The Energon Pub

I know that many regard Cheetor as the Beast Wars equivalent of G1 Bumblebee (something about being yellow and kid-friendly on TV shows), but which G1 character seems to be analogous to the Beast-era Rhinox?

I think that Omega Supreme is pretty close, since the baseformer shares wisdom, courage, toughness and firepower with Rhinox. But aside from a huge size difference, Omega Supreme never struck me as a "renaissance bot" like Rhinox, who did show some knowledge of science and engineering in the BW show.

I'm interested in others opinions on the subject

Don't forget his spirituality.

This is going to be controversial, but I'm going to say soundwave. He was smart, loyal, creative, tough, and he was courageous.

I always thought Rhinox was more like a G1 Ratchet or Wheeljack personally.

MightyMagnus78 wrote:I always thought Rhinox was more like a G1 Ratchet or Wheeljack personally.

I thought of them as well. I ruled out Wheeljack though because of his erratic nature. You can make a much better case for Ratchet, but Ratchet lacks Rhinox's firepower and leadership skills. For myself they don't work, but that doesn't mean that it's that way for you.

MightyMagnus78 wrote:I always thought Rhinox was more like a G1 Ratchet or Wheeljack personally.

I thought of them as well. I ruled out Wheeljack though because of his erratic nature. You can make a much better case for Ratchet, but Ratchet lacks Rhinox's firepower and leadership skills. For myself they don't work, but that doesn't mean that it's that way for you.

Wheeljack kinda works from a toy perspective, I mean his toy head is essentially Wheeljack with a mouth.

But actually, I think his G1 equivalent is Beachcomber, both are usually peaceful, both are intelligent (though Rhinox might be the smarter one) and both prove that they are total bad-asses when they have to.

I always thought he was a mix of Ratchet and Ironhide.

njb902 wrote:Don't forget his spirituality.

This is going to be controversial, but I'm going to say soundwave. He was smart, loyal, creative, tough, and he was courageous.

That's an interesting thought. It would be funny if Rhinox were, in fact, a secretly-reformatted version of Soundwave.

BATTLEMASTER IIC wrote:I know that many regard Cheetor as the Beast Wars equivalent of G1 Bumblebee (something about being yellow and kid-friendly on TV shows),

Cheetor's more like the BW equivalent of Hot Rod than Bumblebee, since G1 Bee was almost always a good boy while Hot Rod and Cheetor were rambunctious, cool guy teens who didn't always play by the rules.

As for the G1 equivalent of Rhinox, that's tough. Rhinox was so unique a character, being almost a mix of every example mentioned here. He had Ironhide's strength, Ratchet's resourcefulness, Wheeljack's technical know-how, Omega Supreme's wisdom and might, Beachcomber's spirituality, but also Springer's courage, Kup's mentoring aura, Ultra Magnus's sub-commander leadership skills, Bumblebee's kindness, Perceptor's knowledge, and enough firepower to suit the needs of all the Wreckers put together.

It's hard to just pick one Autobot who had every one of these traits, since Rhinox was just so good in his own right. It's like what Cheetor once said of Rhinox in Beast Machines, "He wasn't just one of us. He was the best of us."

When you think about it, Rhinox could have, potentially, very easily become a Gary Stu type character because of how much was put into him, but he was instead used well enough and not over-glorified to avoid coming off as "too perfect" a chracter.

craggy wrote:I always thought he was a mix of Ratchet and Ironhide.

Yes, with a little bit of Ultra Magnus thrown in.

There is no real equivalent for Rhinox, because thanks to the smaller cast. Beast Wars characters were more complex. While in G1 Transformers are pretty much more a like a Smurfs(Each have one attribute, and entire character development were based on it). In Beast Wars characters were more "irregular".

TurboMMaster wrote:There is no real equivalent for Rhinox, because thanks to the smaller cast. Beast Wars characters were more complex. While in G1 Transformers are pretty much more a like a Smurfs(Each have one attribute, and entire character development were based on it). In Beast Wars characters were more "irregular".

close to the mark there. As much as I'd have liked to see more characters in BW, I appreciated that they delved into each of those they had pretty well, developing them much more than most cartoons. And then killing them because they had no new toys.

TurboMMaster wrote:There is no real equivalent for Rhinox, because thanks to the smaller cast. Beast Wars characters were more complex. While in G1 Transformers are pretty much more a like a Smurfs(Each have one attribute, and entire character development were based on it). In Beast Wars characters were more "irregular".

That's a good assessment. I was just thinking about the same thing, except I was thinking that they weren't so much getting into deeper character development as they were combining several characters into one transformer. Rhinox did do everything that would've ordinarily been done by Wheeljack, Ironhide, Ratchet, and a bit of Perceptor, with elements of a few other characters tossed in, as others have mentioned.

BATTLEMASTER IIC wrote:

TurboMMaster wrote:There is no real equivalent for Rhinox, because thanks to the smaller cast. Beast Wars characters were more complex. While in G1 Transformers are pretty much more a like a Smurfs(Each have one attribute, and entire character development were based on it). In Beast Wars characters were more "irregular".

That's a good assessment. I was just thinking about the same thing, except I was thinking that they weren't so much getting into deeper character development as they were combining several characters into one transformer. Rhinox did do everything that would've ordinarily been done by Wheeljack, Ironhide, Ratchet, and a bit of Perceptor, with elements of a few other characters tossed in, as others have mentioned.

Thing is, though, it was the deeper development that they were going for.

They couldn't have intentionally been trying to combine the personalities of the G1 characters in order to make the BW characters since the BW makers largely ignored much of the G1 stuff beyond what they were told about G1 by fans and such. They went into BW with barely any info on what all had come before and were mostly trying to create their own thing that wasn't made to be tied into G1. The earliest episodes were made with the mindset of BW being a complete reboot unrelated to G1. It was only later when the references started being added in as little fan nods that real connections between G1 and BW were retconned in.

So, Rhinox was less inspired by the G1 dudes we keep listing and more created as his own well developed person.

BATTLEMASTER IIC wrote:

njb902 wrote:Don't forget his spirituality.

This is going to be controversial, but I'm going to say soundwave. He was smart, loyal, creative, tough, and he was courageous.

That's an interesting thought. It would be funny if Rhinox were, in fact, a secretly-reformatted version of Soundwave.

Except that you can see a bot that looks remarkably like Soundwave during flashbacks in Beast Machines. I'd be willing to go for Ratchet as his closest equivalent from the G1 show.