Dragon Ball Super / Tropes D to I

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Spoilers for all Dragon Ball works preceding it will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

D

• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • Goku's Super Saiyan Blue/Kaioken combo. Goku says that just activating it has only a 10% success rate as-of-now, and can possibly kill him if he fails. After that, the power-up has a short duration, although it lasts much longer than a normal Kaioken, and Goku's muscles look like they're about to explode from the stress when he finally turns it off. He later suffers from Delayed Onset Ki Syndrome, which he can't control his energy and risks permanently crippling himself. In the Universal Survival Saga, this is Downplayed since Goku can now use the basic Kaioken multiple times without harming his body.
  • In the Future Trunks Saga, Goku learns the Evil Containment Wave, the technique used to seal away King Piccolo. It is a very powerful technique that can defeat enemies many times stronger than the user or in Goku's case, an immortal who can never die. The setback, it's an extremely draining technique that has a high chance of killing the user if the opponent is much stronger than the person doing the sealing. In the original manga, the only person who has ever survived using it was Kami. Future Trunks manages to learn the technique by watching a video of Piccolo doing it and successful seals Future Zamasu without killing himself since he's close to Zamasu's level of power. It didn't stick because Goku and Roshi forgot the seal.
• Dare to Be Badass: Vegeta has this attitude toward Saiyans who aren't Goku. In the first Multiverse Tournament, he teaches Cabba to become a Super Saiyan and tells the other fighter to surpass him. He gives similar words to Future Trunks after showing him the power of the Super Saiyan Blue transformation.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • The anime puts a darker spin on the films it's adapting.
    • In its version of the Battle of Gods storyline, Beerus is much less comedic and seems to have it out for Vegeta personally. He does very little goofing around at the party, comparatively, and has the Saiyan Prince shaking in his boots the whole time. Even his defeating Vegeta and slapping Bulma are played much more cruelly. The reactions of the characters are also darker. While everyone was scared of Beerus in the movie, there was still a casual, nonchalant feel to everything. Here, everyone is terrified and are close to tears when Beerus is about to destroy the Earth. Likewise, while the fight between Super Saiyan God level Goku and Beerus starts off fairly light like the film, it quickhly escalates and Beerus actually comes close to killing Goku at one point and their battle threatens the entire universe.
    • In the Resurrection 'F' storyline, Frieza tortures his mooks instead of killing them, and rather than being an Advertised Extra, Tagoma has a greatly expanded role where he snaps and turns into a sadist because of said torture. An odd case where less killing manages to be darker than the source. Then, Episode 22 came and Piccolo is killed when no hero died in the movie and Gohan almost died three times instead of just once. Frieza is also more of a Jerkass, attacking Goku's friends during their battle and killing his own men just to show off. He also comes closer to winning against Goku, where in the movie it was a straight Humiliation Conga from start to finish. We also see the heroes' families moments before the Earth explodes.
  • The Future Trunks Saga has a much darker tone compared to the other Super story arcs and surpasses the Android/Cell Saga in tone. This saga covers the struggle involving an enemy known as Black, who looks like Goku. In the first episode of the saga, Future Bulma is murdered, Future Mai is almost killed, and most of the Earth is destroyed. Things only get darker after Black's origins are revealed. He is an alternate version of Present Zamasu who murders his master, takes the Time Ring, uses the Super Dragon Balls to switch bodies with Goku, kills Goku (who's trapped in Zamasu's old body) along with his family, goes to Future Trunks' timeline, kills Future Gowasu and recruits his future self, and they go on to destroy the Super Dragon Balls, murder all the gods in every universe, and are now slowly killing off mortals. The saga ends with Trunks' entire timeline being destroyed by Future Zen'o in order to stop the eternal Merged Zamasu.
  • The Universe Survival Saga kicks it up a notch once again. Think just one universe being wiped out was bad? This time at least seven of them will be bumped off, which means this show that airs at 8AM on a Weekday in Japan features universal genocide seven times over! This dark tone is highlighted with the darker shading, giving even characters like Goku and Master Roshi a more serious edge.
• Dark Horse Victory:
  • During the Baseball Episode (#70), the most effective member of Universe 7's team is Yamcha, who makes up for being by far the weakest member of either team by the significant advantage of being the only member on either team who actually knows the rules of baseball. He also wins their first game by managing to crawl to home base while Beerus and Champa are fighting.
  • Android 17 winning the Tournament of Power counts as well, as in the end a Human was the last one standing.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Hit may be a coldhearted assassin who wears dark clothing, but he has a strong sense of honor and only seems to kill when he's contracted to. He also goes out of his way to only kill his target, avoiding unnecessary kills, and takes out his target in a painless manner.
• Dark Is Evil: Goku Black. Just as the name implies, is an Evil Twin of Goku who is destroying Future Trunks' world and has murdered countless people including Future Bulma. He also wears dark clothing and has a black Battle Aura, a unique feature in the franchise, which has previously always given villains auras in purple or some other color.
• Dark Messiah: Goku Black claims that he's killing off humanity, and destroying countless other races in the name of justice. According to him, he's correcting a mistake made by the gods by eliminating all mortals and creating a paradise. His partner Future Zamasu also shares the same belief. In his Motive Rant to Future Trunks, he calls mortals stupid and foolish for misusing the knowledge giving to them by the gods.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Originally, Zamasu just wanted the gods to be more involved with mortal affairs so they would stop misusing the knowledge giving to them by the gods. At worse, he wanted the gods to stop protecting mortals since they're not worth it. After he meets and fights Goku, however, he goes off the deep end and decides that mortals are foolish and dangerous and needs to be destroyed for the peace of the universe. To that end, he kills his own master, takes his Time Ring, uses the Super Dragon Balls to take Goku's body, and murders him and his family out of spite. By the time Zamasu (now Goku Black) reaches Earth, he wipes out all the gods in the future timeline, is clearly insane, and sees himself as the one true god of the multiverse along with Future Zamasu. Whatever nobility in his goals are long gone.
• Deader than Dead:
  • Goku is forced to summon Future Zen'o after Merged Zamasu goes One-Winged Angel and becomes a multiverse encompassing Eldritch Abomination that threatens to even expand into other timelines. Zen'o annihilates him completely, and the future multiverse he'd assimilated along with him. Also, by destroying the timeline completely, Zen'o also wiped out the entire afterlife, meaning that even the souls of those who already died got annihilated.
  • Dr. Mashirito's ghost gets utterly annihilated in the Dr. Slump crossover after getting on the wrong side of Beerus.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Whis with his dry wit when he's dealing with Beerus.
  • Frieza takes this attitude when he's dealing with Ginyu and his antics.
  • Vados is even more sarcastic than Whis, often making fun of Champa's weight and even teases him about being weaker than Beerus because of his girth.
• Death by Adaptation: In the Resurrection 'F' Saga, Piccolo dies protecting Gohan from Frieza. Much like North City in the movie, they plan to wish him back to life with the Namekian Dragon Balls after Frieza is dealt with.
• Death by Disfigurement: Justified as it's a sign that Merged Zamasu's Healing Factor is failing. When he is born, Merged Zamasu is almost angelic and holy looking, but a blast to the face scars one side. This is taken further when his body further deforms and one of his arms mutates just in time for Future Trunks to destroy his physical form.
• Death by Irony:
  • Future Bulma is killed by a someone who looks like the person she built the time machine to save, Goku.
  • After spending his entire existence talking about how he's the 'Supreme God of the Multiverse', Merged Zamasu is cut in half by a mortal using the power of other mortals. He is then wiped from existence by Future Zen'o, the true Supreme God of the Multiverse, in seconds.
• Death Glare:
  • Beerus tends to give these whenever he's irritated or finally taking something seriously. His glares are so powerful that it makes Goku back away when they first fight and paralyzes Vegeta to the point that he can't move to help his allies when they're fighting him.
  • This is Frieza's default expression when he isn't baffled or amused.
  • Tagoma gives Sorbet one after he gets on him for killing Shisami.
  • Piccolo glares at Tagoma after he mortally wounds Gohan.
  • Vegeta gives a scary one to Trunks when he orders him to leave the battlefield so they can fight Frieza. Trunks immediately stops all his protests the second he sees it.
  • Goku gives these whenever he's properly upset. Case in point, he gives an epic one to Frieza after he returns to Earth and sees Gohan lying badly wounded and Piccolo dead on the ground.
  • Beerus and Champa's default expressions to each other.
  • Vegeta has nothing but death glares towards Frost during their brief battle.
  • Both Goku and Hit give Champa this when he calls all the tournament fighters pawns to the gods. It's so intense that it causes Champa to straggle back.
  • This appears to be Goku Black's default expression.
  • Present Zamasu gives Beerus one just before the God of Destruction atomizes him.
• Death Is Cheap:
  • It's a series tradition. After Piccolo gets a hole through the chest courtesy of Frieza's Death Beam, Goku warps him off to Dende and says they'll get the Namekians to revive him. They don't even bother with the details. He's up and around for the after-party with no fanfare.
  • Subverted in Future Trunks' timeline where Earth's Dragon Balls are inert thanks to the androids killing Piccolo and they can't find New Namek to use theirs or have a Namekian make Earth some new ones. Furthermore, when Gowasu travels to the future to demand Goku Black and Future Zamasu use the Dragon Balls to fix the damage they've caused, they reveal that they destroyed the Super Dragon Balls, thus preventing the last possible way to restore Trunks' future. So all deaths are permanent. Then, the saga manages to one-up itself by having a future Grand Zen'o destroy the entire timeline after Merged Zamasu infected it and kills everyone in it except a few named characters. That includes everyone in the afterlife. The best Whis can offer is to make a duplicate timeline for Trunks and Mai, and stop Black and Future Zamasu before they can kill the gods. However, this is only a copy. The timeline that Trunks and Mai gave everything to protect is beyond saving.
  • Episode 71 has Goku being killed by Hit. The series doesn't even try to pretend this will be permanent, showing them up and fighting again during the preview for the next episode.
• Death of a Child: In two events during the Future Trunks Arc:
  • The first one is when Zamasu switches bodies with Goku and becoming Goku Black. After killing Goku (who was in Zamasu's body) in front of his family, Goku Black then turns his attention to Chi-Chi and Goten.
  • The second one is during the final episode of the arc: Merged Zamasu becomes one with the multiverse and proceeds to kill off all the survivors that Future Trunks and Future Mai gave their all to keep alive, including the two kids that Trunks befriended. Then Zen'o comes in and wipes the entire future timeline out, making everyone who died in the future timeline Deader than Dead.
• Declaration of Protection: In a nice bit of Character Development, after seeing his mentor killed (again) and the Earth blown up, Gohan resolves to get stronger so he can protect his family.
• Debate and Switch:
  • There is a real debate in the Future Trunks Saga about the role of the gods and how they should handle the mortals who misused their god-given knowledge since Zamasu is right that the gods are lazy about their duties and mortals can be extremely dangerous to themselves and their environment. This is rendered moot, however, since Zamasu is a hypocritical monster who's far worse than any mortal, killing any debate on the subject.
  • Goku's recklessness putting the multiverse at risk rose discussion about how Goku's selfish nature was just as dangerous as the villains. Beerus even contemplated killing him since he felt that Goku's naive nature was a danger. However, this goes away once it's revealed that Zen'o was going to destroy the eight universes with the lowest mortal ranking even before Goku reminded him of the tournament. Goku's recklessness indirectly gives one of the doom universes a chance to save itself.
• Deconstruction:
  • This series ruthlessly tears apart the standard Shōnen Determinator and how the heroes always comes out on top against the odds:
    • Goku, despite putting his all against Beerus, getting an 11th-Hour Superpower, and having several Heroic Second Winds, cannot beat Beerus. The power gap between them is simply too much to overcome. The only thing Goku can do is appease the God of Destruction.
    • During the Resurrection 'F' Saga, The Ace and Can't Catch Up tropes are simultaneously deconstructed. Due to decades of relying on Goku (and later Vegeta) to swoop in and save the day, most of the cast (save Piccolo) have sat back and let their fighting prowess and strength atrophy, leaving them woefully unprepared when Frieza's forces come to Earth and invade. Notably Gohan, a former ace himself, has completely let himself go - being unable to maintain even the basic Super Saiyan transformation for very long - which ends up getting his mentor killed. When Goku does show up and manages to get within a hair's breadth of defeating a newly-empowered Frieza, he fails to notice Sorbet (whose power cannot compare to Goku's) skulking around in the background and ends up shot in the back for his trouble. In the end, it takes a literal Deus ex Machina for Goku to triumph and he accepts that everyone (including himself) need to be prepared for the unexpected in the future.
    • In the Future Trunks Saga, Goku, Vegeta, and Future Trunks throws everything they had against Goku Black, Future Zamasu, and later Merged Zamasu. Goku and Vegeta in particular buried their pride and work together, and even fused to become Vegito. Future Trunks gets a new transformation, learns several new techniques, and even gets a last minute power-up from a Spirit Bomb that he unconsciously creates. None of it is enough to beat Merged Zamasu once he merges with the multiverse and everyone is killed. Even calling for the help of the Top God only gets the entire timeline nuked, rendering everyone who has died Deader than Dead. So, despite all his hard work and sacrifices, Trunks loses everything except Future Mai.
  • The Future Trunks Saga has its own specific deconstructions:
    • This saga deconstructs the idea of Goku bringing out the best in people. After meeting and fighting Goku, instead of Zamasu becoming friends with him it sparks Zamasu's Start of Darkness and he begins to see Goku as a Satanic Archetype since he gained power that surpasses the gods.
    • From the same saga, it shows how having an Inexplicably Awesome protagonist is horrifying when used by an antagonist. Goku Black is Zamasu using all of Goku's abilities and extreme growth against the characters turning him into an Invincible Villain.
  • In the Universe Survival saga, Goku's Blood Knight tendancies are savagely deconstructed - the other universes are horrified by his chummy interactions with Zen'o and a group of literal Superheroes from Universe 11 call him an "evil-doer" with no irony whatsoever.
    • Magical Girl-style transformations are lampooned by Universe 2's "Kamikaze Fireballs" in two ways - rather than shifting the conventionally attractive girls into skimpier outfits, they instead become more animalistic and (in Brianne/Ribrianne's case) outright gonk-ish.
    • Goku's tendency to develop an 11th-Hour Superpower when facing an enemy out of his league is thrown completely out the window when he faces Jiren the Gray - a mortal hinted to be even more powerful than the Gods themselves. Goku gains the ability of Mastery of Self-Movement - Migatte no Goku'i - which fascinates Whis and horrifies the other Gods. He manages to face Jiren on a somewhat even plain for a short period of time... but it isn't enough. Jiren is merely forced to use his ki for the first time in their battle and blows Goku away just as his transformation ends.
  • The Super Mode/Eleventh Hour Super Power trope, frequently used throughout the series, is a downplayed example. Unlike previous adaptions that would pull new ones out for the sake of beating the Big Bad, obtaining a new tier of power doesn't mean you'll automatically win. Super Saiyan God Goku ultimately couldn't beat Beerus in a fight and Zamasu ultimately ended up being so far beyond the characters in the end that they were forced to summon a bigger fish to deal with him. There's also a major difference between obtaining a new tier of power and actually having mastered said form, as seen with Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken, which completely threw Goku's ability to use his ki out of whack, Golden Frieza's extremely quick stamina drain and Ultra Instinct Mastered which, despite its name, ended up giving Goku one hell of an energy backlash after he thought he had won his battle. However, this is all downplayed because, despite this, the show's theme is that it's always possible to grow even stronger and it's shown that any flaw can eventually be ironed out with enough training.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • Beerus defeats Goku, but becomes friends with him, although it isn't as obvious as the movie. He even spares Earth, but does it in a way where he saves face.
  • Averted with Zamasu. Goku beating Zamasu in a friendly sparring match is his Start of Darkness.
• Defeat Means Respect:
  • Goku comes to respect Beerus after he beats him, calling him "lord" or "sama" in the Japanese text. In an inverse, Beerus also respects Goku and to a lesser extent Vegeta after beating both of them.
  • After Goku beat him twice and even kills him, Frieza shows a lot of respect towards Goku, while still despising him and wanting to kill him.
• Defeating the Undefeatable:
  • Subverted in the Battle of Gods Saga. The heroes put a lot of effort into defeating Beerus, the God of Destruction. In the end, Beerus remained utterly undefeated. Not even Goku becoming a god could slow him down. The only thing they could do is to appease Beerus' desire to fight a Super Saiyan God.
  • Zigzag with Hit, who is the undefeated assassin from Universe 6. Although Goku gives a brilliant fight, he forfeits the match after Hit wasn't allowed to use his killing techniques because of the no-kill rule and Beerus' refusal to change the rules. Hit then goes on to lose to Monaka, because he throws the match as a favor to Goku. In their rematch, Hit successfully kills Goku, but he revives himself by using an energy blast he fired just before dying to restart his heart. After a tough battle, Goku beats Hit, playing this trope straight.
• Defector from Decadence: Two versions of Zamasu abandon the Kais' non-intervention philosophy and take an active role in eliminating all mortals from the lower realms, thanks to the first being resentful of Goku for beating him and the second being influenced by the first.
• Defence Mechanism Superpower: In the Grand Finale of Super, Goku muses this is how Ultra Instinct - Mastered seems to works. When Vegeta calls Goku out on not using it in their sparring match, Goku notes how he can't seem to activate it at will; it's only when he's in a life or death situation, such as his universe being erased if he didn't win the tournament of power, does he seem to be able to activate it.
• Defiant to the End:
  • Even when Present Zamasu is cornered by Beerus and knowing that he's out of his league, he tries to lunge at Goku in an attempt to kill him. When Beerus grabs him, instead of looking on in fear, he instead gives Beerus a Death Glare, just before Beerus atomizes him.
  • When Hit confronts the refugee Frost in an alleyway, Frost naturally assumes Hit has come to kill him and tries his best to defend himself, even though he admis he can never beat Hit. When he fails, he resigns himself to his fate before finding out Hit actually came to recruit him.
• Deity of Human Origin:
  • Once Goku becomes a Super Saiyan God. Although, it's deity of Saiyan origin for him. After some training from Whis he can even go beyond godhood.
  • Vegeta eventually does the same, reaching the same level of godhood as Goku. Even better, he did it without using the Super Saiyan God ritual.
  • As far as pure power is considered, Frieza becomes a deity for whatever species he is since he can smack Goku around while at full power. However, it's worth noting that he isn't a deity in the traditional sense since his power can still be felt by mortals. He just has the strength of a god, which is extremely impressive and scary.
  • Whis offers Goku the chance to take Beerus's place if something were to happen to the Destroyer, mostly to rile up Beerus. Turns out Zen'o appoints the position to whoever he thinks is strong enough, with a few fighters from different universes in the running by the time of the Tournament of Power. It's implied that the current Destroyers were formerly mortal.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit:
  • While training all-out with Gohan, Piccolo attacks Gohan from behind, only for Gohan to sense it and slice Piccolo's arm off. When Gohan worries about what he just did, Piccolo congratulates him for doing well, all while his severed arm flies behind Gohan and shoots him in the back with a ki blast.
  • In his battle with Obni, who can make copies of his energy to confuse opponents, Gohan deliberately allows Obni to hit him so he'll know exactly where to strike.
• Demoted to Extra: Wouldn't be Dragon Ball without this trope, although Super zigzags. For the most part, the extended cast takes a backseat to Goku and Vegeta with even Gohan getting almost no screen time. At the same time, the extended cast get some spotlight in the Breather Episodes and story arcs like Resurrection 'F' and the Universal Survival Saga.
• Denser and Wackier: Zigzagged. The show is definitely wackier than most of Z. The sense of humor is closer to the original Dragon Ball and it even has a gag episode. At the same time, Super has some of the darkest moments in the franchise with the Future Trunks Saga and its ending.
• Depending on the Artist:
  • Depending on who is drawing Goku, he may not have highlights in his hair.
  • Toyotaro draws Black with the same body figure as Goku and gives him dark outlines around the edge of his eyes. He is also almost always seen smiling. The anime gives Black a slimmer built, which better matches Toriyama's currently art style, darkened his skin tone, and often draws him stoic, only breaking into smiles when he's doing or thinking of something particularly evil.
  • The way the anime (and Toriyama's outline) portrays Zamasu's body figure is quite different, with him being a lean, pretty boy, while Toyotaro draws him quite muscular in the manga. This even extend to the facial expressions, with the anime smiles being more subtle, only going to the extreme when Zamasu's mental state grows worse, while the manga are full blown slasher and villainous with any evil act. Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 model is based on the anime, with Zamasu being leaner than Black, while the manga portray both with a similar muscle figure.
  • In the anime, Present and Future Zamasu are draw slightly differently in the facial area. Present Zamasu has softer expressions and his eyes are more Tareme Eyes. Future Zamasu has more hardened features and his eyes are Tsurime Eyes. Overall, Future Zamasu looks older than Present Zamasu, although it's subtle. The manga draws Present and Future Zamasu the same.
• Designated Villain: An In-Universe example. The gods blame Goku for putting their universes in danger since he reminded Zen'o of the tournament he promised back in the Champa Saga. Even with the reveal that Zen'o was going wipe the universes with the lowest mortal level and the tournament gives at least one universe the chance to save itself, they still blame Goku for everything with Toppo outright calling Goku evil. This is somewhat justified in that none of the gods can blame Zen'o since he can wipe them out instantly. So Goku is a handy scapegoat. Goku also doesn't help himself by not caring about being called a villain and tells the gods to their faces to bring their best fighters so he can beat them up.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • The remaining Z Fighters hit this after the Earth is destroyed by Frieza. Bulma, Krillin, and Gohan can only call out to their dead loved ones, while Goku beats himself up for not killing Frieza when he had the chance.
  • The people of Future Trunks' time were dangerously close to crossing this after Goku, Vegeta, and Trunks were defeated by Goku Black. To add to their misery, they now have two enemies with Future Zamasu. It takes Mai assuring everyone that Trunks will return to keep their hopes up.
  • Future Mai goes past this point when he hears that Merged Zamasu killed everyone on Earth. She can only fire at the sky, screaming denials about what just happened.
• Despair Gambit: This is Bermod's intention when he orders Jiren to eliminate Goku. He reasons that by crushing one of his strongest opponents, the other fighters will lose their nerve. Instead, it seems to just make them all focus on Jiren as a target. Not to mention that Goku goes down a lot harder than anticipated.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: Played With. Although Goku Black fully believes that he's doing the right thing by destroying the cities to kill all the mortals on Earth, he isn't happy about all the destruction and mourns how bad the Earth looks as he observes the ruined West City.
• Destructive Savior:
  • Goku and the other Z-Fighters try to keep damages to a minimal when they fight, often battling in the middle of nowhere. However, given how powerful they are, things still get destroyed, like Super Saiyan God Goku nearly destroying the universe during his fight with Beerus. The Earth would have also been destroyed if Whis didn't protect it.
  • Goku Black thinks he's this. He has to destroy parts of the Earth in order to eliminate the pests known as mortals, but it's all for the greater good in his mind. Still, he limits his destruction to the cities, keeping the surrounding greener intact.
  • Future Zen'o finishes off Merged Zamasu's final form by utterly destroying the entire timeline he is in.
• Determinator:
  • In Battle of Gods, after Beerus beats Goku the first time, he's so laid out that he needs a Senzu to recover (as shown in the extended edition). Here, however, Goku forces himself to stand up after he realizes that his friends on Earth are in danger.
  • Buu keeps getting back up to try and fight Beerus after his first and second defeat. He's the only character to go multiple rounds.
  • Goku throughout his second fights with Beerus and Frieza:
    • Despite being impaled through the stomach and falling into the sea from outer space, Goku refuses to give up. Beerus is counting on this to bring out Goku's full power.
    • Goku keeps fighting and pushes past his physical limits, shocking Beerus. He punches one of Beerus' giant planet bursters in his base form, from within, while his hands and arms are burning up.
    • Although Goku is burnt out from their battle and barely able to stand, he still tries to stop Beerus from destroying Earth.
    • During his rematch against Frieza, Golden Frieza completely overpowers Goku and beats him into submission, but this doesn't keep Goku down. By the end of the battle, Goku is in better shape than Frieza who is huffing for air and can barely stand since he burnt through his energy reserves.
  • Despite being trapped in a frog's body for nearly two decades, Ginyu never lost hope of returning to Frieza's side.
  • Frieza literally tries to put himself back together from pieces and, in his battle against Goku, he won't let anything stand in his way from winning. He also forced his way through four months of Training from Hell despite having never trained in his entire life previously, just to get revenge on Goku.
  • Frost refuses to stay down even when Goku is beating the tar out of him, claiming he has to be an example for the children he defends and that obtaining Champa's assistance to end all conflict is too important to him. This all turns out to be show. Frost doesn't give a damn about the children and he actually starts the conflicts he saves people from.
  • Vegeta keeps getting back up even after Hit strikes him several times in his vital areas. By the time Vegeta is knocked out, Hit notes that Vegeta is the first to take so many hits and not die.
  • Goku Black has his mind set to killing Future Trunks, even if he has to travel across time itself to do it.
  • Despite all his failures, Future Trunks keep fighting against Goku Black and later Future Zamasu. By the end of the saga, Merged Zamasu is sick of him:
  Merged Zamasu: You again, Trunks?!
  • Despite his body melting from Power Degeneration and his Healing Factor slowly giving up, Merged Zamasu's conviction to his Knight Templar cause is so great that he simply gets up and continues fighting. Even being split in half only kills him for about a minute. Even when he is reduced to a cloud of rage, devastation, and madness, his body and mind utterly destroyed, he still retains enough of himself to continue towards his goal of becoming the Top God. Goku says it best:
  Goku: What a stubborn god.
• Determined Expression: An important one occurs in episode 110. In the Dragon Ball franchise, and in many shonen series that have come after it, there's a convention that a character who is killed by an energy attack is rendered in pure line art as their expression changes to awe or horror, before the lines dissolve indicating their body has disintegrated in the blast. This happens to Goku as he falls into his imploding Spirit Bomb, but just as he's about to dissolve, he suddenly grits his teeth and stares resolutely into the face of oblivion. When he reappears a few minutes later, he has not only survived intact, but unlocked a new and terrifying power.
• Deus Angst Machina: Future Trunks cannot catch a break. Since he was a baby his life was ruined by the androids who killed his father, his mother's friends, and later his mentor Gohan. Even after becoming a Super Saiyan, he still couldn't beat the androids and had to journey to the past to gained the experience and power needed to finally kill them and free the future. Just as it looks like his life was finally being put back together and he stopped Majin Buu from being reborn, Black comes to Earth and destroys his world yet again. This time his mom, his only living family, is murdered and he thinks his friend Mai has also been killed. He later loses his entire timeline to Merged Zamasu and Future Zen'o. Future Mai is literally the only thing he has left.
• Deus Exit Machina:
  • Vegeta and Goku are off-Earth training with Whis when Frieza's invasion begins, otherwise they would have wiped out his army in two seconds. The anime takes it a step further by having Whis warp them to another dimension on Beerus's suggestion.
  • Buu's Written In Absence is a similar case. While he would have been no match for Frieza (and especially not Frieza's golden form), he could have just turned the entire army into candy or conventionally killed them all just as easily. Depending on how arrogant Frieza is, Buu's candy ray could have conceivably hit him, too, ending the entire threat.
  • Gohan gets this in the Champa Saga. He wants to be part of the tournament, but can't because he has a conference that day. During the months after the Frieza invasion Gohan has been training to get himself back into shape and is only behind Goku and Vegeta in strength. Him being part of the U7 team would have made them stronger and he would have been a variable substitute for Buu after he slept through the intelligence test.
  • In the Future Trunks Saga, Zamasu and Goku Black are only able to carry out their plans due to the death of the Gods of Destruction via their life-link to the Supreme Kais, as Zamasu and Goku Black proceeded to kill the enormously weaker Supreme Kais in order to get rid of the Gods of Destruction (who would have likely been the only beings capable of one-shooting them, as seen when Beerus kills Present Zamasu).
• Deus ex Machina:
  • The Super Saiyan God ritual within the context of the Dragon Ball continuity as a whole, because it isn't referenced at all prior to Beerus' arrival and gives its recipient the power to completely wreck the universe if they're careless, regardless of previous power level. It works in the story because the ritual is only instigated by Beerus, who has a similar level of power, but if the cast had happened upon it in a previous arc, it would have been a complete story breaker.
  • Zen'o's arrival at the end of the Champa Saga is a literal deus ex machina, as he appears just in time to prevent Champa from destroying the U6 team. While fans had often speculated that there might be an overall ruler of the multiverse, his existence was never referenced in the show prior to that point.
• Deuteragonist: Vegeta is promoted to this, sharing almost equal spotlight with Goku.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
  • After his true colors are revealed, Frost take the time to brag about how he's really an underground planet broker who start wars so he can buy planets cheaply before selling them again at a high price after he fixes them. And he did this in front of two Gods of Destruction. To make Frost's actions even more bold, he actually tries to trick Champa into supporting him, under the name of 'helping children'. Champa was ready to kill Frost on the spot, and only relents because Vegeta wanted to fight Frost and because he wants to show up Beerus.
  • After being told by Bergamo that all the gods from the other universes will be after him and Universe 7, Goku turns towards the other gods and tells them to bring their best fighters and he will beat them all up. Needless to say, the gods weren't happy with the blatant disrespect.
  • A subtle one, but when Beerus tries to blame everything on Goku, including U7's low mortal ranking, Goku calls him out for his random destruction, basically pointing out that Beerus isn't standing on the moral high ground. This really ticked Beerus off and Goku still gets in Beerus' face despite knowing that the God of Destruction could vaporized him on a whim.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Goku is the first one to do real damage to Merged Zamasu by using a super powered Kamehameha that melted half of his face. From there, Goku goes on the attack, with both of his arms disable since he used so much power on the Kamehameha, and viciously beats him, before Merged Zamasu grabs his leg and breaks it. How does Goku response? He fires up his Super God Saiyan Super Saiyan/Kaioken combo and kicks Merged Zamasu with his good leg, breaking his halo.
  • Future Trunks combines the might of everyone on the planet, including Goku and Vegeta and he vertically cuts Merged Zamasu in half. Needless to say, his immortal body did not stood a chance.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?:
  • Frost is almost successful in this when he makes everyone, except for Vados, believe that he's a Nice Guy who fights bad guys and protect children. If he wins the tournament for Champa, he will gain the God of Destruction's support in his charities. His true colors are only revealed after he's caught cheating by Jaco. Champa is so enraged from being deceived that he's ready to kill Frost.
  • Goku gets away from Beerus, who's ready to vaporize him to keep him from seeing Zen'o, by pretending he threw the Zen'o button into the air like a coin flip. While Beerus and Whis are distracted, he pushes the button and is teleported to Zen'o's palace. Even Whis is impressed by the trick.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • No one, not even Frieza, foresaw Tagoma killing his own teammate just to take down Gohan. Everyone is shocked and horrified, while Frieza is pleased by Tagoma's personality change.
  • Ginyu taking over Tagoma's body was a shock to everyone, especially since Frieza and his men believed he was dead the entire time. Frieza is happily surprised that his loyal servant survived the explosion of Namek.
  • Goku didn't foresee at all being shot from behind. He probably didn't even know Sorbet existed. Only Beerus and Vegeta saw the attack coming.
  • Frieza had no clue that Vegeta could even become a Super Saiyan, let alone a Super Saiyan Blue like Goku, and is now his equal.
  • Botamo never considered that someone could drag and throw him out of the ring, negating his absorption ability.
  • Universe 6 is rather shocked by the ridiculous strength of Universe 7's fighters. Their Saiyans don't even know what a Super Saiyan is, much less have several of them with multiple forms.
  • Goku has his fight against Frost in the bag until he suddenly gets sleepy and kicks out of the ring. Everyone is shocked.
  • Everyone is surprised and disgusted when they learned that Frost is just as bad as Frieza. Even Champa is upset and wants to kill Frost.
  • Beerus and Whis are surprised that Champa manages to get a Time Master like Hit on their team. Whis even notes that he didn't know anyone outside of him could manipulate time.
  • Goku got a nasty surprise when he finds out that Hit manages to improve his Time-Skipping ability in the middle of their fight.
  • Goku throwing his fight against Hit catches everyone by surprise. Beerus gets another shock when Monaka actually wins against Hit (because Hit also throws his match).
  • Goku Black didn't know about Future Trunks' time machine, which is why he's shocked when Trunks suddenly disappears on him when he had him dead to rights. Oddly enough, we learned later that he did know about Trunks' time traveling and it was part of the reason why he chose Future Trunks' time to attack. Although, he mostly likely never considered that Trunks would retreat to the past to get help, nor did he know what Trunks' time machine looked like.
  • One of the primary reasons why Goku, Vegeta, and Future Trunks lost their rematch with Goku Black. They were only expecting him to be as strong as Super Saiyan 3 Goku, not to power up to the point where he can challenged a Super Saiyan Blue, and that is before he transformed into his Super Saiyan Rosé. Vegeta then gets taking down fast because he didn't expect Black to suddenly pull out an energy sword and stab him. Things went further downhill once Future Zamasu arrives, which shocked everyone since they thought Black and Zamasu were the same person, and he has powers up and is able to challenged Goku at full power. To add their trouble, Future Zamasu is an immortal.
  • Present Zamasu's plan to kill Gowasu and steal the Time Ring to use the Super Dragon Balls would have gone off flawlessly, if Goku didn't encounter Future Zamasu and told Beerus what happened. He had no way of knowing that Goku could time travel since that's limited to only the Supreme Kais and he didn't learn about time travel himself until a few days ago.
  • Beerus thought that the future was changed after he killed Zamasu because a god killing another god alters the time stream. This is despite Future Trunks and the others pointing out that Trunks' timeline is different from the present timeline. Turns out, Trunks was right, but not for the reasons he thought. Beerus got it wrong because he and the others thought Future Zamasu was Present Zamasu and that Goku Black was merely a golem of the Super Dragon Balls, when in truth, Goku Black is Present Zamasu and he's protected by any changes in time thanks to the Time Ring. Beerus nor Whis could have known that Zamasu would become so obsessed with Goku that he would actually abandoned his godly form and take Goku's body, and team up with his future counterpart.
  • Neither his components or Merged Zamasu foresaw only being half immortal would come back to cause him trouble. Granted, it boosts his power tremendously, but at the cost of his Healing Factor being flawed and causing him to mutate out of control. Later, he underestimates the power of mortals when their hopes, wishes, and energies combine into a singular person, allowing Future Trunks to finally put him down, his physical body anyway.
  • No one knew that Merged Zamasu would survived his body being destroyed and merged with the multiverse, killing everyone on Earth.
  • During his rematch with Hit, Goku was expecting him to use the Time-Skip, which he knew how to counter. So, he's caught flatfooted when all his attacks phase through Hit like he was a ghost. He also didn't expect Hit's punch to land since he was a good distance from him and he could react if Hit moved. This cost him his life, although temporarily, since the punch created a shockwave that stops his heart.
  • To prove that turn around is fair play, Hit is shocked that Goku literally broke his Pocket Dimension that he was using to avoid Goku's attacks. This left him wide open for Goku's Kamehameha.
  • Beerus learning that he will also be killed along with Universe 7 if they lose the Tournament of Power. His surprise becomes bigger when he learns that Universe 7 was destined to be wiped out anyway by Zen'o ^note  The tournament now gives them a chance to survive. and only Whis is allow to survive. Whis' callous and nonchalant laughter only adds salt to the wound.
  • Despite training Goku for over two years, Whis is shocked when Goku bites him during training.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Beerus brought Monaka because he claims that he is the best fighter he had ever met outside of Whis and he gave him a much better fight than Super Saiyan God Goku when in truth, Monaka is weak, at least compared to Goku and Vegeta, and Beerus only said those things to motivate Goku and Vegeta. He has no intention of letting Monaka fight in the tournament, which is why he makes Monaka go last no matter what. This comes back to bite him in the butt since he underestimates Champa's team, specifically Hit, and Goku is the last real fighter after Vegeta goes down. He was also handicapped early by Buu failing his exam, so he only had three able fighters from the start. Even more, he makes Goku, Vegeta, and Piccolo decide the order in which they fight by doing rock-paper-scissors instead of ordering weakest to strongest. This is why Goku is the first to fight in the tournament, Piccolo, the weakest on team, is in the middle, with Vegeta being last. Given what happened when Vegeta fought Hit, Beerus would have been completely screwed if Goku wasn't allowed back into the tournament since Frost cheated. Or, Goku could have been knocked out fairly by one of the other fighters and even if he did make it to Hit, he would have been weaker since he had to fight through the entire Universe 6's team. Whis mercilessly lampshades this.
  • Goku Black has two moments:
    • He didn't consider the full repercussions of taking Goku's body. While he slowly gains all of Goku's power and abilities, he also inherited Goku's Blood Knight tendencies and becomes a Challenge Seeker to the point of not wanting immortality like his future counterpart. This ends up compromising Merged Zamasu's immortality, making him only half immortal.
    • His end goal to fused with Future Zamasu once he reached the peak of his power have specks of this. While creating Merged Zamasu would undoubtedly make an extremely powerful god, he never accounted for the fact that him being a mortal would gimp Merged Zamasu's immortality. He also didn't seem to consider Zen'o in his plan, who can erased the multiverse with ease. Or perhaps he did and thought Merged Zamasu could beat him.
  • Goku's Motivational Lie to get the others to join the Tournament of Power. He claimed that the Tournament of Power had a ten million zeni reward for the winner. Once the lie is revealed and he's called out on it, he quickly realizes that there was no way he could have paid everyone off and had to asked Bulma for a loan.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Occurs in the FUNimation dub of episode 20. When Beerus accuses Whis of visiting the earth without him to get food, Whis whistles innocently. In the original Japanese, it's a random tune, but in the dub, he whistles along with the actual background music in the scene.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Whenever Frieza loses his advantage against Goku, he attacks Goku's friends during the first phase of the fight, something Goku calls him out on. Also, the very moment he begins to lose to Goku as Golden Frieza, he has Sorbet shoot Goku in the back. After being beaten by Vegeta he Rage Quits.
  • Frieza's U7 counterpart, Frost, is just as bad if not worse. Whenever he's at a disadvantage, he poisons his opponent, and does it in such a way that keeps his hands clean.
• Disappears into Light: All victims of the Commeson have their strength drained and disappear within 3-5 minutes. However, Vegeta is able to stay for a significantly longer time because he sucked on a pacifier that once sealed the Commeson.
• Discontinuity Nod:
  • Like Battle of Gods, Pilaf and his group are reduced to children because of a mis-worded wish to the Eternal Dragon. This is a disregard to the first episode of Dragon Ball GT where they're very old and frail and it's Goku they wish back into a kid by mistake.
  • Also like Resurrection ‘F’ in hell Frieza is still in his cyborg form when Trunks diced him. This puts a stopper to all the other times Frieza is shown after dying in his fully organic form such as anime filler, the movies, and GT — unless he was reverted to cyborg form and placed in the cocoon after the death of Kid Buu.
  • This also retcons any and all scenes of hell in the non-manga timelines, as this is the first time we see hell in the manga timeline. In contrast to previous depictions, where hell seemingly consisted of little more than a dank cave where all the villains are allowed to have a body and roam free (meaning they can easily start a revolution in hell or even a breakout), here Frieza is shown to be trapped in a personal Ironic Hell, which can be assumed to hold true for all those who end up there.
  • There's the part in the Buu Saga where Piccolo told Vegeta when he dies, he will be in hell for the crimes he's committed in the past. And once his soul is purified, he will be reborn without memories of his past life. This means Frieza is forever stuck in that tree until he's reborn without his genocidal past.
  • In Episode 32 it is revealed that the Supreme Kai and Kibito defused using the Namekian Dragon Balls, contradicting GT where they remained fused.
  • Android 18 rebukes Android 17 when he refers to her and Krillin's daughter Marron as "Maron", which was the name of Krillin's temporary girlfriend in an anime-only filler storyline of Dragon Ball Z.
• Disney Death: The shockwave from one of Black's ki blasts throws Future Mai several meters back through the air, and lands with a painful crunch.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Beerus has so many he could be the page image:
    • Beerus, per usual. Unlike the manga, where he destroys the whole planet, he merely destroys half the planet for serving him greasy food. Then again, in the manga they also were dumb enough to try to poison him.
    • In the second episode, after a brief scuffle with a warrior who had some dinosaur meat he wanted, Beerus blows up the planet out of spite, simply because he decided he didn't want the dinosaur meat on it anymore.
    • In the third episode, Beerus reveals that the last time he visited Earth, it was when the dinosaurs were roaming around. He wiped them out simply because they had a bad attitude. He didn't do a very good job of it, though, considering dinosaurs still roam the Earth in this setting.
    • Whis notes that Beerus destroyed a planet because the food sucked when he was complaining about lunch. Funny enough, he still ate the lunch made from said planet.
    • In the sixth episode, it seems his feud with the Saiyans was over King Vegeta not getting him the most comfortable pillow in the universe. When the King protested they got him the most comfortable one they could in the short time frame they were given, Beerus says King Vegeta deliberately kept the most comfortable pillow for himself and passed the second-best onto Beerus. Given what he's done over food, it's possible this was why Beerus wanted their planet destroyed.
    • Like the movie, Beerus plans to destroy the Earth because he didn't get pudding or find the Super Saiyan God he'd been looking for. He also says he will destroy the solar system after Goku manages to stall him.
    • He shoots at Goku and Vegeta for disturbing his nap (it was really Champa's arrival). Then again, this is quite mild compared to when he first met them since he isn't trying to kill them.
  • Frieza is almost as bad as Beerus given his Revenge Before Reason and Sanity Slippages:
    • His using Tagoma as a torture test subject for four months as punishment for him telling Frieza to go back to his empire and ignore the Super Saiyan.
    • He shoots Gohan up for daring to remind him of Goku's mercy towards him.
  • Champa is willing to kill his entire team for losing the tournament, calling them a disgrace and an embarrassment to his universe.
  • Present Zamasu takes this to absurd levels. The entirety of his personal grudge against Goku which escalates to attempted murder was over the fact that Goku beat him in a sparring match. His alternate self takes it even further by stealing his body using the Super Dragon Balls and then killing him and his entire family with it just to rub it in. It's even worse in the manga, where Present Zamasu never even meets Goku. He just sees his fight with Hit on Godtube and becomes furious at the idea of a mortal rising to the power of a god.
  • Barry Kahn didn't know Gohan was superhuman so he fully intended to have him hurt/killed doing a stunt as revenge for his wife's rejection.
  • Brianne transforms into Ribrianne to outright destroy two women just because they told her she wasn't capable of joining a martial arts tournament.
• Dissonant Serenity: Because of Goku Black's calm, dispassionate demeanor, almost nothing fazes him. He can murder people by the hundreds and only have a small smirk on his face. One scene when Future Trunks is recalling his arrival on Earth has him casually walking through a field on fire and he talks about killing Trunks in a pleasant tone.
• Distinction Without a Difference: When Goku asks Future Zamasu if Goku Black and he are comrades, he denies it, stating that they are only two people working for the same dream. Goku lampshades that this means basically the same thing.
• Divergent Character Evolution: In terms of transformations, Goku and Vegeta have always been pretty on-par, with Goku achieving a new form and Vegeta following shortly afterwards (except for Super Saiyan 3, though Vegeta is likely capable of achieving it, he has forms that are far stronger and more ki efficient). When both of them break through their limits in the Universal Survival saga, however, Goku gains Ultra Instinct, which is outrageously powerful but only works in short bursts and only activates when Goku is on the ropes, whilst Vegeta gains Beyond Super Saiyan Blue, which is an enhanced form of Super Saiyan Blue that is less powerful than Ultra Instinct (but still on par with a God of Destruction) but Vegeta can access it at any time akin to a normal transformation without excessive strain on his body.
  • They even obtain their powers differently. Goku gets Ultra Instinct from nearly dying, which doesn't work for Vegeta when he stops defending himself to provoke the transformation. Vegeta gets Beyond Super Saiyan Blue when he remembers the promises he made to the people he cares about, a dramatic point of Character Development for Vegeta yet it's something Goku does out of habit.
• Divine Conflict: A lighter and softer version in the Champa Saga. The entire conflict started because Champa wants to show up Beerus by challenging him to a tournament, the winner getting control of the Super Dragon Balls. However, since it is forbidden for the two gods to fight each other, otherwise they would destroy both of their universes, they have mortals do the fighting for them. The Future Trunks Saga, however, shows a much serious version of this when Zamasu rebels against the gods because of their inaction against the evil known as mortals. To bring forward the 'gods' justice', he steals Goku's body to become Goku Black, teams up with his future counterpart, and murdered all the gods in the multiverse, leaving him alone as the supreme god.
• Divine Intervention:
  • Although Whis is technically not a god, he's actually an angel, he still counts since he's many times stronger than Beerus and he has the power to rewind time for the entire universe by three minutes. He uses this power to reverse time on Frieza, stopping him from destroying the Earth. He later uses his time reversal power to prevent Zamasu from killing Gowasu.
  • Since Goku himself can be counted as a deity thanks to his mastery of Super Saiyan God and later Super Saiyan Blue, him coming to save his friends can be seen as this trope. Vegeta would count as well since he too becomes a Super Saiyan Blue.
  • Zen'o, the King of Everything, unknowingly pulls this by arriving to the tournament. If he didn't come, Champa would have murdered his entire team.
  • Goku is actually giving a switch for this. Zen'o wants to be friends with Goku, so he gives Goku a button that will summon him at any time. After Merged Zamasu fuses with the multiverse and kills everyone who was still alive, Goku is left with no choice but to summon Future Zen'o to kill Merged Zamasu since he's an immortal. He does it by wiping out the entire timeline.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The English version of the first theme song, 'Chōzetsu Dynamic!', is done by the original singer, Kazuya Yoshii, himself. Oddly, it took a few weeks for FU Nimation to start using it, since apparently they tried to get the rights to do a different version themselves, but the Japanese side of things didn't let them do it. This version isn't held in the highest regard, since it's poorly translated and scripted, as well as the actor being heavily accented, since he's not a native English speaker.
  • The second theme song's English version, however, is much better handled. 'Limit Breakthrough × Survivor' is sung by YouTube singer, and sometimes FU Nimation dub actor, Nathan Sharp/NateWantstoBattle and most everyone agrees it's both a great cover and is better than the previous theme song's English version.
• Dog Food Diet: Mai gives Trunks a can of meat in the future, excitedly saying that it's not dog food; the implication is that there's almost no other food left.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu:
  • Subverted, but just barely by Frost. Champa was ready to kill him for embarrassing his universe and for trying to trick him when he learned that Frost is a planet broker. The only reason why Frost is still alive is because Vegeta wanted to beat him up during the tournament.
  • Beerus however, plays it straight just before he atomizes Present Zamasu.
    Beerus: (darkly) Don't get cocky.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength:
  • When Krillin asks Goku to punch him so he can feel how powerful Goku has become, Goku warns him several times that it will hurt. Krillin is adamant, so Goku gives him a light punch….which sends Krillin flying across the countryside, through people's houses, and breaks his legs. Given Goku's reaction, he obviously wasn't expecting his punch to be that powerful.
  • While trying to cook for Whis, Vegeta is unable to crack an egg without it exploding in his hand.
  • King Kai accuses Goku of this when he's training on his planet after getting over his illness, saying that he can easily destroy his home.
  • When discussing the grim prognosis of Future Trunks' timeline in Episode 60, Vegeta snaps the fork he's holding, showing his agitation over the situation.
• The Dog Bites Back: After Barry blackmails Cocoa into trying to frame Gohan as cheating on his wife, she one-ups him by blackmailing him into keeping quiet about Gohan's superhero identity by threatening to tell the public about his time as Watagash's host if he spills the beans.
• Doppelgänger Spin: In episode 113, while Goku is fighting Caulifla, he creates multiple images of himself to fool her.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male:
  • Episode 17 has Chi-Chi treating both Goku and Gohan in this manner. In another context, she can be seen as an abusive control freak. Her anger at Gohan, however, is justified. Most people would freak out and be upset at seeing a four-month-old baby being tossed around like a ball.
  • Bulma's treatment of Jaco wouldn't be allowed if their genders were reversed. At the same time this is par the course with Dragon Ball where the males take a lot of abuse from females.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Mai’s relationship with Trunks comes off as this, as it is essentially rape by deception. Mai wished herself to be a kid again and is seen as this Love Interest for a 14 year old Trunks, despite her still keeping her adult mindset, and eventually dates him. If the genders were reversed (a man wishing himself into being a kid again and dating a teenage girl), viewers of the show would be completely horrified.
• The Dragon:
  • Subverted with Whis. Although he is a servant to Beerus and is much more powerful than even the God of Destruction, he tends to sit back and let things play out. He even keeps Beerus from destroying the Earth because he's still eating.
  • When Sorbet was in command of the Frieza Force, Tagoma and Shisami were his Co-Dragons. After Tagoma takes a level in badass and jerkass, he became Frieza's sole dragon.
  • Once Ginyu takes Tagoma's body, he become Frieza' dragon once again.
  • Played With with Vados. She is Champa's servant and is Whis' equal in power, but she allows Champa to do whatever he likes and even helps him like destroying planets on his order. However, she does choose what orders she wants to follow and will interpret Champa's order loosely to troll him.
  • Whis theorizes that Goku Black was created by a wish from the Super Dragon Balls to act as Zamasu's servant and help him with his plan to destroy mortals. At the same time, Whis also notes that Goku Black being created by the Super Dragon Balls doesn't explain why he has similar ki to Zamasu. Goku Black and Zamasu also don't really have a servant and master relationship since Zamasu calls him a kindred spirit. In the end, this turns out to be a subversion. Black is a version of Zamasu who took over Goku's body, so they're equals in rank.
• Dramatic Red Samurai Background: When Vegeta takes a blast from Zamasu to protect Trunks, the screen switches to black and red. The blast was actually non lethal, so it was more for dramatic effect.
• The Dreaded:
  • Beerus to all who know who he is. The Kais are scared of him, Dende has a Freak Out just being in his presence, Vegeta can't even attack him because he's so terrified, Shenron becomes flustered and flees back into the Dragon Balls at the first opportunity, and Frieza of all people humbles himself when he's in Beerus' presence. In Episode 50, Goku Black recognizes Beerus and isn't afraid, giving the first hint of how powerful he really is, or he's just really self-assured.
  • Frieza is this to his entire empire (as well as his own underlings), which meant that with him gone along with his top commanders, his forces face planetary revolts and internal disarray. By the time they finally break down and go to Earth to use their Dragon Balls, they've lost 60% of their entire military force. Sorbet sees no other choice but to bring back the only one everyone truly fears. Sorbet's projections also show that if Frieza is successfully revived, they will gain control of 70% of the universe.
  • Goku is feared by Frieza's entire empire to the point that they try to locate New Namek for years instead of using the Earth's Dragon Balls. They had to reach the Godzilla Threshold before they even considered going to Earth and rush from the planet as soon as Frieza is revived. Frieza himself also fears Goku and shows real nervousness about fighting him again. In Frieza's case, however, his pride and hatred towards Goku override his fear.
  • When Frieza's minions tell him that Goku defeated Majin Buu, he gets a perfect idea of how strong Goku is now; King Cold told him, "The two people in this universe whom you should never cross are the God of Destruction Beerus and Majin Buu."
  • Frieza's Freak Out when he sees Gohan become a Super Saiyan. Sorbet is also noticeably horrified.
  • Hit from U6 is known as a legendary, powerful hitman in his universe. Frost is completely terrified when Hit catches him trying to steal the reward treasures and the cube spaceship, the same Frost who acted like a Smug Snake in front of two Gods of Destruction and Reality Warpers. Goku and Vegeta are also leery of him, and are saving their full power specifically to fight him. Hit was also personally chosen by Champa, who is confident can win the entire tournament for him.
  • Monaka terrifies Beerus. Although Monaka appears very weak and fragile to the point that he mentally faints seeing Goku's Kamehameha, Beerus sees him as their trump card and must go last, no matter what. According to Beerus, Monaka can't tell friend from foe when he's mediating and once destroyed a planet. It's all one big lie. Monaka isn't strong at all and Beerus is terrified about someone finding this out.
  • Zen'o is the King of Everything and his very presence freaks both Beerus and Champa. As the ruler of the multiverse, he has the power to destroy all the universes in an instant according to Beerus. Whis goes even further and explains how there used to be 18 universes before Zen'o wiped out 6 of them.
  • Goku Black. He all but destroyed Future Trunks' world and personally hunts Trunks down for at least a year. All Trunks can do is run and hide from him, even as he murders Future Bulma. When Trunks does stand and fight, he gets his butt kicked, even as a Super Saiyan. Goku Black traumatizes Trunks so badly that when he sees Goku, he has flashbacks and attacks him on sight.
• Dream Deception: When Goku and Vegeta are tasked with changing Beerus's sheets while he sleeps, they are careful not to wake him up. When Beerus opens his eyes, Goku quickly tells him that he is simply dreaming them there as Beerus closes his eyes again.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • The fate of the entire future timeline. Within minutes of Merged Zamasu fusing with the multiverse, he kills everyone on Earth except for Goku, Vegeta, Future Trunks, Future Mai, Bulma, and the Supreme Kais with no fanfare. Future Zen'o then destroys what's left, which erases everyone's existence, to get rid of Merged Zamasu.
• Drunk on the Dark Side:
  • After achieving his Super Saiyan Rosé transformation, Goku Black spends several minutes relishing in his new power and thanking Goku for helping him achieved this form of beauty.
  • Merged Zamasu's new immense power has somehow made him more of a megalomaniac, to the point that he literally sees himself as the center of the universe and causes planet wide disasters just to show off and he's even worse in the manga. He spends several panels testing his body by mopping the floor with Goku and Vegeta, before the declares himself god of everything. He shots energy attacks into the sky to rain down on Goku and the others and laughs like a manic to celebrate being the supreme god.
• Dub Name Change:
  • Enforced by Executive Meddling in the Hungarian dub to preserve continuity with the old dub of Dragon Ball Z, originally adapted from AB Groupe's infamous French version.^note English-speaking fans know this as the basis for the "Big Green" dub. The dub was required to keep many old French-based names, such as "Star Warriors" for the Saiyans, "Crystal Balls" for the Dragon Balls, "Genious Turtle" for Master Roshi, "Young Satan" for Piccolo, "Hercules" for Mr. Satan, "Bubu" for Buu, and so forth. This practice even extended to keeping other old imperfections, like French mispronunciations ("Zsinő" for Ginyu) and dubbing simplifications (Gotenks, a fusion, having a single voice). However, some corrections were also made, like "Trunk" being fixed to Trunks, "Gotrunk" to Gotenks or "Kamehame" to Kamehameha, and Vegeta was allowed to refer to Goku as Kakarot, which never happened in DBZ.
    Aside from the enforced changes, the translator also renamed multiple new characters and previously unnamed techniques to keep the pun in their names. The most controversial is "Hagymágyú" for Galick Gun, a Portmanteau of onion and cannon ("Oniannon").
  • The exact same thing happened in the Italian dub, with all the dub changes from the older series being still here.
• Dub Pronunciation Change: The Italian dub has Jaco's name pronounced as "Yaco", since J (which in Italy was once referred to as "Long I") is usually seen as a "ee" sound.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?:
  • Averted. While most of the world is still in the dark about it, Mr. Satan actually does acknowledge the fact that Goku did kind of save the world and all, and as a result rewards him with a hundred million zeni.
  • Played straight with King Kai, who reminds Goku that he's a very important god, not a motel with a workout facility, when Goku pops in to train with no notice. Goku pretty much ignores it. Taken up another notch when King Kai points out Goku never used the Dragon Balls to resurrect him, Bubbles, or Gregory after the blast from Cell killed them all. Goku sheepishly admits he just forgot. When asked why King Kai even needs to be resurrected, given he lives in the afterlife already, King Kai admits it's so the other gods will stop mocking him for being dead.
  • Beerus has a short fuse with those he believes are disrespecting him, such as when King Vegeta didn't give him the most comfortable pillow in the universe and when Buu ate all the pudding.
  • For someone who just saved the world from the God of Destruction, Goku gets no respect for it. His wife won't let him train because she burns through the money Goku gives her (heavily hinted it went towards Gohan and the new baby), says that she wants Goku to work so he can be someone respectable for his granddaughter (because saving the world multiple times isn't real work), gets caught by Chi-Chi and can't return home because he tries to do a favor for Mr. Satan by fighting an alien who challenged him, and to top it all off, Mr. Satan takes credit for his world saving again. This make the above even worse, Goku learns later that Chi-Chi lied about spending all the money Mr. Satan gave her. She did it so Goku would work again.
  • The Galactic King complains to Jaco about the Earthlings' lack of respect. Jaco politely points out that these people are friends with the gods of the universe.
  • Despite being Goku's statistical equal and some times better, no one puts any faith in Vegeta to solve the current problem of the story, not even his own wife. The reason why Bulma started to feed Whis Earth food was to get on his good side to protect them from Beerus, saying how not even Goku could beat Beerus, in front of Vegeta's face. During the Universal Tournament, she tells Vegeta not to overexert himself because they still had Goku and she only names Goku as being able to deal with Goku Black and Future Zamasu. This last one really ticks Vegeta, and gets him to shout 'Shut up' before being interrupted. Even Beerus gets into this. He names Goku captain and the lead fighter of the U7 team for the upcoming tournament and he wants Goku to get stronger specifically. He did this right in front of Vegeta's face without acknowledging his existence.
• Dull Surprise:
  • While everyone else is shocked and disappointed by The Reveal that Frost, Frieza's seemingly benevolent Sixth Universe counterpart, is Evil All Along and a Villain with Good Publicity, Vegeta isn't surprised at all. In his words, even if it's in an Alternate Universe, there's no way Frieza can ever be good.
  • While everyone is shocked when they see Vegeta go Super Saiyan Blue on Cabba, Hit takes note of it, looks at Goku, and then closes his eyes again.
  • When it isn't related to fighting, this tends to be Monaka's default expression towards everything.
  • This appears to be Goku Black's default reaction to things that surprises him. When he goes into the past following Future Trunks' time machine, he's only a little confused and baffled when he sees Vegeta and Beerus. Even when being sucked into the time portal, he gives a mild reaction. When he sees Goku, Vegeta, and Trunks in the future, he calmly notes that he thought he destroyed the time machine and shows no other reaction besides bemusement. Even seeing Trunks' rage transformation provokes little response from him. Heck, even Vegeta beating him up and giving him "The Reason You Suck" Speech only annoys him. One of the only times he looked truly shocked is when Trunks disappeared in the time machine.
  • When Black transforms into a Super Saiyan Rosé, Future Trunks has a suitable horrified expression, while Goku and Vegeta look almost bored. Similarly, when Trunks learns that Future Zamasu is an immortal, he's shocked and horrified. When Goku finds out about Zamasu's immorality, he's annoyed and calls foul.
  • #17 isn't shocked when he sees Goku's Super Saiyan Blue form. He only notes that Goku has such a transformation and is insulted that Goku was holding back.
• Dumbass Has a Point: When Goku suggests that Zamasu used the Super Dragon Balls to create Goku Black, Whis confirms that this is the likely explanation and his friends are amazed that Goku is actually using his brain for something other than fighting. Note that this comes on the heels of Goku suggesting they make themselves immortal by gorging on senzu beans (never mind that they have access to two sets of Dragon Balls that can grant such a wish).

E

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Zamasu, the Apprentice Supreme Kai of Universe 10, appears in the intro of the Future Trunks Saga several episodes before he makes his official debut.
  • Merged Zamasu debuted in Dragon Ball Heroes before his proper introduction in the show.
  • Jiren is seen in the intro fighting Goku as an equal long before he's formally introduced in the show. Several other characters like Toppo, Brianne, Bergamo, and most of the Gods of Destruction and the Supreme Kais also appears in the intro before they're seen in the show.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom:
  • By only the second episode, Beerus had the score sitting at one and a half planets destroyed (and if only they'd cooked Beerus' food on the old George Foreman grill then it might have only been one planet). One might say he works fast, but then he is the God of Destruction...
  • According to Old Kai, in half a day Beerus destroyed eight and half planets. Even scarier, that's how long he's been awake.
  • The shockwaves from Goku and Beerus's fight are shown to be capable of shattering the entire universe.
  • Champa and Vados' Establishing Character Moment is Vados blowing up a planet with a simple tap of her staff from orbit. She didn't even touch the planet, it just exploded.
  • Frieza successfully destroys the Earth after being beaten by Vegeta. It doesn't stick since Whis rewinds time on him and Goku kills him before he can act.
• Edible Theme Naming: As with all previous entries in the Dragon Ball franchise, almost all the characters are named after foods. Starting after the "Battle of Gods" and "Resurrection F" arcs:
  • Champa and Vados, Beerus and Whis' Universe 6 counterparts, are named after champagne and Calvados (apple brandy), keeping with the alcohol theme. One of their fighters is a Saiyan, and thus by tradition named after a vegetable: Cabba (Kyabe in Japanese), from "cabbage".
  • In the Potaufeu arc, there's the planet Potaufeu ("pot au feu", beef stew), and the short-lived bad guy Grill.
  • In the Universe Survival Arc, Universes 2, 3, 4, and 9 have this.
    • Universe 2's fighters are named after cuts of beef. Examples: Ribrianne (ribs) and Zirloin (sirloin)
    • Universe 3's fighters are named after Italian food. Examples: Paparoni (peperoni, the Italian word for bell pepper), Nigrisshi (grissini, a kind of breadstick), and Narirama (marinara sauce)
    • The counterpart Universes 4 and 9's fighters both share a theme of herbs and spices, but Universe 9 is much more blatant about it. Example: Ganos from Universe 4 and Oregano from Universe 9 are both named after the same herb (oregano).
• Eldritch Abomination: Merged Zamasu's final form after his physical body is destroyed is a horrific, multiverse engulfing abomination that begins breaking into other timelines.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: During the fight between Jiren and Goku, Goku gains a new form called Ultra Instinct. Even the Gods were shocked to see it.
• Elite Mook:
  • Shisami, a red devil-like alien who rivals Piccolo in power. To give context, after merging with Kami, Piccolo was far stronger than Goku when he first became a Super Saiyan. This would make Shisami more powerful than Frieza prior to his death and resurrection.
  • Tagoma surpasses even Shisami. He is able to shoot an energy blast that goes through both Shisami and Gohan. Sorbet says that Tagoma's power surpasses those of the Ginyu Force.
• The Emperor:
  • Although very brief, Frieza returns as the emperor to his failing empire. He then proceeds to get them all wiped out on Earth.
  • Frost is said to be the emperor of the 6th Universe.
• The End of the World as We Know It: The entire future timeline is destroyed by Future Zen'o to stop Merged Zamasu, who fused with multiverse after losing his physical body and killed everyone in it except for a few named characters.
• Enemy Mine: Frieza becomes a last-minute replacement for Buu in the Universe 7 Team, in order to save his universe (afterlife included) from being erased. Just to drive home how much he is at odds with the team, he's literally killed half of them at on one point in time or another(counting another (counting the ones who died before Whis reversed time.)
• Energy Absorption: Bergamo is able to absorb the energy of any attack that hits him and covert it into size and power, i.e. a practical application of 'negative feedback'. He can grow to giant proportions through this method, but there's a limit to how much he can absorb.
• Engineered Heroics: A big part of Frost's planet broker operation is that the wars that he and his army stops are started by him ahead of time so he can put an end to them and get good publicity. He also gets to buy the planets he ruins at a cheap price and sells them for maximum profit.
• Enhanced on DVD: Any bad or wonky animation or stills are fixed in the DVD release. This is the most noticeable for the infamous Episode 5.◊
• Entertainingly Wrong: After Goku and the others returned from the future, Whis deduces that Zamasu created Black using the Super Dragon Balls after he invaded Zuno's palace to get information on Goku and the Dragon Balls, and he also wished for immortality after skipping another year with the Time Ring. He also concludes that Zamasu murders Gowasu since only a Supreme Kai can use the Time Rings. Although Whis gets a lot right, he's wrong about Black who isn't a golem, but Zamasu himself who switched bodies with Goku. He also made the mistake of thinking Future Zamasu was Present Zamasu since he never considered that Zamasu would team up with himself. Whis' theory fall short because he underestimated Zamasu's obession with Goku and his vanity.
• Epic Fail:
  • When Goten and Trunks sense Tagoma powering up, they fuse into Gotenks, fly over, and headbutt him in the crotch. Then they challenge Frieza, and in the middle of doing so their fusion ends because they spent 29 minutes flying to the battle.
  • Frieza loses for the exact same reason he lost the first time. It is to an even greater extent, even compared to the movie, since Frieza fought at maximum power for only a minute before his endurance tanked.
• Epic Hail: Instead of the Z Fighters raising their power all at once to summon Goku like in the movie, Gohan used the last of his energy to call Goku by himself.
• Epiphany Comeback: Goku Black of all people gets one. After Vegeta beats the crap out of him thanks to his six months of training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, he comes to realized what the true source of the Saiyans' power are. Anger. He surmises that Vegeta got so strong so quickly because he was angry at what he did to his son and his world. He then decides to used his own anger at the mortals and losing his sparring match against Goku to increase his power, allowing him to create a scythe that can rip a hole between dimensions and create endless clones of himself.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • In this series, Beerus' first appearance has him eating a huge meal on an alien planet where the inhabitants are scared crapless of him. Although Beerus approves of the food overall, he says it's a bit on the greasy side and decides to destroy just half of the planet. Which he does by tapping his finger on the table.
  • Champa and Vados make their anime debut by destroying a planet. While hardly new in the series, it's the way it's done that stands out. Champa's orders Vados to destroy a planet, while Vados tells him that this isn't the planet they're looking for. Champa ignores her and orders her to destroy it again, which she does by just tapping her staff in space. She even smiles as she does it.
  • Goku Black makes his appearance known by killing Future Bulma without saying a word. He later did his best to kill Future Mai in the same episode. When we finally see Black's face, he proclaims that he's going to kill Trunks with a huge smile on his face.
  • Future Zamasu makes his grand entrance by descending from the heavens like an almighty god and landing next to Goku Black, smiling smugly at Goku. He then tells Goku Black that he promised him that he can kill Goku.
  • Merged Zamasu first moments of existing consists of giving a Badass Boast, stroking his ego and declaring himself the absolute god of all creation.
  • Toppo's first act aside from standing there is to easily extinguish a stray blast of Basil's that Buu deflected and was heading for the Supreme Kai, and proclaims it as being rude to do towards a god, easily demonstrating not only his power but also his heroic traits as one of the Pride Troopers.
  • Brianne, a fighter from U2, is introduced as a pretty young girl with a Non-Standard Character Design since she looks like someone from a Magical Girl series. She quickly proves to be just that by transforming in a similar manner to Sailor Moon and attacking with a giant heart.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Even Frieza's own men think he's a psychopathic monster and hate him. They only bring him back because they feel their rapidly falling empire will completely collapse if they don't revive him.
  • Shisami is utterly shocked that his comrade, Tagoma, would shoot him in the back just so he could get to Gohan. Sorbet is so disgusted that he yells at Tagoma, asking what the hell was he doing.
  • Pilaf tells his flunkies to throw Pan out of their mech in order to avoid the wrath of the Son family, but none of them can bring themselves to do it.
  • Frieza himself is disgusted by the Obliviously Evil nature of the Zen'os. This is not to say Frieza would be any better than them, but his evil is deliberate and intentional, not done out of childish naivete.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Galactic King is only referred to by title, not name.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Beerus has several of these despite being a Jerkass God:
    • The reason Beerus imprisoned the Old Kai in the Z-Sword over a petty argument was because it would be improper of him to destroy the Supreme Kais' World. Also, since the Kais' lives are linked to his, killing one Supreme Kai increased the chances of him dying.
    • He is just as disgusted by Frost as everyone else after learning he was Evil All Along. When he hears that Frost is a planet broker who buy planets he ruins cheaply and then sells them for a high price after he fixes them, he sneers that's exactly what Frieza used to do.
    • Beerus calls Goku Black an evil person and considers killing Zamasu just in case he turns into Black. He also shows anger and disgust when he confirms that Zamasu planned to kill his own master to use the Time Rings and have access to the Super Dragon Balls. For this crime, he personally executes Zamasu.
  • When Champa hears Frost's story about him fighting to gain his support so he can support children of war-torn planets, he's saddened to hear that if Frost loses he doesn't get his support. Then when he learns that Frost is an evil planet broker like Frieza who starts wars so he can buy planets on the cheap, he is pissed. He wants to kill Frost and only relents because Vegeta wants to fight him. He also yells at Vados for bringing such a Jerkass on his team. Although he offers his support to Frost if he wins against the remaining fighters from U7, it clear that he isn't rooting for him since he didn't care when Vegeta knocks Frost out with one punch. He's also upset when he finds out that Vados offered Hit the universe-jumping travel cube if he won the tournament, even seeming unnerved by the idea of a legendary hitman and murderer possessing that. While he doesn't call off the deal due to Hit being the sole remaining member of his team and last chance to win, he's at least got the standards not to overlook the consequences of that action.
  • Despite Whis working for Beerus, who is a petty, spoiled, Psychopathic Manchild with a really short temper who will destroy a planet because he hated the food, he calls Goku Black a coldhearted, evil individual.
  • Said indirectly by Goku Black in regards to Rō, Universe 9's Supreme Kai. He is a spiteful, rude, jerkass who belittles everyone around him, but not even he would have approved of the Zero Mortal Plan. This is why Goku Black killed his future counterpart along with the other gods. He is also disgusted when he looks up Frieza on Godtube and sees that he blows up planets willy-nilly. While he does wants to take out Universe 7, he is also motivated by how much of a scumbag Frieza is. This is shown even more when Frieza offers to betray his universe and join Universe 9 if they revived him. Rō is so horrified that he says that even if Frieza is a villain, he must have something in the universe he cares for, to which Frieza mockingly asked 'what's that'. While Sidra is okay with having Frieza on his team, Rō is venomously against it, calling Frieza a traitorous asshole who can't be trusted.
• Everybody Lives: The ultimate conclusion of the Universal Survival arc. Android 17 uses his wish to restore all of the erased universes, Just as Planned by the Zen'os. Even Frost and Frieza get restored and resurrected, respectively.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave:
  • Goku and the others reaction when they realized that Frieza destroyed the Earth, killing all of their families and friends.
  • Future Trunks when he realizes that he can't sense anyone on Earth after Merged Zamasu blast the ground in his bodiless form. He tells Future Mai that everyone died, making everything they had fought for up to that point meaningless. This sends Mai over the edge.
• Evil All Along: Frost pretends to be a hero, but is actually just as bad as Frieza. He's even a planet broker just like his U7 counterpart.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Beerus to Goku. They're both rather lazy outside of the prospect of fighting things, love a good challenge, obsessed with food, kind and respectful but with no sense of being rude, outright terrifying to enemies when angry, and generally the most dangerous things in the universe. Only difference is that Beerus had nobody giving him a moral compass. Beerus and even Whis notes how similar they are. After Goku and Beerus becomes friends, their relationship evolves to a more Mirror Character one.
  • Much like in Z, Frieza is an evil counterpart to Vegeta, especially before Vegeta got Character Development. Both of them are princes of their respective empires, born extremely powerful, command the respect and fear of those around them, have lofty ambitions of ruling the universe for all eternity, are ruled by their pride of being the strongest, and are selfish, spoiled brats who will Rage Quit if things don't go their way. The difference is that Vegeta, who along with the remnants of his empire lived under the thumb of Frieza's, had his interests align with positive influences that slowly got him to change and become a better person, one who would eventually put aside his pride for the sake of others. Frieza, who's never known a kind hand that wasn't out of either fear or pity because he's been the overbearing bastard above everyone else, remained an unrepentant asshole who allowed his pride to utterly destroy him, three times.
  • Frieza can also be considered an Evil Counterpart for Goku as well as his Foil. Both are immensely talented warriors and among the strongest mortal beings in the universe, and very likely the strongest members of their respective races. But while Goku (the son of a low-class soldier) was born quite weak and built up his power over the years through blood and sweat, Frieza (the son of a powerful conqueror) was born immensely strong and never trained a day in his life until after being killed by Trunks and brought back to life years later. Whereas Goku lives a humble life in the country and never uses his strength to bully anyone, Frieza is a Galactic Conqueror who uses his strength to rule over the known universe with an iron fist and kill anyone in his way. Furthermore, whereas Goku is a Graceful Loser who simply accepts it when he meets an opponent he truly can't beat, Frieza is such a Sore Loser that he would rather blow up the planet he's standing on than admit defeat.
  • In a strange way, Frost is an evil Mr. Satan. They're both Glory Hounds and Fake Ultimate Heroes who used their fame to support their causes. Mr. Satan, although somewhat selfish, does have his heart in the right place and won't sacrifice others for his own benefit, even when directly threatened. He can also act brave when pressed and becomes a true hero in the process. Frost is an evil bastard who starts wars so he can play hero, buy the planet he ruins, put it back together, and then sell it at a high price. There is nothing heroic about Frost at all.
  • In several ways, Zamasu, especially the one who becomes Goku Black, is one to Vegeta. Both are powerful beings who takes pride in their natural talent, and taking extreme offense when Goku comes along and reveals to them that he's their better. However, Vegeta eventually moves along from his grudge and the competition becomes more playful among them. Zamasu however, doesn't get over it and his hatred for Goku for besting him boils over big time, leading him onto a genocidal rampage, in one timeline stealing Goku's body and killing him and his family out of simple wounded pride and spite.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Due to being a copy of Vegeta, Copy-Vegeta genuinely cares for Trunks and hesitates when Copy-Gryll tells him to absorb Trunks. He later praises Trunks for his efforts in fighting him. Not enough to stop him from trying to kill Trunks and Goten however.
• Evil Duo: Goku Black and Future Zamasu are the primary villains of the Future Trunks Saga, working together to destroy all the mortals in the multiverse. Goku Black is more the muscle and brute of the duo, who wants to gain power to the point of passing up immortality so he doesn't get rusty. Zamasu is the thinker and planner, wanting Goku Black to take his time fighting Goku to maximize his growth instead of outright killing him. Despite this, they are both Ax-Crazy. This is made even stranger when Goku Black confirms that he's actually a Zamasu, meaning they're basically fighting two Zamasus.
• Eviler than Thou: Frieza is quite annoyed that Zen'o and Future Zen'o have cute voices and mannerisms that contrast their horrendous acts, like wiping out entire universes. Made even better by the fact the two Zen'os aren't trying to be evil, they just (supposedly) don't know any better. Frieza's ultimate issue is that they're committing what should be perfect acts of evil but don't have the motives or personality of a villain like himself. He goes so far as to say he plans to one day rule over them.
• Evil Gloating:
  • After Frost is outed as a villain, he openly gloats to everyone within hearing range, including Beerus and Champa, about how he's really an underground planet broker and how everyone fell for his act.
  • After he seemingly murders Future Mai, Goku Black asks Trunks if he's finished saying goodbye and he shouldn't be sad since he'll joining her soon. Also, when he tells Goku about his identity, that he stole a version of Goku's body using the Super Dragon Balls, he brags about how he killed that Goku with his own hands, and when Future Zamasu and Goku Black catches Goku in a corner, they add that Black killed Chi-Chi and Goten of that respective timeline after killing Goku. When Trunks obtains his Super Trunks form, he declares that he will protect the world and beats down Black. To his surprised, Black gets back up and attacks him from behind, before mockingly asking, "weren't you going to protect his world?"
• Evil Knockoff:
  • Copy-Vegeta is a purple copy of Vegeta created by the Commeson after it absorbs Vegeta's power and personality. Because the Commeson also absorbs Vegeta's will and spirit on top of his power, he doesn't like others telling him what to do, taking the power of others' to boast his own strength, and has a fondness for Trunks.
  • Whis and the heroes theorize Future Zamasu wished for Goku Black with the Super Dragon Balls to not only have a powerful partner, but mock Goku with a twisted clone of him. However, it turns out that Goku Black isn't a clone of Goku. He is Goku in body, but Zamasu in mind. Zamasu used the Super Dragon Balls to switch bodies with Goku.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: According to Gowasu, the reason for Merged Zamasu's monstrous half is because of his mutation is causing his inner evil and conflict to become manifest.
• Evil Overlord:
  • Frieza, back to running his own empire after returning from the dead.
  • Subverted with his Good Counterpart Frost, who is anything but evil. Then double-subverted: Frost is evil like Frieza, he just hides it so he can be seen as a universal hero.
• Evil Is Not a Toy:
  • Frieza's men are quickly reminded why Frieza was The Dreaded for the entire universe in his day the moment he's resurrected.
  • While Sidra is okay with recruiting Frieza to be on his team Rō is absolutely against it, saying that someone who would betray their own universe can never be trusted even with Sidra's assurance that he can control Frieza.
• Evil Is Cool: When Future Trunks describes Black as looking like Goku except he wears a black outfit, Goku complains that Black sounds cooler than him.
• Evil Is Hammy:
  • Although Goku Black is normally quite calm and subdued, he dips into this once he unlocks his Super Saiyan Rosé form, at least on the Cold Ham side. He spends several minutes talking about how beautiful he has become, how he has mastered all of Goku's power, and how he has transcended past the realm of mortals.
  • Merged Zamasu. By the gods he claims to serve, yes. He starts out calm and reserved, but as the battle goes on and he has his Villainous Breakdowns he becomes more hammy, similar to Frieza on Namek. By the end, he's reduced to nothing but shouting at the top of his lungs, especially when Future Trunks joins the fight.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Beerus, see Disproportionate Retribution.
  • Champa is almost as bad. He is willing to murder his entire team just for losing a tournament.
  • Present Zamasu's entire grudge against Goku boils down to him being mad that a mortal beat him in a sparring match. An alternative version of Present Zamasu (who wasn't killed by Beerus) takes it so far as to take Goku's body using the Super Dragon Balls and kills him along with his family with it purely out of spite. Future Zamasu is probably worse since he never personally met Goku until Episode 56, yet he hates him because he's a powerful mortal who fight gods. Which is hypocritical since Goku Black and he murdered all the gods in the multiverse to make themselves the supreme gods.
  • Barry Kahn allows Gohan to be a stuntman and hopes for him to be seriously hurt or killed because Videl snubbed him when he tried hitting on her. He then tries to ruin Gohan's marriage by setting him up with Cocoa, taking pictures of her kissing Gohan, and then showing those pictures to Videl.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Tagoma after going through Training from Hell thanks to Frieza. He not only becomes much stronger, but he's more evil and feels nothing about killing his own comrade to take down an enemy.
• Evil Twin: Goku Black looks exactly like Goku except he wears a black gi and has a green earring. He even has a Kamehameha-like technique, except his is black instead of blue. The reason why, Goku Black is Goku's body, however, Zamasu took it over thanks to the Super Dragon Balls.
• Evil Wears Black: Goku Black. Like his nickname, Battle Aura, and Color Motif suggests, he wears dark colors and is a mass-murderer who all but destroys Future Trunks' Earth.
• Evolving Credits: For every new story arc, new pieces of animation are added, and new characters are inserted into pre-existing shots like Jaco and Monaka being at Bulma's house during the Champa Saga and Pan being added with Gohan and Videl during the Future Trunks Saga. Shots of Frieza and his men are inserted into the opening sequence during their arc and is replaced with the U6's fighters, Botoma, Frost, Magetta, Cabba, and Hit, during the Champa Saga. Notably, from the Champa Saga onward, the classic shot of Goku standing in front of the cast is updated by having him standing side-by-side with Vegeta rather than alone, much like how Goku stood side-by-side with Gohan during the Buu Saga's opening theme. With the Future Trunks Saga, new animation with Future Trunks, Mai, Goku Black, and an unknown green Supreme Kai whose name is Zamasu are added. Also the ending shot is changed to cut-out pictures of Future Trunks, Mai, Goku Black, Goku, and Zamasu. Goten, present Trunks, and the younger Pilaf gang also appear in the final shot.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The book Videl buys for Gohan in the first episode is titled "Difficult Book" in Japanese.
• Exact Words:
  • When Champa yells at Vados for recruiting Frost, after finding out that he's a planet broker, her response is that he told her to find the strongest fighters in the universe. Not the strongest moral fighters. The same applies to recruiting Hit by offering the legendary hitman the ability to jump universes. Her response to Champa yelling at her for that is to remind him he told her to do whatever it takes to get a strong team.
  • When Goku accuses Beerus of destroying planets randomly, Beerus shoots back that none of his destruction is random. Which is true, however, he destroys for extremely petty reasons that might as well be random to any normal person.
• Excuse Plot: Beerus fully admits that the Universe Tournament is this for Champa and him. They just want an excuse to fight each other, since they can't do it directly without endangering their universes, and they don't care about who gains control of the Super Dragon Balls.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy:
  • When Goku reveals Super Saiyan Blue to Frieza, he takes the time to explain the form to him and how it's different from a normal Super Saiyan.
  • Hit zigzags. He won't tell anyone about his abilities and he kills his target seconds after engaging them, however, when fighting against Goku he does confirms Goku's observations about how his powers work and will even correct him if he's off.
  • Once Goku activates his Kaioken while using Super Saiyan Blue, he spends several minutes explaining to Hit how the Kaioken works and how he can use it with Super Saiyan Blue when it was impossible before with the normal Super Saiyan forms. In this case, Goku sees his fight with Hit as a friendly match and since the Kaioken is a power up technique there is no real danger in telling Hit what was happening.
  • Future Zamasu is more than happy to tell anyone who will listen that he's an immortal and it's useless to attack him.
  • U9's Supreme Kai tells everyone how Lavenda's poison works and how Gohan will slowly rot if he doesn't surrender.
  • In his fight against Goku, Bergamo takes the time to explain how his ability works and how he grows stronger the more he's hit. Although, U9's Supreme Kai is the one who gives most of the details and it didn't really matter since Goku was able to figure out how Bergamo's power worked without being told and even lampshade how unoriginal it was.
• Exploited Immunity:
  • After being backed into a corner by Vegeta after he loses his golden form, Frieza destroys the Earth, knowing that he can survive in space while Vegeta, even with the power of a god, cannot.
  • Magetta is immune to heat since he eats lava and doesn't seem to need to breathe. He uses this to heat up the ring (where the heat is trapped by Vados' second barrier) when he fights Vegeta and nearly suffocates him.
  • Future Zamasu exploits his immortality by holding Goku and Future Trunks in place while Goku Black fires a Kamehameha at them. During the second battle, he acts as a meat shield for Goku Black.
  • In the Tournament of Power, Hermila and Prum make use of the latter's ability to redirect energy at will and create a sort of ki attack relay that keeps most of Universe 7 pinned for a considerable length of time.
• Exposed Extraterrestrials:
  • Frieza in his true and ultimate forms wear no clothing, although his body in his golden form resembles armor.
  • Jaco. Despite looking like he's wearing an uniform, that's actually his skin.
  • The Galactic King wears no clothing except a crown, though as an octopus this doesn't exactly reveal anything.
• Expospeak Gag: In the FUNimation dub, the cubical vessel that the gods use to ferry mortals across universes is called a "hexahedron".
• Expy: See here.
• Extra-Strength Masquerade: Played With. The people of Earth are finally accepting that super-powered beings exist and it isn't all just some trick. However, they also fully believe that Mr, Satan is one of these super-powered people and the strongest in the universe, capable of beating a god like Beerus. This is despite Mr. Satan never showing powers like these creatures. Even the people who should know better like the staff who saw the entire Cell Games think nothing of this. This gets even more over-the-top when other aliens are fooled by Mr. Satan, despite their ability to sense energy (though given that god powers, like those of Beerus and Whis, can't be sensed by mortals, this is slightly more forgivable). These same aliens are also dismissive towards Goku, seeing him as a country bumpkin, though that's because Goku keeps his true power suppressed.

F

• Face Death with Dignity:
  • When Frost believes Hit has come to kill him in Episode 91, Frost initially tries to lure Hit into a false sense of security before firing his needles at him. When that fails, he tries to fight him. When that fails, Frost lets out a resigned "damn it" and gives up, ready to accept death. Frieza, in this circumstance, would have probably tried to blow the planet up. Fortunately for Frost, however, Hit actually has different things in mind for him.
  • Most of the universes that face annihilation in the Tournament of Power do so with stoicism or enthusiastic support for their fighters in spite of their defeat. The major exceptions are Ro of Universe 9 and Quitela of Universe 4, both of whom have Villainous Breakdowns as they're about to be erased.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: This is especially true of Present Zamasu. He looks like an older version of U7's Supreme Kai with pretty boy features. He even looks downright innocent when serving tea to Gowasu in Episode 53. That is before he suffered Sanity Slippage after meeting Goku who shattered his world. After that faithful meeting, he began his descend into darkness.
• Face–Heel Turn: In the future, Zamasu goes from simply being distrustful of mortals to working with Goku Black to actively wipe them out. In the present, Zamasu goes through this trope by storming into Zuno's planet and threatening him in order to learn more about Goku and the Super Dragon Balls. He then tries to murder his master to gain control of the Time Rings. An alternative version of Present Zamasu who wasn't stopped by Beerus kills his master, takes the Time Ring, uses the Super Dragon Balls to take Goku's body, and then proceeds to murder him and his family, using his own body.
• Face Your Fears: In Episode 76, Goku and Krillin train together and, at Master Roshi's request, enter a forest where they face illusions of their past foes. Notably, the one Krillin fears the most is Tambourine, the first person to kill him.
• Fake Static: In Episode 12, Mr. Satan pretends to have a dropped call after a news reporter asks him for details about the shockwaves from the fight between Goku and Beerus.
• Fake Ultimate Hero:
  • Mr. Satan, of course. After Beerus is defeated, even alien races fall for the claim that Mr. Satan did the deed and give him a medal in gratitude.
  • Frost turns out to be this. All the stories about him going to planets to save people from evildoers is one big lie. He starts the wars that he fixes, then buys the planet on the cheap before selling it. There is literally nothing heroic about him.
  • After Episode 41, Monaka is shaping up to be Satan's protege. However, he fulfills the role in a different way as he doesn't seek out glory, however several times saves the day by happenstance or because of others making him look more heroic than he is.
• Failure Hero: Poor Future Trunks gets hit with this hard in the Future Trunks Saga. For over a year, he fights Goku Black and loses every time despite his best efforts. Black also gets stronger every time they battle, making victory for him more impossible. After going to the past to get help, Goku, Vegeta, and he still can't beat Black and Black has a powerful ally, Future Zamasu, who is an immortal. During their second battle, he learns that Black specifically chose his timeline to punish him for breaking the time taboo and creating a new Time Ring when he saved Goku from the heart virus. All this frustration and anger causes him to transform into a new form of Super Saiyan…which only puts him on par with Black and Future Zamasu, and he's quickly overwhelmed. Then, just when it seems he finally won against all the odds thanks to unconsciously creating a Spirit Bomb from all the survivors on Earth, merging it into his sword, and slicing Merged Zamasu in half, it all comes crashing down when Merged Zamasu's soul fuses with the multiverse and kills everyone in it except for a named few. What's left is erased by Future Zen'o, leaving Trunks' timeline nothing but an empty void. Except for Future Mai, Trunks literally lost everything.
• Fallen Angel:
  • Zamasu becomes a fallen Supreme Kai due to his genocidal ambitions and need to create a 'perfect' world without mortals. This also extends to Goku Black, since he is also Zamasu.
  • Merged Zamasu, who is the fusion of Goku Black and Future Zamasu, so he's naturally this. However, his fall into darkness is especially pathetic. During his final battle with Goku, Vegeta, Future Trunks, and Vegito, Zamasu is barely recognizable from the once proud and silent prodigious God he used to be, instead resembling a mutated monstrous demon.
• Family-Unfriendly Death:
  • Future Bulma is disintegrated by an explosion caused by Goku Black. Even more disturbing, Goku Black was holding her by the neck as her body disappeared and her head was the last to go.
  • Zamasu kills a Babarian by literally splitting him in half, and unlike Super's usual Bloodless Carnage, we see purple blood spill as the two halves hit the ground.
  • Present Zamasu is slowly vaporized by Beerus, after he's caught in the act of attempted murder. We actually hear Zamasu scream in agony as he dies, even with his head gone.
  • Future Trunks ultimately kills Merged Zamasu's physical form by slowly slicing him in half with his enhanced sword, starting from the groin on up. Also doubles as a Karmic Death because Zamasu's descent to villainy began with him killing a Babarian in that same manner.
• Fangs Are Evil: Merged Zamasu's mutated form has fangs.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Goku Black really doesn't like Saiyans, humans, or any mortal being, calling them mistakes of the gods that needs to be eliminated. He looks down on mortals like they're lower than dirt and calls death a blessing for humans. He constantly mocks Future Trunks for being a Saiyan, calling him pathetic since he's part of a 'warrior race' and is about to die so miserably.
  • Zamasu really doesn't like mortals, seeing them as dangerous since they keep repeating the same mistakes and fighting pointless wars. Meeting and fighting Goku only confirms his opinion, along with seeing Planet Babari in the future. His future counterpart teams up with Goku Black (who is Present Zamasu who had taking Goku's body) to kill all the mortals.
  • Both Future Zamasu and Goku Black despise Earthlings, calling them the worst type of mortal, since they broke the time taboo. They specifically chose Future Trunks' timeline to punish the Earthlings and even say that Trunks' transgressions have awoken the justice in their hearts. How much of that is actually true is debatable since Future Zamasu and Goku Black were already on the deep end before they knew of Trunks' 'sins'.
• Fantastic Slurs: Just like in Universe 7, calling a Saiyans a 'monkey' or some form of primate is a major insult. Caulifla tries to make Kale go Super Saiyan from anger by calling her a monkey, gorilla, and a chimpanzee. She's clearly uncomfortable doing this and hates calling her protégée such names.
• Fartillery: Magetta's farts are incredibly explosive. He's aware of this and weaponizes it, triggering an explosion that nearly ring-outs Vegeta.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel:
  • Whis ferries Beerus around the cosmos using a technique which transports them in a beam of light. Though it's not clear just how fast he's moving, it never takes more than 30 minutes or so for him to reach his destination. Whis even states that he is the fastest being in the universe.
  • Vados has been shown to be just as fast as Whis.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • For Frieza, his pride. He is so stricken by Goku beating him that he devotes all his resources to getting revenge. He also leaves his training too soon, not mastering his golden form before rushing to Earth, which leads directly to his downfall.
  • Goku's flaws are his pride in his own power and his mercy. When Goku is too self-assured, he drops his guard, leaving even his powerful body open to attack. This is how Sorbet was able to shoot him in the back. He also tried to show mercy to Frieza once the outcome of the fight became clear, instead of just killing him.
  • For Vegeta, he thinks too much during battle instead of just acting. It was because he took too long to finish Frieza that gave Frieza the chance to destroy the Earth.
  • Whis claims that the Fatal Flaw in the Saiyans are their pride. If Goku and Vegeta had worked together from the start to take down Frieza, things wouldn't have gotten as bad as it did.
  • Zamasu also has issues with pride on top of his narcissism. Ultimately, he views himself as a 'perfect god' who knows better than everyone else, thus he can't understand the idea that he's flawed and needs to grow, so he can't understand Gowasu's mentality that mortals are flawed, but can become greater if time is taken to nurture them. This is ultimately causes his fall into evil since he can't see past his own world's view.
  • Future Zamasu has a horrible habit of lowering his guard because he's an immortal. He gets sucker punched by Goku and Future Trunks several times, and gets caught in Trunks' Evil Containment Wave because he's too self-confident to dodge.
  • Merged Zamasu, just like his component Future Zamasu has a tendency to go on Motive Rants in the middle of a battle which leaves him wide open, as Vegito quickly reminds him. His pride in his vast power is also his undoing. He could've killed the heroes the moment he was born, yet chose to play with them, allowing Goku to melt his face and for Goku and Vegeta to fuse.
  • Piccolo reveals that Gohan has the same flaw as Goku, namely they're Smug Supers who drop their guard when they think they're ahead. Piccolo even points out that this is the reason why he lost to Super Buu despite overpowering the demon.
• Fatal Method Acting: Invoked. Barry Kahn has no problem with risking the life of his stuntman just to make a scene look cooler. He is eager to see Gohan get hurt or killed when he takes the stuntman's place.
• Fate Worse than Death: Ginyu likening his experience being stuck in a frog's body to Frieza's experience in hell. It is now a fate Tagoma gets to experience.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • Frieza, per usual, although he is far more faux since he's revival since he is noticeablely unhinged, and traumatized from his experience in Hell and his defeat to Goku. Even the smallest reminder of his defeat sets him off, often ending in someone being tortured. At the same time, he does show a degree of respect towards Goku, giving him a real compliment when Goku revealed that he'd achieved godhood.
  • Unlike Goku, Goku Black speaks in a soft, somewhat polite tone when addressing Future Trunks. His speaking pattern is actually quite formal. He also looks down on Saiyans, humans, or any mortal like they're filth, and sees death as a blessing for them. At the same time, he shows a great deal of respect towards Goku, who he calls the strongest of the proud warrior race. However, this sort of falls into faux too since he killed Goku once he took his body in another timeline.
  • Grand Priest at first seems to be an amoral character, calmly discussing the destruction of entire universes, including the souls of the dead within them with no particular opinion on the matter, and always keeping up a polite demeanor except when decorum is broken. Later on, however, he proceeds to give an evil smile after the destruction of Universe 9, indicating that he actually has an evil streak. It is made more powerful by the fact he gives the smile to an angered Goku, someone who he seemed to be genuinely kind towards before, indicating his kindness is rarely genuine.
• Fearless Fool: Although Goku is usually humble about where he stands in the greater universe, his need to fight strong people veers him into this territory at times. He asks to fight Beerus, despite all the warnings from King Kai, and he goes to ask Zen'o about the tournament he promised, despite Beerus and Whis telling him that's a horrible idea. Beerus even threatens to vaporized him to keep him from seeing Zen'o, to which Goku gives the God of Destruction a defiant glare. In the first case, he gets a bruised ego after Beerus two-shots him. In the second example, he indirectly endangered the entire multiverse, but even after learning this, he doesn't seem particularly phased by the threat.
• Fearful Symmetry:
  • Beerus and Champa are so similar that any combat between them results in a complete stalemate. Exaggerated when they try to decide on a tournament rule with rock-paper-scissors and have hundreds of draws at high speed without either getting the upper hand. This continues a Running Gag throughout the franchise of indecisive rock-paper-scissors matches.
  • When Goku fights Goku Black this naturally happens. Most notable is when they have a Cross Counter, with each having a manic grin about the whole situation. This becomes a little unnerving since Black is Zamasu who is trying to mimic Goku to become more powerful.
  • Since Goku Black and Future Zamasu are basically the same person, they fight perfectly in-sync with each other and can read the other's movements. Vegeta names this as one of the reasons why they can't beat them in a straight fight.
• Feel No Pain: Thanks to his Complete Immortality, Future Zamasu feels no pain, even when being impaled.
• Fictionary: Similar to Porunga, who only grants wishes when spoken in Namekian, Super Shenron only grants wishes in the "language of the gods" (which is Japanese spoken backwards), so the only beings that can ask wishes of him are other gods. Unlike Porunga, who can speak the universal language, Super Shenron only talks in the language of the gods.
• The Fighting Narcissist:
  • It's subtle, but Zamasu is definitely one. His entire Start of Darkness amounts to him having flown into a narcissistic rage when Goku bruised his ego in a sparring match by showing a mortal could be stronger than he is, directly or indirectly.
  • Upon revealing Super Saiyan Rosé, Goku Black goes on a speech thanking Goku for helping him unlock the full potiental of his body and reach the height of beauty.
  • Future Zamasu is very full of himself and proud, believing himself to be a 'true God' after obtaining immortality in the future. It says a lot that the only being who he seems to view as an equal is Black, who is actually an alternate universe version of himself.
  • Given both of his components are this, it's a given that Merged Zamasu is this. Not only is he immensely powerful, his first words upon coming into being are declaring himself the noble and beautiful supreme god while demanding everyone to praise and adore him. He even flies into the characteristic 'narcissistic rage' when Vegeta and Trunks force his Holy Wrath back at him. He's naturally not even scratched, but his ego was and his reaction is 'fly into a homicidal rage'.
• Final Boss:
  • Hit is the final and most powerful fighter on Champa's team. Champa is so confident in Hit's ability that he fully expects him to win him the entire tournament, even after seeing Vegeta's Super Saiyan Blue form.
  • Despite Goku Black being the Big Bad who started the entire plot of the Future Trunks Saga, and the powerhouse force between Future Zamasu and himself, it is Merged Zamasu who is the final enemy Goku, Vegeta, and Future Trunks face.
  • Of all of the opponents in the Tournament of Power, Jiren is hyped to be the strongest opponent, even powerful than his universe's God of Destructuion. Indeed, Jiren becomes the final hurdle for Universe 7 to win the Tournament of Power.
• Final Solution:
  • Goku Black thinks killing all the mortals will create an utopia since they're the one failure of the gods that they won't correct.
  • When Zamasu hears about the new race of mortals on Planet Babari who are extremely primitive and violent, he suggests wiping them out. This shocks Gowasu since that is a job for the God of Destruction, not the Kais. He later takes it a step further and suggests that all mortals be cleansed for the good of the universe. Future Zamasu makes good on this belief, helping Goku Black cleanse the Future Earth.
• Finger Poke of Doom:
  • A literal example: Beerus blows up half a planet by poking the table he's set at.
  • In the following episode, he blocks some Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs using a single finger, then redirects the alien's attack by pointing at him.
  • Mr. Satan gets a double dose from Buu and Beerus, who are about to fight and want him out of the way. He goes flying into a wall, leaving a decent crater.
  • When Sorbet tries to give commands to Frieza's poorly coordinated army, Frieza flicks him into the distance and says it's pointless now that the fight has begun. Sorbet manages to fly himself back about five minutes later.
• Finger-Twitching Revival: In the last shot of Episode 50, Future Mai is shown and her hand moves, indicating she's Not Quite Dead.
• Fire-Breathing Diner: Happens to Krillin when he finds the "lucky" wasabi takoyaki.

• Flaw Exploitation:
  • In the Resurrection ‘F’ Saga, Frieza pulls this off not once, but twice. First, he uses Goku's tendency of showing him mercy to get Sorbet to shoot him in the back when his guard is down. Then, he takes advantage of Vegeta's tendency to overthink during a fight to blow up the Earth before Vegeta could finish him off.
  • Frieza manages to do this again by taking advantage of Goku's desire to fight strong opponents. He gets Goku to agree to revive him with the Dragon Balls if he wins the Tournament of Power because Goku wants to see Frieza's 'further evolution'. Goku even calls Frieza evil for exploiting his weakness.
• Flexible Tourney Rules:
  • In the Universe 6 vs 7 tournament, the rules are changed several times based on the whims of whoever happens to be fighting. Vegeta gets them to suspend the rules for his current match so Frost will be allowed to keep fighting, Vegeta's match with Magetta has a secondary barrier added with a second ring out rule to favor Magetta, and Goku tries to get them to suspend the no killing rule during his match with Hit before forfeiting because Beerus refused to agree.
  • In the Zen'o Exhibition Tournament, Majin Buu gets a ring out and Basil uses some kind of drug, either one of which would have disqualified the latter under normal tournament rules. As the entire thing is being held because the future Zen'o never saw the previous tournament, the Grand Priest explains that the only real rule is to entertain Zen'o for as long as either fighter can stand. He promises to iron out the official rules for the proper tournament.
• Flying Saucer:
  • The Frieza Force uses the familiar ship design.
  • This is also the design of Jaco's ship.
• Foil
  • Gohan to his father, Goku. They are both extremely gifted warriors who represent the peak of their groups. Goku is the strongest pure-blooded Saiyan, while Gohan is the most powerful of all the hybrids. They are both also pure-hearted, fun-loving, have a love for animals and people, and are somewhat naive about the outside world. They're also both Brilliant, but Lazy — in exactly the opposite ways. Goku loves to fight and challenge himself, while Gohan hates fighting and hurting people, and won't train unless there is an immediate danger. Goku is Book Dumb and doesn't work to support his family unless pressed, while Gohan is very well educated and has a steady job to support his growing family.
  • Goku to Beerus, especially after Goku achieves Super Saiyan God. Both are deities who love so many of the same things—a good battle, food, fun with friends, sleep. However, Goku was a hard-working common man who had to rely on his friends' hearts to become a god, he fights to protect life, and he possesses incredible self-restraint and awareness when he's not being an idiot, whereas Beerus has lived his entire life hovering like a giant above everyone else in his universe aside from his master attendant, his whole job is to destroy to make space for more growth, and his Hair-Trigger Temper and Olympian sense of entitlement make him frightening to be around for most who've met him.
  • After character development, Vegeta becomes this to Frieza. Unlike his former boss, Vegeta learns to care about others and being able to set his pride aside for the benefit of others and his own sanity. By letting go of the past, Vegeta becomes a happier person. Frieza, on the other hand, never learns from his experiences and remains an uncaring fiend even after he is given a second chance at life. He allows his hatred and anger towards Goku to drive him insane, and it's his inability to let go of his pride and the past that drives him to his death the first time and yet again when he refuses Goku's offer to leave peacefully.
  • Hit is in many ways Goku's counterpart. Both are the top fighters in their respective universes, both relish the opportunity to face a strong opponent, and both are adept at improving or reinventing their abilities on the fly to address a strong opponent. Personality-wise, they're very different, but there's a perfect match for the finale of a Tournament Arc.
  • Caulifla is another counterpart to Goku, being a laid-back fighter with an incredible talent who can learn new techniques after seeing them once.
  • Kale, despite being an expy of Broly, is a lot like Gohan, specifically early Z Gohan, in being insecure, not a natural fighter, but having an incredible amount of power potential that can't be controlled and is only unlocked by intense emotion.
• Fond Memories That Could Have Been: As Future Trunks watches Gohan play with Pan, he is seized with a vision of Future Bulma and Mai having dinner with him. Something that is no longer possible since Goku Black murdered Bulma and Mai (he thinks).
• Food as Bribe: Bulma invites Whis to Earth to try various foods in the hopes that he'll protect her family if Beerus tries to blow up the Earth. Vegeta then joins the action to get Whis to train him.
• Food Porn: Tends to appear around Whis, with luscious closeups of various dishes and him describing their flavor and texture as if he were in a cooking show.
• Foregone Conclusion: Given that the series takes in the intervening years of Buu's defeat and the Distant Finale of Dragon Ball Z, it's clear that Goku and his friends will survive the events of Super.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The first two episodes are set before the Battle of Gods and Resurrection F movies this series is going to retell, so we get a little of this trope regarding certain events from them.
    • After Beerus destroys the caveman planet in the second episode, Whis still asks if he really doesn't want dinosaur meat anymore. This scene is likely hinting at Whis' ability to turn back time, which was introduced in Resurrection F. Later on, while training Goku and Vegeta, Whis also mutters he won't need to "rewind and fix" when Beerus destroys a small planet with a sneeze.
    • In the second episode, we see Vegeta is no fun at parties. A large crowd cheers for him to dance on stage, but he blows them away and leaves. Once the events of Battle of Gods come to pass, Vegeta will have to sing and dance to distract Beerus from detonating the planet. Turns out to be subverted since Vegeta didn't sing and dance to calm Beerus. Instead, he got food for him and cooked like one of those Japanese chefs, which is actually foreshadowed in the second episode since that was how Vegeta's dinner was served. He even cooks an octopus, similar to the one that sprayed him.
    • The dubbed version of Episode 9 manages this as well, further down the line: to properly make a Super Saiyan God, they have to channel their 'inner light' instead of ki - ie spirit as called in the original version, six pieces of which make a transformation far above SSJ3. In the Future Trunks Saga, when fighting Merged Zamasu, Trunks' will to destroy Zamasu is so strong that it channels the inner light of everyone left on Future Earth (willingly on their parts too), and as a result this energy creates a Spirit Bomb, making him powerful enough to kill the semi-immortal monster... his physical body, at least.
    • At the beginning of the Frieza arc, Frog Ginyu can be seen hopping out of Jaco's ship. He was also seen earlier, being in the area where Frieza was wished back.
    • Frieza and his men have the habit of interfering with other people's fights. Gohan gets blindsided twice. First, Tagoma shoots him through Shisami, nearly killing him. Then, Frieza shoots Gohan while he's fighting Ginyu. This foreshadows Frieza having Sorbet shoot Goku when he is about to lose again.
    • There is one more Senzu left after Gohan is healed of his wounds from Frieza.
  • We get a sneak preview of Hit's power and strength when he takes down Frost with one hit.
  • The Champa Saga intro and "Wow" credit segments showing Monaka paired with Jaco and the Galactic King caused many fans to question if Monaka was actually as strong as he really was ... as Jaco is a comic relief character. Along the same lines, there's also "He with the big nipples" being explained in-universe as though it was a legendary moniker.
  • After Goku suddenly became dizzy when fighting Frost, the music changes to an ominous Latin choir chant. It is Frieza's theme in Super, giving a big hint that Frost isn't such a Nice Guy.
  • After teaching Cabba to go SSJ, Vegeta says anger is the best trigger to unlock it. This doesn't mean it's the only trigger though, as Cabba discovers on his own, and teaches to Caulifla.
  • The Nameless Planet being the final Dragon Ball is foreshadowed by it being the exact same size as the other Super Dragon Balls, and arranged in the center of them as if they belong together.
  • In Episode 44, Monaka delivers things to Bulma, who asks him to come in and aid her a bit, her latest work inefficiently producing some sort of blue liquid that isn't explained. The start of the Future Trunks Saga has Future Bulma working on this same liquid, revealing that it's fuel for the Time Machine.
  • Because one of the primary plots in the Future Trunks Saga is a mystery, there are a lot of clues about the identity and motives of Goku Black among other things:
    • At the end of the opening for the Future Trunks Saga, we get a cut board of Mai, Black, Goku, Zamasu, and Future Trunks with different color backgrounds behind each of them. Mai is green like her hat and Goku is orange because of his gi. Zamasu is purple which matches parts of his outfit, and Trunks is blue like his hair and jacket. Black's background is pink, despite his name and appearance being black. It's a subtle hint to his Super Saiyan form, Super Saiyan Rosé, that gives him pink hair. There is even a subtile clue of Zamasu's role in the story. Purple is the color often used for villains or morally questionable characters in Dragon Ball, so Zamasu's purple background hints his role as an antagonist.
    • The name of the fourth story arc is called the Future Trunks Saga. This stands out since every saga in Dragon Ball, save for the movie retellings, are named after the primary antagonist of the season, which is why some fans called the arc, Black Saga. Episode 56 reveals that there are two antagonists, Goku Black and Zamasu. Since Zamasu not being the same person as Goku Black is a big spoiler, they couldn't name the saga after them, and neither Goku Black nor Zamasu fit into a group like the androids. Even the revelation that Goku Black is Present Zamasu from an alternative timeline is a big spoiler.
    • Goku Black has access to a Time Ring, an artifact that Beerus and Whis both claim that only the Supreme Kais have access to. It's eventually revealed that he's in league with Zamasu, a very anti-mortal Supreme Kai from Universe 10. Then it turns out that he is Zamasu from an alternate version of the main timeline.
    • When Gowasu offers Zamasu one of his Potara earrings so he can use the Time Ring, Zamasu jokes about them fusing if they wear the earrings on different ears. This serves to explain for new viewers how the Potara earrings work. However, when Goku Black and Future Zamasu are shown to be wearing one set of Potara earrings between them, it is thus unsurprising that they eventually use them to fuse.
    • In the Yoku Yoku Dance credits we see several characters throughout Super such as Beerus, Whis, Champa, Vados, Future Trunks, and even Tights. Some fans quickly realized that the credits didn't have any villains like Black. Zamasu isn't part of the credits.
    • When Whis told Goku that to defeat Beerus, you just need to kill the Supreme Kai, it was Played for Laughs at that time, with Goku personally assuring he will not do such a thing. Well Goku, you won't, but a person with your body, face and skills did it rampantly in Future Trunks' timeline.
    • While chilling in their cottage, Future Zamasu suggests that Goku Black should have become an immortal like him, saying how good it is to have an undying body. Black isn't interested. His unlimited growth is key to their 'Zero Mortal Plan' and he might get rusty. He also just wants to get stronger and there is no challenged to be have if he can't die. This turns into a key weakness against Merged Zamasu, who ends up only being half immortal thanks to Black, which compromises his Healing Factor.
    • During one fight with Goku Black, Future Trunks promises to cut him in half. He does exactly this in Episode 66, although it was Merged Zamasu and not Black himself.
    • After Future Trunks' Time Machine is destroyed by Goku Black, Vegeta tells him not to give up. Beerus scoffs at this mindset, saying that there are times that nothing can be done and one should know when to give up. At the end of the saga despite everything Trunks done to save his world he still fails. The cold reality is that he has to accept that 'nothing could've been done'.
    • Early in saga, Whis talks about how Zen'o can destroy anything from evil people, to planets, to the entire multiverse. He even reveals that they used to be 18 universes until Zen'o destroyed 6 of them when he was in a foul mood. In the finale of the saga, Future Zen'o destroys the entire future timeline to kill Merged Zamasu who fused with the multiverse and was an immortal.
  • In Episode 71, Goku is on-edge because he knows Hit has a contract on him. But how exactly would Goku know about this contract when Hit is in a different universe, and who from Universe 6 would have hired Hit in the first place? It turns out Goku knows because he hired Hit, having Whis contact Vados and do it by proxy.
  • In Episode 83, the Supreme Kai revealed that there are currently only 28 planets with intelligent life. If you go back to the Resurrection 'F' Saga when Sorbet brings up a hologram of the universe, you see exactly 28 planets numbered. Either extremely good foreshadowing on Toei's part or they guessed the correct number.
  • Buu's role for the Tournament of Power is subtly hinted in the intro and the Boogie Back credits. In the intro, he's only seen in group shots and never on his own like several characters. In the Boogie Back credits, while the other U7's members are fighting or doing dramatic poses, Buu is sleeping on a cloud. Come Episode 92 it's revealed that Buu fall asleep, again, and won't wake up for two months so he needs to be replaced, explaining why he's only in group shots in the intro since the replacement can easily be put in.
  • Related to the above, after Buu has his sparring match with Goku he complains about feeling sleepy.
  • While Whis is training Goku and Vegeta prior to the "Resurrection F" Saga, he encourages them to seek a state of perfect synchronicity and awareness where their limbs move instantly without waiting for signals from the brain. Goku achieves this state, called Ultra Instinct, in Episode 110 after absorbing the power of his own Spirit Bomb.
  • Starting with the ending from Episode 97, there is a shot of Jiren, Toppo and Dyspo standing over the other universe fighters. This foreshadows them being the final 3 opponents for Team 7 to face.
• For the Evulz: Goku Black taking Goku's body is one thing, but using it to murder his wife and youngest son out of spite is another. Plus it's heavily implied that he gets a kick out of being an Omnicidal Maniac. Future Zamasu also crosses this when he mocks Goku about how Black murdered him and his family.
• Forced into Their Sunday Best: In the Doctor Slump crossover episode, Chichi forces Goku to take a job working security for a world invention conference and Goku must wear a suit to look the part. He almost immediately rips off the suit's sleeves and wanders off.
• Forgot About His Powers:
  • In the first episode, Goten accidentally drives the tractor over a cliff and needs Goku to save him... even though Goten can fly and is both strong and fast enough to catch the tractor himself.
  • Goku seems to have forgotten that he can plow fields with his bare hands like he did as a child. Or he does and just doesn't want to for some reason. Later Subverted in Episode 47, when he recalls plowing fields as a child (flashback included) and uses the method for harvesting.
  • When she and Krillin fly to escape a traffic jam, #18 wonders why they didn't just fly to begin with.
  • Again Krillin when he chases criminals on a motorcycle instead of simply flying up to and catching them. He eventually ditches the bike and speeds himself in front of them.
  • Beerus accuses Goku of this when he freaks out that it will take Whis thirty-five minutes to reach Earth when he could just teleport. Goku didn't forget, he just can't sense any energies from Earth from where he's at.
  • Averted with Piccolo since the animator staff seems to remember most of his powerset, like him being able to stretch his limbs, his Multiform technique used in anime filler, charging up the Special Beam Cannon to take down opponents many times stronger than him, and even his antenna beams that haven't been seen since the 23rd World Martial Arts Tournament.
  • Averted again with the reveal that Goku can combine the Kaioken with a form of Super Saiyan, specifically Super Saiyan Blue. The reason he never did it in the past is because Kaioken is extremely hard on the body and just becoming a normal Super Saiyan is stressful enough. Combining Kaioken with Super Saiyan would have been outright suicide. However, since Super Saiyan Blue is achieved using a mix of a calm mind and great energy control, it makes it possible for the combination work. At the same time, it's still highly dangerous. Because it is an incomplete technique, it has a 10% success rate and failure could end in death. Which is why Goku chooses not to use it until he masters it or gets pushed into a corner.
  • In what seems to be an ongoing theme in Super, averted with Puar. In Episode 42, we see Puar transform for the first time since the original Dragon Ball.
  • At first, Future Trunks seems to have forgotten about turning Super Saiyan, since he handles Goku Black's attacks in his base form. As it turns out, he just refrained from doing so to save his strength, knowing it wouldn't make a difference anyway- and it didn't when his anger boiled over. This also applies to his Super Saiyan 2 form, which he got at some point around his timelines's Dabura/Babidi crisis (that he handled before Majin Buu was released, period).
  • Goku forgot that Whis could rewind time, after begging Beerus to intervene when Zamasu was about to murder Gowasu. Good thing Whis didn't.
  • In the Universe Survival Arc, Riribeu is the first fighter to be knocked out of the Tournament of Power, despite being one of the few fighters with natural flying ability, because she forgot to fly after being stunned by the ferocity of Basil's attack.
• Forgotten Superweapon: Goku is given a button that can instantly summon Zen'o, omnipotent ruler of the multiverse. He completely forgets about it until his enemy has become a universe-consuming entity of pure evil, and only finds it then because of searching his pockets for an extra Senzu.
  • Boy howdy, how many enemies have we seen over the years that Evil Containment would have been an absolutely perfect way to defeat, quickly and with a minimum of fuss?
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Episode 69 which is a crossover with Dr. Slump which features lot of Breaking the Fourth Wall and potty humor along with a surreal plot and power scaling that are the hallmarks of Dr. Slump instead of the more serious tone that Dragon Ball is known for.
• Fountain of Youth: The Pilaf gang have been reduced to children thanks to a mis-worded wish to Shenron. Doubles as a Mythology Gag when you consider that a misunderstood wish by Pilaf was the very reason Goku was turned back into a kid himself in Dragon Ball GT.
• Four Is Death:
  • Combined with Elite Four. The tournament of power will erase any universe that loses, but the 4 strongest universes (1, 5, 8 and 12) are exempt from entering and will be spared regardless. The plan would have resulted in four universes total, but Goku's request for a tournament changes the result to allow one remaining for a total of five.
  • Of the 12 universes, those numbered 4 and 9 (both considered unlucky numbers in Japan) provide the most underhanded and dishonorable fighters, and are implied to be Crapsack Worlds ruled by gods who are morally ambiguous at best.
• Fragile Speedster: Cabba is very fast and can pack a punch that can knock Vegeta back, but tires easily and seems to have a hard time against Vegeta's more brutish fighting style. One gut-punch from a Super Saiyan Blue Vegeta knocks him out entirely.
• Frame-Up: Barry Kahn tries to frame Gohan and make it look like he's cheating on Videl with Cocoa so he can have her all to himself. Videl, however, knows her husband and throws Barry out of the house.
• Freak Out:
  • Dende has a major one as he realizes that Beerus is a god.
  • After Beerus slaps Bulma, Vegeta loses it completely. That is before he explodes into Unstoppable Rage.
  • Frieza has a major one when Gohan shows mercy to Captain Ginyu, as it reminds him of his own humiliation on Namek. He suffers from visible Sanity Slippage.
  • Frieza has another one after Vegeta transforms into a Super Saiyan Blue.
  • Beerus has a minor one after Goku sucker-punches Monaka in the face. He is also not happy that Goku is their last real fighter since Monaka isn't very strong and is close to panicking about losing the tournament.
  • Both Beerus and Champa have major freak outs when they see Zen'o, the King of Everything.
  • Trunks has one of these when he thinks Future Trunks is his illegitimate brother.
  • Future Trunks have a major one when he wakes up and sees Goku. He immediately attacks him, thinking that he's Goku Black.
  • An alternate version of main timeline Goku gets a major one after his body suddenly changes while he's farming. He spends several seconds trying to convince Chi-Chi that he's Goku, only for Zamasu to come, who took his body using the Super Dragon Balls, and murders him while he's confused and helpless.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: With The Reveal in Episode 34 that Frost is Evil All Along, he's becomes this to his Universe 6 teammates. He's become a Broken Pedestal to Cabba, what with the two having fought together in one of his many wars and Cabba being a genuine hero. Champa considered Frost's actions and true character shameful and wanted to destroy him for this until Vados reminded Champa of the imperative of beating Beerus for the Super Dragon Balls.
• Friendship Denial: Future Zamasu denies Goku Black of being his comrade, only a kindred spirit with a similar vision, which completely baffles Goku. This becomes more confusion since they get along very well and even seem to live together in a cottage and laments that Goku Black didn't become an immortal like him. In Episode 60, it's revealed that Goku Black is Present Zamasu from an alternative timeline, which is probably why Future Zamasu doesn't see Goku Black as a 'friend' since they're basically the same person.
• Friend to All Children: Frost is mentioned to take care of children left behind in the wake of his peace-keeping efforts. When Goku starts beating him, he says he can't stop fighting because he has to be an example for the children, which is all BS. Frost doesn't care about children and in fact starts the conflicts that leaves many of them homeless and parentless.
• Friendly Enemy: Despite being at odds with Goku and his friends since they side with Beerus, Champa is actually quite nice to them and even shares food with Goku and Vegeta. When Goku loses to Frost, he mostly demeans and mocks Beerus, not Goku who he compliments as Beerus' ace.
• Friendship-Hating Antagonist: During the Universe Survival Arc, it's eventually revealed that Jiren, the main rival character during the arc, hates the concept of bonds because he once got close with some fellow students when he was younger, only for them to be massacred in front of his eyes, leading him to believe that friendship wasn't strong enough to survive in the world, and that only power mattered."
• Fridge Logic:
  • Bulma questions why Champa would bother using the Super Dragon Balls to move the entire Earth to his universe because he loves the food when he could simply ask the all-powerful dragon god for all the tasty foods in the universe. Beerus tells Bulma that neither Champa nor he are really interested in the Super Dragon Balls and this is all just an excuse for them to fight.
  • Bulma does it again after she covers for Gohan being the Great Saiyaman when he stopped a bank robbery. She comes up with a story that she made a duplicate Saiyaman costume that someone stole from her lab and that person must have stopped the robbery, not Gohan. This is despite Bulma having nothing to do with the movie and has no business making a spare costume. She even points out that this excuse is weak and Gohan is lucky that everyone so easily bought it.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Zamasu started out as a regular Kai, not a Supreme Kai, a Kai, like King Kai. Despite being a prodigy, he was still weaker than Super Saiyan 2 Goku. By the end of the Future Trunks Saga his various incarnations have not only performed genocide on the rest of the gods in the multiverse, but have wiped out life on multiple worlds with their genocide of Earth just being their latest stop. His various incarnations also grew so strong that they could challenged and even surpassed Goku at his strongest with Merged Zamasu needing Vegito for the heroes just to have a chance. By the very end, he becomes an Eldritch Abomination that is only stopped by literally destroying Future Trunk's multiverse courtesy of the Top God Zen'o.
• Full-Potential Upgrade: Turns out the real reason Goku hasn't used the Kaioken while in Super Saiyan is because of the strain it will put on his body and he can't easily control it. However, his Super Saiyan Blue form is much less stressful on him and easier to control once mastered since it requires perfect energy control and a calm mind to use. This allows Goku to use the Kaioken while in that form up to X10. It's not perfect, however. It only has a 10% success rate since Goku is still working on it and it makes him sick days afterwards.
• Fusion Dance:
  • Merged Zamasu is the Potara fusion of Goku Black and Future Zamasu. Although he mostly resembles Future Zamasu physically because of his green skin, outfit, and eye color, he has Black's outfit color palette, facial structure, and hair style. Personality-wise, he strongly favors Future Zamasu given his arrogance, his tendency to underestimate his opponents to the point of dropping his guard, having Villainous Breakdowns when things goes wrong, and his love of Motive Rants. In fact, very little of Black's personality is shown outside of the fact he has strong mood swings. Their shared traits, however, namely their A God Am I, narcissism, and Sadism, seem to have stacked and magnified.
  • In the Tournament of Power, it's eventually revealed that the Universe 6's Namekian participants, Saonel and Pirina, each fused with several dozen of their race, allowing them to almost match up to Gohan and Piccolo.
  • Later, three of Universe 3's robots turn out to be a Combining Mecha, as many suspected. But then their leader, Dr. Paparoni, merges with them to form a colossal biomechanical monster.
• Future Badass:
  • Future Trunks, naturally. Although Present Trunks has shown more raw talent than Future Trunks, given the ease with which he became a Super Saiyan and being stronger than Future Trunks at the same age, Future Trunks is more serious, has ascended to Super Saiyan 2, and almost single-handedly prevented Majin Buu's awakening.
  • Present day Mai is a Harmless Villain who is a lackey to Pilaf, although she is the smartest within the group. Future Mai faced Goku Black several times and even saved Future Trunks' life by blinding Black with a Flash grenade.
  • Future Bulma, so much so that Present Bulma admits she's smarter than her - after all, she invented the time machine at least seventeen years ago, whereas her older present self has no clue how to replicate it without her future counterpart's notes.
• My Future Self and Me:
  • Future Trunks forms a relationship with Present Trunks, who treat each other like brothers.
  • In Future Trunks' timeline, Future Zamasu is allied with Goku Black, who turns out to be Zamasu from another timeline.

G

• Generational Saga: This series continues the many misadventures of the Son and Brief families. The beginning of the Resurrection ‘F’ Saga has Pan's birth and Goku becoming a grandfather, and the Universal Survival Saga has Bulma giving birth to her second child.
• Genius Bruiser:
  • Goku is a downplayed example since he is quite Book Dumb despite being a fighting genius. That doesn't stop him from outsmarting those who are intellectually superior to him:
    • After realizing the Fatal Flaw in Frieza's ultimate form, instead of trying to overpower Frieza, he allows the tyrant to beat him up until he burns himself out and is too weak to continue the battle.
    • In his match against Botamo, after realizing that none of his attacks can bypass Botamo's defense, he decides to drag the giant bear towards the edge of the stage and flips him out of the ring, stunning everyone including Vegeta and Piccolo who didn't think of that.
    • Thanks to the information he gains from Jaco and the Galactic King, he figures out how to counter Hit's Time-Skipping power by predicting his movements and in their rematch, he is able to counter all of Hit's new techniques using pure observation.
    • He manages to learn the complicated Evil Containment Wave in a single night when it took Tien, a fighting genius in his own right, an entire day to master.
    • In his rematch with Hit, he is slowly able to figure out how Hit's new abilities work and counter them such as: feeling out Hit's invincible energy attacks and shattering his Pocket Dimension that gives him his phase ability.
  • Piccolo, naturally, falls into this. What he lacks in raw power compared to the other fighters, he more than makes up for by using his head. He had his match against Frost won using several clever tactics like fully charging his Special Beam Cannon and allowing Frost to shoot him in the leg so he would lower his guard and make it easier for Piccolo to grab and shoot him. He only lost because Frost cheated by poisoning him. It was also his idea to use the Evil Containment Wave to trap Future Zamasu since he's an immortal.
  • While Gohan is not a fighting genius like his father and mentor, he is one of the most intelligent people in the series, having a steady job as a scholar and attending conferences.
  • Magetta doesn't look it, but he's very aware of his species' abilities and is adept at using them to give himself the advantage. His mastery of his species' unique abilities almost wins him the fight against Vegeta.
  • Future Trunks becomes this after the events of the Android/Cell Saga. While in Z, Trunks was a naive fighter who lacked the battle knowledge of the older fighters and Cell, he has shown a lot of growth in Super since he is able to trick Black several times to either escape or attack, and even learns the Evil Containment Wave faster than Goku, although he did have Mai there to help him aim.
  • Goku Black masterminded the entire 'Zero Mortals Plan' first by stealing Goku's body using the Super Dragon Balls, recruiting his future self and giving him immortality before destroying the Super Dragon Balls, and killing all the gods in the future timeline. His end goal was to eventually fuse with Future Zamasu to create the powerful, immortal god Merged Zamasu to rule as the supreme god of the multiverse. His plan would've succeeded too, if Future Trunks didn't return to the past to get help. He also shows his battle smarts when he reprimands Future Trunks for fighting on blind emotion and figures out quickly how to use his rage towards the mortals to become stronger.
• Genius Ditz:
  • To most, Goku comes off as this since he seems to be only smart when it comes to fighting. He has, however, shown other skill sets such as being a very good farmer to the point that his crops are extremely popular. Goku is just too lazy to used his talents for anything but fighting unless his forced.
  • Despite Pilaf being a Smug Snake feather-brain, he does knows his way around machinery. Not only does he build his Pilaf Machines, but he is able to help repair the time machine and even make improvements to its program. Bulma takes note Pilaf's brilliance and wonders if he's really just an ordinary kid. He is also extremely good with math too, which makes sense since how did he build those Pilaf Machines with part-time job funds.
  • Shu also counts. He is Cloudcuckoolander who often misses the point, but he does have knowledge of fighting skills. He knew that Future Trunks was image-training and explained how it works to Mai.
• Genius Loci: After Merged Zamasu's physical body is destroyed, he becomes an Eldritch Abomination in an attempt to BECOME the multiverse.
• Genre Shift
  • Super has a mild case of this when compared to Dragon Ball Z. While Z focused primarily on sci-fi elements like aliens, space travel, androids, time-travel, ect, Super focuses on the gods to the point that it boarders on Lovecraft Lite. However, this particular shift feels like a natural transition since Z was heading in that direction during the Buu Saga with the higher gods getting involved and Buu being an Eldritch Abomination.
  • The in-between arc episodes are generally more comedy focus and light-hearted to the point that they would fit right in with the original Dragon Ball. The most standout example being the Dr. Slump crossover where Super becomes a gag anime.
  • The Future Trunks Saga has a very different tone compared to all of the other story arcs in the franchise since the main focused of the arc is the mystery of who or what Black is, why he looks like Goku, and how is Zamasu connected to him. It also mixes the time-travel from the Android/Cell Saga with the fantasy elements from the Buu Saga, creating a rather complicated Stable Time Loop.
• Genre Blindness:
  • Gohan fails to keep up with his training, yet again, despite the events of the Buu Saga and even the Battle of Gods Saga. Although Gohan doesn't like to fight, you would think he would at least keep his body in shape and maintain his current power. At least it seems he learned his lesson after Frieza killed Piccolo.
  • Frieza's men were foolish to believe that someone as prideful and scornful as Frieza could walk away after being humiliated and killed by what he saw as overgrown monkeys.
  • Goku, did you really think someone as scornful and prideful as Frieza would just walk away after being defeated, especially after what he did on Namek?
  • Goku and the others are shocked and stricken that Frieza chose to destroy the Earth instead of being killed by Vegeta. Given that rage quitting has been a proud DBZ villain tradition since Vegeta tried it, they should have known this could happen, especially Goku since Frieza did the same thing on Namek.
  • Vegeta saying that Monaka doesn't look powerful at all given all the buildup Beerus has been giving him. Given how many times Vegeta has misjudged opponents based on their appearances (Frieza's true form, Perfect Cell, and Fat/Kid Buu), and the fact that he is fairly small himself, he should know better by now. In the end, it turns out Vegeta was right about Monaka.
• Gentle Giant: Magetta is a mighty, metal living volcano with the grits to take an enraged Vegeta head-on with no fear...but hurt his feelings, and he won't take it very well.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Kid Trunks does this to his future self, after the latter is despondent upon losing to Goku Black and being separated from Future Mai once again.
• Geo Effects:
  • Merged Zamasu spends the entire fight flying high above everyone raining down death on them. He outright says he's doing it because he's a god and he should be looking down on everyone (in this case literally).
  • Magetta can create his own environment by superheating the battlefield to volcano temperatures. Since he literally eats magma, the heat has no effect on him, but it quickly becomes unbearable to his opponent. Vegeta is left panting and tired after only a few seconds of exposure to the heat. It also helps that Vados created a secondary barrier to hold in the heat and restrain Vegeta's flight.
• The Ghost:
  • Zalama, the God of Dragons who created the Super Dragon Balls, has been mentioned, but has yet to make an appearance in the series.
  • Despite his universe being the origin of Goku Black and Zamasu indirectly killing him at least twice, Rumsshi, U10 God of Destruction, is never seen during the Future Trunks Saga. He doesn't show up until Episode 78 along with the other Gods of Destruction.
• The Glasses Come Off: Gohan removes his glasses as he prepares to fight Beerus. It does him little good. He does it again when preparing to fight Shisami, and actually has that one in the bag until Tagoma takes a cheap shot.
• The Gift:
  • Beerus fully believes that Goku has this after he manages to absorbed the power of Super Saiyan God into his being, become much stronger than before. This actually becomes a plot point in the Future Trunks Saga where Zamasu sees Goku's outstanding fighting talent as an insult and failure of the gods since he gained power that surpasses them. It reaches the point where Zamasu takes Goku's body using the Super Dragon Balls so he can used Goku's abilities for his own ends and carry the 'sins' of mortals and the gods.
  • Frieza has by far the most natural fighting ability of any non-god character in the series, perhaps even any character fullstop. Even Gohan or Goku could not get stronger as fast as Frieza did. Before losing to Goku he'd literally never trained in his life and was still one of the strongest beings in the universe. After being revived, it only takes him four months of training to surpass even Buu and be a match for a Super Saiyan Blue. His biggest failing is his impatient. He chose to rushed to Earth instead of mastering his golden form, giving him severe stamina issues.
  • Zamasu is such a talented Supreme Kai in training that Goku surmises that he could surpass Beerus someday. Beerus, naturally, take offense to this.
  • Caulifla from Universe 6 becomes a Super Saiyan without needing to reach her Rage Breaking Point. She just focused her energy and was able to transform on her first try and maintain the form on her second attempt. For reference, the only other Saiyans to have an easier time transforming were Goten and Trunks, who are gifted because they're tailless hybrids. She also later manages to unlock Super Saiyan 2 with absolutely no difficulty whatsoever to pacify a crazed Kale, something that none of the hybrid Saiyans managed to do.
  • Gohan has been called the character with the most potential by Vegeta and it really shows in the Universal Survival Saga. After some training with Piccolo and overcoming his mental block, he not only regains his Ultimate form but he gain power that rivals Goku as a Super Saiyan Blue.
• Glad He's On Our Side: Goku's reaction after having a sparring match with #17. #17 has spent the past decade training and can now fight about on par with Super Saiyan Blue Goku. Adding his infinite stamina into the mix and Goku admits that #17 would be a dangerous enemy.
• Glory Hound:
  • Mr. Satan goes on television and tells the world about Beerus. He then claims to have defeated him by ascending to godhood. He really didn't need to do this and could have told the world something else to explain the strange weather or least left out the ascension part.
  • Frost is also one given that he uses his influence to start conflicts and then fixes them so he can build a reputation as a universal savior to hide his planet broker business. This costs him dearly after the tournament. He is now a wanted fugitive for his actions.
• The Gloves Come Off: Goku Black and Future Zamasu could have fused at any time, but only resorts to doing so when they realize that the mortals are a threat to them and have a way to permanently put Future Zamasu down. Black even says that 'Play time is over' when they fuse to created Merged Zamasu.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: While Zamasu has always been distrustful of mortals since he finds them Too Dumb to Live, what sends him on his Start of Darkness was his sparring match with Goku. That simple match showed Zamasu that mortals can obtain power that rivals or even surpasses the gods. He becomes even more crazy when he sees Goku with god energy on Godtube.
• A God Am I:
  • When Future Trunks demands to know who Goku Black is and why he's killing everyone, he boasts that he's a higher being who has judged humanity to be unworthy. At the same time, Black also makes a point to say that he's working on behalf of the gods, not that he's one himself. However, once his identity as Zamasu is revealed, he goes into full god mode, calling himself the supreme god next to Future Zamasu.
  • Although he is a god, Future Zamasu says how he is a true god and the only one worthy of divine power since he's an immortal. He even went as far as to murder all the other gods in the universes and declare himself as the supreme god].
  • Merged Zamasu of so very much. Given that both of his components have this, it should be no surprise. His first words upon coming into existence are telling everyone to praise and adore him because he's the supreme god. He takes it a step further by his attack names ('Blades of Judgment', 'Light of Absolution', 'Holy Wrath') all being themed around his self declared status as the 'supreme god'.
• A God I Am Not: Beerus asks Goku and Vegeta if they want to become the new God of Destruction since they bribed Whis to train them. Goku says that he just wants to become stronger. Vegeta says that he's only there so Goku doesn't leave him in the dust.
• God Is Evil: Merged Zamasu is one of the most powerful gods ever to appear in the series, matched equally by his evil intent. Although, he thinks he's the good guy, while the rest of the multiverse is evil.
• God Is Flawed: Gowasu believes that the gods are not infallible and must also grow and learn like the mortals they watch over. Zamasu strongly disagrees with him since he thinks the gods are naturally flawless, while also thinking that the gods are wrong for not interfering with mortal affairs. As the story progress, Gowasu himself becomes a shining example: while undoubtedly a good god, he was a Horrible Judge of Character in regards to Zamasu, taking him as his apprentice despite Zamasu's adamant racism against mortal life and other signs that he's not entirely stable, with everything Gowasu does to try to convince Zamasu that not all mortals are bad backfiring and eventually driving him to a Face–Heel Turn. Gowasu becomes aware of this after Zamasu's murder attempt on him is revealed, and very much regrets it.
• God Is Good:
  • Despite Gowasu's personal failings with Zamasu, everything else indicates that he is a good Supreme Kai since Universe 10 is ranked in the middle of the mortal ranking despite Rumsshi being an even lazier God of Destruction than Beerus and Champa. He is also shown to be more knowledgable than even Old Kai.
  • Belmod and Khin, U11's God of Destruction and Supreme Kai, both fulfill this in that they are gods who wants to destroy evil and fully support the Pride Troopers. Because of this, U11 has the highest mortal ranking of the 'bad' universes, making them the best of the worst.
  • Zen'o is the Top God of the multiverse, but is also a Nice Guy who commends the fighters for their role in the tournament and takes Goku's lack of reverence in stride. Although, he apparently does have a mean streak. He destroyed 6 Universes when he was upset, which is why there is now only 12 Universes. Also, we find out that Zen'o is too pure. He doesn't have a concept for lower life and will play marble with planets when he's bored. He also decides to destroy the losing universes during the Tournament of Power because it would make things more exciting - which actually isn't true. He planned on it a long time ago but felt like the tournament would be a good excuse. Plus, it would give him the opportunity to check his original assessment of the mortal level of each was correct, so that the ones with the strongest fighters can continue to develop while the weaker ones can be pruned.
• God Job: Much like the title of Kami on Earth, God of Destruction is a job and not something someone is born into. How exactly one gets this position isn't clear, especially since Beerus and Champa are twins, and are Gods of Destruction of different universes. In the movie Battle of Gods it is hinted that people like Whis choose the next God of Destruction, which is reinforced in this series when Whis says he'll train Vegeta on the condition of him becoming a God of Destruction. When Zen'o appears, he teasingly threatens to take Beerus and Champa's jobs away, suggesting that he is the ultimate authority of the decision.
• God's Hands Are Tied: In the Future Trunks Saga of Super, Beerus goes to some lengths to stretch the rules when Goku Black shows up from the future, but states he can't outright solve the problem for the Z-Fighters since a God of Destruction isn't allowed to time travel; he goes so far as to criticize Goku for relying on the gods, which is hypocritical for several reasons.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy:
  • A common complaint about the Kais in Dragon Ball is that they don't interfere with the lower worlds, allowing beings like Frieza to kill and terrorized people, and only directly intervenes when Majin Buu was reeking havoc. According to Gowasu, U10's Supreme Kai, the Kais are not allowed to interact with mortals. The only gods who are allowed to interact with the lower worlds are the Gods of Destruction. This becomes a major plot point in the Future Trunks Saga where Zamasu, U10's Apprentice Supreme Kai, thinks that the gods are sinful for only watching over the lower realm and allowing evil to flourish, instead of taking direct action. The problem, Zamasu thinks all mortals are inherently evil and needs to be wipe out to bring peace to the universe.
  • A major issue with many of the Gods of Destruction. For example, Beerus (U7), Champa (U6), and Rumsshi (U10) are extremely lazy about doing their jobs. Beerus just wants to sleep and eat, Champa won't even destroy his own planets and often spends his time looking for Super Dragon Balls when he isn't eating, and Rumsshi just can't be bothered. This has a severe impact on their universe's mortal level.
  • Zen'o is technically the supreme ruler of all reality, but is never seen actually running things. In practice, he's more of a massive wildcard that the other gods conspire to appease so that he doesn't destroy one or more universes in a fit of pique. This goes to extremes in the Future Trunks Saga: Zen'o's alternate timeline equivalent doesn't seem to have even noticed that Zamasu not only depopulated several planets, but killed all the other gods in the multiverse to keep them from interfering. On the other hand, once he does become aware of the problem, he takes notable steps by annihilating the entire timeline.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Vegeta throwing away his pride to entertain Beerus by cooking and humbling himself.
  • Sorbet only resurrects Frieza because he's been trying to keep the empire afloat, but they've lost planet after planet to revolts and are rapidly losing military power. While he isn't particularly happy about bringing Frieza back to life, Frieza's the only one who can rebuild the empire.
  • Frieza's men even going to Earth. Before the empire began to completely fall apart, they were searching for New Namek to no avail. They wanted to avoid Super Saiyan Goku at all costs.
  • Frost in regards to his final form. Unlike Frieza who used his final form that deliberately killed all his minions, Frost didn't even want to use the form since he accidentally killed a villain, but obliges to keep up with Super Saiyan Goku. The accidentally killing an evildoer story is most likely a lie and his true Godzilla Threshold is using his poison needle to disable his opponents.
  • During the tournament, both Vegeta and Goku view using their god powers as this since they're saving it for Hit, which is why they're willing to struggle with opponents that they can easily defeat if they use their full power. It is later revealed that Goku's true Godzilla Threshold is using the Super Saiyan Blue with Kaioken combination since it has a 90% failure rate and can seriously harm or kill him. He is still improving it and was saving it for Beerus, but Hit forces his hand.
  • Future Trunks and Bulma reached this point during Goku Black's onslaught. They re-powered the time machine to return to the past for help.
  • The fight against Goku Black and Future Zamasu forces everyone to use a very old attack - the Mafuuba or Evil Containment Wave in the dub.
  • Downplayed. Future Zamasu reaches this point after Future Trunks nearly seals him with the Evil Containment Wave. He tells Goku Black that they can no longer afford to toy the with the mortals, otherwise their plans could be ruined. Black agrees, and says 'play time is over', before fusing with Future Zamasu to create Merged Zamasu. The reason why this is downplayed is because it's hinted that Merged Zamasu was always their end goal and they wanted Black to become as strong as possible before fusing. Future Zamasu nearly being sealed only speeded up their endgame.
  • Merged Zamasu in turn eventually pushes Goku and Vegeta over this, resulting in first Goku using Kaio-Ken Blue and then the rebirth of Vegito. Then, after Merged Zamasu loses his body, merges with the multiverse, and murders everyone on Earth, Goku has no choice but to call Future Zen'o, who destroys the entire timeline to kill Merged Zamasu.
  • With only three hours until the Tournament of Power, Goku and the crew are missing a fighter after Buu fall asleep on them. After Beerus hammers them for only focusing on Earth and destroying the Frieza Force that had the most powerful warriors in Universe 7, Goku decides to asked Frieza to be the tenth member. This, naturally, shocks and horrifies everyone.
  • A strange one occurs in the last minutes of the Tournament of Power, when the threat from Jiren proves so great that Goku and Vegeta not only are forced to go all-out, but wordlessly decide to fight him together, something they've always refused to do even when the fate of the Earth was at stake.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: Frieza develops a Super Mode that turns his skin gold and purple. He mentions that he chose to make it gold with this very trope in mind.
• Golden Super Mode:
  • It's not just for Saiyans anymore — Frieza's new form is effectively this. He says he chose the color specifically to show off to Goku and mock the Super Saiyan, only to learn blue is all the rage in super forms now.
  • Subverted with the god forms Super Saiyan. Super Saiyan God gives Goku red hair, while Super Saiyan Blue turns Goku and Vegeta's hair blue. Goku Black's Super Saiyan form is called Super Saiyan Rosé and he gains pink hair. Although, according to Toriyama, Black has a normal Super Saiyan form. The anime just never used it.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • The people of Planet Potaufeu created a power weapon known as the Commeson that can absorb people and steal their powers. It was created to neutralize the enemies of the Potaufeu. However, the Commeson not only takes the power of the people it absorbs, but also their will and spirit. So when the Commeson absorbs the power of a evil person, it too becomes evil. It soon became so power that it threatened the universe, so the people of Potaufeu sacrifice themselves to seal it within the planet.
  • By absorbing Vegeta, the Commeson copied his personality and will. Since the real Vegeta is far too prideful to fight using dirty tactics or relying on the strength of other's to get ahead, the Commeson can't control Copy-Vegeta.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors:
  • In the series, purple is usually the color of evil characters. All of Frieza's forms have purple in it and his Battle Aura is purple outside of his golden form. The Comméson is purple and the copies it creates when it absorbs people are also purple. Black's aura has hints of purple when it isn't depicted as pure black. At the same time, neutral or morally questionable characters also have purple like Beerus, Champa, Rō, and Hit. Heroic characters tend to be represented by red, blue, white, and gold. Frost plays with this since he's presented as a heroic character and he has blue highlights with a blue battle aura, but is actually a villain on par with Frieza.
  • Goku Black's colors heavily contrast that of Goku, his Good Counterpart. He wears black and has black ki with hints of purple, while Goku is associated with brighter colors like the orange of his gi, and the yellow of his Super Saiyan aura and ki, or the blue of his Kamehameha or Super Saiyan Blue aura. Black's Super Saiyan Rosé form is an odd example, but still qualifies considering its color is an inverse to Super Saiyan Blue.
  • Zamasu is represented by purple, even in the title card during the opening. He is also morally ambiguous since he has a strong distrust of mortals, but isn't villainous. Even as he becomes more zealot in his belief that mortals are dangerous and needs to be wipe out for universal peace, he doesn't act on it outside of killing one of the Babarians, which he did show a moment of regret towards. It's not until Future Zamasu makes his first appearance that Zamasu is confirmed as a major and extremely evil villain.
  • Merged Zamasu plays with this. Although he has Goku Black's outfit color scheme, he's represented by a heavenly white aura and halo that is usually used to represent the heroes. This is because he sees himself as a heroic figure trying to save the multiverse from the foolishness of mortals and correcting a mistake by the gods. However, as he has his Villainous Breakdowns and he becomes disfigured, half his body becomes purple, mutated sludge, he shows himself for the villain that he is.
• Good Counterpart: Both Cabba and Frost:
  • When introducing himself to Goku and Vegeta, Cabba reveals while his race are Blood Knight mercenaries, their job is to fight evil, and still have their home planet Salad, whereas Vegeta mentioned Universe 7's Salad has been destroyed due to infighting.
  • Frost is this to Frieza. While he is the emperor of Universe 6, he has no evil intentions, which Piccolo notices. Unlike Frieza, who is a sociopathic mass murderer, Frost is more honorable than he is (and stronger). Also he refuses to use his final form to prevent killing anyone, unlike Frieza who gleefully murders anyone in that form. Frost runs his empire not to conquer the universe, but to stop wars, rebuild war-torn planets, and to help children, which is why he's even in the tournament. He even fights on the front lines with his men instead of being an Orcus on His Throne. He is literally Frieza's polar opposite. Tellingly, he appears to be on good terms with U6's Saiyans. And it's all a lie. He's an evil Jerkass like Frieza who starts wars so he can buy and sell planets. He only lacks an ultimate form because he never met an opponent as strong as Goku and he relies on tricks like his poison needle to win.
  • Turns out that the real Good Counterpart to Frieza is Hit. Like Frieza, both are talented fighters who didn't have to work for their power and easily curbstomp anyone who tried to fight them. The difference is that when Frieza meets his match with Goku, he is driven insane by the idea of anyone being stronger than him and his madness eventually leads to his death, twice. Hit, on the other hand, is grateful for meeting someone like Goku who pushes him for the first time in his life and seemed happier than he has ever been. Frieza is also a Combat Pragmatist who will do anything to win, even if it means sacrificing his men, attacking those around Goku, or blowing up the planet he's standing on. Hit is a textbook example of Honor Before Reason who won't attack Goku when he has the chance since he respects him too much as a Worthy Opponent.
• Good Is Not Soft:
  • Discussed by Beerus after he scolds Goku for trying to spare Frieza again instead of just killing him, which led to the Earth being destroyed. Goku takes Beerus and Whis' words to heart, and mercilessly blasts Frieza to hell the moment Whis rewinds time for him. Goku later seems to take Beerus and Whis' words to heart again since he tries to kill Future Zamasu by blowing his head off and he's only saved because he's an immortal. He also tries to actively kill Black for murdering Chi-Chi and Goten.
  • Future Trunks is one of the most merciless fighters in the series. When Future Dabura and Babidi threatened to awakening Majin Buu, he kills them both without playing around unlike the main timeline characters. He also swears to kill Black several times for all the pain he has caused. At the same time, Trunks would rather live a peaceful life with his mom and Mai instead of always fighting for his life.
• Good Is Not Nice:
  • Vegeta may officially be one of the good guys now, but he is still the most merciless of all the Z Fighters. He kills Captain Ginyu without a moment of hesitation, despite Goku calling it unnecessary. He also tells Frieza that he isn't soft like Goku and has every intention of sending him back to hell before beating the shit out of him and knocking him out of his golden form. He teaches Cabba how to become a Super Saiyan by brutally beating him up and pushing him to his Rage Breaking Point. He then turns into a Super Saiyan Blue and knocks Cabba out with one punch, so he will remember the pain.
  • Beerus eventually falls into this as he becomes friends with Goku and the others. He is still petty, selfish, short-tempered, and will threatened death and bodily harm to those who annoy him, but he's overall a decent person who shows contempt for Frost when he learns that he is just another version of Frieza and Zamasu when he tries to kill his own master and attack Goku. He also shows anger about not being able to do more to help Future Trunks, although he tries to hide it, and he wishes back U6's Earth so Champa can enjoy the same food as him.
  • Whis. Although he comes off as much nicer than Beerus, he still has no problem with seeing planets being destroyed because the food was subpar and he even laughs at Beerus when it's revealed that he will be the lone survival of U7 if it loses the Tournament of Power. At the same time, he does show real concern for Beerus and Goku, and calls Goku Black a cold-hearted villain.
  • In general, all the Gods of Destruction fit into this category. They work together with their Supreme Kais to bring balance to the universe, but they are also extremely temperamental, petty, and some won't even do their jobs and even threatens their own Supreme Kai. At the same time, it is shown that being a Nice Guy isn't a good trait to have as a God of Destruction. Part of the reason why Sidra is bad at his job is because he's too nice to destroy what is needed and feels bad about about the things he does destroys.
• Good Thing You Can Heal:
  • Super Saiyan God appears to have a type of healing ability since Goku recovers after Beerus impales him with his hand through the stomach.
  • Piccolo is the first one to attack Tagoma and gets his arm ripped off for his trouble. He happens to be the only one of the fighters who can easily regenerate a lost limb.
  • After his match with Frost, Piccolo casually heals a hole in his chest.
• Goo-Goo-Godlike: Baby Pan can not only fly, but her just powering up destroys Pilaf's battle machine. She is also strong enough to carry Pilaf's gang back to Earth after they shot themselves into the stratosphere.
• Götterdämmerung: Goku Black and Future Zamsu wipes out all the gods in Future Trunks' timeline, making them the supreme gods of all 12 universes.
• Graceful Loser:
  • Unlike the movie, Goku does not outright admit defeat to Beerus and keeps fighting until he's absolutely exhausted. However, once Goku really can't fight anymore, he tells Beerus that even gods can't decide the limits of people. He also takes his loss to Frost well. He's upset, but not mad. He does get annoyed, however, when he learns that Frost is a dirty cheater.
  • Cabba is extremely gracious after losing to Vegeta, mostly because he's happy to become a Super Saiyan and earn Vegeta's respect.
  • Hit takes his loss to Goku during their rematch in stride, vowing to kill Goku again someday before leaving.
• Grand Theft Me:
  • Ginyu's back and up to his old tricks. He gets around the limitations of his frog body by tricking Tagoma into saying "Change" by writing it on the sand in alien script when he's looking at Ginyu.
  • Black is actually Present Zamasu from another timeline who used the Super Dragon Balls to switch his mind and body with a version of Goku. And unlike Ginyu, he kills the original Goku once the switch is made.
  • Barry Kahn is taken over by Watagash because he has so much darkness in his heart.
  • Frieza manages to be this even in death. It was because of his defeat to the Super Saiyan that Beerus became more interested in finding a Super Saiyan God and fighting them. This leads directly to the events of the Battle of Gods arc. It also, ironically, made Goku and Vegeta prepared for Frieza's revival.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Barry Kahn really didn't like Gohan getting more attention than him after he successfully pulled his stunt of jumping on a moving tank, pulling out the driver, and changing the pose that he came up with. He's also jealous that Gohan is married to Videl and actually tries to ruined their marriage in revenge.
  • Sidra and Rumsshi's animosity towards Goku seems to stream from jealousy that he's close to Zen'o. Although, Sidra also has a beef with Goku since he beat his best fighter.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality:
  • The Champa Saga. It is the first story arc since the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament to have no villain. Champa and his team are antagonists against U7, but no one save for Frost is evil. Hit may be an assassin who is stoic and dispassionate (at least until he fights Goku), but he has a strict code of honor and is an example of Dark Is Not Evil. Champa is more boorish and rude compared to Beerus, but he overall treats people better than Beerus (who often eats on other people's planets before judging to destroy it), doesn't have tantrums over small things like there being no pudding that ends with a planet exploding, doesn't terrorize people with his mere presence, shows some degree of sympathy for others like him feeling sorry for Frost when he hears his backstory, and his temper is nowhere as bad as his twin. He also has standards about who represents his universe. At the same time, he doesn't care about the warrior code and wants his fighters to take the most pragmatic solutions to win over fighting fairly, sees his fighters as pawns, and he was ready to kill his entire team for losing the tournament. On the other side, although all the fighters from U7 are good with Vegeta being an example of Good Is Not Nice, Beerus has a history of doing terrible things because someone or something ticked him off, as seen throughout the Battle of Gods Saga, and he still threatens the people of Earth whenever he's upset. It is also hard to say if he sees his fighters as comrades or pawns similar to Champa since he didn't care that Champa was going to wipe out his own team and mocks Goku for thinking he can overrule the gods. With that said, Beerus has shown major Character Development since he uses his one wish to restore U6's Earth and advance its culture to be similar to U7's Earth so Champa can enjoy the same food as him. Although, it's left up in the air if he did this out of the kindness of his own heart, or because he wants Champa to owe him something.
  • The Universal Survival Saga. Much like he Champa Saga there is no 'villain'. All sides are fighting for their own survival since Zen'o will destroy the losing universes of the Tournament of Power. Many of the gods have shown themselves to be extremely petty, selfish, and hate Goku because he's close with Zen'o and wants to blame everything on him, even when it's pointed out that Goku did them a favor. At the same time, Goku is selfish himself since he wanted the tournament to fight strong people and ignored the warnings from both Beerus and Whis about Zen'o being dangerous. He's also not concern about the state of the multiverse, only his own universe and even that's secondary to him fighting strong opponents. There is also the fact that Frieza, one of the biggest monsters in the franchise, is part of the U7 team, replacing Majin Buu. Zen'o himself is also not portrayed as a bad person since he's too innocent and pure to see the value of lesser life. To him, destroying the losing universes is spring cleaning... or so it is believed, considering the real purpose behind it (in the anime).
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Beerus knocks out Gohan by hitting him with Buu, who he was just thrashing.
• Groin Attack:
  • Gotenks makes his entrance by headbutting Tagoma in the groin. This is right after Tagoma boasted that the weak attacks of the Z Warriors could do him no harm.
  • Future Trunks finally kills Merged Zamasu by slicing him in half vertically — starting at the groin and going up. It's not Played for Laughs in the slightest, complete with Merged Zamasu screaming in utter agony.
• Guardian of the Multiverse: Zen'o who rules over the entire multiverse and is the single most powerful character in the entire franchise. So far, he appears to be the watcher type who doesn't interfere with the happenings of the different universes, although he does show concern when Champa and Beerus don't do their jobs.
• Gut Punch: Super is generally more lighthearted than Z and although the Future Trunks Saga has its dark moments, it still has its funny moments. However, this saga gives us three gut punches:
  • There is Future Bulma's death. Granted, most fans suspected that she was probably going to die since Future Trunks was crying in the preview, but the fact that she died within the first minutes of the episode by having her own lab explode on her while Black holds her shocked a lot people. It becomes especially horrifying when you considered that the last thing Bulma sees as she dies is a twisted version of Goku's face.
  • Black explains his origins. He steals Goku's body using the Super Dragon Balls and kills him while he's trapped in his old body, in front of his wife and son. However, the most sickening part is that Goku Black then goes on to murder Chi-Chi and Goten in coldblood. Although we don't actually see it, we hear Chi-Chi and Goten scream.
  • Probably the biggest punch in the series. At the end of the saga Merged Zamasu survives having his body sliced in half by Future Trunks and merges with the universe since he's an immortal. He then processes to kill everyone on Earth except Goku, Vegeta, Future Trunks, Future Mai, Bulma, and the Supreme Kais, and Merged Zamasu was moving into other timelines. To stop him, Future Zen'o destroys the entire future timeline, leaving Trunks and Mai as the sole survivors.

H

• Hairstyle Inertia: At the beginning of Episode 69, Goku has his hair slicked back in order to work as a security guard for Mr. Satan. His usual hairstyle quickly reasserts itself.
• Hair-Trigger Temper:
  • The primary reason why Beerus is so dangerous. He is good-natured and fun-loving when he's in a good mood or eating. In many ways, he's similar to Goku. However, he becomes a complete terror when angry and planets are often destroyed. This becomes a huge problem since Beerus is really easy to anger.
  • Champa has a temper equal to his brother and is willing to fight Beerus even though he knows they can destroy the 6 and 7 Universes.
• Half-Human Hybrid:
  • Well, half Human Alien to be precise. Due to his components, Merged Zamasu is a Kai/Saiyan hybrid.
  • Bulla is the second child of Bulma and Vegeta, making her a half-human/Saiyan hybrid like Gohan, Trunks, and Goten.
• Half the Man He Used to Be:
  • Zamasu bisects one of the lizard-people on Babari after it refuses to back down in spite of Zamasu's superior power.
  • Merged Zamasu ultimately suffers this fate, courtesy of Future Trunks in Episode 66. Doubles as a Karmic Death considering his descent to villainy began by slicing a Babarian in half.
• Handicapped Badass: Magetta can't fly, which has become a standard technique in Z. Doesn't stop him from giving Vegeta a hard time, especially since Vados put up a secondary barrier to limit the movements of anyone who can fly. He is, without a doubt, the most powerful flightless character introduced in the franchise.
• Hannibal Lecture: Goku Black does this in a style of a Motive Rant. After Future Trunks calls him a murderer he cruelly points out that Trunks is responsible for everything since he saved Goku's life by giving him the heart medicine. If Trunks had allowed Goku to die as history dictated, then he as Zamasu would have never taken an interest in Goku's body. He also states that he chose Trunks' timeline solely to punish Trunks for breaking the time taboo, saying that he's the one responsible for killing all the Earthlings. Trunks does not take this well.
• Happy Ending Override: Future Trunks gets hit with this hard. At the end of the Cell Games, Trunks returns to the future and kills the androids and Cell in imperfect form, bringing peace to the world and avenging his fallen mentor, Gohan, after suffering nearly two decades under the terror of the androids. Seventeen years later, a new enemy, Goku Black, appears and wrecks Trunks' world even harder than the androids and does it in a year's time. To make it worse, Future Bulma is murdered by Goku Black, and Mai, his last remaining friend, is also shot down and left for dead... but he doesn't know that's not the case - not for a fair while anyway. It sucks to be Future Trunks.
• Hard Work Hardly Works
  • Played With; Frieza assumed that being a natural-born prodigy made him stronger than anyone else — a notion shattered rather violently by his encounters with Goku and Future Trunks (who had to train in order to achieve Super Saiyan). Bearing this in mind, Frieza resolves to undergo training for the first time in his life so he can take his revenge. He succeeds mostly, but he still fails since he didn't complete his training, something that Goku reprimands Frieza on since it takes more than raw power to get ahead.
  • Also Played With in regards with Vegeta. He gets six months more training with Whis than Goku and slightly surpasses his rival by the time Goku arrives. However, Goku closes the gap between them, becoming the strongest of the two again. At the same time, Vegeta had a much wider gap to close since Goku became a Super Saiyan God and absorbed the power of godhood into his body, while Vegeta took the long way to the same power, which Goku himself admits makes him a little jealous.
  • Averted with Gohan. Although he has the most raw potential of any fighter in the series, he's way behind Goku and Vegeta since he mostly stopped training while they continued to pushed themselves. The same holds true with Goten and Trunks, who have the potential to surpass their fathers, but don't put in the work necessary to do so.
  • Played Straight with characters like Piccolo and Tien. They continued to train long after everyone gave up on catching up with the Saiyans, yet they still fall behind. Tien is far weaker than Goten and Trunks who mostly play fight, and Piccolo is weaker than Gohan even after he stopped training.
  • Averted with Future Trunks, who has become more powerful after his final appearance at the end of the Cell Saga. Between series, he achieved Super Saiyan 2 and took care of Dabura and Bibidi by himself using tips from the Supreme Kai. Later in the saga, Trunks achieves a new level of power that seems to be just shy of Super Saiyan Blue, meaning that like his father, he achieved god-like power through hard work, with a large helping of extreme rage.
• Harmless Freezing: Goten and Trunks become demi-Saiyan-sicles after being locked in Monaka's truck on an interplanetary delivery. Monaka fixes them up with blankets and hot water.
• Has a Type: As it turns out, Saiyans in general have a genetic attraction to strong-willed people.
• Hates Being Touched:
  • Zamasu was angry at Goku for touching his arms, to the point that Gowasu had to intervene so nothing happens. To be fair, Goku started to touch his body just to see how well trained he was the moment they met, but considering he did it without his consent, Zamasu had a pretty valid reason to be angry. It's later revealed that this had less to with consent and more to do with his top god complex.
  Zamasu: Don't touch me so casually, mortal!
  • One of Merged Zamasu's main form of offense is to 'stay high in the air raining down death': he feels mortals shouldn't touch gods and gets angry when Goku and Vegeta actually manage to do so.
• Hated by All: Everyone hates Frieza. The only reason his men use the Dragon Balls to resurrect him is because with the empire going down since his demise they see his fear factor as the only way to restore it. Tagoma reminds everyone what a Sociopath Frieza was and how they're better off without him. Although Sorbet isn't happy about having Frieza back, he still goes through with it to restore the empire. Later, when Frieza tries to bribe his way onto the U9 team after he betrays Goku and leaves him to be erased in Sidra's Sphere of Destruction, Ro, who has been nothing but a Jerkass God to everyone, wants nothing to do with Frieza, calling him a traitor to his universe.
• Hate Sink:
  • Although Zamasu has a point about mortals misusing the knowledge of the gods, are often warring with each other instead of learning from their mistakes, and that the gods themselves should do more to stop evil mortals from abusing their power, we as the audience are obviously not supposed to sympathize with him. For one, his rants against mortals are hypocritical since the gods have shown themselves to be just as flawed and some times more petty than mortals. Zamasu himself also goes beyond the limits when he tries to kill his master. A version of Zamasu succeeds and uses the Super Dragon Balls to take Goku's body, murders him with it, and then slaughters Goku's family using his face.
  • The audience is clearly not supposed to like Barry Kahn since he is an insufferable Jerkass who will risk the life of his stunt double just to make a scene look cooler and wishes harm to others because they snub him.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Zamasu starts out a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to protect the universe from the constant cycle of mortals fighting wars and destroying each other, but ends up being just as bad, if not worse than the mortals he sought to protect the universe from. Present Zamasu tries to commit murder against his own master so he can begin his quest to kill all mortals and Future Zamasu is helping Goku Black wreck Future Trunks' world. Goku Black (an alternative version of Present Zamasu) goes as far as to murder Goku's entire family after taking his body and then goes on to kill all the gods in the 12 universes.
• Healing Factor: Gods, or at least very powerful ones, seem to have one. In episode 11, Beerus gives Goku a deep wound to the chest that disappears when Goku gets his Heroic Second Wind. The next episode, Goku gives Beerus a Paper Cut to the cheek, which also heals instantly.
• Healing Hands:
  • Well more like a healing staff in this case. Whis instantly heals and restores Vegeta and Goku with his staff after they trained for an undetermined amount of time.
  • Buu shows that he can still heal thanks to absorbing the Grand Supreme Kai when he heals Mr. Satan after his win against Basil.
• Heavy Sleeper:
  • Pilaf and his gang sleeps through the entire fight between gods after they ate their fill of food.
  • Beerus. Goku and Vegeta's antics are not enough to wake him up.
  • The reason why Buu isn't part of the battle against Frieza is because he fell asleep. According to Gohan, shaking or tickling him will do nothing. He falls asleep again when testing for the universal tournament between U6 and U7, and yet again in the Universal Survival Saga after sparring with Goku.
• Heel: Bergamo makes Goku, and by extension Universe 7, this for starting the tournament that ends with the losing universe being erased. Goku doesn't mind being called or seen as the villain as long as he gets to fight strong opponents.
• Here We Go Again!: Even with all the trouble the Butterfly Effect caused (namely creating Black and Zamasu), Present Bulma still wants to make a time machine of her own just to prove she can. However, Beerus finds out and puts a swift end to that.
• Hero Antagonist:
  • By all accounts the Universe 6 team might as well be considered this. Of its fighters, at least two members (well, one of them, anyway) can be considered the Hero of Another Story and polar opposite of a bygone evil in Universe 7.
    • Frost is a good guy and a benevolent ruler of his universe, the Good Counterpart to Frieza, and the only reason he agreed to join the fight against our heroes is because he wants to help the children in his universe. Subverted when he turns out to be Evil All Along.
    • Cabba is a heroic mercenary rather than a space pirate, like all the Saiyans from Universe 6 in contrast to Universe 7's former Saiyan society.
  • Toppo is determined to take Goku and Universe 7 down, but only because he thinks that Goku is evil and it is his duty as a hero to wipe out evil.
• Hero Killer:
  • Unlike his movie counterpart, Frieza successfully kills one of the heroes in the Resurrection 'F' Saga. While delivering the final blow to a crippled Gohan, Piccolo shields Gohan with his body, taking a Death Beam directly to the chest, killing him instantly. This act nearly pushes the Z-Fighters into despair and panicked before Goku and Vegeta arrives. And if we count Frieza blowing up the Earth, he kills everyone not near Whis.
  • Goku Black shows that he means business by killing Future Bulma in his first appearance, and attempted to do the same with Mai. He also chases Future Trunks across time itself to kill him and traumatized Trunks so badly that just seeing Goku's face caused him to react with panic and fear. Later, we learn that he killed Goku after he stole his body using the Super Dragon Balls, murdered Goku's family in cold blood, and he also killed all the Supreme Kais in every universe, except for Zamasu.
• Hero of Another Story: Future Trunks was able to stop Majin Buu's revival in his time by defeating both Dabura and Babidi by himself.
• Hero, Rival, Baddie Team-Up: By the Tournament of Power, Vegeta gets promoted to Friendly Rival while the Arch-Enemy spot gets filled by Frieza. The three of them end up in the Last Stand against Jiren after Android 17's attempted self-destruct puts him out of commission. It's particularly notable due to Vegeta becoming jealous that Goku is able to work better with Frieza than with Vegeta. This trio continue on into Dragon Ball Super: Broly.
• Hero-Worshipper:
  • Subverted. Barry Kahn wants a movie about the Great Saiyaman not because he's any fan of the guy, but because he figures it would be an interesting contrast if a popular star like him plays a dorky, forgotten figure. Unlike most civilians and people who aren't in the know, he's not really a fan of Mr. Satan either, having only read the first page of his autobiography to quote so he can appeal to the man's ego when pitching the movie to him, and likely only approached Mr. Satan so the movie could ride off of his fame and popularity.
  • Like most of the rest of the world, Cocoa Amaguri is a fan of Mr. Satan. She also gets pretty excited about spending time with Gohan after learning he's the Great Saiyaman. However, this is all a ploy since she wanted to set up Gohan and appear she's having a love affair with him after being bullied by Barry. She changes her mind after Gohan shows her real compassion and warmth, and truly does see Gohan as a hero.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Gohan has one after Piccolo is killed protecting him. He mourns that Piccolo wouldn't have died if he kept up with his training.
  • Goku himself have one after Frieza destroys the Earth, killing everyone who wasn't next to Whis. He blames himself for not killing Frieza when he had the chance. Thankfully, Whis allows him to redo his mistake.
  • When Future Mai learns that all of the remaining survivors are dead because of Eldritch Abomination-Merged Zamasu's attack. She screams in denial and unloads her shot gun into the sky.
• Heroic Build: Toppo and Jiren from the Pride Troopers have extremely buff built. Fitting since they're a group of super heroes.
• Heroic Lineage: Pan comes from two heroic lineages. Her grandfather, Goku, is a warrior who saved the Earth countless times and her father saved the world from Cell and was critical to everyone's survival during the Saiyan Invasion. Her uncle, Goten, is also a hero in his own right, fusing with Trunks to battle Majin Buu. Her other grandfather, Mr. Satan, is a Fake Ultimate Hero, but he is seen as the world's savior and did help save the world from Cell and Buu.
• Heroic Resolve: After going through a severe case of PTSD from the events of the Frieza Saga, Krillin resolves to help kick Frieza's army's ass after prep talk from Muten Roshi, who tells him why he's the student of Turtle School. Not to mention Frieza's men who aren't Shisami and Tagoma are weaker than him.
• Heroic RRoD:
  • What Gohan experience after he released all his energy so Goku can feel it and teleport over to Earth.
  • Goku suffers a mild case of this after he disengages his Kaioken after he throws his match with Hit. He muscles spammed and looked like he's going to exploded. Piccolo had to carry him back to his seat. Days later, he becomes sick with Delayed Onset Ki Syndrome, in which he loses control of his energy and he can't even fly properly. King Kai warns him that he risks permanently crippling himself if he does something so careless again.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Piccolo laid down his life to saved Gohan, just like he did in the Saiyan Saga.
  • Gohan almost pulled one of these after Piccolo is killed. He used the last of his power to make an energy burst powerful enough for Goku to sense so he can find his way back to Earth. He almost tears his body apart and leaves himself vulnerable to Frieza.
  • Done twice in the same episode. Future Bulma gives Trunks the fuel for the time machine and orders him to run when Goku Black finds them. She is shortly killed. Later, Mai attacks Goku Black to distract him so Trunks can make his way to the time machine and leave to get backup from the past. She is mercilessly shot down and seemingly killed.
  • It's revealed that Future Yajiirobe survived the androids attack because Korin gave him the very last Senzu before dying.
  • Future Trunks is willing to blow himself up to kill Future Zamasu, thinking that his regeneration must have limits. Goku Black stabs him in the back before he can make the attempt.
  • Android 18 does a non-lethal variant of this in episode 121, sacrificing herself to put 17 back in the ring.
  • 17 sacrifices himself to save Goku and Vegeta from elimination in episode 127. He lives as revealed in episode 130.
  • Goku and Frieza pull non-lethal one in episode 131, ringing themselves out to take down Jiren.
• Heroic Second Wind: Goku is initially outclassed by Beerus even with the Super Saiyan God powerup, but his excitement over such a strong opponent allows him to recover and come back even stronger multiple times.
• Heroism Motive Speech:
  • Gohan gives one to Shisami as he prepares to fight, saying he's just become a father and wants to live in a world of peace, and is willing to fight for that peace if Shisami won't give in. However, he's cut short as Tagoma sneak-attacks both of them.
  • Gohan gives another one about being too weak to protect anyone because he neglected his training for so long. He then uses the last of his energy to summon Goku and Vegeta.
• He's Back!:
  • Frieza is revived, and trains for the first time in his life — making him more powerful than he's ever been before.
  • After being rag dolled in the Resurrection 'F' Saga, Gohan gives a great performance in the Zen'o Exhibition match while blinded against Lavender. After training with Piccolo he finally regains his Ultimate form in all its glory.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Goku Black and Future Zamasu gets along extremely well. They both fight perfectly in-sync with each other, live together in a cottage, and Zamasu treats Black as an equal to the point of lamenting that Black didn't wish for immortality on the Super Dragon Balls like him. He even gives Black advice on how to get stronger off of Goku. Interesting, Zamasu doesn't see Black as a comrade or friend, but as a kindred spirit. This all makes sense once we learned that Black is an alternate version of Present Zamasu. So the only person Zamasu likes and treats as an equal is literally himself.
• Hidden Depths:
  • The Pilaf Gang comes off as Cloudcuckoolanders, Harmless Villains since they almost always fail at any goal that they set, but they have shown that they're deeper characters than that. Pilaf is a Genius Ditz who is really good around machinery since he helps repair the time machine and even improves the programming. He also knows how to maintain funds from a part-time job that allowed him to build a Pilaf Machine. Shu have knowledge of fighting skills such as image-training, and Mai is the most caring of the bunch. She wants to help Future Trunks because she cares for him (and has a crush), and she wanted to immediately take Pan home the moment she climbed into the Pilaf Machine.
  • Goku has no real interest outside of fighting and training, yet he's very good a farming. He grows a huge harvest, despite being away a lot, and if Beerus is anything to go by, he grew a tasty crop. His crops are in fact so popular that he has a regular buyer.
  • Cocoa opens up to Gohan about some insecurities of hers and how worthless she feels compared to him, a superhero who's friends with aliens.
• Hidden Heart of Gold:
  • Vegeta is textbook example of Good Is Not Nice since he is often rude to everyone, quick to anger, and prideful to a fault. At the same time, he is much nicer than he was before and is more willing to show his love for his family like taking them on vacation, going to Trunks' soccer games, and reaching new levels of power when Beerus slaps Bulma. He also takes Cabba, a Saiyan from Universe 6, under his wing and teaches him how to become a Super Saiyan, by beating the crud out him and threatening to kill his family and blow up his planet to get him to his Rage Breaking Point.
  • Despite his intense rivalry with his brother, Beerus wishes for U6's Earth to be restored and advance so it's up to par with U7's Earth so Champa can eat the food there. Although Champa is touched by the gesture, he's still somewhat annoyed that Beerus did something for him.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Even using the Super Dragon Radar, Bulma can't find the final Super Dragon Ball. It turns out to be the very planet where the tournament was taking place.
• History Repeats:
  • To Frieza, Gohan sparing Ginyu was a big history repeat since it reminds him of Goku showing him mercy. Which causes him to utterly lose it.
  • Piccolo lays down his life protecting Gohan from an enemy's attack, just like he did way back in the Saiyan Saga.
  • Goku's rescue of Gohan is also similar to the Saiyan Saga. He comes just in times when Gohan uses up all his power and is about to be killed.
  • Frieza once more loses power too fast to defeat Goku, and Goku once more tells him he isn't worth killing. Frieza also attempts another sneak attack, this time with more success.
  • Just like on Namek, Frieza chooses to destroy the planet instead of losing to a mere monkey. He is much more successful in that he did destroy the Earth without dragging it out like Namek. However, Whis reverses time on him, allowing Goku to kill him before he could Rage Quit.
  • Although The Dreaded of the universe, the battle against Frieza ends with a whimper unlike all the other Z villains. This is just like the battle on Namek, which ended with Goku blasting Frieza after his second Backstab Backfire, and his first arrival on Earth where he is cut to pieces and blown away by Trunks.
  • Future Trunks' timeline is under siege yet again, this time by an enemy known as Goku Black. Like before, Trunks goes into the past to get help.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Because Future Zamasu fused with the mortal Goku Black, Merged Zamasu immortality was compromised, allowing Trunks to split him in half, unfortunately, it allowed Zamasu to win in a very tragic way.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum:
  • Initially nobody goes Super Saiyan against Beerus, presumably thinking it's not necessary since they can't sense his ki. Goten and Trunks even fuse, but don't bother to power up. Of course, it wouldn't do them any good if they did.
  • During the first part of the fight against Frieza's army, Gohan doesn't go Super Saiyan, not even when he's fighting Shisami. Gohan is so powerful, however, his normal state is more than enough to handle anyone outside of Tagoma and Frieza.
  • Frost tries to hold back against Goku, trying to hide his transformations and save his power for the other fights. When Goku calls him out on this, he transforms to his second to last form, confusing Goku since he never seen it before. In exchange, Goku turns into a regular Super Saiyan instead of using his god power. After fighting for awhile longer Frost is forced to go into his true form.
  • Goku chooses to fight Frost as a normal Super Saiyan, seeing it as more than enough. Beerus gets on Goku about this when he loses, saying if he used his god powers he would had crushed Frost easily. In fairness, a regularly Super Saiyan was more than enough for Frost. However, Frost cheated by poisoning him.
  • Like Goku, Vegeta holds back from becoming a Super Saiyan until Magetta forces his hand. When Goku points out that Vegeta would have won sooner against Magetta if he used his full power from the start, Vegeta just glances at Hit. Goku then reveals that they're both saving themselves for him. Because of wanting to hide their true power from Hit, neither uses Super Saiyan Blue even when it would make their matches a lot easier, until Vegeta finally shows it unnecessarily to Cabba in order to inspire him. By this point, however, Hit is the next and final opponent and Vegeta doesn't lose much by briefly showing what he can do.
  • When Hit asks Goku why he isn't transforming, Goku tells him that transforming takes a lot of stamina and he's saving it until he finds a counter to Hit's Time-Skipping ability. Later, Goku reveals that he can combine the Kaioken with Super Saiyan Blue and make himself ten times stronger. He didn't want to used it since it's an incomplete technique with a 10% success rate and a good chance of death.
  • Future Trunks does not go Super Saiyan against Goku Black. Most likely, he doesn't do it because it would be pointless and he's trying to save his strength.
• Holding Out for a Hero:
  • The people on Earth depends on Mr. Satan to save them from the latest weirdness of the week. It's to the point that they believed that he ascended to an actual god.
  • During the Resurrection 'F' Saga, the Z-Fighters hold the line until Goku and Vegeta arrives since they stand no chance against the renewed Frieza and are nearly killed by Ginyu-Tagoma.
  • Played With in the in the future timeline. The survivor of Goku Black's massacre depends on Future Trunks to protect them and to bring help from the past. At the same time, they're not willing to sit around and allow themselves to be slaughter. They actively fight Goku Black despite knowing it's futile.
• Holier Than Thou: Zamasu believes that he's more right than his fellow gods since he's willing to do something about the mortals who misused the knowledge of the gods while they sit back and do nothing. This includes murdering his fellow gods since they wouldn't agree with his ideals and would try to stop him.
• Holy Halo:
  • Both Whis and Vados have rings around their necks like halos. It's later revealed that they're both angels. We later get to see that it's a feature common to all of them.
  • The Grand Priest has a giant ring behind his back, which appears to be a halo. It's not quite confirmed if he's an angel like Whis and Vados or a separate type of being altogether, but since he is their father if it turns out "creator" isn't more accurate, and his position as steward to Zen Oh is any indicator, he might just be one.
  • Merged Zamasu forms a giant ring of light behind his back that wouldn't be out of place in Final Fantasy. He can use it to fire various attacks, such as purple lightning and a red Flechette Storm. Gowasu even calls it such.
• Home Field Advantage: One of Magetta's abilities is to super heat the environment around him. Since he eats and is filled with molten lava this has no effect on him, but fatigues and weakens his opponents. This has an impact on Vegeta, who is trapped in cubic force field that holds all the heat in, practically boiling him alive. Which is why Champa and Vados created the secondary field, along with restraining Vegeta's flight movements since Magetta can't fly.
• Honesty Aesop: Somewhat spoofed in episode 42 in which Beerus has to protect his Motivational Lie to Goku about Monaka being one of the strongest people in the universe. The rest of the cast gleefully forces him to go to increasingly awkward lengths to protect this lie, and he ends up sparring with Goku in a hot and embarrassing Monaka costume. At the end of this, he vows not to lie again, while Whis nods as if it was his intention to teach this all along.
• Honey Trap: Barry Kahn tries to arrange one between Cocoa Amaguri and Gohan, manipulating the former with his influence in an attempt to defame the latter in his marriage and career. It fails abysmally because everyone involved is too innocent and are basically immune to his machinations.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • Despite going days without eating, Pilaf refuses to take any food from Bulma's party out of pride. He changes his mind after Goten and Trunks fix a giant plate for him and his gang.
  • Frost could have been disqualified after cheating in his fight against Piccolo, allowing Piccolo to move on, but Vegeta and Piccolo agreed for Piccolo to accept the loss so that Vegeta could fight and defeat him officially. Beerus even backs them up on this, though it puts their team at a technical disadvantage. Turns out for the best since Goku gets back into the tournament after Beerus finds the poison wound on his palm, and Piccolo would have been completely outmatched against Magetta and would have most likely lost. After that, the tournament is an even 3 vs 3.
  • Vegeta helping Cabba learn to become a Super Saiyan. Going out of one's way to make an opponent stronger is not a good combat strategy, although it might endear him to the Universe 6 Saiyans in the long run. He still has a massive advantage with his Blue transformation, but using that in this match tipped Hit off to his true power level, which both he and Goku were trying to avoid doing. Both Beerus and Champa call him stupid for doing this.
  • Hit could have finished Goku after he increases his Time-Leaping power from 0.1 to 0.2 seconds, taking Goku off-guard. He chooses not to, even with Champa yelling at him, since he owes Goku for pushing him to improve for the first time in his life. Later as Goku reveals a new found technique that can turn the tables, rather than listening to Champa to stop him before he can do so, he instead lets Goku go through with it. He also chose to fight Goku head on instead of waiting out the Kaioken. In Episode 71, he offers to let Goku live while telling whoever contracted him that he had killed him. Goku refuses and wants to try fighting Hit as an equal.
  • Goku asks that the no-killing rule be lifted from the tournament so Hit can fight without restraint. Since Hit is an assassin he has been holding back throughout the match.
  • Copy-Vegeta wants to fight Goku in a fair match, despite having the ability to absorb Goku's power and become stronger. This puts him at odds with Copy-Gryll who is a Combat Pragmatist.
• Hope Bringer:
  • Goku, as always, and later Vegeta to a lesser sense. When everyone gives up on opposing Beerus and prepared themselves for the end of the world, their hope is restored after Goku arrives, despite standing no more of a chance against Beerus than anyone else. Everyone's hope is also restored in the battle against Frieza when Goku and Vegeta arrives. Krillin is closed to tears, saying that they have to leave everything to them. During the tournament between Universes 6 and 7, Bulma tells Vegeta not to worry about defeating all the fighters since they still had Goku, which really annoys Vegeta. This gag returns in the Future Trunks Saga where Bulma tells Trunks and Goten to leave everything to Goku, utterly forgetting about Vegeta.
  • For the human world, Mr. Satan. As soon as the Earth began to shake, they called him and asked for his help. Especially now that they think he ascended to godhood.
  • Future Trunks is called everyone's hope by Future Bulma since he's the only one who can use the time machine and bring help back from the past to fight against Black.
  • Just before their match, Bergamo lambasts Goku as a villain to paint himself this way. It works for the gathered audience, who already didn't like Goku for being casual with the gods.
• Hope Crusher: Part of Frieza's revenge is to bring despair to Goku before slowly killing him. His first order of business is to kill all of Goku's friends and family while he waits for him on Earth. He specifically tries to have Krillin killed since he knows that will hurt Goku the most. He then tells Goku in detail about how he plans to destroy the Earth to get rid of the Dragon Balls before finding New Namek and doing the same thing there so no one can be brought back to life.
• Hope Spot:
  • Old Kai surmises that the reason why Beerus is holding back his full power is to allow Goku to think that he's winning and become overconfident. Once Goku reached his max power, Beerus plans to utterly crush him.
  • Despite having several Heroic Second Winds and getting some good hits in, Goku still loses to Beerus.
  • It seems Piccolo has Frost defeated after he wraps him in his arm and has his Special Beam Cannon fully charged. Then Frost poisons him, costing him the fight.
  • Probably one of the most vicious ones in the entire franchise. After unconsciously gathering the energy from the survivors of Earth, Future Trunks creates something that looks like a Spirit Bomb and absorbs its power into his sword. He then uses his spirit sword to cut Merged Zamasu in half vertically. In the end, it appears that the people of future Earth saved themselves from the wrath of a mad god. Then, Merged Zamasu's spirit fuses with the multiverse and kills everyone except Goku, Vegeta, Future Trunks, Future Mai, Bulma, and the Supreme Kais. To add more salt, Future Zen'o wipes the timeline, including the afterlife. So everyone who died don't even exist anymore.
• Hopeless Suitor:
  • Barry Kahn tries to flirt with Videl, who is absolutely not interested and Happily Married to Gohan, who she considers much cooler. He doesn't take the rejection well.
  • For the same reason, Cocoa's Ship Tease with Gohan is obviously never going to progress beyond being a one-sided crush.
• Horrible Judge of Character:
  • Goku is usually good at reading people's intentions with Raditz being one of his few failures. However, he completely misreads Zamasu, seeing him as a good Kai and not believing he has anything to do with Black. This is despite Zamasu showing open hostilities towards him during their visit and even tries to attack him after losing a sparring match. It is not until Goku sees Future Zamasu helping Black that he realizes what a scumbag Zamasu will become.
  • Even after Zamasu cuts down an inhabitant of Planet Babari rather than just walking away, this being right after Zamasu openly suggested just wiping out all of the inhabitants of Babari, Gowasu actually believes that Zamasu has learned his lesson after their visit and lecture. When Goku, Beerus, and Whis expose Zamasu's plans, Gowasu is absolutely shocked to discover otherwise. Even then, he genuinely believes that going to the future to scold Zamasu and give him a Last-Second Chance will actually work; one would think that after everything he's heard about the atrocities Zamasu has committed in the future and even seeing the results with his own eyes, Gowasu would know that Zamasu is beyond reason. Once the crisis is, Beerus advises Gowasu to choose his disciples more carefully in the future.
• Horrifying the Horror:
  • Beerus is on both ends of this. He is the only being that Frieza is openly and shamelessly afraid of, to the point his arrival actually causes Frieza to briefly grovel before him. On the other hand, Zen'o makes him openly shit his pants.
  • Even after over a decade since his death, Frieza is terrified of the Super Saiyan to the point of having PTSD upon seeing Gohan transform. He is also still clearly frightened of Goku despite his hatred and rage towards him.
• Hostage Situation: Gryll and his men take Monaka hostage to prevent Goten and Trunks from attacking them.
• Hour of Power:
  • According to Gowasu, the Potara fusion can only last for an hour with non-Kais. That is the real reason why Vegito defused in the Buu Saga, not because of Buu's magic. Vegito Blue, however, burns thought his energy so quickly he barely lasts ten minutes before the fusion breaks.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Downplayed, but after becoming a god, Goku needs a few minutes to get to grips with his new power.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen:
  • Frieza's entire empire. They went from being the most feared and powerful force in the universe, who controlled 70% of the known universe, to barely qualifying as an army after not only losing Frieza and his father, but all their best fighters on Namek. According to Sobert, they're on their last legs and are considered a laughing stock.
  • Frieza himself to an extent. Despite returning stronger than ever, he is so mentally broken from his defeat that he isn't sane anymore and his mental state decreases throughout his battle with Goku. By the time Vegeta beats him up and he loses his golden form, he's almost on the verge of tears.
  • Goku Black expresses this sentiment when he's ready to kill Future Trunks, calling him the last of the proud Saiyan race, and how pitiful his death is.
  • Frost went from being the Emperor of Universe 6 who was seen as a universal hero, to being a wanted fugitive for war crimes. When Hits finds him, he sits huddled in an alleyway with only a worn cloth to protect him from the elements.
• How Much More Can He Take?: Golden Frieza spends the vast majority of the battle beating Goku around like a ragdoll. Yet Goku is still able to get up and fight and actually out-endures Frieza who burns through all his energy since he's been leaking power since transforming into his golden form.
• How We Got Here: Episode 71 starts with Goku collapsing in the middle of a rocky field while defusing from Super Saiyan Blue. When Gohan, Goten, and Piccolo arrives, they confirmed that he's dead. After the title screen, we see the events that leads to Goku's death.
• Human Aliens:
  • The Saiyans look exactly like humans, especially since all the Saiyans in this series have no tails, including the U6's Saiyans. That said, although U6's Saiyans are said to have lost their tails through evolution, Goku, Vegeta, and Gohan all cut off or lost their tails in previous series and have good reasons to not let them grow back.
  • Brianne is a earthling looking girl, but the planet she was in is riddled with Amazing Technicolor Population. However, this doesn't holds true when she transforms into Ribrianne.
• Human Hammer-Throw
  • Episode 6 "Don't Anger the Destroyer". When Lord Beerus becomes furious after being splashed with water, Vegeta tries to distract him by preparing a meal for him. Vegeta dives into the ocean, grabs a giant octopus by one of its tentacles and pulls it into the sky. He then spins around, pulling the octopus with him, and throws it down.
  • In episode 113, Goku grabs Caulifla, spins around while holding her and throws her away from him.
  • In episode 114, Kale combines this with a Fastball Special: she grabs Caulifla by the feet, spins around and throws her at a charging Goku.
  • In episode 115, Kefla, Kale and Caulifla's fused form, grabs Goku by the legs, spins around and throws him.
• Humans Are Bastards: Zamasu feels that humans, aka mortals, are all stupid and barbaric since they keep repeating the same mistakes and starting wars. Goku beating him in a sparring match and showing that a mortal can surpass the gods only hardened his opinion, seeing mortals as both stupid and dangerous. His opinion is further solidified when he sees the mortals on Planet Babari still fighting wars even one-thousand years into the future.
• Humans Are Flawed:
  • The core of Goku Black's beliefs. He views humanity as the gods' sole failure amidst all of their creations, and he must wipe them out to create a "beautiful utopia".
  • Zamasu wonders if mortals are worth the gods' protection since they keep repeating the same mistake of growth and conflict. Going to Planet Babari confirmed his suspicions since the mortals there are still primitive and violent, ever after thousand years has past.
  • While Gowasu disagrees with Zamasu about intervening in mortal's affairs, he does agree that mortals are very flawed and it is the duty of the Kais to watch and nurture them. He also makes it a point to say that the gods are also flawed and must learn from their mistakes.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Barry Kahn is easily one of the biggest, most evil bastards in the series, which is saying something given the monsters the franchise is known for, and he was already that way before Watagash hijacked his body and gave him superpowers.
• Humans Are Special: Played With. Although almost every alien makes it a point to say that humans are weaklings and worthless, humans apparently make great food. Beerus is practically addicted to Earth's cuisine to the point that he calls instant ramen noodles one of the best things he ever tasted and can't get enough pizza. Champa wants to move the entire Earth to his universe so he can eat there (his universe's Earth no longer have humans). In the end, Beerus uses his own wish to revived U6's Earth along with all the humans so Champa can eat there.
• Humanoid Aliens: Like Z, most of the aliens fall into this if they're not Human Aliens. The entire U6 team are humanoids along with the tournament announcer. One of the few aliens in the show that doesn't fall into this is the Galactic King.
• Humanoid Abomination: Despite looking like Goku with a Potara earring and having a Super Saiyan transformation, Goku Black detached disdain of Future Trunks' Saiyan ancestry and unnatural powers tell a different story. He also looks down at humans, calling death a blessing for them. It later turns out that he has a disdained for all mortals. We find out that Zamasu is actually Goku Black, using Goku's body.
• Humble Hero:
  • None of the Z-Fighter care to be acknowledged for their world saving since they prefer to live a peaceful life. Mr. Satan take credit for their actions not so much for his personal glory, not anymore at least, but to protect Goku and the others' privacy.
  • Despite being the hero of the future timeline, Future Trunks is often embarrassed by the amount of hero worshipping he gets. A lot of his humility comes from the fact that he is a Classic Anti Hero who is well aware of his failings to the point that they cripple him.
  • Dende implores Goku to train the reborn Kid Buu when he becomes old enough. Goku is hesitant about the idea since he claims not to be good at that kind of stuff, which is a severe downplay on Goku's part since he trained Gohan to surpassed him during the Cell Saga and taught Goten and Trunks the Fusion Dance in just a few hours.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • It is more Downplayed compared to the movie since Frieza fares better overall since he is an Adaptational Badass and his army has one more powerful Elite Mook in Tagoma/Ginyu who gives the protagonists a more serious challenge. However, he doesn't completely avoid this fate: His army, bar Shisami and Tagoma, is still stomped into the ground by the likes of Master Roshi, a fighter who hasn't actively fought since the King Piccolo Saga, Tagoma is easily taken down by a rusty Gohan and is one-shotted by Vegeta, and Frieza's golden form, admittedly after a prolonged duel, burns out after less than a minute of fighting at full power during which Goku lets Frieza beat him up so he would tire out faster. By the time Goku counterattacks, Frieza is exhausted to the point that he can barely stand, while Goku, despite his injuries, is relatively fine. He also does suffers a (compared to the movie, relatively minor) Villainous Breakdown when Goku says he isn't worth killing and he should go away. When he does get Goku at his mercy and is about to kill him, Vegeta not only interferes, but reveals that he can go to the same level of Super Saiyan God as Goku and promptly kicks Frieza's ass, knocking him out of his golden form and causing a major Villainous Breakdown. When it appears he at least gets the last laugh and destroys the Earth, Whis rewinds time on him, allowing Goku to kill him, and sending him right back to Hell. Even the major gain he got in the show like killing Piccolo is reversed before the saga ends, making his one true victory utterly meaningless. Yeah, he really should have taken Tagoma's advice.
  • This is Frost's fate after he is caught cheating. He loses his match against Vegeta in one punch and he is knocked out by Hit when he tries to steal the prize treasure and the cube ship.
  • While Goku Black and Future Zamasu are Karma Houdinis since they as individuals can never be punished for their crimes, Merged Zamasu more than makes up for their sins. First, despite all his power, he gets his face melted by Goku's Kamehameha, rapidly kicked in the face, and then have his halo broken by Goku's Kaioken. He then gets beating up by Vegito, a being born from the god's fusion, and he gets sliced in half from the groin up by Future Trunks, a mortal he failed to kill so many times. Even when he seems to get the last laugh by fusing with the multiverse and killing all the mortals in it, he gets one-shotted and rendered Deader than Dead by the real Top God Future Zen'o, who utterly destroyed the paradise he spent years creating. To add another twist to the knife, he fails to kill the people he truly despised, Goku and Trunks.
• Humongous Mecha: Magetta may look like a robot, but he's actually from a race known as the Metal Men.
• Hypocrite:
  • Bulma complains that the guys think they can do whatever they want...after she and Chichi have locked all the men out of the room in which they are keeping Pan and Videl, for having the temerity to disagree with Chichi on how Pan should be raised. One of those men being Pan's father.
  • After Frieza's men leave, Mai gets on Shu for only asking for a million zeni when he could have asked for more. Shu quickly points out that Mai's wish was even more wasteful since she asked for ice cream, which can melt and only be eaten once. Mai counters that it's been a long time since she had any.
  • Frieza has so many moments that it becomes Hypocritical Humor:
    • After being revived, Frieza asks what happened to his father. Sorbet informs him that they were unable to revive him since Pilaf stole both of their wishes, and that they would try next time. Frieza dismisses the idea, saying his father is bossy. Coming from the poster child of Bad Boss.
    • Frieza flicks Sorbet into the distance for trying to give orders to the Frieza Force when they're in the middle of a battle. He does this not one minute later, ordering them to attack Krillin and even repeating Sorbet's order to coordinate their attacks.
    • Frieza mocks Vegeta for being arrogance and not knowing his limits. Funny coming from a guy who lost because he got arrogant and didn't know the limits to his own transformation.
  • Champa calls Beerus out for being rude to his house guests when he accidentally shots an energy blast at him. This is despite him about to literally blow Beerus' door open.
  • Jaco repeatedly poking fun at Bulma's age, someone he knew since she was five.
  • What Goku Black calls Goku when he demands that he uses his full power. Goku is only fighting as a Super Saiyan 2.
  • Zamasu and his counterparts are probably the biggest hypocrites in the franchise and unlike Frieza and even Beerus none it is Played for Laughs:
    • Present Zamasu comes off as this since he looks down at mortals for using violence to solve their problems instead of the knowledge given to them by the gods. Yet, he sees no problem killing an inhabitant of Planet Babari when they could have simply left as Gowasu points out. He also disagree with Gowasu about the gods being flawed and must also learned from their mistakes, yet he thinks his master is wrong for not bringing justice to mortals, basically saying that the gods are wrong on this subject. By Episode 57, he is willing to murder his own master to further his goals, the same type of behavior he looks down upon on mortals.
    • Future Zamasu takes the hypocrisy further by telling Future Trunks that mortals only use the great gifts of the gods to kill each other and how immature and silly they are. This is coming from the same person who uses his great knowledge to slaughter entire planets. He also calls Goku a jerk who dares to fight the gods. This coming from the guy who helped Goku Black (who's a god in a mortal shell) murder all the gods in the multiverse.
    • Goku Black looks down on mortals and thinks they all deserve to be destroyed, yet he steals Goku's body in order to attain a perfect form. The irony seems to be lost on him, at least until Future Zamasu mentions it while talking outside their little house. Also, he murdered all the Supreme Kais in the different universes, which kills all the Gods of Destruction. So while he's preaching about how the gods are righteous and mortals are their only mistake among all their creations, he has no problem killing them to further his goals.
    • Despite Merged Zamasu's disdain for mortals, one of the people he's comprised of was in a mortal body. He doesn't even deny it, he just considers it a necessary evil so that he'll never forget the mistakes of the previous gods.
  • Beerus has several moments. Some times it's Played for Laughs. Other times for Irony:
    • He accuses Goku and the others of relying on the gods too much after Whis offers to make a new timeline for Future Trunks and Mai after their world got destroyed by Future Zen'o. The problem is, the entire situation was the gods' fault. Gowasu was the one who chose a Sociopath like Zamasu as his successor and was blind to his growing darkness, something that Beerus lampshades. Gowasu was also the one who gave Zamasu information about the Super Dragon Balls (which are the gods' Dragon Balls), that allowed him to steal Goku's body to become Goku Black and give Future Zamasu immortality. The future gods were also caught flatfooted as Goku Black murdered all the Supreme Kais with little to no resistance, leaving Future Zamasu and him alone as the supreme gods. Finally, it was Future Zen'o who nuked the entire timeline after Goku and the others crossed every available Godzilla Threshold and if Future Zen'o actually oversaw the multiverse like he's supposed to he could have killed both Goku Black and Future Zamasu before it reached that point. Beerus' statement is extremely close to victim blaming.
    • He reads Goku the rights about how dangerous Zen'o is despite his kind nature since he is unpredictable and too innocent to value life. While good advice and he has a point, the problem is that Beerus isn't much better than Zen'o outside of the scope of their destruction. Beerus is extremely unpredictable and temperamental to the point that he will destroy entire planets for petty reasons (including a Kai's world) and even trapped his fellow god in a sword for millions of years over a disagreement. There is also the fact that Zen'o treats Goku better than Beerus who often pulls Kick the Dog moments on Goku like mocking him for his inability to save the U6 team from Champa, constantly rubbing in Goku's face that he's still an inferior to the gods, and threatening to kill Goku to impose his will upon him, something that Zen'o has never done to him. Goku even calls him out of this, saying that he's just as guilty of destroying planets randomly, which pisses Beerus off. It's little wonder Goku doesn't really listen to him since Zen'o treats Goku as a friend, while Beerus tends to treat Goku like his favorite pet or toy.
    • After learning that Universe 7 has the second-lowest "mortal level", Beerus immediately blames Goku for this. Of course, as a god, improving the state of mortals is his personal responsibility. Moreover, as he's destroyed at least eight planets since his introduction to the series, and there are said to be only 28 inhabited planets with intellegent life left in the universe, he's directly done more to reduce the mortal level of his domain than any other main character, with the possible exception of mass destroyers like Frieza and Majin Buu. Before then, he blamed U7's Supreme Kai for the low rating since he takes a hands off approached and let mortals developed on their own instead of directly guiding them. Although the Supreme Kai is lackluster at his job, mostly because he was a junior when he became the Top God, the Supreme Kais are supposed to be hands off, which is an issue Zamasu had with the system. Plus, Beerus makes the Supreme Kai's job harder by destroying planets over bad food and even trapping Old Kai in a sword for millions of years.
    • He calls Goku out for starting the Tournament of Power and orders him to "take responsibility" for what he has done. Then when he learns that his universe has the second worst mortal ranking, he blames everyone else for it, refusing to take "responsibility" for the low ranking.
    • When he learns that Buu fell asleep three hours before the Tournament of Power is scheduled to begin and won't wake up for two months, he launches into an angry tirade about beating Buu awake. Whis reminds him of his sleeping habits and how he has no room to talk. This statement leaves Beerus' speechless for a moment before he angrily tears into the piece of meat he was eating beforehand and changes the subject.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Whis boasts that his body is trained to avoid danger without even thinking about it. Goku then points out he's standing in poop.
  • Beerus eats some pizza and says he likes it despite it being too greasy. At the beginning of the show, he blew up half a planet because its people served him greasy food. Just goes to show that it's not really about the food when he decides to wreak destruction.
  • Almost all of Frieza's Hypocrite moments are Played for Laughs.
  • After hearing Frost's backstory during his fight against Goku, Krillin admits that he doesn't know who to root for to Bulma before eventually siding on his friend's side. However near the end of the fight, Bulma is the one that cheers on Frost. When Goku loses, Bulma accuses Krillin of being responsible for not cheering for Goku sooner.
  • Future Yajirobe complains about Goku and Future Trunks being too heavy and says that they should lose some weight as he drags them away from Future Zamasu and Goku Black. Goku lampshades this, saying that he didn't want to hear that from him.
  • During their match, Toppo tells Goku to shut up when he asked if Toppo was a noble hero. After a few minutes of Toppo giving long-winded speeches about justice, Goku mocks him about how he told him to shut up yet he's doing all the talking.
  • When Future Trunks tells everyone about Goku Black, Bulma calls the name stupid and complains that he couldn't come up with a better one, only to be informed that it was her future self who came up with it.
• Hypocrisy Nod:
  • Merged Zamasu is well aware that one of his fusees, Goku Black, was in the body of Goku, a mortal; he states outright that he deliberately did so because in his view, Goku is everything selfish and evil about mortals, and he took Goku's body so he'd never forget the gods' mistakes and failures.
  • Goku tells a bunch of thugs trying to steal his van that they need to get a real job, then notes that he's hardly one to talk.

I

• I Am the Noun: Merged Zamasu does a version of this when he's born:
  Merged Zamasu: My form is justice! My form is the world!
• I Am Not Left-Handed:
  • Frieza states that he will not underestimate Goku this time and transforms to his final form. However, an astute viewer will know that he has by this point unlocked another form beyond that one.
  • Frost tries this against Goku, but Goku knows that Frost can transform since he is U6's version of Frieza. He still tries to fool Goku by going into his second to last transformation. This is not out of malice. He doesn't want to accidentally kill Goku since he doesn't have full control of his true from. Which all turns out not to be true. He really was trying to fool Goku and hold back to save energy. During his fight against Vegeta, Frost considers his poison needle to be his true trump card.
  • Goku and Vegeta are holding back their god forms until the final match against Hit.
  • Hit holds back throughout the entire tournament. Since he is an assassin, he can't fight at his best since there is a rule against killing. Instead, he uses mainly counterattacks and gradually increases the power of his strikes until his opponent is incapacitated. Goku tries to have this rule lifted so he can fight Hit all out.
• I Can't Sense Their Presence:
  • Beerus' presence can't be sensed except by other gods since god energy is incomprehensible to mortals. Although, through Whis' training, Goku and Vegeta can sense god energy even in their base forms.
  • When Goku achieves godhood, his friends note that they can no longer feel his energy. In the Resurrection 'F' Saga when Goku revealed his new god form, Gohan says it has to be Super Saiyan God since he can no longer feel his father. Later in the Future Trunks Saga, Trunks says that he can't feel Vegeta once he become a Super Saiyan Blue, but he can feels a lot of pressure from the form.
  • Goku Black expresses complete surprise when he realizes that he can't sense Future Trunks anymore after he disappears in the time machine. As he puts it, Trunks has completely left this world.
  • Goku notes that he can't sense the Trio De Dangers' energy during Buu's match with Basil.
• Icy Gray Eyes:
  • Zamasu possesses distinct gray eyes unlike the other Supreme Kais who have black eyes, and is also a cold, ruthless being whose strong will motivates him to place his "ideas above the people" to the point he wants to kill all the people so that his ideas can come true. And he possesses the power to make it happen. Naturally, Merged Zamasu has the same eyes.
  • In his Super Saiyan Rosé from, Black has grey eyes. It's hint that he's Zamasu, a coldhearted Supreme Kai.
  • Merged Zamasu possesses distinct gray eyes just like his components, and like them is also a cold, ruthless being whose strong will and justice motivates him to place his "ideas above the people" to the point he wants to kill all the mortals so that his ideas can come true. And he possesses more than enough unstoppable power to make it happen. During the final battle, one his eyes mutates and becomes purple as a result of his Villainous Breakdown.
• I Did What I Had to Do: How Goku Black justifies killing all the gods in the future timeline. Since they wouldn't understand his ideals, he had no choice but to kill them so they wouldn't stop him.
• Ideal Hero:
  • Much like with Z, Goku zigzags. Specifically, Goku himself fulfills the trope by being the best man you'll ever meet or hear of. He is the Hope Bringer to all who knows him, can inspire people who have been evil their entire lives to become good people like Piccolo and Vegeta, can bring out the best in people who are morally ambiguous like Beerus and Hit, will spare enemies, used only enough force as necessary to bring someone down, only kill as a very last resort, and will lay down his life without hesitation to protect others. However, he will also focus on his training to the exclusion of everything else, sometimes including family, and will allow his selfish desire to fight strong people cloud his better judgement. This is very much seen in the Universal Survival Saga where Goku's need to fight strong people endangers the entire multiverse, although unintentionally on Goku's part and he isn't happy about it, vowing to win no matter who stands in his way.
  • Frost comes off as this. He fights against bad guys across the universe, greatly regrets killing an evildoer in his final form (which is why he doesn't use it anymore), and runs a charity that supports children of war-torn worlds. The only reason why he's fighting for Champa's cause in the tournament is so he can gain Champa's support in his charity work. Which is all part of his facade. Frost doesn't care about children and is in fact a planet broker who causes the misery those children find themselves in since he starts wars so he can buy planets more cheaply.
  • Gohan parodies one when he's dressed as the Great Saiyaman. When he's in Super Hero mode, he's a mixture of Power Rangers and Superman with his poses and grand speeches. When he's not in costume he is closer to a Classical Anti-Hero because of his self-doubt in his ability.
  • The Pride Troopers from U11 are an entire team of this, fighting evil and protecting their universe from all danger. Their heroism has even caught the interest of their God of Destruction.
• Idiot Hero: Goku, of course since he is the original. He is the only one not to realized that Monaka is weak and really thinks he has God Ki when Beerus dresses as Monaka to fight Goku.
• Ignored Enemy: In Episode 63, one of Future Zamasu's many The Reason You Suck Speeches is ignored by Goku and Vegeta, who are arguing over who was responsible for looking after the urn they planned to trap him in. Amusingly, Zamasu doesn't even care that they're not listening to him. He enjoys hearing himself talk.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Despite being a badass who saved the world from the androids and kept Majin Buu from being revived, Future Trunks is jealous of Gohan since he can live his dream and have a happy family, while Goku Black stole everything from him including his mother and Mai (so he thinks). Just being reminded of the life he could of have if Black never came to Earth reduces Trunks to tears.
• Imagine Spot:
  • In Episode 54, Future Trunks undergoes what Shu calls "image training" in which he constructs a mental scenario of himself fighting Goku Black. In every attempt, he gets killed with one blow. Seeing him do this prompts Mai to do the same, with an image of Future Trunks kissing her.
  • In Episode 83, Goku and Gohan together create an "image battle" of Krillin fighting Basil, an opponent from a recent tournament. The imaginary Krillin holds his own for a while using various techniques, but is finally defeated by the other's greater power. Despite this, Goku points out that Krillin has resumed training since they last met him, and may fare better in reality than expected.
• Immortality Seeker:
  • After learning of the Super Dragon Balls, this becomes Zamasu's goal. While his Bad Future counterpart has already succeeded in doing so, the present Zamasu is stopped and killed by Beerus.
  • Defied; when Future Zamasu suggests that Goku Black should've used the Super Dragon Balls become an immortal just as he did, Black disagrees, as he's satisfied with the power he has. This is strange considering that this is actually a Zamasu who refused to become immortal, unlike his Future comrade who's immortal and enjoys every minute of it.
• Immune to Bullets: Almost everyone in the franchise is this by default, because of their prodigious strength. However, it's downplayed compared with previous entries in the franchise, where bullets never had any effect on seasoned fighters at all: during the Future Trunks Saga, Future Mai tries to assassinate Goku Black, a being with world-shattering power, using a special bullet, and believes it has at least a small chance of working. And in episodes 75 and 77, Krillin and Goku respectively receive minor injuries from guns, said to be a sign of them getting out of practice.
• Immune to Fate: His Time Ring renders Goku Black immune to any alterations to the past, up to and including a god murdering his past self, which should normally bypass the timeline splitting like it normally would (according to Beerus).
• Implacable Man:
  • Krillin becomes an Implacable Police Officer in Episode 17, slowly chasing down some bank robbers on his scooter while nonchalantly dodging their bullets. It becomes absurd in this case since he could have flown and caught them in about half a second, which he does eventually do.
  • Goku Black will stop at nothing to hunt Trunks down, even through time.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • Goku Black stabs Super Saiyan Blue Vegeta with an energy sword through the chest.
  • Future Trunks impales Future Zamasu right through the chest, but it has no effect on him since he's an immortal.
  • Despite getting a major rage boost, Goku is taking down by Goku Black by being stabbed multiple times in the chest and having the energy swords blow up within him. Before then, Goku is stabbed by Goku Black though Future Zamasu, who is an immortal, when they have him pinned against a wall.
  • Goku Black sneaks behind Future Trunks and stabs him in the back to keep him from self-destructing on Future Zamasu.
  • While his components loved doing this, Merged Zamasu ends up on the receiving end. Vegito impales him through the chest on his Spirit Sword, which while it doesn't stick definitely hurt. Future Trunks does the same thing after absorbing the energy of all surviving life on the planet and making a Laser Blade out of it, and unlike Vegito's, the wound doesn't just instantly seal back up.
• Important Haircut: In episode 76, Krillin has #18 shave his head after he regains his fighting spirit and decides to take up martial arts again.
• Improvised Weapon: Magetta's uses a piece of his hardened lava spit as a club to great effect and comes literally within an inch of ringing Vegeta out by smacking him with it.
• In Harm's Way: Because of Goku's Blood Knight nature, he is at his happiest when he's fighting, either for fun or for his life. Beerus is the God of Destruction who the other gods fear, he wants to fight him. The other Gods of Destruction and their strongest warriors are after Goku since he put their universe in danger, he's more than happy to fight all of them and says so to their faces. Goku even admits that he fights at his best when he's on the edge.
• In-Series Nickname: The primary villain of the Future Trunks Saga is called Goku Black or just Black, though he calls himself Son Goku. He's really an alternative version of Present Zamasu, and the name Goku Black comes from Future Bulma, who named him after his black outfit and not wanting to relate him to her dear friend.
• In the Back:
  • Tagoma coldly shoots his own comrade, Shisami, from behind while he is fighting Gohan, taking both out.
  • During episode 26, Sorbet succesfully shoots Goku in the back when the latter dropped his guard.
• In Their Own Image:
  • What Goku Black's plan boils down to: by wiping out mortals, he'll create his own vision of paradise. He even states this if he's chosen by the player in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2:
  Goku Black: The world shall be remade in my vision!
  • Merged Zamasu naturally since he is a fusion of Goku Black and Future Zamasu. He states his new world will be, "by gods, for gods," and since his components personally wiped out all of the other gods in the multiverse, he basically means his world will be "by me, for me".
• Incompletely Trained: Frieza's biggest failing. Instead of learning to master his golden form, he rushed to Earth the moment he achieved it to get revenge. This leads to him losing for the exact same reason he lost the first time.
• Inexplicably Awesome:
  • It's a mystery as to why Goku is so powerful. He was born a lower class warrior, and is the son of a low class warrior and pacifist mother. Yet, through years of hard work and his own natural ability, he surpasses the Saiyan Prince and rivals the Gods of Destruction according to Gowasu. Even Beerus is shocked when he absorbed the power of Super Saiyan God into his being, which made Beerus call him a rare prodigy. Zamasu becomes so obsessed with Goku's power and endless growth that he actually uses the Super Dragon Balls to take his body, abandoning his godly form.
  • Beerus is a god among gods, and nothing is really known about him or why he is so powerful. It's implied that Beerus could have been a mortal at one point, unlike the Kais who are born gods, given that Whis offers Vegeta and Goku the position at one point.
  • Whis isn't a god as far as we know, but he's stronger than Beerus and has the power to rewind time for the entire universe. When Vegeta asks exactly what Whis is, he gives a non-answer. However, we learn from U7's Supreme Kai that he's a type of angel who looks over the God of Destruction.
  • Like his twin brother, Champa is a god among gods and nothing is really known about him. He could have been mortal at one point since Whis and Beerus have hinted several times that mortals like Goku and Vegeta can become the new Gods of Destruction.
  • Like Whis, Vados isn't a god, but she's stronger than Beerus, Champa, and possibly even her brother. There is no explanation why she is so powerful. However, like Whis, she's a type of angel according to U7's Supreme Kai.
• Info Dump:
  • Zuno's gives a lot of detail about the Super Dragon Balls like who created them, when they were created, how old they are, and their size among other things. It is so much information that Bulma can barely keep up and has to write everything down.
• Ignored Aesop: Whis makes it very clear that Goku and Vegeta would be nigh unstoppable if they could actually work and fight together. After Frieza is taken care of, Goku and Vegeta agree that Whis has a point. They opt to completely ignore said point.
• Ignored Epiphany: After Zamasu has his My God, What Have I Done? moment, he seemed shameful for killing a mortal when he could have just left with his master. He can't even look Gowasu in the eye while he's lecturing him on his actions. A scene later, he's back to his self-righteous self and feels justified killing mortals since they're evil.
• I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That:
  • Jaco is more than happy to pretend that he never saw any Saiyans on Earth and that Whis didn't rewind time, breaking the law. He does it again after the Galactic King and he deduces that Hit is Time-Leaping, which he freezes times for 0.1 seconds. Bulma tries to get Jaco to arrest Hit for breaking galactic law, but he refuses since he doesn't want to die. His boss the Galactic King feels the same way and pretends not to see anything.
  • When discussing if inviting the androids to the Tournament of Power is cheating since they're artificially enhanced humans, Beerus covers his ears and says he heard nothing.
• Indignant Slap: God of Destruction Beerus has had enough playing around on his trip to Earth, and begins charging a blast to destroy Vegeta and the rest of the planet. He is interrupted with a slap on the cheek by Bulma, who is fed up with him ruining her birthday party.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet:
  • Beerus has no problem directly attacking the Earth. Goku asked him if human lives mean anything to him. He says they don't matter since this is a battle between gods.
  • For once in the series Subverted. The tournament between Universes 6 and 7 is happening because Champa wants Earth, so he can eat all the food. He is even willing to lose the Super Dragon Balls he has been searching for all this time. When Beerus win the tournament, he uses his one wish to restore the Earth from Universe 6 so Champa can eat the same food as him.
• Intangible Man: When Hit returns to kill Goku, he reveals a technique that makes physical attacks pass right through him like a ghost. Vados reveals that what Hit is really doing is using the "time" he's "skipped" with his Time Skip technique to create a Pocket Dimension, which partially phases him out of local time-space. The downside is that he's limited in his attacking options while doing this and he can't keep it up forever. Once Goku figures out that Hit is "not there", he's able to break down the pocket universe and attack Hit anyway.
• Interactive Narrator: In the FUNimation dub of the Champa Saga's Recap Episode, the narrator gets fed up with the cast interrupting him and quits halfway through the episode.
• Interquel: At least the beginning of the plot, which takes place between the Majin Buu Saga and the manga's Distant Finale.
• Invincible Villain:
  • Despite everything thrown at him, Beerus remains completely undefeated and never came close to using his full power. On the bright side, Goku did more damage and gives Beerus a tougher fight compared to Battle of Gods.
  • Outside of his first match with Goku which was a case of Worf Had the Flu and ended before either one could get serious, Goku Black has never actually lost a battle. Even his final battle with Vegeta where he was being flatted by him ends with Black having the advantage with his endless clones and toying with Vegeta and Goku. He is joined only by Super Buu, Beerus, and Future Zamasu in this category. And since he has now fused with Future Zamusu he's never going to get a chance to be defeated either.
  • Future Zamasu falls into this since he is an immortal and can't technically be defeated despite being beating up by Future Trunks and Goku. Although Trunks manages to trap him in the Evil Containment Wave, it didn't stick since Goku and Roshi forgot the sealing tag. Now that he has fused with Goku Black, Future Zamasu can't be defeated since Merged Zamasu is a different entity.
• Iron Butt Monkey:
  • Because of Frieza's Adaptational Badass it is more Downplayed compared to the movie, but it is still there. When we first see him, he's in an Ironic Hell where he's trapped in a pod hanging from a tree in a world that can only be described as Candy Land. He is revived in pieces, falls apart when he tries to put himself back together, and his pieces are gathered and dumped into a container to be thrown in a healing tank. Even after he Took a Level in Badass he gets heaps of humiliation piled onto him. Goku is able to fight his true form without becoming a Super Saiyan and even after he becomes Golden Frieza and gains the advantage over Goku, he burns himself out because he didn't train the form before coming to Earth and gets the mess beating out of him by Vegeta. Even him blowing up the Earth gets negated by Whis. After he dies, he's sent right back to his Ironic Hell.
  • Yamcha in Episode 70. Despite just playing baseball, the dude gets a lot of punishment, but still wins the game for his team even though a hurricane is being formed by Beerus and Champa fighting. He's also one of the only people present who actually knows how to play baseball. Again, though, he gets the shit kicked out of him to the point where he's praying that he actually survives the game, nevermind making it home.
• Ironic Echo: When Piccolo has Frost at a disadvantage during the U6/U7 tournament, he confidently says that he was able to win because Frost didn't know his fighting style. After poisoning him with the needle hidden in his arm, Frost says the same back to Piccolo.
• Irony
  • It was Frieza being defeated by the Super Saiyan that really got Beerus interested in a Super Saiyan God, leading to the events of Battle of Gods. If those events never happened, Goku and Vegeta would have been severely underprepared for Frieza's return.
  • Part of the reason why Goku wanted to stay dead after the events of the Cell Games is because most of the enemies they fought all through Z wanted revenge on him or were linked to him in some way. Turns out, Frieza's remaining empire stood away from Earth because they were terrified of him.
  • Frieza's golden form is meant to be poetic irony to the Super Saiyan. He wants to beat Goku's golden form with one of his own. Also, him committing his entire army on the invasion of Earth ends up saving the universe. Not only was his army defeated by the Earth's defenders, he ruthlessly kills them to show off his new power, leaving only Sorbet alive who is killed by Vegeta. With Frieza's final death, all the planets that remained under his empire control are now free. In a larger sense, Sorbet's attempts to revive the planet trade empire back to its former glory by bringing back Frieza, actually help put the final nail in its casket.
  • Beerus is the God of Destruction who tried to destroy the Earth when he first goes there. At the end of the Champa Saga, he uses his one wish from the Super Dragon Balls to revived U6's Earth for seemingly no personal benefit.
  • The Future Trunks Saga is filled with cruel ironies for both sides:
    • A very dark one for Future Trunks and Bulma. Goku has always been seen as their greatest hope. Bulma invited the time machine and sent Trunks into the past mostly to save Goku from the heart virus that was destined to kill him. Now, with the androids gone, Buu's awakening prevented, and peace is restored, a new evil appears who looks exactly like Goku all the way down to his voice, and even says his name is Son Goku. He single-handily destroys the world worse than anything the androids ever did. As a final cruel irony the last thing Bulma sees before she dies is Goku's face.
    • Goku is known for bringing out the best in people through his force of character and pure-heartedness. Beerus becomes nicer after meeting Goku and Hit comes out of his stoic shell during his fight with Goku at the tournament. Zamasu, however, has the opposite experience. Meeting Goku is his Start of Darkness, taking him from a Kai who simply distrusts mortals and sees them as foolish, to a Kai who wants to eliminate all mortals in the universe and is willing to murder his own master to do it.
    • Beerus went from being one of the most powerful and dangerous Arc Villain in the series, to being the Big Good who prevented Present Goku from becoming Goku Black by destroying the time loop that created him.
    • Future Zamasu notes that it's ironic that they need a mortal's power in order to bring forward the 'Zero Mortals Plan'. According to Goku Black, a big part of that plan hinges on is his 'infinite' growth. The mortal power they're referring is that Black is using Goku's body as a vessel and is taking advantage of his endless potential.
    • In the long run, Zamasu taking Goku's body to become Goku Black wasn't the best idea. Although Zamasu gained a vast amount of power from using Goku as a vessel, he also inherited a lot of Goku's quirks like his obsession with battle, his need to be challenged, and the desire to grow stronger. Which leads him to having no desire to become an immortal like Future Zamasu since being unable to die takes the fun out of fighting and can make him rusty. This ends up badly crippling Merged Zamasu, who would have been unstoppable if Black was an immortal. Instead, Merged Zamasu ends up only being half immortal, meaning that his body can be destroyed if enough force is used.
    • One of the most evilest and cruelest villains in the franchise is Zamasu, an Apprentice Supreme Kai. Not only did he murder all his fellow gods as Goku Black so he can stand as the supreme god of the future multiverse, but he also performed mass genocide on mortals across the universes and went out of his way to kill Goku while he's helpless in his old body before murdering his wife and child. The ironic part is that Zamasu is supposed to be a God of Creation who looks over and guide mortals, and stop monsters like Zamasu from destroying the universe similar to the U7's Supreme Kais fighting and dying to stop Majin Buu. The Supreme Kais also balance the more temperamental and morally apathetic Gods of Destruction. With Zamasu, he's worse than any god whose job it is to destroy stuff.
    • The Dragon Balls are often used by the heroes to repair the damage done by the latest villain. In the Future Trunks Saga, the Super Dragon Balls are used in favor of the villains to make one of them more powerful by stealing Goku's body and the other one invincible by becoming an immortal. In other words, the Dragon Balls, the symbol of hope in the series, is used to bring about the greatest despair in the entire franchise. By the end of the saga, the damage done is so immense that not even the Super Dragon Balls can repair it because the villains destroy them after getting their wishes granted.
    • In another bitter twist, Gowasu describes the extra Time Rings as the creation of someone who abused time-travel to change the past and wonder what fool would do such a thing. It turns out that the reason why Goku Black was in Future Trunks' timeline and killed off Earthlings in such a cruel fashion was to punish them for making the Time Machine. Future Zamasu and Black give Trunks an earful about him meddling in the past and call him a sinner. By the end of the saga, as Gowasu looks at the box with the newly formed Time Ring (created when Beerus killed Present Zamasu), he calls it his sin before closing the box.
  • In the Future Trunks Saga, it was Goku's casualness towards Zen'o that won the King of All over to the point of wanting to be Goku's friend. He gives Goku a button to summon him anytime he wanted. This button is used to summon Future Zen'o who killed Merged Zamasu. It had the unfortunate effect of wiping out the entire future timeline, yet it was literally the only way to stop Merged Zamasu at that point. Goku then beings Future Zen'o to the present, giving Zen'o a playmate who is truly his equal, something that everyone supported. Come the Universal Survival Saga, it is Goku's casualness towards Zen'o and him not heeding the warnings of Beerus and Whis that put the entire multiverse in danger. Then, turns out him not listening to Beerus and Whis indirectly gave U7 a chance to save itself since Zen'o was going to destroy it and the other weaker universes before Goku reminded him of the tournament.
• It Only Works Once: Whis reveals he can turn back time for three minutes. However in this version he warns Goku he won't be able to do it again for a while once he does. So if Goku messes up, it's game over for real. Luckily Goku makes the Reset Button count and quickly blasts Frieza before he does his suicide attack.
• Is It Something You Eat?: Beerus ask Gotenks if the Dragon Balls are some type of food. In the dub, he even asked which parts of the dragon they're made of.
• It's All About Me:
  • All versions of Zamasu. For all their grandiose speeches about justice, it becomes clear at the end of the day that all they care about is their vision of paradise and don't give a damn about anyone who's not them, not even their fellow gods who they will and have willfully murdered. Merged Zamasu is this to an even greater degree. While he still cares about nothing but what he thinks is justice, he takes it a step forwards by declaring himself 'the sun of this world' and that his new world will be 'by Gods, for Gods' (note, when saying this he's the only one left, so it basically translates to 'by me, for me'), making it clear he views the entire universe as existing solely for him.
  • Barry Kahn only wants to star in a movie about the Great Saiyaman because he wants to plaster his face in every nook and cranny imaginable. He also doesn't take rejecting well, since he hopes Gohan will be seriously hurt doing a highly dangerous stunt. Videl actually calls him out on this in her "The Reason You Suck" Speech, saying how Barry is treated like a prince, yet is so insecure that he would resort to trickery and blackmail when he isn't the center of attention.
• It's All My Fault:
  • Gohan blames himself for Piccolo dying since he didn't keep up his training. Krillin tells him that he isn't to blame since it was only natural for him to want to be with his family.
  • Goku feels responsible for Frieza blowing up the Earth since he failed to kill him when he had the chance. Thanks to Whis, however, Goku is able to redo his mistake.
• It's Personal:
  • Frieza has a bad case of this after his resurrection. He can think of nothing but revenge against Goku.
  • Future Trunks' relationship with Goku Black. Not only did he destroy Trunks' world after it was just beginning to recover from the androids, he murders Future Bulma in coldblood, and nearly did the same to Future Mai. He also gives Trunks a severe case of PTSD and he can barely sleep.
  • Vegeta wants revenge on Goku Black for targeting Future Trunks and for killing Future Bulma.
  • After losing to Goku in a sparring match, Present Zamasu becomes obsessed with Goku to the point of stealing his body and then killing him with it. To add salt to the wound, he murders Goku's family for no good reason other than to be sadistic.
  • Goku himself is pushed to this with Goku Black when he learns that Black not only stole an alternate timeline version of his body and murdered that Goku, he did this in front of that timeline's Chi-Chi and Goten. And then proceeded to murder them too. The cherry on top is that Black then taunts Goku about it. Goku is very rightfully pissed about it.

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