Freakin' Mutagen: how does it work?

[Jester]

I know there are different mutagens as well, be they Mirage or FW, but for the most part there are just the 2, but how do they work.

For the most part FW mutagen "causes whoever touched it to take on the form of whatever animal they had most recently been in contact with," but you occasionally get mutagen that turns 3 cows into a multi-horned super bull. It also tends to destabilize with age, like in Wererats from Channel 6 and the whole ofseason 9

Mirage mutagen either "hyper-evolves" or makes things larger and more intelligent, depending on who you ask.

I guess that is the question: does the Mirage mutagen cause things to only "larger and more intelligent" or does it cause them to take leaps up the evolutionary ladder?

[CyberCubed]

If you remember in the ep with the giant mutant bull, they were trying to mix the right chemicals together to form the mutagen, but they obviously messed up when Rocksteady/Bebop were fooling around with the tracks.

Likewise why did Mutagen Man transform into what he did?

[Revan]

[ASSUMPTION] The dinosaur creatures from Venezuela in vol 4 did not have vocal cords before their exposure to the transmat biproduct [/ASSUMPTION]

Cop Out answer: A little of both

Actual stance: I say the latter. A leap up the ladder because the creatures from vol 4 gained the ability to speak. As did the turtles. Sliders have no vocal cords but the turtles can speak as well so simply making them larger and more intelligent would not give them vocal capacity. Come to think of it, growing larger would no explain why they have only 3 fingers and two toes on each hand when that is not anatomically correct for sliders

[Andrew NDB]

The Fred Wolf mutagen doesn't even warrant any kind of intelligent analyzation. I mean, where does the line even come down on what living organism you "last touched"? If you have some living AIDS virus inside you and touch some Fred Wolf mutagen, do you morph into AIDS Man? If a flea jumps onto you a minute after petting the cat, is that the deciding factor between whether you become Flea Man or Cat Man?

It's just silly, silly, silly.

[Revan]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

The Fred Wolf mutagen doesn't even warrant any kind of intelligent analyzation. I mean, where does the line even come down on what living organism you "last touched"? If you have some living AIDS virus inside you and touch some Fred Wolf mutagen, do you morph into AIDS Man? If a flea jumps onto you a minute after petting the cat, is that the deciding factor between whether you become Flea Man or Cat Man?

It's just silly, silly, silly.

Agree... BUT. I always thought of it in terms of acquiring DNA information. Animorphs anyone? When those kids touched something they read the animal's DNA.

[gobo]

So how does mutagen work?

Didn't your parents ever teach you the difference between reality and make-believe?

[plastroncafe]

It techs the tech, of course.
Duh.



It pains me to say it's more of the latter, but only because I'm a pedant when it comes to equating "progress" with "evolution."

[Andrew NDB]

Stupid What-If Fred Wolf Mutagen Scenarios (just because):

1) You thoroughly de-louse a guy and throw him in an isolated, completely sterilized chamber devoid of any kind of organisms. You leave him in there for a few weeks or a year... (point being, there would be no "imprint" of any kind of any DNA other than his own in/on him) then dump some mutagen on him. What does he mutate into?

2) You sit in a room while holding a hamster, with a puddle of mutagen in the middle. You touch the puddle of mutagen, then make the hamster touch the mutagen too. Since the last lifeform you touched was the hamster, and the last lifeform the hamster touched was you (a human), does that mean you both mutate into identical Hamster Man mutants?

[Revan]

My head hurts

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

The Fred Wolf mutagen doesn't even warrant any kind of intelligent analyzation. I mean, where does the line even come down on what living organism you "last touched"? If you have some living AIDS virus inside you and touch some Fred Wolf mutagen, do you morph into AIDS Man? If a flea jumps onto you a minute after petting the cat, is that the deciding factor between whether you become Flea Man or Cat Man?

It's just silly, silly, silly.

Oh, have a baby raspberry, Andrew...


EDIT:
Also, Jester, haven't we discussed this before?
http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/sho...ghlight=carter

[ABrown]

I've read on the internet where a lot of people didn't understand why if the last creatures that Hamato Yoshi had contact with was the turtles, why would he turn into a rat? But it still makes sense to me. Think about it this way. If you've spend weeks or perhaps even months living with cats, but then you spend just a matter of days with another animal. Odds are, you're still going to have cat hair all over you. So even though Yoshi had made contact with the turtles. He still had enough rat hair/dna on him to mutate into a rat.

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by ABrown

I've read on the internet where a lot of people didn't understand why if the last creatures that Hamato Yoshi had contact with was the turtles, why would he turn into a rat? But it still makes sense to me. Think about it this way. If you've spend weeks or perhaps even months living with cats, but then you spend just a matter of days with another animal. Odds are, you're still going to have cat hair all over you. So even though Yoshi had made contact with the turtles. He still had enough rat hair/dna on him to mutate into a rat.

Jester and I figured this out in our TMNT Commentary on Turtle Tracks. We decided that Yoshi still had rat hairs on his body, thus the "creatures" with which he's been in contact most recently are the rats.

But, I guess, you can take that explanation with a grain of salt.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

We decided that Yoshi still had rat hairs on his body, thus the "creatures" with which he's been in contact most recently are the rats.

But hair doesn't contain any DNA.

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

But hair doesn't contain any DNA.

It does in the Fred Wolf universe!

And, again, for good measure:

Spoiler:

Oh, have a baby raspberry, Andrew...

[FearlessLeader]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

But hair doesn't contain any DNA.

Well one could arguably state that there was a hair follicle or two attached to one or more of the hairs on Yoshi and that was the DNA that mutated him

But I tend to try to not use logic in terms of the old cartoon, regardless of how much I am growing to love it

[Cryomancer]

It'd be neat to compile every line mentioning anything about how it works, how it's made, etc and see if there is any remote consistancy to it or not.

I've been kind of kicking around the idea of trying to make a mutagen mod for minecraft, but since what it does seem so inconsistant, what it would actually do in game is hard to nail down. Of course, the game already has a pigman in it, so human/pig mutations would be simple enough.

[Jester]

Why is it that I created this thread and every time I see it I can't help but think of this:

and this:


In fact...there....changed.

[TMNT_2010]

Here's my theory. In the show we see him walking towards the turtles and he picks them up off the mutagen. This gives us the answer.

He was in another room where he had contact with rats. Then he goes and sees the turtles. On his way to pick them up he steps on the mutagen first(we see this in the show).

So he touches the mutagen after touching rats and the turtles are of course touched by him before his own mutation has begun.

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by TMNT_2010

Here's my theory. In the show we see him walking towards the turtles and he picks them up off the mutagen. This gives us the answer.

He was in another room where he had contact with rats. Then he goes and sees the turtles. On his way to pick them up he steps on the mutagen first(we see this in the show).

So he touches the mutagen after touching rats and the turtles are of course touched by him before his own mutation has begun.

Hmm... good point! I like it... simple but effective!

[Jo Dawn]

This has no scientific merit, and barely any thought put into it, but maybe Splinter had more rat DNA on him, but also some turtle DNA. So he turned into a rat, but with a wee bit of turtle in him.

That explains why he lived so darn long for a rat.