Tropes
- Big Bad Wannabe: Victor Drath, he's a marginally successful crime boss, whose shortcomings he blames on the Autobots intervention in his schemes, but once his scheme to trap four of them in synthoid bodies is a success, he has the still developing synthoids thrown in the dump and plans to have the now vacant Autobot bodies melted down. Old Snake calls him out on his short sightedness and suggests that they reconfigure the now Empty Shells into piloted mechas. Plus not making sure that the (now human) Autobots were dead ultimately lead to his arrest and the fall of his criminal empire. Suffice to say:Old Snake: They simply don't make terrorists like they used to.
- Color Motifs: The Autobots' human overalls are coincidentally in the same colors as their robot modes.
- Continuity Nod: Old Snake's fingers are covered in yellow scales, clearly being a visual reference to what G.I. Joe: The Movie revealed about Cobra Commander's origins.
- Crossover: The Big Bad brings in a character called Old Snake. Who if you follow the clues is at least heavily implied (but not outright stated) to be Cobra Commander from the series G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. He even does the "COBRA!" battlecry at the end of the episode...only to collapse into a coughing fit.
- Expy: Averted! While Arcee looks like Princess Leia in robot mode, she doesn't look like her as a human.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Michelle seems to be against her boyfriend and tries to help Human!Rodimus, only to double-cross him.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Human!Rodimus and Human!Springer look like their voice actors.
- Karma Houdini: Not only does Old Snake (believed to be Cobra Commander) avoid capture unlike Drath and his men, but he's apparently avoided arrest for over 20 years and G.I. Joe never caught him. He just walks off into the night lamenting that crime isn't what it used to be. Granted if the rumor that Old Snake is Cobra Commander is true, then at this point his massive organization i.e. Cobra is history, and he's been reduced to peddling their inventions to any crimelords willing to employ him. But he does not get busted at the end of the episode.
- Unexplained Recovery: In G.I. Joe: The Movie, Cobra Commander was reduced to a mutant snake monster. Assuming Old Snake is indeed the same guy, he somehow regained his humanoid form during the interim. Three years after this episode was produced, DIC Entertainment's G.I. Joe revival would show how it happened.
