Inspirations & Things That If You Like Them You Might Like DBZ

• #1: zombie movies
  
  such as, in particular:
  Romero's Living Dead series (Night of, Dawn of, Day of, Land of, etc.)
  28 Days Later
  Shaun of the Dead
  
  ("Zombie movies? Nooooo, that can't be! Cats, what you say?!?!?!")


• #2: NetHack, or other Rogue-likes


• H.P. Lovecraft stories or The Call of Cthulhu RPG
• H.G. Wells or Edgar Allen Poe
• Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
• Ghostbusters
• Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness
• I Am Legend - the Richard Mathesson book or any of the movies
• Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog
• The Princess Bride
• Trilogy of Terror (particularly the Zulu Warrior episode)
• Twilight Zone
• Tales From the Crypt
• Tales From the Darkside
• The Outer Limits
• Jonathan Coulton songs like: Re Your Brains, Creepy Doll, Chiron Beta Prime, Still Alive
• Weird Science song & movie
• She Blinded Me With Science song
• Thriller song & video
• Elvira late-night TV series
• Zombies!!! board game by Twilight Creations
• Doctor Who
• Back to the Future
• Stephen King
• Deadly Friend movie
• Frankenstein, or Dracula, orig books
• Young Frankenstein movie (correction: "That's pronounced Franken-steen. Steen!")