Hector Ramirez

This article is about the legendary reporter from Generation 1. For the legendary reporter from Animated, see Hector Ramirez (Animated).

Hector Ramirez is a human from the cartoon portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

What secrets lie within Al Capone's vault? Certainly not a couch.

Hector Ramirez is a journalist... in a looser sense of the word. Vapid and easily bamboozled, he nevertheless marches on in his attempts at investigative reporting, full of a misguided bravado that frequently puts him into unnecessarily dangerous situations. Still, thanks to a combination of weaseling and dumb luck, he has managed both to stay on the air and not get himself killed—discounting the time he was turned into a fifteen-foot-tall living zombie, at any rate. He got better.

Fiction

The Transformers cartoon

Voice actor: Frank Welker, John Stephenson (English), ? (Japanese)

After the evil Lord Chumley stole a top secret Soviet jet, the blame was placed on the United States. Hector Ramirez appeared on TV, commenting on the new hostilities between the US and the Soviet Union erupting from this incident. Prime Target

Notes

Hector in G.I. Joe, Transformers, Inhumanoids and Jem. So far, no known My Little Pony appearances.

• Hector Ramirez was writer Buzz Dixon's parody of the infamous "journalist" Geraldo Rivera. Ramirez was originally conceived as a returning character in G.I. Joe, but would go on to appear in other Hasbro- and Sunbow-created shows, including Jem and the Holograms and, most prominently, Inhumanoids.
• Although the character is not named on screen, Buzz Dixon claimed in an interview to have included Ramirez in a Transformers script, and "Prime Target" is the only episode that fits the bill (given that Dixon's only other script was "Carnage in C-Minor"). Although the character is not used in the manner that Dixon describes, it was taken that this was intended to be Ramirez, and the fact booklet released with Pioneer's Transformers 2010 DVD box set (written by Hirofumi Ichikawa) identifies him as such.
• Although the basics of Ramirez's physical appearance remain consistent, the details vary considerably between the shows he has appeared in, and sometimes even within them.
  • G.I. Joe first depicted him with a thin moustache and black hair parted to the side in "Twenty Questions", then depicted him with a bushy moustache and grey hair parted to the side in "The Traitor, Part II", then went back to his original design for his subsequent appearances in "Not a Ghost of a Chance", "Sins of Our Fathers" and storyboards for G.I. Joe: The Movie.
  • Jem depicted him with a thin moustache and black slicked-back hair in "One Jem Too Many".
  • In Inhumanoids he sported a bushy moustache and black hair parted to the side.
  • His appearance in Transformers is mostly consistent with his Inhumanoids appearance, having a bushy moustache and hair parted to the side, albeit his hair is brown rather than black.
• Ramirez's appearance in Transformers marks the only instance in which the character was not voiced by Neil Ross. In compensation, hey, two different guys voice him!
• Ramirez later appeared in the G.I. Joe cartoon produced by DiC, in the episode "Injustice and the Cobra Way". However, while his name appeared unaltered in newspaper text, all spoken dialogue had it changed to "José Riviera" for reasons unknown (presumably because Sunbow may have claimed ownership of him).
• Outside of the cartoons, Ramirez appeared in one issue of Devil's Due Press's G.I. Joe comic, Issue #40, where he was blown up in a taxi cab by Cobra after delivering sensitive information to Joe Colton.

External links

• Essay on Ramirez and the Hasbro Animated "Universe"
• Buzz Dixon on Hector Ramirez