Headcanon: The Bayverse movies are a shared dreamscape for cybertronians in other continuities. It came into being when earth became suddenly important in the great Civil War, as Cybertronians tried to cope with the new paradigm where tiny flesh creatures gained great importance in their conflict. It’s only one of many dreamscapes, but those who have fought on earth tend to gravitate toward it in their sleep.
Think about it, in the movies, the characters are disjointed, their personalities shift from movie to movie (sometimes scene to scene). Motivations are unclear and/or simplified. Why does Optimus care about the humans? Ask him that and he spouts some vague rhetoric that is never really established in the movies. The humans treat the robots like either pets or villains and are generally unbelievable assholes to them. Megatron just does things because grrr!. It’s clear that he’s very emotional and passionate about beating the hell out of Optimus, but his motives are never well established either. But it makes perfect sense if that whole world is a collective dream, the bots would be taking their motivations, hangups and grudges with them when they go into recharge and find themselves suddenly a part of this disjointed narrative.
So many scenes in these movies seem like a collections of Nightmares that characters might tell Rung during a session:
Ravage: It was stormy, the ocean was choppy. I think I was on the top of a human ship..A submarine. I opened a hatch and regurgitated ball bearings into their bridge and it turned into another another cybertronian.
Ironhide: I was standing in the human’s private outdoor space, everyone was there. A tiny creature, a dog? I could barely see it. The thing drained it’s tank on my foot. I got angry but Optimus wouldn’t let me squish it, I had to stand there and do nothing.
Bee: I was in my alt mode in some kind of park, these two humans were making out on my hood and It made me feel warm and happy?
Megatron: -then I realized that I wasn’t really in charge, I was serving a master. I doing all the work for millennia long quest to destroy earth’s sun and he didn’t lift a finger to help. This made sense to me at the time, I was content to be a tool as long as I won in the end.
Optimus: -We were destroying the city but that did no matter. I could hear the humans dying but all I cared about was finishing him once and for all.
Bots whose consciousness goes into the dreams during recharge tend to be incidental characters in the dreamscape, but those who are in comas/unconscious/dead-but-not-really become more important because they are their for long periods of time. Sometimes pivotal characters like Optimus and Megatron are phantoms of what the dreaming bots believe they should be rather then the dreaming consciousness of those characters.
Honestly, these movies make so much more sense as a shared dream. Death has so little weight that you can picture the poor bot who died horribly waking up in the equivalent of a cold sweat on their recharge slab or after being knocked out in battle.
Cybertronian Database 