Curate, connect, and discover
Hear me out, a rodimus who believes that hot rod is dead (he doesn't wanna believe that he is hot rod).
Whenever he talks about his past before becoming rodimus, instead of saying "I did" he says "so hot rod...". And nobody knows why he talks like he isn't hot rod.
They don't understand until Megatron gets so annoyed by that, that he starts demending rodimus to stop talking like he isn't hot rod.
And rodimus just looks him, dead in the optics, and says: "But I am not hot rod, I am rodimus. Hot rod is dead. Don't you remember Megatron? You were the one who killed him after all, weren't you?"
And after he says it there is just silence. Because nobody knows how to react or what to say.
Nobody knows how to react to finding out that too become a prime, their captain literally died (I like to believe that rodimus doesn't like to talk about how he became a prime). That he died at the servos of the mech who became his co-captaim years later.
Or that he believes that who he was before is still dead. and not even the matrix can bring him back.