Sideways is a gleeful troublemaker, for whom chaos is its own reward. His every action misleads and deceives, be it for his own twisted amusement, or for whatever deeper agenda he may be working towards. In truth, this cunning and deadly warrior is an agent of the chaos-bringer, Unicron, and is charged with the task of appearing as both Autobot and Decepticon in order to cause confusion amongst both factions and prevent them from allying together against his planet-eating master.
Sideways (known as Doubleface in Japan) made his enigmatic debut when he arrived on Earth near the Autobots' base, taking the form of an Earthly motorcycle. Aiding the Autobots in battle against the Decepticons and allowing them to acquire a recently-discovered Mini-Con, Sideways joined their side, offering no information on himself other than being a "drifter." It seemed that his true colors were revealed, however, when he lured the youthful Autobot Hot Shot to the Decepticons' moonbase and betrayed him, allowing the powerful Mini-Con weapon, the Star Saber, to be claimed by the villains. Switching heads, Sideways adopted the Decepticon insignia, professing to have been on their side all along.
The mystery of Sideways began to grow when he duped Starscream into fighting Megatron, and started to interfere in battles from a distance. His goal was always to confuse, and his actions saw the balance of power in the war constantly shift back and forth as he caused the Mini-Con weapons to change hands over and over. When he tried to infiltrate the Autobot base by moving through cyberspace, interference from the Autobots' human allies stopped him, but also saw their minds pulled into cyberspace along with him. Failing to capture the kids' partner Mini-Cons, Sideways suddenly froze with horror when he realised that his master was coming, and pleaded with the children not to tell him that he had failed. The kids returned to their bodies, but not before catching a glimpse of Sideways' mysterious master - the planet-sized Transformer, Unicron.
Eventually, his manipulations were uncovered by the Decepticons, who tracked him to a cave on the moon where he was caught reporting in to Unicron. Attacked by Megatron wielding the Star Saber, Sideways revealed the true extent of his Unicron-given power as his body was slashed to pieces and reformed before the Decepticons' very eyes before departing to carrying out his work by other means. But, even with his true allegiance exposed, his methods remained much the same, as he contacted the Autobots and made them aware of the existence of the third and final Mini-Con weapon, the Requiem Blaster.
Convincing the disgruntled Decepticon tactician Thrust to side with him, Sideways orchestrated the betrayal of Starscream, who joined the Autobots out of sheer hatred for Megatron, but was then convinced to return, bringing with him all the Mini-Con weapons, which were now united in Decepticon hands. Brought to Cybertron, they were then stolen by Thrust, who brought them to Sideways. Sideways took the weapons to Cybertron's moon - in reality, a disguised, deactivated Unicron - where they reactiated the chaos-bringer. As Unicron attacked Cybertron and the armada of Transformers assembled against him, Sideways served as an avatar for the dark god, allowing him to communicate directly with Optimus Prime, within his body. Once again, however, with the aid of the human allies, the Mini-Cons broke free of Unicron's control, deactivating him, and Optimus Prime destroyed Sideways with the Requiem Blaster. |
