Nitro Zeus

Nitro Zeus is a Decepticon from The Last Knight portion of the movie continuity family.

That reminds me, I gotta go break Shego out of jail after this!

Nitro Zeus (Nitro for short) comes across as little more than a loudmouthed, trash-talking, strutting, self-aggrandizing jerk. He is all of those things, but unfortunately for his enemies, he's got the strength and skill to back up his ego. Though his manner makes his seem like a rowdy brawler, Nitro is actually more the stalk-and-destroy type. He is a powerful, merciless hunter, using his vast arsenal and formidable tracking skills to locate and capture whatever targets Megatron demands.

Even off the battlefield, Nitro makes it his business to know everything he can about where you live and who you associate with, just in case. Ever since Nitro was taken prisoner by humans, he's been passing the time by tracking his captors' families. Fortunately, Nitro is such a braggart that he'll share all his intel before he gets a chance to use it.

Shockwave's death on Earth greatly angered him, and now both humanity and the Autobots are in Nitro's sights.^[1]

Fiction

The Last Knight film

Voice actor: John DiMaggio, Steven Barr (English, See Notes), Masafumi Kimura (Japanese), Zhang Yaohan (Chinese), Diouc Koma (European French), Sven Brieger (German), Metello Mori (Italian), Anderson Coutinho (Portuguese), Manuel Pérez (Latin-American Spanish), Ender Yiğit (Turkish)

I didn't make the cut for Pacific Rim.

Nitro Zeus was among the Decepticons in T.R.F.'s custody. When the T.R.F. opted to negotiate with Megatron and release some Decepticons to be part of his "crew" in exchange for hostages he had taken, Nitro Zeus was among his first choices. He was cleared for release, provided he stay within the county, and joined the Decepticons on their hunt for Cade Yeager. Before he left, Nitro Zeus thanked some of his former jailers, as well as making some either creepy or threatening comments about one's wife.

Though the Decepticons discovered Cade's location, he managed to evade them initially, angering the battle-starved Decepticon. He also seemed fond of sticking close to the smaller Mohawk. They followed Cade to an abandoned town, where they were met with some not-quite-unexpected resistance in the form of the Autobots Bumblebee, Drift, and Crosshairs. Unbeknownst to the Decepticons, Cade had also rigged the town with explosives, which damaged the cons. While many other Decepticons fell in the resulting chaos from the explosion and the arrival of Grimlock, Nitro Zeus was among the survivors who retreated upon Megatron's order. When Cade traveled to England, Nitro Zeus followed with Megatron and Barricade.

Shego! help me, HELP M...

Megatron soon, inevitably, betrayed T.R.F. and began working with Quintessa to destroy Earth and restore Cybertron. After a corrupted Optimus Prime broke free of Quintessa's control, Nitro Zeus was at Megatron's side when he took the staff from Prime, and personally mocked him for losing his chance to kill Unicron. He then made his way to Stonehenge with his leader and joined his comrades in watching as the two planets began colliding but eventually fled when they came under attack from the British military.

He then followed Megatron to Cybertron to meet with Quintessa and participated in the final battle with the Autobots. He joined his leader and Infernocus on the front lines but fell back when the Autobots broke through. Inside the ignition chamber, he fought fiercely alongside Megatron in taking on Optimus, Bumblebee, Hot Rod, and Hound. Unfortunately, despite holding his own during most of the battle (while losing his right leg in the process), as the control center plummeted to earth, he met his demise when Bumblebee clung to his back and blew his head off. The Last Knight

Toys

The Last Knight

I am hilarious and you will quote everything I say.

• Decepticon Nitro (Voyager Class, 2017)

• TakaraTomy ID number: TLK-25
• TakaraTomy release date: September 16, 2017
• Accessories: 2 rocket clusters, removable head
• Known designers: John Warden (Hasbro)

Part of the third wave of the "Premier Edition" The Last Knight Voyager Class assortment, Nitro transforms into a fighter jet relatively similar to an F-16 Fighting Falcon (as opposed to his movie model's Saab Gripen form). His head is connected to his body with a standard Titan Master plug/socket combo, allowing it to be removed and replaced with any Titan Master... and the Deluxe Cogman toy's Titan-Master-esque head-robot. Nitro's jet mode also features an opening cockpit in which a Titan Master can sit, although it cannot accommodate his disconnected head. It is not required to decapitate him to transform him, no matter what head is attached to the neck socket.

There are reports of his legs not tabbing/pegging in snugly in jet mode. This can be remedied by adjusting the screws in his back (under the wings) on whichever side's leg isn't fitting flush against the main body. Though sturdy, his shoulder pads and back turbines are also prone to popping off.

Nitro's head is based on concept art, and as a result is modified from the KSI Boss design (like the rest of his body), rather than using the modified Shockwave head of his finalized on-screen model. Curiously, his package art depicts him with an entirely unmodified KSI Boss head.

Along with Masterpiece Bumblebee, Nitro saw re-release in March 2018 in Japan. Nitro was redecoed and retooled into Studio Series Thundercracker and KSI Boss.

No, he does not come with a gold chain.

Notes

And I'm a Ghost. Or am I?

• Nitro Zeus's body model is reused from Age of Extinction's KSI Boss robots, with a heavily modified Shockwave head switched in. Just look at the head comparison on the right.
• Nitro Zeus is named after the code-name for a shelved cyberattack plan against Iran, which was presumably shortened to just "Nitro" by Hasbro for trademark or marketing reasons.
• "Nitro Zeus" is also the name of one of the two bullmastiff puppies Bay adopted during the production of The Last Knight, the other being named "Bumblebee". Amusingly, Nitro is the more shy and reserved of the pair.
  • Bay would go on to name his third Mastiff Nitro Zeus (his previous two, Mason and Bonecrusher, had passed away before The Last Knight was released in 2017). He showed up as himself in the 2019 film 6 Underground.
• Two versions of the film saw release, with altered dialogue for several robots. Nitro Zeus not only had alternate dialogue in his scenes (bar his last line, "You blew your chance to kill Unicron", which was absent in the alternate cut) but was voiced throughout the film by Steven Barr rather than John DiMaggio, leading to a completely different delivery of his lines. A mixture of DiMaggio and Barr's readings was used for the official digital release of the film. The Digital, DVD, and Blu-Ray releases credit both actors, while DiMaggio was the sole actor to provide the dialogue in the home video release.
• Like all toys from The Last Knight's toy line, Voyager Class Nitro was assigned two different working/code names during development, namely the figure-specific "TRA 23" and the character-specific "Gamma Beam Grey", which were used by several online retailers for early placeholder listings. However, the figure was also listed under the name "Bumblebee" (!) by both Amazon Spain and Toys"R"Us UK, causing people to assume a Voyager version of Bumblebee was in the works before a direct connection was drawn between the Hasbro product code number from the aforementioned Amazon Spain listing and the one tampographed onto the leg of a sample of the Nitro figure. Later, the Spanish version of the Hasbro website also listed Nitro as "Voyager Bumblebee", so it would appear the name for those aforementioned listings did indeed originate with Hasbro.
• Speaking of toys, the head-swapping gimmick Nitro and Cogman share is from a scripted, but ultimately unproduced, sequence in the movie where Cogman would rip off Nitro's head and commandeer his body, giving Cogman's distinction as a "Headmaster" some relevancy to the story.
• By unscrewing the head piece for his toy, it's revealed there are actually 4 smaller "eyes" in addition to his large one in the middle, and they're painted yellow just like it. However, none of these smaller "eyes" are visible, possibly hinting at an earlier design that went unused. Given their survival into the final product despite being covered up, it's possible this change was very last minute.
• According to his TRF prisoner dossier bio, Nitro's single eye doubles as a scope for his high-powered, shoulder-mounted machine gun turret. He also carries a vast array of weaponry too numerous for the TRF to catalog.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Nitro Zeus (ニトロ・ゼウス Nitoro Zeusu), Nitro (ニトロ Nitoro)
• Korean: Nitro Zeus (니트로 제우스 Niteulo Jeuseu)
• Mandarin: Dànqì Zeus (China, 氮气宙斯 Dànqì Zhòusī, "Nitrogen Zeus")

References

External links

• [1] Concept art for Nitro Zeus by Josh Nizzi on Instagram