Why were there so many hallucination episodes?
 

So I'm rewatching season 4 and I just got through Journey to the Center of Mikey's Mind. That episode got me thinking, why were there so many episodes featuring hallucinations or illusions?

Fungus Humungous, Mazes & Mutants, In Dreams, Vision Quest, The Deadly Venom and Journey to the Center of Mikey's Mind all featured the turtles dealing with illusions or something similar. Giving us an average of one per season.

I suppose over all it wasn't that many, though 3 listed were all in the same season (3)? Though one was dreaming (although they could all be in the same dream) and there wasn't much hallucinating in the Deadly Venom.

Oh, there was Darket Plight too.

I mean, it's a thing. The Mirage comics & 4kids did it. Allows for wild stuff to happen with some sort of justification, I guess. I like it.

For the obvious reason that it allows them to do crazy and wacky things that you can't do in a "regular" episode. You can tell how much the writers/animators were having fun making those eps.