The appearance of the Matrix in the Generation 1 animated series originated with early script drafts of The Transformers: The Movie, which introduced the idea of "Life Sparks", very similar to the sparks that would later be introduced with Beast Wars. The Matrix was not present in the earliest known incarnation of the movie; instead, upon his death, Optimus Prime transferred his own Life Spark to Ultra Magnus, with the implication that this was standard practise among Autobot leaders. This idea was eventually discarded, replaced with a physical object known as the "Matrix of Leadership", which evidently derived its name from the Creation Matrix of the comic book. The episode "Cosmic Rust" attempted to introduce the concept of the Matrix to the animated universe before the movie, but the dialogue containing the reference was deleted during production. The line, which dated the creation of the Matrix to 4.5 million years ago, would ultimately have conflicted greatly with what would be learned of the Matrix in the future.