A Kraang Ship and April's Mother are discovered underneath the farm house.
- An Aesop:
- Trust your instincts.
- Family isn't just blood: it's also the people who care about you.
- "Be Quiet!" Nudge: Casey is...rather blunt when April's mom asks what happened to Kirby, and Raph elbows him.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Take a wild guess. Although "sheep's clothing" may not be entirely accurate.
- Cassandra Truth: Mikey quickly senses that there's something "off" about April's mother, but nobody listens to him. To be fair, he is Mikey.
- Darker and Edgier: Easily the most horrific episode of the season so far and one of the darkest of the series, right along with episodes featuring the Rat King or the like.
- The Dreaded: The Kraang themselves thought that Mom-Thing was too dangerous and uncontrollable, and put it in stasis.
- Evil-Detecting Cat: Ice Cream Kitty, who had just been happily playing with Mikey, starts hissing at the window when it notices Mrs. O'Neil is outside.
- Foreshadowing: Mom-Thing has green eyes, just like Irma.
- At the end of the episode, some frogs are shown getting into the mutagen that was spilled when Mikey and Mom-Thing first fought.
- Gorn: Much like the original Thing, the true form of April's mom is incredibly grotesque and resembling guts and muscles being torn inside out.
- Halloween Episode: While Raph is watching TV at one point, a flashing pumpkin is on-screen, placing the events of this episode somewhere in October, appropriately close to Halloween. This makes the creepy stuff that goes down in this episode all the more frightful.
- Hope Spot: The ending reveals Mom-Thing is a creature created from combining Kraang DNA with Mrs. O'Neil's, and that it was a defective clone like seen when the Kraang captured April. This left the possibility of the real Mrs. O'Neil still being alive somewhere. Unfortunately,
Brandon Auman confirmed that Mrs. O'Neil is indeed dead. - Horrifying the Horror: Apparently even the Kraang found the Mom-Thing to be too horrifying so they put it into stasis.
- Innocently Insensitive: Casey is far too flippant about Kirby's recent mutation when Mrs. O'Neil asks about him.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: When Raph goes into the basement when he hears Leo screaming, the latter tells Raph that Mikey was right about Mrs. O'Neil being a creature. What should be remembered is that Mikey, while rightfully suspicious, never once mentioned the idea that April's mother could be an alien creature. Unfortunately, Raph does not realize this until "Leo" is revealed to be the Mom-Thing.
- I Told You So: At the end of the episode, Mikey gets bragging rights when he was right the whole time about Mrs. O'Neil's true nature and how no one believed him.
- Mundane Made Awesome: The gang's chores around the house are turned into an epic combat situation.
- One Bad Mother: Who do you think?
- Person as Verb: Raph refers to Casey's Innocently Insensitive moment as "pulling a Mikey".
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The turtles react to Mikey attacking April's mom about as well as you'd expect.Donatello: Michaelangelo. You. Attacked. April's. MOTHER?!
- Remake Cameo: April's mom is played by Renae Jacobson, aka April's voice actor in the 1987 show.
- Too Good to Be True: It seems that April was finally able to see her mom for the first time, only until the near to the end of the episode, for Donnie to point out that when he was looking over the data, he discovered that the creature April destroyed wasn't really her mother, it only had her memories and it was an early Kraang "infiltration experiment that utilized a combination of Mrs. O'Neil's DNA and Kraang DNA, but it was too dangerous".
- Villain Ball: Mom-Thing had April completely on its side until it grew impatient and threatened her. And then it has the bright idea to reveal its true form to April for no real reason which unsurprisingly has April go against it.
- Villain of the Week: Much like the first two episodes of the season.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Mikey has this moment after April saves him and the others from "Mom Thing". He turns around and tosses his cookies.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Mikey's distrust towards Mrs. O' Neil causes some problems with the others. However, it turns out he was right all along.
- Whole-Plot Reference: With the assimilation of the Turtles and Casey, themes of trust and paranoia, an Eldritch Abomination with an inhuman moan as its true sound, and the overall gruesome Gorn, this episode is a full homage to The Thing (1982).
And boy does this description not even begin to describe it. - Yank the Dog's Chain: April reunites with her mom, only to discover it's a malicious Kraang experiment.
