- Transformers: Generation 1 (1984-1987)
- The Transformers (Marvel) (1984-1991)
- The Transformers: The Movie (1986)
- Beast Wars (1996-1999)
- Transformers: Armada (2002-2003)
- Transformers (2007)
- Transformers: Animated (2007-2009)
- Transformers: TransTech (2008-)
- Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen (2009)
- The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers (2010)
- Transformers: Prime (2010-2013)
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
- Transformers: Rescue Bots (2011-2016)
- Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (2012)
- The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye (2012-2018)
- Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
- The Transformers: Sins of the Wreckers (2015)
- Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
- Transformers: Cyberverse (2018-2020)
- The Transformers: Unicron (2018)
- Transformers: EarthSpark (2022)
- Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
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General
- Most 21st-century depictions of Shockwave. The G1 cartoon originally portrayed him as a yes-man loyalist who would follow Megatron's orders to the letter... though he wasn't always (i.e; rarely) a match for the Autobots. The G1 Marvel comics portrayed him as a second Starscream with far more competency than the tropenamer, though he still gets foiled by his enemies. And then we have the Aligned, movieverse, and Animated continuity Shockwaves, which, while still loyal to Megatron, are far more competent and powerful. Then we have IDW's Shockwave, an no-nonsense tyrant and pathological harbinger of doom who masterminds just about every catastrophe known to everyone of his kind. This carries over to the War for Cybertron Trilogy series and the Cyberverse and EarthSpark cartoons, where his loyalty to Megatron is not steadfast and he is more than able to throw down with the best fighters possible.
Transformers Comics
- From IDW's Spotlight mini-series comes the Kup issue. The story begins innocently enough with Kup fighting off zombie-like Cybertronians, before retreating to his rough hut/shelter. Initially it seems like he's merely surviving a rash of zombified Cybertronians alongside Outback after having crash-landed on a strange planet, but then the true horror element shines through: Kup has actually been driven insane by the radiation coming off the exotic variants of Energon Crystals glowing on the planet, and Outback is actually dead - Kup does not notice this fact as he brags to Outback's own corpse while using his arm as a crude club! The way the art style takes on a surreal, dreamlike approach when the narrative is in Kup's point of view makes it even creepier. The later parts of the story add a bit of a forlorn horror to it, as it turns out Springer was sending Autobots in hazard gear that made them look like zombies to the addled mind of Kup in an effort to rescue him, and in the end it takes Trailblazer's forcefield ability to get Kup out of that brown hellhole, at the cost of Kup nearly busting his Spark chamber's containment field in a fashion akin to a stress-induced cardiac arrest!
- Another IDW-given form of Nightmare Fuel is the Cybertronian punishment of empurata. Those found guilty of heinous-enough crimes are modified extensively to remove most forms of their outward identity. Their hands replaced with unwieldy clamps or other job-appropriate appendages, their outer chassis swapped around quite a bit, and their face rendered a single, mostly unemotive optic. The questionably sane Autobot Whirl is one to have suffered this fate, and occasionally thinks back to a time he looked normal. The most prolific victim of this process, however, is a senator who prided himself on looking good, could scarecely keep a single paintjob, and was a good friend of Orion Pax. The one who gave the order did so soley out of spite after finding out he was helping Pax in his movement to change Cybertron's government. The result of this process? Shockwave, the coldly ruthless logical monster we all know now. They didn't just maim his body, they butchered his mind and soul.
- There's a quick, but brutally creepy scene from the construction of the Kaon underground gladiator arenas in Megatron's origin story - several Constructicons are shown to obtain some of the raw material they need by melting down some of their enemies. Given that the prisoners were restrained, they were most likely still functional and concious before they were thrown into the smelting pit. Yikes.
- In Arcee's Spotlight, the way Jhiaxus was depicted modifying Arcee to alter and give her the female gender is incredibly creepy. Arcee herself has some emotional stability issues as a result of what was done to her, and when she later got her revenge on Jhiaxus in a later comic, she kept attacking his helpless body ruthlessly even after severely crippling him, with a wicked Slasher Smile on her face as she got her revenge.
- More horror from the IDW series: Anti-Personal Mines. (Not a misspelling.) In first part of the "Speak, Memory" storyline, Skids is talking to a psychiatrist about his past as a bomb negotiator. When questioned about what a bomb negotiator is, Skids said "Defusing a landmine was hard enough at the best of times—- But the Decepticons found a way to make it harder. They were building mines that begged for mercy." The Decepticons took live Autobots and hard-wired their heads and other vital components into landmines. Skids' job as a bomb negotiator was essentially keeping the victim that the landmine was made out of calm while he mercy-killed them. If they panicked, they'd blow up. And that's just the start of the horror in that issue...
- IDW's final Transformers series, Last Bot Standing, is about the cold, harsh realities of two factions of giant mechanoids engaging in a Forever War... That no matter how long they think they can live, their resources are finite. And when people are desperate to survive and can't find a way to feed themselves, they'll have to make very dire choices.
- One of the covers for Issue 2 is of Moon, normally portrayed as a cutesy mechanical rabbit with big doughy eyes, looking as if he stepped straight out of someone's nightmares of Watership Down. His eyes glowing red and cracked like lenses of a mask, and a layer of froth dripping from his mouth as he stares at a fresh corpse.
