Anyone even a little familiar with Dragon Ball will know about Goku’s father, Bardock. Bardock became a hit with fans for starring in the non-canonical movie Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku, and when Dragon Ball Super started, Bardock was fully integrated into canon with far more development and relevance than he had before, a perfect treat for fans old and new.

Bardock has always been one of Dragon Ball’s biggest characters, and that might have led to him achieving a major feat unlike any other. Thanks to Bardock’s immense popularity, he’s made regular appearances in numerous stories, even before Bardock was officially reworked into canon for Dragon Ball Super, and thanks to one story in particular, Dragon Ball might have made it so Bardock took one of Goku’s biggest achievements for himself years before Goku had a chance. The exact logic behind it is a little confusing, but nevertheless, it’s plenty interesting to think about.

How Dragon Ball Made Bardock A Super Saiyan Way Before Goku

The Super Saiyan Twist Most Dragon Ball Fans Might Not Know About

While Goku was the first person in Dragon Ball to turn into a Super Saiyan, in actuality, that honor might technically belong to Bardock. In 2011, a new Bardock story entitled Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock was released, and it saw Bardock survive the destruction of Planet Vegeta and get flung back in time to well before the Saiyans took over Planet Plant and fight Frieza’s ancestor, Chilled. During the fight, Bardock’s lingering rage toward Frieza pushed him to become a Super Saiyan, meaning that Bardock, in-universe, became a Super Saiyan long before Goku did.

What makes it even better is the extra context surrounding Bardock turning Super Saiyan. After Bardock defeated Chilled, Chilled, with his dying breath, told his soldiers to warn his family about warriors called Saiyans, as that was all he knew about Bardock, and since the story took place on what would become Planet Vegeta, it’s not just that Bardock turned Super Saiyan before Goku did, but it’s also that Bardock ended up becoming the Legendary Super Saiyan. Bardock was originally someone confined to a single short film, so seeing him rise to such prominence is nothing but great.

Bardock Being The Legendary Super Saiyan Is More Complicated Than People Think

What Makes Bardock Being A Super Saiyan So Confusing

As easy as it would be to accept Episode of Bardock as the end of Bardock’s story, doing so is surprisingly complicated. Not only does the canon version of Bardock in Dragon Ball Super differ completely from how Bardock had been depicted since Dragon Ball Z, but Naho Ooishi, the writer of Episode of Bardock, explicitly stated that she didn’t consider the story canon and saw it more as a what-if scenario. Everything about Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock suggests that it should be non-canon, so that, in turn, should mean that Super Saiyan Bardock is non-canon, as well.

What makes things complicated, however, is how Dragon Ball treats Episode of Bardock. Dragon Ball’s timeline is infamously confusing, with it treating everything in the anime aside from the original movies as part of its official continuity, even when it makes no sense to do so. Dragon Ball GT, for example, has never officially been denounced as non-canon, despite how much it contradicts Dragon Ball Super, and sure enough, Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock has been referenced in the official Dragon Ball timeline, so it still technically has a place in canon, despite how little that makes sense.

At the end of the day, while the events of Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock haven’t technically been made non-canon, the new direction Dragon Ball has gone with Bardock makes it clear that people shouldn’t expect anything from it anytime soon. All of that is for the best, of course, for as entertaining as Episode of Bardock and Bardock becoming a Super Saiyan were, Dragon Ball’s current direction is far better for Bardock in the long run, and hopefully, there’s more of that to come.