#idk i just kept staring at that picture and had a eureka moment

[shantechni]

Bruh this picture must be really old because the boys' heights are just all over the place.

Idk, maybe the animators just wanted to show how old the picture is by having Raph look like an actual pipsqueak and Leo be almost the same height as Donnie.

Or maybe they forgot to keep the boys from going off model.

If the weird heights are supposed to be representative of how old the image is though, then that really makes the growth of the turtles over time very interesting.

Determining their heights as babies is difficult since there aren't too many shots of them standing side by side at equal heights (not to mention that they spend most of their time crawling). But Leo, Raph and Donnie are close in height to each other, and we can at least make out that Mikey was cursed to forever be the shortest, an observation that's supported by concept art of them.

It was admittedly harder determining their heights as children since they're sitting for almost the entire episode as Splinter tells his story, so this picture of them is the best we've got:

One would look at this and think nothing of it because their heights are hardly any different from when they're teens, but closer inspection shows that Leo and Donnie are standing at different distances from the camera than Raph and Mikey. Not too close for them to seem bigger, but just enough for them to seem shorter than they actually are.

Lining them up with each other shows us that Leo is, during this period of time, actually the same height as Donnie, and they're both a good couple of inches above Raph and Mikey (poor Mikey😭).

And, as we can see by the time the series starts, Donnie ends up as the tallest turtle.

So, in conclusion: Donnie will never stop growing. Tall boys 4 lyfe-

That's not to say the others stopped right there because they evidently grew over time, as expected of teens. Leo's height compared to Splinter's is the best depiction of his growth from S1 to S4.

Though, since Splinter began using his cane more in S4, a better depiction would be to compare him with Donnie from S1 to S5, where we can see that Leo's back in his rightful place as his shoulders are just a hair away from lining up with Donnie's.

So, in conclusion for real this time: Our boys been growin'.

...That or I'm digging too deeply and the staff really just gave up-