How has Piccolo Daimao been forgotten by people?

[kei17]

Everytime I read/watch the Piccolo Daimao arc, one big question about its plot arises: How could people forget all the destructions and massacre by Piccolo Daimao within only three hundred years? 300 sounds like quite a big number, but it's a very short period of time from human history perspective. If the same thing happaned in our real world, I don't think we could forget it only within hundreds of years.

As you can see in the Buu arc, the common people in the DB world do seem dumb, but are there any other possible reasons other than just they're so dumb that they forget things easily?

[JulieYBM]

Ignoring "Toriyama didn't think about it" one could always assume that television didn't exist at the time of the original Piccolo Daimaou conquest. Clearly there was television during his second conquest but we do see that the people of Earth would rather place their faith in the Mister Satans of the world, rather than any sort of Piccolo Daimaou, so perhaps they all just thought they were under an illusion and the World King decided it would be best to leave the dog lay?

[DBZAOTA482]

If you saw an 8+ foot tall demon alien destroy a whole city with just the wave of his hand and shit you wouldn't believe any of it was true.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Potential technology would definitely be a part of it. Just look at how fast things have progressed in the last 100 years. If the DragoN World's Earth was as primitive as we were 300 years ago, the stories may have become little more than a myth if the tales weren't actively passed down (or the survivors decided not to tell those stories). There are plenty of things in history I was taught during school that I probably wouldn't have bothered to look into on my own, and I'm sure there are probably just as many events that those classes never bothered to teach us.

But that may give the people too much credit. Really, as you've already mentioned, the plot of Dragon ball renders most of the human population fairly stupid.

[DBZAOTA482]

Humans in general are stupid. Dragon Ball's just keeping it real.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I always assumed it was known to some people out there, but only as a legend, rather than an actual piece of history. Didn't Yajirobe seem to know about Daimao once he was on his way if I recall? Anyway, as has already been suggested, I'd just assume technology wasn't nearly what it was in the current timeline back then, so the story kind of just faded into legend rather than going down into the history books.

I've always wondered more about how the general populace forgot about his return though...or all the crazy things they used to regularly see on the seemingly-highly-televised Budokais...or the Saiyans (even if they only knew them as random aliens)...the collective memory of humankind in the Dragon Ball world definitely seems to be pretty spotty. It's almost as bad as the populace of OT TMNT. Almost.

[precita]

Humans in the series were surprised in the Buu saga of characters leaping into the air and throwing energy attacks. When only 20 something years earlier they had Goku and others do that at the tournaments

[kei17]

So, these are possibilities brought up so far:

• Undeveloped technology
  This sounds plausible because science technology has drastically developed over 300 years in our world. However, in the DB universe, electric rice cookers already existed at the time, which suggests that their technology had already reached at the level of ours in the 1950s at least. It is possible that their technology underwent a little different way of development compared to ours, but with the usage of electricity, I doubt that they couldn't invent any machines and intelligence network that can transfer faithful information about a huge threat to the mankind.
• People didn't believe what happened
  We are not given enough evidence, but according to stories told by some characters, it was a threat that is huge enough to terrorize the entire world. With their technology, it is very unlikely that the majority could assume it was all just a false recognition by some witnesses. In addition, Piccolo Daimao seems to like media exposure and uses it to terrorize humans.
• Humans are stupid
  As I pointed out in the original post, this idea is excluded. It's because there's no objective evidence about their intelligence and memory or the relations between that and their oblivion of a historical event. Anyway, to be honest, it's just that this idea is not fun at all.

By the way, in the course of the discussion, I came across to a non-in-universe question: What was the point of people forgetting the event of Piccolo Daimao? Couldn't the plot serve fine even if the common people acknowledged him and what he did 300 years ago? Maybe it would have been better that way instead.

[Gyt Kaliba]

By the way, in the course of the discussion, I came across to a non-in-universe question: What was the point of people forgetting the event of Piccolo Daimao? Couldn't the plot serve fine even if the common people acknowledged him and what he did 300 years ago? Maybe it would have been better that way instead.

Hmm...knowing Toriyama, maybe he thought it would be simpler to just have most of the populace not remember most of the events, so as to make it easier to keep our main heroes 'secret' and 'separate' from all of that, for whahtever reason? I don't think it would really have to be that complicated, but it does seem like something Toriyama might have thought.

[ekrolo2]

Piccolo's rampage being forgotten would make more sense if it happened say thousands of years ago. Toriyama might've even considered this but perhaps he didn't like the idea of making Roshi so old. I think if he wrote Piccolo's rampage as something that occured in such a long time span and simply had Roshi say "300 years ago, a cult dedicated to Piccolo managed to awaken him but my master gave his life up to seal the demon once more!" could've made all these elements work.

As it stands, the only answer that I can come up with with the story we have, as unsatisfactory as it sounds is that DB humans are just that freaking stupid.

[Super Saiyan Turlast x4]

At least Piccolo Daimao was compared to Bojack..........

[soulnova]

That's twice they have forgotten about him, in fact. He leveled the capital while fighting Goku.

If there was just one thing I would change about the DB universe, is precisely that. People actually remembering watching/reading about these encounters.

[singsing]

Honestly, the best in-universe answer I can think of is precisely that humans in DB are stupid, which is a shame. 300 years ago for us would be during the time of the colonization and exploration, which is very heavily documented. A global terror like Piccolo? He would most definitely go down in history, and it's recent enough to be something continually taught and made known as a fact. As has already been mentioned in this thread, the humans even forgot something from a few decades ago, super powered fighters in the Budokai.

[Marco Polo]

What if someone gathered the Dragon Balls and wished that people forget about this whole tragedy

Or maybe Kami himself wanted people to forget about his embarrassing little evil brother

[B]

I wouldn't have a problem seeing that, if the massacre was so widespread, the tiny percentage of people that survived told the story and future generations simply didn't believe it.

Even back in DB's earliest days, the many mythical and mystical aspects were treated as such; even with animal people walking around.

[Korppi]

At least King Furry and World Tournament Announcer didn't forget Piccolo Daimao.

[Silver Sinspawn]

Earlier on in Dragon Ball, and even further back in Roshi flashbacks we see that a lot of the world is very martial arts oriented and people are spread far apart. Eventually around Z we start to see bigger cities and more tech, things are more like they are in the real world.

Some people remember him, like the various martial arts masters in the world and King Furry, but for others he'd exist as more of an urban legend.

300 years ago for us is different because 300 years ago, there wasn't a large amount of people living in caves and forests, etc. We've had infrastructure, and are much closer knit than they were.

[tasuxeda]

One possibility is that Piccolo didn't leave many survivors who knew he existed and lead the army of demon that was attacking everyone, if Demon Clan didn't tell anyone about Piccolo then the only people who would know about Piccolo would be rare people that managed to survive him.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Maybe someone used the Dragonballs to wish to restore the damage and erase people's memories of it?

[omaro34]

Maybe someone used the Dragonballs to wish to restore the damage and erase people's memories of it?

That someone would have definately been Kami. Although not mentioned, he probably ensured that the memory of King Piccolo would fade away, hence making mankind less fearful, and they would live their lives peacefully. Perhaps part of a Guardian's job is to make sure some things remain a secret.