Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-25192437-20190426124749

While divine tree myths are nothing unique, it's well known by now that Kishimoto likes to pepper Naruto with references to the Dragon Ball saga (Naruto's blond hair, chakra being capable of being used to produce energy blasts, Son Goku, ever-escalating power-up transformations) and it just occurred to me that the God Tree might be a reference to the Tree of Might - as well as both being based on the Jubokko yōkai of Japanese folklore, possibly with bits of the Tree of Life from Abrahamic folklore (as noted in the Trivia section).

They're both massive divine trees that drain life energy/ki/chakra to the extent they can kill the planet they're planted on, and they both channel the absorbed energy into a fruit that greatly empowers those who consume it - a fruit only the gods (the kai in Dragon Ball and the Ōtsutsuki clan in Naruto) are supposed to consume (the Fruit of the Tree of Might for Dragon Ball and the Chakra Fruit for Naruto).

In light of Kishimoto's habit of Dragon Ball references, that strikes me as being a bit more than coincidental - though I could be wrong. 