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Megatron: "It appears you and I are destined to battle aboard this ship once more, Autobot."
Optimus Prime: "Bring it on, Decepticon."
The most recent entry in the Transformers franchise, debuted in December 2007. While it is an entirely other Alternate Continuity, it was created to ride the popularity of the 2007 Transformers film and as a result borrows several aspects of the film. Despite severe fan reactions to the character designs and animation style, the show's story and scripting (and a healthy respect to the saga as a whole) have won over many converts in short order.
A group of maintenance Autobots discover the coveted transformer artifact called "The AllSpark" and in escaping pursuit from the Decepticons, land on Earth in Detroit. Waking up in The Future, they befriend Sari Sumdac, 7-year old adopted daughter of Professor Isaac Sumdac and work to maintain friendly relations with the public. However, the Decepticons aren't far behind.
One of the things that separate this show from its predecessors is the animation style, which is fluid, simplistic and very organic looking. (Odd, considering it is about robotic life forms.) While some are still unhappy with the look, the simple style makes the action sequences easier to animate and you become accustomed to it surprisingly quickly.
Another distinction is the way the Decepticons are used. They are big and powerful enemies, and the protagonists are maintenance workers; even one 'Con requires the small Autobot team to work together just to contain them. Most of the time, Megatron is planning some sort of gambit to avoid detection while still furthering his plans. He is dangerous, but the Decepticons as a whole are a scattered group; Megatron doesn't want to deal with the entire Autobot Elite Guard before he's ready.
To maintain the Decepticons as serious enemies, human enemies of the Autobots form the bulk of the first two seasons. Some are joke villains that are only petty thieves, but others are legitimate threats to the Autobots. Another unique feature of the show is that the Transformers are very well known among the community and there is a noticeable lack of Hero Insurance. The humans are unhappy with the collateral damage and the Autobots maintain their good graces by repairing the city (after all, they are construction workers).
See also the character page
This Show Provides Examples of:
- The Ace: Afterburn, in the Titan Magazine adaptation. Bordering on Canon Sue, who in two consecutive issues leave Optimus and Bumblebee holding the Idiot Ball respectively. Turns out he is a sparkless drone Decepticon spy, who Megatron quickly disposes of.
- Adaptation Distillation: Most notable is in the character of Starscream, who makes his first bid for leadership in the first episode. He is very literally the distilled character of G1, who took until The Movie and Megatron being injured from a battle with Prime. Here he is much more proactive, planting a bomb on Megatron before he went off to fight the Autobots.
- Also, there's apparently Optimus Prime, who says...just read the quote above. Please don't make me repeat it.
- Aesop Amnesia: Happens frequently. Bumblebee and Sentinel Prime alone are poster boys for this trope.
- AI Is A Crapshoot - Megatron developed Soundwave to evolve with uses of Sari's key into a new body, but Soundwave unexpectedly became sentient unto himself (but still useful to Megatron's plans). And then there's stuff like Professor Sumdac's malfunctioning police robots and the nanobots in the pilot, and...
- One msut wonder how Sumdac stays in business if 3/4 of his machines go haywire.
- Air Vent Escape: By Optimus, complete with Shout Out to Die Hard.
- Alien Arts Are Appreciated - Bulkhead winds up with a museum show in one episode, although his "masterpiece" was an accident.
- Aliens Speaking English
- Almost Kiss: Blackarachnia and Optimus Prime. However, most of the time she does it, she's trying to distract him.
- All There In The Manual - The Starscream clones are only ever referred to by their personalities (or gender), but their toys are named after the G1 Seekers: Coward Starscream = "Skywarp," Sycophant Starscream = "Sunstorm," Egomaniac Starscream = "Thundercracker." If they ever dub a Liar Starscream toy "Ramjet," the homages will be complete!
- Consider the homages complete, then — the Transformers Animated Almanac does indeed name the character as "Ramjet."
- In an almost literal example, toyless Female Starscream's official name "Slipstream" was created just for The AllSpark Almanac.
- Actually The Allspark Almanac probably counts a lot for this trope, revealing intense amounts of detail (and ShoutOuts about the show, the setting and the characters.
- Aloof Ally: The Dinobots and the main team of Autobots have a relationship that is adversarial at best.
- An Aesop - Most episodes.
- And I Must Scream - Swindle's fate at the end of S.U.V. — ironically to be cut into pieces and sold off. ("Five Servos of Doom" reveals that Swindle is Not Quite Dead, and he gets freed in "Decepticon Air".)
- Blurr's eventual fate could be seen as this, if the infamous drawing turns out to be canon. While many fans seem to see the drawing as a good sign, this Troper can't help but shudder at the thought of Blurr being still alive while being crushed so badly.
- Blurr was originaly planned to be show alive after being crushed by showing his still beating spark.
- Androcles Lion - Grimlock, complete with thorn in his foot for those that might miss the connection.
- Animesque - From the same folk who worked on Teen Titans, Ben 10 and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! And of course, the overseas Mook and The Answer Studio are Japanese-based animation houses...
- Anyone Can Die - Starts in the begining of the third season with Blurr and never looks back.
- Arc Welding - Ratchet's two old friends from the Great War— Arcee and Omega Supreme— are revealed to be closely connected, plotwise, in the third season.
- Ascended Meme - The portrayal of the Autobot Elite Guard as arrogant and corrupt, and the Decepticons as fighting for their freedom.
- Autobots Rock Out!: Done absolutely literally in "Human Error". And it was AWESOME!!!
- Back To Back Badasses - With bonus Strange Bedfellows: Megatron and Optimus Prime. "Well you're the last bot I'd expect to come to my rescue." When Optimus says he isn't, Megatron then grabs Optimus and uses him as a shield.
- Badass Decay: The Dinobots to the point where they were easily scared off by post-upgrade Sari by Season 3.
- Badass Grandpa: Ratchet.
- Bag Of Holding - Swindle's "personal storage dimension".
- Before we even meet Swindle, we have Wreck-Gar's backpack, which contains (quite literally) everything and the kitchen sink.
- Bash Brothers: The most literal version is Prowl and Fanzone in "Survival of the Fittest," but the trope is frequently used as, on the whole, one Decepticon is more dangerous than three Autobots.
- Batman Gambit - Optimus manages to pull one off in "Decepticon Air," in a near-perfect homage to Superman II.
- Battle Butler - Lugnut's near-religious fanatical devotion to Megatron.
- Berserk Button - Starscream, true to type, likes to plan out monologues and speeches. Don't interrupt him when he gives them, 'kay?
- BFG - Owned by Megatron, Swindle, and Shockwave.
- Big Bad - Megatron. He doesn't get his short-lived Evil Plans thwarted every week anymore, nooo...
- Big No - Bulkhead, when he wakes up and finds his body stolen.
- Biological Mash Up - Meltdown's human experiments ended up bizarre, monstrous Mythology Gags of G1 Pretenders.
- Bizarrchitecture - Sumdac Tower is shaped like a giant sparkplug, and thus is narrower at the bottom than it is near the top.
- Blow You Away - Jetstorm , and vehicle mode Safeguard. Optimus whips up a tornado with the Magnus Hammer.
- Boot Camp Episode - In a Flashback Episode, Bumblebee and Bulkhead go through basic training.
- Born In The Wrong Century - Captain Fanzone, no doubt. The man (somehow) has a rotary dial cell phone, of a size that marks it as outdated by today's standards, among other things.
- Fanzone's Catch Phrase when getting befuddled by anything more complex than that? "This is why I hate machines.''
- Bounty Hunter - Lockdown.
- Brain Bleach - Optimus looks to be in dire need of some after Sari explains where little organics come from.
- Break The Cutie - Sari in Season 2. First her dad goes missing, then her dad's company gets taken out of her control by Porter C. Powell who reveals with the subtlety of a brick that she doesn't exist in any form of legal documentation. If it weren't for the Autobots helping her cope over all of this, Sari could very easily have snapped upon the revelation that she was part Cybertronian instead of taking a level in badass.
- Break The Haughty - Sentinel's ordeal in Return of the Headmaster. It doesn't stick.
- Broken Hero - Optimus Prime, of all people.
- The Bumblebee - Bumblebee (duh) and Sari.
- Cannot Tell A Lie: Inverted by Ramjet, the Liar Starscream, who literally always says the opposite of the truth, Opposite Day-style.
- Canon Immigrant: Oil Slick was never intended to be in the show (in fact, he was originally just a sketch someone made in their free time), and was kept to the toyline and the comics. He's since been introduced in the cartoon in a brief but memorable scene. Roughly the same deal with Soundwave's guitar creatures.
- Inverted with Prowl's samurai armor sidecar; it was created for the show but Hasbro liked the design so much they made a toy version and Prowl eventually got the armor permanently.
- Cassandra Truth: Bulkhead tries to warn Sari about Soundwave, but she's just not listening.
- Catch Phrase - Captain Fanzone, "This is why I hate machines" (with a couple of variants).
- How could one not mention "Transform and Roll Out"? Or the even cooler evil variant, "Transform and Rise Up"?
- I am Wreck-Gar! I dare to be stupid!
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Wreck-Gar and Random Blitzwing. To quote the latter after being sent flying:
Mayday! Mayday! Let's all dance around the maypole!
- Color Coded For Your Convenience The Autobots are bright primary colors (sans Bulkhead and Prowl) while the Decepticons are muted or secondary colors like gray, purple and green. Dead Cybertronians become a distinct darkish grey, in homage to G1 Optimus Prime's death in The Movie.
- Comic Book Adaptation - Three: One is simply a somewhat-fail-y retelling of episodes through screen captures,
 one is an original series of stories published by Titan Magazines and only available in the U.K. (there's also one Animated story in the main Transformers Comic written by Simon Furman), and one is a (most definitely canon) series called The Arrival written by the show's head writer Marty Isenberg, which both tells new stories and what various characters were doing between appearances on the show.
- Combining Mecha - Any Transformer becomes this against their will when the Headmaster gets his hands on them.
- Also, in the comics and Season 3, Jetfire and Jetstorm, who merge symmetrical docking-style into Safeguard.
- Composite Character - The show's version of Blackarachnia is a composite of Blackarachnia from Beast Wars and and Transformers Generation 1's Elita One. Not to mention her design features certain elements of all of her appearances throughout Beast Wars/Beast Machines.
- Complete Monster: Lockdown and Prometheus Black. The former is a sadistic bounty hunter who killed his old trainer to steal Transformer-infants and the latter expemplifies Playing With Syringes. Even the Decepticons look good in comparison.
- Conservation Of Ninjutsu - The Autobots barely hold off Starscream early on, but are much more effective against the squadron of clones. (The Autobot arsenal now includes stasis cuffs...)
- Continuity Porn - The Allspark Almanac. How much can they pack into a mere book, you ask? Clearly you haven't read this book. It's... impressive. Seriously, there are so many references to things in there, no way could one person ever understand them all on their own.
- Cool Car: Par for the course with Transformers, but special mentions go to Lockdown, a combination of a few classic musclecars, and Blurr, whose vehicle mode is reminiscent of the Mach 5.
- Cool Shades - or rather optic sensors: Prowl, Soundwave, Jazz, and Grimlock (the first two's even look a bit like Kamina's). Meltdown's shades, however, are actual sunglasses, and are pretty funky.
- Don't be fooled, Prowl might have Kamina's shades, but he's really Volfogg
- Corrupt Corporate Executive - Porter C. Powell, and to a lesser extent, Prometheus Black/Meltdown.
- Creepy Monotone - Soundwave. Perceptor is actually performed by a voice synthesizer. Megatron and Shockwave come close, being more implacable then monotone.
- Cruel Mercy - Optimus didn't spare Megatron because he was feeling kind....
- Cue Cullen - David Kaye as Optimus Prime.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul - Perceptor may already be a robot, but according to Word Of God, he deleted his own personality and capacity for emotion in order to store more information in his processor.
- Dark Action Girl - Slipstream, the Female Starscream, as treacherous as her progenitor and her fellow trope examples.
- Uh, hello? Blackarachnia!
- Darker And Edgier - Third season. Family Unfriendly Violence, Family Unfriendly Death, and Child Soldiers, oh my!
- Dark Skinned Redhead - Sari
- Dating Catwoman - Optimus and Blackarachnia/Elita-1
- Deadline News - A reporter is covering the Robot War that Soundwave started when his camera starts attacking him. Then we see a News-Bot covering the news a few days later...
- Destructive Saviour - Bulkhead. So very, very much.
- Detractor Nickname: Derisively referred to as "Teen Titans" for sharing the same style/studio.
- Die Hard On An X: "Decepticon Air," complete with Prime doing the "exploding elevator" trick from Die Hard, and making snarky comments while doing an Air Vent Escape.
- Dirty Coward: Coward Starscream, even more so than Starscream himself, though the clone lacks even the courage to betray people to ensure his own safety.
- Disco Dan - Meltdown. Not only does he cling to outmoded ideals about human superiority over all machines, he also once speechified about how Prof. Sumdac isn't worthy to "lick the mud off my platform shoes, booga-looga-looga-looz!"
- Dis Continuity - Some fans still refuse to acknowledge this version exists, their main complaint being the art style.
- Others love the first two seasons, but despise the third because of the tone shift from fun and happy to Anyone Can Die.
- Distinctive Appearances- Nearly every robot in the series can be identified by their shadow. Especially Blackarachnia.
- Distracted By The Sexy - Blackarachnia pulls this on Bulkhead and Bumblebee during her first appearance on Earth (they'd never seen a female Transformer before) and does it quite often to Optimus Prime afterwards (who kinda used to be her ex).
- Distressed Damsel - Arcee is metaphorically Stuffed Into The Fridge multiple times.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength - Bulkhead
- Do I Really Sound Like That? - Sari's impression of Optimus Prime is spot on
- The Dragon - Starscream at first, and later Lugnut.
- By the series finale, the latter is literally fighting Shockwave for this position.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty - Sentinel
Prime Minor in a flashback.
- Drop The Hammer - Ultra Magnus and Sari. Shockwave, briefly.
- Dumb Muscle - The Dinobots, especially the toddler-like Grimlock. Of course, Swoop and Snarl can't seem to muster up the processor power to speak, either. Lugnut, Scrapper, Mixmaster, and Blackout are also standouts, while Bulkhead is a Genius Ditz. Omega Supreme was specifically programmed to be Dumb Muscle, so that he wouldn't question his lot in life as a Robot Of Mass Destruction.
- Enemy Mine - Although they're technically both Autobots, Optimus and Grimlock's fateful teamup played out like this.
- Ensemble Darkhorse - Blitzwing, Prowl and Lockdown quickly became fan favorites.
- Epic Flail: Bulkhead.
- Everyone Knows Cybertronian Optical Code - Used in "Decepticon Air" when Optimus's Autobot symbol flashes while "telling" Jazz his plan.
- Justified here, since Optimus is an Elite Guard washout and Jazz is an actual member of the Elite Guard.
- Evil Costume Switch - Shockwave changing his color scheme to his "true" Decepticon colors can be treated as such.
- Evil Gloating - Starscream loves this. Interrupt him at your peril. Naturally, his clone Thundercracker, the Egomaniac, loves it even more.
- Evil Is Sexy- Megatron, Starscream (yes, even the voice), Lockdown, Slipstream, the female Starscream, and Blackarachnia of course!
- Expy - Very common, this being Transformers. Most recently, Beast Wars character Rattrap got one in the form of Rattletrap (a combination of the original's Western (Rattrap) and Japanese (Rattle) names). Not exactly a flattering portrayal.
- Fallen Hero - Blackarachnia
- Family Unfriendly Death - In the season three premiere, Blurr is crushed into a cube. One hopes for a Disney Death, somehow.
- Considering his spark was still glowing in the close-up models of the cube...
- Fan Nickname: "Teen Titans", by the TF-fans who belive the series is Ruined FOREVER (as usual), since it was designed by the same team who worked on the aforementioned series.
- Fantastic Racism - Meltdown and his henchman don't like machines, and Sentinel Prime doesn't like organics. Is an Odd Couple spinoff possible?
- Hell, Sentinel believes becoming techno-organic is a Fate Worse Than Death, as he tells Blackarachnia to her face before trying to kill her. Second-in-command of the Autobot Elite Guard, everybody!
- Endemic among the Cybertron-bound Autobots—they're afraid of organics like humans might be afraid of bugs. "Ew! Step on it!" Fanzone later uses this to his advantage, as due to his being a human and all, he's basically a walking bioterrorism weapon.
- This might be Fanzone's hatred of machines...if machines didn't hate him back.
- Fastball Special - Optimus does this with Sentinel Prime to get the latter into melee range of Lugnut.
- Bulkhead tosses Prowl on more than one occasion. See also the Not Quite Flight example below.
- Feed Me: YOU INTERRUPTED MY SPEEEEEECH!
- Femme Fatale - Blackarachnia
- Finger Twiddling - By Bulkhead, of all bots.
- Five Bad Band: The main Decepticons, although there is significant shifting of positions because of plot, betrayal or otherwise being separated.
- Big Bad: Megatron
- The Dragon: Starscream, then Lugnut, then Shockwave
- The Brute: Lugnut
- Evil Genius: Blitzwing and Shockwave mostly. Soundwave also fits but he doesn't interact with the others
- Dark Chick: Blackarachnia, the true Mad Scientist of the group, but besides the first episode she doesn't have much to do with the others
- Five Man Band - Somewhat iffy:
- Prime - The Hero
- Bulkhead - The Big Guy
- Prowl - fits the Ineffectual Loner type of The Lancer, but he isn't much of a foil to Optimus
- Ratchet - An older Mentor, he has the demeanor of a second Lancer, but is The Medic, uses indirect fighting abilities, and was originally intended to be the Token Girl Autobot.
- Bumblebee is ditzy and the closest 'bot with Sari, but also the Fragile Speedster foil to The Big Guy, Bulkhead.
- Sixth Ranger - Jazz (for the finale, anyway), but he was always on friendly terms with the team.
- Team Pet/ Sixth Ranger - Sari Team Pet as the mostly-human little girl, Sixth Ranger after her upgrade to mostly-bot teen technorganic.
- Rodimus's team of Autobots have shown up in the third season premiere and appear to form a Five Man Band of their own.
- Foe Yay - the ending of "A Fistful of Energon"
- Foreshadowing - At the end of the first season, Sari tries interacting with the Allspark and all it shows is a holographic DNA helix surrounding a spark. No explanation is given until the end of the second season but the fans quickly latched onto that as confirmation of some Wild Mass Guessing.
- Forgotten Superweapon - Omega Supreme
- Freud Was Right: In "Three's a Crowd" we see that in robot mode the neck of Scrapper's power shovel comes out of his crotch.
- Friendly Enemy: Bulkhead and the Constructicons (other than Dirt Boss) get along famously, and Bulkhead knows that Mixmaster and Scrapper are simply misguided, not evil.
- Friend To All Living Things - Prowl.
- Ironic considering he's the only Autobot who successfully kills another character on screen (Starscream in "Endgame Part 2"), although Jazz helped.
- From Nobody To Nightmare - Wasp(inator)
- Funny Schizophrenia: Blitzwing. Icy, Hothead, and Random.
- The Future - The exact date isn't known, but it's apparently the 22nd century or near to it.
- Furry Confusion: Or 'the robots are sentient? non-sentient?' confusion: Tutor Bot, News Bot
- Genius Ditz - Bulkhead is revealed to be the most qualified space bridge technician in the galaxy.
- Gentle Giant - Bulkhead
- Getting Crap Past The Radar - Most of the Nanosec/Slomo interaction in "S.U.V.: Society of Ultimate Villainy."
- See also Unusual Euphemism: "Skidplates", "Oil Stain", "Bumper", "Slag"... oh, and is the Constructicons' obsession with "oil" fooling anybody?
- Now add in the Constructicons' "strip club" at the beginning of "Three's a Crowd"...
- "Don't just stand there with your pistons in your servos!" For those who don't know, "servos" are hands.
- "Get your head out of your exhaust port!"
- Giggling Villain - Professor Princess, and Random Blitzwing, though his is more insane laughter than actual giggling.
- Girlish Pigtails - Sari, of course. After her upgrade, they get smaller but don't vanish entirely. Appropriate, since she's still pretty immature.
- Glass Cannon: Soundwave has The Power Of Rock, but since he's made out of Earth metals without the Unobtainium that Cybertronians have, he can be easily broken apart by a single attack. Retreat!
- Good Is Not Nice: Well, let's see; we've got Wasp being thrown in the Stockades with one piece of questionable evidence, Swindle left paralyzed and our heroes do nothing about it, Sentinel wanting to kill Blackarachnia once he discovers who she really is, and then there's Omega Supreme's entire backstory . . . So Yeah, the Autobots can almost be as ruthless as the 'Cons at times.
- Go Out With A Smile: Prowl, ironically.
- Gotta Catch Them All - In the beginning of the second season, after the All-Spark shattered, the Transformers start gathering the pieces; each one having strange powers over machinery. Shades of Inu Yasha!
- Grand Theft Me - Headmaster.
- Grievous Harm With A Body - Spittor (the Decepticon frog-bot) in "TransWarped" grabs Red Alert with his tongue-tentacle things and spits her at the other Autobots.
- Optimus forcing Laserbeak into his altmode and clobbering Soundwave with him in Human Error part 2.
- Growing The Beard - Thrill of the Hunt was a strong and mature episode that addresses consequences and regrets during war time and won over the fans who thought this series was just going to be slap-stick comedy.
- Possibly happened again with season three, due to the above mentioned Darker And Edgier.
- Grumpy Bear - Ratchet
- Grumpy Old Man - Ratchet and Captain Fanzone. Naturally, they get forced to team up in "This Is Why I Hate Machines."
- Half Arc Season
- Half Human Hybrids: Sari.
- Hammerspace - Wreck-Gar's trash bin can both produce random objects and make things put in it seemingly disappear. Similarly, Swindle has an in-universe justification: a private transwarp frequency to his personal storage dimension...located in his torso.
- Has Two Mommies - In season two Sari effectively gains 5 robot daddies. Well, 3 daddies and 2 older brothers... Well, Bumblebee comes to think of himself and Bulkhead as the cool parent, while the others are collectively the strict one. Except for Ratchet, who's more the Cranky Robot Grampa.
- Have You Told Anyone Else: Blurr hadn't, and shortly thereafter he was a compacted cube.
- Heel Face Revolving Door - Wreck-Gar, if Funny Schizophrenia counts.
- Hello Nurse: Pretty much Bulkhead's (silent) reaction when he first meets Blackarachnia.
- This troper (and probably several other fans) had a similar, more literal reaction when Red Alert first transformed.
- Heroic Sacrifice - Optimus Prime died in the third episode - less than sixty minutes into the series. He was brought back from the dead less than two minutes later - a new personal record. Then Omega Supreme died in the second season finale... but he's Not Quite Dead.
- Prowl as well, in the third (and most likely final) finale. Yes, unlike pretty much any other character, he really is dead.
- Hero With Bad Publicity - Bulkhead occasionally in Season 1, all the Autobots in Season 2.
- Hey Its That Voice - Two words: Starbob Screampants.
- Quite a few others from Nickelodeon shows. Broadhead Star. Professor Lil. Sari Turner.
- Not to mention Optimus Prime has voiced four different series: Megatron, yeeeessss, Protoman.EXE, and Sessho-freaking-maru. So Yeah...
- In general, about half the cast of Gargoyles are in there, somewhere. Bulkhead/Broadway, Prowl/Owen Burnett and Blackarachnia/Hyena.
- They brought back several of the same voice actors who worked on G1 to reprise their characters. Most notably Corey Burton playing Shockwave and Spike Witwicky; but also John Moshitta as Blurr, Susan Blu as Arcee and even Judd freaking Nelson for Rodimus Prime's three or four lines in TransWarped.
- Can't forget "Weird" Al Yankovic as Wreck-Gar.
- George Takei has also shown up, as Prowl's cyberninja master, no less.
- There's also Lance Henriksen as Lockdown.
- And let's not forget Townsend Coleman as Sentinel.
- The Japanese version will feature Norio Wakamoto as Megatron
- Homage - several designs are nods to other Humongous Mecha and even other Transformers series:
- Starscream's vehicle mode is similar to the YF-19 Alpha One from Macross Plus and Macross 7 (he even looks like the GERWALK mode for a second during his Transformation Sequence).
- Soundwave and Prowl's Cool Shades are a nod to the ABC Warriors of 2000 AD Comics.
- Tutor Bot looks quite a bit like Lord Canti of FLCL.
- The police drones used by the city look like the ED-209 from Robocop (which is also set in a futuristic Detroit), and Sumdac even makes a reference to it having similar problems with identification.
- Blurr's vehicle mode looks like the Mach 5. The toy version even has a hidden sawblade that springs out front. On a different note, he also has wheels inspired by Cheetor from the canceled Transtech line.
- Jetfire and Jetstorm, who combine to form Safeguard, bear a marked resemblance in design and combination-style to Hyoryu and Enryu/Choryujin from Gao Gai Gar.
- Mainframe is such an homage to the original G1 character that, like the original, he lacks the ability to transform.
- Spittor's vehicle mode was designed as an homage to Don Figueroa's version of the original Spittor's altmode before the Beast Wars.
- The Starscream clones are all based on other jets in previous Transformers series and a sly joke towards the repaint/resell methods of Transformer toys; The original Sycophant's color scheme almost exactly matches that of Starscream in The Unicron Trilogy.
- Headmaster is not a Gurren Lagann reference, no matter what some people tell you. Dirt Boss, however...
- Dirt Boss also has mind-controlling devices he fires into other Transformers' heads, just like the G1 Insecticon Bombshell.
- During "Decepticon Air", Sari's hands splits apart into many smaller robotic fingers to operate a keyboard quickly, very much like is done by various computer operating cyborgs in Ghost In The Shell. Also, her "palm blast" hands in Transwarped bear a remarkable resemblance to the design of Iron Man's repulsors that was used in the movie.
- Sari's first upgrade in TransWarped is another homage to Gurren Lagann, namely the way her arms and legs suddenly expand is almost identical to the way the Gurren's do when it combines with Lagann.
- Honest John - Swindle doesn't even bother with a fake name, he's just that honest.
- Hollywood Homely - Blackarachnia, at first. She's supposed to be hideous due her techno-organic status, but both to the viewer and most of the Autobots she's a beautiful Femme Fatale. And then her helmet comes off and this trope is subverted so fast its head spins.
- Hulk Speak - Grimlock
- I Know You Are In There Somewhere Fight - in "Transwarped, Part III," Ratchet to Omega When Starscream's controlling him.
- Also twice in "Human Error". Done by Sari first to her father and later to the Autobots.
- Idiot Plot - "Where Is Thy Sting?" Complete with heavy Most Definitely Not A Villain.
- That episode illustrates just how foolish people's fear and paranoia can make them.
- Ineffectual Loner - Prowl keeps trying to be antisocial and self-reliant, but is inevitably beaten down by the power of Aesop.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain - The Society of Ultimate Villainy, for the most part.
- Instrument Of Murder - Soundwave has an electric guitar that turned into his attack bird Laserbeak. He also has Ratbat, who turns into a keytar.
- Is It Always Like This - Newcomer Jazz, on being attacked by a mass-produced robot army.
- Jerkass - Sentinel Prime. Ultra Magnus really is a terrible judge of character.
- Jive Turkey - Jazz. "Traffic lights. Solid."
- Journey To The Center Of The Mind - Prowl interfaces with Omega Supreme to free him from Megatron's control.
- Killed Off For Real Starscream, Prowl
- Lantern Jaw Of Justice - Many of the Transformers, but especially Sentinel Prime, who's an Actor Allusion to The Tick.
- Large And In Charge - Megatron, Ultra Magnus
- Large Ham - Starscream
- Sentinel Prime transforms into a flexing musclepose.
- Slightly more subtle, but head!Megatron's magnificent one-liners ("I blame myself", "I suspect it was an inside job", etc.) surely qualify.
- Laughably Evil - Blitzwing.
- Lean And Mean - Starscream
- Leet Lingo - The Headmaster, often straying into Totally Radical. "Total OWNAGE, n00b!"
- Legion Of Doom - The Society of Ultimate Villainy, which is comprised of the most fail-tastic human adversaries plus Swindle, who lives up to his name rather well.
- Line Of Sight Name - Scrapper, and attempted several times by Wreck-Gar.
- Living Ship - Though most of the cast qualifies as Living (Inorganic) Vehicles, it turns out Omega Supreme, war hero and savior apparent, was their ship. For whatever reason, his offline body was used for Space Bridge repair (almost certainly because of his friend Ratchet; Sentinel Prime was under the impression that Omega had been dismantled after the war), and they later brought him back on-line.
- Losing Your Head - As inflicted by the Headmaster on Bulkhead, Sentinel Prime and Starscream. Not to mention Season 1 Megatron, and Waspinator, left in multiple pieces.
- Lzherusskie - Jetstorm, Jetfire.
- Lotus Eater Machine - The Autobots end up in one of these thanks to Soundwave in Human Error part 1.
- Macross Missile Massacre - Blitzwing can pull these off in a pinch. Lugnut can pull off a similar move with a payload of bombs.
- Mad Scientist - Meltdown, the Headmaster, Oil Slick, and now Blackarachnia.
- Ratchet seems to view Perceptor, Wheeljack, Mainframe, and Highbrow as this, with a "My God, what have you done?!" type reaction to every little thing they do. Although given how they created Omega Supreme to live the life he did, Ratchet might have a point.
- And if /co/'s Wild Mass Guessing is right, Omega Supreme runs on protoforms (Wheeljack did made him after all)
- Magic Skirt - Sari's dress. And thank god, because she's eight.
- Which starts glitching along with everything else when she starts overloading.
- In season three, she's sixteen, which isn't a whole lot better.
- Magnetic Plot Device- The AllSpark and Sari's key.
- Make Me Wanna Shout - Starscream eventually develops an eerily appropriate sonic scream ability from the Allspark fragment in his head. It's never really explained how he does this, and it's never even brought up again after TransWarped.
- Manipulative Bastard - Megatron
- The Medic - Ratchet and Red Alert. The instant healing properties of Sari's key often displaced Ratchet's skills and put her in this role.
- Merchandise Driven - As always.
- Mega Manning - Blackarachnia and her previous form, Elita-1.
- Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher - Arcee in the finale, due to Shockwave's hacking.
- The Mole - "Longarm" a.k.a. Shockwave
- Mook Face Turn - The Dinobots, once Meltdown couldn't hurt them.
- Moral Dissonance - Laughing off sending Swindle to his death in "S.U.V."; Bulkhead's unprovoked attack on who he believes to be Wasp in "Where Is Thy Sting?"
- Motor City
- Motor Mouth - Blurr, to the nth degree. Notably, this is played differently from his G1 counterpart, who rambled irrelevancies and reiterated himself in a redundant manner; Here, he talks a blue streak at 600 mph.
- Mythology Gag - Far, far too many. Just go read the trope page.
- Some of them go double meta. Starscream's clones have color schemes similar to the Seekers of G1, but are also a sly dig at the repaints of Starscream that constituted the Seekers. The triceratops Dinobot in G1 was named Slag (which became an Unusual Euphemism in Beast Wars and later in this show) and this one is called Snarl. In the show Scrapper claims to have tried naming him Slag first.
- And Slag was a name considered for Snarl, too.
- Some of the returning voice actors are fairly obvious (Corey Burton reprising Shockwave, Susan Blu reprising Arcee, Judd Nelson reprising Rodimus Prime), but there's a more subtle one with David Kaye voicing Grimlock. David Kaye voicing a Transformer with a T-Rex as its alt-mode seems rather familiar... yeeeeeeesss...
- The Napoleon - Dirt Boss
- Naughty Tentacles - Spitor's tongue-tentacles in his alt form move to his crotch in his robot mode. Given that his first victim is the female Autobot Red Alert, this brings this trope forcibly to mind.
- New Powers As The Plot Demands: Sari's key does exactly... whatever is needed this episode. From repairing offline bots, to unspecified upgrades, to controlling any machine, to tracing pay-per-view signals, to removing All Spark fragments from speeding trains.
- Neutral No Longer - Happens not just once, but twice because of the Autobots.
- Nice Job Breaking It Hero - Bumblebee really screws up in "Autoboot Camp".
- Ninja - Prowl and Jazz.
- And Oil Slick and Master Yoketron. And formerly Lockdown.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot - Besides being robot ninjas, Jazz is also a Soul Brotha, and Prowl and Bumblebee were once turned into zombies. Lockdown has a huge claw for a right hand, making him the "pirate" to Prowl's "ninja", as well as a Bounty Hunter with a skull for a head and an undertaker's tux. To say nothing of the Dinobots, who are Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
- Let's not forget that Prowl decided to become the complete opposite of a ninja by getting a Samurai-armor upgrade in "A Fistful of Energon"...which later returns in "Five Servos of Doom" and seems to be a permanent upgrade.
- It's later revealed that Lockdown was once a ninja pupil himself and an Autobot; Word Of God is that no Decepticon ever trained under Yoketron. And Oil Slick is a ninja chemist.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Optimus and Bumblebee would've made it to the Elite Guard if they didn't bother to help their fellow Autobots (Bumblebee for accepting the blame on Bulkhead's behalf for knocking a tower onto Sentinel, and Optimus for taking the heat for Sentinel's idea to go to the restricted planet). Also, Isaac Sumdac in the second season quickly becomes a prisoner after helping rebuild Megatron for the majority of the first season thinking he was a good guy.
- Nothing Is The Same Anymore: Season 3.
- Not Good With People: Prowl.
- Not Important To This Episode Camp - For the Prowl/Lockdown episode "A Fistful of Energon," Bumblebee and Sari apparently jaunted off to "Five Banners Roller Coaster Kingdom."
- Not Quite Flight - The Autobots are mostly confined to the ground, but Prowl has his Jetpack and Optimus is surprisingly effective with his grappling hooks when fighting airborne opponents. The most creative example, though, is the multi-stage rocket in "Nanosec" where Bulkhead fires his wrecking ball to launch the duo of Prowl and Bumblebee, Prowl giving Bumblebee a boost with his jump-jets, and Bumblebee using his turbo boosters to get even higher than that. Who needs jet engines anyway?
- Not So Different - Speaking of Lockdown and Prowl...
- Not So Harmless: When most people heard that Waspinator was going to be in season 3 most fans though he was going to be comic-relief like his Beast Wars counterpart, not an ex-Jerk Ass who's been mentally broken past repair, a hulking monster twice the size of Prime, and a completely insane Implacable Man (as, like in Beast Wars, blowing him up just annoys him).
- Official Couple - Lugnut and Strika. Yeah.
- Odd Couple - Optimus and Grimlock. Prowl and Bumblebee/Bulkhead. Ratchet and Captain Fanzone.
- Opposite Sex Clone - Slipstream, to the letter.
- Organ Theft - Lockdown indulges in the robot equivalent.
- The Other Darrin - In season three Omega Supreme is voiced by Phil LaMarr instead of Kevin Michael Richardson.
- Out Of Focus - Captain Fanzone went from a major character in Season 1 to a rarely appearing recurring character by Season 3.
- Humans in general were pretty much written out of season 3, in an attempt to make the show less about them and more about the titular giant robots.
- Parental Bonus - Shout Outs to Airplane!, Die Hard, Star Trek, Peanuts and so, so many more...
- Percussive Maintenance - Blackout repairs the space bridge he broke after stomping on the ground near it by... stomping on the ground near it again, implied to be an ability of his (that is, causing electronics to fail and being able to reactivate them, hence the name).
- People Puppets - Anyone controlled by a Headmaster unit or Dirt Boss's Headmaster-derived drill bit.
- Personal Gain Hurts
- The Pesci - The third Constructicon, Dirt Boss. To the point of also being The Napoleon.
- Pet The Dog - Sentinel offering Optimus a spot in the Elite Guard in "Decepticon Air". Although it doesn't last long before he's kicking again.
- Pintsized Powerhouse - Both Brawn and Dirt Boss.
- Playing Against Type - David Kaye as Optimus Prime, as he has played both evil warriors and lancer/rival duos.
- Playing With Fire - One-third of Blitzwing (and occasionally another third), and as of the third season, Hot Shot and Jetfire (duh).
- Plot Relevant Age Up - TransWarped: Sari in Season 3, courtesy of the AllSpark Key. Before she was about 8, now she looks about 16.
- Power Incontinence - TransWarped: Sari after the AllSpark Key starts to overload her
- Power Trio - The Elite Guard. Ultra Magnus: Superego, Jazz: Ego, Sentinel Prime: Id. Blitzwing arguably forms his own trio, with the calm face being Superego, the angry face being Id, and the crazy face being Ego [by combining the others' traits at random].
- The Dinobots could count, never being seen seperately outside of Human Error, Part II.
- Praetorian Guard - The Elite Guard again.
- Pride Before A Fall - "Return of the Headmaster" is all about this for Sentinel.
- Psycho For Hire - Lockdown.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad - Team Chaar, appearing in one scene set on the other side of the galaxy which wasn't even very plot-relevant.
- Also the SUV, although they were only a group for one episode.
- The Reason You Suck Speech - Bulkhead delivers one to Wasp in "Where Is Thy Sting".
- Reasonable Authority Figure - Fanzone and Ultra Magnus
- Red Eyes Take Warning - All the Decepticons. In fact, when the Constructicons became Decepticons, their eyes turned red. Blackarachnia's, too.
- ...and Sari's eyes changed from red to blue with her transformation, so there you go.
- The Remnant - The Decepticons.
- Rescued From The Scrappy Heap - unlike most humans in Transformers, Sari has largely avoided being The Scrappy. Of course, then there's the...
- Robotic Reveal - Sari injures her elbow at the end of the second season...revealing Cybertronian circuitry within.
- Which also makes this a bit of a We Knew It, as several fans already suspected it, between having no identity papers and no obvious mother while her father was a robotics expert.
- Ironically, it was her father who accidentally turned her human.
- Rescue Romance - Both subtext-y robot romances, Optimus/Blackarachnia and Ratchet/Arcee, make heavy use of the males saving and failing to save the helpless females.
- Robo Family - Jetfire and Jetstorm refer to each other as brothers.
- Robot War - Soundwave keeps trying to start one, and it's just not happening.
- Rogues Gallery - Of mostly humans, allowing the Decepticons to stay that much more threatening by their lack of overuse.
- Running The Asylum - If you played a drinking game with Transformers Generation One MythologyGags, you'd be dead by the third episode.
- The Sadistic Choice - Starscream does this in the pilot. And, you know, what Bumblebee did to Nanosec.
- Sassy Secretary - Or rather, a robot programmed to sound and act like one.
- Say My Name - Megatron's reaction when he finds out it was Starscream who set him up the bomb in the premiere.
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens - The writers took the worker's revolution aspect of the Autobots from the original series & played it to its logical conclusion.
- Screams Like A Little Girl - Bumblebee, "Along Came A Spider".
- SENTINEL PRIME. Supposedly, they even got a woman to voice the scream.
- Grandus, one of the biggest transformers in the entire series. Although admittedly he appears to be in full on wimp mode all the time.
- Screw This Im Outta Here - Jazz, having enough of Sentinel's attitude, follows Ratchet to Earth to join Optimus' crew in "This Is Why I Hate Machines."
- Send In The Clones - Starscream is able to create clones of himself, each of which embodies part of his personality. One is a coward, one is an egomaniac, one is a pathological liar, one's a suck-up...and one is a girl.
Starscream: So, which part of me do you come from?
- Self Destruct Mechanism - Starscream uses clones as a form of Trojan horse...twice.
- Sesquipedalian Smith - Prometheus Black
- Shaggy Dog Story - "Decepticon Air."
- Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Shockwave does this to Bumblebee and Bulkhead, asking if they're really willing to take down their old friend Longarm. They totally fall for it. Psych.
- Maybe because he forgot to change his colors back?
- Shell Shocked Senior - Ratchet, notably in his flashback episode "The Thrill of the Hunt". Further elaborated on in his Sequel Flashback in TransWarped.
- Short Run In Peru - Somewhat annoyingly to American viewers, Canada's YTV aired this show a week ahead of Cartoon Network after it was dropped for one week in favor of the Ben 10 Alien Force premiere. Not to mention that, annoying everyone else in the world, a Dubai children's network aired almost all of season 2 over a month early, leading to Wild Mass Guessing and outright misinformation based on screenshots with no English translations.
- Shout Out - Oh boy.
- Wreck-Gar, played by Weird Al Yankovic, yells at one point, "I dare to be stupid!" Which is the title of the song by Weird Al Yankovic that the original Wreck-Gar and the Autobots rocked out to for an indefinite period of of time in the original movie. The "Universal Greeting" associated with the song also gets a mention.
- Wreck-Gar also bears a marked resemblance to his voice actor, even down to the facial hair. The whole thing gets topped off when, as he confronts Soundwave and tries to counter his music, he pulls out an Accordion.
- In "Velocity" Blitzwing once fired out a Macross Missile Massacre in the style of the Valkyrie fighters from, well, Macross.
- The appearances of the human villains Angry Archer and Slo-Mo are based on Hasbro executives Aaron Archer and Samantha Lomow respectively. The former was unaware of the character until late in production, but his only request was that the Archer be left-handed so he was apparently not too upset about it.
- Also Master Yoketron may have been named after Takara's lead designer on Transformers Hideaki Yoke.
- Perceptor's voice bears a distinct resemblance to the synthesized voice of famous physics genius Stephen Hawking.
- Wheeljack, Gadgeteer Genius extraordinaire, has "facial hair" and other design quirks that indicate he was patterned after Mythbusters' Jamie Hyneman, despitre Word Of God saying he isn't and that the design is pure coincidence.
- Similarly, Highbrow is a clear shout out to actor Terry Thomas, from his accent to his "mustache" to the gap in his "teeth".
- Rodimus' design takes the characteristics the original shared with Marvel Comics' Hawkeye and runs with them, even giving him a bow.
- Not to mention Rodimus is voiced by Judd Nelson, his G1 version/counterpart's original voice actor in the 1986 movie.
- Dirt Boss' design is extremely similar to another pint sized mind controlling villain, Marvel Comics' MODOK, and he's also a caricature of various real life mob bosses, particularly Al Capone, in temperament, speech, and methods, and later pulls a huge reference to White Heat; "Top of the world, cogs!" He's also the first legitimate homage to Gurren Lagann, his diminutive size being (especially the stubby legs) inspired by Lagann itself along with using drills to control other machines. And he looks sort of like Wario, to go with the Mario and Luigi-like pair of Scrapper and Mixmaster.
- Huffer and Pipes take the Mario and Luigi thing to new heights, however.
- The title "Decepticon Air" is a reference to the Nicholas Cage movie "Con Air", which also features prisoners being transported gone wrong. It help that the Decepticons are often called 'Cons for short.
- Forsooth! It must not go unmentioned that, by Od's Beard, Ultra Magnus' hammer is strikingly similar to Mjolnir, possessed by the Odinson himself, Norse Mythology's Thor!
- Lockdown wears a Western-style poncho in "A Fistful of Energon" for no apparent reason but to shout out to Fistful Of Dollars.
- Taken to extremes by the AllSpark Almanac, which manages shout outs to TF fandom memes, obscure characters (as in 'only appeared in a spin-off racing track set in 1984' obscure), and a metric ton of other stuff.
- Silent Bob - Mayor Edsel. His eyebrow is apparently expressive.
- Silent Partner - Snarl and Swoop, with Grimlock doing the talking.
- Also, Wheeljack for Perceptor.
- Skunk Stripe - Isaac Sumdac
- Smug Snake - Porter C. Powell, he talks a big game but he is also willing to throw an 8 year old out onto the streets. The only thing keeping the Autobots from squishing him is their own morality, and he is consciously aware of that. Grimlock's morality, on the other hand...
- Something Else Also Rises: Blackarachnia caressing Swoop's face causes him to lift his flail and swing it around energetically.
- Soul Brotha: Jazz.
- Southern Fried Private: Bulkhead went to boot camp straight from the energon farm, and Hot Shot and Ironhide both have distinct Southern accents.
- Space Does Not Work That Way - Jetstorm can still create windstorms... in space. So Yeah.
- Split Personality - Blitzwing has three, and...
- Personality Powers - ...a different power for each, as well as different vehicle modes.
- Technically, he has two powers and two alt-forms; one of his personalities alternates between both interchangeably.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero - Nanosec (Nino Sexton) and Headmaster (Henry Masterson). Also Angry Archer (A. A. Archer) and Professor Princess (Penny Princess, Ph.D.).
- And comics-only villains Stiletto (Stella Healy) and Crossroads (Roland Cross).
- The Starscream - Starscream is dealt with as a traitor deserves—the next time Megatron sees him after Starscream blows him up in the pilot, Megs blows him up. When that fails, he blows him up again. The only reason Starscream lived to see Season Two is because he got an AllSpark fragment that made him unkillable.
- The Stoic - Prowl
- Straight Arrow - Rodimus, no relation to Hawkeye.
- Super Mode/Powered Armor - An upgraded Sari gets it in "TransWarped".
- While not powered per se, Prowl later permanently retains a duplicate of his one-shot samurai armor upgrades.
- Sword Over Head - Optimus's finishing blow against Megatron in "Endgame". But with a hammer.
- Synthetic Voice Actor - Perceptor has one of these, and it sounds a lot like Stephen Hawking's.
- The Talk - 'How is it you're able to make these new, smaller organics?'
- Talking To Himself - Due in part to budget, Animated gets a lot of mileage out of its actors.
- Pushed to its logical end with the Starscream clones. Despite having color schemes clearly inspired by older characters that had their own names, they'll probably never be referred to as anything but Starscream clones on the show. That's because if they're all Starscream clones, then they all count as the same character; if they were different characters, they'd have to pay Tom Kenny extra to voice them all and they're only allowed to have one VA voice so many characters in a single episode.
- They've done several episodes where two characters go out on their own and argue the entire way, and often even had the same voice actor, with both Prime/Grimlock and Prowl/Fanzone.
- This was lampshaded during the Botcon 2008 script reading, where Bumblebee suggests to a thinly disguised Beast Wars Megatron (as voiced by David Kaye) that they call Grimlock or Lugnut (both voiced by David Kaye) for help. Megatron responds "Oh, please. What do I look like, Scott McNeil?"
- Damn it, I even read that in Megatron's voice!
- There's even one where Animated!Optimus is talking about golf with BW!Megatron, the latter declaring with a chuckle that Autobots suck at golf.
- Technological Pacifist - Professor Sumdac
- Technopath Post-Upgrade Sari in Season 3
- Ted Baxter - Egomaniac Starscream/Thundercracker
- Team Pet - Sari, for the first two seasons. She gets an upgrade (and we do mean upgrade) to Sixth Ranger in season 3.
- Tuckerization - The Angry Archer (named after and resembling Hasbro designer Aaron Archer), Slo-Mo (named after and resembling Hasbro executive Samantha Lomow), Yoketron (named after Hideaki Yoke, a designer for the Diaclone and Microman toylines the original Transformers series was based off of)
- Theme Twin Naming - Jetfire and Jetstorm. Also, while they're not technically twins, Wasp and Bumblebee share a chassis model.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill - Optimus Prime refuses to kill Megatron with the Magnus Hammer
- Took A Level In Badass - Prowl has gone through a specific character arc for him to complete his "cyber-ninja" training. Optimus Prime has had to dig in his heels in order to properly face off against Megatron. Bumblebee received a literal upgrade to his previously worthless stingers (which nicely explained how they were so powerful in flashback).
- Truly Single Parent - Isaac Sumdac, since Sari is seemingly an Opposite Sex Clone by way of a Cybertronian protoform.
- Unusual Euphemism - Par for the Transformers course. "What a glitch-head!" "Slag yeah."
- "It's a no-processor-er!"
- The Virus - Space barnacles.
- This Is SPARTA:
Starscream: [to Megatron] "THIS! IS! ALL!!! YOUR!!! FAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUULT!!!!!"
- Those Two Guys - Blitzwing and Lugnut, Bumblebee and Bulkhead, and, particularly, Mixmaster and Scrapper. Jetfire and Jetstorm.
- Token Loli - Sari. Somewhat less in season 3.
- Does Professor Princess count?
- Tomato In The Mirror - Sari.
- Tonight Someone Dies - Sort of. The DVD Commentary for a second season episode has one person asking if anyone really dies, and another one responds that no one does until season three...
- Twitchy Eye - Occasionally, Megatron gets tired of Lugnut's fawning.
- Unknown Rival: Unlike most Transformers continuities, Megatron barely knows who Optimus is. Prime finally angers Megatron enough to say his name in "Endgame, Part II."
- Verbal Tic - Wreck-Gar starts nearly every sentence with "I am Wreck-Gar!" after he obtains his name.
- Villainous Breakdown - Megatron starts to lose it just a little bit in the season 3 finale. "Then destroy the Autobots. Destroy the city. DESTROY ANYTHING THAT'S NOT ME!"
- Villainous Glutton - Though not fat, Starscream's toy-only clone Dirge is the living representation of the former's greed, and as such is an accomplished glutton who always wants more of everything, energon goodies included.
- Villain With Good Publicity - Porter C. Powell, again. And for some bizarre reason, Soundwave's attempted conquest of the world is forgotten quickly enough for Powell to sell toys of him.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting - Besides every robot's eponymous transforming, there's the expert impersonator Shockwave. (Not to be confused with Soundwave.)
- Also Colossus Rhodes, who's rather Bane-ish.
- What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome? - At the end of "Human Error," Optimus and Soundwave have a guitar duel, done completely serious.
- Where It All Began - Season 1 finale.
- Why Did It Have To Be Snakes - Optimus Prime is scared of spiders. Sentinel Prime is even worse - he's afraid of Organic Life in general. Probably for the same reason Optimus has arachnophobia.
- Jossed. Organophobia seems to be a pan-Cybertron thing when it comes to Autobots, although it's more severe with Sentinel due to certain past traumas.
- With Friends Like These - Sentinel.
- The Woobie - Part of the reason Sari has avoided becoming The Scrappy is because her life sucks so much. (Come Season 2, anyway. Omega Supreme can't seem to catch a break either, and Ratchet's had it nearly as bad.)
- One could just about give this to poor Wasp. A stark contrast to Waspinator of Beast Wars.
- Blurr instantly became this when he was killed by Shockwave in the season three premiere, as mentioned above.
- Arcee has been one in her every appearance.
- Skywarp, and his predecessor, #3370318. Poor guys; life is scary!
- Bulkhead has his Woobie moments too.
- Word Of God: Several things, most notably the possibility of Blurr not being dead, and Slipstream's name.
- Xanatos Gambit: Megatron pulls one of these off in "Endgame, Part 1," with his own minions.
- You Blockhead - Sentinel blaming Optimus for Elita-1's "death".
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness - In "Endgame, Part 1," Megatron says this to Starscream before blasting him to smithereens.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe - The Angry Archer.
- Yes Man - Sunstorm and his predecessor #2716057; It's unclear whether they're at all sincere in their constant praise, or if they're just working an angle and trying to butter everyone up.
- Lugnut, however, plays it straight in the mold of Inferno.
- This is Starscream we're talking about. Of course he's working an angle and trying to butter everyone up.
- You Shall Not Pass - In the first season finale, with Megatron rising with a new body and the Decepticons closing in on the Allspark, Optimus tells his crew that this is where they stand and fight. This results in Bulkhead tackling the bruiser Lugnut in the air.
- Yuppie Couple - The Witwicky family, interestingly enough.
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