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Sideways...

He's become quite the famously infamous 'bot over the years.

Motorcycle of Mystery. Servant of Unicron. Denizen of Planet X. Cowardly Audi. Dimension-hopping Headache...

He's pretty much been it all, hasn't he?



...Or has he?

What if I were to tell you that that last bit was actually never supposed to be true?

But first, a little history, just so that we're all up to speed on how Sideways got to this point.


Motorcycle of Mystery

In the beginning, there was the Robots in Disguise (2001) Sideways, first released in a two-pack with Axer, both redecoed from the Generation 2 Laser Cycles, and released in April 2002.

The toy bio for Sideways painted him as, among other things, "mysterious and silent", keeping mostly to himself.



The toy bio for the accompanying Axer strongly implied him to be the very same individual as G1 Axer, having hopped from the G1 universe to the RID'01 universe through a black hole.



Compare how much Axer's RID'01 bio borrows, verbatim, from his G1 bio and tech specs.



One month later, this two-pack was released in Japan as an unchanged Hasbro import, a USA Edition.

In September 2002, the Armada Sideways toy was released by Hasbro. This toy was given an online bio at Hasbro's website that borrowed heavily from RID'01 Sideways's bio and tech specs (much in the same way that RID'01 Axer's bio borrowed from G1 Axer's bio and tech specs). The main difference in this bio was that it now described Sideways as having a split-personality condition caused by interactions with his two different Mini-Cons.



At the time, some fans began to wonder if Armada Sideways might be the same person as RID'01 Sideways, since the former's bio borrowed so much from the latter's bio in the same way that RID'01 Axer's bio borrowed so much from G1 Axer's bio.

Of further note is that Armada Sideways's Japanese release, Legends of the Microns MX-01 Doubleface (released in April 2003), used a toy bio and tech specs that were very similar to the Hasbro one, even mentioning the Mini-Con-induced split personalities.



English translation:

“Know that I am impervious against any tempest!”
In his sports bike disguise he can exceed 400km/h. Due to the Microns influence on Earth he has two personalities, good and evil. It’s impossible to predict which of his two personalities will be dominant.
PWR...4.0; INT...6.0; SPD...6.0; END...5.0; RNK...6.0; CRG...8.0; FPR...6.0; TECH...8.0

In December 2004, the Japanese-only RobotMasters toyline released RM-19 Double Face, sharing the same Japanese name and color scheme as the Armada/Legends of the Microns character. His toy bio also contained a reference to the names of LOTM Doubleface's two Mini-Cons, "Shadow" and "Bright" (but did not use the same tech specs as his predecessors).



English translation (by Hydra):

Package story:
The war between the armies of the heroic Cybertrons and evil Destrons continues...
The Cybertrons warriors receive report of the discovery of a mass quantity of Solitarium. The bearer of the information is the newly enlisted Doubleface.
The location of the discovery is Jarr (Charr), a planet in the far reaches of the galaxy that was once the birthplace of Road Rocket. G-1 Convoy's squad head to Jarr, but there before them are Beast Megatron and his soldiers, launching an attack on Doubleface. Road Rocket immediately strikes a counteroffensive on the Destrons, rescuing Doubleface. But inexplicably, at that moment Doubleface turns to attack the Cybertrons! Road rocket jumps to the defense of his allies, standing off against Doubleface.
What could the true identity of Doubleface be!?

RM-19: Double Face
"Why do I meddle with you, you ask? It's because I enjoy it."
Function: Double spy
Profile: Despite a quiet exterior, deep within his heart lurk sinister thoughts. Housed within him is the communication system "Shadow and Bright," which is made useful in negotiations. His weapon, the Shaftbreaker, has such power that being cast in its mysterious light causes the opponent's nerve systems to be entirely severed.
Weapon: Shaftbreaker
RNK7 PWR9 DFN8 STA9 SPD9 TTL42

Like the first two Sidewayses' toy bios, this guy is also pretty quiet, and his on-package story text also paints him up as treacherous and mysterious.

So far, we had three Sidewayses/Doublefaces with all of their respective toy bios characterizing each of them as silent and mysterious. That said, however...


Servant of Unicron

Despite what both the Hasbro and Takara bios said about Armada Sideways, the Armada cartoon would do away with all of the split personality stuff and depict him as simply a pure agent of Unicron, even implied by the end of the series to have been created by his master, with his Mini-Cons instead used to let him simply pretend to be an Autobot or a Decepticon before his true allegiance was revealed.



Of note is the fact that, throughout at least the English-dubbed version of the cartoon, Sideways's combined Mini-Con partner (named "Mirror" in Japan, unnamed in English) always seemed to be the one doing all the talking, as if it was in control of the motorcycle body like (appropriately enough) a puppeteer and his puppet.

As an aside, it bears mention that this depiction of Sideways as a loyal servant of Unicron was, at the time, exclusive to the Armada cartoon (and the books adapted from it by DK Publishing). When he appeared in the Armada comics published by Dreamwave, he was portrayed as little more than an ordinary Cybertronian; apparently a Decepticon since he was once seen working with them on a satellite project.



In the final Armada issue, he even appeared in a crowd of Autobots and Decepticons cowering in fear of Unicron's arrival to Cybertron.



While the Dreamwave "More Than Meets the Eye: Armada" profile for Sideways leaned into his cartoon portrayal as a Unicron minion, that series of profile books also had a lot of other content that simply didn't fit into the comics continuity proper. And Simon Furman (who was writing the Armada comics at the time) has stated that he was not looking at what the Unicron Trilogy cartoons were doing at the time, so Sideways's MTMTE profile simply didn't reflect his appearances in the comics themselves.



Backing up to the Armada cartoon, the episode "Credulous" featured a brief scene in which Sideways's Mini-Con Headmaster falls off, exposing his real head for a moment. Two lines of dialogue found only in the English version of this scene were of Sideways replying to a comment made by Megatron, and then a second "dumb" sounding voice speaking in mockery of Sideways's line.

Shown in this clip from 3:38 to 3:52:


No explanation for this weird other voice has ever been given, but it almost sounds like it came from Sideways himself, as if he was mocking himself. Quite the goofy thing for the English dub to do in that moment. Though, speaking of goofy...


Denizen of Planet X

In 2005, the third part of the Unicron Trilogy, Transformers: Cybertron, saw a return of the Armada cartoon version of Sideways... kind of.



Hasbro's intention behind this radically-different-looking 'bot named Sideways was for him to be the same faction-swapping Unicron minion from the Armada cartoon, having somehow survived his apparent death at the end of Armada. However, Takara took a different route with this version of the character, with GONZO (the Japanese company behind the production of the Cybertron/Galaxy Force cartoon) reimagining him as a new 'bot named "Noisemaze", separate from the original Doubleface, and depicted him in the cartoon as having originally hailed from the mysterious Planet X.

Hasbro attempted to reconcile this new version of the character with the Armada cartoon version, but with mixed results. Namely, the Cybertron cartoon's English dub gave him a new, snarky, and incredibly goofy personality, in stark contrast to how serious he was back in Armada. The original Hasbro.com feature "Ask Vector Prime" explained his having been revived by the lingering power of Unicron that still dwelled within him:

Ask Vector Prime, Hasbro.com wrote:
Q: How did Sideways come back? I thought he was destroyed for good by Armada Optimus Prime.

A: Sideways is a tricky villain, the dark powers of Unicron must have saved him to live again.

And both the Cybertron cartoon's English dub and other Hasbro materials embraced the Planet X backstory to fully retcon the idea of Unicron having originally created Sideways (at least, in the English version). Thus, from Hasbro's perspective, Armada/Cybertron Sideways was an inhabitant of Planet X who came into the service of Unicron after Planet X's destruction. Following his apparent death at the end of Armada, and following Unicron's own death in Energon, Sideways was revived by Unicron's latent power within him, but no longer in Unicron's service, and free to resume his original mission for Planet X.

As for his change in personality, well... There was that one weird scene in the aforementioned Armada episode "Credulous", in which a very silly voice spoke in mockery of Sideways in a brief moment when his Mini-Con Headmaster was separated from his real head. And Cybertron Sideways had a very similar silly-sounding voice, too (though, not by the same voice actor). So since Cybertron retconned the Planet X backstory into being the true origin of this Sideways, it seems that that would make Cybertron Sideways the true version of his personality, while his Armada personality was how he was when under Unicron's influence. One could even suppose that his Armada personality was actually that of his combined Mini-Con partner controlling the real Sideways like a puppet, and that the goofy mocking voice from the scene in "Credulous" was possibly the real Sideways briefly surfacing from his Mini-Con's control, right before said Mini-Con reattached itself and returned Sideways to speaking normally.

Meanwhile, from Takara's perspective, Doubleface and Noisemaze remain separate, unrelated individuals with separate, unrelated backstories.

And speaking of things unrelated...


Cowardly Audi



2009's Revenge of the Fallen movie (and its tie-in media like comics and video games) gave us the first completely new character to bear the name "Sideways" with absolutely no connections to the previous ones, with his toy bios characterizing him primarily as a cowardly courier who hides behind bigger bots.



However, by this point, the name "Sideways" had come to have a certain reputation in the Transformers fandom, so a certain subset of fans were a little miffed that Hasbro was reusing that particular name in such a slap-happy way.

And what, exactly, was that reputation...?


Dimension-hopping Headache

More than being a Mystery Man, more than being a Planet X-Man, but on par with being Unicron's Yes Man, was the notion of Sideways being a multiversal mischief maker who jumps from dimension to dimension, universe to universe, creating chaos and confusion wherever he goes.

This idea really began to take shape with the creation of Animated Sideways.



Debuting in the 2011 Transformers Animated book "The AllSpark Almanac II", Animated Sideways was given a hybrid design based on both the Armada and Revenge of the Fallen versions, and was written by Jim Sorenson as having arrived in the Animated universe from another dimension, with very implicit hints that, after disappearing into a black hole (not unlike RID'01 Axer all those years ago), he would arrive in the Movieverse to become ROTF Sideways, in a very deliberately vague, playfully implicit attempt to suggest the possibility that Animated Sideways was the missing link that made ROTF Sideways the same Sideways as all the others who previously bore the name.

Things became even more confusing when 2015's "The Complete AllSpark Almanac" featured hidden "Ask Vector Prime" text (also written by Jim) that intentionally shook everything up by having Vector Prime claim that there were actually lots of Sidewayses out in the multiverse, all of whom were dimension-hoppers. Some of whom were the same as other Sidewayses, while others were completely different Sidewayses but who were also the same as other different Sidewayses. And all of whom were variants of the many previous Sidewayses people were already familiar with, but also different versions of each other due to all the overlapping designs and universe-hopping involved in this purposely convoluted explanation:

Ask Vector Prime, The Complete AllSpark Almanac, Page 213 wrote:
Q: There is some debate on this-is Sideways a multiuniversal singularity?

Answer: Oh my spark no! however, he certainly gets around with some versions of him jumping from universe to universe to universe. For instance, the Sideways of Aurex 402.0 Gamma, who originated from Tyran 509.12 Zeta, is NOT the same as the Sideways of Aurex 802.23 Alpha, who originally came to my attention in the Viron cluster and made his way to at least two or three other clusters after he first departed that universe stream. It's hard to keep track, even for me! They Tyran universes tend to branch frequently, due to the multiversal nature of the Fallen, so many of the Sideways from there are distinct beings and have never visited more than one universe. Though, of course, when a universe he is in schisms, he naturally splits as well. Why there are multiple iterations of the Sideways from Tyran 609.23-XP Kappa, and that's just within one highly volatile universe. At least one of those made his way to the Iocus cluster by way of Nexus Zero, and another hailed from the Uniend cluster and had briefly visited a Rovio stream. That's not to say the Tyran Sideways is NEVER from elsewhere. For example, the Tyran 207.28 Gamma Sideways who was rebuilt following his bisection, and sent undercover to infiltrate the Primax Autobots, was spawned in Fornax 813.0 Gamma. I hope this clarifies things.

This answer is insane, nigh-incomprehensible gobbledygook and only exists to make our heads hurt. It literally broke the TFWiki coverage of Sideways at the time.

Later that same year, the Facebook version of "Ask Vector Prime" (also written by Jim) got hijacked by one of the dimension-hopping Sidewayses. He used the ROTF Sideways design, but had a sarcastic personality like Cybertron Sideways, and was compatible with Headmaster technology like Armada Sideways. During this time, "Ask Sideways" answered fans' questions with playfully snarky, unabashedly dishonest, and generally ludicrous responses. He delighted in confusing everyone with his nonsensical replies, and was a self-admitted liar. Needless to say, he was not to be taken that seriously.



But something I didn't actually mention is where this whole concept of Sideways as a multiversal mischief maker even began. I mean, that's always been his thing, right? Sideways has always been a dimension-hopper.


...Or has he?

Way back in February 2005 (a mere two months after the release of the RobotMasters Double Face toy), the following claim was given on alt.toys.transformers:

I remember when Takara was showing off Robotmaster pics, they included some fun stuff like 'character first appeared' notices. Doubleface's had him first appearing in Car Robots, not Micron Legend. This, apparently a reference to his RiD toy.

A follow-up post clarified that this was "Takara's website's note of Doubleface's 1st appearance".

While the validity of this claim on ATT was originally questioned by Doug Dlin (a veteran translator of Japanese Transformers material), it was later brought it up again several times on the TFWiki talk page for the original Sideways article, going all the way back to when said article was first being put together back in 2006. In these early talk page conversations, folks took this claim to mean that Takara had considered the Hasbro-released RID'01 Sideways toy to be the first appearance of RobotMasters Double Face, and therefore the same character.

As mentioned above in the "Motorcycle of Mystery" section, it was suspected back then that RID'01 Sideways was the same guy as Armada Sideways based on their Hasbro toy bios sharing a lot of the same text, nearly verbatim. With this old claim from ATT about the RobotMasters and RID'01 toys being the same character, that seemed to also solidify a connection between the Armada and RobotMasters versions, thereby making all three the same Sideways. But since at least Armada and RobotMasters were set in different universes, logic dictated that Sideways must be a dimension-hopper!

I recently brought this up on the TFWiki Discord server, since there were numerous mentions on the Wiki of certain publicity materials having supposedly stated that RobotMasters Double Face was considered by Takara to be the same character as Robots in Disguise 2001 Sideways. As of now, those mentions are gone, because, when I brought up those old ATT posts on Discord, longtime Transformers fan Monzo informed me of something very important to take into consideration about those old ATT posts: They were written by a user named Derik, whom Monzo informed me was a rather unreliable narrator back in the day. This got me to do some further digging into this matter.

Since the Takara RobotMasters site has been long dead since 2008 (and the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine initially didn't seem to show anything useful on Double Face's archived toy page), I decided to look for other sources, like old Japanese magazine scans or Japanese Wikipedia. From the former, all I could find were these table scraps that bore no helpful information.




But from the latter, I found something interesting. According to Japanese Wikipedia, RobotMasters Double Face is "a different person" from the Japanese Armada Sideways/Doubleface. A straightforward answer with no ambiguity, and one that states the exact opposite of Derik's original claim. But of course, even in Japanese, Wikipedia is still Wikipedia, so I had to keep digging.

I looked into as much of the Takara RobotMasters website as the Internet Archive had, well, archived. To my delight, it had a whole lot! But since Double Face's toy page was a bust, I looked into each of the other toys' pages. Using a Flash emulator, I was able to see what the surviving .swf files on each page looked like. I even discovered that each of these pages had hidden text descriptions for each toy found below the Flash file on each page.

And what did I find after combing through all of these toy pages, and then the entirety of the site's archived content? Well, there was zero sign of any "character first appeared" notices that were mentioned in Derik's original claim. Each Flash file contained the toys' name, tech specs, bio (the same as their on-package bios), and interactive buttons that showed the toys' different modes and weapon gimmicks. To the right of the Flash file was an illustration of the toy's box art, and to the left of that below the Flash file was a smaller image (now defunct) that linked each page back to the Lineup page. To the left of this smaller image was each of the hidden text descriptions, all of which primarily described the toys as toys, not as characters.

The only descriptions that made any mention of what series the characters originated from were those for Beast Convoy, Lio Convoy, and Skywarp & Thundercracker. The descriptions for Smokesniper and Gigant Bomb did mention that their toys were from G2, but not the two of them as characters. And the ones for Star Saber, Victory Leo, and Victory Saber mentioned that they hail from Planet Victory, but didn't explain what that was or which series is was from.

And what did the text description on Double Face's page say? The exact same thing that was also written on Road Rocket's page:

ロボットからスポーツバイクに変形！
ロボットマスターズシリーズ初のフラッシュギミックを内臓！！
ボタンを押せば、武器が発光するぞ！！

メーカー希望小売価格￥１，０２９円(税込)

English translation (courtesy of DeepL):

Transforms from robot to sportbike!
The first in the Robot Masters series with a built-in flash gimmick!
Press the button and the weapon will light up!

Suggested retail price: ¥1,029 (tax included)

Nothing about him personally. For that, we have to look directly at his toy bio, his on-package story text and his appearances in RobotMasters fiction. His bio notes that he is quiet, sinister, and handles negotiations, with his motto noting he likes to mess with people. The story text (which is also found on Road Rocket's packaging) basically summarizes the events of the seventh RobotMasters web comic, in which he is shown to also be treacherous and mysterious.

But you know what is missing from all of this? Anything to support Derik's original claim that RobotMasters Double Face was the same person as RID'01 Sideways. The one and only piece of RobotMasters material in which I could even find a mention of the phrase カーロボット (Kārobotto, "Car Robots") was the RobotMasters Encyclopedia, but only in reference to the Autobot Cars subgroup rather than the 2000 cartoon series.

After a whole week of all this extensive research, I finally realized a long distorted truth about Sideways/Double Face: Not only was his RobotMasters version never originally a dimension-hopper, but prior to the creation of the Animated character, Sideways himself was never originally a dimension-hopper!

The belief that he was stemmed not just from the belief that the RID'01, Armada, and RobotMasters dudes were all the same guy, but also from an early impression that RobotMasters itself was a multiversal conflict similar to the Universe War of the 2003 Transformers: Universe series. But, I took a closer look at the RobotMasters fiction and this relation chart:



English translation by Hydra:


A closer inspection of both reveals that there was only time travel in RobotMasters, no dimensional travel. The main RobotMasters fiction (that being the online comics and the toys' on-package story texts) specified who did and who did not come through the Blastizone to 2004 Earth, and the only ones who did were Beast Convoy, Beast Megatron, Psycho-Orb, Star Saber, Victory Leo, Gigant Bomb, and Lio Convoy. Characters like Wrecker Hook and Double Face had nothing to indicate that they were dimension-hoppers (the former of which was suspected to be due to this having been back before Takara cleared up the whole Car Robots mess). By all appearances, Double Face was just a native to the world of RobotMasters, and Japanese G1 as a whole.

Even if it had been true that the RobotMasters toy and the RID toy were the same character in Takara's eyes, that would still only apply for the Japanese G1/Car Robots/RobotMasters side of things. There was still no direct connection to make the Japanese Armada character the same guy. Sure, the RobotMasters toy bio referenced the Japanese names of Armada Sideways's Mini-Cons, " Shadow" and "Bright", but there was nothing more explicit than that, which feels more like an homage or an Easter egg kind of reference.

While there was the "mysteriousness" alluded to his toy bio and story text, with nearly two decades of hindsight now behind us, it becomes clear that that mysteriousness was all surface-level; nothing ever came out of it. Author/artist Naoto Tsushima may have hinted at the possibility of there being more to him, but he didn't DO anything with it. In the long run, Double Face's mysteriousness wound up having all the substance of Mysterior. No traces of any Unicronian-affiliation, no signs of any otherworldliness, no indication of Double Face being anything more than just a 21st-century JG1 native. He was Just. Some. Guy.

And frankly, I find it awfully convenient that, only two months after the RobotMasters toy's original release, along came Derik with a claim that, essentially, turned that toy into the exact missing link needed to connect it to both the RID'01 and Armada Sideways toys in such a way that ALSO just so happened to perfectly play right into the very same kind of headcanon ideas that Derik liked to have back then: In the very same ATT post that he made this claim, he also tried to use it to connect the Car Robots Super Spychangers story to the Universe War, speaking as if the two were deliberately written to tie into each other.

And even on the TFWiki talk page for The One, Derik tried to connect the Primeval Dawn depiction of the Vok with the Alternity, speaking again as if the two were always meant to relate to one another (when the two were created completely independent of each other by several years). And then there were Monzo's additional statements on Discord about how Derik claimed Blaster calling the EDC the "stars on Mars" (in the G1 cartoon five-parter "Five Faces of Darkness") was instead in reference to the S.T.A.R.S. organization. And fellow TFWiki user Grum pointed out on Discord that Derik tried to claim that IDW2 was the result of IDW1 Springer rewriting history via time travel.

And there's the fact that this is the very same Derik Smith who was part of the group responsible for the most infamous hoax of the Power Rangers fandom, "Scorpion Rain". So he's no stranger to deliberately fabricating total falsehoods to screw with fans. But in the case of his Sideways claim, he seemed to genuinely believe it after having repeated it so many times and having helped to spread it with others claiming it as well.

Needless to say, Derik had quite the reputation of being rather full of it. And coupled with a complete lack of any proper evidence to support it, his claim of RID'01 Sideways being RobotMasters Double Face should no longer be given any kind of real consideration.


"Crankshafts"

As a final aside, there is one more other thing that should also be addressed.

Back around the time of Derik making his claim, one of the more vocal supporters of the idea of the Robots in Disguise and Armada Sidewayses being the same guy was David "ItsWalky" Willis. He favored the idea of there being only one Sideways who was capable of jumping from universe to universe, but it was Derik's original claim about the RobotMasters one that really cemented the idea in both his and the minds of many a fan. Before then, he and other likeminded individuals were just looking for a reason to affirm the shared identity between the RID and Armada Sidewayses. Derik just so happened to provide such a reason, in a rare moment of he and Walky actually agreeing on something that further added to this idea becoming so widespread.

In 2008, Fun Publications had started up a new series of comics and prose stories under the label of Transformers: TransTech, based on the canceled sequel to Beast Machines but reimagined as its own new series unconnected to Beast Machines (due to Hasbro having already used Transformers: Universe as a Beast Machines sequel back in 2003). Set in the world of Axiom Nexus (a sort of hub city for multiversal travel), this series saw numerous characters from across the Transformers brand (and even from outside of it) meeting each other in theretofore unheard of interactions and hijinks. The six-part comic storyline "Transcendent" was the backbone of this series, with the three prose stories "Gone Too Far", "Withered Hope", and "I, Lowtech" all tying in and overlapping with it, all taking place within the same week or so of each other.

In 2009, a fourth prose story was pitched to Fun Pub, but was ultimately unpublished. Written by Walky and illustrated by Graham Weaver, "Crankshafts" told a rather isolated story largely unrelated to the other TransTech fiction (though, the story's epilogue had some vaguely loose hints of connection with a character affiliated with the Alpha Trion of "Transcendent", but I digress) and featured none other than a Sideways as the story's final boss antagonist. This Sideways was depicted with the "petty" voice and personality of Cybertron Sideways and had some rather unambiguous shapeshifting powers (think like [url='https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Makeshift_(Prime)']Makeshift[/url] from Transformers: Prime) that he used to assume the likenesses of RID2001 Sideways, RobotMasters Double Face, Armada Sideways (minus any Mini-Con Headmaster), Cybertron Sideways, and even the yellow/orange/green Fox Kids redeco of Beast Wars Transmetals [url='https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Waspinator_(BW)/toys#FKTM']Waspinator[/url]!



The story attributed this shapeshifting ability to the "Trans-Phase Mode" of Armada Sideways as seen in the Armada cartoon, and was used in the story to generate static-y digital tendrils from the floor that ensnared Sideways's victims in the story.



Had this story been published, the idea of all these Sidewayses being the same guy really would have been canonized even before The AllSpark Almanac II and Ask Vector Prime came along and did what they did later on, as it would have been the first outright instance of the RID2001 RobotMasters, Armada, and Cybertron dudes all being the same singular 'bot (plus Fox Kids TM Waspinator added to the mix, but one could just right that one off as a disguise).

But since this story wasn't published, it isn't canon, and instead the fan debates simply continued when ROTF Sideways and Animated Sideways came along.


Conclusion

With there having never been any real connection between the RobotMasters and RID'01 versions of Sideways, that also weakens any ties between the RobotMasters and Armada versions. What remains out of all of this is the realization that Sideways was never supposed to be the universe-hopping headache that he was made out to be. The RID'01 and Armada bios were worded very similarly, but without Derik originally misleading us about RobotMasters toy, there was no real proof of any dimension-hopping going on (unlike the more directly implicit reference in RID'01 Axer's toy bio that pegged him as a dimensionally-displaced G1 Axer).

Armada Sideways was popular at the time, so it seems Takara just capitalized on that popularity by making a G1 version of the character in RobotMasters; simple as that. But Derik's unsourced claim led everyone to believe that Sideways was a multiversal mischief maker, and things like Animated Sideways and the "Ask Sideways" Facebook column were both born out of this belief. As a result, ROTF Sideways has also become entangled in this mess, when it is obvious that he was never supposed to be. And now, thanks to this longstanding misinformation, the damage is done.

Ask Sideways, Facebook, July 3, 2015 wrote:Oh, I confuse you, do I? Shocking, because normally I'm SOOOOO straight-forward. Lemmie break this down for you real simple. 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.

And thus we have Sideways, the unicorn-hopping planet of Minions from Dimension X.



What?

Admittedly I've only read half of this so far, but well done!

Emerje

Sounds to me like this Derik character must just be Sideways having jumped to our universe, only he could craft such an elaborate domino train of lies.

Seriously though, that's some damn impressive detective work, cheers.

I never bought into the idea that all Sidewayses are/must be the same individual. It always seemed like the connections between the different iterations were drawn merely to sustain the idea that they were connected. Each of the major Sidewayses being his own universe's incarnation was clearly always the intention, and it helps those stories to not have to be beholden to things established by unrelated fiction. Glad to know there is now better precedent for dismissing the idea.

Brilliant work with this research, Sabrblade.

This is the kind of stuff I love. Absolutely brilliant!

I've made some updates since the first posting, most notably having added in info regarding Sideways's appearances in the Dreamwave Armada comics, and more quotes and citation links for each iteration of Ask Vector Prime.