History Fridge / DragonBallZ

* This troper often wondered why Gohan went Super Saiyan 2 after Cell crushed Android 16's head. Sure, it was sad and all, but Gohan didn't really know 16 very well. But then, it hit me after seeing some video's: That scene was ''exactly'' identical to a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqS559YTX6s nightmare Gohan had in some filler]], were Cell crushed Piccolo's head, one of the people he cares most for, in the same manner. Cell crushing 16's head made him realize how Cell could easily destroy everyone he knew and loved. - Tropers/Shadowgirl13Chaos

* In the "Buu Saga", Majin Buu displays the ability to heal very early on, which starkly contrasts from Buu's nature as we were told up to that point - a merciless, destructive force of nature. The brilliance comes in when you realize later on that Buu's healing ability was {{Foreshadowing}} of the fact that he had absorbed two Supreme Kai in the past, with Kibito demonstrating healing abilities in the same arc.

* Vegeta's characterization in the Frieza Saga is TOTALLY different than that of the Cell saga. In the former, he's a borderline magnificent bastard, while in the latter, he's a trigger happy idiot who makes numerous mistakes that ultimately end up giving the villains the upper hand on more than one occasion. And then his characterization mysteriously changes back after Cell Saga, and while he's still a prideful idiot, he's got a much better head on his shoulders? What happened in the Cell Saga? He became a Super Saiyan, which is noted to emphasize the traits of recklessness and arrogance natural in Saiyans, especially if you're not used to the form. Remember, Vegeta didn't train to lose the negative aspects as Goku and Gohan did, and as a result, he kept the negative side effects of SSJ throughout the Cell Saga. By the time of the Buu saga, he's got more of a handle on the form.

** A few years pass and Buu comes along, and not even a Super Saiyan Vegeta can stop this monster. Instead, it takes Super Saiyan 3, a form that technically shouldn't exist.

** Which the androids immediately proved to be [[NoSell immune]] too. Instead, the form had to be reformed and perfected until we got Super Saiyan 2.

* Yes, the amount of [[SuperMode power ups]] and [[PowerMakeover transformations]] available to Saiyans ended up becoming rather ridiculous[[note]]like [[UnstoppableRage Oozaru]] and [[GoldenSuperMode Super Saiyan]][[/note]] even before Dragon Ball GT added [[BeastMan Super Saiyan 4]] and Dragon Ball Super added [[PhysicalGod God]] [[spoiler:and [[DontThinkFeel Ultra Instict]]]] transformations into the mix. However, it becomes Fridge Brilliance when you realize [[Literature/JourneyToTheWest Sun Wukong]], the character whom Son Goku is based on, knows 72 Earthly Transformations that allow him to transform into animals and objects. As such, Goku having about 7 or more forms can be considered a continuing CallBack to his meta-fictional origins.

* It used to bother me that in in the Buu saga the people competing in the martial arts tournaments are all such weaklings and people, in general, are so disbelieving in abilities like ki and energy attacks and easily accept Mr. Satan's claims that it's all a trick when before those same abilities seemed much more widespread and known about. But then I realised that by the end of Piccolo saga it's pretty much just Goku and the other Z fighters who use those abilities and they basically disappear from the tournament scene until the Buu saga. All their adventures and battles take place in out of the way places or other planets and largely remain under the radar of the general public up til the Cell Saga. Also over the course of Dragon Ball Z, nobody has sought out any of the Z fighters to train under them the way that Goku and Krillin sought out Master Roshi. So it's not surprising that by the time of the Buu knowledge about abilities like energy attacks and use of ki would have faded out of public consciousness and the techniques themselves fallen out of practice.

** Speaking of Videl Vs. Spopovich, the whole event was just dreadful. It might have given her serious PTSD. The fandom wonders why Videl doesn't fight anymore, but think about this: You're an exceptional martial artist, and this awkward kid who just transferred to your high-school teaches you how to tap into your ki. Ki that gives you superhuman strength and durability. Ki that makes you stronger than you've ever been before. Then, in your first real fight, you're in high spirits. [[MemeticMutation You feel great! You can win! You. Can. Do. This!]]... Then, you get beaten to a pulp and stomped out by sadistic Chad Mc-Muscle-Mass. Completely and utterly powerless even save yourself, to win. All you can do is cry out in agony, all of that training and preparation down the drain. No wonder she doesn't fight anymore.

* In the category of "Glossed over but '''really disturbing''' if you think about it too hard": Android 18's reproductive organs were left intact by Dr. Gero, which is what enabled her to conceive and bear a child by Krillin later. This almost seems like an oversight if you want to turn a human being into an inhuman killing machine that obeys your every order. Hormones (whether estrogen or testosterone) can drive behavior, thereby introducing a variable that would not be entirely predictable. ''Unless'' Gero thought that 18 losing her free will but retaining her biological femininity would be useful. Gero, after all, had lost a son (the model for Android 16), presumably to a wife who was also long dead. The potential theories for this range at their tamest from Gero, being versed in DNA splicing, wanted to experiment with create DesignerBabies through IVF with 18's still-viable womb as the incubator. At their darkest... well, [[RapeAsDrama exactly what you're probably thinking]].

** Also,Goku hasn't met Burter. It's possible that his "fastest in the universe" claim is more an intimidation/provocation tactic more than anything else.

* The romance between Vegeta and Bulma might look very unlikely from any logical standpoint at first glance, but makes sense when you consider some relevant elements of both characters. Bulma from the very first arc of the original ''Manga/DragonBall'' was shown as a very [[{{Jerkass}} vain]], [[AllWomenAreLustFul flirty woman]], who always swoons over handsome guys, but at the same time, goes into [[ClingyJealousGirl jealous rages]] with alarming frequency. Her on and off relationship with Yamcha precisely never seemed to take off because Bulma gets jealous of any female interaction Yamcha displays. Now enter Vegeta, for most of the series, the guy is just obsessed with [[AlwaysSecondBest surpassing]] Goku and doesn't care at all about anything else, [[CelibateHero least of all women]]. In practice, Vegeta could be in front of ANY earthling woman no matter how beautiful and he wouldn't care less about her, which in turn, makes him the ideal man in Bulma's eyes since he will never, for any reason, look at other women. Future Trunks' description about how Bulma and Yamcha broke up also fits with this, he says (because [[UnreliableNarrator his mother told him most likely]]) that Yamcha was too promiscuous, but we never see the poor guy going with multiple women or anything like that, the brilliance being that in Bulma's eyes, even talking to some other woman was acting "promiscuous", something that Yamcha and every other man on the planet would do by sheer nature...but Vegeta would most likely never do. In the end, the prince of the Saiyans was the only male fitting for Bulma (and perhaps well, Goku as she muses a couple of times, but he was already taken).

** One word. ''Saibamen''. (Goku at the beginning of the series could destroy rocks as big as him, survive bullets and only had a poweer level of 10. Saibamen were as strong as Raditz was upon his arrival on Earth: power level of '''1200.''')
* When Vegeta says that he succeeded in having becoming a Super Saiyan because [[PureIsNotGood his heart is pure evil]], he may have just been exaggerating for intimidation purposes-- and instead, what was pure was his determination to win. Which makes more sense for his character anyway, since his determination at the end of ''Z'' is so great that it manages to [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome scare Majin Buu]] because he refuses to give up or stay down, to a level that exceeds even Goku's own {{determinator}} status.

** Also, there's the fact Frieza destroyed Vegeta on ''Beerus''[='=] request. It was a one time thing, and Beerus was considering killing Frieza next time he woke up, but as far as Shin knew, Frieza and his organization had a use in Beerus' job, and he didn't dare to wake him up and check.
** But what nobody is mentioning is that the Supreme Kais only act when the actual foundations of the universe are at risk (mass destruction of celestial bodies, deicide, time-related terrorism, anything dealing with the Demon Realm, or demons in general, etc), and while Frieza and his family were a big part of the evil across the galaxies, their affairs were still just something in the realm of mortals, and they had no reason to interfere. It wasn't until the entire universe, including them, was in danger by an insane creature even stronger than them, that destroyed anything in sight just for fun, that they decided to act. There's a reason why they didn't stop Goku from killing Frieza, for them at the time, it was just mortal businesses, though commendable, there's a reason why Beerus wanted to kill him too, since the rules of a God of Destruction are way more flexible. His death gave the oppressed people under Frieza's tyranny a chance to rebel (something that would've guaranteed the death of any of them in the past), and as Frieza's henchmen mentioned by the time of ''Anime/DragonBallZResurrectionF'', many actually succeeded and are free now.
* Trunks remarks that none of the stuff he predicted (apart from where Goku would land) was true; even the pair of androids who arrived at where he predicted was just a coincidence (they weren't the same androids he expected). He theorizes that it's due to time travel inherently messing with the timeline, however there are subtle hints he himself was responsible:

** Finally, as to why the Androids are different; all of them have the objective of killing Goku, but as Goku is already dead by their activation, they really had no other goals; 16 (if he was activated) would have probably wandered into the woods to live a peaceful life with the animals. 16 also acted as a sort of morality chain for the two, usually advising against really heinous behavior of the two. Without him, the two went off the hook (especially 17, who even in the main timeline seemed to like carnage).

** Alternate interpretation: Gero in the original timeline would probably heard that Goku had died. This was six months before the androids attacked. So possibly, he stopped upgrading the androids or downgraded them because their most powerful opponent was dead, and changed their programming. In the "main" timeline, the core instruction would have been something like "Kill Goku." That was all they were programmed to do, which explains their focus on finding him. But in the original timeline, with Goku dead, Gero might have changed the mission to "Kill everyone."

** According to ''Dragon Ball Minus'', Saiyan are sent out as children, but they're already grown up a fair bit by that time (Raditz's first mission came when he was already seven, right before the destruction of their homeworld, and in fact his mission mate was Vegeta himself), and Goku being sent out as a toddler was not completely the norm but [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture Bardock figuring that there was something strange in Frieza recalling all Saiyans to planet Vegeta and sending him on a planet with enough food for a growing Saiyan but nothing interesting for the Planet Trade Organization to invade]]. On the other hand, Saiyan childhood is implied to consist in combat training... And Goku was ''still'' RaisedByWolves.
** It is also [[CultureClash cultural]] in real life. Goku only really comes off as a [[ParentalNeglect neglectful parent]] to the people in the US. In Asia countries and part of Europe, Goku is seen as a good father who ''spoils'' Gohan. That is why Gohan's character development as a child was getting over his spoiled nature.
** ''Dragon Ball Minus'' stated ''Goku's mother'', a big softie by saiyan standards, was against sending infants out on planetary extermination missions, which is why Goku and Raditz were so "old". Prince Vegeta had already been on them, as Bardock had described Vegeta as a "pain" in the neck partner.
* It used to bother me that in in the Buu saga the people competing in the martial arts tournaments are all such weaklings and people in general are so disbelieving in abilities like ki and energy attacks and easily accept Mr Satan's claims that its all a trick when before those same abilities seemed much more widespread and known about. But then I realised that by the end of Piccolo saga it's pretty much just Goku and the other Z fighters who use those abilities and they basically disappear from the tournament scene until the Buu saga. All their adventures and battles take place in out of the way places or other planets and largely remain under the radar of the general public up til the Cell Saga. Also over the course of Dragon Ball Z nobody has sought out any of the Z fighters to train under them the way that Goku and Krillin sought out Master Roshi. So it's not surprising that by the time of the Buu knowledge about abilities like energy attacks and use of ki would have faded out of public consciousness and the techniques themselves fallen out of practice.

* Pan's name - on the one hand, a pan as in 'frying pan' fits well with the series' food-related theme naming. But also, a pan pipe is a type of flute, like a piccolo. So Gohan named his kid after his mentor, too.

** Also {{foreshadowing}}. One of the works most cemented in PopCultureOsmosis as far as comparing Pan to The Devil is ''Literature/TheGreatGodPan''. Now, what was the Super Saiyan transformation that came after 3, not counting ''Anme/DragonBallGT''? How was that transformation achieved?

* It's been pointed out that despite the fact that Vegeta trains even harder than Goku, he can't quite catch up. This is contrasted with the irony that Vegeta was considered the natural prodigy as a child. However, when Goku first emerges from the Time Chamber during the Cell Saga, he explains that he was able to surpass Vegeta in less time because he trains ''better'' than Vegeta does; Vegeta tortures himself through rigorous but inefficient training methods because he doesn't know any better. He never needed to train very hard because of his natural aptitude, where as Goku was taught very effective training methods by Roshi, Korin, Kami, and King Kai.
* Cell, who who has [[AllYourPowersCombined the cells of all the Z-Fighters and Frieza within him]], attempted to [[EarthShatteringKaboom blow up the Eath]] when he realized he couldn't win... which is also what Frieza did on Namek in similar circumstances. LikeFatherLikeSon, eh?

** Raditz, Nappa, and Vegeta, for example, made many techniques and weapons from ''Manga/DragonBall'' useless: Nimbus (not fast enough), the Power Pole (never used), the Multi Form technique (rendered useless by Nappa), and even the Kamehameha wave (only had effect when used in tandem with the kaioken). In other words, earthly martial arts just wouldn't cut it. So what did? Martial arts made by the gods, namely the Kaioken and the Spirit Bomb.

** Which the androids immediately proved to be [[NoSell immune]] to. Instead, the form had to be reformed and perfected until we got Super Saiyan 2.
** A few years pass, and Buu comes along, and not even a Super Saiyan Vegeta can stop this monster. Instead, it takes Super Saiyan 3, a form that technically shouldn't exist.

* The fusion of Goku and Vegeta into Vegetto (Vegito, Vegerot, what have you...) is brilliantly designed. The more powerful warrior (Goku) serves as the base of the body and clothing, and the more dominant personality (Vegeta) provides the color scheme plus miscellaneous items like gloves and boots. Now, what this has to do in relation to the Elder Kai and Kibito Kai...?

* The 25th Tenkaichi Budokai shows some differences from the previous tournaments we've seen (21st, 22nd and 23rd), namely a 30 minutes time limit, the preliminaries disputed via the Punching Machine to prevent injuries, and a greater commercialization (shown by the larger stadium and the previously absent television broadcast), all of them apparently coming out of nowhere. Thing is, those very three tournaments are the reason for the new rules: the superhuman fighters of those tournaments proved themselves capable of fighting for hours, with the final match of the 21st tournament taking ''four hours'', hence the time limit due the fighting being scheduled to happen in a single day; the 23rd Tenkaichi saw [[{{Sadist}} Tao Pai Pai]] almost killing Chiaotzu and, [[{{Jerkass}} considering his character]], he likely did the same to anyone who fought him in the preliminaries (in fact the anime ''shows'' him beating a preliminary opponent so bad he needed hospitalization. Even Piccolo at his most evil was showing more restraint), hence the Punching Machine made specifically to prevent injuries in the preliminaries; the greater commercialization was made necessary by the heavy damage caused in those three tournaments, where, aside from contestants randomly breaking the walls by sending others flying into it (and Panput doing it on purpose because [[UnderestimatingBadassery he thought Goku was too weak to face him]] and [[PetTheDog didn't want to beat up a child]]), Goku in Great Ape form caused heavy damage to one of the buildings, Tien disintegrated the ring, and Piccolo ''annihilated the whole place'', necessitating the commercialization to raise the money and rebuild the whole place for the 24th Tenkaichi .
** Another change is the Junior Division. With the greater exposure the public would protest to children fighting adults-and due the lack of previous television broadcast, most people wouldn't know that the children in the 21st and 22nd tournament had been stronger than most adult fighters.

* Vegeta's characterization in the Frieza Saga is TOTALLY different than that of the Cell saga. In the former, he's a borderline magnificent bastard, while in the latter, he's a trigger happy idiot who makes numerous mistakes that ultimately end up giving the villains the upper hand on more than one occasion. And then his characterization mysteriously changes back after Cell Saga, and while he's still a prideful idiot, he's got a much better head on his shoulders? What happened in the Cell Saga? He became a Super Saiyan, which is noted to emphasize the traits of recklessness and arrogance natural in Saiyans, especially if you're not used to the form. Remember, Vegeta didn't train to lose the negative aspects like Goku and Gohan did, and as a result, he kept the negative side effects of SSJ throughout the Cell Saga. By the time of the Buu saga, he's got more of a handle on the form.

** Even without considering ''Episode Of Bardock'', not only is Frieza a creature who transforms, but all of the saiyans and at least three of his non-Saiyan employees also transform. Even without the ability to sense ki, he can probably recognize a legit transformation, and even though Frieza and Zarbon do it to contain (power and hideousness, respectively), Abo, Kado and all the saiyans do so to increase. Seeing a noticeable, visible change in a saiyan, no matter how subtle, would be likely to freak him out if he can't think of a way to explain it with something like tails or full moons.
* King Kai originally told Goku that planet Vegeta had been destroyed by its Guardian, or God in the original Japanese, had summoned a meteor to crush into it when the wicked ways of the Saiyans went too far. We later learned that it had actually been Frieza to destroy it... And even later, we learned that Beerus sped up his plans due king Vegeta keeping the most comfortable cushion in the universe for himself. A God ''[[FromACertainPointOfView did]]'' summon what destroyed planet Vegeta due the Saiyan doing something evil, just it wasn't the planet's god, it wasn't a meteor, and the evil was suicidally stupid pettiness.
* At the start of the series Bulma is shown actually scared of ''Goku'' when Raditz reveals they're both Saiyan. As ''Manga/JacoTheGalacticPatrolman'' establishes she had known of the Saiyan for years, she has just realized that her best friend had come to Earth to wipe everyone out.
* In the "Buu Saga", Majin Buu displays the ability of healing very early on, which starkly contrasts from Buu's nature as we were told up to that point - a merciless, destructive force of nature. The brilliance comes in when you realize later on that Buu's healing ability was {{Foreshadowing}} of the fact that he had absorbed two Supreme Kai in the past, with Kibito demonstrating healing abilities in the same arc.

* At first, Uub seems like a retread of Gohan. He's an unimpressive fighter with a lot of potential that only becomes apparent when he is enraged. But that was the entire point. Goku wasn't just given an opponent who mirrored his son, but unlike Gohan, who had all the resources and conditions necessary to become a great fighter but kept throwing it away to focus on more worldly pursuits, Uub doesn't have the opportunities to develop his talents because of harsh worldly realities until Goku give him relief. Goku loves his biological sons the way they are, but Uub is the son he mistakenly believed Gohan to be during the Cell saga. Gohan doesn't lose his head until someone he cares about gets hurt, Uub got into fight mode simply by being in front of an opponent he didn't like.
* Scouters being broken so easily on certain mooks. For low-level mooks, the scouters are probably not built as well, and don't have the range of power levels as ones higher tiered leadership hold, as low level mooks would only really need to deal with civilians and low tier warriors. High power levels would overload these scouters really quickly and cause them to explode easily.

* Videl as a teen often wore FingerlessGloves, but stopped after retiring from fighting. Those weren't simple gloves, they were martial arts padded gloves to protect her hands, and stopped wearing them after retiring from fighting-or realizing her ability to use ki meant she didn't need them anymore.

* Fat Buu often made acrobatic manouvers while flying around with Babidi, but stopped after he was dead-he knew exactly how frail Babidi was and was already trying to kill him without being sealed away, he just hadn't thought of the way he ultimately used yet.

* During the end of the Frieza saga, Goku turned down an offer to be quickly transported back to Earth via the Dragon Balls, insisting on heading back to Earth on his own. Which actually may be the smarter idea if you take into account that he just unlocked his Super Saiyan form, a power he at the time knew very little about, knowing only that it gave him a power boost while making him significantly more violent and rage-filled. Goku, keeping those factors in mind, likely figured he needed time to figure out how to control his Super Saiyan powers (remember he didn't even figure out how to turn it off while on Planet Namek) before returning to Earth, since otherwise he might've risked someone pushing the wrong button at the wrong time which might prompt a still rage-filled Super Saiyan Goku into hurting that person along with damaging the Earth.

* Speaking of Goten, this troper just had one about his name. It’s twofold: first, the characters, Go and Ten, translate to “understanding the heavens”. Goku’s characters translate to “understanding the sky“. So, Goten’s name is a direct memorial to his recently-deceased father on Chi-Chi’s part. ''But'', in Chinese (and ''Dragon Ball'' is implied to take place in mainland China), the characters would be pronounced as Wuten (compare Sun Wukong, the inspiration for Goku) — as in, Wuten Laoshi, a.k.a. Muten Roshi. Just like Gohan, Goten is named after one of Goku’s [[OldMaster old masters]]. Doubles as a SugarWiki/CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming.

** But what nobody is mentioning is that the Supreme Kais only act when the actual foundations of the universe are at risk (mass destruction of celestial bodies, deicide, time-related terrorism, anything dealing with the Demon Realm, or demons in general, etc), and while Frieza and his family were a big part of the evil across the galaxies, their affairs were still just something in the realm of mortals, and they had no reason to interfere. It wasn't until the entire universe, including them, was in danger by an insane creature even stronger than them, that destroyed anything in sight just for fun, that they decided to act. There's a reason why they didn't stop Goku from killing Frieza, for them at the time, it was just mortal businesses, though commendable, there's a reason why Beerus wanted to kill him too, since the rules of a God of Destruction are way more flexible. His death gave the opressed people under Frieza's tyranny a chance to rebel (something that would've guaranteed the death of any of them in the past), and as Frieza's henchmen mentioned by the time of ''Anime/DragonBallZResurrectionF'', many actually succeeded and are free now.

** According to ''Dragonball Minus'', Saiyan are sent out as children, but they're already grown up a fair bit by that time (Raditz's first mission came when he was already seven, right before the destruction of their homeworld, and in fact his mission mate was Vegeta himself), and Goku being sent out as a toddler was not completely the norm but [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture Bardock figuring that there was something strange in Frieza recalling all Saiyans to planet Vegeta and sending him on a planet with enough food for a growing Saiyan but nothing interesting for the Planet Trade Organization to invade]]. On the other hand, Saiyan childhood is implied to consist in combat training... And Goku was ''still'' RaisedByWolves.

* It used to bother me that in in the Buu saga the people competing in the martial arts tournaments are all such weaklings and people in general are so disbelieving in abilities like ki and energy attacks and easily accept Mr Satan's claims that its all a trick when before those same abilities seemed much more widespread and known about. But then I realised that by the end of Piccolo saga it's pretty much just Goku and the other Z fighters who use those abilities and they basically disappear from the tournament scene until the Buu saga. All their adventures and battles take place in out of the way places or other planets and largely remain under the radar of the general public up til the Cell Saga. Also over the course of Dragonball Z nobody has sought out any of the Z fighters to train under them the way that Goku and Krillin sought out Master Roshi. So it's not surprising that by the time of the Buu knowledge about abilities like energy attacks and use of ki would have faded out of public consciousness and the techniques themselves fallen out of practice.

** Ki and energy attacks are really rare in the Dragonball world (until DBO anyway) because hardly anyone actually knows how to use Ki or that it even exists. Those taught by the Turtle and Crane schools and their teachers are the only ones that are shown having the ability to access Ki at all and both of those schools hardly take on any students at all. Take a look at all the tournaments and fighters throughout Dragonball and DBZ and the number of people besides the protagonists and last round fighters that actually are shown using it is next to zero, and anytime Ki techniques are used by anybody such as the Kamehameha wave it's almost always mentioned to be legendary and mythical technique, something only people in the fighting biz and rabid fighting fans would have so much as heard of. Overall I'd say a couple dozen people on the entire planet can use Ki in any capacity at the most. Mostly the fighters besides the protagonists just use purely physical techniques based around raw power and/or speed rather than Ki. It's easy for a population of billions to dismiss something like Ki as tricks when hardly anybody knows about it, fewer have seen it firsthand, and next to nobody actually uses it. It isn't until the Cell games that Ki becomes involved in something big enough to be known to the world at large and Hercule quickly squashes much interest in it. Ki is definitely not something the average Joe runs across every day and/or uses themselves.

*** Actually, no. Frieza likely would've never gone to Namek. Remember, while Vegeta had heard of "wish granting balls of Namek", they had no idea the dragonballs were the same thing. Vegeta worked that out himself, and the only reason Frieza went to Namek was because he heard Vegeta's theory through the scouter and Vegeta was about to destroy the Earth. However, the Fridge Horror remains because that just means Frieza would've went to Earth instead and there's no telling how that would've gone. Goku might've still been injured, they might not have had Vegeta as an ally, and all the extra boosts Goku got (from training in space and coming near death on Namek) wouldn't have happened either.

** Even worse is that Vegeta recovered much sooner than Goku did thanks to the advanced medical equipment Vegeta had access to then. Vegeta was going to head right back to Earth until he heard Frieza went to Namek. If Frieza didn't learn about the Dragonballs, Goku would've doomed the Earth.

** Piccolo takes exception at the great commercialization, and makes a point of blowing up any recording or broadcasting equipment he sees. [[{{Irony}} His destruction of the original temple is the main reason for it]].

* Why isn't Vegeta wearing his armor at the 25th Tenkaichi when he otherwise wears it all the time (even claiming it counts as Saiyan formal clothing when he wears it at a party) until the end of Z? Because the rules of the Tenkaichi Budokai forbid the use of weapons or armor, and he couldn't figure how to justify it.

* The romance between Vegeta and Bulma might look very unlikely from any logical standpoint at first glance, but makes sense when you consider some relevant elements of both characters. Bulma from the very first arc of the original ''Manga/DragonBall'' was shown as a very [[{{Jerkass}} vain]], [[AllWomenAreLustFul flirty woman]], who always swoons over handsome guys, but that a the same time, goes into [[ClingyJealousGirl jealous rages]] with alarming frequency. Her on and off relationship with Yamcha precisely never seemed to take off because Bulma gets jealous of any female interaction Yamcha displays. Now enter Vegeta, for most of the series the guy is just obsessed with [[AlwaysSecondBest surpassing]] Goku and doesn't care at all about anything else, [[CelibateHero least of all women]]. In practice, Vegeta could be in front of ANY earthling woman no matter how beautiful and he wouldn't care less about her, which in turn, makes him the ideal man in Bulma's eyes since he will never, for any reason will look at other women. Future Trunks' description about how Bulma and Yamcha broke up also fits with this, he says (because [[UnreliableNarrator his mother told him most likely]]) that Yamcha was too promiscuous, but we never see the poor guy going with multiple women or anything like that, the brilliance being that in Bulma's eyes, even talking to some other woman was acting "promiscuous" something that Yamcha and every other man on the planet would do by sheer nature...but Vegeta would most likely never do. In the end, the prince of the Saiyans was the only male fitting for Bulma (and perhaps well, Goku as she muses a couple of times, but he was already taken).
* When Vegeta says he's "known stronger houseplants" than Hercule Satan at first it sounds like typical Vegeta talk, but remember Vegeta was held in bondage by Frieza nearly his whole life. During that time he conquered thousands of planets and killed entire civilizations so ''maybe'' there ''was'' a planet whose populace had some form of plant life to safeguard their homes.

** This is from the Bardock special so it's place in cannon is dubious, but wasn't Vegeta (the planet) known as Plant before the Saiyans came?

* This troper hasn't seen DBZ in a while so please forgive any mistakes. If this troper recalls, 16 wasn't able to be wished back for whatever reason, perhaps because he was pure machine. Does this imply that he's soulless? Because if he could think, and feel, what makes his physiology any different from any of the aliens we saw in Other World? Does this mean 16 was only simulating the emotions according to glitchy programming, rather than experiencing them on the same spectrum as a human? Really makes this more Fridge Depression rather than Fridge Horror.
** It's not canon but, one of the [[GuideDangIt guidebooks]] says #16 was revived, and he went to live with #8. From a canon perspective, though, #16 wasn't revived simply because he wasn't alive to begin with. The gang specifically wished for all those ''killed'' by Cell to be revived, but #16, not being alive in the first place, was never killed by Cell. He would have been revived by a wish to restore everything destroyed by Cell, though, if they had thought to fix all the property damage Cell caused instead of removing some bombs that [[IdiotBall Bulma could have taken care of anyway.]]
* When Vegeta says that he succeeded in having becoming a Super Saiyan because [[PureIsNotGood his heart is pure evil]], he may have just been exaggerating for intimidation purposes-- and instead, what was pure was his determination to win. Which makes more sense for his character anyway, since his determination at the end of Z is so great that it manages to [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome scare Majin Buu]] because he refuses to give up or stay down, to a level that exceeds even Goku's own {{determinator}} status.

** Also, there's the fact Frieza destroyed Vegeta on ''Beerus''[='=] request. It was a one time thing, and Beerus was considering killing Frieza next time he woke up, but as far as Shin knew Frieza and his organization had a use in Beerus' job, and he didn't dare to wake him up and check.
** But what nobody is mentioning is that the Supreme Kais only act when the actual foundations of the universe are at risk (mass destruction of celestial bodies, deicide, time-related terrorism, anything dealing with the Demon Realm, or demons in general, etc), and while Frieza and his family were a big part of the evil across the galaxies, their affairs were still just something in the realm of mortals, and they had no reason to interfere. It wasn't until the entire universe, including them, was in danger by an insane creature even stronger than them, that destroyed anything in sight just for fun, that they decided to act. There's a reason why they didn't stop Goku from killing Frieza, for them at the time it was just mortal businesses, though commendable, there's a reason why Beerus wanted to kill him too, since the rules of a God of Destruction are way more flexible. His death gave the opressed people under Frieza's tyranny a chance to rebel (something that would've guaranteed the death of any of them in the past), and as Frieza's henchmen mentioned by the time of ''Anime/DragonBallZResurrectionF'', many actually succeeded and are free now.

** And this is possibly where Gero changed the power levels of the Androids; In Trunk's Timeline Goku would have arrived on Earth and would have fought a bloody battle with Frieza. As Cell has Frieza's cells, this means that Gero was, on some level, aware of the battle. He then must have known that the Mechanical Bodies he built for himself and 19 would be pointless, as Goku was clearly above their power level even before training and instead went to tweak on 17 and 18 more. In the main timeline, Goku never fought in it and the battle itself lasted too short for Gero to collect any meaningful data (Frieza and King Cold both got obliterated to ash, as oppose to possibly leaving behind corpses for Gero to collect and study). And the reason why 17 and 18 are weaker in Trunk's timeline? Gero always makes his androids powerful (as evident with 16 being the most powerful despite being the earliest one) and tone down from there. Gero, knowing his own #20 Mechanical body would not suffice, instead opted to tone down 17 and 18's power to manageable levels (which still predictably failed).

** Alternate interpretation: Gero in the original timeline would probably heard that Goku had died. This was six months before the androids attacked. So possibly he stopped upgrading the androids or downgraded them because their most powerful opponent was dead, and changed their programming. In the "main" timeline, the core instruction would have been something like "Kill Goku." That was all they were programmed to do, which explains their focus on finding him. But in the original timeline, with Goku dead, Gero might have changed the mission to "Kill everyone."

* In the category of "Glossed over but '''really disturbing''' if you think about it too hard": Android 18's reproductive organs were left intact by Dr. Gero, which is what enabled her to conceive and bear a child by Krillin later. This almost seems like an oversight if you want to turn a human being into an inhuman killing machine that obeys your every order. Hormones (whether estrogen or testosterone) can drive behavior, thereby introducing a variable that would not be entirely predictable. ''Unless'' Gero thought that 18 losing her free will but retaining her biological femininity would be useful. Gero, after all, had lost a son (the model for Android 16), presumably to a wife who was also long dead. The potential theories for this range at their tamest from Gero, being versed in DNA splicing, wanted to experiment with create DesignerBabies through IVF with 18's still-viable womb as the incubator. At their darkest... well, [[RapeAsDrama exactly what you're probably thinking]]. This isn't terribly farfetched, given some of the [[AmbiguouslyHuman theories]] that abound about [[AbsurdlyYouthfulMother Bulma's]] [[TheAgeless mother]], who appears to have stopped aging at 35 despite Toriyama explicitly stating her and her husband's ages as at least ''twice'' that by ''Super''. It's all a bit... ''yikes.''

** Also, recall that Vegeta’s characterization during the Cell Saga ''is'' similar to his characterization during the Saiyan Saga. It’s actually the Frieza Saga where he’s different. And what happened just before the Frieza Saga? ‘’ He lost his tail'', and with it, the free transformation/power-up into the Great Monkey form (remember, thanks to the Power Ball technique, Vegeta didn’t have to wait for a full moon and could access that form at will). Captain Ginyu was treated as the second-most powerful fighter in Frieza’s army thanks to his power level of 120,000, but with the Great Monkey form, Vegeta’s power level would have gone from 18,000 (nothing to Zarbon or Dodoria, let alone Ginyu) to ''180,000''. (Actually kind of puts into perspective why the Saiyans were considered so horrifying.) So, during the Frieza Saga, Vegeta is at his smartest and most cautious because he’s both Just openly betrayed Frieza ''and'' lost his single best weapon against him. He’s back to normal in the Cell Saga because he finally managed to replace his old, lost transformation [[CameBackStrong with an even better one]].

* Speaking of Goten, this troper just had one about his name. It’s twofold: first, the characters, Go and Ten, translate to “understanding the heavens”. Goku’s characters translate to “understanding the sky“. So, Goten’s name is a direct memorial to his recently-deceased father on Chi-Chi’s part. ''But'', in Chinese (and ''Dragon Ball'' is implied to take place in mainland China), the characters would be pronounced as Wuten (compare Sun Wukong, the inspiration for Goku) — as in, Wuten Laoshi, a.k.a. Muten Roshi. Just like Gohan, Goten is named after one of Goku’s [[OldMaster old masters]]. Doubles as a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming.

* Speaking of Goten, this troper just had one about his name. It’s twofold: first, the characters, Go and Ten, translate to “understanding the heavens”. Goku’s characters translate to “understanding the sky“. So, Goten’s name is a direct memorial to his recently-deceased father on Chi-Chi’s part. ‘’But’’, in Chinese (and ‘’Dragon Ball’’ is implied to take place in mainland China), the characters would be pronounced as Wuten (compare Sun Wukong, the inspiration for Goku) — as in, Wuten Laoshi, a.k.a. Muten Roshi. Just like Gohan, Goten is named after one of Goku’s [[OldMaster old masters]].