24 Amazing Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About The Turtles Movies

Everyone who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s will remember just how popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were art the time. You could find them everywhere, cartoons, toys, clothes, lunch-boxes, Turtles were everywhere you looked!

Thank’s to it’s popularity all around the globe, three live-action  Turtles movies were released in fairly quick succession in the early 1990’s,the first of which broke box-office records at that time.

24 Amazing Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About The Turtles Movies

That right, all four Turtle actors actually got their faces on screen, even if only for a short while……

John Pais, who played Rafael, plays the passenger in the back seat of a cab. Michelan Sisti, who plays Michaelangelo, plays the pizza delivery man who delivers the pizza to the Turtles’ sewer. Leif Tilden, who plays Donatello, plays the Foot messenger that meets April in the subway station. David Forman, who plays Leonardo, plays a gang member in the warehouse during Casey’s fight with Tatsu.

While they may have not got much screen-time, at least they could prove they were in the movies.

Judith Hoag was not asked to reprise her role as April in the film’s sequels due to her own personal complaining. Particularly about the six-day work-week and the amount of violence in the movie.

This was something which would be addressed in the second movie, as you will see later in this article.

In the original script, the young boy Foot Soldier that Tatsu (Shredders second in command) attacks was to die from the beating he got.

The sounds of the boy breathing and others saying he would be all right were added at the last minute after the movie ratings board objected to the scene.

Originally, Judith Hoag was to wear a yellow colored jumpsuit and a big head of red hair. This was in homage to the original cartoon and comic character. However she found the jumpsuit “horrifying” and so the idea was scrapped.

The yellow raincoat April wears in the beginning of the movie is a homage to the yellow jumpsuit she wears in the 1987 cartoon.

Jim Henson, whose company provided the movie’s turtle costumes, was reportedly upset about the level of violence in the finished movie.

While he was proud to have helped advance the art of animatronics, he viewed the violence as “excessive, pointless, and not his style.”

While the film was set in New York City, much of the filming actually took place in Wilmington, North Carolina. Only a couple of location shoots were done in New York City to capture famous landmark areas.

Shredder and the Foot Clan’s hideout was filmed in an abandoned cement factory called the Ideal Cement Factory outside of Wilmington, North Carolina in Castle Hayne.

This location was also used as the set for Dinohatton in Super Mario Bros. (1993) and Top Dollar’s nightclub in The Crow (1994).

Many major studios such as Walt Disney Pictures, Columbia Pictures, MGM/UA, Orion Pictures, Paramount and Warner Bros. turned down the film for distribution.

They were worried that despite the popularity of the cartoon and the toy line the film could potentially be a box office disappointment like Masters of the Universe (1987) was just a couple years earlier.

However, these studios would be proven wrong, with Turtles going on to break box office records at the time.

All three newswomen seen or mentioned in the movie are named after a month: April, May, and June.

In the cartoon and in the original comic, the Turtles are all slightly shorter than your average human being. This was impractical for the live-action version, since all of the actors portraying the Turtles were at least 5’6’’. The costumes had to be sized similarly, but the now bigger Turtles brought with them an unforeseen issue:

The full-sized costumes couldn’t fit in a regular-sized manhole, which is a bummer when half of your movie takes place in sewers.

Therefore, production had to construct their sets with custom-sized manholes, much larger than the ones you would usually encounter in North America. You might think this is not a big problem since the sewers were a set, but the shots of the turtles entering the underground were originally going to be filmed separately but the size issue forced the producers to reconsider.

Long before his roles in The Green Mile or Iron Man 2, a young Sam Rockwell got the role as head thug in the Foot Clan. At then end of the movie he tells the police to “check out the East Warehouse over at Lairdman Island”, a nod to the comic’s creators, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.

As everybody knows, the Turtles love Pizza! This love for pizza caused a corporate war between pizza giants Dominoes and Pizza Hut.

Dominoes had the privilege of  feeding the Turtles throughout the movie with Dominoes product placement. However, it was Pizza Hut who were able to secure a $20 million marketing campaign. Sponsoring everything from the ‘Coming Out of Their Shells Tour’ to video games and toys.

Most Turtles fans will know their is a huge difference between the first and second movies when it comes to tone and violence. The first was far more dark and violent than the second, which was much more comical and light-hearted. Although this didn’t please many Turtles fans, their was a good reason behind it…

Due to backlash from parents over the violent tone of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) movie, (something that Judith Hoag (April O’Neil) and Jim Henson were also upset about), the Turtles didn’t use their weapons for the majority of the second move. To get around this they would use any nearby props as weapons, this included yo-yo’s, laundry baskets, belts and many other set props.

This video of the first fight scene in the movie shows exactly how the Turtles got around not being able to use weapons.

Paige Turco took over the role of April O’Neil in Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. The original actress, Judith Hoag, was never even approached about the idea of reprising her role from the first movie.

Turtles II was dedicated to Jim Henson, who created the Turtle’s costumes. Jim died not long after the release of the first movie at the age of 53.

While the first movie had exceeded all expectations, Golden Harvest wasted no time green-lighting a sequel. This was because they believed the franchise was going to burn out quickly.

Golden Harvest wanted to get this movie out in theatres as soon as possible, which is why the film came out less than a year after the first movie’s release.

The glass that Professor Perry uses in Turtles II to mix the mutagen antidote has a picture of Bart Simpson on it. This is a reference to the fact that Bart has the same “Cowabunga” catchphrase as the Turtles.

When the Turtles first encounter Tokka & Rahzar, Michelangelo asks, “Didn’t we see these guys on WrestleMania?” Super Shredder, who appears later in the movie, played by Kevin Nash, would go on to participate in WrestleMania five times as Diesel, including one as WWF Champion in 1995.

Many of the pizza props used in this movie were reused in Ernest Scared Stupid (1991). They can be seen being thrown at the bullies who try to attack the kids’ tree house.

The “Secret Of the Ooze” was that it was created by aliens, but that sub-plot got cut from the film.

In the original comic story, the ooze was made by stranded aliens called the Utroms through a front company called TCRI (Techno Cosmic Research Institute).

Since the final script did not include the Utroms, the company was changed to TGRI (Techno-Global Research Industries).

At one point in the movie, one of the turtles refers to Walker (Stuart Wilson) as the “Zorro dude”. Wilson later starred in The Mask of Zorro (1998) as Zorro’s arch-nemesis, Don Rafael Montero.

Elias Koteas plays both Casey Jones and one of Walker’s henchmen, Whit (who is implied to be Casey’s ancestor). April notices the similarity.

During the late 80’s and early 90’s, Astoria in Oregon was going through a filming boom. Movies such as The Goonies, Kindergarten Cop, Short Circuit and Free Willy had all been filmed there.

Producers of Turtles III decided to get in on the action, and recreate medieval Japan in this small coastal town’s surrounding countryside.

Producers invited Corey Feldman back to reprise his role as Donatello in the third movie. Feldman had been dropped in the second movie due to being in rehab. Producers at the time thought this could damage the family-friendly image of the movie. For that reason a different voice actor (Adam Carl) was used.