Terrorsaur

Terrorsaur is the series' Starscream analogue and, unusually, the show is upfront about it. A Predacon pterodactyl with an aerial advantage and no patience, he spends the first season attempting to depose Megatron roughly once a month and failing in a slightly different way each time. Doug Parker voices him at a shrill pitch that makes his ambition sound less like menace and more like whining, which is precisely the point.

He comes closest in "Power Surge", where he discovers a raw energon deposit on a mountaintop, supercharges himself, and actually seizes command of the Predacons. It lasts most of an episode. The energon overload is unstable, he burns out, and Megatron resumes his seat without much apparent concern. It is the only time in the series a mutiny against Megatron succeeds even temporarily, and the show frames the whole thing as an inconvenience rather than a crisis.

His best moment is a defeat. In "Equal Measures" he infiltrates the Maximal base and tries to recruit Dinobot into a joint coup, and Dinobot plays along just long enough to shove him into the trash disposal unit, without firing a shot and without telling the other Maximals. Terrorsaur is outmanoeuvred by exactly the kind of scheming he thinks is his specialty.

He dies unceremoniously. In "Aftermath", the quantum surge from the Planet Buster's destruction hits the Darksyde, and Terrorsaur and Scorponok fall into the lava pits beneath the base and are killed. No last stand, no dialogue of consequence, and no funeral. The show simply removes two characters to make room for the Fuzors.

Pterodactyl beast mode giving flight and aerial attack capability, one of the Predacons' two air units in season one. Armed with a shoulder-mounted energy cannon and wing-tip blasters. Limits: physically fragile, poor in a ground fight, and psychologically unable to follow through on his own plans. Raw energon boosts his power dramatically but destabilises him, as "Power Surge" demonstrates.

• Megatron: a commander he tries to overthrow repeatedly and who barely registers the attempts as threats.
• Scorponok: an on-and-off co-conspirator, and the character he dies alongside.
• Dinobot: outplayed by him in "Equal Measures", the humiliation that best defines his limits.

IDW's Beast Wars Sourcebook states that Terrorsaur, along with Scorponok, survived the Beast Wars, directly contradicting the cartoon's depiction of both falling into the lava pits in "Aftermath". Fun Publications material also revives him. The cartoon treats the death as final.

Killed in "Aftermath", falling into the lava beneath the Darksyde during the quantum surge. IDW later retconned his survival.

• Voiced by Doug Parker, who also voiced Starscream's disembodied spark in "Possession", making him the voice of both the show's Starscream analogue and the actual Starscream.
• The name is an original Beast Wars coinage rather than a G1 reuse, unlike Megatron, Scorponok, Inferno, Rampage and Waspinator.
• A Transmetal Terrorsaur toy was produced; concept work for an unproduced Transmetal Dinobot was reportedly recycled into elements of his design.
• Terrorsaur and Scorponok were written out in "Aftermath" primarily to make room for the season-two Fuzors, Silverbolt and Quickstrike, within the show's tight CGI character budget.
• IDW's Beast Wars Sourcebook later established that Terrorsaur survived the Beast Wars, contradicting the cartoon's on-screen death.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• IDW's Beast Wars Sourcebook asserts he survived the war; the cartoon shows him destroyed in "Aftermath". The two accounts have never been reconciled.