The Saiyan warrior and Dragon Ball hero, Goku, has had a long history of tangling with cosmic entities and legitimate gods throughout his career as a Z Fighter, and while each of those encounters helped him achieve new levels of strength, two of them led to the same humiliating defeat.
In Dragon Ball Super chapter #1 by Akira Toriyama and Toyotarou, the God of Destruction, Lord Beerus, has a premonition of his death, one which comes by the hand of an entity known as a Super Saiyan God. So, Beerus tracks down the last remaining Saiyans in the universe to gauge their power levels and ease his anxiety. The first Saiyan he encounters on this journey is Goku who was training on King Kai’s world. When Goku learns of the immense power that Beerus wields, he can’t help but ask the deity to a friendly sparring match so that he can witness that power first hand. Even when Goku powers up to Super Saiyan 3, he can’t even land a single punch on Beerus who easily dodges Goku’s attacks. When Beerus grew weary of the battle, he simply flicked Goku in the head which was enough to beat the Saiyan right then and there–though Beerus added another strike to ensure Goku was down-and-out even though that second hit wasn’t really necessary.
In Dragon Ball chapter #164, which was years before Goku’s encounter with Beerus, the Saiyan child sought out Earth’s God, Kami, to ask if he could revive Shenron and make the Dragon Balls magical wish orbs once again. In a previous chapter, King Piccolo did the impossible and killed Shenron, thereby eliminating the wish-granting magic of the Dragon Balls. However, Kami had the power to undo that heinous act, but first Goku had to convince him to do so. When Goku got to Kami’s palace, the Saiyan mistook the deity for Piccolo since both Kami and Piccolo were of Namekian descent. Without wasting a second, Goku launched an attack against Kami–though he never even laid a finger on the god as Kami simply flicked Goku in the head upon Goku’s aggressive approach which incapacitated him immediately.
The fact that Goku was utterly humiliated by two separate gods many years apart in exactly the same way is absolutely hilarious and incredibly fitting when considering Goku’s character. Goku is one of the most hard-headed fighters in Dragon Ball–second only to Vegeta–as he is determined to get stronger even if it means putting himself, and sometimes others, at risk. On these two occasions when Goku thinks he can actually fight a god when he clearly isn’t ready, it seems appropriate that the gods gave him a solid flick in the head for trying to do something so foolish and show him that his power is totally insignificant by comparison.
In true Goku fashion, however, the Saiyan wasn’t undone by these humiliating defeats, and instead used them as inspiration to become strong enough to take one of those flicks in the head without even blinking. When Kami beat him with a flick, Goku trained with the god and even surpassed him in terms of strength within three years. Similarly, after Beerus humiliatingly defeated him, Goku began training with Beerus’ angel, Whis, in an effort to become even more powerful than the God of Destruction by way of unlocking and then mastering the power of Ultra Instinct. So, while Goku suffered the same humiliating defeat from two separate Dragon Ball gods, both instances led him down paths of untold power that he would have otherwise never experienced. In other words, a good flick in the head is exactly what Goku needed in both situations.
