TMNT's Shredder Was Actually Super Tame Compared to His Successor
While Shredder is known to be the most hardcore ninja and the biggest thorn in the Turtles’ bottoms, it’s hardly the truth: his direct descendant was way more terrifying.
To say that Shredder’s an old story is to say nothing at all. One of the most dreadful ninjas of his time, he was put to eternal sleep back in times of feudal Japan and came back to life in modern days to continue leading the Foot Clan. Shredder’s skills are unmatched, and he’s a force to be reckoned with — but he’s not the worst evil.
The person who brought Shredder to life in the first place was his direct descendant, Oroku Karai, who Shredder himself addresses as his “granddaughter” despite there being far more generations between the two.
Karai’s not only known for resurrecting her Gramps and being his relative, though: in fact, she’s far more hardcore than him.
Oroku Karai successfully led the Foot Clan prior to Shredder’s return. After reviving her predecessor, Karai served as Shredder’s chunin — and then overtook the reign again once he disappeared for good.
This time, she was even more experienced, and her new rule showed just how much worse than Shredder she truly was.
Much like Shredder, Karai was trying to indoctrinate and recruit children into the Foot Clan, but she had different methods.
Shredder hooked kids up with promises of fun and free life, and eventually started training them into loyal and cold-blooded assassins for the Clan — but if a child wanted to quit, they were free to go whenever.
Oroku Karai, on the other hand, was not so lenient. She, too, was eager to recruit kids and raise them as the Foot Clan’s soldiers — but she was not ready to tolerate deserters even among the little fellows. As she revealed to Master Splinter, the children who have already seen the Foot Clan had only two routes: to serve or to die.
This is insane in itself as Karai was more than willing to kill literal kids who didn’t want to be raised into her ninja army but it becomes even more weird in the context of Shredder not even thinking about something like that.
This proves that Shredder was by no means the most unhinged ninja in TMNT: this title belongs to his granddaughter.