Trivia / Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen

• Acting for Two:
  • Grey DeLisle voices Arcee, Chromia, and Elita-1. Justified since they're triplets.
  • Tom Kenny voices Skids and Wheelie.
  • Frank Welker voices Soundwave, Grindor, Devastator, and Ravage.
  • Kevin Michael Richardson voices Rampage, one of the Primes, and vocal effects for various Hatchlings and Kitchenbots.
  • In the video games, James Arnold Taylor voices The Fallen and the player character.
• Blooper: Subtitles render the dialogue of the Dynasty of Primes members voiced by Michael York and Robin Atkin Downes as being delivered by a single character, not two separate entities.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: "New Divide" by Linkin Park ended up becoming one of their biggest hits, and is held in much more acclaim than the film.
• Creator Backlash: Following the release of Revenge of the Fallen and in the lead-up to Dark of the Moon, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Bay, and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura discussed their disappointment with the final product, all being onboard with the criticisms towards the script, which they felt suffered due to the hard-locked release schedule and issues resulting from the 2007 writer's strike. Bay expressed remorse about the "dorky comedy" like the Twins and promised to have them removed for the sequel, admitting that The Fallen was "kind of a (expletive) character", and specifically citing the inclusion of "mystical" elements as a mistake.
• Creator Killer: The game adaption was the last game Luxoflux developed before it dissolved.
• Creator's Pest: Michael Bay hated Arcee and not only killed her off, he openly announced she would die an unceremonious death four months before the film’s release with a smile on his face.
• Dummied Out: Done indirectly with the Autobot motorcycle figures - leaving out the third one from the toyline resulted in two Autobot sisters with the components intended for a three-part mecha form.
• Executive Meddling:
  • You might be wondering why the name of the college Sam Witwicky went to is not named. That's because after filming both Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, the colleges forbade Michael Bay from revealing the name of the college after they filmed a scene where Mrs. Witwicky got accidentally high on pot brownies and went around campus in a pot-induced humiliation fest.
  • Positive example from Hasbro. Several employees actually asked the film crew to not give major design overhauls to returning characters so that parents wouldn't have to buy their kids new toys of the same characters. New toys of returning characters were still made, but usually with minor changes that only completists would be interested in getting.
• Descended Creator: Film editor Calvin Wimmer as Demolishor.
• Fandom Nod: Leo and co. are basically pitch-perfect parodies of some of the more extreme bloggers any fandom can pick up.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Frank Welker voices Soundwave in the English, French and Italian releases. While the American Spanish and German credit him, they opt for local actors.
• The Other Darrin: Megatron is voiced by Frank Welker instead of Hugo Weaving in the game, and Lennox is placed by John Dimaggio instead of Josh Duhamel.
• The Other Marty: James Arnold Taylor recorded lines for The Fallen (which is how he got the job to voice the character in the tie-in game), but was dubbed over by Tony Todd. However, JAT's grunting is left intact according to a JATCAST episode.
• Promoted Fanboy: Josh Nizzi created a fan design for a movie-based Long Haul, which was so good he was brought to Hasbro and eventually to the actual film production team. In addition to Long Haul being the first new design approved for Revenge of the Fallen, he ended up designing Jetfire, the new Megatron and Powered-Up Optimus Prime.
• Recycled Script: Many plot points are taken directly from the The Transformers: The Movie. Some details are changed and there's a lot of new stuff, but the basic plot is strikingly similar.
  • Megatron is resurrected and works for the real Big Bad - an ancient Generic Doomsday Villain capable of causing destruction on a cosmic scale.
  • The Big Bad cannot act until something Prime-related is out of the picture: The Matrix of Leadership for Unicron, and Optimus Prime for the Fallen. Optimus Prime falls in battle, allowing the Big Bad to make their move.
  • The villain gets close to victory, but the Matrix of Leadership is used and a Prime (Rodimus/Optimus respectively) takes them out in a Curb-Stomp Battle; meanwhile, Megatron lives to fight another day.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • The characters of Arcee, Soundwave, and Ravage were all considered for the first film but were removed until now. Arcee was removed due to the writers believing they'd have to explain why there are female robots in an alien race and because Bay also disliked how small she was compared to the other Autobots (and as it was later revealed, he really hated her for some reason). Soundwave (and Ravage with him) was excised when the direction for the character couldn't be decided upon, and they decided to save him for a sequel where they could try to do him right.
  • Optimus's reintroduction in this film, descending out of a plane, was an idea considered for the first film.
• Role Reprise: In the video games, most of the film's cast reprises their roles whereas they were mostly replaced for the 2007 video games. This includes Mark Ryan as Bumblebee, Jess Harnell as Ironhide, Robert Foxworth as Ratchet, and Charlie Adler as Starscream.
• Shrug of God: Writer Roberto Orci admitted to not knowing why they didn't have Barricade return when his disappearance from the first film before the climax was meant to be a Sequel Hook.
• Troubled Production: Among all the Transformers movies became hit with this pretty hard.
  • The writers turned in a script outline the night before the 2007 writers guild strike, which impacted the pre-production timetable. The sequel release date was set in stone against Michael Bay's wishes, but based much of the early production work on that outline. When the strike ended and the writers came back, their outline became locked in and they had to write the rest of the movie based on all of the story beats, unable to change much as they went along.
  • Differing demands from Hasbro, Paramount and Product Placement companies drove much of the decided robot cast. Audi offered a car to become the Decepticon Sideways then seemed to back out, but then late in production gave the go-ahead for the whole sequence that highlighted the Arcee triplets and Sideswipe chasing him down.
  • Similarly, Jolt the Chevy Volt was included late in the schedule, with the writers promising to give him a substantial role, but ended up mostly a background extra although does participate in one of the most memorable moments of the film (he ends up getting a death scene in a comic that lead up to DOTM).
  • Barricade from the first movie was originally intended to return in this film for a bigger role, but was completely forgotten due to the cramped production timeline.
  • The script in general was being written while they were shooting, which both Bay and Labeouf admitting disappointment and frustration. Much of the lead-up to DOTM was promising that they had a better-refined script.
• Viral Marketing: Rival conspiracy websites mentioned in the film really exist. However, neither TheRealEffingDeal.com nor GiantEffingRobots.com are around anymore as of 2018 (or possibly even earlier).
• Uncredited Role: Applies to the vocal effects for the Hatchlings, the Kitchenbots, Ravage, and Grindor, provided by Kevin Michael Richardson, Fred Tatasciore and Frank Welker, respectively.
• What Could Have Been: There can be a very interesting book written about how a number of factors made this movie the (debated) low point of the franchise.
  • A TON of ideas got scrapped, some late in the game, including:
    • Arcee being a combiner who would regularly take on a merged form that was roughly Bumblebee's height. This was dropped so late that the two of the three toys for Arcee retained this ability.
    • Skids and Mudflap being able to combine.
    • Sideways was supposed to have a larger role but Audi chickened out, causing them to give much of his scenes to Demolisher... only for Audi to change their minds BACK to having him in the movie, resulting in his quick scene.
    • Fan favorite Springer was scheduled to be in the movie as an Osprey twin-rotor helicopter, with two toys released based on the design. The guess is he was dropped because the Osprey design would make him absolutely tower over every other robot (at about 60 feet tall) and give Devastator a run for his money.
    • Several Seekers were slated to appear, including Ransack. Again, got toys because of them being deleted so late in production.
    • Soundwave would have gained an earth alt mode, namely a Chevy truck.
    • Originally the Fallen was supposed to be trapped in an alternate dimension of sorts and only able to escape when all the Primes were gone, rather than just hanging out in his ship. Once released he was to take on an Earth mode based on the Aurora stealth plane design (an upgrade to the Black Bird jet Jetfire turned into).
    • Sam was supposed to transfer all the knowledge he gained from the Allspark to the Matrix, which in turn would become a new Allspark for the Autobots.
    • The various adaptations feature a different ending than the movie itself, where Megatron, having found out that The Fallen had been lying to him and manipulating him all this time, leaves his master to die and flies back to the Nemesis with Starscream to awaken his new army.
  • James Arnold Taylor was originally cast as the Fallen, but was later replaced by Tony Todd. He did keep the role for the video game though.
  • Brie Larson auditioned for an unspecified role (possibly Alice).
  • Barricade’s disappearance from the first film before the climax was intended to be a Sequel Hook, but he was not included in the film.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The film was impacted by the 2007 writer strike, with an outline delivered to Michael Bay the night before it started and he based much of the pre-production work on that. Once the strike ended they were constantly writing and rewriting throughout filming, resulting in the highly disjointed and unfocused film. Tie-in material was also compromised, with alterations to the cast of characters and important plot beats changing every day.