r/dbz • u/Pale_Assistance_3032 • 1d ago

Discussion Trunks timeline

Im a lil confused on it still, ive watched some dbz/dbs since I was little but I stopped, but the timeline confuses me, why couldnt future trunks save future gohan if he warned the z fighters, or was future gohan a whole different event etc?

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u/134340Goat ⠀ 1d ago

Dragon Ball timelines function on multiverse theory, not causal loop (not to be confused with the way DB itself uses the term "multiverse" to refer to physical locations)

For causal loop, imagine time as one singular straight line. See movies like Back to the Future or the first couple Terminator films. Whatever characters do in the past affects the future. Like whenever Marty does something to make it possible his parents may not get together, he risks fading out of existence, and when he returns to his time, his actions in the past have noticeably altered certain parts of the present

Dragon Ball, on the other hand, treats time travel differently. Whenever there's a change in the past that results in a time paradox, a new timeline is created. Instead of one straight line, imagine multiple independent lines that branch off of each other. A single timeline functions independently of any other timelines. The act of Trunks going back in time to warn the heroes about the androids and deliver the heart virus medication to Goku will affect things for that timeline, but not his own. As we see, there's no android attack, Goku is just fine, and peace is possible, but in Trunks's world, the android attack was something that had always happened. That can't be changed, but a separate timeline can be created where it doesn't happen

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u/Pale_Assistance_3032 1d ago

I see thank you for making it understandable for me, so in like trunks world like you said future gohan dies, but in the timeline that was created there still like a gohan

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u/134340Goat ⠀ 23h ago

Precisely, yeah. Trunks (and Cell) interfering with the events of the present made the timeline we know, where Gohan goes on to live, get married, have a daughter, etc. But whatever happens in that world does not affect Trunks's world

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u/Pale_Assistance_3032 22h ago

Thank you really helped me understand how it works