Sideways (disambiguation)
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- Sideways is a difficult 'bot to define...
If you encounter a 'bot going by the name Sideways, do not trust him! Throughout the multiverse, the name is associated with cheats and liars. Most oftentimes, a Sideways's allegiances are to be questioned. Many of them claim to be helpful allies, but more often than not, they work for a greater evil. Some would assume Sideways to be cowardly, but their true strength oftentimes lies in their speed and their cunning. A quick getaway today can assure that greater machinations come to fruition tomorrow. Some Sideways are known to possess dimension-hopping capabilities, and tracking which Sideways is responsible for what in whatever universe can be a tad confusing. Some of them have claimed to travel to other universes to slaughter and impersonate their native counterpart, or that Sideways are cloned from one another to fulfill their roles in multiple parallel events. Sideways are true sowers of confusion, and even if one were able to see past all the lies, one would still be hard-pressed to make sense of the chaos that they leave in their wake.
Conceptual history
The idea of Sideways being a dimensional traveler who's the same across his cross-continuity appearances has been built up over time, and much of the evidence for it is circumstantial.
The original Sideways, a 2002 Robots in Disguise toy, was packaged with Axer, whose on-package bio strongly insinuates that he had come from a Generation 1 universe through a black hole; while the bios make no particular connection between the two characters, later evidence has led many fans to speculate that Sideways also came from another universe. The following year's Armada Sideways toy was given an online bio almost identically worded to that of the Robots in Disguise character, suggesting that his duplicity was a new development upon coming to Earth, the result of being pulled in two mental directions by his Mini-Cons.[1] However, the cartoons and comics outright ignore this aspect of Sideways; both portray him as a pure agent of Unicron, with his Mini-cons showing no indication of influencing his mind.
It was the 2004 Robotmasters that really kickstarted the idea of Sideways as a dimension-hopper; the Robotmasters toy is named and colored after the Legends of the Microns/Armada toy, and some Robotmasters publicity material has declared that the character's first toy was indeed the Robots in Disguise Sideways figure. Since the entire premise of Robotmasters is that Transformers are arriving on present-day Earth through wormholes from across time and space, the idea appears to be that Sideways universe-hopped into the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity. Armada Sideways would subsequently appear in the 2005 Cybertron franchise, but with the added wrinkle that the cartoon gave no indication of him being the same character — indeed, in Japan he was given an entirely different name, "Noisemaze" — with only English-language supplemental material such as Ask Vector Prime indicating that they were indeed the same.
While 2009's Revenge of the Fallen Sideways showed no indication of having anything to do with prior versions of the character, 2011's The Allspark Almanac II deliberately and cheekily alluded to the idea by presenting an Animated "Land General Sideways" whose design combined aspects of the Armada, Cybertron and Revenge of the Fallen characters, who was explicitly described as hailing from another dimension and implied he would go on to become Revenge of the Fallen Sideways. Hidden Ask Vector Prime text in the Almanac's 2015 compilation successor The Complete Allspark Almanac would go on to explicitly state that, while not all incarnations of Sideways are the same exact character, all prior incarnations of Sideways were dimensional travelers who had crossed between multiple universal clusters.
Of course, if all that seems confusing, it's nothing compared to the subsequent Facebook-based Ask Vector Prime feature. Helmed by Almanac author Jim Sorenson, the online column was for a time taken over by Sideways himself, sporting the Revenge of the Fallen character's design and a goofy, snarky personality similar to that of Cybertron Sideways. This Sideways claimed to have been the one behind pretty much every instance of the character seen in the past, as well as many, many other events and disasters across the multiverse; however, he also lied liberally and gleefully admitted to that fact, seemingly taking delight in confusing and frustrating everyone.
| “ | Everything you think you know about me was a lie told by me to confuse someone, or conjecture from someone who'd be in no position to know. So yeah, maybe I'm a fragment of Unicron, because maybe Planet X used to BE Unicron. And maybe I'm his avatar made manifest and untethered once he collapsed into a giant singularity. And maybe I'm from the Cybertronian Empire. And maybe I'm just an ordinary Autobot who went crazy from Powerlinxing to the wrong Mini-Cons. Maybe I'm all of those things, or none.
And you know what the best part is? You'll. Never. Know. |
” |
—Sideways on his identity situation, Ask Sideways. | ||
Given the ambiguity that results from a mixture of retcons and unreliable narrators, and the potentially enormous user-unfriendliness of sticking strictly to the "canon" versions of the character, we have decided to present each continuity family's version(s) of Sideways on their own page. Whether you choose to think of them as being all the same character, or all strictly separate, is up to you.
Major Sidewayses
Full list of Sidewayses
- 2002 — Sideways, the Autobot from the 2001 Robots in Disguise franchise.
- 2002 — Sideways, the agent of Unicron from Armada.
- 2004 — Sideways, the Decepticon spy from Robotmasters.
- 2009 — Sideways, the Decepticon from Revenge of the Fallen.
- 2010 — Sideways, the Decepticon from Animated.
- 2015 — Your mom, who may or may not be another instance of Sideways.
- All other separate iterations, variations and other manifestations of the previously mentioned characters.
Other things called "Sideways"
- 2015 — "Sideways", the fourteenth episode of the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon.
Not to be confused with...
- Sideswipe
- Side Burn
- Sidetrack
- Tarantulas, another agent of Unicron who sometimes possesses some superficial similarities with Sideways, but is a separate character. (UNLESS HE ISN'T!)
Fiction
The Complete AllSpark Almanac
According to Vector Prime, the Sidewayses of the multiverse included:
- The Sideways of Tyran 509.12 Zeta, who traveled to Aurex 402.0 Gamma.
- A Sideways from the Viron cluster, who traveled to Aurex 802.23 Alpha, and made his way to "at least two or three other clusters" after that.
- Multiple separate Sidewayses from Tyran 609.23-XP Kappa, at least one of which traveled to the Iocus cluster via Nexus Zero.
- A Sideways from the Uniend cluster who briefly visited a Rovio stream.
- A Sideways from Fornax 813.0 Gamma, who traveled to Tyran 207.28 Gamma, survived being bisected, and was sent undercover to infiltrate Primax Autobots.
Vector Prime hoped this would clarify things, which was nice of him, if perhaps a little naive. The Complete AllSpark Almanac
TransTech
One Sideways traveled to Axiom Nexus and seized control of Vector Prime's Axiom Nexus News column. After Sideways cheerily said he was probably lying about everything, he said he thought all other Sidewayses were losers so he killed and replaced them, implied that he was the Revenge of the Fallen Sideways, and then went on to claim he wasn't Tarantulas and then implied that he was Tarantulas. His reign of uninformative terror was finally brought to an end when the TransTechs tracked him down, due to his frequent tripping of the Axiom Nexus Auto-Censors, and began trying to break into his hideout in the Heap. Shortly afterwards, a question from David Willis caused his head to explode, forcing him to temporarily Headmaster-link with Rook and escape to parts unknown.
Man, Sideways was a dick. Ask Sideways
