As said, Wheelie and Brains are just Autobot-affiliated Transformers living with Sam. They're not part of their ranks however.
I'd be really surprised if the writers even gave 30 seconds of thought into that line, much less how much has been given by this thread.
I'm actually curious about what that means for the Twins. Was their one second cameo an error? Or were they supposed to have been in the film but disappeared. I don't think they're dead, despite their deaths in other adaptations of the story, because Barricade was also killed in the orginal movies comic/novel but since it was cut from the film, he wound up living.
the twins were going to be in the movie, but due to ppl calling them racist and such bay took them off, but forgot to remvoe the scene in where we see them in alt mode, Ppl claims that colored body parts can be ssen on the scene where they were meant to die, ifi ts true then they did died offscreen barricade is a different thing, if the twins were alive they would had been seen on the autobot convoy as they were heading to NASA and taken part of the chicago battle, Barricade (like any con) could had escaped and such (the comci sequels shwos that he was attacked by ironhide and survived)
technically,i dont think Wheelie and Brains count as Autobots they are ex-Decepticons even if they do,they seem too small to make a huge difference
what i believe is simmons never knew about ironhide dying and the wreckers, so he counted 1. optimus 2. ironhide 3. ratchet 4. sideswipe 5. mirage 6. wheeljack 7. brains 8. wheelie 9. bumbleburp. no knowledge of wreckers nor ironhide = correct numbers, no?
here's the list 1)Optimus 2)Ratchet 3)Bumblebee 4)Sideswipe 5,6 and 7)the Wreckers 8)Dino 9)Que there really is 9 Autobots,exluding Wheelie and Brains maybe they dont count as Autobots,more like ex-Decepticons
Here is how I first thought of it. 1.) Optimus 2.) Bumblebee 3.) Ratchet 4.) Sideswipe 5.) Dino 6.) Que 7.) Leadfoot 8.) Roadbuster 9.) Topspin And then I didn't count Wheelie and Brains because of their size/importance. I mean, deporting those above-mentioned nine is getting rid of a serious threat. I don't think that Wheelie and Brains would pose that much a threat to the 'Cons, so it was kind of like "Meh, they don't matter. Deport them or not, it doesn't matter." That and since the two of them could fit together in a pet-cage, they barely count for 0.1 of a regular Autobot. Huh. Never thought of it that way. I don't think that Simmons knew of The Wreckers at this point. Could account for it.
10 autobots - ironhide + (- twins) -brains and wheelie x (jolt to the power of 0) = 9 autobots That's how the math adds up.
^ Thi-...erm, these. Like Jetfire, Wheelie never even got rid of his Decepticon insignia after "switching sides" (it's plainly visible upside down on his backside in the carrier ship) and NEST didn't even care that he and Brains were living as civilians with Sam rather than under government watch like the Wreckers and the rest of Optimus Prime's crew of Autobots. Seems pretty straightforward.
