War Dawn: how the Orion Pax origin rewrote G1 canon

The Season 2 episode that turned Optimus Prime from a leader into a legend, and quietly built the spine every continuity since has leaned on.

For most of Season 1, Optimus Prime was simply there, the noble leader, fully formed, with no history worth telling. Then "War Dawn" sent the Aerialbots back into Cybertron deep past and gave him an origin that every continuity since has borrowed.

The episode reveals Optimus as Orion Pax, an ordinary dock worker gravely wounded in a Decepticon attack and rebuilt by the ancient Alpha Trion into the warrior the galaxy would come to trust. In twenty-two minutes it transformed Prime from an archetype into a character with a before and an after.

The Marvel comics, IDW, and the modern Energon Universe have all reached for some version of the Orion Pax story. War Dawn is where the idea that Optimus was made, not born, entered the canon, and the franchise never looked back.