Transformers: Wings of Honor - Television Tropes & Idioms

In 2010, the Official Transformers Fanclub finally ended their five-year "Nexus Prime" saga which took place over several different universes, and switched to a new continuity scheduled to last for three years. Taking a page from Classics, this new continuity also revisits the original Generation 1 universe as part of its storyline, but using the cartoon instead of the comics. The story Wings of Honor (May, 2009) is considered the debut of this timeline.

So far the storyline is in two parts, with the rest being "just like the cartoon except where it's not":

The "Wings of Honor" portion, which serves as a prequel to the cartoon. The Great War has just barely begun, with Megatron and his rebels having gained in force enough to cause serious troubles for the High Council, and dangerous Decepticon leaders popping up all over the place.

To combat this new menace, two separate projects are formed. One is council member Magnum's "Elite Guard", various teams of skilled soldiers charged with protecting the civilians and hunting down and eliminating the Decepticon resistance. The other is Alpha Trion's "Prime Initiative", dedicated towards giving the Autobots a strong military leader who will unite all of the Autobots against the Decepticons. The two projects don't have a lot of regard for each other, to put it mildly. The stories mostly focus on the Elite Guard squads, though Prime's unit comes more into play in the second half of the arc.

This series/universe provides examples of:

Wings of Honor

The Ace: Over-Run thinks he's this. The reality is somewhat different.
Ascended Fangirl: Lancer is an annoyingly enthusiastic Elite Guard groupie who gets drafted into helping them during a fight. She's so Squee about it that she doesn't even mind being used as The Bait.
Attack Drone: Over-Run collects these and has them fight for him on the battlefield. It later backfires on him when Bruticus catches one of his drones and throws it at him with deadly force.
Badass Bookworm: The Elite Guard later ends up taking two "desk jockeys" into their ranks when they're starving for members. One turns out to be a crack sharpshooter, while the other once dispatched some Decepticons with a desk stapler. Sadly it doesn't go well for one of the bookworms.
Badass Crew: The various Elite Guard squads.
Big Damn Heroes: Big Bang, Ironfist, Rumbler, and Sprocket turn out to be Not Quite Dead and burst in out of nowhere to save the afts of Magnum and his troops.
BFS: Leozack has one, as part of his anime character parody status.
Calling Your Attacks: Leozack, again to keep with his anime theme. His sister Lyzack also gets into the act when she later takes up her brother's sword for him.
The Captain: Thunderclash & Metalhawk
Captain Crash: Landshark's (lack of) landing skill is legendary.
Cloudcuckoolander:
- The Decepticons invent a chemical weapon that turns anyone under its influence into one of these for a while
- And Metalhawk still has his moments even when "sober".
  Magnum: "You really expect me to believe [this mission report]? Gods, dragons... and here it says that you all died!"
  Metalhawk: "Well, I may have taken a few liberties..."
- And the Stealth Team's Sprocket is this trope in spades. Among other things, he enjoys talking to imaginary friend versions of real people, remembering impossible situations as if they sincerely happened to him, and talking to non-sentient spaceships as if they were sentient (although this last has shades of possible The Cuckoolander Was Right).
Doomed by Canon: The pluckily adventurous Elite Guard made up almost entirely of characters who never show up in the cartoon and trying to stop the civil war, while scoffing at the useless "Prime Initiative" and having the Combaticons as one of their squads? It wasn't a question of if they're all doomed, it was just a matter of how.
Face Heel Turn: The Combaticons start out as willing and (sort of) moral members of the Autobot Elite Guard. We just were waiting to see how the shoe drops...
- *drop* And guess who just decided that tearing Sentinel Major apart is a perfect exchange for a snazzy new gestalt form?
Fem Bot: In one story, two (all-"male") Elite Guard squads find out that their latest mission involves protecting an all-femme group of scientists and their Brawn Hilda security guard. Despite, y'know, everyone being a robot, some stereotypical hilarity still ensues.
Handsome Lech: Swindle seems to like the femmes as much as he likes money. Side Burn also has a thing for fembots, especially red ones that transform into shiny sportscars.
Heel Face Turn: Rage's lackey Drench decides to defect to the Elite Guard after deciding he's just not cool with his boss carelessly playing around with crazily dangerous monster things.
Hot Chick with a Sword: Or as Side Burn puts it upon seeing Lyzack, "A femicon with a sword... hot!"
Implacable Man: Even after Ironfist throws his entire arsenal of explosives at it, Brimstone just keeps on coming...
In Love with Your Carnage: Side Burn lusts after Lyzack even more after seeing her almost take down Magnum in a wild swordfighting fury.
Intoxication Ensues: See Cloudcuckoolander above.
Kill 'Em All: The ending of the first Elite Guard storyarc—or damn close to it, at least. Also arguably a Suddendowner Ending, since the previous stories were lighthearted adventures where the good guys always triumphed over the Decepticons.
Killer Rabbit: In one story, the big hyped-up ultimate dangerous Decepticon the Elite Guard finally meets up with turns out to be a knee-high cute little dragon. But just as they start to relax and be amused it starts breathing horrible atom-decoupling plasma projectiles which sends everyone running away in sheer terror again.
Let's Mock the Monsters: See Killer Rabbit.
More Dakka: One of Flak's philosophies is that you can never have too many weapons.
Mythology Gag: Ricochet's death is an homage to Scorponok's death in The Transformers.
New Meat: Kup and Dion are the youngest Elite Guardsmen, and often the subject of teasing and/or kicks in the skidplate as a result—both friendly and otherwise.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: Landshark is based on Chevy Chase.
No Indoor Voice: When Comm Officer Big Bang speaks, everyone listens whether they want to or not.
OC Stand In: Both the "Wings of Honor" and Redux casts are made up of a lot of background and/or barely-used characters to avoid having to explain around the Sunbow cartoon too much. They even coincidentally managed to use two previously-unused characters that Last Stand Of The Wreckers used at the same time, albeit with very different characterizations.
Officer and a Gentleman: Thunderclash, with a bit of Southern-ness mixed in.
Please Wake Up: Outback's reaction to Ricochet's death.
Flak: "He's offline."
Outback: "Just like Rico to take a stasis nap during a fight."
Flak: "No, Outback. He's... gone."
Outback: Oh! ...oh."
Prequel: To the Sunbow cartoon.
Shout Out: The Elite Guard's Stealth Team is based on The A-Team.
Sibling Team: Rumbler and Sprocket, and Leozack and Lyzack.
Similar Squad: Thunderclash and Metalhawk's squads are composed of similar personality archetypes, and the two leaders have a friendly rivalry.
- The Captain: Thunderclash & Metalhawk
- New Meat/Wide-Eyed Idealist: Kup & Dion
- Quirky Pilot: Landshark & Over-Run
- The Big Guy/More Dakka Person: Flak & Ironfist
The Strategist: Onslaught.
Stuff Blowing Up: Ironfist is always on a quest to develop and use ever bigger and louder bombs, to the point of making even his teammates extremely nervous.
Tastes Like Purple: While under the influence of a Decepticon chemical (see Cloudcuckoolander above) one of Metalhawk's crazy ravings involves saying that "the fuzzy petrorabbits taste like yellow".
Ultimate Salesman: Swindle is, if anything, even more outrageous in his attempted salesman tactics as an Autobot than he will be as a Decepticon.
What the Hell Is That Accent?: The fandom jury is still out on whether Ironfist's accent is supposed to be British, Australian, Scottish, or just plain weird.
Would Hit a Girl: Thunderclash, though he does bemoan that it feels rather ungentlemanly having to do so. And the Decepticons have no problems with hitting or even killing the girl, of course.

The "Generation 2: Redux" portion, which serves as a sequel to the cartoon. Following Optimus Prime and Galvatron leaving Earth for other venues, with only a skeleton crew left behind, the humans and Nebulans teamed up to use Vector Sigma technology to create their own new generation of Earth-born Transformers. Manufactured in various places around the globe, these Transformers are "born" free of the Great War, instead placing their allegiances and cultural backgrounds in various countries.

So, of course, these kiddie Transformers decide the best thing to do with their young lives is split up into two factions and start shooting at each other. Leading the Autobots is "Sir Pyro Ignatius Spark", an eccentric and somewhat mischievous British (and knighted) "teenager" with a noble streak. Meanwhile, the Decepticons have Clench, an ill-tempered sadist with a Texan accent.

During one of their battles, a fight inside the Large Hadron Collider involving the Decepticons' experimentation with a power-enhancing substance results in a mishap which grants all of the Earth-born Transformers (and some of the older Transformers who stayed behind) with new strange superpowers (and new eye-blinding paint jobs), making them all a "new Generation".

This series/universe provides examples of:

Generation 2: Redux

Aliens of London: Justified—amazingly enough for a Transformers series—all of the Cybertronians with a pronounced Earth regional accent developed it by either being "born" and raised in the country or region in question, or otherwise having spent enough time there to pick up the accent.
Bad Boss: Clench.
Clench: "You [Sky-Byte] and Breakdown are gonna be the next test subjects. If you both survive, I nominate myself for augmentation."
The Captain: Pyro.
Child Soldiers: The Earth-born Transformers in Redux are minors even by Earth standards.
Cool Old Guy: Well, more like "Cool Middle-Aged Guy", but Streetwise is one of the few adult Cybertronians in the mix, respects the "kiddies" and lets them mostly lead themselves, and mainly serves as a Badass advisor and helper to Pyro.
French Jerk: Slicer.
Gratuitous Spanish: Rapido peppers his speech with this.
Interquel/Sequel: The Redux stories are a sequel to the Sunbow cartoon, and may be an interquel if it turns out Beast Wars is part of the timeline.
Jive Turkey: Streetwise talks like this, as an homage to Shaft.
Magical Particle Accelerator: The central aspect of the initial BotCon comic's plot.
Mass Super Empowering Event: In the BotCon comic, a large number of Transformers end up being granted various superpowers by Forestonite gas. Some of the known ones:
- Aquafend: Making a Splash/An Ice Person
- Beachcomber: Fertile Feet
- Breakdown: Gale Force Sound Hand Blast
- Bumblebee: Power Floats
- Clench: Gravity Master
- Electro: Electrically-charged sword
- Meanstreak: Agony Beam
- Pyro: Combat Clairvoyance
- Rapido: Super Speed
- Sideswipe: Shapeshifting (beyond normal Transforming)
- Sky-Byte: "Tsunami Blaster" from his chest
- Streetwise: Phasing
- Windbreaker: Blow You Away
No Celebrities Were Harmed: Clench is based on Jack Palance.
OC Stand In: Both the "Wings of Honor" and Redux casts are made up of a lot of background and/or barely-used characters to avoid having to explain around the Sunbow cartoon too much. They even coincidentally managed to use two previously-unused characters that Last Stand Of The Wreckers used at the same time, albeit with very different characterizations.
Omnicidal Maniac: Lampshaded. When Pyro guesses that Clench wants to use the Large Hadron Collider to create a black hole to destroy the Earth, Clench points out that, not only is that impossible, he and his Decepticons are still on the Earth. Pyro concedes the point (although it's implied he was being a smart aleck with his guess anyway).
Shout Out: Pyro's personality is based on the Tenth Doctor, Streetwise's is based on both Shaft and a page from the TFWiki, and Slicer is a take on the French Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The Strategist: Rapido.
Tastes Like Purple: After getting his new powers, Pyro says that they "feel somewhat purple◊".