What, If Any, Basic TMNT Knowledge Were You Ignorant Of?
 

I can think of two off-hand: I thought the comic book was over with by the time the OT came out, and I believed Usagi was a TMNT character. (Which makes sense, because I was never into comic books as a boy.)

Back in the days before I joined here, I often wondered why the Turtles were all "dressed like Raph" on the NES game's cover. I knew nothing about the Mirage books then. To me TMNT comics were Archie....well and I knew of the Image books...but passed on them because of the over the top violence.

LOL I thought the same thing when I saw the cover to that game :tlol:

I also had no knowledge of the comics

Uhhh, hard to say. One thing that comes to mind is when I discovered the comics as a kid, I was SUPER confused. I bought an issue of Archie, Vol. 1 & the Image series all at once, thinking they were the same series. The issue numbers corresponded so I of course assumed they were in continuity with eachother (not that I thought in those terms, haha). I was ridiculously confused. In one they're in a maze with robot foot soldiers, the next they're time traveling with a child and feeding an obese Superman, then suddenly Donny is a cyborg, Raph is Casey, Splinter's a bat, Casey has a chainsaw... I never picked up the comics again until I was an adult. Hahaha.

Same as above about TMNT(1989) NES. It was confusing! I too passed on Image to this day because of the over the top violence that does not seem like the Ninja Turtles I know. I remember the cover #3. I bought thinking it was Armaggon on the cover,but I was unfortuantely wrong.

Ditto on Usagi! I was blown away when I learned he was not a TMNT but was the lead of his own set of characters.

Krang not a comic character at first. I knew better by age 11 just like the above two.

Almost forgot,I thought Eastman and Laird that was stamped on the Archie TMNT Adventures comics was the production compan that made the comics for Archie not knowing they were the co-creators during the original run. Not until 1998 when I finished my Archie set did I realize who they were.

I thought Karai was Shredder's step daughter anywhere she was involved in TMNT apparently she is not in the Mirage/Image Comics. I only learned this LAST WEEK!

I erroneousl thought that the source material (Mirage's b&w comic) was certainly superior... until I bought an issue. :tgrumble:

I didn't know about the mirage comics. It wasn't until I saw Turtles Forever that I soon after found them and read them.

They all wore red bandannas and they had tails.

Splinter raised the Turtles specifically to kill the Shredder, and that guy died by the end of the first comic. I remember being so shocked about that.

How exactly does one pronounce the name Dan Berger?

Or Steve Lavigne, for that matter?

Bur-gur and Luh-veen I think.

It's another topic for another thread, but I can agree with you that those early issues were, in Internet parlance, meh. But, I like early episodes of the Simpsons because they're so raw, so maybe I ought to take another look.

Dan told me to pronounce it like "burger" or like whatever language it came from "bear-guh". I'm certain Steve's is pronounced the same as Avril's despite the added G.

Why'd ya have to go and make things so complicated?

I never actually watched the OT growing up, just the movies, primarily the first movie, and when I started to catch TMNT on TV again, it was the 2003 series. So I was always under the impression it was a somewhat serious show with bits of humor thrown in to lighten the mood every once in awhile (since it was, after all, targeted towards kids). I've actually been pretty weirded out to realize how many fans prefer a lighter, more comical portrayal as opposed to darker, more mature themes.

I thought the Utroms were Krang, or at least he was one of them.

The first movie made me realize the Turtles were very different from the cartoons. When I saw the movies I figured the comics would have human Foot Soldiers and Splinter would be mutated from a rat.

If anything the first movie was almost like our gateway drug to the Mirage comics.

I thought that the Foot Soldiers from the OT were humans at first -- which freaked me out a little when, in my first episode I'd ever seen, Mikey backflipped away from their laser beams and two melted each other to slag. Probably why I'm so fascinated with the special death animation of plasma weapons in the Fallout series... albeit, closer to one's fascination with horror films than anything else.

Oh wow. I actually totally agree with this. I love Mirage later down the line, but the enjoyment I get out of the first dozen or so issues is definitely of the "because it's so raw/aw, they were having fun" variety.

Uhhh, anyway, I obviously didn't discover the source material for a while as a kid, although I'd read the first several issues (my parents actually bought it) before the Fred-Wolf toon had ended. So I was at least clued into the black-and-white, all red masks, Shredder dead in the first issue stuff earlier than most.

Other than that, I 'unno. I also thought Usagi was a Turtles character for a long time.

Oh, and I played the SNES Tournament Fighters for years without knowing where Armaggon, War and Karai came from. Karai was actually the first one who's origin I discovered. I knew hardly anything about Adventures until I became a fan again in my late teens.

For a long time I didn't know who or what the Utroms were. I liked the word, though, and I still do. Like little squidgy pink umlauts.

The first time I saw Usagi was on his own #10 cover with Leonardo back in the late '80s. At the time I thought it was some foreign TMNT comic. It wasn't until I bought and read it that I realized otherwise. Then of course I got Turtle Soup and there he was again.
Also, I always pronounced Steve Lavigne's name incorrectly until Avril became popular.

For me, it would be that when I first saw on the OT that the TMNT were based on comic book characters, they were based on older versions that inspired the TMNT, and that Archie was the only comic volume ever released and that of course Fred Wolf was the original version of the franchise. I also thought the movies were made independent of everything and just a fresh take and not based off of the Mirage comics. I originally thought "Mirage Studios" was just a production company that worked with Fred Wolf and Golden Harvest that supported their productions by providing stuff such as character designs and props. This was when I was about five, six, seven years old.