Top 5 Best Beast Wars Catchphrases
Beast Wars. To many in the Transformers fandom, they are the two words that started two decades of love and joy. For countless others, it was the series that reinvented the franchise and brought the concept of transforming alien life forms back into existence. Not only did the line provide toy fans with ball-joints, transparent elements, colorful chromey bits and beasts, beasts, and more beasts, but it brought a whole new television show along with it.
Beast Wars (or Beasties to you Canucks out there) the cartoon was the first fully-digitally-animated Transformers cartoon. Produced by Mainframe, its renderings of its beasts evolved in very visible and interesting ways over the three years of the show’s existence. Unlike the original Transformers cartoon, which tried to include as many of its toys in as many of its cartoons as possible, Beast Wars focused instead on a small cast that carried on the tradition of fantastic voice acting established in the G1 cartoon. This excellent voice acting, coupled with the deeply character-driven story-telling headed up by Larry DiTillio and Bob Forward, made Beast Wars a wonderfully memorable series that even after 20 years is still celebrated as one of the finest examples of Transformers media since its inception.
Today, I’m bringing the voice acting and the excellent scripts together to look at one of the greatest elements of the Beast Wars, in
The Top 5 Beast Wars Catchphrases!
5. “For the Colony! / For the Royalty! / Burn!”
Inferno (Jim Byrnes)
When a crashed stasis pod is damaged, it leads to the faulty wiring that erroneously attaches the social habits of the beast form to the protoform inside. As the beast form is that of a worker ant, this creates in Inferno an implacable drive towards the protection of his home, which he calls his “colony, and everything he does is in service of his “queen.” Couple that obsession with his love of making things burn, and we’ve got a walking Catchphrase. But wow is he a fun character.
4. “Well, that’s just Prime.”
Optimus Primal (Garry Chalk)
Right from the first episode, this statement was one that was mostly used by the Maximal’s commanding officer as a sarcastic statement depicting poor humor with an unfortunate situation, but every once in a while, it really did evoke the awe and wonder that some situations called for. Though it’s never totally clear just what is so “Prime” about it all.
3. “We’re all gonna die.”
Rattrap (Scott McNeil)
With his Brooklyn accent and world weariness, Rattrap has been a little bit of everything, seen a little bit of everything, and pissed off everyone he has ever met. At least twice. Vocal and a better complainer than an American student in a classrom, Rattrap sure knew how to interject. Of all his quotes, none better described what he lived for than the simple avoidance of this particular fate. And often to very amusing responses from those around him.
2. “Decepticons Forever!”
Covert Agent Ravage (Lee Tockar)
In Beast Wars, we got multiple nods to the Generation One cartoon: Starscream’s ghost, the Ark, the Nemesis, but none hit us with as much force as Ravage’s appearance in the series. At the end of Season Two, in “The Agenda,” Covert Agent Ravage (who was the original Decepticon infiltrator before being reformatted into a Predacon) appeared, and was convinced by Megatron that his mission was the same as the original Megatron’s mission. During a point that elicits fangasms all over the world, this covert kitty screams this phrase before transforming into his classic cassette mode. Few moments in any series ever convey the kind of sheer joy that this one unleashes.
1. “Yesssss…”
Megatron (David Kaye)
What? Did you really think that anyone said anything with as much grace and sweeping grandeur as Megatron? Or was it conceit that drove you to consider something less ubiquitous than his signature statement? The only thing even remotely so abundant in this series are the diodes of Waspinator littering the ground after any encounter with the insect. Spoken more than one hundred times in the three seasons, and amounting to nearly 4 minutes of screen time, nothing could even remotely be so… defining of the show. No.
Honorable Mentions:
“Shut up, Rattrap!”
From Primal to Cheetor, Megatron to Dinobot, and even in a wonderfully-played joke, Rattrap, himself, just about every single member of the Beast Wars said these two wonderful words to Rattrap. Sometimes, it was a variation of it, and more often than not, it was precipitated by his trademark “We’re all gonna die,” comment, but whatever the reason, the obnoxious rodent certainly knew how to get on everyone’s nerves.
“I need no help hunting Predacons. And I prefer to hunt alone.”
Tigatron (Blu Mankuma)
As I’m classifying catchphrases here as things that people say again and again, this doesn’t actually count. Instead, it would count as more of a motto that sums up Tigatron’s essence. A loner and a hunter, the Bengal tiger was one beast of incredible love for his planet, and ferocity against those who would spoil this place. And if this really was his catchphrase, man, that would just be chilling.
So there you have it! The catchphrases that we will forever associate with the colorful cast of Beast Wars. Agree? Disagree? Feel free to give your two Golden Disks’ worth in the comments below. Special thanks to everyone on Youtube who posted the collections of the amazing vids on the site.
