Krang and Shredder try to find a rare element, only to find an unassuming alien creature with an insatiable taste for metal.
Tropes:
- Because You Were Nice to Me: The turtles first find the Zipp when Michelangelo frees it from a barrel, which earns its gratitude. As such, the Zipp swarm (and later, the giant Zipp) listen to him.
- Big Eater: The Zipp(s) has a massive appetite for anything metal, able to devour something like a huge metal plate in a matter of moments.
- Contrived Coincidence: The element needed to make a Zipp vanish/shrink is rigidium, the very metal that Shredder is after.
- Here We Go Again!: After conglomerating all the Zipps back into one and letting Shredder inadvertently take it back to Dimension X, the Turtles believe they won't be bothered by it anymore...only for Leonardo to discover a Zipp they had missed in his katana's scabbard.Raphael: (Deadpans) I think I'll check into a motel until this blows over!
- It's Personal: Raphael doesn't take kindly to seeing the Zipps breaking a turtle display at the museum.Raphael: Now that's going too far!
- Killer Rabbit: The Zipp appears cute and harmless at first, but Krang reacts with immediate fear when he sees it. His fear is proven rational when it literally starts eating the Technodrome. Krang then decides to send it to Earth as a distraction while they steal rigidium.
- Me's a Crowd: Anytime the Zipp eats copper, it doubles. Unfortunately, since there's copper everywhere in the city, it isn't long before there's a whole swarm of them.
