Bumblebee came as a breath of fresh air to many Transformers fans, both for its story, emotional impact, and clear, beautifully choreographed action sequences. The film was done in a way that was very easy for any new viewers to understand the essence of Transformers: friendship and family in the face of adversity.
But longtime fans got a little more out of the movie. Filled with references to more than G1 and themes spanning all 35 years of Transformers history, here are 10 connections to the Transformers cartoons in Bumblebee that you didn’t notice.
The Parental Situation
It seems to be a common theme in Transformers cartoons to have an absentee parent. In G1, it was just Spike and Sparkplug Witwicky. After that, Sari and Professor Sumdac. Sure, Sam had two parents in the movie, but we never heard anything about Mikaela’s mother. In Transformers Prime, Jack Darby and June Darby were the parent and offspring duo, followed by Denny and Russell Clay in the dubious sequel series, Robots In Disguise.
Charlie joins the trend, closer to Jack the sense that she has a mother who works as a nurse, but she has something of a new father figure in her life. Still, Charlie’s story starts with the loss of a parent and the strengthening of a strained relationship with her mother. Through Transformers Prime, we see Jack and June go through a similar growing process after June is introduced to the Autobots.
West Coast Location
When are the Autobots coming to the East Coast?
Transformers tend to make earthfall on the West Coast, specifically crashing into the semi-dormant volcano by the name of Mount St. Hillary. Usually, it’s located somewhere in Oregon and no less than 2 iterations of the Ark have crashed into it. The Autobots seriously need a better pilot for this thing.
Aside from the Ark, the Prime Autobots took refuge in an abandoned missile silo in Nevada and Cyberverse started its story in a similar location, based on the amount of red canyons and vegetation.
Voice Actors Galore!
Some veteran Transformers voice actors made it into the movie! The most notable include David Sobolov as Blitzwing, Steve Blum as Starscream, Jon Bailey as Soundwave and Shockwave, and of course, Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime.
Sobolov was involved in both Beast Wars and Prime, Blum rules the Aligned Continuity in Prime, Rescue Bots, and Robots In Disguise, and Bailey officially voiced Optimus in the Machinima series.
Transformers Scattered Across the Universe
Even in the first season of G1, we didn’t meet all the bots on the roster. Due to budget restrictions, Transformers cartoons can’t have nearly as many characters as they had before, leading to explanations of bots being in other places or lost to the stars. This is most predominant in Prime. Arcee tells Jack that the Autobot army itself has been separated and scattered in a desperate bid for survival.
Most recently in Cyberverse, Bumblebee and Windblade had to track down the location of the Ark before the Decepticons could fully gather their forces for an assault on Earth.
Bumblebee’s Overall Design
Obviously, Bumblebee’s design for the movie was heavily influenced by the other movies’ designs. It’s still dubiously in the same timeline as say, The Last Knight, but all of the Transformers’ designs take cues from their G1 counterparts, hence the VW Beetle vehicle mode.
But Bumblebee’s large eyes and mouth seem to hail from his Transformers Prime iteration. Out of all past and present incarnations of the character, Prime Bumblebee (which in turn, was heavily based off of his original 2007 movie design) has the roundest face and largest eyes. But beyond that similarity, the mouth is the biggest giveaway. At the end of the Prime series, we find out that Bumblebee does indeed have a mouth (an honest to goodness shock to everyone) and he’d been wearing a mouthguard the entire time.
Basically, this rounder designed bounced from movie to cartoon and back to the movie. Weird how things work out.
Involving the Human Populace
Bumblebee marked the first time the Decepticons took the initiative to involve humans (Decepticon Day doesn’t count), but Autobots and humans have a long history of working together. Government interaction stems from the movies, but Prime gave a small team of Autobots their own liaison via Agent Fowler.
They later interact with more government officials in seasons 2 and 3, with Optimus spooking General Bryce with a friendly hello and later, all Autobots taking refuge in the hangar of an active military base.
Cliffjumper’s Death
Cliffjumper really didn’t deserve this. Prime started the trend, killing off Cliffjumper in literally the first five minutes of the show. Yes, Hasbro killed off The Rock (seriously, check IMDb if you’re skeptical) after promoting the heck out of him. Starscream deals the final blow and never lets that feat go throughout the entire show.
Though it’s cartoons adjacent, IDW gets a shoutout for killing Cliffjumper in the final moments its run. But he really deserved more than a cameo in a pile of dead robots.
Bumblebee’s Near Death Experience(s)
Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time Bumblebee’s died and come back to life. While this also extends to the first IDW run, Bumblebee’s first death and resurrection arguably came all the way from G1.
Next up was Transformers Animated, grievously injuring Bumblebee in the Season 3 premiere, but he doesn’t actually die. Prime pushed it over the edge in their Season 3 finale, having Megatron kill Bumblebee during the final battle. Megatron, and everyone else for that matter, is quickly surprised when Bee not only returns from the dead (via Cybermatter), but has his voice back and returns the favor by stabbing Megatron with the Star Saber. Brutal.
The Battle Mask
Believe it or not, Bumblebee’s battle mask harkins back to G1. Though he never used it in the comics, it was featured predominantly on his toy and the associated artwork. When Hasbro managed to get his toy trademark back from a swingset company, the live action movies and Animated gave Bumblebee the battle mask back. Prime swapped it out for a mouthguard, but returned to the mask trend with Robots In Disguise.
For the Bumblebee movie, being part of the movie universe, the mask comes from overhead instead of from the jaw or sides to match up with the movie mask deployment function. But the design of the mask itself looks like a mix of an actual bumblebee’s face with the G1 “V” shaped design.
Bumblebee’s History of Trauma
Yes, the first live action movie started the trend of the mute Bumblebees, but it’s affected every Transformers cartoons post-2010. Prime Bumblebee’s history was expanded in Alex Irvine’s short story “Bumblebee at Tyger Pax,” detailing Megatron’s interrogation of the scout and the ultimate removal of his voice box. Being part of something called the Aligned Continuity, this not only affected Prime, but also the High Moon Studio games (War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron), Alex Irvine’s novels (Exiles and Exodus), Prime, and Robots In Disguise. Yeah, that’s all the same Bumblebee.
Now, we get to throw amnesia into the mix. With Transformers Cyberverse set to release slightly before Bumblebee, the writing team was given very vague guidelines on how to proceed. One of the rules was making Bumblebee an amnesiac to have something of a connection to Bumblebee. And of course, Megatron tore out Bumblebee’s voice box in Cyberverse. Gotta love consistency.