Cartoons have given us a lot over the years. They’ve entertained, they’ve taught us valuable life lessons, but – and most importantly of all – they’ve provided us with some bonafide musical bangers. Just consider the animated X-Men series’ theme song:
Or the irresistible shuffle of The Simpsons’ opening music?
But, if we’re going to truly honest, if we’re going to genuinely look within ourselves to find a higher truth, we all know the greatest cartoon theme song of all time. Yes, that’s right, please stand up for the intro to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
It has everything you could ever want from a piece of music: sweet chord changes, exciting ad libs, and a chorus so catchy it really should be quarantined.
And that chorus is why we’re here today. A while back, XKCD – a webcomic you should definitely be following – published a list of Wikipedia articles that have the same syllable stress pattern as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. You know, something like “Puerto Rico Lizard-Cuckoo.”
Well, this has been taken a step further by enterprising Twitter user, __eel__. They created a Twitter bot that only posts real life Wikipedia articles whose titles can be sung to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme. For example:
Cedar Canyon, South Dakotahttps://t.co/FhnRZWOk8h pic.twitter.com/c96Y2D0Xc4
— Wiki Titles Singable to TMNT Themesong (@wiki_tmnt) June 17, 2019
Air Force Combat Action Medalhttps://t.co/2sMrhlx3ym pic.twitter.com/2gQufO4CP7
— Wiki Titles Singable to TMNT Themesong (@wiki_tmnt) June 16, 2019
Silver Comet (roller coaster)https://t.co/UOr9ug84bt pic.twitter.com/gaew1f5Nkx
— Wiki Titles Singable to TMNT Themesong (@wiki_tmnt) June 16, 2019
It’s safe to say there are a lot of these on the Wiki Titles Singable to TMNT Themesong Twitter feed. Each of the images accompanying the tweet were created with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles logo generator, which you can find here — it’s great fun to mess around with.
So, is there anything we can learn from this combination of Wikipedia and pop culture? Does it suggest our nostalgia-obsessed generation is incapable of actually absorbing knowledge, instead having to cloaking it in childhood references to make it more palatable?
Definitely not. Not even a tiny bit, it’s just a funny Twitter account, calm down. Still, you should probably follow it.
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