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Saiyans and Humans had a common ancestor or better they are actually the same species that simply evolved a little differently because of different planetary and survival conditions. DBZ genetics obey Lamarck

First of all, they can produce fertile offspring which is the textbook if and only if condition for being the same species. The only difference between the two is the tail and whatever it does. And the fact that the Saiyan genetics that have evolved towards fighting and attaining more and more power. Humans on the other hand have adapted themselves to a life of peace on earth and therefore evolved more towards using their brain and technology. It's said in the series by King Vegeta that the Saiyans were not the original inhabitants of planet Plant. They got there somehow. They adapted to the 10x gravity of that planet, which probably had a significant say in their evolution. As for humans, it's possible they had a tail at some point which they must have lost over time as the genes went recessive. Perhaps in the Saiyans' tree the tail genes became dominant and then mutated to give the tail the ability to transform them into giant apes.

Also there's more to support that point. Under training (especially gravity training) humans have also performed just as well as Saiyans and probably would have been even better had it not been for the Saiyans' Zenkai abilities and Super Saiyan levels. The humans' power levels after training on the lookout were much higher than Goku's stint at the lookout back in Dragonball. While the fight against the Ginyu force is filler, Tien, Yamcha and Chaoutzu did better against them then Vegeta. And it must be mentioned that both are big eaters when they burn a lot of energy.

Even in Real Life while humans are still one species, there were are very distinct groups with unique characteristics among them.

• To make the guess more wild, it's likely that earth suffered a Dark age at some point when humanity degraded to a much lower level of civilization due to some apocalypse (or a World war between bloodthirsty ancient human ancestors). Some humans escaped and traveled to planet Vegeta, lost touch with their home civilization and themselves degraded to the Stone age in their attempt to adapt to the harsh conditions on the new planet. The native Tuffles too could have inflicted heavy losses against these humans, destroyed whatever tech they had and forced them into the wild where they struggled to survive for a long long time (Reminds me of what happened in Larry Niven's Ringworld). Over time humans on earth again became technologically advanced and evolved to lose their tails and their fighting genes (Super Saiyan genes became recessive to the point where they went vestigial). For Saiyans it was just the opposite. They adapted to the wild, over time probably forgot their own history and turned into savages and evolved into fighting machines under the 10x gravity and gained the ability to transform into apes and their Super Saiyan genes became dominant, but dormant. Thus humans split into two groups, but other than certain genes evolving to becoming dominant and others becoming vestigial, they are in fact the same species.
• Also their genetics are extremely compatible to the extent that their offspring are much more capable then either pure Saiyan or pure human. Perhaps the recessive vestigial Super Mode genes in humans combine with the dominant and active Super mode genes in Saiyans and get activated as a result, giving offspring like Gohan, Goten, Trunks or Pan much stronger genes (or the Super Saiyan genes occupy more of their genetic makeup), giving them more potential. On the other hand the tail genes are weakened over time and they die out. As well as the genes responsible for personality, which explains why only pure Saiyans possess the fighting lust.
• DBZ genetics seem to suggest that Lamarck Was Right. Perhaps after a few generations of very powerful human fighters having their own offspring, those humans' own Super genes will be activated enough to become dominant and we could see the first Super Human transformation, which would be the icing on the cake.

Ironically, the Saiyans' Zenkai ability is a defense mechanism, not an offensive feature.

That's how it's so inconsistent. When Vegeta first demonstrated his Zenkai ability, he went from 18k to 24k; higher than Goku's kaioken 3x boost , when he got beaten to near-death one more time by Zarbon, he went from having the tar beaten out of him to kicking his ass. After he instructed Krillin to nearly kill him, he was indeed stronger than form 3 Frieza but was no match for his final form.

While training in 100x gravity, he kept putting himself in near-death, but on namek he was only as strong as Ginyu, who was more than 4 times weaker than first form Frieza. Goku was so worried about fighting Frieza before he healed, and then conveniently became as strong as initial final form Frieza.

During their fight, Perfect Cell was no match for a Super Saiyan 2 Gohan; after blowing himself up in a desperate attempt to defeat him, his power increased so drastically that he can stalemate with a Super Saiyan 2-powered Kamehameha.

By these speculations, a saiyan's ability to get stronger from recovering a near-death state is because, just in case they encounter a similar or same threat, they would have enough power to deal with that problem.

• IF what you were saying were true. Then it would mean Zenkai protects a specefic method of being injured similar to how an antibiotic protects against a certain illness. Zenkai improves the saiyans overall health.

• If this is true it would possibly be an example of Fridge Brilliance. After the Cell saga Goku trained in otherworld (and if anime filler is considered) fought with opponents like Pikkon etc. while Vegeta trained on his own. Goku was able to reach higher levels of power because he had an opponent and Vegeta didn't. Goku wanted Buu to come back to life so he could have a challenge AND continue to grow.

• • I think this is going to be my personal canon.

Zenkai is a form of inbuilt Unlock Potential in Saiyans whose real purpose is to unleash enough potential for a Super Saiyan transformation to become possible. And Goku got there first thanks to his Kai-o-Ken

Ok, this is a big one, and it needed a lot of thought, so stay with me on this. Has anyone found it odd that the Saiyan's healing abilities go to bizarre extents once the Saiyan's power level and intensity of training go beyond a certain level and then vanish? Take a look at Namek Saga. Vegeta and Gohan's powers were improving dramatically after the fight with the Ginyu force. Vegeta's power went up by about 40%-50% after the Saiyan saga and the Zarbon fight, but then it went up 10x after he recovered from the fight with the Ginyu force to over 500,000 and then at least another 4x as he was at least as strong as Frieza's third form (though it wasn't enough to fight the 4th). Gohan (apart from Guru unlocking his powers) nearly surpassed Frieza in his third form albeit briefly.

Now a Saiyan's power level needs to be beyond a certain threshold to properly access the Super Saiyan form (a few million or so). Take a look at Goku. After repeated healing and training his power level went to around 90,000 (w/o Kai-O-Ken). But then it went from around 90,000 to 3,000,000 (as per official Daizhenshuu Guides) after the fight against Ginyu. That a 33 fold increase!. You wonder if even Guru could have achieved that. That's followed by Goku finding more and more reserve of power up to a 20x Kaioken and then he lost it and became a Super Saiyan.

After that it's never works like that again except once in the Cell saga where Cell seems to have used it to come close to Super Saiyan 2 (well almost, as Gohan did beat him with one hand down and his power cut in half). It didn't seem to work like that the first time when he swallowed a Senzu Bean, (though it must have done something as his 100% power was strong enough to awe Goku). It's plausible that since Cell didn't need Zenkai for reaching Super Saiyan levels it just worked on boosting his power closer to Super Saiyan 2. Now after Cell was destroyed, it seems to have stopped working on him too as in the Otherworld he was floored by Pikkon. And by this point if healing even works at all on Goku and co., its effect is negligible.

Something about the way Zenkai behaves at that point strongly hints that it actually modifies the Saiyan's body or activates some genes to prepare them for the next stage in evolution and handle the enormous power of the Super Saiyan form. The huge increase in base power is a direct consequence this and the Zenkai essentially works like an inbuilt Unlock Potential ability to boost the Saiyan's power to that threshold where the power level is high enough for the Super Saiyan transformation to happen. The Super Saiyan power only comes when there's a need for it and if there's any need for a Saiyan to push his power level beyond 6 digits, it probably sends upgrades their healing to unlock potential mode because there are very few situations which can push a Saiyan that far.

Goku's increase of 33x was probably because of his frequent use of Kai-o-ken up to 10x (with 20x in reserve) which activated his healing early on to handle such enormous boosts in power. Goku attained the transformation more easily than Gohan or Vegeta and this troper is sure the Kai-o-ken would have definitely had a role in that.

• Although in Goku's fight against Pikkon, he lasted a lot better than Cell did, although he wasn't Super Saiyan 2 material. And Goku did mention that it was working on Gohan while training, more than what it was on him until Gohan actually managed to match Goku. However, Goku and Gohan were both Super Saiyan by this point, and their healing was working like it normally does - nowhere near overdrive like it did in the Namek saga).
• It might be that because Goku was dead, he had an unlimited energy supply. He could even combine Kai-O-Ken with Super Saiyan against Pikkon.
• Wouldn't that mean Zenkai would stop functioning completely after the Saiyan has achieved super saiyan level because it's already served it's purpose, because YOU said Zenkai is to help the saiyan achieve super saiyan level. Zenkai does infact help a saiyan achieve super saiyan but that's not it's main purpose. Zenkai is to help a saiyan compensate for recovered bodily damage to ensure increase their chances of survival. Broly for example was naturally adept, and it's most likely he didn't receive that many injuries in his life time other besides that petty stab wound meaning he really didn't need zenkai to be at super saiyan level because he was already there, but he still has the zenkai ability because he is a saiyan.
• It never worked again the way it had in the fight against Frieza, which suggests that at that point it goes from a Healing Factor to an Unlock Potential power.

The exponential power growth stops beyond a point where new levels are needed.

Goku's Super Saiyan form (and his base form) weren't that much stronger in the Buu saga. At the very least, not anything like what he had improved in the Cell saga. Discounting GT, it's possible that once a level has been mastered, the increase in power goes back to normal levels and is no longer exponential, which is why new levels have to be thrown in to keep the exponential power growth going. Maybe that's why Piccolo said that Goku was feeling a little depressed 10 years after the Majin Buu saga had ended. He probably had mastered Super Saiyan 3 by that point and didn't have much else to master so his power growth had moved off the exponential track and was back to a relatively slow and linear rate.

Ultra Super Saiyan 1 and 2 are a failed attempt at Super Saiyan 2 because of poor control over Super Saiyan

Well that's seems obvious why Trunks and Vegeta couldn't ascend. They hadn't properly mastered the form like Goku and Gohan did, so they just ended up bulking up their bodies.

Mastering Super Saiyan has a direct impact on the base form's power.

After Goku's time in the hyperbolic time chamber, his base power was stronger than Frieza's level. His base and Super Saiyan forms didn't become significantly stronger by the Buu saga and if the TV special was to be believed, Goten and Trunks were a little stronger than Goku was while fighting Frieza on Namek in base form, so Goku's base must be stronger. Goku and Gohan spent most of their time in qualitative training mastering the Super Saiyan state after which their power went up astronomically. Assuming that the 50x multiplier still holds, it's possible that the base form too was strengthened proportionately.

Cell would have accepted defeat if Goku became a Super Saiyan 2

Cell expected Goku to be the strongest of the Z fighters, he even offered him the opportunity to get a senzu bean so the fight could continue. Had Goku accepted Cell's offer he eventually would have received power boost to reach Super Saiyan 2 (granted he didn't die first). Because Cell predicted Goku was the biggest threat he probably wouldn't have gotten as angry as he did with Gohan (who was a "CHILD!!!!") if he surpassed him.

The Hyperbolic Time Chamber/Ro Sa T is supposed to represent a black hole

Just think about it. A black hole's gravity is so great, that not even light can escape from it. The Ro Sa T has a 10x greater gravity than Earth, and everything looks white because it is pulling down light. Time dilation, or time going slower or faster than usual, is also believed to happen in black holes. There are also odder, but plausible scientific theories saying that black holes act as wormholes, so the entrance to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber could be a wormhole to an alternate dimension, which the Ro Sa T is stated to be.

• Except time passes faster in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber than on the outside. In close proximity to a black hole, time passes slower than it does far away from the black hole. Inside a black hole, time as such loses its meaning and becomes a spatial dimension.

The scouters are powered by mini-creepers

They know the direction, proximity, and strength (creepers have to distinguish between humans and sheep). Also a massive shift in power level makes them think they're less than an atoms width away from a target and explode. Plus its the kind of stupid macho thing a Saiyan scientist would do.

Goku's massive advantage over Vegeta is because he trains much more efficiently

In the Buu Saga, Vegeta blames Goku for being more born talented for why he Can't Catch Up, but when you think about it, Vegeta's training is rather crude and just about as brute force as it can get. In fact most of his improvement probably comes from Zenkai healing and we aren't even sure if he got to SSJ2 only because of Babidi or whether it simply boosted his SSJ2 power. In fact Vegeta only seems to indulge in brash over training for the most part, and if you know what that means, you'd wonder if he'd have improved at all if it weren't for healing genes.

• In fact that remark of Vegeta's is particularly striking because till the Cell Saga believed he was the born talented one. If anything, that probably means Vegeta did take a level in humility after all.
  • An of course, as Super 17 says, "It will only make [him] stronger!"
• This is all but proven when Vegeta clearly notices in the Cell Saga that Goku and Gohan are comfortable in their Super forms and then returns to training and doesn't attempt the same thing, though as the Buu saga proves Goku might have been wrong about how much energy transforming wastes.
  • In Goku's defense, he did say he didn't have much time to practice SS 3.
• This really has as much if not more to do with Goku's own trainers than Goku himself. When left to his own devices on the trip to Namek, Goku's training is virtually identical if less intense than Vegeta's; turn up the gravity, blast self, heal with beans. The difference is that Goku's doing it in a controlled environment with a more efficient healing method compared to Vegeta who was increasing his power at the time by getting his ass kicked and thrown into a pod. Beyond that, Goku has always had the benefit of older, wiser trainers who teach him useful techniques like the kao ken. Vegeta was probably left to train himself. It's also likely that Vegeta did get to SSJ2 on his own; he seems confident in that he could take Dabra, who was nearly as strong as perfect cell(and thus out of reach of anything short of a ssj2). While Vegeta's confidence in his abilities and the reality are often not the same thing (see his fight with Frieza, Android 18, and perfect Cell), this was said against an enemy who he was observing fighting at full strength, giving him a better estimation of their abilities.
  • I'd say you need to give credit where credit is due here. Goku was still weaker than Vegeta after being trained by King Kai, Mr. Popo/Kami, Korin, Roshi, and Grandpa Gohan. It wasn't until he started training on his own that he surpassed Vegeta. Granted the Anime and Movies imply he learned SS2, dragon fist, and SS 3 from Grand Kai but we really can't say that's true for certain.
• And Goku takes sufficient rest. That is just as important as training hard, because the real improvement happens during the recovery phase.

Chi-Chi was severely traumatized from Goku's fight with Piccolo Jr.

Think about it, watching the man you loved since childhood begin beaten to death by the reincarnation of an enemy said man fought when he was a child. That's enough to make you give up fighting forever, never letting your kid get involved in martial arts and developing the opinion that being smart is the only way to survive.

Piccolo is Batman

A bad-ass gruff character who is surprisingly good with kids.

• Plus he traveled the Earth as a kid.
  • Dear lord. You're right...
• He's also an orphan.
• Surprisingly good with children? Where the hell are the goal posts on this standard? Piccolo threw Gohan at a mountain, nearly starved him to death and left him fighting dinosaurs for survival when he was like six. Add that to the fact that he clearly couldn't read that Gotenks was playing around despite how much he was over acting the part and I'd feel comfortable saying he knows close to nothing about kids. He just likes Gohan and likely always will.

Vegeta's base form has a higher strength limit than Goku's

Let's face it, Goku relies on his super saiyan forms a lot more than Vegeta. So, the theory is that Goku puts energy into his super saiyan forms, while Vegeta only uses them when he needs to. So, Vegeta will train more in his base form, and Goku's base form, and probrably even first ssj form, will be no match for Vegeta's! Problem, Goku-fans?

• Nope. The transformations are straight up multiplications of the "base form," ergo if Goku's super saiyan transformation is stronger than Vegeta's, then Goku's base is stronger than Vegeta's current form when he killed someone.
  • But they never straight up fought in super saiyan form, at least not the same level. Goku always was a step up from Vegeta's Current form when he killed someone. He was SSJ When he fought Frieza, And SSJ 3 when he fought Buu, and didn't even kill Buu with his own power.
• Who ever came up with that whacked up theory must be a huge Vegeta fan.
• Goku relies on his Super Saiya-jin forms a lot more because he's usually pitted against the Big Bad. Threatening his own safety fighting in his base form when he could power up early on would be the DBZ equivalent of Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight. The only times we see him consciously avoid leveling up is when he has a specific intent - i.e. not defeating Buu so the surviving fighters on Earth could learn to shoulder the burden of Earth's protection. Besides, this theory would only really stand if Goku never trained in his base form, which is a bit of a Logic Bomb since earlier arcs showed us that attainment of higher power levels could only be done through the strengthening of the previous form, allowing the fighter to reach the breach of its potential before ascending. Hence, SSJ2 comes after a body becomes properly trained to SSJ 1, which in turn would imply that the base form must be consistently strengthened, as well. Given the power he exemplifies in the Buu arc, it's obvious he doesn't take very well to the idea of "resting in peace."

Cell was holding back

Four words. Goku And Piccolo's Cells.

• ...Uh? Please elaborate because you're not making sense.
  • Simple. Cell was holding back while he died fighting Gohan. He has both Goku AND Piccolo's cells, so that is one factor holding him back. Vegeta's cells, as well, and even though Vegeta doesn't really like Gohan, He wouldn't kill him at the time the cells were taken from him.
    • Simply having the cells would be irrelevant unless he was also stated to have some form of genetic memory which would allow Goku and Piccolo's feelings of affection for Gohn to matter. And if he had that then he probably wouldn't have been such a monster.
    • While normally genes don't affect memory, in Dragonball Z they obviously do, especially in Cell. Thus why Cell knows all of the techniques of those whose genetic material he is composed of. Maybe Cell is not an actual individual, but a mental mash-up of those from whom his cells were taken.
    • It's fairly obvious Cell gets personality traits from the people who's genes he has. It would explain his Blood Knight tendencies. That being said, he also got cells from Frieza and Vegeta, the first of whom hated Gohan and the second rather enjoyed punching him.

Half saiyans EAT their tail during birth

Stay with me here, there is a story behind this. Gohan is only half saiyan, and unlike most other half saiyans, he has a tail. One other thing I noticed is that Gohan seems to be less of an eater than other half saiyans. So, in the womb, most half saiyans run out of nutrition and instinctively... Consume their tails. Gohan had enough to last, as he did not require as much nutrition as the others, and so he kept his tail when he was born. The reason full saiyans do not do this is because the female saiyans' body is already built to support a saiyan fetus, human females... aren't.

• Chichi would be strong enough to support Gohan in her prime, but not as much when she was pregnant with Goten (not to mention she'd be emotionally unstable with Goku's death and everything). Makes sense. But could also be that Chichi and Bulma wanted to prevent any future troubles (as they've notices how powerful saiyans could become) and just decided to cut their tails.
  • Cool story, bro, But I doubt it. Remember Gokus Tail? It was torn, ripped, and cut off thrice, and only when Kami himself got it off did it stay that way. Chichi and Bulma almost definatly could not pull that off. (Hehe)
    • Gohan's never grew back once his was gone. Why would other half-Saiyan's tails?
      • It did. Remember, Piccolo yanked it off after destroying the moon when Gohan transformed during that one year of training for the Saiyans. It grew back spontaneously when Vegeta unleashed his fake moon to transform which leads to Gohan's transformation to Great Ape which helps win the battle.
  • Perhaps Goten and Trunks did have a tail once, but it was removed shortly after their birth, as suggested above, and it never grew back because perhaps Bulma found out a way to prevent the tail from growing back and shared it with Chi Chi. Maybe Bulma visited Kami himself and had him do to Trunks what he did to Goku to keep his tail from growing back, and later the same was done to Goten, this time by Piccolo, who had by then fused with Kami. The reason why Gohan's tail did not get the same treatment might have to do with the fact that it was not until Goku fought Vegeta that he discovered that the Saiyans become giant monkeys during the full moon. By the time Goten and Trunks were born, Goku already knew the dangers a Saiyan with a tail could present, so nobody was worried about Goku being upset or intrigued by the suggestion of his son having his tail removed.

Cell now has his own species

They're called Seru-jins. It has been happening since Cell was created. The reason is, every time Cell is damaged, a single leftover cell is enough to regenerate him. So, the second Cell's skin was created, the skin cells that fell off (it happens like, every time everyone moves) took root in the ground and mended themselves with atoms in the ground. When they finally grow, each Seru-jin will be a different color, with different abilities based on the element of atom they mend with.

• • Probably not. Cell's regeneration is probably programmed so that the "from a single cell" thing doesn't kick in if there's already a Cell walking around. Otherwise they'd be too busy trying to prove which Cell is strongest to get anything else done. Or he simply doesn't shed skin cells and just reabsorbs them into his body.
  • Cell can't regenerate from just any cell. He has a core group of cells from which all other parts grow, and can only regenerate if the core isn't damaged.

Krillin was severly abused as a child

Several fanfics, in fact, the vast majority of all Krillin angst fics, focus on the topic of Krillin being horribly abused by his father. Often, his mother has died naturally, or more frequently, been KILLED BY HIS FATHER. This actually makes a considerable amount of sense; in DBZ Kai, as he prepares to fight Frieza, he says "It's times like these that I really wish I had a mother to call." However, this doesn't have to mean she was killed, but keep in mind that Krillin is only in his 20's when he says that, so she wouldn't be dead from old age. Most fanfics on this topic involve Krillin running away to the Orinji temple and then to The Kame house.

• It's a fact that Krillin was bullied at the temple, but there isn't a shred of evidence that he was abused by his parents. He never mentions them in the manga so we can assume they are dead, but the series stays neutral on the subject otherwise.

Super Saiyan Transformation is all about the tail

I wonder why I'm the only one who thinks this and ignores most of the psychobabble. Evidence: The tail is a huge energy battery. The tail is needed for the massively disruptive Oozaru transformation. It's very important and no traditional Saiyajin voluntarily loses it. EVERY SINGLE CANONICAL SSJ HAS BEEN MISSING A TAIL. Think about it - Saiyan bodies store much more Ki than ordinary bodies, with the tail SPECIFICALLY being a ki sink. Missing the tail, the high amount of power in the main cast needs to go to their bodies - instead of the tail - starting the process of SSJ transformation. The legendary super saiyajin probably had SO much energy it overloaded even the tail's capacity naturally. Makes much more sense than some mumbo jumbo about pure hearts. also matches the half-human hybrids powerups- Gohan had a tail during the important formative years, while Trunks's and Goten's were removed at birth.

• Most likely not. The original design for a super saiyan three had a tail, and it was a sign of power.
• I don't think so. When Goku was turned back into a kid in GT, He got his tail back, and he was still able to go SSJ, SSJ 3, AND SSJ 4. Also the SSJ 4 transformations have tails.
  • First, GT's place in canon is, at best, debatable. Second, Goku had already become a Super Saiyan by that point, and had been using the form for decades. It's established that once a Saiyan makes the transformation, they can do it any nearly any time he or she wishes. And on that note, yes, female Saiyans could, theoretically, make the transformation. Toriyama said that Pan would have had the ability if she had sufficient motivation, like her grandfather and father before her.
  • Or, the reason they grow a tail in SS 4 is because it's a battery. They generate so much energy, that they would be to powerful if they didn't have a tail in that form.
• I doubt it, the creator himself admitted he just forgot about the tail by the time Trunks and Goten rolled around. Also the control art for Broly from Akira Toriyama specifically mentions that it doesn't really matter whether or not he has a tail. While Broly isn't cannon he was designed by the creator.

Saiyan Power is derived purely from HAIR

While I've noticed a lot of hair based comments on this page, I felt this couldn't go explicitly unsaid - that a Saiyan is powered by hair length, style, and/or color, especially the higher levels of Super Saiyan. Think about it... At the start you have Goku with his huge, spiked afro, and he's the most powerful we've seen. Then you have Vegeta who has that wild mountain of spines, and the widow's peak so large that Everest goes flaccid in it's green tinged inadequacy. After that, the next Saiyan we've seen was Nappa, whose only hair was on his tail, and Goku defeated him handily. Raditz doesn't count, he was just an Anticlimax Boss and I'll explain why below. This theory only applies to full blooded Saiyans and not half or quarter Saiyans like Gohan, Trunks, or Pan.

• Now, let us observe the various Saiyan transformations, starting with their full moon monster form. Self explanatory, an enormous ape, covered in hair that is BROWN. The Super Saiyan one even had the extra hair to form the Super Saiyan spiked hair of doom. After, we discuss the Super Saiyan transformation itself. In the first stage, the hair spikes all the way up and become gold (an important Saiyan color), Vegeta has this hair style naturally which can explain why he gives Goku, who had MORE hair in their first fight, so many problems. In the Super Saiyan 2 stage, hair gets longer and bigger. In Super Sayian 3, well...they of course get much, much more hair, and lose their eyebrows. Now, According to the theory so far, this mean Raditz, who was basically just a Super Saiyan 3 with black hair and eyebrows should have destroyed Goku. But that's just it, his hair was not blonde/gold, and he had EYEBROWS. Perhaps this acted as a sort of power inhibitor, which would also explain why Super Saiyan 3 gives the utterly stupid fashion statement of lacking eyebrows. All Raditz had to do was shave off his eyebrows! So close...
• Now, and lastly, I'll talk about Super Saiyan 4, the most powerful form we've seen yet. Or that I've seen yet anyway... The hair is definitely longer, but not quite as long as in the previous incarnation of the legendary Super Saiyan, however! They compensate by growing red FUR on everywhere but the major muscles, but hair can't grow on steel so that's okay. Not only this, they also grow back their tail, which only exists in this form, even if the Saiyan in question has had his tail pulled out instead of cut, removing it, supposedly, forever. I guess forever means "unless they need space for the extra hair."

Garlic And Garlic Jr. Are Namekians

Simple. Take a short Namekian, remove the antennae and muscles, recolor sea green, and add spots and wrinkles. What do you get? Garlic Jr

• More like the combined evil of Namekians made flesh, like Piccolo Daimaho/King Piccolo.
  • Garlic and Garlic Jr. are Makyo-seijin.

They're still on Namek, and it's All Just a Dream

• I don't think Dragon Ball is like Bleach...
• Why Namek?
  • Because it's all 'what should have been' flashing before Goku's eyes during the last few seconds of his life before Namek explodes, of course.
    • Usually people imagine NICE things when their deaths are impending. Being killed by the very next Big Bad doesn't seem like that.
      • Knowing Goku, finding the most worthy opponent may be the happiest moment of his life.
      • This would mean that fighting is more important that food.
        • …it's Goku.

The Ox-King was going to whore out his daughter.

Consider: When they first meet Chi-Chi, she's being sent by the Ox-King to get a favor from Master Roshi. And Chi-Chi's wearing... Well, it's quite a silly outfit. And the Ox-King knew what Roshi was like. So, the logical conclusion is that the Ox-King was willing to let Roshi have his daughter in exchange for the turtle master's services.

• This is a children's cartoon, you freak!
  • Aaaaalternatively, Ox King naively hopes that Roshi has standards, Chichi is TWELVE in that arc. Or he has faith in her ability to throw that head blade. Which she did. And it was awesome.
  • But the Ox-King didn't know what Roshi was like. Roshi made it a point that he didn't want the Ox-King to know about the deal with Bulma, meaning he didn't want Ox King to know. Plus Turtle was surprised at Roshi's pervertedness when he first heard of it. Wouldn't that mean Ox King doesn't know?
    • Backed up by the fact that Roshi used to be able to ride the Nimbus, which only pure-hearted people can ride. Considering Grandpa Gohan's and the Ox-King's ages, it's possible that Roshi was different when he was training those two.

Vegeta is in denial of his father's death.

This is quite obvious. Now, Vegeta is very vain and power-hungry. It's strange that he refers to himself as "The Prince Of All Saiyans", since he's technically the king because his father is dead. The obvious conclusion? He's in denial. What confuses this troper about this idea is that Vegeta acknowledges that he and Goku are the last full-blooded Saiyans.

• Perhaps another way of filling it in is that Vegeta considers himself unworthy of the title of King as he isn't the strongest, but has enough respect for his bloodline to call himself Prince.
  • Or he could still be Prince Vegeta because he hasn't had a coronation, so he can't claim the title of King.
  • Another alternative is that the Saiyans were a Principality, like Wales- Prince was the title of the ruler, not the heir to the throne. Freiza would have allowed them to keep the title as long as they submitted to him.
  • Nope, his father was King. King of the Saiya-jin under Freeza's overlordship of the entire universe, mind you, but King nonetheless. I think that the above theory about lack of a coronation sounds right, not to mention there's no longer a Planet Vegeta to be King of. By the way, I've never quite figured this out: are we supposed to assume that King Vegeta was weaker than Bardock? The movie implies that, but never comes out and says it.
  • Alternately, King Vegeta was the Prince of All Saiyans at the time of his death, and his name was King Vegita (Bejita-O), like how Fuhrer Bradley's first name was "King".
  • Vegeta is the Prince of a race that consists of four people. Eight if you include the movies. He could declare himself King at any time because, hey, not like anyone can stop him. But as vain as Vegeta is, he probably realizes what a petty, pointless act that would be. In fact his vanity is probably what stops him from doing it; he knows he'd look like an immature child calling himself king of the sandbox at the playground.

Turles is a clone of Goku.

Hence why he looks exactly like him and says they're of the same mold. This editor had a much more elaborate theory when he was younger, but has since forgotten it.

• Well, here's a more elaborate theory I just thought of; Turles is a clone created by Freiza, because he saw that Goku will not finish his mission to rid Earth of sentient beings. Furthermore, Freiza gave Turles information about the tree so he had more of a chance of beating Goku.
• If I recall correctly, it's stated that most low-level Saiyans resemble a basic archetype, which is why Bardok, Goku and Turles are virtually identical. Presumably a remnant of some sort of clan/serfdom system they had before they became mercenaries.
  • You are correct. Additionally Turles is older than Goku and Frieza did not know anything about Goku until the Frieza Arc. Lastly, Turles isn't even canonical (the only time when he could've arrived on Earth is after the Saiyan Arc and before the Finding Namek Arc but when he arrives he fights the whole Z team even though most of them are dead) so don't bother with theories.

The Saiyans took a job with Frieza not for the destruction, but for the food

Look at how much even a half-blood Saiyan eats. Assuming human population growth rate- they can interbreed, so it should be fairly similar, albeit somewhat slowed by constant destructive warfare- their food needs would outstrip the productive ability of any one planet within a couple generations, and, although they were shown landing on Planet Plant in spaceships, it was clear that they couldn't actually build any on their own. As a result, when Frieza came to them with a job offer, they accepted not as an excuse to destroy other worlds, but in order to send off excess population to keep Planet Vegita's population at carrying capacity, and get sufficient food for the expatriate Saiyans.

• This is what I believe too. Once Vegeta realizes that Freeza destroyed his planet and his people, he stops being evil and joins the good guys.
• Just a side note, I remember King Kai in the dub making a joke about how many Saiyans it took to build a rocket ship. The Saiyans must have been able to build a starship, but it probably took a long time and was primitive by galactic standards.
• Well, other than the filler and DBGT, there's no indication that Saiyajin came from another planet or stole their tech. I personally prefer to think that some Saiyajin scientists looked at the night sky and dreamed about punching the stars in their mouths. Not to mention the possibility of finally having a city that wasn't blown up by some overpowered brat having a temper tantrum.
• Given the existence of galactic empires like Frieza's, it was probably a matter of time before somebody stumbled upon the Saiya-jin, regardless of their personal potential for technological advancement. Either way, there are numerous benefits to being employed for the galaxy's Big Bad, including access to the products of galactic trade... Not to mention the ability to redirect their natural aggression onto species other than their own. It's just that there are major drawbacks to working for the universe's Big Bad as well. Like being blown up.

Cell Saga SSJ2 Teen Gohan is stronger than Buu Saga SSJ2 Goku or Vegeta.

This is mostly my own impressions from the anime/manga, so feel free to dispute them thoroughly, but a) look at how easily he dispatches his enemies, and b) look at the fact that the whole deal with him is the huge power boosts he takes from his dual heritage.

• Firstly, Goku and Vegeta had a total of seven years non-stop training to surpass him, while Gohan didn't. It's not too much of stretch to consider that they surpassed him in strength in that time. Also, Gohan's opponents were Cell and his "children", who in comparison to Gohan were punching bags, well the former was. The Cell Juniors were more like exploding pinata, which was all simply to imply that Gohan achieved an unrivaled state of strength. The same thing was done when Goku first turned Super Saiyan, so your argument pretty much lays out like that. And finally, it ignores the statements from both Goku and Vegeta upon turning SSJ2 that "You're stronger than Gohan when he first fought Cell." Nuff said.

Goku was in Super Saiyan form during Goten's conception.

Most Saiyans have extreme difficulty breaking the Super Saiyan barrier, but Goten and Trunks can do it easily. What do they (and, significantly, not Gohan) have in common? Their fathers could go Super Saiyan already. Now, maybe Lamarck Was Right, but Occam's razor suggests a kinkier explanation. When Goku goes SSJ, his hair color changes, so his DNA must change as well, potentially passing on different characteristics. And if you were Chi-Chi or Bulma, wouldn't you want to try it?

• Most probably not. Trunks can go SSJ easily too, and Vegeta most likely wasn't in SSJ form at the time of his conception. He may have been capable of going SSJ, same as Goku, but he wasn't doing the deed in SSJ state, so to speak.
  • Vegeta probably wasn't Super Saiyan when Future Trunks was conceived, but due to the extra training he was doing due to knowing about the androids coming, he was Super Saiyan when Present Trunks was conceived, which is why he finds it so much easier to turn SSJ then his alternate time line self.
    • False. Future Trunks turned SSJ at a very early age as well.
    • Not nearly as early as the main time line's Trunks. Remember his training with Future Gohan?
• Also Chichi hates SSJ form, I doubt she'd let Goku do it like that. Unless he forced her. Which is a whole new issue.
  • Full tank of Fetish Fuel, to go please.
• Bra also doesn't seem to be able to turn into SSJ easily—or at least has far too little interest in fighting to even try. Which might lend credibility to this theory.
• Also, it is stated that Goten was conceived before the Cell Games, and Goku was in SSJ pretty much permanently at the time...
• To me, it just looks like half-breed Saiyans have an easier time turning Super Saiyan, but the results are less spectacular. And in Super Saiyan form, Goku probably couldn't hold a turkey without roasting it, so just forget about makin' love.
  • But remember that the only available time for Goten's conception was during the several days before the Cell Games (see above), during which Goku was in permanent, but also "normal" SSJ, without radiating any violent energy. So Goten pretty much HAD to have been conceived while Goku was in a semi-permanent SSJ state.
  • I agree, it seems like it may be due to Heterosis - when creautres breed with similar genes breed, the offspring is similar to the parents. When varying creatures breed, the offspring can turn out better due to a wider selection of beneficial genes. Although it's extremely weird how humans can breed with saiyans considering how horses can't even breed properly with zebras. My guess is that humans are descended from Saiyans who used the technology of other races and evolved into being more peaceful due to the Earth being an easier place to live on.
    • Or, alternately, Saiyans are descended from humans taken from prehistoric earth by aliens and genetically enhanced into biological weapons of mass destruction....
  • According to some theorists, notably among the Dragon Ball wiki, the half-saiyans transform with greater ease due to inheriting the saiyans' fighting potential as well as the human capacity to release their emotions (saiyans tend to suppress anything other than anger and bloodlust). And since the SSJ transformations depend on extreme rage...
  • Also note that it is only in the anime movie that Future Trunks' SSJ transformation was triggered by his grief and rage over Future Gohan's death. In the manga he was already able to transform, and the events that triggered his transformation is in fact not ever mentioned. And really, Gohan wasn't subjected to all that much emotional stress during his transformation sequence either, not when compared to what Goku and Vegeta went through. Then consider all their ages: Future Trunks (anime movie) - 14, Future Trunks(manga) - younger than 13, Gohan - 11 (physically 11.5-12 counting subjective time), Future Gohan - unknown, but implied to be soon after Goku's and the other Z-fighter's deaths, which would be mid teens at the latest. In short all the half-Saiyans in all the time lines all made SSJ at ridiculously young ages.
• This theory (that SSJ transformation ability is inherited in a partly Lamarkian fashion) also potentially explains why Pan did not ever transform into SSJ, despite several instances of extreme emotional stress/rage that might have caused such a transformation. At the time she was conceived, her father had undergone the Elder Kai's manipulation and did not need to transform to access his full power. Couple that with the fact that Pan appears to be at least as strong as a low-level SSJ 1, on par with Goku when he fought Freeza (note how easily she disables and captures Dr. Gero/Android 20 in one scene), and how her ki aura turns SSJ gold when she powers up, and it raises the possibility that Pan inherited some part of the "mystic" transformation from Gohan, enabling her to access SSJ level power without physically transforming.
• This ties in with the WMG of the tail-SSJ connection above. We know Goku hadn't gone SSJ prior to Gohan's conception, but had by the time of Goten's. Vegeta had the capability to go SSJ when Trunks was conceived. We also know we never see a SSJ with a tail. Perhaps the removal of a saiyans tail begins a BIOLOGICAL process that results in the ability to go SSJ. This change could be passed on to offspring. Goku had lost his tail a good while ago when Gohan had been born, but had yet to complete the process. Thus, Gohan has an easier time going SSJ than Goku or Vegeta because he started somewhere in the middle of the process and the tail prevented it from progressing. By the time Goten was conceived, Goku had completed the SSJ process and passed his new genetic sequence more fully onto Goten. The reason Vegeta was able to go SSJ so comparitively soon (compared to Goku) after losing his tail was because he was in more near-death experiences. Its canon that Saiyans get a chunk stronger after almost dying, possibly pushing them along the SSJ process, but further, he was HEALED alot more. Indicating a higher rate of cell division. Goku regaining his tail in GT (a slow time consuming process) started a new biological process that allowed for a SSJ 4 state. Baby replicated this process within Vegeta after seeing it in Goku.
  • Nice explanation but mostly likely NOT. The whole SSJ transformation was already a legend among Saiyan culture. Vegeta briefly pictures a gold SSJ Oozaru rampaging per the legends he was told and no Saiyans prior to Goku (who was not on his native planet) ever let their tails be removed. So there is reasons to believe that SSJ could be achieved by Saiyans with tails intact but it was so rare that it became something of myth and legend.

The dinosaurs, talking animals & other weirdness are the result of the Dragon Balls.

People who have managed to collect all seven in the past wished for them.

• Dragon Ball takes place in Earth in the future. In the future, genetic experiments created talking animals and brought dinosaurs back to life.
  • Either that, or some time before the story, a furry got a hold of the Dragon Balls and wished that everyone with his same fetish turned into the kind of animal they are attracted to.

Dr. Briefs collected all the Dragon Balls sometime in the past.

Think about it: in order to create the Dragon Radar, he must have had contact with them before, right? Plus his inventions do things that blatently defy the laws of physics. This could be the result of a wish granted by the Dragon.

• Bulma found a dragon ball in her basement to make the radar—presumably someone just randomly picked it up or bought it as a fancy jewel. No wishes had previously been granted in 100 years, I think the manga says this.

Dr. Briefs is some 753 years old.

He collected the dragon balls 700 years ago and wished to become immortal, then spent some time collecting them so he could become a magic-powered inventor. When someone tried to wish away his power 101 or 100 years ago (but could only turn him into a harmless old fool thanks to the various power limits of the wish-granting system), he stole one of the dragon balls to keep anyone from ever being able to collect them all and properly word a wish to defeat him once and for all (possibly also as a way to tell if there was a changeover between Kamis, to renew his immortality). When he lost his immortality thanks to the power switch and the dragon balls being remade, he either realized His Time Had Come and should live the rest of his life as a mortal human, or got distracted by the hot wife, the loads of cash, and the capsule full of porno mags.

The Earth of Dragon Ball is our Earth in a far future

The main series of Dragon Ball Z shows that the English language exists, and William Shakespeare has existed, on the Earth of Dragon Ball. If we go by the 12th movie, then Adolf Hitler existed on the Earth of Dragon Ball too. If historical figures from our past existed there, it means that the planet where Dragon Ball happens is indeed ours. The Earth of Dragon Ball is more technologically advanced than ours, with flying cars, sentient androids and hoipoi capsules, which means Dragon Ball is set in the future (dinosaurs and sentient animals can be explained with advancements in genetics). How far in the future? Well, all of the dates there have 3 digits (the story happens after "the year 700"), which means the calendar has been reset about 700 years before the story. In our reality, a problem with dates is bound to happen in the year 10000, when software coded to process years with 4 digits will consider the year 10000 (5 digits) as a year zero. People might realize that resetting the calendar is easier than fixing the software, so the year 10000 will be considered as the new year 0, and Dragon Ball actually occurs around the year 10700.

• The official map of the DB world shows that it, first off much smaller then our current world. And second, and most importantly, that it is a COMPLETELY different shape than ours. A much more likely theory than the "700 years since we just restarted the calendar" is "it's been 700 years since we used all those bombs to blow the world into a different shape".
• The fact that the continents are shaped differently could mean that continental drift eventually reshaped the Earth, which would make the setting over 100 million years in the future...or it could just be some sort of terraforming, or people with dragon balls wishing for the changes.

In the live action movie, Piccolo killed Pilaf and took control of his army

How else do you explain the fact that Mai is there, but NOT Pilaf?

• Makes sense to me.

Pink is a royal colour for Saiyans.

That's why Vegeta didn't mind wearing the shirt.

• Perhaps he never understood the whole concept of "blue is for boys, pink is for girls", being an alien and everything...
• Real saiyans wear pink... Because of the stains on their skin of the blood of their enemies! (They never fought nameks or vulcans.)
• Problem is, he DID mind wearing the shirt. He acted disgusted - unless we're talking about the manga, where it's never mentioned - because it's in black and white, of course.
  • He mostly did mind wearing human clothes, if we take in consideration he was one hell of an arrogant prick at that time (okay, just slightly less after that). He didn't really care about the color, what was unnerving to him was to wear such fragile garment. Also, remembering the other shirts he had to use, he doesn't have what we call "fashion skills".
• Vegeta isn't even shown wearing pink in any of the manga materials. It's just an anime addition by a gender-confused staffer, trying to project his/her own insecurity on Vegeta. How's that for WMG?
  • Lovely.

Lunch was the first Super Saiyan.

It's a bit of a joke, but she becomes a mean, strong blond haired, green eyed girl when she sneezes, she might be Akira's Super Saiyan prototype. Then, he pretended to forget who she was to avoid people pointing it out. Didn't work, though.

Nameks are Plant Aliens

They're green, they live on water, air, and sunlight, can regrow lost segements of body and are capable of self-fertilization. Alone, these don't mean much, but together...

• That's pretty much a given, Namek orbits crazily around three Suns... That's why they are so strong.
• Actually, Word of God in the recent (Japanese only) guidebook "Super Exciting Guide: Character Volume" says that Namekians have enzymes in their bodies that turn water into nutrients.
  • Which is exactly what plants do. And of course, this is coming from the same guy who said tails are a recessive trait even though Gohan had one, and the fact that he has a daughter demonstrates he doesn't have a monosomy disorder.

Piccolo really didn't understand that human-like beings like Gohan actually needed food.

He thought that getting their food from other plants and animals was just laziness, and instead of just beiing kind of soft leaving the apples for Gohan, he was being really, really, uncharacteristically kind.

Fasha is Videl's mother.

She could have gone to earth to find her son (whom fan-theories say is Goku), and had a nine-month-stand with Hercule. This kind of explains why Videl has (supposedly) Charles Atlas Superpower greater than any other human (even Krillin was the only other non-magical human who could actually fly, if I'm not mistaken), when her father (the "strongest man on earth", which probably wasn't a completely empty boast) was hardly more than a Joke Character. (This also adds a bit of Squick to Gohan x Videl... A lot of squick if you consider GT canon.)

• The similarity is amusing, but Fasha is clearly killed just days after Goku's birth, long before Videl was conceived.
  • Plus Fasha was on a different planet the day after Goku was born. That's some impressive recovery if she really is the mother.
• Alternatively, she wasn't a Saiyan's offspring, but some sort of superhuman experiment, and her mom was a Hot Scientist. How such hottie could get with Hercule Mr. Satan and have a cute daughter is yet to be explained.
  • What's love got to do with it? She chose him because of his claims to be the strongest man, as part of her plan to breed a Super Soldier. After selecting the proper chromosome matches for her brains and his brawn, plus possibly some Saiyan DNA she found lying on some battlefield, Videl was the result.
    • She could even be Dr. Gero's daughter, and planned to take over the world with a super soldier, but probably didn't expect to be a labrat for Gero's heart virus (look theories below, and you know he'd be capable). After she finally got used to her family life, she suffered the same symptoms, dying when Videl was a kid. Tear Jerker indeed.
  • Nitpick, but Kuririn isn't the only ordinary human capable of flight. Yamucha is, too. Of course, that doesn't detract from your point.
    • Riff e Tensinhan as, supposedly, everyone else from the same school.
    • Tien/Tenshinhan had a good chance of not being human. Didn't recall Yamcha flying, though it seems that he had in Z.
      • Yamcha flew all the time in Z, check out the android saga.
      • Tien is stated clearly to be a human who gained his third eye through "attaining enlightenment". He and Chiaotzu apparently learned it as a technique from the crane school (Roshi's rival). By the end of Dragon Ball and the beginning of Z, most of the Z fighters at that time possessed the ability.
• Another possibilty may be that Videl is actually Fasha reborn as a human with no memories of her past life... After all, you do have Kid Buu reincarnate as Uub at the end of Dragon Ball Z, who's to say that it hasn't happened before (it also seems to be the natural process for those who were not totally evil)? The main difference between the two cases is that Goku made the request for Uub to retain some of his past life's fighting skill and potential (at least I think that's the case), while Fasha's memories were wiped completely before she was reborn as Videl. But, on some sort of subconcious level, she remembered certain details... That's why Videl was able to learn how to use her Ki to fly so fast!
  • If such is the case, Fasha's memory wouldn't need wiping. When a person is reincarnated as another after death, all memories and knowledge of their previous life disappear permanently. That's why no one can remember ever having any past lives. If Fasha was reborn as Videl, she wouldn't remember her past life anyway.

Nappa was once the most powerful Saiyan.

More powerful than Goku, Vegeta and Broly combined, he was actually the first to reach Super Saiyan status and ascend to nigh-godhood. Then he got so powerful that his hair fell out. And that was the end of that.

• Ten dollars says someone thought you were serious before they read my bullet point.
  • I thought he was serious till he got to the point about the hair falling out, lol.

Android 17 is also a girl, but with her voice (and perhaps body) modified to sound like a man

It would explain the extremely slender built, and the lack of Clothing Damage. Lack of eyelashes? Flea from Chrono Cross was a (supposedly male) transvestite and had lashes, so, a female transvestite that disguises as male might miss hers. She's just a low-voiced, flat chested girl. Gero himself wanted the girl to be modified into a guy, because a duo of twin girls wouldn't look as menacing as a boy and a girl. Also, Toriyama is known to joke with this sort of stuff, if he revealed it to be the true canon 25 years after everything, it would be hilarious.

• #17 and #18 were originally human twins, brother and sister, who were forcefully turned into androids by Gero.
  • Not to mention the fact that 18 calls him brother at one point.
    • Maybe she just respects his gender-identity choice?
  • She doesn't just call him brother, she repeatedly teases him for being a man - liking cars, never wanting to ask directions, etc.
    • That would be pretty ruthlessly funny if he had been made into one against his will, no?
• Remember, it was only in the anime that #17 has a male voice. Maybe in the manga Toriyama intended for them to sound the same—after all, they look exactly the same except for the hair. And #17's bandanna could be covering up some cleavage...
• Oh my god, you mean there's a strong guy inDragon Ballwho doesn't have 24-inch pythons unless he gets fused with his clone from hell in analternate continuation? EGADS!

The "heart virus" Goku dies of in the alternate future is a biological weapon made by the aliens who taught him the teleportation move.

Remember, at the time Goku was dressed in Freeza's armor. The aliens may have assumed that he was the herald to a full-scale invasion and made the appropriate (secret) counter maneuvers.

• Alternatively, they gave it to him unwittingly. Their ancestors had long since developed immunity to it, but Goku hadn't and had the bad luck to be physiologically similar. The end result was much the same as if a 12th-century native american was transported to Europe during the Black Death- guaranteed infection with something that he had no resistance to.
  • • I buy this theory. It also explains why he's the only one who fell sick.
  • If we take in consideration that it happened around the same time that Gero's mosquito spy was collecting DNA, Gero would be responsible for this; because who is much of a coward to plan such things and knows genetic engineering enough to make a virus that would affect a saiyan?
    • This troper finds it unlikely considering the differences in the time line. Goku dies to the virus earlier, the more powerful Androids are sent out. Likely Gero fearing Goku learned of the plot and was secretly training as Goku isn't making news or around any more. Goku lives and makes some news, the weaker but "safer" androids are sent out thinking Goku was still weak.
• Remember driving instructor? He was coughing all the time... Or Vegeta, he was surprisingly tired in the late Freeza arc. Aliens are ruled out, Goku never infected any of his friends, and a virus was still active 20 years later (so they worked at medicine).
• Goku left Namek in his tattered gi. The first time he wore Saiyan style armor was during the Cell saga.

The "heart virus" Goku dies of in the alternate future is caused by the attack Devilman used on him when he was a child.

When Devilman used the devilmite beam on goku, he was a child, & his heart was pure. But, who's to say that the effects of the beam didn't wear off immediately afterwards? The devilmite beam might have been permanent, & Goku's purity didn't last forever. During his battle with Frieza, Goku became enraged (which caused him to become a super saiyan) after he found out that Frieza killed his best friend & his entire species. The devilmite then took effect, but the beams grew slowly, because Devilman wasn't manipulating them. Eventually (about a year after he went SSJ) the beams grew large enough for Goku to start feeling them. The beams then shredded Goku's heart, & he died before they could destroy anything else.

• How come medicine worked on it, then?
  • Simple Goku's heart was weakened, he was strong enough to fight the Devilmite beam. But it weakened his heart enough to allow the heart virus to work, why else was Goku the only one affected?
    • Problem. If this heart virus was active enough over 20 years for a cure to be worked on and made in the future…wait, are we saying Devilman went around all this time he hasn't been seen on-air giving Devilmite beams to ordinary pure-hearted people?

Frieza's death caused problems only slightly more preferable to the ones it solved.

We're talking about an empire that may span dozens, if not hundreds, of planets. We're talking about a creature that was so powerful that nothing could challenge him. So now that he's gone, the universe is suddenly facing a massive power vacuum. Numerous people will be competing to fill that vacuum - many of them probably a little whacked, others completely insane, and still others just dumb and selfish with no clue what it takes to rule properly. And each of these people will have their supporters, some looking for a free ticket to power and status, and others showing cultlike devotion to their new master and his grand destiny. Bloodshed for years. Huge-scale anarchy. Err, maybe Vegeta taking over wouldn't have been so bad?

• It wouldn't happen because almost everyone that wanted to take over when Freeza eventual death would happen was working for him and died. The only one that wanted such thing is alive after his death is Vegeta (who pretty much redeemed himself); or, if you take in consideration Sealed Evil in a Can, Buu.
  • Two problems. The first is that power levels for better or worse seem to make a lot more difference in who wins a fight than inteligence or talent. So once the Ginyu force and Freiza were wiped out Zarbon likely could have taken command with little trouble. Possibly less trouble than the Captain Ginyu since all the flashbacks suggest that Zarbon and Dodoria are the next in command regardless of their power levels. The second being that Frieza couldn't be everywhere at once and since it's implied that the Saiyans are well above the rank and file (and lets be honest Raditz wasn't all that powerful by any scale used in DBZ) the elimination of Frieza, King Cold, the Ginyu Force, Zarbon and Dodoria and Cui all at once is an enormous vacuum.
  • Why assume that the only megalomaniac villains out there are the ones we see? Surely, some reasonably powerful people are going to come crawling out of the woodwork when they get their chance?
  • If you count GT, then Dr. Myuu and his Machine Mutant Empire would count as one such villain.
• Freeza's empire is stated in the Anime dub to have slightly over 40 planets, sometime in the early Namek Saga. That's a lot of worlds, but considering that the average world has no Saiyin-level Chi-users, and the number of powerful individuals who died around the same time as Frieza (anyone left after that struggle would have to be too weak for the Ginyu Force, and probably weaker than Zarbon or Dodoria), no war would have resulted which a lone Z fighter couldn't wrap up on a dull weekend. Most likely Vegeta, during his stint of away-from-Earth training which ultimately got him a Super Saiyin form. Though, of course, he would have just killed any warlords, and said he was coming back later to rule their worlds. Maybe people are still out there, trembling in fear at the though of his return...
• The show is pretty coy in describing what Frieza and his henchmen are exactly, but they were far from civilized. They knew nothing of technology and power levels, yet somehow they had really impressive technology and power levels; sometimes they called themselves "mutants." I'd figured they were bio-engineered soldiers, and the real bosses were on some other planet.
• The 2008 special explains that Abo and Cado took over, so no real problems. Plus, by the end of the special, they're friendly with the Z fighters, which is probably good news for their empire. Obviously not canon, but it is an explanation.
• Vegeta was shown at one point beating up on The Remnant of Frieza's forces on the occasional world, so it looks like the individual planets were simply allowed to go free (if Abo and Cado didn't take them back).
  • Must be filler. After the Frieza arc the DBZ team had no further access to spaceships, and the only ones who ever space-travelled after that were Goku and Dende.
    • Dr. Briefs almost certainly still has the blueprints for the insanely upgraded version of Goku's spacepod that he built for Goku, and IIRC, Bulma herself modified Piccolo's ship for human use, so those plans should still be rolling around as well.
  • Have we neglected Cooler? Or King Cold? Frieza's older brother and father, respectively? They most likely have control of his empire now.
    • Not... terribly likely, given that King Cold was killed by Future Trunks about two minutes after Freiza, and Cooler was killed in the movies. He may have gotten sorta better, but wasn't in any condition to do any ruling. And was killed once and for all anyway.
    • Not to mention Cooler is movie-only.
  • The empire is at least double 40 planets - The planet Vegeta stops at before going to Namek is #79. This issue is actually adressed in Dragon Ball Online as the main villain of the game takes leadership over the remains of Freeza's forces.
  • The way I figured the empire worked, and this is taking Cooler into account as movie-only or not, his movie doesn't really contradict anything and fits nicely within the series timeline, is that King Cold is the actual ruler of the overall empire. Frieza and Cooler, despite Frieza at the very least being stronger than Cold, are subservient to their father but left to operate more or less autonomously, given their own territory to have power over. Within Frieza's territory, he has decided to keep the existence of his father and brother secret and propagate the belief among his followers and subjects that he is the ruler of the universe, partly out of ego and partly so no one gets the idea of trying to instigate a war between the three factions. After Frieza's defeat on Namek, Vegeta began taking a metaphorical sledge hammer to Frieza's empire as he searched for Goku in space while King Cold was having Frieza healed and repaired. After Frieza and Cold die, Cooler assumes control over whatever's left of Frieza's holdings as well as what territory Cold ruled personally, assuming such territory existed. This explains the gap between Frieza and Cold dying and Cooler showing up. Upon Cooler's death, the scenario presented by this WMG took place, but earth was left alone either due to obscurity or due to the fact that if you have five people each stronger than your newly deceased evil overlord living on the same planet and apparently content to remain there punching each other, you leave them the hell alone.

Nappa is alive.

During the Namek Saga, the Z warriors wished that everyone killed by Vegeta would come back. Well, guess who killed Nappa?

• No, they did NOT. They wished that everyone killed by Frieza and his men would come back; as Tien and Yamcha didn't immediately come back to life, the argument that Vegeta and Nappa counted as Frieza's men at that point is invalid.
  • Ah, but Vegeta hadn't turned truant by that point (unless he did, but that's not the point of this page). Sure, he didn't like Frieza, but I doubt that matters. I like this one.
    • Vegeta spefically didn't count. Even if Vegeta's body count on Namek had been chalked up to Frieza, it's mentioned that it's not when all the survivors are wished back to Earth and Vegeta laughs about it. The wish was to return to life all those Frieza killed and it was extended to include those killed by his actions. When Vegeta was on earth he wasn't acting under orders. Given how broadly the wish was made it's not impossible that the Ginyu are alive. It was Frieza's fault they were around, Frieza did put them in the situation that got them killed and apparently death by heart ache is considered murder.
• And his hybrid son (or daughter, whatever) will appear in the next DBZ movie as an important plot point. If they made Vegeta's long lost permashota brother in this recent movie, why not Nappa's kid?
• If you follow the GT anime canon, he had to have died. Otherwise, Vegeta couldn't have killed him again during the Super 17 saga.
• The Namekian villagers that Vegeta killed didn't even come back with that wish. And since he keeps telling us that there are only two Saiyans left, I think it's safe to say that Nappa is still dead.

Women can become Super Saiyan, but...

It takes a different trigger to do so. Men are transformed by rage (Goten might be the exception, as Vegeta probably irritated Trunks enough to SSJ him on purpose), but Pan (if GT is to be taken in consideration) doesn't seem to transform into one, even when absurdly enraged. Perhaps, their trigger is an emotion that transforms women into monsters, like rage does with men. Scorn, deception, and absolute despair are good options to take in consideration.

• This is anime. Just insult her cooking or something and that'll do it.
  • What if she doesn't like to cook, like Pan? Calling her fat might be the replacement? (it'd work for Bra, I'm pretty sure)
• It isn't rage; otherwise Vegeta would have done it long, long ago. It's something like freeing your mind, if I remember it right.
  • It was overwhelming rage + a pure heart (Vegeta claimed he used pure evil) + sufficient amounts of power. Unless you're over a level of power that Vegeta never approached until late into the Frieza saga, you just can't transform into SSJ.
  • But of course Pan was easily that strong (she pwns Dr. Gero/Android 20 in one scene, for example).
• Alternately, possibly Pan really hasn't ever gotten angry enough. For while she has definitely gotten very angry (and had her fair share of despair too), she was never in a situation where she was desperate angry - ie in the back of her mind there was always the possibility that her grandfather or father or uncle, etc would save her.
• Super Saiyan is a super powered evil side. Just being enraged won't cut it. There needs to be some extreme hate.
• Some Fridge Logic, though I'm not sure if it counts in the DBZ universe: Blood. Remember, Pan is only a quarter saiyan.
  • Does this mean that Goten had some serious issues he wasn't letting on about?
    • That was the point of Cell torturing the crap out of his friends in front of him: he needed Gohan not just be furious, but to go on a roaring rampage of revenge.
      • Goten, not Gohan.
• Women probably can become Super Saiyans but you need to have at least as much Saiyan blood as human blood to go Super Saiyan. That's why Pan never went SSJ, she's only 1/4 Saiyan.
  • So why, in the "100 years later" episode, are both Goku Jr (Pan's grandson) and Vegeta Jr (Vegeta's great-great-grandson) able to transform into Super Saiyans?
• Pan can be dealt with by looking at a subsequent WMG - she theoretically 'inherited' (read: stole) the Mystic Powerup from Gohan when she was concieved. This would explain why she never turned Super Saiyan, despite being able to fight on-par with her Super Saiyan 3 Grandpa.
  • She also can fight with the golden Super Saiyan ki aura suggesting either she can access Super Saiyan power without a Super Saiyan transformation (as per theory above) OR she can and does change into a Super Saiyan, but female Saiyans don't change their hair color when they transform! Of course the ki aura color thing could just be the GT animation team screwing up.
• Word of God has it that he just couldn't decide on how to draw a female Super Saiyan and left it out. Something about the hair. I'm not seeing it, though

Saiya-man is the result of the repressed trauma that Gohan endured at the hands of the Ginyu Force.

(*pose*... *pose*... *Large Ham rant*... *poses some more*)

• Repressed trauma? Perhaps he thought that if they weren't so evil, they'd be awesome. And thinking about that, in DBverse, it seems like all TV programs are superhero shows, fighting tournaments, baseball... And the News.
  • You forgot aerobics.
• I'll buy this one, since Piccolo also traumatized Gohan pretty bad (to train him in Goku's absence), and notice that the Saiyaman costume has a turban/cape thing going on...
• In Budokai Tenkaichi 3, in the character reference, its implied that, indeed, Gohan was probably thinking of the Ginyu Force when he got the idea, but it also says that he was inspired by them, not traumatized.
  • It's possible he thought they were cool, he was only 6 at that point, young enough to still think that tokusatsu was cool.
    • Maybe he got into tokusatsu later on, since at the time they were weirding him out.
• My personal theory is that the Saiyaman outfit is a tribute of sorts to some of the Z-fighters and clothes from Gohan's past. The green tunic thing is from Bandit Yamcha or could also be from Tien and Chiaotzu, The body suit, boots and gloves resemble those from Saiyan armor, as already mentioned the cape and turban are from Piccolo, and finally the sunglasses are from Master Roshi

Saiyans are to the Time Lords as Romulans are to the Vulcans.

Romulans are a violent warrior race and look similiar to the Vulcans. Vulcans are a logical observational race. Saiyans are a violent warrior race and look similiar to Time Lords, yet there's the difference of the tail. Time Lords are a logical observational race. Saiyans just go through regenerations differently (super saiyan state) or sometimes not at all.

• If they are related, the divergence must have been much, much farther in the past than the Vulcan-Romulan split, judging by physiological differences. I read somewhere that the Vulcans and Romulans diverged around the time of Christ, and all their differences are cultural, wheres Time Lord-Saiyan differences are in many respects genetic, indicating time for divergent evolution.
  • Perhaps the Time Lords banished their more violent members eons ago, before inventing TARDISes, and sent them all to a random planet in space pods, the random planet just happening to be inhabited by Tuffles? This would, of course, imply that Time Lords originally had tails, and it is the Saiyans who are the physically closer to the ancestor species...
    • This would imply that Time Lords can go Oozaru at some stage. Maybe Gallifrey has something to do with Blutz waves?

Vegeta is American.

Think about it! His attacks have English names in Japan, his Big Bang Attack causes Nuclear Explosions, he's the most arrogant person in the series. There's no doubt he's more American than Bandit Keith.

• Alternately, everyone in Planet Vegeta were Americans. Most of them happen to have vegetable names in English, only slightly modified.
  • Lol, possible. But Word of God has it that Vegeta was given English moves so as to seem more alien to the Japanese audience.
    • Like Americans.

Most Saiyans are (or were, briefly) alive

During the Namek saga, they wished for everyone killed by Freeza and his men to come back to life. Freeza killed the Saiyans. So after the wish, they all reappeared, only to find themselves floating in empty space.

• • On a related note, this means the heros of the show commited at least one count of genocide, since those saiyans would have then died horrible deaths in the vacuum of space. I say at least one count because I doubt that it was the first time that Frieza destroyed an enemy's entire planet.
• Wasn't the destruction of the Planet Veget well over a year before the wish was made?
• Additionally, this is how Tarble (as well as some of the other Saiyans in the not-quite-canon movies) is both a) still alive despite the "only four Saiyans survived" story and b) why he doesn't look nearly as old as he'd have to be to survive Freeza's Saiyan purge. It works like this: Tarble is sent off planet, probably somewhere between the ages of five and ten. Freeza destroys Vegeta-sei and presumably hunts down most of the off-planet Saiyans including Tarble. Twentysomething years later, the Dragon Balls revive everyone killed by Freeza and his men, including Tarble. Since Tarble is off planet, he survives, learns of Freeza's death, and decides to go native rather than purging the planet for the profit of a dead tyrant. Ten or so years later we see him in the recent special, married to one of the aliens he was assigned to kill.
• Except that Tarble probably had those genes that make people look younger for more time than they should, or is probably Vegeta's half brother through genetic manipulation or something. He probably was a servant of Freeza as well.
• This is impossible. One of the restrictions on Kami's balls was that if you were reviving multiple people who fit into a category, only those who died within the past year are revived. Vegeta blew up twenty-some-odd years ago, and the wish was made on Kami's Dragon Balls, so the Saiyan people were past their expiration date (unless someone wanted to revive them one at a time).

Garlic Jr. is related to Pilaf.

• Surely I am not the only one who finds their resemblance a little odd.
  • This troper also noticed how similar they look. But preferred rather they aren't related.
  • They're the same species, but Pilaf is a noseless mutant, like Krillin.

Hell's name is really HFIL.

• The Hell you see on the show doesn't look like the one from "Fusion Reborn." Sure they may be connected to each other (since the bad guys escaped from this Hell), but Gaz and Moz's section of Hell is really known as the Home For Infinite Losers.
  • The Hell in "Fusion Reborn" was altered by Janemba. In the movie Goku is shown falling into what looked like floating red gelatin, only for the camera to pan to a sign reading "Blood Fountain" showing that it was previously that established landmark. At the end of the movie it all went back to normal. As for the name HFIL, this troper's theory is that the censors just took the word HELL and lopped off the bottom portion of the letters, leaving H F I and lowercase L.
    • That's correct. Go watch the uncencored version of the FUNimation dub (Remastered). Their shirts read HELL.

Piccolo's Heel Face Turn Only Became Possible With Goku's Death

Piccolo was originally birthed for one purpose: To kill Son Goku and avenge Demon King Piccolo. That was his sole driving ambition besides taking over the world. He could do nothing else but train and work for that moment. However, once Piccolo killed Goku and Raditz, his directive was complete and that compulsion was gone. From that moment on Piccolo was free to do as he wished, and in that time period immediately after he grew close to Gohan, which was the primary factor in his Heel Face Turn.

• Sorry, this isn't WMG, this is canon.

The reason Gohan can go Super Saiyan in GT is because he passed the 'Mystic' powerup down to Pan.

Think about it, though this does draw from the above WMG of Goku was in Super Saiyan form during Goten's conception to an extent. The 'mystic' powerup that Gohan recieved from the Grand Old Kai is something that no one really knows how to explain and also circumvents the whole point of the Super Saiyan powerup. Rather than going level 1/2/3, they just draw out the needed strength so long as their body was trained to handle said strength (ie: their max strength is always there if they need it). For some reason, Gohan no longer has this in GT, instead being forced to use the traditional power scale of Super Saiyans.

Meanwhile, Pan is running around the universe, beating the crap out of villains that most DBZ characters would have a hard time with... and is even out-performing her grandfather at times. About the only way to explain this is that she somehow 'stole' the powerup from her father when she was concieved.

• I thought something similar. Pan had a golden aura sometimes (might be animation error), and golden auras are usually Super Saiyan ones, or, in Gohan's case (at Buu's Arc), Mystic Saiyan. The Mystic power probably passed down to her, indeed.
• It's never stated in canon that Gohan can never go SSJ again. Although he went Mystic instead of SSJ when asked to, it doesn't say anywhere that SSJ has been overwritten or erased for good.
  • But what clearly was done to SSJ is it was rendered pointless, due to Gohan having a better (ie. "less taxing") way of accessing his power. This is apparently no longer the case in GT, whereas Pan, as said before, is running around doing things on par with a basic level SSJ.

The Super Saiyan transformation is the same thing as Shinobu Sensui's Sacred Energy.

The similarities? Both require a tremendous level of power in base form, they both require the user to go through a personality change of sorts, both have a golden aura, and both grant the user ridiculous levels of power. The only difference between the two is that Sacred Energy doesn't change the eye color of the user. But maybe the hair and eye color change is just a Saiyan trait.

Dende is an avatar of Haruhi Suzumiya.

He is made the new Kami-sama of Earth for a reason.

Goku was able to continually surpass Vegeta because he drank the Divine Water

Goku drank the Divine Water in Korin's Tower in order to defeat King Piccolo. It changed him from being a lowly C-Rank warrior to probably an A-Rank Warrior. Guru's raising of Gohan's and Krilin's potential probably had a similar effect.

• Interesting, and entirely possible! That would explain why Krillin pulled far ahead of the other humans after the Namek saga.
  • Now that I think of it, if Lamarck Was Right biology applies to the Dragon Ball universe, than young Trunks and Goten should've easy surpass their fathers, and maybe Vegito for that matter, if they put any serious effort into training.
• You mean the divine water he drank before his fight with King Piccolo? Because the 'divine water' in Korin's tower was just ordinary water.
  • Right, that 'Divine Water', the one that's potentially fatal. Not the ordinary water that Korin normally guards.
• All the kami water did is give him a power boost. The reason why Kakarot was able to easily surpass Vegeta is because he had more battle smarts. Even though Vegeta trained more and violently then Kakarot, Goku trained smarter and more efficiently than him. A good example of this is when Vegeta was on Namek getting his face pounded in and Goku was training in 100x gravity, who do you think suffered more Goku or Vegeta, I believe that one's so easy it doesn't need to be answered because we all know the answer, but answer this to your self who came out stronger. Goku's training was no walk in the park either but he did it at a steady pace or at least steady for him since we all know how energetic Goku is. Oh yeah do you remember when Kakarot came out of the hyperbolic time chamber stronger than Vegeta (because he mastered the fpssj instead of the assj form) because he recieved better training than him and it was because he trained (worked on his strength and speed) instead of torturing himself.

King Chappa and Mr. Satan are one and the same person

A supposedly strong fighter, losing to a little kid (Goku), King Chappa couldn't stand the embarassment, and changed his name to Mr. Satan. He later went on to win the world championship.

• Plus it's actually stated that King Chappa has won the tournament at least once before Goku showed up.
• It also supports the post above about how Mr. Satan had a child that looked nothing like him.

The Earth of Dragon Ball Z is a lost Harem Planet for saiyans.

But whoever made the weak saiyan-like beings either made them too weak to stay physically intact, or was killed for daring to suggest weakening the descendants of saiyans before telling them where the planet was. Human/Saiyan hybrids go Super-Saiyan more easily than pure Saiyans because their genetic material was collected not too long after (or sometime before) the last Super Saiyan (possibly even from a branch of its family), and divergent evolution allowed the humans (who could not turn Super-Saiyan) to keep the Super-Saiyan gene more readily accessible and the Planet Vegeta Saiyans killed off most bloodlines that could access the Super-Saiyan form below a power level of some fifteen thousand due to Power Incontinence and a Berserk Mode. This is how Gohan, Trunks, et. al. could be conceived.

Every lifeform is decended from Cell.

Work with me here. We know know as Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock (or whatever the official title will be when it hits the US) that it is possible in the Dragonballverse to literally get knocked into last week. Freiza did not kill Bardock he knocked him one thousand (or more) years into the past. Gohan likewise may not have killed Cell instead knocking a being with the DNA of every known species all the way back to the beginning of time.

Earth is one big Mystical Fount of Power.

Saiyans who live on earth for a long time can access Super-Saiyan form more easily, but not as easily as Saiyans (or half-Saiyans) who were born on Earth. Their power incline is much steeper than normal Saiyans and other species for this reason, even if they do start out stronger. Most humans are just immune to it.

• It could be something in the sun, or in the moon.
• Earth does have an unnaturally large moon relative to other planets. Raditz even comments on this in Dragon Ball Kai. Perhaps the large size emits enough "flux waves" to increase Saiyan power even if their tails are missing. This is assuming the moon was wished back after Piccolo blew it up.

Saiyans reproduce like Xenomorphs.

They find (or make) a convenient hole in a member of another species, or if Fasha is canonically "female" a breeding member of their own, lay a fertile egg-thing, and let it grow until it can tear its way out of the host or the host expels it. Human females happen to be right in the comfort zone where they can expel the parasite before it kills them but after it is big enough to survive on its own, and (assuming it is implanted via the right orifice) has a ready patch of nutrition-transferring tissue that keeps it from sucking stuff out of more sensitive organs. They may take on the characteristics of the host, like the Xenomorphs, which would explain the power increase rate of human-Saiyan hybrids and Trunks' hair. However, it's more likely that earth is a "big Mystical Fount of Power" and Trunks just happened to have a funny hair color like Broly.

• Ewwwww.

Frieza is an alternate-universe version of Batman.

Assuming that his actual parents are dead, and King Cold is his subordinate (very nearly canon) and parental figure ("king" being a given name like King Vegeta is guessed to have on the JustBugsMe page). He can breathe in space, he goes from a less bulky physique than most (but not all) beings of similar power, getting more and more bulky before dropping into a physique not extremely dissimilar from his original form but with a Sculpted Physique (literal to the trope for Frieza, literal to the title for Batman). His rival is a humanlike space alien who got sent to earth before its home planet was destroyed, became more powerful than any of his own species, met many others despite being Last of His Kind, and notably indulged in Super Dickery. His (back to Frieza/Batman) fighting style includes manipulating his opponents and allies based on how he thinks they think, and while for most of Frieza's run he doesn't rely on tools, he does use his spaceships and chair in his first form and eventually a mechanical contrivance to fight despite being incapacitated and very nearly killed by a much stronger opponent. The two most significant differences between Frieza and Batman are that Frieza merely ended up weak compared to the other fighters, and Batman usually puts his skills on the side of justice instead of the side of making himself more money.

• So…if Batman ever got selfish…The DCU would become something akin to a Hell on Earth? Honestly…I believe you.

Future Bulma didn't actually build a time machine - she built a machine made to travel through to alternate realities!

Ok, so this idea came to mind while playing one of the video games, but bear with me.

Future Bulma's time machine (calling it this for the moment) lets Future Trunks travel back in time to warn Goku and everyone else about the Androids coming up in three years - not to mention the heart virus that will kill Goku. This in itself makes some sense with time travel, although Trunks seems to acknowledge that it will make an alternate timeline rather than change the future when he leaves for home.

Cue three years later, Trunks returns. Now, if this was really a time machine he had, Future Trunks would have traveled back to the exact same day that the Androids showed up, with Goku long dead and the other fighters being slowly wiped out. He has no way to logically travel down the timeline he created! And that's assuming Trunks was able to return to his timeline in the first place! After all, if we use Back to The Future theory, Trunks just made himself an alternate 1985 where Goku's still alive, the Androids and Cell are gone and Biff rules Hill Val... right. You get the idea.

So, really, the only way for this to make any sense is for "Future" Trunks and Bulma to believe that this is a time machine, while Bulma (obviously distracted by the world ending around her) wound up crossing some wires somewhere. Thus, instead of time travel, she really breached the walls between dimensions. This is how Trunks can keep visiting the other 'timeline' he created, without being stranded in a future he accidentally made.

This also has the side-effect of making Cell a trans-dimensional threat, which changes very little in terms of how things play out. The Cell that tormented the cast for most of the plot arc is a Cell from an alternate universe where the Androids slaughtered nearly everyone, but Trunks barely won a final fight with them. The Cell that Krillin and "Future" Trunks destroy while sitting in his fetus form is the Cell of this world, a Cell who will now never come to be. Finally, the Cell killed by Future Trunks in the epilogue is a Cell from a similar world to that of the Cell Gohan killed, but one who came into a world nowhere near as decimated thanks to Trunks killing the Androids much sooner because of his vastly increased strength earned from his time in our reality.

So! To sum up?

Trunks traveled through dimensions, not time, which is why he was able to come back for return visits and still avoided screwing up his own timeline. There were three versions of Cell because of this, but this changes nothing and helps further explain why DBZ "time travel" is so screwed up anyhow.

Am I insane, or does this actually make sense?

• I'm with you, this guy is a genius!
• You're not insane, just wrong. Trunks did travel through time the first time, but in affecting the past, he automatically created a new dimension. There is no way for Trunks to travel back to his own past timeline, because in that past time line Trunks did not travel into the past. Because if he had, then that future wouldn't exist. Make sense?
  • Actually, its canon that any time-travel they commit also is interdimensional travel as well, since Trunks notes that there are several things in the main Z timeline that are different from his own (like their Androids being ridiculously stronger than his own or Goku falling from his disease at a different time).
    • Precisely. There is no way to travel into your own timeline, so in that sense only interdimensional travel is possible.

Dragon Ball Z was suppose to be Dragon Ball The Next Generation

Nowadays many viewers wondered why did Akira Toriyama became such a Master in Demoted to Extra when it came to just about any DBZ character whom was from DB. (Well except for Goku, even though Akira seemed to have tried to do that. Namely on how later on in the series Goku has been accused of trying a little too hard to get the younger fighters to take over his role.) Its no secret that Gohan was suppose to have taken over the role of "Earth's Hero" and Main Character from his Father. (In which plenty of fans have wished that the show ended on the Cell Saga so Akira might have actually got his wish.) While DBZ did have its fair share of new characters, Goku never did lose his role as Earth's main protector. And despite on how they have been hit with the "Demoted to Extra" trope (some a lot more than others) it was still pretty much the adventures of Goku and his friends.

But in Akira Toriyama's defense its an interesting idea to try to come up with a "Next Generation" a bit more gradually. Cause often enough when a franchise tries to use that idea we get a bunch of new characters that come out of nowhere, in which we might not even be certain if we are in the same continuity anymore. (But its generally due to the story having a time skip when that happens though how much of a time skip can often vary.) The story would often like to claim that these characters would have any connection to any previously established character, even though the story never actually mentioned their existence until now. Akira tried to avert this by getting Gohan to one day take over his father's role gradually. But sadly DBZ is probably quite the example on how that kind of idea can go wrong. So in other words Akira might have succeeded in truly getting Gohan to truly take over his father's position as Earth's Main Defender if he did it right from the start.

• Word of God says, mostly, yeah. Executive Meddling and negative fan reaction (the Japanese really REALLY like Goku) forced him to keep bringing Goku back time and time again.
• In support of this is the fact that while Goku in DB was a legitimate Kid Hero who saved the world many times over, adult Goku in DBZ was actually not much of a big hero (and even in some ways a subversion of the hero concept). Consider: he didn't save the world from Raditz alone (enter Piccolo), he didn't save the world from Vegeta and Nappa alone (enter Vegeta's own Bad Bossness, Gohan, Krillin, and Yajirobe), he didn't save Namek from Freeza (no one did), he actually endangered Earth by provoking Freeza, and he didn't protect Earth from Freeza afterwards (Mirai Trunks did), he didn't save the world from the Androids (turned out it didn't need to be done, or maybe Krillin did by showing enough compassion to No.18 to prevent them from going evil), he didn't save the world from Cell (unless guiding Gohan to it counts), he had a chance to save the world from Fat Buu and didn't do it (Mr. Satan did by befriending Buu), his plan to save the world from Super Buu by teaching fusion to Goten and Trunks failed miserably (failed to take into account that the kids weren't emotionally mature enough to pull it off), and his contribution to stopping Kid Buu was as part of a team effort (along with Mr. Satan, Vegeta, and the entire population of the earth).
  • Fascinating, I'd never thought of it that way before. So the only time he truly saved the world all by himself was when he beat Piccolo Daimaou all those years ago. All part of the Shonen Jump mantra of "friendship and effort" or whatever, I guess.

Buu is a mutant/primitive/evolved/enchanted/whatever Kirby.

Let's review the facts, shall we?

• Both are pink.
• Both are stretchy and can partly shapeshift.
• Both can eat much more than seemingly possible.
• Both can take the appearance and powers of people they eat.

QED.

• Going by this theory, that means Bibidi is a…ah, screw it. That's one time that meme won't apply here, cause time has nothing to do with it.

Super Saiyan 3 draws power that originally would have come from a Great Ape Transformation

Due to it's quick energy consumption (I'm going by official manga here, not GT), it isn't that far-fetched an assumption that SSJ 3 is a compacted version of the Golden Great Ape of a SSJ 2. My reasons? Well, at least in the anime, we see the image of an Oozaru as Goku completes the transformation, and in the English dub, he says that the energy required to become a SSJ 3 has to come deep from within, sort of indicating forcibly drawing out the power that originally would have come from becoming a Great Ape while in SSJ or SSJ 2 (I'll assume that the power increase sort of...decreases as the person gets more powerful).

• Perhaps supporting this, the SSJ 3 transformation results in more prominent browridges and a slightly more sloped forehead, which are features reminiscent of earlier hominid ancestors of humans - ie halfway back to transforming into an ape.

Reacoom is the announcer in Dragon Ball Kai.

Reacoom is really the announcer. He talks slowly when recapping previous episodes because he has trouble reading his cues. He couldn't announce for the beginning of episodes 30 because he was busy getting ready for his fight with Vegeta, nor episode 31 because he was in the middle of it. (he was able to announce the end of episode 30 because the fight was put on hold for the next week, of course)

Humans are (on average) the worst, most violent species in existance, not Saiyans.

There's only been one saiyan recorded in the last 3000 years that wasn't in close contact with humans for years before his transformation, and that's Broly, who had a Slave Crown and a parent who made the normal Saiyan Training from Hell look like Training From HFIL. Goku was raised by humans, and even needed his best friend being killed in cold blood before his eyes to snap and go Super Saiyan rage in his mid-twenties. The incredibly powerful Prince Vegeta was raised by the punk kid who enslaved and later destroyed his entire planet (and I mean "his", being Prince of All Saiyans), then got surpassed by some punk serf-class guy who lived most of his life on a backwards planet with almost nobody above level 5, and spent a few years using mystical and technological training weights to push his rage at, probably, Goku being more powerful. This was when he was at least over thirty (unless I drastically overestimated his age), but he had exposure to humans for a much shorter time than Goku. Gohan, a half-human and raised (mostly) by humans, has emotion-based power boost, turned Super Saiyan when he was eleven and Super Saiyan 2 when he was 12. Trunks and Goten were SS-capable by the age of ten, and while Goten had (almost definitely, I don't remember the timeline) been conceived after Goku was SS-capable, Trunks required Training from Hell anyway- Goten just needed a human family. That included Chichi (as did Gohan, until he was five).
What have the Saiyans not had that the DBZ Saiyans and Half-Saiyans had in droves? Human associates. Huan associates that taught them (and other alien characters) to repress emotion until it bursts out of their ears like steam, have violent outbursts at any expression of their species' traditional pastimes (and then switch completely to encourage this in a younger sibling), let illogical sequences of thought and action slide as long as they sound okay, shoot dogs for fun and lack of profit, and (though this is usually the tipping point after years of buildup of the Human Bastardry) watch their weak human friends die like flies. Saiyans just kill things for food, release of aggression, money and at least sometimes honor, which humans do all the time plus those other things. The only beings in the series that are worse than the average human mercenary (on a wider scale) are the Card Carrying Villains that originate from Earth or other dimensions anyway.
Therefore, DBZ humans are the most evil, loony species in existence (at least on average, since some humans are only evil or loony), and bring out the worst in even Saiyans.

• Except most of the humans in the series weren't that bad.
  • • And who's saying that?
  • You underestimated Goten and Trunks. We see Goten become a Super Sayan at 7 (almost half his older brother's age when he first did it and around 1/3 or possibly 1/4 of his father's). Trunks did it a 8 (around 1/4 of his father's age when he first did it). This is assuming they'd just did it within that year. Then, shortly after Goku first became SSJ 3, They did the same (though they were fused, do it may not count completely).

Captain Ginyu was never in his original body.

When Ginyu says "The stronger this guy is, the better," during his battle with Goku, Jeice immediately understands, realising that Ginyu is about to use his body swap technique. Although it's possible that Ginyu simply told the others about it, it seems more likely that they have seen him use the technique in the past, perhaps more than once. Who knows how many bodies he went through before coming to the horned, purple one that we see in the series?

• This is actually widely believed by fans, and is pretty much fanon / almost canon. However, if you follow the GT canon, Ginyu gets sent to Hell and is reunited with his recognizable purple body. This could just be for the viewers' sake, or in GT he really was the purple guy. However, if you don't follow GT, the above theory looks very acceptable.
  • Alternatively, the purple guy who came from Hell in GT was actually the frog in Ginyu's old body?
    • In Budokai Tenkaichi 3, it says that Ginyu was originally the same race as Jeice and Sauzer.

Bulla is far stronger than she looks.

She's Vegeta's daughter; I refuse to believe that anyone with him for a father would not be expected to at least be able to put up a fight (however pitiful). More likely, she received training when younger and just lost interest as she got older. That would explain how she is capable of flight.

• It's hinted that she's capable enough of carrying her own shopping bags without any effort, but she doesn't want to look manly doing so.
• Vegeta doesn't think much of women. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't bother to train her.
  • He doesn't care about most women, but he DOES care about his daughter. He probably at least taught her self-defense.

Only females/genderless beings can use the more traditional way of magic.

The one Granny Uranai, Kami-sama and the Kai use, by seeing the future through a crystal ball, making enchantments, these things. Thet's why it doesn't receive too much attention in the series... And might explain how super-Saiyan level guys can be afraid of their wives. About the Kais, they're probably as genderless as the Namekians, and the body differences which would usually be gotten through gender are actually the form that makes them feel most comfortable, if not with some limitations (like a random baldiness, or short legs). The explanation is that too much testosterone would make this sort of ability rather blurry... About Master Karin? He might be neutered. And about Son Goku, if he accepted being Kami-sama, he'd probably be castrated as well (even if it'd be only magically). Ugh.

• The old Daikaioushin seems to certainly be male and non-neutered, if his Roshi-esque antics are anything to go by. Similarly, Buu is pretty magical and shown the hots for at least one girl, although its questionable that there's anything underneath his pants...
  • Going by Dragon Ball Online, Buu created a wife for himself, in order to create the majin race.
  • The old Daikaioushin accidently fused with a witch at one point, granting him unique powers.

Hercule/Mr. Satan and Senbei Norimaki were part of a cloning experiment.

Hercule was designed to be the strongest man, while Senbei was made to be the smartest. Both worked somewhat. Hercle, while outclassed by the rest of the cast, is probably the strongest man to not use ki. Meanwhile, Senbei created one of the first androids, albiet one that needed glasses and had some issues with common sense.

Tarble looks so young because the planet he was sent to is so very far away

Tarble spent most of his life in cold sleep. He heard of Frieza's defeat shortly after it happened, but it took him another several years of travel to get to earth.

• So, a male Ayeka, huh? Wow, that explains everything.

Saiyans have a collective source of energy from which they draw their transformative powers.

After Frieza killed off all the saiyans but four (or maybe nine or ten, if you count the movies), it became incredibly easy to go to higher levels of power, passing Super Saiyan and going to Legendary Super Saiyan (when you reach SS the hard way first) or SS2+.

Saiyans are an offshoot of the human race, or the two races share a common ancestor.

There are several pieces of evidence towards this. First, the fact that the two races are pretty much identical save for the tails. What are the chances of two races evolving on different planets and looking almost the same? Then there's the tails and Great Ape forms, which could be an evolutionary throwback or something. There's also the fact that the two races are capable of producing fertile offspring together. Finally, it's said that the planet the Saiyans left for Planet Vegeta is still somewhere out in space. Maybe Planet Saiya (as the Dragon Ball Wiki refers to it) is actually planet Earth?

• Or they're mutants who were exiled to another planet for having tails, and over time grew to become a race. In time, planet 'Earth' also had so many mutants they couldn't exile them all, leading to the multi-species community they had today.
• That would explain why a level of Ki control would allow humans like Tien, Krillin, and Yamcha to fly, while also giving master Roshi the abilty to hover for extended periods of time.

Gogeta had actually turned Super Saiyan level FIVE in Dragon Ball GT.

• Seriously, why else did his hair randomly turn red?
  • Unlike the others, SSJ 4 has no standard hair color. you'll notice vegeta's hair is also a different color in SSJ 4
• Does Black and brown make red?

Android 16 either still wanted to or still would have tried to kill Goku if he had lived.

When they finally meet face to face, he tells Goku that he was created to kill him, and that he should not forget that. In the pre-Kai dubbed version, he says that he simply chose not to. We know that Gero had filled his head with nothing but info on Goku. And that out of all the Androids, he seemed to be the one most devoted to the mission (besides 19, and naturally 20). So why didn't he do it? First off, he could still prioritize. Cell was a more immediate threat, and while he was programmed for one specific task, and while he might not be able to go against that perogative, he could still choose when and how he went about it. This is important to my second point. His two most notable acts are both against Cell. Mainly trying to stop him from absorbing 17 and 18, and then trying to self detonate in order to kill him. But he's only supposed to fight Goku right? That's why he even refused to do anything else. Well, whose cells does Cell happen to have? He used this fact to reinterpret his primary mission. Since the opponent he was fighting happened to have the Dna of the opponent he was supposed to kill, he could accomplish what he wanted to do (save his friends, and the world) while accomplishing what he had to do (Kill the spiky haired guy). This even ties into his second attempt to take Cell down. Who was one of the guys within the range of his self destruct device? Son Goku! That's who. If it had worked he would have literally killed two birds with one stone........ and Mr. Satan. I suspect he knew he would not be able to beat Goku, but couldn't go against his programming competely, hence his words when they first met. He was warning him that even if they beat Cell, he himself would still be a threat later.

There is a good reason why Hercule hasn't learned Ki Contol yet

Hercule hasn't learned Ki Control yet because he would be too overpowered if he did. He manage to survive attacks from Cell and Kid Buu, both who were above Super Saiyen level. He even manages to stand up and recover within the same episode. If he can already survive blows from both of them without ki, imagine how strong if he had used Ki.

• Cell wasn't even trying, and Kid Buu was being mentally held back by Fat Buu. He's more like the strongest roach alive. He might be able to surpass Yamcha, if he's lucky.

Pan, as well as her descendants, are actually all 1/2 Saiyan

Now, this may sound a little odd, but just go with it for a second. When a child is born, he/she receives 1/2 of their mother's DNA, and 1/2 of their father's DNA. This process is, normally, random, which provides a good mix n' match of traits from both parents. However, because half of Gohan's DNA is inhuman, it's entirely possible, and even likely depending on how 'insistent' Saiyan genetics are, that Pan received all Saiyan DNA from him. If that's true, and she found out about it, Pan might have gotten Bulma to mess around with any pregnancies she might have had, which would lead to her only passing on Saiyan DNA, and so on, and so forth, leading to Goku Jr., who is still capable of becoming a Super Saiyan.

• Jossed by genetics. If this theory were valid, she'd be a boy.
  • Not necessarily. There ARE female Saiyans, so their genetics have to be close enough that you can derive either a male or a female.
    • Gohan has his X chromossome from Chichi and his Y chromossome from Goku (there's no ohter way around). He passes his X (Chichi's) chromossome to Pan and so does Videl, hence Pan is a girl. Since Gohan's X's chromossome is entirely human, we could either assume that a female born from Gohan is less Saiyan than a male son.
      • Except you're confusing sex-linked traits, carried on the sex chromosomes (the X and Y chromosomes), with with traits carried on the autosomes (all the other chromosomes). Species is not a sex-linked trait, it's the result of a specific combination of genes on a specific arrangement of chromosomes that an organism has. There might be Saiyan-specific genes that are carried on the Y chromosome that Pan wouldn't have inherited (that female full Saiyans also wouldn't have), but that doesn't mean she has any less Saiyan DNA than a hypothetical son of Gohan's. An offspring's always going to get half of each parents' DNA (Except in the case of nondisjunction, in which case the offspring would either not end up being viable and getting miscarried or, if they were born, would probably have many serious medical issues.). The only way for Pan to have been half Saiyan would be if Gohan and Videl decided to make a designer baby and add another quarter set of Saiyan DNA from another Saiyan.

Vegeta learned how to sense energy after being shot in the eye by Goku

To make up for losing sight in one eye.

• But he heals completely! It probably takes way longer than that to learn a sixth sense, even if you sorta need it. And even if he did learn, wouldn't he just forget it after his eye heals?
  • Well, yes, but Vegeta's very gifted. He could've noticed that it could be done, and when he lost sight in one figured out how to do it. From what we see on Namek, Vegeta did learn it, this just seems the best reason.
• According to a WMG below saiyans have sharigan and this could be what helped him to learn to since energy, or perhaps it was the creators' way of moving the story along.

Dabura was a nice guy and benevolent king with a few dickish habits and desires before Babidi majin'd him

Which is why he ended up like he was after death. Once the evil magic controlling him vanished with death, he became a nice guy again. The fact that his species is called and looks like demons is mostly irrelevant and he was a Noble Demon, and he had some standard Disgaea-ish demonic tendencies, not overall harmful but still dark, which was enough for the evil magic to take hold of. All in all, its the only possible explanation for how within hours of his death, he was a total Flower Child.

• This troper thought the same thing. But the Demon World is often viewed a horrific place. It could mean that 1) Dabura pretended to be an evil while among the other demons or 2) these demons are not that evil and prefer to be left alone until Babidi came along.
  • Neither Sula, nor Count Lucifer looked like they were nice. It's more likely Dabura was just as dickish as they were (though MUCH more powerfull and higher ranking), and becoming nice was a side effect of prolonged exposure to heaven.

Raditz was, is, and always will be the most powerful fighter

Raditz had hair with a length that rivaled goku in SS3, so my theory is that Raditz was able to transform into an SS at a very younge age, due to being constantly beaten to near death due to his weakness. after his 105th or so loss, he became sdo enraged that he became a super sayan. He kept this hidden so that he could train more and allow himself to be beaten in order to become even more powerful, but eventually he reached the point where a normal sayin couldnt do any damage to him. He knew that Vegeta or Nappa could damage him, as well as Frieza, but they would have killed him, and he would have not been able to come back since he didnt know about the dragon balls. So he went to earth to have Goku, whom he knew would be strong enough but not kill him, to beat him senseless, but he didnt expecct Gohan and Piccolo. Now, it could be said that Goku was, at birth, one of Frieza's minions, and he never really formally quit. That means that when all people destroyed by Frieza's minions were brought back to life, so was he, twice as powerful as before, with a powerlevel now exceding 1,000,000. He then used a time machine to go to Trunks universe and get killed by Cell. Then he was brought back to life again in Fusion Reborn. After he was killed once again his powerlevel was well over a billion and he could become SSJ 4. he then killed king yenma and went off to train in the world, waiting for the day goku would be strong enough to stand a chance against him

• • Raditz was killed by Piccolo, not Goku, who had nothing to do at all with Frieza, and it had been more than 1 year after his death so he wouldn't have been revived anyway. Natch.
  • Piccolo’s full five-minute charged Special Beam Cannon is enough to kill even a Super Saiyan, the attack is never used again in the series because it takes a ridiculous amount of time to produce.

18 is, somehow, related to Mrs. Cleaver

Seriously, how many people would actually engage in hand-to-hand combat while wearing pearls?

Kaio-sama/King Kai is the narrator. (In the Japanese version.)

Both are played by Jouji Yanami, besides King Kai is a God of sorts. Why wouldn't he be able to narrate the story? (This kinda falls apart in the dub where Sean Schemmel is King Kai, Brice Armstrong narrates Dragon Ball, Kyle Hebert narrates Dragonball Z, Andy Chandler narrates Dragon Ball GT and Doc Morgan narrates Dragonball Z Kai.)

Saiyans & Nameks are polar opposites

It's actually really obvious when you think about it:

• Saiyans are barbaric, & Nameks are peaceful

• Saiyans are always hungry for power, & Nameks have a source of unbelievable power (Dragon Balls) at their fingertips, but only use them in case of an emergency

• Saiyans are super powerful humanoid aliens, & Nameks are stereotypical green telekinetic aliens.

• It can safely be assumed that all Saiyan tech comes from Frieza's army, but the Nameks can create spacecrafts that can travel an entire galaxy in a month (although it is possible that they wished for these materials from Porunga [kami/piccolo was from the dragon clan, after all])

• Saiyans transform into giant monkeys, while Nameks have the ability to grow giant.

• Saiyans are Big Eaters while Namekians don't need to eat

The Black-Star Dragon Balls can grant literally any wish, & more than once

Seriously, if Kami made these things when he & Piccolo were one, then they must be more powerful in some positive way (blowing up the planet in a year if they don't get colloected & put back on said planet in a year doesn't count as positive).

Vegeta's ancestor was the last super saiyan before Goku

One of the Vegeta's became the strongest saiyan warrior & unlocked the power of the super saiyan, & the other saiyans re-named their planet after him & made him their king.

Yamcha is a werewolf.

• He's Chaotic Neutral
• He's a loner
• He has a scruffy, lupine look to him
• He spends his early years Walking the Earth
• He's drenched in Animal Stereotypes
• His ultimate attack is the Wolf Fang Fist.
• We never see him transform because Our Werewolves Are Different.
  • Except Jackie Chun fights a werewolf in one of the Tournaments and it's made clear that Their Werewolves Are Not Different.
    • Our Werewolves Are Different but in a different way
    • Jackie fought a werehuman; a wolfman that transforms into a human during the full moon. Anyway, Yamcha couldn't be a werewolf, otherwise he would've transformed the first time Goku transformed.

Future Trunks is Ranfan's husband.

It's not that far-fetched. After going back to his time and defeating the Androids, Trunks decided to go back further in the past, to a time when Goku is still a kid and the rest of the Saiyans haven't arrived on Earth yet. He ended up being romantically involved with Ranfan in the past and eventually married her. That's why Ranfan's husband is also named Trunks.

• Where does it show Ranfan married to someone named Trunks?
  • In the Dragon Ball Bouken Special manga guide published by Shueisha in 1987. See here for more info.
• Damn you! I just thought of that same theory and pulled up this page so I could post it, only to find it at the very bottom of the page...

GT was something dreamed up by Pan

Its just an extended dream Pan had one night. Giru is a stuffed robot she's holding onto while sleeping.

Tarble's wife is the same species as Abo and Cado

Why were they attacking that particular planet? It was their home planet, and maybe one or both of them had a thing for Tarble's wife.

• Alternately, she's from the same civilization seen on Planet Plant in Episode of Bardock. Although, this does raise the question of how they escaped everything that happened in that world…

Tien never forgave Nappa and Vegeta for the deaths they caused.

Tien and Chaotzu show up less and less as the series went on. While the other Z-fighters could accept Vegeta's presence, they could not.

• Its particuly telling in "Yo, Son Goku And His Friends Return", pretty much everyone shows up but Tien and Chaotzu.
  • Actually, they stop showing up because Tien and Chiaotzu are loners by nature. Tien told everyone on Dende's Lookout after the defeat of Cell that they'd probably never see him again, and only showed up again temporarily in the Buu Saga to help Goku.

Mr/Po Po can defeat anyone in combat, but can't fight.

We've seen him be able to take on kid Goku and Gotenks in a one-on-one fight (although he did lag behind gotenks a bit) Being a genie, Mr. Popo has the ability to raise his power level to be equal to or greater than his oponent, but he cant/doesnt want to actually fight.

• • He never fought Gotenks, did he? I remember him defending himself agaisnt Goten and Trunks for a couple of seconds, and that was filler.

Kid Buu is at least the second most powerful form of Majin Buu

Okay, I know people can't seem to agree on which is the most powerful form of Buu, so I just though I'd stick this up and see what people think. When Super Buu is changing back into Kid Buu we get an explanation from the Supreme Kai about what's happening, and about midway through Old Kai specifically says that absorbing the other Supreme Kai's made Buu weaker. So every form he took after absorbing them (Fat Buu, Old Buu and Super Buu) was weaker than Kid Buu. This doesn't include the other absorbtions though, so I think the order goes like this:

Super Buu (With Gohan, Goten, Trunks and Piccolo), Kid Buu, Super Buu (with Gotenks and Piccolo), Super Buu, Old Buu, Fat Buu,

• This troper says kid Buu is and always will be the strongest Buu. What is more dangerous than a kid full of temper tantrums, and a power level that surely exceeds millions. Every thing he absorbs, dilutes the unstable kid within him, and if it's something good, it mixes the emotions and feelings with his own, except being so purely evil he does not get affected much by the minor feeling of every single individual.
  • Doesn't mean he can't have a lower power level than any other form of Buu, though. Maybe the idea is his pure lack of restraint more than makes up for any actual deficiency in power potential compared to the other Buus.
• Possibly Kid Buu is Kirby and he absorbed the anti christ thus, mixing Kirby's weak minded goodness, with the Pure Evil that is the Anti Christ.

The reason Trunks' sword worked against mecha freeza but not goku is becuase it only works against people with mechanical body parts.

• It was specially designed to kill the future androids, and it tore through mecha freeza like butter, but it didn't work when king cold used it against him, or when he used against goku becuase neither of them had any android parts. the reason it broke on the present androids is because they were just so strong they overpowered it.
  • So it was a +10 against metal sword?
• WAY WRONG!!!! Sorry, i meant is this correct based on the Hirudegarn movie, where the sword was given to trunks by that one purple alien, who had it forged to defeat a giant mystical Holocauser.

Future Trunks, by killing Freeza, is responsible for all the differences between his timeline and the main timeline.

• Presumably in Future Trunks' timeline Goku used Instant Transmission to teleport back to earth, turned SSJ, and squished Freeza and his father. Now if we add the supposition that Goku's heart virus is alien in origin and he contracted it while in space, perhaps in Yarblat, and consider that turning SSJ seems to accelerate the onset of the disease, then going SSJ to fight Freeza that second time would be the trigger that activated the heart virus, leading to Goku's death. This explains why Goku didn't get the heart disease until much later in the main timeline.
• Now Dr. Gero initially designed the Androids solely for the purpose of revenge against Goku, so how would he most likely react when he gets word of Goku's death from his bug probes? In all likelihood he would reprogram his half-completed Androids as instruments of world domination rather than tools of personal revenge. This would explain why the Androids in Future Trunks' timeline are more evil and indiscriminately destructive.
• Without Goku as a template/goal to aim for during the final two to three years of Android development, Dr. Gero lacked the motivation and/or the combat data to make his Androids stronger, resulting in weaker Androids at the end. Dr. Gero is more confident in his ability to control these weaker Androids (erroneously so, of course), and so he does not shut them down and never makes Android 19.

Future Trunks was wrong about the Androids being much stronger than his Androids in the main timeline.

• Future Trunks has never seen the Androids in his timeline use their full power. They like to toy with their victims, and they've been toying with him all this time. The only people who have ever seen Future 17 and 18 use their maximum power die soon afterwards. The main timeline Androids, being more honorable and less sadistic, use their full power in their fights.
• Alternately, the Future Androids started out just as strong as the main timeline Androids, but, having destroyed their creator, they have had no maintenance on their cybernetic parts for all this time, and have slowly become weaker as those parts wear down.

The Androids of Future Trunks' timeline are not more evil (and the main timeline Androids are not more good) than their counterparts. The Androids in all timelines started out exactly the same in ethical alignment, but diverged afterwards.

• In the original unaltered timeline, the Androids are activated and find themselves unchallenged in terms of power. This sense of absolute power and entitlement corrupts them and they become increasingly evil and chaotic over time.
• In the main story timeline, due to the actions of Cell and the heroes' responses to those activities, the Androids get to experience what it is like to be overpowered, to be hunted, to be terrified. They also (in particular Android 18) get to experience what it is like to have someone else help them, protect them, and support them, in some cases (Krillin and Android 16, for example) unconditionally. This experience gives them insight and empathy into how regular humans would regard them, and that empathy allows them to become good.
  • Not quite. The first time everyone fights 17 and 18 is well before Cell first appears, and they're easily overpowered by the Androids. However the Androids spare them in the main timeline, while they killed them in Future Trunks's timeline. This seems to indicate that they're already more benevolent than the ones Trunks battled.
    • Although, they were activated in a different time and situation. The androids of the present kill Gero, fight the Z fighters immediately afterwards, then go to find Goku, after which all the life-changing stuff happens. I'm guessing that in the bad timeline, they awaken, find Goku dead, kill a bunch of normal humans and go nuts.

Piccolo's merge with Nail didn't include Nail's soul

In DBZ, souls definitely exist. Nail told Piccolo that if they merge, he won't put his personality into him. Therefore, I think it makes sense that Nail's soul was seperated from his body, and went to King Yemma to be processed. (Obviously, he'd go to heaven) Nail's body, and the power it possesses, went to Piccolo. Others may have thought of this before I did, but I don't see it mentioned here and there has been some discussion to what happened to him when the merge happened.

• How do you separate the personality/character from the soul? New Piccolo knows and cares about Dende, showing that Nail is still alive within him somehow.

Guru didn't unlock ALL of Gohan's potential

Either he sensed EXACTLY how much potential Gohan had and thought it wise not to unlock all of it (what with Gohan being so young, he might not be able to handle all that power) or he simply was not able to unlock all of it (which would require someone a LOT higher up on the spiritual food chain, like a Kai).

• Or he could only unlock what was currently being held back. With Gohan it's clearly cannon that he was fighting beneath his actual strength simply because he didn't believe he could be stronger than Goku in the Cell Saga. The same thing happens again in the Buu saga with Mystic Gohan. The kid just has mental blocks that keep him from fighting at 100%.

Saiyan Eyes have the same characteristics as the Sharingan

Just a heads up for anyone who has never seen Naruto; the Sharingan is an eye technique used by certain ninja (namely the Uchiha clan and a few select others) that has three main abilities. 1) It gives the user an edetic memory allowing the user to copy and physical or chakra based technique (chakra is bascially ki) 2) It essentially puts the world into HD to allow the user to follow any movement no matter how small. 3) It grants the user powerful hypnosis. I propose that not only do Saiyans have eyes that mimic the Sharingan, but that there is also massive canon evidence supporting it.

1) Ability to copy any technique: It is offically stated that it took Master Roshi fifty years to develop the Kamehameha wave from scratch, after seeing it performed only once, it took Goku minutes to not only learn it but master it to the level he was able to destroy a car - only his small ki level was stopping him from having the capability to destroy a mountain as Roshi had done. Fast forward to the 23rd World Arts Tournament and, despite only ever having seen it performed twice, Goku was able to perfectly mimic Tien's Solar Flare. It should be noted that whilst both Krillin and Yamcha both eventually learn these techniques, its only after being taught by Master Roshi and being taught by Tien respectfully. Later on, Goku learns the Kaioken and the Spirit Bomb from King Kai in a matter of months, which according to the latter, he was the first person to ever achieve this feat - and apparantly the last, given how Piccolo, Yamcha, Tien and Chiaotzu all endured the same training yet were somehow unable to learn these techniques (it's very unlikely he wouldn't have at least attempted it)

2) High Definition Vision: Given the insane speeds Saiyans fight at, as well as repeatedly being shown that they are capable of picking up very minute details, this theory is completely confirmed. One counter-argument however, is that the humans have also been shown to possess the capability to view fights at super speed. But in fact... they really don't. Naruto is capable of seeing things at massive speeds, but the Uchiha will always see things that little bit faster; just like Goku will always see things that little bit faster and clearer than Krillin.

3) Hypnotism: This one is the hardest to prove, and certainly Saiyan eyes have nowhere near the mesmerizing power of the Sharingan. But I believe there is proof that Goku and Vegeta have a very subtle hypnotic ability that they themselves don't realize they possess. Firstly, Goku has always had an unbelieveable ability to convert his enemies into friends - despite usually doing little more than either beating them up or giving them a stern lecture. Yamcha was a cowardly thief, Krillin was an a-hole, Tien was sadistic, Piccolo and Vegeta were world destroying conquerers. All of which became, at the very least, close allies or friends. Then there were all his other friends he aquired thoughout his travels. True, it helps that he is one of the friendliest people in the world; but he was still able to win over entire villages, even if they didn't particularly like him. Secondly there is Vegeta. During his days as a fully fledged Saiyan warrior he never had any time whatsoever for eye contact - he just killed or tortured people, and some of his most passionate haters were Bulma and the Z-Fighters. Come the time skip, where he was living at Capsule Corp enough to look her in the eye... suddenly she was overcome with passion enough to want to conceive a child with him, and every Z-Fighter had forgiven all the terrible things he did apart from Tien (It could be argued that, being a Triclops, he would have a certain immunity to hypnotism, enough to shake off Vegeta. Indeed, by the Buu saga, Tien had apparantly distanced himself from them - able to forgive righteous Goku but not enough to forgive psychotic Vegeta.) By GT, he nearly everyone had grown to respect/love him (Tien still absent) as well as Bulma actually wanting to produce a daughter with him. Remember how Future Bulma and Trunks pretty much thought he was a jerk, whereas present Bulma and Trunks loved him? - they experienced decades longer making eye contact with Vegeta than their future selves ever did.

4) Misc. Evidence: During the initial stages of the Great Ape transformation and beyond, a Saiyans eyes change colour into... Sharingan red. If it wasn't for the lack of Sharingan tomoe encircling the iris Goku, Vegeta and Gohan would have been dead ringers for Uchiha.

All in all, proof for the Saiyan Sharingan is irrefutable.

• A Saiyan's iris isn't really emphasized, I believe that you are just another Naruto fanatic and are just making up nonsense to make everyone in the Naruto universe seem like they are part Saiyan. Because we all know that Dragon Ball Z will kill Naruto.

Dragon Ball takes place in Shadowrun's Sixth World

Futuristic technology, widely present magic and a rather large metahuman population first just make it look like a regular Fantasy Kitchen Sink world but a lot real historical figures, events and cultures are referenced in the series. To the citizens of Dragon Ball Earth, they might be ancient history.

On this earth, the Awakening in 2011 also must have reshaped the world a lot more radically than in Shadowrun, resulting in a very different looking world map.

Chi-Chi is jealous, envious and afraid of her family

She has to know that any of them can wipe the floor with her. Yes, go Big Head Yell, throw objects, fume and rage—cool. They obey her because they love her; They fear her temper because of that love, it makes them upset to see her upset. She has them by the heartstrings, but in no other way. Her way of handling or mishandling them goes back to the final tournament of the original DB. She shows up, wants to surprise the boy she loves, figures to give him a good fight at worst, which is fair. Goku was always strong, but he wasn't making super-geometric leaps when they were kids. But she shows up, and not only does he not recognize her, he brushes aside her combat challenge, one she has prepared for likely for years, under the tutelage of a great fighter, her own father. From the start she realizes even the hint of physical control of any sort is out for her men, and must therefore keep herself tsundere to handle it all.

• Very likely; from a female perspective I have to say thats often how it works in real life. I can honestly say every single one of my boyfriends has been stronger and larger than me; but a loud voice and a little love goes a long way.
• Alternatively, her family did their best to keep her happy to keep the food coming. She is known for her fantastic cooking abilities and saiyans (and half-saiyans) being what they are, consume A LOT of food. If Chi Chi is not kept happy, the food may stop coming which would be a fate worse than death.
  • Most times, it wouldn't be so inherently unequal. With application and leverage, many times a size and strength advantage can be alleviated. In Chi-Chi's case, this is impossible, which is sad. Release her, Yamcha or Mister Satan in our world, and they would kick most ass without powering up. Her firstborn flew through a tree unharmed within weeks of his birth. Her younger son achieved a genetic milestone while not yet 10. Most grandmothers don't have their little ones making worldwide flights before kindergarten. While she can be obnoxiously tsundere (The Kai cut of her after the Saiyan arc doubles this), it is her way of keeping from going Super Nutso Level 5.

Namekians have a stunted sex-drive

It always bothered me why the Namekian civilization is so small despite the fact two hundred years had passed since the near-extinction of their species. Given the amount of healthy adults and given that we've already seen King Piccolo could lay at least half a dozen eggs in a matter of days, their population should at least be double what we see. Then I realized that Piccolo Jr, Kami and Dende have all shown no interest in starting a family either (in fact it could be argued that neither did Guru or King Piccolo. Guru had no choice and King Piccolo was only interested in using his mutated children for war). During Frieza's invasion, we saw no more than ten kids maximum. All things considered, Namekians appear to have the sex-drive of a Panda. Only reproducing when they have no other option. It could be theorized that without the biological impulse to have sex like humans do, Namekians have no inclination to reproduce and may in fact find the whole subject a taboo.

• • Or they may be going for quality, and not quantity. There are fewer children because they want each child to have the most love and attention while growing up.
  • They don't have a sex drive. They reproduce asexually.
    • In this case I interpeted sex drive as reproductive drive.
    • Although that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have sex. Some all-female species of lizard need sexual stimulation from another lizard to stimulate egg production; maybe sexual stimulation forms an integral part of Namekian reproduction. Oviously, Namekians wouldn't need sexual stimulation to reproduce, as evidenced by Piccolo Daimao's producing his jacked-up mutant offspring by himself, but it might be necessary to produce healthy, normal Namekian children. Piccolo might be a special case since he's Piccolo Daimao's reincarnation and already having a soul thing may be enough to keep him from being a mutant. Maybe sexual stimulation is necessary to properly create baby Namekian souls then and the normal soul keeps them from being mutants? Eh?
  • My guess: Guru is a Namekian Queen. He was feed with the arcane Namekian Royal Jelly so he developed his size and power. Without Namekian Royal Jelly, a Namekian is only able to spring off degenerated Namekians like Cymbal, Tambourine and Drum. This theory is backed up on the canon fact that there are different castes. Mostly we see worker Namekians, with a few warriors and a Queen. They also have the wise/magician type, who has some fighting capabilities but mostly rely on their intelligence and powers, like Dende's healing.

The Super Namek are the ones who multi-class.

Based on my theory (just above) about Nameks having different castes, like in a beehive, I can guess that Super Nameks, like Slug or the nameless one that became Kami-sama and Piccolo Senior, were the ones who developed the abilities of different castes. That would explain Piccolo's power to create objects from thin air, like Gohan's Namekian suit, Gohan's first kimono and sword, or the hourglass he gave Super Boo while he was waiting for his fight against Gotenks.

The Super Saiyan transformation is a Viral Transformation.

It's supposed to be extremely rare to the point that Goku is the first Super Saiyan in thousands of years, yet once Goku transforms, every other surviving Saiyan (except Tarble and Paragus) is able to transform. My theory is that Super Saiyans have a passive ability to accelerate other Saiyans' transformation (and thus require less of a "push" to make the first transformation) just by being near them. Thus, once Goku first transformed, other Saiyans required less of a push to make the change, to the point where Goten who had spent his entire life around a Super Saiyan (Gohan of course) was able to transform without even trying.

• Or maybe it only affects babies.
• Or the transformation to super saiyan occured through years of saiyan babies getting stronger.
  Vegeta said saiyans, after being wounded, come back as strong as whatever wounded them, well maybe the strength is passed down and dormant in every child, making the first saiyan relativly weak compared to the last saiyan.
• If goku got a lobotomy, then by some manner of Saiyan Strength, was revived to the point of not being a vegetable anymore, would he have physcic powers, considering a lobotomy is a surgical interruption of one or more nerve tracts in the frontal lobe of the brain: used in the treatment of intractable mental disorders.
  This is mentioned because to come back stronger from a brain ailment would have to be ¿physcic? powers, right?
  • Goku was able to read Krillin's brain by touching it on Namek. So it's pretty much canon that he already does have psychic powers.

What triggered Goten's first transformation.

Goten was a REALLY colicky baby.

• Goten first went Super Saiyan when he was sparring with Chichi; and he didn't even realise until she pointed it out. Possibly he was trying to make his mother proud by becoming stronger but he was doing it subconsciously?? That's my guess.

The Other World we see is one of many

Each galaxy has its own Other World with its own Kais watching over it.

• Wasn't it sorta canon? Like, they had East, West, North and South Kais.
  • I thought it was East, West, North and South quadrants of one galaxy.
    • They've been referred to as both galaxies and quadrants. "Quad" means "four", of course, so the "quadrants" reference is just as easily applied to the four quadrants of the universe as opposed to just alternate parts of a galaxy.

The younger you are the easier it is to go Super Saiyan

Explaining Goten and Trunks

• This theory is very obsolete and more importantly absurd. Once someone has achieved the SSJ form it becomes encoded in their genetics. That's why Goten was born a hell of a lot stronger than gohan, because Goku was a Super Saiyan at the time. I don't think Goten off all people has a warrior spirit.
• Besides, if this were the case, Goku would've become a Super Saiyan when Tambourine killed Krillin.

Yamcha noticed that Future Trunks was Bulma's and Vegeta's son, thus, sacrificing his relationship with Bulma to help saving the Universe.

It was claimed that Yamcha cheated on Bulma, thus, making her break up with him and marry Vegeta. Now, if we remind that Yamcha never was really good with girls, we can say that cheating would be an extremely difficult feat to him. What if he tried to cheat on purpose, because he couldn't bring himself to end his relationship with Bulma (after all, he still loved her)? Now, the question would be: why? Then, we remind that, as a thief, Yamcha tended to be more perceptive than the majority of the characters. By seeing a purple-haired kid who became super saiyan, and by noticing that Vegeta was also a saiyan (and that Goku would never cheat on Chichi, because it's Goku we're talking about), he put the pieces together and reached the conclusion that Vegeta would end up banging his girlfriend, somehow. But why Bulma of all people? Because she, perhaps, was the only female (besides his mother) Vegeta ever knew. Not to mention that the Prince of Saiyans would be too awkward to ever get another girlfriend (it's Vegeta we're talking about). Also, the fact that a powerful warrior is also the heir of a family of scientists makes saving the world way more practical. In the end, Yamcha went the smart and selfless way and made sure it'd be easier to Vegeta and Bulma to be together; after all, the Universe was more important than his romance. Actually, it wouldn't be surprising if he, by himself, suggested Vegeta to stay at her house, with the allegation it'd be big enough, they'd invent advanced training equipments and they'd be rich enough to buy tons of food to him (after all, he knew about Goku's extensive meals). Maybe Bulma also noticed he did it on purpose, after she was already married to Vegeta (it'd explain why they weren't really in bad terms with each other, after the short timeskip). Or perhaps this troper is giving too much credit to Yamcha's smarts.

• • I've always suspected this, given how completely out of character it was. Yamcha's character was always a cross between Goku and Vegeta. He's arrogant, prideful and enjoys training for long periods of time alone, but is also quite kind hearted and genuinely loved his girlfriend. It's just unacceptable to me that Yamcha would sleep around. Also, in the original Dragon Ball Yamcha always was the cunning and pereptive one until he was nerfed by the time by the King Piccolo saga rolled around.
    • Wrong, sirs. Yamcha started cheating before future Trunks existed.
      • True, Bulma gets upset with Yamcha about his flirting with other city girls in Dragon Ball which leads to her ditching Yamcha and going to search for the dragon balls after the first World Tournament and the beginning of the Red Ribbon Army arc.
      • Now, now, I believe things are a bit more complicated than that. I don't think there has been a single instance of Yamcha openly flirting with another girl. And, as Bulma's Mom explained during the Red Ribbon Army arc, Tsundere Bulma got jealous of Yamcha's status as a Chick Magnet. Of all the times they fought and "broke up" we only get to hear Bulma's side of the argument which boils down to insult Yamcha/throw a temper tantrum; without mentioning she's not above laying her eyes on other men (Goku, General Blue, Zarbon). Finally, the only evidence of Yamcha's "infidelity" comes from Future Trunks' testimony. Info which clearly he got from Bulma, who might as well have said that in order to save face.
      • The only time I can ever remember someone accusing Yamcha of cheating was a pre-22nd Budoukai-vaguely-Red-Ribbon-Army-ish episode where a thief or soldier flirts with him, he looks incredibly uncomfortable with it. Bulma misinterprets the entire scene, and refuses to wait for an explanation before going off to adventure with Goku. Yamcha is cocky, yes. He's proud, a bit devious in his early appearances, but while I'm not sure I'd say he was deeply in love with Bulma, it's clear the two of them cared about each other, and the whole "Yamcha cheats on Bulma and she runs crying to Vegeta because he's so understanding" scenario has never really rung true. It is a gross disservice to all three characters. It would have been much more believable if it had been written as "Bulma got fed up with Yamcha going off to train all the time and got with Vegeta because, hey, he stays close to home and he's not all bad." And furthermore, it's also just... not very like Toriyama. It actually sounds really out of place in a series like Dragon Ball.

Dr. Briefs and his wife are actually Brief and Panty.

It'd be hilarious if it was true, after all, Bulma's mother DOES look a bit like a curly-haired Panty, not to mention Dr. Briefs' name. Bulma's hair color (taking in consideration the manga, where it's purple)? Comes from her mother's side. After all, her possible aunt Stocking has a weird hair color which can only be defined as upper-purple/lower-pink... She was conceived when Panty still was powerless, explaining why she doesn't have any outstanding angel powers... But still explaining why she's resistant (and convincing) enough to go to bed with Vegeta. There, I think I created the craziest theory WMG could ever have.

The cataclysm on Namek was caused by overuse of the Dragonballs.

Elder Kai warns out heroes that misuse of the Dragonballs could cause terrible natural imbalance and Namek, the planet of the balls origin, was devestated by natural disaster during Guru's time. It isn't unreasonable to link this event with Elder Kai's warning.

The Kamahamaha Wave and Dodon Ray were inspired by the Masenko.

The only Earthlings to create energy waves were Roshi, Shen and their master because they learned how to use Ki by watching King Piccolo.

Saiyans are from Earth.

North Kai mentions that Vegeta still wasn't the true home planet of the Saiyans. Perhaps they can breed with humans because they have Terran origins.

Namekians are related to the Martians of the DC Universe.

Okay, so this is probably spawned from my intense appreciation of these two characters and lack of sleep, but whatever. As a lot of people on the internet (and pretty much anyone ever) have seemed to

Ginyu actually survived the Namek saga.

The wish used with the Namekian Dragonballs was for that everyone but Freiza and Goku to be transported to planet Earth. Given that Ginyu was technically alive during this, only trapped in a frog, he would logically be included in "everyone"(hey, the wish didn't differentiate between Namekian and human, why would it ignore a sentient frog?). As for why he hasn't shown up, Ginyu is Genre Savvy enough to stay far away from Goku and company. As for why he appeared in Hell, it was due to not being resurrected in the Buu saga or more likely, Ginyu's supposedly original body is actually another he took. Ginyu may have either been stuck in the frog's body and soon died due to its limited life-span, or found another body and fled far away to retire.

• Actually in the anime Ginyu is shown on earth now as a leader of a group of frogs in a local pond.

Cell unintentionally saved Goku's relationship with his family.

He had Gohan go up against a complete monster and showned no inclination to step in. Gohan is shown as very gentle and probably hated being in that situation. Also Chichi has always been so protective. I'm not saying they would have hated him but they would have been mad and in Gohan's case, I believe there would have been a significant strain between them. But with Goku dead, it shocked them so they forgot/forgave any resentment they felt towards Goku for that instantly instead of it taking time.

Gohan didn't get his intelligence from Chi-Chi, but Goku.

Let's face it: even though Goku isn't exactly the smartest person around, this might only be because of his brain damage. For all we know, if Goku hadn't bumped his head and his personality was more or less the same...

• Gohan does strike me as smarter than his mother, (not that she's stupid or anything) and since it's canon that Goku smacked his head hard enough to completely change his personality... you have a very good point.
• Vegeta did claim that Goku's father was a brilliant scientist. We aren't exactly shown this at any point in the anime or manga, but maybe Bardock did science-y things between planetary conquests.
• Actually, that was just the early Funimation/Ocean dub.

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