Is Dragon Ball GT an Alternate Timeline?

[GurixDr34]

Do you think Dragon Ball GT is Canon in the Dragon Ball Multiverse? i dont think its something so unrealistic Future Trunks and Cell are from different Timelines in Cell Timeline he killed Future Trunks and Stole his Time Machine while in Future Trunks Timeline the Z Warriors were killed by Androids 17 and 18 maybe the Dragon Ball GT Timeline it is an Alternate Future maybe in Dragon Ball GT World Beerus is still asleep or was killed or maybe in the Reality of Dragon Ball GT the Gods of Destruction do not Exist as a curiosity i think that the Old Dragon Ball Z Movies are Canon in Dragon Ball GT World because i remember that in the Last GT Saga the Omega Shenron Saga there is a reference to the Fusion Reborn Movie since Goku and Vegeta talk about doing the Fusion to become in Gogeta i like both Dragon Ball Z Sequels GT and Super so i would like to think that GT is Canon in the Dragon Ball Multiverse

[SupremeKai25]

It is an alternate/side timeline that obviously cannot exist in the Main Super continuity.

The moment you have to erase major Super characters like the Gods of Destruction, you basically agree that GT is incompatible with Super.

But even without the Gods of Destruction, you would have to explain why Sorbet never resurrected Frieza, why Moro never broke free, why the Gamma androids and Cell Max were never created, etc.

And if you say that the DBZ movies exist in GT continuity, you say that the Super Broly movie is also incompatible with GT. Since Super Broly is a good guy while DBZ Broly is pure evil.

[theherodjl]

In the context of the DBZ anime, GT & Super are both official sequels as Toriyama & Toei came up with the general ideas for each series. They're parallel timelines that split off from the Majin Boo arc, and either one does not hold a greater or 'true' canon status over the other. The fact that we continue to see concepts and their respective characters from GT & Super in SDBH as well as other media, is all the proof that we need to know that there is no priority over what is canon.

[TobyS]

In the context of the DBZ anime, GT & Super are both official sequels as Toriyama & Toei came up with the general ideas for each series. They're parallel timelines that split off from the Majin Boo arc, and either one does not hold a greater or 'true' canon status over the other. The fact that we continue to see concepts and their respective characters from GT & Super in SDBH as well as other media, is all the proof that we need to know that there is no priority over what is canon.

Come on get real. They are both *official* product's but one is more recent, didn't go out of it's way to not contradict gt, has original author involvement, the same og author who called GT a side story it's clearly the main/canon one.

The debate among the fandom is really only super anime/manga/toriyamas outline as the true canon but gt is not in contention

[SupremeKai25]

In the context of the DBZ anime, GT & Super are both official sequels as Toriyama & Toei came up with the general ideas for each series. They're parallel timelines that split off from the Majin Boo arc, and either one does not hold a greater or 'true' canon status over the other. The fact that we continue to see concepts and their respective characters from GT & Super in SDBH as well as other media, is all the proof that we need to know that there is no priority over what is canon.

Super consistently gets more representation and focus in Heroes and videogames than GT.

It is clear which of the two is held in higher regard by the producers.

[Jord]

In the context of the DBZ anime, GT & Super are both official sequels as Toriyama & Toei came up with the general ideas for each series. They're parallel timelines that split off from the Majin Boo arc, and either one does not hold a greater or 'true' canon status over the other. The fact that we continue to see concepts and their respective characters from GT & Super in SDBH as well as other media, is all the proof that we need to know that there is no priority over what is canon.

Come on get real. They are both *official* product's but one is more recent, didn't go out of it's way to not contradict gt, has original author involvement, the same og author who called GT a side story it's clearly the main/canon one.

The debate among the fandom is really only super anime/manga/toriyamas outline as the true canon but gt is not in contention

And Super contradicts Z so it doesn't even line up with the series it's supposed to fit in, even though it has "original author involvement", which doesn't mean anything since the original author doesn't own DB.

And even if he would own the series, how would it make a series objectively better? I could see that point being valid when the author has been active since the previous series ended but in the case of Dragon Ball, we have an author that zoned out of the franchise for a long time, forgets large parts of his own work and recycles ideas a lot. Making it seem more like a new coat of paint.
Sometimes having the original author involved isn't an upside.

[Kaboom]

GT isn't an alternate timeline in any sort of in-universe, "Trunks split the flow of time in twain again" sense. It's an alternate continuity, one of many splitting off from the main story of the original DB manga. It's in the same boat as the movies, each version of Super, Dragon Ball Online, and so forth.

Fussing over which particular spinoff story is the "true sequel" or whatever is asinine. Especially when so many folks try to force everything to revolve around Super, which has two (or more) separate and incompatible versions of itself, which makes the argument extra ludicrous.

[Koitsukai]

I like to think of GT as a what-if version of the events. What if Beerus never woke up.

Definitely not something part of timeline N°7.

[sunsetshimmer]

one is more recent

Yeah, but that's also the reason why we see more focus on Super in media, games, merchandise, SDBH etc. Well, it's new. It's kinda obvious they'd want to promote it with higher priority. But does it make it more relevant if we talk about such thing as "canon". Idk. OG series is ignored as hell and that doesn't make it less relevant than Super, hell no.

Anyway, If i were to stick to things that are 100% canon, i'd stick to original DB manga and nothing else. Toriyama having bigger involvement in Super than in GT is a fact, but it's still not the same as him creating everything like he did back then. Super is still VERY questionable to me as canon story, especially with all the different versions of it. Remember, there is no single official and clear statement that either of these is canon or not canon.

Back to actual topic though, GT could exist as different timeline, but there is no official statement about that. We saw how much things changed just because Trunks travelled in time. Different androids appeared, 16 appeared, 17&18 were somehow stronger and not really evil. It's not hard to assume there could be a timeline where Beerus didn't wake up etc.

[VegettoEX]

Super consistently gets more representation and focus in Heroes and videogames than GT.

It is clear which of the two is held in higher regard by the producers.

This is not reality at all. GT has been a staple, a tentpole, a load-bearing state of being for Heroes for a decade, and it only keeps increasing. Within the very magazine that the Dragon Ball Super manga is serialized, you're often bombarded with GT imagery first and foremost and long before you get any Super-adjacent material.

[theherodjl]

I like to think of GT as a what-if version of the events. What if Beerus never woke up.

Definitely not something part of timeline N°7.

I feel like it can also be the other way around, in that Super is "what if there were 13 universes, each having a Hakaishin & Angel, a grand ruler overseeing them all, and there were supermassive progenitors to all other DBs?". Because the original DB anime run gave absolutely no indication to any of this until the 2013/2015 films and then the Super anime.

[DaSuperBaby]

I like to think of GT as a what-if version of the events. What if Beerus never woke up.

Definitely not something part of timeline N°7.

I feel like it can also be the other way around, in that Super is "what if there were 13 universes, each having a Hakaishin & Angel, a grand ruler overseeing them all, and there were supermassive progenitors to all other DBs?". Because the original DB anime run gave absolutely no indication to any of this until the 2013/2015 films and then the Super anime.

I never thought of it like that. I think that's better and makes more sense.

[Toxin45]

I like to think of GT as a what-if version of the events. What if Beerus never woke up.

Definitely not something part of timeline N°7.

I feel like it can also be the other way around, in that Super is "what if there were 13 universes, each having a Hakaishin & Angel, a grand ruler overseeing them all, and there were supermassive progenitors to all other DBs?". Because the original DB anime run gave absolutely no indication to any of this until the 2013/2015 films and then the Super anime.

Nah that is too much headcannon Toriyama is more involved with super than he is in gt which he had little to do with it

[Hellspawn28]

It's own continuity. It's impossible for Super and GT to co-exist with each other in one timeline. I view Dragon Ball as multiple continuities similar how franchises like Godzilla and Halloween had more than one continuity. For example:

Dragon Ball manga
Dragon Ball Super
Dragon Ball GT
Dragon Ball Heroes
The original DB & DBZ movies.

[Cold Skin]

The simplest way to look at it if you want it to be an alternate timeline - although maybe too simplistic and therefore inaccurate - is that GT is what happened in a timeline where Beerus never woke up when he did, perhaps because he didn't get a prediction from the Oracle Fish to program his awakening. That way, the heroes never got in touch with anything god-related except for the Kaio Shins, which made them stale for a long while. No contact with the way things work on a divine scale (Zeno, angels, universes and all) nor with divine powers (being limited to the three classic Super Saiyan levels for long years).

Of course, it demands that you accept the fact that somehow it led to other events not triggering, for example the Freeza army making him come back. You can imagine that the fact that Beerus was starting to destroy planets somehow made them hurry in panic with their plans in Super, while in GT, it took more years, and by the time they wanted to set it in motion, the Dragon Balls of the Earth were gone. Zamasu never got to meet Goku and his distrust of humans stayed in check. Etc, etc... But all of it asks from you that "somehow it led to this" kind of conclusion, without really knowing.

It's a bit like the comics and Marvel/DC "what-if" universes, where sometimes, a lot of things work differently in alternate universes, with the rules being different, the appearances being different, the powers being different, for the reason that it's just how it is in that alternate universe.

It's not only just that, but movie villains are part of GT, so in that timeline, the movies happened, which makes GT incompatible with Z/Kai to begin with if you think about it!
So GT really looks like it's an "Elseworld" in Dragon Ball, where things can be all different just because that's the way they are in that world.

It's always interesting to see how the producers of the various media make them interact for example, and if they choose that some Super elements are known to GT characters or not. For example, the Super Saiyan 4 never seems to remember Super Saiyan Blue, hinting it never happened in his story. Kid Goku will although outright state that DBS C-17 is different than the C-17 he fought before, or be surprised when seeing Goku Black as he doesn't know why that man looks like him as an adult.

So the devs themselves, whether they consider Super and GT as either different products that are not even alternate timelines, or alternate "elseworld" timelines, do agree that DBS elements are completely unknown to GT characters (which is not surprising, but always interesting when they have to come up with interactions between them).

It's interesting to wonder, for each fan, if they consider that elements from one exist in the other despite never being exploited or if things work differently in that world: for example, do you consider that in Dragon Ball Super, the Super Saiyan 4 could technically be accessible despite the fact it will probably never be discovered, or do you consider that form simply doesn't exist at all in that version? Conversely, do you consider that in Dragon Ball GT, they could have become Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue if they had been in contact with divine fighters, or do you consider those forms simply would never exist at all in that version? Basically, does the world work fundamentaly differently in those two continuations according to you, or is this just a matter of circumstances not presenting themselves and making them "miss" opportunities?

[theherodjl]

Nah that is too much headcannon Toriyama is more involved with super than he is in gt which he had little to do with it

...because Super is more modern and regularly ongoing. GT was written to be a sequel back in the 90's and was intended to be how the DB anime ended, even still appearing in Shueisha's timeline along with DBS.

[Toxin45]

Nah that is too much headcannon Toriyama is more involved with super than he is in gt which he had little to do with it

...because Super is more modern and regularly ongoing. GT was written to be a sequel back in the 90's and was intended to be how the DB anime ended, even still appearing in Shueisha's timeline along with DBS.

That was along time ago

[Hellspawn28]

It's impossible to have both in the same timeline. For example:

Freeza is still alive and not dead
Freeza is way stronger and won't team up with a weakling like Cell
Piccolo is way stronger and won't be knock out by a ki attack from Base Gohan under Baby's control
Gohan, Goku, and Vegeta have new forms that would be used
Everyone in the Super 17 saga act like they haven't seen #17 since he was absorbed by Cell despite him showing up afterwards
Kibioshin is still a thing
Goku said that he hasn't seen Kibitoshin and Elder Kai since Buu was defeated when Goku saw them again afterwards

[theherodjl]

That was along time ago

And GT is still recognized by the owning company as a sequel to the DBZ anime and is occasionally used in other media. To my knowledge, no one at Shueisha or Toei has stated that we should disregard GT because Super is a series currently having more work done on it or because Toriyama has had more involvement.

[SaiyamanMS]

I see GT as an alternate timeline to Super, which is more or less how it was depicted in Xenoverse 2 by my recollection. However, Beerus not waking up isn’t the original diversion point, it’s actually much earlier when the Pilaf gang obtained the Dragon Balls and wished for their youth. The Pilaf gang as depicted in GT clearly never had their youth restored.

Even if Beerus awoke in a timeline where the Pilaf gang weren’t children, its possible that Bulma’s birthday could have played out differently with him leaving without incident. (Or he could have just slept through and not come to Earth.)

The Freeza force only found the Earth’s Dragon Balls with the cooperation of the Pilaf gang, so they couldn’t have revived Freeza. Also, if the conflict with Beerus never happened, Goku and Vegeta would still be present on Earth.

Once again, without Goku and the others being involved with Beerus, the Universe 6 tournament would have never happened, Zamasu would have never met Goku and the Tournament of Power wouldn’t have happened. The Freeza force wouldn’t have found and recruited Broly to fight the Earth Saiyans.

I’d need to refresh myself on the Moro and Granolah arcs to figure out how or what could have happened there, but the Red Ribbon revival would probably be a much lesser threat with Goku and Vegeta on Earth, even without their training with Whis, meaning no Orange Piccolo or Beast Gohan.

But yeah, Super and GT can’t exist in the same continuity, but they can both fit within the wider Dragon Ball mythos as alternate timelines.