If you were never really concerned with the events of the twisted universe that is Dragon Ball Z then you are not alone. More niche than Pokémon and more kitsch than pretty much anything else on the planet, it has never had the widest audience. But that’s no bad thing when it comes to the series itself. Throughout its various transformations (remember, it was Dragon Ball before it was Dragon Ball Z) it has always taken itself rather seriously. It wants to be seen as a story that is more earnest manga than the usually rather good fun Pokémon.

If we were pushed to explain any aspect of the plot over the years, we could probably only say that it involves a variety of characters meeting up for fights. A lot. In between these fights, the characters talk about fighting, and after the fights, they either celebrate or feel depressed. Because of the fights.

However, there is also Cell. Like most things in Dragon Ball Z, he goes through a couple of transformations. But Dr Gero (a ‘medical professional’ who we personally wouldn’t see if we had a worrying rash) created Cell as ‘the perfect warrior’. And that’s his story arc.

Along the way, he became quite a mysterious character, with more than a few secrets. Read on to find out what you didn’t know about Cell. And if you’re extra patient, hang on to the end, for some real stuff.

15 Too Boring To Draw

If you love Cell, turn away now. This won’t be pretty.

Apparently drawing high-quality anime and other assorted projects takes its toll. Who knew that the artist who created Cell would find it to be such an arduous task? Surely being part of the phenomenon would be enough to make you jump out of bed in the morning?

It was all about the spots. The spots on Cell’s costume had to be individually drawn, and there were hundreds of them. This meant the artist just could not cope, and this is also seen as the actual reason why Cell left the story arc.

Cell came back a little more but for strictly cameo appearances. And that’s sad. We are also flabbergasted to note that this is probably the only case of ‘artist becomes so bored the character leaves’ we have ever encountered.

14 Lying About How Tough He Is

Cell has often said that he can always regenerate. This is a great skill to have, especially if you’re the type of android who will suffer third-degree burns and a broken neck on a regular basis.

However, he was obviously full of himself, because he often claimed that he would always be able to regenerate if his head was intact. While this sounded super cool and made him seem even more formidable, it simply wasn’t true.

Like a typical liar, he exaggerated his toughness. In one fight, he lost his entire upper body (people really didn’t take a shine to him) and still regenerated. As far as we know, the head is part of the upper body.

This was later explained (by Cell, naturally) as evidence of his ability to regenerate from one cell in his body.

So the head thing was a lie, and his pants should have caught fire.

13 Defeating The Best Of The Best

Goku could have (nearly) anybody. If he felt the need to start a ruckus, even the biggest bad guys would call for a taxi. He was tough, fearless and responsible for defeating two out of the show’s three biggest, most evil foes.

The third of these was Cell. But Goku chickened out of this scrap and tried to get rid of Cell through some teleportation thing, or something like that. No one really knows what Goku attempted, but he certainly did not take on Cell alone. In other words, he lost his nerve.

This makes Cell the only ‘boss’ type bad guy who wasn’t eliminated by Goku, which in turn makes Cell a true super baddie. If Goku didn’t have the courage to take him on, Cell was obviously the biggest and the toughest.

12 A Fusion That Should Never Have Existed

Fusing characters together was a popular way of adding to their shelf life. It was most often done with good characters, fighters that fans wanted to see ‘levelled up’ and made even more powerful. But Cell, he had a chance at the glory too. He was fused with another evil character and we can’t actually say that any other evil character did this kind of stuff.

However, it was a pretty pointless fuse. And If you’re a huge Dragon Ball fan, you will know that it was doomed when we tell you that the other character in the fusion process was Frieza. The two of them came together in Dragon Ball Fusions but did precisely nothing after the fusion took place. There were no huge fights that showed their new fused powers at their best. And the fused character, called Celluza, just looked like some weird and catastrophic genetic experiment. It was a poor, poor effort.

11 Defeating The Worst On His Own

Okay, we know that Mr Satan probably wasn’t Lucifer himself, but if you run around town calling yourself by that name you’re going to get some attention. Cell may well have thought he was kicking the Fallen Angel around (his ego was that big). And that leads neatly into his glorious tour of Hell.

That’s right, Cell even went to Hell and caused a spot of bother. Not content with being ‘perfect’, he headed into the nastiest place in the universe and basically smashed it to bits. This means he was totally the hardest guy in the saga. For about ten minutes.

Because Pikkon went to Hell with Goku to try and stop Cell from making a mess of the place. And Pikkon defeated Cell with one kick.

Sometimes it sucks to be Cell.

10 The Long-Lost Twin

We all know that Cell was an exciting, dynamic character, one of the few to really get fans divided as well. But his lineage and his family history have never really been touched upon. This is most likely because he is the ‘perfect fighter’ android type character.

But as it happens, Cell didn’t always look like he does in the comics and the games. There were a number of prototypes for him that never made it off the sketch pad. And this meant that Cell actually inspired another character.

Ozotto (try saying that without thinking of a dish that includes rice) was a demon character who appeared in a Dragon Ball Z video game. He was super evil but was also a character who had his ‘look’ as a spin-off from early versions of Cell.

9 One Man, Many Voices

If you know who Cell is (and by this point in the article if you don’t you’re actually wasting your time) you will know that he goes through a transformation or three. With the animated series though, this became most apparent and brought its own problems along with it.

The TV show had the three different voices (all perfectly reasonable) but the video games tended to use the same actor for all the different versions of Cell. This may not necessarily matter because for you to have taken notice of this you would have to be genuinely interested in the art of voice acting (if this is you, by the way, walk outdoors right now and take a deep breath).

We noticed. And we’re a little annoyed. The whole concept of the character revolves around him changing as part of the progression.

8 What's That Shape?

While he was still interesting enough to draw, Cell had one element of his uniform that was constant. That’s every single version on the show, as well as in comics and games.

Remember that Cell was a character that changed appearances rapidly throughout his story arc. The one thing that didn't change is that central black shape. Some refer to it as a diamond but we think it’s more like a kind of inky smudge.

If you bear in mind that Cell has the DNA of a number of characters inside of him, then this makes sense. Frieza is one of those characters, and Frieza also had a central shape (coloured purple, if it matters) that stayed with him too. It’s just one of those interesting ways in which the creators built out a story for the characters.

7 Almost Not Existing

Cell is a popular character in Dragon Ball lore. We know this because there are a million fan theory sites out there about just him. Seriously, if you look for them, don't say we didn’t warn you. It's amazing how much can be written about a fictional character.

Right at the start of things though, he was a product of frustration. The top guys behind the story wanted an android (or pair of androids) that were less annoying than Androids 19 and 20. If you know who they are, you’ll probably agree with the suggestion that they aren’t the most endearing of characters.

Androids 17 and 18 were pretty much hated by the bosses too. Things were not looking good. Then, in a perfect moment of inspiration, the creator of the concept came up with Cell.

6 Version 2.0 Is A No-Go

The bosses behind Dragon Ball Z (yes, them again) were miffed about something else. It didn't take long before there were dissenting voices around the second form that Cell took.

They thought he looked goofy. We’re a little unsure whether or not this was the official ‘semi-perfect’ form of Cell. But in any case, Yuu Kondo (editor of the manga) thought he looked like a ‘moron’. So, this implies that the ‘perfect’ form of Cell was less moronic and looked quite normal. This, we’re not sure about. But then, we don't have that many egotistical androids to compare him to.

We digress somewhat. Cell finally ended up in his perfect form (Kondo actually pressurized the creator to speed the whole thing up) and everything was okay in the Dragon Ball world.

5 A Serious Concern

When it comes to the heads of heroes and villains in manga, it’s quite easy to see a pattern or two forming. Generally speaking, good guys have reasonably normal heads. Bad guys have whatever their creators want them to have, and this tends to manifest as something creepy and disgusting. With Cell, the early concept art is incredible. He even had hair at one point. Other versions of Cell’s head were flat, like some kind of vile-looking demon beetle type thing.

Going back to the hair thing (we are genuinely fascinated with what could have been here) the hair that Cell nearly had was similar to the hair of the Saiyans. That’s spiked and rather cool. They even had beards. The possibilities for Cell could have been endless.

Shame.

4 Life's A Popularity Contest

Okay, quiz time. How many characters do you think there are in the entire Dragon Ball Z universe? Think about it. If you need a few minutes for research time, take it.

You back? Okay. The answer is... 84. We think. That’s a lot of character work. Plenty of interesting story arcs and a huge universe to enjoy. Out of all those characters, it's understandable that there will be more than a few fan favourites, and plenty of fuel for late night arguments over who is the best and so on.

When it comes to Cell, he’s reasonably popular. In 2004 there was an official poll that asked for the characters of the Dragon Ball universe to be ranked. This was in celebration of the landmark Dragon Ball Forever book. Cell was ranked number 14. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but not exactly hated either.

3 Representing The Dragon Ball Universe At Its Worst

We’re not talking about his being all evil and stuff, that’s a given. But the main reason why Dragon Ball isn't as universally liked as, say, Pokémon, is because people think it just involves fighting and little else. And this is where Cell runs into a little bad luck.

He organized the Cell Games, which was a sporting arena event that reminded everyone else of the world of Pokémon. Cell didn’t care. He thought it was an original idea. The Games just involved fights and lots of them. It was basically an excuse for Cell to look good and beat everyone up. Critics didn't like this. Dragon Ball Z has always been seen as an inferior manga/show due to its poor narrative. And constant fighting doesn't help. So Cell is one of the main reasons why Dragon Ball has its haters.

2 Inexplicably Shunned

A movie came out in 2004, and called Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods. It was actually the first full-length theatrical release since 1996, when the tenth-anniversary movie came out. The fans were excited. To see a Dragon Ball Z movie in a theatre was a rare treat.

However, the movie was not perfect. It didn’t feature Cell, and this made lots of Cell fans super sad. The creators of the movie even carried off a dig at the character, by having him appear in a trailer lamenting his omission (this is the 14th most popular character in the story, people!). It was a huge snub, though perhaps not to Cell, since he’s a fictional character. We can bet that Cell’s fans shed a tear or two.

1 Taken Down By A Snotty Kid

Okay, it’s arguable that Gohan isn’t a snotty kid. That’s what we call a subjective judgement, guys. What isn't so subjective is the ridiculously violent way in which Gohan offed each and every one of Cell’s offspring.

Gohan was obviously in a terrifically bad mood that day, because in Dragon Ball Gohan kills eight of the Cell Juniors. And we know that there were only ever supposed to be seven Cell Juniors. Basically, we’re talking about some kind of continuity error, but it matters to us. Check out the way Gohan gets rid of what is essentially Cell’s offspring (yes, we know he’s an android). It’s brutal, with Gohan literally ripping them limb from limb.

The Snotty Kid (sorry, Gohan) even got bonus points because of that little continuity error.