Rapid progresses in nanotechnology fields have led us to use a number of advanced nanomaterials (NMs) for engineering smart multifunctional nanoparticles (NPs)/nanosystems (NSs) for targeted diagnosis and therapy of various diseases including different types of malignancies. For the effective therapy of any type of solid tumor, the treatment modality should ideally solely target the aberrant cancerous cells/tissue with no/trivial impacts on the healthy cells. One approach to achieve such unprecedented impacts can be fulfilled through the use of seamless multimodal NPs/NSs with photoacoustic properties that can be achieved using advanced NMs such as graphene oxide (GO). It is considered as one of the most promising materials that have been used in the development of various NPs/NSs. GO-based targeted NSs can be engineered as programmable drug delivery systems (DDSs) to perform on-demand chemotherapy combined with photonic energy for photothermal therapy (PTT) or photodynamic therapy (PDT). In the current review, we provide important insights on the GO-based NSs and discuss their potentials for the photodynamic/photothermal ablation of cancer in combination with anticancer agents.