"Future" Trunks Arc Timeline & Paradox Discussion Thread

[SuperSayanJim]

Hey guys and girls,

Today we basically had an idea of how much of a clusterfuck is time traveling in Dragon Ball Super. I've seen a lot of theories that seem to nicely explain how Goku Black came to be and survive even after Beerus killed the original Zamasu, however they all seem to lack a few things, namely simplicity and proof. So, what's happening here? By now, we all know that Zamasu is, simultaneously, himself and Goku Black. We also learned today that Goku Black stole Goku's body from some point in the past and that he killed both Chi Chi and Goten. It's also revealed that the Immortal Zamasu is, apparently, from Trunks' own timeline. So, what's the catch? Well, after looking at Black's time ring I realized that... It's the main one! You should be asking by now "What main one"? Well, If you remember Gowasu's explanation of the time rings, he mentions that there is an original ring and all the other ones are from alternate timelines created by illegal time travelling. He then proceeds to show us all the rings, mentioning that there is a new one "created by some idiot a few years ago". Let's have a look at a little image from that moment:



Notice how all the alternate rings are green and the main one is silver? Now guess the color on Goku Black's ring. Wait, is it silver? Let's check another image!



This seems to confirm that Goku Black possesses the main time ring. Now, this would imply that, somehow, he stealed Goku's body from the main timeline and that the events we've been witnessing are potentially from a fifth timeline and not the original one. Today's episode also confirms that there is no time paradox as the timeline split was created the moment Zamasu (Goku Black) travelled to the past and killed Son Goku. This is why when Beerus kills Zamasu he doesn't kill Goku Black, because they are from 2 different timelines.

What's your take on this?

[Cipher]

I actually need someone to break this down for me, because for the first time in my life with Dragon Ball time-travel, I don't even have the faintest picture of what's happened here. I've been waiting for good subtitles, but maybe someone already has a better handle on this.

1. Black says he's the same Zamasu Goku fought in the past, correct? Goku only fights Zamasu due to the investigation into Black, which would imply some sort of causal loop due to Zamasu's ability to move between the main timeline and Trunks'. (Personally, I don't have a problem with that, and was suspecting that would play a role in the arc's explanation for a long time.) Is there any other way to interpret that?

2. Zamasu, at some point, kills Gowasu and steals a time ring and the green Potara (and subsequently possesses Goku). When ... does this happen? Were these the original events of the main timeline, that have now been splintered into a fifth (that we're watching?), where this outcome is prevented? If so, what caused Goku to fight Zamasu in this original turn of events, and how did things not play out identically to what we've been watching? What is causing the differences?

This is all without even touching the color of Black's time ring. If we really want to get around that, it may have been green in the main timeline, but turned silver when brought into the splinter timeline it connected to.

[SuperSayanJim]

I actually need someone to break this down for me, because for the first time in my life with Dragon Ball time-travel, I don't even have the faintest picture of what's happened here. I've been waiting for good subtitles, but maybe someone already has a better handle on this.

1. Black says he's the same Zamasu Goku fought in the past, correct? Goku only fights Zamasu due to the investigation into Black, which would imply some sort of causal loop due to Zamasu's ability to move between the main timeline and Trunks'. (Personally, I don't have a problem with that, and was suspecting that would play a role in the arc's explanation for a long time.) Is there any other way to interpret that?

2. Zamasu, at some point, kills Gowasu and steals a time ring and the green Potara (and subsequently possesses Goku). When ... does this happen? Were these the original events of the main timeline, that have now been splintered into a fifth (that we're watching?), where this outcome is prevented? If so, what caused Goku to fight Zamasu in this original turn of events, and how did things not play out identically to what we've been watching? What is causing the differences?

1. I don't think there is, unless Goku meets Zamasu for another reason (maybe the upcoming multi universe tournament).
2. These events seem to happen after Zamasu meets Goku. In the "original timeline" there is no Black, so Zamasu kills Gowasu undetected, travels back in time, creating a new timeline and switches bodies with Goku

[Cipher]

2. These events seem to happen after Zamasu meets Goku. In the "original timeline" there is no Black, so Zamasu kills Gowasu undetected, travels back in time, creating a new timeline and switches bodies with Goku

Right, so ... when? Because we keep a pretty close eye on him between his sparring session with Goku and apparently being destroyed by Beerus. There's also no explanation about Beerus not having actually destroyed him, so I'm wondering if this Zamasu was from the original version of the main timeline, which has been further splintered somehow. Though if that's the case, his mentioning a sparring match against Goku that lines up with what we saw doesn't particularly make sense.

On the surface of things, I can think of several different explanations that would have been much more tidy, but oh well. I'm just struggling to understand this one.

[SuperSayanJim]

2. These events seem to happen after Zamasu meets Goku. In the "original timeline" there is no Black, so Zamasu kills Gowasu undetected, travels back in time, creating a new timeline and switches bodies with Goku

Right, so ... when? Because we keep a pretty close eye on him between his sparring session with Goku and apparently being destroyed by Beerus. There's also no explanation about Beerus not having actually destroyed him, so I'm wondering if this Zamasu was from the original version of the main timeline, which has been further splintered somehow. Though if that's the case, his mentioning a sparring match against Goku that lines up with what we saw doesn't particularly make sense.

Let me lay an idea for you:

Hypothetical timeline :
.: Goku fights in the Uni 6 vs Uni 7 tournament which Zamasu watches on GodTube;
.: Zamasu gets a sparring match with Goku at some point after that
.: That same Zamasu kills Gowasu, steals the rings and the potara and travels back to the past, a new timeline (Timeline 5)
.: In this timeline he Kills Goku after switching bodies and then travels to Trunks' timeline to punish him for reviving Goku
.: He gets Alternate Zamasu on board, fights trunks.
.: Trunks goes back to the past, to the Series timeline, and warns Goku about Black's existance,

[Cipher]

Hypothetical timeline :
.: Goku fights in the Uni 6 vs Uni 7 tournament which Zamasu watches on GodTube;
.: Zamasu gets a sparring match with Goku at some point after that
.: That same Zamasu kills Gowasu, steals the rings and the potara and travels back to the past, a new timeline (Timeline 5)
.: In this timeline he Kills Goku after switching bodies and then travels to Trunks' timeline to punish him for reviving Goku
.: He gets Alternate Zamasu on board, fights trunks.
.: Trunks goes back to the past, to the Series timeline, and warns Goku about Black's existance,

Time rings can't enter the past. Black's doing so is a fluke, since he's following Trunks' time machine.

[SuperSayanJim]

Hypothetical timeline :
.: Goku fights in the Uni 6 vs Uni 7 tournament which Zamasu watches on GodTube;
.: Zamasu gets a sparring match with Goku at some point after that
.: That same Zamasu kills Gowasu, steals the rings and the potara and travels back to the past, a new timeline (Timeline 5)
.: In this timeline he Kills Goku after switching bodies and then travels to Trunks' timeline to punish him for reviving Goku
.: He gets Alternate Zamasu on board, fights trunks.
.: Trunks goes back to the past, to the Series timeline, and warns Goku about Black's existance,

Time rings can't enter the past. Black's doing so is a fluke, since he's following Trunks' time machine.

Maybe they can. We may also only have 4 time rings for all the timelines and the silver one that controls the whole time. It's not set in stone, they actually mention that one would have to be really stupid to travel back in time

[MathSSJ]

2. Zamasu, at some point, kills Gowasu and steals a time ring and the green Potara (and subsequently possesses Goku). When ... does this happen? Were these the original events of the main time line, that have now been splintered into a fifth (that we're watching?), where this outcome is prevented? If so, what caused Goku to fight Zamasu in this original turn of events, and how did things not play out identically to what we've been watching? What is causing the differences?

Trunks himself traveling through time may have caused it the split, creating a new branch of time lines from the main one. Another point is when Black came to the main time line. Him being catapulted back to Trunks' time line might mean that the way he traveled was flawed in some way, creating a split.

On why Goku met Zamasu under different circumstances? There might be N possible reasons why, but I don't think it's very important to be honest. Zamasu is already a bit screwed up in the head from the get go and the only thing that really matters is that Goku, a mortal, effectively beat him. Maybe Beers was just sightseeing and checking the Universe 10 cosine, and happened to drag Goku along. Maybe Goku asked them to go to check potential fighters from U10 since the multiversal tournament is coming eventually.

[Cipher]

On why Goku met Zamasu under different circumstances? There might be N possible reasons why, but I don't think it's very important to be honest. Zamasu is already a bit screwed up in the head from the get go and the only thing that really matters is that Goku, a mortal, effectively beat him. Maybe Beers was just sightseeing and checking the Universe 10 cosine, and happened to drag Goku along. Maybe Goku asked them to go to check potential fighters from U10 since the multiversal tournament is coming eventually.

While I can definitely think of other reasons Goku may meet Zamasu at some point (though, actually, most of them are fairly convoluted without the investigation into Black's ki taking Beerus, Whis and Goku right there), I suppose my issue is that this episode seems to pretty straight-forwardly present the idea that we're dealing with the same Goku, and the same Zamasu. Or at least that the events they know are identical up until that sparring match.

I'm willing to bite on explanations about circumstances not in fact, being the same, if and only if it appears the series has really rendered its time-travel irreconcilable without viewer explanations that go against this episode's obvious intent.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Okay...

I think the intended idea here is that time is relative and "fluid"; that the future already exists (which is why they can visit Babari) but can be altered by unforeseen circumstances like Trunks' arrival. So, for some reason, Goku and Zamasu ended up sparring in the Universe 10 Kaioshin Realm of the original main timeline without Trunks' interference or knowledge of Black. However, once Trunks shows up, the future of that timeline begins to change, but Beerus destroying Zamasu doesn't overwrite the the original Zamasu already stealing Goku's body because of the power of the Time Ring he wears...?

Whether this change causes a split or not, I have no idea. If so, there should have been a new Time Ring when they visited Universe 10, but Gowasu didn't acknowledge one.

Honestly, I'm just going to wait for Toyotaro to hopefully make sense out what seems like a hell of a mess.

[Cipher]

Okay, so everything does work for me if Black is from a version of events that have been overwritten by Trunks and Black returning to the past. If Trunks traveled back to a point earlier than Black's creation (which he did), he would create yet another split, which would be the events we've been viewing since episode 48.

I don't think that's quite what this episode gives us, and there needs to be an alternate reason for Goku to fight Zamasu (though I suppose with the broadcast of the U6-U7 tournament, such reasons could exist), but it does at least work that way, and would be a pretty cool explanation had the episode managed to present it clearly.

In that case, the Zamasu Beerus destroyed was indeed a "third" Zamasu, whose plans didn't get to take off due solely to the differences caused by Trunks and Black's visit. (Or, in the manga, Trunks' visit alone.)

The biggest issue with this is that from what we know, it should have created another green time ring like the same day Gowasu and Zamasu look at them, but ... whatever.

EDIT -- Or the more fluid version suggested by TheDevilsCorpse works, I suppose, placing more emphasis on the time ring, but that brings a lot of unspoken elements into play.

I'm a little more frustrated at how this has been presented/unwilling to immediately write off plotholes here because, while the original manga was written week to week, this storyline wasn't. And I feel like Toriyama had a pretty good idea about how everything fits together that may have been mangled between the episodic scripts this arc.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

That's just my interpretation of events based solely on Herms' tweets and summary. I don't necessarily like it as things currently stand, but nothing I've read from them so far stands out to me as implying an actual split or alternate timeline for the mess that is Black's origin. Everything we're told about him makes it sound like it's supposed to basically be the Zamasu we've been watching, only not as unfortunate as to face death at the hand of Beerus because of Trunks popping up. Which has obvious problems...

I could be missing something that subs could clear up, or maybe the anime was just extremely shitty at explaining it. I don't know. Hopefully we get clarity somewhere, and if it's from Toyotaro, I also hope that it doesn't take months to get there...

[sailorspazz]

Yeah, this episode really confused things...at first, I was pleased that I was correct in my theory about Black being the Zamasu from our timeline, meaning he would've somehow lived through Beerus' attack and carried out his plan from there. But instead of getting an explanation on how he survived being destroyed by the freaking God of Destruction, we got...him saying things that happened in the past don't affect him because of the time ring. Okay, sure, I can accept that the time ring has special abilities or whatever, but...how did he get to the future if he never had the chance to go?

I know there are a number of theories about alternate versions of the main timeline where events happened somewhat differently (Gokuu and Zamasu still sparred for some reason, without Trunks coming from the future). But the problem is, the episode itself made no mention of timelines other than the two we've been following already. I think they'd make it clear if they intended for him to be from a separate timeline. As it is, we have to rely on theories to explain a pretty major plot issue, and though I hope we get some clarification in the future, it seems like this might be the only (still incomplete) explanation we get

[Zephyr]

I was thinking earlier today that perhaps Black!Zamasu fought with Goku at Zeno's multiverse tournament, or at least came to be wary of Goku's power during it? Granted, today's episode clearly implies the contrary, but at this point I'm willing to bank on that being a Toei thing. Causal loops and infinite regresses bug the living hell out of me, and I'm praying that Toriyama didn't opt out for one for this arc.

That said, I'm really digging what I think Toriyama's going for. They're fighting a villain from a timeline where he killed Goku, which mirrors the Cell arc, where they were fighting a villain from a timeline where he killed Trunks.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Alee9977]

Thinking a little this is the conclusion I reached to explain the timelines without making a time paradox:

We have 4 timelines:
#1: Future Trunks timeline, where the current arc is taking place (Black arc)
#2: DBS main timeline
#3: Cell's timeline
#4: Timeline where Zamasu changes his body with Goku's and kills him and his family. I assume this timeline separated from the main timeline because Trunks travelled to the second timeline, so this is what would have happened if Trunks never travelled back to the past.

Everything starts in timeline 4 (here the Black arc never happened), for some reason Goku and Vegeta meets Zamasu, the most possible explanation I find to this is that they met in the 12 Universes tournament, Goku showed interest in Zamasu and after the tournament he asks Whis to take him to Universe 10 Kaioshin's Realm, they fight a little and we reach to the same conclution that was showed in Ep 53. Zamasu gets annoyed because of that, kills Gowasu, steals the time ring and uses it to find the dragon balls quickly and changes his body with Goku's, then he goes to the future looking for a partner and finds Zamasu from timeline #1, there they use the sdb to wish for immortality, they kill all the gods and then they start killing the humans until they reach the Earth in U7.

Some people say that Zamasu changed his body with Goku from DBS Ep. 1, just because of the outfit he was wearing when Black explained everything. Remember we saw Goku wearing that outfit many times through DBS being the last time in Ep 42. Also, if it was Goku from DBS ep. 1, then he wouldn't be able to fight with Trunks, fight with SSJ2 Goku, and also transform in SSR (this transformation could be explained with being Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan with evil god ki).

Also some people claim that Black never saw SSB, but that's something we don't really know, when Black saw Vegeta in SSB he was only smiling and Trunks said that he didn't get amazed by seeing SSB, so we have no idea of that.

This is a theory to avoid a time paradox and to keep things easy to understand.

[Geekdom101]

So I made a video, and I know I should put this in Fan Works, but I feel it needs a discussion in here as well, where I basically get with my buddy Mike (LSM Mike not VegettoEX) and we break down the time travel and explain how Black was born despite being killed and the whole "Predestination Paradox" and "Bootstrap Paradox", and how the Time Rings pretty much allowed Black to exist because he left the time stream to enter another one. I'm proud of this video and I spent 2-3 hours thinking about this, but I was curious if you think I missed anything?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlGM_srKkgk

[Cipher]

At fist I was really prepared for Black's origin being the result of a boostrap paradox due to interaction between the two timelines. (Black follows Trunks into the past ---> Spurs the investigation into Zamasu ---> Motivates Zamasu to create/become Black ---> Enters Trunks' timeline to begin the circle, all without anyone changing anyone's known history.)

As of episode 61, though, and I don't love this, I've subscribed to TheDevilsCorpse's reading that, due to the fluid nature of the future the time rings enter and return from, the events leading up to Black's creation are simply part of a future of the main timeline that's been well and truly "overwritten" by the events we've witnessed. Beerus killed Zamasu before his plans could get off the ground, thanks to Trunks and Black's trip to the past, but the Black-Zamasu who had already left the timeline for Trunks' remains unaffected.

I've subscribed to this reading because:

1) It jives with the fact that another green time ring hadn't immediately appeared before Gowasu checks the box (otherwise the easier reading would be a timeline split)

2) It does actually work somewhat with what we know of the silver time rings. They allow Kaioshin to enter a speculative version of the future, but certainly they could still change events between now and then and apparently don't create new timelines. Why don't they? Magic; it's just the rules we're given. Trunks' time machine seems to create splintered events when it changes some known history, but the time rings' back-and-forth future-observation mechanics don't. A "fluid" future.

3) It actually makes sense of Black saying he's unaffected because of the time ring specifically. I take this to mean he's unaffected because he jumped ship to a parallel timeline, but it could be endemic to the ring itself and make just as much sense.

So, the events leading up to what we've witnessed are:

1. Zamasu and Black spar for some undisclosed reason (the anime really botched this by simply preventing their sparring as if it could have occurred under the same circumstances we've witnessed, which is minorly infuriating).

2. Zamasu kills Gowasu, steals the green Potara and time ring, and travels at least one year into the future to use the Super Dragon Balls, take over Goku's body, and kill him.

3. Zamasu uses a green time ring to enter Trunks' timeline and partner up with his parallel self, who wishes for immortality due to the absence of an equivalently powerful Goku.

4. Black and Future Zamasu begin their "0 Ningen" plan.

5. Black follows Trunks back into the main timeline, at a point earlier than his creation.

6. This new chain of events leads to Goku, Beerus and Whis stopping Zamasu just before he puts all his plans into gear. Because his crimes involved the fluid future the time rings access, they've simply been -- "poof" -- overwritten. However, because Black had already left for another timeline, or because he's wearing a time ring, depending on your reading, he's still hanging around unaffected.

[Esfír Dedragón]

I was right...

TOEI did decide to incorporate a Time Loop theory on Goku Black and Zamasu.



Well, that's unfortunate.

[GodKaio-Ken]

The whole thing makes a lot more sense if you think of all time as happening simultaneously rather than the cause and effect type perception we usually have. Not changing anything about your theory, just saying it becomes easier to visualize how the paradox happens.

[TheMikado]

So I made a video, and I know I should put this in Fan Works, but I feel it needs a discussion in here as well, where I basically get with my buddy Mike (LSM Mike not VegettoEX) and we break down the time travel and explain how Black was born despite being killed and the whole "Predestination Paradox" and "Bootstrap Paradox", and how the Time Rings pretty much allowed Black to exist because he left the time stream to enter another one. I'm proud of this video and I spent 2-3 hours thinking about this, but I was curious if you think I missed anything?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlGM_srKkgk

I watched this, but maybe I missed it.

Black is created by a casual loop. Similar to your argument about terminator. According to this theory Beerus killing Zamasu should always be part of that loop regardless.

The initial timeline to create Black should have ended with Beerus as well. For some reason there is a timeline where Beerus suspects Zamasu is black enough to investigate him with Goku but doesn't kill him. This is the part which makes no sense. The events of the loop should have played out exactly the same which is what makes it a loop in the first place. What I want to know is how and why there is a loop where Beerus didn't kill Black.