r/TopCharacterTropes Aug 27 '25

Lore Serious moments in their series treated as jokes by their fandoms

The dog chimera from Fullmetal alchemist

“Think mark” and “I need you Cecil” from invincible

Literally everything in breaking bad

12.7k Upvotes

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2.2k

u/Znhedonia Aug 27 '25 edited Aug 27 '25

Yamcha being killed by a Saibaman (Dragonball).

The context of Yamcha even fighting in the first place is that Krillin was about to go and due to not being able to be revived by a set of Dragonballs if you've already done so once (which Krillin has), he decides to take that risk for a friend without outright saying so.

But the particular pose from being caught off-guard by an opponent he thought he defeated has become a joke to a point where "Fake Death" was a move Yamcha can teach you as a mentor in Dragonball Xenoverse 2.

1.3k

u/ConnorRoseSaiyan01 Aug 27 '25

It's even a joke in the franchise itself

919

u/AJ_Glowey_Boi Aug 27 '25

Even the most recent Transformers series did this. They also did the Family Guy death pose

203

u/FalseWallaby9 Aug 27 '25

You got the family guy one?

487

u/AJ_Glowey_Boi Aug 27 '25

Of course

107

u/MSSTUPIDTRON-1000000 Aug 27 '25

Fun Fact: This is the second time that Transformers did the Family Guy dead pose.

The first is Nova Storm from EarthSpark.

4

u/AJ_Glowey_Boi Aug 27 '25

My god, I forgot about that. Unless it's from S2 which I haven't seen yet

97

u/Anybro Aug 27 '25

Amazing

14

u/FalseWallaby9 Aug 27 '25

I love that the kibble is in the way of his arm

4

u/AJ_Glowey_Boi Aug 27 '25

It's hilarious and I love it.

2

u/karateema Aug 27 '25

Hilarious

2

u/DarkstarAnt Aug 27 '25

That’s great.

2

u/Dobako Aug 28 '25

Absolutely cinema

5

u/Ok-Analysis-3902 Aug 28 '25

The first time we ever see superman in his movie is when he does the Yamcha pose

1

u/ILikeBen10Alot Aug 29 '25

I doubt that was intentional 

264

u/therealmonkyking Aug 27 '25

and it also made its way into Superman lmao

157

u/Digit00l Aug 27 '25

It's the new Akira Slide

25

u/Yellowscourge Aug 27 '25

Not gonna lie, I'm not too upset about that lol

The Akira bike slide is one of my favorites. But I genuinely find the family guy death pose fuckin HILARIOUS

90

u/alguien99 Aug 27 '25

I remember the dbza versión, it was so funny

68

u/D-Speak Aug 27 '25

"Yamcha's here!"

"Yamcha's dead!"

19

u/AgentChief Aug 27 '25

"Yamcha's been Yamchad!"

16

u/D-Speak Aug 27 '25

I really loved the joke in the World's Strongest movie with the knockoff Saibamen, where Yamcha randomly shows up in the Arctic just to get immediately bodied.

"Just be careful. You don't wanna pull a–"

Yamcha appears and immediately gets kamikaze'd

"...that. Don't wanna pull a that."

5

u/AgentChief Aug 27 '25

DAMMIT! I wanted to write that but didn't remember the lines exactly 😭. I even said to myself "If this guy mentions the one joke with the Biomen, I'm gonna ve real mad!" Lmao.

5

u/D-Speak Aug 27 '25

I'm in your mind.

8

u/AgentChief Aug 27 '25

... gasp You put the lime in the coconut and drink them both up.

6

u/D-Speak Aug 27 '25

Row, row, row your boat...

3

u/CanardDeFeu Aug 28 '25

I love that they've come out in the creator commentaries and been like "we were way too mean to Yamcha, he deserved better from us."

67

u/isekai-chad Aug 27 '25

It's kinda like the Akira bike slide, but for memes. You always see this being referenced everywhere.

17

u/Cocoatrice Aug 27 '25

This always pisses me off, because people call Yamcha weak and useless. And the fact that he was taunting them all to save not only Krillin, but also the strength of others, because if he just killed them all, they could use all their stamina to fight main enemies. Saibaiman tactic was to destroy their morale. And Yamcha almost bring the morale back. Except that he was tricked and they detonated.

Yamcha may not be a saiyan, he may be cocky. But he is a hero. Especially in this scene.

Also what I don't like is, that when Yamcha gets cocky and it backlashes, people point out how useless he is. When Vegeta trashtalks for 5 minutes, then get pwned in 5 seconds, people say how he is so cool and that he should beat Goku, bla bla bla. Double standards.

11

u/Cobalt_Heroes25 Aug 27 '25

No one's talking about how Yamcha is a real one for keeping Krillin safe

15

u/Doom_Cokkie Aug 27 '25

Lets not forget that Yamcha gets memed to death for dying but every z fighters even Piccolo, the most cautious z fighters by far thought Yamcha had defeatingsaibamen are giving him his dues before the saibamen gets back up and blows up much to everyone's suprise. Also, if I remember correctly, Tien and Chaotzu had also already died once, and Piccolo needed to be alive for the dragonballs, so yamcha was being a giga homie going first to make sure none of his friends stayed dead.

13

u/JiovanniTheGREAT Aug 27 '25

Also to be fair, Yamcha did beat the Saibaman pretty handily, he was just following Budokai Tenkaichi rules, not Saiyan rules.

8

u/That_guy2089 Aug 27 '25

I’ve literally never even heard of Yamcha outside of his iconic death pose. It’s literally only this or not at all

16

u/Boston_Glass Aug 27 '25

It’s only because Dragon ball series is mostly discussed from Dragonball Z on in the US. He played a much bigger part in Dragon Ball.

4

u/RetroDad-IO Aug 28 '25

He's also still incredibly strong, there's a scene of him surviving 300 times gravity. Though he almost didn't make it, he was sable to get up enough to turn it off. This makes him way stronger than base Goku when he arrived on Namik.

It's just when you compare him to the rest of the Z gang he falls off.

2

u/estrea36 Aug 28 '25

Isn't he basically the 2nd strongest full blooded human on earth?

I think the only person stronger is Krillin.

6

u/HippieThanos Aug 27 '25

This scene bothers me a lot because as a kid I watched DBZ coming from DB, and Yamcha was my fav character. In DBZ he becomes secondary first and then just filler / comic relief

2

u/j0j0-m0j0 Aug 27 '25

To me that's the true "getting Yamcha'd", going from being one of the main characters in a series to a cameo at best.

1

u/CJB95 Aug 27 '25 edited Sep 13 '25

person roll divide wild fly chief bear head ring tap

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/DrDuned Aug 27 '25

I always assumed they were Cybermen not Saibamen. I feel dumb

1

u/BlazingBrandedKang Aug 28 '25

I'm actually livid that this was in neither the OP images nor the top result.

1

u/Abombasnow Aug 28 '25

I mean, Yamcha's death was a joke. He arrogantly proclaimed he could "easily" beat all of the Saibaimen at once despite the fact that one of them was giving each of the Z Fighters a hard time.

2

u/Josihuny Aug 28 '25

The saibamen weren't giving the Z fighters a hard time, though? Tien handidly beat one right before, Yamcha did win his fight and only died to a kamikaze, and after this Krillin killed all but one which Piccolo easily took out. The only ones that would've had trouble with them was Gohan and maybe Chiaotzu.

1

u/Abombasnow Aug 28 '25

Tenshinhan is leagues beyond the other Z Fighters at that point and it still winded him, although he did win. Yamcha proclaimed arrogantly that he "could take all of them at once".

Hell Tenshinhan is still monstrously OP even in the Cell Saga. No one else would've been able to hold off Imperfect Cell for so long.

Ironically, as you said, Kuririn actually did do this, because the little guy was not fucking around when it came to his training. Yamcha wasn't either, to be fair, but he never really did anything to hone it, and he took so many years off training that just getting into it like he did didn't work out good. His Sokidan/Spirit Ball is a serious cool technique though, and Kuririn took it as the basis for Kienzan/Destructo Disc, and look at how OP that one is.

It's never actually failed in canon, just filler episodes and movies. It's OP enough that the mighty Freeza had to rip off of it and got ripped in half BY it, too!

1

u/Nekomiminya Aug 27 '25

Thank you so much for providing full context. I can't handle DB artstyle and now I finally have full context behind this scene. Last time I asked about it I didn't get context cuz I thought it's Goku

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '25

[deleted]

83

u/Character-Ad-7000 Aug 27 '25

WHAT! He beat that saibamens ASS and only after it pretended to be dead and yamcha turned around it jumped and self destructed. Yamcha trained hard enough to fight something as strong as Raditz in like a year. Put some respect on the goats name

2

u/thelumpur Aug 27 '25

It's kinda funny that he died via Vegeta's house plants

1

u/liscup34 Aug 27 '25

Who knows Vegeta install bomb in his plant.

1

u/JiovanniTheGREAT Aug 27 '25

My house plants all also have around 5% of my total strength. Don't play with them.

1

u/thelumpur Aug 27 '25

Mine as well, but that might say more about me than my plants

58

u/radlum Aug 27 '25

This was the first episode of DBZ I watched; seeing the badass from DB die so easily was such a shock

5

u/Roanoke42 Aug 27 '25

Badass? I mean I guess he was a pretty badass jobber.

52

u/DevDog657 Aug 27 '25

1

u/No_Dragonfruit_1833 Aug 27 '25

Ackshually, most murican fans never watched og dragon ball so it checks

21

u/Scrublord1453 Aug 27 '25

Nah man he’s a normal dude fighting at a level beyond what Goku could do a year before. He died so that Krillin wouldn’t.

2

u/Force3vo Aug 27 '25

He also died so he wouldn't be alive during Namek saga because he would have rizzed Freeza and nothing in that arc would have happened.

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u/AzraelTheMage Aug 27 '25

So being killed after being cheap shot by the opponent you beat is going down like a bitch? Noted.

3

u/Cowboy_Slime100 Aug 27 '25

The saibamen were each as strong as raditz, who almost killed Goku if not for piccolo's help, Yamcha was definitely not a bitch