Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26184563-20130421015649/@comment-995426-20160429034451

Heh, I keep forgetting the changes 2K12 made to Leatherhead's backstory.

Mirage Leatherhead was mutated intentionally at TCRI as a text subject using alligator and human DNA, and the Utroms started treating him as a person when he gained sentience. Leatherhead loved the Utroms so much that he kept trying to build a transmat to transport him back to the Utrom homeworld and be reunited with his family.

I chalk up accidental anthropomorphic forms to humanoid genetic influence. I prefer the relatively harder sci-fi incarnations of TMNT too much to just dismiss humanoid form as a convenient accident. When mutants develop humanoid form without some explained enabling mechanism, I call it a plot hole.

Of course, considering Kraang Prime's claim that the ancestors of humans were mutated by them, it is entirely possible that 2K12 ancestral humans were reshaped in the form of Utrom encounter bodies rather than the other way around. Of course, it doesn't fully explain why Utroms started crafting those bodies to begin with, and we're left with a chicken-and-egg-style mystery.