Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-4682609-20140210041658/@comment-5996361-20140218073701

There are two kinds of fears. The first is irrational fear. The kind of fears that could develop into phobias of things like rats, heights, cockroaches. These can sometimes be linked to traumatic experiences we experience as children, so when faced with them, we also subconsciously associate all the bad memories of that experience with them. The second kind of fear is a little more profound. These are mortal fears. We all have at least one, though sometimes it can take time to realize it, unlike having a fear of heights or bugs (both you would notice). Things like death, your own mortality, betrayal, losing loved ones, or like Leo's, failure are mortal fears. These often relate very personally to your life experiences, relationships, and memories. The fungi in this episode used the psychological and frantic terror that comes with irrational fears, and used it as a defense mechanism. The victim would be so consumed by fighting off their own fear, that they wouldn't a threat to them. Leonardo, however, was faced with his mortal fear failure. And because he had to face it (however indirectly or briefly) every time he and his brothers went on missions, Leo was able to overcome it by not failing this time. Everyone else saw their irrational fears (though I felt a bit cheated when the writers used the squirrelanoids for Mikey, I thought that after coming so close to dying with zits he would be very afraid of them coming back.), and even though you might say that Donnie's hallucinations were his mortal fear, they were so amped up to the point where anyone could say that it was ridiculous and irrational. Anyway, this is just my theory on fear, so if you think that there is something wrong with it please comment. :)