Mystery Science Theater 3000

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a human television series, a once-cancelled comedy which inspired the MSTF tradition in Transformers.

Fiction

Ask Vector Prime

Of all of the cancelled television programs he had seen, Mystery Science Theater 3000 was Vector Prime's favorite. However, no television or holovision program is worth bending or breaking causality to save. All hope was not lost, however, as there was an early 21st century crowdsourcing campaign to revive the program. Vector hoped his readers from the 23rd century would not spoil the results of that campaign. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/12/07

MST3K references in Transformers fiction

Don't worry, there's more where he came from. Somehow.

While the show is rarely directly part of Transformers fiction, there have been numerous references to the show over the years:

• Robots that look suspiciously like Tom Servo and Crow appear among the corpses on J'asik in the Generation 2 issue "Swarm".
• In "Gone Too Far", Jackpot paraphrases Tom Servo's occasional boast of "I'm the wind, baby!".
• The title of the Animated storybook "Robot Roll Call" is likely a reference to the theme song's "Robot Roll Call" bridge.
• In the Rescue Bots episode "Rescue Bots Academy", the characters watch and comment on a highlight reel while in silhouette, mimicking MST3K's "Shadowrama" movie segments.
• A likely-indirect reference comes in the form of "Nightmare Fuel", a term the show coined which became the name of a TV Tropes trope.
• "Robot Roll Call" gets called out in the IDW Transformers vs. G.I. Joe issue "Headmasters".
• Robots in Disguise Grimlock's tail-dragging flying kick from "The Champ" is directly a reference to Godzilla vs. Megalon... but that sequence was popularized in the West in the MST3K episode featuring that film. In fact, Godzilla's silly flying kick was used as a clip in the show's opener for 44 episodes.

Notes

• Mystery Science Theater 3000 also provided the Transformers fandom with the term "dull surprise", based on a sketch from the episode Alien from L.A..
• The Netflix-exclusive seasons of the show stars Patton Oswalt, one of the punch-up writers for the 2007 Transformers movie.

External links

• Mystery Science Theater 3000 at Wikipedia
• Kickstarter revival campaign