TMNT: Mutant Mayhem 2 Features A Delightful Joke That's A First For The Franchise [Exclusive]

The "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" franchise is franchise that has evolved with the decades. Take, for instance, the look of the turtles themselves. Though for years the turtles looked almost exactly alike, only distinguishable by their weapon of choice and color-coded eye masks, we have seen projects that drastically changed the design of the turtles in recent years.

"Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and now "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" are good examples of this. "Mutant Mayhem" leans on imperfection, going for a sketchy look for the world of the turtles, and gives the turtles vastly different designs from one another. In that movie, Raphael is substantially bigger than his brothers, Donatello wears glasses and is smaller and thinner than the rest, while Michelangelo has braces. This helps make the turtles feel like real teenagers with awkward bodies that are changing and growing — and for the first time, things are about to get even more awkward.

During an interview promoting the short film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 — Lost in New Jersey," which is releasing in theaters alongside the new "SpongeBob" movie on December 19, 2025, producer Jeff Rowe gave /Film an exclusive little tease of what to expect from the feature-length sequel to "Mutant Mayhem," and it involves poor Donnie.

"We ended up making Donnie a lot taller. He hit a growth spurt," Rowe said when asked about having the voice actors grow up in-between the movies. "And we're like, 'As much as we can, can we just try to give a reason for it?' We're going to have to stop recording them soon because by the time the film comes out, they'll be 30."

"Mutant Mayhem" already changed the traditional look of the turtles and resulted in a successful relaunch of the franchise, but this news takes that idea to a new height. Donnie having a growth spurt can certainly lead to a funny running gag, sure, but what makes this unique is that he's changing within the same iteration of these characters. Growth and aging are rare in animation, because one of the advantages the medium has is that you're allowed to freeze your characters in time and keep making new stories forever. (That's how Bart Simpson has been 10 years old for nearly 40 years.)

That Donnie is now taller and growing up opens the door for many storytelling opportunities in the future of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." This probably doesn't mean that future movies will follow the turtles into adulthood and beyond, considering Paramount canceled an R-rated, adult-focused turtles movie, but it does mean there is a chance this iteration of the turtles will grow up a bit and continue to change. Given that they join a high school at the end of "Mutant Mayhem," we could see even them graduate in a future movie.

At the very least, this is a funny workaround for the reality of voice actors growing up during the long production time required to make an animated project. It's also a cheeky rebuttal to the way shows like "Stranger Things" struggle with their actors outpacing their characters' ages.

Before we see the turtles return in the "Mutant Mayhem" sequel, they're appearing in the holiday short "Chrome Alone 2 — Lost in New Jersey." The short deals with the turtles discovering a bizarre and uncanny commercial for toys of them (presented entirely in live-action), paying homage to the history of turtles merch.

The fact that the commercial is in live-action is a continuation of the visual style of "Mutant Mayhem" (which featured the animated turtles watching "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"), but the strange contrast between live-action and animation also works as a clever piece of commentary on the use of AI in advertising.

"The commercial is supposed to feel like it's a little bit uncanny and [like] it's made by AI, and the short is about AI," director Kent Seki told /Film in an interview about the short film.

In order to enhance that uncanny feeling, the animation team even added extra fingers to the kids featured in the fictional toy commercial. This works to showcase the low quality of the commercial the turtles watch, presented in the style of '80s commercials with a less-than-perfect signal that distorts the image, but also to poke fun at AI's inability to properly recreate human fingers. The short itself is funny, visually stunning, and poignant in its portrayal of AI as an incredibly stupid piece of tech that ruins everything it touches.

"That made me feel like there's something here that's ... we can make a great turtle short, but we can also say something at the same time that is fun and relevant to the times we live in," Seki added.