Rabbids

Rabbids are a number of alien rabbit-like creatures that appear in various games by Ubisoft. Their first appearance was in Rayman Raving Rabbids. Eventually, The games' protagonist, Rayman, would eventually be phased out of this series, and the Rabbids would become the stars.

The Rabbids are zany and random, and apparently love to cosplay, as they are often seeing many different costumes.

Involvement with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
As Ubisoft had obtained the TMNT license in 2007, they used this as a cross-promotion tool. Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 featured Rabbids dressed up in Ninja Turtle-like gear, complete with eyemasks and shells.

2009 saw the release of the fighting game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up. There are three Rabbids that serve as secret characters in the game: Raving Rabbid, which wears a speedo, Splinter Rabbid, which is dressed like Splinter Cell protagonist Sam Fisher, and Ninja Rabbid, which wears a purple eyemask and has a toilet seat as a carapace. All three characters use various weapons to fight, including plungers, shopping carts, and spatulas.

Reception
The Rabbids (Raving and Splinter) were first revealed to be playable in Smash-Up at Japan Expo in France, in July of 2009. Fans were disappointed that not one, but two versions of a non-TMNT character were shoehorned into a TMNT game, especially one that was supposedly designed to celebrate the Turtles' silver anniversary. Despite having separate spaces on the character select screen, it was widely rumored that the Splinter Rabbid was an alternate costume.

In August of 2009, an image of a Ninja Rabbid was seen on the Amazon.com pre-order for Smash-Up, and the text indicated that the Rabbid character would be a pre-order bonus item (along with a Technodrome stage). This led to the rumor that either A) the Rabbid character(s) would all be costumes for one central Rabbid, and were all a pre-order bonus, or B) that the Rabbid would still be available in the standard retail version, and this Ninja Rabbid would be a bonus costume.

When the game released in September, it was found that the Raving, Splinter, and Ninja Rabbids were all in the game and considered separate characters. Furthermore, there were no new TMNT characters in the cast than what was known in July. This led to fan outcry and several hate-filled topics littering the Smash-Up official site's message board.