History WhatCouldHaveBeen / Godzilla

* In the early 2000s, film studio [[Creator/{{Daiei}} Kadokawa-Daiei Pictures]] approached Toho with the proposal of a '''Gamera vs. Godzilla''' crossover film. In what might be one of the most unfortunate missed opportunities in monster film history, Toho rejected the offer, and Kadokawa-Daiei went on to make ''Film/GameraTheBrave'' instead. [[note]]Gamera and Godzilla did crossover once or twice (depending on what you count as a "crossover") although never in a film, once in a live stage show at the Osaka World Fair for ten days in 1970 (two images of Godzilla and Gorosaurus alongside Gyaos survive, but apparently no pictures of Gamera), and second in the video game ''VideoGame/CityShroudedInShadow'', although the two never encounter one another or interact in the game (although characters from several different franchises including ''[[Franchise/UltraSeries Ultraman]]'', ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}'', and even ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' appear, none of their scenes overlap).[[/note]]

* ''Film/DestroyAllMonsters''. Beyond the intention of being [[SeriesFauxnale the last Godzilla movie]], many other monsters were intended to appear but never made the final cut like [[Film/WarOfTheGargantuas Gaira the Green Gargantua]], Maguma the giant walrus from ''Gorath'', and Ebirah. Baragon and Varan were also intended to have larger roles, but the former suit was difficult to film the scenes the needed scenes with and the latter suit hadn't been used in years, and there presumably wasn't enough money to make a new one, so it was replaced with a motionless prop for a few shots. It was also long thought that Baragon was replaced by Gorosaurus for the role of destroying the Arc De Triumph, but early drafts and storyboards reveal that Gorosaurus directly replaced Maguma during planning.

** An arguably even weirder attempt to revive the Godzilla franchise was the proposed ''God's Godzilla'' which had Jesus Christ as an evil space alien who animates Godzilla from a hidden, dinosaur-shaped Nazca line drawing in order to send humanity into an apocalypse in which the only survivors are horrific mutants. The idea was dropped due to fears of Toho repeating the same mistakes that ultimately got ''Film/PropheciesOfNostradamus'' banned by including the horrific mutants and for possibly offending the Christian religion with an evil depiction of Jesus Christ.

** An arguably even weirder attempt to revive the Godzilla franchise was the proposed ''God's Godzilla'' which had Jesus Christ as an evil space alien who animates Godzilla from a hidden, dinosaur-shaped Nazca line drawing in order to send humanity into an apocalypse in which the only survivors are horrific mutants. The idea was dropped due to fears of Toho repeating the same mistakes that ultimately got ''Film/ThePropheciesOfNotradamus'' banned by including the horrific mutants and for possibly offending the Christian religion with an evil depiction of Jesus Christ.

** An arguably even weirder attempt to revive the Godzilla franchise was the proposed ''God's Godzilla'' which had Jesus Christ as an evil space alien who animates Godzilla from a hidden, dinosaur-shaped Nazca line drawing in order to send humanity into an apocalypse in which the only survivors are horrific mutants. The idea was dropped due to fears of Toho repeating the same mistakes that ultimately got ''Film/PropheciesOfNotradamus'' banned by including the horrific mutants and for possibly offending the Christian religion with an evil version of Jesus Christ.

* A proposed sequel to ''Film/GodzillaVsHedorah'', by the director Yoshimitsu Banno, had Godzilla fighting a giant mutant starfish, which he scrapped in favour of a direct sequel where Godzilla would fight another Hedorah, but in Africa this time. However, this too never saw fruition, reportedly because the Yoshimitsu was sacked before production could begin on the sequel.

* Originally in ''Film/TerrorOfMechagodzilla'', Titanosaurus was going to be two plesiosaur-like dinosaurs, a male and a female, known as Titans, which were normally peaceful, but became aggressive after entwining their necks.

** An arguably even weirder attempt to revive the Godzilla franchise was the proposed ''God's Godzilla'' which had Jesus Christ as an evil space alien who animates Godzilla from a hidden, dinosaur-shaped Nazca line drawing in order to send humanity into an apocalypse in which the only survivors are horrific mutants.

* ''Film/DestroyAllMonsters''. Beyond the intention of being [[SeriesFauxnale the last Godzilla movie]], many other monsters were intended to appear but never made the final cut like [[Film/WarOfTheGargantuas Gaira the Green Gargantua]], Maguma the giant walrus from ''Gorath'', and Ebirah. Baragon and Varan were also intended to have larger roles, but the former suit had been damaged badly from constantly being modified into other monsters such as Neronga in ''Series/{{Ultraman}}'' and the latter suit hadn't been used in years, and there presumably wasn't enough money to make a new one, so it was replaced with a motionless prop for a few shots. Amusingly, the dub refers Gorosaurus as Baragon because the scene of Paris' destruction by a tunnelling Gorosaurus originally called for Baragon (or more accurately, it originally called for Maguma, who got replaced by Baragon, who got replaced by Gorosaurus).

* 1993's ''Film/GodzillaVsMechagodzillaII'' was to be directed by Ishiro Honda, [[DiedDuringProduction but he died earlier that year.]] Likewise, it was intended to be the final Heisei film with the [[Script/Godzilla1994 intended 1994 Tristar film taking over.]] To that end, the original ending involved Mechagodzilla successfully killing Godzilla, only for Baby Godzilla to grow to full Godzilla size. The new Godzilla would then star in the 1994 Tristar film. Since that never came into fruition, Toho got back to work with ''Film/GodzillaVsSpacegodzilla'' the following year.

** Dark Horse had also wanted to do their usual comic crossovers with Godzilla, proposing ones with ''Franchise/TheTerminator'', ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'', and the ''ComicBook/JusticeLeague''. But Toho, infamously strict with the IP, said no to all of them.

** Dark Horse had also wanted to do their usual comic crossovers with Godzilla, proposing ones with ''Franchise/TheTerminator'', ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'', and the ''ComicBook/JusticeLeague''. But Toho, infamously protective of the IP, said no to all of them.

** Dark Horse had also wanted to do their usual comic crossovers with Godzilla, proposing ones with ''Franchise/TheTerminator'', ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' and the ''ComicBook/JusticeLeague''. But Toho, infamously protective of the IP, said no to all of them.

** Dark Horse had also wanted to do their usual comic crossovers with Godzilla, proposing ones with ''Franchise/TheTerminator'', ''Franchise/Superman'' and the ''ComicBook/JusticeLeague''. But Toho, infamously protective of the IP, said no to all of them.

** Ren was originally TheStarscream who after infusing Hollow Earth Energy to [[spoiler:Mechagodzilla]], he kills Simmons, becoming the sole human BigBad, making a BigBadDuumvirate with [[spoiler:Hollow energy-infused Mechagodzilla with Ghidorah taking the reins]].

** Plot details have started to come out regarding the first version, elements of which are preserved in the novelization. It has Ren having more screentime, and Madison suffering effects of PTSD from the previous film. A big one is [[spoiler:that the eye seen in Florida contained the ORCA-Z and the Simmons are intentionally trying to cast Godzilla into a bad light. Even him going out of his way to attack Kong at sea was engineered by Maia and 'playing dead' also caused it to shut off.]]

** Around this time Toho took plot ideas from its Planning Department staff for what might be the next film. Some of thse were truly bizarre, such as Godzilla facing off against Cthulu, Godzilla battling a take on Sun Wukong named King Goku, and a pitch where Godzilla fights five brightly colored clones of himself, a la the Super Sentai/Power Rangers franchise.

** The movie was originally going to be a sequel to Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, Adam Wingard would've been director, but end up not happening.

** The movie was originally gone to be a sequel to Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, Adam Wingard would've been director, but end up not happening.

** The Art Book for the movie shows concept art of [[AliensAreBastards Gigan]], Anguirus, Baragon, a titan resembling [[SpidersAreScary Kumonga]], and most noticeably, a turtle titan that bears a close resemblance to ''Gamera'', a scorpion monster with rock-like pincers, and an octopus/cuttlefish-like monster. None of them make any appearances in the movie. According to Dougherty, the production team considered adding other Toho monsters to the mix at some point, but, gven the fact that each Toho character has its own rights which must be paid, they ultimately decided to cook up some new creatures for the Monsterverse's menagerie. That being said, there are still ''lots'' of undiscovered Titans, and the team did manage to sneak the skeleton of a creature that [[LawyerFriendlyCameo may or may not be Anguirus]] just outside Godzilla's underwater lair.

* ''Film/GodzillaRaidsAgain'' was originally planned to have an ''incredibly bizarre'' immediate sequel in 1956 called ''Bride of Godzilla'', which would center around a giant RobotGirl created by a scientist to combat a third Godzilla and second Anguirus, only Godzilla to fall in love with her (yes, really!). It also would also take place in a HollowEarth world discovered by the characters the characters and home to a whole ecosystem of Godzillas, Anguiruses, and other monsters (like a giant chameleon and a mutant archaeopteryx). At the end the robot would have detonated its nuclear heart, killing Godzilla and destroying the ecosystem. Did we mention the giant robot girl would have been naked?

** The trailer with Oppenheimer speaking featured a few scenes of destruction cut and showed a huge, multi-armed woodlouse kaiju, apparently dead. It's not seen in the movie. Fans commonly refer to this monster as "Vishnu", due to Robert Oppenheimer's famous ''Destroyer of Worlds'' speech playing in the background, but in the concept art book ''Godzilla: Art of Destruction'' it's only referred to as "a strange, dead monster".

** The cinematographers originally planned for the scene with Joe Brody's interrogation and outburst at the MONARCH facility to be shot using several elaborate camera angles and cuts. Bryan Cranston did such a good job with the first rehearsal take that they decided to just use that one and scrap their previous plans.

** Very early into development, the [=MUTOs=] were known as Rokmutul and Pterodactyl, which had more strongly reptilian designs, but these later became the female and male [=MUTOs=] respectively and ended up having more insectoid designs.
* In TheStinger of ''Film/KongSkullIsland'', Godzilla was planned to have had a physical cameo, with several of the characters on a boat in the Arctic encountering him breaking through the ice. However, this clashed with the perceived timeline established in [[Film/Godzilla2014 the previous film]] which implied Godzilla never surfaced anytime between 1954 and 2014, so instead [[spoiler: Godzilla only appears as cave art alongside Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah]].
** There were also plans for Godzilla to appear in photographs early in the film, but the director did not want a movie about Kong to show Godzilla first and instead the photographs were replaced by images of a wrecked ship strongly implied to have been attacked by Godzilla.

** Some concept illustrations from the art book had unused Titan designs, including several which resembled Toho kaiju such as Gigan, Kumonga (even if a giant spider-like kaiju did end up in the final film), Anguirus (even if his skeleton did end up in the film in a freeze-frame cameo), Kamacuras, Baragon, and even one which looked like '''Gamera''' (even if most of these were probably just meant to be placeholders).
** There was also concept artwork of Titans which did not appear in the final film, including a scorpion monster with rock-like pincers, an octopus/cuttlefish-like monster, and an aquatic monster called Margygr which appeared as a corpse.

** Another proposed idea was having a movie where Toho's Godzilla would battle the Godzilla that would have appeared in Tristar's original script before it was retooled. Aside from Toho having an ironclad rule that prevented any kind of direct Godzilla vs Godzilla fight, Tristar's movie was being constantly delayed and reworked. Ultimately the idea would really die as a result of the decision being made to kill Godzilla and end the Heisei series.

** Another proposed idea was having a movie where Toho's Godzilla would battle the Godzilla that would have appeared in Tristar's original Godzilla script before it was retooled. Aside from Toho having an ironclad rule that prevented any kind of direct Godzilla vs Godzilla fight, Tristar's movie was constantly delayed and reworked. Ultimately the idea would really die as a result of the decision being made to kill Godzilla and end the Heisei series.

** Around this time Toho took plot ideas from its Planning Department staff for what might be the next film. Some of thse were truly bizarre, such as Godzilla facing off against Cthulu, Godzilla vs King Goku, and a pitch where Godzilla fights five brightly colored clones of himself, a la the Super Sentai/Power Rangers franchise.

** After production wrapped on ''Vs Spacegodzilla'' Toho's writing staff had a contest to decide what draft should be the next Godzilla movie. One of these was a direct sequel titled ''Spacegodzilla's Counterattack''.

** There was a proposed concept for a direct sequel which had Mothra's body be turned into a robotic cyborg known as [=MechaMothra=].

* ''Film/GodzillaRaidsAgain'' was released in the US in an edited form as ''[[CutAndPasteTranslation Gigantis: The Fire Monster]]''. However, the original idea for the movie's US distribution was ''even more radical''. ''Godzilla Raids Again'' would've been "remade" into a completely different film known as ''The Volcano Monsters'' by AB-PT Pictures. Godzilla and Anguirus would've been referred to as simply [[DubNameChange a giant T-rex and Ankylosaurus]], the monsters would've attacked San Francisco instead of Osaka, and every scene with a Japanese actor would've been cut (along with everything else that the later ''Gigantis'' dub cut as well). Toho even lent their suits to AB-PT, since they were desperately trying to market their films to the US in any way they can at the time (even if it involved massive editing). Before the project could come to fruition, however, AB-PT Pictures closed shop. The result? ''The Volcano Monsters'' (along with several other films they were developing) never saw a release, the two monster suits that Toho lent went missing, and what we got instead was the ''Gigantis: The Fire Monster'' release by Creator/WarnerBros.