Warning! Spoilers ahead for Dragon Ball Super chapter 82!
The incredible moment when Goku suddenly recalls the first memory of his father Bardock exposes a fatal flaw in Dragon Ball Super‘s Broly retcon of the deceased Saiyan’s story.
In chapter 82, an audio file of Bardock that Goku and his friends play to learn the secret of how he defeated the villain Gas triggers a long-suppressed memory in Goku from the revamped Broly film that first introduced Bardock’s retconned character. The memory is of Goku looking out at his parents Bardock and Gine from inside the space pod that is about to transport him from Planet Vegeta to Earth. While a touching moment, this scene actually exposes one of the few retcons that actually didn’t improve upon the original Bardock: The Father of Goku film, which debuted the first iteration of the eponymous character.
In Bardock: The Father of Goku, the dad of the then-named Kakarot didn’t come to suspect Frieza of treachery due to mere deduction and paranoia like in Dragon Ball Super: Broly. It was instead, in part, because an alien whose planet Bardock had conquered cursed the Saiyan with their race’s ability to see their future and how they’ll die. Aside from the curse plaguing Bardock with images of Planet Vegeta’s destruction, Bardock’s foresight not only allowed him to see his son’s future but presented him with the odd opportunity to “interact” with Goku. In the pivotal scene, an older version of Goku on planet Namek turns to Bardock and warns him that it’s not too late to become different from Frieza.
But Dragon Ball Super‘s Broly film erased this particular twist in Bardock’s story. If the retconned Bardock had still received this ability, there’s a chance that it could have connected the past version of him with Goku again like it did in Bardock: The Father of Goku. It’s obvious that this “gift” of foresight not only plagued the user with knowledge of their demise but could transcend time in some capacity by allowing Bardock to see events after his own death and communicate with some version of Goku regardless of whether the “real” Goku experienced this interaction. Even though Bardock couldn’t have passed on this technique to Goku as he acquired it after Goku’s birth, who’s to say that this ability couldn’t extend well beyond the normal parameters, which it did to some extent during Bardock: The Father of Goku. In fact, other series outside of manga have explored this type of phenomenon like Star Trek’s Nexus, which Star Wars later copied. So why not Dragon Ball?
That said, Bardock’s full retconned story has yet to unfold and could still connect him with his son Goku in other capacities. For example, fans still don’t know how Bardock defeated Gas even though the villain was undoubtedly much stronger than him. Could Goku‘s father actually possess some special type of technique similar to the ability of foresight? As of now, it’s all speculation. And as things currently stand, Bardock is just a regular Saiyan who somehow got lucky, since nothing from Dragon Ball Super‘s Broly film (where that type of ability would have come in handy) suggests otherwise.
