Dragon Ball/Headscratchers

For sequences not in the original manga, see Dragon Ball.

Saiyan Saga

• Okay, so according to King Kai, the Sayains conquered the Tuffles by utilizing the full moon that came to Planet Vegeta once every eight years. Question: Why did the Tuffles not notice huge, stomping ape monsters every eight years until the Sayains decided to attack them? And why did the Sayains wait so long/didn't connect the dots until right then?
• Toriyama contradicts himself about Shenlong's powers in DBZ vol.2 After Kami-sama takes Goku's body, Piccolo says Kamisama lacks the power to bring him back to life (p.11). However when the Z fighters ask Shenlong to destroy the Saiyans a few pages later, he says he was made by God and cannot grant any wish that surpasses God's powers (p.115) Waitammit, in that case how come he can bring Goku back to life when Kami-sama can't?
  • Saiyan Arc and beyond (DBZ) contradict the previous material (DB) often. Another example is when Karin states that a rocket ship heading towards Kami's palace would simply be deflected which is later handwaved when Bulma flies up there to give everyone battle armor.
    • That can be explained by advances in technology. We're talking about Bulma after all. Meanwhile, the OP is IN THE SAME BOOK.
  • The proper limitation (as re-stated at the end of the Cell Saga) should be that Shenlong cannot affect beings stronger than his creator. He can do things that surpass Kami's powers (ressurrect people), but not things that surpass Kami's strength (killing the Saiyans, de-powering the Androids).

• Krillin, Roshi and Bulma are Goku's closest friends. He was basically inseparable with them all his life and Krillin in particular is like a Heterosexual Life Partner and/or brother. Why did it take him four years to let them know he has a son? Why hasn't he had contact with them in that amount of time? In general this series has a tendency, during the time skips, to have the characters have spent the time having no contact with each other, presumably so that the characters themselves can echo the surprise the viewer is supposed to feel during big revelations like marriages and childbirth. But it doesn't make sense considering how close some of the characters are.
  • When people grow up and move away from one another, this does actually happen. There are people you grow up with, do everything together with, and then you graduate High School/College and don't see them for years. Goku grew up and got married--that's the start of a whole new life, and their world seems to be without the internet or Facebook, so you wouldn't have Krillin seeing Goku's status update saying, "Say hi to little Gohan!"
    • They may be without the Internet and Facebook, but they're not without telephones. And while, yes, people do slowly grow apart over time, that's not how this was portrayed. One day Goku and Krillin were BFFs, the next day Goku got married and apparently vanished off the face of the Earth for four years.
    • Let's make an objective analysis: The original Dragonball ended in 1989 with Dragonball Z ending in 1996. It's not unsurprising their world doesn't have social networking and e-mail in an era in which Toriyama was still using Windows 95. Mobile phones were also very expensive and in relative terms were limited to bulky bricks and car-phones - making the Dragonball universe an unintentional combination of Zeerust and Technology Marches On.
    • Even if you're just talking about the anime, the start of DBZ was in 1989. Unless Toriyama used Trunks' time machine, he wouldn't have had access to Windows 95.
      • Later on Bulma complains about how terrible Goku is at staying in touch with the rest of the team, so it's only natural they wouldn't know what's going on with them. It's their own fault for not visiting.
      • Remember how Goku has almost 0 understanding of good social behavior as a child, Chi-Chi has met these people at most twice after the 23rd Tournament, and little baby Gohan can't even talk. If ANYTHING, I'd ask the question in the other direction: Why Doesn't Bulma or Krillin Visit THEM?

• Okay: During the Saiyan Saga, it's down to Piccolo, Gohan and Krillin, when Vegeta's scouter spots Goku approaching. He tells Nappa to kill the others because they can't take the chance of Goku teaming up with the rest. So why didn't he just blast them himself? He'd already seen the others were at least strong enough to hold Nappa off, and that Nappa doesn't know the meaning of "finish them quickly".
  • At this point, Vegeta was pretty much just a backseat driver, and not a particularly smart one at that. Plus he could always do it himself later (or so he thought).
    • Actually, I believe it's because of his "royal" personality. The Prince of Saiyans doesn't want to waste his time/strength/energy/breath/blinks on inconsequential gutter trash from a backwards world. He's so powerful and therefor "above" these lower beings that he shouldn't have to bother when he's got Nappa to do it for him (even if the bald brute gets tends to "play with his food").
  • Even if Goku teamed up with them, the power level he showed on Vegeta's scouter would have mattered little to him. It was Nappa Vegeta was saying couldn't afford the team up, so there's no need for him to prevent it happening.

• How did Piccolo not realize he was an alien? When Raditz tells Piccolo that Piccolo is an alien, specifically a Namek, Piccolo practically has a Heroic BSOD. What in the world did he think he was previously? Seriously, how does he not notice that nobody else has antennae and green skin? On the flip side, he goes out in public very often. The general public has no idea about flying people, aliens or anything (which is kinda dumb since apperently anybody can learn to fly, but whatever), so why don't they freak out when they see a big green guy with antennae?
  • He grew up as the son/clone of a guy who more or less claimed to be satan, so he probably thought he was just that: an outworldly being of demon-ish nature. Being informed that your an alien is bound to screw up your own self-perception.
  • Original Dragon Ball also has plenty of half-animal hybrid people wandering around. A green guy isn't too farfetched in that regard.
    • Not just Original Dragon Ball. There were plenty of half-animal hybrid people in DBZ. A specific example is one of the World Tournament Applicants during the Buu-saga; a wolf/bear man who got 102 on the punching machine. The President of the World is a dog-man too, same as in the past. But... yeah... demons exist in the world as well, apparently. Piccolo probably thought he was a demon, as one of the tropers above already mentioned.
  • As for the antenna, he keeps his head covered with a turban thing. The people in the martial arts tournament only notice who he really is after he takes it off. Before that he just looked like a dude with green skin and some weird things in his arms.
  • Note, however, that Piccolo Daimaou was actually a demon in addition to being an alien, just like Kami-sama was a god as well as an alien. As Piccolo had all his father's memories, he probably also had Kami-sama's pre-divine memories, but was too young to know he was from another world when he arrived on Earth.
    • That's not accurate. Kami is the japanese word for god. Even though nobody ever uses it Kami probably had a name. Just like Piccolo wasn't aslo a demon he had taken the title of basically the Devil. At this point Dende is God of Earth and his title would be Kami. It's just by that point everybody is on a first name basis. It's possible that at one point all planets had kami's just like each quadrant as Kai.

• During the Saiyan Saga, why was Korin/Karin (that white cat with the stick) so unprepared? He had an entire year to prepare some Senzu beans, but by the time Goku arrived, he only had two beans left? Right after the Saiyan arc, it only took him about one or two months to prepare an entire bag for Goku to take to Namek. Shouldn't he have been stockpiling them for everyone, enough for one bag per person? At least an entire bag? It would've certainly given the protagonists a distinct advantage. Yajirobe could've even delivered the beans to everyone a day or two in advance before the fight.
  • Based on what Trunks says in his alternate timeline story, the senzu beans come from a tree. So it's the trees that determine how many senzu beans there are, not Korin. A bad crop, which can happen to any tree no matter how well you care for it, means few beans, and a good crop means plenty.
  • For all you know, he could've been preparing the things shortly after learning of the Saiyans and they just weren't ready until after the Saiyans were defeated. The two he gave Goku could've just been from a previous batch that was almost used up.

• In the Saiyan Saga saga when Nappa and Vegeta where flying toward Earth they had gathered the Dragon Balls long before they arrived but where not wishing Goku back so he could train right? So why didn't they just wish for Nappa and Vegeta's ships to blow up, then one year later wish Goku back and everything is peachy-kean.
  • Oolong was the only one who ever thought of killing them with the Dragon, but he didn't knew that it would be unable to affect them until he tried to kill them directly, then the others argued that they just better bring Goku back to life. Good thing too, as he wouldn't be able to come back to life again if more than a year had passed since he died, and there was only one wish.
  • Also, if Goku isn't wished back within a year, he'll be dead permanently. If Oolong's wish had been granted it would have been a Bittersweet Ending for all.
• In the beginning of the DBZ series, Vegeta randomly kills Nappa because he's getting his tail kicked by Goku. This was always a bit of a tactical wallbanger for me. Vegeta could have ordered Nappa to finish off the rest of Goku's friends (Krillin etc) while he focused on Goku. If he had done this, the big battle scene would have had both him and Nappa running around as giant apes, practically a guaranteed win.
  • Vegeta really isn't the brightest bulb in the box when his pride is insulted, after all the cockiness he showed and seeing his ally getting his face stomped he was pissed that Nappa was so weak, he was an insult to the saiyan race, and by extension, Vegeta's pride so he killed him, he surely could have used that energy he wasted flashily finishing off Nappa and Nappa himself to win or atleast put up a much better fight, but his pride got in the way.
  • Goku's last attack to Nappa broke his back, and Nappa was unable to battle anymore in any way, that combined with the fact that he had failed so throughly with a low class like Goku made Vegeta decide to finish him off right there. And what would be the point in killing the others anyway? If it's not going to amuse him then he would have no reason to go after them because they haven't done anything to him yet.
    • Of course, Vegeta could always have simply left Nappa paralyzed on the ground. Had he done that, Nappa probably still could have provided assistance as a great ape by dragging himself along on his hands. In fact, considering that the z-fighters only won by the skin of their teeth, Nappa probably would have sealed the evil saiyans' victory that way.
      • The fight had moved away by then, unless Vegeta was willing to carry Nappa to the new battlefield (Which he obviously wasn't) then Nappa wouldn't have been close enough to transform.
  • Actually, you're right but also wrong. Nappa was incapacitated so he was of no use anymore, someone would had killed him anyway because there was Vegeta alone and 3 opponents left. But the matter is that he was way stronger than Goku, he could had killed him, Krillin and Gohan without going full power, it's not his fault he didn't knew there was a technique at that time only known by two people that could multiply your power level (kaioken)

• Why didn't Piccolo think of using the Special Beam Cannon against Nappa? whilst it is almost certainly unlikely he could have killed him outright, it would have caused a noticable increase in damage than any of the other techniques he was throwing. Just for reference everything else were pre-Dragon Ball Z moves like the Demon Wave and the ability to split into copies - none of which even worked against teen Goku. We've also seen during his pre-saiyan saga training montage that his ki level has reached the point where it no longer requires a five minute charge up time. The only reasonable explaination i can see is that Piccolo was holding an idiot ball.
  • Why? Because of the probability that it wouldn't work. Raditz dodged the damn thing at near-point blank range and Nappa was much much faster.
    • Then why not try hit him while he was distracted like they tried to do when he attacked Tien? Even when its down to only three they could have done it so he probably couldn't dodge the attack.
      • Such a tactic relies on a lot of variables coming together at once, though. Nappa might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but it would be unlikely that he'd fall for a similar move again. That's not getting into how incredibly worn down the Z-fighters were getting at that point or the fact that Vegeta, however passive at that point, was still keeping an eye on things.
  • Firstly, the training montage is filler. Secondly, he uses something very similar to the Special Beam Cannon, the only difference is that he uses holds both hands out in front of him and fires a much bigger version of the Special Beam Cannon. He mentions in the battle with Raditz that he was still developing the technique and it wouldn't take as long to charge if he had both hands, so many people believe this is the final version of the Special Beam Cannon. And oh yeah, it misses Nappa.
    • Except every other instance of the Special Beam Cannon has the one-handed variety. And as Piccolo and Gohan demonstrated in the Cell Sagas, a being of power stronger than the user can just deflect it. So even if Piccolo did use it, one, it would still take a while to charge, and two, Nappa could just deflect it.

• Ok, I was re-watching the beginning of DBZ, and something occurred to me. So Raditz came to Earth ostensibly to find his brother to help him, Nappa and Vegeta conquer some difficult planet. Now, barring massive amnesia-inducing head injury, there are only so many possibilities of what could have happened to Kakarott,
  • • He was too weak as a child and was killed by the natives.
    • He conquered the planet but his ship was damaged and couldn't leave.
    • The ship was programmed to "call home," but since Planet Vegeta was destroyed, it couldn't do that.
  • I guess he was expecting #3, but I feel like #2 would have been a much more likely scenario, considering the moon and turning into a giant monkey.. If so, how did Radditz intend to take his brother away?? He had only one one-man capsule! Was he planning on sharing??
  • He was probably planning on summoning backup from Vegeta and Nappa if and when he eventually found Kakarot. Alternatively, based on tracking he could have realized that Kakarot's ship was still intact (which it was) and planned to use that to get him away.
  • Frieza and his troops don't generally spend a lot of time trying to help each other. If Kakarot had failed or abandoned his mission, Raditz would have to kill him. And if Raditz refused, Frieza or some henchman would kill him. And if the henchman refused, Frieza would kill him. Most likely, Raditz is just blindly following orders.
    • I don't think Raditz would have had to, or tried to kill Kakarot if he failed but TRIED. Raditz extends the offer for Kakarot to join him quite a few times, so if he failed but TRIED, he probably would have extended his time to help him finish the job.
  • He's got an apparently always-on communicator strapped to his face. "Dude, your ship's busted? Alright, take me to the mansion you made out of the bones of the children of your foes, little bro, while we wait for the ship I'm requisitioning right now from Frieza-sama to arrive. Do you get space-cable?"
    • It's the same as having a cellphone, it wont work if Goku doesn't have one, which he didn't had on and was somewhere on his ship, which as stated before could had been blown up as far as Raditz knew.
    • Almost certainly option 1. This unfortunately leads on to the inherant flaw with the Saiyan's plan of sending babies to conquer other planets... you see Goku is an incredibly weak fighter naturally. When we first meet him, he's stronger and faster than an normal human but... Vegeta is very much correct in saying that, as a lower class warrior, Goku is very unimpressive. If Goku never turned he would have missed out on every piece of training, piece of equipment or external augmentation he would ever recieved as a pure hearted man. For example, if Goku remained evil, Grandpa Gohan never would have trusted the power pole to him and would never have trained him in the martial arts - meaning he never could have reached Kami's Lookout for his training with Kami and Popo - assuming they (and by extention Korin) didn't kill him first. If he remained evil he wouldn't have been trained by Roshi and developed his extreme power boost, wouldn't have gained the flying Nimbus or the Kamehameha Wave - his two most useful techniques. This all would have led up to the fact he would eventually have run into the Red Ribbon Army and without the Power Pole, Nimbus, Kamehameha, Gohan and Roshi's martial arts training, Korin's senzu beans, all the good hearted people that helped him like Android 8 and possessing absolutely no knowledge of or capability to track the Dragon Balls - Goku would have been slaughtered. His Great Ape form wouldn't have helped either: remember when Pilaf nearly killed him with a single missile? the RRA had considerably more hardware than that. It's also worth noting that eventually Goku would also have come up against Roshi(who more than likely would have eventually destroyed the moon and used the Evil Containment Wave to protect the Earth), Crane Hermit, Tien, Krillin (who would still have been trained by Roshi), Yamcha... all of whom possessing the potential to kill or seriously injure him.
    • The Saiyans didn't know any of that was there, though. Those qualities are all probably pretty unique to Earth. Remove the magic, super powerful fighters, and monsters, and remember that the world's moon would've turned Kakarrot into an unstoppable killing machine.
      Alternatively, killing off weak babies was part of the purpose of the practice--remember, it's the weak, low class ones that are sent off in the first place. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if that's what happened with Raditz: Send the infant off to some world, observe, and if he kills everything on it, bring him back. If not, leave him to rot.

• Why did Raditz found it odd the condition earth was in when he got there? Goku was ordered to conquer the planet not to destroy it. It's not mandatory to turn the area you conquered into a Conan movie evil empire is it? Maybe Goku liked green plains and left that place as it is. It was a very wide area with mostly animals and as far as we know "one person", if Goku conquered earth he probably was in a capital in a more urban area. Last it has been over 20 years, Goku could had just burn down most of the planet, become the undisputed dictator of all of earth and things were rebuild and such after that.
  • I believe that Goku's orders were to eliminate all life on Earth... that would include animals at least. And I'm pretty sure eliminating all life on Earth wouldn't leave the place sparkling clean...
    • Not to mention the very first thing Raditz saw when he came out of his pod (in the manga, anyway) was a farmer, so it was obvious from the start that Kakarrot had failed his mission.

• Lord Enma said he defeated Raditz before he went to hell, so what stopped the rest of the villains from killing Enma? It was stated King Kai is stronger than Enma and that Nappa is stronger than King Kai, so why couldn't Nappa, or any villain after Nappa, kill Enma?
  • Because he is the goddamn King Emma.
  • Alternatively, the secret powers of his mahogany desk saved him.
  • Because the other villains would be a little cloud, like everyone else. Despite Filler saying otherwise, villains don't keep their bodies.
  • Uhh actually that line about Enma beating Raditz was from the Manga
    • Yes. And Raditz was a little puff during that time. That's what I'm saying. Remember, Goku is the one who thinks this makes Enma strong, since he didn't realize Raditz lacked a body.

• Other than Rule of Drama and need to have a Big Damn Heroes moment, why did Goku had to run all the way back Snake Road to return to earth while Yamcha and the others were revived instantaneously later?
  • Either Porunga is just that much better, or they didn't word the revive Goku thing very well, and King Kai told them how to phrase it properly later.
    • Both, actually.
• Why wasn't Raditz much, much stronger? He'd spent the last several years of his life wearing himself ragged on the front-line against a variety of alien civilizations, just like his father (along-side two elites at that). Just the boost of Zenkai alone should've made him far more dangerous than he was, not to mention his using weighted armor longer than Goku or Piccolo (the Zenkai boost was pushing Bardock near 10'000 near the end of his life, and he was lower-class too). Kami's training, as incredible as it is, doesn't seem like it would be great enough to let half a dozen humans surpass a Saiyan in just a year (that same training for 3 years allowed Goku to just match Piccolo).
  • Raditz may just not have ever gotten near enough to death to get enough boosts. There's no indication he used weighted armour, the Saiyan armour is actually quite light and flexible.
• Why didn't Vegeta simply end his blutz wave technique when Gohan went Giant Ape?
  • It wasn't something that he was consciously keeping up at that point, and when he first uses it, Goku says that it's draining his energy. He probably didn't have direct control over it by then, and didn't have the power to brute-force it off.
• After Goku blinds Vegeta with the Solar Flare, why did it never occur to him to just cut off Vegeta's tail and bring him down to size while blinded?
  • There's no indication that Goku even knew at the time that cutting off Vegeta's tail would return him to normal. I mean, Goku only transforms 3 times as far as we're shown, and only once does his tail get cut off to return him to normal, and he doesn't even know that he was turned at that point, much less what happened to his tail. Also, since Goku doesn't even know about the fact that he turns into a Great Ape until the fight with Vegeta, obviously nobody told him that cutting off the tail would help.
• Vegeta's claim that he'll destroy the earth while his power level is around 30,000 doesn't make logical sense. It took Frieza a huge amount of charging in his final form at 50% of his power (around 60,000,000) and yet he didn't give it enough oomph to blow up Namek. Kid Buu's blast to destroy the earth needed a shot from Super Saiyan Vegeta to deflect it into orbit.

Freeza/Namek Saga

• Before leading Bulma to Kami's old space ship, Mr. Popo mentions that Kami was waiting for his parents to come and get him. But wait, parentS? As a Namekian, shouldn't he have only one parent? Especially since Namekians are male-only/genderless?
  • Popo probably just didn't know any better. Or maybe Kami remembered there being two older Nameks and just assumed they were his parents.
    • I'm willing to bet the mono-gender characteristic of Namekians is a retcon. King Piccolo's eggs were always attributed to being just another one of his immense demon powers - remember Kami was never seen using using this technique. Only later, when they were on planet Namek, did this become a product of his reproductive cycle.
      • It could just be a mistranslation. Does the Japanese specify more than one parent? It should also be noted that Kami didn't know he was an alien until Nappa and Vegeta said so. It's possible Kami just assumed he had two parents since all intelligent life on Earth does.

• Again, Mr. Popo says young Kami left the Yunzabit highlands because "finding food was hard." Wait...food? I thought Namekians only drank water?
  • The whole Namekians only drink water thing is either a plot hole or a retcon because it's contradicted many many times. In addition to the example above we have: King Piccolo eating entire feasts and Piccolo complaining about eating too much fish during the Goku learns to drive bit. Even if you can overlook these facts there is something else to consider: why would a species that doesn't eat need teeth?
    • Strictly speaking, both the Piccolo feast and the Piccolo fish thing are pure anime filler. No Namekian is ever shown eating or even drinking in the Dragon Ball manga. That's what makes the mention of food especially incongruous.
  • Maybe he was using "food" as a synonym of "things you need to swallow to survive", meaning that Yunzabit is poor in water too (it was a desert area, after all).
  • Its possible King Piccolo can just eat for pleasure and not for sustenance.

• So, the thing that pushed Goku over the Edge into becoming SSJ was when Frieza killed Krillin. So why didn't he go SSJ in Dragon ball when Krillin and Roshi where killed?
  • You need more than a pure spirit and emotional force to ascend- you also need a great deal of power, far above the average Saiyan warrior. Way back when Krillin died the first time, Goku wasn't even up to his own lower-class standard.
    • Don't forget, Dragon Balls. It basically means that he's comatose for a while and he can't be revived again. Plus, the other time was the death of Krillin, seemingly Piccolo, and Vegeta, after hearing about what really happened to their planet, in a relatively short (Frieza's Five Minutes should give scale) amount of time.
      • Also, since Krillin had already been brought back once, Goku assumed he couldn't be wished back again.
      • I doubt it was just Krillin's death that tipped the edge (but it was the final straw.) Not only was Krillin dead, but Piccolo was seriously injured and Vegeta, the second-to-last pure-blooded Sayain was also dead, leaving Goku the last of his kind. Oh, and he's fighting a monster that killed his people, including his own mother and father. He also probably realized that Frieza would do the same thing to Earth if he's given the chance.
    • There's also, at least in Kai, that Frieza was about to do the same thing to Gohan before Goku stopped him.

• What's the deal with Frieza anyway? How come he was smart enough to kill all the Saiyans when he noticed that they were becoming too powerful (even then, they were no match for him even in his weakest form), but yet he toyed with Goku?
  • He'd already killed Vegeta by this point, and Vegeta was (as far as anyone else knew) was the the strongest of the bunch. He toyed around with Goku because, frankly, he could. If he'd attacked Goku instead of Krillin after the Spirit Bomb failed, Goku never gets the impetus to go SSJ, thus gets quite dead.
    • Let's also not forget that Goku returned the favor by letting Frieza power up to his max.
  • Goku=commoner. Saiyan hierarchy goes by strongest Saiyans, which tends to be hereditary. Frieza=sadistic supervillain. Of course he's going to toy with him, like a cougar might toy with what appears to be a mouse. Plus, the flashback to Bardock gives him personal incentive to be extra cruel. (Alternate explanation: each time hew powered up, it could have left him that much more unstable, similar to the Super Saiyan forms. Does four increasingly beastial forms, the last being coldly calculating and frankly no caring about other beings as much winning ring a bell?)
    • That works. But also, it seems that what Frieza truly feared was all the saiyans rising up at once - not one monkey playing super-hero, regardless of rank.
  • None of the mutants, Frieza included, have any ability to gauge power by themselves: without scouters they're pooched. Frieza probably believes, with good reason, that no one can approach his power. Goku had to tell him that he was bleeding power ridiculously in his final form, to the point where he quickly had no chance at all, which Frieza didn't even believe. Frieza was probably more irritated than scared by Saiyans.
  • Its worth noting that Spirit Bomb that he didn't see coming aside Frieza was simply having fun all the way until he wasn't. He actually (at least in the Anime) makes a note that he realizes Goku is getting stronger while they fight and he should probably hurry things along. Even then he would have been fine if he'd killed Goku first and tortured Krillin and Gohan instead of Krillin first.

• Why didn't Captain Ginyu do the body change on Frieza? He meets a Saiyan with power around 200,000 and doesn't even hesitate, meanwhile he knows very well that Frieza's like 500,000 at least.
  • My guess is that Freeza knew about the technique and had some way of blocking/defending against it/moving out of the way/could do it right back. And that would be the sad end to Capt Ginyu. Also, unlike Vegeta et. al, Ginyu was a high ranking officer of Freeza's army. He might have no reason to anger Freeza or pick a fight with him.
    • The way Zarbon thinks of them, we can assume they are independent mercenaries rather than regular henchmen. If so, exchanging bodies would be a very stupid thing to do to your richest contractor. And even if perhaps Ginyu could have taken Freeza's place as ruler of the empire, he probably has no reason to, as he seems to love fighting strong enemies. If he became a ruler, he would probably have little time for that (Freeza always sends warriors to do work, only going himself when the situation is of the utmost importance).
    • He was Frieza's second-in-power and only henchman with a six-figure power level, and presumably second-in-command. Ginyu also seemed to idolize Frieza and was actually quite loyal to him.
      • He's not Frieza's second-in-power, he works for King Cold. Presumably both Cooler and King Cold would murder the shit out of him if they found out he pulled a stunt like that.
      • Common question on most peoples DBZ Problem Lists but actually it's not that hard to work out. Ginyu doesn't gain any of the knowledge or abilities of his new host, only the raw power of their base form. He was outmatched by Vegeta because he didn't know how to use the Kaioken or the Kamehameha and he couldn't fly or fight the others as Bulma because she probably has the basic human power level of 5. Now when it comes to Frieza, although he has massive raw ki, his true power comes from his ability to transform (which Ginyu most certainly knows about) and his ability to destroy planets (which Ginyu doesn't know how to use the technique.) in this situation King Cold in his stage two transformation would easily kick stage one Frieza's ass. Also Ginyu seems perfectly happy to be a mercenary/Frieza Delta Force type of guy, he doesn't WANT the tyrant lifestyle Frieza has.

• Why does every being in the universe except the Namek Dragon understand Japanese/English?
  • I always figured he did understand, but rules are rules. (IIRC, he'd say the wish had been granted in English, in the dub).
  • Translator Microbes, ain't they handy? (Btw, Porunga could understand english, but couldn't grant any wishes not made in Namek language)

• OK, how can all of Namek's skies be sunny all the time? Even if they have a ternary star, one side of the planet should still be in darkness unless the planet is being orbited by the suns.
  • Guru and/or Porunga did it. The Nameks are obviously Plant Aliens, so maybe they wanted increased light exposure to be able to increase their reproductive ability to repopulate or something, and never bothered to turn the night back on?
    • I clearly recall a mention of two or more suns.
      • Three, as I recall.
        • Wild guess: all three suns have the same mass and orbit each other, while the planet is not revolving around the suns but lies stationary in a Lagrange point.
  • There are several possibilities: a star system caught in the gravitational pull of a hypergiant might get this effect, if it's not too badly scrambled. This would also explain the disaster only Guru survived as a solar wind from the hypergiant. Or reflective particles in the atmosphere, conducting light like all atmospheres distribute heat.
    • Sorry to burst your bubble, but the disaster is explicitly stated to have been a massive drought.
  • Not only do some of the Namekians (like the one that revived their planet and race from scratch) have magic powers they have magic balls with magic powers. If you know what I mean. Maybe the Suns were orbiting the planet?

• When Frieza has his 3 top henchmen killed (Cui, Dodoria, Zarbon), has several mooks killed, and knows Vegeta has his dragon balls and is allied with 2 fairly strong earthlings (Gohan and Krillin), then why does he call his elite soldiers, the Ginyu Force, instead of just going and dealing with it himself? According to Frieza himself, even in his most basic and weak form, has a powerlevel of 530,000 , which is over ten times stronger then Vegeta was at the time. I know he is lazy, but can't he just spare five minutes to walk out, execute Vegeta with one punch, and go back to his ship and skip the whole "call the Ginyu Force" step?
  • Part of the reason he called the Ginyu force was to get them to bring new scouters, as Vegeta and the old Namekian had destroyed all they had. Without them Freeza wouldn't even be able to find Vegeta, or the other Dragon Balls.
    • Well, Frieza didn't have Cui, Dodoira, and Zarbon killed...Vegeta wiped them out. As for why Frieza didn't take care of things himself, I attribute it him being so royally pompous, egotistical, and full of himself that he didn't think he should HAVE to (same as I stated above as to why Vegeta let Nappa deal with the last three Z-Fighters when Goku was inbound post-resurrection).
    • Pretty much... he's the Big Bad. He doesn't 'deal with things himself' until the heroes are really asking for it.

• Word of God states that mecha Freeza's cyborg parts made him more powerful than his standard final form. If that's true why didn't he get them added sooner? He's shown to be obssesed with being as powerful as he can and it would make him immortal at least when it comes to old age.
  • Frieza's body couldn't handle even his regular fully powered form, the cyborg parts were only added to save his life.
    • Also, they look rickety and like they were scrounged from a junkyard. Surely, King Cold's powerful, advanced empire, which can produce spaceships, is capable of doing better for one of the princes. Or better yet, clone organic replacements and rebuild him properly, something we might see in our lifetimes in Real Life.
      • I think their main incentive was keep him alive and make him stronger (scouter-level wise). He probably would have had better looking parts if he wasn't so eager to "set a course for Earth".
  • Frieza is a naturally powerful being and he uses that natural power to get what he wants because he feels that his tremendous power gives him the right to do just that. Perhaps he felt that, if he used unnatural means to augment his powers, that would cheapen the idea that he was born better than others and as such is entitled to have everything he wants.

• Okay, the Earth Dragon Balls take a whole year to recharge, right? Then how were they active during the Freeza saga for Popo to summon the dragon? At most 2-3 months had passed since their last use. Does Kami being dead and then revived allow them to ignore the 1-year recharge rule?
  • Yes

• It kind of bugs me how Krillin's Power Level (on Namek) goes from 13,000 (after Guru unlocks it) to 75,000 when he's preparing to fight Freeza.
  • Guru is just that good. He is unlocking potential - meaning its making you as strong as you possibly can be at that point in time. Krillin apparantly wasn't training anywhere near hard enough.
    • Regardless of the Daizenshuu rankings, manga Kuririn never indicated that he was anywhere near 75,000 on Namek and no PL readings were given for him in the series after the Guru power up. At his strongest, he was strong enough to fight evenly with Ginyu in Goku's body (who had a PL of around 23,000 at the time) and get himself casually stomped almost to death by Recoome. Meanwhile, Ginyu estimated that a PL of 60,000 would have let Goku be sufficiently powerful to decimate the of the Ginyu squad combined (sans the Captain himself, obviously) as he did.

• DBZ. Frieza blows up planet Vegeta. This somehow kills all but 4 (or so) Saiyans. Wait, what? Culturally, Saiyans are space warriors. They have teams of soldiers on planets throughout the galaxy. Heck, they even send their infants out into space to cause trouble. Do Saiyans have No Ontological Inertia? Did Invasion Team #252 just vanish when their home planet exploded? Was there a holiday on planet Vegeta that ALL Saiyans were required to attend, despite multi-year travel times?
  • Well, a good chunk of the movies involve Saiyans showing up who just happened to be off-world that day.
    • If you include the movies (which usually count as non-canon), then the number doubles to 8 Saiyans. The final list is: Goku, Raditz, Vegeta, Nappa, Broly, Paragus, Turles, and Tarble. EIGHT isn't exactly "an entire race of planet conquerers that even includes their infants." Therefore, It Still Bugs Me.
  • Remember the part in the middle of the movie when Dodoria and henchmen were sent to eliminate Bardock's friends? That probably happened anywhere else with unaware conquering saiyans too.
    • It's implied that if you ignore Zarbon, Dodoria, the Ginyus and Frieza that hunting down hundreds if not thousands of Saiyans would have have been an enormous undertaking that would have had to see the stop of all other business. Not to mention they clearly knew exactly where to find Goku and they didn't for no good reason. I think it's easier to believe that those scouters that are always on let a lot of people know to lay low and word never got out that Frieza died. Now that I'm thinking about it there are probably plenty of people, Saiyan and otherwise, who are hiding on planets that don't have radios.
    • I believe that, because they had scouters, they were easy to track down. In regard to the babies, they were probably killed when trying to take over the planet. Goku would have been killed too, hadn't it been for the head injury that made him good.
  • Thing is unless Saiyans were a very very small race there should have been hundreds if not thousands that were off planet at the time. Clearly for example they knew WHERE to find Goku and decided not to. I know Frieza was a scary guy but when he mysteriously stopped sending children into space some extreme panic should have taken place.
    • Don't quote me on this, but I think I remember it being specifically stated that the Saiyans were very few in number and the only reason they were able to overthrow the Tuffles was because of their Oozaru form.
      • I do remember somewhere in either the manga or the anime that Vegeta states the Saiyans were always low in numbers. So it's not hard to imagine most Saiyans were home on Vegeta when the planet went boom and Freeza could have had the rest they believed to be threats hunted down like Bardock's crew.
  • But then again, who's stopping you (or anyone) from writing a fanfic about your own fan-made Saiyan(s) who were off-planet at the time? I know that's been used many, many, MANY times, but still. Personally, I've always loved seeing "surviving Saiyan" OC's to this day, discredited or not.
    • Fanfiction isn't canon, so it wouldn't answer any questions and not everyone likes writing (or even reading) fanfiction.
  • Frieza was the one who sent them on missions, and could quite easily just have everyone in easily found areas to be slaughtered, assuming he didn't just call them back to the homeworld while he gets some new clients lined up for orders.
    • Or also because he wanted them all dead, spent time to make sure they were all on the planet, telling them it was a day off or the like so he could kill them all quickly.
  • I believe the Saiyans all returned to planet Vegeta after a conquest. The Saiyans appearently did no have the means or the interest to colonize new planets, so they would all return to Vegeta once their job somewhere else was done. And who is to say that the Sayians that were not at Vegeta at the time of the planet's explosion were not ruthlessly hunted down and murdered? They all had scouters, which made it easy for Frieza to locate them, and they probably had not idea that Frieza had betrayed their race.

• Something's always bugged me about the moment in the Namek saga where Goku reads Krillin's mind. It can be said that they didn't want to explain everything we'd already seen, but in a series with as much filler as DBZ, that hardly seems like a problem. Also, in-context, Goku never uses this ability again. Couldn't that be really useful during, say, the Cell saga? Instead of just "sensing everything that happened," he could have read someone else's mind.
  • He has shown telepathic ability at least twice before during the battle with Vegeta: When he told Gohan to deflect the Spirit Bomb and when he managed to get Oozaru!Gohan focused on Vegeta. So it's not quite the Ass Pull it seemed. Granted, the fact that he never uses it again still stands.
    • Goku had shown telepathic ability before, true. But that was just talking to people, not reading their minds, and certainly not viewing things that had already happened. And Goku had to put his hand on top of Krillin's head to read his mind, anyways. Seems like an Ass Pull to me.
      • In the original series it was shown that martial arts masters could read minds.
      • Master Roshi was able to read Nam's mind during the 21st World Martial Arts tournament to discover his quest to find water. It's not inconceivable that he either taught it to Goku and Krillin or that any ki aware person could do it given enough practice.
      • Goku also could have picked it up from hanging out with King Kai. You know, the guy who can talk to people telepathically while on the other side of the galaxy, in another dimension?
      • Muffin Button
    • Goku never really had a reason to use it again. He was present from the start for the Cell and Buu sagas so he didn't need to mindread anyone to catch up with them. Besides, in addition to having four telepathic teachers, his best move involves telepathically requesting ki from every person, animal, plant and rock (and possibly star) in a planet or solar system.
    • Goku (and Vegeta) did use the technique again while in Super Buu's body to read the restrained fat Buu's mind, although, not having read the manga, I'm unsure if that's canon or not.
      • Not canon, anime-only scene.

• I know we didn't see the entire planet of Namek but did we see ANYTHING that suggested that Namekians could build space ships? They looked like a bunch of farmers who couldn't possibly have built the vessel that brought the Namek to Earth.
  • This was explained on screen. The planet Namek suffered a cataclysmic event that killed off the entire race except Guru and the Nameless Namek. The Namek used the last surviving ship to travel to Earth and Guru got pregnant and repopulated the Namek race. In other words, their advanced industrial civilization ended that day to be replaced with a primitive agricultural society.
  • And that cataclysm destroyed absolutely everything? I might not be able to build a car from scratch but given the sheer number of cars on the planet I'm confident I could piece one back together. For that matter we still have ruins of dead societies today that were presumably build with less durable stuff than a space faring nation would have had. I'm not saying I could get back into space by piecing together what's lying around but I bet I could figure out a flash light and a car unless this "cataclysm" was pissed off Frieza intentionally destoying every library and computer it doesn't make sense that they hadn't at least gotten back to industrial era.
    • As unrealistic as it is, it is still the official reason for their lack of technology is that they suffered an extinction level event that destroyed their civilization and killed off all but two Namekians. One possible hand wave is that the Namek race was never a particularly large one from what we've seen; they never needed large cities or the infrastucture that goes with over-population. Also, whilst we have clear evidence the Namekians were ahead of us in the space race, it is conceivable the Nameless Namek's spaceship was one-of-a-kind and thus is the reason why he was the only one to evacuate the planet.
    • It's just a matter of priorities. Their current population is tiny and their planet is a wreck. They don't plan to go anywhere for a while, so what's the point of building one. Not to mention if they need one that badly, they can always just get the Dragon Balls together and wish for one, so they consciously don't want one or they'd have it.
    • Just seems like just like the pyramids this stuff should have been just lying around. Also the species was nearly driven to extinction two hundred years ago right? We are supposed buy that the Namek who became Kami and Picolo and Guru were the sole survivors. At the same time Raditz instantly recognizes Picolo as a Namek? Gotta say this sounds like one of those times when Akira-sama simply didn't know what was happening with his own story.
      • Huh? Why shouldn't Raditz immediately recognize Piccolo as a Namek? The Freeza forces was in the middle of an attack on Namek at that very time, so it's very likely that Raditz had intel on Namekians. Also about pyramids, excavation of ruins takes time, energy and manpower. For a devastated planet that has barely been repopulated, that really isn't on their To Do list at that point.
      • Except Frieza wasn't attacking Namek at that point. If we take any of the flashbacks as cannon conquering a world is supposed to be a matter of days not a matter of years and Raditz attacks is over a year (two I remember right) before Vegeta and Nappa arrive on Earth. And the travel to Namek takes about a week. We also see that Frieza and his forces WRECK Namek pretty much as fast as they want. The only logical answer is that just like with Raditz scanners are always on and Frieza was after the Dragon Balls and wouldn't have been there otherwise. The point about the pyramids isn't that you have to excavate them it's actually that you don't. They are just there and with as much as they flew around the planet you'd think a space faring race would have built stuff. Also what were they farming since they were clearly agricultural?
      • Some crops (hydrangea, for the record) that would help regenerate the planet. I think the crops purified the air or the water or something. Also maybe they didn't keep their stuff in pyramids. It's not exactly their style of architecture. Maybe they kept them in houses or cities that have been reduced to rubble.
        • True, Frieza may or may not have been attacking Namek then, but what's to say he and his troops didn't have any intel on the planet at that point? They didn't up and attack out of the blue, they obviously did some research about the planet and its Dragon Balls.
  • Don't forget that we learn from Kiwi that Freeza didn't know about the dragon balls until after Vegeta deducted their origin while facing off against Piccolo. Addressing the main headscratcher here, there's no reason why the Nameks couldn't have been a strong space-faring race at one point, and some of them are hanging around in Freeza-conquered planets. And at the very least, considering Freeza knew the location of Namek, there must have been some recon of the planet that Vegeta was conceivably aware of.
  • Rereading the manga, it seems the great cataclysm was a terrible drought. This would have wiped out their civilization, but it should have left their technology intact. I surmise they didn't have any to begin with apart from their spaceship-houses.

• Why did Vegeta break his own scouter? Sure, he didn't need it, but it's not like it was hurting him in any way.
  • It was probably out of frustration, just like some people might break a video game controller when they're pissed off at the game.
    • Well, the one he breaks during the Namek Saga he did it on purpose to impress whatever foe he was facing at the time (Dodoria if I recall correctly). He regrets his act later on, realizing he quite not master the ability to sense ki perfectly yet.
  • He wanted to make sure there were no functional scouters left for Freeza to get ahold of. It was actually for the best since Zarbon could've taken it from him when they fought later.

• When it's time to make the wishes, Piccolo calls Gohan and tells him to resurrect him first, so the Earth Dragon Balls will reappear. Ok, that's smart enough. Then, his second wish is to be trasported to Namek, because "with the traning from Kaiou, I will surely be able to defeat Freezer". Now maybe he was still a bit cocky at that point, but really, that sounded terribly delusional. Piccolo used to be weaker than Nappa. Then he and the others arrive at Kaiou's planet, but apparently they only do so when Goku is already in space and going to Namek (that's when Kaiou calls to inform him of the matter). Meaning, Piccolo had just a week to train. I would be surprised if he had got anywhere above 10.000 in such a short amount of time. Probably even Krillin was stronger at that point. Good thing he met Nail on the way, otherwise he was just going to get his butt kicked hard (not that it didn't happen anyway).
  • Piccolo was doing quite well against him before Frieza decided to transform into his next stage; I guess Piccolo didn't count on that happening.
    • That was after the fusion with Nail, and he didn't count on that happening either. If it weren't for Dende messing up the wish (simply asking for him to be teleported on Namek instead of directly where they were, so he met Nail by chance), Piccolo would have probably got destroyed even by Freezer's first form.
    • Correct. Piccolo was vastly overestimating his own strength and underestimating Freeza's. But this is a common theme in DBZ and shouldn't surprise anyone.
    • I always figured it was him being a papa wolf to Gohan. He wanted to be there to try and keep him safe. And as stated above he probably underestimated Freezer
• Freeza's something of an expert at blowing up planets right? So what was the reason given for his botched attempt at destroying Namek?
  • As Goku himself said, Freeza was scared that he would be caught in the blast, the whole reason he left 5 minutes for it to blow up was so he could beat Goku and then escape (Since he couldn't control his 100% final form for long)
    • Actually, it was Freeza who said that. Goku retorted that Freeza really just wanted to fight the Legendary Super Saiyajin (semi-)fairly, and had held back subconsciously so that he could do that; Goku said that if Freeza still really wanted to nuke the planet right away, there was nothing Goku could do to stop him. Freeza's responding smirk, comment that it would be a race to see if it would be Freeza or the exploding planet that killed Goku first (implying that he would be fighting Goku when the planet blew up, if it came to that), and relative lack of damage from being caught with almost no power on the planet when it finally blew up, all seem to back up Goku's assessment.

• Vegeta explains that the battle suits worn by Frieza's army can grow to any size, as was shown when Vegeta grew into a giant ape. Then in the very next moment Vegeta states the only new model suits left were too small for him. Did someone throw an Idiot Ball at him?
  • Yeah, those sentences coming one after the other made me go "Wait, what?" I always figured Vegeta didn't want to wear the newer ones and just used that as an excuse. Maybe he didn't want to wear the same thing the earthlings did.
  • They still seem to have a "default" size, though. It's probably about comfort as much as anything--sure, Vegeta could squeeze one of the child sized ones on, but it would be like squeezing into underwear too small for you--yes, the waistband will stretch to accomodate you, but it's not going to be comfy.
    • Unlikely, but maybe the newer models didn't have "the fit any size" feature. Not a good excuse though.

• Since the Destructo Disc is shown to be effective on Frieza why didn't Krillin cut Frieza to bloody ribbons immediately following the solar flare instead of rushing off to get Vegeta?
  • I can't remember but I think that might have been filler, and obviously they can't kill the main villain in filler. It's still kind of bothersome though as to why Krillin never did that at all, he could have done it to Dodoria too.
    • No, Krillin cutting off Freeza's tail is in the manga. I guess the Z fighters fight way too clean to consider using that sort of tactic. Cell, on the other hand...
    • I'm thinking the Destructo Disc takes time and energy to discharge and is not that fast. Krillin only got a clean hit on Freeza (which he almost dodged) because he caught him by surprise. Any further attempts would have been suicidal, and he knew it.
      • The thing is, Kuririn follows up on the one Kienzan that cut Freeza's tail with four in a row (Freeza dodges all of them, of course). Since Kuririn can throw a Kienzan with little or no buildup time, there was no reason he couldn't have cut Freeza in half after the Taiyo Ken.
      • Do we know those ones would have harmed him. Maybe Krillin hit him with one fully powered one and then threw some incomplete ones at Freezer because Freezer would assume they could and would kill him if they connected and waste time dodging instead of attacking. Krillin has shown that he is a strategic fighter, enough of one to be considered a genius bruiser if you look up his entry on the Character Profiles.
• When Popo wished for everyone killed by Frieza to be brought back to life, what happened to the Saiyans? And all the countless minions he killed out of boredom? Even if they used the "except the evil ones" clause they used in other wishes, surely at least Bardock would have been saved?
  • We have to get one fact straight here: Bardock wasn't a good guy, he wasn't a hero, he was as evil as the rest of them. What changed him slightly was the madness that came with knowing Frieza was going to kill them all. The wish itself was phrased Frieza and his henchmen on Planet Namek to be brought back from the dead meaning that the Saiyans were straight out of luck both having died on their own planet and being out the Dragon's canonical 1 year time limit. As for the random minions? Toriyama forgot about them/didn't deem them worthy enough to be included.
    • Considering how badly they manage to twist the rules it's a minor miracle that the Ginyu Force didn't get wished back. I mean if Guru dying of a broken heart qualifies him as someone Frieza killed I don't see why Frieza specifically calling you to a planet and putting you in a situation that causes you to perish doesn't count as Frieza killed you.
      • This is addressed in the manga during a conversation between Kaioh-sama and Kami-sama. The Dragon Balls can only revive people who have been dead a year or less; so no Saiyajins. The dead minions were anime only. As for the Elder Namekian, Kaioh asks if it is possible to revive somebody who died of old age to which Kami answers no. Then he asks “what if his lifespan was shortened by the appearance of an evil being?”; Kami ponders for a second before answering “it is possible”.
• Something came to mind when re-watching Frieza saga through DBZ Kai. Why the hell did Dende and Nail suggest to use the dragon balls to make Vegeta and Krillin/Gohan's wishes when they would never be able to summon the dragon balls in the first place when neither one of them could speak fluid Namekian at that point? Maybe that's what Guru suggested when he told Nail to go help his friends fight off the Ginyu force before turning back around, but I'm not so sure. Nail more or less knew he was sending them into a suicide mission, since Goku was still too far away to help anyone, nor did anyone think he was strong enough to take on the Ginyu force.
  • Come again? I'm not sure what you're asking. Anyway, it seems Guru was not seriously intending that the earthlings would get their wish. It was only when he realized how big a threat Freeza really was that he changed his mind and sent Dende to show them how it was done. Krillin was heading back to ask Guru the same thing, and he and Dende met halfway, on with the story.

• Ok, was working on a response to an argument on the general Dragon Ball page about why Goku doesn't use Kaioken and Super Saiyan at the same time; the numbers aren't adding up. Frieza's 100% final form is given as 120million. This would of course put his 1% final form, with which he trashed Vegeta and fought evenly against Goku with, at 1.2 million. Goku is stated to have been fighting at his limit against 1% Frieza, using Kaioken x20 the whole time. Which would put his base power at 60k. Which is less than his base power when fighting Captain Ginyu. More over this raises the question of how Goku could have beaten Frieza if a Kaioken x 20 only put him at 1% of Frieza's power; Super Saiyan, which is a x50 increase, shouldn't put him anywhere near 100% Frieza.
  • 1.2 million would only put Goku just above 2nd Form frieza but he was able to block final form friezas death beams, he was around 3 million, they battled for a while and then Frieza went 50% and battered Goku with King Kai stating that even Kaioken times 10 wasn't helping so Goku increased his Kaioken to 20 times making 3 million 60 million and equaling 50% Frieza, then Spirit Bomb and then Super Saiyan which is a x50 increase to 150 million, beating Frieza's 100% 120 million. There is nothing which states Frieza was stronger, he only got in a couple of good hits and any parts where Frieza was beating goku was anime only; goku later states that he was holding back to test Frieza's power and out of fear of wrecking the planet while others were still on it, DBZ is a manga about fighting and power, Goku becomming the legendary strongest fighter in the universe wouldn't work narratively if he only won cause the real strongest in the universe got tired, he beat him because he was the main character and finally became the strongest there was.
  • It's pretty much stated both dialogue and in what we visually see that Super Saiyan Goku wasn't as strong as 100% Frieza. Goku had only two advantages in that fight 1) 100% power put extreme strain on Frieza's body. It wasn't that Goku was getting stronger that allowed him to fight evenly it was because Frieza was getting weaker - remember that 100% power wasn't a transformation; it was just Frieza straining harder and harder in order to maximize the power of his fourth form whereas Goku was using the strength granted to him by his transformation which gave him a key edge. 2) Frieza's ego and common sense. If Frieza fought like a professional; methodically analysing Goku's strategy and techniques and not letting his emotions get the better of him he wouldn't have make catastrophic mistakes such as not killing Goku when he first encountered him or by throwing two telepathically controlled Destructo Disks against an enemy who has proven on numerous occasions already that he prefers evasion over a head on fight. Goku didn't need to be stronger against a guy who is so headstrong he is willing to attack a Super Saiyan whilst missing half his body.
  • What's with the 1% thing? It's never mentioned in the manga. As a matter of fact, Freeza clearly stated that he used roughly 50% of his power to trash Goku (he probably used a bit more to survive the Kaiohken 20x and the Spirit Bomb). SSJ Goku's power was at least close to that of 100% Freeza.
    • I can't speak for the Manga because I've never read it but in the Anime it's stated in dialogue that he starts the battle against Goku using just 1% of his power - at this point they are basically equal. He then steps it up to 50% and completely kicks Goku's ass until he murders Krillin. This leads to Goku's Super Saiyan transformation and Frieza eventually pushing himself to 100%. In the anime Goku is pretty much dominated by Frieza until the latter starts to weaken; at which point the Tyrant's fate is sealed. Chalk it up to either Adaptation Decay or Adaptation Expansion depending on your point of view - probably guess what mine is.

• This is a big one. Who the hell is Frieza selling planets to? And why? Couldn't he just take their wealth? Are they all as strong as him? Is there a whole race of Friezas still terrorising the universe? Why would Frieza be scared of the Saiyans in comparison to that? For that matter what's he selling these planets FOR? What's worth more than what a planet and its people could produce if he enslaved them?
  • WMG, but based on King Kai's history of the Saiyans, where the Saiyans conquer a planet for another species in exchange for tech, maybe Frieza sells planets in exchange for technology that his own scientists haven't developed yet, as well as other things that Frieza probably wouldn't be able to get if they enslaved or destroyed those people. Either that, or Frieza sells planets to people that are wealthy but too strong to be worth the time and effort it would take to enslave or eradicate them. Besides, regardless of how strong he is, Frieza's just one man. As strong as he is, a sufficently strong race all working together to kill him would probably pull it off. Fear of this happening is the reason Frieza destroyed the Saiyans, the Super Saiyan legend was only just another motivation for him to do that.

Android/Cell Saga

• King Kai, Bubbles, and Gregory were killed in Cell's destruction of the Kai planet, same as Goku, yet they weren't revived when the wish to bring back all those killed by Cell was made. What gives?
  • Goku says King Kai could be revived but decided to stay dead in order to show him around. And apparently people can decide whether to be affected by a wish or not (such as when Goku refused to return to Earth after the Namek saga)
    • Not to mention being dead doesn't really change King Kai's situation much; he lives in the afterlife anyways.

• Vol 19, something's off about Trunks' afterstory. Cell's reason for coming to our timeline was because the androids were missing in his, right? But right before Future Trunks fights him, they have the following exchange.

Cell: You can't even defeat 17 or 18, much less me
Trunks: Oh? Then where are they now?
Cell(shocked): !!
Cell: ...You don't mean...You destroyed them?

• • In other words, Cell didn't learn the androids were missing until after he tried to kill Trunks and take his time machine. But why would he try to go back in the past unless he knew the androids were missing already? Why wouldn't he try to assimilate the weaker future androids? Can anyone say "Plot hole"?
  • The Time travelling story in whole. Get some Popcorn. The Original Timeline - Cell's Timeline - has Goku defeating Frieza and King Cold, then dying shortly later of a Heart virus. Dr. Gero unleashes Androids 17 and 18 onto the world. They kill the Z Fighters, bar Gohan. Gohan survives for awhile, trains Trunks, but later dies. Bulma, builds a Time Machine to find a way of preventing everything that has happened. Trunks goes back in time to an Unseen Timeline...
  • Unseen Timeline: and arrives upon the arrival of Frieza and King Cold. Trunks defeats them, and tracks down Goku, giving him the antidote/cure to the Heart Virus he later develops. He returns to HIS Timeline, but returns to help the Z Fighters deal with Androids 17 and 18. At some point, they discover Gero's secret lab, and find the blue prints to 17 and 18. Trunks returns to his time...
  • Cell's Timeline and destroys the Androids with the shut down device. A year later, Cell appears while Trunks is getting ready to go back one last time to tell them of his success (why he took so long is hard to understand). Cell kills him and goes back in time...
  • Main Timeline: Cell winds up creating a new timeline to 1 year before Trunks arrives and begins to develop/grow. 1 year later, FUTURE TRUNKS arrives (Cell's arrival does nothing to prevent Trunks' previous Time Travelling). But because of Cell's presence in this timeline, it is not the Trunks from Cell's Timeline arriving to the Unseen Timeline, it's a different pair. This turns out to be the Main Timeline and Future Trunks' Timeline. Future Trunks is identical to the Trunks from Cell's Timeline so far. Everything you see in the manga/anime happens, including Cell killing Future Trunks. After Cell is defeated, and Trunks is resurrected, he returns to his timeline, aware of Cell's arrival in his own timeline...
  • Future Trunks' Timeline: But first things first, he beats the shit out of 17 and 18. When Cell arrives, presumably that exchange happens.
    • In Cell's Timeline, 17 and 18 are dead. In Future Trunks' Timeline, they are dead. In the maintime line, Cell gets killed. In the Unseen Timeline, they are presumably gone, and Cell's fate is unknown. Hope that answered the question somewhere.
    • Much simpler explanation: Cell knew 17 and 18 were missing, but his shock was that Trunks defeated them. Understandable since previous data showed Trunks overwhelmed by a single android.
      • No. It's hard to tell from the quote above, but the manga page shows that Cell clearly did not know 17 and 18 were missing until Trunks told them. When Trunks told him, he tried to sense them (which doesn't make sense in and of itself, but...), realized they were missing and reacted with shock. If he already knew they were missing, he wouldn't have bothered searching.
      • Like you say, Cell trying to "sense" the androids makes no sense. But even if he found out first from Trunks the androids were missing, so what? Cell could've been spying on Trunks for any number of reasons, only to be called out by Trunks, learn of the androids' destruction, then decide to steal the time machine.
      • Except Trunks calls out Cell by accusing him of planning to kill him (Trunks) and go back in time to absorb the androids, to which Cell is like "How did you know?" Which brings us back to the opening question. The whole Trunks after-story is one big "Huh?"
      • the manga page shows that Cell clearly did not know 17 and 18 were missing. Wrong. Panel 1: Cell tells Trunks that he's too weak to even defeat the Androids ("You can't even defeat 17 or 18, much less me"). Panel 2: Trunks asks him "Oh? Then where are they now?". Panel 3: Cell is shocked ("!!"). Panel 4: Cell asks "You don't mean... They're missing because you destroyed them?". There's nothing that shows he didn't know they were destroyed, and he's not shown "sensing" them.
      • From that, it seems he knew they were missing, but did not know they had been destroyed. So his shock is because they were destroyed by Trunks, not because they were missing.
      • The reason why Cell eats Ginger Town is because he transforms after absorbing an amount of power (stated when Piccolo and Cell met) so why didn't Cell try and absorb Trunks who is at that point more powerful than 18 and 17 combined?
        • No, Cell can transform only by absorbing 17 and 18. Absorbing others simply makes him stronger, but he was too weak to manage to absorb Trunks. Or, if you're referring to the timeline where Cell killed Trunks and stole his Time Machine, well... the manga never showed what happened, so maybe he DID absorb him.
  • Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I remember it being mentioned in the series that Cell could sense the Androids. It was probably not through ki, though. It must be some device or something the Androids had which made it possible for Cell, and only Cell, to detect them.
    • Nope. He has to look for them the old fashioned way, otherwise he wouldn't have had to go through all the trouble of blowing up islands to flush 18 out of hiding.

• Vol 14, Piccolo sees Kami looking down on the world, calls peeping on the lower world "an undignified hobby" and says Kami will lose that ability once they merge. Except they don't, and Piccolo takes over as resident voyeur. Either Toriyama forgot he wrote that line or Piccolo was wrong, or both.
  • Kami "lost" that ability because he is no more, hence he can never look down anymore.

• Android Saga. Right before they enter the Dr. Gero's cave, Krillin divides the six Senzu beans between himself, Picollo and Tien. After the Battle Royal (No Match for the Androids), Krillin again has all six Senzu beans.
  • That may be an Adaptation-Induced Plothole. I don't remember the anime, but in the manga I clearly remember that the Senzu are divided, and a panel shows his hand holding only two beans. He probably recovered the other four from his friends' bodies.

• Why didn't Goku just teleport back to Earth before Cell exploded?
  • Because he was feeling mentor-y and wanted his son to take over for him in guarding earth. He persisted in this philosophy well into the Buu saga.
  • Real Reason: Toriyama wanted Goku out of the way, to officially pass the torch to Gohan. Hence - Goku go boom.
    • Plausible In-Story Reason: He had to stay to make sure Cell didn't have any tricks that would allow him to return to Earth before The Boom (Turns out, he did.)
  • Because he forgot to think of that in the middle of apologizing to King Kai for taking Cell there.
  • Goku's an Idiot Hero anyway, what makes you think he'd actually bothered to think that far ahead? Using Instant Transmission was an absolute last resort (which didn't even work), and he didn't even have a planet in mind when he decided to use it. (Seriously, that's pretty stupid--why not go to some deserted planet, or even the ruins of Namek or the middle of space?) Throw in King Kai distracting him, and BOOM! before he has a chance to think about grabbing King Kai and zipping back to Earth.
    • Goku can teleport only to places he senses ki, so he can't 'port to a lifeless location. Considering he got only King Kai and his 2 pets, besides himself, killed, it was actually wise on Goku's part. Then again, he still could've saved them, as well as himself, if he had just moved with a little urgency.
    • Well, to be fair, Goku only had just enough time to tell King Kai that the little planet was the only place he could think of sending Cell to. Immediately after that, Cell blew up. Even if Goku had the power to teleport himself, King Kai and the animals off, he would still need some time to find somebody else to teleport to; the closest being with ki off the planet would probably be Enma Daio, at the other end of Snake Way.
    • What's stopping him from just going back to Earth?
• Ok, where are Babidi and Majin Buu in the future Trunks alternate timeline? They definitely should have appeared at that point (and presumably killed off the human race.)
  • Given that he was gathering ki on weak (as far as he knew) old Earth in the primary timeline, it can be assumed that he needed to gather ki from nearby Buu's cocoon. In future Trunks' timeline, most of the strongest people are dead, except a weaker Gohan and Trunks, who combined don't have enough to unleash Buu, and ki-less androids. Presumably, Babidi keeps a few probes on Earth or something, and came by in the main timeline because there were enough strong people to fuel Buu's unleashing. Not enough strong people in future Trunks' timeline, so no Babidi, who is presumably still waiting over there.
  • This is the plot of the PSP Game Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai 2: Another Road.
    • There's bound to be timelines out there were Babidi and Buu did succeed in wrecking the planet. But given the loss of the DBZ warriors and the population being driven underground in Future Trunks' timeline, it's possible Babidi never did get enough energy to revive Buu, or was killed (either him or Dabra/Spopovich/Yamu) by the androids before succeeding.
      • The Androids just are not killing Dabra outside of the sneak attack from HFIL. Dabra's power are supposed to be comparable to Perfect Cell.
      • There are bound to be timelines where Dabra never joined Babidi, as well as timelines where Dabra killed the Androids. The multiverse is infinite.

• Dr. Gero is shocked when Goku and Vegeta go SSJ. The explaination given is that Dr. Gero wasn't monitering them in space. But wait, didn't Trunks go SSJ on earth in his fight with Frieza? Goku too?
  • He never saw Goku do it, and he certainly never saw Vegeta doing it. He probably thought it was an ability unique to that Trunks person.
  • Dr. Gero explicitly states that by the time Goku went off to space he had ended surveillance, since he had formed a method of calculating the future rate of everyone's power increase and considered further surveillance unnecessary and a potential security risk.
    • Honestly its a bit of a plot hole. Dr. Gero claims he stopped surveliance of them at that time and I can only imagine he must not have programmed his computer to notify him if something truly outrageous happened but Cell has Frieza and King Cold cells in him, clearly the surveilence was still active at least until Trunks vs Frieza and I doubt surveliance stopped right then which is what it would take.
    • Gero stopped surveillance, but the computer kept working on the Cell Project. The bugs that collect DNA are part of that project and have nothing to do with Goku surveillance project. This is shown in the anime by having two unique models of insects: one presumably with a camera, and the other that gathers DNA from strong fighters.
• How is it possible for nobody to figure out Trunks is Vegeta and Bulma's Child? He comes from the future, Goku is dead due to an illness, Gohan is too young to conceive anyone, and no other saiyans have appeared from space. He has the same haircolor as Bulma (manga), he is wearing a CC jacket, and has a time machine. They both live in the same house. Even the two of them don't put it together until they see him again -- despite having a lookalike baby! How can people be this clueless? It just bugs me.
  • I assume you mean after Trunks reappears when the Androids emerge. Up to that point, only Goku and Piccolo knew Mirai Trunks' name and origins. And once Piccolo blurts out his name, Vegeta rapidly puts two and two together (and bashes himself for not seeing it sooner). Also don't forget Vegeta thought he was lying about being a Saiyan. Not to mention everyone was too busy acting on Trunks' warning (training and such) to put much thought into Trunks' lineage.
    • Right, like it is the *name* that makes it obvious. Sure, they are in training, but I'm sure they take a break to eat every once in a while. Dude comes from the future and nobody spends a few minutes to speculate? Not to mention Bulma isn't training, and she is supposed to be pretty clever -- yet she didn't figure it out, given she is shocked when Goku knows his name.
      • Well, keep in mind one important fact: With the exception of Bulma, they're all single-minded idiots. Bulma probably never gave it a second thought until Mirai Trunks reappeared.
    • But was anyone really trying to figure out Trunks' "identity"? He's a heroic young Saiyan from the future, apparently Future Bulma sent him back in time, there we go. They were more worried about the whole "all of you died in my future" message he'd given them, and without the benefit of hindsight, Trunks could've come from anywhere: yet another long-lost Saiyan who'd arrived on Earth, Future Bulma's attempt to artificially concieve or clone a Saiyan using Goku or Gohan's DNA, a younger child that Goku and Chi Chi had before he died (Goten didn't exist yet, so Trunks could've been Gohan's younger brother as far as they knew - remember, kids in real life don't always look like their parents, and who knows how You Gotta Have Blue Hair genetics works), and so on. For what it's worth, a lot of non-spoiled fans at the time were surprised, and they had a better perspective on the mystery than the characters themselves.
      • "Gohan is too young to conceive anyone"? I wouldn't really agree with that if you catch my drift.
  • Gohan is ten years old at most when Trunks first appears with his warning of the future, man! He's still a child!
    • He's 10 chronologically at the end of the Cell Saga, making him 7 when Trunks comes back with the warning.
    • Which makes it even worse!
  • The reason they didn't figure it out, despite having a look-a-like baby is because it's quite a leap to assume that just because your baby has the same eye and hair color as the strange time-traveler from the future, that your baby is him as an adult; and like another Troper said, before Mirai Trunks' return, only Goku and Piccolo knew who he really was. They may have speculated where this guy came from, but it must've happened off-screen.

• Why did Bulma go to all of the effort of inventing a time machine for Trunks when it would have been much easier to build another spaceship and send him to Namek and use their balls. Three Wishes: Move/Destroy the Androids, Bring Piccolo/Kami Back, Bring Gohan or Vegeta Back. Much better than just saving the lives of some alternate versions of some people you never really knew, isn't it?
  • First off, Namek was destroyed and nobody knew where "New Namek" was. When Goku needed the Namek Dragon Balls at the end of Buu saga he had to go ask Kaio to find them.
  • Secondly, moving or destroying the androids won't work because it's established that the dragons cannot affect someone stronger than they. In that case bringing back Piccolo/Kami or any of the others is fruitless because they'll just get killed again. Trunks did say he went to the past to find out how to kill the androids. He could have wished them back after, but again there's many limitations: only one person at once, or a one-year limit, or previously resurrected people can't be brought back again, etc. Why waste time on dead people with a middling chance of resurrection when you have an entire world to rebuild?
  • I have to agree. While Gohan was shown as being strong enough to handle a SINGLE android, he was far more powerful than any of the other dead fighters, and since Goku died of a heart disease (which technically falls under 'natural causes', which was one of the can't-do-it rules of resurrection) bringing back the I-get-powerful-stupidly-fast fighter was out of the question.
    • Nothing stops them from building a space ship later when the world has stabilized a bit, anyway.
  • All they had to do was wish that Dr. Gero (who wouldn't be stronger than Shenron or Porunga) never went into robotics or becomes good or any other wish that would prevent him from creating the rest of the androids.
    • That makes no sense. When have the dragons been shown to retroactively alter things?
    • Also Shenron and Porunga are only as strong as their creators - Kami/Dende Guru/Namek Elder. Dr Gero is at least as strong as Frieza; so no, the Dragons couldn't directly effect him in any way whatsoever.
  • Trunks later admits (right after finding Cell) that his goal was just to find out the means to destroy the androids by watching the DBZ warriors fight them, or failing that to bring Son Goku with him to the future. What I've gotta wonder is why he didn't get Shenlong to make him a new shutdown controller for the androids and use that to immobilize+ destroy them in the future. Or get Past Bulma to make him one, but I guess by that point he was already strong enough to take on the androids on his own (who were weaker in his timeline than in Goku's).
    • In the timeline where Cell killed him, that's what happened. He went to the past, got the remote, went back to the future, used the remote, and then Cell kills him, since he didn't go through all that extra training. All There in the Manual.

• Okay, the timelines thing with Trunks. If he can go back to his own future to kill Cell, then his timeline is stable. But he kills Cell before he can go back in time in the first place, the Cell saga never happens. So we've got Cell in the future, dead. Cell in the present, dead. If it was possible for Trunks to get back to his own timeline, then how could he kill Cell before Cell went back, with the powers he gained training to fight Cell-in-the-past? To add yet another complication, this troper has also heard the interpretation of onscreen events as Cell killing Trunks to steal the time machine before he can go back the first time, but Trunks kills Cell before Cell can kill pre-travel future Trunks abnd get the time machine, but if he hadn't he shouldn;t bein the past. but since he did, Cell shouldn't be in the past, so oh no I've gone cross-eyed. To summarize: Two timelines are missing a Trunks, at least one timeline is missing a Cell, and neither Trunks nor Bulma actually know how time travel works, do they?.
  • Because the timelines have already been set and can't be altered. At this point, a third timeline had been created (where the main Cell came from) and couldn't be written out of existence. Trunks himself stated that what happened in other timelines couldn't affect the other ones, as we see him and Krillin destroy present Cell, yet the main Cell still exists. When he returns to his future, the events in the main timeline haven't altered his, further confirming his statements.
  • There are three independent timelines. There is the main one, there is a second one where Cell kills Trunks and goes back in time into the main timeline (ultimately becoming perfect Cell), and there is a third one where future Trunks goes back in time into the main timeline, then returns and kills the Cell of his timeline before he can steal the time machine from him. The main timeline's Cell was killed before he was even born (lol aborted). All timelines are independent; changing something in one doesn't affect anything in the other ones, so everything is accounted for.
    • Well, there are actually four timelines. The one you didn't mention was the one that would've been the main timeline if Cell didn't kill Trunks and take his machine to the main timeline. In the fourth timeline, future Cell wasn't present. They found the blueprints for the androids in Gero's lab and managed to destroy the androids of that timeline. Then that future Trunks went to the future, deactivated the androids, destroyed them, and was later killed by Cell before he could go back to the present to alert everyone of the good news. What confuses me, however, are two things: The alternate present Cell and alternate present 16. What if they didn't destroy the Cell of that timeline? Not knowing of Cell's existence, they'd have no reason to destroy the super computer building Cell nor Cell himself because they didn't know about them; Hell, they didn't even know about the hidden bunker below the lab. In 20 years or so, he'd appear and everyone would be fucked. Not to mention the whole conflict with Majin Buu that might possibly happen before Cell is even complete. Then there's 16. Was he just not present in that timeline? I doubt that he would've just sat back and allowed 17 and 18 to get destroyed and the dude was stronger than a fully powered future Imperfect Cell. The only character that would've stood a chance is Piccolo after fusing with Kami and the only reason Kami even agreed to do it was because he sensed future Cell, who wasn't present in the alternate present timeline. Did future Cell's presence somehow cause Gero to create him? That makes me wonder about just how similar the alternate present timeline is to the main timeline. Future Cell's presence could've somehow influenced Gero's decisions in regards to how powerful to make 17 and 18 and the creation of 16 (or how powerful to make him if he was going to make him anyway as a result of being affected somehow by Trunks' time traveling). Present Cell could've possibly have been much stronger than his future counterpart if allowed to grow.

• Where was Cell hiding Seventeen and Eighteen, anyhow? He's seen vomiting Eighteen out near the end of the Cell/Gohan fight, and she's totally intact. I know both androids are ninety pounds soaking wet, but Cell wasn't so big that he had enough room for two human-sized secret compartments, even if you assume they were curled up into very tight fetal positions. I don't know, maybe he could have spontaneously digested Seventeen to make room for Eighteen, but even then it's still a stretch.
  • Don't forget that when Buu absorbed people, they shrank. It might be the same, especially since Cell was designed EXPRESSLY to absorb these two individuals.
  • That's exactly what this troper always assumed. Seventeen was disassembled, and Eighteen was meant to be used relatively intact. And may have been usable the other way around, had he absorbed them in a different order. If you think it's a stretch, just remember: Cell doesn't make much sense anyway.
  • Another point is that even if he could fit them in his body, his whole top half was blown off in the Cell Games. He could regenerate, but unless he could extend his capabilities to the androids (who were partly mechanical?), they should have died at that point, depriving him of his main source of power.
  • Except that "androids" is a bad translation. The japanese word means something more like "artificial being" than "robot". They were both human before, gero just enhanced them. They were absorbed on the cellular level. Of course, this brings to mind the question of how #18 was coughed up at all...
    • Obvious cyborgs are obvious. Anyway, indeed, 18 should've been coughed up as sludge, and neither her nor 17 could've been left whole in there. In the normal perfect form, Cell is very lithe, only having any sort of bulk in its upper body. Only when it artificially bulks up, are its belly, throat and mouth big enough to hold an entire woman. If the process somehow reconstructed her, she should've come naked, and with no cheratin parts, the outer layer of skin, or any fat at all - basically a bright pink, emaciated hommunculus whose fragile skin would've been torn to ribbons by encountering the interior of Cell's esophagus, its teeth and the rough ground.
      • And they should not come out fully clothed either. I guess even Cell needs fiber in his diet to keep him regular.
  • I alwasy assumed that 17 and 18 were stored in Cell's body just like in Buu's; shrunken and fully intact. They were probably stored in his lower body which actually makes sense as he vomited her up (she was near the stomach). When Cell grew giant they grew proportionally (to their normal sizes) and the rest is history.

• Why didn't Trunks just go one day back in time, get his past self to join him, and repeated the process many times over to create an army of Trunks to easily defeat the androids? Or, more seriously, gone back further and stopped Dr. Gero? Were his actions really optimal decisions?
  • For one, because the time machine only had so much juice in it and being jury-rigged from the start, he didn't know how many jumps he had. For another, he had no idea where Dr. Gero was hiding.
    • Stopping Dr. Gero doesn't work because all the timelines are independent. Sure, he might save some other timeline from having to deal with the Androids, but it doesn't do anything to help his world.
• Ok, this just bugs me. If Goku was able to grow his tail back in Dragon Ball, how did they get rid of the tails forever in Dragon Ball Z?
  • "Official" according to the Toriyama interview in the first issue of US Shonen Jump:

The tail lets you gain trememdous strength instantly by transforming you into a giant ape, but the risks are equally great - you'll lose your strength if it's squeezed. Once you're as powerful as Vegeta and Goku, the tail just gets in the way. It is thought that the bodies of Saiyans, who are a fighting species, decided that their tails are unnecessary appendages.

• • Toriyama bullshitting as usual (and ignoring the fact that Goku trained his tail to overcome that weakness), but there you have it.
  • A Wizard Did It?
  • By the same process which restored the moon between Roshi blowing it up and Piccolo blowing it up?
    • The Wizard in either case being Kami (who permanently removed Goku's tail and restored the moon). More plausible in-story reason: Maybe once you are past puberty it is impossible to grow it back. Why Trunks, et. al. tails never grew back, I'm not sure. Cauterization? Maybe removing it at birth makes it less likely to grow back?
      • Maybe half-saiyan tails don't grow back? Vegeta didn't want the tail post-Frieza in case it interfered with becoming a super sayan, and he's Just That Badass?
        • Gohan's a half-saiyan and his tail grew back like five times.
      • Also maybe not all half-saiyan are born with tails. Neither Trunks nor Goten have ever been shown with tails, maybe Gohan's the freak.
      • According to the Toriyama interview in the very first issue of US Shonen Jump, "It seems that tails are a recessive generic trait." Of course this is Toriyama we're talking about so he probably pulled it from his ass but there you have it.
    • Kami did it, though he doesn't explain how. Since all those times he "lost" his tail in Dragon Ball he just got it cut/snapped (there is always a short stub remaining, after all), I assume when Kami got rid of it he removed it from the root. Like the difference between cutting a hair and pulling it out.
  • I think it grows back when they go Oozaru, which they stop doing when the Super Saiyan becomes an option.
    • I fully expected the end of that sentence to be, "which they stop doing when the tail gets cut off." As a joke. Since they don't become Oozaru without a tail. Which means the above explanation doesn't work.
    • I always a assumed it stopped growing back after they reached a certain age.

• If Cell had absorbed Android 18 first, would he have looked the same?
  • Probably, since 17-powered Cell didn't resemble 17 at all.
    • Apart from the eyes and the ego (well, that was also from Vegeta. And Freeza. And King Cold.), it was not quite like 17. However, 18 was stated to be weaker, so maybe Cell would be slighty weaker.
      • To my memory, it was 17 that constantly claimed 18 was weaker than 17. Now there does appear to be a slight difference, but I personally think it had a lot to do with ego and sexism rather than any profound difference in their power levels.
        • Sexism? That's a bit of a reach. "No one is as strong as I am" is not a statement that cares about sexes. Also, let's remember. This is Dragon Ball. Even the slightest-seeming difference in power is capable of leading to a curb stomp.
    • It's stated in the manga (on one of the original cover pages at the back detailing all of Gero's creations from #1-20) that #18 is slightly weaker than #17.

• Why did Dr. Gero rebuild himself as an energy absorbing model, if the whole point of that model is that its weaker and easier to control than 17 and 18's model? Was he afraid he'd lose control of himself?
  • I'd always assumed he was a poor tactician, and assumed that sucking energy out of enemies and sucking up energy beams was somehow better than unlimited energy.
  • Either that, or perhaps the process requires a young, strong body. The energy-absorbing model wasn't as powerful, but all Gero had to do was put his brain in it. He was a frail old man by that time, so he probably wouldn't have survived the implantation process used on 17 and 18.
  • On a related note, why did Gero make his robot body look the same age as his human body?
    • Guess vanity isn't one of his many flaws. It's not like he was much better looking as a younger man.
    • All in all, Gero may have been a super genius but he was still a complete idiot. What he should have done was build a body similar to Super 17 from GT - an Android with both energy absorbing and the infinite power generator he used on 17 and 18. This would have had the incredibly useful advantage of being able to collect the energy of the Kamehameha Wave using his hand... which was probably what he was going for with his current Android 20 body. He watched as his nemesis destroyed the entire Red Ribbon army using that attack - wouldn't it be poetic justice for him to absorb its energy and use it to destroy Goku in revenge?
      • The problem with that idea is that he could never build something like that from scratch. He needed the help of Dr. Myu just to create a clone from hell of 17 that would be able to merge with the guy into Super 17. This also still doesn't address the problem of whether his body may have been too old and worn down to be able to withstand the infinite power generator and data chip experiments he used to turn the two rebellious teenage twins into 17 and 18 in the first place. Even if he could, and even if it was as simple as going through that and then taking up energy absorbing inlets, he would have to cut off his own hands to make that happen. It's easy to see what could go wrong there.
        • Except… he got infinite energy into a pure synthetic android already! Case and point: 16!
  • I can think of a good reason: Cell. Think about it: Cell was designed to absorb 17 and 18 (or they were designed to be absorbed by Cell; I forget which). If he were like them, Cell might not see himself as perfect after absorbing both 17 and 18, and come after Gero as well. I guess he could make some alterations to his body to make his body useless to Cell or something, though...
  • Remember what kind of person Dr. Gero is. He's not just an Omnicidal Maniac (for lack of a better phrase), but also is an utter sadist. It seems perfectly acceptable to consider that maybe he prefers slowly, agonisingly draining every last drop of energy from a victim before slaughtering them, thus allowing them to suffer such intense pain and fear that they wish for death to come to be far more satisfying than simply blasting them away in a fairly quick manner.

• It's a minor point but when Goku comes back to Earth in his spaceship after Trunks killed Freeza he A: says he knew what was happening, and would have used his new teleport technique to come back to earth immediately if he hadn't been sure Trunks could have handled it. B: explains his teleport technique as being able to move at the speed of light, quoting the actual speed (at least in the dub, don't know about the original) C: says he came back from training on a planet millions of lightyears away. As in, it would take millions of years to reach this planet at the speed of light, but his ship did it in a year or so. But even though the ship didn't make it to earth before Freeza did, he could've teleported and arived in time. Calling a You Fail Astronomy Forever seems a bit redunant at this point.
  • It's a minor Dub-Induced Plot Hole (he says nothing about the speed of light in the original Japanese). He clearly moves distances and to places clearly impossible if he were simply zapping himself place to place like a lazer. Easily handwaved by the fact that Goku's an idiot.

• After Future Gohan loses his arm, why doesn't Bulma just build him a new mechanical one? She's supposedly a genius with technology.
  • Probably because the mechanical one wouldn't be able to shoot ki blasts. Also, maybe Future Gohan didn't want a mechanical arm because he'd feel he'd be disturbingly similar to the androids.
    • And Bulma's surname is Briefs, not Rockbell, so the thing would probably be little more than the plastic mannequin hands we give to amputees.
  • Considering just how strong he and the androids were, the mechanical arm might as well have been made of custard. It would just slow him down.

• How the hell did Dr Gero get the DNA of every single Z fighter and their enemies, including alien warlords and all?
  • His mosquito-like spybots took blood just like the real insect, and just like the real insect, they were too small for the characters to notice, especially when the characters were busy with the person trying to kill them. Frieza and Cold were likely bitten while they were on Earth and busy with Trunks.
    • Which is weird because Dr. Gero says he ended surveillance shortly before Goku left for Namek.
    • Some of his bugs were still around, though. Goku is shown destroying one after Gero tells him about them.
      • Piccolo was actually the one to do that after Cell told him about them. As for Gero, I could've sworn he only intentionally stopped collecting data after Frieza and King Cold were killed.
    • Gero personally stopped paying attention to the surveillance, but the computer independently kept working on the Cell Project.

• How can Cell (or for that matter, Dr. Gero's computer) exist in their own timelines? Wouldn't the androids have blown up Dr. Gero's lab (especially consdering Gero even warned them about that while he was being killed in those timelines)? You have to admit Cell is pretty dang lucky the androids didn't touch the place where they killed their first victim.
  • Explained in the series. Cell's capsule and computers were in a basement bunker which 17 and 18 didn't know about. When they blew up the lab's ground level, the rubble covered the bunker's entrance, and so they left, thinking that they'd destroyed the entire thing.

• In Trunks' timeline, where's Android 16 and Android 19?
  • It's implied that 19 is never built, and 16 never got activated by 17 and 18.

• It was really tough on Goku with all his injuries during the fight with the Cell Jrs without aid from the Senzu beans. If only he had some way of TELEPORTING TO AN ALIEN WHO COULD HEAL HIM!!!
  • It takes a while for Dende to heal anyone. Plus in that time, the humans and Piccolo would bite it. Trunks and Vegeta are really the only ones who would've had a chance until Gohan got pissed. Plus y'know, as said many, MANY times on this page he's still Goku.
    • Not to mention the chance of Cell tracking him and hurting Dende in some way, which would really screw up their revival plans.

• King Cold at one point suggests Frieza just destroy Earth but Frieza doesn't want to because he wants to make Goku suffer. Makes sense for him, but after Trunks kills him, why doesn't King Cold then destroy the Earth himself? Even if Trunks killed him before he could retreat, he would still have the planet destroyed.
  • Frieza actually did try the Planet Crusher on Trunks. Trunks caught it. King Cold wouldn't have fared much better.

• After Cell was destroyed and all his victims revived by the dragon balls, why didn't Android 17 search for his sister? He seemed very fond of her, and he must have wanted an explanation for why he was alive after being ingested by Cell. Turning into a vagabond that wanders around woods with nothing to do seems very out of character for someone like him.
  • Maybe he did in the 7 years between the Cell Saga and Buu saga, but he didn't want to live with her while she was with Krillin, and he didn't want to live with any of the other Z fighters either, so he just went off to live on his own.
    • 18 doesn't immediately jump Krillin's bones, she dashes off back to Earth. About the only thing we know about her warming up to Krillin, falling for him, marrying him, and bearing his daughter is that it occurs within a seven year Time Skip. So it's likely they got back together at some point.

• The third timeline (The one where Main Cell came from) confuses me. Like how did it even happen? We have the present universe and Future Trunks universe, so at which point was this third universe created?
  • What happened was their are 2 divergent timelines from the future trunks timeline. One, the one that leads to the main timeline, is where trunks went to the past, killed king cold, went to the future, came back three years later and figths the androids, then returns, only to be killed by cell, who takes the time machine back to BEFORE teen trunks returned to the future the second time. His presence there caused Trunks to become more powerful than when he got killed by cell, he goes back to the future, and kills cell instead of being killed by him. Make sense?

• How did Gero get the DNA from Frieaza and king cold to put in cell? he clearly stated he had ended the surveillance and DNA gathering before they went to Namek.
  • He ended surveillance of Goku specifically and didn't follow him into space. As I seem to remember, whatever he was using to get the DNA caught notice of Frieza and King Cold's arrival, went "Hey, those guys are strong, better grab'em." and did so.

• After fusing with Kami, why didn't Piccolo re-power the Dragon Balls? It's established that Kami knew how, and that Piccolo had all his memories. Not to mention, at that point Piccolo was (obviously) much more powerful than Kami had been, as well as surpassing all the other living Namekians. Shenron would have become stupidly powerful at that point.
  • He can't. For some reason he loses the ability to create and power the Dragon Balls once he re-fuses with Kami. It's not just about memories or knowledge, there's also some innate power required which Piccolo doesn't have. Possibly because he's a clone of the original Piccolo and not the 'real other half' of Kami.
  • I suspect that the reason is that you have to be good to create Dragonballs. Of the four sets we're aware of one was created by Guru who is undeniable a good guy. Kami expelled his evil, which became Piccolo, and was also pure good. Dende again about as good as you can get. We don't know much about Moori (the elder Namek who presumably made the Dragonballs that now exist on Namek) but he's portrayed as being good. It's possible that Piccolo was sufficiently evil that he simply can't.
  • It's also possible that he could have done it if he wanted. Fusing with Kami was sufficient to "turn them off" so to speak because the being that created them was gone now. He might very well have been capable and just didn't. It's not like they waited weeks or years, Dende was there and had the balls up and running in like six days.
  • He had other priorities like finding first form Cell, and finding out what he was up too. Then he was nearly killed by Cell. Then there was preventing Cell from absorbing 17 and 18, etc. He didn't think about creating new Dragon Balls until Goku mentioned his intention to revive all those killed by Cell back to life. He also wasn't Pure good like Kami was so it was unlikely he even could make them. That is why Goku eventually went to New Nameck.
  • He also spends alot on time on the frontlines, meaning he has a good chance of getting killed. In that situation, it would be better to have the guy who is never on the frontlines with the macguffin device dependant on his being alive than him.
• How the hell does no one recognize any of the Z fighters during the broadcast of the Cell Games? Goku is a former World Champion, Yamcha, Krillin, and Tien were all competitors in the Tenkaichi Budokai, Piccolo should be still recognized as Ma Junior, and Vegeta was televised when the Saiyans attacked. Just because of different hair and eye color, nobody thinks that the dude wearing the exact same uniform as the former World Champion could possibly be him?
  • An old couple do regognize Goku as "Chichi's husband" and the King (The dog guy) also recognises him, as for everyone else, it's probably the hair that threw them off, by the time Hercule came into the scene I doubt Goku was publicized much so no one had really seen his face for a long time. As for Yamcha, Krillin, Piccolo and Tien, I don't think the Camera was ever focused on them (I could be wrong) plus in the 23rd budokai no one realized it was Piccolo until his Turban came off... Vegeta being televised was only in the Anime.
  • This is in fact a Plot Hole. There is no reason why this was ommitted from the Plot Hole section on this website. Ki attacks and flying are world famous in Dragon Ball and it is absolutely ludicrous they would ever forget. They would have had to destroy every single record or altered it in some Nineteen Eighty Four way but for absolutely no reason. One Big Bad points this out, saying that mankind has already forgotten Goku.
  • Well it was roughly twenty years in between the 23rd Budokai Tenkaiichi tournament and the Cell Games so it isn't all that surprising that people forgot. Same reason Hercule was able to convince people that Ki blasts, etc. were 'tricks'. That and the rare few who CAN use Ki energy are content to be annonymous. And finding people who can use them is hard if you don't have the resources to find them. and convincing them to teach you is even harder.
• Why didn't Cell use Instant Transmission to escape Gohan's final Kamehameha?
  • Because he was putting literally all his energy into deflecting Gohan's blast. He spares a moment's concentration on ducking away, he gets vaporized that much faster.

• When Cell killed Trunks in the third timeline, why did he go to the first timeline? Shouldn't he have gone to the fourth timeline (an unseen one) as that was where third timeline Trunks was going?
  • Time travel plots rarely make sense, even the ones that are written well.
    • The first IS the "fourth" timeline. It's in their history that Cell came to their timeline, it's part of their timeline. The multiverse is infinite so there are millions of Cells that jumped into other timelines as well.
    • Because Cell goes back to a different year: 1 year before Future Trunks arrives. Meaning, he's basically interfering with the Original Timeline (Cell's Timeline: the one he just came from.) The reason the Main Timeline comes about is because BOTH Cell and Future Trunks wind up time travelling to it.

• How did the Androids not kill everyone on Earth in 14 years? And why are people still going to places like amusement parks after all that time?
  • Androids just wanna have fun. The amusement parks, I'm not so sure...
  • I get the feeling the Androids are more like frequent earthquakes than anything. Civilization still exists, with news announcements and amusement parks and clothing stores; it's just that every so often, a city goes boom.
    • Dunno about the anime, but in the manga Trunks says the androids deliberately prolong the killing for fun, that the entire population of the Earth only numbers in the tens of thousands, and that most of humanity has been forced to hide underground. Not a single amusement park or shopping mall appears.

• How the hell does Imperfect Cell get so stupidly powerful after absorbing humans? When regenerated Piccolo first fights Cell, he's shown to be much more powerful, but Cell absorbs a few humans and then is able to crush Piccolo AND Android 17 in their second battle. True, Piccolo was weakened, but Android 17 was shown to be about the same strength, and he NEVER runs out of energy. In the first power level reading, it's of a farmer, who has a power of 5. So most humans have a power level of about 5, but Piccolo was as strong or even stronger than a Super Saiyan at that point, which had a power level way up in the high millions...And, if Cell could absorb weaklings and get so strong, couldn't he have absorbed a Z-Fighter or something all those times his opponent was stronger? Would've come in WAY handy against Gohan...
  • Absorbing strong people was more work than he wanted to put in. He went for quantity instead of quality. Also it's likely the power inside him wasn't a 1-1 correlation, but instead grew exponentially by the number of people he absorbed.
    • A few people? He annihilated several cities, so, depending on their size, he could have absorbed something over a million people at that point.
      • The average population for a city in the US is 6545 people (281,421,906 spread over 43,000 towns/cities) and the average power level of an ordinary human (based on Raditz's Scouter) is 5. This means that Cell, on average, experienced a 32,725 fold increase in power upon successfully destroying each city. However, that is not the full story because it has often been noted that Cell's aura resembles a Super Saiyan (which given how Gero collected Frieza and King Colds cells at the same time Trunks and Goku went Super Saiyan it is highly likely he collected Super Saiyan DNA). Given the 50X multiplier Super Saiyan provides, his power increase per city increases from 32,725 to 1636250 - or in other words one Final Form Frieza per city (which given Cell's massive improvement over Piccolo the second time they fought, that figure would seem almost exactly right). It is also worth noting that according to Raditz, Roshi has a power level of 139. Now, Roshi is by every definition a superhuman, but we know from the original Dragon Ball (namely the World Martial Arts Tournaments and the Red Ribbon Saga) a fighter with even a basic level of martial arts and/or ki training is capable of reaching power levels around the 100 mark. If Cell absorbed enough reputable fighters you could happily multiply my estimate above by tens of thousands.

• According to Future Trunks, Goku in his timeline died of heart disease even before the androids attacked. Question: why didn't they use the Dragon Balls to either cure him or resurrect him? Huh?
  • Earth's Dragon Balls have many restrictions. They can't grant the same wish twice, they can't revive someone who died more than a certain amount of time ago, and, most relevant to this case, they can't revive anyone that died of natural causes. Disease is natural, unfortunately.
    • What about curing the disease before it kills him? Also at that point they just came back from Namek so they know about and have access to the Namekian Dragon Balls.
      • The disease seemed to have a pretty rapid onset, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume that finding the Dragon Balls would have taken too long (sure, they can fly now, but they'd still probably have to do people a bunch of favors to actually get the damn things like the first few times around). As for the Namekian ones: Yes, they were aware that they still had them, but they had no idea where the Namekians were (Goku had to go to Kaio-sama to figure that one out) and, even if they did, there was no way to get there in time -- what with the one guy that can instantly get to wherever he wants being at death's door and all.
      • If you recall, it took over a month for them to actually reach Namek, and since we don't really know exactly how fast it kills him, we can assume that by the time they got their and made the wish, Goku would have died. Or maybe they were just waiting for him to get better, or for doctors to find a cure - I mean who could have predicted that Goku would have died?
      • The rapid onset part was the problem. Remember during Cell Saga, Goku found all the Dragon Balls within a day or two before going to the Cell Games? So they could have found the balls and cured him, but it's very possible that by the time they realized he was ill and dying (they only knew what was wrong with him in this timeline because Trunks had given advance warnings) and took a few hours to search for the balls, Goku had already kicked the bucket.
        • Also, let's keep in mind that it was Goku who found all the Dragon Balls within a day or two before going to the Cell Games. AKA the one guy that can instantly get to wherever he wants. I can imagine it taking closer to a week for any of the others.

• After consistently falling short with the creation of the first 16 androids because none of them are evil/obedient/proactive enough to carry out his designs to rule the world and/or destroy Goku… is there a reason why, of all the unassuming idiots in the Dragon Ball world for Dr. Gero to kidnap and use for his experiments, does he even entertain the thought of going for the two runaway teenagers, let alone decide that it's a good idea?
  • Because when all else fails and you need to pick aid from the general pool of the human population, you Recruit Teenagers with Attitude. Gero was clearly Wrong Genre Savvy about that trope.

• In the anime I don't think Trunks ever specificly says what numbers the androids are in his timeine (I may be wrong) but in the manga he says they are numbers 19 and 20, so if 19 and 20 in his timeline and 17 and 18 in the present, what are the extra 2 Gero built in Trunks timeline? Are they ever mentioned or shown?
  • And to make matters worse, when Trunks goes back in time, they do refer to themselves as 17 and 18. Did Trunks just mess up or what?
  • Shockingly this exists in the original manga as well because Toriyama originally intended for 19 and 20 to be the Big Bads but his old editor was not impressed so he made up 17 and 18.

• After blowing himself up, How did Cell's cells power him up? When Vegeta is explaining the whole Saiyajin get stronger after recovering from a near fatal situation that the damage cannot be self inflicted. I'm pretty sure activating a self-destruct mechanism is a self inflicted injury. And unlike the other Androids where the self-destruct bomb was a piece that was installed, with Cell being Cell that means the detonation and explosive properties were a part of his DNA ie. not external influence.
  • Vegeta was apparently mistaken. Remember how Goku trained on his way to Namek? By shooting himself with his own Ki attacks then using a Senzu Bean to heal himself. So apparently Vegeta just got his facts wrong. Saiyans being a Proud Warrior Race, it probably started as just a taboo against doing it yourself because it was cheating or something that mutated into "it just doesn't work that way," sort of how the Discworld wizards' rule against sex/marriage started as a way to prevent Sourcerors from being born, and mutated into "If you have sex your magic won't work".

• Why didn't they just steal Cell's time machine, go to his timeline, and retrieve the devices that deactivate the androids so Cell will revert to his imperfect form and be defeated easily?
  • First, because time travel is screwy and each time you go back in time you just create a new continuity. Secondly, because Cell sorta melted his way out of his time machine and left it to rot, so it's probably not in great condition. Thirdly, Trunks says the time machine doesn't have a whole lot of juice to it, and Cell swiped it from Trunks right after he got back to the future, so it's likely it was just out of power.
    • The device that deactivates the androids was created by Bulma in THIS timeline. Going to another timeline won't help. Furthermore the whole point of deactivation was to do it BEFORE they were absorbed. Once they'd been absorbed it was already too late.

• This is a problem (I mean improvement) partially with the translation from Japanese to English but if you watch it with the subtitles on or go read the manga Cell can't regenerate from a single cell. He regenerates as long as a certain lump of cells in his head remains intact. Goku blew his head (and everything north of his waist) clear off.
  • Only a guess here: maybe that lump is vital only if Cell is disintegrated. "Minor" injuries like the loss of the upper half of the body are recoverable. But yeah, that's a bit of a Plot Hole...
• The events surrounding Piccolo's defeat at the hands of Cell are bugging me... he has his neck broken with a punch, a hole opened through the chest by an energy wave and is then tossed into the sea; people who witness these events claim that he's dead, Goku says that he can no longer perceive his aura and nobody tries to help him (not even Tien, who's right there). A couple of minutes later Goku teleports and saves an exhausted Tien, but before he can leave, he discovers that not only Piccolo is alive, he is even coming out of the water by himself! How can he be still alive and capable of that?
  • Well, Namekians can regenerate, for a start. And it wouldn't be the first time (even in this Saga) that Piccolo in particular has feigned greater injury for one reason or another.
    • Namekians can regrow body parts, but I'm pretty sure they can't regenerate a broken neck (their power is not like Wolverine's).
    • In Buu saga, Piccolo explains that he only needs his head to be intact to allow him to regenerate the rest of his body. It shows him doing this after Trunks accidentally dismembered him.

• Why is Gohan during this saga known as Teen Gohan in the video games? He's around 7 at the start and 10 at the end.
  • American-induced misnaming. He doesn't even look like a teen, tbh.

• So Goku is dying of a heart virus and the end of the world is approaching. So... what's keeping him from using instant transmission to teleport himself and the entire crew to Namek, gather the Namekian Dragon Balls, have Vegeta vaporize him, then ask Porunga to restore his body (1st wish), petition Lord Enma to have his body reunited with spirit, ask Porunga to bring him back to life (2nd wish), then have Goku teleport back to Namek and bring everybody back to Earth. The Virus was destroyed when Vegeta vaporized him, Goku is back at full health, and received a power boost since he pretty much came back from the dead. Convoluted heart virus subplot resolved, and the subsequent complications are averted.
  • So you're saying a plan that requires Vegeta acting out of character (he wants to beat Goku and wouldn't just kill him if he let him) and a bunch of back and forths is less "convoluted" than the initial plan of "just take the medicine that you know will cure you when the symptoms start showing up"? Nothing "convoluted", just bad timing.
  • I believe that the original poster was referring to the Mirai timeline--y'know, the one where there WAS. NO. CURE. Besides, as far as Vegeta being out of character goes, he gets to incinerate Kakarot and fight him afterwards. Yay. No, the real trouble is probably that this thing came out of nowhere and they didn't have time to think that up or find an alternate way to get to New Namek after he died.
  • He couldn't have been referring to that timeline, because in that timeline Goku was long dead before they even knew the Androids existed, so the end of the world wasn't "approaching."
  • Well in the Mirai timeline it was a sudden onset that killed him before anyone realised what the disease was, how it spread etc. So they really didn't have time to go off planet for a cure. In main timeline they also didn't know much about it and were too busy training to really think about saving Goku. Also they didn't know if Goku would get the disease or when, so planning something that convoluted would have been pointless. Also why go too all that trouble for something they couldn't guarantee would work when you had medicine handy that you knew would. Also Vegeta wouldn't kill Goku like that unless it was in a true battle his pried as a True Saiyan Warrior would demand no less than a true match to the death with Goku to see who was truely the best.
• Why didn't Gero just stick with Android 16? From what we saw he was far more powerful than the others, there weren't any indicators that he would have disobeyed Gero's commands and even if there was something about 16 that made him unwilling to kill Goku (which we never see) why couldn't he just use the design to make another? Heck, 17 even wonders about it briefly before it's dropped and never mentioned again.
  • 17 and 18 were basically just food for Cell, Dr. Gero's biggest project. Of course, this just raises the question of why he didn't just make Cell in his Perfect Form to begin with.

• When Gohan finally overpowers Perfect Cell, the latter threatens a Super Kamehameha powerful enough to destroy the world. Fair enough. The problem is that it literally takes minutes for him to charge up the damn thing - why did he chose such an inefficient technique? Vegeta's Galick Gun destroyed Arlia effortlessly in seconds, Frieza's Orange Glowing Ball of Death destroyed Vegeta effortlessly in seconds - both techniques Cell would obviously know and yet, despite being hundreds of times stronger, he chose the longest, most drawn out technique he could possibly use which gave his enemies ample time to counter attack. In fact, to put into scale just how long Cell took to destroy the Earth, Master Roshi - Power Level 139 took less time to Kamehameha the moon than Perfect Cell - Power Level several million took to shoot the planet he was standing on.
  • Cell's a bit of an idiot. I'm assuming it's something he got from Goku. He has a real sense of dramatic irony, which is why he set up the whole tournament charade to begin with. Destroying the earth with his family's signature attack is exactly the kind of thing Cell would do to spite Gohan. Minor aside; Roshi's power level was presumably above 139 when he blew up the moon. Scouters only read how much is being put out at that moment, not what they're hiding before power ups. Roshi was in hulk-mode when he made the moon go boom, not to mention several years younger and in better shape.

• Since he hadn't been created for the series yet, Goten wasn't in the future- I understand that. However, after his creation, shouldn't he have been retconned into the future, or at least acknowledged as dying as a baby or something? Or did he not exist at all? Although, I'm pretty sure he should have based on my knowledge of the timeline, but I could be wrong.
  • Its actually pretty simple; the most likely point in which Goku and Chi Chi conceived Goten was during his and Gohan's week long cool down period before the Cell Games - in other words years after the timelines diverged to make Future Trunk's universe. Incidentally it is also a good explanation as to why Goten can go Super Saiyan so easily seeing as there is a good chance Goku was in Full Power Super Saiyan mode during his making love to her.

• This could just be the english dub, but towards the end of the saga, after Cell comes back from blowing himself up, he states he's going to use instant transmission to more or less wipe out all life in the universe. Why? I get it, Cell's a dick, but really, why? He was created for the sole purpose of killing Goku. He proved, however, that he was capable of ignoring that when he chose to accept Goku's surrender and fight Gohan instead(granted, with the intent of killing Goku when he was done with his son), which can be chalked up to him being a Blood Knight; hell, the whole tournament farce of the Cell Games is due to him being a blood knight, which he gets from his saiyan genes. So, saiyan genes override the Kill Goku programming. But he goes from Blood Knight to Omnicidal Maniac awful quick. If anything, shouldn't he had gone the Frieza route and decided to try his hand at becoming a Glactic Conquerer?
  • My theory: He wasn't planning on doing it, he just claimed that he would so that they would be desperate to defeat him and fight that much harder. He was raising the stakes.

• Also, how did Cell return in his perfect form? He can regenerate from a single cell and get stronger after nearly dying, this explains why he was still alive. But without 18, shouldn't he have regenerated to his second form?
  • 18 provided Cell the energy he needed to achieve his Perfect form. After Cell self-destructed and regenerated, Cell's Saiyan genes gave him an enormous power boost (since if a Saiyan recovers from (near-)death their power increases phenomenally). This power boost was enough to kick Cell into his Perfect form and even go beyond it, becoming Super Perfect Cell, all without the need of 18. Which begs the question if Cell would have become even more powerful if he had absorbed 18 again.

• It is repeatedly stated that androids don't have chi. If that is true, then how can they use Ki Attacks? I can kinda understand Android 16, since his ki attack is in the form of energy cannons he has for biceps. But 17 and 18 seem to use regular Ki Attacks like everybody else despite lacking ki. What the hell?
  • Well, they are Ridiculously Human Cyborgs, after all. The energy provided may come from their circuits similar to how organic warriors draw ki out of their bodies for blast attacks, but that doesn't necessarily mean the energy itself has to be ki.

Buu Saga

• During the tournament, when Piccolo was facing against the Supreme Kai, why did he suddenly start panicking, then stepped down? I...never understood it.

• Goku gets a lot of heat for not saving Gohan, Goten, Piccolo and Trunks. IIRC Goku grabbed Hercule and Dende and the Supreme Kai saved him and Vegeta via instantaneous movement (which works better than Goku's IT). Why didn't VEGETA grab anyone?
  • ...That's a damned good question. I just assumed neither of them had time. If they did, Vegeta would've grabbed one or two of them. Plus, Goku probably figured he could wish them all back with the Dragonballs.
  • As I recall, Goku grabbed Hercule and Dende with Instant Transmission. Vegeta didn't grab anyone because he didn't have the technique and couldn't reach them in time.
    • He actually swooped down and grabbed them while Vegeta seemingly stayed en route to the kids and Piccolo.
  • He receives a lot of crap because dumb luck and dragonballs aside he grabed the wrong people. Gohan was the most powerful person in the universe at the time and saving him should have been priority one. Vegeta who doesn't have instant transmission couldn't snatch anyone and thus doesn't get heat here.
    • Goku's IT/flight speed wouldn't have been fast enough for him to concentrate grab them AND leave the planet. He flew down to grab Hercule and Dende while Vegeta seemingly stayed en route to the others (though he was still behind Goku when he grabbed hercule and dende). Look at page 508-509. Or would you have been happier if they all died? Regardless, Vegeta "could" have grabbed everyone (or grabbed at least trunks) and then Supreme Kai would've met them half way.

• Does #18 still have her unlimited ki in this saga? She could've put up a fight against Buu, but instead she apparently listens to her much weaker husband and starts running away with their daughter. Did they just forget her powers?
  • From what I can tell 17 and 18's unlimited energy means that they don't fatigue rather than being able to put colossal power into their techniques. If this wasn't the case then Piccolo wouldn't have been able to overpower 17. 18 was exactly as strong as she ever was; which considering as how completely she failed against Cell, fighting Buu would have been a complete joke.

• This might be a little bit nitpicky, but when Super Buu used his Human Extinction Attack, he states that all humans have been killed. The problem with this is that there are many sentient species on the earth that aren't human and therefore wouldn't fall under the attacks criteria, what happened to them?
  • Boo just didn't care about them.
  • Alternatively, they got wiped out too. Does Buu strike you as the kind of...I was going to say person, but really, thing that would take the time to list off the different species of intelligent life he just annihilated? He doesn't care that much. They were down there, they were alive, thinking, doing what it is they do. Now they're dead. He lumps them into one group and calls them "humans".

• When Vegeta tells Goku that he blew himself into oblivion in an attempt to kill Buu, Goku's shocked. Why? Goku knew Vegeta was dead already. Was it because it never occured to him that Vegeta would sacrifice himself for others?
  • When did this scene happen? If it was anime-only, it's probably Adaptation Decay.

• Why did Trunks never bother asking his dad why he has a weird "M" on his forehead?
  • There were other priorities at that time (avoid being killed by Buu, for example). Plus, Trunks and Vegeta didn't share that much time in the scene, and the whole Final First Hug thing probably distracted the kid.

• Why did Goku seek a successor with Uub? He had two sons one of whom outpowered him and who had a serious girlfriend thus kids in the future. His rival had a son and both he, his rival and his close friend are all aliens who will outlive almost every human alive on Earth at that point. Shouldn't he have spent that time training Goten(the son he knew for about a year), no wonder he was so soft by GT his father left him to train with some random boy. By the end Goku literally spends more time with Uub then Goten, and when you consider he was dead for about 8 years of Gohan's life he's a real deadbeat dad.
  • Gohan, Goten and Trunks all grew up into lazy kids who slacked off severely on training unless a threat to the world was present. Gohan would rather study, Goten and Trunks just don't like to train that hard. If anything should happen to Goku, he probably won't be able to come back to life, and then the world will be screwed, so he really needs to find a worthy successor who is strong, cares about the world and loves training, and quick.
    • Also he may have been dead for 8 years of Gohan's and 7 years of Goten's life, but he spent 10 years with them after that, and he clearly states he'll come visit, what with his Instant Transmission skills and all. I wouldn't worry too much about that.
  • Goku wasn't really wanting a make a successor. As Vegeta points out (in the manga, at least), Goku just wanted to fight Uub once he was stronger.

• The real question is why Goku didn't wish for Shenlong to make him younger again so he could be part of that "younger generation" he's trying so hard to bring up.
  • Well, he's an Idiot Hero for one thing. Also, perhaps he thought Chihi, Gohan, and Goten would be unnerved that he's now the same age as his sons?
  • He wanted Earth to be defended by an Earthling, not him. He didn't want Earth to always have to rely on him.

• With all the worrying Chichi does about finances in the Buu saga, wouldn't it have been simpler for her to just send Gohan on a Dragon Ball hunt, then ask Shenlong to make her rich? Forgotten Phlebotinum?
  • Good question. I can't say she didn't believe in the Dragon balls, as she's no doubt witnessed their powers a time or two. It's likely that because she was so obsessed with Gohan studying that she felt him running off on a Dragon ball hunt would be an absolute waste of time. Alternate Character Interpretation: Perhaps she felt that using Shenlong to make her rich would make her look like a Rich Bitch, and possibly lower both Goku's and Gohan's opinion of her? I mean, she'd literally have the power to wish for anything up to and including the end of world hunger and all she wishes for is for her to be filthy rich? Even Goku wouldn't be silent about that.
    • No one has to know if she wishes for a moderate amount. Chichi was desperate enough for money that she was willing to whore out...err, marry off her precious darling Gohan to Videl. Nothing, not even Shenlong or Goku's wrath can compare to that for her.
    • True. It's just that I think even Idiot Hero Goku would say something if they suddenly became millionaires with their own money and it turned out she used the Dragon Balls to get it.
      • Possibly, but at the time she's shown worrying about money, Goku's been dead for almost a decade. He'll be coming back for a day, but only to take part in the tournament. Plus no one says she has to wish for millions, just enough to get by on so she wouldn't have to worry.
  • The Dragon Balls require a long recharge time between uses and can't bring someone back if they've been dead for too long. If something horrible happened within that year that could be solved by an immediate wish but not by a delayed wish or by throwing money at it, the guilt for that would be on Chichi's choulders. Also, she's prideful; she can't ask the dragon for the same reason she can't ask any of the rich people she knows, including (if nothing changed since the first series) her father, the Ox King.
    • As far as her father goes, it's his money they've been spending all along. Neither Chichi nor Goku have ever earned a single zeni in their lives. Well, technically Goku won the Budokai once, but he left before he could collect his prize.
  • I don't Chi-Chi is that desperate. I believe that she understands that the Dragon Balls should be available to be used for more important matters.

• His choice to train Uub may be generally noble, but why doesn't Goku just go to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber with him? They can spar without damaging the Earth, and, by the end, Uub will be a man ready to support his family and village, and Goku will return to his own family and friends after a vacation of less than two weeks.
  • You mean the hyperbolic time chamber that got destroyed?
  • And which Goku has already used up his allotted two days/years per person per life?
    • Actually Goku had only used it for one day before, and if I recall he even exited early from that day. Plus he was on his 2nd life now since Old Kai gave Goku the rest of his life. Of course that doesn't help the fact the time chamber was destroyed.
      • Technically speaking it was only destroyed once. When the Earth was destroyed not long after it took the Lookout and the remains of the chamber with it - thus it was completely resurrected when the planet was wished back with the Dragon Balls. It would make no sense to believe that the door to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber would remain in pieces, so the OP's point still stands. Most logical answer? story convolution. They wanted a convenient way for Goku to become a child and for Pan to grow up so that they could have a three man band - note how little Uub actually does during GT. He starts by being Goku's equal *disappears* fuses with Buu *dies* has a token scene in the final saga *GT ends* The script writers hated that character.
        • His point doesn't stand when you remember that it took Goku ten years to train Uub. Even with his renewed life, he'd only be able to get two of those ten years done in a couple of days. If they stayed any longer than two days, the door would disappear. Of course, with the existence of the Dragon Balls, Goku could've just had some friends wish him and Uub out of the room after ten days, assuming that's possible...
      • The writers supported Pan/Trunks?
  • Doubt it, Toriyama wasn't involved in GT and there is no way he planned this in his long awaited conclusion of the story.
    • In any case the ROSAT was never Goku's first choice of training locations. He only used it because of time constraints during the Cell Saga. In this case he's in no hurry - plus Uub might need to enter the ROSAT one day for an emergency, much better to save it for then.

• Also, Goku was very reckless in getting Uub to shout "yeah!" in the final episode of the anime. The excitement could have been enough to awaken Uub's full sonic potential, and Uub is the reincarnation of the loudest being in the history of the universe.
  • That's like saying it's dangerous to let Goten stick out his hand because of all the energy blasts fired from it. If he was angry enough? Hole in reality. But that needed serious rage.
    • • Another point on this; Goku explained numerous times that he, Vegeta, and the rest of the fighters were getting up there in age. He felt that the world would still get attacked by threats. The impression I got is that part of it was to train somebody to protect the world for the day where he and his friends wouldn't be around to do it anymore.

• Just noticed something in the Buu Saga. When Goku and Vegeta fuse into Vegetto, they toy with Buu in order to get him to absorb them so they can rescue their kids and Piccolo. But at that point they were already planning to use the Dragon Balls to revive their dead friends. So why not just kill Buu on the spot instead of dilly-dallying and then just revive everyone all at once?
  • Because at that point, trying to bring back the people Buu had absorbed (not eaten) would have either brought back Buu or done nothing; they were a part of Buu's being, and we've already established that the Dragons can't affect someone stronger than he is against their will.
    • They would have all been killed along with Buu, meaning they could be resurrected separately, and there's always the "restore them as they were at so-and-so time" wish. There was no need to take so many risks with Buu when they could have ended the whole thing quickly.
      • Let's not forget that this is the same bunch for whom it never occurred to destroy the Vegeta and Nappa's space pods, stranding them in the vacuum of space, once Sheng Long told them he couldn't directly zap them. Or wish Goku/Gohan/whomever was fighting the Big Bad suddenly had a power boost that would allow them to take down the Big Bad Evil Guy.
        • Ohh, good point. No way Shenlong could have given a power boost to a being more powerful than him (his usual excuse) beyond refilling their energy, but destroying the space pods is a brilliant idea! ...which is why they didn't think of it.
          • Because Saiyans, like Batman, can breathe in space
          • No they can't. This is the entire point of the "5 minutes till Namek explodes" part of the Freeza fight: the fact that Freeza can survive in space and Goku can't.
            • Yeah, actually they can. They are shown breathing in space several times in the series, both before and after the Freeza Arc. When Nappa and Vegita are traveling though space and blow up the bug planet, they are shown just standing outside of their capsules several hundred miles from the planet. And in the movie with Goku's dad, he breathes perfectly fine in space as he charges Freeza.
              • Those same scenes had said Saiyans talking in space. So I wouldn't take too seriously what that means about Saiyan capabilities. They're clearly filler and it's made explicit in canon that Goku can't breathe in space.
      • They might have considered it, but here's a couple of maybe reasons... Goku and gang had strict codes of honor, and they might have felt that zapping the Saiyans is bad form, as they would be defenseless and can't fight back (space pods are only for travel, as the series shows several times). Then again, maybe Bulma could have built something in that year's time to blast them... but then it is also consistently shown that Earth technology of that time is a bit behind Saiyan and Namekkian technology. She blew up a Saiyan ship by fiddling with its remote control-type thing, and later in the show it was Mr.Popo who showed her how to use a Namekkian space pod. So they were pretty much sitting ducks, really...
      • Even though the whole "them being a part of Buu at the time" thing is a good reason, it kind of fails when you take into account that they were able to bring back #17, who was a part of Cell at the time, perhaps even more so than the ones Buu absorbed.
        • Even more so? Buu's insides are a dimension of their own with warped physics that caused Vegetto, which was SUPPOSED to be a permanent fusion, to defuse. I'm going with the "absorbed people are too firmly integrated into Buu to be removed by any means save going in and doing it from the inside," and it seems plausible enough that even death wouldn't be enough to extricate them from Buu. Cell didn't really get shown having a very firm grasp on the androids he absorbed-hell, punching him hard enough was enough to get #18 free.
          • I thought that part of the fusion process involved a pretty cocky personality to go along with it. Look at how Gotenks toyed with Buu during that fusion. Although the other fusions don't seem to have this, such as Kibito Kai.
          • Goten and Trunks were cocky enough to begin with, the fusion didn't change a thing.
          • Maybe it's just a Saiyan thing?
          • Vegetto wasn't cocky, he was obviously playing the whole time so Buu would try to absorb him, the fact he almost flat out tells Buu to use it on him makes it obvious.
          • Hell, Vegetto's reaction when Buu starts trying to absorb him was to think something along the lines of, "Took him long enough to realize that I'm open for that." It's arguable that we never actually saw Vegetto's real personality during his entire fight.

• Why were Goku and Gohan so cavalier about snuffing Babidi's minions? They just sat there smirking as Vegeta smoked his opponent and Goku didn't even give a token effort into getting his opponent to surrender. Did the decade or so between Freezer and Babidi make them both that cynical?
  • As for Gohan, he had to deal with Cell in between Freezer and Babidi, if you'll recall, and, as noted above, he isn't exactly what you'd call "saner" for it. Sorta the opposite. After Cell, its understandable if he finds himself taking a "no mercy" attitude to any and all superpowered evil. As for Goku, well... the baddies DID have the M on their forehead, so he knew they were brainwashed beyond being able to surrender.
  • More than that--Babidi only picked people with supreme evil in their hearts, and the only one who WASN'T all that evil was able to resist Babidi's commands almost completely. It's a safe bet they figured that Babidi's servants were scum anyways.
    • Also Goku used to be pretty cavalier about killing baddies early in the manga. Perhaps he tapped back into his childish roots?
  • Because God was on his side. (Kaio Shin is God, right? Unless Dai Kaio is God, in which case God is dead. Either way, Goku is stronger than God.)

• Fat Buu expelling the evil inside of him caused Evil Buu to form, and subsequently makes him weaker (this version is commonly referred to as Mr. Buu). Evil Buu absorbing Mr. Buu forms the even more powerful Super Buu. After Mr. Buu gets yanked from Super Buu, he becomes Kid Buu. Wait, what? What the heck happened to Evil Buu?
  • Making it even worse, Kid Buu was the original monster, forged by Bibidi himself; he was transformed into Buff Buu when he absorbed the Southern Supreme Kai, and then Fat Buu when he absorbed the Grand Supreme Kai. Then Fat Buu splits and rejoins, causing Super Buu. Super Buu is basically Buff Buu, so apparently something got lost in the shuffle. Then Mr. Buu leaves Super Buu, causing him to become Kid Buu. Then Kid Buu dies and reincarnates as Uub, while Mr. Buu is still around. If you were following that, then congratulations: you are insane.
    • I followed all that. If I wasn't insane before I read it, I am now.
    • Just mark it up to Tangled Family Tree. Oh, and in the manga, Majin Buu and Uub merge to form "Majuub"
    • Err, no they don't. Unless you're talking DBGT manga, which definitely does not count.
    • Fat Buu was Kid Buu (concentrated evil), plus a bunch of Supreme Good that made him bigger, fatter, and acted as a power limiter. Fat Buu was Chaotic borderline Neutral/Evil, then Mr. Satan got him nicer to the point where he was Chaotic or True Neutral. Evil Buu jumps out of him, but he's weaker as only part of Buu, and absorbs Fat Buu to become Super Buu: All the power of Fat Buu, but suppressing the good of Mr. Buu.When they cut out everyone who's powering him up, they also completely remove the Grand Supreme Kai's influence, which was limiting his power. So Fat Buu was likely far stronger than Kid Buu, but GSK was holding him back. (Buu power is positive, good is negative, combining them makes a smaller absolute value, sort of thing.)
  • Think of it this way: Majin Buu had all the power-boosting-but-behavior-altering good guys absorbed inside him, isolated. He split, a la Kami. Evil Buu absorbed Mr. Buu. Evil Buu got Mr. Buu's power without the behavior-alterations, thus the changed color
  • Think of it this way: Majin Buu had all the power-boosting-but-behavior-altering good guys absorbed inside him, isolated. He split, a la Kami. Evil Buu absorbed Mr. Buu. Evil Buu got Mr. Buu's power without the behavior-alterations, thus the changed coloration but unchanged personality. Buu being made of Phlebotinum, he took a shape much more suitable for fighting than Fat Buu had. Theories for why Evil Buu became Kid Buu follow:

A. Evil Buu had absorbed enough of Mr. Buu's memories or nature or something like that that he transformed into what was basically the evil early version of Fat Buu instead of going back to Evil Buu. To avoid horrible snarls it only works on whatever-the-HFIL Buu's species is called.

B. Akira Toriyama was way past caring at this point and just wanted to mess with your heads.

C. The animators made a coloring error, making Kid Buu pink instead of grey, and Kid Buu is basically the same as Evil Buu but taking a shape more suitable for fighting someone who isn't Fat Buu. Plus he's seen The Incredibles and figured out that capes are a bad idea.

• • Continuing from above: To figure out why Kid Buu was reincarnated as Uub, you need to think on this: Goku can tell the entire hierarchy of Otherworld to shove it and they'd have no choice but to comply. Kid Buu gave Goku a run for his money, plus he can teleport across dimensions, so there's no real way to make sure he actually stays in Otherworld, or keep him from leveling the place. Goku had his quota one brilliant idea per twenty years and suggested that reincarnating Kid Buu as a helpless infant would either get him turned good or make him an HFIL of a lot easier to kill, and the guys in charge agreed. Keep in mind that Mr. Buu had been pulled out of Kid Buu by then, and was still living separately, the same way Kami and Piccolo had. Just like Piccolo Jr. not having the same personality as Piccolo Daimao (personal opinion not really backed up by canon, but killing Goku once in revenge, then having a Heel Face Turn could well be any child's reaction to having his admittedly evil father killed) Uub developed his own personality and turned out okay.
    • Anime Filler and GT aside, DB actually explains their views on the afterlife quite clearly. Enmadaiou has a book, where everyone is listed according to their Karma. If their Karma lists them as "good", they go to heaven. As a subset of that, abnormally heroic figures get to keep their bodies. Those deemed "bad", get reincarnated -- during a process where they lose their bodies, their souls are systematically cleansed and their identity is destroyed (this happens in Hell) and they are reincarnated. This is what Piccolo (who was GOD, and knows such things) explains will happen to Vegeta when he dies. Goku, having been to the afterlife and friends with several dieties, knows this is how it works, and asks as a special favor that Buu be reincarnated in Earth. Uub has his own personality because he *is* is own personality. Personality doesn't remain during reincarnation.
      • Interesting. Thanks for the explanation.

• In the fight against Kid Buu, Goku refused to throw the Genki Dama because Vegeta was in the way despite him shouting to go ahead with the attack anyway, so he was basically choosing to doom the entire universe for the sake of one person who would've ended up being killed anyway because of his refusal? What the hell? Yes, launching the attack would've pretty much ensured Vegeta a third demise, but it's not as though they couldn't have just wished him back to life again. The lapse in all things logical makes my head want to implode!
  • Goku is an Idiot Hero. He may gain 20 IQ points when fighting, but thats because he fights using natural instincts and intuition- works well in hand-to-hand, but problematic with such higher-reasoning decisions, especially given that he lacks the intelligence to compensate.
    • Foe Yay. That is all.
  • As I recall, Vegeta was still dead at the time that he was holding off Kid Buu. At which point, if he were to die, he would cease to exist. They couldn't wish him back because his soul would have been destroyed; Vegeta wouldn't just be dead, he would end. Forever. Goku didn't want to destroy Vegeta's soul in the process of killing Majin Buu.
    • No, they'd already wished him back as the second wish before gathering the chi for the Genki Dama.
      • Yeah, Goku was just being an idjit. Last moment of suspense before the grand finale.

• How is it that when a villan like Frieza or Broly is out there terrorizing the universe, the so called "Supreme Kais" never do anything about it? If I recall correctly, didn't Supreme Kai mention in one episode about him being able to fell Frieza with one punch?
  • Because as bad as they were, they weren't threatening the stability of the universe, and didn't even blow up all that many planets, comparatively. Buu was, what with destroying something like three quarters of the known universe as well as 4/5 of the top deities, as compared to Broly's one-family vendetta or Frieza's black market trading.
  • Did you see how terrified Supreme Kai was over Vegeta going one on one with Pui Pui? Personally think the Supreme Kai was lying, exagerating, mistaken or referencing his power millions of years ago when he claimed he could one shot Frieza. Nothing he demonstrates supports his claim.

• To my understanding, Goku left to train Uub because the Z Fighters were getting old, and he wanted someone to succeed them. However, by this this point he's got all of Old Kai's lifespan, which is enough to gurantee he'll out live everyone except maybe Popo and Buu, possibly Dende and Piccolo. So why didn't he spend as much time as he could with his family, considering he'll still be alive when their dead and thus have plenty of time to train a successor.
  • Dude can teleport and fly at super-speed. His sons can at least do the latter, and his wife is probably strong and fast enough to run there in a few minutes (going by how she trained Goten to his early Buu saga levels). GT aside, he can spend as much time with them as he wants and vice-versa, and he's really looking forward to having a duel with Buu where the latter isn't completely psychotic.
  • Goku's reasons for training Uub were as much having a succesor, as having his rematch with the reincarnation of Buu. Also something to do with keeping an eye in with the reincarnation of the most powerful being in the universe, and making sure he turns good so it's all worth it in the end.
  • Goku doesn't have the lifespan of the old god. He's just alive for the rest of his Saiyan lifespan, which admittedly means he'll still outlive pretty much everyone but the aliens and Roshi.

• In the beginning of the Buu saga Vegeta belives Gohan was killed by Buu. Due to his claim the others believe this as well. A short time later Bulma makes a wish on the Dragon Balls to bring back everyone killed. Gohan had not been killed/revived before by the dragon. Even if he had died he would have been brought back. Why did they still believe he was dead!?
  • This one bugs me too. If at least they had a Hand Wave of "Hey, we can't feel his ki, that means he must be dead!" (But he's actually at the Kaiohshin's planet), it would make some sense. But instead, they just assumed he got Killed Off for Real when it was impossible for him to be so.
    • The only way it could make sense if if they thought that Gohan had been fatally wounded, but still hung on long enough until after the wish was made, and only then died.

• Okay, so Piccolo destroyed the entrance to the room of space and time to trap Buu inside. Then Buu ripped a hole into space and went back to our side. After 1 or 2 minutes Piccolo and Gotenks manage to come back to our side too, just to see that Buu destroyed Kami's palace and left. So far so good. Only problem would be that 1 day outside equals 1 year inside, making those 1-2 minutes inside the room equal to less than half a second for Buu to destroy the palace and leave.
  • That's all the time Buu would need. That's why he's so destructive.
    • This, basically. Buu has ridonkulous levels of Super Speed. An out of shape Roshi and a barely trained Kuririn were able to attack, counterattack, strategize, play Janken, then attack again so fast that they looked like they just blinked to opposite ends of the battle ring in a split-second back at the beginning of the series. Buu is a little faster than that.
  • Toriyama forgot about that, just like he forgot about the whole "being unable to know about the outside world" and "only two people can be in at any time" rules. At least he didn't forget making the place white.
  • It could be Handwaved saying that breaking any of the rules nullified the chamber's time effect at least temporarily.
  • It's mentioned that Gotenks and Piccolo took hours trying to break the room.
  • When Piccolo sees that Dende is alive, Gohan reminds him that Buu didn't have enough time to look for everyone in the Lookout because little time had passed between Boo getting out of the Hyperbolic Chamber and then Piccolo and Gotenks getting out. Piccolo then says he had forgotten to consider this!

• Babidi having Boo kill off Dabra. Okay, so Babidi is childish and stupid. That doesn't stop this from not making any frigging sense:

1. If Boo goes rebel (Like he ends doing), only Dabra can hold him long enough for Babidi to seal him in the ball again.
2. If Boo ends in the ball again for whatever reason, Dabra can defend Babidi.
3. If an enemy is strong enough to put Boo on a pinch, Dabra can help. (Hey, still better than nothing, and he has that stoning spit...)
4. Boo has a childish nature and doesn't accept orders, while Dabra is completely loyal to his master until his last breath.
5. While Babidi could make new servants, it's almost impossible they would be stronger than Dabra.
6. He comes from the freaking Demon Realm and looks like Satan! (Not Mr. Satan, thankfully)

• ...So, all in all, Babidi nabbed himself a Genki Dama-sized Idiot Ball right there.
  • Pretty much yeah. Babidi is arrogant, possibly more childish than Buu, and more notably, incredibly short sighted. Remember what he did to Spopovitch and Yamu. They were hit with a massive case of outliving their usefulness, but after her saw how much energy they collected, he wondered if her had acted rashly. It was the same thing with Dabura. He treats everything like a toy, and once something better comes along, he chucks the old one away. He's was nowhere near as smart as his old man (who was able to control fat buu much better from what we can see). He just doesn't consider the consequences of his actions.
  • Wrong: Babidi didn't order Buu to kill Dabra at all. Dabra pissed off Buu by mocking him, then when he regained consciousness after Buu casually trounced him he thought it was a bright idea to try and backstab Buu (out of loyalty to Babidi), who proceeded to turn eat him without any input from Babidi.

• The fusion dance requires both participants to be the same height, right? But Vegeta's way shorter than Goku. How are they able to use the fusion dance?
  • They don't have to be the exact same height, they just have to be close enough.
  • What counts as close enough though? Despite Toriyama's inconsistencies with height, Goku has about 4 to 5 inches on Vegeta.
    • Four to five inches isn't that big of a difference. Probably height is important in a general sense, but power level is the real deciding factor.
    • The movies are non-canon, so it is possible that the height requirement does apply. Of course, Toriyama didn't really give a shit about the series at this point and was pretty much pulling everything out of his ass.
  • They are never shown using the fusion dance (Vegeta bluntly refuses in DBZ), so maybe it wouldn't even have worked due to said height difference.

• Enma judges EVERY SOUL of EVERY PLANET, so why when Buu starts destroying Earth does he act like this is making his job harder? I seriously doubt an extra 6 billion people is THAT MUCH when you're judging souls of God knows how many planets each day
  • More work is still more work. In the grand scheme of things, it may not be that much, but it's still irritating to get a bunch of work piled on you all of a sudden.
  • Well, for Enma to judge that many freaking souls, we can assume that time moves much much slower in Enma's realm. So normally he gets souls slowly, a few at a time, even though they are dying much faster in reality. But with Buu they all died at the same time, so they all arrived at the same time. Just a theory.

• Before Kid Buu destroys the Earth Goku says "That's way too much power, it can't be meant for us! He's going to destory the Earth"... But, by this point, wouldn't it take MUCH more power to destroy Goku than it would to destory the Earth?
  • It's Goku.
  • Another theory: He's saying that he's using more power then he'd need to use against Goku and Vegeta and he's making sure they can't do anything to stop him. That's what I always thought.

• In the Buu saga the amount of wishes Shenlong can grant goes from 2 to 3, I guess we're just supposed to assume Dende upgraded them which is fine and all. But Goku seems to know straight away that it's 3 wishes now?
  • So?
    • Goku has been proven to have mind-reading powers. Fact.

• The Super Spirit Bomb they used on Kid Buu should have worked without the need for the people of earth to raise their hands. The spirit bomb works by taking energy from those beings that offer it, who do so by raising their hands. Now, right after everyone on earth gave energy and Buu is still pushing Goku's Spirit Bomb back, Vegeta tries to bully Mr. Satan into having the people of earth raise their hands once more, giving even more of their energy and potentially killing them. If this is so, what exactly stops the Z-fighters that are on earth from giving huge chunks of their energy? Kid Buu is shown to be about on par with SSJ 3 Goku, so Gohan (whose a whole lot stronger than that at the moment) donating almost all of his energy should have been more than enough to take care of Kid Buu. Heck, Android 18 and 17 have INFINITE energy, they could have kept their hands up all day.
  • 1) Who said they weren't giving all they could? 2) 17 and 18's energy wasn't exactly ki (it's why the Z-Senshi sense where they were). The chances were good they couldn't actually use 18's energy if she wanted them to.
    • I was going to mention the scene where 17 was shown giving Ki (well, whatever his energy source is)to Goku, but I guess that could be attributed as filler. The thing is that if the the z-senshi (or really just the demi-saiyans) were giving all they could their donated Ki should have been more than enough to take care of Kid Buu. This might have been averted if it was said that there's a limit to the amount of Ki a person can give, but a person can apparently continue donating until they die. There is no reason for Gohan, Trunks and Goten to not give all they can.
    • The scene where #17 raise his hand is not filler (it is in the manga), but you could Hand Wave by pointing it was never shown the ki actually coming from him. Anyway, the scene where Vegeta tries to make Satan to convince people to raise their hands again is filler, so we can conclude it is just not possible. After raising their hands you can't give the energy again as you have already gave all of it.
      • According to Toriyama in the SEG the way to win battles "includes several forms: genki, yuuki & shouki" and presumably ones battle power is a combination of all 3 so while Gohan may have been stronger than Boo the amount of genki he could offer was nothing. It also explains why 17 and 18 could offer energy as genki isn't whatever source was being artificially produced. So everyone on Earth could be as strong as Vegito but the Genki Dama wouldn't be as strong as a billion Vegitos would be. Also explains how the genki dama on Freeza was so powerful when there was hardly anyone significantly powerful offering energy to it.
    • Uh...wasn't #17 long, long dead by then?
    • Every time the Z-Fighters beat a major villain, they generally make a wish to revive all of said villain's victims.
    • Generally, yes, but 17 specifically wasn't revived at the end of the Cell Saga. 18 was, but only because she'd been coughed up by Cell earlier in the fight.
      • 17 was revived along with all the other victims of Cell. He is shown to be alive during the Kid Buu saga, having lived a life in obscurity after his revival. If 17 had been left dead, why would Krillin wish for both of them to be turned into humans again?
    • I distinctly remember in the anime (or at least, the version I saw) that 17 was left out of the revival, and I don't recall him ever being shown in the Buu saga at all.
      • I believe it was a mistake, then. Here's the short clip of 17 during the Kid Buu saga: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nadz-fsWYsU Also, every Dragon Ball wiki I have read specifically mentions that he was revived and lived a life as a vagrant in the woods.
    • Ah, that settles that. The description in the Youtube link says it was cut from the episode, so that's why I didn't see it.
    • 18 and 17 cannot use the power from their mechanical body parts (the place where they get their infinite energy) to donate to the spirit bomb, because it's not ki. However, they can donate whatever human life force they have, just like everybody else.

• Okay, check this out. Right at the start of Volume 24, Goku's about to teach Trunks and Goten how to fuse when Babidi threatens to destroy Capsule City. They have to go for the dragon radar before it's destroyed for good. So Goku tells Trunks to zip home and get it while he stalls Babidi and Boo. But waitaminnit. Goku can teleport there and back in a flash. So why doesn't he a) go by himself or b) take Trunks there, instead of going to fight Boo?
  • Trunks had to search for the Dragon Radar once he got there. If Goku had gone himself, Buu would have destroyed the city while he was looking.
    • We already established that Goku has Instant Teleportation, AND that he can take Trunks with him. At the speed Buu was traveling and with Goku's abilities, Goku and Trunks would have found the radar and been out of there before Buu made it.
    • Let's be honest. What Goku really wanted to do was fight Buu. He probably wanted to test his full strength against Buu once, then see how the boys would compare against him, since the stakes were too high with Buu. There's also the fact that Trunks is more familiar with Capsule Corp than Goku since, he's obviously family. Besides in the end, it was in Bulma's flying craft in a capsule.
    • He could teleport there with Trunks, but there was no guarantee that they could find the Dragon Radar before Buu gets there and nukes the place. This way, he can at least hold Buu's attention for as long as it might take Trunks to find it. OTOH, he probably should have teleported Trunks there and then teleported to Buu, but the Buu saga basically had Goku oscillating from having everything under control to saying/doing completely random things.

• Right before Vegeta sacrifices himself against Buu, he asks Piccolo if he'll be sent to the exact same place as Kakarot. Piccolo tells him no, he's going straight to hell for being such a bad guy. But the thing is, Vegeta has already died once before against Freeza. He should already know where he's going and why, so why ask?
  • Because that time, he was revived within a matter of hours, a day at most. Have you seen the line for processing? He probably didn't even make it to Yama the first time around.
    • Okay, that makes sense.
  • Alternatively, it had been years since the Namek Arc, while Vegeta is still not exactly nice, he has definitely changed. Vegeta may have thought that he may have been good enough in those intermission times that he may go to a different place.

• Near the end of the Buu saga, Dende, old Kaio and Kaio-shin go to New Namek to get the Dragon Balls so they can wish the Earth back. But when they get there, the Namekians already know all about what's going on and have gotten the seven balls together. How is that possible?!
  • Namekians have magic.
    • Not possible. They didn't know about Freeza's genocidal ambitions that were happening on the very same planet as them, and even Guru had to put his hand on Krillin's head to get the details. And now suddenly the whole race knows everything that happened a million light years away?
      • Didn't they mention something along the lines of "we sensed a great dangerous Ki in Earth's direction so we feared for the worse and gathered the Dragon Balls just in case"? If so, talk about Crazy Prepared!
      • They didn't mention any such thing, but it's not impossible.
        • Nah, just Genre Savvy. Given that they were around for Frieza and Cell, and had been on Earth long enough to have heard about Pilaf, Piccolo, the Red Ribbon Army, and the Saiyan Invasion, it really doesn't take very much imagination to connect "powerful malicious ki on Earth" to "they're probably going to want large scale reviving again soon, we better gather our balls in case they lose theirs again".

• So, in order to defeat Super Buu Goku and Vegeta fuse together and for all they know it's a permanent fusion. So I guess what I'm wondering is, what would Vegetto have done about Bulma and Chichi? Would he have juggled two wives? Got them to wear the earrings? Picked one?
  • In the grand scheme of things, given that the protection of the Earth is more important than the feelings of two women, the most reasonable answer to give would be tough luck. In regards to giving the Potara to Chi-Chi and Bulma that is... one of the most horrifically negligent things that could possibly happen. They have two very young children to think of. Goten has spent his entire life without a father and would have to come to terms with not only losing him again, not only losing his mother, but the knowledge that his parents have apparantly decided their happiness is more important and that he should just accept his mother has been replaced by what is essentially a completely different woman with his mother's memories. Not to mention what Ox-King, Bulma's parents and Gohan would think about such an arrangement. Incidentally, if Vegetto picked a wife it would transform him immediately from Hero of the Earth to Complete dick.
    • • • "Hero of the Earth" and "Complete Dick" are not mutually exclusive titles.
    • Well the Goten situation is easy to solve: have him and Trunks use potara fusion. And the Chi-Chi/Bulma fusion (Chi-ma? Bulchi?) wouldn't be a completely different person.
      • This solution is so wrong on so many levels... My best bet is that they'd end up living with Bulma and Chichi would go off and do her own thing. She's far more uptight than Bulma, who would probably accept the situation before too long. She's open-minded (and more than a little perverted).
      • "And the Chi-Chi/Bulma fusion wouldn't be a completely different person." Whilst you are indeed correct in saying that a fusion between Bulma and Chi-Chi would technically be the same person - in the same way the Eleventh Doctor is technically Susan Foreman's grandfather. But in terms of personality, sense of humour, outlook on life, physical appearence and even intelligence you could in no way say that the Eleventh Doctor is the same man as the the First. A fusion between these two women would be the exact same situation. For example lets look at Chi-Chi; a loving, caring housewife who enjoys the simple things in life like marriage and rasing children... and is nonetheless an authoritative, stern woman with a real world level of martial arts skill. Bulma on the other hand is a vain, snobbish tomboy with a genius level intellect but absolutely no prowess in fighting whatsoever. If you were to merge these two women you would in no way create a woman that acts like Chi-Chi. To Goten, who is lets remember is a seven year old child, she would have would have been replaced with a woman who only superficially resembles his mother in looks and personality. Secondly the suggestion that Goten and Trunks should give up their individuality and their short lives just to make Vegetto and Bulchi happy is both disgusting and absurd - Chi-Chi and Goku aren't the Borg Queen and Locutus.
    • Look to put it simply, there's no way Chichi would ever agree to either fuse with Bulma or accept Vegetto as a husband. Bulma wouldn't want to fuse with Chichi either (Bulma = vain = fact), but she may find it in her heart (and, ahem, other places) to accept them as a unit. With Goku's Instant Transmission, he can go back to visit his kids any time he wants while living at Capsule Corp. Problem solved.
      • Erm, did we suddenly forget that Chi-Chi is madly in love with Goku? True, she would get very pissed off at him throughout DBZ, but she still very clearly cared about him and in DB, she was obsessed with him. I doubt she'd suddenly not accept Vegito simply because he's not exactly what Goku once was. Hell, I doubt she'd even think that deeply about the fact that Goku technically doesn't exist anymore.
      • Is Chichi really that in love with Goku? It's always seemed more like she was in love with the idea of being in love and getting married, rather than in love with Goku himself.
  • Let's see...at the end of the Cell saga, she's crying on the floor when her son informs her that Goku died in the battle. Yeah, that sounds like a woman who doesn't love her husband.
  • Plus, at the time of Vegetto's fusion, Goku was a widower (as well as Vegeta.) And Vegetto probably figured that Shenron could split him apart.

• How can "Mr Buu" (As some call him) and Kid Buu exist at the same time? Isn't Mr Buu just Kid Buu with the Grand Supreme Kai absorbed? Meaning if you removed the Grand Supreme Kai from Mr Buu you'd have 2 Kid Buu's...
  • I think that while he looks the same, the Mr. Buu that was split off basically is Grand Supreme Kai, reborn as what can be thought of as a split personality of Buu. Note that when Goku and Vegeta went in, they didn't see Grand Supreme Kai with the other absorbees- most likely, due to the time he spent absorbed, you couldn't remove him any more than you could Kid Buu's native personality.
    • I always thought of it similar to the whole Kami King Piccolo deal. Same person, different identity, one good one evil.

• If Enma really had the power to re-incarnate villains into good guys, why didn't he do so with every villain the Z fighters killed?
  • Wasn't worth the trouble is probably the official reason. Buu was rediculously strong and there is no reason to believe he wouldn't have destroyed the world from the other side had Enma not trapped him the body of a young boy. Unfortunately it's filler but the Ginyu Force, Frieza, King Cold and Cell are all shown as keeping their bodies in hell. Frieza and Cell even get to fight Goku in GT (I know, I know) in the anime Zarbon is the strongest warrior to actually be clensed. Everybody above that says screw that noise and keep their bodies. But none of them were strong enough of crazy enough to try to destoy reality itself. Honestly given what we learn about Other World during the Buu Saga there's not much reason to think that killing Buu would have done more than slow him down for a tick.
    • There's no indication that they haven't. Frieza and Cell may be some sort of freakishly powerful children on a distant planet, and possibly even good guys.
      • It was just a favor to Goku for saving the universe. If for some reason he asked for Frieza to be reincarnated (I expect Vegeta would have something to say about that) he probably would have done it instead.
      • I expect what Vegeta would have to say about that would be something along the lines of "Yes. Bring him back as something I can hit. Repeatedly."

• I think all Dragon Ball Z fans know by now that Hercule Satan is the greatest case of Overshadowed by Awesome in the entire franchise. He is an incredibly gifted martial artist when not going up against Z-Fighter level fighters and legitamately won the World Martial Arts Tournament at least once. What bugs me is that, because we only ever see him getting his ass kicked by vastly stronger enemies, there is no conclusive reading of his power level - just how strong is he? Now most people would be inclined to give him a very insulting power level, however as we have seen from the 21st Tournament, there are an incredibly diverse level of opponants that enter from monsters and beasts to legendary fighters and cheaters. There is no reason to believe that the tournament he legitamately won wouldn't have also featured a vast array of strong enemies for him to defeat. Also, we have seen him fall from insane distances, survive explosions, get kicked into a mountain and pull of speed and stength similar to 21st Tournament Goku (when he defeated the two thugs who shot Buu's Puppy) which would immediately put him ahead of his two closest rivals King Chappa (who was killed by a single kick from Tambourine) and Nam. This would logically give Hercule a power level at least equal to Roshi and Goku in the 21st, a pretty impressive feat for someone that cannot use his ki.
  • Quite possibly, yes. It's just that by the point he was introduced Toriyama had moved beyond using power levels for the series (too much trouble, he said), and they never made a reappearance so Hercules never got rated.
  • It's not easy, but we could try to quantify Satan's power somehow: for his strength, we know that he had trouble destroying fifteen tiles with one hand, while Goku in his first appearance easily destroyed three slabs of concrete with a finger. The latter sounds way more impressive, I believe. For speed, we definitely know Goku at the 21st tournament was pulling out stuff like triple persistent images, which from what we know, seems way above Satan's league. Same for Roshi, who at the time was essentially the strongest person in the world, who could use several ki techniques and make persistent images like it was nothing. Overall, I severely doubt Satan would be anywhere near their level. Maybe he could deal with Goku in his first appearance, but even then, it's a very strong "maybe". He can definitely deal with the other contestants in the tournament though. Maybe he's close to King Chapa's level. Still, King Chapa was said to have won a torunament without getting hit once, so maybe he's stronger. Anyway, maybe Satan won because there were no other competitors (I guess being defeated twice by Goku, the second time with no effort whatsoever, would have a bad effect on King Chapa's ego, and Nam has no reason to be fighting again after getting his water).
    • You just made me think of something else: What happened to all of the funny animals? There were many characters like those in prior series, but, after DBZ, they became scarce and stopped appearing altogether after a certain point. Some of them even fought in the tournaments as well.
    • Addressed in another question, but they're still around. The President is still the dog from the Piccolo Daimaou saga, for one thing. Toriyama probably just didn't feel the need to draw them all the time just to show that "Yes they're still around."

• Where did the term "Z Fighter" to refer to the main and supporting characters come from? I figured it was just an out-of-universe thing, but I remember them being explicitly referred to as such in the original English dub, if not in Kai. So was there ever an explanation for it?
  • Some clever dub writer thought of it, that's all. Remember the "Z" doesn't even exist in the original Japanese edition.
    • Thank you for bringing this up (I was going to if it wasn't already here). I actaully hate the term "Z Fighter" because it makes no sense. As the above troper said the Z didn't exist in the Japanese version and it certainly never existed in the series itself. At no point in story did a significant, team building event involving the letter Z happen. They need to be called something else.
      • Why hate the term so much? The "Z" comes from Toriyama himself, even though it wasn't used in the Japanese version.
      • Citation needed. This is the first I've ever heard of that.

• In a similar vein to just above, what is with the tournament commentator saying, during the Buu Saga, specifically during the fight between Android #18 and "Mighty Mask", that he had not seen anything like these fights? Hm... did he forget every tournament in Dragon Ball? The news eleven years ago -by this point- of the Saiyans attacking the world, or Piccolo before that, or young Goku going ape when fighting "Jackie Chun"? Or was Hercule THAT convincing?
  • Hercule probably told everyone the same thing he told Videl: All of those spectacular fights in the previous tournaments were fought with cheap tricks. As for the announcer, he's just pretending he doesn't know what he's talking about; The dude clearly states that he remembers the old fights, says that the new tournament fights are boring, and asks Goku if he and his group were really the ones who beat Cell. He and King Furry are the only characters not closely related to Goku that seem to have realized that Cell is far stronger than Mr. Satan.

• During the Buu saga, Goku was forced into a desperate choice - to use Potara to fuse with either Dende or Hercule. He quickly decides upon Hercule, reasoning that because of his martial arts training the resultant fusion should, at the very least, become slightly stronger. It bugs me of just how dismissive Goku was at the contributions Dende would have made to creating a fused warrior. Dende maybe weak, but he is also a Namek - and Namek's have some incredible natural abilities. A fusion between a Saiyan and a Namek would have the ability to regenerate, (something that Piccolo, Cell and Buu have proved time and again how useful that is), would have the ability to stretch his limbs a good dozen metres, would have access to incredibly acute hearing and, of course, have access to all the Saiyan advantages that Goku would bring. Also, unlike Hercule, Dende can actually use ki - weak ki perhaps, but his healing ability is arguably one of the most useful techniques in the series. The excuse that he needs Dende alive to keep the Dragon Balls active is in itself ridiculous because a fusion between Goku and Dende would have the ability to make new Dragon Balls. There is nothing saying that you have to be pure Namek, and seeing as the fusion would give the resulting warrior all of Dende's abilities... Goku was firmly hit with an Idiot Ball.
  • (op) Something else I thought of just after I wrote the paragraph above. Why did Goku have to fuse with Dende or Hercule in the first place? Goku's Instant Transmission allows him to go anywhere in this Universe or the Otherworld. What was stopping him from snapping his fingers and fuseing (forcibly if necessary) with Pikon?, or Olibu?, or King Kai?, or any of the dead Z Warriors which includes includes Krillin, Tien, Yamcha..., or the Grand Kai?, or Supreme Kai/Kabito? all of these fighters are stronger than Dende and Hercule. We also know that its entirely possible for a living and dead warrior to fuse because that is exactly what he does a few minutes later with Vegeta. Seriously, Goku or Toriyama really didn't think this whole crisis through.
  • He didn't fuse with Dende because he needed the Dragon Balls (This is before the whole plan to go and use the namekian Dragon Balls).
    • Like I said above though; why? there is no evidence whatsoever a Saiyan/Namek hybrid wouldn't have the ability to create Dragon Balls. A fused being has every capability its hosts possessed - just enhanced. Dende's original balls would die, but seeing as this new creature isn't Dende, all he would need to do is create a new Dragon. In fact, if you consider GT to be canon a very similar event has already happened. The Nameless Namek invented the Black star Dragon Balls that turned to stone when he split into Piccolo and Kami - only to reactivate when they re-joined in the Cell saga.
      • GT isn't canon, and Pikkon and Olibu aren't canon either. I don't have an answer for the other characters you mentioned.
    • There was no way to know for sure ahead of time whether fusing with Dende would affect his ball-making abilities or not (GT is not canon). Since the process was irreversible, the risk was not worth taking. Your point about him fusing with King Kai is a valid one, though. Who are Pikon and Olibu? If they're filler they don't count. And Goku could not fuse with any characters currently actively dead, only those who had been brought back to Earth like Vegeta was.
  • Another thing to consider is biology. Fusing through the dance only works with two people with similar bodies and ki. Although Potara fusion would've forced Goku and Dende to fuse, you have to remember that humans are much more similar to Saiyans than Namekians. So similar, in fact, that they're able to reproduce with eachother. Who knows what problems may have arisen from fusing a monkey-like humanoid species with a plant-like humanoid species. There was Cell, but Cell's a special creature not born of fusion techniques.

• Another little bit of confusion occurs in the Buu Saga. What the HELL happend to Tien and Chiaotzu! Tien did pop up breifly to try and help, but after Dende healed him he vanished. It's possible that Tien left the battlefield to get Chiaotzu, and they and Dende could regroup. But of course that wouldn't explain Dende's recklessness in trying to follow Buu around everywhere with Herclue!
  • As far as the manga goes, Tien was not shown being healed by Dende. It's entirely possible that Buu's kick killed him (that would also give an explanation as to why Goku avoided using the Potaras with Tien; he could have fused with an unconscious body, but not with a dead one).

• The final Spirit Bomb. When Goku used it the previous times (Vegeta and Freeza) he only needed to ask his surroundings (including inanimate things) for energy, yet to defeat Kid Buu he needs the humans to raise their hands and consciously give him energy. Why couldn't he take it freely anymore?
  • He could. However he needed all the humans to donate their energy because just doing it the normal way would make it far too weak to destroy Kid Buu, who is at the very least 1500x stronger than Freeza.

• When Babidi is about to destroy West City, Bulma explains why they need to recover the Dragon Radar: since it's made of particular components, it cannot be rebuilt. Then how come, in the original series, she was able to rebuild it at least once (using scrap material!)?
  • Maybe she ran out of whatever special material she had?

• Goku at Super Saiyan 3 claimed he could have destroyed Kid Buu at full power, but was holding back to give Vegeta a chance? I've heard of Idiot Hero, but this is ridiculous. Goku knows that Vegeta can't beat Buu at all with Super Saiyan 2 so why even throw away his best chances?

• At the part where Goku has to decide to fuse with Dende or Hercule, he decides to go with Hercule because he knows martial arts even though he admits that it would lower his power level by a lot. My question is why would he bother to fuse then. Goku by himself may not have a chance to stop Buu, but he would definately have a better shot by himself than from some weaker fusion form.
  • He says he has no idea if he would get strong enough from the fusion, and speculates he may actually become weaker. He doesn't know at all if it's even possible for him to become weaker through potara fusion. He was desperately hoping fusing with Mr. Satan would make him stronger than Boo.

• Ok, let me get this straight; Kid Buu is weaker than Super Buu but stronger than a level 2 super saiyan, which was all Vegeta and Goku could manage against him, so he tore them apart, forcing them to go with the Spirit Bomb plan. Gohan at this point was significantly stronger than Super Buu. While Gohan giving his Ki to the Spirit Bomb gave it the single largest boost of anyone, shouldn't his contribution have been more than enough to obliterate Kid Buu?
  • We don't know how powerful Super Buu actually was, only that he was losing to Gohan. The thing that makes Kid Buu so dangerous is he's fighting at 100% and doesn't care about collateral damage. Super Buu and all the others thanks to the Kai he absorbed are holding back and we don't know how much. Like Gohan when he fights to his full potential had Frieza on the ropes, was beating Cell so bad he started playing with him and owned Buu so hard he decided to let Gottenks have another crack at it for no reason other than it couldn't hurt anything. It's entirely possible that Super Buu could have destroyed Gohan with little effort fighting at 100%.
  • Nah, Super Buu was inferior to Gohan by a big margin. We know that Super Saiyan 3 could match Kid Buu with enough power to obliterate him at it's peak power and Gohan is quite a bit superior to Super Saiyan 3 so it's likely that they were pretty close.

• Buu can regenerate even from molecular matter, as we saw after his fight with Gotenks in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Why didn't he just vaporize himself, or at least just cast off microscopic bits of himself, and then absorb everybody almost instantly?
  • Considering that he doesn't just gain power like Cell from absorbing people he gets some of their personality this wouldn't be a good plan. If be absorbed someone who was a pacifist he might become one too just like how Kid Buu became Fat Buu after absorbing someone who was very kind and playful.

• How does Super Buu constantly crack his neck despite lacking bones and joints?
  • Popping bubbles inside him.

• Why is Chichi so different in how she treated Gohan in comparison to Goten? With Gohan, she was virtually psychotic about his studying and keeping him from fighting at all. With Goten, she even trains him. Could be that she's justed mellowed out but I'm not sure that explains the drastic differences in upbringing.
  • Goku's death during the Cell Games snaps Chi Chi out of her insane overprotectiveness and obsession with her son's education, at least when it comes to Goten. She's still as obsessive as ever about it with Gohan.
    • But why with only one kid? How come she hasn't lightened up in regards to Gohans education? IS that she favors Goten for looking like his dad (not likely, I think), or has dismiss Goten as lost cause in this case (once, again, I don't think this is the case) or what? Why be obsessed about one kid getting a good education and not the other?
    • I think that Gohan is studying of his own accord by that point. Chi Chi being so obsessed with Gohan's education is something that anyone that's seen Dragonball would agree is something that just came out of nowhere anyway.