In “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” we get a montage of the turtles fighting that features several different sequences cut seamlessly into each other, looking like a single sequence when pieced together.This includes a brief shot of Donnie just beating up some dudes at a pool bar. The scene is shown at a wide angle, just like the “Oldboy” hammer fight, showing the physical prowess of the turtles but also, occasionally, their inexperience and quickness to break into chaotic fighting.
“Mutant Mayhem” director Jeff Rowe took to Twitter to confirm a fan’s suspicion that the scene was inspired by the hallway scene in “Oldboy.” Rowe said:
“This is one hundred percent the inspiration and I’ve been trying to put an ‘Old Boy’ hammer fight in everything I’ve done since ‘Gravity Falls.’ Glad we finally got one in!”
Rowe, of course, worked as a writer on the fantastic cartoon “Gravity Falls,” where he wrote the open-ended series finale. The idea that we could have gotten a scene where Soos or Dipper got involved in an “Oldboy” hallway fight on “Gravity Falls” is hilarious, but the fact that we got Donnie to pull if off instead adds to the eclectic influences in “Mutant Mayhem,” and that’s what helps make it so special.