Random thought but in the movie continuities is being named Wheeljack the equivalent of being named John Smith? They can't all be the same guy after all but there sure are a fair few of the buggers.
Could it be a codename or a military designation? Maybe a dedicated science division?
What's your preferred way of reconciling all these very different Wheelfellows?

 

Allow different Cybertronians to share the same name the same as we humans do.
That's how we can have Bee movie WJ and RotB WJ

 

Ignoring the Bay movies being out of continuity with BB/ROTB, isn't only the Rise of the Beast one actually named onscreen?

There; that's movie Wheeljack.

 

Nope, the credits of Bumblebee name him as Wheeljack, voiced by Steve Blum.

 

So only one bot is named Wheeljack on screen in any movie. Problem solved.

We can call the BBM guy Steve or something.

 

Downshift...

 

Or better yet, Downvote, for what happens to me every time I point out that only one of the movie guys gets the name in any dialogue, and it's the one people get weird about.

 

Downshift and Slicer would also work.

 

No pal, credits are "on screen". Pedantry aside that doesn't really resolve what I asked.

 

Dotm guy is called Que. He's named that on screen in dialogue and the credits so he doesn't count as he's a new character. (Of course, this also means Brawl has to be called Devastator but... uummmm.... shut up )


Otherwise....

This. Its an entire species, why would everyone have a wholly unique name? Humans dont. Googling myself with my first and last name, theres about 4 of me out there in the internet. Even more when I facebooked myself.

 

.....no

 

It's one of the many reasons the Bayverse disappoints fans. You can say this is a new continuity all you want, but Hasbro learned after Armada to stop name slapping, in the Bayverse not only is your beloved character name slapped but beloved characters are completely and extremely negatively re-imagined. In the case of Wheeljack they did both, name slapped him on Pablo right after giving us a perfect rendition in BBM, prior to that they reimagined him as a robot Albert Einstein.

So in the Bayverse Wheeljack has been interpreted as robot Albert Einstein (and helplessly executed), his typical appearance and as robot Steve Erkel (with an accent). It's just plain insulting to his previous 30 years, even if you count the Unicron trilogy where he was renamed Downshift and Sideswipe took his name.

The Bayverse can't even be consistent with its own characters.

Travis Knight was a fan, that's why his versions of the characters are recognizable. Pablo is NOT Wheeljack. Wheeljack appeared in BBM as HIMSELF.

Also thank Primus, Wheeljack is in TFONE looking like Wheeljack and not some zany reimagining.

 

Why does a characters name matter tho? Shouldn't we care more about them being good characters than having recognizable designs and names?

If they had a black helicopter decepticon, and named him Bumblebee, i wouldnt care, because im focused on whether its a good character or not.

 

Perfect rendition: An unnamed bot who appears for a two-second line but looks like a cartoon character I like

 

...turn on captions in the film. Hope this helps

 

Why, do the captions in RotB say Pablo? Because little else seems to explain the fandom fixation with the only dialogue-specified movie Wheeljack needing a different name.

 

Screenshot one that says that

 

RotB Wheeljack should have been named Shermando after Sherman in TLK. Both talk about how another protagonist sounds, "Racist," in their introductory scenes.

 

Does this system of yours work in tiers? So credits don't count but what about baked in subtitled cybertronian dialogue which is how the tank bot from the 2007 film identifies himself as Devastator, does he share his name with the combiner from the second film who has spoken dialogue which declares his name as Devastator, or is that less legitimate since it wasn't spoken?

Is the girl autobot from the BBM opening a separate character to the one called Arcee from ROTB? Her name wasn't spoken after all, just WHO the hell is this mysterious enigma?!

 

I share most of this sentiment, but ROTF Devastator is called by name by Megatron in the film so it is a genuine case of the name being used twice in the same legitimacy.