I always thought they somehow reconned it so that the BW episode took place sometime between him being destroyed and when he gets his body back via Unicron.

 

It was never made clear but with the nature of time travel there’s no telling when his ghost went back in time......But keep in mind with time travel there’s no reason to assume that there’s anything linear about it

It could’ve gone back moments after he was destroyed by galvatron in the film , It could’ve gone back in time 1000 years after that anything is possible

 

That, in my head, there's a Sunbow Season 5 and beyond that continue that continuity but incorporate all non-BW toys released since then more or less chronologically.

And it has an overall arc roughly parallel to DiC G.I.Joe through through end of G2 so about when Cobra Commander came back, Galvatron was rebuilt as Megatron but the purple on his Action Master and G2 forms were literally bits of Galvatron.

One of the G2 tanks is cartoon continuity Straxus who goes on to become BW Megatron.

In keeping with the anthropomorphicization of the cartoon, Powermaster Optimus married Elita 1 in a big ceremony with the Witwicky family in attendance and was semi-retired until G2 while Hot Rod had adventures to refill the Matrix.

Borrowing ideas from elsewhere, Victory Leo was a reformatted Trailbreaker. This gets around the Ginrai origin problem and pays homage to Overhaul/Leobreaker. Star Saber is the offspring of Elita-1 and Optimus, who was designed from elements of both of them with Perceptor's help.

When possible, I prefer one character becoming another rather than a huge cast. It feels more like mythology that way to me with sacrifice and rebirth. I also prefer it to be a saga centered on the same few characters with no random introductions and envision it extending to Daniel and his kid sister's kids.

I'd lean towards the TFTM characters becoming a few of the Axelerators and Turbomasters.

Hot Rod becomes Thunderclash. Blurr becomes Rapido. Kup becomes Scorch. Arcee becomes Hurricane. Wheelie becomes Windbreaker. Cyclonus becomes Skyquake.

 

The battle near the Protectobots base got down to a stage where it was 3 (one was First Aid) fit Protectobots vs 2 fit Stunticons (Breakdown and Deadend) a cease-fire is called by the Protectobots (which the 2 fit Stunticons agree with - in part because of Breakdown's paranoid nature). As the Protectobots take two of their wounded back to their metropolitan base, First Aid is shot from behind (with only a little damage but enough to mean that he cannot repair the two Protectobots in time to save the day at Autobot City).

At Autobot City, I am thinking that Huffer is shot dead by the Constructicons while he is still outside of Autobot City.

After Devastator first breaches Autobot City's defenses Grapple (who has had a massive grudge against the Constructicons since the Master Builder's episode) and a number of Autobots concentrate fire on Devastator and Grapple with pretty much his last gasp of energy fires a shot that causes Devastator to separate into 6 different components. However, he did not suspect that Skywarp (under instructions from Megatron with Thundercracker giving Skywarp some cover) had teleported to behind Autobot lines and manages to shot dead Grapple. Perceptor who is near Grapple manages to transform (with mass shifting) into his Microscope alt-mode to make himself a much smaller target.

 

1. The Ark in Five faces of Darkness is not destroyed when Trypticon attacks Mount Saint Hillary. This is kinda backed up because, thanks to shoddy AKOM animation, Trypticon attacks a mountain that looks nothing like what the mountain looked like in the previous two seasons, and is actually to the left of Mount Saint Hillary. Nice job, folks!  

2. Wheeljack and Windcharger, although heavily damaged, make full recoveries after the Battle of Autobot City. Unfortunately, Wheeljack was too injured to help repair Optimus Prime.

3. With the exceptions of the ones killed in the shuttle, all 1984-85 Autobots survived. They were simply offscreen for the most part after the movie.

 

My headcanon regarding offscreen events in the movie is completely at odds with yours. Anyway all good, IMO they should have brought back a number of S1 and S2 Autobots who were not seen again in season 3 or season 4. But since they did not, even when Optimus Prime returned and since they used the likes of Wheelie and Blur fairly regularly in season 3, instead of the likes of Hoist, Inferno and Skids, etc.:

• I have it that at the battle of Autobot City Wheeljack and Windcharger came face to face with the Reflector. The main Reflector unit temporarily blinds the Wheeljack and Windcharger (a bit like a scene in the Ultimate Doom part 1 episode) and the other two Reflector units backed up by Thundercracker and Skywarp shot Wheeljack and Windcharger, who both died pretty much there and then.

In my headcanon as per the storyboards that did not make the final cut that both Sideswipe and Tracks survived the battle of Autobot City and they could not bear to watch Optimus die so they went to assist the Protectobots at the Protectobots base. Optimus, was getting information from Gears on the Moonbase about the situation at the Protectobots base and the Ark.

There Sideswipe and Tracks encountered the 3 injured Stunticons (Motormaster, Dragstrip, and Wildrider) as well as a fit Deadend and Breakdown and an injured Octane (who was kind of exaggerating injury, since Starscream Ghost, I feel that Octane is more conman than violent gangster) and those Decepticons feel that the Autobots must have won the battle of Autobot City. As such Octane says he can transform and is also capable of transporting the Stunticons (like Blitzwing in Cosmic Rust could). Anyway, Octane is able to fly the Stunticons back to the Decepticon undersea base.

Unfortunately for the Protectobots, Pipes is on another planet at the time of the attack on Autobot City and it will be sometime before all the Protectobots are fit enough to form Defensor.

At around the 1:05 minute mark in the following clip, Hound and SunStreaker are in the background.

Hound uses a hologram of Omega Supreme and imitates Omega's voice and says 'Decepticons you are no match for me' the Decepticons fall for this long enough to shake Skywarp, Astrotrain and Blitwing off. and find Megatron. Unfortunately for Hound and Sunstreaker Ravage is in the background and fires his missiles into the back of Hound and Sunstreaker which cause the hologram of Omega Supreme to disappear and Skywarp, Blitzwing and Astrotrain are able to shot dead Hound and Sunstreaker. However, Skywarp and Blitzwing (to a far lesser extent) are heavily hit by Autobot fire by the surviving Autobots.

Essentially to me, I think that most of the season 1 and season 2 Autobots who did not appear in season 3 (including animation errors) either died at Autobot City or other offscreen events. They were at least dead by the end of the Dark Awakening episode. This is just my headcanon though.

 

Since we're all sharing our headcanon for offscreen events during the battle of Autobot City...

After a headcanon event set in 2003 I call Combiner Wars as a sequel to the Devastation game involving Nova Prime, Optimus Prime and Inferno now have their own Combiner teams. Optimus Prime keeps his team (Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl, and Sunstreaker) with him while he's stationed on Moonbase 1 so their combined form is available on the Cybertron front, while Inferno and his team (Sideswipe, Wheeljack, Mirage, and Smokescreen) guard Autobot City on Earth.

During the attack on Autobot City, Inferno, combined with his team, is bored through the spark by Devastator's drill protecting Red Alert, leaving Red Alert alone and guilty for giving him the cold shoulder for years for "abandoning" him to be a Combiner.

Red Alert, in vengeance, fires all of his shoulder missiles at Devastator with no plan; Devastator turns to him, about to terminate him, creating an opening for Mirage, Wheeljack, Sideswipe, and Ultra Magnus to perform a shoulder missile volley attack, tearing Devastator down to the individual Constructicons.

Wheeljack heroically saves Mirage, who had thought of him as a lowly, dirty failure of an engineer; Mirage finally admits how valuable he was as an Autobot, and reluctantly escapes as Wheeljack is killed by the Constructicons.

Smokescreen, now wearing his Alternators/TFP Season 3 colorscheme, has his arm eaten off by the Insecticons while pinned down by Megatron and goes into stasis lock from shock; he will later get upgraded with a claw arm and switch to Armada Smokescreen's colorscheme.

The Aerialbots defend the river that powers Autobot City's hydroelectric power plant (and therefore Autobot City's defense grid) from the Combaticons, who intend to redirect its flow down a mountain pass, (a tactic devised by Onslaught) holding out until the break of dawn, just before Optimus Prime's shuttle arrives; the Combaticons successfully cut off the dam's water supply and bring down all the wind turbines, and Autobot City quickly loses power; with their defenses broken, Megatron declares the slaughter begun.

The Protectobots, former guardians of a now-fallen neutral territory on Cybertron, have reluctantly taken asylum under the Autobots' care on Earth, and are relaxing on an island as they are not officially Autobot soldiers.

Omega Supreme cooperates with NASA as the Space Shuttle Discovery's external booster on the first Space Shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster (which actually happened in 2005) as a diplomatic gesture with humanity and is unavailable.

Hoist and Grapple die at the hands of Autoscout because they're ugly and lame.

Optimus Prime and Sunstreaker arrive, expecting the rest of their Combiner team, Hound quickly boards their ship to brief them, telling them that their shuttle was hijacked, with no survivors and they can't form a full Gestalt even with Inferno's team's survivors. (this is why Hound is seen on the ramp for their ship despite being stationed on Earth)

 

Chip Chase only pretends to be in a wheelchair to keep it a secret he's superhuman. I mean, the guy survives drops from near-fatal heights regularly and ripped a floppy disk like paper. Spike is also superhuman but not to the same degree of strength, instead being more durable.

 

My headcanon revolves around a few things; the deadhorse of mass shifting. I'm not a fan of energy conversion. Lifespans, energy consumption and overconsumption. And the origin of the transformers (I really don't like the children of god primus origin). Oh and reproduction.

IMO, there's no point in transformers having alt modes, or bot sizes if they have the ability to change their mass at will. It undermines the point of their physical forms and alt modes. they might as well be amorphous energy beings that solidify in whatever shape they want.

I like my robots robotic. Now that's not to say I don't think they couldn't change their size, but for me it has to be limited and not ignore the point of robots and alt modes like I believe energy conversion mass shifting to do.

As cybertronians are robots first, everything needs to build from that. Astrotrain might just be a big metal balloon in shuttle-big-enough-to-carry-everyone mode, but that's the downside and price of attempting something like that. Being made of super metals means they're still tough even if they're thin.

Soundwave could compress his internal systems into a denser smaller shape. His flight ability could be used to disguise his mass, so he anti-gravs his way around as a boombox. His full robotic size might not be as heavy as another robot of the same size, but it wouldn't be hollow. Same with megatron.

So my criteria for transformers size changes is that it can't make their physical form redundant and it can't make choosing an alt mode unimportant. Hence alt modes use a lot of energon to 'learn' and are a bit like performing plastic surgery on yourself - very uncomfortable. And size changes in robots are explained by internal densification or hollowing out to create the desired shape. This would mean that the arms of omega supreme are not hollow tubes waiting for transformers to get in them, but solid metal as the rockets have internally rearranged to combine into a smaller but denser robot.


Energon
Decepticons are gas guzzlers. They are larger and have more special abilities that require more power. But they believe it's their right to take. The looming energy apocalypse sent cybertron into rationing energy use and coercing people to shrink in order to be more efficient. Decepticons were the people who refused to tow the party line. Rebelliously doing the opposite - publically over consuming, stealing energy etc. Basically went into post apoc mode where only the strong survive.

Decepticons refuse to give up their flight, size, or advanced abilities (teleporting, null rays, fusion cannons, hypno rays etc) believing its their right as superior beings to take energy and live their lifestyle unaltered. Autobots basically refuse to make their energy problems the problems of the galaxy and so they fight.

Transformers can live forever if they have enough energon. They are also really hard to kill as the spark is all they need to be rebuilt. So the cybertronian civil war, or energy war, dragged on for millions of years as they fought a battle of energy attrition, attempting to wear the other out. Actual fatalities were comparatively rare. They just get back up and fight until out of energy in stasis lock again.

As they lost more energy, their attacks became less lethal, so the war dragged on even longer.

Transformers origins
I really don't like primus is god, unicron is satan and transformers are basically religious templars created by god to fight satan. The chosen one christ-prime is on the nose as well.

I actually really liked the original cartoon origin. It was an inversion of normal dystopian future AI uprisings - aliens created AI, it rises up and kicks them off the planet but doesn't kill them and they go on to live a peaceful life until they have a civil war. Now I know that a lot of the concepts around the Quintessons have been retconned into a conquest and enslavement rather than creation. this manages to keep 90% of the story identical, the slave revolt, sparticus vibes etc.

But as I said I don't like the primus god holy warriors and fallen angels schtick. Far less free will in that story and focuses the existence of transformers on Primus and unicron rather than it being on themselves as a species trying to reconcile two sides of a bloody war. This is especially true when decepticons are created by taint from Unicron in some storylines.

I actually really just liked the ideological disagreement between autobots and decepticons. That megatron was opposed to Optimus not because he was taint-bagged by Unicron and was therefore now EVILLLL. Like I said, I don't like what the existence of Primus and Unicron does to the identity of the transformers and the importance of their war.



This then leads into the concept of transformer reproduction as now god can't squirt them out of the ground if it doesn't exist as well as gender. I go for them being asexual cybernetic beings. Any earth-aesthetic 'masculine' or 'feminine' forms are simply some of the many varieties of cybertronian 'types' that exist, like monsterbots with robot forms with weird non humanoid bits like scorponok with claws in robot form. Reproduction is then a decision taken by one or more transformers to produce offspring. They do that by taking a part of their spark to form the consciousness of a new entity. if one robot does it, it basically becomes cloning. If more than one does it, the new spark takes on traits from multiple parents. Gestalts are a kind of temporary spark merging, while insecticon clones and vehicons are examples of types of clone, some with longer staying power than others. The spark builds a body around itself and 'wakes up' as a new transformer.

Transformers don't reproduce often as it takes a lot of energon, hence my plural parenting happens as an energy conservation.


I also reckon this is why the quintessons were revolted against. once transformers could breed, they were out of the direct control of their masters so they started hunting down breeders and their offspring to control the population. This then led into the revolt.

 

This makes a lot of sense. I like it!

 

I also think the reason the movie had so many fatalities is because everything prior to that had both sides underpowered and struggling for energy. The Autobots didn't want to intrude on Earth and take all their energy for themselves, and the Decepticons were always thwarted and wasted lots of time chasing macguffins and bolstering their ranks with more generics that need more energon. By the time of the movie both sides have off-planet energy facilities on Cybertron and Moon Base 1 respectively, so the shots were all more lethal and powerful.

 

In my head, Ultra Magnus is not an individual. It's literally Optimus Prime in battle armor.

 

Megatrons legal name in my head is Mackatron.

 

Maybe shadelock is the Same miner that ratchet tortured in the episode stronger and faster

 

In my personal "continuity", I have an alternate take on Prowl would be a bit on the different side compared to most Prowls. This "Prowl" is modeled after the Combiner Wars figure rather than the G1 "Datsun" look.



This "Prowl" is a fembot, and she was originally a lieutenant who was a relative to her more experienced and high-ranked siblings (Bluestreak and Smokescreen whose always has looks that deviates from each other more than their G1 counterparts). This causes some reef between her and some other Autobots due to them thinking that the only reason Prowl was even a lieutenant was being a relative to more experienced high-rank Autobot officers, aka Nepotism. These grievances eventually causes her to be promoted into a high-rank Commander tasked to ensure safety of both Cybertronians and humans on Earth by her spiteful superiors, as they already had severe doubts about her competence (suspecting that she only got as far as she did through family connections), and gives her the Commander rank on Earth just to get her out of the picture from Cybertron.

Getting promoted into a rank that she never asked for against her will and aware that she's not even close to have actual experiences worthy of said title, "Prowl" has no choice but to take this "opportunity" as the only chance she'll ever have to prove herself as a worthy Autobot not needing her more successful siblings to succeed. Despite a lack of actual field experiences, one thing "Prowl" has was her determination to become a better commander and a humble personality who's willing to improve herself.

Personality-wise, "Prowl" is well-spoken, polite, and easy-going fembot awares that she's unready to be a good commander yet, willing to to help both Cybertronian and human civilians, and is shown helping with daily routine duties in her stationed base on Earth. During her freetime, she constantly spends much of her free time in intense reading about military rules so that she can be a competent commander.

Hmm.... that sounds very bizarre (Just like most story ideas that I've think of).

 

In the '86 movie, Astrotrain was in cahoots with Starscream on tossing Megatron overboard on the way back to Cybertron. Him placing the crown on Starscream during the coronation meant he was to be the new second-in-command.

 

This is 100% my headcanon as well. Though seeing how Astrotrain and Starscream teaming up usually works, Screamer might have been screwed regardless of whether Megatron came back as Galvatron.

 

In Armada, the mysteriously techno-organic planet Nemesis Prime was prowling on is a hollow planet made of a layer of Unicron's skin shed after eating several planets, the gap through which Unicron tore out of being sewn back together by Mini-Cons still under his control. Just because I like how creepy it was that Unicron has organic aspects in Armada.

 

In my headcanon universe(Which I plan on turning into a web comic) Star Saber is a chivalrous, high level Autobot knight who has no idea what moral ambiguity is. To him, all Decepticons are vile and evil, and he fails to take into consideration that they too are people. That means that he also believes that all Autobots are righteous and valiant. This doesn't mean he's a bad person, he just comes off as self-righteous.

 

Yes, I also assume he counts his blessings everyday Galvatron had other events to worry about before he put two and two together.