I'm surprised you didn't mention the story. "I have no mouth, and I must Starscream". In the story Starscream spark gets transferred into an organic creature. I love how the story goes into great detail how things like a beating heart and flowing blood would be absolutely terrifying to a mechanical creature
Jetfire being put in a permanent vehicle mode forever while still being able to think because of *studio executives* is some of the funniest shit ever.
@@Spartan_803they are ALIEN robot-like organisms, not devices from Elon Musk's garage. And even if they were, soft robotics is a thing. See also: Blade Runner and Westworld
The IDW 2005 comic run really did have a weird relationship with Body Horror. It felt like every other series had some sort of crazy death. Tarantulas shrinking down crawling into Roadbuster's head was for sure the one that made me put down the comic and think about my life for a long time.
The head mines were a nightmare and a half. Or were they called anti-personnel mines? Point is imagine having your body converted into an explosive device with no way of being saved. Also the b class decepticons being turned into literal bombs against their will.
I'm shocked you didn't mention Silas' whole situation where he was stuffed inside Breakdown's dead corpse as life support and then turned into a vampire zombie by Knockout and Starscream.
fairly certain that breakdown, like, partially regained consciousness or some shit during that bc it was his voice instead of Silas' in that episode. So the zombified corpse was shambling around without his input.
The whole Silas in Breakdown's body arc was real hard for me. Silas had been building his own Transformers - one prototype destroyed by Bumblebee and one remote-controlled Optimus Prime look-a-like that actually worked. MECH clearly had the tech to create working Transformer bodies. It was wild then that the Prime writers were like, "Nah, stick him in a Cybertronian corpse." Excuuuuse me? "Oh and then have the corpse's closest companion experiment on the result with a shrug, saying he's not really bothered by it." WTF, Prime? No, seriously, WTF?
I’m surprised Transformers prime wasn’t mentioned for what happened to Breakdown. His corpse being taken apart and Frankensteined together to become a mecha-cyborg suit for Silas. Then Silas became a test subject and tortured by the deceptions.
god yeah. saw that episode as a wee lad with a mushy still developing brain, never even mentioned that episode to my therapist lmao. that continuation was still my childhood tho i still rewatch it to this day
The Aligned continuity version of Trypticon is quite disturbing. He dies in War for Cybertron, and in Fall of Cybertron, he is forced to become "The Nemisis," which is the Decepticon flagship. In TF Prime, he was accidentally revived by dark energon. What always creeped me out is how the Cons' were fine with riding around the cosmos inside the mummified corpse of one of their comrades.
Bro didn't even die, he was still alive in FoC, just paralyzed. You can even hear him going "Nooo..." when Megatron tells him that's he's a failure and is going to be turned into a ship permanently.
@ottol.c.1784 Yes. It was removed after he became the Nemesis because Soundwave tells us it was damaged.... along with Trypticon. It is also Megatron' idea of a fitting punishment for Trypticon's failure.
One of the instances of body horror in Transformers that stuck around with me the most was the whole arc in the IDW Lost Light comics surrounding Pharma. That was just a continuing series of escalating nightmares that got worse and worse. An intentionally spread rust plague that dissolved victims bodies. A deal made with the DJD to sacrifice hospitalized patients to feed Tarn's addiction that required a steady supply of t-cogs. Pharma's obsession with Ratchet that led him to give him the "Severed Head Kept Alive Treatment." And culminating in a medical showdown that gave the fandom PTSD whenever they heard the word "Lengthways." Those comics are my favorite iteration of Transformers storytelling, but good LORD did they go nuts with the potential for awfulness inherent in robots with mutable bodies.
Or how new cons were builty from the molten bodies of prisoners. Imagine knowing you're built from rhe remains of someone who died being melted alive. "I'm pretty sure hell exists" was the perfect line for that panel.
@@returnedtomonkey8886shit, the one where skids finally saw the parts of his past that was left intentionally buried? That panel with his friend (forgor the name) literally melting alive in the "teleporter" with that quote has to be one of the most messed up TF things ive seen in a while
Transformation in general is body horror. Just casually dislocating all your limbs and breaking every bone and twist and pieces of metal, *until you transform into your alt mode! 😁*
Transformers: The only franchise (minus the live action movies) "aimed at kids and young teens" that allows mutilation, disintegration, and any other horrible bodily harm to transpire to the robots no matter how human they look or how sentient and sapient they act.
...It's not the only franchise that does that and I swear you children all seem to think whatever franchise you're into is the only one to show or talk about those things. There used to be a time where children were regarded as being capable of handling such concepts.
To this day i still dont have a solid idea of whats fatal and non fatal for the IDW transformers. Some characters survive the same injuries that kill others. Sometimes getting their head blown off kills them, while other chracters come back from it perfectly fine, like Devestator.
It's been a while since I read IDW '05, but I'm pretty sure that one of the Constructicons actually died from that and they had to get a new guy to form Devastator. But you're absolutely right that what's fatal and not is kinda inconsistent at times
@cybermang878 I'm not arguing for absolute consistency or anything, crazy stuff happens in the comics. But in the case of that constructicon, Scrapper, his head was completely exploded and left for dead in a construction lot. The decepticons were pretty disjointed at that time, and while its unclear when or how they collected his body (they later use his corpse to form the 'paralyzed' leg of Devestator), he had pretty certainly been long dead before being found.
@@blootooth00 Had to quickly check tfwiki to check wtf I was misremembering. It seems I mixed up Devastator getting shot in the head with Prowl replacing Hook as the head & shoulders of Devastator. My bad
@@TheNameIsFa11Probably that! If i remember correctly, it was mentioned in mtmte that smaller bots like Minimus can die from lesser damage than bigger ones
might be more of an existential horror than body horror, but the way combiners works in IDW. the more often and longer a group stays combined, the more their minds merge into the combined being, losing their individuality in the process. eventually getting to the point where Scrapper, Mixmaster, LongHaul, Scavenger, Hook, and Bonecrusher cease being 6 people. and just become 1/6th of Devastator mentally. as for outright Body Horror, The Dire Wraiths and what they did to an Ultra Magnus in The Rom crossover.
Headmasters, not just the IDW take where that guy was forced to be one, but the general idea of having another living being make up your actual head and having to share a body.
So, pretty sure the DJD *specialize* in body horror. Like forcing an autobot spy into a beast mode permanently and only referring to him as "the pet", acting like a dog more than a conscious being. There's also the time the division grinded, burned, and electrecuted another victim before talking him to death; or the time they had a cybertronian's brain gagging their mouth; and Vox's face... that's haunting Also, Tarantulas bursting out of Roadbuster's head
Does Autobot Spike from G1 count as body horror? Sure it lacks blood and gore, but the horror of not being human, and having your being put into an unstable alien frame cobbled together from parts where Spike gradually lost his sanity, to me, still went unnecessarily hard. Also no mention of Meltdown's horrifying mutant army?
@@trypticon8619 i did as a kid. ig i just didnt clock onto that fact... or i just dont remember. the movie implies it was a suit so my brain probably just covered the memory up with that xD
The crown goes to The Beast story line. With the dinobots combining in the most horrific way possible that liquified their bodies to the point that their heads collectively shouted "kill" inside of Beast's head was very disturbing
I think its fascinating to think about what might and might not be possible as autonomous robotic organisms but oh my god the cover for the ratchet megatron fusion is intense
In Sins of the wreckers 4 comic, tarantulas shrinks and crawls into roadbuster's head and whispers to him and taunts him. He then expands to regular size and explodes roadbuster's head and neck area. The art of a giant tarantula bursting out of his body is quite disturbing...
I've always had a thought of a human inside of a transformer during transformation, possibly being grinded, crushed, converted into fuel, trapped inside, unable to move, or maybe something else. A story about a human trapped inside of an auto-bot that is offline, describing how they slowly wither away, only to be saved last moment, or found years later when the body of the autobot is examined could make for an interesting story.
Those bot bombs still rattle me to this day. I don’t know why it had such a big impact on me when I first read through that scene, but I felt so bad for that poor bot (Heavytread if I remember right) I can’t even begin to imagine seeing someone turned into a talking, crying bomb, let alone being turned into one
Another thing that comes to mind is the scene in G1 where Starscream turns that Doctor guy into an immobile cyborg and seemingly abandons him on Cybertron. I feel like people brushed past that too quickly lmao
What still gets me is how Perceptor and Prowl altered Kupp's memories and keep him medicated after he recovered from addiction. All so Prowl can use Kupp to better push the Autobots in the direction he believes will best help their cause.
In Transformers Prime, some bots got themselves killed in what seemed to be body horror too. A Vehicon had his innards ripped out by Bulkhead, who in a funny twist yells at Miko to "Cover her eyes" as he ripped out the Vehicon's insides in slowmo, while Miko looks amazed lol (I really don't like Miko at all but that was funny). Breakdown was also tortured by Cylas and his team, and they even removed one of his optics. Skyquake was turned into a Zombiecon, and his arm was removed, and then Airachnid killed Breakdown by completely dismantling him, and then Mech and Cylas took his body, and refitted it to Cylas when the latter was crushed and almost killed by his Nemesis Prime. Cylas was seen with implants and tubing when connected to Breakdown's body and also had scars and cuts. So yeah TFP had even some human body horror in it as well.
I LOVED how in depth this was!! SO MUCH MESSED UP STUFF.. As someone who has never watched transformers Anything I just watched TF1 and I’m starving. This was Fun thank you
A body and mental horror concept I love has to deal with the Jumpstarters Topspin and Twin Twist in Last Stand of the Wreckers where Twin Twist is being dissected while Topspin can feel the pain, the panel with Twin Twist missin his eye and lower jaw was terrifying
I always find it rather ironic that most people view the tf franchise as more childish compared to sw or marvel. Most franchises came from toy lines and cartoons but gradually grew along with their audience over the years, imo tf is no different besides being somewhat more violent/gory then most kids franchises that people consider to be more mature. Being a robotic alien that doesn’t bleed red definitely helps it weave past the censorship I suppose
Waiter waiter more robo-gore please!! :3 what can i say whenever one of my fav characters is turned into an agonizing severed head hanging by their spark i can't help but love the trope the edgier the better ngl wish they also put more emphasis on scraplets and used them as a torture method more oftenly theyre in concept like rats chewing you up to death but worse cuz they're tiny and under your skin lol
5:25 Sunder would erase their subconscious memory of transforming, and stop the tcog from communicating with the brain. Also in idw, there was a dead deception the lost light used as a ship
In Michael bay's second Transformers film, we see a decepticon being ripped apart for spare parts to rebuild megatron. The kid me was haunted by that image. I still remember it some time. That raw, unexpected, visceral yet short scene that is barely even dwelt on if at all made it that much spookier.
IDW gets a lot of flack for how violent it was, but the horror fan in me never minded much. One of the standout ones for me is from Last Stand of the Wreckers when the Decepticons use the comatose, limbless torso of Fort Max as a random number generator.
Some underrated moments of body horror come from 2011's Dark of The Moon where it goes from watching Ironhide fall victim to weaponized cosmic rust, seeing a Decepticon proto-form get pulled apart by the Wreckers, to watching Megatron get his head yanked off by a battle axe and then soon after sentinel getting his head blown out by a shotgun. Though not cybertronian it was also pretty gruesome to see humans reduced to nothing but their skeletons after being shot by cybertronian weaponry.
I think one you should have mentioned was Empurata, it isnt technically much body horror more so existential but Shockwave and Whirl going through it and going insane because of what it did to them and just the fact that they replace your head and hands to remove you of individuality is body horror to me
IDW, shockwave and whirl have there heads removed and replaced with a simple camera as a punishment. Used to explain the cyclops bots. It's why there are so few of them and why they are both crazy.
Im hoping for sunder to apear in any further media. He is such a horrid character. Its a crime for him to be contained to just comics. His horror needs to spread to other media!
Sins of the Wreckers with that spider entering Trailbreakers head and exploding it off. Now that I mention it, Sins of the Wreckers is just chocked full of body horror and other grotesque imagery.
That wasn't trailbreaker, I'm pretty sure it was roadbuster. During the Wrecker saga trailbreaker was with the Lost Light. Trailbreaker was probably dead by the time Sins happened.
my friends and i have been running a transformers tabletop RPG campaign for a couple years now and my players have repeatedly pointed out the surprising amount of body horror. Not all of them are long-time fans of the franchise so it's been a matter of some debate whether this is due to me being true to the lore or just my personal depravity. I have repeatedly insisted "it's both tbh" but it's good to have an outside force confirming this.
I forgot what the episode was, but in Transformers RID, there was a snake transformer that has heads of transformers in a formaldehyde like substance that he would stitch onto other bot’s bodies, one of these victims was one of the show’s main characters: Sideswipe. Please let me know what this episode was or if you remember this.
I also remember there being an episode from Transformers Prime where BlackArachnia just got a proboscis and spider fangs and began siphoning the energeon from her own foot soldiers…creepy
Transformers really pushes the limits of "they're robots, so we can do whatever to them". Even just beyond the body horror elements of it, the dialogue sometimes gets me. Like in the Transformers 1986 movie you got Megatron fighting Prime to the death and he says "I'll rip out your optics!" and there's always stuff like that going on like "I'm going to rip out your spark and eat it in front of you before you cease to function!" like damn dog, that's scary and they back it up too like with the body horror elements, like some of these panels look like Berzerk with a transformers skin
this is the first bit of transformers content ive ever seen. ive never known anything about the series other than robots that can turn into vehicles. this is fucking insane, how was i not aware of how metal this shit was?
In one of the IDW comics, the decepticon justice divisioin (DJD), caught up to one of their targets, a cultist, and cut his head open, and placed his brain in his own mouth hoping he would chew it when he woke up.
“I’ll strip you down for spare parts autobite.”- the Cybertronian equivalent of Hannibal Lecter saying he’s going to keep your organs as meal prep for the week.
I remember picking up an issue of the Generation 2 run in about 1995 because Optimus Prime was on the cover. It ended up being the one where he is literally (and very graphically) consumed at the atomic level by The Swarm. Something about such a heroic character screaming helplessly as he ceases to be, and the juxtaposition of his own thoughts in the text bubbles ("Disassembled particle by particle, atom by atom. Eaten alive... the horror of this protracted death") scared the shit out of a five year old me. Genuinely may have been the first time I was actually confronted by the idea of death. I'm still amazed by the fear the artists could fit into two totally circular eyes.
This changes everything I knew about Transformers, which was admittedly not very much. Makes the series so much more fascinating to know how much humanity is in an Autobot and that they can be just as tortured as a humanoid.
Shocked that there was no mention of the sparkeaters or the DJD! Not sure how much of torture technically constitutes as body horror or just as gore but the scene where Helex puts another guys brain in his mouth like a gag while he's tied up was CRAZY. The entire concepts behind cold construction reads as body horror to me as well. The idea that half of the population is not born normally but built from the corpses of other people and are considered second class citizens was chilling. That and the body tourism industry and subsequent and suicide ("relinquishment") clinics from before the war (rewind/chromedome arc)
well there was also the bit in the g1 cartoon where the decepticons trap the autobots in vehicle mode during a race, blow out their tires and make them run out of gas leaving them immobile. i remember it scaring me when i was young
Something from the G1 cartoon of all places that I thought was pretty frightening was Autobot X. Basically the Autobots built a spare body out of extra parts, but Spike's consciousness wound up stuck in it for a while.
I have always had this thought for a while and I am glad someone brought this up because when you think about it, Transformers could be a PG-13/mecha version of “The Thing”. Because when you think about it, the Thing race and Cybertronians are both aliens, they can copy otherworldly things to disguise themselves for their own purposes and can drive a sense of awe and fear of something outerspace and greater than themselves.
Since you showed fall of Cybertron footage and someone also mentioned Trypticon, i must add the fate of the lightning coalition who was forced into the dinobots by shockwave
Video: (talking about bodily horror.) Me: (happily watching) Video: (Then starts to talk about the transformers) Me: (comidicly loud and long gasp) YOU LIKE TRANSFORMERS TOO!? I ALSO LIKE TRANSFORMERS ITS ONE OF MY SPECIAL INTERESTS!!!!! (i cant remove the guestio mark for some reson)?(remembers this is a transformers video I clicked on) Oh, I forgot I clicked on a transformers video... YIPPEE!!!!!!
A notable mention that was left out is in the war for cybertron games the titan trypticon was defeated and left paralyzed yet conscious and instead of fixing him megatron permanently transforms him into the nemesis ship
One could make a whole body horror video about IDW Transformers alone... and half of it would be Last Stand of the Wreckers and its sequels (at first I wanted to say that the other half would be mostly More than Meets the Eye/Lost Light, but then I remembered that plenty of truly unsettling stuff happened in other ongoings - like Devastator transforming with one of its components dead at one point in Robots in Diguise/The Transformers).
The Transformers story Another Time And Place not only features a zombie-like revived Megatron, but also this: "Bludgeon was suddenly seized by multiple robotic arms, the 'spider' instantly starting to weld, cut and unbolt. In the terrible seconds that followed he was taken apart, piece by piece, circuit by circuit, until component parts were all that was left. Bludgeon didn't so much as cry out."
I know in the end the 'bots end up still having autonomy but Empurata from IDW/MTMTE is a bit body horror to me too! Whirl, Shockwave, even Tarn! They all had their heads removed and subbed out for a spotlight optic and have clamps for hands instead of fingers as an old, archaic torture and punishment method - spooky stuff!
I'm surprised you didn't mention the story. "I have no mouth, and I must Starscream". In the story Starscream spark gets transferred into an organic creature. I love how the story goes into great detail how things like a beating heart and flowing blood would be absolutely terrifying to a mechanical creature
Which continuity? What issue?
@_Iscream It was a Halloween special for the IDW Rebooted Universe, but I don't know if it's cannon or not
@ thanks! Will check it out
@_Iscream no problem 😊
Oh I'm so looking this up
Jetfire being put in a permanent vehicle mode forever while still being able to think because of *studio executives* is some of the funniest shit ever.
"No you can't kill off any characters! That's too dark for our family friendly property!"
*The Monkey's Paw curls*
@@getschwifty5537I’m fucking wheezing dude.
They turned him into a Warhammer Dreadnought
yeah, like the exects actually made it worse
It's basic procedure at that point.
Maybe they did the "there robots we can do whatever we want" a bit too far
not far enough
Yeah, but these robots have blood, organs, and other stuff robots shouldn't have.
@@Spartan_803they are ALIEN robot-like organisms, not devices from Elon Musk's garage. And even if they were, soft robotics is a thing. See also: Blade Runner and Westworld
they did it in dotm too
they're*
The IDW 2005 comic run really did have a weird relationship with Body Horror. It felt like every other series had some sort of crazy death. Tarantulas shrinking down crawling into Roadbuster's head was for sure the one that made me put down the comic and think about my life for a long time.
for as good as it was, dear god if they weren't robot!!!
Oof, the Tarantulas moment is a good pick, to be sure
"Everywhere I go, I see your face"
I can never forget Vos saying ‘Wear my face’
The head mines were a nightmare and a half.
Or were they called anti-personnel mines?
Point is imagine having your body converted into an explosive device with no way of being saved.
Also the b class decepticons being turned into literal bombs against their will.
I'm shocked you didn't mention Silas' whole situation where he was stuffed inside Breakdown's dead corpse as life support and then turned into a vampire zombie by Knockout and Starscream.
fairly certain that breakdown, like, partially regained consciousness or some shit during that bc it was his voice instead of Silas' in that episode. So the zombified corpse was shambling around without his input.
@@drek.475 Well that makes the whole situation many times worse! No wonder Silas was relieved when Arachnid killed him...
The whole Silas in Breakdown's body arc was real hard for me. Silas had been building his own Transformers - one prototype destroyed by Bumblebee and one remote-controlled Optimus Prime look-a-like that actually worked. MECH clearly had the tech to create working Transformer bodies. It was wild then that the Prime writers were like, "Nah, stick him in a Cybertronian corpse." Excuuuuse me? "Oh and then have the corpse's closest companion experiment on the result with a shrug, saying he's not really bothered by it." WTF, Prime? No, seriously, WTF?
Breakdown got THE shortest end of the stick in TFP ngl.
@@drek.475
I dunno, we get a shot of Airschnid _stabbing Silas._ He opens BD's chest compartment, looks at her, thanks her, and dies onscreen.
I’m surprised Transformers prime wasn’t mentioned for what happened to Breakdown. His corpse being taken apart and Frankensteined together to become a mecha-cyborg suit for Silas. Then Silas became a test subject and tortured by the deceptions.
Then Silas inside Breakdown's corpse were turned into energon starving vampire zombies
god yeah. saw that episode as a wee lad with a mushy still developing brain, never even mentioned that episode to my therapist lmao. that continuation was still my childhood tho i still rewatch it to this day
The Aligned continuity version of Trypticon is quite disturbing. He dies in War for Cybertron, and in Fall of Cybertron, he is forced to become "The Nemisis," which is the Decepticon flagship. In TF Prime, he was accidentally revived by dark energon.
What always creeped me out is how the Cons' were fine with riding around the cosmos inside the mummified corpse of one of their comrades.
Bro didn't even die, he was still alive in FoC, just paralyzed. You can even hear him going "Nooo..." when Megatron tells him that's he's a failure and is going to be turned into a ship permanently.
Something I always wondered was why he didn’t try transforming once he woke up again. Was he simply not able to?
@@ottol.c.1784 it's very likely his tcog got removed between foc and transformers prime
@ottol.c.1784 Yes. It was removed after he became the Nemesis because Soundwave tells us it was damaged.... along with Trypticon. It is also Megatron' idea of a fitting punishment for Trypticon's failure.
@@nintende I wonder what they did with the removed T-Cog….
One of the instances of body horror in Transformers that stuck around with me the most was the whole arc in the IDW Lost Light comics surrounding Pharma. That was just a continuing series of escalating nightmares that got worse and worse. An intentionally spread rust plague that dissolved victims bodies. A deal made with the DJD to sacrifice hospitalized patients to feed Tarn's addiction that required a steady supply of t-cogs. Pharma's obsession with Ratchet that led him to give him the "Severed Head Kept Alive Treatment." And culminating in a medical showdown that gave the fandom PTSD whenever they heard the word "Lengthways." Those comics are my favorite iteration of Transformers storytelling, but good LORD did they go nuts with the potential for awfulness inherent in robots with mutable bodies.
Or how new cons were builty from the molten bodies of prisoners.
Imagine knowing you're built from rhe remains of someone who died being melted alive.
"I'm pretty sure hell exists" was the perfect line for that panel.
@@returnedtomonkey8886shit, the one where skids finally saw the parts of his past that was left intentionally buried? That panel with his friend (forgor the name) literally melting alive in the "teleporter" with that quote has to be one of the most messed up TF things ive seen in a while
Transformation in general is body horror. Just casually dislocating all your limbs and breaking every bone and twist and pieces of metal, *until you transform into your alt mode! 😁*
well if the had bones..
Transformers don't have bones
They have some crazy joints
they could jut be extremly double jointed...since most, if not all ,the transformation happens along the joints
last boss of Chris campaign of RE6 will show you and organic transformation body horror
This shows that the transformers are more than just a kids franchise
You could say, it's more than meets the eye
Transformers: The only franchise (minus the live action movies) "aimed at kids and young teens" that allows mutilation, disintegration, and any other horrible bodily harm to transpire to the robots no matter how human they look or how sentient and sapient they act.
yes
...It's not the only franchise that does that and I swear you children all seem to think whatever franchise you're into is the only one to show or talk about those things. There used to be a time where children were regarded as being capable of handling such concepts.
@@Commander23c you re cool
@@PERSONII3331PERSONIIEVER It's amusing you think I want or care about validation. It's something that frustrates me so I expanded on it.
@@Commander23c i just agreed with you
''I'm gonna turn into a truck now''
**BONES CRUNCHING**
To this day i still dont have a solid idea of whats fatal and non fatal for the IDW transformers. Some characters survive the same injuries that kill others. Sometimes getting their head blown off kills them, while other chracters come back from it perfectly fine, like Devestator.
It's been a while since I read IDW '05, but I'm pretty sure that one of the Constructicons actually died from that and they had to get a new guy to form Devastator. But you're absolutely right that what's fatal and not is kinda inconsistent at times
@cybermang878 I'm not arguing for absolute consistency or anything, crazy stuff happens in the comics. But in the case of that constructicon, Scrapper, his head was completely exploded and left for dead in a construction lot. The decepticons were pretty disjointed at that time, and while its unclear when or how they collected his body (they later use his corpse to form the 'paralyzed' leg of Devestator), he had pretty certainly been long dead before being found.
@@blootooth00 Had to quickly check tfwiki to check wtf I was misremembering. It seems I mixed up Devastator getting shot in the head with Prowl replacing Hook as the head & shoulders of Devastator. My bad
I guess it depends on the individual. Much like how some humans can survive several bullet wounds while others can die from just one.
@@TheNameIsFa11Probably that! If i remember correctly, it was mentioned in mtmte that smaller bots like Minimus can die from lesser damage than bigger ones
might be more of an existential horror than body horror, but the way combiners works in IDW.
the more often and longer a group stays combined, the more their minds merge into the combined being, losing their individuality in the process. eventually getting to the point where Scrapper, Mixmaster, LongHaul, Scavenger, Hook, and Bonecrusher cease being 6 people. and just become 1/6th of Devastator mentally.
as for outright Body Horror, The Dire Wraiths and what they did to an Ultra Magnus in The Rom crossover.
Headmasters, not just the IDW take where that guy was forced to be one, but the general idea of having another living being make up your actual head and having to share a body.
I mean, even the original ones, the Nebulons (and Spike) underwent pretty drastic surgery.
So, pretty sure the DJD *specialize* in body horror. Like forcing an autobot spy into a beast mode permanently and only referring to him as "the pet", acting like a dog more than a conscious being. There's also the time the division grinded, burned, and electrecuted another victim before talking him to death; or the time they had a cybertronian's brain gagging their mouth; and Vox's face... that's haunting
Also, Tarantulas bursting out of Roadbuster's head
Does Autobot Spike from G1 count as body horror? Sure it lacks blood and gore, but the horror of not being human, and having your being put into an unstable alien frame cobbled together from parts where Spike gradually lost his sanity, to me, still went unnecessarily hard.
Also no mention of Meltdown's horrifying mutant army?
I think he does count, if Frankenstein is body horror, so is spike
wait that actualy happened????
damn
@@QuietBorb yeah, you should watch G1, it’s a good dumb fun series
@@trypticon8619 i did as a kid. ig i just didnt clock onto that fact... or i just dont remember. the movie implies it was a suit so my brain probably just covered the memory up with that xD
@@QuietBorb The suit he wears in the movie is different from the cobbled frame he got swapped into once. It was called Autobot X I believe.
The crown goes to The Beast story line. With the dinobots combining in the most horrific way possible that liquified their bodies to the point that their heads collectively shouted "kill" inside of Beast's head was very disturbing
That one's so edgy it loops back round to being funny lol
I think its fascinating to think about what might and might not be possible as autonomous robotic organisms but oh my god the cover for the ratchet megatron fusion is intense
In Sins of the wreckers 4 comic, tarantulas shrinks and crawls into roadbuster's head and whispers to him and taunts him. He then expands to regular size and explodes roadbuster's head and neck area. The art of a giant tarantula bursting out of his body is quite disturbing...
I've always had a thought of a human inside of a transformer during transformation, possibly being grinded, crushed, converted into fuel, trapped inside, unable to move, or maybe something else.
A story about a human trapped inside of an auto-bot that is offline, describing how they slowly wither away, only to be saved last moment, or found years later when the body of the autobot is examined could make for an interesting story.
Those bot bombs still rattle me to this day. I don’t know why it had such a big impact on me when I first read through that scene, but I felt so bad for that poor bot (Heavytread if I remember right) I can’t even begin to imagine seeing someone turned into a talking, crying bomb, let alone being turned into one
Another thing that comes to mind is the scene in G1 where Starscream turns that Doctor guy into an immobile cyborg and seemingly abandons him on Cybertron. I feel like people brushed past that too quickly lmao
That one Marvel comic with the Ratron hybrid thing was straight up horrifying
im surprised you didn't include the DJD 'weAAAr my fAAAcee' guy
Crap, I keep forgetting he can do that!
vos mention [happy]
The ratchet and Megatron fusion reminded me of the ending of the fly where Brundlefly was asking to be put down
What still gets me is how Perceptor and Prowl altered Kupp's memories and keep him medicated after he recovered from addiction. All so Prowl can use Kupp to better push the Autobots in the direction he believes will best help their cause.
Dear god, that Beast Wars character alone would've given me nightmares if I saw it as a kid
In Transformers Prime, some bots got themselves killed in what seemed to be body horror too.
A Vehicon had his innards ripped out by Bulkhead, who in a funny twist yells at Miko to "Cover her eyes" as he ripped out the Vehicon's insides in slowmo, while Miko looks amazed lol (I really don't like Miko at all but that was funny).
Breakdown was also tortured by Cylas and his team, and they even removed one of his optics. Skyquake was turned into a Zombiecon, and his arm was removed, and then Airachnid killed Breakdown by completely dismantling him, and then Mech and Cylas took his body, and refitted it to Cylas when the latter was crushed and almost killed by his Nemesis Prime.
Cylas was seen with implants and tubing when connected to Breakdown's body and also had scars and cuts. So yeah TFP had even some human body horror in it as well.
I LOVED how in depth this was!! SO MUCH MESSED UP STUFF.. As someone who has never watched transformers Anything I just watched TF1 and I’m starving. This was Fun thank you
Welcome to the fandom! I highly recommend Transformers Animated and Beast Wars!
One I can think of a G1 body horror part.
In triple takeover scrapper turn I think skids prowl smokescreen and another one into a throne!
Loved this episode, Would love more coverage on TF body horror like Tarn and such
A body and mental horror concept I love has to deal with the Jumpstarters Topspin and Twin Twist in Last Stand of the Wreckers where Twin Twist is being dissected while Topspin can feel the pain, the panel with Twin Twist missin his eye and lower jaw was terrifying
You missed the part TFA's Lockdown is a walking body horror himself, plus to describe the graphic transformation of Elita-1 to Blackarachnia.
I think the Golden Rust is also an example of Transformers Body Horror.
I'm surprised you didn't mention empurata. where criminals get their heads and hands removed and replaced with mechanical eyes and tools
Absolutely. The shockwave reveal was one of the best moments of the series and the Whirl backstory was messed up.
Thirding this, I was waiting for the face off references all the way through.
It makes sense. The same thing happened with Samurai Jack. All the decapitations had to be done with robots in order to avoid censors.
I always find it rather ironic that most people view the tf franchise as more childish compared to sw or marvel. Most franchises came from toy lines and cartoons but gradually grew along with their audience over the years, imo tf is no different besides being somewhat more violent/gory then most kids franchises that people consider to be more mature. Being a robotic alien that doesn’t bleed red definitely helps it weave past the censorship I suppose
Waiter waiter more robo-gore please!! :3 what can i say whenever one of my fav characters is turned into an agonizing severed head hanging by their spark i can't help but love the trope the edgier the better ngl wish they also put more emphasis on scraplets and used them as a torture method more oftenly theyre in concept like rats chewing you up to death but worse cuz they're tiny and under your skin lol
Suprised you didn't mention the Beast Within,the comic where the Dinobots combine in to the most horrific combiner ever
That one scene in ROTF where a decepticon gets mutilated just to revive Megatron
5:25
Sunder would erase their subconscious memory of transforming, and stop the tcog from communicating with the brain.
Also in idw, there was a dead deception the lost light used as a ship
In Michael bay's second Transformers film, we see a decepticon being ripped apart for spare parts to rebuild megatron.
The kid me was haunted by that image. I still remember it some time. That raw, unexpected, visceral yet short scene that is barely even dwelt on if at all made it that much spookier.
IDW gets a lot of flack for how violent it was, but the horror fan in me never minded much. One of the standout ones for me is from Last Stand of the Wreckers when the Decepticons use the comatose, limbless torso of Fort Max as a random number generator.
Some underrated moments of body horror come from 2011's Dark of The Moon where it goes from watching Ironhide fall victim to weaponized cosmic rust, seeing a Decepticon proto-form get pulled apart by the Wreckers, to watching Megatron get his head yanked off by a battle axe and then soon after sentinel getting his head blown out by a shotgun. Though not cybertronian it was also pretty gruesome to see humans reduced to nothing but their skeletons after being shot by cybertronian weaponry.
The most disturbing and sad part is is that these are LIVING things not just machines.
I think one you should have mentioned was Empurata, it isnt technically much body horror more so existential but Shockwave and Whirl going through it and going insane because of what it did to them and just the fact that they replace your head and hands to remove you of individuality is body horror to me
i see sunder, i click
IDW, shockwave and whirl have there heads removed and replaced with a simple camera as a punishment. Used to explain the cyclops bots. It's why there are so few of them and why they are both crazy.
I've felt a video like this is long over due. These filmmakers be taking the "they're just robots" a bit too far. Even in the recent TF One.
How dare you leave out breakdown and Silas
3:58 so she basically became o arachnid
Black arachnia
i expected shockwave to be the main reason for most of this, its the most logical assumption
Im hoping for sunder to apear in any further media.
He is such a horrid character. Its a crime for him to be contained to just comics.
His horror needs to spread to other media!
1:48 ai be like
2:09 the design o the characters feel weird even outside of the fused thing
Sins of the Wreckers with that spider entering Trailbreakers head and exploding it off. Now that I mention it, Sins of the Wreckers is just chocked full of body horror and other grotesque imagery.
That wasn't trailbreaker, I'm pretty sure it was roadbuster. During the Wrecker saga trailbreaker was with the Lost Light. Trailbreaker was probably dead by the time Sins happened.
my friends and i have been running a transformers tabletop RPG campaign for a couple years now and my players have repeatedly pointed out the surprising amount of body horror. Not all of them are long-time fans of the franchise so it's been a matter of some debate whether this is due to me being true to the lore or just my personal depravity. I have repeatedly insisted "it's both tbh" but it's good to have an outside force confirming this.
From More than Meets the Eye, IDW's "YOU'RE in the box!" springs to mind. Remember that one eerie good scene from Robocop (2014)? Yes, it's that.
I forgot what the episode was, but in Transformers RID, there was a snake transformer that has heads of transformers in a formaldehyde like substance that he would stitch onto other bot’s bodies, one of these victims was one of the show’s main characters: Sideswipe. Please let me know what this episode was or if you remember this.
I also remember there being an episode from Transformers Prime where BlackArachnia just got a proboscis and spider fangs and began siphoning the energeon from her own foot soldiers…creepy
I love that Froid is a reference to Sigmund Freud
Transformers really pushes the limits of "they're robots, so we can do whatever to them". Even just beyond the body horror elements of it, the dialogue sometimes gets me. Like in the Transformers 1986 movie you got Megatron fighting Prime to the death and he says "I'll rip out your optics!" and there's always stuff like that going on like "I'm going to rip out your spark and eat it in front of you before you cease to function!" like damn dog, that's scary and they back it up too like with the body horror elements, like some of these panels look like Berzerk with a transformers skin
"The Smelting Pit" with scrounge's half-melted body was definitely the first truly brutal bit of body horror in the original comics.
At least Transmutate comes back and I love her she looks cute
Well there was that time Starscream switched a doctor's body parts for robotic parts in G1...
this is the first bit of transformers content ive ever seen. ive never known anything about the series other than robots that can turn into vehicles. this is fucking insane, how was i not aware of how metal this shit was?
Shockwave’s origin is has a lot of body horror.
Who would've thought a franchise meant to sell toys carved a lane for themselves in a very artistic subgenre
I didn't know G1 Transformers was so hardcore.
IDW Sunstreaker being dismantled while keeping him alive and one human doctor had sex with his GF in front of him (unknowingly) ☠☠☠
In issue All hail Megatron, it was replaced by human protagonist's body, Being used as CPU with wires going through his skull and eyes.
In one of the IDW comics, the decepticon justice divisioin (DJD), caught up to one of their targets, a cultist, and cut his head open, and placed his brain in his own mouth hoping he would chew it when he woke up.
“I’ll strip you down for spare parts autobite.”- the Cybertronian equivalent of Hannibal Lecter saying he’s going to keep your organs as meal prep for the week.
6:00 they actually made a very similar story in Dr Who.
rachet is the transformers equivalent of los santos customs
"whats wrong with you now?"
I remember picking up an issue of the Generation 2 run in about 1995 because Optimus Prime was on the cover. It ended up being the one where he is literally (and very graphically) consumed at the atomic level by The Swarm. Something about such a heroic character screaming helplessly as he ceases to be, and the juxtaposition of his own thoughts in the text bubbles ("Disassembled particle by particle, atom by atom. Eaten alive... the horror of this protracted death") scared the shit out of a five year old me. Genuinely may have been the first time I was actually confronted by the idea of death.
I'm still amazed by the fear the artists could fit into two totally circular eyes.
This changes everything I knew about Transformers, which was admittedly not very much. Makes the series so much more fascinating to know how much humanity is in an Autobot and that they can be just as tortured as a humanoid.
Shocked that there was no mention of the sparkeaters or the DJD! Not sure how much of torture technically constitutes as body horror or just as gore but the scene where Helex puts another guys brain in his mouth like a gag while he's tied up was CRAZY. The entire concepts behind cold construction reads as body horror to me as well. The idea that half of the population is not born normally but built from the corpses of other people and are considered second class citizens was chilling. That and the body tourism industry and subsequent and suicide ("relinquishment") clinics from before the war (rewind/chromedome arc)
hasbro really went "they are just robots how bad could the body horror be" then idw comes out like "you wanna see??"
There was also that one edgy non canon Dinobot combiner that everyone hated
well there was also the bit in the g1 cartoon where the decepticons trap the autobots in vehicle mode during a race, blow out their tires and make them run out of gas leaving them immobile. i remember it scaring me when i was young
Something from the G1 cartoon of all places that I thought was pretty frightening was Autobot X. Basically the Autobots built a spare body out of extra parts, but Spike's consciousness wound up stuck in it for a while.
I have always had this thought for a while and I am glad someone brought this up because when you think about it, Transformers could be a PG-13/mecha version of “The Thing”. Because when you think about it, the Thing race and Cybertronians are both aliens, they can copy otherworldly things to disguise themselves for their own purposes and can drive a sense of awe and fear of something outerspace and greater than themselves.
2005 IDW comics have got some brutal deaths man... But Sunder is next-level brutal.
When speaking of G1, you forgot the episode "Autobot Spike", classic body horror
Body horror and existential horror kinda go hand in hand I think. So Jetfire’s fate checks out in my book
How dare you forget Senator Shockwave’s forced lobotomy
I honestly love body horror in transformers, it brings some much needed horror and messed up things in the Cybertronian world
Since you showed fall of Cybertron footage and someone also mentioned Trypticon, i must add the fate of the lightning coalition who was forced into the dinobots by shockwave
Ouch that’s gotta hurt
Video: (talking about bodily horror.)
Me: (happily watching)
Video: (Then starts to talk about the transformers)
Me: (comidicly loud and long gasp) YOU LIKE TRANSFORMERS TOO!? I ALSO LIKE TRANSFORMERS ITS ONE OF MY SPECIAL INTERESTS!!!!! (i cant remove the guestio mark for some reson)?(remembers this is a transformers video I clicked on) Oh, I forgot I clicked on a transformers video... YIPPEE!!!!!!
In G1 there was also that episode where Scourge stole the matrix and he went mad whilst his body became incredibly deformed and almost goo-like
Tetrahex Ripper sounds like a great industrial metal band name.
A notable mention that was left out is in the war for cybertron games the titan trypticon was defeated and left paralyzed yet conscious and instead of fixing him megatron permanently transforms him into the nemesis ship
Also the zombie cliffjumper from transformers prime,man it is brutal
Nemo-surgery is just a fancy way to say "cortigal psychic patch" let's keep it abuck
Dude I love your videos man and happy Halloween
One could make a whole body horror video about IDW Transformers alone... and half of it would be Last Stand of the Wreckers and its sequels (at first I wanted to say that the other half would be mostly More than Meets the Eye/Lost Light, but then I remembered that plenty of truly unsettling stuff happened in other ongoings - like Devastator transforming with one of its components dead at one point in Robots in Diguise/The Transformers).
The Transformers story Another Time And Place not only features a zombie-like revived Megatron, but also this:
"Bludgeon was suddenly seized by multiple robotic arms, the 'spider' instantly starting to weld, cut and unbolt. In the terrible seconds that followed he was taken apart, piece by piece, circuit by circuit, until component parts were all that was left. Bludgeon didn't so much as cry out."
I was literally just thinking of Sunder a few minutes ago, and then this pops up lol
I know in the end the 'bots end up still having autonomy but Empurata from IDW/MTMTE is a bit body horror to me too! Whirl, Shockwave, even Tarn! They all had their heads removed and subbed out for a spotlight optic and have clamps for hands instead of fingers as an old, archaic torture and punishment method - spooky stuff!