Mirage (G1)

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

Mirage is an Autobot from the Generation 1 continuity family.

Mirage is what humans call "old money." Before the war, he was a member of affluent Cybertronian society, with his own large estate and high-priced friends. He enjoyed the finer things in life: vintage energon, swank evening events, and turbofox hunts on the grounds. But when the war started, he was forced to choose sides and found himself banded with a group of commoners he didn't really understand.

Some of the other Autobots don't trust Mirage. He feels the war, even after all these millions of years, is beneath him. War is not, after all, how civilized, erudite beings conduct themselves. He often questions the Autobots' violent means, and not-so-secretly hopes they and the Decepticons can get along. Because of this, he has been labelled by a few others as a Decepticon sympathizer. Still, he sided with the Autobots for a reason, and he is there for the Autobots when they need him.

Although the details vary by continuity, Mirage has the ability to create illusions which typically either render him invisible or make him appear to be somewhere he isn't.

He sounds like Dean Martin.

Japanese name: Ligier (リジェ Rije), Rijie (Robot Masters)

Hungarian name: Délibáb ("Mirage")

Italian name: Mistero

Portuguese name (Portugal comic): Miragem

Portuguese name (Brazil comic): Miragem

Fiction

Marvel Comics continuity

Generation 1

Events from the UK-only comic stories are in italics.

Mirage tells the story of how he got his name every five minutes.

Mirage was one of the Autobots on board the Ark when it crashed, and was subsequently reactivated in 1984. At first, Mirage was reluctant to full-on attack his Decepticon opponents, instead trying to reason with them. However, after a battle with the relentless Ravage, Mirage learned that sometimes diplomacy is not an option. The Last Stand

During an accident on the Ark, Brawn suffered an extreme neuro-shock, causing him to rebel and turn against his teammates. Mirage helped the Autobots hunt him down and tranquilize him. This same accident also amplified Mirage's ability to create illusions, which he later used to trick the Decepticons into believing that a duel between Brawn and Starscream ended with Brawn's death. The Decepticons felt totally stupid. The Enemy Within!

In the wake of a disastrous mission to rescue Optimus Prime's captive head from the Decepticons, most of the Autobots were rendered inoperative. Mirage was one of a handful of Autobots who remained active, accompanying Optimus and various newer Autobots on several subsequent missions. Rock and Roll-Out! I, Robot-Master! Command Performances!

Mirage lucked out during the Dinobot Hunt—he was assigned to B-Team, whose quarry, Snarl, was knocked out by the destruction of a human military base, leaving him inert and easy to capture. Dinobot Hunt!

Long after, he was blown to pieces by Octane during an Arctic battle arranged by Starscream. He recovered in time to be destroyed again in New York City by Starscream himself (empowered by the Underbase). Dark Star

Generation 2

Disobeying Optimus Prime's orders, Grimlock led a covert team (which included Mirage) onto the Cybertronian Empire ship Twilight to defeat Jhiaxus and his army of "evolved Decepticons." Grimlock's plan was an utter failure, ending in Red Alert's death and the Autobots' capture. Mirage was destroyed by enemy fire during the following prison break. Devices and Desires!

Classics

The Classics comic takes place after the end of the original Marvel Comic, but in a new timeline that does not include the events of the Marvel UK-exclusive stories or Generation 2.

Having been revived (presumably by Nucleon), Mirage was the happiest of them all, until he saw just how bad his way of life was affected by warfare. Mirage found that ages of warfare had made him bitter. Eventually, he decided to join Optimus Prime in returning to Earth, and war with Megatron.^[1]

His actions include evacuating RUNTs and their pilots, holding Soundwave at gunpoint, and revealing that his illusion powers (in this continuity) now include invisibility. Crossing Over

He later secretly followed Grimlock to a meeting from his crew of the Graviton. Unfortunately, he tried to crash Starscream's meeting with Bug Bite. Dreadwind's infra-red sensors, and Weirdwolf's keen nose allowed the Decepticons to find him, and he was gift-wrapped for Megatron. When the Gravitron crew led by Grimlock and Ultra Magnus attacked the Decepticon base, Mirage was rescued by Strongarm, Swoop, Snarl, and Elita One. Games of Deception

Cartoon continuity

Generation 1 cartoon

Voice actor: Frank Welker (English), Takurō Kitagawa (Japanese)

Mirage was part of the bridge crew of the Ark when it crash-landed on Earth four million years ago. A volcanic eruption in 1984 awakened the Ark's inhabitants, including Mirage, who was reformatted by Teletraan I to have a terrestrial alternate mode of a Formula-1 racer. With the battle against the Decepticons now transplanted to Earth, Mirage still hated warfare. He longed to return to Cybertron and simply turn his back to the evil Decepticons, but his loyalty to Optimus Prime kept him in the fight.

Mirage was instrumental in stopping the Decepticons from returning to Cybertron after amassing enough energon from Earth. The Decepticons had constructed a new star cruiser and were in the process of flying home to tip the scales of the war in their favor. Mirage used his cloaking ability to sneak aboard the Decepticon ship. He uncloaked and opened fire, blasting away at the ship's controls. He then bailed from the doomed cruiser, floating back to Earth's surface on a parasail as the Decepticons crashed into the ocean. Optimus Prime asked Mirage why he—homesick and war-weary Autobot that he was—did not hitch the ride back home. Mirage responded, affirming his loyalty to the Autobots, "The ship was... full." More than Meets the Eye, Part 3

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Mirage’s role in the Autobots’ battles on Earth was a distinctly minimal one, leaving him confined to the background on the battlefield or not present at all. In early 1985, however, the spotlight shone on Mirage again when Cliffjumper suspected him of disloyalty. The discovery of a Decepticon installation in a sector Mirage had recently scouted caused Cliffjumper to leap the incorrect conclusion that Mirage had concealed the information and was a traitor to the Autobots. During a battle with the Decepticons at the site, Mirage was injured, but managed to rip a Decepticon seal off Skywarp. Mirage risked the trust of his comrades by sneaking away to perform a plan of his own, framing the Decepticons for stealing Energon cubes from the Insecticons. Spotted carrying the cubes by Cliffjumper, Mirage’s guilt seemed all but confirmed, and before he could reveal his innocence, he was captured and brainwashed by one of Bombshell’s mind-controlling cerebro-shells. Under Bombshell’s control, Mirage led the Autobots into an ambush, but at the battle’s end, the assorted manipulations were revealed and Cliffjumper apologized to Mirage. Traitor

Toward the end of the year, Mirage was among the team of five Autobots who disguised themselves as the Stunticons, with Mirage’s alternate mode making him the perfect choice to masquerade as Drag Strip. Penetrating the Decepticon camp, the Autobots ran into trouble when the real Stunticons arrived, trying to prove their identities by forming Menasor. With a combination of Windcharger’s magnetic powers and Mirage’s illusion-creating ability, the Autobots were able to appear as Menasor too. Though the deception was soon revealed, they were still able to thwart the Decepticons’ plans. Masquerade

An unused scene from the storyboard for The Transformers: The Movie showed Mirage wounded (possibly killed) by Megatron after getting back at Bombshell for jeopardizing his career. Given the high body count, his death is still likely.

Japanese cartoon continuity

Robot Masters pack-in comics

Robot Masters online comics

Binaltech

Mirage volunteered for an experimental new Binaltech upgrade that boosted the power chip rectifier in his revamped body to the Nth degree, making him permanently invisible thanks to his electro-disruptor. This proved to be key in a special mission conceived of by Optimus Prime and Prowl. Having uncovered several secrets from the files of the time-traveling Ravage, the Autobots learned of a mysterious switch hidden away on Cybertron which, when pulled, would instantaneously immobilize all Transformers throughout the universe. Having lost Cybertron to Megatron's tyrannical rule and facing considerable odds in the Sol System as well, Prime decided it was necessary to activate the switch in order to end the war.

With Tracks and several Smokescreen GTs awaiting his signal as back-up, Mirage invisibly infiltrated Decepticon-controlled Cybertron and made his way to the switch. After throwing the switch, though, Mirage was surprised to find that he was still mobile. It seemed the Binaltech warriors (both Autobot and Decepticon) were significantly different enough from regular Transformers to be unaffected by the immobilization wave. With the Autobots now vastly outnumbering the Decepticons still in operation, the tide of the war had irreparably shifted.

Dreamwave comics continuity

Events from the Keepers Trilogy novels are in italics.

Despite his misgiving about the war effort, Mirage's tenure with the Autobot cause dates back to the time of Sentinel Prime. When Shockwave staged a disastrous offensive against Iacon, Mirage was there defending the Decagon alongside Prowl and the other Autobot soldiers. The War Within issue 5 During the Dark Ages, he continued serving under Prowl as part of the main Autobot faction at Virtue's Forum, in the remains of Iacon. Alongside Jazz and Sunstreaker, he tried defending their prisoner, Experiment D-43, against the intruder known as The Fallen, but failed miserably in the process. The War Within: The Dark Ages

Four million years ago, Mirage crash-landed on the planet Earth aboard the shuttle known as the Ark, with more than two dozen of his fellow Autobots and Decepticons. They remained inactive in stasis lock at the base of a volcano until 1984, when volcanic activity shook them back on-line. The war began again, but without reinforcements or connection to Cybertron, Megatron and his Decepticons were eventually defeated and taken prisoner by the Autobots. Mirage and the rest of the Transformers were prepared to fly back to Cybertron in a new spacecraft, the Ark II, when it exploded on its maiden voyage, leaving them all believed dead.

Not so. Most of the Transformers had been salvaged by a mercenary named Lazarus, who spent the next few years repairing and reprogramming the Cybertronians to use as weapons of mass destruction at his command. Optimus Prime was reactivated by the United States military to oppose Lazarus, and he in turn used the power of the Matrix to revive several other Autobots who had escaped Lazarus' salvage crews, including Mirage. After rescuing some of their number from the human mercenaries, Mirage and the Autobots had to race against time putting their friends back together after the Decepticons escaped to wreak havoc. What's worse, a mechanizing virus had been released by Megatron, turning organic life into inanimate mechanical matter. Mirage exhausted a good percentage of his energon reserves fighting back the tide of the virus, but the Autobots were eventually successful. Prime Directive

Mirage was remarkably unhelpful during the war with the Keepers. After Optimus Prime was forced to give the Matrix over to Megatron as a debt of honor, Mirage sniped about the decision worse than any of the Autobots. His criticisms only got louder after a news report from Washington, D.C. made it clear that Megatron had found one of his warriors, the already mighty Omega Sentinel, who could actually wield the power of the Matrix directly. Now that Prime had actually strengthened their enemies as well as weakening the Autobots, Mirage just wouldn't shut up about it. The final straw was when Franklin Townsend, a crazed augment working for the Keepers, idly strolled into the Ark, took over control of Bluestreak's mind, and made his getaway. Mirage was ready to brazenly disobey Prime's orders and charge right after Bluestreak, until Optimus physically slammed him into a wall and forced him to obey his commanding officer.

When you're being so much of a dick that the legendary patience of Optimus Prime runs out, it's time to rein it in, Mirage. Fusion

When Shockwave came to Earth and announced that the Autobot/Decepticon wars were over and that the two factions had been united, Mirage was one of the first to fall in with the new regime. The rest of the Autobots were wary of this development, and so a few (especially Cliffjumper) considered Mirage a traitor. Brothers' Burden Mirage quickly realigned himself with the Autobot cause when Shockwave's true plan was revealed, and Cliffjumper seemed to forgive him, as Mirage had saved Cliffjumper from Dirge by sneaking up on him invisibly. Revelation

Unfortunately for Mirage, the Autobots' acting commander Prowl soon came to the conclusion that they needed to return to Earth and establish a more significant beach-head there for the future. Mirage tried to argue against the idea, as he was more than thrilled to finally be back home on Cybertron, but then Trailbreaker cut in and reminded Mirage that Shockwave's united government had sold off his riches and property while he was gone. Ooooh—burn. Atonement The Autobots readied themselves for the return mission on a new shuttle, and began construction of Autobot City upon their arrival on Earth. The Route of All Evil

IDW comics continuity

Mirage was a suspect in the assassination attempts on Blaster, as he was one of only four Autobots present on the Hub during both attacks. He and two of the other Autobots were cleared when it was discovered that a mind-controlled Beachcomber was the true culprit. Spotlight: Blaster

A year later, he delivered information to the Autobots that there was a power-struggle among the Decepticons, information that turned out to be false and drew Optimus and an Autobot team (including the former Ark-19 crew) into a hideous ambush that left them trapped on Cybertron. Before dumping them on Cybertron, Megatron revealed that there had been a willing traitor collaborator involved in his trap, and Mirage was the prime suspect All Hail Megatron issue 7 with everyone but Jazz and Prowl believing he'd betrayed them to the Decepticons. All Hail Megatron issue 4

It's not all bad though, he got to use his invisibility trick to sneak up on Kup's crew when Jazz was trying to prove his command skills. All Hail Megatron issue 5 Not long after, a raging Ironhide dragged him into a corner and beat him half to death. All Hail Megatron issue 7

The events of Spotlight: Mirage possibly take place in an alternate/unknown continuity.

This didn't actually happen. Or did it? No, it didn't.

Mirage was haunted repeatedly by dreams of being a Decepticon. Or actually is a Decepticon from another universe who, after helping kill the last Autobots, got blown back through time and space to the main universe. Or via Zodiac energy has gained flashbacks of an alternate Decepticon Mirage. God knows what's going on there. Spotlight: Mirage