The Dragon Ball series has been one of the most popular and successful franchises for manga and anime. Created by Akira Toriyama, who drew inspiration from the Chinese novel Journey to the West, Dragon Ball has captured the hearts of millions of fans all over the world and could also be credited as one of the series that created the popularity of Japanese animation in Western culture.

Fans of the series have enjoyed watching Goku grow stronger as he trains and develops friendships, rivalries, and enemies of all shapes and sizes. It is inarguable that Goku is one of the key characters (if not the key character) that makes the series what it is. Another character that the series wouldn't have been the same without and that has been a part of it just as long as Goku is... Bulma! While Bulma is one of the few non-fighters in this action-packed martial arts series, she has played a huge role throughout it. From the Dragon Rader, which brought her and Goku together in the first place, to Trunks' Time Machine (and Trunks himself), the Dragon Ball universe has been shaped by the series' genius scientist. She is considered to be the brains of the group, using smarts and technology to save the day rather than strength. Her stubborn attitude often morphs the impossible into the possible with her intellect seeming to be as limitless as Goku's power!

But as influential as Bulma has been, there are still quite a few things everyone assumes or downright gets wrong about her! This list we've brought to you today has 25 things that everyone gets wrong about Bulma.

25 Thinking Her Last Name Is Brief

Yes, as surprising as it is to learn, Bulma's last name isn't Brief or Briefs! Brief seems to just be the first name of Bulma's father, Dr. Brief, and not their family name. So what is Bulma's last name?

Apparently... she doesn't have one.

Though, considering that most of the Dragon Ball characters don't seem to have last names or family names (with the exception of Goku and his family), maybe the no last name was intentional on Akira Toriyama's part?

24 Thinking She's Always Mean

Okay, so maybe Bulma isn't the most soft-spoken or sweetest of characters, and she is definitely one of the more hot-headed characters in Dragon Ball, that doesn't mean she's always mean. Bulma has shown to be nice and even pretty generous to her loved ones. She lets them use the Dragon Radar whenever they want or need to. She let the Namekians crash at Capsule Corporation while they waited for the Dragon Balls to be usable again, and she's thrown a few parties and invited her friends that offer free food and fabulous prizes!

23 Thinking She's Only There To Make Trouble For Goku

A lot of anime and shows, in general, follow a similar formula. There is the hero and there is the damsel in distress who always seems to get herself in sticky situations where the hero has to rescue her. Goku and the others do have to save her from time to time, but she isn't really a damsel in distress. Being a human and one of the only non-fighters means a lot of the danger that comes her way are things she couldn't possibly protect herself from. And honestly, Goku has to save... everyone, more than once.

22 Thinking She's Just There For "Fan-Service"

The Dragon Ball series is just like any other anime series and offers a bit of "fan service" every now and then again. And Bulma is often the source of it, especially in Dragon Ball which leads some people to believe that it's her only purpose for being there. Not that there isn't anything with a little fan service, but in this situation, she is much more than that! She has been the creator of inventions that have saved the day. And the supplier of tasty treats for Beerus, which keeps the God of Destruction from destroying the Earth.

21 Thinking She Has A Thing For Goku

It is true that Bulma and Goku have a close relationship. They have known one another for years and have been on a lot of adventures together. The two have come to rely on one another as well, so it isn't too much a stretch to see why so many fans think the two of them (or want them) to have romantic feelings for one another. There is also a rumor that when Toriyama first started working on Dragon Ball his editor thought Bulma and Goku should be together. Imagine how different the series would have been if that happened!

20 Thinking She Does Nothing But Whine

So no one who knows the series will ever say that Bulma is a constant ray of sunshine, she has been shown to get irritable and has a temperament that even Goku and Vegeta lose sleep over. And she was a little bratty in Dragon Ball but... she was a sixteen-year-old who suddenly found her whole world flipped upside down by a little boy with a monkey tail. And even later on when Bulma complains about something, it is usually a good reason. Constantly getting dragged into bad situations with super-powered aliens to gods would make anyone complain.

19 Thinking She Always Goes Along With The Dragon Team's Plans

Most of the fighters on the Dragon Team aren't exactly known for their intelligence and strategy for anything other than battle. And that is something that Bulma often points out to them. Being a genius must be hard when most of the people around you rather use their fists to solve their problems than their brains. Bulma has argued and outright refused to go along with plans that she has considered being bad ideas, even if it was proposed by Goku, whose plans usually seem to work in the end.

18 Thinking She's The Only Capable Girl In The Series

Bulma is pretty cool and she is one of the most important characters in the show, but that doesn't mean she's the only capable female character in the series.

Dragon Ball is dominated by male characters, so a lot of the female ones shine through when they make an appearance.

Chi-Chi has been around for a long time too, And Android 18 is a pretty awesome fighter and so was Videl. And Super has introduced even more awesome female characters with Whis' sister Vados and Caulifla and Kale Saiyans from Universe 6!

17 Thinking She Is Totally Defenseless

Bulma is one of the few main characters who doesn't fight in the Dragon Ball series, but that doesn't mean she hasn't been able to defend herself when needed. Even when she was sixteen she was packing heat and ended up using it on Goku. Thankfully bullets don't seem to have an effect on fighters. Bulma even fights off a giant crab in a submarine on Namek to get back a dragon ball that had fallen into the ocean! And apparently, she has a whole defense system in her bedroom in Dragon Ball Super.

16 Thinking She Is An Only Child

Fans assumed that Bulma was an only child. We didn't get to see her family often, but the times that we did it seemed that Bulma only had her parents, who lived at Capsule Corp.

But apparently, she has an older sister named Tights!

Tights is one of the main characters of Toriyama's manga that is a prequel to the start of Dragon Ball. She appears in Super older, when Bulma calls, asking for her help to get in contact with Jaco. Fans weren't the only ones surprised to learn she had a sister, so were Vegeta and Goku!

15 Thinking She Has Never Been In A Fight

It is true that Bulma isn't a fighter if anything she seems to hate the idea of it. But that doesn't mean she has never used her fists before. When Bulma gets angry she gets really angry and she is prone to hitting or slapping someone out of anger. Both Goku and Krillin have been on the receiving end of one of her hits, and so had Master Roshi for... reasons. And even the God of Destruction himself Beerus has faced Bulma's Might Smack more than once.

14 Thinking She Can't Cook

Another running gag that is present among the fandom is the idea that Bulma can't cook. There isn't really much of the bases for it, as we haven't seen her cooking very often. Though all the get-togethers she throws have a lot of food, she is only seen cooking some of the food at one of them. And in Dragon Ball Super, Vegeta himself says Bulma can't cook, but that was after she insulted his own cooking so we aren't sure if what he said was true or if he was being mean.

13 Thinking Her And Goku Are The Same Age

For anyone who hasn't seen Dragon Ball, it is a common mistake to make that Bulma and Goku are the same age. They look to be around the same age, and the animation style of the series leaves a level of ambiguity around the ages of characters unless they are pretty young or very old. But there is a six-year age difference between Bulma and Goku, as they meet when he is ten and she is sixteen! There are quite a few jokes in the series, especially in Super, that poke fun at Bulma's age.

12 Thinking She And Maron Are Somehow Related

In the anime, there is a filler saga known as the Garlic Jr Saga that has Gohan, Krillin, and Piccolo protecting the Earth while Goku was still in space. In those episodes, Krillin gets himself a girlfriend... who bares a strong resemblance to a certain blue-haired scientist we all know and love. But as far as anyone knows, there is no sort of relation or connection between Bulma and Krillin's ex Maron. She just happens to be another blue-haired, blue-eyed girl.

11 Thinking She And Chi-Chi Hate Each Other

The two have been shown to argue with one another sometimes but it never seems to be out of genuine animosity towards one another. And the times they do argue it seems to be when their families are competing against one another so its more a heated rivalry than anything else.

Bulma and Chi-Chi are friends and are often seen together in the series.

And it makes sense that they'd become friends, who else would understand being married to men from an alien warrior race and raising half-alien kids that were stronger than them before they even left preschool?

10 Thinking Bulma Dyes Her Hair

Bulma's hair has gone through many different hairstyles throughout the series and fans had thought for the longest time that she had also gone about dyeing her hair. But it turns out that isn't the case! There has been a lot of fan speculation on why Bulma's hair changes so much it seems to be, or at least in the opinion of this poster on the Kanzenshuu forum, that the colors used for animation changes from studio to studio. So one studio might have her hair as blue and another might have it as blue-green.

9 Thinking Bulma's Mother Is An Android

The fans of the Dragon Ball series seem to have a lot of fun with coming up with theories to questions that they have. How young Bulma's mother looks and the fact that she hasn't seemed to age at all is the origin of this fan theory that Bulma's mother is an android. That would explain her lack of aging... but there is nothing in the series to suggest that it's true. It's possible that because she's a minor character that no one has felt a need to change her design. Or maybe she just has a good plastic surgeon.

8 Thinking She Hasn't Gotten Help With Her Inventions

Bulma is a genius and has done and created a lot of amazing things on her own, but many fans assume that the series' resident gadget girl has been able to accomplish everything on her own. And for the most part... that is true, but there are a few cases where she has gotten a helping hand from her father. When it came to building the spaceships that took the gang to Namek, Dr. Brief helped her build those. And he helped built the training room in Capsule Corp even helped her fix Android 16 right before the Cell Games!

7 Thinking Her Dad Could Replace Her

While we said before that Bulma has gotten help from Dr. Brief that doesn't mean he could so easily replace his daughter. Dr. Brief seems to be a genius himself and an inventor as he is the founder of Capsule Corp and their dyno-packs. But most of the inventions that have helped or saved Goku and the rest were completely made by Bulma's own design. Both of the Dragon Radars and the Trunks' Time Machine wouldn't be around if Bulma wasn't around.

6 Thinking She's The Reason The Saiyans Came To Earth

This one is another fan theory. In Dragon Ball, Bulma searches for the dragon balls so that she could wish for the perfect boyfriend. In the series, she doesn't get to make her wish... though a lot of fans speculate that she might have behind the scenes since with the time gap between the end of Dragon Ball and the beginning of Dragon Ball Z. And since Bulma ends up with Vegeta, who no one had expected, fans theorized that the dragon's power drew the Saiyans to Earth to bring Bulma her "perfect" match.