Call Back / Dragon Ball Z Abridged

• Piccolo mentions that he switched from MySpace to "Spacebook" in episode 25.
• In episode 26 he mentions how he just assumed he could connect to the Internet with his antennae when Nail mentions he has apps.
• In episode 3, Piccolo tells Gohan that he's going to throw him at a mountain in order to draw out his hidden power. It doesn't work. Gohan corrects him, saying that it looks more like a plateau. The scene is repeated in episode 26 between Freeza and Vegeta.
• Krillin's Destructo Disc hits a mountain after slashing Nappa's cheek, replete with sound effects used previously when Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon hit a different mountain in episode 2.
• In the Lord Slug special, the minions think Christmas is the Earth name for Freeza Day, mentioned in the (Christmas) Tree of Might special.
  • Referenced again in a Christmas Day 2014 Team Four Star tweet to "all [their] exterrestrial friends" here.
• In episode 14, Krillin calls Freeza a F.A.G. (Freaky Alien Genotype). In episode 17,when Vegeta kills Zarbon, he says the not abbreviated version.
• The Stinger to episode 27 is a call back to a line from episode 5. Vegeta even lampshades it:
  Vegeta: Huh. Should've known that was a one-hit wonder.
• In episode 29, Goku has to charge his spirit bomb attack to use against Freeza, and needs Piccolo to provide a distraction. The conversation between the two is word for word the conversation between Piccolo and Goku in episode 2 when Piccolo charges his Special Beam Cannon to use on Raditz and gets Goku to distract him, only with the roles reversed.
  • Also, not only is Goku humming the same song Piccolo was while charging the Special Beam Cannon, but Freeza finally hits Piccolo's glubock!
  • Lampshaded by Piccolo, as the way in which Goku says it is so similar that the Namekian wonders if he's angry about dying last time.
    Piccolo: Did you just hold a grudge?
• Episode 30: Kidney Shot. Doubles as Ironic Echo as in this case, Freeza's on the receiving end. Only after the pause, Goku yells "Stomach Punch."
  • The Stinger? Well in reference to Krillin's death and episode 11...
    Popo: Called it.
• Also in episode 30: Freeza makes good on his promise to Goku that he'd give him two pizzas.
• Another one from episode 30: Freeza struggles to control the ki disc he tossed at Goku, much like Yamcha with his Spirit Ball in 'The Christmas Tree of Might.'
• While searching for an escape ship, Goku notices that Namek looks "the same, only on fire" while it had looked "all the same" before. This is a call back to not one, but two things Vegeta has said previously. Once he had called out the planet for looking the same everywhere, and another time he had threatened to reduce an area he was floating in to a barren wasteland.
  Vegeta: So basically the same, only on fire.
• In the climax of episode 30, Goku finally locates the muffin button that he mentioned to Dr. Briefs.
• When Goku turns Super Saiyan while fighting Freeza, he angrily quips "I'm going to break you...like a KitKat bar!" When he turns Super Saiyan while fighting Cooler, he references an entirely different candy bar ("Not going anywhere for a while? Grab a Snickers"); Cooler is just as confused as his brother was, but for completely different reasons.
• In episode 33, Freeza starts malfunctioning while saying "dead" and switches to "cadaverific", the word that Mr. Kent used to describe how dead Yamcha was in episode 8.
• When Freeza sees Trunks turn super-saiyan, he has a flashback to Goku in the same state. In the flashback, Goku whispers "... Pizzas". Which was a part of the lead up to Freeza's near death.
• Episode 33 has Trunks cutting Freeza to pieces and blowing him to smithereens then Krillin makes the same "here... here... and there" joke he made on Episode 9.
• Also in episode 33, Krillin yells "Whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop!" in the background after unintentionally pissing off Vegeta. This goes all the way back to the start of season 2 when he was called "Curly" after calling Gohan looking like a young Moe Howard.
• In episode 34, Piccolo, Goku, and Gohan are all training together in a three-way spar. Gohan fails to dodge every single attack and ends up falling off a cliff. Goku remarks to Piccolo that he really needs to learn how to dodge, but Piccolo interrupts, saying "Still working on that."
• Episode 36 brings back the dodging joke too, with Gero screaming at #19 to do it and asking why it's a subroutine, since "it's not that complex." Piccolo just shoots Gohan a look.
• The title of episode 36 is "Super Saiyan Swagger".
• This exchange from episode 40, a call back to the first Cooler special.
  Android 16: Hello, bird. What is your name?
  Bird: [chirping]
  Android 16: Toriyama?
  Toriyama: [more chirping]
  Android 16: I would love to see your dinosaur.
  Toriyama: [even more chirping]
  Android 16: It does WHAT?!
• In episode 42 just before Kami and Piccolo fuse, Kami tried the same "go lower" trick Nail pulled on him in episode 25. Piccolo didn't fall for it this time.
  • And afterwards, both Nail and Kami try to get Piccolo to repeat his hype-up chant.
• When Gohan and Trunks find Cell's eggshell, Gohan mentions he fought an alien that looked similar—said shell looks like Dodoria's head.
• While discussing the limits of age and his job, Kami notes that when cars came around he did want to try one but his vision was too bad to drive and asks Piccolo about his time driving a car.
• In episode 52, Goku begins to teach Gohan "how to dodge" as a way to bring the Super Saiyan out of him. He does this by charging up a massive blast of energy. Before its fired, Gohan utters "Damn you, Pavlov..." as a callback to what Piccolo said to him in episode 8.
• Episode 54 had Perfect Cell accidentally making the arena that he's going to use for the Cell Games into a circular shape after being annoyed that he had to recreate the arena because to the previous one isn't perfect due to the fact that it had a single green tile on it. He mutters "How did all these squares make a circle?!", a call back to Mr. Popo's Madness Mantra in episode 40 after Popo gets massively high due to consuming a gallon of LSD.
• In History of Trunks, any scene with Yamcha in it has been edited since he dies before everyone else.
  • During the scene where Trunks is arguing with Bulma, there is about a 15 second clip of Vegeta's scream from Namek.
• Cell gives an ironic callback to the pre-TFS version of Dead Zone Abridged when Tien shows up in episode 48: "What, was Krillin busy?" In the old movie, Goku asked Krillin if Chiaotzu was busy.
  • When Trunks exits the Time Chamber, his dialogue with Goku mirrors when he met him in episode 34.
    Episode 34
    Trunks: [thinking] Okay, Trunks, don't be nervous. He's just a normal guy. Introduce yourself.
    Trunks: [out loud] So, you're Sun Wukong, right?
    Trunks: [thinking] Damn it!
    Goku: I'm Son Goku, yes.
    Trunks: [thinking] ...Roll with it.
    
    Episode 48
    Goku: Hey, Trunks! Wow, neat hair!
    Trunks: [thinking] Oh, my God, first piece of positive reinforcement in over a year! Respond appropriately!
    Trunks: [out loud] Thank you. I grew it myself.
    Trunks: [thinking] Damn it!
    Goku: Huh. That's funny.
    Trunks: [thinking] ...Roll with it.
• When Goku puts on some Saiyan armor during the Cell Saga, he references one of Vegetas lines, saying "Paragon till death."
  • The same episode as the above entry (episode 49) has a call back to Vegeta's Goku Button.
    Cell: Listen, Vegeta, I'm in the middle of something more important than whatever this is, so if you just want to run along and bring back someone substantial, say, I dunno... Goku? [Vegeta's smirk turns into a frown immediately.] That'd be great.
    [Vegeta takes a deep breath, smirks once more and then transforms into an Ascended Super Saiyan, screaming at the top of his voice]
    Cell: Oh, what's wrong, prince, did I touch a nerve?
    Future Trunks: You pressed the Goku Button.
    Cell: [before being interrupted by Vegeta's gut punch] Excuse me, the wha—?!
    Vegeta: [looking up, smirking] Ya shouldn't a did that.
• In episode 51 Tien describes Krillin as being "a total bitch." This is the exact description Bulma used for Krillin in episode 13 when they got trapped on Namek.
• When Chi-Chi asks Gohan if he was on drugs in The World's Strongest, Gohan replies "it was just the one apple", referencing Dead Zone Abridged.
• Paragus uses Vegeta's "legendary Super Saiyan" speech against him in BROLY.
• When everyone is completely beaten down by Broly in BROLY, they all comment that they rather face the villains in the other movies. Piccolo wanting to open up the Dead Zone so they can bring back Garlic Jr. Trunks rather prefer more androids in disbelief. Vegeta prefers being kicked in the dick a thousand more times than hear Broly scream out "KAKAROT" again. And Gohan rather take another shot at Turles, even though he's just an evil version of Goku.
  • Immediately after, Goku mentions Dr. Wheelo and Gohan laments him dying of brain cancer.
  • Right at the end, Piccolo comments that no one mentioned Lord Slug and feels it kind of racist.
• When Bulma goes through Android 16's head in episode 56, a shortcut to a program called "murder.exe" is visible in the background. As Dr. Briefs says, at least Gero was consistent.
• In the Plan to Eradicate Christmas holiday special, Vegeta fondly recalls taking attempting to kill Santa each Christmas when he was a child (before it was replaced by Freeza Day). This is a callback to Christmas Tree of Might, where Santa tells Goku the only reason he never visited Planet Vegeta was that the Saiyans kept trying to shoot his sleigh down.
• Episode 60 is an utter callback bonanza:
  • Krillin mentions "Team Three Star" to Vegeta in an unsuccessful attempt to bond with Vegeta, referencing the really bad team name from Season 2. Yamcha asks if it a club he can join, but gets flatly denied.
  • Piccolo yells "DODGE!" to Gohan, who is actually dodging effectively during the battle for a time. This fills Piccolo with pride, though Nail and Kami start to rag on him and Piccolo begins to downplay it.
  • In Lord Slug, after Piccolo grabs his arm, Dorodabo asks him not to break his arm, to which Piccolo says "no." In episode 60, a Cell Jr. catches Yamcha's arm, and they repeat the lines.
    Yamcha: MY BASEBALL CAREER!!!
  • In the second part, Trunks revives Krillin's "SENZU BEAN" gag by tossing one at his head. Doesn't have the same impact, as Krillin was half dead at the time, which Trunks awkwardly realizes.
  • The ball was dropped, however, when Gohan threw back in Goku's face all three of his stupid decisions regarding Cell and previous Big Bads once they were on the ropes, but only in regards to why he spared Vegeta. While Goku did spare Vegeta so he could get a better fight later, that only happened in canon. In DBZA, he asked the retreating Vegeta if he was sorry for what he did, and when Vegeta said yes, Goku appealed to Krillin's morals so he'd let Vegeta leave.
  • During the final beam struggle of the season, Goku is giving Gohan a pep talk from beyond the grave. During which, he references an earlier pep talk he gave to Vegeta by telling him to "eat that horse".
  • Before leaving for The Lookout, Yamcha asks if there's anything to eat there. Krillin immediately responds with "FOURTH RULE OF POPO'S TRAINING"!
  • The "Little Green" running gag is alluded to and subverted while Shenron is summoned; he refers to Dende as "Big Green" and himself as "Bigger Green".
  • Trunks gives a twofer after being revived. First, he returns mid-sentence, clearly trying to stop King Yemma from bragging about his desk. He also mentions that at least he got his clothes back, indicating that King Yemma is still making people strip.
  • After Tien mentions that he told Chiaotzu that they would "eat out" if he wasn't dead before day's end, Yamcha calls it "gay", referencing a similar joke from all the way back in episode 4.
  • In episode 57, Tien and Yamcha recounted the story of Vegeta flipping them off on the way to the Cell Games arena. At the end of episode 60 Pt. 3, Vegeta flips off Trunks during his send off. Trunks responds in kind, earning a smirk of respect from Vegeta.
  • In History of Trunks, Gohan punches 17 into a building, causing the latter to scream "You goddamn cheap son of a bitch!". In the Epilogue of episode 60, Trunks punches 18 into a building, causing the latter to scream "Goddamn cheapshotting asshole!" in a similar tone and cadence.
• HFIL has one to episode 20 of the main show, with Burter even name-dropping this trope. He and Jeice are the commentary team for HFIL episode 3's dodgeball match.
• The Running Gag about hitting really hard in "Cooler 2: The Return of Cooler's Revenge - The Reckoning" comes back in Buu Bits during the Final Explosion scene.
  Vegeta: I'm gonna take a page out of Kakarot's book... I'm gonna hit you REALLY hard!
  • The return of "I need an adult/I am an adult" as Ultimate Gohan's Pre Ass Kicking One Liner against Super Buu.