Transformers Animated/YMMV
- Adaptation Distillation - Most notable is in the character of Starscream, who makes his first bid for leadership in the first episode. He is very literally the distilled character of G1, who took until the movie when Megatron was injured from a battle with Prime. Here he is much more proactive, planting a bomb on Megatron before he goes off to fight the Autobots.
- And the Fandom Rejoiced - David Kaye as Optimus Prime.
- Ass Pull: The Reveal that Bulkhead is the top space bridge technician in the galaxy. Mainly because it makes one wonder why exactly this never came up while the team was repairing space bridges.
- Badass Decay - The Dinobots, to the point where they were easily beaten by Jetfire and Jetstorm and scared off by post-upgrade Sari by Season 3. Oh, and according to Grimlock's profile, he's as powerful as Megatron.
- Broken Base - For every dozen or so Transfan that adores the show with full heart, there is usually one that dislikes it with as much hate as their love combined. This being the Transformers fandom, this is unsurprising.
- Complete Monster - Lockdown and Prometheus Black/Meltdown. The former is a sadistic bounty-hunter who killed his old trainer to steal Transformer-infants and the latter exemplifies Playing with Syringes. Even the Decepticons look good in comparison.
- Porter C. Powell arguably counts, although he leans more towards being a Smug Snake. His Moral Event Horizon is kicking a little girl out of her home after her father went missing.
- Continuity Porn - The Almanacs are bursting at the seams with references to every corner of the TF multiverse.
- Damsel Scrappy - Sentinel Prime's sole purpose in the series seems to be getting into trouble or messing something up for Optimus to fix.
- No, he's also an embodiment of the Autobot's less-than-squeaky-clean image compared to other series'.
- Ear Worm - "ALL I CAN DO, AND ALL YOU CAN DO~". Moreso with the Japanese fans.
- The American theme song is pretty catchy too.
- Ensemble Darkhorse - Blitzwing, Prowl, and Lockdown quickly became fan favorites. Wreck-Gar too, but what were you expecting with that VA?
- The character of Lockdown was adopted into the IDW G1-inspired comics and even got a movie-style toy, he was just that well received. In addition elements of his character was transplanted into Transformers Prime for the character of Airachnid.
- Lugnut, the glorious Battle Butler for the GLORIOUS Megatron.
- Evil Is Sexy - Megatron, Starscream (yes, even the voice), Lockdown, Slipstream, the female Starscream, and Blackarachnia of course!
- Fandom Rivalry: It's starting to build up one of these with its Contested Sequel, Transformers Prime.
- Fanon Discontinuity - Some fans still refuse to acknowledge this version exists, their main complaint being the art style.
- Others love the first two seasons but despise the third because of the tone shift from fun and happy to Anyone Can Die.
- And of course, there is even a flip side to this opinion as well, with certain fans who weren't as fond of the show suddenly becoming hooked after viewing the third season and its more serious attitude.
- Others love the first two seasons but despise the third because of the tone shift from fun and happy to Anyone Can Die.
- Fridge Brilliance: The concept of "electronic paint-jobs" works well with explaining why Transformers turn gray when they go offline; the paint-job is maintained only as long as they live.
- Freud Was Right: In "Three's a Crowd" we see that in robot mode the neck of Scrapper's power shovel comes out of his crotch.
- Growing the Beard - "Thrill of the Hunt" was a strong and mature episode that addresses consequences and regrets during war time and won over the fans who thought this series was just going to be slap-stick comedy.
- Possibly happened again with season three, due to the show going Darker and Edgier.
- Harsher in Hindsight: Arcee, given in Prime, her background mirrors that of Ratchet's--expect for unlike Arcee's Animated incarnation, both Tailgate and Cliffjumper did actually end up dead.
- Also, in the film series shows us that despite all of Sentinel Prime's Jerkassness on Animated, he could've been much, much worse.
- In this series, Sentinel took a shine to Ironhide, Ironhide being one of the students, in the film, Ironhide is the first Autobot Sentinel murdered onscreen.
- Also, in the film series shows us that despite all of Sentinel Prime's Jerkassness on Animated, he could've been much, much worse.
- Hilarious in Hindsight - Safeguard's look reminds many people of Kamen Rider Double. One person even modded their Safeguard into CycloneJoker colours.
- The casting of Corey Burton, the voice of Shockwave on Generation 1 as Megatron. Recently in Dark of the Moon, the G1 incarnation of Megatron's voice actor, Frank Welker, returned the favor and voiced movie Shockwave.
- Wasn't there another show where Jeff Bennett and Bill Fagerbakke voiced two characters in a Five-Man Band who were put in stasis? And funnily enough, their roles in the team are even the same.
- One of TF Wiki's earlier image captions for Lugnut describes him in relation to Shockwave and Omega Supreme. This becomes amusing when Animated Shockwave is introduced and Lugnut feuds with him on who is Megatron's most loyal servant. And then the last episodes have the creation of Lugnut Supreme, based on Omega Supreme, which involved both Lugnut and Shockwave.
- Hollywood Homely - Blackarachnia, at first. She's supposed to be hideous due her techno-organic status, but both to the viewer and most of the Autobots she's a beautiful Femme Fatale. And then her helmet comes off and this trope is subverted so fast its head spins.
- Idiot Plot - "Where Is Thy Sting?" Complete with heavy Most Definitely Not a Villain.
- Magnificent Bastard: Megatron
- Memetic Mutation: Shockwave's difficult to hear and completely out-of-character "LIAR! LYING LIAR!" has become a bit of an in-joke amongst his fans.
- Moe - Sari. Post-upgrade she starts to grow towards being a full-on Deadpan Snarker however.
- Moral Event Horizon - In "Predacons Rising" when Waspinator told Bumblebee that Wasp forgives him for getting him sent to the stockades followed by "But Waspinator never forgive!"
- Prometheus Black decides to use the child of his "arch-nemesis" as the test subject for making an organic Transformer. This is after he already tried it on two adults and permanently left them in misshapen bestial forms.
- Most Wonderful Sound - This is the first time the Autobots themselves have mentioned the iconic transforming noise. When the Bots are trying to will themselves back to their normal states in Soundwave's Lotus Eater Machine, Bumblebee suggests that Bulkhead make the noise with his mouth.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap - Unlike most humans in Transformers, Sari has largely avoided being The Scrappy. Of course, then there's the...
- Robotic Reveal - Sari injures her elbow at the end of the second season...revealing Cybertronian circuitry within.
- Which also makes this a bit of a We Knew It, as several fans already suspected it, between having no identity papers and no obvious mother while her father was a robotics expert.
- Ironically, it was her father who accidentally turned her human, although Sari did assume at first that he built her. Sari's unfinished protoform absorbed humanity when Sumdac reached out to touch her. Good thing Blackarachnia never found out...
- Captain Fanzone is also pretty well-loved by the fans, as well.
- Robotic Reveal - Sari injures her elbow at the end of the second season...revealing Cybertronian circuitry within.
- Running the Asylum - If you played a drinking game with Transformers Generation 1 mythology gags, you'd be dead by the third episode.
- Self Fanservice - Teenage!Sari is oftentimes subject to being drawn in provocative alternate outfits on various art sites. Most fanart also depicts her as Tall, Dark and Bishoujo, probably because she's shown to have really long legs.
- Squick - Captain Fanzone dangling a loogie towards Rattletrap, and sucking it back in when the latter telling him what he wants. Excuse me for a sec....
- Straw Man Has a Point: Sentinel's a organic-phobe Jerkass and while his approach to the situation is wrong, he makes a good point to Blackarachnia in "Predacons Rising":
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"Don't say that name! You don't deserve to say that name! You're not Elita-1, you mutant freak. Elita-1 went off-line a long time ago." |
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- They Changed It, Now It Sucks - When Takara Tomy announced that they're tying Animated (well, their handling of the show) with the movie-verse, change in episode order, renaming Bulkhead to Ironhide (even though there was already an "Ironhide")... Well...
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot - This is arguably what happened to Sari's upgrade, and her backstory in general. We never see the immediate fallout of her upgrade and near-overload, since she vanishes for four episodes afterwards, and we never find out how she got to Earth in the first place.
- Blame Executive Meddling for that, they demanded that the human characters be shoved to the background to focus on the characters with toys for the third season, including Sari.
- Too Good to Last: Sure, three seasons and 42 episodes doesn't sound too bad... until you realize that the show was on the air for less than a year and a half.
- The Woobie - Part of the reason Sari has avoided becoming The Scrappy is because her life sucks so much. (Come Season 2, anyway. Omega Supreme can't seem to catch a break either, and Ratchet's had it nearly as bad.)
- One could just about give this to poor Wasp. A stark contrast to Waspinator of Beast Wars.
- Blurr instantly became this when he was killed by Shockwave in the season three premiere, as mentioned above.
- Arcee has been one in her every appearance.
- Skywarp, and his predecessor, #3370318. Poor guys; life is scary!
- Bulkhead has his Woobie moments too.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Blackarachnia and Wasp