Plotholes
 

So there's probably no secret that the FW cartoon has a lot continuity errors and plotholes (which is somewhat understandable given the production).

But there is one plothole in particular I find odd, why did Shredder forget where the turtles live?
In some episodes (I'm thinking about the body swap episode with Splinter and Shredder in particular) Shredder is unaware of the turtle lair's location, which I guess is the reason he don't just send his henchmen there to eliminate them.

However, Shredder did know where Hamato Yoshi was hiding in the first place, that's why he dumped mutagen down there. So why would he convienently forget where the turtles live when the entire premise of them being mutant turtles rests on him knowing where they live? If the turtle lair is somehow a different storm drain from the one Hamato Yoshi was originally hiding in, why is that Shreddder could track down Hamato Yoshi to a random storm drain in NYC of all places in the world, but he can't locate another storm drain of similar size in the same city?

That's a good question. Yeah he was in the lair when he was in Splinter's body in The Old Switcheroo. But he couldn't keep track of the route there with the towel over his eyes. Another thing I wonder is if he had the towel on his eyes when he left the lair to go back to the lab to get back in his own body. If not, he should know the way to the lair.

Here's a possible answer. In The Missing Map, the turtles had a map to the lair and they said it's because they used to have trouble finding it because they were new there. Maybe Shredder just forgot where it is too.

Shredder was also in the lair in Cowabunga, Shredhead, but except for only for a brief period while Splinter was doing a command test, he was acting as Michelangelo. I'm surprised Baxter didn't give Shredder or his goons help for determining the lair location as he successfully kidnapped Splinter in Return of the Shredder in the lair by himself.

I assume that before the series as Saki/Yoshi escaped to New York that somewhere underground chasing each other, both lost course of each other after passing certain sewer routes, with Saki ending up in the Technodrome and Yoshi of course ending up what would become the Turtles' Lair. Shredder or Krang never ended up in the Turtles' Lair over the course of the series by finding it themselves. Its a shame this never happened since this could have led to a big finale, though at least 4kids shows the impact of a destroyed Turtles' Lair.

Here's one that occurred to me just last year: Throughout most of the series run, the Ninja Turtles' goal was to capture Shredder, Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady so they can be brought to justice and in the episode "Pirate Radio" they actually manage to achieve this goal during a fight with Tin Face and his moronic mutants on a boat out in the New York harbor. So what do our heroes promptly do with their arch nemesis and his flunkies? That's right, send them back to Krang in the friggin Technodrome. Somebody really dropped the ball on that one!!! :trolleye:

And how did Yoshi get money for a plane trip to the USA? And why did Saki follow him along? Yoshi was blacklisted and could't stop Saki from leading the foot clan in Japan. Ironically, Shredder stalking Splinter all the way to the USA ended up in the mutagen getting dropped on the Turtles. Talk about sabotaging yourself, Shredder :lol:

And what happened to the human foot clan? It's like Shredder told the Clan to **** off after he met Krang since "Hmm since I have all of this alien technology now, I no longer need the Foot. I can rule not only japan but also the world!". And speaking of that... in "The Missing Map" episode, Splinter has documents with him that prove he's the true leader of the Foot... why did he get kicked out, then? And what's stopping him from going back? And what Foot Clan? At that point, what was the Foot Clan? A bunch of robotic foot soldiers and Bebop and Rocksteady?

There's way too many plotholes and inconsistencies in the FW series to list them all in one post only. But another one that comes up to my mind is Tempestra being in "Night of the Rogues". I can let Scumbug and Anthrax slide, but Tempestra?! How could Shredder possibly know of her?

First of all, the place Shredder mutated the Turtles in the sewers was obviously not the same lair Splinter and the Turtles live in normally for the rest of the show.

He didn't? He probably snuck on board the cargo hold.

Isn't that ironic? Shredder created the Turtles his own worst enemy. Also Shredder still clearly wanted to kill Yoshi, that's why when they fight as Splinter/Shredder he tries to kill him especially in the Seasons 1-3 fights they had.

Maybe Tempestra broke free of her computer chip prison and Shredder discovered her? Also Anthrax was unknown to the Turtles, only Scumbug knew them.

The one that bothers me the most is the gang mutants from S1. Shredder even mentions how Beebop and Rocksteady were only the beginning and these new mutants were better or something along those lines only to be forgotten about later. We see one of the mutants become human with the retromutagen gun, so you could assume after the failure of B&R he demutated them all since they were all more trouble than they were worth, however we then see them inside a jail in the technodrome including the demutated gang member as a mutant again meaning the gun didn't actually work or Shredder mutated him back.

In the last episode Divide and Conquer, the turtles use Krang's android body which suddenly had a chip in it that makes the body bigger and it looked like Donatello figured that out from its blueprints. That chip was destroyed way back in season 1 and that got me wondering how did it get another chip?

And how could Donatello and Michelangelo not think that there might have been the possibility of Krang, Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady lurking around the Technodrome at the time?

Why would they be there?

Not saying they would be, but they should have considered the risk. It's not like Krang and Shredder couldn't have fixed the big movable fortress meanwhile. Besides, there were some alien creatures inside the Technodrome. anyway.

Or when Donnie was panicking about the android shrinking to the size of a ping pong ball and exploding, yet it never did. It did shrink but not to that size. The Turtles just pushed Krang's body while it still held Dregg captive and let it explode in the portal.

Funny thing too considering that android was mentioned as indestructible in Divide & Conquer but it did blow up in Krangstein Lives, got zapped apart to sh*t in Pirate Radio, had its arms hacked halfway off by Leo in Super Irma, got its backside controls nearly blown out by Irma shooting it in Shredder Triumphant.. and I'm sure there were other incidents that I cannot remember.

I cannot totally rule it out as indestructible if it managed to get damaged in some way or another nor am
I'm really sure if any of that was anything other than miscommunication or change of writers.

The only one that gets ME is Lotus finding the lair AND blowing a hole in the wall in "Beware the Lotus" and then Shredder never finding it again afterward, despite having a CLEAR way to get there with that sniffing machine. Just- WTF??!! I can excuse him not finding it while in Splinter's body or when he thought he was Mikey, but THAT one is kind of face-palm worthy.

And he DID still have the human Foot, BTW- they just ran all of his "Ninja" businesses.... Duh- would have thought that was obvious.

Speaking of Lotus, why did her personality and motives change between her only two appearences? In the first she's a mercenary hired by Krang, whom later join forces with the turtles for some reason. But in the second one she's all mopey about not feeling like she had a purpose being a ninja in the 1990's.

What happened? If her skills got her a job as a confident mercenary, why is she sad about her skills not having any purpose in the modern world the second time we see her?

The biggest one for me, has always been when Splinter is telling April how they had all become mutated.

He tells her that the mutagen causes whoever touched it to take on the form of the animal they were most recently had contact with. He is holding the turtles so they take human form, and then he says he was most recently in contact with a rat even though we just saw him holding the turtles. So he should have turned into a turtle too.

Yeah that one is really weird. I've read arguments that the reason is the turtles had already started to mutate and therefore the mutagen didn't respond to them as being last thing Yoshi touched, or that Yoshi technically touched the mutagen befor the turtles.

I don't really buy that, for some reason the turtles did not mutate before Yoshi picked them up, in fact the mutation happens right after he picked them up, not just to the turtles but Yoshi as well! This implies it was that touch that caused the mutation, otherwise they would have been mutated before Yoshi opened the door...

It's still a fairly simple scenario to explain. Yoshi steps into the mutagen to pick up the turtles and clean them. Thus, his mutation had already begun before he actually started cleaning the turtles. It just seems to have taken a little while to complete.

#cartoonlogic

^ I'll second that.

Hmm I never thought of it like that, actually does make sense, even though we don't see Yoshi with the rats, he does say he was most recently in contact with the rats.

That, and he was in contact with the turtles often enough before, that they were probably already mutating as well- he was the only other creature they ever had contact with at all.