When you have a franchise that’s run as long as Dragon Ball, you’re bound to run into some continuity problems. In fact, every iteration of the Dragon Ball franchise, whether it’s an animated series, film, video ⛎game, or even the original manga itself, there’s a whole slew of inconsistencies.
Whether these are born from Akira Toriyama and his staff being forgetful (and, considering the amount of years this franchise has existed, and the gargantuan amount of content within it, is quite understandable,) or they stem from the creators actively choosing to redefine specific elements, you will find retcons and brok🌳en continuity everywhere.
That said, Dragon Ball Super and its recent film are unique in the sense that they MASSIVE𒈔LY break continuity within the well-established lore of the franchise.
Sure, there are definitely changes that are small or inconsequential in nature, couple൩d with honest-to-goodness mistakes, but when it makes a big change, it makes a colossal one that has implications across decades of material.
With this list of 25 Crazy Things In Dragon Ball Super That Break Continuity, we’ve compiled some of the most mind-bogglingly bizarre alterations that Toriyama and his crew have intentiona🥀lly implemented in Super, along with others that amount to minor mistakes that, while not devastatin🎀g, still end up breaking continuity.
Again, nearly every saga of every Dragon Ball series does at least a few things that either retcon important material or breaks continuity in other ways, but Super is like an Oozaru 🌱going on a rampage against canon, and there’s no one around to blow u🐓p the moon.
25 ♛ ꦅ Piccolo Teaching Fusion
Divine earrings are a decent way to fuse, but if you want the best bang for your buck, you better prepare to do a wacky and extremely precise dance. Goku picked up this particular method of fusing two warriors into one during his post-mortem Other World advent♋ures, and made sure to bring it to the forefront in the battle against Buu.
So, how come in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Piccolo is treated as the ultimate Fusion Dance expert? He didn’t discover it, nor was h𒆙e the one to teach it to our heroes… that was all Goku. We get the idea of Piccolo observing and coaching Goku and Vegeta, but the film treated him like he was progenitor of the technique.
24 Time Travel Got A Lot Weirder 💟🌟
Akira Toriyama’s concept of time travel is fairly unique when compared to something like Back to the Future’s take, but Dragon Ball Super muddies its already complex nature, practically rewriting it in the process. Here’s the thing, though: time travel in Dragon Ball has always been overly comple🐈x and a little bit hard to comprehend.
When Super added in the idea of multiverses, all of which contain alternate time lines, Time Rings and much more, things became so complicated that we barely get what’s going on, and neither does Toriyama. Frankly, we don’t have the space to talk about all the inconsistencies, but doing a quick watch of Trunks explaining time travel in Z and then watching the Goku Black arc in Super, and you’ll und🌱erstand… actually, you won’t, but that’s the point we’re 🙈making.
23 ꦍ The Nature Of The Afterlife 🦩
It can be easy to forget that within the first few episodes of Dragon Ball Z, the main character get𒊎s utterly blown away and spends a lengthy amount of time in the after life. This is bold in and of itself, but the after life, otherwise known as the “Other World,” is executed in such a unique and fun way that it’s easy to dull the pain of Goku’s demise.
The Other World itself goes through some minor conceptual changes throughout the series, such as the circumstances of keeping one’s body, but Super makes major and jarring alterations. These include, but are not limited to, there bein❀g multiple, specific versions of Hell, alternate check-in stations (rather than King Yemma being the one and only,) and much more.
22 🌠 Trunk’s ♒Hair
The tale of Trunks’ hair color is bizarre and longer than it should be, and its blatantly contradictory “conclusion” makes it so much worse. Basically, for the majority of Trunks’ appearances throughout the entire franchise, his hair has been a light purple, but in Super he’s given blue hair.
Well, more specifically, Furure Trunks has blue hair, while kid Trunks has purple hair. Weirder yet, way back in the '90s, some toys of Trunks (before we even knew who he was) h♚ad blue hair instead of purple, so this problem is one that’s gone back decades, and we’ll likely never know the true answer.
21 Bardock’s Characterization 💟
The latest film in the franchise, Broly, makes some major changes to accepted canon and characterizations, and Bardock takes the biggest hit of them all. Portrayed as a ruthless Saiyan who cares little for his own son, the original𒀰 Bardock is a terrible person who decides to stand up to tyranny to defend his race and, in his final moments of life, takes selfish pleasure in the fact that his son will eventually avenge him.
Broly transforms Bardock into the equivalent of Superman’s father, while also altering his characterization to be a far softer and kinder character, who aims to save Goku because he loves him. While this is nice, it makes Bardock a far less in🐻teresting character, and, again, and there’s already a better version of this tale in the form of Superman.
20 🦹 Ki Blast Mechanics
Watch basically any episode of the Saiyan or Frieza arcs, and the iconic Ki Blasts of Dragon Ball Z are specta▨cular forces of destruction, adorned with all kinds of special visual effects to give them even more impact. Even something as simple as Vegeta firing off a single blast is treated with care, and each burst is practically unique.
In Super, most (if not all) standard ki blasts are treated like weak, rapid fire shots of yellow bolts that look more like a cheesy version of Gundam Wing’s machine gun effects than anything in Dragon Ball. While not a story-shattering continuity change, this nerfing of the visual and destructiv🥂e splendor just looks and feels awful.
19 Goku’s Origins🃏 ♉
The specifics of Goku’s origin have gone through some minor (and major) changes in🌸 the past.
When we’re first introduced to the character, he’s just a weirdly strong kid with a tail who was found as a baby by Grandpa Gohan. Sometimes baby Goku is found in his space pod, other times he’s not. Sometimes he was said to be violent before he bonked his head, while other media shows him being a good boy from the start. In fact, the only truly major retcon came in the form of Goku being a Saiyan… that is, until Broly came out.
In Broly, Goku isn't a baby. He’s a child that’s a few years of age, and he definitely knew his parents and possibly his brother. While 🧔he probably forgot them by hitting his head, this age change was totally unnecessary and shatters continuity for zero reason.
18 ꦜ Bulma’s𝐆 Age
Bulma is one of Dragon Ball’s longest running characters, and she’s absolutely awesome. Sure she was cool when she was going on adventures with Goku as a kid, but her impressive level of genius is really what makes this character shi𓄧ne.
Of course, there is something that’s not 🎐quite right about B𓂃ulma, and it’s her age.
Now, we know that discussing her age is something of a trigger for her, but we’re not actually talking about how old she is… we’re specifically referencing how Bulma herself doesn’t seem🐠 to actually know hoꦗw old she is.
Bulma claims she is 38 in Super’s films, but she’s actual🧸ly 45 if we check out her official ൩birth date. Sure, she could be concealing her true age, but we think it’s probably just a mistake on the writer’s part.
17 The E꧃xistence Of God Powers, Gods Of Destruction And More
First, an uncomfortable fact: Dragon Ball GT might still be canon, despite Funimation saying otherwise and a general fan belief that it’s not. There’s plenty of timeline room before reaching the age of GT, so there’s nothing that’s outright contradicted GT’s events just yet (aside from a few small changes)… well, except for the hoopla surrounding d🅘ivine powers and the nature of the universe(s.)
Basically, Super Saiyan God and its related forms, Beerus, Agnels, the multiverse itself, and so much more are never once mentioned in GT. Obviously they weren’t invented yet, but the fact that Super consciously takes place before GT, when they could’ve easily done a 𓆉hard retcon of it, makes us think Toriyama genuinely wants to tie things together, and if that’s the case, he’s already messed up.
16 ❀ Achievi🧜ng Super Saiyan
Even casual fans will mention Goku’s explosive transformation in a Super Saiyan as one of their favorite parts of the franchise. The rage he harbored against Frieza was the perfect catalyst for his titanic transformation. Likewise, Vegeta’s burning desire to surpass Goku led to his own Super Saiyan transformation, while Gohan’s 𝓡internalized hatred was what helped him achieve Super Saiyan 2.
These awesome transformations were tied to intense emotions and turmoil, and only through harnessing them were our heroes able to evolve… but Super decides 🅘to throw that all out the window by saying you can just find a tingly feeling 🦩in your back and then use that to transform.
…. And that's how you deflate one of the most emotionally charged concepts in an entire franchise. This change is like the midi-chlorians of Dragon Ball.