Trivia tropes for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003)
Trivia with Their Own Pages
- Acting for Two:
- In "Reality Check", the Super Turtles are voiced by their mainstream counterparts' voice actors.
- The Turtles' voice actors also voice the Dark Turtles during Season 6.
- In addition to the Turtles' clones and alternate universe counterparts, Sam Riegel also voiced one of the heads of Triple Threat, Wayne Grayson voiced Metalhead and a random Utrom named Krang, two Triceratons named Gruell and Zed, Greg Abbey voiced the Kappa Tengu and Ernie and Michael Sinterniklaas voiced a mob lieutenant named Weasel, and Parker (Dr. Abigail Finn's assistant).
- Marc Thompson voiced Casey Jones and a lot of other side characters.
- Three of the Shredders in this series are voiced by the same person, Scottie Ray. The Utrom Shredder, the Tengu Shredder, and the Cyber Shredder. There's an in-universe reason for this however; the Tengu Shredder is the original Oroku Saki from ancient Japan, whom the Utrom Shredder, Ch'rell (the main Big Bad of the series) based his human persona on, and the Cyber Shredder is a virtual manifestation of Ch'rell combined with Viral.
- In the French dub, Splinter and Casey are both voiced by Thierry Janssen.
- Approval of God: Despite not being involved with the production of the show outside of being one of the co-creators of the franchise, Kevin Eastman called this show
awesome and one of his favorites in a 2020 comic con. - Channel Hop: From Fox/4Kids TV to The CW4Kids for its final season. An episode that Fox rejected, "Insane in the Membrane," aired on Nicktoons nine years after it was produced.
- Creator Backlash: Baxter's mutilation was never something Peter Laird was comfortable with, saying he never really liked that approach, although he agreed that Baxter's eventual fate was fitting.
- Creator's Favorite: Peter Laird didn't like Hun at first, but he eventually became one of his favorites as the series went on, to the point that, after hinting at it, Hun became part of the Mirage comics.
- Creator's Favorite Episode: The voice of Donatello, Sam Riegel, stated in an interview that "The King" was his favorite episode of the series, due to being able to star in what was a tribute to one of the most famous comic book creators of all time, Jack Kirby.
- Creator-Preferred Adaptation: This show seems to be this for Peter Laird, which is unsurprising given that he actually had a role in making it, and is also more faithful to the original TMNT comics.
- Died During Production:
- In the Mexican Spanish dub, Leonardo's voice actor (Enrique Mederos) died in almost the beginning of the series and he was replaced by Luis Daniel Ramírez. The funniest thing in the recasting is Mederos previously voiced Fujitaka Kinomoto and Luis Daniel Ramirez voiced his son, Touya.
- The episode "Future Shellshock" is dedicated to the memory of George Elliot McClain, who was a production assistant for the series.
- Early-Bird Release:
- "The Christmas Aliens" was released on the DVD "Michelangelo's Christmas Rescue" two months before it aired.
- Various episodes from Season 4note were released on the DVDs "Shredder's Final Countdown" and "Mutants & Monsters" anywhere from a few weeks to a couple months before they aired.
- Executive Meddling: As mentioned on the introduction, the 5th season was skipped in favor of the Fast Forward season (presumably due to how dark season four was and 4Kids and Playmates fearing how this will affect toy sales). This caused the 4th season to end in a cliffhanger for some time. Playmates was the party that explicitly requested a lighter tone for the series.
- Irony as She Is Cast: Sam Riegel voices Donatello, but anyone who has seen his antics on Critical Role will confirm his personality is far more like that of Michelangelo. He is also the youngest actor amongst the Turtles' voice cast, while generally Michelangelo is considered the youngest. To be fair, he was initially cast as Mike while Wayne Grayson was cast as Don, before the roles were switched around.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes:
- For a longest time, the series was available only in inconvenient, out-of-print DVD season sets (season 3 in particular was a headache to obtain simply because it never received its own individual season set, just seven single DVD sets with episodes shuffled out of order. What's worse is that the DVDs also have episodes from season 4 mixed in), available in incomplete forms (Turtles Forever), or not available at all (Back to the Sewer). Paramount and Nickelodeon started releasing DVDs — but they only collected random episodes and arcs before being discontinued. Thankfully, as of May 15th, 2023, the whole series is now available to purchase (and in glorious HD) over on Youtube, iTunes and Amazon Video; plus you can stream it over on Paramount+.*
- For the twentieth anniversary, the entire series plus Turtles Forever finally received a complete series DVDbox set.
- Missing Episode:
- The 2023 complete series DVD release actually acknowledges the existence of "Nightmares Recycled" by having Disc 13 list episodes on the disc as "109, 111-117", skipping the unproduced episode.
- "Mayhem From Mutant Island" is notably the only episode missing from Paramount Plus perhaps because of its nature as a compilation of short segments.
- "The Return of Nano" and "Secret Origins Part Two" were delisted from digital outlets in April 2021 for unknown reasons. The former was later reinstated on Amazon Prime.
- The Other Darrin: Several characters eventually were recast, most notably Leatherhead (F.B. Owens to Gary Lewis).
- Post-Script Season: The series had wrapped up its main plot in Seasons 4 and 5, before the Fast Forward Retool and Back to the Sewer were aired, both of which had less of an emphasis on arc-based stories and more on selling toys, although the latter finally married April O' Neil and Casey Jones.
- Promoted Fanboy: Sam Riegel has said that he was a fan of TMNT and Donatello was his favorite character and that getting to play the same character was "literally the best experience".
- Recursive Adaptation: The series spawned a short-lived comic book adaptation. There was also a comic adaptation of the Fast Forward season in the UK.
- Refitted for Sequel: Several abandoned concepts and episodes from the scrapped season season of Fast Forward were retooled into the final iteration of the seventh season.
- The scrapped second season of Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation had concept art for a government agent in a black coat and glasses. It's possible this character was eventually reworked into Bishop.
- Role Reprise: In the Italian dub, the turtles are all voiced by the same actors as the 1987 series.
- Science Marches On: In “Sons of the Silent Age,” April, Casey, and the Turtles stumble across a nuclear power plant which they are happy to see close due to their environmental cost, and Don even gives this speech:“Ah yes, nuclear power plants. Once heralded as the future of energy, but they’ve become the Purple Dragons of energy production: hard to clean up after and even harder to get rid of…”
- Even accounting for Artistic License – Paleontology in “Return of Savanti, Part 2” (see episode’s recap page for more details), it’s now known that velociraptors have feathers.
- Screwed by the Lawyers: Nickelodeon's acquisition of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise from Mirage Comics caused 4Kids to pull the plug on this series. Nickelodeon would create their own TMNT in its place.
- Self-Adaptation: One of the co-creators of TMNT, Peter Laird, was a story consultant for this series, and also helped edit a number of the scripts.
- Similarly Named Works: Season 7, subtitled Back to the Sewer, and has no relation to the second TMNT Game Boy game Back from the Sewers.
- Star-Making Role: For Michael Sinterniklaas (Leonardo) and Sam Riegel (Donatello).
- Toyless Toyline Character: Back to the Sewer is notable for not having a dedicated toyline for it despite the overhaul to the show's design implemented with the season. That said, the overhaul was largely intended to bring it more in line visually with the 2007 film, presumably so that Playmates could use the show to continue to sell toys based off the film, though ultimately the toyline only really continued in the mini-figure line, which led to the Turtles gaining stealth suits during the season. The mini-figure line, which originally only focused on movie characters, eventually brought in the 2003 cast like Hun and the Triceratons.
- Word of God:
- At the TMNT 25th anniversary panel Q&A, a fan in attendance asked how they came up with the villain Master Khan from Back to the Sewer, possibly in an attempt to get an official word on the fan theory that he was named after 4Kids head Al Khan. One of the concept artist for the show that was on the panel answered that Capcom's character designs were a major influence for the visual designs for many of the show's villains.
- Though all replies have been lost to the ravages of time, 4Kids' YouTube channel around 2009 answered fan questions, one of which noted that while Serling's fate went unaddressed in the show proper, he ultimately found his stay in the present worth it due to getting to witness Casey and April's wedding.
