"Save Mothra!" "WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME?!" Explanation Prior to the release date and trailers, after the announcement of the film, memes were spawned in a Take That! to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice's Martha meme where Godzilla or Kong urges the other to save Mothra, Godzilla's ally in the previous film, particularly Kong as he is portrayed as the Batman to Godzilla's Superman. Jia in the film even had a line reminiscent of Alfred's "He is not our enemy!" line from Batman v Superman.
"You were never a god. You were never even a zilla!"Explanation A parody of Batman's quote immediately preceding the infamous Martha line.
Godzilla vs Kong: Dawn of the Monsters.
"We need Kong. The World Needs Him." This line makes the rounds quite a bit due to the absolute overuse of it in every trailer and TV spot.
"Hey, the world really needed Kong!" Due to being a shot in the arm for theaters during the pandemic as well as being a new movie to help entertain the line resonates a little more. Helping was AT&T had considered simply putting it on Netflix.
With one of the combatants being an ape, inevitable jokes of "Le Monke", "Return to Monke", and comparisons to Harambe the Gorilla abound in comment sections and meme pages.
The prolonged time it took for the trailer and the film to release, as well as the constant changes to the release date, was jokingly interpreted by fans as Kong phoning Legendary in fear and pleading for more time after seeing Godzilla defeat King Ghidorah in the previous film.
On a similar note, the poor Rotten Tomatoes reception of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) has been joked by fans that Kong works for Rotten Tomatoes and was trying to sabotage Godzilla's career.
Comparisons to Captain America: Civil War and its memes also became prominent, usually inserting captions of Godzilla and Kong saying disagreeing statements before the final panel of "Godzilla vs. Kong", implying a petty argument or an overblown conflict between the two.
Before the release of the trailer, fans joked about the tremendous size difference between Godzilla and Kong. After the trailer's release however, jokes abound that Skull Island Kong in 2017 was just a toddler.
The bat-like monsters that appear briefly in the trailer drew joking comparisons to the alleged eating of bats that spread the COVID-19 pandemic.
The real antagonist of Godzilla vs. Kong: the pandemic keeping theaters closed.
A memetic animated clip called "Searching for the Sea Banana" (derived from an advertisement for the Game Boy Advance port of Donkey Kong Country) showing a swimming gorilla has drawn many jokes about Kong swimming off Skull Island to fight Godzilla.
"Godzilla is hurting people and we don’t know why." Explanation A quote from Mark Russell on why Godzilla started to attack humans after the previous two films saw him defend humanity from the likes of the Mutos and Ghidorah. People then decided to bring up numerous reasons why he's doing this from Godzilla complaining about being bombarded with rockets to being still pissed off by the fact that the humans tried to kill him and Ghidorah with the Oxygen Destroyer in the previous film.
From Viet Kong to Hong KongExplanation Kong: Skull Island was filmed in Vietnam and had a Vietnam War theme while the main battle of GvK takes place in Hong Kong. The pun was not lost on fans.
The Primate Versus Reptile premise has drawn many jokes comparing them to Donkey Kong and King K. Rool, with Youtube comments and memes humorously quoting lines from the DK Rap from Donkey Kong 64.
"And then there's Chunky! He's dead."Explanation A memetic line from the Brentalfloss parody, where the Donkey Kong characters are portrayed as leading miserable lives post-Donkey Kong 64, except for Chunky Kong, who's literally... dead. Monsterverse fans have since seized the meme to parody Kong's absolute disadvantage.
Another joke is that fans of the beloved Super Smash Bros. game series immediately compared the fight to Bowser vs Donkey Kong.
Godzilla and Kong fighting on an aircraft carrier, with Godzilla with the obvious advantage in the water, has drawn comparisons to the battle of Groudon and Kyogre in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire where Groudon is just standing on a small patch of land in the middle of the ocean.
Jokes about how tiny Godzilla's head is (proportionately speaking) abound, especially next to the more proportionate Kong.
"Kong did what Thor didn't: he went for the head."Explanation In Avengers: Infinity War Thor fails to strike Thanos in the head, allowing him to perform his snap that wipes out half of all life. With Kong targeting Godzilla's head with his axe, the comparisons were pretty much expected.
"King Kong ain't got shit on me!"Explanation People have claimed that this is exactly what Godzilla would say, since he shows no fear in fighting the King.
Jokes comparing Kong to Kratos from God of War (PS4). Given they both came back to a sequel Older and Wiser, sport a beard, and use an axe against an angry god.
Facebook meme pages are fond of posting videos of actual primate and reptile conflict (such as a marmoset attacking an iguana or a crocodile eating a baboon) and captioning it as "Leaked footage from Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)".
Many, MANY people are, of course, memeing Kong himself due to being "monke."
Kong striking Godzilla on the head with his axe has spawned memes of "GO TO HORNY JAIL" *bonk*
There has been a trend of Kong fans defending Kong by simply pointing out that he's "monke" or "big monke".
"Our battle will be Legendary!" Explanation A joke referencing Kung Fu Panda and a pun on the film studio making the movie.
Oogway's quote from the short film Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five, "Hmmm... Monkey." is also widely parodied in videos and comics◊.
Sopa de Macaco (Monkey Soup) is a common meme as well. Explanation A Brazilian meme spawned from a doctored Facebook photo in which a guy displays the titular soup, with the animal's head inside. It has since become a shorthand for general Brazilian weirdness on the web in the country and, unsurprisingly, became popular again as Godzilla supporters joke that that would be Kong's fate at the other monster's hands.
With fan theories that Godzilla is a disguised Mechagodzilla, jokes about Among Us abound that Mechagodzilla is the Impostor or is very "sus".
SPANK THE MONKEY! Explanation A meme popping up on comment sections upon the release of the Japanese trailer, which shows Godzilla bitch-slapping Kong and sending him flying. Jokes abounded of "spank the monkey", a slang euphemism of masturbation.
The new Japan trailer of Godzilla whacking Kong backwards has drawn jokes about how America's trailer shows Kong punching Godzilla and Japan taking offense at the "disrespect" and hitting back with footage of Godzilla returning the blow.
This same clip has provided fuel for "I like your cut, G!" memes.
"They shrank Godzilla!"Explanation The scene showing Godzilla and Kong duking it out on top of an aircraft carrier, coupled with shots of Godzilla being dwarfed by skyscrapers in Hong Kong, led to accusations that Legendary shrank Godzilla down to Kong's Skull Island size instead of beefing Kong up to Godzilla's size. In actuality, these scenes are an aversion of Not Drawn to Scale, since Godzilla is only 119.8 meters (approximately 393 feet) tall, and the aircraft carrier and many of the skyscrapers are much bigger. He is actually too big compared to some, like when he stands in front of the Bank of China building at more than half height, when in reality he would be less than a third (the building is 367.3m tall).
Atomic Bitch SlapExplanation The humorous nickname of the, well, slap that Godzilla pulls on Kong that sends him flying
Still waitin’ for that Godzilla vs. Kong trailer. Explanation Due to Legendary and Warner Bros. waiting to announce the trailer before its March 2020 release date and their vague responses to the questions, fans have started to joke about when they’ll eventually release something related to the film.
Godzilla fans vs. Kong fansExplanation A comparision on how both sides defend their kaiju, with Godzilla fans pulling a Wall of Text to explain how Godzilla will win, while Kong fans have the small response of "big monke" or something similar
Funnily enough in some circles, this got reversed once the movie came out. Godzilla clearly dominated Kong and the latter needed an improvised defibrillator while Godzilla could still fight. But some Kong fans will perform mental gymnastics and walls of texts to insist Kong somehow won the grudge match.
With Mechagodzilla being officially revealed with a more Terminator-like appearance, jokes comparing Mechagodzilla to Arnold Schwarzenegger abound.
A pair of teaser posters depicting close-ups of Godzilla's hand and Kong's hand have drawn comparisons to the "Arthur'sfist" meme or showing them holding hands in a bunch of hilarious parodies.
Mechagodzilla's defeat by liquor being spilled on his controls has led to jokes poking fun at his Weaksauce Weakness, with memes saying how alcohol is bad for your health.
Jokes abound portraying Kevin the Left Head as a Memetic Badass given that it was his brain who ends up taking control of Mechagodzilla and decimating even the combined might of Godzilla and Kong, despite his famously goofball antics in the previous film.
Also, jokes about Kevin's continued Butt-Monkey status given Mechagodzilla's brutal defeat by the hands of Kong.
Shortly before the film's release, a giant cargo ship called the Ever Given became lodged sideways in Egypt's Suez Canal, impeding trade routes and boat traffic on a large scale. Twitter was quick to jump on the meme bandwagon, photoshopping Godzilla and Kong fighting on top of the ship and captioning "the situation in Suez Canal has escalated".
Ren Serizawa, son of the late Dr. Serizawa, was jokingly compared to Kylo Ren by fans both for his name and his villainous rebellion against his father.
"All the humans should be dead by radiation poisoning."Explanation A joke commonly brought up by fans who dislike the human characters and are Just Here for Godzilla, also pointing out the ridiculous Plot Armor of the humans why they're still alive after everything.
Jia communicating with Kong via sign language has drawn jokes about how Kong can even see her given the size difference.
"WHERE IS BEST GIRL?"Explanation Despite KOTM mentioning the discovery of a new Mothra egg in the credits and tying in to the Toho tradition of her being reborn in spirit each time she dies and hatches a new larva, no mention of Mothra is brought up in the film (aside from a brief text at the start about Mothra's pregnancy), upsetting Mothra fans who were disappointed to not see her return.
The Hollow Earth lizard briefly seen munching on some crustaceans has become quite popular due to its strangely Ugly Cute appearance. Some have compared it to Minilla, Varan, or even Tristar's '98 "Zilla".
This movie breaking box office records is often compared to Tenet in that it managed to do what Tenet failed (releasing in theaters during a pandemic). Memes arise from such comparisons.
"One will literally fall."Explanation When Kong first enters the Hollow Earth he falls from a massive height, plummeting down in the reduced gravity. Jokes about the tagline "One Will Fall", as well as Kong's original death falling from the Empire State Building, were very quickly memed.
The clip of Kong floating in the Hollow Earth's zero-gravity quickly drew comparisons of Godzilla infamously flying in Godzilla vs. Hedorah.
Kong eating a Warbat incited comments of "remember what happened the last time someone ate a bat?" in Youtube comment sections and forums.
"Godzilla had a stroke trying to read this and fucking died."Explanation An older meme depicting the Godzilla suit of the Heisei Toho series lying down in a wagon, which became a meme as a reaction to signs, phrases, or internet posts which are a Mind Screw in grammar or operate on Insane Troll Logic. Jokes soon arose how Kong could defeat Godzilla by saying or writing something equally confusing as to give Godzilla a stroke.
"I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a lizard/with a monkey." "How about side by side with a friend?" Explanation Godzilla and Kong's relationship at the end of the film has jokingly been compared to that of Legolas and Gimli from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with them being Fire-Forged Friends who team up against Mechagodzilla and come to respectfully consider each other a Worthy Opponent.
In April 6, 2020 a video of a giant monitor lizard climbing up shelves in a 7-11 in Thailand quickly became viral and memetic. Jokes comparing it to the film sprung up quickly, joking that the lizard was "looking for a monkey" or was angry at not being invited to the movie auditions.
The opening scene on Skull Island, where Kong is shown waking up and going about his daily business, has drawn comparisons to the opening of Shrek with the memetic song "All Star" by Smash Mouth.
"You can't just shoot a hole into the surface of Earth!" Explanation As Godzilla makes landfall in Hong Kong looking for Mechagodzilla, he realizes something is going on and shoots a hole from the surface to Hollow Earth, which brings to mind Doomguy trying to reach the lower levels of Mars by shooting the BFG 10,000 directly at it while Samuel Hayden complains that he can't just shoot a hole into the surface of Mars.
Godzilla Vs. Kong Vs. DogeExplanation Based around that iconic screenshot where Kong is about to deck Godzilla in the face. The first panel is the unaltered image. The second panel is edited to depict both of them running away from Doge, who is their size and coming towards them with a baseball bat.
Crocodile ModeExplanation Used to refer to the scene in the Hong Kong battle where an injured Godzilla goes berserk and chases after Kong on all fours, biting and slashing at him while he scrambles to get away.
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