Trivia / Transformers: Cybertron

• Creator's Favorite: Vector Prime is Aaron Archer's, the lead toy designer of all Unicron Trilogy shows, favorite character he's made.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Hasbro originally intended the character Overhaul to be called Trailbreaker. This would have given the character the nice transition from Trailbreaker to Leobreaker. Unfortunately, Hasbro's trademark on the name had expired forcing them to rename Trailbreaker, leaving no continuity between the names (later releases of Trailbreaker used lawyer-friendly names such as Trailcutter or Trailblazer; fortunately, Hasbro reacquired the trademark for Trailbreaker in 2014).
  • The "Vanguard Team" in the Japanese line was renamed to the "Cybertron Defense Team" elsewhere. While no official reason has ever been given for the change, the fact there was an active white nationalist group called National Vanguard at the time is the most likely reason.
  • Originally, the show was supposed to be a sequel to Legends of the Microns and Superlink. However, the animation company decided that they didn't want to be beholden to anyone else's work so they turned the show into a Continuity Reboot (though, in the first episode, Bud already knows about the Transformers and Alexis Thi Dang turns up in the finale with her design from Energon). Hasbro responded by turning the show back into a sequel and had Fun Publications turn the Grand Black Hole into the Unicron Singularity and stated it was affecting everyone's minds as to explain the continuity issues. Then, a few years later, Takara used Kiss Players to retcon Galaxy Force back as a proper sequel.
• Missing Episode/Screwed by the Network:
  • During its original broadcast in a number of Eastern European countries, the show went off the air before reaching its final episodes, due to the first 16 or so episodes being constantly rerun for months upon months, stalling the series.
  • Meanwhile, in America, Kids' WB broadcast the first 26 episodes (twice), but then removed the show (on a cliffhanger, no less) because the second half of the series wasn't dubbed yet. Pity the poor children who wanted to see the rest of the series but didn't have Cartoon Network...
• Role Reprise: Aside from everyone coming back for the English dub, the Japanese version sees Tesshō Genda reprising Primus from the Japanese version of Energon.
• The Other Darrin:
  • In the English dub, Megatron's voice actor is different in the pilot^note here played by Trevor Devall, who would later dub Scourge/Flame Convoy in the series proper. (On top of that, he sounds nothing like he would in other episodes. And there's no reason for it: the guy who flawlessly stepped in for Megsy's VA last time the need arose is currently voicing Vector Prime.) Lori is also voiced by a stand-in in three episodes (Chiara Zianni for Retreat, Revelation and Inferno). Override gets the VA pinch-hitter treatment a few times too, but it's quite flawless; if you're deliberately listening for it, her accent (there's a bit of New Yorker in her) is less pronounced in a few episodes, specifically, she goes back and forth between Lisa Ann Beley and Nicole Oliver.
  • Ransack and Scourge were also given the same treatment in at least an episode for each (Sam Vincent in Showdown for Ransack, Colin Murdock for Scourge in Revelation). And it's really noticeable in the former's case.
  • Garry Chalk voices Soundwave in "Giant" instead of Robert O. Smith. Chalk later reprised Soundwave for Bee in the City 2: Electric Boogaloo.
• Screwed by the Network: Despite all episodes being dubbed, the Latin American feed of Jetix only ran the first 26 episode at early hours of the morning so that (like almost all series in the channel) they could show more The Fairly OddParents! and Animation/Pucca during the day. The rest of the series was only shown on local channels that bought the broadcast rights like Canal 5 Mexico and Canal 4 TCS El Salvador.
• Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy:
  • Unlike most Transformers shows this one's characters are very faithful to the toys... to an unnecessary degree. Because the 3D models were based directly on the toys, there's absurdities like screw holes or buttons for spring-loaded missile launchers visible on many of the robots.
  • Backstop, however, saw a radical change to the US version of the toy. Whereas the Japanese Saidos was light gray with gold accents, Hasbro opted for a grayish-purple with yellow accents despite not matching the animation. Saidos has become an extremely rare toy whereas Backstop is quite common on the aftermarket.
• Studio Hop: As noted on the main page, GONZO took over for Actas for the series' animation production with an uncredited Sunwoo Entertainment as co-producer and Korean distributor
• Uncredited Role: Unlike the previous three anime dubbed for America^*Transformers: Robots in Disguise being written by Saban regulars like Richard Epcar, Steve Kramer, Tom Wyner and Marc Handler; while both Armada and Energon were co-adapted by the duo of Terry Klassen and Ward Perry, Cybertron doesn't list its writing staff for the dub, though they were revealed after the fact. These included future Transformers: Prime writer David McDermott, Stephanie Sheh (who's gone on record stating she doesn't remember which episodes she wrote for) and the aforementioned Marc Handler (who wrote six episodes).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Hirotaka Suzuoki was originally intended to voice Starscream as a Role Reprise from the original cartoon. But due to his ill health ^note  and sadly eventual death roughly midway through the show's airing , he was replaced with impressionist Takaya Kuroda.
  • Backstop (Saidos in Japan) was to have a proper left arm with separate back plate, but the designers changed it to a giant claw arm using the back plate as a scoop, citing that they thought it looked like a rhino with a hand coming out of its butt.

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