Rampage (BW)

The name or term "Rampage" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Rampage (disambiguation).

This article is a featured article, and considered to be one of the most informative on this wiki.

Rampage is a Maximal or Predacon from the Beast Wars portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

I ate his spark with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Rampage (also known as Protoform X) is the awful result of scientific experimentation gone awry. He is a serial killer and cannibal, with an immortal spark that ensures his twisted brand of horror and misery will live on as long as he does (forever, presumably). Rampage detects and draws strength from the emotions of others, literally feeding on the pain and suffering he causes. As an unwilling conscript of the Predacons, he is contemptuous (at best) of the rest of his team, typically bored and uncooperative on missions, and he frequently sneaks off for his own purposes to try to relieve his boredom in the most cruel and horrible ways possible.

“	Is that fear you are feeling, Maximal? Yes... my spark, it feeds on terror. Let it grow! Let it consume your circuitry! Feel it, yes, feel it! Feel the fear!	”
—Rampage, "Bad Spark"

Fiction

Toy Bio

Despite the terror claws, not a gangsta.

If Rampage's titanic size, armor plating and psychopathic tendencies weren't horrifying enough, he is also capable of generating tidal waves, inducing earthquakes and triggering landslides with his "terror claws", while his ever-dreaded galva-conductors allow him to unleash deadly electrical discharges. With this immense arsenal available to him, he prefers to use his gatling cannon as a way to finish off his opponents. Rampage toy bio

Cartoon Continuity

Dawn of Future's Past

The Maximals should consider making their scandalous super-secret projects a little smaller.

While preparing for a deep-space exploration mission, the Maximal crew of the Axalon stopped for a few weeks at a space station. Here, Rhinox helped acquire a mysterious complement to their cargo, a very large protoform branded with an X. The Axalon was ordered to dispose of "Protoform X" on a barren moon somewhere in the Alpha Quadrant. However, before its captain, Optimus Primal, was able to explain the circumstances fully to his crew, they were suddenly under even newer orders to pursue a stolen Predacon ship, the Darksyde. Subsequently, the Axalon followed the Darksyde through a transwarp portal and crash-landed on a mysterious planet. Dawn of Future's Past

Beast Wars cartoon

Voice actor: Campbell Lane (English), Nobuyuki Hiyama (Japanese), Gilberto Baroli (Portuguese), Alfonso Mellado (Latin American Spanish), Stefano Albertini (Italian)

This is a great way to work out.

Protoform X was a Maximal experiment to recreate Starscream's mutant, immortal spark. Though arguably successful in this regard, the creation was unstable. Bad Spark In point of fact, he was criminally insane. He was held at Colony Omicron but soon escaped, killing all of its inhabitants save a lone security officer, Depth Charge. After four stellar cycles of chasing the killer, Depth Charge finally captured him and brought him back to Cybertron Deep Metal - but not before Protoform X destroyed Starbase Rugby and devoured an unknown number of the inhabitants. Nemesis Part 1 Rather than destroy him, Maximal Elders had Protoform X placed into a stasis pod aboard an exploration vessel, the Axalon. They instructed its commander, Optimus Primal, to dump him on some barren world in deep space.

Protoform X was among the stasis pods jettisoned by Optimus when the Axalon was damaged by Megatron's Predacons, and only fell out of orbit far into the Beast Wars. Battle near his stasis pod shocked him into activation, and he promptly set out to terrorize all nearby Transformers, rending Tarantulas limb from limb and stalking Blackarachnia and Silverbolt. (All right, whose bright idea was it to allow the homicidal maniac to keep his weapons!?) X seemed unstoppable at first, but when one of Silverbolt's missiles jammed his tank treads as he climbed up a mountainside, he lost his grip and tumbled down the rock face in pieces.

Attack my weak point for massive damage.

As Protoform X lay immobilized, Megatron arrived and, using a blade of pure energon, removed a portion of his indestructible spark. Megatron then had him brought back to the Predacon base and repaired. When X attempted to turn his weapons on his "savior", Megatron revealed that he held half of X's spark in a special cage lined with energon crystals, allowing him to torture the beast at will. Megatron thus welcomed him into the Predacon fold, dubbing him "Rampage". Bad Spark

Rampage made no secret of his hatred for his new "master", anticipating the arrival of Maximal reinforcements from Cybertron, and the demise Megatron would surely receive as a result. Megatron had other plans in motion, using Rampage's weaponry to destroy a mountain, proving that the future recorded on the Golden Disk was mutable. Rampage's services were further pressed into use when the Predacons assaulted a valley full of protohumans, however his contribution came to an end when Dinobot forcibly inserted Waspinator into his main gun with predictable results. Code of Hero

None shall hurt you now. Come with me, come. I will protect you... I am your friend. Your only friend.Rampage convinces Transmutate to follow him, "Transmutate"

'If you guys don't cut it out, I'm taking my Transmutate and going home!"

Though a violent sociopath, Rampage was not without compassion. After an attempt by him to regain his spark fragment failed, Rampage encountered a twisted protoform which he dubbed Transmutate. He quickly befriended it and attempted to have it inducted into the Predacons. Though Megatron ordered the creature destroyed, Rampage persevered with trying to make it a useful addition to the Predacon forces. He became possessive enough to viciously fight with Silverbolt over it. When Transmutate was killed by this fight, Rampage bellowed in grief. Transmutate

Rampage was a major component of the assault on the Axalon when it appeared as though the Maximals were going to receive reinforcements from Cybertron. The Predacons were driven off by an invisible force — the cloaked Transwarp cruiser flown by Ravage. The cruiser would later be a part of a strike on the Predacon base, during which Rampage unleashed a barrage of missiles on it. Ravage judged the attack "impressive", and responded by using the ship's weapons to blow Rampage to pieces. The Agenda (Part 1) Rampage, of course, survived to lead yet another attack on the Axalon. Quickstrike rode triumphantly into battle on back of Rampage's tank mode... until an auto-gun knocked him off, and Rampage uncaringly drove straight over him. The battle ended when Rattrap took out the Transwarp cruiser — Rampage managed to outrun the crashing ship and laughed in triumph... only for the still-armed missile on top of the ship to launch in his face. The Agenda (Part III)

At Megatron's call to arms, a badly-charred Rampage managed to pull himself together and began trying to pull the Axalon from its perch, with the aid of a large number of arachnoids. He finally met his match in battle when the newly reformatted Optimus Primal attacked him. The huge Maximal leader simply shoved him aside, but Rampage had the last laugh as his deflected missile sent the Maximal base plunging into the lake. Cackling, Rampage disappeared into the lake after it. Optimal Situation

Oh, BABY!

Later, Depth Charge arrived on prehistoric Earth with the single-minded goal of destroying Rampage. Rampage was beside himself with joy, eager for revenge on his old "playmate". Depth Charge's loss at Colony Omicron had embittered him, and Rampage used this emotional wound to torment the Maximal. In the end, Depth Charge got the upper hand, and may well have ended the feud then and there, but for the intervention of Quickstrike, which allowed Rampage to sneak away and destroy Depth Charge's ship. Deep Metal Rampage soon met his old enemy again when Rattrap descended to the bottom of the lake to retrieve the Sentinel module from the wreckage of the Axalon. Depth Charge had the upper hand in the battle, but Rampage escaped death when Silverbolt argued with Depth Charge over his commitment to the Maximals. Changing of the Guard

When Megatron created Dinobot II, he used Rampage's spark fragment to form the core of the new Predacon, who likewise retained the ability torture Rampage into continued loyalty with it. Naturally, Rampage was filled with fury and disgust at sharing his spark with a 'half brother'. Dinobot was able to use the spark fragment to keep Rampage in line, and the two "brothers" took part in the interrogation of Depth Charge after the Transmetal driver went missing. When they were attacked by a strange feral beast, Rampage and Dinobot inadvertently blasted each other. Feral Scream Part 1

"I'd just like to thank all the little people I had to step on to get here."

Rampage would go on to have a second clash with Silverbolt, targeting him when he was filled with grief and rage over Blackarachnia's death; he'd have killed him easily if Blackarachnia hadn't suddenly become alive again and beaten him up. Crossing the Rubicon He almost got his revenge when Megatron deliberately gave Blackarachnia to him, and was clearly having fun torturing her before she was able to overpower him. Master Blaster Following Tigerhawk's destruction of the Predacon base, Rampage and Dinobot were blown away by one strike from the Vok emissary. Other Victories

THERE CAN BE ONLY...NONE!

While Megatron was retrieving the submerged Decepticon craft Nemesis, Depth Charge met Rampage in battle one last time on the ocean floor. At the battle's climax, Rampage allowed Depth Charge to kill him with a shard of raw Energon, resulting in a fantastic explosion which destroyed both. Rampage won even in death, laughing maniacally in triumph as Depth Charge made the final, stabbing blow. Nemesis Part 1

3H comics

Soon after Megatron acquired his dragon body, a temporal disruption drew the attention of both the Maximals and Predacons to a remote canyon, where Rampage and his fellow Predacons met their foes. The Maximals were losing, having been fought into a corner, when suddenly the battle was interrupted. The Dark Essence—the life force of Unicron—had possessed the newcomer Windrazor, the source of the temporal disruption. Rampage and the others were immobilized by Unicron's psionic force blasts, and the merged creature advanced on the Maximals. Paradox

These events would soon be retroactively erased from Rampage's timeline with the efforts of the legendary Covenant. Terminus

IDW Beast Wars comics

These events take place "in-between" scenes of the episode Changing of the Guard.

Megatron tasked Rampage and Inferno to oversee Tarantulas's instalment of the Sentinel components within the Predacon base. Rampage complained he always got all the dirty jobs in response. The Gathering #3

Beast Wars Metals comic

The twisted product of a Maximal experiment to create an immortal spark, Rampage was born a vampiric monster of incredible regenerative capability who consumed the sparks of others. Sealed away within a stasis pod, he was loaded onto a Maximal vessel for disposal, but partway into the voyage, he escaped and slaughtered the crew, causing the ship to crash on the planet Energoa. The crash drew the attention of Optimus Primal's Maximals, who were stranded on the planet fighting the Beast Wars at the time, and they investigated the ship, which had become submerged in the ocean. Rampage attacked Rattrap and Airazor just as they discovered his empty pod, eating Rattrap's tail and almost consuming Airazor, before Primal arrived and freed her by severing Rampage's arm. Regrowing the limb, Rampage engaged Primal, seizing him with his abdomen-mouth and forcing him to hack his own arm off to escape. Primal tried a desperate ploy to take the monster down, stuffing a demolition charge in his head and allowing Rampage to eat it; Primal survived by shifting to beast mode, and though it momentarily seemed the gambit had succeeded, Rampage burst out of the waters in crab mode, grabbed Primal, and dragged him off into the ocean. Using the ship's still-functioning weaponry, Rattrap and Airazor detonated an underwater volcano beneath the pair, creating a shockwave that Primal was then able to ride with his hoverboard, carrying Rampage out of the water and into the air. Primal then lopped off his remaining arm to escape Rampage's grip, disengaged his board, and jammed it into the monster's mouth, leaving it to carry Rampage up into space, stranding him in Energoa's orbit. Beast Wars Metals #2

Some time later, when the Predacon leader Megatron fused himself with his Decepticon predecessor to upgrade himself, the energy discharge from the fusion targeted Rampage, still floating in orbit, and blew him to bits. The sparks of his victims were released from his body, and used by Megatron to reanimate several of his fallen Predacon warriors. Beast Wars Metals #5

Beast Wars: Uprising

"Hello, Clarice..."

On an alternate Cybertron, the selfish, aging combatants of its eternal civil war sought immortality through various means. The first was through creating the Maximals and Predacons to fight on in their name, and the second was to become literally immortal. Scientists managed to create an inextinguishable spark that mimicked the properties of Starscream's lifeforce, but the result was a creature who was consumed with hate and power and an undying taste for violence. Appalled, the scientists locked "Protoform X" away, hoping the Builders of Cybertron would never discover him. Instead, inevitably, Protoform X burst free, leaving piles of tortured bodies in his wake. This outburst inspired the name "Rampage," and the creature was bested only by the bounty hunter Depth Charge, who brought him to justice. Rampage's club magazine profile

Rampage was being held in the Ferromax Detention Center when he was witness to Dynobot's jailbreak. He sensed great sorrow and fury in one of Dynobot's rescuers, and as she left with Dynobot and the others, Rampage encouraged her from his cell to embrace these feelings. Alone Together: Prologue

Games

Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals (PS)

This game takes place in an alternate version of the second season of the Beast Wars cartoon.

Voice actor: Campbell Lane (English)

Rampage participated in an extensive one-on-one beatdown involving nearly every active participant of the Beast Wars. Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals

Transformers Legends

When Silverbolt discovered a pod marked with a giant X in the middle of an impact crater, it quickly became an item of interest to the Predacons as well. As the pod unleashed Rampage, everyone was tossed away. The continuing battle drew the attention of Depth Charge, who was seeking revenge for Rampage's previous slaughter of his friends. Together, the Beast Warriors dealt Rampage a mortal blow, just as Megatron arrived. The dying Rampage accepted a life-saving portion of Megatron's Spark, only to find that he was now bound to Megatron's will. When Sparks Fly

Toys

Beast Wars

A Seafood Louis eater's worst nightmare.

• Rampage (Ultra Transmetal, 1998)
  • Japanese ID number: D-41
  • Accessories: Spring-loaded triple barrel missile launcher, 3 missiles and 1 rifle

Rampage transforms into a Transmetal king crab, featuring fully articulated crab legs and pincers that can open, close and be posed in a variety of angles through the use of ratcheting joints. His triple-barreled Gatling missile launcher is stored on the underside of the beast mode. As a Transmetal, Rampage has a third "vehicle" mode, transforming rather elaborately into a tank with rubber treads that unfold from inside his claws and fit over a road wheel network formed from his crab legs that allows them to really roll. His missile launcher flips out to face forward for this mode, and rolling the figure forward spins its wheel, rotating the launcher and auto-firing any or all of its three missiles.

In robot mode, Rampage is an imposingly large figure with a decent level of articulation due to his ball joints, but because he wears most of his beast mode as a sort of backpack, he is quite back-heavy (his cartoon model would even move his crab legs from their cumbersome position on his forearms to his shoulder pads). In addition to his missile launcher, he is armed with a small laser rifle and can hold both weapons in his hands. The small rifle and the launcher's three missiles can store inside his claws while he is in his alternate modes. The figure was first released with orange paint applications on his head and chest, but a running change recolored these silver, giving his head more show-accurate look; curiously, it took about fifteen years before this variant was widely known about.

The Japanese Beast Wars Metals release of the figure features noticeably different colors, replacing the orange details and gradient on his robot mode face, chest and limbs with silver, and more clearly delineating the "X" on his crab carapace by painting it purple. Most impressively, the robot head and limbs are changed from opaque orangey-red to translucent blood-red plastic.

This toy was later redecoed into the BotCon 2000-exclusive Shokaract.

• More information on Rampage at TFU.info

Timelines

Would you believe this isn't me?/ That what you get isn't what you see?

• Protoform X (Deluxe, 2014?)

Using the First Edition Megatron mold. He will be the 2014 Transformers Collectors' Club free figure, mailed to new or returning club members who get their registration in before the deadline.

Notes

• According to the series background materials published in the Beast Wars Universe guidebook, Rampage's body was supposed to have been constructed out of leftover G1-era technology seen in the Great War due to the lack of know-how for protoform technology. How this jibes with his status as "Protoform X" is anyone's guess.
• Rampage's taunt about Starbase Rugby in "Nemesis" ("like you had no time for Starbase Rugby? You had friends there! As I recall, tasty ones, too.") implies he destroyed it because Depth Charge had friends there.
• Some fans are split on how to interpret Rampage's death; he is clearly shown to let go of the energon shard that killed him prior to being stabbed with it, to which Depth Charge reacted in surprise. Because of this, some fans feel this means Rampage, knowing he couldn't win the struggle, allowed himself to be impaled in order to end his torturous existence (and laughing in the giddy euphoria of oblivion), while others believe he deliberately let go to test whether or not Depth Charge would go through with his threat of ending his life, his laughter instead being taken as solace in the knowledge that Depth Charge's obsession with him had successfully corrupted him into the same kind of monster he wanted to kill. Or, Rampage could just be batshit insane. It's also possible that while Rampage's physical form was destroyed, he knew that his spark was immortal, leaving him alive but without a body.
• No explanation is ever given for why energon suddenly kills Rampage, even though Megatron's been poking his spark with it ever since he appeared. Although the fact the energon was unstable may have had something to do with it, or the degree it was stabbed into the spark.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Rampage (ランページ Ranpēji)
• French: Furibo (Canada)
• Italian: Granchior
• Mandarin: Mó Hsìeh (Taiwan, 魔蟹, "Demon Crab"), Ace (Protoform X, Taiwan, 艾斯 Aì Ssū)
• Polish: Pieniacz ("Litigant")
• Portuguese: Violência (Brazil, "Violence")
• Spanish: Rampante (America, "Rampant")