Requiem" he is killed once again in the same way, unlikely to return.
• In the Hood: His clothes have a hood, which he dons during his assault on Shredder's building in "Showdown".
• Invincible Hero: He can casually defeat the Turtles, even when holding back, to the extent that Leo managing to land a single punch on him in "I, Monster" is treated as a major achievement by the Turtles. Not only that but practically no other villain in the show can stand up to him in a fight. And he's pretty much the only hero even up to now who can fight and defeat Shredder — who is an Invincible Villain — in any capacity. Even when the Shredder transformed into the Super Shredder and became much more powerful and durable than him, Splinter still managed to fight him on somewhat even footing, even if he was on the defensive and was willing to end the both if need be. Heck, even when Super Shredder perfected the Mutagen and became even stronger, Splinter still managed to keep up with him in "Requiem". However, sadly, this ends when Super Shredder stabs Splinter in the back after it looked like Splinter defeated him.
• Killed Off for Real: In "Requiem", he is killed once more. Unfortunately, it is permanent.
  • However, he does occasionally reappear to Leo as a spirit and comes back as one to fight Ho Chan off "End Times" when Kavaxas begins to summon the forces of the Underworld.
• Kirk Summation: In "Showdown, Part 2", he calls out Shredder on his obsession with revenge this way.
  Splinter: You never had anything but your hatred. And if you defeat me, you will have nothing!
• Large and in Charge: This version of Splinter is One Head Taller than the Turtles.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: As revealed in "Showdown", Karai is his missing daughter Miwa, who Shredder took and raised as his own the night Tang Shen died.
• Made of Iron: Splinter has managed to survive being hit by a poison dart, repeatedly slashed, then thrown into the sewer by the Shredder, and a 1000 foot fall. Tiger Claw even lampshaded the first instance of this. Unfortunately, being impaled by the Super Shredder proved too much, even for him.
• The Mentor: To the Turtles obviously.
• Mirror Character: This version of Splinter falls into this with the Shredder more often than most, especially since this series puts a good deal more focus on his flaws as a father and sensei (see Adaptational Jerkass above). Splinter frequently physically beats the Turtles as punishment for their screwups, at times bordering on being abusive, not unlike the Shredder does to his own adoptive daughter and minions. While it's ultimately out of love and the desire to protect them, it does put more emphasis on him being A Lighter Shade of Grey than his enemy.
• Moment of Weakness: In "Turtle Temper", he states that one such moment on his part is partially what triggered Shredder's Start of Darkness, which he informs Raph of in an attempt to Tame His Anger. Splinter recounts an incident where Shredder openly and relentlessly insulted him in front of Tang Shen, eventually leading Splinter to lose his temper and attack him. This caused their rivalry to intensify, eventually leading to Shen's death at Shredder's hands. Raph claims that he had no choice but to get angry since Shredder was insulting him, to which Splinter retorts that he did have a choice: he could have just ignored Shredder's taunts and walked away, but he didn't.
  Splinter: I could have chosen to ignore him. I could have chosen to let his words wash over me, like a river over stone. But I let him anger me. It was I who made his words into weapons. That was the choice I made. What choice will you make?
• My Greatest Failure: His anger-fueled attack on Oroku Saki after he insulted him in front of Tang Shen caused their rivalry to intensify, eventually leading to the murder of his wife and the loss of his daughter at Saki's hands.
• Mythology Gag: Hamato Yoshi was killed by the Shredder in the original comics, with Splinter training the Turtles to defeat him and avenge Yoshi. Although Yoshi is Splinter in this version, he ultimately meets the same fate as his original counterpart, with the Turtles killing Shredder to avenge their fallen master.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In "Panic in the Sewers," his fear of losing the Turtles to Shredder leads him to put them through weeks of Training from Hell with barely any sleep to ensure that they'll be able to survive another fight with him. While well-intentioned, all he succeeds in doing is making the Turtles paranoid and anxious, leading to the Foot nearly succeeding in destroying their home. Once the situation is settled, Splinter acknowledges his mistake and apologizes for letting his fear infect them.
  • While he does give Oroku Saki/Shredder a nice good old-fashioned butt-kicking for Shredder's Backstab Backfire in "Earth's Last Stand", this butt-kicking and the return of Splinter's daughter Miwa/Karai leads to Baxter Stockman agreeing to supply the now heavily-crippled Saki with Mutagen, eventually turning him into the Super Shredder, who becomes his killer in "Requiem".
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Gives one to Shredder in "Showdown" in an animal rage, leaving him in a heap on the floor and only being stopped from killing him by Karai's arrival. Shredder returns the favor in "The Invasion".
  • Splinter once again returns the favor in "Earth's Last Stand"; he's so furious at Shredder for betraying their Enemy Mine against the Triceratons, on top of being willing to ensure Earth's destruction for the sake of his revenge, that he beats the ever-loving crap out of him. Shredder spends the next handful of episodes bedridden and in intensive care as a result.
• Now That's Using Your Teeth!: In "Showdown", he not only catches one of Shredder's blades with his bare teeth, he breaks it with them.
• Old Master: Though he's not quite as old in this adaptation, he retains the distinction of being one of the few people able to go one on one with Shredder, himself capable of taking on all four of the Turtles at once without breaking a sweat. He's also the only character who can consistently defeat Tigerclaw.
• One-Man Army: In "Showdown", he delivers a Curbstomp Battle to the entire Foot Clan (except Shredder) by himself.
• Papa Wolf: As shown most prominently in "It Came From the Depths".
• Parental Substitute: As always, he is the Turtles' guardian and adoptive father.
• Posthumous Character: After his permanent death at the end of season four, he still reappears in season five through flashbacks and through the afterlife.
• Pressure Point:
  • Used both in battle and on Raph when he's being obnoxious.
  • Best seen in "Earth's Last Stand", where he completely smacks down the Shredder after systematically disabling all of his limbs.
• Primal Stance: A variant. When fighting the Shredder and taking off the gloves, he runs on all fours and claws at him like an actual rat in between more disciplined martial arts.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: To the Turtles; he can get a little physical in expressing his displeasure or when he feels he needs to emphasize his point, but once he has their attention, he almost always tries to be patient, understanding and sincerely helpful in his position as their father. It's highlight in the season one episode "It Came From The Depths", where he professes that Michelangelo is right when he says that the Turtles owe it to Leatherhead to give him a chance, but also agrees that Leatherhead must be reasonably restrained, since he is a super-strong giant gator-man prone to sporadic bursts of violent fury.
  Splinter: I am compassionate, not insane.
• Red Is Heroic: His yukata is a shade of red and he is a very noble man and excellent master in ninjitsu.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Not only is he a humanoid rat, but he is taller than all of his sons despite his species, whereas most Splinters tended to be on the short side for humans.
• Rule of Three: Three times he seemingly dies. The third time, it sticks.
• The Scapegoat: Shredder will always find a way to blame Splinter for either anything that goes wrong with his life or the various atrocities he commits.
• Sophisticated as Hell: For all his calmness and mature vocabulary, he still calls the Pulverizer a "doofus."
• Spared by the Adaptation: Much like in two previous adaptations, Hamato Yoshi survived his run-in with The Shredder and mutated into Splinter. Unfortunately, this trope is subverted by the end of the show, as Shredder does ultimately succeed in killing him in two separate timelines. Though his death in "Annihilation Earth" is undone by temporal shenanigans by season four, he's killed for good in the penultimate episode of the fourth season.
• Stern Teacher: The opponents that the Turtles fight are no pushover, so it's justified. An example of this is shown in "Panic in the Sewers".
• Stock Animal Diet: Being a rat, Splinter is shown to have a particular taste in cheese. He is most often seen eating cheese-sicles (which is essentially a slice of Cartoon Cheese on a stick kept in the freezer) and has a home-phone that resembles a large cheese wheel kept under glass.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: He can use his ki to create shockwaves combined with his pressure point strikes when he wishes. He is also shown doing the trope in "The Deadly Venom", though only to heal both himself of lingering injuries and the others after being bitten by Karai's mutagen snakes. He's able to combine them with his Pressure Point arts to free Karai from the control of the brain worms as well.
• Supporting Protagonist: He receives the most Character Development behind the titular characters, and when it comes down to it, the series is really driven by his long, horrific war with the Shredder. This ends when he is killed at the end of season four.
• Team Dad: Once again as per tradition. Taken up a notch in that he's considered not just their figurative father, but their literal one.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Played Straight and Averted, depending on the situation. Splinter seems to be of the mindset that one shouldn't kill needlessly. When he told Raphael not to kill his enemies, he was speaking about the Purple Dragons, a trio of low-life punks who aren't much of a threat to them or the city as whole. Shredder and Rat King, on the other hand, are both threats to them personally as well as the city, thus Splinter usually tries to end his feud with either. By "Of Rats and Men", he did just that with Rat King.
• Together in Death: With Tang Shen.
• Tough Love: He can be a harsh critic, is blunt in his appraisals and even willing to smack the Turtles around a little to emphasize his point, but it's all because he loves them and he needs to make sure they're as strong as they can be given the deadly foes they go up against.
  • As the episode "Lone Rat and Cubs" revealed, the Kraang was pursuing him and the Turtles since the four were just babies. Little wonder he did his best to train them to deal with the harshness. They were hunted from the start.
• Unreliable Narrator: It's revealed in "Tale of the Yokai" that Splinter was not entirely telling the truth during his flashbacks to his life before Tang Shen's death. Saki was not entirely motivated by jealousy when it came to Shen, as Yoshi was genuinely stumped on whether he should choose his family over his ninja clan, whereas Saki was willing to even take on a child that wasn't his own to provide a better future for her and Shen. Furthermore, Saki has plenty of reason to be enraged about the extinction of the Foot Clan at the hands of the Hamato Clan, so the conflict wasn't as black and white as Splinter has told it. Splinter probably wasn't telling his sons everything out of self-delusion, but this episode certainly casts the war between the Hamato and Foot Clans in a new light, though the events revealed do not contradict what was stated by Splinter nor do they reveal the reasons for the clan warfare.
• Unstoppable Rage: When Shredder decided to practically tap dance on his Papa Wolf button at the end of season one, Splinter snapped his blade with his teeth. Shredder didn't learn in the interim; in season two when Splinter believed he lost both Leo and friend Leatherhead to Shredder, he snaps so hard he launches a pile of construction pipes off his back.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Expressed in "Vengeance is Mine". When Karai, having been revealed to be Splinter's biological daughter Miwa, demands to know why he never tried to pursue revenge against Shredder after everything he's done, Splinter replies that revenge is pointless and only leads to more pain. Sadly, this ends up flying right over Karai's head.
• Was Once a Man: Originally a human named Hamato Yoshi, until he was mutated and became a giant rat.
• The Worf Effect: For the entirety of the series until late season four, Splinter has been the only hero who can fight Shredder on fairly even footing. He's routinely beat to a pulp and then later killed by Super Shredder to show how powerful his mutation has made him.
• You Can't Fight Fate: His permanent death in "Requiem" strongly implies that despite the Turtles' efforts to save him from being killed by Shredder in "Annihilation: Earth", he was always destined to die by Shredder's hand. Both times, he's impaled by Shredder in the exact same way, through the back. Splinter had been living on borrowed time in the second half of season four.

April O'Neil

Voiced by Mae Whitman

Her Civilian outfit

Her space jumpsuit

Her kunoichi outfit

"This is it, April. A new start. Just pretend you're a normal girl. Don't talk about alien robots, or mutant dad, and don't even THINK about turtles."

A girl whose father was kidnapped by the Kraang at the start of the series, and she would've suffered the same fate had the Turtles not intervened. Though initially shocked by the Turtles, she gradually began to warm to them and became a full-fledged member of the Hamato Clan. It's even arguable that Splinter sees her as a new daughter. As the Turtles' conflict with the Foot Clan and the Kraang grows larger, it's gradually made more and more apparent that there is far more to this girl than meets the eye.

---

• Action Survivor: She is this at the start of the show. Training from Master Splinter and the revelation that she's half-Kraang and has psychic powers make her a straighter Badass.
• Adaptational Badass: This version is much more of a fighter than other versions of April. She actually joins the team and gets trained by Splinter, becoming able to defeat Ralph in sparring. She eventually manages to fight Shredder by herself.
• Adaptational Jerkass: A downplayed and subtle example. She's prone to being mean towards the Turtles if they do anything to upset or disappoint her. When her father was accidentally mutated into a bat and Mikey confessed they were the ones who released Mutagen canisters from a Kraang ship, leading to said mutation, she instantly accused them of mutating him on purpose, and swore to never see their faces again, even refusing to believe their claims that the whole disaster was an accident. However, during a visit from Donnie and hearing Casey tell her how he lost a friend from an accident as they both said that some things can't be controlled, April realized her harsh behavior towards the Turtles, especially Donnie. Also, during a Foot attack, April realized that Donnie and Casey were right as she call the Turtles for help. After taking care of the Foot Clan, April forgives them for their honest mistake and apologizes to the Turtles for yelling at them.
• Adaptation Species Change: In the comics and other versions, April is a pure-blooded human. Here, she is half-human, half-Kraang due to being experimented on by them when she was still in her mother's womb.
• Addictive Magic: In "Bat in the Belfry", April has shown to become dependent on the Power Crystal she received from the Aeons. She would have headaches and nightmares about space, and even Splinter claims that April is merely using it as a crutch. She becomes irritable and violently defensive if asked to part with it or if she does not have it on her, and eventually vows never to let it out of her sight. It is later revealed that the crystal was possessed by the soul of a corrupt Aeon slowly possessing her, which she eventually overcomes by destroying the crystal.
• Age Lift: In contrast to most incarnations of her, where she is typically a young adult in her early-to-mid twenties, she is a 16 year old teenager here.
• Bad Liar: At least around Irma, who by her third appearance has figured out that April's got friends that she's hiding from her, in part because of April's rather poor excuses as to why she has to suddenly leave. Of course, Irma was a master Kraang spy who was no doubt trained to weed information out of people and see through facades.
• Berserk Button: Due to the corrupting power of it, don't try to take her Aeon crystal.
• Can't Catch Up: In addition to April's training as a Kunoichi averting Instant Expert, her later fight with Karai makes no attempt to dodge the hard truth that someone who's been training for years and has been in actual fights is going to beat someone who has never been in a serious fight and has only been training for at most a few months.
• Combat Hand Fan: Her preferred weapon.
• Composite Character: She shares some traits with the female turtle Venus de Milo from Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation. Like Venus, she is treated as the fifth member of the group, uses the tessen as her weapon, and has latent psychic powers. She also wears her hair in a ponytail, which is similar to how Venus had part of her bandana braided to resemble a ponytail.
• Cool Sword: Given one by Splinter in season four, to signify her new kunoichi status.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: On the receiving end of one in "Karai's Vendetta".
• Damsel in Distress: Mostly during the first season, though its worn off in subsequent seasons to the point where she defeated Raph in a training session and is able to knock down Casey several times to his annoyance.
• Deadpan Snarker: She has her moments sometimes.
• Designated Girl Fight: Her first fight was on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle with Karai. In their first rematch, she's able to get in a few good hits, but is still outmatched overall.
• Designated Victim: Occasionally, but nowhere near as much as in the 1987 series. Phased out in the later seasons with better ninja training and use of her psychic powers. In "Darkest Plight", said training and powers allow her to fight Shredder/Super Shredder when she uses psychic abilities to fling a truck at him.
• The Empath: Which is a rather rare ability in this series. It's due to her half-Kraang DNA
• Expy:
  • She shares some similarities to Willow Rosenberg. Being the redheaded Muggle Best Friend to the titular character? Check. Having powers as the series progress? Check. Corrupted from the dependency of powers which is only stopped when being talked down by the guy who has a crush on her? Check. Having better control over her powers from said experience? Check.
  • She has quit a few similarities to the X-Men character Jean Grey; a red-headed mutant who wears yellow that possesses telepathic and telekinetic abilities who becomes a host to an alien presence that manifests as a Superpowered Evil Side with a significant power boost.
• Fiery Redhead: More subdued than most cases, but still has shades of this.
• Forgiveness: After the Turtles accidentally mutate April's father, she loss her temper at them and doesn't want to see them again. Several episodes later, Donnie approached April as he tried to apologizes for what happen but she refuses to listen and accept it then makes it clear to him that she doesn’t want to see him or his brothers again. However, before leaving, April took a second to listen to Donnie say that some things are just beyond anyone’s control. Also, hearing Casey, who was unaware of the Turtles at the time, tell her of an event where he accidentally ruined a friendship and saying the same thing Donnie said, April thinks about their advice then felt guilt for getting angry at the Turtles, especially Donnie for something that wasn't in their control. While being attacked by Karai, April not only takes both Donnie's and Casey's advice but was also convinced to forgive the Turtles. Also, April gave the Turtles her own apology for being harsh towards them and promises to never hold a grudge against them again.
• Gaussian Girl: How Donnie first sees her.
• Gossipy Hens: After meeting Karai for the first time, Leo goes to April to talk about it. While at first cranky that he woke her up, she immediately perks up with excitement when it was about a girl he met... and then proceeds to hit him with a rolled-up magazine when he tells her that the girl was a part of the Foot Clan.
• Half-Human Hybrid: In "The Kraang Conspiracy", it's revealed she's half Kraang because the Kraang abducted and experimented on her mother, altering her DNA.
• Hartman Hips: She's got slighty huge hips, in case you've noticed.
• The Heart: Towards the Turtles as usual, but a more action oriented one than her previous versions.
• Heroic Resolve: During her fight with Karai in "Karai's Vendetta". No matter how many times Karai knocks her down or beats her senseless, April just keeps getting back up to try again.
• Hypocrite: When she learns Casey lost a friend for injuring him, she assures he didn't on purpose, while she refuses to acknowledge her father's mutation in hands of the Turtles was an accident. She was taken aback when Casey advises her that some things can't be controlled, which is the same thing Donnie told her earlier. And to her credit, April realizes she's in the wrong and apologizes to the turtles.
• In-Series Nickname: Given the nickname "Red" by Casey.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Throughout the first two seasons, she has attitudes of wanting her old, normal life back. However, once she realizes that she has no control over her life and that she LIKES having adventures and spending time with the guys...
  • I Just Want to Be Special: She changes to the opposite attitude, wanting to become stronger and have better contributions to the team. It pays off spectacularly.
• Jerkass Realization: After finding out that the Turtles were responsible for her father accidental mutation, April completely lost it as she accused them for doing it on purpose then walked out on them. However, after a while, April was visited by Donnie as he attempted to make amends but she angrily didn't listen to him then pushed him away. Although, April took a moment to listen to Donnie said that somethings can't be control. However, while hanging out with Casey and listening to his story about how he destroyed a friendship as he said the same thing Donnie said, April not only take their advices to the heart but also realized how wrong she was to be so hard on him and the rest of the Turtles. During a Foot clan attack, April tired to defend herself on her own but finds out that Donnie and Casey were right about how everything can't be controlled as she calls the Turtles for help. After they came to her rescue and forgiving them for their honest mistake, April apologized to the Turtles, especially Donnie, for how she acted towards them.
• Kryptonite Factor: Her powers don't have any affect on supernatural beings, as seen when she failed to telekinetically push Kavaxas and Vampire Casey.
• Letting Her Hair Down: Inadvertently in "The Power Inside Her", due to the Aeon crystal driving her berserk.
• Love Interest: For Donnie, expanding on the hints of a Precocious Crush from the 2003 series. While she's closest to Donnie out of the Turtles, she doesn't seem to reciprocate his feelings..., at least initially.
  • After, Casey Jones is in the picture as well...
  • The show is ambiguous on if she likes either of them. She has her moments with both, though a good more with Donatello. In "A Foot Too Big", Donnie comes to the conclusion that he is probably annoying to April as Bigfoot was to him. So he confesses this to April at the end of the episode, saying, "I'm just a mutant." After a moment of silence, April merely mysteriously smiles and she leans toward him, saying "You're not JUST a mutant Donnie...you're MY mutant." before gently grabbing him and pulling him toward her, planting a brief affectionate kiss on his lips, much to the shock of Donatello (and the audience.) She then turns around smiling and walks away, leaving Donnie—still in shock and extremely confused—to mention that he "understands nothing..."
  • Out of the Turtles, she seems most worried about, and focuses almost solely on, Donnie, when the Dream Beavers trap the brothers in their dreams. Though he's the last Turtle she and Casey find, he's the first she realizes is in trouble, she sits beside him the entire episode, cradles his head against her chest, makes psychic contact with him first (and more blatantly than the others by actually appearing in his dream), gets so worried she tries to slap him awake, and becomes noticeably terrified when Donnie stops breathing. When Donnie finally wakes up, she's so relieved she gives him a big kiss on the cheek.
• MacGuffin Super-Person: "TCRI" reveals her to be this. Taken even further in "Karai's Vendetta" where she now has the Foot Clan after her as well, to the point that Splinter and Leonardo tell her she'll need to stay in the lair indefinitely for her own safety.
• Male Gaze: The camera frequently focuses on her rear. Especially in "The Lonely Mutation of Baxter Stockman", which has her tied up and bent over, over a giant tank of mutagen.
• Master of the Mixed Message: Does she have feelings for Donnie or not? probably not even she knows. She HAS kissed him several times at this point, once even on the lips when he more or less hinted at the feelings he has for her.
• McNinja: She is the Hamato Clan's only Irish-American, New York-born Caucasian member.
• Mind over Matter: Due to being half-Kraang, she has telekinetic powers as well as empathic. She uses it to catch projectiles and send them back at their user, throw items around, and manipulate opponents. She can also telekinetically push opponents (like she did to push Super Shredder off the Wolf building in "Requiem").
• Missing Mom: She doesn't have a mother. Her revealing this to Karai catches her off guard long enough for her to take Karai down.
  • Painfully Double Subverted in season three when she meets her mom again, except it's a Kraang clone.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • April was filled with regret for pushing the Turtles, especially Donnie, away for an honest mistake, after they accidentally got her father mutated into a bat, when she hears some wise advices from Donnie and Casey about not controlling everything. Also, during a Foot Clan attack, April's guilt for her actions became worse when she not only realized that she put Casey in danger but also that he and Donnie were right about not controlling everything, after seeing the situation get out of hand, as she calls the Turtles for help. After the Turtles came to her rescue and forgiving them for their honest mistake, April apologizes to them, especially Donnie, for her behavior and assured them that what happen with her father was all an accident.
  • She’s extremely horrified after she disintegrates Donnie, under the Aeon crystal's influence. Things are set right soon enough, but one could hear the despair in her voice.
• Nice Girl: Usually, April is very kind, brave, caring, loving and sensible.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In "The Invasion", she brings Irma to the Turtles' lair to keep her safe from the Kraang... only to discover that Irma was a Kraang-droid all along, and in doing so, she has exposed the Turtles' lair to the Kraang.
• No-Sell: She is shown in "Karai's Vendetta" to be immune to an acidic Kraang liquid, apparently at least in part because she is effectively half-Kraang. In "The Lonely Mutation of Baxter Stockman", she is revealed to be immune to mutagen, as well.
• Oblivious to Love: Initially to Donatello. She becomes less oblivious and more exasperated as the show progresses, especially once Casey comes in.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Before her dad was kidnapped at least. She wants to remain this way, though by later seasons she's given up on being normal and actually wants the action.
• Plucky Girl: As per tradition.
• Powers Do the Fighting: While she does learn basic ninjitsu, most of her technique involves attacking from a distance, using her telekinesis to attack with projectiles and stop incoming attacks, often using her Combat Hand Fan as a Precision-Guided Boomerang.
• Rejected Apology: In "Target: April O'Neil", Donnie approaches her and tries to apologize to her for accidentally mutating her father, but she doesn't want to hear it and makes him clear she doesn't want to see him or his brothers again. She only changes her mind when Casey told her how he destroyed a friendship in the past along with his and Donnie advice that no one can't control everything. Hearing this and feeling guilty for pushing the Turtles, especially Donnie, away for something that was an honest accident, April forgives them and apologized to them for her actions.
• Replacement Goldfish: Pretty much stated to be one for Miwa by Splinter towards the end of "Baxter's Gambit", though not in the hurtful kind of way.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • For Leo with Karai... Which lasts for all of twenty seconds and ends the moment he tells her that the girl he's interested in is a Foot Clan member, in which case the opposite reaction justifiably ensues.
  • Unlike most of the Turtles and Casey, she's shown to think Raphael and Mona Lisa's romance as cute.
• Ship Sinking: Any interest in Casey seems to have faded in season three. Justified, given that she's too preoccupied with the Kraang's takeover of New York to care.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: In season four, she gets two outfit changes to show that she's truly part of the team: For the first half, a copy of the 1987 April's outfit and for the second, a black and yellow coat and pants to show her graduating into official kunoichi.
• The Smurfette Principle: By the time she is officially inducted as a kunoichi, she becomes the first official female member of the Hamato Clan since Tang Shen and Miwa (the former having died and the later reforming the Foot Clan as its head).
• Squishy Wizard: While she is classically trained by Splinter and the turtles in the art of ninjutsu, she mainly relies on her psychokinetic abilities and is often the first to be knocked out of the battle.
• Supernatural Floating Hair: When using her powers.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: April possesses psychic abilities due to the traces of mutated DNA in her body. With her ninjitsu training by Master Splinter and mental exercises by Professor Honeycut, April has learned how to use both in combat, usually using her Combat Hand Fan as a remote-controlled edge weapon.
• Token Super: Passive-mutant physiology and ancient ninjitsu mantras aside, April is the only member in the Hamato Clan with inherent and innate superpowers, her Kraang-DNA giving her a host of Psychic Powers including Mind over Matter, clairvoyance and certain forms of Telepathy.
• Took a Level in Badass: She is now training Casey Jones, who has trouble keeping up with her. By season four, she is now a kunoichi and essentially the 5th member of the Turtles on patrols, and eventually manages to fight Shredder by herself to save Karai's life.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: More action oriented than obvious tomboy though.
• Unfazed Everyman: After adjusting to the shock of meeting the Turtles.
• Undying Loyalty: Before her dad was mutated, and after she realized it was an accident and forgave them, she has since remained this way with the Hamatos.
• Was Too Hard on Him: After finding out about her father's accidental mutation from Mikey, April loses her temper on the Turtles and walks out on them. However, a few episodes later, after thinking about what Donnie, who tried to fix things, and Casey said about how some things can't be controlled, April realizes how wrong she was to be so hard on the Turtles, especially Donnie. After a Foot Clan attack and the Turtles came to help her, April forgives them and apologizes to them for being so hard on them, especially Donnie.
• Weirdness Magnet: Because her genetic material is integral to perfecting the mutagen for the Kraang's invasion of Earth, April is a highly desirable asset to a lot of hostile entities in the series. The Kraang try numerous times to kidnap her (her dad's incarceration a result of their failed attempt), their first attempt causing her meeting with the Turtles. By virtue of being a friend and ally to the Hamato Clan, she becomes a target of the Foot Clan, a problem galvanized when the Shredder allies with the Kraang. She gets chased by Pigeon Pete to bring her a message from her father, she becomes a target to Mutagen Man after Donatello vents his frustrations on him and her Psychic Powers makes her a desirable target of various supernatural entities like Ho Chan, Za-Naron and Kavaxas.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • She gives one to Splinter in "Showdown, Part 1" when he chooses to remain behind in the lair rather than help the Turtles stop the Kraang's plans.
  • Gives one to the Turtles in "The Mutation Situation" after she finds out that they were the ones who spilled the mutagen on her dad and turned him into a giant bat (albeit accidentally) to the extent that she declares their friendship over and swears that she never wants to see them again. However, she forgives them in "Target: April O'Neil" through Donnie and Casey advices that some things are far beyond their control as he tells her of an event that happened between him and his best friend that ended their friendship. Also, April gave the Turtles her own apology for being harsh towards him, especially towards Donnie.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In "Fungus Humungous" it's revealed she has a fear of bats probably caused by her father's mutation.
• Will They or Won't They?: April is the center of a Love Triangle between her, Donatello and Casey Jones. For most of the series, Donatello's attraction to her was entirely one-sided, her reactions ranging from indifferent to annoyed to visibly uncomfortable, while her interactions with Casey are mostly teasing. By the last season, her and Casey's interactions are played as more platonic while she seems to be more receptive to Donatello's affections, though it never becomes outwardly romantic.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: If what April says at the end of "Bat in the Belfry" is any indication that her Aeon crystal is starting to do this to her as she relies more on it with each appearance...
  April: It's my crystal. I'm never taking it off again for anyone, or anything, ever again...
  • Turns out the crystal held the soul of an Aeon, who's been slowly corrupting April in order to pull a Demonic Possession. Thankfully, she manages to destroy the crystal and the Aeon, ending the corrosive influence.
• You Can't Go Home Again: For a time during season one, the Turtles and Splinter decide that she must stay with them in the sewers for her own safety, at least until the crisis is resolved. This ended up being an Aborted Arc. However, it's played straighter for the first half of season three when the Kraang conquer New York and after the end of season three, where the Triceratons destroy Earth, though this is undone by time travel.
• Younger and Hipper: She's typically a young woman in most incarnations. In this adaptation, she's a teenager who is around the same age as the Turtles.
  87-Raphael: April? Casey Jones?! No way!
  87-Leonardo: They're like, kids! This April is way too young to be wearing a jumpsuit. Are you even a reporter?
  April: Why? Do reporters wear jumpsuits where you come from?
  87-Donatello: Of course! What kind of backwards dimension is this?
• Youthful Freckles: To emphasize her age.

Casey Jones

Voiced by: Josh Peck

"All my life I knew I was meant for something greater. This is my calling, my destiny. My city is infested."

Click ^here To see Casey with his mask

"Do you know what this is? This is Casey Jones vs. Evil Robo-Ninjas! Coolest freaking thing in the universe!"

A rowdy juvenile delinquent type. He enters a rivalry with Donnie over April's affections, though the Love Triangle is far from resolved or one-sided on any account. He strikes up a strong friendship with Raph, and eventually Donnie, and is accepted into the fold fairly quickly.

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• Adaptational Ugliness: While "ugly" might be a little harsh, most versions of Casey Jones are genuinely handsome with a lot of musculature. This version of Casey Jones is much lankier, with a bunch of his front teeth missing from when one of his friends accidentally knocked them out.
• Admiring the Abomination: He notes how cool Mutagen Man is, even during the fight in which Mutagen Man is trying to kill him. He does the same with certain other villains, such as Rocksteady and Armaggon.
• Amazon Chaser:
  • Liked seeing April beating up Mutagen Man with her Tessen fan.
  • Also seemed to find Karai's threats to kill him much more interesting than scary.
• Arch-Enemy: Much like the 2003 series, he's seems to have entered a rivalry with Hun. For the earlier series though, it was because of backstory reasons, while the 2012 series presents it for being more of due to having similar conflicts.
• Badass Normal: He has none of the formal training of the Turtles or Splinter, but manages to go up against Mutagen Man, who is several times larger than him and has acid powers. He also takes out a bunch of Foot Bots the first time he meets them, armed with nothing but a hockey stick no less, putting his natural talent even above the Turtles who outright lost to the Foot Bots fighting as a team the first time around.
• Bash Brothers: With Raphael after chasing down a runaway footbot together, also with Donatello after taking on Speed Demon.
• Big Brother Instinct: In this adaptation, he apparently has a little sister he's looking out for.
• Blood Knight:
  • He was seen fighting Mutagen Man instead of running away. Brave boy...
  • Taken up a notch in his next appearance, where he thoroughly enjoys fighting an army of robot foot ninjas.
  • Deconstructed a bit in "Newtralized!" where his tendency to rush in causes enough problems that Raph wants him to stay out of fights altogether.
  • After telling Casey that April has been kidnapped in "The Lonely Mutation of Baxter Stockman" Leo preemptively reassures Casey that he'll get to hit someone with a hockey stick on the rescue mission.
• Book Dumb: He meets with April because he needs a tutor, not because he wants to get better in school mind you, but just so he doesn't get kicked off the hockey team.
• Butt-Monkey: About the same as Donnie and Mikey.
• Can't Catch Up: He's not really up to par with the Turtles, or even April, and he tends to get benched during big events for his own safety.
• Character Catchphrase: "GOONGALA!"
• Cool Bike: Has a built-in guns, grease, jousting spikes, and a missile. He made it himself.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Has a punk aesthetic and his battle gear consists of a skull head themed hockey mask and black and war paint underneath, but he is a good guy.
• Demoted to Extra: After the Turtles get back from space in the first half of Season 4, Casey's role diminishes a lot. He doesn't have any focus episodes and even the story arcs he does appear in during Season 5 drop him out of the story before the big climactic parts.
• Distressed Dude: Getting eaten by a Kraathatragon, captured by the Rat King, and being the first one to be kidnapped by Stockman's insect minions are just a few examples.
• Establishing Character Moment: He hits April with a puck and tells her she should have gotten out of the way. And when talking to April later, says he'd like to become a hockey player... Or a Bounty Hunter.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Casey is worried about the mutants and ninja robots hurting his dad and sister.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With the rest of the Hamato clan. He befriends April after being forced to take her on as her tutor and they bond over both trigonometry and the attacks of Mutagen Man and the Foot bots. Later with the Turtles, Raphael sees him as a punk and Donnie as a rival for April and the others see him as an intruder to their secret lair, but after helping save the lair from being discovered by the Foot Clan even Splinter welcomes him into the fold.
• Foil:
  • As opposed to April, he seems to love the idea of being attacked by aliens, robots, and mutants.
  • He's also this to Donnie, his rival for April's affections, being a Blood Knight who playfully flirts with her in contrast to Donnie's The Smart Guy who obsesses over her without making any significant moves to win her over.
  • Then there's his Arch-Enemy Hun. Both of them feel like they have to prove themselves to their allies, but whereas Casey knows when to hold back and focus on the more important things, Hun doesn't.
• The Gadfly: Casey has a real talent for getting under people's skin, whether with subtle digs or rowdy obnoxiousness. The former is often targeted at Donnie (to to a much lesser extent Raph and April) and the latter at enemies.
• The Gift: Casey's combat abilities, despite apparently being self-taught, are at least on par with that of the Turtles.
• Good Is Not Nice: Seems to have a fairly antagonistic personality.
• Hidden Depths:
  • It says something when the Book Dumb bad boy chooses to write his personal journal in cursive (which some adults have trouble with) instead of plain script.
    • The illustrations in the journal are also really well-done.
  • He cares more about the safety of others than his initial appearance implied.
  • He seems to have enough smarts to produce retractable roller blades and a makeshift taser using a potato peeler.
  • Also, his first encounter with Super Robo Mecha Force Five Team Five Go:
    Casey: This is great, but where're the subtitles? I hate dubbed anime.
  • He also appears to have enough technical skill to fix up cars and vehicles, and even has his own Cool Bike.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Most of the jabs he makes at Donnie apply to himself. He once insults Donnie by calling him 'stick-man' (despite the fact his trademark weapon is a hockey stick).
  • Pointed out by Donnie when he insults Donnie's teeth gap; Donnie responds by calling him 'cave mouth' (referring to his numerous missing teeth.)
• I Just Want to Be Special:
  "Who wants to be normal anyway?"
• I Know Madden Kombat: As usual, Casey fights using sports equipment.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Hits two Foot Robots... With hockey pucks he launched into the air.
  • Sinks a puck into a barely puck-sized hole on an unsteadily moving target from several meters away, blowing up an alien mech the others are having trouble fighting.
• Improbable Weapon User: Uses sporting equipment, roller blades, and an improvised taser.
• Improvised Weapon: Throwing a metal pipe at Mutagen Man and fighting a squadron of Foot Bots with hockey sticks and pucks? Yep, that's the Casey Jones long-time TMNT fans know and love.
• Instant Expert: Subverted. While he clearly is gifted in regards to combat, as noted above, other skills like roof hopping and stealth are clearly taking him longer to get down.
• Jerkass: In "Mutagen Man Unleashed", he's smacking hockey pucks around and doesn't care who gets hit, nor apologize and tells April that she shouldn't be standing in the way of his pucks when she was rightfully standing in front of her locker.
  • Even as late as "The Evil of Dregg", he knocks a bug into Donatello's face (most likely unintentionally), which then proceeds to bite and infect him. Not only does Casey NOT apologize for doing so, he bursts out laughing when he sees that Donatello's face has become bloated from the bug bite.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In "Target: April O'Neil", he recounts to April an accident he caused between him and his best friend that ended their friendship and remarks that "some stuff is just beyond our control." As Donnie had previously stated the exact same thing to April, April slowly realizes that she's making the same mistake Casey's friend did and reconciles with the Turtles.
• Jerk Jock: Downplayed. In "Mutagen Man Unleashed", he's smacking hockey pucks around the hallway without a single care for who he hits, but unlike most examples of this trope he doesn't actively bully people. Plus, he turns out to be more caring than he lets on at first.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In "Target: April O'Neil", he tells April about the time he hit his ex-best friend during a hockey game and his voice and face indicate he's remorseful even though it was an accident. Later, in "The Good the Bad and the Casey Jones", he immediately saves Raph from getting run over by a subway and when Raph returns the favor, he's grateful.
• Lean and Mean: In stark contrast to most versions, who tend to have a muscular build.
• Leeroy Jenkins: One of his bigger flaws is his tendency to just rush into a fight while screaming "Goongala!"
  • "Casey Jones Vs. The Underworld": restless after the Kraang invasion, he goes hunting for the Foot Clan and ends up in numerous close calls with its more prolific members, even Shredder himself. What's worse is that not only does the Shredder now know him by his face, but he's openly revealed his identity to the Foot Clan (something even Bradford is incredulous about) in his crusade.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Zig-Zagged. He's aware of bizarre things like the Mutagen Man and the robot Foot Ninja, but was entirely unaware of what's behind either, or that the Turtles exist until his third appearance.
  • While all the Hamato Clan know April is psychic, Casey is the only one who doesn't know why.
• MacGyvering: For one, his taser appears to be made from a potato masher of all things.
  • He also made explosive hockey pucks as well as a bike with firework missiles and baseball machine guns.
• Multilayer Façade:
  • He still has his signature hockey mask, but also has skull-shaped face paint under it.
  • The Reveal of which seems to be a big Shout-Out to the comic, Batman/Grendel — the image is nearly identical (if messy), and the "blaaaaaaargh!" is the same.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Casey is much skinnier than the Turtles, but can still deal rather impressive physical damage. Only the largest and strongest mutants seem to really pose a threat.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In a Shout-Out to the original film, he says "Oops" when he purposely uses a garbage truck's compactor to crush the Shredder in "Requiem". However, it lacks his usual sarcasm and mockery, as the Shredder had just murdered Splinter moments earlier.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Briefly appears in the season two opening, making his debut in "Mutagen Man Unleashed".
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: There are subtle hints of one developing between him and Donnie, with Casey as the red oni.
• Rollerblade Good: He has retractable skates this time around.
• Romantic False Lead: Although in season 2, he seemed to be on his way to being April's official partner, by season 3 any interest on April's part seems to have faded.
• Rule of Cool: The point of the hockey mask, apparently.
• Scary Teeth: Well, not too scary, but he's missing his front teeth, As many hockey players do in real life.
• Ship Tease: He has a few flirty moments with April.
• Sixth Ranger: While not the first to ally with the turtles against the Kraang and the Foot Clan, Casey was the first to join on a more semi-permanent basis (April not having starting assisting in battle directly until after Casey joined), becoming an unofficial member of the Hamato Clan.
• Static Stun Gun: A new toy in his arsenal is a taser built in under one of his gloves.
• The Team Normal: Casey is the only one of the main heroes who isn't a mutant.
• Third-Person Person: When he's acting smug, he tends toward this. In his more casual moments, he drops it.
• Token Human: Considering everyone in the Hamato Clan, even April, is a mutant, he's the only Hamato Clan character to be this and one of only three major characters midway through season four to be human (Shinigami and Shredder are the other two, though Shinigami is also a witch; this leaves Casey as the ONLY fully human character when Shredder mutates. Fishface even lampshades this in "Meet Mondo Gecko", calling him "the obligatory human ally".
  • Exaggerated in the first half of Season 4, where he is the only full human being to exist in the entire universe, as Earth was sucked into a black hole in the finale of the previous season. He, the Turtles and April were saved just before they got sucked up with the rest of the World.
• Tough Spikes and Studs: His gaolie glove and shoulder pad has spikes, and he is a street fighting athlete.
• Truer to the Text: In the 2003 series, Casey was given a backstory on how the Purple Dragons burned down his father's store because he refused to pay protection money. It's hinted that Hun may have murdered him for attempting to go to the police, giving Casey a legitimate hatred of criminals, especially the Purple Dragons. This backstory would later be adapted into the original comics. Here though, Casey's father is never shown but is acknowledged to still be alive, and he has no previous beef with Hun or the Purple Dragons. While he acknowledges his desire to protect people, Casey is once again depicted as having no Dark and Troubled Past and finding the idea of fighting crime cool.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Raphael as per usual, but pretty much has this relationship with all of the Turtles.
  • By season three, he has this more with Donnie due to their Love Triangle with April.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: For some reason, Casey is scared of rats. Hilarity ensues when he meets Splinter. He overcomes this fear as of "Of Rats and Men".
• Younger and Hipper: Like April and Karai, Casey is a teenager in the same age group as the Turtles rather than being an adult.
• Youthful Freckles: He has been given some freckles in addition to being aged down for this series, like April.

Spike

Raphael's ordinary pet tortoise.

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• Canon Character All Along: He became this continuity's version of Slash.
• Foreshadowing: While Spike is a rather stoic tortoise, he can be clearly seen to be smiling while watching Raph lashing out against his brothers when he gets frustrated with them and started hitting Mikey with a rolled up comic book. Later on, in the same episode, he makes a sound from his mouth that later evolves into the roar he does as Slash.
• Furry Confusion: The Turtles' pet normal tortoise.
• Hidden Depths: Since he is a normal turtle, he can't really express his own opinions or thoughts to Raph or the others so he appears to be a simple, silent, and adorable ordinary turtle. Turns out he really isn't happy about how the other Turtles have been treating Raphael and has been learning ninjitsu by watching Raph practice so often around him.
• Lightning Bruiser: (As Slash) Strong and tough, and also surprisingly fast.
• Morality Pet: The only one who can bring out Raphael's softer side.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: As an ordinary adorable tortoise.
• The Stoic: Spike is a pretty calm tortoise and doesn't react to much. Turns out he's just been really good at bottling up his anger and frustration all this time which is what lead to him becoming Slash.
• Surrogate Soliloquy: "Spike, chew on your leaf if you agree with me".
• Team Pet: For the Hamato clan. Until his mutation into Slash.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Leaves.

Ice-Cream Kitty

Ice-Cream Kitty

Voiced by: Kevin Eastman

"Meow!"

A stray cat that April rescued and gave to Michelangelo, who almost immediately accidentally mutated it into an ice cream creature. Now, she lives in the Turtles' freezer and helpfully hands them frozen goods when they open the door. Apparently still tastes good.

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• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Being made of ice cream gives her this advantage.
• Adaptational Context Change: While this wasn't the first time Michelangelo had adopted a cat as the family pet, this is the first time it was a mutant, much less as an adorable ice-cream monster.
• Anthropomorphic Food: A mutated combination of a cat and ice cream, specifically Neapolitan flavor ice cream.
• Badass Adorable: Her debut appearance has her easily going up against the GIANT MUTANT RATS that tried to eat her and her friends, scaring them away and even fending some off on her own. Even when one of them chews on her, she's strong enough to lift their jaws up despite being made of ice cream.
• Canon Foreigner: Downplayed. While not the first cat Michelangelo has adopted in the franchise (Klunk being his cat in the Mirage comics, IDW comics and the 2003 series), Ice-Cream Kitty in particular is an Original Character.
• Cat-apult: In her first appearance, Mikey throws her at the Rat King, who Ice-Cream Kitty proceeds to shred.
• Creator Cameo: Despite being female, she's "voiced" by Kevin Eastman, one of the creators of the TMNT franchise.
• Intellectual Animal: Often shown to be much smarter than a normal house cat, seemingly able to understand what Mikey says to it, playing card games, and taking part in some of Mikey's other shenanigans.
• Nice Girl: She's friendly and doesn't appear to hold a grudge against Mikey for mutating her despite the process being clearly unpleasant. She also seems to get along perfectly with Splinter despite him being a rat, as she hands him a cheesesicle from the freezer at one point.
• Recurring Element: This series' answer to Klunk, an orange stray cat that ends up belonging to Mikey. They took a very different direction though.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: For Michelangelo, and the fans, the other Turtles not so much.
• Team Pet: Taking over from Spike who left just 5 episodes before it was introduced.

Chompy Picasso

A baby alien turtle Raph found on Magdomar.

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• All Animals Are Dogs: In a lot of his scenes, he acts like a somewhat dimwitted and excitable puppy, which is in contrast to Spike, who actually acts realistically turtle-like. However, this might be considered a justified example, as Chompy is a space alien who happens to look like a turtle.
• Beast of Battle: He's grown a lot in the Bad Future of the mutant apocalypse world, now the size of a small house. Donatello and Michelangelo use him as a war mount, one that's fast enough to keep up with cars and motorcycles.
• Canon Foreigner: He was created for the series.
• Children Are Innocent: Naturally, being a baby.
• Disappeared Dad: Nothing is ever mentioned of Chompy's father, or if he even has one. It's entirely possible his species may reproduce asexually.
• Fartillery: He's capable of farting out fire, much to Ice-Cream Kitty's dismay.
• Happily Adopted: Played with, in that his mother isn't dead. In the episode where his mother comes to Earth for him, Raphael explains he thought Chompy was an orphan, hence why he kept the little guy. After seeing Chompy is in good hands, Tokka effectively hands custody over to Raph.
• I Choose to Stay: His mother comes to Earth to find him and take him with her, but after the two are reunited Chompy decides to stay on Earth so he can stay with Raph and the other Turtles.
• Interspecies Adoption: Believing him to be an orphan, Raphael, a mutant turtle of Earth, adopts Chompy, an alien who looks like a turtle.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: He is still to Raph and many characters.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Ordinary turtle that brings out Raph's softer side? Say hello to alien Spike.

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