10 Dragon Ball Characters You Totally Forgot Existed

King Piccolo is the archetype for every Dragon Ball villain that followed. He was the first overpowering, singular global threat that Goku ever faced off against. It was this climactic battle that forged the template for every major fight in the later series. But like the elder Gohan, King Piccolo shares a name with a far better known character and his arc is just a blip against the massive screen time of the other Piccolo.

The ultimate threat up to that point, King Piccolo and his minions cut a swath of death through the ranks of the heroes. Goku wasn't remotely a match for him and even after powering up it was a drag out fight that he barely survived.

Why he isn't better remembered amounts to two main factors. The first being that after dying at the end of his fight with Goku, he gave birth to his own reincarnation. Piccolo Jr pretty quickly dropped the Jr and became the one and only Piccolo. A character who unlike his predecessor had a core of human emotion and thrived as an antihero and grew to be a fully fledged champion.

In addition to being outshined by the second Piccolo, he is also very much outshined by DBZ villains.

With characters like Frieza and Cell, the Z villains are indeed cut from the same cloth as King Piccolo but in terms of destructiveness, petty cruelty and sheer power level totally outmatch him.

So, while completely memorable and totally remarkable in the context of the original series, King Piccolo just doesn't stand out against so many of the later villains who inharited so many of his traits.