Concept art for a rejected snake-like mutant that would have appeared in the first season.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)
What Could Have Been in this series.- There was some interest in having James Avery reprise his role as the 1987 Shredder in one of the crossovers, but he passed away in 2013 before they could do so. Kevin Michael Richardson plays him instead in the three-part crossover in Season 5.
- An undisclosed Asian actor was considered for the Shredder, but the crew couldn't find an appropriate actor for the character, so Kevin Michael Richardson was cast.
- Character bios were leaked when the show was still being worked on, and Shredder's stated that he had a daughter named "Oroku Miwa" who allowed him to stay human. The name "Miwa" is used for the name of Splinter's daughter in the show (Splinter's bio still mentions a lost daughter, though suspiciously left her unnamed). The final show instead uses Karai as Shredder's adopted daughter in keeping with the 2003 version, albeit it turned out that Karai was Miwa the whole time.
- Some of the first concept art reveals that it was planned for Raphael to be the one to have the crush on April, but later the screenwriters decided that it suited more Donatello.
- One piece of rejected concept art showed that there were once plans to have Wingnut and Screwloose appear on the show as Expies of Batman and Robin, but instead Wingnut became nothing more than a nickname for Kirby O'Neil's mutant bat form and Screwloose was never given a mention at all. However, come the fourth season, the Batman & Robin-esque versions of Wingnut and Screwloose do make an appearance.
- The production team actually began to dislike Dogpound so much they seriously considered killing him off in season two, but they declined and instead mutated him into the series' incarnation of Rahzar, who they wanted to include into the series from the beginning.
- When asked on the possibility of more seasons, it was noted that while Ciro Nieli planned on finishing the series with five, they weren't opposed to doing more, even if it'd mean they would have to modify the series plan. No such modification occurred, and the series ended at five.
- Originally, Super Shredder's decapitation in the season four finale would have been more obvious, with a very thin gap between the head and torso in the black-and-white shot. According to Ciro Nieli on Instagram, Nickelodeon caught the gory detail and censored the gap in all showings of the episode.
- In an interview
, Ciro Nieli said that the series was originally to begin with Splinter undergoing an immensely early case of Death by Adaptation, with the Turtles leaving the sewers for the first time in their lives and being forced to take on the world on their own. Nickelodeon, naturally, was shaky on such a drastic and melancholic premise. Though Splinter eventually would meet his doom in the series proper (two times no less, the latter of which stuck).
