Transformers: Prime/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

Starscream's disdain for a car alternate mode makes more sense if you remember all his minions are cars. To him, not only does it lack the perks, but also to Decepticons, flight is a symbol of status and command.
In "Convoy" the "minimal force" used against MECH seems excessive, as in blown up cars excessive. However, that kind of force would have been minimal against Decepticons. Clearly human vehicles are more fragile than what the Autobots are used to fighting, making this a collective Does Not Know His Own Strength.
Starscream spends a lot of time trying to get around Soundwave rather than directly challenging him while in command of the Decepticons. Then the season finale comes along and Airachnid doesn't think she needs to. Cue Soundwave utterly owning her and forcing her to yield. Starscream was worried about getting his ass kicked if he tried anything too ambitious.
- Also note that, in the fight, Airachnid doesn't land a single damaging blow onto Soundwave. Why? Because Soundwave is a scout; it's his job to watch people and listen in on them, meaning he's been watching Airachnid's moves, and accordingly created a strategy. And due to this, he's presumably also been watching the Autobots fighting out in the field.
- This has been pretty much confirmed in a newer episode, where Wheeljack tries to take Soundwave in a fight. Guess who won. Hint: It wasn't Wheeljack. Although he scored some hits and managed to break Sounwave's face and knock him off a cliff.
Why Bulkhead is the only one affected by Dark Energon: all the others have already come into contact with it; it's keeping Megatron alive, Optimus has fought a bunch of Terrorcons and was in the midst of a Dark Energon eruption, Bee directly handled a shard of it in episode 14 and was hit with the stuff in episode 23, and Arcee was infected with it way back in episode 2.
- This also helps to explain why Bee recovered from the dark energon effects of Megatron's blast fairly quickly even though he should've gotten sick from it like Raf did.
The writers have found a way to kill Optimus without breaking their rule that when a characters dies, they stay dead. By having Optimus loses his memories as a Prime, and worse yet, join the Decepticons, in effect, Optimus Prime is dead.
Some people complained that Megatron hearing Rachet's communication with Arcee in One Shall Rise II was a continuity error. However, thinking back I just remembered something very important about Soundwave: somehow he can even pick up transmissions between Autobots. Somehow, he might have been able to break the code, allowing them to hear Arcee's position, Wheeljack's arrival, and Optimus's troubles with MECH. What would happen if Soundwave somehow overheard the Autobots get careless and casually mention their base location?!?
- They kinda already did, in the very first episode: Soundwave overhears Arcee mention Jasper, Nevada, and plays it back for Starscream. That's how the Vehicons track her down and chase her (and, by association, Jack) in the first place.
We've seen repeatedly that the Vehicons are not simple drones. They have individual voices and personalities. So why are they all Faceless Mooks who have the same alt. mode? Because having a uniform appearance for their footsoldiers makes perfect sense from a military view. And only the higher-ranking officers have the unique names and vehicle modes.
The choice of a desert town may seem like a simply way to avoid the cost of having to animate trees and grass all the time, but it's not just an American desert state: it's Nevada. AKA: home of Area 51. The locals are used to hearing ridiculous conspiracy theories involving aliens and ignoring them, making it one of the perfect places for the Autobots to hide out without causing too much of a commotion. Any news from the area would just be chalked up as more silly rumors by UFO freaks.
- Mars Cat says ...
In "One Shall Rise-Part 3", Megatron is briefly possessed by Unicron, and appears to be in flames. Consider the source of Megatron's name. If one is not savvy on the mythology of Transformers: Megatronus Prime would later go on to be known as The Fallen.
Bulkhead's status as a Lightning Bruiser. How does the big guy move so damn fast? Well, look at his feet. Specifically look at the inside of his feet. There's wheels leftover from transformation. It's entirely possible he can use them for bursts of speed when he needs to move faster.
So why did Unicron have an eye inside his own body. 2 reasons: 1) he finally caught on to the fact that anyone who wants to defeat him will enter his body to do it, (2) He realized you can't fly a ship through his eye when it's on the inside.
- There's also the fact that despite having transcended physical form, as Optimus states in the season finale, he also still has a physical form that he can and as shown by his spark being still within his spark chamber, does inhabit. As such, being a god, he can pretty much do anything he wants to his own body.
There are some goofs, like some grammatical errors and Optimus stating that Earth's core is full of lava as opposed to magma, but these are Aliens Speaking English. It takes us long enough to learn the language of the country next door to us! And, even if these guys use the internet like their movie incarnations, who's to say that they didn't pick up some dodgy urban myths while doing so? Besides, none of the humans present seem like the types to care (or know) of these errors, and the 'Cons are the ones making most of them, especially Megatron; the guy who spent three years in space, thinks Humans Are the Real Monsters and refuses to sink low enough to take an "native" alt mode.
In "Orion Pax, Part 1," Agent Fowler asks, "Why send a boy to do a Bot's job?" To me, that was a good question - why would Optimus make Jack the only one who can restore his memory, when the other Autobots are more likely to survive to finish the job? And this is more than Optimus trusting in Jack's maturity; the other 'Bots have been with him far, far longer than the humans have. But Optimus gave the Key to Vector Sigma to Jack because he knows Megatron's disdain for humans in general: when Megs was waiting on the other side of the Space Bridge, he was expecting Arcee to hold the Key. But when Arcee arrived, she fought him instead, buying Jack enough time to restore Optimus's memory. Optimus knew what would happen when he unleashed the Matrix on Unicron, anticipated what his team would try to do - and found the one factor he knew Megatron would overlook.
Starscream returning to steal energon makes perfect sense when you think of the fact that all transformers use energon to function. Starscream doesn't know where the autobot base is, so it makes sense that he would come back aboard the decepticon ship to steal cubes for himself.
An out-of-universe example: That recurring five-note rhythm pattern in the theme song? That's based on the classic transformation sound!
- Holy crap, you're right!
Bulkhead seems quite panicky at the thought of Optimus finding out that he's taken Bumblebee out on a scouting mission with him in Operation Bumblebee Part 1. This may be because he got told off for doing the same thing in Darkness Rising with Miko!
Now that we know Bumblebee was tortured and maimed by Megatron himself, his actions in Sick Mind/Out of His Head take bravery to a whole new level.
It seems that, for all his Chewing the Scenery, Unicron's power is finite, given that he can create a single Mook capable of talking and over powering Optimus, but an army speaks in unison and does about as well as Megatron's mooks. The giants he creates later seems to be incapable of anything other than dull movements, such as scraping the ground and walking slowly.
- Of course, Unicron was never fully awake during the entire season 1 finale, as that would have destroyed the Earth. A fully-conscious Unicron could probably split his consciousness more ways than a semi-conscious one could.
Why Starscream's clones have T - Cogs. If you assume that the genetic code he's talking about is equal to DNA, it's completely logical for said DNA to contain code for T Cogs, we would have code for 2 kidneys even if one were removed, the respective genes would just be dormant everywhere but the kidneys.
- It's more likely that the DNA simply contains instructions on what to turn into, and T-Cogs are simply standard equipment in the basic protoform bodies. Simply put, Starscream put software onto existing hardware—he didn't change the hardware.
- Does this really count as "Fridge"? Because if you ever paid attention in Biology class, it shouldn't.
Paying attention early on in Armada, you'd notice something strange is going on when the Starscream Clone confronting Bulkhead has his hands change into guns, something that Cybertronians who lack T-Cogs are unable to do.
In Loose Cannons, Wheeljack is initially distrusting and not entirely respectful of Optimus Prime, viewing him as the kind of commander who would rather put his troops in danger than himself. Now, in this universe, Wheeljack and Optimus have never directly met or worked with one another before, so it makes a little sense that Wheeljack might judge his character wrongly. It makes a whole lot more sense, when you remember who the previous leader of the Autobots was in this universe and that his attitude towards his troops was scarily similar to that of Megatron.
Given Unicron is one with the planet earth and energon is cybertronian blood, they're basically taking Unicron's blood. But more than that, humans might also be doing the same in the form of things like oil and geo-thermal energy...
Why does Bulkhead ask Miko to look away in Episode 4 when he's fighting the vehicon? Because from his perspective, he's ripping someone's heart out which is certainly not suitable for kids and he knows it.
Ratchet not knowing about the large radio antenna array is a prelude to the episode where he's unable to help Raf. Just as he wouldn't have bothered to study human medicine, given that he doesn't think highly of human technology, he naturally wouldn't have looked at that either.

Fridge Horror

Bulkhead states that if the spacebridge crew calls in reinforcements, the odds will be 400 to 1 against the 'Bots. That means there are a minimum of 1,600 Decepticon soldiers ready to fight, not including miners and other servant-class 'Cons. And we know that it's possible to move up in the world and become a fighter. To say the Autobots are outnumbered is the understatement of the century.
- It could have just been an expression. On the other, this does explain why the autobots don't stay aboard the Nemesis longer than they have have to, since every second they spend there is one where the danger of being overwhelmed increases.
- They'd probably have been better off with 1600 Vehicons. Megatron is one bot and he completely curbstomped them.
Just how many humans died when Unicron came close to waking up?
- Millions? If Hawaii experienced a blizzard, that's thousands right there just from freezing, plus all the tornadoes, hurricanes and the like, there must have been quite the death toll with Unicron stretching.
Is Jack the only child Airachnid has tried hunting?
Megatron is not, in fact, the scariest or most powerful 'Con on the show. Soundwave is.
- Perhaps not. However in the prequel novels, Soundwave is one of the only gladiators to have come close to beating Megatron in combat, so he's definitely up there.
- Actually, Megatronus ponders on the fact that if his meeting with Soundwave hadn't been in a "first-to-wound" fight, he wouldn't be alive then (neither would Soundwave, but this is MEGATRON we're talking about).
When Starscream puts the drop of energon into MECH's prototype, only one of its eyes begins to glow. Why? Because they only got one eye when they tried to disect Breakdown. Megatron may not be a ghoul, but it seems Silas certainly is.
- No, Silas used the eye to lure the Autobots into a trap and then it got blown up.
- Ratchet put the eye on his tech-reader-whatever-thing, so it was carried away from the explosion when the 'Bots ran. Ratchet probably discarded it after that (the ol' "ew, yuck" *fling* maneuver), which would have allowed MECH to collect it later when they scrubbed the place.
- With Breakdown's death, this means that MECH has spare parts...
  - An interesting point: Nemesis Prime seems to have yellow eyes. Who else has them, who isn't in need of them anym- BREAKDOWN.
    - The eyes did not come from Breakdown, MECH has reconstructed him.... so he can serve as the new body of Silas. Whether this is any better is for you to decide.
      - It is not better. Think about it: Silas is going to be using a reanimated corpse as a demented form of life support. On top of that, despite living far longer than humans do and being a lot stronger, there are many things that make life worth living to humans that Cybertronians are incapable of. Silas's favorite foods? He'll never taste them again. That wonderful sent of fresh air on a summer afternoon? He'll never smell it again. He'll never smell anything again. We've also never seen any word yet on whether the transformers in this 'verse require sleep, so there's a good chance that he won't ever sleep again. He's lost so much of what's central to every human's daily life. This could easily damage his sanity. Hell, he's become Alphonse Elric! Only evil!
  - In fairness, Silas would probably be delighted to finally be separated from human needs such as food and sleep. Now, his reaction to pain, however...
When Breakdown's freshly dismembered corpse is discovered, there's clearly no Energon anywhere. Airachnid is the one who killed him...and spiders tend to suck the fluids from their prey.
- If she had, why would she have needed to find more?
  - She's still...um, leaking(?).
  - So she's a genocidal pedophilic vampire robot spider. Great.
Nemesis Prime's attack on the base must have killed at least two dozen or so personnel.
Airachnid, sadistic genocidal maniac, now has an army of Insecticons that follow her with absolute loyalty. To put that in perspective, one Insecticon gave freaking Megatron a hard time and by the time he finally killed it, he was weakened to the point he was nearly helpless. Airachnid now has an entire army of the things!
- And now, Airachnid's in stasis and imprisoned by the Autobots, and the Insecticons have reverted to their original setting: loyal to Megatron.
- Speaking of the insecticons most people noted how easily Megatron seemed to handle them when there was a swarm of them heading towards his ship despite in an earlier episode having much trouble with them. Taking a closer look, he wasn't aiming for a kill shot on any of them: he was aiming to take out their wings and let gravity do the rest. He aimed under the carapace of the insecticon and took out it's wings. The Insecticon who fell off of the nemesis was clearly still alive. As for those that landed, they never actually attack him, since Airachnid got trapped in Stasis at that moment, resulting in the above.
Consider that when Knock Out came out of stasis, his reaction to Jack being on the control panel seemed to be "got you now", rather than "what are you doing here", implying he was aware about it the whole time. Consider that the Insecticons, Megatron (who has already demonstrated that he never forgets a face) and Soundwave will have probably been aware of all these organics climbing over them...
Given the darker tones and the emphasis on the war, TFP could almost be taken as a sort of robotic post-apocalyptic Mad Max. IE A world got to hell over oil (or energy in this case) and the turmoil it might cause.