One of the most commonly-understood assumptions about Son Goku from the Dragon Ball franchise is that he's capable of an indeed has achieved feats of ungodly strength. While this is reasonably true even for him as a kid, original series creator Akira Toriyama guided the iconic Saiyan across increasingly unfathomable hurdles, from continuously raising his power ceiling, to crossing the event horizon of a quasi-black hole and not being pulled in. While there are certainly other wildly impressive top fighters by the most recent arcs of Dragon Ball Super, Goku remains the primary standard-bearer given the most opportunities to prove his strength.
Naturally, while one can reasonably hope to quantify certain feats of Goku's raw and enhanced strength, he's also always seeking, and finding, new ways to push past his limits. It means the ultimate answer to Goku's true extent in Dragon Ball is open-ended by design, but he's certainly found some ways to truly astonish fans even decades later. Unsurprisingly, these moments have helped secure a place for Goku among anime's most powerful characters, and the standing possibiliity of him to still outdo himself in the future is both thrilling and deeply intimidating to envision in the real world.
Ever since the beginning of the Dragon Ball franchise, Goku has been presented as one of the strongest characters in his universe. Thanks to his unique nature as a Saiyan and his arduous training since childhood, the hero was several times more agile, resilient, and mighty than a regular fighter. As a child, he was already capable of lifting cars with his bare hands, without showing much discomfort. His feats of strength only continued growing alongside him, to the point where no human could ever aspire to imitate him.
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After dying at the hands of Piccolo during one of the most iconic and memorable moments in the franchise, Goku was sent to King Kai’s planet, where he underwent one of the hardest training sessions in anime. The Saiyan trained at this location, which had a gravitational pull 10 times higher than Earth’s. This trend would continue later in his life, thanks to Bulma and his father, who constructed an artificial gravity chamber for him to train. After years of hard work, Goku got to a point where he was comfortably carrying 40 tons even in augmented gravity.
During episode #118 of the Dragon Ball Super anime, the warriors of Universe 2 used an attack that resembled a black hole to try and eliminate Goku from the Tournament of Power. Despite this technique not creating a real singularity in space, seeing as it did not absorb mass, it still possessed many qualities of this special phenomenon. This implies that the force used to crush the protagonist could be comparable to that of a real black hole. Goku was being pushed downwards with a force of around 6 to 10 solar masses, an amount no human can comprehend.
The black hole was exerting more than 2 billion tons of force upon Goku, and even that was not enough to stop him.
Even then, the hero did not falter, being able to stand up, move freely, and ultimately push the black hole away with a single Kamehameha, his most iconic signature attack. The strength and resilience demonstrated by Goku at that time went beyond what any human could realistically comprehend. Universe 2’s attack could not have been a real singularity point in space, but its behavior makes it clear that it behaved similarly. The black hole was exerting more than 2 billion tons of force upon the hero, and even that was not enough to stop him.
Regardless of how impressive Goku’s feats can be for fans, the Dragon Ball series has made it hard for its followers to defend them. This issue is born from the multiple and continuous changes in strength and power that its characters go through whenever it is convenient for the plot. One of the biggest examples of this trend occurred during episode #36 of the Super anime when Vegeta faced the mechanical giant Magetta. Thinking he could get an easy victory, the prince attempted to carry the machine to throw it out of bounds.
Regrettably, Vegeta could not even move the monster, prompting Beerus to claim that it would be impossible, as the machine weighed more than 1000 tons. Universe 7’s God of Destruction is known for being the strongest deity among the 12 universes, so his implication was an important detail for readers. Nonetheless, seeing as Goku was able to push away an object millions of times more massive than Magetta, it does not make sense for the Saiyan prince to have struggled as much.
Though it is important to note that Vegeta did not use any transformations when he attempted to move the giant, he should have been able to lift him without any effort. The prince has never truly surpassed his old rival in terms of strength, but he is by no means far from Goku’s level. Lamentably, due to Dragon Ball’s focus on epic fights and comedy, the series tends to change the true strength of its characters to what seems convenient at the time. Calculating how strong any of its characters truly are would be an impossible task, but given the feats of strength at hand, Goku's shown some truly astonishing accomplishments.
