Re: why?
For the aforementioned reasons - humor. It was a long running Manga that was both martial arts and humor oriented (at least, initially), and as such Toriyama-sensei felt humor was in intention, as that's why some of the versus fights didn't matter and that not everything was taking in earnest because of said humor. Though I'm a bit confounded by a certain farfetched notion - how a very old megalomaniac who was hell bent on destroying Goku through his creations (however ineffectual that might have been as old as Dr. Gero was) could qualify for "humor" in lieu of what was used before with anything outside of the resemblances this topic of discussion revolves around, but now I'm prattling.
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