There's an entire channel on Pluto TV devoted to just Ninja Turtle cartoons. Which is right up there with the channel for just American Gladiators on the good ideas list. Especially if you just want something playing in the background*.
Anyway, so ninja turtles. There's been several cartoons and I don't know how many different comics over the years. And I was thinking, have any of the turtles ever decided to just, stop doing the ninja thing?
Most of the origins I remember say Splinter (whether he was a rat that became humanlike after exposure to mutagen, or a human who became ratlike after exposure to mutagen) found the four little turtles, and raised them and trained them in martial arts.
(I assume there is some Discourse out there about how Splinter is the real villain because he raised these four turtles from babies and turned them into soldiers and assassins, and Shredder is actually the good guy who takes in troubled people and gives them a clan to belong to. Because this world is a hellscape, and other people are the greatest source of suffering on it.)
Next thing you know, they're fighting ninjas, guys with a disturbing amount of metal accessories, squishy brain aliens in exo-suits, giant talking alligators, all kinds of shit. Time travel, space travel, fearful and violent humans.
At some point, one of them had to say "Enough," right? I'd assume either Donatello or Michelangelo, if only because they're the two usually depicted as having the most other interests outside martial arts. Donnie could probably cheerfully go into engineering or computer programming, and Mikey would pursue an X Games career or become a professional gamer. Raphael and Leonardo strike me as enjoying fighting too much, and being too devoted, respectively, to ever abandon it.
I don't know of it ever happening, though. I vaguely remember Mikey being captured by the government and experimented on in the '90s Archie Comics series (which is the only one I really bought), and he might have been blind for a while because of that, but I'm not sure he stopped entirely. I mean, if you figure the Turtles were originally playing off Miller's Daredevil run, they can't very well let being blind stop them.
But I figure there have certainly been deaths, brainwashings, severe injuries that may have taken one of them off the board for a time. But in terms of simply looking at the life they're living, seeing it's not the life they want, and doing something about it? Not that I know of.
I don't know if they all just love it too much, or if they feel too much loyalty. That walking away would feel like turning their back on their brothers and their father/teacher.
* Although that's been less necessary the last week since the neighbors downstairs and their extraordinarily loud kid moved out. It is 200% quieter in this building now just from that kid not slamming their door 70 times a day, no exaggeration.
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