Characters / Dragon Ball - Saiyans

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Character page for the Saiyans, a race from the Dragon Ball franchise.

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Saiyans (サイヤ人, Saiya-jin)

The most important race in the Dragon Ball lore since Goku is part of this mighty warrior race.

While much of the backstory of the Saiyans remain a mystery, what we do know is that they didn't originate from Planet Vegeta. Their original homeworld, Planet Sadala, was destroyed during in-fighting before they invaded Planet Plant, killing the Tuffles. Some time after that, their planet was annexed by Frieza's Empire. For years, they worked as part of Frieza's attack force, being some of Frieza's strongest fighters. Despite their hard work, however, Frieza subjected them to constant demeaning and Fantastic Racism, having decided to one day eliminate the Saiyans out of fear of their growing power, the legend of the Super Saiyan, and the fact that the Saiyans were too free willed to ever be truly loyal to him. To that end, after being encouraged to act by Beerus the Destroyer, he recalled all the Saiyans back to Planet Vegeta, planning to destroy the planet in a month's time. This tipped off Bardock that something was wrong and he and his wife sent off their youngest child Kakarot for his protection.

What happens next varies between mediums in the finer details, but the most common plot points are that the Saiyans rebel against Frieza and King Vegeta personally leads an attack. He is easily killed and Bardock alone launches one final assault against Frieza, only for him to be killed along with Planet Vegeta. This reduces the Saiyan's numbers to a mere handful ^note Son Goku/Kakarot, Raditz, Nappa, Vegeta, Broly and Paragus, and possibly Tarble, more if you include non-canon material, making them functionally extinct.

In the current story, the Saiyans are experiencing a bit of a resurgence thanks to breeding with humans, creating powerful hybrid Saiyans who are far stronger and less violent than their pure-blooded counterparts. They are also not evil anymore thanks to the influence of the Earthlings.

Universe 6, the twin universe of Universe 7, have their own Saiyans. Unlike their U7's counterparts, the Saiyans of U6 are a thriving race and heroes who protect the innocent.

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Saiyans in General

• Achilles' Heel:
  • Grabbing a Saiyan's tail can disable them if they haven't trained themselves to overcome this weakness.
  • A Saiyan's tail in general is very weak compared to the rest of the Saiyan's body. It's easy to be removed from young children without any harm coming to them. And as shown with Yajirobe, they can be severed even by someone who's vastly weaker than their Great Ape Form.
• Adaptational Badass: As a consequence of Raditz’s Adaptational Wimp (see below). In manga and supplementary interviews, Raditz is referred as a middle class Saiyan (elite in all but name) and among the strongest Saiyans of his generation. In anime and some other adaptions, Raditz was treated as a one of if not the weakest Saiyans, implicitly making rest of race much more powerful.
• Aliens Speaking English: Despite being from another planet, Saiyans seem to speak the same language as earthlings do.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Played with. Saiyans are known across the universe for being a race of cold-blooded, murderous monsters to the point that the Galactic Patrol assigned people like Jaco to kill their babies when they were sent to planets. There are a few pacifists born among them, but they are the exception. Frieza wiping out the Saiyans is mostly seen as a good thing. At the same time, the surviving Saiyans in the story are good to the point of being the universe's greatest protectors. They are also a great deal more powerful than they ever were when they were evil.
• Amazon Chaser: According to Vegeta, male Saiyans are wired to prefer strong-willed women. Bulma and Chi-Chi definitely fit the bill. Assuming this holds true for Saiyan-Human hybrids, so do Videl and arguably, Future Mai.
• Ambiguous Situation: There are conflicting messages on the relationship between Tuffles and Saiyans. Baby from GT and Lychee both claim that Saiyans were taken in and treated as equals before Saiyans got greedy and attacked, however, there are claims by Vegeta that Tuffles treated them as lesser beings until they got fed up and revolted. Due to the lack of expansion during this era, this remains unclear who was telling the truth.
• Animal Motifs: Monkeys, of course. Just like Son Goku, Saiyans have monkey tails and can transform into the Great Ape.
• Asshole Victim: While it was terrible of Frieza to kill the Saiyans after all the loyal work they did under him and his father, it's hard to feel sorry for them since they were extirpational Space Pirates long before King Cold conquered them. This feeling is carried over to characters like Goku and King Kai. They both see the fate of the Saiyans as karma and Goku even tells Frieza that the Saiyans paid for their mistakes.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: King and Prince Vegeta were by far the strongest Saiyans to ever exist. Planet Vegeta was named after King Vegeta, not the other way around^note With the reveal that King Vegeta was the third of his lineage, it's debatable which king Vegeta named the planet. Saiyans can also rise up the ranks by getting stronger as Toriyama notes since most Saiyans were classified as low-class warriors with only a handful of mid-tier Saiyans.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Their Zenkai boost to grow stronger can be immensely powerful, as it's a potentially easy way to get stronger. The thing is, on top of the diminishing returns these boosts have, a Saiyan has to nearly die and be treated back to a relatively stable condition before they get any benefits from the boost, though it helps that Saiyans tend to be hard to kill. Vegeta (when these boosts were used to bridge gaps between him and his opponents) nearly doesn't get anything useful due to being at the mercy of someone else's actions to heal him and his antisocial nature means he's alive through nothing but charity.
• Badass Crew: Saiyans form teams to help them conquer worlds. The most well-known teams are Bardock's crew and the remaining Saiyans led by Vegeta during the Saiyan Saga. Dragon Ball Super: Broly shows that Vegeta's crew used to have two more Saiyans before they died off at some unsepcified point in time.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Saiyans have been shown in the stratosphere on a few occasions despite it being said multiple times that Saiyans can't breathe in space.
• Beyond the Impossible: The Saiyan ability to get stronger truly doesn't seem to have an unsurpassable ceiling, at least in the anime. It's to the point where Vegeta has repeatedly stated that "Saiyans have no limits", and it's hard to disagree with the boast, considering several Saiyans reach levels equal to/surpassing that of the gods themselves, with any rivals to their power either being mutants, supernatural beings or artificial life forms.
• Big Eater: Saiyans as a whole have ravenous, seemingly insatiable appetites. A famous scene during the Buu Saga has Goku, Vegeta, and Gohan at the World Tournament diner pouring food down and piling bowls up. Krillin even makes a remark on wondering what Saiyan stomachs were made of. Baby also accuses the Saiyans of overunning the Tuffle race by depleting their resources.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Saiyans are Human Aliens with naturally spiky Wild Hair who are insanely aggressive and love to fight, have tails, and can transform into giant apes in the light of the full moon if they still have their tails. Not to mention if they are put close to death and recover, they increase in strength exponentially. More mundanely, full-blooded Saiyans maintain the same hair shape from the day they are born and grow in abrupt intervals, basically staying small children until they reach a specific age when they immediately physically grow to their adult heights practically overnight. Despite this, they can interbreed with humans, with the resulting hybrids gaining many of the aforementioned attributed except - rather amusingly - the static hair.
• Blood Knight: With the exceptions of Tarble and Gine, all Saiyans love fighting and have a strong bloodlust. Even the peaceful Son Goku is unrepentantly one of these who will put a good battle over friends and family's safety. This also applies to the half-Saiyans to a lesser extent. Although the hybrids don't have the need to fight like pure-blooded Saiyans, they still enjoy sparring, play fighting, and watching fights. Son Gohan, Future Trunks, and possibly Bulla are the exceptions.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: To a degree. Gine is considered a "pacifist" because she's strongly opposed to sending babies into dangerous combat situations. Given she is a failed soldier who would have been killed several times over if not for Bardock saving her - which is also considered odd behavior for a Saiyan - it's not surprising to a human observer why she would have that mindset.
• The Bully: For all their cultural posturing, Saiyans are really nothing more than a planet of bullies. They claim to be all about Might Makes Right but can't stand losing. In a true society where strength is the standard of morality, then even if someone lost they would Face Death with Dignity or be a Graceful Loser. By contrast, Saiyans only believe in survival of the fittest when they are the fittest. If Paragus and Goku's parents are anything to go by, they also don't particularly like the Royal Family but keep their heads down because their race's hierarchy is based on strength.
• But Not Too Challenging: Although they call themselves a warrior race, in practice they're essentially just bullies whose idea of a "strong opponent" is someone who is strong enough to not be immediately curb stomped, but not powerful enough to actually win. Goku is an anomaly because he actually prefers to fight people who can actually defeat him.
• But What About the Astronauts?: A few were off conquering other planets when Frieza destroyed their homeworld. Frieza called them all home, hoping to avert this trope. He nearly succeeds, with only those had defected (Turles, Broly, Paragus), or ignored the call (Nappa, Raditz, Vegeta), or those sent to another planet not long before Frieza acted (Goku), managing to escape the planet's destruction.
• Came Back Strong: A racial trait of all Saiyans: after recovering from mortal wounds, Saiyans become much stronger. How this racial trait develops overtime is different between various Saiyans:
  • With the surviving full-blooded Saiyans, this effect diminishes over time as the Saiyan becomes stronger; eventually Goku and Vegeta don't really get large near-death boosts anymore, with their greatest increases developed with training and/or new forms from then on. Goku Black in the manga however keeps his near-death boost, and his gains are definitely much greater than any previously seen in the manga.
  • With the half-blooded Saiyans, through some combination of conditioning, genetic adaption, and possibly other things, they gained greater innate power and seemingly don't get any serious benefits out of their injuries. Gohan, Goten, and both versions of Trunks are far stronger than their fathers were at their age, and their development seems to be focused more on unlocking power instead of developing it.
  • Lastly, a small handful of individuals do not require near-death injuries to grow. Instead, they start rapidly getting stronger after they get hit with/recover from any decently-powerful attacks, the stronger the better, up to and including in the middle of battle. Thus far, only Anime!Goku Black and Broly in Dragon Ball Super have been able to consistently increase their power this way - if in different manners - which was a great part of what made them so hard to deal with.
  • As another aspect of their racial trait, Saiyans tend to get big power increases when made extremely angry - to the point of inducing new transformations, in some cases - and allows them to surprise their opponents, sometimes turning the tables. In the anime, Goku Black explicitly notes this fact after seeing it happen often and uses it for himself when Vegeta overpowered him.
• Cast from Calories: Part of the reason Saiyans are such Big Eaters; they need calories for Ki Manipulation, and as a warrior race, their nutritional intake is much higher than humans. Best displayed with Goku, who early on would often be weakened by hunger to the point of uselessness. Turning into kaiju-sized beasts and regrowing tails would also require a hefty calorie intake to sustain.
• Cavalier Competitor: Saiyans would enjoy a good fight normally, drawing it out for the sake of their pride and letting their opponent push themselves to the max for the sake of getting a good challenge. But as saiyans like Vegeta and Nappa show, as soon as their opponent happens to be stronger than them, all bets go out the window and they decide to try and kill their opponent with all their might out of wounded pride, even if it meant fighting dirty.
• Challenge Seeker: Saiyans love to fight and to be pushed to their limits. Raditz even tried to use this trait to lure Goku into joining him by promising great battles instead of living peacefully with weak humans.
• Child Soldier: As soon as a Saiyan child is out of the incubator, they're ready to be sent out to conquer planets. Goku was sent to Earth as soon as his incubation period was complete, yet Raditz fully expected him to wipe the planet clean of life within a few years of landing. Raditz himself was part of Vegeta's team when he was only seven and Vegeta was about the same age.
• Combat Pragmatist: In order to give themselves the advantage in case they came to a planet where they couldn't change into a Great Ape on their own, they invented a technique that effectively becomes a moon for them to transform anyway and give them an edge.
• Close-Range Combatant: Saiyans tend to fight with their arms and legs more than anything else, using flight to close the distance between them and their opponent, they have ki attacks, but they are mostly considered finishing moves.
• Depending on the Writer: The characterization of the Saiyans varies between the era and the medium:
  • In their introduction and the anime depiction of them, Saiyans were portrayed as a race of Blood Knights, seeing virtue as a weakness, and the depiction of them painted as barbarians in every sense of the word. Saiyans weren't complete psychopaths, though, as they could still feel empathy for their own comrades (like the case of Bardock, and Nappa suggesting reviving Raditz with the Dragon Balls). The idea of a good Saiyan was inconceivable, and before King Cold's employment of them, they weren't different from cavemen.
  • Material released since 2008, however, painted Saiyans in a more realistic light, the previous depiction is based on its culture, as many Saiyans were non-combatants and were used for mundane jobs, and many of them closer to guys doing their job while enjoying it. The depiction of the Saiyans before King Cold's empire employing them paints them as civilized enough, but still war-like (as Shallot proves).
  • What the average power of a Saiyan was varies. Raditz, who had a power level of 1,200, was considered elite enough in the manga to go on missions with Prince Vegeta. In anime filler, on the other hand, he was considered weak by the standards of his race.
• Deliberately Cute Child: The entire Saiyan race is this trope. Saiyans have long childhoods to stay cute and young to throw off their enemies, thinking they're harmless, before quickly growing into their adult size.
• The Dog Bites Back: They tried this against Frieza, but he ended up killing most of the Saiyans without even trying. This is Played Straight with Vegeta who managed to ruin Frieza's plan for immortality and destroyed most of his army with his rebellion on Namek. The Super version of Broly also beat the living tar out of Freeza over a solid hour after the latter killed his father.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Saiyans are widely feared across the universe as the strongest warrior race. Even Frieza fears them, which is part of the reason he chose to wipe them out before they grew in numbers and strength. The Galactic Patrol sends their patrolmen to find and kill Saiyan babies that invade planets. If killing them isn't an option, they Mercy Kill the population so they won't suffer.
  • Ironically, Frieza is greatly considered this to Saiyans. Despite loathing working under Frieza, they are absolutely terrified of the amount of power he wields, as such, they can't do much but complain about him behind his back.
  • The few that know about Beerus drop their fight-happy nature and are very polite to the God of Destruction.
• Dumb Muscle: Saiyans as a whole were seen as this trope by much of the verse, due to their barbarity and destructive drive for fighting over all else. Many who know of the Saiyans deride them as stupid and dangerous savages and their time serving in the Frieza force was spent being derided as mindless attack dogs. That said, there's no indication that they were actually stupid, just really, really violent. The perception as Dumb Muscle is more than likely a sign of Fantastic Racism, as just about anyone who describes them as such also tend to call them monkeys.
• Edible Theme Naming: The Saiyans are named after vegetables, as "Saiya" is a pun of "Yajin" which means "wildman" (Which fit their Blood Knight personality and ability to turn into giant apes like wolf-men), and an anagram of yasai (野菜), which means "vegetable". The "Jin" means "person", making "Saiyajin" mean "Person from Saiya".
• Elite Mook: The Mid-Class warriors, being among the most powerful warriors on the planet, being sent to the most dangerous planets, and only surpassed in power by royalty. According to invoked Word of God, Raditz is in this category.
• Egopolis: Vegeta's father renamed the planet Plant after himself.
• Enemy Civil War: Dragon Ball: Minus says there's never more than a few thousand Saiyans because they tend to go to war with each other and thin out their numbers.
• Enfant Terrible: Saiyan babies are well known for being ill-tempered and violent, especially by human standards. Goku tried to kill Grandpa Gohan and was an absolute terror to the old man despite his good intentions until the accident caused him to forget his Saiyan instincts.
• Everyone Has Standards: Saiyans typically want a good challenge more than anything, so they tend not to waste time torturing weaker species like Frieza would, opting instead to kill them quickly.
• Evil Counterpart: What they are to the Universe 6 Saiyans, who are protectors of justice.
• Evil Versus Evil: In their final hours, King Vegeta (with some saiyans who lost their nerve) and Bardock individually tried to rebel against Frieza. They ended up on the losing end of a Single-Stroke Battle and their planet was destroyed.
• Fantastic Racism: They're both on the receiving and giving end of this. On a whole, Saiyans are treated like second-class citizens among the Frieza Force since they're seen as brutal and stupid monkeys. On the other hand, Saiyans have no respect for any species that isn't them.
• Fantastic Slurs: Calling a Saiyan a 'monkey' is a major racial insult.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Invoked in Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans; when meeting the Z-Fighters, Dr. Lychee claims his people tried to help the Saiyans and were only given death and destruction for their efforts. It should be noted, however, that this account isn't exactly backed up by what we see in flashbacks: while the Saiyans did wage war on the Tuffles (and ultimately wiped them out), they were shown as living in primitive conditions prior to that, implying that the Tuffles weren't quite as generous to the invaders as Lychee paints them as being. Vegeta, who at this point sees nothing wrong with what the Saiyans did to anyone, incredulously interjects that Tuffles were using Saiyans as slaves.
• Good Counterpart: The Saiyans of Universe 6 work as mercenaries, protecting weaker races.
• Hairstyle Inertia: This is a biological trait of their entire race. As Vegeta explains, a Saiyan's hair remains the same from the day they are born. This doesn't apply to facial hair, which they can freely grow and shave off.
• Has a Type: According to Vegeta, the vast majority of Saiyan males are Amazon Chasers. Presumably, most Saiyan women have a case of All Amazons Want Hercules, though due to all the Universe 7 Saiyan women being dead we'll probably never know for sure.
• Hated by All: They were despised by pretty much everyone in the galaxy due to their unrepentent warmongering, and no one outside of some of the surviving Saiyans shed any tears when Planet Vegeta was destroyed.
• Heavy Worlder: Grew up on a planet with ten times Earth's gravity.
• Homeworld Evacuation: They left Sadala and moved to Plant.
• Human Alien: Outside of their tails, Saiyans look like humans with unnaturally spiky Wild Hair akin to a Mahayana Buddhist Asura. The remaining Saiyans live on Earth without anyone knowing that they're aliens outside of their circle of friends and family. Subverted in that by the franchise's definition of "human", they are humans, just not Earthlings. There are even instances of Saiyans referring to themselves as human; comparing a Saiyan's normal form to their Great Ape form, Vegeta refers to the former as their "human form". Paragus, in both the Japanese and English versions of ''Dragon Ball Super: Broly', refers to Broly as a human when explaining to Frieza that he's channeling the power of a Great Ape "in his human form".
• Humanity Is Infectious: By the time of Freeza's first death, living on Earth helped mellow out the few surviving Saiyans, especially the human hybrids.
• Hypocrite: Saiyans are a warrior race that believes in Might Makes Right and are fully embrace the Social Darwinist mindset. They are also blood knights that love to fight. The hypocrisy comes in the fact that they have too much pride and narcissism and while they say they love to fight and have a challenge they can't stand losing, especially to non-saiyans or lower class saiyans. When at a disadvantage, Saiyans will display Dirty Coward tendencies by fighting dirty, running away, or even begging for mercy. Ultimately, they're less Proud Warrior Race Guy and just a planet of bullies.
• Identical Grandson: Goku and Vegeta look near identical to their fathers.
• Identical Stranger: A booklet given away at Japanese screenings of The Tree of Might said that Saiyans of the same rank can look similar to explain why Turles looks so similar to Goku.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: In anime filler it's explained that the Saiyans got their technology from the Arcosians who paid them to conquer a new planet. In DBS: Broly they received their tech from Freeza and King Cold.
• Informed Attribute: It has been stated that Saiyans can regrow their tails as a result of being in danger, while this was shown to be true of Goku and Gohan during fights against Giran and Vegeta respectively, this remains untrue for any other saiyan or saiyan hybrid as no matter what situation they're in where their lives are constantly being threatened that their tails ever grow back. Presumably there's a limit on how many times a Saiyan can regrow a tail.
• Informed Flaw: In universe example, their apparent Dumb Muscle trait. They're derided (by the Frieza Force especially) for being idiotic savages, but there is no evidence for them being dumb as much as there is for them being extremely violent. In fact, supplementary materials go further against this, with the Saibamen being a sign of their Organic Technology, and Dragon Ball Super: Broly showing there were actually Saiyan scientists who seem to be treated with respect.
• Irony:
  • At the start of Z, the Saiyans were a race feared by the universe. Having even a Saiyan baby sent to a planet was considered a death sentence. The entire cast of Earth was terrified of them and saw them as the greatest threat the Earth had ever faced, far worse than the reign of King Piccolo. Over a decade later, the Saiyans and those who carry their blood are considered the greatest champions of not only the Earth, but the entire universe. The remaining Saiyans also became far stronger than they ever were when they were evil.
  • Goku is probably the least like any traditional Saiyan and Vegeta at the beginning of the series even saw Goku as No True Scotsman for their race, believing that Goku's morality and easy-going demeanor were completely at odds with Saiyan ideals. However, it turns out that Goku was actually the closest to Saiyan ideals. While Saiyans love fighting, it's mostly about pride and dominance while claiming a Social Darwinist mindset, yet they hate losing and can be cowardly in the face of a superior opponent. Goku on the other hand loves fighting for its own sake and the more dangerous or difficult the challenge, the more excited he gets while never cowering in battle with a superior foe. Traditional Saiyans believed in living a warrior's lifestyle but never really did much to improve their skills or train and only developed new techniques as they needed them. Goku trains constantly and tries to learn and polish as many new skills as he can to improve himself and be ready for the next challenge. Lastly, Saiyans claimed that it was fine to use any means available but never tried to learn or assimilate from other cultures by being xenophobic while Goku's open-mindedness and lack of pride allowed him to learn all kinds of things from many different cultures and people. Basically, if the Saiyans are Klingons then Goku is Worf.
  • The Saiyans were believers of The Spartan Way, Virtue Is Weakness, and survival of the fittest, yet they're weaklings compared to the Universe 6 Saiyans who are a bunch of peace-loving warriors fighting for justice, the very thing the U7 Saiyans looked down on. Granted, Universe 6 Saiyans have the advantage of not being wiped out by someone fearing their growing strength, thus allowing them to reach greater heights, but if the Universe 7 Saiyans hadn't gone so far as to steal a planet after destroying their own they likely would not have ended up in such a situation to begin with.
  • A serious irony given their hypocrisy about their Blood Knight instincts and Proud Warrior Race Guy but refusal to actually fight fairly against opponents that equal or may even surpass them, while instead opting to run or fight dirty, is that the Saiyans in Universe 7 are pretty weak given how broken their Adaptive Ability Came Back Strong power is and if they in fact had the courage and honor to seek out fights that push them to the limit regardless of personal safety, they would be monstrously strong. It's because the saiyans of universe 6 believe in Right Makes Might and have the Heroic Resolve not to cower in the face of a challenge that they are so strong.
• Jerkass: The vast majority of Saiyans are this. They take pleasure in causing pain and wiping out civilizations to satisfy their bloodlust. Even the nicer Saiyans like Bardock and his crew felt nothing for the people they murdered.
• Karmic Death: After decades of being remorseless Space Pirates who caused the extinction of dozen of races, the Saiyans were pushed to the brink of extinction by their own benefactor.
• Karmic Jackpot: By abandoning their evil ways, the remaining Saiyans reached levels far beyond their own comprehension including godhood.
• Killer Space Monkey: The Saiyan race in a nutshell. They can even transform into giant monkeys under a full moon that increase their overall power by ten times.
• Laser-Guided Karma: There's not really much difference between what the Saiyans routinely did to other species and what Freeza did to them. Made even moreso by the fact that Beerus the Destroyer authorized it.
• Lighter and Softer: From 2008 onwards, Saiyans tend to be portrayed in a better light, focusing on the White Sheep Saiyans, giving Saiyans from non-canon specials the Adaptational Nice Guy treatment, and implying that Saiyans were not always a warrior race. That said, the in-universe view remains the same: They ultimately suffered a Karmic Death that no one shed tears for.
• Little Bit Beastly: Although they may look human, they have monkey tails that can be used as a fifth limb. However, most of the adult Saiyans keep their tails wrapped around their waist like a belt to make them hard to grab, given the tail's status as an Achilles' Heel.
• Logical Weakness: They have overwhelming strength and can shrug off almost any weapon you throw at them...but they're still living creatures who need oxygen. Batman Can Breathe in Space is right out, and they can be drowned or suffocated as easily as any human.
• Long-Lived: Zigzagged. On the whole, Saiyans have a longer lifespan than humans. According to Vegeta, a Saiyan is still considered young up to their 80s since they are a warrior race that stays in their prime longer so they can keep fighting. At the same time, because of their lifestyle, they tend to die young.
• Maniac Monkeys: A race of monkey-like beings,^note though their only monkey characteristic in their base forms is their tails with the power to transform into giant apes, and most of them are violent conquerors.
• Master Race: They fully see themselves as the strongest race in the universe bar none. They're not too far off the mark given how powerful Goku, Vegeta, and their descendants become throughout the series. There were stronger fighters in Frieza's force but these were all unusual mutants.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Originally said to have evolved on the planet Plant alongside the Tuffles but Plan to Eradicate The Saiyans says they came to Plant from another planet. This was made canon by GT and Super.
• Mysterious Past: Despite being the most important race to the Dragon Ball lore, there is very little known about the Saiyans. We don't know much about their origins or how they got the technology to travel to other worlds after they destroyed their original homeworld. The biggest question is how can the Saiyans become gods when no other species so far have such abilities. Even Golden Frieza, whose power surpasses those of a Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan, has no access to god energy.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: They're a highly durable race, being able to withstand attacks that would instantly kill a normal person without having the ability to regenerate like the Namekians. Vegeta survives a Great Ape landing on him when he was already critically injured and Goku survives having all his bones crushed in one instance and his heart pierced on two others. Even wounds that are fatal to them take several minutes to kill them. Vegeta gets his heart pierced by Frieza and still has time to give a grand speech to Goku before dying, something Frieza lampshades. Goku and Raditz are both impaled on Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon, yet Piccolo had to personally cave Raditz's head in to stop him from talking, and Goku lived for several minutes before succumbing to his injuries.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: As a race of Challenge Seekers, they like fighting strong people who they can test their skills. At the same time, however, they don't like fighting opponents who can beat them. They prefer to fight people who can give them a reasonable challenge before they stomp them. If faced with a superior opponent, they have Villainous Breakdowns like Nappa and Vegeta. Goku is unique in that he wants to battle people who can defeat him and even overpower him. The greater the odds, the more excited he gets.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Zigzagged. Saiyans don't usually care for one another. Raditz had no problem trying to kill his own long-lost brother and his nephew, and when Raditz is killed, Vegeta and Nappa talk about how weak he was. While Nappa does consider reviving Raditz, Vegeta shoots the idea down and suggests immortality instead, to which Nappa quickly agrees. Vegeta had no problem killing Nappa when he was crippled by Goku. King Vegeta exiled his own son Tarble to another planet for being weak. Toriyama confirmed that most Saiyans don't care about their family, and they usually only mate to keep the population up rather than out of love. That said, there are exceptions. Nappa was very loyal to Vegeta, and Bardock and his team were actually friends. Nappa and Raditz were also shocked when Vegeta said he didn't care about their race dying. King Vegeta clearly cared for his son Prince Vegeta. Paragus initially cared for his son Broly. Vegeta and Goku, while sometimes seen as debatably bad by human standards, end up genuinely caring for their own family. Gine even outwardly says that Bardock showing concern for his son Goku is not something she expected and marks as strange.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • The mid-class, despite what the name might indicate, the Saiyans belonging to this class were incredibly rare, to the point that before the planet Vegeta was destroyed, there were only 10. Almost all Saiyans were low-class warriors. Possibly Justified by the fact that in this class were placed the warriors who were too strong to be considered low-class, but not enough to be elites.
  • Pacifist Saiyans. This does not mean a Saiyan who's against violence, but simply someone who doesn't adopt the battle-hungry mindset of Saiyan culture. Gine is the most notable "pacifist", but she's called this largely due to her objections about Saiyan babies being sent to depopulate planets. Out of concern for the children mind you, not the depopulation of planets.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Played With. Up until the Namek Saga, the Saiyans shown were portrayed as ridiculously strong, but in truth, they were not considered much to Frieza's army. Even Cui was at the same level as Vegeta, Cui's not considered to be anything more than a decently powerful soldier, and Vegeta was the strongest Saiyan in existence at the time. It's explained the peace-loving Namekians could outclass Saiyans (with Guru saying the Nameless Namek was stronger than a Super Saiyan). On the other hand, their unique ability to turn into Great Apes and near-limitless growth allowed them to potentially overcome any obstacle, meaning they could potentially have outgrown this trope entirely if they were allowed to flourish.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: Zigzagged. They tend to spend a long time as children, age through their teenage years pretty quickly, and spend several decades in their prime. They used this to their advantage, as the innocent-looking appearance of young saiyans allow them to invade other planets easier.
• Oddly Small Organization: According to Dragon Ball Minus, the Saiyan population was only a few thousand on their home planet before Frieza destroyed them. It implied because there was a warrior race constantly at war with other races and each other, it was difficult for them to increase their numbers.
• One-Man Army: A single Saiyan child can wipe out a planet's population in just a few years. Goku shows us firsthand how it's done when he wipes out the Red Ribbon Army by himself. On the adult side, Vegeta shows us the power of a fully trained elite warrior when he destroys the Frieza Force on Namek almost by himself. Both of these demonstrations are without full moons...
• Planet Looters: They mostly wiped out planets' populations, looted the planets, and then sold them to the highest bidder.
• Planet of Hats: The Saiyans were introduced by Goku. Once Raditz comes we learned that all Saiyans are freaking strong, transform into giant apes under a full moon, are prideful, and are Blood Knights. Goku is unique among his race because he doesn't have the Saiyan bloodlust. This is a combination of being raised on Earth, having a head injury, and inheriting his mom's good nature. Part of the justification for the Saiyans is that there were good Saiyans, but they were banished or repressed by the more violent parts of their race. The Saiyans' dark nature was also exploited by Frieza who used them to wipe planets and made them advance too fast so they never evolved past their barbaric ways.
• Prehensile Tail: While their tails are typically not used this way, both Goku and Raditz demonstrate that their tails can be used offensively, or to pick something up. However, given their tails' general lack of durability, they're mainly tucked away.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The hat of the entire Saiyan race. They pride themselves on being a warrior race to the point that weak or passive Saiyans are treated like outcasts. Despite all that, Saiyans weren't mindless brutes. It's revealed in Super Broly (or at least retconned in) that they had scientists and technology of their own and were fully capable of strategizing and doing things beyond attacking blindly.
• Psycho for Hire: As a whole, the Saiyan race served as this to the Frieza Force. While their planet was annexed by Frieza, they were nonetheless bloodthirsty, extirpation-bringing Space Pirates who took pleasure in causing pain and wiping out civilizations. In fact, this is part of the reason Frieza opted to kill them all since they were a warrior race that wasn't truly loyal and could turn on him at any moment.
  Frieza: These barbarians pretend to be submissive, but they're dangerous. They could bear their fangs at us at any time. They are, after all, a species completely comprised of warriors. It's always best to put a sleeping beast down before it can be awakened.
• Punny Name: Saiyan sounds very similar to the English word, Simian.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: King and Prince Vegeta fight on the front lines with the other Saiyans. Vegeta even had his own crew before Frieza destroyed Planet Vegeta.
• Rubber-Forehead Alien: Look like humans with tails.
• Significant Anagram: Of Yasai「野菜」or “vegetables”. Kind of fitting for each Saiyan individual to be named after vegetables.
• Slave Race:
  • How the Saiyans are overall treated by the Frieza Force, which is why the Saiyans resent Frieza so much. Part of the reason why Frieza decides to wipe them out is that he realizes that the Saiyans can never truly be loyal to him.
  • Vegeta says the Tuffles used Saiyans as slaves and were never as generous as they so claim themselves to have been.
• Smarter Than They Look: Saiyans at large are viewed as dim witted brutes, but an analysis of Saiyan society proves that while they were notably quite violent and often came across as bullies, they just as mentally capable as any of Frieza's men, if not more so.
• Smug Super: A common trait among the Saiyans, including the hybrids. They are the strongest warrior race in the universe and they're fully aware of it.
• The Social Darwinist: Mixed with Fantastic Racism, Saiyans looked down on other species and saw it as their right to wipe them out since they're weaker than them. This also applied to themselves since weak babies who were killed on missions were considered trimming the fat.
• The Sociopath: To the extent that they can be judged by human standards, most of them meet all the criteria of true sociopaths: they are violent, ruthless, insensitive, egocentric, petty, self-centered, extremely proud, and have poor impulse control. However, this seems to be a merely cultural thing on the part of the race, since both Vegeta and Tarble have shown traits of kindness. That said, a few Saiyans stand out as exceptionally psychopathic, these are Broly (his old version) and Turles.
• Son of an Ape: They're a rare case of this trope not referring to humans, as some aliens call Saiyans monkeys as a slur.
• Sore Loser: Despite all their warrior pride, they tend to not handle it well when they face opponents who can actually match them.
• Space Orcs: They're a race of violent barbarians with a constantly warring society built entirely on an Asskicking Leads to Leadership political system. They initially lived in stone huts and wore simple fur, but (depending on who you listen to) they gained high-tech after they reverse-engineered the technology of their advanced neighbors after wiping them out, or got it after being recruited into the Planet Trade Organization as Elite Mooks. They later became Frieza's Mooks, fighting to help him conquer planets.
• Space Pirates: They are an entire race of pirates who go around killing everyone on a planet and then sell it to the highest bidder. Raditz tries to get Goku to become one, telling him about all the glorious battles that they will have in space. Krillin is disgusted when he hears what the Saiyans do, outright calling them space pirates in the English dub.
• The Spartan Way: As a warrior race that believes in constant training and one's strength as the ultimate virtue, they fit this mindset perfectly. They even sent their toddlers to conquer planets whose inhabitants are weak enough for their children to slaughter.
• Super Mode: Similar to the Great Ape transformation, Saiyans have the ability to become Super Saiyans. The requirements are kind of vague, but it is stated that a pure heart and being a certain power level is needed for a Saiyan to transform into this state. According to Cabba, a Saiyan from Universe 6, anger is needed for the first transformation. After that, a Saiyan only needs to focus their energy on their backs to become Super Saiyan. There is also the god Super Saiyan forms. Super Saiyan God requires the light of five righteous Saiyans pouring their power into another Saiyan and the requirements for Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan are vague outside of having good energy control. As it's name implies though, it is a combination of the two transformations.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Toriyama says that Super Saiyans generate S-Cells that they pass onto their children, making them much more likely to be Super Saiyans.
• Superpower Lottery: They grow stronger from every battle and stronger still from near-death experiences, are naturally very strong, and with enough training and rage are able to reach a superstate that multiples their power fifty times over, and that's just a regular Super Saiyan. Even a normal Saiyan can transform into a Great Ape (if they have their tails and a full moon) that raises their overall power by 10X. They can even become real Physical Gods in a universe filled with physical gods. They are close to being indestructible even without a healing factor. Outside of vaporizing them or outright destroying vital organs, Saiyans are hard to kill. And the real kicker, their human-hybrids are even more powerful.
• Super-Senses
  • Saiyans, if we go by Goku, have a super scent. At one point, Goku states that his nose is as sharp as a dog's. Saiyans also appear to have better eyesight than humans since Goku is able to see people from far distances before anyone else even noticed anything and, as of Super, Saiyans have better hearing than humans too since Goku heard Bulma talking through a wall when she wasn't talking that loud.
  • To make nothing of Goku actually being able to count out how many cockroaches hid behind the fridge when he was honing his senses in preparation for a fight. Although Goku has special training from Mr. Popo on that front, he can nonetheless map out surroundings that his eyes can't with frightening accuracy, using nothing but air currents. Combined with Ki sensing this allows him to fight multiple opponents at once.
• Takes One to Kill One: When they are introduced, the Saiyans are so overwhelmingly powerful compared to any enemy that the Earth has ever faced that even after a year of training the Earth's fighters can't even take down Nappa, who is far weaker than Vegeta. Only Goku and Gohan are able to turn the tides and repel the Saiyans. Goku is a Saiyan and Gohan is a Saiyan hybrid.
• Three-Month-Old Newborn: Saiyan offspring don't develop in their mother's wombs. Rather, they're grown in large incubation tanks over a three-year period. The end result is newborn babies that look like toddlers.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Saiyan children, in general, are very disturbing by human standards. Upon meeting Grandpa Gohan for the first time, Kakarot tried to kill him despite being a baby. They may look cute and innocent, but looking is as far as it gets.
• Tyke-Bomb: Saiyan children are taught at a young age to be ruthless killing machines. As a toddler, Raditz expected Goku to kill everyone on Earth and Raditz was helping Vegeta conquer worlds when he was about seven years old.
• Virtue Is Weakness: In general, they believe traits like compassion, forgiveness, love, and even family bonds to be weaknesses. They call it "going soft", with Raditz, Nappa, and Vegeta outright declaring Goku a Category Traitor for embracing such traits.
• Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: During the filler episodes of the anime that involved Hell, no Saiyan is ever shown, not even Nappa or Raditz. While these two do appear in Dragon Ball GT (and briefly, with Raditz appearing in one shot, no other Saiyan appears in these segments.
• White Sheep: Tarble and Gine are born as pacifist Saiyans who didn't share the bloodlust and battle instincts of their race. Tarble is sent into exile by his father while Gine was considered a failed soldier who worked in the meat factory^note It should be noted that Gine was not actually a pacifist by human standards, her being against babies being sent to lay waste to planets was what got her labeled this, she has no moral objections to what Saiyans as a whole do. . Goku zigzags since he was quite violent as a toddler and calmed down after he hit his head. At the same time, it's hinted that he inherited his mother's kind heart, which is partly why he became a good person.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Lower-class saiyans often had problems with their Great Ape forms, making them rampaging monsters rather than efficient warriors, attacking just about anything they could without a second thought.
• Women Prefer Strong Men: Like how male Saiyans are typically Amazon Chasers, presumably, the same goes for female Saiyans finding a husband.
• The Worf Effect: The entire Saiyan race is subjective to this. They are one powerful warrior race in the universe and just three of them brought the Z-Fighters to their knees. They only survived because Goku and Gohan are Saiyans themselves. Frieza wipes out an entire planet of Saiyans with just his finger. Before that, he personally killed King Vegeta, the strongest Saiyan alive at the time.

Great Apes/Oozaru

When Saiyans who retain their tails look upon a full moon, they will transform into colossal monkeys and go on a rampage. Less experienced and low-class Saiyans will lose consciousness and have no memories upon changing back, while elite Saiyans retain their sapience while transformed.

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• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: All Saiyans with tails have the ability to become Great Apes; giant monkeys that tower over the battlefield.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Great Ape transformation is this for much of the Saiyan populace since it is the only one actually accessible to them from a young age. It boosts their power tenfold when they look at a full moon or a Power Ball. However, without the proper training they're effectively rampaging beasts. The only known Saiyans that can control themselves are Vegeta, Nappa, King Vegeta, and possibly Bardock. Even active soldiers like Bardock's crew or Turles don't have much control as much as they instinctively refrain from attacking each other.
• The Dreaded: Great Apes are rightly feared by any survivors. Son Gohan Sr. warned Goku to never look at the full moon as it would summon a terrible monster. Bulma, Master Roshi and Krillin were all nervous to see that Gohan Jr. inherited a Saiyan tail. In Dragon Ball Super: Broly even Saiyans themselves seem to fear the transformation, as Paragus warned Beets to avoid looking at Vampa's moon.
• Golden Super Mode: In Dragon Ball GT, the Golden Great Ape can be unlocked by Saiyans who have mastered Super Saiyan and absorb blutz waves, which can be from the full moon, or a planet reflecting blutz waves. Full-blooded Saiyans can access a further form beyond Golden Great Ape known as Super Saiyan 4 which is described as harnessing the power of the Golden Oozaru but remaining in human form.
• Kaiju: In their Great Ape forms, Saiyans are larger than most buildings, though it is somewhat inconsistent even in the early days when seeing Goku's ape form.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Their Great Ape forms are a mixture of gorilla, baboon and macaque.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: All Saiyans have the ability to transform under the light of a full moon if they still have their tails. However, a Saiyan has to be trained to control it, otherwise, they become mindless beasts that attack everything in sight.
• Pointy Ears: Saiyans grow these in their Great Ape form.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Saiyan eyes turn bright red when they transform and they're nigh unstoppable engines of destruction until their ability to abosrb moonlight is compromised.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Naurally, growing to the size of a castle means Saiyans will end up losing any clothes they were wearing at the time. Fortunately the ones in Freeza's service all wear uniforms that can expand indefinitely.
• So Last Season: Supplemental Materials and Video Games comment or exemplify that the power of the Oozaru pales to the power of Super Saiyan. Super explicitly says that the saiyans of Universe 6 evolved past needing tails/ the Great Ape transformation.

Super Saiyans in General

The legendary Super Mode of the Saiyans, said to be given to only the strongest of their race, the last known Super Saiyan was known centuries before he was destroyed his own power. Then came Goku, who would re-discover the iconic transformation in his battle against Frieza, and utilize it as the first of many forms for both him and all other known beings with Saiyan heritage in the modern day.

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• Adaptation Expansion: Vegeta and Future Trunks getting Super Saiyan 1 was an Offscreen Moment of Awesome, the anime promptly gives them dedicated scenes that explains what they were going through when they finally got it^note Episode 129 for Vegeta and History of Trunks for his own.. Gohan's transformation was much quicker in the manga^note Chapter 382, after Cell becomes perfect, it cuts to Gohan turning Super Saiyan, and Goku congratulating him for it where Goku just taught him how to transform, while in the anime's episode 160, Gohan asked him to fight like he was going to kill, Goku complies, turns Super Saiyan, unleashes a Kamehameha, and while Gohan is pushing it, he reminds himself of every time he wasn't strong enough to defend everyone else, and that pushes him to finally transform and he deflects the Kamehameha.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Super Saiyan Grade 3 is noted to be this, as while it boosts the user's power even more than Grade 2, it has the drawbacks of more ki consumption, less speed and less stamina meaning that unless you're already faster than you're opponent, you're just a big target, at which point there's no reason to use it. Understandably it was never used again once Super Saiyan 2 was introduced.
  • Super Saiyan 3 suffers similar problems. In terms of pure strength and speed, no other Super Saiyan form in Z-Era can compare, but it takes so much energy to maintain that drawn out battles make the form a hinderance. This is somewhat lessened in that Goku balances out the form by saving the form to land extremely powerful hits and then swapping out.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Due to peaceful members of the Saiyan race possessing a higher number of S-Cells than the others (barring those who increased their cell count through training), this means that anyone who manages to push one of these Saiyans past their breaking point has a higher than normal chance of triggering their Super Saiyan form, which may end up being the last thing they ever do.
• Battle Aura: Most Super Saiyan auras are golden, though some are blue, red, green or even pink depending on the form and/or the individual.
• Depending on the Writer: Super and GT both have drastically different ideas of what would come past Super Saiyan 3, in the former it is Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue which involve the use of God ki, while in the latter it is Super Saiyan 4 which involves blutz waves and the Oozaru transformation.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The term "Super Saiyan" is describing just that, a Saiyan that's super.
• Golden Super Mode: The Trope Codifier, famous for giving the user glowing golden hair and a gold Battle Aura. Interestingly, several transformations beyond regular Super Saiyan use different colors entirely: Super Saiyan 4 and Super Saiyan God are red, Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan is blue (to the point where it was officially shortened to "Super Saiyan Blue" after everyone realized what a mouthful the original name was), and the Legendary Super Saiyan is green. Not to mention Goku and Vegeta acquiring even higher forms that turn their hair silver and purple respectively, or Goku Black's hair turning pink when he turns Super Saiyan.
• Informed Flaw: Zigzagged. Back before Super Saiyan was revealed, it was stated that the only recorded Super Saiyan died due to his power exceeding the limits of his physical body. The most many Super Saiyan users suffer is some strain, but it was never close to being lethal. Those who wield the Legendary Super Saiyan power however, such as Broly or Kale, have had massive build-ups of power that frequently run wild and were a danger to everyone around them, including themselves.
• Irony:
  • Super Saiyan used to be so rare that it was thought to be a myth with only one recorded Saiyan in history to ever achieve the transformation, and no one even knew for certain what it looked like. Or, for that matter, if it was a transformation at all. After Goku attains the form, the transformation begins to go through rapid Uniqueness Decay where every known Saiyan/half-saiyan hybrid can attain the form rather easily.
  • One of the Saiyans' most powerful transformations, Super Saiyan God, is only accessible to those who have righteous hearts, something that the Saiyans looked down on.
• Lightning Bruiser: With the exception of Grade 3, any user of Super Saiyan becomes incredibly fast and hits exceptionally hard, and Super Saiyan 2 and 3 both have lightning surround the user.
• Logical Weakness: Super Saiyan is a conscious transformation to maintain, and does not give the user any form of immunity outside of physical toughness (in fact, Goku turning Super Saiyan only made the strain on his heart worse, and Baby's possession of Saiyans became easier when they transformed), so anything that can dull the senses, invades the body or puts them to sleep counteracts any benefit of the form.
• My Suit Is Also Super: For some reason turning Super Saiyan 4 comes with Magic Pants. Goku and Vegeta both turned into Great Apes before settling into the form and the clothes they lost from the initial transformation were restored, sans their upper body-wear.
• Next Tier Power-Up: Hoo boy, where to begin? There's Super Saiyan Grade 1-4, then Super Saiyan 2, then 3, then 4 or Super Saiyan God, then Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan... and that just covers the three main series! There's plenty more of variation in Super Dragon Ball Heroes and other materials.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • Super Saiyan 4 sounds like it'd be a further evolution of Super Saiyan 3, but in reality, it has little to do with three, or any of the previous forms. It is however, stronger than previous forms as indicated by its name.
  • Super Saiyan God also counts, it has nothing to do with the Super Saiyan transformation, requiring that six pure-hearted and righteous Saiyans to pour their energy into one as well as having unique powers such as a Healing Factor and the use of Godly ki.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: For a time, partly due to Super Saiyan being a myth with little information available, it was believed only the pure of heart may obtain Super Saiyan, which would be refuted by Vegeta who claimed he was "pure evil" at the time. This was later thrown out entirely, and anyone with Saiyan DNA can obtain the transformation under the right circumstances.
• Physical God: The Saiyans have the ability to reach godhood by becoming a Super Saiyan God. However, to do this they need the light of five righteous Saiyans united into one and the power-up is only temporary. At least until Goku comes along.
• Rage Breaking Point: One of the most common ways to achieve some form of Super Saiyan transformation: Goku, Future Trunks, Broly, Vegeta and even Gohan all got to some new power because they hit this limit.
• So Last Season:
  • Super Saiyan absolutely dwarfs the Great Ape transformation in practically every way as it's more powerful, faster, and far easier to attain and maintain.
  • Played With. Super Saiyan 1 is the weakest of all the transformations, but it's also the easiest to master and use, so a seasoned enough Saiyan could potentially hold out against a foe much stronger than them by virtue of experience. Super Saiyan 2 plays this straight, as it was considered impossible to achieve before Gohan did, and then Goku is revealed to obtained and surpassed it in the Buu Saga, and while it remains relevant until the end of the Saga, it becomes barely a foot note after the introduction of Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan 4.
• Super Mode: It's not the only one Saiyans have access to, but it is by far their most powerful even before anyone knew there was levels above it. Its potency was so strong that it changed tides of multiple battles within Dragon Ball Z-era onwards.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Toriyama states that S-Cells are responsible for a Super Saiyan transformation, which would be why Goten, Present Trunks, Caulifla and Cabba obtained the transformation soon after learning about it (or in Goten's case, without knowing about it).
• Took a Level in Badass: The immediate effect of someone turning Super Saiyan is that they get a good boost in strength and durability, far more than Oozaru. And with more transformations unlocked, the more levels in badass the character takes.
• Tranquil Fury: Due to a Rage Breaking Point being one of the more common circumstances needed to trigger the transformation along with the exacerbated emotional turmoil accompanying this, a newly minted Super Saiyan tends to lapse into an Unstoppable Rage more often than not. As a result, properly controlling and using the form requires the Saiyan in question to channel and temper it with this state of mind.
• Uniqueness Decay: As Vegeta points out in-universe, Super Saiyans have become drastically more common since the Namek Saga onwards in drastic contrast to how it was all but a myth before Goku achieved it. Come media and Dragon Ball's resurgence with Super. Super Saiyan is so commonly given to just about every Saiyan to a point that Gotenks in Fighter Z says its more surprising if they can't obtain the form.

Saiyan Royalty

King Vegeta

King Vegeta the Third (ベジータ王三世, Bejiita Ou Sansei)

The king as designed by Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru for Dragon Ball Z

The king as designed by Naohiro Shinanti for Dragon Ball Super: Broly

Voiced by (Japanese): Banjo Ginga (Z ep. 78, Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Broly), Yukimasa Kishino (Z ep. 124), Masaharu Sato (Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan, Battle of Gods, Super, Dragon Ball Heroes)
Voiced by (English): Christopher Sabat (Funimation dub); Terry Klassen (Z ep. 124), Brian Drummond (Z ep. 230) (Ocean dub); Ed Marcus (AB Groupe/"Big Green" dub); Michael McConnohie (Bang Zoom!/Toonami Asia dub of Super)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Juan Felipe Preciado, José Luis Castañeda (ep. 124), Joaquín Martal (Movie 8), Arturo Casanova (Battle of Gods), Salvador Reyes (Super and DBS: Broly)

King Vegeta the Third was the King of all Saiyans and the father of Prince Vegeta the Fourth. He was also a "hero" to the Saiyans after he led his people to victory in the Saiyan-Tuffle war, in which the planet was renamed in his honor. After his people were annexed by King Cold's planet trade organization, he had no choice but to pledge allegiance, knowing the Saiyans weren't powerful enough to defeat him or Cold's successor, Frieza.

The Saiyans worked under Frieza for several years, then his son, Prince Vegeta was given to Frieza under unknown circumstances, although King Vegeta intended to rebel before he would ever let Frieza gain his son. Unfortunately, his rebellion was cut short by Frieza himself and he was killed.

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• Action Dad: To Vegeta. He is the king of a warrior race.
• Adaptational Badass: He became the Dark Masked King in Dragon Ball Heroes, being brainwashed like Bardock by The Demon Realm. He lacks King Vegeta's Butt-Monkey status and is considered a real threat to the protagonists.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: His decision to exile a recently born Broly instead of trying to murder him was this, as was his decision to not attempt to kill Paragus for objecting to this. For a given definition of "nice" anyway.
• Asshole Victim: He's a classist who would doom his own people's progeny just for coming close to his bloodline's power, to say nothing of the other races he knowingly sent to the slaughter by allying himself with King Cold and Frieza. Getting humbled by Beerus and killed by Frieza seems like just desserts.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He was made King for a reason. He was the strongest of all the Saiyans and led them to victory against the Tuffles. Also, the planet was named after him (or at least one of his predecessors depending on what canon you follow), not the other way around.
• Bad Boss: King Vegeta blasted one of his own men for delivering bad news in Z. Depending on which movie you're watching, he also either tries to kill Broly as an infant or dumped him on a planet where he might have been killed by natural predators despite the protests of his father Paragus.
• Blood Knight: He's a Saiyan, what else would you expect? He sent his second son to a distant planet for being born too soft and weak, being possibly ashamed of him.
• Brass Balls: Fighting his way past all of Frieza's henchmen to personally challenging Frieza, the man had guts. Unfortunately, he didn't have the power to back it up.
• Breakout Character: Despite only being mentioned in just one page in the original manga, he got more scenes in the anime, and ends up appearing in both Battle of Gods and the Dragon Ball Super arc that adapts it.
• Butt-Monkey: King Vegeta is one of the characters in the franchise who receives constant humiliations, from Frieza and Beerus. Frieza himself kills him without any effort after he tried to rebel.
• Canon Immigrant: Originally a filler character who only got mentioned once in the manga. He has a few flashback appearances in the anime and the Non-Serial Movies, and he shows up in the canonical Battle of Gods movie and the Dragon Ball Super Arc that adapts it.
• Death by Origin Story: No King Vegeta, the role of defeating Frieza goes to one of your lowly soldiers' sons. And killing him goes to your half-breed grandson via time travel.
• Defiant to the End: Unlike the squad of the strongest saiyans King Vegeta could gather, who were scared shitless of even being in the same room as Frieza, King Vegeta held his ground and attempted to strike down Frieza, only to be quickly cut down himself,
• Doomed by Canon: He had several filler appearances in flashbacks, and of course is destined to die at Frieza's hands.
• Dub Text: The dub makes him care more for his son than he was originally written. His motivation in the original is to free the Saiyans from Frieza and take his empire for their own. The prince was a minor factor if even worth the mention.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the original Z anime, his hair is completely auburn (much like how his son's was initially depicted as). In Dragon Ball Z: Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan, his hair becomes completely black (on the grounds that Vegeta himself stated in the manga that all Saiyans have black hair). Eventually, his hair is black with brown highlights in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and Dragon Ball Super.
• Egopolis: After the Saiyans conquered Planet Plant, he renamed it Vegeta, after his bloodline.
• Evil Overlord: King Vegeta is very tyrannical, hunted at least one species into extinction, sent babies into space to conquer planets, and oppressed his own people even before their subjugation by Frieza.
• Evil Versus Evil: When going against Frieza it's easy to forget King Vegeta was a tyrant himself, even though he did care for his son and his people. He is also responsible for at least three conflicts in many stories (The Tuffles and Broly).
• Generation Xerox:
  • His son Vegeta inherited his tyrannical streak, intelligence, and implicitly, a cold heart. It's not entirely certain if Vegeta also got his anger and sense of pride from his father as well. Also, King Vegeta could be confused for an adult prince Vegeta's brother, as they're nearly identical but for King Vegeta's beard, lighter hair, and being taller and more muscular.
  • In a more meta sense, he shares with his son getting overshadowed by Bardock and Goku respectively. Both he and Bardock faced an army of Mooks to kill Frieza, only to be killed off by Frieza himself; the key difference is the level of respect that Frieza gives them post-mortem. When King Vegeta tried to kill him, he was relatively fresh and had henchmen with him yet Frieza brushed him off like another assassin with a single blow, permanently upending the expectation of Asskicking Leads to Leadership which had defined his entire existence; consequently, Frieza only half-remembered him get a rise out of his son during the battle on Namek. In comparison, Bardock, did the same feat while tearing through hordes of his men solo, causing Frieza to take him seriously enough to pay attention to him as he destroyed Planet Vegeta along with him, all completely unprecedented for a lower-class Saiyan. As a result, Frieza instantly recalled him when seeing his resemblance in Goku, showing how more of an impact the death and struggle of Bardock had compared to King Vegeta III.
• Genius Bruiser: More of an Informed Attribute, but said to have a mind "equal to a Tuffle." He managed to organize the Saiyans into a formidable army, leading them to victory over the technologically advanced Tuffles. His son inherited this trait.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Towards both versions of Broly. King Vegeta does not take it well that a Saiyan was born with a higher power level than what his bloodline could produce.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: Has the exact same hairstyle as Vegeta.
• Hypocrite: While the degrees of emphasis vary between his assassination attempt on Broly in the original movie and his decision to exile Broly in the Super film, King Vegeta's actions against Broly and Paragus were largely motivated by jealousy and fear of Broly's power. Broly not only eclipsed his son by leaps and bounds from the start but was capable of growing exponentially, presenting a challenge to his power—and from his perception a possible threat to all other Saiyans. Coming from a race that accepts and even encourages adversity in order to grow stronger, that literally positioned his lineage as royalty because they were the strongest, and that desperately yearned for a way to break free of Frieza's rule to establish themselves as the ultimate power in the universe, it's an exceptionally cowardly act of self-sabotage on his part.
• I Have Your Wife: Frieza's flashback implies that Frieza forced King Vegeta into letting him take Prince Vegeta with the threat of hurting his people if he refused. It's not likely that he was intended to be a hostage, as Frieza took a shine to the young prince as a good recruit, and Saiyans don't really care much for family.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • In Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan, he decided to execute the newborn Broly, viewing him as a threat to his power due to his Power Level of 10,000. Considering how Ax-Crazy Broly became as an adult, coupled with his incredible power, King Vegeta's fears had merit.
  • In Dragon Ball Super: Broly King Vegeta banishes Broly to Planet Vampa after seeing how freakishly powerful he is as a child. While Paragus called Vegeta out on this and believes the King only did so because he was jealous that his son's powers rivaled the prince, King Vegeta's stated reason was that Broly's potential could drive him insane and make him a threat both to himself and everyone around him. Paragus himself seems to realize that the King may have been right once Broly's battle on Earth turns him into a rage-fueled Berserker and a potential universal threat.
• Kick the Dog:
  • In Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, King Kai says King Vegeta convinced the Saiyans to wipe out their neighbors, the Tuffles, after years of peaceful coexistence. This talk is accompanied by a picture of Tuffles shaking hands with Saiyans and another picture of Barbaric-looking Saiyan males chasing after screaming Tuffle women in civilian clothes. Though admittedly, it's a little hard to tell exactly how much of his dog-kicking is and isn't canon, or if it was even dog kicking to begin with.
  • In Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan, King Vegeta orders the execution of a baby Broly simply because he viewed him as a threat to his power. When Paragus desperately pleaded for Broly's life, King Vegeta was completely unmoved and decided to execute Paragus as well.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Broly instead had him send Broly, a newborn Saiyan child, sent to a remote planet all by himself without the consent of Paragus. This leads to Paragus declaring vengeance against him.
  • He exiled his younger son to a distant star system because he was weak and soft-hearted. All things considered, however, this can be seen as Pet the Dog moment, since he didn't kill him.
• Knight Templar Parent: He had no problem with Frieza's misuse of his people until Frieza tried to take his older son Vegeta from him, which crossed the line. However, in the anime, this is Dub Text, as the original take did have him sick of Frieza's rule in general.
  • Played Straight in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, where he banishes Broly to Vampa due to being stronger than his son, and in the same room as him.
• Legacy Character: Dragon Ball Super: Broly reveals that he is actually the third man to carry the "Vegeta" family name, making his son Prince Vegeta the Fourth.
• Little Bit Beastly: Like all Saiyans, he has a monkey tail that he wraps around his waist like a belt.
• Morality Pet: While otherwise very evil, King Vegeta genuinely cared for his firstborn son.
• Noble Demon: Despite being a ruthless Blood Knight, he does show some care for his people. Just so long as none of them get stronger than his bloodline.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Ambiguous Situation aside, King Vegeta managing to rally the notoriously prideful and vitriolic saiyan people to rebelling against the Tuffles is rather impressive.
• Papa Wolf: At least part of his motivation (whether a large or small part depends on the actual version of the show) for revolting against Frieza was because the latter forced him to hand over his son, Prince Vegeta.
• Pet the Dog: To his credit, he obviously loves his firstborn son. Otherwise, he is still a black-hearted villain who enjoyed partaking in extirpation and mass murder on a planetary scale. In Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans, it's mentioned that without provocation, he ruthlessly wiped out every Tuffle, including civilians. In Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!!, he exiled his young son Tarble for being too kind. Although the fact that he only exiled Tarble instead of beating or killing him could be another point in his favor.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: He has a red cape, black clothing, and is the king of a race of Planet Looters.
• Reverse Grip: King Vegeta prefers to perform his Galick Guns using a single-handed, backhanded motion befitting his regal status.
• Royal Blood: Downplayed. Rather than being a member of a special bloodline or a politically powerful family, he was made King because he was the strongest Saiyan when they conquered planet Plant, as well as being one of the smarter ones and taking up a leadership role at the time.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: He doesn't appear to leave planet Vegeta, but he does manage and organize the Saiyans in their work for Frieza.
• Satellite Family Member: King Vegeta, the ruthless and clever king and warrior, is our Vegeta's father. He forced his views on him shaped much of his mentality that would be carried with him for much of his life.
• Shoot the Messenger: In a flashback, King Vegeta blasted his messenger to smithereens after he reported that they had to wait three days before attacking the planet because of the full moon coinciding around that time. It's implied that he was more irritated that he can't get the job done in good time to keep Frieza off his back than the actual failure.
• Signature Move:
  • Execution Beam.
  • He also, of course, knows the Galick Gun and can even bust out a Super version when he ascends to his Great Ape form -- in the games, at least.
• Strong Family Resemblance: To Vegeta and Tarble, albeit taller and with a beard.
• Theme Naming: After the word vegetable.
• Too Dumb to Live: Beerus, God of Destruction, asked the king to get him the most comfortable pillow in the universe. King Vegeta invaded a planet to steal it...and then gave Beerus the second-best pillow because he decided he wanted it for himself. And then tried to claim the pillow only wasn't the best one because they hadn't had enough time, making Beerus call him on lying too. At least, that is what Beerus thinks happened.
• Villainous Widow's Peak: Prince Vegeta inherited his hairline from his father and both are heartless elitists. Tarble's widow's peak isn't as prominent and he's considerably less cruel than his father or brother.
• We Have Reserves: He literally thought this of his soldiers, but his son was a different matter altogether.
• The Worf Effect: Effortlessly slain by Frieza with one punch in spite of being the King of the Greatest Warriors in the Universe, but not before having his head literally used as a footstool by Beerus The God of Destruction while being forced to treat him to an 8-course banquet... Mind you this latter sight traumatized Vegeta well into his adulthood as he was there to see it...
• Would Hurt a Child: Would kill a BABY, as shown in the original Broly movie. To say nothing of sending newborns to planets and expecting them to survive on their own.

Vegeta

See Dragon Ball: Vegeta

Tarble

Tarble (ターブル, Taaburu)

Voiced by (Japanese): Masakazu Morita
Voiced by (English): Todd Haberkorn (Raging Blast 2 only)

"Nice to meet you, I'm Vegeta's younger brother Tarble."

Tarble is Vegeta's younger brother. Unlike Vegeta and every pure-blooded Saiyan (besides Goku and Gine), Tarble is a kindhearted and polite individual. It was because of this along with his relatively weak power level that he was sent off to a distant planet. In the special, he comes to Earth to ask for Vegeta's assistance in defeating two remnants of Frieza's forces who have been terrorizing the planet he has settled on.

Tarble is part of the continuity of the movies released after the original manga, but he is kindly ignored in Dragon Ball Super.

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• Adapted Out: Zig-zagged. Tarble is mentioned as existing in the Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F' movies, but is ignored entirely in Dragon Ball Super, along with the Xenoverse series. However, he is mentioned in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, but only shortly after the destruction of Planet Vegeta, with Nappa and Vegeta briefly wondering "Whatever happened to him?" before the latter shrugs the thought off; no further mention of his fate is given, assumed or otherwise.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • A meta side effect of Continuity Drift, but during the Future Trunks saga, Goku Black calls Trunks the last remaining Saiyan. Is unknown if this implies Black never encountered the future timeline version of Tarble or he executed him at some point in the story.
  • For a time, it was unknown if Tarble still existed in Super's canon, as there was no mention of him like there was in Battle of Gods, it's eventually revealed that Vegeta still has a brother in canon during the Broly movie, but many things such as if he was exiled or if he was killed or even what he was like- are unmentioned.
• Beware the Nice Ones: While he's seen as weak in the grand scheme of things, Tarble is still a Saiyan warrior who, depending on how it's translated, is able to fight close to or very nearly at first form Frieza's level, far beyond what Saiyan Elites like Nappa and even Vegeta himself were capable of at the beginning of the series. Though it doesn't really help him out as he only arrives on Earth post-Buu saga.
• Big Brother Worship: Despite not having seen Vegeta in over 20 years, has a very high opinion of him and even believes he defeated Frieza.
• Blue Is Heroic: He has a blue uniform and a blue scouter. He's also one of the nicest Saiyans.
• Canon Immigrant: Zig-zagged. Tarble first appeared in the Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!! special written by Toriyama, as a celebration of the franchise anniversary, and he was then referenced in Battle of Gods and is referenced again in Dragon Ball Super: Broly in a passing mention, meaning he is part of the continuity of the movies. However, he is Adapted Out in Dragon Ball Super and many video games released in the 2010s, due to the character being pretty irrelevant in the overall lore of the series.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Aside from the occasional mention of being somewhere out in the depths of space, Tarble never makes another physical appearance.
• Edible Theme Naming:
  • Vegetable. Get it?
  • From a technique standpoint he, like his father and older brother, knows a variation of the Galick Gun technique (Specifically the short-range Galick Burst.)
• Flat Character: Tarble is this, mostly because his presence in the story is very minimal. He is introduced as polite, asks Vegeta for help, Tarble reveals Gure is his wife to the shock of everyone, and that's pretty much it, they don't have another speaking role in the special, and are only mentioned afterward by Vegeta in Battle of Gods as them leaving to somewhere he doesn't know. Most of Tarble quotes on Raging Blast 2, his only video game appearance outside of Heroes, is mostly presenting himself as Vegeta's brother.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Morally he's the responsible to Vegeta's foolish. He spent a long time trying to stop the terror of Frieza's forces rather than participating in it.
• Generation Xerox: Of both Vegeta and his father King Vegeta.
• Good Counterpart: To Raditz. Both are long-lost brothers to one of the few remaining pure-blooded Saiyans (Raditz to Goku and Tarble to Vegeta), but where Raditz was a cruel and ruthless warrior, Tarble is a quiet and kind-hearted young man.
• Happily Married: Gure looking nothing like a human or Saiyan certainly doesn't discourage Tarble from proudly introducing her as his beloved to Vegeta.
• Hero of Another Story: Tarble was sent off to a distant planet because he was considered too weak, yet, he became a strong fighter who fought against some of Frieza's forces and also got married. That's quite the achievement for someone considered a failure by his family, even if he is so outclassed by everyone at this point.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Only relatively speaking. Tarble is twice as tall as Gure, but the shortest adult Saiyan.
• Informed Attribute: It's stated he's around the strength of first form Frieza (ignoring the questions that would raise for a pacifist saiyan), Tarble never demonstrates any sort of power.
• Interspecies Romance: While there's plenty of this in Dragon Ball, Tarble and his wife Gure really stand out. Tarble is a Saiyan, which is a race of Human Aliens, and Gine, while her race is unknown, doesn't even look human.
• Karma Houdini: As much of a nice guy Tarble is, he is still responsible for the destruction of many vehicles, along with some explosions, in a city before his arrival at Mr. Satan's party. No one ever calls him on this.
• Laser-Guided Karma: He's a massive White Sheep to the Saiyan race. He's also one of the few that actually survived the destruction of Planet Vegeta (since he was exiled to some backwater planet beforehand).
• Mythology Gag: He has bangs just like Vegeta's design as a kid in Dragon Ball Z had before it was retconned into Vegeta having the same hairstyle he had as an adult.
• Nice Guy: Unlike his father and brother, Tarble shows a pleasant and well-mannered personality. He is less prideful, more grateful to those willing to help him, and more heroic.
• Non-Action Guy: Due to being outclassed by Abo and Kado by the time he shows up, he does no fighting whatsoever.
• Not So Above It All: As seen in the Raging Blast series, while he does think his people are a bit too bloodthirsty for their own good, he still finds enjoyment in a good sparring match.
• Odd Couple: He and Gure, to the point that it's really hard to see what he saw in her... Or, provided she's indicative of what her species look like, what she saw in him. Played for laughs when Master Roshi lampshades how Saiyans have weird taste in women...within earshot of Bulma and Chi-Chi.
• Older Than They Look: Despite looking younger than even teenage Gohan, Tarble can only be, at most, 5 years younger than Vegeta, which means he is in his 30s.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Downplayed compared to the Saiyans we've seen, but he still has pride in his race.
  Tarble: I'm one of the warrior race of Saiyans too!
• Reluctant Warrior: So much so that he was exiled for it.
• Remember the New Guy?:
  • He's the brother Vegeta always had but never cared about, so much so that he never mentioned him to any of his family and friends until Tarble showed up in person seeking help. Doesn't help Vegeta made it clear in the original manga there weren't any surviving Saiyans besides Goku and himself, yet he knew Tarble was alive on some homeworld.
  • Yo Son Goku And His Friends Return was never officially released outside of Japan and Tarble's only international appearance was in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z. Despite this, the movies will occasionally mention that Vegeta has a brother.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Tarble is far more pacifistic than Vegeta and Saiyans in general.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Tarble looks like a smaller, younger version of Vegeta, who already looks like a smaller, younger version of his father.
• Token Heroic Orc: Among the Saiyans. After Frieza's death, he fights against the planet broker's remaining soldiers when they begin to terrorize worlds for their own ends.
• Took a Level in Badass: He was born a reject with a low power level. By the time of the special, he is strong enough that he was able to give somewhat of a fight against Abo and Kado, who were by that point even with Frieza's first form.
• The Unfavorite: Was exiled for being too weak and kind. However Vegeta, who would have killed him on the spot for being a weakling (like Nappa) 11 years ago, has become "nice" enough by the time they reunited to merely find him extremely annoying. He also seems to have a peculiar taste in women, since according to Vegeta, Saiyans only choose strong women, but Gure is the complete opposite of this.
• Voodoo Shark: Claims to be as strong as Frieza's first form... despite the fact that he's a pacifist, making it a question as to how he could do this in the first place without constantly fighting or having some special training method, but nothing is explicitly ever said.
• White Sheep: The only known Saiyan besides Yamoshi (who has been long dead) and Gine who's heroic from the start. Extra points for being from the royal family, which has produced some especially jerkish Saiyans.

Saiyan Elite

Nappa

Nappa (ナッパ)

Voiced by (Japanese): Shōzō Iizuka (Z, Dragon Ball Heroes), Kiyoyuki Yanada (GT), Tetsu Inada (Kai and most media from 2009 onward)
Voiced by (English): Michael Dobson (Ocean dub); Christopher Sabat (Z 2000-2001 and Bardock the Father of Goku; originally), Phil Parsons (All media from 2002 onward), Dylan Thompson (Z ep. 104; originally), Sean Schemmel (Z ep. 93 flashback only) (Funimation dub); Dave Pettitt (Blue Water dub); Paul Bandey (AB Groupe/"Big Green" dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): José Luis Castañeda (Z, GT and DBS: Broly), Héctor Reynoso (Kai)

"What's wrong? Oh wait, don't tell me. I think I know what you need. A nice trip to the afterlife. One way, of course."

Vegeta's partner and fellow surviving Saiyan. Practically dominates all of the Z Fighters in their fight till Goku arrives and easily beats him down. Vegeta then finishes him off thinking he was being weak; of course, he was very very wrong on that front.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite not having much of a personality outside of being a sadistic brute who murders all the Earth's defenders outside of Gohan and Krillin (and it wasn't from a lack of trying), it's hard not to feel sympathy for him after Vegeta kills him in cold blood. Especially since Nappa has been nothing but loyal to Vegeta since he was a child and never saw the betrayal coming. He even pitifully croaks "Thanks, boss." in the Kai dub. It becomes a bit tragic when Vegeta, who was the more evil of the two, ends up redeeming himself. Nappa could have probably redeemed himself too if he had the chance.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Like all Saiyans, he embodies this trope to the full extent. He was close to being unstoppable until Goku came and broke his back.
• Ax-Crazy: Nappa's brutally sadistic and violent, and completely loses what sanity he had when Goku kicks his ass.
• Back for the Dead: He escapes from Hell in GT alongside other villains from across the series and destroys a city before Vegeta appears before him, insults him for his Dumb Muscle tendencies, and obliterates him once more. Really his only contribution was ridding the landscape of its population so Vegeta and the other Z-Fighters can use it to subsequently do battle with Super Android #17 undeterred.
• Badass Armfold: Shares it with Vegeta.
• Bald of Evil: More of a greyish, but still obviously bad streak. In Heroes, when Nappa gets Super Saiyan forms, the fact that he has no hair is worked around by causing his facial hair to grow.
• Benevolent Boss: He has obvious pride in his Saibamen and trusts them to defeat the Z-Fighters. He is clearly shaken when Vegeta kills one for failing him and tells the remaining ones to go all out.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: The big to Vegeta's little. Naturally for this series, he's the weaker of the two.
• Blinded by Rage: During his fight with Goku, Nappa completely loses his shit and is practically foaming at the mouth with rage. Vegeta even calls him out on it despite having anger issues of his own.
  Vegeta: Nappa! Don't be a fool! Calm down! How do you expect to win when you're so mad, you can't even see straight?!
  • Ironically, it is implied that Vegeta used this against Nappa when he killed him again in GT.
• Blood Knight: He really loves fighting and causing destruction. Then again, it's a requirement for any good Saiyan's résumé.
• Breath Weapon: His "greatest technique", even better than the one that scored a One-Hit Kill on Piccolo. Goku instantly counters it with a quick blast of his own.
• The Brute: Nappa solves his problems with force, yet listens to his superior obediently.
• The Cameo: After Vegeta kills him again in GT, Nappa can be seen entering Hell and encountering Piccolo alongside Staff Officer Black, General Blue, and Major Metallitron. He even gets a proper line of dialogue at that moment.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He demolishes Tenshinhan and Chaozu, beating the former so badly that his arm literally breaks off and No-Selling both of their last-ditch Heroic Sacrifice attacks. However...
• Curb Stomp Cushion:
  • Piccolo, Gohan, and Krillin manage to put up a good fight against Nappa working together, even though he eventually thrashes them all. Part of what makes the fight with him so narratively effective is that the heroes come so close to winning several times, only for their effort to fail by the slightest margins (for example, he himself admits he would have been in serious trouble had Gohan followed through on their first team attack, and Vegeta said Krillin's Kienzan would have killed him if he didn't dodge). Also, while regular attacks from the likes of Tenshinhan and Krillin are in the straight-up No-Sell range for him, he does take noticeable damage whenever he gets hit by Piccolo or Gohan. The former leaves a bruise on his face with his first punch, draws Blood from the Mouth, and leaves a burn mark on his back with a ki blast. The latter sends Nappa flying with a kick, puts a large gash on his forehead, and burns Nappa's hand a bit when the brute slaps away his Masenko.
  • Despite being outclassed by Goku, Nappa is such a Determinator that he can fight somewhat evenly with Goku when he calms down to try and fight the Saiyan who is twice as powerful as him. It takes Goku using Kaio-ken to actually put him down for good - which Goku normally foregoes due to its incredible strain - and even then Goku had to break Nappa's spine instead of going with the traditional beat-em-till-they-faint approach.
• The Dragon: To Vegeta, even though he was a full adult when Vegeta was still a child.
• Dumb Muscle: Nappa isn't that smart (choosing to solve every problem with violence) and follows Vegeta's every order. Despite being a veteran warrior, he also seems to lack knowledge of certain ki techniques, as shown when he tried to tank Krillin's Kienzan, which Vegeta could immediately tell was a specialized cutting attack.
• Et Tu, Brute?: His last moments are spent begging Vegeta to help him after Goku thoroughly beat him, and he literally gives him a hand...only for Vegeta to toss him into the air. Nappa can only spend mere seconds of shock before Vegeta blows him up.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: In the Japanese original and the Latin American Spanish dub, Gohan insults Nappa's mother, which angers him. The English dub (both the original and Kai) changes this to Gohan saying that Nappa smells.
• Even Evil Has Standards: To Vegeta, a lot.
  • His first reaction to hearing about the Dragon Balls is to suggest using them to wish back their fallen comrade, Raditz, which Vegeta rejects, saying that Raditz deserved to die if he got killed by weak Earthlings.
  • Another, later anime-only sequence shows a flashback where Nappa talks about how bummed he is that the Saiyans got exterminated, while Vegeta says that they all deserved to die for being weak (note that his own parents were among those killed). Both he and Raditz are greatly bewildered when Nappa points out that Frieza killed their entire race and Vegeta already knew it and didn't care.
  • He is visibly shocked when Vegeta kills off one of the Saibamen after it lost to Tien. Vegeta says that the Saibaman didn't take his opponent seriously, to which Nappa replies "But still... it was alive!", and tells the next Saibaman to go all-out this time.
  • He never saw Vegeta killing him coming, at all, especially since he did it while he was asking for help.
  • In Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Nappa and the other two adult Saiyans are shocked at how little concern young Vegeta and Raditz show about the fact that their respective younger brothers might be dead and their parents definitely are dead. Makes sense when you remember that Nappa was later driven into a rage by Gohan insulting his mother.
• Evil Is Bigger: He's huge and muscle-bound, towering over the Z-Fighters and Vegeta.
• Fantastic Racism: Much like Raditz, Nappa cares little for anyone who isn't a fellow Saiyan. He mostly hates Goku because he considers him a traitor to the Saiyan race. When he learns about the Dragon Balls, he wants to use them to bring back Raditz before Vegeta dismisses the idea.
• For the Evulz: His very first act upon arriving on Earth is to blow up East City simply because he could.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Goku puts him out of commission by breaking his back, after which Vegeta kills Nappa himself.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Seriously, he gets worked up and/or angry so easily that Vegeta looks perfectly rational in comparison.
• Having a Blast: His Volcano Explosion/Giant Storm technique, where he uses his ki to create massive explosions just by raising two fingers. It's quite possibly his Signature Move.
• Hero Killer: Although Nappa only directly kills Piccolo, his actions lead to the deaths of Chiaotzu and Tien Shinhan via failed Heroic Sacrifices. He also planted the Saibamen, so Yamcha's death is on his hands as well.
• Hot-Blooded: He's very passionate about fighting and killing, second only to Vegeta. This gets him in trouble with Goku since he begins to lose his temper as Goku mercilessly beats him. He only calms down after Vegeta yells at him.
• Ignored Epiphany: In the English dub of an anime-filler episode, Nappa seems to like the idea of being thought of as a hero by the people of planet Arlia after he and Vegeta liberate the planet from King Moai. This does not stop him from laughing when Vegeta destroys the planet.
• Informed Flaw:
  • Some databooks describe Nappa with a power of only 4,000 but he is capable of fighting Goku who supposedly doubles him in power. (At this point in the series, having double the power represented a one-sided fight). In the manga itself, Nappa, Goku and Vegeta all have lines that instead suggest Goku and Nappa are roughly on the same level (When Vegeta says Goku's power is over 8,000, Nappa is in denial and says Goku will never be a match for him, instead of denying that Goku is stronger than him. After Nappa calms down, he fights Goku better, and Goku, who was pretty confident about fighting Nappa, now says that the fight will take forever to end. Vegeta says the same thing soon after). Another detail from databooks that make Nappa's power level only being 4,000 nonsensical is Piccolo, who is stated to have a power level of 3,500, yet Piccolo is way more outmached against Nappa, than Nappa himself is against Goku, who supposedly has twice as much power.
  • Even though Goku describes him as Unskilled, but Strong, when he calms himself down he is capable of showing enough skill to fight a much more powerful opponent like Goku, even when Vegeta knows that Nappa can't win anyway.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: In Kai, after Gohan throws a plethora of insults his way, the one Nappa gets offended by was "You smell".
  Nappa: It's not my fault! I've been cooped up in a space pod for a year, what do you expect?!
• Jerkass: As a born-and-raised Saiyan, it's a guarantee. It doesn't get much worse than laughing in the face of someone who just witnessed their friends dying senseless deaths.
• Killed Off for Real: After being killed by Vegeta, he never came back (except for a very brief cameo in GT). Justified as canonly, all those who lead villainous lives go to Hell and have their souls cleansed for Reincarnation, which is probably what happened
• Leeroy Jenkins: Nappa is such an arrogant fighter and believed that the Z Fighters were so weak, that dodging their attacks was unnecessary. When Gohan assaulted him with a Masenko blast using all of his energy, Nappa chose to deflect the blast with his bare hands instead of simply moving out of the way. He tried to do the same to Krillin's Destructo Disk and had it not been for Vegeta's warning, Nappa would have paid the price for underestimating his foes.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: While a ruthless Saiyan, unlike Vegeta, Nappa seems to care about the Saiyans and speaks of reviving Raditz before Vegeta shuts him up. He's also shocked when Vegeta kills a Saibaman for failing him. Surprisingly for this trope, Nappa is not who ends up being redeemed, Vegeta is.
• Little Bit Beastly: Like all Saiyans, Nappa has a tail that he wears around his waist like a belt.
• Made of Iron: Even Goku is surprised by how much resistance he has. Note that Goku is twice as strong as Nappa, and yet Nappa still kept getting up, despite beating after beating. Goku had to break his spine to put him down for good.
• Mars Needs Women: Discussed; when they see how powerful Saiyan-human hybrids like Gohan are, Nappa suggests to Vegeta that they conquer the Earth, then mate with the human women to breed a race of powerful warriors. Vegeta shoots the idea down on the grounds that it would be stupid to breed a race of warriors that would one day be more powerful than they are.
• Momma's Boy: Implied in the Japanese anime, where Gohan quips during the three-hour break that "(Nappa's) mother's belly button sticks out!" Nappa is flabbergasted at how Gohan could've known this.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: Zigzagged. He's big and easily wipes the floor with most of the Z-Fighters... and at the same time, Goku and Vegeta - both of whom are considerably smaller than Nappa - beat him effortlessly.
• Noble Demon: Despite being a mass-murdering planet destroyer, Nappa was extremely loyal to Vegeta, and just seemed to follow his orders. He was also the only one who stood up to Frieza and was shocked when he heard that Vegeta didn't care about the Saiyans dying.
• Noodle Incident: How he lost his hair according to Akira Toriyama is a complete mystery.
• Offended by an Inferior's Success: He doesn't take the idea of learning that the lower class Goku is stronger than him very well.
• Old Retainer: Strange as it sounds, this is probably the trope that comes closest to describing his intimate-by-Saiyan-standards relationship with Vegeta, given that the latter still considers himself royalty. The Bardock special and Dragon Ball Super's Broly movie show him serving Vegeta even in his childhood.
• Older Sidekick: To Vegeta. He served Vegeta back when Vegeta was a child while Nappa was a fully grown adult.
• Older Than They Look: Official statements reveal that while his Saiyan genes give him the appearance of someone in their mid-late 30s, he is actually more than 50 years old. This makes him the oldest saiyan in canon going by birthdates and the timeline (though due to his constant use of the time chamber, Vegeta is also in his 50s by the end of Z). The only sign of his age is his baldness (he had hair when he was younger).
• Person of Mass Destruction: He has a lot of fun blowing up cities and destroying the navy when he reaches Earth.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Like Vegeta, he looks down on Goku for being a low-class Saiyan, and is driven to a Villainous Breakdown over the fact that Goku is overpowering him.
  Nappa: You're not stronger than me, you little runt! Your strength was tested when you were a baby! You're a third-class Saiyan! I'm a Saiyan Elite, you low-class dog!!
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: He's a Saiyan and displays the brutality of said race moreso than any later additions to the Saiyan race. Only Vegeta is crueler than Nappa.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He fights by basically playing with his prey and has a tantrum when Goku beats him up.
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": Like most generic brutes, Nappa treats the futile deaths of his opponents as good entertainment. This leaves him off-guard when Son Goku shows up and proceeds to smack him around.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He's the red to Vegeta's blue. Think about that for a moment.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Upon escaping from Hell in the Super 17 arc of GT, Nappa, instead of heeding Vegeta's friendly advice to leave town, instead attempts to kill Vegeta out of revenge for killing him due to his broken back. Predictably, he fails.
• Sadist: He's a very typical Saiyan. He loves to play with his food.
• Satellite Character: He's almost entirely defined by his relationship to Vegeta, there are some aspects of him that don't relate to the Prince, but they are mostly minor.
• Slasher Smile: When he's not losing his temper, he's grinning sadistically.
• Signature Move: Giant Storm, the move he uses to level East City. More so than an actual finishing move of his.
• Smarter Than They Look: Despite Nappa seeming like a big dumb brute, and he is, he's got more intelligence and empathy than one would think. He also was a general for the Saiyan army (according to the English dub), something he couldn't have gotten by being dumb.
• Space Pirates: He is a space pirate along with all his fellow Saiyans. As he flies over the Earth during the three-hour break, he muses about how much money they will get from selling Earth since it is so beautiful.
• Theme Naming: Like all Saiyans, he's named after a vegetable (Napa cabbage).
• This Cannot Be!: His reaction when Goku, a low-class Saiyan warrior, hands him his ass. Before that, there was also his reaction upon discovering from Vegeta that Goku's Power Level was over 9000.
  Nappa: What, 9,000?! There's no way that can be right! It can't!!
• Underestimating Badassery: Despite knowing his high power level, he mocks Goku about how he killed his friends and how they were all holding out hope that he would save them, but he came too late. Once Goku made sure Krillin and Gohan were safe, he proceeded to beat the daylights out of Nappa.
• Underwear of Power: Wears trunks like many members of Frieza's army. Shortly before killing Piccolo, Nappa sheds his armor.
• Unskilled, but Strong: According to Goku; he admits that while Nappa is indeed powerful, Goku would be more impressed if Nappa actually knew how to use his strength. He did show some skill in fighting the other Z-Fighters, though, and to his credit he does focus himself and power up during his fight with Goku - it just didn't help much.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: In GT. Having died and gone to hell, he probably got a power-up after coming back, but he couldn't train to get stronger. And Vegeta was already orders of magnitude stronger than when he killed Nappa the first time around. Vegeta easily one-shots him with little effort.
• Villainous Breakdown: He flips out when Goku kicks his ass.
• Villainous Friendship: He thought he had one with Vegeta. Despite Vegeta being Nappa's prince, Nappa typically addressed him in a casual manner instead of calling him "Sir", or "Your highness", which Vegeta didn't seem to mind. Nappa was loyal to Vegeta, proudly admitting that Vegeta was far more powerful than him. When Nappa was crippled by Goku, he thought Vegeta would help him. Unfortunately, Nappa's trust was misplaced, and Vegeta killed him in cold blood.
  • It should be noted that in the original Japanese, Vegeta's royal lineage was not mentioned in either the manga or anime until Dodoria revealed that Frieza destroyed the Saiyan homeworld and stated that he was spared because Frieza figured his great power would prove useful to the Frieza Force. Nappa only mentioned beforehand that Vegeta was named after their home planet with no mention of a royal title, making their not-quite-equal partnership seen during the Saiyan arc seem more plausible.
• Villainous Valor: You gotta hand it to him, he never even thought about surrendering during his fight against Goku, despite being horribly outmatched. Vegeta has to call him off, which he only begrudgingly accepts.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Viciously Averted. Piccolo, Krillin, and Gohan believe that grabbing Nappa's tail will render him helpless, much like Raditz. When Piccolo grabs his tail, however, Nappa elbows him on the head, rendering Piccolo unconscious for several minutes. Vegeta mocks them for thinking that elites like Nappa and him would allow such an obvious weakness to go unchecked. Funny thing, Krillin should have known this could have happened since Goku overcame this weakness when he was a child and also didn't bring it up when Goku suggested the same strategy to use on Raditz (which luckily did work).
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Surprisingly, Nappa shows concern for the Saibamen under his command.
• The Worf Effect:
  • He defeats all of the Z-Fighters who had trained to fight him, killing half of them, including Piccolo. Then Goku comes and curb-stomps him.
  • To show how much more powerful Vegeta is compared to Nappa, Vegeta turned him into dust with one powerful attack. Granted, Nappa was weakened and injured, but it stands out since Goku needed to power up to cripple Nappa, while Vegeta wasn't even winded from using so much energy.
• Would Hurt a Child: Has no problems fighting Gohan, who was only 5 years old when he came to Earth. Blue-and-Orange Morality is in play on this one, as Vegeta was about the same age when he was ranked as the strongest Saiyan, so Saiyans clearly aren't biased by age.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: When Goku arrives on the battlefield and sees the bodies of his friends, he realizes that Chiaotzu is missing; cue Nappa gloating about how Chiaotzu blew himself up in a futile attempt to kill him.
  Nappa: Strong little runt. You could say he went out with a bit of a bang.
• You Have Failed Me: After Goku breaks Nappa's back, Vegeta - after grabbing Nappa's hand to seemingly help him up, hurls him into the air - tells Nappa that he won't be such a disappointment when he's dead, and then annihilates him with a powerful beam attack. Note that at this juncture, Vegeta could have just stuffed him back in his own ship and had Nappa put back into a medical tank when they got back. Vegeta was just that much of a bastard.

Paragus (Super)

Paragus (パラガス, Paragasu)

This is our chance my son, attack!!

Voiced by (Japanese): Katsuhisa Hōki
Voiced by (English): Dameon Clarke
Voiced by (Latin America Spanish): Roberto Sen

The father of Broly, and a former colonel of the Saiyans. After his son was exiled by King Vegeta due to his immense power level, he followed his son's path to Planet Vampa in order to rescue him, getting stranded in the process. Forty years later, he was found by the Frieza Force and joined alongside his son in order to have his revenge on the Saiyan royal bloodline.

For the old-movies version, see here.

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• Abled in the Adaptation: Downplayed. He's still missing his left eye, but in his origin story, he retains his eye when he was middle-aged.
• Abusive Parents: Broly may have had it easier as a whole than his movie 8 versions, but Paragus still essentially enslaves him to carry out his revenge on the Vegeta family. He treats Broly more like an attack dog than a son, using a shock collar to control his fits of rage and even forbidding him from trying to befriend the local wildlife on Vampa.
• Adaptational Modesty: The original Paragus has no sleeves and wears short spandex that shows his legs, while in here, Paragus has sleeves and wears a skirt that covers his legs. This is revealed to be a recent change courtesy of the Frieza Force, as his Saiyan Army attire was similar to the original's.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: While still an awful person, Paragus is much less cruel than in the first Broly movie. Paragus only wants Vegeta dead as opposed to unleashing Broly on the South Galaxy and enslaving a race of aliens like in his debut. In addition, the original Paragus intended on abandoning Broly and leaving him for dead when he could no longer control him, while here, he outright begs Frieza to save Broly when it looks like he's going to die against Goku.
• Age Lift:
  • In the old movies, Paragus looked middle-aged. In Super, he is now an old man with gray hair. Justified since the new movie takes place about 13 years or so after the time period the old movies were set, and the movie's flashbacks depict him in his middle-aged appearance.
  • This is also applicable with the young versions, in the old movies Paragus looked like a young adult when Broly was born, In Super, he looked middle-aged.
• Alas, Poor Villain: The film seems to present his death as this. He has a legitimately tragic backstory, and toward the end, he realizes that Broly's power is growing unstable, and tries to get him to stop before he either dies or destroys everything, finally remembering how much he loved Broly and begging Frieza to save his son, only to be betrayed and killed by Frieza, while Broly is torn apart by his father's death. However, his death is also a Karmic Death.
• Ambiguous Situation: Paragus never makes it clear if he cares about Broly's safety as a tool for his revenge or because he still cares about his son in his own twisted way.
• Asshole Victim: He is better than the original Paragus, yes, but his abuse of Broly is still so utterly vile that you'll be forgiven if you enjoy watching him die.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Frieza in Dragon Ball Super: Broly. Frieza is the more dangerous of the two and lives through the movie, but Paragus' grudge against King Vegeta drives the plot.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Paragus hinges his entire revenge scheme on Broly. This wouldn't be a problem if he could actually control his rampaging son, which he loses the ability to do after Cheelai steals his remote. When Broly goes to fight the Saiyans, all he can do is stand in horror and watch, before being offhandedly killed by Frieza to motivate Broly's transformation into a Super Saiyan.
• Canon Immigrant: Paragus was created for the Dragon Ball Z: Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan movie, but thanks to Broly's popularity, he was included in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, although reinvented from his original concept.
• Colonel Badass: Prior to the destruction of Planet Vegeta, he was the commanding Colonel of the Saiyan Army.
• Combat Pragmatist: Not only does he have no compunctions against using a blaster, but he seems to prefer to do so despite not really needing it with a power level 4200.^note It's possible he uses it because it provides a cleaner kill than a ki attack
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: It can be argued that Paragus might have cared about Broly in the beginning much like his 1993 counterpart, as shown by his frantic literal flight from King Vegeta's palace to rescue his son from Vampa. However, his obsessive vengeance quest eventually wore away any compassion he may have had for his boy; and compounded with four decades of isolation on a hellish death-world warped what little remaining love he had for Broly into a sense of possessive entitlement; an all too sadly common trait among parents who hate their talented children yet still mooch off their success through guilt trips. To his credit however, Paragus eventually remembers how much he loved Broly when he thinks he's about to lose him. Unfortunately, by the time he realizes this Frieza had other ideas...
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Rather than Broly crushing him to death in an escape pod, Frieza murders him so that Broly will become a Super Saiyan.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: It's implied that Broly is psychologically dependent on Paragus after being raised by him alone on Vampa. But whatever the reason, Broly truly loved his father, and Paragus' death is what makes Broly angry enough to turn Super Saiyan for the first time.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite abusing Broly and using him as a tool for revenge, Paragus still maintained his love for him. When Broly could no longer be controlled and looked like he was about to be killed by Goku, rather than abandoning Broly, Paragus begs Frieza to save him.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Downplayed. Bardock and King Vegeta were both Saiyans, and thus complicit in numerous wide-scale murders, but for all their faults, they both sincerely loved their children. Paragus, however, sees Broly more as a weapon so that he can get his revenge on Vegeta than an actual son, and is more enraged for his snubbed pride than any pain his son may have suffered. If we're talking about Tarble, then Paragus and King Vegeta are equally awful parents.
  • He is also this to Caulifla. Unlike her treating Kale with care and like and a good friend, Paragus treats Kale's counterpart, Broly, with cruelty and as a weapon owner.
• Foil:
  • To Piccolo of all people. Both of them train a young and gentle child with unimaginable potential in the middle of a wasteland with the goal of using them as a tool for revenge and evil. The one thing separating their stories is that Gohan's kindness changed Piccolo's heart from a ruthless murderer focused only on killing Goku to an honorable warrior who protects the innocent and a member of the very family Piccolo himself wished to destroy, while despite Broly's love for his father Paragus, Paragus remains an evil, abusive, son of a bitch until its too late to come back.
  • To Caulifla, being the Kid with the Leash to a freak of nature in Saiyan form. While Caulifla is friends with Kale and reins in her psychotic rampages with kindness, eventually stabilizing her to the point where she can control her full power, Paragus abuses Broly and uses pain to keep him in line.
• Freudian Excuse: Just like his Movie 8 version, this version hates the Vegeta family, but instead of trying to kill both him and his son, Broly was sent away to a remote planet by himself. This action by King Vegeta seriously pissed him off. However, his anger mostly stemmed from his bruised pride than any pain suffered on Broly's part. As his treatment of Broly shows, Paragus isn't justified in forcing his petty vendetta on his son, who has no personal interest in it.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: While it is a bit too generous to say that Paragus was having a full Heel–Face Turn it's clear near the end of the movie that he is horrified by Broly's dangerously increasing strength and tries to get him to calm down before Broly either dies or completely destroys everything. To bad for him Frieza has become captivated by his son's power and thus Paragus is murdered by the tyrant in order for Broly to become a Super Saiyan.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He's a vengeful, murderous asshole, but when you consider that Broly is mentally unstable and can destroy whole worlds, it's more understandable that he'd feel he had to use extreme measures to keep Broly in line.
• Karmic Death: He treacherously kills Beets by firing a single blaster shot through his heart. He meets his own end when Frieza decides to betray him and fires a single energy blast through his heart.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Towards the later part of the film, he starts screaming for Broly to surrender, believing that he's not strong enough to stand against true Super Saiyans like Goku and Vegeta. He winds up being right, but his son gives a much better fight than he thought he was going to.
• Light Is Not Good: Like his original incarnation, he wears white and his past self is shown with the same white cape as his previous incarnation, while his recent outfit has white with a lighter shade of color (namely pink) and these clothes are not telling of his alignment.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Frieza gives him the "a meteor destroyed Planet Vegeta" story, and no indication is given that he ever learns that Frieza destroyed Planet Vegeta before his own death.
  • He's also completely shocked when he witnesses Vegeta's Super Saiyan transformation, not knowing anything about a transformation that has been in play for at least a decade in the story.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Paragus seems to realize near the end of the movie that his constant desire to train Broly into a tool of vengeance was a terrible mistake when Broly's increasingly growing strength destroys his sanity and turns him into a universal threat. He even realizes that King Vegeta's warning about Broly may have been right after all and desperately tries to get Broly to stand down to no avail.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Paragus doesn't engage the heroes himself, preferring to leave all the fighting to his son. Given that their power far exceeds his own, he's probably wise to abstain from any direct conflict. This proves to be a factor in his undoing, in that he hinges his entire vendetta on Broly's abilities, so when he starts to lose and fly off the handle, he descends into a Villainous Breakdown.
• Obviously Evil: Cheelai and Lemon immediately realize how badly Paragus' abuse has damaged Broly's mind. Broly still loves him anyway.
• Oh, Crap!: When he realizes that Frieza's about to kill him for his own plan.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Paragus has a power level of 4,200, which makes him stronger than any human in the Saiyan Saga. But in comparison to the protagonists, he is a Non-Action Big Bad.
• Papa Wolf: This version's reason to hate the Vegeta family is that his son Broly was exiled to a remote planet by King Vegeta. However, four decades of endless hatred and obsessively forging Broly into a weapon of revenge warped what love he has for the boy into a sense of entitlement; by the time Paragus and his son return to civilization, his rage stems less from any injustices inflicted on Broly, and more because he felt his pride was insulted.
• Pet the Dog: Granted, it was before we see how terrible a father he is, but he insisted Broly thank Cheelai for giving him food.
• Real Men Wear Pink: One of the last survivors of a warrior race and he wears a pink skirt.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Frieza executes Paragus and uses his death to trigger Broly's transformation into Super Saiyan.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: His body glove is purple and his vest has splashes of green.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In a weird way. Both versions of Paragus die in their first appearance, but while the original Paragus was killed approximately during the Cell arc, this version lives past the Universal Tournament.
• Tragic Villain: Just like the 1993 film continuity, King Vegeta robbed Paragus of a chance to be a father by driving father and son into desperation. Had he not been consumed by hatred and prioritized vengeance over his son's happiness, this Paragus (by Saiyan standards) would have had the chance to be a father just as loving as Bardock and Vegeta the Third. Paragus is as much a victim of the Vegeta Dynasty's callousness as his son is.
• Underwear of Power: Wears blue trunks before he is picked up in the modern day by Frieza.
• Undignified Death: Especially by Saiyan standards. Frieza kills him extremely casually while he is lying against a rock for support. He doesn't get any dramatic music, any last words, or even a chance to react much. It's not a warrior's end.
• The Unreveal: It's never revealed what exactly caused his blinded eye in this version.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: His treatment of Broly is out and out abuse, but he placed the shock collar around his son's neck to keep Broly's immense power restrained. Without it, a rampaging Broly could easily be a monumental threat to the entire universe. Or, at the very least, would've destroyed Vampa and gotten the two of them killed.
• Younger Than They Look: Paragus retains his original look when he was younger since he should be younger than 80. His older self is already in his 80s as Broly is in his early 40's.

Middle-class Saiyan

Raditz

Raditz (ラディッツ, Radittsu)

Voiced by (Japanese): Shigeru Chiba
Voiced by (English): Lane Pianta (Z Season 3; originally), Justin Cook (All media from 2002 onward) (Funimation dub); Jason Gray-Stanford (Z Season 1-2), Alistair Abell (Z Season 4; flashback) (Ocean dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Humberto Solórzano (main voice), Gerardo Reyero (Z, flashback ep. 47), César Soto (Z, flashback ep. 102), Salvador Delgado (Z, flashback ep. 104), Enrique Cervantes (Z, flashback ep. 182), Gisela Casillas (young, DBS: Broly)

Goku's older brother and the first villain introduced in the Z series. Raditz was sent to check up on Son Goku's progress of Earth's conquest and recruit him for Frieza's army, only to find his brother instead became Earth's hero. Incensed at how his brother turned out, Raditz kidnapped Son Gohan and order Goku to begin exterminating Earth's populace. Despite being fairly weak by Saiyan standards, Raditz was still far stronger than anyone Goku had fought at that point, prompting the legendary alliance between Goku and his former enemy Piccolo.

Whether he is considered Mid-class or Low-class seems to vary depending on who is writing and the source, though according to Toriyama, he is Mid-class.

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• Adaptational Badass:
  • Downplayed in Xenoverse, he's much more competent and less cowardly than his anime and manga counterpart, likely because he has powered up and was controlled by Towa, and yet he was still easily defeated.
    • There is also the fact that he is treated like a boss, while the Saibaman is a mook, even though in the original manga Raditz is just a bit stronger than a single Saibaman.
  • After decades of being nothing but an afterthought, Raditz finally gained a Super Saiyan form in Dragon Ball Heroes. And not just any Super Saiyan form: Super Saiyan 3!
  • A more subtle case in video games is his ability to use energy beams where ki is gathered in one point which improves the attack's strength, similar to Kamehameha, with "Double Sunday" and "Saturday Crush". In the manga, he's completely baffled when Piccolo and Goku use Special Beam Cannon and Kamehameha respectively, and the only ki attacks he uses are a basic energy beam, which while powerful, doesn't concentrate energy before fiting, and a single ki blast.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Played with. In the series, Raditz is just a Smug Snake with no redeemable characteristics whatsoever. Some games, following Character Exaggeration of him being a complete loser with an inferiority complex, including a Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 What If? and Dragon Ball Xenoverse story also give him daddy issues regarding Bardock.
• Adaptational Wimp: Not in power, but in status within the Saiyan army. In the manga and supplementary interviews, it is made clear that Raditz is a Mid-class warrior (which would make him elite in general terms), in the anime and other adaptations he is treated as if he were one of the weakest Saiyans ever, to the point that Daizenshuu 7 describes him as the lowest among the Saiyans.
• Arc Villain: Raditz begins the most recognized part of the Dragon Ball series.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy:
  • Raditz spends the vast majority of the fight against Goku and Piccolo boasting about his own superiority over them. And he's only a relatively mild example compared to Vegeta and Nappa...
  • Gets subverted as the arc goes on: while he is generally cocky and arrogant when he has the upper hand, he immediately begins to panic and turns into a Dirty Coward when he begins to lose control over a fight.
• Ax-Crazy: Not in the anime/manga itself, but some depictions of him in the games seem to accentuate his more hotheaded traits to the point of borderline insanity.
• Barbarian Long Hair: His long unruly hair often led fans to joke about what would happen to his hair if he went Super Saiyan 3. And now that he has, as per Super Dragon Ball Heroes, we can see that it's so long that it sweeps across the floor!
• Big Bad Wannabe: When Raditz first shows up, he seems to be an unstoppable menace the likes of which have never been seen before. But it turns out that in the larger scale of things, he's just glorified fodder for Vegeta. He becomes an even smaller fish compared to the overall pond of Frieza's mooks — especially since both Nappa and Vegeta are stronger than he is, and even a Saibaman is close to him in power (not counting his Oozaru form anyway), which the stronger Z-fighters are able to easily dispatch by the time Nappa and Vegeta arrive (Chiaozu, Yajirobe, and non-raged Gohan would still have trouble though). Even when he was a threat, Raditz was ill-prepared for the combat potential of Earthlings, as while he could shrug off their raw power, he was taken off-guard when Goku and Piccolo started raising their power levels by shedding weighted clothing and focusing their ki.
• Big Brother Bully: An extreme case for Goku. First, he kidnapped Goku's son (his nephew) and attempted to force Goku to kill one-hundred humans by the end of the day. When that didn't work, he tried to murder his brother for refusing to join him and attempted to kill Gohan for his hidden power. He's the textbook evil brother.
• Black Sheep: The only one of his family to have no redeemable features whatsoever, being the only one ruthless enough to murder his own brother and nephew. Even taking Goku out of the equation, Gine was a Token Good Teammate and Nice Girl, while canon Bardock at his worst was a Noble Demon and still legitimately cared for his sons and mate.
• Blood Knight: Like all Saiyans, Raditz loves to fight and has a strong blood-lust. He even tried to get Goku to join him by talking about all the battles and mass murder they could perform in space.
• Boys Like Creepy Critters: During his brief cameo in chapter 77 of Super, Kid!Raditz showed off his pet beetles to a couple of Saiyan kids. One of them was a little girl, who reacted with boredom, whilst sharply contrasting Raditz’s excitement.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Downplayed, but evident. Raditz was considered a Middle-class Saiyan by virtue of his power level (which in itself puts him in the minority of Saiyans able to reach that level), able to decimate the Earth should he have wanted to, but despite his decent power, his lack of putting hard work into his efforts made him vulnerable to the Saiyans genetic Weaksauce Weakness. Becomes increasingly glaring with every passing arc as Goku and Vegeta proceed to reach unfathomable heights in power while any Saiyan or Saiyan-human hybrid introduced afterwards could easily dwarf Raditz.
• The Brute: Raditz has few notable personality traits outside of being a thug and all of his screen time consists of brutally beating down the heroes, going out of his way to make them suffer for being weaker than him.
• Bullet Catch: He catches a bullet the First Contact Farmer shoots at him and throws it back, killing him with ease. This is just a bit of unnecessary murder on Raditz's part as he was in no danger as Goku has repeatedly demonstrated that Saiyans can't be killed with gunfire.
• Cain and Abel: The Cain to Goku's Abel, to the point that it results in the latter's first death.
• The Cameo: In GT during the Super 17 Saga, he can be spotted from a distance escaping from Hell alongside Cooler, Jeice, Android #19, Pui Pui, Yakon, Major Metallitron, and General Rilldo. Other than that, he is never shown being killed and sent back, though it obviously did happen in light of how powerful the heroes had become by that point.
• Character Exaggeration:
  • Some of the games exaggerate Raditz' more hotheaded traits and make him more crazed, when he spent the largest amount of his canon screentime being insufferably relaxed.
  • His supposed weakness also became this in the video games (and fandom), where it's insinuated that he was constantly mocked and developed an inferiority complex. There's absolutely zero indication of this in the original manga besides Vegeta calling him weak (he calls everyone weak). Nappa, while never personally liking him, at least considered him a useful comrade and suggested bringing him back to life, while still calling him a loser for getting himself killed before Vegeta shot the idea down. The Saibamen were said to be close to him in power (not as strong though; Toriyama himself stated Raditz was stronger than a Saibaman), but this was supposed to be an indication of how ridiculously powerful the Saibamen were, and it's shown later that most of Frieza's regular mooks are weaker than that (Gohan and Krillin had their power levels clocked at "around 1,500" and they killed two mooks in one hit each mere seconds after arriving on Namek). Toriyama dispelled this further in recent material when he confirmed that Raditz was seen as an above-average warrior and had him personally accompanying the prince in battle. In Super: Broly he's shown to look down on his younger brother for being a worthless low-class, implying by extension that he's of a higher rank.
• Child Soldiers: According to Dragon Ball Minus, Raditz became a full-fledged warrior at the age of seven. This seems typical of the Saiyans who send their babies into space.
• Contrived Coincidence: It's certainly fortuitous that Raditz neglected to train his tail so Goku could capitalize on grabbing it in order to weaken him. What Goku seemingly forgets is that by the time of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament, he learned to adapt his tail to no longer have that peculiar weakness. More bizarrely is that Krillin, who discovered firsthand in their match at said tournament, never acknowledges that either with his only contention that Goku might not be able to keep up with his brother to find an opportunity. It seems stretching credulity that neither of them would think that Raditz may have also trained his tail given that, unlike Goku, he likely knew exactly about his biology enough to understand how having a weak tail would be to his detriment. Even later, when Krillin, Piccolo, and Gohan try the same strategy on Nappa, only to discover that neither he nor Vegeta was negligent with their tails, Krillin acts as if such a thing had never happened before.
• Defiant to the End: Downplayed, as he had been a Dirty Coward for several minutes before then, but Raditz ends up taunting Piccolo and Goku about his allies (Nappa and Vegeta) coming to Earth in one year and spends his last moments relishing in the prospect of their onslaught. His confidence is bolstered by his assumption that they will surely resurrect him with the Dragon Balls (they don't).
• Depending on the Writer: Raditz is a Mid-class or a low-class varies depending on who is writing him. In Daizenshuu 7 and many video games, he is considered one of the weakest Saiyans in existence, while Toriyama mentions that Raditz was a middle-class warrior.
• Die Laughing: He spends his last moments laughing about how Vegeta and Nappa would (supposedly) revive him and avenge him.
• Dirty Coward: Rather ironic that he is one, considering that he comes from a race composed of Blood Knight Determinators who actually would prefer death when defeated in battle than living with the shame of losing, especially to someone of a weaker caste level than themselves. Begging for your life seems to be a trademark of Frieza's army. Also, Raditz in particular being a coward justifies his comparatively low power level: Saiyans get stronger after recovering from life-threatening injuries. Cowards are less likely to get those kinds of injuries.
• Elite Mook: He boasts of being an elite warrior, and severely beats up Goku and Piccolo. This is retroactively subverted, when after his death it is revealed that he was almost as weak as a Saibaman.
• Establishing Character Moment: Upon his introduction, Raditz expresses disappointment that Earth's population haven't been wiped out and executes a farmer with barely a thought. He then homes in on Piccolo, goads him into a fight and emrges from Piccolo's full-powered ki blast completely unscathed.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Zigzagged. Raditz felt not an ounce of sorrow when he finds out about Planet Vegeta’s destruction and he’s fully aware that his mother did not survive. And he was only a little kid when this happened, shocking even Napa himself. However, he did affectionately call her “Mom” and listen to her advice to not look at the full moon, but he only half-listens to where she and his father sent Goku. Flashbacks shows him having no problems with holding onto her hand.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Notably averted. He showed no sadness when learning about the death of his parents, and he had no problem with murdering his own brother and nephew. While he did show some respect for his mother, Gine, calling her "mom" and listening to her advice to not look at the full moon, showing he may have had a bit more care for her than the other members of his family, he still didn't seem too broken up about her death. When Goku recovers his memories, he briefly sees Raditz holding onto their mother’s hand as they watch Bardock happily wave goodbye as he leaves for work. It’s not clear if Raditz truly didn’t care over the death of his parents, or “acted” like he had No Sympathy to hide his pain in front of the other Saiyan survivors. Keep in mind that Vegeta and Nappa displayed a more respectful attitude towards their own parents and while Vegeta wasn't a great father to Trunks, he never wanted to see his son dead.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • In an anime-only flashback, both Raditz and Nappa are horrified to discover that Vegeta did not care that their race got wiped out, stating that they all deserved to die for being weak. Note that his own parents were among those killed. Nappa points out that Frieza destroyed their home planet, in turn killing off their entire race but Vegeta coldly states that he already knew it and didn't care, making Raditz and Nappa react with horror.
  • In Dragon Ball Super: Broly, young Raditz is visibly shocked that Vegeta cared little about Planet Vegeta's destruction besides "now I'll never be King Vegeta". While Raditz himself seems blaise about his own parents dying, he does wonder about where they took his brother, before brushing it aside.
• Evil Counterpart: To Goku. They both love to fight and were born on the low end of the power scale of Saiyan society. Goku is brave (not afraid of death) and chose to grow stronger instead of choosing to stay as a "low class." Raditz is a coward who begs for his life when he's about to be killed and remained weak because of his cowardice and his arrogance resulting in him even neglecting to train his tail, which a kid Goku even managed to realize and focus on. While Goku really loves a good fight, he loves his family just as much, but Raditz feels no love towards his family, given he unhesitatingly tried to kill his long-lost brother and nephew and felt no sadness towards his parent’s deaths.
• Evil Is Bigger: He stands nearly a head taller than Goku and is more muscular.
• Evil Sounds Deep: In the Japanese version, his voice in the anime is low and raspy, contrasting strongly with Goku's childlike voice. When combined with some other tropes, he ends up bearing very little resemblance to the rest of his family, especially given the fact that his family otherwise has Only Six Faces. Not counting Pan, he's notably the only biological relative of Goku's in the original Japanese anime not to be voiced by Masako Nozawa.
  • Inverted in the Ocean dub by Jason Gray-Stanford which is more tenor.
  • The Funimation Dub of Dragon Ball Super: Broly gives Raditz a noticably deep voice for a child.
• Evil Uncle: Kidnapped Gohan with the intent to raise him as a real Saiyan and uses him as bait for Goku. When Gohan attacks him in retaliation for gravely injuring his dad, Raditz decides to kill him so he won’t grown up with such an overwhelming power level.
  Raditz: You are the first Saiyan to ever damage me like this, my nephew. You are a true warrior, who is worthy of being a Saiyan. And so, I will give you a death that is also worthy of a Saiyan.
• Face Death with Dignity: For what it's worth, despite his fear and disbelief that he had been beaten by people he saw as lesser than him, Raditz spends his last moments confident his Saiyan comrades will come to Earth to avenge him and ravage the planet.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: A retroactive example. Despite claiming that he is an elite warrior, the further we get into the army that he was a part of, this seems to be more of a lie. A simple Saibaman is almost as strong as him and a group of random soldiers was laughing at a power of 1,000.
• Fantastic Racism: Like most Saiyans seen on-screen, he has a very low opinion of anyone who isn't a Saiyan. After Goku sacrificed himself to stop him, Raditz mourns that his brother would lay down his life for what he considers an inferior species.
• The Farmer and the Viper: During the fight, Goku grabs Raditz's tail to give Piccolo an opening to kill him with the Special Beam Cannon. Raditz begs Goku for mercy, promising to leave Earth if Goku does so; over Piccolo's protests, Goku grants Raditz's mercy... and Raditz promptly knocks Goku down and ruthlessly breaks his ribs, all while rubbing in his face how stupid it was of him to fall for it. When Gohan critically injures Raditz and Goku has him restrained so Piccolo can finish him off, Raditz tries the same trick again; unfortunately for him, Goku isn't dumb enough to fall for the same ploy twice.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Typical of Frieza's soldiers, Raditz wears a scouter on his left eye. He also wears red bands on his left bicep and left thigh.
• Fatal Flaw: Raditz is far more dependant on scouters than Vegeta or Nappa. He never considers that Goku or Piccolo might be masking their true strength and he's flummoxed when the scouter lists Gohan's power level as 710, which he initially dismissed as a malfunction. Goku and Piccolo fighting him from two sides while Gohan was graudually losing his temper meant that Raditz was easily distracted and soon found himself stuck in a checkmate.
• Foil:
  • To his little brother, Goku. Both are overachievers much like their father before them, born low-class yet fortunate enough to become elite by attrition after their race was wiped out. While Goku embraced the gentle heart given to him by his mother and works his entire life to break the limits of his birth, like his father, Raditz chose to embrace the ruthlessness of being a Saiyan while rejecting his mother's kind influence. Also, despite Goku's gentle and kind nature, he maintained his Saiyan pride and spirit, while Radtiz's Saiyan spirit has long been driven out of him despite his claims to the contrary.
  • He can also be seen as one to Cooler, of all characters - both are the older sibling of another character (Raditz to Goku, Cooler to Frieza) who hold their younger sibling in contempt, but is willing to put aside his differences with said sibling if a common enemy shows up (although will try to kill said sibling if the opportunity presents itself), only to be eventually surpassed by said younger sibling (Goku surpasses Raditz by becoming a Super Saiyan, while Frieza surpassed Cooler by obtaining his Golden Frieza form)^note for added bonus, both Raditz and Cooler died before Goku and Frieza obtained said forms. However, the difference is that Raditz's disdain for Goku came from the latter rejecting his violent Saiyan heritage, but otherwise, he had no problems with Goku; Cooler and Frieza have similar ruthless personalities, but Cooler considers Frieza an obstacle in conquering the universe.
• Forehead of Doom: Raditz has a big broad forehead emphasized by his Villanous Widows Peak.
• Flanderization: Raditz was always weaker than his two compatriots, but he had never shown anything but confidence in his strength, even being at death's door didn't stop him from being a Smug Snake. In most early games containing Z stories, there'll be a mention of Raditz being weak, which later games would then evolve to Raditz having some sore spot about being called or perceived as weak, and then modern games eventually change him to having a full blown Inferiority Superiority Complex.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Vegeta and Nappa have little respect for him and Vegeta scoffs at the idea of using the Dragon Balls to bring him back to life. Nappa does, however, care enough about him to suggest bringing him back to life, while still calling him an idiot for getting killed.
• Heel Realization: Granted, a non-canon one, but a what-if version of the Saiyan Saga that plays out in Budokai Tenkaichi 2 has Raditz suffer amnesia, train alongside Goku and Gohan, becoming a valued ally against Piccolo. He later regains his memories and grudgingly (due to the threat of Vegeta and Nappa) resumes his conquest of the Earth. He is trounced by the combined might of Goku, Krillin, Gohan, and Piccolo, and learns what "true strength" is: defending those who cannot defend themselves. In addition, Raditz gets a (surprisingly touching) dream sequence where he admits to his long-dead father that he not only misses him, but that Raditz—despite his boasts—considers himself a weakling. At the end of the story, Raditz pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to stop Vegeta and Nappa from reaching the Earth (by crashing his ship into theirs), warning his young sibling about the threat of an even greater monster that the Saiyans serve.
• Horrible Judge of Character:
  • Raditz apparently believed that Nappa and Vegeta would revive him after they got to Earth, as he says that his only regret is that he won't be back in time to see them kill the people of Earth. On the contrary, while Nappa does indeed suggest reviving Raditz, Vegeta shoots the idea down, stating that reviving a weakling like Raditz would be a waste, instead opting to wish for immortality. Nappa does not argue against this and quickly agrees.
  • Raditz figured out Goku had this issue and when facing certain death begged Goku not to allow Piccolo to kill off his own brother, all the while acting like his previous demeanor was just an act.
• Hot-Blooded: While relatively calm when compared to Vegeta and Nappa, Raditz becomes this when he's in full battle mode.
• Hypocrite: He outright declares Goku - his own brother - a disgrace to all Saiyans for his soft nature, when Raditz himself isn't a credit to their race. As a whole, Saiyans are Blood Knights who would rather die than live with the shame of defeat, especially when their opponent is weaker, whereas Raditz is a Smug Snake and a Dirty Coward who bullies others weaker than him and begs for his life as soon as realizes Piccolo's attack can kill him.
• Informed Attribute:
  • In one of the dubs Bulma notes that he looks like Goku once he announces he's the latter's brother. In the manga, Frieza sees a resemblance between Raditz and Gohan. Keep in mind Goku and Gohan have very gentle faces while Raditz has a very villainous face. He actually resembles Vegeta more than anyone else.
  • In Raditz's own words - and in Toriyama's - he was an elite warrior, but considering that after his death, a Saibaman was revealed to be as strong as him, that is hard to believe.
• Irony: During his "Reason You Suck" Speech to Goku, he claims that their parents would be ashamed of him for turning out so weak and that he isn't a true Saiyan warrior since he lacks their ruthless and cold nature. This is ironic in a number of ways. The first was that their mother was a failed soldier and their father fell in love with her despite this fact. Bardock also came to embrace his softer side, which is why Goku is even on Earth. Second, Raditz succumbed to fear in the face of death, while his father and his "soft" brother both showed cold defiance to their killers.
• I Surrender, Suckers: After his tail is grabbed and he is at the mercy of Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon, Raditz swears to leave in peace if Goku spares his life. Goku takes him at his word and lets him go, only to be kicked in the face and have his ribs broken.
• It Only Works Once: Begging Goku for mercy when faced with the Special Beam Cannon worked the first time. Thankfully, Goku wasn't stupid enough to fall for the same ploy twice.
• Jerkass: It wasn't enough that he bullies his opponents in a fight. He also came to visit his baby brother when he grew up only to force him into destroying the planet he's on and had no hesitation in kidnapping his nephew and trying to murder his baby brother if he didn't do as he said. He's basically a horrible person who's perfectly fine with killing his own family members if they don't obey him.
• Kick the Dog:
  • He kidnaps his own nephew so he can 'raise' him into a proper Saiyan, and bait Goku into joining them after he kills one-hundred humans.
  • After receiving mercy from his brother, he knocks him down and sadistically crushes all his ribs while saying that Goku is a soft-hearted idiot. He then tries to murder Gohan because he had a higher battle power than him. This becomes even worse when you consider that his mother was also soft-hearted and would have been upset by Raditz's behavior.
• Killed Off for Real: Unlike a lot of the DBZ villains, Raditz never comes back. You'd think being Goku's brother he'd play a bigger role. Justified since the threat level of every successive villain completely dwarfed Raditz.
  • Being mundane by Saiyan standards and a vile Jerkass guaranteed that upon dying in the manga he'd undergo purification in Hell before eventually being reincarnated.
  • He appears only briefly in the background◊ in GT when the villains escape from Hell, since the anime allows every character to maintain a corporeal form in the afterlife.
• Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: While he does initially try to convince Goku to join him when Goku makes it clear he won't join Frieza's army, Raditz snaps, declaring his brother a Category Traitor who deserves to die. When Gohan, his four-year-old nephew, attacks and gravely injures him, Raditz immediately tries to kill him too. Thankfully, Goku's Heroic Sacrifice prevents him from doing so.
  Raditz: The true warrior never hesitates to kill... not even to kill his own brother!
• Knight of Cerebus: As soon as he arrived on Earth and delivered the Wham Line that Goku is in fact a member of an elite ruthless alien warrior race, you knew that the tone and direction of the series would be changed forever. So much so that for the anime, his appearance officially marked the transition from the original series to Z.
• Lack of Empathy:
  • He notably takes advantage of Goku's own empathy, and pummels him as a result, laughing at his younger brother's gullibility. Of course, he should've thought about doing this in front of Gohan... On the other hand, he does express genuine grief that Goku would actually sacrifice himself for what he considers to be a bunch of weaklings unworthy of protection.
  • This has been a consistent thing with him since he was a child, with him barely caring about the destruction of his race or the death of his parents, which shocks even Nappa.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Raditz suffers this—in an echo of his younger brother's memory loss—in the Tenkaichi 2 what-if version of the Saiyan Saga mentioned above. Raditz's memory loss is brought about by a defective Saibaman exploding in his face. While Raditz retains all of his might (and pent-up resentment at being called "weak"), he becomes more docile. His full memory is painfully reawakened upon seeing Gohan's tail.
• Little Bit Beastly: He has a tail, which shocks Goku and his friends since it's exactly like the tail Goku had as a child. Serves as Five-Second Foreshadowing when one shot of his hair being flipped up shows the base of that furry "belt" was connected to the end of his spine.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Goku and everyone else were very surprised when he announced himself as his brother.
• Made of Iron: Raditz took on Piccolo's strongest ki blast without any hint of steeling himself and wasn't the least bit scuffed. He also isn't directly killed by Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon immediately and lasts a minute or two taunting the former and Goku afterward, and he would have probably lasted even longer had Piccolo not caved his head in.
• Mauve Shirt: Frieza at least knows his name and he would be considered fairly powerful among the ranks of the Frieza Force.
• Mirror Character: Goku. Both are overachievers much like their father before them, born low-class yet fortunate enough to become elite by attrition after their race was wiped out. While Goku embraced the gentle heart given to him by his mother and works his entire life to break the limits of his birth, like his father, Raditz chose to hide behind others stronger than him while embracing the ruthlessness of being a Saiyan, rejecting his mother's kind influence.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Telling Piccolo about the upcoming Saiyan invasion allows the Z-fighters to train enough to be a challenge to Nappa via attrition and pragmatism. The result was that the Earthlings easily beat their saibamen, which ends up allowing things to last much longer than they would have otherwise.
• Noodle Incident: It's never stated in Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku or Dragon Ball Super: Broly how Raditz learned of his brother both being alive and on Earth seeing how he was unaware of his parents' intentions and had no contact with them afterward.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: At the beginning of Z Raditz is a mid-level minion of Frieza's, but on Earth he easily pulls off a Bullet Catch against a shotgun-wielding farmer and is powerful enough to curb-stomp both Goku and Piccolo, the two strongest beings on the planet simultaneously, forcing Goku to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to take him down. In fact, when they discover that Vegeta and Nappa consider Raditz a pathetic weakling compared to them, the Z-Fighters are in disbelief.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In a flashback, we see both Raditz and Nappa react with horror when Vegeta says that he does not care that their race is dead. While Nappa shows some traces of humanity elsewhere, this is the only time Raditz ever displays a positive side, to hammer in how shocking Vegeta's Lack of Empathy is even to other Saiyans. Notably, this goes against Dragon Ball Super: Broly, where he's just as apathetic as Vegeta as a child.
• Out of Focus: Unlike Nappa or Vegeta, Raditz doesn't get much focus after his death in Z, whereas Nappa gets filler episodes with Vegeta, and even a cameo in GT, Raditz isn't nearly as touched upon. Bardock: The Father of Goku also overlooks his existence despite being the firstborn son of the protagonist. It was years after the manga concluded to even confirm that Raditz was stronger than a Saibaman or that he was a similar age to Vegeta.
• Outside-Genre Foe: This is part of the reason why he was so unstoppable when he was first introduced. Although Piccolo is an alien, he was born and raised on Earth. Raditz not only formally introduced aliens to the series, but also showed that the fighters on Earth are insects compared to the true monsters in the universe. Raditz is barely an Elite Mook and yet he completely dominated Earth's best fighters with ease.
• Pet the Dog: Twistedly crossed with Kick the Dog in Xenoverse. After undertaking his Parallel Quest and helping him beat Goku, Piccolo, and potentially Gohan, Raditz spares Goku's life and decides to take him along to destroy a few planets with him and get his killer instinct back. While destroying planets is, obviously, evil, it still shows that deep down Raditz really does love and cares about his brother... on his own terms. In the anime, one can interpret his explanation about Planet Vegeta's destruction being by an asteroid as protecting Goku from Frieza. A later flashback in a late Frieza arc filler established that Vegeta and Nappa had their suspicions about the tyrant being responsible for their homeworld exploding which Raditz was also there to hear.
  • Ends up being the metaphorical dog in another cross with Kick the Dog during his mentorship "plot" in Xenoverse 2. The Time Patroller's request for him to train them leads to an immediate haughty disposition, lording over the player character, not unlike Vegeta lording over Nappa. As they begin easily mastering his techniques and routinely kicking his ass, his facade begins to crumble, and the final "training session" is actually just him trying to assert his superiority. When beaten for the last time, he basically has a crying breakdown and confesses he just wanted to have someone he could boss around so he'd no longer be at the bottom of Prince Vegeta's totem pole. Hearing this, the Patroller (implicitly) offers to remain his student/underling, and he is overjoyed to hear it.
• Playing the Family Card: Raditz tricks Goku into sparing him the first time by reminding Goku that they are brothers, despite trying to kill Goku himself.
• Poor Communication Kills: If Gine had told Raditz she'd sent his brother to Earth for his own protection, Raditz probably wouldn't have gone there and got himself killed.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Only surpassed in this by Nappa and Vegeta. The sole reason he antagonizes Goku is because of his refusal to accept his Saiyan heritage^note Granted, "accepting his Saiyan heritage" included having to cause the extirpation of all macrofauna on Earth, which was unacceptable to Goku.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Compared to Goku’s cheerful Manchild, he definitely is a bratty arrogant bully and would not hesitate to kill his own brother and nephew.
  • After he was hit by Gohan who doesn’t remember his powers, he throws a fit on him and smacks the crap out of his nephew.
  Raditz: YOU JUST KNOCKED THE STUFFINGS OUT OF YOUR OLD UNCLE RADITZ! LIKE THIS!
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives one to Goku after he is shown mercy after begging for his life. During his rant, he claims that their parents would be ashamed of him and he isn't a true Saiyan warrior. He doesn't realize the Irony of his words.
• Redemption Equals Death: In an alternate telling of the events in Budokai Tenkaichi 2, Raditz ends up sacrificing his life to stop Vegeta and Nappa's invasion of Earth.
• Retcon: When he first meets Goku, Raditz informs him that planet Vegeta was destroyed three years ago, needless to say, this element was corrected sometime later.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • Raditz is correct that saiyan babies are sent to depopulate planets and Goku would ordinarily be one of those babies, but due to circumstances surrounding the situation, Goku's the savior of the Earth, not its destroyer. Minus establishes that he was also wrong about the reason why Bardock and Gine sent Goku there. It wasn't for conquest, but to keep him safe from Frieza.
  • He's also right that Nappa and Vegeta will come for the dragon balls... just not to revive him with their potential wish (though Nappa does consider it openly).
• Sadistic Choice: Raditz gives Goku one when they meet: either Goku kills 100 humans within the next 24 hours and joins Frieza's army, or Raditz kills Gohan. Goku, of course, Takes a Third Option and forms an Enemy Mine with Piccolo to take him out.
• Shadow Archetype: Raditz serves as this to Goku along with being an Evil Counterpart. If Goku was raised as a Saiyan, or simply hadn't suffered a head injury so early in life, he would have turned out similar to Raditz. In the long run, he also shows that Goku's hubris towards his own strength would have made him an arrogant bully that would eventually meet his match and die with nobody to mourn him, falling well short of his true potential.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Son Goku. Raditz is evil and unambitious with no redeeming qualities, while his brother Goku is a selfless Nice Guy that constantly seeks out greater challenges.
• Small Role, Big Impact:
  • Believe it or not, Raditz is essentially the catalyst for the entire second half of the Dragon Ball manga. Had Raditz not remembered his little brother and come to Earth, the entire series would have been turned on its head: Piccolo and Goku would never have teamed up and thus Piccolo wouldn't have become social with the other martial artists. He may have even remained evil, and continued on with a plan to terrorize planet Earth, had he and Goku not joined forces. Goku wouldn't have trained with King Kai, but merely at his own pace, and would have been far too weak to combat the androids by the time they arrived, assuming he hadn't already died from the heart virus he was to contract (though a theory is that he got it during his trip on Yardrat). Gohan would never have been trained by Piccolo, and thus would never have become a fighter at all. Vegeta and Nappa would never have received the transmission involving the Dragon Balls, and thus would never have visited the Earth, thus remaining under Frieza's thumb — Frieza himself would also never have been killed, allowing the Cold family to continue terrorizing the universe. Trunks would never exist due to Bulma and Vegeta never meeting. Cell probably wouldn't exist either, or at least, a far less powerful version of him due to not having either Frieza, King Cold or super saiyan DNA in him. And Babidi probably wouldn't have been able to reawaken Majin Buu that quickly due to no earthling being powerful enough to open his cocoon. Despite being the weakest villain at the start of the series, Raditz coming to Earth is what allowed the "Z series" to be what it became.
  • This carries onto Dragon Ball Super. Without the abundance of Super Saiyans that rose from the above-listed circumstances, the Super Saiyan God form would never be unlocked and Beerus would have probably exterminated Earth for not providing him with a Worthy Opponent. Likewise, Zeno would have wiped out the entire universe due to their collective power never reaching the godly levels it did once Goku and Vegeta trained under Whis. Moro would have still escaped and drained the remaining planets of their life energy with not even Broly able to resist him since he never attained Super Saiyan in this continuity.
• Smug Snake: Raditz is calm and collected when in control of a situation, but the minute he starts to lose he alternates between getting explosively outraged and being a Dirty Coward who begs for his life.
• Starter Villain: For the Saiyan arc, and Z as a whole. He kicks Goku and Piccolo's butts upon his introduction and is the weakest villain at the start of Z.
• Stronger Sibling: In terms of raw talent, Raditz was this to his brother by a decent margin, being a mid-class Saiyan while Kakarot/Goku was a low class, and Raditz even shared his ability to learn any new technique according to material outside the manga/anime. Not that it matters, as Goku has far surpassed him after the Saiyan Saga.
• Theme Naming: Named after the vegetable radish. Additionally, his attacks in the games generally have names related to days (Shining Friday, Saturday Crash, Double Sunday, Black Monday, Cyclone Monday, Vacation Delete, Weekend).
• Took a Level in Badass: In Xenoverse, mainly due to Towa trying to screw with the timeline by making him more formidable.
• Tyke-Bomb: Like all Saiyans, Raditz was raised to wipe civilizations and was part of Vegeta's team since he was at least five or seven years old. He was even considered a full-fledged warrior at that age.
• Underwear of Power: Raditz wears trunks like many members of Frieza's army.
• The Unfavorite:
  • Vegeta and Nappa didn't like Raditz much, referring to him as a weakling for dying, though Nappa at least briefly considers bringing him back with the Dragon Balls before Vegeta dismisses the idea. And neither Frieza nor any of his other soldiers felt any camraderie for Raditz either for no other reason than because he was a Saiyan.
  • And not mentioning how Bardock never thought of him once, even in his dying moments.
  • Averted, thankfully, in Dragon Ball Minus, where Bardock asks Gine where Raditz is when he arrived back on Vegeta on Frieza's orders, tells Goku that he'd also tell Raditz not to look at the moon, and laments that Raditz has to put up with "The Prince", showing at least some concern and regard for his firstborn.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Although he is a well-trained Saiyan warrior, he relies heavily on his brute strength to get ahead. He also relies too much on his scouter, which causes him to underestimate Goku and Piccolo, and he neglected in training to overcome the Saiyans' weakness, being grabbed by the tail, unlike Goku, Nappa, and Vegeta, which nearly caused Piccolo to kill him without needing to kill Goku, and when Goku restrains him with a full nelson, he's completely helpless after Gohan's attack cripples him. He doesn't even know techniques that improve the power level of his attacks, like Vegeta, Nappa, and every martial artist of note on Earth did.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: In Bardock's flashback to when Gine introduced him to newborn Kakarot in the incubator pod, child Raditz can be seen playing with some other Saiyan children. It’s clearly shown how happy he’s around other kids his age, especially as he’s admiring the beetles in front of him.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Lampshaded in Attack of the Saiyans where Goku points out that Raditz didn't train at all in Hell. It seems he prefers trying to steal magical items to instantly get power.
• Villainous Widow's Peak: Does not take after his father at all. Or his mother.
• Villain Respect: He's actually impressed when Goku proves himself willing to sacrifice his life just to kill Raditz. At the same time, he's disappointed that his brother would lay down his life for such a weak species. As he attempts to murder Gohan, in the anime, he's genuinely impressed that his nephew managed to injure him to such an extent and vows to make his death "worthy of a saiyan" before Goku stops him.
• Villains Want Mercy: First example in Z. He begs for mercy when Piccolo was going to kill him with his Special Beam Cannon. When he was shown mercy, he knocks Goku down and ruthlessly breaks his ribs while mocking him for falling for it. When he's about to be killed again, he pleads for his life again; thankfully, Goku doesn't fall for the same trick twice.
• Virtue Is Weakness: After being granted mercy by Goku, Raditz crushes his ribs and openly mocks him for his compassion. He says that Goku's honor and mercy are the most disgraceful things about him, while he (Raditz) is a "first-rate warrior" who has no problem using dirty tricks or killing his own brother.
• Vocal Dissonance: The Funimation dub doesn't recast Raditz when he makes a cameo as a child, leaving him with a voice that sounds far too pubescent for a child of his size.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: His arrival on Earth shows the heroes what awaits them in the wider universe. Namely, the fighters on Earth are pitifully weak compared to even a Mook in Frieza's army. As elaborated above, this ends up having a huge snowball effect on the future of the universe.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Grabbing his tail renders him completely powerless, something Goku takes advantage of since he shared the same weakness as a child. According to the Japanese text, Raditz can cut off his tail if necessary, which is why Goku didn't grab it again after the surprise wore off. Weirdly, Goku never considers the possibility that Raditz, having grown up in his own natural environment and knowing how his body worked from the beginning, might not have the tail weakness considering that even the ignorant-at-the-time Goku trained his own tail to lose it by the time of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Hinted in some of the video games like Burst Limit.
• Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Bizarrely, he is not seen again after his death, and this is a series where the life and afterlife interact at times. King Yemma says he was sent to Hell, but Goku doesn't run into him at all when he ends up there in at least two separate filler episodes. The manga at least establised that souls tend to remain amorphous will-o-wisps unless they're particularly significant and Piccolo mentions at one point that such souls will eventually reincarnate, so it makes sense why we never see Raditz in canon.
• The Worf Effect: Basically his purpose. He shows up, no sells Piccolo's blasts, curb stomps Goku and Krillin with one hit each, and spends most of the rest of his screen time beating down Goku and Piccolo. Then he reveals he isn't even half as powerful as one of his partners, and several times weaker than the other.
• Worf Had the Flu: According to Toriyama his power level was 1,500 instead of 1,200, but he was apparently not in his full power when he came to earth. Why he wasn't at full power is never elaborated on, and brings up more questions than answers.
• Would Hurt a Child: He threatens to have Gohan killed unless Goku joins him. Big mistake. After Gohan injures him with a sneak attack headbutt, he's enraged to the point that the first thing he does is knock the kid into unconsciousness and then immediately try to murder him.
  Goku: (heavily injured) Please, don't hurt him. He's just... a boy.
  Raditz: Yes, he's just a little boy, that's true. But he's very strong. And he has a power level even higher than yours, little brother. And if he ever learned to control it, it would be very bad for us. Heh. So, you could see, I have no choice. He must die! Now!
• You Remind Me of X: Frieza notices the similarities between him and Gohan and assumes, not knowing Goku exists, that Gohan must be Raditz's child. Close but no cigar.

Low-class Saiyans

Bardock's Family

Bardock

See Dragon Ball: Bardock

Gine

Gine (ギネ)

Voiced by (Japanese): Naoko Watanabe
Voiced by (English): Emily Neves
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Mireya Mendoza

"Bardock... I'm just surprised you've gone to such lengths for [Kakarot]. It's so unlike a Saiyan to be overly concerned for his children."

Goku and Raditz's mother. She was a member of Bardock's squad but due to not being cut out for fighting, Gine went on to work at the meat distribution center instead.

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• Adaptational Badass: Gine was a massive Non-Action Guy by Saiyan standards when she debuted. That said, in Fusions, she's a playable character (and a Moveset Clone of her own Great Granddaughter, Pan).
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: From both Saiyan and human points of view. She disliked fighting unlike most Saiyans, but at the same time, she didn't object to their Space Pirate culture.
• Damsel in Distress: Gine noted as being a rather poor soldier, and needed Bardock to save her on the battlefield multiple times.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Considering how Frieza destroyed all of Planet Vegeta, it's pretty obvious.
• Edible Theme Naming: As with all other Saiyans, her name is based on that of a vegetable; in this case, the spring onion ("negi" in Japanese, but with each two letters in the name on opposite sides).
  • In English, it's pronounced the same as the end of the word "aubergine", which is another name for eggplant (which is botanically a fruit).
• Fling a Light into the Future: She and her husband sent Goku to Earth to protect him from Frieza. His becoming strong enough to avenge their deaths was an unforeseen bonus.
• Generation Xerox: Goku gets his kind heart from her, and Goten would get her hair at the End of Z. Likewise, in Fusions, she shares a moveset with her quarter-Saiyan Great Granddaughter, Pan.
• Greater-Scope Paragon: Because of Generation Xerox, Gine was part of the reason Goku is the hero he is.
• Happily Married: Note that most Saiyans married/mated for breeding purposes, but Bardock and Gine genuinely care for each other. Out of all the Saiyan pairings that have appeared in Dragon Ball (romantic or otherwise), Bardock and Gine are shown to be the most affectionate towards one another. In Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Gine rushes into Bardock's arms and they lovingly gaze into each other's eyes once he returns home. Also, Bardock's tail uncurls from around his waist once Gine does this, showing that he's letting his guard down.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: Her youngest grandson inherits her hairstyle when he's a teenager in Z, although his is a little longer. Gine's loose, shaggy hairstyle could also be the source of Raditz's epic mullet. As a child in Z, Pan might have also gotten this hairstyle, at least as far as the bangs go.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: How Gine views Earth, the planet she programs Kakarot's space pod to be sent to. She describes the humans and the natural resources on the planet as "worthless", i.e. Frieza wouldn't be interested in trying to conquer it. Bardock replies that Earth being "worthless" makes it all the more likely that Kakarot will survive, since it's beneath Frieza's notice.
• Laser-Guided Karma: If Gine ever killed anyone during her brief time as a soldier, she gets this both ways. While she was a good person by comparison to the rest of the Saiyans, Gine is still a part of the Saiyans' ruthless society as a Proud Warrior Race. Indirectly helping to cause global extinction is still bad, despite her not partaking in much fighting, so her being killed along with most of the Saiyans by Frieza could be seen as karma. She is also not against the Saiyans' rather ruthless society as much as she is against sending their babies to depopulate planets, cementing her in this trope. At the same time, she helps her husband Bardock send their son Kakarot away to Earth to protect him. Kakarot — that is to say, Goku — grows up to unintentionally avenge his parents and keep their bloodline going.
• Little Bit Beastly: Like all Saiyans, Gine has a monkey tail. Unlike most, however, she's often seen with her tail loose, much like Goku when he had a tail, presumably since she's not fighting and doesn't need to protect her weakness.
• Mama Bear: Gine's concern for her children is one of her most admirable traits, given maternal instincts are a foreign concept to most Saiyan mothers. She openly argues with Bardock all the way to the point of sending Kakarot off-planet, even then promising her son, that should his father's suspicions about Frieza be false, the two will immediately go to look for him.
• Martial Pacifist: She's regarded as a pacifist by her people for objecting to using babies as Child Soldiers, though she's completely fine with supporting her husband and elder son going out fighting.
• Missing Mom: Gine dies along with the other Saiyans when Frieza destroyed Planet Vegeta.
• Morality Pet: To Bardock. His genuine love for her keeps him from becoming a complete monster.
• Nice Girl: Was described as a gentle person. This is despite her having been a space pirate in the past, and heling the Saiyans conquer planets as part of the Frieza Force. It's possible that her gentle nature prevented her from hurting anyone, and that's why she got switched to the meat department.
• Odd Couple: A pacifist marries a hardened warrior like Bardock who has no problem depopulating planets. But again, her "pacifist" stance, in this case, comes from a moral dilemma with sending babies to depopulate planets and is more concerned with the effects on and dangers for the young ones rather than the inhabitants.
• Oh, Crap!: In Broly, she is visibly horrified when Bardock turns out to be right about Frieza planning to destroy the Saiyan race.
• Parental Favoritism: Like Bardock, Gine seems to favor Goku over Raditz. In Minus when they realize Frieza plans to wipe them out, Gine's sole concern alongside Bardock is ensuring Goku is sent to Earth before it happens. Unlike most cases, it's justified as Kakarot is still incubating and Gine was watching over him all the way until she had to send him away, Raditz in the meantime was already deployed elsewhere and safe.
• Pink Means Feminine: As shown in Dragon Ball Z Extreme Butoden, Gine's Saiyan armor is pink. It's dark green in the DBS: Broly movie, though her wristbands keep the color.
• Poor Communication Kills: Gine tells Raditz that she sent Goku to Earth. What she fails to tell him apparently, is that Goku was sent to Earth for his protection, not to purge the planet. If she had told Raditz this, he most likely wouldn't go to Earth and tried to bully his baby brother to wipe out the population, which got both of them killed.
• Posthumous Character: Like Bardock, what we know of Gine comes from information revealed long after her death. Notably, she only has one mention in the entirety of the original Dragon Ball series, grouped with Bardock when Raditz vaguely tells Goku their parents were killed in the destruction of Planet Vegeta. She's seen for the first time in Dragon Ball Minus, which tells Goku's backstory, 19 years after the original manga ended and Bardock's own animation debut in The Father of Goku. By contrast, Gine's animation debut is in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, almost five years after Dragon Ball Minus.
• Rescue Romance: Fell in love with Bardock after he protected her on a mission.
• Satellite Character: Nearly everything about Gine relates to her relationship with Bardock, she has no solo scenes or interacts with anyone but him.
• Satellite Love Interest: She is Bardock's wife, and she is only ever seen interacting with him beyond her goodbye to her son, Goku.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She fell for Bardock because he initiated a Rescue Romance. Goes both ways, since Bardock, a hardened warrior of an Always Chaotic Evil race of Blood Knights, married the kind-hearted Token Good Teammate of the Saiyan race that is Gine.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Despite never showing up at all in the manga or even filler, she and Bardock are the reason why Goku is on Earth and not dead.
• Space Pirates: Gine was one before she retires to work in a meat factory, being unfit to be a warrior. She was weak and had to be saved multiple times, so it's not clear if she ever actually killed anyone.
• Spanner in the Works: She along with her husband sent Goku to Earth when they suspected Frieza of being up to no good. Their actions were a major factor in Frieza's downfall.
• Token Good Teammate: To the Saiyans in general. Much like Vegeta's younger brother, Gine was born with a gentle heart and does not have the Saiyans' Blood Knight tendencies, making her a failed soldier. She does, however, not have any outstanding issues with saiyans depopulating planets as much as she does sending babies to do it.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: She is a Saiyan with a gentle kind-hearted soul without a mean bone compared to Fasha’s Tomboy.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Gine was said to be incredibly nice, soft, and gentle, which really contrasts with the Saiyan as a whole. Unfortunately, her good nature was not enough to save her.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Gine looks a lot like her grandson Goten when he was a teenager in Z, only older.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: She's staunchly against the Saiyan custom of sending babies out in pods to grow and conquer planets.

Kakarot

See Dragon Ball: Son Goku

Bardock's Squad

General

Bardock's crew of low-class Saiyan warriors. They all end up getting killed by Dodoria and his team.

Tropes applying to all of them

• All There in the Script: Aside from Tora, none of them are named in dialogue during the special itself (in Japanese anyway).
• Ascended Extra: Downplayed, but they get a bit more time in Kakarot than they did in the special they debuted in, thanks to them having some downtime before they go to Planet Meat, and each having a side quest.
• Breaking Old Trends: They are the first Planet Vegeta raised Saiyans shown to actually have care for one another: Raditz wasn't attached to his brother and was ready to kill him and his son for opposing him, Nappa wrote Raditz off as an idiot and Vegeta didn't care at all for Nappa and Raditz. These guys show that Saiyans are not complete sociopaths, and that they can form healthy bonds with one another. Shame it didn't last.
• The Cameo: Tora and Fasha appear briefly alongside Bardock in Frieza's memories when he privately muses about Goku's sheer might.
  • All of them make brief appearances in the prologue of Dragon Ball Super: Broly as part of the group Frieza and King Cold meet upon their arrival on Planet Vegeta.
• Canon Foreigner: They were created for Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku.
• Canon Immigrant: Downplayed. They appear as a blink-it-you-miss-it cameo on Dragon Ball Super: Broly (they're among the many Saiyans Frieza meets for the first time on Planet Vegeta), and Toyotarō drew a scenario in which how they may fit the Minus version, but this should be taken as Word of Saint Paul. Basically, they were killed off while Bardock was heading to Planet Vegeta just like in Father of Goku, and this motivated Bardock to confront Frieza.
  Narrator: After this, they lost contact with Tōma & co… That is the event that caused Bardock’s suspicion of this return-home order to grow ever stronger.
• Dub Name Change: All of them received name changes in the English dub, causing them to lose the vegetable puns.
  • Tōma became Tora.
  • Selypa became Fasha.
  • Panbūkin became Shugesh.
  • Toteppo became Borgos.
• Edible Theme Naming: All of their Japanese names are based on vegetables (in the culinary sense).
  • Tōma is based on tomato.
  • Selypa is an anagram of the Japanese pronunciation of "parsley."
  • Panbūkin is based on pumpkin.
  • Toteppo is based on potato.
• Foil: The Saiyan equivalent to the Ginyu Force. While the Ginyu Force are flamboyant, drag out their fights and are loyal to Freeza, Bardock's squad are no-nonsense, kill their prey on sight and quietly resent Freeza. Funnily enough, Ginyu taking over Goku's body means he physically resembles Bardock for awhile.
• Odd Name Out: Due to the above-mentioned name changes in the dub, they are some of the few saiyans not to have vegetable-based names.
• Posthumous Character: They have been long dead by the time Dragon Ball starts.
• Sacrificial Lion: Their deaths don't impact the series in any way, but the tragedy of it motivates Bardock to fight against Frieza.
• Schrödinger's Canon: They are confirmed as existing in Super's canon, but literally everything else is up in the air. It's not known if they're still Bardock's True Companions, if their personalities changed, or if how they died was altered. All we know for certain is that they were most certainly killed off.
• Super Mode: Like with all Saiyans with a tail, they can transform into great apes. They are shown as great apes in The Father of Goku.
• True Companions: They very obviously care for each other, despite all the snark and teasing they throw each other's way, and their deaths are Bardock's primary motivation to turn against Frieza.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: They were all killed by Dodoria and his squadron about halfway into the special with only the bare minimum known about their personalities.
• The Worf Effect: They're introduced depopulating a planet, and the next time they're sent out to a planet they're wiped out by Dodoria's squad

Toma/Tora

Tora (トーマ, Tōma)

Voiced by (Japanese): Kazuyuki Sogabe (Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku), Tetsu Inada (Dragon Ball Heroes onwards)
Voiced by (English): Mike McFarland (Funimation dub); Doug Rand (AB Groupe/"Big Green" dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Ricardo Brust
Voiced by (Hebrew): Yuval Segal (Hebrew dub)
Voiced by (German): Thomas Schmuckert (German dub)

The second in command of Bardock’s Elite.

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• The Cameo: He appears in one of Frieza's memories during his fight against Goku in Z.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Bardock arrives on the ghastly scene of his team already dead with a barely alive Tora using his last moments to inform Bardock of Frieza's betrayal and begging his leader to unite the remaining saiyans against the tyrant. He passes away immediately afterward in Bardock's arms.
• The Gadfly: He has a habit of ribbing his teammates such as playfully saying Shugesh deserved his facial scar for dropping his guard as a great ape and (in the Funimation dub) proving a point that Bardock can't remember much of anything beyond fighting.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the sense that he playfully ribs his teammates while still being a battle-hungry mass murderer who does so for fun and profit. His last words to Bardock were to make sincerely ask the latter not to get killed himself and unite the people of Vegeta against Frieza.
• Locked Out of the Loop: He had absolutely no idea why Dodoria's men would attack him, how they've done what he's asked, apparently unaware of how deep Frieza and his men's loathing of Saiyans was.
• Noble Demon: Toma's complicit in Freeza's decimation of numerous planets, but like Bardock he's a team player who is implied to be Bardock's best friend.
• Number Two: According to supplementary material, he is second in command. Out of all the members, however, his death is the one that impacts Bardock the most, as his iconic red bandage is bathed in his blood.
• Playing with Fire: One of his attacks is lighting the opponent on fire. So far, he's the only saiyan with such an ability.
• Rust Proof Blood: That "headband" on Bardock stays red. This is even more noticeable in Dragon Ball Online, Episode of Bardock, Dragon Ball Heroes, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, and all the other scenarios where time travel greatly extends Bardock's lifespan but the stained bandage continues to be without rust.
• Sailor's Ponytail: Toma has a ponytail despite his hair pointing upwards.
• Ship Tease: The way he is drawn with Fasha implies they were romantically involved.
• Underwear of Power: Wears trunks, similar to Raditz and Nappa.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Of Bardock’s crew, he appears to be the chummiest with Bardock.

Selypa/Fasha

Fasha (セリパ, Selypa)

Voiced by (Japanese): Yūko Mita
Voiced by (English): Linda Young (Funimation dub); Jodi Forrest (AB Groupe/"Big Green" dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Isabel Martiñón
Voiced by (Hebrew): Talia Barkai

A member of Bardock's elite crew, conquering many planets for Frieza, and during Father of Goku, she can be seen destroying the population of a planet in her Oozaru form.

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• All Amazons Want Hercules: Kakarot addresses a long held question and confirms that female Saiyans, such as Fasha, are significantly more attracted to strong male saiyans when they have a strong physicality and strong will.
• Ascended Extra: Played with. She becomes a playable character in Budokai Tenkaichi 3, despite not having any shown fighting in her only appearance in Father of Goku. As such, much of her movements and personality traits were created for the game.
• The Baroness: Sexpot variant. She wears the skimpiest outfit among Bardock's crew which shows off her curvaceous body and she's a ruthless enforcer to an evil empire.
• The Cameo: She appears in one of Frieza's memories during his fight against Goku in Z.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: Selypa's outfit is bright pink, bares her legs and has a breastplate that emphasizes her bust. Her femininity is further pronounced with a pair of earrings.
• Death Glare: Her stare in Frieza's memories of the saiyans is the stuff of nightmares.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: The leg warmer on her left leg is much higher than the one on her right, and there is no strap on the right side of her armor.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Strictly within her own team, but still. Fasha advises Bardock to go see the freshly born Kakarot before their next assignment and only playfully muses "How scary..." when Bardock snaps at his crewmate to mind her own business.
• Leotard of Power: Wears a pink leotard under her armor.
• Non-Standard Character Design: She, and the other female Saiyans who appear in Bardock - The Father of Goku for that matter, have purple eyes instead of the usual black. An Early-Installment Weirdness can be the reason, as she was created before this detail of the Saiyans was added.
• Pet the Dog: Normally ruthless as your garden-variety saiyan, she's got a small amount of maternal instinct in her to suggest that Bardock go visit his newborn son before they head off for Planet Meat.
• Pink Means Feminine: The only female on her team and she wears pink clothing.
• Only Six Faces: She's sort of resembles a buffer, aggressive-looking Videl, although Fasha debuted long before the latter.
• She's a Man in Japan: She is a man in the first Brazilian dub of the film due to a mistake on the translator's part. This was corrected later.
• Ship Tease: Despite fans believing she and Bardock may have had something for a decade, the special implies she and Tōma were more involved affectionately.
• The Smurfette Principle: Played straight In-Universe and from a meta-perspective: She was the only female member of Bardock's squad, and the only known female Saiyan for decades until Gine's introduction in Dragon Ball Minus and Caulifla and Kale in Super. Many people speculated she was Goku's mother due to this.
• Technicolor Eyes: She has purple eyes.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: She is tough as nails compared to Gine’s Girly Girl.

Pumbkin/Shugesh

Shugesh (パンブーキン, Panbūkin)

Voiced by (Japanese): Takeshi Watabe (Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku), Yasunori Masutani (Dragon Ball Heroes onwards)
Voiced by (English): Chris Rager (Funimation dub); Ed Marcus (AB Groupe/"Big Green" dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): César Soto
Voiced by (French): Eric Legrand
Voiced by (Hebrew): Dov Reiser

The second strongest member of Bardock’s elite.

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• Acrofatic: He is much bigger than his crewmates, but he is just as capable.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: He has this attitude if what little of his personality is seen is any indication, as he gets scarred by a Kanassan as a great ape and is seen grumbling about the next day.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: The Saiyan named after pumpkins happens to be a stout man with a bowl cut, making him resemble his namesake.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: In his great ape form, he squashes Demetrious, a Kanassan soldier, in retaliation for scarring his face with a ki blast.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the sense that while he's the most outwardly unpleasant of the crew after Bardock himself, he shows concern for his boss after being knocked out by Toolo along with the others and is dejected when they leave Bardock to heal and go off to their next assignment.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted, he and Scarface share the same Japanese name.
• Only Six Faces: He resembles Nappa, only overweight and with a full head of hair.
• Scars Are Forever: He gets blasted by a Kanassan as a great ape and carries the scar on his right cheek for the rest of his brief existence.
• Stout Strength: He may be fat, but he's also bursting with muscle; not dissimilar to his executioner Dodoria.

Totepo/Borgos

Borgos (トテッポ, Toteppo)

Voiced by (Japanese): Kōzō Shioya (Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku); Yasuhiro Takato (Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot)
Voiced by (English): Dameon Clarke (Funimation dub); Ed Marcus (AB Groupe/"Big Green" dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Mario Sauret
Voiced by (Hebrew): Efron Atkin

The silent guy of Bardock’s elite.

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• Bald of Evil: Totepo has black hair strands on his side but is otherwise bald and a planet conqueror.
• Big Eater: Inferred with him stuffing his face during the crew's conversation without Borgos himself saying a word (at least in Japanese).
• Flat Character: Even compared to the rest of the crew, he's not got much personality to speak of. In the original Japanese version, he's simply a Living Prop to bolster the numbers.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has a trio of scars on his forehead cutting from the right downwards.
• No Brows: Totepo has the neanderthal ridge seen on a Super Saiyan 3.
• Nonstandard Character Design: His skin is ashen and he lacks eyebrows, making him look more alien than the other Saiyans
• The Quiet One: He doesn’t talk in the Japanese version aside from a battle cry against Dodoria's grunts. The Funimation dub gives him a few extra lines.
• Simpleton Voice: His voice in Funimation's dub sounds fairly dopey, though not to the extremes of Recoome.
• The Stoic: Doesn’t emote much in the original Japanese.

Other Low-Class Saiyans

Beets

Beets (ビーツ Bītsu)

Voiced by (Japanese): Takuya Kirimoto
Voiced by (English): Anthony Bowling
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Manuel Campuzano

A non-combatant Saiyan that joined Paragus on his journey to Planet Vampa to rescue Broly.

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• Advertised Extra: He was advertised in Super Dragon Ball Heroes alongside Paragus, despite the fact he is a non-combatant Saiyan that is only alive in the first act. He has a power level of less than one thousand.
• Anime Hair: Has a hairstyle similar to Gohan.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: Part of his design, he has shadowed under eyes that make him look either sinister (as he is working with Paragus) or just tired in general.
• Edible Theme Naming: Beets, from beetroot.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He accompanies Paragus to search for Broly despite the former's protests. He then gets stranded in a Death World and eventually killed by Paragus to conserve their food supplies.
• One-Steve Limit: He shares a similar name to the main player avatar of Dragon Ball Heroes, who was named after the musical term.
• Posthumous Character: He has been long dead by the time the series starts. He was killed off by Paragus on planet Vampa. Broly wore Beets' pants in his adulthood before getting a new unifrom from Frieza.
• Prehensile Tail: Like all Universe 7 Saiyans, he sports a long monkey tail, and he doesn't wrap it around his waist since he's not a fighter.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He suffers this fate at the hands of Paragus to conserve supplies.

Leek

Leek (リーク, Rīku)

Voiced by (Japanese): Yōhei Azakami
Voiced by (English): Austin Tindle
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Óscar Flores

An associate of Bardock during his missions. Introduced in Dragon Ball Minus.

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• Edible Theme Naming: Leek, a vegetable.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: His design is quite remarkable due to how asymmetric it is.
• Living Prop: He exists to give Bardock someone to talk to, but that's the extend of his character.
• Named by the Adaptation: Nameless in Minus, he is credited with a name in Broly.
• Rugged Scar: A gruesome scar on his head. It's later revealed that he got it during the invasion of Planet Cereal.
• Tempting Fate: He laughs off Bardock's suspicions of an attack by Frieza on the Saiyans. Then Frieza forms the death ball and he is one of the many horrified Saiyans to be able to watch its' impact with Planet Vegeta.
• Underwear of Power: Wears black briefs, like many members of Frieza's army.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Barely lasts a couple of minutes before he's killed.

Taro

Taro (タロ, Taro')

Voiced by (Japanese): Masaya Takatsuka
Voiced by (English): Marcus D. Stimac

A low-class Saiyan that is familiar with Bardock. Introduced in Dragon Ball Minus.

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• Edible Theme Naming: Taro, a vegetable.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: As with every other Saiyan barring Bardock, he's blissfully unaware of Frieza's intentions to destroy the Saiyan race and offhandedly mentions that Frieza has been asking around about the Super Saiyan myth. This increases Bardock's suspicions even more, but Taro doesn't think anything of it.
• Living Prop: A pretty tertiary character that helps give Bardock someone to talk to for a brief scene.
• Named by the Adaptation: Nameless in Minus, he is credited with a name in Broly.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted; he shares his name with Turtle's son seen in an episode of the original Dragon Ball anime, though their names are spelled differently in Japanese.
• Only Six Faces: He resembles Nappa but with hair.

Nion

Nion (ニオン, Nion)

Voiced by (Japanese): Yukiko Morishita
Voiced by (English): Terri Doty
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Gaby Ugarte

A Saiyan scientist that worked for King Vegeta.

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• All There in the Manual: Named in the credits, she is nameless in the movie.
• Edible Theme Naming: After onion, a vegetable.
• Living Prop: A tertiary character who has enough characterization for a quick mention, and her existence provides some insight in Saiyan culture (basically that they had scientists alongside warriors)
• Nonstandard Character Design: She has straight, blue hair that's styled into a bob cut, unlike every other Saiyan that almost always has wild, black hair.
• Psychotic Smirk: For her brief moment on screen, we could see two emotions: cold demeanor and a cold smirk associated with villains.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only woman on the group of scientists.
• The Stoic: While the male scientists are characterized as scared of angering King Vegeta, she is shown to be calm during all her screentime.

Related

Goku Black

See Dragon Ball: Goku Black

Saibamen

Saibamen (栽培マン, Saibaiman)

Voiced by (Japanese): Toshio Furukawa, Hirotaka Suzuoki, and Tōru Furuya (Z and Budokai), Yusuke Numata (Kai and all games from Budokai 2 onwards)
Voiced by (English): Cathy Weseluck, Doug Parker, Alvin Sanders, and Don Brown (Ocean dub); Chris Cason and Mike McFarland (Z and Bardock - The Father of Goku), John Burgmeier (GT, Kai and most video games) (Funimation dub)
Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Carlos Olizar, Óscar Flores, José Arenas

Six plant monsters grown by Nappa to fight the Z warriors. They are implied to be and later confirmed to be Organic Technology of Saiyan creation.

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• Action Bomb: Saibaman Bomb, their ace in the hole, turns them into one. In Budokai 3 they have a timer on their head that counts down to 0.
• Adaptational Wimp: It's hard to believe, but even these guys get hit with this. In the main series, while nothing compared to the saiyans, they were still something of a credible threat to the heroes and even took out Yamcha via bombing. The various video games over the decades have them as little more than Mooks that the players can walk through like dried styrofoam.
• Ax-Crazy: Their debut in the anime shows them destroying the surrounding rocky outcroppings and then shrieking with maniacal glee.
• Elite Mooks:
  • They have power levels of 1,200 which is not far below Raditz's official power level of 1,500, and he was considered an elite soldier. Most Frieza soldiers don't seem to have powers that high, judging by Krillin and Gohan killing two scouts in one hit each after having their own numbers clocked at "around 1,500." According to Toriyama, Saibamen "are an extremely rare and valuable item" and that since they might go wild and take their owners, "only a select few warriors are capable of handling them" (implying they're stronger than the vast majority of Saiyans). Furthermore, the Daizenshuu books note that the ones Vegeta brought to Earth were stronger than average because of the soil they were planted in (this is also alluded to in the series, where Nappa comments on the idealness of Earth's soil for his Saibamen).
  • They often serve the mook role in video games. In Dragon Ball Online they've become established on Earth and diversified to fill several ecological and mook niches.
• Hollywood Acid: Able to shoot it from their heads.
• Last of His Kind: Nappa says that the six they bring to Earth are all that's left after a crazy battle that saw a large number of them killed. By the end of the arc, they're extinct.
• Organic Technology: The Daizenshuu, the first Tenkaichi game, and Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot all state that they were artificial lifeforms created by the Saiyans using biotechnology.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: The Saibamen are about 4 feet tall, but they are almost as strong as Raditz.
• Plant Person: They're grown from seeds.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In case you had any doubts. Their crazed behavior is accented by their red sclera.
• So Last Season: They may be mooks, but they're nearly the equivalent to Raditz in power (though one of the games says that their power is dependent on the quality of the soil they're planted in). The Z Fighters are still able to destroy them with little effort, except for when Yamcha gets hit with one's Suicide Attack.
• Suicide Attack: Saibaman Bomb is a kamikaze technique that turns the Saibaman into a living bomb that grabs hold of its opponent with an extremely tight grip and quickly self-destructs. Just ask Yamcha.
• Stronger Than They Look: Judging only by their appearances, the saibamen resemble the classic low-level goblins, but they are really almost as strong as Raditz, so they could beat any character in the first part of Dragon Ball. (Which includes King Piccolo, who could destroy cities).
• The Unintelligible: They can't speak normally, only shrieking and moaning. They do seemingly understand Nappa and Vegeta's orders without any problems. Goku questions in Budokai 2's story mode if a saibaman can even talk for real.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Vegeta callously blew one up for losing to Tien, much to the shock of Nappa and the rest of the saibamen. Daizenshuu 7 notes that "they possess only enough intelligence to understand orders", and they don't appear to be capable of speech or tool use.

Figures of Legend

Yamoshi

Yamoshi (ヤモシ) / Original Super Saiyan (初代の超サイヤ人, Shodai no Sūpā Saiya-jin) / Original Super Saiyan God (初代の超サイヤ人ゴドドッ, Shodai no Sūpā Saiya-jin Goddo)

^{Click here to see the Original Super Saiyan}

^{Click here to see the Original Super Saiyan God}

"Long ago, a small group of pure-hearted Saiyans questioned the evil committed by their race. The good Saiyans decided to lead a revolt against the bad and to ensure victory pooled their powers together to create a savior... A Super Saiyan God! The savior easily defeated the evil Saiyans with his immense power, but then vanished as quickly as he came, as the energy his comrades offered him couldn't last for long. In time, evil again took root in planet Vegeta, and the memory of the Super Saiyan God became a myth, merely lost altogether."

— Shenron

The Original Super Saiyan of legend spoken of by Vegeta. Never encountered in the story and is long dead by the time the series takes place, but in a way is vastly important to the story as his story provides the basis for the goal of the Super Saiyan that every Saiyan character tries to obtain in the series. According to Vegeta, the Original Super Saiyan lived 1000 years ago (in the anime this is changed to 3000) and was the most powerful warrior in the universe, but his power was so great that only the Great Ape form could allow his body to sustain that power. Eventually his power became so great that it destroyed him and the planet he was on. Since his demise, no other Super Saiyans appeared, and he passed into myth.

Even after more than a thousand years, the myth of the Super Saiyan holds incredible significance to the Saiyan race. Frieza heard rumors of the legend and seeing how powerful many of his Saiyan subordinates were becoming felt fear over the possibility that one of these Saiyans might rise up to the challenge and become a Super Saiyan thus ending his reign over his Empire. This leads Frieza to destroy the Saiyan race and leads Vegeta to want to reach the goal. Eventually, Goku obtains the transformation and defeats Frieza. Eventually, nearly every Saiyan still around, including Vegeta, much to his delight, gains this transformation and gain incredible power from it.

Years later, the God of Destruction Beerus saw a spirit in a prophetic dream that came to be known as the Super Saiyan God. This led him to reach to the last living full-blooded Saiyans known, Goku and Vegeta, to ask them about it. After being asked by Goku in turn about how to attain the Super Saiyan God transformation, Shenron, with his vast knowledge, tells the Z Fighters, Beerus, and Whis the story of the Super Saiyan God, a Saiyan of noble heart. Much like with the Super Saiyan transformation, Goku and Vegeta manage to gain this transformation and gain incredible power from it. An interview with Akira Toriyama about Super Saiyans later revealed that this original Super Saiyan God and the Original Super Saiyan of Vegeta's legend were one and the same.

It is implied in Dragon Ball GT that the Original Super Saiyan was also the original Super Saiyan 4.

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• All for Nothing: He wished to obtain the power of godhood to fight off against evil Saiyans, but because the form was temporary, he couldn't accomplish his objective, and as we know, Saiyans remained utter bastards until Frieza killed them all.
• All There in the Manual: While Shenron told Goku and the others about the original Super Saiyan God, his name, more information about his background, and that he and the Original Super Saiyan from the legend Vegeta told in the Frieza Saga were the same person comes from an interview with Toriyama about Super Saiyans.
• Ambiguous Situation: Due to the contradictory elements of the legend, Yamoshi's life and what his transformation was like are pretty much a mystery, inviting much speculation.
• Awesomeness Is Volatile: Explosively so, as his demise in the legend of the Original Super Saiyan can attest to: He did acquire the power to become the most powerful warrior in the universe, but his power was so great that his body could not sustain that power and it destroyed him and the planet he was on.
• Continuity Snarl: The reveal that the Original Super Saiyan and the Original Super Saiyan God were the same person, Yamoshi, muddies things a bit, as the Original Super Saiyan was stated to have died sometime after attaining the transformation due to his power becoming so uncontrollable for his body to handle it, yet the reveal implies that he lived long enough to attain another transformation and become the Super Saiyan God. That being said, this could be chalked up to Legend Fades to Myth.
• Doomed Hometown: The story implies that the planet the Original Super Saiyan destroyed was the origin planet of the Saiyans, leading to the migration of the Saiyans to Planet Plant and the wars that led to the Saiyans conquering that planet.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: According to the Original Super Saiyan legend, his power became so uncontrollable that it destroyed him and the planet he was on.
• Edible Theme Naming: Yamoshi is a pun from bean sprouts in Japanese, which also serves as a pun of Yamoshi being the "seed" that both legends about the Super Saiyan and Super Saiyan God transformations sprouted.
• Foil: He is the Good Counterpart of Bardock.
  • Both decided to face off against an evil threat, but both lost and became forgotten over time. The difference between them, however, was that Yamoshi had an altruistic purpose against his own race, while Bardock was an Anti-Hero who wanted revenge against Frieza.
  • Yamoshi also managed to transform into the legendary Super Saiyan, inspiring a legend across generations that even to the present day carries weight, while Bardock, outside of some what-if stories, became completely forgotten by time without achieving anything.
• Goal in Life: His power and the myth surrounding it leads to Vegeta making it his goal in life to become a Super Saiyan, to be an invincible warrior just like the legend himself.
• Golden Super Mode: The originator of the Super Saiyan transformation according to legend. Is stated that he became a Super Saiyan again once he got cornered by enemies, but even then, was defeated by outside sources and this defeat inspired him to find other six Saiyans of pure heart in order to awaken the Super Saiyan God. Vegeta implies that Kale's berserker transformation may be what the original Super Saiyan looked like.
• Ideal Hero: Unlike normal Saiyans, Yamoshi was a noble and heroic one who fought to protect the planet and those he cared about. Too bad he was defeated, though.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Not only did he ultimately fail to redeem Saiyan society, but as in the original legend he may have destroyed Planet Sadala as a result of his powerup. Not only did this nearly wipe out the very people he fought for, but it directly resulted in the Saiyans inhabiting planet Plant, wiping out the Tuffles, and being discovered by King Cold. In other words, not only did he fail to improve Saiyan society, the results of his actions made things much worse.
• Pals with Jesus: Possibly and exclusively on Dragon Ball GT. Old Kai talks of having encountered a Super Saiyan before, he never speaks of who this particular Saiyan was though. If it helps any he mentions it was a Super Saiyan 4, something that is only possible if you can control the power of the Golden Great Ape transformation. That narrows things down a bit.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Was considered the most powerful warrior the universe has ever known by Vegeta, and at the very least was powerful enough to destroy a planet.
• Posthumous Character: He has been long dead by the time the series started, let alone by the time Vegeta first mentions him.
• Required Secondary Powers: Vegeta claims that the Original Super Saiyan could only maintain his full power in the transformed state, which is a foreshadowing of the eventual Golden Great Ape transformation Goku and Vegeta go through in GT. What makes things even more interesting is that Old Kai claims to have encountered a Super Saiyan 4 before when he sees Goku in that state, said Super Saiyan 4 transformation can only come if you can control the Golden Great Ape form, something that the original Super Saiyan was capable of.
• Shrouded in Myth: Vegeta says that he existed so long ago that the transformation he had attained was considered a legend, a myth told by the Saiyans to give them a false sense of hope of overcoming Frieza one day. The myth is still so prevalent in the galactic consciousness that Frieza fears it, Vegeta believes in it, and the Kais have knowledge of its existence. Also, the character, despite his importance to the plot, is never given a name in the series proper, but perhaps that adds to the appeal.
• Small Role, Big Impact:
  • The legend of the Original Super Saiyan seemed to be considered a pretty minor one to the universe since hardly anyone outside the Saiyans, Frieza, and some Kais knew about it (if the surprised expressions of everyone except them every time Goku or any other Saiyan in the series turned Super Saiyan in front of them are anything to go by). Despite this, his power and the myth surrounding it leads to Vegeta making it his goal in life to become a Super Saiyan, both to be an invincible warrior and to overthrow Frieza; Frieza's fear of the legend led him to commit the almost complete annihilation of the Saiyans.
  • The legend of the Original Super Saiyan God seemed to be an even minor one, as not even Vegeta knew about it (Only Frieza, depending on the source). Despite this, however, his "presence" gave Beerus the prophetic dream about the Super Saiyan God, and his spirit made a Namekian elder write about him in a book.
• Token Heroic Orc: He is stated to have been a good-hearted Saiyan in an era where those were not common.
• Too Powerful to Live: Vegeta speaks of the original Super Saiyan as having power so great that he destroyed himself, his power so volatile he couldn't control it anymore. As powerful as Goku or Vegeta become it never gets to the point they can't control it, meaning this is just part of the legend itself and not an actual fact.
• The Unreveal: It's never revealed what happened to Yamoshi or how he attained the original Super Saiyan or Super Saiyan God, but at least in the latter's case, there were explicitly more pure-hearted saiyans to help with that ritual.
• World's Best Warrior: Considered the strongest Saiyan until Goku attained the Super Saiyan transformation for himself, even Vegeta had hoped to attain the power that this legendary figure wielded.

The Ancient Saiyans

The Ancient Saiyans

"What we call our birth world was destroyed in a civil war, and after its decimation, we conquered another planet and called it Vegeta."

— Vegeta

Long before King Vegeta took control of Planet Plant, the Saiyans resided in Planet Sadala. According to Vegeta, the planet was destroyed by internal conflicts between the Saiyans, but according to legends, it could have been destroyed by something else, perhaps a Super Saiyan.

The ancient Saiyans are a relatively new addition to the lore of the series. There are background references in Super about them, although vague (with Vegeta stating that the Saiyans from Universe 6 closely resemble them), some characters from video games are described as Saiyans from the past: Shallot, the Saiyan in Red and Cumber.

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• Ambiguous Situation: What exactly destroyed them? An internal conflict? Or the original Super Saiyan, whose power destroyed a planet in the past? How exactly did they get to planet Plant to begin with?
• Ancient Evil: The tale of Yamoshi states Saiyans were long evil, even before joining Frieza. While there were good-hearted Saiyans, they were a minority.
• Depending on the Writer: So far, there is no consistent portrayal of Ancient Saiyans as to their appearance, where Super says the Cabba resembles an ancient saiyan, where as Shallot, the Saiyan in Red and Cumber look far more like modern saiyans, with defined musculature and all.
• Canon Foreigner: So far, ancient Saiyans have only appeared in videogames.
• Posthumous Character: Since Planet Sadala was destroyed by either an internal conflict or a figure of legend, these characters have long been dead for maybe centuries.

Characters from other materials

Planet Vegeta's Guardian

Planet Vegeta's Guardian

In the anime series (not in the manga), King Kai tells Goku that, similar to the Earth, Planet Vegeta had a guardian with the job of god watching over the planet, and that, seeing the evil in the hearts of the Saiyans, he summoned meteors to destroy the planet. Shortly afterward it is revealed, however, that Frieza was the actual culprit behind Planet Vegeta's destruction.

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• Canon Foreigner: The Guardian was a filler character created to give an explanation of how the Saiyan race came to be extinct, as Frieza wasn't created by that point. However, after Frieza's introduction, this character was never referenced again, not even in Heroes, as he wasn't even a character and any attributes could be attributed to other canon characters. Surprisingly, though, his concept was similar to Yamoshi's legend, revealed decades after his episode appearance.
• From a Certain Point of View:
  • How you could view this guy's place in King Kai's story: a way to explain most of the destruction of Planet Vegeta, without outright mentioning Frieza since it is shown afterward that he wants Goku to stay the hell away from him.
  • There's also the fact that Super revealed that there was a God who did in fact judge planet Vegeta to be worthy of destruction, only that God was no guardian. It was Beerus, who authorized Frieza to destroy the planet after King Vegeta was moronically selfish.
• God Job: He was the guardian of Planet Vegeta, effectively god just like Kami and Dende.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Going off of King Kai’s story, it would seem that the guardian perished alongside the planet when he summoned meteors to destroy it.
• In the Hood: According to King Kai's flashback, the guardian of the planet wore a hood while destroying the planet.

Shorty and Scarface

Shorty (ブロッコ, Burokko) and Scarface (パンプキン, Panpukin)

Scarface (left) and Shorty (right)

Shorty voiced by (Japanese): Yukimasa Kishino
Shorty voiced by (English): Paul Dobson (Ocean dub); Mike McFarland (Funimation dub)
Shorty voiced by (Latin American Spanish): José Luis Castañeda

Scarface voiced by (Japanese): Daisuke Gōri
Scarface voiced by (English): Gerard Plunkett (Ocean dub); Phil Parsons (Funimation dub)
Scarface voiced by (Latin American Spanish): César Soto

Two Saiyans from 100 years ago (or illusions if you’re watching the Japanese version) that are utilized by Kami to train the Z-Fighters for Nappa and Vegeta’s arrival. They are filler characters who don't appear in the original manga.

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• All There in the Manual: Their Japanese names were revealed in the Japanese Daizenshuu books.
• All There in the Script: Their English names were revealed in the credits roll of the Funimation dub.
• Bald of Evil: Scarface has some hair on the side of his head, but none on top.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Shorty is the big guy, Scarface is the little guy.
• Canon Foreigner: They didn't appear in the original manga.
• Continuity Snarl: In regards to Dragon Ball GT. They wear uniforms standard to the Freeza Force despite later materials stating that the Saiyans only became the dominant race on their planet under King Vegeta's leadership and Freeza recruited the whole race sometime later, so their outfits are almost 70 years premature. This detail isn't quite as big an issue in Dragon Ball Super, where the Saiyans were introduced already employed by King Cold and possibly King Cold's predecessor, so it's not too big a stretch for the same suit of armor to be in issue for 100 years. The only issue being that Super follows the manga and Dragon Ball Kai, where these characters don't exist.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In the English dub the pendulum room sends the Z-Fighters back 100 years to Age 662. The problem is Frieza didn't take over Planet Vegeta until Age 731. This means Shorty and Scarface shouldn't have Battle Armor or Scouters. This is averted in the original Japanese version where they are stated to simply be illusions.
• Dub Name Change: To Shorty and Scarface.
• Evil Brit: Scarface has an English accent in the American dubs. Understandable in the Ocean dub where his actor, Gerard Plunkett, is an Irish-born Canadian. His Funimation voice, Phil Parsons, is American and pulls it off...less convincingly.
• Fangs Are Evil: Scarface has a small fang sticking out of his mouth.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Scarface has a scar going right across his eye.
• Ironic Name: Shorty is the taller of the two.
• Mooks: The two fulfill the role of generic Saiyan grunts in their two video game appearances.
• My Grandma Can Do Better Than You: In the English dub, Scarface uses this line to ridicule the Z-Fighters' power levels.
  Scarface: Hey, my grandmother can gather energy faster than that but don't feel bad, she's one tough cookie!
• Named After Someone Famous: Scarface's name in the dub is a reference to famous gangster Al Capone's nickname.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: In Kami's own words, they are among the weakest Saiyans. They are still strong enough to easily beat those who at that time were the four strongest humans (on average, each of the humans had 375 which was a Power Level a little smaller than what Goku had when he fought against Raditz).
• Odd Name Out: They are some of the only Saiyans in the series whose names aren't based on vegetables. Averted in the original Japanese version where their names are based on broccoli and pumpkin.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted, Scarface and Shugesh share the same name in Japanese.
• Only Six Faces: Shorty looks like an uglier version of Raditz.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Assuming they had not already died before it happened, they definitely were dead after Frieza wiped out Planet Vegeta. The video game Dragon Ball Z: Kyōshū! Saiyan however, features them arriving with Raditz in order to pick up Kakarot.
• Underwear of Power: They both wear black briefs, like many members of Frieza's army.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: Created to show Krillin, Yamcha, Tien, Chiaoztu what they're in for when they fight the real Saiyans coming to Earth (Vegeta and Nappa). The two end up utterly decimating the four. Yamcha and Tien last a little longer and there's a brief Hope Spot where it seems they knocked them down. But Shorty and Scarface quickly recover and take them out with ease.

Tullece/Turles

See Dragon Ball Z Movie Villains

Broly

See Dragon Ball: Broly

Paragus (old continuity)

See Dragon Ball Z Movie Villains

Shallot

See Dragon Ball Legends

Cumber

See Dragon Ball Heroes Villains

Pinch

See Dragon Ball: Fusions

Onio

Onio (オニオ)

Honey and Onio

A portly Saiyan tourist married to a woman named Honey who arrives on Earth with the intent to make it his vacation planet.

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• Acrofatic: Onio may be big, but he is shown to be a decent fighter and does manage to keep up when playing soccer with Neko Majin Z and Kuriza.
• But What About the Astronauts?: Toyotaro says he was in space looking for a vacation planet with his wife when Frieza destroyed the planet Vegeta.
• Canon Foreigner: Onio and his wife are gag characters that only appear in Neko Majin Z. Toriyama's successor Toyotaro believes that they are still a part of the Dragon Ball universe and were among the few survivors of Frieza's Saiyan extermination.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Onio quickly loses against Neko Majin Z, even after going Super Saiyan.
• Easily Forgiven: Neko Majin Z seems to hold no ill will towards Onio despite the fact that he tried to kill him twice.
• Expy: Onio is basically Sourman from Dr. Slump, Toriyama's famous gag manga, but in Saiyan armor.
• Golden Super Mode: Onio can go Super Saiyan.
• Gonk: Onio's design is meant to subvert the expectation that all Saiyans are cool and attractive people.
• Happily Married: Until Onio loses a fight against Neko Majin Z, after which Honey divorces him.
• Reused Character Design: Onio looks remarkably similar to Sourman from another one of Toriyama's manga, Dr. Slump.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Onio is basically a blue beach ball with a face, Honey is a slender, attractive woman.