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THE ANNOTATED ALLSPARK ALMANAC II

In the tradition of the first “Annotated AllSpark Almanac”, chronicling all the hidden reference to Transformer lore and beyond in Jim Sorenson and Bill Forster's first Transformers: Animated guidebook, now comes the guide to the second volume of the fan-favourite series!

Unsurprisingly, some references remain elusive! They're all mentioned in this document, sometimes just with a (?) after them, but click here for the short list of references that have yet to be identified.

If you've got any ideas, send me an e-mail!

Check out Jim Sorenson's blog at Disciples of Boltax
Read about the AllSpark Almanac at TFWIKI.Net
and buy the book at Amazon.com!

Front cover – We've got Bumblee and Sari playing with real Animated toys: Voyager-class Wreck-Gar and Optimus Prime, Deluxe-class Prowl and Ratchet, Leader-class Bulkhead, and Roll-Out Command Optimus Prime. Bulkhead's buzzsaw is on the wrong hand, however, and the packaging lying beside Bumblebee is for Voyager Prime, not Roll-Out Command Prime.

Back cover – The silhouetted figure that takes up most of the back cover is a mysterious figure of evil from the new opening sequence created for the Japanese broadcast of the Animated cartoon. And speaking of Animated in Japan, that Japanese quote reads: “When I was a kid, Super Robot Lifeform Transformers' books were nothing like this book. Those were the days... But this new book is really fun, too! I didn't think I'd be surprised at the humongous size of this book!” The quote is attributed to Hiroyuki Otoboto, the Transformer-loving patriarch of the Otoboto family, stars of new live-action segments attached to the Japanese broadcast of Animated. The final part of the quote in particular is lifted from Transformer manga artist Naoto Tsushima's Twitter feed, where he made the comment in regard to the first Allspark Almanac. In the first of many non-Transformers references to come, mirror-universe Swindle's quote mentions a minimum security orphanarium; it was in such a facility that Futurama's Leela grew up.

Pg 9a – Jim Sorenson's Decepticon alter-ego is an Animated version of Octus, a member of the Decepticon Triumverate from the UK Marvel Comics story, “The Fall and Rise of the Decepticon Empire”. Creator Lee Sullivan designed Octus to transform into a Dalek from Doctor Who, and that alternate mode intention is faithfully carried on here, with it being referred to by its technical name, a Mark III Travel Machine. Bill Forster's alias, meanwhile, is Megadeath from the UK annual story “The Magnificent Six” (no doubt a choice based on Forster's propensity for heavy metal), but he has been redesigned from his original hideous appearance into a form based on Beast Wars Neo character Big Convoy. His alternate mode is a Guylos EZ-038 Assault Craft, an appropriately elephantine mech from Zoids.

Pg 9b – Reference is made to Alignment, a novella produced by Simon Furman for the UK convention Transforce in 2001 to end the story of the Marvel Comics universe and lead into the Beast Era. Produced without Hasbro's approval, it was a non-canon endeavour... until now, as the introduction refers to it as “true and accurate”! This is also the book's first use of the “universal stream” classification system introduced in the Fun Publications Transformers Collectors' Club exclusive story, “Withered Hope”. We'll be seeing a lot more of this as we go on.

Pg 11 – Hidden away in the bottom right of this page is the first frame of a flip-book style animation that runs through the Almanac. It depicts pencil-sketch versions of Optimus Prime and Megatron's transformation stock footage.

Pg 13 - “Bakapor” is Russian for “dumbass”.

Pg 15 – Safeguard's powered up form (which appeared only in the “First (and Second) in Flight” comic that came with the Jetfire and Jetstorm toys, not in the cartoon itself), is referred to as Burning Justice, a pejorative nickname used by TFWIKI.Net for the “burst of super-power brought on by intense emotion” that is a popular trope of anime.

Pg 16 – Yoketron's bio refers to numerous Cybertronian martial arts: Crystalocution (originally mentioned from G1 Banazi-Tron's bio), diffusion (from Dreamwave's More Than Meets the Eye handbook), Tekkaido (from the BotCon 2001 exclusive Arcee's bio) and Circuit-Su (from Bugly's bio, also mentioned in the Animated cartoon itself). Two new arts are introduced here: Tahtib-tron and Laser Lathi, named for Tahtib and Lathi, types of cane-fighting from Egypt and India, respectively. To close out the bio, Jazz quotes a song lyric: “I believe the protoforms are our future,” a paraphrased vesion of Whitney Houston's “Greatest Love of All”, which contains the lyric “I believe the children are our future”.

Pg 17 – Here we learn that Kup (designed for the Animated cartoon but not implemented; finalized specially for inclusion in the Almanac) gave Optimus, Sentinel and Elita-1 their names, as we saw Sentinel do for Bumblebee, Bulkhead and their classmates in “Autoboot Camp”. Kup is puffing on a cy-gar, as his Generation 1 counterpart did in IDW Publishing's “All Hail Megatron”.

Pg 18 – Shockwave uses the measurement of mechanometers, which originated in the Generation 1 cartoon episode “City of Steel” and saw use in the previous Almanac. He also refers to Cyber/Nano Algorithms, or CNA, the Transformer equivalent of DNA introduced in IDW Publishing's “Spotlight: Arcee”. Operation: Doppelganger is explained on page 61; it's a pretty generic name, but I'm going to guess it's a reference to a similar operation that went down in BattleTech.

Pg 19a – Numbers on Wheeljack's page:

Pg 19b – Mainframe's profile refers to the Software Wars, a conflict mentioned in Generation 1 Guzzle's packaging bio. It also name-drops Extempaxia, a Quintesson from the Transformers Universe Presents: The Wreckers comics, and Spanner, the Autobot technician responsible for building the space bridge in the Generation 1 Marvel comic.

Pg 20 – Kup refers to Animated versions of Generation 1 characters Skram and Blaster, and Fun Publications' Cybertron creation, Quickslinger. Blaster is fond of Quarian thrash, music mentioned in the previously-discussed Alignment, and Ragnarok & Roll, the title of an episode of The Real Ghostbusters. Kup also name-checks The Fallen, one of the Original Thirteen Transformers introduced in Dreamwave Productions' The War Within: The Dark Ages comic, and the Pit, the analog of Hell in the Transformers' belief system, first mentioned in the Beast Wars animated series. We also learn that Animated Rodimus was previously known as Hot Rod, like his Generation 1 counterpart.

Pg 21 – Kup refers to turbofoxes, Cybertronian wildlife first mentioned in Generation 1 Mirage's bio, and swears by Xal, a deity sworn to by the second generation Cybertronian Mindset in issue #9 of Marvel's Generation 2 comic. He notes that Rodimus has become known as the chosen one, an epithet borne by Generation 1 Rodimus and first mentioned in the episode “Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1”. Rodimus's team are here given the name Team Athenia, named for the planet introduced in that same episode (and later actually named in the Japanese dub of the episode), paralleling the Decepticons' planet-named Team Chaar. The two teams were seen in the Animated episode “TransWarped” where they battled in an asteroid belt, here dubbed the Magnokor belt after the magnetic-powered character from Inhumanoids. The Cosmic Rust infection that claimed Rodimus in that episode was named on-screen, but for the sake of completeness we'll remind you that's a reference to the Generation 1 episode that introduced the disease and bore its name.

Pg 22 – Dyson Cube is a webcomic. The Tower of Pion is a structure in the Autobot capital Iacon, introduced in Dreamwave's The War Within comic books. Ballobots are used in the Cybertonian sport of basketrek, mentioned in issue #21 of Marvel's Generation 1 comic. Ironhide's chant of “Brawn get mad! Brawn smash!” is, of course a reference to the Incredible Hulk. Cybertronian watering holes Maccadam's Old Oil House (first introduced in the UK Marvel comics, but has since made the leap to most every continuity going, including the Animated cartoon) and Widow's Cafe (an establishment that debuted in the Fun Publications story “Gone Too Far”) are also mentioned. Finally, Ironhide uses batch proto-initiator as a substitue for “mother” (as in, “brother from another”), a term first used in issue #3 of IDW Publishing's Infiltration series.

Pg 24 – Red Alert uses a Transfer Interlink, like BotCon character Apelinq. Like Ratchet before her, she trained at Protihex Medical Mechanical; the Orbital Torus State of Protihex was first introduced in Dreamwave's The War Within comics. Red is famous for inventing a cure for Gold Plastic Syndrome, a fan-coined nickname for an unfortunate condition that blights many Transformers toys made from swirly metallic gold plastic that causes them to crumble with age.

Pg 25 – The song on this page is titled “The Iron Baron”, the pre-production name of the original Generation 1 Grandus. It is sung by Rosanna (who will appear in a couple of pages), and appears courtesy of Twincast Productions, Ltd, named for Twincast, the upgraded form Blaster took in the Japanese series, The Headmasters. It refers to Belzone (a cancelled Generation 2 Autobot Power Master), the Void (the nothingness left when Unicron consumes a universe) and the Stonehenge Kick (Grandus's special attack, shared by his Generation 1 predecessor). I imagine its probably a parody of an existing song, but can't suss out what.

Pg 26a – Among the Cybertronian drugs Beachcomber indulges in are syk (from the UK Generation 1 Marvel comic story “Secrets”), simultronics (from IDW's “Spotlight: Blurr”), Angolmois (Unicron's life-force, from the Japanese Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo series) and crysmag (from the Headmasters two-parter, “The Final Showdown on Earth”). Rattletrap supposes Beachcomber's sensors would be work a few shanix, a kind of currency favoured by Death's Head in the UK Generation 1 comics.

Pg 26b – Highbrow met his end in the Manganese Mountains, a Cybertronian locale introduced in Marvel's Headmasters comic-book mini-series.

Pg 27a – Diablock Rock is named for Takara's LEGO-like building block line, Diablock. We also get our first mention of Trypticon prison, named for the Generation 1 city-bot Trypticon, just as the other Cybertronian structures from Animated, the Metroplex and Fortress Maximus, are.

Pg 27b – Dug Base should be recognisable as sharing a body design with Grandus. That's because he's based on the Brave toy of the same name, who was a redeco of the original Grandus toy. He appeared in vehicle mode in the Animated episode “Decepticon Air”.

Pg 28a – Dai Atlas is training Drift, a samurai Autobot introduced in the pages of IDW's “All Hail Megatron”.

Pg 28b – Animated Sky Garry shares the same attack as his Generation 1 predecessor, the Mystery Circle Punch. He was second to Big Bang, an Autobot commander designed to be the star of the 1991 Takara Transformers toyline, who was ultimately shelved and never produced (until Fun Publications revived the concept nearly twenty years later); Sky Garry was also a member of the '92 toyline, hence the reference. The translation of his name is a bit of a crack at the fact his name makes no dang sense. Here, it is given a meaning in an old Destron dialect; “Destron” was the traditional Japanese name for the Decepticons until recently. Page 222 sheds a bit more light on this reference.

Pg 29a – Illegal services Rattletrap is known to provide include shock pop datatrax (shock pop is a type of music enjoyed by the 2007 live-action movie's Grindcore; datatrax are a form of data storage introduced in the Beast Wars animated series), prismaball tickets (a sport played by the Generation 1 Nebulan Recoil) and forged S.T.A.R.S. indento-cards (S.T.A.R.S. was a “club” of sorts back in the mid-1980s, advertised through flyers packed in with Transformers toys full of exclusive stories and mail-away offers, including just such a card). He is in a relationship with a “botanist”... more on this on the next page!

Pg 29b – Allicons are creations of the Quintessons, who first appeared in The Transformers: The Movie. They were unnamed in the film, and were later named by Dreamwave Productions. Seaspray fought some during the War of the Waves on Antilla; the War of the Waves was the name of a Transformers Universe action figure two-pack containing Air Raid and Storm Surge, while Antilla was a planet introduced in the Generation 1 cartoon episode, “Cosmic Rust”.

Pg 29c – The Autotroopers' body type is 256-OZU-004, the ID number of Jake Sully from the James Cameron movie, Avatar.

Pg 30a – The aforementioned botanist! Animated Botanica began life as an April Fool's joke of sorts by character designer Derrick J. Wyatt, when he put her and several other characters into an image posted on his blog and challenged readers to figure out which characters were real and would be appearing in the third season, and which weren't. Botanica was a fake-out, but she's canon now, baby! She is noted to be in a relationship with Rattletrap (a callback to the original Rattrap and Botanica hooking up in Beast Machines), and she once rid the planet Daffodil II (mentioned in the letters page of issue #326 of the UK Generation 1 comic) of an infestation of Morphobots (from the Generation 1 cartoon episode, “Quest for Survival”).

Pg 30b – Like Kup before him, Wheelie was designed for the Animated cartoon, but not used, then finalized for the Almanac. He was found on Zeotopia, named for the world of the Hasbro toyline Xevoz, by the Silver Guardians, named for the security force from Power Rangers: Time Force.

Pg 31 – Pipes was another “April Fool's” character, designed to look like Huffer in reference to Generation 1 Pipes, who was a remold of Generation 1 Huffer, and both characters have the same special powers as their G1 progenitors. Huffer and Pipes are also designed after Nintendo's famous brothers, Mario and Luigi; their dialogue here is written with Italian accentuations.

Pg 32 – While describing Tracks, Beachcomber refers to two types of Cybertronian fauna: glitch mice (from the Generation 1 cartoon episode “S.O.S. Dinobots”) and nano-fleas (from issue #2 of the Transformers Universe comic).

Pg 33 – Cliffjumper not trusting Mirage is a reference to their Generation 1 ancestors going through the same clash in the Generation 1 cartoon episode “Traitor”.

Pg 34a – Glyph graduated from Drouhard University, named for Brianne Drouhard, the character designer who created her. She is an Archaeometrist like her Generation 1 counterpart, and is known to have studied Gorlam Prime (introduced in IDW Publishing's “Spotlight: Nightbeat”). Her closeness with Tap-Out is a reference to the fact that both their Generation 1 counterparts were BotCon exclusives in the same year.

Pg 34b – Tap-Out's body-type is a 65356 9292 346 shell, the barcode number of the Animated Bumblebee toy. As an Archaeometrist, Glyph uses several fictional languages while describing Tap-Out.

Pg 35 – Dude, Searchlight is basically Batman. He once beat up the criminals responsible for Operation: Burning Sky (named after a Generation 1 UK comic story) and deposited them in front of the Forum of Enlightenment (introduced in Dreawave’s The War Within comics).

Pg 36a – Volks is based on a Brazilian recolor of the original Generation 1 Bumblebee toy. Tap-Out calls him a LadiesBot217-type, in reference to the screenname of live-action Transformers movie character Sam Wiwicky, “LadiesMan217”.

Pg 36b – Carrera is based on a Brazilian recolor of the original Generation 1 Cliffjumper toy. In describing him, Bumper refers again to syk (see pg 26) and the Iacon 5000, a race name-dropped in the letters page of issue #326 of the UK Marvel comic. The measurement of weight, the kilo-unit, is used; this originated in the Animated episode “Rise of the Constructicons”.

Pg 36c – Furao is the name given to Generation 1 Bumblebee in the Brazilian translation of the Generation 1 comics. It means “Ferret” in both Portugese, and as this entry notes, “Old Malignus”; “Malignus” was the evil faction from the Brazilian version of the Transformers toyline, but see page 222 for some expanded meaning of this. Also referenced are the Flash Frenzy (personal spaceship of Cybertron Skyfall), Elba (a prison planet from the Challenge of the GoBots episode, “Escape from Elba”), cyber-ducks (mentioned in the Generation 1 cartoon episode “The Rebirth”, Part 1), a solar sail (a feature of the Armada Mini-Con Oceanglide) and the Blot Nebula (from the on-package bio of Classics Jetfire).

Pg 37a – Hubcap is friendly with an Animated version of Generation 1 Action Master Jackpot; their Generation 1 counterparts are good chums too, as seen in the Fun Publications story, “Gone Too Far”. Shanix are mentioned again (see pg 26), as is Aquillian crystal (a form of currency from issue #44 of the Marvel Generation comics), a protocol droid (a type of droid from Star Wars) and a paranoid android (Marvin, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).

Pg 37b – Searchlight is definitely channelling Frank Miller’s Batman! He mentions Bhul, a planet introduced in IDW’s “Spotlight: Arcee”.

Pg 38a – Autosanrin was the winning entry in a Transformers character design contest held by Japanese magazine Comic Bom Bom in 1986.

Pg 38b – Lightbright appeared in the Animated cartoon twice, but like most of the crowd fillers, went unidentified. She gets a name here for the first time, based on the Hasbro toy, Lite-Brite.

Pg 38c – Lickety-Split has the same story behind her as Lightbright, and also gets a name from another Hasbro toy, in this case, My Little Pony. Her entry references a Golden Disk (a Cybertronian artefact introduced in the Beast Wars cartoon), Orgenon and the Galactic Olympics (both from the Generation 1 cartoon episode “Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1”), and Buzz Lightyear (from Toy Story, also immortalized as part of Takara’s Disney Label Transformers sub-line). The popular measurement of time, the nanoklik, introduced in Beast Wars, is also used.

Pg 39a – As previously intimated on page 25, Animated Rosanna is a singer, just like her counterpart from the Kiss Players series. She’s Cybertron’s number two star next to Windy (a female Micromaster from Takara’s final Generation 1 series, Operation: Combination, who was indeed a popular singer), and was formerly part of the Velocitron Band (a band from the planet Velocitron, as seen in the Cybertron episode “Champion”) with the Rock Bots (an unproduced idea for Transformers that transformed into musical instruments). Her songs include “Alive a Soldier” (a song from the Japanese version of the Animated cartoon), “Principle of Badness” (from Beast Wars II) and “There Is No Border in the Universe” (from the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon, Super-God Masterforce). Her hometown is Ky-Alexia, first mentioned in Dorling Kindersley’s guide to the live-action Transformers movie universe, which is just off the Mithril Sea, an ocean mentioned in the bio of Universe Rook. Her model number is 09262 8765 001, the secret agent number of Brock Samson from The Venture Brothers.

Pg 39b – As Transformers wouldn’t know the names of Earthly animals, Ramhorn is here called a Nosoron, the Polish name of Beast Wars character Rhinox; Steeljaw is a Cybercat, a species named in the Cybertron episode “Challenge”; and Zaur is a Brontobot, one of the preliminary names for Generation 1 brontosaurus Dinobot Sludge.

Pg 40 – Mega-dronex is not a Transformers term, but it’s got to be a reference to something.

Pg 41 – Exo-frame is a fairly generic term, but given the references to it found in the first book, I’ll bet this is a specific callout to the mechs of ExoSquad. Tutorbot 2.0 replaces the original, based on the Diagnostic Drones from Beast Machines. Reference is also made to a Project: Powermaster, named for the original Generation 1 toys with transforming engines; the toy design section towards the end of the book sheds a little light on this!

Pgs 42-43 – Sari’s powers include a Hyperspace Mallet (a joking name given to the popular anime trope that involves little girls pulling huge mallets out of nowhere), a Master Blade (the personal weapon of Generation 1 Fortress Maximus from the Headmasters series), a Skyboom shield (named for the Mini-Con shield weapon from Armada; the previous Almanac also gave Sentinel Prime’s shield this name), azusa skates (named for the Azusa Skatepark in California) and Micron Boosters for enhanced jumps (named after the series of blind-packed Mini-Con figures released by Takara; “Microns” is the Japanese name for “Mini-Cons”).

Pg 44 – “Single Green Robot” refers to the movie, Single White Female.

Pg 46 – Blackarachnia calls Waspinator a “circuit-glitched diode-blown dimwit” the same string of epithets hurled at Generation 1 Hot Rod by Kup in The Transformers: The Movie. She also notes that his stingers are “cranked up to eleven”, a popular term from the movie This Is Spinal Tap.

Pg 48 – Strika’s title, General of Destruction, was previously noted in the bio for her included in issue #24 of the Official Transformers Collectors’ Club magazine. It’s a reference to the typical Japanese title for Decepticon leaders, “Emperor of Destruction”. Her being armed with reciprocating cannons is a call-back to the original Beast Machines Strika toy, which was also equipped with them. She also has a small reserve of Forestonite, the mysterious energy source from the Japanese Generation 2 manga, “The New Battle!!” It is also clarified that her Team Chaar is named for the planet the team is stationed on, which was introduced in the Generation 1 cartoon episode, “Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1”.

Pg 49 – We’ve already covered Cosmic Rust (see pg 21), which was one of Oil Slick’s creations in the Animated universe, per the comic story “Bots of Science”. Here, another of his creations is named: the reverse evolution virus, which originated in the Micromaster Collection storyline. The remark about him training with an Autobot motorcycle refers to his on-package bio, which claimed he trained with Prowl as a Cyber-Ninja, something the show didn’t touch on. Cyclonus concludes his description of Oil Slick by saying “over, finished”; this is what you call a “Furmanism”, one of the many popular repeated phrases in the works of Transformers comic book writer Simon Furman.

Pg 50 – Cyclonus’s backstory heavily hints that he shares a similar history with his Generation 1 counterpart, coming from a future where Megatron has been rebuilt into Galvatron. He has transwarp circuitry (used for bending space and time, introduced in the Beast Wars cartoon and later played a big role in Animated) in his reactor linkage, a part of Transformer anatomy that it wouldn’t be pleasant to stuff anything up, according to issue #57 of the Generation 1 Marvel comic. Cyclonus is armed with an oxidizing laser, like his G1 counterpart originally was, and blades that can generate waves of blinding, corrosive black light, like the black beam gun that G1 Cyclonus upgraded to when he became a Targetmaster. The comment about Starscream's circuity and self-preservation algorithms seems to suggest Cyclonus is a rebuilt Skywarp, who was last seen floating in space in “TransWarped”, just as G1 Skywarp may or may not have become G1 Cyclonus (but let's not open that can of worms).

Pg 52 – Blackout is armed with four zander cannons, named for IDW Publishing writer Zander Cannon. Beast Wars Rampage and Scavenger and Beast Machines Che all had galva-conductors, but Blackout has them in his particle-blasters, which makes them feel like a reference to Generation 1 Galvatron, who had a particle cannon. His astro blasters are named for the Mini-Con weapon from Armada. His seismic energy dischargers are noted to be reverse-engineered from an “oddly misplaced Cybertronian” named Crasher, a reference to the Challenge of the GoBots character well known for her seismic stomps, along with an indication that she might have somehow wound up in the Animated universe. Further, the specific name of these dischargers comes from the bio of Fracture, the live-action movie toyline’s own Crasher homage.

Pg 54 – Spittor mouth tendrils are given the name Legion Tentacles, after the hideous appendages that sprout from the mouths of the monstrous Legion in Takara’s creepy Kiss Players series.

Pg 55 – Many fans were reminded of Generation 1 Bombshell and his mind-controlling cerebro-shells when Dirt Boss was introduced, and the Almanac doesn’t let them down, officially giving Dirt Boss’s devices that name. The Generation 1 homages continue as the Constructicons are hinted to be building something called Devastator.

Pg 56 – Soundwave’s black and red avatars are referred to both as electrostatic copies, named for the toy redeco they represent (“Electrostatic Soundwave”), and Soundblaster duplicates, after the upgraded form Soundwave took on in The Headmasters, to which these avatars are coloured in homage. His primary avatar is called a sonic white version of himself, after the “Sonic White” coloration of the Music Label Soundwave toy that its colours are based on. The virtual world he trapped the Autobots are in is called both Realvision (from issue #48 of the Generation 1 Marvel comic) and a makeshift InfoCore (after the massive computer system from Beast Machines).

Pg 57 – Ratbat and Laserbeak are both describing as having the vampiric and cowardly characteristics of their Generation 1 predecessors, respectively. The Scraplets, tiny robots from issue #29 of the G1 Marvel comic, are mentioned, as is the measurement of distance, the hic, from the UK annual story “The Magnificent Six” and used in the previous Almanac.

Pg 58 – Reflector has a Photon T-34 cannon, named after the live-action movie Real Gear Robot. Their hard-light hologram powers are a reference to a strange scene in the Generation 1 cartoon episode “Divide and Conquer”, in which the original Reflector’s components disappear in a flash of light. The measurement of time, the megacycle, is used: it originated with Beast Wars, but has since become widely used.

Pg 59a – Smelting Pools and a personal pickaxe weapon were the hallmarks of the original Generation 1 Straxus, who first appeared in issue #17 of the Generation 1 Marvel comic.

Pg 59b – Slapper is another of the aforementioned “April Fool” characters posted to Derrick J. Wyatt's blog, a redeco of Spittor, just as Robots in Disguise Slapper was a redeco of Beast Wars Transmetal Spittor. Energon Discharge Powder would be the Transformer equivalent of sneezing powder; when afflicted with a fit of “sneezing” in the Beast Wars episode “The Low Road,” Rhinox would involuntarily discharge energon. It is Vrobian in origin; Vrobians were psychic vampires from issue #63 of the Generation 1 Marvel comic.

Pg 60a – Porter C. Powell’s limousine was designed to resemble the Tonka GoBot Tux, and the Almanac follows through with this idea in designing a robot mode for it, giving him the GoBot’s characteristic top hat. The robot is named Stretch, which was the alternate name the GoBots cartoon gave to Tux; his banishment across the dimensions seems to hint that Animated Stretch and GoBots Stretch could be the same character. Furthermore, the reference to quantum-string vibration levels appears to hearken back to the GoBots' method of cataloguing alternate universes, which they refer to as “levels”, as seen in the Challenge of the GoBots two parter, “Invasion from the 21st Level”, and revisited in the Fun Publications story “Withered Hope”.

Pg 60b – Flip Sides is another April Fool character, an Animated version of a Decepticon sleeper agent available exclusively through online retailer eHobby, and a redeco of the cassette mold also used to create the original Rosanna. Fans noted that unfortunate similarity in colors between Flip Sides and Rosanna, who were not released terribly far apart, but the Almanac has played with that similarity here, with Blurr’s report suggesting that Animated Flip Sides and Rosanna could possibly be one and the same.

Pg 61a – Scalpel is an Animated version of the Revenge of the Fallen character, having started life as a piece of fan art Derrick J. Wyatt drew for his blog.

Pg 61b – While the original Generation 1 Magnificus was not a clone in his bio, he was made into one by Dreamwave Productions in issue #1 of their ongoing series, and that idea is carried on into Animated Magnificus. Project Doppelganger is explained and CNA is mentioned again (see pg 18 for both); CNA is also referred to by another name, hard-coded design schematics, a term from issue #2 of Transformers Universe Featuring the Wreckers. Magnificus’s knack for dealing with organics is presumably a reference to the closeness between G1 Magnificus and the organic alien Ga’mede. Reference is also made to the planet Ijurn, mentioned in passing in Dreamwave’s Micromasters mini-series.

Pg 63a – In describing his part in the events of “TransWarped”, Shockwave name-checks several Decepticon leaders who did not appear in the series: Straxus (seen earlier in the book), Gutcruncher (a high-ranking Generation 1 Action Master), Skystalker (Generation 1 Micromaster with aspirations on leading the Decepticons), Deathsaurus (leader of the Decepticons in Japan’s Victory series) and Clench (European-exclusive Decepticon leader from the interstitial period between G1 and G2). Clench is noted to command Team Kaon, named for the Decepticon city on Cybertron introduced in Dreamwave’s The War Within comics. It appears to break the format of teams being named after planets, until you remember that Animated has a lot of the Decepticons living on a planet they have named “New Kaon” after being exiled from Cybertron. In the same breath, Megatron’s team is noted to be “Team Earth”.

Pg 63b – As in the first Almanac, the text which appears in the headers and footers and behind the numerous illustrations on many of the episode guide pages is Cybertronix, a symbol language developed for the Beast Wars cartoon that hides hidden messages to be decoded. The font on this page, and that used on all Decepticon internal logs, is the “Predacon” font. Messages on this page include:

Pg 64 – This partial episode summary for “TransWarped” takes the form of the Headmaster's account on Yatter, the Transformers equivalent of Twitter introduced in the Collectors' Club exclusive story, “Eye in the Sky”. Yatter is copyright Alternate Reality, Inc, the computer programming company from issue #40 of the Generation 1 Marvel comic. The Beast Wars II Moon toy appears in the title bar, as does the Japanese ID number for Raiden, C-131. The page prompts users to post with the order “Report to me at once!”, the command Optimus Prime gave Ironhide in the opening scenes of The Transformers: The Movie. The arrow-shaped Start box is taken from Generation 1 instruction leaflets. Headmaster's screen name ends in 42, which is both the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and a nerd cliché so tremendously tired that the Headmaster's use of it unsurprising. He has 26632 followers, after the Star Trek vessel, the NCC-26632. He follows 137 people; there are entirely too many possibilities for me to figure out what this is referring to!

The lists of top trackers and trending topics are, of course, full of references:

Pg 65 – Xal is referenced again (see pg 21), and the Autobots' ship is finally revealed to have a name: the Orion, after the spaceship captained by Generation 1 Bumblebee in Dreamwave's ongoing series. This begins a trend that will be developed fully later in the book!
Cybetronix on this page, like all the others presented as Autobot records (this one is a page from Bumblebee's private journal) is in the “Maximal” font. This is not alone, however: also present is the “Ancient Autobot” font, which was created by author Jim Sorenson in the late 90s, based loosely upon some characters seen in the Generation 1 episode, “Cosmic Rust”. This font was later used in the “Allspark Wars” online game that was part of the promotion for the live-action movie. These passages are:

Pg 66 – As in the first Almanac, the timecodes for the Autobot incident reports correspond to Star Trek stardates. For this episode, it's the Deep Space Nine episode “Melora”. Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 67 – Starscream uses the swears frag and smeg; the former is a fairly common sci-fi swear that saw use in the Beast Wars cartoon, while the latter is from Red Dwarf. He call his teeth mecha molars (a term used in issue #41 of the Generation 1 Marvel comic), and refers to the SynthAxe, a rare real-life musical instrument from the late 1980s. His AllSpark-endowed weapon form is called a Targetmaster configuration, after the Generation 1 Transformers who featured transforming weapons.

Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 68 – This final “TransWarped” summary is time-coded 47254.1, stardate of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Dark Page”. The battle at the mine from “A Bridge Too Close” gets the same time-code as it did in the first Almanac, stardate of the episode “Invasive Procedures”, and other events from the three parter are coded with the stardates of “Interface” and “Phantasms”. In a non-Trek reference, Prime comments that Bulkhead “fastballs” Bumblebee, referring to the trademark move of X-Men Wolverine and Colossus, in which the latter hurls the former like a baseball.
Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 69 – The timecode for “Three's A Crowd” is the stardate of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, “Necessary Evil”. Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 70a – The header and footer of the “Three's A Crowd” summary are “Ask Vector Prime” segments.

Pg 70b – Several pieces of Transformer anatomy are named in First Aid's report on Ultra Magnus's injuries. Many of them are generic computer and machine terms that have been used regularly throughout Transformers history (like “struts”, motherboard” and “rotators”) but some of the more specific callbacks include motor relays (from the Generation 1 cartoon episode “City of Steel”), boron compressor (from the G1 “War of the Dinobots”), piston rod (from the Animated episode “Autoboot Camp”), manga fuses (from the G1 episode “Fire on the Mountain”) and fuel pump (first in issue #29 of the G1 Marvel comic). Magnus's armor is noted to be made of Cyberium, a metal mentioned in the Animated “chose your own adventure” book series, “Be The Hero”.
Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 71 – The timecode for “Where Is Thy Sting?” is the star date of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Force of Nature”. Bumblebee drops a reference to his laser core; this concept from the original Generation 1 cartoon (mentioned in the episodes “Divide and Conquer” and “The Autobot Run”) was analogous to what modern fiction calls a spark (the essence of Transformer life); Beast Machines Mechatron's on-package bio explained that the spark was part of the larger laser core, and Bumblebee's crack here seems to line up with that.
Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 72 – The timecode for “Five Servos of Doom” is the start date of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Second Sight”. The second season episode, “A Fistful of Energon”, is given timecoded with the star date of the Next Generation episode, “Timescape”. Prowl credits Yoketron with the saying: “The seeds of the future lie buried in the past”, the mantra of Optimus Primal from Beast Machines, and restates the first Almanac's note that Lockdown's shop features cable made of cybertitanium, a metal introduced in the Japanese tech specs of Generation 2 Sizzle.
Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 73 - “Predacons Rising” is timecoded with the star date of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Parallels”. The events of “Where Is Thy Sting?” are given a different code here than on their own page, which is the star date of the Next Generation episode “Attached”. The timecode the first Almanac gave to “Megatron Rising, Part II” is used again to refer to that episode; it's the star date of the Deep Space Nine episodes “If Wishes Were Horses”.
Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 74 – Poor Waspinator's note makes a few Beast Wars callbacks, in addition to those inherent in the episode itself. Waspinator claims the “universe hates him” (a lament the original Waspinator made in “Deep Metal”), and makes reference to a floating mountain and a set of standing stones, alien artefacts featured in “The Trigger” and “Chain of Command”, respectively. This adds fuel to the fire that Waspinator and Blackarachnia may have actually wound up on the Beast Wars planet, but as Derrick J. Wyatt said after “Predacons Rising” aired, Jim Sorenson clarified that this isn't the literal intent of the references. Meanwhile, the ammonite in the top right and the crab at the bottom are colored like the Beast Wars Neo characters Dead End and Rockbuster, again respectively.

Pg 75 - “Human Error, Part I” gets timecoded with star date of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Inheritance”. Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 76 – This whole summary for “Human Error, Part II” is, of course, written in homage to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The snake coiled around the border in the lower left is one of Bill Forster's pets, named 1812 after a robot drone from Farscape. The critter in the bottom right, meanwhile, is based on the Transformers Device Label flash drive toy. This feline figure has been released in various colours as Generation 1 Ravage, and Beast Wars Tigatron and Cheetor; here, it's being rendered in the colour scheme of a lesser-known Generation 1 kitty, the Pretender Beast Catilla.

Pg 77 – Unfortunately, the people who pinned up these fliers won't be seeing these three dogs again, as they have all met their ends. Pis was killed by Wilder in the Super-God Masterforce episode “Rage!! Little Devils with No Need for Rules”, Patch (unnamed in his appearance) and his owner were slain by Shockwave in issue #65 of the Generation 1 Marvel comic, and the third, nameless dog was the victim of Decepticon super-science in issue #8 of the Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers manga. The Seymour mentioned on the garage sale sign below is presumably Seymour Simmons from the live-action Transformers movies. He probably needed the money after he lost his job!

Pg 78 – The energy cloud from “Decepticon Air” is here called The Stone Place, named for a nebula from Fred Saberhagen's novel, “Berserker's Planet”. It has been given this name by “the squids”, a nickname for the alien Quintessons, who debuted in The Transformers: The Movie, and are referenced several more times in the Almanac.
Coded writing on this page is all related to Sentinel Prime's voice actor, Townsend Coleman:

Pg 79 – Oh boy, here we go. This three-page summary of “This Is Why I Hate Machines” takes the form of an issue of “Alternity Today”, a multiversal newspaper named for the Alternity, the hyper-evolved Autobots of the future who watch over the multiverse, from the Japanese toyline of the same name. This page is absolutely busting at the seams with references. Let's take 'em as they come.

Pgs 80-81 – The references just keep coming in this double-page newspaper spread.

Deaths:
Spectacular Spider-Man #107 - Jean DeWolff
X-Men #108 - Moira MacTaggart
Amazing Spider-Man #121 - Gwen Stacy
Uncanny X-Men #136 - Jean Grey
Amazing Spider-Man #294 - Kraven the Hunter (who has since been resurrected!)
Cerebus the Aardvark #300 – The title character
Uncanny X-Men #486 - Corsair and D'Ken
Action Comics #601 - Katma Tui
Batman #673 - Joe Chill
Detective Comics #818 – Ventriloquist
Action Comics #870 - Jonathan Kent
Action Comics #871 – Doomsday

First appearances:
Flash #106 - Gorilla Grodd
Strange Tales #110 - Doctor Strange
Batman #121 - Mr. Freeze
Amazing Spider-Man #129 – Punisher
Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #134 – Darkseid
Incredible Hulk #181 – Wolverine
Batman #181 - Poison Ivy (181 appears twice)
Action Comics #242 – Brainiac
Uncanny X-Men #244 – Jubilee
Uncanny X-Men #266 – Gambit
Adventure Comics #283 - General Zod
Thor #337 - Beta Ray Bill
Batman #357 - Jason Todd
Amazing Spider-Man #441 - Mattie Franklin
Detective Comics #523 - Killer Croc

Pg 81b - And finally, the crossword. There are some mistakes present in it that impede solving it, which we will note as we go along. Many answers simply involve abbreviating the clue into an acronym (for example, the answer to 14 across, “Isotropic weight”, is simply “IW”). The answers are, in order and with notes on their origin where appropriate:

ACROSS

1. Transformation Lock Virus, employed by Megatron in Beast Machines.

12. Bic

13. PI (Private Investigator)

14. IW

15. HP (Hit Points)

16. NRT

18. Meow

20. Vilna, capital of Lithuania

23. Subplot

26. Fermi, one of the scientists who worked with J. Robber Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project.

27. Her

29. ECG

30. YA; Yuss is a province of Cybertron from the UK annual story, “The Magnificent Six”

31. HI, abbreviation for Hawaii, where the Aqua Raider Team battled in the Armada “Linkage” mini-comics

32. Novaroid, servants of Dark Nova from the Battlestars storyline

35. US

37. AC

38. Ad

39. RN (registered nurse); Paradron Medics appeared in the Generation 1 cartoon episode, “Fight or Flee”

40. IX (nine)

41. Laos, where Starscream was spotted on March 12th, 1982, in the “Hungry Dragon” alternate reality game that promoted the live-action Transformers movie

42. Attacktix – misspelled as “Attactix”

44. PSI

46. KC; another goof, this ought to be KK for “King Kong”. Rather than point fingers, though, let's pretend it stands for “King Con!”, issue #54 of the Marvel Generation 1 comic, in which Iguanus scales the Empire State Building.

47. Map

49. Yr (year)

50. RO

51. EV

53. To

54. OO; “00 gauge” is the most popular scale of model railway, at 1:76 scale. How do we make the railway connection? The “Grandpa” mentioned in the clue was a train in the Robots in Disguise episode, “Secret Weapon: D-5”.

55. Mrs, a reference to Micromaster Discharge’s failed plan to marry team-mate San D-Go

57. Airs

60. Art

61. TV, a reference to the Generation 1 Junkions and the fact that their leader Wreck-Gar was voiced in The Transformers: The Movie by British star Eric Idle. This clue is actually 61 DOWN, not across.

62. Cybernet Space Cube, the computer-generated addition to the Generation 2 cartoon

66. Vis, as in “vis-scanners”, and so forth

68. Ca (carbon)

69. La

70. AK, Alaska, where these two Mini-Cons were located in the Armada Playstation 2 video game

71. Cry

72. ET (extra-terrestrial)

74. Re

75. Jib

78. Frijoles, born of a silly little joke on the TFWiki, which gave an article to the “Frijoles”, after woeful Unicron Trilogy stereotype Carlos exclaimed “Holy Frijoles” in the Energon episode, “Cybertron City”

81. Ag

83. Ice; water is the cure for Scraplets (see page 57)

85. Ales

87. Knok, Autobot Powermaster partner to Doubledealer, who had a second bat-like Powermaster named Skar. Here, Skar is revealed to be a Nebulon bolt-bat; Cybertronic bolt-bats were mentioned in the Generation 1 cartoon episode “S.O.S. Dinobots”

88. BA

89. Ming, of Flash Gordon fame

91. NEBE

93. Zod, from Challenge of the GoBots

95. Wig, referring to the time Beast Wars Megatron donned a judge’s wig in the episode “Other Victories”

97. Etna

99. Lion, referring to Beast Wars II “father and son” duo, Lio Convoy and Lio Junior, who both transformed into lions

101. Virulent Clones, who were spawned on the planet Ceti Alpha Seven in the BotCon exclusive story, “Descent into Evil”

105. SD, South Dakota, location of Mount Rushmore

106. Dab

108. Lio, a misspelling of Victory Autobot Victory Leo’s name

109. PSA, referring to the public service announcements Bumblebee, Tracks and other Autobots starred in for the Generation 1 cartoon

110. Rou, from BotCon exclusive character Roulette

111. AZ, Arizona, location of the Grand Canyon

112. TAI, referring to T-AI, the Autobot computer from Robots in Disguise, who identified the Generation 1 computer, Teletraan I, as her father

114. NBE, from the live-action Transformers movies

116. sic

118. Syli. The Quintessons had no specific currency in past fiction; Sorenson admits he used this word, the currency of Guinea from 1971 to 1985, to make 90 down fit.

119. Armornecking, clearly drawn from the human term “rubbernecking,” used in the bio for Generation 1 Getaway

125. Nov (November)

127. Peal

128. TGO

129. Dine

130. OD (overdose)

131. Lair

134. DL (down-low)

135. Orbit Disruptor Cannon, from the Generation 1 episode “B.O.T.”

140. PR

141. Ace

142. Tarn, a Cybertronian city and Shockwave’s hometown per the UK annual story “State Games”

143. NJ, New Jersey, noted to exist on the planet Ganzvort in the bio of Generation 1 Rewind)

144. TOE (Theory of Everything)

145. Fuzors, the Beast Wars characters who were a fusion of two animals

150. IED (Improvised Explosive Device)

151. EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, whose agent Walter Peck bedevilled the Ghostbusters in their film

154. TN, Tennessee, though the Ark-19 was only crippled over Tennessee, and actually crashed in the Gulf of Mexico, in IDW’s Devastation series

156. NN

157. Gobotron, home planet of the GoBots. A controversial question, claiming Wheelie comes from Gobotronic parentage!

160. EA

162. Coda, the dropped sub-title of the final four issues of IDW’s All Hail Megatron series

164. Ambassador of Destruction, grandiose title of Super-God Masterforce Deceopticon Overlord


DOWN

1. TB

2. R Infinity Accelerator, from IDW’s “Spotlight: Ultra Magnus”

3. Acre

4. OPE

5. Rio, Portugese for river; this clue carries on the joke that the Cybertronian language “Malignus” is the same as Earth’s Portugese (see page 36)

6. III, the Intelligence and Information Institute, from the Generation 1 Marvel comics

7. Owled (groan)

8. Oh

9. CPS

10. Impactor, leader of the Autobot strike time the Wreckers, who first appeared in the UK Marvel Comics story “Target: 2006”

11. UFO; the Autobots wouldn’t believe Daniel Witwicky when he claimed to have seen a UFO in the Headmasters episode, “Return of the Immortal Emperor”

17. Try

18. Mini-Con

19. Whalers; Generation 1 Pretender Longtooth developed a fixation on a whale-like alien in issue #64 of the Generation 1 Marvel comic, while Jonagar was a ship Kup flew into the mouth of a space whale, per a story he told in the cartoon episode “Chaos”

20. Vroom; the Asphalt Wars were mentioned in his bio

21. DC

22. Agua

24. Byracrane, a bear Transformers cult from the Beast Wars Neo manga

25. Tad

28. Era

31. HRP

33. Ox

34. Isaac – Sumdac, that is!

36. Sty; Beast Wars Razorbeast transforms into a wild boar

38. Axe

43. True

45. Sob

46. Koraja, as named in the Marvel Comics Headmasters mini-series

48. Pie, an ancient fandom joke

52. Vase

55. Mt (mount)

56. Sparkdrinker, the axe wielded by Cybertron Metroplex

58. RCCL, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. Trypticon fired on a ship off the coast of Carbombya in the Generation 1 cartoon episode “Thief in the Night”, though that ship belonged to “Luxury Cruises”

59. Sure, as in Generation 1 Targetmater Sureshot

62. CC

63. EL (extra life)

64. Akin

65. By

67. Iran; Prince Jumal appeared in the Generation 1 cartoon episode “Aerial Assault”, but the Middle Eastern country he ruled was not named

73. Timaeus Project, the experiment that essentially transformed the Autobots of the future into the Alternity, from the toyline of the same name

76. IL, Illinois, saved by the Air Defense Mini-Con Team in the UK Panini Armada comics

77. Be

79. Jowl

80. Okie

81. Abel, killed by Sixshot in the Headmasters episode “Terror! The Six Shadows”

82. Gator; alloygators were first mentioned in the BotCon exclusive story “Games of Deception”, and Generation 1 Action Master Krok’s partner Gatoraider is here retconned into being one

83. In

84. Ebi, Japanese for “shrimp”. Like the Malignus/Portugese joke, the book present “Destron” as being the same as Earth’s Japanese (see page 28)

86. SZV

90. Godzilla, mentioned with this descriptor in the third issue of Marvel’s Generation 1 comic.

92. EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal)

94. Oil

96. GNP (Gross National Product)

98. NNO

100. NATO

102. UOBI

103. TSS; the Toxic Sludge Swamp comes from Generation 1 Snap Trap’s bio

104. Cain, from Zone

105. Salad; lead sulphide crystals were a favourite of the Mecannibals from the Generation 1 Marvel comic

107. Bar; Maccadam’s has been covered already and will be seen again the book, but the Black Hole Bar and Grill appeared in issue #52 of the Generation 1 Marvel comic

113. INDD

115. EN (the letter n)

117. Colander (Strain-R is not an Allspark mutation who has appeared in any previous fiction)

118. Bit of a screw-up here: there is no 118 down. There is, however, a two-letter word running dowards one square right of 118 across, with no number, to which this clue is supposed to be attached. The anawer is “Ye”.

120. RGR

121. Mobat, a G.I. Joe vehicle

122. EII

123. CNS (central nervous system)

124. Got

126. Van

131. Dot

133. Inn

136. Icons

137. Teens; the Headmaster Teens were Japanese-exclusive Headmaster heads who came without a body of their own

138. Rains

139. CRE

140. PITE; Powerglide referred to Astoria Carlton-Ritz as a “pain in the afterburner” in the Generation 1 cartoon episode “The Girl Who Loved Powerglide”

145. FGD (flue-gas desulphurization)

146. UOO (University of Oxford). Heath Blaisedale appeared in the Generation 1 audio book, “Sun Raid”

147. ZBR; Zobovor is the screen name of Transformers fan Dave Edwards

148. OOO

149. RTF (rich text format)

152. POI

153. Ado, from the title of Shakespeare’s play

158. RD (red dwarf)

159. OE

161. Au

163. An

The word jumble unscrambles to read “neutron laser demagnetizer cannon”, the weapon of Screech, Action Master partner to European exclusive character Take-Off. Why is it a “good tool for an eagle scout”? Because that’s what Take-Off’s bio calls Screech!

Pg 82 - “Endgame, Part I” is timecoded with the star date of Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Lower Decks”. Prowl's shuttle is given the name Dawn Treader, after the ship from The Chronicles of Narnia.
Cybertronix on this page:

Pg 83 – The final episode summary contains the following Cybertronix:

Pg 89 – Fans began calling the rock mosters from “TransWarped” Rock Lords as soon they appeared on the show, after the Tonka GoBots spin-off that featured the questionable concept of transforming rocks. Here, the name is canonized, and Tutorbot 2.0 pops in to tell us that the Animated Rock Lords are just another species native to the planet Quartex, where the Tonka Rock Lords live.

Pgs 92-93 – Ninja Gladiator appeared in “Where Is Thy Sting?”, complete with background featuring TORQ III (from the Generation 1 cartoon episode “Day of the Machines”) and fighters Antron (from Micronauts) and Snake-Eyes (from G.I. Joe). The Almanac expands massively on the premise of a video game starring characters from other franchises, and this naturally leads to a big ol' pile of references.

Pg 96 – The brand name of Sari's scooter, Secord, is derived from the real name of pulp comic hero the Rocketeer, Cliff Secord. Because it's also a jetpack, get it? The brand of turbines, Bader, appears to be a reference to famous WWII fighter pilot, Douglas Bader.

Pg 97a – “Thanatos-class” ships are named for the Thanatos, the ship commanded by the Generation 1 Predacons from IDW's comics. “Doomsday-class” ships, meanwhile, after named for the Doomsday, the Decepticon ship seen briefly in the opening of Armada attempting to stop the Mini-Cons fleeing Cybertron. Named Doomsday-class ships are the Nemesis (the Decepticon flagship from the Generation 1 cartoon, first named in Beast Wars) and the Darksyde (the Predacons' ship from Beast Wars). Thanatos-class ships are armed with omega whip cannons (from the manga “Full Throttle Scramble Power!”) and starblitz torpedoes (among the armament of the aforementioned Thanatos from IDW). Strika's ship is named the Kalis' Lament, after the starshpi from the Fun Publications story “The Dark Heart of Sandokan”, itself named for the Cybertronian city that was overrun by zombies in the UK Marvel comic story, “City of Fear!”.

Pg 97b – In addition to the recognizable Dai Atlas, the “avatars” for the Great War board game are Animated versions of Cybertron Wing Saber, Operation Combination's Scrash and Armada Sideways. The original Scrash was never actually seen; fans believe that had he been, he would have been based on the European-exclusive toy Skyquake, and this Animated character bears out that theory. Sideways is a particularly interesting one: the Armada character is a known dimension-hopper - every other character with the name Sideways is a variation of this guy, except for Revenge of the Fallen Sideways. A square on the board game overleaf confirms that Animated Sideways came from another dimension (indicating that he is the Armada character), while the body design he is sporting in the illustration on this page shares many similarities with ROTF Sideways, suggesting that they are the same character after all! More on this on page 144!

Pgs 98-99 – Hoo mercy! Guess we'll just have to go through this square by square!

Pg 102 – The sonic canyons are a region of Cybertron originally mentioned in Generation 1 Siren's bio. The first thing to be called a Matrix Chamber was, amusingly, not related to the concept of new Transformer life at all: it was an energy-generating device from the Robots in Disguise episode, “The Hunt for Black Pyramid”. “Sacred impliment”, meanwhile, is a term used on TakaraTomy's “World of Transformers” website to refer to the objects that give Transformers' life, like the Matrix of Leadership, the live-action movie Allspark, and Vector Sigma, the mega-computer from Generation 1 also mentioned on this page.

Pg 103 – The planet Fabricon appeared in the Challenge of the GoBots episode “A New Suit for Leader-1”.

Pg 104-105 – Lots of stuff!

Pg 106 – Generation 1 Buzzsaw, Sundor and Garboil were all repaints of Generation 1 Laserbeak. Sundor was among the character's from Derrick J. Wyatt's April Fool image, though the Almanac has changed the spelling of his name (intended to parody Laserbeak's Japanese name, “Condor”) to the English word “Sunder”. Soundwave's description for Garboil, the ever-present wordsnatcher, was the name of a bird in the novel The Phantom Tollbooth. His Méliès-wave generator is named after filmmaker Georges Méliès. Wingthing was the bat-like partner of Soundwave when he was an Action Master, though she has been relegated to just a Ratbat repaint here.

Pg 107 – Matrix, “darkest hour”, yadda yadda.

Pg 110 – The transformation of Cybertron into a huge weapon was also the stated goal of Generation 1 Megatron in the first issue of Marvel's G1 comic. The three potential origins for Cybertron and the Transformers related here are also culled from different continuities: “natural evolution” from that same first issue (given the name atechnogenesis in Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye guidebook), “built as a factory” from the G1 cartoon's “Five Faces of Darkness”, and the “primordial titans” are, of course, Unicron and Primus, originally of the Marvel universe, but now the default communal origin across the multiverse. The two moon bases, meanwhile, were introduced in The Transformers: The Movie.

Pg 112-113 – In his opening narration, Cosmos mentions another earlier faction that existed on Cybertron, to go along with the “Malignus” and “Destron” mentioned elsewhere in the book. This race is the Guardians, the heroic faction from GoBots. As to the worlds that surround Cybertron:

Pg 114-115 – It was right about here that I figured Sorenson and Forster were deliberately messing with me. Oy. I guess the best way to do this is to do it a sector of space at a time. And we'll go alphabetically, rather than try to follow the splatter-pattern of the book. There'll be some repetition here, with planets that have already been named earlier in the book and identified earlier in these annotations, but I really can't face up to doing all the cross-references this page would entail so, hey, you get yourself some repetition. Let's begin!

We'll start with the worlds of the Decepticon Empire, denoted by purple markers.

Next, let's look at the yellow-marked Vestial Imperium, introduced in the Fun Publications comic, “Cheap Shots”.

Next, the Autobot Commonwealth, marked in red. Apart from Cybertron, we've got:

Let's turn now to the orange Quintesson Pan Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere, named for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of the 1930s.

Now the blue Nebulon Republic, named for the Nebulans and their world Nebulos from Generation 1.

Then the tiny little white spots that are the Vok Territory.

And now.... the neutral and unclaimed planets, bathing these pages in green splotches.

Gasp.... wheeze.... and finally.... in addition to the above-mentioned Tiresian Union and Alpha Q's realm... the other named regions of space...

Pg 116 – Avalon Boulevard is named after high councillor Avalon from the Dreamwave Energon comics. Dolrailer Spaceport gets its moniker from the Japanese name of Robots in Disguise Mega-Octane. The hanger here is named after Shingo XXIV, a notable individual who wrote a letter that was printed in issue #38 of the Generation 1 Marvel comics.

Pg 117 – Eronus Way is named for a member of the Autobot Council of Autobots from Dreamwave's The War Within comics.

Pg 118 – Bricolo is the is the French-Canadian name of the Generation 1 Constructicon Scrapper. A character with this name was mentioned in the Fun Publications story, “I, Lowtech”.

Pg 119 – Horsepower is named for an Autobot who appeared in the UK comic story, “The Big Shutdown”. Sparkride is named after the repaint of the Generation 1 Protectobot Groove who was a component of Guard City in Operation Combination. These two appeared, unnamed, in the “First (And Second) in Flight” comic packed with the Jetfire and Jetstorm toys.

Pg 122 – Photon pulse cannons were the personal weapons of choice of the Generation 1 Autobot Headmaster, Brainstorm.

Pg 123 – Powered Convoy is designed and named after the Diaclone toy that was repainted to become Generation 1 Ultra Magnus.

Pg 124 – Commandrons were a line of motorized transforming Tomy toys available through McDonalds in 1985. Meanwhile, Maladroids were a subset of the Select 1980s toyline, Convertors.

Pg 125 – This Maccadam's menu is full of fun stuff.

Pg 128 – The Emirate Xaaron Spacebridge Nexus is named for the Autobot leader from the Marvel comics, who first appeared in the UK serial “Target: 2006”.

Pg 134 – Lisa Kane is a friend of author Bill Forster.

Pg 135a – Unnamed in the episode they appeared in, Cancer and Hydra are based on the Super God Masterforce characters with whom they share their names. Vangelus, meanwhile, is another of Derrick J. Wyatt's April Fools illustration characters; he's a caricature of Transformer fan Chris Ho, and sports his screen name.

Pg 135b – The Burger Bot placemat has quite a few sneaky references in it.

The fictional presidents listed on the mat include:

Pg 136 – The Jekka Amphitheatre appeared in the G1 UK comic story “Deadly Games!”

Pg 137 – The gas station attendant's nametag reads McFeely, a reference to... well, me! Your humble annotator! Jim and Bill blew me away with this honor.

Pg 139 – Another reference to the Pit (see pg 20) and the Beast Wars standing stones (see pg 74).

Pg 143 – Since the body text makes a point of saying the Autobot workers are nameless, “Boost Hammer” presumably refers to the tool attached to the highlighted worker's arm. It's named after Wrecker Hook's solitarium weapon from Robot Masters.

Pg 144-145 - Hhhhhhookay, we're on the home stretch now, with these Omega Sentinels pages being the last big jobs. For the sake of my sanity, repeat references to planets and battles that have already come up in the Almanac wont be noted here. Note how all the file cards are written from a Decepticon perspective!

Let's start with the evidence tag in the top left. Fictional numbers which appear on it are:

It also has some REAL numbers on it, which are all aspects of scientific and mathematical constants with their decimal points relocated.

And the rest:

Pg 146-147 – And it goes on!

Lastly, the evidence tag on the extreme right of this page is the same as the one on the previous spread, except for:

Pg 148 – The Steelhaven was given its name in the first Almanac. It is named for the ship commanded by Fortress Maximus in the Generation 1 Marvel comics.

Pg 150 – Swindle mentions Planet Q, home of Energon's Alpha Q, seen in the star map on page 114-115.

Pgs 154-155 – References in the technical cutaway of the Steelhaven include:

Pg 222 – Even at the finishing line, the Almanac sneaks in a few last references to things we have not seen in the book before in the form of an Animated timeline. In addition to the previously-mentioned Guardians, Malignus and Destrons (explaining how they can be old dialects, as touched upon at various points in the books) we have: