Reproduction

HOW IS BABBY FORMED?

Though their bodies may be mechanical, Transformers are, at heart, living beings, and like all creatures, Cybertronians also create new members of their species. But while organic life-forms procreate through a comparatively quick, self-contained, and straightforward procedure, Cybertronian reproduction is a complicated affair. The vast majority of Cybertronians reproduce asexually, but how exactly a new Transformer is created, given life, and introduced to the world is a complicated process—a process that often plays a key role in the origin of their species and culture, even if individual methods of reproduction often vary wildly across different continuity families.

Reproductive methods

See also: Protoform, Hatchling

Mechanical construction

See also: Drone, Man-made Transformers

"I've been workin' on the Dinobot, all the live long day..."

In the very earliest days of the Transformers franchise, before the franchise established the more supernatural aspects of Cybertronian biology, early fictional portrayals treated the Transformers like conventional—albeit highly sophisticated—robots. With the right parts and technical knowledge, anyone could simply build a new Transformer like an ordinary machine. Once built, this new Transformer simply springs to life, a sentient and fully-functioning individual. In the original Transformers cartoon, Wheeljack and company created the Dinobots this way, the Constructicons rebuilt a human city into Trypticon, and the temporarily super-intelligent Grimlock created the Technobots.

As the Transformers franchise continued to evolve, this mundane treatment was largely forgotten in favor of more mystical means of procreation, but permutations and new twists on the idea have continued to surface. The Cyberfactories from the cartoon-based Wings Universe, for instance, are said to have mass-produced a new generation of Transformer life on the planet Earth, and the process of "cold construction" from the 2005 IDW continuity combines the concept of mechanically assembled bodies with the idea of spark infusion from an outside source. In still other stories, mechanically built Transformers are specifically flagged up as mindless "drones." Lacking the presence of an animating spark, these drones are "artifical" beings—mindless, mass-produced units who operate on a set of preprogrammed directives rather than a conscious mind.

In some Transformers universes, sufficiently connected human organizations have studied and reverse-engineered alien techno-biology to manufacture their own Transformers. In some stories, these man-made Transformers are mere drones, mindless human machines that approximate Cybertronian anatomy for their own destructive purposes, while in others the intersection of human and Cybertronian technology has given rise to fully-sentient, human-built Autobots such as the Autoroopers.

Spark infusion

See also: Sacred treasure, Matrix of Leadership, Primal Program, Matrix Flame, Vector Sigma, AllSpark, and AllSpark Mutation

Vector Sigma holds "Disco Night" every Friday at 11 pm.

As the Transformers franchise evolved beyond these simple roots, later stories would firmly establish that Transformers were not simple automatons; rather, they were fully-sentient living beings. Thus, both the Marvel comic and cartoon would separately explain that the creation of a Transformer entailed infusing their physical form with a guiding, animating life-force. The Beast Wars cartoon would eventually dub this life-force a "spark," and still later fiction revealed that sparks generally came from a supernatural artifact capable of imbuing new Transformers with life. In the Marvel comic, this artifact was the "Creation Matrix," and its Primal Program, conceptual forerunner of the later Matrix of Leadership. Concurrently, the cartoon introduced the omniscient supercomputer Vector Sigma, which turned Megatron's transforming but non-sentient robots into the Stunticons.

After the release of both Beast Wars and its sequel Beast Machines, later stories set in the Generation 1 continuity family would essentially retcon that both the Matrix and Vector Sigma were creating new sparks whenever they brought Transformers to life. Soon, the 2007 Transformers film introduced the AllSpark—coopting the name of the Transformer afterlife given in Beast Machines, the metaphysical "realm" from which all Sparks were generated and returned to after death—as an artifact with similar life-giving properties, which carried over into that year's Transformers Animated cartoon. Much like Vector Sigma, both Animated and the live-action film depicted the artifact with life-giving powers, but even more pronounced: the AllSpark can infuse any machine with a spark and spontaneously bring it to life—though results can range from articulate, fully-sentient Transformers to the animalistic creatures collectively known as "AllSpark Mutations."

In rarer circumstances, exotic substances like energon can have a similar effect on mundane objects; The various BotBot tribes, for instance, are the products of energon radiation infusing everyday objects at a human shopping mall with Cybertronian robot forms. In a similar vein, Angolmois Energy displayed the ability to "evolve" normal, organic animals into Maximals and Predacons.

Forging

See also: Protoform, Pit (BW), Transformer afterlife, and Well of All Sparks

In some Transformers tales, the creation of new sparks is tied to Cybertron itself—only a healthy, thriving planet can naturally create the sparks that will become the next generation of Cybertronians. Some stories, most notably Dreamwave's Generation 1 comics and the Aligned continuity family have described the Well of All Sparks as the physical mechanism from which new sparks are drawn up from the core of the planet. In other stories, a sacred artifact such as Vector Sigma or the AllSpark can serve as an intermediary, the physical mechanism by which new sparks are imbued into the living metal that will become their mortal form. This mass of living metal becomes a protoform, a living entity that's roughly analogous to a human fetus. Over time, the liquid metal mass cools and develops into a fully-fledged Transformer, adopting a unique personality and alternate mode. Sometimes referred to as "protoforming" or "being protoformed," IDW Publishing's More than Meets the Eye comic book coined the term "forging" to describe the entire process, and in the years since the term has grown to become a loose synonym for "birth" in general.

Other means

Sexual reproduction

Optimus Prime asks where organic beings come from... and realizes that there are some questions best left unanswered.

See also: Transformer romance

Although the vast majority of Transformers universes feature both male and female Transformers with an understanding of love, the vast majority of Transformers do not reproduce sexually, and indeed regard this kind of procreation as something entirely alien to their mechanical worldview. (Though admittedly, there isn't a lot of direct evidence for humans reproducing sexually in most Transformers media, which is, after all, aimed towards kids.) A handful of stories have nevertheless revealed that some Transformers organize themselves into humanlike family units that could imply organic methods of reproduction... although, again, as Transformers is mostly for kids, little has been revealed beyond infrequent mentions of parents and the occasional crude innuendo, the latter almost certainly added for comedy's sake rather than any kind of definitive canon.

Some versions of Wheelie's backstory, for instance, note that his parents died in the crash that marooned him on the planet Quintessa. Similarly, the Japanese Victory manga reveals that Deathsaurus and his forces have been fighting for the sake of their civilian families living on top of the Planet-Destroying Fortress, which include Deathsaurus's wife Esmeral and many children. In Revenge of the Fallen, Jetfire mentions parents, while in The Last Knight, Hound alludes to a bad relationship with his father.

Budding

See also: Swarm

Budding doesn't look like much fun at ALL. It looks like Aliens versus Predator all over again.

The Transformers: Generation 2 comic revealed that, after their creation by Primus, early Transformers reproduced by "budding," a mitosis-like form of asexual reproduction whereby Transformers could rapidly reproduce by generating a mass of energized liquid metal from within their body. This mass then splits itself off from the "parent" Transformer to become a new Cybertronian. Illustrations suggest that this is something of a communal event, with others surrounding the budding robot in a circle. Once the Transformers had hit a population level that Primus deemed desirable, the practice stopped and all memory of it was erased.

When the Cybertronian faction rediscovered and revived the process over the next 4 million years after the Ark's disappearance, Primus's lifeforce was spread thinner and thinner between them, and the successive generations of budded Transformers became increasingly less sentient and emotional. The lifeform called the Swarm was created as a byproduct of the process. Transformers who have undergone the budding process retain some sort of primal link to their offspring; the Decepticon Onslaught doubles over in pain when his Cybertronian descendant Mindset is destroyed, and the Liege Maximo says he would know if his descendant, Megatron, were to die.

Cloning

See also: Cloning

Transformers possess genetic material of a sort, and this "genome" can be copied and manipulated by scientifically minded individuals to create clones. In some instances, these cloned Transformers are identical in every way to the donor Transformer; in other stories, cloned Transformers may take on different names, color schemes, develop new personalities, and even possess radically different alternate modes—they are, essentially, a new individual with little connection to the original beyond the circumstances of their creation.

Familial relationships

See also: Relatives, Twins

Although the Transformers are generally understood to reproduce asexually, canonical sources have sometimes used genealogical terminology to describe certain relationships. Most commonly, some Transformers possess siblings, and more often than not these siblings are referred to as twins— Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, Jetfire and Jetstorm, or Skids and Mudflap. When Transformers fiction has deigned to give an explanation for this phenomenon, the most common explanation is that twins are the result of a "split protoform" or a "split spark"; akin to the random splitting of a human zygote.

The setting of the Beast Era featured a cast of characters far removed in time from the original Autobots and Decepticons, which the show's cast of Maximals and Predacons referred to as their "ancestors." Rattrap occasionally mentions his "great-aunt" Arcee, and some sources have referred to Optimus Primal as Optimus Prime's descendant. In the absence of sexual reproduction, the use and meaning of these genealogical references is difficult to explain. This term may also be used in an ideological sense or even a technological sense, much as the CD or MP3 player is, in a way, a "descendant" of the gramophone.

Fiction

Generation 1 continuity family

Marvel Comics continuity

Marvel The Transformers comic

Before Primus shut down, he gave the Transformers a "genetic matrix" that contained his essence and power, which could be used to create more Transformers without his direct involvement. The Primal Scream This "Creation Matrix" contained a "Primal Program" encoded within the Matrix's crystal,^[2] which could be used to give life to new Transformers. Over time, the Matrix passed from one leader to the next, until, by the modern day, it had come into the possession of Optimus Prime. The New Order Although Optimus Prime would eventually leave Earth, the Matrix Flame on Cybertron burned constantly as long as the Matrix still existed and could channel its life-giving energies. The Autobot resistance on Cybertron harnessed the Flame to create their new warrior, Ultra Magnus.^[3]

Once the Transformer war spilled over to modern Earth, Shockwave captured and decapitated the Autobot leader, using the Creation Matrix to build and animate the Constructicons. The Next Best Thing to Being There! Shockwave then attempted to imbue life into the newly built Jetfire, but was thwarted by Buster Witwicky, who had had the Matrix downloaded into his mind by Prime's still-living head. Prime Time! Once Prime had been rescued, he used the Matrix to bring Jetfire to life. Rock and Roll-Out!

Marvel Generation 2 comic

With the right early screening, even shelfwarming might some day be preventable.

Soon after Primus created Prima and the first generation of Cybertronians, he gave them the ability to "bud" off from one another as a way to rapidly increase their population, replicating their own genetic material in the process. However, this method of reproduction posed its own unique dangers, and was only ever intended to be a stopgap measure to quickly grow their numbers beyond the Transformers Primus himself had created from the fabric of Cybertron. If Transformers budded too much, the essence of their creator would grow thinner and thinner between them, resulting in a cold and emotionless race.

Once Cybertron's population grew to a desired number, Primus caused his creations to forget about the process entirely, leaving them to reproduce using the Matrix alone... but eventually a group of Decepticons would resurrect the process, quickly shedding their ignoble origins to become the coldly efficient Cybertronian empire. This new faction relied exclusively on budding to procreate, but their overuse of the process led to the creation of the Swarm. The Power and the Glory

Cartoon continuities

The Transformers cartoon

Although some Transformers such as the Dinobots S.O.S. Dinobots and Trypticon Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4 were simply built on Earth like conventional machines, Megatron first created the Stunticons by rebuilding five normal road machines into transforming, remote-controlled robots; unlike the Dinobots, these remained entirely mindless automatons. To turn them into truly sapient Cybertronian lifeforms, Megatron took them to Vector Sigma on Cybertron, and ordered the ancient computer to bring his creations to life, granting them Cybertronian intellects and personalities. The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1 In turn, the Autobots constructed their own team, the Aerialbots, and brought them to life through a similar process. The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 2

A temporarily superintelligent Grimlock created the Technobots using parts from Unicron's severed head, and sacrificed his own enormous intellect to imbue the team with above-average intelligence—a process, that, notably, did not involve Vector Sigma. Grimlock's New Brain

Victory comic

A large population of civilian Decepticons lived atop the Planet-Destroying Fortress, including Deathsaurus's wife Esmeral, his son, and many other small dinosaur Transformers, collectively dubbed the "Baby Dinoforce." The Grand Victory War

Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity

Although the Autobots and Quintessons made several Transformers without the aid of Vector Sigma (a form of Primus), those base Transformers were not considered fully alive robots, being considered by Wheeljack in 1985 as more akin to animals. He would change his mind after creating the Monsterbots in 2011, where he realized they were still legitimate Transformers in their own right, just with less intelligence. Over time, the Monsterbots would grow fully-developed minds. The Road to Legends' Revival Chapter 3 The intelligent Technobots' creation was possible because Grimlock had absorbed Vector Sigma's knowledge when he became a genius. Volcanicus comic 2

Wings Universe

Cybertronians in this universe are created on assembly lines at specialized production centers. These plants seem to create Cybertronians based on set blueprints that determine both their design and to some degree their personality, as both Side Burn's unique appearance/attitude and Ironfist's extra processor are explained as being the result of "glitches" in their production lines. Cybertronians seem to hold some loyalty to the center that created them, as Side Burn joined the Autobots after his own was destroyed by the Decepticons. Side Burn's profile in Club magazine #39 Ironfist's profile in Club magazine #36

In the years following the revitalization of Cybertron, a Cybertronian alliance with Earth and Nebulos led to the proliferation of Cyberfactories across the planet to mass-produce a new generation of Earthborn Transformers. These factories operated using technology reverse engineered from Vector Sigma to bring the new Transformers online. Generation 2: Redux

Following the Rebirth, Jhiaxus utilized advanced cloning technology to birth a "second generation" of Cybertronians modelled after the mightiest of Autobots and Decepticons. A Flash Forward

Beast Wars cartoon

Both Maximals and Predacons begin as protoforms, nonsentient masses of liquid metal. Protoforms are fragile in their unprotected state, vulnerable to energon radiation, The Spark, but given the right circumstances they can survive indefinitely when inside a stasis pod. Beast Wars (Part 1) Where exactly these new protoforms and the sparks they carry come from is something of a mystery; some semi-canonical sources have inferred the existence of an autonomous "Matrix facility" and a "Pit" where Maximal and Predacon protoforms are respectively manufactured, but details are scarce and sometimes contradictory. Beast Wars Universe The Razor's Edge

The protoforms aboard the Maximal starship Axalon were placed in stasis pods for their journey, but after the ship and its crew found themselves diverted to prehistoric Earth, the newborn protoforms were ejected into orbit rather than risk damage in the crash. When a stasis pod landed on Earth, its inbuilt DNA scanner surveyed the terrain for nearby lifeforms, then generated a beast mode for the new protoform, based on the local wildlife, to bring the new Transformer online. Fallen Comrades The Spark Predacon shell programs are capable of altering the personality of a protoform before its activation, potentially turning them into an obedient Predacon soldier. Double Jeopardy Spider's Game

Dreamwave Generation One continuity

Transformers generally begin life as a protoform, a skeletal mass of partially formed circuits that can be altered to suit specific needs. These are kept in stasis pods filled with nurturing nutrient gel until the body is infused with a spark, usually from the Matrix. If the Matrix is absent, life can be granted by attuning the protoform to an energy wavelength similar to the Matrix and then applying a concentrated burst of energon. This alternative is rarely used, as it is extremely resource-consumptive and requires restrictively high amounts of energon. Once a spark is infused into a protoform, it begins a reformatting process that designs its own robot and alternate modes for the new Cybertronian. Some believed that the Cybertronian race had yet to explore other potential avenues of creating Transformers, although what form this might take remains mysterious. More than Meets the Eye #8

Following the loss of the Ark, Shockwave began experimenting with new methods of creating life, including cloning. Recipe for Hate The process sought to induce the natural splitting of a spark through technological means, manipulating a pair of protoforms to match based on a set of pre-programmed variables. More than Meets the Eye #8 From this, he created several unique individuals based on both Autobots and Decepticons like including Sunstorm, an experimental, highly unstable clone of Starscream. Night of the Combaticons As resources grew scarce, Shockwave worked with the Autobots to create a new generation of Transformers by secretly tapping the power of Vector Sigma. Eventually, their efforts gave rise to the Micromasters, a smaller and more fuel-efficient breed of Cybertronian. Destined for Nothing

2005 IDW continuity

Baby boom? Baby fuel-air bomb!

According to Scorponok, no mechanical lifeforms in the galaxy are capable of sexual reproduction. Kill All 'Cons Thus, Cybertronians are normally created through one of two methods: they are either "forged" or "constructed cold." Their names include an "of [place]" suffix to describe where they were born, e.g. "Megatron of Tarn".

Forged Transformers are created when an energy pulse from Vector Sigma flashes across Cybertron and its moons, igniting hot spots where new sparks emerged from the planet. After a great celebration, Cybertronians would gather "sentio metallico" from the planet's surface, "nurturing" the substance until it coalesced around a freshly-harvested spark. The Fecund Moon Remembrance Day Beginning as a simple geometric shape, a newborn protoform follows the genetic instructions hard-coded within their spark to develop limbs, facial features, and components related to their future alternate mode. Silent Light If the protoform struggles to find a form, specialized medical professionals known as blacksmiths help the new Transformer along by sculpting the metal into its most natural shape. A World Misplaced Once a protoform cools into a solid mechanical form, the young Transformer develops by imprinting on its surroundings, learning how to walk, talk, interact with others, and even transform. Surfeit of Primes Shining Armor #1 The Dead Come Home, Part 2 From "first flash" to the final product, the maturation process lasts no more than two weeks, This Calamitous Life with the specific protoform-to-Transformer phase taking anywhere from two to five days. This Machine Kills Fascists Shining Armor #1

A small group of forged Transformers are known as "Point One Percenters" (about 0.01% of the population) and may possess strength, durability, or endurance beyond that of the average Transformer. The Divided Self Some Titans carried hot spots within their bodies, using the Transformers birthed from these hot spots to colonize distant worlds during the reign of the Thirteen. First Contact The Velocitronian Titan Navitas once identified Windblade as the "sparkling" of her planet's Titan, Caminus. Race Against the Light

Sex Ed. Volume 1, or: PANTS FULL OF SHAME."

Cold construction was instituted by Nova Prime after the First Cybertronian Civil War; fearing that the increasingly infrequent pulsewaves from Vector Sigma would halt entirely and leave him without enough Transformers to create his grand galactic empire, Nova entrusted the Matrix of Leadership to a science team headed by Tyrest and charged them with tapping its legendary energies of creation. The scientists succeeded in doing so, and proved able to generate thousands of sparks a day and house them in artificially-built bodies in what historians would dub the "Silver Harvest." Sparks were produced at such a rapid rate that they had to be stockpiled until new bodies could be constructed. The Divided Self To do so, the sparks were "frozen" in photonic crystals until they were "thawed" and placed in a body inside a specialized postnatal facility, leading to the term "constructed cold". Predestination: An Expert's Guide Unbeknownst to the majority of Cybertronians, these photonic crystals were themselves manufactured by a unique Cybertronian, Rung. Modes of Production The prefabricated forms that housed Matrix-derived sparks did not match the "genetic instructions" encoded within a newborn spark, and at least one constructed cold Transformer, Starscream, developed a habit of periodically changing bodies. Some interpreted this as a sign that his spark was still subconsciously trying to find its "true form", Your First Mistake but others held that it was merely a sign of his own vanity. Another Mine

Recognizing the potential for outcry against what they were doing, a cover story was put in place to explain the birth of these new Transformers: the public were told that they were created via spark-splicing, using the energy of a Forged spark to ignite a new one. The Fecund Moon Eventually, one of the scientists had an attack of conscience and stole the Matrix, replacing it with a forgery; unaware of this, Tyrest and his team believed that they had bled the Matrix dry. The Divided Self The public were never told why the "spark-splicing" program was stopped; as such, by the time of Nominus Prime's assassination, Senator Shockwave had made repeated lobbies to resurrect it. An Intimate Beheading Resentment towards constructed cold robots led to religiously motivated prejudice in the name of Adaptus and even apartheid against the "knock-offs." By the time Megatron was first arrested, the Senate had relaxed these laws and the discrimination was officially considered a thing of the past, cough cough. Chaos Theory Part 1 Megatron himself occupied a unique position as the only "hybrid" 'bot. Originating as a wholly cold-constructed bot, the body's original spark was destroyed by a time-travelling Rewind; a Point One Percenter spark which had been harvested on Luna 1 in the present day was placed in the empty shell by Whirl. Predestination: An Expert's Guide

"The next thing I knew, I was pregnant."

As the war dragged on, the Autobots discovered a long abandoned cache of frozen sparks from Nova Prime's era. Desperate to bolster their numbers, Autobot command began mass-producing legions of cold-constructed soldiers to fill out their ranks. These "Made to Order" soldiers were named after the campaigns they were activated for, e.g. "Getaway of the Corcapsia Incursion". Early M.T.Os followed a ten-step education program before they could be declared fit for duty; as the war worsened, however, the number of steps dwindled to seven, then, finally, three simple directives uploaded directly into their minds as their sparks thawed so that new M.T.Os could be airdropped as soon as they came online. Twenty Plus One The Decepticons had their own supplies of M.T.O. soldiers, including Ambulon. The Not Knowing Decepticon M.T.Os were constructed using raw material from melted-down Autobot prisoners, but where their sparks were sourced from is not known. Speak, Memory! (Part 2) The Decepticons experimented with cloning late in the war and created three sentient Insecticons from experiments on a naturally-occurring subterranean species. The process proved horribly inefficient, however, and the three thousand failures lived on as the ravenous "Insecticon swarm". All Hail Megatron #7

The scientist Mesothulas invented a third form of "reproduction" after discovering the ability to create an artificial spark by synthesizing Matrix energy. The only known being created through this method was "Ostaros", a robot who would later become Springer, indistinguishable from any other Cybertronian save for the circumstances of his creation. Whether or not Springer counts as a "true" Cybertronian, or merely an advanced replicant synth robot, is presumably up to the reader to decide. Sins of the Wreckers #3 Sins of the Wreckers #5 After the war, Scorponok obtained the Magnificence and learned how to infuse organic lifeforms with extracted sparks. To revitalize the dying Decepticon movement, he planned to mass-produce these biological creatures; by reproducing sexually, the spark they carried would split again and again and again until their population reached a desired number, at which point their sparks would be harvested and placed back into cold constructed bodies. Only one organic was produced as a proof of concept before Scorponok lost possession of both the child and the Magnificence. Kill All 'Cons

1. ↑ At least thirteen of the Titans carried hot spots within their bodies for colonization purposes; by extension all known Transformers native to the colony worlds are Forged.
2. ↑ Megatron is a hybrid Transformer, consisting of a forged spark in a cold constructed body.

Beast Wars: Uprising

Little is known about how the "Builders of Cybertron"—the former Autobots and Decepticons who fought the Great War—reproduced, although they regarded Vector Sigma as their "font of life". Head Games By the end of their conflict Vector Sigma was counted among the casualties, threatening the dying Cybertronian race with slow extinction. Broken Windshields During their heyday, science identified some particularly exceptional Builders as Point One Percenters, who had helped thwart Unicron's attack on Cybertron. The Inexorable March

Correctly realizing that the Cybertronian race was doomed without an alternate means of generating new sparks, Cerebros bargained with the hyper-evolved Human Confederacy in the hopes that they could grant his race a future. Using the energon matrix they provided, he helped to create the Maximals and Predacons as successors to the Autobots and Decepticons—but even though his contemporaries merely saw these newly created "proto-races" as slaves to continue their old grudges via vicious gladiatorial Games, Cerebros viewed this as an acceptable sacrifice to curtail further Cybertronian aggression. Head Games

Years into the Grand Uprising, the artificially created Galva Convoy and his cloned energon matrix devised the Vehicon, a mass-produced proto-race that could "reproduce" by infecting other Cybertronians and transforming them into more mindless Vehicons. Originally conceived as a weapon of war, the rise of the Vehicons soon snowballed into the Vehicon Apocalypse that effectively ended the Grand Uprising. Derailment

Of Masters and Mayhem

After the onset of the Great War, several Cybertronians were constructed cold. The Truth We Make

TransTech

As Maximals with "fully integrated organic parts," Kitte Shūshū and her husband Z Grill conceived their son Stampy using them—the only explicit confirmation of sexual reproduction in the Transformers franchise.^[4] Andromeda - Axiom Nexus News, 2015/05/10

Transformers vs. G.I. Joe

Following Megatron's defeat, Brawn and his spouse Cover Girl used a combination of Headmaster, binary bonding, and technoactive core technology to conceive a half-Cybertronian, half-human child. The War Never Ends

2019 IDW continuity

New Transformers are forged from Cybertron's living metal, a process that begins with the mass harvesting of raw materials by gigantic, mobile crawlers such as Leviathan The World In Your Eyes Part Three and continues at the Pyramid in Iacon, where this metal is shaped into a new body to house a spark obtained from the Well of All Sparks. Finally, the newborn Transformer is introduced to the people of Cybertron in a great open-air celebration officiated by the reigning Prime. The World In Your Eyes Part Four Wannabee, Part 2 The Transformers of this universe emerge in a comparatively underdeveloped state; born without a concrete understanding of the world around them and lacking an alternate mode, the task of educating these new Transformers falls to a volunteer "mentor" that essentially serves as a parent. Under their mentor's tutelage, new Cybertronians learn about life on Cybertron, apprentice themselves in a job that suits their interests and talents, and eventually scan an alternate mode for themselves. The World In Your Eyes Part One The World In Your Eyes Part Two Arcee/Greenlight: Run

With the passing of the Nominus Edict in the years that followed the War of the Threefold Spark, the forging of new Transformer lives became a strictly controlled affair, only permitted every few kilocycles when the Senate deemed it appropriate. The World In Your Eyes Part Five Despite this, at least one freak accident resulted in the birth of Cliffjumper mere hours after Bumblebee's own forging. Wannabee, Part 2

Unicron Trilogy

Armada cartoon

Very little is known about how new Transformers come online in this continuity, with the exception of the Mini-Cons. These tiny Transformers were deliberately created by Unicron from his cells so as to accelerate the ferocity of the Transformer war on Cybertron; their collective birth had them all hatch from glowing green pods of energy inside Unicron's innermost workings. Drift

Linkage

Redline and Falcia combined energy from their spark frames in order to create a new body for Twirl to inhabit after her Mini-Con storage panel was destroyed in battle. After returning to the living world, Twirl viewed the pair as her "father" and "mother," a claim that Falcia vehemently denied. Linkage Part 7

Live-action film series

Transformer mythology holds that their race was created by the AllSpark, an ancient artifact of unknown origin. When the artifact found its way to Earth, the humans of Sector Seven experimented with the AllSpark's life-giving properties, and discovered that the AllSpark's energy could animate machinery and turn any electronic device into feral "AllSpark Mutations." This power made it of interest to the Decepticons, who, after arriving on Earth, sought to recover the AllSpark and use its power to create a new generation of Decepticons from Earth's technology to conquer the organic world. Transformers

Somewhat confusingly, this continuity family also provides the most evidence for some kind of sexual reproduction: various characters such as Hound Age of Extinction and Jetfire Revenge of the Fallen have alluded to mothers and fathers, ancillary tie-in media has claimed that Megatron killed his and Optimus Prime's father, Transformers Autobots Megatron himself supposedly possesses "chromosomes," Age of Extinction and Wheelie humps Mikaela Banes' leg in a moment of passion. (Yeah...) Revenge of the Fallen

At any rate, those Transformers in this universe who are not simply brought to life by the AllSpark begin as "hatchlings," tiny unprogrammed protoforms who gestate in fluid sacs and require regular doses of energon to survive. Revenge of the Fallen As they mature, hatchlings leave this pod and begin to consume minerals. Dark of the Moon Eventually, they assume their adult dimensions, becoming a protoform capable of engaging in scanning for new alternate modes. Revenge of the Fallen The Dinobots appeared to have reproduced during the three years since Optimus Prime's departure from Earth, birthing the rambunctious "Mini Dinobots," but details beyond this are scarce. The Last Knight

Animated

New protoforms are created from Cybertron's abundant reserves of protomatter, mined from the planet's Sonic Canyons. Once harvested, this metal then placed inside a stasis pod and exposed to the light of the special Matrix Chamber within the dojo of the Cyber-Ninja Corps. After many stellar cycles, the protoforms are imbued with sparks and brought online. The AllSpark Almanac II Five Servos of Doom Young Autobots may attend Autobot boot camp to learn how to work as a team. Autoboot Camp Traditionally, protoforms were granted sparks through the AllSpark, which had supposedly created the Transformer race ten billion years prior; when Megatron's Decepticons sought to seize the AllSpark for themselves during the Great War, the Autobots hid the artifact in deep space, far from Cybertron. Transform and Roll Out Although the Autobots no longer controlled the AllSpark, they could still bring new protoforms online by using Vector Sigma. The AllSpark Almanac II

When Optimus Prime and his crew inadvertently stumbled upon the AllSpark in the present day and destroyed its physical form during a battle on Earth, the "AllSpark fragments" that remained displayed the ability to animate machinery, The Elite Guard each fragment acting as an immortal, indestructible spark. Mission Accomplished Two AllSpark fragments turned a pair of human machines into the Constructicons; Rise of the Constructicons another fragment brought a heap of garbage to life as the eccentric Wreck-Gar, Garbage In, Garbage Out and Starscream used a cadre of stolen protoforms and subdivided his own AllSpark fragment to create a legion of dysfunctional clones. A Fistful of Energon

Shattered Glass

In this backwards universe, new Cybertronians receive "embers" from the Omega Terminus supercomputer. Legions of misshapen mutants attend to this twisted machine by gathering the corpses of the dead from across Cybertron and bringing them to the mass graveyard that surrounds the computer's plinth. Over time, Omega Terminus processes, breaks down, and recycles these remains into fresh robotic bodies, then imbues them with embers to bring them to life. The influence of Omega Terminus ensures that newborn Transformers quickly forget their origins, and its existence is thus considered to be a myth to the people of Cybertron.

In addition to this, the Omega Terminus can also grant embers to non-sentient Cybertronian mechanoids. Grimlock was one such being; under the influence of the Omega Terminus, he rapidly evolved from a simplistic, AI-powered machine into a true Cybertronian, gaining a powerful robot mode and a sophisticated intellect to boot. Dungeons & Dinobots

Aligned continuity family

All Cybertronians begin their existence in the Well of All Sparks. This channel to the living core of Cybertron, created after the death of Solus Prime and her return to Primus, The Covenant of Primus is where new sparks are formed through the AllSpark that traditionally resides within the Well. In eras past, new protoforms would first have to reach the surface via a death-defying run through the Underworld and its assorted horrors to prove their courage and bravery, but this practice eventually faded—by the era just before the Great War, protoforms were simply harvested from the Well, taught to transform, and put to work under the caste system. Exodus Other near-Cybertronian creatures, such as the Insecticons, could replicate themselves, but each successive generation grew increasingly primitive. Fall of Cybertron

The earliest Transformers born from the Well were unaware that they could transform at all; when the Quintessons took control of the planet during the Age of Wrath, they claimed that they had given the Cybertronian race this ability. The influence that the Quintessons exerted over the primitive planet was considerable to the point where newborn Cybertronians during this era began emerging from the well without names, merely numbers. Finally, however, an underground resistance group captured Silverbolt as he emerged from the Well and examined him to prove that the T-cog was a natural part of Transformer biology.

In the Golden Age that followed the expulsion of the Quintessons from their world, Transformers colonized other planets by using conversion beams to instantaneously cyberform promising planets into metallic, Cybertron-like worlds. A portion of Cybertron's own AllSpark energy was used to ignite the colony's core to create a miniature copy of the original Well on Cybertron. The Covenant of Primus

When the Autobot/Decepticon war erupted, however, the AllSpark briefly ceased to produce life in a seeming act of divine rebellion. However the AllSpark created one final wave of Transformers who unanimously joined the Autobots, a generation that included Bumblebee. Exodus During the war, the Decepticon Shockwave experimented with cloning, and even managed to create armies of Predacons based off prehistoric creatures who had once roamed ancient Cybertron. Project Predacon The Decepticons were able to clone protoforms, and Starscream used an abandoned science lab aboard the Decepticon vessel Harbinger to briefly create a team of clones. Armada After the end of the war, Optimus Prime, who had since absorbed the energy of the AllSpark into his physical form for safekeeping, sacrificed his life to reignite the Well and give birth to a brand-new generation of Cybertronians. Predacons Rising The Covenant of Primus

Ask Vector Prime

The Decepticon Ragnarok was an Outlier who could clone himself at will by budding. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/06/25

Any part of The Source—including both Primus and Unicron, as well as the Chronarchitect—can be harnessed to create a new spark, and even Unicron's poisonous emanations like Dark Energon and Angolmois Energy can be used, under the correct circumstances, to grant life to Cybertronian bodies. Vector Prime held that it was not the origins of a spark that determined its future alignment, and pointed out that all sparks had the capacity for both good and evil. Ask Vector Prime, 23/07/2015

Cyberverse

The Allspark was the source of Cybertronian life and the mechanism by which new sparks came into existence. Allspark During the Great War, Megatron hoped to use Vector Sigma to reprogram the Allspark, then use it to create to a new generation of unstoppable Decepticon warriors. Megatron Is My Hero Although this plan was ultimately foiled in one universe, the Megatron of an alternate timeline accomplished this goal after killing his universe's Optimus Prime, and used the Allspark of his universe to create an army of Decepticon supersoldiers. The Other One

Toys

When two toy manufacturing companies love each other very much, one of them may start shooting Transformer design propositions to the other one. There, during several months of gestation, engineers will work on those designs, which will be developed into functional and manufacturable Transformers. Once the Transformer is ready to be produced, its design will be sent to marketing and ultimately to the chain manufacturer for the delivery. Voilà! A new Transformer is born!

Notes

• During the early years of the Transformers franchise, Hasbro had a strict "no-girls" policy regarding the potential existence of female Transformers. Hence, Marvel writer Bob Budiansky's invention of the Creation Matrix as a means of generating new life began as a way to explain how the Transformers could procreate.^[5]

Foreign names

• Japanese: Jiko zōshokunō (自己増殖能, "budding"), Forged (フォージド Fōjido), Constructed cold (コンストラクテッド・コールド Konsutorakuteddo Kōrudo), Spark ketsugō (スパーク結合, "spark-splicing")

References