Continuity
From Transformers Wiki
Note: This chart was quickly out-of-date shortly after its publication, and has only gotten more so over the years. Fun!
A continuity is a fictional universe or timeline that is characterized by recurring characters and settings and an internal consistency with regards to characterization and depicted events. Typically a licensor will establish a fictional universe and stick with it, keeping the stories they produce in continuity with each other, meaning that they are meant to all take place in the same "world".
A continuity is typically established in a single medium, be it cartoon, movie, comic or novel, however it's common for additional material to be produced by licensors which fit into an already-existing continuity. For example, IDW Publishing produced a series of comics which are intended to fit with the live-action movie series. Meanwhile, Fun Publications's "Wings Universe", explicitly takes place in a continuity extremely similar to but not quite the same as the Generation 1 cartoon continuity as seen in The Transformers. On the other end of the scale, Blackthorne Publishing's Transformers in 3-D comics maintained no continuity at all with each other, and could be taken to each present a separate universe.
Still, while all of these continuities are intended to present separate sets of events, there are important similarities which allow us to categorize them in groups. Though IDW's original continuity, The Transformers cartoon, and Marvel Comics's universe present incompatible events, they feature the same characters and agree on many other points as well, allowing them to be categorized as being members of a Generation 1 "continuity family".
Contents |
Multiverse
More so than most science-fiction franchises, Transformers has been, from the very start, a collection of many varied continuities. Even before the G1 cartoon premiered, there was the Marvel Comics series and an array of Marvel-produced storybooks which cannot be reconciled with each other, resulting in myriad micro-continuities. There have been so many mutually exclusive Transformers continuities that a truly exhaustive list would be nearly impossible to complete. However, it is relatively easy to list the major continuity "families".
There is a subjective component to all of this, and each fan decides for themselves how "fine-grained" they want their own personal list of continuities to be. Ultimately, it could be argued that almost every story exists in its own exclusive continuity, even different stories that were clearly intended to be set in the same universe. For example, two episodes of the G1 cartoon series that make no explicit references to events in each other, but are both "descendants" of the three-part "More than Meets the Eye", could arguably exist in different universes. There may be no particular reason to assert that they don't share continuity, but there is also no clear internal evidence that the events of one affected the world of the other. They might conceivably be set in different branches of a timeline that started with "More than Meets the Eye".
The most inclusive perspective is to consider all canonical Transformers stories as existing within a multiverse which contains countless—perhaps infinite—alternate universes. Some of these universes are more closely related to each other than others, but they are all part of the same whole. This approach has been officially sanctioned in a number of stories:
- The 2003 Transformers: Universe franchise, which takes the existence of an overall Transformers multiverse as the core of its story.
- The Armada comic storyline "Worlds Collide" made explicit multiple parallel universes able to sometimes interact. 75,890,008 realities are scanned in the course of the story, though Astroscope claims that there are an infinite number of alternate realities.
- Several of the Fun Publications Timelines tales, most notably the "TransTech" stories, expand on the multiversal concept by treating the continuity families as "clusters" of universal streams that have been studied and catalogued for millennia.
- The joint e-HOBBY/TakaraTomy franchise Transformers Cloud took a slightly different spin on the multiverse concept, presenting each individual Transformers franchise as a discrete "spacetime" reality, with wider continuities being connected in "flows of time."
Meta-continuity
The 2003 Transformers: Universe franchise (sometimes referred to as "TFU") attempted to create an overarching structure to the Transformers multiverse. It was helmed, fiction-wise, by 3H Productions, who then held the license to run the official Transformers convention, BotCon. Convention fiction starting in the year 1997 was directly incorporated into Universe, although it wasn't until BotCon 2002 that the term Transformers: Expanded Universe appeared on a BotCon toy box, and the name was shortened to just Transformers: Universe afterwards. The Universe toyline eventually became the home of not just convention-exclusive toys, but also other redecos and store exclusives that were sold in normal retail outlets. The bios for the Universe characters were primarily the responsibility of 3H.
The Universe meta-continuity officially established the idea of a Transformers multiverse and pulled together many elements from other Transformers continuities, focusing heavily on variations of Beast Machines and Generation 1. 3H's comic book series, Primeval Dawn, The Wreckers, and Universe, brought together characters from many parallel universes and are the primary sources of information about this meta-continuity. Character bios published in convention programs, fan club newsletters, and on the 3H and Hasbro websites also contribute.
Among other things, the Universe universe makes some reconciliation between conflicting origins for Cybertron and the Transformers race that were presented in the original comics, cartoon, and Beast Machines cartoon. It also incorporates the otherwise ignored sub-toylines Mutant Beast Wars and Dinobots into its fiction, and is the earliest example of a story that asserts (or implies) that there is only one Unicron who travels from one universe to another, rather than an infinite array of Unicrons in different universes.
Fun Publications, the company that followed 3H in running the official convention and fan club, continued this approach. The Fan Club comic storyline "Balancing Act" took place primarily during the Cybertron cartoon, but featured a multiversal battle fought by characters culled from other continuities. The setting changed after each arc ended as characters migrated from continuity to continuity. The "science" of the multiverse was further expanded upon in the stories set within the TransTech "hub" universe.
The multiverse has been explored within the Cyberverse cartoon with the series using Unspace, and new versions of the Quintessons, Megatron X and Tarn. It connects to the War for Cybertron Trilogy cartoon by showing key moments in the multiverse match when Optimus Prime threw the AllSpark into a space bridge the same way his Cyberverse counterpart did.[2] War for Cybertron also brought back the Dead Universe from the 2005 IDW continuity.
Major continuity families
As of 2024, the wiki recognizes eight primary continuity families. These are:
- Generation 1 / Beast Era (the "Primax Cluster", according to the TransTechs)
- Robots in Disguise ("Viron Cluster")
- The Unicron Trilogy ("Aurex Cluster")
- The live-action film series ("Tyran Cluster")
- Animated ("Malgus Cluster")
- Aligned ("Uniend Cluster")
- Cyberverse
- EarthSpark
Additional continuity families include:
- Pre-Transformers and other related franchises ("Cymond Cluster")
- The original GoBots ("Gargent Cluster")
- Robotix ("Xobitor Cluster")
- Animorphs (Elsewhere in the Megaverse)
- The Playskool Go-Bots ("Yayayarst Cluster")
- Star Wars ("Lukas Cluster")
- Shattered Glass ("Primax -408.24 Epsilon")
- TransTech ("Nexus Cluster")
- Kre-O ("Fornax Cluster")
- Angry Birds ("Rovio Cluster")
- Cloud ("Primax 514.29 Gamma")
- BotBots
- Side merchandise ("Iocus Cluster")
- The real-world universes ("Quadwal Cluster")
Every (or nearly every) Transformers story can be easily fit into one of these families, even if its precise continuity can't be pinned down.
For further information about these continuity families and families in general, please see Continuity family.
Prominent Generation 1 continuities
Within Generation 1, there are an almost uncountable number of established alternate universes. Some of these continuities are extremely obscure, such as the timeline which houses the second Commodore 64 video game. On the other hand, the G1 cartoon is so widely known that even many members of the general public (i.e., not fans) would be familiar with it, and quite possibly be unaware that there even are other Transformers stories besides it and the 2007 live-action film.
Following is a very incomplete list showing only the most prominent G1 continuities and their relationships to each other. For the purposes of this list, only G1-proper will be considered, and not the extended-G1 that includes G2, MW, and the Beast series. Additionally, in keeping with Transformers Wiki's policy, the live-action film is not included, as it is treated as an independent continuity family rather than a part of G1.
- Cartoons (American) - Three complete seasons of varying length, The Transformers: The Movie, and a 3-episode "fourth season". Probably the best known of all continuities.
- Cartoons (Japanese) - Includes the first three seasons of the American cartoons and the movie, as well as three additional TV series, two OVAs and various manga series.
- Marvel U.S. comics - Includes The Transformers, The Transformers: Headmasters, and the character profile series The Transformers Universe. The comic book adaptation of The Transformers: The Movie is out of continuity with the other Marvel comics.
- Marvel UK comics - Includes both the American comics and UK-originated material, amounting to a similar total volume, that was published exclusively in the UK until being reprinted internationally in the 2000s.
- Dreamwave Generation One continuity - A new continuity with much of the flavor of the original cartoon series, but a very different history. Includes the three "G1" volumes as well as three volumes of The War Within and a Micromasters miniseries.
- 2005 IDW continuity - Yet another new continuity, based on earlier versions of G1 featuring classic characters but with some large revisions of basic story premise and character designs. This universe, which began with 2005's The Transformers: Infiltration, ran for more than thirteen years and briefly ballooned into an entire "Hasbro Universe" of interconnected titles, before finally concluding in late 2018 with the Transformers: Unicron miniseries.
- 2019 IDW continuity — a rebooted continuity that began in early 2019 with Transformers and concluded in 2022 with the Transformers: Fate of Cybertron one-shot.
- The Energon Universe – a new continuity that began in 2023, focused on creating a shared universe for Transformers, G.I. Joe, and an original property – Void Rivals – all united by a focus on the substance energon. This continuity began with a stealth launch in the pages of Void Rivals followed by a new Transformers ongoing series released in October of that year.
Unified Japanese continuities
In Japan, every Transformers cartoon until the release of Legends of the Microns can, with a little elbow grease, be fit into a single unified continuity, much like the unified American G1/Beast continuity. This includes the American G1 cartoon (minus Season 4, which Japan did not air) and Beast series as well as Headmasters, Super-God Masterforce, Victory, Zone, Beast Wars II, Beast Wars Neo, and even Car Robots (the original, Japanese version of Robots in Disguise). In the 21st century, TakaraTomy developed a fondness for new fiction that was retroactively inserted into available gaps in the G1 timeline, like Binaltech, Kiss Players, and Robotmasters. Despite this rapidly accumulating additional story material, all of these stories managed to more or less hang together (save for Binaltech, which was spun off into its own alternate timeline as its story progressed).
In Japan, then, Legends of the Microns was the first full reboot, connecting with Super Link into the second major Japanese continuity, and then, as noted above, Galaxy Force started a third.
In 2007, TakaraTomy performed some significant retcons to their Generation 1 timeline, most visible in a timeline posted on their website (accompanied by a flowchart, at right), and much more extensively in another one printed in the Kiss Players/15 Go! Go! Compilation graphic novel. The most significant aspect of this retcon was to exploit the events of The Battle of the Star Gate, an unfinished manga from Super Robot Magazine, to nail down a precise destination for the time travelers of Car Robots and explain why the Generation 1 cast was not present during the events of the series. The website timeline also made the rather bizarre claim that the 2007 live-action movie also somehow took place in the Japanese Generation 1 continuity in 2007, but this was not reflected by the accompanying flow-chart, and was established to not be the case by the Kiss Players timeline (which noted that the movie-verse Autobots and Decepticons came from another universe).
In addition to this serious working-over of the Generation 1 universe, the website timeline also took a moment to re-establish Galaxy Force as in the same timeline as Legends of the Microns and Super Link (as had been initially intended and how the series had always been presented in the West).
In addition to the above, nearly every Japanese TF franchise has had ancillary manga published in magazines such as TV Magazine and Comic Bom Bom. The relationship between the manga and cartoons varied. For example, the manga associated with the first two years of Transformers (pre-movie) can easily fit into the cartoon continuity, but would not contribute much of substance to the timeline. Some of the later G1 manga, however, such as those associated with Super-God Masterforce and Victory, contradict the cartoons bearing the same names.
Continuity soup
With the labyrinth of branching and criss-crossing timelines, it can be difficult at times to say exactly what makes up the history of any given Transformers universe. Over and over through the history of the Transformers brand, stories have been written which both extend pre-existing stories and also "fill in" pre-existing stories, adding details and retcons big and small. These extensions may be written years or even decades after the stories from which they are descended. There may be multiple extensions which conflict with each other, written at different times by different people for different licensees, targeting different markets. Branching timelines, on their own, are not that difficult to keep straight, but the relationship between various Transformers stories is much more complex than that because of the way new stories will pick and choose elements from old stories. There are no real answers to the questions that arise from this practice. It becomes a very messy question of subjective tastes and opinions, leading to the idea of a personal canon.
Consider the Beast Wars television series: It borrows elements from the American G1 cartoon and G1 comics. The history of the Beast Wars cartoon's timeline is a mishmash, something that probably resembles the G1 cartoon more than anything else, but which differs from the cartoon in unknown ways and may include more (or less) of what we see in the Marvel Comics. BW is set in a G1 universe for which we have never seen—and probably will never see—more than tiny glimpses of the "G1 part". The history of that universe is not known, even though we presumably know its broad outline.
So, what significance does information from Beast Wars, such as the idea of the spark, hold for those older stories? Since being introduced in "The Spark", sparks have become one of the most important and unifying concepts in all Transformers fiction, yet fiction which predates Beast Wars, of course, never mentions them. G1-era fiction which was written post-Beast Wars almost always includes them. Retconning sparks into most vintage G1 fiction is not all that difficult, but should it be done? Obviously, the G1-esque universe in which the Beast series are set has sparks, but what about the actual G1 cartoon and comic universes? Do they have sparks? Does the G1 cartoon's future (and past) look like Beast Wars or like something else?
What if a new story instead claimed that its past was exactly like an old story rather than merely similar to it? The main storyline of the Universe and Wreckers comics is ostensibly set in the BW/BM cartoon continuity, happening alongside and immediately afterwards. Are revelations from Universe "true" in Beast Machines, or is Universe actually set in a timeline which is identical to the BM timeline aside from those extra events occurring? Does your answer change when IDW Publishing releases a Beast Wars comic which also claims to occur alongside the BW cartoon, but which cannot be reconciled with Universe?
What do you do with something like the Classics comics published in the official fan club newsletter? Those stories are set in the future of the US G1 comic, except...that they ignore the UK G1 comic and the US G2 comic. According to G2, there is an offshoot race of Decepticons running around in space who have been away from Cybertron for millions of years. Is that still true in other offshoots of the G1 comic? Is Jhiaxus out there in Classics-comics space somewhere, and simply not visiting, or does he not exist at all? He could exist...but there is no way to know.
Another curious case is that of Transformers Animated. While there are divergent continuities, such as the UK published Titan stories, there is also a comic series and a brace of guide books that are explicitly set in the same continuity as the cartoon. Since these books were produced concurrently with the cartoon, and by many of the same creators, does that influence our understanding of how continuity works for this series?
The only objective way to deal with all of this would be to take a very strict viewpoint on every story and never assume that anything is "true" unless it is explicitly stated in that story. Taken to an extreme, though, this stance can make it impossible to declare any two stories to share continuity, even two sequential episodes of a given TV series. For all we know, the new episode is set in a universe closely parallel to that of the previous episode but a little different. We wouldn't want to assume that a scene which wasn't shown in the recap actually occurred, after all. Especially if there's a continuity glitch of some sort, like the dialog in a recap being slightly different than the dialog from the earlier episode. So an absolutist "only what they showed" viewpoint can't really work. There has to be some concession; even "I'm going to treat all the episodes of this series as if they are one big story" is a subjective decision, one which another fan may find too restrictive or too liberal (especially if two of those episodes directly contradict each other!).
We... are family?
Lastly, all of this means that it is difficult to tease out questions of which continuities are subsets of others, how closely related two different continuities are, etc. A significant example of this is the categorization of the various IDW Publishing and Movie continuities. Both are clearly beholden to Generation 1 in many ways, but are generally thought to be notably "further out" from the G1 "core" than most other G1 continuities. Should they be considered new families or not? How do you quantify this? Do differences in physical form such as the movie's drastically different aesthetic make a difference? If so, should it also make a difference that most IDW characters have had their alt-modes altered slightly? What ratio of character rehashes to original characters is required to count as part of the old family instead of the start of a new one? What if, instead of a straight-up rehash, it's more of an amalgamation of a few old characters, as in the case of Movie Frenzy?
Again, the reader is referred to the article on continuity families, in particular the section "Quirks and gray areas", for a brief explanation of the categorizations that have been adopted on this wiki.
Notes
- Many other fictional "universes" are explicitly Multiverses, among these is the Marvel Universe, which in the manner of a Venn diagram also overlaps to include a portion of the Transformers Multiverse (Earth-91274 for instance).
- Due to crossovers between properties, it has been argued by some fans that all (or nearly all) Hasbro toy properties (including all fiction published under The Transformers, G.I. Joe, Inhumanoids, Jem and the Holograms, C.O.P.S., Battle Beasts, Action Man, M.A.S.K., Challenge of the GoBots, My Little Pony, Robotix, Visionaries, and Air Raiders) may be part of the same extended multiverse. (Sadly Sky Commanders has yet to join the fun.)
- Countless external properties have been inserted into some Transformers continuity or another, either via direct crossovers or inside jokes and winking nods.
Foreign names
- Japanese: Jikū Renzokutai (時空連続体, "spacetime continuity")
