 While the character Sun Wukong came from Wu Cheng'en's famous classical novel "Journey to the West", in an interview with Screen Power magazine, actor Collin Chou denied that the plotline would be related to the novel.The details of the plot were devised by screenwriter John Fusco along with actor Jet Li.Li explains,

In a behind the scenes article he wrote for "Kung Fu Magazine", screenwriter John Fusco also stated he derived the surname for the Jason Tripitikas character from "the wandering monk, Tripitaka, from "Journey to the West"".