THE ANNOTATED ALLSPARK ALMANAC ADDENDUM

The Annotated AllSpark Almanac -- The Annotated AllSpark Alamanc II -- The Annotated Alt2Day.com

Through the auspices of Fun Publications, the AllSpark Almanac continues as the AllSpark Almanac Addendum!

THE STUNTI-CON JOB

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• Phase displacement armor was mentioned, though not seen, in the Prime episode “Sick Mind”. It allows a wearer to become immaterial.

• Alpha Flux is a scientific term referring to “the number of alpha particles emitted from a surface over a period of time.” Feels like its probably a reference to something science-fictiony too, though! Perhaps the game mechanic of the same name from the RPG Gamma World?

• The Transmetal driver was a prominent McGuffin from the Beast Wars animated series, featuring in the episodes “Feral Scream” and “Crossing the Rubicon”. That universe's version of Cheetor got a good tate of its power.

• The Aqua Saw was the personal weapon of the Decepticon Pretender Gilmer from Super-God Masterforce. His was really just a funnily-named sword, though!

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• Although hardly a Transformers-specific term, an omnidirectional relay played an important role in the Generation 1 cartoon episode, “The Big Broadcast of 2006.”

• Breakdown uses the swear “smeg”, from Red Dwarf, which previously saw use in the second Almanac.

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• The page header is written in Ancient Autobot, a font created by Jim Sorenson based on symbols seen in the Generation 1 episode, “Cosmic Rust”. It simply says “Police Report”.

• Carrying on the dating system seen in the Almanacs, the events of “Moving Violations” are dated to 47603.3, stardate of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Shadowplay”.

• The rule Crumplezone and Ransack have broken is labelled 31422-6955, composited from two back-to-back episode titles from the TV series Fringe, “Amber 31422” and “6955 kHz”.

• The string of Ancient Autobot above Cheetor's head turnaround reads “Reelect Miguel Prado”. Prado was the villain of the third season of Dexter; the “reelect” bit comes from the fact he was a District Attorney.

• Below Cheetor's head is “Hello, Megan!” perpetually irritating catchphrase of Miss Martian on Young Justice.

• Cheetor's ID card reads “Cybertron Police Defense Command / CPDC / Adaptability/Honor/Integrity/Courage / This certifies that the signature and photograph hereon is an appointed TransTech Detective of the Cybertron Police Defense Command / Cheetor / The truth is out there”, the last line referring to the famous tagline of The X-Files. The red text says “TransTech Division”, and Cheetor has signed his name.

• The note below the card says: “Such is charged with the duty of investigating violations of the laws of Cybertron, collecting evidence in cases in which the Autobots are or may be a party in interest, and performing other duties imposed upon him by law”. It is signed by Ultra Magnus, and labelled an “Order of the Magnus of Cybertron”.

• The caption for Cheetor's police paraphernalia reads “Rule 1: Cardio”, an important lesson for surviving the zombie apocalypse as taught by the movie Zombieland.

• The first block of Ancient Autobot text to the right of his reads is a quote from the Dr. Katz episode “Bystander Ben”, which reads: “No more than three shots, and possibly as few as none, were fired.”

• Below that is a quote from Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible: “Bad Horse still votes neigh.”

• And under that is one from online series The Guild, which tranlates as “Game over, Axis of Anarchy!” Both Dr. Horrible and The Guild star Felicia Day, but she wasn't in Dr. Katz so I'm not sure if there's supposed to be a link between these quotes.

• The symbol language above Cheetor's vehicle mode is the second “Alien Language” from Futurama. It's not a simple substitution cipher, being partially mathematical in its working, but it translates as “Created by Warren Robinett”. These words were one of the earliest video game easter eggs, included in the Atari 2600 game Adventure by programmer Robinett to ensure credit where it was due.

• The text below Cheetor's vehicle mode is the alien language from the movie District 9. It reads: “401 K 480180”. This is a reference to the FX animated series Archer, and the fact that according to the episode “Jeu Monégasque”, the title character has $480180 in his 401(k) account.

• The symbol just under Cheetor's bumper is an interrobang. It's inclusion is a nod to fan and regular Transformers Wiki contributor Interrobang, paying him credit for being the one guy who manned up and added all the information from the planetary star map from the second Almanac to the wiki.

• The writing to the right of Cheetor is in J.R.R. Tolkien's elvish. It translates as “Frodo Cuinar”, which is elvish for “Frodo Lives”, a popular counter-culture slogan from the 1960s and 70s, which you don't need to me to tell you refers to the protagonist of Toklien's Lord of the Rings.

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• As in the first two Almanacs, the symbol writing on this page is in Predacon cybertronix, from the Beast Wars animated series. The header is a new instalment of Ask Vector Prime, the Q&A session once held by Hasbro on their website during the run of Cybertron, previous editions of which also appeared in the second Almanac. This one reads: “Q: Was Cyclonus built from Bombshell or Skywarp?” referring to the longstanding fan debate over which robot Unicron reformatted in The Transformers: The Movie. The nice, safe, non-committal – but entirely true – answer is “A: It varies by universe”.

• Just below this is a set of co-ordinates, which pinpoint the location of the Pasadena Convention Center, location of BotCon 2011.

• The image of Sideswipe is, of course, in the colours of his original Generation 1 namesake. Note how, in his younger days, he shared a head with Rodimus, as well as a body-type! The cybertronix behind him translates into the lyrics of Iron Maiden's “Satellite 15... The Final Frontier”.

• The cybertronix behind Oil Slick is the lyrics to “Synchronicity II”, by the Police.

• The text to the right of Oil Slick reads: “You're so meta, you probably think this song is about you”. Not sure if that's a direct quote from anything, but it is of course a parody of the Carly Simon song, “You're So Vain”.

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• As written, the piece of text to the right of Reachout is in Maximal Cybertronix and translates as... um... upside-down-lower-case z, period, upper-case O, period, upside-down-lower-case z, period, and then a colon. However, Sorenson admits that's a mistake and that it should say “C.O.C.”, and that it's a clue for figuring out the new symbol language seen across these two pages. My very first thought was that this might be morse code – Mini-Cons, beeping and booping, and all that – but the presence of more than two characters saw me immediately throw that theory out the window without testing it. As it turns out, I really should have, because that's exactly what it is. A parenthesis, regardless of orientation, is a dash, while a circle is a dot. C.O.C, then, it turns out, stands for Cybertron Optical Code, the morse code style light-flashing message-transmission system seen in the Animated episode, “Decepticon Air”. In honour of the fact that this was a new cipher that had to actually be figured out, instead of a pre-existing fictional language, all the hidden words relate to famous uncrackable codes, unsolvable riddles and untranslatable languages. They are:

• Above Grindor reads “Quipus”, which were lengths of knotted lengths of string used by Incas to record information.

• Below Reachout is “Phaistos”, from the Phaistos Disc, one of the most famous mysteries of archaeology, a Bronze Age disk decorated with an unknown series of symbols.

• The text above Leader-1 says “Dorabella”, referring to the Dorabella Cipher, an unsolved coded message written by English composer Edward Elgar.

• Below Duck-E, we have “Voynich”, as in the Voynich Manuscript, “the world's most mysterious manuscript”, a book from the 15^th century written entirely in an unreadable language.

• Above High Wire is “Beale”, in reference to the Beale ciphers, a set of potential hoax ciphers that allegedly point the way to buried treasure.

• Beneath Sureshock, the text reads “Dispilio”, from the Dispilio Tablet, a neolithic tablet unearth in Dispilio, Greece, that bears an undeciphered symbol language of some kind.

• And below High Wire reads “D OUOSVAVV M”, which is the text of an mysterious inscription on a statue in the grounds of Shugborough House in Staffordshire, England.

• The text below each of the Mini-Cons' bios is also in Maximal cybertronix. They are each the name of a character played by Kurt Russell: MacCready from The Thing, Snake Plissken from Escape from New York, Jack O'Neill from Stargate, Stuntman Mike from Death Proof, Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China, and the King himself, Elvis Presley, as seen in the 1979 TV movie, Elvis.

• Cell Block 456 is named after a race of aliens from the Doctor Who spinoff series, Torchwood.

• Briefly glimpsed in “Moving Violations”, we get a better look at Mudflap here. His alias, Sawtooth, was a proposed name for the live-action movie redeco of the Cybertron Mudflap toy, on whom this Mudflap is based.

• Triple M, short for the Militant Monoform Movement, were mentioned in issue #23 of IDW's ongoing Generation 1 series, released just a few months before this addendum.

• Mudflap's associate being Skids is a reference to the live action movie universe's twins of the same names. Animated Skids himself was briefly glimpsed in the second Almanac, and actually was based on the live-action Skids, unlike Mudflap here.

• Simultronics are a virtual reality drug seen in IDW's Spotlight: Blurr.

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Most of the characters on this page of teasers for future Almanac profiles have appeared before, some in very obscure places, but a random few are new. From left to right, and top to bottom, they are:

• Evil parallel-universe versions of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, inspired by the evil mirror universe of “Shattered Glass” introduced at BotCon 2008. Had Animated gone to a fourth season, there were plans to include a Shattered Glass themed episode in which these characters would presumably have appeared. Prime's purple coloration is based on the Shattered Glass version of Generation 1 Optimus Prime, while Bumblebee's white paintjob is inspired by Bugbite, a character twice depicted as a white repaint of Generation 1 Bumblebee. Both characters officially debuted on a lithograph at BotCon 2011.

• Nemesis Prime, based on numerous evil clones of various Optimus Primes throughout numerous continuities. Specifically, Animated Nemesis Prime is an official repurposing of a Japanese-exclusive black repaint of Optimus Prime. He also appeared on the BotCon 2011 litho.

• A Transformer based on a manatee. It has previously only appeared as a piece of art posted on Derrick J. Wyatt's blog, with the name Manatronatee.

• Dark Rodimus, a Japanese-exclusive black repaint of Rodimus (there known as “Black Rodimus”) who made the jump to American when he also appeared on the BotCon 2011 litho.

• Shattered Glass versions of Sari and Isaac Sumdac. While both first appeared as artwork by Wyatt on his blog, Sari was the first to make the jump into canon when she appeared in an illustration Wyatt produced for the Japanese publication Transformers Generation 2011 Vol 1. Both characters were then included on the BotCon 2011 litho.

• Sky-Byte, Blot and Mindwipe, members of Team Chaar who all appeared on the final page of “The Stunti-Con Job”. Blot is directly based on the Generation 1 Terrorcon of the same name. A headshot of Mindwipe first appeared in The AllSpark Almanac II, but his character design is largely original, owing very little to his Generation 1 namesake beyond a pair of bat-wings. The second Almanac also featured a very different headshot for Sky-Byte, which had since been supplanted with this new head bearing much more resemblance to his Robots in Disguise progenitor. Bill Forster noted when commenting on the second Almanac that he envisioned Sky-Byte as shared a body-type with Lugnut, a design choice that is carried through to this finalized version of the character.

• Flashpoint, a new character appearing in “Moving Violations” who shares a body type with Animated Red Alert. She is broadly based on the live-action movie Inferno toy (because it was a redeco of Armada Red Alert), but isn't called Inferno because the second Almanac already introduced an Animated Inferno based on the Beast Wars character.

• Chromia, a blue redeco of Arcee based on the Generation 1 character of the same name. She first appeared in the bluntly-named Japanese trading card game, “Transformers Cards”. Virtually simultaneously with her appearance in this game, the second Almanac also included a Chromia headshot, but based on her Generation 1 self's head. This version continues the card game's used of the Arcee head, albeit with a blue face instead of the pink one her card uses.

• Road Rage, who sports a red version of Animated Tracks's body, in homage to Generation 1 Road Rage, who was a red redeco of Generation 1 Tracks.

• Grinder, a blue and white redeco of Blackout, who first appeared in “Transformers Cards”, and is an homage to Revenge of the Fallen Grindor (who was a repaint of moveiverse Blackout). The cards Engrish-ed up the spelling of his name, but this proved fortuitous, given the appearance of an Animated Mini-Con Grindor in “The Stunti-Con Job”.

• Venom, a green and orange redeco of Blackout based on the Generation 1 Deluxe Insecticon of the same name, simply because Blackout looks rather insect-like. He first appeared on the BotCon 2011 litho.

• Bugly, a blue and yellow Blackout redeco, and a brand new character making his debut here. He's based on the Generation 1 Pretender of the same name, again because the character was an insectoid.

• Stampy and Longrack, based on the Beast Wars Neo characters. Stampy debuted in “Moving Violations”, Longrack in “The Stunti-Con Job”.

• And the last run of characters all premiered as crowd-fillers in “Moving Violations”: Stungun (based on the character from Fun Publications' TransTech stories), Air Raid (a redeco of Animated Powerglide based on FunPub's Skyfall, but not named after him on the basis that Skyfall, as a component of Nexus Maximus, should be a multiversal singularity), Scrounge (based on the spy from the Generation 1 Marvel comics, and previously mentioned in the second Almanac), Jackpot (based on the Generation 1 Action Master), Excellion (a redeco of Animated Hot Shot, based on of the redeco of Cybertron Hot Shot of the same name), Strongarm (based on the Energon Omnicon) and Moscardo (an original character, one of many who sports the Bumblebee body-type, and christened with Generation 1 Bumblebee's Portugese name).

• Last but not least, tucked away in the bottom right, are super-deformed versions of Octus and Megadeath, the Transformer alter-egos of authors Jim Sorenson and Bill Forster, who previously appeared in the introduction to the second Almanac. Here, they appear in their alternate modes for the first time: Octus is a Dalek from Doctor Who (in keeping with Generation 1 Octus, whose creator Lee Sullivan design him to transform into a Dalek), while Megadeath is a mammoth, since he shares a body-type with Beast Wars Neo Big Convoy.

TRANSFORMERS COLLECTORS CLUB MAGAZINE #43

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• Little Miss Firecracker might be a reference to the real-life Miss Firecracker beauty pageant, or the movie that also went by that name.

• Tetrinite is a supremely durable metal mentioned in the Transformers Kids' Stuff storybook, "Jaws of Terror".

• Decimus Quadrillions is, one would presume, the suitably money-oriented full name of the Animated universe's version of Senator Decimus, a wealthy politician from IDW's Generation 1 continuity, first appearing in the "Megatron Origin" mini-series.

• Furnacia was the home plant of the Firebugs, from the Marvel UK Generation 1 story by that name.

• The Rescue Patrol name was previously used by a team of Generation 1 Micromasters.

• In addition to sharing various physical characteristics with Infernos from across Transformers continuity, Flashpoint has the same motto as G1 Inferno, and uses a Hydro-Pack, the same accessory the G1 character used when he was an Action Master.

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• The Choirs of Anduria were mentioned in issue #31 of IDW's ongoing Transformers series.

• Both the tickets and the fan club pass feature more Cybertron Optical Code. They continue to refer to unsolved or unreadable languages. I think Jim was taking a pop at me for not figuring this out first time round! They say:

• The top of the ticket reads "D'Agapeyeff", referring to the D'Agapeyeff cipher, an unsolved cipher written by cartographer Alexander D'Agapeyeff.

• The stub of the top ticket reads "Rohonc", as in the Rohonc Codex, an unsolved code found the city of Rohonc, Hungary, of unknown origin.

• The bottom ticket stub says "Byblos", after the Byblos syllabary, an deciphered writing system found in the Mediterranean city of Byblos.

• The top of the fan club pass reads "Tamam Shud", referring to the mysterious Tamam Shud case, in with an unsolved cipher was found on the body of a dead man in 1948 in Adelaide, Australia.

• The bottom of the pass translates as "Seraphinius", from the Codex Seraphinius, an illustrated fantasy encyclopedia created by Italian artist Luigi Serafini in 1981, written in an unreadable alphabet.

• JW 39 864 715 – Ah, it's another alpha-numeric string that I haven't a clue about.

• Rosanna's concert is a Synergy Production. Synergy was the holographic computer from Jem and the Holograms, also responsible for orchestrating music shows.

• The Fractyal Amphitheatre is named for the Beast Wars BotCon 1997 exclusive, Fractyl.

• Tomaandi was an Autobot Elder who made a few sparing appearances in a handful of very early Marvel UK stories. The street number, 1864, is a fairly vague thing to pin down, but I suspect it's a reference to the South Park episode “Super Fun Time”, in which the kids visit a “living history” Pioneer Village set in a perpetual 1864.

• Perihex is a region of Cybertron previously only mentioned on game board of the 2007 live-action movie version of RISK.

• A re-use of the Cybertronian day-and-month system seen in The AllSpark Almanac II - Marxsol is named for Beast Wars cartoon writer Christy Marx, while Zetcaneon is named for the Masterforce Warrior Zetca (a copy-edit error in the Almanac saw the "-neon" cut off this month's name, so this is its first full appearance in print).

• BBB-307DR is the identification code of a computer that appears in the Philip K. Dick novel, The Electric Ant.

• 0709215012 is the prisoner number of the character Brendon in the Home Movies episode, "Time to Pay the Price".

• 6548-32480-3321 is the number of Animated Wheeljack's body type, originally mentioned in The AllSpark Almanac II. If it has a hidden meaning (as Bumblebee's did), I still haven't figured it out.

• Could ticket number B5 be a reference to sci-fi TV series Babylon 5? B4 then would presumably not be a reference to anything, just the seat next to B5.

• The number on the tickets' stubs, AR81088587, is the name of a file mentioned in one of the epigraphs in the Frank Herbert novel, Dune.

• Concermaster is a play on Ticketmaster, similar logo and all. It of course calls to mind Headmasters, Targetmasters, Powermasters, etc.

• The CDs are cast in the image of the Golden Disks from Beast Wars, with the top one bearing the symbols of the Vok disk, and the bottom decorated in the symbols of the Voyager disk.

• The image on the cover of the CD case is the cover to the soundtrack of The Transformers: The Movie. The Ancient Autobot on the cover reads "Frozen Gold and Liquid", presumably an accidental cropping of "Frozen Gold and Liquid Ice", a fictional song from the Iain Banks novel Espedair Street. The red text at the bottom is Rosanna's name.

• I'll bet anything that the Generation 2 Autobot symbol radiating the "radar" waves was a sticker on a G2 toy, but I can't figure out which one offhand.

• Grandus was established to be a fan of Rosanna's in The AllSpark Almanac II. The strap on his backstage pass reads "BPCOM." Not sure what that could be a fragment of. Rosanna is playing a guitar that looks like Animated Laserbeak in the pass illustration - another nod to her potential double-life as Decepticon deep-cover agent Flipsides?

• Manatronatee is another of Rosanna's pets, which include Ramhorn, Zaur and Steeljaw - all established in The AllSpark Almanac II.

TRANSFORMERS COLLECTORS CLUB MAGAZINE #44

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• As noted above, these “evil mirror universe” versions of the Animated cast are inspired by the Shattered Glass universe introduced at BotCon 2008. The cast is expanded through references to the other mirror universe Autobots, who all seem to be cast as having the traits of the Animated Decepticons – Prowl has had a clone army like Starscream, Ratchet is known for his twisted experiments like Blackarachnia, and Bulkhead is noted for his power, like Lugnut. The only real reference here is to the Terrordome, Isaac Sumdac's battle fortress, named after the base employed by Cobra in the G.I. Joe franchise. It was previously named the Technodrome on the BotCon lithograph that introduced these characters, after the spherical war machine from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but that was an error.

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• This page is written in the same “diary entry” style as a few episode summaries seen in the two Almanacs, with the “Hello Nekomimi Pop-Star” stationery replaced with the appropriately mirror-universe-y “Goodbye Inumimi Rock-Star” (“inu” being Japanese for “dog”, where “neko” means “cat”). The entry summarizes “mirror” versions of the Animated episodes “Sound and Fury”, “SUV: Society of Ultimate Villain” and “Human Error”, introducing mirror versions of human villains Angry Archer, Nanosec, Professor Princess, Colossus Rhodes and Meltdown, who together make up “HYBRID” (nyuk nyuk nyuk). Sari uses the swear “frack”, from Battlestar Galactica (where it's spelled “frak”).

• Doodles scribbled on the page by Sari include “Stingers Rock” (referring to the nogoodnik band of the same name from Jem and the Holograms) and a My Little Pony character in the aesthetic of the newest version of the series, Friendship is Magic, which is named Rainbow Dark in a dual reference to FiM character Rainbow Dash and Hasbro girls property Rainbow Brite. What the “Poison Apple” doodle might refer to, beyond that obvious Snow White reference, I'm not sure.

• The polaroid of Sari with her chainsaw arms was originally a piece of art Derrick Wyatt produced for his blog. Mirror universe Sari has this weapons in place of regular Sari's sword blades.

TRANSFORMERS COLLECTORS CLUB MAGAZINE #45

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• Mention is made of Operation: Distant Thunder, an endeavour that takes its name from a time-travel experiment in the Binaltech story line, which was itself named for “Distant Thunder!”, the time-and-space bending adventure from issue #100 of the Marvel UK Generation 1 comic. No details are given of it here, but given Cyclonus's involvement in it and the hints in previous Almanacs that he hails from the future, one is left to wonder...

• Sky-Byte's reluctance to harm non-military targets hearkens back to his Robots in Disguise incarnation and his friendship with children.

• Blot and Mindwipe's profiles are pretty much straight lifts from their Generation 1 counterpart's.

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• The Maximal Cybertronix next to Blot translates as “Turd Ferguson. It's a funny name” - a quote from a Saturday Night Live parody of Jeopardy!

• Strika is armed with Reverse-Higgs Nitronium Missiles, weapons previously seen in in the Fun Publications text story Flames of Yesterday. That story noted they were prone to quantum jamming, but here, it is said they are less susceptible to it than Penetraror Missiles, the personal weapons of Generation 2 Roadblock.

• The Predacon Cybertronix behind Oil Slick is the lyrics to “Goodbye My Only Friend”, the closing theme from the video game Portal 2.

• Oil Slick's new weapon uses Giga-Techvolt principles, named after one of the weapons used by the Sixliner team from Return of Convoy.

• Ironfist is contemplating the use of Mini-Cons as partners, as seen in the Armada series.

• The hexadecimal code in the bottom-right corner of the page is from the TV series Sherlock, appearing in an illicit e-mail in the episode “A Scandal in Belgravia”. I can't take credit for this one, Abates of TFWiki.Net got there before me! Note that this continues the use of the hidden codes in the Addenum as being references to hidden codes from both fiction and real life.

• With that in mind, if anyone can suss out what the numerical strings by Blot and Strika's names mean – 69275754697 and 64672943 – speak up...