The 4 ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Personality Types

It’s an inexplicable quirk of group dynamics: if four people spend enough time together, each of them will eventually turn into one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Well, not literally. That would involve toxic ooze. But, by some law of human behavior, each member of a quartet can’t help but take on one of the archetypical personality types found in our favorite crew of adolescent cold-blooded crime-fighters (or second favorite, I guess, if you really love the Battle Toads).

I didn’t discover this template, I’m merely modernizing it (if you’ll indulge me enough to accept that references to a now 30-year-old cartoon are modern). In Jonathan Lethem’s wonderful novel The Fortress of Solitude, characters describe a similar “essential human grouping pattern” based on that other iconic quartet, the Beatles.

Choose wisely.

The Beatles or the Turtles? Certainly one of the classic questions of our time. For now, let’s use both to analyze the four universal personality types inherent in any foursome:

Leonardo/Paul McCartney

The idealized leader: dedicated and decisive, we usually think of this character as valiant, but they can also be the figurehead of a sinister unit. Personally, the Leos and Pauls of the world tend to bore me a little with their…