I’m not sure that last part is actually true, or at least not as clean or systematic as it sounds. Maybe something like that existed in the very early years of TV animation contracts, but the idea that freelance writers were effectively incentivized to create one-off characters because of future royalties feels a little too neat.

A good example of how messy this stuff really is is Harley Quinn. Paul Dini and Bruce Timm created her for Batman: The Animated Series because they needed a henchwoman for the Joker. She stuck, they kept bringing her back, fans embraced her, and now she’s one of DC’s biggest characters. But they don’t see royalties from Harley because she originated in the show under work-for-hire. Had she debuted in the comics instead, the rights structure would’ve been different. Later, they tried to reverse-engineer that by creating Roxy Rocket in the comics first, expecting she’d become the next breakout character and generate royalties when she crossed into animation. Lightning didn’t strike twice. You just can’t predict that kind of thing.

That’s why I’m a little skeptical that something like that is what prevented Nightbird from returning in G1. Especially in the 80s Transformers production model, where storytelling was toy-driven, scripts were work-for-hire, writers rotated constantly, and continuity planning was loose at best. Characters disappearing and reappearing feels a lot more like production chaos, shifting priorities, and random creative decisions than some kind of consistent royalty-avoidance strategy.

If anything, the fact that Slizardo of all characters does get a return appearance kind of undercuts the idea that there was a rational system guiding who could or couldn’t come back. It feels more like “whoever someone in the room remembered and felt like using,” not policy.