Garbageman

Garbageman is a minor recurring antagonist in the 2003 animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

He is voiced by Mike Pollock, who is the current voice of Eggman.

Appearance

Garbageman is a disturbing sight. He is a unhealthily corpulent man with a belly making up most of his body. He has a double chin, stained with drool and beady red eyes on his face. True to his name, Garbageman wears only a filthy wifebeater on his body and a ruined baseball cap on his hairless head.

Garbageman is a wheelchair-like tank of some sort, both of the two tanks used by Garbageman had wires going into his body. In a canned episode, it would be revealed Garbageman has no legs due to a mutation he was born with, with this in mind, it can be assumed the tank like devices used by the Garbageman are also a life-support system for his unhealthy body.

Biography

Backstory

The Garbageman had dreams of his own kingdom. He chose to make his home on an island used as a landfill. For subjects, he kidnapped homeless people and forced them to work as his slaves. When he kidnapped the Professor, he attracted the Turtles' attention. Ultimately, they put an end to his plans. He was knocked into Hudson Bay; the Turtles, under the impression that his size limited his ability to swim, dived into the water to rescue the Garbageman. However, when they reached the bottom, his chair was empty.

The Garbageman later appeared in his own underwater city, "Junklantis", which was made from wrecked ships. Donatello and Michelangelo, riding in the Shell Sub, encounter Garbageman's realm of refuse. The two Turtles are captured and held prisoner in Junklantis, where they discover that the shipwrecks to which have birth to the city were caused by the Garbageman himself. Don and Mike escape in the Shell Sub and destroy Junklantis, but are chased by the Garbageman in his own submarine. They defeat the Garbageman and his sub falls into a crevasse in the ocean floor.

Nightmare Recycled

Nightmares Recycled was going to have Garbageman return with a major revelation about the villain. The boy that would become Garbageman was born the conjoined twin of Hun, enforcer of the Shredder.

While both twins were conjoined, Hun was a healthy boy aside from being attached to his twin, while Garbageman was deformed and had no legs due to being conjoined to Hun's waist.

As an adolescent, Hun secretly contacted a backalley doctor to separate the two. After the operation, Hun was excited to be able to live as a normal healthy boy, but his legless twin was still a problem. Despite his brother begging for mercy, Hun remorselessly wrapped him up in blankets, told his brother he was nothing but garbage and garbage must be disposed of, then tossed him in a dumpster to die.

The main plot of the episode involved Garbageman coming back for revenge on his brother. The draft script ended with Garbageman dying by falling into a vat of acid and melting.

Peter Laird in a talk with the drafts expressed his advice. Feeling that Hun abandoning the brother he grew up in the trash with zero remorse was too much even for Hun. He felt it would make more sense if the surgeon blackmailed Hun for possession of his brother, which Hun reluctantly agreed to. Laird also had issues with Garbageman's death, feeling it was too graphic and the Garbageman character shouldn't be killed off after such an interesting plot point.

Ultimately Mirage and 4kids both decided not to complete the episode and it never moved beyond draft state.

Trivia

• Aside from his voice actor, he does share a few similarities to Dr. Eggman himself, they are both obese, uses technology and they both want to build empires.