Game Changer took a left turn for its penultimate season seven episode “Who Wants to Be Jacob Wysocki?” Instead of the usual mind games host Sam Reich played on his trepidatious contestants, the episode was designed to spotlight fan favorite Jacob Wysocki. He was awarded $100,000, and later told Polygon, “I think there’s still a part of me that doesn’t even know if it’s real.”
Throughout the game, Wysocki relied on various ripcords (think Dropout-ized lifelines from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire) to progress, one of which was “Go Super Saiyan.” He and his friends mashed a button to make a digitized version of Wysocki power up. And so, as a giant Dragon Ball fan myself, I couldn’t help but ask Wysocki about his favorite Z Warriors.
“I really do like future Trunks,” Wysocki said, referring to the mysterious teen who makes a wild entrance by slicing Frieza in half, the biggest threat the characters had faced by that point. “As a kid, I was like, ‘This is so tight that now this show has a guy from the future.’ I did not see that coming.” He also pointed to Trunks’ sword and purple hair as unique and very rad characteristics of the new Super Saiyan.
Wysocki’s Super Saiyan minigame in “Who Wants to Be Jacob Wysocki?” wasn’t the first time his Dragon Ball fandom has popped up. In the Game Changer’s season 6 episode “Sam Says 3,” Reich prompted the contestants for a visual effect that would be added to the episode in post-production. Wysocki requested he be powered up like a Super Saiyan and then acted out the scream-filled process like Dropout viewers were instead watching an episode of Dragon Ball Z. “Make a dream of mine come true,” he said.
But for all the Super Saiyan references, one non-Saiyan sticks out as a Wysocki favorite.
“I also think Piccolo is a G,” he says. “He holds it down.” And hold it down he did — there’s a reason fans refer to the Namekian as more of a father to Gohan than Goku, pointing to that early year Piccolo and Gohan spent together training and bonding.
“I don’t think saying underrated is quite right, because I think a lot of people would agree with me, but I think maybe he’s slept on a little bit more than some of the Saiyans,” Wysocki says. Piccolo takes a backseat in Dragon Ball after the Cell arc, and isn’t given a starring role again (along with a couple new forms) until 2022’s Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. “But he’s still fucking tight,” Wysocki says.
“Who Wants to Be Jacob Wysocki?” is streaming now on Dropout. Like with previous Dropout minigames, you can play Power Up Jacob and make the comedian go Super Saiyan yourself.