Alien



An alien, in the broadest sense, is someone or something not native to where they currently are. In the common sense of most fiction, though, it means anything originating from an extraterrestrial source.

For example, a tiny, inferior, squishy creature may consider a giant, talking robot to be an alien, while at precisely the same time the robot could find the fleshling to be the alien.

Contrary to Hollywood, not all aliens have long heads and mouths on their tongues. Although some will scare the ever-loving crap out of you anyway.

In many Transformers continuities, in addition to humans and Cybertronians, there are both organic aliens and robotic aliens. Many of the organic ones look very human, and an awful lot of the robotic ones have the ability to transform like Cybertronians. The extent to which these similarities are coincidence varies from species to species, when it's explained at all.