Sacred Rule of the Mall

"This is the rule of the mall, as old and true as the sky.
The burger that keeps it may prosper, but the burger that breaks it shall die."

The Sacred Rule of the Mall is basically the one and only rule the BotBots have, one that is designed to keep them and their otherwise chaotically carefree lives safe: under no circumstances whatsoever should a BotBot reveal themselves to a human. Keeping their existence a secret ensures that they can continue their nighttime partying.

So of course, a Bot breaking that rule, even by accident, could face some harsh consequences. Probably harsher if they did so to a human not as incompetent and ineffectual and distractible as the mall's current night security.

Fiction

BotBots cartoon

On his first encounter with the Lost Bots, Burgertron taught them The Sacred Rule of the Mall on their first trip outside the Lost and Found after a close encounter with their nemesis, the hideous flesh creature known as Dave the night security guard. It was on this trip however that Burgertron would end up inadvertently breaking the Rule: when his disguise mode was spotted by a hungry and not-picky Dave and inches away from being messily consumed, Dimlit leapt to his rescue and knocked Burgertron out of Dave's greasy grasp. The pair were only visible in robot mode for a split second, but Dave was immediately convinced what he saw was real. The only thing keeping him from immediately searching for them was the fact that the Lost Bots had driven the mall's train up the escalators into the food court, and Dave needed to get it back to the ground floor to stay out of trouble.

Unfortunately for the Lost Bots, this entire encounter had been witnessed by just about every other BotBot in the mall, and an incensed Spud Muffin kicked Burgertron out of the Hunger Hubs. Every other squad in the mall quickly shunned the Lost Bots, leading to months of them trying to win back the favor of their fellow BotBots. Mall Than Meets the Eye

Burgertron would end up breaking the Rule a second time, intentionally, in order to save the rest of the BotBots from discovery. Dave had been incapacitated by the foam block pit in the mall's daycare earlier in the evening, so the Bots could enjoy Bot Prom uninterrupted. But Spud Muffin had secretly helped Dave eventually extricate himself from his comfy confinement, and the only Bots not attending Prom, Dimlit and Jacqueline, were completely unable to stop him on his nightly rounds. Having been warned of Dave's imminent approach and knowing there was not enough time for everything to be disassembled and hidden, Burgertron took the disco ball and rode it to the lower level, deliberately revealing himself to Dave and leading him on a chase away from the Prom. On the Bot Prom Dance Floor

At the conclusion of the Goldrush Games, just before the Lost Bots were to be exiled to The Dark Side of the Mall, Burgertron psyched out the entire population of BotBots and sent them scrambling into disguise mode by crying wolf- er, security guard. When the "Gamesmaster" failed to transform, Burgertron revealed that the golden trophy bot was really Brock O'Lonely in a large mechanical suit, who had been forced into the sham that Spud Muffin had set up specifically to get the Lost Bots (and Burgertron in particular) banished. As an increasingly unhinged Spud revealed the depths of his plans to get Burgertron out of his life, he broke the Rule by not noticing that Dave was actually coming up behind him, and being the only one still in robot mode when Dave picked him up. Fortunately for the BotBots, thanks to an earlier kindness Burgertron had shown Dave, the guard assured the "sidekick" that he would never reveal the BotBots' existence to anyone else, not that anyone ever believed him anyway. Unfortunately for Spud, this did not save him from the ire of the other BotBots, both for breaking the Rule and just being a bad Bot. While many were ready to toss Spud onto an outbound truck never to be seen again, Burgertron argued for clemency and instead the fry-bot found himself banished to the Dark Side of the Mall himself, so that one day he might redeem himself and rejoin BotBot society. The Goldrush Games - Part the Second

Notes

• The BotBots are really committed to the Sacred Rule of the Mall. Multiple times, food-based BotBots come close to being devoured by Dave and refuse to shift to robot mode to save themselves:
  • Ulf the Orange and Burgertron in "Mall Than Meets the Eye"
  • Frostferatu in "Escape from Snackatraz"
  • Lady Macaron in "Lone Bot and Carb"
  • Knotzel in "Rage Against the Karaoke Machine"

On top of that, in "Scanned Out" it is revealed that several hiding BotBots had been bought by humans and taken from the mall never to return. Clogstopper nearly befell this fate, but he was returned the next day for being "defective".