Afterburn
From Transformers Wiki
- Afterburn is an awesome dude working for the Autobots from the Transformers Animated continuity family.
A ward of the Elite Guard and a Special Ops man, Afterburn is a highly skilled and highly confident soldier with a sleek off-road car form. A born leader, a quick thinker, a nice guy and capable of laying the smackdown with his agility and fireblasts, he's got a PhD in Being Handsome And Wonderful.
He's so handsome, in fact, that Sari, a human child, declared him "dreamy". That's somewhat creepy.
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Fiction
Titan Magazines
At the Academy, he was nicknamed "Squeak-Clean Afterburn" (no, really) because he was so fantastic he is always clean and shiny. He came top in his class in Anti-Virus Diagnosis and Nano-Virus class. Ratchet & Grimlock Are DEAD? He went on to join the Elite Guard and was eventually dispatched to Earth by Ultra Magnus to join Optimus Prime's team; Magnus intended for Afterburn to learn skills and knowledge from them, so that their successes could be replicated on other worlds.
He arrived in the middle of a battle between the Autobots and fashion disaster Quake-Maker. He saved Optimus, won Sari's heart and Bumblebee's admiration, quickly took control of the Autobots, and just as quickly worked out and exploited Quake-Maker's weakness. Because he rules. (Optimus got ignored on the sidelines and got a rock in the face.)
Everyone loved him and everyone in the Autobase rapidly became his best bud! Burnout
He was part of a mission to Dinobot Island when Snarl and Swoop went berserk, due to his virus knowledge. He effortlessly took control of the mission and came up with the strategy that won the day; he identified the Rage virus and how to neutralise it; and he even put up with Ratchet faking his death without being annoyed! What an awesome dude! (Bumblebee got made to look bad and was deliberately put down several times, and had big sad puppy-dog eyes.) Ratchet & Grimlock Are DEAD?
Later, he attended a basketball game with Bulkhead, Prowl and Sari, until he picked up a police alert of major traffic chaos—leading to a battle with the villain Crossroads, who had taken control of Detroit's robots! Rather kindly, Afterburn let Prowl save the day while he relaxed by providing covering fire. Afterwards, he leaned on a wall and smirked slightly while warning everyone that Decepticons were cunning and could strike at any time. What a nice guy he is to remind us of this, and it totally didn't look dodgy! Crossroads!
After a failure to acquire enough information, it turned out that astonishingly, he wasn't the charmball we thought—he was actually a spy sent by Megatron! The cake is a lie! We didn't see that one coming... Divebomb!
But then it turned out that not only was the cake a lie, but everything else was too—in actual fact, Afterburn was a Sparkless drone, built by Megatron as a prototype and sent off to be a spy. He wasn't even "real". Afterburn's job failed, Megatron then murdered him and taunted Bumblebee over it. Bumblebee lamented the death of a sparkless spy, while Optimus told him to get over it. They've both got points, if you think about it. Megatron's Revenge
TransTech
During ANN's coverage of what was falsely assumed to be the deletion of all universal streams recorded by Axiom Nexus, Afterburn stated that he was very disappointed by being the only survivor of his home stream, as he was very popular there while not being notable on Axiom Nexus. Rook - Axiom Nexus News, 2016/12/31
Notes
- Originally, Afterburn was going to be the Animated version of Sideswipe. However, when Titan released a preview image of the character, the online response to this Iron-Man-crossed-with-a-duck-monster-thing was so overwhelmingly negative that the preview was soon pulled.[1]
- When the comic was released two weeks later, Sideswipe had ever-so-conspicuously become "Afterburn". This may be due to the fan reaction. Considering his story arc and that the cartoon couldn't even have a Cliffjumper be framed as a baddie, it's possible Hasbro said "no".
- Afterburn's Autobrand can broadcast fake hologram messages, making the Autobots believe Ultra Magnus vouched for him.
- So if he never was on Cybertron and never studied Anti-Virus classes, how did he stop that Rage Virus...?
- He was in "Special Ops" work, so that's why no one's ever heard of him. Including Derrick J. Wyatt.[2]
- If he's "dreamy", then Sari has a bad taste in 'Bots.
- His behavior, abilities, and overall role in the story totally isn't a jab at mary-sue characters among the fandom: Afterburn is just that good.