Weird misconceptions you used to have

[Polyphase Avatron]

Another one, I remember as the Buu saga was just starting to be broadcast, I went on the Toonami website and saw some titles for upcoming episodes, one of them involved Videl, and I didn't know who that was at the time so I thought it was a new villain. Also, one of the titles was "Eighteen unmasks", and instead of unmasking Mighty Mask (aka Goten and Trunks) I thought it meant that she would unmask herself and reveal some kind of monstrous robotic form (this was back when I still didn't know that 17 and 18 used to be human, you can blame the dub for that).

[Son Gohan 1995]

I thought Gohan and Kuririn were in the same age group. Krillin being slightly older, same with bulma. This was during namek.

[B]

After seeing a figure in a Beckett magazine, I thought "Gokou", which I pronounced "Gokow", was Goku's grandson in GT.

[Dbzfan94]

Another one, I remember as the Buu saga was just starting to be broadcast, I went on the Toonami website and saw some titles for upcoming episodes, one of them involved Videl, and I didn't know who that was at the time so I thought it was a new villain. Also, one of the titles was "Eighteen unmasks", and instead of unmasking Mighty Mask (aka Goten and Trunks) I thought it meant that she would unmask herself and reveal some kind of monstrous robotic form (this was back when I still didn't know that 17 and 18 used to be human, you can blame the dub for that).

The dub said that 17 and 18 were humans too. Just sayin...

[Kid Buu]

I thought DBZ was the best show ever made.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Another one, I remember as the Buu saga was just starting to be broadcast, I went on the Toonami website and saw some titles for upcoming episodes, one of them involved Videl, and I didn't know who that was at the time so I thought it was a new villain. Also, one of the titles was "Eighteen unmasks", and instead of unmasking Mighty Mask (aka Goten and Trunks) I thought it meant that she would unmask herself and reveal some kind of monstrous robotic form (this was back when I still didn't know that 17 and 18 used to be human, you can blame the dub for that).

The dub said that 17 and 18 were humans too. Just sayin...

Maybe we were watching different dubs.

[Dbzfan94]

Another one, I remember as the Buu saga was just starting to be broadcast, I went on the Toonami website and saw some titles for upcoming episodes, one of them involved Videl, and I didn't know who that was at the time so I thought it was a new villain. Also, one of the titles was "Eighteen unmasks", and instead of unmasking Mighty Mask (aka Goten and Trunks) I thought it meant that she would unmask herself and reveal some kind of monstrous robotic form (this was back when I still didn't know that 17 and 18 used to be human, you can blame the dub for that).

The dub said that 17 and 18 were humans too. Just sayin...

Maybe we were watching different dubs.

Well idk about you, but I was watching Funimation's Z dub. They said 17 and 18 were human beings at one point

[Draconic]

In my country the show lasted on tv only till about 19 and 20's appearence and I only watched it at first till Namek. A couple of years later I played a mugen game at a friend's house and I remember thinking there was this awesome and powerful villain and moving trough the roster I found Perfect Cell and I was sure that was it. In truth I was thinking about Frieza. So I thought Cell was Frieza till I actually got around to watch DBZ again.

[ABED]

Before seeing any of the corrisponding episodes, I thought Jeice was the fastest of the Ginyu Force and Reacoom was the strongest, but Ginyu was simply the better fighter. I can't recall where i got the ideas.

[MarCas92]

Before seeing any of the corrisponding episodes, I thought Jeice was the fastest of the Ginyu Force and Reacoom was the strongest, but Ginyu was simply the better fighter. I can't recall where i got the ideas.

Idk about the Jeice thing, but I have seen a lot of power level lists online that list Recoome as the 2nd strongest behind Ginyu.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Bumping because I just remembered another one.

In the dub of the scene where Freeza sent his soldier to try to kill Trunks, the soldier said "his power's only level 5". At the time, I thought that didn't mean he had a power level of 5, but rather his power was being measured as "level 5" on some completely different scale. It sounds weird, but it was probably because I had never heard anyone in the show phrase it "his power is level x" before, rather than "his power level is x" which was always used instead.

[Kendamu]

I used to think that Yamcha was A Saiyan. When I first saw him is when I first started watching DBZ, I didn't know what Saiyans were, but Yamcha had wild hair and a uniform like Goku. So, I assumed that he was like Goku.

I also used to think, around the same time, that the Ginyu Force fight took place on Earth. This was back when the series was only dubbed up to Goku beating ReaCoom. So, having caught the show here and there on a constant loop on Toonami, I didn't know that the Saiyan Arc survivors had traveled to another planet.

Also around the same time, DBZ movies 1-3 played a lot on Toonami dubbed, but they had the Japanese BGM. Not knowing that the Shuki Levi dub BGM was US-only, I thought that the movies and the show had their own BGMs. I didn't hate the "show music," but I loved the "movie music" so much that I often wondered why they never played that BGM on the show. Nowadays, I mostly watch the anime just for its BGM.

During the summer between the Freeza Arc and the Artificial Human Arc, I had bought some of the Saiyan Arc manga when it was still sold as individual comic book issues. Anywho, my point is that, in the manga there's obviously not content from the filler. So, when reading the manga, I was like, "Wow! They skipped a lot of Gohan's training. There no dinosaur or the orphan kids or anything!!" I didn't know that the manga came before the anime at this point.

Lastly, I once came across a DBZ site that had a picture of the Artificial Human Arc Saiyans on it in their normal forms and their Super Saiyan forms. This was also when I first got hardcore into DBZ in the '90s. They're shown as one big group of eight characters. The caption said that, "The blonde guys are Goku's cousins." While I thought that was BS, I was under the impression that they were their own separate characters because all the blonde guys were standing next to all the Saiyans.

EDIT: Forgot to add that, also very early on, I thought that the Kaio Ken was called the K.O. Ken. Because the dub pronounced it "Kayoken" and I wasn't really versed in any sort of Asian languages at the time, I came to that conclusion based off the idea that the attack seemed to be meant as a way to get a knockout in one or two hits. It was only after recording DBZ Movies 1-3 off Toonami and watching them on VHS over and over that the real pronunciation caught on in my head.

[shinmaru]

I had a Cardass card with Cell absorbing 17, and I had just seen the episode were Trunks cuts Frieza in half for the first time.
I always thought it was Trunks that got absorbed because I never seen the androids before and Trunks was still a new character for me.

[Akira]

Back in the 90's, a classmate brought to school some VHS raws of the "Cell Games" that he'd somehow managed to get ahold of. (the furthest fansub tape anyone had was somewhere during the Freeza fight at that point). None of us in our fansub group had anything past Freeza at that point except this guy, who had some of the Trunks and Android stuff. We were all stoked to watch part of this new arc after classes. In the study lounge later, we all huddled around a small TV and VCR setup and watched the Cell fight together. The guy who brought the tapes was telling us stuff that had happened up until this point to catch us up. We saw Mr. Satan step out to challenge Cell, and I asked, "Who is that?" He said they'd wished back Nappa, but that he hadn't gotten much stronger, so he was going to lose. Then Cell killed Future Trunks near the end, and Vegeta went into his rage. Guy said Trunks could never be wished back because he was from an alternate timeline, and that's why Vegeta got so mad. He only had up to the episode where Gohan beat Cell's Kamehameha, so I guess he had no clue that Trunks gets wished back shortly after.

So, until I got fansubs of my own for that saga later down the line, I had those two outlandish misconceptions for a while. It was exciting to watch "Raw Japanese DBZ" back then that no one else in school had seen yet. I don't recall any other major misconceptions besides those, well there is one other. The fansubs had a lot of foul language in them, and I assumed the original version was full of it I guess for a time.

[omaro34]

1) I once thought Kami was voiced by Morgan Freeman.
2) I used to think Freeza was a girl
3) I thought Fasha was Goku's mom
4) I used to think Piccolo was the black guy of DBZ, and the Namekians were the "Africans" of the DBZ universe (I know that's weird, but this was my misconception as a kid).
5) I thought Tien was an alien
6) I thought Broly was the strongest character in the history of the series.
7) I thought Popo was a black guy, and not a genie. (My friends used to call him 1am lol)
I thought Chiautzo just put on makeup as clown all the time, and didn't realize that was his normal face.

[TheatreStyleKai]

The dub said that 17 and 18 were humans too. Just sayin...

Only as an off-hand remark, when Kuririn explained to Goku how he was able to have a kid with No. 18. Up until that point Funimation was really pushing the idea of No. 17 and No. 18 being fully synthetic. Frustratingly enough they seemed to return to this line of logic when they dubbed GT.

"Don't you remember 17? You killed Dr. Gero yourself! You hated him because he gave you human emotions!

Ugh.

Let's see, misconceptions.
I seem to recall I once though Freeza had a third brother named "Freezla" before I was able to distinguish between episode summaries and fanfiction. I also briefly believed that Future Trunks had been hidden on Planet Namek and had secretly helped Goku defeat Freeza by redirecting his energy discs back at him. This was because I had read several mentions online of Trunks cutting Freeza in half, without mentioning that he had been rebuilt as a cyborg and traveled to Earth.

[Vijay]

Super Saiyan 3 Goku & Kid Buu to be strongest characters in Boo Arc

I never knew the Power Chain thing even existed in da 1st place.

Also, as I grew-up watchin DBZ in Malaysian/Speedy Dub, I've also thought KHH was wrong pronounciation all along. Its supposed to be Piy Po Ye Ko!

Just these things in general.

Man, it sure feels nostalgic to think how I started knowing/watching at 3-4 & now I'm 23

[AS_Saiyan]

All the Oozarus in the flashbacks in start of Z and in GT are villains that Goku fought against in 'that series where Goku was only a kid'

[Polyphase Avatron]

Another one, before I ever watched the show and when I just saw snippets of commercials and the logo, I thought the show was called "Dragonballz" as in "dragonballs" with a z because of Xtreme Kool Letterz.

[ShadowBardock89]

Somehow, a false memory was stuck in my head that Vegeta regained conscious after his fight with Zarbon and was walking around wounded. It was then that his tail grew back, but Vegeta ripped it off himself after coming to the conclusion that it was a hindrance and he was stronger without it. He then passes out from the pain and Zarbon later finds him like he does in the show.
I must've mixed up the Zarbon fight, Vegeta on Earth, and him going to rip Gohan's tail off together.