Oroku Saki (Mirage)

Oroku Saki, or The Shredder was the leader of the New York Foot Clan and a major enemy of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

History
A pair of ninja members of the Foot Clan, Oroku Nagi and Hamato Yoshi, both competed for the love of a woman named Tang Shen. However, Shen only loved Yoshi, which enraged Nagi. Nagi attacked Shen, and in her defense, Yoshi attacked and killed Nagi.

Shamed for killing another member of the Foot Clan, Hamato Yoshi fled from Japan to America with Tang Shen and his pet rat, Splinter. However, Nagi's younger brother, Oroku Saki, swore a vendetta on his brother's murderer. He eventually tracked down and killed both Hamato Yoshi and Tang Shen. Joining the Foot Clan himself and trained to be a ninja, Saki quickly rose through the ranks, and was put in charge of the American branch of the Clan. Under Saki's leadership, The Foot participated in a variety of criminal activities, including drug smuggling, arms running, and assassination. This also allowed him to finally move to New York to avenge his brother’s death by killing Yoshi and Shen; however, Yoshi’s pet rat Splinter escaped and later mutated into an anthropomorphic form, and spent years training the four Ninja Turtles to avenge Yoshi and Shen.

Fifteen years later Oroku Saki was seen now running a protection racket. When Splinter felt the Turtles were ready, he asked them to challenge and kill Oroku Saki. This first fight took place at night on a rooftop in New York City. After a bloody rooftop battle, Leonardo managed to run him through with his sword. Allowing Shredder to commit Seppuku, thus dying an honorable death, he instead in an attempt to take them with him to his death, opted for throwing a thermite grenade at them, which Donatello would bat back at his face. The explosion as well as Shredder falling off the roof would be the end of him. With their leader dead, the Foot would continue to hunt down the TMNT for revenge.

However, several months later, several members of the Foot, as well as the Shredder himself, would jump and beat Leonardo to the brink of death, and throw his body through the window of April's Second Time Around store. Shredder and the Foot would attack the TMNT, and with the help of Casey Jones, they managed to escape to his old farmhouse in Northampton. After months of recuperation, the TMNT returned to New York, and with the help of Zog, a Triceraton mentally confused due to breathing our Earth oxygen, they went to take down the Foot and the Shredder once and for all. During the fight, Zog gets hacked to death by 3 deformed "Mutant Shredder clones". The other Turtles would face them and be taken down one by one, leaving Leonardo to go ahead and face the "real" Shredder himself.

Shredder revealed that he was a worm clone of the original Shredder, but still harbored the hatred of the original. The Foot employed some sort of mystic worms that ate remains of the dead, and then grow into the form of what they ate. The malformed Shredder Elite were the first three experiments with the worms, and the Shredder now facing Leonardo was their fourth. Shredder and Leonardo fought it out and in the end, Leo would end up beheading him. Leonardo would then take Shredder's body and burn it. With the Shredder gone, chaos erupted in New York City among the leaderless Foot Clan.

In issues 3 and 4 of Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 2, it is shown that a few weeks after Leonardo defeated the Shredder, a Foot Mystic would find the remains and use the worms again, the worms then went out to find a new body, but this time they'd also eat the remains of a shark. This shark monster considered himself the real Oroku Saki. Facing the Turtles, who defeated it, he realized he was just a clone and escaped, also eating the Foot Mystic. Sometime later, the monster returned in issue #33, however, and had the Foot kidnap Casey's adopted daughter Shadow to lure the Turtles into a trap. With the Turtles away this Shark/Worm/Shredder monster would face Splinter and Casey Jones. It's unknown if it would return.

Due to Shredder's death, the Foot would still be after the Turtles. The Elite Foot in particular were after Leo's head. The TMNT would be forced to help Karai (leader of the Japanese branch of the Foot who came to New York) kill off the Foot factions that were battling each other in exchange for a truce. And sure enough, after they defeated the Elite, Karai and the Foot promised to leave the Turtles alone.

So even after Shredder was only fought with and killed off in one day, his shadow continued to haunt the Turtles for years to come, be it in the form of worm clones, the rest of his clan or Karai.

This version of The Shredder had a brief cameo in Turtles Forever, playing the same role he did in Volume 1 #1. He appeared to the Mirage Turtles to challenge them when the 1988 and 2003 Turtles threw trash cans at him making him fall. This is a reference to the general weakness of this incarnation's Shredder in comparison to some of the others. He was voiced by David Wills.