Trivia / Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah

• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $22 million; Box-Office: $20 million. Ironically, the film was meant to alleviate the box-office disappointment of Godzilla vs. Biollante, which at least made back its budget. This was partly due to the lack of an American release, as detailed below. It did however make over ten times its budget back in merchandising and TV releases.
• Creator Backlash: Ishir⁠ō Honda is among those who felt the film was in bad taste, especially for depicting deaths of American soldiers.
• No Export for You: There was a very long pause of Godzilla movies not being released over to the U.S. and it started with this one. The explanation was that there was a huge controversy over the footage of Godzillasaurus killing American G.I.s during the WWII sequence, along with the fact that the main villains were Westerners. This, coupled with the strained economic tensions between the U.S. and Japan at the time, resulted in the aforementioned long pause in U.S. distribution. Word of God explained the film was never meant to be anti-American.
  • Because of this, if you ever bought a toy from Trendmasters, which uses the Heisei films as the background for most of the monsters, you'd have no idea it was referring to the actual movies until Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, since there was a planned release for Destoroyah and the only thing that came out of it was a prototype figure.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Toho was originally planning a remake of King Kong vs. Godzilla, but money disputes with Turner made Toho decide to use Mechani-Kong instead. Turner still demanded money to use the character, feeling that using Kong's likeness in the form of Mechani-Kong was the same as using the original character.
  • A direct sequel was planned after this entry did well at the box office. This time with a King Ghidorah whose origin was more in tone with his Showa counterpart, a space monster.
  • Rather than under the sea in 2204, Tomoyuki Tanaka wanted King Ghidorah to be discovered on Venus (which he was associated with in the film Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster). Writer/director Kazuki Omori was somehow able to override Tanaka's objections because he didn't want to make a movie about "silly space monsters." The Japanese novelization for the film ran with Tanaka's idea, in that the Futurians discovered the body of King Ghidorah partly buried on the surface of Venus and used his cellular materials to create the Dorats.
  • Godzilla's original form was going to be a Tyrannosaurus rex, until special effects designer Shinji Nishikawa opted for a fictional dinosaur species instead.
• You Look Familiar: Yoshio Tsuchiya returns to the series in his final role, as Yasuaki Shindo.
  • Katsuhiko Sasaki as Professor Mazaki, having previously appeared in Godzilla vs. Megalon, Terror of Mechagodzilla, and Godzilla vs. Biollante.
  • Kenji Sahara has a small role as a government official.

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