April O'Neil

April O'Neil is a fictional character from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics. She is the first human ally of the Ninja Turtles. She is also the motherly-figure to the Ninja Turtles. In most media she is the love interest of Casey Jones and Donatello. In Mutant Mayhem she is the love interest of Leonardo.

Background

TMNT 2003 Series

April originally served as an assistant to Baxter Stockman until his Mouser experiments got out of control, and after the Turtles saved her she became a faithful friend, ally, and "big sister" to them.

TMNT 2012 Series

Befriending the Turtles after they rescue her from the Kraang, she is a valuable and dependable ally; able to go up the surface in broad daylight when the Turtles cannot. She is later offered by Splinter to trained in ninjutsu in order to become a full-fledged kunoichi.

Rise of the TMNT 2018 Series

Years prior to the start of the series, April encountered Splinter and the Turtles. She befriended and eventually forged a close familial bond with the five of them.

Mutant Mayhem Film

April is a student at Eastman High, where she finds herself extremely interested in journalism. She attempted to read morning announcements for the school, but froze up in fright and began to vomit excessively, earning her the derisive nickname of "Puke Girl". Desperate to continue with her interests, she sought to find the identity of the mysterious super-criminal "Superfly" so that she could receive the kudos, as well as prevent the curfew that was set to be put in place due to Superfly's dangerousness.

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2024 Series

Personality

TMNT 2003 Series

April is smart, friendly, and intuitive. Despite the weirdness she is thrust into on a daily basis since her attempted assassination by her boss, she has been able to acclimate eventually to where nothing at all seems to be too weird for her.

Despite Casey's brutishness, ill temper, and low intelligence, she falls for him in a true case of "opposites attract". But it could also be due to his inherent kindness and honesty. Like other incarnations of the character April was fearful of the Turtles and Splinter at first, then overtime started to warm up and became their ally. She is loyal and reliable to the Turtles, Splinter and Casey.

April gets along with Donatello the best out of the Turtles, as she's the only one who he can talk to about anything scientific.

TMNT 2012 Series

April is a smart, strange, and stubborn 16 year-old tomboy with an indie rock vibe. April is also feisty and determined and quite resourceful. She is fiercely loyal to her mutant friends, as seen in "Panic in the Sewers". When the Turtles are ready to give up, April volunteers to find out Shredder's plot. She is also somewhat reckless too despite her intelligence. She cares about her family, or what's left of it, above all else.

Any threat to her father is one that she takes very seriously, and when she finds out that the Turtles are accidentally responsible for his mutation, she becomes enraged and temporarily severs her ties with them. However, hearing Casey's story about losing a friend in a similar situation and agreeing with Donnie's earlier advice about not controlling everything, April realized her actions and behavior as she felt remorse's for pushing the turtles away for something that was an honest accident.

Unfortunately, April's guilt became worse when she is once again assaulted by Karai, as she realized that she not only put Casey endanger but also realized that he and Donnie were right about not controlling everything, even going to the point of desperately calling Donnie for help. After he and the others save her, they reconcile as April apologizes to the turtles for her actions and behavior, especially to Donnie.

She has grown to be hostile and slightly mentally unstable due to her weird obsession over the crystalthe Aeons gave her. However, after the events of "Bat in the Belfry", April has begun to show signs of mental instability in regard to her Aeon Crystal, becoming overly-possessive of it, and going into fits of rage whenever she has parted with it or someone tries to touch it, even using the Turtles' weapons against anyone she sees wearing it to get it back. But after seeing Donnie getting destroyed due to her being controlled by an elder Aeon, April immediately regrets her behavior and apologize to the others for allowing her obsession over the crystal to destroy her friends and family.

Rise of the TMNT 2018 Series

April is upbeat, quick-witted, and adventurous. She tends to be a more go-with-the-flow type spirit in the way that she is adaptable and often matches her energy with those around her.

April is shown to be incredibly brave as seen in "The Gumbus" when she enjoys the fiasco in the Stock & Shop while Michelangelo and Leonardo are terrified. She is quick to jump into action. However, while she doesn't like waiting around, April isn't known to be detrimentally impulsive.

April has a selfless and heroic streak such as in "Warren & Hypno, Sitting in a Tree" when she frees Warren Stone from a mystic gauntlet Baron Draxumis trying to collect to ensure he and Hypno-Potamuscould remain together. April also has a forgiving nature, befriending and learning to care for Draxum despite all he has done even before most of the Turtles. Although she can be rude at times like in "The Fast and the Furriest" when Donatello accuses her of stealing the Turtle Tank and, being annoyed by him and his brothers breaking in and being accused of something she didn't do, kicks the Turtles out via her window.

Despite all these traits, April has insecurities as seen when she is trying to sell cookies, but is unable to get customers due to her passive-aggressive approach in "Always Be Brownies". She can be discouraged by repeated failures, but her capacity to self-motivate allows her pick herself up. Even so, April isn't too shy or proud to ask for and accept support from others and regularly leans on those she trusts.

April has an environmentalist side, raising funds for tree conservation in "Always Be Brownies" and working to halt the production and use of a hypertoxic herbicide in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie.

April tends to be more responsible compared to the rest of the Mad Dogs, taking accountability for her actions and trying to heal harm she may have caused more often than them, but is still plenty immature.

Mutant Mayhem Film

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2024 Series

Appearance

TMNT 2003 Series

April is a slim, redheaded woman with pale skin, and due to her appearance and name, she may be of Irish descent. As time goes on, she develops a bit of muscular tone to her limbs. Her primary outfit is a purple crop top, baggy khaki pants, a dark belt, and dark blue shoes. Her hair is normally made into a bun in the back.

In Back to the Sewer, her design is streamlined to emulate her 2007 film incarnation. Her normal civilian clothes consist of a pink t-shirt with a white rectangle, a necklace, a pair of gray jeans tied in a brown belt, brown bracelets with blue and purple shoes. Her hair, still in a bun, is more of an orange or light auburn color. Her skin is also less pale. In battle, she tends to wear a yellow jumpsuit reminiscent of her 2007 movie appearance, as well as Bruce Lee.

TMNT 2012 Series

April appears as a young-looking 16-year-old. She has shoulder-length ginger hair that appears to be tied up into a small ponytail and right-sided curved bangs. She also has a yellow headband. April wears an elbow-length black shirt with a yellow and white sport shirt with the number "5" over it, blue denim shorts, black leggings, brown bandages/bracelets around her wrists, white high socks with two blue stripes on them and black low-heeled boots. Though you may not notice it, April has a patch on the right back pocket of her shorts. The patch is inspired by Pixar's Luxo Jr. Ball: A round yellow patch with a blue outer ring and a red star in the middle. There also appears to be keys that are assumed to be her house keys. April is slim for her age, with blue eyes with long eyelashes and freckles while standing at average height. Donnie finds all of these features "attractive", leading to his crush on her.

Since "New Girl in Town", her pajamas consists of a yellow long sleeve button up shirt, and floral pants.

In "The Kraang Conspiracy", she is seen wearing a white long-sleeved, button-up shirt, and white pants when the Kraang was about to gather some of her DNA. Her headband is also changed to white. Starting from "Beyond The Known Universe", she began wearing a yellow space suit over her normal outfit with a white belt, gauntlets, and boots. This appearances may be a reference to her 1987 counterpart's appearance.

Since "City at War", April has been wearing a black jumpsuit similar to her space suit, with yellow stripes down her arms and sides. In addition she wears her Tanto blade at her lower back and her headband is now black in color.

Rise of the TMNT 2018 Series

April O'Neil is a teenage black girl with curly burgundy hair styled in two high afro puffs with bangs, black eyes, dark brown skin, and a thin figure. She wears a long yellow t-shirt and a cropped green varsity jacket with ¾ sleeves and a button closure (typically found on the right side). Her jacket has light green trim and a '5' print over its heart and back. She wears black capri leggings, yellow high-top sneakers, a black choker around her neck, and a pair of red cat-eye glasses with yellow lenses. She also wears two yellow hair ties.

Mutant Mayhem Film

April is a teenage black girl with short auburn hair, which she wears in box braids, brown eyes and freckles on her face, she also wears glasses. Unlike all her previous incarnations, April is plus-sized. She wears a black shirt with a white print, a buttoned yellow jacket, ripped jeans pants, white socks and white All Star sneakers. She also wears a black cap on her head, a golden pendant around her neck and a silver spiked-bracelet on her right wrist. April sometimes carries a satchel around with her.

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2024 Series

Film Appearances

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem

One night while investigating, Raphael accidentally threw a shuriken and hit April's scooter helmet with it. While she was calling out the Turtles on their carelessness, a thief stole her scooter. In a mix of attraction to April and guilt, Leonardo insisted that they retrieve her scooter. The Turtles followed the thief into a chopshop and took out the criminals inside. April arrived to get the scooter back, and formally met the Turtles for the first time, finding out what they really were. The Turtles offered to tell her everything over pizza. The Turtles gave April their origin story and she told them what she had been doing. After realizing that the only reason that April didn't immediately find the Turtles monstrous is because they helped her, Leo devised a plan that would get them both what they wanted; The Turtles would find and beat this Superfly, and April would document their exploits, thus endearing all five of them to the public.

The Turtles took out a series of goons on a chase to find out where they could find Superfly. Eventually, Bad Bernie spills the beans, saying that Superfly had hired a couple of his men to deliver a part to them, but he killed them when he got what he wanted, and are now forcing him to send out more men to steal and deliver a part or he'd kill Bernie, too. The Turtles take this part to Superfly in an effort to take him down while April records the action, but both parties are surprised to find that the other are mutants. The Turtles and Superfly's gang get chummy, and April urges them to complete the mission. The Turtles go along with the gang's transportation of the machine piece in an effort to disrupt it, but their attempt is thwarted and they are forced to crash off of an overpass, where they are caught by T.C.R.I.

April rushes off to find Splinter to help bust them out. She convinces Splinter that she is a friend, and he infiltrates T.C.R.I. headquarters to rescue them. He frees them, and just in time for them to wonder how he found them, April crawls out of a ground-level duct. With that, they all raced to the boat graveyard outside Staten Island to stop Superfly's plan.

April kept in hiding to monitor the action, and the Turtles convinced Superfly's gang, who didn't really want to harm humanity in the first place, to turn against him. They all fought off Superfly and rushed him, pinning him to his machine and knocking him out of the boat and into the water with it. Unfortunately, it then went off, mutating Superfly into a massive creature with a whale body, only picking up more animals as he made his way through New York City. When April saw the media painting the Turtles and Superfly's family in the same light as Superfly himself, April knew she had to do something, and so she ran into the Channel 6building and took over the reporter's position, mostly overcoming her fright to save her new friends as well as the city, only vomiting a little, briefly. This turned the city's opinion on the Turtles and the other mutants, and they helped them take down Superfly.

In the aftermath, the curfew did not come into effect and the school's prom was uncanceled as a result. April's locker graffiti changed from puke-based insults to hailing her as a hero, and she met the Turtles on their first day at Eastman High. Leo went to prom with her, although she tried to clarify with him that it was only as friends.

Trivia

• Her favorite color is red.
• Her favorite food has been stated to be chocolate.
• Her favorite author has been stated to be Robert Fulghum. Because his books helps her find peace in the whirlwind of chaos that usually surrounds her.
• April's name comes from the Latin "aprīlis", meaning "of the month of the goddess, Venus". April's surname, O'Neil, is of Irish origin; derived from Irish Gaelic, it means "descendant of Niall" (the translation for Nialleither being "Cloud" or "Champion"). Her surname implies that April has family roots in Ireland, making her ethnicity/nationality Irish-American. In Japanese, April's name would be 四月(しがつ, shigatsu), meaning "the 4th Moon"; (moon = month and April is the 4th month) or 卯月 (うづき, uzuki), meaning "Moon of the Rabbit". In Katakana, April's name is spelt: アプリル (Apuriru). April is called "April-chan" by Mr. Murakami, who she likewise addresses as "Murakami-san".
• As of the events of "Baxter's Gambit", April is now armed with a Tessen, (lit. a "Iron Fan", better known as a Japanese war fan), a weapon that Splinter had one day hoped to give to his daughter, Miwa, who April reminds him of. April will now be focusing her fighting style around the real-life Japanese martial art of Tessenjutsu. The tessen has a sharp edge when it spreads open, and can also be used as a throwing weapon. Before settling on the tessen, the weapons April went through are a Chigiriki, (a staff with chain), a Mace, (a club), a pair of Kama, (small scythes), and a Manriki (a length of chain with weights on both ends).
• April is revealed to have Chiroptophobia, a fear of bats in " Fungus Humungous" most likely because of what happened in "The Mutation Situation".
• This is the first 2012 incarnation of April to be a teenager.
• There is a Pixar Ball on the back of her pants.
• April's dad, Kirby prefers if April hung out with Donnie, but not with Casey.
• She is the only character in the series who always has the "Small Mouthed" animation.
• This Rise black version of April O'Neil marks the first time she is designed as black (and non-white in general) in a TMNT TV series or film and the second time she is unambiguously black in a licensed TMNT work overall. The original version of April O'Neil in the Mirage continuity was named after TMNTcreator Kevin Eastman's former wife, the late April Fisher, who was biracial. The fictional April O'Neil's earliest appearances were in a state of flux. She was designed as a white character in her first and second appearances in TMNT vs. the Mousers and The Great Chase, but her third appearance in the 1985 Mirage comic Rescuing Master Splinter portrayed her more closely resembling the real-life April Fisher with a racially ambiguous appearance. April's character design then stabilized into a white woman with black hair (with the exception of the colorized version of the Guest Era issue Egyptian Adventure where she was portrayed as a black woman in the second printing) and would remain white through her redesigns in many different iterations until her character in 2018's Rise of the TMNT.
• This is the second teenage incarnation of April in TMNT after April O'Neil from the 2012 TV series.
• April's catchphrase is "Aprillllll O'Neil!", often said while charging into battle.
• A running gag in this series is April having a different job almost every time she appears with her period of employment usually ending by, or before, the end of an episode. According to one of her official biographies, April worked at a pizza shop, which is how the Turtles get their pizzas in this series. The Turtles also get a friends and family discount because of their connection to April. It is unclear, however, if this is actually the case in the series itself, she is never shown delivering pizza except in the comics. She gets fired from her job at a restaurant called Albearto's after the events of "War and Pizza". In "Mrs. Cuddles", April works as an actress on Mrs. Cuddles' television program. In "Shadow of Evil", April works at a shoe store called the Foot Shack.
• According to one of her official biographies, April loves the Turtles like brothers. This is also iterated in the Junior Novel Ninja Power, April stating, "We [April and the Turtles] became friends. Really good friends. They're like big brothers to me”. Though introduced as the Turtles' best friend, in this iteration, April and the Turtles share a brother-sister relationship with one another.
• It was stated in January 2019 by co-executive producers Andy Suriano and Ant Ward in a World Screen interview that April had the longest casting process of the voice cast as Suriano and Ward sought performances that provided April's character strength, humor, and a specific chemistry with the Turtles as their sister and a fifth Turtle. Suriano stating, "We'd almost given up doing the casting at that point and we were gonna go back to the beginning . . . We had exhausted so many actors at that point and then [Kat Graham] was the very last we heard and we're like, 'That's it. That's our April.' Everything clicked”.
• According to Ninja Power, April has known the Turtles for five years. It was confirmed in August 2020 from Rise of the TMNT staff writer Russ Carney in a Tweet that, "TMNT and April met before they were all teens”.
• As mentioned by Donnie in "Operation: Normal", April seems to have a fear of cosplay wizards.
• It is shown in "The Purple Game" that April lives with her mother.
• It was revealed in January 2020 by Rise of the TMNT staff writer Carney in a Tweet that, "All the writers feel April has two parents--we've talked about this. Splinter even addresses this in a S2 episode". It was revealed in July 2023 by Rise of the TMNT staff writer Ron Corcillo in a Tweet that April lives with both of her parents.
• April tends to act as second-in-command to Raph.
• April presumably has pierced ears as she wears a pair of hoop earrings in "Hypno! Part Deux".
• April uses "This whole situation" in more situations than the other Mad Dogs do, who usually only use it as a way to refer to their mutation.
• This 2023 black character is an adaptation of April O'Neil, first created by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman. This version was developed by Brendan O'Brien and designed by Woodrow White.
• This is the second version of April to be designed as black (and non-white in general) in a TMNT TV series or film. The first is April O'Neil from Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, also produced by Nickelodeon.
• This is the third teenage incarnation of April in TMNT. The first is April O'Neil from the 2012 TV series. The second is April O'Neil from Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• This is the second time April is voiced by a black women. The first time was in Rise.

Voice Actresses

• Japanese :
• English :

all information on April O’Neil came from the TMNT wiki

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