Common Knowledge / Dragon Ball

• Yamcha is known for being an utterly useless weakling who is constantly getting killed off. Actually, he only dies twice (one less than Goku), was the first person to use a ki technique, and ends up saving everyone from Goku's Great Ape form in the original series. However, it is true that he has never won at the Tenka'Ichi Budoukai and he was the first to die in the battles with the Saiyans and got nearly killed during the first fight against the Androids. This may also be conflation with Krillin, who actually does die with some frequency - indeed, Yamcha died the first time because he didn't want Krillin to risk sacrificing himself again.
  • He's also often regarded as the weakest fighter of the main cast. While he undeniably landed into Can't Catch Up, by the end of the manga, he was at least stronger than (among others) Yajirobe, Korin, Chiaotzu, and Master Roshi. It was his attempts to stay in the game in the Saiyan and Android Sagas, where most of the people even weaker than him had dropped off and thus leaving him the weakest fighter, that landed him in loser territory.
  • His death in the Saiyan Saga is remembered by fans the world over for being an embarrassing and indignified defeat that every other Memetic Loser after him has paid homage to in fan works if not in canon. Most people forget that he was winning the fight against the Saibamen up until they used their self-destruct attack, which no one had any way of predicting. Plus, he volunteered to fight in place of Krillin specifically to make sure Krillin, who had died once already and thus ran the risk of being Killed Off for Real as far as they knew, wouldn't be in danger. Of course, the fact that he ultimately died to a glorified Mook who is barely weaker than Raditz, and his fellows generally performed better than he did (Tien handily defeats his Saibamen, Piccolo kills one with casual ease, and Krillin kills three when enraged), doesn't help his reputation.
• Many people have brought up the series' formulaic nature of Goku constantly coming up against a big threat, losing, either training or finding some other MacGuffin in order to get stronger, and finishing off the threat in a rematch. In all of the fights in DBZ's run, this has never happened to Goku once. A good number of the Non-Serial Movies follow the formula of "Goku gets his ass kicked initially, then powers up somehow and wins in the rematch", though, and may be the movies' fault for this perception.
  • Through all the fights he's had, he's often defeated an opponent on the first try with little difficulty^note (Nappa, Recoome, Burter and Jeice, Yakon), had a great amount of difficulty but ultimately brought the opponent down, mainly with assistance from others^note (Raditz, Frieza, Super/Kid Buu), the fight ultimately ended inconclusively^note (Majin Vegeta, Fat Majin Buu), or Goku did ultimately lose, but someone else ended up defeating the opponent^note (Vegeta, Captain Ginyu, Android 19, Cell). In fact, the only times the theme of Goku losing a fight, finding a way to get stronger, and then defeating his enemy in a rematch is during the original Dragon Ball, primarily with his battles against Mercenary Tao and King Piccolo.
  • As part of this, there's also a perception that the Z era is the "Goku Show" in contrast to the ensemble story prior. It's quite the other way around. Though the first arc of Dragon Ball is indeed more or less an ensemble story (Goku does most of the fighting, but this matters less in a comedy), after Goku starts training with Roshi, the series becomes pretty purely his story, with other good characters only rarely taking the spotlight. Meanwhile, though he is integral to the plot of every major arc of Z, he spends at least large portions of each arc unavailable for some reason, be it training, travel, or death, causing other characters to step up to the plate.
• Funimation's English dub may have been responsible for plenty of unintentionally hilarious moments, but the famously memetastic line "IT'S OVER NINE-THOUSAAAAAAAAND!" was not one of them. The infamous line comes from the first American dub, which ran in syndication for two seasons before being cancelled. This dub used a voice cast of talent from The Ocean Group and Brian Drummond provided the iconic hammy line read. When Funimation redubbed that episode after the show became a runaway hit on Cartoon Network, they actually gave the line a fairly understated read (by Vegeta's standards, anyways). Delivered by Christopher Sabat, it was more like "It's over nine-thousand!"
• It's often assumed that Piccolo's status as a Namekian is a Retcon meant to explain that he isn't actually a demon. While it is a retcon, and it's the explanation for his appearance and some of his abilities, Piccolo really is (or was) considered a demon. While there are true born-and-bred demons like Dabura, a demon is also something a person can become, and Piccolo is the latter (or, more accurately, King Piccolo was the latter, and Piccolo inherited those traits). This is where King Piccolo's weirder powers, like creating mutated soldiers or destroying the Nimbus come from: they're not Namekian powers, but demon powers. Filler-and-film-only characters Garlic Jr. and Lord Slug also fit in this category and keep their demon theming and presentation throughout, despite clearly being aliens from the get-go. This is underlined by Kami mentioning that Raditz's soul went to the afterlife normally when Piccolo killed him—Piccolo did have real, supernatural, demonic abilities, and lost them when he Took a Level in Kindness.
• Contrary to popular belief, Goku is not illiterate. He was explicitly taught reading and writing by Master Roshi, as well as at least some math. He's also seen driving a car in the Cell arc (both anime and manga), which in Japan means he must have passed a written test probably requiring more than a primary school level of literacy. (He does have bad handwriting, however.)
• It's often thought that Roshi taught the Z-Fighters the Kamehameha Wave. Except he didn't. Goku and Tien both copied it after seeing it once, while Yamcha and Krillin were able to recreate it independently without Roshi's knowledge — as proof, the first time he saw the latter two using it, he flipped out and insisted they weren't ready before being proven wrong. In fact, up until Dragon Ball Super, there's no indication that Roshi ever taught them any actual techniques — from what we see, the Turtle School seems to be more a method of training than a martial arts style in its own right.
• The infamous "Namek will explode in five minutes" plot point is one of the most notorious and widely-cited examples of the Magic Countdown trope in all of fiction. What a lot of people don't understand is that this isn't just a case of the countdown progressing as fast as the plot requires it to, there's an in-universe explanation: it was established as early as the 21st Budokai Tenkaichi that from an in-universe perspective, battles between high-level fighters are sometimes too fast for ordinary people to follow. The audience is often seeing a "decompressed" version of the fight that they can actually follow along with. During the Budokai Tenkaichi, Krillin and Jackie Chun (Roshi) had a prolonged exchange in the span of a few seconds and had to recreate what happened in slow motion for the benefit of the announcer and spectators. This is brought up again when Yamcha was fighting a Saibaman; they were moving so fast Gohan couldn't follow them until Piccolo told him to follow by sensing their ki. By the time of Namek, Goku would become hundreds of thousands of times stronger, and fives minutes would be plenty of time. The perception is not helped by the anime's notorious padding and filler due to catching up to the fight in the manga, resulting in the whole fight taking longer than it should have even taking in consideration the warriors' increased speed, whereas in the manga the fight was short and straightforward.
• Nowadays, everyone "knows" that Dr. Gero created the androids to get revenge on Goku for killing his son, who was an elite soldier in the Red Ribbon Army. Actually, it's more complicated than that: Gero's son was felled by an enemy bullet, and there's no evidence or reason to believe Goku ever even encountered him. While it's true Gero's anger at Goku was born from a love towards his son, he doesn't blame him for killing his son; he hates Goku for dismantling the Red Ribbon Army, which (in his eyes) meant his son's death was in vain. Not only that, but revenge on Goku wasn't his only reason for creating androids: he helped make androids as part of the Red Ribbon Army's technological development program, and some materials suggest he dreamed of replacing Earth's entire population with artificial beings even before he joined the Red Ribbon Army. In fact, Goku even met and befriended an Android when he was a kid, well before he toppled the Red Ribbon Army.
• There's a common belief that Vegeta's drive to get stronger than and/or defeat Goku is driven by a desire to get even for being beaten on Earth. However, strictly speaking, it wasn't Goku who scored the Z fighters' victory — he certainly played an important role, but it was Gohan who beat Vegeta and forced him to retreat. Vegeta himself doesn't blame Goku for his loss; rather, he's driven by frustration at the idea of a low-class Saiyan being more powerful than him and wants to prove that he's the better fighter.
• By far one of the most notorious (though more widely discredited now) was the widely-repeated claim that Toriyama always planned to end the series after the Frieza storyline or the Cell storyline, but was forced by his editors or publishers to continue because the manga was so successful. In fact, the end of the Frieza arc seems to have been one of the few places Toriyama didn't plan to end the series, given that it clearly sets up another plot point in the form of Goku mysteriously surviving. And while he did intend on the Cell arc being the End of an Age, he was still intending on continuing past then with Gohan as the main character and a Lighter and Softer tone. The only one which seems certain is that Toriyama originally had no notion of continuing beyond the original Dragon Ball quest with Goku and Bulma, having just finished a long-running series in Dr Slump and citing reluctance to commit himself to another multi-year serialization. The Saiyan arc is also fairly likely, given that Toriyama claimed the name "Z" was specifically to suggest its finality and the many minor retcons that needed to be made to facilitate Frieza, but it's not entirely confirmed. The misconception is attributed mainly to a badly-translated interview from the very early days of online anime fandom in the late 1990s, which caught on and has been repeated for the past 20 years. Another factor is that, while the manga pretty much jumps straight from Namek exploding to the revelation that Frieza has returned as a cyborg over the course of one chapter, the anime stuck a Filler arc in there, which would give the viewers the impression that the manga had spent some time spinning its wheels trying to figure out what to do next, when in reality, it just jumped straight into the next plot.
• For that matter, there's no evidence that Toriyama was forced by Executive Meddling to make Goku the main character again due to popularity: in fact, by the end of the Cell Saga, a poll suggested that Gohan was the most popular character in the whole manga. Not only that, but Toriyama claimed his editor at the time was fairly permissive, which wouldn't match up with said editor forcing him to change the entire structure of the arc. Toriyama himself has claimed that he felt Gohan just didn't fit in the protagonist role, and it's really evident in those early Buu Saga chapters that he was struggling to make Gohan work as a main character and story driver, before he started reintroducing characters from prior arcs and kicking the series into an actual plot. Gohan did suffer a decline in popularity over the course of the Buu Saga (a later poll had him falling all the way to sixth place), but it seems to have happened because of him not having much to do and being pushed to a minor role, not the other way around.
• Most people believe that Gohan is a teenager in the Android saga, particularly because Gohan is known as "Teen Gohan" in English dub video games to refer to him in that saga. Except he isn't. The Android saga takes place ten years after his birth, and taking his training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber into account, Gohan is only 11 years old; a pre-teen. Ironically, the commonly-named "Adult Gohan" is the one who actually is a teenager, which should be obvious given that he's in high school. The video games simply seem to use that name for him because "Adolescent Gohan" or "Preteen Gohan" isn't as catchy, or would be confusing with regards to "Kid Gohan" (referring to his Namek Saga-and-earlier self).
• The consensus on Raditz is that he was a low-class warrior for Saiyan Standards. Although the character fell victim to the Sorting Algorithm of Evil to the point that the Saibamen that Nappa brought to earth and the mooks that Frieza brought to Namek rivaled or even surpassed him in power, the truth is that he was indeed a Mid-class Saiyan, which may not sound impressive until Toriyama confirms that the vast majority of the Saiyan population was low-class with only 10 being middle class, so Raditz was more powerful than the vast majority of the population. Much of the issue on this front is that Goku is repeatedly described as a low-class Saiyan, despite being Raditz's brother and even after far outclassing him in strength—assuming from there that Raditz was also low-class is an easy jump to make if you're unfamiliar with Word of God.
• It's often claimed by fans that the villains for the Android Saga were originally intended to Android 19 and Dr Gero, only to then be changed to 17 and 18 due to Executive Meddling, and then again to Cell after his editor was left dissatisfied. While the part about them being changed due to complaints is true, it wasn't Toriyama's then-current editor Yu Kondo who had him change the identity of the Big Bad, but his close friend and previous editor Kazuhiko Torishima, who personally called Toriyama to complain to him about his follow-up to Freiza being "a fat guy and a geezer", then again to complain about their replacements 17 and 18 being "a pair of brats". Kondo was the one who pushed for Toriyama to change Cell's design to Perfect Cell, but he had nothing to do with the more radical changes in direction the story took.
• One of the most infamous examples of this is the "Goku is a terrible father" statement made by some fans. Toriyama has never denied that Goku has flaws as a father, but the series regularly shows that Goku loves Gohan, Gohan looks up to Goku heavily, and that many of the supposed pieces of "evidence" are regularly taken out of context, ignore details about what happened, or are from moments where Goku is called out for a mistake that affected Gohan. Goku is a flawed father, but still shown as a generally good one regularly despite the claims by people.
• One common claim is that Dragon Ball is based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. Parodying Journey to the West was certainly the original concept, but it faded out very quickly as the manga went on, and really only applies to the first arc, which had a vaguely similar setup of a Monster of the Week adventure across a land of demons and strange beings. In fact, there's really only three characters who are cleanly based on Journey to the West characters (Goku, Oolong, and the Ox-King), with the others filling their roles rather loosely (Bulma has a similar early role to Tripitaka, Yamcha can be compared to Sha Wujing if you really squint), or not being based on anything at all (Puar, Roshi, Pilaf, etc). By the Budokai Tenkaichi arc, the only real vestige of the concept left was Goku being loosely similar to Son Wukong, and even then, most of the Wukong-esque elements of Goku's character fell out of relevance, to the point that the only thing they really have in common nowadays is the name, fighting skills, and being based on monkeys.
• Many claim that Vegeta could have killed Perfect Cell if he didn't miss his Final Flash. While they are correct about Vegeta having the potential to kill Cell, the issue is people think Vegeta missed. However, the lead-up to Vegeta's iconic Final Flash had him bait Cell into standing still while he charged his attack. Not only that, but while Cell initially took him up on his offer, it was only just before the attack hit that he realized he was in danger and dodged at the last possible second, causing the attack to just barely miss him. In short, Vegeta didn't miss his Final Flash, but Cell narrowly avoided a direct hit that could have completely killed him.
• Potara Fusions are permanent, Super retconned them so they're temporary. A common complaint towards Super as people accuse the series of "going against canon" regarding the aforementioned fusion. However, while Old Kai did say the fusion would be permanent, Vegito still defused while inside Super Buu for unknown reasons with no explanation given.
• A popular joke among fans is that the reason Lunch completely vanished after the 23rd Budokai was because Toriyama forgot she existed. This mistake is entirely understandable, given that Toriyama claimed exactly that in a 2003 interview, but research showed this to be completely unture. Lunch was actually quietly written out of the series over the Time Skip, but would continue to make appearances in Filler episodes and official artwork years afterwards, and was even supposed to have made an appearance as a part of the montage of people helping power the Genki-Dama during the Final Battle with Kid Buu before her appearance was replaced with that of Android 17.
• It's common for fans to think that the Dragon Ball GT special "A Hero's Legacy" (the one with Goku's Identical Grandson descendant) came out after the anime, as a Distant Finale. This is a pretty forgivable mistake, as not only is it chronologically far after the series, but it expands on ideas that were already present in the GT epilogue, and most DVD collections of the series put it at the very end of their listings. In reality, though, it came out right before the start of the Super 17 arc, about halfway into the series. It becomes noticeable if you pay attention to some of the dialogue—Pan never recounts any post-Baby Saga events, because they hadn't aired or likely even been conceived of yet.