TMNTPedia
Advertisement

"What has two robotic legs and loves to stomp turtles? This guy!"
— Fishface in The Pulverizer

Xever Montes was one of Oroku Saki's top henchmen, alongside Chris Bradford. Once mutated into Fishface, he became even more of a force to be reckoned with. Xever is also a crime boss of the Brazilian mob in New York City, who call him Mr. X. Since the Shredder's resurrection by Kavaxas, Xever has parted ways with what remains of the Shredder's subordinates and is no longer an antagonist, but he still wants to live the life of a criminal.

Appearance[]

His human appearance was tall, skinny, and wore a blue jeans, a white shirt and blue vest. He was of Afro-Brazilian descent and sported a small afro.

His appearance as Fishface is a large crimson-red snakehead fish with yellow eyes and thin stick-like arms, with webs between his fingers. He has a large dorsal fin with a chunk missing from the front. His stomach area is white, and his mouth is full of sharp teeth, especially two large ones sticking out of it. He was modified a pair of silver-colored high-powered metallic legs, as well as an orange breathing rig.

History[]

ExPyM

Xever before his mutation

Xever Montes was a Brazilian street urchin. He was also an uncaught, unbeatable master thief, that is, until he was sent to prison (after trying to steal a briefcase, possibly filled with money). There he made his own weapons, and it was also where Shredder found him. He then became one of his top henchmen in the Foot Clan, to carry out their dirtiest jobs, such as assassinations and robberies

He debuted in the episode "New Friend, Old Enemy". There, he is paired up with Chris Bradford to find and kill Splinter, as Xever knows his way around the criminal underworlds of each city. After Bradford set the trap for Mikey, he and Bradford easily captured him. After Leo, Donnie, and Raph saved Mikey, Xever and Bradford followed them into the sewer. He proved to be more than a match for Donatello and Michelangelo, but was outmatched by Leonardo and Raphael when the Ninja Turtles switched foes. The Turtles then flushed Chris and Xever out of the sewers.

In "Never Say Xever", Shredder puts Xever in charge of getting rid of the Turtles. Xever uses his connections with the Purple Dragons to do this. After the Turtles save Mr. Murakami from the Dragons, they follow one of them, Fong to their hideout in the fortune cookie factory. Just as Fong tells Xever and Bradford about the Turtles, they make their entrance and a fight breaks out. While Bradford handles Donnie and Mikey, Xever fights with Leo. When the Foot Ninjas arrive, the Turtles retreat, much to both Xever's and Raphael's frustration. Xever punishes Fong, before realizing that they can hold an ally hostage to make the Turtles stay. He holds Mr. Murakami over a tall building and waits for his foes. When the Turtles open a trash can and show a captured Bradford to him, threatening to throw him off the building, he does not release Murakami, stating that Bradford's not his friend and that he wanted him to fall over. As he is cutting the rope holding Mr. Murakami up, Leonardo pulls him up, as Xever orders the Foot ninjas to fight. The Turtles are able to defeat them while dodging Xever's kunai. When Bradford frees himself with one of the Kunai, he asks Xever how he was so sure that Leo was bluffing, which Xever responded with "I wasn't". He is then able to defeat Raphael by hitting him while he was distracted by Foot Soldiers and uses the same tactic for Leonardo. When showing off his skills to Bradford and about to fillet the Turtles, Fong gives Leonardo his sword back who slashes a water tower and the bad guys are washed away by said water tower, giving the Turtles enough time to escape.

In "The Gauntlet", Xever is shown along with Bradford being punished by Shredder. He comments that he should have left Xever in the prison where he found him. Xever then goes out to hunt the Turtles with his partner. On the way, he touches a snakehead fish in a Chinatown Stand. He finds the brothers as Donatello attempts to deactivate The Kraang's mutagen bomb. Xever easily defeats Leonardo and Michelangelo before fighting Raphael. After Bradford is defeated and the bomb is disarmed, Donatello helps Raphael battle Xever. Xever initially has the upper hand but finds himself cornered with Bradford. Refusing to surrender, Bradford tries to detonate the mutagen bomb, but the blast causes the Mutagen to wash over both of them, mutating Xever into a red snakehead fish because the snakehead fish was the last thing he touched. Due to mutating into a fish, Xever can't breathe in the air anymore and begins suffocating, begging for the Shredder to help him.

In "Panic in the Sewers", Xever stuck his head out of Shredder's pool, showing that he survived, however, he has no prominence, as he can't travel on land anymore.

In "Mousers Attack!", he is still confined to the pool and complains about it. Bradford mocks him and taps on the glass covering the water, giving Xever a painful headache. Bradford talks about how Shredder may get hungry for sushi, enraging him, and telling Bradford , Xever backs down when Shredder tells him he is useless to him this way.

In "The Alien Agenda", Baxter Stockman has successfully built a water-breathing rig for Xever, but an attempt at building him a set of mechanical legs turns out clumsy and worthless. Once Stockman saw the Kraang robot, he realizes that this is what he needs.

In "The Pulverizer", Xever orders his Purple Dragons to steal Kraang tech, which Stockman reverse-engineers to make Xever's robotic legs fully functional. When Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael realize that Baxter Stockman would be the one using the tech, they confront him and try to stop "whatever he's doing", only for Xever with his newly equipped robotic legs to jump in front of them. The Turtles laugh at him, with Mikey nicknaming him Fishface (stating it was either that or Robo-Carp), however they soon take him seriously when he defeats Michelangelo with a single kick. Raphael knew to avoid the legs, and after lots of evenly matched fighting, Raphael pins his feet to the wall. Xever then bites him, injecting venom and making Raphael unable to fight. He defeats Leonardo before Donatello drives in with the Shellraiser. Xever hisses at the enhanced Subway car, but the Shellraiser defeats him with a shot from its garbage cannon.

In "Baxter's Gambit", he is seen trying to steal Kraang technology, but because The Foot and the turtles were after the same tech, they end up fighting each other. After battling Raphael for a little while, Dogpound is defeated and the two retreat. Raphael chases his rival, only to be drawn in to Baxter's trap, where Baxter turns on his teammates as well. After battling Raphael again, Raph saves Fishface from a laser saw, for reasons Raph didn't know. After realizing they've been going in circles, Baxter splits the gang up, with it just being Raph and Fishface on one side. He tries to suck them into a giant turbine, only for Fishface to save Raph (as his robotic legs were able to hold on), and they escaped the fan. While they were walking together, Raph asks him why is he working for Shredder but does so by using a respectful tone and by actually calling him Xever. Surprised by that respectful gesture, he opens up to him, and tells Raph that at a young age he learned that you must steal if you want something. But one day, his luck ran out, and he was sent to prison, but Shredder let him out, claiming that his skills were very useful. Fishface tells Raph that he is not in debt, but simply likes a job where he can crack some skulls, which Raph relates to. Fishface hears Dogpound's voice, and breaks down a wall to reunite with him and the other 3 turtles. They then battle Baxter's "Monster of Doom", which is an enhanced Stockman-Pod. After Mikey and Dogpound get Baxter's UFO over the Monster of Doom, Fishface uses his robotic legs to catapult Raph in the air, where he destroys the UFO, which crashes on the Monster of Doom. Too tired to fight after that, both Fishface and Dogpound agree to save the fight for another day, but as they walk off, Fishface throws one Stockman's weapons at Leonardo. Fortunately, Raphael sensed it and caught the ball with his sai. Fishface walks off with an evil smirk, with Raph glaring behind him.

In "The Pulverizer Returns!", he helped the Shredder with his plans to create a mutant Army by helping the Foot Soldiers steal the Mutagen from TCRI. He along side Dogpound fought the Turtles, easily taking down Raph before the Turtles switched their weapons and were defeated and had to call a retreat. Fishface was later seen in the warehouse, pushing the Pulverizer forward towards the Mutagen tank just before getting beat by Donnie. He managed to topple over the Shellraiser single handedly before fighting off Donatello with Dogpound when he tries to save Timothy. He then ran out with Dogpound after he set the explosives.

In "Showdown, Part 1", he and Dogpound guarded a hologram of April O'Neil as a trap for Splinter. He asked Dogpound how good this "Ninja Master" they were about to fight was. He attacked Splinter repeatedly until Splinter tricked him into kicking Dogpound in the face, knocking him out. Now facing Splinter 1-on-1, he was defeated easily and fled into the water tank.

In "Mikey Gets Shellacne", he and Dogpound both take orders from Karai and kidnap Baxter Stockman to turn the two back into humans. However, Fishface witnessed Dogpound transforming into a skeleton-looking werewolf after he fell into Baxter's tank of mutagen and Mikey dubs him "Rahzar". Then, Fishface, Rahzar, and Baxter all get electrocuted when Rahzar accidentally hits the electric system and the sprinklers go off.

In "The Manhattan Project", he seems to be a little scared when Tiger Claw showed up (presumably because a tiger's diet includes fish), and quickly tried to get on his good side, by offering him some refreshments, which he accepts. When he faced Raph again, he reveals his new weapon is a larger butterfly knife called a switch saber.

In "The Legend of the Kuro Kabuto", he teamed up with Stockman-Fly to get Shredder's helmet, (the Kuro Kabuto), stating that Shredder's face looks uglier that Stockman in his current state. He fought well but was outmaneuvered by the Turtles.

In "Vengeance is Mine", he is seen giving Karai food, but is irritated by Karai's mocking attitude, making threats to her. Later, he and Rahzar were distracted by Michelangelo's shadow puppet skills. After Rahzar is defeated, he knocks Mikey off the building, but Mikey latches on with his Kusarigama, stopping him from hitting the ground, which caused his knife to be stuck on a wall at a high distance. Then he, Tiger Claw and some Footbots chased the Turtles and Karai in Dragon Bikes, but Fishface was knocked off of his bike along with everyone else after Donatello poured pizza grease on the street to make his motorcycle slip.

Throughout "The Invasion, Part 1" and "Part 2", he is seen alongside Shredder, Tiger Claw, and Rahzar in a non-speaking role during Leonardo's fight against the Foot-Bots. After Leo is pushed into the icy water by a Foot-Bot and is heavily tired, Fishface is ordered along with the other two henchmen to take him down before being easily defeated.

In "Vision Quest", he appears near the end of the episode as Raphael's spiritual opponent where's he defeated.

in "Serpent Hunt", Xever appears next to Bradford as they are scolded by Shredder about their inability to find Karai during the months since her mutation and the Kraang Invasion. Xever casually remarks about Karai being "Too Scaly" before quickly correcting himself and saying that he meant "Too Stealthy" and that the city is so big. Later in the episode, he and Bradford managed to Capture Karai but lose her at the hands of Anton Zeck when the latter steals Xever's motorcycle and Karai when Xever and Bradford argue over who was going to bring Karai back to Shredder. After getting the call from Zeck and Ivan Steranko who want to make a deal with Shredder to return Karai and in turn Shredder helps them to get out of the city, Xever and Bradford are flanking Shredder as they arrive at the Harbor where the deal is about to take place. After the Turtles intervene Xever is squaring off against Zeck who according to Xever's own account "Talks too much and that's saying a lot coming from ME!" Xever knocks Zeck out and in relief states that he can "Finally hear myself think again." The Episode ends with Xever and Brandford looking on in sadistic glee as Zeck and Steranko are mutated.

In "Casey Jones VS. The Underworld", Xever accompanies Shredder and Tiger Claw in their meeting with Don Vizioso. In a discussion between Shredder and Don Vizioso, it is mentioned that Shredder controls the South American gangs through Xever.

In "Meet Mondo Gecko", Jason's employer "Mr. X" is revealed to be Xever Montes, who took Jason in after he mutated into a gecko and his parents kicked him out. He's also shown to be operating mutant races that are very popular with the New York City underworld and mutant communities.

In "Attack of the Mega Shredder", Fishface sleeps while Leonardo and Michelangelo enter through the den to save Karai.

In "The Fourfold Trap", Fishface, alongside Rocksteady, Bebop, Rahzar and Tiger Claw, ambush Leonardo, April and Raphael. Fishface tries to raid April but is hit by Rocksteady and crashes into a wall, he then captures Raph with the help of Bebop and Rocksteady. At the lair, Xever takes pleasure in making fun of Raph because he himself made adjustments to the turtle's cell. Later he attacks Splinter in the water to finish defeated and at the same time lose its breathing rig before being carried away by the water current.

In "Annihilation: Earth! Part 2", Fishface is absorbed by the black hole with the rest of the Earth, except for the Turtles, Casey and April, who were able to flee aboard a ship.

In "Earth's Last Stand", Fishface's demise is prevented by the turtles.

"City at War": Fishface and Rahzar joined with Tiger Claw they follow Karai and Shinigami to a martial arts store where Shredder keeps a cache of illegal weapons in the back warehouse. He asks Tiger Claw if Karai is still with them, he tells him that the brain worm is gone and she is their enemy now. When the turtles and April come to save Karai and Shinigami, while fighting Xever flirts with April.

"The Super Shredder": Fishface appears at the subway station and reroute the train that Rahzar and Tiger Claw used as a distraction for The Turtles and April towards a dead end but the group got out of the train in time.

"The Power Inside Her": Fishface helps Rahzar and Tiger Claw fill their van with mutagen stolen from a Kraang lab for Shredder to maintain his mutation. However as Casey didn't want to wait more for his friends, decides to confront them and takes Fishface out of the van by shocking him with his taser but he crashes in a dumpster which causes him to hit in an alley. It looks like Casey was finished but April arrives to help him now being fully powered by her Aeon crystal. Fishface goes after her first but April immobilizes him with her psychic powers and breaks one of his mechanical legs causing him to fall to the ground.

In "Requiem", he, along with Rocksteady, Bebop and Rahzar distract the turtles in Coney Island while Super Shredder manages to finish off Splinter on the Wolf Hotel building.

In "Owari", Fishface was the first of the hench-mutants the turtles faced before they finished the Super Shredder. Raph also managed to break off both his mechanical legs and his water breathing device.

In "The Forgotten Swordsman", Xever can be seen at the pier of Coney Island to retrieve the corpse of Rahzar who had drowned at the hands of Leatherhead, so he can be revived. A chore he apparently does with great apprehention, as he and Bradford never got along. Later in the episode, he and the revived Rahzar are sent on patrol to look for the Kuro kabuto when they encounter Mikey and Raph and fight them. After encountering Hattori Tatsu, who offers Bradford a place as his new right hand man to lead his Foot Clan, Bradford confides with Xever about considering the offer very seriously.

In "End Times", Xever meets up with the Turtles, telling them about the Foot cultists, revealing their origin and their weakness: bright light. He then reveals to them that Shredder has been brought back to life. He then ends his story by telling them that he abandons the Foot, hunkering back to the time that he was just a petty criminal and life was simple. As Xever walks off, it is the final time that he appeared in the series.

Personality[]

As one of the Turtles' more clever and cut-throat enemies, Fishface is quite hot-tempered, cruel and treacherous. Although a criminal to the core, he swears utmost loyalty to the Shredder, as the ninja rescued him from jail and gave him a purpose and protection. He shares some similarities to Raphael, given their love of battle, but is proven more bloodthirsty than him. In his role as 'Mr. X' he's shown to be a very cunning and manipulative crime boss in his own right who preys on social outcasts as a method of recruitment. He has sometimes tends to underestimate his opponents which sometimes leads to his defeat.

Powers and abilities[]

As a human, he was very skilled in capoeira, a Brazilian leg-based martial art, and knife fighting (and he most likely learned some some Ninjutsu from the Shredder as well). He was an expert with butterfly knives before he was mutated. He was highly skilled and was easily able to fight off at least two of the Turtles on his own. However, his mutation gave him the ability to breathe underwater (of course), but has also left him with several weaknesses. His mutation into a fish resulted in the loss of his legs and his ability to breathe air, rendering immobile and overall unable to live on land without the help of a breathing mechanism and mechanical legs that Baxter Stockman provided him. However, the martial arts that he had learned still do have a surprising influence on him and, thus, he can use the robotic legs with quite lethal skill, and can still wield small blades, and even some swords pretty well (without them slipping right through his fingers). Xever also gained a venomous bite which causes hallucinations, nausea, and delusions, and the ability to command regular snakehead fish to attack his foes. Xever knows how to ride a motorcycle. It seems Xever's skinny fish arms are somewhat very strong. In "Baxter's Gambit", he is seen holding Raphael's leg without any struggle.

Weapons[]

Xever often uses a butterfly knife as his weapon.

His mechanical legs were invented by Baxter Stockman and improved with The Kraang tech. They are incredibly strong, fast and agile, allowing Fishface to deliver devastating kick attacks (even stronger than his already incredibly strong human legs) and jump great distances. The robotic legs can also cling to surfaces (as seen in "Baxter's Gambit") and spin like a propeller (as seen in "The Pulverizer").

He also wields a balisword with extreme precision in "The Manhattan Project, Part 1".

Relationships[]

Former allies[]

  • Shredder - Montes interact very little with his master, but is probably thankful for when the Shredder released him from jail. When Shredder was resurrected, he was horrified and decided to abandon the Foot. He says to the Turtles it is too much for him, even for a talking fish.
  • Tiger Claw - Xever shows clear signs of fear towards Tiger Claw, either due to an instance in the past, or because of their respective mutations (as a tiger's diet can include fish), as he uncharacteristically shows hospitality to Tiger Claw.
  • Chris Bradford / Dogpound / Rahzar - Even though Shredder put them together as a pair, Fishface and Dogpound don't cooperate well. They frequently berate each other and quarrel amongst themselves, and their different fighting styles and attitudes have been shown to clash. However, they are driven by the common goal set by Shredder to defeat the turtles, so they are able to put their squabbles aside and fight together whenever the situation calls. When he was forced to retrieve Bradford's lifeless body to resurrect him, Xever had a deep dissatisfaction with that, which shows that he really hated Bradford.
  • Baxter Stockman / Stockman-Fly - At first, Stockman was their ally, but when Fishface and Dogpound harassed him, he betrayed them and took revenge by trapping them (along with the Turtles) in his "Maze of Doom", in the episode "Baxter's Gambit". After that, Xever and Baxter became enemies. Later, thanks to Shredder's order on recapturing Stockman into useful pawn and put a mutagen bomb on his neck (which will turn him into a mutant, once he made a contact with a fly, if he failed) so he won't escape again, they become an ally once more. During the events of "The Legend of the Kuro Kabuto" Xever and Stockman fought side by side but neither was really happy about that. After that episode, their interactions were virtually none at all.

Former enemies[]

  • Donatello - Xever has had little interaction with Donatello.
  • Jason / Mondo Gecko - Mr. X took Jason in as one of his errand boys after Jason's parents kicked him out for mutating. He used Jason to lure Michelangelo and Casey Jones into a trap, but Jason quickly realized thereafter that the turtles weren't the enemy—Mr. X was.
  • Karai - Neither Xever nor Bradford showed much respect towards Karai when she served as intern leader of the Foot while Shredder was in Japan (as it turned out to recruit Tiger Claw) She ordered them around like two errand boys. They fought only once in "City at War" where it was painfully obvious that even without using her snake mutation, Karai was Xever's superior.
  • Leonardo - Xever has had little interaction with Leonardo. Though in the episode "Baxter's Gambit", Xever and Leonardo are deciding who should go first through the doorway in Baxter's Maze of Doom.
  • Michelangelo - Xever has had little interaction with Michelangelo. Though in the episode "The Pulverizer", he seems very annoyed with Mikey's nickname for his new mutated self.
  • Raphael - It seems that the both of them share several similarities, one of those is that they both like having a job where they get to "crack skulls every day". The two also have a rivalry, and duel whenever they meet though they seem to have respect for the other. Raphael is also the only turtle who has near equal skills to Fishface. In Baxter's Gambit, the two of them were split away from the other turtles and Dogpound. Raphael saves Fishface from a laser saw, and Fishface saves him from a deadly fan. The two show great teamwork and destroy Baxter's UFO. He even tells Raphael why he's in the Foot Clan. Xever was also Raphael's spiritual foe in the spirit plane in "Vision Quest".

Quotes[]

  • "Pretty weapon for a tough guy. In prison, we made our own weapons." - New Friend, Old Enemy
  • "The name is Xever. So you don't forget, I'll write it on your shells… with these." - Never Say Xever
  • "HEY, STAY AND FIGHT, YOU COLD-BLOODED COWARDS!" - Never Say Xever
  • (To Fong) "IDIOTA! You led them to our hideout!" - Never Say Xever
  • (About Bradford) "He's not my friend!" - Never Say Xever
  • (About the turtles wanting to throw Bradford off a building) "Go ahead. It'll save me the trouble." - Never say Xever
  • "See Bradford? That is how you catch Turtles. And next, I'll show you how to fillet them." - Never say Xever
  • "Ah yes. What would we have done without your brave leadership, from inside the trash can?!" - Never say Xever
  • "Oh, sorry for the inconvenience! When would you prefer to breathe your last breath?" - The Gauntlet
  • (Gasping for water, after being mutated) "Help....me!!!" - The Gauntlet
  • "If I wasn't stuck in here, I would've caught Splinter by now." - Mousers Attack!
  • "Fix these, or I will bite your head off!" - The Alien Agenda
  • "Let them come. Who has two robotic legs, and loves to stomp turtles?" (Points to himself) "THIS GUY!" - The Pulverizer
  • (To Raphael) "Actually, I believe I was turning you into Turtle Soup." - Baxter's Gambit
  • (Looks up at Baxter) "You fool! What are you doing? Have you gone mad?" - Baxter's Gambit
  • (To Raphael) "You think I'd let Baxter do away with you? That is a pleasure I am reserving for myself." - Baxter's Gambit
  • (To Raphael) "We are of a kind, you and I." - Baxter's Gambit
  • "Don't get too comfortable, Karai." - Mikey Gets Shellacne
  • "I want to live as a man. Love as a man. Not as a fish, do you hear?"- Mikey Gets Shellacne

Trivia[]

  • Xever's human form is reminiscent of late actor and martial artist Jim Kelly, and it is noticeable that both Kelly and Chris Bradford's apparent template, Chuck Norris, have starred in two famous Bruce Lee movies (Enter the Dragon and Way of the Dragon, respectively).
  • Although Xever was not officially named "Fishface" until "The Pulverizer", he is listed by that name in some of the episode credits prior to said episode.
  • The known symptoms of Fishface's venom are delusions, fever, and nausea.
  • Fishface tells Raphael the reason behind his association with the Shredder in "Baxter's Gambit", establishing that Xever has been with the Foot Clan since childhood.
  • In "The Manhattan Project, Part 2", Fishface uses his new giant balisong for the first time, which is similar to the one that comes with his action figure.
  • The name Xever is one of several variants of the Iberian name Xavier, whose use as a given name was inspired by the historical figure Francis Xavier, who was so named because he came from the town of Xavier (today Javier) in Spain's Navarre region. The place name Xavier itself derives from Basque Etxeberria, meaning "the new home."
    • Xever is always pronounced /ˈzɛv.əɹ/ "ZEV-er," rhyming with "never." But this is very much an anglicized pronunciation, and not normal for Portuguese, Xever's native language. The pronunciation of Portuguese words is very predictable from their spelling, in which case Xever would actually be pronounced /ʃɨˈveʁ/ "shih-VAIR."
ScalienLaird-0
  • As Fishface, Xever uses a pair of mechanized legs attached to a sort of belt for mobility whilst out of the water. This may have been partly inspired by a rejected toy design from Peter Laird depicting a mutant cobra wearing a very similar apparatus.
  • Xever's last name, Montes, is first revealed in "Meet Mondo Gecko". Whereas his partner Chris Bradford was primarily known and referred by his last name, Xever Montes was primarily known and referred by his first name.

Gallery[]

Advertisement