Backgrounds of 1987–1996 series Rahzar and Tokka?
 

Does anyone have any theories about the backgrounds of Rahzar and Tokka in this series. In "Dirk Savage: Mutant Hunter" they just showed up and not much about them was mentioned.

My theory is that they were most likely created by Bebop and Rocksteady off screen during Planet of the Turtleoids when they let the Mutagen loose in the zoo.

Case closed.

There was a line like that in the show I think. Not so much Bebop and Rocksteady but I think they were saying something like mutagen in the zoo or something.

Donatello: "Ever since Shredder unleashed that mutagen in the zoo years ago, the city's been crawling with mutant animals!"

Michaelangelo: "Yuck! Mutant animals! My least favourite kind!"

Raphael: "Hey!! What are we? Mutant vegetables??"

Yeah, I watched the heck out of that episode after Vegitasan made it available on his site years ago.

I for some reason, thought, that in this very roundabout way, cartoon acknowledged second movie.

Now, of course, it looks more logical that it refers to event of the Planet Turtletoids.

I'm also glad they made Rahzar and Tokka intelligent, and not the dumb babies they were in the second movie.

It was the reason Rahzar became one of my favorites for years and why I loved him being revived in the Nick cartoon with a better backstory and character.

Razhar and Tokka in the original series were criminally underused.

Would've been cool if they appeared in the Red Sky seasons, especially during the HAVOC arc as that involved mutants.

Everything about Red Sky stories was a mess.

Instead bringing back more old faces, which they could make relatively cool, like they have done with Shredder, Krang and Rat King, they created bunch of nobodies and quickly threw them away.:roll:

I prefer these versions of Rahzar and Tokka, then the ones from the Nickelodeon series.

Also the best developed versions in my opinion, despite only appearing in 1 episode

Soto Razhar and Tokka had great costumes, and I actually enjoyed the giant babies trope, I think it was a good idea to have made them instead of using Bebop and Rocksteady.

Nick Razhar and Tokka weren't even a duo, and I didn't find them as memorable. They didn't have much character development either despite being threats.

FW versions are king in my book, hands down. Great designs, cool voices, actually competent and I found their chemistry to be pretty good. That moment when Tokka was caught by Dirk Savage and screamed for help, while Razhar remarked how he lost his only friend in the world, actually gave me the feels.

Works for me. Rare example of continuity, too. :tlol:

I love that they look exactly like the toys (a somewhat uncommon thing) but they're fairly shallow characters.

While I do think more old characters should have been used, that was a problem throughout the entire shows run, not just the last two seasons. Most characters only appeared for a small handful of episodes, 1 or 2 at best. The original cartoon never gave characters a lot of episodes outside the main villains.

Yep, they were pretty close to the Toys.

http://www.thetechnodrome.com/images...zar/tokka1.jpg

http://www.poeghostal.com/wp-content...and_rahzar.jpg

I think making the cartoon versions look like their toys was probably more intentional rather than unintentional.

I'm glad they appeared at all.

I'm still bugged to this day that Pizzaface, Wyrm and several others never got an epsiode. Scumbug and Antrax also should have gotten an intro episode before they appeared in Season 7. Especially Scumbug since he apparently met the Turtles off-screen.

Not a soul thought otherwise.

It's an obvious statement to make but we all know the Fred Wolf cartoon was rarely in touch with the look or marketing of Playmates toys. During the show's run there were view times characters were used in the cartoon that came directly from a toy Playmates wanted to market or the way it looked.

Did Shredder ever release mutagen to a zoo?

Not Shredder directly but Bebop and Rocksteady did, Hence Donatello holds Shredder responsible 2 seasons later.

Which episode was that?

Planet of the Turtleoids

If anything they gave 'Rahzar' too much character development in Nick, starting off as a martial arts Chuck Norris look-alike celebrity, mutating into a dog, and then into a skeletal wolf that's literally 'Rahzar' in name only. I mean, call him what you like... but he just wasn't Rahzar. I mean, sure, we're used to it now, but they honestly could have called him Wolfesbaine or Skelewolf or whatever, and we wouldn't have noticed the difference. Sure, Bradford and Rahzar were both wolves, but they couldn't have been more different. A bulky savage brute in armor compared to a sleek skeletal werewolf ninja. Honestly could have had an all new name and not one person (except maybe Cybercubed) would have demanded this wolf be named Rahzar just because a previous incarnation already made a mutant wolf.

If it's one thing I kinda didn't like about the Nick show was giving some completely different characters the names of older characters that have nothing to do with them just for the hell of it. The worst offenders were Rahzar, Chrome Dome, Hun and the Neutrinos. Hell, I'm surprised they didn't just call Karai Scale Tale and maybe mutate Shinigami into a mole and call her Dirtbag just so that the guys at Nick could be like 'see? see? Another 80's reference!!' Hell, mutate Casey into Groundchuck and then double Ice Cream Kitty into Scratch while you're at it.

To be honest, now that I thought about it.. I am 100% honestly surprised Mikey didn't call Snake Karai Scale Tail. It's exactly the kind of thing Nick would have done. Hell, they could have gone all the way and say Karai was nicknamed 'The Lotus Blossom' back in Japan and say Shinigami's nickname was 'Ninjara' just to cover all their bases.

Nick's Rahzar is the best developed Rahzar because he now has a backstory and character rather than...just being a dumb infant mutant wolf (Movie 2), or just being a one-off guest character, as much as I liked him in his 1 ep. They basically took a 1 dimensional character and gave him an actual backstory with Chris Bradford. I can see why they didn't have Tokka on the Shredder minion list because he and Slash would be too similar nowadays. Having two mutant Turtles with spikey shells is overkill.

Nick's Chrome Dome is exactly what Chrome Dome is. A robot who looks like Shredder or an Elite Guard. What else is Chrome Dome supposed to be? He's a robot.

I do agree on Neutrinos (obviously, those were just 3 robot drones), and Hun was too fundamentally different although they kept his rivalry with Casey.

Overall though with few exceptions new series always change characters from past series. Rat King especially is a drastically different character every time we see him. 4kids was a Bishop clone, in Nick he was Dr. Falco, in IDW he's an Immortal God, etc. Rat King is proof you can do the same character in so many different ways.

I love Rat King's real name in the Nick series, always reminds me of that character from Star Fox.

I'm still slightly disappointed Groundchuck and Dirtbag never appeared in the Nick cartoon. I know if they appeared they would look totally different than we know them, and probably act completely different...but it would have been interesting to see.

I don't miss them much.

I'm more bothered by the other gang members that were mutated alongside Rocksteady/Beebop are never mentioned or given any explanation to what happened to them, they even had cool designs.


At least Wyrm got that 5 second appearance in the commercial, I count that commercial as canon to the OT. Hell that commercial would also gives dirtbag another appearance if we want to count it as canon.

Pizzaface I can live without, so gruesome, I don't even know why I owned the toy.

Scumbug and Anthrax worked fine without an intro episode but yeah an episode would've been nice.

You're forgetting Fugitoid who had a figure early on and there were plenty of Fugitoid like episodes with generic robots, so if they had only changed one of those robots name to Fugitoid it would've given him a nice appearance since one of those generic robot episodes had a similar enough story to Fugitoid.

What makes these characters not having a second appearance or a first appearance hurt is that we had so many generic episodes where they could've easily promoted the toyline in them.

Fugitoid could have been made a Neutrino, and we would have that 20-25 years earlier.

You don't remember "The Secret Ingredient"?

https://orig00.deviantart.net/98d2/f...es-d9bpsk4.png

:)

It just wasn't Rahzar. Intelligence aside (wether dumb in the movie or smarter in the cartoon) he's supposed to be a mutated wolf, not a mutated human, and definitely not Chuck Norris. That's like making the Turtles cool surfer dudes that turned into mutant turtles. Again, Chris' second design was such a dramatic departure from Rahzar that you could have called him Wolfesbaine or something and no one would have noticed.

Nick's Chrome Dome could have looked like a more updated version of... Chrome Dome, and not like Chris Bradford. And no, he looked Shredder-ish, but not like an Elite Guard. How could he? He was created in the 80's show in which there were no Elite Guards.

In what episode was that "Secret Ingredient"

It's fan art.

The action figure looked cool.l

Wow, that's great fan art. It looks exactly like a still from the FW series.