Line #19 Fridge/BeastWars


1	!! Fridge pages are Administrivia/SpoilersOff by default, so all spoilers have been unmarked and all examples folderized. Proceed with caution. Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.
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6	* Silverbolt's kinship with Transmutate makes sense when you remember he too is [[MixandMatchCritters different]].
7	* Near the end of the run, Megatron transforms into a dragon. This seems completely bizarre as dragons didn't exist in Earth history... until you rewatch G1 episodes like "A Decepticon In King Arthur's Court" and realize that dragons actually did exist in Earth's history. Megatron might very well have scanned a lifeform best suited for his needs while in the lava (okay, it doesn't explain everything, maybe he internalized a previous scan but was not able to make the shift yet due to time concerns, but it's not COMPLETELY out of left field).
8	* One would think by destroying Optimus Prime, you'd run the risk of losing the Matrix of Leadership and letting Unicron destroy Cybertron. But you must realize, the plan was made by ''Megatron''. Megatron ''becomes'' Galvatron, meaning he made this plan ''before'' they found out about Unicron. This plan would have given the Decepticons victory... until Unicron decides to come along and chow down on Cybertron.
9	** Given that the Predacons were unaffected by the time storm, this implies that not only do the Decepticons defeat the Autobots, but they also beat Unicron as well, without the use of the Matrix!
10	*** It could have been a delayed reaction of sorts. The Maximals were disappearing first since Optimus Prime, the Maximals' ancestor was dying, but if the altering of the timeline continued unopposed the Predacons would likely have gone next.
11	* Waspinator's apparent invincibility was mostly a running gag, but considering he was possessed by the immortal Starscream it is possible he came away from the experience with similar capabilities.
12	* Despite having a spark said to be indestructible, Depth Charge is able to destroy Rampage's spark by ramming a spike of energon into it. At first this seems like an error, considering Megatron was able to use an energon blade to divide Rampage's spark in two to no ill effect. But when Rampage dies Dinobot is able to sense it and notes that he finally feels whole. Rampage's spark ''wasn't'' destroyed, half of it was and the other half regenerated to compensate.
13	** Alternatively, the half of the spark Rampage had ''was'' destroyed, but that allowed the remaining portion in Dinobot II's body to act as it's own true mind rather than one unit split between two others.
14	* After the quantum surge, Cheetor in particular takes time to get a better handle on his new state, whereas Megatron is shown easily flying into action under his own power. However, considering that he had Waspinator immediately 'available' to him after the surge, it's possible that Megatron made Waspinator give him a quick 'flying lesson' so that he wouldn't embarrass himself using his new flight mode before rejoining his troops, on the natural understanding that Megatron would do something particularly unpleasant to Waspinator if he ever told anyone Megatron needed that kind of help...
15	* In "Optimal Situation", when Optimus first received his "Optimal" body, he kicked ass and took names of all the Predacons, [[TheWorfEffect but for the rest of the season, Optimus lost many of his fights]]. Perhaps Optimus Prime's spark lent him lots of power. This is especially noteworthy when he fights the Transmetal 2 Megatron, who had the spark of G1 Megatron in him, in the last few episodes.
16	** It should also be noted that in most of his later fights, the Predacons were specifically targeting Optimus to take him out of the fight; this is in keeping with the third season forcing the Maximals on the defensive, preventing them from coming up with counters for Megatron's Transmetal II state in the same manner as the Predacons could have had time to counter Optimal Optimus.
17	* This one mostly affects the toys, but there's a small crab figure named Razorclaw. Now, in G1, the original Predacons included a lion named Razorclaw and a tiger named Rampage. So Beast Wars ''also'' has a Razorclaw and a Rampage who turn into similar animals, the main difference being one is a lot bigger. However, which is which is different.
18	* The Predacons choice to become the most powerful local creatures is about 50/50: dinosaurs sure make sense but wasps? Scorpions? Spiders? That all depends how you mean by powerful: all of those creatures have existed for millions of years and predate the reign of mammals by a significant margin. They are the strongest in evolutionary stability if not in sheer strength or utility.
19	* At least three characters - Inferno, Blackarachnia, and Rhinox - are reprogrammed by the Predacons, yet Megatron puts up with Waspinator's laziness and stupidity, Tarantulas' insanity, and Terrorsaur's [[TheStarscream Starscreaminess]]. Why didn't he just reprogram them? Well, until ''Beast Machines'', there was only one hint that Megatron even ''had'' programming skills - the Transmuter, and that one backfired when Rhinox utterly took over pretty much the entire Predacon ship, and demonstrated that a fully-active Cybertronian is ''very very hard'' to truly reprogram. The only one to semi-permanently reprogram anyone was Tarantulas, and unless you're actively suicidal, you don't want to trust Tarantulas to reprogram ''all'' your henchmen. And even then, he was hotwiring protoforms rather than "adults" like Waspinator and Terrorsaur! No less than ''three'' reasons why he didn't try it until he was grotesquely misusing Sparks in ''Beast Machines''!
20	** And note that in ''Beast Machines'', he had to effectively wipe all but the basic functions from said sparks to reprogram them. Two of the three that he didn't reprogram ended up rebelling, while the third was Waspinator, who didn't exactly need much coercing. The last two he "reprogrammed" turned out to be doing it out of their own free will (the need to protect Cybertron as a whole, even if it's no longer the Cybertron they knew).
21	* Despite the fan dislike of "organic" modes, they didn't originate in this series- they had been preset since the 1987-1988 portion of the original toy line. Pretenders(disguise shells of either human or monster forms) which included several early series characters, Firecons(organic beast modes, albeit monsters) and even headmaster Fangry had a lot of random fur. The ability to take an organic alternate mode was already there in the series years before Beast Wars was created and makes for a natural technological progression. Though the organic deity stuff from ''Beast Machines'' ignores it but that was largely due to Hasbro deliberately wanting its writers to have no prior franchise knowledge.
22	* Ravage's toy in Takara's ''Beast Wars Metals'' line, along with the ''War for Cybertron: Kingdom'' toy based upon it, is designed so that his animal and robot heads are one and the same. This is likely a call-back to Ravage's first character design from ''G1;'' back when he was one of Soundwave's minions, the jaguar head was the only head Ravage ever had. It seems Ravage is sticking to the head he's most familiar with across both his former robot mode--now his beast mode--and the new humanoid form that supersedes it.
23	* Waspinator's Transmetal 1 form's vehicle mode is a fighter jet. This is fitting on three levels:
24	** There's a fighter jet called the [=F-18=] Hornet
25	** Waspinator got possessed by Starscream in one episode
26	** At the end of the series, Waspinator quit being a Predacon, a lot like how [=Jetfire/Skyfire=] quit being a Decepticon back in [=G1=]. He even takes his Predacon logo off a lot like how Jetfire did.
27	* Silverbolt being a Fuzor makes sense when you consider the fact that the original Silverbolt was the central element of the Combiner Superion.
28	* Megatron's final plan to destroy the ''Ark'' with the ''Nemesis'' doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it. He was incensed earlier in the season when Tarantulas tried to do something similar and the Decepticons are still aboard the ''Ark,'' meaning destroying it would wipe out the Predacons as well as the Maximals. Yes, Megatron is carrying the original Megatron's spark, but without his body, that doesn't do him a lot of good. But that's when it hits you- Megatron IS carrying the original Megatron's spark. A Megatron who wouldn't care about wiping out the Maximals OR Predacons if it meant victory for himself. Was ''BW'' Megatron being subconsciously manipulated by his ancestor into following the best course of action for the Decepticon leader? It's possible that with the spark alive but with no body to return to, ''G1'' Megatron might have just taken over ''BW'' Megatron's body. There's nothing concrete in the show itself to support this, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless.
29	* This may have been unintentional, but Scorponok and Quickstrike seem to represent the two different types of scorpions that exist in real life. Scorponok's pedipalps (pinchers) are very large and powerful-looking, while his stinger by comparison is small and plain-looking. Like scorpions with these characteristics, Scorponok seems to rely almost entirely on his pinchers for combat, both in robot mode with his missiles and in beast mode, and only uses his cyber-venom a handful of times. By contrast, Quickstrike has smaller, more spindly-looking pinchers with a large and very noticeable cobra-stinger, and like scorpions with small pinchers and large tails, he relies mostly on his tail for combat, with its firepower in robot mode and its cyber-venom in beast mode.
30	* At the start of the final season Megatron has Rampage and Tarantulas destroy the Axalon by the rather complicated method of having Rampage and the spiderbots pull it off the side of the cliff and into the river below, rather than just blow it up, easy with Rampage's firepower. But if you remember an early season 1 episode established that an underground energon deposit ran from one base to the other meaning an explosion at either ship could ignite it and cause a chain of explosions all the way to the other one, blowing both up. Hence Megatron needed to destroy it without causing the ship to explode or at least not explode in it's present position.
31	* Beast Wars Silverbolt is part land animal and part flying animal. This could be a reference to how his G1 namesake was constructed out of a low-flying cargo transport vehicle and modified into an aircraft made for higher altitudes (which was why he was also afraid of heights).
32	* The Transformes Wiki's page on "The Agenda Part 1 asks" why, of all people, Megatron entrusted the mission to secure the Ark, to the infamously incompetent Waspinator. The awnser is likely his desire to keep that mission a secret; given how incompetent Waspinator is, which the Maximals know as well as the Predacons, if he was absent from the battle, the Maximals are less likely to notice, and even if they do, they are likely to assume he's just damaged, because he always is, whereas if one of his more competent soldiers was missing, the Maximals may have become suspicious and investigated where they had gone, which is what happened when Blackarachnia grew suspicious and went looking, drawing Silverbolt's attention.
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36	* Megatron cutting Rampage's spark in half, then keeping half of said spark in a box lined with energon spikes, squeezing it to cause him immense pain whenever he gets out of line. The horror comes when you remember that, for all intents and purposes, sparks=souls. Megatron essentially tore half of Rampage's soul out of him. And that's not even getting into creating Dinobot II with said half of soul.
37	* How Rampage became a monster: ''the Maximals experimented on him in an attempt to copy the immortality of [[TheStarscream THE Starscream]], the worst Decepticon opportunist in existence.'' Yes, the ''good guys'' performed Nazi-esque eugenics experiments on ''their own people'' in an attempt to emulate the conditions of ''one of the most notorious bad guys of their era''. They ''also'' pulled a BigBrotherIsWatching by locking down all information and locations related to the Great War, keeping ''their own people'' ignorant of their past. All in the name of not reliving the atrocities of that war. HeWhoFightsMonsters, indeed...
38	* When Rhinox is deprogrammed in ''Dark Designs'', he comments about how being a Predacon is "like being three gigs of attitude on a two gig hard drive. No wonder they've got personality problems", leading to an EverybodyLaughsEnding... save for Dinobot, who is a Maximal by choice, not by programming, and who is still immensely proud of his Predacon heritage (Megatron and his merry band of lunatics, not so much). What Rhinox said would be immensely insulting to someone like that.[[note]]Of course, earlier in the episode, Cheetor's reaction to Rhinox's programming was "Better dead than Pred", which led Dinobot to retort "Some of us have survived the experience", so that isn't entirely overlooked.[[/note]]
39	* The existence of new Predacons as the series goes on. At the start of the series, before they crash land on Earth the Maximals jettison their hibernating crew members in their stasis pods to protect them from the crash and energon on the planet, planning to pick them up after they sort out the whole mess. New characters are introduced in the series by having some of these pods crash to Earth, and the Maximals and Predacons fight over them. So far, every single awakened character has no memory of their time on Cybertron due to damage from the crash. But the Predacons take it one step further and purposely [[BrainwashedAndCrazy wipe their memories and implant a program]] that makes them aggressive, scheming, and all the other things that Megatron wants in a minion. As shown in the last few episodes, if the program is removed, it kills the Predacon in was implanted in. That means that Inferno, Blackarachnia, and Quickstrike were probably all loyal Maximals at one point, and all much different people than what they were forced to become.
40	** Though it should be noted than in the original cartoon none of the protoforms save Rampage had a past existence on Cybertron: they were all newborn that had yet to be activated. This does little to alleviate the horror however, since it means Megatron and his cronies had no issue with brainwashing the Cybertronian equivalent of babies into soldiers. Supplementary materials later retconned Tigatron and Airazor as having past lives on Cybertron as Maximals, but Blackarachnia, Inferno and Quickstrike were all born on Earth. Quickstrike is particularly unsettling since he never had any kind of shell program implanted inside him, suggesting that his psycopathic cowboy persona ''is'' his true, spark-given personality.
41	** In Blackarachnia's case, her natural personality isn't immensely different than her altered one. She just lost any urge to betray others for her own sake and became more capable of compassion and loyalty. Quickstrike was awakened before any new programming could be implanted, so what we see from him ''is'' his natural personality. At least what his personality is without any memories to work from. Inferno, however, probably had it worst of all as the overpowering mindset of his beast form and Tarantulas rushing his reprogramming resulted in what is essentially an intelligent fire ant in a robot's body.
42	** The rest of the protoforms don't fare much better. Considering dozens, if not hundreds, of pods were seen in the first episode being dumped out, but only a handful were ever recovered, much of the crew was likely lost on the planet. It doesn't help that in ''Coming of The Fuzors'' it confirms that many of the pods that crash landed on the planet malfunctioned and were destroyed (several malfunctioning transformer bodyparts were seen around where Silverbolt and Quickstrike landed). Even the ones that might have survived the crash didn't survive intact; Silverbolt and Quickstrike were lucky, but Transmutate was just barely functional. And that says nothing of the ones that did get rescued; according to the Timelines comics, Tigatron and Airazor had completely different lives back on Cybertron and were only made into protoforms because their ship was shot down in pursuit of Megatron and transferring their minds into protoforms were the only way to save them. The process was evidently incomplete, as the two basically had no memory of who they were. Tigatron, in particular, would be horrified if he did ever return to Cybertron since he was basically an elite soldier of the Maximal police force, whereas his current personality is a naturalist pacifist.
43	* G1 Megatron's plan to assassinate Optimus Prime wouldn't let the Decepticons win. If anything, it would actually let ''Unicron'' win, because without Prime, there would be no Matrix of Leadership (or it would fall into the wrong hands and be unusable), and therefore, [[WesternAnimation/TheTransformersTheMovie no way to save Cybertron]].
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Context Fridge / BeastWars