Where have you gone, Mikaela Banes? With news surfacing that Megan Fox’s option was not picked up for the third installment of the highly successful and highly loud Transformers series, legions of fans everywhere are demanding answers. Depending on what you read, Fox’s ousting may be attributed to anything from Fox referring to director Michael Bay as Hitler to the filmmaker’s desire for a new love interest for Shia LaBeouf’s character, Sam Witwicky. Heck, just today, Fox claimed the whole thing was her idea in the first place.

Any of those seem like plausible explanations for the starlet’s exit. Well, except that last one. Make no mistake about it, Megan Fox was given the heave-ho off this picture and the crack investigative team at here at Reelloop is determined to cut through the studio red tape to find the truth. It is with that dogged attention to detail in mind that we present to you the ten likeliest reasons that we now live in a Fox-less Transformers existence.

10. Megan Fox has a janky thumb

A quick Google image search of “Megan Fox Thumb” unleashes a cache of scarring, cannot-be-unseen images of Fox’s completely jacked up right thumb. Basically, it looks like a toe. There are several reasons that this may have contributed to her firing, and “making the crew throw up and convulse” would almost certainly be chief among them. It’s very likely that the thumb was something that Bay, LaBeouf and the rest of the gang were just able to overlook for the production of the first two films, but, I mean, look at that thing. You can only look away from the Devil for so long before he turns you to stone. Yep, you read that right. Megan Fox’s thumb is equal parts Satan and Medusa.

9. Megan Fox is covered in some expensive sheen

If you saw the first two Transformers films, congratulations, you’re like everyone else in the world. You also probably thought “That Megan Fox girl is sort of pretty, but why is she shimmering so?” The reason for that is that Megan Fox must always be over-moisturized at all times, for fear of shriveling up and dying like a slug on hot August pavement. Truckloads over patented FoxSlime were brought in over the course of two productions and the studio decided it could no longer incur such costs. There is no official word on whether or not the substance was incredibly sticky or incredibly slick, but I imagine either one would make shooting tireless action scenes very difficult. Which leads us to…

8. Megan Fox’s personal hygiene was becoming a problem

I’ve never met Megan Fox. But I’d be willing to bet my next Reelloop paycheck (and believe me, it’s hefty) that she doesn’t smell too great. Like all the items on this list, this is pure conjecture on my part, but she strikes me as the type of girl who probably smells like the inside of a Forever 21 store, if the Forever 21 store was the subject of an attack by an army of shit-hurling chimpanzees. Also, that aforementioned body grease was child’s play compared to the veritable nuclear waste plant that Fox poured into her hair every day before shooting commenced. Or, so I read.

7. Megan Fox has a thing about tattoos

So, Megan Fox is sporting a ton of really obnoxious ink. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that, like most people with tattoos, she simply would not shut up about them. Furthermore, it is very likely that she insisted the cast and crew all get matching tattoos to commemorate this momentous film making experience in which they were all partaking. Think “Death to Bugs” from Starship Troopers, only not nearly as awesome. The others probably felt that they were close to actually getting some obnoxious body art just to shut her up and decided to eliminate the problem altogether.

6. Megan Fox started hanging out with Diablo Cody

Word is that Fox and the Jennifer’s Body scribe (also known to be a purveyor of  inane tattoos) had become fast friends. Word round the campfire is that Fox had been seen around Hollywood dropping snarky one-liners and bestowing people with cutesy, Juno-esque nicknames. This presented a problem to the sanctity of Transformers 3, because this behavior is both incredibly annoying and, worse, completely counter-intuitive to portraying the vapid and constantly distracted Mikaela Banes. Fox seems like the type who would freelance a bit with what certainly would have been a meticulously-crafted script with Cody-isms like “Geez, Sam, could we just have a day devoid of some alien robot catastrophes? Honest to blog.”

5. Megan Fox is hungry for power

Like all rising Hollywood stars, Fox may have begun to overestimate her worth, making such rash demands as “I need at least four motorcycle-straddling shots in this picture.” or “I think Mikaela ought to become President in this one.” She may have even demanded shoehorning in a Mikaela-Sam-Optimus Prime love triangle arc wherein she reverse cowgirls OP while Sam is forced to watch from afar. While such outside-the-box thinking is largely missing from most big-budget action pictures, it would have done no favors for the film’s kid-friendly intentions.

4. Megan Fox is a heartbreaker

Fox really did a number on Beverly Hills 90210 alum Brian Austin Green when she left him high and dry in February 2009 and sources close to the production of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen disclosed that the artist formerly known as David Silver did not take to kindly to the rumors that Fox was snuggling ever closer to costar LaBeouf. Green would frequently show up on set shouting obscenities and trying to hawk DVD copies of Impact Point out of the trunk of his Kia Optima. Admittedly, this is not Fox’s fault, but Bay couldn’t very well fire Brian Austin Green, could he?

3. Megan Fox sexually assaulted costar John Turturro

Well, I think we all know what happens when you fuck with The Jesus.

2. Megan Fox is not a real person

She is, in fact, nothing more than an elaborate special effect. And an expensive one at that. It’s possible that while both films were commercially successful, the critical backlash of Revenge of the Fallen had Bay sweating bullets that fans may wise up and not show up in droves as they had in the past. Ergo, he was forced to cut the film’s already bloated special effects budget at it’s most expendable point, Megan Fox. Or, rather, the approximation of computer pixels that the public came to know as Megan Fox.

1. Megan Fox was in Transformers 1 & 2

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one. Is it possible that Bay, the longtime master of style over substance, had an introspective moment of self-appraisal wherein he said, “Hey! I don’t have to put this talking pair of legs in here just for grins! I can cast someone with substance! Someone with charm and charisma! Sure she’s knocking out of the park with the ‘Hormonal Teens’ demographic, but we’re getting absolutely slaughtered in the ‘Human Beings With a Fully-Functioning Frontal Lobe’ demographic! Enough is enough!”

No, it’s probably the second one. The special effects one.