G1 Transformers becomes a lot more unsettling to watch when you take into consideration that all the animation errors are canon.
What do you MEAN they’re canon?
You know Unicron? That old son of a gun turned out to be a multiuniversal singularity. Meaning: in all the Transformers universes there was only the one Unicron. The one from armada, the one from G1, the one from Prime. Every single one of them, the same guy existing at the same time in multiple continuities. Same thing for the 13 and Primus.
But then, in Energon, Unicron fucking died. Like, he ended up dead, that shit had never happened before. And Unicron passed from being alive and existing in all universes in tandem, to be dead in one of them. The fabric of reality couldn’t take it and started to collapse on itself (the setting in Cybertron) which manifests as all the errors that occur in all the continuities.
If I remember correctly, it’s called The Unicron Singularity
All the animation errors, all the continuity inconsistencies
Starscream had Thundercracker’s paintjob for a few frames? Unicron Singularity
A dead character appears on a crowd shot? Unicron Singularity
Tag: the unicron singularity
i love talking about how extra Transformers canon can be, so I’m gonna do that for a bit
did you know that Transformers has an in-canon reason for plot holes and continuity errors? an in-canon version of “A Wizard Did It?”
it’s called the Unicron Singularity
see, in Transformers, we have this Universe-Eating Bad Guy God called Unicron. Unicron is (or, I guess “was.” It’s Complicated) what’s known as a Multiversal Singularity. Meaning, across all of the thousands of different Transformers universes and timelines, there is only one Unicron. Unicron can exist in multiple universes simultaneously, but all versions of him share a collective consciousness and memory.
Well, in the cartoon Transformers: Energon, Unicron got killed. Straight up dead.
So, what happens when you kill something that exists simultaneously across all timelines, universes, and dimensions?
You get a massive hole punched in the fabric of reality that affects all of those planes of existence that Unicron existed in.
This reality-shattering black hole, named the Unicron Singularity, is the explanation for every single plot hole, inconsistency, and error in every single piece of Transformers media.
Animation error caused one of the Seekers in Transformers G1 to be colored incorrectly? That was actually a side-effect of Unicron’s death warping reality. For a brief moment, Skywarp was blue because Unicron died.
Transformers: Armada’s constant dubbing errors leading to characters getting called the wrong name all the time? Unicron’s death did that.
Transformers: Cybertron, a show initially created to be a new continuity not tied to any previous shows, being awkwardly reworked in to being a sequel to Energon despite directly contradicting basically everything that happened in Energon? Unicron singularity. In fact, Transformers: Cybertron was the show the Unicron Singularity debuted in and the Singularity was introduced solely to explain the bizarre continuity issues between Cybertron and Energon.
So, to simplify everything:
- Transformers: Cybertron was made as a full reboot with no ties to any previous show
- Businessmen came forward and, with no regard for the series canon because businessmen don’t give two shits about that sort of thing, said “actually, Cybertron is a sequel to Energon.”
- The writers and the fans said “But that doesn’t make sense.”
- The writers worked with what they were given and concocted the biggest “A Wizard Did It” explanation for every single error in Transformers ever.
And that’s how weird Transformers fiction is, which is why a lot of us just prefer to buy the toys and cherrypick the fiction whenever it decides to be good for a change.
How's it hummin'? 