The Turtles have infiltrated the Shredder's ship, but all is not going to plan, and it looks like they're all in over their heads...
This episode provides examples of
- Bittersweet Ending: Ends with Zog’s Heroic Sacrifice in attempting to take down the Shredder with him onboard a flaming ship. It’s made worse when Shredder survives and Zog doesn’t.
- Cain and Abel: Hun views the Shredder as something of a father figure, making him Karai's adoptive brother in all but name. Yet he decides to free Leo and have her fight Karai, telling him that he may spare Splinter if Leo manages to finish her off, indicating that he hates her more than he hates the Turtles.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Hun briefly trades blows with Zog the Triceraton, almost effortlessly.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the comics, Zog was slashed to death by three Shredder mutants. Here, Zog takes on the Shredder and sacrifices himself, taking Shredder down with him onboard a flaming ship, to buy time for the Turtles to escape.
- Handicapped Badass: Non-human examples: Several foot mechs are incomplete but fight anyway with ones without a head and with only one complete arm still putting up good fights.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Zog, to defeat the Shredder. Also cements his position as a woobie, as much as a huge dino-man can be one. His efforts didn't stick, sadly.
- Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand: Leonardo gives Karai the chance to kill him, trusting that her honor will stay her hand, much to Splinter and Raphael's disbelief and horror.
- Made of Iron: Zog takes some serious injuries but keeps coming.
- Never Found the Body: Shredder and Zog at the end when they plummet into the ocean, although Shredder is quickly revealed to be alive.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Karai is fully intending to execute the turtles but Hun decides to free Leonardo and give him his weapons back because he hates her and tries to sabotage her attempts to prove her loyalty to the Shredder. In the ensuing fight Leo is able to persuade Karai not to kill him.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: The Turtles find a Triceraton that was accidentally teleported back to Earth with them, a soldier named Zog. Since he can't breathe oxygen, he's delirious, and thinks that the Turtles and Splinter are commanding Triceraton officers. They save his life, but he's still delusional, and they wind up taking him on a mission to fight the Shredder, during which he dies. While the Turtles are saddened by his death, the fact that they knowingly and willingly manipulated a delusional alien by masking as his commanding officers, dragging him into a fight which is not his, and that if he were aware of who they were would consider them enemies and want to kill them is never addressed.
- To be fair, the timetable kind of forced them to drag him along. They found Zog right before a very urgent mission, leaving him alone with a limited nitrogen supply might not have turned out very well, with it being indicated they had hoped to do something for him afterwards. In fact, Raph even tried to save Zog when he made a Taking You with Me Heroic Sacrifice but unfortunately it was too late.Raph: We have to save him!
Don: It's too late. He's gone.
Splinter: My sons, he has given us our lives. We must not dishonor his brave sacrifice.
- To be fair, the timetable kind of forced them to drag him along. They found Zog right before a very urgent mission, leaving him alone with a limited nitrogen supply might not have turned out very well, with it being indicated they had hoped to do something for him afterwards. In fact, Raph even tried to save Zog when he made a Taking You with Me Heroic Sacrifice but unfortunately it was too late.
- Shock and Awe: The headless Foot Mech can electrocute anyone it touches.
- Shout-Out: Mikey's line: "There's no need to fear; Michelangelo is here"
- Sword over Head: Done by Karai to Leonardo.
- Uncertain Doom: The Foot Mechs are all apparently destroyed in the episode but due make two reappearances in the show (both were dream sequences but one was Dreaming of Things to Come), making it possible that some were salvaged from the wreckage of the ship, such as the headless one which just fell into the water and the one with the laser cannon (he was ripped in half, but this was a fate another Foot Mech had remained functioning after earlier).
- Unreliable Narrator: Zog's opening narration given his delusional state and belief he and the Turtles are all on a mission for the Triceration Republic.
