Riptide (G1)
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| This article is about the Generation 1 Autobot. For the Armada Autobot, see Riptide (Armada). |
- Riptide is an Autobot Hydrobot from the 2005 IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Riptide has never really been particularly smart or studious. Preferring to enjoy the simpler things in life, such as drinking at Swerve's and pulling pranks on his fellow 'bots, Riptide fits perfectly into the Lost Light's already dysfunctional crew. He's also a bit of a chatterbox, especially when worried or scared.
Contents |
Fiction
2005 IDW continuity
- First appearance: More Than Meets the Eye #28
Riptide was constructed cold as a M.T.O. in response to the Simanzi Massacre, specifically to combat the Forced Flood. Back then, the ten-step program for new 'bots had been shortened to eight steps and never mind Simanzi, his big past trauma was the download packs he had to study and the revision and the pressure and oh god the exam which everyone else found easy. Twenty Plus One
During the war, he became friends with Pipes (and may or may not have known that he was Pipes' "type"). No Guns, No Swords, No Briefcases Hydrobot comrades included Aquabat. Towards Peace At some point in the war, he became moderately chirolingual, a Transformer 'sign language' of sorts. By the end of it, he'd developed an unreliable transformation cog. Twenty Plus One
Riptide was present when Drift and Pipes purchased the Lost Light from a pair of NAILs in Iacon's religious quarter. Suspicious of the original owners, Riptide offered to go back to get a receipt of sale but found the NAILs laughing about how they had sold a ship that contained a Sparkeater. In response Riptide attacked them but was instead knocked out for two days, preventing him from joining the original Lost Light crew. Twenty Plus One Pipes would die thinking Riptide just hadn't been bothered to turn up after all. No Guns, No Swords, No Briefcases
He finally got a second chance to join up a few years later when the Lost Light briefly returned to Cybertron. As the ship prepared to get back to its mission, a disinterested Riptide was roped into helping Swerve and Crosscut with his fake new crewmember interviews. He was also present for Megatron's trial at Raskol Arena. Towards Peace
Once on the ship, Crosscut gave him and fellow newbies Mirage and Nautica a tour that ended with Swerve's. Riptide took a bunch of photos of the place. No Guns, No Swords, No Briefcases He fell in with Skids and Nautica, and, wanting to set goals for himself, even risked the horrors of exams by going to Megatron's classes on the Knights. Words Hang in the Air Those classes didn't make him like or trust Megatron any further, though five months in Riptide bet twenty shanix that Megatron would pretend to be reformed for at least another month. Twenty Plus One
Reading the Lost Light Insider at Swerve's, Riptide managed to convince Trailcutter to break into the Medbay and steal Megatron's "super fuel". When communications with the Forcefield Specialist broke down, Riptide brushed off Skids' concerns. Words Hang in the Air Riptide began attending lectures held by Megatron, and when he was warned by Swerve that it was all a distraction while ol' Megs devised plans to conquer the universe, just responded that he needed that sort of life goals too. Predestination: A Beginner's Guide Not long afterwards when it became apparent that the Lost Light was disappearing around them, Riptide abandoned the ship along with twenty other 'bots aboard the Rodpod, though his fellow escapees continued to vanish. As the crew tried to keep their minds off things, Riptide talked with Ammo about the terrible M.T.O. exams. After Nightbeat worked out that those left behind were not part of the Lost Light's crew at launch, the Rodpod arrived at Ofsted XVII to find their ship, apparently broken in half. Twenty Plus One
Upon boarding the shattered remains, the Lost Lighters were stunned to recognise their landing zone as Swerve's bar. Megatron enlisted the aid of stowaway Ravage to help look for survivors, and in response Riptide took to mocking the Decepticon feline, getting a few digs in when Ravage claimed to smell Ultra Magnus but instead turned up Minimus Ambus instead. Megatron chastised him for being so flippant in front of a dead body and Riptide felt sufficiently ashamed enough to apologise. He was later teamed with Skids and Getaway as they searched for clues, and was the first to discover a room full of dead Lost Lighters, all in their altmodes and missing their transformation cogs. When both Skids and Megatron reached the conclusion the Lost Light they were aboard had been attacked by the Decepticon Justice Division, Riptide helped explain the group to Nautica, and hurriedly informed the team he'd repaired the Rodpod as the Lost Light shook. slaughterhouse
After Nautica mentioned the Lost Light's quantum drums floating in space, Riptide suggested that the profession just involved placing the word 'quantum' before other words. Nautica responded with a badly-executed joke, prompting him to remark on her failed effort. He later ended Rewind's tale about the DJD's attack by noticing that the quantum foam outside of the ship was beginning to spread. The Road Not Taken
When Brainstorm set out to change history, Riptide joined a team who followed him back through time to prevent this. Their first stop was in Alyon just before the war, where they helped Orion Pax defend a hot spot from the Senate. All Our Parlous Yesterdays On their next stop further back in history, Riptide was assigned to patrol waterways in search of Brainstorm, but found nothing (and was very vocal about how boring it was). Moving on, the team was present at Maccadam's for the bar brawl that led to Megatron's fateful arrest, during which Riptide saved Impactor by throwing the time case at a guard trying to shoot him. Stet They finally reached Brainstorm at his true goal—preventing the war by killing Megatron early on—and convinced him to stand down. Before returning to their own time, the team sent a message to their future selves to try to prevent other tragedies, with Riptide's contribution being a warning not to trust Brainstorm, but it didn't arrive in time. Predestination: An Expert's Guide
Riptide then attended the Lost Light Internal Legal Affairs Committee's hearing to discuss what Brainstorm's punishment would be. When Brainstorm sarcastically asked who else had built a time machine, Riptide stood up with his hand raised before realising Brainstorm had said time machine. Our Steps Will Always Rhyme
During the "EarthDance" party held at Swerve's, Riptide questioned Ravage as to whether if he'd choose Megatron or Soundwave. The Frail Gaze He came along on the trip to the Necroworld, where he chatted with the Necrobot about his holographic flowers. The Not Knowing At some point, Riptide became a keyholder for Swerve, occasionally locking up the bar. Full Circle While visiting the Lost Light, Froid got Riptide to take him to Rung's office. Thanks, bro. Speak, Memory: Part 1
Sometime over the course of the journey, Riptide began to take Megatron's discussion classes; he was an enthusiastic if average student. He was also asked by Getaway if he'd join a hypothetical mutiny against Megatron and Rodimus, and answered yes. On the same day he was told Megatron was very impressed with the work he'd put into a history essay (he'd still failed but Megs would explain why later!), that mutiny kicked off. Megatron, Rodimus, and assumed sympathisers, including Riptide's friends like Nautica, were tricked off ship and when Getaway wanted to rub in how big the mutiny was in a broadcast, a somber Riptide stood with him. How Bright Their Frail Deeds
Afterwards, Getaway and his co-conspirators participated in a team meeting regarding the Warren. They were interrupted by the "last will" transmission broadcast by the exiled crew, particularly Rodimus's part, in which he revealed (to the alarm of everyone present) that the Decepticon Justice Division had been set on them. Getaway quickly wiped the transmission mid-playback and ushered everyone except Atomizer and Thunderclash out, but Riptide continued to lurk just beyond the door, where he witnessed Getaway and Atomizer assault Thunderclash and wipe his mind with a nudge gun. Riptide fled, but Getaway pursued and shot him with the nudge gun as well. Full Circle
Though temporarily rendered comatose, Riptide was in fact unaffected by the gun's memory-erasing effect due to his low intelligence. Getaway was unaware Riptide still had his memory of the incident, and assumed that he had been affected by Sunder's remote memory manipulation like the rest of the crew. Journey's End When the Protectobots returned and broke into Swerve's to discuss the crew's unusual behaviour, Riptide entered behind them and confessed the truth about the mutiny and Thunderclash's condition. When they were discovered by Getaway and a team of ship security, Riptide suckerpunched Powerflash and told the Protectobots to escape the Lost Light and contact Optimus Prime. Full Circle Riptide was subdued by Atomizer and brought before Getaway. Getaway taunted him with the fact that he'd never really been a part of the inner circle of those they'd abandoned, however Riptide claimed that Getaway was describing his own hurt. This bruised Getaway's ego, and so he took Riptide into the oil reservoir, primed his nudge gun to make Riptide forget how to transform and then shot him, leaving Riptide to fall into the scraplet-infested oil. Filling in the Blanks
Getaway waited thirty seconds for the scraplets to reduce Riptide to his life cord before leaving. But once again, the nudge gun failed to take: beneath the oil, Riptide had transformed into boat mode to evade the scraplets, and burst from the reservoir once he was alone. Lurking about the Lost Light, he observed Getaway force Atomizer to murder one of the Protectobots (having been captured before they could escape, and trapped in memory loops in the medibay alongside Thunderclash). When they left, Riptide woke First Aid from his memory loop. The medic deduced Riptide's immunity to nudge guns, made a plan to escape the ship, and helped Riptide wake everyone else. After a quick trip to the morgue to pick up Ambulon's corpse to serve as a replacement leg for Defensor, the group attacked the shuttle bay.
The shuttle bay was occupied by Getaway and his security team, having been there to greet the Lost Light's new head of security, but they were no match for Defensor... until Star Saber stepped off the shuttle. While Riptide struggled with Powerflash, Star Saber made quick work of Thunderclash and Defensor. The only survivors, Riptide and First Aid were left trying to drag the wounded Thunderclash aboard the shuttle in the face of the approaching Star Saber, and were only saved when Atomizer had a sudden change of heart and incapacitated Star Saber with the nudge gun. Thanks to this intervention, Riptide, First Aid, and Thunderclash were able to board and escape, finally leaving the Lost Light behind. Journey's End
First Aid got Thunderclash fixed up on Troja Major, and along the way Riptide picked up an A.S.O.S. from the long lost Dinobot commander Grimlock. They also made contact with the blacksmith Wipe-Out who had a Q-class ship. Following a tracker left on the Lost Light, they caught up at Mederi to find the crew had been turned into Sparkeaters and were menacing Rodimus and his unit. The groups teamed up, and Riptide helped First Aid, Ratchet, and the other doctors barricade themselves safely inside one of the medical facilities to look for a cure while Rodimus led a team to confront Getaway on the Lost Light itself. A Dance Before Dying First Aid was successful, and the Sparkeaters were reverted to normal. Lūstrāre Everyone regrouped aboard the retaken Lost Light, as Riptide loaded his injured comrades onto the ship. They were confronted by the sheer scale of the Grand Architect's schemes, a mysterious figure Getaway had thrown in with after discovering Cyberutopia was a sham. Riptide and the rest brought the Lost Light aboard the Architect's Worldsweeper as he continued to rend threadbare space with the God Gun. Farsickness
Riptide and most of the others were extracted from the Grand Architect's Worldsweeper by the exiled Megatron, who had returned from the Functionist Universe through the rift created by the God Gun. Brought aboard his ship, the Last Light, Riptide and the others now had to find a way to deal with Megatron's pursuers- the Functionist Council and their Cybertron, converted from planet form into a giant avatar of Primus. The Return of the King After returning to the Lost Light, Riptide mostly stood around on the bridge as various important revelations were made and plans were formulated. He inquired of the Magnificence why the Omega Guardians couldn't step in and handle Functionist Primus, but there were no easy answers forthcoming. The Unremembering A plan was hatched to defeat Functionist Primus and Riptide was assigned an important role in it. After Rung was revealed as the true Primus and capable of creating multiple Matrices, Riptide was of the few chosen as a potential wielder of one. He was dispatched to Alyon on Functionist Cybertron to open his Matrix and overload the hot spot there. Nickel and Fulcrum accompanied Riptide as his defenders as the Functionist Council threw all their forces at the Lost Lighters. At first Riptide, nor anyone, could open their respective Matrices but after a pep talk from Rodimus, he summoned the necessary will to accomplish his task. Ultimately, the Functionist Council was defeated and the day was saved. A Spark Among Embers
Riptide went along on the Lost Light 's final "lap of honor" and was quantum duplicated with the rest of the crew so that one version of them could go on further adventures in another universe. After returning to Cybertron, he attended the farewell party in Swerve's and reminisced on the Lost Light's journey over the "Matrix map" etched on Rodimus' desk.
Far in the future, Riptide attended Ratchet's funeral. How To Say Goodbye And Mean It: Part 2
2019 IDW continuity
Riptide attended an illegal skitter race at Swindle's. Swindle's
Notes
- Riptide's robot and vehicle modes were revealed by Alex Milne on Twitter on March 29, 2014.
- Milne partially based Riptide's color scheme on the clothing of the Water Tribe from television series Avatar: The Last Airbender.[1]
- James Roberts said the mutineers shown in "The Dying of the Light (1)" were deliberately "B-listers you know and like and trust" for impact, and singled Riptide out as someone chosen because he'd once been a 'main' guy.[2]
- More than Meets the Eye #31 gives him a vitreous-positive sparktype.
