France

The French, pictured speaking English.

France is a nation in Europe, former colonial power, permanent member of the UN Security Council, and a wielder of nuclear weapons. It is known for making many contributions to Western culture and has a reputation for snobbery.

In World War II, France surrendered in the face of foreign invasion, leaving the population to suffer under a genocidal dictatorship for four years. This is seen as a source of hilarious jokes by some other nations.

Fiction

Generation 1 cartoon continuity

The Transformers cartoon

Not to scale.

The transcontinental Europa 2000 car race started from Paris and went on to Istanbul. Secretly, it was a scam of Megatron's! A map of the race's route showed that either France is bigger in the show's universe than in reality, or the map-maker knew bog all about France's geography. Trans-Europe Express

Japanese cartoon continuity

The Headmasters cartoon

France was one of six nations blackmailed by Sixshot to give him all its energy or face destruction. The Trainbots stopped him before he could get round to carrying this threat out. Terror! The Six Shadows

Super-God Masterforce cartoon

The Headmaster Junior Minerva is half-French on her mother's side.

France held the F1 World Grand Prix at the Rouen Circuit, and was the homeland of champion racer Germain, whose car mysteriously survived every crash it was ever in. He later retired to run a bar in the small town of Dagneux. Both the Autobot and Decepticon Headmaster Juniors believed his car to be a Transtector and headed for France to investigate, with the latter group attacking Dagneux. They got their butts kicked. Assemble! The Four Godmaster Gunmen

In order to discredit Ginrai in the eyes of humanity, the Decepticons later dropped a meteor on Paris, destroying the Arc de Triomphe. Expose the Decepticons' Dark Trap!

As part of the Decepticon plan to devastate Earth, known as Operation M-1, Overlord devastated Paris and toppled the Arc de Triomphe again. The French armed forces were overpowered. BlackZarak - Destroyer from Space

Young Corgi

France would presumably be a member of the Federation of Western Europe. Battle Beneath the Ice

Transformers/G.I. Joe

Cobra conquered France in 1939, crushing the Maginot Line and enslaving the entire population of Paris.

Cobra. That has to be embarrassing. The Line

IDW Generation 1 continuity

When the Decepticons seized New York City and began hitting other sites across the planet, a group of world leaders met in Versailles and decided to hit New York with a nuclear strike. Luckily, this discussion of nuclear mass-murder did not put them off their tea. All Hail Megatron #6

The strike was launched during an internal Decepticon spat, and involved European Union air forces; this would mean France is going to drop the bomb, having the only nuclear-armed jets in Europe. All Hail Megatron issue 10 The French decided to re-use their old, retired propeller bombers for this missions rather than the Dassault Mirages; we don't know why but that sure was a lucky break for Tankor! All Hail Megatron issue 11

2001 Robots in Disguise cartoon

The goal of the International Grand Prix was the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Skid Z's Choice

Live-action film series

Titan movie comic

The following events occur in a splinter timeline where Megatron won the battle of Mission City.

Hell, you should see the other guys.

When the Decepticons conquered the United States, France joined the other nations of NATO in opposing them. Paris underwent an unknown level of bombardment during the conflict, but the Palais Bourbon (France's seat of government) was still used as a meeting point for world leaders when NATO decided to make a nuclear assault. However, the Decepticons hit NATO first, engaging its forces at the Bay of Biscay near France.

After ten minutes of ass-kicking, Dreadwing took out the Palais in a bombing strike. The French government was probably killed here. Twilight's Last Gleaming, Part: 2

Revenge of the Fallen

Revenge of the Fallen viral campaign

Fassbinder was given a video recording an incident between Frenchman Vinny Lemans and an alien robot to post on The Real Effing Deal as part of their continuing efforts to expose the alien invasion occurring at the time. The Real Effing Deal

Revenge of the Fallen film

Eiffel Towers are as numerous as Constructicons.

It was a lovely day in Paris, when a couple of Decepticon transition forms came hurtling out of the blue skies, startling human pedestrians. One struck a masonry tower, causing it to collapse in smoke and flames. Revenge of the Fallen

In real life, the Eiffel Tower is indeed visible from the Place de la Concorde... but it would be behind the viewer in the Revenge of the Fallen scenes. It certainly isn't visible from Philadelphia, whose City Hall tower is the one shown getting blown up.

Rescue Bots cartoon

According to Chase, they eat snails in France. The Lost Bell

Games

Hunt for the Decepticons

Hunt for the Decepticons

Notes

• France withdrew from NATO's integrated military command in 1966 and rejoined in 2009. This is one year later than in Twilight's Last Gleaming, but then in real life there wasn't an alien occupation of North America.
• Comic artist Dan Reed lived in France. (He was an American and working for Marvel UK. Globalisation gone mad!)
• France has had multilingual packaging since 1985, due to Transformers distributors wanting to get all of mainland Europe in one product line.
• Beast Wars was known as Ani Mutants in France.
• As well as dubbing the Transformers cartoons, France has dubbed and broadcast the GoBots cartoon. In fact, it dubbed that and the unrelated Japanese Machine Robo anime, slapping the GoBots logo on the latter.

External links

• France on Wikipedia