Pseudocanon

Transformers fiction has an unusual but fairly cut-and-dried policy on what is canon: anything depicted by official fiction/sourcebooks is canon (for some continuity at least). However, there is a large amount of additional information about the various Transformers universes that does not come from officially endorsed products. Background gleaned from creator interviews, early drafts of stories, forum posts, and the like all fall into the realm of pseudocanon.

Pseudocanon usually fits in well with the actual canon (at least until a later writer invalidates it), as it is the writers' idea of "what is really going on" as they craft their stories. However, because it is not established in any official fiction, it can't be taken as a given or definitely "true". Fans are free to incorporate pseudocanon, or not, into their personal canons as they see fit. Knowledge of relevant pseudocanon may enhance one's enjoyment of a story, but can't be used to "prove" a point about that story because the pseudocanon itself is not in the story.

As an example, in the final episode of Beast Wars, the Maximals depart from Earth, without ever being shown replacing the spark of the original Megatron. Although it could be presumed that they had done so, it was not established as true. The show's writers stated that yes, the Maximals had indeed replaced the spark, and that the scene had even been animated before it was cut for time. They even provided a clip of the scene to Ben Yee, who posted it on his site, and was later included as an extra on some DVD sets.^[1] Despite all of this, the return of Megatron's spark within the context of that episode is not canonically established. It is clearly the writers' intent for the spark to have been replaced, and again, it is logical to presume that this would have happened off-camera, but because no canon source—that is, no official and finished fiction from Beast Wars had established it, it technically remained "not necessarily true" for the mainstream Beast Wars canon.^[2]

Those few examples of pseudocanon considered to be important enough to include on this wiki are marked with {{apocrypha}}.

"Canon by retcon"

As the Transformers fandom has started running the asylum, various bits of notable pseudocanon have been "retconned" into being canon after all, either through the events being alluded to in a canon source, or — through fourth-wall-breaking declarations from the likes of Ask Vector Prime—being outright stated to be "true and accurate" events within the Transformers multiverse; the most notable instances of this are probably Alignment and the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon, which have both been claimed to have taken place in the Transformers multiverse despite never being officially published under the Transformers brand. Despite this, this wiki takes the position that they're in something of a canonical limbo: they've been referenced, yes, but the events have never been explicitly described or depicted in full under the Transformers banner, and so they can't be said to be non-apocryphal under our definition of "canon".

(Plus, if taking place within the Transformers multiverse was all it took to be on TFWiki, we'd have to cover the entirety of the original G.I. Joe cartoon and comic (and the latter's spinoffs) in full...)

See also

• Authorial intent
• Alignment
• Beast Wars Universe, which is full of this stuff.

References