Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Stranger Things is a Crossover comic between Stranger Things and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles consisting of a four-issue miniseries.
The kids of Stranger Things are heading off to New York City for a relaxing vacation. They hope to get away from the weirdness that haunts their town until they discover the presence of their major foes the Mind Flayer and Demodogs. To stop them, they'll have to team up with the Ninja Turtles to save New York from an otherworldly threat.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Stranger Things provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: Despite being a TMNT work, their Arch-Enemy Shredder never appears, which makes sense as the comic is based on the Mirage Comics incarnation of the Turtles where Shredder was a very minor villain, in contrast to the rest of his role in the franchise as Big Bad. Instead, the TMNT side of the villain roster is fulfilled by Baxter Stockman.
- Alternative Continuity: The comic is non-canon for Stranger Things but is set in-between seasons 2 and 3. On the TMNT side, it uses the Mirage comics in style, story and look as its basis, however the story clearly takes place after Issue 21, since Casey knows April, Don, Mikey and Leo, and the turtles are in New York and living in the sewers. Since TMNT Vol. 1 #21 takes place in December 25, 1988 and this story is said to take place in 1985 since page 1, it simply cannot be canon to Mirage.
- Big Bad: The Mind Flayer serves as the main antagonist of the comic, as it's responsible for all the bad stuff happening to New York and is planning to drag New York into its realm of the Upside Down.
- Breaking Old Trends: This is one of the few TMNT Intercontinuity Crossover comics to restrict itself to elements from the Mirage continuity. This is an intentional stylistic choice, as the comic takes place before the 1987 series first aired and established the franchise's identity going forward.
- Covers Always Lie: While the main covers reflect the content of the issues quite well, many of the variant covers feature the Ninja Turtles wearing their different colored masks and gear instead of their uniformly red Mirage ones. Also, some include prominent characters from both properties such as April and Casey and Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve who make no appearance at all in the comic.
- Crossover: The series is a crossover between Stranger Things and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage).
- Crossover Combo Villain: In a Mook variation, Stockman combines his mousers with demodogs to create cyborg demomousers.
- Dimensional Traveller: The Mind Flayer takes advantage of the dimension traveling aliens called the Utroms to build a portal so it can invade Earth.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Mind Flayer is an eldritch monster from a world known as the Upside-Down with the ability to create monsters, and plans to feed off the city of New York.
- Expy: The Mind Flayer looks a lot like Nyarlathotep in his true Outer God form.
- For Science!: Baxter Stockman is only interested in researching the predators of the Upside Down for his scientific goals and doesn't care who gets hurt in the process.
- Gaslighting: Baxter Stockman enters Eleven's mind and pretends to be the person she looks up to, police chief Jim Hopper, to force her into opening portals to the Upside-Down for him.
- Mad Scientist: Dr. Baxter Stockman is a scientist who has been experimenting on and fusing the demondogs with his own robotic Mousers, planning to open a portal to the Upside-Down and study its predators to create his own perfect ones.
- Mind Rape: Baxter Stockman tries to break both Raphael and Eleven by making them think they're both just lab experiment freaks using his mental abilities inside Eleven's mind. Raphael saves Eleven by revealing to her that their origin doesn't need to be a flaw but can be a benefit and she snaps out of it and helps defeat Stockman.
- Mythology Gag: The cover of the second issue resembles the poster of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.