Transformers myths and misinformation.

I recently came across some new info about our boy Sideways.  The mysterious bikerbot who is either a spawn of Unicron/Unicron's avatar/a dude with a split personality/a citizen of Planet X/or a member of the Cybertronian Empire was not a dimensional traveler who hops to different dimensions(at first). Over the years, we been told the various versions of Sidewayses may or may not be the same dude, crossing to other universes.

Yes, the guy who died in the opening scene in the 2nd live action movie. Weird that this 10 second character retroactively became same character from other Transformers stories.

I mention this character(or characters) several times in my blog and I had to go back and edit them to prevent more misinformation.

There was a Decepticon bike in the Robots in Disguise 2001 toyline called Sideways with a toy bio. Later on, Armada's toyline had a Sideways and it's nearly the same. He was then featured in both Armada and Cybertron. Two shows set in the same timeline(Sort of, that too is a can of worms) In 2004, there was a two-episode OVA crossover series in Japan called RobotMasters

Optimus Prime, Primal, and Victory Saber teamed up

Transformers from various eras are thrown in one area and fought over a rare power source. Anyways, Sideways was in this crossover and he had the same colors as his Armada counterpart and shared a very similar toy bio as his RID2001 and Armada counterparts. People then mentioned that every version of Sideways from the RID2001 toy, Armada/Cybertron character, and Robot Masters are the same exact man as he hopped into the Japanese G1 universe. It kinda made sense due to his master, Unicron is a god-like being who crosses universes.

In 2010, a book called Allspark Almanic said that the Transformers: Animated universe has it's version of Sideways and hints it's the previous dimensional traveler and it hints he will go to another universe and go to Shanghai. Basically saying that hi&bye Decepticon we saw in the 2nd movie is the same guy. The author of the book said it was suppose to be a joke and an Easter egg, not to be treated as canon evidence.

In 2015, there was an official Q&A section on Facebook called Ask Vector Prime. When Vector Prime wasn't around, Sideways took over and claimed every version of his clashing stories is true, or not. He acted like a total troll and nobody took his words seriously. Also, he mentions your mom alot. Vector Prime did came back to his Q&A section while Sideways retreated.

Well the thing is, the stuff about Robot Masters about Sideways being a dimensional traveler was never true to begin with. Western audiences thought RobotMasters was multiverse crossover but that was never the case, it was a time-traveling crossover. So RobotMasters Japanese G1 exclusive. Another thing is someone online made claims about RobotMasters version of Sideways and claim that this is the same exact guy from Armada as well as the toy from RID2001. Everyone took him seriously and it was added on the Transformers wiki and everyone believed it and it stayed that way for a while.

Later works like Allspark Almanac and Ask Vector Prime were inspired to write about Sideways, the dimensional traveler who likes to troll people. So it ended up as canon but it technically wasn't up until to this point.

Sideways was a confusing headache, saying that every version is the same guy, even you ignore the live-action version. We could avoided all this if we knew about this false info. Well sort of. Sideways will still have clashing origins to begin with. The horribly rushed dub of Armada said he was Unicron's avatar which didn't make sense and contradicts with him commutating with Unicron as a separate person. Cybertron gave him a different origin saying he's from Planet X. A whole twelve years after Armada ended in America, the Japanese version finally got completely fansubbed and Sideways said he was a creation of Unicron.

There were other times misinformation got spread around. I still remember being told that in Japan, that Optimus in Armada and Optimus in Energon were two separate characters. This kinda makes sense because Armada ended with Optimus floating in space, feeling unworried of carrying the Matrix due to give in to his dark impulses. You think Energon will start with the Autobots move on in the ten years of peace and when force of evil attacks, Optimus will make this big come back or something but nope, he's suddenly back with the Autobots like nothing happens and doesn't comment on his floating in space moment. Another thing is they have different voice actors in Japan. However that was not the case and it was an early sign that Energon is going to become one of the worse Transformers series of all time.

Somehow these were two separate people in Japan.

However that was never the case, they really were meant to be the same guy. The thing is not everyone had the space in their hard drives to download 52 fansubbed episodes or their relatives didn't want them to download a ton of stuff on their PC. This was long before the age of streaming BTW. All they heard was from they saw on forums and other places of those who seen the Japanese version.

However, this information did spread and people started asking questions like is Nemesis Prime from Armada the corrupted version of Armada Optimus?

It sounds simliar to some fan theories about the recent film, Rise of the Beasts. People theorized that the movie is going to be the like Days of Future Past and that the Maximals are from the future of  the events of The Last Knight and Unicron woke up and destroyed the Earth. The planet eater got control of Optimus and turn him into Scourge, the villain of the movie. The Maximals go back in time to warn the Autobots of the 1990s to prevent this bad future. However that didn't happen and to this day, Paramount still kinda sees the Post-Bay films maybe prequels possibly.


I remember one rumor of something else in Armada but 1st, I must go back to the very 1st episode of Transformers: Robots in Disguise when it premiered in September 8, 2001. The episode had a Dr. Onishi at a press conference in New York City when

Megatron bust through a skyscraper to abduct the scientist but the Autobots arrived to clashed their foes with NYC as their battleground with fallen skyscraper debrief all over the place. Of course, we all know what happen three days later in real life.

The English version of the show got heavily re-edited. Any shots of buildings getting destroyed were edited out. Several episodes aired out-of-order, confusing viewers. There were three episodes that never aired in America. The 1st episode was reran with heavy editing.

Ok, back to Armada, I had to explain the situation of how 9/11 affected RID2001. In January 30, 2003, an episode premiered with a mysterious light almost crashing into a space shuttle. It was revealed that was Jetfire scanning his new form. Two days later in real life, the Columbia Shuttle Disaster happen. Suddenly people were spreading rumors that we were going to this episode is going to banned or edited. Actually it didn't happen surprisingly.

I think there was one rumor that Orson Wells died during production of the animated movie and that Leonard Nimoy finished his lines. This been disproven by the people who worked on the film.

There were myths of that the Japan-only series Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo, that the cast came from the 24th century Cybertron, just like the characters of Beast Wars. Not true. The problem is these shows didn't get properly translated and everyone assumes they came from 24th century Cybertron. They actually came from tens of thousands of years after Beast Machines. However this misinformation did influenced a mid-00s comics based on Beast Wars and threw in characters from the Japan-only shows.

Inspired by lack of info from an untranslated anime.

Then there is the High Moon games, War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron. Alot people think this is a direct prequel to the G1 cartoon. It's not, it's more like inspired by G1 and all it's pre-earth stories featured in the comics. It's actually a prequel to the show, Transformers: Prime. However it was originally designed to be G1-like but Hasbro at the time wanted everything outside of the Michael Bay movies to be part of this one big timeline and it was called the Aligned Continuity. Trying to ram an unconnected video game with a T.V. show doesn't make sense but that's the official explanation we got. The 2nd game did sort of added little Easter Eggs that sort of connect it to Prime.

They got rid of their big muscles, Tron lines, and their noses since the events of the game.