The series quickly evolved from its roots as a parody of the comic 'Daredevil' to be its own... er... critter. And I always loved that in the comic that the same toxic waste container that blinded Matt Murdoch and made him Daredevil was the one that dropped into the sewers and mutated the turtles.
And on an amusing note- the Turtles had visible tails (as turtles do) in the original comics. I used to do lay-outs for my high school's weekly 'news' paper and a friend and I got busted for drawing a TMNT in one issue- because people who didn't know the characters thought we drew turtles with wangs! Same reason they stopped drawing them in later versions.
On a second amusing note I have a video produced from a comic convention about a year before the animated series debuted in which the creators- Eastman and Laird- are talking about the comic and say something to the effect of "we just had some group approach us about doing an animated version olf the turtles... but those things are generally crap and never glo anywhere." AHahhaahahaaaaa.... talk about an understatement from guys who within a few years could probably wash their windows using the spare cash they had as rags.
