Trivia / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III

• Acting for Two: Elias Koteas plays both Casey Jones and one of Walker's henchmen, Whit (who is implied to be Casey's ancestor). April notices the similarity.
• Actor-Shared Background: Like Raphael, his voice actor Tim Kelleher hails from New York City.
• Ascended Fanon: For years fans have referred to the film with the subtitle "Turtles in Time", a misnomer that originated from the video game of the same name. The 2009 DVD release of the movie branded the movie as "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time", officially cementing the subtitle.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: "Turtles in Time" isn't actually the subtitle of the third film, whose official name is just "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III." That name actually originated with the second arcade game, and the films' home video distributors later lifted it and added it to newer releases of III (though only on the box art).
• B-Team Sequel: The creature effects were provided by All Effects Company instead of Jim Henson's Creature Shop. It shows. In fact, outside of some of the actors and two of the puppeteers^* Gord Robertson and Rick Lyon, who puppeteered for Tokka and Rahzar in the previous film puppeteer for Michelangelo and Donatello, respectively, Robertson also serving as puppet captain, almost no one returns from either of the other films.
• California Doubling: The film takes place in New York and Ancient Japan, but many scenes are actually filmed in China's Hong Kong and in Astoria, Oregon.
• Copiously Credited Creator: In the Italian dub, Tonino Accolla is Leonardo's voice actor as well as the ADR director and ADR writer.
• Executive Meddling: Implied to be part of the reason why the Creature Shop didn't return for the sequel^note the other being through a recommendation by Rick Stratton, one of All Effects' regular collaborators, who was approached by one of the producers while working freelance on Bram Stoker's Dracula. According to Eric Allard; the then still-nascent Henson Control System was extremely buggy and ruined many takes, angering the producers in the process. This, coupled with the Henson family's negative reaction to Jim's In Memoriam credit in the first sequel and Allard's company outbidding them was what caused Golden Harvest to cut ties with the Hensons by the time of the third movie.
• Fake Nationality:
  • The Canadian Elias Koteas as American Casey Jones and his British ancestor Whit.
  • The Japanese Mitsu is played by Chinese-born actress Vivian Wu.
• Franchise Killer: The third movie did not go over well with either critics or Turtles fans, which halted the live-action series. Outside of the infamous The Next Mutation, there wouldn't be another live-action TMNT production until 2014.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: While the movie is almost universally disliked and considered worse than the second movie, both co-creators of the franchise, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird on separate occasions have said that they believe that the second movie is worse than the third one.
  • Peter Laird, in his blog, when asked to rank the TMNT movies (that had come out at that point), ranked the third movie above the second one. In a later blog, where he posted about his initial plans for the second movie, he said, answering one of the fans, that he thinks the second one was far more ridiculous compared to the third one.
  • Kevin Eastman, in 2014, said the following:
    "What we tried to do with the third movie was to make it as good of a story as we could. We went through a painstaking level of do's and don'ts, what they could and couldn't do. We wanted something that would be good for all ages again. I call movie one the best, movie two the worst, and movie three halfway in between."
• Not Screened for Critics: Unlike the previous two movies, New Line did not provide advance screenings for critics until its opening day. Given the subsequent negative response, it's not surprising.
• The Original Darrin: Corey Feldman returns to voice Donatello after being replaced by Adam Carl in the previous film.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Raphael changes voice actors again from Laurie Faso to Tim Kelleher. Similarly, Splinter is now voiced and puppeteered by James Murray instead of Kevin Clash.
  • Matt Hill, Jim Raposa and David Fraser replace Kenn Troum, Leif Tilden and Michelan Sisti as the suit actors of Raph, Don and Mike. Mark Caso is the only suit actor of the Turtles to return from the previous films.
  • In the European French dub of the first two movies, Leonardo, April, and Casey were voiced by Emmanuel Jacomy, Céline Monsarrat, and Philippe Vincent respectively. Here, they are instead voiced by Thierry Wermuth, Nathalie Juvet, and Renaud Marx, again respectively.
  • In the Italian dub, Fabrizio Pucci voices Donatello instead of Mino Caprio, Massimo Rossi voices Raphael instead of Massimo Corvo, Giancarlo Padoan voices Splinter instead of Sergio Fiorentini, and Tony Sansone voices Casey Jones instead of Stefano Benassi.
  • In the Japanese dub, Issei Futamata voices Casey Jones instead of Hiroya Ishimaru or the late Taro Arakawa.
• Production Posse: Disregarding the returning cast members, puppeteer Gordon Robertson and animatronics lead Eric Allard previously worked on Short Circuit 2.
• Role Reprise: In the Japanese dub, all of the actors from the TV Tokyo dub of 1987 series reprised their roles for this film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Since the original ending to Secret of the Ooze would have revealed that the Professor was an Utrom, it's possible that the plot of this movie would have originally been an adaptation of the Turtles in Space arc.
  • Had this movie not have bombed, there would have been a fourth movie called The Next Mutation (no relation). It would have dealt with the turtles and Splinter finding out that their mutations haven't completed and they develop new powers. Mikey would have developed a human-like appearance that would allow him to go to the surface, Donnie's eyesight would have faded and he would make special goggles that would allow him to see better, Leo would change his skin to a chrome-like surface, Raph would turn more monstrous, and Splinter would bulk up. There would have also been a fifth turtle named Kirby. The accelerated mutating was later put in the later seasons of the Fred Wolf cartoon and the idea of a fifth turtle was put in The Next Mutation.
  • If prototype screenshots are to be believed, the character that became Aska in the SNES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters was originally going to be Mitsu, possibly changed to disassociate from this movie's failure.
  • Apparently, Eastman and Laird didn't want the Shredder to appear in the second film at all, with the original idea being to have his helmet appear damaged to refer to his ambiguous fate in the first film. This would've set up an appearance from the Shredder in this film instead had that plan gone through, but it didn't.
• Working Title: A Feudal Fable.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Michelangelo and Donatello are respectively performed by Gord Robertson and Rick Lyon, who previously performed Tokka and Rahzar in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.
  • The Japanese voice of Casey Jones, Issei Futamata, previously voiced Raphael in the home media release of The Secret of the Ooze.
  • In the Italian dub, Murata is voiced by Mario Bombardieri, who previously played Chief Sterns in the second film.

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