He's a typical mad scientist type. What does any mad scientist want? To gain knowledge by experimenting on innocents/enemies/friends, etc. And gaining power through his science. I believe he is presented as not having emotions and being more logical than emotional. I don't think that's being a nihilist.
Yeah, nihilists reject order and favor anarchy and wanton destruction. I'd say Shockwave is the total opposite of a nihilist.
Which Shockwave? He's got 3 or so distinct personalities, the Megatron-loyalist, the military strategist, and the scientist. The latter two are typically self-serving and the last is completely amoral, but I wouldn't really categorize either as having a lack of purpose. I dunno, maybe Bayverse Shockwave was and that's why he got so little screentime in DOTM. "Oh Optimus Prime is killing me now? Well, the universe is pointless anyways guess I'll just die."
He isn't so much as a nihilist as he's really more of a bot that's even more of a machine then even most machine lifeforms thus giving him a twisted view on life that's beyond messed up.
Marvel Shockwave was portrayed as a slave to logic, albeit one with emotions. He pursued leadership as it was what his mind ultimately deemed logical. Prime Shockwave was shown to have virtually no real personality, just a devotion to science and driven by logic. IDW Shockwave was something else altogether. Omnicidal maniac. Nihilism, specifically the fact that ultimately nothing matters and everything ends, would have possibly factored into his very warped views but that's about it. There is nothing to suggest that his Marvel or Prime incarnations were nihilistic. At least, not using definitions of the wrd that the rest of the species would understand. And no, nihilists do not crave anarchy and chaos. These things have nothing to do with each other. At a stretch, one could argue that nihilists simply accept that chaos is, on a long enough timeline, inevitable. And if there's one thing Shockwave is a fan of, it's order. Chaos doesn't work well for someone that has difficulty adapting to situations that aren't logical. See his fight with the Dynobots in the early days of IDW. Their completely disorganized and chaotic nature was seeing thm trash him until he basically surrendered to baser instincts.
But he still wasn't Nihilist; he believed Cybertron's people should have a future above everything else, so he did feel something had meaning. He just put a lot of emphasis on the ends justifying the means.
Your Shockwave can be a Nihilist if you like, mine is a violent Utilitarian. I suppose the truth lies in whatever continuity you prefer. To me I always defer to my personal interpretations of character, though it's admittedly mostly grounded in the Marvel comics run. I think I enjoyed the early comics the most because they felt intentionally vague.
I would say that G1 cartoon Shockwave is sadistic as evidenced by the Search for Alpha Trion episode, where he persuades Starscream to drop Optimus and the Elita-1 into a boiling acidic substance.
According to the dictionary, a nihilist is: "a person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles." Shockwave, as generally presented, does not believe that life is meaningless; at the very least, he does not believe that his OWN life is meaningless. In the G1 cartoon, he was a loyal servant to Megatron and clearly believed that serving him was important. In the G1 comics, he wanted to lead the Decepticons to victory; he clearly believed that conquest was important and that he was needed as Decepticon leader. In the Dreamwave comics, he was a scientist and wanted to explore Cybertron's past and conquer its present. In Animated and Prime, he was again loyal to Megatron, and in Prime, he was again a scientist. In the live action movies, it's hard to say for sure, but he displays no particularly nihilistic tendencies. Even IDW Shockwave, who probably came the closest of any Shockwave to nihilistic thinking when he declared that all life had no value, still thought his life was important to preserve Cybertron. I would also agree with the description of him as an extreme utilitarian. If there's a nihilist in the Decepticon ranks, I think it's G1 Dead End: "We are all just food for rust."
