Godzilla King Of The Monsters 2019 / Tropes Q to Z

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:

R

• Rasputinian Death: Burning Godzilla kills Ghidorah by blasting him with his Nuclear Pulse over and over, the first incinerating his wings, then his side heads, and then finally his entire body in an explosion that levels a huge radius. This still isn't enough, as his severed center head is still alive, so Godzilla bites down on its neck stump and fires his Atomic Breath point blank until he's nothing but atoms. Justified, as Ghidorah's Healing Factor practically requires his death to be this.
• Readings Are Off the Scale:
  • Admiral Stenz stating that the Titans are causing "disasters we don't even have names for yet."
  • It's stated later in the film during a military briefing that Ghidorah's typhoon has evolved into a Category 6. In reality, there's no such thing as a Category 6 storm, since Category 5 encompasses all possible readings above Category 4.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: It's revealed that the Last Ice Age occurred because of a global cataclysm triggered by a war between the Titans and Advanced Ancient Humans.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • When Serizawa (rightly) calls the eco-terrorist accomplice Emma Russell out for meddling with the Titans without fully understanding them and for knowingly endangering billions of people, she immediately fires back by calling out Serizawa's and Monarch's hypocritical inaction and failure to stop the government's potentially-disastrous plan to try exterminating the Titans in their sleep.
    Dr. Ishirō Serizawa: You are meddling with forces beyond our comprehension! Gambling with the lives of billions!
    Dr. Emma Russell: And what are you gambling with, Serizawa?! Monarch is broken! It's on the verge of being shut down by a government whose only objective is to eradicate the creatures. And if that happens, what will our chances be?!
  • The above is instantly followed up by Mark tearing into Emma for her supreme pride, for her frankly insane way of dragging her twelve-year-old daughter into the operation, her haphazard way of going about the plan, and lastly for the fact that "sacrificing the few for the greater good" is ultimately just a cover for her secretly selfish motivations of lashing out at the world in rage and grief:
    Dr. Mark Russell: You are OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MIND! First you put our daughter's life in danger, now you get to decide the fate of the world?! That's rich, Emma!
    Dr. Emma Russell: [...] After we lost Andrew, I trained her to survive, and at least now she will have a fighting chance!
    Dr. Mark Russell: "A fighting chance"?! Why don't you listen to yourself! It's not all math, Emma! Some things you can't control!
    Dr. Emma Russell: And there's some things that you can't run from!
    Dr. Mark Russell: This won't bring him back to us!
  • In the novelization version of Madison and Emma's falling out after King Ghidorah's takeover, which is also partly based on a deleted scene that was filmed; Madison gives her mother an absolutely scathing speech over all that she's done with her plan to accelerate the Titans' awakenings, and over the whole world now being in apocalyptic danger because Emma's arrogance and blunders have caused her to completely lose control of the plan:
    Madison: There's always a choice! You know who taught me that? Dad. You said he left us, that he was a drunk who didn't care about us.
    Emma: Because he did leave us. Somebody had to be strong for you, and it sure as hell wasn't him. He gave up on me, gave up on you.
    Madison: No. You're the one who gave up! You gave up on everything. You gave up on humanity. And if Dad's such an asshole, then why'd he come back? Why is he trying to help people while we're trying to kill them?
    Emma: We are helping people, baby—
    Madison: Bullshit! You said you were doing this for Andrew. But do you really think he would've wanted this?
    Emma: I... I don't know
    Madison: Exactly. I'm starting to think you don't know more than you do.
• Rebellious Spirit: Emma Russell, and to a lesser extent Madison Russell, both have rebellious streaks. When things get serious, Madison doesn't hesitate to steal a keycard and defy a Monarch scientist's shouts, nevermind stealing the ORCA from a group of armed mercenaries whom are holding her under house arrest; and she makes her dislike of Jonah as clear as she can without getting herself into serious trouble when she's with him. Emma's bio reveals that she has a history as a maverick environmentalist who was arrested a few times, and she's willing to forego Monarch's legal efforts to combat the government and turn traitor to Monarch altogether as well as forsake most of her morality, if she thinks it'll stop the world from making a disastrous mistake and will make her son's death matter.
• Reclaimed by Nature: Due to the Titans' terraforming effect, it's revealed that this has happened at a rapid rate to the ruins of Las Vegas and San Francisco where Godzilla and the MUTOs rampaged after the first film's events. It can be safely presumed it'll probably also happen in Boston and perhaps other destroyed cities after this film's ending.
• Reconstruction: In contrast to the anime version of the character, this Ghidorah takes the original concept and adds enough realism to make it work beautifully. A giant flying dragon would need enormous wings he could fold out of his way, that are also sturdy enough to support his weight when leaning forward. The three heads all have minds of their own, causing certain independence from each other, and move around like cobras due to their long necks. He belches a conductive ionized gas ignited by his body’s bio-electricity, and his electrical powers allow him to summon storms. His occasional mind control powers are reworked into his status as an Alpha titan with the ability to direct the other Titans as he sees fit on an instinctual level. Also, while previous King Ghidorahs were said to be planet killers, how they did so wasn't elaborated on other than 'fly around spamming Gravity Beams until everything is dead.' This Ghidorah is capable of destroying all life on Earth by virtue of his storm spreading until it blankets the entire planet in a neverending hurricane.
• Recycled Title: The movie shares its name with the Americanized version of the original Godzilla from 1954.
• Redemption Equals Death: Emma can't possibly atone for the treason, terrorism and megadeaths stemming from both the intended plan and the Ghidorah miscalculation. She does realize she needs to at least fix the latter though and also draws the dragon away from her family to her own certain death. Even if her injuries were not enough to kill her, Burning Godzilla appearing to fight Ghidorah causing the buildings around him to melt meant she definitely didn't make it out.
• Red Is Violent: Rodan is a Titan with a violent temperament who's a red-colored Magma Man, and even his introductory scene has a Red Sky, Take Warning. Mothra is normally the gentlest of the Titans, but when provoked to aggression, her bioluminescence turns predominantly red. And then there's Burning Godzilla, who levels Boston with thermonuclear pulses in the process of obliterating Ghidorah.
• Red Shirt Army: Soldiers from all branches and nations drop like flies wherever the Titans show up, and sometimes even when there's just humans around. Fighter pilots seem to get the worst of it though, mainly because the two primary antagonistic kaiju are Giant Flyers that go through fighter wings like tissue paper.
• Related Differently in the Adaptation: In the film, the focused woman and child on Isla de Mara were apparently mother and son, based on the boy screaming "Mom!" at the woman when he's almost swept away by Rodan's wingbeats. In the novelization, they're instead explicitly grandmother and grandson.
• Remote Vitals Monitoring: During the aerial battle with Rodan, a monitor on the Argo is keeping track of the fighter jet pilots' life signs, and it indicates when Rodan rapidly snuffs them out.
• Rescue Arc: After his estranged wife and daughter are kidnapped by a mysterious organization with its own plans for the giant monsters, Mark joins a rescue mission with Emma's Monarch colleagues, Drs. Graham and Serizawa.
• Revision: The novelization does this for the first film's exposition about Godzilla and the MUTOs' origin; stating that Monarch's account that they were the surviving remnants of a Permian ecosystem is just the mainstream theory out of several for the Titans origins, and mentioning other theories which effectively give the Titans a Multiple-Choice Past.
• Rewrite: Instead of a Polynesian island in the Pacific, in this continuity Mothra was found inside a temple hidden in the rainforest mountains of China's Yunnan Province (though Dr. Chen's talk with Mark about her family history with Monarch confirms Infant Island exists in this continuity and the novelization states Mothra is worshiped there).
• Rewatch Bonus: Emma's plan and Madison being on board with it is neatly hinted at in the opening act, with Madison nervously asking if her father is going to be safe. When Mothra first hatches, Emma seemingly nonchalantly tells one of her coworkers if he wanted to take the morning off, as she knows Jonah and his terrorists will be arriving soon and will kill all the Monarch staff.
• Rightful King Returns: After fighting with Godzilla a second time, Ghidorah usurps the position of King of the Monsters, with Serizawa even scornfully referring to him as a "false king". The humans then spend their energy trying to revive Godzilla so he can challenge Ghidorah again. It takes a few false starts, but eventually Godzilla incinerates Ghidorah for good and reclaims his crown.
• Roar Before Beating: Godzilla and Ghidorah exchange roars with each-other directly before charging at the starts of their first and last fights in the movie. Rodan makes a point of shrieking at Monarch's aerial forces, at Ghidorah, and seemingly also at Godzilla when Rodan intends to challenge any of them respectively (although he wisely backpedals with Godzilla).
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: This movie introduces the concept that some of the larger Titans distributed around the globe defer like a pack to an "alpha" Titan, who claims its position over the other Titans via fighting, strength and domination. Godzilla is the final "King of the Monsters" as hinted by the title, while Mothra, the only Titan who firmly remains on Godzilla's side instead of deferring to King Ghidorah and also Godzilla's symbiotic partner, is called the "Queen of the Monsters" by Dr. Ilene Chen. When King Ghidorah usurps the kingship and begins using the other Titans to begin destroying the planet, Godzilla and Mothra personally fight tooth and claw against Ghidorah and Rodan to take theirs and humanity's planet back from the three-headed alien invader and regain control over the other Titans. After Ghidorah is killed at the cost of Mothra's life, and Godzilla becomes the reigning Alpha Titan, the Creative Closing Credits reveal that he's personally acting to keep the other Titans from invading population centers.
• Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Godzilla's lair is an ancient city that was part of a prehistoric kaiju-worshiping civilization, now reduced to Underwater Ruins.
• Rule of Symbolism: In order to firmly establish Ghidorah as synonymous with the Devil, one scene shows him rearing triumphantly on an erupting volcano under a burning sky while the cross atop a ruined steeple takes up the other half of the screen.

S

• Sadly Mythtaken: The mythology-inspired names of the other Titans are quite fitting, but it's rather strange that the name "Scylla" would be given to a spider-like desert creature, since in mythology Scylla was a six-headed serpentine sea monster that was once a beautiful sea nymph cursed by a sorceress. That said, The Stinger has a newspaper headline stating that the Titan Scylla is Greek in origin.
• Say My Name:
  • Mark Russell, over and over, in the opening flashback when he's desperately searching for his son amid the devastation in San Francisco:
    "ANDREW! ANDREW!"
  • Alan Jonah when his right-hand Asher is shot in front of him:
    "ASH!"
  • Vivienne Graham when a collapsing piece of the disabled tiltrotor's interior ceiling pins Mark down while Godzilla and Ghidorah are battling around the vehicle, right before she rushes to save him:
    "MARK!"
  • Mark and Emma Russell both when looking for their daughter in a city that's being reduced to rubble and obliterated by the Kaiju's Final Battle:
    "MADISON!"
    "MADDIE!"
• Scenery Gorn: Washington D.C. gets flooded and generally trashed when Ghidorah decides to nest there. Boston later gets utterly demolished by the battle between Godzilla and King Ghidorah.
• Scientist vs. Soldier: More minor or in the background than in the first film, but still very much present. This film very much leans more towards the Scientist side of the equation: the scientists are advocating coexistence with the Titans as they are ecologically essential to the planet, and while some Titans are hostile to humans others are indeed benevolent, and a benevolent Alpha Titans can potentially get all the others in line; the government and military meanwhile ignore and care little for Monarch's arguments, and are just trying to use any good excuse to take over and try killing all the Titans indiscriminately with a short-sighted lack of regard for the consequences or how that might backfire. The military even unleash an untested prototype weapon of mass destruction trying to accomplish their goal, and are arguably responsible for enabling Ghidorah's Near-Villain Victory that takes up the second half of the film when they try taking matters into their own hands.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: Monarch have discovered and contained seventeen ("and counting") new Titans besides Godzilla since the first film's events.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: King Ghidorah is frozen in the ice Antarctica. The film makes clear that Monarch knows that, even frozen and dormant, Ghidorah is NOT anything good - just witness the way the whole room goes silent when Mark asks what's actually in Antarctica. Sure enough, once he's woken things go to hell very quickly.
• Senseless Sacrifice: In the novelization, the soldiers in Antarctica who stop, turn around and fire machine guns at Ghidorah until the dragon disintegrates them are actually trying to distract Ghidorah at the cost of their own lives while the scientists and Mark Russell are fleeing via the nearby Osprey. It doesn't do much good, since the electricity that Ghidorah generates when he blasts the soldiers also short-circuits and grounds the Osprey, and then Ghidorah immediately turns his attention to attacking Mark and the scientists inside the craft.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Mark Russell is a physically-fit zoologist who's been living in the mountains; and he's hot-headed, outspoken, cynical, hostile, and doesn't hesitate to charge into a warzone (the Manly Man). The visibly-skinnier Sam Coleman is rational-headed, can barely speak in front of more than two people without descending into stuttering, supports Serizawa and Graham's positive assertions about the Titans, is the nerd son of a jock dad (according to his profile), and he's the least action-oriented of Monarch's top members (the Sensitive Guy). Throughout the movie, Coleman actively seems to want to be Mark's friend despite the latter's less-than-receptive initial attitude.
• Sequel Adaptation Iconic Villain: After the previous two movies had Godzilla and Kong in their respective MonsterVerse debuts facing off against Canon Foreigners; King of the Monsters follows up on The Stinger of Kong: Skull Island by bringing Ghidorah himself in as the Big Bad, with Rodan as The Dragon instead of Godzilla's ally, as part of the massive handful of Sequel Escalation.
• Sequel Escalation: The first Godzilla film featured two types of kaiju, Godzilla himself as well as two MUTOs of the same species. This one has four main kaju, with four more making on-screen cameos. How many Kaiju are there total?
  Dr. Serizawa: Seventeen... and counting.
  • Furthermore, the death count in this film is implied by the end to be not just in the thousands but in the millions or possibly even billions, and King Ghidorah is a much more actively malicious antagonist that the MUTOs or even the Skullcrawlers were.
• Sequel Hook: So nice, they did it twice.
  • A montage during the end credits discusses the possibilities of rivalries and grudge matches between the Titans, mentions that several Titans are moving towards Skull Island, and ends with cave paintings depicting a fated showdown between God and King.
  • Godzilla has defeated Ghidorah and is now the new King of the Monsters, but The Stinger reveals Jonah, having survived the events of the film, collecting Ghidorah's head from a fisherman for reasons unknown. The novelization even has a character posit that Ghidorah could regenerate a new body from dismembered pieces, leaving it possible that he could return.
  • The ending montage also, if one pays attention to the text being blocked out, reveals not all the slumbering Titans actually listened to Ghidorah and many more are still dormant, allowing for other kaiju to show up in the future besides the announced ones. Even without this, only a handful of the 17 Titans are actually shown.
  • One of the articles in the final montage mentions plans for an expedition into the Hollow Earth.
• Sequel Non-Entity: Despite The Stinger of Kong: Skull Island setting up Conrad and Weaver to join Monarch, absolutely nothing is seen nor heard of them in this film. Dr. Brooks is the only human character from that film to return, and even San Lin (who became Brooks' wife in the tie-in prequel Skull Island: The Birth of Kong) isn't mentioned in the movie.
• Serendipitous Survival: It's a subtle Rewatch Bonus, but there are two (unsuccessful) attempts by the same character to invoke this trope on others. In the opening, Emma's reassurances to Madison that Mark is safe where he is appear on the first watching to just be a mother reassuring her daughter that he's far enough away from harm due to his isolated whereabouts if the worst comes to pass, but when re-watching the scene with knowledge of the Evil All Along twist, it becomes apparent that Emma is actually assuring her co-conspirator that he'll be safe when the worst comes to pass. Shortly before Jonah and his goons are due to slaughter everyone standing between them and Mothra (an attack which Emma is secretly in on), Emma attempts to persuade Dr. Mancini to take a sleep break so he won't become a casualty – it doesn't work and he gets a bullet to the head.
• Shared Family Quirks: Madison is a Nature Lover with a strong connection to the Titans like her father — specifically, Madison seems to have the most intimate connection with Mothra while Mark has one with Godzilla. Madison also has none of her father's faults like his self-absorption, judgmentalism, tendency to let his emotions run away with him or his tendency to run and hide from his problems instead of confronting them.
• Shared Universe: Part of the MonsterVerse, preceded by Godzilla (2014) (chronologically) and Kong: Skull Island (in terms of release), and set to be followed by Godzilla vs. Kong.
• Short-Lived Aerial Escape:
  • Subverted with the Osprey that the eco-terrorists commandeered. The craft almost gets shot out of the sky by Ghidorah's all-destroying gravity beams shortly after his awakening, but he loses interest in favor of terrorizing humans on the ground once the ORCA's signal stops broadcasting from the Osprey, and then the eco-terrorists escape unscathed.
  • There's a narrower subversion later in the movie when the G-Team are flying a critically-damaged Osprey filled with evacuees above the Pacific Ocean away from an erupting volcanic island, with only seconds to get the Osprey flying into the Argo's bay before it falls into the ocean (to say nothing of Ghidorah's nearby presence). Thanks to Mark, Griffin gets the Osprey into the bay just in time, although its rotors still damage the bay interior and the vehicle's remains amid the unorthodox parking.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Rodan simply flying releases devastating shockwaves on a city below, due to the raw force of having to keep such a monster airborne.
    • Rodan also has wings with rounded tips, unlike the common, implausible pointed tipped wings that most pterosaurs in media are depicted with.
  • Mothra's design is based on a mix of several different insects, with large eyespots like owl moths, a color scheme similar to a monarch butterfly, a body resembling a wasp and mantis-like forelimbs.
  • Both Rodan and Ghidorah use their winged forelimbs in to aid walking and running in a manner similar to vampire bats and pterosaurs.
• Sickly Green Glow: The Oxygen Destroyer's blast produces a pale-green bright light, and it eradicates every lifeform except the alien Ghidorah, and Godzilla (who's grievously injured by it) within the blast radius. Ironically, the green glow isn't from nuclear radiation, but from an energy field that's supposed to eradicate radiation-eating monsters without feeding them.
• The Silent Bob: Not unlike Femuto towards the end of Godzilla (2014); Godzilla, Rodan and Ghidorah in particular all manage to communicate a lot of what they're feeling, thinking or intending to do using not just their actions and body language, but also their complex, detailed facial emoting. Godzilla's thoughts are clear when he sees Serizawa approaching him, and also when he examines Mark and the Monarch top brass atop the submarine, and he's visibly outright pissed when Ghidorah awakens. Meanwhile, Rodan is clearly a territorial Blood Knight to the point of homicidal mania, and Ghidorah is clearly a creature who has intelligence on par with Godzilla's married to a horrifying sadistic streak; grinning in pleasure as he attacks humans whom have no feasible defence against him with the full intent to kill them for the mere crime of existing. Ghidorah's three heads also physically disagree with each-other at times and have distinct personality traits, with the middle head being the boss and the left head being the runt at the bottom of the trio. Senior animation supervisor Spencer Cook commented that the monsters were designed to be "95% animal and 5% personality."
  Spencer Cook: One of my jobs on this project was to find the best way to convey each monster’s personality through body language and limited facial expressions. It was a tricky combination because if we exaggerated the personality it could seem cartoonish but if we only focused on monster qualities, it wouldn’t connect with the audience. In character animation, we always look for ways to visually communicate with the audience by finding aesthetically interesting poses, which we call "appeal" and visual clarity through clear silhouettes and clean staging of the action.
• Sleep Deprivation: Monarch scientist Dr. Mancini is apparently due for some sleep when Mothra's egg is about to hatch early in the day, but he postpones it rather than miss the Queen's hatching (which ultimately gets him killed). The novelization mentions he isn't the only person in his line of work who tend to skip sleep: one of the doctors monitoring Kraken has been unable to sleep for twenty-four hours, and Emma is confirmed in the novel to be a low-grade insomniac. Additionally, Jonah in the novelization has apparently been awake for an un-enviable forty-eight hours when he and his men are drilling into the glacier holding Ghidorah, before he gets some brief shut-eye during the wait.
• Sliding Scale of Unavoidable vs. Unforgivable: Emma insists that their plan to accelerate the Titans' awakening through force and allow them to cause millions of collateral deaths around the world, is a necessary evil to ensure the overall human race's and the biosphere's long-term survival. Emma points out that if the government have their way and try to exterminate the Titans (which is only a matter of time away, thanks to the understandable mass fear of city-leveling monsters that caused so much destruction in the last film, and also thanks to Monarch not taking the government as seriously as they probably should have); then the long-term consequences could be even worse for the world than Emma's plan. Regardless, the human heroes including Madison are horrified and disgusted by the amorality of Emma's plan, and they argue the plan is a catastrophic gamble at best due to how little anyone understands about the Titans (the novelization goes into even more detail about this). The latter argument is backed up when King Ghidorah, whose true nature basically makes him an Outside-Context Problem, blindsides the terrorists who freed him by commanding the other Titans to help him raze back the world's ecosystems instead of healing them, with the MonsterVerse novelizations indicating that the likely end result is the extinction of all multicellular life except Ghidorah himself if Ghidorah finishes this. That having been said, once Ghidorah is taken out of the picture for good, Emma's plan does work the way she wanted it to, in a roundabout way, with Godzilla pacifying the other Titans and even commanding them to steer clear of human habitations from now on.
• Snow Means Death: Ghidorah, the single most malevolent Kaiju and the only one who actively threatens to destroy the entire Earth, has Antarctica as his Evil-Sealing Can and the site of his Big Entrance when he's freed. Word of God confirms Antarctica was chosen because its lifeless, barren environment reflects Ghidorah's Omnicidal Maniac true nature.
• So Last Season: In both Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island, the only help Godzilla and Kong really needed to bring the Kaiju Big Bads down was some well-timed artillery and explosives from the human cast distracting the big bads from finishing the fight themselves. In King of the Monsters, that on its own isn't nearly enough to ensure the good guys win when King Ghidorah is the Big Bad. It takes nothing less than an overpowered Godzilla, Mothra, and all four branches of the U.S. military all fighting together to even stand a chance at taking Ghidorah down. And ultimately, Ghidorah still almost manages to come out on top of all of them. If not for the Russells' final intervention with the ORCA, then Ghidorah surely would have sucked the radiation-overloaded Godzilla dry, killed him, and would have been decisively victorious.
• Solid Gold Poop: In the end credits, one newspaper article notes the possible use of kaiju excrement as a fertilizer.
• So Proud of You: Played With in the novelization. Both the Russell parents have moments where they inward feeling proud of one-another or their daughter, even if they never say it aloud to them and even if that pride is also mixed with terror for their lives.
  • Mark can't help feeling proud of Emma perfecting the ORCA, even if he seethes at the fact the new version is expressly being used on Titans, and he also feels pride in Emma when watching her sacrificing herself at the end. When Madison uses the ORCA to disorient Ghidorah at great mortal risk to herself in Antarctica, Mark is both proud and fearing for her.
  • Emma likewise can't help feeling pride in her daughter's mettle and fear for her life, after she's realized that Madison has taken the ORCA out from under her eco-terrorist captors' noses, escaped on foot to Fenway Park, and used the device to spontaneously paralyze most of the Titans worldwide.
• South of the Border: Rodan wakens in Isla de Mara, Mexico thanks to Emma. Between that and the military hitting its coast with the oxygen destroyer missile, it's in pretty sorry shape by the end of the film.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The third TV spot plays "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" amidst the carnage and destruction inflicted by the various Titans.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Godzilla himself in regards to the Oxygen Destroyer, which in this version renders him Only Mostly Dead as opposed to the original Gojira, where it left him Deader than Dead.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The film is more or less a remake of Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster as far as the cast of monsters go.
  • With several monsters rampaging across the planet, it is also one to Destroy All Monsters and Godzilla: Final Wars.
• Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: The film makes frequent use of Monarch's digital global maps. After Ghidorah is freed in Antarctica and escapes, the hurricane he quickly forms around himself (which is shown on Monarch's maps to be roughly the size of Central America) which is represented with bright red-and-yellow color, stands out starkly against the map's blue colors. After Ghidorah awakens all the Titans and commands them to begin ravaging man and nature alike, Monarch's world maps are dotted with over a dozen red indicators all around the world indicating the Titans, and most of the maps are also now indicating fast-moving orange swell lines coating the oceans and continents (the official novelization confirms the swell lines represent Ghidorah's Weather Manipulation spreading storms all over the planet).
• Squashed Flat: At least one or two G-Team soldiers get instantly crushed by falling boulders of ice when Ghidorah rises in Antarctica.
• The Starscream: Subverted with Rodan. He shows no loyalties and basically switches sides based on whoever's winning, but he shows no direct attempt to turn on Ghidorah. According to the mo-cap actors, Ni is a Starscream who wishes he was Ghidorah's leader head instead of Ichi.
• Stealth Pun: When Godzilla arrives at Fenway Stadium, he appears from the side of the left field wall, which means he's approaching from the Green Monster.
• The Stinger: Alan Jonah is shown at the end collecting one of Ghidorah's heads, planning to use it for his own goals.
• Stock Footage: Some of the B-Roll used in various scenes such as Emma's Motive Rant, the Senate subcommittee meeting and the end credits is footage taken from the 2014 movie's Comic-Con teaser trailer, the 2014 movie itself (including a joke where the footage of the MUTOs’ courtship is pixellated) and even Kong: Skull Island (the brief visual of Kong’s face is taken from Randa seeing him through his camera lens).
• Stock Sound Effect: Godzilla's roar now includes elements of his Showa roars, as do Mothra and Rodan's.
• The Stoic: Jonah is constantly calm and collected despite whatever chaos is surrounding him. Emma Russell tries to be The Unfettered, but is repeatedly proven to be Not So Stoic.
• The Stormbringer: Once Ghidorah is awoken, he generates a perpetual hurricane filled with yellow lightning around himself, which follows him wherever he goes and gets more powerful the longer that he's active. When Ghidorah takes over as the ruling alpha from Godzilla and leads the Titans toward creating global extinction, his Weather Manipulation begins spreading offshoot storms around the globe, and it's overall suggested that if Ghidorah hadn't been stopped, this would've ultimately enveloped the entire planet in endless storms. Only Ghidorah's death at the hands (and mouth) of Godzilla brings the storm to an end.
• A Storm Is Coming: King Ghidorah's powers allow him to generate a gigantic electrical storm via his mere presence.
• Straw Character: The U.S. government and senators are narrow-minded, obstinate idiots who make ignored experts out of their official field experts and who think that dropping a bomb in waters that aren't even in their territory will resolve every new problem that they and their allies are confronted with. Meanwhile, Admiral Stenz is apparently still as short-sighted to the Green Aesop as he was in the previous movie.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Compared to Godzilla (2014), which was minimal on the Kaiju action and pyrotechnics, this movie features more frequent explosions and cavernous buildings collapsing. Beyond the frequent exchanges of gunfire and exploding craft between the military and Titans, Rodan causes a volcano's top to explode, and the Final Battle between Godzilla, Ghidorah, Rodan and Mothra tears Boston down with fire and lightning whilst the human cast are running or driving for their lives. The crowning jewel in terms of Awesome, however, has to be Burning Godzilla's thermonuclear pulses.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Dr. Vivienne Graham is eaten by Ghidorah and later on, Serizawa sacrifices himself to fire up the nuclear warhead that can revive Godzilla from the effects of the Oxygen Destroyer.
• Summon Bigger Fish: When Ghidorah poses a threat to all of humanity after usurping Godzilla as Alpha of the planet's Titans, the humans' solution is to revive a near-dead Godzilla, knowing he's the only Titan capable of defeating Ghidorah and restoring balance.
• Sunken City: Washington D.C. is completely submerged in floodwaters from King Ghidorah's hypercane, except for the tops of some buildings and landmarks. And then there's the Underwater Ruins that Monarch discover in the Hollow Earth.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Dr. Vivienne Graham's death is so quick that even if you were paying attention you might not have been sure what happened or who it happened to. Ghidorah, seeing a group of less than a dozen humans running for their lives, arbitrarily targets her out of the crowd, and in a flash devours the ice upon which she was standing whole. A few minutes later Serizawa is shown sitting in front of a monitor listing her as deceased, just to make sure the audience knows it was her that died.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Ilene seems to take over Dr. Graham's role as the intelligent Ms. Exposition after Graham is killed by Ghidorah, while Mark and Emma both have similarities and contrasts to Joe Brody from the first film, and Mark has similarities and contrasts to Preston Packard and Haruo Sakaki.
• Swallowed Whole: Dr. Graham is eaten this way by Ghidorah's middle head in Antarctica, and one of the Raptor pilots duelling Rodan is swallowed whole while ejecting.
• Symbolism: While hiding out from Godzilla and Ghidorah's fight within her family's original home, Madison covers her ears and screams from the commotion of it all. There's a shot of her family years ago, as it topples over in the chaos. This is meant to signify the exceptionally dysfunctional state of her family and how it will never go back to the previous, happier state it was.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: How the movie aims to present the human antagonists' Big Bad Duumvirate whom are conspiring to forcibly set the Titans loose and kill potentially billions of people. Emma Russell is the somewhat more genuine of the two in her well intentions to restore balance to the world and she doesn't want all of humanity to perish, causing her to side with the heroes again once she realizes King Ghidorah is actually a threat to all life on Earth; and the movie tries to make much of Emma's Villainous Parental Instinct towards her remaining child and her trauma over her other child's death which drove her down her dark path (Sympathetic). Alan Jonah on the other hand is a Misanthrope Supreme who in truth doesn't care about restoring nature; his only true motivations are using the Titans as a means to make the human race suffer, and he's happy to let Ghidorah completely eradicate humanity and potentially all other life on the planet just to satisfy his hatred (Despicable).

T

• Tail Slap: During the Boston battle, Godzilla at one point uses the same move he used to defeat Hokmuto in the previous movie to stagger Ghidorah: revolving on the spot and slamming his tail into Ghidorah's shin. In the novelization's extra scenes, Mokele-Mbembe has a tail that makes up two-thirds the length of its body, which it uses as a devastating weapon, slicing apart an Osprey and a pyramid each in a single blow.
• Takes One to Kill One: This movie shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that only Titans can kill Titans. The Government think they can put down the Titans on their own terms, but not only does the military's Fantastic Nuke fail to permanently kill either of the Titans it directly strikes; the 2014 movie's implications that nuking a Titan will only make them even more dangerous are outright confirmed. The conflict between Godzilla and Ghidorah is a Heroic Menace vs. Evil Menace scenario, with Godzilla being strictly interested in maintaining peace and balance, whereas Ghidorah is an Omnicidal Maniac seeking global extinction. Mark and Monarch attempt to draw Ghidorah and the territorial Rodan into a Menace Civil War to take both the Destroyer Titans out, but Ghidorah wins and comes out of that fight none worse for wear.
• Take That!:
  • Stone Mountain, a major Confederate monument, is briefly mentioned as one of the sites a Titan emerged from (and presumably leveled).
  • Jackson Barnes asks if Mothra and Godzilla "have a thing" and refers to the symbiotic relationship between them as being "messed up", perhaps a subtle jab at the "Mothzilla" shipping.
  • An organization of human-looking antagonists attempt to Mind Control the kaiju, including chiefly King Ghidorah, using technology — sound familiar? Except in this movie, King Ghidorah quickly proves to be Eviler than Thou and is impossible to control from the get-go, and it usurps control of the other Kaiju from the humanoids for its own purposes.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Averted in the Humvee scene. If you listen closely when Barnes says he'd run away like Madison if he had parents like hers, Emma and Mark's voices are squabbling indistinctly in the background, and it's hilarious.
• The Team: The key Monarch brass have this dynamic with each-other, tackling the world-threatening problems together for the most part. Although all of them except Foster are scientists, they for the most part specialize in different areas of research and expertise (mythology for Dr. Chen, zoology for Emma Russell, bio-acoustics detection for Dr. Stanton, etc.).
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: While humanity and Godzilla have battled in the past, both instinctively realize their best chance to survive is to fight together against the hostile Titans. It's also confirmed in the novelization that Emma Russell feels this way about working with Alan Jonah.
• Telepathy: Dr. Ilene Chen and her sister Dr. Ling both show hints of being telepathically connected to Mothra, a reference to the Shobijin: Ling seems to know and be entranced just before Mothra's pupa hatches, while Ilene appears to feel Mothra's coming at the Final Battle before she's seen. The Creative Closing Credits reveal that Advanced Ancient Humans likely formed telepathic connections with some of the Titans they coexisted alongside.
• Terraform:
  • It's revealed that many Titans have Fertile Feet which can cause entire biomes of vegetation to flourish, even in desertified locations. Emma's video call shows that the urban ruins leftover from the previous movie's events have been overgrown with lush forestry regardless of the surrounding region's normal terrain, at an anomalously-rapid rate. The Creative Closing Credits reveal that Behemoth's passage has turned part of the Sahara desert into a rainforest, and many of the awakened Titans have reversed the effects of global warming whilst introducing new prehistoric superfoods and green fuel sources into the environment.
  • Dr. Stanton speculates that the alien interloper Ghidorah is ultimately wreaking massive storms and global natural disasters because he's xenoforming the planet into a more ideal place for him to live, to the detriment of all pre-existing life as we know it. Either that or Ghidorah just wants to destroy everything that isn't him, as Mark briefly speculates in the novelization.
• Thanatos Gambit: Mothra's Heroic Sacrifice against King Ghidorah also gives Godzilla a necessary power-up. The dust from her destroyed body settles on Godzilla, awakening his Burning Godzilla form, which enables him to finally defeat Ghidorah.
• Theme Music Power-Up: The 'Rebirth' track that plays during Godzilla's rising from the depths in his powered up state contains a version of his theme.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Ghidorah makes a consistent habit of using his Gravity Beams, an attack that throws Godzilla around, to attack humans directly. Most of note is when he tries to use all three to atomize Madison, a tiny human girl, because he was pissed at her. Directly before that, he proceeds to level the stadium she's in and much of the surrounding area solely trying to get her.
• This Cannot Be!: A couple heroic cases.
  • Dr. Stanton says it's impossible when Coleman says the storm which Ghidorah disappeared inside has changed direction and is headed towards Rodan at unnaturally fast speed, at which point Chen and Coleman realize that Ghidorah is generating the storm himself.
  • Commander Crane just says, "That can't be" when informed that the underwater vortex has carried the submarine to a place where instruments say it's suddenly several-hundred extra miles from Castle Bravo (because the sub has entered the Hollow Earth).
• Those Two Guys: Barnes and Martinez serve as this throughout the majority of the movie after the death of Hendricks.
• Throat Light: Ghidorah's necks and mouths glow with yellow light when he's charging up his lightning breath weapon. Godzilla mostly averts or at the very most downplays the trope, as his throat only glows a split second if at all before his atomic fire breath discharges; save for that one scene where he slowly builds up the charge so he can take his sweet time barbequing Ghidorah's severed head in his jaws.
• Time-Shifted Actor:
  • Alexandra Rabe portrays a roughly seven-year-old Madison in the flashback and the Russell family photo, whereas Millie Bobby Brown portrays Madison in the present.
  • Joe Morton appears in the scene where Mothra comes out of her cocoon as the present day version of Houston Brooks.
• Tiny-Headed Behemoth: All four of the main Toho-originating kaiju. Godzilla's round head looks relatively small amidst the armored, muscular mass that is his body, whilst Ghidorah's three heads and necks are dwarfed when Ghidorah spreads his wings to show how massive his full body plan really is (this despite the heads alone being about the size of a two-storey building each – think about that). Rodan's head looks a lot smaller when his wings are spread than it does when they're folded (and he's at his most dangerous in the air), whilst Mothra's imago form has a very small head atop her insectoid body which is dwarfed by her vast wings.
• Too Dumb to Live: The series' tradition continues:
  • After King Ghidorah awakens, the first thing the G-Force team does is open fire at a three-headed draconic monster that can easily annihilate them without trying. And proceeds to do so. This gets Adaptational Explanation in the novelization.
  • Monarch attempts to lure Rodan towards King Ghidorah's current position by drawing his attention to them. Their jet escort continues to open fire on him when it's clear their weapons are no match for him.
  • The military pull a truly apocalyptic one, overlapping with Lethally Stupid. As an indirect result, an entire fleet composed of all four branches is thoroughly annihilated by Ghidorah and Rodan at Washington D.C..
  • As the Argo is fleeing Rodan, one of the fighter pilots who's being threatened by him decides to eject. Rodan is right behind him, and when the pilot ejects he flies upward, right into Rodan's maw.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The human protagonist Mark Russell goes from a self-isolating Titan-hater who's obnoxious to his former colleagues, to getting his wish and wishing he hadn't, and he's more respectful for the later half of the film as well as succeeding in getting his daughter back.
• To Serve Man: Rodan and Ghidorah are fine with making snacks out of humans.
• Tragic Bigot: Mark Russell, who for the first half of the film hates Godzilla and to a lesser extent all Titans because of his son's death. It's also hinted early in the film (and furthermore in the novelization) that Mark is far from the only one who feels this way and that this trope is a major source of Fantastic Racism towards the Titans: many people want the government to try indiscriminately exterminating the Titans because of the deaths of thousands of people who had loved ones during the first film's events.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Much like with the merchandise, the trailers have made little effort to hide that Godzilla will transform into Burning Godzilla during the final battle with Ghidorah, with him unleashing a Nuclear Pulse as he does so.
  • Plot-wise, the TV spots have done a terrible job at keeping any important things under wraps, notably Ghidorah missing a head as he flies from the ocean, Mothra being killed by Ghidorah's gravity beams in her Heroic Sacrifice, Emma dying as she’s says “Long live the king”, and finally, Godzilla's nuclear pulse that vaporizes Ghidorah.
• Traveling at the Speed of Plot: Godzilla cuts down on a lot of traveling by taking shortcuts through the Hollow Earth tunnels. Making it much easier for him to come to the rescue several times.
  • Averted with the rest of the Titans summoned by Ghidorah, they take so long to travel to Boston that by the time they arrive Godzilla has already killed Ghidorah, and they submit to Godzilla willingly.
• Triumphant Reprise: Godzilla's signature theme music from the original 1954 movie plays when he charges into Boston accompanied by the military to do battle against King Ghidorah, except it's a more uplifting and heroic rescore of the original leitmotif. Reflecting how Godzilla is an ally instead of a threat in this movie, is at his most heroic against the omnicidal threat of Ghidorah, and reflecting the movie's themes of humanity finding it in themselves to make peace with and coexist with the monster who originally represented the atomic bomb.
• Truer to the Text: This version of King Ghidorah is the most faithful to the original incarnation in his debut film, being a sadistic, nigh unstoppable killing machine of extraterrestrial origin who destroys the world not because he's ordered to, but because he enjoys doing so.
• Two First Names: Aside from the return of Vivienne Graham from Godzilla (2014), in this film we also have Alan Jonah and the Russell family.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: King Ghidorah becomes the new King of the Monsters, replacing the Heroic Neutral Godzilla with an Ax-Crazy Omnicidal Maniac and alien invader as the Alpha of the Titans.

U

• Uncertain Doom: It's unknown if the senators featured at the movie's start are killed in King Ghidorah's subsequent invasion of Washington D.C.. The novelization's expansion heavily implies that after Admiral Stenz' last physical appearance in the movie, he most likely died on a sinking submarine at the D.C. battle – this is based on a deleted scene for the movie which would have all but confirmed Stenz' death, a scene which was cut because the director felt it wasn't the right end for Stenz.
• Underwater Base: The major levels of Castle Bravo/Outpost 54 are built into an island's underwater bedrock, with an oil rig above the ocean's surface disguising the higher levels. In the official novelization, the numberless Monarch outpost which holds Kraken is located out at sea with several levels below the water's surface.
• Underwater Ruins: Midway through the film, the cast come across a remarkably well-preserved, fully-submerged Cyclopean city in the Hollow Earth, and they discover that a lethally-radioactive temple within the city (which is free of water due to an air pocket) is where Godzilla makes his lair.
• The Unmasqued World: After the relief that Godzilla was able to save what was left of San Fransisco came the global populace's horrified realization that there are more monsters as big as Godzilla is. As such, humanity has been on high-alert for the five years following Godzilla, even though no significant Titan activity has occurred between then and this movie. And Monarch, previously a secret organization that researched the Titans, has since gone public and publicized their mission, to the point that the viral marketing website for the movie involves them actively recruiting civilian operatives.
• Unplanned Manual Detonation: Monarch plans to shoot a nuclear torpedo at the resting Godzilla in order to speed up his recuperation. However, the submarine's torpedo tubes get damaged in transit, making it impossible to fire anything. So Dr. Serizawa volunteers to take the warhead to Godzilla and set it off himself.
• Unreadably Fast Text: Saying where in the film it is would be potentially spoiling a deliberately-hidden Easter Egg.
• Unstoppable Rage: Mothra's death sends Godzilla into one after he transforms into Burning Godzilla. He then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie brutally reducing Ghidorah to atoms in Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Played Straight by the U.S. Army when they unexpectedly intervene in the Kaiju battle at Isla de Mara by firing the Oxygen Destroyer. The weapon's use makes the military directly responsible for seemingly killing Godzilla, and enabling Ghidorah to start unleashing its Apocalypse How on the planet. Especially relevant when considering the director's suggestion that Godzilla would've beaten Ghidorah there and then if not for the military intervention.
• Upbringing Makes the Hero: The Monarch website notes that Serizawa, now the head of an upgraded Monarch, bases the pro-natural balance, pro-Godzilla values and ideology which drive him on his upbringing: he grew up in Hiroshima amidst the fallout of the atomic bombing, and he was taught by his father Eiji to respect the balance between nature and man. The G-Team soldier Anthony Martinez was raised on a sense of close community and helping others, hence his willingness to put himself in mortal danger for others' sakes.
• The Usurper: Thanks to unintentional aid from the military, King Ghidorah defeats Godzilla and usurps his throne as King of the Monsters. This allows him to let loose all the Titans at once and command them to begin destroying all other life on the planet. Humanity has no choice but to help Godzilla regain his throne before Ghidorah kills everyone.

V

• Victorious Roar:
  • Ghidorah performs a villainous version atop Rodan's volcano when he's usurped Godzilla's position as King of the Monsters, after Godzilla is severely incapacitated by the Oxygen Destroyer's effects to a point where he'll likely take years to recover. The call not only marks Ghidorah's victory, it also awakens other Titans around the world and instigates them to begin destroying everything on Ghidorah's behalf, marking the movie's Halfway Plot Switch where things go From Bad to Worse.
  • At the movie's end, Godzilla lets out a triumphant roar after he's killed Ghidorah and the summoned Titans bow down to him as their new king; solidifying the reclamation of Godzilla's kingship and the restoration of balance.
• Viler New Villain:
  • The MUTOs in 2014 and the Skullcrawlers in Kong: Skull Island were just giant animals, following their species' hardwired biological imperatives that happened to pose an apocalyptic threat to humanity and the ecosystem. Ghidorah, however, actively enjoys what he does in his quest to take over the Earth and bring about global extinction, and he goes out of his way to gleefully and directly murder several people even when it's impractical for him. It's even suggested at one point in the novelization that he isn't really trying to xenoform the planet for himself at all as the characters theorize, but is simply trying to kill every other living thing as an end-goal in and of itself.
  • Lieutenant Colonel Packard from Kong: Skull Island had no higher plan than killing Kong at all costs, and he simply ignored or overlooked how his actions put more people in danger from the creatures in the bigger picture. In this film, the much more serious-acting Alan Jonah is actively trying to get billions of people killed, as an end-goal rather than as unfortunate collateral, and he directly murders dozens of unarmed people in person when the Monarch outposts are being raided.
  • Compared to Bill Randa from Kong: Skull Island, who manipulated several dozen unwitting soldiers and Landsat scientists into unwittingly endangering themselves against the monsters; Emma Russell helps Jonah to endanger billions of people around the world in the name of her cause, and she betrays her own Monarch colleagues, whom Jonah massacres, and she even leaves her ex-husband to die in front of their daughter for her plan's success.
• Villain Ball:
  • Emma, for no other reasons than possessiveness and because she isn't all up there, pulls her tween-aged daughter Madison into her and Jonah's plan to murder millions of people in cold blood and set destructive kaiju loose, making sure Madison is along for every minute of the ride, instead of sending Madison away to somewhere she'd be safe and away from the whole thing; which causes no small number of problems for Emma and Jonah, because Madison is increasingly traumatized by the atrocities her mother and her allies are committing around her, and she reacts appropriately. Jonah himself soon has enough and directly calls Emma out on her nonsensical choice to bring Madison along.
  • Alan Jonah and his goons are highly intelligent and capable for the first half of the movie, having contingency plans in place and staying one step ahead of the heroes. But after Jonah decides to do nothing about King Ghidorah's reign of terror, Third Act Stupidity sets in, with him and his troops all choosing to take a break at the exact same time and leave the movie's MacGuffin — which Jonah knows his treacherous and more conscience-plagued co-conspirator wants to use to put a stop to Ghidorah, and which could get them all rooted out and killed by one of the rampaging Titans (the very outcome Jonah is trying to avoid) if it's misused — completely unguarded in an open, empty room in their base. This enables Madison to steal the ORCA and escape with it without a problem, in order to lure the Alpha Titans to Boston before the Final Battle and to ultimately prevent Ghidorah's Near-Villain Victory against Godzilla from turning into The Bad Guy Wins. The novelization partly amends this: there, Jonah cows his co-conspirator into submission by threatening to have her daughter's throat slit if she goes near the ORCA without permission, and even then he does leave one soldier behind to guard it; who Madison subdues by playing innocent and getting close enough to use his own tazer on him.
• Villain Has a Point: Besides how The Extremist Was Right (see above), Emma also was not wrong that Monarch was in a pretty sorry state at the start of the film before she kicked off her plot, being in a losing legal battle against the not-so-reasonable government's and the public's calls for attempts to kill the Titans (which, had the government's plan been enacted, likely would not have had any positive outcomes, as described under Fridge Horror). She's also got a point about how, even if her plan is more reckless and radicalist than how Serizawa and Monarch are handling the Titans, they're both gambling with billions of people's lives whichever path they take.
• Villains Act, Heroes React:
  • On the human side, Alan Jonah and Emma Russell plan to forcibly awaken all the Titans so they can inflict Gaia's Vengeance and restore ecological balance to the planet, before the government and military (who are pushing along with most of the public for a military takeover of Monarch) have a chance to attempt killing all the Titans off. Monarch, though they're aware of the Titans' ecological importance and are under worsening fire from the anti-Titan government, are more interested in maintaining the status quo, caging what Titans they find at containment sites and putting precautions in place to (attempt) killing them if they can't be contained, and Monarch take action to try and stop the human antagonists' plan once they become aware of it (specifically once the antagonists fire the first shot in the film with their attack on a Monarch outpost).
  • On the kaiju side, Godzilla acts to defend his position as the dominant Titan once Ghidorah is awakened by human intervention and challenges it again. When Ghidorah successfully takes over the planet's Titans from Godzilla and begins inflicting his Apocalypse How, that's when Mothra steps in to help stop Ghidorah.
• The Villain Wins: Emma's plan brings about the deaths of millions worldwide. But her plan works. The Titans at the end restore the environment. Even though she is ultimately crushed under debris, she dies knowing that she left the world a "better" place for her daughter.
• Volcanic Veins: This movie's portrayal of Rodan is a Magma Man, with vein-like cracks along the edges of his wings oozing bright lava. Burning Godzilla has burning orange light leaking through the cracks between his scales, giving off the impression of fiery glowing veins.

W

• Waist-Deep Ocean: Midway through the film, the 119-meter-tall Godzilla stands upright next to a submarine in the open ocean — in water he was previously fully submerged in — before diving back underwater and swimming away.
• Walking Wasteland: All the Titans have the potential to be Persons of Mass Destruction, but Rodan causes devastating supersonic winds that can pretty much annihilate whatever's beneath him just by flying over it, Ghidorah produces a lightning-filled typhoon around himself with evolves into a Category 6 hurricane, and Godzilla... Godzilla at the film's climax.
• War Is Hell: According to the Creative Closing Credits, Advanced Ancient Humans provoked the Titans into warring with them when the humans in question grew proud and attempted to enslave them, the very creatures their civilization had once worshipped, as weapons of war. At the end of the resulting conflict (which triggered the Last Ice Age), both sides had suffered losses despite the Titans' Nigh-Invulnerability and vast physical superiority to humans, because the resulting cataclysm was just that bad.
• Washington D.C. Invasion: When the Titans are attacking cities globally under King Ghidorah's thrall, Ghidorah himself heads north to invade Washington D.C. with his closest thrall Rodan, causing a Category 6 hurricane to settle over the city, and reducing the city to a deeply-flooded, apocalyptic, completely-inhospitable hellscape that's plagued with tornados, lightning and waterspouts.
• Waving Signs Around: A news broadcast in the movie's opening, explaining that people are grieving and angry after the damage that occurred in Godzilla (2014), depicts a crowd of anti-Titan protesters marching in Washington D.C. with signs reading slogans such as, "Destroy All Monsters" and "Titans=Monsters". The footage was created by taking real-life stock footage of Washington D.C. protests and editing the signs' text.
• Weaponized Landmark: The 200 Clarendon building in Boston—the city's most prominent and distinctive tower—becomes a very handy wall for Mothra to ensnare two of Ghidorah's heads with her silk, and the alien dragon barely has time to react before Godzilla puts him through it.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Ghidorah is very agile for a creature his size both on the ground and in the air. Unfortunately for him, he can't swim, which becomes a problem when he fights the aquatic Godzilla in his home turf.
• Weather Manipulation: Ghidorah, who generates a massive, lightning-filled typhoon around himself merely by being active, and it grows more and more powerful over time. Furthermore, upon taking over as the Alpha Titan, Ghidorah's Weather Manipulation begins spreading offshoot storm around the globe. Mothra also has this power in that once her metamorphosis is complete, she disperses Ghidorah's storms wherever she goes.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Emma goes along with the plan to awaken the Titans because she believes that they will 'just' cause enough destruction to let Earth rebuild afterwards... and more shockingly, if it hadn't been for the X-factor of Ghidorah operating outside the 'natural order', that plan might have worked out. Jonah meanwhile, proves to be a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist who just wants to see humanity suffer.
• Wham Line: One is dropped shortly after King Ghidorah survives the Oxygen Destroyer, leading Dr. Chen to assume based on her analysis of myths about Ghidorah that he isn't a natural Titan as we understand it, but rather is an invasive alien.
  Dr. Chen: It tells of a great dragon who fell from the stars. A hydra whose storm swallowed both men and gods alike.]]
  Mark: You mean an alien?
• What Is Going On?:
  • Emma says this thrice. The very first line of Mothra's birthing scene coming from Emma is, "What the hell happened?" Prompting Dr. Mancini to fill Emma and the audience in on the Mothra egg's looming birth. Emma shortly after asks what's happening when the containment field unexpectedly fails and the outpost's security begins shutting down due to Jonah and his paramilitary's actions. Much later in the film, Emma quotes the trope name ad verbatim when alarms in the eco-terrorists' base begin blaring, at which point Jonah succinctly and sarcastically makes her aware of the ORCA's disappearance.
  • In the novelization's side-story following Master Sergeant Nez and Mokele-Mbembe at Outpost 75, a couple of Nez's men ask what's happening. One of them asks Nez herself after the latter has doubled security at the outpost since receiving news of Jonah's assault on Outpost 61. Later, Dr. Kearns cries out "What the hell is going on?" when the facility shakes, prompting another operative to confirm that Mokele-Mbembe is awakening.
  • During the intimidation display scene, Mark approaches Ilene to ask her what's happening after the base has begun trembling and alarms have started blaring, and Ilene tells him in quick and clear terms what the situation looks like so far.
  • In the novelization, one of the scientists at the secret ocean-based outpost asks what's happening when the resident Titan starts passing effortlessly through the containment field after the life sign-monitoring instruments say it has died. At which point, another operative realizes aloud that Kraken camouflaging its life-signs stops the field from holding it back.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Emma Russell calls Serizawa out for condemning the notion of sacrificing masses of innocent lives when his Head-in-the-Sand Management means that The Government could take over Monarch any day now, at which point the government would cause just as much damage to humanity and the world in the long term as the eco-terrorists' plan would have, if not more. No-one actually has a comeback for this, and Serizawa already demonstrated earlier in the movie that he doesn't treat the senate's foolishness nearly as seriously as he later takes Emma's plan despite being aware of the risks. Serizawa later breaks his own philosophy against human intervention in Titan crises, personally intervening with a manually-armed nuke to save Godzilla's life.
  • After putting up with Mark's self-centered, self-righteous and abrasive attitude and his fallacious grudge against Godzilla for the first hour of the movie, Serizawa delivers a succinct and brutal callout to Mark: commenting to Mark's face in front of all the Monarch top brass that Mark has gotten his wish to see Godzilla killed when Ghidorah is free to rampage unchecked without Godzilla around. It's enough to get Mark off his high horse for the rest of the movie:
    "Looks like you got your wish, Mark(!)"
• When He Smiles: According to the novelization, Dr. Mancini usually doesn't think much of kids, but he has a kind of "nice, slightly silly smile, if he chose to show it off." Also in the novel, Jonah at one point gives Asher "a really genuine smile he almost never brought out."
• Why We Can't Have Nice Things: The city in the Hollow Earth. It's the historical and archaeological find of the millennium, but Godzilla needs to be healed in order to fight King Ghidorah right now, and the only way to do that is to set off a nuke in his face. For mankind to survive, the city has to be destroyed.
• Wonder Twin Powers: According to Mike Dougherty, Godzilla's Fire Form is part of his and Mothra's symbiotic relationship, and thus requires both of them to do. It's unknown if it can happen without Mothra dying, however.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Although both of the lead eco-terrorists – Alan Jonah and Emma Russell – have some valid points (the latter more than the former), particularly with their concerns about The Government's stupidity that provoked them to action; underneath it all, they're just using it to lash out at the entire human race for the suffering and tragedy that they had to endure because of mankind's follies.
  • Jonah, who is fine with Ghidorah creating an even worse extinction event than humanity to wipe us out, has been driven mad by decades of fighting in dirty war after dirty war where he recurrently saw humanity at its absolute worst, causing him to believe that anything is better for the world than the Anthropocene being allowed to continue any further. The novelization of the film furthermore reveals that the tipping point for Jonah's descent into misanthropy was his daughter being gruesomely murdered on her way home from school, while he was away on a tour of duty.
  • Emma was caught up in the destruction of San Francisco where her son was brutally killed, after which her husband descended into alcoholism before abandoning her and Madison. After five years of trying to work out why the Titan attack happened, Emma bizarrely takes out their grief by planning to force billions of people to go through a hundred more Titan attacks, believing the Titans will regenerate the ecosphere at the end of it. The novelization more clearly states that the reason Emma has decided on this course of action after theirself losing a loved one to a Titan attack is because they specifically blame mankind for causing the 2014 rampage in the first place, after having discovered that mankind's environmental abuse is what instigated Godzilla and the MUTOs' emergence then and that it's still instigating other Titans' gradual awakening now.
• The Worf Barrage: The Oxygen Destroyer is this. It's fired on Ghidorah in an attempt to kill him and Godzilla. Its impact leaves an Instant Fish Kill, and after several seconds of waiting on baited breath to see the aftermath, Ghidorah emerges completely unscathed by the blast. Ghidorah's No-Sell of it is part of what promptly makes the humans realize that Ghidorah is actually an alien, and not a creature native to Earth like the other Titans are.
• The Worf Effect: The four main Titans in this film are implied to be more intelligent than the MUTOs in the 2014 film, and this film features "a rival Alpha to Godzilla" for the first time.
• World of Snark: Quite a few of the human characters including the heroes say something snarky in this movie. Aside from very chronic or obvious snarkers like Mark Russell and Dr. Rick Stanton, we've got a particularly haughty U.S. senator, the mysticist Dr. Chen, the stuttering Sam Coleman, the tough-as-nails Colonel Foster, and the hardened and misanthropic Alan Jonah; all passing sarcastic or disparaging comments at some point or another.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • In reference to his Rebirth of Mothra 3 portrayal, Ghidorah attempts to personally atomize a child using all three heads' Gravity Beams after said child has used the ORCA to get in the way of his plans. Only a blast of Godzilla's atomic ray saves Madison from being disintegrated.
  • In the novelization, Alan Jonah threatens to have one of his men slit Madison's throat if her mother steps out of line.
• Wreathed in Flames:
  • Rodan's internal temperature runs so hot, the natural "cracks" in his skin (and wounds incurred in battle) seep out a bright red glow that makes him look like he's on fire, particularly when he takes to the sky.
  • In the final battle, Mothra empowers Godzilla, causing him to enter his Burning Godzilla Super Mode — which as the name suggests has magmatic-looking scales and radiates such intense heat that Godzilla ignites and melts everything around him.
• Wrong Assumption:
  • After the world has discovered Kaiju are real and could likely be sleeping anywhere under our civilization's feet; Admiral Stenz, the government, and apparently most of the public who lost loved ones in the events of 2014 are convinced that our only recourse as a species is to kill all the Titans while they're sleeping, and they basically view Monarch as Carter Burke for the organization's vehement resistance to this agenda. What most of the world doesn't seem to realize is that this isn't a traditional Action Horror movie in the style of Them!, so much as it is a Green Aesop story in the style of The Day After Tomorrow: Monarch are actually ignored experts who have very valid reasons for opposing Titan extermination, and it's furthermore unlikely that the Titans will be easy to kill even while dormant.
  • Although Mark is a lot more conscious of the power discrepancy between man and Titan than most, he still buys into the mindset that the Titans should all be killed and that Monarch are brainless zombie advocates for not doing so, partly because his view on the Titans is highly colored by personal trauma. Mark also seems to think he's the Only Sane Man among the cast despite his very biased view of Godzilla and despite his shortcomings as a father and husband.

Y

• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: During the final battle, the lightning bolts around Godzilla and Ghidorah have the color associated with them and their breath weapons. Three guesses for who fits in each category.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Implied. At the pivotal point where it's revealed Emma is working with the bad guys, she tries to call her daughter over with her nickname but to no avail. It's only once Emma says "Maddison" that the girl's reluctance evaporates and she obediently comes to her side.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: A little downplayed, given the implications about how much worse things would've gotten if Ghidorah won in the end. Despite Monarch's efforts to stop them, the Eco-Terrorists' plot to see all the Titans around the world awakened and released on the planet actually succeeds; when Monarch's efforts to stop them releasing Ghidorah fail, and later when Ghidorah proves itself Eviler than Thou and seizes control of all the Titans for its own agenda. (With the exception of Ghidorah who is an Omnicidal Maniac, it turns out The Extremist Was Right here.) And despite Godzilla's initial efforts to put Ghidorah down again, Ghidorah actually succeeds in usurping Godzilla as King of the Monsters and starting his own Apocalypse How, leading to the Final Battle in Boston where Godzilla and Mothra seek to end Ghidorah and his control over the other Titans.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Barnes gets the movie's only Precision F-Strike when he first sees Ghidorah in Antarctica while saying this.
• You Know the One: On the first viewing, Madison and Emma's breakfast conversation looks like they're discussing far-from-unique anxieties about how the world is changing with the Titans' existence, and also about how rough Mark's Grief-Induced Split from them has been on Madison. On the second viewing, it's apparent that they're actually talking about Emma's Eco-Terrorist plan and the apocalypse survival training that Emma has been subjecting Madison to. Emma and Madison also don't refer to the ORCA as anything other than "it" nor do they allude to its function when bringing it up, enabling the next sequence to introduce the device and its purpose to the viewer proper.
• You Monster!: After Emma makes the call to awake Rodan in spite of Madison's protests, which escalates into Ghidorah forcing Rodan into submission, Godzilla accidentally being taken out by the military's Oxygen Destroyer missile and the other Titans awakening to go on the rampage at Ghidorah's command, she gets hit with this from her daughter Madison, deeply affecting her.
• You're Insane!:
  • Mark Russell has the following to say to one of the human Big Bad Duumvirate whom are setting the Titans loose to restore balance to the world at the cost of millions of lives, said villain being his own ex-wife Emma, after he's heard them explain their plans and reasoning: "You are out of your GODDAMN MIND!" He then proceeds to verbally tear even further into her.
  • In the novelization, a Monarch operative named Mariko is persuaded by the aforementioned character Emma's argument that the Titans deserve to reclaim the planet and that humans have no right trying to stop them by killing them, sabotaging the emergency kill switch in the outpost where she's stationed and aiding Behemoth's rampage when King Ghidorah's alpha call galvanizes the Titans. When a colleague of hers, Erik, realizes what she's done, he has this to say to her:
    "You're as crazy as she [Emma] is."
• You Will Not Evade Me: Ghidorah pulls a Villain: Exit, Stage Left on Godzilla and the Monarch air force by simply flying the hell out of Antarctica. Later, when Godzilla goes Burning Godzilla, the first of Godzilla's Nuclear Pulses incinerates Ghidorah's wings down to the bone, ensuring he can't flee the same way this time.

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