Continuity family
From Transformers Wiki
A continuity family is TFWiki.net's term for a group of distinct but closely-related individual continuities. It is not an official term, it is not a declaration of immutable canon, but it is an extremely useful organizational tool, providing the essence of how we divide one page from another.
For example, the Generation 1 franchise has always comprised multiple separate, irreconcilable continuities; most prominently the original cartoon and comic books. Therefore, there is no single "Generation 1 continuity", but many (many many) related ones. It would be madness to make a separate page for every single timeline-specific incarnation of, say, Starscream, so we group all of his portrayals across the Generation 1 franchise into the same article, considering them a united "family".
And, just as a single franchise can contain multiple continuities, so can multiple franchises be part of a single continuity. For example, Beast Wars is a separate franchise from Generation 1, but its storyline draws heavily upon Generation 1 continuity, so it is considered part of the same continuity family, and Starscream's appearance in the Beast Wars cartoon is also included on the same page.
Determining where one continuity family ends and a new one begins is an inherently subjective matter and occasionally a cause of debate (see Quirks and gray areas below). One general guideline that fits most cases is that a new family is begun when a series is a) a fresh continuity, b) within a separate franchise, and c) significantly different in cast, theme, style, etc. Robots in Disguise was the first series to break from tradition in all three criteria and therefore form a new family.
Under this organisational scheme, most Transformers media falls into one of eight categories:
Other series exist that do not clearly fall into one of these (such as the Go-Bots toyline, Kre-O shorts, Battle Masters, and...er, Angry Birds), but the majority of Transformers stories reflect one of these "visions" of the brand. Though some fan-targeted official media has homaged TFWiki's use of continuity families in the form of universal clusters, Hasbro itself notably does not subscribe to the idea of the brand being divided into "families"—to them, Optimus Prime is Optimus Prime is Optimus Prime, no matter the differences in style and continuity.
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Specific continuity families
Generation 1
The source from which all other Transformers continuities are ultimately derived, the Generation 1 continuity family was made up of multiple separate continuities from the very start; the Marvel comic, its UK-exclusive side-stories, the original Sunbow cartoon, and the children's storybooks ran side by side from 1984, each telling related, but incompatible takes on the same basic story ideas. This continued into the era of the Generation 2 revival in the 1990s.
While the "Beast Era" marked a significant departure in terms of visuals, cast and story, the events of the Beast Wars cartoon firmly establish it and its sequel series as part of the Generation 1 "mythos". The Generation 1 setting and characters have been revived and revisited since the 2000s with comic series from Dreamwave and IDW, new Generation 1 toys and other media. TakaraTomy, in particular, has focused on expanding its own take on the Generation 1 cartoon timeline.
The Generation 1 family is by far the most extensive in the Transformers multiverse, primarily due to being the most iconic iteration of the brand — after all, if you ask someone what Optimus Prime looks like, most people will picture the original. Perhaps as a self-perpetuating side effect of this, there's a tendency by fans to view new media or toys as "G1 by default" if it doesn't fit clearly into one of the other families.
Robots in Disguise
The first Transformers series to break from the Generation 1 family was the 2001 Robots in Disguise franchise. Curiously, it originated as Car Robots, a Japanese-exclusive series that — while not clearly placed in any existing continuity — was not treated as any different from previous Japanese-exclusive series that fit loosely into the Generation 1/Beast Era timeline. However, when Hasbro imported the series to fill time during the production of Armada, the series was treated as a full reboot, with faction leaders Fire Convoy and Gigatron reimagined as new versions of Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Thanks to the lack of any overt ties to the Generation 1 series in Car Robots, western fans initially assumed that it had also been intended as a full reboot, and thus there was much confusion when a very complicated timeline from the Japanese Kiss Players franchise explained how the events of the series (and several obscure bits of Japanese media) fit into the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon timeline. Because of this unique overlap, Car Robots-original characters on this wiki have Generation 1 family appearances sorted onto the same pages as their RID counterparts.
The scope of the Robots in Disguise continuity family is limited, including only a television series, a short comic story from the 20th Anniversary Transformers Summer Special and many characters who only exist as toys. Perhaps as a result of its confusing origins or its relatively low profile, most revisiting of Robots in Disguise concepts and characters since the series ended have come in Generation 1 series, such as the 2005 IDW continuity and the Transformers Legends manga.
Unicron Trilogy
The "Unicron Trilogy" is the first Transformers continuity designed from the ground up as a full reboot, with Transformers: Armada marking the first time Hasbro and TakaraTomy worked together to create a new Transformers franchise from the start; as such, it includes reimagined versions of classic Generation 1 characters like Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Starscream.
The Unicron Trilogy, so named by Aaron Archer for the key role Unicron plays in each series, includes the Armada, Energon, and Cybertron toylines and all related media. While both Armada and Energon were supported by both cartoons and comic books, the collapse of Dreamwave Productions meant that the only tie-in comics for Cybertron were exclusive to the Transformers Collectors' Club, and a short-lived Japanese manga.
Though Armada, Energon, and Cybertron were all conceived as being part of the same universe by the Hasbro and Takara teams, the Japanese animation studio responsible for the Japanese version of Cybertron (known as Galaxy Force) ignored this, with Galaxy Force thus having no ties to the previous Unicron Trilogy cartoons. The English dub of the series did what it could to smooth over continuity and retroactively fit Cybertron into the timeline of the other two cartoons, and in 2007, Takara used a timeline on their website to retcon Galaxy Force into being a sequel to Legends of the Microns (Armada) and Super Link (Energon) as initially intended.
Movies
Perhaps rivaling Generation 1 as the most prominent continuity family, the live-action movie family is built around 2007's Transformers, its sequels Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, Age of Extinction, and The Last Knight, and its prequels Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts.
The films are supported by a massive array of supporting fiction, from books to comics to video games, all of which tries to follow the films' continuity; however, the disparate tie-in material generally ignores other licensed movie fiction, resulting in multiple "branching" continuities that all use the films as a basis. For obvious reasons, the movies themselves will happily ignore and overwrite elements of these side stories if needed, resulting in tie-in fiction that's at odds with later films — and that's not even getting into tie-in material based on unfinished versions of the film scripts that the movies end up contradicting.
With the films themselves generally disinterested in exploring continuity between different installments, it has generally fallen to tie-in material to reconcile and smooth over unexplained elements of the timeline... though even this proved insufficient when The Last Knight and Bumblebee each provided completely contradictory backstories to the original movie. As such, even the film series itself contains multiple distinct continuities. Isn't that fun?
Animated
Debuting in late 2007 to capitalize on the launch of the live-action movie, the Transformers Animated cartoon introduced a new family with a distinctive visual style and story featuring a young, inexperienced Optimus Prime leading a team of Autobots in a post-Great War setting.
The cartoon lasted for three seasons, supplemented by a comic miniseries, a Japanese manga adaptation, and other ancillary fiction. While a success in terms of sales, Animated ended up a victim of Transformers cannibalizing itself, with toy retailers more interested in giving shelf space to the better-selling movie series toys... not helped by Hasbro wanting to have a little more control over their IP than they had at the time (with both the movie and Animated being partially under the control of completely different gigantic corporations and not necessarily needing Hasbro to vet everything they did).
Outside of a BotCon-exclusive story and toy set and a series of reference books, the Animated continuity family hasn't been revisited in any major way since the cartoon ended, but it remains a fan-favorite series for its sense of humor and strong characterization.
Aligned
Debuting in 2010, the "Aligned" continuity family — a name coined by fans based on Hasbro statements — represented an effort by Hasbro to "align" their media output, creating the Binder of Revelation: a universe bible that all subsequent works, set in a new singular continuity, would be based on. Things didn't exactly turn out this way, however; the necessity of allowing individual creative teams flexibility led to many details not lining up, with the result that the overall "story" only really fits together if you squint.
The Binder of Revelation drew heavily on previous iterations of the brand, attempting to create the "definitive" Transformers continuity by picking and choosing the best elements from Generation 1, the Unicron Trilogy, Animated, the movies, and more. "Aligned" launched with War for Cybertron and Transformers: Exodus in June 2010, chronicling the origins of the Transformers' war; both would later be followed up with the sequels Fall of Cybertron and Exiles. Later in 2010, the Transformers: Prime cartoon debuted the "present-day" story of the Transformers universe with a more serious show focused on long-term storytelling, and The Covenant of Primus would later reveal more of the history found within the Binder, including the full story of the Thirteen original Cybertronians.
Other media in the Aligned continuity family includes the preschooler-focused Rescue Bots and its sequel Rescue Bots Academy, the Robots in Disguise cartoon that served as a sequel to Prime, and the Japanese-exclusive Transformers Go!, along with various pieces of ancillary media and toylines.
Cyberverse
Debuting in 2018, Transformers: Cyberverse represents a second try at a "brand alignment", like the Aligned continuity before it. Rather than attempting to fit multiple stories into a single overarching timeline, Cyberverse is set in a standalone continuity unconnected to any other media; however, it uses variations of the "evergreen" designs that also appear in Generation 1 and Aligned toys and media, and avoids slapping pre-existing names on unrelated characters, instead making use of a roster of classic Transformers characters with recognisable designs.
Cyberverse's story is heavily serialised, and draws on material including the Generation 1 cartoon's backstory, the IDW Generation 1 comics, and even the Binder of Revelation — though it diverts from the Binder enough to generally not be considered an Aligned story. The Cyberverse continuity family centers on the cartoon, supplemented by a video game, several YouTube shorts, the online bios, and—most unusually—the yet-to-be-released maybe-canceled Nezha: Transformers animated series, which blends Cyberverse with the story and characters of the 2003 cartoon The Legend of Nezha.
EarthSpark
Debuting in 2022, Transformers: EarthSpark reflects a relative move away from the brand alignment that characterised the Aligned and Cyberverse continuities. While it makes heavy use of recognizable characters, using variants of their evergreen character designs in some (but not all) cases, EarthSpark diverts from the Generation 1 and Binder of Revelation-inspired stories that had characterised the previous decade of storytelling with a post-Great War setting that centers a new "faction" of Earth-born Transformers, the Terrans, finding their place in the world.
Other families
While most series and toylines will belong to one of the eight major families, outliers exist, ranging from crossover franchises to cross-brand character mashups to the simply unidentifiable. These include:
- GoBots — A continuity family built around the one-time rival of the Transformers brand, centered on the war between the GoBotic factions of the Guardians and the Renegades. (Nothing to do with those Go-Bots.)
- Go-Bots — A continuity family of series targeted at pre-schoolers, centered on the Go-Bots of Botropolis and their adventures in making the universe a better place! (Nothing to do with those GoBots.)
- Battle Masters — A continuity involving rockin', sockin' robots who mostly look little like any other versions of the characters.
- Knights of Unicron — A totally metal continuity where the Knights of Unicron are the best dang band on Cybertron!
- Shattered Glass and Shattered Glass Animated — "Mirror universe" versions mainly of the Generation 1 and Animated continuity families, where up is down, black is white, and Optimus Prime is a baddie.
- BotBots — A bizarre continuity where the only known Transformers are formerly ordinary household items, brought to life by a cloud of energon gas released in a shopping mall.
- TransTech — A singular universe populated by the Transcendent Technomorphs, hyper-advanced Transformers responsible for charting and cataloguing the multiverse.
- Cloud — A universe populated by the Spacetime Police, a group of Transformers that take a more active role in the wider multiverse, interfering directly to maintain its integrity — for a small fee, of course.
Characters from side merchandise lines that draw on multiple incarnations of characters from across continuity families, such as Bot Shots, Kre-O, and Construct-Bots are generally sorted onto their inspirations' pages. The exception is certain major characters from Kre-O, who are portrayed as literally swapping between forms based on different incarnations as one would change clothes, making splitting them up functionally impossible.
Characters that originate in non-Transformers properties such as G.I. Joe, Star Wars, and Animorphs are typically given a single page that covers all their appearances, no matter which Transformers continuity they appear in.
Quirks and gray areas
The concept of a continuity family is not an official one; it was generated by editors of this wiki as an organizational tool. As such, for the bulk of Transformers fiction, deciding where the lines between families are drawn is a subjective business, balancing both abstract guidelines and practical considerations.
IDW Publishing
Though IDW Publishing's 13-year comics continuity is officially classed as part of the Generation 1 franchise, there was initially some dispute over whether it should be considered part of that continuity family. Though the cast almost entirely consisted of Generation 1 characters in recognisable designs, the backstory was very different to any prior Generation 1 universe, and many of the characters were portrayed in unique ways; the question of whether or not, for example, the IDW versions of Galvatron or Thunderwing should be considered the "same character" as previous incarnations was a contentious one.
This debate was reignited with the debut of "phase 2" of the IDW continuity, which began bringing in characters like Sky-Byte, Airachnid, and Knock Out, all based on characters who'd originated in non-Generation 1 media. In time, this anything-goes ethos carried over to both IDW's rebooted Transformers universe and a plethora of miniseries, leading to taxonomic oddities such as Armada Sureshock appearing in a My Little Pony crossover comic, or a new version of Robots in Disguise Riotgear antagonizing "Generation 1" Rodimus in Last Bot Standing.
Ultimately, however, many minor appearances of Generation 1 characters and the incorporation of IDW elements into other G1 toys and media makes it impractical to split it out; it would be absurd, for example, to give a separate page to the IDW version of G1 Roadblock.
Live-action films and Animated
In both the live-action film series and the Transformers Animated cartoon, much of their casts, both major and minor, are updated versions of classic Generation 1 characters. For this reason, when both series debuted, many considered them analogous to the IDW comics; however, both are far more extensive than the relatively self-contained IDW Generation 1 comics, with each having a wide array of their own tie-in material and their own toylines. This, coupled with stark differences in characterisation, aesthetic and backstory, and both series' increasing deviations from the Generation 1 "default" as time went on, meant that it made far more sense to treat them separately.
And ultimately, simply making use of Generation 1 character archetypes cannot on its own be enough to have a franchise be classed as part of the Generation 1 family. By that metric, few-to-no franchises would fall outside of "Generation 1", which would be an organizational nightmare.
Aligned, "evergreen", and beyond
The "Aligned" continuity, Hasbro's attempt at a grand, unified universe for the Transformers brand, drew heavily on previous versions of the brand to create its world. However, the flagship piece of media of this new universe, Transformers: War for Cybertron, was originally conceived as a Generation 1 cartoon prequel; while using a distinct visual style, the designs are almost all heavily based on and recognisable as Generation 1 characters, and High Moon Studios even promoted the game as a Generation 1 prequel to games press. Subsequent Aligned media, such as Prime and Robots in Disguise, stepped further away from strict G1 influence, but it is still very easy to view the games as Generation 1 updates rather than part of the Prime universe.
This issue recurred with the debut of Cyberverse, which went a step further by not only using Generation 1-inspired designs, but the evergreen designs actively being used by contemporary Generation 1 media; their characterisation draws heavily on their classic counterparts, and the show's backstory draws on both Generation 1 and Aligned sources, meaning that relatively little of Cyberverse cartoon is actually unique in the scope of the Transformers brand. From a practical point of view, however, as a new Hasbro-initiated major-media-backed toy franchise with no continuity ties to any previous series, it's easier (and much less page-bloating) to consider it its own family rather than trying to subjectively judge whether it's "close enough".
This approach has also continued into the following EarthSpark series. While it features some evergreen-inspired designs (and even a Generation-1-inspired fantasy sequence in its first episode to further complicate things) and uses many aspects of the "Aligned" continuity in its backstory, it diverges in significant enough ways, on top of the "new Hasbro-initiated major-media-backed toy franchise" thing, so like Cyberverse it makes more sense to just treat it as its own thing.
Official perspectives
The first official media to actively engage with the idea of a Transformers multiverse was the 2003 Universe franchise, which depicted a war involving characters from several previous series. However, the concept of "families" of Transformers universes was first introduced in the TransTech franchise from Hasbro licensee Fun Publications, which introduced the concept of universal streams: technical, overly-precise "code names" for Transformers universes that included designations for the "universal clusters" to which they belonged — in essence, a direct in-universe version of and homage to TFWiki's continuity family system.
Though the universal streams were intended to be deliberately unintuitive and detached to represent the distant, aloof attitude of the Transcendent Technomorphs, some fans really latched onto them, taking them as gospel and framing their entire view of the Transformers multiverse around them. Later Fun Publications fiction did avoid such a strict, divided view of Transformers lore — Beast Wars: Uprising, which is classed as a Generation 1 (or "Primax") continuity, made heavy use of Unicron Trilogy Mini-Cons as Micromasters and brought in characters like Strongarm and Override; as well, later Ask Vector Prime answers tried to emphasise how arbitrary and lacking in inherent meaning the universal stream labels were... for all the good it did. Eventually, the entire universal stream conceit was written out, with the TransTech losing their ability to view the multiverse.
Hasbro itself, meanwhile, has never particularly considered there to be strong divisions between "versions" of the Transformers brand, particularly since the departure of individuals strongly invested in the mechanics of the fictional multiverse; indeed, when asked in 2017, brand manager John Warden indicated that he didn't consider Generation 1 Optimus to be separate from Armada Optimus, or even from Ginrai![1] This, of course, makes sense for a large corporation like Hasbro — they're here to make toys of Optimus Prime for kids to enjoy, not to worry about whether they fit into imagined categories; and, when not looked at from a wiki organization perspective, Sunbow Optimus isn't meaningfully more different from Armada Optimus than he is from Marvel Optimus or from IDW Optimus.
(But seriously, John, Ginrai?)