Official Episode Discussion S2 #19 "The Wrath of Tiger Claw""

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by Metalwolf

But in a way they did do something like that in Turtles Forever, at least for OT Turtles. They didn't kill them, but they did characterize them in such a way at their expense, just to highlight how much 'kewler' the 2k3 Turtles were and how more dangerous their Shredder was. At least with Tigerclaw killing them they go out like warriors and not like the pizza obsessed chumps Turtles Forever portrayed them to be, which is another reason why I can't understand the fan-gush that movie gets.

And did David Wise even like how the OT were portrayed in TF? Would he not like a more fitting ending to them going out like heroes, instead of being seen as little more then a joke to make the 2k3 Turtles look good?

I didn't like how the OT Turtles were portrayed in Turtles Forever either (that movie can't go 5 minutes without making fun at the OT Turtles' expense), but it's one thing to deride character(s) for a period time and keep them alive, and maybe having a potential of being redeemable (which Nick seemed to do mostly), but for me at least, it's more extreme to have something as final and absolute as death and trample over the OT Turtles' bodies just to create emphasis on TigerClaw's ruthlessness. Therefore permanently ending the journey of the OT characters, and even the OT show itself in a way, that the original writer would most likely not have intended.

If it was a true canon development, as I said before, it would be another lowbrow behavior of throwing the OT version under the bus again, just to superficially "one up" their own cool factor, just for the sake of a moderately emphasized villain in the Nick series. Which would have been so ironic considering since both 2K3 and Nick owe their creation to the past success of the OT in creating Turtlemania. In my eyes, a product's "coolness" is how much it can do on its own rather than heavily berating/mocking something from the past to boast its own importance/relevance.

But for the most part, in both episodes "Wormquake!" and "The Wrath of Tiger Claw" the Nick show depicted the OT Turtles fairly close, from its lighter comedic seasons ("Wormquake!") to the darker toned Red Sky seasons (with the orange-colored flashback scene in "The Wrath of Tiger Claw").

Nevertheless, it seems that both of our concerns have been addressed with the OT Turtles fighting like warriors and still being alive.