YMMV / Transformers: Animated

A-F

• Adorkable: TFA Optimus, natch. Just watch the way this guy awkwardly stumbles over his words from time to time. It's downright precious. The "Career Day" short represents the zenith of his awkwardness.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Sentinel Prime suffered severe psychological damage in the incident where Elita-1 was lost. Since then, rabid fear of organics and guilt over leaving Elita-One to die have been gnawing away at his neural nets, turning him into a paranoid wreck who's convinced he's the Only Sane Man. Or maybe he's just some self-centered jerk who won't take responsibility for his actions. A slight riff on the former: Sentinel and Elita-One were romantically involved (you see his arm around her waist and he puts in every effort he can to protect her, even covering her and Optimus' retreat. When she fell to her 'death,' he's willing to throw himself into a damn inferno to save her.) Yeah, he took her death pretty hard, especially since his and Optimus' rule-breaking (going to that off-limits planet) caused Elita's death. Now, in the present, he's convinced that rule-breaking will always cause heartbreak. That's why he's so obsessed with regulations and order, to keep others from suffering that same loss. He wants to do good in that regard, but he does need a little guidance; after you realize that, it's hard to hate him. Alternate Character Interpretation, indeed.
  • Some more Transformers: Animated specific examples: Do Lugnut and Blitzwing merely work together, or are they genuinely friends? Is Blitzwing crazy because he's a triple-changer, or is he able to triple-change only because he's crazy? Or are his nuttiness and ability to triple-change unrelated? Derrick J. Wyatt stated that becoming a triple-changer means going crazy in response to a question on his blog.
  • There are plenty of interpretations regarding Megatron, in large part due to how — probably deliberately — ambiguous a lot of his characterization comes off as. Is he really dedicated to the cause of the Decepticons, or is he merely a power-hungry bastard who uses empty rhetoric to hide the fact that he's out for himself first and foremost? Is his apparent affability genuine or just a very good mask? Is his seeming lack of gratuitous cruelty a sign that he has redeeming qualities, or an extension of his pragmatism and self-control? That being said, this is largely for the show itself; supplemental materials (especially some tie-in comics and released material about the planned Season Four) seem to generally lean towards a more monstrous and unpleasant characterization for him.
  • Invoked with Blackarachnia's last scene. Waspinator was destabilizing due to the Transwarp energy she infused him with, and was close to exploding. Blackarachnia encased both herself and him in web, lessening the explosion. Optimus says she did that to save them, sacrificing herself, Sentinel says she did it to harness the energy and teleport out, sacrificing Wasp.
• Animation Age Ghetto: Back when the first promos were shown off, many fans claimed that the show would be too "kid-oriented" based off of the art style alone. Then Thrill of the Hunt aired and the show got darker in general, and these claims became less frequent.
• Ass Pull:
  • The Reveal that Bulkhead is the top space bridge technician in the galaxy. Mainly because it makes one wonder why exactly this never came up while the team was repairing space bridges, or why the Elite Guard would give someone they recognize the genius of in their information log such an unimportant job as a member of a cleaning maintenance crew.
  • ¨Five Servos of Doom" revealed that Prowl was around during the Great War, when all previous episodes implied Ratchet was the only team member from that era. TFWiki.net even lists this as a continuity error on their page for the episode. Lockdown also suddenly recognizes Prowl's moves as being learned from Yoketron when he should've recognized it the previous times they fought. Finally, Prowl begins wearing his samurai armor full-time to promote the new toy on the shelves at the time when "A Fistful of Energon" treated his decision to discard the armor as a good moral choice. The armor was actually a creation of the showrunners, Hasbro only learning of it after the fact, thus a toy was made and why Prowl had to regain the armor.
• Badass Decay:
  • The Dinobots, to the point where they were easily beaten by Jetfire and Jetstorm and scared off by post-upgrade Sari by Season 3. Oh, and according to Grimlock's profile, he's as powerful as Megatron.
  • Most of the Decepticons suffer from this. Blitzwing and Lugnut are the worst cases, they are shown to able to beat all five of the main autobots on their own, and since the Autobots getting their asses kicked all the time would get old, beating them has to constantly require the use of plot devices that render both villains to Butt-Monkeys.
  • Blackout suffers this in the Cool comic, where Jetfire and Jetstorm dodge his attacks, and combine to take him down. Blackout killed 3 bots the size of Omega Supreme in the war by himself, and lead a bombing raid against a fourth, and he seems to forget that he's covered in weapons.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Sentinel Prime, the show's biggest Jerkass. Fans Love to Hate him, feeling his arrogance coming back to bite him is entertainingly karmic, his mannerisms adding to the moral layers of the Autobots, showing they're not all squeaky clean, and his occasional points of clarity, specifically his reaction to Blackarachnia adding a surprisingly emotional depth to him. Others hate him because he's an obnoxious Damsel Scrappy who refuses to learn from his actions and is a danger to everyone.
  • The reveal of The Motor Master's design met with some contention. There were fans of the design, using the Voyager Optimus Prime gave him a beefy Evil Counterpart appearance. There was also a number of fans who didn't like the design, some felt that the blocky head clashed with the more curved design of the body, with those fans feeling the use of the Wreck-Gar mode to be more suitable. Finally other fans feel that complaint applies more to the character model rather than the toy.
  • Jetfire and Jetstorm. Some thought they were a cool addition to the cast being Autobot Jets, and combiners who had a number of awesome and funny moments. Others found their comedy relief annoying, felt they were overpowered and benefitted too much from The Worf Effect.
  • Blackarachnia became one due to how her sympathetic backstory doesn't justify her actions such as what she did to Wasp and her intentionally throwing an aged Sari off a skyscraper. Still, she has plenty of fans for being a good reinterpretation of the Beast Wars character.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Slipstream appearing for a brief minute to shoot down Optimus at the end of "Endgame, Part I". This is an artifact from a deleted scene in which Slipstream would've revived Starscream at the end of "Endgame, Part II".
• Bizarro Episode: The Bee in the City script reading. Filled with Fourth Wall breaking fun, and various Shout Outs to other Transformers continuities, and even lampshades the trope by agreeing never to speak of the incident again.
• Broken Base: The art design for the show, especially for the Transformers themselves. It is either a refreshing new take on the characters with some enjoyable zaniness, or it is too different from what came before and that same zaniness apparently making it not feel like Transformers anymore.
• Can't Un-Hear It:
  • For many fans, the late Fred Willard as Swindle. Willard brings all his best acting chops to make a two-episode character one of the best modern takes on a character who is one of the few to outshine the other members of his combiner team and stand on his own. Many had hoped that Willard would one day reprise the role in a different series, but sadly this never came to be when Willard passed away in 2020. His death was taken so hard by the fandom at large that you'd think they were grieving one of the creators of the franchise. TFWiki.net even made Swindle the featured article on their main page for some time after Willard's death.
  • Corey Burton's Role Reprise of Shockwave also solidified him as the definitive actor for the character for many fans, much like Peter Cullen and Frank Welker as Optimus Prime and Megatron. His successor, David Sobolov, even admitted he could never outdo Burton and resolved to provide his own unique take on the character to not be in Burton’s shadow.
  • While Mark Ryan’s take on Lockdown in Age of Extinction would be well-received, few would argue that anyone can outdo Lance Henriksen as the character he helped originate.
  • Corey Burton's icily intimidating yet charismatic performance as Megatron has put him right up there with Frank Welker himself as one of the voices of the Decepticon leader among fans.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Anytime Sentinel Prime gets his skid plate tossed around is immensely satisfying, seeing how big of a Jerkass he is. The worse he suffers, the better.
  • After all of the despicable things he pulls, Porter C. Powell suffering a Humiliation Conga that culminates in him likely being put out of business is especially gratifying.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Crack Pairing:
  • For whatever reason, Longarm/Shockwave and Blurr, even though their only scene together is of Shockwave trying to kill Blurr without remorse. Hilariously it's become one of the most popular pairings for the Animated fandom, even beating out old favorites like Megatron/Starscream and Jazz/Prowl. Even the pairing's fans aren't sure why!
  • Apparently, quite a few circles ship Megatron/Optimus and Blitzwing/Bumblebee.
  • In a few fanfiction circles, Cliffjumper and Rosanna/Flip Sides, because Cliffjumper is in Autobot Intelligence while Rosanna is heavily implied to be a sleeper agent for the Decepticons. This is in spite of Rosanna's importance being exclusive to All There in the Manual only, and Cliffjumper & Rosanna/Flip Sides have canonically never met nor would they have known reasons to have any past interactions.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • Megatron basically falls into this in Season 1. Seeing him as a disembodied head, and yet manages to be such a threat manipulating events, coupled with a Creepy Monotone by Corey Burton, you find him both unnerving and memorable and cool at the same time.
  • Lockdown. An organ trafficker who would speak in such a polite tone to you even as he dismembers a part of your body, especially thanks to the vocal performance of Lance Henriksen. Combine this together and you get a villain you can't wait to appear each season.
  • Also Soundwave especially with Jeff Bennett doing a voice that sounds similar to Ultron.
    Soundwave: I am Soundwave. I am Decepticon. The revolution begins now!
  • Now, with the other S-wave, Shockwave, having such an unnerving design and Corey Burton making his David Warner impression much more like a ghost from a horror film. No wonder he got so much popularity upon his debut.
• Cult Classic: Animated didn't achieve the same kind of pop culture dominance that many other iterations of the franchise have, but a decade after its release it retains a very strong following within the greater Transformers fandom due to its surprisingly strong storytelling, unique take on the Transformers mythos, and abundance of geeky Shout Outs, Homages and Mythology Gags thrown in for the older fans to catch.
• Damsel Scrappy: Sentinel Prime is an unusual male (not to mention giant alien robot) example. Most of his time onscreen involves him getting into some scrape or another and having the long-suffering Optimus get him out. It seems the only thing that keeps Optimus from abandoning him is a sense of guilt about their shared past and perhaps some level of fondness for his old Academy-mate.
  • Mix of all of the above, and the hope that Sentinel gets it through his thick head that his arrogance is a Bad Thing. But Status Quo Is God and he always rubber bands back to being a jackass by his next appearance. Even Jazz, who has long tolerated (or ignored) it as his second in command, finally gives up and more or less defects to Prime's crew.
• Demographically Inappropriate Humour:
  • Several words pertaining to machinery and technology are used in place of swearing (e.g. "Skidplate" for "ass", "Oil Stain" for "shitstain", "Slag" for "fuck", "Glitches" for "bitches").
  • In "Home Is Where The Spark Is", Prowl tackles Bumblebee onto the ground, with his hands on his chest and his face mere inches away from his and saying "You should try it sometime" while smirking as Bumblebee blushes beneath him. Prowl's talking to Bumblebee about keeping his stillness of course.
  • The Constructicons Scrapper and Mixmaster provide a lot of this. Their obsession with drinking oil is blatantly a stand-in for alcoholism and they are occasionally seen hitting on cars as if they were attractive women.
• Designated Villain: Prowl in his backstory in "Five Servos of Doom." He's supposed to be an undisciplined maverick who learns to be more humble and fight for a good cause under Yoketron, but the reason he's brought to Yoketron in the first place is because he's a draft dodger. Prowl states he doesn't want to fight in the war, and he's shown to have been rounded up and forced to participate by Warpath, who even threatens to take him outside and beat him up until he agrees. In essence, he was pressed into service and villainized for not wanting to go out and risk his life for the people forcing him into the war. While the Decepticon threat was so great that the Autobots were forced to make certain moral concessions so the Decepticons wouldn't win and make life even worse for people under their oppression, it certainly doesn't paint Prowl as in the wrong like it wants to since he is, in essence, an untrained civilian and a conscientious objector being threatened with physical harm for not falling in line, which only makes the Autobots look worse instead.
• Diagnosedbythe Audience:
  • Due to how he lack awareness of his surroundings, being annoyed by the sound of Bumblebee’s arm oil leak in, “Sari, No One’s Home,” having an interest in art, and has trouble regulating his emotions, Bulkhead is commonly interpreted as autistic.
  • This also goes for the other main Autobots:
    • Bumblebee’s hyperactive personality and interests in racing and video games can be read as him being autistic and/or having ADHD.
    • Similar to Bulkhead, Prowl can also be interpreted as autistic due to how he’s prone to Brutal Honesty, learns how to be more sociable with his teammates, and has a fascination with Earth and its surroundings.
    • Optimus is a similar case to Prowl and Bulkhead due to how he gives speeches to communicate his points, being quite socially awkward around other people, and his trusting nature leading to some people taking advantage of him.
  • Ratchet most likely suffers from PTSD due to his survivor’s guilt over Arcee and Omega Surpreme, as well as his refusal to discuss his time in the war.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: See here
• Estrogen Brigade: And how!
  • This Optimus Prime has been cited as a common cartoon crush for female fans who grew up with the show. It's probably the lips.
  • Blitzwing has a huge army of fangirls due to reasons listed here. Also, both "Icy" and "Hothead" are seen as quite attractive.
  • However, there is another rival for Blitzwing's hold over the fangirls: Megatron. Good Lord, where do we even begin with the thousands of fans who call this Megatron hot? It's either the voice, the design, or his accurate observations of the Autobots.
  • Other male characters who many fans find attractive include Starscream, Prowl, Jazz, Rodimus Prime, the Jet Twins, and Blurr. Even characters such as Sentinel have fangirls who find them handsome!
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: Defied. Word of God is that avoiding this reaction is why the AllSpark has no given origin, to not run the risk of making the artifact less interesting or making it too bizarre and convoluted.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Transformers: Prime. People who prefer Animated cite Prime's myriad of writing issues and poor execution of its Darker and Edgier tone while people who prefer Prime say that Animated, among other things, is too goofy.
• Fanfic Fuel: With the amount of characters with their own quirks even if they're exclusive to All There in the Manual, there's at least a couple of pieces of fanart and/or fanfiction that you'll find lying around somewhere of them. It at least rivals that of the Generation 1 buzz.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Blitzwing's faces are referred as "Icy", "Hothead", and "Random". This has become Ascended Fanon.
  • Lugnut's Power Fist weapon is the "Punch Of Kill Everything", AKA the P.O.K.E. This has been Ascended Fanon, although the K has been changed to stand for Krush.
  • "Teen Titans", by some Transformers fans (G1 or other media) who believe the series is an inferior incarnation of the whole franchise. Unknown to some of them (or deliberately), the show was designed by the same team who worked on the aforementioned series.
  • Since, in this continuity, Autobots are largely incapable of flying, the Animated version of Powerglide actually seems to transform into a ground-based alternate mode, prompting some to name him as "Powerdrive" instead.
  • Starscream is sometimes referred to as "Evil SpongeBob" by fans due to his voice actor, and the fact that when Starscream starts yelling he sounds exactly like SpongeBob if he was an evil robot.
  • Jetfire and Jetstorm are referred to as JetTwins for simplicity sakes.
• Fountain of Memes: A good chunk of the TFA memes revolve around either Blitzwing, Lugnut, or Wreck-Gar.
• Friendly Fandoms: With My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, for many obvious reasons.

G-L

• Growing the Beard: Season One wasn't bad by any means, and had a few stand-out episodes (in particular "Thrill of the Hunt", which introduced Lockdown and dealt with mature themes like consequences and regrets during war time), but Seasons Two and especially Three were when the series found its footing, introducing Darker and Edgier themes, more serialized storytelling and character development, and largely ditching the one-note human villains of the first season in favor of a more consistent focus on the Decepticons as the main villains.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Arcee, given in Prime, her background mirrors that of Ratchet's—expect for unlike Arcee's Animated incarnation, both Tailgate and Cliffjumper did actually end up dead.
  • Also, in the film series shows us that despite all of Sentinel Prime's Jerkassery in Animated, he could've been much, much worse.
    • In this series, Sentinel took a shine to Ironhide who was one of his students. In the film, Ironhide is the first Autobot Sentinel murders onscreen. Worse, this show has a scene where Ironhide tells Sentinel to "hit him with everything he's got". The irony is not lost on fans as the comments of the video show.
    • Ratchet and Lockdown are enemies in this show due to the latter causing the events that led to Arcee being in a coma. Age of Extinction has Lockdown kill Ratchet.
  • In the Pilot Movie, Optimus dies saving the Allspark. Death was actually very cheap in this case, but before Optimus was restored to life, Prowl commented on the importance of his sacrifice. Cut to the Grand Finale, where Prowl sacrifices his spark to restore the Allspark and is Killed Off for Real.
  • Megatron once mockingly told Starscream that he "couldn't lead a parade" during the latter's infamous Death Montage. Cut ahead to Transformers: Cyberverse, and a parade actually plays a key role in that show's final season, specifically by said parade actually being a Lotus-Eater Machine designed to drain the Autobots and Decepticons of their Sparks, and create a Quintesson Judge that will destroy the universe. And who's part of said judge? Starscream.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Tom Kenny's take on Wasp has been well-received, in spite of the Memetic Mutation by younger audiences about how SpongeBob and Starscream have the same voice. Meanwhile, reception on his take on Starscream is seen as take it or leave it, though some are impressed that with him channeling Chris Latta.
  • For younger audiences that have never seen his non-Patrick roles (such as Gargoyles), Bill Fagerbakke's performance as Bulkhead is this.
  • David Kaye's Optimus Prime is seen as on par with Peter Cullen's Optimus Prime due to how Kaye was able to bring out Optimus's enduring personality and emotional vulnerability in his vocal performance.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Safeguard's look reminds many people of Kamen Rider Double. One person even modded their Safeguard into CycloneJoker colours.
  • The casting of Corey Burton, the voice of Shockwave on Generation 1 as Megatron. In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the G1 incarnation of Megatron's voice actor, Frank Welker, returned the favor and voiced movie Shockwave. ^note  Though Burton was asked to reprise the role for that film, he turned it down.
  • Wasn't there another show where Jeff Bennett and Bill Fagerbakke voiced two characters in a Five-Man Band who were put in stasis? And funnily enough, their roles in the team are even the same.
  • One of TF Wiki's image captions for Lugnut describes him in relation to Shockwave and Omega Supreme. This becomes amusing when Animated Shockwave is introduced and Lugnut feuds with him on who is Megatron's most loyal servant. And then the last episodes have the creation of Lugnut Supreme, based on Omega Supreme, which involved both Lugnut and Shockwave.
  • Lugnut is fanatically loyal to Megatron in the series. Several years after the end of Animated, a new incarnation of Lugnut in the IDW G1 continuity becomes a part of Deathsaurus' army in More Than Meets the Eye, who are dead set on murdering Megatron after his defection to the Autobots.
  • In "Human Error Pt. 2", both Optimus Prime and Soundwave battles using The Power of Rock (complete with guitar shredding). Fast forward to 2014, and we got another one from Hasbro... in the form of a My Little Pony: Equestria Girls short involving Rainbow Dash and Trixie in a guitar shred-off!
    • Speaking of MLP, there's a villain who uses a robot unicorn that shoots lasers to commit crimes. You know it's funny when you realize that Sari's VA voices a certain purple unicorn.
    • Also in Human Error Pt. 2, There are quotes of "So much for the element of surprise" and "Just do it!" which become something Sari's voice actor would say later. Also "Just do it!" becomes something Sam Witwicky says (and no, the Sam from the other Transformers).
  • There's something funny about how back in Beast Wars, Gary Chalk voiced G1 Megatron but in this series, David Kaye now voices Optimus Prime. Deliciously ironic, yeeesss...
  • In "Transwarped, Part 1", Bulkhead utters a version of phrase his Transformers: Prime counterpart would frequently be on the receiving end of by Ratchet: "We need that."
  • Bumblebee dressed as a vampire and said he "want[s] to drink your motor oil". Oil is later shown to be the Transformer equivalent of alcohol. That means he's supposed to be Dracula and he said, "I want some beer". Maybe he's a vampire, but not Dracula... In a later episode, the oil-guzzling Constructicons actually do ingest a bit of Bumblebee's motor oil after they find a trail made by his leaking tank. Apparently he tastes even better than their usual fare, so it's possible that Bumblebee just settled on the first blood-analogue he could find for his dramatic statement.
    It also serves as a sort of retroactive Reverse Funny Aneurysm moment when you consider two things:
    1. Before this episode, Beast Wars introduced Tarantulas, who at least once tried to drain the mech fluids of a Maximal in a vampiric manner.
    and 2. During that same time, a cartoon called Vanpires aired, about - you guessed it - mechanoid vampire cars that drained the motor oil from helpless vehicles.
  • "Till All Are One": In Transformers Animated, Elita-1 has the power to download every Cybertronian's special ability, indeed.
  • Lockdown's appearance was partially inspired by Boba Fett, and was in a rivalry with Ratchet, who was voiced by Corey Burton. Around the same time as this series, Cartoon Network was running a Star Wars cartoon that had a few bounty hunter dedicated episodes, including around Boba Fett. Both shows also not only featured Burton in prominent roles as the lead villains, but Burton would get to voice the character of Cad Bane—another bounty hunter that was originally envisioned for Lockdown's original voice, Lance Henriksen!
  • Omega Supreme being The Ark finally came full-circle in 2021, with a new giant Autobot that turns into the iconic ship (though it's sadly not Omega).
  • Dino Drive in "Blast from the Past" being a homage to Jurassic Park (1993), now that, in 2021, an official crossover has been announced.
  • One of the shorts for the series sees Starscream pull off the old bunny ears finger trick on Megatron. Come Transformers: EarthSpark and we have Megatron doing the same thing to Optimus Prime.
• LGBT Fanbase: Due to the strong themes of found family, rebelling against societal norms, and learning to accept yourself, this show gained a huge LGBTQ+ fanbase. There’s also the huge amount of Ho Yay between many of the male characters and mannerisms in characters such as Blitzwing and Starscream.
  • Specifically, Optimus has a huge following of bisexual and gay Transformers fans who cited him as an inspiration to their own coming out through his struggles of trying to find his place in the world against a society who tries to fit him into a box and learning how to embrace his differences.
  • Sari’s discovery of her half Cybertronian identity can be interpreted as a Closet Key moment.
• Love to Hate: There are plenty of examples. Namely Megatron for being a formidable adversary, Meltdown for being a formidable adversary by human standards, and Sentinel Prime for being an unapologetic jerk that has his fair share of karma delivered.

M-S

• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons and the Arch-Enemy of the Autobots. A brilliant tactician who kickstarted the entire Decepticon cause into an organized, deadly army and initiated the Great War, Megatron was reduced to but a head after the betrayal of his lieutenant Starscream; however, even this doesn't stop Megatron, as he manipulates Isaac Sumdac and several other humans to reconstruct his body and return to life. Megatron is constantly updating and adapting his plans, going from trying to steal the Allspark to using its shattered fragments to create a Space Bridge with ease, and uses the mole he planted in Cybertron ages ago, Shockwave, to construct Decepticon uprisings so as to distract Cybertron and let Megatron invade. Rarely losing his cool and his plans always being foiled only by an outside source he couldn't have predicted, Megatron makes one final scheme by using rudimentary tech to take control of Omega Supreme, create clones of him, then use them to conquer Cybertron before expanding the Decepticon rule across the cosmos.
  • Shockwave is Megatron's "most loyal servant", a manipulative shapeshifter who infiltrates Cybertron as the Autobot Longarm. When Bumblebee learns that there is a Decepticon spy in their midst, Shockwave first tries to murder the bot before framing the innocent Wasp as the spy, successfully protecting his identity to such a point that he murders the current head of Cybertron intelligence to get himself the promotion with no suspicions. Shockwave manipulates the Autobot leadership for years as he orchestrates Decepticons across the galaxy, and always pounces on any potential leaks of his identity, leading Blurr into a lethal trap when he tries to investigate Longarm and cutting off communications with Optimus Prime when his team learn of Shockwave's status as a mole. When realizing he is moments away from being exposed, Shockwave deals a fatal blow to Ultra Magnus, kidnaps Arcee and uses her memories to help Megatron with his plans to clone Omega Supreme, only being beaten after he lures an Autobot team into a trap and nearly murders them all by playing on their compassion.
  • Soundwave, a walking music player intended to be upgraded into a new body for the crippled Megatron, instead gained self-awareness and set out to establish machines as the dominant species, even extending an offer to the Autobots to join his revolution. Returning after his apparent destruction with new robotic minions in tow, Soundwave drugs and captures the Autobots, placing their minds in a virtual world where they're human while he reprograms them to follow his commands. Upon being discovered by Sari, Soundwave takes advantage of the redistribution of his original toy model to brainwash every human in the city and impede her search for help. Adapting to complications in his plans with ease, Soundwave manages to escape even with his body once again destroyed, free to return for revenge another day.
  • Swindle is a fast-talking, smooth arms dealer who plays both sides of the Autobot-Decepticon conflict to bring himself the most profit. Introducing himself by manipulating a group of human villains into building a powerful EMP weapon, Swindle betrays them all and tries to sell the weapon to Megatron, demonstrating its abilities by easily incapacitating the entire Autobot team. Though he is captured thanks to a surprise attack, Swindle bounces right back as he stages a breakout of an Autobot prison ship, taking control and planning to use the Autobot crew as hostages before harvesting their parts for extra cash. Swindle is always ready with a new gadget or weapon to get out of any situation, such as arming the Decepticon prisoners or disabling Jetfire and Jetstorm in a cinch, and he ultimately gets away scot-free, using an Autobot rescue attempt to distract his cohorts, looting the entire prison ship's belongings, and fleeing into space while remarking how much he "loves a shopping spree."
• Memetic Loser: Unlike most incarnations of the team, the Dinobots have been hit by this as people have looked back on the show. Not only did they suffer from the aforementioned Badass Decay, but their lack of intelligence (even compared to the original cartoon incarnation of the team) and how easily they're manipulated by villains to do their bidding (specially by Blackarachnia) muddied the team's reputation for even some of the most die-hard Animated fans.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Optimus's lips has been the subject of many jokes, with Coral Blue #5 being the most common one.
  • Shockwave's difficult to hear and completely out-of-character "LIAR! LYING LIAR!" has become a bit of an in-joke amongst his fans.
  • Sentinel Prime. What a jerk!
  • The Formspring RPs give us HAT!
    • And they also give us Straxmus, a holiday where everyone mocks Lord High Governor Straxus.
  • "This is why I hate machines!".
  • "You interrupted MY SPEECH!"
  • I am Wreck-Gar, and I’m good for one thing: "GARBAGE!"
  • Blitzwing's "EXPRESSING MY FEELINGS IN SONG!"
  • Courtesy of Tara Strong and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, majority of the fans from both shows would agree that "Sari is Best Pony!".
  • It was a big deal for younger audiences during the show's airing that Starscream and Bulkhead were voiced respectively by Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke of SpongeBob SquarePants fame, prompting several SpongeBob and Patrick jokes and videos about the duo.
  • #reviveTFA ^explainationA hashtag originating in April 2019 on Tumblr, this was used by fans to support a potential 4th Season revival. However, with the passing of the show's art director Derrick J Wyatt, it's on its way to being a Discredited Meme.
  • Prowl predicted T-Posing as seen here.
• Moe:
  • Sari, being an adorably snarky 8-year-old girl. Teenage Sari, on the other hand has a much snarkier personality, and fanart frequently portrays her as very curvaceous - despite the show never really showing any sort of upgrade besides her height and different eye color.
  • Among the Autobots, Wreck-Gar is very much this. It sounds weird that a sentient Humongous Mecha voiced by "Weird Al" Yankovic could be cute in the first place, but Wreck-Gar is so Adorkable and kindhearted that it's absolutely darling. Fair warning, watching him may make you want to go out and hug the nearest garbage truck.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Most Wonderful Sound - This is the first time the Autobots themselves have mentioned the iconic transforming noise. When the Bots are trying to will themselves back to their normal states in Soundwave's Lotus-Eater Machine, Bumblebee suggests that Bulkhead make the noise with his mouth.
• My Real Daddy: Bulkhead was the name of a major character in Transformers: Energon, who was older, and designed after Generation 1 Springer (even being named like him in Japan). Animated's vastly different character as The Big Guy with an artistic streak, however, was well-loved, and later reuses of the name Bulkhead are new interpretations of the Animated character rather than the Energon one.
• Narm Charm: The series' approach to combining humor with drama makes the whole thing remarkably cheesy, but there's something inherently lovable about the way much of the main cast (and that includes many of the villains) are nobodies, screw-ups, and nutjobs.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Team Athenia and Team Chaar. And they would've gotten more appearances if the show had continued...
  • Tracks with a snobby accent running away from Ratchet and Captain Fanzone in "This Is Why I Hate Machines".
  • Also from "This Is Why I Hate Machines", Flareup and Grandus trying to squish Fanzone.
  • Warpath's only major appearance in "Five Servos of Doom".
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The Nintendo DS game has rather mixed reviews. While lauded for the graphics and story being faithful to the show as well as having the show's cast reprise their roles, it has also been criticized for being too easy and mainly being a puzzle game with very little transforming or fighting.
• Questionable Casting: Fans initially questioned David Kaye voicing Optimus Prime since he'd previously voiced Megatron in Beast Wars and the Unicron Trilogy. Kaye himself admitted that he was surprised by his casting, having expected that he would be voicing Megatron again. However, Kaye managed to win over fans, with his voice suiting the younger, less-experienced Optimus that the series was going for.
• Realism-Induced Horror:
  • Many fans praise the series for its in depth look at how fascist societies operate, specifically the anti-organic sentiments expressed by the Autobots on Cybertron, throwing innocent people into prison based on accusations (accidental or not), and the otrascization of anyone who questioned how things are ran. Not to mention, how Sentinel runs Cybertron is very eerily close to the behavior of real life dictators. On the opposite end, Megatron's methods of convincing people to be Decepticons can bring to mind how cults or terrorist groups bring in new members.
  • Bumblebee being mocked and ridiculed by the other cadets can bring uncomfortable memories to those who faced bullying in similar environments.
  • What makes "Thrill of The Hunt" a memorable episode is its surprisingly realistic depiction of trauma and survivor's guilt through Ratchet's flashbacks. Additionally, Lockdown is such an effective villain because people like him do exist in the real world; cold hearted, sadistic individuals who will hurt and traumatize innocents for the sake of profit.
  • Similarly, Optimus's backstory is both heartbreaking and terrifying not only because of his survivor's guilt over Elita's "death," but also how Sentinel pins the blame on him to avoid responsibility for the incident. There is too many instances of innocent people being treated horribly because of unchecked character assassinations like this in real life.
• The Scrappy: While they did help stave off Villain Decay and Menace Decay for the Decepticons, the human villains are generally disliked for being gimmicky and taking screen time away from the Transformer vs. Transformer conflicts. The sole exception seems to be Meltdown, since he serves as a menacing villain in his own right and can pose a genuine threat to the Autobots. Technically speaking though, he's not human-at least not anymore.
• Self-Fanservice: The teenager/Autobot version of Sari is subject to this quite often, as the artstyle of the show simply does not allow for realistic anatomy. The most frequent fanservice depiction of her seems to have a focus on her posterior, sometimes cranking it up to overexaggeration. Kid Sari, however, falls under the "don't lewd the loli" unwritten rule and as such the fanart usually depicts her in goofy situations similar to the show.
• Signature Scene:
  • Ratchet's tragic backstory ending with Arcee having lost her memory in "The Thrill of the Hunt" is notable for not just being an effective introduction to Lockdown, who would go on to become a fan-favorite villain in the franchise, but for being the point when most if not all of the naysayers who claimed Animated would be too kid-friendly were firmly silenced.
  • Optimus' hysterical laugh in reaction to Sentinel's disembodied head in "Return of The Headmaster". Because seeing Optimus Prime laugh is a rare scene in any continuity.
  • Starscream's Death Montage in "Mission Accomplished".
  • The shocking cliffhanger of the Season 2 finale "A Bridge Too Close, Part II" where Sari is revealed to partially be a robot kept fans on the edge of their seats for the entire year between Seasons 2 and 3.
  • The Season 3 premiere "TransWarped" opens with an explosive battle between Team Athenia and Team Charr, depicting an epic struggle between teams of characters adapted from Beast Machines to the live-action film series (Blackout is notable for being the first such Canon Immigrant from the movies in the franchise), even including Judd Nelson reprising his role as Rodimus from The Transformers: The Movie.
  • The Grand Finale has two moments that became iconic:
    • Optimus defiantly declaring his name to Megatron after condescendingly being called "Autobot" the entire series, and being rewarded when Megatron finally recognizes him as a true threat and calls him by his name.
    • Prowl's Heroic Sacrifice, particularly his final smile, is regarded as one of the most heroic, powerful deaths in the franchise. Comparisons were made to Dinobot's iconic death in Beast Wars, and for good reason.
• Squick - Captain Fanzone dangling a loogie towards Rattletrap, and sucking it back in when the latter telling him what he wants. Excuse us for a sec....
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • In "Predacons Rising", Sentinel discovers Blackarachnia's true identity Elita-1 and that she has just transformed Wasp into Waspinator via her transwarp chamber (he was manipulated into it). Despite the former revelation, Sentinel, being an organic-phobe, is actually willing to kill Blackarachnia, to put an end to all this. While his approach to the situation is most certainly wrong, given how she hasn't actually harmed him yet, he does have something of a good point in this line below, given what she's just done to Wasp:
  "Don't say that name! You don't deserve to say that name! You're not Elita-One, you mutant freak. Elita-One went off-line a long time ago."
  • The villain Meltdown's anti-robot crusade was due to robots taking manufacturing and service jobs from humans, in a city with the highest unemployment rates in the country.
  • Megatron is a compulsive manipulator and liar but he isn't wrong at all that Autobot society is authoritarian and borderline fascist. Besides corrupt, organic hating higher ups like Sentinel Prime, Autobot High Command uses sentient beings like Omega Supreme as living war-machines, treats prisoners so terribly they broke Wasp's mind, and is apparently so bigoted toward organics Blackarachnia felt more comfortable with the Decepticons than them. The Decepticons' quota as "freedom fighters" certainly must've come from somewhere.

T-Z

• Take That, Scrappy!: Rodimus Prime, in his first appearance, ends up getting afflicted with cosmic rust. This has satisfied some fans who don't like Rody.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • When Takara Tomy announced that they were tying Animated (well, their handling of the show) with the movie-verse, change in episode order and renaming Bulkhead to Ironhide (even though there was already an "Ironhide")... Well...it sure did help that the Japanese dub didn't turn out to have any major tie-ins with the movie-verse at all and had some awesome music by JAM Project. What actually ended up going on: change in episode order and Ironhide rename still happened, fans were also annoyed by cuts to the episodes made in favor of live action segments featuring the Ototbotto family. There were also various instances of Cultural Translation and some characterization changes made, like Bulkhe—uh, Ironhide becoming more of a simpleton than the original Bulkhead and Bayformer Ironhide ever were.
  • To say that some fans were not pleased when it was revealed that in this show's universe Optimus was not the Big Good of the Autobots but just a low level commander voiced by someone other than Peter Cullen would be the understatement of the decade.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Soundwave is one of the most beloved G1 Decepticons and received an interesting update as a rogue A.I turned Transformer. He could have easily had an interesting role as Megatron's new favorite clashing with older Decepticons such as Lugnut over who was more devoted to the cause or with Starscream as the replacement Number Two. Instead Soundwave only appears in three episodes across the entire series and never interacts with any other Decepticons outside of Megatron in his Origins Episode to the point his role as a Decepticon comes off as an Informed Attribute. They were going rectify this in Season 4 and have him join up full time with the Decepticons... but the show was canceled.
  • Blackarachnia in the "Megatron Rising" two-parter. All her appearance amounted to was creating a continuity error (e.g, she wanted to be fully mechanical again, which is what she already tried doing in her formal debut, but it wound up almost killing her; unless that's what she wants) and getting Sari to the Autobots faster to help them. One wonders if she was forced into those episodes.
  • Team Athenia and Team Chaar were hyped up considerably for the delayed season 3, both were teams brimming with old characters re-imagined. They got magazine profiles, and focus in the trailer. The three part season premiere opens with their battle... and they never appear again outside of cameos.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Sari's upgrade, and her backstory in general. We never see the immediate fallout of her upgrade and near-overload, since she vanishes for four episodes afterwards, and we never find out how she got to Earth in the first place. You can blame Executive Meddling for that: they demanded that the human characters be shoved to the background to focus on the characters with toys for the third season, including Sari.
• Too Cool to Live: Prowl and Blurr. At least it seems that way for the latter. The comics reveal he was never actually killed and was given a new body later.
• Toy Ship: Sari and Bumblebee, though some circles view them as being Like Brother and Sister. After Sari's upgrade into her teenage form, it seems that the shippers won - she is shipped almost exclusively with Bumblebee. Also an oddly justified ship - after all Transformers date Transformers, right?
• Unexpected Character:
  • A few major ones (mainly, since it's not a Beast Wars-type series, nobody could have expected Blackarachnia in the main 'con lineup) but one standout among the "generic" bots. They're almost all based on G1 characters, some more obscure or from the Japan-only sequels, but then there's the Autotroopers (seen in Sentinel's propaganda video). They hail from the INCREDIBLY not-kid-friendly (and probably not-brain-friendly) Kiss Players Japanese radio series and its accompanying manga pages. (Their presence isn't what made it that way, but KP is just the last thing you'd expect a kids' show to make a Shout-Out to in any way.)
  • Waspinator being The Rival to Bumblebee and a normal-looking bot that is revealed to have gone crazy like his Beast Wars counterpart at the end of his debut episode... with his next episodes having him become just like the original Waspinator.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Headmaster's dialogue consists of Leet gamer lingo that was common during the mid-to-late '00s.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Optimus Prime in "Megatron Rising, Part 1". While he did grab the Jerkass Ball pretty hard, and gets rightfully chewed out by Bumblebee for his behavior, he has every reason to be upset as he did. Not only are the Decepticons on the verge of an attack, but he just learned that Bulkhead and Prowl lied to him about hiding the dangerously powerful Dinobots—a pretty serious breach of his trust. Not only that, but considering his decision to take Sari's key was specifically because he wanted to use its healing powers in their upcoming battle without needlessly putting her life at risk, and both Sari and Bumblebee have been particularly irresponsible throughout the series up to that point (namely with her using the key to do virtually whatever she wanted in spite of the consequences, and his impulsiveness constantly getting him into trouble), he's not entirely wrong.
  • Sentinel Prime in "Predacons Rising". The guy is an absolute jerk of a bot, he's partially responsible for her mutation, and his cut towards Blackarachnia is a pretty deep one, considering they were once very close. Yet her actions up to that point have shown she's fallen pretty deep into villainy, and seems to have no regrets over it. Yes, Sentinel is horribly racist towards organic life, but seeing as Blackarachnia has committed all sorts of acts of villainy, "Elita One" did go offline a long time ago. What's especially deep cutting is that she has no regrets about what happened other than how it personally affected her, but Sentinel feels he crossed the Moral Event Horizon, and what he did back then was inexcusable. It's pretty jarring that a gigantic jerkass is (eventually) willing to accept his role in the whole affair, but she isn't.
  • Blackarachnia. She was written to be a pitiful character, but still a villain nevertheless, except the writers went a little too far: by her True Companions Left for Dead at the hands of aliens, romance with Optimus Prime, and a poor girl driven mad by her freakish mutation and having to join the Decepticons just to survive, then told by an old buddy it would have been better if she died and hints that there was still some goodness in her. However, Word of God seems to imply the Heel–Face Turn the audience was hoping for was kind of in their heads.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Sari in "Megatron Rising - Part 1": Sari is a sweet, smart and brave kid. But she tends to overuse the power of the Allspark Key whenever she can and can be a bit of a brat about it sometimes. In previous episodes throughout season 1, she's told not to abuse its power, but she does it anyway which leads to a big disaster and once the disaster is taken care of she says that she'll use the power of the key more wisely... only to abuse its power the next episode or so. In this episode, Optimus becomes so mad that Prowl and Bulkhead disobeyed his orders and lied to him that he becomes a jerk and one of the first things he does is want Sari to give him the key so they could use its healing powers for the upcoming battle against the Decepticons. But Sari refused to give it up, insisting that she'll be more responsible. (Again.) Thus, Optimus told Ratchet to use his magnetic powers to take the key by force. Naturally, Sari was heartbroken by their lack of trust, but it's hard to blame Optimus if you remember the previous episodes. Optimus may have taken a level in jerkass, but he has a good point in this regard.

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