The evil Dr. Wheelo has been trapped in ice in an accident that destroyed his body. His loyal assistant Dr. Kochin returns him to life and summons Shenron to... defrost his lair? Wait a minute, let's start again.
Dr. Wheelo, a completely normal scientist by Dragon Ball standards, has passed away from cancer, but his assistant Dr. Kochin has saved his brain. Wheelo wants a body again, and the moronically evil Kochin decides to get one for him ... but determines that it should be from a) the strongest warrior, and b) someone with a penis (against Wheelo's protests that any would do). This of course brings him into conflict with the Z-fighters, who are prime candidates for said strongest warrior (with the exception of Piccolo, who is Namekian and therefore doesn't have genitalia). He has his saiba- sorry, biomen kidnap Master Roshi for the purpose (and Bulma to get Roshi to cooperate), but unfortunately, he's been a victim of Power Creep, Power Seep recently.
Goku then intervenes in order to clear up the misunderstanding (oh, and rescue his friends), fighting through Kochin's death traps and the three elite Bio-Warriors with the (dubious) help of Krillin and Gohan, before facing off against a Brainwashed and Crazy Piccolo. They're this close to saving Bulma (Master Roshi having already saved himself) and escaping when Dr. Wheelo decides he's had it with watching Kochin's atrocities and stupidity helplessly without a body, and activates the powerful exoskeleton he'd had the whole time but never realized. Wheelo kills Kochin by breaking the floor he's on and sending him falling to his death, before engaging the Z-fighters.
But instead of being shot into space and destroyed by a spirit bomb, this Wheelo gets thrown a bone. Gohan realizes that he's not evil, just desperate, and persuades Goku to drop the spirit bomb and get Wheelo a new body the obvious way that Kochin never thought of - summoning Shenron and just wishing him a new one. Wheelo can live a normal life, the Z-fighters still have their bodies, and Piccolo is no longer brainwashed. All is well, until the next movie at least.
Now these tropes are cruel, vicious and FIGHT the elderly!
- Adapted Out: Goku's first fight with Blub-Blub was removed in this version, since it ruins the flow of the narrative. It was replaced with Kochin inviting Goku in, and the latter freezing his ass off on the way.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Dr. Wheelo is saddened, and several of the present characters are aghast, as Blub-Blub lingers dying after Goku flattened him. Part of the shock is how laissez-faire Dr. Kochin treats the situation.Blub-Blub: So dark... and cold... *sobs*
- Anti-Villain: Dr. Wheelo. All he wanted was a body, and even then he was horrified when it turned out they didn't need to kidnap anyone for it.
- Arm Cannon: Kochin's arm turn out to be a minigun, with his fingers being the barrels. Unfortunately for him his target was unfazed by it.
- Badass Boast: Roshi's response to Kochin saying he'll be abducted shortly after kicking the crap out of the Biomen.Roshi: Are the bodies not a clear indication of how this is gonna go down?
- Beyond the Impossible: Dr. Wheelo somehow manages to cry while bemoaning his inability to see the Earth's beauty, despite lacking tear ducts.Gohan: Hey, Dr. Wheelo, I... wait. Are you crying?
Wheelo: I physically can't, but I'm just so sa-a-a-a-ad! - Body Horror: Downplayed for human Wheelo but no less disturbing. Gohan wishes to Shenron to move his brain to a fresh new body, but neglects to shrink it from its bus-sized mass. He is seen functioning despite the brain making his head the size of his entire body.
- Brain Critical Mass: Everybody seems to think that, being a Brain in a Jar, Dr. Wheelo has to have Psychic Powers. Dr. Wheelo himself is mystified by this assumption.Gohan: Dad, I think Dr. Wheelo's controlling [Piccolo]!
Wheelo: But I am a BRAIN in a jar!
Goku: So you admit it! - Brain in a Jar: Dr. Wheelo. He repeatedly states this, because apparently it's unclear to the other characters.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Piccolo ends up hitting Gohan after Kochin experiments on him. Goku, of course, checks whether or not this counts as training.
- Bullying a Dragon: Gohan shows off his power after an argument with Kochin pushes him too far. Wheelo tries to get Kochin to stop, but Kochin is too much an idiot.
- Butt-Monkey: Yamcha, once again. He gets downed by one of the Biomen in the exact same fashion as a Saibaman did to him, and Piccolo regards as no more than an example of what not to do. His defeat is even treated as Funny Background Event when Gohan reflects on the event. About the only bones thrown to him were that the cold of the Arctic didn't bother him like it did Piccolo and Gohan and that at least he survived this time.
- Cane Fu: Kochin's admittedly cool cane has what appears to be a hidden cannon that is somehow able to fire out a powerful beam.
- Call-Forward: After revealing the name's of the new Bio-Warriors, Kochin mentions that he's fighting someone on the trademark for the "Freezer" name. Naturally when Kochin mentions Freezer's name on the speakers while said Bio-Warrior is freezing Goku, the latter then states it sounds familiar before having his train of thought derailed by his entire body freezing. Furthermore, after defeating Bouncy Butcher, Goku says he's going to deck the next guy he sees and then immediately punches Freezer in the nose, not unlike what he said he'd do to Freeza.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Kochin. He flat out refers to Wheelo's lab as an "evil lair" despite Wheelo insisting otherwise. When Gohan argues they are men of science, Kochin responds by listing off ways science has been used to hurt people.
- Complexity Addiction: Kochin kidnaps Bulma and Master Roshi, puts Goku in death traps, and summons Shenron just to de-ice his lab in order to get Dr. Wheelo a body... when he could have just used a random Bio-man, Bulma, Piccolo, or even gathered the dragon balls again to wish Wheelo a body.
- Continuity Nod: When Chi-Chi asks if Gohan is on drugs, he affirms that "it was just the one apple, Mom." This refers to the drug trip he took after eating an apple in Garlic Jr.'s castle in the Dead Zone movie.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Roshi beats the shit out the encroaching Biomen, claiming he doesn't hold back when he's high.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being a giant Brain in a Jar with a robot body in a frozen lair with an evil assistant, Dr. Wheelo is very much not evil, spending most of the movie horrified at Kochin's deeds.
- Didn't See That Coming: Shenron, being so used to only ever being summoned by the Z warriors and their group, wakes up and casually starts asking "what do you assholes want this time", only to be utterly stunned when he sees he's been summoned by Kochin, who he's never seen before, and hastily gets into character.
- The Dog Bites Back: Once Wheelo starts using his exoskeleton, he sends Kochin falling to his death with a stomp of his foot.
- Do Wrong, Right: When Goku finds out that Master Roshi was kidnapped because he was mistaken as the World's Strongest, Goku immediately hops on Nimbus to fix this mistake.
- Dragon-in-Chief: Kochin is technically Wheelo's assistant but since Wheelo is a Brain in a Jar, Kochin is the one whose actions drive the plot of the movie while Wheelo can only futiley protest.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Kochin is a Stupid Evil Card-Carrying Villain but when he's shocked that Wheelo didn't notice the robot body he built for him after he left the lab. He's evil but not so evil he'd leave Wheelo trapped in a jar with no way to move, remarking "What kind of monster do you think I am?" Of course Wheelo kills him for that comment in light of Kochin's other villainy.
- Exact Words: The ending has Gohan make a wish to create a new human body to transfer Wheelo's brain into. Too bad everyone forgotten to downsize said brain to normal human standards.
- Face Death with Dignity: What's Kochin's last words after Wheelo's retort to his "What kind of monster do you think I am?" question by destroying the floor that Kochin is standing on?Kochin: (As he's falling) Fair enooouuuugh!
- Frivolous Summoning: Dr. Kochin spends 50 years gathering the Dragon Balls, magical stones that can grant any wish, to summon the Eternal Dragon Shenron... to melt the ice off his front door. Shenron suggests Kochin wish to gain the power to melt the ice himself, in case it happens again, but eventually grants the wish anyway out of frustration.
- Groin Attack: While Freezer's "preserving the Goods", Goku was about to state his name sounded familiar before immediately having that train of thought derailed once he felt the ice beginning to encompass his groin as well.Goku: It's like the worst part of getting into a pool times a thousand!
- Heel–Face Turn: Zigzagged. Wheelo isn't really a villain (his science is Neutral Science at worst), he was just a revolutionary oncologist who just wanted a new body because his old one died (ironically of cancer), then Kochin made him a brain in a jar. He ultimately snaps from having spent 50 years alone as an immobile brain and then having to watch Kochin perform atrocities while being helpless to do anything, but in the end when Gohan thinks of a way to give him a new body (namely wishing for one from Shenron), he willingly surrenders to wait until they can summon Shenron to do it.
- Immune to Bullets: Already from the very beginning of the original series, bullets do little more than Scratch Damage to characters with higher-than-average power levels. When Krillin gets shot at by Dr. Kochin's minigun, the bullets bounce off of him as he's then reminded of his old friend Launch.
- Insistent Terminology: Everyone mistakes the Biomen for Saibamen, to their chagrin. Even Kochin makes the error, and one of them angrily corrects him mid-sentence. He points out that nobody cares what their name is.
- Karmic Death: After spending so much time repurposing Dr. Wheelo's inventions for evil (even creating some evil inventions of his own), Kochin ends up getting killed when the doctor himself sends him falling into a dark abyss with the exoskeleton suit that Kochin designed for him.
- Lampshade Hanging:
- Just as in the Neighborhood Cluck version of the movie, Shenron notes that it would make much more sense for Kochin to have used the wish to give himself powers in order to melt the ice. At the very least, it would have helped out in case the lair got frozen over again.
- When Gohan says that he wants to help Piccolo because he heard screaming, Oolong asks him to name a fight that doesn't feature somebody screaming.
- My Brain Is Big: Dr. Wheelo's brain is estimated to be the size of a golden retriever. Not the dog's brain, the actual golden retriever. When Gohan suggests that it's the size of a greyhound, he gasps out in horror "The BUS?!" When he gains a human form, thanks to Shenron, the almighty dragon doesn't shrink the size of his brain leading to a mass at least twice his body on top of his head.
- Mythology Gag: Wheelo's original names for Electrocutioner, Bouncy Butcher, and Freezer were Zap Zap, Blub-Blub, and Brr, noting the names they had back in the Neighborhood Cluck adaptation.
- Non Sequitur, *Thud*: When Goku gets blown up by his own Spirit Bomb, he groans out "Good work, team...!" while he's laying down on the ground.
- No-Sell: Krillin ignores Kochin blasting him with simple gun fire from his machine-gun-arm.
- Roshi and Oolong get high from Roshi's pot brownies burning, but Bulma seems unaffected by it.
- Parental Substitute: Goku cheerfully agrees that he's a bad role model for Gohan, but that's what Piccolo is there for.
- Only Sane Man: Poor Dr. Wheelo doesn't see why they have to jump through so many hoops and antagonize the Z-warriors just to get him a body. Unfortunately, he's a brain in a jar and only finds out he has a powerful exoskeleton when he finally has enough of Kochin's idiocy and villainy.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Mind-controlled Piccolo has red eyes. Goku asks if he's been hanging around Master Roshi (who was previously seen baking pot brownies).
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Wheelo finally snaps thanks to Kochin's cruelty, discovers he has a giant mechanical exoskeleton, and proceeds to go completely berserk until he gets launched into orbit and sees the Earth from space.
- Running Gag:
- Immediately after getting unleashed from his brainwashing, Piccolo tells Gohan to dodge before striking him.
- The "Kaio-What?" gag returns, with Wheelo being the one confused this time.
- Kochin's obsession with finding a body with a penis.
- Wheelo having to state he's a Brain in a Jar.
- The Biomen being mistaken for Saibamen.
- Save the Villain: Gohan is the only one who realizes that Wheelo isn't evil and managed to talk Goku out of killing him.
- Shout-Out: The end credits are played over a song about Wheelo and Kochin done in the tune of the Pinky and the Brain theme.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: When the Biomen start to threaten Turtle:Turtle: I'm 999 years old. I don't give a fuck.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Rather than destroying him with the Spirit Bomb, the heroes decide to wish Dr. Wheelo a new body. Unfortunately, due to the large size of his brain, his head is left looking oddly disproportionate to the rest of his body. That said, Wheelo happily thanks the Z-Warriors for their generosity, so he either doesn't notice or feel pain from the change or is comfortable enough with it.
- Subverted by the time Broly rolls around, as it turns out Wheelo has passed away of brain cancer.
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Kochin built a robot exoskeleton for Wheelo so he wouldn't be immobile. Said exoskeleton is gigantic and defeats the Z warriors almost single handedly. Given that it was Kochin who built it, it makes sense.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Goku of all people uses this trope after Krillin and Gohan fail to save him. Though in his case it's less be annoyed by other people being dumb and more annoyance with them not being able to keep with him and forcing him to do everything himself.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Biomen to the Saibamen. This is lampshaded by everyone calling them Saibamen when they see them, even Kochin.
- Stupid Evil: Kochin. He is a Card-Carrying Villain but even putting that aside he's an idiot. He insists on getting the strongest body for Dr. Wheelo, even though Wheelo isn't picky about what body he has. He keeps rejecting perfectly good bodies because he somehow doesn't think to use them (the Biomen) or because they don't have a penis (Bulma and Piccolo). When Goku, Krillin, and Gohan do break into the control room of the lab, rather than trying to talk things out like Wheelo wanted, he orders the brainwashed Piccolo to kill them for no reason.
- Title Drop:Goku: I'm here for two things: to rescue my friends, and correct a mistake! I am Son Goku! And I am THE WORLD'S STRONGEST!
