What's the worst TMNT you can imagine?
 

We have a lot of threads about people's "ideal" version of TMNT that they would create if they were in charge. But, what about the opposite?

If for some reason you just wanted to tank TMNT with the worst version ever (TV show, comic, or movie), what would it be like?

I'll have to give it some thought myself, but I'd love to see what everyone comes up with.

Two ground rules...

1. It still has to have most of the "fundamentals" in place and be recognizable as TMNT in some form.

2. Don't just point to an already existing version of TMNT that you don't like and say "that". Be creative, and remember you're trying to top (or bottom or whatever) that version for "worst TMNT ever!"

I dunno if it's still out there, but once upon a time there was a short series of YouTube videos where each of the Turtles went their separate ways and kinda became their worst selves. Mikey wound up in some halfway house kind of establishment with a bunch of drug addicts; Leonardo tried to live a normal human life and got some office job where people would pick on him behind his back for looking so strange. I believe he was even married to April in this version (there were a lot of Leo/April shippers back then). Donatello meanwhile became a nerd blogger who would go on about his favorite anime (sound familiar, Cubed?) Finally Raphael was pretty much a loner who still went around looking for trouble. Eventually they all came together after the tragic death of Master Splinter, and they get into a big fight over how they lost their way after splitting up. Then in comes their mortal enemy Oroku Saki who is now a woman. So yea, that for me pretty much sums up what the worst version of TMNT could be like.

Looking back I'm willing to bet the guy who wrote and created that mini-series was like mortified by how horrible it came out and took the videos down, hence why they can't be seen again. Even the costumes were horrible, it was just a bunch of guys wearing green face paint and color coded bandannas, or in Leonardo's case a really terrible human disguise. I do remember the "Lady Shredder" actress being pretty hot though. As far as I could tell she was 100% female in real life simply playing a transgendered Saki.

It's already happened. The Next Mutation/Music Tour brand of "make everyone Michelangelo and jokes of what pacifism is". The death rattles of Turtlemania in the 90's.

The worst version of tmnt would be a combination of PD Michealangalo, Christmas special Leonardo, Coming out of their shells tour Raphael and TMNT 3 Donatello, with their Splinter being a hybrid of all 4 versions.

PD is the worst. Atleast the christmas special and COOTS incarnations have entertainment value.

Platinum Dunes already made it.

& no I'm not trying to be funny.

It really is the worst; more obnoxious than the Fred Wolf show with butt-ugly turtles

The Fred Wolf show was about tongue in cheek and sarcastic humor, it's nothing like the new movies.

The leaked script was worse. So much worse.

Probably the worst possible tmnt would somehow enforce the lessons "life is always great no matter what", "revenge is totally radical", and "adopted people aren't real family, only blood matters!"

Just be thankful we dodged alien Turtles and a Shredder who was a white man. Jesus Christ.

The fact that Eric Sachs was originally intended to be Shredder makes my blood boil even more than Turtle nostrils. And that's saying a lot.

Ha yeah... I have a soft spot for the Christmas one, and normally watch it each December, but Turtle Tunes was BAD.

I remember watching it with a friend when I was like 5. We gave it a chance for like 10 minutes, but once they started singing about not talking to strangers we started describing all the violent ways they should be dispatching that pedophile foot ninja.

Hh.

TMNT went corporate a long time ago, but it still always maintained a degree of heart. Until Bayturtles.

Pretty sad to see Pete and Kevin's creation made into a soulless movie with zero respect paid to what it's all about.

Platinum Dunes Bayturtles, as other wise souls have previously observed.

There's the good and the bad elsewhere, but nothing as damned soulless as Bayturtles.

There is worse.Meld all the aspects that failed with Next Mutation with Image and it would cripple the franchise more than four plus years.

Image was great.

Image sold so little that most people didn't even know it existed. It didn't cripple anything, we just wouldn't have gotten any TMNT comics at that time until PL revived it with Volume 4.

Volume 2 had already ended.

Dune Bay Turtles was pretty bad.

Next Mutation was hampered by a few things, but at least with a proper budget, or a netflix methidology it could have been salvageable somehow if they got rid of venus and made it more like the movies.

the current nick series is pretty bad as well IMHO. a mish mash of ideas and nostalgia throw backs and just plain weirdness that never really lands anywhere.
but i guess it's not the worse thing we could have gotten.

Bay Turtles still holds that honor.

People just picking Bay Turtles for the sake of it. We all know it could be way worse.

To tank a cartoon I imagine something like Uncle Grandpa or even TTG! Just all around stupidity with no legitimate reason for existing. No story, no development just nonsense.

To tank a movie I imagine B-movie special effects. Little to no story. Nothing that can be taken seriously. I'm thinking something like Trolls 2 (not so bad it's good either).

I know someone is gonna say I just described Bay Turtles...oh ha ha :roll:

Keep trollin' Vegita-San, keep trollin'

Terrible writing, bad direction and general incompetence is a given when it comes "the worst TMNT I can imagine". That would be the basis, anything else would just be something grinding against my personal preference.

With that out of the way, let's make a little list of what has been grinding against my personal preference before:

• April as a newsreporter
• Baxter Stockman as a fly
• Any version of Bebop and Rocksteady aside from the IDW version and maybe the Nick version.
• "The Kraang" instead of the Utroms
• Hulk Turtles
• People turning into animals because of animals ancestors
• The Turtles running around in broad daylight through a crowded city
• Pretending you can write an entire season about going to the future when it shouldn't take up more than five episodes at most
• Adding another turtle to the team

So based on older material, the worst possible version I can imagine features big hulking turtles including Venus, who don't try to hide from society and mutated from humans because they had turtles as ancestors. The main villains would be the Kraang, a fly version of Stockman and Bebop/Rocksteady acting like the FW version and all of the latter three would have animals ancestors. The characters would spend way more time than needed in an exotic setting and April would report at the end of it.

It was full of nonsense. No real reason for anyone to be a ninja, except maybe the mysterious Shredder, who had no actual feud with Splinter and would rather hire grunts than ninja. Oh wait, that's because he was added to the script 5 seconds before filming began and didn't actually belong in the stupid movie.

No one said "man, we could make a great TMNT movie". They said "hey, these Transformers movies make money, let's apply TMNT to that plus downhill snow fight".

^ all very excellent points!!!

my own personal gripes i'd like to add

• Buzz-Cut Officer Casey Jones
• April being portrayed as a bubble headed bimbo
• Donatello/April shipping
• Any Turtle shipping
• Turtles using yo-yo's and salami instead of their weapons
• Leonardo not getting to use his Katanas

I'd say the worst version of tmnt would be the Turtles not being the main focus, kinda like the way Sonic X focused more on Chris than Sonic himself.

Another Bayturtles trope.

Although, to be fair, TMNT 1990 is a bit guilty of that too.

true! pretty much every scene with Danny was pretty cringe worthy.

watching Keno was no picnic either!

but none are as painful to watch as this guy

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/...20120627202853

They add kid sidekick characters to every series.

Original toon had Zack and to a lesser extent Carter (even though he was in College and technically older than all the Turtles, lol)

4kids had Angel and that kid from "Lone Raph and Cub" who helped Raph fight the gangsters

Nick had Timmy before he became Mutagen Man. You could sort of count April/Casey too since they're de-aged.

IDW has Angel again

Mirage has Shadow, and she is actually in a lot of Tales stories as both a teenager and young adult


I wonder why they always do this? Do they think adding a human kid sidekick helps people related to the Turtles?

just feels like the meddling of clueless corporate executives

"research studies show that BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH..."

they feel less a sidekick and more of just an annoying tagalong.

I would not count Angel in IDW. She's like 21 and does her own thing.

And you forgot Cody from Fast Forward.

Ah yeah, Cody. For some reason he never bothered me though, he was basically a male version of April with a little Casey in him. I also liked that he wasn't involved in every single fight the Turtles had in FF, they left him out of a lot of episodes or behind at O'Neil tech so he didn't feel forced.

they at least were developed characters before Nick decided to turn them into kiddie tagalongs.

i image they're going to do this to the new cartoon as well?

April as a reporter isn't a big deal, but I don't care if she ever is one again. She was also a reporter in Archie and the original movie trilogy and it didn't matter.

Baxter as a fly is fine, just as long as it isn't overused.

Well Fred Wolf Bebop/Rocksteady would only work in the context of the old show obviously.

The Kraang aren't a problem as long as they aren't overused. They're basically just enslaved/hypnotized Utroms.

FF had plenty of story material, at most they could have chopped off about 6 episodes and made a 20 episode season.

I didn't hate Cody either. It was cool that he was part of the family and that the Jones-O'Neils passed down stories of the guys to each generation.

I do think you're incorrect about how heavily he was featured. They used him a lot, especially once he built Turtle X. The only episode he actually sat out was "Milk Run".

But I have a reason to dislike all of them, not necessarily unbiased ones but reasons all the same.

• I don't like April being a reporter since it's at odds with Turtles living in the shadows.
• I don't like Baxter turning into a fly because it reduces a compelling character with plenty of potential to a one note movie parody.
• I don't like most versions Bebop and Rocksteady because they're pointless and obnoxious. The exception to this is the IDW version, since Waltz/Weaver at least figured out how to turn the irritating elements into something charming and gave them something resembling a point. I'm not sure about the Nick version, they're kind of still kind of annoying and I don't see why they have to be Bebop and Rocksteady, but at least they're not as annoying and the difference helps me distance them from the original version.
• The Kraang pretty much were the show's version of the Utroms for three seasons and I hated it.
• When I rewatched the series in full two years ago or so, I noticed that a lot of the stories could easily take place in the modern era, highlighting what a gimmick the guture setting was...

two very excellent points.

How is Baxter less of a one-note character if he turns into a cyborg? Baxter as a fly is meant to be sympathetic, at least how he was in the original toon. Baxter in 4kids was meant to be sympathetic too because of what happened to him.

IDW's Baxter seems to be going in a new direction, but so far he basically functioned as the same lackey for Krang or Shredder, went through the same Mouser and robot subplots, and the Fly-borgs are basically just a mix of his mutant fly and cyborg forms. Depends where he goes from here.

Baxter in the early Mirage was a cunning and ruthless megalomaniac.
Baxter-fly is just another bumbling henchman.

at least the IDW comics restored the character's credibility at being formidable.

April as a reporter . . . . . . that i'll just never understand.

As David Wise said, we had only hit the early stage of the Information Age when Red Sky begin. That being said,the TMNT needed a way of being informed of the villains' plot so having a reporter for a friend gets the action going.

It doesn't matter if Baxter is a fly or a cyborg, white or black. He is forced into the role of henchman of Shredder. Mirage had only one story with him before they made him into a cyborg unable to do more with an independent human Baxter. He will never be a big bad standing on his own. He will either be the unwilling henchman or working with for his own goals,not Baxter Stockman by himself.

Because that way he's not just a riff on one specific thing, cyborg is a much more general and diverse idea than just parodying The Fly. Not to mention that it just doesn't sit right with me to turn one of the original Mirage characters into a parody of some unrelated thing, especially when they had almost nothing in common to begin. As the villain of the second TMNT story ever told, reason April met the turtles, the only good thing about volume 2, one of the best written characters of both the 2003 and the IDW series, he's very memorable on his own merits without being turned into a damn parody of the Fly.

Baxter Stockman can be a great character in his own right and he's been at his best when they've actualy used the comic book version as a starting point, turning him into fly and then trying to define him as "the guy who turns into a fly" just feels like an insult to what the character should be.

And in case I've just been talking out my ass so far, at least the cyborg version offers some visual variety...
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/...20120806184740http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/...20130616201516http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/...20120806184904http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...20120806184940http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/...20120806184820http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...20121020131916http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/...20131207104007http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/...20120806184836http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...20121020131858

Mirage never had Baxter as a henchman of Shredder. neither did IDW.
Baxter partnered with Shredder in IDW for a story arc, but he was never a henchman.


the Fred Wolf cartoons could have found another way to keep the Turtles informed of the villains' plot.
they pretty much just turned April into Lois Lane.