High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Master Splinter, or simply Splinter is a fictional character in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe. Splinter is a giant anthropomorphic rat who is the master and adopted father of the Ninja Turtles. Splinter's name (and in fact much of the TMNT's origin story) is a spoof of the origin of Daredevil (Marvel Comics). After being blinded by a barrel of toxic waste, Matt Murdock (Daredevil) was trained in the art of ninjitsu by a sensei known as Stick. Splinter, then, is a spoof of Stick. His status as a "sewer rat" is somewhat of a pun on the artist's name Seurat seeing that the four turtles are also named after artists from centuries ago, particularly the renaissance era although Seurat was from centuries after that era.