so by now we've probably already seen the theory which proposes that bulkhead was a captured decepticon warframe who was reformatted into the bot we all know and love today. i really like that theory, don't get me wrong. but i thought of something that might be a bit more in line with the events in the show.
we know from the jetfire/jetstorm plotline that the autobots aren't above capturing decepticons and trying to recreate their technology to the autobot advantage.
what if bulkhead wasn't a captured decepticon, but instead, a failed attempt to create an autobot warframe?
first off, bulkhead's frame is wildly different from the rest of the autobots. a lot of them come from similar protoforms, but afaik, we never see any autobots quite like bulkhead.
but you know who does have a frame like bulkhead?
bulkhead has lugnut's massive forearms, smaller head, underbite, smaller legs proportional to body size, fist weapons (bulkhead with his wrecking ball, lugnut with his punch of kill everything), and even some of his green coloration. but the biggest takeaway, pun intended, is that both of them are huge. even with how variable tfa scale sometimes gets, bulkhead is always the biggest autobot around, save for omega supreme.
i personally believe that lugnut was captured by the autobots and experimented on in the same way starscream was, only to be freed by the other decepticons (or himself). however, lugnut's coding was still applied to an autobot protoform, in the hopes that they'd have a giant of their very own.
the thing is, bulkhead has always said he was from an energon farm. so why would this be if he was actually an experiment?
it all comes down to loyalty. the reason jetfire and jetstorm, despite their recklessness and tendency to goof off, are still part of the elite guard is because of their undying loyalty to sentinel. the thing is, they were already fully formed bots when they were experimented on, and they were already loyal to the cause.
bulkhead, on the other hand, has always been more of a free spirit. sure, he's a team player, but he's always at his happiest when he's doing his own thing. painting, practicing music, studying space bridges, fighting in his own style; when it comes down to it, bulkhead knows what he does best, and after the prowl episode, he's not gonna let anyone convince him to act however they want him to.
not to mention, apart from being pretty independent, bulkhead is crazy smart. when he applies himself, he's easily the most book smart of the space bridge team. if even megatron acknowledges your expertise behind closed doors, you're doing something right. that level of intelligence isn't something the autobots want in a big, dumb, completely loyal warframe.
i personally think bulkhead was rejected because he was never fully loyal to the autobots training him and too smart to be properly controlled. he's always loyal to 1.) his friends and 2.) who he is deep down. so, he had his memory wiped (which can happen, we've seen it with arcee) and was sent to a backwater energon farm, just a failure to be swept under the rug.
but we all know how that turned out.
tl;dr, bulkhead was an autobot experiment to create a warframe using lugnut's coding, but his surprising intelligence and true to himself nature made him incompatible with being used as a weapon.
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