Goku: Uh...uh... Who are you? And where are you?

Goku was based on one of Toriyama's earlier characters named Tanton, a fictional protagonist who appeared in a one-shot series called Dragon Boy.In this story, Tanton's odd physical characteristic was a pair of wings. When Toriyama decided to create Dragon Ball, he used Chinese author Wu Cheng'en's 16th century classic novel Journey to the West as inspiration for his own series. The name Toriyama adopted for the character is the Japanese romanization of 孫悟空 (Sun Wukong), who is the central character of the novel. To be creative with the character, Toriyama stated that he designed Goku to be a human boy with a monkey tail, instead of being a complete simian like Sun Wukong. He decided to do this because the tail would be visible even when Goku was trying to hide. Though Goku is treated as a person from another planet, Toriyama initially had the idea to make him an Earthling, but, with the introduction of new fighters from other planets, it was later established that Goku is a Saiyan. In order to advance the story faster, Toriyama gave Goku the ability to teleport to any planet in just a few seconds.

Dragon Ball ドラゴンボール (C) Akira Toriyama