Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero's Viral Cell Max Image Is Fake, Plus New Gohan and Piccolo Team Shots

The image of Cell Max that spread widely in early June 2022 was fake. Someone who has seen what Cell Max actually looks like told me it was not him. In the final days before Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero opened in Japan, new teasers also showed Gohan, Piccolo, Goten and Trunks fighting side by side.

When I wrote this in early June 2022, we were three and a half days, based on Japan time, from the release of the film in Japan, the first country to get it. North America, along with the English dub, was set to get it on August 19. New information was arriving pretty much every day, but Toei Animation had done a great job of keeping a lot of the movie a secret. It was hard for leakers to get anything this time, and I was happy about that. I would have loved to know more myself, but things were going to get crazy within days once the film was out and everything was confirmed.

What follows goes into very light spoilers only. The full plot, beginning, middle and end, had not been revealed at that point. I had limited information, other leakers had limited information, and not everything was out yet.

A new TV spot showed Gohan, Piccolo, Goten and Trunks fighting as a team

A TV spot had come out a couple of days earlier. Much of it was material we had already seen, but there were a few new things worth highlighting. The biggest was a new shot of Gohan, Piccolo, Goten and Trunks together. I love the teamwork and the fact that they are working together as a team. A while ago I said that the final battle in this movie would feature multiple characters, and this shot was the proof of it.

The spot also included another shot of Magenta witnessing explosions from the battle at the Red Ribbon headquarters. That was trailer trickery, because the explosion comes from a different part of the movie, so it is not the same moment as Gohan fighting Gamma 2. That Kamehameha from Gohan looked great.

Fat Gotenks appears to pull off the Galactic Donut

The spot also gave a good look at Gotenks doing what looks to be the Galactic Donut. This is the failed fusion, fat Gotenks, with his backside sticking out, which is there for comedy, just like with Gogeta.

People asked me whether regular Gotenks was in the movie. I did not think he was. My thinking was that it would just be fat Gotenks. Even so, so many details of the film had not come out at that point that it remained a big mystery.

Super Hero's unfinished image showed how far along Toei really was

Another interesting image compared two versions of the same shot. At the top was the unfinished image I talked about a few weeks earlier, from when they were first working on the film. It was an older piece of footage, because they were much further along than they had told us. Below it was the final version, and it looks much better.

Seeing what that shot was and what it became is interesting. I really do hope that at some point we get more behind the scenes information on how they made this movie.

As far as I knew, Goku, Vegeta and Broly would stay on Beerus's planet, with no Ultra Instinct or Ultra Ego

The day before I wrote this, a short eight second clip came out. It shows the training fight between Goku, Vegeta and Broly on Beerus's planet, and it ends with a note saying four days left. I thought that was neat. As far as I knew, they were not going to leave Beerus's planet. We also would not see Ultra Instinct or Ultra Ego in this movie. I had been hoping we would a few months earlier, back in the previous year, but it was not going to happen in this film.

They were clearly saving things for future movies, future anime and future manga. You can tell they were holding back. This movie's story is about Gohan, Piccolo and Pan, and those are the main characters. As I had mentioned a few days before, you could take Goku, Vegeta and Broly out of this movie and the story would still work. They do not have to be in it for the story to function, because it is Gohan's story.

The convincing Cell Max image was a fake, and the real one has green on him

With the movie so close, a lot of people were going to try to fool fans by leaking fake plot synopses, fake spoilers and fake information. It always happens, but it was going to get kicked up a few notches that week. One example was a very convincing image of Cell Max that came out the day before I wrote this. It was convincing to those who did not know better. It was not the real Cell Max.

I talked to somebody who had seen what Cell Max actually looks like, and that is not what he looks like. More parts of his body are green. He is red, black and white, but he also has green on him, like the original Cell. I showed the image to that person and they straight up told me no, this is not what Cell Max looks like. The creators of the fake took what we knew about Cell Max and put it together, but they forgot to add the green parts. They even wrote Cell Max in Japanese on the image. It was a good effort, but not the real design.

The image looked like it came from a magazine, but there had been no magazine leak containing it. In fact, when it came out, no new magazine was even out from Japan covering this movie or anything Dragon Ball. So it was without question fake. Much like with the Raditz leak, people who did not know any better fell for it.

Instagram, Facebook and TikTok are a hive of misinformation

I urged everyone to be very careful, especially on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, which are a hive of misinformation. There are people there who do not know how to properly decipher information and pass on the correct information, and a lot of amateur journalists. There was probably going to be a lot of fakery coming out.

This particular image was done as a prank, so I was not upset about it. I just wanted people to know it was not what Cell Max looks like, and that more fakes might appear. The yellow Cell image from a few weeks earlier was made by an Instagram artist. Some people are not trying to lie; they are putting out their own ideas to see whether people catch on. Still, you have to be careful. At the time, I planned to cover the real Cell Max image as soon as it arrived, along with the full synopsis later that week.

Do you agree that Super Hero's story would still work without Goku, Vegeta and Broly?