How many transformers characters are there? (2024)

The fact that the Armada profile books gave Thundercracker his own profile and Starscream himself says in the cartoon that he looks like Thundercracker after his upgrade.
Then IDW and the Collector's Club, even Hasbro have retroactively made repaints originally meant to be the same character new characters.
G2 Sideswipe was made a clone in the Selects line while IDW showed him as a protoform Arcee named after the original.
The Collector's Club made most of the Machine Wars cast clones of their G1 selves.
See Also
Sunstorm (Transformers)List of Transformers: Prime characters Knock Out (Prime) - Transformers Wiki
Idw also retroactively made Actionmaster Thundercracker and one of the G2 Seekers, I forget which one, separate entities to G1 Thundercracker and Starscream or Ramjet.
Collector's Club also made an early piece of Seeker art Nacelle and Hasbro are giving us G2 Sandstorm based on an unused colour scheme for Ramjet.
IDW Beast Wars made the Japanese and US releases of Beast Wars figures separate characters despite being identical such as Apache and B'Boom.
Even Transformers 84 has shown us a yellow Hook on Cybertron suggesting the G2 repaints of the Constructicons could be seperate entities to the G1 versions who were built on Earth.
Can Galvatron 1 and 2 be considered seperate characters?
The black Japanese repaint of Hot Rod was a clone. Is Titanium Menasor the same character as Rodimus Unicronus?
The Japanese Manga showed there were two Overlords who could combine.
Powermaster Prime can be considered a separate individual to the original Optimus in the Marvel comic and in Masterforce where he's named Ginrai.
I believe Skyfire and Jetfire could also pass as seperate entities.
CW Ultra Magnus being Minimus Ambus in disguise can be considered separate to G1 or Siege Ultra Magnus.
Then there's official repurposes where toys represent more than one character.
Movie Wreckage was repurposed as G1 Reckage.
Armada Predacon was repurposed as G1 Preditron.
Protoform Optimus Prime was repurposed as Prima.
Personally I would consider every one of the above examples as separate characters since they all come from official sources and I'm always happy to expand the G1 cast but not everyone will agree.
It wasn't the plasma baths that turned Galvatron crazy. He was trying to answer this question. He reasoned that if he killed everyone, he wouldn't have to count them.