Megatron becomes Galvatron: G1, Robots in Disguise, Unicron Trilogy (and we mean every subseries of the Unicron Trilogynote Done for trademark reasons, according to Aaron Archer. It wasn't as much of an issue in Japan: Armada Megatron/Galvatron was Micron Legend Megatron/Megatron Super Mode; Energon Megs/Galv was Super Link Galvatron/Galvatron General; and the Cybertron version was Galaxy Force Master Megatron/Master Galvatron - Takara didn't originally intend for Galaxy Force to be in the same continuity.), Age of Extinction, Shattered Glass
A technicality with Prime- Megatron is resurrected and given an upgraded body by Unicron, the standard Galvatron origin, but he's never referred to as such. A single toy of this form just called it "Unicron Megatron"
Starscream comes back from the dead: G1, Beast Wars, Unicron Trilogy, Animated
Someone makes an evil Optimus clone: G1, Robots in Disguise, Energon, Beast Wars II, Prime, Age of Extinction note When the humans in Age of Extinction make Galvatron, they specifically say that they're designing him to look like Optimus Prime; Galvatron keeps reprogramming himself to resemble his old body. He keeps Optimus' truck vehicle form though.
Unicron Appears: G1, (technically) Beast Wars, Armada, Energon, Prime, Beast Wars Neo, Rise of the Beasts
Transformer with a human for their alternate mode: Masterforce, Animated, Revenge of the Fallen.
If you were to play every Transformers opening theme ever made back to back, it would take just shy of 40 minutes to complete.
If you just watched the English intros of every main Transformers cartoon, it would still take over thirteen and a half minutes.
Dummied Out: Some of the Transformers' toys have the clear/translucent plastic for lightpiping in their heads painted over, disabling that feature (ie. Animated Voyager Lugnut). Others may have the vestiges for integrated weaponry, like missile launchers, but lack the springs or mechanisms for actually loading or firing them (ie. Legacy Armada Starscream).
Executive Meddling: Tons and tons and tons, relating to marketing and the usual reasons. For example: the Grand Finale to Simon Furman's Myth Arc comic series was cut from 12 issues to 4 so that IDW could publish All Hail Megatron instead.
Inconsistent Dub: The Latin American and even the European Spanish dubs, all the way: Due to the fact Hasbro wanted to dub the Spanish versions in the U.S. for having more control about the dubbing (This is was during G1, the animated movie and the Japanese Anime versions, mind you), all the Spanish language versions (including the European one) were sometimes dubbed by a Spanish-language studio in Los Angeles. The main problem with this approach is, due of consideration about the Spaniard viewers, especially in the Anime versions, some series were dubbed using the European Spanish dialect, but keeping the local accents intact: Not only the Latin American viewers had to tolerate a very fake Spaniard accent, but the Spaniards had to tolerate a ridiculous Spaniard dialogue with Mexican and Central American accents.
In fact, Mexican voice acting studios only dubbed a very small amount of Transformers stuff: The Beast Wars/Beast Machines series, Prime, Robots in Disguise and the live-action films. Other countries that dubbed the rest of the TF series were: Chile (Animated) and Venezuela (The Unicron Trilogy).
While the Mexican dub of Beast Wars was pretty good, it was panned for changing the names of all the characters to Spanish equivalents. This was corrected later in Beast Machines' dub.
No Export for You: Many Japanese things haven't been officially released in the US such as Scramble City: Mobilization and the only episode of Transformers: Zone due to Toei being notoriously difficult to work with, Transformers: Call of the Future even though all of the dialogue is in English and Transformers: Go! due to the fact that it doesn't fit anywhere into the Aligned timeline and wound up being ignored in Japan due to the release of Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015) which started with Optimus dead unlike in Transformers: Go!
Old Shame: In The New '10s, the franchise has started to phase out the One-Gender Race aspect of the Cybertronian people, and has introduced more female (and even transgender) characters; quite notably, while older works often felt the need to explain the very existence of female transformers, nowadays they simply exist in the setting without any questions asked. This likely stems from the Running the Asylum aspect of the franchise, the growing female fanbase, and as a response to the perception that female bots tended to be present only as the Token Minority and/or to give the male characters female love interests - not to mention that adding them in from the get-go is easier than coming up with convoluted reasons for their low numbers (Looking at you, IDW Arcee).
Promoted Fanboy: Benson Yee, frequent convention visitor and operator of a popular Transformers web site. He was approached on Generation One expertise for Beast Wars and received a "Consultant" credit on certain episodes.)
Then there's Don Figueroa, who built his own meter-tall custom Transformers from scratch before becoming a fan-favorite artist and toy designer.
Running the Asylum: Arguably, it's one of the few series that has benefited from it.
Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy: Rather famous in the original toyline, as the repurposed toy molds were from stories of piloted (not sentient) mecha and transforming defense bases. Ratchet and Ironhide (repaints of each other) weren't even humanoid in their alternate forms. Even Beast Wars had to take some liberties with the character models as the toys would have to cheat to be workable with both modes. Because of the lead time necessary for the movie line compared to the actual movie many of the toys are based on earlier designs and not the final character design, although by the third film most every character had a reasonably screen-accurate toy. Transformers: Animated was the first series to feature genuine cooperation between the character designers and the toy developers, resulted in extremely screen accurate toys.
Trend Killer: During the 80s, there were several "transforming vehicles" lines on the market, like the big two of 1983's Challenge of the GoBots and 1984's The Transformers, 1985's M.A.S.K. and Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, and 1986's Centurions. By 1987, Transformers were the top dog, but already suffering from declining sales, at least part of which was thanks to the debut of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesnote Another big factor was the lack of a concurrently airing cartoon to help sell the characters and thus the toys. By 1990, the Transformers toyline died with a whimper, taking the concept of transforming vehicles as a key point of a toyline with them. The Transformers franchise would make a comeback thanks to the Michael Bay films, but "transforming vehicles" as a whole haven't been so widespread since.
What Could Have Been: Many, many toys and concepts end up being discarded - from G1 alone, we have characters originally being named differently (e.g. Swoop was to be named "Divebomb" before the name was later repurposed for the Predacon bird), a planned Unicron toy and two planned Arcee toys for the original toyline, an axed rerelease of the original Megatron toy in a blue/orange deco (dubbed "Lava Megatron" by Hasbro and "Safety Megatron" by fans), two Megatron triple changers (one that switched between Megatron, Galvatron and a gun◊ and another between Megatron, Skywarp and a plane◊ and many, many more. See here for more.
Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: The Limited Edition tables, which cost nearly $2,000 over the regular "Pro" model, and were produced in limited quantities (125 for each faction, and 500 of the "Combo" version).
, it's easier to list the series where this doesn't happen: Transformers: Robots in Disguise '01, (though it nearly happens in the last episode), Transformers: Rescue Bots, Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015) '15 and Transformers: Shattered Glass (where, since it's a Mirror Universe, this happens to Megatron instead).
