| “ | None of you will leave here alive! | „ |
| ~ Utrom Shredder's most famous quote. |
| “ | You speak my name, but you do not know me! I am Ch'rell, Oroku Saki, Duke Acureds, the one, true Shredder! I am a destroyer of worlds, and I fear no one! | „ |
| ~ Utrom Shredder to the Mirage Turtles. |
Ch'rell, also known as the Utrom Shredder, is the main antagonist of the 2003 animated TV series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the 2009 animated television film Turtles Forever.
As Oroku Saki, he is a billionaire philanthropist, but uses this image as a front for his criminal empire. He is an evil Utrom who causes destruction throughout the universe to make himself powerful, making him the most dangerous criminal of the universe. He is the ruthless leader of the Foot Clan. The Utrom Shredder is also the archenemy of Mortu, the Utroms, the Turtles and their master and father, Splinter.
He was voiced by Scottie Ray, who also voiced the Tengu Shredder in the same series.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- He takes anybody that opposes him in any way as a deathly serious enemy, and will stop at nothing to destroy them no matter how harmless and/or peaceful the being.
- In the Ninja Tribunal storyline, it's revealed that anyone who claims the identity of the Shredder for themselves develops an unconscious mystical connection with the original Shredder. This means that because Ch'rell took the form of Shredder, this may have caused him to become worse. However, this isn't a prevention, as he was already very heinous from the beginning.
- Although Karai became the new Shredder at one point and got worse, she still ultimately redeemed herself and was even (presumably) willing to forgive the Turtles as she attended April and Casey's wedding, further proving that Ch'rell's actions weren't excusable. Therefore, this has no effect on his moral agency.
- While he does adopt Karai when finding her alone in the streets, as time goes on, it turns out he simply viewed her as a tool and treats her horribly, threatening her with death if she questions him.
- The same goes for the Foot Mystics, whom he ultimately used as pawns despite respecting them for their powers.
- Overall, he has no tragic backstory, redeeming qualities, comedic moments or a Freudian Excuse, shows a chilling lack of remorse for his terrible crimes.
- Although his death by the hands of Rocksteady and Bebop’s idiocy when they accidentally blasted the laser at the back of him is a bit humorous (even in the final moments in Turtles Forever), it is not played for sympathy let alone any laughs, but instead portrayed as a purely karmic retribution for his pettiness towards the Ninja Turtles and all the things he did. Because of his seriousness and the threat he possesses, it is far too brief to detract from his heinousness.
- As shown in Splinter Forever, had Ch'rell survived, he proved to be persistent enough to return to his home universe and try to get back at the Turtles and their allies.
Background[]
- He started wars and committed atrocities across the universe for power and profit, causing the deaths of millions of people.
- According to Dolphette's testimony, Ch'rell launched an attack on the planet of Enethone where over 1 million innocent inhabitants had been killed.
- In Wan-ran Otho's testimony, he incited and funded a civil war on Eno II to mine raw minerals without restriction, causing the lives of 3.2 million to be killed.
- The Utrom High also mentioned that Ch'rell tried to take over the Utrom government various times through destructive means such as through devastating bombings across the planet — his evil deeds on Earth proved to count as this.
- While being transported to prison, he escaped, presumably murdered some of the guards and caused a malfunction, forcing the ship to crash-land on Earth.
- He attacked an Utrom testing out the newly invented Exo-suit, stole the suit and cruelly threw the Utrom away to either fend for himself or get killed.
- After becoming the leader of the Foot Clan under the guise of the Tengu Shredder, he ordered an attack on the other Utroms who crash-landed before spending centuries building his own empire.
- He attacked the sword-smiths who built him the Sword of Tengu for no real reason. He claimed to have used the Sword to lay waste villages, burn castles to the ground, vanquish armies, and conquer Japan.
- For centuries, he ruthlessly hunted down the other Utroms as revenge for imprisoning him in the first place.
- He had his ninjas torture Master Splinter's master, Hamato Yoshi via electrocution, for not giving him the information he wanted before killing him in cold blood.
Season 1[]
- He has multiple innocent people from the streets kidnapped and mutated to help him search for his enemies.
- He then had them disposed of when they didn't prove to be useful. It should also be noted that the mutation slowly drove them to becoming mindless monsters, and even when they are reverted, it came with the cost of only living underground until several episodes later. They also were shown to be in pain during the mutation.
- He kills one of his punks, John for failing to bring him the money they stole, laughing maniacally afterwards.
- He does this to most of his minions who fail him, except for Baxter Stockman. However, this was only because he still found him useful to his plans, so he has him repeatedly tortured gruesomely for his failures to the point where he is only a brain in a jar. While the final mutilation that turned him to such a state was solely done by Hun (which wasn't an order made by him unlike the previous scenarios), when finding out, he proceeds to sadistically torture him after mocking him for his state.
- There is one flashback in the episode "Insane in the Membrane" where he is shown to torture him himself, so saying that Hun was the only one that abused him is not completely true. Baxter's constant mutilation would be a key factor in him losing his sanity in said episode.
- While he does treat Hun better than him, he isn't above punishing him for his failures.
- He does this to most of his minions who fail him, except for Baxter Stockman. However, this was only because he still found him useful to his plans, so he has him repeatedly tortured gruesomely for his failures to the point where he is only a brain in a jar. While the final mutilation that turned him to such a state was solely done by Hun (which wasn't an order made by him unlike the previous scenarios), when finding out, he proceeds to sadistically torture him after mocking him for his state.
- He attempts to manipulate Leonardo into joining the Foot Clan and serving him, lying to him about wanting to fight a "greater evil", presumably the Utrom race he sought to enslave.
- When Leonardo makes his decision not to join him, he tries to kill him and the other Turtles with the help of his ninja soldiers. He laughs sadistically when he is about to deliver the killing blow to Leonardo.
- He has his Foot Elite soldiers beat Leonardo to near death before snapping his swords out of spite. He even dishonorably attempts to kill him when he was injured before Splinter stops him.
- He blows up April's store and locks the Turtles and their allies in a walk-in cooler so he can make sure they die from the explosion. His actions would lead to the Turtles and their allies leaving New York and ended up putting Leonardo into a coma for some time.
Season 2[]
- In his battle against the Utroms, he threatens to use the transmat to send them into the heat of a supernova to kill them and taunts them that he will then use the device to conquer their homeworld and destroy every last one of their kind.
- After being revealed to be an Utrom, he tries to choke Raphael to death and have the Turtles and Splinter die in an explosion, not caring if he perishes with them.
- He mortally wounds Zog the Triceraton when he stops him from killing the Turtles, causing his death as he sacrifices himself to use the last of his strength to drag him into the sea.
Season 3[]
- He has Hun and Baxter steal the anti-gravity generator left in Beijing from the Triceraton invasion that was making the city float in the sky, ignoring Karai's protests that the process would result in its destruction and the deaths of millions of people living in it. To make matters worse, Stockman even comments that it would be a suicide mission.
- He also has them do manual labor as punishment for trying to abandon their mission, even putting shock devices on them and activating them whenever they irritate him.
- Using his Oroku Saki persona, he participates in New York's reconstruction effort in the aftermath of the Triceration invasion so he and the Foot Clan could salvage Triceraton technology that was left behind to build an intergalactic starship which would allow him to reach the stars once more and worse, spread his empire across the universe so he could rule over the universe.
- As shown with his alternate future self, he would enslave the entire Utrom race before returning to Earth and ruling it with an iron fist, forcing the entire human race to work 18 hours in slave camps or die, before continuing to bring such draconian rules and lay havoc to the rest of the universe and ending all resistance.
- When informed his emergency launch sequence will lead to the lives of dozens of innocent people at his party being threatened, he dismisses any potential casualties and has the silo doors opened.
- He defeats the heroes during the fight, leaving them badly injured. He also attempts to kill Karai when she tries to stop him from dishonorably killing the Turtles. The situation was so dire that they attempted to overload the ship's power core and blow it up with them inside in order to stop Shredder's plan, only being saved at the last second by the Utroms whom Honeycutt warned prior.
- The Utroms being too hasty to respond Honeycutt's message as they came to his, Splinter, and the Turtles' rescue nonetheless only hammered home how dangerous he is.
Season 4 to Back to the Sewer[]
- Despite his initial defeat, his actions would major repercussions on the rest of the series for the following reasons:
- He is responsible for Leonardo having PTSD from their penultimate fight, which caused the latter to become broodier, more hostile and more violent for the first half of Season 4, until Leo travelled to Japan to control his anger with the help of the Ancient One.
- He is also indirectly responsible for Karai's villainy and her hunting down the Turtles.
- He is indirectly the reason why Viral was infected and forcibly rewritten and reprogrammed into the Cyber Shredder, and thus is responsible for his crimes.
- In the episode "Tempus Fugit", a possible future is shown in which the Utrom Shredder, Tengu Shredder and Cyber Shredder are engaged in a war for control of New York City.
- His feud against Cyber Shredder was rather ironic considering the latter being the former's life engram meant to awaken in the event of something happened to the original thus part of him in many ways.
Turtles Forever[]
- He was ungrateful to his 1987 counterpart and Krang when they freed him from his exile and tries to kill them.
- Abuses his 1987 counterpart and Krang several times in the movie and orders them to be restrained for annoying him.
- Due to finding his 1987 counterpart useless, he seeks to rule over the 1987 dimension with an iron fist.
- He has many of his own minions painfully mutated into mutant soldiers for his own army.
- When he discovers that there are Ninja Turtles in every dimension, he sought a genocidal crackdown on every version of the Ninja Turtles across the multiverse by destroying them in their source dimension, Turtle Prime.
- He uses the Technodrome and his army of advanced Foot Soldiers and mutants to attack New York and kills many soldiers trying to stop him.
- He has the 2003 and 1987 Turtles tortured to death in order to find Turtle Prime so he can destroy it and kill the Turtles in every dimension and laughed while doing it. This caused Karai to turn against him for good by redeeming herself and saving the Turtles at the last second before they were killed.
- He causes the 2003 dimension to be erased, although it will be restored when he is defeated.
- After arriving to Turtle Prime, he starts destroying it with the Technodrome.
- When told to his face that his actions will destroy his home universe as well, he coldly dismisses it due to there not being anything in his universe that he cared about leaving behind.
- He grabs hold of the Prime Turtles and begins crushing them to death, which causes the entire multiverse to be erased from existence.
- When faced with the real consequences of his actions, that his quest for revenge will lead to the painful annihilation of all life in the multiverse, including himself, he shrugs off initial hesitations and maniacally laughs as he annihilates all reality just to get his revenge on the Turtles.
Trivia[]
- In a deleted scene of Turtles Forever, before Bebop and Rocksteady accidentally kill him, the Utrom Shredder was to briefly show hesitance when crushing the Mirage Turtles when Karai points out that the Multiverse's destruction would mean that both of them would die, which could have suggested that Ch'rell, deep inside, did love Karai. In the finished film, the Shredder just shrugs, over-officially discarding his "care" for Karai, assuming it was ever genuine, in the process. Had the original scene been kept, it could have prevented the Utrom Shredder from being Pure Evil.
- However, even if the original scene was kept, it could be argued that he only hesitated for pragmatic reasons, as he knew that he would also die when he kills off the Mirage Turtles, or that he subverted his care for her in the end. Considering that he is willing to kill her when she told him to release the Turtles, those possibilities are not completely invalidated.
- He is the second Pure Evil version of the Shredder, predated by the 1990s film trilogy version, followed by an alternative timeline version of himself, a demonic version of himself and succeeded by a 2014 incarnation, and two more cartoon incarnations in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Out of all these versions, he is the most heinous as he has killed millions across the galaxy and attempted to purposely wipe out the multiverse out of spite towards the Turtles, and possibly is one of (if not the most heinous) antagonist of the entire TMNT franchise.
- If one considers him a version of Krang, he is also the second Pure Evil version of Krang, predated by the Archie Comics version, followed by an alternative timeline version of himself and succeeded by the 2012, Out of the Shadows, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles versions.
- His IDW counterpart does not count as Pure Evil due to having genuine redeeming qualities, most notably being devoted to the Utrom race and determined to preserving their future at all cost, which ironically contrasts with his 2003 self, who actively despises his fellow Utroms.
External Links[]
- Utrom Shredder on the Villains Wiki
- Utrom Shredder on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Wiki
- Utrom Shredder on the Ultimate Evil Wiki
- Utrom Shredder on the Entertainingly Detestable Wiki
- Utrom Shredder on the Base Breaking Character Wiki
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 Pure Evils
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