Ninja Turtles 'toons Old and New

You know, about the 1987 show... In the first episode, Shredder flooded the entire Manhattan Security Services building in an attempt to kill off the Turtles and April. Kinda extreme, wasn't it? I mean, the whole building ended up exploding from the sheer water pressure; there's no way that wouldn't make the headlines the next day, and the police would've been alarmed enough to dig up every scrap of evidence for this unpercedent and yet highly unconventional act of domestic terrorism. What was up with that?

For that matter, how did Shredder, a crime boss from Japan, hook up with an exiled alien warlord?

Why did Krang believe Shredder could build him a new body? He wasn't a scientist; after all, it was Krang who outfitted the Shredder with the Foot bots and Technodrome. In fact, Shredder had to recruit Baxter Stockman specifically to handle science stuff.

Why was Shredder even stealing from technology companies? The Technodrome could produce Foot Soldiers and was far in advance of any human technology.

Why employ Rocksteady and Bebop's gang to rough up April when you have an army of robots that do it for free? Why go after her at all? Reporting the crimes on TV wont give the police any more clues, and a reporter that goes missing would only draw more attention to the operation.

Hamato Yoshi comes to America penniless, yet even if was there illegally he wouldn't have to go live in the sewer. He was a fit, educated man fluent in English. Hundreds with less skills make it in the Big Apple under the table while working towards their citizenship. Tutoring American businessmen in Japanese language and customs was booming in the 1980's. He could have made a tidy living doing so, for example.

So in short, the whole premise relies on way too many people gripping the Idiot Ball as well as plenty of Fridge Logic.

It was an 80's cartoon.

That's reason enough.

I watched Turtles Forever over the weekend (Via Nicktoon's Turtle Nation marathon), then the Director's Cut version I saved and I've realized a few things that I didn't before.

What (eventually) happens to 2K3!Mikey with the '87 Turtles and 2K3!Raph with the Mirage Turtles could be seen as them getting a taste of their own personalities (Though the director's cut version shown 2K3!Mikey getting a upward pound from his '87 counterpart. Something I don't remember him doing at all). The looks the '87 Turtles and 2K3!Leo gave 2K3!Raph seemed to support this in Raph's case.

edited 14th Aug '15 10:54:17 AM by LLSmoothJ

until proven otherwise, i'm gonna say online supervillain chat room.

What I want to know is what happened to the human members of the Foot Clan between the time Oroku Saki took over and turned them into "an army of crime" and the first episode, where he appears to have replaced them all with unthinking robots for some reason.

Despite growing up in the time period where it would've been rerun or in its later seasons, I literally just watched my first episodes of the 80's show a month or so ago.

I was a bit surprised to find that Turtles Forever Flanderized them a bit (though I didn't watch the later seasons, so maybe it was just working of Flanderization that was already there - it happened a lot with other 80's shows).

Say, how come the 2012 series and the movies are exempted from the stated rule of not including the characters that are not specific to the animated spin-offs in said spin-offs' character sheets? The Ninja Turtles, Splinter, April O'Neil, and the Shredder at the very least do vary considerably in characterization and sometimes design between the original comics, the 1987 TV series, and the 2003 series. Heck, the Turtles Forever movie puts the three aforementioned incarnations of those characters next to each other, establishing them as distinct entities in their own right.

The rights to the franchise were sold to Nick shortly after Turtles Forever. I'm not an expert in copyrights or anything, but I believe the contract must have cleared up the Fred Wolf's character copyright snare with Eastman and Laird's original comic rights. That's why after the Mirage comic wrapped up TMNT and started anew with IDW, folks like Krang, Bebop, Rocksteady, and mutant-fly Baxter Stockman begin showing up more prominently than they did during the 4Kids era.

... What do real-life copyright issues between other companies have to do with which characters we should put in our character sheets?

Oh, my bad. I misread the question. In that case, TMNT 2012 came in a time well after TV Tropes became well-known and firmly established sub-pages like YMMV and Characters as well as cleaning up several misused tropes or examples, and the reboot paved way for a fresh look and character page. That's why when Disney rebooted Star Wars, the new Star Wars Character page is fairly well-organized and full of clean examples in comparison to the now relegated Legends character page, which a good chunk is missing information or simply not well written.

Personally, I think the old TMNT Character page is The Artifact from a time when TV Tropes was just finding it's footing. It needs to get rid of that old rule and instead sub-divide the character tropes in their respective incarnation, with the general page being the character tropes that all share. Much like the Legend of Zelda page, which now expands upon each incarnation of Link and Zelda.

edited 30th Aug '15 2:01:49 PM by Shadao

Well, that makes two of us. Who else is with us on this? Though I'm ashamed to admit that my knowledge of the franchise isn't as good as would have liked it to be, even if we're strictly talking only about the 1987 and 2003 TV series (the only installments I have ever gotten the privilege of watching, and even then it's considerably to largely spotty).

You've watched the best versions then. XD. Go online and rewatch them, relive the childhood.