Fridge Brilliance
- The whole concept of Empurata (the removal of face and hands) as a punishment. It doesn't just say "people like this are criminals", and it isn't just an "or else" punishment. It makes being shunned inevitable through the use of the Uncanny Valley. For us, Cybertronians are already on the other side of the Uncanny Valley and so an Empurata victim is still just a robot. But a Cybertronian would consider themselves in the position humans do. Ergo after the removal of head and hands, but not the ability to speak, move or transform, a victim is thrown straight into the position of 'zombie' territory. This person is no longer a person. It makes negative reactions a subliminal and therefore inevitable response, not just one based on conscious fear and ignorance. Additionally, in a setting where your societal role is determined by what you are able to do, the removal of advanced sensory input and dexterity further marginalizes victims of Empurata, as they can be quickly reduced from 'expert artist' to 'forklift with feet' or some equivalent.
- Empurata and its use by the Functionist Council is also a hilarious piece of Irony when you think about it. When we see Adaptus's flashback to the God War, Epistemus is shown to be a Cyber Cyclops since his head becomes the Magnificence and all. In seeking to punish people for denying what they think is "the will of the gods", their assigned social role, they're making people look more like one of those gods, and they never realise it.
- The title doesn't just reference alt-modes and the theme song; it's also about how it focuses so much on the characters' Hidden Depths. What you see on the surface in a character's first appearance is almost never what you'll be seeing thirty issues later.
- When Rodimus sets foot on Luna-1 and the hotspot ignites, the assumption by everyone involved is that it's because he's carrying part of the Matrix. The real reason is because Rung stepped down onto the surface at the same moment Rodimus did.
- In issue 20 we get to see the Killswitch picking out people to die. It has been confirmed that people who were cold-constructed are more inclined towards criminal acts, but it's also interesting to see who these are - Soundwave is forged, Whirl and Cyclonus are forged, Rewind's forged... but Prowl, Ravage, Brainstorm and Chromedome are cold-constructs. Misfire and Fulcrum are forged, as is Grimlock, but the rest of the Scavengers aren't. It's just interesting to realise that your faction has nothing to do with how you were born or how you now live your life.
- Tyrest's idea that cold construction makes you inherently "predisposed to sin" also parallels real-world prejudices by ignoring other factors in favour of just assuming a trait is innate. For example, Tyrest's realisation is that every Autobot in the Aequitas trials was constructed cold - but Impactor, for example, doesn't seem like he was "born bad"; he seems like someone who spent his formative years being treated like, essentially, a piece of heavy equipment and ended up resentful and violent, then ended up as a Wrecker, a situation that could not have improved matters. Then there are the obvious candidates for the trials, Warborn MTOs - hardly people who were given a great start in life. It's not that cold construction predisposes you to evil; it's that the circumstances that cold-constructed bots live through have, historically speaking, Not Been Great.
- It's revealed in issue 18 that the Knights of Cybertron died of disease they caught from organics, this is likely the original source of the Fantastic Racism Cybertonians have towards organic life.
- Whirl's crack about "that time Magnus tried to tell a joke" being laden with shocked silences, angry denials and gasps of disbelief isn't just a dig on Magnus for being near-lethally uptight; the one deliberate joke (as opposed to snarky comment) we have seen Magnus tell was him Trolling the defrostees about beast modes, and that one did get just such a reaction!
- Rodimus's first published story, Spotlight: Hot Rod, heavily involved the Magnificence, and also faced Scorponok in Maximum Dinobots. In his final adventure, he encounters both the Magnificence and Scorponok, bringing his story full circle.
- Why does Minimus Ambus bother with the intermediate suit of armour, the one that saves his life when Tyrest crushes his head, on a day-to-day basis, even though other minibots like Tailgate and Rewind seem to be fine? Because the Magnus armour wasn't built for him. Presumably, its earlier wearers were closer in size to, say, Rodimus, meaning that the internal spaces for the user were built for those proportions - so, rather than reengineer it at length to fit him and have to rework it again when he met the fate of the other Magnuses, he kept using the "regular size" intermediate armour because it let him fit in and interface more easily.
- It seems a bit wonky at first that the Omega Guardians saved Tailgate specifically for their Evil Plan when it turns out that even Whirl could open a Matrix given a Rousing Speech - but that's in a situation where they're specifically working to solve the problem without loss of innocent lives. It's entirely likely that it would have taken the very best of the characters to open the Matrices if they'd gone for the quick, ruthlessly pragmatic option the Guardians pushed for, since signing on to kill millions of innocents for the greater good seems like exactly the sort of thing a system called a morality lock would have objections to.
- A lot of Getaway's reprehensible personality makes a lot more sense when you consider his life and roles in the narrative, not that of a sociopath who simply stopped being able to hide his true self, but a deeply traumatized Child Soldier bot who spiraled out of control when the very reason he was built for was now over.
- Not only was he an M.T.O., he was specifically part of the 2nd wave, aka the first wave to be made during the Great War.* All he's ever known is war, death, and suffering, brought up to hate the Decepticons with every fiber of his being, and this isn't something exclusive to him, as the Scavengers all lament knowing nothing but the war themselves, and that even when its supposed to be over, they still instinctively hated Autobots until undergoing some Character Development. Add on Getaway working under Prowl and stuck doing Dirty Business for him, and it's safe to say he's seen his fair share of shit.
- Then he meets the crew of the Lost Light, all Autobot's like he is... and learns they're a Dysfunction Junction of epic proportions.* Then, of course, Megatron, the bot representing everything Getaway was raised to hate, is made captain of the Lost Light, and while Team Rodimus initially despise him... he soon becomes part of their numbers. And suddenly, Getaway pretty much snaps. He's watching before his very eyes the people he once admired, the people who are nominally part of the same cause he was built for, being chummy with the one who is antithetical to everything they stood for. Not only that, but even Optimus freaking Prime is permitting Megatron to be there. It's an injustice in his eyes, all the people who died fighting alongside him, all the things the Decepticons destroyed, it leads to Aggressive Categorism, but instead of just "Autobots" and "Decepticons", it's "Autobots" and "Decepticons + Anyone who doesn't hate Megatron".
- And so, he had two goals: "Get Rodimus removed from position of Captain", and "Get Megatron off the ship". Both of which he tries resolving non-lethally at first, the former by getting Atomizer to try and trick Rodimus into filtering the crew using the Crisis Vote, the latter by having Whirl goad Megatron into attacking him, both of which failed. Getaway still saw himself as the "good guy" in all this, and for the most part he favored just using manipulation tactics, with even his getting chummy with Tailgate being framed more as him just trying to get the little bot on his side. Then, the Quantum Duplicate incident happens... and that's where he begins his Sanity Slippage. Before then, he genuinely cared about the Autobot Cause, but after that, he cared more about what he considered "justice".
- Look at Issue 33 for instance. He is excited to see Rewind alive again, and there's little reason to believe this is fake. The only people around him are Skids, someone he considers his friend, Nautica, who at the time hadn't established herself as one of Team Rodimus, Riptide, the same as Nautica but with the addendum of him being an idiot, Nightbeat, someone he made no secret he finds to be a smartass, and Megatron and Ravage, both of whom he wouldn't be alone in detesting. He is just genuinely happy to see Rewind alive again. He's casually bantering with Skids, acting chummy with Nautica and Riptide, etc. Then there's his reaction to learning Brainstorm is a Decepticon spy: pure outrage. The idea that Brainstorm was a spy pissed him off beyond belief, as he can only punch a wall while yelling "traitor!", even insinuating he'd have killed Brainstorm himself had he not already been dead. This seems like a far cry from the bot who would later try to damn most of these bots to the Galactic Council.
- But then, he decides to discuss a hypothetical "mutiny", and comes to realize where the chips fall in terms of opinions of Megatron. He starts Nudge Gunning everyone who doesn't share his belief Megatron needs to die, even if they had once been co-conspirators like Whirl, and begins acting much more predatory with Tailgate, even hoping Megatron would kill the latter to justify killing him. As he tells Team Rodimus in Issue 50: "I'm not a bad person, I just have strong beliefs.", as he truly doesn't see himself as the bad guy, he sees himself as the only sane bot in a universe gone mad, something only further when even the bots who once backed him turn against him upon learning Team Rodimus was assailed by the DJD. As he told Froid, he only wanted Megatron dead, and even saw what he did to Tailgate as a misstep, not a mistake, but a failed plan, Nothing Personal and all that, even trying and failing to amend the deal with the Council at times, and realizing the crew will think he willingly left them to the DJD. By this point, it's now "Getaway + Supporters" and "Everyone who disagrees with Getaway".
- And then they finally get to "Cyberutopia", and thinks it was all worth it. All the betrayals, all the manipulation, it was all worth it in the end, he'll finally receive validation and people will see that he was right. And he learns it was All for Nothing. "Cyberutopia" was just Mederi. He betrayed his kinsmen for nothing. And he breaks. He realizes he has nothing left aside from his hatred for Rodimus, and decides to go for broke, joining up with the Architect, turning the rest of the crew into Spark Eaters, and having no illusions about surviving their fight, even if the idea of Rodimus killing him terrifies him. He thought he was the only sane person in a universe gone mad, but now he sees he was always the mad one. An M.T.O. with delusions of grandeur who failed at everything he desired, lost the only people who he genuinely considered friends due to his own actions, will never get the validation he's more than just "his station", and doesn't want to die.
- All of his behavior and history speaks less of a genuinely vile bot who was only an Autobot because he was built to be one, but a bot raised to believe the war propaganda and couldn't adjust to post-war life without going insane.
Fridge Logic
- In this continuity the Decepticons took their name from Megatron's slogan "You Are Being Deceived", so they're effectively calling themselves the Cybertronian equivalent of "sheeple". Kind of detracts from their idealistic/fearsome reputation somewhat.
- It's more likely it began as an insult that the Decepticons defiantly took for their own, similar to the British calling American Colonists "Yankees", and "Yankee Doodle" becoming a patriotic tune.
