Godzilla King Of The Monsters 2019 / Tropes I to P

Tropes # to H | Tropes I to P | Tropes Q to Z | YMMV | Trivia

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Godzilla: King of the Monsters provides examples of the following tropes:

I-J

• Identical Grandson: The Chen twins, their mother and her twin, and their twin grandmothers are all identical.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Dr. Ilene Chen has a short pixie cut, whilst her twin Dr. Ling wears her hair in a Motherly Side Plait.
• If It Swims, It Flies: Monarch has drones that can transition from submersible to aerial.
• I Have Your Wife: Jonah and his mercenaries kidnap Dr. Emma Russell and her preteen daughter Madison, who is not of the same value to them as her mother is: in the novelization, Mark mentally notes that this implies Jonah and his men intend to hold Madison's life and well-being hostage in order to get Emma to cooperate. Subverted – the truth about Emma and Madison's departure with the eco-terrorists is much worse.
• Impeded Communication: Asher mentions that the staff at Outpost 32 attempted to launch an emergency beacon to get out an alert that they were under attack, but the eco-terrorists cut them off and massacred everyone just in time.
• Improbable Cover:
  • Played Straight when Rodan kicks up winds powerful enough to send buses flying into the air like leaves: Barnes, Martinez and a local mother take cover behind the wall of a building which somehow doesn't collapse on them under these, again bus-hurtling, winds.
  • Subverted during the Final Battle when Madison runs to the Russells' Boston home and seeks shelter from the battling Titans: the house she takes refuge in crumbles on top of her.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: In the novelization's expansion of Methuselah's awakening, a woman witnesses it from a distance and she starts downing a nearby bottle of champagne.
• In Harmony with Nature: Discussed. Many of the humans believe that ancient civilizations coexisted symbiotically with Titans which safeguarded them against the more aggressive ones, and that re-striking such a relationship with Titans again in modern times is key to mankind's survival. The eco-terrorists criticize modern mankind's overpopulation, war, pollution, and mass destruction of the environment, and Emma Russell believes that humanity will cause their own extinction if the balance between man and Titan isn't found again. The ending reveals that after Godzilla has pacified the awakened Titans (but only after they've killed millions of people under Ghidorah's thrall), their Fertile Feet has begun halting and reversing decades' worth of manmade ecological damage.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Emma Russell comes to the conclusion that the best way to honor her son Andrew's memory after his death in a Kaiju battle and save everyone else from following him to the grave is by repeating the tragedy a thousand-fold on the rest of humanity so that those who survive the destruction will expectantly enter an ecologically-sustainable coexistence with the Titans. Whilst Emma has a point in the end about the Titans' positive effects and capacity to coexist with humans, all things considered, is it any wonder Madison calls Emma out for thinking Andrew would be anything other than horrified beyond compale at what she's become if he could see her now.
  • Jonah's own justifications for letting King Ghidorah do what it wants to the planet basically descend into this when Emma realizes Ghidorah is destroying the planet's biosphere instead of healing it, as he rants that humanity is too despicable to be redeemed, and he treats Ghidorah's actions more like it's an unexpected bend in the road than the opposite of what their plan was about; proving Jonah is a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist who just wants to see humanity suffer and will sacrifice his original Eco-Terrorist agenda when something better comes along to see his desires through.
• Insecure Protagonist, Arrogant Antagonist: On the human heroes' side: Monarch are opposing the government's Titan extermination plan, but they still have their doubts about the Titans and they're unwilling, to a fault, to take risks as an alternative to maintaining the already-failing status quo; Mark is filled with rage and unresolved grief over his son's death which has led him to push all his remaining loved ones away and which fuels his negative view on the Titans; and Madison wants to please a mother who takes advantage of this trait in her. On the human villains' side: the eco-terrorists have a point about Monarch's shortcomings, and they're proven right that the awakened Titans can provide many more solutions than problems, but they're also far too arrogant in their beliefs that they can control the Titans with the ORCA and shape the world into what they think it should be. All the eco-terrorists except Emma remain in denial that Ghidorah has caused their plan to spiral completely out of their control even whilst Ghidorah and his Titan army are sterilizing the planet.
• Instant Fish Kill: Happens when the Oxygen Destroyer (which is designed to exterminate all life in a two-mile radius) detonates off the coast of Isla de Mara. The Stinger also has a local fisherman say that the O.D. exterminated all of the local fauna and fishing has become impossible.
• Insufferable Genius:
  • Mark Russell is an asshole who seems to think his own feelings are the center of the universe, makes his son's death which hurt his ex-wife and daughter out to be all about himself, and goes off on a couple tirades at Monarch before he gets better. But he's a competent animal behavior expert who proves to be invaluable during the movie, working out what's going on with the Titans and where the eco-terrorists are going to strike next, whilst the rest of Monarch are a step or two behind him.
  • Dr. Rick Stanton is very acerbic, cynical and bitterly sarcastic, but he's a very smart guy who's good at tracking the Titans' bio-acoustics.
• Interspecies Romance: Joked about twice in the film, when Mark states that Ghidorah is going to Isla de Mara to eat, fight, or mate with Rodan; and when Barnes asks if Godzilla and Mothra are mates despite one being a giant reptile and the other being a giant insect.
• Intimidation Demonstration:
  • When Godzilla becomes agitated and he aggressively approaches Castle Bravo, he's showing his immense internal nuclear power via rhythmically flashing bright pulses of light from his dorsal spines. Vivienne Graham notes that this visual signal is akin to a gorilla pounding its chest in Godzilla, designed to intimidate a potential adversary via demonstrating one's own dominance and aggression. Tellingly, Godzilla's fins are flashing like this again when he rushes onto the scene of Monster Zero's awakening to put a stop to his ancient rival. The fact that Godzilla never once displayed this signal in the first movie against the MUTOs is a warning sign of just how much more dangerous than them Ghidorah is.
  • Ghidorah has his own intimidation display when him and Godzilla meet for the first time onscreen, just before they clash. Ghidorah rises to his full height and spreads his wings wide to make himself appear bigger — a real-life tactic used by various species in the animal kingdom to ward off potential fights, although in Ghidorah's case, the director said that it's a gesture of challenging bluster on his end. This does terrifying wonders by Ghidorah appear way larger than Godzilla.
• Ironic Echo: "Long live the king." The first time it's said as a sarcastic quip by Alan Jonah, as they realize waking Ghidorah has upset their plans to wake the other Titans slowly, one at a time, since Ghidorah is waking them all up and summoning them (not that Jonah particularly minds). The second time, it's said as a "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner by Emma Russel before getting killed by Ghidorah, after she's bought enough time for Godzilla to get his Heroic Second Wind and activate his Super Mode, allowing him to destroy Ghidorah.
• Irony: When justifying the release of Ghidorah, Emma compares humans to an infection, with the Earth being the body they're spreading through and harming, and the Titans acting as antibodies to maintain the planet's balance. It turns out that Ghidorah is a quite-literal infection to the Earth in the sense that he's an Alien Invader who actively tries to destroy the planet's biosphere by inflicting rapid mass extinction.
• It Can Think:
  • As per usual, this is the case. This is especially played up with Ghidorah, who quickly establishes that he's genuinely evil and not only aware of humanity, but actively wants them dead. When Madison unplugs the ORCA from the speakers in Boston, he not only zeroes in on her in seconds, but Ichi's eyes narrowing as it looks through the window at her implies he's worked out he's being tricked by this tiny human - something reinforced by his preparing to obliterate her with all three of his gravity beams even after the ORCA is smashed.
  • In the novelization, a cephalopod-like Titan called the Kraken tricks Monarch into thinking it's died, then destroys the facility monitoring it with remarkable cunning and efficiency.
  • Mothra shows this by being the first Titan to flat out try to communicate with humans, alerting Monarch to the fact Godzilla's still alive and actively leading them to help him. The novelization seems to have her telepathically contact Madison and save her. This plays into the ambigiousity of whether she's just a huge prehistoric animal worshipped as a deity or a genuinely supernatural goddess.
• It Has Been an Honor: Inverted when Rick Stanton says this to Serizawa before the latter departs to perform his Heroic Sacrifice. A deleted scene depicting the death of Admiral Stenz has him attempt to say this to Colonel Foster before he's Killed Mid-Sentence by an explosion.
• It's All About Me: Unsurprisingly, Ghidorah could be seen as this. Whether he's xenoforming the planet for himself or simply hates all life that isn't him, his aim is razing the entire Earth to the ground in order to benefit no-one but himself. Emma and Mark Russell can also be accused of this: it's implied Emma's plan is ultimately her way of lashing out at the world over her son's death in her Sanity Slippage, and Mark Russell seems to think his own suffering and the fates of his family specifically are what the world revolves around whilst the rest of Monarch are more concerned about the threat of Ghidorah and the other Titans to all life on the planet. Meanwhile, Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist Jonah has an extra moment in the film's novelization that explicitly confirms this about his misanthropic goals.
• It's Personal:
  • In contrast to Godzilla's previous conflict with the MUTOs (which was two giant animals vying as natural enemies); Godzilla and Ghidorah seem to genuinely despise each-other beyond a conflict for dominance, if Ghidorah's confrontational and blusterous body language and Godzilla's murderous scowl when they see each-other again is any indication. They're almost like two dueling cowboys out of a western.
    • This also seems to apply between Godzilla and one of Ghidorah's heads. San/Kevin, the left head, is violently decapitated by Godzilla before regrowing from the body's neck stump (with Word of God further stating that this has likely happened to Kevin many times in Ghidorah's past). After Kevin grows back, he repeatedly savages Godzilla's neck when Ghidorah is sucking the life out of Godzilla, and in doing so, the head causes Godzilla to wail in absolute agony.
  • In the novelization, Serizawa defies this trope: although Ghidorah has killed someone that Serizawa held dear, Serizawa refuses to fall into the trap of hating Ghidorah like an Animal Nemesis, having already seen how Mark choosing to do just that with Godzilla has turned him into a spiteful, angry shell of his former self.
• It Was a Gift: An extra scene in the novelization reveals that Vivienne Graham's belongings in Castle Bravo include a Yapese pendant with a carving of Godzilla, which was gifted to Eiji Serizawa, who in turn passed it down to Ishirō, who then passed it to her. After Graham's death, Serizawa wonders who the pendant should pass to now.
• I Warned You: Monarch tries to warn Stenz that not allowing Godzilla to deal with the situation is going to end badly. He doesn't listen, and it causes things to go From Bad to Worse. At the meeting at Castle Bravo, while mentioning that Godzilla's the only Titan with any chance of matching Ghidorah, Martinez emphasizes the point they (seemingly) killed the best and only chance they had of beating Ghidorah.
• Jerkass:
  • Rodan may not be outright evil like Ghidorah^note even though he sides with King Ghidorah, he only does so after being personally bested by him in combat and after Ghidorah has become the new King of the Monsters, but he still isn't a particularly nice Titan. Though his beef with Monarch's aerial forces is legitimate from an animal's P.O.V., he takes a lot of enjoyment in tearing them apart. He also viciously burns and attempts to decapitate Mothra under Ghidorah's command, and as soon as Ghidorah is killed by Godzilla, Rodan acts blusterous towards Godzilla himself and then backs down very quickly when Godzilla shoots him a Death Glare.
  • Although Mark is one of the heroes and he shows a Heart of Gold several times, he's not a pleasant person to friends or allies at first. Tending to let everyone around him suffer for his own grief, he chronically acts angry, self-righteous, extremely sardonic and highly rude toward the very people whom are tracking his kidnapped family; and he used his grief to push away his equally grief-stricken ex-wife and daughter years before the film's start while he wallowed in self-pity. Honestly, the Monarch top brass deserve a medal for not punching Mark in the face.
  • Senator Williams is acerbic, wants the military to exterminate the Titans (and is actually convinced that it won't cost too much to try), and she has an immediate comeback for every counter-argument if she doesn't just shoot it down or conveniently forget about it at a speed that makes Dory's memory look outright eidetic (unlike Admiral Stenz, who looks outright shocked by how the senate she's chairing aren't taking the matter of Titans half as seriously as they should be).
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Mark, though out of line in his rants that Monarch should kill all the Titans because Godzilla unintentionally killed his son, isn't wrong that even the benevolent Titans can unintentionally cause destruction to humans, and was completely right that recreating the ORCA would do more harm than good.
  • Jonah is very annoyed that Emma kinda omitted the "genocide against the human infection" part of the plan from whatever she explained to Maddie over the preceding years.
• Jumped at the Call: The Monarch characters' bios are expanded upon in the supplementary Monarch Sciences website. Graham, Stanton and Barnes were all eager to accept when they were first offered the chance to join a Titan-studying covert government agency, which happened to align with their lifelong personal interests, respectively.
• Jump Scare:
  • Quite effectively, considering it's being pulled by Godzilla. Castle Bravo is watching Godzilla's threat display under water, his spines glowing rhythmically before he apparently decides to stop. Beats go by, with just the dark water pressing around them... then Godzilla is right there in front of the window, swimming past at a truly alarming rate.
  • When Monarch's submarine is investigating the bottom of the underwater vortex, one of the drones' POVs pans over... and a porcelain-featured face suddenly pops into view in the water, causing Dr. Chen and the audience to jump.

K-L

• Kaiju: Very obviously, though in addition to creating original giant monsters for Godzilla to fight like its predecessor, this film also brings in kaiju from the Toho films. In-universe, they were initially dubbed MUTOs by Monarch, but are now called Titans (Sam's use of the MUTO term in the courtroom scene implies it's now used exclusively for the kaiju type seen in the first film).
• Karma Houdini: Alan Jonah and his goons minus Asher are still alive and well in the end, and they're shown collecting Ghidorah's leftover decapitated head.
• Keystone Army: Dr. Mark Russell compares King Ghidorah and his Titan army to the (defunct in real life) wolf pack alpha theory, declaring that defeating Ghidorah will cause the global Titan rampage to stop since Ghidorah is the one altering the baseline Titans' behavior to attack humanity in coordination. In the novelization, it's noted that Mark's proposed fix is a best-case scenario and there's a real possibility as far as anyone knows until the end that the Titans will continue rampaging even without Ghidorah's direction. Fortunately, after Godzilla kills Ghidorah, the Titans do stop rampaging under their new king's leadership, and they even begin cleaning up the ecological damage that's been done to the world.
• Kill All Humans: When King Ghidorah takes control of the Titans; while Ghidorah does lead them towards inflicting an extinction event on the planet's ecosystems, the Titans seem to rampage in major human cities specifically. Ghidorah himself meanwhile ravages Washington DC and makes it a roost for himself, and that's not even going into how much he loves killing humans.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: In Antarctica, Master Sergeant Hendricks plays the Curse Cut Short variation, getting out an "Oh, shi-" just before Ghidorah's all-destroying Gravity Beams zap him into oblivion. A deleted scene portrays Admiral Stenz, knowing that he's screwed, trying to tell Colonel Foster over a video feed that It Has Been an Honor but he's struck by an explosion mid-sentence.
• Kill It with Fire: Godzilla in his superpowered Fire mode finishes off Ghidorah with his nuclear pulses, literally roasting his wings and two side heads off, before unleashing a concentrated blast to his chest that finally kills him.
• Kirk Summation: All the semi-major characters from Monarch give one towards Emma Russell when the latter exposits about their Evil Plan, pointing out they're risking severe damage to the world, meddling with forces beyond comprehension or control, gambling with the lives of billions of people and most of all, even if the plan works, it won't bring her son back.
• Knight of Cerebus: Ghidorah itself. Godzilla and the MUTOs were living natural disasters, but Ghidorah? Its a living extinction event. While not exactly light beforehand, the moment he appears onscreen everything takes a much darker turn and he kills a named character within minutes of being released. Whereas the MUTOs may have been capable of sending humanity back to the Stone Age, Ghidorah actively desires humanity's destruction and is definitely capable of carrying that desire out.
• Knight Templar:
  • Former British Army colonel Alan Jonah is fully convinced that Humans Are the Real Monsters and he insists that setting the Titans loose to cause potentially billions of deaths is necessary so that the beasts can make a better world. He continues to insist that letting King Ghidorah eradicate humanity completely is far better for the world than allowing the Anthropocene to go on, even after it's become apparent that Ghidorah's rule is destroying the world's natural order instead of restoring it.
  • Jonah's secret partner in crime Emma Russell firmly believes that they're saving the human race if not its individual members along with the world's biodiversity; even if they have to sentence countless innocents to death, release all the Titans indiscriminately with regard for neither their temperaments nor Godzilla's role in keeping them all under control, and use the ORCA to dictate how they think the Titans should shape the world. It takes watching King Ghidorah begin unleashing the mirror opposite of what was expected and Madison spelling out that Andrew would be horrified beyond words at what Emma has done for Emma to realize how far she's fallen, although she's proven right about the other Titans' ability to benefit the world after Godzilla re-takes his kingship.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: When Emma and Madison witness Mothra's egg hatching, Emma and most of the other scientists present in the air-sealed observation room are wearing grayish-white coats just to emphasize that they're scientists.
• Landmarking the Hidden Base: Several of Monarch's global outposts are located at major landmarks, including Angkor Wat (one of the most important archaeological sites and the largest religious monument anywhere in the world), Stone Mountain (a major Confederate monument in the U.S. which remains a tourist spot to this day), Loch Ness (yes, that Loch Ness), Machu Picchu (one of the New Seven Wonders of the World), the Manpupuner rock formations (one of the Seven Wonders of Russia), and Uluru (the single largest rock formation in Australia and a major landmark of the Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park). Justified, as many of these places are world heritage sites or ancient burial sites with religious significance, making it all the more believable that they would be the resting sites of Titans which ancient civilizations worshipped as gods, plus Monarch had to construct the containment sites around the places where they found the Titans slumbering since they couldn't exactly be moved without waking them up.
• Last Note Nightmare: The Comic-Con reveal trailer uses a rendition of Claude Debussy's calm and majestic "Claire de Lune" that serves as Soundtrack Dissonance for the carnage it plays over. But it suddenly takes a more appropriately distorted and ominous turn when the freed Ghidorah is shown.
• Lecture as Exposition: Early in the movie, Dr. Graham gives a briefing to the Monarch top brass, the G-Team and Mark in a boardroom complete with slides and videos on a wall; revealing to them (and the audience) what happened to Mothra after Jonah's assault on Outpost 61, and who Alan Jonah is.
• Leitmotif: The classic themes for Godzilla and Mothra have been brought back, with new themes being composed for Ghidorah and Rodan. Keeping with a "Monster Opera" theme, each theme has different vocal characteristics.
  • Godzilla has the Akira Ifukube theme accompanied by powerful kakegoe chanting provided by a taiko group from Tokyo
  • Mothra's Song is performed by an ethereal female choir.
  • Rodan's theme is brassy and loud, pushing the French horn section into piercing screams, emulating the monster's calls
  • Ghidorah's theme is built around three-note phrases and groups while featuring ominous chanting from Japanese Buddhist monks.
  • In addition to the four kaiju themes, there is a general "Ancients" theme heard throughout the film, with an Ancient Babylonian poem about the days when humans worshiped monsters being chanted throughout.
• Lethally Stupid:
  • The military, as usual. At the beginning of the film, they're implicitly supporting the government's plan to attempt indiscriminately killing all the hibernating Titans regardless of their moral alignment in ignorance of Monarch's findings indicating that that, if successful, could cause humanity to perish in an extinction-level ecological collapse. Midway through the film, they rashly fire the prototype Oxygen Destroyer at Ghidorah in an attempt to kill him and Rodan, and Godzilla is caught in the blast and crippled: with Godzilla unable to keep Ghidorah in check, the three-headed Titan usurps dominance of the Earth's other Titans and forcibly awakens them to begin enacting a severe extinction event. It can be argued that the military are directly responsible for things going From Bad to Worse and for the deaths of millions around the world, which could have been avoided had they not fired the Oxygen Destroyer and let Godzilla finish Ghidorah off.
  • Exaggerated by Emma Russell. She only intended to get a handful of humanity killed as a consequence of her plan to ultimately renew the world's ecosphere. By releasing Ghidorah without any consideration for his (or the other Titans') possible hostility and the other unknown factors surrounding the creatures, she's unwittingly unleashed a rival Alpha Titan who will exterminate humanity completely and will cause even more harm to Earth's biosphere than us if Godzilla can't stop him.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Serizawa, Monarch and even Titan-hater Mark Russell espouse this. This time around, when the military doesn't listen, the whole of humanity suffers the consequences in the form of Ghidorah leading the other Titans in rapidly decimating the planet. Ultimately, Monarch revive Godzilla so he can fight off King Ghidorah and restore balance, and when Ghidorah is Life Draining Godzilla during the Final Battle, the Russells use the ORCA to distract Ghidorah long enough for Godzilla to recover.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Despite the moral alignments their respective hair colors are traditionally associated with, the dark-haired Madison is the Light Feminine while her blonde-haired mother Emma is the Dark Feminine. Madison has an intimate connection with the maternal Mothra, and she's moral, compassionate and emotionally mature, but she also starts the film as a slight Wide-Eyed Idealist, being manipulated by Emma into going along with her Eco-Terrorist plot until bodies start dropping. Emma on the other hand appears to be aloof and distant due to her son's death even if she still cares about the world, there are some early hints that she cares more about the Titans than she does people's lives, and she wholly intends to cause millions of deaths by awakening the Titans whilst being the only person in the cast who can't see that she's lashing out as some warped mass crime of passion over Andrew's death in a Titan attack.
• Light/Fire Juxtaposition: Godzilla's signature Breath Weapon and his city-obliterating Burning Mode and other special abilities are very much fire-based, whereas Mothra's Beta-Wave Bioluminescence abilities are firmly light-based. Whilst both Godzilla and Mothra are committed to maintaining the Earth's natural balance against invasive Titans, and whilst this is one of the more heroic iterations of Godzilla to date; Godzilla can be a bit of a Blood Knight in battle and he crosses into ruthless measures when stressed and irate in Godzilla Vs Kong, whereas Mothra is never shown going to such extremes and Mothra's affinity for humans is more explicitly confirmed than Godzilla's implicit favoritism.
• Light-Flicker Teleportation:
  • Godzilla does this, slowly approaching the underwater window of an offshore platform deep enough that the only source of light is the intermittent flashing of his dorsal plates.
  • Ghidorah also does this when the Argo flies into his hypercane, with nothing but darkness in front of the plane until spasmic flashes of lightning reveal Ghidorah's gigantic silhouette is flying right there in front of them amid the darkness.
• Light Liege, Dark Defender: Inverted by Godzilla and Mothra. Mothra is the wise but delicate High Queen who is literally associated with light and Godzilla is the Grumpy Old Man earth guardian, but Mothra consistently seems to be the one trying to protect Godzilla.
• Lineage Comes from the Father: Gender Inverted with the Chen family. Drs. Ilene and Ling Chen and the rest of their family in their family photo consist entirely of sets of identical twin girls, hinting at their connection to Mothra. Nothing is known about the men in their family, as there are no male relatives at all in the family photo.
• Logo Joke: Both the Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures logos in the opening, which are stylized to have a more roughened texture like millennia-old excavated artefacts, and are imposed against a Mayincatec hieroglyph background depicting some of the film's Kaiju with a grim, dark-red apocalyptic palette.
• Losing Your Head: Ghidorah's center head is still alive, even after Burning Godzilla had incinerated the other two heads and the rest of his body. Godzilla essentially has to light up the still-living head with his atomic breath to make sure that the space invader is gone for good.

M-N

• Made of Iron: This trope ends up applying to Serizawa when he brings the warhead to a severely weakened Godzilla in his temple; even though it's basically a suicide mission and the extremely high radioactivity visibly affects him, Serizawa, in reality, should have been killed soon after he exited his mini-sub, even before he took off his glove and helmet.
• Male Might, Female Finesse: Zig-Zagged with Godzilla and Mothra. Mothra is actually a front-line combatant like Godzilla, but doesn't have the same level of Super-Toughness as Godzilla when it comes to taking a lot of physical punishment from a fight with Rodan. Mothra consequently uses more Fragile Speedster tactics against Ghidorah or Rodan.
• Mama Bear: Emma proves to be one when Madison escapes Jonah's custody with the ORCA and ends up at ground zero of the Titans' Final Battle. Played With by Mothra, who doesn't react kindly to Monarch's containment field killing the flying insects in her temple.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • Alan Jonah is manipulative towards Emma Russell to keep her under his thumb so she will operate the ORCA for his agenda. Despite technically being subordinate to Emma, it's clear that Jonah is manipulating Emma's pride and giving her the impression that their views on how to save the world are one and the same in order to get her dancing along to his tune whenever she starts expressing doubts.
  • To a lesser extent, Emma is an emotionally-manipulative parent to Madison. It's subtly implied in the film (and all but confirmed in a deleted scene and in the novelization) that Emma has been trying to alienate Madison from her father out of spite towards him for abandoning them. Moreso, Emma has been indoctrinating Madison into her and Jonah's Eco-Terrorist plot to release the Titans, telling Madison how benevolent Titans such as Mothra can be whilst limiting her exposure to more volatile Titans and absolutely sugar-coating the sheer amount of mass murder the plan involves. However, Emma isn't half as competent at manipulating Madison as Jonah is at manipulating her: Emma's failure to in any way prepare Madison for accepting global genocide blows up when the bodies start dropping and Madison reacts with predictable shock, horror and a crisis of conscience; a reaction which Emma remains blissfully all but ignorant of until Madison has already lost all faith in her.
• Married to the Job: The supplementary materials explicitly say some of the Monarch operatives' commitments to their job have taken a lot of precedent over their personal lives. Stanton has divorced three wives, and the official website comments that his bio-acoustics work at Monarch is his one true love, almost quoting the trope ad verbatim. In the novelization, Dr. Graham has had several relationships which didn't last due to her being too committed to her work (a trait she also shares with Serizawa).
• Mass "Oh, Crap!":
  • The entire Monarch crew on the Argo has this reaction when they realize that Jonah and the ORCA are in Antarctica, and thus with the only other kaiju on Earth in Godzilla's weight class.
  • Everyone — Monarch and the soldiers who are at ground zero, even the very person who sets off Ghidorah's awakening, have this reaction when Ghidorah awakens.
  • Virtually everyone on the sub shits bricks when, after the newly supercharged Godzilla surfaces and blasts his atomic breath into the sky in a Pillar of Light, the big guy then notices them for the first time...
• Master of Your Domain: It's hinted in the movie, and outright confirmed in the novelization, that it's no coincidence Mothra hatches into her imago form at the same time that Ghidorah has taken over as the King of the Monsters: she sensed from inside her pupa what was happening to the world, and she willed her biological metamorphosis to speed up so she could combat the threat. The novel also physically introduces the cephalopodic Titan nicknamed Kraken (officially named Na Kika in later MonsterVerse installments), which can camouflage theirself like a cuttlefish and even feign termination of life functions when they want to.
• Mauve Shirt: Besides Colonel Foster, three of her G-Team subordinates – Barnes, Martinez and Griffin – get relevant dialogue and characterization of their own, and they all survive the film whilst the rest of the team get wiped out. Master Sergeant Hendricks gets a few lines, but the movie doesn't expand on his character as much as the above three soldiers before Hendricks is killed by Ghidorah at the end of the first act (this is different in the novelization, which provides a full expansion of Hendricks' personality before he's killed off).
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: There's a hint in the film that seems to suggest the Chen twins have some kind of telepathic connection to Mothra, and their family descended from ancient Mothra-worshipping priestesses has a peculiar history of identical twin sisters in every recent generation. The novelization hints that Madison also forms a Psychic Link to Mothra during a near-death experience. Whilst the film leaves it ambiguous whether or not Mothra is really a supernatural goddess, either way the director has confirmed she possesses Born-Again Immortality.
• Mayincatec:
  • The map of the Monarch facilities around the world shows that the one in Peru is underneath Machu Picchu and that the Titan contained there is Quetzalcoatl. The only problem with this is that Machu Picchu is the most well known Inca ruin, while Quetzalcoatl is a deity from Aztec Mythology (although some other Titans with names of mythological entities are also in random places, such as the Greek Typhon in Cambodia, the Babylonian Tiamat in the state of Georgia, and the Hebrew Behemoth in Brazil).
  • The temple that enshrines Mothra's egg is a classical Mayan step-pyramid—it would be a picture-perfect example of Tikal architecture if it didn't lack the castle at the top of the structure. The fact that it's in the middle of China is the movie's first hint that an ancient, far-reaching civilization from antiquity once lived in symbiosis with the Titans.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Near the end of the movie, you'll know exactly why Godzilla means "God incarnate": After Mothra supercharges and balances Godzilla's internal radiation properties, he becomes Burning Godzilla and No-Sell Ghidorah's Gravity Beams and dominates the evil space dragon, and finally finishes him off by destroying his still-living head. Truly a god incarnate indeed.
  • According to the novelization, Mothra's species name, Mosura, means "giver of life" in the language on this universe's version of Infant Island. Given her benevolent and protective nature, she lives up to it.
  • King Ghidorah genuinely becomes the King of the Monsters after Godzilla's apparent death and thus makes his name fitting. His title, the One Who Is Many, is also meaningful, given his three heads and being an Alpha Titan, able to make the rest of the world's Titans act as extensions of his will.
  • Monarch's underwater HQ, Castle Bravo, is named after the codename for the first in the original series of atom bomb tests in the Bikini Atoll. In the film continuity, these tests were intended to kill Godzilla, but didn't even faze him.
• Mesopotamian Monstrosity: The films opens with a Logo Joke, showing the Legendary Pictures logo flanked by Mesopotamian-style carvings of a couple of the Titan characters. This foreshadows one of the movie's main themes: that ancient peoples were able to exist harmoniously with the Titans. Dr. Chen pulls up a barrage of digital images of ancient art, much of it Mesopotamian, when discussing her research into legends of Ghidorah's origin. Finally, the Underwater Ruins of the Godzilla-worshipping civilization in the Hollow Earth have a definite Mesopotamian influence to their architecture, with lamassu statues aplenty.
• Militaries Are Useless:
  • As with the last movie, when it comes to dealing with the Titans, the best that military can do is to annoy them with their weapons as both Ghidorah and Rodan shrug off their attacks. It gets even worse as the military eventually comes up with the Oxygen Destroyer, a weapon that could lethally damage the Titans, but then end up using it at the most inopportune time as they launch it at both Godzilla and Ghidorah during their second fight. The resulting fallout leaves Godzilla in a near death state, whereas Ghidorah was able to No-Sell it due to his alien origin. In other words, even if they didn't know about it until it was too late, the military basically assisted Ghidorah.
  • Subverted in the third act: once the plan becomes to resurrect Godzilla to defeat Ghidorah, the military keeps Rodan and Ghidorah busy to allow the operation to take place. During the final battle, they also back up Godzilla against Ghidorah, marking a rare moment in the franchise where the military and Godzilla are genuinely fighting on the same side.
• A Million Is a Statistic: The main cast don't emotionally dwell on nor react as much on the deaths of dozens to thousands of background extras, even if said extras are supposed to be their direct colleagues In-Universe, as they do on the deaths of their own (Serizawa, Graham and oh so especially Andrew Russell for the human heroes, Asher for the human villains); even if the sheer scope of the Titans killing millions of people in itself is Played for Horror. A lot of the sympathy we're expected to feel for the Russell family's tragedy (particularly Emma and Mark) is reliant on assuming that they're the only ones who lost a loved one and fell apart under the circumstances that they did and that they're owed special treatment, even though the film explicitly states that thousands of other people In-Universe went through the same thing.
• Misanthrope Supreme:
  • Actually downplayed by Jonah's partner Emma Russell. They revere the Titans, and they scorn the damage mankind has done to the environment and also the sorry affair that is Monarch and the government's legal battle over the Titans, but they emphasize during their Motive Rant that they want the human race to survive in some form; even if billions of collateral deaths have to occur amidst the Titans' forced reclamation of the planet. Part of how Emma justifies their actions is by claiming mankind will likely engineer our own extinction within the next century if the Titans can't restore Earth's natural balance, and Emma implies that they're appalled by the realization King Ghidorah will likely wipe out the human race entirely.
  • Alan Jonah is a much straighter example. Having repeatedly witnessed the worst of humanity in the worst warzones for decades, Jonah wants the Titans to kill off as much of the human race as possible (with the apparent exception of himself and his paramilitary), justifying the genocide of mankind as "saving" the planet at large from us. Jonah's disillusionment and hatred for humanity is so strong that he's perfectly fine with an unchecked Ghidorah exterminating us completely, and wreaking even more destruction on the Earth's environment than we would have.
• Misplaced Retribution: Mark blames Godzilla for the death of his son Andrew in the incidents of the last movie, even though the MUTOs were to blame for the destruction of San Francisco and Godzilla was actually the very one who stopped them. It's also implied, particularly in the novelization, that whether or not they're aware of it, Emma Russell's motivation for deciding to unleash the Titans is wanting the whole human race to suffer because they blame humanity for triggering the Titans' awakening via Dug Too Deep in the first place which led to her son's death.
• Missing Steps Plan:
  • The government wants to have the Titans wiped out while sleeping, but, as made explicit in the novelization, has no real clue how that would be done. Most of the Titans would only be made stronger by nuclear weapons and any other weapon humans have would only serve to make them angry, meaning the most likely result would be waking the Titans and making them mad, as happened with the male MUTO. While the Oxygen Destroyer might work, at least on some of them, it's also shown to have catastrophic ecological effects that would probably do more damage than the Titans would.
  • Narrowly avoided by Mark. In the wake of King Ghidorah's global takeover, he intends to ditch the other heroes and head out in a lone Osprey with nothing but a couple suitcases and the clothes on his back, to make a frustration-driven last-ditch effort to find Madison on his own – even though, as Sam Coleman points out to him, Mark has absolutely no idea where on the entire planet to even start looking for Madison by himself. Oh, and the world is currently in the midst of a global apocalypse with a human-hating three-headed dragon currently engulfing the planet in utter chaos – and the fact that the last intel Mark and Monarch got indicated that Madison is in the custody of a group of heavily-armed, cold-blooded misanthropic killers wherever she is. Fortunately, Mothra's timely arrival prevents Mark from going through. Possibly justified, since as far as the heroes know at this point, Godzilla is dead, and while taking out Ghidorah is mankind's best shot at survival, there's literally nothing available on Earth that can defeat Ghidorah with Godzilla gone and the majority of the other Titans under Ghidorah's command, meaning there isn't much reason to hold out hope and do much of anything except say goodbye to one's loved ones while one still can.
• Mission Briefing:
  • Subverted. During the Lecture as Exposition on Alan Jonah and Mothra's whereabouts, Colonel Foster starts to brief everyone on the G-Team's joint operation to Yunnan to prevent Jonah's mercs from capturing Mothra, but Mark interrupts the briefing to say he suspects (correctly) that Jonah is banking on Monarch to remain distracted focusing on Mothra whilst he and his mercs move on to their next target.
  • During the third act, Colonel Foster gives the rest of the G-Team a fast-paced run-down explaining King Ghidorah's presence in Washington DC and that all four branches of the military will work together to keep Ghidorah occupied as a decoy.
• Mistaken for Romance: When Mothra appears at Castle Bravo, Jackson Barnes asks if she is Godzilla's mate and is squicked out even after it's clarified that their relationship is likely symbiotic.
• Mr. Exposition: The 2014 movie's original expositors, Drs. Serizawa and Graham, return, although the latter is killed before the second act. King of the Monsters also introduces Dr. Ilene Chen, who exposits about the Titans (particularly their connections to ancient myth) and about Godzilla's home.
• Mix-and-Match Critters:
  • Rather than resembling an actual moth, Mothra combines features of wasps and praying mantises, giving her a more intimidating appearance than previous incarnations.
  • Rodan also combines aspects of birds of prey to go with his pterosaur-based look.
  • Behavior-wise Ghidorah displays a mix of various animals as well: his twin tails rattle like a rattlesnake, his wing-spreading posture is a threat display of many birds of prey, and the dominant and submissive behavior of his three heads is similar to pack behavior in wolves.
  • One of the new Titans, named Behemoth, resembles a cross between a woolly mammoth, a sloth, and an ape.
  • Another of the new Titans, Scylla, resembles a cross between a spider and a crab with a squid-like face.
• Monster Lord: Carrying on from Kong: Skull Island's exploration of Kong's semi-Darwinist relationship with Skull Island's creatures, this film expands on the concept of Alpha Titans: Kaiju which are in an elite weight class of their own beyond the standard Titans', and can bend the other Titans to their will once their dominance is asserted. The overall-benevolent Godzilla and the actively-malevolent Ghidorah are both Alpha Titans, more-explicitly portrayed as intelligent creatures than the other Titans are, and they apparently battled each-other in ancient times for the top spot over the other Titans. After awakening in the present day, Ghidorah succeeds in becoming King of the Monsters when Godzilla is taken out of action, directing the other Titans to rampage globally and destroy the world at his specific command, until Godzilla kills Ghidorah and gets the other Titans to literally bow to him.
• Monumental Damage:
  • According to the military, the Titans responding to King Ghidorah's call are explicitly attacking capital cities—Washington, Moscow, Berlin, etc. While the military believes these attacks to be random and wild, the pattern is not lost on Monarch's scientists.
  • Washington D.C. is completely wrecked, due to Ghidorah using it as a base of operations. One of the last wide shots we get to see of it shows only the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building standing as far as the eye can see, and the latter has chunks of it missing or on fire. Oh...and it's so completely flooded that battleships can run up close enough to fire on Ghidorah.
  • In the Final Battle in Boston, Fenway Park is instantly flattened as it becomes ground zero for the festivities. Then Mothra webs up Ghidorah to the 200 Clarendon skyscraper (formerly John Hancock Tower) and Godzilla tackles him through it, miraculously leaving the iconic Prudential Tower unscathed... at least until the entire city is leveled by Godzilla's final Nuclear Pulse. At one point, the city's famous Paul Revere statue is flung all the way from the North End to somewhere in the Theater District. It's also implied that, by making landfall in Boston via the Charles, all of the city's iconic bridges must have been torn to bits by Big G.
• Monumental Damage Resistance: Washington D.C. is ravaged by tornadoes, lightning bolts and floodwaters brought in by Ghidorah's hypercane (the waters are deep enough for a battleship to sail through the ruins), but the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol's (lightning-scorched) dome are still intact and fully visible above-water. In Boston, the iconic Paul Revere statue is somehow still in one piece after the city has been ravaged by four battling Titans and nuked thrice over by Fire Godzilla.
• Mordor: King Ghidorah quickly destroys Washington D.C. and turns it into his personal roost (with Rodan stationed beside him as his vanguard), whilst commanding the other Titans to continue wrecking the planet. The city is flooded in waters so deep that a Navy battleship can sail through it, the buildings emerging above the water are half-scorched, tornadoes and water spouts from Ghidorah's hypercane are dotted about the place, and only a bleak-looking amount of sunlight gets through at the horizon with Ghidorah's lightning-filled storm darkening the sky.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Downplayed with Ghidorah – if one looks closely, he has a few odd, displaced, smaller, vestigial-looking second teeth poking out of his gums around the main teeth. Played Straight with Mokele-Mbembe: in the novelization, he shows during his rampage that he has "thousands of teeth" inside his maw.
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: Basically the point of the Russells' character arc in the film. Mark is a reclusive, bitter, self-pitying wreck of a man with a hatred for all Titans five years after Andrew's death, and the crux of his Character Development is learning to make peace with Godzilla and let go of his grief. Emma, though she's become aloof and Workaholic and is clearly still hurting over the loss at times, seems like she's moved forward in a healthy and productive manner, until it turns out she if anything has taken their son's death even worse than Mark in the ensuing half a decade; deciding in evident Sanity Slippage that the way to honor her son's death is by releasing all the Titans indiscriminately to ravage humanity and restore an ancient coexistence whilst betraying all her friends and colleagues, and deciding she has the right to decide the fates of billions, and her actions unwittingly release an even worse threat on the planet in the form of Ghidorah.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: With the existence of Kaiju revealed to the world and with rumors spreading that Monarch are actively hiding many more live Titans, The Government and most of the traumatized public are calling for the Titans' blood before another Hawaii, Las Vegas or San Francisco happens; overlooking Monarch's warnings that trying to eradicate the Titans will likely do humanity more harm than good in the end, and underestimating just how ineffective our species' arsenal is against grown Titans. Even Mark Russell, who has a far more practical understanding of the Titans than most, is blinded by his rage at times to the greater-scope problems with trying to kill the creatures; proposing when he's off on one of his tirades that Monarch killing every last Titan while they're dormant will render the ORCA useless to the eco-terrorists (ignoring the high probability Monarch would miss some of the Titans and... oh yeah, the fact that Monarch don't even conclusively know if they can kill the Titans and not just cause a repeat of what happened when they tried to electrocute Hokmuto).
• Mysterious Antarctica: Monarch found King Ghidorah frozen in ice there.
• Mythology Gag: Enough for its own page.
• Named by the Adaptation: Several characters and Rodan's volcano (El Nido del Demonio or The Demon's Nest) get this in the novelization.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Besides the above example with Rodan's volcano, this is lampshaded with Rodan's Red Baron, which he proves in the film is a name he earns:
  Ilene Chen: Local legends call it Rodan, the Fire Demon.
  Mark Russell: That's comforting(!)
• Narrow Annihilation Escape:
  • Mark and the G-Team barely make it out of the Antarctica outpost when it's collapsing into the ice in time to avoid going down with it. They're almost literally racing to outrun the splinters forming in the ice beneath their feet before they get clear of the collapse.
  • The G-Team and the Isla de Mara evacuees onboard Griffin's Osprey escape the island – now in the midst of a volcanic eruption, which the novelization states would have surely killed everyone if they'd stayed there – and their badly-damaged Osprey is seconds away from losing power and dropping into the ocean when they make it into the Argo's hangar. The can't-go-back part is subverted in the stinger, which shows the islanders have returned to Isla de Mara and are operating out of an intact warehouse sometime after the movie's plot was resolved, although it's made clear that their livelihoods have been annihilated, so they might soon abandon the island again.
  • The Advanced Ancient Acropolis in the Hollow Earth gets obliterated by a nuclear explosion shortly after the human cast find it. It's the find of the century if not the millennium, but the only way to save the world from certain destruction by King Ghidorah involves nuking the place. The heroes' submarine barely makes it clear of the explosion, suffering severe turbulence, and their sub is dead in the water after surfacing.
  • At the movie's end, Mark, Madison and most of the main cast start getting the hell out of dodge at the tail end of the Final Battle, which occurs in the Russells' former hometown of Boston. Mark and Madison get a view from a safe distance as the city is completely levelled and irradiated by Burning Godzilla's Nuclear Pulses in order to kill King Ghidorah for good.
• Natural Disaster Cascade: When King Ghidorah usurps Godzilla's position as the ruling alpha of Earth's Titans, he leads the Titans to inflict this all around the world, threatening to cause an extinction event. We don't see much of the global destruction beyond brief glimpses on video feeds and Ghidorah's spreading Weather Manipulation causing stormy weather around the world, but Admiral Stenz reports the Titans are causing "earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis, and disasters we don't even have names for yet." The novelization goes into further detail, explicitly noting that if Ghidorah remains unopposed, the global destruction is liable to wipe out all multicellular life except the Titans.
• Nature Is Not a Toy:
  • The human heroes criticize the eco-terrorists' (mostly Emma's) plan to forcibly accelerate the Titans' awakenings and manipulate them into restoring the ecosphere, because no-one has a sufficient understanding of what they're tampering with: each Titan is a living natural disaster in its own right, and the consequences in the probable event that humans make one wrong move could be even more cataclysmic than the eco-terrorists' intended projections already are. It turns out that the eco-terrorists have majorly fucked up by awakening Monster Zero (a rival Alpha Titan about whom far too little was known): Monster Zero/Ghidorah forcibly takes control of the other Titans for his own wants, and he commands them to begin razing down humanity's cities and the global ecosystems. Even Alan Jonah calls Emma out for genuinely believing that they could control nature on such a scale, making it clear that he always suspected there was a chance they would lose control and he was fine with it so long as devastation to humanity was assured.
  • If you look carefully in the movie, it's clearly revealed that the Advanced Ancient Humans who originally coexisted with Titans attempted to enslave them as beasts of war — which naturally led to several of the Titans rebelling, which in turn led to a global cataclysm which ultimately triggered an ice age and irreversibly reduced those of the ancient humans that survived to scattered remnants around the world.
• Nature Lover: The Russell family have an appreciation for nature, which ties into their interactions with the Titans. Mark Russell starts the film as a particularly cynical version, having run off to the mountains and pushed all his human connections away in order to immerse himself in wildlife photography as a way to block out his unresolved grief. Madison and Emma Russell, however, are introduced based in a rainforest in China interacting (more or less) peacefully with Mothra, and Madison's Monarch Sciences bio clarifies that she has a lifelong passion for insectology and the outdoors generally.
• Near-Villain Victory: Rodan comes close to finishing off Mothra during their fight, and Ghidorah almost wins and dooms the Earth twice.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The trailer makes it seem Jonah's line "Long live the king" is referring to Godzilla and is some kind of badass one-liner or quip. He's actually referring to Ghidorah, and it's actually a moment of wistful realization that the Evil Plan is officially Off the Rails.
  • Several shots in the trailers also seem to set Rodan up as the hero we know from the Toho films. While he's not exactly an outright villain, he's also a destructive sadist who spends a decent chunk of the film as Ghidorah's Dragon.
  • The second trailer shows a scene of Emma contacting Monarch urging them to free Godzilla as it's their only chance, painting her in a heroic light. In the film itself, not only does she never once advocating freeing Godzilla to stop Ghidorah, as this happens after Godzilla is presumed dead due to the Oxygen Destroyer and Ghidorah awakening the Titans, this is where she fully reveals her Insane Troll Logic, her utter hypocrisy, and her increasingly feeble attempt to claim the moral high ground in front of Monarch and her husband, even it's already pretty clear at this point she's just full of it.
• Nice Guy:
  • Sam Coleman is a friendly, if meek and stuttering guy, who seems unusually determined to be Mark Russell's friend despite the latter's initially unreceptive attitude. Despite his timid demeanor, he can pull his crap together in the face of the Titans' awakening when it really matters.
  • Vivienne Graham in particular seems to be a sympathetic ear to Mark, when she isn't getting exasperated at his "kill Godzilla because he killed my son" tirades. In the official novelization, Serizawa considers Graham "more compassion[ate] than anyone he'd ever met."
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • The heroes decide to lure Rodan away from mainland Mexico, a plan that somehow involves baiting the monster into flying right over the nearby, heavily populated city—with predictable results for the unfortunate city.
  • The heroes lead Rodan to King Ghidorah in hopes that they'll kill each other. After Ghidorah beats him up badly, Rodan ends up becoming The Dragon to Ghidorah as a result, which allows Ghidorah to summon him to counter Mothra's interference. Had they not done so, it's likely Mothra and Godzilla may have defeated Ghidorah in much quicker time during the Final Battle.
  • Admiral Stenz and the military, just like the last time that the former got involved. As Godzilla and Ghidorah are fighting off the coast of Mexico, the military deploys an Oxygen Destroyer in hopes that it'll kill both of them. Not only does Ghidorah completely No-Sell it (presumably because of his alien nature), but it severely weakens, and almost kills Godzilla, the only one capable of challenging Ghidorah. Even more so given Godzilla had the Homefield Advantage on Ghidorah underwater and potentially could have won then and there. Martinez lampshades the stupidity of this.
    • Not only that, but removing the sole threat to King Ghidorah's reign, even temporarily, results in him awakening the remaining Titans, the very thing everyone was trying their hardest to avoid. Sure, Godzilla wins in the end but it's not like they're all going to just go back underground.
    • Additionally, it's indicated the Oxygen Destroyer's fallout is responsible for crippling the island fishermen's livelihoods, which in turn leads them to selling Ghidorah's dredged-up severed head to Alan Jonah.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: After Ghidorah is completely destroyed, the numerous Titans he awoke remain awake, now answering to Godzilla as their new alpha, and are healing the damage to Earth's ecosystems not only caused by Ghidorah but also by humanity beforehand. Bare in mind, before this, Monarch was on its last legs short of being shut down by the anti-Titan military and government, and with all the Titans awake and ready to defend themselves, delusions of the military euthanizing the Titans in their sleep (and likely screwing the Earth's future overall) are now a pipe dream. One could argue that The Extremist Was Right and they just royally awoke the wrong Titan first.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The three living members of the Russell family. Madison deeply admires and connects with benevolent Titans, yet she also fiercely cares about innocent lives to the point where she risks her own life and limb helping to stop Ghidorah (Nice). Emma is willing to sentence billions of people (including all her friends and her daughter's father) to death entirely of her own volition for what she believes to be the greater good, whilst emotionally manipulating her daughter into being complicit in mass murder and attempted mass genocide, and even her claims that she's serving the greater good are implied to be taking her grief out on the world in a monstrous manner (Mean). Mark is a cynical, whiny, self-pitying blowhard who rants about being entitled to see Godzilla killed, but he's aghast at the idea of letting innocent people die and at what Emma has been putting Madison through (Inbetween).
• The Night That Never Ends: The novelization confirms the film's suggestions that Ghidorah's spreading storms during the Apocalypse How threaten to cause a form of this. Specifically, the decreased daylight reaching the planet's surface due to the storms perpetually covering the skies would've on its own been enough to have the effect of a nuclear winter, causing the majority of plant and animal life to die off.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Averted. Ghidorah's nature as an extraterrestrial life form means that his biology defies all laws of known biology. Notably, being a space creature not requiring oxygen to survive and likely not even having any oxygen-containing compounds in his cells, he is rendered completely immune to the Oxygen Destroyer's effects.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male:
  • Although they only interact with each-other briefly, Godzilla and Rodan play this dynamic off of each-other when Rodan challenges Godzilla, before a threat from the latter makes Rodan back off. Godzilla is perfectly willing to fight if it's necessary, but he never does so without provocation if there's no threat to himself and Earth's natural order. Rodan is overly eager to pick a fight with anything, he doesn't always think as quickly as he acts, and he only cares about Earth's natural balance insofar as whichever Alpha Titan he's currently following cares about it.
  • Amongst the human heroes, Serizawa and Mark frequently interact and they show contrasting personalities. Serizawa is sophisticated, stoic, compassionate, and one of the few people whom are well-aware of the Titans' importance in the bigger picture (the Noble Male). Mark is cynical, rude, Hot-Blooded, and self-absorbed in his own anger and anguish, but also very conscious of the death and destruction that the Titans are capable of due to his first-hand experience of a Titan attack (the Roguish Male).
• No Body Left Behind: Implied to be Emma's ultimate fate. Even if she didn't die of her mortal wounds, she may very well have been disintegrated by Burning Godzilla's first blast.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Outside of Godzilla and Mothra, it seems to be that at least the majority of the non-alpha titans seen in the film are normally not antagonistic towards humans, with even Rodan only attacking after Monarch struck him first, and they only caused destruction at Ghidorah’s command when he became the Alpha out of fear and were immediately prepared to submit to the more benign Godzilla after he killed him.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: Jonah kills Dr. Mancini at arm's length with a headshot. Later, a variation occurs when Ghidorah's side heads restrain Rodan by the latter's wings while the middle head fires his Gravity Beam (a devastating energy weapon which can instantaneously disintegrate humans and buildings at long range) point-blank at Rodan's chest, immediately finishing the fight between them.
• No-Sell:
  • In the novelization, Kong senses King Ghidorah's call for the other Titans to join his army and ignores it. The Skullcrawlers, on the other hand, eagerly respond, so Kong fights them to stop them from leaving Skull Island.
  • The Oxygen Destroyer, while super-effective against Godzilla, has little to no effect whatsover on Ghidorah. In fact, it indirectly causes more harm than good, since it enables Ghidorah to start the film's Apocalypse How.
  • When Godzilla achieves his Fire form, he effortlessly shrugs off Ghidorah's blasts.
• Not Enough to Bury: Naturally, this happens a lot with gigantic monsters, but special attention goes to Ghidorah who goes out of his way to blast humans to unrecognizable ashes with his heads' Gravity Beams instead of causing accidental collateral. Mothra is reduced to radioactive ashes when she tanks all three of Ghidorah's Gravity Beams at once. Godzilla ultimately inflicts this trope on Ghidorah as a requirement due to the latter's Healing Factor, vaporizing his entire body piece by piece, although The Stinger reveals there's still a (seemingly-)dead leftover head that was decapitated earlier in the film.
• Not Quite Dead:
  • A heroic example occurs with Godzilla, who flatlines and is presumed dead after being crippled by the Oxygen Destroyer, until Mothra makes the human cast aware that Godzilla is still alive.
  • Humorously subverted in the final battle in Boston. Godzilla unleashes devastating nuclear pulses that vaporize most of Ghidorah's body. After the last pulse, the dust settles for a bit... and Ghidorah emerges from the ruins of a building, having apparently recovered already! Then more rubble falls away, revealing it's just Godzilla swinging Ghidorah's severed head around. That head is still alive somehow, but Godzilla finishes him off with no problem.
  • The end credits montage reveals that Mothra laid an egg sometime before her Heroic Sacrifice, and the in-universe newspapers speculate that the offspring could be Mothra's reincarnation or something else^note maybe Battra.
• Not the Intended Use: It's proven in the ending that the Titans serve the purpose of maintaining and aiding the Earth's ecological balance, but Ghidorah instead forces the Titans to aid it in destroying the very planet that they're meant to maintain.
• Nuclear Option: Monarch deliver a nuclear warhead to Godzilla in the Hollow Earth and manually detonate it to massively speed up his Healing Factor so he can defeat King Ghidorah.
• Nuke 'em: The military launching their prototype Oxygen Destroyer in an attempt to kill Ghidorah and Rodan (and only notifying Monarch once the weapon is on its way, making the latter unable to do anything about it but flee to a safe distance) crosses straight into this territory, given that they were firing an untested prototype a few miles away from a populated island, and seemingly didn't bother to get a status update from Monarch on the situation's details before acting. It backfires horribly, as Ghidorah is unaffected by the weapon due to his literal Bizarre Alien Biology, whilst Godzilla is severely crippled and rendered near-dead by the Oxygen Destroyer; and without Godzilla to fight him off, Ghidorah is able to hijack control of all the other Titans and promptly begin destroying man and nature alike. The Stinger furthermore indicates that the weapon's use has wiped out all marine life around the island, which has furthermore destroyed the local fishermen's livelihoods. Martinez lampshades how horribly wrong this has gone.

O-P

• Obvious Villain, Secret Villain: The eco-terrorists' Big Bad Duumvirate. Alan Jonah, introduced massacring a Monarch outpost including a surrendering scientist in cold blood, is a former colonel and MI6 agent gone rogue, and Monarch have had trouble with him before which makes him known to them, as depicted in the spin-off graphic novel Godzilla: Aftershock and the Monarch Sciences website. His co-conspirator, however, is a complete surprise to everyone: Emma Russell is a highly-respected member of Monarch's own, a family member to two of the movie's main human heroes, and seemingly a Kidnapped Scientist, but then it's revealed that she's willingly been in cahoots with Jonah since before the movie's start, to the shock and initial confusion of the rest of the cast.
• Odd Friendship: The relationship between Godzilla's species and Mothra's species. Monarch scientists theorize that the two may have a symbiotic relationship, though judging by Mothra's willingness to sacrifice herself to protect Godzilla and Godzilla's Roaring Rampage of Revenge after Ghidorah kills her, it's visible how the two may actually genuinely care for each other beyond just mere biological symbiosis.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • During the film's third act, King Ghidorah has an entire army of awakened Titans rampaging around the world in his name, tearing down cities and creating disasters of biblical proportions. But with the exceptions of Ghidorah and Rodan's raw destruction in Washington D.C. and Boston (and also Mokele-Mbembe's rampage in the Sudan in the novelization's expansion); all we see of the other Titans' respective rampages in other locations are (A) Scylla and Methuselah's (and more Titans' in the novel) emergences from their resting places, and (B) brief glimpses of video feeds of the onscreen Titans tearing through skyscrapers on monitors.
  • The military's battle against Rodan and King Ghidorah in a destroyed Washington D.C. largely occurs offscreen: we only see the moment before the battle begins, and when we next cut back to D.C., Ghidorah and Rodan have already annihilated most of the fleet. Downplayed in the novelization, which shows more of the battle's beginning and ending.
• Off with His Head!: Ghidorah loses his left head to Godzilla in the Mexico battle. However, given his powers of regeneration, it later grows back. Burning Godzilla's Nuclear Pulse incinerates his side heads and then his entire body, leaving his still living center head to be incinerated by Godzilla's Atomic Breath.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • In Antarctica, Mark is visibly dismayed when Emma and Madison don't come to him while he has Jonah pinned at gunpoint – then when he realizes that Emma is about to free Monster Zero from his icy tomb, Mark slowly looks over at the silhouette of Ghidorah behind the glacial wall in abject horror as he realizes it's about to be freed.
  • When Ghidorah charges up his Breath Weapon with all three heads' gazes set murderously on the G-Team, Master Sergeant Hendricks barely has time to get out a dismayed "Oh shi-" before Ghidorah's lightning blasts reduce him to ashes.
  • In the novelization's expansion of the Washington D.C. battle, Rodan at one point disappears from the G-Team's sights while they're trying to get his attention. Cue the following:
    "Oh, shit!" Martinez yelped. "Above us, nine o'clock!" Barnes glanced up to see the monster, filling half the sky, wings folded at its sides, diving straight toward them.
  • When Madison realises Ghidorah is looking through the Fenway Stadium window right at her, all she can do is slowly turn around to stare the Three-Headed Devil in the eye, then whisper "Oh, shit" and make a run for it. In the novelization, she has a significantly less nightmare Fuel-filled mental freak-out when she realizes her mother is about to catch her emailing Mark in the beginning.
  • Dr. Rick Stanton's response when he sees the Argo's instruments indicating that Godzilla, juiced up on the full power of a hydrogen warhead, is overloading and is on a countdown to going thermonuclear, at which point he'll explode like an atom bomb: "Oh, boy!"
  • When Ghidorah's middle head spies a power station in the middle of their battle, Godzilla of all characters has this reaction as his three-headed nemesis supercharges himself: the Big G turns his head with an almost confused purr and his facial features shift to an almost disturbed expression.
  • Look closely at Ghidorah's left head in the shot after Emma's Last Words, and you can see that head in particular fearing (rightly) that the three of them are screwed with Burning Godzilla approaching. The left head continues to look terrified and hesitant for the short remainder of his life before he's obliterated, in contrast to how the other two heads at least try to put on a brave face.
  • When Burning Godzilla obliterates both of Ghidorah's side heads, the middle head seems to become visibly terrified. After the final Nuclear Pulse obliterates Ghidorah's body, you can see the confusion in this head's face as he emerges from the rubble, unsure of what's happened, then the freak-out when Godzilla emerges with the now-bodiless head's neck stump in his jaws. The middle head spends its final moments shrieking at a particularly-high pitch that none of Ghidorah's heads used throughout the film, indicating he's in blatant terror as Godzilla destroys the last head.
• The Old Gods: The Titans are given this air to them, and several times outright called 'the First Gods.'
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Most of the themes have Japanese chants in the background, but primary note to Ghidorah's, with the chanting being an actual Buddhist sutra (the Heart Sutra specifically) to represent his theme of annihilation.^note  As an added bonus, the ones who recorded the track were real Tibetan monks.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Ghidorah turns out to be more intelligent, and also (true to form) a lot more destructive than the previous movies' monster antagonists could be. From the moment he's awoken by the eco-terrorists, Ghidorah starts intentionally killing any and all humans who cross his path, regardless of them being unable to pose a threat to him. But upon usurping domination of the other Titans distributed around the world, King Ghidorah commands them all to actively tear through human cities and trigger disasters on every continent, while Ghidorah himself generates massive storms including a Category 6 hurricane, threatening to cause global extinction. It's speculated that because Ghidorah is an alien, the three-headed dragon's goal is xenoforming the Earth to be more fitting for his own tastes at the expense of all other life. The novelization further suggests that the other Titans will also die away due to Ghidorah's actions if he remains dominant, and that Ghidorah will try to annihilate everything in the Hollow Earth as well once there's nothing left on the surface that's worth destroying.
• One Myth to Explain Them All: Dr. Chen's notes in the novelization theorize that the Titans — particularly Godzilla and Ghidorah — are the originators of various mythological creatures.
  • Godzilla and other members of his species inspired Dagon from Semitic mythology, Ryujin from Japanese mythology, the Mimlos-whale of Pacific Northwest mythology, etc.
  • Ghidorah inspired the Lernaean Hydra from Greek mythology, the Zmey Gorynych from Slavic folklore, the Yamata-no-Orochi from Japanese mythology, the Thunderbird of indiginous North American cultures, etc.
• One-Steve Limit: In the novelization, there's another Rick besides Dr. Stanton working for Monarch, located at the outpost containing Scylla.
• Only I Can Kill Him: Godzilla is stated to be the only thing capable of defeating King Ghidorah. This is because Godzilla is the only kaiju strong enough to beat him and humanity's strongest weapon amounts to a No-Sell on Ghidorah. This leads to the Darkest Hour when Godzilla is seemingly killed, leaving Ghidorah completely unopposed.
• Only Sane by Comparison:
  • Remember what Admiral Stenz was like when we first saw him back in Godzilla (2014)? Well, when you put him next to the senators who represent the U.S. government in this film, he certainly comes off as this trope. Sure, he's narrow-minded and ultimately ignorant, and he continues to show a Nuke 'em tendency and a downplayed General Ripper tendency in King of the Monsters, but he at least tries to be as reasonable as he's capable of being, and he actually recognizes Monarch as experts to be heard out. The U.S. senate by comparison laugh off the idea of coexisting with Godzilla as anything other than his zookeeper, and they and the government overall seem to have no higher priority on their mind than Gotta Kill 'Em All to make humanity's existence feel more comfortable in the short term, practically turning a deaf ear to the statement that humanity need coexistence with the Titans for their own survival. Stenz himself seems to almost realize what a bunch of Lethally Stupid idiots he's answering to when he looks shocked at the senators' laughter.
  • Humorously enough, one of Ghidorah's three heads gets this treatment. Whereas the side heads are a Fearless Fool and a distractible Genius Ditz, Ichi (the middle head) seems to be the most intelligent and quick-acting of the three heads. But he's also apparently the most gleefully sadistic of the three, based on his frequent Slasher Smiles, him making a meagre bean-sized snack out of Dr. Graham while she was running away from him, and him being the head who's leading the trio as they seek to create an extinction event (with Word of God supporting the notion that at least San/Kevin the left head would probably not be so interested in world domination if he was separate of Ichi).
• Opposites Attract: Deconstructed. Mark and Emma had an unpleasant Grief-Induced Split after losing a child – which Real Life studies have found usually only occurs if the grieving couple's relationship already had further underlying problems beforehand^note otherwise, it's more likely that the shared suffering will actually strengthen the couple's bonds – and we see a lot of personality contrasts between them in the present.
  • Mark is a brunette with a square-shaped facial structure, whereas Emma is a blonde with a heart-shaped face.
  • Mark thinks that humans should leave nature alone, and that mankind shouldn't be tampering with things they don't understand. Emma believes that attempting to long-term save the world at large is worth ruthlessly tampering with nature on a massive scale in a hamstrung manner.
  • Mark is, at his best, wary and leery of all Titans including the Big Good, because of their destructive capacities, and he thinks the world is better off without them in it. Whereas Emma believes that humans are ultimately more of a threat to the world than the Titans are, and that restoring balance to the world and ensuring mankind's long-term survival is worth actively setting loose as many Titans as possible to let them reclaim the Earth and cause collateral mass devastation, and she underestimates the possibility that some of the Titans she targets are just as dangerous for the world's balance as the MUTOs and Skullcrawlers were if not more.
  • After Andrew's death, Mark chose to run away from his duties as a Monarch operative and everything that reminded him of the Titan attack. Emma instead felt obligated to stay on and commit herself to finding a long-term "solution" to the disaster and its looming future repeats.
  • Mark is Hot-Blooded, impulsive, self-centered, and prone to throwing pity parties, but he wears his spite, rage and grief over Andrew's death on his sleeve for everyone around him to see. Whereas Emma is a ruthless, cold-blooded schemer who fancies herself a master manipulator; she's been lying to everyone including herself about the true extent of her unresolved grief, to the point where she all but went mad and she's the only one who can't recognize her own instability, and she feels she's working towards the greater good despite her motivations being secretly selfish.
  • Mark is disgusted at the mere thought of people being collateral damage of a Titan's presence, whereas Emma has no such reservations when she forcibly accelerates the Titans' awakenings, knowing full well that hundreds to billions of people around the world will be in the firing line.
  • Mark initially blames all the Titans, especially Godzilla, for Andrew's death in Godzilla and the MUTOs' 2014 conflict. Emma instead blames humanity for causing and continuing to cause the Titans' re-emergences in the first place via our ecologically-unsustainable practices, and our refusal to do anything to address them.

• Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: The MonsterVerse's trend continues. Bunyip and Mokele-Mbembe are among the seventeen known Titans, and the novelization links Behemoth to the South American cryptid Mapinguary.
• Our Dragons Are Different:
  • Ghidorah, of course; a three-headed alien kaiju that crashed on Earth during the last Age of the Titans. He has three heads, two tails, Psycho Electro powers, the ability to generate enormous super-storms, and a Healing Factor more powerful than any earthly Titan's.
  • Discussed by Dr. Chen and Mark, the former mentioning that the iteration of dragons as destructive monstrosities was mainly a western concept, whereas in eastern cultures dragons were sacred and revered as much more benevolent entities — highlighting the contrast between Ghidorah and Godzilla.
    Mark Russel: I don't suppose your family has any tips on slaying dragons, do they?
    Ilene Chen: "Slaying dragons" is a western concept. In the East, they are sacred. Divine creatures who brought wisdom, strength, even redemption.
• Our Hero Is Dead: A hero seemingly dies at the end of the movie's second act, instigating the Halfway Plot Switch where things go From Bad to Worse. Godzilla is seemingly killed by the Oxygen Destroyer, to Monarch's dismay, and without him around to continue challenging Ghidorah, the three-headed dragon takes control of the other Titans around the world and he begins having his own way with the planet. Fortunately, it turns out Godzilla survived and retreated into the Hollow Earth, but he's severely weakened as Monarch come to his aid.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: The new titans are pretty bizarre-looking, namely Scylla, resembling a cross between a crustacean, a spider, and a squid, Behemoth, who combines features of mammoths, gorillas and sloths, and Methuselah, who is essentially a walking mountain.
• Our Titans Are Different: The monsters are now referred to as Titans.
• Outliving One's Offspring:
  • The Plot-Triggering Death of the elder Russell child amidst a Titan battle five years ago led to Emma and Mark divorcing, and it remains the primary source of both their angst throughout the film. Mark has pushed away everyone who might help him, isolated himself, and bitterly pins the blame for his son's death on Godzilla because the latter is the only still-living Titan that was involved in the battle. Emma on the other hand has seemingly productively moved on, but she's clearly still haunted and implicitly depressed – then it's revealed that Emma has actually been taking Andrew's death much worse than Mark did.
  • In the novelization, Jonah reveals that he himself tragically outlived his own child in his backstory. His daughter Lindy was abducted and brutally murdered while he was away on a tour of duty, which marked the turning point of Jonah's descent into darkness.
• Outside-Context Problem: In-Universe, Monarch is puzzled by Ghidorah's uncharacteristic malice, and his unusual powers such as his Healing Factor, which they describe in-film as "biologically impossible". When they find legends that claim Ghidorah is a "great dragon who fell from the stars", they deduce he must be some kind of extraterrestrial lifeform, which is why he's so different to the other Titans on Earth. It's also what derails Emma's plan. Even though she's got a point about the Earth's Titans "restoring the balance," Ghidorah is not part of that balance, and his awakening is not a good thing for the Earth.
• Overpopulation Crisis: Eco-Terrorist Emma Russell brings this up in their Motive Rant projecting the Earth's future if humanity remains dominant instead of the Titans; explaining that their motive behind releasing all the Titans is so they'll restore the natural balance and force what humans aren't killed during the mass awakening back into an ecologically-sustainable coexistence with the Titans.
• Parallel Conflict Sequence: A minor case during the Final Battle: whilst Godzilla and Ghidorah are duking it out, their respective sidekicks Rodan and Mothra engages in their own battle across Boston, although it's shorter-lived than the main battle.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Rodan and especially Ghidorah very much, and Godzilla still causes some unintentional or necessary mass destruction during his fights.
• Pet the Dog:
  • As evil as he is, Jonah has a couple moments, such as attempting to amuse Madison in the elevator and possibly also (depending on Alternative Character Interpretation) when he lets Emma go with one of his people's Hummvees.
  • Emma has a subtle Rewatch Bonus one early in the film, where she attempts to convince a Monarch scientist to go take a break shortly before Jonah's assault arrives.
  • Downplayed when Ghidorah sees humans for the first time since awakening: the left head's (San/Kevin's) response to the humans shooting at him is to lean down and basically nuzzle them with his chin, and he only stops once the middle head (Ichi) physically pushes him back in line. Then all three of Ghidorah's heads atomize the humans by firing their gravity beams as one. This establishes that San/Kevin is less malice-driven, more curious and more childish than the other two heads.
• Pillar of Light: Godzilla makes one with his atomic breath as a "call to arms".
• Plot Armor: The number of main character deaths that take place in this film can be counted on one hand, with fingers left over. This is despite the fact that every main character remains squarely in the center of whatever action is being depicted throughout the course of the story, while literally all of the others who are not main characters are being picked off like flies.
  • There's also King Ghidorah stopping to momentarily glare at Emma and Madison respectively when he located either of them in Boston, in contrast to the way he killed Vivienne Graham in Antarctica. Probably justified by Ghidorah being personally pissed at either of them for using the ORCA against him.

• Plot Parallel:
  • Godzilla and Mothra coming to humanity's aid when we need them most despite our species' alienated feelings toward the Titans we once worshipped, and Mothra giving her life against Ghidorah to that end; parallels Mark and Emma coming to save their daughter when she needs them most despite her alienated feelings towards her once-happy parents, and Emma giving her life to help stop Ghidorah to that end.
  • Serizawa's brief interaction with Godzilla during his Heroic Sacrifice can be construed as Japan symbolically coming to terms with atomic weapons after being traumatized and haunted by the WWII atomic bombings for years. Just minutes later, Mark finally comes to terms with Godzilla and the death of his son after being traumatized and haunted by them for years.
  • The film aims to portray Mark and Emma's respective plot threads in this light, the ex-couple spending most of the movie separated from each-other and even on opposing moral alignments. Mark is outwardly angry and hurting over their son's death with unprocessed grief, he blames Godzilla for his perceived role in the tragedy and wants him to pay, he finds that him getting his wish unleashes King Ghidorah on the world, and him trying to fix his mistakes by saving his daughter and making peace with Godzilla is portrayed as his "redemption". Emma is inwardly angry and hurting over their son's death with unprocessed grief, she blames humanity for their perceived role in the tragedy and wants us to pay, she finds that achieving her plans for this unleashes King Ghidorah on the world, and her trying to fix her mistakes by saving her daughter and sacrificing herself to help stop Ghidorah is portrayed as her "redemption".
• Plot-Triggering Death: The entire plot of the movie begins with the death of Andrew Russell. Mark Russell divorces himself from his family and hates Godzilla for the death of his son, while Emma goes out of her way to communicate with monsters in order to keep them in line, but she also makes a deal with Alan Jonah to raid every Monarch facility to awaken every Titan on Earth, including King Ghidorah, to "cleanse the Earth". Madison points out unleashing the monsters is not something Andrew wanted.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Dr. Rick Stanton among the Monarch key brass, and Barnes among Monarch's military G-Team, are either team's token source of mood-lightening jokes.
• Post-Apocalyptic Traffic Jam: One brief shot in the film shows that Boston has one when Ghidorah is commanding the Titans to help it raze the planet, and it's also mentioned in the novelization.
• Posthumous Villain Victory: A positive case since The Extremist Was Right. The eco-terrorist Emma Russell (the only eco-terrorist to have a Heel Realization once their actions in awakening Ghidorah lead to the latter threatening all complex life on Earth) dies pulling a Redemption Equals Death, distracting King Ghidorah until the three-headed monster fatally injures them. After Emma's death, the very goal they set out to achieve has been reached: the awakened Titans around the world regenerating the ecosphere, whilst humans and Titans are at a peaceful coexistence. Note that Emma's goal is only achieved after their death, when Ghidorah is slain by Godzilla, since it's only under Godzilla's direction that the Titans stay away from population centers while renewing the ecosphere whereas Ghidorah was forcing the Titans to purely destroy everything.
• Power Glows: A recurring theme with the Titans. When Godzilla charges his atomic breath, his back spines glow blue. When Mothra uses her "god rays," her wings glow with blinding white light. And, in a new twist, Ghidorah's necks visibly glow with yellow light as he charges up his gravity beams. Godzilla's blue glow gets more and more pronounced as the final fight with Ghidorah progresses, with Rick counting down Exact Time to Failure before Godzilla goes nuclear thanks to the excess energy of the nuke used to jump-start his regeneration. When this combined with Mothra's Heroic Sacrifice causes him to enter Fire mode, his whole body glows red with firey atomic heat.
• Power Trio:
  • Subverted in that Rodan is loyal to Ghidorah until Godzilla kills him, so out of the original heroic trio from Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla and Mothra are the only ones fighting against Ghidorah. That being said, by the end of the movie Rodan has sworn his allegiance to Godzilla and a new Mothra egg has been discovered/created, so it's possible a future film will see the Power Trio together again.
  • Played Straight by Ghidorah's three independent-minded heads, who form a Terrible Trio and Freudian Trio.
• Precision F-Strike: Barnes gets the film's single allotted F when he sees Ghidorah first emerge from the Antarctic Ice:
  You gotta be fucking kidding me.
• Predatory Big Pharma: Dr. Rick Stanton mentions pharmaceutical organizations among the list of organizations and agencies that might try to poach a live Titan for resources or research material, or otherwise trade in such via the new Titan DNA black market.
• Pride: "The arrogance of man" is still very much in play, from the Eco-Terrorists' plan to forcibly awaken all the Titans and belief they can control them with the ORCA, to the government and military's Suicidal Overconfidence about killing off the Titans, both of which enable Ghidorah to jump-start the Apocalypse How.
• Properly Paranoid: Now that the world is aware that giant creatures exist among them, this serves as Paranoia Fuel for people to speculate whether there are more out there, whether there are Titans that aim to protect humans, and whether there are those that mean to threaten mankind. Cue King Ghidorah, Rodan, and several other kaiju. There's also the question of how many Titans there are, where they are sleeping, and what might wake them up. Imagine your city is built on the back of a giant monster, and what will happen to your house if said giant monster decides to start moving again. On the other side, the military's use of the Oxygen Destroyer makes the eco-terrorists look Properly Paranoid in their concerns that the military could actually succeed in killing the Titans if they tried.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: During the Final Battle, after his wings are incinerated, Ghidorah desperately attempts to fend an approaching Burning Godzilla off by blasting all three heads' Gravity Beams at him in close range. Burning Godzilla No-Sells it, and what's more he almost seems to give Ghidorah a Slasher Smile in response; before he delivers the next three phases of Ghidorah's Rasputinian Death.

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