Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has easily taken over the box office and the fans’ hearts. From the memes to the unexpected battle sequences, every aspect of the film is being liked by someone or the other. It was recently revealed that the film took inspiration from Goku and Dragon Ball when making the Pink Godzilla.
While that in itself was a great deal on its own, seeing that Akira Toriyama’s legacy is finding ways of continuing in places that may not even be directly in relation to Dragon Ball, it is not the only one.
The film has a personified reference in the form of its Pink Godzilla, but what is even more surprising is that Godzilla x Kong isn’t the first Monsterverse to have a reference to Toriyama’s magnum opus.
Godzilla Brought Akira Toriyama in the Crowd
Dragon Ball started off in the year 1984. It was only the beginning of the series, and Akira Toriyama’s fame was not even close to what it is now. In the same year, much to his coincidence, The Return of Godzilla also came out. What many fans might now know, as pointed out by @14_kaiju on X, is that Toriyama was also a part of the film.
Fun fact: Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama was an extra during the crowd scene in The Return of Godzilla (1984) and can also be seen on the film's poster. pic.twitter.com/fkSS4Q5Hgw
— Kaiju No. 14 (@14_kaiju) April 6, 2024
The Dragon Ball mangaka just so happened to be an extra during the crowd scene in the film, but that wasn’t it. He actually made it into the very poster of the film, tying him to the franchise even more closely than fans realize. Simply by being an extra without any dialogue or credits, Akira Toriyama had significantly tied himself to the Godzilla films forevermore.
While Dragon Ball in itself doesn’t reference a lot of monsters or even include them, the anime and manga’s impact has spread across the entire world, forming a legacy perhaps no one could compare to.
Dragon Ball is Front and Center for Godzilla x Kong
In a fan Q&A, Jared Krichevsky, who came up with the design for Godzilla x Kong’s Pink Godzilla, revealed that his inspiration for the same had nothing to do with Goku’s Super Saiyan Rosé. While the similarities are uncanny, there is a difference between the two.
“I didn’t see Goku Rosé until years later. But I did base the transformation off of Kaio-Ken. Yeah, it was always supposed to be a temporary transformation. In the movie, he absorbs the DNA of Tiamat.”
Instead, another form of Goku became the motivation for Godzilla’s temporary transformation. Krichevsky found Goku’s Kaio-Ken to be the perfect idea behind his latest look and began to adapt to the idea.
Not only did Goku make himself a concrete force of nature in the franchise, but even Akira Toriyama has his part to play in it, too.
