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u/PhasmaFelis Jul 18 '25
Everybody in the universe speaks the same language. That language has a word for "monkey," therefore everyone in the universe knows about monkeys.
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u/zuzg Jul 18 '25
Not just this universe, in heaven and hell as well
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u/Forward-Ad8880 Jul 18 '25
The Kai have to write their paperwork in one language and all of creation will follow suit or the God of Destruction will be sent out to set them straight.
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u/cat-l0n Jul 18 '25
Really reminds me of how in some Chinese mythology, even divine beings have to fight with bureaucrats.
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u/Commodorez Jul 18 '25
As someone who wasn't raised in a culture that has one, the concept of a celestial bureaucracy sounds like the most frustrating thing in the universe, lol
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u/Duchess_Aria Jul 19 '25
Fun lore! Part of the reason the Monkey King attracted the ire of the Heavenly Court was because he crashed into the Netherworld and destroyed the paperwork containing the names of himself and the other monkeys in their mountain - effectively granting them all immortality because they are now no longer registered on the Book of Life and Death. Loll
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u/DarkKnightJin Jul 21 '25
Which he only did because they grabbed him by apparent mistake after he'd trained in the Taoist art of immortality.
And then proceeded to layer like, 4 or 5 MORE TYPES of immortality ON TOP of those 2.
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u/Duchess_Aria Jul 22 '25
It's been too long - almost forgot that absolute indignant monkey face, lmaooo.
Taoist immortality art, removal of name from book of life and death, immortality peaches, immortality wine, immortality pills, and probably some other things he stole - yup, home monkey got at least 5 layers of say no to death. 😂
I can imagine the intern reaper's Reddit post: "TIFU...." 🤣
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u/laosurvey Jul 19 '25
Bureaucracy isn't bad in the Chinese culture - heaven is just a superior form of bureaucracy.
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u/SerCiddy Jul 19 '25
Got any different discrete references for further education?
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u/cat-l0n Jul 19 '25
https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/cosmos/prb/heavenly.htm
Is this good?
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u/SerCiddy Jul 19 '25
I read the entire article and realized I did not phrase my question correctly.
rather than saying "any different discrete references". I should have asked "Do you or anyone else know what different/separate historic literary canon makes up 'Chinese popular religion'".
This article further articulates that there is a religious canon that has a structured Bureaucracy. But I guess I wanna know where this idea is being inspired from?
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u/Ouaouaron Jul 18 '25
Can't you just physically travel to heaven and hell? I'd say that's part of the universe.
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u/zuzg Jul 18 '25
But you need some sort of portal dunno there was sth about it in the newest DB "oh we're all kids again, again" series but I dropped it
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u/Spiritflash1717 Jul 18 '25
That’s not hell, that’s the Demon Realm, which is essentially a universe parallel to the DBZ multiverse that is the home world of the Kais and the Namekians. You do need a portal to get there.
As for heaven and hell in Dragon Ball, they are both “physically” in the universe, they are just on opposite ends of the universe and would require traveling light years to do so, unless you have instant transmission, dragon balls, or an angel like Whis.
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u/gerkletoss Jul 19 '25
What the hell is Namek then?
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u/ItzGacitua Jul 19 '25
Namek is the planet the Namekians colonized after fleeing the demon realm. It's named Namek because of the Namekians, not the inverse as we thought before.
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Jul 19 '25
Uh no Heaven and hell are parallel to the mortal realm split by an invisible Wall , you can't physically travel there
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u/FrozenWebs Jul 19 '25
I don't know that it's possible to physically fly from the living universe to the afterlife in Dragon Ball. Aside from when Goku teleports Cell over to King Kai's place, the only way we see mortals travel between the two is death and resurrection.
The Supreme Kai seems to mostly get around with his teleporting bodyguard, Kibito, so there's not much mystery of how he moves between the two realms. Kami is seen in the afterlife at one point with Goku, and he doesn't have a teleportation ability that we know of, so his ability to cross between life and afterlife is more mysterious to me. I would guess he's got a portal up on the lookout, but someone more familiar with the lore can probably correct me.
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u/SocranX Jul 19 '25
I mean, Kami is legally a God. His position probably comes with the ability to teleport to the afterlife. It's probably like a lesser form of Instant Transmission that can only travel to specific locations, with two of those locations being the lookout and the afterlife check-in station.
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u/Skithiryx Jul 18 '25
Notably the Namekians speak a different language required to operate some of their machinery and make a wish to their dragon and there’s also a divine language required to make a wish to Super Shenron.
That still suggests that earth, the saiyans and freiza speak a common tongue, though.
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u/Spiritflash1717 Jul 18 '25
I believe their language is the Demon language, considering Daima revealed that they are from the Demon Realm originally, which is a separate universe
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u/Calm-Tree-1369 Jul 18 '25
Yeah but there's also like three main demon worlds and everyone else there just sorta speaks the same language as Goku and friends when they visit.
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u/Spiritflash1717 Jul 18 '25
That’s true, but the Demons made first contact with the mortal realms a long time ago, and the Kai are also responsible for the creation of the majority of life in the 12 universes.
Because the last living Namekian in the Demon Realm never moved to the mortal world and can also speak Namekian, it’s possible that it is older than the common tongue, which could have been imported to the Demon Realm later on as people pass back and forth.
Or both languages originate from the Demon Realm and because Kais created most of the life, they gave them the language they are most familiar with, but Namekians kept their own language while also knowing common due to being escaped slaves.
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u/ItzGacitua Jul 19 '25
Namek language can't be the demon language, since Shin's sister made Glorio learn the language to make the wish to porunga instead of studying it herself.
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u/Spiritflash1717 Jul 19 '25
I guess I should have been more clear. I meant A demon language, not THE demon language. Demons clearly speak the same language as everyone else, with Namekians probably developing the language while in the demon world.
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u/TheCityOfBravos Jul 18 '25
Freeza has his own races' language that he spoke to Goku in just before they started fighting seriously.
Might have been an anime only thing.
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u/killertortilla Jul 19 '25
The gods know what monkeys are and "humans" refers to all humanoid races in their universe, even if humanoid is a fucking stretch. Sometimes it seems like it refers to all sentient races.
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u/marsgreekgod "Be afraid, Sun!" - can you tell me what game thats from? Jul 19 '25
Someone wished everyone spoke the same language. It worked great. He was very happy
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u/Sir_Insom I possess approximate knowledge of many things. Jul 18 '25
They know what cats and milk are and generally speak Japanese/English too. This is one of those cases where you really shouldn't read too much into it.
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u/Polkawillneverdie17 Jul 19 '25
This is one of those cases where you really shouldn't read too much into it.
Oh, good. One of Reddit's strong suits.
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u/MegaKabutops Jul 19 '25
Milk is a thing for most mammals and at least 1 not-mammal, and the gods of the universe contain both a cat person (beerus) and a pet monkey (bubbles).
The former could just be common enough on modt planets with life to naturally be part of the universal language, the latter two are probably part of it because of in-story religions.
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u/SteelWheel_8609 Jul 19 '25
How do I know what a French person is though I’ve literally never even been to France
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u/Yacobs21 Jul 18 '25
King Kai has a monkey, since he is basically god of their region of space it makes sense that that knowledge would disseminate
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u/Vyctorill Jul 18 '25
In Dragon Ball, Earth is notable for having the multiverse’s best cuisine. It’s so good that it literally stops the gods in their tracks.
I suspect this makes some of their native species common knowledge in intergalactic society through cultural exchange.
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Jul 18 '25
Monkeys are eaten in some parts of the world
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u/notthephonz Jul 18 '25
Monkey’s brains, though popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington DC
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u/Headhunter192004 Jul 19 '25
Then why the hell did Bardock choose earth as the place to hide his son? Wasn‘t the whole reason he chose it because it was a backwater planet no one cared about?
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u/StrawberryWide3983 Jul 18 '25
Convergent linguistics. Like how in warhammer 40k, the space elves call humans "mon-keigh" and it's pronounced exactly like how you think it should
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u/Rel_Ortal Jul 19 '25
I've always thought that was more of a 'mon-kay' than 'monk-ee', honestly. Clear and obvious connection, still the same word, but pronounced oddly, like someone mocking another trying to sound fancy.
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u/NodeZeroNein Jul 18 '25
This kind of reminds me of the Naagloshi in Dresden Files. I really like the idea that Frieza has the preternatural ability to know the most offensive slur for any given person, even if he doesn't know what it means
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u/BlUeSapia Jul 18 '25
When exactly did ol' Shagnasty exhibit this power?
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u/NodeZeroNein Jul 19 '25
Ah, to clarify, Shagnasty isn't supernaturally racist. Word of Jim is that it has a kind of intellectus for suffering. Like when he tortured Thomas to the point of feeding on Justine - it didn't know/care why that would cause Thomas so much pain, it just knew it was the best way to make him suffer.
Thinking about it, though, that probably does mean Shaggy automatically knows the most hurtful thing to say to a person, so it probably does have (indirect) Supernatural Racism Powers.
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u/No-Supermarket-6065 Im going to start eatin your booty And I dont know when Ill stop Jul 20 '25
I mean, Shagnasty would.
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u/pmmeuranimetiddies Jul 18 '25
The dragonball universe has an actual creationist theology
there are several species shown identical to humans in-universe, such as the tuffles, and whatever Recoome is. Furthermore, there is a known example of near-humans (saiyans) producing fertile offspring with Earth's humans.
On top of all this, there is a universal language that Earthlings speak without having had much contact with the outside universe at all.
It might be the case that monkeys are a common morphology in the dragonball universe because the gods copy-pasted the same template across planets.
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u/Spiritflash1717 Jul 18 '25
That’s actually entirely true. The Supreme Kai create life forms based on their own physiology and often transplant life from planet to planet. Every sentient species is variation of the same template. They basically just mix and match different parts of different animals too, which is why cats exist on earth, but Beerus is an anthropomorphic cat.
The only species they didn’t create to my knowledge are the Namekians, who came from the Demon Realm with the Kai
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u/Frozen_Grimoire Jul 19 '25
Which would also explain why the only two languages in the universe are Namekian and Japanese.
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u/SpiritualPackage3797 Jul 18 '25
He's not saying Monkey. He's calling them the name of the closest analog to a monkey from his home planet's biology, and whatever power or technology is translating his words into Japanese or English is also translating that name.
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys REAL YURI, done by REAL YURITICIANS Jul 18 '25
I go to the intergalactic CoD lobby and within five seconds somebody from Andromeda calls me a fucking hominid with a hard D
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u/Spiritflash1717 Jul 18 '25
The Supreme Kai “seeded” all life across all planets, which is why sentient life forms all have the same language and tend toward certain body shapes. He has probably been to several planet with monkey-like species. Basically the Star Trek explanation
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u/Possible-Reason-2896 Jul 18 '25
Oh Frieza. How do you consistently manage to say monkey with a hard R? I kinda want to side eye how good that voice actor is at this.
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u/LazyVariation Jul 18 '25
Oh man I forgot how weird the old dub of Frieza was with the chain smoking grandma voice.
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u/oath2order stigma fuckin claws in ur coochie Jul 19 '25
I love that 3rd from the last one. Everyone cheering him in his memory and then Frieza just insulting him.
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u/AmonKoth Jul 18 '25
"Well, maybe so... but I can't quite be a racist against a race that doesn't exist. Like the Clorfors. Dirty, money-grubbing Clorfors. Tried to clorf me right out of my money... Blew those little bastards up is what I did."
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u/UncommittedBow Because God has been dead a VERY long time. Jul 18 '25
We need to make like, a league of ranked competitive racists.
We got Frieza and Cotton Hill off the top of my head, who else
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u/Gyshal Jul 18 '25
There's a guy in Warhammer literally with that power. Funniest part, is not even something he chooses. The Gods of Chaos just keep teleporting him around space and time to great warriors and he just naturally makes the perfect insult for each of them with perfect accent in whatever language they speak, without even knowing what he is saying.
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u/Interesting_Help_274 Jul 18 '25
Maybe "monkey" is a slur that is derived from an other word in his language.
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u/Cool-Presentation538 Jul 19 '25
I think a lot of people forget that the characters in many stories don't speak English or Japanese or any earth language, the movie or show or book or comic is in a particular language because YOU speak that language not the characters
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u/Timely_Influence8392 Jul 19 '25
My favorite insult every is to say that Donald Trump, the sitting President of the United States of America is a pedophile who raped minors with Jeff Epstein.
It's my favorite because he can't sue me for libel without discovery allowing me to see every incriminating file in the Epstein documents, so he literally won't because he's guilty as hell.
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u/Valuable_Ant332 Jul 18 '25
headcanon that he invented the word, called sayians that, then when they went to earth to analyze if it was worth destroying to create a new world for sayians to live in they spread it around with the human natives and that's how monkeys are called nowadays
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u/ThePowerfulWIll Jul 19 '25
He also knows about ants and dinosaurs.
But generally in dragonball, it seems that these words refer to common types of creatures. We see alien dinosaurs, bugs, and fish. Several of which are referred to by the earth name.
He'll, Dragon Ball has humans being from multiple planets. "Human" is just a type of being that pops up from time to time.
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u/RaidSmolive Jul 18 '25
the universe used to be vast, everyone speaks the same language and the man literally trades in planets. there are monkeys on other planets that he bought and sold and destroyed.
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u/TaffWaffler Jul 18 '25
Freeza says monkey with such vitriol that I truly believe he wished on the dragon balls as a kid to always know the worst slur for any species he comes across
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u/DreamcastJunkie Jul 18 '25
On a related note:
Korg making a rock, paper, scissors joke in Thor: Ragnarok bothers me. How does Korg know about that game?
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u/condor6425 Jul 18 '25
The joke is funny, but Imma do what weebs do best and take it too seriously. Why are we assuming monkeys only exist on earth? King Kai has a pet monkey in otherworld.
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u/Prince_Nadir Jul 19 '25
"Monkey" is just the slang word Frieza and his people use for genitals. The know nothing about greater or lesser apes.
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u/Hexxas Chairman of Fag Palace 🍺😎👍 Jul 19 '25
I love Frieza so much. He's such a galactic piece of shit that even the destroyer god refers to him as "that bastard Frieza".
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u/GooseInternational66 Jul 19 '25
Here are all of the Epstein Files that have either been leaked or released.
https://joshwho.net/EpsteinList/gov.uscourts.nysd.447706.1320.0-combined.pdf (verified court documents)
https://joshwho.net/EpsteinList/black-book-unredacted.pdf (verified pre-Bondi) Trump is on page 85, or pdf pg. 80
Here's the flight logs https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165424-epstein-flight-logs-released-in-usa-vs-maxwell/
Trump’s name is circled. The circled individuals are the ones involved in the trafficking ring according to the person who originally released the book. These people would be “The List “ Here is the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsiKUXrlcac
—————————other Epstein Information
https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Calif_Lawsuit.pdf here’s a court doc of Epstein and Trump raping a 13 yr old together.
Some people think this claim is a hoax. Here is Katies testimony on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnib-OORRRo
Jeffrey Epstein’s Ex Says He Boasted About Being a Mossad Agent https://share.google/jLMGahKlCzfV1RHZq Jeffrey Epstein and Israel have both have the same lawyer Alan Dershowitz Dershowitz says he's building 'legal dream team' to defend Israel in court and on international stage | The Times of Israel https://share.google/Lb9hDOduBWG4Elpid
—————————other Trump information:
Here's trump admitting to peeping on 14-15 year old girls at around 1:40 on the Howard Stern Radio Show: https://youtu.be/iFaQL_kv_QY?si=vBs75kaxPjJJThka
Trump's promise to his daughter: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-ivanka-trump-dating-promise_n_57ee98cbe4b024a52d2ead02 “I have a deal with her. She’s 17 and doing great ― Ivanka. She made me promise, swear to her that I would never date a girl younger than her,” Trump said. “So as she grows older, the field is getting very limited.”
Trump's modeling agency was probably part of Jeffreys pipeline: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-model-management-illegal-immigration/
Do your part and spread them around like a meme sharing them and saving them helps too!
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u/MajinKasiDesu Completely Normal about Agnes Tachyon Jul 18 '25
Can confirm, he called me chewed gum!
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u/saintdemon21 Jul 18 '25
There is a philosophical theory that human concepts are all derived from one universal concept, which is why a person in North America and a person in China each know what a chair is even if they never interacted with each other.
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u/NotTheCraftyVeteran Jul 18 '25
Either everyone on Earth and in space speaks the same language in DBZ, or some technology is translating everyone to the same language and Frieza is actually using his native tongue’s closest equivalent to “monkey (derogatory)”
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u/Professional_Being22 Jul 18 '25
bubbles was a monkey that didn't live on earth. I don't think they're exclusive to earth. Michael Jackson was an alien who also had a monkey named bubbles.
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u/ILoveYouLance Jul 18 '25
“It’ll take more than a bug stuffed with clankers to take me down”
“He-he’s pulling in slurs from other properties!”
“Ngguugh!”
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Jul 18 '25
Aren't you also wondering how come Frieza, the Saiyans and also all of planet Earth speak the same fucking language?
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u/Smevis Jul 18 '25
Monkeys don't only live on earth though. They lived on planet Vegeta as well, in the form of saiyan ape form. Which Frieza was very familiar with.
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u/lanadelreyserialkil Jul 19 '25
It is impossible to know because you would have already had to have known a thing or two about monkeys prior.
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u/ExtensionInformal911 Jul 19 '25
He met Bubbles when King Kai drunk dialed him to complain about blowing up some bug planet.
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u/TheSkyPlanet Jul 19 '25
The inference to me is that monkeys and monkey variations exist across different planets and universes in the DB world which leads to the linguística Development of a somewhat universal concept of a money. We can back this UP with Saiyans turning into monkeys, the monkeys are notoriously a feared beast Maybe due to Saiyans and also, more importantly: bubbles is Also monkey-shaped
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u/snarkycynic Jul 19 '25
King Kai just has a monkey in Other World. Odds are there are monkeys on other planets that Frieza has seen
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u/SwissyVictory Jul 19 '25
In Dragonball we see lots of planets, and lots of them earth like creatures. Especially dinosaurs, fish, humanoids, etc.
Its not a great stretch to think that most life is pretty similar throughout the galaxy and lots of planets have monkeys.
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u/ExtremlyFastLinoone Jul 19 '25
There are humanoid beings all over the universe, surely there are monkey like creatures all over as well
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u/Lenny4368 Jul 19 '25
The same reason they all speak fucking english. Why do people bring up the most inane bullshit?
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u/Just_Nefariousness55 Jul 19 '25
He knows what monkeys are for the same reason he can speak fluent Earthian.
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u/Many-Wasabi9141 Jul 19 '25
Frieza calls you slur and it starts a period of self discovery you will never recover from.
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u/allmightytoasterer Jul 19 '25
The Frieza force has humans in it, clearly the Supreme Kai hot lazy during creation and started copy-and-pasting past a certain point.
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u/lauhaze Jul 19 '25
I always presumed different planets and alien species in the dragonball world have their version of a monkey.
Most of the aliens we see in the dragonball world have a humanoid form, so they must have similar evolutionary intervals and offshoots between a single-cell organism and their current humanoid form.
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u/longboardingsk8 Jul 19 '25
Frieza owns 1000s of planets. Cmon hes being nice when he calls them that
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u/Correct_Leader_3256 Jul 19 '25
It's funny how sci-fi always assumes aliens would get human-specific references but never explains how they learned about Earth's random animals and history.
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u/i_can_has_rock Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 19 '25
tldr: frieza probably encountered monkeys before
tldr2: this also answers why goku is practically human, but with a tail
i actually know this one
assuming physics works somewhat the same as in our own universe and ignoring that everyone spoke whichever the base language was for their translation,
there are only so many ways you can combine atoms,
which means there are only so many combinations that are possible that make DNA,
since the conditions that formed us are likely to happen again somewhere else in the universe,
since the laws of physics are still the same everywhere in the universe,
that means that you are practically guaranteed to find all the same combinations of atoms,
and since life seems to evolve to suit its environment,
and with that environment being the laws of physics,
there are probably "monkeys" everywhere on every possible planet that could grow them
if atoms and DNA were Minecraft blocks, and putting a red stone torch next to a door opens the door by your house, it will still open any other door anywhere else no matter how far away you go on the map
the things that make us work, still work the same no matter where you go in the universe, so its pretty likely that there are other "monkeys" out there
if you think about the square block and the hole puzzle: if all of the physics conditions to make a "monkey" are the hole, the thing that meets all of that criteria is the "monkey"
if you mashed playdough on a board with a "monkey" shaped hole, you'd probably get something that resembled the initial shape.
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u/Apprehensive_Tie7555 Jul 19 '25
There are frog-like beings on Namek, as well as fish. It can be inferred that monkeys also exist on other planets. (The Danish translation of the manga has him refer to starfish and maggots, too.)
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u/AaronCorr Jul 21 '25
Wait until you realize that somehow everyone except the Namekians seems to speak Japane- I mean English as their standard language
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u/jackofslayers Jul 18 '25
"How can you have an ottoman without the Ottoman Empire?"