Grimlock

Grimlock is the Dinobot Commander, a Tyrannosaurus-mode warrior built on Earth rather than born on Cybertron. In "S.O.S. Dinobots" Wheeljack and Ratchet construct him, Slag and Sludge from dinosaur skeletons found in a cave adjoining the Ark; the trio immediately turn on their makers, Grimlock blasting Teletraan I with his fire-breath, and Optimus Prime orders them destroyed before Wheeljack talks him into sealing them away instead. They are only reactivated, with upgraded brains, when the Autobot command staff is captured.

His defining trait is that he does not believe the strongest Autobot should take orders from a weaker one. Soundwave probes the Dinobots' minds in "War of the Dinobots" and finds exactly that resentment; Megatron plays to it, and Grimlock declares Optimus Prime an enemy, hauling him to the Decepticons rather than finishing him. Prime then shoves him clear of an exploding meteorite, and Grimlock apologises. The pattern repeats on a larger scale in "Desertion of the Dinobots," where he walks out on the Autobots entirely after a Decepticon trap at an airfield, takes the Dinobots to Cybertron on his own initiative, and is captured by Shockwave and put to work in the cybertonium mines.

The Autobots treat the Dinobots as a weapon of last resort, called in for Devastator, Sub-Atlantica and TORQ III, and Grimlock never lets them forget it. Beneath the contempt is a consistent line: what he hates more than weakness is strength abused, which is why he always ends up on the Autobot side.

Season 3 substantially rewrites him as friendlier, goofier and well-meaning. "Grimlock's New Brain" gives him temporary super-intelligence from Galvatron's anti-electrons, and he builds the Technobots before transferring the intellect into Computron; in "Call of the Primitives" he beats Tornedron by randomly flipping a switch that Primacron's calculations had missed.

Enormous physical strength and durability, sufficient to trade blows with Optimus Prime or Megatron; a Tyrannosaurus mode with jaws that can bite through almost anything; an energo-sword, a double-barrelled rifle and a rocket launcher; fire-breath in the cartoon. His limits are as pronounced: he is slow, has no patience for tactics or planning, and in the cartoon is portrayed as outright dim-witted with a broken speech pattern. His toy bio flags the real weakness as character rather than hardware, a warrior who resents authority and is willing to accept casualties others would not.

• Optimus Prime: mutual friction, Grimlock resents taking orders from him but respects his strength, and Prime saving his life in "War of the Dinobots" is the turning point of their relationship.
• Prowl: a running feud, Grimlock's chaos infuriates Prowl and Prowl's rigid protocol infuriates Grimlock.
• Wheeljack and Ratchet: his creators, and the Autobots most willing to defy Prime on his behalf.
• Wheelie: acquired on Quintessa during the 1986 movie, an unlikely companion Grimlock grows fond of and carries on his back.

Marvel's Grimlock is far more capable: he nominates himself for command after Optimus Prime's death, proves it by leading the Autobots against Trypticon, and then lets the power corrupt him, building a variable voltage harness to torture defectors like Blaster. The cartoon reduces him to a slow-witted bruiser with the "me Grimlock" speech pattern and never gives him the Autobot leadership.

Survives the 1986 movie and season 3 and is still active in "The Rebirth." In the Marvel continuity he serves two terms as Autobot leader, loses the ability to transform after dosing himself with Nucleon, and survives to the end of the war.

• The toy began as Takara's Diaclone "Dinosaur Robo" No. 1 Tyrannosaurus, released March 1984; for the 1985 Transformers release Hasbro recoloured the blue pelvis red, dropped the Diaclone pilot figure while keeping the cockpit, and blunted the teeth for safety.
• Preliminary names included Tyrannobot, Tyrex, and, in the surviving Sunbow series bible, "Trapjaw" and "Jawbreaker," both crossed out by hand and relabelled Grimlock.
• He is the only one of the original five Dinobots whose name has two syllables and does not begin with S.
• Season 3 deliberately recharacterised him as the friendlier, bumbling comic lead, a sharp break from the fierce but slow-witted warrior of seasons 1 and 2; his popularity is the usual explanation.
• An actor in a Grimlock costume appeared as one of the live Transformers at the 1985 Universal Studios Tour.

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.

• Intelligence level: the cartoon plays him as barely functional while the Marvel comics and most later fiction write him as crude but shrewd enough to command an army.
• The cause of his broken speech pattern is explained differently in nearly every continuity, and the UK and US Marvel strips are not consistent with each other.
• His toy bio's contempt for humans sits badly against season 3, which has him serving drinks at diplomatic functions and befriending Daniel Witwicky.