Dragon Ball Z is home to some of the most iconic villains in anime history, and many of them are also the most powerful. With villains strong enough to destroy entire planets and even galaxies, it’s no wonder that DBZ greatest villains also had incredibly high kill counts. In fact, due to the mere scale of the powers used by Dragon Ball Z‘s strongest warriors, some of DBZ‘s villains killed too many people to actually count.
While they can’t be exactly calculated down to the person, looking at their most destructive feats can clearly reveal DBZ‘s most successful killers. Many of DBZ‘s greatest and most terrifying villains have no line they won’t cross to reach their goals, no matter how many innocent people they have to kill to get there. However, DBZ‘s most potent murderers take things a step further. They tend not to have any good reason for their senseless destruction at all; like blind forces of nature, they’ll destroy anything and kill anyone unlucky enough to cross their path.
10 Strongest Dragon Ball Z Villains, Ranked
10 Best Frieza Fights in Dragon Ball Z & Dragon Ball Super, Ranked
As Dragon Ball’s greatest villain, it’s only right that Frieza took part in some of DBZ and Super’s best fight scenes.10Androids 19 & 20 Decimated an Entire City to Fight Goku Without Distractions
Most Notable Kills: Destroyed an Entire City
Androids 19 and 20 didn’t have much time to do much damage in DBZ, as they were quickly overshadowed by Androids 17 & 18. However, in the short time they were around, 19 & 20 left a pile of corpses in their wake. The first time the Z Fighters ever encountered 19 & 20 was shortly after they had first shown up on Amenbo Island, and things turned deadly quickly. Seeing the destruction the Androids were capable of, Goku expressed his concern that innocent people could get hurt in the city there, and urged Piccolo to help him drive the Androids away.
Overhearing their conversation, Android 20 agreed with Goku that the civilians there would get in the way of their fight, so he proceeded to destroy the entire city with his laser eye beams to eliminate all distractions. It’s a scene that emphasizes the threat the Androids present to humanity early on, and doubles down on everything Future Trunks had warned Goku about in the years leading up to the Androids’ arrival.
9Cell Casually Absorbed Other Beings to Recharge His Own Strength
Most Notable Kills: Android 17, Goku, King Kai, Future Trunks
Why Did Goku Give Cell a Senzu Bean in Dragon Ball Z?
Goku’s decision to give Cell a Senzu Bean in Dragon Ball Z causes much confusion, but this gambit actually makes a lot of sense.
Cell was never created for wontan destruction, so his thirst for mayhem was notably lesser than most of the other powerful villains in the Dragon Ball franchise. Cell only had one mission: kill Son Goku. Everything else was just collateral damage. Unfortunately, it took quite a lot of collateral damage to get there.
Cell’s earliest and most notable feat of unadulterated terror was when he absorbed an entire city’s worth of people just to recharge his own energy. Additionally, in order for Cell to have made it to the present time period to begin with, he had to sneak up behind and kill Future Trunks to steal his Time Machine in an alternate future. In the end, Cell did achieve his goal of killing Goku after Goku sacrificed his own life to prevent Cell from destroying the Earth. In that regard, his creation by Dr Gero was technically a complete success.
8Androids 17 & 18 Terrorized Two Entire Timelines
Most Notable Kills: Dr Gero, Future Gohan, Nearly Every Z Fighter in the Future Timeline
There are few villains in Dragon Ball that were as highly anticipated and feared as Androids 17 & 18. Even the Super Saiyans were helpless against them (as Vegeta found out the hard way), and their creator, Dr Gero, had absolutely no control over them due to their immense difference in power. Like any pair of rebellious teenagers, 17 & 18 only wanted to have fun, even if it was at the expense of countless lives.
Androids 17 & 18 weren’t just terrors in the present time period, though, they actually did the most killing in Trunks’ future. 17 & 18 killed all the Z Fighters in Trunks’ timeline, and turned the entire world into a post-apocalyptic dystopia. While 17 & 18 have changed a lot in Dragon Ball Super, becoming heroes who have even started families of their own, there’s no escaping the sad truth that they were initially created for the sole purpose of being stone-cold killing machines. It just goes to show that any Dragon Ball villain can turn things around and redeem themselves as long as they have the desire to change.
7Nappa Was Destroying Planets For the Frieza Force His Whole Life
Most Notable Kills: Tien, Chiaotzu, Piccolo
It’s unknown how many planets Nappa and Vegeta conquered before they came to Earth, but it’s likely that even he and Vegeta themselves lost count. The two Saiyans had been purging planets of all life so that Frieza could sell them for several years, so Nappa’s kill count was definitely high.
The extent of Nappa’s murderous tendencies were shown even before the fight with the Z Fighters. Nappa went on a spree of destruction for the fun of it, destroying a number of cities. Nappa would then proceed to kill a total of three Z Fighters by himself, those being Chiaotzu, Tien and Piccolo. If he hadn’t met his untimely demise at Vegeta’s own hand, it’s likely Nappa would have gone on to commit many more atrocities in the name of the Saiyan race and the Frieza Force.
6Vegeta Wasn’t Above Killing His Own Comrades if They Didn’t Serve His Goals
Most Notable Kills: Nappa, Cui, Dodoria, Zarbon, Guldo, Recoome, Burter, Jeice, a Namekian Village, Android 19, the Crowd at the 25th Tenkaichi Budokai
10 Best Vegeta Fights in the Dragon Ball Z Anime, Ranked
Although fan-favorite villain turned hero Vegeta never gets to defeat a villain, he still has some iconic fights throughout Dragon Ball Z.
Vegeta was always shown to be a merciless killer from his earliest moments in the Dragon Ball franchise. The most egregious example of this was before he even fought the Z Fighters. Vegeta killed his own partner, Nappa, simply because he disappointed him in the fight against the Z Warriors.
Additionally, Vegeta infamously went on a murderous spree on Planet Namek in search for the Dragon Balls: a deed which he expressed regret for years later in Dragon Ball Super‘s Moro Arc. It’s impossible to say for certain just how many people he killed throughout his life as a member of the Frieza Force, but it’s safe to say there were too many to count. Even after he became a hero, Vegeta ended up committing one of his most horrible acts of murder when he killed the entire crowd of the World Martial Arts Tournament after becoming a Majin.
5Turles Destroyed Countless Planets in His Search For Strength
Most Notable Kills: All Life on an Undetermined Number of Planets
Turles is the villain in the DBZ film The Tree of Might: a non-canonical story set some time before Vegeta and Nappa arrived on Earth, but after Gohan’s training. Of course, this timeline wouldn’t make sense in regard to how things actually happened in the series, but that doesn’t change the fact that Turles was easily one of the most murderous villains in DBZ. Turles’ main means of destruction was by planting the Tree of Might on planets.
The Tree of Might would suck all the life force from the entire planet, and then bare fruit which would grant the person who eats it the power of all the life forms on that planet. Before he set his sights on the Earth, Turles had apparently been planting Trees of Might on numerous other planets and eating their fruits to grow increasingly more powerful. It’s unclear just how many planets he had destroyed in this manner, but considering he was far more powerful than Goku at Kaioken x20, who was himself strong enough to fight Vegeta, it must have been a lot.
4Frieza Bought and Sold Planets as Real Estate
Most Notable Kills: Dende, Vegeta, Krillin, The Majority of the Saiyan Race
Frieza was destroying planets far before either Goku or Vegeta were born, and they both become more than aware of that first hand. It’s unclear just how many planets Frieza and his Frieza Force have conquered and destroyed, but the number is likely far too high to count. Frieza quite literally destroys planets for a living, but even without considering his off-screen adventures, Frieza has enough feats of destruction in the series to prove himself one of DBZ‘s most successful killers.
In the series itself, Frieza was shown destroyng at least three planets on-screen. First Planet Vegeta, then Namek, and finally the Earth itself in the Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F film. This last feat was truly devastating because he would have easily killed all the Z Fighters with this singular act had it not been for some divine intervention by way of Whis.
3Broly Destroyed Entire Galaxies With Utter Ease
Most Notable Kills: An Entire Galaxy
While Super‘s new, canonical form of Broly is definitely more powerful than his DBZ counterpart, Z Broly was by no means a weakling. Broly was able to destroy an entire planet with one effortless ki blast, proving that his potential for destruction was far beyond even Frieza’s, who had to at the very least charge up an attack to destroy planets at that point.
Luckily, unlike Frieza, who spent countless years destroying planets for fun, Broly had a much more complicated relationship with his pentient for destruction, though that didn’t quite stop him from doing a good amount of damage before his powers were brought under Paragus’ control. In Dragon Ball Z: Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan, Broly was shown wiping an entire galaxy off the map in a fit of rage, and it’s implied that this wasn’t the first time. While it was never shown on screen, the fact that Broly could have possibly destroyed numerous galaxies makes him easily one of DBZ‘s most masterful murderering machines.
2Majin Buu Killed People Purely For the Fun of It
Most Notable Kills: Everyone on Earth, Countless Planets of People
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10 Things That Make No Sense In Dragon Ball Z’s English Dub
The English dubs of Dragon Ball Z introduced some odd things to the popular show.
Unlike Frieza, whose full breadth of destructive conquests can mostly only be hinted at, Majin Buu’s feats of pure calamitous terror are well-documented. Majin Buu’s most infamous act of terror was definitely his human extinction attack, which resulted in the simultaneous death of nearly every human being on earth in one blow. As impressive as that single attack was as an act of merciless murder, it wasn’t even his most horrible feat.
At the height of his reign of terror, Buu destroys innumerable planets throughout the galaxy, unscrupulously destroying any planet he comes across merely for the fun of it. Kid Buu would have surely destroyed the entire galaxy, and maybe even worse, had Goku and Vegeta not risked their lives (or at least, what was left of their lives, considering they were both already dead) to face him.
1Beerus Kills as an Act of Divine Justice
Most Notable Kills: An Unknown Number of Planets and Civilizations in the Universe
There are few characters in the Dragon Ball franchise as finely tuned to the art of annihilating entire civilizations as Beerus, the God of Destruction. While he would hardly be considered a villain nowadays, when he was first introduced, he was the greatest threat to the Earth Goku and his friends had ever known. Even in Super, there’s always the possibility that Beerus could decide to destroy the Earth whenever the mood strikes him, though he certainly has a greater vested interest in keeping Goku and Vegeta around than ever.
Beerus never really had evil intentions, even though his actions have undoubtedly led to the deaths of too many living beings to count. For Beerus, destruction is his divine duty, and he is just bringing balance to the Universe by wiping out entire civilizations and obliterating their planets into nothingness. At the very least, being killed by Beerus is likely the most painless of any other villain in DBZ, because his Hakai completely erases beings from existence.
