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NOTE: This is a composite profile of Megatron across various Generation One continuities.

Megatron: This was almost too easy, Starscream.
Starscream: Much easier, almighty Megatron, than attacking the real threat, the Autobots' Moonbase!
Megatron: You're an idiot, Starscream. When we slip by their early warning systems in their own shuttle and destroy Autobot City, the Autobots will be vanquished forever!
Ironhide: No!
Megatron: Such heroic nonsense.
~ Megatron declaring his intentions to destroy the Autobots forever before murdering a wounded Ironhide in cold blood in The Transformers: The Movie
I would have waited an eternity for this! It's over, Prime.
~ Megatron after fatally wounding Optimus.
First Prime, then Ultra Magnus, and now you. It's a pity you Autobots die so easily, or I might have a sense of satisfaction now.
~ Galvatron attempting to strangle Hot Rod to death in the movie

Megatron (sometimes reformed into Galvatron) is the main antagonist of the Generation One series of the Transformers franchise.

He is the founder and leader of the Decepticons who plots to conquer the planet Cybertron and the rest of the universe and would later gain a new form, Galvatron, in a deal with Unicron himself, and seeks to free himself from his control to continue his own desires to rule the universe. He is the arch-nemesis of Optimus Prime, the leader of the Decepticons' rival faction, the Autobots.

However due to Generation One only having several branches of continuity that take Megatron's story to different places where he could either not be bad enough or gain redeeming qualities, Megatron only manages to count in select continuities. He avoids this issue in both the 1984 Sunbow cartoon as well as in the 2012 Regeneration One comic miniseries by IDW Publishings, which serves as a sequel to the 1984 comic series by Marvel, where he remains one of the notably worst villains within these series while devoid of any redeeming qualities.

In the Sunbow cartoon, he was voiced by Frank Welker, who would also voice his video game adaptation of the 2007 live-action movie. And as Galvatron in the movie, he was voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, who also voiced Sentinel Prime in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]

In General[]

  • Instigated the Transformers Civil War in his ambitions of galactic conquest, leading to countless death and suffering spreading to various planets for millions of years, with Cybertron nearly drained of resources and heavy casualties piling up on both sides.
  • Devoid of any and all honor where many of his repeated partnerships with the Autobots it is only for his own benefit in which he will frequently betray them at the end when it comes to the cartoons. While in the Marvel series, Megatron would have a one-off moment of sparing a human out of respect of his courage, this all goes when Simon Furman took over the writing for the comics in which he writes Megatron in Regeneration One as a dirty cheater who will do every dirty trick to win or go against his word.
  • While Megatron in both the cartoons and Marvel comics get into the subject of several humiliating and pathetic moments, many serving as jokes in the cartoons, Megatron remains serious enough:
    • For what all episodes Megatron gets standard or goofy plots or be on the subject of slapstick, Megatron always ends up defaulting to being a serious threat in the series' biggest episodes whose plans would avert usual limitations of 80s cartoon villains due to potential casualties of his plans being made very explicit who the heroes make it a priority to stop. This is especially notable in his final outing as Megatron in the movie which has him subject majority of the main Autobot cast of the first 2 seasons to horrifying deaths, including Optimus Prime himself. The same is true as Galvatron who begins the movie subjecting Ultra Magnus and Starscream to family-unfriendly deaths and ends the series in a plot to blow up the galaxy, and regularly trying to kill countless people.
    • In the Marvel comics while spending most of the series trying to regain power from Shockwave when he usurps him repeatedly for his incompetence which compared to the darker more threatening competitors within the Decepticon leadership made Megatron more pathetic than an actual threat. However by the time of Regeneration One Megatron's devastation of Earth immediately regains Megatron enough menace that was lost from his portrayal in the original series that made him straight enough to count here.
  • Despite the high heinous standards of both the cartoon and Marvel comic series, Megatron stands out in both for different reasons:
    • Megatron/Galvatron has the largest quantity of heinous actions with the various attempts to destroy/enslave Earth, Cybertron and even the universe on top of his war crimes on Cybertron easily stacks him up to the likes of both Unicron and the Imperial Magistrate as the worst in the cartoon series.
    • While in the comics Megatron gets overshadowed by the likes of Shockwave, Straxus and even his own time-displaced variant from the future, Galvatron, who all commit some of the worst crimes in the original Marvel series without Megatron's influence, upon Regeneration One Megatron's sadistic genocide of Earth elevates him as one of the worst Decepticons in the comic series.

Sunbow Cartoon[]

Past[]

  • In his first act of war, he guns down the benevolent Autobot leader, Sentinel Prime, ending Cybertron's golden age and starting the war.
  • Builds the Robo-Smasher to attack innocent Transformers and forcibly turn them to evil Decepticons, in which the process is irreversible as Omega Supreme would find out when he tries to turn his friends, the Constructicons back to normal but failed, and he himself got subjected to the machine and ended up being stripped of every emotion but hate.
  • Manipulates the naive Orion Pax into helping him, and upon his realization of Megatron's true evil, guns him and his girlfriend Ariel down and nearly kills every other worker present, whose lives were only narrowly saved thanks to Alpha Trion rebuilding them as Optimus Prime and Elita-1 respectively, but their friend Dion (as confirmed by David Wise and Hasbro) wasn't lucky and died from the attack.
  • As the war he started goes on for millions of years, Megatron ends up wasting all of Cybertron's resources and energon for the war effort.

Season 1[]

  • By the time of the premiere's prologue, he has already wiped out most of the Autobots.
  • Upon arriving on Earth, Megatron immediately tries plundering Earth of all it's energy, and then begins some destructive attempts against many of Earth's power plants in the premiere such as:
    • Attacking the oil rig that Sparkplug Witwicky and his teenaged son Carl work in, trying to have all the workers drown to death and then even fire upon the rig and blow it up to submerge them and the Autobots in rubble.
    • Attacking a dam and causing it overflow, which nearly floods a nearby town.
  • Tries to use Spike as an unwitting test subject to test his space bridge, taunting him on how he could be vaporized from existence if the space bridge is unstable.
  • Tries to absorb the heat of Earth's core, which causes Earth's temperature to plummet and plunge itself to an apocalyptic ice age, where Megatron gloats that when he is done, Earth will be an icy tomb.
  • Tries to manipulate the inexperienced Skyfire to kill the captive Sparkplug, Buster and several Autobots.
  • Threatens the life of Spike's similarly aged and wheelchair-bound friend, Chip Chase, to obtain the Anti-Matter Formula to turn himself into a weapon of mass destruction that can vaporize anything it hits.
  • Partners with Doctor Arkeville to use chips to brainwash several humans to become the Decepticons' undying slaves, beginning with Sparkplug as a test subject, which shows a degree of consciousness retained by the victims where Sparkplug suffers agony for any attempt to resist. Upon the success on Sparkplug, Megatron and Arkeville brainwashed hundreds of humans minimum.
  • Despite initially promising Doctor Arkeville to let him rule Earth, Megatron drags Cybertron into Earth, which will see the Earth torn apart by the resulting gravitational disturbances, while having his slaves harvest the energy from what all disasters that will ensue, while gleeful on how he would simply leave Arkeville a dead world to rule over.
    • One additionally cruel touch is how he uses Optimus' own protectiveness over Cybertron to ensure it gets out of the space bridge and escape oblivion, tricking Optimus into dooming Earth for Megatron's plans.
  • Has hundreds of his slaves harvest energy from an unstable tidal dam, shrugging off Arkeville's objections that the dam is unstable and all of them would drown with how "I thought humans liked playing in the water".
  • Tries to abuse Cybertronian law to cheat his way to winning a one on one duel with the Autobots by secretly using the strengths of all his minions, all to force Optimus and the Autobots to exile and leave Earth defenseless for his plans.

Season 2[]

  • Tries taking advantage of Spike's crazed state when he was placed on a robotic body to make him kill his Autobot friends.
  • Upon capturing Carly, when his underwater base sustains damage which is minimized to just Carly's cell, Megatron has the Decepticons stop what they are doing and watch as Carly drowns to death with glee before callously shrugging it off as "show's over" when it seemed Carly fully submerged by the water.
  • Alters Wheeljack's immobilizer to permanently freeze Ironhide, intending to use the device to freeze all of Earth's people in place permanently.
  • Blindly fires upon the dinosaurs in Dinosaur Island to push the Dinobots off the ledge and drown in a tar pit while laughing at the sight.
  • Tries to harvest energy from Dinobot Island, uncaring that the island's nature is so volatile that doing so could result in the Earth or even the galaxy itself being destroyed.
  • Brainwashes Gears to help Megatorn set up a Solar Needle to harvest energy from the Earth's sun. This process causes solar flares that cause widespread tremors that threaten the planet, something he explicitly has no concern of.
    • When Optimus brings it up that his Solar Needle is going to cause a huge supernova that shall destroy the universe, while initially believing them to be lies, when he realizes they might be true and is on the verge of defeat, Megatron refuses to shut down the needle and have the universe destroyed if he is unable to rule it.
  • Partners with Shawn Berger to frame the Autobots as enemies of humanity and force them to be exiled from Earth. Megatron then hijacks their ship and needlessly steer them to a fiery death at the Sun.
  • When the Autobots were seemingly dead, he conquers Central City and renames it "Megatronia One", where his minions lay waste to the city and open fire at civilians, before rounding everyone to forced hard labour to extract energy in which any opposition, distraction or incompetence is met with lethal force as Megatron rubs in how hopeless they are, as he even tosses Berger to the same slave labour, and intending to subject world to such horrifying state.
  • Scrambles airwaves to hold Earth's communication ransom, leading to plains crashing or colliding mid-air, trains derailing and no way to call for help, motorists stuck at dangerous blizzards, and wants Earth to choose between such catastrophes continuing or bow to his feet.
  • Later on tries to drill into the Earth's core to harvest energy, a cataclysmic process that will see the Earth collapse in on itself. While Megatron originally remained adamant that such an event won't happen, he also prepared a Space Bridge to flee the scene should the apocalypse occur.
    • Later on Megatron would ally with the Autobots to stop the Earth's destruction when the Space Bridge was destroyed, and when it seemed that the Autobots were unable to stop it, Megatron cowardly leaves them and even his own Decepticons for dead to save his skin.
  • Attacks and nearly kills Alpha Trion to access Vector Sigma to create the Stunticons, before using them to attack military bases to frame the Autobots as traitors.
  • Upon learning of Vector Sigma's destructive potential, intends to use it to destroy all life on earth by forcibly roboticizing the planet, beginning with the city of Seattle.
  • Attempts to harness the destructive power of the Pearl of Bahud-in, capable of destroying entire cities, to unleash devastating natural disasters onto Earth to force its submission. When Megatron's actions result in the Pearl going out of control and cause an endless storm that will destroy the entire world, Megatron flees to enjoy the sight.
  • Lures the Aerialbots to a sadistic trap where he will transport them to the cold endless void the universe was at the beginning of time, eternally alone.
  • When Perceptor cures him from Cosmic Rust, Megatron infects him with Cosmic Rust instead to force the Autobots to a sadistic trap where he will bound Perceptor in his microscope alt-mode and focus the sunlight to set off a bomb at noon, where either they let Perceptor die, or save him and ifnect them to a slow death from the Cosmic Rust.
    • When one of his minions ask why not use his heat ray to melt them, Megatron bluntly states that he just wanted the Autobots to suffer and tried to vaporize the Statue of Liberty, which was coated in the cure, an alloy named Corrostop.
  • When Optimus pleads for Megatron to destroy the Combaticons for the danger they pose to the galaxy, having nearly destroyed Cybertron and Earth, Megatron goes against his word to Optimus for his own end as he rewrites them to his control.
  • Tries to create a device to pull the Moon closer to the Earth, causing floods across the planet and harvest energy from the core.
  • Implants a timed bomb on Swindle's head to force him to gather the materials to assemble the above machine

1986 Movie[]

  • Attacks an Autobot scout ship, shooting down Hound, Prowl and Ratchet to horrifying death, to which Megatron tries to use their ship to sneak the Decepticons to destroy Autobot City. When the barely living Ironhide tries to stop him, Megatron dismisses it as "heroic nonsense" and blasts him to pieces.
  • Has his forces attack and nearly destroy all of Autobot cities, killing countless Autobots, including Wheeljack and Windcharger.
  • When Optimus pulls an all or nothing gambit by charging him and his forces, Megatron fights back using dirty tactics at every turn and gravely injures him, nearly ripping his eyes out with his bare hands at one point.
  • The second Prime finally has him at a disadvantage, Megatron feigns begging for undeserved mercy in order to catch him off guard and shoot him. When Hot Rod notices this and tries to intervene, Megatron proceeds to take him hostage and use him as a human-shield against Optimus, giving him the upper hand and allowing him to shoot the gaping wound he gave him during their fight. This eventually results in Optimus dying on his deathbed, making Megatron ultimately responsible for it in the long run.
  • Simply to save himself, Megatron makes a deal with Unicron in which he'll give Unicron the Matrix of Leadership in exchange for Unicron giving him a new body and new troops, as well as leaving Cybertron mostly intact enough for Megatron to rule.
    • Despite Unicron holding his part of the bargain and reviving Megatron as Galvatron, the ungrateful Galvatron immediately plots to betray Unicron once he learns that his benefactor is weak to the Matrix.
    • While the mental torture he suffers from Unicron is horrific, it’s not played for sympathy since he was already evil and it doesn’t cause him to change his ways.
  • Upon his transformation into Galvatron, he shoots Starscream point blank to retake leadership of the Decepticons, vaporizing him to bits.
  • Cold-bloodedly shoots Ultra Magnus to pieces, temporarily killing him, to claim the Matrix of Leadership in an attempt to use the Matrix to enslave Unicron for his own plans of conquest.
    • This leads to Unicron attempting to destroy all of Cybertyron out of anger of Galvatron's betrayal, which kills hundreds of Autobots and Decepticons, possibly including Shockwave, who was Megatron's most loyal servent aside from Soundwave.
  • When Unicron starts destroying all of Cybertron, Galvatron is willing to assist Unicron by stopping Hot Rod and attempting to kill him personally.
    • One very nasty bit is that when Galvatron tried to strangle Hot Rod to death, he would muse about how he couldn't even be satisfied with killing Optimus as Megatron, or in his new form killing Ultra Magnus and then Hot Rod himself due to how easy they are to kill, showing that even when at a deal gone wrong with Unicron, Galvatorn is still simply a sadistic, cruel psychopath and a tyrant who got what was coming for him.

Season 3[]

  • Even when noticably much more insane thanks to falling in a plasma pit, Galvatron was already a brutal tyrant while sane, and for his terrible mental state, knows he is an evil conqueror and enjoys it, and then by the time of Season 4, regains his former sanity for his most horrible plot.
  • Upon his return, Galvatron attacks Cyclonus and Scourge just to assert his dominance over the Decepticons, and even blindly massacre nearly all his Decepticon followers for answering to the Quintessons when Galvatron was presumed dead.
  • When one of his minions get blinded and falls to his death, Galvatron not only refuses to save him, but mockingly tells him to die with dignity.
  • Attacks various human-Autobot posts, wanting the heads of his enemies as souvenirs.
  • Sells out Cybertron to the Quintessons in an alliance with them in hopes of finally wiping out both the Autobots and the humans, horrifying Blitzwing into leaving his command.
  • Unleashes Trypticon to destroy several Autobot-protected human settlements, risking thousands of casualties.
  • Enslaves the population of the planet Dread to harvest the deadliest material in the universe, Death Crystals, in hopes of creating a cannon to destroy Cybertron and be even more infamous than Unicron himself.
  • Orders his men to crash an asteroid onto a peace conference held in Cybertron and kill the hundreds of delegates to various planets, to prevent peace from ever existing in the galaxy and cause widespread war and chaos.
  • In an effort to use Eurythma's harmony as a devastating weapon against the Autobots, he tries to torture the native Allegra to death, and when this results in her knocked unconscious, muses how boring it is now that she can't feel anything anymore.
  • Takes advantage of the planet Paradonia's pacifist ideals to enslave its populace to create weapons to wreak havoc across the universe and conquer it by harvesting it of its energy, threatening to kill Paradonians for any resistance.
  • Uses his insanity to reduce Turkulon into a wasteland, leaving its population either dead or broken, due to his love for being an insane lunatic. When Cyclonus points out it will only take centuries for survivors to rebuild, Galvatron nearly tried to continue and wipe it clean out of spite so that the planet will never be rebuilt at all.
  • Releases the Dweller and traps the Autobots to be devoured by the beast and even use his own men as meat shields and laughs at how the Dweller will eventually destroy Cybertron.
  • Attacks and tries to destroy several towns protected by the Autobots out of spite, ebfore letting Trypticon loose for a devastating rampage all across Earth.
  • Harvests Anti-Electrons from Unicron that sees the Autobots malfunction and then slowly die.

Season 4[]

  • Breaking the truce, he declared in the Season 3 finale to attack several Autobots, including Ultra Magnus, and then drains them off their energon to power engines that would transport Cybertron all the way to Earth, condemning them all to a slow death until Optimus Prime was able to arrive and rescue them on time.
  • In a partnership with Lord Zarak, Galvatron tries to unleash the Plasma Energy Chamber, setting off a chain reaction that will not only destroy the Earth, the Sun and Cybertron, but extend to even the very distant planet of Nebulos and wipe out the galaxy, while Galvatron escapes to rule whatever is left, disregarding the lives of any men who could get caught in the crossfire.
  • At the end, Galvatron and Lord Zarak prepare to attack several more planets and suck them dry to build a planet even more powerful than Cybertron and rule the galaxy.

Beast Wars and Beast Machines[]

  • In Beast Wars: Transformers, it is revealed that the war that Megatron started became so bad that after it ended, the descendants of both the Decepticons and Autobots, the Predacons and the Maximals had to go through phyiscal changes, such as adopting smaller bodies in order to adapt to less amount of resources which the war has cost. It is also revealed that the Predacons are facing prejudice due to the war crimes of their ancestors under Megatron's leadership, with many Predacons desiring to restore the glory of the Decepticons.
  • Before his defeat, Megatron left behind a secret recorded message on the Golden Disk in which he instructed any would-be listener to travel back in time to prehistoric Earth, kill the unconscious Optimus Prime and wipe out the ancestors of humanity in order to rewrite history in his favour. To make things worse, had his successor managed to kill Optimus Prime, it would've allowed Unicron to win in the future which was proven true in Megatron’s Ending in Beast Wars: Transmetals game as stated without the Matrix there was no way to defeat Unicron.
  • Along with the aforementioned posthumous influence he had on the story, he also inspired a rogue Predacon criminal who took up the name Megatron and became a power-hungry psychopathic megalomaniac with a massive god complex and became even more despicable than his namesake ever was, as he not only almost destroyed time and space twice, but also managed wipe out almost the entire Cybertronian race to become a god. Although Predacon Megatron's crimes are solely his own choices, the original Megatron did kind of inspire him, thus making him posthumously responsible for the events of both Beast Wars and Beast Machines.

Regeneration One[]

  • Upon his reactivation, he goes on a devastating rampage across Earth that killed countless innocent humans in order to get Optimus Prime's attention.
    • When Optimus didn't come, Megatron decides to increase the damage of the rampage, hacking into various nuclear silos to initiate a global nuclear holocaust that would wipe out nearly all life on the planet.
  • Having grown bored of waiting for Optimus, to pass his time, Megatron organizes a genocidal crackdown all life that is left on Earth, preferring to draw out his victims death to entertain himself.
  • In order to ensure such crackdown, Megatron resurrects all the fallen Transformers he can find scattered on Earth, resurrecting and then lobotomizing them all as mindless zombie slaves.
  • To pay back Starscream for his treachery to a very extreme end, Megatron grants him an ounce of spark to ensure Starscream is aware of everything around him, and yet is unable to do anything as he is forced to do Megatron's bidding against his will, while frequently mocking his state.
  • Ratchet has it worst of all, in which Megatron reduces him to a mere head, helpless, frozen, unable to do or say anything, as he is forced to see what all atrocities Megatron commits, all for the sake of ensuring his own immortality due to the psychic link they both share and thus can be unkillable.
  • Forces Shockwave to be a living computer replacing the Ark's systems.
  • Infects Kup with scraplets, a parasite infamous for slowly eating Transformers alive, to use him as bait.
  • Executes Springer for no actual reason than simply so he could drive Optimus to the edge.
  • All the actions he committed was to anger Optimus into breaking his pacifistic philosophies and be willing to kill him so Megatron can finally end their conflict in a glorious battle, be it by killing Optimus or dragging him down to his level.
  • Regardless of who wins the battle, Megatron has the Ark launch all remaining nuclear missiles to cause a second nuclear holocaust to wipe out all life still left on Earth, himself and Prime included, just so by the end he can have the final laugh and take everyone down with him.
  • He almost drags Optimus down to his level, however once Optimus refuses to kill him, Megatron tries to take the opportunity to kills his arch-nemesis once and for all.
  • Although his death by Optimus ripping out his spark is very brutal, it was completely deserved for his numerous horrible crimes.
  • His crimes were so horrific that it caused both Shockwave and Starscream, two of the most treacherous and selfish villains of the series, to not only abandon their evil ways, but become vouchers for universal peace in the end.

Trivia[]

  • The theory of his spark being merged with Beast Megatron's causing the latter's ever-growing megalomania and sudden psychotic hatred towards free-will and organics in Beast Machines is seemly shown in a text story titled A Meeting of Minds set between Master Blaster and Other Visitors where he manipulates Beast Wars Megatron, If this was confirmed to be canon, it would make the original Megatron even worse.
  • In an early script for Five Faces Of Darkness, Galvatron was revealed to abuse and mistreat Shockwave, ignoring his advice not to side with the Quintesson commanders, despite him being one of his oldest allies. This would eventually lead Shockwave to realize Galvatron was irredeemable and side with the Autobots but however his role was replaced with Blitzwing. Had this been kept, Megatron would've been even worse.
  • His Japanese Generation One Cartoon counterpart doesn't qualify as Pure Evil as while he commit the same crimes (Up to Season 3) and beyond in it’s original stories, he ends up redeeming himself in the events of Legends and Generation Selects.

External Links[]

Navigation[]

            TFAutobotLogo Generation One Pure Evils

Animation
Transformers '84: Megatron | Unicron
Beast Wars: Transformers: Megatron | Tarantulas
Transformers: Prime Wars Trilogy: Unicron | Overlord

Comic Books
Marvel: Straxus | Flame | Unicron | Jhiaxus | Megadeath | Liege Maximo | Megatron
Dreamwave: Unicron | The Fallen

See also: Transformers Pure Evils

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