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Bumblebee is the name of several fictional characters from the various Transformers universes.
Bumblebee (known as Bumble in Japan) is the "little brother" of the heroic Autobot faction, always striving to prove himself in the eyes of the taller, stronger robots that he respects - especially his leader, Optimus Prime. So strong is this admiration toward others, he takes risks that put him in danger. Although a bit of a wise-cracker, he is a capable and reliable messenger and spy, his small size allowing him to go places that his larger comrades cannot. He is highly fuel efficient, has great visual acuity, is particularly adaptable to undersea environments and transforms into a Volkswagen Beetle. He was later reconstructed in a stronger, more mature form as Goldbug.
Bumblebee is established as the smallest of the first year Autobots, but his actual size varies greatly in the various media, ranging from the same size as other Autobot cars to barely taller than a human. His only official height was in an early issue of the Marvel comics where it is stated he is 15 feet tall.
Bumblebee's primary function in the original Transformers animated series and comics was to serve as the "young" character with whom the youthful viewing audience could know, and he would befriend the Autobots' primary human ally - the young son of the Witwicky family (Buster in the Marvel comic - see issue #1 - and Spike in the cartoon) - to this end, a concept that persists into the 2007 live-action film. Although a well-known character because of this, Bumblebee is quite unusual in that, unlike many other Transformers, his name has not been re-used and applied to unrelated characters throughout the ensuing twenty years of Transformers media, due to the loss of the trademark until recently. His role as the "young yellow character", however, has inspired other Transformers characters with the same role such as Cheetor and Hot Shot.
Bumblebee Transformers: Beginnings
Optimus Prime entrusted Bumblebee with the secret that the AllSpark would be sent into deep space to prevent Lord Megatron from possessing and corrupting it. Just after the launch, Megatron attacked Bumblebee in rage at losing the AllSpark and shattered the Autobot's voice capacitor beyond repair.
Bumblebee arrived on Earth and, sensing the AllSpark was near, took on local camouflage to search for the artifact. He immediately attracted the attention of Sector Seven agents and the Decepticons.
Transformers (2007) film
Bumblebee is one of Optimus Prime's most trusted lieutenants. Although he is not the strongest or most powerful of the Autobots, Bumblebee more than makes up for this with a bottomless well of luck, determination and bravery. He would gladly give his life to protect others and stop the Decepticons.
Badly damaged in battle, Bumblebee lost the ability to speak verbally, though he can still communicate over inter-Autobot frequencies (in a fashion that seems somewhat akin to instant messaging, a usable but more distant and less personal means of interaction).
 Bumblebee, having made his way to a second-rate car dealership, became Sam Witwicky's first car. Sam's father promised his son a car if Sam paid half of the money and achieved three A's in school. After doing so with the help of his genealogy project, Sam rode with his father to a car lot with an exceedingly long name. Following them to the lot, Bumblebee quietly placed himself among the other cars. To prevent Sam from having to choose another car, he used a high-frequency sound wave to blow out the windows of every other car in the lot, leaving Bobby Bolivia with no choice but to sell Bumblebee to the Witwickys.
Bumblebee is an Autobot from the 2007 movie franchise in the live-action film continuity family. He is also known as N.B.E.-02.
Bumblebee – The new Animated Series
Bumblebee is the youngest, yellowest, and most energetic of the Autobots...as usual. A hyperactive wisecracker, Bumblebee is quite convinced he's the fastest—and coolest—thing on four wheels. He has a tendency to bite off more than he can chew, so it's a good thing he pals around with the massive Bulkhead. He does not take well to being called short, and his over-eager ways can get on Ratchet's nerves all too easily. Still, Bumblebee is good people, as evidenced by his fast friendship with Sari Sumdac.
“ I may be small, but I'm scrappy! And I can ride circles around your big, old, rusty chassis! ”
—Bumblebee to Bulkhead, "Total Meltdown
Marvel Comics
 When the Autobots and Decepticon awakened on Earth in 1984, Bumblebee was part of the first team of Autobots sent out to investigate the planet. Eager to be the first to encounter a local life-form, Bumblebee unfortunately got his wish when he was injured in a battle with the Decepticons at a drive-in movie theater, and - stuck in car mode - was found by the young human, Buster Witwicky. Buster took him back to his family's automotive garage, where his father Sparkplug repaired the car, and was shocked when it transformed into a robot. Bumblebee arranged their first meeting with Optimus Prime, and his role as a "liaison" of sorts between the Autobots and humans continued as he participated in the first meetings with millionaire industrialist G. B. Blackrock, eventually leading to a deal between them that saw Blackrock supply the robots with fuel.
After some smaller roles showing new Autobot recruits around and searching for Decepticon activity, Bumblebee took the spotlight again when he came to question his usefulness to the Autobots, and abandoned them without explanation. Unfortunately, this occurred just as Decepticon leader Shockwave had targeted Bumblebee as the weakest link in the Autobots, planning to mind-control him and use him against his comrades. Taking refuge from Decepticon pursuit in a used car lot, Bumblebee was subsequently stolen by two teenagers, who took him on a joyride through the city. This attracted the attention of both Autobots and Decepticons, and after saving the teens from a Decepticon attack, Bumblebee himself was saved from them by the Autobots, convincing him of his worth to them.
When Bumblebee was assigned to watch over the launch of the mobile Power Station Alpha, also guarded by the daring special mission force G.I. Joe, a Decepticon attack prompted him to transform in order to save a civilian boy, only for the Joes to mistake him for a Decepticon and open fire, destroying him. Learning of their mistake and allying with the Autobots, the Joes set about trying to rebuild Bumblebee; with the aid of Autobot medic Ratchet, Bumblebee was reconstructed as Goldbug.
Charged with hunting down the petty criminal known as the Mechanic, who had stolen some Autobot equipment, Goldbug and Blaster opted instead to remove themselves from the tyrannical command of then-leader Grimlock. A run in with the Decepticon Triple Changers led to both robots becoming infected with the metal-eating disease known as the Scraplets, but with the help of human Charlie Fong and the Autobot Throttlebots, a cure was found in the form of water, and they were saved. Their respite was short-lived, however, when the group, low on fuel, was caught up to by the Protectobots, under Grimlock's command, and Blaster was captured. The abandoned, immobile Throttlebots, including Goldbug, were then captured by the government-sponsored Rapid Anti-robot Assault Team (RAAT), who intended their destruction. Sympathetic to their plight, RAAT operate Walter Barnett removed their brain components and installed them in toy cars while their bodies were destroyed.
After managing to escape the Predacons, Goldbug returned to the Autobots' volcano base, only to discover that the Ark had been restored and had blasted off. Blindsided by Decepticon leader Ratbat, Goldbug's toy body was blasted, but soon found by the Autobot Headmasters - freshly arrived from the planet Nebulos - who used their technology to construct his body for him again. The group soon learned that the brain patterns of Optimus Prime (who had died sometime before) had been preserved on computer disk by a human named Ethan Zachary, and Goldbug took the disk to Nebulos, where Prime was restored to life as a Powermaster.
Goldbug was seen among the Autobots being repaired on the Ark when Optimus Prime sent Landmine and Cloudburst on their mission to obtain computer chips to repair fellow Autobots in issue #52, "Guess Who The Mechannibals Are Having For Dinner?"
Subsequently, Goldbug was among the Transformers who was deactivated while defending the Earth against the cosmically-powered Starscream. Bumblebee's body was seen among the deactivated Autobots Ratchet was doing his best to revive in Transformers #56, "Back from the Dead". While Ratchet diligently worked to restore the deactivated Autobots to life, his attempts always met with failure. In the midst of his work, he was captured by believed-dead Decepticon leader Megatron, who demanded he rebuild Starscream as a Pretender. Ratchet succeeded in this task, but while Megatron left him unattended to observe Starscream's attack on Earth, he was able to use the prototype Pretender shells to restore to life Grimlock, Jazz and Goldbug, who he restored to being Bumblebee out of personal preference.
During a battle with the Decepticon Mayhem Attack Squad, Bumblebee, Jazz and Grimlock were transported to the center of Cybertron, where they discovered the slumbering form of their creator and deity, Primus. The battle that followed caused Primus to briefly awake with a scream, alerting his ancient enemy Unicron to his location. Aware that Unicron was now bearing down on Cybertron, the Autobots began a search for the Creation Matrix, the only force capable of stopping the chaos-bringer. Bumblebee, Jazz and Grimlock followed a lead to VsQz, third moon of the planet Cameron, where they ran afoul of both a monstrous creature created by the corrupted Matrix energy, and the mighty Decepticon Pretender, Thunderwing, who defeated them and claimed the Matrix for his own. They were later rescued by their fellow troops, and Thunderwing was defeated.
Bumblebee put in one further appearance in the U.S. Marvel comics. In a nightmare alternate universe where Unicron had destroyed Cybertron, and Galvatron and the Decepticons ruled Earth, Bumblebee was shown in flashback as one of the casualties of the Decepticon conquest, being killed by Scourge.
In the expanded universe of the Transformers comic published exclusively in the U.K., which reprinted the American series with new stories spliced in between, Bumblebee had a lead role in several other stories. In one, he went AWOL to track down and capture Ravage, in the process running into a Decepticon trap and needing rescuing. Later on, he was part of the Dinobot Hunt; on his own, he rescued three Autobot prisoners and disabled the Decepticon's means of mentally controlling Sludge.
As the U.K. series did not reprint G.I. Joe and the Transformers (in which the above account of Bumblebee's transformation into Goldbug occurred) until much later, a new story was penned that reimagined the change in a very different way, as part of the U.K.'s larger running time travel storyline. When the deranged future Decepticon leader Galvatron travelled back in time to 1987, the bounty hunter Death's Head pursued him. The mass-shifting inherent in the time-travel process caused the Autobot First Aid to be displaced to limbo when Death's Head arrived, which alerted Bumblebee to his presence. Wanting to keep the fact that he was in the past a secret, Death's Head blasted Bumblebee, completely destroying him, but his remains were soon happened upon by the Junkion, Wreck-Gar, also from the future. Putting his advanced mechanical skills to work, Wreck-Gar soon rebuilt Bumblebee as Goldbug and the upgraded Autobot joined in the battle against Galvatron, at one point facing him one-on-one (and losing) before Ultra Magnus intervened. Goldbug had a few additional adventures dealing with Galvatron's threat in other U.K.-exclusive stories.
After the time-and-space-shattering events of the Time Wars, the U.K. comic introduced an alternate timeline that chronicled the adventures of the Autobot Earthforce, a group of pro-active Autobots under Grimlock's command, who were dedicated to safeguarding Earth while Optimus Prime's contingent dealt with the threat of Unicron. Bumblebee was a member of the Earthforce, performing such notable missions as helping Ironhide stop the Decepticons' plan to rebuild Devastator as an individual being.
Generation 1 - Animated series
 Bumblebee holds the distinction of being the second-ever character to appear on-screen in the original Transformers animated series, while on a mission to recover a small clutch of energy conductors with Wheeljack, illustrating the energy crisis holding sway over their home planet of Cybertron. Bumblebee was subsequently among the Transformers aboard the Ark as it set off searching for new worlds and new energy sources, which crashed on Earth, causing the Transformers within to be trapped in stasis for four million years. Awakening in 1984, Bumblebee distinguished himself by helping Ironhide quell a raging river and using his small size to help Sparkplug Witwicky plant explosives in the midst of a Decepticon mining operation. He later befriended Sparkplug's son Spike, but their first adventure together was not a pleasant one, as they were both kidnapped by the Decepticons, and Bumblebee was brainwashed into luring the other Autobots into a trap.
As a regular character throughout the show's first two seasons, spanning 1984-1985, Bumblebee's escapades were almost always carried out alongside Spike. His adventures have taken him back to Cybertron, to the prehistoric Dinobot Island, the sunken city of Sub-Atlantica, a world of alien giants, a debaucherous gambling asteroid locale and more. He has been scorched by acid rain, fought as a mindless gladiator, been mauled by a monstrous alien cat, quested for "robotic insecticide" and, in one of his most significant roles, was one of the few Autobots to survive a brainwashing scheme by the Decepticons, leaving it up to him to save his comrades.
In the episode 51, "Prime Target" the big game hunter Lord Cholmondeley captured a secret Soviet jet, leading to panic of possible war. Cholmondeley then set his sights on the ultimate trophy, the head of Optimus Prime. In order to lure Optimus in Cholmondeley captured Bumblebee and several other Autobots. Optimus Prime accepted Cholmondeley's challenge and defeated the big game hunter and freed the Autobots.
In the episode 59, "Trans-Europe Express" a charity auto race from Paris France to Istanbul Turkey was held. The Autobots Bluestreak, Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Smokescreen, Sunstreaker, Tracks and Wheeljack participated alongside several human racers including Augie Canay. Meanwhile Megatron had been able to discover the whereabouts of the Pearl of Bahudine, the power core of a Cybertronian weather control machine. Megatron had the Stunticons eliminate the Autobots from the race while stealing Augie's car to use its experimental engine's metal to make a control device for the pearl. Bluestreak, Tracks, Bumblebee and Augie were able to stop the Decepticons by unleashing the power of the pearl, but to stop the pearl Bumblebee had to destroy it. Augie had the gold shell of the pearl sold and the money given to charity when he learned the race was a fake set up by the Decepticons merely to get his car.
By the time of The Transformers: The Movie, set in the Earth year 2005, the Autobots had been forced off of Cybertron, and Bumblebee and Spike manned Moonbase Two on one of the planet's satellites as the Autobots prepared a strike to take back the planet. The attack was scuppered by the sudden appearance of the giant planet-eating robot Unicron, who consumed Moonbase One as Spike and Bumblebee looked on in horror. As Unicron turned on their moon, the pair set a cache of explosives to detonate in his maw and abandoned the base in a small shuttle, but the detonation failed to even scratch the chaos-bringer and he inhaled their ship. Deep in his digestive system, the pair were trapped on a conveyor that would drop them in an acid vat, but they were saved by Spike's son Daniel, and they and the other Autobots escaped Unicron's body as it was destroyed through the power of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership.
Bumblebee was one of the few characters from the beginning of the series to continue appearing in the show's third season, set in 2006, where he could regularly be found performing duties in Autobot City on Earth. He and Spike were reunited for an old-school adventure when the ghost of Starscream invaded the city in order to steal the eyes of the giant Autobot Metroplex, but they were unable to stop the villain from accomplishing his task.
When the body of the deceased Optimus Prime was recovered from space by a pair of Transformer-hating human scientists who intended to use it to lure the Autobots into a trap, Bumblebee was part of the rescue team lead by Rodimus Prime to recover it. Entering the lab, some of the Transformers were exposed to rage-inducing alien spores that caused them to run wild, and although Bumblebee avoided infection, he was seriously damaged by the rampaging Superion. A member of the alien race called the Quintessons subsequently repaired and restored Optimus Prime to life in order to stop the "Hate Plague", and also worked his technical wizardry on Bumblebee. The little Autobot had been so severely damaged, however, that he required an entire reconstruction. In his new, shiny body, he commented that he had gone beyond just being Bumblebee, and was now a "gold bug", prompting Optimus Prime to redub him "Goldbug." As Goldbug, Bumblebee traveled with Optimus Prime to the planet of Chaar in order to secure a heat resistant alloy that could protect him from the plague, only to be infected on the mission and later cured when Prime used the power of the Matrix to purge the plague.
Goldbug also enjoyed a brief appearance in the fourth and final season of the series, defending Autobot City and Cybertron against a massive Decepticon attack. Because of a scene showing Bumblebee instead of Goldbug, it still makes him one of only nine characters to appear in all four seasons of the show.
After the animated series ended in the U.S. Bumblebee appeared in animated form in the commercial for the Classic Pretenders.
Bumblebee made a cameo in the pilot of the Transformers: Animated series on a historical video being viewed by Optimus Prime. This historical video was stock footage from the original animated series.
He made several further appearances in the Japanese-exclusive series, Transformers: The Headmasters, which supplanted the fourth American series, and appeared to die while attempting to stop a metal-warping meteor from crashing into Cybertron, only to turn up alive and healthy later on in the series. The role of a young human and small Autobot friend in this series was taken over by Daniel and Wheelie.
IDW Publishing
Fall of 2005 was the third re-launch for The Transformers comic series, this time under the management of IDW Publishing.
IDW's core universe was introduced with the six-issue mini-series, The Transformers: Infiltration, making it clear that the company's take on the Generation 1 universe was radically different. Bumblebee appears as a member of a small team of Autobots under the command of Prowl, operating in secret on Earth out of Ark-19. Still a Volkswagen Beetle, he (like the other Autobots) possesses the added ability to generate a "holo-matter" avatar of a young female to masquerade as a driver and to otherwise interact with humans. Working with Ratchet and a trio of young humans to search an abandoned Decepticon base, Bumblebee was able to take down Skywarp during a Decepticon attack, outthinking the Decepticon and shooting him out of the sky despite his teleportation system. After Blitzwing and Skywarp brought the base down, Bumblebee helped save the humans, despite commenting previously that they would be acceptable losses. As Megatron then engaged the traitorous Starscream in battle, Bumblebee did what he does best by spying on the fight; almost shot by the Battlechargers, he was saved by Prowl and Jazz. In the follow-up The Transformers: Escalation, he is left to run the Ark-19 on his own.
Transformers: Evolutions
IDW has also begun publishing of The Transformers: Evolutions, a series dedicated to featuring alternate-reality "Elseworlds"-style tales of the Transformers. The first installment, Hearts of Steel, placed the Transformers in battle on Earth prior to the Ice Age with the forms of transmetal prehistoric beasts. The Ice Age forced them to enter hibernation beneath the surface of the planet when it begins. In the 1800s, Bumblebee was awakened when a pounding from above showers dirt on him. Expecting Decepticon activity, he was surprised to find that the source was humans building a railway. Curious about their train, he is almost caught by the humans, but hides by adopting the train's form as his alternate mode. Among the humans is the legendary John Henry, who is concerned that the train - a spike-driving device designed to lay railroad - is intended to replace him, and to placate his concerns, Bumblebee reveals his true form to him with the promise that he is only here to help. Through John Henry, Bumblebee learns that the Decepticons have reactivated and are pillaging trains as part of their newest plan. This scheme which is to travel to New York and obtain an electrical generator in hopes it will make them all powerful. After awakening some of his fellow Autobots, Henry and Bumblebee manage to thwart the Decepticons' plans, rerouting the railtrack they are using, causing the Decepticon train convoy to plunge into a chasm. After this Bumblebee and the other Autobots return to stasis.
Other appearances
A parody of the Generation 1 Transformers was aired in the December 23rd 2008 episode of Frank TV, called "Frank the Halls." In the story Optimus Prime and his Autobots (Bumblebee, Jazz and Wheeljack) battle Megatron and his Decepticons (Soundwave and Starscream) when Optimus runs out of gas. Optimus becomes enraged at the price of gas, steals the fuel from the annoying hybrid Autobot Prius Maximus, then joins the Decepticons in destroying the city. Bumblebee appears in the Robot Chicken episode "Junk in the Trunk." In the segment he's in, he is whipped by a towel used by Grimlock in the locker room and later appears at Optimus' bedside before he dies of prostate cancer.
Maggie Simpson appeared as Bumblebee in one opening sequence to the Simpsons alongside the rest of the Simpson Family rendered as Autobots.
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