Goku employs his Instant Transmission technique in battle, leading to a parade of continuity celebrating some of Dragon Ball Super's biggest moments.
Warning: contains spoilers for Chapter 82 of Dragon Ball Super
While Dragon Ball has been around for decades at this point, it may be a surprise to some fans to realize that Dragon Ball Super has been running for nearly 7 years on its own--an achievement for any individual manga series, to be sure. Chapter 82 of Super takes a moment to celebrate its own contributions to the franchise's long-running legacy, reminding fans just how much the world of Dragon Ball has grown.
Dragon Ball Super debuted in June 2015, making its most recent chapter, chapter 82, just a few months shy of its seven-year anniversary. While chapter 82 keeps its focus on the current arc, matching up Goku against the Heeters' ultimate warrior, Gas. Goku's surprisingly clever tactic for dealing with Gas involved teleporting from planet to planet using Instant Transmission, luring Gas away from the injured Granolah. Instead of just jumping to random locations, however, Goku locks on to the presence of people he's known, such as Jaco, leading to a cavalcade of cameos going back through nearly every arc in Super.
Goku's first warp takes him to the location of Calamis, a member of the Galactic Patrol who first appeared during the Moro arc. The next jump takes him to a city, where the referee from the tournament between Universes 6 and 7 is shown. With Gas a few steps behind, Goku then leaps to the location of Monaka, Beerus' fake ultimate warrior from the same arc. Monaka dumps an entire truckload of waste onto Gas, further slowing him down, and Goku's next warp lands them in a bathtub, where the Galactic King is washing up. Their next stop is the Galactic Prison (from the Galactic Prisoner Saga, naturally), where a number of prisoners who recognize Gas are being held. From there, Goku transfers to a ship being piloted by Irico, another Galactic Patrolman, until finally ending up at the location of Beerus' angel attendant Whis, who is sharing a snack with the Oracle Fish that first told Beerus the Super Saiyan God legend.
Although Goku could merely have leaped from place to place, it's well established that Instant Transmission is easier to use when the user can lock onto the life force of someone they're familiar with, so this trail of cameos does make sense in universe. However, he didn't have to visit these particular characters; he could just as easily have passed through Frieza's fleet or visited the new planet Namek as easy fanservice. Instead, each character he visits played a role in Dragon Ball Super's story specifically, turning this trick of his into a look back at the series' contributions to the Dragon Ball universe.
The chapter concludes after Goku has returned to Cereal, so that's probably the end of the Saiyan's tour of Dragon Ball Super history. It's a reminder of how Dragon Ball has continued to change over the years, expanding outwards to an ever-greater cosmos, and it marks an interesting contrast with the chapter's content surrounding Bardock, which has been officially redefining the nebulous canon around Goku's father.
