History Headscratchers / DragonballZAndroidAndCellSaga

*** The anime added in the dialogue, in the manga call explodes straight away when they arrive on King Kai's planet.

* Why didn't Cell ever use the Kaio-ken? There are multiple points when it would've been useful (against Ascended Saiyan Vegeta as Semi-Perfect Cell, for example), and since he has Frieza's durability and Piccolo's regenerative abilities, I doubt he has to worry much about the damage it can do to him.

** I think Future Cell was already on the prowl when Trunks killed the future Androids.

* After blowing himself up, how did Cell's cells power him up? When Vegeta is explaining the whole Saiyajin get stronger after recovering from a near-fatal situation that the damage cannot be self inflicted. I'm pretty sure activating a self-destruct mechanism is a self inflicted injury. And unlike the other Androids where the self-destruct bomb was a piece that was installed, with Cell being Cell that means the detonation and explosive properties were a part of his DNA ie. not external influence.

** Cell actually states he did NOT expect this to work out the way it did. Maybe this is what is important for Zenkai, i.e feeling genuine fear of death with no safety net, yet crawling back from that state. Probably trying to cash in that powerup again would NOT have worked since it would not have been a honest attempt at dying.

*** Vegeta has been shown on more than one occasion to have far more pride in himself than he does brains. He's constantly boasting about proud Saiyan nonsense, Prince of all Saiyans, etc. and would likely consider self-induced injury for a zenkai boost to be cheating, and utterly beneath someone of his status, to the point of completely dismissing it without consideration. To him it probably is a matter of not working.

*** Episode 189 6:46, in Japanese, Cell DOES mention a lump in his head as his core : "In my head, there is a small lump. It acts as my core. As long as it is not destroyed, my body can keep on regenerating itself". This is a plot hole.

** Well in the Mirai timeline it was a sudden onset that killed him before anyone realised what the disease was, how it spread etc. So they really didn't have time to go off planet for a cure. In main timeline they also didn't know much about it and were too busy training to really think about saving Goku. Also they didn't know if Goku would get the disease or when, so planning something that convoluted would have been pointless. Also why go too all that trouble for something they couldn't guarantee would work when you had medicine handy that you knew would. Also Vegeta wouldn't kill Goku like that unless it was in a true battle his pried as a True Saiyan Warrior would demand no less than a true match to the death with Goku to see who was truly the best.
** Pretty much that. There is nothing forced or complicated about taking medicine when you start feeling the symptoms. They didn't need to worry about saving Goku, as they assumed he'd take care of it himself as, y'know, he has the cure sitting in the fridge in his house, and presumably, he doesn't want to die of a heart virus. Its his fault for not thinking ahead and bringing the cure with him when it came time to face the androids. And, as previously said, Vegeta's Saiyan pride and honor would not allow him to simply vaporize Goku, even if he wanted.

** Gero wasn't just after a Goku killer, he wanted an android that would lay waste to the world too. 16 would not even not do that, he might even stop Gero when he tries himself. If 17&18 did kill the Z Fighters and Goku, 16 might've killed them when they try to run wild across the world.

* When Gohan finally overpowers Perfect Cell, the latter threatens a Super Kamehameha powerful enough to destroy the world. Fair enough. The problem is that it literally takes minutes for him to charge up the damn thing - why did he chose such an inefficient technique? Vegeta's Galick Gun destroyed Arlia effortlessly in seconds, Freeza's ''Orange Glowing Ball of Death'' destroyed Vegeta effortlessly in seconds - both techniques Cell would obviously know and yet, despite being hundreds of times stronger, he chose the longest, most drawn out technique he could possibly use which gave his enemies ample time to counter-attack. In fact, to put into scale just ''how'' long Cell took to destroy the Earth, Master Roshi - Power Level 139 took less time to Kamehameha the moon than Perfect Cell - Power Level several million took to shoot the planet he was standing on.

** Just look at the situation from Cell's point of view: you achieved your primary purpose, i.e. getting your perfect body; you, therefore, are the single most powerful being on Earth, with an unquenchable pride and thirst for fighting. You then go on creating and announcing the Cell Games; the goal, beyond satisfying your sadism, being taking the slightest chance possible to find a decent challenge on this planet before destroying it; of course, you know damn well that your archnemesis will be there, with a little surprise, Goku told you. D-day arrives, you fight the 2nd best warrior of Earth beside you to a stalemate; he gives up and make the tag to his hopeless son, that you almost immediately tries to torture. Then, that hopeless son, not only responding to your torture methods by getting his power meter through the sky, manages to ''single-handedly'' kick your perfect ass in the most humiliating way possible, even forcing you to try a self-destruct attempt. THEN, you get the chance to come back to life even stronger than before. You have the combined DNA of Freeza and Vegeta; you don't want to beat your nemesis and destroy his planet; you want to shatter his spirit before. I always assumed that Cell, with this Kamehameha, actually ''wants'' to get a response; he's about to destroy the Earth and kill the only person who bested him, all with that person's signature move; doing it by ''besting that person in a Kamehameha clash with said signature move'' would be the ultimate cherry on the cake.

* Since he hadn't been created for the series yet, Goten wasn't in the future- I understand that. However, after his creation, shouldn't he have been retconned into the future, or at least acknowledged as dying as a baby or something? Or did he not exist at all? Although, I'm pretty sure he should have based on my knowledge of the timeline, but I could be wrong.
** Its actually pretty simple; the most likely point in which Goku and Chi Chi conceived Goten was during his and Gohan's week-long cooldown period before the Cell Games - in other words years after the timelines diverged to make Future Trunk's universe. Incidentally it is also a good explanation as to why Goten can go Super Saiyan so easily seeing as there is a good chance Goku was in Full Power Super Saiyan mode during his making love to her.
*** Goku specifically said that the only time they wouldn't be Super Saiyan is when they slept. And seeing as how the act would most likely be done in bed, Goku wouldn't have been a Super Saiyan at the time. Also I don't think Goku porking Chichi as a Super Saiyan is a safe idea. I don't know if this is in the manga but in the anime Goku and Gohan, while a Super Saiyan, had a hard time controlling their strength to do ordinary tasks like picking up a glass without breaking it. I'm pretty sure Chichi would've ending up in the hospital with some broken bones.

** Keep in mind what makes up Cell. The Saiyans were pretty apocalyptic in themselves-rather than using their power to enslave planets, they cleared them of all life. Yeah, Freeza told them to do it, but [[BloodKnight they sure didn't mind.]] Then there's [[AxCrazy Freeza]], who casually wiped out life due to a mixture of [[EvilIsPetty plotting real estate]] and [[ForTheEvulz sadism.]] Cell had [[FromASingleCell practical immortality]] as well, and just suffered a near-death experience when becoming Super Perfect. Cell was probably thinking that by going to war with the entire universe he'd have a great fight, and more importantly to him, prove that he's perfect [[VillainousBreakdown after Gohan hurt his ego.]] If the planets get destroyed quickly, then [[LackOfEmpathy they don't matter.]] If the heroes of the planet fight back, then [[BloodKnight Cell gets a great fight.]]

** Zenkai doesn't work if you do it to yourself ( Remember during the Freeza fight,Krillin had to blow a whole in Vegeta's chest to invoke Zenkai, rather than Vegeta doing it himself).

*** When you can regenerate from a few cells, then being reduced to a few cells constitutes as "near death". [[TruthInTelevision Life]] tends to be lazy that way, so by unlocking that method of regeneration, Cell now has take that risk every time.

** Their energy is unnatural, so it probably can't be sensed naturally. Also I vaguely recall Androids' energy being referred to as something other than ki.

** Akira Toriyama: ''"I intended to put Gohan into the leading role. It didn't work out. I felt that compared to Goku, he was ultimately not suited for the part."'' (''Daizenshuu 2'' interview) There you have it, official confirmation of why Gohan didn't stay the main character in the Buu Arc, Toriyama felt he couldn't handle the role. And considering Gohan was pretty apathetic towards training and making sure he didn't fall behind in strength, can you blame him for thinking Gohan wasn't suitable as the main character? Gohan was essentially a subversion of all the tropes that made Goku so lovable. Fan rumor though, has usually claimed that Toriyama was "forced" to give Gohan the shaft due to fan outcry and/or his ever-insidious editor and there is not any real evidence of this.
*** Gohan fell behind in strength and became apathetic BECAUSE Toriyama decided he was unfit to be the lead not the other way around. It's actually puzzling how that happened since he's been a warrior almost from the point of being able to walk and his father died protecting the world, you'd think Gohan would have kept at it. In his defense he was still the second or third strongest being in the universe at the beginning of the Buu saga and the most powerful being again by the end.

*** Let's not forget what happens after Cell dies and Gohan becomes the main character: almost an entire volume of school antics, Gohan turning into a sentai parody, and possibly some teen romance. Perhaps Toriyama thought that Gohan was a good main character for those kind of activities, and he always seemed happier when writing weird stuff. But if Dragon Ball's new audience was different from Dr. Slump's audience, they probably wouldn't have liked this new turn of events. That would explain why he eventually just made the manga into a fighting series again very soon. And he didn't see Gohan fit as main character of the fighting parts. So yeah, in a way it could be that he was effectively forced to change his mind, but in a very indirect way. It's also worth pointing out that Gohan was the most popular character in the series by the end of the Cell saga (which could have influenced Toriyama's choices), but he had disappeared from the Top 5 during the Buu arc (a sign that fans didn't like the character's new direction). In the end, writers have to please their fans, even when nobody is quite forcing them to, if only to keep their readership.

** Maybe there's a hard cap on how powerful he can get in his first form, and he reached that once he absorbed enough towns worth of people. So there's no point in attempting to absorb Piccolo. As for him being terrible at using his other abilities, he did have Krillin's cells who fails miserably at utilizing his Kienzan in situations where it's conjectured he could have killed much stronger opponents. Also he has Vegeta's cells of arrogance so he never believed the other Z-fighters made a difference.
** For absorbing Piccolo, Cell tries that. He drains a whole arm dry before Piccolo break free, then reveals he's still easily powerful enough to kill Cell. Ever since then, Cell stays the hell away from Piccolo until he shows up at Piccolo and 17's fight. At that point, Cell is strong enough to drain Piccolo, but why waste time with that when the androids, who will give him a ''much'' greater boost, are right there? As for why he underuses his skills in the final battle, Perfect Cell is pretty much defined as being arrogant as all hell and is even worse as Super Perfect. He's not going to use a trick like teleporting Gohan into a vacuum because he doesn't need to, nor does he need to use his self destruction trick or anything other than beating Gohan in a pure power contest, because that's more fun to him anyway.

** Two possible explanations: 1. Cell's mix of genes allowed him to overcome that weakness of Namekian regeneration, or 2. Cell's power increase from being restored from near death was so massive, that it managed to not only overcome the fatigue loss as a result of the regeneration, but increase Cell's power far beyond what it was before.

** That's what Bulma said. Plus, it's simple. It's because they thought that if they trained ahead of time, they would stand a chance against Gero and the Androids..I swear, it's all in the blood, but oh well, we wouldn't have a show if the heroes didn't make any poor decisions.

** There's also the issue that they really don't know how far along in development the androids are, and going there right away would risk kick-starting Trunks' apocalypse earlier than they could be prepared for. It made more sense to play it safe and wait for a time where they could be counted on showing up and just train hard til then.

*** Except for the fact that you are sending your infantry to attack that single target as well, thus risking their lives unnecessarily.It makes to concentrate your attack with Artillery, Jets, and Vehicles... but not with regular infantry added into the mix; Machine Gunners would have to get close to the target in order to fire, putting them at greater risk of getting hit by your own units.They would be in the blast radius OF your long-range weaponry while they were firing; thus It is better for you to have them pulled back and used as escorts instead, so as to not risk any unnecessary casualties. If you want to concentrate the combined firepower of your artillery,Tanks, Missle Launchers, Snipers, and jets on a single target, fine, go ahead, but regular infantry would just get in the way. Hence why I say that they were "idiotic."

** Don't forget that this has occurred before in the series. Piccolo and Goku vs. Raditz had Piccolo's SBC kill Raditz, who was much more powerful than him. We also see Krillin's Kienzan slice through Freeza's tail. On top of that, from the same arc, Tien held back Imperfect Cell through Tri-Beam spamming, whereas I doubt he'd fare as well through simple punches. It's made quite clear that powerful techniques exceed the user's actual power level and can deliver final blows to stronger targets with enough charge time. What makes it unreliable is that stronger targets would have to be dumb enough to wait around for the target to charge (which does happen), or in the case of Tien his tri-beam is said in Dragonball to drain his life force and risks killing himself by using it. Unsure about Kienzan, however. Then on top of that the stronger, faster target can still dodge the blow.

** It's not that common, most want to conquer it. Cell most likely had no intention of destroying the universe. He was going to blow up the Earth mostly in a final act of pettiness because like Freeza he couldn't stand being defeated and would rather everybody die than him lose. He was probably bluffing about blowing up the sun since he was clearly aiming at Gohan. It would have been interesting to see what Cell would have done after killing the Z Warriors. Considering that he craved a challenge enough to give the Z-Warriors ten days to train (it's a good thing for him the ROSAT has limitations since the Buu Saga suggests all the Saiyans would be past him in just seven days.) he would have been bored out of his mind for sure but it wouldn't be a surprise if he'd immediately started searching the universe for worthy opponents not just blowing stuff. Either that or he would have settled into Freeza's job as intergalatic tyrant but that seems unlikely.

** Good question. I guess he's just that much of a sadistic narcissist, filled with so much ego that he can't concieve that there could possibly be a better plan than the one he came up with.
** In universe, Gero's body had energy absorption abilities that ''eventually'' would have allowed him to surpass 17 and 18, who were kind of static. Out of universe, Dr. Gero and 19 were supposed to be the main villains, 17 and 18 were tacked on when Toriyama's editor looked at their designs and said "Make something more threatening."

** They're pretty much Cell's children, seeing as how he has Piccolo's Namekian cells and could probably reproduce asexually with much more success when his form was perfect than when he was in a weaker form. He even refers to them as his "offspring" (in Kai anyway) and refers to them as his "beloved children" (in the original funimation dub)
* Why are the androids from the future so willing to kill in comparison to the modern androids? If the androids from the modern era had wanted to they would have killed everybody during their first encounter. Which is apparently what happened in the original time line. Otherwise Piccolo would have merged with Kami and while Goku is the one who thought it up Piccolo was fully aware of the Room of Space and Time and Vegeta and Gohan plus a year in the Time Chamber equals two very dead androids. So it's fairly obvious that Gohan never used the Time Chamber because had he destroying the androids would have been child's play.

*** Cell was not swimming, he was above the islands looking down. He obviously could "swim" he has Frieza DNA and it's confirmed later that he can survive in space. It probably just didn't occur to 18 that fleeing underwater was an option for her, she's a cyborg and fundamentally thinks like a human not taking full advantage of things she can do. All DBZ characters of any worth can "swim" however. In this case swim means however they fly they should be able to do that in water as easily (or easier) than in the air. They don't fly like birds or rockets via propulsion of some sort. They are perfectly capable of hovering in place seemingly with only slightly more effort than standing. They simply reject gravity and choose to move in a direction. Absolutely nothing shown gives reason to think that will work any worse underwater.

** It's probably an optional thing. You could try the super hard you-must-be-super-powered-to-the-limit, or you could go with train normally for a whole year in a day.
*** The question is about why two months in the ROSAT is apparently better than two years of training under what seem to be harsher conditions. However the answer appears to be simple. Ignoring NewPowersAsThePlotDemands being in full effect it's implied that Vegeta thought a Super Saiyan was the absolute pinnacle of strength and it somehow didn't occur to him that it was even possible to get any stronger until he got his ass handed to him by a glorified toaster. Same with Goku, his training was probably aimed at bringing Piccolo and Gohan as close to his level as possible not at making himself any stronger. That of course begs the question of why he didn't push Gohan through to SS though. Sure the outcome would have been the same either way since the Androids were mopping the floor with Vegeta and Trunks one more Super Saiyan wouldn't have made much difference but still.

*** Perhaps after achieving Super Saiyan status, the hardest part was out of the way, and from there is was just a matter of having enough time and an absence of distractions to push the form further.

** First time travel is really finicky. There are something like four confirmed timelines already as is explained several times above. There is little guarantee that Trunks could actually return Goku back to his timeline even if he wanted to. Second I don't think Trunks believed it was possible to become more powerful than a Super Saiyan. Vegeta doesn't come to the realization until a glorified toaster hands him his ass, Goku apparently hears Vegeta's rage in his dreams and decides clearly is a Super Saiyan lost a fight then that's not the pinnacle. Gohan just kind of follows the plan and Trunks is flat out skeptical. He was looking for some kind of trick. Which turns out did exist (the off switch) and in one unseen timeline they use. Trunks then returns to the future and gets killed by Cell attempting to come back and tell the heroes mission accomplished. In addition look at the time and date Trunks comes back to, (and temporarily ignore how insane it is that someone with a fucking time machine was LATE instead of arriving exactly when they meant to) Dr. Gero was supposed to already be dead killed by 17 and 18 by the time he arrived and to the best of his knowledge in the sixteen years between the deaths of the Z-Fighters and him using the time machine precisely zero new events from Dr. Gero have happened.

** It's impossible to know what Android 19 thought other than he knew Dr. Gero was his superior. As for Gero was he even hiding his identity? I'd always sort of assumed he just didn't bother introducing himself formally to a bunch of people he was planning to kill. Also unfortunately DBZ gives us a painfully small sample size to work with as far if Dr. Gero should have reasonably assumed he would be recognized on sight. Bulma does and it's implied that it's because their both scientists and all scientists know each other. But the Z-Fighters as a whole are clearly ignorant to culture. They don't recognize Hercule on sight and it's all but stated he's their version of Mike Tyson and Hulk Hogan all rolled into one. Gero was also an integral part of an army that nearly conquered the world. So again he may very well have presumed that he needed no introduction.
*** In the English version, Gero does flat out deny his identity to the Z fighters; he talks about himself in the third person and when Piccolo calls him out on hyping Gero up so much that it sounds like he is Gero, he says that's absurd and claims to just be an artificial life form created by Gero. As for why, I have no real idea beyond it may just be Gero trying to distance himself from his own mortality and embrace his new existence as Android 20, but it's hard to say, especially as the act is more or less dropped after Bulma spills the beans.

** He doesn't have a father in his time line. He wants to see his father happy, or at least, as a proud warrior. It's normal for sons to surpass their fathers, but still, he wants him to be happy. Even is Vegeta is an utter dick.

* Looking at Trunk's flash backs of the Z-warriors, which were in fact just stories told to him, it looks like all the relevant fighters were killed by the Androids initially. Assuming they went and killed Roshi for some reason after that Popo, Korin and Yajirobe are all around and the androids have no way of sensing energy so you could hide from them indefinitely. Why didn't ANY of them come find Gohan and Trunks? Even if you pretend that none of the three of them were aware of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber which would have at absolute worst solved all their problems in three days they could train pretty much to their content on the Lookout without being randomly spotted.

* If the main Cell hadn't come to the main timeline, does that mean Trunks and the Z Warriors would have killed the androids? According to timeline #3, Trunks somehow defeated the androids. I wish we could have seen how timeline 3 played out. I'm assuming Trunks killed Android 17, 18, and 16 (possibly with the help of super namek Piccolo).
** While we don't know for certain the answer is fairly obvious based on observations. Timeline 3 trunks is killed by Imperfect Cell which means he never trained in the ROSAT. The most likely answer becomes that Bulma somehow found out about the remote, they build a remote, shut down the Androids and destroy them that way.

** Probably the same reason it hurts Namekians too. He has to expend power to actually withstand the blows which would wear him down over time and any force that does get through would still give him pain. It's not like he actually maintains ''wounds'' during the fights. Being able to regenerate on it's own doesn't mean you can ignore things altogether like Buu who was magic and made of goo.

* I'm not sure if this subject has been touched on but this troper will write about it anyway. One thing about the Future Trunk's timeline that bothers me is this. Why didn't Future Goku contact Future Gohan from the afterlife? You know, a little bit of instant transmission to King Kai's planet and ask if he could speak to Gohan. Like in the lines of "Hey son, I figured out that you can reach a level beyond the super saiyan also you can go train on Kami's Lookout for 1 year worth of training in 1 day as well. Mister Popo will hook you up."
** Goku's an IdiotHero. Also, its possible that he didn't get to keep his body this time around and/or had forgotten about the Hyperbonic Time Chamber.
** The most likely answer is that he simply didn't achieve a level higher than Super Saiyan in that universe for any number of reasons. Remember in our universe Vegeta is the one who actually comes up with the idea after being spared by 17 and 18 and Goku psychically hears it and agrees. Vegeta didn't survive in the alternate time line, presumably went to HFIL so even if he had the idea would be unable to communicate it to Goku.

*** Depending on the translation, the alternate Androids from Trunks' future are actually significantly weaker than their counterparts in the main series for reasons never fully explained; though they're significantly more malevolent. Future 17 & 18 are about on par with a SSJ, maybe a little above, but it's generally implied that Trunks or Future Gohan could potentially beat them one on one, but always lose due to being ganged up on. Though other translations and the history of trunks special go the other way and say they're just as strong as their counter parts but usually hold back for fun. Anyway, point being, assuming the former explanation is the case, then a fused Kami-Piccolo would have certainly been able to take them both out at once, but due to their greater blood lust, they didn't let him live long enough to try.
** As for why Trunks and Future Bulma thought Goku would make that much of a difference, keep a few things in mind; Bulma is Goku's oldest friend and she has a nostalgia for him as well as a certain savvy most of the characters have about Goku being the win button for their group. Bulma also doesn't know much about the mystical side of things in the DBZ universe and might not have known Piccolo and Kami could fuse, and even if she did, she might not have realized that doing so would have given him the massive boost that it did; she might have thought it would simply add Kami's power to Piccolo and Kami was significantly weaker than Raditz. Piccolo and Kami fusing also costs them the dragon balls, so they might have figured that while neither is as strong as the fused namekian, Goku and Vegeta teaming up as super saiyans would have been enough to tip the balance without costing the dragon balls if things went south.

** Presumably the same reason Mr. Popo didn't take them to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber/ROSAT which would have solved their problem in a day or two tops. Somehow the androids found and slaughtered them. Or it never occurred to Gohan or Bulma. Mind you Gohan and Trunks wer both stronger than them at that point anyhow.

* Why didn't Dr. Gero erase/alter Android 17 and 18's memories while they were "sleeping" in their capsoles? He kidnapped these teens and turned them into cyborgs, so it shouldn't have been a surprise to him that these two would defy him. Why did he allow them to keep their memories and personalities? It's obvious they still remember their past lives as humans.

** It's not the weight, it's the ''mass''. The muscles are too physically big, and get in their own way. As an example, Arnold Schwartzeneggar had to lose weight and muscle mass between being Mr. Universe and playing [[Film/ConanTheBarbarian1982 Conan the Barbarian]] explicitly because the huge, bulky muscles he developed for body building meant he was physically incapable of wielding a sword properly. He was still plenty strong enough to lift the sword and swing it with considerable force, but he was too damn big to use it with any sort of technique.
** On top of that, this is the first time in the entire series where increased mass slowed anyone down. Dodoria and Android 19 weren't slow for their size. Several other characters have used larger forms without diminished speed: Oozaru Vegeta, Oozaru Gohan, Zarbon, Freeza, and even Cell himself. They throw all of that out the window just to have Trunks lose.

** Cell's imperfect form had a lot of insectoid influences, including the head, wings, and tail. Then he becomes bigger, bulkier, and his feet change, but manages to outclass everyone except someone stronger than him with no problems caused by the change in proportions. Just like when Freeza went from his smallest form (1st form) to a much bigger 2nd form, and then the third had so much extra weight up top he bent over from it. And this was a guy that took a super saiyan to beat. And while his fourth form was smaller than all but his first form, he then had to bulk up like Trunks to reach full power, with no resulting loss in speed. Considering that Oozaru were strong enough to tip the balance in a war fought by Saiyans, I expect they were strong enough that it would matter if they lost speed. As far as real life examples go, 150 lb. jiu jitsu black belt Pedro Sauer beat 250 lb. Lance Bachelor. First thing that came up in a google search for a fight like that. Skill matters, and Trunks has spent far more time training and fighting than Cell. But DBZ had to throw out everything the series established about mass and speed so they could have Trunks lose this one. Speed is a big deal, but it had also clearly been linked directly to strength for the entirety of the show up to this point.

** I think it's because Goku is still alive. Remember the Goku of Future Trunks' timeline died long before 17 and 18 were activated and since the two were built for sole purpose of killing Goku, they pretty much started to slaughter anyone else that stood against them. Since Goku is alive in the main timeline when 17 and 18 were activated, they decided to make a "game" by tracking him down.

*** But there is a real reason to believe it's King Cold's second form: Frieza has four forms. Frieza's 2nd form looks like King Cold's only shown form. King Cold is Frieza's father. Internal logic heavily suggests King Cold was not in his final form. Obviously this is all still conjecture, but the argument described holds weight and gives reason to believe it. The truth is we'll never know for sure.

*** Why would Cold's real form look like one of Freeza's "fake" forms, as opposed as his true form?

** It's never explained. There are plenty of possibilities though. Perhaps they don't REALLY have infinite energy and sixteen or so years of running wild had weakened them some what. My personal guess is Gero purposely weakened them, without Goku to pressure him he took his time in the hopes of getting them to a point where they could be controlled. Clearly he failed in his endeavor.

** There's also the fact they were created to fight Goku and the rest. In Trunk's timeline, the gang had no knowledge of an upcoming threat so any training wasn't as motivated or intense so they would have had more off time and wouldn't have gotten as stronger. Old Time Line Z-Fighters simple weren't as powerful as New Timeline Z-Fighters. Thus Old Timeline Androids or weaker than New Timeline Androids

** Did anybody see Freeza power up into the pinnacle of his power on Earth, like he did on Namek?

*** Trunks minced up Freeza and then blasted the bits with a Masenko for good measure. Freeza may have survived Namek exploding with him on it, but even with his incredible durability, he only survived because there was no one to finish him off afterward. Besides which, Freeza is durable, but he can't regenerate. Maybe he did survive Trunk's attack, for a little while anyway, but he was still reduced to tiny pieces with no way to pull himself back together or otherwise recover from those injuries.
*** Namek's explosion also isn't something you can reliably compare since Frieza blew it up by just destroying it's core then letting nature take over as the planet became unstable. It's much different than say how Frieza blew up Planet Vegeta by firing an energy ball strong enough to destroy it in one go.

** Vegeta does care about his sons (present and Future) frankly future Trunks to a nearly absurd degree. Starting with Future Trunks, Vegeta warms up to him fairly quickly. It makes some sense that Trunks worships Vegeta since Bulma apparently had much warmer and fuzzier memories of Vegeta even in that time line than we are generally lead to believe. Vegeta however is affectionate enough by the end of the saga to rush Cell over Trunks who was physically his son but emotionally was much more Gohan's child than Vegeta's. We don't know much of the details of Bulma and Vegeta's relationship, especially early on. As in when did HE find out Trunks was his son. From what we learn from Future Trunks I doubt that Vegeta and Bulma were enough of an item (especially since he went into space immediately following that) that him coming back and finding her pregnant instantly clicked as "that's my son" not "Earth Woman got pregnant while I was away." Certainly by the time the Buu Saga comes along he's quite proud of and attached to his son. I'm not saying he's a better father than Goku, he just has a better habit of staying alive after having children but he's no where near the uncaring brute he's being portrayed as here.
** I think it's important to note cultural differences, too. Vegeta was raised with Saiyan heritage. On Vegeta it was typical of families to send new born babies into space. I doubt Saiyans have much in the way of fatherly affection. In regards to how Vegeta treats Trunks he is actually a far more attentive father than his cultural upbringing should have made him.

** The Time travelling story in whole. Get some Popcorn. The Original Timeline - Cell's Timeline - has Goku defeating Freeza and King Cold, then dying shortly later of a heart virus. Dr. Gero unleashes Androids 17 and 18 onto the world. They kill the Z Fighters, bar Gohan. Gohan survives for awhile, trains Trunks, but later dies. Bulma, builds a Time Machine to find a way of preventing everything that has happened. Trunks goes back in time to an Unseen Timeline...
** Unseen Timeline: and arrives upon the arrival of Freeza and King Cold. Trunks defeats them, and tracks down Goku, giving him the antidote/cure to the Heart Virus he later develops. He returns to HIS Timeline, but returns to help the Z Fighters deal with Androids 17 and 18. At some point, they discover Gero's secret lab, and find the blue prints to 17 and 18. Trunks returns to his time...

*** Nope. In a flash back scene from the anime, Cell kills Trunks by choking him with his tail (rather silly but whatever) and goes into a cacoon state in order to travel in the time machine which was too big for him. He also lowers his power as a result of this transformation; this is why he has to absorb Ginger Town among other populated areas to get enough power to absorb the androids. Even if he had absorbed Trunks, he would have lost the power immediately in order to cacoon himself.

** I assume you mean after Trunks reappears when the Androids emerge. Up to that point, only Goku and Piccolo knew Mirai Trunks' name and origins. And once Piccolo blurts out his name, Vegeta rapidly puts two and two together (and bashes himself for not seeing it sooner). Also don't forget Vegeta thought he was lying about being a Saiyan. Not to mention everyone was too busy acting on Trunks' warning (training and such) to put much thought into Trunks' lineage.

** On the other hand, with the Hyperbolic Time Chamber in play, Gohan could have potentially gained quite a few years on Bulma (or any other sexually mature female with genetics conducive to purple-haired quarter-Saiyans) over the 20 years period in question. Trunks himself could have spend a significant amount of his childhood in there, as well. Who knows how many generations a Saiyan eugenics program could go through under the right circumstances. Not to mention other possibilities the Dragonballs present (like artificially aging Gohan to his peak condition or discovering/transporting to Earth any long-lost Saiyan foot soldiers that may have been off-world when Planet Vegeta blew up in hopes of bringing them back from effective extinction.) Sure, if you get hung up on his parentage, the mystery solves itself, but if you don't actually care that much (as most of them didn't), then it's the warning that captures your attention.

*** Nothing stops them from building a space ship later when the world has stabilized a bit, anyway.

*** Also Shenron and Porunga are only as strong as their creators - Kami/Dende Guru/Namek Elder. Dr Gero is at least as strong as Freeza; so no, the Dragons couldn't directly effect him in any way whatsoever.

* Okay, the timelines thing with Trunks. If he can go back to his own future to kill Cell, then his timeline is stable. But he kills Cell before he can go back in time in the first place, the Cell saga never happens. So we've got Cell in the future, dead. Cell in the present, dead. If it was possible for Trunks to get back to his own timeline, then how could he kill Cell before Cell went back, with the powers he gained training to fight Cell-in-the-past? To add yet another complication, this troper has also heard the interpretation of onscreen events as Cell killing Trunks to steal the time machine before he can go back the first time, but Trunks kills Cell before Cell can kill pre-travel future Trunks and get the time machine, but if he hadn't he shouldn;t bein the past. but since he did, Cell shouldn't be in the past, so [[TimeyWimeyBall oh no I've gone cross-eyed]]. To summarize: Two timelines are missing a Trunks, at least one timeline is missing a Cell, and neither Trunks nor Bulma actually know how time travel works, do they?.

*** Well, there are actually four timelines. The one you didn't mention was the one that would've been the main timeline if Cell didn't kill Trunks and take his machine to the main timeline. In the fourth timeline, future Cell wasn't present. They found the blueprints for the androids in Gero's lab and managed to destroy the androids of that timeline. Then that future Trunks went to the future, deactivated the androids, destroyed them, and was later killed by Cell before he could go back to the present to alert everyone of the good news. What confuses me, however, are two things: The alternate present Cell and alternate present 16. What if they ''didn't'' destroy the Cell of that timeline? Not knowing of Cell's existence, they'd have no reason to destroy the super computer building Cell nor Cell himself because they didn't know about them; Hell, they didn't even know about the hidden bunker below the lab. In 20 years or so, he'd appear and everyone would be fucked. Not to mention the whole conflict with Majin Buu that might possibly happen before Cell is even complete. Then there's 16. Was he just not present in that timeline? I doubt that he would've just sat back and allowed 17 and 18 to get destroyed and the dude was stronger than a fully powered future Imperfect Cell. The only character that would've stood a chance is Piccolo after fusing with Kami and the only reason Kami even agreed to do it was because he sensed future Cell, who wasn't present in the alternate present timeline. Did future Cell's presence somehow cause Gero to create him? That makes me wonder about just how similar the alternate present timeline is to the main timeline. Future Cell's presence could've somehow influenced Gero's decisions in regards to how powerful to make 17 and 18 and the creation of 16 (or how powerful to make him if he was going to make him anyway as a result of being affected somehow by Trunks' time traveling). Present Cell could've possibly have been much stronger than his future counterpart if allowed to grow.

*** Also maybe not all half-Saiyans are born with tails. Neither Trunks nor Goten have ever been shown with tails, maybe Gohan's the freak.
*** According to the Toriyama interview in the very first issue of US Shonen Jump, "It seems that tails are a recessive generic trait." Of course this is Toriyama we're talking about so he probably pulled it from his ass but there you have it.

*** I always a assumed it stopped growing back after they reached a certain age.

* After fusing with Kami, why didn't Piccolo re-power the Dragon Balls? It's established that Kami knew how, and that Piccolo had all his memories. Not to mention, at that point Piccolo was (obviously) much more powerful than Kami had been, as well as surpassing all the other living Namekians. Shenron would have become stupidly powerful at that point.
** He can't. For some reason he loses the ability to create and power the Dragon Balls once he re-fuses with Kami. It's not just about memories or knowledge, there's also some innate power required which Piccolo doesn't have. Possibly because he's a clone of the original Piccolo and not the 'real other half' of Kami.
** I suspect that the reason is that you have to be good to create Dragonballs. Of the four sets we're aware of one was created by Guru who is undeniably a good guy. Kami expelled his evil, which became Piccolo, and was also pure good. Dende again about as good as you can get. We don't know much about Moori (the elder Namek who presumably made the Dragonballs that now exist on Namek) but he's portrayed as being good. It's possible that Piccolo was sufficiently evil that he simply can't.

** He had other priorities like finding first form Cell, and finding out what he was up too. Then he was nearly killed by Cell. Then there was preventing Cell from absorbing 17 and 18, etc. He didn't think about creating new Dragon Balls until Goku mentioned his intention to revive all those killed by Cell back to life. He also wasn't Pure good like Kami was so it was unlikely he even could make them. That is why Goku eventually went to New Namek.
** He also spends a lot on time on the frontlines, meaning he has a good chance of getting killed. In that situation, it would be better to have the MacGuffin device depending on someone who is never on the frontlines being alive.

*** Two problems with that. First at the time he was the in the top three most powerful beings in the universe. Sure it lasts all of a few hours but killing him wouldn't be difficult at all. Cell and Android 16 can both sense energy as well. If I have to choose between Picollo the super powered Namek and Dende the kid with the healing touch I'm really banking heavily on Cell's arrogance (a good bet) and Cell's stupidity (not a good bet). Remember Freeza put a stop to that garbage as soon as he figured out what was going and Cell clearly has Freeza's memories.

** I think the issue here is purity of heart: Yeah, Piccolo became a good guy, but just at a "regular good guy" level (With a lot of blood on his hands from his King Piccolo era, by the way) while Kami was 100% pure of heart, since that was the whole point of dividing himself to begin with. If he tried to have a set of dragon balls depending of him, because of his Piccoro side they may become tainted and potentially dangerous, like the black star dragon balls at the beginning of GT (Which were in fact actually made by a pre-split Kami). To elaborate on the "regular good guy" purity, think about Bulma, Krillin or Roshi; they are all really good guys, but still not pure enough to use the Kinto'un cloud since they are not as absurdly good natured as Goku.

** This is in fact a PlotHole. There is no reason why this was omitted from the Plot Hole section on this website. Ki attacks and flying are world famous in ''Dragon Ball'' and it is absolutely ludicrous they would ever forget. They would have had to destroy every single record or altered it in some Literature/NineteenEightyFour way but for absolutely no reason. One BigBad points this out, saying that mankind has already forgotten Goku.

** The Budokai wasn't that big a deal back in the day. There weren't any cameras, or even stands, people just basically crowded around the ring. It was only really for the locals and people who were really interested in fighting. Piccolo even mentions that the Buu Saga Budokai is much larger, but has lost its soul in the process. In short, there might have been 200 people or so who saw the Z fighters in action back in the day and those that we know who did, like the announcer and the king, do recognize them.

** Instant Transmission requires a Ki source to lock onto, right? So, he could have probably teleported away after Vegeta blasted him (When he turns around and shouts "BEJITA!") but after that, he is basically inside that giant Kamehameha stream. How's he supposed to make out a ki source somewhere when he is beeing blasted in the face by a ginormous energy ball?

*** I would say it's something like that. I would assume the farmer's powerlevel was so low because 1. Yes, he's weak, but, 2. He has no knowledge of how to use his ki energy at all. He would be able to increase his powerlevel if knew how to, and if he was able to access 100% of all the energy in his body, he'd probably access a power level a whole lot higher than 5 (he'd also probably end up burning out and dying). So when Cell absorbs people, he gains every drop of energy in their body AND he knows how to use it effectively, meaning he can increase his power by however much raw ki energy resides in a human body, and most likely multiply it through some form of ki control.

*** What about curing the disease ''before'' it kills him? Also at that point they just came back from Namek so they know about and have access to the Namekian Dragon Balls.

*** If you recall, it took over a month for them to actually reach Namek, and since we don't really know exactly how fast it kills him, we can assume that by the time they got their and made the wish, Goku would have died. Or maybe they were just waiting for him to get better, or for doctors to find a cure - I mean who could have predicted that Goku would have died?

** Bear in mind the disease came out of nowhere, works fast, and according to Trunks they tried to cure it with the senzu beans. They undoubtedly thought the beans would stop it and when they failed didn't have the time to gather the balls. Once Goku was dead, that was it. The dragon balls wouldn't work on natural causes and no one could find New Namek but Goku through King Kai so even if the Namekian balls didn't have that limitation they couldn't reach them in the first place.

* After consistently falling short with the creation of the first 16 androids because none of them are evil/obedient/proactive enough to carry out his designs to rule the world and/or destroy Goku, is there a reason why, of all the [[SunnydaleSyndrome unassuming idiots]] in the ''Dragon Ball'' world for Dr. Gero to kidnap and use for his experiments, does he even entertain the thought of going for '''[[TheRunaway the two runaway teenagers]]''', let alone decide that it's a good idea?

*** Freiza stated that he created his forms to supress his power, its not something that his whole race can do, if King Cold could transform then he would have after seeing his son killed so quickly.

*** While I agree that Cold was likely capable of transformation, there's no real reason to believe that Cold's form was his second form. Cold's preferred form resembled Freeza's second form, yes, but there's no hard or fast rule that says their forms have to follow the same pattern. Cold's form could have been his first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or seventy third.

* How did Trunks dispatch Mecha Freeza so effortlessly? Trunks was, according to Gohan, similar to Namek Goku. Namek Goku was pretty close to Freeza, being only 25% stronger than him (120 million vs 150 million). And Mecha Freeza was stronger than Namek Freeza, to the point that he was confident he could match Namek Goku's power and maybe even win. So if the gap between Trunks and Mecha Freeza is this small, how in the hell did Trunks manage to do half of the things he did, like ''catch Freeza's Supernova?''

* It's one thing to say Goku is a bad father, but to say Vegeta was a better one? Come on. He could care less about either of his sons (present and Future) until the Future one was killed by Cell. Not to mention while they were training in the hyperbolic time chamber Trunks said that they didn't train together. A guy who was willing to let an infant die is a better father than a guy who told his experienced 11 year old son with a hidden potential (and was the youngest person at the time to reach Super saiyan AND master it) to fight?

*** Not to mention being dead doesn't really change King Kai's situation much; he lives in the afterlife anyways.

* Vol 19, something's off about Trunks' afterstory. Cell's reason for coming to our timeline was because the androids were missing in his, right? But right before Future Trunks fights him, they have the following exchange.

** The Time travelling story in whole. Get some Popcorn. The Original Timeline - Cell's Timeline - has Goku defeating Freeza and King Cold, then dying shortly later of a Heart virus. Dr. Gero unleashes Androids 17 and 18 onto the world. They kill the Z Fighters, bar Gohan. Gohan survives for awhile, trains Trunks, but later dies. Bulma, builds a Time Machine to find a way of preventing everything that has happened. Trunks goes back in time to an Unseen Timeline...

*** In Cell's Timeline, 17 and 18 are dead. In Future Trunks' Timeline, they are dead. In the maintime line, Cell gets killed. In the Unseen Timeline, they are presumably gone, and Cell's fate is unknown. Hope that answered the question somewhere.

*** Nope. He has to look for them the old fashioned way, otherwise he wouldn't have had to go through all the trouble of blowing up islands to flush 18 out of hiding.

*** The anime added in the dialogue, in the manga call explodes straight away when they arrive on King Kais planet.

** Given that he was gathering ki on weak (as far as he knew) old Earth in the primary timeline, it can be assumed that he needed to gather ki from nearby Buu's cocoon. In future Trunks' timeline, most of the strongest people are dead, except a weaker Gohan and Trunks, who combined don't have enough to unleash Buu, and ki-less androids. Presumably, Babidi keeps a few probes on Earth or something, and came by in the main timeline because there were enough strong people to fuel Buu's unleashing. Not enough strong people in future Trunks' timeline, so no Babidi, who is presumably still waiting over there.

*** There's bound to be timelines out there were Babidi and Buu did succeed in wrecking the planet. But given the loss of the DBZ warriors and the population being driven underground in Future Trunks' timeline, it's possible Babidi never did get enough energy to revive Buu, or was killed (either him or Dabra/Spopovich/Yamu) by the androids before succeeding.
*** The Androids just are not killing Dabra outside of the sneak attack from HFIL. Dabra's power are supposed to be comparable to Perfect Cell.
*** There are bound to be timelines where Dabra never joined Babidi, as well as timelines where Dabra killed the Androids. The multiverse is infinite.
*** Babadi was probably killed by the androids for the fun of it, meaning no Majin Buu to wake up and deal with. With Babadi dead, Dabra would have no reason to hang around. And then there's the whole issue of whether or not adroid ki and be absorbed.

*** Surveillance and DNA gathering might've stopped when Frieza unleashed his attack, because the bugs would've been destroyed in the process.

* How is it possible for '''nobody''' to figure out Trunks is Vegeta and Bulma's Child? He comes from the future, Goku is dead due to an illness, Gohan is too young to conceive anyone, and no other saiyans have appeared from space. He has the same haircolor as Bulma (manga), he is wearing a CC jacket, and has a time machine. They both live in the same house. Even the two of them don't put it together until they see him again -- despite having a lookalike baby! How can people be this clueless? It just bugs me.

** On the other hand, with the Hyperbolic Time Chamber in play, Gohan could have potentially gained quite a few years on Bulma (or any other sexually mature female with genetics conducive to purple-haired quarter-Saiyans) over the 20 years period in question. Trunks himself could have spend a significant amount of his childhood in there, as well. Who knows how many generations a Saiyan eugenics program could go through under the right circumstances. Not to mention other possibilities the Dragonballs present (like artificially aging Gohan to his peak condition or discovering/transporting to Earth any long-lost Saiyan foot soldiers that may have been offworld when Planet Vegeta blew up in hopes of bringing them back from effective extinction.) Sure, if you get hung up on his parentage, the mystery solves itself, but if you don't actually care that much (as most of them didn't), then it's the warning that captures your attention.

** I was always uder the impression that only Goku and Piccolo knew that Trunks came from 20 years in the future. To the rest of their allies, he could have come from ''any'' point in the future. Therefore, his resemblance to either Bulma or Vegeta could be seen as coincidental and various (incorrect) theories could be made regarding his parentage.

* Okay, the timelines thing with Trunks. If he can go back to his own future to kill Cell, then his timeline is stable. But he kills Cell before he can go back in time in the first place, the Cell saga never happens. So we've got Cell in the future, dead. Cell in the present, dead. If it was possible for Trunks to get back to his own timeline, then how could he kill Cell before Cell went back, with the powers he gained training to fight Cell-in-the-past? To add yet another complication, this troper has also heard the interpretation of onscreen events as Cell killing Trunks to steal the time machine before he can go back the first time, but Trunks kills Cell before Cell can kill pre-travel future Trunks abnd get the time machine, but if he hadn't he shouldn;t bein the past. but since he did, Cell shouldn't be in the past, so [[TimeyWimeyBall oh no I've gone cross-eyed]]. To summarize: Two timelines are missing a Trunks, at least one timeline is missing a Cell, and neither Trunks nor Bulma actually know how time travel works, do they?.

** Except that "androids" is a bad translation. The japanese word means something more like "artificial being" than "robot". They were both human before, gero just enhanced them. They were absorbed on the cellular level. Of course, this brings to mind the question of how #18 was coughed up at all...
*** Obvious cyborgs are obvious. Anyway, indeed, 18 should've been coughed up as sludge, and neither her nor 17 could've been left whole in there. In the normal perfect form, Cell is very lithe, only having any sort of bulk in its upper body. Only when it artificially bulks up, are its belly, throat and mouth big enough to hold an entire woman. If the process somehow reconstructed her, she should've come [[FanService naked]], and with no cheratin parts, the outer layer of skin, or any fat at all - basically a [[FanDisservice bright pink, emaciated hommunculus]] whose fragile skin would've been torn to ribbons by encountering the interior of Cell's esophagus, its ''teeth'' and the rough ground.

-->The tail lets you gain trememdous strength instantly by transforming you into a giant ape, but the risks are equally great - you'll lose your strength if it's squeezed. Once you're as powerful as Vegeta and Goku, the tail just gets in the way. It is thought that the bodies of Saiyans, who are a fighting species, decided that their tails are unnecessary appendages.

*** Maybe half-saiyan tails don't grow back? Vegeta didn't want the tail post-Freeza in case it interfered with becoming a super sayan, and he's Just That Badass?
*** Gohan's a half-saiyan and his tail grew back like five times.
*** Also maybe not all half-saiyan are born with tails. Neither Trunks nor Goten have ever been shown with tails, maybe Gohan's the freak.

** Remember just what Gero was doing remaking himself as an android. He ''disconnected his own brain and stuck it someplace else''. Given how intrincally, instinctively linked one's body and brain are, it's entirely possible that controlling himself was the last thing Gero had to worry about.

** What happened was their are 2 divergent timelines from the Future Trunks timeline. One, the one that leads to the main timeline, is where Trunks went to the past, killed King Cold, went to the future, came back three years later and fights the androids, then returns, only to be killed by Cell, who takes the time machine back to BEFORE teen Trunks returned to the future the second time. His presence there caused Trunks to become more powerful than when he got killed by Cell, he goes back to the future, and kills Cell instead of being killed by him. Make sense?

** I suspect that the reason is that you have to be good to create Dragonballs. Of the four sets we're aware of one was created by Guru who is undeniable a good guy. Kami expelled his evil, which became Piccolo, and was also pure good. Dende again about as good as you can get. We don't know much about Moori (the elder Namek who presumably made the Dragonballs that now exist on Namek) but he's portrayed as being good. It's possible that Piccolo was sufficiently evil that he simply can't.

** He also spends a lot on time on the frontlines, meaning he has a good chance of getting killed. In that situation, it would be better to have the macguffin device depending on someone who is never on the frontlines being alive.
** And lest we forget, he actually was a Macguffin before the change happened. If he/Kami died, the Dragonballs are rendered useless. Piccolo knew it was wise to not appoint himself the new Guardian of the Earth, because...that'd just put him back on square one where if he dies, there go the Dragonballs.

* Why were the Androids of the main teamline much kinder than the ones of Future Trunks' timeline?

%% Bubbles and Gregory are filler-only characters, but the wish itself and King Kai remaining dead was in the main storyline, hence its placement here rather than on the Filler subpage.

** Goku says King Kai could be revived but decided to stay dead in order to show him around. And apparently people can decide whether to be affected by a wish or not (such as when Goku refused to return to Earth after the Namek saga)

* Android Saga. Right before they enter the Dr. Gero's cave, Krillin divides the six Senzu beans between himself, Picolo and Tien. After the Battle Royal (No Match for the Androids), Krillin again has all six Senzu beans.
** That may be an AdaptationInducedPlotHole. I don't remember the anime, but in the manga I clearly remember that the Senzu are divided, and a panel shows his hand holding only two beans. He probably recovered the other four from his friends' bodies.

* Dr. Gero is shocked when Goku and Vegeta go [=SSJ=]. The explaination given is that Dr. Gero wasn't monitering them in space. But wait, didn't Trunks go [=SSJ=] on earth in his fight with Freeza? Goku too?

*** Apart from the eyes and the ego (well, that was also from Vegeta. And Freeza. And King Cold.), it was not quite like 17. However, 18 was stated to be weaker, so maybe Cell would be slighty weaker.

* It's a minor point but when Goku comes back to Earth in his spaceship after Trunks killed Freeza he '''A:''' says he knew what was happening, and would have used his new teleport technique to come back to earth immediately if he hadn't been sure Trunks could have handled it. '''B:''' explains his teleport technique as being able to move at the speed of light, quoting the actual speed (at least in the dub, don't know about the original) '''C:''' says he came back from training on a planet millions of lightyears away. As in, it would take millions of years to reach this planet at the speed of light, but his ship did it in a year or so. But even though the ship didn't make it to earth before Freeza did, he could've teleported and arived in time. Calling ArtisticLicenseAstronomy seems a bit redunant at this point.
** It's a minor DubInducedPlotHole (he says nothing about the speed of light in the original Japanese). He clearly moves distances and to places clearly impossible if he were simply zapping himself place to place like a lazer. Easily handwaved by the fact that Goku's an idiot.

* How can Cell (or for that matter, Dr. Gero's computer) exist in their own timelines? Wouldn't the androids have blown up Dr. Gero's lab (especially consdering Gero even warned them about that while he was being killed in those timelines)? You have to admit Cell is pretty dang lucky the androids didn't touch the place where they ''killed their first victim''.

*** 18 doesn't immediately jump Krillin's bones, she dashes off back to Earth. About the only thing we know about her warming up to Krillin, falling for him, marrying him, and bearing his daughter is that it occurs within a seven year TimeSkip. So it's likely they got back together at some point.

** What happened was their are 2 divergent timelines from the future trunks timeline. One, the one that leads to the main timeline, is where trunks went to the past, killed king cold, went to the future, came back three years later and figths the androids, then returns, only to be killed by cell, who takes the time machine back to BEFORE teen trunks returned to the future the second time. His presence there caused Trunks to become more powerful than when he got killed by cell, he goes back to the future, and kills cell instead of being killed by him. Make sense?

** He ended surveillance of Goku specifically and didn't follow him into space. As I seem to remember, whatever he was using to get the DNA caught notice of Freeza and King Cold's arrival, went "Hey, those guys are strong, better grab'em." and did so.

** An old couple do recognize Goku as "Chichi's husband" and the King (The dog guy) also recognises him, as for everyone else, it's probably the hair that threw them off, by the time Hercule came into the scene I doubt Goku was publicized much so no one had really seen his face for a long time. As for Yamcha, Krillin, Piccolo and Tien, I don't think the Camera was ever focused on them (I could be wrong) plus in the 23rd budokai no one realized it was Piccolo until his Turban came off... Vegeta being televised was only in the Anime.
** This is in fact a PlotHole. There is no reason why this was ommitted from the Plot Hole section on this website. Ki attacks and flying are world famous in ''Dragon Ball'' and it is absolutely ludicrous they would ever forget. They would have had to destroy every single record or altered it in some Literature/NineteenEightyFour way but for absolutely no reason. One BigBad points this out, saying that mankind has already forgotten Goku.
** Well it was roughly twenty years in between the 23rd Budokai Tenkaiichi tournament and the Cell Games so it isn't all that surprising that people forgot. Same reason Hercule was able to convince people that Ki blasts, etc. were 'tricks'. That and the rare few who CAN use Ki energy are content to be anonymous. And finding people who can use them is hard if you don't have the resources to find them. and convincing them to teach you is even harder.

** Instant Transmission requires a Ki source to lock onto, right? So, he could have probably teleported away after Vegeta blasted him (When he turns around and shouts "BEJITA!") but after that, he is basically inside that giant kamehameha stream. How's he supposed to make out a ki source somewhere when he is beeing blasted in the face by a ginormous energy ball?

*** Dunno about the anime, but in the manga Trunks says the androids deliberately prolong the killing for ''fun'', that the entire population of the Earth only numbers in the tens of thousands, and that most of humanity has been forced to hide underground. Not a single amusement park or shopping mall appears.

** Bear in mind the disease came out of nowhere, works fast, and according to Trunks they tried to cure it with the senzu beans. They undoubtedly thought the beans would stop it and when they failed didn't have the time to gather the balls. Once Goku was dead, that was it. The dragonballs wouldn't work on natural causes and no one could find New Namek but Goku through King Kai so even if the Namekian balls didn't have that limitation they couldn't reach them in the first place.

** Plus Fewer people would ask questions when they stop seeing them around. Grab the girl down the street and someone will call the cops to report them missing. Not so in 17 and 18's case because they've either already been reported missing or no one will miss them. If they've made firends on the streets, those friends may very well assume they've moved on elsewhere. No one will ask any questions. Unlikely that someone looking for a missing buddy will track down Gero but why take the risk?

* In the anime I don't think Trunks ever specificly says what numbers the androids are in his timeine (I may be wrong) but in the manga he says they are numbers 19 and 20, so if 19 and 20 in his timeline and 17 and 18 in the present, what are the extra 2 Gero built in Trunks timeline? Are they ever mentioned or shown?

* After blowing himself up, how did Cell's cells power him up? When Vegeta is explaining the whole Saiyajin get stronger after recovering from a near fatal situation that the damage cannot be self inflicted. I'm pretty sure activating a self-destruct mechanism is a self inflicted injury. And unlike the other Androids where the self-destruct bomb was a piece that was installed, with Cell being Cell that means the detonation and explosive properties were a part of his DNA ie. not external influence.

*** The device that deactivates the androids was created by Bulma in THIS timeline. Going to another timeline won't help. Furthermore the whole point of deactivation was to do it BEFORE they were absorbed. Once they'd been absorbed it was already too late.

*** Goku took everything over Cell's waist off with his instant transmission attack. It's either what the above poster said and the loss of everything but your legs is still considered a "minor" injury, Cell was lying and or mistaken about his own regeneration abilities (which seems likely, considering his near death experience was an explosion inside him it seems unlikely enough of his head would survive to do anything) or the writer didn't know what was up.
** Apparantly that was a translation error, there was never a thing in his head that made him regen, he just regens.

** Pretty much that. There is nothing forced or complicated about taking medicine when you start feeling the symptoms. They didn't need to worry about saving Goku, as they assumed he'd take care of it himself as, y'know, he has the cure sitting in the fridge in his house, and presumably, he doesn't want to die of a heart virus. Its his fault for not thinking ahead and bringing the cure with him when it came time to face the androids. And, as previously said, Vegeta's Sayian pride and honor would not allow him to simply vaporize Goku, even if he wanted.

** Creating two teenaged androids (who are just effectively regular renagade teens with modifactions) so they can live in fear and dread of a killer insect android hunting them down for food? Yep, sounds like something Gero would do.

* When Gohan finally overpowers Perfect Cell, the latter threatens a Super Kamehameha powerful enough to destroy the world. Fair enough. The problem is that it literally takes minutes for him to charge up the damn thing - why did he chose such an inefficient technique? Vegeta's Galick Gun destroyed Arlia effortlessly in seconds, Freeza's ''Orange Glowing Ball of Death'' destroyed Vegeta effortlessly in seconds - both techniques Cell would obviously know and yet, despite being hundreds of times stronger, he chose the longest, most drawn out technique he could possibly use which gave his enemies ample time to counter attack. In fact, to put into scale just ''how'' long Cell took to destroy the Earth, Master Roshi - Power Level 139 took less time to Kamehameha the moon than Perfect Cell - Power Level several million took to shoot the planet he was standing on.
** Cell's a bit of an idiot. I'm assuming it's something he got from Goku. He has a real sense of dramatic irony, which is why he set up the whole tournament charade to begin with. Destroying the earth with his family's signature attack is exactly the kind of thing Cell would do to spite Gohan. Minor aside; Roshi's power level was presumably above 139 when he blew up the moon. Scouters only read how much is being put out at that moment, not what they're hiding before power ups. Roshi was in hulk-mode when he made the moon go boom, not to mention several years younger and in better shape.
** Just look at the situation from Cell's point of view: you achieved your primary purpose, i.e. getting your perfect body; you, therefore, are the single most powerful being on Earth, with an unquenchable pride and thirst for fighting. You then go on creating and announcing the Cell Games; the goal, beyond satisfying your sadism, being taking the slightest chance possible to find a decent challenge on this planet before destroying it; of course, you know damn well that your archnemesises will be there, with a little surprise, Goku told you. D-day arrives, you fight the 2nd best warrior of Earth beside you to a stalemate; he gives up and make the tag to his hopeless son, that you almost immediately tries to torture. Then, that hopeless son, not only responding to your torture methods by getting his power meter through the sky, manages to ''single-handedly'' kick your perfect ass in the most humiliating way possible, even forcing you to try a self-destruct attempt. THEN, you get the chance to come back to life even stronger than before. You have the combined DNA of Freeza and Vegeta; you don't want to beat your nemesis and destroy his planet; you want to shatter his spirit before. I always assumed that Cell, with this Kamehameha, actually ''wants'' to get a response; he's about to destroy the Earth and kill the only person who bested him, all with that person's signature move; doing it by ''besting that person in a Kamehameha clash with said signature move'' would be the ultimate cherry on the cake.

** Its actually pretty simple; the most likely point in which Goku and Chi Chi conceived Goten was during his and Gohan's week long cool down period before the Cell Games - in other words years after the timelines diverged to make Future Trunk's universe. Incidentally it is also a good explanation as to why Goten can go Super Saiyan so easily seeing as there is a good chance Goku was in Full Power Super Saiyan mode during his making love to her.

*** The idea is that having the super saiyan ability causes genes to be expressed in such a way that Goten would have easier access to the form than Gohan, not that Goten was conceived by Super Goku. That is some (loose) basis in real life, where the present condition of the parent can affect how genes are expressed in the child.

* This could just be the english dub, but towards the end of the saga, after Cell comes back from blowing himself up, he states he's going to use instant transmission to more or less wipe out all life in the universe. Why? I get it, Cell's a dick, but really, why? He was created for the sole purpose of killing Goku. He proved, however, that he was capable of ignoring that when he chose to accept Goku's surrender and fight Gohan instead (granted, with the intent of killing Goku when he was done with his son), which can be chalked up to him being a BloodKnight; hell, the whole tournament farce of the Cell Games is due to him being a blood knight, which he gets from his saiyan genes. So, saiyan genes override the Kill Goku programming. But he goes from BloodKnight to OmnicidalManiac awful quick. If anything, shouldn't he had gone the Freeza route and decided to try his hand at becoming a GalacticConqueror?

** 18 provided Cell the energy he needed to achieve his Perfect form. After Cell self-destructed and regenerated, Cell's Saiyan genes gave him an enormous power boost (since if a Saiyan recovers from (near-)death their power increases phenomenally). This power boost was enough to kick Cell into his Perfect form and even go beyond it, becoming Super Perfect Cell, all without the need of 18. Which begs the question if Cell would have become even more powerful if he had absorbed 18 again.

** Something like that, I heard that the japanese audience really liked goku, which makes sense to me considering that I ONLY liked gohan during the cell games.

*** Umm, no. Gohan told Cell before he ascended to [=SSJ2=] that he never like fighting in the first place. In fact, Chi-Chi never forced him to study if you go by the manga and japanese anime. Chi Chi ''encouraged'' him to do it, but by the time Namek was over you can pretty much say Gohan was bent on studying himself. He just wanted to train since the androids were there and stuff. He's a BadassPacifist who doesn't appreciate fighting as much as his father does, hence the reason he stopped training after his father died.

* Cell doesn't seem to use his powers anywhere near as much as he could. Absorbtion, regeneration, teleportation, the ability to spawn mini-mook versions of himself, ''all'' of the Z-Fighter's techniques... it just seemed like if he used even one of those abilities intelligently no one would've stood a chance. Absorbing a few million humans raised him from weaker than Piccolo to stronger than him. Yet he never tries to absorb Piccolo, who's hundreds of millions times stronger than the average human? He never thinks to spawn a Super Perfect Cell Jr. in his final fight with Gohan to help him, or at least make sure the other fighters don't interfere like, you know, exactly what they did? He doesn't think to teleport Gohan and himself into space, where he can survive and Gohan can't? He doesn't think to try to self-destruct again, knowing that no one could stop him and he could regenerate? Even if that somehow didn't destroy the planet, he'd still come back more than powerful enough to stomp Gohan.

** Maybe there's a hard cap on how powerful he can get in his first form, and he reached that once he absorbed enough towns worth of people. So there's no point in attempting to absorb Piccolo. As for him being terrible at using his other abilities, he did have Krillin's cells who fails miserably at utilizing his Kienzan in situations where it's conjectured he could have killed much stronger opponents. Also he has Vegeta's cells of arrogance so he never believed the other z-fighters made a difference.

** Two possible explainations: 1. Cell's mix of genes allowed him to overcome that weakness of namekian regeneration, or 2. Cell's power increase from being restored from near death was so massive, that it managed to not only overcome the fatigue loss as a result of the regeneration, but increase Cell's power far beyond what it was before.

** Saiyans get stronger when they survive near death experiences, embodying the term "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger." Cell was very nearly killed, considering even ''[[SmugSuper he]]'' didn't know he'd survive. The massive boost of strength allowed him to return to perfection and then some.

** In addition Trunks would have done his best to veto this option. We already know that destroying the androids in our time/dimension doesn't retroactively destroy the ones in his time/dimension. He was hoping to learn from Goku how to defeat the androids which requires them to be activated so he can see them defeated not prevented from coming into existance.

* This troper wonders exactly why the military just throw all their resources into attacking Cell and Majin Buu senselessly, without developing a real strategy. Wouldn't that needlessly cost them the lives of their soldiers, particularly the infantry? It seems completely stupid to have their infantry soldiers within range of where missiles, bombs, and shrapnle are exploding.

*** Except for the fact that you are sending your infantry to attack that single target as well, thus risking their lives unnecessarily.It makes to concentrate your attack with Atillery, Jets, and Vehicles... but not with regular infantry added into the mix; Machine Gunners would have to get close to the target in order to fire, putting them at greater risk of getting hit by your own units.They would be in the blast radius OF your long range weaponry while they were firing; thus It is better for you to have them pulled back and used as escorts instead, so as to not risk any unneccesary casualties. If you want to concentrate the combined firepower of your artillery,Tanks, Missle Launchers, Snipers, and jets on a single target, fine, go ahead, but regular infantry would just get in the way. Hence why I say that they were "idiotic."

** Most energy attacks explode, he probably means to incinerate gohan and the remaining energy would make a large explosion to destroy the 'earth'(he said solar system later)

* Why are people weaker than Cell managing to blow him up? Vegeta and Goku both blast part of his body up, but as he has a much higher power level shouldnt they be unable to do that, just because loss of body bits isnt as fatal to him as others that shouldnt mean that weaker characters can damage his body, regeneration isn't needed unless a stronger person blasts you, like piccolo and nail but cell seems to be the only one who ends up needing it against people weaker than him. I guess its lucky for him he has regeneration or hed be the biggest pushover villain ever, imagine if Krillin could have blown Freezas head off, without regeneration hed be dead but since hes stronger than krillin that could never happen, so why does it happen with cell?

** Isn't the fact that Cell got his top blown off by Goku proof that Cell isn't that much stronger? Goku was still giving Cell a pretty good fight before the kamehameha. As for Vegeta, Cell was intentionally baiting him, probably lowering his ki, only to realize at the last second that he underestimated the Final Flash.
*** It's hard to tell how much anybody was holding back in any fight. It's implied that Cell was holding back against Goku. Vs Vegeta it depends on if you read the Manga, watch the Funimation dub or Kai. In the Manga it's a bit ambigious (to me anyway) if Cell underestimated the Final Flash, the Funimation dub makes it clear that he didn't realize Vegeta could fire that much energy (even after five minutes to charge) in the Kai dub the opposite is true and he intentionally allowed himself to be injured just to screw with Vegeta.

* Does the ROSAT have some special properties that allow your training to be more effective than it would otherwise be? Vegeta alternated training at 100g and deep space training for years, but according to Trunks two months in the ROSAT was enough for him to push all the way to full power super saiyan. That's a HUGE boost in a very short period of time. As far as we can tell Goku didn't get a whole lot stronger over the time skip either.

*** In the english version, Gero does flat out deny his identity to the Z fighters; he talks about himself in the third person and when Piccolo calls him out on hyping Gero up so much that it sounds like he is Gero, he says that's absurd and claims to just be an artificial life form created by Gero. As for why, I have no real idea beyond it may just be Gero trying to distance himself from his own mortality and embrace his new existence as Android 20, but it's hard to say, especially as the act is more or less dropped after Bulma spills the beans.

* While Cell has justifiable reasons to be so strong, its still hard to fathom how 17 & 18 are so much more powerful than Frieza, robotic reconstruction or not. While Frieza's increase in power from becoming a cyborg is speculative seeing as he was dispatched before making much use of it, Trunks didn't consider him much of a threat either way. It seems far-fetched that earth cyborgs, made of earth technology and using earthly materials would be superior to a cyborg built by the Galactic Frieza Army, an advanced empire with access to technology and materials found throughout space. Not to mention that said mechanical form is intergrated with the body of the already-powerful Frieza (chunks of it anyway), versus cybernetics intergrated with the bodies of once-oridnary human teenagers. SortingAlgorithmOfEvil seems like the only excuse for this, unless humans are just ''that'' good with science when they try.

** It might not have been possible. We don't really know much about the process he used on 17 and 18 but they are either teens or twenty somethings in pretty good shape vs an old man who had to transfer his brain into a robot body so he could survive.

* Why didn't Trunks bring the Dragonballs from the past to the future and use them to restore his world? Or he could have brought Dende into the future and had him create new Dragonball for them to use. He could even of had his mother find New Namek, past or future and gotten a Namekian to be the new guardian of Earth and create new Dragonballs.

** They simply didn't think of it, but it might not have been possible. First a lot of fans believe that he contracted the virus on Yardrat not on Earth it just took forever to become fatal. Presumably in the OTL going Super Saiyan to fight Frieza sped things up considerably. Or "heart virus" is insufficiently specific. It might be like wishing immunity from the flu when the reality is that there are several viral diseases we lump together under the title 'flu' that are related sure but not the same precise disease.

* Why didn't Future Trunks immediately go and blow up the still-developing Cell after killing Future Android 17 and Future Android 18? Instead, he waits for the hatched Cell to come to him after months?/years? all the while sucking up people to make himself stronger. Trunks knew where Gero's lab was, having gone there twice in the past and knew about the bunker basement, instead he lets dozens or more people die just to terrorise Future Cell a bit? Seems a tad out of character (not the cocky part exactly, the letting people die part).

* Why didn't Future Trunks immediately go and blow up the still-developing Cell after killing Future Android 17 and Future Android 18? Instead, he waits for the hatched Cell to come to him after months?/years? all the while sucking up people to make himself stronger. Trunks knew where Gero's lab was, having gone there twice in the past and new about the bunker basement, instead he lets dozens or more people die just to terrorise Future Cell a bit? Seems a tad out of character (not the cocky part exactly, the letting people die part).

** In the Future Trunks timeline, they had no idea Goku would even ''get'' sick until it was too late. In our timeline, remember that these are the same guys who decided to reject Bulma's sensible plan to use the Dragonballs to locate Gero's lab and stop him before the androids could be built. It's quite possible they hadn't even considered it since they had the medicine on hand and were training for the Androids.

** They simply didn't think of it, but it might not have been possible. First a lot of fans believe that he contracted the virus on Yardrat not on Earth it just took forever to become fatal. Presumably in the OTL going Super Saiyan to fight Frieza sped things up considerably. Or "heart virus" is insufficiently specific. It might be like wishing immunity from the flu when the reality is that there are several viral diseases we lump together under the title 'flu' that are related sure but not the same precise disease.

* Why didn't they summon Shenron to wish Goku immune to the heart virus?

* Why didn't Trunks bring the Dragonballs from the past to the future and use them to restore his world? Or he could have brought Dende into the future and had him create new Dragonball for them to use. He could even of had his mother find New Namek, past or future and gotten a Namekian to be the new guardian of Earth and create new Dragonballs.*

* Why didn't Gero make himself at least as powerful as 17 and 18, if not more?

** I don't think anyone other than Goku knew about Instant Transmission.

* Forgive me if this was explained, but why did Future Trunks believe he needed to fight Frieza? IIRC, he says that he thought Goku would arrive too late to stop him, so he intervened. Goku then explains that he could have been there instantly with his new teleportation ability, and Trunks says if he had known that he wouldn't have bothered. But wouldn't that have been exactly what happened in Trunks' own timeline? Why would Trunks not know about this?

* Why didn't Bulma and Dr Brief inform 16 that they had removed his self-destruct feature!? It was thanks to this lack of communication that he got killed, as him pointlessly trying to blow himself up with Cell resulted in him getting reduced to a head, which in turn meant that he had no way of defending against or avoiding Cell's attacks when he was talking to Gohan.

* Why didn't Bulma and Dr Brief inform 16 that they had removed his self-destruct feature!? It was thanks to that that he got killed, and him pointlessly trying to blow himself up with Cell resulted in him getting reduced to a head, which in turn meant that he had no way of defending against or avoiding Cell's attacks when he was talking to Gohan.

* While Cell has justifiable reasons to be so strong, its still hard to fathom how 17 & 18 are so much more powerful than Frieza, robotic reconstruction or not. While Frieza's increase in power from becoming a cyborg is speculative seeing as he was dispatched before making much use of it, Trunks didn't consider him much of a threat either way. It seems far-fetched that earth cyborgs, made of earth technology and using earthly materials would be superior to a cyborg built by the Galactic Frieza Army, an advanced empire with access to technology and materials found throughout space. Not to mention that said mechanical form is intergrated with the body of the already-powerful Frieza (chunks of it anyway), versus cybernetics intergrated with the bodies of once-oridnary human teenagers. SortingAlgorithmOfEvil seems like the only excuse for this, unless humans are just ''that'' good with science when they try.

** Cell's imperfect form had a lot of insectoid influences, including the head, wings, and tail. Then he becomes bigger, bulkier, and his feet change, but manages to outclass everyone except someone stronger than him with no problems caused by the change in proportions. Just like when Freeza went from his smallest form (1st form) to a much bigger 2nd form, and then the third had so much extra weight up top he bent over from it. And this was a guy that took a super saiyan to beat. And while his fourth form was smaller than all but his first form, he then had to bulk up like Trunks to reach full power, with no resulting loss in speed. Considering that Oozaru were strong enough to tip the balance in a war fought by Saiyans, I expect they were strong enough that it would matter if they lost speed. As far as real life examples go, 150 lb. jiu jitsu black belt Pedro Sauer beat 250 lb. Lance Bachelor. First thing that came up in a google search for a fight like that. Skill matters, and Trunks has spent far more time training and fighting than Cell. But DBZ had to throw out everything the series established about mass and speed so they could have Trunks lose this one. Speed is a big deal, but it had also clearly been linked directly to strength for the entirety of the show up to this point.

** It's not the weight, it's the ''mass''. The muscles are too physically big, and get in their own way. As an example, Arnold Schwartzeneggar had to lose weight and muscle mass between being Mr. Universe and playing Film/ConanTheBarbarian explicitly because the huge, bulky muscles he developed for body building meant he was physically incapable of wielding a sword properly. He was still plenty strong enough to lift the sword and swing it with considerable force, but he was too damn big to use it with any sort of technique.