And the child was born in a nearly forgotten corner of the universe, to one of the last, clueless pieces of an ultimately inconsequential warrior legacy, and a mother clinging to the dregs of a kingdom her planet had all but stopped even whispering stories about. The boy was named for a grandfather whose corpse sat in the belly of a beast who forgot all about making a meal of him in the first place; he was named for the spare scraps of uneaten food on the table.
Gohan was taught by a ruined and broken evil as an afterthought, because the boy was all that was left to take after his father- a nobody- finished the first leg of his journey on earth and stood front and center in the eyes of the gods.
The boy was then served up as a savior in place of his father- he was offered to a world far off and beyond the stars dotting the night sky when no other was able to take the role.
He was cast aside, too, when his father- arisen, a hero, glowing with both divinity and wrath- returned, and faced down a tyrant with a heart of ice. Thus, the boy's potential was saved for later, for a day when everyone else's had been used up.
Then, the boy's father died as he lived and died and then lived again, as the Earth's saving grace, and left the honor of sating the Earth's fears in times of crisis to his son, an unprepared child who had been the one to damn his father in the first place.
Years later, the God of the Eastern Universe scrounged for a savior in the wake of the universe's greatest evil. He chose Gohan, because the boy was the only one left at that eleventh hour, and cobbled together from him a hastily made plan from a sword and then using an old man he found lying around.
And so, when Gohan failed and his father again filled the hero's shoes, the universe only shrugged.
Gohan had only ever been leftovers, anyway.