Why did Android 17 & 18 turn good?

[Captain Strawberry]

I could never figure it out, why in the main timeline are they different from their future counterparts? Dr Gero worked on them longer which explains why they were stronger but why weren't they as malicious? Why did they stop their mission to kill Son Goku?

[rereboy]

I could never figure it out, why in the main timeline are they different from their future counterparts? Dr Gero worked on them longer which explains why they were stronger but why weren't they as malicious? Why did they stop their mission to kill Son Goku?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The difference is that in the main timeline they only got a few days to experience what was like to be able to do whatever they wanted with no one able to do a thing about it, while in the future they had decades of that.

So, in the main timeline they went from not caring about people to having humility and starting to empathize to people, while in the future they went from not caring about to people to enjoying ever so more being able to destroy anything and play all the games they could think of.

[sintzu]

They didn't have much of a choice, when they woke up Cell absorbed them and when he was killed Gohan & Vegeta were strong enough to wipe them out with one attack.

[TheGreatness25]

18 turned good to give Kuririn a love interest. As for 17... I mean we don't know. We don't see what he does. He points a gun at someone to put his hands up to share genki with Goku. Is he good because he hasn't been out trying to conquer Earth?

[theherodjl]

Because Goku has a bad habit of sparing his enemies and giving them the opportunity to become good.
In DBZ's case, it's either you live long enough to die a hero or live to become a hero after being a villain for a long time.

[Lord Beerus]

18 turned good to give Kuririn a love interest. As for 17... I mean we don't know. We don't see what he does. He points a gun at someone to put his hands up to share genki with Goku. Is he good because he hasn't been out trying to conquer Earth?

Well, according to Toriyama, much Android 18, he also fell in love, started a family and found a job that suited his preferences.

Q6: Where’d Artificial Human No. 17 go after the Cell arc, and what did he do?
He works in the wildlife preserve area of a gigantic royal nature park, as an outstanding guard who doesn’t hold back against poachers. It’s an ideal job for No. 17, who loves to be on his own and isn’t big on cooperating with others; since he’s so good at his job, he takes in a high salary. He’s married to a zoologist; they have one child and two adopted children, and live happily in an isolated house inside the nature park. He went and met No. 18 and Kuririn one time, but didn’t talk about what he’d been up to, maybe because he considers such a wholesome lifestyle embarrassing.

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/translations/ ... ll-arc-06/

[precita]

Also present day 17 and 18 never even killed anyone even before they met Cell. Besides some bikers who tried to kill them in filler, lol.

[RandomGuy96]

Because if they didn't, Piccolo and Vegeta would both be begging Gohan for the opportunity to be the one to kill them.

[Marco Polo]

In the Future timeline, Black was blackmailing them into killing all humans!

[TheGreatness25]

In the Future timeline, Black was blackmailing them into killing all humans!

Is that... true? Is Super retroactively changing the characters again?

[dbgtFO]

In the Future timeline, Black was blackmailing them into killing all humans!

Is that... true? Is Super retroactively changing the characters again?

He was just joking.

Also this topic is already touched upon before they are even introduced.

When Bulma tried to argue for summoning Shenlong and having him reveal, where Dr. Gero's lab was, besides being shut down by the battle hungry Saiyans and the prideful Namekian and Triclops, Krillin gave her a nugget of wisdom that came to hold true in the forthcoming arc.
Basically he told her, that having common enemies is what made the team a group of friends in the first place and then he also warned her about what would happen, if Vegeta didn't have a common enemy to be distracted by, which Gohan apparently thought sounded silly or something(can't recall exactly, but he thought Krillin started out well only to somehow ruin it).

The same is what ended up ultimately applying to the main timeline version of Androids #17 and #18.
No doubt seeing other people actually care about them like wanting to protect them and fighting alongside them and even making wishes to help better their lives steered them clear of going down the path, that their alternate counterparts did.
A path probably influenced by a hatred towards humanity for producing monsters like Dr. Gero and the helplessness they felt, when experimented on, only to instill the same sense of helplessness toward humanity as revenge.

I believe the above and what rereboy mentioned about absolute power corrupting absolutely are the two major reasons, why they eventually turned good.

[MaxZ]

better question is why did the future androids turn bad?

the present androids were never bad, really. they never killed anyone save for Gero and those filler thugs (who were trying to kill them anyway, it was self defence)

they even made threats to kill people and didn't follow through with them. they said that they would kill anyone who interfered with 18 and Vegeta's fight, and yet they deliberately refrained from killing the Z-fighters when they interfered.

now why did the future androids become so evil? butterfly effect, as Whis explained recently.

[FoolsGil]

I chalked it up to the Butterfly Effect.

In the Mirai Timeline Gero fully completed 17 and 18, released them and we all know how that turned out.

However in the main timeline, because of Trunks and Cell, things changed-Gero took time out of his life to transfigure 19 and turn himself into 20. He didn't have enough time to complete both assignments, so he focused on himself and 19, and because of it Seventeen and Eighteen were more bratty than evil, outside of killing Goku.

[jplaya2023]

the inclusion of android 16 changed them

[Cetra]

"Being bad" is something Lapis and Lazuli never were really interested in like the typical villains. They have not this kind of character Cell or Freeza have. It was just "what they did". Like a whim,. But it never felt like it was motivated from their own character. It was more like a whim. They knew Goku was a good target because Gero modified them just for him. They wanted to fight him. They no longer felt like it, so they stopped. Well, of course Goku being dead might also have something to do with it. But Lazuli in the middle of the Cell battles already changed.

[SSJ Human]

the inclusion of android 16 changed them

Good point. He was gentler than either of them.

[MasterVampire]

Gohan & Vegeta thats why

[Lionel]

The siblings may not be inherently evil per se, but they can still be emotionally callous at times. #18 had no qualms with an innocent bystander getting killed during her fight with Vegeta. She also threatened to kill Mr Satan if he didn't keep his assurances of paying the bribe back to her. This proves that they can still be unpredictable and cold-hearted, even if they're not outright massacring entire populations.

[Nejishiki]

That's just as much as Vegeta's fault in that particular cut of filler. Really, she seemed to be playing a game to see how many people Vegeta would hit before finally striking her.

[Lionel]

That scene with the truck on the mountain road wasn't filler...

[spoiler]
[/spoiler]

It's depraved indifference at the very least. She knowingly put that man's life in danger when it would have been just as easy to fly away before Vegeta fired à la Goku diverting Cell's Kamehameha away from the planet.