Headscratchers / Dragon Ball Z: Frieza and Namek Saga

• The end of the Namek arc has some very confusing things that happen upon revival compared to previous canon. We get the deaths of Krillin and (not actually) Goku on Namek before it explodes. They say they can't revive the two because they'd come back where they died (on the empty space that used to be planet Namek) and thus have to resort to wishing their souls to earth before reviving them so they'd come back to life on earth. Whaaaat? Goku's first death was on earth, yet when he's revived he's still stuck on King Kai's planet and has to travel all of snake way to return. As for Krillin, Chiatzou got blown up similar to Krillin, and yet his soul body got to travel to King Kai's and returns exactly to where they make the wish. He didn't have to make the trip back and use Kami as the go-between, neither did Yamcha or Tien. Same thing with Piccolo, really. He lost his halo, but was still on King Kai's planet, not on earth. So the idea of reviving Krillin and the not actually dead Goku shouldn't have needed a separate wish to summon their souls. It just felt like it was there for some cheap drama that they might not actually come back that just gets resolved in the next ten seconds when Vegeta tells them a way to solve the problem. So, to sum things up, Goku and Piccolo were revived, but stuck on King Kai's planet, Chiatzou, Tien, and Yamcha were revived, but summoned exactly to the spot of the wish and not to where they died.
  • It makes a little bit of sense when you consider how wishing people back to life worked in Dragon Ball. Every single time someone was wished back to life in Dragon Ball, their dead bodies just came back to life again. Thus everyone who was wished back to life came back in the exact spot in which they died, because that's where their bodies were. In the case of Goku, after he died his body suddenly disappeared - Piccolo stated that it was the work of Kami, who negotiated with King Yemma to allow Goku to train his actual body in the Otherworld under King Kai. That's why Goku had to head back across Snake Way to have Kami transfer him back. His body was no longer on Earth to come back to life there. Piccolo, Tien, Yamcha and Chiaotzu should have been given the same consideration. In the manga, it's not obvious that Yamcha, Tien or Chiaotzu came back to life in the spots they died, either. So if that happened in the anime, it could have been a non-Toriyama change. I agree however that it should not have taken an extra wish to bring Krillen back to life on Earth - Kami should have been able to act as a go-between in that case, though it's possible that the Bulma and co. just didn't know precisely how it all worked.

• Before leading Bulma to Kami's old spaceship, Mr. Popo mentions that Kami was waiting for his parents to come and get him. But wait, parentS? As a Namekian, shouldn't he have only one parent? Especially since Namekians are male-only/genderless?
  • Popo probably just didn't know any better. Or maybe Kami remembered there being two older Nameks and just assumed they were his parents.
    • I'm willing to bet the mono-gender characteristic of Namekians is a retcon. King Piccolo's eggs were always attributed to being just another one of his immense demon powers - remember Kami was never seen using this technique. Only later, when they were on planet Namek, did this become a product of his reproductive cycle.
    • It could just be a mistranslation. Does the Japanese specify more than one parent? It should also be noted that Kami didn't know he was an alien until Nappa and Vegeta said so. It's possible Kami just assumed he had two parents since all intelligent life on Earth does.
    • It's a mistranslation. In Japanese, there aren't really plurals for the most part, and the term he uses to refer to his "parents" can either be singular or plural, depending on the context.
• How is Burtur(from the Ginyu Force) the "fastest in the universe"? Even before Goku arrived, Jeice, Ginyu, and Freeza all had a higher power level than him. Doesn't that make them faster?
  • A higher power level doesn't mean you are faster, it just means you have a bigger amount of ki.
  • True, but let's face it, it's just not true. Ginyu and Frieza are most certainly faster than Burtur. He's probably abnormally fast for his power level, though.
  • Additionally Ginyu like Frieza can adjust his power level. If Burter was faster (but still weaker in combat) than Ginyu at Ginyu's suppressed power level and like everybody he'd never seen Frieza actually get out of his hover chair then it's possible that Ginyu humored him. It seems like he's that kind of guy and Frieza may have never heard the boast or likewise decided he didn't mind.
• Again, Mr. Popo says young Kami left the Yunzabit highlands because "finding food was hard." Wait... food? I thought Namekians only drank water?
  • The whole Namekians only drink water thing is either a plot hole or a retcon because it's contradicted many many times. In addition to the example above we have: King Piccolo eating entire feasts and Piccolo complaining about eating too much fish during the Goku learns to drive bit. Even if you can overlook these facts there is something else to consider: why would a species that doesn't eat need teeth?
    • Strictly speaking, both the Piccolo feast and the Piccolo fish thing are pure anime filler. No Namekian is ever shown eating or even drinking in the Dragon Ball manga. That's what makes the mention of food especially incongruous.
  • Maybe he was using "food" as a synonym of "things you need to swallow to survive", meaning that Yunzabit is poor in water too (it was a desert area, after all).
  • Its possible King Piccolo can just eat for pleasure and not for sustenance.
  • Plants still need nutrients. Perhaps Namekians are like venus flytraps-they don't get enough nutrients from water, so they need a little extra(food).
  • Teeth are good for communicating, both with language and basic emotion (like intimidation)
  • My guess is that Namekians don't need to eat on their home planet since they get their nourishment from the three suns and presumably whatever chemicals reside in the planet's water supply. Since Earth has one sun and goes through phases of night, Namekians would be malnourished and need supplements to stay healthy.

• So, the thing that pushed Goku over the Edge into becoming SSJ was when Frieza killed Krillin. So why didn't he go SSJ in Dragon Ball when Krillin and Roshi were killed?
  • You need more than a pure spirit and emotional force to ascend- you also need a great deal of power, far above the average Saiyan warrior. Way back when Krillin died the first time, Goku wasn't even up to his own lower-class standard.
    • Don't forget, Dragon Balls. It basically means that he's comatose for a while and he can't be revived again. Plus, the other time was the death of Krillin, seemingly Piccolo, and Vegeta, after hearing about what really happened to their planet, in a relatively short (Frieza's Five Minutes should give scale) amount of time.
    • There's also how unnecessary it was. With Demon King Piccolo, he wanted to take out any martial artists that could learn the sealing move that he was trapped by, which was very plausible. Here, there was no way Krillin could ever be a real threat to Frieza.
    • Krillin ironically was probably the biggest singular threat to Frieza until Goku went SSJ. As we learn from Frieza's tail he's not too strong to Destructo Disc. All it would take for Krillin to kill him would be for Frieza to allow himself to get sufficiently distracted and end up bisected.
    • Also, since Krillin had already been brought back once, Goku assumed he couldn't be wished back again.
    • I doubt it was just Krillin's death that tipped the edge (but it was the final straw.) Not only was Krillin dead, but Piccolo was seriously injured and Vegeta, the second-to-last pure-blooded Sayain was also dead, leaving Goku the last of his kind. Oh, and he's fighting a monster that killed his people, including his own mother and father. He also probably realized that Frieza would do the same thing to Earth if he's given the chance.
    • Freeza not only killed Kuririn and injured Piccolo, but he threatened to kill Gohan too. It basically sent Goku over the edge.

• What's the deal with Frieza anyway? How come he was smart enough to kill all the Saiyans when he noticed that they were becoming too powerful (even then, they were no match for him even in his weakest form), but yet he toyed with Goku?
  • He'd already killed Vegeta by this point, and Vegeta was (as far as anyone else knew) was the strongest of the bunch. He toyed around with Goku because, frankly, he could. If he'd attacked Goku instead of Krillin after the Spirit Bomb failed, Goku never gets the impetus to go SSJ, thus gets quite dead.
    • Let's also not forget that Goku returned the favor by letting Frieza power up to his max.
  • Goku=commoner. Saiyan hierarchy goes by strongest Saiyans, which tends to be hereditary. Frieza=sadistic supervillain. Of course, he's going to toy with him, like a cougar might toy with what appears to be a mouse. Plus, the flashback to Bardock gives him personal incentive to be extra cruel. (Alternate explanation: each time he powered up, it could have left him that much more unstable, similar to the Super Saiyan forms. Does four increasingly bestial forms, the last being coldly calculating and frankly no caring about other beings as much winning ring a bell?)
    • That works. But also, it seems that what Frieza truly feared was all the Saiyans rising up at once - not one monkey playing super-hero, regardless of rank.
  • None of the mutants, Frieza included, have any ability to gauge power by themselves: without scouters they're pooched. Frieza probably believes, with good reason, that no one can approach his power. Goku had to tell him that he was bleeding power ridiculously in his final form, to the point where he quickly had no chance at all, which Frieza didn't even believe. Frieza was probably more irritated than scared by Saiyans.
  • Its worth noting that Spirit Bomb that he didn't see coming aside Frieza was simply having fun all the way until he wasn't. He actually (at least in the Anime) makes a note that he realizes Goku is getting stronger while they fight and he should probably hurry things along. Even then he would have been fine if he'd killed Goku first and tortured Krillin and Gohan instead of Krillin first.
  • Frieza feared the Saiyans as a collective force, after finding out from Dodoria what Bardock was able to do on his own. As such, he didn't feel any fear regarding a particular individual or a rag-tag handful of survivors.
  • Actually, Jaco the Galactic Patrolman (both the main series and the bonus chapter Dragon Ball Minus) and Battle of Gods/Dragon Ball Super together explain it: Frieza believed that the Super Saiyan and the Super Saiyan God were mere legends and that the Saiyans weren't actually a threat, just a possible nuisance to his control of the empire if they rebelled as he expected them to do, while still too useful to kill due to their immunity to the Galactic Patrol's bioweapon (hence why he didn't actually plan to destroy the planet Vegeta until Beerus told him to, and not only allowed some Saiyan to survive but actually made sure some wouldn't there at the right moment). He just didn't consider any Saiyan an actual danger until Goku went Super Saiyan.
• Why didn't Captain Ginyu do the body change on Frieza? He meets a Saiyan with power around 200,000 and doesn't even hesitate, meanwhile he knows very well that Frieza's like 500,000 at least.
  • when has it been shown that Ginyu is disloyal to Freeza? That'd be the only reason he'd have to use it on Freeza
  • My guess is that Freeza knew about the technique and had some way of blocking/defending against it/moving out of the way/could do it right back. And that would be the sad end to Capt Ginyu. Also, unlike Vegeta et. al, Ginyu was a high ranking officer of Frieza's army. He might have no reason to anger Freeza or pick a fight with him.
    • The way Zarbon thinks of them, we can assume they are independent mercenaries rather than regular henchmen. If so, exchanging bodies would be a very stupid thing to do to your richest contractor. And even if perhaps Ginyu could have taken Freeza's place as ruler of the empire, he probably has no reason to, as he seems to love fighting strong enemies. If he became a ruler, he would probably have little time for that (Freeza always sends warriors to do work, only going himself when the situation is of the utmost importance).
    • He was Frieza's second-in-power and only henchman with a six-figure power level, and presumably second-in-command. Ginyu also seemed to idolize Frieza and was actually quite loyal to him.
    • He's not Frieza's second-in-power, he works for King Cold. Presumably both Cooler and King Cold would murder the shit out of him if they found out he pulled a stunt like that.
    • King Cold maybe, but Cooler would probably be amused at the idea of Frieza losing his body like that. He even said he planned on killing off Frieza anyway.
    • Common question on most peoples DBZ Problem Lists but actually it's not that hard to work out. Ginyu doesn't gain any of the knowledge or abilities of his new host, only the raw power of their base form. He was outmatched by Vegeta because he didn't know how to use the Kaioken or the Kamehameha and he couldn't fly or fight the others as Bulma because she probably has the basic human power level of 5. Now when it comes to Frieza, although he has massive raw ki, his true power comes from his ability to transform (which Ginyu most certainly knows about) and his ability to destroy planets (which Ginyu doesn't know how to use the technique.) in this situation King Cold in his stage two transformation would easily kick stage one Frieza's ass. Also Ginyu seems perfectly happy to be a mercenary/Frieza Delta Force type of guy, he doesn't WANT the tyrant lifestyle Frieza has.
    • Also, (in the anime anyway) that technique is shown as a beam when he tries to use it on Vegeta. It may have been too fast for Vegeta to dodge it, but Frieza probably could have dodged it easily. This would have made things very awkward for Ginyu in the 3 seconds preceding Frieza murdering him.
    • Actually, the beam can't be dodged. In the anime it's shown to paralyze whoever it's used on, including people much much more powerful and faster than whatever body he's possessing at the time, such as when he used the technique on Piccolo while in Bulma's body. The limitations are apparently that it's rather slow, so it can be intercepted by someone else, and Ginyu needs to be capable of talking to actually use it. As for not being able to use Goku's body perfectly right off the bat, it's probably because how Goku accesses his body and Ki is different than how Ginyu, and probably most people do. Ginyu would probably have little trouble controlling Frieza's body because the way that the use Ki is pretty much the same. I think the real reason that Ginyu doesn't take over Frieza is he just respects the man, in fact Ginyu seems to be one of the very few of Frieza's minions that actually does, unlike the others that follow him out of fear.

• Why does every being in the universe except the Namek Dragon understand Japanese/English?
  • I always figured he did understand, but rules are rules. (IIRC, he'd say the wish had been granted in English, in the dub).
  • Translator Microbes, ain't they handy? (Btw, Porunga could understand English, but couldn't grant any wishes not made in Namek language)
  • In addition to the above I thought it was also a built-in security measure. It does a pretty good job of that as well first preventing Frieza from summoning Porunga as soon as he'd collected all seven Dragonballs and then later preventing Frieza from wishing for immortality. We never see anybody who isn't from Earth make a wish on the Earth Balls however, it may not be a security feature and might simply be that wishing must be done in the native language.
  • Makes a neat reason for just how language works in the Dragon Ball universe. Rather than officially speaking English, Spanish, German, or Japanese, etc., they are speaking a common Universal Language. It just so happens that Earth's native language is Common Language, while Namekians are bilingual.
• OK, how can all of Namek's skies be sunny all the time? Even if they have a ternary star, one side of the planet should still be in darkness unless the planet is being orbited by the suns.
  • Guru and/or Porunga did it. The Nameks are obviously Plant Aliens, so maybe they wanted increased light exposure to be able to increase their reproductive ability to repopulate or something, and never bothered to turn the night back on?
    • I clearly recall a mention of two or more suns.
    • Three, as I recall.
    • Wild guess: all three suns have the same mass and orbit each other, while the planet is not revolving around the suns but lies stationary in a Lagrange point.
  • There are several possibilities: a star system caught in the gravitational pull of a hypergiant might get this effect, if it's not too badly scrambled. This would also explain the disaster only Guru survived as a solar wind from the hypergiant. Or reflective particles in the atmosphere, conducting light like all atmospheres distribute heat.
    • Sorry to burst your bubble, but the disaster is explicitly stated to have been a massive drought.
    • In the anime exclusively — it's not specified in the manga.
  • Not only do some of the Namekians (like the one that revived their planet and race from scratch) have magic powers they have magic balls with magic powers. If you know what I mean. Maybe the Suns were orbiting the planet?
  • Maybe Namek is tidally locked, so one side is always facing one of the suns. This may have been relatively recent, which would go to explain the Great Drought.

• When Frieza has his 3 top henchmen killed (Cui, Dodoria, Zarbon), has several mooks killed, and knows Vegeta has his dragon balls and is allied with 2 fairly strong earthlings (Gohan and Krillin), then why does he call his elite soldiers, the Ginyu Force, instead of just going and dealing with it himself? According to Frieza himself, even in his most basic and weak form, has a power level of 530,000, which is over ten times stronger then Vegeta was at the time. I know he is lazy, but can't he just spare five minutes to walk out, execute Vegeta with one punch, and go back to his ship and skip the whole "call the Ginyu Force" step?
  • Part of the reason he called the Ginyu force was to get them to bring new scouters, as Vegeta and the old Namekian had destroyed all they had. Without them, Freeza wouldn't even be able to find Vegeta or the other Dragon Balls.
    • Well, Frieza didn't have Cui, Dodoria, and Zarbon killed...Vegeta wiped them out. As for why Frieza didn't take care of things himself, I attribute it him being so royally pompous, egotistical, and full of himself that he didn't think he should HAVE to (same as I stated above as to why Vegeta let Nappa deal with the last three Z-Fighters when Goku was inbound post-resurrection).
    • Pretty much... he's the Big Bad. He doesn't 'deal with things himself' until the heroes are really asking for it.
  • Spare five minutes to kill Vegeta? Are you crazy? Have you seen how much time 5 minutes are in Namek?!

• Word of God states that mecha Freeza's cyborg parts made him more powerful than his standard final form. If that's true why didn't he get them added sooner? He's shown to be obsessed with being as powerful as he can and it would make him immortal at least when it comes to old age.
  • Frieza's body couldn't handle even his regular fully powered form, the cyborg parts were only added to save his life.
    • Also, they look rickety and like they were scrounged from a junkyard. Surely, King Cold's powerful, advanced empire, which can produce spaceships, is capable of doing better for one of the princes. Or better yet, clone organic replacements and rebuild him properly, something we might see in our lifetimes in Real Life.
    • I think their main incentive was to keep him alive and make him stronger (scouter-level wise). He probably would have had better-looking parts if he wasn't so eager to "set a course for Earth".
  • Frieza is a naturally powerful being and he uses that natural power to get what he wants because he feels that his tremendous power gives him the right to do just that. Perhaps he felt that, if he used unnatural means to augment his powers, that would cheapen the idea that he was born better than others and as such is entitled to have everything he wants.
    • Also, other than his own father, Frieza was already more powerful than any known being in the entire galaxy by several orders of magnitude. Even in his weakest transformation, he was over 4x stronger than Captain Ginyu, who is implied to be the strongest warrior in the entire planet trade outside of Frieza and King Cold. He was already inconceivably strong and nigh-invincible, thus had no meaningful incentive to go chopping off bits of his own body to replace with tech.
    • There's also the physical hindrances of having mechanical body parts attached to your flesh. Ignoring the elephant in the room regarding if he would be able to use his 100% power without bulking up, Frieza generally prefered to stay in his suppresed forms to the point that he even told Piccolo, Krillin, Gohan and Vegeta that they were the first ones to witness his second transformation, since his transformations actually alter his body drastically it could be possible that his mechanical limbs would have prevented this without constantly getting modified which in and itself would be very impractical. Besides, Frieza himself states he has trouble controlling his real power, even leading to his stamina problem, which means that being constantly on an upgraded version of his final form would probably be too much of a hassle for him when dealing with mundane tasks (Remember Goku accidentally breaking a glass when he tried to hold it as a Super Saiyan?), specially since he was much stronger than almost everyone in the universe anyway.

• Okay, the Earth Dragon Balls take a whole year to recharge, right? Then how were they active during the Frieza saga for Popo to summon the dragon? At most 2-3 months had passed since their last use. Does Kami being dead and then revived allow them to ignore the 1-year recharge rule?
  • Yes
  • As shown back in Dragonball when King Piccolo destroyed Shenron and then was restored by Kami only a few days later, Kami can restore the Dragon Balls to power effectively whenever he wants to. There might be some limitations, like Kami only being able to do it every so often, but he can.

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

• DBZ. Frieza blows up planet Vegeta. This somehow kills all but 4 (or so) Saiyans. Wait, what? Culturally, Saiyans are space warriors. They have teams of soldiers on planets throughout the galaxy. Heck, they even send their infants out into space to cause trouble. Do Saiyans have No Ontological Inertia? Did Invasion Team #252 just vanish when their home planet exploded? Was there a holiday on planet Vegeta that ALL Saiyans were required to attend, despite multi-year travel times?
  • Well, a good chunk of the movies involve Saiyans showing up who just happened to be off-world that day.
    • If you include the movies (which usually count as non-canon), then the number doubles to 8 Saiyans. The final list is: Goku, Raditz, Vegeta, Nappa, Broly, Paragus, Turles, and Tarble. EIGHT isn't exactly "an entire race of planet conquerers that even includes their infants." Therefore, It Still Bugs Me.
  • Remember the part in the middle of the movie when Dodoria and henchmen were sent to eliminate Bardock's friends? That probably happened anywhere else with unaware conquering Saiyans too.
    • It's implied that if you ignore Zarbon, Dodoria, the Ginyus and Frieza that hunting down hundreds if not thousands of Saiyans would have have been an enormous undertaking that would have had to see the stop of all other business. Not to mention they clearly knew exactly where to find Goku and they didn't for no good reason. I think it's easier to believe that those scouters that are always on let a lot of people know to lay low and word never got out that Frieza died. Now that I'm thinking about it there are probably plenty of people, Saiyan and otherwise, who are hiding on planets that don't have radios.
    • I believe that, because they had scouters, they were easy to track down. In regard to the babies, they were probably killed when trying to take over the planet. Goku would have been killed too, hadn't it been for the head injury that made him good.
  • Thing is unless Saiyans were a very very small race there should have been hundreds if not thousands that were off planet at the time. Clearly for example they knew WHERE to find Goku and decided not to. I know Frieza was a scary guy but when he mysteriously stopped sending children into space some extreme panic should have taken place.
    • Don't quote me on this, but I think I remember it being specifically stated that the Saiyans were very few in number and the only reason they were able to overthrow the Tuffles was because of their Oozaru form.
    • I do remember somewhere in either the manga or the anime that Vegeta states the Saiyans were always low in numbers. So it's not hard to imagine most Saiyans were home on Vegeta when the planet went boom and Freeza could have had the rest they believed to be threats hunted down like Bardock's crew.
  • But then again, who's stopping you (or anyone) from writing a fanfic about your own fan-made Saiyan(s) who were off-planet at the time? I know that's been used many, many, MANY times, but still. Personally, I've always loved seeing "surviving Saiyan" OC's to this day, discredited or not.
    • Fanfiction isn't canon, so it wouldn't answer any questions and not everyone likes writing (or even reading) fanfiction.
  • Frieza was the one who sent them on missions, and could quite easily just have everyone in easily found areas to be slaughtered, assuming he didn't just call them back to the homeworld while he gets some new clients lined up for orders.
    • Or also because he wanted them all dead, spent time to make sure they were all on the planet, telling them it was a day off or the like so he could kill them all quickly.
  • I believe the Saiyans all returned to planet Vegeta after a conquest. The Saiyans apparently did not have the means or the interest to colonize new planets, so they would all return to Vegeta once their job somewhere else was done. And who is to say that the Sayians that were not at Vegeta at the time of the planet's explosion were not ruthlessly hunted down and murdered? They all had scouters, which made it easy for Frieza to locate them, and they probably had no idea that Frieza had betrayed their race.
  • If we took Bardock, Broly, Cooler, Goku, Paragus, Tarble, Turles, Lord Slug, the nameless Namek, Dragon Ball Online, and the early Saiyans into account, it's safe to say that not all Saiyans were wiped out barring the 8 known survivors. Vegeta may have said that the Saiyans were small in number, but being a race of space pirates there is no doubt that there is a large number of them; this may take a while, so get comfortable and really think about this.
    • Turles was a rogue Saiyan who defected before Frieza blew up Planet Vegeta, and there is a pretty decent chance that he wasn't the only defector; on top of that, Frieza apparently couldn't track him down, maybe because he modified or tweaked his scouter in some manner to avoid detection and/or he was too far away to have his ki tracked by a scouter. Scouters are essentially miniature computers; Nappa and Vegeta's scouters alerted them of Raditz's death. If Turles had his scouter at the time Frieza blew up Planet Vegeta, his scouter should have reported to him that a large number of Saiyans were killed (since it tells them who died), which would let him know that someone really powerful must have killed them all. If there were no Saiyans around, Frieza was the only person who would blow up planets then, so that shouldn't be hard to figure out. And not just that: you can also listen in on other scouters to hear conversations (which is how Nappa, Vegeta, and Frieza had found out about the Dragon Balls). If Turles had overheard Frieza, Dodoria, and/or Zarbon suggesting/overseeing the Saiyan genocide, he may have heard of the genocide and decided to hide out. This may also be the case with any other rogue Saiyan out there.
    • Now Paragus and Broly survived by pure luck on Broly's part, but they never wore scouters following Planet Vegeta's destruction. Without scouters, Frieza couldn't track down either of them, and they were probably too far to be tracked anyways; trans-galaxy tracking is impossible with scouters and even having the ability to sense ki naturally would have proven useless unless a freakishly large power level like Broly's was present. Plus, they were presumed dead before the planet burst happened anyways, so to Frieza there would be no reason to look for them. This is most likely the case of other Saiyans presumed dead, but turned out Not Quite Dead. And Frieza's not like his cop-dog brother Cooler; he won't bother going through with extensive body checks/searches to make sure none of the Saiyans survived their supposed death.
    • Then Tarble was exiled because of his low power level; if King Vegeta would even exile royalty over power levels, who's to say that he hasn't done this before? Granted Tarble had a scouter, but he was most likely too far to be tracked and too weak to be considered a threat to Frieza in the event that he did find him. Saiyans were the strongest race in Frieza's army, and an incredibly weak Saiyan could be mistaken for a non-Saiyan due to his low power level. And then Planet Trade Organization members presumably have assigned scouters rather than generic ones. Raditz' scouter went off when he died and Nappa and Vegeta knew that he died because they presumably knew that the particular scouter belonged to Raditz. It's also safe to say that Frieza doesn't hand out every single scouter to every one of his soldiers, so he can't possibly know which scouter belongs to which soldier when it comes down to every single soldier. Looking at a flashback of King Vegeta's exposition of power among Saiyans, we see space pods coincidentally leaving. Prince Vegeta's dialogue confirms that those were exiles.
    • Bardock was also presumed dead and lost his scouter in the process and was a good distance away from the rest of the organization, making him untrackable. Nobody noticed his space pod coming into the atmosphere of planet Vegeta either, probably meaning that space pods aren't tracked with/like scouters. When word of his survival got to Frieza and his henchmen, they clearly didn't expect it especially considering that Dodoria told them that he was dead. This could have happened so many other times with Bardock being the last known instance of this.
    • Goku was sent to earth to conquer it, and when Cooler noticed his pod flying by, he just sat back and chillaxed like nobody's business. He doesn't consider the Saiyans to be his problem, even though he knew that collectively they were a threat. There may have been other babies sent to other planets to conquer them when Goku was sent to earth or before that. Knowing Cooler, he most likely didn't do anything about it if he noticed them.
    • Dragon Ball Online has time travel. It's safe to say that Saiyans can get pulled from their original timeline into the current one. Plus, Trunks is a half-breed from the future, and Bardock is a pure-breed from the past. Who knows what period in time Bardock was pulled from or which particular time period the future that particular Trunks came from (and Cell came from yet another future in which he KILLED Trunks and went back in time showing that there is clearly more than one timeline, something that Dragon Ball AF exploits). Time travel clearly works like it did in Kingdom Hearts 3D and Fire Emblem Awakening (excuse me for pulling up non-franchise examples) and that means that numerous Saiyans can be pulled from any period of time from any timeline, courtesy of Miira, Towa, or any time traveller.
    • Lastly, King Kai may have gotten his story mixed up when explaining the Saiyan race so we can't go by anything he says regarding them, and this also means that maybe he was wrong about the arrival of the Saiyans. There's no way that every single Saiyan went to Planet Plant when the majority of them did. Plus they arrived in space ships, meaning that they were at least technologically advanced in some aspects a little. Lord Slug and the nameless Namek were survivors of the drought that happened, but they most likely didn't know each other and they ended up going to different places. Who's to say that some Saiyans didn't do this when they escaped their home planet?
    • In short, there are way too many possibilities to consider to go strictly by the assumption that only 8 Saiyans have survived Frieza's genocide. Apparently Akira Toriyama Didn't Think This Through well enough, because several.
  • Explained in Dragon Ball Minus: Frieza recalled all Saiyan home before blowing up the planet, with a number of Saiyan surviving being explained by Frieza doing it early on purpose (he states he cannot wait more than a month when he's told that some Saiyan still won't be back in time, and with Jaco the Galactic Patrolman explaining that the Saiyan are immune to the Galactic Patrol bioweapon there's the implication he still wants some of them around anyway). As for Vegeta and Raditz, Vegeta just decided to ignore the recall order, and Raditz was with him.

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

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

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

• When it's time to make the wishes, Piccolo calls Gohan and tells him to resurrect him first, so the Earth Dragon Balls will reappear. Ok, that's smart enough. Then, his second wish is to be transported to Namek, because "with the training from Kaiou, I will surely be able to defeat Freezer". Now maybe he was still a bit cocky at that point, but really, that sounded terribly delusional. Piccolo used to be weaker than Nappa. Then he and the others arrive at Kaiou's planet, but apparently they only do so when Goku is already in space and going to Namek (that's when Kaiou calls to inform him of the matter). Meaning, Piccolo had just a week to train. I would be surprised if he had got anywhere above 10.000 in such a short amount of time. Probably even Krillin was stronger at that point. Good thing he met Nail on the way, otherwise he was just going to get his butt kicked hard (not that it didn't happen anyway).
  • Piccolo was doing quite well against him before Frieza decided to transform into his next stage; I guess Piccolo didn't count on that happening.
    • That was after the fusion with Nail, and he didn't count on that happening either. If it weren't for Dende messing up the wish (simply asking for him to be teleported on Namek instead of directly where they were, so he met Nail by chance), Piccolo would have probably got destroyed even by Freezer's first form.
    • Correct. Piccolo was vastly overestimating his own strength and underestimating Freeza's. But this is a common theme in DBZ and shouldn't surprise anyone.
    • I always figured it was him being a papa wolf to Gohan. He wanted to be there to try and keep him safe. And as stated above he probably underestimated Freezer
    • Nail himself is surprised at Piccolo's strength, so he did get very good on Kaiou's planet (in the span of one month or so... ah, well). But he also says something like "if you don't want to fuse with me, then go ahead and get your butt kicked by Frieza". So yes, Piccolo was definitely overestimating himself. But that isn't so strange, since he had never seen Frieza.

• Freeza's something of an expert at blowing up planets right? So what was the reason given for his botched attempt at destroying Namek?
  • As Goku himself said, Freeza was scared that he would be caught in the blast, the whole reason he left 5 minutes for it to blow up was so he could beat Goku and then escape (Since he couldn't control his 100% final form for long)
    • Actually, it was Freeza who said that. Goku retorted that Freeza really just wanted to fight the Legendary Super Saiyajin (semi-)fairly, and had held back subconsciously so that he could do that; Goku said that if Freeza still really wanted to nuke the planet right away, there was nothing Goku could do to stop him. Freeza's responding smirk, comment that it would be a race to see if it would be Freeza or the exploding planet that killed Goku first (implying that he would be fighting Goku when the planet blew up, if it came to that), and relative lack of damage from being caught with almost no power on the planet when it finally blew up, all seem to back up Goku's assessment.

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

• Since the Destructo Disc is shown to be effective on Frieza why didn't Krillin cut Frieza to bloody ribbons immediately following the solar flare instead of rushing off to get Vegeta?
  • I can't remember but I think that might have been filler, and obviously they can't kill the main villain in filler. It's still kind of bothersome though as to why Krillin never did that at all, he could have done it to Dodoria too.
    • No, Krillin cutting off Frieza's tail is in the manga. I guess the Z fighters fight way too clean to consider using that sort of tactic. Cell, on the other hand...
    • I'm thinking the Destructo Disc takes time and energy to discharge and is not that fast. Krillin only got a clean hit on Freeza (which he almost dodged) because he caught him by surprise. Any further attempts would have been suicidal, and he knew it.
    • The thing is, Kuririn follows up on the one Kienzan that cut Freeza's tail with four in a row (Freeza dodges all of them, of course). Since Kuririn can throw a Kienzan with little or no buildup time, there was no reason he couldn't have cut Freeza in half after the Taiyo Ken.
    • Do we know those ones would have harmed him. Maybe Krillin hit him with one fully powered one and then threw some incomplete ones at Freezer because Freezer would assume they could and would kill him if they connected and waste time dodging instead of attacking. Krillin has shown that he is a strategic fighter, enough of one to be considered a genius bruiser if you look up his entry on the Character Profiles.
  • Perhaps the best answer lies within Krillin's character. He's somewhat cowardly when the pressure is on too much and will not hesitate to choose flight in a fight or flight scenario. A great example of his "flight" choice kicking in is when he suggests running from the Androids later in Android saga. And he finally catches a break against Frieza by blinding him. One can hardly blame Krillin for trying to live and fight another day by getting the heck away from the entity of pure evil who is exponentially stronger than he is.
• When Popo wished for everyone killed by Frieza to be brought back to life, what happened to the Saiyans? And all the countless minions he killed out of boredom? Even if they used the "except the evil ones" clause they used in other wishes, surely at least Bardock would have been saved?
  • We have to get one fact straight here: Bardock wasn't a good guy, he wasn't a hero, he was as evil as the rest of them. What changed him slightly was the madness that came with knowing Frieza was going to kill them all. The wish itself was phrased Frieza and his henchmen on Planet Namek to be brought back from the dead meaning that the Saiyans were straight out of luck both having died on their own planet and being out the Dragon's canonical 1 year time limit. As for the random minions? Toriyama forgot about them/didn't deem them worthy enough to be included.
    • Considering how badly they manage to twist the rules it's a minor miracle that the Ginyu Force didn't get wished back. I mean if Guru dying of a broken heart qualifies him as someone Frieza killed I don't see why Frieza specifically calling you to a planet and putting you in a situation that causes you to perish doesn't count as Frieza killed you.
    • Simple: The wish is like a contract, and the Exact Words of the wish are for one group, the victims, to be resurrected by another group, those affiliated with Frieza and otherwise allied with him. Since they fall into the latter group, they cannot be wished back as they are not part of the first group.
    • This is addressed in the manga during a conversation between Kaioh-sama and Kami-sama. The Dragon Balls can only revive people who have been dead a year or less; so no Saiyajins. The dead minions were anime only. As for the Elder Namekian, Kaioh asks if it is possible to revive somebody who died of old age to which Kami answers no. Then he asks �what if his lifespan was shortened by the appearance of an evil being?�; Kami ponders for a second before answering �it is possible�.
  • Resurrecting a category of people in that manner has a one-year time limit, so no Saiyans would be brought back. (Unless Vegeta still counted as a minion of Frieza at the time he killed Nappa, which was less than a year earlier. But since Nappa clearly didn't get revived and Vegeta was already in the process of betraying Frieza when he went to Earth, we can safely rule that one out.) It's entirely possible that any of Frieza's minions that were killed by Frieza or by a higher-ranking minion in the last year would have been revived, though. And those who had been killed on Namek should have been brought back to Earth via the third wish to Porunga.
  • The dragons do not run on Literal Genie rules. They are intelligent, generally helpful, understand the intent of the user's wishes and follow them. If a wish seems pointless, they'll even warn the users beforehand. I imagine Shenron just did what he thought Popo wanted him to.
• Something came to mind when re-watching Frieza saga through DBZ Kai. Why the hell did Dende and Nail suggest to use the dragon balls to make Vegeta and Krillin/Gohan's wishes when they would never be able to summon the dragon balls in the first place when neither one of them could speak fluid Namekian at that point? Maybe that's what Guru suggested when he told Nail to go help his friends fight off the Ginyu force before turning back around, but I'm not so sure. Nail more or less knew he was sending them into a suicide mission, since Goku was still too far away to help anyone, nor did anyone think he was strong enough to take on the Ginyu force.
  • Come again? I'm not sure what you're asking. Anyway, it seems Guru was not seriously intending that the earthlings would get their wish. It was only when he realized how big a threat Freeza really was that he changed his mind and sent Dende to show them how it was done. Krillin was heading back to ask Guru the same thing, and he and Dende met halfway, on with the story.
    • I get what the first troper is saying. I myself have wondered it too, that why did they let Gohan and Krillin go use the Dragon Balls before the Ginyus arrived when they KNEW they would be impossible to use? Made even worse in the original Toonami run, when Dende claims Guru didn't think they could collect all seven... while they were on their way to do just that.

• Ok, was working on a response to an argument on the general Dragon Ball page about why Goku doesn't use Kaioken and Super Saiyan at the same time; the numbers aren't adding up. Frieza's 100% final form is given as 120million. This would of course put his 1% final form, with which he trashed Vegeta and fought evenly against Goku with, at 1.2 million. Goku is stated to have been fighting at his limit against 1% Frieza, using Kaioken x20 the whole time. Which would put his base power at 60k. Which is less than his base power when fighting Captain Ginyu. More over this raises the question of how Goku could have beaten Frieza if a Kaioken x 20 only put him at 1% of Frieza's power; Super Saiyan, which is a x50 increase, shouldn't put him anywhere near 100% Frieza.
  • 1.2 million would only put Goku just above 2nd Form frieza but he was able to block final form friezas death beams, he was around 3 million, they battled for a while and then Frieza went 50% and battered Goku with King Kai stating that even Kaioken times 10 wasn't helping so Goku increased his Kaioken to 20 times making 3 million 60 million and equaling 50% Frieza, then Spirit Bomb and then Super Saiyan which is a x50 increase to 150 million, beating Frieza's 100% 120 million. There is nothing which states Frieza was stronger, he only got in a couple of good hits and any parts where Frieza was beating goku was anime only; goku later states that he was holding back to test Frieza's power and out of fear of wrecking the planet while others were still on it, DBZ is a manga about fighting and power, Goku becomming the legendary strongest fighter in the universe wouldn't work narratively if he only won cause the real strongest in the universe got tired, he beat him because he was the main character and finally became the strongest there was.
  • It's pretty much stated both dialogue and in what we visually see that Super Saiyan Goku wasn't as strong as 100% Frieza. Goku had only two advantages in that fight 1) 100% power put extreme strain on Frieza's body. It wasn't that Goku was getting stronger that allowed him to fight evenly it was because Frieza was getting weaker - remember that 100% power wasn't a transformation; it was just Frieza straining harder and harder in order to maximize the power of his fourth form whereas Goku was using the strength granted to him by his transformation which gave him a key edge. 2) Frieza's ego and common sense. If Frieza fought like a professional; methodically analysing Goku's strategy and techniques and not letting his emotions get the better of him he wouldn't have make catastrophic mistakes such as not killing Goku when he first encountered him or by throwing two telepathically controlled Destructo Disks against an enemy who has proven on numerous occasions already that he prefers evasion over a head on fight. Goku didn't need to be stronger against a guy who is so headstrong he is willing to attack a Super Saiyan whilst missing half his body.
    • SSj Goku was always stronger than 100% Freeza. In the manga, he completely dominated Freeza. On the other hand, Freeza was barely injured in the final stage of the fight, while Goku's SSj transformation happened after his body had been brutally beaten, and then both thrashed further and mostly drained of energy by the Kaioken x20 Kamehameha. His Super Saiyan form went into the battle more fatigued than Freeza and he still utterly dominated the fight. Additionally, official battle powers put Freeza's max at 120 million, with S Sj Goku at 150 million.
  • What's with the 1% thing? It's never mentioned in the manga. As a matter of fact, Freeza clearly stated that he used roughly 50% of his power to trash Goku (he probably used a bit more to survive the Kaiohken 20x and the Spirit Bomb). SSJ Goku's power was at least close to that of 100% Freeza.
    • I can't speak for the Manga because I've never read it but in the Anime it's stated in dialogue that he starts the battle against Goku using just 1% of his power - at this point they are basically equal. He then steps it up to 50% and completely kicks Goku's ass until he murders Krillin. This leads to Goku's Super Saiyan transformation and Frieza eventually pushing himself to 100%. In the anime Goku is pretty much dominated by Frieza until the latter starts to weaken; at which point the Tyrant's fate is sealed. Chalk it up to either Adaptation Decay or Adaptation Expansion depending on your point of view - probably guess what mine is.
  • IIRC it's 2% not 1%, 2% makes more sense because it means that 500k is around .5%, "over 1 million" in the second form could be 1.2 million and exactly 1% then 1.7-1.8 ending with the final form starting at 2.4 million(2%), multiply by 50 and you have the 100% of 120 million(his canon 100%).
  • "1%" is not mentioned in the Japanese version; it's the Funimation English dub claiming 1%. As stated, 1% of 120 million is 1.2 million, which is more or less his second form. If he was going to literally use 1% of his power, there would be no reason to go beyond the second form. The purpose of his lower forms are to restrict his power, so if he were capable of restricting his power that far in his final form, the lower forms would be completely unnecessary. The only percentages mentioned that I know of for sure are ~33% (mentioned in the anime, where when Freeza is powering up to 50% he tells Goku that he hasn't even gotten to 1/3 of his power yet), 50%, 70% (in the anime, when Freeza tries to power up to 100% and is the last number he gives before getting Goku to let him finish), and 100%.
  • Another possibility could be that Frieza is lying through his teeth at that point, to cow the heroes into submission or force them into a panic. He says that it's "only 1 percent", but that may have been a total lie and he was using way more.

• This is a big one. Who the hell is Frieza selling planets to? And why? Couldn't he just take their wealth? Are they all as strong as him? Is there a whole race of Frieza's still terrorising the universe? Why would Frieza be scared of the Saiyans in comparison to that? For that matter what's he selling these planets FOR? What's worth more than what a planet and its people could produce if he enslaved them?
  • WMG, but based on King Kai's history of the Saiyans, where the Saiyans conquer a planet for another species in exchange for tech, maybe Frieza sells planets in exchange for technology that his own scientists haven't developed yet, as well as other things that Frieza probably wouldn't be able to get if they enslaved or destroyed those people. Either that, or Frieza sells planets to people that are wealthy but too strong to be worth the time and effort it would take to enslave or eradicate them. Besides, regardless of how strong he is, Frieza's just one man. As strong as he is, a sufficiently strong race all working together to kill him would probably pull it off. Fear of this happening is the reason Frieza destroyed the Saiyans, the Super Saiyan legend was only just another motivation for him to do that.
  • This may not apply to the fantastical setting of Dragonball in general (dinosaurs and demons and afterlives and all that), but it seems to me that most planets would already be lifeless. If Frieza is selling them for raw materials (the most likely scenario, it seems to me), then sending soldiers to wipe them clean of all (sentient) life a total waste of effort when the universe is full of dead rocks. The only explanation that seems at all reasonable is that there is at least one completely unseen alien species with a massive population growth problem that need a nigh-endless supply of oxygen-rich livable worlds to support their expansion. All things being equal, they sound much scarier than a pampered space prince's pursuit of immortality.
  • Maybe Frieza isn't as much of a crazy Omnicidal Maniac as he seemed, maybe he only resorts to violence and murder when it is more beneficial than diplomacy, in this case he'd lose trade if he just conquered all the people with money in the universe, he'd also be out of a job and likely have nothing to do. It's the same as why the Europeans didn't just declare war on Asia and Africa back in the day and instead opted to trade with each other for goods instead of pillaging India for spices.
  • Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that his empire is either an evil corporation-type empire, or a sort of space mafia. It's a way to maintain power, status, connections and control of commerce throughout the galaxy. Frieza's ancestor Chilled was just a space pirate when Bardock was sent into the past, so this mafia or corporation could have been how a small army of mercenaries following a powerful pirate lord grew to become a full-on galactic empire. Considering the rest of Frieza's family, control of this empire would be hereditary. They might do it out of tradition.
    • It's clear the Frieza, sadistic as he is, clearly prefers if not diplomacy a hands-off policy. If there was another race out there on par with the Saiyans or high tier Namekians were already spread to multiple planets it might have been vastly easier to be diplomatic. All evidence suggests that Frieza has less than twenty warriors of any real worth. 5 Ginyus, 1 Zarbon, 1 Dodoria, 1 Quiqui and three Saiyans. Everybody else seems to be weak enough that they would need to overwhelming numbers to even threaten Master Roshi. Attacking a space empire of Raditz level warriors would be a fairly huge undertaking, definitely requiring his top-level warriors. Frieza seems to be sufficiently lazy. The question here is unless it's just a sufficiently large slave army to compete with his brother what does Frieza want that he can't just take?
    • I believe there's a throw-away line right before Ginyu starts fighting Goku that puts the average power level of Freeza's footsoldiers at somewhere between 1000-1500.
  • Ego? Having money might feel good to him, even if there is no real use for it. Also, sadism. Freeza seems to enjoy the killing and running a business around it, so he can get ego stroking revenue, might be all the more worthwhile to him.

• Why didn't Goku stop Vegeta from killing the Ginyu Force? We know he hates killing spares any and everybody he can. At the moment he and Vegeta were nothing resembling equals at the moment. They try to sell it as Vegeta simply caught Goku of guard and there wasn't time. Really, there was no time to stop a guy so much slower than you that he can't even see you when you move full speed and who knows where you are by sensing your energy? I'd expect something a little more active than "Vegeta, no."
  • In the manga, Vegeta's kills on Burter and Recoome were instantaneous. By the time Goku reacted to what he was doing, the ki beam was already on a one way course with Recoome. Plus Vegeta had taken Senzu so he already received a Zenkai boost.
    • While the Zenkai boost is difficult to measure reliably that's still not good enough. The difference in speed between Vegeta and Burter is so great at the start of the battle that Vegeta can't even see him move. We know this because Vegeta attempted to throw the Dragonball and Burter fetches it before Vegeta knows what's happening. The difference in speed between Burter and Goku is so great that Burter can't see Goku moving. Vegeta kills them instantly from our point of view and quickly from his own but Goku could have stepped in and deflected Vegeta's shots as easily then as he did Frieza's blasts shortly afterward.
    • Vegeta at this point was actually stronger than Goku. Goku had reached a power level of 160k, but Vegeta's zenkai boost from the beating he took from Recoome put him on par with Frieza's fist form, around 500k. If that doesn't make sense with what's observed regarding Vegeta's power and reactions between his killing Burter and Recoome and his fight with Frieza, just remember that power levels are bullshit.
    • Zenkai boosts can in some cases be ludicrously large (for example when he let Krillin blast a hole in his chest and got healed by Dende, Vegeta went from barely matching Frieza's 1st form to being clearly stronger than his 3rd). It's inconsistent, but at the point Vegeta killed Burter and Recoome he was beyond any doubt stronger than Goku without the Kaioken. Which Goku didn't have activated when Vegeta blasted them.

• Why wasn't Krillin revived by the wish to restore everyone killed by Frieza and his men? Was it solely because his cause of death was being blown to fucking smithereens?
  • Nope, it's because at that point the Earth Dragon is either incapable or unwilling to revive a person more than once, though they fixed that problem later on. Krillin had been killed once already by Tamborine way back in Dragonball.

• Okay, so Freiza delays the explosion of Namek because he doesn't want it to kill him. But when it does explode, he endures it. Yeah, the guy's been bisected and suffered cranial damage, but that's due to having his attacks backfire. What was he so worried about if the damage from the initial explosion was so minimal?
  • Perhaps he just got really lucky? He could have assumed he wouldn't survive but somehow he managed to. It at least seems like he would have died shortly after if Kind Cold hadn't found him. He wasn't in any condition to get to a friendly planet or take care of his injuries.
  • Maybe its the same psychology that prevents guys who take severe health risks in sports or even commuting but can't bring themselves to brick their own skin with a needle and cringe at the sight of a solitary hornet? It is would a lot and could, in theory, kill him so Freeza subconsciously held back.

• So is Ginyu's body on Namek his original one? He has been shown to be willing to swap bodies if he feels his opponent is stronger than him. It's never said whether or not he used this ability often but it stands to reason that he got so strong by doing this repeatedly which means we don't know what Ginyu's true form is.
  • So? That seems more like inferred holocaust or fridge horror than a plot issue.
  • It's not his original form. According to the Super Saiya Densetsu strategy guide, Ginyu first switched bodies with the richest boy in his class, and in one Shonen Jump issue, it's stated there are only a few people who have seen his true form, Salza among them. What his true form actually looks like is still a mystery, though.

• Vegeta is placed in regeneration chambers twice in this saga. Why didn't his tail grow back? Unless Yajirobe's sword had some mystical property that prevents wounds from healing, Vegeta should have gotten his tail back on the first go.
  • Just a total guess, but perhaps after a certain age, tails don't grow back. Goku was in the regen tank also and his tail didn't grow back.
  • I've always thought the chambers only healed physical wounds, it couldn't regrow limbs. Think of it like the Bacta Tank from Star Wars. If we put Luke (minus his right hand) inside a Bacta Tank/regeneration chamber, it'd heal up the physical damage on his body, but the hand wouldn't grow back. Instead Luke would just have a healed stump near the wrist where the hand used to be. Same with Vegeta's tail. It was a prehensile limb he was born with, and since he lost it, it couldn't grow back.
  • Except we do see Goku and Gohan's tail regenerate, so the healing tank should be able to regrow the tail, however like the troper above stated, it seems to no longer regrow after a certain age. Of course, this theory flies out the window because Goku regenerates his tail often in Dragonball and he's older than Gohan. Gohan suddenly stops regrowing his tail post Saiyajin saga. And we never even see Goten/Trunks with tails. So the real explanation is that Akira Toriyama decided tails should stop existing.
  • Although it wasn't explained, this was acknowleged in the manga. When Vegeta first steps out of the regeneration chamber after the battle on Earth, he's told that they couldn't regenerate his tail but Vegeta simply muses that it will grow back on its own (which of course it doesn't).

• In the Saiyan saga, Bulma's scouter exploded when Goku's power level was around 20,000. But during the Frieza saga, just about everyone's power level was way above that. In fact, Ginyu said Goku's power level there was around 180,000 or so, yet none their scouters exploded due to power levels until Vegeta was fighting Frieza.So, why did Bulma's scouter explode?
  • Because that was a cheaper, older model. During the Frieza Saga, Dodoria even mentions, when his partner's scouter explodes, that he should have upgraded.
  • Also, it was a scouter that Raditz was using. He was likely given one with a lower power level tolerance because anything above 20,000 would have murdered him in a second so why bother?
  • My guess is that since the main characters can power up, the scouters record every single level they advance to, which causes memory overload. Theoretically a scouter should be able to handle Freeza's power level as long as he doesn't transform.
• What did the penguin say to the astronaut? For the love of Kami, someone tell me!
  • This oughta clear things up for you. Also, that joke is more than likely non-canon and give how canonical vs non-canonical is Serious Business...
• The scene where Vegeta explodes into Saiyan rage after finding out Gohan stole one of his dragonballs, why didn't Frieza and his men sense his power? He was all fired up ready to murder someone. Come to think of it, why didn't they hear his screaming? Vegeta was yelling off the top of his lungs. It's that famous scene where he shouts, "I'LL GET YOU!!! YOU WON'T ESCAPE MY WRATH!!!"
  • Weren't the scouter's destroyed by that point? Regardless scouters seem to have fairly limited range most of the time and Namek is a large planet. When Raditz came to Earth it took him a while to get a fix at all and when he did the first thing he spotted was Piccolo, he had to search a second time to find Goku. (And that was on a planet where Goku and Piccolo were the only 'significant' power levels.) There is certainly no reason they should have heard him. Unlike in DBZA Vegeta's screams cannot be heard all the way through time and space and anybody more than a few hundred yards from him wouldn't have anyway of hearing him.
    • What about the good guys? Didn't Gohan and Krillin have the ability to sense energy? I think I remember them freaking out whenever Vegeta kills a henchman.
    • The Good Guys could sense Vegeta and were purposely avoiding him as much as possible. They also knew he could sense power levels which was why they kept supressing their power and sprinting around the planet instead of flying which held true pretty much until Vegeta joined their team or when things were so bad that it just didn't matter any more.
• Everyone is sent back to earth during Goku's battle with Frieza. Does that mean there are 2 Piccolos and 2 Yamchas on earth? What I'm asking is, are there corpses of Yamcha and Piccolo still lying around?
  • I kind of think that someone would get around to burying the bodies in the several weeks that pass in between then.
  • Nicely lampshaded by DBZ Abridged: "Buried?"
  • No corpses were left behind. Their bodies were transported to the Heaven by Kami for them to train, just like when Goku was killed by Piccolo. On the same note, Kami had to remake Chaotzu's body.
• So when Bulma was complaining about not being able to shower, didn't the ship that she, Krilin and Gohan travel in have any built-in bathrooms and showers? Couldn't she have invented anything to take care of this dilemma?
  • Probably, but knowing Bulma, she was probably just overreacting.

• Why didn't Chi-Chi consider going to Namek along with Gohan, Krillin and Bulma if she was so worried about Gohan leaving her for two months after she didn't see him for a whole year (I know she attempted to go twice, but that was only filler so that doesn't count)?
  • Yeah, I think if it makes sense, filler can count. I mean, let's not forget what the word fiction means here... you can just say it happened in both the manga and the anime and it just wasn't seen in the former. That may be your best bet. Alternatively, Chi Chi got turned off at the idea of getting involved with aliens even if it involved watching over Gohan...but then this is Chi Chi, resident Mama Bear of DBZ, so yeah

• How can Guru be so fat if he only drinks water? Him drinking it doesn't count, that's the Abridged Series.
  • We know next to nothing about Namekian biology or history and like with the Saiyans much of what we do know conflicts with itself. It seems perfectly plausible that they still hadn't figured out that whole Namekians don't eat they only drink water after designing Guru. It would explain why they are a society of farmers. . .growing what exactly? However assuming they work in what would be the simplest explanation of their biology they drink water create energy via photosynthesis and said energy via action. Guru may simply be inactive and until they put him in that house (the one with a door smaller than he is) may have simply grown fat. He lives on a planet with no night and eats sunlight. The only dieting he can do is to go inside and close up all the windows.
  • Maybe some Namekians just keep growing and Guru was really old. Remember, King Piccolo was quite old and very big as well. Perhaps spawning minions/other Namekians increases the size of the Namekian who created them for some reason.
    • Supporting the above reason: Guru isn't just fat, he's also huge. His hand is nearly as big as Krillin's head and he looks like if he ever stood up straight he'd be about twelve feet tall.

• The dragons are explicitly incapable of affecting beings more powerful than themselves who do not wish to be affected; this is why Shenron couldn't kill Nappa and Vegeta on their way to earth, this is why Parunga couldn't teleport Goku to Earth against his will after Namek blew up. So how is it that Gohan, Piccolo, and Vegeta are surprised when they're teleported from Namek to Earth? They're all more powerful than Porunga is, and would have to give their consent to be affected by him. More over, at the moment he's transported, Vegeta doesn't apparently want to be teleported away, at least not without getting a shot in on Freeza, so it shouldn't have happened so suddenly.
  • Vegeta seeing Super Saiyan Goku and trying to attack Frieza was an anime-only scene. In the manga, he got teleported to Earth before he had a chance to object.

• When Kami wished for those killed by Frieza and his forces back to life, how come Krillin wasn't automatically brought back? Don't multi-resurrection wishes make exceptions for those who died more than once?
  • No, what would have even given you that impression?

• Why didn't the scientist and soldiers on Planet Frieza 79 lock Vegeta up? Frieza makes a lot of mistakes, but this one takes the cake. Frieza has a guy who is just as evil and power hungry as him. This guy makes it no secret that he wants to kill Frieza. Vegeta shows up on his planet, bloody and weakened. Does Frieza tell his men to hold him? Nope! The scientist heals Vegeta, and gives him his scouter before taking off to Namek. Wouldn't you inform your men at your base about his betrayal, and order them to hold him until you return? Vegeta was weak and helpless, so he wouldn't have been a problem for the soldiers.
  • Did they even know of Vegeta's treason at this point? They saw a Saiyan badly injured and helped him. I doubt Vegeta's that dumb enough to go "Muw aha ha ha ha ha, off to kill Frieza!!"
  • Yes, Frieza knew of Vegeta's plan. It's just that he didn't consider him a threat (and considering that, even with the Zenkai making him stronger, Vegeta still couldn't match Zarbon's full power, let alone the Ginyu Force or Frieza himself), and, as recently discovered, having a Saiyan immune to the Galactic Patrol's bioweapon was quite useful, so he was willing to forgive. It was until Vegeta came to Namek that Frieza decided it was unforgivable.

• What if the good guys never traveled to Planet Namek? Since you need to speak Namekian for the dragon balls to work, does that mean Frieza would have been screwed, having no choice but to go back to running his business? The Nameks would rather die than let a tyrant rule the universe. Of course, you would have a dangerous villain running around, but what are the odds he and his soldiers would visit earth? I don't think earth is a popular planet in the DB Zverse.
  • Piccolo, Tien, Yamcha and Chaiotzu never get revived. The Earth dragonballs are never restored. Frieza would've conquered Namek and called it Frieza Planet 666. Then the androids attack and kill everyone, even Goku assuming he doesn't die of the virus first. Because Vegeta and Bulma never meet, Trunks is never born. The end result is that everyone's dead and Earth becomes a giant playground for the Androids (and later Cell). In short, The Bad Guys Win.
    • Dr. Gero used the data and DNA of the combatants on Namek to upgrade his Androids. If the Z-Fighters never went to Namek, then Gero wouldn't have been able to produce such powerful fighters. Trunks wouldn't come back in time because the Androids wouldn't be super powerful enough to destroy the future so Goku would die of the heart virus, but without the intense training the Sayians underwent in order to fight Cell they wouldn't have had enough Ki for Babidi to revive Buu with... and Frieza would have been defeated by the Galactic Patrol at some point due to their bioweapon. tl;dr, everything would have worked out fine either way.
    • This is blatantly incorrect. First Gero did not get data or DNA from Namek. That's why he was unaware of Goku's transformation. He got Frieza and King Kold's DNA from when they visited Earth. And thank Kami for that, Cell can survive the vacuum of space so, presumably, he doesn't need to breathe. If he had Guldo's Time Stop ability he'd be absolutely unstoppable. With Goku dead, Vegeta not on Earth and no warning that leads to the Z-Fighters training even 19 and Gero would probably be more than sufficient to take out the Z-Fighters. Frieza may or may not be eventually stopped but our heroes would neither no nor care about the galactic tyrant in this timeline.

• Ignoring that Guru is a bit of a prick for not giving them Dende and/or Nail right off the bat as a last-ditch effort to save his race (again) why didn't he unlock Vegeta's potential? Given how in Dragonball relatively small differences in power levels are the difference between an utter curb stomp and a damn good fight Vegeta wasn't THAT much weaker than Recoome. If he got so much as a full zenkai out of it he would have been stronger than Jeice.
  • Vegeta just murdered a village of his people. I doubt that Guru would be willing to help. Frieza lampshades the Namakian Honor Before Reason Trope several times. Besides that, Nail was much stronger than the Ginyu Force goons anyways and Guru sent him to deal with them as well. It just so happens that Nail got a premonition that caused him to return to Ginyu. At that point, Guru was shit out of luck in every respect. In Kai, Guru lampshades his lack of forethought by saying age has dulled his wits. He was less than a day from death at that point recall and his people were just slaughter in less than a week or so after hundreds of years of slow recovery. The man was a little stressed out and not thinking clearly.
  • It's possible that Vegeta didn't have any power to unlock. There is an ongoing theme in Dragonball that Gohan is quite a bit more powerful than he is capable of tapping into. Examples include vs Raditz where he briefly powers up to over 1000. Vs Final Form Frieza when he thinks Goku has been killed. While Goku is fighting Cell and he thinks Goku is holding back. Vegeta by contrast is probably actually performing at 100% all the time. The same goes for Nail.

• Why did Frieza's destructo disc return? Unless both he and Cell were dancing because they thought it was fun that move requires conscious control rather than locking on to a target and chasing them indefinitely. The moment Frieza stopped focusing on it it should have continued in a straight line until it hit something strong enough to stop it.
  • Maybe it was on a return course when he stopped focusing on it and forgot.
  • Watching this scene in the anime, it seems like what happened was this: Frieza tracks Goku around with the Destructo Disks; Goku tries to blind Frieza with the dust cloud of one of his ki blasts and Frieza jumps into the air to dodge (with the Destructo Disks flying off into the distance behind him); He and Goku engage in a brief air battle and Goku slams Frieza back down to the ground again; Frieza tries to use the one of the disks on Goku, who is right in front of him, but forgets that the disks were directly behind and now he's in the disk's return path; Since Frieza can't sense energy (apparently not even his own) the disk cuts him in half.

• Could Krillin have killed Frieza? It's mentioned in several places that he's not too strong to Destructo Disc. What is often ignored in that context is that Frieza was once cut in half and on a planet that exploded and the result was they found him alive either unconscious or in a coma but alive. So if Krillin (or Vegeta he used a Destructo Disc on Oozaru Gohan) snuck up and decapitated Frieza would that kill him? Or would it result in a pissed off head flying around shooting eye beams at you?
  • We only see Frieza's tail sliced off by a Kienzan. We also see tails snipped off by much weaker creatures/moves (Puar and Yajirobe to Goku and Vegeta, respectively). Maybe with Krillin's power level, he had just enough to slice off Freiza's 2nd transformation tail and unable to slice his body apart. The only other time we see Kienzan (from Krillin) hit a target is Nappa's cheek. It's more-or-less a informed attribute that the Kienzan could slice a target several magnitudes of power stronger than the user in half. It's possible even Nappa wouldn't have sustained a lethal blow (although perhaps a crippling one seeing as it broke skin) and equally if it had hit Frieza's torso it might've done little more than slightly wound Frieza.
  • I'm pretty sure that in canon there's never been an example of the Kienzan hitting something and failing to cut it. (The scene where Perfect Cell tanks one is anime-only.) So it's not a matter of Frieza lacking sufficient power to be immune to it, it's a matter of him lacking the regenerative power to recover from being sliced in half. That said, Frieza doesn't actually die from being cut in half, and he might well still be strong enough to handle a human like Krillin then drag his lower half to a healing tank.

• So we know that Frieza's transformations basically work in reverse to what we're accustomed to, and he'd by choice in his weakest form in order to control his power. That can be accepted, but it leaves us with the question of just why he gets bigger in his second and third forms? How does getting weaker make him bigger?
  • Size in the DBZ universe is almost entirely divorced from actual power so it just does.
  • I always figured that each form outside of his true form was a focus and not a true version of power suppression, as each form outside his final form seemed to be attuned to each "stat" his first form, while "weak" for Frieza seemed to be quite fast, his second form channeled his power into his physical strength "stat" making him look a muscular version of the first form, his third form channeled more into Ki control (he seems to use more Ki blasts when using it), and his final form is just his power condensing into one optimized form, the issue was that everyone who encountered Frieza until Goku was too weak to actually notice that much of a difference between forms until final.

• I know that this is filler and therefore is considered by many to be non-canon but does anyone remember the Fake Namek mini-arc from the anime? Near the end, it is revealed that Raiti and Zaacro read Bulma's mind and discovered about their journey to Namek, so they set up an illusion to stall them while they fixed the Z-Fighters' ship so they could steal it. However, why did the Z-Fighters see Fake Namek as the real Namek in the first place? It seems that Raiti and Zaacro didn't set up the illusion until after the Z-Fighters crash-landed.

• Vegeta's gambit paid off and he received a huge zenkai that awed the heroes but left final form Frieza completely unimpressed. How did he know Vegeta would be no match for him even though he had no scouter and couldn't sense ki?
  • He probably didn't know exactly how strong Vegeta had become and was just being arrogant. The possibility that a Saiyan could surpass him doesn't really seem to have occurred to Frieza, even when Goku goes Super Saiyan, he does not initially regard him as a serious threat. He just happened to be correct in Vegeta's case.

• Before Bulma, Krillin, and Gohan end up inside the Mirror Ship, they get attacked by a bunch of starfighters. Starfighters that belong to whom, exactly? Did they belong to the kids aboard the Mirror Ship? They didn't seem to have any other spacecraft aboard, nor anyone qualified to fly a starfighter on their own, nor do they ever mention the starfighters getting blown up by the Namekian spacecraft. Did they belong to Frieza's men? Or did both the Namekian craft and the Mirror Ship just happen to both pass through a star system occupied by an unidentified hostile alien race?

• On the journey to Planet Namek, Bulma was in her underwear on the spaceship. Why would she walk around in shirt and undies in front of a 8 year old child and a guy? I still find it weird to this day. I get she and Goku were childhood friends, but Krillin was shown to have an attraction to her back in Dragon Ball.
  • You answered the first point on your own, Gohan was 8, and probably didn't care, remember in the Cell saga Gohan takes a bath with his father when he was 10/11, and found nothing weird about it, and Bulma probably knew that while Krillin was attracted to her, he wouldn't try anything as at that point she was still kind of with Yamcha, it's also a cultural thing, in japan, as far as I'm aware, taking baths and hanging around in almost nothing around friends and family is not as big of a deal as it is in western culture, they treat it as more of a bonding experience than anything else, as a way of deepening relationships and trust, rather than any sexual reason.

• If Guru knew he was dying soon, why hadn't he already made arrangements for a new Elder so Namek would still have Dragon Balls?
  • Maybe he had. Freeza and his men kill literally all the other Namekians before Guru dies anyway.

• A minor issue, after all the Namekians killed by Frieza and his henchmen were brought back to life and transported to Earth the Namekians are confused when their fellows from one village are not among them. Vegeta explains that the wish did not include those killed by himself. Only theirs one problem with that. At least one Namekian from the village Vegeta attacked was not killed by Vegeta. The lone Namekian was badly injured, but he was discovered and quickly killed by a henchmen of Frieza's who looked similar to Appule. So, shouldn't that one Namekian have been revived by Shenron?
  • This does not happen in the manga, it's likely just anime filler. So, it wasn't considered to have happened.
  • That would make sense in hindsight, considering Frieza killed that very same man. And Shenron didn't revive him either.

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