Did Splinter mutate the turtles?
 

I think someone on here mentioned this before, but it looks like Splinter is actually causing the turtles mutation in the opening sequence. I never looked for myself until I actually watched it frame by frame last night.

Splinters eyes are red for a split second and he's holding a container of mutagen that doesn't appear broken or cracked. Then his hands appear as if he is setting the turtles down, not picking them up.

I guess it doesn't matter all that much if he did cause their mutation, but I'm wondering about the red eyes since he's always been under control by the Rat King when he has red eyes like that. But the Rat King doesn't show up for years, so I'm not sure why his eyes are red.

I think it would be really cool if the turtles found out he did it on purpose one episode. I don't think they'd be angry or upset because they got to have their lives, but it would be interesting.

Splinter the mad scientist... I like it. Donatello had to get that personality trait from somebody, I guess!

It is an interesting idea, but I think the intro just establishes the origin in a nano second Aliena. Judging by the intro and the origin in Rise of the Turtles, Splinter is responsible for mutating them like in the Fred Wolf show. The intro here just wants to show Splinter is who assisted in the mutation and raised them into the teenagers they are now.

I don't get why Splinter's eyes are red unless it's too set up the darkness within the sewers at the start of the intro. Before they start using their weapons in the intro, there's a primary black background, possibly using red as it's easy to catch with black.

Interesting idea. Not sure what the implications of it would be though.

It'd be thinking far too much on it, but I guess you could say Renet perhaps?

Possibly a time travel paradox - the turtles are needed to save reality at some point in the distant future, and Renet arranges for someone to go back in time and force splinter to actively mutate the turtles (maybe send the Rat king back or a member of the Pantheon?)

That would almost certainly be giving the show too much credit for planning That far ahead and hinting so subtly at it, but its a cool observation :)

I'd wondered that in the past, the hand motion looks odd, though I've figured maybe it looked better in the intro going that direction then the reverse. Never really paid attention to the eyes though.

Really if he mutated them on purpose while already mutated himself, then I'd think their own mutations would have come out weirder if their last prior contact was a mutated rat-man. That...would be... different. lol

It would be a interesting idea. In the mirage comics, they were train specifically to carry out Splinter's revenge against Shredder so I can imagine as a idea that he mutate the turtles to create minions/underlings in guise as "children".

It would something that Shredder can use to manipulate one of them in order to get him on his side or create mutiny.

I kind want to see this now. Not in this show but maybe in something else with a dark tone of a moral gray cloud of ambiguity, because Splinter was a ninja assassin that killed people so he should be written as a dark character (not as a villain but more like Daredevil) and with the turtles written as light characters because they are basically children so that they should have a bit of a innocence in them to balance it out. For Splinter, it would be a different take on him that we haven't seen in a while.

Man Tarris, we so think alike. I was kind of thinking about time travel where he was forced to mutate them to make the future work out, but I do not want to speculate too much after what happened with Dark Raph, so I left it out. :P

Haha! That's never struck me as odd before at all. That's awesome you brought that up but I'm pretty sure it's just to express their origin right quick. We all know the origin story from the first episode and Splinter does not put them in the mutagen at all.

Perhaps Splinter didn't want to be alone and 'caused their mutation. Either way, this may be too deep of a storyline for TMNT.

I actually liked the concept of the original tmnt. Were Splinter raised the turtles to be assassins. I don't like this dark Splinter idea though, way too exaggerated. A flawed Splinter would be best. The characters need to be like onions, they need multiple layers.

I always speculated that the whole "Splinter raising the turtles to be killers'' is also one of the reasons for Raphael's berserker side. Raphael said himself that "Even in practice he has the urge to kill''. So I assumed the lessons to kill alongside of his mutation was the reason for his enhanced bloodlust.

It would have been a clever twist... If the opening didn't reveal it in every episode...

Well I guess with Splinter that his flaw is that he sometimes forget that they're still impressional kids, because he is so laser focus in turning them into harden warriors.

I wonder if instead of Splinter raising them from infancy, they met by chance/circumstance rather then destiny when Splinter was sold into TCRI by the foot clan, and they escape together and been hiding out ever since.

Or maybe without their knowledge, Splinter burn that place to the ground, because he knew that they were secret illegal lab experiments that TCRI didn't want any one to know, especially the government,and he only did it so that he can cover their tracks and make it possible for them live in peace for good, but at the cost it destroyed any chance of finding of who created them and why they were created.

He's like Rick Grimes when it comes to his kids.

When growing up and watching the cartoon, my cousin used to tease me that Splinter wasn't always so kind, that in reality, when he was human, he was probably buying the baby turtles to raise as food. I don't know how true this would actually have been, but it could be an interesting topic in future TMNT programming to bring up.

I noticed that in the intro too, interesting idea. I think there may actually be something up with how they actually mutated, because I always thought that even the sequence of them getting mutated in Rise of The Turtles was kinda vague.

http://i.imgur.com/XtBKPXb.gif

"Oops."

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...4f6ccf9d01.jpg

LOL! Funny, Indigo. :tlol:

You're from Texas...

And I was starting to like Indigo, now I want to snuff the life out of that person with love and friendship.

Looking more and more like someone's overstayed their welcome.

But Splinter went to New York to hide from Shredder.

Well, the origin story in the first episode says otherwise.

Does it? Is Splinter not not just telling them that he went to a pet shop and bought four baby turtles when he was attacked and mutated? In the episode I don't think he mentions why he was in New York or the Shredder.