Characters / Dragon Ball Red Ribbon Army

aka: Dragon Ball Dr Gero

Dragon Ball Main Character Index
Antagonists
Original Series Villains (Red Ribbon Army [Cell]) | DBZ Villains (Frieza's Empire [Freeza/Frieza [A to H, I to Y], Cooler/Coola], Majin Buu) | DBZ Movie Villains (Broly) | GT Villains | DBS Villains (Goku Black, Zamasu/Zamas [Fused Zamasu/Zamas])

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Red Ribbon Army

Red Ribbon Army (レッドリボン軍, Reddo Ribon Gun)

An evil organization headed by Commander Red. They get wind of the Dragon Balls and use any means to collect them, including taking innocent life. Goku practically decimates them by himself after they get in his way one too many times.

After their initial eradication, remnant loyalists have attempted to either revive the Red Ribbon Army or avenge them.

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The Army in General

• Armies Are Evil: A textbook example. They're more like a terrorist organization or a very resourceful crime syndicate than a conventional military faction.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Despite the heavy comedic focus of early "Dragon Ball", the Red Ribbon Army was the first major threat that came close to killing Goku. And despite the main army being wiped out, its remnants go on causing more trouble for the heroes, even 40 years later.
• The Cameo: Several of their members including Staff Officer Black, General Blue, Major Metallitron, Captain Yellow, and Captain Dark make appearances in GT when past villains escape from Hell as part of an evil scheme hatched by Dr. Gero conspiring with Dr. Myu. The latter four chase Mr. Satan through the streets until Pan comes to the rescue and easily kills them all. They later all appear with the latter in the Other World awaiting their return to Hell and Black, Blue, and Metallitron (plus the Saiyan Nappa) are later shown to run into Piccolo after he helps liberate Goku from the dimension.
• Colourful Theme Naming: Almost every major member of the army is named after a color, the exceptions being Captain Dark (as some official sources imply that his name is actually pronounced as "Dock", as in the structure ships stop at) and Dr. Gero (who was created years after the rest of the characters).
• Dirty Coward: Honor is a pretty rare quality among the ranks of the RR. They prefer to dispose of their victims in sneaky, brutal ways, and when things don't go their way, they turn tail and run.
• The Dreaded: They were known as the most powerful and evil army in the world. Their influence was so vast that Bulma said that the real military could do nothing against them. Goku's friends were fearful for his life once they learned he was going to storm the Red Ribbon Army Base.
• Ephebophile: Two of the army's grunts corner Bulma and make it clear they plan to gang-rape her, even when she tells them she's only 16.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: They hire homosexuals, cyborgs, animal people, and women, but to Red, they're all expendable.
• Evil Army: The first of two evil organizations in the series to feature a large variety of villains in its roster, they are the weaker one as the latter in Z are an intergalactic planet ring ruled by a psychotic monster of a Bad Boss.
• Evil Is Petty: Red's goal is to use the balls to grow taller; understandably, Black kills him because he has ordered death for failure and many of their men had died for a pathetic desire.
• The Ghost: There's a few brief mentions of "General Copper", who is apparently a very high-ranking official on the same level as Blue and White, but he's never actually seen. There's also a Brown Squadron/Bronze Company that shows up during Silver's tenure (only mentioned in the manga) plus in the army's Image Song, but Brown himself doesn't appear in any capacity.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Despite being wiped out by the time of Z, the legacy Red Ribbon Army lives on in the form of Dr. Gero, the Androids and Cell.
• Mooks: The average soldier within the army. Even an average-level martial artist can take them down.
• Mook Horror Show: What Goku subjects them to when he invades their base. Nothing they did could slow him down. They shot him with snipers, shot rockets at him, brought out tanks and jets, and Goku easily took them out. It got to the point that soldiers chose to run and risk execution instead of fighting Goku.
• Mook Mobile: A lot of them ride helicopters or other vehicles. This doesn't seem to help their survival rate as Goku typically explodes helicopters (presumably killing the pilot); in comparison, Foot Soldiers are almost always just knocked out by Goku.
• N.G.O. Superpower: They have vast resources and technology, having such things as tanks, aircraft, submarines, androids, and Mini-Mecha. At one point, Bulma states outright that Earth's actual military doesn't stand a chance against them and that the Daizenshuu states were responsible for producing 16% of the world's vehicles.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: General Blue's soldiers wear the uniform. Though as mentioned above, they entirely believe in Equal-Opportunity Evil. Oh, and just like the Nazis (and to a slightly lesser extent, the Soviets),^note the Nazis were known to dispatch the Thule Society and the Ahnenerbe for expeditions and experiments on occult devices, and as for the Soviets, they often attempted to unleash Psychic Powers from within a person they also intend to find magical occult items (in this case, the Dragon Balls) to further their plans of world conquest.
• Post-Final Boss: After General Blue (their strongest soldier, and the only one actually capable of fighting Goku) gets defeated and Goku defeats Tao Pai Pai (the world's most feared assassin, hired specifically to take care of Goku), pretty much everyone else left in the army at this point is one for him.
• Remember the New Guy?: Dr. Gero was their head scientist and said by canon materials to be the one who built their weaponry, including Android 8. We never see or hear of him, or know he exists at all, until the Android Saga, yet he's apparently well known among scientists like the Briefs family.
• The Remnant: Decades after the destruction of the Army at Goku's hands, several smaller groups try to either resurrect or avenge the original organization, which is now long defunct.
  • By the time of Z, Dr. Gero and his Androids are technically this. Gero, being one of the army's founding members, tries to continue the cause, though with a heavy focus on killing Goku, partly because Gero wants revenge because Goku is responsible for the Army's defeat in the original Dragon Ball, though it's also out of practicality since Goku would likely interfere anyway. In both Trunks' timeline and in the regular timeline, his plans are a bit too effective in so many ways, but Gero never lives to see it happen. It's not drawn attention to, outside of Yamcha's initial encounter with Gero and #19, but the Red Ribbon Army iconography is notable on all of Gero's androids except Cell.
  • In Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero it's revealed that the original army's legal front, Red pharmaceutics, survived the terrorist militia's downfall and has been working towards rebuilding the army.
  • A faction of the Red Ribbon Army established by Gero serves as the main antagonist of Dragon Ball Fighter Z, even if it's basically just Android 21 at that point.
  • In a distant future shown in Dragon Ball Online a successor faction called the "Red Pants Army" eventually rose to replace the Red Ribbon Army, adopting much of their iconography.
  • Attack of the Saiyans also features a Remnant of Red Ribbon Army Soldiers​ lead by General White as minor antagonists for the Z Fighters to deal with during the one-year time period between Raditz's defeat and the arrival of the other Saiyans.
• Reused Character Design: Commander Red and Staff Officer Black doppelgangers later cameo in Z as a director and producer of a Great Saiyaman film. In fact, almost every high-ranking Red Ribbon officer's design has been recycled once or twice across the various media of the Dragon Ball franchise.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Black's defeat, the rest of the Red Ribbon Army scatters. And even before Black's defeat most of the army started running, even when they were threatened with execution.
• Take Over the World: The army's purpose and why they are after the Dragon Balls...or so they think, anyway. Commander Red's real goal is just wish to become taller, which he thinks will make it easier for him to take over the world.
• Villain Song: Red Ribbon Army.
• You Have Failed Me: The standard military code of the Red Ribbon Army is this—and they have an extremely broad definition of "failure". Including failing to dodge Commander Red's cat that randomly attacks people who enter his office.

Leadership

Commander Red

Commander Red (レッド総帥, Reddo Sousui)

Voiced by (Japanese): Kenji Utsumi
Voiced by (English): Josh Martin (DB, The Path to Power), Mike Wiebe (Z ep. 128 in a flashback) (Funimation dub); Noah Umholtz (Blue Water dub); Ted Cole (Z ep. 128 in a flashback) (Ocean dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Roberto Sen

An eyepatch-wearing dwarf who created the Red Ribbon Army to fulfill his dream of ruling the world. Commander Red led the Red Ribbons up until Goku's final assault on his compound; then, his number-two, Staff Officer Black, killed him when Red admitted that the real reason he wanted the Dragon Balls was not to rule the world, but just to become taller. In Dragon Ball Online, he returns centuries later, rebuilt as "Android 9", and creates the new Red Pants Army.

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• Accent Adaptation: He speaks in an Irish accent at the beginning of his appearances in the English dub. The Irish accent goes away over the course of the series as he ends up mainly using an American one. In The Path to Power, he only speaks with an American accent.
• Adaptational Badass: In the anime, he's initially built up as a more intimidating Bond villain type, while in the manga he's a bit of a joke from his first scene. His height and even his face aren't revealed for several episodes, he has a violent cat-like pet and he's fantastic at pool and golf. He also makes a direct attempt to personally kill both Goku and Officer Black himself during their first fight (Which would have worked if it wasn't for the former's immense power and the latter being knocked out the window just in time), something his manga counterpart never did.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Downplayed, but in the anime, Red was at least smart enough to not brag directly​ to Officer Black about his true plan, and only did so in an act of Evil Gloating to himself after he thought he had succeeded in killing both Goku and Black.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: He has white hair and a red eye patch in the manga, but red hair and a black eye patch in the anime.
• Arc Villain: Of the Red Ribbon Army Saga.
• Bad Boss: He has his men executed for any kind of failure, which comes across as even worse when his wish is really petty and not worth the sacrifices. As mentioned above, he has a very wide definition of failure; for example, if a mook isn't fast enough to dodge a vicious cat he randomly sics on him and loses an eye, he's done for. As for field operations, it basically means "Do your job and fulfill your orders perfectly or you're dead", even if you managed to achieve something of value amidst the chaos. Just ask General Blue, who Red wanted to be executed just because he failed to obtain Goku's Dragon Balls despite managing to gain the Dragon Radar, an almost-equally good find.
• Bad Guys Play Pool: And golf and pinball.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: He's built up as the main villain for the entire Red Ribbon Army arc, only to be killed by Black seconds before Goku appears in his office.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He sees himself commanding an army that can take over the world and hunts down the Dragon Balls for his own vanity. He is brought down almost singlehandedly by Goku and is killed by Officer Black when he learns the real reason why Red wanted the Dragon Balls.
• Boom, Headshot!: How he met his end.
• Bullying a Dragon: After the events of Muscle Tower, he knew exactly how strong Goku was and what he was capable of. That still didn't stop him from sending thieves, his generals, and a renowned assassin to kill Goku. Once it went too far, Goku decided to wipe the army out. To Red's credit, two of the men he sent after Goku (Blue and Mercenary Tao) were actually capable of killing Goku and almost did so.
• Colourful Theme Naming: Red, after his hair. Presumably, the army is named after him.
• Disney Villain Death: In The Path to Power, Officer Black fatally wounds him by shooting him in the chest, causing Red to stumble off the rail and fall to his death.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In The Path to Power, he has General Blue executed and claims that he did so because of Blue's failure to get the last Dragon Ball, but it's heavily implied that he was using this as a convenient excuse and that the real reason he had Blue killed was that he walked up to Red to hand the Dragon Balls to him and stood over him, angering Red's Height Angst.
• Evil Is Petty: Everything he does is just so he wants to grow taller; when he finds this out, Black is understandably outraged that he wasted so much time and effort on such a stupid goal and blows his brains out.
• Evil Redhead: He is a red-haired man who is the boss of the evilest army in the world.
• Eyepatch of Power: Does nothing but point out that he's bad.
• Fatal Flaw: His vanity and pride. He gets several people in his army killed searching for the Dragon Balls, and it's all for him to get taller so women will like him. He's so vain that he sees nothing wrong with telling Officer Black this and expects no consequences for his actions. His pride also prevents him from retreating when Goku raids the base. He could easily leave the Dragon Balls, retreat, and rebuild the Red Ribbon Army, but he refuses to be beaten by a mere child. This leads to his breakdown where he reveals his real goal for the Dragon Balls to Black.
• Faux Affably Evil: Occasionally puts up a more affable persona when talking to or complementing his men, but it's clearly an act and he's nothing more than a petty, murderous manchild whose actions are even worse when his true goal is revealed. It's especially noticeable when he complements one of his henchmen and then immediately threatens to have them executed for not performing his requested task perfectly.
• Freudian Excuse: According to his bio in the Daizenshuu, Red's reason for his hatred of his own size is that he was bullied at Elementary school because of it.
• Height Angst: He was so angsty about his height that intended to use the eponymous objects, not to complete his world takeover, but to wish himself taller.
• I Am the Noun: When Black tells him that his selfishness will doom the Red Ribbon Army:
  Commander: I am the Red Ribbon Army! What's good for me is good for everyone, and I want to be taller!
• Identical Stranger: A guy who looks exactly like Red, but without an eyepatch, shows up as a hotheaded film director in the Great Saiyaman Saga of Dragon Ball Z.
• Insane Troll Logic: Instead of wishing for world domination, he wants to wish to be taller, insisting taking over the world will be easier when he's taller despite all of the men and resources he's wasted to get the Dragon Balls.
• Jerkass: Killed hundreds if not thousands of people, including his own men, just so he could become taller.
• Kick the Dog: When Black calls him out for all the mooks they've lost and sacrificed just to wish to be taller, Red tells him it was worth all that and more. This led to Black's decision to kill him and take over.
• Killed Off for Real: Unlike Black and some of his officers in GT, once he's killed, he is never heard from again.
• Laser-Guided Karma: His own cruelty to others, including his men, comes back to bite him in the end. He tells Tao to kill anyone that gets in his way since he will pay him. This leads to Tao murdering Bora in cold blood, changing Goku's focus from just finding his grandpa's Dragon Ball to finding all of them so he can wish Bora back to life. It also made Goku become even stronger since he had to fight Tao to take back the Dragon Balls he took. By the time Goku comes to the Red Ribbon Army base, they're all but defenseless against him since all of their best men were already defeated or executed, causing Red to have a Villainous Breakdown and reveal his real intentions for the Dragon Balls to Black. Once Black learns the truth, he promptly shoots Red in the head.
• Mugging the Monster: At the beginning, he had no clue who Goku was, thinking he was just some kid who was getting way over his head looking for the Dragon Balls. It isn't until Goku destroys Muscle Tower that he has a clue that Goku is no ordinary child.
• The Napoleon: He deploys the full forces of his worldwide and heavily-armed criminal organization to find the Dragon Balls... so he could be taller.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Him contracting Mercenary Tao to kill Goku completely backfired. Because Tao murdered one of Goku's friends, it changed Goku's focus from searching for the Four-Star Dragon Ball to finding all of them. He also forced Goku to become much stronger to beat Tao, which made him close to invincible when he came to the Red Ribbon Army base. He also made the mistake of making things personal with Goku, which made Goku more ruthless since he wanted to destroy the Red Ribbon Army instead of simply taking the Dragon Balls.
• Non-Action Big Bad: He doesn't really fight anyone; he just barks orders at his subordinates. The fact that, in the anime, he retreats into a panic room just before Goku's arrival pretty much confirms that he possesses no fighting prowess period.
• Pet the Dog: Was planning on preparing a massive meal for Tao Pai Pai as a bonus for killing Goku and bringing the latter's four Dragon Balls to him. Given that Tao didn't ask for this and Red's general personality, it stands out as a rare moment of genuine gratitude from him.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Acts somewhat childish at times.
• Reused Character Design: Besides the film director from the Great Saiyaman Saga, the coach of the Battle Ball Team bears a strong resemblance to Red too. The differences are that the coach is gray-haired, is average-sized, and has no eyepatch.
• Right-Hand Cat: Is occasionally seen with his pet while sitting, though it looks more like a mogwai than a cat and has a bad temper.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: His suit's so nice that the player can wear it in Dragon Ball Xenoverse.
• Smug Snake: Fancies himself as a genius and claims that his petty goal will somehow allow his army to conquer the world.
• The Sociopath: For a small-time villain, he is probably the first true sociopath in the series. He sends scores of his men to their deaths searching for the Dragon Balls all for his own vanity. When Officer Black calls him out on this, he sees nothing wrong with throwing away people's lives to get what he wants. He also regularly executes his men for small offenses without batting an eye.
• Surrounded by Idiots: He thinks this, but he's no better than his subordinates.
• The Unfought: As a result of Black killing him just before Goku arrives. It can be reasonably inferred that he has no fighting prowess anyway.
• Too Dumb to Live: Refused to surrender the Dragon Balls, despite knowing that he could not stop Goku and bragging about his real goal to Staff Officer Black.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Commander Red's ridiculously mundane and selfish desire to become tall not only cost hundreds if not thousands of lives but his creation of the Red Ribbon Army led to Frappe and Gero creating the androids. The repercussions of this were not realized until almost 20 years after his death and continued for another decade. This set Disaster Dominoes up that lead to both the Bad Future, Cell's feasting on multiple cities and the near destruction of the solar system, and Zamasu's mortal killing rampage and the resulting destruction of an entire timeline.
• Vain: The real reason why he wanted the Dragon Balls, he wants to be taller.
• Villainous Breakdown: He has a long one after Goku comes to the Red Ribbon Army base and begins to wreck it while searching for the Dragon Balls. The breakdown causes him to reveal his real plan for the Dragon Balls to Officer Black, which ends up getting him killed.
• Villainous Legacy: For a character who ends up being such a joke, he has a rather massive one in the form of Dr. Gero who in turn has one through his creations.
• Wasteful Wishing: He spent all that time and resources going after the Dragon Balls simply so he could wish for height.
• We Can Rebuild Him: His resurrection as Android 9.
• We Have Reserves: He has his men executed for even the slightest transgressions, and when his real goal is revealed, openly admitted to Staff Officer Black that he'll gladly throw every last soldier's life away as long as he can get his wish. This is the final straw for Black who kills him on the spot.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: His dream is to take over the world. He could easily achieve this goal by using the Dragon Balls to wish for world domination...but instead, he desires to wish to be taller.
• Would Hurt a Child: Even before he knew how strong Goku was, he still had his men try to kill him to get his Dragon Ball.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He thought Master Roshi was the scientist who built the Dragon Radar because he was an old man.

Adjutant Black / Staff Officer Black

Adjutant Black / Staff Officer Black (ブラック補佐, Burakku Hosa [manga]; ブラック参謀, Burakku Sanbō [anime])

Voiced by (Japanese): Masaharu Sato
Voiced by (English): Christopher Sabat (DB, GT, The Path to Power), Phillip Wilburn (Z ep. 128 in a flashback) (Funimation dub); Jonathan Love (DB), Chris Gerritsen (GT) (Blue Water dub); Brian Dobson (Z ep. 128 in a flashback) (Ocean dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Salvador Delgado (DB), José Luis Castañeda (Path to Power)

The second-in-command of the Red Ribbon Army. Black puts up with years of verbal abuse from Commander Red due to his loyalty to the Red Ribbons' goal of conquering the world but finally snaps when Red admits that he wasted hundreds of lives getting the Dragon Balls just so he could become taller. He executes Red for insubordination and assumes command of the Red Ribbon Army, but is quickly defeated by Goku.

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• Adaptational Badass: Like most characters in The Path to Power, Black gets a major power-up thanks to his battle mech. In the series proper, Black's Battle Jacket gives Goku some problems but is easily dealt with. In the movie, that Battle Jacket is now a building-size mech that can fire a giant laser and tank a Kamehameha that is strong enough to wipe out an armada. It's also loaded with missiles that are powerful enough to knock out Goku. He even manages to kill Android 8 by crushing him and he's stronger than Goku. It takes Goku's losing his temper and reaching into his latent power to defeat Black.
• Ambiguously Brown: In The Path to Power, he is several shades lighter than he was in the original manga and anime.
• Ax-Crazy: In The Path to Power, he goes completely nuts after finding out Commander Red's true wish, and starts blowing up the entire RRA base while laughing manically. He also takes far more joy in attempting to kill Goku than his canon counterpart did.
• Bad Boss: He isn't in charge long before he shows signs of this. Despite executing Commander Red for throwing away lives for his own vanity, he's willing to destroy the entire base along with his remaining men just to kill Goku. And earlier, he approves of executing General Blue, despite him bringing back a Dragon Radar that is smaller and far more accurate than theirs. Though the manga averts the former example due to the base being completely deserted by that point.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Once he kills Red, he claims that he will lead the army into a new era of greatness and take over the world. He is killed within only a few minutes of taking command by Goku.
• Blackface-Style Caricature: While not as blatant as Mr. Popo later in the series, Black is a Black man with big, bright lips, which are notably removed from his redesign in The Path to Power.
• Blatant Lies: In the dub, Black tells Goku he just wants to make peace and has no ill-intentions for the Dragon Balls. Even someone as naive as Goku doesn't buy this.
• Breather Boss: Officer Black was this to Goku In-Universe since Mercenary Tao was a much tougher fight.
• Bullying a Dragon: Despite telling Commander Red that they can't possibly win against Goku and begs him to retreat, he tries to fight Goku in a Battle Jacket. It cost him his life.
• Colourful Theme Naming: Black, for his dark skin (insensitive to Western audiences, but just a somewhat lazy pun in Japan), like all the other color names.
• Didn't Think This Through: He no doubt forgot to check for a parachute when finding a battle suit to beat Goku, since he laments about not having one as his suit explodes and kills him.
• Disappointed by the Motive: He is not pleased to find out that Red wasted so much time and resources on finding the Dragon Balls just so he could make himself taller.
• The Dog Bites Back: He had enough of Red after Red intended to essentially demolish his own army just to get taller and killed him.
• The Dragon: Till he offs Red for wanting to be taller thinking that is needed for world domination.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He kills Red since the latter jeopardized the whole organization by wishing for something so useless that it caused the downfall of the group and that he didn't care how many died to achieve it.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He offers to work together with Goku to use the Dragon Balls to revive Bora, but Goku shoots him down. He seems to have never imagined that a kid like him would refuse to work with a criminal organization.
• Foreshadowing: Before Goku's rematch with Tao, Black is shown getting annoyed after Red insults his intelligence for not knowing when to hand his boss a cigar. It may be filler, but it does hint at Black not fully respecting Red's methods deep down, and that was before hearing about his commander's desire to be taller.
• Heaven Seeker: Upon being brought back in GT only to be killed all over again, he and General Blue are somehow hopeful that maybe they'll get into Heaven this time. Needless to say, they're once again Hellbound for terrorizing the Earth alongside Major Metallitron and Nappa.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Black is much smarter than Commander Red.
• Hypocrite: He insists to Red that they can't possibly beat Goku and it's best to just give him the Dragon Balls and escape... and yet immediately after killing Red, he refuses to escape himself and takes on Goku in a Mini-Mecha. On top of that, despite executing Commander Red for throwing away the lives of their men for his own vanity, Black (in the anime) proves to be just as much of a Bad Boss when he decides to nuke the entire base along with his remaining men, just to get rid of Goku.
  • His brief appearance in GT has him (in the English dub only) berate General Blue for being killed by a girl (namely Pan), never mind that he was there too in his Battle Jacket and was also killed by her. It's present in the Japanese version too where he and Blue are hopeful that they'll get into Heaven this time despite them doing nothing during their brief revivals to warrant changing their sentencing. Needless to say, they are later seen in Hell along with Metallitron and Nappa. There's also Black lamenting how quickly all his fellow villains were killed so easily and calls them losers. Blue is quick to remind him that Black is among those losers.
• Identical Stranger: Like Red, Black's character design reappears years later as a film producer in Dragon Ball Z.
• Kick the Dog:
  • In the anime, he tries to nuke the base with a missile, when many of his own men were still there. The manga averts this due to the base being deserted.
  • In The Path to Power, he brags about killing Android 8 to a crying Goku. This does not end well for him.
• Klingon Promotion: After learning that Commander Red only wanted the Dragon Balls to make himself taller, Black shoots him dead point-blank and takes over as the new leader of the Red Ribbon Army, aiming to use Shenron's powers to conquer the world.
• Mini-Mecha: The Battle Jacket he uses to fight Goku.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: More in the anime than the manga. In the latter, Black shoots Red instantly once he learns what Red's true motivations for Dragon Balls are. In the anime, Red sends Black to fight Goku as a last line of defense while he hides away in a panic room. As the two battle, Red springs a trap and tries to crush the both of them in the room. Black survives (ironically thanks to Goku knocking him out of the way) and comes back just in time to hear Red gloating about his wish. When he confronts him on it, Red gets too uppity and eventually snaps that Black is nothing more than a toadie meant to serve him. Cue instant headshot.
• Not What I Signed on For: He is anything but pleased to discover that Red expended so much time and resources on finding the Dragon Balls simply because he wanted to wish to get taller.
• Only Sane Man: Was the one to suggest to Commander Red that he should just surrender the Dragon Balls and escape. Too bad he didn't follow his own advice.
• Punny Name: In the Japanese anime, he's called "Black Sanbō" (sanbō meaning "staff officer"), as in The Story of Little Black Sambo.
• Race Lift: He is made only slightly tanned in the Path to Power film.
• Reused Character Design: Black's design is reused years later as a film producer during the Great Saiyaman Saga in Z. Much earlier, he was recycled as a baseball player, Pepper Johnson (Oguri in Japan), in the Saiyan Saga on Yamcha's team but was given more hair. Plus in the Imperfect Cell Saga, one of the Battle Ball players who picks a fight with Cell also had Black's design.
• Scary Black Man:
  • Subverted, despite the hilariously insensitive name and design. He's as dangerous as his position expects, but also probably the sanest Red Ribbon Army officer.
  • Played straight in the Path to Power special, where he lapses into a Villainous Breakdown after having killed Red. However, he's more tan than black in said special.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Goku kicked a missile that was powerful enough to destroy the entire Red Ribbon Army base, Black decides to cut his losses and run. Unfortunately for him, Goku isn't merciful enough to let him escape and he dies in his battle suit.
• The Starscream: At first Black is completely loyal to Commander Red, but upon finding out Red's true wish (and in the anime, Red's attempt at killing both him and Goku) he executes Commander Red for basically ruining the Red Ribbon Army for his own selfish ends, going on to fight Goku after offing his former boss.
• Stating the Simple Solution: He tells Red it's best to just leave the Dragon Balls to Goku, escape while they can, and rebuild the army at a later date. For some reason, he doesn't take his own advice after he becomes the new commander.
• Too Dumb to Live: Even with a battle suit, especially one he complains has no parachute during his last moments, he should have known that he could not beat Goku. It becomes even dumber since he recommended several times to retreat to Commander Red.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He seems noticeably nicer before killing Commander Red, being concerned for others and being an Only Sane Man. Once he takes over as the Big Bad and engages Goku, he's just as much of a villain as any other Red Ribbon member.
• Treacherous Advisor: Subverted. He actually was very loyal to the Red Ribbon Army, and used to be very loyal to Commander Red. He didn't think to betray Red until after overhearing the fact that Red was actually intending to use the Dragon Balls to grow taller, and even then only because Red's actions were going to kill off the Red Ribbon Army.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: After Goku survives his final attack, he tries to make a run for it. But Goku promptly smashes through his bot, killing him in the explosion.
• Villainous Breakdown: It started when Goku storms the base, and learning of Red's motivations just makes him snap.
• We Can Rule Together: Tries this with Goku after he kills Commander Red, even offering to help Goku gather the Dragon Balls and revive Bora. Goku turns him down cold and tells him to just turn himself in to the police. Black responds by shooting Goku.

Officers

Colonel Silver

Colonel Silver (シルバー大佐, Shirubaa Taisa)

Voiced by (Japanese): Banjo Ginga
Voiced by (English): Christopher Sabat (Funimation dub); Ben Jeffery (Blue Water dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Mario Castañeda

The first member of the Red Ribbon Army to go up against Goku. He steals a Dragon Ball from Pilaf and temporarily destroys Goku's Flying Nimbus.

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• Adapted Out: Along with Captain Yellow, Silver was excluded from the 10th-anniversary film The Path to Power.
• Affably Evil: He is calm, professional, does not immediately resort to violence, and bears Goku no personal grudge. In the Funimation dub, he is even polite to civilians — though he will still kill them without mercy.
• Ascended Extra: Appears earlier and has a larger role in the anime than in the manga.
• Badass Longcoat: He wears a long blue coat that goes past his knees and he is one of the Red Ribbon Army's strongest fighters.
• Badass Normal: He is very strong for a human, being able to defeat several world-class boxers without being touched. Too bad for him that he's beneath Goku's notice and is taken out with one tail whip to the face.
• BFG: Carries a bazooka and uses it to shoot down the Nimbus.
• Boxing Battler: He fights like a boxer. In the anime, he's shown knocking out four professional boxers with a single punch.
• Break the Fake: Does this with a fake Dragon Ball after a store owner attempts to con them into buying it.
• Colourful Theme Naming: The only member of the army whose color name doesn't reference his appearance in some way.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He doesn't even come close to defeating Goku who easily sidesteps his attacks and manages to knock Silver out only using his tail!.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Calls Black an imbecile for thinking he has time to sit and wait for backup as Pilaf's flying fortress emerges, and repeatedly abuses radio communicators.
• Evil Redhead: Although he's one of the nicer members of the Red Ribbon Army since he doesn't kill out of sadism, he's still a ruthless guy who will murder innocents to get his way.
• The Coats Are Off: Removes his trench coat during his fight with Goku.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has a rather ugly scar across his chest.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: Silver kills the conman for lying to his face. He also tells Black and Red everything about his defeat. Yep. I was knocked out by a 12-year-old.
• No Shirt, Long Jacket: Doesn't wear a shirt under his long jacket.
• Reused Character Design: Maron, Krillin's temporary girlfriend in Z, eventually leaves Krillin for a rich guy that looks an awful lot like Silver. Much earlier, when Goku visits West City for the first time, a blonde-haired man with Silver's jacket can be seen inside a phone booth while Hasky is driving through the streets.
• Rugged Scar: Has a nasty scar on his chest.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Wears a scarf while he's in action.
• The Stoic: In the Japanese anime primarily. The English dubs made him a little more excitable, such as when he insults Black for telling him to wait for backup.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the anime, Silver is dismissed by Commander Red after losing the Dragon Balls to Goku, who then orders his henchmen to kill him. But he is never shown to be killed (whereas in the manga, Red says he'll "see him in front of the firing squad"). He makes no appearances after this, leaving his fate unknown. He's not even seen in GT when most of the Red Ribbon officers escape Hell.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Pilaf snatches the Dragon Ball and retreats in his flying fortress, forcing Silver to let him go. Later, Silver shows up with his whole army in fighter jets and blows it up.
• The Worf Effect: The anime spends a few episodes showing his badassness and competence... And then Goku knocks him out with a kick and a tail slap.
• Would Hurt a Child: Despite his polite demeanor, he attacks Goku without hesitation even before he knew who he was. It ends poorly for him, just as it did for everyone else who fought Goku up to that point.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In the Japanese only, he seemed genuinely shocked at Red's dismissal of him despite being highly praised by him an episode prior. Apparently, despite himself, he missed the part about the Red Ribbons being an Evil Army who will tolerate no failures, with execution being the consequence. And Red reminds him of this during the interrogation.

General White

General White (ホワイト将軍, Howaito Shougun)

Voiced by (Japanese): Tesshō Genda (DB), Hirohiko Kakegawa (The Path to Power)
Voiced by (English): Kyle Hebert (Funimation dub); Ryan Luhning (Blue Water)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Roberto Sen (DB), Rafael Rivera (The Path to Power)

A Red Ribbon leader searching for a Dragon Ball in the snowy arctic, General White built a fortress called Muscle Tower, kidnapped a nearby village's leader, and forced the townsfolk to comb the landscape for the Dragon Ball. His retinue of followers almost had Goku on the ropes, but Android 8 defeated him and saved Goku.

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• Accent Adaptation: A Russian one in the English dub.
• Bullying a Dragon: He repeatedly mouths off to Eighter, belittling and mocking his compassionate nature and blowing off his pleas to resolve things peacefully. He inevitably pushes Eighter to his Rage Breaking Point after shooting Goku; first standing up to him and declaring he's not afraid of the furious android, he soon caves in and freaks out, especially when his gun turns out to be out of ammo, and is punched out of Muscle Tower and into the horizon.
• Colourful Theme Naming: White, for his hair, although it's bluish in the anime.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Tried to fight Goku, thinking he was weak from his trials in Muscle Tower. Goku was weakened, but not enough to make a difference.
  • His "fight" with Eighter, if you can even call it that. Eighter sent him flying with just one punch.
• Dirty Communists: General White has a Russian accent, and if that's not enough, most of his footsoldiers are wearing Red Army commando uniforms.
• Dirty Coward: Takes the mayor hostage by gunpoint when he realizes that he couldn't win against Goku.
• Disney Villain Death: He made the big mistake of harming Goku in front of Eighter and ends up being punched out the window and several miles through the sky into a mountain. Going General Blue's offhanded comment about needing to apologize to White (only in the English dub; done in a way that made it seem that he was still alive) and his appearance in Attack of the Saiyans, he survived.
• General Ripper: Has no problem trying to kill a kid, using villagers for slave labor, and killing innocents to find the Dragon Ball. He even planned to kill all the villagers once he did find the Dragon Ball, which was why Android 8 hid it from him.
• Husky Russkie: He is physically the largest of the Red Ribbon officers Goku goes up against (though also physically the weakest).
• Jerkass: He was going to execute all the villagers after they found the Dragon Ball. He also outright tells Eighter that his compassionate nature disgusts him.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Continuously belittled and mocked Eighter for being a failure. He was also the one who ordered Murasaki to press Eighter's self-destruct button.
  • He planned to execute the villagers once he found the Dragon Ball, which was why Android 8 hid it from the army.
• Oh, Crap!: Has a moment like this when he realizes just how bad of an idea it was to shoot Goku in front of Eighter.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: His followers—Major Metallitron, Ninja Murasaki, Android 8 (who pulled a Heel–Face Turn), and Buyon.
• Reused Character Design: In the Saiyan Saga, a baseball player named Rocky Rivers (or Doug in the Japanese version) bears a strong resemblance to White though his hair is brown in color instead of purple.
• Sadistic Choice: Try to make Eighter decide between killing Goku or him killing the mayor.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: What Eighter did to him after he shot Goku in the back of the head.
• Virtue Is Weakness: He's disgusted by Eighter's compassion, declaring him a technological failure for it. During his final fight with Goku, he openly tells Eighter that his pleas for compassion and non-violence make him sick.
• Vodka Drunkenski: Given his implied Russian heritage as well as his sometimes drinking from a flask that presumably contained vodka.
• Would Hurt a Child: He shoots Goku in the back of the head when he's trying to defend Android 8 and the Mayor. Even worse, he planned to execute the entire village once he found the Dragon Ball.

Ninja Murasaki / Sergeant Major Purple

Murasaki (ムラサキ曹長, Murasaki Sōchō)

Voiced by (Japanese): Takeshi Aono (Most media until 2009), Nobuo Tobita (Dr. Slump remake and Dragon Ball Heroes)
Voiced by (English): Duncan Brannan (Funimation dub); Zane Sampson (Blue Water dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Pedro D'Aguillón Jr.

A half-competent ninja mercenary hired by General White. Despite his relative weakness, he has an impressive repertoire of tricks and proves a wily foe—he is the first Red Ribbon villain whom Goku takes more than one episode to beat. He survives Goku's assault on Muscle Tower and comes back to finish Goku off soon after, but Goku unknowingly tosses a bomb at him and he hasn't been seen since.

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• Adaptational Heroism: Murasaki and his brothers appear in Xenoverse 2 as members of the Time Patrol.
• Adapted Out: He makes no appearance during the Muscle Tower section of The Path to Power.
• Ass Shove: What happened when he landed on Goku's Power Pole. To make it even more painful, he accidentally jerks it around when he hits against a tree, and Goku yanks it right out when he wants it back.
• Butt-Monkey: Throughout their entire fight, he's basically nothing but Goku's plaything, and endures one humiliation after another.
• Colourful Theme Naming: Murasaki is Japanese for purple. Notably, all the other Red Ribbon Army color names are English, but his name is in Japanese, presumably because he's a ninja.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: His entire "fight" with Goku more or less consisted of Murasaki becoming his plaything for several episodes. Goku could have beaten him at any time but was just having too much fun.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the manga, Murasaki is never seen again after Goku knocks him out, and is presumably killed when Muscle Tower collapses. In the anime, he survives the fall of Muscle Tower and is instead killed when Android 8's bomb explodes in his face.
• Dirty Old Man: Murasaki has a lot of girlie magazines in his quarters. In addition, he also secretly took pictures of two women changing into ninja outfits, two women who were also heavily implied to be General White's sisters (only in the English dub, however).
• Doppelgänger Spin: Subverted as they are actually his quintuplet brothers.
• The Dragon: To General White. He is far stronger than White and is the only one besides Major Metallitron and Buyon to actually hurt Goku. Which isn't saying much.
• Dragon Their Feet: In an anime-only​ event, he makes one last attempt to kill Goku and Android 8 even after General White has been defeated and Muscle Tower has been destroyed, and it takes being blown up​ by Android 8's self-destruct bomb to finally put him down for good.
• Dub Name Change: The European Spanish dub changes his name to General Purple, apparently in order to fit the name line of his colleague. The Viz manga translates his name literally as Sergeant Major Purple.
• Fragile Speedster: He relies mainly on speed and confusing his opponents. When it comes to actual battle, Goku takes him and his brothers out in a single punch each.
• Humiliation Conga: Almost his entire fight with Goku is this. He lands on Goku's Power Pole, gets bested in hide-and-seek and racing, gets his favorite sword broken, and is eventually one-shotted by Goku after he attempted to blow up Android 8. And if you count the filler, he gets buried in an avalanche and gets blown up by a bomb which he may or may not have survived.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Goku never took this guy seriously, until he tried to destroy Android 8.
• Iron Butt-Monkey: A lot of bad stuff happens to this guy but he always seems to recover. He even might have survived Android 8's bomb.
• Killed Off for Real: In the anime, Goku unwittingly throws Android's self-destruct bomb at him (while he was trapped in the snow). The bomb detonates before he could get it off, resulting in an explosion of blood as the narrator quips, "It's always nice to end a story with a bang!" Despite this, Murasaki reappears in video games and does not reappear in GT at all, not even in the Super 17 arc, where the Hell residents escape.
• Laughably Evil: He tries so hard to be serious, but he can't catch a break being Goku's Butt-Monkey.
• Ninja: Subverted in that he is a bumbling idiot.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: At times he can be dangerous. He would've self-destructed Android 8 if Goku hadn't intervened.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: He can shatter rocks with a sword strike, and actually succeeded in hitting Goku in the nape with a bladed Precision-Guided Boomerang. His problem is that Goku is superior to him in everything and tough enough to survive that blade.
• Porn Stash: And Goku found it.
• Reused Character Design: One of the Toad Warriors who harasses the Androids in the Cell arc has a similar face to Murasaki, though his hair is white and in a ponytail.
• Smug Snake: He is not as strong as he likes to believe, especially compared to Goku who literally plays with him.
• Stock Ninja Weaponry: He had a sword, daggers, and everything else you expect to find on a ninja.
• Would Hurt a Child: In the anime filler, he holds Suno hostage to blackmail Dr. Frappe.

Sergeant Metallic / Major Metallitron

Sergeant Metallic / Major Metallitron (メタリック軍曹, Metarikku Gunsō)

Voiced by (Japanese): Shin Aomori (DB and Mystical Adventure), Hisao Egawa (The Path to Power)
Voiced by (English): Bill Capizzi (Harmony Gold dub); Chris Rager (DB, Mystical Adventure, and The Path to Power), Christopher Sabat (Z ep. 128 in a flashback) (Funimation dub); Don Brown (Z ep. 128 in a flashback), Lucas Gilbertson (DB) (Ocean/Blue Water dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Gerardo Reyero

A massive soldier who Goku fights in Muscle tower. Turns out to be a robot and the first combatant in that arc that provides Goku with a serious challenge.

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• Adaptational Wimp: In The Path to Power Goku defeats him by punching his head off, something that in the manga and anime barely slowed it down.
• The Ahnold: Is clearly based on Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator.
• An Arm and a Leg: After launching one of its arms, Goku disables the other, but it keeps attacking with its feet.
• The Cameo: Before being destroyed again in GT, he can be seen flying out of Hell alongside Android #19, Cooler, Raditz, Jeice, Pui Pui, Yakon, and General Rilldo. Later he's shown with Staff Officer Black and General Blue, plus Nappa, back in Hell and they encounter Piccolo just fresh off of getting Goku back to the living world.
• Colourful Theme Naming: Metallic, though the theme is broken in the dub in favor of alliteration.
• Cranial Processing Unit: Averted. It loses its head to no apparent disadvantage.
• Dub Name Change: Renamed "Major Metallitron" in the English anime dub and "Full Metal Jacket" in the manga.
• Implacable Man: It just keeps coming, no matter what Goku does to it. It finally stops when its batteries run out.
• No-Sell: Although Goku is able to cause superficial damage, nothing he can do stops the robot until its batteries run out.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Look like the Terminator, shoots a rocket out of his mouth, and repeats the same sentence, yes he is a robot alright.
• Robo Cam: A POV shot shows a visual overlay of Gratuitous English text, which also identifies Goku as an alien.
• Robotic Reveal: After Goku kicks its head off, it keeps attacking, showing that it's actually a robot. More of its chassis is revealed after it tanks a kamehameha.
• Rocket Punch: Resorts to this when its body is damaged by a kamehameha. Unlike most examples of the trope, the fist doesn't return and is useless after firing.
• Scary Black Man: He gets Race Lifted into one in The Path to Power, in a reversal of Staff Officer Black's own Race Lift.
• Terminator Impersonator: A blatant Expy of The Terminator, right down to his large hulking physique, leather outfit, and Cool Shades. Although Goku is unaware that the being he's facing is a robot until the very end, we get copious amounts of a mechanical HUD. He even provides the page image.

General Blue

General Blue (ブルー将軍, Buruu Shougun)

Voiced by (Japanese): Toshio Furukawa (Most media), Bin Shimada (The Path to Power and Budokai Tenkaichi series), Nobuhiko Kazama (Dr. Slump remake)
Voiced by (English): Dave Mallow (Harmony Gold dub); Sonny Strait (Funimation dub); Roger Rhodes (DB), Adam Hunter (GT) (Blue Water dub); David Gasman (mainly), Ed Marcus (one line) (AB Groupe/"Big Green" dub); Russell Wait (Animax Asia dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Salvador Delgado

A high-ranking member of the Red Ribbon Army with formidable psychic powers. General Blue was searching for a Dragon Ball in the ocean when Goku and Bulma stumble into his camp. He quickly becomes a deadly enemy to Goku and friends and is the first villain who can really take on Goku in a straight fight. When he fails to obtain the Dragon Ball, Commander Red orders him to fight Mercenary Tao, who kills him.

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• Accent Adaptation: He's given a British accent in Funimation's dub despite his obvious German-inspired design.
• Adaptational Heroism: In Mystical Adventure, General Blue (named Lieutenant Blue) was shown to be somewhat of a nice guy, or at least not an evil guy. He also acted as a genuine Sacrificial Lion to Tao Pai Pai, being killed by him after he tried to warn his boss, Chiaotzu, about their treacherous plans against Chiaotzu after he stumbled upon Ranfan inside Shen's bedroom.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Most dubs eliminate the implications that he is a pedophile, though this just serves to make him as villainous as his manga counterpart, who never showed any hints of lusting after children.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the original manga, Blue is more or less implied to be a Depraved Homosexual. The anime, however, takes it a step further by all but stating that Blue is a pedophile as well, making him that much more despicable. It also overlaps with Adaptational Nice Guy since most dubs remove this implication by suggesting he has a long-lost little brother instead.
• Adaptational Wimp: His The Path to Power counterpart is not nearly as impressive as the regular version. He lacks psychic powers or any other superhuman ability and seems to be just a surprisingly tough regular soldier. He is even restrained by two other soldiers and killed by a regular firing squad, rather than in a fight with one of the world's greatest assassins.
• Agent Peacock: He may be a Sissy Villain, but he is by far the strongest commander in the Red Ribbon Army. He easily beats Krillin and nearly killed Goku three times. He also escaped a collapsing underwater cave by swimming and survived his plane crashing into a mountain with no real injury. Even being knocked to Egypt barely caused him any damage.
• All Gays Are Pedophiles: Anime only. Aside from being homosexual, he is sexually attracted to the childlike Obotchaman (even calling the boy "his type"), which was changed in the dub to him being amazed at how Obotchaman supposedly looks like a long-lost little brother of Blue named Samuel. The Latin Spanish dub barely avoids it by turning his object of desire into a girl. This scene never happened in the manga, though.
• All Germans Are Nazis: Well, sort of. It is implied that he hails from Germany or at least a German-speaking country (He says "Auf Wiedersehen" when leaving Goku, Roshi, and Bulma to be blown to bits after stealing the Dragon Balls, which is the German equivalent of "Goodbye"), and everything about him basically speaks "Nazi".
• Almighty Janitor: With his superhuman abilities and not too bad smarts, Blue is in all ways the strongest member of the Red Ribbon. He could easily overthrow Commander Red and Adjutant Black's chain of command if he so desired and would find relatively little resistance. However, he instead follows their commands to the letter and is never shown to have any ambition other than military loyalty, to the point he is positively terrified when Red announces him he will be executed.
• Asshole Victim: Given his pedophilic tendencies (in the anime), a habit of killing his own men for the most minor reasons, and status as a high-ranking officer in an army out for world domination, it's easy to say that his death at Tao's hands was well-deserved.
• Ax-Crazy: He has one of his own men shot for picking his nose, and relishes in the sound of the gunfire.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: What happened to him when he fought Arale, a robotic girl and the main character from Dr. Slump.
• Bad Boss: Considering the fact that he executed soldiers for picking noses, failure to hit Goku twice, and cowardice/sleeping on the job (the last of which he executed in person the soldier who did these actions). At one point, he also implies that he physically abuses soldiers who somehow sneak up on him ("How many times do I have to tell you!? It's very hard to sneak up on a general and to keep your teeth!") The only one who's even worse of a boss in his army is his own boss, Commander Red, who once was implied to have executed a soldier just because he couldn't evade his cat in time, and also has a chilling disregard for his own troops, even willing to kill off his own army just to get himself taller.
• Berserk Button:
  • Sloppiness, sneaking up on him and especially getting his looks messed up.
  • He went from seeing Bulma as "disgusting" to "need-to-die irredeemable" when she tried to claim she was a guy to appeal to his orientation. Blue vowed to make her die brutally for it, much to her horror.
• Colourful Theme Naming: Named for his blue eyes, which complete his Nazi-esque appearance and also glow when he uses his psychic techniques.
• Creepy Crossdresser: Sort of — when he finds that he would have had to wade through water to trail Bulma and Krillin for the Dragon Ball and potentially the pirate treasure, he complains that he forgot to pack his bikini trunks in his field kit.
• Didn't See That Coming: Considering how she crashed into the police car he stole without a scratch, showed no fear when he held her hostage (he was even creeped out by her licking a knife he was threatening her with), and sent him flying when he tried to kill Goku, he certainly didn't expect that Arale, like Goku, is no ordinary child.
• Disney Death: An entire underwater cave collapsed on him. He somehow survived. Was also knocked high enough to forcibly travel and crash-land from Penguin Village to an Egypt-like country and survive relatively intact.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: An immaculately handsome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed villain working for a paramilitary organization who dresses in what looks like an SA "Browncoat" officer uniform and possesses superior physical and mental aptitude? Let's just say that the Dictator from Fusion Reborn would have been pleased to recruit him. Even his homosexuality seems to be inspired by the Sturmabteilung's reputation for high rates of openly gay recruits, including their executive Ernst Rohm.
• Evil Brit: He's given this accent in the Funimation dub.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In the Funimation dub, his attraction to Obotchaman is replaced by Blue mistaking OB for his lost little brother Samual. It sounds like Funimation!Blue really missed him.
• Fan Disservice: His reference to possessing bikini trunks, anyone?
• The Fighting Narcissist: He completely loses it when Krillin gives him a nosebleed and asks the characters several times how they can hit a thing of beauty.
• Genius Bruiser: Aside from being the strongest Red Ribbon Army soldier (which is demonstrated), General Blue was also stated by Commander Red to be a tactical genius on the battlefield. However, as he ends up doing most of his work personally, this is not showcased much outside of drawing a fake arrow in place of Kuririn and Bulma's arrow to trick Goku into going the wrong way.
• Giggling Villain: He laughs like a noble woman in the Japanese version.
• Heaven Seeker: His brief return in GT shows him in line with Staff Officer Black with the latter noting how pathetic it was that all the villains were killed again so quickly. The Japanese version and Blue Water dub have them both hope that this time they'll get into Heaven. They don't. Both are last seen in Hell alongside Major Metallitron and Nappa encountering Piccolo after he sends Goku back to the living world.
• Incompatible Orientation: He's gay, but Bulma fawned over him like most Bishounen.
• Inexplicably Awesome: His superhuman physical traits and psychic abilities are never given a proper explanation in the context of the series, not even after more dangerous foes are introduced. It is only hinted in an episode that he might have been "enhanced" in some way.
• Iron Butt Monkey: This guy takes a lot of physical punishment. He is nearly electrocuted to death by a giant eel, gets knocked around by Goku, is buried alive in an undersea cave, crashes his air jet into a mountain, and is knocked to Egypt by Arale. Despite all that, he shows no lasting damage.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: It was a robotic girl and the main character of Dr. Slump, but a girl nonetheless. In GT after his second death, Staff Officer Black took the time to mock him for getting killed by a girl (it was Pan)...never mind that Black also was killed in that same fight.
• Karmic Death: He had a bad habit of killing his men for any minor transgression (falling asleep, picking noses, trying to sneak up on him when really one of them was trying to tell him they have orders from HQ, etc). Yet he himself is killed just due to his commander not seeing that he actually brought him something very useful that could speed up the search for the Dragon Balls (Goku's Dragon Radar) and more concerned he couldn't get the Dragon Ball as initially ordered, despite said commander knowing the trouble Goku was giving his army. Essentially Blue was executed due to a bout of pettiness from his superior just as he did his men.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: He smiles as he listened to a soldier being executed, outright stating that he loves the sounds of gunfire killing people. Ironic, considering his fate in The Path to Power.
• Macho Camp: Scared of mice, and a bit of a neat freak (however, see Ax-Crazy). Otherwise, he is every bit a man's man, and one of the first truly threatening enemies Goku faces.
• Near-Villain Victory: Despite getting two of his units wiped out, he came the closest to killing Goku not once, not twice, but three times. He also was successful in stealing the Dragon Balls and did succeed in taking Goku's Dragon Radar. He's by far the most successful villain of the Red Ribbon Army.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Very likely inspired by SA leader Ernst Röhm.
• Oh, Crap!: His reaction in the anime when his use of his paralysis power on Mercenary Tao turns out to be a no-sell. Bear in mind that up until this point, even Goku was shown to be vulnerable to it. This completely destroys his self-confidence, resulting in him charging Tao in blind panic, followed by Tao finishing him off with his tongue.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: When Bulma figures out her feminine wiles are wasted on Blue, she tries to entice him by saying she's got a penis. Blue calls her a freak for this.
• Psychic Powers: Including paralyzing anyone who meets his gaze and animating ropes.
• Psychopathic Manchild: The sadistic joy he takes in hurting people can best be compared to a schoolyard bully tormenting smaller children. Also, while he has other reasons for not liking it, Blue's reaction to Bulma flirting with him is almost similar to a young boy feeling as though interacting with girls would get him infected with cooties.
• Putting on the Reich: His uniform is based on the Nazi SA.
• Sissy Villain: On the one hand, he is super-strong and possesses frightening Psychic Powers. On the other, he is terrified of mice and obsessed with his looks.
• So Last Season: Like the rest of the Red Ribbon Army, he's briefly revived in GT. Whereas he was a surprisingly dangerous Wake-Up Call Boss in Dragon Ball, by GT the power scale has grown to such ridiculously extreme heights Goku's granddaughter kills him in a split second just by flying past him.
• Sorry, I'm Gay: Bulma's attempt at seducing him fails miserably.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: As Goku's first genuinely superpowered opponent both willing and capable of killing him, he is at the very bottom of said algorithm, though a dangerous Wake-Up Call Boss nonetheless. Fittingly, he is used as the fall guy to hype up Goku's next main opponent.
• Squishy Wizard: He's actually a fairly strong and resilient guy, being able to overpower Krillin, crush cars and phone boots with no effort, and get headbutted across the globe. Even so, it's clear that in a head-on fight Goku could beat him rather handily if it weren't for his psychic powers. Also shown in the anime only part when he tries the telekinesis on Tao who breaks free of it with no trouble.
• Super-Soldier: He nearly kills Goku, who Curb Stomps all the other commanders, can lift heavy boulders with little effort, swim great distances, and have psychic powers. He fears only one thing: mice.
• Super-Strength: Such as lifting boulders and crushing phone booths with his bare hands. Also goes in line with superhuman endurance due to his surviving an electric eel's shocks with no apparent ill effects afterward, and snapped its neck.
• Take That!: It's implied he's inspired by Ernst Röhm (remember that General Blue's soldiers wear Nazi-like uniforms).
• Time Bomb: Tried to kill Goku and Co. with one after he stole the Dragon Balls.
• Token Super: General Blue is the only member of the Red Ribbon army to possess any sort of powers, in his case Psychic Powers that enables paralysis and telekinesis, as well as superhuman levels of strength, durability, and speed that allow him to defeat Krillin and give Goku a decent fight. Everyone else was either a faceless mook, a Badass Normal, a ninja, a scientist, a robot, or a mindless monster with a natural invulnerability factor.
• Undignified Death: Fitting for a prissy boy like him, Tao Pai Pai cuts his life short with his tongue. He could have killed Blue in any number of ways; yet not only did Tao utterly shatter his skull and let him soak in what had just happened, but he also gave Blue a lethal wet willy. One could only imagine the terror and disgust that was going through Blue's mind at the time.
• Vanity Is Feminine: Had a mental breakdown when Kuririn gave him a nosebleed and had an equally bad reaction when Goku punched him. As for the effeminacy, he's a Neat Freak who's terrified of mice.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The first major villain to defeat and almost kill Goku and his friends in combat. In fact, he is the first villain in the series who is actually capable of killing Goku, though he is soon eclipsed by Mercenary Tao, who kills him with no effort.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: After he ditches his uniform to swim through a sea cave.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He's deeply afraid of mice.
• Wolverine Publicity: Let us put it this way: He is the only Red Ribbon Army member who is actually playable in any of the DBZ fighting games (Budokai, Budokai Tenkaichi, etc). Sure, it was only for one game (Budokai Tenkaichi 3), but the rest of the Red Ribbon Army didn't get playable in any of those games. It is probably because he is the only member with any actual powers.
• The Worf Effect: He's the strongest Red Ribbon officer, able to fight Goku and nearly kill him on more than one occasion. The first sign of Mercenary Tao's prowess is when he effortlessly kills Blue using nothing but his tongue. That he was able to do that to someone who managed to give Goku trouble serves to show how terrifyingly strong Tao is.
• Would Hurt a Child: Had no problem trying to kill Krillin and nearly kills Goku multiple times. Plus he holds Arale at knifepoint during the Dr. Slump crossover.
• You Have Failed Me:
  • He callously executes any of his lackeys who fail him... or who pick their nose in his presence.
  • When he fails to get the Dragon Balls (despite snagging Goku's radar and proclaiming he can make up for it by using the device to speed up the search for the balls, which actually is a better find), Blue himself is essentially executed by Commander Red, who offers to spare his life if he can beat Mercenary Tao, knowing that Blue stands no chance.

Captain Yellow

Captain Yellow (イエロー大佐, Ieroo Taisa)

Voiced by (Japanese): Daisuke Gōri
Voiced by (English): Andrew Chandler (Funimation dub); Ben Jeffery (Blue Water dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Armando Réndiz

A tiger person who briefly faces off against Goku, commanding a plane trying to raid Bora and Upa's village. Goku knocks him out of his airplane, killing him.

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• Accent Adaptation: He gets a thick Australian accent in the Funimation dub.
• Adapted Out: Along with Colonel Silver, Yellow was excluded in the 10th-anniversary film The Path to Power.
• Benevolent Boss: Unlike most Red Ribbon officers, he's compassionate enough towards his troops to give them fair warning about potential dangers.
• The Cameo: He returns in GT chasing Mr. Satan along with General Blue, Staff Officer Black, and Major Metallitron before getting killed by Pan. Later he's shown with Captain Dark and Pui Pui in Other World, awaiting their return to Hell.
• Colorful Theme Naming: He's named after his yellow belt buckle, sleeves, and the yellow parts of his jacket.
• Disney Villain Death:
  • Goku punched him out of his plane mid-flight. If that was not enough to convince you that he is dead, he later reappears in GT as one of the Hell escapees.
  • In the Dragon Ball SD, a heavily abridged, non-canon retelling of the entire original manga, it's revealed that the tiger pelt that Goku can be seen wearing when he comes back from his training in the wilderness was taken from Captain Yellow.
• Dirty Coward: Retreats after Bora kills all his men and takes Upa hostage in exchange for the four-star Dragon Ball. He refuses Bora's demand to lower the plane down because he thinks the latter will kill him if he does and orders the hunter to throw the ball up to him instead. Bora is not amused.
• Funny Animal: He is a tiger who acts like a human.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Not to the extent of Colonel Silver, but unlike most of the army, he treats his men decently enough and is compassionate enough to warn them away from an erupting volcano.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: It is noticeable that he becomes extremely flustered when speaking to his superiors, especially Commander Red, to the point that he seems afraid. He's justified to an extent given how his employers typically deal with failures, and Red threatens to sic Mercenary Tao if he can't obtain the dragon ball from Bora.
• Red Herring: After Goku fought his way through General White and Blue, plus his curb-stomping of Colonel Silver at the beginning of the Red Ribbon arc, you didn't think that he'd have much difficulty against another colonel, right? Yellow is killed off in the same chapter/episode he's introduced in and the main threat quickly becomes Mercenary Tao.
• Visual Pun: He's an anthropomorphic tiger who is a plane pilot. He's a Flying Tiger, alright.
• Would Hurt a Child: Had no problems snatching Upa and holding him hostage in exchange for Bora's Dragon Ball. Bonus points for holding the boy at least 30,000 feet above ground via plane. There's also his almost immediate shooting at Goku once he recognizes him, though in that latter case it does not end well for the captain.

Colonel Violet

Colonel Violet (バイオレット大佐, Baioretto Taisa)

Voiced by (Japanese): Kazuko Sugiyama (DB), Naoko Watanabe (The Path to Power)
Voiced by (English): Kasey Buckley (DB and The Path to Power), Kate Oxley (Dragon Ball Online) (Funimation dub); Jennifer Bain (Blue Water dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Belinda Martínez

A female member of the Red Ribbon Army who is sent on an interference mission against Goku's allies to stop them from getting the Dragon Balls. She's only in it for the money and doesn't even care about her own subordinates. When Goku storms the Red Ribbon headquarters, she sees the writing on the wall and deserts, taking a huge amount of the army's money with her. Violet is the only Red Ribbon officer known to have survived.

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• Ascended Extra: She only has about two panels in the manga before she's never seen again. The anime expands a bit more on her showing that she is only working with Red Ribbon for the money.
• Bad Boss: Doesn't give a lick about the people who work under her as she leaves her squad to their deaths while retrieving a Dragon Ball.
• Colourful Theme Naming: After her hair.
• Death by Adaptation: In the movie The Path to Power, Goku blows up her airplane.
• Hired Guns: Heavily implied to be her relationship with the Red Ribbon Army.
• Karma Houdini: Until Path to Power, Violet had not only survived the events of the Red Ribbon Saga but escaped it while enduring practically no consequences.
• Long Bus Trip: She's never heard from again after she dodges Yamcha and the others en route to the Red Ribbon base. Given her established Hired Guns mentality, it is likely she just went on with her life afterward.
• Oh, Crap!: Anime-only, the only time she ever shows this is when she nearly flies into the ship carrying Goku's friends (coming the other way toward the Red Ribbon base she was fleeing) and barely swerves to get out of the way.
  • She barely has time for another in The Path to Power where Goku comes along and destroys her plane, killing her instantly.
• Only in It for the Money: Got paid when she returned with the Dragon Ball and robs the vault when Goku was rampaging through the base.
• Pet the Dog: Despite her bad boss status, she does love animals and went out of her way to save a monkey while escaping. Granted, she does this immediately after killing several of her own men to distance herself from a crocodile.
• Reused Character Design: A girl called Fanfan appears during Goku's training on Kami's Lookout via the Time Room and bears a resemblance to Violet, albeit with a paler complexion. Some have theorized that she's an ancestor of Violet's.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In the anime, once Goku begins his invasion of the Red Ribbon base. She heads straight for the vault, grabs as much cash as she can, and then bolts. She's one of the few Red Ribbon officials to escape Goku's wrath at the time and, considering she doesn't appear later in the show, probably went on with her life after the Red Ribbon's downfall. Red was not happy about this when he found out.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only living fully blooded female seen in the Red Ribbon Army that's still alive, until Android 18 is revealed.^note however 18 was formerly the human Lazuli, who was a notorious runaway that was kidnapped and forced into the Red Ribbon against her will by Dr. Gero

Gevo

Gevo (ゲボ, Gebo)

The son of Dr. Gero, who served as a high-ranking soldier in the Red Ribbon Army, and was killed in combat by an enemy bullet. He became the basis for Android 16. This man was never mentioned in the manga or anime, only revealed in an interview with Akira Toriyama, and then finally being mentioned in Dragon Ball Fighter Z. The artbook for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot finally revealed his name to be Gebo, codenamed Gold. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero then spells his name as Gevo.

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• All for Nothing: His sacrifice was this, as the army ended up being destroyed by Goku. It is likely that this is the reason that Gero hates Goku so much. What Gero never knew, however, was that even if Goku hadn't destroyed the army, Commander Red would have wasted the Dragon Balls by making himself taller instead of wishing for the army to rule the world like they were led to believe. This means that his son would have died for nothing anyway.
• Evil Redhead: Implied, as he was a member of the Red Ribbon Army and became the basis for Android 16. However, is unclear what his personality was like, as Gero made Android 16 soft on purpose.
• Family Theme Naming: His name is a Japanese onomatopoeia for vomiting, going with the theme of Dr. Gero's family names being based on vomiting.
• Gentle Giant: He was a massive mountain of muscle with a soft side for nature if 16's any indication.
• Morality Pet: For Gero. His death being rendered worthless is likely the true reason for Gero's intense hatred towards Goku, as opposed to just being put out of a job or losing the chance to be part of the army that would control the world.
• Posthumous Character: He has been long dead by the time Dr. Gero starts to make his move in the Android saga. Toriyama states he was killed by an enemy bullet at some unclear point in time before the Red Ribbon Army's demise by Goku, but fans otherwise tend to ignore this detail and think he was killed by Goku during the Red Ribbon saga, which is not the case (it doesn't help that Dragon Ball Z Abridged goes by that route).
• Top-Heavy Guy: It's safe to assume that he's a massive mountain of muscle, since 16, who is based on him, is practically all muscle.

Vomi

Vomi (ボミ, Bomi)

The wife of Dr. Gero, who died long before the events of the original manga took place. In Dragon Ball Fighter Z, she became the basis for Android 21. An image of her makes a cameo in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero as part of Dr. Gero and Dr. Hedo's family profile.

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• Canon Immigrant: Played with. While the design of Android 21 for Dr. Gero's wife is made canon by Super Hero, 21 herself is not. Vomi is, as of this writing, an entirely separate character.^note with the implications she could become 21 in the future, if Dragonball Fighter Z gets an anime adaption
• Family Theme Naming: Her name is a pun on the English word "vomit", fitting with the theme of Dr. Gero's family names being based on vomiting.

Allies

Buyon

Buyon (ブヨン)

Voiced by (Japanese): Masaharu Sato (DB), Daisuke Matsubara (Video Games)
Voiced by (English): Christopher Sabat (Funimation dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Mario Sauret

General White's "pet", it appears as Goku's last opponent in Muscle Tower. It's a large, obese pink alien... thing and is stored inside a hidden room in General White's tower.

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• Adapted Out: He is removed in the retelling of the Red Ribbon Army Saga's events in the 10th Anniversary movie The Path to Power.
• Alien Among Us: Dragon Ball Online reveals that Buyon belongs to a race of space aliens called Jigglers. How exactly he got to Earth and was found and tamed by the Red Ribbon Army (and how exactly they managed to get him inside Muscle Tower) is unknown.
• Big Eater: It eats cattle and even humans whole.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: Buyon's one weakness is freezing temperatures, and its room is able to be accessed from the outside by destroying the wall.
  • In the video game, Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo, ice-using robots are often dropped down from the ceiling for Goku to freeze him with.
• The Dreaded: Looking back, it's likely that Suno's father was referring to him and not Android 8 when he stated that Muscle Tower held a terrible monster.
• Evil Laugh: He can't talk, but he laughs a lot.
• Fat Bastard: Sure, he's just a hungry beast trying to survive, but his Evil Laugh and constant grinning suggests he's getting a kick out of Goku's feeble attempts to fight back.
• Harmless Freezing: It's more apparent in the video game adaptations, where freezing it only allows the player to damage it, but in the anime, Buyon still reacts to Goku kicking it hard enough it shatters.
• Jabba Table Manners: Averted, despite the area it's kept in being littered with the bones of those it ate the bones it eats from are always picked clean, and it's not covered in food.
• Kevlard: It's so fat it can completely No-Sell any direct attacks, including taking a full-blast Kamehameha to the stomach and having it just bounce off.
• King Mook: If one takes the Dragon Ball Online as canon.
• Killed Off for Real: Assuming that it wasn't revived when Goku had to wish for Earth to be fixed after Kid Buu destroys it. It's also the first named character to be Killed Off for Real by Goku, and the only member of the Red Ribbon Army not shown to be revived in GT.
• Literally Shattered Lives: After punching a hole in the wall to freeze Buyon solid, Goku literally shatters him to pieces with one kick.
• Meaningful Name: Its nickname "The Jiggler" should be obvious, given how fat it is, but "Buyon" includes the Japanese onomatopoeia for something that is soft or bouncy (buyo).
• Mysterious Past: With the reveal that Buyon is actually a space alien, it becomes a mystery how exactly he got to Earth and how he was discovered and trained by the Red Ribbon Army.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: An interesting variation. Rather than being so physically tough, it can withstand anything thrown at it, it's so soft it can withstand anything thrown at it.
• No-Sell: Practically its main gimmick, being so fat that direct attacks don't deal any damage. Goku has to make it solid just to be able to defeat it.
• Overly-Long Tongue: It can get long enough to reach across the room.
• Psycho Pink: It is as cruel and ravenous as its skin is pink.
• Stone Wall: Practically his main gimmick. He's so fat that even the Kamehameha bounces off of him, and it takes literally freezing it solid before Goku can even hurt it.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The first enemy in the series to completely No-Sell a Kamehameha.

Mercenary Tao

See Dragon Ball Original Series Villains

Androids

Android 8

See Dragon Ball Others

Android 20 (Dr. Gero)

Android 20 (人造人間20号, Jinzou Ningen Nijuu-Gou) / Dr. Gero (ドクター・ゲロ, Dokutaa Gero)

Voiced by (Japanese): Koji Yada (Most media), Ikuya Sawaki (all media from 2015 onwards)
Voiced by (English): Brian Dobson (Ocean dub); Kent Williams (Funimation dub); Jonathan Love (Blue Water dub); Ed Marcus (AB Groupe/"Big Green" dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): José Luis Castañeda, Guillermo Coria (Kai)

A former scientist for the Red Ribbon Army from the first series which Goku single-handedly destroyed and the one responsible for the creation of the Androids and Cell. By Z he has turned himself into an Android (number 20) and plots revenge on Goku, but the plan pretty much backfires on him. He returns in GT, but doesn't fare any better.

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• Accidental Hero: With the creation of Android 17, Gero unwittingly began a chain of events that ended with 17 winning the Tournament of Power in the Universe Survival Saga of Super in Universe 7's name, and saved the multiverse from total annihilation after it was revealed that if Android 17 wished for anything other than the revival of the erased universes, everything would have been wiped out, including the afterlife.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot:
  • Inverted. In the main universe, he apparently made no less than twenty androids which all ended up doing a Heel–Face Turn somewhere down the line. Finally averted with 19 (and, if you count the movies, 13, 14, and 15), Cell, and himself, since he could be sure he would stay evil.
  • 17 and 18 stay evil in the original timeline. Problem is, they still ended up killing him.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • It's unknown if Android 21 from FighterZ is his wife whom he turned into an android or if 21 is just a clone of his wife with some of her memories and appearance, similar to how 16 was made in his dead son's appearance. FighterZ gives hints to both ways, but never gives concrete proof one way or the other.
  • Soon after 16 is freed, 17 learns that 16 doesn't have a human base, and wonders why Gero would create cyborgs when he can create just as powerful robots. With Gero being dead by that point and all of his labs being destroyed later in the story, this is never answered. Possibly it's an Aborted Arc, as Cell takes over as the main villain a while after Vegeta fights 18.
  • It's not clear if he's stronger than Freeza, as no comparisons are made about their powers. Piccolo's comment suggests that either the the androids aren't as tough as they thought, or the Z-Fighters themselves grew too strong, which is a quite vague statement about where everyone is power-wise. Furthermore, Goku was handling 19 well enough, to the point Gero was worried 19 was going to lose, despite Goku being much weaker because of the heart virus, and it's not commented if the heart virus made Goku so weak that he was weaker than back in Namek or not.
• Anticlimax Boss: Invoked Trope. After Piccolo easily defeats him, following Vegeta doing the same to Android 19, Piccolo wonders why he's so weak, baffled that someone who could easily beat Frieza would fear such weaklings. As it turns out, this is because Android 20 and Android 19 are a mere Disc-One Final Boss, and the real androids Trunks was talking about haven't shown up yet.
• An Arm and a Leg: Piccolo chops off his left arm.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: After Yamcha escapes with the heart virus-stricken Goku, Gero lets them go, declaring that he'll kill Goku later. In the meantime, he'll amuse himself by killing all of Goku's friends, outright saying that he'll enjoy doing so.
• Arc Villain: Of the Androids Saga before Cell took the role.
• Asshole Victim: After all the misery he caused to Goku and his friends, including massacring many innocents out of spite, it's hard to feel any sympathy for him when he is executed by 17 out of retaliation. He gets it again in GT when Myuu betrays him and has Super 17 kill him a second time.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Even though he could only watch his victory from Hell, he is the first villain in the Dragon Ball saga to get exactly what he wanted; the death of Son Goku at the hands of one of his creations, albeit one from an alternate future. (Alas for him, it doesn't stick.) Not until Fusion Zamasu succesfully obliterated his universe of all life in Super has a villain in the Dragon-World been as triumphant in his goals.
• Badass Bookworm: He found a way to make a bio-android called Cell from at least four different sapient species (five if the theories about Tien being part alien is true, SIX into another one if you count Android 21) and incorporate their powers into it, as well as making deadly androids including making himself into one.
• Bald of Evil: Before turning himself into a cyborg, he sported a skullet. Post-conversion, he has a transparent dome where his cranium used to be.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Inverted. He's a mean old bastard who looks more haggard than the oldest man on Earth.
• Best Served Cold: He waited fourteen years after the fall of the Red Ribbon Army before moving to take his revenge on Goku. He spied on Goku to make sure his androids were more than powerful enough to kill him. In Trunks and Cell's timelines, Goku died of the heart virus before he could act. In the main timeline, because Gero didn't send his trackers to Namek, he didn't know about the Super Saiyan transformation and badly underestimated Goku and his group.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Seems to live by this. Gero's whole beef with Goku stems deeply from the fact Goku destroyed the very evil Red Ribbon army that provided his resources and funding (at least until it was later revealed his son fought and died for said army), and decided to spend many, many years attempting to make androids strong enough to dwarf Goku in power. He also does not consider his kidnapping of 17 and 18 and forcibly turning them into powerful cyborgs a bad thing, in fact, he expects them to be thankful and loyal to him. It's probably best exemplified by the fact the reason 18 has limiters on her strength is that he believed 17 was merely too strong to control his strength (i.e. trying to kill him soon after activation), and doesn't suspect 18 would try the same thing (which she does), and it's only THEN does he realize they're rebellious. But even after that, he still expects them to listen to him without any real reason to when they destroy the only thing holding them in line. He's also shown to have no love for the human race, having created many machines to wipe them out. Yet at the same time, Gero was someone who cared very deeply for his deceased son to the point of not wanting to have the model based on him in combat regardless of his strength or deep rooted code that would only serve to help him. And by all accounts 21 seems to view him with fondness when attempting to recall her past.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Dr. Myuu in the Super 17 Saga.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Although he is very powerful, him underestimating the Saiyans and Piccolo despite his research proves to be his undoing. That and he thought raw power alone was enough to beat a group who have trained their entire lives and he was shortsighted enough to give himself the weaker android design instead of the more powerful endless energy model like Androids 17 and 18.
• Brain in a Jar: His brain is concealed in a glass dome under his hat.
• Brick Joke: Vegeta mentions that his head probably rolls just as well as 19's. It does.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Gero gave everything to kill Goku after he single-handily destroyed the Red Ribbon Army. He eventually gets his wish when Cell kills Goku through his failed self-destruction. However, his obsession with beating Goku costs him his life, and his ultimate creation is destroyed by Gohan, the son of the man he spent the last part of his life trying to destroy. Also in the end, his victory turns out to be meaningless since Goku returns to life seven years later and stronger than ever.
• Bullying a Dragon: He repeatedly insults and berates 17 and 18, who were rebellious teenagers before he kidnapped them and forcibly turned them into cyborgs, and who are far stronger than he is, mind you... what happened to him was inevitable. And even worse, when Dr. Gero built 17 and 18, he realized how difficult they were to control, so he came up with a new design for future androids that, while still very strong, were more limited in their power. Except that he then rebuilt his own body and used the deliberately weakened design rather than the fully powered one that might've enabled him to stand up to 17 and 18 (or better yet, to not even need them in the first place). Yeah, his obsession definitely curbed his genius there.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: He certainly doesn't spare words to praise his own work while he's posing as just one of Dr. Gero's creations. Piccolo even deduces correctly that his praise for Gero means that he is Gero before Bulma confirms it.
• Butt-Monkey: In Supersonic Warriors for the GameBoy Advance, his storyline revolved around trying and failing to defeat Goku and the Z-Fighters. So much that you don't even play as him, and even thought Cell was enough to defeat him. Goku even defeats Cell at his strongest, and he struggles to find a way to defeat the protagonists.
• Character Exaggeration: In Z, his only known motivation was having revenge on Son Goku for destroying the Red Ribbon Army, but in GT it extends to turning all organic life into machines. Dr. Gero's interpretation in GT can be blamed on the writers not fully knowing what his motivation was, as he was killed before his plans could be further detailed.
• Crazy-Prepared: The last recordings he had about Goku and his friends were from the Saiyan invasion, and he guessed that none of them would become much stronger than that, but just in case his androids from 13 onward are much stronger... As in could easily kill Frieza at full power on Namek stronger. It paid well when it turned out Goku and co. had grown far beyond expectations.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Gero's easily one of the most brilliant minds in Dragon Ball, and his skill in robotics and programming is so high up there that even Dr. Brief and Bulma have a hard time dealing with reprogramming 16 even with their combined efforts and working for several days. Even then, Bulma was so uncertain about 16 staying an ally that she removed his bomb without telling him in fear he might try to use it on Goku. However, as indicated many times in this entry, Gero seems to lack a lot of common sense.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: He was the leading scientist of the Red Ribbon Army: a military global superpower and rival to Capsule Corp. in terms of its technological output. When Goku puts an end to the RR, he makes death machines, some of which run on perpetual energy, to kill Goku as revenge, and it's known without Goku they'll turn the planet into a hellhole. He probably could have made a huge profit out of his cybernetic enhancements, weapons, etc. Piccolo even lampshades this after chopping off Gero's arm, declaring his efforts to be a "waste of technology."
• Cyborg: Makes himself into one to make sure the latest model wouldn't Heel–Face Turn him.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: The primary goal of the androids, outside of world conquest. Gero built the androids specifically to kill Goku. Given all the resources, dedication, and time he put into this, he obviously viewed Goku as almost god-like. Even the weakest Android is comparable to Frieza (the stronger ones far exceed him) and he was considered the strongest in the universe. It was his creation Cell that achieved Gero's dream, both surpassing Goku in power and killing him, although that last part was willing on Goku's end.
• Didn't See That Coming: Despite all his monitoring of Goku and his friends, he's caught completely flat-footed by the Super Saiyan transformation. He also couldn't understand why Piccolo was so powerful. His plans would have been completely ruined if he didn't make Androids 16, 17, and 18 so powerful by accident and his Unintentional Backup Plan with creating Cell.
• Didn't Think This Through: When 17 and 18 show that they're no more loyal to him than before after 17 steals the remote to control them, Gero decides to just bark orders to them seeing how they should be listening to him thanks to the fact he gave them strength. This quickly causes him to meet his end.
• Dirty Coward:
  • His entire fighting style consists of trying to sneak up on people so he can drain their life, and he always runs away as soon as The Dog Bites Back.
  • This was implied before him and 19 even fought against Z-Fighters. After Goku tells them to fight somewhere away from civilians, it's Gero who chooses an area surrounded by rocky mountains, which Piccolo quickly notes that the mountains can be used to hide in case they need to, and this is despite Gero not expecting Goku and the others to be anywhere near his level. In the end he really did need to hide in the mountains.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Though he was intended as the true and straightforward villain of the Android Saga, a few mocking words from Toriyama's former editor about him and 19's designs quickly turned him into this trope and prompted the introduction of 16, 17, and 18, who themselves would soon follow suit in favor of Cell.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • His hatred towards Goku for destroying the Red Ribbon Army caused him to make a series of androids that turn the future timeline into a hellhole and nearly destroy the solar system in the main timeline. It becomes even more disproportionate when you remember that his former boss, Commander Red, wanted the Dragon Balls to wish for height. However, it is possible that Goku's actions also led to his son being killed by an enemy bullet when the RR army lost a lot of military might. Said son is the inspiration for Android 16's looks which also explains why he didn't want 16 to fight. We'll never know for sure now that Gero is dead.
  • His sanity also steadily takes hits in his quest for revenge to the point where he blames everything for his son's death and the downfall of the Red Ribbon army. This leads him to program a bio-android with the DNA of the galaxy's strongest warriors to hate all forms of life so he would exterminate every living thing in existence. And the rest is history.
• Dub Name Change:
  • He's renamed as "Dr. Maki" in the Latin American Spanish dub.^note Eduardo Garza later elaborated the reason: The dub's director at the time just plain didn't like how "Gero" sounded (implying that it was possibly because "Gero" with a hard "G" would rhyme with various vulgar insults in Mexico, where the dub was made). Keep in mind that said dub already had to rename "Chi-Chi" to "Milk" due to "chichis" being a slang term for breasts there. However, they start to call him "Dr. Maki Gero" in the episode in which Bulma reveals that Android 20 was Dr. Gero (by having her explain that "Maki Gero" was supposedly his full name). From then onward, he is referred to as "Dr. Maki Gero" for the rest of the series (including GT), though he'd still be called just "Dr. Gero" a few times.
  • The US and many European dubs pronounce his name with a soft "G" (making his name sound French) while in Japanese it's a hard "G", which the Latin American Spanish dub at least keeps. (There's actually a pretty good reason for this, as "Ghe-roh" doesn't keep to the Theme Naming as much as "jhe-roh" seems to.)
• Energy Absorption: Abuses this until Piccolo tears off his right arm.
• Epic Fail: On top of his Bullying a Dragon moments, he has many cases of ignorance that definitely qualify him for this:
  • Whether it was actually impossible or he just didn't bother, not following Goku to Namek with his observations and combat data recording truly messed up his calculations, particularly with the Super Saiyan transformation.
    Vegeta: Your boneheaded creator picked a fine chapter to omit from your memory banks!
  • For someone who researched modifying humans to turn them into killer cyborgs, the fact that he concluded that Goku won't become that much stronger because of his age is a massive miscalculation, especially given that he knows about the Saiyans.
  • There's also him not realizing that the Z-Fighters can raise their powers in short bursts and not taking that into account for his energy-absorbing android models.
  • Him not knowing that Piccolo has telepathy. He must have seen at several points that Piccolo and his father, King Piccolo, could communicate with only their thoughts. He obviously didn't know this since he was shocked that Piccolo was able to call for help despite his mouth being covered.
  • At this point, he's already successfully turned flesh-and-blood humans into immensely powerful cyborgs who have infinite amounts of their max energy, yet he outfits himself with the weaker, more flawed energy absorption model for some unknowable reason.^note It's hypothesized Gero fitted the infinite energy machines to 17 and 18 to give Cell a major power boost during their absorption. It's also later shown that 17 and 18 are largely organic, which means that Gero's older body would have had more difficulty with that power, as 17 himself openly speculates. Not to mention he did this to two young children he kidnapped and turned into killing machines against their will. Not once in his obsession does the thought of rebellion occur to him.
  • In GT, he comes back and partners with Dr. Myuu to create an even stronger android than his previous ones, Super 17, to kill Goku. He also boasts that he has upgraded his own android body in Hell, making him stronger than before. Despite this, he gets kicked around and manhandled by Pan, a ten-year-old who doesn't even have Super Saiyan, and ends up pathetically pleading for his life after she restrains him and threatens to kill him if he doesn't call Super 17 off. When he tries to comply with her demand, Myuu has 17 simply blow him up. Again.
  • In the same scene described above, when Pan grabbed Gero, he could have simply absorbed her energy to free himself, but didn't, despite how much he tried to absorb energy back in androids saga whenever he was outmatched.
  • Revealed in a bonus in Super's manga, he for some incomprehensible reason, initially concluded that the reason 17 tried to kill him the first time he was activated must've been due to having too high a power level and purposefully made 18 weaker than him by putting built-in limiters in her design in hopes that she would be more obedient. It obviously doesn't work and 18 tries to kill him too, since the real reason is obviously that they hate him for kidnapping them, performing awful experiments on them, and trying to tell them what to do.
  • Gero created 17 and 18 to kill Goku, and, as the Future timeline showed, to Kill All Humans if Goku was dead already. Not only do 17 and 18 save Goku multiple times, but 17 also becomes the protector to the human race in general and goes on to win the Tournament of Power and save the multiverse, and that's after 17 attempted a Heroic Sacrifice to save Goku and Vegeta, no less. In whatever hell Gero is in, he surely is kicking himself hard.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero reveals Dr. Gero had another son who resented the Red Ribbon Army for "corrupting" his father, mother and older brother, and warned his own son, Dr. Hedo, to stay away from them.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • For all the pain and tragedy associated with his actions, every indication to date has heavily leaned on the idea that he genuinely cared for his family while it was still whole. According to a 2014 interview with Akira Toriyama, Gero based Android 16's design off his dead son who was a former Red Ribbon army soldier felled by a bullet. Gero, having a special place in his heart for his son, gave 16 great power and his explosive mechanism. But, not wanting him to be destroyed in battle if possible, gave him a gentle personality which caused 16 to outwardly be considered a "failed model". Dragon Ball FighterZ implies that he may have turned his wife into Android 21, though sadly she doesn't remember being human and only knows what she read in her own file, which neglected to mention her or 16's connection to Gero (though it did mention that 16's human inspiration was her child).
  • Gero also really liked Android 19 for some reason. It's never expanded on anywhere, but Gero starts pleading Vegeta to spare 19's life before Vegeta blasts him to pieces. From his reactions, this was more than just wanting to have to replace a creation, but he acted like he just lost a dear friend. 19 was probably his only real company and the only loyal and bug free Android that he could count on. Even Cell mocks Gero in expanded materials, but 19 was the one Android that was truly intelligent (despite not being much of a talker) and loyal to him.
• Evil Counterpart: To Grandpa Gohan, to a certain extent. Both are old fellows who took young people (Kakarot, Lapis, and Lazuli) under their wing, renamed them (to Goku, 17 and 18, respectively), caused a change in their personalities and ultimately got killed by them. Though unlike Grandpa Gohan, who got accidentally killed by the Superpowered Evil Side of Goku, Gero's death was a case of The Dog Bites Back.
• Evil Genius: Not just creating androids, but also making himself into one. He also created Cell, who was proclaimed the Ultimate Life Form thanks to his genetic heritage.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: After being defeated by the Z Fighters, he hit the Godzilla Threshold and reactivated Androids 17 and 18, hoping to be able to control them with a remote deactivation device... which they promptly swipe and destroy the moment he lets his guard down.
• Evil Is Petty: His entire beef with Goku is simply because Goku cost him his job and funding when Goku destroyed the Red Ribbon Army... at least, in his early depictions and his initial appearances. Later material reveals his motivation goes somewhat deeper, and while it's still very myopic (his son may have died for Red Ribbon, but his son still died for a leader who didn't care and a cause that would've made the world a worse place) and ultimately petty, it's at least more understandable.
• Evil Old Folks: The most notable other than Babidi. He all but destroyed Future Trunks's world and the main timeline over a petty (well, not so petty to him, but still very myopic) grudge.
• Exact Words: When Goku demands that they move the fight to a deserted area, Gero decides to make a deserted area by using his Eye Beams to level the entire city.
  Dr. Gero: I cleared the area of innocents, in accordance with your wishes. Do you disagree with my methods?
  • Later, when Piccolo notes that he's sounding like Dr. Gero himself, he insists that Dr. Gero is dead and that he is just a creation of his. This is technically true, as Gero the human did technically die, his heart no longer beating and everything...but due to a scientific process that transferred his brain into "his creation", Android 20, so that he could live as an android rather than as a human.
• Expy: Of Dr. Mashirito from Toriyama's own Dr. Slump. Like Gero, Mashirito was a scientist who built several robots to defeat a single individual, eventually turned himself into one, and was killed by one of his own creations.
• Eye Beams: His primary method of attack.
• Freudian Excuse: According to Toriyama, his son was killed in action while serving in the Red Ribbon Army. This would explain why he hates Goku so much since he destroyed the army his son died fighting for.
• Forgot About His Powers: Jarringly enough, he forgot about his own power absortion in GT when Pan grabs him, despite how much he tried to steal energy from the Z-Fighters back in androids saga. Pan grabs his neck and Gero grabs her arm while trying to pull it away, and he's not strong enough to free himself from Pan, but he still had the perfect chance to absorb her energy, but just doesn't.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: His cyborg body's only organic part is his brain.
• Go Through Me: When Android 19 is draining Goku's energy, Gero puts himself between the other Z-Fighters and tells them that they're going to just stand there and watch Goku die unless they can get past him, punctuating his statement by shooting Piccolo in the chest with his Eye Beams. Of course, he doesn't account for Vegeta arriving on the scene.
• Godzilla Threshold: His reactivation of Android 17 and 18 is a villainous example. He knew how rebellious they were, but having exhausted all other options, and with the Z-Fighters literally at his doorstep, he was desperate enough to give it a try. Oh, sure, they manage to fight off the Z-Fighters with ease... but not before turning on Gero and killing him.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of the Android Saga. Between assisting the rise of the Red Ribbon Army originally, being the co-creator of Android 8, creating Androids 17 & 18 and their resulting future rampage, creating 17 & 18 period out of a pair of unwilling teens, attempting to hunt down Goku with all the Androids, creating Cell, causing 17 to go Super in GT, and in the deutero-canonical Dragon Ball Fighter Z he possibly turned his kindhearted wife and mother of his son into a nigh-unstoppable android which lead to her resulting suffering and rampage (though he couldn't have known posthumously his machines would recover and use the cells of a monster named Majin Buu, leading to her going insane from gnawing hunger, it's still completely his fault and even without Buu he still performed those inhumane experiments on her to kill Goku. Without Buu's DNA, she could've even ended up like Cell.
• Grumpy Old Man: Perpetual Death Glare, prone to yelling, and he has a very bitter-sounding voice. It's obvious he was meant to be this, even if he wasn't evil.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Loved his deceased son enough to devote his time modeling Android 16 after him. It makes him more powerful than 17 and 18 but giving gentle programming to avoid combat so 16 would outlive him. Needless to say, 17 and 18 meddling to bring about his activation, really pisses the old guy off.
  • His reasons for Androidizing his possible wife are also vague (if she's actually his wife and not grown like Cell is similarly left vague) - there's the possibility he wanted to save her life and ensure that she, too, outlived him. There's also the possibility that he thought it would be easier to control an android that already loved him or it could be a combination of both. Regardless of what his reasons were it is made absolutely clear by the game that she still never should've had to go through what he did to her, and on top of that because of Buu, the process left her with a fatal design flaw that made her go insane with the desire to eat people to the point of developing multiple personalities. This is extremely distressing to 21 herself (who can't remember him at all), leaving her confused as to what she is and why he would create a dangerous monster like her.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Three times. His androids end up betraying him in every timeline.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: He started out as a human, one of the people that Goku and the others spent their lives protecting, and both before and after turning himself into a Cyborg, Dr. Gero proves to be one of the biggest, most evil bastards in the series, and a perfect example of how humans can be just as bad as the monsters and aliens the Z-Fighters face every day. No better is this displayed than with his creation of Cell. To elaborate: Gero created a techno-organic monster that powers up by literally drinking people in the slowest, painful way possible, all for the sake of petty revenge on Goku for destroying the Red Ribbon Army, with Cell himself later deducing that Gero in fact created him to kill every living thing in the universe.
• Immortality Seeker: He tells Androids 17 and 18 that he rebuilt himself into an android because he wants to live forever. 17 kills him a few minutes later.
• Informed Ability: He claims to be stronger than Android 19 after Vegeta effortlessly blows the android apart. He never backs up this claim and gets his butt handed to him by Piccolo, even after he drains almost all of Piccolo's energy.
• Irony:
  • His hatred of Goku is the stuff of legends, but he never seemed to realize that in using Goku's DNA in Cell's creation, part of Goku would live on through Cell.
  • If one accounts for FighterZ, this extends to his possible wife 21, who also has some of Goku's DNA. Not only would Goku live on, but he also made the person he loved partly become the person he hated to the point of insanity.
  • Android 17 is his walking irony in that not only 17 offs him, but he also joined Goku in the Universal Tournament and saves the entire multiverse. Essentially, Gero tried to make 17 into an anti-Goku weapon but ended up creating one of Goku's most powerful allies instead.
• It's Personal: The entire Android/Cell Saga can be seen as one big 'It's Personal' towards Goku since Dr. Gero built the androids specifically to kill Goku as vengeance for destroying the Red Ribbon Army.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Dr. Gero kidnapped two teenagers to do his bidding, and is single-handedly responsible for Trunks' Bad Future. He is killed by Android 17, the computer programmed with his memories incinerated by Trunks, and to top it off his Cell project is brought down with help from the very android he designed after his own son.
  • He (almost) kills Yamcha by impaling him through the chest with his bare hand during his initial rampage through the city. Android 17 finishes Gero in almost the exact same way.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Android 20 being Dr. Gero was originally a twist (which is foreshadowed early on when he talks about Gero in third person, but Piccolo notes that he talks about Gero like he is Gero, which he denies and says Gero is dead), but whenever a game adapts the Androids saga, they don't bother hiding this to the point he's almost never called Android 20.
• Mad Scientist: He created Cell and the androids with science; notably, he's one of the few fighting varieties of the franchise.
• Major Injury Underreaction: While he is very expressive when 17 impales him with his hand, his reaction to his head being kicked off is one of mild frustration and not one of worry he's literally just a talking head that's completely defenseless.
• Man Behind the Man: Subverted as he shows up first and all of his creations are a much bigger threat than he is.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: In the end, he got what he wanted. Goku is killed by his greatest creation. Cell, however, is soon killed afterward by Gohan and Goku returns to life seven years later.
• Misanthrope Supreme: In addition to hating Son Goku and friends, it's heavily implied that Gero hates the human race as a whole, considering he made multiple killing machines who lack the slightest bit of empathy towards humanity and delight in their fear and deaths.
• Misplaced Retribution: In GT, he teams up with Dr. Myuu to get revenge on Goku for his death, dismissing the fact that both he and Myuu were killed by their own creations.
• Moral Myopia:
  • Lampshaded in the Funimation dub. He starts screaming "that's enough" at Vegeta when the Saiyan beats 19 so brutally that 19 is running for his life. Vegeta quickly calls him out on this, pointing out that they had come to kill him and the Z-Fighters in the first place, and it's only "enough" because Gero is losing. Not only this, but Gero and 19 were also the ones committing mass murder on the helpless several chapters earlier.
  • His entire grudge against Goku stinks of this. Gero only cares that he lost his job when Goku destroyed the Red Ribbons; never mind the fact that they were an evil army who terrorized innocent people, and Gero willingly built killer robots for them to help them do so.
• Never My Fault: Created the androids and Cell and left them to terrorize innocent populations to spite Goku for destroying his machines. Machines that he'd knowingly built for an organization that terrorized innocent populations.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: His creation of the Android siblings saves all of the multiverse from being wiped out of existence by the two Zenos, because both of them were critical to the Team U7 winning the tournament (with 17 personally actually winning the entire thing). 17 would then go on to show how much he had grown as a person by wishing for the sake of others instead of his own desires, passing Zeno's test and proving that the current reality deserved to exist.
• Not Me This Time: Played With in Movie 7. When Goku first encounters Android 13, he initially thinks that Dr. Gero created him. However, Android 13 corrects him and states that this time, he and his partners, Androids 14 and 15, were created by Gero's supercomputer rather than Gero himself. It's not that he didn't intend to have them created so much as by the time they were created, Gero was long dead. The same applies to both Cell (whose initial creation and development was handled by Gero personally but had to grow from a fetal state before being born just like any other living creature, by the time this finished Gero had died) and 21 (who he started with as a human woman and Gero set up his computer/robots to automate the work using information and algorithms he gained creating Cell, resulting in almost all of the work being done in the decade after his death).
• Off with His Head!: 17 kicks his head off before crushing it under his foot.
• Omnicidal Maniac:
  • Cell implies after returning to Earth in his Super Perfect form that Dr. Gero may have created him for not just killing Goku and destroying the Earth, but also the entire universe as revenge on life itself for letting the Red Ribbon Army be defeated.
  • In GT, Gero talks about having a dream to replace all life with artificial beings.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: The scale of this guy's expertise is off the charts. Not only is he a genius of engineering and robotics capable of building technology tougher than Frieza, but he's also:
  • A biochemist and geneticist capable of creating a being like Cell from scratch (minus the saiyan DNA samples), which would likely require synthesizing all sorts of unnatural compounds.
  • A computer scientist who pioneers AI sufficiently complex to able to develop empathy (Android 16).
  • A (theoretical) physicist who develops infinite energy generators for Androids 17 and 18, something every expert in history would love to study his notes on.
  • A neurosurgeon capable of programming a computer to perform his own brain transplant into an inorganic body.
• Outliving One's Offspring: His son was killed fighting for the Red Ribbon Army, leading him to create Android 16 in his image. It's implied his Revenge Myopia against Goku is in part because his defeat of the Red Ribbon Army made his son's death All for Nothing^note though given Commander Red secretly just wanted to be taller, it would've been like that even if Goku did nothing
• Outside-Context Problem: A very mild example. The Z-Fighters are caught completely by surprise when they learned that they can't sense the androids. Being unliving constructs, they have no Ki to sense. Androids 19 and 20 can also absorb energy, making any energy-based attacks useless until their hands are disabled or removed. However, once their gimmicks are rendered useless, they go down very easily.
• Pet the Dog: A off-screen example, which depends on outside sources, but Dr. Gero, as evil as he was, had a soft spot for his family. He built Android 16 based on his late son and was adamant about not making him battle if it wasn't required, and it's implied he may have turned his wife into an android with the hopes of reviving or protecting her. She was turned insane not by his design, but due to Majin Buu's cells.
• Posthumous Villain Victory: As mentioned elsewhere, Gero is the first character in the Dragon Ball saga (Zamasu being the second) to get what he wants: Revenge on Son Goku. But Gero is very much dead by the time it happens.
• Properly Paranoid: He builds the electrical wiring of his lab around the remote kill-switch for androids 17 and 18. Unfortunately for him, he uses this too often on 17 who feigns obedience until he can snatch it away from Gero.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Despite Goku being overpowered and killed by his greatest creation, Cell, the bio-android is killed soon after achieving ultimate perfection. His victory becomes utterly meaningless after Goku comes back to life seven years later with power that completely dwarfs Cell at his best.
• Remember the New Guy?: He wasn't even mentioned in Dragon Ball's original Red Ribbon Army storyline. The anime even had a quietly ignored filler episode that claimed one Dr. Frappe (or Flappe) created androids like #8, only for Toriyama to bring that element back years later. This is later handwaved in one of the databooks by stating that Dr. Gero and Dr. Frappe were partners on the Android project. The original dub took this a step farther by having Goku claim that he met Gero back then and was surprised to hear he was still alive. Naturally, subsequent remasters and Kai removed this line in favor of a more accurate translation.
• Retroactive Idiot Ball: He originally was meant to be the main villain of the Androids Saga, but because Torishima, Toriyama's ex-editor, didn't like him and 19, Toriyama decided to create other, more powerful androids, and it caused this trope. Gero uses the inferior absortion type, which 18 even points out it's an older type, and while she wonders if he made himself into the absortion type because infinite types are too difficult to control, it doesn't explain why Gero didn't use the infinite energy type on himself. While it can be excused that the infinite energy type 17 and 18 have wouldn't work on Gero, since they're mostly biological and Gero is an old man, so it could possibly not make him as strong (Plus he mentioned he wanted eternal life, which 17 and 18 may not have), he could still make himself into the same infinite type as 16, who is mechanical, so he could just transplant his brain into an mechanical infinite type.
• Revenge: It's very disproportionate considering his boss wanting to wish for height growth, which would likely have made him as mad as Black had he known, though it's more likely because Goku managed to remove his funding source and his son had fought and died in the army, making his efforts for naught.
• Revenge Before Reason: As Bulma and Piccolo note, Gero had a very good mind and could have really made himself a profit if he used his technology to benefit the world rather than using it as fuel for his hate against Goku.
• Revenge Myopia: He wants Goku dead because Goku destroyed the Red Ribbon Army and cost him his funding. This is ignoring the fact that the Red Ribbons were an evil group who terrorized innocent people and wanted to Take Over the World, and Gero willingly built killer robots to help them. Later material elaborates that Gero also wanted to avenge his son, who died fighting for the army, but it's still incredibly myopic considering that Gero's son still died for a leader who didn't care about him or his son and a cause that would've made the world a worse place.
• Running Gag: Being killed by 17. It's happened twice in canon (one in the main timeline, the other in Future Trunks' timeline), once in Super Android 13, and once in GT.
  Dr. Gero: (Just before Super 17 destroys him) No, not again! AAAGGH!!!
• Self Made Super Powers: Dr. Gero is so brilliant that he creates multiple cyborgs and Android more powerful than the second strongest being in the universe, Frieza and the strongest Super Saiyans without ever leaving the Earth, a very remote and weak planet. He then converts himself into a cyborg.
• Small Role, Big Impact:
  • In the timeline Trunks comes from he is never seen, being murdered offscreen by the androids, and he is killed fairly early in the main timeline too by the Androids. Still, his influence causes at least two timelines to turn into hell and nearly destroys the main timeline. Literally every bad thing that happens in Androids/Cell Saga happened because of him and his grudge against Goku. Even as far ahead as Super, Zamasu wouldn't have specifically targeted Future Trunks' world had it not been for his time traveling, which he wouldn't have had any reason to do in a world that was never terrorized by the Androids, to begin with. And then there's Android 21 from FighterZ, a terrifyingly powerful and always-hungry bio-android possibly converted from his own wife.
  • His creation of Android 17 and 18 ends up saving the entire Dragon Ball multiverse from annihilation. They participate in the Tournament of Power, during which 18 gets herself eliminated to make sure 17 stays in the tournament; 17 goes on to win the whole thing, no less, and he then passes the Zenos' Secret Test of Character with flying colors.
• Smug Snake:
  • Starts acting like a big shot and only has the advantage because Goku was ill. As soon as Vegeta destroys 19, he quickly scampers off to activate 17 and 18.
  • Before then, he acts smug again after he takes Piccolo's energy. He's quickly put in his place after Piccolo Curb Stomps him.
• Start of Darkness: Gero has a very clear moment that set him down the path he'd follow; the day his son, a Red Ribbon soldier, was killed in the line of duty. Everything he would later do — all his attempts to kill Goku for destroying the army his son died for and all the people who suffered as a result, building Android 16 in the image of his son, possibly turning his implied wife into Android 21 to ensure her survival so that some part of his family would live on — all stem from that one day. Most curiously, this moment has not been depicted directly in any Dragon Ball media as of yet.
• The Stoic: When he was first introduced, he was very much this. He spoke in a calm, monotone voice even as he was killing people and explaining his origins to Goku. However, the moment Goku went Super Saiyan and started to pummel Android 19, he loses this trait, going from concern to cocky to full-blown panic after he realizes how badly outmatched he is.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Gero's intention when creating the androids. After Goku destroyed the Red Ribbon Army, he wanted to create a fighter that could beat Goku on his terms and inspire the same sense of fear and dread he gave the army (hence the massive overkill on the power generators and the constant monitoring Goku and his friends' growth in power over the years for the bio-android projects). Cell came closest to doing this to Goku (if only because he was the second of Gero's creations who fought him), but even then, he never once displayed fear of Cell, no matter how much stronger he was than him, and died on his own terms.
• That Man Is Dead: During his initial encounter with the Z Fighters, he claims Dr. Gero has passed away, and that he is simply another one of his creations. And he wasn't technically lying.
• Theme Naming: Given that most living things in the Dragon Ball universe are named after food or concepts related to eating, what's a totally appropriate name for someone who creates facsimiles of life and spits upon the real thing? Why, a Japanese word for vomit, of course.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • All the androids. When Gero last monitored Goku on Earth, the highest power level on record was Vegeta's Great Ape form, which had a power level of around 180,000. He didn't see any of the fights on Namek, so he calculated how powerful to make the androids based on what he saw on Earth, knowing nothing about Frieza or the Super Saiyan. The weakest android is broadly comparable to Frieza, who was considered the strongest in the universe, meaning Gero made his weakest creation around a thousand times stronger than he needed to, equivalent to trying to assassinate one guy by building a goddamn nuclear warhead.
  • And speaking of nukes: Androids 16, 17, and 18 were his strongest series and it showed when they demonstrated enough power to easily best a normal Super Saiyan — which, once again, he had no idea existed.^note It's largely implied that it's the power generators that they run on that made them so powerful, so that was more dumb luck. On top of that, at least 16 and 18 (and more than likely 17) have self-detonators — 16, in particular, felt his bomb was powerful enough to insta-kill even (Cell Games era) Goku despite his power being close to Perfect Cell.
  • As for Cell, his base form is a stupidly overpowered amalgamation of many of the universe's greatest fighters, including Goku himself. Furthermore, 17 and 18 — two androids who were already far stronger than they had any reasonable need to be — also act as components for Cell to power himself up even further, resulting in a creature that could annihilate a solar system with little trouble. And all this to kill one man who cost Dr. Gero his job almost two decades ago. "Overkill" is an understatement. He was aiming to terrorize.
  • He goes even further beyond with Android 21. He didn't think that making her as powerful as Cell was enough, he had to create a way to make her even more powerful. So he had his supercomputer gather even more DNA from battles for the next 10 years and threw in the cells of the most intelligent scientists in the world to make her a genius on top of that. He just couldn't account for Majin Buu.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • His obsession with destroying Goku has really deprived his otherwise-genius mind in several ways. Namely, kidnapping two rebellious teenagers and making them more powerful than you is already risky enough. Repeatedly mouthing off at said rebellious teenagers, whom again, he made to be more powerful, is like hanging a "kill me" sign on your own neck.
  • Not running for it once 17 and 18 wake up, though he probably wouldn't have made it far. Instead, he stands there pissing them off even more, leading to his death. The most pathetic part for him is that if he had just let them wake up 16, 16 likely would've prevented them from killing him (though admittedly 16 didn't show much reaction to hearing that Gero was dead).
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: In Dragon Ball FighterZ, it's revealed that Android 21 is his amnesiac widow (or at least heavily uses her base for a model) and his most powerful creation. She's gorgeous, he's... not. That being said, converting her into a bio-android likely kept her youthful, whereas he likely didn't bother converting himself into an android until he was quite elderly, and the man clearly cares more about practicality than aesthetics.
• Underestimating Badassery: He started monitoring Goku and his friends not long after the defeat of the Red Ribbon Army, gathering data on his powers and calculating a pattern for his increases in strength. The research was abandoned before they left for Namek, as Gero felt he could accurately gauge how strong they would be upon returning and set the power of himself and 19 above that. He was thus unprepared for two Super Saiyans and a fused Namekian. Stealing fortune from the rest of the world, though, Dr. Gero was also a big believer in no kill like overkill and used technology for 17 and 18 which set them well above even his own parameters.
• Undignified Death: Stepped on by his own creation.
• Unintentional Backup Plan: If you consider that Dr. Gero's final creation, Cell, eventually succeeds in killing Goku, exactly as Gero had planned for the androids, and was the closest any of his creations came to his implied dream for the total genocide of humanity.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He is never shown using any advanced fighting techniques or styles whatsoever. Instead, he relies heavily on his power and uses sneak attacks to grab his target so he can drain their energy to become stronger. Once his power fails him, he's completely helpless and can only run to get backup.
• Villainous Breakdown: He starts to lose his composure after Vegeta destroys 19. It goes further downhill for him after Piccolo proves himself stronger than him and he's forced to awaken 17 and 18. Gero's further enraged when 17 takes his kill-switch remote, crushing it. He utterly loses it once both of them try to activate 16, so much he doesn't seem to care anymore that he's sorely outclassed by them.
• Villainous Cheekbones: Standard for most elderly Dragon Ball characters.
• Villainous Legacy: Gero dies fairly early on, but his creations continue to plague the characters for the rest of the season, causing far more trouble than Gero could ever have hoped to.
  • He himself is a member of a previously defeated villainous organization, the Red Ribbon Army, and was evidently responsible for a lot of the technology they utilized.
• Villains Want Mercy: He plotted for years to kill Goku and his friends out of petty revenge, sucked the life out of Yamcha before impaling him, and leveled an entire city to the ground, but when Android 19 is overpowered by Vegeta and sent running for his life, Dr. Gero begs him to stop as Vegeta prepares to finish 19 off; Vegeta rightfully tells him off before blowing 19 to pieces.
  Dr. Gero: Enough!
  Vegeta: Don't be absurd! It's enough because you're losing! You've come here to destroy us! Fool! You're going to have to finish what you started!
• The Worf Effect: He is at least many times stronger than the base Saiyans (he's unaffected by Goku's punch to the face). Yet Android 20 gets easily beaten by Piccolo, someone who was once weaker than Frieza's third form, who was much weaker than base Goku or Vegeta.
• World's Smartest Man: The only person in the world with a right to this claim aside from Bulma and Dr. Briefs. Although he remains mostly reclusive and unheard of due to the science community shunning him for being a psycho. But to his credit, his Androids were so advanced that Dr. Brief himself didn't entirely comprehend his designs.

Android 19

Android 19 (人造人間19号, Jinzou Ningen Juukyuu-Gou)

Voiced by (Japanese): Yukitoshi Hori (Most media), Tetsu Inada (GT)
Voiced by (English): Phillip Wilburn (Z), Todd Haberkorn (Kai) (Funimation dub); Cathy Weseluck (Ocean dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Ricardo Hill, Roberto Mendiola (Kai)

The final android created by Dr. Gero whose objective is to kill Goku. He almost does just that (with a tiny bit of help from Goku's heart condition), but is attacked by Vegeta before that can happen. Android 19 just loses his head after Vegeta goes Super Saiyan.

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• Acrofatic: Fast and agile despite his size.
• An Arm and a Leg: He gets his arms ripped off by Vegeta shortly before his destruction.
• Artificial Human: He is a fully mechanical android.
• Asshole Victim: Considering the fact that he ruthlessly beat on Goku and started to suck the life out of him while Goku was helpless and incapacitated from the heart virus, it's more or less impossible to feel any pity for him when Vegeta blows him to smithereens.
• Brain in a Jar: Just like Gero, he has a glass dome covering his brain concealed by a hat, only his brain is purely electromechanical in nature.
• Butt-Monkey: His return in GT is just to pay homage to the way he got axed the first time around — he got blown up and had nothing left but his broken head clattering from the wreckage and rolling to a stop rather pitifully. Off-screen. Yep, he wasn't even worth the trouble of another big death scene and was reduced to a quick gag.
• The Cameo: Basically all his brief appearances in GT amount to. He first is shown flying out of Hell with Cooler, Major Metallitron, Yakon, Pui Pui, Jeice, Raditz, and General Rilldo on a TV announcement. Next, he's seen blasting up stuff with Pui Pui during the same broadcast. Finally, after Pui Pui and Yakon are both killed, #19 is the next to go with once again being blown up, off-screen, by Goten and Trunks and having his damaged head rolled out as before with Vegeta. He didn't even get to have any interactions with Dr. Gero.
• Character Tics: He can be seen shaking his earring multiple times.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: Phillip Wilburn's take on 19 made him out borderline Monster Clown on helium. Todd Haberkorn sounds fairly eerie himself with his take sounding downright woman-like at times.
• Crippling Overspecialization: His fighting style relies solely on his high endurance, his ability to sap energy from opponents, and the element of surprise thanks to him being invisible to the Z-Fighters' Spider-Sense. Without any of these advantages, 19 is basically helpless.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Before then, Goku dominated him even as his strength was being drained by the heart virus. Once Goku wasted a massive amount of energy using a Kamehameha that 19 greedily absorbed, the tables turned and Goku gets the crap beat out of him.
• Determinator: Absolutely refuses to let go of Vegeta once he manages to start absorbing his energy. Vegeta, for his part, commends him for this right before ripping his arms clean off of his body.
• Dirty Coward: He gleefully beats a terminally-ill Goku senseless and drains his energy... but when he gets his ass handed to him by the perfectly healthy Vegeta and loses his arms, he's left trembling in fear before freaking out and running for the hills. Vegeta even calls him out on it in the original Funimation dub:
  Vegeta: What's the matter? You're the one who started this game, and now you don't want to play anymore? You were enjoying yourself before, when you were sucking the life out of Kakarot!
• The Dragon: The straightest example in the Android saga, being Android 20's right hand and only creation besides Cell who doesn't defy him in some way.
• Energy Absorption: Like Android 20, he can absorb ki and energy. Doesn't help him against Vegeta.
• Fat Bastard: There's a very good reason Gero designed him to look like that... he found it amusing.
• Feel No Pain: According to Tien and Vegeta.
• Flat Character: Since he was designed to be fully loyal to Gero, he has no real personality. He also only exists to be killed by Vegeta.
• Gonk: Barely looks human.
• Jobber: Essentially existed so Vegeta would have something to beat up on when he first became a Super Saiyan.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: When Goku is incapacitated by his heart virus in the midst of their fight, 19 quickly beats him down and starts sucking the life out of him... which Vegeta quickly puts a stop to.
• Killer Robot: Created to kill Goku. Almost succeeds thanks to Goku catching his heart virus.
• Monster Clown: His white face and high-pitched voice in the Funimation dub of Z can give off this impression, especially with his laughter.
• Not So Stoic: Initially seen with a blank expression and seeming like an emotionless robot, the mask cracks during his fights with Goku and Vegeta. He giggles like a crazed child after absorbing Goku's Kamehameha and beating him into the ground, has a gleeful Psychotic Smirk on his face while he's draining Goku's energy directly, and is left trembling in fear once he realizes he can't beat Vegeta before trying to make a break for it, screaming in sheer terror as he does.
  Vegeta: So it's I guess it's true after all. Androids do experience fear.
• Off with His Head!: Like Guldo, this was caused by Vegeta, but unlike Guldo, Vegeta blew him up first.
• Outside-Context Problem: Like the other androids, his energy can't be sensed by the Earth's fighters. He can also absorb energy through his hand like Android 20. Despite this, he's killed quickly once Vegeta removes his hands.
• Robo Speak: In the Funimation dub.
• Running Gag: Each time he gets killed, all that remains is his head, with the cranium blown out, his eyes all derpy, and his mouth hanging open.
• Sadist: Takes great delight in draining his victims and beating them senseless, giggling like a crazed child while he does so. You can also see the joy on his face as he sucks the life out of Goku.
• Smug Snake: He acts like a big shot, and only has the upper hand against Goku because of the heart virus. As soon as Vegeta kicks his ass and rips his arms off, he tries to make a break for it.
• The Stoic: When he's first seen, he didn't smile and had a largely blank expression. Even when Goku was beating on him, he showed no real emotion. He did laugh maniacally after absorbing Goku's Kamehameha and started to beat him up and suck his energy. His cold demeanor completely shatters after Vegeta tears him up, leaving him quivering in fear.
• Tears from a Stone: Being a completely mechanical construct, 19 should feel no actual emotions whatsover, and Gero more than likely only programmed simulations of sadistic glee into his protocols for the sake of intimidation in combat. It's therefore a chilling testament to Super Vegeta's sheer overwhelming power that he is able to beat genuine fear and self-preservation insincts into a machine that does not even have a soul.
• Undignified Death: Loses his composure when Vegeta kicks his ass, and finally tries to run for his life after Vegeta tears his hands off.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Just like Android 20, he is shown using no fighting style or techniques. When Goku went Super Saiyan, 19 kept bull charging and didn't even try to evade or block Goku's attacks. Instead, he relies on his high endurance and his energy absorption to get ahead. The moment he loses his ability to drain energy, he becomes completely defenseless and tries to run.
• Villainous Breakdown: Both figuratively and literally - after realizing that he has no chance against Vegeta, he ends up running away from him screaming his head off.
• Your Head Asplode: Inverted — 19's head is the only part of his body that doesn't end up exploding from Vegeta's Big Bang Attack. It happens again in GT where Trunks and Goten blast him off-screen.

Androids 17 & 18

See Dragon Ball: Androids 17 and 18

For information on their future counterparts, see Dragon Ball: Future Trunks' Timeline

For information on Hellfighter Android 17 and Super Android 17, see Dragon Ball GT Villains

Android 16

See Dragon Ball Others

Dr. Gero's Supercomputer

Dr. Gero's Supercomputer

A Supercomputer programmed to finish Dr. Gero's work even after his death. It was responsible for the completion of Cell in Future Trunks' timeline.

It gets a larger role in Dragon Ball Z: Super Android 13!, where it releases Androids 13, 14, and 15 to kill Goku.

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• Adaptational Intelligence: In most versions it does not speak or show any signs that it is self-aware. However in the English dub of Super Android 13, the computer actually speaks, in Dr. Gero's voice no less. Android 13 reveals that the computer is programmed to think it is Gero.
• AI Is A Crap Shoot: It's a super computer that continues Dr. Gero's mission after his death to create Androids to kill Goku.
• Ascended Extra: It was only given a passing mention in canon by Cell, before promptly getting destroyed by Krillin and Trunks. But in the English dub of the Non-Serial Movie it is a fully fleshed out and speaking character, being the Big Bad of sorts.
• Awesome by Analysis: Is constantly scanning enemies and relaying battle data to the Androids.
• Big Bad: Is effectively this in Dragon Ball Z: Super Android 13!, due to deploying the Androids to kill Goku and giving them orders.
• Non-Action Big Bad: As it is an immobile computer, it lacks any combat ability and must instead rely on the Androids to fight in its stead.
• Small Role, Big Impact: It barely appears onscreen, but it was responsible for Cell's creation and by extension all of the carnage that Cell spread during the Cell Saga.
• Spared By Adaptation: In Super Android 13, since it's unknown if the Cell events occurred, Piccolo never got to learn about the existence of the computer and hence the Z-fighters never return to Dr. Gero's laboratory basement to destroy it.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For all intents and purposes, it is Dr. Gero without a body, whereby it carries out his purpose and even talks like him in Super Android 13.

Androids 13, 14 & 15

See Dragon Ball Z Movie Villains

Present Cell

Present Cell (現在のセル, Genzai no Seru)

The main timeline counterpart of Cell. He ends up being destroyed by Future Trunks and Krillin.

The Cell who achieves perfection and becomes a major antagonist has his own page.

For information on Future Cell, see Future Trunks' Timeline.

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Besides tropes featured by Cell, Present Cell features examples of:

• Adaptational Badass: In the Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors game, he is able to become perfect from birth since Gero adjusted him to not need to absorb the Androids.
• Irony: Despite being created to kill Goku and being from the same timeline as him, all versions of Cell have the least personal relationship with him out of all the main villains in the series. This irony is even more pronounced for Present Cell, as the Cell from Cell's timeline who appeared in the main timeline at least fought Goku and indirectly managed to carry out his mission to kill Goku. Present Cell, on the other hand, never even met Goku.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Averted; Future Trunks and Krillin killed him before he could awaken. Of course, this doesn't stop the Cell that's developed into his imperfect form, but it'll save them the trouble of taking on Present Cell later.

Cell Jrs.

Cell Jrs. (セルJrs, Seru Junia)

Voiced by (Japanese): Yusuke Numata (Z), Takahiro Fujimoto (Kai), Bin Shimada (Super Butoden 2), Hirotaka Suzuoki (Budokai series and Budokai Tenkaichi 1 and 2), Shigeru Nakahara (the legend)
Voiced by (English): Don Brown, Terry Klassen, Brian Drummond, Richard Newman, and Pauline Newstone (Ocean dub); Justin Cook (Funimation dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Carlos Olizar, Óscar Flores, José Arenas

Cell's offspring. They are asexually produced from Cell's tail, through cellular mitosis. According to Cell himself, each Cell Junior has his power and abilities.

In the manga of Dragon Ball Super, it's revealed they survived and became park rangers alongside Android 17.

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• Adaptational Wimp: They're extremely strong not only in general but by the standards of the era. Regardless, video games tend to cast them in the role of weak expendable mooks. In the context of their arc, only two or three characters (Gohan, Cell, and maybe Goku) were stronger than even a single Cell Junior.
• Ambiguous Situation: Whether or not the Cell Juniors who show up in Super's manga's bonus chapter are the original Cell Juniors or not. 17 himself says they're pseudo/fakes, who just happen to be as strong as the originals, and the narration at the end says that since Cell could regenerate, maybe Cell Juniors also could, and maybe the Cell Juniors from the island are the originals after all, but it's all left unanswered, and whether or not they're the originals is a Voodoo Shark either way.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Despite looking like mini versions of Cell, they are almost as strong as him, and are only weaker than Gohan and Cell by the time of their creation.
• Blackmail: Dialogue for an unused Budokai 3 scenario has one Cell Jr. tell Cell "I know what you're hiding", implying this on some level.
• Blood Knight: They love to fight and kill as much as their father.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Despite being basically fodder, they are as strong as Super Saiyan Vegeta and Trunks, and in Super, can match Super Saiyan Goten and Trunks.
• The Bus Came Back: After having presumably been killed by Gohan during the Cell Games, a chapter in the Super manga reveals they have Cell's regeneration powers and were tamed by Android 17 afterward.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: They brutally beat the Z warriors in order to provoke Gohan.
• Dirty Coward: They gleefully beat up the weaker Z-Fighters on Cell's orders, but back down in fear when faced with an enraged Super Saiyan 2 Gohan; one even uses Krillin as a Human Shield and threatens to slit his throat with Wolverine Claws if Gohan doesn't back off, and when only one of them is left, he straight-up tries to run away.
• Enfant Terrible: Created with the sole purpose of torturing the Z-Fighters to force Gohan to reveal his hidden power.
• Flat Character: They're just mooks that enjoy torturing others, and that's all there is to them.
• Giggling Villain: They have almost no dialogue, with only one of them saying a single line. In general they only laugh and giggle, when they're not screaming in terror and pain after Gohan is finished with them. They are at least able to speak extensively if an unused scenario in Budokai 3 is any indication. Other materials show that they possess about the same intelligence as their designs and roles would imply, but simply choose not to speak.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the Super manga, they were tamed by Android 17 to help defend his island from poachers. An unused scenario in Budokai 3 would've also seen one of them rebel against Cell.
• The Hyena: Their only dialog is to laugh and giggle when they're not screaming in terror and pain after Gohan is finished with them.
• Informed Attribute: They supposedly have the same powers as Cell, yet they don't have his regeneration powers, making their deaths more inconsistent. This was corrected in the manga adaptation of Dragon Ball Super, where they regenerated but were tamed by Android 17 but at the cost of a causing a Voodoo Shark instead.
• Made of Explodium: In the anime, they explode into nothingness when Gohan kills them. In the manga, they also explode, but rather than this trope, it's because Gohan just hits them really hard, resulting in straight-up Gorn.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Even smaller than Krillin or a Saibaman, but are powerful enough to the point that everyone sans Super Saiyan 2 Gohan could only hold their own at best.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After Gohan takes down all but one of them, the remaining Cell Jr tries (and fails) to run away.
• Schrödinger's Canon: Their status as being alive is debatable. The manga of Super, which has already taken some creative liberties throughout its run, claims that 17 found and tamed them, and even that was only shown in a bonus chapter that may not even be canon to the manga itself. The anime however makes no indication of them being alive. As such, it's easier to assume they're not going to be showing up anytime soon.
• Strong as They Need to Be: In the anime. One minute they're being manhandled by Yamcha and Tien, and the next they're putting Super Saiyan Trunks and Vegeta on the ropes. Though this can largely blamed on filler, as the manga and Kai keeps them fairly consistent.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the manga adaptation of Super, it was shown that they regenerated after Gohan destroyed their bodies.
• Voodoo Shark: Them being alive in Super's Manga raises a good amount of questions, such as when did they regenerate? What have they been doing all this time? How did they arrive on 17's island? Why did they not want revenge on Gohan or seek him out? Why did no one ever sense their kis? 17 also claims that they're fakes, and if they really are, who created these fakes and why are they as strong as the originals? These are never answered.
• The Worf Effect: To the Z Fighters, they're unstoppable killing machines. They're nothing but pests to Super Saiyan 2 Gohan, who one-shots all of them. They also serve as a convenient measuring stick for Cell's true power; the Z Fighters were totally outclassed by all seven of them, but after powering up, Cell is confident that he's still stronger than Gohan, who he just saw obliterate the Juniors in one blow each. Then Gohan reveals his true power and it becomes apparent how terribly outclassed Cell truly is.

Android 21

See Dragon Ball - Android 21

Red Pants Army

See Dragon Ball Online

Red Pharmaceuticals

Magenta

Magenta

Voiced by (Japanese): Volcano Ota

Voiced by (English): Charles Martinet

Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Octavio Rojas

President of Red Pharmaceuticals, the legitimate face of the Red Ribbon Army. He is the son of Commander Red.

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• Adaptational Badass: He's a playable fighter in Dragon Ball Legends, and his summoning of Cell Max is treated as a Godzilla Threshold Counter-Attack, with his defeat lacking any form of Undignified Death he suffered in the movie.
• Ambiguously Related: Magenta has a picture of Colonel Violet on his office desk right next to a picture of his father Commander Red, implying she's his mother or related to him in some other way.
• Avenging the Villain: For his father Commander Red.
• Benevolent Boss: He treats Carmine and the rest of his soldiers with kindness and respect.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Downplayed. Magenta is no more competent than his father was, and greatly overestimates his own intellect. But he was able to rebuild the Red Ribbon Army in secret, manipulate Dr. Hedo into joining his organization and provide the resources to create Gammas 1 & 2, and authorized the creation of an even more powerful version of Cell.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Cell Max in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Somehow manages to fall into this trope despite being the actual Big Bad of the movie. Yes, it's his plan to kill off the protagonists and Take Over the World, but he's an incompetent boob who only gets as far as he does thanks to Hedo wanting to create superheroes and Piccolo wanting to teach Gohan a lesson. The most serious, consequential act of villainy he accomplishes is using his dying breath to activate a Doomsday Device that Hedo had prepared for him and already managed to partially sabotage.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: He's the president of Red Pharmaceuticals and uses his business to finance the Red Ribbon Army's goals of world domination.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Played for Black Comedy. His death by poisoning is impressively painful, drawn-out, and humiliating, with his seizure resembling a traditional Japanese Kabuki Mime-Dance complete with drums and Yoh vocals, serving as a final punchline to his movie-long habit of worthlessly antagonizing those vastly stronger and more competent than he is.
• Cyborg: While trying to kill Dr. Hedo for betraying him, Magenta reveals that he had enhanced his body with a cybernetic exoskeleton. Unfortunately for him, his body is still comprised largely of organic components, leaving him vulnerable to the poison from Hedo’s remote-controlled drone.
• Disc-One Final Boss: He dies two thirds of the way through the movie, waking up Cell Max just before he does to serve as the final threat to the heroes.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He deeply cares about his father as he holds a picture of him on his office desk and respects him greatly. The loss of Magenta's late father might be one of the main reasons he wants revenge on Goku and his family as he holds them responsible for his death years ago. He even has a photo of Colonel Violet.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: Just before shooting Dr. Hedo, Magenta tells him he's wanted to do it since he first met him.
• The Man Behind the Man: He funded Dr. Gero's research during the events of Dragon Ball Z. The deaths of Gero and Cell were huge setbacks in his plans to rebuild the Red Ribbon Army.
• Manipulative Bastard: He tricks Dr. Hedo into thinking that the Z Fighters and Capsule Corporation are evil.
• Meaningful Name: Magenta is the shade between red and violet, highlighting his status as the successor to Commander Red.
• Mirror Character: To his father Commander Red. Both are dwarfish, egotistical terrorist masterminds with ambitions of world domination. However, whereas Commander Red frequently had his subordinates punished for the most trivial of failures and practically destroyed the Red Ribbon Army in pursuing the Dragon Balls for an incredibly asinine reason, Magenta treats his underlings with dignity and respect and doesn’t waste his organization’s resources and manpower on something as petty as growing taller.
• Modern Major General: The dark irony of his story is that he appears to have been an incredibly successful pharmaceutical CEO. It's just that he wanted to be an Evil Overlord despite having little actual talent for it.
• The Napoleon: He inherited the height-challenged genes of his father and often stands on boxes to make himself look taller.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Like his father, Magenta doesn't fight or interact with any of the heroes and has Carmine, the Gammas, his soldiers and Cell Max do all the fighting for him. Granted, he does try to kill Hedo and then fight him properly, but Hedo has him injected with deadly poison before he can.
• Redemption Rejection: The opening of Super Hero states that after the Cell Saga, Magenta momentarily gave up on his aspirations to take over the world and just ran his company legitimately, which is why he was considered a "non-evil" person who got brought back with the Dragon Balls in the Buu Saga. But when learning about Dr. Hedo sometime prior to the film's start, he turns his back on a life of legality and restarts his plan to resurrect the Red Ribbon Army.
• Smug Snake: A cruel, cocky dictator-wannabe who's never, ever as in control of the situation as he thinks he is, and tends to achieve his (often illusory) successes thanks to other people indulging him for their own purposes. Exemplified in his final scene, where he tries to kill Hedo only to learn that the doctor had essentially already won before the fight even started... using a method he'd already threatened Magenta with earlier in the movie.
• Too Dumb to Live: While his objectives are slightly more sensible than his father's, his methods absolutely are not. He goes from being a respected and immensely wealthy pharmaceutical CEO to dying a spectacular Cruel and Unusual Death amidst the flaming wreckage of his would-be empire entirely because he keeps picking fights with people who completely eclipse him in power and/or intellect and keeps ignoring all the incredibly obvious warning signs (up to and including being directly warned to his face) that this will end horribly for him. The specifics of his death only drive this home. During his first meeting with Hedo, he learned that the doctor was Immune to Bullets and could kill any human being (specifically including cyborgs) quickly and effortlessly by having his robot bee discreetly inject them with poison. When Hedo turned against him, he shot him several times with a handgun, revealed his cyborg augmentations, and challenged him to a fight. You can guess the rest.
• Undignified Death: The Neurotoxin dart that Doctor Hedo shoots at him in self defense could have just sent him into a seizure and had him collapse on the ground paralyzed, but is instead made hilariously cruel by having his spasms contort his body into multiple poses resembling Japanese Kabuki Stage Dance, with his face's shade even turning a shade of the black and white face paint of said mimes. Rubbing salt in the wounds is the accompanying background music of Yoh Vocals and drum beats to each spasmed dance move before he finally collapses in a humiliating grinning heap.
• The Unfought: He doesn't engage in any fight and no one fights him, even in the climax. Mostly because Hedo manages to effortlessly kill him the moment he does actually try to throw hands.
• Villainous Friendship: He is very good friends with Carmine and holds him in very high regards and trusts him greatly.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Implied. To the public he is the president and CEO of a successful pharmaceutical company that no one, not even the Z Fighters, suspects is a front for a terrorist organization.
• Would Hurt a Child: Being completely prepared to kidnap and threaten the three-year-old Pan in order to draw out Gohan was the main moral dividing line between him and Hedo's android team, and the last straw for his already somewhat strained relationship with the doctor and his 'family'.

Dr. Hedo

Dr. Hedo

Voiced by (Japanese): Miyu Irino

Voiced by (English): Zach Aguilar

Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Miguel Ángel Ruiz

The new chief scientist recruited by Magenta. He is the grandson of Dr. Gero.

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• Arch-Enemy: The prequel mini-arc in the Super manga reveals that he had already clashed with Trunks and Goten (disguised as Great Saiyaman X-1 and X-2, respectively) three months before the events of the movie, gaining a personal grudge against Trunks in particular.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He's goofy looking and his obsession with heroes is ridiculous but he's not afraid to kill Magenta when the two face off. He also killed a few inmates during his stint in prison.
• Boxed Crook: Magenta recruits him after he had finished serving a prison sentence for stealing bodies from a morgue for usage in his experiments.
• Crazy-Prepared: He's a lot more prepared than Gero ever was. His creations are more generalized and adaptable in their capabilities, and he takes careful measures to protect himself from betrayal by either his employers or his own weapons. All of this proves extremely useful throughout the movie, both for him and for the entire planet.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: He has thick black outlines around his eyes, probably from tireless nights of research and experimenting (as well as poor dieting and hygiene).
• Desecrating the Dead: It's explained rather early on that Hedo dug up corpses and used them as his own attempt to make cyborgs.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While he's not particularly moral, per se, he's a big fan of superheroes and has no real appetite for actual villainy. He also deliberately invokes this with his creations, keeping himself and the planet safe from them through the simple expedient of giving them consciences - his main objection to deploying Cell Max is that it isn't yet sapient enough to understand that destroying the world is a bad idea.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: He's not all that great a person and he knows it, but he wants more than anything else to create genuine superheroes. When the Gammas do a Heel–Face Turn after deciding they're fighting for the wrong side, he's entirely willing to follow them.
• Family Theme Naming: Super Hero would establish his and Dr. Gero's family names as being puns on vomiting, with Dr. Hedo's name being a pun on "hedo" (反吐), the Japanese word for vomiting.
• Fanboy: Of superheroes, which is why he designs Gamma 1 & 2 after them.
• Heel–Face Turn: He's a largely amoral weapons developer for a world domination campaign, but while he's fine with letting his creations be used to take out the Red Ribbon Army's alien competition, he's not fine with kidnapping a child to lure her father into a trap, or anything else that's similarly malicious and cruel. Inspired by the example of the Gammas, he accepts their decision to stand down and surrender to the heroes' rescue mission, and risks his life to try to prevent Magenta from destroying the world by releasing Cell Max. After the battle, he completes his redemption arc by applying to work alongside Gamma-1 at Capsule Corp under Bulma.
• Immune to Bullets: He modified his skin with a chemical enhancement that renders him impervious to ballistics. It comes in handy when Magenta shoots Hedo several times at point-blank range while he’s trying to stop the former from activating Cell Max.
• Irony: He's a huge fan of superheroes... while also being an apathetic arms dealer who would kill someone just because they were making fun of him.
• Lack of Empathy: He's not empathy-devoid, and does have a conscience underneath it all, but he's definitely empathy-deficient. He resorts to lethal force with disturbing speed and ease, and thinks little of engaging in criminal activities (or even helping a terrorist organization Take Over the World) in order to support his research.
• Mad Scientist: While nowhere near as bad as his grandfather, Hedo still resorts to some fairly unethical scientific practices such as digging up corpses to use in his experiments, or accepting funding from the world’s most notorious terrorist organization in order to create the ultimate life form.
• Manchild: While a brilliant, if amoral, scientist, Hedo is quite childish with his superhero obsession, complete with wearing a superhero outfit underneath his lab coat. He also seems to eat nothing but Oreo cookies and milk.
• Mirror Character: To his grandfather Dr Gero. Both developed highly powerful androids in service of the Red Ribbon Army, but the similarities end there. Gero was a Knight of Cerebus to contrast the silly nature of the original Red Ribbon Army, and a wholly immoral, irredeemable Bad Boss who repeatedly proved himself Too Dumb to Live. Hedo harkens back to the army's goofy nature, and is a Crazy-Prepared Noble Demon who treats his creations like family (except for Cell Max, but only because he's a non-sapient force of destruction), and survives through good planning, good luck, and good karma.
• Noble Demon: He's a weapons developer who's amoral but not immoral, and has both a sense of honour (inspired by his love of superheroes) and no appetite for pointless or extreme cruelty.
• Noble Top Enforcer: He and his Gammas collectively serve as this for Magenta's new Red Ribbon Army. They're both its main source of (meaningful) military power and its most principled members, and the entire organisation ends up on a swift route to oblivion as soon as it crosses lines they're not willing to follow it across.
• Oh, Crap!: Practically says this word-for-word when Cell Max is activated.
• Older Than They Look: His young voice, short stature and youthful appearance may give off the impression he's much young boy, he's at least a full grown adult.
• Only in It for the Money: In addition to Magenta's lies, his motivation for working for Red Pharmaceuticals is getting money to research his funding.
• Properly Paranoid: He made sure to bake an Achilles' Heel into Cell Max in case it ever got out of control. As the climax of Super Hero shows, this was a very prescient move on his part.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He admits that he's at least somewhat aware that Magenta and the Red Ribbon Army are bad news (saying his parents warned him about them), and that their claims that they're protecting the world are utter bunk, but so long as they give him the funding, resources, and facilities to pursue his android research, it's not that big a deal to him.
• Story-Breaker Power: This is a 24 year old Manchild who is able to artificially manufacture two (three, if you count Cell Max that he replicated from the notes and zygotes found in his grandfather's lab) androids that equal (if not rival) Super Saiyan Gods in the span of a mere six months, and has outright stated that he is more than capable of mass-producing them if Gamma 1 & 2 prove to be successful prototypes. Note that Doctor Gero was only able to accomplish a similar feat making 16, 17 and 18 in his late 60's after fourteen years of research, and has apparently never even met, much less taught any of his considerable talents to his grandson. Hedo is in fact quite proud that he developed his own androids without any help from his grandfather, not even having looked at Gero's research until after he'd already designed the Gammas. Now that Hedo works for Bulma, the Z-Warriors have now gained an indispensable source of new warriors in the next Tournament of Power.
• Superior Successor: Hedo is considered to be superior to his grandfather by Magenta and Carmine, and he might as well be, since as soon as Hedo got in touch with Red Ribbon's resources Gamma 1 and 2 were created, androids whom Piccolo considers to be as strong as some of the recent opponents he has faced, namely before and during the Tournament of Power; and Cell Max, in an incomplete form, was a serious threat above what Piccolo expected of the Gammas.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Oreos, which he can be seen eating throughout the movie.
• Unwitting Pawn: Played With. He's convinced to help Magenta based on a lie, but it does turn out he's rather apathetic to the idea that his enemies aren't evil.

Carmine

Carmine

Voiced by (Japanese): Ryota Takeuchi

Voiced by (English): Jason Marnocha

Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Beto Castillo

Magenta's chauffeur and right-hand man.

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• Anime Hair: He has a massive pompadour which he keeps well groomed. His personal car even has a custom-made dome in the roof to accommodate his 'do.
• Color Motif: He wears a completely red business suit, complete with red boots.
• Consummate Liar: He uses fake, edited photos of the Z Fighters to make them look evil as a way to manipulate Dr. Hedo and the Gammas into thinking they are villains and trick the the latter into killing them.
• The Dragon: He's Magenta's right-hand man and displays the most personal loyalty to him.
• Dragon Ascendant: He takes over the Red Pharmaceuticals company after Magenta's death and at first looks to become the next Arc Villain as he plots to get revenge on Gohan, Piccolo and the Z-Warriors for ruining his and Magenta's plans. However, after seeing first-hand the full extent of Goku and friends' powers, he wisely gives up any lingering notions of continuing the Red Ribbon Army's agenda and decides to focus solely on Pharmaceutical R&D.
• Evil Is Petty: As if kidnapping a three-year-old girl isn't cruel enough, he refuses to let her have any cookies and then eats one right in front of her.
• Gangsta Style: He shoots at Pan with a sideways "gangsta" stance.
• Jerkass: While he is loyal to Magenta, Carmine is downright cold and heartless to everyone else around him and shows no mercy. He is also a very self-absorbed Glory Hound as he likes hogging all the credit to himself and never shares it in his logos or videos.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Upon realizing how strong Goku and his friends are, he gives up reviving the Red Ribbon Army and changes their focus to Pharmaceutical R&D.
• Meaningful Name: "Carmine" is another word for crimson, which is certainly reflected in his all-red wardrobe.
• Mirror Character: To Staff Officer Black. Like Black, Carmine is much more competent and straight-laced than his boss, but he is nevertheless extremely loyal to Magenta, whereas Black ultimately betrayed Commander Red (it helps that Magenta, unlike his idiot father, doesn't try anything as frivolous as using the Dragon Balls to wish to grow taller), Carmine only takes over after Magenta has been killed by Dr. Hedo. Also after their takeover, they try to go after a member of the Son Family, but while Black dies in a vain battle against Goku, Carmine wises up and gives up on the whole revenge and world domination plot after realizing just how outmatched they are.
• Shooting Superman: Tries to kill Pan, a quarter-Saiyan child and the granddaughter/daughter of Goku and Gohan who is being trained by Piccolo, with a handgun after she breaks free of her cuffs. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t end well for him.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero leaves his fate ambiguous, as he's last seen being knocked out by Pan before the destructive battle with Cell Max occurs. The manga's adaptation, however, shows him leaving the ruined base after the climax.
• The Stoic: He is emotionless, calm, and collected while he is ruthless, murderous and cold-blooded.
• Uncertain Doom: After Carmine is defeated and knocked out by Pan, he disappears from the film, leaving his fate following the final battle ambiguous. The manga's adaptation, however, shows he survived.
• Undying Loyalty: To Magenta.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: In the manga, a battered Carmine is shown limping away from the destroyed Red Ribbon headquarters after Cell Max's defeat along with some surviving soldiers, intending to return to Red Pharmaceuticals.
• Would Hurt a Child: He enjoys in tormenting a kidnapped Pan and later attempting to kill her, a 3-year-old little girl. Of course, Pan is strong enough to take care of herself and she easily knocks him out.

Gamma 1 & Gamma 2

Gamma 1 & Gamma 2

Gamma 1

Gamma 2

Voiced by (Japanese): Hiroshi Kamiya (Gamma 1), Mamoru Miyano (Gamma 2)

Voiced by (English): Aleks Le (Gamma 1), Zeno Robinson (Gamma 2)

Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Marc Winslow (Gamma 1), Alan Fernando Velázquez (Gamma 2)

Two new superhero-themed androids developed by Dr. Hedo. The red-themed Gamma 1 is the stoic and serious one who fights Gohan in Super Hero. The blue-themed Gamma 2 is the boisterous and smug one who fights Piccolo in Super Hero.

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• Actor Allusion: For Gamma 2 in the English dub. It's not the first time Zeno Robinson has voiced an artificially created being who's loyal to their creator, believing they have the best of intentions, only to start questioning those intentions after being confronted by the main hero.
• Adaptive Ability: Observing his fight with Gohan, Piccolo notes Gamma 1 is learning and growing stronger. Gamma 1 quickly gains the advantage, leaving Gohan on the back foot until he unleashes his Ultimate form.
• Animal Themed Super Being: Deliberately invoked by their creator. They have a shark-like aesthetic with grey skin and fins on their head, as well as shark-themed ray guns, mainly because Hedo thinks any proper superhero should be an Animal Themed Super Being and sharks are as a good an option as any.
• Beehive Barrier: Gamma 2 is capable of putting up barriers like previous androids. Unlike previous entries, it's honeycombed patterned and reflects attacks instead of purely tanking the hit.
• Big "SHUT UP!": When Piccolo starts pointing out the flaws in what Gamma 2 has been told, the latter shouts this at him to rebuke what's being said.
• Captain Ersatz: Gamma 2 is a rather blatant homage to the Ultra Series' Ultraman Zero. He is voiced by Mamoru Miyano, is an Ultraman Copy with twin head fins, is characterized as a misguided arrogant Blood Knight with aspects of a Stock Shōnen Hero — exactly like Zero was before his own Character Development.
• Chekhov's Gun: As a subtle character development for Gamma 2, he initially misses the detail that Piccolo escaped his assault, something that Gamma 1 scolds him for. Near the climax, Gamma 2 notices that Dr. Hedo is alive and jokingly scolds Gamma 1 for not noticing.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Gamma 2's fight with Piccolo has him handily kicking the latter's ass, and would have killed him had he not been fooled by the Namekian.
• Good Is Not Soft: They think they are superheroes, but are more than willing to kill their foes. This continues after their Heel–Face Turn, where they're prepared to put up a ferocious fight against Cell Max alongside the protagonists.
• Heel–Face Turn: Gohan and Piccolo try to talk some sense to them and that they are not fighting for the good side, particularly Piccolo providing the argument that even if they're just following orders, their master could have been fed false information. When Carmine tries to shoot Pan with a gun, Gamma 2 shoots Carmine's gun away and finally realize that the Red Pharmaceuticals/Red Ribbon Army are the real bad guys and stops fighting Piccolo. He and Piccolo tell Gamma 1 and Gohan to stop. The two Gammas subsequently help the Dragon Team to stop Cell Max, with Gamma 1 becoming the newest Z-Warrior after suriviving the battle with the monster.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Gamma 2 attempts a self-destructing attack against Cell Max which fails to kill the beast, though it stops from being a Senseless Sacrifice due to the attack still depriving Cell Max of an arm and scarring the entire left side of his body.
• Large Ham: Like Gohan's Great Saiyaman persona, Gamma 2 is a hammy "For Great Justice" type with a fondness for cheesy poses.
• Mirror Character: Androids #17 and #18 were rebellious Deadpan Snarker twins that didn't particularly care about good or evil as much as finding entertainment. Gamma 1 and 2 are fiercely loyal androids that largely operate on the idea that they're heroes, but also with a hint of My Master, Right or Wrong.
• Morality Pet: To their creator, Hedo. He may be a largely amoral Mad Scientist, but he treats them both as his own beloved sons and is willing to respect their decisions about what is and is not the right thing to do. It helps that he explicitly created them as homages to the superheroes he admires, so when they end up as better people than he is, they're very much working as intended.
• Nice to the Waiter: When Gamma 2 returns to headquarters after his first fight with Piccolo, he and several Red Ribbon soldiers are shown cheerfully greeting each other.
• Painting the Medium: Gamma 2's strikes on Piccolo land with a retro-style comic effect with onomatopoeia, which initially seems to be just Piccolo Leaning on the Fourth Wall when he questions where these effects came from. In reality, they're holographic effects that Gamma 2 makes for added spectacle.
• Primary-Color Champion: Classical superheroes dressed in red and blue capes. Ironically, the real protagonists of Super Hero are Gohan and Piccolo, who both dress in purple gi (Piccolo has green skin, to boot).
• Ray Gun: They both wield retro-looking ray guns coloured to match their outfits. Presumably they carry these pistols instead of using completely internal weapons like Gero's androids because Hedo thought it looked cooler. Especially since it allows Gun Twirling as part of their posing.
• Recurring Element: Another pair of powerful cyborg twins created by the Red Ribbon Army to hunt down the protagonists.
• Redemption Earns Life: Gamma 1, the surviving twin, sheepishly asks Bulma if he could join his creator Doctor Hedo as an employee at Capsule Corporation, which she graciously accepts.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: While they may look almost identical, their personalities contrast one another. Gamma 1 is stated to have a calming personality while Gamma 2 demonstrates a slightly flippant attitude. In one scene that displays their dynamic, Gamma 1 obediently stands to attention while Gamma 2 casually leans on his shoulder. Ironically, Gamma 1 wears red while Gamma 2 wears blue.
• Shout-Out: The Gammas seem to draw on multiple classic Japanese superheroes:
  • Their grey skin and rounded heads with fins on the top resemble Ultraman. Gamma 1's single fin specifically makes him resemble Ultraseven.
  • Their uniforms (with their belts, tunics, and long boots) resemble a cross between the cast of Cyborg 009 (specifically in the large buttons) and Anpanman (in their capes).
  • One of Gamma 2’s attacks is a Diving Kick ala Kamen Rider. His twin head fins also evoke the original Kamen Rider's antennae.
• Stone Wall: Gamma 1 explains that both of them can fight at full power until their energy runs out. While they may not have the infinite energy as Android 17 and 18, Gamma 1 and 2 have more than enough offensive abilities to give Ultimate Gohan and Potential Unlocked Piccolo a good run for their money.
• Superhero: They may be the titular superheroes of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, though they appear to be working with the remnants of the villainous Red Ribbon Army and targeting Goku's friends under the impression that they are evil. At the end of the film, Piccolo commends Gamma 2 on his bravery and calls him a true superhero after all, though Hedo corrects him that all of the Dragon Team members are superheroes.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Gamma 2 is one for Android 16. Like 16, Gamma 2 is a fully-mechanical Android who was made for evil purposes, but ultimately turns good and gives his life to stop Cell (or at least a copy of him).
• Ultraman Copy: Their heads are modelled after famous Ultra Series heroes. Gamma 1 is based on the original Ultraman, while Gamma 2 seems to be based on Ultraman Zero.
• Worthy Opponent: Upon witnessing Gamma 2 protecting Pan from being shot by Carmine, Piccolo comes to respect him as a misguided but true hero, enough so to furiously charge in to protect him from being trampled by Cell Max when he was knocked unconcious by the monster.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Played with. While they express distaste at using Pan as bait to draw out Gohan, they still go along with it when Magenta has some goons kidnap her. However, when Piccolo (disguised as a Red Ribbon soldier) pretends to hurt Pan, Gamma 2 is outraged and Carmine outright attempting to shoot her is what finally makes the android realize that Magenta and his goons are actually the bad guys, meaning that while they tolerated Pan's kidnapping, they draw the line at actually harming her.
• Written Sound Effect: They are equipped with hologram projectors that allows them to visualize sound effects, something Picollo wonders about when he first fights Gamma 2.

The Ultimate Weapon (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Cell Max

Voiced by (Japanese): Norio Wakamoto

Voiced by (English): Dameon Clarke

Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Ricardo Brust

A kaiju-sized clone of Cell and the Red Ribbon Army's ultimate weapon.

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• Achilles' Heel: The center of his forehead is his weak point, that is struck three times, which damages him and weakens him but it still takes Gohan Beast to exploit it with an enormous Makankosappo blast while an equally giant-sized Piccolo pins Cell Max down. It was deliberately added by Hedo to make killing him easier, since he didn't fully trust either Cell Max or Magenta.
• Adaptational Badass: As strong as Cell Max is on the movie, once Gohan gets his Beast form he's not treated as that threatening. While Piccolo still struggles to grab him, he still manages to do so by himself, and when Cell Max charges his energy ball attack, Gohan is clearly still feeling confident, and easily pierces it with Special Beam Cannon, while never looking worried. In the manga adaptation, when Cell Max starts to charge his energy ball attack Gohan looks worried, Piccolo struggles to get a hold of him until Gamma 1 shoots one of his wings off, and Krillin uses a Destructo Disc to damage the other wing enough for 18 to manage to break it, and once Cell Max throws the energy ball, Gohan noticeably struggles to pierce it with Special Beam Cannon until Goten and Trunks kick his hand away, making him lose control of the energy ball, allowing Gohan to pierce it and kill him.
• Adaptational Wimp: At the same time, in the manga version he gets a minor case of this. In the movie, Krillin tries to use Destructo Disc and it doesn't even scratch him. In the manga version Krillin succeeds in damaging one of his wings with it, enough for 18 to manage to break it.
• Beam Spam: He is able to fire beams from every single spot in his gigantic body in a similar manner to Shin Godzilla. Cell Max’s body spots aren’t visible at first unlike the original Cell, but are activated when Cell Max empowers himself and they glow when he's about to fire his numerous beams.
• The Berserker: He's locked in a mindless, all-consuming rage from the very second he's born, and acts on it by destroying everything in his line of sight.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Magenta in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.
• Boom, Headshot!: Gohan Beast manages to put him down by drilling a gargantuan hole through his head with a massive Special Beam Cannon blast.
• Composite Character:
  • Cell Max is a mixture of Semi-Perfect Cell and Bio-Broly. While the comparisons to Cell are obvious, Bio-Broly was also a kaiju-sized cloning experiment that lacked the intelligence of his genetic template.
  • He also shares a similar color scheme, kaiju size and flat characterization with Hirudegarn.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Unlike the previous villains who are intelligent enough to be master manipulators, Cell Max the first and only main villain who is a mindless monster because of his premature awakening.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Right after Gohan Beast lays the killing blow, Gamma 1 immediately warns everybody to flee right as Cell Max is about to explode, forcing the heroes to Outrun the Fireball.
• Feral Villain: Invoked trope as he is built to enforce "peace", and was released by Magenta before he could be properly completed. Unlike the original Cell, Cell Max lacks sapience and is a mindless beast of destruction.
• Final Boss: He is the last opponent that the heroes face in the final act of the film.
• From a Single Cell: Subverted. Unlike with Cell, Cell Max seems to not possess any form of regeneration, because Hedo thought he was dangerously uncontrollable in his present state and wanted it to be possible to kill him by targeting a single weak spot rather than having to obliterate him entirely.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Gamma 2's Heroic Sacrifice blows off his arm and badly scars half his body, weakening him enough that Gohan and Piccolo credit it with helping them deliver the killing blow.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Unlike all other canon villains, and very much like several Non-Serial Movie villains, Cell Max is not sentient, being a mindless rampaging beast of pure instinct. This is justified, as he was released prematurely before the programming for his mind was completed.
• Godzilla Threshold: Quite literally due to his Kaiju proportions, but Dr. Hedo is extremely reluctant to unleash Cell Max for a number of reasons. Not only is he impossible to control and based on incomplete research from Dr. Gero, he doesn't fit the cool superhero aesthetic at all!
• Gonk: He strongly resembles Cell's second 'Semi-Perfect' transformation, which was noted to be extremely ugly, both in-universe and out.
• Hero Killer: He caused the death of Gamma 2 by blocking his suicidal attack, at the cost of his left arm.
• Inflating Body Gag: Like Cell before him, Cell Max's corpse ends up using the Unforgivable technique to inflate himself to a nearly similar size in a last ditch effort to kill the heroes (he ends up being far bigger than the original's mountain size), but with major differences as this technique can only activate if Cell Max dies. However the resulting explosion is far far weaker compared to the original's planet destroying version, seeing as it was only strong enough to level a city, which it does by leveling what remains of the Red Ribbon Army's headquarters which ends up burying poor Krillin who was unlucky enough to escape in time.
• The Juggernaut: Aside from his aforementioned weak spot, he's so tough that he can almost seem invulnerable (though a particularly strong self-destructing attack, like the one Gamma 2 attempts, can also do substantial damage to him). It takes the combined might of Gohan, Piccolo, Goten, Trunks, Android #18, Krillin and the Gamma Twins to stand a chance against him. After scraping a win, Gohan speculates that even Goku and Vegeta would have struggled to defeat Cell Max. Toriyama states that if Cell Max was completed, even Broly would not have been able to defeat it.
• Kaiju: Cell Max is the size of a large building, much bigger than even Cell's bloated self-destructing form. Cell Max's size forces Piccolo to bust out his rarely-seen Gigantification technique in order to match the beast in height.
• Knight of Cerebus: As a film, Super Hero is fairly light-hearted and comedic in tone. All that goes out the window the second Cell Max is awakened.
• Logical Weakness: An unusual example, where the existence of a deliberately-added Achilles' Heel reveals additional weaknesses (like the inverse of Required Secondary Powers). Hedo gave Cell Max lighter armour over the vital organs in his head. Therefore, if it were possible to kill him with damage to a single vulnerable spot, he couldn't have a Healing Factor. If he didn't have a Healing Factor, it was therefore possible to wear him down through brute-force attrition in order to make attacking his vitals easier. This proves essential to the heroes' victory over him, and is what makes Gamma-2's sacrifice meaningful.
• Mirror Character: To the original Cell. Cell was a Genius Bruiser who was able to scheme around others and was quite known for his sharp tongue. Cell Max is nothing more than a rampaging monster who tries to destroy everything around him instinctively.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Pretty much completely immune to damage outside of his Achilles' Heel.
• Not Zilla: Appears to be heavily inspired by the big green fella's Shin Godzilla incarnation, specifically. He's a near-mindless, hideously-mutated behemoth with vivid red highlights whose most iconic attack is firing a web of violet Beam Spam from all over his body, and especially from his oddly-shaped tail.
• Oh, Crap!: A non-verbal one as Cell Max realizes the power Gohan Beast's attack would have, and tries to make himself a harder target to hit by taking flight, a move that might have worked if not for Piccolo's efforts.
• Red Is Violent: His exoskeleton is mostly red, in contrast to the original Cell's green colour scheme. While Cell was a murderous sadist, he was in full control of his actions. Cell Max, on the other hand, is little more than a rampaging monster who instinctively destroys everything in sight.
• Sucksessor: To Cell. While Cell Max easily beats his predecessor in terms of raw destructive power, he is also a brainless Berserker with none of the original Cell's cunning and intellect, as well as a lack of a Healing Factor (when his arm gets blasted off by Gamma #2, it does not regenerate). Cell Max also has an Achilles' Heel purposely built in, courtesy of Dr. Hedo not having much faith in Cell Max's usefulness to begin with: a strong enough hit to his head will kill him instantly.
• Superior Successor: Downplayed. Cell Max is vastly more powerful than the original Cell, and was designed to be an all-around improvement, but a combination of deliberate sabotage and rushed deployment means he possesses several key weaknesses that his predecessor did not. For one, Cell Max has a clear weak spot on his forehead that kills him instantly when struck hard enough, but more importantly, he is completely insane and unable to control his power, he also has an inferior version of Cell's Unforgivable technique (which is only powerful enough to level a city, instead of leveling planets like the original Cell was capable of doing). It's worth keeping in mind Hedo says Cell Max's body is ready, but the mind control program isn't complete, and that if he's released as is he'd be little more than a rampaging monster, so Cell Max could be even more powerful if he was completed, with Toriyama saying he'd be even stronger than Broly if he were completed.
• Tail Slap: Unlike the original's stinger tail, Cell Max has a large bludgeon at the tip of his tail, which he uses to smack the heroes around. At one point Piccolo manages to catch the end and slam him back with it.
• Tortured Monster: His cacophonous roars sound more like those of a pained and confused animal than a truly malicious monster.
• Understatement: Gamma 1 states that Cell Max's weakness is the top of his head, which makes it initially seem like a Weaksauce Weakness, but as the Z-fighters soon find out, it requires an incredible amount of power to exploit this weakness.
• The Unintelligible: Whereas Cell was highly intelligent and eloquent, Cell Max cannot speak. He only screams and roars. The implication is that his speech-centres (and anything else that might have resulted in him having something interesting to say) weren't developed by the time Magenta deployed him.
• Walking Spoiler: Was kept out of the marketing for Super Hero to serve as a surprise.
• Worf Had the Flu: Spends the final part of his battle against Gohan and Piccolo with an arm destroyed thanks to Gamma 2's suicide attack. More broadly, he's physically and mentally incomplete because he was activated before Hedo had a chance to apply the finishing touches and make him an actual person. Toriyama has said that if he had been complete, he'd have been even more powerful than Broly.

Soldier 15

Soldier 15

Voiced by (Japanese): Takashi Matsuyama

Voiced by (English): Greg Carson

An elite soldier who works for Red Pharmaceuticals.

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• Blackmail: He uses footage of Pan being held hostage to force Gohan into coming with him to the Red Ribbon Army's secret base.
• Butt-Monkey: He gets knocked out by Pan when he attempts to kidnap her, underestimating how powerful she is and that she can tell he's a stranger with ill-intent. When he shows Gohan a footage of Pan being held hostage, Gohan goes Papa Wolf and the soldier fearfully complies with his demand to take him to her to save himself from his wrath.
• Would Hurt a Child: He has no qualms with kidnapping Pan and using her as bait to lure her father Gohan to the base. However, he fails to capture her due to underestimating how powerful Pan is.

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