Personality component

A personality component is a part of a Transformer's anatomy that, as its name suggests, governs their personality. When it is removed, a Transformer becomes dumb and vacant, though they can still move about and be directed. The process of removal and replacement seems fairly safe; the Decepticons have been known to extract them from prisoners and destroy their bodies, storing the personality components in the Decepticon Detention Center. Installing a personality component in a non-Transformer machine can cause spontaneous reconfiguration, but not always.

Sometimes personality components look like energon cubes, and sometimes they look like inscrutable technical equipment covered in human-scale gauges and screens.

Fiction

Generation 1 cartoon continuity

The Transformers cartoon

We've replaced Starscream's energon with Combaticon® brand personality components. Let's see what happens.

At some point in the past, Megatron ordered a group of political prisoners known as the "renegade Decepticons" stripped down to their personality components and put into storage on Cybertron. In 1985, Starscream infiltrated the Decepticon Detention Center in search of them, hoping to use them as an army to overthrow Megatron. He found them and took them to Earth, where he installed them in abandoned World War II military vehicles. Doing so instantly caused the vehicles to reconfigure themselves into different, yet still human-based, forms (such as a B-17 bomber becoming a space shuttle and an F4U Corsair becoming a helicopter). Starscream called them the "Combaticons" and announced their names as they transformed to robot mode, though it's unclear whether he was giving them these names or just acknowledging them. The Combaticons parlayed with their would-be benefactor, whom they didn't remember and to whom they felt little indebtedness for their freedom. Nevertheless, Starscream was still able to lead them against Megatron (with the help of a little blackmail). Starscream's Brigade

For Brawl's personality, that actually looks pretty advanced.

However, their rebellion ended in failure, and Megatron was able to capture and reprogram the Combaticons' combined form of Bruticus to be loyal to him. The Revenge of Bruticus This seemed to work, though the Combaticons' individual quirks sometime still caused Megatron headaches. For example, after a disastrous battle against Defensor that left all but Swindle in pieces, the remaining Combaticon sold the wreckage of his comrades to humans across the globe. When Megatron confronted him about it, Swindle pleaded that greed was programmed into his personality component. So Megatron decided to use self-preservation as a more powerful motivator, putting a bomb in Swindle's head that would go off if he didn't reassemble the Combaticons within 15 hours. Swindle succeeded, but the team couldn't merge... because, it turned out, he had neglected to find Brawl's personality component, which had ended up inside some filthy human youths' science-fair project. The personality component turned the kids' robot hostile and potentially deadly, though the havoc he wreaked didn't seem to have a particular goal. Swindle eventually recovered the personality component, but the kids had gleaned enough information from it to use it as an eavesdropping device, overhearing the Decepticons' plans when they reinstalled it in Brawl's body. B.O.T.

Legends comic

The personality component was what retained a Transformer's spark, a fact discovered by Wheeljack in 2025. The Road to Legends' Revival Chapter 2

After Trypticon's destruction at the hands of Dai Atlas, the integrated Full-Tilt was reduced to a personality component, which was recovered by the Race Track Patrol. They brought it to the Metrosquad, who modified the component into a small robot in the hopes that he could be used to recreate Trypticon. LG-43 Trypticon Project Chapter

Wings Universe

The ancient Transformers on Cybertron sealed the personality component of Brimstone, called the Heart of the Dragon, in an urn. It was regarded as a powerful component, being capable of controlling the Metrotitan as a body. Flames of Yesterday After taking control of the Decepticon army, Megatron intended to reduce the Combaticons to their personality components and inter them in the Detention Center. Battle Lines, Part 5

Jhiaxus sent Runabout and Runamuck to find some personality components. Runamuck found some, though he complained that all the glowing pink cubes on Cybertron were hard to tell apart. A Flash Forward, Part 2

Beast Wars: Uprising

While looting the Museum of Decepticon Heritage, Packrat stole a personality component that had once belonged to a Combaticon. Cultural Appropriation

Notes

• The idea of a "personality component" is just one of many in the vague and confused world of Transformer sentience. Its relation to the spark and the laser core, not to mention Vector Sigma, is unclear at best. It doesn't help that the two major portrayals of personality components are different in their physical properties and effects.
• According to the "Starscream's Brigade" shooting script, the thing that Starscream got from the Detention Center was supposed to be glowing green and labeled "DANGER - CRIMINAL DECEPTION [sic] PERSONALITY COMPONENTS. DO NOT REMOVE!" Moreover, when he resurrected the Combaticons, he was supposed to be taking "small ebony cube[s]" out of the glowing box and putting them in the vehicles. Had this been animated accordingly, not only would the strange energon resemblance have been gone, but there would have been less of a discrepancy between that episode and "B.O.T."

Foreign names

• Japanese: Personal component (パーソナルコンポーネント pāsonaru konpōnento)