Nightmare Fuel / Dragon Ball Super

For him, no cost is too great to ascend into Godhood.

Be not fooled: this is NOT the carefree world of Dragon Ball or even the darkly awesome one of Z. Dragon Ball Super is more of a Cosmic Horror Story than any Shounen series has any right to be, and thoroughly deserves its Nightmare Fuel page. One may argue that the violence has been toned down from its predecessors, but the existential horror of a multiverse filled with capricious, unstoppable deities more than picks up the slack...

For the original series, see here, for the previous series, see here. The Future Trunks Saga and Universe Survival Saga have their own pages here and here, respectively. For the film Dragon Ball Super: Broly, see here.

All spoilers are unmarked!

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God of Destruction Saga

• Beerus being played much less for laughs turns a lot of his scenes into this.
  • For starters, his Establishing Character Moment is different. In the movie, it was a silly scene of Whis trying to wake him up with bombs, and then when that failed, threatening to sing which caused Beerus to lazily drag himself awake. Here? A creepy scene of him being served food by an alien race who are practically doing their best not to shit their pants in fear. After Beerus eats it and deems it tasty but greasy, he decides to only wipe out ''half'' the planet. And he does it with a poke!
  • At the party, it seems more like Bulma invited a serial killer who is acting friendly to everyone just before killing them. (Then you realize that's exactly the case as he's a serial destroyer of worlds.) And Vegeta is the only one who knows Beerus' true nature and can do nothing about it as Beerus shoots him smug looks.
  • Vegeta, who has always been brave to the point of foolhardiness before, spends almost all of episode 7 utterly paralyzed in fear as the others try to fight Beerus and lose one by one.
  • Beerus's extremely prolonged, frantic rant to Gotenks in response to being denied pudding is funny...at first. Then he starts flipping between moods even faster, throwing out every single variable of food that could ever be considered like a madman, and it becomes disturbing. It gives one the impression that even though he's not outright villainous, Beerus isn't entirely all there. The fact that Gotenks is tearing up does not help.
  • Beerus slapping Bulma is played very creepily, with the viewers seeing what appears to be a fairly long windup, Vegeta freaking out as he realizes what's about to happen but cannot seem to move, and the gleam in Beerus' eye as he's about to do it.
    • What makes Beerus slapping Bulma even more frightening is that Dragon Ball Super has taken much more care to establish how much damage he can do with the slightest effort. He defeated Goku by flicking his forehead and pushing down on his shoulder. Bear in mind even before the Buu Saga, Goku could bear the weight of four hundred tons. Now, just imagine what a slap can do to an average human? Screw getting knocked out, Bulma and Vegeta are lucky she wasn't reduced to splatters all across the ship!
    • Just seeing Vegeta utterly shocked and guilted after seeing such a thing happen to his wife while not being mentally able to do anything about can be both this and heartwarming.
• The mere fact that Beerus only has to look at Vegeta to freeze him in terror, even when he's trying to fight.
• Beerus is about to destroy the world. Everyone hugs their loved ones or just stares in shock as Piccolo comments that everything they did against Beerus was futile in the end.
• We are given an even clearer picture of how powerful Beerus is. He tells Vegeta that this was the first time in a long time that he had to use one-tenth of his power and he did much better than Goku as a Super Saiyan 3. With just one-tenth of his strength, Beerus took no notable damage from Vegeta's rage-fueled onslaught, and then proceeded to casually slap him out of his Super Saiyan 2 form!
• Despite the power up to Super Saiyan God, Goku is still struggling against Beerus, barely dealing any real lasting damage despite landing hits on the guy. It's all Goku could do to just survive and one can really feel the hopelessness in facing overwhelming power.
  • Whenever Beerus drops the good-natured act and lets his voice drop an octave, expect a terrifying beatdown to occur. Just ask Goku, whether he's being slammed into the ground or being catapulted into space or fending off scores of energy blasts, knowing that if one gets through and hits Earth, kiss the planet good-bye...
  • Beerus finally has enough and stabs Goku through his left rib. If you observe closely, Goku's complexion turns paler as a result, and his aura also diminishes nearly to nothing.
• The above sudden turn of seriousness occurs for one reason only: Goku figured out why Beerus was holding out on him and mentioned he could relate... except Goku really can't; he can't so much as fathom what it's like for Beerus because there has never been a power gap so vast between him and others as Beerus has to everything else in the universe. Beerus does not take kindly to such an allegation.
• The battle between gods is so intense that the entire universe will be turned to dust if they keep fighting, at least if they don't control the angle of their blows. An entire planet in another solar system crumbled to bits from the shockwave, and probably other planets suffered the same fate. We don't know if that planet was populated. Even the Planet of the Kais and King Kai's planet are in danger and they lie outside the physical universe, meaning the Otherworld itself may be in danger, and even the afterlife would be destroyed.
• Piccolo grabs onto Whis to stop him from prematurely leaving when it looks like the battle between Goku and Beerus is decided. Whis of all people tells Piccolo to let go of him. His voice, when he says that, sounds a bit harsh and demanding. When someone as nice as Whis, who hangs out with Beerus of all people, sounds pissed, you know you're in trouble.
  Whis: You will kindly remove your hand. [Beat] I said remove it.
  • What's even more terrifying is what Whis may do if he got angry. Beerus had the power to potentially destroy the universe, and Whis is even stronger than him.
  • This line sounds arguably harsher in the dub than in the original version. Thank goodness Vegeta did a ki blast when he did, or else something far worse than Beerus destroying Earth could have happened.

Golden Frieza Saga

• Goku and Vegeta's training regiment makes the previous sagas look like child's play, as their lives are literally on the line when they must lift an extremely heavy weight and move across the planet in one lap; if they fall off their route, they'll enter a dimension where they can never come back. Their 'housework' of changing Beerus' sheets/blanket, while he's sleeping. The seriousness of the task makes it funny at first, but then the implications - that all of Beerus' sudden sleep movements hit with his full power - overturn that; the two Saiyans are lucky they were strong enough to survive such blows.
• Champa and Vados show up. Vados blows up a planet on Champa's orders, just by tapping her staff while in orbit. Worse, they're not done, because they're looking for a specific planet and this wasn't it, meaning they didn't have to destroy it and that Vados knew that the planet Champa was looking for wasn't this one.
  • Even worse is Champa's attitude towards destruction. He comes off as more boorish and arrogant than his twin brother, who has no problem getting his hands dirty and instead has his assistant do it for him, demanding in the rudest manner possible. He's lucky that Vados is so calm and understanding about the matter, considering she, like Whis, is much, much stronger than the lord she serves. Vados herself is terrifying as well, destroying an unrelated planet without so much as batting an eye; Whis is shown as being much more considerate towards life, even if he does have to follow Beerus.
  • Perhaps the worst of it is her smile. Unlike Whis, Vados' calm smile doesn't come from knowing things will work out or that she can reign in her lord if need be. No, her calm, sinister little smirk is in light of destroying this random world. There is a being of Whis' caliber who enjoys destruction.
  • And then Vados gets worse. In the manga, we find out that in the past, she intentionally started a fight between Beerus and Champa. Each one of them by definition has enough power to clean out an entire universe, and she and Whis know full well that a prolonged fight between them would guarantee that outcome, yet she deliberately pitted them against each other! Just what the hell is this woman's deal?!
  • After the brief encounter with Beerus and Whis, they said that they already collected five of what they are looking for. Could they be talking about... Super Dragon Balls?! Meaning what his original plan to do with them is a horrifying thought.
  • Oh yeah, then there's the part where she deliberately played off Champa's laziness to receive carte blanche to pick Universe 6's Freeza to join her and Champa's team, with promises that Champa will assist him in winning. Here's why this is a big deal: Frost is not Freeza's Good Counterpart, he's his smart counterpart. Vados knows this and picked him anyway. And she convinced Champa to keep up the promise, despite taking this revelation as a personal shame brought unto him by Frost, by reminding him of the competition and his goal to defeat Beerus. She has essentially gotten her God of Destruction to earnestly back a Galactic Conqueror with Good Publicity responsible for at least millions of deaths^note as opposed to merely advising/coercing/ordering him to perform certain tasks as Beerus did with Freeza, and even then Beerus intended to kill Freeza down the line as well by manipulating his sloth and pride.
• Sorbet wishes for Frieza to be brought back, despite being told that this will leave him in pieces. It results in a rain of unidentifiable chunks of flesh, which start twitching like mad, showing that Frieza is not only alive but conscious. The icing on the cake is when Pilaf, Mai, and Shu look at one stray piece - which turns out to be Frieza's eye, as it springs open and glares at them. No surprise that the three of them freak out and hand it over to Sorbet & Tagoma as quickly as possible.
• Frieza's emergence from the regeneration machine. He nearly blows up the ship just powering up after reintegrating all his pieces. Then he steps out amidst the rubble, ominously cracks his neck, and then spits up a huge gobbet of green slime... and then he shows his Bad Boss credentials by blasting Tagoma's arms and legs for daring to suggest that they just ignore Goku. Lucky for Tagoma, he gets fixed up.
  • In comparison to Resurrection F, Frieza doesn't kill Tagoma or randomly kill his men. Instead, he's "just" happy to demean and torture them and largely kept them around to kill as a means to show off his new power.
  • Tagoma doesn't come out that much better compared to the movie. Here, he is Frieza's practice dummy for four months. Frieza uses him to test his power so he can keep Goku alive for as long as possible, but in great pain. He did this every day. By the time Tagoma goes to Earth, his sanity is shot to hell and he becomes as ruthless and cold-blooded as Frieza. At least the Tagoma in the movie died with his convictions and the morality he had intact. In Super, Frieza killed Tagoma in all except the body.
  • The very idea of anyone being at Frieza's mercy for four months. Given what a sadistic monster Frieza already is, the fact that the tries to improve his torture is downright frightening. It's even scarier when you consider what would have happened to Goku if he never met Beerus and gained the power of Super Saiyan God. It would make Tagoma's suffering look like child's play.
• The entire screen goes red and the music change as the Earth's fighters make their approach to where Frieza's going to land.
• Tagoma ruthlessly guns down Shisami so he can also get Gohan, who Shisami was bear-hugging at the time. While Sorbet is horrified and calls Tagoma out, Frieza is actually impressed by his cruelty.
• Frieza going utterly insane after Gohan tries to show mercy to Ginyu. Frieza spends several minutes shooting Gohan until he can't even move, all the while mocking him. After Gohan is on the ground, Frieza teases Gohan about begging for mercy and crying before saying he still wouldn't spare him. The whole thing is made even more surreal when he calls Gohan "Goku".
  Frieza: Serves you right, insect. Serves you right, Saiyan. Serves you right, Son Goku!
  • While this is happening, Goten can only scream his brother's name in despair.
  • And to compound the nightmare, in what can be called a frightening Call-Back to the Saiyan Saga and the Namek Saga, Piccolo saves Gohan and takes a Death Beam to the heart. The next episode confirms he's dead.
• Ginyu the body thief. Once upon a time, his ability to switch bodies had been sealed away when he was tricked into a body that cannot speak... And now he found a way to work around it.
• Frieza powering up to his final form. He vaporizes his entire army just by powering up and leaving what amounts to a mile-wide crater in the earth. This is Frieza powering up.
• Frieza is an Adaptational Badass here. In Resurrection F, he and Goku's Super Saiyan Blue form were roughly equal in power. Here, Frieza absolutely clobbers him. You can count the number of good hits Goku gets in on him with one hand, with fingers left over.
• When Frieza destroys the Earth, we actually see the heroes' loved ones getting caught in the blast. It is especially bad for 18, the Briefs, Goten, and Trunks since they see the blast coming and can't do anything to stop it. It's also terrible for those who don't see it coming. Mr. Satan and Buu are sleeping, Videl is comforting Pan, Chi-Chi is reading, and Marron is doing her schoolwork. In just a few seconds, they're all dead.

Universe 6 Saga

• Beerus and Champa are so powerful that if they fight all out they will destroy two universes. Given what happened when Super Saiyan God Goku fought Beerus, it is very believable especially since Goku was still much weaker than Beerus while Champa is on Beerus' level.
• In-universe, but possibly out too. Beerus's funniest thought (and possibly wish) is complete destruction of the world. This fact (and his Slasher Smile at departing) scares Bulma so much that she decides to find Universe 7's Super Dragon Balls before the tournament will end.
• The power of Frost's poison. It's so potent that it doesn't just make Goku tired and dizzy, it knocks him out for over a minute. When he regains consciousness, Goku is so out of it that he didn't even realize that he got ring-out or how it happened. Imagine how that poison would have affected a more normal person? The fact that Frost is actually a villain counts too. The person that is known throughout Universe 6 as a hero, leader, and savior is actually responsible for their misery. How many people have died because of him?
• Monaka scares Beerus, the God of Destruction so much that the latter does its best not only to prevent Goku from fighting him but will be relieved if Monaka isn't fighting at all. He later explains that when in battle Monaka becomes such a berserker that can't distinguish between friend and foe, and that he destroyed a planet, while he was in trance. Thank God that he's a good guy! Later this turns out to be a lie.
• Vegeta once again indulges in his formerly evil behavior to goad Cabba into going Super Saiyan. While Goku and the others were growing concerned with his sudden erratic behavior, imagine all this from Cabba's POV. For all he knew, Vegeta posed a very serious threat to his planet and his people and there wouldn't be a thing that could be done to stop him. Good thing Vegeta wasn't being serious about his threats...
  • The English dub gets especially chilling when Vegeta starts beating on Cabba. At one point it looks like he might not stop; Yamcha thinks he might have gone back to the dark side, and even Bulma and Trunks start to get nervous.
    Piccolo: He wouldn't.
    Goku: (looking more serious than he has the whole tournament thus far) He would.
  • Even worse because Vegeta is very specific with his threat:
    Vegeta: Now listen! If you quit on me, (screen darkens, zooms in on Vegeta's eyes) I will kill you. (snip) And once the fight is over, I'm going to blow your stupid planet Sadala to smithereens! But first, I'm going to hunt down, one by one, and murder every last member of your family. But for them... it won't be quick.
• The fact that Hit only goes for vital spots when fighting his opponents, purposely using "light" attacks to keep his opponents off balance, and these "light" attacks are strong enough to draw blood. When he puts actual effort into his attack, it's powerful enough to knock Super Saiyan Blue Vegeta out in one shot. Had he put his full power into it, Hit could've potentially killed him! He didn't only because of the "no-kill" rule in place for the tournament.
  • Hit's abilities bear extra mentioning. Imagine fighting a being who can stop time for 0.1 seconds. That may not seem like much but that same being can also move at insanely high speeds. With time stopping for "that long", it's all the time that Hit needs to lay all the punishment he wants on you. While you're reeling from the first barrage of hits, the next couple of barrages start coming out of nowhere and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Oh, and all those hits target your vital areas: throat, temple, eyes, ears, chest, neck, etc.
  • One last thing that makes this incredibly terrifying: Hit isn't like Goku or even Vegeta (anymore). He's not even neutral. He's a hitman. Meaning he not only can kill people, but does so for a living. Imagine what a person Hit was hired to kill would think in the above situation. Combined with this, the fact that Hit is over a thousand years old. In that time, imagine how many people he might have killed.
  • So, you have a cold, calculating fighter one thousand years old in the realms of the gods' tier of power who decided to become a professional killer with his gifts. How could you possibly make him even more dangerous? Give him a form of Zenkai boost to his combat ability as he fights. The "as he fights" part is a key difference: the Saiyans got their power up by being beaten in a fight. They needed time to recover and were vulnerable for a short while. Hit does not: when you finally found a way to land a couple of shots and start dealing some damage, he will become far stronger and shrug it all off, and then he'll become even stronger.
  • The Visual Effects of Awesome for the Time Leap is most certainly this, as while nobody who isn't a Super Saiyan Blue going 10x Kaio-ken can actively perceive it, reality itself surrounding Hit both inverts and cracks apart like a smashed pane of glass, to speak nothing of mention the dark filter going on. It makes his brutal beatdown on Goku when he ups the duration to half a second quite frightening, seeing Goku helplessly being torn into some hellish alternate dimension by quite possibly the deadliest mortal man in the multiverse.
  • After Goku uses the Kaio-ken with Super Saiyan Blue, his individual muscles keep bulging and spasming uncontrollably. It's pretty gross, and painful too.
• Champa tries to murder his team after they're defeated. What's more worrying is that his tone completely changes, becoming psychotic. And what about Beerus, when Goku forfeits his match? It lowers to the point that you see that he is very angry, and barely keeps himself calm. It's very possible that if not for meeting Goku and his friends before, and becoming nicer, he could kill them just like Champa.
• While he seems to be a good guy, the fact that Beerus and Champa, beings leagues stronger than the heroes are even close to at this point and incredibly powerful Physical Gods themselves, are terrified of Zeno and freak out at his mere presence. Just how much power, either literal, metaphorical, or both, does Zeno have to get that reaction from two beings of that magnitude?!
  • Enough to wipe out the twelve Universes in the blink of an eye, according to Beerus. Beerus on his own can only destroy one universe; Champa and Beerus clashing with one another at full power can only destroy two Universes. Zeno can wipe out The Multiverse singlehandedly.
  • And, as Universe Tournament arc shows, he's seemingly quite amoral... Emphasis on "seemingly".

Potaufeu Arc

• Goku loses control of his energy and can neither even fly straight, nor teleport correctly. Because of this, he crashes into his own house and wrecks it, despite his best attempt to control himself. Although this is Played for Laughs, it has to be scary for Goku not to have control of his own body and can't stop himself from hurting people, and he's clearly being extra careful with Pan. If Chi-Chi and Goten weren't super tough, Goku's crash could have killed someone.
• When Pan goes missing: A baby who is barely a year old is missing while her parents were gone and everyone is panicking. Even though Pan is part Saiyan, she is still a baby and thus everyone is freaking out since they don't know if she's hurt or not.
• The Superhuman Water/Commeson is like Super Buu's ability to absorb things, except it's a sentient entity rather than a technique. It not only copies the appearance, power/skill/techniques (including complete drain of Ki), and personality of the one it envelops but should the copy not be defeated within a short amount of time, the original will die, via physical dissolution. And it seems that no matter how strong or weak you are, you're vulnerable to this entity's drain, including beings on the level of gods. Imagine what could have happened if it absorbed Beerus or Whis, or even Zeno!
• Look at this whole ordeal from Trunks' point of view: before Goku arrived, he had two choices. Either he stands there while his real father vanishes into thin air, or he has to fight and defeat the copy of his father, who possesses all the man's raw strength and skills. And he no doubt knows his father is one of the strongest beings in the universe. The poor kid might not want to get out of his room for a while, particularly after he nearly got absorbed himself...
• When telling the others that they need to keep Monaka's weakness a secret from Goku so he'll continue to be motivated to become stronger, Whis says the Gods of Destruction of the other universes are brutal, with the implication that they're worse than Beerus. Hair Trigger Tempered, Ax-Crazy, petty Beerus. Yikes.

Hit arc

• Episode 68: Gohan comes to Shenron to wish for Pan's health, as she's quite ill, and doctors failed to cure her because of her Saiyan blood. Imagine, though it's very unlikely, what could have happened if Pan didn't get cured by Shenron...
• Episode 69: Beerus shows off just how vast his power is by erasing Dr. Mashirito's ghost from existence, in the very same episode which stated that Penguin Village residents could defy Dragon Ball Super's logic. Not only that, but while every other character who has died so far either gets brought back to life, gets reincarnated, or just lingers in the afterlife, Mashirito is gone forever.
  • It's Played for Laughs, but when you really think about it... how obscenely powerful Arale is. If she was evil, she could have taken over the entire universe long ago. And there's no indication that she was lying when she said to Goku that she would use her ultimate attack at 100x the power, something that he wasn't sure he could stop or block as a Super Saiyan Blue.
• Episode 70: We are again shown what could happen if Beerus and Champa start fighting each other. The storms start, the ground starts to crack, and multiple strays of their ki fall on it like tiny meteors. And they weren't powering up, yet they threw around blows strong enough to slightly wound each other, something not even Super Saiyan God Goku did with his best effort! Good thing that Whis and Vados stopped them.
• Episode 71 has Hit managing to take Goku out and kill him stone dead with one blow. It isn't even a major one either: All he does is punch Goku in the chest and it cuts to a close-up of the area that Hit punched, which is caving in on itself. Then Goku wheezes and tries to bounce back from it, only to fail and collapse. Hit didn't even physically touch Goku. He just punched hard enough that a shockwave (either of pure force or a special Ki attack) went straight through Goku's body and his heart. A Goku who just came back from training to fight Zamasu and Goku Black. Even if Goku managed to recover from it, that's beyond fucked up.
  • Episode 71 graces us with the image of Goku dead with his eyes open. The last two times we've seen him dead, it was with his eyes closed, or from behind. This time, we get to see his eyes opened and it's chilling...
  • Another frightening thing about the scene: Now that Hit isn't in a tournament bound by a no-kill rule, Hit gets to show off some of the powers he didn't get to use in the Universe 6 Saga. One of these is an intangibility technique. Goku tries to land a few punches, but they go right through Hit. Imagine being one of his targets; You're desperately trying to fight him off, but your attacks go right through him. No wonder he's such a renowned hitman. After all, how do you fight someone you can't even touch?!
  • Prior to all of the above, the episode also shows us Hit when he's performing an assassination job on a local crime boss, and to say that he is frighteningly efficient is an Understatement. He uses his Time-Skip to bypass all of the boss' security guards and when he reaches his target, he coldly tells him he's hired to kill him and promptly punches a hole through his heart, ignoring his pleas and bargains and killing him instantly. Imagine it from the crime boss' perspective: You're having a normal evening at your office when all of a sudden, you find that time has stopped for everyone but you. You turn around and find some strange guy behind you. The man tells you he's been hired to kill you and you panic and call for help, but with everyone but you frozen in time, help isn't coming anytime soon. You beg and plead with the man to spare you, even offering him money in hopes he goes away, but the man will hear none of your beggings and punches a hole through your chest, killing you instantly. The entire scene made it feel like the guy was face-to-face with the the Angel of Death himself. Paranoia Fuel is at its best.
  • The eerie atmosphere surrounding the entire episode. Goku somehow figured out that Hit was out to kill him and he'd been acting paranoid all day, to the point where it affected his eating habits. That's right. Hit's power is so sinister that he could unnerve Goku from another universe! Though all of the above becomes a lot less eerie when you find out Goku hired Hit himself so he could fight him at max potential.

Great Saiyaman arc

• Watagash is a terrifying creature - while harmless by itself, it's a parasite that attaches to people and increases its power based on their darkness, mutating their bodies. It was able to turn Barry Kahn, a human actor with virtually no physical training, into a spiky-shouldered warrior who can fly with Laser Eyes before growing him into a hideous Kaiju, able to at least smack base-form Gohan around (even if he's holding back and trying not to seriously hurt his opponent). If Watagash got attached to a bigger evil like Frieza or Cell (or worse), he could be able to turn them into an Eldritch Abomination capable of rivaling Fused Zamasu! And thanks to Jaco's negilgence he could come back...
  • Even worse, in Dragon Ball, mind control becomes less effective against really powerful or stubborn creatures (as shown by Vegeta's personality ignoring Babidi and the Commeson), and Watagash doesn't even seem to have a really personal purpose, to begin with. So if any of the aforementioned villains ever came in contact with it, they'd be in control and able to exploit the power-up, or even subdue Watagash itself.
  • When Watagash's host transforms into a more powerful form, their body develops large red scars all over. It's like the power is tearing the host themselves during the transformation.
  • Though ultimately Played for Laughs, Barry himself is still a rather disturbing character. Remember, Watagash doesn't cause its host to become evil; it only feeds off what's already present and then becomes accordingly powerful. Barry has proven himself to be a self-centered sociopath who tramples the careers of those less fortunate than him for amusement, tries to ruin marriages to puff up his insecure ego, and kidnaps innocent children to spite romantic rivals. Little wonder Watagash was able to make him so powerful.

Krillin arc

• The preview for Episode 76. Goku and Krillin go into a forest to continue training and for Krillin to get his self-confidence back. Not long after they enter the forest, the smoke turns into enemies that they faced and defeated. Aside from the obvious, why is this Nightmare Fuel? ONE OF THE VILLAINS IS TAMBOURINE. This is literally nightmare fuel for Krillin since Tambourine is the monster that killed him as a child. This, along with the other past villains showing up, will likely spark some long-since-buried bad memories for Krillin.
  • Don't forget that Tambourine only killed Krillin the first time. He's died three times over the course of the series, and yes, the second and third murderers, Frieza and Buu are present. Even if Krillin has recently seen Goku stomp Frieza, well, see below.
  • Also, think about it from Krillin's point of view. For Goku, it's just a gallery of his fights, but Krillin never made it even to Frieza's level. Tambourine, King Piccolo, Nappa, Saiyan saga Vegeta, and the Ginyu Force are likely the only ones there he actually can defeat. And they are some of his worst memories.
  • Also think about the fact that Krillin never encountered King Piccolo, this means that Goku is the reason that this shade shows up! Nearly 30 years have passed since Piccolo's father almost killed him and he's still there, lurking deep in his memories.
  • In Episode 76, we even get to see Krillin's point of view against these villains. He remembers his deaths with Tambourine, Frieza, and Super Buu, along with his petrification when he faced up against Dabura (who was also present with the villains).

Galactic Patrol Prisoner Saga

• Chapter 43 introduces a new villain: a powerful wizard by the name Moro who earned the name "Planet Eater Moro" thanks to his ability to drain the life out of entire worlds and consume it to become stronger, having done so to 320 planets already. By then, he dwarfed Majin Buu in power to the point a much stronger Grand Supreme Kai and South Kai (the two strongest and the only ones who were capable of fighting Buu head-on) were struggling to stay alive fighting him at the same time, and Grand Supreme Kai had to sacrifice most of his divine power to seal Moro's magic away. Even then, Moro was so powerful that the Galactic Patrol couldn't execute him, just imprison him.
• Goku locks onto Moro's energy and prepares to Instant Transmission to him... only for Moro to sense him and smirk, scaring the crap out of Goku. This bears repeating: Moro managed to scare the crap out of Goku. Let that sink in.
  • The Oh, Crap! Goku had when he sensed Moro is shown in full in the following chapter and explained why: his Ki feels like the countless people he's eaten screaming in agony. Remember Imperfect Cell's rematch with Piccolo where his Battle Aura was a screaming, tortured mass of the people he absorbed? Moro's ki is basically that taken up a notch.
• Also, in Chapter 44, Moro arrives on New Namek to search for the Dragon Balls, only to be confronted by Goku and Vegeta. His first response? To telekinetically grab a Namekian child and attempt to drain his life force. Thank God Vegeta stepped in just in time.
• Moro doesn't even need to absorb a planet's power to use it to strengthen himself: he can just weaponize it directly, which manifests in him attacking with giant tendrils of energy strong enough to overwhelm Super Saiyan God Vegeta. Worse yet, he can do this for as long as the planet is still alive, meaning he will never run out of energy until then. Moro also outright states that his power is but a fraction of what it once was, and at his strongest, he could swat Super Saiyan God Vegeta like a fly.
  • And to make matters worse, Moro can passively drain an opponent's energy while fighting, ensuring he gets stronger while they get weaker. By the time Goku and Vegeta realize this, they've both lost so much energy that they can't even go Super Saiyan. Things do not bode well for our heroes...
• Chapter 46 might as well be titled "Darkest Hour, the Chapter" as things are not looking good for both the heroes and the Namekians.
  • Moro drains enough of Goku and Vegeta's energy that they're basically helpless and proceed to completely beat the two into the ground. The fight becomes so one-sided that Goku is forced to do something he rarely does: run away from a fight. Goku tries to use Instant Transmission... only to find that he's so drained of energy that he can't even manage that. Moro finishes the fight by draining all their energy and leaving them to die. If not for Esca, the Namekian child Vegeta rescued from Moro in Chapter 44, saving them, Moro would have won. Even worse, absorbing their energy results in him regaining some of his youth. If he could do this much damage when he's past his prime, imagine what he could do if he regains his full power.
  • Moro spends the three days Goku and Vegeta are recuperating collecting the Dragon Balls... in the most sadistic way, he possibly can. Namely surrounding a village in pillars of flames made by their own planet's life energy as he telekinetically throws them straight into the fire, one by one, to force them to surrender the Dragon Balls. He's done this to at least three villages so far.
  • The chapter's ending. A lot of Namekians merge into one Super Namekian to try and fight Moro. The Namekian Savior charges Moro from behind... and instantly gets impaled on his arm without Moro even turning to look at him in what is easily one of the most graphic scenes in the manga. All the while Moro's wearing a sadistic grin on his face.
    Moro: Was this your savior, by chance? Apologies. He was dead before I could even see his face.
• Chapter 47 has Moro searching the remains of the village for their Dragon Ball, and he manages to find out exactly where it is. That's right, Moro is able to sense the energy of the Dragon Balls themselves, a feat previously thought to be impossible. The next scene has a Namekian running away with a Dragon Ball in tow only for Moro (whose presence is made known by his shadow slowly looming over the poor Namekian) to catch and kill him (offscreen, "thankfully"). Both scenes give the impression that there's no escape from Moro.
• Chapter 48: Moro finally regains his full power. He instantly kills Cranberry by impaling him through the chest, bloody hole and all. He then decides Namek itself has outlived its usefulness and moves to completely devour it. Worse? Moro made a second wish, and whatever it was Moro is very happy about it.
• Chapter 49: Moro's fight with the Grand Supreme Kai, if one can even call it that, is a terrifying display of Moro's full power. The Grand Supreme Kai throws everything he has at Moro, but Moro has drained so much of New Namek's energy that he can basically shrug off anything he throws at him. Even worse, it's revealed that the Grand Supreme Kai can't seal Moro's magic anymore. When Majin Buu split into his good and evil half, his evil side took all of the Grand Supreme Kai's godly power... Which was destroyed when Goku vaporized Kid Buu. So our heroes no longer have their trump card to fall back on. And like the previous chapter, this one ends with Moro taunting Vegeta about his second wish. Whatever it is, it can't be good.
• Chapter 50 finally reveals what Moro's second wish was. Turns out he didn't wish for immortality, but he used the wish to free his fellow inmates at the Galactic Prison, who fly a spaceship to New Namek to assist Moro. And if things couldn't get much worse, Moro is capable of empowering them with his magic, making them strong enough to hold their own against Goku, Vegeta, and the Grand Supreme Kai (not helped by Moro draining their energy again). The fight becomes so one-sided that our heroes are once again forced to make another hasty retreat, leaving Moro with an army consisting of the most dangerous criminals in the universe, all empowered by his magic and completely loyal to him. If things weren't bleak for our heroes before, they are now.
• Chapter 51. Things continue to go From Bad to Worse. After completely draining New Namek of its energy, Moro and his new army decide to go on a galaxy-wide rampage, with his minions pillaging the planet for its valuables and resources before Moro drains it of its life. Moro was already strong before, so who knows just how powerful Moro will become.
  • Their first stop is Planet Zoon (homeworld of Pui Pui from Dragon Ball Z), where a group of soldiers attempts to protect the treasure from them. We get treated to some horrific acts of violence as one of the prisoners, an alien resembling Fin from Dragon Ball Heroes, goes on the offensive, easily slaughtering the soldiers in gruesome ways (snapping one's neck, slicing others in half, putting a hole through another with his arm). At one point, he licks the blood off his hand, clearly enjoying the slaughter.
  • After raiding the planet, the prisoners are about to leave when one of the survivors weakly attempts to stop them. Seven-Three, an alien with an unnerving resemblance to Hit, turns around and fries him with his eye lasers and proceeds to do that with the other dead soldiers before being stopped by Sangabo, who coldly states that if they kill too many, there won't be enough energy for Moro to drain. Really underscores just how ruthless they are.
  • On another planet, the Marcelli family, only loyal to Moro for their own purposes, decide to go loot another planet. Their next target? Planet Earth. And that will likely attract Moro's attention. Things look bleak for the rest of the Z Fighters...
    • And sure enough, this is exactly what happens in Chapter 52. The Marcelli gang arrives on Earth looking for Blue Aurum only to be defeated by Piccolo, who sensed their arrival on Earth. However, they manage to trick Piccolo into thinking they're just a bunch of harmless tourists and he lets them go. By the time he realizes his mistake and shoots down their spacecraft, it's too late. The gang has already contacted Moro, who decides to send a stronger search party to investigate the planet to see if it's worthy to be consumed. Y'all better hope Vegeta and Goku finish their training before he gets there.
• Chapter 53 gives us more insight into Seven-Three. Turns out he's an Artificial Human who has the power to copy the abilities of others by simply grabbing the back of their neck. And we get a rather frightening demonstration of this power. When he, Shimorekka, and Yunba make a pit stop on a planet inhabited by humanoid porcupines, Seven-Three grabs a fallen porcupine and begins downloading his data while simultaneously using him as a shield against the others' needles. He then uses their needle to attack them, killing them all instantly. Even worse, he notices a family of porcupines using a warp portal to escape and copies that power too, allowing the trio to arrive on Earth much earlier than the heroes anticipated. And then, he manages to copy Piccolo's abilities as well, leading to a fight between the two. Piccolo manages to hold his own at first, but Seven-Three eventually gains the upper hand thanks to his limitless stamina. Only a timely rescue by Gohan saves Piccolo from certain death. In one chapter, Seven-Three proves to be the most terrifying member of Moro's army.
• Chapter 54. It looks like Gohan is easily dominating the fight with Seven-Three, but the Android has some tricks up his sleeve. Good news: after copying someone's abilities, he can use them for just 30 minutes - although the time limit only applies when he actually uses that someone's combat data. Bad news: he can store data from 3 different people and switch between them at will... and one of them is Moro. Using Moro's power, Seven-Three drains Gohan's, Piccolo's, and Krillin's energy, weakening them enough so that Shimorekka and Yunba can utterly curb-stomp them. The only reason they aren't killed right then and there is because Moro wants to wait for Goku and Vegeta to finish training so he can drain their energy along with Planet Earth.
• Chapter 57. When the Z-Fighters manage to defeat Seven-Three, Moro joins the fight and decides to amuse himself by powering up Saganbo with his energy. With the added power boost, Saganbo is able to defeat Gohan, Piccolo, and Androids 17 and 18 at the same time. Thankfully for the Z-Fighters, Goku has arrived on Earth and is ready to join the fight.
• Chapter 58. In an effort to draw out Goku's true power, Moro decides to power up Saganbo with more of his energy, threatening to keep powering up Saganbo until Goku reveals his true power. And we get a lovely view of Saganbo suffering a nasty case of Power Incontinence, complete with bulging muscles and foaming at the mouth. Goku outright begs Moro to stop, knowing full well Saganbo's body won't be able to handle the strain. And sure enough, Saganbo eventually keels over from the strain. Moro's callous indifference to the death of his second-in-command makes the scene all the more frightening.
  Goku: Wasn't that your friend?
  Moro: My friend? I have no friends. Those were only soldiers. They may be gone, but I can always collect more.
• Chapters 59 and 60 have the fight between Moro and Ultra Instinct Sign Goku. At first, it seems the two are on relatively equal footing, but soon Ultra Instinct begins to take a toll on his stamina. Worse, Moro reveals that he's been holding back and unleashes his true power, beating Goku to the ground. Thankfully, Vegeta arrives on Planet Earth via Instant Transmission.
• Chapter 61. Thanks to his new Forced Spirit Fission technique, Vegeta is able to dominate his rematch with Moro by forcibly removing all the energy he's absorbed, weakening him severely. But the wizard has one last trick up his sleeve. Taking a page from Cell and Majin Buu's playbook, Moro swallows Seven-Three whole to regain the power he lost to Vegeta, transforming into a twisted fusion of Seven-Three and himself and gaining Seven-Three's abilities. With the boost in power, he's able to easily defeat Vegeta, leaving the Z Fighters to deal with their most dangerous adversary yet.
• Chapter 62 is titled "Edge of Defeat" which couldn't be a more appropriate title given what happens to our heroes. With his newfound power, Moro proceeds to steamroll through the Z-Fighters. Goku blasts Moro's arm off with a point-blank Kamehameha only for Moro to use Piccolo's regeneration to regrow his arm... right through Goku's chest. The other heroes fare no better as Moro effortlessly swats them aside. When Dende makes his way to the battlefield to attempt to heal them, Moro throws up a barrier to keep him from interfering. Worse, Piccolo notes that even if Goku and Vegeta were to fuse, Moro could use Vegeta's Force Spirit Fission to defuse them thanks to Moro copying Vegeta's abilities. Thankfully, Goku still has his Mastered Ultra Instinct to try...
• Chapters 65: MUI Goku utterly demolishes Moro and it seems the villain has finally been brought down... or not. Instead of killing Moro, Goku's Fatal Flaw rears its face again as he fully heals Moro with a Senzu Bean, giving him the chance to return to the Galactic Prison and never escape again. Instead, Moro finds the severed hand that contains Merus's data, giving the wizard Ultra Instinct and the power of an angel (albeit a trainee one). While Goku does fight him equally, Moro's body is unable to handle all that power, so he decides to merge with Earth itself, essentially becoming a living planet. Even worse, as Whis points out, there's no way to defeat Moro without destroying the planet, which would also set off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire galaxy thanks to all that power. To summarize, Goku's leniency towards his enemies has put the galaxy in its Darkest Hour...
• Chapter 66: Moro has well and truly snapped, spending the entire final battle with an utterly unhinged and deranged look on his face that only gets more evil as the fight progresses. Worse yet, Moro is going to explode no matter what's done now, which is only narrowly averted at the last second. As if that wasn't bad enough, he manages to do what even Jiren couldn't (in the manga): overpower Ultra Instinct Goku.

Granola the Survivor Saga

• Ultra Ego is an ability that requires the user to constantly think about destroying everything, almost to the exclusion to anything else... And the Gods of Destruction are constantly using it.
• Chapter 87: By the end of the fight with Goku, Vegeta, and Granola, Gas' body finally starts to break down to the point that he starts to look like a rotting zombie. Vegeta compares his situation of being the universe's strongest being to a curse rather than a blessing. And when Frieza puts Gas out of his misery by shoving his whole arm through his torso, his body turns into a skeleton instantly.
  • The fact that Frieza has not only resurfaced once more but achieved yet another new form in Black Frieza. While Goku and Vegeta are at the end of their ropes after a long and grueling battle with Gas, and Gas was deteriorating rapidly, they're still all extraordinarily powerful with the former two in their Ultra Instinct and Ultra Ego forms respectively. Frieza one-shots all of them casually.

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