Things that happened in the franchise that surprised or shocked you
 

What are some things that happened over the course of the franchise that genuinely surprised you? Or stuff you never thought would happen until it actually...happened.

For me:

1. A licensed comic crossover between Batman and the Turtles. This is something I never in a million years would ever think would happen. DC actually deciding to have Batman crossover with the Turtles in a 6-part comic. Batman meeting the Turtles...IN CANON. Even now I'm still shocked this is actually happening.

2. The original Fred Wolf Turtles returning in specials, crossovers or movies, such as Turtles Forever or their upcoming Nick cartoon crossover. Especially the latter which will have their original voices reprise their roles. I never expected the 80's Turtles to get "new material" nearly 20 years after the show got canceled.

3. A new Image short comic story as part of the 30th anniversary comic IDW put out last year. This is just...crazy. A NEW Image comic drawn and written by the same guys who did the Image series over 17 years ago? What.

4. Lots of old characters being used again after decades in either the Nick or IDW series, like Lord Dregg, Bellybomb, Muckman, Mutagen Man, the Neutrinos, Fast Forward characters, Armaggon, etc. Never expected to see most of these guys again.

5. The franchise actually being generally popular again due to the Nick cartoon. As much as I loved the 2k3 cartoon, the show was barely known outside of hardcore fans or whatever kids watched it in the early 2000's. Entire new kids are exposed to TMNT now. This is probably the most popular the franchise has been since the early 90's.


There's probably more but this is all I can think of right now.

Viacom buying the franchise.

Also forgot to mention Kevin Eastman returning to the franchise and developing story ideas with Tom Waltz, writing new TMNT comics, and drawing covers for all the issues.

For those who don't know Kevin pretty much left the TMNT franchise after 1997 when Next Mutation bombed and Image did poorly in sales and he was gone for the entire 2000's era of Volume 4 and 2k3 until coming back in 2011 with IDW.

“The Birds, the Bees and the Turtles!”, enough said... What?!, it's almost official :teek:

I'm not surprised with Batman and the TMNT teaming up. Both of them are known for working mostly in the dark shadows of night. Unlike, for example, Superman who operates in broad daylight.

One of the biggest things that surprised me was TNM. I couldn't believe they were changing them so much. Of course, this was the first time I started to notice and actually like Donnie, so something good came from it.

Speaking of Donnie, what happened to him in IDW was a surprise for me.

Giving the guys love interests in Nick was a shock, even if it leads to nothing in the end.

That time April got freaky as a cockroach... that shocked me. :trazz:

Turtles teaming up with Shredder in 2k12 series...
and Splinters sudden murder with the huge failure thing...
but to be fair I kinda expected Shredder to kill him then...
*shrugs* :tconfuse:

The sale to Viacom shocked me.

As did 2k3 Leo actually beheading Shredder.
Oh sure, he turned out to be using an Utrom suit, but still. Until that reveal Leo totally beheaded Shredder in a children's cartoon.

Bebop and Rocksteady going after Don with sledgehammers in the IDW series shocked me.

As did their reincarnation angle. The reveal of that is still one of my favorite issues of the run thus far.

OH! And the trailer for the 2k7 movie. I was not expecting to love that thing as much as I did.

The top shocking moment for me was IDW issue 44, It was brutal.

SAINW, I'm surprised no 1 said this yet.

A lot of things from the Nick show has surprised me, The Invasion, bringing back the OT turtles and there voice actors ect. Annihilation Earth was shocking with Shredder killing Splinter on screen and the earth being destroyed.

The return of Bebop, Rocksteady, and a lot of characters and elements from sources other than the Mirage comics. I honestly thought that we'd never ever see these things again since Laird was so adamant against using them.

The Viacom buyout.

The Turtles returning in 2003. And from 4kids of all companies.

The IDW comics coming out before the cartoons. I assumed they would do the cartoon first, THEN make a comic series.

Irma being a Kraang spy but that wasn't a good kind of surprise(why couldn't it have been Vernon?). :P

Eh, Bebop/Rocksteady making huge comebacks was expected once Peter Laird stopped being in control of the franchise. Funny thing is they returned everywhere.

Turtles Forever brought them back so they appeared in 4kids in 2009. Then they appeared in the IDW comics. Then the Nick cartoon. And now the new movie.

Bebop/Rocksteady could never be forgotten. The mutant duo will always return.

Armaggon in the Nick show and knowing a year prior


The Nick show taking such a huge dip in quality, but season 4 has been season 1 level.

Its fans and the forum they inhabit.

Same. :lol: I still can't believe THAT is "Word of God" as far as canon. Nobody can even play defense by saying it was a guest writer or a lesser writer... the creator farted out that colossal misfire. Definitely shocked... and appalled.

Surprisingly, the sale to Nick didn't shock me, as I always figured Pete would have no choice but to "sell out" to Nick or Disney one day, especially after it became clear he was burned out and didn't really care about doing it anymore. I'm also not surprised that the entire franchise has since become watered-down, kiddified, and is sustaining itself by suckling on the teat of the Fred Wolf cartoon. I am surprised that it happened so fast. I thought for sure they'd pretend to care about fans older than age 10 for at least a little while, but then I remembered: Nickelodeon. Says it all.

At this point I'm not sure if anything could or would shock me. I'm pretty damn jaded, in case you couldn't tell.

Viacom Sale

TMNT + Batman comic

Turtles Forever

Didn't they bring back Pete the Pigeon in IDW/Nick or something? Recall reading about that. Dunno if it actually happened but I was liek "Whaaa ANYONE can return now".

Attempts at making the turtles aliens and Shredder a white man. You have no idea how thankful I am everyday that we've dodged those couple of bullets.

In THAT regard, I'm surprised that AFTER the sale to Nicky, we still get a comic book (IDW) that's shockingly good!

Bebop and Rocksteady are love. Bebop and Rocksteady are life.

Everything to do with April's origin in Mirage vol 4 was awful. Say what you will about Nick April being part Kraang and having psychic powers, but at least she's not a literal drawing. And frankly, it's a pretty steep insensitivity to her infertility. It's fine if they wanted to go that direction, but good grief, that was low. Polycystic ovary syndrome might have been better; Endometriosis might have been better. But a drawing!? Heck, fit it into the side of Utroms working on a cure for cancer (another thing that surprised me, if only because of how goofy it sounds. That's Captain Planet grade silly) and have it be ovarian cancer.

Scrap the sister's cancer story in the Tales and put April in it instead. It's a lot less bumpy that way, and certainly less insulting to April as a character, and to people with fertility issues who are struggling to conceive as she was.

A lot of the violence/deaths in the 2k3 series surprised me the first time I saw the episodes, they basically pushed the boundaries as far as they could go on a Saturday Morning cartoon. Characters being impaled, stabbed, blown up, on-screen deaths, etc.

I was only a teenager when the 2k3 series originally aired back in the early 2000's, so back then the show was exactly what I wanted.

Yea Shredder getting his head cut off was like "WHAT!"

And also in the OT, "I never bluff".

The thing that I found funny about this is that it was 4Kids. The company notorious for scrubbing out deaths to make it more child friendly. The people who sent characters to the Shadow Realm to mask over that they died. The people who went to incredibly hilarious lengths for censorship in the shows that they dubbed. Especially when 2k3 was pretty much just as nasty as the original dub of say, Yu-Gi-Oh, and even Pokemon at times.

Dontallo keeping Baxter Stockman's cyborg remains prisoner for years and then murdering him in volume 4 is still one of the most unsettling elements of his character after all these years to me.

Actually liking the Nick turtles.

Bebop and Rocksteady finally getting in a Movie.

What does Superman do these days? So few phone booths left and all.

1991
 

It could've happened in 1991.

Of course they've gotta rely on the golden years of the franchise in the general public (OT, Golden Harvest films, classic toys, video games). That is to say, more early-style tmnt stuff exists, but in smaller quantities compared to OT-based work.

Something that could still surprise me at this point is Peter Laird finally finishing Volume 4.

Maybe some day...within the next 10 years. I mean PL isn't getting any younger...he'll be 70 in 9 years.

I remember being pretty shocked when watching the "Notes From the Underground" storyarc and the Turtles realized Quarry was actually a beautiful woman in her birthday suit. The following season they went back to cure everybody that the Foot Clan had mutated and of course they were all standing there stark naked.

The day Laird finishes Volume 4 is the day I go out and buy a lotto ticket, because apparently it will be my unbelievably lucky day.

One day I believe we will get everything we want:

1. PL finishes Volume 4.

2. Complete DVD/blu-ray collections of the entire 2k3 series and uncut Turtles Forever.

3. Nick cartoon released on blu-ray

4. IDW to collect all the Image series and the rest of the issues they skipped.

5. The original cartoon completely remastered in a new blu-ray set in the highest quality possible.


One can dream. We will get everything we want.

2-5 may happen within the next 50 years or so, but at this point I think we need to give up on Mr. Laird. Let the old man move on with his life already, people!

Well, the IDW made Bebop and Rocksteady somewhat likable without changing a lot about them. I guess doing that to characters that had always been ill-conceived and poorly written is pretty shocking?

My first time watching the Original Movie.

I laughed. I cried. I huddled in fear. I relaxed and I simply enjoyed.

To me, the Original Movie is the absolute best of the TMNT.

And my life would've been very different had I not watched that movie at all.

Shredder killing splinter in Annihilation took me by absolute surprise. I knew that Tang Shen's death was shown onscreen and deaths were prevelant in flashbacks but I never saw splinter's death coming. It was indeed a big shock for me.

Also, Shredder being an utrom in 2k3.

Original cartoon season 8. Rocksteady and Bebop minus their bumbling ways was a twist, the shocker is Channel 6's fall to obscurity.

Oh and Irma snapping in the season 7 finale. Enough WTF to cross over the line into awesome. :lol:

The first time I saw a picture from a Mirage issue after years only knwowing the toys, movies, OT and Archie-comics was a pretty shock... (PS.: but in a positive way)

Well it's not like that twist came out of nowhere, pretty much everything is spelled out in episode six.

Thinking back in it, I'm surprised that Casey Jones wasn't in the original cartoon, that much. He was in like, what, 5 or so episodes, in the 9 years that they were around. For being a main character, in the Mirage comics, I'm surprised that he wasn't more prominent. Honestly, it wasn't until the 90 movie, that I knew who Casey was. Sure, I saw that he had a toy, but I never saw him in the cartoon. In fact, it wasn't until about 10 or so years ago, that I found out he even appeared in the original cartoon.

Maybe episode six shoked viewers more.