The Grand Alliance reel from their losses while Megatron reasserts his dominion over the Decepticons and reveal why he's considered the Devil.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Starscream blasting the Constructicons' horns during the coronation was enough to make Schneizel giggle.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: First Starscream, and then Megatron when he retakes control, intends to use the Damocles to attack and wipe out the Autobot/Black Knight base on Horai Island.
- Aerith and Bob: Amongst all the fancy Japanese, European and Cybertronian names so far, the Vehicon who defects is named... Steve.
- Asshole Victim: The deaths of Starscream, Schneizel, and the other Britannian nobles by Rust Plague are terrible, but no one can say that they're undeserved.
- Batman Gambit: The destruction of the Avalon during the Iacon Relic hunt turns out to have been this, as Starscream and Schneizel planted nanoscopic trackers on its tech, counting on the Autobots and Black Knights to retrieve its wreck for reverse-engineering purposes, thereby discovering the location of their base on Horai Island.
- Broken Masquerade: Anticipating the endgame of the war with the Decepticons coming to its apex, Zero finally come clean to both the refugees of Horai Island (basically what's left of humanity) and the Black Knights in its entirety of his identity as Lelouch.
- Character Death: Oh dear — this chapter has the highest kill count of named characters in the story.
- We learn that Sugiyama, Inoue, and Minami, along with the rest of the Asura Strike Force were wiped out by Damocles in the last chapter.
- The Constructicons are wiped out by Predaking.
- All the remaining Britannian Nobles and Royals who sided with the Decepticons are liquified via Cosmic Rust, as is Starscream.
- Continuity Nod: Megatron comments about having seen the whole coronation bit with Starscream before when it happened during Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and remarks that it's still "bad comedy".
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The humans who died from the Rust Plague are described as having their skin bubble and melt, their flesh and organs burn up and ends with their bodies melted into puddles of goo. Starscream fares no better as his body literally crumbles to bits.
- Didn't See That Coming:
- Lelouch honestly didn't expect to see the reformed Vehicon after the Fuji mines mission.
- Starscream, Schneizel and their loyalists didn't see Megatron's survival coming.
- Heel–Face Turn: Steve the Vehicon no longer wanted to be a Decepticon, having escaped with Odysseus, Carine, and Laila.
- Mythology Gag:
- The Vehicon who pulled a Heel–Face Turn last chapter is named ST-3V3, with Kallen dubbing him "Steve" for short. Both this designation and name were assigned by fans of Transformers: Prime to a particular Vehicon that Starscream bitch-slapped for giving a report he didn't like in an early episode.
- Starscream and Schneizel hold a lavish coronation ceremony for themselves as joint emperors of their factions, only for it to be crashed by a still-alive Megatron, who then kills them. This is nearly exactly how things played out in The Transformers: The Movie, when Galvatron showed up to retake control of the Decepticons after Starscream left him for dead.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The status quo has been damaged before, but it is completely leveled here — all disloyal portions of the Decepticons are eliminated, cementing Megatron as the story's true Big Bad. Lelouch reveals his identity to all of the Black Knights, something that he never did in canon under favorable circumstances. Damocles is moving to strike Horai Island. And at the end of the chapter, Optimus rejects the possibility of being restored by the Forge of Solus Prime so that its power can be used to restore Cybertron... and instead offers the Matrix of Leadership to Lelouch.
- Rousing Speech: Lelouch gives one to his forces to rally their hope and prepare them for Megatron's coming attack.
- The Starscream: Ironically, the Trope Namer succumbs to this, as Thundercracker, Slipstream, and Sky-Byte sabotage his defenses to help make Megatron's counter-coup even easier.
- Seeking Sanctuary: Odysseus, Carine, and Laila hope to find safety by staying with the Autobots and Black Knights, having escaped the Decepticons right before Schneizel and Starscream enter their endgame.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Just when Ratchet and Perceptor believed they have exhausted all viable options of healing Optimus, Cera meekly states that they could try empowering him with the Forge of Solus Prime. Ratchet mentally kicks himself for not considering the idea sooner.
- Wham Episode: See Nothing Is the Same Anymore above for how this is one of the biggest Whams in the whole series.
