Trivia / Transformers: Cyberverse

• Acting for Two:
  • For the English cast:
    • Ryan Andes as Grimlock and Shockwave.
    • Billy Bob Thompson as Wheeljack and Starscream.
    • Dick Terhune as Maccadam and Prowl.
    • Todd Perlmutter as Ratchet and additional voices (for the latter, alongside Ashleigh Chrisena Ricci, Haley Carter Chapel and Ryan ).
    • Jeremy Levy as Bumblebee, Rack'n'Ruin, Jetfire, Perceptor, and Whirl.
    • Mike Rose^* in actuality, Canadian voice actor Tony Daniels voices Teletraan-1, Teletraan-X, Drift, Lockdown, Astrotrain, Kup, and Croaton.
    • Marc Thompson as Megatron and Sky-Byte.
  • For the Japanese cast:
    • Tetsu Inada as Grimlock, Shockwave, Dirge, Bludgeon, and Prowl.
    • Yoji Ueda as Wheeljack, Ramjet, Soundwave, Acid Storm, Teletraan-1, Teletraan-X, Alpha Trion, Drift, Ratchet, and Maccadam.
    • Akeno Watanabe as Shadow Striker, Slipstream, Clobber, and Chromia.
    • Satoshi Tsuruoka as Starscream, Thundercracker, Rack'n'Ruin, and Lockdown.
  • Taken to ridiculous levels in "The Crossroads".
• All-Star Cast: The Japanese dub has Aoi Yūki, Tetsu Inada, Satoshi Tsuruoka, Ryōhei Kimura, Takehito Koyasu and Shigeru Chiba.
• Billing Displacement: The cast is listed in alphabetical order. Interestingly enough, it's ordered by surname.
• Creator Backlash: Randolph Heard has since admitted that the use of Bumblebee’s voice box in Season 1 hasn’t worked out the way the crew intended it to be. This is why starting with Season 2, Bumblebee got his voice box fixed and can speak normally.
• Darkhorse Casting: Downplayed. The cast of this series is composed of New York non-union voice artists, known for anime like later seasons of Pokémon: The Series and the Yu-Gi-Oh! spin-off series (including Marc Thompson and Marc Swint, who voice Megatron and Soundwave respectively) and Canadian voice artist Tony Daniels (under the name Mike Rose). Some of the VAs, like Jeremy Levy and Jake Tillman, did not have significant roles in animation prior to this show, with Tillman being a former Vine star who moved to YouTube after the former shut down; doing an Optimus Prime voice on The Ellen DeGeneres Show is what landed him the role in the first place.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Clobber was supposed to be a female version of Lugnut, but Hasbro objected to this, so she was renamed. Some foreign markets still use the name Lugnut, indicating that the change was very late.
  • The structure of Season 1 (Bumblebee being mute, the episode of the week format, the flashbacks) were not were a mandate from Hasbro which the production team were happy to move past in later seasons.
• Fake Brit: American Marc Thompson voices Megatron with an accent that wavers between British and Australian.
• Fandom Nod:
  • Wheeljack's characterization as a madcap absent-minded inventor more inclined to make "awesome" weapons than strictly useful ones, including some rather dangerous and self-destructive ones, is more in line with the boiled-down parody used for the captions on TFWiki.net than any actual prior version of the character.
  • In The Immobilizers, several Youtube Transformers reviewers are listed in Cybertronian on a datapad at the "Save the Singlehorns" stand. These include Comodian Cam, UltraPrimal, dragonkllper19600, Threw Adams, RodimusPrimal, Keyan Carlile, and Jillian Jones.
• International Coproduction: The show was produced in United States' Allspark Animation and Ireland's Boulder Media, with the animation outsourced to India's Xentrix Studios.
• Network to the Rescue: After Cartoon Network silently declined to continue showing the series past first season in Poland, TVP ABC (Polish Public Television's children channel which already broadcast Season 1 on terrestrial TV there) premiered Seasons 2 and 3 in one go from late January 2021 to mid-February of the same year.
• No Export for You: In some Central and Eastern European countries like Hungary and Romania, the show was cancelled after its first season, with no announcement for a continuation.
• The Other Darrin:
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Optimus Prime's voice actor, Alfonso Ramirez, tragically passed away in 2019. Blas García, who is the recurring voice actor of the character in Latin America, takes over in season two.
  • The Hungarian dub shuffled around certain character voices in each episode. Shadow Striker had three voices, Soundwave, Shockwave, Ratchet and Hot Rod had two, and there were at least two alternating voices for Starscream. At times, their original actors could still be heard in their episodes in different roles. Most baffling of all, Shadow Striker became a male for one episode. This might have been because the episodes were dubbed with lengthy gaps between them and there was no effort to retain consistency.
  • Saskia Marx was seemingly unable to contribute to Season 4, so Clobber’s few lines of dialogue are provided by Shadow Striker’s actress, Deanna McGovern.
• Production Posse: It has the same pool of voice talent as Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy.
• Prop Recycling:
  • Several minor characters are just recolors of existing characters. For example, the gladiator Megatron fights in "Megatron Is My Hero" is a recolored Grimlock.
  • A tool first shown in Wheeljack's lab is later reused as one of Lockdown's weapons.
• Role Reprise:
  • In the Japanese dub, Ryōhei Kimura reprise his role as Bumblebee from the dub of his own film and also Transformers: Robots in Disguise.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Windblade's voice actress (Jahel Morga) reprises her role from the dub of Transformers: Robots in Disguise.
  • In the Italian dub, a lot of characters reprise their voices from earlier seasons. Marco Balzarotti has been Optimus Prime since The Ultimate Battle (a Compilation Movie of the Unicron Trilogy series included with a Classics Optimus Prime vs Megatron 2-pack), Gianluca Iacono voiced Starscream since War for Cybertron, Claudio Moneta and Lorenzo Scattorin reprise their roles as Ratchet and Wheeljack from Prime and Alessandro Capra, Cristiana Rossi and Sergio Romanò reprise their roles as Bumblebee, Windblade and Grimlock from Robots in Disguise.
  • In the Hungarian dub, Bumblebee retains his voice from Prime and RID. Optimus Prime uses his Prime, RID and second Movieverse voice. Windblade keeps her second RID voice actress and Grimlock was likewise carried over from that show. Starscream and Soundwave also use their RID voice, but strangely only in some episodes. One of Soundwave's voice actors had also dubbed him in some scenes of the '86 movie's second dub.
• Remake Cameo: The Japanese dub has a interesting case of this:
  • Aoi Yūki, who previously voiced Shatter in the dub of Bumblebee, now voices Windblade. Hilariously enough, while the former was a Decepticon, Windblade is an Autobot instead here.
  • While technically could fit in the Role Reprise part of sorts, Takehito Koyasu (as Optimus Prime) previously voiced Optimus Primal from the dub of Beast Wars. Likewise, Shigeru Chiba plays the role of Megatron, but one clearly meant to be the original Megatron of the setting rather than the Predacon descendant from Beast Wars. Both cases not unlike the English version of the Unicron Trilogy.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • Just like Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015), the show was hit with a 6:30 am EST timeslot on Saturdays and no TV advertising thanks to the network's legendarily-unhealthy obsession with Teen Titans Go! (it's worth noting that, unlike with RID 2015, it premiered at a time when TTG was severely declining in popularity and variety was being restored to the schedule in an attempt to lure back longtime viewers who jumped ship for other kids television networks, online, and streaming when TTG dominated the schedule). Its premiere on September 1, 2018 was overshadowed by the premiere of Total DramaRama. As a slight consolation, though, it's at least easier to watch than RiD2015 was in that episodes debut on the CN app each Friday, and are available On Demand as well. Additionally, Hasbro uploads every new episode to their official YouTube page shortly after they air on television. It also helps that the US debut this time was not behind literally the entire EU as well.
  • In Asia, the original English episodes are completely marked as private and viewers can only watch the Malay-dubbed version, meaning English speakers in Asian countries will have to turn to unofficial streaming sites.
• Short Run in Peru:
  • For the first season:
    • From "Megatron is My Hero" to "Maccadam's", Canada has overtaken the United States in airing these episodes, airing two episodes per week. The entire first chapter would have been aired until November 2018, but the week after they aired "Maccadam's", they switched with reruns at the last minute.
    • "Sabotage" and "Teletraan-X" were available first on YouTube TV and On Demand two weeks before CN aired them.
    • "King of the Dinosaurs" and "The Extinction Event" first aired in France, also one to two weeks before the US premiere.
    • "Matrix of Leadership", "Siloed", "Awaken Sleeping Giants" and "Eruption" aired in Singapore, again one to two weeks before the US release.
  • The second season aired faster in France, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, with four episodes per a week.
  • Season 3 aired in its entirety in the UK and EU before the US or Canada even began. Considering the many huge changes in this season, it's safe to say for North American fans social media was a spoiler minefield.
• Spoiled by the Merchandise: The third season, Battle for Cybertron, as well as the inclusion of the Quintessons were revealed by early toy releases rather than by any official show statement or trailer.
• Throw It In!: Acid Storm started as a male Seeker but changed to a female appearance after having a female voice actor cast in the role. Later episodes flip-flopped except when there were spoken lines. While this was likely an animation error, writer Mae Catt decided to put down Acid Storm as genderfluid, which has been met positively.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Character designer Leo Chiola revealed on ArtStation a different version of the intro.
  • Clobber was originally supposed to be a new version of Lugnut. Hasbro, for some reason, didn't want Lugnut to be female, so the name Clobber was given a different name (taken from a Titans Return figure whose fiction puts him in the Beast Era). Why they didn't want Lugnut to be female is unknown, but it seems like it might have something to do with the original character's fanatical devotion which didn't translate into the new show anyway.
  • Concept art by production designer Rob Higgins revealed early designs for Optimus Prime and Starscream when the show was called Transformers Origins that were later revised and/or revamped by Boulder Media.
  • Mae Catt stated in a Q and A session that, had the series continued past season three, there would have been more characters introduced (including Obsidian, Ultra Magnus, a female Jazz (even though Jazz's toy advertising copy says he's male) and Rumble and Frenzy), crossovers with other Transformers continuities (such as the Aligned continuity, Transformers: Animated, Transformers: Shattered Glass and the original G1 cartoon) and a redemption arc for Starscream where he would've been revealed to have survived his apparent death in "The End of the Universe" with amnesia. Mae Catt also made it clear that the production team had no interest in doing a Unicron arc due to how repetitive it had become.
  • As per writer Randolph Heard, Blackarachnia was in consideration to be added to the show during the first two seasons, but ultimately never made the cut.
• Working Title: Transformers Origins.
• Word of God:
  • According to story editor and writer Randolph Heard on Twitter, Rack'n'Ruin in this series were Sparked as conjoined twins, not artificially created into that state, and Shockwave has been inspired by his observations on them to create the two-headed Seeker from "Megatron is My Hero".
  • It was confirmed by writer Gavin Hignight that Deadlock became Drift here, as usual for the character. This eventually made its way into the show subtly, where 'Bee takes Deadlock to Maccadam's but calls him Drift when they're aboard the Ark later.
  • Writer Mae Catt's reviews of the Season 2 episodes have bits of interesting informations about the making of the show's episodes. She also verified that Acid Storm switching between masculine and feminine faces is "just something Acid Storm does."
• Write Who You Know: Randolph Heard based the dog seen in "Sabotage", whom Bumblebee sees in his memories, on his real life French bulldog.

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