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Dub Induced Plot Hole / Dragon Ball

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Multiple dubs:

  • In the original series, the Red Ribbon Army's creations are called "jinzōningen," which means "Artificial Human." The various dubs refer to them as Androids, starting with Android 8 in the original Dragon Ball. The term fits Android 8 just fine, but is a lot clunkier for the Androids introduced a lot later: Androids 16 and 19 appear to be purely robotic, but Android 20 is a cyborg (a Brain in a Jar, specifically), and Androids 17 and 18 are upgraded humans with it being rather ambiguous how robotic they are. There are also "bio-Androids" like Cell and Android 21—the term makes sense in Japanese, since it's just saying they're a result of an artificial process, but in English, it's implying that they're fully-organic robots, raising the question of how that works. The term sticks around in modern material largely because "Artificial Human" is pretty darn clunky to say in casual dialogue, even if the only prominent character it accurately describes is 16.

Ocean dub:

  • Tien Shinhan infamously remarks that his arm will eventually grow back after Nappa rips it off. At no point in any version does Tien ever demonstrate regeneration powers, and since Tien is supposed to be more or less Earthling barring the third eye (with his techniques being wholly derived from training), it raises the rather clear question of why Tien hasn't taught this technique to others. Funnily, he does have the ability to grow additional limbs, but this isn't so much regeneration as a temporary technique.
  • The claim that when Piccolo and Kami "went to the next dimension", the Dragon Balls went with them. Since they had functional Dragon Balls in the next dimension, why couldn't they just wish themselves and the other Z-Fighters back, instead of needing the surviving Z-Fighters to use Namek's Dragon Balls?
  • Another infamous example; Vegeta simply explaining how Saiyans turn into giant monkeys was changed to Vegeta explaining how Goku's "brilliant scientist" father invented the method to transform Saiyans without a full moon, a bit of lore which the translation team completely made up and contradicts all other depictions of Goku's father, Bardock. This was likely meant to serve as a replacement for the information that Goku accidentally killed his adoptive father, which was a reveal from the previous series that had yet to be dubbed.
    • In that same exchange, Vegeta implies that he and Bardock were in the same unit, or at least were sent on missions together. Given that the latter was a lower-class warrior, this is... unlikely.
  • Likewise, Goku's realization that he was the giant monster who killed his beloved grandfather was changed to Goku realizing that Vegeta killed him — which not only makes no sense (since Vegeta has never been to Earth before), it also makes Goku look deluded and in denial over what really happened. Either they didn't have the original Dragon Ball for reference, or they did and simply refused to imply that the main character ever killed innocents (even if he wasn't in control of himself at the time).
  • In the Japanese version, Freeza kills the mook Namole who delivers the news of the Ginyu Force arriving because he showed fear. In the Ocean dub, Freeza instead "sends" Namole to the "next dimension" because he won't be needed with the Ginyu Force arriving, even though Freeza doesn't do the same to any of his other soldiers for this reason, including two other henchmen in this very scene who he lets live.
  • Krillin complains about Vegeta almost letting him and Gohan "go the way of the dinosaurs" — which still exist in the Dragon Ball universe, and both Krillin and Gohan have interacted with, making Krillin's line nonsensical.
  • Ocean went out of its way to avoid admitting that Freeza and his men were killing the Namekians by removing bodies onscreen, cutting scenes of the killings as well as one of Gohan burying one village, editing the dialogue to refer to them as though they were still alive and adding random grunts and moans whenever a pile of dead Namekian corpses were onscreen. They didn't even bother with the usual "another/next/new dimension" explanation; they simply pretended that the Namekians weren't dead. This becomes a problem when the "not-actually-dead" Namekians are wished back to life at the end anyway which by that time had already switched the dubbing cast along with the censorships that come with it due to the lack of funds.

Funimation dub:

  • In both Z and Kai, when Krillin and Future Trunks arrive at Goku's house, Yamcha recognizes Future Trunks and calls him by name, even though Yamcha left the fight with Androids 19 and 20 to take Goku home before Piccolo revealed his identity.
  • According to Funi, Dr. Gero was the leader of the Red Ribbon Army who Goku had apparently spared long ago and "General" Tao wanted nothing more than world domination. In actuality, the Red Ribbon Army was led by Commander Red. Furthermore, Goku never met Gero during his childhood and Taopaipai was a mercenary who couldn't care less about world domination. This mistake was the result of ''Z'' being translated before the original Dragon Ball, leaving the translators to guess at what happened based on untranslated video clips.
  • Goku specifically says his Instant Transmission technique moves him at the speed of light. Problem is, the speed of light is actually pretty slow when it comes to the vast distances between solar systems Goku uses it to travel. Ships capable of moving several times faster than light also exist in-universe, and at one point Goku would have been on one when he contemplated using the ability to beat Freeza back to Earth. In the Japanese version, no exact speed is ever attached to Instant Transmission, it's merely said to be, well, instantaneous.
  • Another detail that is dropped is that Goku can only use Instant Transmission to travel to places where he can sense the Ki of other living beings. This becomes an important plot point later on when Cell is threatening to blow up the Earth and Goku uses the technique to take him to King Kai's planet instead, saving the Earth at the cost of King Kai and his friends' lives. Originally, this was simply a pragmatic decision to take Cell where he'd do the least amount of damage possible. In the dub, however, there is no clear reason as to why Goku couldn't have just dropped him in the vacuum of space somewhere, making it look like he got some of his friends killed for no reason.
  • When Supreme Kai gives Majin Buu's full history to Old Kai, Supreme Kai states that Buu was uncontrollable until absorbing Grand Supreme Kai (becoming Fat Buu). Old Kai comments, "It weakened him." This is a mistranslation of the original line, which is, "It calmed him." The result is many fans disagreeing on the strength of Buu's different forms.
  • Dragon Ball, which was dubbed long after the first dubbing of Z:
    • Funi attempts to make the retcon of King Piccolo and his spawn being aliens, rather than demons, less blatant by changing all references to them as demons to more vague terms such as "Piccolo's tribe." However, it's played straight when King Piccolo says he's seen warriors from all over the universe, when it would later be established that the Namekian who would become Kami and Piccolo only lived on Namek until a young age before coming to Earth and never leaving.
    • The scene where Goku accidentally agrees to marry Chichi, something she would end up coming back to take him up on at the 23rd Budokai tournament, was changed to just Chichi asking Goku if he'd be thinking about her. This was corrected for the most part by having Goku instead make a similar promise in a Red Ribbon Army Arc filler episode where he sees Chichi and Ox King again ("What about the wedding?" "I'll come back for some of that later!"), but when Chichi reminds him of it at the tournament, the flashback is still to the original scene for no apparent reason.
    • A very minor one, but right after the scene where Tambourine kills Giran, he takes a swipe at a nearby child's father. The dub dialogue for whatever strange reason has Tambourine say he killed the dad for fun, but when it cuts to the father we can see he's clearly still alive. The original Japanese never tried to imply the attack killed him.
  • Dragon Ball GT:
    • Goku wonders whether he'll have to go back to school after being turned into a child. Only he was raised in the mountains, lived in complete solitude and never even met another person besides his grandfather until he was 12, and he never went to school (Master Roshi's training doesn't count).
  • Dragon Ball Super: Episode 60 has Goku state he's never kissed Chi-Chi, and implies he doesn't even know what a kiss is, much to the horror of Vegeta. This is despite there being multiple instances in Z of Goku and Chi-Chi kissing each other. In the Japanese version, Goku was expressing confusion towards Trunks performing a Mouth-to-Mouth Force-Feeding on his mother, with Goku's wording making Vegeta think Goku was talking about kissing.

French dub:

  • The Serpent Road is said to be 100 km long instead of a million. Thus it comes off as bizarre that it takes Goku months to traverse it.
  • Much like the Ocean dub, Goku thinks that Vegeta was the one who killed his grandfather despite Vegeta having never visited Earth before. The dub strangely enough has both Grandpa Gohan and Kami outright stating that Goku can transform into a giant ape in flashbacks, making this even more nonsensical.
  • Vegeta claims that the "Space Warriors" (Saiyans) can take on any form they want under moonlight, instead of becoming giant apes when exposed to it. Apparently every Saiyan just really wants to be a giant ape.
  • They never call Vegeta or Freeza by name during a lot of episodes, until they suddenly do and Krillin knows both of their names because... he just does. Until then, Freeza was "the tyrant" and every other bad guy was "the enemy" (they were still called that for the whole Namek arc). Similarly, the members of the Ginyu Force (called "Special Forces" in this dub instead) have no names in the French script for the majority of their appearance, until Krillin suddenly knows the names of Ginyu and Jeice despite them never saying it. Jeice calls Burter by his name only once at quite random moment (when inviting him to attack Goku together), while Guldo and Recoome remain unnamed.
  • The Saiyans are called "Space Warriors" (yes. And Super Saiyans are "Super Warriors." No, really) despite there being many other alien races to which the term could apply, and when King Kai describes the history of Saiyans to Goku he calls them by that name even when talking about their primitive, cave-dwelling ancestors.
  • Goku has no idea what a "Genki Ball" (Genki-dama in the Japanese and Latin American or Spirit Bomb in English versions) is until Vegeta tells him during their fight with Buu, and in fact wonders if Vegeta is going to use it. Except that he has used it several times in the series (and movies) by that point. The dub also had problems with the Kaio-Ken attack and what it does — for instance, when Goku first reaches the Super Saiyan stage, he claims he has been empowered by King Kai, which is what the dub interpreted the Kaio-Ken technique as.
  • Goku's original birth name Kakarot is never used in the French dub and its many European re-dubs, possibly for fear that a character having two names might confuse kids. Except for one episode, during the time Goku goes missing after Namek's explosion, in which Vegeta goes around searching for someone named "Cachalote" in space. It is never explained who or what the name refers to and Vegeta returns to calling him Son Goku for the rest of the series. Compounding this nonsense, "Cachalote" means sperm whale in some languages, which makes it even stranger that Vegeta would go looking for whales in outer space.
  • When describing Dr. Gero, Bulma calls him a brilliant scientist and a crazy hack in the same scene. So, which is it?
  • Captain Ginyu can speak after having changed bodies with the Namekian Frog. This not only makes the whole filler section of Bulma building a device to understand his speech completely pointless, but, when she gives Frog Ginyu the device, he suddenly cannot speak.
  • Babidi and Dabura continuously talk about Majin Buu (while he's still dormant) as if they had met him before. However, once Buu comes out, both will act surprised at his appearance, and suddenly Babidi mentions he had only seen him in a photo.
  • Similarly, while the Supreme Kai's name is Neptune (due to a mistranslation), he's called Shin way more often.

Other dubs:

  • In the Hungarian dub, during the Garlic Jr. Saga (or Garbig, as the dub calls him), Gohan is stated to be 5 years old. That cannot be, as he was 4 at the start of the series, and two years have explicitly passed since then. This may or may not have been the result of working with the confusing French script.
  • The infamous "Big Green Dub" version of The History of Trunks has the narrator claim that Vegeta, Tien, Yamcha and Krillin survived the Androids' initial attack — so where the hell are they now?
  • Episode 92 of the original Dragon Ball in the Latin American dub shows Krillin referring to Jackie Chun as Master Roshi, even though he's not supposed to know Jackie really is Roshi.
    • And in Episode 105, when Cymbal arrives to where Goku and Yajirobe are, Goku asks Cymbal if he knows Tambourine. When Cymbal replies, instead of referring to Tambourine, he's referring to himself.
  • The Arabic dub of Z changed Raditz from Goku's brother to his Evil Former Friend. However, it kept the implication that this was the first time they canonically met, since Goku still arrived on Earth as an infant in this dub.

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