10 Comic Book Supervillains Who Created Their Own Worst Enemy

6. The Shredder And Master Splinter

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Shredder Master Splinter
IDW

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have undergone plenty of changes over the decades - some in an attempt to make the group more family friendly, and others purely for the sake of giving the formula a bit of a shake-up.

One thing that has not changed since the original Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird comic, though, is the rivalry between the Turtles, their Master Splinter, and the Shredder. In nearly every incarnation, Oroku Saki is responsible for invoking the ire of Splinter and his four reptilian sons, and you can't say he doesn't deserve it.

In the original incarnation, the Shredder killed Splinter's master, Hamato Yoshi, who was teaching the young rat the ways of ninjitsu. When Splinter eventually encounters the four turtles doused in goo in a Manhattan sewer, he mutates along with them and becomes their sensei, teaching them everything his master taught him, so that one day they could overcome and defeat the Shredder.

Other continuities vary, with the current IDW series depicting Splinter, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo as reincarnated versions of Yoshi and his sons - who were murdered by Saki in Feudal Japan - but Shredder is always to blame for igniting the feud in the first place, as well as for laying the foundations of his own downfall.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.