Hello, everyone. I am reposting this to TFW2005 on behalf of my TFWiki colleague Sabrblade. I am not sure if this discussion better goes in 'News and Rumors' or 'General Discussion', but I think Sabrblade is providing valuable insight on the 20-year history of Transformers characters bearing the name 'Sideways'.

(Please bear with me as I may have to edit this TFW2005 post a few times to adjust all the forum code adequately.)

Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums • The Distorted Truth About Sideways

The Distorted Truth About Sideways

--- Begin text from Sabrblade ---

Sideways...

He's become quite the famously infamous 'bot over the years.

Motorcycle of Mystery. Agent of Unicron. Denizen of Planet X. Cowardly Audi. Dimension-hopping Headache...

He's pretty much been it all, hasn't he?



...Or has he?

What if I were to tell you that that last bit was actually never supposed to be true?

But first, a little history, just so that we're all up to speed on how Sideways got to this point.


Motorcycle of Mystery

In the beginning, there was the Robots in Disguise (2001) Sideways, first released in a two-pack with Axer, both redecoed from the Generation 2 Laser Cycles, and released in April 2002.

The toy bio for Sideways painted him as, among other things, "mysterious and silent", keeping mostly to himself.



The toy bio for the accompanying Axer strongly implied him to be the very same individual as G1 Axer, having hopped from the G1 universe to the RID'01 universe through a black hole.



Compare how much Axer's RID'01 bio borrows, verbatim, from his G1 bio.



One month later, this two-pack was released in Japan as an unchanged Hasbro import, a USA Edition.

In September 2002, the Armada Sideways toy was released by Hasbro. This toy was given an online bio at Hasbro's website that borrowed heavily from RID'01 Sideways's bio (much in the same way that RID'01 Axer's bio borrowed from G1 Axer's bio). The main difference in this bio was now it described Sideways as having a split-personality condition caused by interactions with his two different Mini-Cons.



At the time, some fans began to wonder if Armada Sideways might be the same person as RID'01 Sideways, since the former's bio borrowed so much from the latter's bio in the same way that RID'01 Axer's bio borrowed so much from G1 Axer's bio.

Of further note is that Armada Sideways's Japanese release, Legends of the Microns MX-01 Doubleface (released in April 2003), used a toy bio that was very similar to the Hasbro one, even mentioning the Mini-Con-induced split personalities.



English translation:
“Know that I am impervious against any tempest!”
In his sports bike disguise he can exceed 400km/h. Due to the Microns influence on Earth he has two personalities, good and evil. It’s impossible to predict which of his two personalities will be dominant.
PWR...4.0; INT...6.0; SPD...6.0; END...5.0; RNK...6.0; CRG...8.0; FPR...6.0; TECH...8.0

Then in December 2004, the Japanese-only RobotMasters toyline released RM-19 Double Face, sharing the name and color scheme of the Armada/Legends of the Microns character. His toy bio also contained a reference to the names of LOTM Doubleface's two Mini-Cons, "Shadow" and "Bright".



English translation (by Hydra):
Package story:
The war between the armies of the heroic Cybertrons and evil Destrons continues...
The Cybertrons warriors receive report of the discovery of a mass quantity of Solitarium. The bearer of the information is the newly enlisted Doubleface.
The location of the discovery is Jarr (Charr), a planet in the far reaches of the galaxy that was once the birthplace of Road Rocket. G-1 Convoy's squad head to Jarr, but there before them are Beast Megatron and his soldiers, launching an attack on Doubleface. Road Rocket immediately strikes a counteroffensive on the Destrons, rescuing Doubleface. But inexplicably, at that moment Doubleface turns to attack the Cybertrons! Road rocket jumps to the defense of his allies, standing off against Doubleface.
What could the true identity of Doubleface be!?

RM-19: Double Face
"Why do I meddle with you, you ask? It's because I enjoy it."
Function: Double spy
Profile: Despite a quiet exterior, deep within his heart lurk sinister thoughts. Housed within him is the communication system "Shadow and Bright," which is made useful in negotiations. His weapon, the Shaftbreaker, has such power that being cast in its mysterious light causes the opponent's nerve systems to be entirely severed.
Weapon: Shaftbreaker
RNK7 PWR9 DFN8 STA9 SPD9 TTL42

Like the first two Sidewayses' toy bios, this guy is also pretty quiet, and his on-package story text also paints him up as treacherous and mysterious.

So far, we had three Sidewayses/Doublefaces with all of their respective toy bios characterizing each of them as silent and mysterious. That said, however...


Agent of Unicron

Despite what both the Hasbro and Takara bios said about Armada Sideways, the Armada cartoon would do away with all of the split personality stuff and depict him as simply a pure agent of Unicron, even implied by the end of the series to have been created by his master, with his Mini-Cons instead used by him to simply pretend to be an Autobot or a Decepticon before his true allegiance was revealed.



Of note is the fact that, throughout at least the English-dubbed version of the cartoon, Sideways's combined Mini-Con partner (named "Mirror" in Japan, unnamed in English) always seemed to be the one doing all the talking, as if it was in control of the motorcycle body like (appropriately enough) a puppeteer and his puppet.

Furthermore, the episode "Credulous" features a brief scene in which Sideways's Mini-Con Headmaster falls off, exposing his real head for a moment. Two lines of dialogue found only in the English version of this scene are of Sideways replying to a comment made by Megatron, and then a second "dumb" sounding voice speaking in mockery of Sideways's line.

Shown in this clip from 3:38 to 3:52:


No explanation for this weird other voice has ever been given, but it almost sounds like it came from Sideways himself, as if he was mocking himself. Quite the goofy thing for the English dub to do in that moment. Though, speaking of goofy...


Denizen of Planet X

In 2005, the third part of the Unicron Trilogy, Transformers: Cybertron, saw a return of the Armada cartoon version of Sideways... kind of.



Hasbro's intention behind this radically-different-looking 'bot named Sideways was for him to be the same faction-swapping Unicron servant from the Armada cartoon, having somehow survived his apparent death at the end of Armada. However, Takara took a different route with this version of character, reimagining him as a new, 'bot named "Noisemaze", separate from the original Doubleface, and depicted him in the cartoon as having originally hailed from the mysterious Planet X.

Hasbro attempted to reconcile this new version of the character with the Armada cartoon version, but with mixed results. Namely, the Cybertron cartoon's English dub gave him an incredibly goofy new personality in stark contrast to how serious he was back in Armada. The Hasbro.com feature "Ask Vector Prime" explained his having been revived by the lingering power of Unicron that dwelt within him, and both the cartoon's English dub and other Hasbro materials embraced the Planet X backstory to fully retcon the idea of Unicron having originally created Sideways (at least, in the English version). Thus, from Hasbro's perspective, Armada/Cybertron Sideways was a denizen of Planet X who came into the service of Unicron after Planet X's destruction. Following his apparent death at the end of Armada, and following Unicron's own death in Energon, Sideways was revived by Unicron's latent power within him, but no longer in Unicron's service, and free to resume his original mission for Planet X.

As for his change in personality, well... There was that one weird scene in the aforementioned Armada episode "Credulous", in which a very silly voice spoke in mockery of Sideways in a brief moment where his Mini-Con Headmaster was separated from his real head. And Cybertron Sideways had a very similar silly-sounding voice, too (though, not by the same voice actor). So since Cybertron retconned the Planet X backstory into being the true origin of this Sideways, it seems that that would make Cybertron Sideways the true version of his personality, while his Armada personality was how he was when under Unicron's control. One could even suppose that his Armada personality was actually that of his combined Mini-Con partner controlling the real Sideways like a puppet, and that the goofy mocking voice from the scene in "Credulous" was possibly the real Sideways briefly surfacing from his Mini-Con's control, right before said Mini-Con reattached itself and returned Sideways to speaking normally.

Meanwhile, from Takara's perspective, Doubleface and Noisemaze remain separate, unrelated individuals with separate, unrelated backstories.

And speaking of things unrelated...


Cowardly Audi



2009's Revenge of the Fallen movie (and its tie-in media like comics and video games) gave us the first completely new character to bear the name "Sideways" with absolutely no connections to the previous ones, with his toy bios characterizing him primarily as a cowardly courier who hides behind bigger bots.



However, by this point, the name "Sideways" had come to have a certain reputation in the Transformers fandom, so a certain subset of fans were a little miffed that Hasbro was reusing that particular name in such a slap-happy way.

And what, exactly, was that reputation...?


Dimension-hopping Headache

More than his being a Man of Mystery, more than his being a Planet X-Man, but on par with his being Unicron's Yes Man, was the notion of Sideways being a multiversal mischief maker who jumps from dimension to dimension, universe to universe, creating chaos and confusion wherever he goes.

This idea really began to take shape with the creation of Animated Sideways.



Debuting in the 2011 Transformers Animated book "The AllSpark Almanac II", Animated Sideways was given a hybrid design based on both the Armada and Revenge of the Fallen versions, and was written by Jim Sorenson as having arrived in the Animated universe from another dimension, with very implicit hints that, after disappearing into a black hole (not unlike RID'01 Axer all those years ago), he would arrive in the Movieverse to become ROTF Sideways, in a very deliberately vague, playfully implicit attempt to suggest the possibility that Animated Sideways was the missing link that made ROTF Sideways the same Sideways as all the others who previously bore the name.

Things became even more confusing when 2015's "The Complete AllSpark Almanac" featured hidden "Ask Vector Prime" text (also written by Jim) that intentionally shook everything up by having Vector Prime claim that there were lots of Sidewayses out in the multiverse, all of whom were dimension-hoppers. Some of whom were the same as other Sidewayses, while others were completely different Sidewayses who were also the same as other different Sidewayses. And all of whom were variants of the many previous Sidewayses people were already familiar with, but also different versions of each other due to all the overlapping designs and universe-hopping involved in this purposely convoluted explanation.

Later that same year, the Facebook version of "Ask Vector Prime" (also written by Jim) got hijacked by one of the dimension-hopping Sideways. He used the ROTF Sideways design, but had a sarcastic personality like Cybertron Sideways, and was compatible with Headmaster technology like Armada Sideways. During this time, he answered fans' questions with playfully snarky, unabashedly dishonest, and generally ludicrous responses. He delighted in confusing everyone with his nonsensical replies, and was a self-admitted liar. Needless to say, he was not to be taken that seriously.



But something I didn't actually mention is where this whole concept of Sideways as a multiversal mischief maker even began. I mean, that's always been his thing, right? Sideways has always been a dimension-hopper.


...Or has he?

Nine days ago, I was on the TFWiki Discord server, on which I suggested a proposal that sent me down a path of research that, I believe, has led me to discover a long distorted truth about Sideways.

In this proposal, I brought up the fact that, up until recently, there were numerous mentions on the Wiki of certain publicity materials claiming that RobotMasters Double Face is considered by Takara to be the same character as Robots in Disguise 2001 Sideways. More specifically, the original claim about this was first given on alt.toys.transformers back in February 2005 (a mere two months after the release of the RobotMasters Double Face toy). Said claim was "when Takara was showing off Robotmaster pics, they included some fun stuff like 'character first appeared' notices. Doubleface's had him first appearing in Car Robots, not Micron Legend." A follow-up post clarified that this was "Takara's website's note of Doubleface's 1st appearance".

While the validity of this claim on ATT was originally questioned by Doug Dlin (a veteran translator of Japanese Transformers material), it was later brought it up again several times on the TFWiki talk page for the original Sideways article, going all the way back to when said article was first being put together back in 2006. In these early talk page conversations, folks took this claim to mean that Takara had considered the Hasbro-released RID'01 Sideways toy to be the first appearance of RobotMasters Double Face, and therefore the same character.

Thus, my proposal was to simply merge the "Sideways (RM)" article into the "Sideways (RID)" article, seeing as the Wiki places all the G1 counterpart versions of the RID'01-original characters (including the Hasbro-made ones who did not originally exist in Car Robots) on the RID'01 characters' pages (since the original Japanese Car Robots versions of the RID'01 characters were G1 characters to begin with). So if Takara considered the RID'01 Sideways toy to be a Car Robots character, then he would be a G1 character in Japan just like any of the Car Robots-original characters. And with his being the first appearance of the already JG1 character of RobotMasters Double Face, it would only make sense for those two pages to be merged.

While this proposal was initially met with support by several users on the Wiki's Discord, there was one voice of opposition that caught my attention: Longtime Transformers fan Monzo. Since the original claim came from a user named Derik, Monzo informed me that Derik was a rather unreliable narrator back in the day. This got me to do some digging into this matter before bringing it up to be formally discussed on the Wiki proper.

Since the Takara RobotMasters site has been long dead since 2008 (and the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine initially didn't seem to show anything useful on Double Face's archived toy page), I decided to look for other sources, like old Japanese magazine scans or Japanese Wikipedia. For the former, all I could find were these table scraps that bore no helpful information, while the latter did have something interesting.




According to Japanese Wikipedia, RobotMasters Double Face is "a different person" from the Japanese Armada Sideways/Double Face. As mentioned above in the "Motorcycle of Mystery" section, it was suspected that RID'01 Sideways was the same guy as Armada Sideways based on their Hasbro toy bios sharing a lot of the same text, nearly verbatim. With Derik's claim of the RobotMasters and RID'01 toys being the same character, that seemed to also solidify a connection between the Armada and RobotMasters versions, which then planted the seeds for the idea of Sideways also being a dimension-hopper. So it's really interesting to see Japanese Wikipedia just outright say otherwise. But of course, even in Japanese, Wikipedia is still Wikipedia, so I had to keep digging.

I looked into as much of the Takara RobotMasters website as the Internet Archive had, well, archived. To my delight, it had a whole lot! But since Double Face's toy page was a bust, I looked into each of the other toys' pages. Using a Flash emulator, I was able to see what the surviving .swf files on each page looked like. I even discovered that each of these pages had hidden text descriptions for each toy found below the Flash file on each page.

And what did I find after combing through all of these toy pages, and then the entirety of the site's archived content? Well, there was zero sign of any "character first appeared" notices that were mentioned in Derik's original claim. Each Flash file contained the toys' name, tech specs, bio (the same as their on-package bios), and interactive buttons that showed the toys' different modes and weapon gimmicks. To the right of the Flash file was an illustration of the toy's box art, and to the left of that below the Flash file was a smaller image (now defunct) that linked each page back to the Lineup page. To the left of this smaller image was each of the hidden text descriptions, all of which primarily described the toys as toys, not as characters.

The only descriptions that made any mention of what series the characters originated from were those for Beast Convoy, Lio Convoy, and Skywarp & Thundercracker. The descriptions for Smokesniper and Gigant Bomb did mention that their toys were from G2, but not the two of them as characters. And the ones for Star Saber, Victory Leo, and Victory Saber mentioned that they hail from Planet Victory, but didn't explain what that was or which series is was from.

And what did the text description on Double Face's page say? The exact same thing that was also written on Road Rocket's page:
ロボットからスポーツバイクに変形！
ロボットマスターズシリーズ初のフラッシュギミックを内臓！！
ボタンを押せば、武器が発光するぞ！！

メーカー希望小売価格￥１，０２９円(税込)
English translation (courtesy of DeepL):
Transforms from robot to sportbike!
The first in the Robot Masters series with a built-in flash gimmick!
Press the button and the weapon will light up!

Suggested retail price: ¥1,029 (tax included)

Nothing about him personally. For that, we have to look directly at his toy bio, his on-package story text and his appearances in RobotMasters fiction. His bio notes that he is quiet, sinister, and handles negotiations, with his motto noting he likes to mess with people. The story text (which is also found on Road Rocket's packaging) basically summarizes the events of the seventh RobotMasters web comic, in which he is shown to also be treacherous and mysterious. But you know what is missing from all of this? Anything to support Derik's original claim that RobotMasters Double Face was the same person as RID'01 Sideways. The one and only piece of RobotMasters material in which I could even find a mention of the phrase カーロボット (Kārobotto, "Car Robots") was the RobotMasters Encyclopedia, but only in reference to the Autobot Cars subgroup rather than the 2000 cartoon series.

I immediately rescinded my proposal to merge the two TFWiki articles, and finally realized the aforementioned long distorted truth about Sideways/Double Face: Not only was his RobotMasters version never originally a dimension-hopper, but prior to the creation of the Animated character, Sideways himself was never originally a dimension-hopper!

The belief that he was stemmed not just from the belief that the RID'01, Armada, and RobotMasters dudes were all the same guy, but also from an early impression that RobotMasters itself was a multiversal conflict similar to the Universe War of the 2003 Transformers: Universe series. But, I took a closer look at the RobotMasters fiction and this relation chart:



English translation by Hydra:


A closer inspection reveals that there was only time travel in RobotMasters, no dimensional travel (save for the sole anomalous instance of Galaxy Convoy inexplicably showing up in the final RobotMasters 3D diorama comic, in promotion of his Hybrid Style toy, but which lacked any explanation and had no sign of the Blastizone in any of its events). The RobotMasters fiction specified who did and who did not come through the Blastizone to 2004 Earth, and the only ones who did were Beast Convoy, Beast Megatron, Psycho-Orb, Star Saber, Victory Leo, Gigant Bomb (and Smokesniper?), and Lio Convoy. Characters like Wrecker Hook and Double Face had nothing to indicate that they were dimension-hoppers (the former of which was suspected to be due to this having been back before Takara cleared up the whole Car Robots mess). By all appearances, Double Face was just a native to the world of RobotMasters, and JG1 as a whole.

Even if it had been true that the RobotMasters toy and the RID toy were the same character in Takara's eyes, that'd still only apply for the Japanese G1/Car Robots/RobotMasters side of things. There was still no direct connection to make the Japanese Armada character the same guy. Sure, the RobotMasters toy bio referenced the Japanese names of Armada Sideways's Mini-Cons, " Shadow" and "Bright", but there was nothing more explicit than that, which feels more like an homage or an Easter egg kind of reference. While there was the "mysteriousness" alluded to his toy bio and story text, with nearly two decades of hindsight now behind us, it becomes clear that that mysteriousness was all surface-level; nothing ever came out of it. Author/artist Naoto Tsushima may have hinted at the possibility of there being more to him, but he didn't DO anything with it. In the long run, Double Face's mysteriousness wound up having all the substance of Mysterior. No traces of any Unicronian-affiliation, no signs of any otherworldliness, no indication of Double Face being anything more than just a 21st-century JG1 native. He was Just. Some. Guy.

And frankly, I find it awfully convenient that, only two months after the RobotMasters toy's original release, along came Derik with a claim that, essentially, turned that toy into the exact missing link needed to connect it to both the RID'01 and Armada Sideways toys in such a way that ALSO just so happened to perfectly play right into the very same kind of headcanon ideas that Derik liked to have back then: In the very same ATT post that he made this claim, he also tried to use it to connect the Car Robots Super Spychangers story to the Universe War, speaking as if the two were deliberately written to tie into each other.

And even on the TFWiki's talk page for The One, Derik tried to connect the Primeval Dawn depiction of the Vok with the Alternity, speaking again as if the two were always meant to relate to one another. And then there were Monzo's additional statements on Discord about how Derik claimed Blaster calling the EDC the "stars on Mars" (in the G1 cartoon five-parter "Five Faces of Darkness") was instead in reference to the S.T.A.R.S. organization. And fellow TFWiki user Grum pointed out on Discord that Derik tried to claim that IDW2 was the result of IDW1 Springer rewriting history via time travel. Needless to say, Derik had quite the reputation of being rather full of it. And coupled with a complete lack of any proper evidence to support it, his claim of RID'01 Sideways being RobotMasters Double Face should no longer be given any kind of real consideration.


Conclusion

With there having never been any real connection between the RobotMasters and RID'01 versions of Sideways, that also weakens any ties between the RobotMasters and Armada versions. What remains out of all is the realization that Sideways was never supposed to be the universe-hopping headache that he was made out to be. The RID'01 and Armada bios were worded very similarly, but without Derik originally misleading us about RobotMasters toy, there was no real proof of any dimension-hopping going on (not like the more directly implicit reference in RID'01 Axer's toy bio that pegged him as a dimensionally-displaced G1 Axer).

Armada Sideways was popular at the time, so it seems Takara just capitalized on that popularity by making a G1 version of the character in RobotMasters; simple as that. But Derik's unsourced claim led everyone to believe that Sideways was a multiversal mischief maker, and things like Animated Sideways and Facebook's Ask Sideways were both born out of this belief. As a result, ROTF Sideways has also become entangled in this mess, when it is obvious that he was never supposed to be. Thanks to this longstanding misinformation, the damage is done.

Ask Sideways wrote:Oh, I confuse you, do I? Shocking, because normally I'm SOOOOO straight-forward. Lemmie break this down for you real simple. Everything you think you know about me was a lie told by me to confuse someone, or conjecture from someone who'd be in no position to know. So yeah, maybe I'm a fragment of Unicron, because maybe Planet X used to BE Unicron. And maybe I'm his avatar made manifest and untethered once he collapsed into a giant singularity. And maybe I'm from the Cybertronian Empire. And maybe I'm just an ordinary Autobot who went crazy from Powerlinxing to the wrong Mini-Cons. Maybe I'm all of those things, or none.

And you know what the best part is? You'll. Never. Know.

And thus we have Sideways, the Unicron-hopping Planet of Minions from Dimension X.

 

*reading this post like

 

Ah, yes. News.

 

Long story short:

 

Well, it's a rumor of sorts, anyway.

 

TLDR: allowing Wiki editors opportunities to influence official media is and always has been a mistake

 

Intresting

 

It really isn't.

 

I think this goes in the General TF Discussion section

 

What the fuck.

 

I’m glad I was drinking when reading all that.

 

This was a really interesting read! Very cool.

 

Soooo…what exactly does this change? Someone put their headcanon on a fan wiki (never been done before) and it kind of sorta came true officially? Feels like stuff intimately tied to Unicron would get this treatment inevitably since they decided to do the multiverse/universal singularity nonsense.

Take note, this is why you actually take fan wikis with a grain of salt. You could be walking around with incomplete knowledge of various Sideways and not even know it.

 

Sabrblade is more than welcome to create an account here and post this article in the wrong sub board themself, you know.

 

This was... a fun read. Should've been in General Discussion though. Other than that uh....
...
i like purple motorcycle man being connected to audi r8 cause its cool

 

Well, shit.

 

Ha.

 

That clip in credulous with the 2nd voice is around the 13 minute mark not the 3 minute mark if anyone wants to watch it.

 

I wish I was.

I'm too sober for this shit.

 

This thread should be moved to the General TF Discussion forum. On the Sideways front, all I want is a Generations purple motorcycle man with knees and both Mini-Cons.