Easter Eggs

This page is meant for TMNT references, hidden content - a.k.a. "easter eggs" - and cameos only.

• Easter Eggs (Mirage)
• Easter Eggs (1987 TV series)
• Easter Eggs (Archie)
• Easter Eggs (2003 TV series)
• Easter Eggs (Dreamwave)
• Easter Eggs (IDW)
• Easter Eggs (2012 TV series)
• Easter Eggs (Paramount)
• Easter Eggs (Amazing Adventures)
• Easter Eggs (Rise of the TMNT)
• Easter Eggs (Batman vs. TMNT)
• Easter Eggs (Last Ronin)

Action figures

• NECA Aliens: NECA released a San Diego Comic Con 2017 exclusive figure of Warrior Alien which was painted yellow, as a deliberate reference to the Pizza Monsters, called Sewer Mutation Warrior Alien.
  

Animation

Animaniacs

• Hooked on a Ceiling: In this episode, four Ninja Turtles pop out during the introduction when the narrator is naming well known figures from the Renaissance.
  

Garfield and Friends

This first cartoon show for Garfield aired on the same CBS of the 1987 cartoon show and featured some references to TMNT:

• One of the introductory quips of the title screen was "Just think of me as like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Pussycat."
• Speed Trap: Garfield dismisses a questionable police officer with the quote "If this guy's a lawman, then I'm a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle."
• Sound Judgement: Garfield finds a note that the sound effects guy quit the show in favor of doing sword noises on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Hare Force: The show's sub-segment U.S. Acres once had a reworking of The Tortoise and the Hare that at first considered making the tortoise a ninja warrior, before Booker and Sheldon dismiss the concept doubting that anyone "would ever want to watch a show about it".
• Clash of the Titans: This episode had Garfield asking if before returning to his own cartoon he can get pizza on the Ninja Turtles one.

Gravity Falls

• Fight Fighters: In this scene, Dipper says he can’t find the traditional power-ups like "turkey legs" (in many games like Castlevania, Final Fight, etc), "pizza boxes" (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game), or "gold rings" (Sonic the Hedgehog).
  

MAD

• Super 80's: This was a crossover parody between all the 1980s decade pop culture successes, including the Ninja Turtles, and the science fiction film Super 8. In one scene, one of the original Mirage Turtles makes a cameo alongside Sonny Crockett and Papa Smurf.
  
• TMNTMZTV: This was a crossover parody between the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 animated TV series and the celebrity gossip show TMZ, where Shredder and the Foot Soldiers annoyed the famous celebrities, the Ninja Turtles.
• I Hate My Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: This was a crossover parody between the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 animated TV series and the I Hate My Teenage Daughter sitcom, where the Turtles appear trying to protect their "mother" from a date with Shredder.
• Sanjay and Krang: This was a crossover parody between the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 animated TV series and the Nickelodeon animated series Sanjay and Craig, where Sanjay adopted not a snake, but the evil alien brain: Krang.

Muppet Babies

• Sing a Song of Superheroes: This 1990 Muppet Babies episode features Baby Kermit, Baby Fozzie, Baby Animal, Baby Bean, and Baby Rowlf dressed as the Ninja Turtles.

Robot Chicken

YOU'RE NOT ON   NICKTOONS   ANYMORE!

Some TMNT stuff really isn't for little kids.

• Enter the Fat One: A sketch from "S&M Present" features Joey Fatone getting trained by the Turtles from the first three live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.
• Senior Mutant Ninja Turtles: A sketch from "Rodiggiti" depicts the Turtles as the "Senior Mutant Ninja Turtles" in a retirement home, doing such things as playing bingo, eating prune pizza, and wearing adult diapers.
• Girl Toys: A sketch from "Moesha Poppins" features Venus de Milo from Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation drowning herself in a toilet after she was kicked out of the Ninja Turtles.
• Shell Spin - To the Bone: Both sketches from "Collateral Damage in Gang Turf War" features Michelangelo spinning on his turtle shell, but has fallen on his back and can't get up.
• Unique Street Sharks: A sketch from "Butchered in Burbank" claims Street Sharks to be completely different from the Ninja Turtles.
• The Stinkiest Sewer - Sewer Farter Exposed: Both sketches from "Secret of the Booze" features Muckman looking after April while the Turtles fight Shredder, only for him to make a bad impression on her by farting, and then denying that he did it, blaming it on Krang. It is later revealed that Krang was hiding from April and Muckman, and he really did fart.
• Splinter's Rock Bottom - Shredder and April: A sketch from "Super Guitario Center" has Splinter embarrass the Turtles by eating a rotten apple from a nearby trash can. The latter sketch from the same episode has Shredder and April fall in love with each other a la Romeo and Juliet.
• TMNT Sex Talk: A sketch from "Fridge Smell" features Splinter teaching sex education to the Turtles. Donatello later creates a robot of April when Splinter denies the Turtles the chance to have sex with the real April.
• TMNT Pizza Brutality: A sketch from "Hopefully Salt" has Donatello create a tank that fires pizzas. It's surprisingly effective against Shredder, even going as far as to get a news report.
• Bad Date With Krang: A sketch from "Secret of the Flushed Footlong" features Krang on a blind date with a girl named Courtney.
• Pizza Delivery: A sketch from "Your Mouth Is Hanging Off Your Face" has Michelangelo exposing himself to the pizza delivery guy.
• TMNT Straws: A sketch from "Ginger Hill in: Bursting Pipes" has Shredder killing the Turtles with plastic straws.

Samurai Pizza Cats (English dubbed)

• In episode 1 of Samurai Pizza Cats (only in the Saban dubbed version), there was a gag with an elderly robot turtle walking slowly in a robot dragon attack. The Narrator brought up a retirement home for aging ninja turtles, a reference of the future elder Ninja Turtles in retirement seen in one episode from the 1987 TV series.
  • When the old robot turtle loses his shell from being hit by a broken pillar, he ran and shout "Cowabunga!!!".
    

    

    COWABUNGA!!!

Saturday Night Live

• Middle-aged Mutant Ninja Turtles: An animated sketch parodying the 1980s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon shows the Turtles in their middle-age. This sketch was featured in the April 11, 2020 episode of Saturday Night Live At Home.

Teen Titans Go!

• Birds: The mutant mocking bird known as Muscle has a purple mohawk, shades and a vest inspired by Bebop's classic look.
  
• Más y Menos: The Turtles appear when Más and Menos take the pizzas from the Titans Tower and leave them to the Turtles. All Turtles were voiced by Greg Cipes, the voice of Beast Boy and also Michelangelo in the 2012 TV series.
  

  
• Real Boy Adventures: After Raven turned Cyborg human again, Beast Boy (voiced by Greg Cipes) named him "Fleshy Guy" and exclaimed he was really good at naming things, as a reference to the Nickelodeon's Michelangelo (who's also voiced by Greg Cipes).
• Truth, Justice and What?: This was a full crossover episode between the Titans and the Turtles, read more about it at its main page.
• Animals, It's Just a Word!: This episode features a muscular mutant rat in a mining outfit with a tattoo on his right shoulder, an obvious homage to the TMNT character Dirtbag.
  
• Garage Sale: A box storing the turtle shells from "Truth, Justice and What?" appears at the Titans' attic.
• Operation Dude Rescue, Part 1: A Ninja Turtles graffiti appears under a bridge, with the Turtles' face featuring thick lips as a reference to the Paramount Turtles' CGI looks.
  

The Adventures of Puss in Boots

• The Brothers: This episode features four teenage humanoid ninja pigs, who are brothers, have distinct personalities from one another, and wear multi-colored masks. As a bonus fact, like the Ninja Turtles, the brothers have three fingers in each hand, while all other pigs in the Shrek franchise have only two. In addition, three of the pigs are voiced by Michelangelo voice actors (Greg Cipes, Mikey Kelley, and Robbie Rist).
  

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3

• Sneaking Lying Cheating Giant Ninja Koopas - King Koopa transforms four of his Koopalings using one of his wands, then naming them "Sneaking Lying Cheating Giant Ninja Koopas", as a parody of the extravagant title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and also being equipped with almost the same weapons as those ninja heroes. They even parody the catchphrase "I Love Being A Turtle!" from their first film, with Big Mouth saying "I love being a Koopa!".
  

The Fairly OddParents!

• Channel Chasers: "Adolescent Genetically Altered Karate Cows" is a parody of the Ninja Turtles as a show visited in "Channel Chasers", after Timmy Turner wished for a magic TV remote that allowed him to travel through television as if the programs were real worlds. The program itself is not actually traveled into, just the ending credits, although three of the titular characters are seen briefly, as well as a robot cow device which may have come from the program itself.
  

The Simpsons

• The episode titled "Teenage Mutant Milk-Caused Hurdles", references TMNT.
• In the episode "Now Museum, Now You Don't", Lisa comes across two pages in a book titled Illustrated History of Western Art; on the left is Leonardo da Vinci, and on the right is "Leonardo da Ninji".
  

Transformers: Robots in Disguise

• In the episode More than Meets the Eye, a wrestler is named "Poughkeepsie Piledriver" same as in Headlock Prime. Both episodes were written by Steven Melching.

Tiny Toon Adventures

• In a few episodes of this series, the TMNT were spoofed by the fictional characters of the hero team 'Immature Radioactive Samurai Slugs', whose members were called Picasso, Warhol, Rockwell and Grandma Moses (based on artists Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell and Anna Mary Robertson Moses, parodying the fact that the Ninja Turtles were named after famous Renaissance artists). They even had their own theme song, which mimics the classic theme song for the 1987 TV series.
  • Mr. Popular's Rules of Cool
  • Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation
  • Weekday Afternoon Live

Wreck-It Ralph

• One of the TMNT arcade video games makes a brief cameo.
  

Bojack Horseman

Comics

ALF

• ALF Annual #3: Buy Low--Shell High! - Back in Melmac, when ALF was an orbit guardsman, he met the vigilante-hero team known as the "New Age Melmutant Abstract Turtles", formed by Picasso, Mondrian, Calder, and Pollock (named after Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Alexander Calder, and Jackson Pollock).
  

Arrow

• Oliver Queen, Stephen Amell's character in the Arrowverse TV franchise, appeared improvising his vigilante persona with a hockey mask and armed with a baseball bat in the series' official comics, just like Casey Jones in the Out of the Shadows film, wich was played by that same actor.
  

Moo Moo Dah

• There is a breif reference towards TMNT in the last chapter of one of the volumes of the Malaysian Chinese series based off one of the Lunar New Year characters of Malaysian monopoly company Astro, by Malaysian book company Hup Lee. A small team of kappas, which wears bandanas, resembles the Ninja Turtles, with the "Kappa Boss" resembling Leonardo.
  

  

Scribblenauts Unmasked: A Crisis of Imagination

• Issue 2 of the DC Comics/Scribblenauts crossover spin-off comic saw the main characters in a sewer. Along with a pair of plumbers that resembled Mario and Luigi, were a rat and four turtles.

Sonic the Hedgehog

• While the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics were still in print, the Turtles made a cameo appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog #2 miniseries within a panel where Michaelangelo tries to make a guest appearance and help out Sonic's comic book series, only to be told to scram.
  
• Wrong Sewer: While the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics were still in print, the Turtles made a cameo appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog #10. Seen in the background during Sonic's trek through the sewers, the brothers comment that seems they're in the wrong comic book.
  
• In the regular series of Knuckles the Echidna #3, when Knuckles' home Angel Island is on fire, a naked Michaelangelo can be seen making a cameo amongst the fleeing animals.
• In Sonic Universe #26, when Silver the Hedgehog travels to an alternate timeline, he and the Dark Freedom Fighters are seen using a base that resembles the Turtle Lair.
• Inter-dimensional Jail: Bebop and Rocksteady make a cameo appearance in Sonic Universe #29 as inmates of the inter-dimensional Zone Jail teasing Sonic's evil doppelgänger, Scourge.
  
• Finally in Sonic Boom #3, after Amy loses her Piko Hammer she is seen trying out various other weapons, including a Bō that looked similar to the one wielded by Donatello.

Superman

• In the early 90s a few issues from Superman related comics featured Jimmy Olsen portraying on a TV show a hit character named "Turtle Boy", wich was an obvious parody to the TMNT and their growing mainstream popularity.
• In one of these instances he appeared signing autographs for his fans, when mistakenly he autographed for a child by signing "To my favorite pal, Michael Angelo." and the little boy protested that his correct name is "Michelangelo"; this was a nod towards the fact that several fans were still confused since by then the official name spelling for the turtle Michelangelo had not been clarified yet within the franchise's productions, something that would only finally happen near the end of that same decade.
  

  Jimmy Olsen signing autographs as his fictional superhero alter-ego "Turtle Boy."

Transformers

• In Departure, The Nightbirds are functionally identical to each other, but their accent colors vary between blue, orange, red, and purple, referencing the bandanas of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
  

• In Ghost Stories, Krang and a Proton pack can be seen on a trash heap.
  

Wolverine

• Issue #50 (Vol 2): The Shiva Scenario Part 3: Dreams of Gore, Phase 3 - Jubilee complains about the monotonous task assigned to her aboard the Blackbird and she also protests bored mentioning that even "those turtles have a pizza-warmer in their van".
  

Live-action productions

Boy Meets World

• Boy Meets Girl - When Topanga arrives at the Mattews Family home to visit the "supposedly sick" Cory, she finds one of Cory's Ninja Turtles boxer shorts between the clean clothes he was accommodating and then he immediately threw it away embarrassed.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

• The Fugitive Part 1 - The character Jake Peralta mentions the Ninja Turtles when they are tracking a fugitive in the sewers.
• Your Honor - When Jake suggests to Capt. Holt that he should be more communicative and relaxed with his own mother, he responds sarcastically by questioning if he is supposed to say to her something like "Cowabunga, mom".
• The Golden Child - Jake and Amy talk about the complicate relationship she has with her overachiever brother and so Jake mentions some conflictive brothers he knows about but that always back each other in tough times; she then realizes unamused he was talking about the Ninja Turtles.
• Admiral Peralta - A reference to the Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV series was made in the episode 10 for Season 7, were Jake, as a TMNT fan, mentions the new reboot with a new take on Splinter and Krang's backstory.

Cobra Kai

• Fire and Ice - Raymond casually mentioned that those staffs that the karate students use during their performance are called "Bō" and that it is the same type of "weapon Donatello used". He is also Raymond's favorite Turtle.
• All In - Demetri called two of Hawk's new Cobra Kai friends as 'Bebop' and 'Rocksteady'.

Dinosaurs

• Robbie's room in the '90s-era sitcom Dinosaurs has a TMNT-inspired poster that reads "Teenage Mutant Ninja Cavemen".
  

Power Rangers

• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers
  • In the original version of the pilot episode "Day of the Dumpster", Zack Taylor (Black Ranger) expressed his disbelief at the story of Zordon (named Zoltar in the original pilot) by sarcastically claiming to be a Ninja Turtle.
  • In "The Trouble with Shellshock", the turtle monster Shellshock, upon growing comments "Wait'll those teenage mutants see what a full-grown turtle can do!".
• Power Rangers Ninja Steel: In "Presto Change-O", the turtle/fire extinguisher-themed monster Sloge told the rangers to prepare to get 'shell shocked.' That is a clear nod to the title of the Power Rangers in Space/Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation special crossover episode. Also, Brody Romero (Red Ninja Steel Ranger) said "A ninja vs a turtle, that's a wacky combination" alluding to the TMNT.

The Big Bang Theory

• The Fish Guts Displacement: Sheldon sings the beginning of the main theme song for the 80s cartoon series while listing his favorite theme songs of all time. His friends Leonard, Howard and Raj follow him saying "Turtle Power" at the end. This series was also produced by Chuck Lorre.

The Walking Dead

• Here's Not Here: Morgan's master was named Eastman in homage to the co-creator Kevin Eastman, he also carries a walking stick and lost his family tragically, much like master Splinter. During the episode there can also be seen a shirt with the words "save the terrapins" and turtle pictures hanging on Eastman's walls.
  

Two and a Half Men

• Big Flappy Bastards: The main character, Charlie, tells his nephew, Jake, that the main theme song for the 80s cartoon series was one of his first paid works while he plays its beginning on the piano. This series was also another production by Chuck Lorre.

Real people

• Ruby Rose: Among actress Ruby Rose's tattoos is one of Leonardo. She has explained that she got a Turtle tattoo because whenever she was scared as a child (from bullies, the monster under the bed, et cetera), she imagined the Turtles there with her as her friends and protectors.
• Vanilla Ice: He has a tattoo on his leg featuring the classic TMNT logo and the Turtles from The Secret of the Ooze poster.

Video games

Borderlands 2

• The Rat's Nest: Patricia Tannis has a mission for you to hunt down and kill a 'Splinter Group' of mutants that’ve managed to run amuck. The only way to lure them out of hiding is to get one of Moxxi's pizzas and deliver it to them in their sewer hideout. Their names are Lee, Mick, Ralph and Dan. Sound familiar? The Rat's Nest is reached via a newly-opened floodgate on the lower level of the first "turbine room" in Bloodshot Stronghold. The path exposed provides an alternate route through the Stronghold until the "Satan's Suckhole" area, rejoining the main area through a one-way door. There is also a small puzzle with five lights that spawns Flinter, a rat miniboss, when solved.
  

Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder

When some enemies are killed (including the Bad Brothers and Death Adder himself), the game plays a voice clip of Raphael yelling "DAMN!" as he is chasing after Casey Jones, from the first motion picture. The series is notorious for stealing its death cries from films.^{[citation needed]}

Minecraft (Mo' Creatures mod)

The Minecraft game mod, "Mo' Creatures", allows the creation of more types of animals than vanilla Minecraft, including turtles. If the player has four turtles and they are named after the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Leonardo-Blue, Michelangelo-Orange, Donatello-Purple, Raphael-Red), those turtles will gain weapons and masks from the Ninja Turtles.

If one of these "ninja turtles" are killed, they each have a chance of dropping a certain unique weapon. For example, Raphael will drop a Sai.

The special skin does not work in the 1.6.4 beta version.

Streets of Rage 4

• Graffiti art of a rat with four color-coded turtles (red (behind the box), orange, blue, and purple) appears in the game's sewer stage.
  

World of Warcraft

• Sewers of Dolanaar: Go down into the sewers of Dolanaar, there you will see a level 80 rat "teaching" four level 1 turtles. There are also green glowing potions around them, representing mutagen Ooze.