When Toriyama started his first draft of Dragon Ball, he originally planned on making Goku full monkey to make the series more faithful to Journey to the West. During Toriyama’s second draft, Goku was instead a full human dressed in sailor clothes that rode a flight mecha instead of the Flying Nimbus.[26] Toriyama’s third draft became the final design.

Goku’s full name is also based on Sun Wukong. The name “Son Goku” is simply the Japanese on’yomi rendering of Sun Wukong, as Chinese and Japanese share the same characters but with different pronunciations. “Sun/Son” is a common Chinese surname that normally means “grandchild”, while “Wukong/Goku” is a common Buddhist name that means “perceiving air/awakened to emptiness”. Reading “Sun Wukong” via the first and final characters only through the Japanese kun’yomi rendering system makes it read out as “Mago Gosora”, used at some point as a gag in the original manga’s run by the World Tournament Announcer.