Characters / Transformers: Generation One - Decepticons - 1986 to 1987

G1 Character Index: Autobots ('84-'85) ('86-'87) ('88-'90) | Decepticons ('84-'85) ('86-'87) ('88-'90)

This character sheet is for listing the tropes related to Transformers: Generation 1 Decepticons introduced between 1986 and 1987, most of whom debuted in the movie or the post-movie seasons of the cartoon.

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1986 Decepticons

Galvatron (ガルバトロン garubatoron)

Function: City Commander

Alt Mode: Cybertronian Artillery Unit

"My power is everything; defeat is absurd!"

Voiced by: Leonard Nimoy (The Transformers: The Movie), Frank Welker (The Transformers), Jeff Manning (Call of the Future) (EN), Seizō Katō (JP)

A powerful, cold-hearted and oftentimes-insane Decepticon, Galvatron is a dangerous Decepticon leader. While mostly known for being a reformatted Megatron after a chance encounter with Unicron following a final battle with Optimus Prime, sometimes he's an ancient Transformer warlord, separate from either entity.

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• Adaptational Badass: His comic selves were shown to be immensely powerful, shrugging off multiple Autobot assaults in rapid succession, and surviving many experiences that could have killed other Transformers. In the IDW comics, he even killed a Prime!
• Adaptational Wimp: Galvatron II suffers this in Regeneration One.
  • In Issue #0, it is revealed that he only managed to kill his version of Rodimus Prime because the time-jumping mainstream Hot Rod distracted his counterpart at a crucial moment (not to mention he had Cyclonus and Scourge backing him up, making his victory far less impressive either way).
  • UK Galvatron battled Ultra Magnus many times, and won all but the last fight. Galvatron II battles Ultra Magnus twice during Regeneration One, losing to him the first time and being killed by him during the second encounter.
• All Take and No Give: When Energon-low Decepticons (who'd already given Energon to bring back Galvatron) were hired by the Quintessons to take on the Autobots with enough Energon to keep going, they're seen as "disloyal," and Galvatron makes no bones about it. Swindle calls him out on it.
  Swindle: They gave us Energon! They led us on this raid! What can you give us that they didn't?
• Angrish: Cartoon Galvatron was pretty prone to yelling "BWAAAAAA!"
• Arch-Enemy: To Rodimus Prime and Ultra Magnus.
• Arm Cannon: Galvatron wields a powerful particle cannon much like Megatron's fusion cannon.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • In the third season, he becomes so unstable that Cyclonus and Scourge take him to a planet designed to deal with psychotic people. Galvatron ultimately ends up driving the planet itself insane when it connects to his mind. It's a bit of a Deconstruction as Galvatron is so batshit insane that he foregoes making plans and just beats the hell out of whatever happens to piss him off, it makes him dangerous, but not more of a threat than Megatron.
  • Meanwhile, the UK comic version starts off as relatively composed. However, it soon becomes clear he's holding back a great deal of madness, and circumstances keep pushing him over the edge.
• Bad Boss:
  • Whereas Megatron was genuinely respected by his warriors, Galvatron is feared and hated for his erratic tendency to suddenly kill them for the most insignificant of slights.
  • In his first appearance, the Marvel US version threatens to kill Wildfly for bad-mouthing him, then actually does kill Cyclonus for being overpowered by an Autobot.
    "I only saved you so I could destroy you myself."
• The Bad Guy Wins: One alternate universe Galvatron (dubbed "Galvatron II") managed to conquer Earth and allow Unicron to devour Cybertron in his universe.
• Barbarian Hero: He's far from being a hero, but his portrayal in the IDW continuity perfectly fits the bill.
• Berserk Button:
  • Starscream. The winning Batman Gambit of "Target: 2006" relies entirely on Galvatron's sheer hatred for him (and Starscream's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder).
  • In The Rebirth, Part 3, he's completely angry at the Decepticons who came back from Nebulos now as Headmasters and Targetmasters and would have scrapped the -Master partners if not for Zarak revealing he had the Key to the Plasma Energy Chamber. Lampshaded by TFWiki.net:
  "You mean you don't like the whole master idea, Mighty Galvatron?"
  "OF COURSE I DON'T! HOW DID YOU THINK I'D REACT?!"
• BFG: He transforms into a futuristic howitzer cannon.
• Big Bad: As he's (usually) Megatron himself in an upgraded form, Galvatron naturally fills this role. Even in the IDW-verse where he's a separate entity, he managed to become Decepticon leader following Megatron's Heel–Face Turn.
• The Caligula:
  • After his being submerged in a lava pit on the planet Thrull, he went into a more insane state after his "sanity chips" had suffered from being in a "plasma bath" that long.
  • The Marvel US version (a.k.a. Galvatron II) clearly had a few screws loose, talking to, yelling at and shooting Rodimus' corpse.
• Came Back Strong: Following Megatron's deal with Unicron in his near-death throes, he became far stronger than before as a result, as Starscream can attest to.
• Continuity Drift: In the Transformers UK series, this happened with Galvatron when Simon Furman took over writing the US Transformers comic and wanted to bring Megatron back. While Megatron had survived Shockwave's attempt to drive him to suicide in the UK comic, he was still dead in US comic canon and could not simply evoke the UK canon since no one in the US knew about the Transformers UK stories. So for the UK stories, the Megatron Galvatron ran around with in the Time Wars was made into Lord Straxus, who put himself inside a clone body of Megatron (although that later revelation resulted in a Continuity Snarl, since Time Wars had Galvatron remembering events through the clone's eyes).
• Crown-Shaped Head: The three crests on his head evoke a crown, symbolizing his leadership of the Decepticons.
• Deal with the Devil: Megatron's transformation into Galvatron was essentially a Faustian pact with Unicron.
• Decomposite Character: In some continuities (especially the IDW comics), Galvatron is a completely separate entity from Megatron rather than an upgraded iteration of the latter.
• Depending on the Writer: Galvatron's relationship with Megatron. In most cases he is an upgraded Megatron going by a new name. However, the IDW comics show him as a completely separate entity from Megatron.
• Didn't Think This Through: In issue 78 of the Marvel comic, Galvatron encounters the resurrected Megatron and tries to kill him under the pretense of "breaking the cycle" by destroying his past self before he becomes Galvatron. Thankfully, Galvatron regains some clarity, acknowledging that killing his past self, even if he's from an alternate timeline, is a very stupid idea, both for potential time travel paradoxes and the fact he has no reason to do so.
  Galvatron: I almost... I almost killed myself!
• The Dreaded: The mere mention of Galvatron conjures despair in the bravest of hearts, and whereas Megatron was respected by his own warriors (except Starscream), said warriors now fear for their lives every waking moment thanks to Galvatron's temper and insanity.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: The Headmasters anticlimactically buries Galvatron under mounds of ice, which serves to write him out of the series and the rest of the Japanese continuations of the original cartoon. Bear in mind he managed to survive an exploding planet beforehand.
• Enemy Mine: He starts to propose a truce with Hot Rod in order to fight Unicron. Unfortunately, Unicron is still able to cause Galvatron pain to keep him in line, having Galvatron attack Hot Rod instead.
• Evil Laugh: With a gloriously-goofy-sounding one in the Malaysian-dub.
• Evil Old Folks: IDW Galvatron, who's a good twelve million years old, and has been killing and murderising pretty much everyone that's gotten in his way all that time.
• Evil Overlord: He's the Decepticon leader given a considerable upgrade. Even when he isn't, he still commands a powerful army and even takes command of the Decepticons.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Leonard Nimoy and Seizo Kato provided fairly gravelly voices for him. Frank Welker averted this, providing Galvatron with the voice he used for Mr. Mxyzptlk and Jorak Uln.
• Faux Affably Evil: Target: 2006 Galvatron initially acts calm, reasonable and measured. It eventually becomes clear that Galvatron is not all the way sane (and this is before he starts really going mad).
• Graceful Loser: After the Hate Plague crisis is resolved in "The Return of Optimus Prime", he graciously calls a temporary ceasefire.
  Galvatron: There will be no war today, Optimus Prime; you have earned Galvatron's respect.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Even Megatron had a better temper than Galvatron did, the latter who's liable to flip out and attack anyone in his proximity.
• Hero Killer:
  • The Marvel US version helped Unicron destroy Cybertron, and in an alternate future, pretty much every Autobot's dead (including Rodimus Prime, whose corpse has been strung up between the ruins of the World Trade Center).
  • The UK comic version killed several of the Wreckers when they fought him.
• I Hate Past Me: Marvel US version actually tries to beat an insensate, just-revived Megatron to death when they meet, thinking it will cure his madness. His UK version's first order of business was usurping Megatron and burying him alive.
• Implacable Man: The Galvatron that appears in Dreamwave's Armada comic just effortlessly walks through the local Decepticons (of whom, admittedly, there are only three, besides Megatron). Had the Air Strike Team decided not to help out, he would've killed Megatron too.
• Informed Ability: He's actually a Triple Changer, his second transformation being a human-sized laser pistol. This was never brought up in the cartoon, and only shown once in the Marvel UK comics (where he had forced a terrified bystander to transport him covertly). His Dreamwave profile notes it, but has Cyclonus declaring most aren't "worthy" enough to wield it.
• Joker Immunity:
  • The Marvel UK incarnation basically had nearly all of his appearances involve something that would turn anybody else to scrap metal, but he kept coming back, over and over. It eventually took a time rift erasing him from existence to get rid of him for good.
  • His IDW self has returned from apparent death several times. First when the Ark was sent to the Dead Universe and its crew revived as undead beings, then when he was thrown into a solar pool by Optimus Prime and survived against all odds, then when the D-Void seemingly atomized him (in actuality sending him back to the Dead Universe), until he finally gets killed by Optimus Prime in the climax of All Hail Optimus. But considering how his head survived, and his Titans Return toy has a Titan Master that turns into his head, he probably would have returned from even that had the series not been rebooted.
• The Juggernaut: Galvatron in the UK Marvel comics was so powerful, it's easier to list the attempts to hurt him that actually do something.
• Kneel Before Zod: Played completely straight:
  Galvatron: Before a society can move forward, all must agree on the rules. Now kneel!
• Large Ham: It does not help that Frank Welker decided to give Galvatron a high-and-screechy voice, not unlike another screeching-and-effeminite villain called Skeletor.
• Laser-Guided Karma: His very being is arguably such to the Decepticons in the cartoon. When trying to evacuate from their battle with the Autobots in the movie, they are quick to eject any injured Decepticons that are holding down Astrotrain, their leader Megatron included. This chains off the events that ultimately leave them with the far more insane and abusive Galvatron as their general.
• Laughably Evil: In the cartoon, his sheer insanity makes him a blast to watch.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Doesn't care about any battle tactics, opting to charge into battle recklessly.
  Cyclonus: Mighty Galvatron, we must use strategy!
  Galvatron: STRATEGY IS FOR COWARDS! (punches Cyclonus)
• Light Is Not Good: Galvatron's original toy, in contrast to his design in The Transformers: The Movie, was predominantly bright white. This color scheme carried over to his appearance in the Marvel comics (as well as "Galvatron II") and even his post-Dark Cybertron IDW body.
• Losing Your Head: His Titans Return toy has a mini-Megatron lookalike named Nucleon who turns into his head.
• Mood-Swinger: In Season 3 of the cartoon, he could switch between calm, insanely gleeful, sarcastic, terrified, enraged at the drop of a hat. It was even lampshaded in one episode.
  Galvatron: (after being told to stop) And just how do you intend to stop me? You lump of—
• Nigh-Invulnerability: He's often portrayed as being nearly unbeatable. Some sources claim that this is due to him drawing power from Unicron himself.
• One-Man Army: Comic Galvatron is usually capable of plowing through anything thrown at him.
• Pet the Dog: In the IDW comics, a Sweep mistakes Autobots for a threat and attacks them, but is shot down and found by Galvatron. He heals the Sweep, and claims to be the Savior of Cybertron and that they all need to unite to save it.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: His IDW counterpart is a barbaric ten million-year old badass.
• Psychopathic Manchild: In Season 3 at times, his behaviour's similar to that as a spoilt child with a horrible temper with Cyclonus being the "damage control" for the Decepticons and he's leader of an entire army of Decepticon warriors. He definitely fits the third dot point of the trope.
• Purple Is Powerful: Galvatron is often depicted as being purple, and there's no denying that he's very powerful.
• Red Baron: In Beast Wars: Uprising, he's remembered as "The Mad Tyrant".
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Cartoon Galvatron is the loud, rash, insane red to his lieutenant Cyclonus' logical, rational blue.
    Cyclonus: Mighty Galvatron please! We must use strategy and—
    Galvatron: [punches him into outer space] Strategy is for COWARDS!
  • Inverted with the comics, where Galvatron is the calm, cunning blue to Cyclonus' hot-headed red.
• Related in the Adaptation: In the IDW comics, Galvatron and Arcee are twins.
• Sanity Slippage: He wasn't exactly playing with a full deck before, but in the UK comics his second time-jaunt leaves him disoriented. Then, in a fight with some Autobots Blaster zaps him with his electro-scrambler, and much of Galvatron's remaining sanity evaporates.
• Sanity Has Advantages: While Megatron was never the perfect example of sanity, he did manage to be somewhat of a competent leader who earned the respect (but not necessarily loyalty) of many Decepticons. He retains this trait in the movie, being terrifyingly effective throughout with no one questioning his commands. However, after his plasma bath, he becomes a low functioning mood swinging sociopath who flies off the handle and is constantly questioned in his leadership abilities.
• Sanity Strengthening:
  • After being hit by the wisdom of the Autobot Matrix by Optimus Prime, Galvatron seems to regain some of his marbles, enough to show lucid appreciation for Prime in the end. This came into play in both "The Rebirth", where Galvatron shows himself to be a (comparatively) more calculating and reserved commander who can manage some amount of strategy again.
  • Zigzagged in the Headmasters cartoon, which for a while, similarly follows with the idea of Galvatron being a more cunning and stable commander. Then he reveals his master plan; to make himself into a Unicron-esque entity called "Grand Galvatron", with a new body made out of the components of most of his loyal soldiers. Sixshot, who is apparently planned for "donations", is quick to double cross Galvatron upon seeing his utterly ludicrous idea.
• Sadist: In "Starscream's Ghost", when he orders the execution of a traitor Decepticon, a Starscream-possessed Cyclonus manages to change his mind by appealing to his sadistic side and suggesting to keep him alive in order to torture and interrogate him.
• The Starscream:
  • Ironically for a character usually born of Starscream's treachery, Galvatron tends to plot against Unicron the first chance he gets ^note According to Flint Dille, Galvatron's relationship with Unicron was purposely intended to reflect the one he had with Starscream as Megatron.
    Galvatron: I now possess that which you most fear. You will do my bidding or taste my wrath!
    Unicron: You underestimate me, Galvatron. For a time, I considered sparing your wretched little planet Cybertron. But now, you shall witness its dismemberment!
  • Galvatron's Tech Specs note how he's a City Commander (therefore of a similar rank to Ultra Magnus) who plots against his allies and is determined to lead the Decepticons, as if he were one of Megatron's dragons and not Megatron himself.
• Stupid Evil: Galvatron from Season 3 onward is this to a T. He regularly abuses even his most loyal servants (often for no reason), charges blindly into battle without any form of strategy, and violently lashes out at the slightest inconvenience. This isn't a surprise at all given the severe dent to his sanity that he suffered.
• Tank Goodness: Like Megatron, most of Galvatron's modern toys are tanks.
• That Man Is Dead: Subverted in the cartoon (everyone knows Megatron and Galvatron are the same but don't make a big deal out of it) and deconstructed in the Marvel Comics, as the various time travelling Galvatrons have a hard time coping with past versions of themselves that somehow manage to cheat fate and not become Galvatron, often having to tell themselves that they are not Megatron to muster up the courage to attack their past selves.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Double subverted. Upon Megatron's initial reformatting in the movie, he is actually a fairly stable commander. However, his "plasma bath" in the third season alters Galvatron's sanity chips, rendering him insane.
• Tranquil Fury: In an O.O.C. Is Serious Business kind of way. In Season 3, when this happens, it means he's even more furious than usual.
• Two-Faced: His UK comics version got half his face blown off toward the end. That didn't help his sanity one iota.
• Unstoppable Rage: If someone ticks Galvatron off (something easy to do, given his degraded mental state), expect to see things blowing up.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • Surprisingly, he retains this with Soundwave after his transformation. This carries over to Transformers: ★Headmasters, where he showed genuine grief after Soundwave's death and cared enough to bring him back to life as "Soundblaster".
  • To a lesser degree, Season 3 of the cartoon series shows he had a similar relationship with Cyclonus, even though he didn't show it nearly as often as Cyclonus did.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Subverted; when Megatron first becomes Galvatron, he is perfectly rational. The insanity part usually comes soon after.

Cyclonus (サイクロナス saikuronasu)

Function: Saboteur

Alt Mode: Cybertronian Fighter Jet

"Compassion is the Autobots' downfall."

Voiced by: Roger C. Carmel & Jack Angel (EN), Minoru Inaba (series, movie) & Fumihiko Tachiki ("The Rebirth") (JP, Cartoon), Tomomichi Nishimura (JP, Headmasters)

Galvatron's second-in-command, created by Unicron from the remains of either Bombshell, or Skywarp. Or some guy named Life-Spark. Or was always Cyclonus; it various from continuity and fan you speak to. Fiercely loyal to Galvatron, he is often tasked with the thankless job of babysitting his insane leader.

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• Adaptational Dumbass:
  • Transformers: ★Headmasters inexplicably changed him and Scourge from genuinely menacing and formidable warriors into dumber Dirty Coward Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain comic reliefs who manage little more than cheap childish slapstick whenever they appear.
  • In the Marvel UK comics, he was dim enough to be outmaneuvered by a pair of human jet pilots, and later on loudly announced that he and Scourge had betrayed and killed Shockwave to become Decepticon leaders in their time - right in front of the present day Shockwave.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • In the IDW comics he's at his most heroic, pulling a Heel–Face Turn and becoming a brooding Anti-Hero, who nevertheless allies with and assists the Autobots.
  • The 2019 continuity goes one better, with Cyclonus being a reclusive Anti-Hero who, while not an Autobot, sides with them against the Decepticons.
• Adaptational Villainy: Whilst a Noble Demon in the cartoon, the Universe Wreckers comic and Rodimus Vs. Cyclonus comic both depict him as only pretending to be one to cover his cowardly duplicitous nature.
• The Berserker: In the IDW comics, Cyclonus's main conflict is that internally, he's a huge ball of rage, despite trying to be The Stoic, and wanting Nemesis Prime's peaceful "utopia." As the series goes on, he mellows, being calmer in action and more silent off the field, he mentions in issue 1 of the MTMTE ongoing, that if he gets into a real fight, he's gonna have trouble stopping.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Tries his best to steer his insane leader Galvatron on the path of reason but inevitabily fails and gets knocked around by the madman for his trouble.
• Co-Dragons: Alongside Scourge, he serves as Galvatron's highest-ranking minions.
• The Consigliere: In the cartoon, he is constantly trying to keep Galvatron's Ax-Crazy attitude in line. Compared to Starscream however, who is a compulsive Commander Contrarian, he's just trying to keep things smoothly for his master, aware many Decepticons are just a stone throw away from turning on their commander as much as the Autobots he risks diving head first into in his insane rampages.
• Continuity Snarl: Cyclonus in the US Marvel Comic, along with Scourge, had a blink and miss cameo appearance in "The Headmasters" comic in order to pimp their Targetmaster figures. This created a problem since the book was set in the present. Simon Furman ultimately fixed this by creating a time travel scenario where Cyclonus and Scourge would be sent back in time and ultimately hook up with Scorponok.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: Sunbow Cyclonus is one to Starscream; he took the Air Commander's place as Decepticon second-in-command with a jet alt-mode, but whereas Starscream was... well, The Starscream, Cyclonus is blindly devoted to Galvatron. He's also an honorable Noble Demon with great respect not just for Galvatron but also his adversaries, contrasting Starcream's self-centered Dirty Coward and Smug Snake tendencies.
• Cool Starship: He transforms into a space fighter, sometimes even serving as Galvatron's personal transport.
• Depending on the Writer: His true identity. In recent comic continuity, writers sidestep the issue by either having him be created by Unicron from scratch or having him be always Cyclonus and not a Transformer who got upgraded into a new body.
  • In the G1 cartoon, he was either Bombshell or Skywarp. Due to an animation error (in which both of them became an individual Cyclonus but only one was seen afterwards), this has been hotly debated.
    • Some debates Take a Third Option; namely that all the Decepticons save Megatron actually were dead when Unicron found them, and that Cyclonus was made from both Bombshell and Skywarp, accounting for Cyclonus' loyalty (a trait of Skywarp that Bombshell utterly lacks) and high intelligence and cunning (a trait of Bombshell that Skywarp utterly lacks).
  • In the Marvel comics, he was a Decepticon called Life-Spark.
  • In the Universe continuity, he's implied to be Bombshell, calling Skywarp his Armada.
  • In Macrocosmic Seekers, he's implied to be Skywarp.
  • In the Dreamwave comics, he's himself and a servant of Unicron, and there seems to be many of him.
  • In the IDW comics, he's still himself, an old Transformer from before the war.
  • The official Hasbro reveal for his War for Cybertron: Kingdom figure just couldn't decide:
  "CYCLONUS, a herald of UNICRON, first appears in the 1986 movie when BOMBSHELL/SKYWARP were reformatted into the second-in-command of GALVATRON."
• Demonic Possession: Possessed by Starscream's ghost in...well, Starscream's Ghost.
  • Cast as a Mask: Roger C. Carmel still voiced Cyclonus when the story demanded he "act normal" to fool Galvatron in that episode. When he made the deal to betray Galvatron to Rodimus, Chris Latta voices Cyclonus.
• Discontinuity Nod: IDW comics, after being erroneously labeled as a Decepticon throughout Heart of Darkness and Chaos (he really is non-affiliated), Cyclonus mentions in The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye that he isn't and never was a Decepticon, and in the issue before, he's seen protesting being locked up with the Cons, as he isn't one.
• Dumb Muscle: The Marvel UK version, who is even dumb enough to tell Shockwave that he and Scourge would help kill him one day. He is also this the Japanese Headmasters anime.
• Ear Ache: In The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Whirl breaks one of his horns in the first issue. He goes for over 30 issues before it finally gets fixed.
• Empathic Weapon: As a Targetmaster, his gun is formed by Nightstick.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the IDW comics, Cyclonus goes to activate a Nega-core, which will flood the positive universe with his Negative Universe, and he has several debates with himself over if he should activate the guardian, Thunderwing, who destroyed his planet. Ultimately he decides not to, but when the Autobots corner him, he banishes his doubts and activates the guardian.
• Evil Counterpart: To Ultra Magnus. This is actually lampshaded by a Quintesson scientist in "The Killing Jar". When their leaders seemed to attack them in an insane rage, BOTH Magnus and Cyclonus tried to use reason before they fought, only doing so when they "were given no other option."
• Evil Sounds Deep: Courtesy of Roger C. Carmel.
• Flat Character: Invoked by his Transformers Universe profile, which states he has no personality beyond being a ferocious warrior. Averted pretty much everywhere else, where he usually has some kind of personality.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: In the cartoon, he was created from either the remains of Bombshell or Skywarp, two low ranking Decepticons. In the UK continuity, he's a no-name Decepticon called "Life Spark".
• Informed Attribute: His Transformers Universe profile claims that he has an additional transformation, being able to trim back the wings and fins of his jet mode to become an interstellar rocket. No version of Cyclonus has ever displayed this.
• Noble Demon: Depends on the continuity; while he's willing to save Ultra Magnus from certain doom in the cartoon, he's more than willing to employ Death's Head to kill Shockwave so he wouldn't have to get his hands dirty himself.
• Number Two: To Galvatron. It has been stated he could easily become a better leader than Galvatron any time he wanted to, were it not for his Undying Loyalty to the maniac.
• Off with His Head!: His Marvel UK version gets his head torn off by Megatron.
• Only Sane Man: Shares this with Soundwave in Season 3. He serves as the voice of reason in the Decepticon command.
• Power Source: His jet engines are nuclear powered, allowing him to cruise at Mach 2 and reach escape velocity.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: A trait of his primarily in the cartoon and the original IDW run. It's exemplified in the latter, where he's an ancient warrior from the same barbaric age of Cybertron as Galvatron.
  Cyclonus: Warriors such as you and I should meet their end in battle.
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: In the Marvel UK comic, a Megatron clone decapitates Cyclonus. But his death, twenty years before his creation, created a time rift that threatened to consume the Marvel UK universe until his remains are fed to it.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The logical, rational blue to his commander Galvatron's brash, headstrong and insane red.
  Cyclonus: Mighty Galvatron please!! We must use strategy and—
  Galvatron: [punches him into outer space] Strategy is for COWARDS!
• Shrug of God: In-Universe. In a coded Ask Vector Prime from a Transformers Animated guidebook, Vector Prime, an immortal multiversal traveler, says that Cyclonus's identity varies by universe.
• Sizeshifter: Even though he is as tall as Galvatron, if not slightly taller, Cyclonus can fit his leader perfectly in his plane mode's cockpit.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Justified. Cyclonus's Tech Specs claim he has vast resources of power, from which he can draw upon in proportion to his current needs.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Nightstick is a former criminal thug, whose dishonorable nature often leaves him and Cyclonus at odds with each other.
• Undying Loyalty: To Galvatron. To emphasise, he uses Starscream's "Mighty Galvatron" addressing with complete sincerity.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: That "tells Shockwave they're going to kill him" bit mentioned up above? So much death could've been avoided if Cyclonus hadn't said that. The remark provokes Shockwave into finding a way to save himself, which kickstarts the whole Time Wars storyline, and Cyclonus' own death.
• Villainous Friendship: In S3 he is loyal to only Galvatron and the Decepticon cause, always staying by his leader's side. In "Webworld" he even attempts to find help for him when his insanity causes mutiny to stir in the ranks of the Decepticons, and demonstrates towards the end of the episode he'd rather have a psychotic boss than just a mindless machine (the therapists were about to lobotomise him). In "The Burden Hardest to Bear" he's the only Decepticon who stays by Galvatron's side after a Matrix-empowered Scourge usurps command of the Decepticon army.
• Worthy Opponent: He respects Ultra Magnus as a brother-warrior, and the feeling is mutual.

Scourge (スカージ sukāji)

Function: Sweep Leader

Alt Mode: Cybertonian Hovercraft

"Desolation follows in my tracks."

Voiced by: Stan Jones (EN), Yutaka Shimaka (Season 3, movie) & Masashi Hirose ("The Rebirth") (JP, Cartoon), Masaharu Sato (JP, Headmasters)

Created from a former Decepticon (originally former Seeker Thundercracker, though recent adaptations have him just be a Transformer named Scourge), he serves Galvatron as the leader of the Sweeps, a battalion of robotic doppleganger huntsmen who track down and assassinate elusive Autobots.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: His beard in the box art appears white (or light grey on his toy itself). In the cartoon, it's either dark blue, dark greyish blue, dark grey, or black.
• Adaptational Dumbass: Transformers: ★Headmasters inexplicably changed him and Cyclonus from genuinely menacing and formidable warriors into dumb Dirty Coward Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain comic reliefs who manage little more than cheap childish slapstick whenever they appear.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Marvel-UK Scourge was considerably smarter than his Sunbow cartoon counterpart.
• Beard of Evil: A stylish Fu Manchu and Goatee. Or Van Dyke.
• The Brute: Under Galvatron.
• Butt-Monkey: While Cyclonus gets his fair share of abuse from Galvatron, it is Scourge who truly bears the brunt of his leader's hideously-bad temper, as he is not one TENTH the warrior that Cyclonus is.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: In the IDW comics, after the Chaos event, the Dead Universe Transformers are all accounted for; Galvatron is temporarily dead, Cyclonus has pulled a Heel–Face Turn (kinda) and Jhiaxus has gone to cause trouble in space, but Scourge has disappeared. In the first issue of MTMTE, Cyclonus is seen searching for him, before leaving, and Sky-Byte mentions that a Sweep head looks like someone he knew. Editor John Barber eventually confirmed he was considered dead.
• Co-Dragons: Alongside Cyclonus, he serves as Galvatron's highest-ranking minions.
• Continuity Snarl: Scourge, in the US Marvel Comic, along with Cyclonus, had a blink and miss cameo appearance in "The Headmasters" comic in order to pimp their Targetmaster figures. This created a problem since the book was set in the present. Simon Furman ultimately fixed this (even though the Headmasters comic would not be published in the UK) by creating a time travel scenario where Cyclonus and Scourge would be sent back in time and ultimately hook up with Scorponok.
• Demonic Possession: Starscream possesses him in Ghost in the Machine.
• Dirty Coward: It's implied that the Sweeps in general are cowards, but after what happened to a Sweep that was shot in the eye in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 3" by Wheelie, soon after they recovered Galvatron, nobody would blame them.
  Sweep: My guidance system is hit! Galvatron, save meeeeee!
  Galvatron: Please, meet your end with dignity! I despise whiners!
• Disintegrator Ray: His vehicle mode's cannon fires a blast that destroys molecules, causing whatever it hits to dissipate.
• Empathic Weapon: The Nebulan Fracas transforms into his gun as a Targetmaster.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Fracas can explode into violent rages at the drop of a hat.
• Heel–Face Turn: At the end of the Timelines comics, a continuation of the G1 cartoon, Scourge signs a peace treaty on behalf of the Decepticons with the Autobots Neutrals and Second Generation Transformers that ends the war.
• Losing Your Head: Titans Return reinvents Fracas as an ancient Cybertronian Titan Master, and he forms Scourge's head as opposed to his weapon.
• Mook Lieutenant: His main role in the Decepticon Army is commanding the Sweeps, Mooks who either look almost or entirely identical to him.
• Obviously Evil: Aside from the normal Decepticon physical traits, Scourge (and thus also the Sweeps) takes the cake by having a Beard of Evil, demonic-looking wings and clawed fingers with red-painted fingernails.
• Out of Focus: While he's nominally part of a trio with Galvatron and Cyclonus, ol' Scourge tends to get the short end of the stick, almost never getting the same amount of face time as them.
  • Zigzagged in the Marvel Comic: Stateside readers didn't get much more than a couple quick cameos to promote his Targetmaster toy, but he was fairly prominent in UK exclusive storylines.
  • Dreamwave introduced him as a sort of Chekhov's Gunman, but the company folded before they could finish the story.
  • IDW planned to introduce him in All Hail Megatron as an Evil Counterpart to Kup, but Hasbro vetoed this idea. He was hastily retconned as a member of Nemesis Prime's crew along with Galvatron and Cyclonus, and made a handful of appearances before dying offscreen in some kind of Noodle Incident.
• Palette Swap: The Sweeps are occasionally subtle palette swaps of Scourge. The Wings of Honor continuity made them all paler blue than Scourge and certain toys of them are released with slight differences to Scourge's figure. Though of the time they look exactly like him and Scourge is distinguished only by appearing more.
• Powers via Possession: When he takes in the Autobot Matrix of Leadership in his own body, he turns into a hideous freak with the power of a hundred Decepticons and great madness to boot in "The Burden Hardest to Bear." Scourge wipes the floor with Galvatron and Cyclonus and usurps control of the Decepticons for a strike on Earth. However, Hot Rod, having seen the changes the Matrix did to Scourge, defeats him to reclaim it and become Rodimus Prime once again.
• Real Men Wear Pink: His claw-tips are painted pink, and Depending on the Artist, the tips of his toes as well.
• Remember the New Guy?: In the IDW comics, he just shows up in All Hail Megatron #14. In the Revelation miniseries the Dead Universe Transformers were: Nemesis Prime, Galvatron, Cyclonus, Straxus, Jhiaxus, and Grindcore. 14 states that Scourge was also one, despite having not been seen before.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: This is mostly an Informed Ability, but Scourge did display ridiculously powerful Telescopic Vision in an early part of the "Five Faces of Darkness" episode of the television series. Scourge was able to trace the trail of Galvatron's wild trajectory from the severed head of Unicron to the planet Thrull, light years away. He was also able to zero in and focus on Galvatron's hand protruding through the lava pit. But outside this one instance, Scourge's tracking skills are never displayed again.
• The Starscream: Even destroying the original Starscream doesn't save Galvatron from being betrayed by one of his closest subordinates. In "The Burden Hardest to Bear", a Matrix-empowered Scourge succeeds in defeating Galvatron and temporarily seizing command of the Decepticons.
• Super-Senses:
  • Demonstrated when a storm erupts on Jupiter (from Galvatron shooting at it) is audibly painful to the Sweeps, but not Galvatron or Cyclonus.
  Sweep 1: This is blowing out my audio sensors!
  Sweep 2: It's torture!
  Galvatron: [Evil Laugh] No, no, it's music! The symphony of destruction and the anthem of agony!
  • At the beginning of "Five Faces of Darkness", Scourge is able to telescopically track Galvatron's trail light years away, and zoom in on him in his plasma bath.
• Uniformity Exception:
  • Scourge, while usually visually indistinguishable from his Sweeps, has a completely different voice (with different voice actors) from them (Scourge has a deep voice while the Sweeps usually sound higher-pitched).
  • He is sometimes differentiated by being a slight Palette Swap, as mentioned above.
• Yes-Man: Unlike Cyclonus, he's not so willing to speak up against Galvatron's deranged choices.
• You Are Number 6: "Call of the Primitives" shows that the Sweeps are referred to by numbers rather than names.
  Sweep 6: Sweeps 6 and 7 coming in for a strike!

The Combaticons (コンバッティコン konbattikon)

Five Decepticons who transform into military-based vehicles. One way or another, they end up serving as Starscream's troops in several continuities.

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• Adaptational Heroism: Swindle and Blast Off are given more sympathetic characterizations in the IDW comics. Eventually, even Brawl has a Heel–Face Turn.
• Armies Are Evil: A concept present within the overall Decepticon faction, but made very overt with the Combaticons due to their military theming.
• Breakout Villain: Despite being the third Decepticon Combiner team introduced, the Combaticons have gone on to having much more prominence in media than other Combiner teams, with a prominent role in the IDW comics and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, with all their members present and given characterization. Most Combiner teams by comparison are lucky if their leader is given any focus, less so any of the other individual members.
• Combining Mecha: They merge into Bruticus.
• Cool Mask: All of them with the exception of Swindle are easily identified by their faceplates and visors.
• The Dividual: In early Japanese continuity they were this, but other than that instance, as seen in Breakout Character above, this has been averted hard.
• Face–Heel Turn: According to the Transformers: Wings of Honor comics, they were once part of the Autobot Elite Guard.
• Hidden Depths: In "The Rebirth", it is the Combaticons who build the giant rocket thruster used to push Cybertron out of orbit.
• Multiple-Choice Past: In the Sunbow cartoon, Starscream created the bodies from junked WWII vehicles and inserted the minds of five renegade Decepticons. Said Decepticons could also have been part of the Autobot Elite Guard who defected to Deathsaurus' Decepticons to later be imprisoned by Megatron's Decepticons (to coincide with the TV origin, yet still with some slight discrepances). And so on.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Were among the Decepticons shown boarding Scorponok in the third part of "The Rebirth", and are never seen again after.

Onslaught (オンスロート onsurōto)

Function: Combaticon Leader

Alt Mode: Anti-Aircraft Truck

"The mind is the greatest weapon."

Voiced by: Marc S. Jordon, Terry McGovern ("The Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1") & Steve Bulen ("The Rebirth") (EN), Yutaka Shimaka (Seasons 2, 3 and Scramble City), Jin Horikawa ("The Rebirth") (JP, Cartoon), Michitaka Kobayashi and Kōji Totani (JP, Headmasters)

The captain of the Combaticons, as well as their primary strategist and tactician. One of Megatron's best generals, Onslaught prefers to call shots from afar. He forms the torso and head of Bruticus. His G1 toy also forms into a base/gun emplacement for Trypticon.

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• Arm Cannon: His Universe toy had a flip-out gun on his right arm as his primary weapon. Onslaught's Wings of Honor depiction drew from this design and the wrist cannon was shown to have an impressive range and a lot of firepower.
• Armchair Military: A rarity for leaders in the franchise, Onslaught chooses to lead from the back. Make no mistake, he's still a formidable fighter and is capable of being a Frontline General when the situation calls for it.
• Backpack Cannon: His anti-aircraft turret becomes a pair of twin back-mounted cannons in robot mode.
• Berserk Button: He flies into a rage whenever something unexpected messes up his plans.
• Dub Name Change: In the Italian G1 dub, he is called Destroyer.
• The Leader: Leads the Combaticons with his carefully-constructed plans.
• Leader Forms the Head: As is is usual for Combiners, he forms the head and torso of Bruticus.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Though he prefers to have his troops carry out his plans without getting his hands dirty himself, when he does personally enter the battlefield, he is a fierce combatant.
• Sonic Stunner: He uses a powerful stun gun, which Bruticus also uses. Said stunner is strong enough to "stun" a hillside into powder, so the term "stun gun" is used perhaps loosely.
• The Strategist: Rather than get his hands dirty, he prefers to devise strategies for his Combaticon subordinates to carry out on his behalf.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: He fires photon missiles equivalent to 3,000 tons of TNT.

Blast Off (ブレストオフ buresuto ofu)

Function: Space Warrior

Alt Mode: Modified International NASA Space Shuttle

"I destroy Autobots by choice, not command."

Voiced by: Milton James (as Milt Jamin) (EN), Show Hayami, Kenyū Horiuchi ("Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4") & Eiji Yanagisawa ("The Rebirth") (JP)

The aerial surveillance specialist for the Combaticons, Blast Off monitors Autobot activity from a suborbital distance, touching down to pounce on his enemies at just the right moment. He forms the right arm of Bruticus.

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• Adaptational Wimp: In Transformers: Wings of Honor, Blast Off is largely incapable of atmospheric flight. His shuttle mode was built to reach escape velocity and operate in the vacuum of space—a fact which leaves the team without flyers when Vortex is taken out. Most continuities, however, have Blast Off's altmode being able to operate fine in any atmosphere.
• Aloof Ally: He considers himself to be above the rest of his comrades — figuratively and literally, given that he's often out in space.
• Cool Plane: His Combiner Wars toy gives him a thematically more appropriate Harrier jet alternate mode (though this is due to being a redeco of the Aerialbot Quickslinger/Slingshot from the same line), despite transforming into a low-altitude attack jet being quite unfitting for the character.
• Death from Above: He's good at raining destruction down on Earth from orbit, with an x-ray laser that can hit targets over 12,000 miles away.
• Depending on the Artist: The portrayal of his face varies.
  • His original Generation 1 toy is sculpted with two large eyes similar to Swindle's, but his nose is painted the same color as his eyes to give him a visor. Said face also had a faceplate, and therefore, no visible mouth.
  • His Generation 2 repaint and Encore reissue left the nose unpainted to give him separate eyes as the sculpting intended.
  • In the cartoon, his face has a faceplate like his original toy, but his head crest is colored rather than his actual eyes, giving him a visor very high up on his face. His Unite Warriors figure uses this head as a reference.
  • His first Combiner Wars figure was recolored from Quickslinger's toy. As such, the figure retains Quickslinger's head, which has a visor but incongruous with any other depiction of Blast Off, no faceplate, and thus, a visible mouth. This head was used in the IDW comics. Some fans have found this choice of head bizarre, as the Quickslinger figure was a head retool of Firefly's figure, and Firefly possessed a faceplate that would have been more in line with how Blast Off was traditionally depicted. This led them to question why Firefly's head was not used instead. Said fans thus postulated that the designers prioritized the visor on Quickslinger's head as a more recognizable feature of Blast Off's face, as Firefly's head has a pair of eyes that are considerably smaller than those of Blast Off.
  • His second Combiner Wars figure, which was recolored from the Unite Warriors figure, gives him two large eyes, similar to the Encore reissue figure. As is the case with the Encore figure, this figure leaves the nose unpainted to facilitate this.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He likes to act as if he's superior to others, but that behavior is just a mask, to conceal how lonely he is when he's up in space.
• Token Good Teammate: Both IDW continuities portray Blast Off as the most sympathetic of the group. In the 2019 continuity he even defects from the Decepticons at the story's end.

Brawl (ブロウル, ブロール burōru)

Function: Ground Assault

Alt Mode: Leopard 1A3 Battle Tank

"I was built to be wild."

Voiced by: Tony St. James (EN), Toshio Ishii (JP)

A violent berserker with a hair-trigger temper, Brawl is a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. He forms the left leg of Bruticus.

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• Backpack Cannon: His tank turret becomes a back-mounted cannon in robot mode.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He is not only a strong fighter, but he's also a loud, noisy one.
• The Brute: Generally serves as the muscle of the individual Combaticons.
• Dumb Muscle: A fighter, not a thinker.
• Green and Mean: Brawl is almost always colored military green and he's a violent berserker.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He has an extremely foul temper that sets him off into a wild outrage.
• Lightning Gun: He carries a 10 megawatt electron gun in robot mode.
• Make Some Noise: He has a twin sonic cannon that can fire off sound at 300 decibels.
• No Indoor Voice: As his entry on the Transformers wiki states, if you can't hear him coming, you've probably gone deaf.
• Tank Goodness: He transforms into a tank and is The Brute of the Combaticons.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: His tank turret fires shells equivalent to 200lbs of TNT.
• Weaksauce Weakness: His turret is prone to locking up in sandy environments.

Swindle (スィンドル swindoru)

Function: Munitions Expert

Alt Mode: FMC XR-311 Combat Jeep

"Make deals, not war."

Voiced by: Johnny Haymer (EN), Osamu Saka (main, Season 2), Kōki Kataoka ("Aerial Assault"), Ken Shiroyama (main, Season 3), Yoku Shioya ("Five Faces of Darkness, Part 2"), Minoru Inaba ("Five Faces of Darkness, Part 3"), Takurō Kitagawa ("Webworld") (JP)

The munitions specialist for the Combaticons, Swindle sees the Autobot-Decepticon conflict as an opportunity for networking, cutting deals, and making profits. He forms the right leg of Bruticus.

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• Arm Cannon: His scatter blaster is mounted to his arm in the cartoon.
• Arms Dealer: He acts as the team's munitions expert, and he knows all about weapons and their market prices.
• Attack Its Weak Point: While he's fairly well-armored in jeep mode, a direct hit on his unprotected dashboard can completely incapacitate him.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: He's the only Combaticon to lack a faceplate and visor, leaving his face plainly visible. This distinction among his teammates reads like an attempt to appear more personable, an extremely valuable asset for a salesman like Swindle to have.
• The Barnum: Considering how his name is Swindle, it'd be kind of shocking if he didn't enjoy conning people out of cash/energon.
• Breakout Character: While they were all introduced and characterized together, he has gotten the most focus out of all of them in the years since, having the most moments away from the team in the cartoon, and is the most prominent Combaticon in the IDW comics. He's also the most heavily featured of the team's Transformers: Fall of Cybertron counterparts, as well as the only Combaticon to be adapted into Transformers: Animated. He would also receive a role in Transformers: EarthSpark.
• The Chew Toy: In the IDW comics. He's had an illegal weapon that drains a victim's energon tested on him, Optimus Prime once landed on him in truck-mode and crushed him, he's had his arm shot off and hung by a chain attached to his back for interrogation, and Astrotrain ran him over and dismembered him. Most of these happened to him for reasons contrary to his wrong doing.
• Didn't Think This Through: Asks Galvatron to his face what he can give the Decepticons that the Quintessions didn't and after stealing Metroplex's Transformation Cog, tries to bargain with Galvatron for it. He's lucky the Decepticon leader didn't kill him on the spot both times.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's a shameless Con Artist, yet even he is disgusted by how the Micromaster Airwave treats everything as an extortion racket.
• The Face: As a smooth-talking salesman, he often serves as the liason between the Combaticons and everybody else. In "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 3", Swindle is even sent to negotiate with the Quintessons on behalf of all the Decepticons on Chaar. Also quite literal, in that he's the only Combaticon with visible facial features.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Okay, maybe more like anti-heroic, but it's notable that a trio of Swindles (it's complicated) help Bulletbike in Transformers: TransTech despite the outrageousness of his story and lack of any major profit motive, and that Swindle is the only Combaticon to forego the more helmet-like visor-and-mask combination.
• Honest John's Dealership: He thrives on wheeling and dealing, and loves to... well, swindle people for his own materialistic personal gain.
• Non-Standard Character Design: In the cartoon, most Decepticons have red eyes (to show that they're the bad guys). Swindle stands out as one of the few with purple eyes. They're also noticeably pretty large, something that's consistent about his design starting from his original toy (in an age when Transformers actually looking like their toys or vice versa was... haphazard at best). Unlike his fellow Combaticons (including Bruticus), he's the only one who doesn't sport a faceplate/visor combo.
• Pragmatic Villainy: "Webworld" has Motormaster and Swindle disillusioned with the insane Galvatron, and give Cyclonus an ultimatum:
  Swindle: Either you do something about his craziness, Cyclonus—
  Motormaster: —Or we'll do something about both of ya!
• Yellow/Purple Contrast: Swindle stands out from fellow Combaticons thanks to his yellow and purple paintjob.
• You Don't Look Like You: His robot mode has a different design in the cartoon than the toyline, with the windscreen of his jeep mode forming his chest. As such, he transforms differently also.

Vortex (ボーテックス bōtekkusu)

Function: Interrogation

Alt Mode: Kaman SH-2 Seasprite Helicopter

"I'm Vortex, fly me - if you dare."

Voiced by: Johnny Haymer (EN), Ken Shiroyama (main, Season 2), Yoku Shioya ("Aerial Assault"), Toshio Ishii (main, Season 3), Osamu Saka ("Surprise Party"), Eiji Yanagisawa ("The Rebirth") (JP)

The reconnaissance specialist for the Combaticons, who also doubles as an interrogator. He forms the right arm of Bruticus.

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• Blow You Away: He can use his rotor blades to create wind funnels of speeds up to 300 miles per hour.
• High-Altitude Interrogation: This is his main way of interrogating enemies. However, he doesn't just hang them out of his helicopter altmode — he also takes them on death-defying wild rides until they spill the beans.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Creating wind funnels takes a toll on his rotors, leaving them vulnerable to breaking. It also severely limits his maneuverability, making him an easy target.
• I Lied: Of course, once his captives have given him the info he wants, Vortex tends to drop them anyhow.
• Psycho Party Member: He is sometimes portrayed as this, being one of the more openly sadistic Combaticons and a torturer. In the 2005 IDW comics he was the only one written without any redeeming qualities, Starscream even references his penchant for dropping Cybertronians from heights to kill them.
• Sticky Situation: He uses a semi-automatic glue gun that traps his targets in place.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once he's done interrogating his victims, he usually lets them drop to the ground.

Bruticus (ブルーティカス burūtikasu)

Function: Super Warrior

"The road to conquest is paved with Autobot wrecks."

Voiced by: Roger C. Carmel (EN), Yutaka Shimaka (JP, Cartoon), Michitaka Kobayashi & Ryōichi Tanaka (JP, Headmasters)

The combined form of the Combaticons. Envisioned as the ultimate front-line soldier, Bruticus was specifically designed to be more resistant to artillery and radiation than previous combiners. Though lacking in intelligence and imagination, he is nevertheless a formidable warrior when a strong leader is guiding his actions.

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• Achilles' Heel: In the G1 Cartoon, he had three target points on his back, that when struck would take him down. Transformers: Wings of Honor and the 2005 IDW Continuity emphasized his durability but noted that his main weakness was his eyes (Dion blasting him in the former caused him to separate and Ironhide fired a rocket through them in the latter damaged Bruticus's cranium so much he had to break up). The target points were also present in Wings of Honor but never taken advantage of by his enemies.
• Desperately Needs Orders: He is a force to be reckoned with and capable of easily pulverising Autobugs, but without orders to follow, he's liable to just stand around the battlefield, looking confused. This unquestioning obedience to orders, however, makes him the perfect soldier in Megatron's eyes, and as such, Megatron has frequently wished that he had an army of Bruticuses.
• Dumb Muscle: He's a model military grunt. This is good in that he'll faithfully execute any commands his commanders give him...but it's bad in that he won't think for himself and won't even do anything if there's no one to tell him what to do.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Courtesy of Roger C. Carmel.
• Helicopter Blender: In "The Revenge of Bruticus", he uses Vortex's helicopter blade (which is attached to his right arm) to shred a couple mooks.
• Hulk Speak: Speaks this way in the cartoon and the Dreamwave comics.
• The Juggernaut: He tries, he tries so hard. Wings of Honor shows him as one, having heavy weapons and near-invincible armor, he rips his way through the Elite Guard, and even when he's brought down, there's barely enough of them left to form a team.
• Mighty Glacier: He isn't quick or agile, but he is able to lift up to 500,000 pounds.
• Out-of-Character Moment: "Fight or Flee" has Bruticus acting as Galvatron's right hand man and is more eloquent than usual as well as the fact that his components are seen separately before cutting back to Bruticus alongside Galvatron in the control room.
• Super Prototype: In Transformers: Wings of Honor he's established as the first combiner and he single-handedly slaughters almost all of the Autobot Elite Guard. The Decepticon's follow-up, Devastator, was taken down much easier.

Gnaw (ノー nō)

Function: Assault Sentry

Alt Mode: Alien Shark

"I live for the taste of an Autobot's fuel line!"

Voiced by (generic Sharkticons): Frank Welker, Bud Davis (speaking in "The Quintesson Journal"), Jim Cummings (1952) and various others (EN), Ken Yamaguchi, Minoru Inaba & Keiichi Nanba (JP, movie), Kenyuu Horiuchi & Masashi Ebara (JP, series)

A Sharkticon from planet Quintessa, Gnaw's loyalties lie with whoever feeds him. He must get lots of food from the Decepticons, then, as he proudly wears their symbol.

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• Adapted Out: While Sharkticons were present in The Transformers: The Movie and Season 3 of the cartoon, none of them were allied with the Decepticons like Gnaw.
• Big Eater: As with all Sharkticons, and Gnaw in particular is loyal to whoever last fed him.
• Epic Flail: His weapon of choice in robot mode, which also acts as his shark-mode's tail.
• Heel–Face Turn: In at least one comic continuity, he's joined the Autobots and become Wheelie's best friend.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Presumably, like most Sharkticons, he's perfectly fine with devouring Cybertronians.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: Despite being referred to as sharks (Sharkticon/Sharktron), the only thing sharklike are their teeth. Their bodies are mostly like frogs while they have the spiked fins and tails like piranha.
• Mook Promotion: Once a Sharkticon identical to the rest of his kind, Gnaw now holds a spot in the Decepticon army.
• Sixth Ranger: Curiously, the Japanese G1 continuity classifies him as a Predacon.
• Threatening Shark: Well, his altmode is more akin to a robot frog pirahna thing.
• Uniformity Exception: His Decepticon insignia is the only thing distinguishing him from any other Sharkticon.

Octane/Tankor/Fuselage/Octone (オクテイン okutein, タンカー tankā, オクトーン okutōn)

Function: Fueler

Alt Modes: Extended Cab Tanker Truck, Boeing 767 Jet

"He who has fuel, has power."

Voiced by: Beau Weaver (EN), Kenyuu Horiuchi (JP, cartoon), Ryōichi Tanaka (JP, Headmasters)

A greedy Triple Changer who becomes a jumbo jet and a fuel tanker. Octane is a mean-spirited bully who enjoys forcing planes to abort landings and watching Decepticons painfully fall inoperative due to a lack of the fuel he is supposed to provide.

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• Achilles' Heel: In his tanker mode, he is heavily armored everywhere except for the underside.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Especially noticable compared to the other more consistent Decepticon Triple Changers.
  • In the Marvel comics he's a bully and Dirty Coward... most of the time. Other times he's a moderately competent soldier.
  • In the G1 cartoon he's a greedy opportunist who eventually goes neutral and befriends Sandstorm. This persists in the Wings of Honor continuity where he's a reluctant ally to the Autobot/Decepticon alliance.
  • In the classics continuity he's a high ranked soldier in Megatron's splinter faction and largely in it for the money.
  • In the Legends continuity... he's a pervert and tries to make a sexy video business. This was based on a gag from the cartoon in which he oggles a fembot.
  • In the IDW continuity he's a fairly standard soldier until post-war where he goes onto be one of the more moral ex-Decepticons and works to promote peace.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He'll do anything if it'll get him something in return. Just ask Galvatron about Trypticon's vacation in Carbombya.
• Dirty Coward: His Tech Specs give him a Courage rating of 3.
  Cyclonus: How dare you disgrace your ancestors by cowering like a pocket computer!
• Deflector Shields: He has a deflecto-shield that repels beams and artillery.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: His weapon of choice is a fuel-powered flamethrower, which is fed from his own tanks.
• Fragile Flyer: His jumbo jet form lacks any sort of armaments, putting him at his most vulnerable.
• Friendly Enemy: To Sandstorm, in the cartoon.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Octane's self-serving outlook and habits of making his allies beg for drops of fuel have made him one of the more despised Decepticons. That he's able to locate fuel and transport it as well as he does is probably what keeps Megatron from kicking him out.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: After the Decepticons kick him out in the cartoon, he sorta sides with the Autobots, getting a job as a salvage operator, and being friendly with Sandstorm. He never actually became an Autobot, but he did seem to scheme with Starscream and Rodimus to get Galvatron killed.
• I Have Many Names: At different points, he's been renamed Tankor, Fuselage, and Octone, almost always for trademark reasons.
• Kill It with Fire: In a surprising show of backbone, Octane once takes on a Scraplet monster with the other Triple Changer Decepticons in the Marvel comics. He sets it on fire with his flamethrower, which is powered by his large fuel supply.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • He dies in the Marvel comics, killed alongside his fellow Triple Changers against Starscream.
  • He's also killed in the War & Peace mini-series from the Dreamwave continuity.
• Losing Your Head: Sometimes the Titan Master Murk transforms into Octane's head.
• Off with His Head!: Courtesy of Slag in the Dreamwave continuity.
• The Starscream: He tried to be this in the cartoon episode "Thief in the Night". As with the original, this didn't work out well for him, and after getting kicked from the Decepticons, he meets the ghost of the REAL Starscream, who shows him how it's done.
• Troll: Loves to make commercial aircraft abort landings. The other Decepticons find such activities to be pointless. They're not particularly happy with his hobby of withholding fuel from them and watching as they fall painfully inoperative, either.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He teams up with Starscream and the Autobots to defeat Galvatron in "Starscream's Ghost", and when Galvatron comes back in the end, Octane just runs off, and is never seen again. Future appearances had him back in the Decepticons, but they might have just been animation errors. The fact that it's possible Octane's role in those episodes was meant to have been filled by Blitzwing doesn't help.
• Writing Around Trademarks: Due to Hasbro losing the rights to the name Octane, he underwent a couple name changes over the decades. Hasbro seems to have decided to just go with his original Japanese name, Octone.

The Predacons (Animatron (アニマトロン animatoron))

A quintet of wild and powerful Decepticons with powerful, savage animals as their beast modes. In some continuities, they are the forebears and original leaders of the Predacon faction from Beast Wars. In most continuities, they are able to combine in order to form the mighty Predaking.

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• Bright Is Not Good: The team might be colored red, orange and yellow, but they're still a group of dangerous bestial Decepticons.
• Combining Mecha: The team combine to form Predaking.
• Cool Sword: All five Predacons (including Rampage the gunner) and Predaking use swords as weapons, and all of them have some extra feature.
• The Dividual: Besides Razorclaw, none of the individual members exhibit much personality apart from each other, with Divebomb at best having his rivalry with Swoop in the Marvel continuity. On the least, this could be more justified given their shared love for the hunt making them act coordinated without questioning.
• Dumb Muscle: Headstrong and Tantrum, the two stronger, bulkier members who form the legs, aren't very smart.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Five Faces Of Darkness, Part 5 depicts them as completely ineffectual, trying and failing to kill Wheelie, Blurr and Marissa Fairborne and when they do merge into Predaking, they are soundly trounced by Sky Lynx.
• Evil Counterpart: A quintet of five vicious, near-feral robots with savage animal modes? Sounds like they fit the bill for the Dinobots (which their original commercial even pointed out).
  Megatron: Few Decepticons can stand up to the Dinobots, but the Predacons can!
  • Invoked by the rivalry between Divebomb and the Dinobot Swoop in the UK Marvel comics. When they picked up their rivalry on Earth, the rest of the Dinobots and the rest of the Predacons joined in the fight. The Dinobots were less than impressed.
  • After the Dinobots merge into the Beast in ''The Beast Within" comic series, the Predacons form Predaking to try and counteract it, only for the latter to be easily killed by the former.
  • This rivalry is also emphasized in the Power of the Primes toyline and the accompanying animated series, Earth Wars game, and the Generations Selects Special comic, all of which feature Predaking clashing with the Dinobots' combined form, Volcanicus.
• Foil: The Predacons are this to their Arch-Enemy in the cartoon, Sky Lynx. To wit, while they're a group of five Transformers that combine into the gestalt Predaking, Sky Lynx can split into two autonomous components that are still considered parts of him. While the Predacons have humanoid robot modes, animal alternate modes, and a humanoid combined form, Sky Lynx's combined robot mode and those of his components are animalistic, and he has vehicular alternate modes for both his components and combined form. Ironically, the Predacons were initially conceived as an Autobot subgroup called the Anibots, which would have debuted in The Transformers: The Movie and whose members would have beastial alt-modes and could combine into a massive robot dragon. On the other hand, Sky Lynx was frequently shown in the cartoon bearing a Decepticon insignia, suggesting that a character model of him with the insignia existed (and not by animation errors) and was being used frequently in the cartoon, leading to speculation that he was initially planned to be a Decepticon.
• Killed Off for Real: The hunters became the hunted in the Marvel comics thanks to Starscream during his Underbase power-trip. Some continuations of the story have some or all of them recover, however.
• Mythology Gag: The stickers included with the Predacons' Power of the Primes figures contain the Japanese ID numbers of their respective G1 figures as part of their detail.
• Non-Indicative Name: While powerful and highly dangerous, buffalo and rhinos are not predator animals.
• Predecessor Villain: Certain continuities establish them as the founders of the Predacon faction in Beast Wars. When the Decepticons accept the Autobot's offer for peace, the Predacons separate from them, gathering together former dissidents and protoforms to begin the conflict anew.
• Remember the New Guy?: The Predacons simply show up without any origin in the original cartoon's third season, though Japanese media would claim they were created by the Quintessons as a means of gaining the Decepticons' trust during "Five Faces of Darkness" (though that explanation ignores Razorclaw, Headstrong and Divebomb briefly being seen among the Decepticon forces beforehand).
• The Rival: They've had a couple over the course of the G1 continuity.
  • As mentioned above, under Evil Counterpart, a commercial and various pieces of media pit them against the Dinobots.
  • The cartoon gives them a recurring enmity with the massive and powerful Autobot, Sky Lynx. This is reminiscent of fellow Decepticon combiner Devastator's rivalry with the another massive Autobot super soldier, Omega Supreme. Notably, Sky Lynx and Omega Supreme had a common origin, with both characters' toys having been manufacted by Tomy under contract by a company called Toy Box, whom Hasbro licensed the toys from as Transformers characters.
  • The Headmasters anime frequently depicted the Japanese original Autobot combiner Raiden sparring with Predaking. Despite this, Raiden's on-package bio stated that his rival was Devastator, a nod to how both combiners originated in the precursor Diaclone toyline before their figures were incorporated into the Transformers franchise.
• Sixth Ranger:
  • The Japanese G1 continuity strangely classifies the Sharkticon Gnaw as a member of the Predacons.
  • Predaking's Power of the Primes figure additionally includes the Prime Master of Onyx Prime, one of the original Thirteen Transformers.
• Sword and Gun: All the Predacons use swords and guns at the same time, and each of those has a distinctive function or advantage.

Razorclaw (レーザークロー rēzākurō)

Function: Predacon Leader

Alt Mode: Lion

"All good things succumb to those who wait."

Voiced by: Joe Leahy (EN), Minoru Inaba (JP)

The captain of the Predacons, and one of the most fearsome assassins in the Decepticon ranks. He forms the head and torso of Predaking.

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• Absurdly Sharp Blade: His claws are able to rip through one foot-thick steel.
• Evil Gloating: He tells Forrest Forsythe that the Autobots are the Decepticon's mortal enemies in "Toy Soldiers!" for pretty much this. Forrest ends up having a Heel Realization upon realizing that Walter Barnett was indeed telling the truth about two separate Transformers factions.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His habit of remaining perfectly still until he believes the time is right to strike can sometimes lead to his joints locking in place, severely hampering his movement.
• In a Single Bound: In lion mode, he can leap distances as long as a football field (120 yards or 110 meters).
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: He wields twin concussion blasters, which do the bulk of their damage through physical force.
• King of Beasts: He transforms into a mechanical lion and commands the Predacons, who also transform into beasts.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: In "Nightmare Planet", after being freed from Daniel's nightmares, they're ready to go after Rodimus and the Autobots — all except Headstrong, whose leg had been injured by a giant Nightmare Galvatron badly enough to keep him from transforming into his beast mode. Knowing that without him, they can't form Predaking, Razorclaw calls for a retreat (since without Predaking, the odds are with the Autobots, not them).
• The Leader: Of the Predacons.
• Leader Forms the Head: As is usual for Combiner leaders, Razorclaw forms the head and upper torso of Predaking.
• Near-Villain Victory: According to his 2005 Fun Publications bio card, he very nearly won the war between the Autobots and Predacons... but then the Tripredacus Council had him killed as part of their own machinations which lead to their The Friend Nobody Likes status amongst the other Predacons.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: He doesn't clown around when he's on the hunt — he won't waste a drop of Energon unless he's certain the results are worth it. He's willing to go long periods of staying motionless (causing others to mistake this for laziness) until the opportune time to strike, when he finally goes all-out. In addition, in the Marvel US story "Toy Soldiers" when he, Ratbat and the other Predacons storm Triple I's base to make sure the Throttlebots are dead, Razorclaw guns down a fleeing soldier In the Back, on-panel!
• Vibroweapon: He wields a sonic sword, the vibrations of which shatter metal on contact. Predaking also uses this sword as a weapon.

Divebomb (ダイブボム daibubomu)

Fuction: Aerial Assault

Alt Mode: Eagle

"Conquer the skies and below you will fall."

Voiced by: Laurie Faso (EN), Kenyuu Horiuchi (JP)

The Predacons' independent-minded air warrior, who likes to "live comfortably" when he's not hunting targets. He forms the left arm of Predaking.

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• Affably Evil: He's the most cheerful of the Predacons, particularly (and especially) when he has several targets to choose from while in the air.
• Brutal Bird of Prey: He's the only Predacon whose alternate mode is not mammalian. Specifically, he's an eagle.
• Feathered Fiend: He transforms into a mechanical eagle.
• Head Hat: The head of his eagle mode serves as a helmet of sorts for his robot head.
• Laser Sight: Has a very unusual example in that his sword uses it — specifically, it locks onto a target and guides the sword towards it.
• The Rival: To Swoop, the Token Flyer of the Dinobots. In the Marvel comics, he took Swoop's original name (Divebomb) for himself after besting him in combat.
• Sigil Spam: His Power of the Primes figure becomes this if you choose to apply all of his stickers, as most of the many stickers that go on his wings each has a miniature Decepticon symbol printed on them.
• Thieving Magpie: He has shades of this, using late-model sports cars (among other things) to build mecha-nests for himself on buildings and mountains.
• Token Flyer: He's this for the team as his alt mode is an eagle.
• Weaksauce Weakness: His internal guidance system is vulnerable to electromagnetic interference, which causes him to lose control and even crash.

Headstrong/Headlock (ヘッドストロング heddosutorongu)

Function: Ground Assault

Alt Mode: Rhinoceros

"The best advice is not to listen to advice."

Voiced by: Ron Feinberg (EN), Takurō Kitagawa (JP)

The ground assault specialist for the Predacons, Headstrong is stubborn and reckless. He uses his tenacity to compensate for his shortcomings, such as his lack of intelligence. He forms the left leg of Predaking.

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• Energy Ball: He uses a plasma-sphere shooter that fires explosive energy balls.
• Hollywood Acid: He releases corrosive acid from his rhino mode's horns.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He acts stubborn to hide his own deep insecurities. Too bad for him that he's more susceptible to psychological (rather than physical) attacks.
• Master of Illusion: He uses a diffraction sword, which bends light and makes him appear somewhere he isn't while hiding his true location.
• Rhino Rampage: A thick-headed bruiser whose beast form is a rhinoceros.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Thanks to his deep-seated insecurities, he's vulnerable to this. If an opponent starts questioning his resolve, he's more likely to collapse under the weight of his own doubts than from an enemy attack.
• Use Your Head: Since he transforms into a horned animal, this is naturally a favored tactic of his.

Rampage (ランページ ranpēji)

Function: Gunner

Alt Mode: Tiger

"Those who conquer, act; those who are conquered think."

Voiced by: Laurie Faso (EN), Osamu Saka (JP, cartoon), Ryōichi Tanaka (JP, Headmasters)

A ferocious warrior who is easily distracted when Razorclaw isn't there to supervise his shenanigans. He forms the right arm of Predaking.

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• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Rampage is different type. Seemingly, television is his Fatal Flaw.
• The Berserker: He's a violent, destructive psychopath who cares about tearing enemies into shreds and not much else.
• Flaming Sword: He uses a thermo-sword that can reach temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: As his name implies, he is prone to frequent and violent rages.
• In a Single Bound: He can jump up to 300ft high and 500ft long in tiger mode.
• Lightning Gun: He uses a 60,000 volt lightning rifle as a weapon.
• Panthera Awesome: Transforms into a mechanical tiger.
• Unstoppable Rage: He goes through this a lot, and friend and foe get torn to shreds during these outbursts. Strangely, TV is one way of keeping him under control; rock music videos in particular keep him enraptured for hours.

Tantrum (タントラム tantoramu)

Function: Fueler

Alt Mode: Buffalo

"Anger gets me running better than any other fuel."

Voiced by: Philip L. Clarke (EN), Yutaka Shimaka (JP, cartoon) Masaharu Sato (JP, Headmasters)

A violent berserker who lives for brute force and destruction. He forms the right leg of Predaking.

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• Ax-Crazy: Lives for destruction and violence.
• The Berserker: He's a hateful, short-tempered thug who goes into violent frenzies in combat.
• Brutish Bulls: A violent, destructive brute who turns into a buffalo.
• Chemistry Can Do Anything: One of his weapons is a catalytic carbine, which sprays a foe with reactive chemicals and forms hazardous compounds on contact with metal.
• Informed Ability: His function is to refuel his teammates, and he carries four fuel tanks to serve this purpose. He's never seen actually performing that function.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: As his name implies, he is prone to frequent and violent rages.
• Horned Humanoid: Retains the horns from his beast mode in robot mode.
• Logical Weakness: His external fuel tanks, while heavily armored, could easily explode if breached by enemy fire.
• Shock and Awe: He wields an electro-sword and can shoot bolts of electricity from his horns (up to 20,000 volts).
• Use Your Head: Since he transforms into a horned animal, this is naturally a favored tactic of his.
• Writing Around Trademarks: Tantrum's later figures bear his Italian G1 name "Torox", likely owing to Hasbro not being able to trademark his original name.

Predaking (プレダキング puredakingu)

Function: Warrior

"Destroy first, ask questions later."

Voiced by: Bud Davis (EN), Minoru Inaba (JP, cartoon), Yukimasa Kishino (JP, Zone)

The combined form of the Predacons, Predaking serves as the ultimate hunting robot. Unusually sharp and clever for a gestalt combiner, Predaking's components are united by their shared love of the hunt, producing a single complete persona.

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• Arch-Enemy: Sky Lynx in the cartoon.
• Genius Bruiser: Unusually for combiners, the Predacons' mental merging as Predaking is successful, resulting in a highly effective (if animalistic) super warrior.
• God in Human Form: His Power of the Primes toy includes Onyx Prime's Prime Master, which is contained behind Razorclaw's lion head, and thus the robot chests of Razorclaw and Predaking. The inclusion of Onyx Prime's Prime Master, who was the first Transformer with a beast form, is likely owing to the animalistic nature of the team.
• Informed Ability: He is supposedly a nigh-unbeatable Genius Lightning Bruiser. In all the myriad continuities in which Predaking has appeared (excluding the toy commercials), however, the big guy acts like a dumb brute and has had perhaps one victory against anyone, and that was against the Combaticons.
• Non-Standard Character Design: After Devastator, Predaking is only the second gestalt in the franchise to not be a Scramble City combiner (a combiner wherein the robots that form its limbs can swap places with each other or other limb robots from other such combiners). The arms and legs of his G1 and Power of the Primes figures can swap sides, but are not interchangeable.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The individual Predacons are dangerous and well-armed by themselves, but as a combiner, Predaking takes it to a new level, being a successful (if animalistic) merge of the five who can easily demolish Autobots in one swoop.
• Shock and Awe: Predaking can generate a protective electric field.
• Wings Do Nothing: Divebomb's wings detach to form Predaking's wings. Though it looks visually impressive, Predaking is just too big to get any lift from them. Played for Laughs in the Power of the Primes where Predaking falls into a chasm and tries to flap them in an attempt to slow down his descent.

Ratbat (ラットバット rattobatto)

Function: Fuel Scout

Alt Mode: Micro-Cassette

"The road is my dinner plate."

Voiced by: Frank Welker (EN), Ken Shiroyama (JP, cartoon and Scramble City), Ken Yamaguchi & Hōchū Ōtsuka (JP, Headmasters)

The Decepticons' cold-blooded and efficiency-obsessed fuel scout, who tends to criticise the waste of fuel in each Decepticon plan. He's one of Soundwave's tapes, but sometimes he finds himself in a high position despite his size — often to the position of Decepticon leadership!

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• Adaptational Badass: His Marvel comics incarnation is a great deal more effective than his other characterizations; besides being a rather effective Decepticon leader for a Mini-Cassette, he managed to take on◊ Fortress Maximus. Sadly, he's never quite regained this level of prominence.
• Adaptational Intelligence: In the Sunbow cartoon, he was shown to have an animalistic intelligence like all animal Transformers. In the Marvel comics, he was Cybertron's chief fuel auditor, with a talent for calculating expenditures and profits. The Japanese cartoons split the difference: He filled the same role that his Western animation counterpart did, but was smarter (Properly Paranoid of Autobot spy Counterpunch) and capable of speech.
• Adaptation Species Change: His original toy's bat form resembles a fruit bat, while his cartoon and future appearances are modeled after a vampire bat, which better reflects his abilities.
• Bat Out of Hell: His robot mode is that of a giant mechanical bat.
• Big Bad: Some continuities have him be in some position of Decepticon leadership.
  • In the Marvel comics, it was really more of a Big Bad Duumvirate with Scorponok, until Scorponok killed him.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Decepticon equivalent of one, using "fuel" and "energy efficiency" in the context that a human would use "money" or "profit." An issue of the Marvel comic mentions that he was an accountant before the war.
  Narrator: On Cybertron, Ratbat was an accountant. He used to count fuel stockpiles. But since his arrival on Earth, this energy-efficiency expert has become commander of this planet's Decepticons. Today he prepares to count Autobot casualties. To Ratbat, it's all the same job... just a different inventory.
• Corrupt Politician: In the IDW comics, he is shown to have once been a senator who did immoral things for profit, such as arming Megatron's little band of gladiators (not that it ended well for him).
• Depending on the Writer: While most continuities have him capable of speech and put him in some high ranking position, the cartoon merely made him The Unintelligible and a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Laserbeak.
  • The Dreamwave comics attempted a sort of middle ground; during the War Within era he's a relatively powerful warlord with a bipedal body◊. However, once Shockwave conquered Cybertron, Ratbat refused to swear fealty to him, so as punishment, he was dismantled and reformatted into a more animalistic form closer to his cartoon counterpart.
• Evil Overlord: In the Marvel comics, he became Decepticon leader for a considerably long while, and later G1 material has put him in a similarly high position of power.
• Fantastic Racism: Shares the average Decepticon hatred of humans, but will put this prejudice aside for the right business opportunities.
• Forced Transformation:
  • Dreamwave has him go from a humanoid body to his cassette form thanks to Shockwave.
  • IDW afflicts him with a robotic form of this — once a humanoid with bat-like features, his former goon Soundwave places his spark into a smaller body that is all bat.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: In IDW, he was a greedy senator who used Megatron's uprising for his personal gain. Then his minion, Soundwave, betrayed him, destroyed his body and placed his spark in his current "cassette" body, thus making him Soundwave's servant.
• In the Back: How Scorponok killed him.
• It's All About Me: His only allegiance is to himself. As for his friends? They're not friends, just business partners.
• Killed Off for Real: Offed by Scorponok in the Marvel comics and Arcee in the IDW comics.
• Lean and Mean: His Cybertronian form in The War Within is incredibly thin.
• Mister Big: While he's usually larger than the mini-cassette he transforms into, he's still a good deal smaller than most of the Decepticons he finds himself leader of in most continuities (such as the Marvel comics).
• Non-Action Big Bad: Played with in the comics; he's a businessman, not a soldier. However, when he does have to fight, he takes full advantage of his flight maneuverability, shoulder mounted blasters, and powerful bite.
• Non-Indicative Name: He is just a bat, not some sort of rat-bat Mix-and-Match Critter like the name would suggest.
• The Quiet One: He could talk in the Japanese animated continuity, but only did so in three episodes of Headmasters.
• Sensor Character: His wings contain sensors that can locate fuel sources. His primary function per his Tech Specs is as a fuel scout for the Decepticons.
• Sizeshifter: Turns from a microcassette into a bat. His Tech Specs note that his wingspan can change from being one foot to ten feet, implying he can also change his robot mode size.
• Start My Own: In War Within: The Dark Ages, Ratbat got fed up of Shockwave's leadership and formed his own faction, the Ultracons. By the time of The Age of Wrath, he gets reabsorbed into the main Decepticon forces.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: While supposedly the Decepticons' fuel scout, the cartoon used him more often as a spy as if he were Laserbeak (who made less and less appearances in the third season).
• Vampiric Draining: He refuels himself by biting into the gas-lines of cars. He prefers high-quality cars as they have higher-quality fuel. He can also use this bite to take down Autobots.
• Was Once a Man: Sometimes (most prominently in IDW), he was once a humanoid Transformer before being unwillingly given a new animal robot mode.

Runabout and Runamuck (ラナバウト ranabauto, ラナマック ranamakku)

Runabout

Runamuck

Function: Shock Troopers

Alt Mode: Lotus Turbo Esprit Sportscar (Runabout), Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Sportscar (Runamuck)

Runabout: "A pretty car makes an even prettier wreck."

Runamuck: "The road is my playpen; cars are my toys!"

Voiced by: Roger Behr (both, EN), Yoku Shioya (Runabout, JP), Tomomichi Nishimura (Runamuck, JP)

A duo of Decepticons collectively known as the Battlechargers, with the ability to transform faster than any other Transformer, taking under half a second to do so. The two are dim, but equally committed to causing chaos and mayhem.

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• Affably Evil: Sometimes, like in the Wings of Honor continuity, they happily inform Jhiaxus of the war, and even give advice on how to pursue a fembot to Sideburn.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Both of them suffer this to an extent, but Runabout in particular. He's easily distracted and prone to indulging in flights of fancy, random violence, and petty vandalism.
• Chaotic Stupid: Both are violent, short-sighted, impulsive, "wacky", and not as clever as they think they are.
• Cool Car: Both transform into different sports cars.
• Delusions of Eloquence: One of the few differences between them is that while Runabout is fully aware that the duo's pranks and graffiti are childish and silly (and gladly embraces this fact), Runamuck has deluded himself into believing that he's a brilliant, Banksy-style artist who creates revolutionary art and social commentary. His art is actually poorly scribbled phrases like "humans are wimps".
• Drives Like Crazy: Though not to the extreme of the Stunticons, the Battlechargers have little regard for humans and their silly little traffic laws.
• Evil Counterpart: In toy terms, they mirror the Autobot Jumpstarters, another duo with a quick-change gimmick. Also true to an extent for their personalities: the Battlechargers are generally too dimwitted and wacky to be effective Decepticons, and the Jumpstarters are too aggressive and reckless to be respectable Autobots (probably why they ended up as Wreckers).
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains: In most continuities, like in Marvel, where they put graffiti on the Statue of Liberty, and especially in the Wings Continuity, where they are incredibly dim, and fairly awkward.
• The Hyena: Runamuck's constant chuckles are always written as "heh heh," almost to the point of a Verbal Tic.
• Killed Off for Real: They suffer this fate in both the Marvel and IDW comics.
• Long Bus Trip: In the Marvel comics, the two effectively vanished after their debut appearance. They eventually returned as members of Shockwave's rebel Decepticons, taking part in the attack on Scorponok's base.
• Monumental Damage: Though more like monumental petty vandalism, since their most memorable moment is spray-painting "Humans are wimps!" on the Statue of Liberty.
• Palette Swap: Averted, surprisingly. You'd think from their designs that they share a body type and were just recolors of each other like the Seekers, but they have noticeably different heads, bodies, and legs. They were produced simultaneously so it's likely each one had his own mold instead of one being retooled to make the other.
• Playing with Fire: Runamuck's friction rifle increases the generation of heat between molecules for five minutes, meaning a target hit with it will burn to death if they make even the slightest move before then.
• Psychopathic Manchildren: Basically what you get if Beavis And Butthead were giant robots.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Runamuck's Red to Runabout's Blue — and Runabout is only the Blue Oni by being compared to Runamuck.

The Stunticons (Stuntron (スタントロン sutantoron))

A quintet of Decepticon automobiles who barely manage to work together as a team. They can merge to form the saber-wielding giant, Menasor.

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• Adaptation Personality Change: Their toy bios paint them as a Dysfunction Junction with the combined Menasor being insane from the group's hatred of Motormaster and conflicting psyches. The cartoon portrays them more like a group of standard tough guys with Menasor acting more like Dumb Muscle than The Berserker.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: The group saves Megatron from Bruticus and Starscream when they combine in "Starscream's Brigade" — earlier, Bruticus had taken out Devastator and was about to get Megatron to submit to Starscream. Only Motormaster's point about Starscream's ego not knowing when to quit got them to do it though.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: In the cartoon, they're created by Megatron for the express purpose of beating the Autobots on their home turf; the road. The Stunticons do a pretty good job of wiping the floor with them until Villain Decay sets in on their later appearances.
• Car Fu: Their modus operandi. They were specifically built to be able to demolish anything and everything on the road, in fact. Wildrider is the worst driver of the bunch, though.
• Cast as a Mask: For "Masquerade," where Autobots who closely resemble their alt-modes impersonate them, the voices of Motormaster and Wildrider (Roger C. Carmel and Terry McGovern) are used when Optimus and Windcharger impersonate them.
• Combining Mecha: They combine into Menasor.
• Cool Car: All of them transform into cars (or a truck in Motormaster's case).
• The Dividual: Each of them had their own distinct personalities in the cartoon, but they're often depicted as this. Even so, it isn't as drastic as their rivals the Aerialbots, with Motormaster still getting some characterization as the group's glory-seeking and abusive leader and other members going solo at times.
• Dub Name Change: In the Italian G1 dub, each Stunticon is named after a predatory animal who got a military vehicle named after them:
  • Motormaster = Barracuda
  • Drag Strip = Iguana
  • Dead End = Cobra
  • Wildrider = Shark
  • Breakdown = Caiman
• Dysfunction Junction: Every one of them has a disorder of some sort.
• The Psycho Rangers: Of the Aerialbots. Played straight in the comics, but interestingly inverted in the cartoon, as the Stunticons were created first: Megatron originally built them because the Autobots thwarted his plans one too many times by being able to drive into places where Decepticon jets couldn't follow them, and he decided he needed his own fleet of cars. That they were mistaken for Autobots early in their existence was a nice bonus.
• Robotic Psychopath: Justified in the cartoon, where the only instruction Megatron gave Vector Sigma when granting them personalities was "fill them with hatred for the Autobots."
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: They despise each other, yet the four smaller cars are united in how much they hate and fear Motormaster. They're forced to join minds to form Menasor and are thus constantly to exposed to each other's neuroses and loathing. The only way they manage to work together is because they fear Motormaster or, more likely, fear the possible wrath of Megatron if they don't cooperate and do as he commands.
• Villain Decay: In their debut appearance in the cartoon, they had "automatic forcefields" that made their hulls impenetrable, and were more than capable of pounding practically the entirety of the Autobot forces. In later appearances, they were taken down much easier, with no mention of their forcefields.

Motormaster/Motorbreath (モーターマスター mōtāmasutā)

Function: Stunticon Leader

Alt Mode: Kenworth K100 Aerodyne Tractor Trailer Truck; Modular Repair Bay

"These wheels are made for crushing."

Voiced by: Roger C. Carmel (EN), Kōji Totani (JP, cartoon and Scramble City), Michitaka Kobayashi (JP, Headmasters)

A blockade runner who serves as the Captain of the Stunticons. Motormaster's Earth-based configuration was chosen to serve as a demented parody of Autobot Leader Optimus Prime. But while Prime commands with compassion and respect, Motormaster leads through bullying and intimidation. He forms the head and torso of Menasor and can also become a Modular Repair Bay for Trypticon.

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• Bad Boss: He treats his teammates like trash, which ultimately hampers Menasor's mental acuity since his four limbs all hate him.
  Red Alert: How vile must a Decepticon be to earn the hatred and disgust of his own comrades? Motormaster is the answer to that question. It's not just his absolute cruelty and remorseless that make him a menace, it's the unhidden joy that he takes in causing pain and suffering, even among his own troops.
• BFS: He sometimes wields the same sword as Menasor, which often ends up disproportionately huge in his hands.
• Blow You Away: He uses a cyclone cannon to fire off devastating high-force winds.
• Combat Pragmatist: He realizes in "Starscream's Brigade" that Starscream's ego would not let Starscream and Bruticus stop with just defeating Megatron and Devastator. This lets him convince the other Stunticons to form Menasor and defeat Starscream and Bruticus.
• Drone Deployer: His original G1 toy has a "Roller Car", seemingly a counterpart to Optimus Prime's Roller. It can interact with his ramp mode and form the chestplate of Menasor, but can't actually be stored inside Motormaster's trailer. It never appeared in fiction or in future toys, but was given a homage in the form of Combiner Wars Blackjack, who is also a tiny car that can form Menasor's chestplate.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's a notoriously Bad Boss to the Stunticons, but even he can't abide the literal madness that drives Galvatron to actively open fire on his men.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Courtesy of Roger C. Carmel. "Bottomless pit" deep, in this case.
• Guide Dang It!: His Modular Repair Bay mode was supposed to attach to Trypticon. This is never mentioned anywhere on Motormaster's packaging, instead being documented only on Trypticon's instructions.
• Large and in Charge: He is the largest of the team in both modes and acts as their tyrannical boss, adding to his twisted mirroring of Optimus Prime.
• Leader Forms the Head: As is usual for Combiner leaders, Motormaster forms the head and torso of Menasor. However, Menasor has an inconsistent design, where sometimes he's like most Combiners where the other members form his limbs, and other times Menasor looks like a large robot who just has the members stuck on his limbs like armor.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Considers Optimus Prime to be his rival as "King of the Road" and goes out of his way to destroy him before Megatron can. In the cartoon, he finally gets his chance in "Masquerade" to go up against Optimus when he rams the Autobot leader at maximum speed when they're both in their truck forms.
  Motormaster: Well, look who's here! The old King of the Road! When I'm finished with ya, you'll be King of the Junkyard!
  • The resulting collision gives Optimus a headache...while also leaving Motormaster utterly wrecked from his front grill, windscreen and tires, to his huge ego and vehicular status.
• Pragmatic Villainy: "Webworld" has him and Swindle disillusioned with the insane Galvatron, and give Cyclonus an ultimatum:
  Swindle: Either you do something about his craziness, Cyclonus—
  Motormaster: —Or we'll do something about both of ya!
• Ramming Always Works: He was designed to smash through enemy ground blockades, and his tech specs even go so far as to describe him plowing through K-rails without even cracking a headlight. Doesn't do him much good against Optimus, though.
• Sizeshifter: Traditionally, his truck cab becomes his feet and his trailer becomes his upper body, yet he's usually portrayed as around the same size as Optimus (whose robot mode only becomes a truck cab while the trailer is a separate attachment) in both modes.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Evil Counterpart or not, he's not nearly as close to Optimus Prime's weight class as he thinks he is.
• Unknown Rival: His vendetta against Prime is mostly one-sided, with Optimus already having an Arch-Enemy in Megatron.
• Villain Respect: He surprisingly gives some praise when speaking of the deceased Optimus in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1".
  Motormaster: What we need is a strong leader! Like, for instance, the Autobots used to have a great leader!

Breakdown (ブレークダウン burēkudaun)

Funtion: Scout

Alt Mode: Lamborghini Countach Sportscar

"Keep your optical sensors to yourself."

Voiced by: Alan Oppenheimer (main) & Jack Angel ("The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1") (EN), Keiichi Nanba (main), Takurō Kitagawa ("The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1") & Show Hayami ("Cosmic Rust" and "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1) (JP)

The saboteur for the Stunticons, Breakdown is equipped with a sonic emitter that can cause mechanical failures in other vehicles. He forms the right leg of Menasor.

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• Meaningful Name: His name is Breakdown and can cause other vehicles to break down with his weapon.
• The Paranoiac: Thinks everyone and everything, living or nonliving, is out to get him.
• There Are No Therapists: Nobody in the Decepticons thinks Breakdown's paranoia is worth doing anything about. Motormaster sometimes even eggs it on, just for the funnies.
• Vibration Manipulation: His sonic emitter produces a frequency that causes nearby machinery to break down. He can achieve the same result with his car mode engine.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He suffers from a leaky fuel pump, which seriously hampers his endurance.
• Wrong Line of Work: Someone thought it was a good idea to give the paranoid, nervous Breakdown the job of scout, a position that often calls for him to venture alone into unfamiliar territory.

Dead End (デッドエンド deddo endo)

Function: Warrior

Alt Mode: Porsche 928 Sportscar

"We are all just food for rust."

Voiced by: Philip L. Clarke (EN), Masashi Ebara (main, Season 2), Keiichi Nanba ("Starscream's Brigade"), Tomomichi Nishimura (main, Season 3) & Ken Shiroyama (Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1) (JP)

A brooding, cynical nihilist who sees existence itself as a little more than a losing battle against entropy and decay. Nevertheless, he is a fierce warrior when he is properly motivated to fight. He forms the left arm of Menasor.

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• Blow You Away: He wields a compressed air cannon powerful enough to demolish an entire grove of oak trees in a single blast.
• Characterization Marches On: His original bio mentions that he's vain and cares enough about his appearance to shine and polish himself, contrasting with his apathy for everything else. This personality trait has been shown off very little in media.
• The Eeyore: He sees no point in the Transformers' war and is convinced that life itself is meaningless.

Drag Strip/Dragstrip (ドラッグストリップ doraggu sutorippu)

Function: Warrior

Alt Mode: Tyrrell P34 Racecar

"The first one to cross the finish line lives."

Voiced by: Ron Grans (EN), Kōki Kataoka (main, Season 2), Show Hayami ("The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1"), Yutaka Shimaka ("Masquerade") & Kenyū Horiuchi (Season 3) (JP)

A victory-obsessed egomaniac who specializes in hit and run attacks. He forms the right arm of Menasor.

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• Competition Freak: Everything is a competition to him, which he'll try to win by any means necessary.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: None of the other Decepticons, Megatron included, can stand his constant bragging and glory seeking. If it didn't make him a dangerous and motivated foe against the Autobots, Megatron would've gladly reduced him to scrap.
• Glory Hound: Very obsessed with victory, to the point where he'd rather die than lose. And when he does win, he'll make sure everyone knows it.
• Gravity Master: He has a gravito-gun, which enhances the gravity of its target, tearing them to pieces.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His obsession with competition can cause him to overheat, or be easily baited into a fight he can't win.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Tends to recklessly rush into battle, only to discover that he has bitten off more than he can chew.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: He loves brushing his ego and bragging about his accomplishments at any opportunity he can get.

Wildrider/Brake-Neck (ワイルドライダー wairudoraidā, ブレークネック burēkunekku)

Function: Terrorist

Alt Mode: Ferrari 308 GTB Sportscar

"Either you're out of my way or you're out of luck."

Voiced by: Terry McGovern (EN), Ken Shiroyama (main, Season 2), Yutaka Shimaka ("The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 2"), Takurō Kitagawa ("Tans-Europe Express") & Yoku Shioya (Season 3) (JP)

A violent psychotic, Wildrider serves as a one-bot demolition derby. He tends to take point in missions, because his fellow Stunticons are afraid to drive anywhere near him. He forms the left leg of Menasor.

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• Ax-Crazy: He exults himself in the accidents and mayhem he causes.
• Drives Like Crazy: While all Stunticons do this, he goes above and beyond largely because he himself is crazy.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His crazy driving style can lead to tire blowouts.
• Insane Equals Violent: While this applies to all the Stunticons, he's the most overt example.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Subverted. Those who don't know him believe his mad attacks are part of a calculated strategy to unnerve the enemy. Those who do know him better are aware that he really is that crazy.
• The Paranoiac: Hates quiet because he's convinced there are enemies out there, waiting to pounce.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Has a red and black color scheme, complete with red-tinted windows in his black car mode.
• Unexplained Accent: In "The Burden Hardest to Bear," he inexplicably develops a Deep South accent.

Menasor (メナゾール menazōru)

Function: Super Warrior

"Leave no Autobot uncrushed."

Voiced by: Regis Cordic (main) & Roger C. Carmel ("The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 2") (EN), Kōji Totani (JP, cartoon and Scramble City), Hōchū Ōtsuka & Tomomichi Nishimura (JP, Headmasters), Masato Hirano (JP, Zone)

The combined form of the Stunticons. Because of his violent, unstable nature, Menasor is generally deployed alone into battlefields where neither finesse nor oversight are necessary.

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• Adaptational Wimp: Most incarnations of Menasor are depicted as a terrifying engine of destruction, mostly due to the Stunticons' unstable mental fusion. But in IDW's Combiner Wars series, he's instead depicted as the least effective Combiner for that very same reason.
• Ax-Crazy: Rendered this as a result of his components all despising Motormaster.
• Blow You Away: Is still capable of using Motormaster's cyclone gun when combined.
• Depending on the Artist: Menasor's cartoon model either depicted them attaching to Motormaster directly forming the limbs like every other combiner (and the toy), or Motormaster's limbs growing in size and his teammates attaching to the outside, making the combination process to achieve a large robot mostly pointless. The IDW comics build on the latter idea by having parts detach from Motormaster to form forearms and feet with the rest of the Stunticons forming the missing parts needed for full limbs. The 2022 Legacy figures would take a similar approach to that idea, with Motormaster's trailer becoming Menasor's skeleton as the rest attach to the limbs and he becomes part of the torso and head.
• Dumb Muscle: He's an idiot like nearly every other combiner, but he is made worse by the fact that since all five components absolutely hate each other, he is a self-loathing and criminally insane idiot.
• Elemental Weapon: Wields an ionizer sword, which is charged with 50,000 volts of electricity.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: When Megatron's constructed weapon explodes in the cartoon episode "Masquerade", Autobot reinforcements arrive. Menasor retreats, as the number of Autobots greatly increased from five.
• Out of Focus: Menasor appeared a grand total of once in the whole of Marvel's comics.
• This Cannot Be!: He is insulted in "Masquerade" when "Motormaster" (really Optimus Prime in disguise) accuses him of being an impostor, but this trope hits when with Windcharger's magnetism and Mirage's illusion-creating ability, the "Stunticons" form a second Menasor!
  Starscream: IMPOSSIBLE!
  Megatron: (looking at them both) Two Menasors?!?
  Menasor #1: Can't be! I Menasor! Me!
• Villainous Breakdown: In the Dreamwave comics, Ultra Magnus is able to paralyze Menasor by taunting his components, who get so caught up with bickering with one another Magnus is able to take Menasor out.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: When he is formed, he is very powerful. Too bad that his components not only consist of a cruel tyrant, an egotistical glory-hog, a nihilist, a paranoid wreck and a complete nutter, but also that all of them hate the cruel tyrant. As such, this practically makes Menasor a walking asylum.

Trypticon (Dinosaurer (ダイナザウラー dainazaurā))

Function: Assault Base

Alt Modes: Fortress, Mobile Battle Station

"Total victory requires total destruction."

Voiced by: Brad Garrett (EN), Yutaka Shimaka (JP, cartoon), Masato Hirano (JP, Headmasters), Daisuke Gōri (JP, Zone)

A giant saurian robot who transforms into a battle station and a city. He acts as the Decepticons' ultimate weapon, but he finds war to be a pointless and boring prospect. His G1 toy includes two drones under his control named Brunt (a tank) and Full-Tilt (a car that becomes a robot). The Marvel comics add a third drone, a robot named Wipe-Out.

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• Adaptational Badass:
  • The Legends comics gives Trypticon an additional monster mode◊ by taking his spaceship mode, transforming the legs backwards, and using the front of the spaceship as the head. His Titans Return figure can be converted into this form.
  • Brunt was originally depicted in most G1 fiction as being nothing more than a tank drone that had no autonomy of his own, and aside from being a tank, can split up into armaments for Trypticon. The War for Cybertron: Siege toyline turns him into a full-fledged Transformer, giving him an actual robot mode. Said toyline also gives him the ability to split into weapons and armor that can be utilized by other Transformers, not just Trypticon.
• Adaptational Dumbass: While Trypticon's Marvel depiction and Tech Specs don't exactly paint him as a genius, they don't make him out to be an idiot. The Sunbow cartoon, however, essentially turned him into an upscaled, evil Grimlock, to the point they even got Brad Garrett (an actor known to be type-cast as dim-witted thugs) to voice him.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the 2005 IDW comics. Trypticon had a reputation as a fearsome monster but only because so many other characters controlled him. When left to his own devices he chooses to fulfill his purpose as a Titan and create new Cybertronian life rather than extinguish it. He also befriends Slug and the Dinobots and acts as a grumpy ally to the Autobots. Wipe-Out was also imagined as a neutral character who aided the Autobots, though his connection to Trypticon removed.
• Adaptational Intelligence: In the Dreamwave comics, he acts an awful lot like a Genius Bruiser.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: His Titans Return toy replaces his battle station mode with a spaceship mode instead.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • His toy bio mentioned him having the ability to Mind Control others, and possessing Anti-Gravity projectors in his city mode that kept his enemies away. Neither of those abilities show up in any other media.
  • While his Sunbow cartoon incarnation was no genius, he was treated as a major problem that couldn't be handled easily. In the Headmasters anime, he's taken out by Wheelie. Wheelie.
• Adapted Out: Brunt and Full-Tilt effectively never existed in the Sunbow cartoon, with Full-Tilt only appearing as part of Trypticon's chest. Likewise, Brunt only "appears" as the centre tower in Trypticon's city mode, and the main cannon in battle station mode. Legends averts this by showing that Full-Tilt is Trypticon's Black Box and contains backups of all of the big guy's life functions.
• The Artifact: His rivalry with Metroplex, which came from them both being the biggest toys of 1986. Pretty much no depiction of them since the cartoon has actually had them as rivals.
• Big Eater: Oh yeah, he consumes 50 energon cubes (50000 barrels of oil) an hour!
• Brilliant, but Lazy: There's no questioning Trypticon's raw power, but he cares very little for it, or for the war in general.
• Cool Car: He has a car drone named Full-Tilt, which can transform into a small robot. The Marvel comics also featured the similar character Wipe-Out.
• Composite Character: In a sense, as Brunt's War for Cybertron: Siege figure gives the previously non-transforming tank drone a new robot mode heavily based upon the Centurion droids that guard Vector Sigma, in particular the IDW comic depiction of them. Recursively, Brunt's figure was then later redecoed into said Centurion droid.
• Drone Deployer: Full-Tilt can be sent out in any of his forms (hanging on Trypticon's chest when not in use). When in his alt-modes, Trypticon can send out Brunt as well.
• Dumb Dinos: In the original cartoon, he's as much of a brute as the Dinobots, and would even enter into childish tantrums. However, this is his only depiction as such, as later incarnations would depict him to have at least average intelligence.
• Equippable Ally: Brunt is able to split up into armaments for Trypticon. War for Cybertron: Siege figure further has the ability to turn his parts into weapons and armor for other Transformers.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Being voiced by Brad Garrett (cartoon) and Fred Tatasciore (video game adaptations) tends to help.
• Faux Affably Evil: His Dreamwave incarnation talks in a sophisticated and polite fashion, as he's testing his weapons out on Prowl's troops.
• Genius Loci: He can transform into a city and a fully armed mobile battle station.
• Hidden Depths: "Call of the Primitives" showed him as being quite the team player during the animal Transformers' brief alliance, humbly following Sky Lynx's directions, and taking steps to keep the others from fighting while within his body.
• Humongous Mecha: He's a city-sized dinosaur that can turn into a mobile battle station.
• Informed Attribute: His bio states that Trypticon secretly finds warfare boring and pointless, and is filled with much self-loathing. This has been brought up precisely never.
• Losing Your Head: Not Trypticon himself, but Full-Tilt, whose Titans Return toy has the Titan Master Necro (a renamed Wipe-Out) form his head.
• Meaningful Name: "Trypticon" is derived from "triptych", used to refer to a painting or object that's divided into three hinged segments. When in his battle station or city modes, Trypticon transforms by effectively splitting into three attached segments.
• Mind-Control Device: Strangely enough, Trypticon's optical sensor has a hypno beam (which he has never used).
• Omnicidal Maniac: While he finds war boring, once he starts attacking, he won't stop until there's nothing but rubble.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Giant city-sized dinosaur? Yep. Strength and Firepower ratings of 10? Yep. A Weapon of Mass Destruction as an altform? When they say he's the Decepticons' ultimate weapon, they're not exaggerating.
• Purple Is Powerful: Trypticon has a lot of dark purple and he's one of the Decepticons biggest weapons.
• The Rival: He serves as the biggest foe of the Autobots' giant city-bot, Metroplex, clashing with him a lot.
• Running Gag: In the Sunbow cartoon, every time Metroplex defeats him, Trypticon ends up being thrown into a large body of water.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: Besides being colored mostly black, Trypticon also has purple, teal and orange accents, serving as contrast for Metroplex's silver, red and white color scheme.
• Shout-Out: As was probably bound to happen with a giant dinosaur-bot, there's been more than one time where Trypticon has been used as an homage to the king of kaiju, Godzilla. The Legends comic even goes as far as naming his Titans Return form "Shin Dinosaurer". His Legends toy goes one step further, giving him a fourth "alternate beast" mode that's based on Kamata-kun, Shin Godzilla's second form.
• Story-Breaker Power: If Trypticon was ever depicted as being as powerful as a city-sized 'bot armed to the teeth and then some should be... there probably wouldn't be many Autobots left. This probably has something to do with his scant appearances in most media.
  • In the Japanese exclusive Transformers: Zone, Trypticon is one of the nine "Warriors Elite" resurrected by the Big Bad. They destroy an entire planet in a matter of minutes.
• Swallowed Whole: His Titans Return figure can "eat" Titan and Prime Masters if they are dropped into his mouth. A compartment in his stomach can be opened to retrieve them. He would do this in the Legends comics, gobbling up many Headmasters to steal their energy.
• Tank Goodness: While in city mode, a tank drone called Brunt is deployed.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: His mouth contains heat-seeking plasma bombs.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: Trypticon's battle station mode is armed with a laser cannon, rotating blasters, destructo-beams and dual photon launchers. Oh, and it can move and is around the size of a city.
• Yes-Man: Wipe-Out is Trypticon's right-hand syncophant, laying so much praise and compliments upon him that he annoys the city-bot at times.
• Your Size May Vary: Trypticon's size has never been consistent. In the Marvel comics, he was only around two to three times the size of regular Transformers, while other depictions make him as tall as a building or two. Meanwhile, his size hardly ever comes close to representing a robot the size of an entire human-scaled city (let alone one scaled for Transformers).

1987 Decepticons

Scorponok (スコルポノック sukoruponokku)

Function: Headmaster Commander

Alt Modes: Scorpion, Fortress

"Kindness is no virtue... and cruelty is no vice."

Voiced by: Steven Keener (US); Banjo Ginga (The Headmasters and Super-God Masterforce), Hirohiko Kakegawa (Zone), Eiji Itō ("The Rebirth") (JP)

A very large Decepticon with a great deal of authority and a high position in the Decepticon hierarchy. That's about the only thing consistent about Scorponok; he's one of those fun characters where almost everything about him from personality to size differs between continuities. Sometimes he's binary bonded or controlled by a smaller creature (usually a Nebulan named Mortilus Zarak).

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• Adapted Out:
  • Since most of his comics selves are only slightly taller than most Transformers, they lack the ability to take on his city mode.
  • His toy came with a minion known as Fasttrack. Fasttrack has not appeared in any G1 media, let alone alongside Scorponok.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Invoked with his death at the hand of Unicron in the Marvel comics.
  Scorponok: Huuuu... Puh-Prime? Did... Did... kuuuu... I do... good?
  Optimus Prime: Yes, old friend... You did good.
• Anti-Villain: Comic Zarak, who made the Decepticons leave Nebulos rather than allow harm to come to his daughter Lyra. While merging with Scorponok didn't do him any favours, as time went by he became increasingly doubtful and unsure of himself, not to mention proving willing to listen to Optimus after the guy saved his life (as Optimus does), and eventually went out fighting Unicron.
• Arch-Enemy: Usually, he's this for the similarly huge Autobot Headmaster, Fortress Maximus.
• Back from the Dead: In Regeneration One; his original pre-Headmaster head was left on Nebulos, which reactivated and ordered Nebulan scientists to reconstruct his original body.
• Bad Boss: In the IDW comic. In The Transformers: Monstrosity, after a disastrous attack that resulted in many of his troops getting killed, Scorponok berates the fallen for being weak and orders the survivors to loot them for parts and credits. One soldier protests, reminding him that Megatron would have shown more respect to the dead. Scorponok angrily crushes his head like an egg.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: He turns into a giant scorpion with an electro-stinger in its tail.
• Big Bad: Scorponok sometimes acts as leader of the entire Decepticon faction (or at least a small group of them), and even when he isn't he usually acts as the big bad mastermind behind some scheme.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In Transformers: Super-God Masterforce, Devil Z forced Scorponok (and by extension the Decepticons) under his control.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Zarak acted as one briefly in the Marvel comics under the alias "Mr Z", running the Z Foundation to recruit humans to destroy the Autobots (under the guise of being a charitable organisation devoted to the extermination of all Transformers on Earth).
  • In the IDW comics, Scorponok also binary bonded to an evil human businessman, Abraham Dante.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: In the Marvel comic, Zarak was able to use his guise as a human businessman to acquire resources for the Decepticons (relatively) legally, instead of stealing them like Megatron would.
• Demoted to Dragon: In Masterforce, after being the Big Bad for Headmasters, he's reduced to Devil Z's Big Stick, thanks to brainwashing. Mercifully for the Autobots, this actually makes him much less dangerous.
• Depending on the Artist: Zarak's contribution to Scorponok's head varies widely.
  • The original toy has Zarak as a regularly-sized Headmaster bulked up the scorpion head acting as a helmet. Due to this giving him a tiny face, the Headmasters anime keeps this concept but changes the proportions so his face isn't as tiny.
  • American G1 media like the Sunbow cartoon and Marvel comics had the tiny Headmaster face take up the entire helmet's opening, but erroneously depicted the helmet as being a part of Zarak with the scorpion head disappearing to allow for this.
  • The Earthrise toy combines the two previous ideas, with a regularly-sized Zarak Headmaster that attaches to another body that forms both the scorpion head and the robot mode head.
• Depending on the Writer: Scorponok and Zarak's portrayal wildly varies between continuities:
  • In the Sunbow cartoon (specifically, "The Rebirth") he appears to be a lifeless Humongous Mecha controlled by Zarak, a green-skinned Nebulonian tyrant.
  • In the Marvel comics Scorponok is a large (but not huge) sentient Decepticon who allies with Lord Zarak, a scheming pink-skinned Nebulan politician. Bob Budiansky depicted Scorponok as largely being your typical comic book villain, but Zarak as having some ethics. Furman depicted Zarak as being almost entirely in control, and when he wrote Scorponok in Regeneration One, Scorponok was essentially a James Bond villain.
  • In The Headmasters, Scorponok is a small Cybertronian who controls a lifeless Transtector to become MegaZarak (and later BlackZarak), and is a total bastard who cares for no-one but himself, willing to destroy planet after planet in the name of ultimate power.
  • The War for Cybertron cartoon has him as a Scorpinok, last of his kind and with a massive grudge against Cybertronians.
• Disney Villain Death: Regeneration One sends him and Grimlock falling down a dark canyon. While Grimlock reappeared later on, Scorponok was seemingly not so lucky.
• Drone Deployer: Though often ignored by fiction, Scorponok's original toy comes with the semi-autonomous drone Fasttrack, which transforms into a car.
• Enemy Mine: He proved willing to team-up with Optimus. Eventually, at any rate, when Optimus told him Unicron was coming.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Zarak willingly took a stand against Unicron and fought the Chaos Bringer to the death, in spite of his terror.
• Evil Versus Evil: Comics Scorponok vied for control of the Decepticons against Ratbat. He eventually won via shooting the guy in the back. Later on, he has to deal with Shockwave and Starscream wresting control from him.
• Evil Sounds Deep: His Headmasters incarnation has Banjo Ginga's deep, booming voice, even when he's in his tiny Headmaster form.
• Genius Bruiser: Though Scorponok is certainly a heavily armed and powerful Decepticon, he's also a cunning strategist. Some continuities hint that binary bonding with Zarak helped his intelligence grow exponentially.
• Genius Loci: One of his alt-modes is a city, though this is usually not seen by his smaller representations.
• Gravity Master: Downplayed; Scorponok's robot mode uses a fusion-powered anti-gravity gun. Try to guess what it does.
• Humongous Mecha: His bigger robot mode is city-sized in some continuities. His smaller mode (as Lord Zarak) is an inversion of the trope.
• Informed Flaw: In "The Rebirth", Zarak's body is said to be withered and totally useless after a lifetime of being dependent on machinery, yet he appears very heavily muscled.
• Large and in Charge: How large and how much in charge he is though varies, but something that's consistent is that he's pretty big for a Cybertronian and is pretty high on the power chain.
• Legacy Character: In the Wings Universe continuity, Zarak's son Olin inherits Scorponok after he passes away, becoming the mech's new operator.
• Losing Your Head: He's a Headmaster. He tends to use the Scorponok name in his bigger mode and the Lord Zarak name in his smaller mode, though some have called him Zarak when in Scorponok mode.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Stephen Keener's voice in "The Rebirth" seems very reminiscent of Vincent Price.
• Paint It Black: Scorponok renames himself BlackZarak in Transformers: Super-God Masterforce, with a rebuilt and upgraded black Transtector.
• Power Pincers: Scorponok has large claws in lieu of hands, and he can use these to deliver crushing impacts.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: As BlackZarak, his colors are mostly black, with red and gold highlights.
• Scary Scorpions: One of his alt modes is a large robot scorpion controlled by Zarak in a cockpit.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: Scorponok is colored green, purple, black and orange in contrast with the Primary Color Champions of Autobots like Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, and his opposite number Fortress Maximus.
• Social Darwinist: Holds these beliefs in The Transformers: Monstrosity.
• The Starscream: It varies across continuities:
  • A line in Sunbow's "The Rebirth" implies Zarak might end up becoming this for Galvatron, and outlines for the aborted fourth season indicates he would have indeed assumed this role, until the original Starscream came back to put a Spanner in the Works.
    Galvatron: We will attack other planets, we will suck them dry, we will rebuild a planet a hundred times more powerful than Cybertron and I will rule the galaxy!
    Zarak: Who will rule the galaxy?
    Galvatron: ME! It is my destiny!
    Zarak: We shall see, Galvatron. We shall see...
  • He is also this to Galvatron in the Headmasters anime, but here he successfully wrests the Big Bad title away from him and becomes the Final Boss.
  • In the Marvel Comic, he and Megatron were rival warlords who were relatively independent of each other. Once Scorponok takes command of all Decepticons on Earth, Megatron and Shockwave actually become Starscreams to him.
  • In the IDW comic, he is this to Megatron, believing that Megatron failed the Decepticons by being defeated by Optimus Prime in The Transformers: Autocracy.
• Tiny-Headed Behemoth: Though Scorponok was one of the largest of the G1 Headmaster toyline, his head is the same size as a standard Headmaster. The toy attempts to circumvent the discrepancy by giving him a giant helmet to wear. It certainly gives the impression of a proportionate head... but Scorponok's untouched, dinky face is still in plain sight. His counterpart, Fortress Maximus, is a double-Headmaster, with Cerebros transforming into Maximus' head, and Cerebros' own head is a standard Headmaster. Thus, Scorponok's various depictions tackle this issue in different ways.
  • The toy attempted to compensate for this by giving him a helmet to bulk the head up, but in the end Zarak was disproportionately tiny compared to the rest of the body.
  • The Headmasters cartoon depicted Zarak as an average sized bot and other stories, like the G1 cartoon, turned Zarak into something of a size-shifter.
  • Certain stories, like the Marvel comics, shrink Scorponok down to an above average Transformer so his head won't stick out too much.
  • The 2005 IDW stories had Scorponok's new Headmaster partner, Dante, don a bulky suit of power armor on top of his Headmaster body, but even with that the trope was still played straight.
  • His 2020 toy ended up going a route similar to Fort Max wherein Scorponok's head transforms into a deluxe class figure and that figure's head transformers into a standard Headmaster, evening out Scorponok's proportions.
• A Villain Named "Z__rg": Lord Peer Mortilus Zarak, who's usually just as bad as the Decepticons even before they show up.
• Walking Armory: Even when he isn't the size of a city, he has guns all over his body, an electro-stinger tail, and powerful claws.
• Weaksauce Weakness: His Headmasters incarnation has a pretty big one - his chest window. One hit to it, and Scorponok would run away immediately.
• Your Size May Vary: Sometimes he is simply twice as tall as the average Decepticon, sometimes he's big enough to become a city.
• 0% Approval Rating: Marvel Comics Scorponok's approval rating didn't so much sink as drown when he let Starscream back into the fold. Had Optimus not decided to surrender as a show of faith, as well as Bludgeon, Stranglehold and Octopunch arriving from Cybertron and warning Scorponok and the other Decepticons about Unicron, Shockwave's attempted coup probably would've gone unopposed. Of course, there's the fact that most of said troops were ones who were Scorponok since the Headmasters miniseries and weren't seen in Dark Star with the exception of the Pretenders, Mindwipe and Weirdwolf...

The Duocons (Doubletron (ダブルトロン daburutoron))

The Duocons are a pair of Decepticons named Battletrap and Flywheels, whose robot modes separate into two different vehicles (a flying vehicle and a land-based one).

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• Combining Mecha:
  • The Duocons are each singular robots that split apart into two vehicles, but each of them only count as one Transformer.
  • In Power of the Primes toyline, Battletrap is a more standard Transformers example, as his components are given their own robot modes and re-imagined as the new characters "Battleslash" and "Roadtrap", thus turning him into their combined form instead.
• Flawed Prototype: In the Dreamwave continuity, the Duocons were this to what would eventually be the Triple Changers, being Shockwave's early experiments with creating Transformers with multiple alternate modes. They were deemed to be failures when their consciousness was split across two separate alternate modes.
  • Ironically, in some continuities, the Duocons are instead portrayed as Triple Changers from the start or otherwise upgraded into them during the plot.
• Literal Split Personality: The Duocons are singular Transformers that split into two separate vehicles, each with portions of the robot's personality. The relationship between the two components also varies. Battletrap's halves getting along well and are able to work together efficiently, while Flywheel's components suffer from Mutual Envy and are constantly bickering with each other, rendering him very unstable.
• LEGO Body Parts: Their G1 toys can swap components with each other, as they use the same connector to hold the two parts together. This functionality is also present in their figures from the Power of the Primes and Siege toylines.

Battletrap (バトルトラップ batorutorappu)

Function: Assault Team

Alt Modes: AH-64 Apache Helicopter, Ford F-150 Camper Truck

"We're only halves of a whole, but double the trouble."

Voiced by: Hirohiko Kakegawa (JP)

Battletrap's brain modules get along well in battle, and torment opponents in concert with each other. In at least one continuity, though, he is upgraded to being a Triple Changer to save his life. In the Power of the Primes toyline, he is instead the combined form of Battleslash and Roadtrap.

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• Ascended Extra: Botcon 2015 gave him a new toy and made him the narrator for the main story for that year.
• Brains and Brawn: According to their Prima pack-in cards as well as Battleslash's Micronus card from Power of the Primes, Roadtrap is the Brains, and Battleslash is the Brawn.
• Consummate Liar: Roadtrap is indicated to be highly deceitful according to his pack-in cards from Power of the Primes.
• Decomposite Character: The Power of the Primes line gives each of his components their own robot modes and re-imagines them as independent characters named "Battleslash" and "Roadtrap" instead, turning Battletrap into their combined form.
• Depending on the Writer: His Bio in Dreamwave and his appearance in The Headmasters make him a Duocon, but his Marvel comics appearance makes him a Triple Changer. Timelines combines the two interpretations, revealing that he was originally a Duocon before being upgraded into a Triple Changer.
• Discard and Draw: In Timelines, Battletrap can no longer split into two different alt modes after an operation to permanently reunite his brain modules once they started to develop an immunity to each other. In return, however, he became a Triple Changer instead.
• It's All About Me: Battleslash is indicated to have an egotistical streak according to his pack-in cards from Power of the Primes.
• Informed Ability: Battleslash's packaging art depicts him using his helicopter blades as a sword. The toy itself has no such functionality.
• Portmanteau: His name in the Power of the Primes toyline is a combination of those of his component bots, Battleslash and Roadtrap.
• Vehicular Assault: A favorite battle tactic of his is smacking an enemy back and forth between his two alt modes before finally finishing them off.

Flywheels/Skytread (フライホイール furaihoīru, スカイトレッド sukaitoreddo)

Function: Assault Team

Alt Modes: F-4 Phantom II Fighter Jet, Howitzer Tank

"Believe in yourself, but only if you both agree."

Voiced by: Yuki Sato (JP)

Flywheels is far more unstable than his brother-in-arms, with his most frequent enemy being himself rather than any Autobot.

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• Adaptation Name Change: In the second IDW continuity, he is named Skytread, which does make more sense, as he has treads, not wheels.
• Cool Plane: One of his alt modes is an F-4 Phantom II jet.
• Depending on the Writer: He can split into two alt modes in continuities like G1, Headmasters, Dreamwave, and War for Cybertron: Siege, but in the Marvel UK comic he was more of a Triple Changer, as well as the IDW continuity. Then in Titans Return, he's neither; instead being a Titan Master that forms a head for other robots.
• Enemy Mine: In the Marvel UK comic story City of Fear, he is forced into an alliance with the Wreckers against the mad Autobot Flame. Despite the teams' doubts, Flywheels actually brings in some back-up in the form of Trypticon.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: He had his top half shredded by Tesarus in the IDW comics.
• Killed Off for Real: In the Marvel comics and the G1 comics, possibly in the G2 comics. Killed in both IDW comic continuities as well.
• Losing Your Head: In Titans Return, he's a Titan Master that turns into his original head. He doesn't have a larger body, but can act as the head for other toys.
• Mutual Envy: Flywheels' components are jealous of and thus loathe each other. As a result, they spend more time feuding with each other than with the Autobots, greatly diminishing his combat efficiency.
• Mythology Gag: Thinking Fulcrum was a zombie is a callback to one of the few stories where Flywheels was actually important, City of Fear, where an ancient city was infested with zombies.
• Non-Indicative Name: Despite being named Flywheels, his ground component, a tank, has treads, rather than wheels. This has led to speculation that his name and that of his fellow Duocon Battletrap were accidentally swapped during production. To wit, Battletrap does indeed possess a wheeled ground component, a truck or SUV, and Flywheels' vehicle modes are more militaristic. Perhaps because of a combination of this and trademark issues around Flywheels' original name, his later figures and fiction appearances would instead bear the more fitting name Skytread.
• Self-Duplication: Bizarrely, his Titans Return incarnation has him gift to whoever he's bonded with the ability to create a clone decoy.
• Tank Goodness: One of his alt modes is a howitzer tank of vague origin.
• They Killed Kenny Again: In comparison to Battletrap, Skytread has been killed several times.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: When introduced in issue 7 of the IDW comics, Flywheels does the least to emphasize his personality, only showing he's kinda twitchy. He then disappeared for several issues before finally joining up with the Scavengers... and dying to the D.J.D. shortly after.
• Writing Around Trademarks: Newer figures of Flywheels bear the name "Skytread" instead, due to trademark issues around his original name.

The Horrorcons (Horrortron (ホラートロン horātoron))

A brutish pair of triple-changing Decepticon Headmasters who can transform into both beast and vehicle modes.

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• Cool Plane: Both of them have jets as one of their alternate modes.
• Losing Your Head: A given as they're Headmasters, but both are unique in that their Headmaster partners serve as both beast and robot heads.
• Only Friend: They're this trope to each other, being the only Decepticons who can tolerate the other's nasty qualities.
• Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: The duo are nasty even for Decepticons, and have the smell to match.
  • Apeface's Tech Specs note that he "never changes his lubricant so he smells like a grease-encrusted turboworm".
  • When he's not in battle, Snapdragon prefers to lounge around in his extremely messy living quarters. He also likes bathing in greasepits, or when those aren't available, the blood of his enemies.

Apeface (エイプフェイス eipufeisu)

Function: Saboteur

Alt Modes: Gorilla, Suborbital Fighter

"Obnoxiousness is not a problem, it is an art."

Voiced by: Dick Gautier (EN); Masaki Aizawa ("The Rebirth") and Yūji Mikimoto (The Headmasters) (JP)

Apeface is horrifically obnoxious and unpleasant even by Decepticon standards — at least the likes of Blitzwing and Skywarp don't spit fuel in public, knock over anyone in their way, or smell bad. He's a Triple Changer that turns into a jet and a robot gorilla, and he's often a Headmaster partnered with a being named Spasma.

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• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: "The Rebirth" has him disgusted by the Autobots' nobility and heroism.
  Apeface: Yuck, noble Autobots make me want to puke.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: As an obnoxious and slobbish thug, he's not very popular among the other Decepticons (the one exception being his Horrorcon partner in crime — and fellow obnoxious and slobbish thug — Snapdragon).
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Rampage ripped off one of his arms during one of the Decepticons' many Enemy Civil Wars. Apeface picked up his own arm and beat Rampage senseless with it.
• Jerkass: Even to fellow Decepticons, he's rude, loud and obnoxious.
• Killer Gorilla: One of his three forms is a gorilla, and he's a cruel, obnoxious thug.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • In the Marvel comics he was among those who perished fighting Unicron.
  • In the 2005 IDW comics he was Squashed Flat by Superion.
• Losing Your Head: He's often a Headmaster, though ironically Apeface turns into a head himself in the Titans Return toyline (having been reimagined as an ancient Titan Master).
• Loud of War: His main weapon of choice (besides his own strength) is a semi-automatic sonic boomer gun, which emits powerful sonic blasts.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Unlike other headmasters, Spasma has a dual responsibility of being two kinds of heads for Apeface, a distinction typically only shared by Krunk, Snapdragon's partner. Consequentially, his design differs slightly compared to his contemporaries. Apeface's robot mode faceplate is situated on Spasma's legs, rather than its typical spot on the headmaster's back; that area is taken up by Apeface's, well, ape face (or at least part of it).
• Super-Strength: In his ape mode, he's able to hit things far harder than in robot mode (his Tech Specs even give him a perfect 10 in Strength). Naturally, this is his go-to weapon in battle.
• Your Size May Vary: Usually, he's a normal-sized Decepticon whose head is formed by a human alien, but in Titans Return, Apeface is a human-sized Titan Master who transforms into his classic head (which can replace those of other Transformers).

Snapdragon (スナップドラゴン sunappudoragon)

Function: Interceptor

Alt Modes: Mutant Lizard, Suborbital Fighter

"If it doesn't get you dirty, it's not worth doing."

Voiced by: Dan Gilvezan (EN); Takao Ishii ("The Rebirth") and Kazuo Oka (The Headmasters) (JP)

A thug who only became a soldier to satisfy his more violent urges, Snapdragon has a terrible work ethic and even worse personal hygiene. His effectiveness as a warrior generally motivates his fellow Decepticons to overlook his more unpleasant qualities. He is often paired with Krunk, a gangster who does a lot of Lord Zarak's dirty work.

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• Blood Bath: When he can, he likes to bathe in the oils of mechanoids he's slain. When that's not available to him, he'll go to a grease pit.
• Blood Knight: When he is motivated to actually fight, he is one.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Despite his brutish, lazy demeanor, Snapdragon is actually one of the smarter Decepticons, with a Tech Specs Intelligence Rating of 9.
• Faux Affably Evil: Because genuine affability takes a bit more effort, and he doesn't want to work that hard.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It doesn't take much to set him off.
• Informed Attribute: His "Earthrise" toy was shown off in Mercenary packaging but was sold as a Decepticon with only Transformers: Earth Wars showing him as a Mercenary that can be recruited by the Autobots and Decepticons.
• Killed Off for Real: In the Marvel comics he gets his head blown off by Blaster.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Like Spasma, and typically unlike any other Headmaster, Krunk does double duty by being two different heads for Snapdragon. Compared to Spasma, however, this distinction doesn't affect Krunk mechanically as much, but some deviance is still present. For example, Krunk has various protrusions across his body that become Snapdragon's teeth in dragon mode.
• Sensory Abuse: In all modes, he's armed with gyroscopic destabilizers that destroy the target's balance.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: One of his alt modes is a lizard monster and he's brutish and loves bathing in the oil of his enemies.
• Would Hurt a Child: He bit Daniel in the Sunbow episode "The Rebirth", giving him injuries that would have killed him if Arcee had not binary bonded to him.
• Undying Loyalty: To Lord Zarak. It is considered his only redeeming feature.

Mindwipe (マインドワイプ maindowaipu)

Function: Hypnotist

Alt Mode: Bat

"Just one look from me and you've lost."

Voiced by: Steven Keener (US); Eiji Itō ("The Rebirth") and Naoki Tatsuta (The Headmasters) (JP)

A Decepticon with strong belief in the occult and the supernatural, Mindwipe is a skilled hypnotist who has made many efforts to contact the realm of dead Decepticons, with little success. He's often partnered with a scientist named Vorath that forms his head.

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• Adaptational Wimp: His Transformers: ★Headmasters incarnation, while possessing the same powers as usual, is also something of a complete schmuck, whereas his western incarnations were more skilled and dangerous with them.
• Adaptation Species Change: Titans Return depicts Vorath as a small Cybertronian Titan Master as opposed to a Nebulan.
• Aliens Steal Cable: His attempts at contacting the other side have only succeeded in picking up old TV shows. Not that Mindwipe minds so much. He actually likes My Mother the Car.
• Bat Out of Hell: His alt mode is a giant mechanical bat.
• Continuity Snarl: In Simon Furman's run, Mindwipe says and shows that he got a hole blown in him by Starscream during Dark Star!...but that story had it to where Transformers with organic enhancements were immune to the Underbase's power which Mindwipe should be as a Headmaster.
• The Chew Toy: In Simon Furman's run on G1. He gets shot by Starscream, conscripted to work for Shockwave via threats of death from Starscream, repeatedly fails to use those hypnotic powers of his, and the one time he does get them to work (on Soundwave, of all folk)... he's captured at gunpoint by Kup and "persuaded" to help smooth things over between both sides.
• Co-Dragons: In "The War Within: The Dark Ages", with Bludgeon and Bugly, for The Fallen.
• Compelling Voice: He is a hypnotist, so this comes with the territory.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: Has this in Transformers: Call of the Future.
• Depending on the Writer: Mindwipe's relationship with Vorath. In the cartoon they were critical of each other's fields and constantly argued. In the Marvel comic they worked together very well and combined their knowledge of science and mysticism to become Scorponox's most effective warriors.
• Evil Genius: He's skilled with his brainwashing techniques, and fills this role among the original Decepticon Headmasters.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Steve Keener voiced him this way in the cartoon.
• Hypnotic Eyes: He can use these to hypnotize lifeforms both mechanical and organic. Just one look is all he needs to put someone under his will.
  Mindwipe: Your circuits are under my power, Lightspeed. You will back away. Back away! You feel powerless to resist!
• Losing Your Head: He's a Headmaster.
• Mad Scientist: In stories where he's a Nebulan, Vorath is a scientist who was expelled and discredited for illegal experiments. Naturally, he and the occult-minded Mindwipe don't see eye to eye.
• Magic Versus Science: The main clash between the mystical Mindwipe and his skeptical scientist partner Vorath. This exchange in "The Rebirth: Part 2" sums it up quite well.
  Vorath: If I only had some energy-sensing equipment, we could easily find which one of them has the key!
  Mindwipe: Bah, what need have I of your scientific toys when I have my extrasensory powers!
• Mind Manipulation: Mindwipe's M.O. and deadliest weapon. Vorath also bestows this ability to whoever he's partnered with in Titans Return.
• The Paralyzer: He carries a viper pistol that can freeze a 'bot for a good thirty minutes using a neuro-circuit paralysing liquid.
• Underestimating Badassery: He once tried hypnotizing Grimlock, figuring the big guy would be an easy target. Grimlock just ignored it and decked him.
• Vampire Vords: The way he speaks in the cartoon, since he transforms into a bat.

Misfire (ミスファイアー misufaiā)

Function: Interceptor

Alt Mode: Suborbital Fighter

"Keep shooting, eventually, you're bound to hit something."

Voiced by: Stan Jones (EN); Hiroshi Naka ("The Rebirth"), Tomomichi Nishimura (The Headmasters) (JP),

One of the Decepticon Targetmasters, Misfire boasts enhanced firepower than puts a dent in whatever he hits. The problem, as his name implies, is actually hitting something that isn't an ally. He says he's getting better, but his comrades would beg to differ. He's partnered in some way with a being named Aimless whose aiming skills also leave a lot to be desired.

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• Adaptational Badass: His Headmasters incarnation is actually a capable shot, making his name very non-indicative.
• Amusingly Awful Aim: The aptly-named Misfire is the absolute worst shot in the Decepticon ranks, having flunked out of their military academy more than four thousand times and was only able to graduate on a technicality because the academy was destroyed in an Autobot attack. His Targetmaster partner, Aimless, is just as bad. Whenever these two are on the battlefield, their comrades try harder to avoid their line of fire than they do with the Autobots'.
• Comic Book Death: Another comic casualty of Unicron. Regeneration One has him inexplicably alive again, just so Scorponok can murder him for no reason.
• Cool Plane: His alt mode is a Cybertronian jet with a top speed of 1600 miles per hour.
• Disqualification-Induced Victory: He only managed to graduate from the Decepticon Military College (Decepticon Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy?) because the Autobots blew it up. He had had previously flunked out 4627 times.
• Empathic Weapon: Aimless forms his weapon in most continuities.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: His IDW self is part of the Scavengers, alongside many other terrible and quirky Decepticons.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: In his case, the inability to hit a target is a trait of the character.
  Megatron: Because Misfire so rarely hits who he aims for, it is all those whom he doesn't aim for who must worry.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • In the Marvel comics he was killed alongside Finback fighting Unicron.
  • In Regeneration One he gets executed by Shockwave for questioning his orders.
• Losing Your Head: His Titans Return toy reinterprets Aimless as a Titan Master that forms Misfire's head rather than his gun. The Japanese release includes a larger Aimless figure that turns into his traditional weapon.
• Meaningful Name:
  • In the IDW comics, he was originally named Flyhigh. The Decepticons started calling him Misfire after an incident with a machine gun, "a misunderstanding", and twenty dead Decepticons.
  • Aimless has a Double Meaning; the first and most obvious one being he's a terrible shot who does nothing to help Misfire's poor aim, but that's actually due to the second meaning; his catastrophic failure in his previous career as a construction engineer has left him aimless in life, and thus is too apathetic to even try putting effort into his new job as a firearm.
• Mirror Character: Of the Autobot Sureshot, even their names have opposite meanings, with Misfire's color scheme contrasting with Sureshot's. While Sureshot's partner Spoilsport is equally skilled as him, Misfire's partner Aimless is equally as bad.
• Motor Mouth: His profile in the IDW comics states that he has ADHD.
• Mythology Gag: His gun in the IDW comics looks like Aimless, despite not being a Targetmaster in that continuity.

Overkill (オーバーキル ōbākiru)

Function: Warrior

Alt Mode: Micro-cassette

"Too much destruction is never enough."

Another of Soundwave's tapes, he's the dumbest and most violent of the group. True to his name, he indulges in excessive violence befitting his saurian robot mode... at least, when he's not accidentally the size of a tiny micro-cassette.

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• Artistic License – Paleontology: Though Overkill is ostensibly a Tyrannosaurus rex, he has a nose horn that makes him closer resemble a Ceratosaurus.
• Ax-Crazy: Only fellow Blood Knight Frenzy rivals Overkill as the craziest and most violent of Soundwave's minions. He'll keep on attacking and destroying even when there's nothing left.
• Blood Knight: He has a tendency to indulge in... well, overkill when let loose on the battlefield.
• Dumb Dinos: He is not particularly bright, mostly due to the fact that he prefers to destroy his targets even when they are already destroyed.
• Harem Seeker: Oddly enough, in G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers he bragged about getting a girl-bot harem while trying to devour Hawk.
• Losing Your Head: In Titans Return, he's a humanoid Titan Master that becomes the head of larger robots. He comes with a robotic dinosaur similar to his original incarnation, however.
• Out of Focus: Overkill very, very seldom appears anywhere when compared to most of Soundwave's other minions.
• Power Incontinence: He sometimes fails to change his size when transforming from tape to dino mode, resulting in an action figure sized T-Rex.
• Sizeshifter: Overkill is among the few Transformers who explicitly change size when transforming. Said shifting is also prone to glitching out, leaving him as a very tiny dinosaur.
• Super-Strength: He's powerful enough to rip open the hull of a battleship and snap cars in half between his jaws.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Overkill's robot mode is shaped like a T-Rex (or at least what people thought a T-Rex looked like back then). And the name should give you an idea of his personality.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: This is his philosophy; with powerful jaws, missiles that explode on contact, and a violent disposition, he uses more force than he really needs to when fighting foes. He gets so into it that he often forgets what his mission was, and/or looks like a fool as he keeps on fighting long after the fight's over.

Pounce and Wingspan (パウンス paunsu, ウイングスパン uingusupan)

Pounce

Wingspan

Function: Infiltrator (Pounce), Data Processor (Wingspan)

Alt Modes: Puma (Pounce), Eagle (Wingspan)

Pounce: "Terror is the stage on which I perform."

Wingspan: "Knowledge is the most deadly weapon of all."

Pounce voiced by: Stan Jones (EN); Jin Horikawa ("The Rebirth") and Masashi Ebara (The Headmasters) (JP)

Wingspan voiced by: Peter Cullen (EN); Kunihiko Yasui ("The Rebirth") and Hōchū Ōtsuka (The Headmasters) (JP)

Two clone brothers, Pounce and Wingspan share identical robot modes but different alt modes. This helps them act as elite spies for the Decepticons.

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• Always Identical Twins: The two look identical in their robot modes, with only their alternate modes distinguishing them.
• Brutal Bird of Prey: Wingspan turns into an eagle.
• Cats Are Mean: Pounce's alternate mode is a mechanical puma, and Pounce himself is far from a pleasant Decepticon, being anti-social, merciless, and wily.
• Evil Former Friend: In Transformers: ★Headmasters, the two were friends with the Autobot Clones before allying themselves with Galvatron.
• Feathered Fiend: Wingspan's alternate form is a mechanical eagle, and he's just as driven and dangerous as his clone brother.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: The brothers each have a rubsign on their chests, each one denoting what beast mode they have. More apparently, however, is their kibble. Pounce typically has his puma mode's legs folded up on his back, while Wingspan has his eagle mode's wings folded up on his back (and if not the mode's wings, then its tail, as demonstrated by Wingspan's Titans Return figure). Usually just consequences of their toys' design limitations, these distinguishing traits have appeared in fiction like the Headmasters cartoon, surprisingly enough.
• In a Single Bound: Pounce's puma mode can jump a distance of 0.7 miles.
• No Sympathy: If an enemy pleads for mercy, Pounce won't give them the time of day.
• Sensor Character: Wingspan has chemical and infra-red sensors that allow him to detect resources and geographical data.
• So Proud of You: Pounce, who normally shuns his intellectual brother, feels a surge of pride whenever Wingspan resorts to force to get what he wants.
• Super-Senses:
  • Pounce has an improved sense of sight and smell, aiding him in his role as infiltrator. Said sight also gives him 99.4% accuracy with his anti-personnel bayonets.
  • Wingspan gains superb vision when in his hawk form.

Sixshot (シックスショット sikkusushotto)

Function: S.T.A.G. (Solo Transformer Assault Group)

Alt Modes: Cybertronian Tank, Off Road Vehicle, Suborbital Fighter, Laser Cannon, Wolf

"Life is worth saving only as long as there are enemies worth destroying."

Voiced by: Neil Ross ("The Rebirth") and Walter Roberts (Call of the Future) (EN); Michihiro Ikemizu (The Headmasters) and Eiji Yanagisawa ("The Rebirth") (JP)

A Decepticon who has six forms, Sixshot is a one-man army and among the most deadly Transformers to ever exist. Vile, nasty, and gleefully murderous, Sixshot delights in sending foes to "the great junkyard in the sky".

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• Adaptational Heroism: The Headmasters gives Sixshot far more redeeming qualities than his Tech Specs do, giving him a sense of honor and decency who never kills innocents or children in cold blood. For comparison, his Tech Specs claim his one redeeming trait is him speaking well of his victims.
• Adaptational Superpower Change:
  • Transformers: ★Headmasters, for whatever reason, gave Sixshot ninja abilities in addition to his alternate modes (of which he received an extra one in "Wingwolf"... which was obviously made via fiddling with the toy a bit).
  • His Titans Return toy, thanks to toy guns becoming taboo in the modern era, replaces the gun mode for a submarine mode. It's totally not his gun mode turned upside-down, we swear.
• Antagonist Abilities: His six-changer abilities that make him an unstoppable One-Man Army, due to the frequent omission of his Autobot counterpart Quickswitch, are often unique to him, and thus exclusive to the Decepticons.
• Archnemesis Dad: He acts as this to his son, Quickswitch, who joined the Autobots to make good where Sixshot went bad.
• Artifact Name: He was named for his ability to initially assume six modes. Transformers: ★Headmasters gave him a semi-official seventh mode, dubbed the "Wingwolf", formed by fiddling with his G1 toy, and his Titans Return toy can also manage a decent approximation of it. Titans Return also replaced his gun mode with a submarine mode by turning said gun mode upside-down. Of course, due to how the toy's designers came up with the submarine, nothing is preventing the Titans Return figure from still assuming the gun mode. Thus, depending on one's interpretation, rather than lose a mode, Sixshot may have well gained yet another mode, making for eight modes in all.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Looking at his robot mode and its kibble alone, it's hard to pin down exactly what Sixshot can turn into. This is because he has only a few dedicated parts for his alt modes. Everything else consists of simple shapes, whose purposes can be easily re-contextualized for whatever mode he chooses. Not only does this suit his characterization as a tricky, unpredictable fighter, but it makes his toys much easier to design.
• BFG: He can transform into a laser gun. Like Shockwave, he doesn't shrink when in this mode, and he can use jets to move around in gun mode.
• Challenge Seeker: Sees battle as a way to test himself against powerful opponents.
• Confusion Fu: Being a six-changer, Sixshot has unprecedented versatility. He can become a car, a tank, a space-fighter, a laser-gun, and a wolf, each with their own benefits that cover each other's weaknesses. And Sixshot can turn into any of them at any time he pleases. The Headmasters cartoon takes his trickiness a step further, by giving him ninja skills like holographic self-duplication and spot-on disguises.
• Cool Car: One of his alt modes is an armed off-road car.
• Cool Starship: He can transform into a Cybertronian spaceship.
• The Dreaded: His One-Robot Army status creates fear in both enemies and allies alike.
• Equippable Ally: Just like Megatron, Shockwave, and the Targetmasters, he can be fired by other Transformers while in gun mode.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: The IDW Decepticons all fear and despise Sixshot for the horrific nature of his function as a Phase Sixer. The only ones that come close to being his friends are the Terrorcons, who look up to Sixshot and want to be just as strong as he is.
• Heel–Face Turn: While he starts off as a nasty piece of work in Transformers: ★Headmasters, he eventually comes to abandon the Decepticons and form a friendship with Daniel.
• Hero Killer: In The Headmasters, Sixshot kills Ultra Magnus in a duel on Earth.
• Hidden Depths: If he believes an opponent is worthy enough, he will face them in hand-to-hand combat to the death. Obviously, he's never lost such a contest, but he always speaks highly of those he's defeated in such a way.
• I Gave My Word: The only reason such an honorable warrior like Sixshot would continue to work for a deranged genocidal maniac like Galvatron was his sense of sworn-duty to Megatron.
• It's Personal: With Chromedome in Headmasters, thanks to killing his friends Jack and Abel. Also, later on, with Ultra Magnus, whom he killed.
• Logical Weakness: His multiple forms and all their varied parts means he requires a lot more maintenance than most Transformers.
• Losing Your Head: His Titans Return toy partners him with an ancient Titan Master named Revolver, who forms Sixshot's head.
• Loud of War: Sixshot wields two hypersonic concussion blasters, which are used in every one of his modes, though the wolf mode prefers the use of its razor sharp teeth.
• Made of Iron: At the end of Spotlight: Metroplex, Sixshot is crushed underfoot by the titular Titan. And he survives. Later comics established that Sixshot, as a Phase Sixer, is made Nigh-Invulnerable.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Sixshot, being a Six Changer, has six forms — his robot mode, a tank, a gun, a spaceship, an off-road vehicle, and a winged wolf.
  • The IDW continuity gives his name additional meaning as a Phase Sixer — as the sixth phase of Megatron's infiltration protocol, he's sent in to completely raze a given planet and eliminate any remaining scraps of resistance.
• Must Make Amends: His Japanese continuity version decides, after his turn to good, to try and find a way to bring back Chromedome's friends.
• Mythology Gag: His Titan Master partner, Revolver, looks like Jack, whose death Sixshot caused in Headmasters.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: His one redeeming trait is his admiration for the opponents he's killed, which are often those he deemed worthy opponents.
• Noble Demon: Sixshot, in The Headmasters only serves the Decepticons out of a sense of sworn duty to Galvatron, and is actually a principled, decent and honorable warrior who does not kill children or innocents in cold blood. This hidden decency allows him to befriend Daniel later on, resulting in a Heel–Face Turn.
• One-Man Army: With the function of Solo Transformer Assault Group and six transformations, Sixshot is perfectly capable of holding his own against far more numerous opponents.
• Out of Focus: Unusually for a Merchandise-Driven franchise and an ambitious toy, Sixshot made only a single appearance in the Marvel comic and the Sunbow cartoon (but for the latter, he sure made it count). It wasn't until IDW came along that he got a starring role in Western media.
• Person of Mass Destruction: In the IDW comics, Sixshot is one of Megatron's "Phase Sixers", a trio of extremely powerful Decepticons who are expected — and perfectly capable — of razing entire planets to the ground whenever they see action.
• Savage Wolves: Sixshot has a mechanical winged wolf as one of his transformations, and he's as cruel, cunning and destructive as any Decepticon comes.
• Super-Soldier: One gets the impression that this is Sixshot's role in the Decepticon hierarchy. It's even more blatant in IDW, where he is explicitly created as a Phase-Sixer.
• Tank Goodness: One of his many transformations is a Cybertronian tank.
• Worthy Opponent: If he speaks well of his victims, he must consider them this to some degree.

Skullcruncher (スカルクランチャー sukarukuranchā)

Function: Swamp Warrior

Alt Mode: Alligator

"Autobots are like bad fuel - weak and greasy."
Voiced by: Kōji Totani (The Headmasters)^note Role originally planned to be voiced by Chris Latta in "The Rebirth"

A swamp fighter with remarkable strength and endurance, Skullcruncher has the disturbing tendency to eat opponents he has bested in battle, despite this not being necessary to the Cybertronian refueling process. This, combined with a habit that makes stealth attacks impossible, makes his fellow Decepticons dread missions with him as a squadmate.

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• Buffy Speak: He refers to his gun as a "Soften Up" gun rather than its given name, because he can't pronounce it.
• Carnivorous Healing Factor: Skullcruncher can devour his enemies in crocodile mode. Within his body, a unique "digestive system" breaks down the parts and repurposes them, allowing him to regenerate battle damage.
• Character Tics: Grinding his teeth together in crocodile mode.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Grax, Skullcruncher's Headmaster partner, tried getting him to eat his business rivals. It worked, but Skullcruncher didn't like organics (not very filling).
• Dumb Muscle: He's tough, and he's strong, but he's incredibly slow and stupid.
• Eating Machine: He can devour Autobots, with a unique "digestive" system allowing him to break their components down and use them to repair battle damage.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Skullcruncher has eaten both Nebulans and Transformers. He's not really fond of either (Nebulans aren't very nutritional, and as for Autobots... see his quote).
• Informed Attribute: His Tech-Specs give him an intelligence score of 8. He has never been described or portrayed as being especially smart, being often characterized as Dumb Muscle. While the Tech-Specs could imply Skullcruncher's intelligence being boosted after bonding with Grax, this puts his IQ on the same level as Brainstorm, who is also a Headmaster.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: In the IDW comics, after Megatron became an Autobot, Skullcruncher retired and became a stand-up comedian. Yes, really.
• Leeroy Jenkins: His teeth-gnashing habit is so loud that Autobots can hear him coming from a mile away, effectively making sneak attacks impossible.
• Losing Your Head: He's a Headmaster.
• Mighty Glacier: His attacks are powerful but slow.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: His alt mode is an alligator and he loves eating his enemies.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: His signature purple and dark green color scheme.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: His Demolecularization Cannon, which fires energy pellets which greatly weaken the durability of armor and steel. Those who have survived being shot have said it feels like being "turned into jelly."
• Sword and Gun: He uses this combination more pragmatically than most. His shotgun softens up his opponents, and his sword slices them into smaller pieces that are easier for his beast mode to chew.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He attempts to compensate for this by playing up his brute strength in an attempt to intimidate his opponents.

Slugfest (スラッグフェスト suraggufesuto)

Function: Messenger

Alt Mode: Micro-cassette

"Expect betrayal and your friends won't disappoint you."

Yet another of Soundwave's tapes, this one in the form of a Stegosaurus. He's a paranoid moron who thinks everyone's out to get him.

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• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The plates down his back double as this.
• Conspiracy Theorist: He's absolutely sure all the other Decepticons are plotting against him behind his back.
• Dumb Dinos: Slugfest is both monumentally stupid and monumentally thin-skinned. He'll take just about any conversation he's around to hear as an insult — whether they're about him or not — flying into destructive rages as a result. Most of the time, these reactions are induced by the messages he carries… and after he's finished his tantrums, these messages are often destroyed.
• Mighty Glacier: Strength score of 9, Speed score of 1.
• Out of Focus: When compared to most of Soundwave's other minions, Slugfest appears very, very seldom. Even Overkill had more exposure than him.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: Slugfest is easily identified by his dark green and purple color scheme.
• The Spiny: Supposedly. His bio states that his dorsal fins can cut through the hardest armors, yet this ability was never displayed in fiction. The IDW comics outright contradict this, as Ultra Magnus steps on him with no bad consequences.
• Vibration Manipulation: Armed with two solar-powered "vibro-cannons" that cause whatever they hit to shake apart.
• Wrong Line of Work: His persecution complex makes him a terrible messenger, as he often gets it into his head that the message he's carrying contains something negative about him, driving him into a rage that usually destroys the message.

Slugslinger (スラッグスリンガー suraggusuringā)

Function: Air Defense

Alt Mode: Twin-Cockpit Suborbital Fighter

"The only way to survive a duel with me is to not show up."

Voiced by: Peter Cullen (EN); Ken Yamaguchi (The Headmasters) and Kenichi Sakaguchi ("The Rebirth") (JP)

An egotistical Targetmaster who has built up a reputation as a master duelist. It's all bluster, though, as he never fights fairly, and wields a weapon that does not necessarily require a high level of user accuracy. His level of courage generally tends to be directly proportionate to the amount of ammo he has on hand.

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• Combining Mecha: He is forcibly combined into Sky Reign in the 2005 IDW continuity.
• Dirty Coward: His definition of a "duel" is shooting his enemy from behind and at a distance.
• Empathic Weapon: Caliburst, who transforms into a machine gun.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Courtesy of Peter Cullen in the cartoon.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: His fellow Decepticons detest him for both his ego and habit of pointing his gun at them for fun.
• Jaded Washout: Caliburst is a failed former actor, who plays the role of a warrior to the best of his limited ability.
• Miles Gloriosus: He boasts of his skill as a marksman, but is nowhere near as good as he thinks.
• Mirror Character: Of Pointblank; Slugslinger is egotistical, boisterous and cowardly, while Pointblank is quiet, shell-shocked and cool-headed.
• Only Sane by Comparison: When your teammates are Triggerhappy and Misfire^note Scourge and Cyclonus aren't always affiliated with the targetmasters, coward or no, you're a more effective and stable teammate.
• The Starscream: His Japanese G1 incarnation tried betraying Megatron, resulting in their fleeing into space to avoid his wrath (which is why they didn't show up until after Galvatron was defeated).

The Terrorcons (Terrortron (テラートロン terātoron))

A quintet of Decepticons who transform into monstrous, nightmarish creatures. And their mental states are just as monstrous and nightmarish as well. They're the rival team to the Technobots. They merge to form Abominus.

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• Ax-Crazy: All of them, some more so than others. Due to this, Abominus is described as little better than a rabid animal with a sadistic streak.
• Breath Weapon: Both Cutthroat and Sinnertwin can breathe fire.
• The Dividual: As is often for Combiner teams, while their individual toys present them with unique profiles that should make them different from one another, in fiction they're only presented as a bunch of animalistic brutes who are always together.
• Hulk Speak: They all speak in a Grimlock-like fashion on and off during the G1 cartoon.
• Killed Off for Real: Another bunch of Starscream's Underbase rampage victims, perishing to said killer in the Marvel Comics.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": To Sixshot (in the IDW comics continuity). Unlike most other Decepticons, they actually admire his brutality instead of fearing it.
• The Psycho Rangers: The evil counterparts to the Technobots and the brawn to their brains, though in the cartoon, they came first.

Hun-Gurrr (ハンガー hangā)

Function: Terrorcon Leader

Alt Mode: Algean Two-headed Razorbeast

"Eat only what you need - destroy the rest."

Voiced by: Stephen Keener (EN) Marshall Efron (EN; beast mode), Ken Shiroyama (JP; cartoon), Hōchū Ōtsuka (JP; Headmasters)

The ever-hungry leader of the Terrorcons. He is also a brutal warrior who likes inflicting wanton destruction on any Autobot he meets, and is just as intelligent, though he prefers to kill some time eating things.

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• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: When his Power of the Primes figure is transformed, Hun-Gurrr's backpack ends up situated on his beast mode's underbelly. Keeping true to his gluttony, it vaguely makes his stomach seem intensely swelled, with its bright pink coloring making it look close to bursting.
• Berserk Button: Hun-Grrr was in a good mood, so he offered some Energon chips to his boss, Bludgeon. Due to a complex Frame-Up, Bludgeon believed Hun-Grrr to be a traitor. Hun-Grrr was more pissed off that his generosity was refused.
• Big Eater: Hun-Grrr needs to eat a lot to satisfy his immense appetite.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Is actually quite intelligent and a capable military strategist, but chooses to spend most of his time stuffing his mouths.
• Extreme Omnivore: Hun-Grrr can eat almost anything and spits it out as missiles and weaponry.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The Terrorcon leader's name has been spelled as Hun-Gurrr^*All of his toys' packaging and instructions, and in the 1987 toy catalog, Hun-Grr^*the Marvel Comics and cartoon series scripts, Hun-Garr^*Part 3 of the UK reprint of "Brothers in Armor!!", Hun-Grrr^*the American toy's tech specs, Blot's The Transformers Universe profile, Dreamwave's More than Meets the Eye entry for the character, Devil's Due Press fiction, and IDW publications like Spotlight: Sixshot and The Ark, and Hun-Gar^*More than Meets the Eye #12 and Monstrosity across various official sources.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Hun-Grrr's voracious diet includes even other Cybertronians, typically Autobots.
• Leader Forms the Head: As is usual for Combiner leaders, Hun-Grrr forms the head and torso of Abominus.
• Multiple Head Case: Hun-Grrr has two heads in beast mode, often talking through both of them at once.
• Picky Eater: Hun-Grrr will eat almost everything - except for organics, whom he finds disgusting.
• Sonic Stunner: Wields a sonic stun gun in robot mode.
• Super Spit: Hun-Gurrr can turn whatever he eats into a dangerous projectile by regurgitating it from his mouths.
• Villainous Glutton: Hun-Grrr's primary motivation is filling his belly, usually above anything else.

Rippersnapper (リッパースナッパー rippāsunappā)

Function: Terrorist

Alt Mode: Bulette

"Autobots are an error I intend to correct."

Voiced by: Jim Cummings (EN) Kenyū Horiuchi (JP; cartoon), Ikuya Sawaki (JP; Headmasters)

A vicious Terrorcon who is incensed by the sight of his perceived inferiors. Ironically, he's the physically weakest of his team, something he tries to hide from everyone.

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• Blow You Away: Rippersnapper carries a cyclone gun that produces winds powerful enough to rip the armor off his enemies.
• Boisterous Weakling: Rippersnapper is durable and vicious, but very weak physically.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Rippersnapper deems other beings weak inferior (typically Autobots) to cover for his own weakness.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Rippersnapper takes his massive inferiority complex out on his Autobot enemies.
• Wolverine Claws: His Power of the Primes toy leaves his beast mode claws as a part of his robot mode arms, resulting in this trope.

Sinnertwin (シナーツイン shinātsuin)

Function: Sentry

Alt Mode: Orthrus

"The sound of ripping metal is music to my audio modules."

Voiced by: David Workman and Jered Barclay (EN) Tomomichi Nishimura (JP; cartoon), Masashi Ebara (JP; Headmasters)

A destructive two-headed terror who likes obliterating anything that crosses his path.

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• Absurd Phobia: Sinnertwin's afraid of small, furry animals despite being a scary two-headed orthrus.
• Kill It with Fire: One of his weapons is a flamethrower, which can attach to the back of his beast mode.
• Multiple Head Case: Like Hun-Grrr, he transforms into a two-headed beast. But unlike his leader, whose heads speak in unison with a singular voice, with neither appearing to possesses any distinct sense of self, Sinnertwin's heads appear to possess distinct personalities and voices and even argued with each other at one point over who got to kill an Autobot.
• Too Many Mouths: The monster mode necks of Sinnertwin's Power of the Primes toy each have an extra mouth at their bases.

Blot (ブロット burotto)

Function: Foot Soldier

Alt Mode: Ogre

"I'm not as bad as I look - I'm worse."

Voiced by: Tony St. James (EN), Ken Yamaguchi (JP)

A dumb, foul-smelling brute.

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• Acid Attack: Blot wields a slime gun which fires a stream of corrosive (and smelly) liquid.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Blot's alt mode, even with prior knowledge that it's intended to be an ogre, is very vague in appearance. In other words, the alt mode is up for interpretation — like an ink blot.
• Dumb Muscle: One of the stronger individual Terrorcons, but very slow-witted.
• Fat Slob: Blot is not really fat in fat standards. But he's still too dumb to do anything about it.
• The Pig-Pen: Blot constantly leaks some sort of disgusting fluid from every orifice on his body. It's due to a health issue he can't control very well; being rock-stupid definitely doesn't help him take care of it.
• Undying Loyalty: Because his hygiene problem causes others to keep their distance from him, Blot shows this towards anyone who at least pretends he's worth something, namely Hun-Grrr.

Cutthroat (カットスロート kattosurōto)

Function: Shock Trooper

Alt Mode: Harpy

Cutthroat: "Compassion is the currency of losers."

Voiced by: Tony St. James (EN) Show Hayami (JP)

An extremely ruthless and savage fighter whose bloodlust scares even his fellow Decepticons.

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• The Berserker: In battle, Cutthroat lashes out with claws, beak and wings until his opponents are nothing but scrap.
• Feathered Fiend: Cutthroat transforms into a bird creature and is a merciless killer without a conscience.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Cutthroat's savage attack style tends to use up a lot of energy, which doesn't help much in a prolonged battle.
• Lack of Empathy: As evidenced by his bio quote, Cutthroat has no use for anything like compassion.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: Cutthroat stands out for his green, orange and purple color scheme.
• Token Flyer: Much like Predacon Divebomb, Cutthroat is the only Terrorcon with a flying alternate mode.

Abominus (オボミナス obominasu)

Function: Gestalt Warrior

"Chaos is my only ally; destruction is my only friend."

Voiced by: Jim Gosa (EN), Chikao Shiroyama (JP, cartoon); Masato Hirano (JP, Headmasters)

The combined animalistic fury of the Terrorcons, who enjoys destroying anything in his path.

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• Dumb Muscle: Abominus is so destructively dumb that a timer needs to be set before the Terrorcons merge. However, there was this one time during the "Hate Plague" episode where he manages to beat Computron (because the latter "thinks too much).
• Flawed Prototype: In Transformers (2019), Abominus is the first Combiner and infamously his combination resulted in him being a ferocious beast that rampaged across the planet in search of Energon and destruction.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: While he carries Hun-Grrr's sonic stun gun, he more often uses his bare hands to smash his enemies to metallic pulp.
• Hour of Power: In the cartoon, the Terrorcons can only stay combined for a limited amount of time before a set timer forcibly splits them apart.

Triggerhappy (トリガーハッピー torigāhappī)

Function: Gunner

Alt Mode: Suborbital Fighter

"Have gun, have fun!"

Voiced by: Charlie Adler (EN); Michihiro Ikemizu (The Headmasters) and Ken Narita ("The Rebirth") (JP)

One of the Decepticons' Targetmasters, Triggerhappy is an insane gun-nut that loves the sound of his own guns firing. So much so, he doesn't care much for where exactly he's pointing them at the time. His main weapon is a compression cannon formed from Blowpipe, a political manager and the envious brother-in-law of Lord Zarak.

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• Ax-Crazy: He's a drooling idiot who laughs maniacally when he fires his (many) guns.
• Blow You Away: Triggerhappy's compression cannon fires compressed air at forces strong enough to crush armor. When Blowpipe is a Titan Master, this ability is imbued on whoever he combines with (not just Triggerhappy).
• Cool Plane: Triggerhappy transforms into a Cybertronian jet, which Blowpipe is able to drive.
• Corrupt Politician: Blowpipe was this on Nebulos, rigging Lord Zarak's election win.
• Depending on the Artist: While his box-art illustration (shown above) and original toy show him with a visor and a mouth, his fiction appearances and Titans Return toy instead give him uncovered eyes and a mouthplate.
• Empathic Weapon: As a Targetmaster, Triggerhappy's compression cannon is the alt mode of Blowpipe.
• Freudian Excuse: It's been rumored that as a scared novice, Triggerhappy actually survived his first few battles by firing madly in all directions, and permanently adopted the technique soon after.
• Killed Off for Real: Arcee cuts him down without a second thought in the 2005 IDW comics.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Triggerhappy's idea of a battle strategy is "wave guns around randomly while firing really fast". This severely annoys the more calm and strategic Blowpipe.
• Losing Your Head: In Titans Return, Blowpipe is instead a Titan Master that transforms into Triggerhappy's head.
• Meaningful Name: The Decepticon named Triggerhappy is Trigger-Happy? You don't say!? The 2nd IDW continuity actually pokes fun at this with a running gag of Triggerhappy insisting people call him by his real name but everyone insists Triggerhappy suits him better.
• Mirror Character: Of the Targetmaster Crosshairs; Crosshairs is meticulous, taciturn and never wastes a single shot, Triggerhappy is careless, wasteful when it comes to shooting, and has no strategy other than firing like a madman.
• Odd Couple: The Trigger-Happy lunatic is paired with the meticulous political mastermind Blowpipe.
• Trigger-Happy: Well... yeah. He loves the sounds his guns make when they go off, so much so he fires them while laughing uncontrollably.

Weirdwolf (ウィアードウルフ wiādourufu)

Function: Tracker

Alt Mode: Wolf

"My pleasure with my enemy's pain comes."

Voiced by: Katsuji Mori (JP, The Headmasters)^note Was to be voiced by Stan Jones in "The Rebirth"

A brilliant but eccentric tracker, Weirdwolf has a unique neural thought process that gives him a "sixth sense" that helps him anticipate the movements of his prey. He is often paired with Monzo, an adrenaline junkie who became a Decepticon Headmaster so he could beat stuff up.

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• Beware the Silly Ones: His quirky mannerisms don't make him any less bloodthirsty or dangerous. Unless he blows his cover by talking to himself.
• The Dragon: In Headmasters, he's one of Scorponok's top minions. Well, for a given value of "top".
• Good Old Fisticuffs: When bonded to Monzo he is, forgo his weapons in favour of wrestling he does, because able to let go of his past Monzo isn't.
• Hot Blade: Carries a thermal sword in robot mode.
• In a Single Bound: Capable of leaping eight miles in a single go, he is. According to his Universe profile, at least. Never really been depicted elsewhere, it hasn't.
• Losing Your Head: A Headmaster he is.
• Sadist: Enjoys tearing Autobots to scrap, as implied by his bio quote.
• Savage Wolves: A dangerous, if eccentric Decepticon who turns into a wolf.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: As a robotic wolf, he has advanced sensors that help him track down his prey.
• Shoulder Cannon: A variation in that his shoulders are the cannons, storing and deploying several small missiles in both robot and wolf mode.
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: Backwards, he talks. Unless written by Simon Furman, he is.
• Talkative Loon: Occasionally blows his cover by announcing his presence before pouncing.
• Would Hurt a Child: Monzo. During the cartoon's "Rebirth" storyline, he nearly broke Danny's arms in a successful attempt to force Arcee to hand over the key to the Plasma Energy Chamber.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Monzo is a former wrestler, and his influence often causes Weirdwolf to resort to such attacks rather than use his weapons.

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