Webcomic / Autobot Academy

Autobot Academy is a Webcomic created by TFW 2005 User Stonecrusher, known for creating the Transformers: Nexus webcomic. The only link available is for the Archive of Our Own version because the real location is a trade secret. Apparently.

On the distant planet of Cybertron, there was no Great War that ravaged the planet. Once considered Outliers by the Functionist Philosophers of Cybertron, Cybertronians with powers beyond the scope of their alt mode soon grew more and more common as time went on. Soon, these powers were given the name of Talents, and many who develop such abilities decide to use their abilities to help society in times of discord and disaster, becoming the heroes to new generations. And the most well-known organization of Heroes is the guild known as the Autobots.

On the moon of Acadeimos, The Autobot Academy trains students with particularly useful Talents to become the heroes of a new generation, fighting against various evil organizations in the name of justice. One such trainee, Hot Shot, has a talent allowing him to control fire to great effect, but he wouldn't be here if it weren't for an interesting series of events that lead the Matrix-carrying Star Convoy to find him worth the effort to hone his skills.

But a sinister force lurks in the shadows of Cybertron and beyond, various gangs previously unassociated have started wearing the same strange badge, associated with the Decepticon Crime Family. Can the Autobots continue saving the day as time goes on, or will they have to wage their battle to destroy the Evil forces of the Decepticons?

Most spoilers prior to The Siege arc will be left unmarked. Proceed at your own risk.

Provides Examples of:

• 0% Approval Rating: Straxus is the least popular of the Decepticon Sectmasters due to his extreme love of war, with most of the troops thinking he's crazy and hoping that he gets killed in the battles he loves so much.
  • Motormaster comes close, but most of the hatred is from those working directly under him.
• A Dog Named "Dog": The Vehicons Afterburn, OverDrive, and Tankor all have the same name as the model of drone they are, unlike the rest of their kind, who chose more unique names.
• Aborted Arc: Skyjack was shown to be monitoring the group chat for Artillery's Resistance the first issue the group is introduced. Whatever reason she may have had for doing this, it's never brought up again.
• Above Good and Evil: In the eyes of Great Convoy, his actions aren't good or evil. He's just doing whatever he needs to do to break the cycle of conflict and ensure that Cybertron has lasting peace, regardless of whether his subjects approve of his actions.
• Academy of Adventure: Autobot Academy is the source of a lot of adventures, including lab accidents that spawn clones, training missions with pro heroes, time travellers trying to change the future, and Decepticon infiltration.
• Adaptation Species Change: While characters from Challenge of the GoBots appear mostly unchanged, they're all fully robotic Cybertronians rather than a seperate cyborg species.
  • Sari Sumdac was a Cybertronian with a human alternate mode in canon. Here, she's part of a line of Artificial Human created be the Galvan Alliance.
• Adaptational Heroism: Among the students of Autobot Academy are Steeljaw, Thunderhoof, and Skylink, who in canon are all Decepticons.
  • Downplayed with Rampage and Nightracer. While there have been versions that made a Heel–Face Turn, here they were never evil to begin with.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Even after her lies to Bumblebee have been revealed, Sari still begs him to help her escape from the Plumbers, who have finally spotted her. He doesn't even let her finish the sentence before turning her in.
• Alien Abduction: Sari Sumdac initially claims she had been abducted by aliens who experimented on her to give her the power to change between different alien forms. However, it's later revealed that she's lying about this.
• Alliterative Title: Autobot Academy fits this trope.
• Ambiguous Robots: While the form we typically see Great Convoy in is unquestionably Cybertronian, his base form resembles Decimus Prime, the hypothetical Cybertronian transformation made by the Ben 10: Omniverse production crew. Seeing how he's an Omnitrix user, it's entirely possible Great's actually an entirely different species, most likely organic, passing off as a Cybertronian.
• Amplifier Artifact: The Matrix of Light used by Star Convoy and his predecessors greatly enhanced their natural abilities and upgrades their physical forms.
  • In the Dark Future, copies known as Energon Matrices were made for the Convoy Council that provide the same power boosts.
• Ascended Extra: Some of the generic students in earlier issues were given names and personalities through profiles, leading to them returning in later issues.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Megatron convinces many of the future Decepticons to follow him by having them come to a gladiatorial arena to watch him fight one of the most experienced competitors... and win.
• Bad Boss: Shockaract treats his fellow clones horribly, viewing them as expendable and not even bothering to learn all their names. This eventually leads to them all turning on him.
• Bad Future: The future that Beta Maxx comes from. It's even known out of universe as the Dark Future.
• Badass Teacher: Pretty much all the teachers at the various hero academies can hold their own in a fight, seeing most are heroes themselves.
• Beach Episode: In "Summertime Smackdown", Hot Rodimus brings several students to the planet Sirena for a day at the beach.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Bumblebee is one of the nicest, friendliest students at Autobot Academy. However, upon learning that Sari Sumdac tricked him into fighting off law enforcement coming after her, he doesn't even hesitate to knock her out and bring her in once she starts begging him to keep helping her. Even said law enforcement is shocked.
  Wes: Ok, wow, you Autobots can be SPITEFUL when you're angry!
  • Upon finding out that Beta Maxx knew that the Siege of Acadeimos would happen, but told no one about it, the normally friendly Lightbright becomes so enraged that she unwittingly damages the ship their on in the process of beating him up.
• Big Game: "The Cube Game" issue is about Bumblebee's efforts to see the Cube finals
• Broad Strokes: The events of the Roleplay. Cameos show that similar events did happen, but the details don't always match.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Discussed and Defied .After Armorhide runs away from him screaming, The Bartender is unable to recall ever doing anything to him that would cause that reaction. However, he's confident that he would be able to remember what he did, and concludes that he never threatened him. In reality the two had never met before, and Armorhide only freaked out because he saw the Bartender in a dream he had.
• Calvinball: Armorball is played like this when it debuts in "Naught but a Game", with X-Brawn deciding that players can chase each other with bats until Bumblebee chooses to ban them. Justified, however, as the rules of the game are still getting worked out, and when it next appears in "Ghost Ship", the trope is averted.
• The Cameo: Transformers: Nexus Sideswipe, Arcee, and Strongarm make cameos in the Amphitheater crowd that is watching the trials.
  • Alongside that, Connect Sari shows up as one of the multiple SAR-1 drones.
  • All the RP characters show up in the comic, sometimes brief, or sometimes a little longer. With the RP over, some have gotten bigger roles in some of the issues.
• Canon Character All Along: Original character Umbra Convoy is eventually revealed to be a disguised Dion.
• Casting a Shadow: Anyone with Umbrakinesis can manipulate shadow to create various constructs, most notably Sky Shadow and Darkstream.
• Clones Are People, Too: The clones created in the lab accident are all treated as individuals, and are given the chance to start their own lives.
  • Most of the clones made by Jhiaxus are also treated as their own individuals, and develop distinct personalities.
• Combining Mecha: The Decepticons are working on Project C to enhance the Powerlink process so that more than two bots can merge together. When the Siege of Acadeimos rolls around, they unveil Menasor and Devastator, their first successful Combiners. And this leads to even more getting made.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Most of the time, clones are on the same level of power as their templete, with Excellion II even managing to almost beat his templete Hot Shot in a fight. The army of clones Jhiaxus unleashes on the students trying to attack his lab, however, are so weak that Hot Shot takes out at least six with just one shot. Justified in that the army had been activated mere minutes earlier.
• Crossover Power Acquisition:
  • The Omnitrix from Ben 10 includes a Cybertronian genetic sample, allowing Omnitrix users with it available to become a Transformer.
  • Great Convoy's trump card is his own Omnitrix device, giving him the powers of various Ben 10 aliens. It's even implied that he might not be a Cybertronian at all, but a member of another species transformed into one.
• Crush Filter: When Tap-Out sees Stiletto for the first time, the image showing his point of view has a noticeably higher pixel count.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: The final training exercise of the first semester is deliberately made to be one-sided, and the freshmen naturally lose in the end to their professional hero opponents. However, they manage to hold off their opponents long enough that they set a new school record for the longest time staying alive in that exercise.
• Death by Irony: Great Convoy is ultimately killed by Megatron, his first known victim in the timeline he came from. Even better, the weapon that does him in wouldn't even exist if Great hadn't merged with the wounded Megatron and upgraded him, leaving him in perfect fighting shape once he was discarded.
• Discard and Draw: Great Convoy has a wide selection of superpowers thanks to his stockpile of Talent Medallions. Even without these, he has the Matrix of Light, which greatly increases his natural abilities. But when he removes the Matrix from his chest, Great has an even greater trick up his sleave: an Omnitrix that lets him use the powers of a wide array of alien species.
  • However, this ends up coming back to bite Great Convoy. While the form he uses as a default is a Blob Monster hybrid that gives him an extremely effective Healing Factor, he has to use a different one to try and restore his timeline. This means that when he gets shot in the chest, he doesn't have the powers required to heal from it.
• The Dog Bites Back: Tired of Shockaract's treatment of his followers, Diabla convinces the rest of the clones to turn on him, and successfully deactivate his one weapon.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Overload has an intense dislike of Star Convoy. So when he runs into his evil clone Toxitron, Overload is quite enthusiastic about taking him down.
• The Dreaded: Rampage is feared by the other students, with his mere presence being enough to silence others and convince them to do what he wants.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Transmutate is revealed to be having strange dreams about her being a clone of herself created in a Bad Future in "Life Unknown", and is seeing the therapist Rung to find out what they mean. It eventually turns out that this future is very real, and that these are Transmutate's own memories.
  • Armorhide also once had a dream with the Bartender in it the night before he first saw him.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Decepticons' plans featured significant differences in the beginning:
  • Megatron's first appearance sees him implying that he plans to create a Mass Super-Empowering Event. The closest thing mentioned later was Megatron's bio suggesting he was responsible for powering up the Decepticons, but it never factored into the story.
  • Decepticon hacker Skyjack was also shown monitoring Artillery's Resistance's group chat. Not only does nothing ever of come of this, it's later shown to be unnecessary, as Sonar was planted within the group for that exact purpose.
  • Speaking of Artillery's Resistance, the leading trio was shown to act more villainous than later, with their first scene having them engage in an Evil Laugh. Additionally, Artillery was presented as being the only one who travelled between schools and Sonar and Tremor were new followers that would be left at Autobot Academy while she moved on, when later issues would establish they all travelled between schools.
  • Generics were frequently shown around the Autobot Academy in earlier issues, in particular a group of scary freshmen. However, once more named characters were created, these generics stopped appearing, though some returned they got profiles made for them.
  • In "Naught but a game" Armorhide had a dream with the Bartender in it before ever actually seeing him. Armorhide hasn't had anything like this happen to him since, nor has it ever been touched upon.
• Enemy Within: Rampage possesses an alternate personality known as Unit 10 that is incredibly violent and ruthless. Though Rampage initially struggled to keep it in check, he eventually learned to keep Unit 10 under control. But at that point, he had a different problem...
• Enemy Without: Rampage's clone Shockaract has a personality identical to Unit 10. That being said, he isn't Unit 10 himself, as Shockaract's goal is to permanently awaken that side of Rampage, and does bring him out once.
• Enigmatic Empowering Entity: Elita-1, who's talent is to give talents to others, has reached out to give several characters abilities. Her exact motives are unclear, but she seems to want to bring about an ideal society for all.
• Ensemble Cast: There are about thirty characters considered to be the main characters.
• Establishing Character Moment: The very first thing we see Umbra Convoy do is break into a prison so he can beat up Darkstream to make sure he doesn't make good on his challenge to go after Star Convoy. He wants the honor of killing him for himself.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Sky Shadow may have been a powerful crime boss, but upon realizing that the Decepticons are willing to resort to terrorism to get what they want, he pulls a Heel–Face Turn and tries to leave the group.
• Everyone Is a Super: Almost all of the Transformer characters have a talent, and even the ones that don't aren't exactly weak, being giant transforming robots and all. Most other alien species also have some kind of ability.
• Evil Genius: Shockwave's talent makes him a candidate for the smartest being in the galaxy, but he uses his intelligence for villainous purposes.
• Evil Knockoff: Several of the clones Jhiaxus made were copies of heroes and academy students, and they willingly joined the Decepticons.
• Eviler than Thou: The first action of note Great Convoy did was killing Megatron to end the Great War, before becoming a far worse tyrant than.
• Expendable Clone: The army of clones Jhiaxus sends out to defend his lab when the students come to rescue the kidnapped Steeljaw don't even get names, and are wiped out with little care by the students. While none are seen getting actually killed, Thundercracker does come across the corpse of a clone of Sky Shadow that he mistakes for the original, a mistake only possible if someone killed him during the fight.
  • Zigzagged with the duplicates made by those with the talent Instant Cloning. While most don't have a problem with killing them and are even sent out by their creators to perform tasks that would likely get them killed, some clones have shown signs of being just as intelligent as the originals. One clone of Steeljaw was unable to tell if he was the original or the copy, and a clone of Downbeat outlived his creator in the Dark Future.
• Expy: There are a fair amount of characters based on characters from other series, as well as vehicles from those series.
  • My Hero Academia and RWBY, the inspirations for the series, have naturally provided the basis for several characters, most notably Star Convoy and Megatron being expies of My Hero's All Might and All For One.
  • Additionally, there are also characters based on characters and vehicles from Kamen Rider, Homestuck, Hot Wheels: AcceleRacers, Splatoon Mega Man, Super Sentai, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Team Fortress 2, Symphogear Sleepless Domain, Overwatch, Terraria Calamity, the Marvel Universe, Sonic the Hedgehog, Star Wars, Hero Factory, Street Fighter, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, Assassination Classroom, GARO, Helltaker, Kaijudo, Moe! Ninja Girls, Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, Murder Drones, and Halo: Reach.
• Failure Gambit: Megatron sends out Darkstream to attack Nyon, but he doesn't expect him to succeed in taking down the local hero team. He just wants to know how strong the Autobots are, and has Soundwave monitor the fight so he can plan for later.
• Faint in Shock: Hot Shot passes out upon meeting his idol, Star Convoy, and again when Star claims he could become as great of a hero as he is. His mom, Firestar, does this upon hearing that her son will be attending Autobot Academy, indicating It Runs in the Family.
• Fake Identity Baggage: Silvertongue, better known as Steeljaw, got his spot at the Autobot Academy by stealing the identity of "Goldknuckle". All goes well for him until the real Steeljaw's sister, Prideclaw, comes to visit her brother, and she ends up finding out what Silvertongue did.
• Fantastic Drug: Cybertronians have the drugs Syk and D.E., with the latter seeing potential interest as a bioweapon by the Decepticons.
• Fictional Sport: Cybertronians have the sport Cube, which is similar to rugby. The main difference is the game is played with, well, a cube.
  • The freshmen at Autobot Academy also create their own sport, Armorball, which is similar to football.
• Final Boss Preview: Great Convoy personally travels back in time in "Time of Romance" to try and kill Beta Maxx himself. Though he fails, he easily beats the freshmen who fight him with his skill and power and is only beaten through luck.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: During the attack on the Neo-Maximal Citadel, students High Beam, Rust Dust, and Stardrive don't make it inside with the others, implying they died in the battle. Regardless of what became of them, not one student mentions they're missing people, including Moonracer, who had spent a year in the future fighting alongside them. Granted, they're fine once the timeline is reset, but still.
• Freak Lab Accident: In "War of the Clones", a school science lab winds up creating clones of everyone in the classroom thanks the talents of those involved.
• Fusion Dance: Powerlinks are the result of two Cybertronians merging to become stronger.
• Gave Up Too Soon: Hot Rodimus spends the entirety of "Ghost Ship" convinced that the ship in question is haunted, only to learn that the "ghosts" he'd encountered were just holograms of the long dead crew of ship, actually the lonely Omega Sentinel Rho Supreme. However, after seeing Rho Supreme off, Rodimus fails to notice that an actual ghost is watching him from afar...
• Gilligan Cut: Hot Shot questions how Tap-Out is going to keep up his lie to Stiletto that he has a time machine when none exist. Cut to the next panel, where Tap-Out has led them to Beta Maxx's time machine.
• Giver of Lame Names: The clone army Jhiaxus sends out all give rather unimpressive names for their Special Techniques, but the absolute worst is Rock, which consists of picking up a large rock and throwing it.
• Greater-Scope Villain: While Megatron is the Big Bad of the present, he's ultimately overshadowed by Great Convoy, who not only killed him, but became a ruler so tyrannical that the only way to stop him was using time travel to ensure he could never rise to power.
• Hate Sink: Submarauder, the abusive father of Nautica, was written by agentSAP2006 to be reviled, which she confirmed in an interview.
• High School AU: The series sees several characters going to a high school to learn how to be Autobots This was later changed to being in college, but the idea is the same.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Because Steeljaw has Super-Hearing, Vanquish bought a device that produces a Brown Note at a frequency only those high audio reception can hear to to easily knock him out during their fight without hurting himself or the rest of the Battle Squad. It works, but Vanquish overlooked the fact that Steeljaw isn't the only one with hearing that good... and said students then arrive to beat up the entire Battle Squad for making the noise.
  • Bisk programmed his videogame realm to punish anyone who swore by killing them instantly after he gave them a warning. However, the way he wrote the programming meant this applied to himself as well, and when he accidently swore out of anger he was defeated instantly, thereby ending the entire game.
  • Great Convoy's entire stock of Talent Chips is destroyed when Sonar finds one that gives them a decaying power and then uses it on the rest of the chips.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Bisk programmed his game to make himself so powerful, no player could possibly defeat him and he could go on keeping his realm up forever. It took literally breaking the game for the students to stand a chance at beating him.
• Hufflepuff House: Out of all the academies that take part in the Festival of the Stars, the members of Protectobot Academy get the least amount of focus. In fact, the school doesn't even get an issue showcasing their arrival on Acadeimos. The students just start making background appearances and when they got there is never brought up.
  • Protectobot Academy does fare better as a part of Artillery's Resistance with four known members, even if three were only confirmed via Word of God. However, the Resistance has its own Hufflepuff Houses in the form of Caminus Central and the Tech Institute of Polyhex, with each only having one member show up in the Resistance group chat and never appearing outside of it.
  • Though they at least did better than the nineteen other academies Artillery has followers in, not all of which have even been named.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Sari Sumdac fled from her post as a negotiator because she wanted to use her skills to be a hero instead. It takes quite a bit of convincing, but she eventually gets her wish and is signed up for enrollment at the next year at Autobot Academy.
• Internet Jerk: Inverted with Nightracer. The Nova Forums are the one place where she isn't mean or aggressive.
• Inventional Wisdom: Downplayed with the "eject engine" button on the Sentinel Maximus. While it would probably be useful to remove the engine for repairs or swapping it out for one that doesn't need to be capable of time travel, why it was designed so that one could do this simply by pressing a single button that still worked while the ship was flying is unclear.
• Ironic Echo: When Steeljaw betrays the Battle Squad, he pretends to think about going through with their deal before giving a Blunt "No" to their leader, Vanquish. Once the Battle Squad finally manage to track him down, Steeljaw attempts to convince them to talk it out... and Vanquish gives him the exact same response before shooting at him.
• The Juggernaut: King Atlas, the top enforcer of the Neo-Maximals. He can shrug off blaster fire, he can stand at ground zero of an oil drum explosion and walk out while still on fire, and when a ship crashes onto him, he just lifts it off him. The only way the students were able to stop him was by returning him to the future, and it takes atomizing him to put him down for good.
  • His leader, Great Convoy, is even stronger. The first time he steps onto the battlefield himself, Great is victim of a successful Attack on the Heart. And he survives. And he has so many different powers he can easily find some way to defeat his opponents, even winning against ten at once. However, he was eventually stuck with having to give up his healing abilities in order to try and make sure his timeline comes to pass, and this led to his body getting vaporized. Even if that didn't kill him, erasing the timeline he came from certainly did.
• King Incognito: For a training exercise, top Autobot generals Obsidian and Strika pretend to be simple drones.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: If one hasn't read the accompanying Roleplay beforehand, the Rainmakers' appearances in the second season and beyond make no effort to hide the fact that they aren't Decepticons, but Autobot heroes..
• Late to the Realization: It doesn't occur to Hot Rodimus that getting punished with paid leave might not be so bad for him until after Hot Shot got him out of his punishment.
• The Legend of Chekhov: If a rumor or conspiracy theory is every brought up, it's most likely going to be revealed to be true. Even when multiple conflicting theories come up, one of them is accurate.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: Hot Shot and Steeljaw do this, only to end up at the same ending location.
• Living Prop: High Beam, an Autobot Academy freshman, has made multiple background appearances, and even gets brought to the Dark Future. However, even after getting a name, he has yet to say a single line, and no one has ever acknowledged him. Even in universe he's said to be mostly known as "that green guy in the background".
• Loophole Abuse: Great Convoy finds himself unable to kill the freshmen attempting to use his time portal to change the future, as Glyph points out that doing so would go against the duties of carrying the Matrix of Light. Great's response to this realization is to simply discard the Matrix until he the beats them all up.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Tap-Out was never one for thinking things through, but when he falls head over heels for Stiletto, the second thing he tells her is a lie that he built a time machine, and reveals the existence of Beta Maxx's to keep up the lie.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Besides the obvious Transformers, the Autobot Academy universe also incorporates characters and elements from Ben 10, Doctor Who, Invader Zim, Steven Universe, Challenge of the GoBots, Star Trek, Rom: Spaceknight, Zoids, Busou Shinki, Frame Arms Girls, Megami Device, Ultra Series, Legends of Chima, BIONICLE, Godzilla, Warhammer 40,000, Gundam, Visionaries, War of the Worlds, TerraforMARS, Aldnoah.Zero, Animorphs, Metal Heroes, Alien, Predator, Metroid, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Super Robot Wars, G.I. Joe, Sonic Colors, Twilight Imperium, Buck Rogers, Rick and Morty, Avatar, Destiny, Dragon Ball, My Life as a Teenage Robot, The Owl House, The Legend of Zelda, Kaijudo, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and ThunderCats.
• Medium Awareness: Fathom's rebuttal when Armory accuses him of getting his information about her from fanfiction?
  Fathom: Strictly speaking, we're fanfiction characters.
• The Mole: The Academies have a big problem with getting infiltrated. About a dozen of the students and teachers were spies.
• Narrating the Present: Fathom speaks in third-person narration unless someone talks to him directly.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Despite the sizable amount of LGBTQIA Cybertronians that have shown up in the series, no one has ever been shown to have a problem with it.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Bisk's talent makes reality like a video game, but it only affected his immediate surroundings. This made him be seen as a joke by Autobots and is only a minor thug in the Decepticons. But after getting his talent upgraded by Shockwave, Bisk is elevated to full on Reality Warper, and in "Sinister Simulation" he turns the entire world into a video game realm that he has full control over, with himself as the final boss. The heroes only win because of a combination of Glyph managing to turn the coding of the virtual world against him and him falling prey to his own anti-swearing punishment.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Umbra Convoy will not accept anyone else killing Star Convoy and denying him his revenge, and will go after anyone who even suggests they'll try it.
  • Unfortunately for Umbra, Megatron shares this belief, and personally leads a team of Decepticons to secretly help Star Convoy win his duel against Umbra just so he could kill him later.
• Only Six Faces: Downplayed. While there are a wide variety of face designs through the use of visors and mouthplates, the standard two-eyes-and-a-mouth face is pretty much identical in shape for every character, with the only differences being eyelashes for female characters and extra lines for older characters.
• Orcus on His Throne: Despite his incredible power, Great Convoy remains on Cybertron and lets his enforcers handle the Resistance. Justified in that he is ruler of Cybertron and it's colonies in his time; he's too busy leading to go after a few enemies, no matter how big of a threat they are.
• Palette Swap: Cybertronians have shared body-types, but with different colors, and in some instances, heads and other components like torso details or alt mode parts. Among the main cast, body-types are shared by Hot Shot and Moonracer, Transmutate and Arcee, and Glyph, Tap-Out, and Bumblebee.
  • Additionally, clones are differentiated from their template by different colors.
  • Hot Shot also shares his body-type with several other bots Star Convoy has previously sent to Autobot Academy, leading some to suspect they're all Replacement Goldfish for his friend Dion, who used the same body-type as well.
• The Poorly Chosen One: Megatron was given his talent by Elita-1 because she thought he could use it to change the world for the better. She realized how wrong she was when Megatron immediately used it to kill Boreus with his own talent.
• Power Copying: Characters with Talent Duplication can do use the abilities of others, with the most notable user of this talent being Megatron, along with Sideways and Raze.
• Power Degeneration: Due to the process that resulted in him being created, Rampage's clone Shockaract's CNA was breaking down thanks to his Adaptive Ability, requiring a CNA stabilizer and a new body to survive. That being said, when he finally breaks down, it turns out this didn't actually kill him, and he somehow managed to be completely healed.
• Power Floats: Subverted and Played for Laughs. Armorjet, the Powerlink of Armorhide and Lunajet, begins floating in the air as he announces that with his newfound strength, he intends to take over the galaxy. However, Bumblebee then points out that Armorjet doesn't have any powers^note Iron Skin, Photokinesis, and Super Strength that should allow him to do this. Armorjet then falls to the ground, having been dropped by Surge, who was using Psionics to levitate him.
• Power Nullifier: Inhibitors are used when someone's talent is too powerful for their own good. As Hot Shot needs to have his removed to try controlling his powers, it appears that the talent can't be used at all while wearing them.
• Power-Up Full Color Change: Megatron switches colors based on the talent he's using. The same goes for anyone using a Talent Chip.
• Powered Armor: The members of the Magnus Corp all use full body Magnus Armor that provides them with extra strength.
• Powers as Programs: Talent Chips can be plugged into anyone to give them the power it was designed with. In the Dark Future, Great Convoy has a massive supply of them to give himself whatever talents he needs.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Megatron reveals to Great Convoy that his merging with him resulted in him getting a new Arm Cannon... which he promptly shoots him with.
  Megatron: Hey. Thanks for the arm.
• Precrime Arrest: Artillery tells Beta Maxx that he should prevented the Siege of Acadeimos by killing Megatron as a sparkling to prevent him from forming the Decepticons. Beta Maxx is disgusted by the idea. Note that this is after Artillery learns that Megatron is her father, so she'd be Ret-Gone if this happened.
• Rage Quit: Strika ends the training exercise against Artillery's Resistance early. Unusually for this trope, she was actually winning and had her opponents on the run: she only quit when the they started resorting to tactics so bad she refused to waste her time any further.
• Reading Ahead in the Script: Fathom skips ahead in his datapad at one point when he gets born. This leads to him discovering that Sonar is a Decepticon spy.
• Red Herring: Two major plot twists used these to hide them:
  • The first was the identity of Umbra Convoy. In his debut issue, Fortress Maximus remarked that he had businees to attend to, but refused to elaborate on what it was. Umbra then popped up to beat up Darkstream. Fort Max later called out Star Convoy for him constantly recommending new Autobot Academy students that all shared the body-type of his best friend, indicating he might be harboring feelings that Star isn't as great as he appeared, the motive behind Umbra's actions. Finally, Fort Max refuses to give a speech he was scheduled to read at the gala, and this is where Umbra makes his move to discredit Star. However, this same issue ends with the reveal of Umbra's true identity: Dion, the former best friend of Star Convoy. The following issue reveals that Fort Max had accidentally gotten too drunk to give the speech.
  • The second was Great Convoy's original identity. His body was drawn to resemble Transformers: Cybertron Megatron's, and this story's Megatron has been known to regularly switch bodies. When he finally showed up in person, he beat his opponents by switching between their own powers, implying that he had Megatron's Power Copying ability. Ultimately, this isn't the case; Great Convoy killed Megatron, and his talents were the result of him using Talent Medallions, not any special ability of his own. However, the real answer to this question was never provided, but given his use of an Omnitrix it's implied that he might not eve have been a true Cybertronian.
• Related in the Adaptation: Due to the rarity of canon families in Transformers, most of the families had to be created from scratch.
• Replacement Goldfish: Hot Shot is the latest in a long line of bots Star Convoy has taken under his wing and recieved training at Autobot Academy to become a hero, and it's eventually pointed out to him that they all share the same body-type. This has led to Star Convoy being accused of deliberately picking his new proteges because of this body-type being the one his old friend Dion used, but he insists it's just coincidence.
• Retcon: As originally written, Autobot Academy and all the other schools were high schools. Sometime in Season 2, this was changed to the schools all being colleges.
  • Based on "I Hide My True Origin", the Decepticon movement came up fairly recently, with Lightbright being alive when they still performed peaceful protests rather than resort to violence and watching Star convoy's first appearance on TV. However, later stories provide a timeframe that suggests the Decepticons publicly resorting to terrorism and Star Convoy coming to stop them happened long before Lightbright was even born.
• Retroactive Idiot Ball: The reason Artillery even ended up at Autobot Academy was because she signed the wrong paperwork and didn't realize she'd transferred to the wrong school until the first day of class. However, it was later revealed that the school she intended to go to, Devius Central, is located on Cybertron... meaning that being flown to a different planet somehow didn't tip Artillery off that something was wrong.
• Revolutionaries Who Don't Do Anything: Artillery's Resistance. They've only been shown meeting once, and even then, they didn't actually resist or plan to resist anything. All the group seems to do is recruit more members and chat instead of trying to overthrow the government. Though considering how many schools their members are in without any suspicion, it's possible this is deliberate and they're just biding their time for something big...
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Fathom's Medium Awareness means he's able to recognize when the timeline has changed.
  • After the Siege is averted, the students who travelled through time all remember some details of the Dark Future, with Transmutate getting the most due to her Stable Time Loop origins.
• Seamless Spontaneous Lie: Sari Sumdac is able to quickly come up with a story about how aliens abducted her and performed experiments on her before she escaped to Autobot Academy, convincing Bumblebee to let her stay with him. It only falls apart once the Plumbers reveal her true origins.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The reason Beta Maxx travelled back from the future to the present day is to stop the Siege of Acadeimos from happening, which ultimately led to the Bad Future he comes from. While he fails, his mission was completed by a group of students he befriended, who manage to make the battle turn out far better than it did in the original timeline. Unfortunately, the also unleash Overlord once more, and even if they could try again the result they got was apparently the best one they could get.
• Shout-Out: The entire series is based on the premise of RWBY and My Hero Academia.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Sophomore student MixMatch didn't appear often in the first two seasons, but she was the one who invented the electronic paint jobs that regularly allowed other students to get into trouble. She also invented the Energon Matrix, making her partially responsible for the state of the Dark future as well.
  • Elita-1 has had even fewer appearances than MixMatch, but her presence is felt throughout the series. She provided Hot Shot and Megatron with their talents, took the Matrix of Light from Sentinel Prime to give to Star Convoy, and was responsible for the rise of talents in Cybertronian society.
• Special Attack: Special Techniques, which can range from stronger versions of normal attacks to pulling off attacks far beyond what should be possible for the talent in question to pull off.
• Start of Darkness: The issue "Villainy's Origins" tells the story of how Megatron set down on the path to evil.
• Superhero School: Autobot Academy and most of the other schools train their students how to be heroes and help them master their talents so they can be used to help others.
• Superpower Lottery: There are a wide variety of talents available for Cybertronians. The best, however, are Ultima talents. They are the strongest version of a talent available, and those who possess them are incredibly effective at what they do. This includes Shockwave and Overload.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The Resistance from the Dark Future first try to send back Transmutate to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, but their efforts trigger a Destiny Paradox. Then they send back Beta Maxx, who proves that permanently changing the future is possible by leaving a mark on a tree. Then the event Beta Maxx is trying to stop comes about and he's forced to bring several students with him.. including ones that become prominent Resistance members, yet this has no affect on the Dark Future itself, as the present and future versions interact with no ill affects.
• Train Job: "The Desert Train" sees Lightbright helping her father's associates sneak onto a prison train that the Decepticons are keeping him on.
• Transformation Trinket: The Omnitrix devices used by the Sumdac units and Ben Tennyson, which lets the user switch between multiple alien forms. Enhanced versions that give access to evolved forms or hybrids are used by Albedo and Great Convoy
• Transforming Mecha: The Cybertronians are an entire race of these. This is a Transformers series after all.
  • Other transforming robot species exist, such as the Lithonians and Waruders.
  • The Nebulans have also created their own transforming Diaclone mechs.
• Twofer Token Minority: Some of the LGBTQIA characters belong to multiple groups:
  • Arcee, Muzzle, Eclipse, Psyvern, and the Autobot Wiretap are transgender lesbians.
  • Nautica and Saperion are transgender bisexuals.
  • Adrestia is a nonbinary bisexual.
  • Sonar is a genderfluid asexual.
• Unishment: Hot Rodimus gets put on paid leave as punishment for putting the entire Autobot Academy at risk during his efforts to help Hot Shot with his uncontrollable powers. Getting to chill at home while still getting paid for it doesn't sound bad to Rodimus... but this doesn't click until after Hot Shot manages to get this punishment revoked.
• The Un-Reveal: We never find out who Great Convoy originally was before he gets killed.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: The students have gone through a few of these:
  • While not intended to be one, Chromia arranged for the drones that Artillery's Resistance would be facing to be switched with top generals Obsidian and Strika to teach the students to accept failure... at least that's what she claims. Star Convoy has a different theory.
  • The final training exercise of the first semester pits the freshmen against some of the top heroes currently active. The students have no chance at winning, and are unknowingly getting timed to see how long they can last.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Rook and Rollout had no idea stepping out of class for a moment would give their students enough time to get into trouble, and Sideswipe definitely didn't count on causing a lab accident that resulted in the entire class getting cloned simply by tossing some cybermatter over his shoulder.
• Virtual-Reality Warper: Upon realizing that the simulation Bisk created uses code, Glyph is able to use her own talent of Instant Understanding to break it to her liking, allowing her and the others trapped in the game to beat Bisk.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Great Convoy ultimately wants a peaceful society for his people and end the Vicious Cycle of wars Cybertron has experienced. However, his methods of doing so involve keeping Cybertron as isolated as possible, preemptively driving species that could pose a threat to extinction, keeping his subjects in check with a massive army of war machines, segregating society based on alt-modes, using large numbers of clones, and brainwashing or killing anyone who stands up to him.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Upon realizing just how strong their new Powerlink form Armorjet is, Armorhide and Lunajet decide to prove all who disrespected them wrong by taking over society using this form... only to be defeated instantly by Surge lifting Armorjet into the air and dropping him.
• The Worf Barrage: Upon encountering Great Convoy, Beta Maxx pulls out a gun designed to lock onto the spark of a target. And it works, blowing a hole straight through Great's chest... which is instantly healed.
• World of Action Girls: As the story takes place primarily at a school for heroes, most of the female characters focused on for both sides are quite capable of handling themselves in a fight.
• World's Smartest Man: Thanks to having the talent Intellect Ultima, Shockwave is the smartest being on Cybertron. He may even be the smartest being in the galaxy with the only notable contender for that title being Azmuth.

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