When one thinks of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, it is more than likely they will associate it with action, adventure, and comedy, and it is a safe bet that any thoughts of horror, suspense, or existential dread don’t pop into one’s mind when considering the Turtles–however, in TMNT’s latest comic, that is exactly what the Turtles will be associated with in the minds of fans as the franchise just found a way to make Five Nights at Freddy’s even scarier.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is an independent horror video game created by Scott Cawthon. In the first game, players are an anonymous night-shift security guard at a ‘Chuck-E-Cheese’-style restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza–and the animatronics are alive and hellbent on killing the player’s avatar. As is slowly explained throughout the series, the co-owner of Freddy Fazbear’s, (formerly only known as the Purple Guy, but later revealed to be a man named William Afton), was a child murderer who killed at least five kids years before the events of the game, and then stuffed their bodies in the animatronics. So, the five animatronics that are after the night-shift security guard are possessed by the angry spirits of murdered children, which is probably one of the darkest concepts ever conceived in a popular franchise–yet somehow, TMNT finds a way to top it.
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #135 by Sophie Campbell and Fero Pe, the Ninja Turtles are harboring the Triceraton, Sersi, as she is a high-profile target for the Utroms. Meanwhile, the chaos of the Armageddon Game rages on across the city as the Null Turtles have waged war on humanity in the name of mutant supremacy. The distraction of the Null Turtles forces most of the TMNT to respond, leaving Sersi alone with Donatello and only a few other mutants capable of protecting her, which essentially leaves her open for Utrom attack–and that’s exactly what happens. Masquerading as a mutant fox, an Utrom sneaks into Sersi’s hideout within Mutant Town and attacks her before it is stopped by Donatello. However, after Donnie takes down the fox suit, the Utrom itself jumps forth from the costume and hits Donatello with a surprise attack–ending the issue on a cliffhanger.
TMNT’s Five Nights at Freddy’s’ Villains are WAY Scarier
The similarities between this Utrom and the animatronics in FNAF are obvious. For one, there is a possessed animatronic in FNAF named Foxy who is (as one could guess) an animatronic fox, same as the Utrom in this TMNT issue. However, there are some key differences that make the TMNT’s version way scarier than FNAF’s. Firstly, the Utrom fox has an added laser-beam weapon suited in the fox’s mouth behind rows of razor-sharp metal teeth, which is an added deadly component not shared by the FNAF counterpart. Secondly, the entity that is possessing TMNT’s fox robot is a member of a super intelligent alien species hellbent on conquering the entire planet while FNAF’s version is just the soul of a dead child confined to the restaurant and only active at night.
Utroms were introduced in TMNT as aliens that wanted to terraform Planet Earth, a process that would have made the air unbreathable for humans–effectively killing everyone in the world without them even knowing what was happening. That is the kind of creature that was behind TMNT’s fox robot–and even that’s not all. When the robot was destroyed by Donatello, the Utrom leaped out and kept fighting, which is something that would not have happened in FNAF as the children’s souls aren’t dangerous by themselves, but are only deadly through the animatronics. So, from the vicious alien that will jump out and attack once the exosuit is destroyed, to the fact that Utroms as a species are a planetary threat, it is safe to say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles somehow topped Five Nights at Freddy’s by having scarier animatronics.