Plotholes
 

So there's probably no secret that the FW cartoon has a lot continuity errors and plotholes (which is somewhat understandable given the production).

But there is one plothole in particular I find odd, why did Shredder forget where the turtles live?
In some episodes (I'm thinking about the body swap episode with Splinter and Shredder in particular) Shredder is unaware of the turtle lair's location, which I guess is the reason he don't just send his henchmen there to eliminate them.

However, Shredder did know where Hamato Yoshi was hiding in the first place, that's why he dumped mutagen down there. So why would he convienently forget where the turtles live when the entire premise of them being mutant turtles rests on him knowing where they live? If the turtle lair is somehow a different storm drain from the one Hamato Yoshi was originally hiding in, why is that Shreddder could track down Hamato Yoshi to a random storm drain in NYC of all places in the world, but he can't locate another storm drain of similar size in the same city?

That's a good question. Yeah he was in the lair when he was in Splinter's body in The Old Switcheroo. But he couldn't keep track of the route there with the towel over his eyes. Another thing I wonder is if he had the towel on his eyes when he left the lair to go back to the lab to get back in his own body. If not, he should know the way to the lair.

Here's a possible answer. In The Missing Map, the turtles had a map to the lair and they said it's because they used to have trouble finding it because they were new there. Maybe Shredder just forgot where it is too.

Shredder was also in the lair in Cowabunga, Shredhead, but except for only for a brief period while Splinter was doing a command test, he was acting as Michelangelo. I'm surprised Baxter didn't give Shredder or his goons help for determining the lair location as he successfully kidnapped Splinter in Return of the Shredder in the lair by himself.

I assume that before the series as Saki/Yoshi escaped to New York that somewhere underground chasing each other, both lost course of each other after passing certain sewer routes, with Saki ending up in the Technodrome and Yoshi of course ending up what would become the Turtles' Lair. Shredder or Krang never ended up in the Turtles' Lair over the course of the series by finding it themselves. Its a shame this never happened since this could have led to a big finale, though at least 4kids shows the impact of a destroyed Turtles' Lair.

Here's one that occurred to me just last year: Throughout most of the series run, the Ninja Turtles' goal was to capture Shredder, Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady so they can be brought to justice and in the episode "Pirate Radio" they actually manage to achieve this goal during a fight with Tin Face and his moronic mutants on a boat out in the New York harbor. So what do our heroes promptly do with their arch nemesis and his flunkies? That's right, send them back to Krang in the friggin Technodrome. Somebody really dropped the ball on that one!!! :trolleye:

And how did Yoshi get money for a plane trip to the USA? And why did Saki follow him along? Yoshi was blacklisted and could't stop Saki from leading the foot clan in Japan. Ironically, Shredder stalking Splinter all the way to the USA ended up in the mutagen getting dropped on the Turtles. Talk about sabotaging yourself, Shredder :lol:

And what happened to the human foot clan? It's like Shredder told the Clan to **** off after he met Krang since "Hmm since I have all of this alien technology now, I no longer need the Foot. I can rule not only japan but also the world!". And speaking of that... in "The Missing Map" episode, Splinter has documents with him that prove he's the true leader of the Foot... why did he get kicked out, then? And what's stopping him from going back? And what Foot Clan? At that point, what was the Foot Clan? A bunch of robotic foot soldiers and Bebop and Rocksteady?

There's way too many plotholes and inconsistencies in the FW series to list them all in one post only. But another one that comes up to my mind is Tempestra being in "Night of the Rogues". I can let Scumbug and Anthrax slide, but Tempestra?! How could Shredder possibly know of her?

First of all, the place Shredder mutated the Turtles in the sewers was obviously not the same lair Splinter and the Turtles live in normally for the rest of the show.

He didn't? He probably snuck on board the cargo hold.

Isn't that ironic? Shredder created the Turtles his own worst enemy. Also Shredder still clearly wanted to kill Yoshi, that's why when they fight as Splinter/Shredder he tries to kill him especially in the Seasons 1-3 fights they had.

Maybe Tempestra broke free of her computer chip prison and Shredder discovered her? Also Anthrax was unknown to the Turtles, only Scumbug knew them.

The one that bothers me the most is the gang mutants from S1. Shredder even mentions how Beebop and Rocksteady were only the beginning and these new mutants were better or something along those lines only to be forgotten about later. We see one of the mutants become human with the retromutagen gun, so you could assume after the failure of B&R he demutated them all since they were all more trouble than they were worth, however we then see them inside a jail in the technodrome including the demutated gang member as a mutant again meaning the gun didn't actually work or Shredder mutated him back.

In the last episode Divide and Conquer, the turtles use Krang's android body which suddenly had a chip in it that makes the body bigger and it looked like Donatello figured that out from its blueprints. That chip was destroyed way back in season 1 and that got me wondering how did it get another chip?

And how could Donatello and Michelangelo not think that there might have been the possibility of Krang, Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady lurking around the Technodrome at the time?

Why would they be there?

Not saying they would be, but they should have considered the risk. It's not like Krang and Shredder couldn't have fixed the big movable fortress meanwhile. Besides, there were some alien creatures inside the Technodrome. anyway.

Or when Donnie was panicking about the android shrinking to the size of a ping pong ball and exploding, yet it never did. It did shrink but not to that size. The Turtles just pushed Krang's body while it still held Dregg captive and let it explode in the portal.

Funny thing too considering that android was mentioned as indestructible in Divide & Conquer but it did blow up in Krangstein Lives, got zapped apart to sh*t in Pirate Radio, had its arms hacked halfway off by Leo in Super Irma, got its backside controls nearly blown out by Irma shooting it in Shredder Triumphant.. and I'm sure there were other incidents that I cannot remember.

I cannot totally rule it out as indestructible if it managed to get damaged in some way or another nor am
I'm really sure if any of that was anything other than miscommunication or change of writers.

The only one that gets ME is Lotus finding the lair AND blowing a hole in the wall in "Beware the Lotus" and then Shredder never finding it again afterward, despite having a CLEAR way to get there with that sniffing machine. Just- WTF??!! I can excuse him not finding it while in Splinter's body or when he thought he was Mikey, but THAT one is kind of face-palm worthy.

And he DID still have the human Foot, BTW- they just ran all of his "Ninja" businesses.... Duh- would have thought that was obvious.

Speaking of Lotus, why did her personality and motives change between her only two appearences? In the first she's a mercenary hired by Krang, whom later join forces with the turtles for some reason. But in the second one she's all mopey about not feeling like she had a purpose being a ninja in the 1990's.

What happened? If her skills got her a job as a confident mercenary, why is she sad about her skills not having any purpose in the modern world the second time we see her?

The biggest one for me, has always been when Splinter is telling April how they had all become mutated.

He tells her that the mutagen causes whoever touched it to take on the form of the animal they were most recently had contact with. He is holding the turtles so they take human form, and then he says he was most recently in contact with a rat even though we just saw him holding the turtles. So he should have turned into a turtle too.

Yeah that one is really weird. I've read arguments that the reason is the turtles had already started to mutate and therefore the mutagen didn't respond to them as being last thing Yoshi touched, or that Yoshi technically touched the mutagen befor the turtles.

I don't really buy that, for some reason the turtles did not mutate before Yoshi picked them up, in fact the mutation happens right after he picked them up, not just to the turtles but Yoshi as well! This implies it was that touch that caused the mutation, otherwise they would have been mutated before Yoshi opened the door...

It's still a fairly simple scenario to explain. Yoshi steps into the mutagen to pick up the turtles and clean them. Thus, his mutation had already begun before he actually started cleaning the turtles. It just seems to have taken a little while to complete.

#cartoonlogic

^ I'll second that.

Hmm I never thought of it like that, actually does make sense, even though we don't see Yoshi with the rats, he does say he was most recently in contact with the rats.

That, and he was in contact with the turtles often enough before, that they were probably already mutating as well- he was the only other creature they ever had contact with at all.

Only Lotus knew the location of the Turtles lair. She never told Shredder where she found the Turtles/Splinter. Simple as that.

In season 8, the Technodrome was trapped in a black hole in Dimension X, but Krang's Rock Soldiers somehow freed it from the black hole with no explanation given. The Turtles had Shredder's Retro-Mutageon Ray in "Wrath of the Rat King", so why didn't use it on Splinter to turn him back to his human self? The Technodrome's dimensional portal was still functional in "Divide and Conquer", making Shredder and Krang's absence pointless.

Splinter realized it's better to be a rat in Splinter No More and Shredder & Splintered.

Speaking of the retro mutagen ray, the turtles first retrieved it in Revenge of the Fly but they destroyed it after they returned all the humans to normal yet they still had it a short time later in The Wrath of The Rat King. Also, the retro mutagen ray in Revenge of The Fly looks like the same gun that Baxter used to turn Shredder into a fly in Bye Bye Fly. My guess is Shredder eventually turned it into a retro mutagen ray.

But she had Foot soldiers with her! And Shredder/Krang never tracked them down by their control signals??!! I call tech-BS!!! And I find it hard to believe she didn't tell them where it was or wasn't in communication with them while hunting the turtles down. She also still had the sniffer-machine, and since Shredder apparently kept it (it WAS in Turtles Forever, after all!) he could have just used it himself!

Hamato Yoshi was the Shidoshi of the Foot Clan. Oroku Saki wanted to usurp his leadership of the Foot Clan. So he frames him in front of a visiting master Sensei, who than kicks him out of the clan. If Yoshi is the leader of the clan, how can a visiting Sensei remove him from power? If Yoshi is supposed to be the leader of that school but not the whole clan, than how does taking him out make Saki leader of the clan, and why is Yoshi referred to as the true leader later on?

So Krang is meant to be a disembodied brain, his species didn't actually look like that. So explain this please.
http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com...13/03/0082.jpg

Maybe it what remains. The robot didn't seem to grow what large in "Divide and Conquer". My problem with the chip is that it enlarged both Krang and the robot. Yes, it was extraterrestrial chip, but it could affect:

*Krang = living creature
*Krang's robot = machine

It would be better if he just used some kind of giant robot-tank instead and just sit inside.

I kinda have this theory that the smarter individuals of Dimension X made it a practice to shed their bodies in order to achieve some higher form of intelligent sentience.

Or...this was before the Godzilla Krang idea was thought up.
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...o/PDVD_078.jpg

So I watched Muckman messes up today, two questions:

1. If Muckman's power was to weaken other mutants, why were only the Turtles affected and not Splinter, Bebop and Rocksteady?
2. Shredder and Krang were flushed away with mutagen, so why didn't they mutate?

1. Muckman aimed his powers at the Turtles, didn't he? Pretty sure Bebop/Rocksteady were standing behind or to the side of him.

2. Krang was in his Android body so it didn't touch him directly. As for Shredder, who knows.

Krang has more than one android body (when one of them was destroyed with "Krangenstein Lives!"), and at that time it appeared to already have the enlarging capability hardware integrated into it without the "chip". Krang could have learned after Season 1 to integrate the "molecular amplification chip" (I think that was what it was called) onto the android body's main motherboard instead of leaving it susceptible to an easy attack again in "Shredder & Splintered".

In "Hot Rodding Teenagers from Dimension X" (Season 1), when Traag asked what happened to Krang's body, he says it's a long story and that he lost his body when "they" banished him to the "mudball" known as Earth. I assumed with the other two disembodied brains, those two experienced the same disembodiment as Krang from "they" and at some point between the disembodiment of the three and Krang reaching Earth, those three disembodied Krangezoids conspired together in regards to the crystal. Whoever "they" are, is of course open to speculation.

:P
I assumed since that water whirlpool could mysteriously and unpredictably appear, the Turtles didn't want to risk taking them (Shredder, Bebop, and Rocksteady) to shore since there were other civilians on the same ship and on others in the vicinity where they could get caught up again in the whirlpool. One could reason that those three villains were used as bargaining chips to ensure the other boats (and civilians) had left the water first, and when it was only that one radio ship left, the Turtles made the three villains "walk the plank" as some type of "drop off point". If the Turtles were by themselves (without having to worry about the safety of civilians nearby in the water), they could have brought those three villains to shore and brought to justice. Just a thought... **shrug**

Michelangelo Meets Mondo Gecko.

So the depiction of the origin contradict the depiction in season one. The Turtles fall straignt into the mutagen instead of on Yoshi's head, the storm drain does not appear to be Yoshi's hideout and for some reason the mutagen is green instead of purple.

In fact, multiple depictions of the mutagen changed the color from purple to green, now that I think about it.

Because I am having a totally dumb moment, remind me again which episode this is from?!

The one where Leo thinks he's one of the Musketeers.

Ah, ok! Thanks! It's been a while since I watched season 5. I am currently on season 10. Maybe I'll go back and re-watch them all again later this year.

Season 3 actually. :)

1) Speaking of being brought to justice, there is a gag in "Mutagen Monster" where Rocksteady pulls out a mugshot photo of himself (in his rhino form), but we don't see Bebop and rocksteady get arrested prior to that.

2) How is Tempestra able to lay low after "Night of the Rogues"? You have a crazy video game sorceress walking around on earth with incredible powers. Where the heck was she during the red sky era? Just chilling at a beach?

3) Rat King and the turtles are sorta neighbors, right? They live in the same sewer, yet, the turtles act like it's no big deal. Apparently he knows where to find them.

4) Why doesn't Donnie create a steel door for their lair entrance? Any villain can just walk in their lair and open fire.

the biggest plothole was Krangs history and backstory which still makes me mad up to this day. This is the only thing that really bothered me with the FW Cartoon :/

Oddly enough, I wrote a fic where that actually happens- it doesn't end well for the turtles.... (# Turtle death)