Trivia / Beast Wars

• Acting for Two:
  • Optimus Primal and G1 Megatron are both voiced by Gary Chalk.
  • Rattrap, Dinobot, Silverbolt and Waspinator are voiced by Scott McNeil. He also fills in for Tarantulas for a good portion of "Other Voices, Pt. 2".
  • Cheetor, Sentinel and the Maximal Computer are voiced by Ian James Corlett.
  • Rhinox and the Vok are both voiced by Richard Newman.
  • Tigatron/Tigerhawk, the Vok and Unicron are voiced by Blu Mankuma.
  • Terrorsaur and Starscream are both voiced by Doug Parker.
• Ascended Fan Nickname: Megatron is named "Megs" a handful of times, Megs being a common shorthand for his (and eventually all the other Megatrons') name.
• Ascended Fanon:
  • The Predacon base's name, "Darksyde", came from a fanon misinterpretation of a line spoken by Terrorsaur in the episode "Equal Measures". ("Welcome to the dark side!") It was given an official name first in the Beast Wars Transmetals video game, and then in the prequel video Dawn of Future's Past.
  • Similarly, Megatron refers to Tarantulas as "Unicron's Spawn" in "Nemesis Part 1." Bob Forward had intended it as a generic insult, the Cybertronian version of human insults centered around someone's parentage ^note  i.e. "bastard" or "son of a bitch" , but since the series' offered no other explanation for Tarantulas' nebulous origins, many fans took the remark literally. The comic "Primeval Dawn" ran with this and depicted Tarantulas as a creation of Unicron (although Unicron wants to eat Cybertron whereas Tarantulas and the Tripredacus Council want to rule Cybertron- but they could be Antagonistic Offspring).
• Channel Hop: After Beast Machines began on Fox Kids, edited reruns of Beast Wars made their way to that block.
• Creator Backlash: Hirofumi Ichikawa described Yoshikazu Iwanami's take on the Japanese dub, which he considers it as a Macekre that removes the sci-fi seriousness in the original English version. As such, his version of Optimus Primal and Blackarachnia in Alternity are from a version of the U.S. version instead of the Japanese version.
• Creator's Pest:
  • Played straight, but subverted later on. The writers hated Waspinator and his speech pattern, along with being required to appear regularly, so they took every opportunity that they had to write him out of episodes by blowing him to pieces. After a while, when the character became a fan-favorite and the writers' opinions softened on him, they eventually requested Hasbro spare him in Season 2's ending on the basis of his popularity.
  • Played entirely straight with Tigerhawk. According to Bob Forward at TFCon, Tigerhawk's existence was a result of Executive Meddling on the part of Hasbro considering making a toy for him, and wanting the show to promote him, and the writing staff didn't care for him at all. Since the show already wouldn't be getting its fourth season, the plans the staff had for the Vok Myth Arc, including Tigatron and Airazor, had to be scrapped in favor of making Tigerhawk into a combination of them, putting him in the show at the tail end... only for Hasbro to change their mind about making a toy for him and demand he be killed off. Notably, when Bob Forward proceeded to write the script for the 3H comic "Primeval Dawn" using the original ideas he had for the Vok Myth Arc and set after Season 3, Tigatron and Airazor were brought Back from the Dead as themselves, while Tigerhawk was all but ignored.
• Deleted Scene: The final episode had a short deleted scene where they put the original Megatron's spark back into his body, resolving what seems like a pretty big oversight in the final cut.
• Fake American: Quickstrike has a very obvious "Southwestern" styled accent, fitting in with his cowboy personality.
• Fake Russian: For whatever reason, Ravage was given a Russian accent.
• He Also Did: Yoshikazu Iwanami is a rather polarizing figure in both the Transformers franchise and in the Anime industry in general. This is largely due to his reputation for turning productions into Gag Dubs, which not only includes later entries like Transformers: Prime, but his dub work for X-Men: The Animated Series and films such as The Perfect Storm, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Dark Knight. He is also well known (and derided) as sound effects designer for plenty of notable anime titles including Berserk (2016), Kill la Kill, most of Polygon Pictures' library and the entire anime runs of Sword Art Online, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Girls und Panzer; along with both Transformers: Armada and Transformers: Energon.
• The Other Darrin:
  • A few G1 cameos pop up with speaking roles. However, their VAs were either busy (G1 Megatron) or deceased (Starscream).
  • Scott McNeil voices Tarantulas for most of "Other Voices, Pt. 2" rather than Alec Willows, with the exception of Tarantulas' screams, laughs, and final line of the episode.
  • A few of the voices would not return for the Beast Wars: Transmetals game, resulting in Rhinox, Quickstrike, Blackarachnia, Tigatron and Ravage to be recast. The latter three being replaced by Toronto actors Janet Laine Green and Martin Roach, while (respectively) Alec Willows and Ian James Corlett subbed in for the first two roles.
  • In "Master Blaster", David Sobolov replaces Casey Kasem as Teletraan One.
• Prop Recycling: In the first episode Megatron pre-Beast Mode form is the same model for the "Giant Mecha Robot" from the Season 2 episode of ReBoot "Nullzilla", The model is recolored and lacking certain details. Said model was reused quite a bit in other episodes afterwards.
• Promoted Fanboy: Benson Yee, operator of the popular web site bwtf.com and convention visitor. He was approached for G1 knowledge and received a 'consultant' credit in certain episodes. There's a lesser version of this where several fans get minor mentions in-series (usually in the names of sectors on the map and such).
  • In the episode "Dark Designs", Waspinator receives what seems like brain damage, and is called wacko. He responds by calling himself Wonko The Sane, an online handle for Ben Yee.
• Reality Subtext: Roughly a year before the episode Code of Hero aired, Dinobot's toy had been discontinued. With no Transmetal upgrade in sight, Dinobot was written out of the show in spectacular fashion. Megatron's final taunt to him even alludes to this.

  Megatron: Oh, please! Face it, Dinobot! You're old technology, obsolete. What could you possibly do?

• Recycled Script: The "Other Voices" two-parter that closes out the first season is very similar to "Web World Wars", the season 2 finale of ReBoot.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot:
  • The reason why there are so few characters compared to G1 is because CGI was quite expensive when it was created (the first season alone cost an estimated $18 million to produce), forcing the creators to limit the number of characters on each side. This even led to several characters being bumped off to keep costs down (most prominently, season 2 started with Terrorsaur, Scorponok, Tigatron, and Airazor being written out to make room for Silverbolt, Quickstrike, and the Transmetal upgrades, as well as the close proximity of Rampage's introduction and Dinobot's death). Of course, fewer characters meant a stronger focus on the characterization of the existing characters, so it wasn't all bad.
  • During early production, Primal and Megatron would have four modes, including the bat and alligator forms their early toys took. This was far too difficult to animate so they got stuck with the gorilla and T. rex modes. Except, numerous scripts had already been written with Primal flying around due to his bat mode. The bat mode was dropped but his flight capabilities were retained to avoid having to rewrite things, even if his ability to fly wasn't consistent with his Beast Mode.
  • A number of other decisions resulted from the troubles of CGI. Early versions had the series taking place on modern Earth, which was obviously impractical. Wolfang was meant to show up, but the animators went with Tigatron instead because he could be made by tweaking Cheetor's model.
  • The limitations of 90s CGI are also the reason for the near-total absence of human characters.
  • The second season finale has a lot of characters in states of Uncertain Doom, because at the time the writers didn't know who Hasbro wanted alive. It turned out it was most of them, leading to Blackarachnia and Inferno surviving what looked like lethal fates.
  • During production of Season 3, the obvious problem came up that Optimus' new body was far too big to fit inside the Maximal base. So in the Season 3 premiere the base is destroyed and the Maximals salvage it to make a new base, with Optimus standing on the ruins of the previous base's substructure.
  • At the time the third season was produced, the state of Tigerhawk's toy was in flux, and at several points, it wasn't going to see release. It didn't help that the state of the series was similarly in doubt. As a result, Tigerhawk showed up very late and very suddenly, and after a ridiculous display of Merchandise-Driven power, he was killed off just a few episodes later because Hasbro had decided they weren't going to release his toy—a decision they then went back on.
• Sequel Gap: Japanese viewers had to wait nearly two years between Season 1 last episode "Other Voices, Part 2" and Season 2 first episode "Aftermath" (season 1 ended in march 1998 and the re-branded season 2 plus season 3 "Beast Wars Metals" was not aired until October 1999) leaving japanese kids with a pretty inportant unresolved cliffhanger for quite a while. (For comparison, season 1 ended in america on april 1997 and season 2 started on october of the same year).
• Technology Marches On:
  • The Maximals are several times seen using data discs that strongly resemble floppies.
  • Towards the end of "Dark Designs," when Cheetor asks Rhinox what it was like to be a Predacon, he answers "it's like you're three gigabytes of attitude on a two-gig hard drive." No, he didn't say flash drive, he said hard drive. To say nothing of the fact that portable storage in the hundreds of gigabytes is now possible.
• Throw It In!: In 'Before the Storm' Megatron gives one of his trademark rants, laughs, then coughs before continuing. This wasn't scripted; David Kaye really had to clear his throat mid speech. But he worked it into the dialogue so perfectly they left it in, going so far as to animate Megatron coughing and clearing his throat for no particular reason (especially since, as a robot, he doesn't need to breathe, let alone cough). For added effect, they even animated Inferno's surprised reaction to it.
• Unfinished Episode: At least three such episodes are known. The most famous is Dark Glass, a planned Season 3 episode which would have detailed Rattrap's attempts to upload the memories of the original Dinobot into Dinobot II, thus partially filling in a major Plot Hole in the Series Finale. It is believed to have been scrapped because the story was too dark and not action-packed enough, although the writers have, likely due to misremembering, at times suggested other reasons. Two other unproduced episodes were given the working titles A Greater Ape and "Bitch Wars" — the former was about Optimus believing himself to be a real gorilla, even joining a group of them, and was canceled because of CGI limitations; the latter was to be Girl's Night Out Episode but the concept didn't make much sense.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early test animations shown here, here, there, there, here, here, here, and there, show that most of the characters resembled their toys much more accurately due to the demands from Hasbro that every piece of the toy be on the characters in some way. They were changed because it limited the animation of the characters especially when they transform into their beast modes.
  • Originally, Waspinator was going to die at the beginning of the second season alongside Scorponok, while Terrorsaur was going to survive and become a Transmetal. However, Waspinator's popularity as The Chew Toy saved him, with Terrorsaur dying instead ^note  Waspinator didn't get Terrorsaur's planned Transmetal upgrade transplanted onto him, however, as such a power boost would have reduced his effectiveness as The Chew Toy . Scorponok was already planned to die, however, because Inferno was a more entertaining character and would serve as The Dragon to Megatron even better, giving him little reason to remain alive ^note  Terrorsaur had been made similarly redundant by Tarantulas serving as a far more competent treacherous Predacon . Both characters who perished did so because the costly limitations of CGI at the time (which lead to a limited character count) meant that characters needed to be removed so that new ones could be introduced and promote the toyline, among other things. This might be why Waspinator is unusually competent in Aftermath, holding his own against Transmetal Cheeter during their confrontation — that scene was likely written for Transmetal Terrorsaur originally. Incidentally, this also lead - in part - to the meticulous plotting of Dinobot's redemptive Story Arc, so some good came out of it all by the end.
  • Speaking of Inferno, according to an interview with story editor Bob Forward from 1997, Inferno was originally planned to be a body for Megatron. The plan was for Megatron to be killed off and revived with his new body being what would instead become Inferno. The original concept was given a nod during the series itself when Inferno and Megatron swapped heads in a collision gag during Coming of the Fuzors (Part 2).
  • Waspinator and Rhinox had Transmetal toys in the toy line, even though they never changed bodies in the show. This becomes an important point for Rhinox if you support the theory that he decides that Cybertron should be made purely technological in Beast Machines because he had become hateful of his comparatively useless beast mode.
  • "Dark Glass", a very dark episode since scrapped that would've filled in a nasty little Plot Hole dealing with Dinobot's Evil Knockoff during the series' finale.
  • For the series finale, Mainframe wanted to have the Maximals fly the Ark and engage the Nemesis. On top of that, the Nemesis would have been manned by revived Decepticons Thrust, Dirge and Ramjet. Budget and time constraints force them to drop the idea.
    • On top of that, it was originally intended that the two-part Grand Finale was meant to only conclude Season 3 - except as a three-part story, with the preceding Vok-based episode (that introduced Tigerhawk) being the 1st episode. It would have explained Tarantulas' past and motives in greater detail and revealed the reasons for his hatred of the Vok. When Executive Meddling (the desire to create the controversial Beast Machines) kicked in and resulted in Season 3 being the last season (dropping a potential Season 4), this idea was scrapped and the resolution to the "Tarantulas vs. the Vok" became an Aborted Arc. Remnants of the writers' idea do appear in the Spin-Off comics, however.
  • Both Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio very much wanted Frank Welker to reprise his role as G1 Megatron in "The Agenda, Part 2" ^note  to the point that Forward apparently offered to fly out to California and record the lines at Welker's home with a tape recorder . Sadly, Mr. Welker had a very busy schedule, and the cost involved for just a few lines prompted them to drop the idea. Gary Chalk filled in for the role.
    • In this very same episode, when Ravage transforms in cassette mode, the original Transfomers cartoon theme song was meant to be played. However, copyright issues complicated things so the idea was scrapped (however, they did have Ravage use the original G1 transformation noise when he transformed).
  • Speaking of Megatron and Gary Chalk, he originally auditioned for this show's version of Megatron. The role went to David Kaye, however, and Chalk ended up voicing Optimus Primal and the original Megatron instead.
  • Insecticon - one of the first Predacon toys to be released - was originally going to be featured in this series, most likely as part of the original Predacon line-up. This appears to have been learned when Ben Yee's website featured a script draft of "Power Surge" in which Insecticon has dialogue.
  • "Fallen Comrades" was originally going to introduce Wolfang. Of course, between a certain new toy about to come out, Wolfang's own toy being old news, and the fact that tweaking Cheetor's existing character model/design would save time and money, Tigatron was used instead.
  • Along with Dark Glass, there were two other episodes that never got made.
    • The first, A Greater Ape, would have featured Optimus believing himself to be a real gorilla after a blow to the head. He would later join a gorilla troop and fall in love with a female ape before an attack by the Predacons would jog his memory. It wasn't made due to the number of new models that would have been required for the episode.
    • The second, called "Bitch Wars" (which was hopefully just a working title), would have had Airazor and Blackarachnia leaving their respective factions, then teaming up and starting their own all-female faction. It was not made because the writers had no idea how to deal with the concept realistically.
  • Rattrap was going to be a more tragic figure. Based on the exposed "brain" on his toy, Rattrap was going to be heavily malformed due to faulty scanning equipment. Over the show, Rattrap would learn to overcome his disabilities and become a competent warrior. It was scrapped because the technology was not yet able to render his organic innards correctly. Some of the basic concept was reused for Rattrap's arc in Beast Machines.
  • In the script for the episode "Coming of the Fuzors, Part 1", the blanks (protoforms without sparks) were originally referred to as "roc-shaan" as a Take That! to Raksha, a Transformers fan notorious for viewing the Decepticons as the real heroes who was also notable for disliking Beast Wars.
  • As seen here, Rampage was originally going to be a helicopter instead of a tank in his third mode.
  • One for the IDW tie-in comics: following The Gathering and The Ascending, writer Simon Furman had an idea for The Revisiting, which would have detailed a new timeline created when the Vok prevents Megatron's theft of the Golden Disc.

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