Transformers More Than Meets The Eye / Tropes A to D

All spoilers up to the end of Season 1 will be unmarked.

Tropes A–D | Tropes E–I | Tropes J–R | Tropes S–Z

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This series provides examples of:

A

• Aborted Arc:
  • During the Lost Light crew's last stand against the DJD on Necroworld, author James Roberts initially wanted to introduce a new character, Quickswitch, who was to be an Autobot phase-sixer built out of rubbish from the damaged fortress. This would have been the culmination of Prowl's plan from all the way back in the first issues of the series to construct artificial phase-sixers in case the Decepticons ever came back in force. Unfortunately, since the series was to be cut short at issue #57, this was shelved, with Ultra Magnus getting a hardcore armor upgrade to compensate.
  • Quickswitch did ultimately show up in the IDW continuity via the Transformers Vs. Visionaries miniseries, although he had hardly any screentime, did not have five alternate modes, and died pretty much minutes after being introduced.
  • In an interview James Roberts released many details that had been cut or changed, one of the most notable ones was a Chromedome/Rewind plot that was seeded all the way in the first few issues. Chromedome was originally supposed to have helped Dominus' undercover operation and wiped Rewind's mind; this was alluded to in Prowl's conversations with Chromedome implying blackmail over a dark secret. Further Rewind was supposed to have survived Overlord and shrank in a panic Overlord grabbing him and inadvertently protecting him from the explosion. This was alluded to in-text with Rewind's absence and Overlord's hand being conspicuously out of shot. The plan from there would be for the Galactic Counsel to have gotten ahold of him, and turned him into a dimensional hopper. This would have explained why the Rewind from the destroyed Lost Light was not displaced along with the other duplicates as the original Rewind was no longer in the universe. Eventually, a confrontation with Chromedome and the two Rewinds would occur at the arc's climax. These plans were supposed to be for a fourth season but were cut because of time and because after developing Chromedome and Rewind's relationship through the comic it didn't feel in character anymore. The plot was dropped but many of the allusions to it remain in the comic.
• To Absent Friends: When Shock finds Ore's corpse, he mourns him and talks about all the stuff they did in the war, deleting his calls and leaving a vial of his innermost Energon there. Swerve does likewise with a drink in the Annual and spills it when Ore begins talking.
• Accidental Misnaming: Rung is almost never correctly addressed by name when he is conscious or present. The other characters will either forget his name, mispronounce his name, or simply identify him based on his profession. However, characters do not seem to have this problem at all in prose stories or when he is not present.
  • If you're wondering how far back this goes: we see one of his old ID cards from literally millions of years ago. His name is spelled "Rong" on it.
• Adaptational Badass: Implicitly Overkill, one of Soundwave's dumber cassettes who's had a number of embarrassing defeats including being run over by Hot Rod, and beaten by Daniel Witwicky. While only in the story for one panel, he's depicted as a massive metal Dinosaur, towering over his enemies, breathing fire, and shrugging off Skids's blasts.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • While always a villain, Cyclonus has usually been depicted as a Noble Demon, or at least having good traits. This is the first series to have him as an Anti-Hero.
  • This comic also features a newly antiheroic Megatron, looking for a new purpose in life and atonement.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Star Saber. Normally a squeaky clean, major hero; here, he's a horrible, fascistic religious extremist.
  • Subverted with Brainstorm; he's a Decepticon agent but is motivations turn out to be sympathetic and he ends up remaining a protagonist.
  • Getaway, normally just sort of there if he's ever present at all, or a Butt-Monkey who gets injured, is a horrifically fanatic jerkwad with no empathy whatsoever, willing to manipulate Tailgate emotionally, or abandon his fellow Autobots to a horrific death just for not hating Megatron.
• Adventure Archaeologist: The Lost Light relaunch introduces us to Anode, one of the Necrobot's rescued time-displaced Transformers who describes herself as such, though from what we see, her hunting for a valuable treasure almost gets her and her assistant Lug killed by a Decepticon thanks to her lackadaiscal approach.
• Advertised Extra: Firestar's crew featured prominently on issue 41's cover, and Milne showed off their character designs and went in-depth about the creative process behind them. In story, only two are important, Firestar and Velocity (the latter of whom wasn't on the cover), part of the reason they got so much focus is because of all the effort that went into designing them, and Milne was really proud of how well they turned out, even if they hadn't gotten much to do.
• A Father to His Men: Rodimus views himself as this, even though he's really not. Similarly Megatron seems to be trying to be a strong father/leader figure to the crew, but they all distrust him too much. By the end of Season 2, "Team Rodimus" aka the group of Autobots who were banished from the Lost Light by Getaway regard him as something akin to this at last.
• Affably Evil: Fulcrum and Misfire. Blip and Nautilator.
• Afraid of Needles: Amusingly issue 30 implies that Megatron is uncomfortable around needles. Of course it becomes much less amusing when we learn why he's scared of them. Trepan tried to perform mnemosurgery on him before the war... while Megatron was still awake.
• A God Am I: The Functionist Council has taken this mindset in the alternate timeline where they control Cybertron. Twelve-of-Twelve floats rather than walks, Six-of-Twelve has had his head redone to look like the Matrix, and the general population treats them with a very fearful reverence, falling to their knees in prayer as they walk by. Megatron finds the whole thing horribly disgusting.
  Twelve-of-Twelve: Be careful. When you lie to me, you lie to God.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Ratchet and First Aid have this reaction to Pharma after his apparent Disney Villain Death. By the time of his actual death however they feel far less sympathy for him.
• The Alcoholic: Trailbreaker. Justified as he needs huge amounts of fuel to power his forcefields, not to mention being fuel-inefficient anyway, and his fuel intake moderation chip burnt out centuries back. This is eventually remedied by Megatron, who permanently reactivates his fuel intake moderator with a little bit of Percussive Maintenance.
• All Crimes Are Equal:
  • The Decepticon Justice Division brutally executes any Decepticon that hinders the cause, be it intentional or not. That includes such minor crimes as being taken captive.
  • Tyrest's many amendments to Cybertronian law basically end with a similar result.
• All for Nothing: The final arc of the comic reveals the entire quest for Cyberutopia to be this. Cyberutopia doesn't exist. The dying Knights of Cybertron ended up coming to an advanced medical planet called Mederi after contracting a fatal illness from contact with organic species. The telepathic network that controls Mederi allowed the Knights to experience a shared hallucination of a paradise as it repaired them and then euthanized them, making the Knights believe they had found a utopia for their people and sending the map back to Cybertron along with the legend of Cyberutopia. And then they all died. Rodimus shrugs off this revelation fairly quickly, though, after he figures out what really happened.
• The Alliance: The Galactic Council, the governing body of the inhabited galaxy. Almost every spacefaring species is considered a part of it. Cybertronians are one of the few exceptions, having been blacklisted from having a representative in the Council due to the sheer length of the Great War and the fact that many other planets have been caught in the crossfire of the war. They do revere Ultra Magnus as a hero due to his legendary adherence to the rules, however. It's eventually subverted during Lost Light, where it's made clear the Council is basically just a very well-armed protection racket.
• All There in the Manual:
  • The supplemental "Meet The Crew" pages at the end of each issue, which contain some minor info about the characters that isn't mentioned or shown explicitly in the comic itself such as the fact that Misfire has the Cybertronian version of ADHD.
  • Checking out interviews and bits of Word of God from James Roberts can greatly help the reader's understanding of the characters, setting, and story. Notably he more or less confirmed that Chromedome and Rewind are the Official Couple months before the comic acknowledged this itself. invoked
  • Reading any extra prose stories in issues is mandatory. A few readers skipped the prose story in issue 21 and ended up extremely confused by later developments, like why Red Alert and Fortress Maximus aren't on the Lost Light anymore in season 2.
  • Due to the Shared Universe nature of the series some minor bits of continuity will only be known if the reader also reads Robots In Disguise or Dark Cybertron.
• Alone with the Psycho:
  • Chromedome with Overlord in issue 15.
  • Ratchet with Pharma in issue 18.
  • Issue 48 and 49 has Rung and Skids with Sunder.
• Alternate Timeline: Perceptor claimed this was impossible, and for the most part it's true. Brainstorm's time travel works with Predestination Paradox rules, until Perceptor messed up with the Paradox Locks and ended up creating actual alternate timelines, including one where Rung is the leader of the rebellion against the Functionists.
• Alternate Universe: In issue 35 Brainstorm's meddling in the past creates an alternate timeline where the Decepticons were never able to overthrow the Senate. As a result the Great War never took place, the Functionist Council eventually took control of the Senate instead, Minimus Ambus never became Ultra Magnus, Dominus Ambus never disappeared, Chromedome and Rewind never got together, functionism and ratioism is planetary law on Cybertron, the Black Box Consortia pressured Cybertron into selling Luna 2, and the Lost Light crew never met each other to go on their quest.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Tyrest thinks this is true of every Cybertronian with a Matrixed spark who was constructed cold. The situation is ultimately left ambiguous, as many of the 'bots in question have done things that range from morally dubious (Chromedome, Prowl, Brainstorm) to utterly reprehensible (such as the Aequitas defendants). However, the likes of forged transformers like Overlord make clear that this is not a good indicator of morality, and Tyrest's attempted remedy can only be described as insane.
• Always Someone Better:
  • Chromedome feels that Dominus Ambus is this to him in Rewind's eyes, though Tailgate disagrees with him on this.
  • Keeping in continuity with The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers, Overlord feels this way about Megatron.
  • Played for Laughs with the Stentarians that Skids, Whirl, and Rewind meet in issue 22. Not only is their war infinitely more impressive than the Cybertronian Great War, it's so massive and old that it's the sole reason the Galactic Council was formed. They also have up to ten alt modes and are omnicombinational (they can all combine with each other). The kicker is that they're actually pretty small. Their gestalt mode they're really proud of is the size of Skids. And the war that has been at a stalemate for 16 million years is thrown into chaos from a single offhand shot from Whirl.
  • In that same issue we see Thunderclash, who is basically a nicer, more popular, more skilled, and more well-liked version of Rodimus. Lampshaded to hell and back.
  • Brainstorm seems to struggle quite a bit to get out of Perceptor's shadow. It's obvious enough to others that Rodimus uses it to their advantage later, though Perceptor himself seems oblivious to it.
• Ambiguously Evil:
  • Cyclonus and Whirl. Cyclonus just pulled a Heel–Face Turn, but doesn't regret killing anyone while brainwashed to serve Galvatron, because they were at war. Whirl is a major Ax-Crazy Jerkass and hated by everyone. He hasn't crossed the Moral Event Horizon yet, but has Kicked The Dog a few times.
  • The Scavengers. Labeled by Banzai-Tron as the worst (as in, most-rubbish) Decepticons ever (unless Tarn was just lying to demoralize Grimlock). They're willing to do some bad things to stay alive like Robbing the Dead, but beyond that are generally sympathetic.
  • The Galactic Council, whose hatred of Cybertronians is rash, but justified. Rodimus calls them a bunch of fascists, but whether this is true remains to be seen. Then, in issue 55, they turn out to be willing to destroy entire planets just to protect their reputation, and send Overlord to murder Megatron.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Getaway talks about this when Skids admits he almost wanted to apologize to Megatron for something and worries he might stop hating Megatron at this rate.
  Getaway: A Decepticon kills an Autobot and you hate him. But a million Autobots? A billion? It's meaningless. That's the problem: the greater the crime, the harder it is to process a response.
• Amnesiac Hero: Skids. He knows from records his name and that he's a theoretician, but remembers nothing of his previous life before ending up on a shuttle crashing through a portal onto the same planet the Lost Light had also crashed on. He ends up becoming a sort of impulsive Action Hero, a far cry from the mild-mannered Actual Pacifist he was before the war. Season 2 reveals that he purposely locked away his memories because he was tricked by Tarn into helping massacre hundreds of Autobots at the Grindcore concentration camp.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • Played with in issue 12. When a number of Autobots are grievously wounded, Chromedome turns to Swerve, only finding his face blown off, and his eye hanging out. The injury looks awful, and then it's revealed that he got it by accidentally discharging a gun in his face.
  • Constantly subverted with Pipes. Despite the regularity of his being injured, he has exactly one Amusing Injury to his name (Brainstorm's ennui gun); all the others are Played for Drama.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Dismemberment is common in this series, as robots most of them can be repaired.
  • Rodimus sacrifices his arms in issue 3 taking out the Sparkeater.
  • Chromedome loses an arm to the doors of Overlord's Slow Cell.
  • Ultra Magnus's right arm gets blown off when the Rodpod is shot down in issue 50.
  • Empurata: A disfiguring punishment in which both the hands and face are removed and replaced by primitive claws and a featureless cycloptic eye. It is extremely recognizable as a Mark of Shame with Whirl, Shockwave and Glitch all having it done to them. In an alternate universe, it happens so frequently that it doesn't shock any longer.
  • Several of the heroes get their limbs blown off by the Functionist Council when trying to open their Matrices of Leadership.
• And Here He Comes Now: In issue 6, Trailbreaker starts drunkenly ranting about how he feels Fortress Maximus is overrated, citing that he has guns in his legs and that the one major battle people remember Fort Max for happened a millennium prior, only for Chromedome to announce that Fortress Maximus just arrived at the bar. Trailbreaker immediately pivots to complementing Fortress Maximus for his performance in said battle and his gun legs, though Fort Max ignores him.
  Trailbreaker: But everyone's like, 'Oh, Fortress Maximus, you're my hero! You've got guns in your legs and you killed tons of 'Cons at Simanzi...' And I'm like 'That was a thousand years ago!' He's a relic! He's a has-been! He's—"
  Chromedome: Just walked in.
  Trailbreaker: Great to see you, Max! Come on over! We were just talking about Simanzi! With the thing and the— the stuff! So... oh wow! You've got guns in your legs! How's that working out for you? That's awesome, man. You're awesome."
• And I Must Scream:
  • According to Word of God, Pharma was lying trapped in the snow for six months after the events of issue 5. No wonder he's lost it by the time the crew encounters him on Luna 1.
  • In Brainstorm's Bad Present, Dominus Ambus demonstrates the gradual evolution of Empurata, a telescreen which periodically flashes Functionist propaganda in place of his own thoughts and words. This is taken even further when the Council uses their link to wipe most of his mind.
  • "Domestication" involves surgically mutilating a beastformer, while leaving just enough awareness for whoever it's being inflicted on to know what's been done to them. It can be undone, though.
  • As punishment for his conspiracy to get Megatron exiled or executed by way of grooming Tailgate to get killed in the process, and nearly getting Cyclonus killed, this is enforced with Getaway. As an escape artist, they need to be as thorough as possible to keep him in check - this equates to removing his limbs, ripping out his voice box so he can't talk his way out, and wiring his spark so that if he so much as moves, his spark will be electrocuted. He's imprisoned like this for the better part of a year, and is understandably incensed when he's freed.
• Androcles' Lion: Whirl, of all bots, is Androcles; the murderous swarm of scraplets he nearly dies for is the lion. And Getaway is the lion's lunch.
• And the Adventure Continues: In the final issue, the crew decides to try and re-create the accident that first split the Lost Light into two duplicate versions, and then shunt one of the duplicates into an alternate universe-thanks to Brainstorm's briefcase-where it doesn't already exist, thus negating the risk of that duplicate disappearing like from the start of season two. That way, they'll be plunked into a new universe they can spend eternity exploring and going on quests, though Perceptor notes the chances of it actually working are infinitesimally small and even if it does succeed, the Lost Light that returns home will never know. After the crew votes unanimously to give it a try, they do...and manage to succeed, depositing one Lost Light with its entire surviving crew complement plus the Scavengers, Anode and Lug, in a completely new universe ripe for exploring. The last panel of the comic is them getting down to business.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: When the Lost Light crew re-appears at Mederi, they've all been converted into sparkeaters, save for Getaway and Star Saber. Worse, Getaway himself allowed it to happen. Part of the plan Rodimus comes up with is to use Mederi's bleeding edge medical tech to try and find a cure for the condition.
• Anachronic Order: The backstories and memories of characters are depicted over time through flashbacks and such, frequently out of order. Issue 12 switches scene by scene from events an hour or before the crew of the Lost Light engages a group of Decepticons commanded by Snap-Trap, events that take place during the battle, and events during the immediate aftermath of said battle in erratic order.
  • The final issue is also this, beginning some years in the future at Ratchet's funeral after he passes on from age-related Spark burnout, and then switching between the funeral and the events that immediately followed the defeat of the Functionists, the end of the quest, and Megatron's trial.
• Animesque
• Annoying Arrows:
  • Atomizer seems to have shot Overlord with them. The result (or lack thereof) is obvious. Justified because Overlord is obscenely powerful and capable of being burned down to a skeleton and still fighting.
  • He also tries it again with Ultra Magnus, when trying to stop him arresting Getaway. There's no indication it did anything there either.
• Anticlimax: In-Universe. Skids states that finding out the contents of Brainstorm's briefcase will lead to this. And when Nightbeat and Nautica finally discover the briefcase discarded in the turbolift of the wrecked Lost Light they open it and discover it's empty, its contents apparently stolen (or already used). Of course, neither of them notices that the conversation they're having about what might have happened to its contents happens out of order...
  • Rather cynically, Ratchet confides in Pharma that after all the fighting, and the end of the war, peace itself has turned out to be "one gigantic anticlimax."
• The Anti-Nihilist: Ore's conversation in the Annual reveals him as one.
  Ore: Peace is the freedom to do whatever you want. Unless you're talking about inner peace, in which case I doubt any of us will ever feel that again. You can't live through what we've lived through and expect to feel that. All you can do is be thankful you survived.
• Anyone Can Die: Not entirely in effect. A few main characters have been killed, but so far there hasn't been much death in the ranks, cast-wise.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Ununtrium, which is what is used to make Phase-Sixers. Although only "Point One-Percenters" can survive the process. Mercifully, it's extremely rare, and the Decepticons used up most of it already.
• A Rare Sentence: From Lost Light Issue #6: "Bloody hell, he just punched the moon!"
• Arc Number:
  • Variations of the number 113 constantly show up, which are a Shout-Out/ Mythology Gag referencing the issue of the original UK comic that got the writer, James Roberts, hooked on the franchise.
  • Same goes for 332.
  • And a milder case with 3. There's Rossum's Trinity, the three corrupt authority figures in "Remain in the Light", the first member of the Functionist Council we see is Three-of-Twelve...
• Arc Symbol: The strange cog-like symbol that the spark-being shows Skids in issue 21. It appears again on Luna 1's planetary engines, on Thunderclash's maps, and drawn on the back of Grimlock's door on the WAP. It's clearly important somehow, but it's meaning currently remains unclear. It actually gets discussed in issue 50. In issue 46, it turns out to be an insignia for a group of mystery bots. Lost Light reveals it's one of five clan brands belonging to the Knights of Cybertron, now in use by someone called the Grand Architect.
• Arc Words:
  • Nineteen-eighty-four.
  • Prepare - Confront - Repel.
  • "You are being decieved."
• Arch-Enemy: Several of the bots have one. Whirl's used to be Killmaster before Whirl did some... unfortunate things to him. Skids thinks Misfire is this to him but can't remember why.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  Shock: After everything we've been through – escaping Hell's Point, braving the crucible, surviving Babu Yar, welding Prowl's hands together for a joke…
• Artifact of Doom: Played with. As per Issue 37, it was a curly straw that started a war that lasted 4 million years.
• Ascended Extra: Multiple characters are fleshed out which were under-utilized in other series or in the IDW continuity itself. This is Swerve and Tailgate's biggest role in fiction (and in Swerve's case, it's the first time he's had any role at all), Whirl's developed more than helicopter-wrecker. Rung went from an unseen Mr. Exposition of character Bios to a starring position.
• Ascended Meme: In issue 20, Getaway describes Prowl as "prickly", getting as close as Roberts could probably get to using Prowl's rather... impolite Fan Nickname from TFWiki.net. It's Prick if you don't know.
• Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Tyrest's goal is to enter Cyberutopia, which believes can reach using a collection of space bridges salvaged from dead Metrotitans. However, only individuals that are completely at peace and free of guilt can cross through the portal's barrier.
• Ass Shove: Whirl is implied to have done this to Killmaster using a wand the size of his head. Yes, really.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Black Shadow getting killed by the DJD.
  • Pharma getting killed by First Aid.
  • The alternate version of Overlord who never escaped his slow cell and was executed by the DJD when they came for him. Though compared to the crew, he got off easily; all they did was cut his head off with a chainsaw.
  • In order to prevent his escape, Getaway's arms and legs and voicebox are removed, and he's wired up so any movement will electrocute his spark.
  • Froid getting turned inside out by Sunder.
  • Kaon getting his head torn off by Tarn.
  • Megatron destroying all the remaining members of the D.J.D.
  • Star Saber getting cleaved lengthways by Cyclonus' Great Sword while in vehicle mode.
  • Getaway getting eaten alive by domesticated scraplets.
  • Demus' death was rather pitiable, sent fleeing from his life in terror before being mercilessly shot in the back by Fortress Maximus, until Maximus tells us that Demus was mutilating live Cybertronians to construct his merchandise.
• A Taste of the Lash: Tyrest does this to himself as a form of self-mutilation based atonement.
• The Atoner: Megatron, who is filled with remorse and seeks to redeem himself by joining the Lost Light's quest.
• Atrocious Alias
  Drift: Dent? He called himself Dent? As in- as in Dent?
  Ratchet: Yeah, well, all the best names are taken.
  • Dipstick doesn't like his name. And he likes his full name even less. For the record, it's Dipstick of Operation: Doom Patrol.
• Audience Surrogate: Tailgate and Nautica. Since they're newcomers to the Lost Light and modern Cybertron itself, they are able to ask the pertinent questions that can get readers world-building information.
• Awesome by Analysis: Skids is a "super-learner" who picks up new skills quickly and easily.

B

• Back for the Dead:
  • Dai Atlas.
  • The Necrobot in issue 50.
  • Half the Protectobots, and Mirage, finally reappear in Lost Light, only to be violently murdered by Star Saber.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Cyclonus, at the end of The Transformers (IDW). He is given a new lease on life by Vector Sigma, which restored him from his Undead status thanks to his Heel–Face Turn.
  • Ore in the annual.
  • Weirdly Zig-Zagged with Rewind. As far as we know, Season One's Rewind is deceased, but the crew picks up his quantum duplicate, who never technically died, aboard the wrecked Lost Light.
• Back for the Finale: Megatron and Anti-Vocationist League arrive in the main universe for finale. The Grand Architect is revealed to be Pharma.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Cyclonus and Whirl in issue 12. Whirl lampshades it, and says even their color schemes complement each other.
• Badass and Baby: Grimlock being the badass who protects the baby.
• Badass Boast:
  • Rodimus makes one to Tyrest at the end of issue 20.
    Rodimus: This isn't over. I'll find you, Tyrest. I will find you and I will kill you. And if I have to tear Cyberutopia apart to do it, fine!
  • Cyclonus makes another good one about ensuring that Tailgate will survive the encounter with the DJD on Necroworld.
    Cyclonus: Because I'll split this world open and tear down the sky before I allow him to come to even the slightest harm.
• Badass Cape:
  • Tyrest wears a really bitching one.
  • The Necrobot's is even more impressive; the inside shows stars and nebulae in a swirl of colors.
• Badass Crew: Most of the crew of the Lost Light. The Scavengers are an inversion; they're a crew of incompetent wimps with occasional moments of brilliance.
• Badass in Distress: Dai Atlas and the Circle Of Light after they're kidnapped by the mysterious Legislators. Season 1's main storyline focuses on the crew trying to find and rescue them.
• Badass Normal: Hoist.
• Badbutt: Tailgate claims to be a highly skilled and well trained soldier but not only does he not display any combat skills, he just just plain doesn't have the personality of a soldier. Justified considering that he never actually did any of the awesome things he claims to have done.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: When Rodimus proves too heroic to leave Getaway to die, Whirl's pet scraplets finish him off. (Getaway, that is, not Rodimus.)
• Bad Present: What "Elegant Chaos" revolves around; by traveling into the past Brainstorm creates an alternate timeline where the Decepticon movement never overthrew the Senate. The result is a nightmarish Cybertron where the Functionist Council have taken over and now slaughter entire alt mode classes for not being useful. The Lost Light crew are spared from being wiped out thanks to Nightbeat and Nautica grabbing the duplicate Brainstorm's briefcase, allowing the crew to go back and fix things.
  • Also somewhat subverted as we discover thanks to Rewinds' alternate records, while the changed timeline ends up being worse for Cybertron, the rest of the galaxy is spared the conflict of the war, and thus billions of lives are saved as a result. Most of the others find it hard to argue with that.
  • And then double-subverted when it turns out that the billions of deaths haven't been prevented, just delayed; the Functionist Council ends up launching its own genocidal war, backed up by a fake Primus!
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Issue 50 implies Getaway had sold Team Rodimus to the DJD. Issue 55 reveals he'd actually sold them out to the Galactic Council. The DJD being on the Necroworld was just a coincidence.
  • Throughout the second season, there are increasing hints that Tarn may in fact be Optimus's long lost buddy Roller (He's got addiction issues, he's a Point One Percenter, he was directly recruited by Megatron specifically to hurt someone...), but issue 55 reveals he's actually Glitch, that other member of Orion Pax's pre-war gang whose fate had gone unrevealed.
  • Lost Light #21 ends with Megatron returning. however his chest is covered, hiding his insignia, and he is wearing a Fusion cannon suggesting he's suffered another Face–Heel Turn. Come #22 and it's revealed that, no, he still a good guy and his Fusion cannon is in fact a medical kit.
• Barred from the Afterlife: During "The Everlasting Voices" The Guiding Hand confirm that they can bring Rodimus and the others back to life, but warn that if they die again they will not be able to return to the Afterspark, their sparks consigned to oblivion. Though in the end this all turns out to be an illusion from a malfunctioning medical centre.
• Bash Brothers: Cyclonus and Whirl, become this during the of Remain in Light, eventually settling their differences.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Justified. Transformers are robots and don't require oxygen or any sort of inhalation so they can move about in atmosphere empty areas without problem. Their starships are still pressurized, however, presumably for the sake of any non-mechanical crew-members or visitors.
• Batman Gambit: Chromedome's use of Trepan's Trigger to momentarily stun Overlord relied entirely on Rodimus busting out his Catchphrase "Till All Are One" after manipulating Overlord's memories of his many defeats at Megatron and Ironfist's hands to associate defeat with that phrase. It works because Rodimus is Rodimus and loves the phrase.
  • Prowl manipulating Rodimus into stowing Overlord on the Lost Light counts as well. He told Rodimus that if he was scared to put him on the shuttle, he could just say no.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Trailcutter wishes away his forcefield abilities right before a pulse weapon freezes everyone on the Lost Light and Decepticons invade the ship.
• Becoming the Mask: Being Ultra Magnus wasn't just a job for Minimus Ambus, it was his entire life. Ratchet even confides in him that as far as he is concerned, Minimus is the "true" Ultra Magnus.
• Be as Unhelpful as Possible: Subverted. When Cyclonus is accused of killing Red Alert, Rodimus is sure he's the culprit, and Drift interrogates him. Ultra Magnus points out that he hasn't had his rights read, and Cyclonus isn't being helpful because he doesn't even know why he's being interrogated. The interrogation is quickly derailed by Drift's play at bad cop (trying to coax a confession using Saying Too Much based on his actions), ending with Cyclonus disarming him and slamming his head against a table.
• Being Tortured Makes You Violently Unstable And Prone To Psychotic Outbursts: Fortress Maximus.
  • Whirl was convinced to work as a thug for the Senate after suffering their Empurata process.
• Berserk Button:
  • Fortress Maximus REALLY hates Overlord (and Prowl, but that's perfectly normal).
  • Don't try to blackmail Chromedome regarding his past.
  • Don't suggest that Rodimus is a Glory Hound. He doesn't take it well.
  • In-Universe, there's a drink called "Berserker Button", named after this trope. Appropriately, it is mentioned Whirl goes on a rampage after having one too many and being asked for the time.
  • Megatron's is being unjustly imprisoned. Key word being unjustly. He draws a gun on Tailgate when the latter pulls a gun on him and demands that Megatron be locked up on account of Crosscut disappearing and Megatron just happening to be in the room when it occurred as evidence of his guilt. But the next issue when it looks like Megatron, or rather his future self, might have had something to do with the deaths on the alternate Lost Light, once he realizes the evidence against him is solid, he agrees that locking up both himself and Ravage is an excellent idea, since he is no longer fit to try and predict his own future.
  • Megatron also flies into a rage at the thought of being helpless.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Brainstorm the silly, lovable Mad Scientist is actually a Decepticon double agent. And he's also playing them to get the components for a time machine.
  • Getaway, who looks like just another wacky new recruit and does things like "bomb" Skids on the nose solely to be annoying, ends up a major villain when he arranges a mutiny.
• BFS: All of the Circle of Light carry Great Swords, including former member Star Saber.
• Big Bad Ensemble:
  • The Decepticon Justice Division and their leader Tarn are the ultimate main villains (Roberts even refers to them as such in an interview) but since they rarely encounter the crew there are several other villains that serve as secondary but equally dangerous antagonists. This includes the Galactic Council, Overlord, Chief Justice Tyrest, and Brainstorm. Meanwhile the Cybertronian Senate and their mooks serve as antagonists in the Pre-War flashbacks.
  • In Season Two, the DJD properly become the chief antagonists, while Getaway is the other major villain. Following the massacre of the DJD in The Dying of the Light, Getaway is left as the only prominent antagonist still around when the series is renamed for Season 3.
  • In Lost Light, the position is tied between Getaway and the Grand Architect. Getaway ultimately sweet-talks his way into the Grand Architect's ranks (which also include old foes like Tyrest and Scorponok), and the Grand Architect's plans have all been to fend off the invading Functionist Council.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • When Sonic and Boom have the medics at gunpoint in issue 5, Fortress Maximus shows up. The following battle is brutal and comically one-sided.
  • When the DJD corner the Scavengers, Crankcase gets his hands on a Cybernought, and proceeds to stomp on Tarn and blast Helex and Tesarus. Kaon then electrocutes Crankcase and Tarn blasts it, bringing the whole thing down, subverting the trope within a few panels of its appearance.
  • Tailgate stopping Tyrest, at least long enough for the others to recover.
    • And then finally the previously thought-dead Minimus Ambus picking up a BFG and shooting Tyrest in the back, thus negating the need for Rodimus to shoot through Tailgate (who is being used as a Human Shield by Tyrest).
    • Issue #51 ends with Drift and Ratchet, both sporting newly-upgraded bodies, appearing on the Necrobot's planet and saving Ten from being murdered by a group of Deathsaurus' Decepticons.
    • Issue #54 sees Megatron finally realize that he really has changed and his Heel–Face Turn has been genuine, and thus takes up arms and singlehandedly begins tearing through the Decepticons to save the injured Ravage and the rest of the crew.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Chromedome and Rewind (as well as Tailgate and Cyclonus) are the rare romantic version of this trope.
• Big "NO!":
  • Fortress Maximus when Rung is accidentally shot in the head.
  • Swerve does this when Skids is skewered by Star Saber in issue #18.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Rung's are commented on repeatedly. Before the war Quark thought they might be listening devices.
• Big "WHAT?!": Inverted in issue 38. When it's reported to the crew of the Lost Light that Rewind has, in the distant past, shot out Megatron's spark while he's still being assembled, present day-Megatron's reaction to this news is the only lowercase word in the entire series: "what?"
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Issue #16, "Gloaming" means "Twilight" in old Scottish. "Lamentatorem" means "mourning".
  • "Conjunx Endura" is latin for "enduring/everlasting spouse", while "Empurata" is an anagram of the latin word "amputare" (to amputate). Roberts is really fond of this trope.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Atomizer has been keeping a list of the crewmembers who voted to have Rodimus stand down as captain after the Overlord incident. He than tempted Rodimus into using it to keep said crew members out of the quest.
  • Getaway, who is secretly a Manipulative Bastard who's been plotting to overthrow Rodimus and any sympathetic to him since shortly after he joined the crew, presents himself as one of the most lovable friends on the crew. Then it gets worse when he grooms Tailgate, pretending to have fallen in love with him, to get himself killed trying to provoke Megatron into getting exiled from the ship or executed. And on top of all that, his mutiny gets the crew stranded on the Necroworld with the DJD, though he was intending to get them stuck with the technophobic Galactic Council.
• Bittersweet Ending: Word of God says he's aiming for this.
  • Season 2 ends with Megatron having cemented his Heel–Face Turn, Drift and Ratchet having rejoined the crew, the DJD dead, Overlord and Deathsaurus retreating, and several missing 'bots like Roller and Terminus returning. However, Skids and Ravage have been killed in the battle, and they are still exiled from the Lost Light by Getaway and Atomizer, leaving them with almost no chance to find the Knights at this point.
  • The Lost Light relaunch's first story-arc ends with one as well. With the help of Team Rodimus, the Anti-Vocationist League is able to deal its first real blows to the Functionist regime, but the Functionist-timeline version of Rung has to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to do it, and Terminus tricks Megatron into being left behind when they have to leave, leaving Rodimus to believe that Megatron has played him into escaping justice (when Megatron had absolutely no intention of doing that and indeed wanted to face justice in being judged by the Knights of Cybertron). However, Team Rodimus manages to return to their own reality and Megatron decides to make the most of his situation by re-organizing the AVL into what the Decepticons should have been, fighting a corrupt regime through words, diplomacy, and understanding, even changing his well-known motto from "peace through tyranny" to "peace through empathy". And he gets a call from Functionist!Orion Pax, who was previously M.I.A. Meanwhile, main-timeline Anode is also able to undo the death of her lover Lug by using the spark-flower the Necrobot planted that was imbued with Lug's residual Spark energy and the sentio metallica the two of them recovered to remake Lug in a new protoform, though it's going to take some time for her to recover fully.
  • The series ends with Getaway, the Grand Architect, and the Functionist Council all defeated and the universe saved (and meanwhile Cybertronian society survives the coming of Unicron). However, Rung gave his life to save them, and information creep robs his friends of their memories of him. Megatron is put on trial again and all but confirmed to have been executed by the Galactic Council. Ratchet eventually dies of old age, and the Lost Light is dismantled and its' crew go their separate ways, most crew members having their own troubles that continue after the end of their quest. The main sweet part, however, is that the crew was able to create a quantum duplicate of themselves and their new friends, the Scavengers, and pushed into a new universe, where they can spend the rest of their days adventuring on... though the main timeline crew will never learn of this.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The series delves more into the Transformers as robotic aliens. Issues 4-5 have them infected by a disease generated by sound. They can survive without their heads, and even get them and their body parts replaced. When their bodies change and parts are replaced, the energon around their spark stays the same.
  • Issues 17 and 19 reveal that Transformers can be born two ways: being forged (being born naturally through a Pulsewave from Vector Sigma and then harvested from a Hot Spot) or constructed cold (being born using a transfer from another spark or more precisely, being created using the Matrix). Despite In-universe arguments that there is no difference between the two types, there is. A specific code exists in every constructed cold spark that can be accessed and utilized, if you happen to know how.
  • As issue 14 shows, some sparks exist that happen to be bright green (and also fatal to anyone who happens to be nearby when they form). The creation of such sparks only occurred at less than .01% of the time, though strangely enough a large amount of famous Autobots and Decepticons happen to have them. These types of sparks are only ever created via Hot Spot. Anyone with these sparks tend to have abilities beyond those of normal Cybertronians.
  • Issue 31 sheds some more light on the nature of sparks, which usually come in three types: Vitreous, Isomeric and Ferrum. These three types are then subdivided into positive or negative types, though what distinction this means is unclear. We do know that Vitreous Positives are relatively rare, with only one in two hundred having such a type.
  • The print version of issue 31 also made mention of Estriol-type Sparks, found in Nautica, and by implication all other female Cybertronians, given Estriol is a kind of estrogen. This was removed in later editions at Roberts's request, as he didn't really like the idea that male and female Transformers would have such big biological differences.
  • According to Issue 36, Sparks can only be harvested once they're "bright" enough, and can evaporate if left too long. From dialogue gleamed throughout the series, this whole process, from flash to harvest to the Spark being implanted in a body, takes less two weeks.
  • In addition, there are occasional "Outliers" born that display powers and abilities that are entirely unique and have nothing to do with their alt-modes, such as teleportation (Skywarp), mind reading (Soundwave), super learning (Skids), force fields (Trailcutter), magnetism (Windcharger), and control over non-sentient machinery (Glitch). The functionists despise them because they throw off their attempts to classify the species, and even a mighty "point one-percenter" like Roller feels inadequate in comparison.
  • The Titans, meanwhile, have built-in Space Bridges, and each of them is linked to the other. One Titan corpse can lead to another Titan corpse, and if someone were to know how a Titan's corpse can be used to reactivate all the other Titans.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Sparks are created from the Matrix, or from a pulse wave from Vector Sigma. The energies in both have a data code which is the baseline for life, sparks are then found, harvested and put into casings and finally bodies, creating a new cybertronian.
• Black Comedy: Quite a bit. Especially from Whirl.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Kaon has some black pupil-less eyes which look as if he has just two vacant sockets. When asked Roberts said that he was intended to have eyes, but he likes Kaon without them.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Prowl to Chromedome.
• Black Speech: Old Cybertronian apparently sounds like this to modern-day 'bots or maybe that's just when Cyclonus is singing in it very loudly with a distinct Tetrahexian accent. Though given the only other person in the series fluent in Old Cybertronian is Vos...
• Blatant Lies:
  Rodimus: Just a precautionary measure in response to something absolutely unremarkable and actually quite boring. But if anyone here does happen to carry industrial-strength energy dampeners or turn into a nullification booth, or is able to generate level 9 containment fields, then hey, feel free to tag along…
  • In issue 34, Froid tries to tell his counterpart Rung that performing a personality adjustment, i.e. memnosurgery, on Megatron, is justified because he's carried out a thorough examination and determined it is the most appropriate, most compassionate way to cure Megatron. The "thorough" investigation consisted of Froid reading a single report from Megatron's boss when he arrived on Messatine and had already brought the memnosurgeon, Trepan, with him to do it before he'd read the report and the only thing Froid wants to "cure" Megatron of is his anarchic leanings.
  • In issue 41, Rodimus keeps insisting that he's horribly sad over Thunderclash's apparent death, despite the fact that he's got a huge smile on his face, keeps making jokes, and is obnoxiously ringing a gong in celebration.
• Blessed with Suck: Tailgate's Cybercrosis makes him immune to Tyrest's thought weapon, giving him a chance to stop him and deactivate his staff, thus enabling the others, not affected by the killswitch, to recover and face Tyrest proper.
• Bloodier and Gorier: In all seriousness, this is probably the most graphically violent Transformers series of all time, putting even the live-"Give me your face"-action movies to shame. With the sheer number of characters that get cut in half, decapitated, tortured and non-fatally mutilated, James Roberts is really pushing the "gore doesn't count if it's robots and not red" rule as far as it can possibly go.
• Blood Knight: Whirl is a heroic example; Overlord a decidedly un-heroic one.
• Body Horror:
  • What Pharma does to Ratchet in issue 18. Removing his entire body and leaving him nothing but a still-living head and spark.
  • Anyone Sunder looks at tries to transform, while suffering from Mind Rape that makes them forget how. The result is they tear themselves inside out.
  • "Domestication" involves surgically removing an animalformer's Transformation cog, then violently removing their intelligence, leaving nothing but an animal. Fortunately it can be undone.
• Book Ends:
  • Issue 19’s first and last page end with a panel of Tyrest, facing the audience and away from Magnus/Minimus, while saying “Fully deserved”.
  • Megatron was originally arrested for being present while Impactor fought and brutalized a couple of military cadets who were assaulting Rung. Flash forward to after Megatron joins the crew, and the psychologist is helping him work out his issues.
  • The first issue ends with the Lost Light's quantum engines creating two identical ships and crews which head out for completely different adventures and outcomes. The final issue ends the same way.
• Boom Head Shot:
  • Rung gets his head blown off by Swerve by accident. He survived, but was comatose until issue 11.
  • Whirl also blows Nautilator's head to pieces.
  • Swerve shoots himself in the face (albeit nonfatally) in the same Issue. Sensing a pattern?
• Born Winner: Point One Percenters. Their sparks are extremely powerful from the moment they ignite. Once put into a body and brought online they become extremely durable and strong Cybertronians. They can be upgraded further to the point of becoming invincible superwarriors.
• Bottle Episode: "Interiors" is largely set in Rung's office.
  • "The Waiting Game" (aka Spotlight: Hoist).
  • Issue 31 takes place inside the Rodpod. Due to the Lost Light crew being trapped in it.
  • Issue #51 mostly takes place inside the Necrobot's fortress as the marooned crew members weigh their options with the DJD closing in.
  • Lost Light issue 13 is about Team Rodimus stuck inside a ship, and slowly driving each other completely nuts.
• Bowdlerise: In-Universe, Ultra Magnus edits and censors a bunch of bits from Rewind's documentary. He mostly just abuses this to censor clips of him acting like a buffoon.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: What the basic function of the New Institute was. Also what Prowl attempted to have Skids and Getaway do to Tyrest, by using a "nudge gun" to fire a thought into his head that would have caused him to resign, since Prowl believed Tyrest was becoming more and more unstable. However, due to Tyrest having already damaged his brain module via drilling, he could tell the idea to resign wasn't actually his.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: This little exchange:
  Swerve: What was on the—
  Rewind: No! Not answering!
  Swerve: Confidential information? Autobot secrets? Confidential Autobot secrets?
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "Tarn: music lover, classical scholar, and mass murderer."
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Brainstorm's meta-bomb, thanks to it, Swerve and Rewind have a Deadpool moment.
  • Medium Awareness: Swerve under the effects of Brainstorm's meta-bomb.
• Break the Cutie: Rewind and Pipes get some of this, but Tailgate undoubtedly takes the cake.
• Break the Haughty:
  • Oh Chromedome, you just couldn't resist taunting Overlord.
  • Rodimus gets subjected to several of these. Regrettably, they never seem to actually stick.
• Break Them by Talking: Starscream tries this on Megatron during the latter's trial. It backfires spectacularly.
• Breather Episode: "Cybertronian Homesick Blues", Issue 22, and issue 40. Issues #56 and #57, the last issues before the rebranding of the series and the start of Season 3, as well.
• Briefcase Full of Money: When Drift is attempting to buy the ship that would latter be known as the Lost Light, the previous owner mentions someone else tried to buy it already with one of these. Drift then proceeds to buy it anyways with a gold currency card that is worth 1 'BILLION Shannix.
• Brick Joke: Combined with Hypocritical Humor. In issue 6, Trailbreaker is drunkenly ranting about how massively overrated he feels Fortress Maximus is, including a jab at the fact that Max has "guns in his legs" (and when Max actually walks in, Trailbreaker hastily and badly tries to use this same fact to praise Max). Fast-forward to issue #12, and Hoist is now complementing Trailbreaker on his newly upgraded legs, courtesy of Brainstorm...which happen to have guns in them.
• Brought Down to Normal: Megatron is being forced to recharge with specially designed fuel that keeps him weak compared to his normal state.
• Broken Pedestal: Megatron has become this to the Decepticons. Not only for turning his back on the movement he founded, but then (being forced to) publically denounce it and then defecting to the Autobots, their enemy. Ravage desperately wants to believe he's either been brainwashed or that this is part of some farther-reaching plan and is visibly crushed when Megatron admits neither of those is true.
• Brown Note:
  • The screams of the Metrotitan.
  • The Empyrean Suite. The music itself is seemingly harmless, but according to Chromedome it's linked to something utterly horrible. So horrible that he refuses to talk about it and believes that Skids should never make an effort to learn it's significance for his own sake. Issue 39 reveals that it is the DJD's "theme song". Relevant to Skids, back when Tarn was the commandant of the infamous Grindcore prison, he would play the song at regular intervals. Such as when prisoners were led into a room and melted into raw components. The music was played to drown out the screams as they died.
  • Bizarrely, Rung seems to be a walking brown note. Whenever he's around others and conscious, no one can remember his name or appearance beyond vague details. The second he leaves the area, the effect disappears.
• Buffy Speak: All the damn time.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Whirl decides to attack the former Dead-Universe agent who's torn through dozens of Autobots. Cyclonus decides to threaten the mentally unstable Autobot on a battlefield with plenty of opportunities for Unfriendly Fire.
  • Dai Atlas probably should've thought twice about laughing at Star Saber's "atheist holocaust" plan...
  • In issue 31 Tailgate has the balls to pull a pistol on Megatron. Megatron is more bemused than anything and is trying to change for the better so Tailgate isn't in too much danger... until he proposes locking Megatron up without evidence.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Spinister. The guy's a massive idiot who'll try to interrogate his own fingers... but he also happens to be a spectacular surgeon.
• Burial in Space: The victims of Overlord's rampage.
• The Bus Came Back: Grimlock, Fortress Maximus. The Lost Light relaunch brings back Scorponok as the new Big Bad after an eight year absence, not to mention the MacGuffin of Spotlight: Doubledealer, the Magnificence, which has also been MIA since Hot Rod recovered it at the end of that issue.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Poor Pipes can't seem to catch a break; on his first time ever on an alien planet, his attempt at being spontaneous results in him being infected with a virus that almost melts him to death by rusting, though a cure is found in time to save him. Then as he's recovering from that over a few drinks in Swerve's bar, he gets unceremoniously shot in the chest by Fortress Maximus in the grips of a psychotic break because Pipes happens to have a similar colour scheme to Overlord. He pulls through that too, but in issue 12, after the assault on the rogue Decepticons, we see him flat out in the shuttle having sustained even MORE grievous injuries. It's like the universe goes out of its way to try and hurt him. And then he gets killed in issue 15, when he runs straight into Overlord.
  • Rung similarly goes through the wringer, such as getting an arm cut off by a fleeing Cyclonus, being used as bait for the Sparkeater, being held hostage, getting shot in the head, etc...
• By-the-Book Cop:
  • Ultra Magnus, typically Played for Laughs. Also Red Alert, though with a more paranoid and serious angle.
  • The fact that is Played for Laughs bites Ultra Magnus in the aft later on, when Tyrest complains that Ultra Magnus has been focusing so much on the most inane details that everyone considers him a laughingstock.

C

• Call-Back:
  • In Issue 3, when Animus and Whirl shared a room and Animus was locked out he accused Whirl of doing it, but it was really Rodimus who auto-locked the rooms. Whirl couldn't get the door open, and Animus was killed by the Sparkeater. In Issue 12 Tailgate tries to defuse a bomb with Rewind, and Cyclonus goes in to drag him out. Trying to look like a hero, Whirl locks Cyclonus and Rewind in with the bomb and claims the door locked itself.
  • In Issue 2, when Rewind first meets Skids, he remarks that everyone thought he was dead. In issue 33, the duplicate Rewind says the same thing.
  • There's also one to the story "Zero Point." When one's in a coma after massive trauma, there's a space between connections called Zero Point, when that space is bridged, the person wakes up. It can be bridged by a memory. In "Zero Point", Roadbuster does it to Springer, here they do it to Rung.
• Call-Forward: In issue 40, Ratchet has a flashback to when he said goodbye to Hunter O'Nion, Bombshell can be seen spying on them. ''All Hail Megatron'' readers know what happened next.
• The Cameo: Used in-universe with Rung during the "Shadowplay". He constantly appears in historical moments in a cameo-like fashion. Rewind describes how there are numerous times when Rung was present at or witnessed historical events but rarely was directly involved. He mentions that Rung is what historians call "a Historical Constant". Elegant Chaos reveals that this is because the Rung seen in these historical moments is actually the present day Rung traveling through time.
  • "Shadowplay" in general has quite a few cameos from characters who are either dead in the present, or simply underused, like Nightbeat, Ironfist, and Windcharger, amongst others.
    • Impactor appears for one panel, as Whirl's new cell-mate.
    • Macabre is in the background when the Senate thugs arrest Senator Shockwave.
  • The opening of issue 16 is filled with cameos:
    • The battle for Hell's Point: all the Warriors Elite (Sixshot, Heretech, Black Shadow, Overlord, Killmaster), Megatron (in gun mode), Impactor, the Dynobots.
    • Clemency: Shock and Ore, the Powerdashers, Torque.
    • Simanzi: Rotorstorm, a Cybernaught.
  • Lockdown's crew has among its members Insecticons, Vehicons, Lugnut and a Blitzwing lookalike.
  • Issue 35 has a scene on Cybertron in an alternate present which contains numerous references to the Unicron Trilogy characters: Demolishor, Sparkplug, Blurr, Cyclonus, Jetfire, Beachcomber, Bulkhead, Snowcat, Hot Shot, Ultra Magnus, Ironhide, Wingsaber, Prowl, Ransack, Crumplezone, and Jetfire.
• Came Back Wrong: Whatever happened to Grimlock, it's left him with severe brain damage.
• Canon Foreigner: Rung, Ambulon, Riptide, and many others.
• Canon Discontinuity: The "estriol-positive" spark type, which was more or less the explanation for female Transformers, was erased from issue #31 for the trade (with Nautica's type changing to ferrum-positive), and Lost Light #7 established that estriol-positive sparks were a discredited myth.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Ultra Magnus.
• Cartwright Curse: Poor Chromedome has suffered it no less than four times.
• Cast Full of Gay: The cast of MTMTE is predominantly male-coded, and nearly all of the romantic relationships shown have been between male characters. Gender in the IDW continuity is a bit complicated; different writers over the years had different visions for what exactly the Cybertronians are with respect to gender. Even when more female characters like Nautica, Velocity, Lug, Anode, and Nickel join the crew, Lug and Anode are already a couple, while Nautica and Velocity get just as much teasing with each other as they do with male bots (Brainstorm for the former, Swerve for the latter). Nickel ends up the only outlier thanks to the Ship Tease she gets with Roller. By the Distant Epilogue, most of the official couples are same-sex, including Cyclonus and Tailgate, Drift and Ratchet, Anode and Lug, Rewind and Chromedome, and the Quantum Duplicates of Brainstorm and Perceptor.
• Casual Interstellar Travel: Played with. Space travel is at least somewhat casual (most likely thanks to quantum jumping) but it also seems to be rather costly, like it would be in real life. The only reason the Scavengers are able to get anywhere is because they scavenge fuel and spare parts to keep their piece-of-crap ship going.
  • This gets brought up in issue 31. As it turns out, the fact that the Lost Light gets around so quickly should be blatantly impossible. Nautica is concerned by this, but no-one has a chance to think about it.
• Catapult Nightmare: Chromedome occasionally suffers them as a side-effect of his mnemosurgery. It's just one of many reasons that Rewind is trying to get him to quit.
• Catchphrase: "Til All Are One!" is Rodimus' catchphrase, to the point of him using it during a particularly good card game, and being the subject of a bet during Tailgate's inauguration ceremony. Drift complains that his overuse is cheapening the dramatic effect it is supposed to have. Chromedome was counting on this in the event Overlord ever got out of his cell.
• Cataclysm Backstory: The galaxy is the way it is today thanks to The Shattering, a massive and disastrous war/event which led to the formation of the Galactic Council and cemented a stronger over-arching government for the galactic community. There's also the Five Dark Epochs but those only affected the Cybertronians.
• Chainsaw Good:
  • Overlord has a pretty big chainsaw which he used to cut Fortress Maximus up during his incarceration.
  • Pharma's new hands can turn into just about anything, but he prefers chainsaws.
• The Caper: Orion Pax organizes one in order to steal a bomb disguised as a fake Matrix during the events of Shadowplay.
• Chastity Couple: Chromedome and Rewind. Unless Cybertronians have some method of sex, though you probably don't want to think about that too much.
• Character Development: Most of the characters undergo this to a bigger or lesser extent, or are shown to have Hidden Depths.
• Character Shilling: Parodied with Spoke and Lockstock, who are constantly talked about as if they're the most badass members of the crew but always happen to be just off-screen.
• Chekhov's Armoury: The comic is packed to the brim with detail. Characters, items, and events that are only briefly seen or mentioned in passing become massively important later on. Listing all the Chekhov's Guns, Gunmen, and the such would take up too much space.
• Child Soldiers: Some Cybertronians, such as Fortress Maximus and Fulcrum, came online during the war. Chillingly, no-one on either side makes a big deal out of it.
  • Even worse, in issue 31 it's mentioned that there was a whole slew of them, named the Made To Order, and that they frequently suffer neurological disorders because of their rapid construction.
• The Chosen Many: Matrix affinity is a special trait that allows a select number of Cybertronians to bond with and use the Matrix. Besides Optimus, Springer, Thunderclash, and Rodimus have displayed the potential to be future Matrix-bearers.
  • The finale features Rung creating a dozen Matrixes to be wielded by the cast in their final battle against the Functionist Council.
• Christmas Special: To celebrate Christmas, artist Alex Milne drew Swerve, Whirl, Rung, Tailgate and Misfire all celebrating the holiday.
  • There is a Christmas special that includes stories from across IDW continuity. Roberts goes the whole hog and fills it full with ludicrously Christmas-y trappings.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Whirl asks Cyclonus why his sword is better than his. Dai Atlas intervenes and mentions that Cyclonus' sword draws energy from the spark to energize it, but the reason it's stronger than normal is because Cyclonus is religious.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The victims of the DJD suffer from this before their execution.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: James Roberts has said that Overlord is based off of John Simm's performance as the Master from Doctor Who, Mark Hamill as Pharma's voice, and Susan Blu as Tailgate. Nick Roche is partial to Andrew Scott as Overlord's voice. Alex Milne has said that he sees Brent Spiner as the voice for Rung, David Kaye as Tarn, and Jeffrey Combs as Ratchet. Colorist Josh Burcham has proposed Adam Baldwin as Whirl.
• Comically Missing the Point: Zig-Zagging Trope with Whirl. It's hard to tell whether he's being sarcastic or honest with his quips. It is even lampshaded by Dai Atlas and Cyclonus.
• The Comically Serious: Ultra Magnus is played as this to the hilt, serving as the Straight Man even to other serious characters. He can't even bring himself to say the word "fun" at one point, having to prompt someone else to say it for him. He displays the phrase "Can't smile to save his life." Well, he can, but only when his life and everyone else's is in danger. Heck, At one point he comes out as a Grammar Nazi over misplaced apostrophes, an offense he considers mutiny.
  • This is actually addressed in by Tyrest, his boss, before stripping him of his position.
• Compelling Voice: Tyrest's weapon of mass suggestion when activated can make anyone do anything he says.
• Conditioned to Be Weak: Overlord is a "Phase Sixer", a One Transformer Army built with a nearly-indestructible frame who can wipe out entire planets by himself. Unsurprisingly, Megatron was quite wary of giving such power to a Decepticon without any sort of insurance, so he had Overlord's brain altered in a way that made him unable to be able to think of how to beat Megatron in a fight. Unlike many versions of this trope, Overlord is aware that this has been done to him and he's spent centuries looking for a way to undo it because he really, really wants to fight Megatron.
• Confirmation Bias: Megatron accuses the Autobots and Neutrals of this at his trial. He's got a point, given that the trial was presided over by his archenemy. It ends up earning him his place on the Lost Light, as he makes the argument that only the Knights Of Cybertron can properly judge him from a neutral standpoint; pretty much everyone in known space either loves or hates Megatron.
• Contemplating Your Hands: Spinister does this multiple times. According to Misfire he's actually interrogating them.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Inverted with the Legislators. While they're threatening and tough, they're basically Giant Mooks, and the first two took a bit to defeat, but Skids took them down with no real problem. When there's an army of them, the better armed Crew can shoot them down faster, but the Legislators over-run them, and take down numerous crew members, meaning that they're worse en-masse.
• Continuity Nod: It even borders on Continuity Porn, though not to the detriment of the story.
  • To Last Stand of the Wreckers:
    • First Aid says in issue 4 that “sometimes, life persists”, alluding to the last words from that book.
    • Fortress Maximus tearing one of the Genericons in half and slamming the pieces together in issue 5 is an homage to LSOTW #5, in which Overlord did the same thing to Guzzle. Here, though, it's fatal.
    • The cover of issue 6 is a call back to Fort Max being thrown to the prisoners of Garrus 9. Also, Fort Max' wanting to ask Prowl why it took him 3 years, 2 months and 10 days to finally send the Wreckers to Garrus 9.
    • The opening flashback scene in issue 14 is the immediate continuation to when Overlord yanks Impactor's harpoon from his eye in Issue 5 of LSOTW.
    • Overlord is still despairing about Megatron's death. Until Chromedome tells him otherwise.
    • Issue 10 has "Wreck 'n' Rule" scrawled on the wall of the prison cell where Orion Pax meets Whirl. Who was Whirl's cellmate? Impactor.
    • In addition, Impactor was brought into prison sans his right hand, like in LSTOW where he's been incarcerated without one. In both cases it was likely to remove a potential weapon.
    • To the story "Bullets." The Lost Light also has the Ethics Committee onboard (Xaaron, Trailbreaker, and Animus), with Animus admitting to lying to get on the committee, and Brainstorm alluding to the crazy stuff he's made (creating the most inventions deemed unethical).
  • Issue 9 begins with Quark´s “So, what am I looking at again? Not more violence” referencing Impactor's words in issue 22 of the previous ongoing. If you look closely, you can see the window of Maccadam still cracked from Rung's crash into it, which happened in that same issue.
  • Swerve mentions that he and Blurr were gonna open a bar once the war is over. He opens a bar aboard the Lost Light, and Blurr opens one in Cybertron
  • Trips to the brig show Tentakil, Snapdragon, and Snaptrap locked up after their battle with the Autobots in issue 12.
  • In issue 14 a flashback depicts Megatron taking off his helmet, showing the crest that makes up his actual head. This was only shown one other time, way back in Megatron Origins.
  • The opening pages of issue 16 all show events previously mentioned in the series: the battle for Hell's Point, the Simanzi Massacre, and the battle in Clemency (seen in the opening of issue 8).
  • It's not the first time that Prowl has dabbled in trying to manipulate other people's thought processes. He had Perceptor implant sub-routines into Kup to have him become Prowl's puppet whenever needed, because Prowl figured out that they might not listen to him, but they would listen to Kup.
  • In issue 22 Whirl mentions Sixshot, though he doesn't say his name. He also lists of his modes as Beast, tank, jet, gun, and something he can't remember, which lampshades that Sixshot has never turned into his car-alt mode for any of his IDW appearances outside a cover.
  • Issue 30 features the return of Whirl's holo-avatar.
  • Skulllcruncher's comedy routine in Issue 45 has him crack joke about how nobody's sure how Infiltration Protocol works. Back in Furman's run, we were given steps 1 and 2, but the rest were skipped in order to get to 6, wherein Sixshot came to level the place. Steps 3-5 were never elaborated on (other than step 5 might have also involved Sixshot), and here Skullcruncher jokes that, none of the Decepticons know what steps 3-5 are, not even Megatron.
  • A very subtle one in issue 3 of Lost Light: the spark-flower Nightbeat analyses contains traces of Turmoil and Piston, both of whom were killed by Starscream, thus indicating that the other names from the flower were also killed by him.
• Contrived Coincidence: The Contrivance Engine that Brainstorm made, which is apparently responsible for the Christmasy trappings of the holiday special.
• The Corruption: Tyrest, in his insanity, has become convinced that cold construction is something like this and has dedicated himself to stopping the nonexistent threat.
• Corrupt Politician:
  • Senator Proteus. He's worse than Ratbat and Decimus, having commissioned Empurata, Shadowplay, and a False Flag Operation that would kill tons of people, to crush a then-justified political movement.
  • Nominus and Sentinel, as well.
• Cosmic Deadline: Like all of IDW's Transformers comics, Lost Light is set to end in September 2018 alongside the Unicron event comic, and the final issues had to be rushed as hell because of it. Most story arcs in the series are normally given four to five issues to develop the plot, but the final ten issues the comic wraps up the truth of Cyberutopia, Team Rodimus and the Scavengers joining forces, the defeat of Getaway, the truth behind the Grand Architect and guiding hand, the return of Megatron, The true nature of Rung as well as the invasion by the Functionist Universe. aka, 7 or 8 different plot lines.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: When Fortress Maximus is being tortured in flashback, the wall of the torture room has "SAVE ME" written in energon/blood, with the E in ME smeared. Bloody Handprints can be seen all around it, the size of them likely means that another victim wrote it.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Benign example with Rewind, who gets jealous about Chromedome's past ties with Prowl.
• Creation Myth: The Cybertronian creation myth is told in the Annual (one version, at least).
• Crapsaccharine World: Like many modern depictions of Cybertron's pre-war days. The Senate controlled and secretly ordered brainwashings and deaths, severe classism gripped the populace, and the value of lower class's lives were incredibly low. All under the facade of being a peaceful time without the war.
  • In issue 13 Rewind mentions several seemingly nice planets that have seedy underbellies. Amongst those listed are Lovetopia, Cuddlex, and the living hell that is Giggleopolis. He even lampshades it, noting that he believes that the outwardly well-adjusted and peaceable a society is, the more likely it is to have some sort of dark secret.
  • Getaway forces one on the remaining members of the Lost Light. With Team Rodimus gone things on the Lost Light run smoothly, the quest is making great time, the ship is orderly, and no one wants for anything under Getaway's benevolent leadership. This is maintained by lies, brainwashing, and murder.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Part of the reason Trailbreaker resents his forcefield.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Fulcrum is a coward and is weak physically, but he's a Guile Hero who can come up with remarkably clever plans and is willing to stand up for his friends when it counts. He comes up with a scheme that allows him to single-handedly save Misfire from a massive security complex and escape the huge police force that pursues them.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • "Are we saying he vomited up his own brain?"
  • In Delphi, all the patients are infected with a virus that activates when one transforms and causes the organs and insides to succumb to rust and decay. They end up coming out of the optics, having the victim cry to death.
  • The Decepticon Justice Division will melt you, shred you, electrocute you, and optionally mutilate your face before letting you die.
  • Poor Ambulon is sawn in half lengthwise. On-panel.
  • Basically everyone who was killed during the DJD's rampage through the alternate Lost Light. Helex forced each of the crewmembers to eat their own brain modules before they were forced into their altmodes and then executed and had their transformation cogs harvested by Tarn. We also see a shot of what the rampage must have looked like, which included Tesaurus shredding Perceptor and at least one other 'bot, Mainframe getting his head ripped off by Helex, Tarn simply casually crushing Swerve's head while he blasts Ultra Magnus and Kaon using Vos in his sniper rifle mode to execute Whirl at basically point-blank range with a headshot. Oh, and they also severed Overlord's head with a chainsaw.
  • In the recap page for issue 44, Swerve mentions part of what it was he saw the DJD do that traumatised him: Tarn and the prior Vos sliced someone in half, then force-fed the poor bastard what fell out (Mercifully, Swerve trails off before he can say any more).
  • Hundreds of Autobots were melted down in a smelting pool in Grindcore Prison, so that their remains could be processed into raw material for new Decepticons. Their screams were so loud that Tarn had to play the Empyrean Suite on full blast to drown it out.
  • Overlord claims in issue #54 that Chromedome was too late to deliver a Mercy Kill to Rewind, and by the time the missiles hit, Overlord had already ripped off Rewind's limbs, began crushing his body, and has to chomp down on Rewind's head to silence his screams for Chromedome to save him. It's quite possible he's lying to rile up Chromedome, however, thanks to the mechanics of the slow cell.
• Cryptic Background Reference: A lot of events and places are mentioned and then elaborated on as the series progresses. The Institute, Empurata, and Relinquishment Clinics are good examples.
  • The Simanzi Massacre is made out of these. It's mentioned as being one of the worst of the worst battles from the entire war, and the closest Megatron felt he ever came to winning. Something called "the Crucible" was involved, and numerous individuals who fought there still have psychological issues because of it. The Autobots created entire armies to fight in it, most of whom probably died, since it was mentioned that the Cybertronian race was halved afterward. Some event called the "Forced Flood" occurred during it. One Ultra Magnus died during the event. Apparently after it was all over, part of Cybertron's hemisphere was superheated so badly it could be seen from a distance. And yet we've never seen the actual events on-page, so far.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Overlord to Pipes, Ultra Magnus, and Ratchet and Drift.
  • The Decepticon Justice Division to everyone they meet.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • "The duly appointed enforcer of the Tyrest Accord can duly appoint my shiny metal-".
  • "With all due respect, Drift, I don't think I've ever heard such a load of—"
  • "Why are you such a-"
    • Followed by a narration box: "And that's when I started swearing."
• Cyber Cyclops: Whirl, the way he tilts his head and when he's taken damage allow him to convey emotion. Flashbacks reveal that Whirl, Glitch and even Shockwave got their heads and hands removed and replaced with the cycloptoid heads as a fantastical form of mutilation and humiliation in the society.
  • The Functionist Council also have one singular large eye on their heads.

D

• Damned by Faint Praise: At one point, Tailgate mentions Getaway told him he was good enough to be a Wrecker, which would almost be heartwarming, save that the Diplomatic Corps were intended to be rivals to the Wreckers.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Chromedome.
  • Crankcase implies Krok has one, alluding to the device he's holding in his hand which he tries to call his former team with, Crankcase says they'll never come.
  • Disturbingly, it's strongly implied that the Lost Light itself has a horrific history. For one thing, there was a Sparkeater onboard it in the engine rooms when the Lost Lighters got it. As if that wasn't enough, Drift notes that Sparkeaters are drawn to emotional torment, so something awful had to have happened on the Lost Light for it to stick around after it got free. Nightbeat lampshades that there's something mysterious and weird about the ship when he first sees it. A flashback in "Shadowplay" shows Rung with an exact model of the Lost Light... a full four million years before the ship would did anything significant as far as we know.
    • Issue 31 reveals that the previous owners don't even know where the Lost Light came from; they just found it floating around completely abandoned, took it as their own, than sold it off to Drift the second he offered to buy it. Oh and it's previous owners were basically devil worshippers.
• Darkest Hour:
  • The end of "Remain In Light" part 4. Tyrest trumps the away team with thought control, Ultra Magnus and Dai Atlas are seemingly dead, Fulcrum and Misfire are trapped on Constancy, Cyclonus and Whirl are forced to face Star Saber alone, and Tyrest activates the Killswitch, crippling most of the crew of the Lost Light and Scavengers. He than steps through the portal that will seemingly lead to the Knights Of Cybertron, leaving the remaining crew members behind in mayhem.
  • Issue #54 sees Team Rodimus completely outmatched by the Decepticons, their power boost thanks to Skids gone - because Skids has died - and about to be set upon by the DJD.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Cyclonus's when drawn by Milne, focuses a lot more on his demonic features (contrast to Chaos and Issue 13), his horns are longer and sharper, his eyes are sunken in and his cheeks are hallow, even his claws become more evident, contrasting his heroic actions in the comic.
• A Day In The Lime Light:
  • Whirl and Fortress Maximus in issue 6.
  • Issue 4 and 5 is this for Ratchet. He gets another one in issue 40.
  • Overlord and Chromedome in issue 14.
  • Trailbreaker, err, Trailcutter and Hoist in their respective spotlight issues.
• Deadpan Snarker: Everyone, to a certain extent, but Ratchet, Drift, and Cyclonus especially.
• Dead Guy on Display: An unintentional example, as it is stated that Ore's body is fused to the quantum generator, implying they can't remove it without affecting the ship until the Annual.
• Dead Man Writing: Rewind's message to Chromedome.
• Dead Person Conversation: between Swerve and Ore in the Annual, although for a short lived time.
• Deadly Deferred Conversation: In issue #15 between Chromedome and Rewind, after Rewind finds out that Chromedome not only used his dangerous mnemosurgery skill after he asked Chromedome not to, but also hid the fact that he did so from Rewind, who is the Cybertronian equivalent of his husband.
  Chromedome: You're angry.
  Rewind: No, I'm past that. It's - what I feel is worse than anger. In fact I don't know—
  Chromedome: What?
  Rewind: I really don't know if I can forgive you for this.
  Chromedome: We'll finish this conversation later. We will. I promise.
• Deadly Euphemism: Spoofed repeatedly in Lost Light issue 9, when Anode complains about Flame repeatedly doing this, rather than just saying he and his goons are going to murder her and Lug, which she finds more offensive than the fact they want to kill her.
• Deal with the Devil: A heavily intoxicated Ultra Magnus leaves an implication to Swerve that he made one with Chief Justice Tyrest.
  Magnus: He promised me things - things I'd always wanted. And - worse than that - he gave them to me! And I took them Swerve! I took them!
• Death by Flashback: Nominus Prime.
• Death by Irony: The unnamed killer that crashes against a billboard promoting flying, while hijacking a flight capable body in issue 10. Chromedome even calls it "the ironic billboard".
• Death Montage: Issue 16 begins with a showcase of all the horrible injuries that Ultra Magnus has suffered in the line of duty. We later learn that while the identity survived, the bots using the identity did not.
• Death Seeker:
  • Issue 6 reveals Whirl may be one - although it's also possible he was convinced that if Max really wanted to kill him, he'd have done it already. His self-loathing creates some of the series's blackest comedy.
  • Overlord, who is suffering a Despair Event Horizon. Or at least he was until Chromedome gave him a reason to live by telling him Megatron is still alive after all.
  • Chromedome. Not only is mnemosurgery killing him slowly, he seems to go out of his way to find ways to have it work quickly - such as forgetting to tell people that he's going to pay a call to a Phase Sixer noted for being one of the most terrifying monsters Cybertron has ever produced, or going so deep into the Pet's mind that Rewind has to sever his arm to save his life.
  • Megatron himself post Heel Realization. Since beginning his genocidal crusade to tear down everything which stood in prevention of creating a better world Megs walled off whatever guilt he felt over the atrocities he either ordered or directly carried out himself. It all, slowly comes to a head when Megatron can longer lie to himself anymore, finally accepting that it ceased being about the cause a very long time ago. That he was now perpetuating violence, striking back at the Autobots, for the hell of it. And this, so utterly rocks him to his core, that it in turn culminates in Megatron trying to off himself alongside the DJD.
• Debut Queue: For season 2, new additions to the roster include Megatron, Nautica, Nightbeat, Bluestreak, the Monsterbots and the Protectobots, among others.
• Deconstruction: See Meaningful Name below, but also transforming itself. The series shows how it integrates into culture, how some bots die in their preferred forms, how it can be addicting, how some altmodes can considered embarrassing or to say negative things about a person's history or personality, and how it's vital to how the Transformers live, instead of being just a gimmick to sell toys or used only for disguise. There is also some emphasis on the prejudice against alt-modes (shapism), how one's alt-mode influenced one's career and life (functionism), and even on a religion that doesn't approve of changing forms (the Militant Monoform Movement). The biggest example was the crisis on Delphi, where bots' organ's liquefy and come out of their optics, thus crying themselves to death, via a sonic-based disease that activates only when they transform.
  • As confirmed by Word of God Chief Justice Tyrest, Pharma, and Star Saber are essentially the three pillars of society (law, medicine, and religion) all taken to their most horrific conclusions.
• Delayed Safety Feature: Brainstorm tries attempt to avert this through the creation of an Early Early Warning System; his regular Early Warning System was this trope. It helpfully says "Uh-Oh" when things start getting dicey, but he insists that there's no need to worry until it starts saying "Run for your life!". But it never does that until things have clearly gone to hell, making it still an example of this trope.
• Demoted to Extra: Perceptor, Sunstreaker. While the other four Headmasters all have story lines, with Hardhead's in RID, Highbrow has been pushed to the back.
• Demoted to Dragon: Getaway, Tyrest, and Scorponok are all working for the Grand Architect after having a turn as primary antagonist.
• Depending on the Artist:
  • Some of the designs change a lot depending who's the artist for the issue, but perhaps the most glaring one is Swerve and Tailgate, who are as tall as everyone else under Padilla.
  • Rojo frequently tends to leave off large amounts of secondary anatomy (the alternate mode parts), making everyone look incredibly flat and humanoid.
• Derelict Graveyard: In issue 18, past the mountains, in Luna-1, is an area full of corpses of Titans.
• Determinator:
  • Pipes. Broken, crushed, leaking, his spark falling out... he still crawls to the nearest alarm to activate it to warn the others.
  • Ultra Magnus has been shot at point blank range by Megatron, a Cybernought, and a bomb has exploded in his face. And that's before the events of this series. As it turns out, Tyrest was deliberately invoking this trope while designing the Magnus Suit.
• Deus ex Machina: Metrotitan in the Annual, literally.
• Dirty Coward: Every time Brainstorm is in danger he either cowers or runs away. A flashback in issue 14 shows this is hardly a new trend.
• Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery: Tailgate becomes a lot more snarky and impatient after he learns that he's dying of cybernecrosis.
• Disability Immunity: Riptide appears to have some sort of unspecified learning disability, which gives him resistance to the nudge gun, saving his life when Getaway decides to chuck him into the oil reservoir to be eaten by scraplets.
• Disney Villain Death: Pharma, when he confronts Ratchet on the roof, and he ends up falling off and trying to shoot him in the back. Drift slices off his hands and lets him fall. The author says that he likes the idea of Ratchet having a rival, so Pharma may return, and he does.
• Discontinuity Nod: In both the previous ongoing and the Transformers tie-in to IDW's Infestation event, Galvatron and his crew (Cyclonus, Scourge, and Jhiaxus) were constantly mislabeled as Decepticons, despite predating the emergence of factions. In the first issue of this series, Cyclonus states, quite clearly, that he's not a Decepticon and never has been.
  • Back in issue #24 of the ongoing, the name of the planet Varas Centralus was accidentally misspelled "Veras Centralus". In this issue, that mistake is referenced when Rewind refers to the two as separate but similarly-named planets that he mixes up with one another.
• Disposable Vagrant: The Institute was kidnapping homeless people from the Dead End for their cerebral experiments. They would have taken Drift, if not for Orion Pax's intervention.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • In issue 4, Tailgate gets mad at Cyclonus for being an Unreliable Narrator concerning the Great War and in the heat of the moment lightly jabs Cyclonus in the arm. Cyclonus responds by violently beating Tailgate down and then brutally kicking him in the gut while he was writhing in pain on the ground.
  • The DJD specializes in this. According to Ratchet they torture and kill people for being captured against their will.
• Distant Finale: The final issue is split in half with one part taking part in the aftermath of the Unicron Crisis and the other taking place many years later with most of the cast having long settled down and lost touch with one another. Luna-1 and the Functionist Cybertron having been fully settled and a new generation of Cybertronians having come of age.
• Distressed Dude: Rung is pretty much the exact wrong combination of Non-Action Guy, Weirdness Magnet, and Chew Toy. There's even a scene of Skids saving him from certain death and carrying him around afterwards in a manner visually similar to that of a swashbuckling action hero carting around a rescued love interest◊. In issue 6 it leads to him getting his head blown apart, when he's taken hostage and his would-be rescuer turns out to have epically horrible aim.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • The whole Monoformer thing has a lot of shades of civil rights movements and discrimination against homosexuals and people of other religions. Not only are they a minority that follow a different belief than most Transformers, but they were almost automatically suggested as possible subjects in the attack that left Nominus Prime near dead (they were proven innocent but still...). Just to drive it home, in issue 4 First Aid mentions that while people act like they don't mind Monoformers, there's still a lot of prejudice against them despite them just being Transformers that don't transform.
  • Overlord undergoing the ununtrium process which makes him into a Phase-Sixer super warrior is played very much like a birth, with Rossum playing the part of the midwife, and Megatron as the proud parent.
    Megatron: He takes after me.
  • Drift's views on the "Death Clock" mirrors the view of some religions on scientific topics.
  • Star Saber speaks like a mix of the head of The Spanish Inquisition and Nazi Germany.
  • Chromedome's continuing use of mnemosurgery is pretty clearly a metaphor for drug addiction, complete with his lover trying to get him to quit and others pressuring him into using it more.
    "No more needling. It will kill you."
  • Further Prowl's treatment of Chromedome has shades of emotional abuse to it.
  • Issue 49 has a nausea-inducing example with Grindcore Prison. It's very clearly a Decepticon concentration camp, the camp's warden, Tarn, is addressed as "Commandant", and the "teleportation chamber" actually being a massive smelting furnace is very similar to the infamous gas-chambers-disguised-as-showers. Even Tarn's habit of playing classical music at the camp is similar to documented reports of the SS doing the same during the "selections."
  • In the final issues of Season 2, Sentinel Prime begins threatening Cybertron, and insists that the planet has lost its way and has become over-diluted and way too diverse, and promises to restore Cybertron to what he deems is the great times by enforcing his bigotry and hate over the populace. Not too many people didn't pick up on the irony that in the same summer that the issue was released, a certain "son of an orangutan"'s presidential campaign, which was started by offensive and racist remarks towards a minority, was in full swing. In #57, Sentinel even mockingly derides Cerebros as "one of those".
• Dramatic Irony:
  • As of issue 8 the DJD thinks that Fulcrum is dead. The readers and the Scavengers know he isn't.
  • Also the reader knows that Hound, Chromedome, Dipstick, Drift, and Ultra Magnus will be dead in 18 months time but no one else does, assuming the Necrobot is actually recording deaths. Issues #32-33 and #44 reveal that the Necrobot had actually added quantum duplicates of the Lost Light to his list.
  • Brainstorm travels back in time to prevent the war, and save Rewind's life, as a favour to Chromedome. However, in the Functionist-dominated Cybertron this creates, Rewind is still killed anyway, and never met Chromedome at all.
• The Dreaded:
  • Invoked in issue 6 with Ultra Magnus in the bar. The Decepticon Justice Division is a more straight example.
  • Played With for Star Saber he's garnered an impressive reputation as a massive fascistic religious zealot with wars and genocides to back him up. However, characters don't necessarily fear him, and when his reputation is first brought up, it's in the form of a jab at his sanity.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Issue 21 reveals that when Drift had a near-death experience a few months ago, he had a vision of the future. The only thing he was able to take away from it is that Rodimus is going to be vital to whatever happens in the future.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Red Alert removes his head to take himself out. Thankfully, First Aid was able to save him.
  • Issue 12 also reveals that after the war had commenced in earnest, the few Relinquishment Clinics that were still up and running changed purposes from body tourism to assisting Transformers on both sides who were sick of the war, but unwilling to leave Cybertron to commit suicide. Chromedome was one of these Transformers, but meeting Rewind changed that.
  • In issue 1 it's lightly implied that Whirl was about to commit suicide by self immolation when Cyclonus walked in on him.
• Driving Question: Who are the Knights of Cybertron? Did they even exist? If they did, where are they? The answer to those being: yes they did exist, they where the first explorers from Cybertron and they all died on what they thought was Cyberutopia.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Trailbreaker, I mean Trailcutter. Specially because everyone thinks he's just the forcefield guy. This is later elaborated on in his spotlight, but in this series, his Meet the Crew bio explicitly mentions it.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Pipes, he really made sure to make his last moments alive count, if only to alert everyone else.
• Dysfunction Junction:
  • The Lost Light is this. Almost half of the crew has some kind of serious psychological or personality disorder. It certainly doesn't help that they only have one therapist.
  • Lampshaded by Hoist in the spotlight.
    Hoist:... so don't dismiss me just because -unlike all your pals on the Lost Light- my personality isn't the product of a crippling psychological disorder.
  • The Scavengers are even worse. Every one of them except Fulcrum and maybe Krok have some sort of personality disorder. And the closest thing to a doctor they have is Spinister, who could best be described as a mix between an autistic child and violent psychopath. And unlike the Lost Light, they don't have any therapists period.
    • Krok is no exception; it is revealed that he deluded himself into thinking his crew was still alive, and that the remote he keeps obsessively clicking is one of their severed fingers. His time with the Scavengers has improved him, however, and he wants to help other Decepticons who are suffering mental illness like him.
  • Lampshaded again in issue 22. The Circle Of Light refuses to join the crew on their journey for this exact reason.
    "Everyone on the Lost Light is cracked in the head!"

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