Fred Wolf crossovers and continuity thread
 

Since this has been discussed in multiple threads for years, I instead think it's time to start an official thread.

Here, we can discuss the Fred Wolf crossovers (Turtles Forever, Wormquake, Transdimensional Turtles and Wanted Bebop and Rocksteady) and continuity (since it didn't affect the 4 Kids or Nickelodeon series that much).

When do they take place?

How to explain what happens to the Technodrome?

How do they fit into the seasons?

How does Krang's origin as a Kraang affect the continuity?

You want a simple apologist answer or the real answer?

First the apologist answer.
Officially only 10 dimensions exist in the Nickelodeon cartoon, period. Since two spots are taken up by hell and a version of Dimension X, it's safe to assume not every single individual continuity is represented as a dimension. Between that and the blatant contradictions, the best possible answer is that it's simply not in continuity with the FW cartoon, at all. Instead the "FW" turtles you see in the Nick cartoon aren't actually the FW turtles, rather a general meshed reflection of the FW era with the similar versions (Archie and the video games) blended in. So for example, if the "4Kids" turtles had appeared, there wouldn't have been any mention of how the Utrom homeworld is distinct from Dimension X and not taken over by the Kraang, because it wouldn't really be the 4Kids Turtles but rather near duplicates with a slightly different history.

But the real answer is far less fun.
The writers of the Nick show didn't care. They either didn't know, remember or care that Krang used to look like a lizard or that he stole the Technodrome from the Predator's botched clone. And since the target audience were little kids who probably never watched the FW show and likely won't care enough to seek it out, why even bother with such details? It's not like the FW writers cared either, there episodes of that show with internal continuity errors.

Anyway, I seriously hope we've seen the last of these things. All they do is try to pander to an ever shrinking segment of fanbase but end up pissing it off instead. All because the Super Friends-like trash relic isn't "being treated with the dignity it deserves".

Although I don't believe that the 1987 turtles seen in Turtles Forever are the real turtles, just as the Mirage turtles in that movie aren't the real ones, I do think that if Turtles Forever were to be placed somewhere in the Original Cartoon timeline, it would be after season 10.

This is for a number of reasons: (currently just stating one, might add more later)

1. The technodrome gets upgraded at the end of the movie and goes back to the 80s universe.

Unless Shredder and Krang deliberately changed it back, which they probably wouldn't due to how powerful Ch'rell's model was, there would logically be an upgraded technodrome throughout the show's run, which there wasn't.

I think the most feasible scenario is that Shredder and Krang managed to finally repair the technodrome (after season 10) and brought it back to earth, where it once again began causing havoc and triggered the events of Turtles Forever to take place.

Everything is in continuity. Ninja Turtles probably has the greatest mythos and multiverse of nearly all of fiction.

You're lucky this is the internet and nobody can physically give you the flaming wedgie you so richly deserve. :tlol:

I just think it’s stupid that they even wrote the ten dimensions thing. Ugh. Why would you put yourself in a corner like that. There is obviously far more than ten. My head canon in that “dimensions” in nick are different from alternate realities.

I think the writers of the Nickelodeon cartoon did care, and didn't outright contract contradict the 1987 cartoon in their portrayal of it.

Throughout both of their crossovers, there are many references scattered throughout which the writers would've only known about had they done some research in the cartoon.

For example:

1. Shredder uses Chrome Dome Shampoo in the Big Blow Out.

2. 80's Leonardo alludes to the events of "Michelangelo's Birthday" when he refers to Shredder having turned them into balloons.

3. 80's Bebop refers to the turtles as having seen through their disguises of "old ladies". A clear jab at the old lady disguises that the duo occasionally used in the cartoon. (The Gang's All Here, Four Turtles and a Baby).

And by the way, How does Krang having a lizard form at one point in time, or having stolen his technodrome from Bezerkro in one point of time, contradict him being a cousin of Kraang-Subprime and being related to the Kraang?

While I highly doubt we are going to get another proper crossover with the 1987 turtles and Rise, your reaction would be the first that I'd want to see if we did :tlol:

Here’s what I believe:

Transdimensional Turtles takes place some time in season 2.

The Wanted B& R 3 parter has to be from season 3 since the technodrome was in the earths core at the exact same place (and it was in dimension X in transdimensional, I guess that season 2 place looks like the place it was at). Since bebop and rocksteady mentioned the old lady disguises, I figure it’s after The Gangs All Here as there was an old lady disguise in that episode.

Turtles Forever happens after Divide and Conquer. When lord dregg was defeated, he was pushed into the portal that led to the technodrome. I believe he survived that and summoned his microbots to rebuild the technodrome and make it work again. Shredder and Krang eventually take over the technodrome again and the turtles forever events happen later.

I find your theory about Trans-Dimensional Turtles quite interesting for one reason, there was no Shredder.

1987 Shredder and Krang worked together almost all the time, except for in season 2 where Shredder was more of a pest to Krang and his plans, than anything else.

If there was one time where a story with only Krang as the villain would be appropriate, season 2 would be it.

Yes, there's inconsistencies because they didn't care enough about continuity and didn't think anyone besides the hardcore fandom would care about those small details but it's all canon, the OT already has enough inconsistencies with stuff like two Atlantis so it's something that comes along with the territory of long running animated shows and it's up to the fandom to fix it through fanon retcons and headcanons. The "not canon", "it's a cartoon" or "the writers didn't intend that/messed up" are lazy answers and aren't allowed here.

First we need to make note of the inconsistencies because frankly I don't remember all of them:
Krang being a lizard? We've debated this tons of times, it's never stated it's his actual body, just a body.
10 dimensions? how is that mentioned in 2012? Maybe the kraang only know of 10 dimensions but there are more they haven't discovered yet.
How they get the technodrome? Did they make it in 2012 for the first time and it has an origin in the OT? I don't remember but I'm sure someone can think of an explanation.

After Turtles Forever we all worked out on where to put it and the general consensus here is that it takes place somewhere around Season 4 as it's the best fit. Why don't the turtles mention 2k3? Well they rarely mentioned other events. Why isn't the technodrome all upgraded? It's the OT, it makes perfect sense for Shredder/Krang to have re-downgraded the Technodrome to the beast that they loved and didn't like the fancy upgrades or the fact that Ch'rell messed it up. Why were the FW turtles silly? Krang's giggle ray. etc

Turtles Forever and even the 2012 crossover don't make much sense post-Red Sky episodes. What we did see in 2012 is that the timelines are not linear and space-time is a tricky thing even in the turtleverse as we saw how the ending of Wormquake relates to Transdimensional Turtles which actually helps to patch away any inconsistencies.

Yes, this also means that technically these two events also happened in Mirage during issue 1, we just didn't see it back then. I'd guess transdimensional turtles happens first hence they're even grouchier when Turtles Forever happens since they have no idea what's going on with this. We just never see it in the actual comic pages but technically they happened off panel. Sure that kind of ruins TMNT #1 and the pacing of that adventure since what is a puny human Shredder after saving the multiverse but it's best not to think about it together, it's more of a timeline aspect.

I do think bigger problems are the utrom world, krang being related to krang prime, etc since now they all need to fit together. At one point in the fandom it was also a popular theory that there was only one Renet in the multiverse but that actually causes more problems so let's not get into that in this thread.

As I said above, I think the TMNT franchise may very well have the deepest lore and greatest mythos in any body of fiction. On the surface it's a very simple franchise, but if you dig deep enough all the different fabrics of each universe can tie into each other seamlessly and the intricate plotlines and characterisation of every series melds together.

TMNT might very well be deeper than Star Trek, Star Wars and DC and Marvel combined. It's probably the greatest fictional body of work ever written and conceived by mankind.

Laughable. Lie down before you hurt yourself.

He's trolling, Leo. Or his version of it, anyway. This is Cubed, after all...

Clearly, but the quality has severely dipped in recent months.

Either he got a promotion at work or found himself some snooch. I'm glad for him either way, but I'd like to see more of the OG Cubed. Recent efforts have been lacking.

The clones developed lizardoid-like boides but at that time, but that doesn't mean Krang had such a body.

And this is why you're not fun at parties... :roll:

When he gets like that don't go near him, just don't even look in his direction. :lol:

While I agree that neatoman is lazy when it comes to the FW series it's interesting you mention the Atlantis episodes. I kind of feel based on how they're presented that the Euro Atlantis episode was a fake and the real one was in Season 7. Am I wrong to believe that? Is one Atlantis felt more the real one than the other?

I watched both Atlantis episodes a long time ago, I thought they could possibly be the same one?

We never got to the see the inside of Atlantis in the European Vacation episodes. It could've still been the same one from season 7, with all the Atlantians just staying inside while it emerged to the surface for a short while.

First off, **** the notion that pointing out flawed writing is lazy, it's not lazy when it's true. Secondly, I did come up with an excuse even if I don't actually agree it's a good thing. Bad writing is bad writing, period. If you observe a clear major contradiction, a massive hole in the structure, then the narrative is broken nonsense.

If you need to put the movie or show on pause, go and think about it, come up with plausibilities, bend the defination of what has been established, add information that was never even presented and effectively rewrite the narrative yourself so that it makes any sense, guess what? The thing was almost certainly either a **** up or not meant to be taken seriously. Trust on this, it's far better to accept these possibilities than try doing the writer's job for them.

And if you did bother jump through those hoops and ended up coming up with something that isn't overthought nonsense that makes even less sense than what you tried to fix, congrats. You are officially a better/more caring writer than the person paid to write the thing in the first place. Then again, your skills would be of better use making something new rather than plug holes in a piece of entertainment structured like swiss cheese.

I'm not saying it isn't lazy writing, I said it's lazy answers for the fandom to do. Yeah, we have to fix plotholes with overthought nonsense but that's what fandoms are for, try to find make the stories that we love work instead of just saying it's "not canon".

The writing wasn't lazy and I have pointed to a couple of writers who have disagreed with you about that. It wasn't the show YOU wanted it to be, that doesn't make it lazy. Every TV show has its own nonsense storytelling depending on whether you like it. I think the IDW idea of the TMNT being reincarnated is more ridiculous than anything the Fred Wolf series did but I don't respond to every Fred Wolf related post slagging off the show. The simple fact is you can't identify with the show the same way I'm not rushing to defend the IDW comic and that's okay but to slag off the show's writing as rubbish when it has shown many times it isn't isn't just an insult to fans like me but the writers as well. I would think before saying stuff like that in the future. I wish I could get away with slagging off other iterations of TMNT without the mods intervening. :roll:

Great minds think alike ;)

I think they do the Fred Wolf thing because I think it's not just little kids they are marketing towards anymore, otherwise including it would not make sense. I think they have been slowly tapping into the older market, since they seem to be the demographic that will introduce TMNT to their kids and seem to keep the franchise 'alive' during low periods when kids lose interest and there is a 'dry' spell between shows. This is just theory of course, but I think it's why they do these crossovers.

Personally however, I think you do have a point there on the last bit though. I always thought that the crossovers were fanwank and didn't really add much of value (except to establish that Krang is literally related to the Kraangs, that was cool) and ended up taking away time and effort that could have gone to developing stronger plots and better characters that would stand the test of time, rather then a very dated reference that appeals to just one narrow set of people. I think this would better appeal to a broader adult TMNT audience, and would be worth tons more then a lazy cameo.

Yeah, if you count the cameos in season 2 then the Nick show has 6 episodes featuring the FW turtles (7 if you count Tiger Claw's flashback). It might have been fine if they only did that one cameo in season 2, the crossover in season 4 or the three-parter in season 5 but all of them together just feels a bit... cheap? I guess? It really wore out the hook.

I guess you could make the excuse that it's set-up and pay-off but it's a really weird thing to focus on all things considered. Together the FW Turtles show up in more episodes than the following characters (all of whom either appear in multiple episodes already or were clearly set up to come back):

1. Metalhead
2. Murakami
3. Hun
4. Snakeweed
5. The mutant mushrooms
6. Rat King
7. Muckman
8. Alopex
9. Savanti Romero
10. The Creep
11. Pizza Face
12. The Sparrow Wizard
13. The Mutant Squirrels

That's just a small sample, there are actually more. And these were all set up as part of the main world, yet they were deemed less important than the fanwank?

Yeah, it's insane what they were doing. A lot of these were original characters, yet a show from 30 years ago gets a lot more love? Maybe when the ratings started going downhill, they thought another cameo was the antidote...

Yeah I realise the ratings for the Nickelodeon channel has been dropping dramatically over the past decade and this show was just but one of the shows suffering. Bad ratings are still bad ratings though...

The funny thing about the crossovers is that the mid season 2 cameo were the second highest rated episodes of that season, the one crossover where the FW turtles had cameos that could have easily been edited out. When it came to the actual crossovers the one is season 4 had really mediocre ratings and the ones in season 5 did worse.

Just a little ratings trivia, the highpoint was Vengeance is Mine and the lowpoint was When Worlds Collide. The Mad Max arc and the classic monsters arc might have done worse as there aren't any official rating released.

So it is probably showing that the crossovers had limited power to draw in viewers. That's kind of interesting. I think it probably also accounts for the box office failure of the OOTS movie, as it looked they'd began to bank a little too hard on FW being 'enough' to make fans wanna see it.

I wonder if the ViM episode good ratings is a sign that people want stuff like that, not goofy crossovers or a cheap gimmick. Stuff were the baddies are scarily and competently good at what they are doing and the heroes could be believed to be in danger, A.K.A good writing.

It would be interesting to see what the Monsters or Mad Max episodes' ratings were. I imagine the Mad Max stuff would be seen as hardcore 'downer' episodes, so probably pretty low and maybe not as well liked.

I think the reason the crossovers failed to generate ratings is that they kind of rely on fan interest. The problem with that is obviously age, the average person who grew up watching the FW show were pushing 40 by the time the last one came out, they're typically not care. Banking on them waking up sunday morning to watch a cartoon just because it guest stars voice actors from some show they watched 30 years ago, it's kind of thinking the JLA movie would have done better if it was titled Super Friends.

I like how you frequently compare Fred Wolf tmnt to super friends, like its your no.1 go to comparison :tlol:

Now I wanna see some fan art of the two groups meeting.

Yes, or that people even watch television the same way as they did 30 years ago. Ratings are an out dated way of tracking a shows popularity in my opinion. My kids going to be 3 this May and has never even watched a show that was airing live/day of. The problem with that is by the time you watch the show. Maybe months or a year after originally released it could have already been canceled. I’m fine with only Netflix but others in my fam like Hulu and Amazon. But we haven’t watched basic tv channels in eight years. When 2012 was on I watched either Netflix for episodes or got DVDs.

More and more people are show waiting the same as trade waiting in comics. Trying to watch a program when it first shows is just another stressor for families with kids (target demo) to fit into a busy schedule.

Yeah I know but I can't help but see the parallels in terms of origin, relation to source material, pop culture signifigance and how fans perceive it.

As much as our opinions are different, I can't help but agree that the two are very similar.

It's not even an accurate comparison. :o

https://i.imgur.com/ldOnqzp.gif

Justice League
 

Speaking of the Justice League, who came up with the idea of renaming them the Superfriends? Was it a legal issue? Or because they added new members?

Officially it's because the producers felt Justice League was too "serious" of a title, if that sounds like a stupid reason to you then it probably was a stupid reason. Then again, this is Hanna Barbera we're talking about here, they were known for doing stupid things to established franchises. Do you know what they did when they got the license to the Thing from the Fantastic Four? They turned him into a regular human teenager who transformed into the Thing at will (which goes against the point of the Thing), then smashed it together with an unrelated Flintstones cartoon to hit 13 episodes.

When you ask if it's a legal issue, that could actually be the real reason. Filmation produced 3 episodes of a Justice League cartoon in 1967, a mere 6 years before Super Friends. So it's possible that Filmation might still have had the trademark on titling a TV show "Justice League". I don't know what American trademark law was like back then but a quick google search reveals that these days a trademark expires after 10 years.

I have watched all three episodes now, and they have many members and allies missing, including Batman. So maybe there was some dispute between Filmation Studios and Hanna-Barbera Studios during the late 1960's and early 1970's (even if there were some years between the cartoons).

Another theory is that when the Superfriends debuted in September 1973, the military forces of the USA had just left North Vietnam in January the same year. The name Justice League of America wasn't the coolest thing in the world (even if you could drop America from the title).

They most likely didn't use Batman in the Filmation JLA shorts because Filmation was preparing a solo Batman cartoon for the following year, "The Adventures of Batman". The skits were also repackaged in "The Batman/Superman Hour" and later as "Batman With Robin, The Boy Wonder". So they probably felt like that was a better use of their "Batman" resources, and saw no reason to put him into the JLA shorts.

I have to say that isn't a bad workaround although yeah I can see why purists would hate that idea. Anyway why are we talking about a totally unrelated cartoon series. This is TMNT! :o

TMNT just didn't pop up from out of nowhere in May 1984. The stories were inspired by over 50 years of American hero and superhero comics and cartoons (I'm not only talking about their origins being inspired by Daredevil).

That is true but I'm not convinced (yet) SuperFriends was responsible for anything.

They're meant to be. No production comapny would spend money on a plot like:

–Let's produce a crossover where the 4 Kids turtles team up with a parody of the Fred Wolf Turtles