Transformers: The Movie (1986)

Trivia: One common question about the movie asks about where a few Autobots vanish to after most of the other main Autobots blast off in the two shuttles, such as Blaster, Hound, Sunstreaker etc etc. The "official" reason is that they stayed behind to help repair Autobot city.

Trivia: Even though Starscream was killed in the movie, he came back in two later TV episodes as a ghost. He also appeared in one Beast Wars episode.

Trivia: The creatures that judge Kranix, Hot Rod and Kup are later revealed in the next series of the Transformers cartoon to be the creators of all Transformers, and used to be the masters of them and Cybertron millions of years a go. They are called Quintessons.

Trivia: It seems Huffer dies in the movie, but you don't see this character get killed. The evidence is that in the episode "Dark Awakening" the Autobots find a graveyard ship with a lot of the killed of characters bodies inside, and one grave says Huffer on it.

Trivia: When the Dinobots are fighting Devastator in Autobot city, Sludge gets a double-handed overhead punch on the back, his eyes pop out of his head Looney Toons style.

Trivia: The robots at the start of the movie, who lived on the planet Lithone, were originally suppose to have space ship transforming modes but these were edited out.

Trivia: Grimlock's line to Kup, "Tell Grimlock about petro-rabbits" is a reference to John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" in which Lenny continuously asks George to "Tell me about the rabbits."

Trivia: The opening titles (with the computerized tunnel sequence) were designed by Deena Burkett and Bill Millar. Deena Burkett had worked previously as visual effects scene coordinator for Disney's Tron.

Trivia: Ultra Magnus was suppose to die in a different way at first. The sweeps fired long laser beams that looped round him, and then they all flew off in different directions, ripping Ultra Magnus apart. Censors forced the artists to change it since it was to violent for a kids movie. However, you can still see the Sweeps fire the long laser beams, but when the shot changes lots of little laser blasts his Ultra Magnus.

Trivia: There are actually two versions of the movie. The PG version has the curse word in it, but there is also a G-Rated one. The G-Rated version is exactly the same as the PG version apart from the bit where Spike says "Oh s--t.", which has been taken out.

Trivia: One original scene that at least made it to the story board stage was where Ultra Magnus got Sideswipe, Tracks and Red Alert to come and help him fight Devastator, but Red Alert got shot and killed.

Trivia: Hasbro told the writers of the movie to kill off any of the characters whose toys were no longer selling.

Trivia: The movie is NOT part of the Japanese storyline canon for the cartoon show. Instead, the Japanese version had the episode "Scramble City" which filled in the details between season 2 and 3.

Trivia: A trailer for the Japanese movie has been found that has a lot of unused footage on it, and can be downloaded off www.seibertron.com The unused footage includes a lot of extra animation for the part where Unicron eats his first planet, Ultra Magnus in different colours, a shot of Autobot City's defences firing at the Decepticons, a shot of the Decepticons avoiding fire (but Skywarp takes a hit), a very different looking Autobot city, unused shuttle footage (with Arcee and Daniel on the same ship as Hot Rod, Kup and the Dinobots) etc. It is believed that this was originally "test" animation to see how the movie could look. Use the link and scroll down, then click on the "TF Movie Promo" http://seibertron.com/media/commercials/?path=/Transformers%20G1.

Trivia: In the credits at the end of the movie, Inferno is credited. Why? He is not in the movie at all, let alone says anything. It's rumoured that in the early scripts of the movie Inferno was in it.

Trivia: The movie marks the first ever appearances of Blaster's cassette transformers. However, originally they were suppose to be different designs. There was only 1 robot, called Bolts. The other three with animals. Cubbie was a lion, Stinger a scorpion, and Stripes a tiger. They were changed later to two robots and two animals, a rhino and a lion.

Trivia: This film was originally intended to be part of a double feature with the movie version of the cartoon series "G.I. Joe" ("Action Force" outside the U.S.). In both cases the makers were granted permission to kill off the majority of the cast so that new characters (and therefore new toys) could be introduced to carry on the storyline. Transformers was the first to be released to a veritable onslaught of negative feedback (possibly due to the slight technicality that children don't like seeing their favourite characters die). This prompted a massive overhaul of the G.I. Joe movie with the result that in the finished film, many of that series' main cast sustain the same level of injuries that Optimus Prime and others suffer, only they just lapse into comas.

Trivia: John Moschitta Jr., who played the voice of Blurr, has held the Guinness World Record as the world's fastest talker. He also reprised his role of Blurr for seasons 3 and 4 of Transformers.

Trivia: It seems like nobody knows if Orson Welles (who died before the release of the film) did complete all of his lines. This is because even official sources don't seem to know if he did. Take the Transformers Series 2 Part 2 DVD set. This has a quiz on it and one of the questions goes something like "Orson Welles was unable to complete his lines in Transformers the movie, who completed them for him?" The only correct answer is Leonard Nimoy. However other official sources say that he did complete his lines, such as the voice actor for the character Arcee, who said she thought that Welles had done all of his lines.

Trivia: When the Decepticons retreat to Astrotrain, if you watch really carefully as Astrotrain transforms from train to space shuttle mode, he will do a 360 degree turn. Surely the Decepticons inside will be a bit unsettled?