Fridge / Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015)

Fridge Brilliance

• In the first episode Bumblebee is the only Cybertronian to actually have wheels in his alt-form while every other bot hovers; since wheels were common before the exodus from Cybertron and Bee had spent so much time on Earth, including wheels is probably a habit of his at this point (and further separates Bee from the current Cybertronian society.)
• The reason for all the Decepticon prisoners having Animal Motifs like The Big Bad Wolf and the Giant Flyer? They probably all were Shockwave's test subjects. Think about it, he cloned the Predacons, and experimented on the Insecticons so why not?
  • Though considering that Hammerstrike is referred to as a "Sharkticon" (a term used before in G1), Underbite a "Chompazoid", and Terrashock a "Buffaloid", it's also possible that some of the Decepticons had always looked like that.
  • On the other hand, Grimlock and the other Dinobots are canonically Shockwave's test subjects, and they all (obviously) have a collective term.
  • True, though some of them may still be his test subjects, like Filch, Quillfire and Ped to name a few.
  • Filch is a corvicon.
  • Maybe after Cybertron was reformated, the Omega lock created new cybertronians based on Team Prime's Subconcious thoughts and memories of Earth's creatures, that's what I thought happened
• Building on the Above about the animal themed Decepticons: It's a call back to the ORIGINAL Robots in Disguise Anime that was exported to America! The main villains for the first half of that series were all Predacons fighting the Traditional Vehicle based Autobots.
  • And that series also had a version of Grimlock who was green and didn't speak in broken English.
• The Cybertronians in this series seem to lack the Shapeshifter Weapons that were present in almost every character in the last series, with Bumblebee's team using handheld weapons and whatever Fixit puts together. Well, the war is over. They no longer need to be constantly armed, as they're not fighting a centuries long conflict anymore.
• Windblade is this when you think about it. She wasn't able to activate due to Optimus launching the Allspark away and Cybertron’s inactivity. She was finally able to move due to Cybertron and the Allspark returned.
• Why didn't Windblade fly out of the river when she fell in? Simple, her thruster forms the heel of her leg, and since she was seen limping, that could imply that her leg (and therefore, her thruster) were damaged.
• Steeljaw's decision to free only Thunderhoof and Clampdown in "Misdirection", as opposed to the others in his old Pack.
  • Clampdown he can easily threaten into submission.
  • Thunderhoof can talk treason, but is smart enough to know he stands no chance against Steeljaw's resourcefulness.
  • Underbite was developing a Villainous Friendship with Thunderhoof, and Steeljaw couldn't trust that much muscle to side with The Starscream.
  • While Fracture was dangerously competent in his missions, as far as Steeljaw knows, he was defeated by two humans and a Mini-con in "Battlegrounds".
• In "Decepticon Island", we get to find out that the Council and most of the people don't think too highly of Team Prime and their exploits, which is why Ratchet (now a Decepticon hunter) and Bumblebee (was demoted to being a street cop) had no problems with leaving Cybertron. This also explains why Arcee, Bulkhead, and Ultra Magnus in the comics are apparently doing their own thing as well, although more like some sort of maverick team since they seem to be (begrudgingly) aligned with the Council.
  • The Council's low opinion of Team Prime also explains why the statue of Optimus collapsed so easily when Strongarm threw Sideswipe at it - keeping the statue in good condition clearly isn't high on their list of priorities.
• Who was the unnamed Sharkticon in "Portals" and why would he betray the Decepticons? One of the last surviving Sharkticons in the third Transformers Aligned Universe novel was Gnaw, a devoted associate to the Quintessons. The "unnamed" Sharkticon even shares the same colors as G1 Gnaw. This is possible foreshadowing that "Gnaw" was a double agent spilling secrets to his former masters, hinting at a return of the Quintessons somewhere down the line.
• History lesson confirm that the Decepticons did extract the base location from Smokescreen's head. Which mean its confirms a theory that the main reason the Dcepticons didn't invade the Autobot base sooner was due to them having both the Spark Extractor and/or running the risk of the Autobots destroying the Omega keys to prevent Megatron from getting them.
• In this continuity, of all the Stunticons that form Menasor, only Motormaster and Dragstrip are the classic members while the rest (Heatseeker, Wildbreak, and Slashmark) are new characters. It makes since as in this continuity Breakdown is dead and it is unknown if Dead End is actually a Stunticon. Wildrider's fate is yet to be determined.
• Now, Quillfire thinking some circus elephants are fellow "revolutionaries" is meant to be proof that he's a bit bonkers. However, it makes sense when you consider two things. First, given that many of the Decepticons in this series resemble Earth animals, it's possible that elephant-resembling ones may exist. Second, elephants (both captive and wild) are pretty dangerous animals, as the many zookeepers or circus trainers that have been killed by one would attest. It also explains why Quillfire wasn't accounting for the fact that the elephants would panic (like most animals would) at the big unfamiliar metal thing; he thought they were sapient and plotting a "revolution".
  • Plus elephants are around the average size of cybertronians, i.e. around the size of vehicles.
• Why would the animators reuse Airachnid's character model in season two, but as a "generic" orange Con without spider legs? Perhaps it is intentional Foreshadowing of a grander power-grab behind the Alchemor crash. Potentially, Airachnid could have gone undercover within the Alchemor, prior to the crash, without the obvious physical features that would have made her recognized immediately; baring in mind that shared body types are a common thing among Cybertronians. Additionally, a Insecticon came be seen in background of season two with Bombshock's toy colors reversed. Bombshock is the last surviving named Insecticon by the time they're trapped on Cybertron's moon with Airachnid at the end of Prime. This also may be a subtle implication of him hiding his "true colors" and working with Airachnid among the crowd of Alchemor prisoners. Everything Robots in Disguise has led to involving the Alchemor crash, plus Megatronous, Steeljaw and the Cybertronian council's role behind it, will likely lead to a culmination in the Grand Finale tying up most if not all of the loose ends of the Transformers Aligned Universe.
• Doubling as a Stealth Pun, Steeljaw uses Kickback (a grasshopper) as bait for the Autobots.
• Also serving as Fridge Horror. The Cybertron High Council hates Autobots (especially those that were a part of Team Prime) as they blamed Optimus Prime for Cybertron's state. The thing is, they're right: Optimus Prime destroyed the Omega Lock, ruining any chance of Cybertron being restored, to save Earth from being cyberformed by Megatron. Regardless of circumstance, the High Council sees Optimus as a traitor to his own kind who sacrificed his own planet all to protect an Insignificant Little Blue Planet while it was the Decepticons (with Ratchet's help) who developed the means to repair the Omega Lock. In the council's eyes, both Autobots and Decepticons are to blame for the fall of Cybertron (Cybertron's doom in the former's case) with Team Prime being viewed as traitors for favoring that Insignificant Little Blue Planet over their own.
  • This ends up completely moot since it's revealed that the High Council are actually Decepticons. Of course they would want to ruin the reputation of their hated enemies by being the Unreliable Narrators to the masses.
• Menasor isn't as effective as in previous incarnations makes sense when you watched Transformers: Prime. Most of the Decepticons have some Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Following that pattern, the Stuticons were the same as them.

Fridge Horror

• Underbite once ate the entirety of Nuon City on Cybertron. The exact ramifications of this are never fully gone into, and it seems barely anyone else besides him even knows about it, but one has to wonder just how much destruction or casualties such an act caused.
  • There might be a reason no one else knows about it: there were no survivors.
• It's revealed that Ratchet left Cybertron because he argued against the idea that Optimus was to blame for the state the planet was in, a belief apparently wildly held by many. He left because he was afraid he would end up in prison for it. What kind of state is the Cybertronian justice system in if a bot can be imprisoned for that? Even a bot who helped save the planet?
• Apparently, Starscream accidentally killed Predaking's fellow Predacons, but Predaking himself is never shown. If he's still alive everyone should pray he doesn't come looking for Starscream.
• Soundwave built the transmitter in "Collateral Damage" while he was in the Shadowzone. There's practically nothing tangible in the zone, so Soundwave's ability to build the device (and upgrade himself and Laserbeak) seems unusual... until you remember that there's something else in the dimension: Skyquake's body.
• In "Collateral Damage" Soundwave says that Steeljaw has served his purpose like the Activator Mini-Cons. None of the Activators still under Soundwave's servitude by this point appear in this episode (except for in flashbacks) or in any episode afterwards. Is it possible that Soundwave killed them?
• When we last saw Starscream, Optimus apparently took him back to Cybertron. With the reveal that the Cybertron High Council were secretly Decepticons fanatically loyal to Megatron, this puts Optimus's decision in a whole new light. Considering that Starscream made no secret of his goal to destroy Megatron, one has to wonder what Cyclonus and his team may have done with him.

Fridge Logic

• You are the Cybertron High Command, and you have to transport a ship full of dangerous prisoners. Who do you send as a guard? One unarmed Minicon with faulty wiring and no backup in case something went wrong (which it did), What Were You Thinking?
  • That the minicon "prison guard" mode would be more than effective in handling prisoners.
    • Yes. Yes he is.
    • There's also the fact there are actual more then one minicon of Fixit's type on that ship.
• If the team are "robots in disguise", why don't Grimlock and Fixit scan more practical vehicle modes? May also be a Headscratcher.
  • Aside from the fact that Fixit's glitchy manner of speaking and size could easily allow him to pass for a human device, trans-scanning may be more difficult than that, and maybe Grimlock simply doesn't want to, going back to it being difficult, maybe he would be stuck temporarily or permanently as as the equivalent of a transgender person, with his preferred "gender" being T-Rex.
  • In Grimlock's case, this show is meant to take place in the aligned continuity, falling in canon with the Cybertron games and Prime. In Fall of Cybertron, Grimlock and his team were captured and forcefully experimented on by Shockwave- Grimlock doesn't change modes because he physically can't due to Shockwave's experiments. He's stuck with a T-Rex alt. mode forever.
    • It's a different Grimlock, but it still makes sense as Dinobots are considered a different species/race than normal cybertronians, so he probably can't change his alt mode like other cybertronians can.
• Considering that not much time has apparently passed since Transformers: Prime, it's rather odd that Bumblebee hasn't contacted Agent Fowler or anyone else who knows about Transformers.
  • Speaking of which, didn't Ratchet choose to stay behind and help Unit:E? Why hasn't Bee contacted him?
  • We don't know how much time has passsed between TFP and RID. Fowler could be dead.
    • Ratchet returned to Cybertron to care for Ultra Magnus in Predacons Rising.
    • Then Ratchet was force by the council to hunt war criminals all over the universe.
    • If "History Lessons" episode is anything to go by, it is very likely that -decades- have passed since Transformers Prime. When Bumblebee and his team arrive to the Unit: E base, the entire military compound is in derelict, abandoned state, and there's a severely rusted jeep just outside the entrance to the hangar. Still, it is strange that Bee hasn't made any effort to contact his old human friends yet. Even if Fowler may be gone, Jack, Miko and Raph are very likely still alive, and it wouldn't be a problem for Bee to track them down.
    • Ah but here's the trick. RID crossed over with Rescue Bots TWICE in the fourth season. The fourth season takes place three years after the first three season in order to meet the time gap between Prime and RID.
    • This means that only three years have passed since the events of Prime and RID. Why the base is abandoned in that way is beyond me, but the writers do not seem to care about continuity; as in "History Lessons," they outright made up stuff about the base.
• Why didn't Windblade used her turbine to slow her pace down the river so Sideswipe could get to her sooner and easier?
  • She was panicking maybe?

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