Nightmare Fuel / Dragon Ball Z

Talk about a Cruel and Unusual Death.

As the Darker and Edgier Sequel Series of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z has some of the vilest villains in anime, and that's not even getting into the traumatic past of Trunks, the excessive violence, or even some traits of the good guys. This may be a series where Death Is Cheap, but that doesn't diminish how scary it can get.

For Nightmare Fuel in the original series, go here, for the Abridged Series, go here, and for the sequel series, go here.

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Violence

• Much of the Family Unfriendly Deaths/Cruel and Unusual Deaths in general are rather uncomfortable to experience, such as the picture above, of Dr. Gero killing an ordinary human just because he bothered him.
• Recoome brutally beating Gohan bloody is incredibly difficult and painful to watch. Seeing other main characters getting thrashed around and getting back up for more despite the odds being against them is usually awesome; not so much when it's a little kid who only has a minuscule amount of combat experience under his belt.
  • Recoome's sinister laughter as he breaks Gohan's neck, complete with him spurting blood from his mouth and twitching as he lies dying on the ground, truly sends shivers down one's spine. Even Vegeta looked genuinely horrified by it!
  • In the anime, the moment Gohan's neck gets snapped, the scene shifts to Chi-Chi on Earth who knows something went wrong through motherly intuition but doesn't know what happened and proceeds to weep in despair at the fate of her five-year-old son. Any reason why the poor woman is against her boy being involved in fights against genocidal aliens?
    • Speaking of Recoome himself, he horrifically deconstructs the concept of durability that heroes are known for, managing to keep going even after his armor is broken, most of his hair singed off, and a lot of his teeth blasted out of his mouth. Two notable instances are when he seemingly is knocked out for the count on the ground only to swiftly get up in an eerily graceful way and even disturbingly when he gets head-butted in the gut by Vegeta with a shocked expression of pain- only for it to immediately shift into a mocking expression to show how little it affected him. This further demonstrates that Recoome is not an Earth-bound human; only an extremely durable alien that has the appearance of a human.
• The unusual amount of focus given to Android 18 shattering Vegeta's arm with a single kick. Never mind that broken limbs are often Real Life Nightmare Fuel in and of themselves. It was the fact that Trunks and everyone up on the hill realizes how screwed Vegeta is right on impact. Or the scream Vegeta lets out right as his arm goes limp. By this point, Vegeta pretty much established himself as a guy that can not only take a pounding but talk crap the entire way. To hear Vegeta scream out in pain to that degree is hair-raising (no pun intended) because it's something Vegeta just doesn't do.
  • For the lulz, 18 dislocates Vegeta's other arm a few minutes later.
• The disturbingly creepy look that Vegeta gave to Gohan back on Namek.
  • Doesn't help that he hits Gohan in the most painful way possible soon after, then makes the threat that once he's done, he plans to destroy Earth.
• Goku's heart virus. At one point, he states that it feels like he's dying. Remember, this is coming from a man who has not only had a literal death experience, but when he died, it was from having his entire abdomen blasted out. That should give you a clue as to how painful the virus is, and to a Super Saiyan no less.
  • Jaco the Galactic Patrolman managed to make this one even scarier in hindsight. He explains that the Galactic Patrol has Extinction Bombs, devices that release a virus that quickly drives an entire race into extinction, but they never managed to create one that worked for the Saiyan. A Saiyan's immune system can deal with the mightiest bioweapons of a galaxy-spanning civilization...but not with that.
  • There is anime filler where Goku has a nightmare as he's suffering from the heart virus. He's able to fight Androids 19 and 20, but he is then assaulted by an unidentified ghost-like figure, with only red eyes on its face. Goku is alarmed, claiming he's never seen anyone or anything quite like it before. As he says this the figure gives a wide grin and opens a mouth full of large fangs. If this was meant to be a personification of the heart virus, then it underscores just how it was so different from, yet no less deadly than every other struggle Goku faced before (and even more so when you consider everything written above).
• Aside from being blown up or vaporized by energy blasts, Akira Toriyama seems to like large chest wounds as indicators of fatal/ near-fatal injuries. Happens to Goku (literally in the second episode), Vegeta, Piccolo, Yamcha, and Future Trunks at different points, among others. During Super Buu's infamous Human Extinction attack, the ENTIRE POPULATION OF EARTH save a handful, and gets a terminal case of hole-through-torso, including (although not shown on screen) all the kids.

Saiyans

• One detail that gets more terrifying as each succeeding story arc raises the stakes is when Raditz scans a farmer and sees his power reading ranks at a measly level 5. Keep in mind farming is a very physically demanding job - which this farmer had likely been doing his entire life - and that farming was part of Goku and Krillin's training regime, which pushed even these two past their physical limits. For context? Raditz's power level in comparison is anywhere from 1,200 to 1,600. An average human farmer doesn’t even measure up to 1% of THE WEAKEST of these invaders!
• When it was still the latest chapter, the reveal that Goku was an alien was quite the shocker, but what's horrifying is how strong Raditz, Goku's older brother seemed at that time. He had no problem dealing with both him and Piccolo at once. Goku was now knowing what it was like for the first time to feel utterly hopeless. For extra damage, he then tells both that the two other Saiyans are FAR stronger than he is. Let that sink in for a bit.
  • For Goku's friends, the idea that there is someone even stronger than Goku running around out there and that Goku himself was sent to wipe out humanity. Keep in mind that as a young child, Goku destroyed an entire army by himself and was close to the invincible outside of a few named martial artists. He also single-handedly killed what was Satan of the Dragon World. To them, the very idea that Goku could have been their enemy must have been terrifying.
  • Jaco the Galactic Patrolman reveals that Bulma had long known about the Saiyans, even if she didn't know what they looked like... And all of sudden, one of the monsters shows up, smacks her best friend around, and reveals that said best friend is another Saiyan.
• In a filler episode, the human Z-fighters are sent to a special room to prepare for the Saiyans. While there, they are all defeated with little to no effort and are given some brutal off-screen and on-screen deaths (which acts as an unnerving foreshadowing of what will happen to them). But what made it scary was how Kami confirmed that they did well considering how strong Saiyans are known to be and that Vegeta and Nappa are far stronger than the illusion Saiyans that the human Z-fighters had to take on.
• Nappa. For those used to how he is in the abridged series, you'll be given an ugly reminder that he's every bit as sadistic and serious as Vegeta in canon. None of the scenes that were played for laughs in the abridged series are done so here. (Beware the Silly Ones, though.)
  • How about when he punches Tien's left arm CLEAN OFF? The scream thrown in great pain was more than adequate and Vegeta laughed about how fragile humans are.
  • It goes From Bad to Worse when Chiaotzu tries to do a suicide bombing on him and it not only fails, it doesn't even scratch the brute!
  • There's some scary foreshadowing in-universe for Piccolo, Krillin, and Gohan when they see Nappa being terrified when Vegeta yells at him for attempting to disobey his order to stall the fight for three hours. Piccolo comes to the correct conclusion that the one tearing them apart with ease was the weaker one.
    Vegeta: NAPPA! DO YOU WANT TO DEFY ME?!
• Vegeta himself, for that matter. When he becomes Oozaru to stomp Goku, he does a damn good job of it. Made worse that unlike Goku and Gohan when they became Oozaru, he retained his consciousness, amplifying the already scary transformation. He then goes on to squeeze Goku with his bare hands in cold blood, which is especially terrifying.
• Bardock and his team. From what little we see of them, they are True Companions, the kind of guys who you would want as your friends and protectors... And they conquer planets and wipe out the inhabitants.
• The very existence of the Saiyans. They're genocidal monsters with enough strength to murder an entire planet in weeks or months, assuming they don't just blow it up. They only love fighting, and with the full moon, they become giant apes that have ten times their normal strength. They have an enormous appetite, and will gladly feast on fallen enemies to sate it. They grow stronger the more they fight and if they ever get beaten and survive, they'll just come back even stronger. When they invade planets inhabited by weak and technologically primitive people, they send their children, who have a long childhood during which they look cute and can train without being disturbed until they have a sudden growth spurt and obtain a body perfect for fighting, at which point, they turn on the locals and wipe them out. At their full potential, the power of Saiyans greatly surpasses even the Kais! The galactic government has tried to deal with them with their Extinction Bombs, bioweapons capable of killing off an entire species, but found they were immune to any virus they could create and has taken to sending their agents to planets targeted by Saiyan to either kill the children before they can grow and murder the locals or use an Extinction Bomb on the locals so they would at least die quickly and with much less terror. No wonder even Frieza ultimately grew scared and decided to destroy them.
  • Extra-Nightmare Fuel for the galactic government, they were so willing to commit mass genocide that they invented and used dozens of civilization-ending WMDs on the Saiyans. Even if the Saiyans deserve it, that's still horrific.
  • Let us never forget the fact that, had it not been for one childhood head injury, Goku would've done all of this to Earth.
• Vegeta's anger when he discovers that Gohan tricked him and swiped the last remaining Namekian Dragon Ball as he takes off in pursuit with murder in his eyes over being deceived.
  • Especially in The Ocean Dub, where Never Say "Die" does nothing to undermine Brian Drummond's chilling delivery of this line:
    Vegeta: I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS!!! YOU WON'T ESCAPE... MY WRATH!! I'LL GET YOU! YOU'RE ALL MINE!!!
  • Plus now that he's able to sense power levels, Gohan and Krillin realize that the advantage that they had on Earth of hiding their ki is gone as he can pinpoint where they are at as he gives chase. Krillin can only tell Gohan to head to Guru's and get his power unlocked as he can only desperately try to hold him off.

Frieza

• Akira Toriyama himself has stated that Frieza was inspired by his worst nightmares. And this is all clearly evident in many of the character's transformations and actions in the series. And for a bonus, Frieza is voiced by Ryūsei Nakao, who went on to voice Mayuri Kurotsuchi.
  • Frieza's transformations are in a category of his own. His first transformation into his 2nd form is Body Horror at its finest, first, his chest and arms enlarge giving the appearance of an upper torso way too big for Frieza's small frame until his legs bulk out starting from the thighs to his ankles, also his horns turn upwards to resemble a more demonic look as seen through a shadow, then we see from his point of view of Vegeta gradually getting smaller, then stretching out his neck, a pink aura surrounds him as his facial features become more adult and his shoulder pads enlarge. The sheer weight of the form causes him to fall to his knees as power is straining his being. In the anime, he then stands up and turns around to show his satanic-alien new form, while in the manga, he gives a Slasher Smile knowing that the heroes are now screwed. Everyone including Vegeta is scared of this new form which is completely justified as Frieza goes to impale Krillin with his horns and prolongs it with sadistic pleasure.
  • The next transformation, while not as graphic, is even more horrific; Frieza extends his shoulder guards and grows spikes on his back, his face stretches out and then contorts into a malformed beak while his head elongates. This leads into a creepy Xenomorph Xerox-like form that acts far more insane than before as he rapidly barrages Piccolo helplessly before Gohan's sudden power boost forced him to quickly/thankfully transition to his next form.
    • It doesn't help that in the original dub, the third form initially had a voice filter that made him feel appropriately alien.
  • Arguably the worst part about Frieza is that he doesn't just kill you; he wants you to die terrified. Probably the best example is in Dragon Ball Z Kai after he kills Dende and then Flash Steps right behind the heroes, and says this priceless bit of dialogue, all while this music is playing in the background.
  Frieza: *after blasting a (at most) ten-year-old child into a smoldering corpse* "I promised you, didn't I? To show you a nightmare beyond the horrors of Hell? But it seems the little one won't be joining us. Such a shame, don't you think? When you see him in the next world, I suppose you'll have to tell him what he missed."
  • Not only that, he killed Dende so fast that none of the heroes even knew it happened until they saw the explosion behind them. To them, Frieza just pointed his finger and something blew up, only to discover it was one of their comrades. Frieza is so fast that he can pull a "You Are Already Dead" on you.
  • Another example is when he impales Krillin on his horn, and bucks him up and down as blood spatters around.
  Frieza: Stay with it. Yee-haw! That's it, buck-a-roo. Ride 'em, cowboy!
  • Of course, Kai makes this part scarier and also ends up referring to Fist of the North Star while doing so.
  "And the spark goes out. Don't bother trying to save him. You can't; he's already dead."
  • King Kai lamenting about Vegeta's fate after his last attack utterly failed to do anything against Frieza. Vegeta is so terrified and broken that he can only float there and cry as he awaits his painful end. After all his boasting, all his scheming, and all the close calls, Vegeta and King Kai knew this was his final moment.
    King Kai: Even he knows that his fate lies in the hands of the icy tyrant. All things come around and Vegeta's treachery is about to be paid back.
    • The Kai dub manages to make King Kai's monologue even more ominous, as well as a bit of a Tear Jerker.
      King Kai: Poor Vegeta. At last, he understands the true nature of the monster he faces. For the first time, he's genuinely trembling. All of the fear and frustration he must be feeling. I can only imagine. His eyes don't lie, those tears are real. This is the first time the proud Saiyan prince has ever known what it is to feel helpless.
  • What is especially disturbing is that Frieza was not created to be evil like Cell and Majin Buu. He commits xenocide regularly because it is simply cheaper than buying the planet before he sells it off to someone else. This guy is one of the evilest and most terrifying figures in the Dragon Ball universe and his M.O is the galactic equivalent of a real estate scam!
  • And of course, the line in the Z dub after he kills Krillin, Frieza tells a joke which should be so bad it's funny but it goes right past that and makes Frieza seem as evil as possible.
    Frieza: Pop goes the weasel.
    • Get to the uncensored version, and you see Krillin's chest expand right before he explodes. OH MY GOD...
    • As for Kai (and the original Japanese), there is no joking, but a threat on who's next to die.
      Frieza: I think the brat should go next.
  • And of course, there's the sheer power Frieza wields. The Saiyans and the Ginyu Force were all intimidatingly strong, but Frieza is this close to being an evil Physical God. When Goku shows up to fight Nappa or the Ginyu Force, we know everything will be okay, but after he shows up to fight Frieza, and seems to be winning for a while, Frieza states that if he uses half of his full power, he can finish Goku. Okay, this is all trash talk we've heard before, but then Goku realizes, with a look of genuine fear, that Frieza isn't bluffing. The alien tyrant then gives him a savage No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, stopping only to say:
  Frieza: "Never mind half max power; I'm not even using one-third of it."
  • Goku tries to turn things around with the Kaioken x 10, greater than anything we've seen before... and it doesn't even slow Frieza down. That's the moment where the viewer realizes just how bad things are for the heroes. And after that, he does a Kaioken x 20, smacks Frieza around a little, and then fires a Kamehameha at fairly close range. Then the smoke clears, and Frieza's injuries amount to nothing more than a second-degree burn on his palm. It's at that point that Goku realizes that Frieza isn't bluffing about being at half power.
    • Also keep in mind that pretty much every opponent after Frieza was either augmented or artificially developed, either by science or magic. Until his defeat by Goku, he was the strongest person in creation.
  • Vegeta, who was terrified of Frieza's previous forms decides he has to put himself near death and get Dende to heal him just to even stand up to the bastard. Vegeta becomes so confident of the new power that he convinces himself he's reached Super Saiyan status, but his confidence quickly evaporates when he realizes that the power boost still wasn't enough and that Frieza had been toying with him throughout the fight. Even his Desperation Attack, which Piccolo stated would've destroyed the planet if it hit, was casually deflected by Frieza. The realization that 1) he's not a Super Saiyan and 2) He will be mercilessly killed by his former master makes the proud Vegeta shed tears, and resign himself to his fate. That's how terrifying Frieza was.
    Frieza: Are you done? Then I'll reciprocate... gently.
    • Cue Frieza torturing Vegeta in the most horrific manner possible. And those damn screams of pain Vegeta lets out as he's getting tortured. Even the part when the villain grabs Vegeta By the Hair (only shown in the preview of the next episode of Z, just not in the next episode itself; but then shown to its full extent in the uncut version of Kai) is VERY disturbing, to say the least.
    • And to add Nausea Fuel to Nightmare Fuel, as Vegeta's blood is spattering everywhere, Frieza licks some of Vegeta's blood off his face. The look of cruel amusement on his face makes the whole scene even creepier.
    • What makes the context even scarier, is that Vegeta was technically raised by Frieza after the latter destroyed Planet Vegeta to be his latest top subordinate. It makes it look like Vegeta was a scared child trying to stand up to his heinous father figure, only to be humiliated physically and verbally for even trying.
    • Worse, Piccolo, Gohan, and Krillin can only stand there and watch. They are utterly powerless to help Vegeta and can only watch as he's being beaten to death before their eyes. Frieza even mockingly says that they can jump in at any time. Even if Vegeta has been a dick towards them, none of them could stomach what they were seeing. This goes double for Piccolo, who was once the Demon King who caused his fair share of Cruel and Unusual Death(s).
    • Even more horrifying is the way Frieza is about to perform a seeming Coup de Grâce on Vegeta by slashing his throat with his sharp fingernails! And this is only after he grabs Vegeta in front of Goku's friends and asks them if they can jump in at the last second. (The Kai version might have amped up the suspense with a Heartbeat Soundtrack that is speeding up to its intensity.) It's a good thing that the healed Goku jumps in at the last second as Frieza has described, even though everyone knows that Vegeta is about to die anyway.
    • And just when you thought Frieza's intent of killing Vegeta is thwarted, the Saiyan Prince somehow triggers the villain's Berserk Button by describing Goku's power as a Super Saiyan. This time, however, the villain succeeds by shooting a death laser into Vegeta's heart, resulting in an almost instantaneous death! Just watching Frieza finish him off with a true Coup de Grâce is pretty unsettling... and also heartbreaking.
    • Moments before he decides to smack around Vegeta during their fight in the anime, and just before the latter's Desperation Attack: Frieza makes it a point to demonstrate how he outclasses Vegeta when the latter goes ballistic and starts firing a cluster of huge ki waves at him. Frieza simply dodges them before they detonate, and at one point, moved so fast that he appeared in front of Piccolo, Gohan, and Krillin watching on the sidelines, and deviously smirked at them. He only did it out of pure intimidation and amusement, and the fact Vegeta's attacks were covering the air with smoke, and darkening the sky made the whole thing creepier◊. Needless to say, Piccolo was scared shitless, either out of the risk of being blown to bits by Vegeta or whatever he thought Frieza had in store, quickly grabbed Gohan and Krillin and high-tailed its way out of the expanding battlefield.
    • Adding to that, Vegeta is urging Krillin to blast him at full strength to injure him. Krillin closes his eyes, turns around, and complies, resulting in a Torso with a View. Vegeta just laughs. The music does not help.
    • Then Vegeta crawls to Dende, and as him to heal him. Dende refuses, reminding Vegeta while not as much as Frieza, Vegeta did kill many of his people too. Dende finally relents, but for that few moments, it was very unsettling.
  • There's also the fact that Frieza's forms were specifically designed to look like monsters from the author's childhood nightmares. Frieza's 4th form is pretty freaky when he first transforms into it, mostly because of how his chalk-white skin combined with it being his most humanoid form makes him look ghostly and eerie human-like. Of course, it doesn't hurt that his first order of business is to blast Dende.
  • When Frieza shows up after the Grand Elder dies rendering the Dragon Balls useless. Frieza stands in complete silence for several seconds before smiling.
    Frieza: "It'll be quick. You needn't worry... death is my specialty."
  • The pure look of utter terror on Vegeta's face sells this scene. It tells you beyond a doubt that the heroes are screwed and are in for a painful death. The Scare Chord and the scene turning red and black also helped.
  • Frieza floating in space with a chunk of his face, an arm, and his lower half missing is pretty disturbing. Surprisingly, the Nicktoons broadcast of Dragon Ball Kai only edits this for blood, and nothing◊ else◊.
    • An in-universe example is when Frieza's being healed. Look at the faces of the medics; you can't tell if they're concerned for Frieza or terrified wondering what the hell did that to him. All they know is that someone took on Frieza at full power and their boss got cut in half.
    • Not only that, but as soon as they are done healing Frieza, they all jump back. They know Frieza well enough that they are genuinely terrified of him lashing out and being an Ungrateful Bastard. Hell, just imagine if they accidentally hurt Frieza during the treatment. Imagine treating someone like that. Some people throw a punch or lash out because of how confused they are during treatment. If Frieza had done that, the poor medic would have been splattered across the walls. The medics likely did everything they could to keep him sedated as much for their sakes as his own.
  • His actions, by themselves, are very disturbing. His attitude, however? When he's not angry at you, he's rather polite.
  • After being ineffectually beaten up by Gohan, he gets up, very effectively beats up Gohan, and then begins to slowly crush his skull. Judging by Gohan's screams of agony, it's excruciatingly painful, and Frieza is laughing. Gohan is 5.
    • Even worse, while this is going on, Goku is in a healing tank. Since he can sense ki, he is fully aware that not only is his son in horrible agony but that his energy is rapidly dwindling and he will die if something isn't done fast. His son is being tortured to death, and Goku is absolutely helpless to stop it.
    • Speaking of Gohan, in the anime, Gohan has a dream about Goku finally returning home. However, when Gohan follows Goku outside, the dream turns into a nightmare when Goku morphs into Frieza and mocks Gohan about Goku's supposed death. The Nightmare Fuel part? This shows that Frieza's sadistic assault on Gohan left him traumatized.
  • On a related note, Goku, just as Frieza is drowning him in the ocean, has a terrifying vision where Krillin is lying on the ground dead (in a manner that's eerily similar to how he was found dead in Dragon Ball), with it then cutting to a decimated planet Earth, while Goku hears his friends frantically calling his name for help (with Chi-Chi even letting out a bone-chilling scream). The vision ends with the Earth blowing up, which shocks Goku back into his fighting state. He knows well that he is the last person standing between Frieza and everyone and everything that Goku has ever loved.
• The unique attack Frieza used to kill Krillin. It involves shooting a benign (at first glance) energy ball about the size of a pinprick into an enemy's chest cavity and then expanding it whilst still inside them. Never mind the implications of your body being invaded by anything against your will, but consider that Frieza’s energy was probably burning away at his insides. And you can see Krillin's chest heave unnaturally right before he explodes. At least, some of Frieza’s other victims got a much quicker death... of them.
  • On that note, anyone who was unfortunate enough to be on a planet at the moment of its explosion.
• At the time of being the ultimate powerful figure within the entire DBZ Universe, Frieza proved that he can go beyond his power ability. During the epic showdown between Goku, Frieza wanted to up the ante by going 100% Full Power. Just like the previous transformation sequences, it is brutal, cold, and downright terrifying. His muscles enlarge to giant proportions, veins throbbing wildly and uncontrollably and he screams into his ascended state made things even worse for Goku for a while. The whole scenario shows just how much he's willing to go to take down Goku and flee Namek who at that point was a ticking time bomb ready to explode at any given minute.
• Frieza destroying Planet Vegeta. Not just simply the planet's demise itself, but how he acts throughout. Frieza flies out of his ship, completely emotionless and unresponsive to Bardock confronting him. He just slowly raises his finger while glaring at him, charging a death ball no bigger than the tip of his finger while the lone Saiyan is verbally spitting in his face. When Bardock throws an energy blast at him, Frieza finally breaks his composure and starts Laughing Mad, expanding the death ball to the point where Bardock’s attack is engulfed in it. Then he throws it at Bardock, his army who just happened to be in the same path, and the planet Vegeta, where we get to see flames erupting from beneath the populace as Vegeta is disintegrated. Frieza's still laughing at all of this. Even Zarbon and Dodoria are deeply disturbed by the sight...
  • Emotionless? As he watches Bardock on a monitor rush through his whole army to get to him, Frieza first calmly requests opening the hatch, prompting a very disturbed "Wait, what?" reaction. Zarbon tries arguing the point, and then... Frieza lets his arm lower by his sides. This simple, wordless gesture prompts Zarbon to gasp, and run out of the room to execute the orders, screaming "Yes, Sir!" And THEN you get a closeup of Frieza's face where pure, unadulterated hatred is displayed. Bardock is but a bug to crush under his heel, but Frieza will clearly NOT tolerate rebellion or any form of opposition, and deep down, you can sense his actual FEAR towards Saiyans.
• Think about the power levels in this saga; after some months of training, Goku is at 180,000 and trashes the Ginyu force, with Ginyu standing at the max power level of 120,000. Is Frieza at max power? 120 FUCKING MILLION. Frieza at his strongest is a thousand times stronger than his most powerful henchman. How the hell is someone that powerful anyway? Answer; he was just born that way. Makes you wonder why the universe chooses to give that much power to someone born into an evil family.
  • It isn't enough to say how his strongest form puts him above everyone else. Frieza, in his weakest form, is already at least 4 times stronger than Ginyu. At his weakest, he was considered the strongest and most feared being in the universe. Not even his men had any idea that he was even stronger than that, or just how much stronger he was. If one does the math, Frieza is all of this to the universe when he's not even using 1% of his power, or even half of that. Later events in Dragon Ball Super in Resurrection of F, and Universe Survival Arc makes the '100% power' an utterly minuscule fraction of his true possible ability.
• All of this becomes far worse in hindsight with Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' and its adaptation in the second arc of Dragon Ball Super, as they reveal that Frieza had never trained a single day in his life. Everyone else, save for Majin Buu, was an artificial creature or had trained hard to become so strong, but he was just born with that strength, and could become much stronger with training. If he had dropped his self-sure personality for even a week, even a Super Saiyan might not have been enough to defeat him the first time.
  • This extends to Frieza's genetic relative Cell, by the way. Cell's instinct is to absorb things to get stronger, but once he reaches what he believes to be perfection, he stops trying, figuring that he's strong enough already. And he was mostly right. That said, the endgame of that saga sees Cell lose his perfect form only to transform back into a stronger version of it without the requisite absorption after a near-death scenario. This indicates that he had access to the Saiyans' innate Zenkai ability. Just how much research had Dr. Gero done on other methods of getting stronger? And how much did Cell know about these methods? In other words, imagine Cell with a few weeks of good training along with the Saiyan and Frieza genetics he had. The universe would've been completely screwed.
• You think you're safe from Frieza? Think again with this terrifyingly brilliant fan made teaser from K&K Productions. And as a bonus... Frieza in this video is voiced by LittleKuriboh, who voiced him in Dragon Ball Z Abridged, and his more serious and ominous voice is enough to make you shit your pants with fear...

Super Saiyan Goku

• Goku's first Super Saiyan transformation, in the original Japanese version. Other versions have scored the scene to look like something dramatic and awesome is happening, but in the original version (and the Kai episode rerun post-2011), the music gives the impression that not only is there no clue as to what the hell Goku turned into, but no indication that it's something good, shocking even Frieza. Imagine what the kids who first saw this scene, see their hero Goku go through that...
  • Kikuichi Shunsuke's chilling musical score, simply entitled "Super Saiyan Son Goku", is more befitting of a horror movie than a martial arts anime, perfectly encapsulating the terror of witnessing a god, nay demon of Rage Itself being unleashed upon the universe. The first thing he does is order Gohan to leave, meaning he's on the verge of being overwhelmed by bloodlust and can't trust himself with his son.
  • The Kai redub also does a damn good job at just how terrifying Goku's transformation into a Super Saiyan is, though that can mostly be attributed to the outstanding voice work. Goku sounds like he's about to lose his mind, and the grunting seems like he's trying to hold himself back but ultimately failing to do so. The track used for this scene pre-2011, 'A Moment For Shuddering', also shows that as well. While it's certainly dramatic, it's not necessarily meant to convey how awesome the transformation is; rather, it gives the impression that Goku's rage is about to break. This all culminated in a truly terrifying scream as Goku finally becomes Super Saiyan, as well as Frieza sounding both shocked and horrified. The only words he could say at the time were "You... you... ruthless... heartless... BASTARD!!! I WILL... MAKE YOU... SUFFER!!!"
  • After becoming a Super Saiyan in Kai, Goku tells Gohan to take Piccolo and Bulma to the ship, then says "DO AS I TELL YOU, RIGHT NOW, BEFORE I LOSE WHAT LITTLE SENSE OF REASON I HAVE LEFT!" He's so overcome by anger that he doesn't trust himself not to hurt his son.
  • The Bruce Faulconer track used in the scene, simply titled "SSJ Transformation", feels quite uncanny compared to the other tracks in the score. Much like the original Japanese track, this does not bring a sense of triumph or excitement but dread and anxiety. The music is perfectly synced with the scene as it slowly builds with Goku's rage, and moments of calm are used for the fear and confusion of those witnessing his transformation. The guitar riffs, while sure to get your adrenaline going, also encapsulate the anger within our hero until it finally explodes. The inclusion of a subtle but noticeable choir not only helps give the scene some mystique but also a feeling of eeriness. In fact, someone went out of their way to swap out Kai's theme with the Faulconer track due to its impact.
• In general, what this transformation does to Goku. It took a gentleman who didn't like to kill and turned him into a monster that Frieza describes as just like himself. Also, instead of taking Frieza down quickly, he let him go to full power so he could make Frieza suffer longer and humiliate him with the fact that even at his best, he never stood a chance at winning. He bluffed to Frieza that Gohan, Piccolo, and Bulma weren't his concern, his thoughts on Gohan attempting to escape the planet distracted him enough for Frieza to momentarily get the upper hand. This may be the other reason why he allowed Frieza to power up to 100%: If he's focused on fighting Goku, he can't go after the others. That the bluff was plausible says a lot about what the Super Saiyan form did to Goku's personality.
• Overly Sarcastic Production's analysis of the how well done the Super Saiyan prophecy was goes into more detail from the manga perspective. It's more terrifying because, before the readers are privy to Goku's inner thoughts, but now, we're all shut out from it, so we don't know what he's actually thinking, so we can't even be sure he's still the Goku we've been following. Also, he begins to act more like Vegeta does, further showing that this is no longer a matter of if Freiza can be defeated, but if the guy that will definitely beat him is still our hero, or something else entirely. It's only when he initially powers down that we are given assurance that, yes, this is still our Goku.
• While fans prefer to ignore it, Dragon Ball – Episode of Bardock makes Goku's transformation even scarier-as Frieza would know from his ancestor what a Super Saiyan looks like... And suddenly, the monster his ancestor warned him about appeared before his very eyes, and he was the cause of it.

Cell

• So a Kid from the Future has come back to the past to save Goku from a heart virus, believing he will be able to find a way to defeat androids that will soon wreak havoc on the Earth. Dragon Ball is doing The Terminator now, some suspense, mostly resulting from the events not playing out the way the kid said they would and Vegeta's unrelenting stupidity, but nothing too frightening... until another time machine is uncovered. A time machine that has been there much longer, is damaged from the inside and has the molt of an unnervingly large Four-Legged Insect like creature, whose mere shed remains have evil eyes, not far away. The good news is that we now have an idea why past events are not unfolding as they should, the bad news is that Earth's defenders thought they had the benefit of foresight but are years behind whatever that may be.
• Cell, Doctor Gero's greatest creation. It wants to eat you and all your friends. Slowly. Through a giant stinger that acts like a large, natural syringe. Even if you're strong enough to rip this natural syringe clean off to try to control the damage, it'll just grow back. And those strong enough won't likely encounter it until it's too late, given it's been operating under their noses for years, drinking away civilization and the ecosystem, steadily getting stronger. There's no way to stop it - machine guns, tanks, and entire armies only serve to annoy it... or amuse him. And after it eats you, it wants to destroy all traces of everything you know and love, but only after sending all the survivors into absolute soul-crushing despair. The icing on the cake is that one of the world's most brilliant scientific minds saw fit to create this thing.
  • Though to be fair, it's very likely Doctor Gero simply had no idea what kind of a personality his creation would develop. Had he known that the ultimate being would inherit the personality of the most sadistic warlord in the universe, combined with the ambitions and love for combat of an entire warrior race, things may have turned out differently.
  • Cell's battle aura in his Imperfect Form is made of the souls of the people he absorbed. And they're crying out in pain.
  • If you think the way he absorbs normal people is bad, wait till you see how he absorbs Androids 17 and 18. His stinger opens up into a funnel and he sucks them in whole like a snake. Watch as the bulge in his tail that was once Android 17 gets smaller and smaller as he advances toward Cell's torso until he completely disappears... You have the pleasure of watching from Android 17's PoV as Cell's tail slowly opens and descends. You actually see the throat of his tail. On top of that, what Cell says as he does this:
    Cell: All that you fail to understand will now be made clear to you. Hahahahaha!! Welcome home!!!
  • Cell's absorption of Android 18 is even worse. 17's reaction to the final attack was a look of shock and then a bit of swearing, and Cell swallowed him pretty quickly. With 18, there's something perversely sexual about it. It takes a long time to swallow her, and it's not a smooth process either; there are lots of creepy sucking motions, accompanied by 18's frightened cries, not to mention that when the tail first sweeps down over her, she screams.
    • The fact that Cell has 17's personality and memories inside of him as he does this does NOT help the imagination given that they are brother and sister.
    • Something similar happens when Cell confronts 16, 17, and 18. The cell looks at 18 in a way that seems almost covetous and says one of the creepiest lines ever:
    Imperfect Cell: Ahhh. You too, my little peach. I'm going to gobble you up!!
    • The reason Cell's absorption of 17 comes across as less rapey and disturbing is because of 16's constant interference, meaning Cell had to rush and quickly absorb 17 and become stronger than 16. Before 16 interfered, Cell's attempt at absorbing 17 was almost as disturbing as 18's. He first has 17 weakened and then holds him at his mercy, taunting him constantly which gives off a very male-on-male I Have You Now, My Pretty vibe. 17 initially resists by throwing insults at him, which Cell laughs off. He then keeps on screaming that he doesn't want to join bodies with Cell and become one with him, while Cell slowly starts lowering his very phallic tail on top of his head, taking his sweet time and enjoying every moment. 17 even says "No", which Cell refuses to take as an answer. This is followed by a helpless 17 trying his best to push the tail off his head as Cell just laughs and continues. Thankfully enough 16 taps on Cell's shoulder before punching him away.
  • And there's Cell's attitude about absorbing 17 and 18. Because they were modified to be absorbed by them, he tells them that their free will means nothing so they just let him absorb them because that's what they were built for. In addition to the gleeful joy he takes in it, this predetermination adds an additional level of psychological horror.
  • And of course Dr. Gero, designing them for this purposes to be this way to get back at them for being understandably defiant in the face of their forced conversion into cybernetic Androids.
  • Another disturbing thing is how after Cell absorbs Android 17, he imitates his voice to try to convince Android 18 to be willingly absorbed. The worst thing is that for a split second, she seriously looks like she's considering doing that until Cell makes the mistake of using 17's voice to call Dr. Gero 'great'. (Or refer to him as Dr. Gero-sama, depending on which version of the show you watch.)
  • Cell's overall design is creepy, especially compared to Frieza and Buu because of how different it is from the rest of the cast. He was a lizard/insect hybrid with Hellish Pupils and was generally menacing.
    • And when he absorbed 17, Nightmare Retardant aside, it's surreal seeing a monster like that getting an expressive, vaguely humanlike face with the Android's iconic Icy Blue Eyes with a human-like mouth with visible lips. It really demonstrates how much of a an aberration of nature that happens humanoid that Semi-Perfect Cell was- not a potentially pre-existing organic monster like his Imperfect form or being like a pale-white skin man in a suit like his Perfect Cell, but some unnatural hybrid that is an intermediate between the two, a scientific horrific chimera of insect and humanoid parts half-hazard put together. Thankfully, the unnatural feel effect disappears when he reaches perfection, in which he becomes scary for other reasons.
  • Here's a chaser. Something to think about when Android 18 is regurgitated. She was never dead. She was absorbed by Cell two weeks before the Cell Games, and she never died. She wasn't digested. She wasn't assimilated. She was still perfectly intact inside Cell for about two weeks. And she was completely powerless to do anything about it. Thankfully, she seemed to be unconscious during the whole time, but still...
  • When Cell absorbs Piccolo's arm. Fortunately, Piccolo can simply rip off that husk that was once his arm and grow a new one, but imagine if Cell did that to someone who does not have regenerative powers...
  • The scenes of clothing littered all over the ground from hundreds if not thousands of people from Nicky Town is pretty chilling. Cell absorbed every one of them, sparing no one, not even children. To him, they are all just a part of his endless buffet. And the Z Warriors can do nothing to stop him.
  • During one of his rampages, he's at a carnival, and a young couple is fleeing from him in a house of mirrors. Imagine running for your life from a creature who's appearing and cackling in all the mirrors, not having any clue where he could be, the last shot is his tail piercing through the mirrors and impaling the couple as they scream in terror.
  • The absolute worst part is that, when Goku steps down and states that someone else is going to fight Cell (in the Kai Dub on Nicktoons), Vegeta looks on in horror and shock and says "None of us have the slightest chance of beating him (Cell)!" Cell is so powerful, that the cocky badass Vegeta is afraid. Holy shit.
    • Keep in mind that this is the second time Vegeta has acknowledged that an opponent was capable of beating him, the first being Broly. He NEVER does that, to the point that in all previous fights, he has either won or been incapacitated in some manner.
  • Cell's transformations as well. Unlike Frieza, who at least retains some traits of his previous forms, Cell's head crest and some other minor traits are the only things to remain consistent throughout his transformations. But he still physically transforms into his new forms, meaning we get to see his body twist and contort itself into his new form. It's even worse when he finally becomes his Perfect Form, as, after the Body Horror part, an energy cocoon forms around him, and his sheer power sends shock waves throughout the world. Trunks tried to interrupt the transformation, but as he's trying to pierce the cocoon, he, and the audience, are treated to a horrifying shadowed Cell midway between forms, emitting an inhuman screech. The scary part is that given how much changed between his first and second forms, there's the feeling of mystery at just what he's turning into now.
• When Cell comes across Piccolo and a random man in the street, who begs Piccolo to take his money and save him. Cell stabs him with his tail, and it starts... moving, like it's drinking, and the man is petrified. The man's entire body STARTS TO MELT; his face eventually caves in, and his body is sucked up until there is nothing left but his clothes. Piccolo, who is usually stoic, is too petrified by fear to do anything but watch in horror, both scared and disgusted at how emotionless Cell is in killing a random civilian. The scariest part is that Cell glared at Piccolo the whole time while doing so.
• In "Our Hero Awakens", Cell has already sucked dry an entire town. We see one Badass Normal guy with an automatic rifle trying to stop him, only to find that his bullets bounce off Cell like raindrops. This is the type of character who in an 80s action flick would be the one to save the day, but in the Dragon Ball universe, he's just fodder. As Cell drains him, we see that his wife and child were hiding nearby and could hear the whole horrific ordeal.
• His announcement of the Cell Games; Cell goes to a local TV station and interrupts all broadcasts by going through the floor much to the shock and horror of those there and watching it. When he reaches the top floor, he announces himself as Cell and that he was the one responsible for the deaths and terrorizing all the towns and cities as the Big Monster of Nicky Town and reverts to his Imperfect Voice. He then announces the Cell Games to all who are watching and states that if he's not defeated, he will destroy all life. To cap this off, he then blows a hole through the building destroying a mountain in the nearby distance before flying off.
  • And of course his actual reasons for the Tournament at all, outside of showing off his perfection, is to give the populace a glint of hope that their greatest champions might be able to defeat them- only to drive them into despair with their defeats before he hunts down each and every last person one by one before repeating the process.
• After having the top half of his body blown up, it's assumed that he's finally dead....until the lower half suddenly leaps to a standing position and regenerates that top half. It's one of the many instances that highlights that Cell is not a man in a bug costume, but an unnatural being whose regenerative properties are presented as an unnatural exaggeration of Piccolo. It's especially jarring that while Cell did regenerate his arm similar to Piccolo, this layer of restoration hints at how absurd his healing factor is and highlights no matter how human he looks in his Perfect form, he's an unnatural creature.
• After Gohan transforms into a Super Saiyan 2 and starts giving Cell the business, we finally get to see the Android's full power. It's easy to forget but Cell is so strong at this point that none of the other Z-Fighters can touch him. When Cell starts throwing energy attacks at the Earth in a vain effort to kill Gohan, they can only watch in horror as Goku's 11-year-old son is the only thing keeping them from being obliterated by Cell's titanic power.
• Cell's desperate attempt after he takes too much heavy damage from Super Saiyan 2 Gohan who manages to beat Android 18 out of him. Reverting into his second form, Cell goes ballistic knowing he is outmatched, and starts bloating up like a grotesque balloon version of himself. Before the inevitable Earth-Shattering Kaboom, Goku intervenes and manages to transport him onto King Kai's planet until he finally detonates, taking King Kai, Gregory, Bubbles, Goku, the still absorbed Android 17 (who tragically didn't get regurgitated in time, unlike his sister) and the entire little planet with him. You would think with Goku's Heroic Sacrifice that it would be the end. But it's not. Cell regenerates with his cell core and manages to resurrect himself into a more powerful state called "Super Perfect Cell". Cue Mass "Oh, Crap!" from what’s left of the Z gang at that point on.
• Cell's self-resurrection is a bundle of nightmares by itself. It starts with the core mass of cells growing, with a disgusting version Cell's Perfect form bulging out gradually. It shows how inherently wrong his existence is.
  • The literal first thing Cell does when he returns is fire an energy beam through Future Trunks' chest. Out of a dust cloud, too fast for anybody to dodge or react before the Z-Fighters can even take in what is happening. Future Trunks hits the ground with a basketball-sized hole in his torso. And then hacks up about a pint of blood.
  • The next thing that happens is that Vegeta goes all out and attacks Cell with all he has. With Goku gone, this means that the Prince is now the second-strongest Z-Fighter. Cell not only doesn't suffer any damage, he isn't even slowed down. He attacks Vegeta and nearly kills him as a reflex more than anything else.
• While it's easy to overlook thanks to it being an incredibly awesome moment for Gohan, Cell's death is pretty gruesome if you miss that. Saying that he had it coming would be a massive understatement, but Cell doesn't die quickly and painlessly, no. He slowly disintegrates while screaming in pain. Even as he breaks apart into millions of pieces and then into microscopic cells, take into consideration that this is Cell we're talking about here, so he likely felt every last bit of it until he was erased for good. That had to have been utter hell to go through.
  • It doesn't help in the brief moment before his body breaks apart completely that his face distorts into deranged exaggerations of himself at a rapid pace.
• What makes Cell so scary is the fact that he isn't some alien such as Freeza and his Empire or some eternal mass of chaos like Buu. He is a creature created on Earth by an ordinary, vengeful human. A human, the people that Goku and the others spent their lives protecting, created an absolute monster that feeds off of other humans in the slowest, most painful way possible. How morally bankrupt and cruel does a person have to be to create such a creature?
• Another thing that makes Cell terrifying is that saying he's strong is an understatement. Until Majin Buu came back to life, Super Perfect Cell was the most powerful evil being in the universe. So strong that the Supreme Kai, who wasn't keeping track of his existence, was shocked at how strong the Z-warriors had to become to fight him.

Super Saiyan 2 Gohan

• Let's cut to the chase. When Son Gohan achieves the Messianic powers of a Super Saiyan 2, he changes from a sensitive and kind-hearted little boy to a cold-blooded, sadistic murderer that would make Frieza or Broly run for their lives. Watching the once kind-hearted boy coldly sneer "Kill him now? Hmph, not yet Dad. He deserves to suffer much longer!!" is incredibly unsettling. Cell even calls him A MONSTER: as in the same Cell that is fueled on the lives of thousands, if not millions of people and laughed with glee as he absorbed the two teenagers his creator turned into cyborgs as they screamed for their lives. He also stated he loves seeing the twisted faces of terror in people, and said to Goku that if it wasn't for the tournament he created, he'd wipe out the earth in one shot without batting an eye. When Goku called out to Gohan that he should end the fight since Cell, while cornered could become more unpredictable than before, Gohan's response was to glare at him and give his most sadistic smirk he's ever shown, before giving the line that he'd like to carry on what was effective torture. That kid was Not Himself.
  • The part of the battle most people remember is this one, but one has to watch the entire fight to get the full impression. The contrast between Gohan before he ascends and afterward is startlingly dramatic.
  • Gohan is right about Cell deserving it, though, considering that Cell DRANK 600,000 innocent people and intended to kill everyone on Earth just to see the terror on their faces before they die.
    • That may be the case, but the fact that Gohan beats the crap in Cell in uncontrollable rage is somewhat disturbing. But the sheer freakishness of it goes up a notch when you consider this- this Superpowered Evil Side has been lurking in him since he was 4 years old.
    • However, it is quite reasonable to sympathize with Gohan, even in Super Saiyan 2. He has lived through traumatic experiences since he was 4 years old, so it is logical to assume that sooner or later he would explode with anger. Remember the Nappa fight, the battle on Namek, and how he saw Namekians being killed by Frieza's army when he was 5 years old, and being bullied by Vegeta at the end of the Namek saga?
  • Fundamentally the whole end of the Cell Games is incredibly disturbing when you think about it. Goku fights Cell first before giving up after it became clear that he couldn't win, leaving his friends and family petrified with fear, particularly his 11-year-old son who worships him and can't even conceive of being stronger than his father, despite Goku fighting to show Gohan that he has surpassed him. Goku then leaves the rest of the fight to Gohan. Piccolo (who didn't even have a real childhood) calling Goku out on the fact he's letting his young child get tortured emphasizes that Goku's just left the fate of the entire world on the shoulders of a boy that isn't even a teenager yet and loathes violence (not to mention giving Cell a Senzu Bean to ensure a fair fight). Worse, Goku had no choice but to trust in Gohan's power since no one else could match Cell. Goku's confidence in his son might have been proven correct but considering what it required, and Goku was banking on, Gohan being driven into a homicidal rage by the emotional trauma, the transformation is arguably worse than Goku's first transformation into a Super Saiyan. The fact that he snaps to the point of sadism isn't surprising considering the emotional state it took to get him there. Just watching him coldly take apart Cell and the Juniors even before he starts talking about making Cell suffer is pretty distressing considering the natural human instinct is to protect and shield children from these kinds of events, emphasizing that despite Goku being raised by humans, he isn't a human and such sentiment are not shared by Saiyans. It's pretty hard to blame Gohan for any of what ensues and it's just made worse by the fact that the already traumatized kid is left to blame himself for his father's death following this.
  • Goku putting Gohan to fight had nothing to do with Saiyan Nature. Goku himself has been fighting villains and monsters since he was 11 or 12 years old without issues, about the same age Gohan is when fighting Cell, so he didn't see the problem with it because for him it was normal at that age. If Goku made a mistake, it's that he didn't take into account just how different his son is from himself, especially how much his son dislikes fighting.
  • Gohan was aware of this about himself. He knew that if someone got him to the point where his rage finally broke, nobody would be able to control what happened next - not even him. And he was warning Cell for most of the first stage of the fight. Unfortunately, all this did was made Cell curious to fight someone at that power level - a reaction that, ironically, might have been a personality trait he "inherited" from Gohan's own father.
• The unspoken fact of this entire plot point is that Goku had no plan aside from throwing Gohan at Cell. He was certain that he couldn't put the Big Bad down, and had to defer to the actual powerhouse of the group, who unfortunately just so happened to be his son. This move wasn't about pride or a sense of giving his son a challenge, it was sheer desperation.

Buu - All Forms

• Frieza was, and to some, still is, the iconic villain of the Dragon Ball universe. While subsequent villains were more powerful in the individual sense, Frieza was a ruthless tyrant who ran an empire and was known and feared throughout the galaxy. If you've watched Z you likely know that while he's afraid of Goku post-transformation, he gives a fight a try anyway - and gets his ass kicked. And comes back for more at least twice. In Super, you find out that Buu, along with Beerus, were the two individuals Frieza was instructed by King Cold, "If you see them, run the other freaking direction." Even to someone who, at the time, was as untouchable as Frieza, the only other individuals known to exist that invoked this level of horrifying terror were a GOD OF DESTRUCTION... and Buu. This basically confirms that Buu at his peak was the strongest being in the universe that wasn't either a God or had access to Godly Ki. And on that note, Buu had been sealed for eons - to the point that few other than the universal pantheon even knew of his existence. Just what the hell did King Cold hear or witness that put Buu in the same class as Beerus?
• How Buu is introduced. He's described to be an Eldritch Abomination that even the Gods who can one-shot Freeza can't defeat, so the initial thought is that Buu's going to be this Lovecraftian horror that's played seriously. And then, Buu is revived and revealed to be...an overweight pink humanoid with a cape, mitten, diaper-like pants, and overall a goofy look that acts like a toddler. It initially seems to be a comedic subversion...right until he trounces Gohan, Supreme Kai, and Dabura, the latter of which was described to be on the same level of power as Super Perfect Cell, like nothing. He proceeds to casually blast a rage-amped Gohan like nothing, which would've killed him if Supreme Kai didn't save him at the last second. He slowly torments Supreme Kai with his own moves used against him and proceeds to turn the king of the Demon World into a cookie to eat him. At this point, it becomes clear that his goofy powers and personality bellies sinister darkness and his goofy powers have horrific consequences due to being on a level of tier far above the last villain who at his peak threatened the Solar System. Instead of a typical Eldritch Abomination, it's a primordial being with a kind of personality and powerset of a kid show being nightmarishly played for all the horrific implications such powers would be realistically.
• As a whole, Buu isn't a magic creation by a deranged sorcerer to rule the universe but a being as old as the universe. An initially mindless child-like being that proceeds to absorb the minds and powers of two of the most powerful gods while killing all but one. He becomes a warped parody of said gods with the added power at his disposal and only through sleep and being sealed away that the universe is saved. And then he's freed, and through a series of events, he proceeds to get much worse, with his sillier elements gradually getting downplayed in favor of terrifying malleability of himself, destructive demonstration that outstrips the previous villains in sheer scope, and deranged and unpredictable behavior.
• With Buu, compared to Freeza and Cell, whose facade of politeness until they become angry when bested allows one to understand their mentality to predict their actions, embodies chaotic unpredictability with the power to act on it, which makes Buu that much more unsettling. One won't know when one has set off any of his forms' short fuses with destructive outbursts on the planet at their weakest and reality itself at its strongest or how randomly they can go from goofy to sinister to insane and back without warning. It makes dealing with any of them very tense.
• From a Religious Horror standpoint, Buu is the darkest answer to Have You Seen My God?. The Supreme Kais are Dead sans the East Supreme Kai because Buu essentially killed and/or ate the rest. And retroactively, Buu would've indirectly killed and rendered inert, two of the few individuals who could've stopped him.
• While Vegeta starts off performing better than any of the previous contenders, Buu gradually dominates him and proceeds to beat the tar of him while restraining his movements by tying him down with a piece of his own flesh. Vegeta then realizes that he's underestimated the creature severely and comes to the revelation that only blowing up every single cell at once of the regenerating monster in one go. And to twist the knife, as much of a character-defining moment it is for Vegeta, Buu quickly regenerates from that and treats the ordeal like it was nothing, proceeding to continue to do what he wanted anyway. What initially seemed to be an easy mission of trouncing enemies becomes one of the most egregious tasks the heroes undergo. And unlike before, it sets up a domino effect in which things escalate from the extinction of the human race, the deaths of almost the entire cast, and the destruction of the planet that had been barely prevented in previous arcs- with only strokes of miracles allowing them to come through. It made for a strenuous Grand Finale for the original series game changer once the sequel series came out, with the heroes due to their actions, now having to deal with the realms of the divine and metaphysical, after defeating the strongest being in existence.
• The first fight against Fat Buu, where Vegeta has to blow himself to smithereens in a Heroic Sacrifice and burn himself literally to ASHES ... for nothing. After the fact, a desiccated husk of Majin Vegeta remains in a dark sky ripe with thunder clouds, that fall to the ground to break and be turned into dust in the wind... Talk about a horrible way to go. And again, all for nothing.
• Then, Piccolo has the mother of Oh, Crap! moments when he sees Buu regenerate from that! Piccolo, the member with the most consistent smarts/wisdom/experience, and resolute composure. That same Piccolo is both baffled and horrified at the sight and proceeds to run for the hills when he sees the tiny pieces of Buu come together, morphing graphically from slime to mini-Buus to come together into the larger one.
  • With Cell, while he could also regenerate from almost anything, it was still treated like a stressful and risky power for him, slowly wearing down his stamina and an indicator that the heroes would be getting closer to actually defeating him- with his ultimate restoration to even greater being a miracle even on his end. Buu on the other hand, a hole through his stomach, being impaled, or even being blasted into literal smoke via a Heroic Sacrifice, is treated as a minor inconvenience at worst. And to make matters worse, this is an automatic feature of his body that he does with the same subconscious effort one takes to breathe. This makes Buu a truly nigh-invincible nightmare, which requires the most powerful assets at the time- Vegito and the Spirit Bomb- to even cause this regeneration to falter enough that Buu needs to consciously restore himself when he realizes his automatic regeneration isn't working or being blasted beyond the atomic level.
• The Fridge Horror of being absorbed by Majin Buu. You are taken into his body where he feeds off your power and knowledge and uses them to kill everyone you know. Worse, you cannot die or do anything to stop him. You are forever trapped in an immortal being who will continue to use your abilities to kill billions. While it can be used for good, with Grand Supreme Kai making Buu potentially having the capacity for redemption after the right kind of persuasion, though it still makes him dangerous; it's used to its fullest vile potential when Super Buu proceeds to play vicious mind games with Gohan, utilizing Piccolo and Goten's memories to find his emotional vulnerabilities.
• Fat Buu gets one. After deciding he's gonna eat Dabura, he starts dancing towards him in an innocent, yet menacing fashion while chanting "Me eat you up, me eat you up, me eat you up". Dabura tries to put up resistance, pummeling him, blasting him, spitting petrifying saliva at him, but no matter what he does, Buu continues to dance towards him until the Demon King is finally consumed.
  • Here it is in all its horrifying glory.
  • Fat Buu gets another dark moment near the end of his career as a servant. After Babidi threatens him with sealing and insults him too many times, a single panel shows Buu's face just before his master-slaying ploy. It is an uncharacteristically serious and dark face for him; if a face acted as someone else's death warrant, Buu's would be it. One look at that and you just know, Babidi is already dead.
    • Heck, think of the way he disposes of Babidi. In Kai, he first deceives Babidi by saying he has a good idea to tell him, allowing him to get close. Then Buu grabs Babidi by the throat, explaining that now Babidi is unable to perform any magic, like the spell to seal him in a ball. Then Buu pulls his fist back, and you get several agonizing shots of Babidi staring in pure horror that there is nothing he can do, nor can he scream for mercy. Then Buu punches his head into oblivion, his fist colliding with the camera and turning it pure red. And the wizard deserved it. To make matters worse, in the original anime we're then treated to a lovely shot of Babidi's twitching, headless and blood-spewing corpse, which is also pulsating with a very loud heartbeat, possibly implying that Babidi didn't immediately die from the decapitation.
    • To make it even worse-if you think about it, that wasn't the first time he tried to kill Babidi. He had been trying to kill him for a while, only restrained by the need to make it look accidental so he wouldn't be sealed again, he was only flying recklessly to have him splat somewhere... Then, during his fight with Goku, Buu realized Babidi couldn't seal him away if he couldn't speak. And as soon as Goku has left, Buu kills Babidi the way described above.
    • The more unnerving part is that, in the dub, Goku is the person who planted the idea in Buu's head to kill Babidi. It's even more unnerving in the Kai dub, which has him grimly warn Babidi of his fate, well aware of what Buu will do to him once he's gone:
  "Oh, and by the way, Babidi? When you get to Hell, which, believe me, is gonna be sooner than you think, King Yemma will make you suffer."
• Watching Fat Buu slaughter cities and reduce buildings to rubble just for fun is nothing short of disturbing. Especially since he treats all the carnage like a kid stepping on ants.
• Even though he only appeared in one episode, Evil Buu (gray) is eerie given his depressing, morbid appearance meant to be the embodiment of Buu's evil finally taken a physical manifestation. Any child who sees this haunting stare◊ would most likely be scared senseless. He's meant to be the opposite of the Fat Buu with his soulless white pupils within a black sclera that originated the Black Eyes of Crazy trope, dull gray skin compared to bright, jubilant pink and sickly, anorexic body compared to the plump roundness. Even when anorexic Buu is pink◊, that unnerving smile still keeps the fear factor.
  • He ultimately came into existence due to Fat Buu failing to compromise between his promise to refuse to kill and his justifiable anger at the sight of the evils of humanity, which expelled this entity that proceeds to kill Van Zant with glee with a massive Ki blast before deciding Fat Buu is going too far from his purpose as an insane destroyer so Evil Buu should be in the driver's seat to keep things back on track and both not tolerating the other existing.
  • While Fat Buu was mostly comedic with an occasional sinister expression with his childish actions having deadly consequences, Evil Buu marks the change for Buu as a black-eyed demon of insanity who aside from a few sporadic comedic moments, is played much deadlier and more serious a threat to the entire universe.
  • How he was extremely deathly stoic in his fight with Good Buu, and then when he eats him, it results in an utterly crazed laugh with completely wide eyes and a deranged smile as he turns into Super Buu, completely different from the reserved exterior he displayed for most of his appearance.
• Super Buu, the form that causes the already massive power of Buu to skyrocket to previously unimaginable heights while also increasing his depravity and make him a much more efficient fighter who trades with the sinister whimsy of Fat Buu for horrific Body Horror. While Fat Buu was more like an innocent child who didn't know how not to break stuff or the difference between good and bad, Super Buu was, along with Kid Buu, the most deranged- being a nearly constantly infuriated creature that can go gleefully insane in a moment. He has this trademark pose where he's standing straight up, but his long neck is tilted to one side and he's got a Cheshire Cat grin about two sizes too big for his face◊. And on top of being deadly enough to wipe out the rest of the human race and the main cast nearly instantly, he's much smarter than he lets on, leading to a fighter that both mentally and emotionally torments you while being several steps ahead.
• Think you're safe from Super Buu? Think again!
  • What's worse is that unlike Freeza who holds back in order to both control his initially uncontrollable full power and Cell who actually had to try to work to achieve his full power; Evil/Super Buu's existence just occurred due to pointless human cruelty shooting a dog and his newly acquired friend and Buu having for the first time in his existence, an emotional compromise of his newfound sense of morales and instinct for destruction, leading to him to split his existence into two, the now purely benign Buu and the expelled negative essence. Unfortunately for both the world and himself, this vastly more powerful side embodying all of his repressed evil proceeds to both dominate, and usurp control over him in order to create an even worse and more powerful version of Buu that causes the situation to gradually become worse as things go on until the very universe is at stake. All this happened due to the petty evil of mere thugs and Buu's emotional trauma of his friends' suffering, just a random thing that caused the birth of one of the series' most vile and dangerous villains.
  • Buu slaughtering the Z-Fighters' friends and loved ones by turning them into chocolate and eating them. It's overlooked in the manga, but shown outright in the anime with Krillin getting turned and eaten first (and suffering his third death), and immediately after, his wife Android 18 and daughter (who's only 3 years old) are next to be eaten (with 18's scream being one of terror and fear that her own daughter was also caught in the blast) and is every bit as gruesome as it sounds as his victims scream in terror as they are transformed and eaten (Bulma's, Videl's and Yamcha's screams were especially notable and bone-chilling). Even worse is Goku can only sit and watch on the Kai Planet as his friends and family die.
  • When Gohan pounds Super Buu into the dirt, Buu begins screaming and ranting like a madman, suddenly going from a snarling rage to a wide-eyed Nightmare Face complete with a Slasher Smile over how he'll make Gohan pay. Despite the flashy display of generating a large aura of Ki while being covered in protruding veins, Gohan doesn't sense much of a power boost from him and says as much. Buu's only response is to look at him, head cocked to the side, baring a manic grin, and muttering: "You're missing the point." The point? Buu just set his body up to self-destruct to take out the area for miles around, knowing that he can just reassemble himself. Buu is not someone you want to make angry.
    • It's not just what he says, it's how he says it - he's so calm and relaxed about it, like blowing himself to pieces is no big deal, because it isn't. The crater he forms is massive, stunning everyone and even giving Gohan pause. It also shows how much Buu has been playing the heroes, and is one of our first hints that he's much smarter than he lets on.
    • The original Funimation dub made this more nightmarish by emphasizing how insane Super Buu is. The moment that he goes from angry mad to insane mad is punctuated by his usually low-register voice briefly going extremely higher in pitch. It comes out of nowhere and it has no relevance other than in hindsight that Super Buu's original form, Pure-Evil/Kid Buu, was something much smaller and infinitely crazier.
  • His actions in this form don't help. As mentioned before, the other forms just liked Stuff Blowing Up. His methods of killing/torturing are extremely sadistic even by the usual standard. That includes turning one into a food of his choice and eating them (keeping them fully conscious the whole time), shrinking someone and then stepping on them, liquefying himself and force-feeding his own body down another's throat, then expanding inside them until they burst. Once Buu does this, Mr. Satan is completely horrified.
    • During Super Buu's fight with Vegito, he forces himself into the fused Saiyan's mouth and tries to destroy him from the inside. Vegito's powerful enough to resist it, but Buu can remain inside his body. The following few minutes are outright disturbing as we see random parts of Vegito's body swelling to ridiculously grotesque size as he attempts to beat Super Buu back out.
  • The Human Extinction Attack: a now-Laughing Mad Buu launches a continuous stream of energy beams that exterminates the entire human population within minutes. He pulls off a Class 3a Apocalypse for no reason other than "I can do this". As Team Four Star put it, "This is the first time in the series where the civilian casualty number isn't just high — it's complete." To make matters worse, the ki blasts are shown not exploding and vaporizing their targets on impact, but tearing through their torsos. Dragon Ball Z has established by this point that a hole in the chest is neither a quick nor a painless way to go. Never mind that the streets of Earth's cities were likely littered with blood and dead or dying bodies until... well, see below.
    • Kid Buu later upgraded it to Class X-3, with an immediate threat of Class X-4 to boot.
    • You know how at that point in the series death was almost completely reversible at will thanks to the Dragon Balls? To the point where Piccolo even tried to buy time by suggesting Super Buu kill all the humans down on mainland Earth knowing they could be wished back? Suddenly when he did that attack it didn't feel so cheap anymore.
    • From Bad to Worse — remember, the earth's dragon can't revive people more than once, and as far as they knew, the Namekian dragon could only revive three people every 130 days.
    • Aside from being the strongest of the Buus, he's also the smartest. He can tear you down more psychologically and physically. And don't try to outwit him, as he already planned for that - just ask Gohan. Even before absorbing Piccolo and Gotenks, Buu has the moment where he threatens to self-destruct mentioned previously, which is enough to contrast the thuggish brute he seemed to be before. Once he does absorb Piccolo and Gotenks, he became much more dangerous — not just in physical power (which did grow tremendously with Gotenks' Super Saiyan 3 power), but in intelligence (courtesy of Piccolo), something which the other forms mostly lacked. Imagine if you gave the smartest mind in the series to the most powerful being in the universe. The result is a Manipulative Bastard worthy of Cell whose ego is boosted even further after absorbing Gohan himself, can back his power with wit, and destroys people with emotional torment (in this case Gohan, made worse since he was repeating things that his teacher taught him to mess him up, and it works). Buu's manipulation ends with Gohan being rendered helpless by the brutal physical and mental assault of his empowered enemy. It got so bad that at one point, it had to be not shown — not censored, but not shown at all — meaning it was as bad as, if not worse than, Frieza's beatdown of Vegeta.
    • Goku has it almost as bad. Imagine standing there and watching as Buu takes your last son and uses his power against you. He just came back to life and he's utterly helpless against the monster who murdered his wife and took his sons in the worst way possible. In the English dub, Buu even had the nerve to call Goku dad after absorbing Gohan.
• Kid Buu was frightening as well. Yeah, he looks smaller, and maybe not as intimidating, but his first act in this form is to attempt to blow up the Earth, seemingly out of pure spite. When that is blocked, he prepares a blast ten times larger that they can't block. Goku begs him not to go through with it, that "There will be nothing! Nothing left at all!" Buu's response is a giggle and one of the evilest smiles of all time, then he destroys the planet. That's when it was clear: this Buu had nothing resembling reason, unlike his previous forms. He had no ambitions to prove himself or to be the strongest, no need for anything to entertain him. He was simply going to kill and kill and kill until nothing was left. For no reason.
  • The totality of this moment is reflected upon once the blast hits Earth's surface. The camera cuts across the universe to New Namek, where Elder Moori and the Namekians are shown being shaken from their daily routines as they sense Earth's destruction. They look up at the sky in mild shock.
  • Kid Buu then travels to the after-life and Yamcha, in complete horror, makes light of the fact that IF enough energy is used, someone could KILL someone already dead. He then goes on to say that doing so would cause them to cease to exist and not even Dragon Balls can bring them back. Kid Buu was strong enough to do just that. This means that, if he were more sadistic, he could subsequently torture you for all eternity and you wouldn't die unless he destroyed your soul!
  • He's the only villain that's completely incapable of being reasoned with. Frieza and Cell may be inhuman in nature and power, but you can still reason with them. Even Super Buu could be distracted for a good fight. That won't work with Kid Buu. He has no pride to manipulate, no ambitions or understandable emotions to get a rise out of, and nothing you can bargain with. It just wants to destroy everything, pure and simple.
  • Kid Buu's body language is chilling in how utterly lacking in restraint it is. And then there's his scream. Psychotic doesn't even begin to describe it. It's... primal.
  • After Buu destroys the Earth, he teleports all over the universe and destroys several other planets in a row like a cosmic wrecking ball, without giving the people on those planets any chance of fighting back or even realizing what was happening. It becomes clear to the viewer that the entire universe was in danger at this point, since this thing wouldn't stop until everything was dead.
  • What little forewarning we got was for the most part Kibito Kai's unrestrained horror as the transformation from Super Buu to Kid Buu arrived at the Huge Buu◊ stage for a moment. Until that moment, he and his fusees Shin and Kibito had been scared of Buu, but after the fusion he considered going after Super Buu himself. Then he saw that... And was on his knees in pure abject terror trying desperately to deny the truth - that Buu was returning to his original form. And when Buu continued changing, he revealed what was happening with just as much horror: that was the Buu that killed the other Supreme Kais, and he remembers all too well the horror of that monster.
  • The other piece of forewarning: when Vegeta was about to rip Fat Buu from him and trigger the change, Super Buu begged him not to out of sheer horror at the idea of reverting to Kid Buu. Sadly, he was too scared to properly explain what he meant by "I wouldn't be me anymore", and Vegeta went through with it, with Super Buu trying desperately to prevent the change.
  • Kid Buu's theme song is the creepiest soundtrack in all of DBZ Kai. It's nightmarish and gives off the vibe of a horror film.
  • Minor though it may be, Kid Buu FALLING ASLEEP in front of Goku during is oddly disarming and chilling. Though one could see it as kind of funny, yes. It still goes to show how little Buu actually thinks of his opponents that he can just casually take a nap before attempting to kill them. Then Goku makes the mistake of waking him up…
  • During the fight with Goku, a few things become clear that make Kid Buu all the more horrifying:
    • Kid Buu does not get tired. While Goku is at least his physical equal at Super Saiyan 3, after an hour or so of intense fighting he's unable to maintain his form. Meaning that a protracted battle with the monster is both inevitable and suicidal.
    • While Goku at the start of the fight is stronger than this version of Buu if he powers all the way up, what does that actually mean if you can't destroy him? While our hero does insist that he was holding back slightly, it becomes pretty clear at a few points that Goku was trying to destroy Majin Buu. He blows away his entire body multiple times and is shocked that the creature is able to regenerate. Vegeta most likely made this observation as well and that's why he came up with using The Spirit Bomb. Otherwise, Buu would eventually kill them because he's a being that can't get tired and can heal from pretty much anything.

Others

• Doctor Gero, the mastermind behind the Red Ribbon Army, definitely deserves mention. His methods for creating Androids 17 and 18 involved kidnapping teenage siblings and wiping them clear of their memories. And that's not the worst he does either. It is implied the reason he created Cell if he had any idea what kind of sadism his creation would obtain, was to enact revenge against humanity for his Red Ribbon Army's destruction. The worst part is that like Mercenary Tao, he's human and not created to be evil like Buu or an alien-like Frieza so he's perfectly aware of the suffering he's causing people and he loves every minute of it.
  • The scene where he absorbs Piccolo's strength is also pretty creepy, and a lot more suggestive than necessary.
  • And then there's the fact that Dr. Gero specifically kidnapped and mutated 17 and 18 for the sole purpose of what amounts to feeding them to a monster from our worst nightmares. To him, those two human kids are just food, nothing more.
  • Because of Gero's hatred towards the Saiyan Goku, he completely brought ruination to at least two timelines, one where Future Trunks came from and the one Cell came from and nearly destroyed the solar system of the main timeline. All those people dead and suffering at the hands of the androids happened because of one man's petty vengeance. One single man completely brought the world to ruin.
• Garlic Jr's fate. He becomes the first Dragon Ball villain to successfully wish for immortality to the Dragon Balls, but in the end, it amounts to nothing, and in fact, inflicts him with a Fate Worse than Death. The reason? His special technique consists of opening a portal to a Phantom Zone called the Dead Zone, but both times he tries to use it against his enemies, he ends up getting trapped in it. The second time, he becomes trapped permanently there, as Gohan destroyed Garlic Jr's home planet, which was the source of his power. Being immortal, and with no means to get out, means that he'll be there for the rest of all eternity. And sure enough, he isn't heard from again.
• Everything that happens to Gohan through the Saiyan saga - especially if you're Chi-Chi. First kidnapped by a stranger, then rescued only to be kidnapped again by someone Chi-Chi would have known for a fact was Goku's mortal enemy. He then disappears for an entire year, only to return just in time to be thrown into a fight with two more guys that are even worse. Chi-Chi gets mocked on occasion for her coddling ways, but after a year like that, who could blame her for being a bit rattled?
• Captain Ginyu. The Ginyu force is this in-universe since it's what Frieza uses when he's pissed and wants things done. The weakest of them has psychic powers able to make two warriors with over thirty times his power level helpless, then there are three people that could curb stomp Vegeta (no, not acting together, every single one of them could do this on his own), and they are to Ginyu less than what Vegeta is to them. So far, however, is just the usual Sorting Algorithm of Evil. The real horror is what happens when you are stronger than Ginyu. He would seriously injure himself, then swap bodies with you, getting a much stronger one, leaving you to die from his self-inflicted and painful injury. The worst of it? Jeice knew of that ability. Is what we see Ginyu's original body? And how many times did he do that before?
  • The second Budokai Tenkaichi game outright states that Ginyu's current body isn't his own. Considering how willing he is to pull out the body-swapping technique, it does make one wonder how many other victims Ginyu left to die in such a manner.
  • In the anime, the Ginyu Force are a bunch of dancing idiots whose true threat level doesn't become apparent until well into their fights. In the manga, it's almost immediately apparent when they show up with Scouters, meet Frieza, and then immediately cross Namek, a planet three times larger than the Earth, right to Gohan, Krillin and Vegeta. A few chapters ago there was some drama over Goku having to cross Snake Way and arrive on Earth due to Kaio losing track of time but these guys made a comparable trip in no time at all.
• The very concept of the Garlic Jr. saga's Black Water Mist. Just breathing it in will turn anyone (unless they're a Namekian, have a dragon shielding them, or are just incredibly lucky) into an evil, vampiric demon. Imagine you look around you after you're in a situation where you don't breathe the mist, and you see everyone you know and love trying to kill you. Or better yet, imagine what's going on in everyone's head right after they breathe the mist. Do they want to kill those close to them, or is it a case of "And I Must Scream"?
  • There's also the fact that the mist covered the entire planet. Over 90% of the Earth's population including animals transformed into bloodthirsty mindless drones of Garlic Jr and his henchmen. We're also shown a very disturbing clip of a young couple hiding out in a destroyed city whilst people all around riot, saying how that "evil mist changes people" before they are suddenly attacked (and probably infected) by several infected animals. We hear their screams as one of the girl's shoes flies off and the camera lingers on it for several seconds. Even worse the only cure for the mist becomes useless after 24 hours, meaning nearly everyone on Earth almost became stuck as drones permanently.
• The fact that during and after the Cell Saga, anyone with enough power is capable of nearly destroying a planet by elevating their Ki (especially if unchecked). During the Buu Saga, we see how Goku provokes earthquakes and destruction across Earth only with his transformation into Super Saiyan 3.
• After you've seen Dragon Ball Super, all the times Supreme Kai was threatened and/or on the verge of death suddenly become a lot more chilling than they already were, knowing that if he dies Beerus himself would cease to exist (and Whis would become inactive afterward), which would have severely affected events going forward into that series. ^spoilersIf he had died, Goku and the others might've still defeated Majin Buu, but while they would've avoided the Battle of Gods saga, they would've been immensely unprepared for Frieza's return (which would inevitably result in Earth's permanent destruction). And while the Champa and Future Trunks sagas may never have started... the lack of a strong team for the Universe Survival Saga (if they even had one at all), and all of the existence hinging on the hidden condition for the tournament, could've had very dire consequences when Zeno eventually remembers to do it. And even if this tournament took a long time to happen at all, eventually Frieza's forces would still find Broly and force him to fight for this tyrannical empire, and Moro would've eventually returned to his energy-eating spree in short order.

Babidi

• Babidi is a sadistic little creep who can't fight on his own but can take even the faintest traces of darkness in someone's soul and forcefully corrupt them into psychopathic slaves. Plus, his whole method for reviving Majin Buu revolved around inflicting pain. On top of that, he'll gleefully show you via magic the death and chaos Buu causes, just to show you how little hope you have.
  • And if you're one of his slaves and he thinks for a second that you've outlived your usefulness? Your arteries, veins, etc. are expanded within you, clogging your insides to the point where YOU become Stuff Blowing Up.
    • Given who we're talking about here, how can we be sure he hasn't already done that before he had his minions?
  • When he gets the idea to place his spell on Vegeta, we get to see how the process works on its victims. The way Vegeta describes it, the victim feels like they're being attacked from the inside. They're then racked with agonizing pain until they fall to their knees. If the victim is resistant, then they scream some more as Babidi's will eventually override their own.

Oozaru

• Any transformation in the Great Ape/Oozaru by Goku or Gohan. It appears to be as painful as it looks as their bodies become feral and more muscular as they transform. Not only do they have an appearance of a monster, but whenever a Saiyan turns into one unless they're elite, they lose all senses of themselves and kill anything in sight.
• But an Oozaru with conscious thought —à la Vegeta— sounds even more terrifying. This means that they know exactly what they're going to do, and you're the helpless grunt about to have your bones ground to dust- at best.
  • Well, at least with conscious thought, you'd be able to know when to stop destroying when the job's done. With an out-of-control Oozaru form, you just kill and kill... and you don't stop until the transformation's over, and you have no memory of what happened...
  • When Goku gets his ribcage crushed by Oozaru Vegeta in the Saiyan Saga. He'd already weakened his body to the point where a light slap from Yajirobe made him wince, so when you think about how much this had to hurt amazingly, he was able to contribute to the fight at all.

Spopovich

• Early in the Buu saga, we see the fight between Videl and Spopovich. Long story short, this entire episode, if you remove the fantasy elements, is a wrestler pounding a young girl in a tournament, and absolutely no one is coming to help her! There's a shot of Spopovich stepping on her head, and all Videl can do is cry out in pain! She's lucky Gohan defied his father and flew in to save her, which, brings up a whole other issue! Even Goku is disgusted with this guy (Spopovich), and went on his way to mutter "I don't like him" and "there's something wrong with that guy" more than once. Still, he didn't intervene, but it was more of a matter of time: if Gohan didn't do it first, Goku would have.
  • Even if you keep the fantasy elements in, for not one, but two solid episodes, the fight between Videl and Spopovich is pretty horrific. Videl, struggling to even make him react to her attacks, delivers a kick that spins his entire head around. After a scene in which everyone thinks she did kill him (including Videl herself, who didn't mean to go that far), HE GETS BACK UP, NEARLY PULLS HIS HEAD OFF, AND SETS IT BACK INTO PLACE! From there, he gets his revenge, pummeling her into heavy bleeding, and not stopping. Her screams are horrifying, especially the ones where he pulled on her hair. Both episodes are considered as Nightmare Fuel in-universe by spectators and the narrator.
  • In the manga Spopovich goes far enough that he manages to BREAK VIDEL'S TEETH and leaves her a bleeding mess!
  • Then we find out that Spopovich lost easily to Hercule in the last tournament, bringing out the Fridge Horror of what was able to make him at least ten times stronger and teach him to fly and use energy attacks. And then Vegeta falls under Babidi's influence.
  • You know it’s that bad when Yamu is the one who forces Spopovich to end his brutality on Videl. This is the same guy who’s enslaved by Babidi, one who must have traces of evil in them, and yet viewing Videl’s torture made Yamu have enough humanity in him to feel genuine sadness.
  • Although it's utterly well-deserved after what he did to Videl, Spopovich's death is still horrifyingly gruesome. Babidi uses the magic he's bestowed upon Spopovich to make the guy's body start to inflate like a balloon. We can hear bones crunching, and get a close-up of his eyes bugging out as his expanding body mass starts to crush his head as he cries out in agony until it's just a gurgling sound...and then he explodes! And as seen below, it's not even the last time such a death happens in the Buu Saga!

Van Zant

• Van Zant, the bandit who shot Buu's dog and later Mr. Satan. In his first scene, he kills an elderly couple and revels in about how great it feels to kill someone. Then we see him shooting people at random in a nearby town. It all leads up to Van Zant shooting Buu's dog and Mr. Satan and this triggers the release of Buu's evil side, meaning he's responsible for every bad thing that happens afterward. All this for no reason other than the sheer thrill of killing people. Even worse is that at the time Buu had reformed and posed no threat to anyone. What's worse is that he uses Buu's destruction spree as an excuse, reasoning that everyone will be killed eventually, and even going so far as to pretend that Buu killed his victims. And just why does he do all of this? He's reckoned that with Buu flying around basically laying waste to the planet, he's probably going to die soon, and he decided it'd be fun to try to take as many people with him as possible. That's his entire motivation. The most terrifying thing about him is that he is a completely normal human being with no superpowers. Emphasize on completely, since he is just a simple human with no superpowers or martial arts training. All other human villains were leaders of evil organizations (Commander Red) or were mercenaries and later cyborgs (Tao Pai Pai), but he is just an average human. Most of the other villains in the series are intergalactic warlords, androids, or other supernatural creatures and use ki-blasts and other superpowers for evil, Van Zant uses normal guns to accomplish bad things. It is terrifying to see that a regular human, who uses normal guns to accomplish bad deeds, can be just as bad as intergalactic alien warlords or insane androids.
  • To emphasize how horrible Van Zant's Realism-Induced Horror is, his first scene is shooting down an old woman who is trying to escape Buu's rampages, and then her husband panics and anguishes over the cruelty of her being gunned down. We then see him pressure his butler into killing the old man who is calling out for his wife and wondering just why this would happen, sounding to be on the verge of tears before his cries are silenced with a gunshot.
  • And, partially related to this is how Zant and his crony Smitty die. Zant's death is standard fare for DBZ (vaporized by a point-blank Ki Blast from Skinny Evil Buu), but Smitty suffers what may be the most horrifyingly brutal death of the entire series ^note Super Buu turned into a liquid and force-fed himself to the guy, expanding inside Smitty until he exploded into several hundred meaty chunks. And, in a series where the main characters routinely get holes blown through them, lose limbs, and get bones snapped, that's saying a LOT.
  • On the subject of Van Zant's death, while the anime spared some of the more gruesome details of Evil Buu vaporizing him, the manga gives us a more gruesome up close look, showing his his jaw breaking off while his eyes fly out of their sockets. As much as he deserved it, that's still a horrible way to go out.
  • This doesn't mention the look◊ that Majin Buu gives him just as he's starting to explode. This may be one of four times in the entire series that we consistently see Fat Majin Buu with his eyes wide open.
  • Someone had to mention how Mr. Satan reacts to the whole thing. Mr. Satan is absolutely furious at Van Zant and attacks him. Mr. Satan, the same guy who acted all fearless in the Cell Games and felt more awkward than scared when he first met Buu, became pissed off and Took a Level in Badass just to give Zant a beating. That's saying a lot.

Piccolo

• This may be more Nausea Fuel than Nightmare Fuel, but Piccolo being forced to reassemble himself after Trunks knocks him over as a statue. Presuming that Piccolo was not conscious of his time as a statue and only regained consciousness when the attack wore off (i.e. when Buu killed Dabura), imagine if your first conscious realization after being turned to stone is, "Oh, Crap!. I'm in pieces." And then there was the effort involved. It's already a known fact that, yes, while Piccolo can regenerate limbs, it's not an easy process. And he had to regenerate several portions of his body.
  • Trunks, at the time less than 10 years old, freaked out as soon as he saw the others coming back to life, remembering that he had broken the statue. He looked over the ridge where Piccolo had been standing and visibly blanched. What kind of visceral, meaty horror he saw can only be imagined, and at such an age.
  • It also helps to remember that this is a show that is all too pleased to show you the gore of battle... yet it did not let you see what Trunks was seeing. Instead, all you saw was young Trunks looking as if he was about to throw up at the ghastly sight, before informing Goten and Krillin that "you don't wanna go up there, guys." Take Our Word for It indeed...
• This example is mostly reserved for the earlier movies: How utterly Piccolo's ruthlessness can be towards the villains, even after his Heel–Face Turn. Whenever he goes up against the henchman, he makes damn sure they suffer an agonizing death, and he seems to enjoy doing it too.
  • Lord Slug: He engages in a Curb-Stomp Battle against Wing and breaks both his arms. Realizing how screwed he was, Wing offered Piccolo a spot in Slug's army. Piccolo stretched his hand out as if to help Wing back up... and puts it in front of his face. He then proceeded to blow Wing's head off.
  • Revenge of Cooler: He fires a homing blast at Doore, who tried to chase after Gohan. He attempted to outrun and then block it, but it proved too much to handle, and he got vaporized. Neiz caught Piccolo in an electric cage. Piccolo was screaming in agonizing pain... until Neiz got too close. Piccolo smirked, grabbed Neiz by the face, and fried him to death by his own attack.

Films/Specials

The Tree of Might

• Word of God stated that Turles is essentially what Goku would be if he never landed on his head, wiping his memory.
• When he plants the Tree of Might, it turns the planet to a desolate wasteland. Also, whoever eats from this fruit obtains immense power.
• When Turles forces Gohan's eyes open to see the fake moon, going Oozaru.

Lord Slug

• Slug when growing into a Super Namek/Giant Namekian. He's even bigger than Piccolo when he went giant in the original series.
• Goku's False Super Saiyan transformation. It shows up for a brief moment, but it's scary to see the desperate Goku suddenly turn into a Kaioken-esque Screaming Warrior on a rage-fueled rampage.

Super Android 13

• In an infamous moment among DBZ fans, Goku turns Super Saiyan and charges the eponymous android with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs only for Android 13 to be completely unaffected. Think about how frighteningly strong any sort of being that can No-Sell SSJ Goku's punches and kicks must be. Then think of that same being punching you directly in the balls (if you have them).
• The horrifying face Goku sports when after turning Super Saiyan and subconsciously absorbing that tremendous power, turning him into a giant ball of raw power that Android 13 can't even approach without disintegrating his fists. Also, even after skewering the android and blowing him up, Goku STILL sports that bared-tooth expression as if to stress how BAD the strain of maintaining this state is upon him.
• The movie itself works as a (possibly unintentional) case of Fridge Horror: Had the Hyperbolic Time Chamber not been around to bail them out, the heroes' helplessness against Super Android 13 is exactly how a fight against Android 16, or worse, Semi-Perfect Cell would have gone. They'd never have lived to even see Perfect Cell.

Cooler's Revenge

• It can be jarring to realize that not only did Frieza have his father King Cold, but also an older brother. Cooler isn't avenging Frieza's death out of love, but out of sheer spite and a sense of self-preservation and his family's honor. Upon learning that it was a member of the supposedly 'weak' race of creatures, a Saiyan, he felt that someone killing Frieza and not him was an outright insult to him. So what does Cooler do? He heads to Earth, enraged, to avenge Frieza and kill the one that had done it. He's just like Frieza, but even worse. His power exceeds him. It's implied in the film that he's in the same form and strength as his brother's fourth and final form... except that he has another form to surpass him!
  • The near-final moments when Goku repelled Cooler back with his Super Kamehameha and Cooler's Supernova straight to the sun. Anyone who's read this page so far knows where this is going... Let's just say that Cooler's demise was a slow horrific incineration that would leave some viewers raising a few eyebrows. He may (like many other Z villains of the entire series) have deserved it but in the end, it’s still a horrible demise...

The Return of Cooler

• ...Then it turns out Cooler survived as a piece of his head intact, and a computer chip called the Big Gete Star fused with it, turning Cooler into a Hive Mind. His first order of business was to invade New Namek, enslave its population, and engulf part of the planet in a giant mass of metal. Cooler also appears as a new body with enough power to overwhelm Super Saiyan Goku and Vegeta at the same time and can rebuild himself each time he's damaged.
  • It took Goku and Vegeta nearly everything they had to destroy Cooler's new body. And just when they were catching their breath, another body showed up atop a cliff leading an entire army of more copies. And no, Conservation of Ninjutsu was NOT in effect...

The History of Trunks

• Future Androids 17 and 18. Unlike their current counterparts, these androids kill For the Evulz and do so in extremely painful and humiliating ways, having done so for over a decade. There's barely a world left by the story's opening, only because the sadistic duo wants to take their time destroying the world. They also go out of their way to psychologically torture Trunks during his first beatdown to the point of instilling mental trauma afterward. Their death threat whispers are haunting and Trunks only survives them the first time out of sheer luck and the Androids' disinterest in hunting him down.
  Android 17: We're in the cemetery!
  Android 18: This is your cemetery!
• When Future Gohan dies. It was horrifying to see him get hit by those beams, while he was screaming in agony, and he was laying on the ground helpless! You begin to realize how hopeless the situation was, even though it seemed Gohan was holding his own. When Trunks faced his beatdown at the hands of the Androids, for some reason, they made the incredibly intelligent decision to use the creepiest Gregorian-chant BGM as a backdrop.
• The look into Trunks's nightmarish future, with a blinding orange sunset, coupled with "Mind, Power, KI" gives an idea of how bleak things are under the Androids' reign.
• From the second the rain falls on Gohan's final battle, the entire film takes on an eerie Film Noir aesthetic of dark shadows broken only by flashes of lightning, dim lamps, and dying sunlight. Trunks hiding in terror from 17 and 18 among the shadows of urban decay is a scene straight out of a 1980s Slasher Movie, complete with a blood-chilling Ominous Pipe Organ score to emphasize just how horrifying and hopeless his plight is.

Broly

• Broly's screams when going Legendary Super Saiyan. He sounds like a baby crying interspersed with maniacal laughter.
  • At the last part of the transformation, we get a close-up of Broly's face. He then lets out a loud scream of agony and hatred as his power rises, and we see his eyes glow green as his skin starts to crack open, then he literally EXPLODES as he reveals his Legendary Super Saiyan form!
• The Goku we all know and love was born with a power level of 2. Broly? Broly was born with a power level of 10,000. That's a base power level, with no training or power-ups. Canonically, he could have wiped the floor with basically everyone in the Saiyan Saga save Goku and Vegeta as a day-old infant. If that's how powerful he was when he was a baby, it's horrifying to think how strong Broly is as a trained adult. No wonder King Vegeta was terrified of him.
  • Also consider that, at least in the original continuity, Broly was stabbed as a newborn by agents of King Vegeta. Talk about Adult Fear if you're Paragus - but Broly came close enough to die from this. The fact that he didn't die from being stabbed in the chest as a baby is frightening, but keep in mind what happens if you nearly kill a Saiyan but doesn't get the job done. As ridiculous as Broly's power level was out of the womb, how much more was it after an assassination attempt?
• Every villain in the series, when being fought, has taken hits and bled. Frieza, Cell, Bojack, Buu, it doesn't matter. Every one of them gets a beating here and there. Broly, though? He doesn't get hurt at all. The only hits that have ever made Broly flinch in any form, at least in the original movies, are the killing blows at the end of each one. He can take everything that you can throw at him and not notice. On top of that, he's insane. You can't bargain with him or surrender. You can't scare him, you can't team up on him and all he wants to do is kill you... as slowly and painfully as he can. And unlike the other villains, he's not doing it because you're in his way or for profit. Broly does it because he loves it. It doesn't matter if he's ordered to kill you, once he sees you then he will go after you, and he will kill you.
• Legendary Super Saiyan Broly. One of the things he's most noted for is his Empty Eyes. This gives him a demonic appearance, on top of the fact that he grows nearly twice as tall as his original self, is bulkier than the Ultra Super Saiyan 2nd state, and destroys a slave race's planet just to see them cry about it. But all you need to realize that he's a bad mofo is to watch one of the many scenes in the first movie where there's a close-up of his eyes.
  • This goes even further in that, for most of the series, the use of 'empty eyes' signifies that a character is either enraged or releasing stupidly high amounts of energy. In this case, it's very clearly both.
• The way Broly kills Paragus. Sure, Paragus certainly deserved it, but it doesn't make it any less horrifying. Paragus climbs into a space pod to escape New Planet Vegeta, which is about to be hit by a comet, and intends to leave Broly behind. Unfortunately for him, Broly shows up, grabs the space pod, hoists it over his head, and crushes it with Paragus still inside. Worse still, he crushes it slowly enough that Paragus has time to lament over his fate - meaning that Paragus's death was a slow and painful one. Ugh...
• Speaking of bad ways to go, both of the times Broly dies aren't pretty.
  • In The Legendary Super Saiyan, Goku punches Broly in the chest while Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, and Trunks give him their energy. Said punch rips a hole into Broly's chest, blood spewing out as Broly's body begins to crack. Broly then begins to violently spasm before he explodes, choking out one last "Kakarot!" (or in the Japanese dub, "IMPOSSIBLE!!!") as he does. Thankfully, Gory Discretion Shot comes into play and we don't see anything grisly, but god damn.
  • In Second Coming, Broly gets blasted into the sun thanks to the Family Kamehameha - at which point we're treated to a clear shot of his heart messily bursting because of the extreme heat, followed by Broly himself. What a way to go.
• If you think about it, the reason Broly is like this (at least post-Super) can be this. On the very day that Planet Vegeta blew up, King Vegeta attempted to kill him via knife because having such a powerful being around was deemed too much of a threat. It didn't work, and shortly afterward, the annihilation of the Saiyan Race occurred, with only Broly and Paragus surviving the explosion itself due to the former's immense power. But that isn't what sets Broly off...no, the trigger for his Legendary Super Saiyan transformation is the Saiyan child that just so happened to be crying right next to him: Goku. For him, the very sight of Goku brings the traumatic events of his youth to the forefront, all because Goku cried in the same room as him on the worst day of his life, causing a rampage that nearly breaks five of the strongest characters in the series at that point. And then in Second Coming, Goten accidentally wakes up a frozen Broly with his crying and incurs his wrath, waking up a hulking monstrosity with one thing left on his mind: murder Kakarot! And since Goten looks an awful lot like his dad, he'll have to do.

Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans

• In Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, Frieza, Turles, Cooler, and Slug come back as ghosts. After they are defeated, Hatchiyack absorbs their spirits, which is very painful. We are then treated to a sequence of each villain's ghost being trapped inside a ball and writhing in agony.
  • It's stated and mentioned by Goku that Hatchiyack is either the same power level as Broly or a bit beyond it. It doesn't help and adds fuel to the fire that he reemerges as an android hellbent on slaughtering Goku and his friends.

Battle of the Gods

• Battle of the Gods is parental fear for Gohan. Get drunk one time and wind up doing something careless that comes dangerously close to killing your wife and daughter. Bet he swore off alcohol after that incident.
  • It also invites the ultimate Fridge Horror of the Sorting Algorithm of Evil in the Dragon Ball universe, Beerus, the God of Destruction which all the other gods fear. This would normally not be as dangerous considering how the gods normally rank things until he curb stomps Super Saiyan 3 Goku with just one finger. Since this is the canonical universe, where Super Saiyan 3 is the strongest state aside from Mystic and Fusions, this is a big deal. Then the Super Saiyan God state, which is the strongest state in the series' canon is activated by Goku to defeat this guy. Normally you'd expect a Curb-Stomp Battle to ensue and deal with the Big Bad. Nope, Goku still loses, only managing to force Beerus to go 70% of his power and suffers no punishment. The real scary part comes after this turns out despite being the strongest character in the series according to V-jump, it turns out that his advisor, Whis, is much stronger than he is, and given that we never see the full extent of Beerus' power, Whis' power must be beyond comprehension. We also get this bit of information; turns that he's the designated God of Destruction for the universe that Dragon Ball is based in which is No. 7 out of 12.
    • To sum it up Beerus, the most powerful character in the series, has several beings above him. There's his mentor who's stronger than he is, strong enough to smack him around like a child and have it Played for Laughs, and then there are the other Eleven Universes' Gods of Destruction that are all probably as strong if not stronger than he is. THEN there's the reveal of the Top God Zeno, a childlike being whom each of the Gods of Destruction fears immensely and destroyed six universes already, with the current 12 universes originally being 18. Talk about a dark and horrifying deconstruction of Always Someone Better.
• Furthermore Beerus is too powerful to fight. During his fight with Goku, the shockwaves from their blows were so intense that Old Kai estimated they would tear the universe itself apart by echoing through the universe and destroying planets and stars in their wake. Even apparently fighting a God of Destruction puts the universe in danger of complete erasure!

Resurrection 'F':

• Frieza is back. The monster that brutally slaughtered TRILLIONS of people and blew up countless planets; who created a galaxy-wide Real Estate scam where planetary-scale genocide was commonplace as part of his father's empire; who mercilessly tortured Goku, Gohan, and Piccolo and savagely murdered Dende, Vegeta, and Krillin, has returned. The Evil Overlord is back, burning with revenge, and more powerful than ever!
• The third trailer starts pretty awesomely, with epic footage of the fights, and both a Heavy Metal tune and a J-Pop song playing as the Z-Fighters fight epically, but then... the music abruptly ends as we see Frieza literally stomping Goku to submission, and further commentary of Beerus and Vegeta seemingly chastising Goku for being soft. Cue Frieza cackling maniacally as the Earth blows up, and the background? Goku screaming in agony. End of the trailer...
• We already knew Frieza to be a Bad Boss, but it reaches new levels. His men only resurrect him as a desperate, last resort because they need him (the only reason is that they can't face the continuous revolts in the empire, and Frieza's mere presence will be enough to scare them all into submission). And the one telling us that is Frieza. He's perfectly aware of this and doesn't care, worse, seems to enjoy the chaos. His first actions after his resurrection show us exactly why it's like that. The first thing he does, he kills one of his men, just to check how strong he is. Then, one of the soldiers that helped his resurrection lampshades the Revenge Before Reason and... Well, remember how he killed Krillin? He does the same but throws the unlucky soldier into space to boot. And that leaves a hole on the ship that starts sucking everyone but Frieza (who could just survive into space anyway). Luckily, they have shields that prevent that, and ultimately the order to raise them is given. By Sorbet. Frieza would have just let everyone die. To sum it up: a wrong move, and you risk a horrific death. Be too close to who made the wrong move, and you risk dying all the same. Do nothing at all, and you might die anyway because he needed a target. Not bad enough? A casual line in the movie implies that his soldiers are forced to join his army. Punch-Clock Villain doesn't even start to describe it.
• Then, of course, Beerus gives us another one. Not only will the guy destroy your planet over a petty insult (from even a minor citizen of your planet), but he can destroy MULTIPLE solar systems by accident just because he ate something especially spicy. Whis has to hunt him down and knock him out. Good thing Whis has a Reset Button. Good Lord...