Acting for Two: Even though the cast is significantly larger than that of most Abridged Series, multiple performances are still unavoidable.
Lanipator has it the worst, voicing Krillin, Popo, Piccolo, Master Roshi, and Vegeta, where there are multiple cases of them talking to each other. Lampshaded at Youmacon 2009, where he introduces himself as playing Chris Sabat. Exaggerated with the Episode of Bardock special, where Lanipator voices all of the primitive Saiyans, who all have the same voice (though there are some cases where Kaiser fills in for him).
Like the original Japanese version, Goku and Gohan share the same voice actor, MasakoX. He manages to make them so distinct that he can even pull off young Goku in flashback, who sounds kind of like Gohan but not enough to be mistaken for him. In "Black to the Future", a Dragon Ball Super short, he plays both Goku and Black Goku in the same scene.
Recoome and Jeice are both voiced by Ganxingba, who are two members of the Ginyu Force that often talk to each other in the same scene. Gan also plays Tenshinhan of the Z-Fighters and Android 17 during the Cell Saga, though they don't talk to each other as often.
Takahata101 plays Dende, along with Guru, Mouri, and Porunga, who more often than not talk to each other in a scene throughout the series. Lampshaded by KaiserNeko in the creator commentary track for Episode 14, noting he plays all the "Green dudes" (referring to the aforementioned Namekians, along with him playing Cell and Guldo).
KaiserNeko mostly played supporting or peripheral characters before Trunks' arrival, although he ends up talking to himself during scenes with King Kai and Gregory, along with George Takei whenever he interrupts King Kai's telepathic calls. The same happens with Korin and Yajirobe, who live with each other in the former's tower (and were upgraded to a romantic pairing in the Abridged Series). Kaiser does voice his frustration over voicing so many characters with similar sounding voices, including supporting casts.
Kaiser: Why do I voice Burter, Korin, and Yajirobe? Why do I voice those three characters?
Actor-Shared Background: Character aspects of Tenshinhan are shared with his actor, Ganxingba, such as his affinity for fantasy Battleball and Judaism. Lampshaded by Lani and Kaiser, where they note the team gradually "wrote Tien more like Gan."
Approval of God: Many of the voice actors of the original English dub of Dragon Ball Z have expressed approval of the series, even quoting the show's lines in-character. Takahata101 was even hired to use his Nappa voice for one of the player voices in Dragon Ball Xenoverse. Christopher Sabat, in particular, is close friends with the team; he's let them crash his panels, he's provided cameos for various videos (under pseudonyms), and he attended the opening of the TFS studio after their successful Patreon campaign.
Hell, the TFS cast members that live in Texas have even worked at FUNimation as voice actors. Chris Sabat even tried to sneak them into the dub of Kai: The Final Chapters as the filler characters dring the Cell Games Re-enactment until a commercial on Toonami showing part of said scene aired, leaving many people to talk about it on social media and Toei finding out about it in the process, who then forced FUNi to reuse the audio from the dub of the original non-Kai version for its official airing and English home release, barring an initial digital stream release that still had the unaltered dialogue that got recorded and uploaded to the internet. This caused Lani, Taka, Kaiser, and Masako to get barred for some time from working for FUNi for some unknown amount of time at Toei's request. A lot of the secondary cast members in Texas still work for them, though.
All-Star Cast: Imagine the series in its heyday and premiering for the first time: the series boasted a cast list consisting of various Abridgers from all across YouTube, some of whom were working on their own Abridged Series while they provided their voices to this one. It can be taken for granted nowadays due to everyone generally being associated with TFS now, but if you were a fan of those individual series the voice actor lineup was practically star-studded. A lot of the other cast members in the third season in particular, such as Amber Lee Connors and Chris Guerrero joined the show before they became regular voice actors at FUNimation.
In TFS Play: Dragon Ball Xenoverse episode 32, Lanipator confirms the fan theory that their created character Dumplin is a young (well, younger) Mr. Popo.
In the second TFS Podcast, KaiserNeko confirms a fan theory about the muffin button: the starship Dr. Briefs built was the same space pod in which Goku first landed on Earth, just massively restored and upgraded. He kept a lot of the original technology without necessarily knowing what it did, and that included the muffin button.
Near the beginning of the Lord Slug movie, after Goku and Krillin fire a Kamehameha at the incoming meteor, Bulma asks "It'll work," which Lani and Kaiser confirm the full line is supposed to be "Do you think it'll work" with the clipped audio left in the final product. Both of them note that this was likely due to shifting a piece of music while editing in the Adobe Premiere timeline that caused the first part of the voice line being trimmed.
In episode 28, when Goku tells Piccolo to look after Gohan and Krillin, Krillin is seen flying away in his Turtle School gi instead of his Freeza Force Armor Vegeta lent him. This mistake was present in the original animation and was at a point before Kaiser got into the practice of having such errors corrected/redrawn, so his solution was to simply use as little of the footage possible and not draw any attention to it.
KaiserNeko regrets the Black Comedy Rape joke in episode 19, which a number of fans took issue with. During the anniversary marathon, the scene in question is talked over and ignored entirely, while in the creator commentary, he explains why it's in poor taste and his intentions.
KaiserNeko also regrets how Dodoria's Unsettling Gender-Reveal was handled, feeling that it comes off as transphobic in hindsight. He says that Vegeta's disgusted reaction should be taken as him being a Politically Incorrect Villain, not expressing the views of Team Four Star themselves. He also would've liked to contrast Vegeta's reaction with Krillin's and Gohan's, which, keeping in-character, would've been more accepting and tolerant.
The guys have commented on their dissatisfaction with some of their earlier episodes, and even dedicated a good portion of the "TIBA Dishonorable Mention" video thrashing the hell out of episode 1. During the 57th episode of their official podcast, they even stated that if they had the chance, they would gladly redo the early episodes to fit with the show's later style.
KaiserNeko did not like how Krillin was written for season 2 where his Adaptational Jerkass personality was pretty much filling in the role for a Jerkass character. Lani agreed that they would have written him the same way he was in season 3.
Kaiser also regrets the term "Freaky Alien Genotype", since some fans used it as an alternative to the homophobic slur it's based on.
They seem to not have held the "Team Three Star" Running Gag in high regard, given this line in the second Kai episode:
Vegeta: That's not funny! It's never been funny! IT'S NEVER GOING TO BE FUNNY!
Lani and KaiserNeko mentions they created Ghost Nappa because he became a fan-favorite character, and tried to add him in the series. When they look back, they realize Ghost Nappa was underutilized because they felt like he was shoehorned in because of his popularity. They realize Piccolo and Nail's dynamic worked better due to Namekian fusion, and had a better use for Nail than they did for Ghost Nappa.
When announcing the abridged version of Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound, Lani mentions putting that film at #8 on their "Best Movies & Specials" list, only for the team to rethink that placement as too generous after trying to abridge it. They called the film nearly unworkable for parody, particularly with its Generic Doomsday Villains and Excuse Plot. They hated the process of abridging the film so much that they felt they could not prevent that hatred from showing in the final product, and thus decreasing its quality.
The entire team, most specifically KaiserNeko, have expressed immense frustration with the series being treated as better than the original anime by their fans, claiming they put "Please support the official release" before each episode for a reason. After an article on The Mary Sueby Princess Weekes called the series the definitive dub for Dragon Ball Z, the team publicly spoke out against it, and when asked by someone if they should watch the original on Reddit, Kaiser absolutely lost it.
KaiserNeko: YES YOU SHOULD WATCH THE ACTUAL FUCKING SHOW, OURS IS NOWHERE CLOSE TO AS GOOD AS THE ACTUAL SHOW, GODDAMNIT!
Scott admitted on the Patreon post announcing the end of the series that one of the reasons the team decided to end the series after episode 60 was that they didn't want to reach a point where they came to resent working on it.
In the first "Behind The Scenes" video, Lanipator and KaiserNeko state that in hindsight, Ghost Nappa didn't really add anything to the show, and was done because they knew that Nappa would be the series' Breakout Character. They do, however, credit the Running Gag for helping set up Piccolo, Nail, and Kami's Sharing a Body dynamic going forward.
Both KaiserNeko and Lanipator have stated that the depiction of "Goku as a bad dad" was done because it was a running gag in the fandom and they leaned into it, and that had they had a bit more forethought they probably would have come up with a different characterization for Goku.
KaiserNeko and Lanipator decided to do a commentary on the first season, and realized some of the jokes (including fourth wall breaks and "Too soon" jokes) did not age well. Kaiser especially can't help but cringe over the quality since "everyone's microphones sucked so much", and visibly Face Palms over his less than stellar editing skills at the time. They did agree some jokes (such as the filler Saiyans in the Pendulum Room's dialogues), and Nappa and Mr. Popo's lines, did age really well.
Kaiser also had negative opinions towards using the orange box due to being compressed and poor quality to use in the first season, since it crops the footage and ruins it. It's why seasons 2 and 3 uses the Dragon Box for the footage and better quality.
Kaiser, Lani, and especially Taka have all expressed their personal distaste not so much for the Canadian subtitles themselves but more that often times people are convinced to use them on their first watch of the show. The short version of the various reasons being that the Canadian subs often give jokes away episodes in advance, aren't written by TFS when people often assume they are, and a lot of the time just aren't funny. In short: They'd much rather that someone uses the Canadian subs on subsequent watches.
Creator's Favorite: Several team members voice characters they particularly like:
Lanipator has admitted in various gaming streams that Piccolo is one of his favourite characters from Dragon Ball, if not his absolute favourite, and that Piccolo was one of the first roles he auditioned for when DBZA was in its early stages.
KaiserNeko has said many times that Future Trunks is one of his favorite characters. His casting isn't an intentional case of Promoted Fanboy; he insists that he auditioned other people for the role, but the team liked his performance the best and pushed for him to play Trunks. It certainly helps that he has a passion for the character.
He also really liked writing for Zarbon.
MasakoX has stated that Goku is his favourite character.
Gaxingba's favorite character to voice is Recoome.
Though he's no longer part of the team, Lani has stated Vegeta3986 is a fan of the underdog characters such as Raditz and Yamcha, hence why he played their roles before his departure from the series. He also based his performance on Jason Gray-Stanford in the Saban-Ocean Group's dub of the series.
Taka, Lani, and Kaiser have confirmed that Episode 42 is one of their favorites in terms of writing, because it has a little bit of everything: Gohan acting as a detective, Krillin fawning over 18, the dramatic fusing of Kami and Piccolo, and Cell's introduction.
During the Creator Commentary for their series, Kaiser states that Episode 24 is one of his favorites in terms of pacing.
One of Lani's favorite videos that the team has ever produced is their adaptation of Lord Slug, owing it to the memorable moments, jokes, and fight scenes.
Dodoria also counts, although you'd be forgiven for not picking up on it.
The Danza: A minor example — one of the Cell Jr's is named Curtis, and thus shares a name with his voice actor Takahata101.
Development Hell: The finale of the Cell Saga. Episode 59 was released in June 2017, but the first part of Episode 60 didn't come out until August 31, 2018, with the other two parts coming out on a weekly basis. They were heavily focused on other work at the time, including the dub for Hells, new episodes of Hellsing Ultimate Abridged, a new season of Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged, and a brand new YouTube channel. Some suggested that this was a case of Screwed by the Lawyers, given their YouTube channel's frequent struggles with copyright claims from Toei Animation. Either explanation is plausible for the eventual cancellation of the show following Episode 60.
Executive Meddling: Despite their being friends with Funimation and many of the official DBZ voice actors, TFS can't cast any of them in Role Reprises because of their contracts.
Fake American: MasakoX is British, but affects an American accent when playing Goku and Gohan, even though neither of them are American (or even come from a universe where the U.S. exists).
In the tenth anniversary stream, when they get to Yamcha's first scene in the first episode, TFS gives conflicting answers about whether or not it was Puar that Yamcha was caught sleeping with when Bulma walked in on him. Lani insists that his and Taka's two votes for it outweigh Kaiser's no.
The team's stance on whether Episode 60 would serve as the Series Finale has gone back and forth. They didn't tip their hand either way until the episode was released. The Stinger makes it explicit that DBZA would return for season 4 and cover the Buu Saga, and Lani also implied that the team was mulling over doing something with the Otherworld Tournament as well. They went back on that for a number of reasons: copyright issues, wanting to work on other projects, concern over avoiding Seasonal Rot (the Buu Saga was not a high point in the original, and they shut down Bojack Abridged out of frustration with the source material), adjusting to new production schedules and techniques, and just general burnout. It helped that Episode 60 had a sense of finality to it and was a good place to end it. But they held out hope for a bit, until Scott finally made it official on Patreon.
God Never Said That: As mentioned under Development Hell, the series ending after the Cell Saga. There was a lot of speculation in the gap between episodes 59 and 60 as to whether the series would continue after that, and although TFS didn't tip their hand either way (here's Kaiser on Reddit saying that the series ending was a "possibility"), fans were convinced that episode 60 would be the end. The Stinger for episode 60 explicitly said that the show would continue partly to assure the fans of their thinking — at least until TFS changed their minds and decided to end it after all.
Grant Smith (a.k.a. Master Wuggles) hates Dragon Ball Z Abridged and its style of comedy. However, Team Four Star invited him as guest for their gaming content, and he eventually became a full member of TFS. He would later contribute to DBZA himself, first by playing Brock and James for one of the Cell Vs. videos, then as a Bit Character in the last episodes of Season 3 of the series proper. He seems to have softened up to the series a little bit, but he clearly still isn't a fan of it.
Kirran Somerlade (a.k.a. LordMoonstone) is another critic of the series who nonetheless joined Team Four Star. He even joined the main trio (KaiserNeko, Lanipator, and Takahata101) as one of DBZA's main writers.
After Freeza's comment on how Guru can be so fat when Namekians only live on water, many started to believe that Guru caused the great drought by simply drinking it all and framed the Albino Namekians for it. They were right.
That the Garlic Jr. Saga would be covered in only one episode.
That Kami, like Nail, would retain his personality as a part of Piccolo. And that he would try the "lower" joke (but Piccolo wouldn't fall for it).
Jeice was predicted to be specifically from Space Australia.
The Stinger of Episode 16 was originally not uploaded on the YouTube version due to the video time limits set in place back in 2010, and it could only be found on TFS's website. Since the videos were removed from their website, the clip was considered lost for a long time. However, the full version of the episode, including the stinger, can be found on both YouTube, as seen here, and TFS's Twitch channel, as seen here.
The brief teaser for the now-cancelled Season 4 was removed from the Grand Finale, only existing through mirrored versions.
Lanipator and MasakoX consider the Neighborhood Cluck Productions versions of the first two Abridged movies to be this.
In his tenth comments replies video, MasakoX states that he does not feel that he really turned out a good performance as Goku for episodes 14 to 26, apparently due to some undisclosed Reality Subtext that made his life difficult and affected his performance. In particular, his "Ginyu as Goku" role in Episode 23 was hit by real-life frustrations.
Kaiser regrets the occasional use of the word "retarded" as synonymous for stupid in some of the earlier episodes. Similarly, Taka mentioned in his own creator commentary that he has friends with the dwarfism condition and now regrets letting "midget" into the earlier scripts when characters describe Krillin.
Kaiser seems to regard Season 1 fairly poorly; on the TFS podcast, in response to a Twitter user asking if the team would redo the show's early episodes if they could, Kaiser gave a wholehearted Big "YES!". Additionally, the "TIBA Dishonorable Mention" is the first episode of the series, implying that they view it as an Old Shame.
If the TeamFourStar tenth anniversary stream is any indication, Kaiser is embarrassed by the "Where'd that scouter come from?" scrolling text in Episode 3, saying that if he was better at editing back then, he would've just removed the scouter entirely.
Much like the “scouter” line, Kaiser is embarrassed by his choice of putting the text “Epic Foreshadowing” on screen after Vegeta tells Nappa he’ll die one day in episode 7. In the creator commentary for the episode, Lani gives the phrase a mocking epic reading while Kaiser begs for someone to just end his life right there and then.
This trope was invoked on the "Casual Friday" stream a few days before the marathon, with Lani telling fans to make sure to tune in early to witness their reactions to the first season.
The DBZ Movie Marathon revealed Taka isn't fond of the voice he used for South Kai in the Broly movie, saying it sounded kind of racist. He even implied if they ever tackle the Otherworld Tournament, he'd change the voice entirely. His two scenes in the film as South Kai feature him burying his face in his hands.
Vegeta3986 replaces Lanipator as Raditz in the middle of the first episode. As of Dragon Ball Z Kai Abridged, Lanipator has gone back to playing Raditz since Vegeta3986 left the show.
Starting in the Bardock special, LittleKuriboh replaces Lani as Freeza, which is subtly indicated when Freeza starts off with Lanipator, coughs mid-line, and switches voices when he starts again.
This happened with Chi-Chi's casting behind the scenes. The original plan was for Whiteash to handle the character, but she backed out due to life issues before Chi-Chi's first appearance. Then Krisrix voiced her for the first season. Then she was replaced by Hnilmik, a veteran of many popular flash animations, machinima, and adaptation projects, as well as voicing Ms. Fortune in Skullgirls. Pick your favorite.
Because Vegeta3986 left the series, everyone he played in the series had been replaced since Episode 24. Kami is now voiced by Remix, Lanipator has gone back to voicing Raditz (whenever he appears, anyway), Yamcha is now voiced by Faulerro from Nullmetal Alchemist, and Garlic Jr. and Oolong both went to KaiserNeko.
Master Roshi switched from being played by MasakoX in Seasons 1 and 2, to Lanipator for Season 3. It was explained in the commentary for Episode 31 that Masako's voice wasn't working out for the comedic opportunities they saw now that the character was appearing more frequently in Season 3, so they switched from Masako's impression of Kōhei Miyauchi to Lani's more expressive Mike McFarland impression.
KaiserNeko played Cooler in the Abridged version of the original Bardock special, but decided not to reprise the role for Revenge of Cooler Abridged and its sequel because he felt he couldn't give the character the proper "majesty". So TFS got Chris Guerrero to play the role instead.
When he appeared in Christmas Tree of Might, Santa Claus was voiced by Kyle Hebert. Assuming that it's the same character, Santa's appearance in Plan to Eradicate Christmas is this, since there he's played by Kamran Nikhad.
Kaiser has said that, outside of one scene in Season 3, he'd never voice Kid Trunks longterm. There are also times where he fills in for certain incidental lines when an actor isn't available to record, such as a groan from a weakened Ox King and Kami in the Dead Zone special. Kaiser does this again Episode of Bardock, where he plays some of the primitive Saiyans whom were all originally recorded by Lanipator. The commentary for the special has Taka, Lani, and Kaiser playing a game of identifying whether it was Lani or Kaiser voicing one of the proto-Sayains in a scene.
Playing Against Type: Invoked by Takahata101, where he stated that he was afraid of being typecasted, believing that people would only like him voicing their version of Nappa. Taka pushed to play Bardock for the Father of Goku special, in order to prove that he could play a wide range of emotions and a more relatively serious character.
Queer Character, Queer Actor: Yajirobe, Korin, and Burter, who were all made gay in the series, are voiced by the gay KaiserNeko.
Reality Subtext: In episode 60 Part 3, Goku gives a speech about not wanting to be brought back to life, which is framed in such a way to bring up the real life rumors that DBZA would be ending. TFS wasn't certain what they were going to do, so they wrote the episode as a possible Series Finale in case they decided to end it there. It was designed to needle the fans. Although episode 60 was the end of the series, that wasn't the plan when it was released; only much later did they pull the plug on the show.
Parodied in-universe in Lord Slug Abridged. Several of Slug's henchmen get fried after they accidentally refer to him as "King Piccolo", and even the Dragon finds his wish very familiar. It's similar enough that even Goku figures it out.
Much to his disdain, characters notice this about Cooler when it comes to Freeza.
In The World's Strongest Abridged, everyone (even their creator) confuses the Bio-Men with the Saibamen who came down with Vegeta and Nappa. One of them blows up Yamcha in the same way, except he survives this time. Piccolo also adds to his Running Gag of how the Quirky Miniboss Squad in the movies is always the same: Dumb Muscle, Pretty Boy, and freaky alien with the weird powers.
Trunks' line "Either loosen your moral code, or stop hinging the the fate of the world on deathmatches!" is referenced by Overly Sarcastic Productions in "Trope Talk: Tournament Arcs" to summarize the problem with the artificial situation of tournament arcs.
Vegeta's line "That's not funny! It's never been funny! It's never gonna be funny" was actually referenced in Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) when Sonic calls Eggman "Baldy McNosehair". When the guys asked the writer about it, he confirms that it was an actual reference to Kai Abridged 2.
After more or less putting Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged on permanent hiatus in 2011, Lanipator reprised the roles of Yusuke and Kuwabara in 2017 for a video short where they challenge Cell to a fight in the days leading up to the Cell Games.
Yami Yugi in the Cell Vs. Short is voiced by none other than LittleKuriboh.
Christopher Robin Miller first played Talking Movie Bubbles in the Lord Slug movie in 2011. He would return 6 years later to reprise the role for the BROLY movie.
Schedule Slip: The release of History of Trunks was given a teaser trailer that promised a February 2015 upload. It didn't come out until March 19th.
Screwed by the Lawyers: As with many Abridged Series, DBZA has been hit with copyright strikes and various other troubles, particularly in its later years. This ended up being one of the reasons (along with the usual creative burn-out and desire to do original work rather than parody an existing one) that Season 4 was ultimately cancelled, as by then TFS had grown exponentially as a business with its non-DBZA projects, and all of it could have been lost if they pushed their luck too far.
Shrug of God: In the commentary for Episode 18, Lani and Kaiser admit they don't know if Ghost Nappa is an actual ghost or just a bunch of hallucinations conjured up by Vegeta's mind.
KaiserNeko mentions in a few Episode Breakdowns a number of unscripted things that were added in:
In Kai Abridged Episode 2, Goku getting interrupted in mid-sentence by Vegeta dying is a result of MasakoX flubbing his line. Freeza Flipping the Bird was also ad-libbed.
When Cell meets the East City Westmen in Episode 44, his head turns in a quick, unnatural fashion. This was originally a fluke, they but kept it because it looked, fittingly for Cell, disturbing.
Krillin's "bitch" rant to Bulma in episode 18 was improvised on the spot by Lanipator.
The reason why Goku keeps calling Freeza "Freezer" is because of MasakoX's accent where he calls Vegeta "Vegeter". Since it's in character for Goku calling Freeza "Freezer", they decided to write Goku's lines where he calls him Freezer.
Kaiser mentions in the original anime, he heard 8 thudding sounds when the Namekian Dragon Balls land on Earth. He intentionally left in the sounds in Episode 30 part 2 to see if anyone caught it.
Trolling Creator: As explained under Reality Subtext, the entire final act of Episode 60 part 3 is played up as the Series Fauxnale for all it's worth; they didn't intend for it to be at the time, but fans were speculating that it would be. It did turn out to be the real Series Finale, but over a year after the episode was released.
Screwed by the Lawyers from Toei's copyright claims and Creator Breakdown due to burnout plagued the series behind the scenes, culminating in the cancellation of the Bojack movie and eventually the announced Season 4. Bojack Unbound in particular suffered from the team struggling to make anything satisfactory out of the source material, to the point that they began to resent the process and the movie itself.
A less serious example would be the scripting for History of Trunks Abridged going over an hour past schedule because of Takahata101 insisting on keeping the punchline to Future Bulma propositioning Future Gohan. Lanipator also fought for it but not as hard, and KaiserNeko eventually convinced them that regardless of how many times it Crosses the Line Twice and might be acceptable in context, the optics of him having known her since he was four while she was older than his father is far too reminiscent of real life grooming to make the cut.
The Season 3 finale of DBZA, released in 2018, ended with a teaser card promising a Season 4. Multiple update videos and social media updates throughout 2018 and 2019 made promises about the release window, with the timeline being pushed back every time. In October 2019 an off-hand reference was snuck into an update video that the team was considering making Season 4 with original 3D animation rather than the repurposed anime footage the series was known for. In January 2020, KaiserNeko made a Twitter post that noticeably said that if Season 4 was made, it would be done with 3D models. After being bombarded with questions by upset fans, the team finally admitted that Season 4 was cancelled in February 2020.
KaiserNeko mentioned they originally planned a bit more dialogue where Jimmy Olsen and Clark Kent went to the fighting grounds where the protagonists confronts the Saiyans, and Jimmy telling Clark that everyone knew he was Superman all along, until Clark tells him if they knew, Superman would had made anyone who knew keep quiet about it, then murder Jimmy offscreen. It was scrapped completely because they didn't have footage for it, and they dropped the lines completely.
LittleKuriboh posted his audition video revealing that he originally auditioned to play Captain Ginyu. TFS ended up loving the Freeza voice more and requested a second audition tape. Lanipator was originally supposed to play Freeza with a Linda Young impression, but TFS dropped it once they decided to cast LittleKuriboh (it's referenced in Bardock: The Father of Goku, with Lanipator briefly playing Freeza with his Linda Young inpression before coughing and switching to LittleKuriboh's portrayal). Interestingly, LK was auditioning for Freeza all along, but knowing that Lanipator was already penciled in for the part, he snuck in his impression by auditioning for Ginyu instead.
During their commentary for Lord Slug Abridged, Kaiser stated that after Piccolo says "Alright, alright, you're not tough", there was going to be a Beat for Dordabo/Wings to process the insult by himself instead of a line from Piccolo and Gohan.
The breakdown for History of Trunks reveals that there was quite a debate about whether Gohan should actually take Bulma up on her offer, though everyone's happy they wimped out. But just in case you're not happy they wimped out, thanks to a fan edit, you can see an alternate take on the scene, where Gohan accepts Bulma's offer.
RWBY creator Monty Oum apparently wanted to voice Future Gohan in History of Trunks, but he sadly passed away before getting the chance. The special was dedicated to his memory.
History of Trunks was going to have a plot point where Trunks actually died and the one who came back was a clone, but it was dropped.
The breakdown for Episode 51 reveals that KaiserNeko was originally going to play all three versions of Cell. He however ended up being casted as Trunks instead, with Takahata101's interpretation of Cell being "too much fun to pass up".
Similarly, during the 10th anniversary livestream, Kaiser said that he initially wanted to give the role of Future Trunks to GanXingba while he played Android 17. However, the rest of the team insisted that Kaiser was better as Trunks (and that Gan was perfect as 17), so they ended up with the roles as they are today. According to Taka's solo commentary of Episode 18, he and Lani had butted heads with Kaiser multiple times over this, as Kaiser was unsure if his performance would be good enough and tried to drop the role to another actor more than once. Lani and Taka wrote in the History of TrunksCall-Forward in Episode 18 specifically to let Kaiser voice Trunks in order to convince him to play the character in Season 3.
Additionally, as revealed by MasakoX in response to a comment on Part 6 of his What If Videl Was A Z-Fighter? video series, had Season 4 not been cancelled, Kaiser was going to voice Buu, with the reason being “He had yet to have played a baddie in the main series other than Garlic Jr.”
The original plan for Android 17 was that he would speak in Totally Radical fashion, but this was quickly deemed annoying and dropped. The gag was later used when Cell impersonates 17 to try and convince 18 to let herself be absorbed, with the goofy speech patterns proving that Cell knows nothing about either of them.
In a livestream after the release of Broly Abridged, Lani said that they wanted to cast Markiplier and JonTron as Broly and Paragus respectively, but it didn't work out because of Mark and Jon's incredibly busy schedules. He also said that they've been speaking with Mark about playing a number of roles, but it probably won't happen for the same reason.
During the Movie Marathon, the team mentioned the original idea for Broly Abridged was Paragus trying to get Broly into the Z Fighters group because his son was a massive fan of them. One of the reason this was canned was because the lack of appropriate scenes to make the idea work.
There was some consideration to skip abridging Broly's movie entirely, likely due to most of the team hating him, but they went through with it.
A tweet released during the Cell Games shorts seemed to hint at a possible appearance by Yang Xiao Long, but sadly never materialized.
A couple of days after Plan to Eradicate Christmas premiered, KaiserNeko clarified on Twitter that the special was significantly different from what was originally planned. According to him, rather than being a Christmas-themed parody, it would've been a more straight comical pastiche of Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, with the main gimmick being that it'd repeatedly shift between the 1993 and 2008 versions of the OVA due to Dr. Raichi's machine causing a tear in the space-time continuum. The special was eventually retooled into a Christmas episode both due to time constraintsnote KaiserNeko described the 1993 footage as being too difficult to edit to the intended extent, which makes sense considering how it's only available in sub-par quality at best and because of the surprisingly apt timing of its production. The original plan for the special did end up getting an allusion in the form of a brief sight gag when Goku and company encounter Santa Claus and he accuses Trunks of messing with the space-time continuum, and Trunks insists that the continuum is fine — while shifting between the modern and 1993 versions mid-sentence.
TFS wanted to make an Abridged voice pack mod for Dragon Ball FighterZ, but dropped the idea after Arc System Works patched the game so that mods are disabled during online play, which effectively rendered the entire idea meaningless.
When the 10th anniversary livestream got to Nappa's scene in the Season 2 finale, Lani and Taka revealed that they considered including lines implying that Ghost Nappa was just a hallucination on Vegeta's part and that he was crazy and doomed to be haunted by hallucinations of ghosts, with Ghost Guru being Ghost Nappa's successor.
Originally Episode 28 was going to be two parts, with its second part becoming Episode 29.
The Ginyu Force showing up on King Kai’s planet was originally going to be cut as the team saw no reason to abridge it due to being pointless filler. However, Lani was able to come up with an idea on how to make it short and funny.
The audience was going to hear muffled screams from Vegeta after Goku finished burying him on Namek, revealing that he wasn’t dead and that he had accidentally been Buried Alive. Similarly, Lani had pitched a joke in Episode 30 that when Vegeta woke up after being revived on Namek, Vegeta would end up dying from suffocating underneath the dirt he was buried under because he couldn't dig himself out fast enough.
In the original DBZ, Freeza says it'll take five minutes for Namek to explode, which becomes laughable considering how many episodes it takes. Team Four Star briefly considered making the final Goku and Freeza fight actually five minutes long, but quickly realized that would be impossible, even for an abridged series. They compromised by Goku questioning if Freeza even knows how long a minute is.
The crew mulled the idea of the Cell Jr. fighting Yamcha being noticeably weaker than the others, as a means to explain how Yamcha could hold his own when the others are leagues ahead of him and doing just the same. They eventually just cut that bit when they couldn't figure out how to make it fit.
The song Cell sings as he dies went through a few permutations. They were all set to make it "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn, but KaiserNeko rejected it and pointed out that Cell and Gohan never really do meet again. (At least not until Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, which came out after Episode 60, and even then it was a clone of Cell, not the real thing) Takahata101 was the one to suggest the song eventually used: "My Way" by Frank Sinatra.
The entirety of Bojack Unbound Abridged is a case of this. Lani blamed it on scripting difficulties, while Kaiser went more in-depth and explained that the movie had so little story and such a boring villain that it was impossible for them to abridge it to their usual quality; all the jokes they could think of were shallow, uninspired, or mean-spirited. Their experience with this was one of several reasons why they decided to cancel the series as a whole after episode 60.
The DBZ Movie Marathon on Twitch revealed the script for the Broly movie was originally much longer and included things like Goku and Broly's first fight, but they realized that would serve essentially as filler and wouldn't mesh with the characterization of Broly they were going for.
The team had an argument over what music would play during Piccolo's Big Damn Heroes moment in episode 25, with Kaiser aiming for Magus's battle theme and Lani aiming for Number One. Ultimately, Kaiser won out.
Originally, Freeza's line about "playing babysitter" in episode 25 was "playing Casey Anthony", which the team found in terrible taste and would get dated quickly.
Nail's line about how he'd eventually fade into Piccolo's head in episode 25 was an excuse for the writers to write Nail out in case the Piccolo, Nail, and Kami's Sharing a Body dynamic didn't work out.
With the ending of the series, TFS's planned adaptation of the Buu Saga leaves many ideas on the cutting room floor:
They weren't exactly sure of how the characters would react to Saiyaman, but one idea was that Vegeta would be completely taken in by the identity and not be able to figure out that Gohan and Saiyaman are the same person.
As revealed in their playthrough of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Mr. Satan would have attempted to rebrand himself as "Hercule" to be more "family-friendly", reflecting the original's Dub Name Change for the same reason.
The team considered continuing the series in the style of Dragon ShortZ to get around YouTube's notoriously strict copyright rules, but that would have required even more time and expense than the previous seasons, and they were already dealing with some serious burnout. They were also concerned that such an Art Shift would negatively affect the series' quality.
As mentioned above, KaiserNeko was penned to play Buu.
Vegeta's decision to give himself over to Babidi would be portrayed as a Hollywood Mid-Life Crisis, triggered by his growing frustration at getting "domesticated" by life on Earth.
Vegeta: I thought about inviting Krillin over! Krillin! For a barbecue! What happened to me, man?! I used to be cool!
Taka fought to keep Ginyu alive as he wanted to adapt the filler arc where he took over Bulma's body, since she had so little to do Namek.
The team thought of making a Krillin Owned Count for the movies, but decided to drop the idea.
Some fans use TFS's Fanon about the canon series, especially with regard to The Multiverse. The Abridged Series itself refers to Alternate Timelines as "universes", in keeping with the use of the term in Dragon Ball Multiverse, but Dragon Ball Super established a whole different definition of a "universe" that directly contradicts TFS's explanation.
The original Dragon Ball Z never depicts how Gero's son was killed, and Akira Toriyama said in supplemental material only that he was killed in battle by an enemy soldier. The Abridged Series includes a scene which shows that Gero's son was killed (along with many others) by Goku himself in the course of the original Dragon Ball. Many fans now adopt the Abridged Series version as Fanon.
Word of Gay: Several characters voiced by KaiserNeko are gay, but not all of them are. He's had to clarify on Tumblr that they're not gay because he's gay, but because it would have been funnier; Korin and Yajirobe were a perfect Odd Couple, and Burter having no obvious indicator of his sexual orientation made it funny for him to be outed. But Oolong, Turtle, King Kai, Gregory, Zarbon, and Future Trunks are not gay.
Kaiser said in the 10th anniversary marathon stream that Princess Snake is Zarbon's girlfriend.
After Episode 55 came out, some fans interpreted the scene at the end as Chi-Chi raping Goku in order to conceive Goten; some were upset, while more disturbingly, some found that interpretation hilarious, and it got to the point where TFS had to add "rape" (and all variations thereof) to the word filter in their YouTube comments. Kaiser stepped in both online and in person at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2016 (the weekend after 55 was released) to clarify that it was not rape, that Goku knows about sex, and that everything that happened was consensual. Episode 56, released soon after, clarified it further, with Goku explaining to Krillin that he knew perfectly well that he could say no; he just can't back down from a challenge (and it feels good, and maybe Krillin should try it sometime). His real problem is that he didn't know that sex makes babies.
After Episode 59 came out, fans complained on Reddit that TFS had gone too far in perpetuating the "Goku is a bad father" meme by having him force a reluctant Gohan to fight a recovered Perfect Cell. Kaiser went on Reddit to clarify that they don't think that Goku is a terrible father; he's just not mentally equipped to do the job properly (which is pretty much exactly what Akira Toriyama had to say on the subject).
According to Kaiser, Mr. Satan received the lifetime supply of Hetap for "winning" the Cell Games.
In the Episode 41 Creator Commentary, Lani and Kaiser discuss the three most obvious locations that the Z-Fighters could have kept Goku, those being Goku's home, Kame House, and Capsule Corp. When they bring up Kami's Lookout as a potential option, Kaiser mentions the original series established that there's some sort of magic that prevented people from just flying up to the Lookout with a vehicle (which Bulma would do later in the show anyways). Lani theorizes that after Kami fused with Piccolo, the magic bubble surrounding the lookout disappeared, allowing normal humans and vehicles to fly up there (or into it) without issue, which Kaiser also accepted as part of their canon.
Lani:(in Mr. Popo's voice) We keep getting hit by airplanes now. It's funny.
Write What You Know: During the 10th anniversary marathon on Twitch, Taka explained that Guru's "Party Pooper" song was something his father used to sing when he was being melodramatic. He added that when his dad saw the episode, he jokingly asked, "When do I get paid for this?"
Write Who You Know: A number of Tien's character traits — such as him being Jewish and having a fantasy battleball league — are directly based on his voice actor Marc "Ganxingba" Soskin.
regrets the Black Comedy Rape joke in episode 19, which a number of fans took issue with. During the anniversary marathon, the scene in question is talked over and ignored entirely, while in the creator commentary, he explains why it's in poor taste and his intentions.
far too reminiscent of real life grooming to make the cut.