Trunks is an annoying, bratty, and spoiled child who most Dragon Ball fans don’t like too much. Even though he is the child of fan favourites Bulma and Vegeta, his immaturity and undeserved power level make him the bane of many a fan. Thankfully, all that doesn’t apply here because we’re actually talking about a fan-favorite character, Future Trunks!
Unlike his younger and alternate timeline counterpart, Future Trunks is everything that everyone should aspire to be. He’s polite, he’s intensely focused on his mission, he’s got a cool sword, and he actually has logical thoughts. Remember that time when he demanded that Goku use senzu beans during his fight against Perfect Cell? What an amazing revelation and in the world of Dragon Ball, this was a radical idea.
As cool as Trunks is from things we already know such as slicing up Frieza like a Saiyan deli man, there are a ton of facts that might surprise fans of the character. These run the gamut from his swords (yes we mean plural), his personality, and even how he has crossed over into other anime worlds. If you ever wanted to see Trunks as a children’s trading card or as a pirate, read on to know just what the heck we’re talking about. Without further ado you mighty earthlings, here are 20 mind-blowing things that you didn’t know about Future Trunks. For the love of God, don’t read this while time travelling, you don’t want to mess up timelines. Our boy here has done that enough.
19 For A Hero, His Body Count Is Huge
When Dragon Ball Z was localized in the west, the dubbing teams tried to take Goku away from his original Japanese roots and turn him into a superhero. This was definitely an error, because this series is definitely not a superhero show.
One of the reasons of this is that most superheroes will not end people, or at least be conflicted about it. This definitely isn’t the case for Trunks, as his body count is the second highest among the good guys in DBZ. Counting just his Dragon Ball Z time (that’s excluding the movies and Dragon Ball Super), he racks up 14. The only other person to beat that is his own father, Vegeta. Keep in mind when calculating this we’re only counting on screen ones, but even with that limit Vegeta blows away his son.
18 He Had A Lightsaber (Sort Of)
As Disney continues to swallow up all our favourite entertainment properties, it shouldn’t be impossible for them to consume the license for Dragon Ball at some point. We mean, look, it already planted the seed for it years ago in a PS2 video game. THE SECRET HAS BEEN UNDER OUR NOSE THIS WHOLE TIME!
In the forgotten PS2 fighting game Super Dragon Ball Z, Future Trunks is a playable character. If you level up his skills enough, you will have access to the laser sword. While it doesn’t look exactly like a lightsaber from Star Wars as its handle and holster are different, we clearly know what the developers were going for. For the love of God, somebody stop Disney before it’s too late!
17 He Broke Genetics
In the days of Dragon Ball and early Dragon Ball Z, the tails that all Saiyans possessed were a big deal. All it took was a moon to come out, and then boom, Goku, Gohan, or any other Saiyan could bust out a power up that multiplied their strength by 10. But due to one event or another, all the Saiyans with tails either lost them or died. The arrival of Future Trunks, even regular Trunks for that matter, should have followed Saiyan genes and granted them tails. But we never saw that, as Future Trunks came on the scene without a tail.
While it’s entirely possible that Trunks simply lost his tail early on (he did come from a messed up timeline), the real reason is that Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama simply got tired of drawing them. Yup. That’s it.
16 He Has His Mom’s Fashion Sense
Dragon Ball’s main protagonist Goku’s look has remained pretty consistent throughout the franchise’s series, from the start of DBZ onwards. Other characters have gone through several alternate looks. A good example of this is Future Trunks.
Seemingly inspired by his mother Bulma’s constant changes in appearance, Trunks also switches up his wardrobe and hairstyle several times. His first look with the Capsule Corp jacket is likely his most iconic look, but we can’t forget about his other ones. You can see lots of those in the image, but there’s also his look in the Dragon Ball Xenoverse games, his clothes in Dragon Ball Super, and others. Who says that you can’t look good while slicing up villains with your sword or missing your father?
15 He Doesn’t Like To Train
We’ll go into this a little later, but Future Trunks is one of the most powerful heroes in the entire franchise. But there’s a key difference between Trunks and other Saiyan powerhouses Goku and Vegeta. Unlike those two, Future Trunks doesn’t actually enjoy training.
In Dragon Ball Super, Trunks tells his father that he only trains so that he is strong enough to take down any threat in his world, like Majin Buu or the Androids. There is a flaw in this reasoning that Vegeta points out: he should always be training because it is never known when a new enemy could appear. Considering this is Dragon Ball, that makes a lot of sense. Trunks agrees with this and promises his father that he will grow strong enough to beat Goku Black and never stop training after that.
14 He Is A Basically A Yu-Gi-Oh! Card
In terms of animes that had a massive impact on the west, Dragon Ball and Yu-Gi-Oh! are definitely up there for the top spot. Dragon Ball is focused on fighting while Yu-Gi-Oh! focuses on children’s trading cards, so they’re basically the same thing. While we’ll probably never get a crossover between the two, this is the closest we’ll ever get.
For this, we can thank Tyler Gressie. This young man was once diagnosed with a form of liver cancer but beat the life threatening illness. The Make A Wish Foundation and 4Kids Entertainment then granted the child’s wish by allowing him to design his very own card. As you can see, this card is based off of Future Trunks. The card was never released en masse as only one copy exists.
13 He’s Serving Time
That slide header wasn’t just put there to be a clever pun (although it helped). But something worth noting about Future Trunks is despite the good intentions that he might have had about trying to rewrite the timeline, it is a crime. Not in the laws of Earth, mind you (wouldn’t it be funny if an army tried to take on Goku, that would be silly), but in the laws of the universe. Instead of being arrested, though, the Lord of Time shown next to Trunks above gave him the chance to redeem himself and offer him a job as a Time Patroller.
This leads into the short lived Dragon Ball Online and succesful Dragon Ball Xenoverse duo of games. Trunks aids the player’s custom character to protect the natural flow of time from demons Mira, Towa and Demigra.
12 He Has A Unique Transformation
There are enough forms in Dragon Ball to fill up up a landfill. From the original Great Ape transformation up until Ultra Instinct, a lot of transformations have come and gone throughout the years. Future Trunks, though, holds the power of a unique transformation that we haven’t seen used by any other character: Super Saiyan Anger.
While the original Super Saiyan transformation can only be initially achieved through anger, this form can only be sustained at all through pure rage. Trunks is able to access this power during the battle with Goku Black and Zamasu after he is effectively fed up of their sanctimonious crap. The form allows Trunks to put up a good fight against Black and Zamasu, but not enough to defeat them.
11 He Likely Has The Most Potential Of Any Hero
Keep in mind what we said earlier about Trunks not liking to train, as it factors heavily into this slide. If we were to think about the amount of time that Trunks has spent training, it isn’t nearly to the level of Vegeta, Goku, or even Gohan for that matter. Yet due to power level shenanigans in Dragon Ball Super, Trunks is somehow on the same level or even perhaps greater than Goku or his father.
Could you imagine if Trunks got the same treatment as Gohan and got his potential unlocked by the Elder Kai? Or what if he trained with the same consistency as Vegeta? There likely would have been nothing able to stop him but alas he only trained to become strong enough to beat whatever threat came, but after the promise he made to Vegeta in Super, who knows how strong he will be…
10 Android 18 Has Disarmed His Family
Future Trunks obviously has a deep hatred for the Androids 17 and 18 as they both destroyed his world. While the 17 from his timeline was the one who killed his father, that doesn’t mean that 18 from our world is any better. After all, she did disarm both him and his father.
To get the obvious one out of the way, we can point to the classic moment of Android 18 breaking the arm of Vegeta with a roundhouse kick from hell. But before he broke the pride of the Saiyan Prince, 18 also destroyed Trunks’ famed sword by blocking a slash with her arm. Only in Dragon Ball could we say that somebody blocked a sword slash with a bare arm and the sword was destroyed.
9 He’s The Most Effective Fighter
A common trope of Dragon Ball that even casual fans of the show will recognize is that even though it’s an anime about fighting, much of the time is spent trash talking or about speaking about the plot. Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, and others are all guilty of this. It took a character from another timeline to finally figure out that fighting is a lot more effective if you shut your mouth and slice up your foes.
One of the reasons why Trunks is loved by so many people in the community is that he recognizes the responsibility that comes with protecting the world. When he wanted to stop Majin Buu in his own timeline, he wasted no time and killed Dabura and Babidi before they bring back the pink blob. And as you see in the image, Frieza didn’t have a prayer against this sword-swinging Saiyan.
8 His Sword Is Still A Mystery
There are tons of unsolved mysteries in Dragon Ball, but one that continues to wreak havoc on the fandom is the question of Future Trunks’ sword. The second last original DBZ movie named Wrath of the Dragon tries to give an explanation for it by having its character Tapion (the man shown above) giving his sword to Trunks. That doesn’t wash though as he gave the sword to present Trunks, not Future Trunks. Not only that, but all the movies except for Battle of Gods and Resurrection F are non-canon, so the theory is dead on arrival.
Although video games like Dragon Ball: Shin Budokai or Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors 2 try to give more backstory to the sword, those games aren’t canon either! Knowing Toriyama’s writing style, Future Trunks will probably just say he saw it lying on the ground.
7 He Has His Daddy’s Approval
A key facet of Future Trunks’ character in the Cell saga was that he was excited to finally meet his father as Vegeta was killed before he knew him in his own timeline. Of course, by that point Vegeta was a deadbeat butt munch who wanted nothing to do with him. If Trunks was looking for daddy’s approval, he should have came to our world for it.
The voice actor Christopher Sabat is legendary in the Dragon Ball fandom for providing the voices of Piccolo, Yamcha, and most importantly Vegeta (along with other bit players in the franchise). Sabat has said that aside from Vegeta (duh), Future Trunks is his favourite character. Hooray! Trunks can now smile just a little bit. His world is still a wasteland, you know.
6 He Has A Lot Of Alternate Versions
While timelines, alternate dimensions and alternate realities are already weird enough in fiction, Dragon Ball takes that one step further by making the actions of Future Trunks’ time travelling shenanigans absolutely head scratching and requiring of the help of fellow fans online to figure out. It also makes several versions of Trunks.
For starters, we have the regular Future Trunks that we know who came to the original timeline, killed Mecha-Frieza, faced Zamasu/Goku Black etc. Then we have a Future Trunks who was killed by the Cell who terrorized the Z-Fighters in the Android saga. Can’t forget about Time Patrol Trunks, the one from the Dragon Ball Online/Xenoverse world. There’s probably even more we’re missing, because this guy gets around a lot.
5 He Is An Avenger
What? Were you expecting us to say that Future Trunks took up an offer from Nick Fury during the end credits of DBZ and joined the Avengers Initiative? Does this look like the Marvel Cinematic Universe to you?
No, you fool, when we say Trunks is an avenger, we mean that he is an avenger of his father Vegeta. You see, Trunks has ended all of the major villains in the Dragon Ball franchise that have defeated his papa. Frieza? Sliced up into a million pieces. Cell? Blown away by his Heat Dome Attack. Buu? Magic. Goku Black? Sliced in half by a spirit sword. What do you mean, Zeno actually ended Black? We blocked that out of our minds, don’t bring it up again.
4 He Was A Pirate Once
Okay, now we feel a little bad for teasing you with that previous slide header, but we promise you that this time we really mean it. Trunks really was once a pirate… not exactly in a Dragon Ball story mind you, but in a crossover manga with One Piece titled Cross Epoch.
In this story, the two universes exist as one and characters’ backstories are changed to reflect this new world. In the case of Trunks, he serves as a pirate under his father as a member of the aptly named Vegeta Sky Pirates. Trunks’ role in the story is minuscule, but it’s still fun to think about Trunks serving a eye patched Vegeta on a flying airship. So we didn’t give you Nick Fury, but we gave you Vegeta with an eye patch, we cool?
3 His Hair Color Is A Point Of Controversy
When it was announced that Future Trunks was going to make a come back in Dragon Ball Super, fans fell over themselves with excitement. When the first images of the DBS Future Trunks came out though, controversy erupted! It was anime fans complaining so of course it was for the most important of reasons: his hair colour.
During all of his appearances in DBZ, it was clear that Trunks had lavender hair just like the present Trunks in the regular timeline. But the fact that his hair was now a different colour threw fans into a dizzy, because in Trunks’ world hair dye is apparently out of the question. In reality, Trunks was almost meant to have blue hair in the anime, and Toei just messed up Toriyama’s original design in Z. They fixed their error in Super.
2 He Was Dumb In The Cell Saga
Maybe we’re being a little cruel with the image above showing off his last moments, but we’re being deadly serious by saying that this sword slasher made some bad moves during the saga in which he debuted.
The point in question would be during his fight versus Perfect Cell. Remember that Trunks is considered to be the smartest of the Z Fighters by the fandom, but this fight shows he isn’t immune to dumb moves. When he powers up to Super Saiyan Grade 3, his muscle mass has become too bulky, he loses a lot of speed, and can’t keep up with the bug android. Funny thing is, even with this dumb move, he still is the smartest Z-Fighter by far.
1 He Has Multiple Swords
Trunks’ sword is the most striking visual asset to his design. Aside from Dabura, there was no character in Dragon Ball Z who used a melee weapon aside from this Saiyan. One would assume that this sword is one of a kind that he held onto dearly. Turns out this isn’t the case.
In the Cell saga, Android 18 manages to destroy his sword as we said above in an earlier slide. But then later on, we still see Trunks rocking a sword in Dragon Ball Super in his fights with Goku Black and that genocidal fool Zamasu. So it stands to reason that the sword which fans held so dear isn’t special at all, and could just be duplicated no problem. How disappointing.
