What animal do you think Nick's Splinter resembles most?
 

Not sure exactly what interpretation(s) of TMNT had the 'Splinter doesn't exactly look like a rat' gag, but it's not unprecedented. Someone with Nick's Splinter for their avatar accidentally suggested to me that he looks like a kangaroo. I actually recall thinking that before. His head, especially, is shaped like a kangaroo's. However, the pattern of his fur looks like that of a badger.

What does everyone else think?

The toy looks like a llama fuc*ed a badger.

He looks pretty much like a rat in-show though. An improvement on his typical dog look I think.

Badger:D:D

Kangaroo rat.

Basically Kangaroo Rat, Badger, and Opossum all mutated together with a human.

When I first saw the old toon Splinter back in the early 90's, I thought he looked like a dog until I learned he was a rat. Since then, I never thought of Splinter to look like a different animal again other than a rat, including Nick's Splinter.

When I first saw his design (before the show was out, in toy form) I absolutely hated it and thought it was very ugly and made no sense, but now that I've seen his actually cgi appearance, I little the design a lot. The only thing that annoys me a little is the red/brown on his face, but all in all I think he looks like a rat (how he's supposed to look!) in the show itself. The toy however makes him look horrible.

over time it doesn't bother me so much and I've just accepted it, but yeah he's not very ratlike. I really don't know what they were thinking, rats have a distinct look and it shouldn't be too hard to come up with something that looks like a rat.

The markings have a lot to do with it. If you look for rat pictures online it's hard to find any rat that has markings consistent with Splinter's. I'd love to see some examples though. The only thing I can think of is they designed him to look lik ea brown/black rat but have a white "human beard" and if you look at it you can kind of see that... but it's still confusing.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/a9eb4e490...lqs3o1_500.png

I would say that Splinter's design is one of my biggest disappointments with the series. He looks neat, just not very rat-like.

Heh, please excuse me for plugging my old comic again...

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56...s1-color-1.jpg
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56...ess2-color.jpg
http://oldmanwinters.deviantart.com/...2012-283554742

I thought the toy looked like a llama, but I think the actual model used in the animation gives a somewhat different impression.

He looks reminescent of a Gobo to me!:P

If not that a badger like posters above said comes to mind.

a rat, d'uh!

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/3...6e3e7b24b0.jpg

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/podels/th...hubby_sat1.JPG


Here are two different rats with markings similar to Splinters ;)


How-ever, I read a while back that this new Splinter, is actually based on a very specific asien, tree Rat species. I remember it having a name, I looked it up, and true enough, there was a lot of small Splinters with the white markings and red-brown fur down their backs in a line.
Unfortunately I forgot what the species is called!

But yeah, this Splinter is not just an ordinary brown sewer rat, he is a very specific species of rat you can buy in a pet-store. I'm just believing that he held one of those rats they sold in the shop where he bought the turtles.
I know the show indicated he got the DNA from the rat he almost stepped on, but come on, he didn't even touch it.

Also, havn't seen the action figure of him, but Splinter in motion in the show.. Looks like a rat. His ears are to big for him to be a hamster.

Well I asked for examples and I got some :) Markings look good. I still don't think Nick splinter looks very rat-like his features, and I'd be willing to bet that if you did a blind test that the answers would be quite mixed.

He looks like a doberman to me.

I think he looks like a rat, but then again I've bred rats and seen lots of different markings. That said, I can understand why people would make mistakes when trying to identify what he is supposed to be. The one that confused me the most was his 2007 appearance!

Whenever I see Splinter from the back I always think of him as some kind of bipedal frog with rat ears. I think it's due to the sleekness of the CGI. Other then that he mostly resembles a rat.

Oh and here's a fun little thing I found so that you can compare the coloring of this frog to...http://www.wta.org/hiking-info/natur...g/image_medium
Splinter's toy!http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P1NlZwDund...0/splinter.png

He looks kind of like an alpaca to me.

He looks like a rat to me lol...I love his ears :)

When I first saw his toy design, he looked like a llama crossed with a badger. But in the show, he definitely looks like a rat. I wish the toy looked like he does in the show.