Michelangelo plays with some retro-mutagen, which contracts a dangerous infection that mutates out of control.
Tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: Mikey keeps referring to the centrifuge as "centerfudge".
- Accidental Truth: When Mikey first reveals his zits, Donnie examines them and jokes that they're going to spread throughout his body until he basically becomes a giant zit and explodes. When they find out what's causing them and run some tests, it turns out that that's exactly what's going to happen to Mikey if they don't fix it.
- Affectionate Gesture to the Nose: Donnie boops Mikey's nose while telling him that fortunately, the Shellacne won't prevent him from making everyone's breakfast. Mikey is relieved to hear this.
- Anger Born of Worry: The other turtles have reactions like this when they find Mikey in Baxter's lab.
- Black Comedy: When going over potential Supervillain Lair locations, the turtles mention that a city dump had been turned into a retirement home, and an abandoned nuclear plant into a nursing school. Best not to dwell on that.
- Body Horror: Mikey's zits reach this point right around the time they start breaking through his shell.
- Butt-Monkey / The Chew Toy: Mikey gets this treatment a few times in this episode:
- First was when his brothers brush off his pimple problem and instead resort to scaring Mikey into thinking he will turn into one himself, despite NONE of them having ever had pimples due to them all being mutants.
- Next was when he went to go get the centrifuge by himself when the brothers ignored his advice outright, (unknown to them that Mikey WAS right about where Stockman was hiding and how to get the centrifuge), and then they scold Mikey once they find him for being predictable and reckless with his actions despite none of them listening to him in the first place.
- Last was when Donnie tricks him right before the episode's ending so that everyone can get another quick laugh out of themselves.
- Chef of Iron: Subverted. Leo, Raph and Donnie try applying their ninja skills to cook breakfast, only to create a haphazard mess in the process.
- Continuity Nod:
- If you look in the background, you can see that Mutagen Man is still frozen from last episode in Donnie's lab.
- This is not the first time that Donatello labeled his stuff, and specifically indicated to Michelangelo to not mess with it.
- Disaster Dominoes: Leo, Don and Raph making breakfast. You get the feeling it's not Mikey's skill at it so much as their combined suckage at it.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Mikey suggests that Stockman and Dogpound may be hiding at Stockman's old lab, but the other Turtles blow him off, believing it simply doesn't make sense. Mikey goes there on his own, and it turns out Dogpound and Stockman were hiding there.
- Epic Fail: Michelangelo somehow managed to miss and/or ignore the warnings put on the Retro-Mutagen prototype.
- Explosive Leash: Dogpound and Fishface put one on Baxter, which will cover him in mutagen if detonated.
- Foreshadowing: Dogpound and Fishface, as a contingency plan, put a Mutagen bomb on Stockman, with them stating that if he betrays them, they'll make him a mutant. Dogpound says that he bets that Stockman will become "some sort of lowly bug".
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The signs on the Retro-Mutagen. One of which is "Mikey, don't eat me".
- Idiot Houdini: Not Mikey, since both the turtles and viewers called him out for his actions. It's Donnie who managed to get away with his actions by labeling the failed retro-mutagen "Super Cooled". He could've labeled it more scientifically like "Keep Frozen/Refrigerated" or specify a temperature.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Dogpound and Fishface seek out Stockman to make him develop a cure and return them to their human selves.
- Mondegreen Gag: Mikey constantly mispronounces the word centrifuge as "center-fudge," despite Donnie correcting him multiple times.
- Never My Fault: Despite the clear labels on it warning of it not to be touched, Mikey blames his brothers for what happens to him after he uses it on himself.
- Downplayed later in the episode when Mikey believes that Dogpound took Baxter to his old lair, which his brothers brush off. When Mikey chews out his brothers for never believing in him (and they ignore him yet again), Mikey goes off to fetch Baxter and the centrifuge for his cure. What's particularly glaring about this example is that after the brothers come to Mikey's aide again, they blatantly point out that they knew Mikey would attempt to go off on his own, yet they don't acknowledge that had they had taken Mikey's words into consideration, he wouldn't have run off to put himself in danger in the first place.
- Pec Flex: Dogpound does this when he realizes he gets to capture Stockman and fight the turtles at the same time.
- Radiation-Immune Mutants: Averted. Retro-Mutagen gives Mikey shellacne, and mutagen turns Dogpound into Rahzar.
- Rise of Zitboy: Mikey's acne goes to ridiculous levels. He even gets pimples on his tongue.
- Sinister Scraping Sound: Dogpound drags his claws against the wall after mutating into Rahzar.
- Too Dumb to Live: Oh, he lives, but Mikey severely pushes this by rubbing a chemical from Donnie's lab on his body thinking it will make him "Super Cool" (misreading the label that said the chemical needed to be "super-cooled") and is covered in warning labels, from multiple "Mr. Yucks" on the front to a plethora of warnings on the back.
- Took a Level in Badass: As if Bradford/Dogpound wasn't one enough already to at least qualify, he went through another one with the transformation to the far more powerful Rahzar.
- Vetinari Job Security: Played for Laughs. At the start of the episode, Leo, Donnie and Raph try fixing breakfast (a job reserved for Michelangelo), but their attempts at applying "finesse" in making breakfast ends in making a big mess.
