Shout Out / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)

aka: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

• If you listen carefully, both Baxter in "His Name Was Baxter Stockman" and Chris Bradford in "Mousers Attack!" yell "Oh yeah!" when they burst through walls, like a certain anthropomorphized punch bowl is known to do...
• In episode 4, when Mikey does his "Secret Kata", one of his moves is the henshin pose of Kamen Rider V3. Mikey in general loves doing the famous Ichigo arm-thrust.
  • Also, the Foot-Bots do kiais that sound like the Shocker Combatmen.
• Part of Chris Bradford's Death Dragon Kata involved sweeping the leg, and yes, it's actually called out.
• Xever apparently buys his boots from the same store Robin does.
  • Dogpound does the same thing in episode 11.
• Not only does Metalhead have a Rocket Punch, his Hyperspace Arsenal includes a pair of pointy red wings that just scream Mazinger Z.
• Jeffrey Combs plays Dr. Falco, a Mad Scientist who injects himself with a green goo. He's been in this situation before.
• Gilbert Gottfried plays Krang Sub-Prime, a hostile alien attempting to wipe out humanity and constantly cackles with an annoying laugh. He's been in this situation before when he played as Ricky Platypus.
• The "Creatures" Magazine that the Turtles read in their downtime is modeled after the now defunct "Famous Monsters of Filmland" Magazine.
• Donnie's smoke bombs produce a purple cloud of smoke and a loud "BAMF!"
• In "Panic in the Sewers", Dogpound tells the driver to "Get Out!" of the tanker.
  • Also from "Panic in the Sewers", The Shredder scratches his claws against a wall as he's walking toward Leonardo in Splinter's nightmare, a method Freddy Krueger is fond of.
  • The newly mutated Bradford/Rahzar does the exact same thing, except this time, it's not a nightmare.
• At the end of "New Girl in Town", when Raph points out that Karai is with the Foot Clan, Leo just smiles and says "Nobody's perfect."
• The sword Karai wants Leo to steal with her used to belong to Miyamoto Musashi.
• You can briefly hear Pac Man sound effects from the Kraang's computer in "The Alien Agenda".
• There are two scenes that call back to Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce GO!, a show that was created by Ciro Nieli.
• Shredder has a loyal Akita named Hachiko.
• Previews for season 2 show a Kraang with "butt cannons".
• The Technodrome capture pods resemble a familiar tool from another franchise.
• In the online Nickelodeon TMNT game Trick or Treat Tussle, Mikey's Halloween costume is Spongebob.
• The end of "The Mutation Situation" features a squirrel turning to the camera to a Scare Chord after drinking Mutagen, a reference to the "Dramatic Chipmunk" meme.
  • Also the radar tracking device that Don makes in the episode was once an old Game Boy, even making the classic start-up noise when turned on.
• In " Invasion of the Squirrelanoids", Splinter tells everyone to "split up and search every room" to find the mutant squirrels.
  Raph: Split up to search in the dark for multiplying mutants. Could we pick a more cliche way to die?"
• The entire episode itself is very clearly a shout out the Alien movies. The squirrels reproduce inside their hosts, they soon grow into huge, black, skeletal monsters, and have a mouth within their mouth. Also in Michelangelo's comic, only one person manages to survive to the end.

  Michelangelo: Game over man! Game over!

• In Mutagen Man Unleashed, a show that Mikey watches, "Super Robo Mecha Force Five Team Five Go", both references Voltron, and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, a show that Ciro Nieli previously worked on.
• In Target: April O'Neil, Casey mentions playing hockey against a team from "Troma Town."
• By the time they start mentioning "Kraang units of weight", the Kraang Running Gag sounds more and more like the running gag in The Dictator.
• It may be coincidence, but the Pulverizer's moves when playing with Donnie's staff have more than a passing resemblance to the Star Wars Kid.
• In "The Good The Bad And Casey Jones", Casey's doodle of himself standing victoriously over a beaten Raph is in the style of the original Eastman/Laird comics. Also, Casey's goalie stick has "East-Man" spraypainted on it.
• In "Fungus Humungous", Mikey starts jumping on mushrooms and says:
  Michelangelo: Check it out! Super Mikey Brothers!
• In "Metalhead Rewired" Metalhead is plugged into a Krang Computer, he then makes a sound just like R2-D2 when the computer explodes.
• In "Mikey Gets Shellacne", Baxter Stockman gets outfitted with what looks like a particular collar from Saw III, except it's equipped with mutagen vials instead of shoutgun shells. The shout out is continued in "The Lonely Mutation of Baxter Stockman" wherein Baxter pretty much acts out like one of Jigsaw's victims desperately trying to remove their mounted trap after Shredder activates the collar. It pretty much goes as much as most Saw traps considering the episode title.
• In The Invasion Part 1 the Kraang give a shout out to the ultimate Mecha-Mooks when one yells Exterminate! Exterminate!
• "Within the Woods" contains multiple references to the second and third Friday the 13th films: the mutant's shrine, which resembles Jason's shrine to his mother, the burlap sack the monster tied over its head, the head wound it received from April, and even replacing its sack with a discarded hockey mask. It even used a pitchfork, just like Jason!
  • 'Within the Woods' is also the name of the proto-film that Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell made on their path to creating The Evil Dead (1981). The episode also features several shout-outs to that, like tree limbs dragging people off.
• Some of Anton Zeck's Dance Battler moves and the sounds he makes reference the The King of Pop.
• In "Vision Quest", Raph (voiced by Sean Austin) finds himself in an underwater cave and complains about the lack of a hidden pirate ship.
• In "the Pig and the Rhino", when Bebop and Rocksteady search for Leo and Mikey, Bebop calls out "Turtles, come out and play-yay," just like the main villain of The Warriors. Even more, this takes place in Coney Island, the home turf of the Warriors in the movie.
• This slide◊ for Space Heroes is an extremely obscure one- the logo for WYBS-TV 47 references an actual former TV station in Philadelphia, WKBS-TV 48, with the logo modeled after the one they used in the early 70s. The station shut down in 1983 because the company that owned it, Field Communications of Chicago, was selling all their stations (the half-brothers who ran the company, the descendants of Marshall Field, the guy who founded the famous department store, had a feud and couldn't work together) and they couldn't find anyone to buy it.
• "The Noxious Avenger" is pretty much a more family-friendly version of The Toxic Avenger, being an average man mutated into a "Monster Hero".
• Steranko, the Russian mobster who eventually mutates into Rocksteady, is named after Nick Fury artist Jim Steranko.
• Anton Zeck, the thief who stole Shredder's helmet and later turns into Bebop, gets his name from comic book artist Mike Zeck.
  • His name resembles "Anton Drek," the pen-name used by Eastman and Laird's 80s B&W comics peer Don "Megaton Man" Simpson when he was drawing adult comics.
• The Chris Bradford action figure Raph is holding at the beginning of "Meet Mondo Gecko" is dressed as the animated-toy version of Chuck Norris.
• Leo using dual sabers and grappling guns to take on the giant monster in "Attack of the Mega Shredder" is one for the Attack on Titan series.
• In "The Creeping Doom", Raph attacks the Creep for an extended period, exhausting himself while the Creep passively takes his blows. Raph then tells the Creep to take his best shot, and gets knocked across the roof in one hit. This is a reference to an Overly Long Gag in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, where a boxer attacks Jason to no avail. In that case, he got his head punched off.
  • Another connection is that Kelly Hu (Karai) was one of Jason's victims in that movie.
• The dragon that eats Crognard in the series finale is unmistakably Tiamat.
• So right before the Earth is destroyed, a friendly alien let's them "hitch a ride" on a spaceship to escape being killed with the rest of the planet. Did the dolphins leave ahead of time?
• The time travel the Turtles, April and Casey experience resembles the 'star gate' sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• April's pose in the yellow suit comes to mind of Barbarella.
• The traditional Show Within a Show for Season 4? Chris Bradford's 2 Ruff Krew, a parody of Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos with elements from the Mr. T and Rambo cartoons from the 80's. Bradford also states a "Chris Bradford fact" in another reference to Norris.
• The missiles of Armaggon's armor are very similar to Torpedo Ted, the aquatic counterpart of Bullet Bill.
• The beginning of "Arena of Carnage" references Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter- Leonardo jumps into the air while yelling "Shoryuken!" while Mikey dizzies Rahzar and finishes him off with a "Balloonality."
• April's third outfit is a color-inverted version of The Bride's suit from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, which itself is a Shout-Out to Bruce Lee's iconic jumpsuit from Game of Death.
• Splinter's "drunk" training sequence with the Turtles in "Tale of Tiger Claw" brings to mind Jackie Chan's classic Drunken Master.
• The series finale episode, "Raphael: Mutant Wasteland", has a series of homages to the Mad Max film series, including Raphael quoting Fury Road's "What a day. What a lovely day" tagline and beginning the episode with a raggedy beard not unlike the one Max began the film with.
  • The finale shares has a few similarities to Logan: the aging anti-hero looking after a Little Miss Badass.
  • Raph sports a Lantern Jaw of Justice, not unlike another old anti-hero badass from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
  • While delirious from the heat, Raph begins to recite part of the first Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner, specifically the part about the "...tortoise on its back, baking in the hot sun..."
• In "The Crypt of Dracula", Leonardo wears several protective amulets as part of his monster hunter costume. One of them is the Elder Sign.
• Rat King's white rat Aristotle is a reference to Willard. In the book (and films), the main character has the ability to control rats, and his most prized and loyal one is an albino named Socrates.
• In "The Foot Walks Again," the EPF's "1987" vault appropriately contains numerous nods to popular 80s media, including Freddy's glove, Geordi's visor, and RoboCop's head.
• The fifth season opening title scene is a clear nod to Cowboy Bebop.
• In "Never Say Xever" when the turtles reveal they have Bradford Donnie goes, "I love it when a change of plan comes together."

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