What happened to Goku
Goku is the main character in the anime/manga series dragon ball, and its subsequent sequels, dragon ball z, and dragon ball gt. He is the avatar of this anime, as he is pure of heart, albeit to a fault, and tremendously strong, and he willingly dies for his people/planet, only to be brought back from the dead/resurrrected with one of the 3 wishes that this world's 7 dragon balls gives once they are collected and the right words are said. Once everything is in order, a great dragon, Shenron, is summoned, granting 3 wishes, but the wishes change depending on the dragon, which depends on the dragon balls or the planet. Once the wishes are up, the balls are scattered all over the globe once again to be gathered again to be used whenever they are needed, which is usually a big pain, and even more so when the balls are changed into the black star ones they are instead scattered all over the dang universe in GT. What's worse, at the end, when the wishes are always being abused, each of of the 7 balls becomes a evil dragon, which is a even bigger pain!
Goku comes from a extinct alien race of space monkeys, revealed in dbz, that look like humans, but have tails, and during the full moon, (or even when they think that it is a full moon) they transform to gargantuan gorillas and wreak havoc all over the world, which the alien race known as the saiyans used to dominate planet after planet, planning their invasions on the full moons.
-Dragon ball and its subsequent series, z and gt, is based on the Journey to the west story about a monkey, Sun Wukong, and his magical red pole that extends indefinitely that can be used to navigate to new places, new heights, and certainly to beat the mess out of enemies. Allegedly, Sun Wukong reduced its size to a that of a coin and placed it behind its ear to hide it, which was pretty smart. Even as I type, Jet Li and Jackie Chan are making a movie based on this old legend, and are calling it the Forbbiden Kingdom or something like that.-
Edit
Dragonball is not in any way based off of Journey to the West, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of China. Journey to the West is a story laden with political reform and dripping with the corruption faced by China. Sun Wukong had his Free-Forming Adamantium Gold Staff, the Ruyi Gin Gu Ban.