History Characters / DragonBallSonGokuTropesPToZ

* WouldHitAGirl: If she attacks him first, she's capable/strong enough to give him problems, and she's not Chi-Chi or Bulma, he will fight back. The most prominent example being him knocking out Launch (in her violent "Kushami" personality. {{Inverted|Trope}} when he does fight Chichi in the 23rd World Tournament, though; he only dodges her attacks and [[WouldntHitAGirl refuses to lay a hand on her]], so he defeats her by using his fist to create a wave that knocks her out of the ring. Then again, considering she claimed that he promised to marry her, he might just have not wanted to hit his potential ''fiancee'' (and immediately did propose after learning it's the truth).
'''Roshi''': ''Y-you don't hold back... Even against women... What a simple felow...''

-->'''Goku''': ''Nyah, no way. I'm definitely gonna take it... But I'll do it fair and square!''\\
'''Korin''':''(Thinking to himself) Hohoho... What a refreshingly honest lad... Quite a change from his mentor...''

'''Goku''': ''Nyah, no way. I'm definitely gonna take it... But I'll do it fair and square!''

* TragicKeepsake: The Four-Star Dragon Ball, one of the mementos his grandpa left him before he died. Goku's exploits during the Red Ribbon Army Saga centers around tracking down the ball. He later retrieves the ball for his son's hat, saying he wants Gohan to have it. His Power Pole is also a keepsake from his grandfather. Ox-King immediately recognizes it as belonging to his old friend.

* WorldsStrongestMan: He holds this title at various points throughout the series although he has been upstaged several times, he always manages to regain this status at the end of each Saga.

* ParentalHypocrisy: When Gohan reaches Super Saiyan 2, Goku is shocked when Gohan chooses to deliberately drag out the fight with Cell to prolong his suffering and make him pay for his crimes and gets on his case over it, despite the fact that he did the same thing when he fought Frieza on Namek. [[JustifiedTrope Of course]], this is a case of Goku learning from experience, since he barely escaped Namek's explosion because he dragged the fight with Frieza out for [[RevengeBeforeReason revenge]] and knows that if Cell gets desperate, he may very well do what Frieza did and blow up the Earth rather than admit defeat; he's soon proven right.

* ParentsAsPeople: There is no denying Goku loves and cares for his family and in times of peace, he ''does'' make a genuine effort to be a breadwinner... but at the end of the day, Goku is simply put in situations where he can't be around his family (due to his many deaths), as well as not having an inborn nesting instinct nor having ever really had a long-term parental figure himself. In the anime, Goku is consistently more openly affectionate with his sons whereas the manga usually has him act more distant towards them. That being said, he does seem to understand the relationship between a father and a son to some extent. For example, when he orders Gohan to leave Namek with Piccolo after transforming into a [[SuperMode Super]] [[EleventhHourSuperPower Saiyan]] for the first time, Gohan objects to that and Goku's retort is along the lines "Don't talk back to your father, boy!"

** The Kamehameha Wave, once considered one of the most powerful energy attacks in the series, gets hit with this over time; Mercenary Tao suffers nothing but ClothingDamage, and King Piccolo doesn't even suffer that much from a direct hit.

* TechnicianVersusPerformer: Although Goku is a well-trained martial artist who put in decades worth of hard work to become the best fighter in the universe, his technical skills are below Piccolo, Tien, and even Vegeta. He never invents his own techniques outside the move he used to kill King Piccolo and the canonically questionable Dragon Fist. Instead, [[PowerCopy he relies heavily on learning or copying techniques from his enemies, friends, and teachers]] and improving upon them or creating variations to make them his own. He is also very playful when fighting and coming up with creative ways to outmaneuver his opponent. When he's not training, he's often relaxing with his family. He tends to be too relaxed even in battle, a weakness that Whis says will be his undoing.

* StockShonenHero: The TropeCodifier, as most of the traits in the trope description are ones he introduced. As a kid, he's a simple-minded KidHero who is naive to the point of stupidity at times, and a BigEater that can put away 40+ full course meals in one sitting. As an adult, he shows mercy to his enemies, gets excited at almost any challenge, and masters techniques after one glance that took other people years to develop. Even after becoming a master, he still trains, believing there's no upper limit to self improvement, and is soon on par with literal gods (and on a first name basis with them). He also becomes very HotBlooded when he sees the opportunity to get into a fight. However, he's also an [[UnbuiltTrope unbuilt]] example, since [[DownplayedTrope while Goku's an unambiguously heroic character and a genuinely good person in every version of the show]], he's also not necessarily as noble or unselfish as other shonen heroes inspired by him; if his friends or the world are threatened, he'll surpass any and all limitations to pull out a win, but he fights primarily for the thrill of it and his final goal is always something for his own benefit.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Being a PhysicalGod might make you close to invincible, but unless you're from a species that can survive without oxygen, you still need to breathe. And if Namek's exploding didn't kill Goku, suffocating in space would have.
** No matter how powerful you become, [[NotSoInvincibleAfterAll you can still succumb to illnesses]]. In the future timeline, Goku dies of a heart virus and in the main timeline, Goku is laid flat for over ten days.
** While training to stay in his Super Saiyan form, he wrecks his house and sends Chi-Chi flying after playfully patting her on the back because he's forgotten how fragile people and things are.

* StupidSacrifice: When Cell freaks out and tries to self-destruct, Goku teleports him away to King Kai's planet and dies when Cell blows up, despite the fact that he could have just teleported back to Earth before that happened (at least in the anime, where it takes Cell several seconds to blow up where it was instant in the manga). However, it's heavily implied that Goku allowed himself to be killed, seeing his death as an overall good thing since he was responsible for many of the threats to Earth and it was only luck that Cell survived his self-destruction. Which then brings up the point that Goku's sacrifice, while well-meaning, was pointless in that regard too. Frieza and the Saiyans were always a wide scale threats that could someday come to Earth even if Goku wasn't there and all the other villains who were just doing their own thing in the original series before Goku ever showed up. The point is driven home when the following threat of Majin Buu has ''nothing'' to do with Goku at all, as well as the reveal in ''Resurrection 'F''' that his presence on Earth, as well as his status as TheDreaded, was the ''only'' thing keeping Frieza's army from returning to Earth.

[[Characters/DragonBallSonGoku Son Goku]] ([[Characters/DragonBallSonGokuTropesAToC A-C]] | [[Characters/DragonBallSonGokuTropesDToH D-H]] | [[Characters/DragonBallSonGokuTropesIToO I-O]] | '''P-Z''') | [[Characters/DragonBallBulma Bulma]] | [[Characters/DragonBallKrillin Krillin/Kuririn]] | [[Characters/DragonBallPiccolo Piccolo]] | [[Characters/DragonBallSonGohan Son Gohan]] | [[Characters/DragonBallVegeta Vegeta]] ([[Characters/DragonBallVegetaTropesAToD A-D]] | [[Characters/DragonBallVegetaTropesEToN E-N]] | [[Characters/DragonBallVegetaTropesOToZ O-Z]]) | [[Characters/DragonBallFutureTrunks Future Trunks]] | [[Characters/DragonBallAllies Allies]] | [[Characters/DragonBallFamiliesAndFriends Families & Friends]] ([[Characters/DragonBallChichi Chichi]] | [[Characters/DragonBallAndroids17And18 Androids 17 and 18]] | [[Characters/DragonBallTrunksAndSonGoten Trunks and Son Goten]] | [[Characters/DragonBallMrSatan Mr. Satan/Hercule]]) | [[Characters/DragonBallFusionCast Fusions]]-]]]]]