saspa posted... Dr Gero building teen robots that are insanely stronger than Frieza in a box of caves with a box of scraps is something I'd often been flummoxed by and annoyed with. However someone once gave a relatively good explanation for that and I was fine with it, but now I can't remember what they said.
For Cell, its because he is basically made of the best genetic components of everyone (though for some weird reason he also needs 17 and 18 instead of just having whatever it is they had pre-built-in). Best I can come up with is that maybe 17 and 18 were basically like a set of living energy reactors and Cell's larval form couldn't support having them from the get-go.
As for 17 and 18, best I can come up with is that he has access to alien technology when doing that and managed to mix it with some earth tech that it happened to mesh very well with, and put them together as just the next of his line of androids. He likely was also stealing stuff from Capsule Corporation, which is bananas advanced in some ways relative to even aliens. We see nothing like capsules among the aliens we see, and Bulma was able to build a time machine (Super was the one that added that there was a super-advanced energy-fuel substance refining necessary to power it, but its not like Gero's spybots don't have access to some serious tech between the insane yet pacifistic Capsule Corp + their improved saiyan style ship technology and whatever he managed to get from Frieza's ship).
But yeah, overall he really stepped it up by like 11 notches. Unless you count him showing up in a movie or two (non-canon) where he ends up making some weapon or another that lets him actually hold up against the heroes at that point in time (I think one of these ended with Goku having to resort to the spirit bomb against him/said weapon IIRC).