Characters / Beast Wars Predacons

Index: Maximals | Predacons | Others | Expanded Universe | Beast Wars Neo

"Terrorize!"

The villains of the series Beast Wars, a renegade and his crew who made off with a stolen Golden Disk, threatening the uneasy peace between their faction and the Maximals...

---

Megatron

Megatron

Function: Predacon Commander; Commander (Transmetal 2); Predacon Vehicon Leader (Beast Machines); Warrior; Emissary (As the Grand Mal)

Alt/Beast Modes: Tyrannosaurus Rex (Original/Transmetal); Dragon (Transmetal 2/Beast Machines); Wolf; Dragon; Spaceship (Grand Mal); Jet; Armored Transport

"Yessss."

^{Click here to see his Transmetal II form:}

Voiced by: David Kaye

Debut: "Beast Wars (Part 1)"

"Megatron does not yield! HE CONQUERS!"

A smooth, calculating, Machiavellian mastermind, Megatron seeks to avenge the defeat of his ancient namesake and restore the Predacons to glory — with himself at the top of the pyramid, of course. Anyone who stands in his way or questions his method is to be eliminated regardless of faction.

He is not the original Megatron but a Legacy Character who was inspired by the G1 version and took his name for himself, making G1 the only verse that has two Megatrons.

If you want to know how he would describe himself, go to this page.

---

• Adaptational Heroism: The Megatron of Beast Wars: Uprising Used to Be a Sweet Kid and is legitimately trying to help his people cast off the yoke of oppression. Sure, he still has a lot of wealth and power to gain from it, but he isn't trying to threaten space and time to accomplish it.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The version of Megatron who appears in Beast Wars: Uprising is a far cry from the narcissistic, godhood-seeking, would-be tyrant of the animated series. Note that this is only by comparison. He's still entirely willing to throw minions under the bus for his schemes.
• Admiring the Abomination:
  • In Other Voices, Part 2, the Vok intend to destroy the Earth with their recently unveiled "Planet Buster" weapon. Megatron is seemingly impressed with such disregard for life. The other Predacons are, understandably, freaked out since they're on the Earth.
  • In "Other Victories", he admires the then-Vok's emissary Tigerhawk for his "awesome" power.
• A God Am I: In the series' finale, he finds the Nemesis ship and delivers fire all over the place. This trait sticks around in Beast Machines, to the point that Megatron tries to consume every other spark in existence, becoming a god in his own right. This plays into the fact he seems to literally be the Cybertronian equal of The Antichrist.
  Megatron: I am Alpha and Omega, Optimal Optimus. Now and forever, until the very end of time!
• Amplifier Artifact: G1 Megatron's spark transforms him into his One-Winged Angel Transmetal II form.
• And This Is for...: A villainous example delivered to Optimus Prime, which doubles as his Motive Rant.
  Megatron: And now Optimus Prime, in memory of the Decepticons, for the glory of the Predacons, for the Cybertron that is rightfully ours! And mine to rule!
• The Antichrist: Starts quoting the Transformers equivalent of him in the "Nemesis" two-part finale. The prophecy is referring to him directly and thus he's this trope. Somewhat composited with Satanic Archetype, as the same prophecy references the Devil. In Beast Machines, his role as this is further exemplified by his spark appearing less like a traditional Cybertronian spark, and more like a red ball of pulsating flame.
• Arch-Enemy: To Optimus Primal, with it growing very, very personal as the series progresses.
  Optimus Primal: We must seek the balance, Megatron. Not only between the organic and the technological, but the balance between eternal enemies: between you and I!
• Arm Cannon: True to form as the Legacy Character to the original G1 Megatron. In his original form, his beast mode's head replaced his right hand and could fire laser blasts. In his Transmetal form his tail becomes a cannon, but can be removed to let him use both hands. His Transmetal II form gives him back the head cannon in the form of the dragon head mounted on his left arm.
• The Assimilator: His grand plan in Beast Machines is to assimilate the sparks of everyone on Cybertron so he can become a god.
• As the Good Book Says...: He starts quoting from the Covenant of Primus in "Nemesis", by which point he's totally snapped and realized he is the Transformers equivalent of The Antichrist.
• Ax-Crazy: By the end of Beast Wars, he’s gone completely insane, developing a god complex, firing on his own troops, and occasionally referring to himself in third person as “the dragon”. In Beast Machines he’s become far more sedate, but is still insane and by the end he goes right back to being completely unhinged.
• Bad Boss: All of his troops are expendable and he cares nothing for their lives beyond how they can serve him best, and he never tries to pretend otherwise except for mockery of the idea. The other Predacons are very frequently insulted, shot at, or smacked around, for failure, incompetence, or just because he was in a bad mood and they said or did something that annoyed him. A particularly shining example comes up in "The Low Road" when Dinobot tries to use Tarantulas as a human shield against him; Megatron shoots Tarantulas out of his hands and mocks Dinobot for thinking that kind of ploy would work on him.
  Dinobot: Do not fire, Megatron! I have a hostage!
  Megatron: Why, so you do. [blasts Tarantulas]
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • In Season 1, he successfully orchestrates Optimus' death and gloats about it to his face right before he is killed.
  • Season 2 ends with him infiltrating the Ark and shooting Optimus Prime in the face, altering the timeline so that the Decepticons won the Great War and the Predacons now rule Cybertron. Unfortunately, in the Season 3 premiere, Blackarachnia intervenes and helps the Maximals restore Prime, undoing Megatron's plan.
  • Beast Machines opens with him having already won, having conquered Cybertron and transformed it into a Villain World by stealing his entire race's sparks and melted their bodies down to make his Vehicon drones. Given that he's Megatron, he rubs this in Optimus' face whenever he can.
• Bastard Understudy: Before stealing the Golden Disk, he was disciple to a Predacon kingpin named Cryotek, who wanted the disk for himself but Megatron betrayed Cryotek, leaving him to face the authorithies^note which is actually the fate Cryotek had prepared for Megatron until he cleverly Out-Gambitted his teacher.
• Big Bad: He is the main villain in both Beast Wars and Beast Machines, with both series having the Maximals having to stop him from carrying out his heinous schemes.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With the Vok and the Tripredacus Council in Beast Wars. Megatron is very much The Heavy, however.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Zigzagged.
  • While he's the main threat to the Maximals in Beast Wars, it's because they're stranded on Earth, in the grand scheme of things he's a small-fry. The Maximal High Command is barely aware he exists, and the Predacons' Tripedacus Council considers him an upstart criminal who, while cunning, is too brash and arrogant for his own good. Expanded worldlore establishes this perception is actually accurate — back on Cybertron Megatron was a protégé of the mobster Cryotek before he hijacked his mentor's scheme to steal the Golden Disk. The major problem they all overlook is that Megatron has found the means to live up to his delusions of grandeur in a way that make him a genuine threat to the galaxy. Ravage lampshades the trope.
    Ravage: I served under the original Megatron; you may have his name, but not his army.
  • Averted in Beast Machines when he returns to Cybertron and takes over the planet, extracting and imprisoning the sparks of all its citizens.
• Big "NO!": He gives one out in the finale of Beast Machines as he falls to his death.
• Big Red Devil: Fitting his nature and prophesied role in the Covenant of Primus, his second upgrade in the Beast Wars gives him the appearance of a giant, winged, almost organic, crimson demon with a fire spewing dragon head for an arm. He is revealed emerging from a pit of lava, just to drive it home.
• Big "YES!": In the Grand Finale of Beast Machines, he screams this after he absorbs the sparks of Cybertron's population.
• Body Horror: In Beast Machines, his dragon mode, the few times we see it, has large pieces ripped out of it and patched together with machinery, implying he actively tried to tear his organic parts out of himself in his pursuit of 'perfection.'
• Boomerang Bigot: Develops a deep hatred for organics in Beast Machines. The problem? He still has his Transmetal II dragon form. He spends the series finding a way to get rid of it so he can achieve absolute "perfection".
• Breaking Speech: He gives a truly merciless one to Optimus when they meet for the first time in Beast Machines.
  Megatron: No, Primal, you have failed. You're still too late to save your people. Billions of Transformers, their extinguished sparks are on your hands! Perhaps if you had won the Beast Wars, things would be different. Who's to say? (This makes Optimus furious enough to revert to Beast Mode) Who's the beast now, Primal?
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Megatron is a theatrical, hammy madman who revels in being an over-the-top villain. He's also a world class Chessmaster who nearly rewrote all of time and space and took over all of Cybertron through sheer cunning.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Megatron proudly calls himself a tyrant at any opportunity, and, in his Near-Villain Victory at the close of season 2, he dramatically proclaims that "evil triumphs!". In the finale of Beast Wars he finds out he's essentially the Cybertronian equal of The Antichrist or Satan in the Book of Revelations and revels in it.
• Came Back Strong: After Tarantulas and Quickstrike throw him into a pit of lava, he comes back out as a Transmetal II, stronger than ever. Of course, his sanity has also taken a massive hit from the experience.
• Came Back Wrong: After being transformed into a Transmetal II by Tarantulas and Quickstrike's attempt on his life, he not only becomes stronger, but even crazier. He winds up killing Quickstrike and Inferno while using the Nemesis to get petty revenge in the protohuman settlement and doesn’t even care, when he previously treated Inferno as something of a friend, and develops a god complex that, by the time of Beast Machines, has gotten even worse to the point he’s become a Godhood Seeker.
• Character Catchphrase: In Beast Wars he tends to add a drawn out "yes" or "no" to the ends of his sentences. Qualifies as both a Big "YES!" and Verbal Tic, yeeessss. It's so popular, that even characters from both factions lampshaded it, yeeeesss!!! It even has a compilation video!!!, yeeess!!!
• The Chessmaster: To an impressive degree, towards his enemies and allies, especially towards Tarantulas. He actually incorporates several other character's plans into his own without their knowledge.
  • Several of his plans depend on his minions betraying him...
    Megatron: Spiders spin their webs, yesss... but I spin them larger.
  • When entering the Nemesis, Megatron outright said that the deceased Tarantulas' treachery is his best asset.
    Megatron: [when entering the control room of the Nemesis] Excellent. Even after his demise, the spider's treachery remains my best asset.
• Cold Ham: In Beast Machines, everything he says still drips with theatricality, but he's far more detached, almost clinical, as part of his new desire to purge his beast mode and its instincts. He goes right back to his old Large Ham self at the end of the series.
• Colonel Kurtz Copy: He's a charismatic, megalomaniac Dangerous Deserter with a god complex who leads a small band of renegades on an isolated planet.
• Combat Pragmatist: As much as he may hate Terrorsaur's guts, the one thing he has in common with The Starscream of his team is that he'll more than gladly shoot a distracted Maximal in the back or pull off any dirty trick to win at all costs.
• Companion Cube: His rubber ducky. Seriously.
• Complexity Addiction: His greatest weakness aside from his overconfidence. He'll often sabotage himself by indulging in needlessly dramatic additions to his plots purely to play into his own bloated ego. Though he will abandon this if pressed enough.
  • His search to remove his organic aspects in Beast Machines is a fine example. Rather than use the spark extractor technology on himself to transfer to a body he could have constructed to his liking, he insists on trying elaborate and dangerous experiments on his current one out of sheer paranoia and ego. He only resorts to a transfer in the final battle when circumstances leave him stuck in the body of a diagnostic drone and he needs a new body to fight the Maximals himself.
• Consummate Liar: A good portion of his manipulative skill set involves hiding the truth from both allies and enemies.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: After Divergent Character Evolution kicked in, this Megatron established himself as the near-opposite of his G1 namesake. The original Megatron was infamous for being a General Failure who came up with complicated and ambitious, but deeply flawed plans that never panned out. The Beast Wars Megatron on the other hand is a dangerously competent schemer who was content to wait, observe, and pick his moment to make his move while preparing gambits to utilize ahead of time, and this more devious manner of plotting won him several lasting victories over the Maximals. He is also different than the later Well-Intentioned Extremist interpretations of G1 Megatron by being irredeemably evil with selfish motives.
• Control Freak: Megatron doesn't trust anyone except himself (which, given the general back-stabbing that goes on in his ranks, is probably wise). It's taken even further in Beast Machines, where he's turned all of Cybertron into a virtually lifeless husk of a world, populated almost entirely by mindless drones, all of which are controlled by Megatron himself. While he later makes use of generals for his army, Megatron values their independence about as much as he does that of the drones, being openly abusive and dismissive of them while fully intending to consume their sparks the moment they are no longer necessary.
• Crown-Shaped Head: Subtly, each of his transformations give him more and more of a crown on top of his body. Symbolizing how ever closer he becomes to being the ruler of Cybertron. Ironically, it is only after gaining a body based on Primal's Optimal form, in comparison Primal had it like a part of his face and even moved with his eyes, does he have a full mechanical crown.
• Cursed with Awesome: In spite of the numerous upsides of his Transmetal II body, by Beast Machines Megatron has grown to despise it for its beast mode. He spends half the series subjecting himself to dangerous and painful experimentation to rid himself of his organic "flaw".
• Cybernetic Mythical Beast: His final beast mode for the last few episodes of Beast Wars Season 3 is a red Transmetal II dragon with purple and gold wings.
• Dark Is Evil: In Beast Wars, Megatron's first two bodies were primarily dark purple and black, and in Beast Machines, he favours a steely gray and dark blue color scheme and operates in low lighting.
• Darker and Edgier: In Beast Machines, he loses his hamminess and the comical elements of his personality, and instead is cold and ruthless.
• Deadpan Snarker: A particularly nasty, arrogant version. When asked about why he monologues to himself, rather than to his troops:
  Megatron: I simply have a penchant for intelligent conversation.
• Death by Irony: His attempt to reformat Cybertron at the end of Beast Machines results in his death.
• Decapitated Army:
  • Both times he's taken out in Beast Machines result in the immediate shutdown of his entire Vehicon army, save for his generals who, as the only other Vehicons with sparks, are capable of functioning independently.
  • In Beast Wars he was a firm believer in this trope and thought the Maximals would be rendered completely helpless without Optimus to lead them. He was proven wrong both times he attacked the Maximals after Optimus had been incapacitated however, as it turned out Rattrap and Rhinox were more than capable of picking up Optimus' slack.
• Deck of Wild Cards: The one on the receiving end of this trope, Megatron spends the entire series dealing with his backstabbing lieutenants more often than not. It's Justified in series as it's encouraged for the Predacons to openly challenge their leader, for failure to stop a rebellion is proof of weakness on the leader's part. Megatron being Megatron, those challenges go unsuccessfully.
• Decomposite Character: Along with the toyline moving the events of present-day Earth to a time-travel adventure and similary to what happened with Optimus Prime and Primal, it did this to Megatron, as the toyline originally painted Beast!Megatron not as an expy/legacy character to G1 Megatron, but as the G1 Megatron himself in an upgraded form.
• Devil Complex: He took his name from an Antichrist figure in the Covenant of Primus. As he goes off the deep end, he becomes convinced he and this figure are one and the same. Given the that he comes close to destroying the future of his species and is outright demonic looking in his final upgrade, it's heavily implied that he's right.
• Demiurge Archetype: When he returns to Cybertron in Beast Machines, he conquers the whole planet, and his previous Godhood Seeker complex evolves into this. He has complete command of everything but the small maximal group fighting against him, and commands the sparks/souls of all those who failed to escape him. He's heavily associated with light, hovering out of a column of light in his reintroduction and gaining a halo in his final stolen form. His rigid order contrasts with Optimus's rebellion. That said Megatron is not actually a divine figure, but a megalomaniac with a God Complex and insane levels of power.
• Diabolical Mastermind: Megatron's operation may be small, but there's no doubt that he's a criminal mastermind.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Hand-in-hand with Decomposite Character, in the first season this Megatron was basically the same as the G1 Megatron, with a similar body structure in robot mode, the exact same name, and an identical plan, that being leaving Cybertron to find another planet rich with energon and harvest it to aid in the war effort. By the time the second season rolled around and it was known that the two Megatrons were different characters, this Megatron was evolved to have a more distinct personality, motivation, and physical appearance.
• Do Wrong, Right: After Tarantulas’ attempt on his life, which results in him gaining a Transmetal II body, he’s less angry about the attempted murder and more that Tarantulas failed to actually kill him.
• Dragons Are Demonic: In Season 3, he emerges from a pool of lava with the beast mode of a red dragon. This is also when his Satanic Archetype traits are played up.
• Electric Torture: A few episodes of Beast Machines had him subject the Vehicon generals to this if they failed him, or just pissed him off.
• Elemental Powers: His Transmetal II body can alternate between fire and ice attacks.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Inferno calls him his "Queen", which frustrates him on numerous occasions. Eventually, Inferno switches to the less embarrassing "Royalty".
• Even Evil Has Standards: Megatron still had lines to not cross. However, they all become subverted by the end.
  • He considers killing Optimus Prime highly risky, and debates over it before shooting him in the face upon deciding he has no other option. Doesn't stop him from gloating about it to the Maximals though.
  • He genuinely believes the Predacons have gotten a raw deal, and genuinely wants to fix that, though he still wants to be the ruler of them. Then he absorbed the sparks of nearly every Predacon alive when he conquered Cybertron.
• Evil Brit: Or at least a very close approximation thereof.
• Evil Counterpart: To Optimus. See Amplifier Artifact for details.
• Evil Gloating: Megatron likes to make sure his enemies know they've been beaten. This bites him in the ass more than once (he tries to "make the Maximals suffer" in the first episode, which gives them the opportunity to shoot them down too and thus start the Beast Wars, and later on he gives a gloating speech to a heavily damaged Dinobot, who uses the opportunity to make an improvised hammer and beat him down.)
• Evil Is Bigger: With the only exception of Rampage, he towers above all the other Predacons and is noticeably taller than even the bigger Maximals like Optimus (at least before he gained his Optimal form in Season 3), Dinobot, or Rhinox.
• Evil Is Hammy: In "Other Visits: Part 1", he and Tarantulas try to out-Evil Laugh each other.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • In the final episode, looking at the proto humans and aboard the Nemesis rather than conserving the ship's fire power...
    Megatron: Hmm. I suppose, given my imminent godhood, these primitives should really be beneath my attention. Ah, still. No score is too small to settle, I always say.
  • At the end of Beast Machines, he transfers his spark to a duplicate of Optimal Optimus's body just to fuck with Optimus.
• Evil Knockoff:
  • He likes making evil clones of Dinobot. Though Dinobot 2 was his greatest success, there were others, including one in the first season who couldn't transform out of beast mode, and a squad of Cyber Raptors in the third season. All of these knockoffs came to bad ends (with the real Dinobot actually eating his evil clone in one case.)
  • At the end of Beast Machines, he inhabits a replica of Optimus' Optimal Optimus form just to spite him, and of course because it was too ironic to pass up.
• Evil Plan: The ultimate one in Beast Wars being to restore the Predacons to glory on Cybertron. In Beast Machines, it's evolved into purging Cybertron of any and all individuality and organic life until he is the only sentient being on the entire planet.
• Evil Laugh: Oh, yes. Rich, deep, and often heard.
• Evil Sounds Deep: David Kaye gives Megatron a deep, refined voice befitting a powerful and sophisticated tyrant.
• The Evils of Free Will: In Beast Machines, Megatron preaches about the chaos of individual minds, seeing the Vehicons (mindless hordes that obey Megatron's ever whim) as true peace and harmony. Downplayed, as Megatron's rhetoric has nothing to do with any actual desire for peace; his narcissism has hit new heights since the Beast Wars, and he only preaches against free will because he's a Control Freak of the highest order who believes that he and he alone should be the sole mind governing the future of Cybertron. He's also fine with using the free will of others to his advantage, creating the Vehicon generals when the drones prove ineffective against the Maximals, and thanking Tankor for coming up with plans that Megatron himself would never have dreamed up (and that he, true to form, hijacks for his own ends at the earliest possibility).
• Evil Feels Good: Megatron clearly loves being the Big Bad and revels in his theatrical villainy.
  Megatron: Now, where was I? Ah yes, mindless destruction. That's always good for the spark.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The only reason he turned Rhinox and Silverbolt into Vehicon generals in Beast Machines. When the Maximals learn the generals are being powered-up by Maximal sparks, they assume it's a ploy by Megatron to deter them from destroying his generals. Turns out, he actually did it because it satisfied his twisted sense of humor.
• Expy: For G1 Megatron. In-universe, this gets him sneered at by Ravage.
• Fantastic Racism: In Beast Machines, he has developed a deep hatred of organic life. To the point that he's trying to purge his dragon mode despite the fact that it would actually help him.
• Fatal Flaw: He would probably win if he could just stop gloating for a minute whenever he's about to win.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • He's charming, erudite, and eager to grind his enemies underneath his heel even if he has to sacrifice all of reality to do so.
    Megatron: Why, Dinobot! What a delightful surprise. Let's see, where are we now? I have the Golden Disk, I have the power to change the future, and the only remaining obstacle in my path to unimaginable glory... is yourself. [sighs]
  • While far more cold and sinister in Beast Machines, this quality continues to pop up, with Megatron affecting a civil and mockingly polite tone. This is especially the case when he's dealing with Optimus, treating their conversations as philosophical debates and pretending to consider Primal an old friend despite their deep, mutual loathing.
    Optimus: What do you want from us?
    Megatron: Oh, nothing much. Just every bit of data on the Oracle to better understand how I can fully exploit the precious sparks in my possession. I anticipate that extracting this information will be slow, painful, and, regrettably... fatal.
• Final Boss:
  • In the 1997 Beast Wars: Transformers video game, he is the final boss of the Maximals campaign.
  • The PlayStation version of Beast Wars: Transmetals features him as the final opponent of the Maximals campaign, with the Nintendo 64 version having a version of him called Megatron X serve as the final boss regardless of which character the player has selected to play as.
• Flesh Versus Steel: His newfound hatred of his own beast mode and all things organic in Beast Machines is the central driver of plot, impelling him as it does to purge and assimilate all other Transformers on Cybertron.
• Flying Face: His Grand Mal body was a giant transforming spaceship with a "robot mode" resembling his own head. To communicate with those inside of it, he created a holographic projection of a smaller version of that head as an avatar.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: On Cybertron, Megatron was considered nothing but a small-time crook with delusions of grandeur, an insult to the legacy of the Decepticon leader from whom he took his name. With his arrival on Earth, however, Megatron became a threat to not just Cybertron, but all of time itself, and upon returning to his homeworld, conquered it with such swiftness and efficiency that no one saw him coming or had any hope of stopping him before Optimus Primal and crew arrived.
• Garnishing the Story: In the last few episodes of the third season, he gets transformed into a giant transmetal dragon. No explanation is given for how he went from a T. rex to a dragon, as while they did exist in the G1 continuity and appeared during time travel, there was no sign of them throughout Beast Wars, but it definitely qualifies for Rule of Cool.
• Genius Bruiser: Seeing as he has a great big purple Tyrannosaurus Rex as his alt-mode, it's a given that he'd be a bruiser. He also appears to be one of the smartest Megatrons.
• Godhood Seeker: Megatron's endgame in Beast Machines is to assimilate every spark on Cybertron into his own, thus making himself into a god and the sole dominating intelligence (and sole intelligence period) on Cybertron.
• Godzilla Threshold: His true agenda, as detailed below.
• The Heavy: He's nowhere near as powerful as the Tripredacus Council and the Vok, but his cunning and mad plans set the series' plot into motion and he causes the most problems for the Maximals over the course of Beast Wars.
• Hero Killer: He is responsible for the deaths of many Maximals; including Tigerhawk (Tigatron and Airazor), Dinobot, Rhinox and Noble.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: It's revealed the real reason he came to Earth in the past was to destroy the original Optimus Prime within the Arc and wipe out Maximal existence. He was very hesitant and settled for the energon instead as a bonus until he no longer had any other option to win the Beast Wars.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the series finale of Beast Machines, Megatron assimilates several sparks into his own, causing his body to grow in size. The increase in mass prevents him from being able to fly or resist gravity when Optimus Primal pushes the both of them into Cybertron's organic core, where both leaders die.
• Hulking Out: In Beast Machines, Megatron has come to hate his organic beast mode and tries to repress it. But when he loses control of his emotions and gets angry, he reflexively transforms into his dragon mode and will often attack first before calming down enough to transform again.
• Hypocrite: He despises treachery and tends to be particularly hateful towards his troops that try to betray him, usually Terrorsaur, Tarantulas, and Blackarachnia. He's also often to single out Dinobot in fights and attack him personally, and seems to have an obsession with trying to clone him and replace him. Of course, Megatron is entirely untrustworthy himself; he'll go back on his word as soon as it suits him, he's a Bad Boss who inspires no loyalty in his troops nor does he even try to, and according to the backstory he betrayed his own boss back on Cybertron when he stole the Golden Disk for him and then made off with it himself. (to be fair though, said boss was planning on betraying him as well)
• Hypocrite Has a Point: Specifically, he despises treachery being done incompetently. In the Predacon ranks, treason is almost a prerequisite to ruling, for if the current leader is unable to deal with being betrayed, who's to say they should still be in charge? Over half his lieutenants have tried to stab him in the back, and he's far from happy about it, but as someone who actually pulled it off towards his own mentor, he would know where they went wrong.
• An Ice Person: After gaining a Transmetal II body, he gains the ability to use ice attacks.
• Infernal Retaliation: After Quickstrike, manipulated by Tarantulas, drops him into a pit of lava while he was incapacitated by wrestling the spark of his namesake for control of their body. Megatron completes his transformation and emerges from the pit, stronger than ever and now with a dragon beast mode. He then proceeds to "thank" Tarantulas.
• Irrational Hatred: He inexplicably develops a burning hatred for all forms of organic life in Beast Machines. Optimus even points out how this makes zero sense given he had no issues with his beast mode in the past and refuses to have his spark transferred to a new body despite hating his current one so much. It's implied his newfound disgust for all things organic is just a self-serving rationalization: instead of admitting his past failures in the Beast Wars were his own fault, he projects them on the organic elements he gained on Earth to protect his ego. Now he seeks to purge himself of those "imperfections" before embarking on his plan to achieve godhood.
• It's All About Me: The only thing that matters to Megatron is Megatron. In Beast Machines, his selfishness becomes even more all-consuming. He takes over Cybertron, captures or kills every sentient being beyond himself, erases every record of all that came before him, and ultimately seeks to consume the sparks of his entire species so that he can ascend to godhood and mold the entire planet into an eternal monument to himself.
  Optimus Primal: Is that the only ideal you serve, Megatron? Megalomania?
• Jerkass: For all his manipulative charm and cultured demeanor, Megatron revels in the suffering he causes and loves to gloat about how badly he's screwed his enemies over.
• Karmic Death: At the end of Beast Machines, he is killed by Optimus Primal while he attempts to reformat Cybertron.
• Kick the Dog: After he decides that Transmutate is useless because of its deformities, he coldly orders Inferno to execute it. Rampage only barely talks him out of it, and Megatron makes it clear that if it screws up, he will kill it without a second thought.
• Killed Off for Real: After surviving countless attempts on his life and things that would kill anyone else, he finally dies at the end of Beast Machines when Optimus sends them both into the core of Cybertron, disintegrating them both and reformatting the planet.
• Knight of Cerebus: Megatron had multiple Laughably Evil tendencies and wasn't introduced as such at first, however, Megatron progressively much more darker and when he becomes more darker, the show's tone also becomes more darker. Moment he became more darker, characters are Killed Off for Real, especially by his hand in which multiple heroes end up dying trying to stop him, with both Optimus dying by his hand ending the first two seasons in chilling notes. His transformation into a Transmetal II dragon brought the Beast Wars to its endgame phase when he attempted to destroy the Ark and ultimately, the very reason Beast machines is much darker than its predecessor cements on the very fact that the premise is based on Megatron winning and ruling Cybertron and performed a virtual genocide against the Transformer race, even killing off most of the Maximals in the penultimate episode and forced Primal to make a permanent Heroic Sacrifice to finish off Megatron. This is all while in this series, Megatron's iconic Large Ham Laughably Evil tendencies were downplayed than before until the end.
• Knight Templar: In Beast Wars, Megatron wants a new glorious age of Predacons after suffering slavery from the Maximals. When pushed to the limit, he would commit an act of genocide against humanity and kill Optimus Prime as a maneuvers he knows will result in the very destruction of time itself and undo existence to remake it as he sees fit and create a new timestream where the Predacons have a glorious age under his rule, taken even further in an attempt to destroy the Ark. Taken further in Beast Machines which he deems free will as an illusion and commits a virtual genocide against his own race as a result and recycles their body to make mindless machines, and his grand plan is to destroy Cybertron and all life technological and organic on it to remake it in a technological paradise.
• Large Ham: Megatron's are hammy. Cartoon villains are hammy. Beast Wars Megatron... is a ham maestro. He becomes more of a Cold Ham in Beast Machines... right up until the end of the series, where he goes right back to being this.
• Large and in Charge: Generally played straight with him. Before Rampage was conscripted into the Predacons, Megatron was the biggest of the group, and once he converted into his dragon body, Megatron dwarfed even Rampage.
• Laughably Evil: His hamminess, sarcasm, and CR baths with his rubber duck make Megatron a blast to watch. This doesn't apply as much in Beast Machines, where he's more serious and cold... right up until the end of the series, where he reverts back to his original persona for the most part.
• Legacy Character: He's a descendant of the original Megatron.
• Look What I Can Do Now!: At one point, he's dropped into a lava pit by Quickstrike, who was manipulated by Tarantulas, in an attempt to kill him. Instead of dying, this actually makes him stronger and crazier than ever; mainly because he also had the spark of his namesake inside him at the time.
• Mad Scientist: He shows signs of being one of these, particularly when he uses the Transmetal II Drive to create Dinobot II and starts acting like Dr. Frankenstein, complete with Waspinator serving as The Igor.
  Megatron: I give you LIFE! TRANSMETAL II LIFE! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: He's prone to expressing Villain Respect by saying "I rather like him/her/them."
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: He traveled to past Earth in the first place to kill Optimus Prime so the Decepticons could win the great war and thus control Cybertron.
• Manipulative Bastard: Many of his greatest advantages were unwittingly supplied by his more treacherous underlings.
• Mayor of a Ghost Town: In Beast Machines Megatron rules Cybertron after having purged it of all sentient beings besides himself and drones programmed to be incapable of disobeying him. Megatron, being the narcissist that he is, greatly prefers it this way as he is able to mold the planet into a monument to his "greatness" unopposed.
• Multiple Head Case: A notable aversion. While Megatron is one of the most famous Transformers that has his beast mode head fully visible in robot mode,^note specifically for his first and third Earth bodies, his T. rex or dragon head simply becomes an inanimate Arm Cannon when he transforms. "Before the Storm" seems to play with this trope by having his T. rex hand act like a Right-Hand Cat in subtle ways, but this is Played for Laughs and can easily be explained by Megatron putting on a puppet show for himself, simply because he's that kind of guy.
• Narcissist: To an insane degree. In Beast Machines, Megatron did everything in his power to turn Cybertron into a reflection of his own self-image. Reflected in this scene:
  Megatron: ...yeeesss.
  Blackarachnia: Why do you always talk to yourself?
  Megatron: I simply have a penchant for intelligent conversation.
• Near-Villain Victory: Several times. For all of his intelligence and chessmastering, he just can't win for definite.
  • At the end of the first season, he kills Optimus Primal. This carries over to the second season and he would've killed the rest of the Maximals had Rhinox not brought Primal back.
  • In the Grand Finale, he finds the Nemesis, kills Tigerhawk with it, and proceeds to attack Mt St Hilary in an attempt to destroy the Maximals and the Ark. If not for Dinobot II's Heel–Face Turn and subsequent Redemption Equals Death moment, he would've won.
  • But his best one of all had to be in the season two finale: He's been captured by Ravage and Tarantulas, with some help from the Maximals. His troops are either incapacitated or pursuing their own agendas. To top it off Ravage has instructions from the Tripredacus Council to eliminate all the witnesses, and what does Megatron do? He plays his last card to change Ravage's allegiance, revealing the whole thing as a plan orchestrated by G1 Megatron to change the outcome of the Great War in his favor. While Ravage keeps the Maximals busy, Megatron flies to Mt. St. Hilary, threatens Silverbolt to get Blackarachnia to open the Ark for him, and attempts to Ret-Gone the Maximals out of existence by blowing Optimus Prime's brains out. Really, his only mistake was keeping Blackarachnia, who was a Maximal Protoform and thus threatened by his attempt, alive long enough to betray him.
  • He gets two of these in Beast Machines, coming seconds away from winning both times.
• Never My Fault: Megatron often blames others for his failures, whether it be his underlings or the Maximals, since his gargantuan ego has blinded him to the possibility he could make a mistake.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Inflicts one on Tarantulas after he Comes Back Strong from his assassination attempt.
• No Name Given: He chose the name "Megatron" for himself; his original name is unknown (though in Beast Wars: Uprising, he was originally known as "Gnashteeth").
  • In the IDW 2021 series, it is revealed that his name was Galavar.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Megatron was little more than a particularly ambitious but still small-time renegade in the eyes of the Tripredacus Council and Maximal High Command. However, he and his crew are the biggest threats to Optimus Primal Maximals on account of being the only other Cybertronians on prehistoric Earth.
• Not So Similar: On one occasion he was told he was unworthy of the respect that usually comes with the name Megatron because of the robots who had the name before him being far superior to him. Though this came from a surviving servant of the original.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Initially, he comes off as a Smug Snake with delusions of grandeur, content to have a large supply of energon. By the end of Season 1, it’s clear he is a legitimate Diabolical Mastermind with grand aspirations and the intelligence to back it up, managing to kill Optimus with his clever planning, and Season 2 reveals he’s a threat to time and space itself.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Although a Card-Carrying Villain by trade, Megatron occasionally at least acts like his plans stand to benefit people other than him, but it's always proven to be a load of bull and that all Megatron cares about is just Megatron:
  • In Beast Wars, despite Megatron's card-carrying tendencies, blatant egomania and abuse of his own men and admission he does seek power, his actions seems to be as equally motivated by power as to create a better world for the Predacons out of genuinely believing they have gotten a raw deal as slaves in his Motive Rant. Even with that it was heavily downplayed and by the time he becomes a Transmetal II dragon upon absorbing power from the G1 Megtron's spark, any belief of him being genuine now is overridden with his egomania and Bad Boss tendencies become taken to the extreme, in which they are definitely long gone the moment he proclaims himself Alpha & Omega and believing he is The Antichrist and his abuse of men turned to straight up sacrificing them, all culminating in a grand plot to destroy the Ark and wipe out nearly the entire Transformer race, even fellow Predacons. This is then continued in Beast Machines in which if his acquired god complex and attempt on the Ark by the final few episodes of Beast Wars didn't convince you, by this show it will, as during his reign of terror upon conquering Cybertron, Megatron did not only steal sparks of Maximals, but fellow Predacons as well, proving Optimus Primal's words that Megatron is just a simple megalomaniac that cares only for himself.
  • Throughout Beast Machines, Megatron claims several times that his efforts are meant to eliminate The Evils of Free Will and turn Cybertron into a single, elegant machine, under his guiding hand. By the end of the series, it becomes clear that Megatron is nothing but a callous, insane megalomaniac, seeking nothing less than godhood and being willing to exterminate his entire species to see it happen.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: How he usually manipulates his more traitorous minions to his own ends. He acts completely unaware of their intentions, slyly playing his own Batman Gambit.
• Oh, Crap!: He has this reaction right before Quickstrike drops him into a pit of lava under Tarantulas' orders in "Master Blaster".
• Omnicidal Maniac: His final resort in Season 2 is to kill Optimus Prime and cause a timestorm that would undo existence to alter the timestream to his image where he leads the Predacons to a glorious age. Then by the finale of Beast Wars he's so all consumed at the thought of victory that he attempts to destroy the Arc with G1 Megatron included, which would mean the destruction of both Maximals and Predacons and all Cybertronian life. This is taken to even greater extremes in Beast Machines in which he attempts to destroy Cybertron itself to remake it in his image.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • In Beast Wars He gains his Transmetal II form with just three episodes left in the series, in time for the final battle.
  • Beast Machines gives him a body resembling Primal's Optimal Optimus form, having constructed it himself (albeit without the beast form). And then he grows bigger when he absorbs the sparks of nearly every single Cybertronian.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the season one finale, he contacts Optimus for a temporary ceasefire, and is genuine in the offer. Optimus immediately knows something is up, because there's no way Megatron would pull this without something else on the table.
• Orcus on His Throne: Megatron spends most of Beast Machines plotting and directing his legions of Vehicons instead of fighting himself, only engaging in combat when directly confronted. He finally starts acting on his own in the series finale, where he uses a copy of Optimus' Optimal body to great effect.
• Our Dragons Are Different: His beast mode is a metallic dragon in the last four episodes of the third season.
• Pet the Dog: He actually has a minor case of this in "Dark Designs". Despite initially berating Scorponok for getting crushed under the crates, once he hears him out afterwards he calmly acknowledges that he was the one who made the mistake by converting Rhinox into a Predacon. As Scorponok whimpers while explaining what happened Megatron even gives him a soft, comforting "there".
• Playing with Fire: After gaining a dragon for a beast mode, he gains the ability to shoot fire from his mouth.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He was initially unwilling to alter time by destroying Optimus Prime, deeming it a dangerous, extreme last resort. A tie-in game would raise the point that with Optimus and the Matrix destroyed, nothing would stop Unicron when he came to Cybertron…
• Purple Is Powerful: His tyrannosaurus bodies both had a largely purple colour scheme.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: He could maul his troops if he felt like it. According to the Manual, this is how Predacon leadership works. They value successful betrayals, believing that if the leader could not fend off the treachery, they obviously were not fit to lead.
  Megatron: Treachery requires no mistakes.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: He has red eyes, and is a callous, genocidal megalomaniac willing to kill anyone to get what he wants.
• Ret-Gone: In "The Agenda", he tried to do erase the Maximals from history by killing Optimus Prime.
• Riddle for the Ages: Something clearly happened to Megatron between his escape from the Maximals and their arrival on Cybertron after his conquest; by the time they arrive, he's developed a virulent hatred for the organic (including his own beast mode), and is scarred over his right eye. The intervening time and stark changes in his characterization have never been addressed.
• Right-Hand Cat: In his first and third bodies, his beast mode head becomes one of his arms, and he's seen treating his T. rex head like one of these. There's also his rubber ducky, to a lesser extent.
• Rogue Agent: Megatron is a renegade from the Predacons, acting without their knowledge to carry out his own agenda. The Tripredacus Council consider him a dangerous extremist, and even dispatch Ravage to terminate him.
• Rollerblade Good: As a Transmetal, his dinosaur feet have wheels.
• Sadist: At several points in Beast Machines, he does things that have no purpose other than to make Optimus suffer, whether it be taunting him about Megatron's victory or drawing out a battle with him. This tendency ultimately shoots him in the foot at the end of the series, when this gives Optimus the chance to kill Megatron and reformat the planet.
• Same Character, But Different: In Beast Machines, he's far colder, less prone to his usual theatricality, inexplicably despises organics, and is far more clinical and ruthless in general, coming off as an almost entirely different character. As the series goes on, it gradually becomes clear that the change was in attitude only; he's still the same power-hungry megalomaniac he was in the original series, it's just that his ambitions have massively grown in scale, and near the end of the series he goes right back to his previous hammy self.
• Sanity Slippage: At the end of Beast Wars, the combination of taking the original Megatron's spark, Tarantulas' attempt on his life, and him gaining the beast mode of a dragon causes him to go even crazier, to the point he starts occasionally referring to himself in Third-Person Person and developing a god complex. He’s become far more composed in Beast Machines, only to lose it again at the end of the series after absorbing all the sparks of Cybertron expect for Optimus'.
• Satanic Archetype: The Covenant of Primus's passages present him as a composite of this and The Antichrist. The fact he becomes a dragon in the end just sells it.
  The Covenant of Primus: (about Megatron) "...and the great dragon was cast out upon the Earth... and his followers were cast out with him."
• Self-Serving Memory: In Beast Machines, Megatron smugly claims to Optimus, currently suffering from Laser-Guided Amnesia, that he won the Beast Wars. In reality, Megatron firmly lost; all of his allies abandoned him, died, or both and all of his plans failed. The only reason he actually managed to conquer Cybertron was because he was able to break out while the Maximals' ship was traveling back to Cybertron, allowing him to get there first.
• She Is the King: Inverted. Megatron is called a "Queen" by Inferno, despite repeatedly warning the latter not to do so. Inferno also uses the more gender-neutral term "Royalty", which doesn't bother Megatron so much.
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Regarding a bunch of Dinobot clones (appropriate, given Dinobot's own penchant for quoting the Bard):
  Megatron: Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!
• Slasher Smile: Gives a pretty freaky one when finding Rampage and uses his energon blade to cut off half his spark.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Well, further into evil. Megatron starts off as an evil, megalomaniacal sociopath, but his Sanity Slippage results in him getting even worse, turning into a deranged Omnicidal Maniac with delusions of godhood. Then he somehow manages to get even eviler in Beast Machines, committing what amounts to genocide on his own race.
• The Sociopath: Megatron is self-centered, self-important, cruel, manipulative, has no respect for any authority apart from his own, has no empathy, and is extremely narcissistic.
• Strong as They Need to Be: In Beast Wars, Megatron's Transmetal II body was easily able to overwhelm Optimal Optimus. Yet when he faces off with the techno-organic Optimus in Beast Machines, he can just barely manage to draw with him (though this may be justified as a side-effect of the failed attempts to rid himself of his organic components).
• Taught by Experience: The last leg of the first season of Beast Machines double subverted this. Tankor is revealed to be Rhinox, someone who nearly deposed and killed Megatron after being remade into a Predacon on Beast Wars. Viewers were surely questioning why Megatron would repeat such a dangerous mistake and why he seemed so unaware of what was going on. Megatron, however, was not only Obfuscating Stupidity, but he fully anticipated possible treachery by installing secret safeguards in Tankor's programming. Rhinox is immobilized the second he actually tries to kill Megatron.
• Tautological Templar: In Beast Machines, to an insane degree. He's firmly convinced that all the crimes he comitted actually improved the Transformers race as a whole, and at no point ever does he show the slightest hint of doubt that what he's doing is for a good cause.

"Cybertron is a haven for machines ! While Optimus was deluded by the false visions of a malfunctioning computer, I have been restoring Cybertron's purity and surely, that is the most honorable cause of all !"

• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: He's a T. rex in both his original and Transmetal beast modes. And he is a charismatic but cruel leader of the Predacons, willing to sacrifice his minions and reality itself just to ensure victory for his Decepticon ancestors.
• Third-Person Person: After gaining a Transmetal II body, he starts occasionally referring to himself as "the Dragon" in third person.
• Tin Tyrant: Megatron's initial robot mode isn't all that grandiose, but by Transmetal, he's got thick metallic armor and mocking Dinobot for leveling a stick at it (before being struck with a stone hammer). By Transmetal II, he is fully decked out in armor in a foremost vainglorious display befitting a Megatron (this transformation occurring from having absorbed the spark of his namesake, fittingly). However, Megatron is also called this verbatim by Tarantulas, in a passing swipe at Megatron's overblown ego and need for glory. Megatron fires back, "Treacherous arachnid."
• Took a Level in Cynic: In Beast Machines, Megatron sports a more sedate, cold attitude, although hints of his old fondness for melodrama bleed through every now and again, and towards the end of the series, he starts to regain his old, hammier persona.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He was never even remotely a good guy, but he becomes even worse by the time of Beast Machines, attempting to carry out an Assimilation Plot tantamount to planetary genocide, fully embracing his god complex, and dropping his Faux Affably Evil demeanor in favor of a more openly ruthless, no-nonsense persona.
• TV Genius: He's undoubtedly sophisticated, intelligent, and verbally elegant. Unfortunately for him, his social skills and inability to attract and maintain followers through anything other than fear, brutality, or blackmail pretty much establish him as The Friend Nobody Likes among his own Predacon troops. Not counting Inferno, who honestly has more than a few loose screws, Scorponok is practically the ONLY character in the show of relatively sound mind who likes Megatron.
• Underestimating Badassery: Neither the Predacon or Maximal leadership thinks of him as more than a crook with delusions of grandeur. He manages to steal a ship and nearly unravel time, then take over Cybertron near-singlehandly.
• Undignified Death: In the Grand Finale of Beast Machines, while Optimus calmly accepts his fate as they plunge to their deaths in Cybertron's core, Megatron screams with impotent rage and fear the whole time.
• The Unfettered: Nothing, not even reality itself, is safe from this megalomaniac.
• Unskilled, but Strong: While he's a skilled battlefield tactician and good long-term planner, Megatron's combat style really boils down to punching, straightforward kicks, blasting other 'bots, and, while in beast mode, biting and tail-slamming his opponents. Not that there's much wrong with it because a lot of the times, his overwhelming brute force will get him through a lot of scraps. However, it doesn't always serve him well because throughout all three seasons, there have been characters who beat him through simply being more skilled than him (Dinobot) or just possessing more raw power (Tigerhawk).
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: In Beast Wars: Uprising, Megatron is shown to have been a Nice Guy even willing to talk with Maximals before his mentor Double Punch screwed him over.
• Verbal Tic: invoked A long drawn-out "Yeeeess..." or "Noooo...". The former was uttered 166 times throughout the series. According to Kaye, the now-iconic tic was an accidental Throw It In!. It came out of his delivery of Megatron's first 'Yes' in the Pilot (which was written normally without the now-familiar inflection). Per the request of VO Director Susan Blu and the production crew, Kaye did it again and stretched it out longer. The rest is history.
• Vetinari Job Security: Though abusive and manipulative to his subordinates, he has proven to be the only one capable of leading his nearly-psychotic crew of Predacons. He proved this to Terrorsaur once by granting him command during a crisis and watching him fail spectacularly.
• Villain Ball: Megatron's main weakness. He himself acknowledges that Predacons gloat too much, but can't quite shake the habit. The series is bookended with him ignoring Dinobot / Dinobot II's advice in favour of something more fun- which only results in him killing Quickstrike and Inferno, his last two Predacons aside from Dinobot II.
• Villain Decay: Impressively inverted. His schemes in the first season are largely simple plots to acquire Energon. Then at the end of Season 1, he masterminds the destruction of the Vok's superweapon and the death of Optimus, after which he starts threatening time itself. And then in Beast Machines, he successfully wipes out all of Cybertron and comes within a stone's throw of destroying the resistance and completing his designs for an entirely mechanical world.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • After Tarantulas' failed assassination attempt and absorbing the spark of the original Megatron give him a Transmetal II body, Megatron just loses his mind and becomes increasingly irrational and unhinged, culminating in him trying to destroy the Ark even though it would mean the destruction of both the Maximals and Predacons alike.
  • Right before Optimus kills them both in the finale of Beast Machines, he begins panicking and loses his cool, culminating in a Big "NO!".
• Villainous Friendship: Downplayed with Inferno. Megatron treats Inferno as his most useful pawn, but genuinely likes him for his loyalty, even if he finds him to be incompetent. He even rescues Inferno in the middle of a battle for no real reason. Killing him with the Nemesis while firing on the protohuman settlement in the series finale is what finally makes it clear Megatron has lost it completely.
• Villainous Valor: While he did pull a Villain: Exit, Stage Left many times during the series, he undeniably embodies this trope when he doesn't quit against Tigerhawk despite being in awe at his power.
• Villain Respect: Whenever Megatron is threatened or simply runs into someone as evil, violent, or cunning as him, his usual response is to proclaim he "rather likes" them.
• Visual Pun: Megatron is an aspiring Galactic Conqueror, and in his first two bodies, his beast mode was a Tyrannosaurus; for most of Beast Wars, Megatron was literally a tyrant lizard. Megatron being who he is, he may well have chosen his beast mode just for the pun.
• Vocal Dissonance: In Beast Mode, his articulate tone of voice is quite odd to hear coming out of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
• Vocal Evolution: In Beast Machines, his voice becomes even deeper and he loses his smug, jovial tone for a more cold, serious tone.
• We Have Reserves: He seems to value his troops' lives slightly less than a normal person does pocket lint and would probably kill them all in a second if they proved to be no longer useful. An impressive feat, since at no time does he have more than a handful or so Predacons, even if some are Made of Iron and being blown to bits is more of an inconvenience than anything else.
• Wicked Cultured: Speaks with an aristocratic accent, fond of quoting literature, and is often found soaking in a energon hot tub.
• Would Hit a Girl: The most blatant example is when he slaps Blackarachnia in "Aftermath" out of anger for working with Tarantulas behind his back.
• You Are What You Hate: By the time of Beast Machines, Megatron has grown to despise organic life, up to and including his own organic beast mode, which he spends all of the first season struggling to rid himself of. This goes even further in the second season, where he spends the first few episodes trapped in an entirely organic body until he manages to liberate his spark.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: His reaction to realizing his new body is a Diagnostic Drone.
  Megatron: I LIVE! I LIVE! I- ...What kind of puny body is this? (Descends into Angrish as Rattrap mocks him)
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Before the start of Beast Machines, he used a combination of his transformation locking virus and the beginnings of his army to steal the sparks of nearly all of Cybertron. By the time he released his own spark to take the Grand Mal as a new body, he began consuming the sparks in his collection to boost his power. At the climax of the series, he had absorbed so many into himself that he attained near-godlike power.

Scorponok

Scorponok

Function: Desert Attack Commander

Beast Mode: Scorpion

Voiced by: Don Brown

Debut: "Beast Wars (Part 1)"

"Megatron is our leader! He rewards loyalty and punishes those who oppose his will."

Scorponok was the second-in-command of the Predacons following Dinobot's rebellion against Megatron in the first episode. He was the only Pred at the start to display full loyalty to Megatron, which in Megatron's eyes made up for his lack of real intelligence. His undying loyalty to Megatron meant that he would clash with Terrorsaur and Blackarachnia at times. Scorponok would die in a freak accident in the Season 2 premiere.

---

• Authority in Name Only: Scorponok was officially Megatron’s second-in-command in the first season, but none of the other Predacons paid him much mind. The one time anyone did follow his orders was to restore a damaged Megatron to lead them again.
• The Brute: He fields impressive firepower, but lacks in the brains department.
• Butt-Monkey: Part of the package when you're one of Megatron's most loyal followers and your teammates are not-so subordinate.
• Character Tic: He's prone to randomly clacking his claws together.
• Depending on the Writer: The writers clearly never figured out what to do with him, and it shows. His personality is completely inconsistent aside from his loyalty to Megatron, and he oscillates between an Evil Genius, The Brute only good for grunt work, Megatron's trusted second-in-command, or a total idiot who talks in Hulk Speak.
• The Dragon: In defiance of typical Transformers dragons, he is an utterly loyal second-in-command to Megatron.
• Drone Deployer: Stores and deploys flying Cyberbee spies from one of his claws.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: He falls into a lava pit and is never seen again. Blackarachnia acknowledges his and Terrorsaur's absence to save her own hide, but otherwise, no one, least of all Megatron, seems to notice or care.
• Dumb Muscle: Despite being the Predacons' tech-expert, he's probably one of their stupidest members. Still, he is powerful and heavily armed enough to act as Megatron’s primary enforcer.
• Expy: Between the cyber-bee pet, the technical skills, the high status, and the loyalty, it's not hard to see him as an attempt at making a Predacon counterpart to Soundwave. However, Soundwave was consistently portrayed as one of the smartest and most competent Decepticons of the G1 era, while Scorponok is anything but.
• Flat Character: He's Megatron's dimwitted, but loyal second-in-command. And that's about it.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: After he dies, he gets a single token mention from Blackarachnia (who's only pointing out the diminished Predacon ranks to save her own skin), then is totally forgotten.
• Genius Ditz: He was kind of an idiot and his speech would frequently degenerate into the monosyllabic, however he seemed to show some savant-like talents when it came to inventing. When they don't go horribly wrong. Lampshaded by Dinobot, who notes that while he is the Predacons' resident inventor, he's also insanely terrible at his job.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: He once created a virus that did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do (for reference: the virus was supposed to turn Optimus into a Dirty Coward who was too ineffective to lead, but it instead amped up his aggression and turned him into The Berserker).
• Hulk Speak: Occasionally he'd slip into caveman talk, usually when he was excited or angry. For example, in Chain of Command after Megatron recovers from being knocked out by an alien probe:
  Scorponok: Megatron back! Megatron back! Scorponok alone with Tarantulas and Terrorsaur! Very bad!
• Inconsistent Spelling: His name is spelled "Scorpinok" in the PC and PlayStation Beast Wars: Transformers game.
• Legacy Character: Subverted. He shares a name with a legendary Decepticon Commander from the late portions of the G1 setting, but they share absolutely nothing in common besides being themed after scorpions.
• Marked Bullet: Scorponok had Maximal sigils on his missiles in the earliest episodes; they were replaced with Predacon ones in short order due to audience unfamiliarity with this trope.
• Master of None: He has a wide array of skills, but is ineffectual at pretty much all of them. He frequently does reconnaissance, but he's not as effective as the fliers and he tends to reveal himself at the worst possible times and always without backup. Scorponok can fight, but there are bigger powerhouses on his team and he makes a lot of boneheaded tactical decisions, like repeatedly attacking the Maximals while he's alone and outnumbered. He has some technical expertise, but Tarantulas and Blackarachnia are superior to him in this field and his devices don't always work as intended. He's frequently assigned a leadership role, but he doesn't command enough respect for the other Predacons to follow him. At the end of the day, Scorponok's only real asset is his undying loyalty to Megatron.
• Not Quite Dead: At least one Expanded Universe goes on to say Scorponok underwent Transmetalization but got stuck in the lava lying dormant, emerging long after the Beast Wars were over. The same goes for his buddy Terrorsaur. So basically, they got to sit out the rest of the battles Left for Dead, escaped the lava Transmetalized, and woke up to a primitive planet with no others of their kind remaining there, stranded by themselves (as Waspinator had been evicted by then). They were just that unlucky.
• Number Two: To Megatron throughout the first season. He shares this role with Inferno after his activation until his untimely death at the beginning of Season 2.
• Poisonous Person: He could create a variety of toxins and launch them from his tail. Notably, his poisons are said to be to be primarily chemically-based rather than the computer viruses or corrosive plasma bolts the spiders or Quickstrike use, respectively.
• Scary Scorpions: While he is fairly powerful, he just doesn't manage to be too much of a threat, though.
• Undying Loyalty: His loyalty was his only consistent personality trait. The only reason Megatron gave him such a high position despite his limited competence is because he knew Scorponok is one of the only Predacons that would never act against him.
• Villainous Friendship: The Beast Wars Series Bible explains he believes he and Megatron have this. Megatron couldn’t care less about Scorponok as a person or friendship as a concept, but permits Scorponok's delusion as it guarantees his loyalty.
• Yes-Man: Towards Megatron. His less loyal teammates mock him for being such a such a toady.

Tarantulas

Tarantulas

Function: Ninja Warrior

Alt/Beast Modes: Spider (Original/Transmetal); Motorcycle (Transmetal)

^{Click here to see his Transmetal form:}

Voiced by: Alec Willows, Scott McNeil (portions of "Other Voices, Pt. 2" only)

Debut: "Beast Wars (Part 1)"

"You shouldn't take your eyes off a spider. They tend to be venomous!"

Tarantulas is the kind of mad scientist who makes other mad scientists feel like they need a shower. He's taken to his beast form to the point where he likes to lay traps for wild animals and then suck the blood out of them while they're still alive (not onscreen, obviously, but still). His habits don't endear him to his teammates, who generally find him disturbing.

Despite his perversions and general creepiness, Tarantulas is likely the smartest character in the show (in terms of raw intelligence, that is, Megatron probably has him beat in cunning) and is an invaluable member of the Predacons, despite Tarantulas not being remotely interested in their goals. While he seems to only be out for himself at first, we learn more of his agenda as the show progresses.

---

• Animalistic Abomination: While most Predacons are this, Tarantulas takes the cake and not because he's a Giant Spider but because he's potentially a spawn of Unicron, the planet devouring, universe destroying Eldritch Abomination wrapped up in a techno organic body the size of a moon or in some versions planet. This means that Tarantulas may never have truly been a Cybertronian but a machine monster posing as one.
• Arachnid Appearance and Attire: Well, he is a spider, after all.
• Arch-Enemy: To Blackarachnia following her defection from the Predacons.
• Ax-Crazy: He enjoys the suffering of his victims as he devours them.
• Back from the Dead: Inferno burns him alive towards the end of Season 1, but he uses a psychic link with Blackarachnia to force her to resurrect him before he can become permanently offline.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Tarantulas certainly has his secrets and most of his plans against both the Maximals and Predacons usually go well. However, no matter how much he tries, he just isn't on the same level as Megatron as either a schemer or a fighter. Every time he thinks he's won, Megatron either counters the scheme with one of his own or finds a way to use it to his advantage.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Tarantulas is actively working against Megatron to advance his own nefarious agenda and makes no secret of it, but Megatron consistently spares him because Tarantulas' scientific knowledge exceeds even Megatron's own. As insufferable and dangerous as Tarantulas is to have around, Megatron begrudgingly admitted that he simply can't win the Beast Wars without him. That said, Megatron isn't above working to dispose of the treacherous spider if the opportunity presents itself.
  • At the end of season 1, Megatron was planning to turn Tarantulas (and Blackarachnia's) escape pod into a transwarp bomb to blow up the Vok planet destroyer. Optimus ended up taking their place.
  • At the end of the series when Tarantulas comes this close to destroying both Megatron and the spark of the original Megatron, that Megatron's patience is finally up.
  • His death didn't stop him, as he is also responsible for the damage done in the series' finale by restoring and upgrading the Nemesis which is used by Megatron.
• Card-Carrying Villain: You can't say evil in the show without mentioning him, his outright villainy and treacherous attitude was something Megatron considered to be a viable asset. Sure enough, even Tarantulas' death didn't prevent giving Megatron one last asset in the form of the Nemesis.
  Tigerhawk: You're Insane!
  Tarantulas: So they say! (Gives off a particularly hearty Evil Laugh)
• Character Catchphrase: "Oh no!" whenever something painful is going to happen to him.
• Characterization Marches On: Initially, Scorponok is portrayed as more of the tech guy, while Terrorsaur was the Starscream substitute. The Tarantulus toy list as a ninja and his creepiness and gluttony were his most prominent characteristics. This is illustrated in the original toy specs which listed Tarantulas's IQ as very low. Eventually this changes. Scorponok is turned into an idiot valuable only to Megatron for his loyalty and firepower, Terrorsaur gradually realizes the whole 'treachery' thing isn't going anywhere for him, and Tarantulas absorbed both of their original roles and becomes the brilliant scientist with secret agendas and murky loyalties. Whatever ninja skills became nonexistent (though he still remains sneaky enough to secretly investigate and/or steal whatever piques his interest), and the creepiness and gluttony is massively downplayed, especially in the case of his apparent cannibalism that exists in The Web and is never mentioned again.
• The Chessmaster: Towards Megatron, the Maximals and the Predacons. He was Out-Gambitted several times by the former.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He's probably the least trusted character in the series for this reason alone, but his scientific know-how inevitably forces others to try and depend on him. It rarely ends up going well for them as he will inevitably betray or abandon them the moment it's advantageous for him to do so.
• Co-Dragons: With Ravage, prior to the former Decepticon's defection.
• Combat Pragmatist: While he is reasonably powerful, especially after his Transmetal upgrade, the term "fair fight" is not in his vocabulary. He prefers to strike from the shadows with his inventions or stalk helpless opponents in his webs. This as much by necessity as it is preference thanks to his mediocre-at-best fighting skill: if Tranatulas can't drop an opponent with traps or his first few cheap shots, he's almost certain to be dominated in direct combat by all but the weakest opponents.
• Composite Character: He can be seen as a mixture of Starscream (treacherous, cunning, independent), Soundwave (disliked by the others, Evil Genius, relies on small robots), and Shockwave (has a greater agenda, very successful, odd morality, and is the science officer of the villainous team).
• Crazy-Prepared: He's not the only character to survive utterly insane injuries, but every time he does it it's because he had a back up; he was also working on getting off the planet long before anyone else even knew the Vok would nuke it.
  • He also has located the Nemesis, he has repaired and upgraded the ship for his own uses. But then he dies and said ship is found by Megatron in the Beast Wars' finale.
• Deadpan Snarker: He definitely shows signs of this.
  Megatron: Fall back!
  Tarantulas: (while being pummeled by Dinobot) Now he tells me!
• Domestic Abuse: His relationship with Blackarachnia takes on serious overtones of this as the series goes on, with Tarantulas using mind control, verbal abuse, and terror to keep her in line. When she eventually breaks free of his control, Tarantulas dedicates himself to destroying her, treating her as an object he is entitled to possession of the entire time. The fact that he did create her certainly contributes to that.
• Double Agent: Turned out to be working to negate the existence of both Predacons and Maximals, as he himself is secretly neither.
• The Dragon: To the Tripredacus Council, acting as their mole in Megatron's ranks. For obvious reasons, Tarantulas mostly operates without the Council's input.
• Enigmatic Minion: He once defected from Megatron's crew then offered his assistance against a greater threat in the same breath.
• Even Evil Has Standards: On the receiving end. All of his fellow Predacons hate him because he's a cannibalistic, creepy sadist and a gigantic asshole to boot.
• Evil Counterpart: To Rhinox. As well as Blackarachnia after her Heel–Face Turn.
  • Technically also this for Rattrap; not only were both the team spies, but the two ended up facing off one-on-one quite a few times in the course of the series.
• Evil Genius: Mad as a hatter though he may be, Tarantulas is a genius.
• Evil Laugh: A distinctive, and rather creepy, cackle that he's very fond of.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He has a bad tendency at laughing at things that no sane person would find funny. Of course, Tarantulas is nowhere close to sane.
• Evil vs. Evil: His conflicts with Megatron and the Vok. He's a psychotic Serial Killer, Megatron is a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur, and the Vok are an incomprehensibly advanced alien race that believe they have an Omniscient Morality License that permits them to kill anyone in their way, so none of them have the moral high ground, and all of them would probably kill everyone else if given the opportunity.
• Evil Feels Good: Alec Willows described him as being fully aware that he's evil and reveling in it, in spite of being nowhere near as competent at it as he thinks he is.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: It's most evident in the first season before his Vocal Evolution started setting in, but Tarantulas has a raspy voice and is definitely not a good person.
• Fantastic Racism: He abhors the Vok.
• Faux Affably Evil: Any loyalty, courtesy, or positive emotion Tarantulas shows is a shallow affectation. Most of the time, it's totally transparent.
• For the Evulz: The reason for his dining habits. He doesn't actually need to eat at all, he just enjoys the suffering he inflicts on his prey as he slowly kills them. What's more disturbing is that it's implied that this habit isn't entirely a result of his beast mode's instincts, but a preexisting habit of his.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Tarantulas is barely tolerated by his fellow Predacons, who (understandably) find him creepy and off-putting. Had it not been for his scientific expertise and the Predacons' desperate need for manpower, he would have been exiled or killed far earlier.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He made an entire lab and several little machines, such as a laser drone that forces a Mode Lock.
• Giant Spider: His beast mode is a huge tarantula.
• Giggling Villain: Tarantulas loves to laugh. It's rarely because of anything funny.
• Hated by All: No one likes Tarantulas. The other Predacons can't stand him because he's a backstabbing, creepy sociopath with utterly disturbing eating habits (in Megatron's case, said backstabbing constantly fails), and The Maximals despise him because he's one of their enemies and because he's a creepy sociopath with utterly disturbing eating habits.
• Hate Sink: While his fellow Predacons have endearing traits^note Megatron is entreatingly hammy and manipulative, Scorponok, Inferno and Ravage are loyal, Terrorsaur, Waspinator, and Quickstrike are comedically ineffectual, Blackarachnia and Dinobot II are redeemable, Rampage is tragic, Tarantulas stands out as being truly nasty. He’s ineffectual in a fair fight, he overestimates his own abilities, his treatment of Blackarachnia is reminiscent of Domestic Abuse, his sadism is never Played for Laughs, and even his "allies" justifiably hate his guts. The only reason Megatron doesn't kill Tarantulas himself is because the spider's scheming makes him more useful alive than dead.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Ends up vaporized by his own machine in "Other Victories" in an attempt to shoot the Vok in vain.
• Hypocrite: Furiously calls Blackarachnia "treacherous" at least once. Tarantulas himself has Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
• Hypocritical Humor: His last confrontation with the Vok and death scene has a brief visual gag where he tries to fend them off by forming a cross with his claws, which can become this trope depending on if you believe that he's a spawn of Unicron.
• I'm a Humanitarian: He tries to devour Cheetor in "The Web". He had many victims prior to this before the series began.
• Insufferable Genius: Nobody likes or trusts Tarantulas, but his scientific knowledge makes him invaluable.
• Knight of Cerebus: Downplayed. He has plenty of comedic moments, but Tarantulas’ eating habits, status as a Serial Killer, Sadism, and abuse of Blackarachnia are never portrayed comedically.
• Macross Missile Massacre: His Transmetal form has at least four missile launchers in his shoulders, which he tends to fire all at once. Strangely, he stopped using them later: the episode where he died had him try to fend off his killers with guns in his shoulders (they fired like his old 'gun-legs' in his pre-Transmetal form).
• The Mad Hatter: He doesn't seem the least bit concerned about his insanity. NOT Played for Laughs.
• Mad Scientist: Very smart, and very insane.
• Manipulative Bastard: Tarantulas plays pretty much everybody who ever places the slightest amount of trust in him.
• The Mole: As a lieutenant in the Predacon Secret Police, Tarantulas serves as the Tripredacus Council's agent in Megatron's ranks, as is revealed in "The Agenda".
• More Dakka: Pre-Transmetal, his spider legs acted as machine guns in robot mode. This function moved to his shoulder-wheels after that.
• Oh, Crap!: While witnessing Dragon Megatron rising out of the lava in front of him, his face is a study in this trope. Somewhat lesser examples happened right before every significant defeat he had in the series, except Inferno torching him at the end of season 1.
  • An instance of this even ends up causing his death, as his panic over the Vok he accidentally extracted from Tigerhawk causes him to fire wildly at them, striking a piece of machinery that swung around and slammed him and the Vok possessing him into an Energon crystal formation that subsequently detonated, killing him.
• Out-Gambitted: By Megatron almost every time he plots against him.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Let's be honest. In most other shows, Tarantulas would be a legitimate Big Bad contender. Unfortunately for him, he has a Large and in Charge Magnificent Bastard like Megatron as his competition. Sometimes his cunning does pay off, but at the end of the day, it is Megatron who always has the last laugh.
• Palette Swap: Initially, with Blackarachnia, though less obviously so than Cheetor/Tigatron due to Blackarachnia's "assets" and slimmer figure. Both transform the same however and carry the same armament- spiderleg machine guns on the arms, pincers for hands and a grappling pistol. Done on purpose in-universe, as Tarantulas wants more spider-based Preds loyal to him. Doesn't work out so well for him.
• Poisonous Person: Tarantulas is fond of using venom and viruses.
• Ret-Gone: He tried to wipe out both sides from existence by killing everyone on the Ark.
• Running Gag: At least once a season, Tarantulas gets crushed by a boulder in some way or another (in the first two seasons, interestingly, both times, he is crushed due to Dinobot's intervention). On the giving end, he always gets the drop on Cheetor once a season as well.
• Sadist: The suffering of others is entertainment for Tarantulas. He even admits that even when he gets no nourishment from eating his victims, he does it because he enjoys the act.
• Serial Killer: In one episode, Dinobot eulogizes him after he seemingly dies with a quote dripping with revulsion.

  Dinobot: Alas poor Tarantulas - I knew him, Cheetor! This is the leg that stalked so many victims."

• Shot in the Ass: He has a somewhat disturbing habit of doing this to others with whatever new weapon he's conceived.
• Smug Snake: While Tarantulas is a capable manipulator and brilliant scientist, he's not nearly as clever as the thinks he is. Megatron knew of his scheming and disloyalty from the very beginning, but deliberately allowed it because he knew he could use anything Tarantulas came up with to further his own plans.
• Sneaky Spider: Easily among the most cunning and treacherous of the Predacons.
• The Sociopath: He's sadistic, abusive and has no kindness or loyalty to anyone but himself.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: When he's got someone in his clutches, he speaks politely, but makes it very clear that he'll enjoy the suffering he's about to inflict on them.
• The Starscream: He eventually takes over the role from Terrorsaur, working on secret plans behind Megatron's back to further his own desires, and early in Season 2 he entertains the idea of taking Blackarachnia and Quickstrike to form his own faction opposed to both the Maximals and Megatron. In a case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, he doesn't get away with his treachery nearly as much as the original Starscream — Megatron tolerates his behavior at first because Tarantulas is useful to him, but as he keeps proving he can't be trusted, Megatron eventually decides he isn't worth the trouble and exiles him from the Predacons. For much of Season 2 and 3, he's left as a rogue only technically allied with the Predacons. He's seen skulking around his lair as much as the Predacon base, helping Megatron almost as much as he sabotages him.
• Undignified Death: His ultimate demise is fairly pathetic, as he goes out wildly panicking while the Vok approach him and shooting at them, but his bullets end up hitting one of his own devices, which slams him into an energon crystal and results in him letting out a high pitched scream before exploding. He killed himself entirely by accident when trying to take out his long-time alien foes.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Megatron, repeatedly. While Tarantulas thinks his schemes are hidden, Megatron is often aware of them and lets him keep plotting because he'll find a way to spin Tarantulas' plans for his own uses.
• Villainous Glutton: Primarily in the first season, but Tarantulas loves to eat — especially living creatures — and his "snacking" is always used to highlight just how gross and terrifying he is. To say nothing of his explicit interest in eating other Cybertronians. The character profile in the DVD boxset actually focuses more on Tarantulas being a "twisted gourmand" than on his scheming side or his Mad Scientist side.
• Villainous Legacy: Tarantulas has found the Nemesis, the Flagship of the Decepticon's fleet which has shot down the Ark and he has repaired and upgraded it for his uses. But Tarantulas dies before he can use the ship. So, in the series' finale, Megatron has found it and he will use it in his attempt to destroy the Ark.
• Vocal Evolution: His voice became gradually higher-pitched and raspier as the series went on and he settled into his characterization.
• Wild Card: He begins the series working for Megatron, but as time goes by it is revealed that he has his own agenda, and frequently betrays Megatron before allying himself with Megatron again, all while working towards his own goals. At the end of Season 2 it is revealed that he originally joined Megatron's crew to spy on him for the Tripredacus council, who have their own agenda.

Terrorsaur

Terrorsaur

Function: Aerial Combat

Beast Mode: Pteranodon

Voiced by: Doug Parker

Debut: "Beast Wars (Part 1)"

"It's good to be a Predacon!"

Terrorsaur is one of the Predacons' main aerial assets during the first season. Like Starscream before him, he plots to overthrow Megatron, but gradually realizes he's in over his head and far from Megatron's greatest concern.

---

• Adaptational Wimp: In the toy-line, Terrorsaur's bio describes him as a savage, vicious, feral warrior and a borderline berserker that the Maximals dread for his savagery. Not so much here.
• Big Bad Wannabe: In the early episodes, he constantly tries to usurp Megatron, but just doesn't have what it takes. Most memorably, in one episode, after a new attempt at taking over, Megatron actually let him lead for an entire battle- only for said battle to end in a spectacular defeat for the Predacons, thus proving Megatron is better suited to being leader than he is.
• Butt-Monkey: He initially rivaled Waspinator in being blown to pieces. Unlike the former, he at least managed to remain a genuine threat, if only due to having one of the biggest arsenals in the show.
• Combat Pragmatist: He's not a match for Optimus or Dinobot in a direct fight but makes up for it by shooting them in the back whenever they're distracted or he sees an opening.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's generally prone to making snarky remarks, usually at Megatron's expense... whenever he's out of earshot.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: In the second season premiere, he falls into a lava pit by the transwarp wave and is completely disregarded. Blackarachnia acknowledges his and Scorponok's absence to convince Megatron that he can't afford to kill her for her treachery, but after that, no one ever says a word about him again.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: "Love" might be an exaggeration, but Terrorsaur repeatedly demonstrated concern for and comradery with Waspinator.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He starts losing it during the Predacons' enclosed concealment in "Victory", sickened by the others's petty arguing and Tarantulas's repulsive dining habits.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Take G1 Starscream's voice and combine it with a pterodactyl screech, and you've got the general idea of what Terrorsaur sounds like. In addition to being a Predacon, he's a craven backstabber to boot.
• Expy: Of G1 Starscream. Terrorsaur is probably the most explicit example of a Beast Wars counterpart to a G1 character in the series aside from Optimus and Megatron themselves; his red-and-grey color scheme, flying alt-mode, screechy voice, and treacherous attitude all echo the Decepticon Air Commander. Unlike Starscream, however (whose treacherous streak persisted even in death), Terrorsaur realizes that the whole 'treachery' thing isn't working out for him and stops, or at least puts it on the backburner. More accurately, he gave up after a spectacularly embarrassing failure during his one successful attempt at taking Predacon leadership, he was well aware that all of the other Predacons viewed him as incompetent and would never willingly follow him again.
• Eye Beams: He has these but rarely uses them in combat, preferring to rely on his other weapons instead.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's surprisingly friendly for an unscrupulous traitor.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: After he dies, Terrorsaur is mentioned a grand total of once before being completely disregarded for the rest of the series.
• Glass Cannon: Terrorsaur was one of the best flyers in the Beast Wars and could do some serious damage if he got his shots off, but his relative fragility meant that a decent hit or two would take him out of a fight.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He's the only person who actually treats Waspinator with some degree of respect, and actually brings him in for repairs, unlike the other Predacons.
  • He knows how to disarm a bomb, provided it's set for long enough.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Both times he manages to usurp Megatron, his arrogance and lack of intelligence brings him back down. The second time convinced everyone he sucked, and he never tried again.
• Hour of Power: "Power Surge" sees Terrorsaur find a floating mountain of raw energon that gives him a considerable power boost, but his circuits can only hold the charge for a few minutes at a time. While he is able to defeat Megatron in battle during his first boost, the Maximals are able to destroy the mountain after his second charge-up, while Optimus distracted him long enough to run out his charge.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Subverted, he's shown glowing like Megatron, Rattrap and Cheetor when the transwarp wave hits but falls into a lava pit and dies. At least one comic showed that he did survive and become a Transmetal, but it took him so long to escape the lava that he didn't get out until long after the Beast Wars had ended.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: He was this when he got his raw energon boost in "Power Surge". And even under ordinary circumstances, he's an extremely difficult target to hit for most of the Maximals thanks to his aerial speed and maneuverability. Plus he tended to give Optimus the most trouble in aerial combat and blasted the Maximal leader from the sky on more than one occasion. Basically, take your eyes off him for one second and you're likely to be shot.
• Oh, Crap!: Does this at the end of Power Surge when he encounters a fully repaired and thoroughly pissed off Megatron.
  Megatron: Well, well. Look who's BACK.
  Terrorsaur: [goes dead white] Help...
• Real Life Writes the Plot: He was killed off instead of Waspinator due to the latter's unexpected Ensemble Dark Horse status, and due to the need to get rid of old products for new characters. Plus, Tarantulas had proven to work as The Starscream of the series better than Terrorsaur ever had, so he was more or less redundant at that point.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Red eyes, and he's a nasty piece of work.
• Sanity Slippage: When the Predacons hide out in very close quarters in "Victory", Terrorsaur quickly starts going stir-crazy.
• Shoulder Cannon: He has two, though they're usually stowed away on his back.
• Smug Snake: He actually thinks he can overthrow Megatron. To his credit, Terrorsaur gets over one of the biggest weaknesses of a Smug Snake by admitting he's outmatched against Megatron and abandons his ambitions for the foreseeable future.
• The Starscream: He almost sounds like him too (indeed, his voice actor substituted for the late Chris Latta in the episode "Possession"). Ironically, it was Waspinator who was possessed by Starscream's ghost. Unlike many Starscreams, he eventually gives up, having learned from his mistake, though Megatron has him pretend at one point to trick the Maximals into thinking they are dead. Interestingly it was his successful attempts at overthrowing Megatron that lead to him dropping this trait as he became more and more aware that his teammates viewed him as increasingly incompetant. He doesn't completely give up on treachery, as his attempted alliance with a forcibly turned Rhinox proved, but he learned the hard way that anyone with the ambitions and capability to take down Megatron wouldn't need Terrorsaur to begin with, except maybe as a disposable pawn.
  • "Power Surge" actually had him destroy Megatron and assumed leadership until the end. Unfortunately for him, not only is he defeated, and the source of his power boost is destroyed, but the big T-Rex got better.
• Took a Level in Badass: In "Power Surge", he gains a raw energon boost and manages to open a can of serious whoop-ass on Megatron. He almost does the same to Optimus Primal, but he was so enamored with his new power that Primal was able to trick him into wasting his power supply.
• Unskilled, but Strong: During "Power Surge", Terrorsaur's temporary supercharge allows him to take some of Megatron's blows and then blow the Predacon leader apart just by powering through his attacks. When Optimus faces Terrorsaur in aerial combat with full knowledge of his new power, the Maximal leader is able to avoid facing Terrorsaur directly and take him by surprise to land a few good blows. While Terrorsaur should have been able to dispatch him as quickly as he did Megatron, Optimus used trickery and evasion to drag the fight on long enough to trick Terrorsaur into wasting his current charge. Since he was so focused on Optimus, Rattrap had all the time he needed to plant charges to destroy the floating mountain that Terrorsaur got his power boost from, ensuring that neither Terrorsaur or anyone else would never get the chance use it again.
• Villainous Friendship: He seemed to have the most camaraderie with Waspinator despite never outright stating that he and Waspinator were friends. As the Predacons' flying units the two were sent on a lot of missions together and whenever Waspinator was taken down, Terrorsaur usually went out of his way to help bring him back for repairs, whereas other Predacons wouldn't bother to retrieve the bug. At the end of the day, Terrorsaur may have been just about the only character who treated Waspinator with some degree of respect and didn't completely look down on him like everyone else. Being a frequent butt monkey himself may have had something to do with it.
• Walking Armory: His armament consists of two shoulder cannons, a pistol, a rifle, and eye beams, though he doesn't use them all at once.

Waspinator

Waspinator

Function: Aerial Attack

Alt/Beast Modes: Wasp

"Waspinator not want to be destroyed! Waspinator has planzzz!"

Voiced by: Scott McNeil

Debut: "Beast Wars (Part 1)"

"Inferno blow up, Waspinator must salvage. Waspinator blow up, nobody salvage. Ohh, why universe hate Waspinator?"

Waspinator's joint status as fate's chew toy and one of BW's most iconic characters came about completely by accident. The creators found his distinctive speech pattern annoying but had to include him for merchandising reasons, so they decided that he'd spend most of his screentime being blown to bits. The ensuing fan adoration saved him from being Killed Off for Real like Terrorsaur and Scorponok, although he might have preferred that to the treatment that he ended up getting instead.

Waspy's own universe may hate him, but ours can't get enough of the guy. He ended up with the last line of BW, a (much, much scarier) TFA counterpart, a place in the Transformers Hall of Fame, and a counterpart in current IDW G1 fiction. Waspinator...happy at last?

---

• Adaptational Wimp: In the toyline, Waspinator is described as a ruthless and highly competent warrior who's dreaded by the Maximals. He got even more frightening when he got his Transmetal upgrade. The cartoon version of Waspinator is completely ineffectual and always gets blasted down.
• Adapted Out: He does not appear in the 1997 Beast Wars: Transformers video game.
• Affably Evil: Of the Punch-Clock Villain variety. His moments of breaking the fourth wall are often him lamenting his Butt-Monkey/Chew Toy status to the audience.
• Amusing Injuries: He gets blown up, beaten down, crushed, smashed, or otherwise reduced to his component parts regularly for comedic effect.
• Being Evil Sucks: His tenure as a Predacon results in him receiving countless humiliating defeats and injuries and nothing but scorn and abuse from his colleagues. He's had enough in the finale and quits.
• Berserk Button: One episode had him get inexplicably pissed off by Airazor's mere presence and he tries to shoot her immediately. It goes about as well for him as most things do.
• Blowing a Raspberry: To Cheetor in "The Agenda Part 1" after he lures him into some machine gun fire. In beast mode - yes, his wasp form has a tongue.
• Breakout Character: It is impossible to talk about "Beast Wars" without bring him or Dinobot up. His popularity made him not only survive the series, but be honored in the Hall of Fame
• Butt-Monkey: Stands out from the other Predacons due to being the "comic-relief" character. He is by far the biggest example. From the 'con himself:
  Waspinator: Why universe hate Waspinator?
• Can't Catch Up: He was never especially talented, but he could at least hang for a bit during the first season. Come the second, where Transmetals started popping up and his already better teammates and enemies got upgrades, and he became an even bigger joke. He was one of only two characters (the other being Rhinox) to go the entire series without an upgrade — and unlike Rhinox, it showed.
• Characterization Marches On: In his earliest appearances, it seemed his intended characterization was a cold, robotic killer (playing up the "-inator" part of his name), based on his clipped, terse dialogue and competence in battle. This whole idea was dropped fairly quickly, and his speech patterns shifted from "terse" to "You No Take Candle."
• The Chew Toy: By the time season 2 rolls around, barely an episode goes by where Waspinator doesn't get hurt in some painful, yet amusing fashion.
• Cosmic Plaything: The universe just flat-out hates Waspinator, and the poor guy knows it. It says a lot that he winds up viewing getting his spark ripped out and used to power a Vehicon General, shown to be an And I Must Scream situation for everyone who befell the same fate, is something he views as an improvement to his life.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Waspinator actually has a pretty good aim, and has done things like shoot down Optimus Primal, shoot Dinobot's rotating blade out of his hand, get a sneak attack on Tigatron, and, most notable of all, defeat Silverbolt three times. It's just that bad things tend to happen to him first...or sometimes immediately after he shoots (for instance, the propeller blade disarm resulted in Dinobot landing on him, then jamming him into the barrel of Rampage's cannon).
• Cuddle Bug: In "Victory", when the Predacons start arguing while hiding out in close quarters, Tarantulas angrily complains Waspinator keeps cuddling him like a stuffed animal. Notably, Waspinator doesn't even bother to deny this.
• Defector from Decadence: In the finale, he quits the Predacons after having enough of being The Chew Toy.
  Waspinator: Waspinator sick of being evil! Sick of being Predacon! And Waspinator especially sick of getting blown to scrap all the time! So, Waspinator QUIT!
• Demonic Possession: Courtesy of Starscream in the appropriately titled "Possession". It ends about as well for Waspinator as anything else does.
  Waspinator: [in pieces] Ooh, Waspinator has a headache in his whole body.
• Determinator: Not just in his name- it takes a special kind of determination to keep going when the universe seems to have it out for you, but Waspinator is one determined 'bot. Given that, it should come as no surprise that he's the only member of the Darksyde's crew to survive the Beast Era, outliving even Megatron.
  Waspinator: Waspinator... never... surrender!
  • Taken to another level in Beast Machines, where it is revealed that Waspinator, without a spaceship, flew by himself across galaxies from Earth to Cybertron. Something which, due to the distance involved, took several centuries to do. Just damn!
• The Ditz: Not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. His eccentric manner of speech doesn't help. At the same time, he's still noticeably more self-aware than Scorponok, Terrorsaur, Inferno, and Quickstrike. Which says something about the quality of lackeys the Predacons had to work with.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: If you take Transformers Legends as canon, then poor Waspinator finally gets his happy ending. Not only does he get restored to his original body, he's now fully accepted by the Maximals, joining the Beast Machines era Maximals and a revived Rhinox as one of their own.
• Eye Beams: He has eye beams that let him do precision cuts, but prefers to use other weapons in battle.
• The Fatalist: Waspinator is well aware his lot in life is to be The Chew Toy, and has reluctantly accepted it.
• Friendly Sniper: He has good aim and isn't totally insane, even being somewhat affable at times.
• Glass Cannon: Despite his Butt-Monkey status, Waspinator has a pretty high hit rate. He just usually gets blown up before he gets the chance to fire.
• Grand Theft Me: He got hijacked by the mutant spark of G1 Starscream in the episode, "Possession":
  Waspinator: What is this? Program does not respond! Waszzpinator does not understand!
  Starscream: (as he's possessing him) I'll bet Waspinator seldom does! But try not to let it depress you, bug-face...
• Groin Attack: On the receiving end when the Maximals are prevented from using guns during a cease-fire. Rattrap fights dirty.
• Happy Ending Override: Beast Wars ends with him leaving the Predacons and winding up worshipped by a tribe of primitive humans, declaring that he was happy at last. Beast Machines shows that he was kicked out by them sometime afterwards and he flew back to Cybertron, which took several centuries; when he finally got back, Megatron extracted his spark and brainwashed him into serving as the Vehicon general Thrust. Waspinator is actually pretty happy with this, since he doesn't get blown up anymore, but even this doesn't last and at the end of the series he winds up reformatted into a tiny wasp. The last we see of him is him ranting to Rattrap about how much of a Cosmic Plaything he is.
• Harmless Villain: Played with. He's a pretty good shot, but he's the universe's personal Cosmic Plaything and fails at almost everything he does.
• Hulk Speak: Wazzzpinator talkzz in the third perzzzon.
• The Igor: He serves this role to Megatron during the creation of Dinobot II.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: He rarely succeeds and quite often just gets blown to pieces. This is part of why the fandom loves Waspinator.
• Iron Butt Monkey: Waspinator routinely takes damage that would kill almost any other Transformer as a running gag. Expanded universe material claims his spark is abnormally small and located in his head, expanding the concept of “non fatal” injuries to the hilarious extremes we see in the show.
• Losing Your Head: He gets blown into pieces, regularly. In many cases, his body is so mangled that his talking (well, bitterly complaining) head is the only recognizable part of left.
• Lyrical Dissonance: When he was inducted into the Transformer Hall of Fame, they played The Touch. It's an uplifting song about how no matter what, you're kicking ass and taking names. It's set to scenes of Waspinator getting unceremoniously blasted to scrap.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: He gets sick of all the abuse he takes and abandons the Predacons at the end of Beast Wars.
• The Nicknamer: Except for Megatron and Optimus, all the other characters have nicknames from him such as "ant-bot" (Inferno) and "two-head" (Quickstrike). Megatron got one in the penultimate episode ("dragon-bot"). Given Megatron only gets his nickname when Waspinator resigns as a Predacon, it seems that Waspinator uses his nicknames in a derogatory fashion.
• Oh, Crap!: He's clearly panicking and scared out of his mind right before the quantum surge hits in "Aftermath".
• Only Sane by Comparison: Out of the Predacons, and even then, it's a relative thing. Still, he's the most self-aware out of all of them, and manages to outlive his fellow Predacons because he's smart enough to book it in "Nemesis" after Megatron loses it and starts trying to destroy the Ark.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He briefly stops speaking in third-person in the finale right before he quits the Predacons.
• Overly-Long Tongue: His robot form has a giant yellow one which he uses to move his disembodied head after he gets blown up.
• Pulling Themselves Together: Often, Waspinator has had to drag his pieces together and get them to the nearest CR chamber, because none of the other Preds could be bothered to salvage him. It keeps him out of the action at the end of "The Agenda" when Blackarachnia accidentally drives into him.
• Running Gag: He's destroyed in almost every episode.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the end of Beast Wars, Waspinator abandons the Predacons after realizing just how much his current lot in life sucks.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: In more serious episodes, he tends to be either absent or be blasted to pieces more quickly than normal so that he can sit out the scenes where other characters do the important things.
• Shout-Out: When he gets hit in the head by Rhinox in Dark Designs, he takes on the personality and mannerisms of the G1 Insecticon known as Shrapnel, Shrapnel.
  Shrapnel!Waspinator: De-cepticons, attack! Attack!
• Sitcom Archnemesis: He has a rivalry with Cheetor and later Silverbolt, and is keeping score. Amazingly, it's not entirely lopsided since he did score a few hits on them. On one occasion, Waspinator voiced a deep hatred for Airrazor for no apparent reason.
• So Last Season: Early on, aerial attacks from him could be a real threat, exemplified by Cheetor's first run-in with him which ended with him being chased by Waspinator under a barrage of missiles and Frickin' Laser Beams. Later on, flight becomes a more widespread ability and he gets routinely blown up before accomplishing anything. His very rare victories in the latter seasons only came when Cheetor or Silverbolt did something stupid.
• Sole Survivor: By the end of Beast Machines, Waspinator is the only one of the original Predacons to still be alive - and, if you discount Blackarachnia, whom was only a brainwashed Maximal and not a member of the Predacon race, the only surviving Predacon at all.
• The So-Called Coward: A villainous example. Waspinator is prone to panicking in highly dangerous situations, because he (correctly) believes something bad will happen to him, but he'll still put up a fight and keep going into battle before his inevitably humiliating defeat.
• The Starscream: Waspinator is well-aware that everything he does is doomed to failure, but that doesn't mean he hasn't contemplated betraying Megatron from time to time. The most notable instance of this is in "Coming of the Fuzors, Pt. 1", where he catches Dinobot stealing the Golden Disk; rather than report him, he suggests a partnership so they can both use it to get ultimate power. Dinobot surprisingly agrees to the partnership; unfortunately, Waspinator's role is to be the human shield.
• Stuff Blowing Up: He gets blown to bits in nearly every episode regardless.
• Take This Job and Shove It: In the finale, he leaves the Predacons behind to live a normal life.
• Tempting Fate:
  Waspinator: Waspinator having good day! Not get shot at once! (Is immediately shot)
• They Killed Kenny Again: In any given episode, he's likely to be blown to bits, yet he always comes back in one piece.
• Third-Person Person: You know something's amiss when he doesn't do this.
  Waspinator: I said NO!!!
• This Is Gonna Suck: His general reaction whenever something painful is about to happen to him is resigned acceptance.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: As mentioned in Silverbolt's profile, Waspinator schools the Fuzor in battle three times. From ''Changing of the Guard":
  Waspinator: Waspinator: 1. Doggie-bot: 0.
  • He also gets turned into a god by the humans in the Beast Wars finale.
• Verbal Tic: He buzzes certain words in the English version, the Japanese version punctuates his sentences with "bun" instead.
• Villain Decay: At the start of the series, he's mildly competent in a fight. It doesn't last past the pilot.
• Villainous Friendship: Implied to have one with Terrorsaur; Terrorsaur is the only Predacon to drag Waspinator back to base for repairs, and is the only being in the universe to treat him with a modicum of respect.
• Villainous Virtues: Determination. No matter how much abuse is thrown at him, he never gives up and continues to function, somehow.
• Vocal Evolution: Initially, his voice was shrill and grating, to the point of being annoying. By the end of the first season, it had gotten deeper, lost any grating qualities, and evolved into his distinctive, buzzing drawl.
• Wicked Wasps: Only on a technicality. He's a Predacon that turns into a giant wasp...but at the same time, he's still Waspinator.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: During the events of "Beast Machines", the humans eventually throw him out because he accidentally annoys one of them and therefore annoys all of them. He then gets turned into Thrust, and, while he enjoys being a cool biker-bot, ends the series as a tiny technorganic wasp with Thrust's head, swatted aside by Rattrap.

Blackarachnia

Blackarachnia

Function: Double Agent; Saboteur (Transmetal 2/Beast Machines)

Beast Mode: Black Widow Spider (Original/Transmetal 2/Beast Machines)

^{Click here to see her Transmetal- 2 form:}

^{Click here to see her Beast Machines form:}

Voiced by: Venus Terzo

Debut: "Double Jeopardy"

"Even when I'm good, I'm still bad!"

Hot. Poisonous. Deadly. As she quotes herself. Tarantulas may have picked her beast mode — and had, in Megatron's words, "ulterior motives" for doing so — but if he was expecting a lackey, he got exactly the opposite. Up there with Dinobot and Waspinator as the iconic Beast Era characters, Blackarachnia's legacy lives on in Animated.^note As well as Prime's Airachnid, albeit in a far lesser example.

---

• Anti-Hero: Post-Heel–Face Turn. She's a Nominal Hero at first, but after becoming a full-fledged Maximal, she's more of a Knight in Sour Armor.
• Arachnid Appearance and Attire: Which makes sense, considering that she is a spider.
• Badass Bookworm: She's cooked up more than a few nifty gadgets, she's well rounded in Cybertronian history, she's a serious player in the intrigue game, and despite her minimalistic physique, will kick your ass in hand-to-hand combat with her mad ninja skills.
• Bastard Understudy: Starscream!Waspinator takes her under his wing to teach her how to be the most treacherous, backstabbing megalomaniac she can — and is shocked when she takes his lessons to heart.
  Starscream: [loudly] You betrayed me!
  Blackarachnia: I studied with the master!
• Battle Couple: She and Silverbolt fight together on occasion.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Like Tarantulas, she's tries to overthrow Megatron any chance she gets. Like Tarantulas, she doesn't get anywhere with it and ultimately switches sides when she sees that Megatron's plans would erase her from existence.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Her first body had solid black eyes.
• Brainwashed: It only comes up once in a while, but she was originally a Maximal protoform and is only with the Predacons because they have a "shell program" tweaking her personality. Though as we find out after it gets deleted in "Crossing The Rubicon", it didn't change her personality that much...
• Breakout Character: Blackarachnia's arc, design, and Heel–Face Turn made her one of the most popular characters in Beast Wars. Since the show she's gone on to have major roles in numerous other stories eventually becoming one of the franchises most well known female transformers.
• Came Back Strong: After her Predacon shell program's defenses killed Blackarachnia, the Transmetal Driver resurrected her as both an full Maximal and a Transmetal II. She demonstrates her new power by easily defeating Rampage.
• Card-Carrying Villain: She spends much of the second season repeatedly telling Silverbolt that she's evil, bad, evil, not to be trusted, and evil, though her warnings fall upon deaf/noble ears:
  Silverbolt: Blackarachnia, I want you to return with me, to the Maximals.
  Blackarachnia: Get a clue, you canine cretin! I'm a Predacon! I'm evil! I'll shoot you—
  Silverbolt: No. My heart tell me that you will not.
  Blackarachnia: Oh yeah? (shoots him in the leg)
  Silverbolt: (shocked) You... SHOT me!
  Blackarachnia: No duh, Dog-Boy! I'm evil!! Now do you believe me?
  Silverbolt: And yet... you ensured the wound would not be mortal. Your inner Maximal goodness -
  Blackarachnia: SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UUUUUUUUPPP!!!
• Combat Stilettos: Built into her actual feet in her Transmetal 2 Battle Mode. Of course, they don't slow her down at all and she's every bit the Kick Chick she ever was.
• Cute Little Fangs: She has visible little fangs in her robot form.
• Dark Action Girl: She kicks Inferno's red robotic behind in a three-minute awesome fight scene, and "Proving Grounds" is an episode devoted to her fighting Transmetal 2 Dinobot and nearly winning (which she surely would have if Rampage's spark weren't powering him). She's the toughest and most important female character in televised Transformers history to date. She remains somewhat dark even after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Dark Is Evil: A black widow spider, introduced as one of the more dangerous Predacons.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Upon her defection, and especially when she gets her darker and more powerful Transmetal 2 body, Blackarachnia is still a black widow, but she's a Maximal (if not a totally nice one).
• Deadpan Snarker: Especially towards Silverbolt, but just about everyone gets a dig from her at one time or another.
  Optimus Primal: [sitting in a stasis pod refitted as a shuttle] Cozy.
  Blackarachnia: Like a coffin.
• Defecting for Love: Blackarachnia defected from the Predacons out of self-preservation after Megatron's true schemes were revealed, but she joined the Maximals out of love for Silverbolt.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She's initially dismissive towards Silverbolt, but his earnestness and nobility eventually bring her around.
• Disney Death: In "Crossing the Rubicon", she seemingly dies when Tarantulas sabotages her reformatting. She gets way better.
• Distaff Counterpart: Invoked by Tarantulas, who deliberately chose her form so that she would be this to him. It worked a little too well for his taste.
• Dude Magnet: She has had Quickstrike, Silverbolt, Cheetor and (in Beast Machines) Waspinator trying to get with her.
• Easily Forgiven: Subverted. Aside from Silverbolt, the Maximals have a lot of trust issues with her for most of the third season.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In "Crossing the Rubicon", she's puzzled at how her Maximal allies aren't as concerned about her using Megatron's Transmetal 2 driver to increase her power as they are about her safety after initially failing to use it.
• Evil Plan: Had some plan involving the Ark in Season 2, but it's never revealed what it is.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: What prompts her to switch sides. She sees Megatron's plan to kill Optimus Prime, and as a Maximal protoform this would erase her from existence.
• Fangs Are Evil: She sports a pair of vampiric-looking fangs and is a very malicious bot. Subverted once she becomes a Transmetal; her fangs become even more pronounced, but by that point, her Predacon shell program was deleted, turning her back into a full Maximal.
• Fembot: A female robot with a very voluptuous figure.
• Femme Fatale: Before her Heel–Face Turn, she made frequent use of femme charm to manipulate other bots.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Blackarachnia is very intelligent, and produces several useful machines such as a shield disruptor and her own transmetal II upgrade chamber.
• Giant Spider: Her beast mode is a ginormous black widow.
• Good Is Not Nice: Post Heel–Face Turn, Blackarachnia keeps her snarky attitude, but she's increasingly loyal to the Maximals.
• Heel–Face Turn: It's slow goings, but Blackarachnia fully throws in with the Maximals over the course of season 3.
• High-Heel–Face Turn: Averted. Silverbolt and the original Dinobot switch sides long before she does.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In "The Spark", Blackarachnia gets a face full of her own cybervenom trying to shoot Cheetor point-blank with it.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: The Tiny Girl to Silverbolt's Huge Guy; he's head and shoulders taller. It makes flying her somewhere easy.
• In Love with the Mark: As a Femme Fatale whose wrapped many a bot around her finger with a flirt and a wink to get whatever she wants, she eventually finds herself genuinely falling in love with Silverbolt.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While shades of it were evident even when she was a Predacon, post Heel–Face Turn, Blackarachnia's snarky and abrasive personality occasionally gives way to shows of kindness and compassion for her teammates, especially where Silverbolt is concerned.
• Kick Chick: If she's not firing her machine guns or her Cyber Venom, she's kicking someone.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:By the time of Beast Machines you must know at least that she loved Silverbolt.
• Look What I Can Do Now!: The following episode after she upgrades to Transmetal has her take on 1/2 the Predacon team (though one at a time) with a myriad of new powers and abilities.
• Love Redeems: Her relationship with Silverbolt helps to reform her. It had a fight on its hands, but it eventually won.
• Manipulative Bastard: She's perfectly fine with playing on Silverbolt's feelings for her until she develops such feelings herself.
• Mind over Matter: She develops telekinesis in her Transmetal 2 body, cold-cocking Rampage out with a flying girder.
• More Dakka: Pre-Transmetal her spider legs acted as machine guns in robot mode.
• Mr. Fixit: She's as skilled an engineer as she is a warrior.
• Ms. Fanservice: Not that she has much competition for the female Cybertronians in the show, but she's remarkably and inexplicably buxom and has a distinctly feminine look, fitting for a Seductive Spider. Her initial look was supposedly inspired by a stripper. A far cry from the other major female Maximal, Airazor, whose design is androgynous enough that She's a Man in Japan.
• Nominal Hero: For the first half of season 3, when she's switched sides to the Maximals but hasn't yet had her Predacon shell-program removed. She becomes a straight-up hero once it is.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Similar to Dinobot, Blackarachnia didn't join the Maximals in support of their ideals; she only did so to protect her own existence as a Maximal protoform, and as a promise to Silverbolt.
• Official Couple: She eventually gets together with Silverbolt.
• Only Sane Woman: Ultimately defects to assist the Maximals as she realises Megatron wiping out the Autobots would also erase her as her protoform was originally Maximal; of the other Predacons active at this point, Tarantulas and Waspinator were always Predacons, Dinobot II is too loyal to betray Megatron, and Inferno, Quickstrike and Rampage are each a different kind of crazy that would stop them really caring about the consequences of Megatron's victory.
• Palette Swap: Initially, with Tarantulas, though less obviously so than Cheetor/Tigatron due to Blackarachnia's "assets" and slimmer figure. Both transform the same and carry the same armament- spiderleg machine guns on the arms, pincers for hands and a grappling pistol. It is done on purpose in-universe, as Tarantulas wants more spider-based Preds loyal to him. Doesn't work out so well for him.
• Poisonous Person: Her primary weapons in her first form is to "poison" her opponents with a paralysis inducing computer virus.
• Redemption Promotion: She switches sides in Optimal Situation, though still retains her Predacon sensibilities. The removal of her Predacon shell program ultimately leads to her Transmetal 2 upgrade, where she's now a proper Maximal.
• Robot Hair: Her Beast Machines robot form sports what appears to be a long mane of something that evokes the appearance of long hair. In Beast Wars she had a headpiece which more resembled a helmet or bob cut instead.
• Seductive Spider: She's even able to win over Silverbolt. Her character model supposedly takes inspiration from an exotic dancer after a trip to a strip club the staff went to.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Again, she ends up with Silverbolt; it takes him some time to get her to drop her emotional guard, but his nobility hits a soft spot with her. Makes sense, when you consider that A. She was originally a Maximal protoform and B. She's been surrounded by nothing more than selfish psychopaths and is probably tired of it all.
• Sixth Ranger: After her time as a Predacon, she defects to join the Maximals.
• The Smurfette Principle: For the first two seasons, she's the only female on the Predacon team, and after Airazor is abducted by the Vok, Blackarachnia is the only girl in the cast at all. This continues into Beast Machines, where she's the only female character in the series until halfway through season 2, where Botanica and Strika are introduced.
• Sneaky Spider: Possibly even more so than Tarantulas. This causes some friction after her Heel–Face Turn, as she's accustomed to sneaking around behind the backs of her nominal teammates, and it takes her some time to adjust to being on a team that isn't constantly trying to play Xanatos Speed Chess against each other.
• The Starscream: Not long after joining the Predacon team, Blackarachnia starts plotting to usurp Megatron, considering herself a better candidate for leader. Although no slouch in a fight and certainly smarter than most, she never quite gets the traction to actually take a shot at the top job, and she eventually quits the Predacons altogether.
• Swapped Roles: In Beast Wars, Silverbolt and Blackarachnia were on opposite sides of the conflict with Silverbolt trying to get Blackarachnia to return to her original Maximal programming. In the sequel series Beast Machines, Blackarachnia is the one who ends up having to restore Silverbolt to the light after he is reformatted as the Vehicon Jetstorm.
• Take This Job and Shove It: She abandons the Predacons once she learns that Megatron's insane ambition would wipe her from existence.
• Token Evil Teammate: To the Maximals post her Heel–Face Turn in season three, though her relationship with Silverbolt softens her up a little. Once her Predacon shell program is removed, she loses her evil streak.
• Took a Level in Badass: Once she's upgraded into a Transmetal 2, she becomes powerful enough to take the business to Rampage in a fistfight before hurling him through a cliff face. This also counts as a Redemption Promotion since it's the point in the series where she embraces being a Maximal, even changing her transformation code to "Maximize" to fully complete her Heel–Face Turn.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Once her Predacon shell program is removed, she becomes more a genuine hero; this carries over into Beast Machines where she's fully one of the Maximals and her villainous past is barely ever mentioned.
• Tsundere: Type A to Silverbolt. While she may be rude and aloof towards him, she does genuinely loves Silverbolt.
• The Unfought: In spite of being a playable character in the Predacons campaign of the PC and PlayStation video game, she is never faced as a boss in the Maximals campaign.
• Use Your Head: She does this several times to great effect, one of her victims being Silverbolt whose particularly hard head ended up downing her as well.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: In season 3, she refers to Silverbolt as "every bad girl's dream". Presumably, this is because he is so protective of her and/or use to her. Interesting, their relationship changes little when she becomes a genuine heroine; she is just honestly affectionate instead of Femme-Fatale-ing him.
• Wild Card: Blackarachnia's allegiance tends to be fluid; some days she'll be loyally serving Megatron, and other days she'll be helping Tarantulas out with one of his plots or just serving her own ambitions. This stops after her Heel–Face Turn.

Inferno

Inferno

Function: Infantry Commander

Beast Mode: Fire Ant

"For the royalty!"

Voiced by: Jim Byrnes

Debut: "Spider's Game"

"Destruction to all who threaten us! The royalty commands it!"

Inferno is almost completely dominated by his fire ant beast mode, and it defines him more than any other Transformer, even Tigatron. The ant's collective, drone-like mindset has convinced him that he is a full-fledged ant, the Predacon base is his colony, and Megatron is his queen. Not only does his Predacon nature make him a dangerous, flamethrowing psychopath, his ant persona also makes him a loyal flamethrowing psychopath. Needless to say, Megatron sees this as a double advantage. He could do without Inferno calling him his 'queen', however...

---

• Adaptation Name Change: He is called Formikon in Beast Wars: Uprising, which is especially noticeable due to his G1 namesake not being featured in Uprising.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: He is a recruit found from a stasis pod in the cartoon, when the 1997 Beast Wars: Transformers video game depicts him as a member of the Predacons from the beginning.
• Affably Evil: Despite being a total lunatic, Inferno is quite personable with his fellow Predacons off-duty, even playing cards with them. When on-duty he usually tends to at least be respectful and professional around them, saving his insults and barbs for the Maximals. He even gives Waspinator a genuine compliment after he helps Inferno take down Silverbolt and Dinobot.
• Angrish: When he’s particularly riled up, he just starts screaming incoherent gibberish while trying to murder the object of his rage.
• Ant Assault: His beast mode is a fire ant, and he's a ruthless Pyromaniac who is zealously loyal to his "queen", Megatron, and his "colony", the Predacons.
• Ax-Crazy: In his debut episode, Inferno tries to kill everybody he sees due to seeing them as a threat to his colony (his stasis pod). Once he joins the Predacons, he mostly sticks the psychotic violence to the Maximals.
• Badass Boast: In "Coming Of The Fuzors, Part 1", when a newly-awakened Quickstrike attacks Inferno:
  "Fool! Pain is my friend! Allow me to introduce you to it!"
• Battle Butler: He's a devoted servant to Megatron and a very formidable Predacon.
• Berserk Button: Damage to "the colony". When Tigatron destroyed his stasis pod (Inferno's first "colony"), Inferno went completely ballistic and prepared to roast the Maximal alive. He was still holding a grudge about it later in the season, making every attempt to kill Tigatron in "Law of the Jungle".
• Beware the Silly Ones: He may have some of the silliest mannerisms of the entire cast and usually teams up alternatingly with Quickstrike and Waspinator, but he's also got some of the heaviest firepower out of any of the Predacons bar Rampage and Megatron himself.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: His beast mode is a fire ant. Hilariously, despite being an ant, he's also the second largest of the Predacons.
• Big "NO!": Screams this right before being blasted into oblivion by the Nemesis.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Remember he was once a Maximal protoform, until Tarantulas got his hands on his pod and reprogrammed him. The crazy part, however, is due to the Transformer equivalent of brain damage rather than any brainwashing.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Is homicidally insane, thinks he's really an ant, and won't stop calling Megatron his Queen, but he's infallibly loyal and a capable soldier so Megatron tolerates it.
• Butt-Monkey: Though to a lesser extent than some of the other Predacons, and he's tough enough to stay a threat in spite of it.
• Character Catchphrase: Spouted off quite a few of his own, but the most iconic is probably:
  Inferno: For the Royalty!
• The Chew Toy: While not the Cosmic Plaything that Waspinator is, a lot of his injuries tend to be Played for Laughs. "Before The Storm" and "Other Visits, Part 1" feature good examples of this.
• Chewing the Scenery: Whenever he starts screaming about burning things, he does this.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Thanks to his "beast mode dominating his logic circuits."
• Combat Sadomasochist: Pain is more likely to elicit laughing fits from him than hesitation.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite being mostly crazed up and Laughably Evil, he's one of the most competent and dangerous Predacons. This plus his Undying Loyalty earns a strange kind of respect from Megatron, who generally gives him command of most situations he isn't present for.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: For the first season and early episodes of the second, he dished these out fairly often, easily mauling Tigatron to near death, burning Tarantulas to a crisp, and mopping the floor with both Quickstrike and Silverbolt. However, once season 3 introduced some of the more powerful characters, Inferno wound up eating a lot of these himself.
• Death by Irony: He inadvertently gets killed by Megatron, the only character he showed any loyalty towards. Adding to the irony is that it was fire from the Nemesis's cannon.
• Determinator: Nothing stops him from carrying out Megatron's orders short of catastrophic damage — sometimes not even then.
• The Dragon: To Megatron, from the second season onward. Inferno may be insane and his devotion to his "queen" is hilarious, but his loyalty is unwavering and he's lethal in combat. Like Scorponok, he averts The Starscream aspect often used alongside this trope.
  • Co-Dragons: In the third season, he shares this position with Dinobot II. Dinobot is leagues stronger than Inferno, but Megatron still values Inferno's loyalty.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: He gets caught in the crossfire in the Grand Finale when Megatron is burning down the home of the prehistoric humans. Nobody, least of all Megatron, notices or cares.
• Dumb Muscle: Inferno's insanity and blind devotion to Megatron leaves little room for critical thinking, and isn't good for much beyond fighting and killing in the name of the royalty. Fortunately, that's all Megatron really needs of him.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first thing he does is try to blast Tarantulas and Blackarachnia with a flamethrower for posing a threat to "the colony", cackle maniacally, and rant about how "the royalty commands it!".
• Evil Counterpart: To Tigatron. Both were Maximal protoforms who identify with their beast modes more than their robot forms and use temperature-based weaponry. They are polar opposites otherwise, down to their elements (fire vs ice) and color schemes (red and black vs green and white).
• Evil Is Burning Hot: Inferno is both a fire ant and a raging pyromaniac.
• Evil Laugh: His signature, maniacal "BWAAAAAH-HAHAHAHAHA!".
• Evil Sounds Deep: It's especially evident when he's screaming.
• Fangs Are Evil: He has very large, sharp teeth in robot mode. So large, in fact that he can't even seem to cover the fangs most of the time. And to say nothing of the pincers he has in ant mode which are so big they could be used for guillotine blades.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: While he's a competent threat to the Maximals throughout the series, Megatron clearly sees him as this despite his loyalty. It's very much worth noting that in the Grand Finale, he sends Inferno, Quickstrike and Waspinator off to do busy work while he takes the competent Predacons (Rampage and Dinobot II) off for real work.
• The Juggernaut: Only in the first season, where he proved to be one of the most powerful Predacons in the show, arguably only beat by Megatron. However, once the Maximals started getting Transemtal forms and far more powerful characters started joining the war, Inferno lost this role to Rampage and Dinobot II.
• Implacable Man: More so in the first season. Given his versatility, flight mode, and firepower, he was easily one of the strongest Predacons under Megatron. Once the second season started introducing transmetals and fuzors, however, Inferno fell out of this pretty hard.
• Ironic Name: Despite sharing the same name, he's the polar opposite of Generation One Inferno. Predacon vs. Autobot. Fire-spewing flamethrower that incinerates everything vs. fire truck that puts fires out. Utterly insane vs. good. The only similarity other than the name is that both are red.
• Killed Off for Real: He finally dies in "Nemesis, Pt. 2" when Megatron accidentally blasts him with the Nemesis' fusion cannon while firing on the protohuman settlement.
• Large Ham: His insane ranting, maniacal laughter, and love of both fire and his "Queen" make Inferno one of the largest hams on the show.
• Laughably Evil: While he's genuinely threatening, Inferno's raging insanity makes him a riot to watch.
• Laughing Mad: He's completely unhinged and constantly laughs. May double as The Hyena.
• Losing Your Head: Happens to him several times. Blackarachnia blows his head off with his own gun in the season one finale, and he reattaches it after coming back online in the second season premiere. In "Coming of the Fuzors (Part 2)", he crashes into Megatron and ends up swapping heads with him. In "Code of Hero", Dinobot makes him shoot his own head off.
• Meaningful Name: A pyromaniac named Inferno. He's also a fire ant.
• Mook Promotion: He becomes Megatron's second-in-command during the 2nd season after Scorponok's death.
• The Nicknamer: A downplayed example in that it's only ever aimed at one person, but he's insistent on calling Megatron either "Royalty" or "Queen". The "Royalty" one only came about because Megatron asked him to stop calling him "Queen", and he only reverts his mannerisms when he's not within retaliation range.
• No-One Could Have Survived That: Very infamously, Inferno was shown to be vaporized at the end of Season 2, when the show's producers at the time didn't know for sure if they would land a third season. When the show did return, this was Retconned into a sight gag and Inferno was simply blown into pieces. Inferno still met his doom when the show was given an actual finale.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Inferno may be one of the many Predacons to serve as ButtMonkeys, but unlike many of them, he does pose a legitimate threat, and nearly kills the Maximals multiple times over the course of the series.
• Number Two: He acts as Megatron’s second from season two onwards. Unlike Scorponok, he proves fairly capable in the role.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In "Transmutate", Inferno is so freaked out by the condition of Transmutate's stasis pod and it giving off weird energy that he quickly contacts Megatron. The catch? He refers to Megatron by his actual name.
• Playing with Fire: Being obsessed with fire, Inferno's flamethrower is his favorite weapon.
  Inferno: BURN, TRAITOR, BURN!
• Psycho Supporter: Believes he's in an ant colony and Megatron is the Queen. On the plus side for Megatron, this makes Inferno undyingly loyal, willing to follow any command and even commit suicide to destroy Megatron's enemies.
  Inferno: For... the... ROYALTY!!! [fires on a huge chunk of energon]
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": On top of being an Ax-Crazy Pyromaniac, Inferno is constantly laughing in the midst of violence.
• Pyromaniac: He's not called "Inferno" for nothing. What's more, he is a delicious inversion of this Generation One namesake, who was an Autobot, sane, and a fire truck.
  Inferno: I don't rock and roll. I burn.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Naturally, since his beast mode is a fire ant; Inferno's body is almost completely red and black, and he's a psychotic brute loyally serving his tyrannical "Queen".
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: His eyes are completely red.
• Retcon: "The Agenda" featured Inferno clearly getting killed, but he turned up alive and well in the season three premiere.
• Screaming Warrior: He often screams as he fights, both in normal and hideous mechanical ant screeching flavors.
• Slasher Smile: His face seems to be permanently shaped into one.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Throughout all three seasons, his power level is all over the place. Sometimes he's portrayed as being powerful enough to take a lot of punishment and dish it back to the Maximals, even in their Transmetal forms. Then at other times, he's the Butt-Monkey, getting taken out in humiliating fashions befitting of Waspinator.
• Taking You with Me: In "The Agenda", he detonates a huge cache of energon to take Optimus and Cheetor with him. It fails to kill them, and Inferno is shown to have survived at the beginning of Season 3, in spite of having been apparently disintegrated by the blast.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Of the Ax-Crazy sadomasochist variety. Quickstrike learned the hard way.
  Inferno: Ahahahahahahahahaha! Fool! Pain is my friend—allow me to introduce you to it!
• Undying Loyalty: With the mentality of a fire ant, Inferno is simply incapable of betraying his leader. This trait, above all others, is why Megatron considers Inferno his most valuable pawn.
  Megatron: (to Dinobot) The ant has some faulty programming. *clears throat* But his loyalty is without question.
• Unexplained Recovery: The writers planned to kill him off at the end of the second season, as he freakin' disintegrates onscreen. Hasbro vetoed this death, and he shows up in the third season premiere — damaged to the point of looking undead, but alive.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Finesse isn't his strong suit, but he hardly needs any when going in guns blazing (sometimes literally) is all he needs. It's best demonstrated in his fight with Blackarachnia in the season one finale, as he easily tosses her around and takes a fair bit of punishment, but she's able to outmaneuver him and has to use his own gun to put him down.
• Villainous Breakdown: Inferno wasn't very stable to begin with, but after Tigatron destroys his stasis pod (which he saw as his colony), he completely loses it and spends the next moments screaming bloody murder as he tries to kill Tigatron.
• Villain Decay: Like a lot of Transformers characters, his skills declined as his toy stopped shipping. He was basically on par with Megatron for the first season, but after his Unexplained Recovery in Season 3, his skills took a pretty hard dive.
• Villainous Friendship: Downplayed, but Inferno is the only Predacon that Megatron even slightly values, due to him being both unquestioningly loyal and relatively competent in battle. Megatron at one point abandons a fight in order to rescue Inferno, though it also could have been out of pragmatism since he was in dire need of troops after Terrorsaur and Scorponok bit the dust, leaving only Waspinator and Blackarachnia, who had just fled the battle.
  Megatron: Oooh, I like him. Yeeesss.
• Yes-Man: Inferno's blind loyalty to Megatron is one of his defining traits.
  Rampage: (on Transmutate) I was just explaining what it meant to be a Predacon. Deceit, treachery. Mindless loyalty.
  Inferno: (nodding) Loyalty comes first.

Quickstrike

Quickstrike

Function: Desert Combat Expert

Beast Mode: Cobra/Scorpion Hybrid

Voiced by: Colin Murdock

Debut: "Coming of the Fuzors (Part 1)"

"Call me Quickstrike, and good's got nothing to do with it!"

Quickstrike is a psychotic Mix-and-Match Critter that Megatron recruited early in the second season. While boastful, he was far from the Badass he claimed to be, and often ended up playing a relatively minor roll of shooting at Maximals from the sidelines. His allegiances were fairly obviously to the person who gave him the most chances to fight, and he nearly betrayed Megatron twice, although the first time he swapped back before he really got started, and the second time he ended up begging Megatron for a second chance.

---

• Agony Beam: Fired from his cobra mouth.
• Arm Cannon: His viper arm.
• Ax-Crazy: Not as over-the-top about it as Inferno, but Quickstrike is a short-tempered lunatic who loves violence.
• Badass Boast: "There is nothin' that crawls, walks, swims or flies that I'm afraid of!"
• Berserk Button: When Dinobot tries to rejoin the Predacons, Megatron makes him fight Quickstrike as a test. Quickstrike takes it very badly when Dinobot bites his cobra tail.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: His cobra head fires lasers either in beast mode or robot mode.
• Blood Knight: Notably, he doesn't really care about the Beast Wars or either faction as much as he just wants the chance to fight someone. Tartantulas is able to talk him into siding with him against Megatron by just promising he'd let him fight more.
• Boisterous Weakling: He genuinely seems to believe he's the toughest Predacon around; rather sadly, he never really seems to figure out that he isn't.
• Bond One-Liner: After he throws Megatron into a pit of lava in "Master Blaster", he gleefully yells "HAPPY TRAILS!" as Megatron falls.
• The Brute: While he isn't the toughest Predacon, he definitely fits the personality part of the trope; eager to fight, a short temper, and not very smart.
• Butt-Monkey: While not quite to the extent of Waspinator, Quickstrike tends to suffer a lot throughout the series. Even his own teammates abuse him frequently; Megatron twice uses him to test for booby-traps ("when dealing with booby-traps, send the boob in first). And unlike Waspinator, he also ends up getting burned alive by his own boss in the final episode.
• Card-Carrying Villain: "Call me... Quickstrike! And good's got nuthin' to do with it."
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Quickstrike is about as loyal as his beast mode implies; in the final episodes of the series, he sides with Tarantulas and tries to kill Megatron, only to offer to hunt down Tarantulas when Megatron survives and wants to kill Quickstrike for betraying him.
• Combat Pragmatist: Despite his ego, he'd take any advantage in a fight. Reveling in attacking weakened or downed enemies.
• Cowboy: He has the accent and mannerisms of a rootin' tootin' black hat cowboy. This also correlates with his beast mode, as both snakes and scorpions are associated with The Wild West. His Leitmotif is also reminiscent of the kind of music heard in Western movies.
• Criminal Amnesiac: Like the other protoforms, Quickstrike is awoken with no memory or idea of who he is, combined with his Boisterous Weakling attitude, this makes it easy for Megatron to tell him that he's one of his Predacon soldiers and that the maximals are his foes.
• Defiant to the End: When Dinobot wins their Beam-O-War and all but won the fight, Quickstrike defiantly asks if that's all he's got. Dinobot says that it isn't, and gives him another concentrated blast to finish it.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: He and Inferno get caught in the crossfire in the Grand Finale when Megatron is burning down the home of the prehistoric humans. There's zero buildup and the two are never mentioned again. It just kinda... happened.
• Dumb Muscle: He doesn't think much beyond the next "keister" he's going to kick.
• Establishing Character Moment: One of the first things Quickstrike ever does is to pick a fight with the first sentient being he meets.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's horrified when Megatron rips out the original Megatron's spark and puts it inside his own body.
• Evil Counterpart: To Silverbolt. Both are Mix-and-Match Critters with an unusual code of honour and regard for the ladies, though in his case it's an evil Cowboy as opposed to a Knight in Shining Armor. Both are also tricked into joining the predacons, but only Silverbolt was smart enough to realize that Megatron tricked him.
• Face Death with Dignity: Faced with the about-to-fire fusion cannon of the Nemesis, Quickstrike’s only reaction is This Is Gonna Suck.
• Fearless Fool: Quickstrike is generally too much of a trigger happy idiot to think his actions through. Megatron lampshades it at one point when the Predacons are attacking the Maximal base.
  Megatron: Quickstrike, you may lead.
  Quickstrike: Yeeehaw! That's what I like to hear!
  Inferno: Royalty! Why was I not chosen?
  Megatron: Because, Inferno, when expecting booby traps... [Quickstrike gets smashed by a giant mechanical fist] always send a boob in first.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Not as much as Tarantulas, but none of the other Predacons seem to like him all that much, with the possible exception of Inferno and Megatron, which in the latter's case just makes him an expendable pawn, the main reason being that Quickstrike's a short-tempered, moronic Jerkass whose only real useful quality is that he'll follow pretty much any order if it means he gets to fight or kill someone.
• Fusion Dance: Quickstrike's stasis pod was damaged by the quantum surge the Vok blasted the planet with. The pod's DNA computer malfunctioned when it tried to scan DNA for his beast mode, gathering information from both a cobra and a scorpion and combining them for his final form.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Pretty much anything will set Quickstrike off.
• Hand Blast: His cobra tail becomes his right arm in robot mode. He can still fire energy blasts from it.
• Hot-Blooded: He has all the restraint of a sugar-high toddler.
• Insufferable Imbecile: Quickstrike is very stupid and constantly wants to fight, this made it very easy for Megatron to convince Quickstrike he was actually a predacon and teach him all the wrong things. Unlike Silverbolt, Quickstrike was too much of a moron to ever realize he'd been had. Quickstrike is so stupid, that unlike Blackarachnia, he never even realizes that Megatron's plan will result in him being erased from history.
• Jerkass: He's notably the only Maximal protoform who didn't need a Predacon shell program or literal torture to join the latter faction.
• Large Ham: Quickstrike does not no the meaning of the word subtlety.
• Leeroy Jenkins: No restraint, no subtlety, and lots of love for violence.
• Leitmotif: His character moments often have guitar twangs reminiscent of Wild West movies, fitting for his cowboy personality.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: Between a scorpion and a cobra.
• Multiple Head Case: Mostly averted. He retains two heads in both modes, but nonetheless has a single mind between them, with his cobra head becoming fully inanimate in robot mode — apart from sharing the occasional nod, which might just be Quickstrike amusing himself. However, like most comedy tropes that can be shoehorned into the Beast Wars setting, the Japanese dub plays this painfully straight, with Quickstrike and his tail holding whole conversations with each other (helped along by Quickstrike's lack of moving lips to sync to on both his scorpion and robot mode heads).
• Not Brainwashed: Downplayed Trope some of the other protoforms who joined the Predacons, Quickstrike never had a shell program installed nor was tortured into joining; however he was given amnesia and tricked into joining. It's never elaborated upon if his attitude is because of the damage he suffered when crashing onto the planet, his beast forms overriding/enhancing his normal aggression, if he truly was this much of a jerkass to begin with or due to being taught this behavior from the rest of the Predacons.
• The Napoleon: The shortest Predacon, with an equally short temper to match.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Quickstrike is an absolute moron and is the biggest Butt-Monkey of the Predacons outside of Waspinator, but he's still a genuinely fierce opponent when eh wants to be. He's able to severely injure Dinobot in one-on-one combat in "Code of Hero", which contributes to his death, and he's able to successfully dupe and nearly kill Megatron in "Master Blaster" simply by exploiting his reputation as an idiot. Admittedly, the latter was Tarantulas's plan, but Quickstrike is still able to pull it off and they're only thwarted because the original Megatron's spark causes the current one to survive.
• Poisonous Person: Fitting his fused beast mode, his cobra head is loaded with corrosive plasma "venom" in both modes. While he could fire blasts of venom from his head in robot mode, it seems to be much less potent than the viruses the spiders used: his blasts and bites were painful, but easy enough to power through whereas the spiders would immediately incapacitate most targets targets if their venom was delivered.
• Psycho for Hire: He's ready to follow whoever gives him more opportunities to fight.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Like Inferno, his eyes are completely red.
• Red Right Hand: His scorpion and cobra hybrid beast mode gives him some bizarre hands. His cobra tail becomes his right "hand", while his scorpion legs form his left "hand" as a bunch of independent "fingers".
• Sadist: He asks Megatron at one point if it's really necessary to kill the Maximals quickly, and chuckles while watching Megatron torture Rampage.
  Quickstrike: Well, uh... does have to be quick? 'Cause after we cripple 'em, I'd kinda like to enjoy their sufferin' for a while.
  Megatron: I like the way you think, Quickstrike, but business before pleasure.
• Scary Scorpions: A bit scarier and more competent than Scorponok.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He was utterly convinced that he was the toughest bot around, but was quite often proved wrong. If anything, he's bottom tier.
• Smug Snake: Quickstrike isn't exactly a slouch at combat, but he's nowhere near as tough or smart as he likes to think.
• The Sociopath: Very low functioning; Quickstrike is a nasty, impulsive, violent little snake who doesn't really care about anyone.
• Sociopathic Soldier: He cares little about the lives his actions put at stake and is focused entirely on doing Megatron's bidding.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: A dumb scorpion bot who serves as Megatron's muscle, he's one to Scorponok. The only differences are that Scorponok was 100% scorpion and served Megatron out of loyalty, not a penchant for violence, and occasionally Scorponok could invent something theoretically useful.
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • As he faces a potential death sentence for betraying Megatron, Quickstrike notes that it "looks like this is my last round-up". The fact that his "defense attorney" is Waspinator (who openly admits that he's fine with Megatron slagging Quickstrike) doesn't help.
  • Quickstrike's last words are an understated "I don't like the looks of this", moments before he and Inferno are terminated by a fusion cannon blast from the Nemesis.
• Underestimating Badassery: He has a bad habit of this:
  • One of the first things he does when he emerges from his stasis pod is to attack Inferno. Inferno merely grabs his cobra tail and starts slamming him into the ground.
  • He eagerly charges in to attack a feral Transmetal 2 Cheetor. It doesn't end well.
  • In "Code Of Hero", he confronts an unarmed (and seemingly helpless) Dinobot:
    Quickstrike: What's a warrior without weapons?
    Dinobot: A WARRIOR STILL!
• Unwitting Pawn: Quickstrike's many personality flaws make him extremely easy to manipulate. So much so that not only does Megatron use him, but so do Blackarachnia and Tarantulas. The latter of whom manages to convince him to aid him in a plan that would have wiped him from history if it succeeded.
• Villainous Crush: He can be downright bashful around his fellow arachnid Blackarachnia.
• Vocal Evolution: His voice became progressively shriller and louder over the course of the series, while also getting less gravelly.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: In his first appearances, he pretty much freaks out anytime someone attacks Blackarachnia.
• Would Hit a Girl: His charity towards Blackarachnia takes a complete 180 after she joins the Maximals; after that he revels in every chance he gets to try to destroy her.

Rampage/Protoform X

Rampage

Function: Warlord

Alt/Beast Modes: King Crab; Tank

Screwball, psychopathic, mental, unhinged and berserk.

Voiced by: Campbell Lane

Debut: "Bad Spark"

"Is that fear you're feeling, Maximal?"

Rampage is the result of Maximal experiments intended to replicate the immortal, indestructible mutant spark that let Starscream survive as a ghost. While he's certainly nigh-unkillable, he's also a cannibalistic serial killer armed with a rocket launcher (who decided to give the experiment high-powered weapons, and who let him keep them after they dumped him in a prison pod?) He racked up a sizeable body count before Depth Charge finally caged him.

Rampage is fully aware of what a nightmare his life is ("I regret everything, my sweet"), but can't seem to think of a more constructive reaction than inflicting as much pain as possible on everyone around him.

---

• Adaptational Nice Guy: Rampage's appearance in Beast Wars: Uprising shows a much more personable, sympathetic take on the character.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear if he was transformed into the monster he is today through experimentation, or if he was literally created in a lab. Both are equally possible in the Beast Wars universe, and there's ample evidence for both.
• Antagonist in Mourning: A subverted case, where Rampage mourns the innocent Transmutate, who he values as a freak like he is. Silverbolt mourns with him ("For now, we are brothers,").
• Arch-Enemy: To Depth Charge... a set-up Rampage seems to enjoy.^note It's subtle, but Rampage becomes more lively after Depth Charge's arrival, whereas beforehand he had a generally sullen disposition due to being forced to serve Megatron.
  Rampage: It was really so very nice of you to come. So glad you could stay - oh, we'll have such fun!
• Attack Its Weak Point: His gun barrel and treads in tank mode have both been exploited to take him down.
• Ax-Crazy: Everyone is a potential victim to him. Megatron had to take extra precautions to force Rampage to reserve his psychotic violence for the Maximals only.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In their final battle, he allows Depth Charge to run his Spark through with a shard of raw energon. It's not clear if he was happy to finally die, if he was taking pleasure in knowing that he could take Depth Charge with him, or if he enjoyed knowing that he had fully broken Depth Charge. Whatever the motivation, he died satisfied.
• BFG: His rocket launcher cannon which can be handheld or becomes his primary weapon in his tank form. It's powerful enough to destroy a mountain that was one of the recorded images on the golden disk.
• Blessed with Suck: Near-indestructibility would seem like a pretty swell thing to have... until Megatron realizes he can use it to inflict normally-lethal amounts of pain on Rampage in order to keep him in line. It was already sucky anyway, since it initially resulted in him being subject to horrific experimentation that would be lethal to anyone else, and is implied to keep him in constant pain.
• Blood Knight: Ultimately subverted. At first, Rampage comes off as a purely a lover of carnage, but the episode "Transmutate" reveals Rampage cares less about sadism in and of itself than as than an outlet for his rage at his tortured existence.
• The Brute: Megatron forces him to be a thug for the Predacons.
• Break Them by Talking: He likes to do this while torturing his victims.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Anybody Rampage gets his claws on can only pray for a quick death.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Nothing seems to give him more pleasure than inflicting pain. Receiving it barely slowed him down.
• Complete Immortality: He was created in an attempt to duplicate G1 Starscream's immortal spark. It worked. His spark was incapable of being extinguished whether it involved cutting it in half with an Energon blade, any physical damage Rampage experienced, or anything the high council could come up with to destroy him.
  • Eventually subverted; Rampage's spark was nigh-invulnerable, but not indestructible. His spark was later destroyed by a large piece of complete raw Energon, something very rare by the time of the Beast Wars Transformers era.
• Deadpan Snarker: Having few other ways of getting back at his fellow Predacons for his miserable circumstances, Rampage gets in a few moments of snark at his team's expense.
  Rampage: [regarding Transmutate] I was just explaining what it means to be a Predacon. Deceit, treachery, mindless loyalty...
  Inferno: Loyalty comes first!
• Death Seeker: His final act implies this was part of his motivation.
• Defiant to the End: After Megatron enslaves him, Rampage makes no secret of the fact that he eagerly looks forward to Megatron's demise. He even makes a few attempts to steal his spark back but to no avail. Even after Megatron has gained a much more powerful body after merging his spark with his G1 counterpart, Rampage has little qualms about grabbing Megatron by the neck, throttling him and insulting him for losing the base to Tigerhawk, showing little fear of Megatron even though Megatron was now stronger. Admittedly, this moment doesn't last long since Dinobot quickly brings him to heel.
• Die Laughing: Not surprising, as Rampage is both an implied Death Seeker and completely looney tunes.
• Emotion Eater: He claims to be able to feed on fear in "Bad Spark". It's not entirely clear if there was any truth to the claim or if he was just toying with Silverbolt when he said it.
• Escaped from the Lab: Protoform X was a Maximal experiment attempting to recreate Stascream's mutant indestructible spark. However, Protoform X was twisted and insane, broke free, and went on a rampage, killing many and destroying Starbase Rugby. He was sealed away and placed aboard the Axalon whose crew were instructed to dispose of Protoform X where it wouldn't harm anyone else.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The bond Rampage forms with Transmutate is one of his only humanizing moments, and his mourning for the ill-fated creature's death is sincere and heartbreaking. Even Silverbolt recognises Rampage's grief as genuine.
• Evil Is Bigger: Rampage is huge. Until Megatron is upgraded to his Transmetal II body, Rampage is easily the biggest of the Predacons.
• Evil Laugh: As is to be expected from an Ax-Crazy, sadistic monster.
• Evil Sounds Deep: He has a deep, raspy voice.
• Evil Tastes Good: He alludes to the pain and terror he inflicts on his targets as almost equivalent to a delicious meal to him. Before making them into a more literal meal, as he did with Depth Charge's friends.
• Explosive Leash: Megatron ripped out half his spark and repeatedly tortures it with shards of raw energon to keep Rampage in line.
• Expy: Of Hannibal Lecter.
• Faux Affably Evil: Shows flashes of refinement and intelligence, but is an utter psychotic loon most of the time.
  Rampage: [grabs Rattrap's submersible] How droll. Rat in a can. [starts crushing it, cackling insanely]
• Frankenstein's Monster: One of the smarter, more vengeful variety.
• For the Evulz: He often ignores orders to relieve his boredom by inflicting horrific torture on any convenient victim.
• Gatling Good: Meets rocket launcher.
• Genius Bruiser: In a Hannibal Lecter sort of way. Rampage is a hulking, nigh-indestructible behemoth who often displays an eloquence and psychological acuity in his sadistic pursuits.
• Giant Enemy Crab: They don't get much bigger than Rampage.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Maximals' scientists wanted an immortal super-soldier. They got their wish.
• Healing Factor: Since he has an immortal spark based on Starscream's, he can't be killed by normal means. His body would heal from all but catastrophic damage in seconds. Depth Charge stabbing a shard of raw energon straight through it, setting off a massive explosion, seems to do the trick.
• Hidden Depths: Normally murderous towards anyone and everyone, the episode "Trasmutate" shows that Rampage actually has a strong affinity for beings he perceives as being as twisted and broken as he is. (For bonus points, the other character who formed a bond with Transmutate was Silverbolt.)
• I Die Free: Implied to be part of his reason for laughing as he allows Depth Charge to kill him.
• I Just Want to Be Free:
  Megatron: Never forget who holds the essence of your spark, and thus is your master.
  Rampage: That, I promise you.
• I Let You Win: At the last moment, he lets Depth Charge kill him, cackling maniacally all the while.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Depth Charge had friends at Starbase Rugby, as he recalls. Tasty ones, too. He also threatens to eat Inferno at one point after he annoyed him.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: Megatron keeps him in check by jamming crystallized energon into the other half of his Spark until he submits to Megatron's orders. Rampage is only able to survive this because he's almost indestructible, but it's still incredibly painful.
• Immortality Hurts: He's been subjected to every method of execution the Maximal High Council could think of, brutalized in combat in ways that even Waspinator would cringe at, and has his heart/soul analogue repeatedly tortured to enforce obedience, but still unable to die. He makes it clear that immortality hasn't brought him anything but pain.
• Implacable Man: In his later appearances, Rampage isn't unstoppable, but it's still damn near impossible to make him stay down.
  Rampage: Your persistence is futile! I rise again!
• The Juggernaut: In his first appearance. It says a lot about how Nigh-Invulnerable you are when Implacable Man is the result of Diminishing Villain Threat.
• Kick the Dog: Despite the two of them mourning Transmutate together in the episode of the same name, when he sees Silverbolt deep in mourning over Blackarachnia's seeming death in Crossing the Rubicon he mutters a desire to help deepen it.
• Killed Off for Real: After being established as nigh-immortal, Rampage finally meets his end in the finale when Depth Charge stabs his spark with raw energon, resulting in a massive explosion that kills them both.
• Knight of Cerebus: Rampage has very few comedic traits. Not that it saves him from being the victim of occasional slapstick, though.
• Let X Be the Unknown: His original designation before Megatron renamed him.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: He's a complete sadist who loves to make his victims suffer.
• Made a Slave: Megatron enslaved him by removing half his spark and encasing it inside a container that caused him great pain whenever it was squeezed.
• Meaningful Rename: "I'm called Rampage now! A bit obvious, but to the point, don't you think?"
• Morality Pet: Transmutate. As twisted as his methods were, Rampage really did want to help the innocent, deformed Transformer come to terms with its pained existence.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: His spark is nearly indestructible and he can heal from grievous injuries, but he can still be put in stasis lock if he suffers enough damage.
• Not Quite Dead: He was essentially "dead" in his first appearance before a nearby Energon explosion jostled him back to consciousness.
• Odd Friendship: In the episode "Transmutate", his friendship with the titular character is genuine. Considering how both are abnormal beings essentially being used by the Predacons for their power, it might not be such an "odd" friendship after all.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: It never comes up in practice, but he says in "Feral Scream, Part 1" that only he gets to kill Depth Charge. He fully intends to feast on Depth Charge's spark once he's done "playing" with him.
• Pet the Dog: His treatment of Transmutate. He tries to protect it and help it come to terms with its existence, albeit in a way that involves murdering several Maximals.
• Psycho for Hire: One of the reasons he's so scary. Without Megatron's precaution, he'd likely have eaten him.
• Psycho Party Member: None of the Predacons are winning any sanity contests, but Rampage is a thoroughly tormented creature and cannibalistic serial killer who would happily massacre and probably devour his entire team if it weren't for the fact that Megatron keeps him on a tight leash.
• Psycho Prototype: As "Protoform X", he was created with an immortal spark like Starscream's. He was also turned insane as a consequence of the spark mutation.
• Reforged into a Minion: In his debut episode, after he is defeated by the Maximals, Megatron finds him and rips out half his spark to force him under his control.
• Robo Family: Since Dinobot II was brought to life with half of his Spark, Megatron calls him Rampage's "new brother" . Rampage himself seems to hate Dinobot II almost as much as he does Megatron.
• Sadist: He seems to love causing pain and suffering, physical and/or emotional, more than anything else. Given what a nightmare his own existence is, this is likely to be Rampage's way of coping with his pain.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: He was the result of Maximal experiments to produce an immortal super-soldier by copying Starscream's mutant spark. After eventually capturing him, the Maximal Elders sealed in up in a stasis pod then turned him over to Optimus Primal's crew to dump on some desolate asteroid since they couldn't figure out how to destroy him. Several adventures later, the monster was unleashed again and recruited by the Predacons.
• Serial Killer: Implied to an exceptionally brutal one. One of his rampages is what turned Depth Charge into such an obsessive hunter.
• Shout-Out: Intended, but ultimately averted. A reference to Hannibal Lecter's "Census Taker" was cut from "Bad Spark".
• Sixth Ranger: He joins the Predacons in latter part of season two of Beast Wars.
• Slasher Movie: His debut episode. "Bad Spark", is almost a Slasher Episode.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He speaks with wit and culture as he tortures his victims, but very clearly enjoys extending their suffering as long as possible before he kills them.
• Soul Jar: Megatron keeps half of Rampage's spark in torture device just so he can control him.
• Spider-Sense: He somehow sensed Depth Charge's impending arrival even before his Starhopper emerged from transwarp space.
• Stealth Pun: He's a Predacon with an immortal spark and turns into a Transmetal crab. When you think of him, you're thinking about the immortality of the crab.
• Strong as They Need to Be: In general, if he's important to an episode, he'll be pretty much invincible. If he isn't, he'll be somewhat tougher than other Predacons, but not by much.
• Taking You with Me: Towards the end of Season 3, he dies when Depth Charge impales his spark with raw Energon, triggering an explosion that kills them both.
• Tank Goodness: Next to his huge crab mode he can also transform into a tank with a huge three-barreled canon. His toy-incarnation is one of the few Transformers toys with working treads.
• "They Still Belong to Us" Lecture: Twice over Transmutate.
  Rampage: No! You will not have it, Optimus. The darkness of its spark echoes my own, it belongs with ME!
  Silverbolt: STOP! That one is not for you!
  Rampage: It is ONLY for me!
• Tortured Monster: Rampage seems to almost welcome the chance to die, as long as it happens on his own terms.
• Tragic Monster: Rampage is undeniably a monster, but he was made by the Maximal High Council. Despite his innumerable crimes, he did not ask to become what he is.
  Blackarachnia: You're gonna regret this.
  Rampage: I regret everything, my sweet.
• Ungrateful Bastard: At the end of his first appearance, Rampage is recovered and repaired by Megatron after being defeated by the Maximals. The first thing Rampage does upon awakening is to draw a weapon on Megatron. Downplayed, as Megatron certainly didn't save Rampage for any altruistic reason, and he quickly proves that he's in no way worthy of gratitude.
  • In "Crossing the Rubicon", when Blackarachnia temporarily dies, Silverbolt is about to kill Tarantulas out of vengeful rage. Rampage, seeing Silverbolt is in pain, thinks he should "deepen it", with Silverbolt only being saved from death by a newly-ressurected and improved Blackarachnia. This is in spite of how Silverbolt told Optimus not to attack Rampage following Transmutate's death in "Transmutate", saying that, since they both mourned her death, they were united in their grief.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He gets a LOT of mileage from his immortality, firepower, and sheer brute force. However, other characters often have other abilities or are more skilled an combat usually have the best chance at defeating him.
• Was Once a Man: It's possible Rampage was a normal Cybertronian before the experiments performed on him turned him into what he is now.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: As Megatron points outs, his immortal spark means that he can be subjected to degrees of pain that would kill anyone else as often as necessary until he is forced to submit without the risk of killing him. Megatron then demonstrates.
  Megatron: It would seem you cannot be terminated. An advantage... or is it?
• Wicked Cultured: He rivals Megatron in both refinement and brutality.
• Wild Card: If Megatron weren't able to control him with half his spark, Rampage would just kill everybody, Maximal and Predacons alike. As it stands, he often tends to go and do his own thing even if it violates Megatron's orders.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: For all his crimes, it must be remembered that he didn't choose to be born as the abomination that he is (that's actually the fault of the Maximals), and he seems to be almost remorseful, at times, of his cannibalistic nature. Megatron's cruel treatment of him doesn't make him any less sympathetic. As the episode "Transmutate" shows, the namesake creature tells you what a Tragic Monster he can be if looked at from a different angle. Even Silverbolt pitied him in that episode.
• The Worf Effect: Played with. In his first appearance he's a nigh-invulnerable juggernaut that takes anything thrown at him and shrugs it off. However, the very same episode along with subsequent appearances diminish this to a degree, showing that he can be caught off-guard or taken down with significant firepower, such as Silverbolt knocking him off a cliff or Dinobot jamming Waspinator into his gun-barrel while he's in tank mode. Powerful characters such as Depth Charge, Tigerhawk, or Optimal Optimus can also take him down.

Ravage

Ravage

Function: Intelligence Saboteur

Alt Mode: Cassette Tape

Voiced by: Lee Tockar

Debut: "The Agenda (Part 1)"

"Decepticons, forever!"

After the Great War, some Decepticons repented and were granted amnesty, being rebuilt into new forms. Originally one of Soundwave's cassette tapes, Ravage is one of the last survivors of the G1 Decepticon movement, and is now in the service of the Tripredacus Council, sent to Earth to end the Beast Wars himself.

---

• Affably Evil: He apologizes to the Maximals after he shoots the weapons from their hands, and generally acts quite polite towards them. He is still under orders to kill them all alongside Megatron after the latter is captured.
• Bad Samaritan: He approaches the Maximals and offers them the use of his ship to end the Beast Wars and a way back to Cybertron. He only planned to carry out the former as he was ordered to kill everyone in the conflict.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Does it do the entire Maximal crew when he first arrives, then apologizes, saying he only did so to avoid any "unfortunate accidents".
• Character Catchphrase: "Decepticons, forever!" It's also his final words.
• Dark Is Evil: A jaguar-styled bot with powers of invisibility and an unbreakable loyalty to the tyrannical Decepticons.
• Defiant to the End: Ravage faces death with a final proud cry of "Decepticons forever!".
• The Dragon: He acts as the Tripredacus Council's agent during "The Agenda" until Megatron convinces him to change sides.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Lee Tockar used one of his deepest voices for Ravage.
• Expy: Averted. Ravage really is the Ravage from the G1 series, re-formatted into a Predacon and given the ability to talk. He also uses this trope against Beast Wars Megatron, explicitly mocking him for having the original's name but not his army.
• Face Death with Dignity: When he realizes that his ship is exploding and he's about to be consumed by the flames, Ravage raises his fist in the air and shouts his "Decepticons Forever!" catchphrase one last time right before he is killed by the explosion.
• Fake Defector: He feigns offering aid to the Maximals when his orders are to terminate them.
• Future Badass: Of a rather odd sort. He's technically from the future (so is everyone else, for that matter), yet at the same time is older than the entire main cast several times over. Played rather straight in that he's waaay more badass now than he was during the Great War.
• Guest-Star Party Member: He appeared to be a temporary ally for the Maximals because he said his job was to arrest Megatron, but that was more like a Bad Samaritan. Then he became one sincerely for the Predacons. He is allied with them for the three-part finale of the second season of Beast Wars.
• Husky Russkie: Given a Russian accent to keep up the spy/agent theme. Oddly enough, the one time he spoke in the original series, he didn't sound Russian.^note But then, how could he sound anything? He's made of plastic.
• Lethal Joke Character: His alt-mode is still a cassette tape, which is was woefully outdated by the time the show aired, much less the future Ravage hails from. Then it turns out that his ship has a port for his cassette mode that allows him to essentially make it an extension of his body. Some of his Beast Wars toys give him the ability to turn into a panther (obviously), but theres no indication he can do so in the show.
• Leave No Witnesses: Megatron guesses that Ravage is under orders to kill the Maximals and remaining Predacons after he concludes his mission. Ravage casually confirms this as he prepares to execute Megatron.
• Mythology Gag: His ship bears some resemblance to Lazerbeak. He also transforms into his cassette form using the G1 transforming sound.
• Noble Demon: Ravage is courteous and above all, loyal; long after the Great War has been lost and the original Megatron is dead, Ravage remains steadfast in his faithful devotion to his master's cause.
• Older and Wiser: He survived the Great War. Back then, he was just a mostly-silent minion, almost an extension of Soundwave. Now... he's learned.
• Old Soldier: A veteran of the Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons, but Ravage is a more than capable spy and assassin. If it weren't for Megatron's ace in the hole, Ravage would likely have succeeded in his mission to terminate both groups.
• Palette Swap: He has the same head as Tigatron’s beast mode, but recolored black with Monochromatic Eyes. His body is also reused from Cheetor’s Transmetal form.
• Panthera Awesome: A humanoid version, in this case. His head is a panther's.
• Sizeshifter: His alt mode is still a cassette tape...that's clearly smaller than his current robot mode body. Guess he inherited that from Soundwave.
• Stealth Expert: He can cloak himself. His ship also has the same ability.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: He wears symbols of both the modern Predacons and the defunct Decepticons showing his loyalty to his old factions, even centuries after their dissolution.
• Took a Level in Badass: Back in The Transformers, Ravage was one of Soundwave's Mini-Cassettes and rarely did anything but grunt work, seemingly lacking intelligence and a personality and nothing but an extension of Soundwave. Now, he's a hardened, cunning badass who could've wiped out the entire cast had Megatron not convinced Ravage to side with him.
• Undying Loyalty: The whole reason he releases Beast Wars Megatron, is because it benefited the original Megatron's agenda.

Dinobot II

Dinobot II

Function: Special Operations Combatant

Beast Mode: Velociraptor

Voiced by: Scott McNeil

Debut: "Feral Scream Part 1"

"I AM the plan!"

A clone of Dinobot Megatron created in Season Three. He lacks the original's code of honour, at least to begin with, and instead acts as a loyal, nigh unstoppable killing machine for Megatron.

---

• 11th-Hour Ranger: Turns against Megatron in the last episode to lend assistance to the Maximals, and in doing so, plays an instrumental role in their ultimate victory. His total screentime as a hero was less than ten minutes.
• All There in the Manual: The story goes that an unproduced episode of the series entitled "Dark Glass" (swapped out for the episode with the protohumans Chak and Una) was supposed to feature Rattrap attempting to recreate the old Dinobot's personality in Dinobot II. Unfortunately, he's unable to get Dinobot II to change. When Rampage dies, this is supposed to sever the connection between the sparks of Rampage and Dinobot II; the latter now gains a free will, and without the evil personality traits of Rampage inside of him, Dinobot II is influenced by the latent personality traits of his old self embedded in him by Rattrap. However, it is unclear if this is truly to be considered canon or not.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's not clear why Dinobot chose to remain on the exploding bridge of the Nemesis instead of trying to save himself. While he had been attacked by Megatron shortly before, the more badly battered Optimus Primal was able to escape under his own power, making it unlikely that Dinobot was unable to escape. Given the original Dinobot's personality traits surfacing, it's most likely possible that Dinobot II simply didn't want to live an undead half-life and chose to die aboard the Nemesis.
• Blood Knight: A fondness for battle is just about the only personality trait he shares with the original. At first.
• Co-Dragons: Shares this role with Inferno. Inferno is Megatron's second-in-command, but Dinobot is his personal attack dog.
• Copied the Morals, Too: Despite Megatron's best efforts to create an Evil Knockoff of Dinobot without conscience that would obey his every command, without the influence of Rampage's spark, the original Dinobot's sense of honor resurfaces^note The unproduced episode "Dark Glass" would have explained this as Rattrap purposely embedding ol' chopperface's personality into the clone, but in the show itself, it would appear as if the old Dinobot's personality and morals were in the clone all along, albeit suppressed.
• The Dragon: Becomes Megatron's Number Two and most lethal weapon after his creation. Nothing short of Rampage is a match for him, and even then Dinobot possesses half of Rampage's spark and can easily bring him into line.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: After his Heel–Face Turn, Dinobot meets a somber, but unceremonious end as he goes down with the Nemesis.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He is outraged by how Megatron tries to kill a single protohuman with the Nemesis' fusion cannon. Finding it a very dishonorable and excessive move (although this could be subverted as it only happened after he somehow merged with his predecessor's spark, rather than a decision he made on his own).
• Evil Knockoff: Megatron created him using a cocktail of Dinobot's DNA, half of Rampage's spark, and the Transmetal 2 driver. Subverted when said evil knockoff regains Dinobot's memories and code of honor, then subsequently turns on Megatron.
• Evil Sounds Deep: There's a digitally added effect to his voice that makes it even deeper than the original Dinobot's. The effect disappears almost entirely after he gains the original Dinobot's memories and personality.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Cheetor who became Transmetal II during the experiment that brought him to life.
  • To the original Dinobot; built in the warrior's image, but without the code of honour. In the end, he subverts the "evil" part of the trope.
• Eye Beams: Only one eye this time, and it fires a pulse instead of a continuous beam, but it's much more powerful than the first Dinobot's eye beams.
• Frankenstein's Monster: So much so that his creation scene is an homage to the original movies, with Waspinator as The Igor.
• Healing Factor: Being powered by half of Rampage's spark, he possesses the same healing abilities.
• Heel–Face Turn: After Rampage is killed, some of the original Dinobot's memories somehow start resurfacing, which leads to him regaining his sense of honour and defying Megatron at the last minute. This makes a bit more sense if you account for the dropped episode Dark Glass.
• Light Is Not Good: Dinobot's coloring is largely white, but rather than a sign of goodness, it just adds to the undead motif of his design and emphasises how creepy he is. He crosses over into Light Is Good, however, at the eleventh hour.
• Modified Clone: Dinobot II was a clone of the original Dinobot, enhanced with half of Rampage's Spark and a Transmetal driver. This made him a powerful and bloodthirsty warrior loyal to Megatron and lacking all of the original's positive qualities... at least until the original Dinobot's personality asserted itself following Rampage's death.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Like his spark donor Rampage, he is all but immortal, able to survive, and heal from, damage that would otherwise be fatal.
• Obviously Evil: While none of the Predacons go out of their way to look benevolent, Dinobot seems designed to look as menacing and brutal as possible, with his undead motif, long claws, glowing red eyes, and even deeper growl than that of the original Dinobot.
• Redemption Equals Death: After saving the day in "Nemesis", Dinobot remains behind on the warship as it falls, giving up his life.
• Replacement Flat Character: To the original, now deceased Dinobot; this one doesn't have much personality aside from being Megatron's attack drone. Justified in that, as a clone powered by a piece of a spark that isn't his own, that's pretty much all he is. This stops being the case after Rampage is killed and Dinobot II begins to take after the original Dinobot's mannerisms.
• Replacement Goldfish: The subtext is certainly there. Dinobot II is Megatron's final and most triumphant attempt to recoup the loss of his defected (Megs would argue defective) lieutenant.
• Robo Family: As he has half of Rampage's Spark, Megatron at least considers them effectively brothers. Not that either of them share much in the way of kinship.
• Sixth Ranger: The very last addition to the Predacon ranks. And in a sense, to the Maximals as well.
• Sociopathic Soldier: The original Dinobot was a Blood Knight with a sense of honor. This version is a Psycho for Hire with a steady job.
• Soul Jar: Becomes this to Rampage, since he was created with half of his spark.
• Spanner in the Works: Had he not turned against Megatron at the deciding moment, the latter would have definitively won the Beast Wars and forever alter the timeline.
• That Man Is Dead: The Maximals make no effort save for the unproduced episode Dark Glass to try and sway Dinobot II over to their side, or remind him of his previous life. As far as they are concerned, he is just a copy of their old ally.
• Torture Technician: He serves as Megatron's main method of inflicting "discipline" on Rampage after his creation. Whenever the latter acts out, Dinobot II squeezes his half of their spark to bring him to heel, not even flinching at the fact that he's apparently suffering the exact same pain that his "brother" feels when doing so.
• The Undead: His skeletal beast mode definitely has this look to it. His robot form similarly has a ghoulish appearance that gives the sense that he's a corrupted version of the original Dinobot brought back from the dead.
• Undying Loyalty: Created to be this to Megatron- a lethal enforcer with no will of his own save to serve his master.
• The Unfettered: Megatron designed this Dinobot to be a more powerful version of the original, but without the sense of honor that made the original oppose his plans. As it turns out, this didn't stick as much as Megatron might have hoped.
• Walking Spoiler: It's impossible to talk about him without mentioning that the original Dinobot died.
• Wolverine Claws: Unlike his generally more heroic predecessor, who used a sword, Dinobot II's main weapon were the razor-sharp talons on his hands.

---