When a comic book fan thinks of World War II there is one hero in particular that always comes to mind, Captain America, but what doesn't come to mind is a bunch of pizza loving teenage martial arts expert turtles, especially a group so heavily associated with 80's pop culture. Believe it or not, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles actually once took on Hitler himself in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #64.
Originally published as a parody of Daredevil, the Turtles gained their powers from the same ooze that blinded the Man without Fear. Shifting heavily from their original darker tone, the Turtles were retweaked into the commonly known goofballs they are today in an effort to turn them into a Saturday morning cartoon, and with that the tone of their comics also shifted to match the show. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures launched in 1988 with its first issues serving as comic adaptations of some of the cartoon shows storylines, however the comic quickly diverged from this with completely original stories and shifting it into a different reality from the show when the creators handed the series over to Ryan Brown and Stephen Murphy after its fifth issue.
So how exactly does all of this result in the Turtles fighting the world's biggest real life supervillain? Stephen Murphy and Ryan Brown brought extra depth to the comics that the show simply didn't have, touching upon social issues and animal rights, making the comics have far more social commentary than its Saturday morning counterpart.
While time travel is definitely a constant theme in the Turtleverse, it tends to be more focused on the future, with enemies traveling through time to the Turtles period, however the Turtles themselves have also jumped through time, even to the past. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #64, also known as part three of Dreamland, features three of the Turtles traveling back to Berlin during World War II. As Michelangelo lays in a coma, the other three Turtles, Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael, open a time slip to the past. It's here in the past that the Turtles take on not one, but two Hitlers, with one being Hitler's preserved brain in a robotic suit from the future. For some bizarre reason, despite being surrounded in advanced future tech, the brain itself is stored in a fragile glass container, and is shattered pretty easily. As Hitler bends over his dying future brain, Raphael, being the badass that he is, walks straight up to Adolf and decks him in the face, being sure to call him a perv in the process.
With the Hitler brain from the future now in their possession, the Turtles plan to head back to the future only to realize that they no longer have the remote for the time slip. Luckily, Don set an emergency back up slip to open at their original entry point two hours after their arrival. It is on their journey back to the portal that they come face to face with the Fuhrer again. Hitler, being obsessed with the occult, confuses the Turtles for demons. In response to his fear, Hitler actually puts his gun directly to his head and blows his brains out. That's right, the Turtles are the reason Hitler commits suicide and the war ends.
Usually associated with it's Saturday morning counterpart, it's a pretty far departure from the show's kids friendly nature to see Hitler straight up shoot himself in the dome, not to mention the fact Raphael follows the suicide up with a cheerful "mission accomplished!" As if a group of teenage turtles mutated into humanoids that study martial arts wasn't weird enough, this issue just amped up the strangeness by eleven.