Splinter was formely a human being named an honorable ninja master Hamoto Yoshi. Yoshi was banished from the Foot Clan in Japan after being decived by the sedtious Oroku Saki, who pinned Yoshi's dogi to the wall with a knife, preventing him from kneeling before there sensei, which was seen as an insult. When Yoshi removed the knife, the sensei and his followers belived this to be an assassinatoin attempt. Exiled from the ninja clan, Hamato Yoshi moved to New York City, where he lived in the sewers. While living in the sewers with the rats as his friends, Yoshi one day found four turtles, recently bought from a pet store by an unnamed boy who accidentally dropped them in the sewer. Yoshi returned one day from his explorations around New York to find the turtles covered with a strange glowing ooze. The substance caused the turtles - most recently exposed to Yoshi - to become humanoid, while Yoshi - most recently where the turtles to become humanoid with a rat and given the name "Splinter", Yoshi adopts the four turtles as his sons and trains them in the art of ninjutsu. He names them after his four italian renasisance artists: Leonardo Raphael Donatello and Michelangelo together they will find the ooze and make there master human once more.
