The Ultimate Guide to Dragon Ball's Gero Family Tree: Unveiling Hidden Connections!

Highlights

Dr. Gero's family, including his wife Vomi and grandson Dr. Hedo, all have names related to vomiting, following the naming conventions of the Gero family.

Android 16 draws inspiration from Gero's deceased son Gevo, who perished in battle, and his coding greatly impacted Gohan and his evolution.

Among Hedo's remarkable inventions in the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero movie are Gamma 1 and 2, along with an enhanced iteration of Cell named Cell Max. Hedo constructed Cell Max utilizing Gero's blueprints.

Dr. Gero became an enemy of Goku after single-handedly destroying the Red Ribbon Army in the original Dragon Ball. Since then, he has harbored a deep grudge against Goku and secretly created powerful Androids capable of defeating him. Among his creations, Androids 16, 17, 18, and Cell stand out, significantly impacting the Dragon Ball storyline. In Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Dr. Gero's grandson, Dr. Hedo, emerges, following in his grandfather's footsteps by constructing twin Androids and an upgraded version of Cell using Gero's blueprints.

In the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero movie, Hedo's family lineage is briefly depicted, introducing a number of Gero's descendants, including Vomi, whose appearance greatly resembles that of Android 21, the primary antagonist in the Dragon Ball FighterZ video game. So, who are the various members of the Gero family?

(N)EMESIS

The Dragon Ball creator, Akira Toriyama, is known for his unique approach to naming characters. Vegetables inspired the names of all the Saiyans, while the Frieza race's names revolve around things related to cold. Similarly, Krillin and his fellow police force members are named after nuts, while Bulma's family is named after types of underwear. Keeping this in mind, it can be assumed that the Gero family also follows a naming convention, and indeed they do. In Japanese, "Gero" (pronounced "geh-roh") refers to vomit or the act of vomiting.

The son of Dr. Gero, who is the basis for Android 16, is sometimes referred to as "Gold" due to the colour-based naming tradition of the Red Ribbon Army. However, his actual name is Gevo (pronounced "Gebo" in Japanese), which is another vomit-related reference. Additionally, a woman named Vomi, who serves as the template for the antagonist Android 21 in Dragon Ball FighterZ, is Dr. Gero's wife and Gevo's mother. Her name clearly nods to the word "vomit" and follows the Gero family's four-letter naming convention. Dr. Hedo, the grandson of Vomi and Gero, also has a name connected to vomiting. It is derived from the Japanese phrase "Hedo ga deru," which means "vomit is coming out (of me)" and is used to express disgust. In essence, it conveys the sentiment of "this makes me sick (enough to vomit)."

Family Ties

Dr. Gero and his wife, Vomi, are the starting point of the family tree. They have two children, Gevo and an unnamed second child, who is the parent of Dr. Hedo. Gevo, unfortunately, lost his life in combat, causing Dr. Gero immense grief. To prevent losing his son again, Dr. Gero created Android 16, who was modeled after Gevo and specifically designed to be gentle. Despite this, Android 16 still had a mission to defeat Goku. However, his actions ended up influencing Gohan, who achieved the Super Saiyan 2 transformation after witnessing Android 16's death at the hands of Cell. Prior to Android 16, Dr. Gero had created several Androids, but they were mostly unsuccessful, leading him to destroy Androids 1-15. Androids 1-7 and 9-12 were fully mechanical, while Androids 13-15 were the first bio-Androids capable of evolving through absorption.

In the movie Dragon Ball Z: Super Android 13!, Androids 14 and 15 are initially created by Gero's self-aware supercomputer. They attack Goku and Trunks before the completion of Android 13. When Androids 14 and 15 are defeated, they are absorbed by Android 13, transforming him into Super Android 13. Androids 17 and 18, originally delinquents named Lapis and Lazuli, retained their free will due to their biological makeup, making them dangerous for Dr. Gero. Android 19 was modeled after a doll found by Gero in an enemy facility. With Gero's assistance, a mechanical body was created to house his brain, becoming Android 20. Initially, Androids 19 and 20 were intended to be the main antagonists of the Cell Saga, but the intervention of one of Toriyama's editors led to the development of Androids 17 and 18, and subsequently, Cell. Cell, Gero's masterpiece, is a bio-Android engineered from the cells of the Z-Fighters, designed to evolve by absorbing Androids 17 and 18 to achieve its "Perfect" form.

Extended Family Ties

Hedo's creations in the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero film include Gammas 1 and 2, as well as Cell Max. However, the ongoing manga arc reveals the reason why Hedo was imprisoned before being recruited by Magenta at the beginning of the movie. Hedo was jailed for stealing corpses, which he then reconstructed into various Androids: the Alpha Series, Beta Series, and his most significant accomplishment, the Ultraman-inspired Gamma Series. Alpha, Beta, and Gamma are Greek letters, and Greek is a language that uses gematria, which assigns numerical values to words, names, phrases, and even letters. So, Alpha represents 1, Beta represents 2, and Gamma represents 3. Cell Max is an incomplete update of Cell that Hedo created using Gero's schematics.

The predominantly mechanical body of Cell Max indicates that Hedo had an unfinished blueprint of Cell and used his own knowledge to fill in the missing parts. Outside the official Dragon Ball universe, the Gero family tree has additional branches, including Dr. Gero's collaboration with Dr. Myuu in Hell to create a second Android 17, resulting in the emergence of Super 17. In the game Dragon Ball Fusions, various versions of Gero are responsible for the creation of additional Androids, such as 33, 44, 55, and the Namekian Android 76. In Dragon Ball FighterZ, Android 21 is built in a secret laboratory by another one of Dr. Gero's supercomputers.

Dragon Ball Is available to stream on Crunchyroll