Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003)
What Could Have Been in this series.
Early concept art of the Turtles from 2001 when the show was still being pitched to Cartoon Network or Kids WB.
- The different rejected pitches for season 7 of the 2003 'toon, from Fast Forward season 2 to "Superworld". Concept art for these rejected series are were released on the now defunct 4Kids' TMNT blog. There's also "Nightmares Recycled", a season 5 episode that was planned but scrapped due to objections from standards and practices.
- And apparently, had there been another Back to the Sewers season, they would have started a "Shredder Wars Arc", where it would answer how the Utrom, Demon, and Cyber Shredders got into their fight in the first place; this plan seemed to have been discarded in favor of Turtles Forever.
- The "Nightmare Recycled" episode would have revealed that The Garbageman and Hun were born as conjoined twins, separated at birth by a seedy, back-alley surgeon; the baby that would later become Garbageman was thrown in the trash, whereas Hun was kept and raised. FOX, however, wouldn't allow this to air, and scrapped the episode before it could be completed. Peter Laird was also not fond of the episode even besides the Hun and Garbageman plot, finding the writing and characterization weak.
- Had a new season of Fast Forward emerged, there would have been a Triceraton Shredder called the "TriShreddertron
". Concept art was eventually shown, and Peter Laird confirmed that he would have been Ch'rell taking over the body of a Triceraton soldier. Other concepts were Darius Dun creating "TechTurtles", which he would have sent after the Dark Turtles for failing him one too many times, forcing them to team up with the heroes. Future counterparts of Leatherhead and Usagi (his space counterpart to be exact) also were planned to join the recurring cast. - The latter episodes of the sixth season that were scrapped culminated in a finale called “Homeward Bound”, which presumably would’ve been more of a proper Season Finale as the Turtles and Splinter went home, as opposed to the Season 7 opener in which Cody and Donnie rather quickly fix the Time Portal.
- The three different pitches for the seventh season that were proposed before "Back to the Sewer" began production.
- 4Kids first pitched a season called "Superworld" which involved the Turtles playing some kind of card game.
- After that pitch was rejected, 4Kids suggested "TMNT: Overload", which would have had the Turtles return to their own time after the events of Fast Forward, but have their younger selves come with them due to a glitch in the time travel process. Mirage approved of this development, but Playmates did not.
- In lieu of "Overload", Playmates proposed a pitch for a Continuity Reboot called "Ultimate TMNT", which was planned to combine the 2003 universe with the continuity of the live-action films and feature characters from the 1987 cartoon and the Archie comic series. Eventually, "Ultimate TMNT" was rejected and "TMNT: Overload" was revised into what became "Back to the Sewer"
- Peter Laird's blog shows off emails between him and other writers, with him critiquing or suggesting tweaks to the scripts.
- On his blog, Peter Laird suggested that "Reflections" be about April writing into her journal, which would have eventually gotten lost and into the hands of a passerby, who would be interested in turning it into a comic book. This subplot was abandoned and the episode plays out like a more conventional clip show episode with the characters sitting around retelling the events of several episodes.
- The underground genetics lab from "Notes from the Underground" was suggested as a hideout for the Shredder, but Laird said that would put him too close to the Turtles and they didn't want to rehash too many of Season 1's locations.
- Nano almost stayed with the Turtles, but Laird wasn't comfortable with the idea so he suggested to wrap up Nano's story with "The Return of Nano" (at least until he was brought back for Season 5).
- Season 4 was originally supposed to have an episode where all of the super-villains teamed up to take on the Justice Force.
- The Shredder originally planned to destroy the Earth with a bomb as he left in “Exodus”, but it was scrapped for it being too out-of-character for him and everyone else around him, since the Earth’s resources were too valuable for even a warmongering tyrant to throw away so recklessly.
- A crossover with Mike Dooney's Gizmo was proposed, similar to the one with Planet Racers, but never got off the ground.
- One of Peter Laird's notes indicates that one of the ideas he had was to have Hun take up the Shredder identity, and maybe have him go at it with Karai, who he'd also conceptualized using the title in Season 4.
- On his blog
- Sam Riegel and Wayne Grayson were originally cast as Michelangelo and Donatello respectively, but swapped roles after the first recording session.
- The series was pitched in 2001 and was considered to be aired on either Cartoon Network or the WB Network with a much less realistic art style (the Turtles looked much closer to the original art style of the comics, in particular), but WB scrapped it. A CGI pilot was also shopped around.
Turtles Forever
- The voice cast of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) were going to reprise their roles in this film. Unfortunately, due to union issues beyond anyone's controlnote , this was literally impossible. Instead, more of 4Kids' in-house actors were used for the original show's characters.
