Official Episode Discussion S2 #12 "Of Rats and Men"

[plastroncafe]

I fail to see how Nick's TMNT isn't thematically dark, regardless of the demographic it's aimed at.

Thus far we've seen:

-A man kidnap and raise his arch-rival's daughter
-The acknowledged burned alive death of Karai's mother and Splinter's wife.
-The dissolving of Timothy, his abduction, and storage in a container which resides in the background of our heroes' home.
-Parasitic mutated squirrels that emerge from their hosts via the alimentary tract
-A man forcibly mutated into a non-mobile creature who is then locked into a closet he can't escape from.

These are twisted and dark things.
We don't need "gore" or "death" for things to be darker. Those aren't the only defining factors of horror. They're just easiest for shock value.