Transformers Animated/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Fake Russian - Jetfire and Jetstorm.
    • Also, Strika, though its hard to tell, since she's only had a few lines.
  • Hey, It's That Voice! - Two words: Starbob Screampants.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: Season 3 was never released in the US. The other DVD's are out of print as well.
  • Mythology Gag - Far, far too many. Just go read the trope page.
    • Some of them go double meta. Starscream's clones have color schemes similar to the Seekers of G1, but are also a sly dig at the repaints of Starscream that constituted the Seekers. The triceratops Dinobot in G1 was named Slag (which became an Unusual Euphemism in Beast Wars and later in this show) and this one is called Snarl. In the show Scrapper claims to have tried naming him Slag first.
      • And Slag was a name considered for Snarl, too.
    • Some of the returning voice actors are fairly obvious (Corey Burton reprising Shockwave, Susan Blu reprising Arcee, Judd Nelson reprising Rodimus Prime), but there's a more subtle one with David Kaye voicing Grimlock. David Kaye voicing a Transformer with a T-Rex as its alt-mode seems rather familiar... yeeeeeeesss...
    • In the Allspark Almanac II, Huffer and Pipes' character bios (as written by one another) both hint at their G1 counterparts' quirks - Pipes says Huffer loves Cybertron and he hopes he never has to find out how he would feel about being anywhere else, while Huffer says Pipes needs a hobby and has to get out in the galaxy; G1 Huffer was a constant bellyacher who hated life on Earth and just wanted to go home, and G1 Pipes was fascinated by Earth culture and technology, having an extensive Kitsch Collection of Earth knicknacks.
      • Also in the second AA, we have Volks' tendency to phrase every sentence he can as a question - a callback to the Generation 1 comics' infamous Death's Head.
    • Several for Beast Wars:
      • Tigatron Stadium - a nod to the Beast Wars character, and to the late, great Tiger Stadium.
      • Blackarachnia, Wasp(inator) and Rattletrap. At the end of Predacons Rising, Blackarachnia is dumped in front of a gorilla, a cheetah, a rhino and a rat. The way she says "You've got to be kidding," almost makes it sound like she's breaking the fourth wall.
    • The first we see the Autobots is they're job was repairing space bridges, which is sort of a Shout-Out to Transformers Cybertron to which Optimus Primes plan was to build new space bridges.
    • Sari eventually becomes flesh-on-the-outside, robot-on-the-inside, just like the Pretender toys from the late 80's line.
  • Shout-Out - Oh boy.
    • Wreck-Gar, played by Weird Al Yankovic, yells at one point, "I dare to be stupid!" Which is the title of the song by Weird Al Yankovic that the original Wreck-Gar and the Autobots rocked out to for an indefinite period of of time in the original movie. The "Universal Greeting" associated with the song also gets a mention.
      • Wreck-Gar also bears a marked resemblance to his voice actor, even down to the facial hair. The whole thing gets topped off when, as he confronts Soundwave and tries to counter his music, he pulls out an Accordion.
    • In "Velocity" Blitzwing once fired out a Macross Missile Massacre in the style of the Valkyrie fighters from, well, Macross.
    • The appearances of the human villains Angry Archer and Slo-Mo are based on Hasbro executives Aaron Archer and Samantha Lomow respectively. The former was unaware of the character until late in production, but his only request was that the Archer be left-handed so he was apparently not too upset about it.
    • Also Master Yoketron may have been named after Takara's lead designer on Transformers Hideaki Yoke.
    • Perceptor's voice bears a distinct resemblance to the synthesized voice of famous physics genius Stephen Hawking.
    • Highbrow is a clear shout out to actor Terry-Thomas, from his accent to his "mustache" to the gap in his "teeth".
    • Rodimus' design takes the characteristics the original shared with Marvel Comics' Hawkeye and runs with them, even giving him a bow.
      • Not to mention Rodimus is voiced by Judd Nelson, his G1 version/counterpart's original voice actor in the 1986 movie.
    • Dirt Boss' design is extremely similar to another pint sized mind controlling villain, Marvel Comics' MODOK, and he's also a caricature of various real life mob bosses, particularly Al Capone, in temperament, speech, and methods, and later pulls a huge reference to White Heat; "Top of the world, cogs!" He's also the first legitimate homage to Gurren Lagann, his diminutive size being (especially the stubby legs) inspired by Lagann itself along with using drills to control other machines. And he looks sort of like Wario, to go with the Mario and Luigi-like pair of Scrapper and Mixmaster.
    • Huffer and Pipes take the Mario and Luigi thing to new heights, however.
    • The title "Decepticon Air" is a reference to the Nicholas Cage movie "Con Air", which also features prisoners being transported gone wrong. It help that the Decepticons are often called 'Cons for short.
    • Forsooth! It must not go unmentioned that, by Od's Beard, Ultra Magnus' hammer is strikingly similar to Mjolnir, possessed by the Odinson himself, Norse Mythology's Thor!
    • Lockdown wears a Western-style poncho in "A Fistful of Energon" for no apparent reason but to shout out to Fistful Of Dollars.
    • Flareup's accent is an obvious shoutout to how she was voiced in the Botcon script reading, "Bee in the City".
    • Plenty of incidentals are homages to characters from previous generations, such as Hot Shot, Red Alert (albeit gender-swapped), Strika, Blackout, Spittor... heck, characters like Powerglide, Beachcomber and Cosmos even show up in crowd shots on Cybertron!
    • Taken to extremes by the AllSpark Almanac, which manages shout outs to TF fandom memes, obscure characters (as in 'only appeared in a spin-off racing track set in 1984' obscure), and a metric ton of other stuff. That's not even getting into the non-Transformers stuff that gets namechecked. There's a map of the galaxy in the second Allspark Almanac featuring planets like Eternia, Krankor, and Marklar, among dozens of other refs on those two pages alone.
      • Even Go Bots! Tonka was merged into Hasbro some time back, so they are now legally in the same universe after all. As such, Blackout's seismic stomp ability is said to have been based on technology from Gobots' Crasher, and Porter C. Powell's limo Stretch is patterned after the Renegade Tux. In fact, he's implied to be the very same character!
    • Roadhandler is one of Yoketron's old pupils, and was trained in the art of wrestling - this is a reference to the G1 Roadhandler's stint as a professional wrestler in the G1 comics.
    • In "Decepticon Air" Sari fixes the space bridge by extending her robotic fingers for quick typing. It looks exactly like similar scenes from Ghost in the Shell.
  • What Could Have Been - Hot Shot and Red Alert were meant to be part of the main cast, but were replaced by Bumblebee and Ratchet due to the live-action movies. Rodimus was first choice for the 'jerkass on the Elite Guard' character, but this was apparently nixed by Hasbro.
    • Also, Hot Shot was going to recieve a toy later in the toyline, along with a triple changing Megatron, but both only made it to the prototype stage before the series was nixed for Revenge of the Fallen.
    • In the episode "Autoboot Camp", originally conspiracy crazed Cliffjumper was to be the Autobot framed for being a Decepticon spy, but Hasbro did not approve of that and that role went to Wasp.
    • The second Allspark Almanac goes in depth about what Season 4 would have been like - and it sounds like it would have been the best thing in the world, too. No, we aren't going to give the details, get the book yourself. [1]
    • Season 4 was also going to make Sentinel Prime a villain. But then we ended up getting a different evil Sentinel...
  1. ↑ If you really want to know, we've got three words for you: Shattered Glass Animated.
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