Due to a quirk with Saiyan/Human half-breeds combined with a one-in-a-billion chance, Pan is Half-Saiyan.
As You Know, you get half of your DNA from your mother and half from your father. So, there is a small, minute chance that the lucky sperm (which has half of the father's DNA, just like the egg has half of the mother's) had only the DNA passed down by Goku to Gohan. However, this would still prevent her from being half-Saiyan, due to the fact that an X would have to come from both parents. However, we do not know much about Saiyan DNA, or how it interacts with human DNA. We do know that a Saiyan immersed in Saiyan DNA heals faster, which means it doesn't follow human biology. So, perhaps due to a quirk with Sayian DNA, the sperm has both gender chromosomes (having two copies of the same X for females), and actually modifies the egg to remove the one that's there. Perhaps both her gender chromosomes are Gohan's X, which, following this weird quirk of biology (or, if you perfer, Ass Pull of mine) would also be Goku's X, which means she would be Half-Saiyan (and genetically, equally related to Goku and Gohan). Now, if her child (the mother or father of Goku Jr.) was fathered by Trunks (who likely died with seemingly every other Z Fighter), that kid would be half-Saiyan, so their child would be a quarter Saiyan, allowing Goku Jr. to go Super Saiyan. As for why Vegeta Jr.'s mother doesn't know Pan, perhaps the families (well, either Bra and Bulma or likely just Bra when it comes to the Briefs') had a falling out over the fact that she was the only fighter to not die, including Vegeta and Trunks. Alternatively, something bad happened about ten years before the finale that caused a falling out between the Briefs family and the Son family.
The fact that Pan is raising her grandson suggests something happened to Goku Jr.'s parents. This could be related to the reason why Vegeta Jr.'s mother (presumably Bra's daughter/granddaughter) doesn't recognize Pan. Something terrible happened that killed Goku Jr.'s parents, and the two families blamed each other for it and stopped speaking to each other.Eis Shenron attempted to rape Pan.
Eis Shenron was extremely powerful, much more powerful than Pan. Plus, Pan was already weakened. So, how did he not easily kill her? Well, notice her clothing? It's ripped up alot more than it should be, seeing as Eis's powers can basically be summed up as "freeze and hit". Not to mention her pants/shorts are the focus of most of the damage. Finally, as revealed outside the anime, Eis is the embodiment of the wish to remove the memories of Majin Buu. So, he's the living embodiment of about 6 billion mind rapes. So, physical rape seems pretty much within his character, seeing as that's the physical equivalent of mind rape.- This makes sense. Squick.
- He calls it his "reverse popsicle".
Pan was an accident.
Pan was 5 (or 4) about 5 years after the Buu Saga. This means that Videl had Pan while she herself was still a teen, perhaps still in high school. Something tells me that wasn't on purpose.- The Jump between Buu's defeat and Goku meeting Uub was 10 years. Pan was born 5 or 6 years after Buu died and was 4 or 5 when the tournament was held.
- According to Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, Gohan and Videl were already married before Videl announced her pregnancy.
- While we're at it, how many times has Pan survived things that should have been fatal to someone at her power level? Well so did Hercule! Who says it's just saiyans that function on Lamarckian inheritance?
The entire series was all a dream.
Because no WMG page is complete without this theory. Emperor Pilaf is a Time Lord
Same reason as the above, and hey. It would explain his presence.GT is set in a reality where they didn't meet Beerus, and Frieza didn't get revived.
It'd explain the discrepancy pretty well, and actually makes the series make more sense (such as by illustrating that Pan has the potential to go Super Saiyan (see BoG), but simply never triggered the transformation in the GT 'verse, which fits a lot better than people thinking she just can't transform at all).- As the plot is kicked off because of the elderly Pilaf gang, the point of divergence is probably during the Android Saga of Z (as that's when they supposedly accidentally wished themselves into infants in Super's continuity), though it could have been prior to even the original series, with Beerus simply not getting that premonition of a Super Saiyan God, and thus the differences with Pilaf being a result of the ripple effect.
- Unless the very last episode of Dragon Ball Super pulls something out of its ass (Emperor Pilaf's gang undo their wish to become children, Goku and Vegeta forget about their God powers, Beerus and Whiz get killed or leave, etc) this is probably cannon.
- Nothing happened in the last episode of Super. There's still the possibility that the Broly movie (or any possible sequels to said movie) could have something happen. Otherwise, this has pretty much been confirmed.
The shadow dragons are supposed to grow in power over time
At the point Goku and Pan hunted down the shadow dragons, the dragons were ridiculously weak by the standards of the current series, menacing only one village or city compared to as early as king piccolo or the red ribbon army which terrorized nations and nearly all the Z big bads who could destroy entire planets. The shadow dragons were meant to grow over time, training themselves like goku and honing their powers until they could fight stronger opponents and reach stages where they become Physical Gods like the eternal dragons to destroy planets by being near them and eventually travel to other universes The GT universe has a much lower power scaling
building on the above, everybody in this series is generally weaker compared to the extent of previous series. For example: Baby tried to destroy earth personally during his fight with goku. At this point in the fight Baby had not only possessed Vegeta, but also turned into a super saiyan oozaru form which has an intense multiplication in Vegeta's power. His method of destroying earth was hitting it with a powered up form of Gallick gun, repeatedly, on a planet which had already started to violently break down thanks to the black star dragon balls. Maybe the writing stuff downscale the power so they could have more impressive fight scenes GT is set in a reality where the DBZ films were cannon
It explains why several villains from the movies showed when Hell broke open, and how Vegeta and Goku know the Fusion dance because they did it previously in Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn.- Problem with this theory is that, with the exceptions of Bojack Unbound and Wrath of the Dragon, all of the films are, at best, Broad Strokes, since most of them conflict with canon (Garlic Jr, while before the series, has Krillin meet Gohan and Goku and Piccolo have their weighted clothing talk before the series starts; movies 2-4 would take place when the story is on Namek; the first Cooler movie has Goku but no Vegeta when it should be the other way around; Cooler movie 2 has no Future Trunks despite his presence at the time it should be set, on top of other issues conflicting with the timeline; Super Android 13 lacks Cell; the first Broly movie has Goku and Gohan in their base states when they should at least be regular Super Saiyan, and Broly movies 2 and 3 can't happen without Broly 1 taking place; and Fusion Reborn has a complete absence of Mystic Gohan and Majin Buu).
GT is the result of earlier time travel incidents.
We only see a set amount of green time rings(they mostly match up to the known timelines in canon), but Gowasu stated the green time rings were created recently. At that point, the earliest known ring(Cell's time travel) was created 16 years ago. Jaco knows time travel was against the law, so it must have happened before Bulma for them to know about it. This is where the GT continuity comes from. Perhaps a Tuffle wanted to stop the Saiyans from killing them all, but it was a prototype and they crashed on the planet, the wreckage salvaged and advanced technology so they could create Baby. Or a Namekian wants to go back and change the Dragonballs, as a result they now spawn Shadow Dragons if over-used. Maybe it's Bardock. The point is that time travel incidents set before Dragonball even happened impacted events in space, however because these were far away Earth's history wasn't changed and things were the same on Earth until the defeat of Majin Buu. Beerus and the other universes exist in that universe, the GT characters just haven't had reason to interact with them. Also, the ripple effect prevented Beerus from getting his dream of a Super Saiyan God and so is still asleep. These other time travel events created all the other continuities of Dragonball...except Film/DragonballEvolution, that was a bad dream.- I like this theory except for one thing I'd like to suggest; Evolution was a condensed version Goku would tell Pan as a joke when she asked about how he met Chi-Chi, until she's ready to have her own adventures (and thus hear the real version).
Bra was killed by the Shadow Dragons
That's why she disappears from the series, she was an early casualty.