List of autobots who died in the 1986 movie

Okay it's like this - Japanese continuity is the same as US continuity up until after Season 3, which was called "Transformers 2010" in Japan. After that Japanese continuity split because Hasbro cancelled the G1 cartoon after Season four's multi-part pilot ("The Rebirth") whereas Takara wanted a full-length series, so they branched off on their own.

This means that the events of Transformers The Movie did occur in the same common continuity that the US and Japan shared, which means that Prowl's appearance in The Headmasters as well as Wheeljack and Perceptor's appearance in Victory are canonically contradictory. I think Transformers the Movie came out in Japan in 1988, which means that it's understandable that the writers of The Headmasters would have not known that Prowl had died and included him, but the writers of Victory _should_ have known. But I don't think the Victory writers (primarily Kaneda Masumi) had a good knowledge of the characters from the original US series anyway. This is evident from the fact that:

+ Cyclonus and Scourge had significant character changes in The Headmasters.

+ Perceptor and Cyclonus also had significant personality changes in Victory, in fact they didn't even use the same Seiyuu (JP VAs) from the Japanese dubs of the US series for them (so they not only behaved differently but sounded different to Japanese audiences!).

Kaneda was never involved in the production of the US series (remember that the US eps were still animated by Toei of Japan) so it seems he had a fairly superficial knowledge of Seasons 1-3; although Kaneda _was_ supervisor for Transformers The Movie (which again was animated in Japan) so you'd think he would've been aware that Prowl and Wheeljack had died! HAR!!

...so yeah, that's why Ichikawa Hirofumi felt the need to retcon Prowl's appearance in The Headmasters (as Prowl II) in the Story of Binaltech. :)

P.S.: as for how Wheeljack came back to life... umm... a wizard did it. ;)