Death

And lo, the children did weep.

Transformers is a children's franchise, but at its core, it's a story of war. This means that the death of major and minor characters sometimes figures into the fiction.

Given the ambiguous nature of Transformer physiology, there is very little consistency regarding what is fatal to a Transformer, even within a single storyline. Damage that one Transformer might shrug off can prove fatal to another, or even to the same character in a different story. It does not take a terribly cynical viewer to conclude that the threshold of survival is generally determined by the needs of the plot.

The out-of-universe reasons for a character's death can vary from plot development to the arrival of new toys. Conveniently enough for writers who are beholden to the whims of a toy company, the majority of Transformers characters are machines, which means that death isn't necessarily permanent. Across the various universes, characters that appear to have been killed have been known to pop up alive again at a later date, or go through some sort of resurrection.

"How can you all be so cold and unfeeling? He died a hero!"

"Don't you even have mechanical hearts?"

"The humans don't understand! Our form of life is vastly different from theirs!"Spider-Man, Sparkplug Witwicky, and Optimus Prime, "Prisoner of War!"

In-fiction causes of death

There is little consistency in what can kill a Transformer. Even the most basic method of killing, which is to destroy or otherwise cause the loss of a Transformer's spark, varies quite a bit in its details from story to story, character to character, and series to series.

Weaponsfire

Like humans, Transformers can be killed by damage caused by energy, projectile, and chemical weapons.

• Most of the casualties of the Battle of Autobot City (and its run-up), including Prowl, Brawn, Ratchet, Ironhide, were victims of energy weapons.

• Most deaths in the Generation 2 comic occurred from energy weapons, including Red Alert, Smokescreen, Runabout, and Quake.

• Dinobot dies after incurring severe damage from numerous Predacon weapons in "Code of Hero".

• Tigerhawk is disintegrated by the main cannon of the starship Nemesis in "Nemesis Part 2". The same cannon subsequently blasts Inferno and Quickstrike, apparently killing them, though their "death" may be permanent simply because there was nobody around to put them back together.

Vivisection

Getting chopped in half is pretty graphic for a kids' story, even one about robots, so it doesn't happen very often.

• In a dream sequence, Grimlock slices Megatron in half, killing him.
• Predaking gets sliced in half by Dai Atlas.
• Sideways dies when Sideswipe slices his car mode in two in Revenge of the Fallen.

Destruction of brain

In the early days of the franchise, a Transformer's life force was sometimes understood to be entirely contained within their brain module, most prominently in the Marvel comics. Destroying the brain would kill the Transformer. This premise was eventually passed over in favor of the more esoteric concept of sparks.

• In an alternate future, Shockwave is blasted by Death's Head, who kills him by extracting and crushing his brain module.
• The Throttlebots avoid death by having their brain modules removed from their bodies shortly before a planned execution.

Big explosions

Transformers characters often assume that explosions are more lethal than they really are; characters survive explosions all the time. An explosion's messy nature makes a good "out" for a writer to fake a character's death. Nevertheless, a few characters have been permanently killed by explosions:

• Straxus was the victim of an interdimensionally triggered explosion that destroyed his body. (In UK continuity, he survived as a raggedy, bodiless head.)
• Depth Charge was killed by the explosion that resulted from Rampage's death (either his exploding spark, or the exploding energon shard that pierced it.)
• Several of the Beast Era Wreckers (Sonar, Spittor, the Deployers) were destroyed when part of their ship exploded with them in it.

Consumption

Quite a few critters in the multiverse are equipped to devour giant robots. Being eaten (and, presumably, digeted) generally proves fatal:

• Various life forms were routinely devoured by the Sharkticons on Quintessa. This included Kranix, a mechanical life form, though not a Transformer. Kup and Hot Rod might have suffered this fate as well, but fought their way free.
• The Mechanibals ate quite a few Transformers during their sojourn on Cybertron. There is some indication that they could actually reconstitute their victims from their "recycled" parts, though this is never explicitly shown.
• The Sharkticons killed two of the Mutants.
• Unicron skewered Brainstorm and ate him. Quite a few other Transformers found their way into Unicron's gullet, though their exact cause of death was generally something more specific.

Melting

They're made of metal; therefore, with enough heat or sufficiently acidic material, they can melt.

• Victims of the Deception smelting pools on Cybertron were reduced by intense heat into their base metals.
• An acid vat would apparently have been enough to destroy Optimus Prime. The Search for Alpha Trion
• Another acid vat was used to disintegrate living victims of Unicron. The Transformers: The Movie

Incineration

Plasma, energy fields, and stellar atmospheres can all utterly destroy a Transformer's body.

• Quite a few characters met this fate in the Unicron Trilogy, but all survived it in some fashion. Megatron's spark persisted within his burnt-out body when he was dropped into the exploding Unicron. Demolishor's body was obliterated by an expanding energon grid, but his spark survived the process and was placed in a new body. Inferno was destroyed when he threw himself into a star, but his spark was salvaged by the Autobots and, again, placed in a new body.

Disassembly

Taking a Transformer apart into its component parts can occasionally kill them:

• Bludgeon met this fate in an alternate future, when Swoop used a machine to pull him apart into his component pieces.

Crushing

Quite a few characters have been crushed into deactivation:

• Inferno is apparently killed when a very large building collapses on top of him.
• Thrust is killed when caught between two folding sections of Unicron's external armor.
• Shockblast is crushed by Unicron's hand on Blizzard Planet.
• His brother Six Shot meets a similar fate, crushed under the heel of a super-sized Galvatron.

Decapitation

Sometimes cutting a Transformer's head off is fatal. Sometimes!

• The Megatron clone killed Cyclonus by ripping his head off.
• Several of the Wreckers were killed by having their heads ripped or blasted off, including Twin Twist and Topspin, respectively.
• Characters from the live-action movie frequently die by decapitation of some form: Bonecrusher, Grindor, and the Fallen.

Stabbed in the spark

Getting stabbed right through the spark is almost always fatal:

• The supposedly immortal Rampage was killed when Depth Charge pierced his spark with an energon blade.
• Skyfall died when Alpha Trion rammed his sword right through his chest.
• Movie Optimus Prime died from a stab wound through the chest.

Non-fatal deactivation

• Stasis lock / deactivated (Ark crew / early Marvel Autobots / BW / Animated)
• Decapitation (Cloudburst, City of Steel, BW Inferno, Animated-Headmaster)
• Dismembered (Cold War!)
• De-Sparking (BM / Starscream / BM Megs)
• Falls (Gears) - has this ever killed anyone?

Resuscitation

• Rebuilt (cartoon G1 Prime)
• Spark placed in new body (Primal, E. Inferno, Demolishor)
• Restored by Primus/Allspark/magic (Movie Prime, BM Primal)
• Power of Primus (Last Autobot)
• Power of Energon (E. Megs)
• Nucleon (numerous Marvel)
• Matrix (implied but never seen - marvel)
• AllSpark fragment (Movie Megs, Animated Prime)
• Zombies

Immortality

• Multiversal singuarities (Unicron, others?)
• Immortal sparks (Starscream, Rampage)
• Allspark-empowered (Animated Starscream)
• Dead Universe (Galvatron, etc.)

Out-of-fiction causes of character death

• Drama / character development / culmination (Dinobot)
• Consequences of war (generics, G2 comic, Impactor)
• Increase sense of threat (disposables UK - City of Fear)
• Thin out cast (Wreckers / Underbase / TFTM)
• Clear space for new toys (BW S1 / Underbase)