Early concept art of the show from this show.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
What Could Have Been in this series.- The crew have confirmed that Season 2 was shortened by Nickelodeon, which explains Season 2's much more compressed pacing and why certain questions are never answered.
- According to a Den of Geek
interview, Ciro Nieli, the executive producer of the 2012 cartoon, was given an offer to work on Rise, but declined due to wanting to take a break. - Before Season 2 was shortened, there were plans to reveal that Baron Draxum made more mutant turtles than just the brothers, and Splinter was only able to save the four while two others would've served as major characters. The two turtles would've also been sisters to the Ninja Turtles. One of them would've been Draxum's bodyguard.
- As part of his Heel–Face Turn, Draxum would've officially become a member of the Hamato clan.
- Splinter was going to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to free Oroku Saki from the Shredder's armor, leading to Saki becoming a major character while Splinter would've almost become corrupted by the armor.
- Karai nearly had more screentime that allowed her to bond more with the Turtles, and she was nearly removed from the series altogether once the crew learned they were getting cancelled. However, Ant Ward was able to convince everyone to keep her.
- "Battle Nexus New York" was going to be the midseason finale of Season 2 and result in a storyline where Big Mama plotted her revenge that ended in either her taking over the Council of Heads or getting arrested.
- A Christmas Episode was going to feature a Lou Jitsu movie that would've been a parody of The Star Wars Holiday Special.
- Before they became the main villains of the movie, the Krang were going to be the villains of Season 3 and then be followed by the Rat King.
- Among the cancelled toys for the series included Big Mama, Repo Mantis, Bug Busters versions of Donatello and Michelangelo, as well as young variants of the Turtles.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie
- A Twitch stream hosted a few days after the film came out revealed, in addition to scrapped concepts for the show before it was Screwed by the Network, a ton of concepts for the movie.
- There would've been a cameo appearance by Armaggon as he fights Casey, which is how he almost first met the Turtles.
- The R-Rated Opening was longer at ten minutes and would've expanded on Leo's relationship with Casey while also showing off Future Badass versions of April, Hypno-Potamus & Warren Stone, and Baron Draxum. In particular, Draxum was going to have prosthetic legs while Warren and Hypno would've had "a brutal death scene". But Nickelodeon cut it down, just so that the film can get a PG rating by the MPAnote .
- Future Leo's giant arm was a leftover from a moment where Donnie would've built robotic doubles of the Turtles after Raph was captured by the Krang, and April was going to pilot one that looked like Raph. The gag was turned into Donnie placing trackers on his brothers.
- The Krang were almost the Big Bad of Season 3, but when the show was cancelled they became the movie's villains instead.
- The crew wanted to go all out on the Body Horror the Krang inflict on who they infect, until they were told that was going too far.
- The Krang were originally a warrior race.
- Raphael was almost going to lose an eye after being saved from the Krang.
- Baxter Stockboy was going to appear in the Bad Future as well with cybernetics that made him look like a fly.
- The final battle sequence between the Turtles and Krang One was originally much longer than the movie depicted on the storyboards, speficically having Donatello fire a Macross Missile Massacre at Krang One, Leonardo teleporting an exploding gas truck into the foe, and the Turtles attacking as they were setting up the Mystic Hot Soup Hibernator. There was also a brief moment where they actually seem to separate Krang from the suit briefly from their combined attacks, only for Krang to then reveal he was actually unfazed as he reconnects to the suit effortlessly and flicks them away.
- Originally, the film was going to end with an ending that repesented "saying goodbye to the Rise turtles", with a scene of Casey leaving to head back to his own time after a heartfelt farewell, and Raphael and Leonardo having a scene of resolution, but was cut for unknown reasons.
- Casey was originally going to be older with the initial plan for him to be voiced by Joe Manganiello, but Nickelodeon asked the crew to make him younger, with that resulting in Haley Joel Osment playing him instead.
