Shattered Glass Animated

2008 was a big year for Transformers. Transformers Animated began broadcasting its first season in full, marking a triumphant return for Transformers to western animation courtesy of Cartoon Network. Elsewhere, Fun Publications blazed their own trail by introducing the Transformers brand to its very first mirror universe in its then 25-year history in the form of Shattered Glass. And when two production teams of asylum-running fans love each other very much, they create a horrific frankenbaby that this wiki has designated "Shattered Glass Animated".

Conceptual history and development

As the first official Transformers convention following Animated's broadcast, BotCon 2008 featured several events built around the show, its cast, and its crew. Among the special guests in attendance were Animated story editor and writer Marty Isenberg, storyboard artist and animation director Matt Youngberg, and art director and lead character designer Derrick J. Wyatt. The three were in the middle of planning Animated's third season; inspired by the convention's Shattered Glass theming, a mirror universe adventure was floated as a potential episode concept (likely by Wyatt, if his later social media presence was any indication). An outline for the episode, in which "Optimus and crew" accidentally TransWarp into a world of evil Autobots and heroic Decepticons, was written up by Tom Pugsley and Greg Klein under the title "Strange Reflections". However, once the season three opener "TransWarped" was extended from the length of two to three episodes, "Strange Reflections" was put on the back burner for a potential season four, and Pugsley was reassigned to write "Human Error, Part II".

This was all happening behind closed doors, however, and Animated's initial public forays into mirror universes came in its ancillary media. The first was in 2009, in the artbook-cum-encyclopedia The AllSpark Almanac, which authors Jim Sorenson and Bill Forster presented as an in-universe document produced by their mirror doppelgangers. This other Sorenson and Forster originated from a universe referred to as Quadwal -3760.925 Theta; at the time, this marked only the second "negative polarity" universe documented in the universal stream terminology used by the officious Transcendent Technomorphs, after the Shattered Glass universe itself. Later in the same year, the "Shatteredverse" comic Around Cybertron #6 would use the likeness of Animated Bumblebee's "Elite Guard" toy as the Wireless Automated Sales Person, with its exaggerated Animated styling representing its in-universe holographic cartooniness. 2010 saw the release of The AllSpark Almanac II, the rear cover of which included a quote of praise for the book attributed to "Swindle (Mirror Universe)"—the first explicit, in-fiction appearance of a mirror universe Animated character.

• "Strange Reflections" conceived for Season 3, written by Tom Pugsley and Greg Klein; Sari designed but barely in the outline (pre-2009)
• Sorenson and Forster write Almanac (August 2009)
• SG Swindle on Almanac II (June 2010)
• SG Sari on Wyatt's blog (October 2010)
• Transformers Generations 2011 Vol. 1 (April 2011) (says she was supposed to be in S4)
• BotCon 2011 litho (June 2011)
• Club Mag 44 addendum (April 2012)
• Transformers I.Q. issue 16 (mid 2014)
• Legends comic (Feb 2015)
• Complete AllSpark Almanac shows Megatron, Starscream etc; season four breakdown refers to "Mirror, Mirror" (March 2015)
• Club Mag 71: litho bios reprinted, summary of S4, The Re-Burn of Blurr (November 2016)
• Epilogue Two (Jan 2017)