Misashi Kishimoto, creator of the Naruto franchise, once said that he drew inspiration from Dragon Ball Z, the cornerstone anime that every 90's kid knows about created by Akira Toriyama. Most fans gatheredd that even before Kishimoto claimed this. I myself would watch the Naruto anime when it was still young, and when Naruto would fall in his Tailed-Beast cloak, I would say, "Look out, Naruto's going Super Saiyan."

I mean, come on:

(Seriously, did anyone not see this?)

This connection is not quite direct, but almost every fan made the connection.

A more recent development in the series was the Four Tailed Beast, ya know, that giant red age whose trademark attack is a concentrated beam of blue light and whose host is named Roshi:

This guy is obviously a homage to Dragon Ball Z. Don't believe me? Okay, follow me on this. Take this Great Ape (that alone is a hint) and try and imagine him in a human-like form. Now hold that image in your mind. Now, I would imagine that your resulting image looked a lot like:

Nevermind that their names are both Son Goku.

So these are the obvious and well accepted relations between DBZ and Naruto, but that is not what I'm writing about. I have a theory the Kishimoto rooted Naruto deep within DBZ, more so that we realize. After a lot of watching, I have noticed staggering similarities between certain characters of Naruto and DBZ. I am convinced that Kishimoto planned the characters of Naruto off of those of DBZ in the same way that Toriyama based his characters off of "Journey to the West."

Be warned, however, that I walk dangerous paths on occasion, and that my theories are my own, not passive, not always agreeable. I plan on placing some future events based on my theories, popular theories as they may be, they are not unanimous. As an example, I will take a screencap from Naruto SD, which is not necessarily canon, and from Dragon Ball, as fair warning to such occasions of deep water. If you find the following repulsive, click the BACK button now and save yourself some heavy stress; however, if you are exited or at least intrigued, stick around.

Okay, here goes:

(And yes, we will talk about this particular case, but canon will be used.)

Well, those of you that are still here, get ready for some serious mind-blowing...