Trivia / Dragon Ball FighterZ

• Ascended Fanon:
  • During Story Mode, Gohan and Krillin encounter the Ginyu Force, and Gohan is impressed by their poses. This makes Krillin believe Gohan was inspired by them to become the Great Saiyaman, a line of thought that was a very common fan theory.
  • For years, the various forms of Majin Buu were given different names to differentiate them, such as Good/Fat Buu for the first form of Buu, Evil Buu for the dark gray form, Super Buu for the variation that was created after Evil Buu ate Fat Buu, and Kid Buu for the "pure" form. At one point in the story mode, Goku referes to Kid Buu as exactly that.
  • Fans have often wondered why Krillin never used the Destructo Disc after a Solar Flare. In one of this game's auto-combos, likely inspired by Extreme Butōden for the 3DS, he does just that.
• Breakthrough Hit: Arc System Works games tend to have Cult Classic status at best. As it stands, FighterZ is their most successful fighting game ever (as well as the fastest-selling Dragon Ball title of all time), having sold 2 million copies within five days of release. One reason why this game became massively successful is due to the large name recognition the Dragon Ball franchise is known for. The closest ArcSys got in terms of success prior to this game was the Persona 4: Arena games (IP owned by Atlus), although that was before said franchise's recognition skyrocketed with Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5.
• Content Leak: FighterZ has had a constant history of having details leaked ahead of time.
  • During the pre-release, one of the Famitsu images that showed off arcade mode also revealed that Beerus, Hit, and Goku Black would be playable well before their official announcement.
  • The entire first season of DLC was leaked due to the lobby avatars for those characters being datamined in the base game.
  • Janemba was leaked by an Xbox advertisement months before his official reveal at Evo 2019.
  • Some of the animations for the dramatic finish of Jiren vs Frieza and Goku was datamined after Broly (DBS) came out, which was the first hint that there was going to be a Season 3. There was also an audio leak of Gogeta refencing his fight against Omega Shenron.
• Creator's Favorite: Tomoko Hiroki, the producer of FighterZ, has stated in an interview that her favorite character is Gohan:
  I recently had a daughter and she is two years old. As I watch her grow up it reminds me of Gohan. He’s smart and strong, maybe not as strong in the recent episodes, but he’s tough. My favorite [arc of the manga], because I love Gohan, is the Cell arc from Dragon Ball Z and when he started going to high school as the Great Saiyaman.
• Colbert Bump:
  • The Jump Festa trailer was set to the song "We Were Angels" by Hironobu Kageyama, the second ending theme of Dragon Ball Z from Episode 200 onwards. This brought a lot of emotions for fans who missed his music.
  • The launch trailer used for outside of Japan was in English and was purposefully made in a style that emulates the much beloved classic Toonami promos. Fans loved it.
  • As noted in Breakthrough Hit, the game itself is this to Arc System Works as a company, giving the developer a greater footing of attention that ranks itself up to the likes of Capcom's mainline fighting games, especially after the fans' falling out with Capcom's Troubled Production of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite and the fans' desire to play a newer Marvel vs. Capcom-styled game.
• Dueling Works: With Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite due to the similarities of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and 3 (3-on-3 fighting system, assists, and the generally chaotic nature of the game) and the latter either removing or toning down these same qualities. FighterZ is also being published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, developers of Tekken and one of Capcom's biggest competitors. The first closed beta test for FighterZ even took place on the weekend before the scheduled release of Infinite.
• Dummied Out: Dataminers found quite a bit of hidden, extra things in the files of the PC version:
  • Fully rendered models of Goku and Vegeta during the Saiyan Saga. They became playable characters for the third DLC content pack.
  • Two unused plaza locations. One is a Saiyan space pod, and the other is a gold Mr. Satan statue. Both of these ended up being used for online events: The space pod for raid bosses, and the statue for faction battles.
  • Audio files have the announcer calling out for Cooler. Cooler was later announced for the fourth DLC content pack at EVO 2018.
  • Trunks' files included a 3D model for the "Sword of Hope" from the battle against Fused Zamasu in Super, which strongly suggested Fused Zamasu would be added to the game as DLC. It was later announced that Fused Zamasu would appear in the game as a DLC character roughly three months later in April 2018, with the Sword of Hope being used in a Dramatic Finish that reenacts the moment Trunks defeats Fused Zamasu.
  • Audio files were found in the game for what appeared to be a playable Super Saiyan 4 Goku, including voice lines that matched up with Super Saiyan Goku's Super Kamehameha, potentially suggesting a dummied out costume.
  • The DBS incarnation of Broly has cut dialogue where he speaks in proper sentences as opposed to his incoherent screaming which makes up almost all of his lines in-game.
• God-Created Canon Foreigner: Akira Toriyama designed Android 21 specifically for this game, and she's a reasonably important character to the backstory of Dr. Gero and Android 16, even to the point where she'd fit into the primary canon. As of Super Hero, Android 21's human base has been canonized and named "Vomi".
• Lying Creator: Super Saiyan Blue versions of Goku and Vegeta were announced after the developers said there would be no alternate versions of existing characters. This is mitigated by the fact that SSB Goku and SSB Vegeta are not Moveset Clones of their standard versions.
• Meme Acknowledgement: Bandai Namco referenced the "Oops! All Gokus!" meme with this tweet showing off Ultra Instinct Goku.
• Model Dissonance: Like Guilty Gear Xrd, FighterZ uses 3D models that try to emulate 2D sprites with added snazzy camera angles. As such, things may look weird if one pays close attention to the fact that the characters literally quarter-face towards each other during their idle stances and/or attacks instead of aiming them directly straight forward. Piccolo and Goku Black in their idle stances are some of the few who actually avert this.
• Newbie Boom: The Dragon Ball franchise is well-known name worldwide. The hype and quality surrounding this game paid off and became Arc System Works' most successful fighting game in history. This has resulted in Discord servers, Twitch streams, Facebook groups and so on that were influential in bringing in many casual gamers who loved the Dragon Ball franchise and wanted to get better at the game. Some fans decided to take a look at ASW's older titles, most notably Guilty Gear Xrd, which inspired the creation of the game and also uses the Unreal Engine just like DBFZ. The success and prestige of the game also motivated quite a few gamers and fighting game fans to revisit the Dragon Ball franchise in general.
• No Dub for You: The game didn't receive any other dub besides English dub.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Chris Ayres had been dealing with COPD throughout 2017 so Frieza's English voice is provided by Daman Mills, Ayres's understudy, who has also been providing voicework for Frieza in Dragon Ball Super in Ayres' absence.
  • After real-life sexual harassment allegations resulted in Funimation severing ties with Vic Mignogna, Johnny Yong Bosch was cast as his replacement for the Super incarnation of Broly, and has played the role since the recast.
• The Other Marty: Vic Mignogna had already reprised his role as the original incarnation of Broly, as well as playing the Super incarnation in his debut film. It's likely that he was originally meant to return as the latter before the above allegations led him to being replaced.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Jeannie Tirado tends to play Nice Girls. Here, she's the English voice of Android 21 (who's classified as a villain, is one of the final remnants of the very evil Red Ribbon Army, and is the overall Big Bad of the game's story). Goes further in that 21 is actually a tortured soul who wants to be a Nice Girl but is possessed of psychological and biological impulses that make it impossible for her to lead a normal life.
  • While playing Hot-Blooded characters is nothing new for Johnny Yong Bosch, playing a massive musclehead and berserker like Broly who only screams is completely new.
• Posthumous Credit: Hiromi Tsuru, Bulma's Japanese voice actress, passed away on November 16, 2017 at the age of 57 from aortic dissection. Thankfully, she recorded all of her lines for this game prior to her passing.
• Promoted Fanboy: James Marsters became a fan of Dragon Ball while working on Dragonball Evolution as Piccolo. Now, he gets to (once again) voice a character from the actual anime series as Zamasu.
• Role Reprise: All of the characters retain their current Japanese and English voice actors with the exception of the Super incarnation of Broly, who is voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch rather than Vic Mignogna in his debut film instead.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Chris Ayres wanted to reprise his role as Frieza for this game. Unfortunately, his COPD reached a critical, and later-terminal stage, which forced him to focus almost entirely on his health.
  • Data found in game indicates that Omega Shenron was at one point considered to be released, but never was finalized.
• Word of Saint Paul: Christopher Sabat revealed a few tidbits about both the Story Mode and English dub prior to the game's release. Specifically, he revealed that Android 21 would be voiced by Jeannie Tirado, and the story would have a more Dragon Ball Classic-esque comedic tone, with the characters occasionally Breaking the Fourth Wall^note Like Yamcha thanking the player for making him look awesome in battle.

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