A doubt

[ahill1]

Why was future Trunks' (from Cell's timeline) time machine programmed to travel to the main timeline? I mean, if Cell didn't kill him, then there'd be two Trunks in the main timeline, no?

 

[Papasmurf]

Cell created the main timeline by traveling 4 years earlier than he should have for some reason, basically. They outright said he was already in the past for a year by the time Future Trunks killled Freeza and gave Goku his medicine.

 

[ahill1]

Cell created the main timeline by traveling 4 years earlier than he should have for some reason, basically. They outright said he was already in the past for a year by the time Future Trunks killled Freeza and gave Goku his medicine.

Yeah, but Trunks from Cell's timeline wanted to warn the warriors about the androids' defeat, so it'd be nonsense for Cell to travel to that time.

 

[Papasmurf]

He must've forgotten that he gave himself 4 years to hatch underground. 4 years is a long time for a bug, surely enough to forget plot details

 

[ahill1]

Besides, there'd be 2 Trunks in the main timeline, if 'timeline cell' Trunks wasn't killed, right?

 

[Papasmurf]

No, the Cell timeline Trunks was killed when he stole his time machine. Then the main Future Trunks, whose timeline was exactly the same until his second trip to the past, encountered Cell (who killed the other him) and learned to predict that his timeline's Cell would attack him the same way when he couldn't find the cyborgs

 

[ahill1]

But if the Cell we know traveled back to the main timeline, we can conclude future Trunks (from Cell's timeline) would be in the main timeline too.

 

[Papasmurf]

That Trunks is the exact same Trunks as the one Cell encounters in the present, only branching upon actually meeting Cell. It's kind of confusing, but essentially Cell's and Trunks' timelines are identical, only Cell traveling further to the past indirectly altered Trunks' because he became much stronger by training for 2 years in the past and having knowledge of Cell.

 

[ahill1]

But like I said, Trunks' (from Cell's timeline) machine was programmed to travel back to the main timeline.

 

[Papasmurf]

Are you referring to the rebuilt one in Super traveling, or in Z?

 

[ahill1]

Yeah the rebuilt one, the one Cell used.

 

[Papasmurf]

I guess Bulma rebuilt it to suit her needs, I dunno. Only the anime has the time machine being destroyed so far, so a quick and convenient way to explain any plot holes is that Toriyama didn't actually write that part and that scene was the anime writers expanding on his notes.

Since that time machine was the first one to actually travel to the main timeline (1 year before the mecha freeza saga), my guess is it always just travels back to the main timeline when used to return to the past. The real question is why it travels to Trunks' future rather than Cell's, but like I said, probably the anime writers' fault, or just plot convenience since Cell's timeline is unimportant to the story.

 

[ahill1]

Well the main plothole is that machine being programmed to travel back to the main timeline, when it was said that future Trunks just intended to tell the Z warriors his androids were successfully defeated.

 

[Papasmurf]

Yeah, Toriyama really should've added a line of Cell saying he traveled 4 years earlier than Trunks intended so he could hatch.

 

[withheldforprivacy]

Why was future Trunks' (from Cell's timeline) time machine programmed to travel to the main timeline? I mean, if Cell didn't kill him, then there'd be two Trunks in the main timeline, no?

I think Cell just pressed buttons at random and happened to travel to that time.