What Could Have Been / Godzilla

Early concept art/design of Godzilla for Godzilla (1954), when its head was once used to be in the shape of a mushroom cloud, clearly alluding to the Hiroshima bombing the original film (and the titular Kaiju itself) was a metaphor of.

Showa Era Films

• The main reason that the first Godzilla movie was made in the first place was because Toho’s original big movie of 1954 In the Shadow of Glory had to be cancelled because of political tensions between Japan and Indonesia. The idea to make a monster movie in its stead was because producer Tomyuki Tanaka was daydreaming about a giant sea monster while looking out the window on the return flight.
• During conceptualization of Godzilla (1954), Godzilla was originally planned to be a giant octopus, and then a fire-breathing ape (obviously based on King Kong) with a head like a mushroom cloud (clearly alluding to the Hiroshima bombing the original film and the titular Kaiju itself was a metaphor of.) was a metaphor of.and a cross between a whale and a gorilla (hence the name Gojira, a combination of the Japanese words for gorilla and whale) before the producers watched The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and decided to make Godzilla a prehistoric reptile like the Rhedosaurus, but keeping the name.
  • Godzilla was originally going to be portrayed with stop-motion similar to King Kong and the Rhedosaurus, but this was largely scrapped (only one scene where Godzilla knocks down a building with his tail was stop-motion) in favour of the iconic monster suits due to the amount of time and budget stop-motion would have required (it was projected that had they shot the film with entirely stop-motion, it would have taken an additional seven years to complete).
  • Godzilla was initially going to be a monster motivated by hunger, and when his head first appeared over the ridge of Odo Island in his initial appearance, there would have been a cow in his mouth. This was scrapped partly because of logistics (the cow would have realistically been too small to see in Godzilla's mouth from that distance) and partly due to it being perceived as too graphic for the film.
    • This version of Godzilla was also conceived of as having massive ears. Both of these details would later be recycled for Baragon in Frankenstein Conquers the World.
  • The original version of Dr. Yamane (Gojira) was going to be more of a caped corny villain whose desire for Godzilla to live went so far as to sabotage operations against him. Thankfully all but his desire to have Godzilla live, to study for the good of mankind, were removed over time.
• Godzilla Raids Again was released in the US in an edited form as Gigantis: The Fire Monster. However, the original idea for the movie's US distribution was even more radical. Godzilla Raids Again would've been "remade" into a completely different film known as The Volcano Monsters by AB-PT Pictures. Godzilla and Anguirus would've been referred to as simply a giant T-rex and Ankylosaurus, the monsters would've attacked San Francisco instead of Osaka, and every scene with a Japanese actor would've been cut (along with everything else that the later Gigantis dub cut as well). Toho even lent their suits to AB-PT, since they were desperately trying to market their films to the US in any way they can at the time (even if it involved massive editing). Before the project could come to fruition, however, AB-PT Pictures closed shop. The result? The Volcano Monsters (along with several other films they were developing) never saw a release, the two monster suits that Toho lent went missing, and what we got instead was the Gigantis: The Fire Monster release by Warner Bros..
  • Anguirus was originally going to have a split carapace similar to a beetle, something that would again come up in conceptual designs for the Heisei versions of Anguirus which never ended up seeing the light of day.
• Godzilla Raids Again was originally planned to have an incredibly bizarre immediate sequel in 1956 called Bride of Godzilla, which would center around a giant Robot Girl created by a scientist to combat a third Godzilla and second Anguirus, only Godzilla to fall in love with her (yes, really!). It also would also take place in a Hollow Earth world discovered by the characters and home to a whole ecosystem of Godzillas, Anguiruses, and other monsters (like a giant chameleon and a mutant archaeopteryx). At the end the robot would have detonated its nuclear heart, killing Godzilla and destroying the ecosystem. Did we mention the giant robot girl would have been naked?
  • The concept was also briefly revisited as a potential revival of the series during Godzilla's hiatus in the 70s, changing various elements around (for one, the robot girl was replaced with an actual female Godzilla) before specific elements were instead used for the first drafts to what would become The Return of Godzilla.
• Rodan was originally conceptualized as a giant prehistoric bird resembling Archaeopteryx (whether this had anything to do with the scrapped Bride of Godzilla's Archaeopteryx is unknown) before he became a giant pterosaur instead.
• Moguera from The Mysterians was originally going to be an organic kaiju, a quadrupedal monster resembling a cross between a mole and a lizard that could shoot gas from its tail, but it was changed into a (bipedal) mech to better differentiate it from prior Toho monsters (but still retaining many of the design aspects of the original idea).
• King Kong vs. Godzilla was originally conceptualized as a film where Kong would fight a giant ogre-like monster created by Dr. Frankenstein (sometimes known as "Prometheus"), before the script was shipped to Toho, where Frankenstein was replaced with Godzilla, and we got one of the most legendary crossover-versus movies of all time, while Frankenstein would later be used in Frankenstein Conquers the World.
  • Toho initially wanted to shoot on location in Sri Lanka, but since the rights to Kong slashed the budget, they resorted to shooting on their own Oshima Island.
  • Due to its enormous box office success, a direct sequel called Continuation: King Kong vs. Godzilla was announced but never evolved past the proposal stage. The script for the film involved Kong briefly fighting a giant scorpion, as well as revealing that Godzilla was actually going to be killed at the end of the previous film, only to be brought Back from the Dead here.
  • Frankenstein vs. Godzilla was also considered but it was scrapped in favour of Mothra vs. Godzilla since the reasoning for Godzilla and Frankenstein encountering one another didn't make sense (the JDSF would awaken Godzilla to fight Frankenstein... even though Frankenstein hadn't done anything destructive and Godzilla hadn't evolved into the heroic phase of his character yet).
  • Even before Frankenstein vs. Godzilla, Toho considered Frankenstein vs. the Human Vapor, a crossover sequel to their previous film, The Human Vapor (1960).
• Manda was originally going to be a "mammoth snake" but since the year that his film was going to come out was the year of the dragon, they made him into a dragon instead.
• Mothra vs. Godzilla was drastically different than what we got with the movie released in 1964. Godzilla was intended to have a bigger role. He was intended to have washed ashore and be a tourist attraction instead of Mothra's Egg, and upon awakening, was to attack the Country of Rolisica, instead of Nagoya. There were no Mothra Larva at all in the movie, only the Imago Mothra, who would've fought with Godzilla at the film's climax and won.
• Originally King Ghidorah was supposed to be crimson before he was designed as golden, and some photos of Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster in production exist where he is blue with rainbow-coloured wings, which is also the version on the poster.
  • Mothra's imago form was originally supposed to have appeared along with the larval form, but she was dropped during production over concerns about the effort it would take to have to puppet three flying monsters together, since Rodan and King Ghidorah already took a lot of strings to operate.
• Batman Vs. Godzilla. Supposedly, some of the concepts from the film were recycled in Son of Godzilla like the weather control machine. It's probably worth noting the idea came around not too long after the famous 60s Batman show debuted. The closest this ever came to fruition cinematically was likely the Toho film Latitude Zero (which is usually considered part of the Godzilla canon-verse), which starred Cesar Romero (who played the Joker in the Batman show) as the villain, who had an army of mutant animals, which included Bat Men (and yes, that is their official name). Godzilla would eventually cross over with Batman some sixty-years later with DC Comics' 2023 series Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong, which features the MonsterVerse incarnation of Godzilla and Kong getting transported to the DC Universe.
  • According to Gojipedia, the film would have starred the Adam West Batman (1966), and featured not only the four main recurring villains in the series (these being The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler, and Catwoman), the main villain would have been played by Boris Karloff, in addition to Bruce Lee making a cameo as himself. Exactly how much of this is true is unknown, but the idea of Boris Karloff being in a Godzilla movie would be a horror fan's dream come true.
  • For those curious as to the plot - Dr. Klaus Finster, a German scientist who just came to Japan after spending 20 years in Argentina, threatens to flood Japan with a weather-controlling machine, so the Japanese government imports Batman from the US to solve the issue. Batman quickly discovers that Finster can't actually control the weather, and is in fact mind-controlling Godzilla to make giant waves. The search for Dr. Finster leads Batman and Robin to a bathhouse, where they strip down to their cowls for a chase sequence. Batgirl is also in the movie, and Godzilla seems to have a crush on her, which enables Batman to realize Godzilla's biggest weakness and create a device that simulates a female Godzilla mating call. Once the Nazi mind-control is overpowered, Batman manages to strap a rocket to Godzilla and shoot him up into space.
  • And believe it or not, that's just one of two drafts made of this concept. The one widely known about was penned by a still unknown American writer and was archived at the University of Wyoming. The second by Shinichi Sekizawa still has it's details unknown to this day.
• You remember Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster? King Kong was originally going to be the star monster instead of Godzilla. This is also evident by most of Kong's mannerisms being recycled into Godzilla's personality in the film, namely Godzilla's odd fascination with Dayo. Kong was replaced by Godzilla because it was intended to be a film adaptation of The King Kong Show, and Rankin/Bass Productions felt the story was too different from the show, leading to the creation of King Kong Escapes instead. But rather than scrapping the story entirely it was retooled to have Godzilla instead of Kong.
• Destroy All Monsters. Beyond the intention of being the last Godzilla movie, many other monsters were intended to appear but never made the final cut like Gaira the Green Gargantua, Maguma the giant walrus from Gorath, and Ebirah. Baragon and Varan were also intended to have larger roles, but the former suit was difficult to film the scenes the needed scenes with and the latter suit hadn't been used in years, and there presumably wasn't enough money to make a new one, so it was replaced with a motionless prop for a few shots. It was also long thought that Baragon was replaced by Gorosaurus for the role of destroying the Arc De Triomphe, but early drafts and storyboards reveal that Gorosaurus directly replaced Maguma during planning.
  • King Kong was also slated to appear, but Toho ended up losing his licensing rights early into production.
  • An early draft of the film was called All Monsters Attack Directive (not to be confused with the later Godzilla film All Monsters Attack), which not only included the appearance of every single Toho kaiju that had appeared prior, but also supposedly would have featured hybrid monsters created by crossbreeding with one another. However, most of this script was scrapped due to budget constraints.
• Ishiro Honda initially wanted all of the monster footage in All Monsters Attack to be brand-new, and he also wanted to include a sequence with Godzilla fighting Rodan and Oodako (the Giant Octopus) and Rodan stalking Ichiro attempting to eat him. However due to scheduling and budget issues, the crew was forced to use stock footage for all monster scenes that weren't Godzilla, Minya, and Gabara. As for the Rodan and Oodako fights, their roles were "recycled" for the Kamacuras and Ebirah fights respectively.
  • Speaking of All Monsters Attack, Gabara started as a giant mole cricket monster known as Gebara. This monster eventually was reused and became Megalon.
  • The movie's whole existence is the result of the poor box office of Latitude Zero, as originally there was no Godzilla movie planned for 1969 and instead an animated series produced by Filmation was to come out. Alongside plans for a live action movie tie in like King Kong Escapes. After plans for the animated show fell through, the movie plans changed once Toho saw how Gamera vs. Viras did okay in the box office despite lots of stock footage convincing the suits to pursue something similar.
• Space Amoeba was originally going to be more of an epic with a global scope, involving an alien invasion resulting in the sinking of entire continents, and nuclear weapons used in retaliation, before the story was considerably downgraded to take place on a single (fictional) island. It was then supposed to film on-location in Guam, but even more budget constraints meant that most filming was done on the Japanese island of Hachijō-jima (in winter), while the water scenes were shot in pools in Tokyo.
  • Gezora was originally a jellyfish monster called Dodora who had fire-based powers.
  • Eiji Tsuburaya was also supposed to be the special effects supervisor, but he died only two days into production and is uncredited in the final film (a decision made by Toho executives which enraged many of the staff who worked on the film, especially Tsuburaya's pupil Sadamasa Arikawa, who basically disowned the film).
• A proposed sequel to Godzilla vs. Hedorah, by the director Yoshimitsu Banno, had Godzilla fighting a giant mutant starfish, which he scrapped in favour of a direct sequel where Godzilla would fight another Hedorah, but in Africa this time. However, this too never saw fruition, reportedly because Banno was sacked before production could begin on the sequel.
• Godzilla vs. Redmoon would have been a film by a collaboration of Toho with Tsuburaya Productions (of Ultra Series fame), in which Godzilla fights a family of monsters. It was scrapped for unknown reasons, and Tsuburaya eventually transformed the film into the very bizarre Daigoro vs. Goliath, although it ultimately has very little similarity to the original story involving Godzilla.
• Godzilla vs. Gigan originally had two different scripts that were eventually heavily rewritten (largely for budget-related reasons):
  • The first draft, titled The Return of King Ghidorah, was focused heavily on Ghidorah and had the evil dragon team up with Gigan and a Red Dragon known as "Mogu". They were going to fight the team of Godzilla, Rodan, and Varan. In this draft, Gigan had a ball-and-chain for one hand. It was presumably scrapped due to the expense of having to make a suit for Mogu, as well as the above-mentioned reason for Varan being a plastic prop in Destroy All Monsters.
  • The second draft was closer to what the film wound up becoming introduced the Space Hunter Nebula-M Aliens and the concept of Gigan teaming up with Ghidorah, as well as Godzilla and Anguirus as a tag-team. The only differences was that Megalon was also introduced to team up with Gigan and Ghidorah and a deity named "Majin-Tuol" teaming up with Godzilla and Anguirus.
  • There's also now a recently discovered third draft called Godzilla vs. Gigan: The Return of King Ghidorah. This one tried to bring Megalon back in, along with Larva Mothra, but both were scrapped.
• Godzilla vs. Megalon was originally to be a solo venture for Jet Jaguar (some believe as a Pilot Movie for a TV series which never ended up happening). However, Toho threw in Godzilla and Gigan at the last moment in hopes of boosting its ticket sales.
• Tokyo S.O.S.: Godzilla's Suicide Strategy was a proposed film where Godzilla battled Gigan and a monster named Chamelegon that only Godzilla could see due to it being made with an alien metal making it invisible to humans (it's assumed this concept was thought up as a way to save budget). During the course of the story Godzilla would be blinded by the air force, and would have to rely on sound to defeat his foes.
• Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla: An earlier draft for the film had Godzilla, Anguirus, and Mothra teaming up to fight aliens called the Garugans. Mothra was replaced with the new King Caesar, Anguirus was hit by The Worf Effect and subjected to a Curb-Stomp Battle by the disguised Mechagodzilla, and the Garugans became the Black Hole Aliens and Mechagodzilla.
  • Gigan was to appear in earlier drafts of the finished script.
• Originally in Terror of Mechagodzilla, Titanosaurus originally was going to be two plesiosaur-like dinosaurs, a male and a female, known as Titans, which were normally peaceful, but became aggressive after entwining their necks which would forcefully fuse the two together into the titular Titanosaurus.
  • Mechagodzilla was supposed to be disguised as Godzilla again in the final battle of the movie and there was a scene written of a child seeing him and crying in betrayal and then the real Godzilla would emerge from the ground to fight him and Titanosaurus.
  • In the original script the entirety of Tokyo was destroyed. Toho wanted the evil monsters to be stopped before reaching Tokyo instead but writer Yukiko Takayama argued strongly that this is what the audience would expect. In the end a compromise was reached. The monsters would destroy a part of Tokyo and Teruyoshi Nakano set up multiple cameras to film the same destruction with multiple angles to use in the film.
• Toho almost made a kaiju film starring a mutated Loch Ness Monster called Nessie, which was going to be a Japanese-British co-production with the legendary horror film studio Hammer. It got as far as a full script, posters, storyboards, and props being made before it was scrapped, since Hammer's golden age was coming to an end and by the time filming was to begin, they were in no shape to start and eventually Toho lost interest after several delays.
  • This lead to a long believed rumor that the 1987 Toho film Princess from the Moon used a still surviving prop of Nessie for the Dragon that appears in the movie. This is only partially true. No actual physical prop of Nessie was ever made^note nevermind that a such a prop surviving in working condition for that long would have been very unlikely, but Teruyoshi Nakano did use a maquette that he had created for the unproduced project as the basis for the Dragon in the film.
• It is believed that Henry G. Saperstein had approached Toho about making a movie with Godzilla fighting one or more Gargantuas. Sadly, the concept went nowhere, although Godzilla did end up fighting the Gargantuas in the comic series Godzilla: Rulers of Earth.
  • Another film collaboration with Saperstein which never ended up materializing was an animated movie featuring Godzilla that was slated for a 1988 release. An animated format was chosen because it would have been much cheaper than a live-action film featuring the same story, whatever it was.
• A VERY psychedelic story known as "A Space Godzilla" (and no, not that SpaceGodzilla) was written in 1979 by Katsuhiro Otomo (a.k.a. - The writer and director of AKIRA!) and was even proposed to Toho as a possible film (allegedly to be done with Stop Motion!). It details about a female alien that resembles Godzilla dying of diabetes and its Alien Son (which also resembles Godzilla) traversing the universe, reuniting with its Alien Godzilla father, and ultimately becoming one with the Cosmos, all while being told in a style similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey. It also involved the Alien Godzilla father fighting a large-breasted alien that threw swastika-shaped knives.
  • An arguably even weirder attempt to revive the Godzilla franchise was the proposed God's Godzilla which had Jesus Christ as an evil space alien who animates Godzilla from a hidden, dinosaur-shaped Nazca line drawing in order to send humanity into an apocalypse in which the only survivors are horrific mutants. The idea was swiftly dropped due to fears of Toho repeating the same mistakes that ultimately got Prophecies of Nostradamus banned by including the horrific mutants and for possibly offending the Religious world with an evil depiction of Jesus Christ.
• Like King Kong (1976) Toho had seriously considered remaking the original film in the Seventies with the title King of Monsters: Rebirth of Godzilla. Apparently however, production got hit with delays before it could even start, leading to its cancellation.

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Heisei Era Films

• Oh boy, where do we begin with Bagan? One of the reasons why he might even be an Ensemble Dark Horse is because of this.
  • His concept first appeared in an early version of The Return of Godzilla, which would have him fight Godzilla as THREE monsters that could shape-shift individually and would merge together at the film's climax.
  • The scrapped Mothra vs. Bagan movie gave Bagan his recognizable appearance and the plot of it sounded EXTREMELY similar to that of Rebirth of Mothra. In this scrapped idea, Bagan could FLY.
  • Godzilla vs. Bagan, a film that was to based on the video game, Super Godzilla. It was going to feature Gotengo and even Godzilla turning into SUPER GODZILLA!
    • On a side note, the basic design for Super Godzilla was recycled as Spacegodzilla.
  • Bagan was also considered for the video game, Godzilla: Unleashed. However, he was replaced by Varan in the planning phase due to Simon Strange preferring Varan over Bagan, simply for Varan's design.
• The American translation for The Return of Godzilla was initially intended to be a campy Gag Dub in line with the later Showa films that proceeded it, but Raymond Burr hated the idea of making a joke out of a dark, serious film that it was intended as and vetoed it.^note Only one line remained from this version, "That's quite an urban renewal program they've got going over there", and which Burr was not happy about.
• Biollante's rose form in Godzilla vs. Biollante was at one point replaced by a fish-rat creature named Deutalios, whom Godzilla was going to kill and then eat. This was cut due to its graphic nature (the second time that a scene showing Godzilla eating meat was cut). Biollante was also originally planned to have only one form and a human face.
  • The box office disappointment of Godzilla vs Biollante is primarily what led to Toho to go back to using older, popular monsters for most of the Heisei Era instead of creating new ones, such as following up with King Ghidorah, and then Mothra, and then Mechagodzilla. It also killed the conceptualization of a Bagan film that had been planned to follow the film had it been successful.
  • A remake of King Kong vs. Godzilla was planned for the Heisei Godzilla series (to coincide with Toho's 60th anniversary) but didn't happen because Turner Entertainment wouldn't let Toho use Kong without demanding expensive royalty payments. It supposedly involved Kong being turned into a cyborg before fighting Godzilla. Reportedly, Anguirus had also been considered to be in it as well. Whatever the case, the film eventually evolved into Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah.
  • After Vs King Ghidorah was a hit, Toho wanted to do an immediate follow-up with another King Ghidorah that would have been of extraterrestrial origin like his Showa era counterpart. According to Koichi Kawakita the project didn't go forward because executives felt it was too easy to bring Ghidorah back again, as well as them seeing a poll at the time showing Mothra was popular among women.
  • A movie featuring Mechani-Kong fighting Godzilla while a team of scientists get injected into Godzilla's body also didn't happen due to Mechani-Kong's "striking resemblance" to Turner's King Kong, which meant that Toho would been forced to pay Turner royalty payments for a character Toho actually owns. It is said that the mecha Bulgario featured in the toku series The Justirisers was based on the unused Heisei design for Mechani-Kong.
• An early draft of what would become Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs. Gigamoth (involving Mothra, as well as a mutated Mothra known as Gigamoth, the concept of which probably evolved into Battra), sound INSANELY interesting.
  • There was a proposed concept for a direct sequel which had Mothra's body be turned into a robotic cyborg known as MechaMothra, looking more like a dragonfly than her traditional appearance.
• 1993's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II was to be directed by Ishiro Honda, but he died earlier that year.
  • There were also going to be two Rodan similar to Rodan's debut film, a mated pair who think Godzilla Junior is their son (rather than Rodan thinking he's his brother in the final film). The male would be killed early on, while the female would be defeated and resurrected as "White Rodan" (rather than Fire Rodan) later on and fight Mechagodzilla to her death defending Godzilla Junior (this version is what ended being illustrated on the poster).
  • Some early ideas for Mechagodzilla was that it would have an artificial alien life-form known as Berserk which would gradually get larger and more Godzilla-like by consuming machinery, and being comprised of seven separate vehicles which would combine to form Mechagodzilla (similar to White Rodan, this unused version is what was illustrated in the film's poster).
  • In the original ending for the film, Godzilla destroys the Garuda, but is killed by Mechagodzilla. Garuda's nuclear reactor explodes and resurrects the King of the Monsters. Another ending was considered in which Godzilla's escaping life energy mutates Baby Godzilla into a new adult Godzilla. In an even earlier version of the screenplay written by Shinji Nishikawa, Godzilla would explode due to an out of control nuclear reaction in his heart during the final battle. The radiation released by Godzilla would be absorbed by BabyGodzilla, mutating him into a new Godzilla, who destroys Mechagodzilla. These concepts were saved for Godzilla vs Destoroyah.
• Moguera's role in Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla was originally intended for Mechagodzilla (rebuilt after the event of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II. However, the producers came to the realization that the film had too many Godzillas (Godzilla, Little Godzilla, Spacegodzilla...), so Mechagodzilla was switched out in favour of a more obscure Toho giant robot.
  • Around this time Toho took plot ideas from its Planning Department staff for what might be the next film. Some of these were truly bizarre, such as Godzilla facing off against Cthulhu, Godzilla battling a take on Sun Wukong named King Goku, and a pitch where Godzilla fights five brightly colored clones of himself, a la the Super Sentai/Power Rangers franchise.
  • Early on the film to be in Vs Spacegodzilla's slot was entirely different and instead would have been a crossover between the Toho Godzilla and initial version of the Tristar Godzilla, featured in the Godzilla (1994) script. Reports vary on if it was going to be a full film or a short, but it was meant to act as a promotion and tie-in to the still in-pre-production Tristar film. However, the reworking of the Tristar film, the decision to kill Godzilla and a studio policy asking for no direct Godzilla vs. Godzilla films meant it wasn't made.
  • Originally Spacegodzilla was going to be called Astrogodzilla, had telepathic powers, and commanded an army of alien dragonflies. Mothra was also going to have a much larger role where she teamed up with Moguera and Godzilla. Most of this got cut for budget concerns. A later revision of this script changed Astrogodzilla's name to "Crystal Godzilla" before it became Spacegodzilla.
  • Even before this, Toho planned on having Godzilla fight a reimagining of the Showa King Ghidorah known as Emperor Ghidorah, which was an extraterrestrial that was actually capable of manipulating gravity with his gravity beams rather than just shooting lightning. However, he was deemed too similar to the Orochi from the Toho film Yamato Takeru, which was coming out at about the same time, and scrapped, but retaining the idea of Godzilla's opponent being from space, Spacegodzilla was born.
  • Speaking of Yamato Takeru, had a franchise spawned from it Toho had plans to include Godzilla and King Ghidorah in one of the sequels.
  • Oh not only that! Toho actually had two monsters already planned for the Yamato Takeru sequel; one was the revived Orochi. The other? Mr. Down on his luck Monster himself: BAGAN!
  • After production wrapped on Vs Spacegodzilla Toho's writing staff had a contest to decide what draft should be the next Godzilla movie. One of these was a direct sequel titled Terror of Spacegodzilla, where a fragment of the space monster would fuse with a space station attacking Earth directly from orbit.
• There were supposedly plans for a King Ghidorah solo film in the 1990s, but it was scrapped in favour of him featuring as an antagonist in Rebirth of Mothra.
• The finale of the Heisei series went through many, many drafts and ideas before becoming Godzilla vs. Destoroyah:
  • One idea for a Godzilla film in the 1990s was to have Godzilla fight a ghost version of the 1954 Godzilla. The idea was to have the '54 Godzilla win and was also slated to feature Godzilla Junior and Anguirus (concept art was even commissioned to try and design a "Heisei series version" of the character◊), and also involved Anguirus fusing with Ghost Godzilla and Baragon. However, since Godzilla already fought against two Godzilla-like monsters (Mechagodzilla and Spacegodzilla) Toho decided to use the Oxygen Destroyer concept instead to bring the franchise full circle, and thus Godzilla vs. Destoroyah was created. Anguirus (along with a slimmer variant known as the Anguirus Hound) was reportedly scrapped because the four-legged walking stance of the suit made it difficult to portray a realistic sense of speed.
  • Worth noting that the image on the left in the commission art link isn't Anguirus but rather a different monster called "Barubaroi". Barubaroi was yet another monster made to fight Godzilla in his own film, and would later evolve into Destoroyah (Anguirus again was apparently set to appear as well as Junior, and Anguirus would have been assimilated by Barubaroi).
  • Another version developed in the conceptualization of Godzilla vs Destoroyah was Godzilla vs. Giant Monster Varan, and as the name implies, the final enemy of the Heisei series was going to be Varan, as the "herald of the apocalypse". Unlike the other proposals however, Godzilla was supposed to live at the end of the film, with the ending being him and Little Godzilla (who finally learns to breathes fire through the course of the plot) swimming off into the sunset.
  • An early script of Godzilla vs Destoroyah involved a mecha known as G-END constructed from the remnants of Moguera from the previous film, Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla, but Toho decided against it since it would have meant three movies in a row featuring mechs, which they thought was excessive.
  • Another idea made during the conceptualization of Godzilla vs Barubaroi (which became Godzilla vs Destoroyah) was that Godzilla would fight a genetically engineered cybernetic humanoid with a human face and skin made of Godzilla cells known as the "Biomonster", and the two monsters would perform a Mutual Kill. There were many other ideas as well, including one where Godzilla fought his son, one where he fought "deep-sea life" (a kaiju resembling Titanosaurus), one where he fought "Super Atomic Godzilla" in Russia, and a particularly wacky one where Junior was sent into the past to battle the Godzilla of the 50s.
  • Sometime in-between those four drafts above and Destoroyah, there was yet another concept, called Godzilla vs. Chaos. This one would've brought back the Ghost Godzilla concept, but Ghost Godzilla himself wasn't going to be the main antagonist here. That title would go to the titular Chaos itself, who would've apparently come from a parallel dimension, and would've fought Godzilla and Little Godzilla over the energy Ghost Godzilla constantly spewed.
  • Originally, Destoroyah was going to fire a powerful "stomach beam" from the floral pattern on his chest, something seen in concept art, kept in the manga adaptation (where it sliced off the end of Godzilla's tail and one of his dorsal plates), and filmed (where it was strong enough to knock Godzilla over with one shot), but scrapped in post-production.
  • Destoroyah's death was also longer and more violent, as he would have survived the JSDF's ice tanks, but is then grabbed by Godzilla as he starts melting down, and rendered flightless by his shredded wings, Godzilla would have taken his son's killer to the grave with him, the extreme heat from the meltdown along with the ice tanks still blasting at the two monsters causes Destoroyah to dissolve into nothing. This ending scene was scrapped because it took the focus away from Godzilla's death, although the manga adaptation kept it.

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Millenium Era Films

• Tanaka's first attempt to revive the Godzilla series after Destoroyah was a proposal titled Godzilla Vs Bio Godzilla, in which a now adult Junior would team up with the Ghost Godzilla to fight off the titular threat. Tanaka's passing ended up leaving the proposal on the cutting room floor.
• During production of Godzilla 2000 there was consideration to have King Caesar and Anguirus appear either as opponents or allies, but it was quickly discarded. Possibly due to how Toho doesn't have confidence in their drawing power.
  • An early draft of the film conceived the film as another solo Godzilla outing much like the first Showa and Heisei films. The story was thrown out for being too vague however, and the alien invasion subplot was added after more drafts.
  • Even earlier drafts of the script had Junior as the Godzilla in the movie, and had direct reference to the events of the Heisei series. He was removed from the story by Shogo Tomiyama in order to create a unique Godzilla and because reusing Junior meant reusing the old Heisei design and Toho wanted to redesign the monster.
    • Two of the plots that included Junior were a draft that served as a revisiting of the Godzilla Vs Mysterians idea that Kawakita tried to make. And a draft called Godzilla Millennium, where Junior would be revealed as missing since the fight with Destoroyah. He would then be found on an island alongside a UFO that would go online and produce a fully CGI alien monster with an amorphous design.
  • Concept art for designs of Orga varied extremely widely. Some designs were much more strongly Godzilla-like, others were more bio-mechanical in appearance to the point of not even having a mouth, while one design strongly resembles Legion.
• In the early 2000s, film studio Kadokawa-Daiei Pictures approached Toho with the proposal of a Gamera vs. Godzilla crossover film. In what might be one of the most unfortunate missed opportunities in monster film history, Toho actually rejected the offer twice after initially accepting the first offer (in which the two would fight each other, ultimately team up together to fight against a bigger threat (likely a King Ghidorah-Gyaos team up) and part on equal terms), the reason it was rejected was because Kadokawa-Daiei ultimately wanted the film to end with Gamera winning in typical Gamera fashion which outright angered Toho as they saw Gamera as a completely inferior Kajiu compared to their own star and left on very bitter terms, and Kadokawa-Daiei went on to make Gamera the Brave instead. ^note Gamera and Godzilla did crossover a small handful of times (depending on what you count as a "crossover") although never in a film, once in a live stage show at the Osaka World Fair for ten days in 1970 (two images of Godzilla and Gorosaurus alongside Gyaos survive, but apparently no pictures of Gamera), second in the video game City Shrouded in Shadow, although the two never encounter one another or interact in the game (although characters from several different franchises including Ultraman, Patlabor, and even Neon Genesis Evangelion appear, none of their scenes overlap), and third as a Guest Fighter in the free-to-play mobile gacha game Godzilla Battle Line, as part of a promotional campaign for the then-recently released GAMERA -Rebirth-.
• Originally, Shusuke Kaneko, the director of Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack! wanted to use Varan and Anguirus for the movie. However, the executives at Toho made him use Mothra and Ghidorah instead since they were more popular monsters, and Toho was playing it safe after Godzilla vs. Megaguirus received mediocore reviews. Baragon was the only monster that was kept due to his popularity in Japan, but it did mean King Ghidorah and Mothra seemed unusually weaker than they usually were, since their roles were originally written for Varan and Anguirus respectively. Anguirus was also going to be known as the "golden freezing monster" and had ice breath to complement Baragon's fire breath (which he ended up not having in the final film, though it did make it into the Pipeworks ''Godzilla'' Trilogy) and Varan's flying abilities. The ship that finished off Godzilla at the end was also going to be the Gotengo rather than the Satsuma.
  • Additionally, Kaneko's other ideas for a Godzilla film included him fighting a mutated astronaut known as "M" and a separate one where he fights Kamacuras as Kaneko wanted to experiment with a completely CGI version of the giant mantis.
• Remember Kamoebas' corpse appearing in Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.? Well, that was originally going to be Anguirus! However, the producers did not like the idea of Godzilla's closest ally appearing dead from an offscreen battle with Godzilla, so the next idea was a Liopleurodon, which also got cut because Toho felt it would be useless to introduce a new monster and have it only appear as a corpse. Kamoebas was used instead to placate Anguirus fans and deliver a stealth Take That! towards Gamera.
  • Anguirus was also initially considered in the prior film, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, where he would have fought against Kiryu similar to his encounter with the Showa Mechagodzilla.
  • After Tokyo SOS wrapped production Masaaki Tezuka submitted a proposal for a solo Kiryu spin off film. It never came to pass.
• Godzilla: Final Wars had a number of scrapped elements and kaiju, such as Gorosaurus (replaced by Zilla), Kiryu (replaced by the Gotengo), the Giant Octopus from King Kong vs Godzilla (interesting, its concept art gives it an actual name: Dagora), and King Ghidorah (replaced by Monster X and Keizer Ghidorah).
  • Concept designs for Godzilla also looked radically different to any incarnation of the character, and looked like snakes with arms and legs than anything else. Another scrapped design looked like the KiryuGoji suit, but with red eyes, a Biollante-like chest pattern and a spiky skin texture, and one model design looked so radically different from the normal Godzilla design that it was hard to even see it as Godzilla.
  • Additionally, Anguirus, Rodan and King Shisa/King Caesar were supposed to be killed, but the fact that the scene would require them to destroy the suits (which were going to be used for publicity shots and promotions), as well as the fact all three were allies of Godzilla's in the 60s and 70s, caused them to scrap it.
  • Also at its early stages, Final Wars was to be a Distant Finale to the Heisei films. With the Godzilla being the adult Junior and Destoroyah being his ultimate opponent at the end.

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Reiwa Films

• Shin Godzilla originally had a scene where Godzilla's third form vomited up a small lake of steaming blood, which made it into production but was never finalized, and an alternate scene where workers find that Godzilla's dislodged tissue is growing back and instead of finding a clump of Godzilla's spikes, would find a teratoma-like mass of meat, eyes, and teeth.
  • Some other scenes that were cut included more shots of civilians fleeing and the destructive aftermath, a scene where Godzilla's fourth form was feebly crawling around on all fours (which was also present in the concept art), a scene where he was actually slithering on his tail like a snake, and a scene where he shot his atomic breath at the ground so that it momentarily propelled himself into the air.
  • Some ideas for Godzilla's design were also that he would have a second head (implicitly that he was reproducing by fission), that the fifth form would emerge from his dorsal plates, and that he would have started off looking normal but gradually became weirder as the film went on, while in the film proper the opposite occurred.
  • A large-scale animatronic of Godzilla's upper body was constructed that was semi-mobile, but it didn't end up in the final film, with every shot being a computer-generated model.
• Several concept art designs for Godzilla in Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters depicted him having horns, face fins, ears, and/or fur, with many having a more mammalian-looking face than the final production, which is relatively simplistic.
  • A single Japanese news article mentions Spacegodzilla being part of the anime trilogy's canon. However, he is ultimately one of the few Toho kaiju that is not even referenced in any way (even the Gargantua/Frankenstein were mentioned to have been considered by the author of the prequel novels), even though many highly obscure monsters that have never interacted with Godzilla before were included (including Daghara, Maguma, Dogora, creatures from Latitude Zero, and even Gamera ended up getting a stealth reference). Whether this was simply a misreport or Spacegodzilla was considered at one time but scrapped is unknown.

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American Films

• An American Godzilla movie was planned as far back as 1983 and would have been in 3-D. The plot would have been similar to Gorgo as Godzilla would destroy San Francisco in search of his son, not knowing that his son was killed by a Soviet submarine and the corpse was undergoing scientific analysis. Godzila would have also have been killed at the end. His design was also drastically more dinosaurian, with a Tyrannosaurus-like head. Because no studio wanted to spend millions on a "kiddie picture", the film was scrapped along with a potential Rodan remake, although Toho really liked the concept, and a suit actually was built by Rick Baker in anticipation with Industrial Light & Magic and Stop Motion animators Jim Danforth and David Allen tapped as potential effects artists.
• Before the Godzilla (1998) film, a 1994 Godzilla film was planned:
  • The film was originally going to have Godzilla fight against a giant monster named the Gryphon and have special effects done by none other than Stan Winston Studios (some models of the Gryphon, and its minions called Probe Bats were even constructed). The concept of the Gryphon has some What Could Have Beens of its own:
    • A lie that has been circulating was that the reason the Gryphon never manifested was because Toho veto'd the idea, and proposed Mothra and King Ghidorah instead. Both were turned down because their rights were extremely expensive. The real reason was actually worse.
    • The real season is that Sony’s executives disagreed about the budget and caused the would be director Jan De Bont to drop out. There were several attempts to re-negotiate, and get a director, Tri-Star brought in Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. The condition they agreed to direct was that they would rewrite the entire thing however they wanted, and we all know how that went. The even sadder irony is that the budget went way over the budget Sony didn’t agree on, meaning that the whole screw up was really meaningless.
    • The Gryphon started out as a monster with the features of a cougar, cow and bat; and Godzilla's origins would be that he was a bioweapon made by an ancient civilization to fight off the Gryphon. Gryphon ended up becoming an alien creature that would have used the DNA of cougars, horses and bats (as well as snakes for its tongues) to construct a body for itself, killed the script's main villain and ultimately was killed by Godzilla after giving him hell in battle. Compare this script, Godzilla (1994), to the final film, Godzilla (1998), which was far, far less cool.
• Godzilla (1998):
  • The film was going to be much closer in feel to the Toho versions, but it clashed too harshly with the director's imagining of the lizard in a more realistic light (for instance, Godzilla looked and moved more like his Toho counterpart, but he looked too much like a man in a rubber suit and broke the suspension of disbelief the director was going for). Some concept art exists of this Godzilla using atomic breath, but in the film proper he did not because of this.
  • Briefly in conceptualization, the film executives asked for a possible sidekick character for Godzilla (so that they could have a protagonist monster that they would always have the rights to and possibly spin a spin-off franchise from). Understandably, both the director at the time and Toho shot the idea down quickly.
  • Additionally, the film was originally going to be given a sequel as well. It was primarily set in Australia, and involved Nick raising and nurturing the Baby Godzilla (from the ending) into being in adult, who in turn lays a litter of his own babies. All while trying to balance out how to protect Godzilla and his babies from the world and vice versa, a swarm of insectoid monsters lead by a matriarch known as the Queen Bitch (yes, that is the real name) begin attacking. The concept of Nick raising Baby Godzilla became the basis for the animated series following the movie, which was MUCH better received due to being closer to the original films.
• There was an American-made sequel to Godzilla 2000 planned known as Godzilla Reborn, where Godzilla would arrive in Honolulu for an unknown reason, the military would knock him out (in the original script he was actually going to be killed, and then cloned later on), and then a bat-like lava kaiju known as Miba (said to sort of resemble the winged MUTO but without legs) would have erupted from Mauna Loa, causing the characters to realize this is why Godzilla arrived in Hawaii. They wake him up and a Behemoth Battle ending commences. It was scrapped after Columbia Pictures wasn't interested in a film with such a low budget (a proposed twenty million dollars), and Toho would have required other studios to pay a high cost to use the script. Planned actors that might have starred in the film included Bruce Campbell, Christopher Lee, Leonard Nimoy, and Jamie Lee Curtis among others. Perhaps coincidentally, the idea of Godzilla arriving in Honolulu to fight a winged kaiju in an American-made film would be reused thirteen years later.
• Godzilla (2014):
  • The project started off in 2004, in the months before the release of Godzilla: Final Wars, as an IMAX 3D short film remake of Godzilla vs. Hedorah tentatively called Godzilla 3D to the Max that even had Yoshimitsu Banno as director at the time where he would have fought a Hedorah-like monster called Deathla. Over the course of 2007-2009, the project eventually morphed into a feature-length film under the aegis of Legendary Pictures.
  • Godzilla was originally planned to be found preserved in a Siberian glacier, like in the script for Godzilla (1994). This was changed when the film team heard that Man of Steel had a very similar scene with the discovery of the Fortress of Solitude (although it ultimately didn't), in a case of pre-production Derivative Differentiation.
  • The trailer with Oppenheimer speaking featured a few scenes of destruction cut and showed a huge, multi-armed woodlouse kaiju, apparently dead. It's not seen in the movie. Fans commonly refer to this monster as "Vishnu", due to Robert Oppenheimer's famous Destroyer of Worlds speech playing in the background, but in the concept art book Godzilla: Art of Destruction it's only referred to as "a strange, dead monster". That creature was revealed to be a placeholder. However, these two monsters were revealed to have almost been the creatures Godzilla fought. The idea was a multi-limbed creature and a flier, which eventually became the MUTOs.
  • The "Art of Destruction" book included concept art of a dogfight between the Male MUTO and some fighter jets.
  • It also included an idea of the original script which was that the Male MUTO was presumably killed during the Hawaii fight but was actually cocooning and growing wings.
  • The MUTOs were originally known as Hokmuto (the male, because he was supposed to emerge in Hokkaido) and Femuto (the female, because she's the female) and their EMP abilities were supposed to nullify Godzilla's atomic breath, although that only ended up making it into the novelization.
  • Godzilla was also originally conceptualized as being six-hundred feet tall before being downscaled to three-hundred and fifty-five feet in the final film, which was still considerably taller than he had ever been before that.
  • The cinematographers originally planned for the scene with Joe Brody's interrogation and outburst at the Monarch facility to be shot using several elaborate camera angles and cuts. Bryan Cranston did such a good job with the first rehearsal take that they decided to just use that one and scrap their previous plans.
  • There were apparently several attempts to keep Joe Brody alive in the script.
  • Due to being Canon Foreigner monsters, the MUTO designs underwent an extreme amount of experimentation. Very early into development, the MUTOs were known as Rokmutul and Pterodactyl, which had more strongly reptilian designs reminiscent of Rodan and Anguirus, but these later became the female and male MUTOs respectively and ended up having more insectoid designs.
  • The art book states that they almost went with giving Godzilla fish-like fins instead of bony dorsal plates.
  • Akira Takarada was meant to have a cameo in the film as an airport customs official, but the scene was cut for an unknown reason.
  • There were also plans for an extended cut of the film, which seems to have been quietly cancelled.
• Kong: Skull Island:
  • J. K. Simmons and Michael Keaton were originally set to be part of the cast, but dropped out before production began. Simmons was originally going to play Packard and Keaton was originally going to play Marlow before they were replaced by Samuel L. Jackson and John C. Reilly, respectively.
    • Had Simmons accepted the role of Packard, it would have been an Actor Allusion to his past voice-over role as Fantastic Racist He Who Fights Monsters General Ripper Wade Eiling from Justice League.
  • Legendary Pictures initially offered Joe Cornish a chance to direct the movie. Peter Jackson (himself no stranger to King Kong) also suggested Guillermo del Toro (who directed Pacific Rim, which is a homage to kaiju films) as a possible director.
  • Marlow and Gunpei did not originally crash land on Skull Island simultaneously in the prologue; Marlow would have crashed by himself and then discovered Gunpei camping out in the jungle.
  • Originally Ramarak/Skull Devil's name was going to be MacArthur. A nickname given by Marlow since, like MacArthur, Skull Crawlers never gave up.
  • Originally, the Big Bad was going to be a giant dragon-like serpent with a saw-like jaw but was scraped and replaced by the Skull Crawlers.
  • Several unused concepts for the Skullcrawlers included having a more snake-like body, being able to glide and climb trees, and having mantis-like raptorial arms.
  • One deleted kaiju was a giant tiger with antlers. This creature was later recycled and made a proper appearance in the spin-off graphic novel Kingdom Kong.
  • Godzilla himself would have actually made a physical appearance in this film. At least a few ideas came to be.
    • According to Jordan Vogt-Roberts in the DVD commentary, there would have been black and white shots of Godzilla early in the film. But Jordan Vogt-Roberts fought against this idea of showing Godzilla first in a movie about King Kong, as he didn't want audiences to immediately focus on Godzilla, or have the film feel like a sequel. The director eventually won out and a shot of the damaged USS Lawton, which was attacked by Godzilla, was used instead.
    • In an Empire podcast, it was revealed that Godzilla was at one time considered to directly appear after the credits. Originally Conrad and Weaver are on a boat with Houston Brooks in the Arctic Ocean. Conrad and Weaver were to have asked Brooks what they were waiting for, to which he would have replied "hold on, hold on...". This would have led to Godzilla dramatically surfacing, breaking through the ice. However, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts admitted the scene did not line up with the events of Godzilla, which implied Godzilla had not shown up between 1954 to 2014. As a result, it was ultimately scrapped for an ending that instead evoked Godzilla without directly showing him.
  • Weaver actually had a backstory about growing up with a Control Freak father and all-around dysfunctional family that was scripted but never filmed.
  • According to writer Dan Gilroy, Conrad and Weaver's deleted backstories:
    • Instead of being reluctant to join the expedition, Conrad would have wanted to join as he would've been searching for the giant monster that attacked him and his unit in Vietnam. One of the early concept art ideas shows that the monster considered was actually King Ghidorah (which would've been depicted in a flashback).
    • Weaver was originally written to be a war-weary photojournalist who didn't believe in anything and felt she had been taking photos for too long, but would experience an awakening and "come back to life" when she first sees Kong.
  • In an earlier version of the screenplay, the film took place in 1917 and was a prequel to the 1933 film, following James Conrad leading a rescue team to Skull Island and facing it' mythical creatures in search of his missing brother, who was stranded there while trying to find a "Titan Serum" said to cure all illnesses. Another earlier script had Conrad stow away on the expedition ship rather than being hired.
  • Legendary intended to name the alpha Skullcrawler Ramarak during production, even trademarking it as such, though the name went unused in the film proper. As noted above, in the film it is referred to as "the big one", and the novelization, merchandise, and other supplementary materials referred to it as "Skull Devil" instead.
  • According to an Empire podcast, Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts had a different opening in mind for the film that was shot down by the studio. Much like the opening we got, it would have also opened in WWII, but instead feature squads of soldiers fighting on Skull Island's beach, when another giant ape (albeit smaller than Kong) would have appeared out of the jungle - it's appearance would be based off of the 2005 incarnation of the Kong - only to be killed by the soldiers. Shortly after its death, a roar would be heard as the much larger, actual Kong emerges from the jungle. Legendary Pictures rejected that opening, as they thought it was too much of a mean spirited Take That! to the 2005 film
  • The movie was originally going to be a sequel to Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, Adam Wingard would've been director, but that ended up not happening.
  • An earlier reference to King Ghidorah was also planned when Marlow exposits the story of Kong and the Skullcrawlers to the other characters, with the wall paintings around them showing multiple types of monsters, including one with "three heads", but in the end only Kong and the Skullcrawlers were shown.
  • The scene of Packard and his soldiers napalming Kong originally did not segue immediately into the Skull Devil's emergence. He also would've been slightly more evil, tying down Conrad and Weaver to trees so that they wouldn't be able to stop him, and this would've led to an outright firefight between the two opposing parties instead of the Skull Devil's appearance breaking the standoff.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
  • Concept illustrations and statuettes indicate that portraying Rodan with bird-like feathered wings was considered before the final design of the more classic pterosaur-like wings was used (although with the addition of a molten texture to go along with his volcanic origins this time). Other concept art gave him a more batwing-like design.
  • Behemoth was originally going to be more elephantine, before a more gorilla/ground sloth-like design was used, and Methuselah was conceptualized as being more strongly bull/rhino-like before its more mountainous design.
  • Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen couldn't return for this film due to scheduling conflicts with other films.
  • The scene with Mark studying the wolves was originally slightly longer, with Mark bowing in submission to a wolf that approached him, foreshadowing the end of the movie.
  • In the novelization, the corpse of a reptilian mermaid-like kaiju called Margygr is in the Castle Bravo base alongside the corpses of both MUTOs, Jinshin-Mushi, and numerous other deceased Titans; while in the film only the Female MUTO's severed head is seen.
  • The Art Book for the movie shows concept art of Gigan, Anguirus, Baragon, a titan resembling Kumonga, and most noticeably, a turtle titan that bears a close resemblance to Gamera, a scorpion monster with rock-like pincers, and an octopus/cuttlefish-like monster. None of them make any appearances in the movie. According to Dougherty, the production team considered adding other Toho monsters to the mix at some point, but, given the fact that each Toho character has its own rights which must be paid, they ultimately decided to cook up some new creatures for the Monsterverse's menagerie. That being said, there are still lots of undiscovered Titans, and the team did manage to sneak the skeleton of a creature that may or may not be Anguirus just outside Godzilla's underwater lair.
  • The artbook also shows a picture of Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan together in Boston suggesting originally it was meant to follow the original movie and have them triple team Ghidorah before it was changed to a tag team match.
  • Rodan's introductory scene was originally planned to be even longer than it already was. When Rodan broke free from the volcano, numerous harpoon turrets would have fired to keep him grounded, and then Monarch would have willingly let Rodan loose to fight the approaching Ghidorah. Another sequence was cut involving a fighter jet soaring low over Rodan's back, firing missiles at him as it's doing so, and more shots of fleeing civilians.
  • The Senate meeting with Monarch was originally going to be conducted with holograms, rather than in person.
  • Two versions of Mothra's Theme were created which, like the original, had lyrics, and were supposed to play over the credits. For whatever reason, they were scrapped and only a lyrics-less version is in the final film.
• Godzilla vs. Kong:
  • James Rolfe was actually offered a cameo appearance by Adam Wingard, but James declined due to the birth of his second daughter.
  • Zhang Ziyi was originally slated to return as Dr. Ilene Chen and play a prominent role in the film... but for reasons unknown was completely absent from the final cut.
  • In an interview with CinemaBlend, co-writer Max Borenstein revealed that a deleted scene from Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) showing Mothra's egg was almost Refitted for Sequel, but was ultimately left out.
  • Concept art and storyboards depicted an alternate opening scene of the Iwi demonstrating the rivalry between Godzilla and Kong's species using large puppets, which would've ended with some sort of third unidentifiable entity resembling a Bamboo Technology Transforming Mecha capturing Godzilla (clearly meant to foreshadow the ending).
  • The film's ending, in which we see Kong thriving happily in Hollow Earth, was originally intended to be The Stinger, but Wingard later decided to play the scene before the credits in order to give the film a stronger conclusion. He also notes that including a post-credits scene, which usually serves to tease future installments, would've been too risky due to the questionable future of the MonsterVerse.
    Adam Wingard: I think the MonsterVerse is at a crossroads where audiences need to vote if they want to see another one of these films before they continue. [...] So I think it’s better not to back yourself into a corner to a certain degree. It makes sense that we don’t have a post-credits scene.
  • Plot details have started to come out regarding the first version, elements of which are preserved in the novelization. It has Ren having more screentime, and Madison suffering effects of PTSD from the previous film. A big one is that the eye seen in Florida contained the ORCA-Z and the Simmonses are intentionally trying to cast Godzilla in a bad light. Even him going out of his way to attack Kong at sea was engineered by Maia and 'playing dead' also caused it to shut off.
  • Ren was originally The Starscream who after infusing Hollow Earth Energy to Mechagodzilla kills Simmons, becoming the sole human Big Bad, making a Big Bad Duumvirate with Hollow energy-infused Mechagodzilla with Ghidorah taking the reins.
  • In an earlier draft of the script Nathan lost his fiancee rather than brother in the Hollow Earth.
  • Nathan was supposed to have a bigger role in the original draft, thus why he teams up with Simmons.
  • Concept art shows Skull Island was originally rendered uninhabitable by severe volcanic activity, with the Iwi being evacuated from the island by Monarch in one piece of art while another piece shows Kong watching the skeletons of the Valley of the Fallen Gods be engulfed by lava.
  • There's a tie-in Godzilla action figure, which was ultimately unreleased, known as "Mega Godzilla" that depicts him wearing some kind of neck-brace body armour. One of the SFX artists confirmed on Facebook that this was planned on being in the film, but scrapped very late into production. What exactly it was supposed to have been part of is still unknown.
  • According to Eric Pearson, Behemoth was going to appear in a scene where a bunch of drunken rednecks attempted to hunt him with shotguns and obviously failed. This scene was cut from the final film.
  • One piece of concept art shows that they toyed with the idea of not just having Godzilla blow a hole into the Hollow Earth (as he did in the final film), but actually tunnel there himself to fight Kong.
  • Another piece of concept art shows the Skullcrawler eggs Team Godzilla was being transported with hatching and attacking them in a scene that was cut from the final story.
  • There are several pieces of concept art depicting an antlion-like kaiju in the Hollow Earth called Shimidah. Some of this concept art, as well concept art for the Rock Critters and Scaly Quadruped reptiles, and a cut scene in the storyboards of Nathan discovering the wreckage of his brother's failed expedition, strongly suggest that there was originally going to be a sequence with soldiers travelling through the Hollow Earth on foot that ended being cut.
  • Some of the concept art of the Scaly Quadrupeds show they almost gave it electric powers and a forked tail, and considered giving it a frill and horns. The Hellhawks were also going to much larger, capable of snatching up the hovercrafts in their claws rather than individual humans, and a lot of their designs were more pterosaur or dragon-like.
  • Kong was originally designed with a scar running across the left side of his face. For reasons unknown, this feature was removed late into production, but it's still visible in some merchandise and marketing material for the movie.
  • The Warbats were originally called Nozuki in development (they're not named in the film itself regardless). Their designer could not explain the abrupt name change, but suggested that 'Warbat' was simply a more marketable name than 'Nozuki'. Several concept art pieces also showed they experimented with them having electricity powers, being sexually dimorphic, having a more lizard-like appearance and walking on their wing fingers like a spider, and even having more than two eyes.
  • One segment that was cut from Godzilla's fight with Mechagodzilla was Godzilla dodging and weaving through Hong Kong to avoid Mechagodzilla's Proton Scream, mirroring how Kong was dodging and weaving through Hong Kong from Godzilla's Atomic Breath.
  • Art designer Jared Krichevsky mentioned several concepts and ideas for Mechagodzilla that ultimately weren't used in the finished film, in Jared's Reddit Q&A session. Among these, Mechagodzilla would have at one point been able to fire a second laser from its tail in reference to Shin Godzilla, and it would have displayed an extra rocket-launcher in its chest and the ability to swim via thrusters (these last two are still visible in the finished film's design but aren't deployed).
• Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire:
  • Among the test screening leaks to emerge for the film was a Canon Foreigner monster occupying the role that went to Mothra, an angel/phoenix like creature named Phosphera (who is still seen as a background wall carving in the final film). According to Adam Wingard, the plan was always Mothra but they weren't sure if they were actually going to get to use her so Phosphera was created as a placeholder just in case.
  • Multiple pieces of concept art indicate they originally considered having the Final Battle take place in Moscow, Russia instead of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This change likely had to do with the ongoing Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

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Other

• The Godzilla Power Hour:
  • It was originally intended by the showrunners to be darker in tone and more faithful to the films than what it ended up being (supposedly, it was originally intended to follow the events of Godzilla Raids Again), but the network executives and television standards at the time would only allow a light-hearted, family-friendly program (Godzilla wasn't even allowed to destroy buildings or breathe fire at people).
  • Toho wouldn't give the rights to any other monsters besides Godzilla, and even then, the producers weren't even allowed to use Godzilla's roar. Instead, Hanna-Barbara had to make do with creating standard Monster of the Week foes for Godzilla (which, to be fair, were nothing new for Hanna-Barbara), and hired Ted Cassidy to provide Godzilla's generic roaring sounds.
• Gunhed was originally written as a Godzilla movie! More specifically, it was originally one of the scripts submitted as part of a contest to create a Godzilla film (the winner of which became Godzilla vs. Biollante), but rather than being scrapped, this script was heavily retooled.
• A sequel to the NES game Godzilla: Monster Of Monsters that focused on Rodan was apparently planned for release in 1991, but was reportedly scrapped and replaced with Godzilla 2: War of the Monsters because Toho didn't think Rodan's name had the same selling power.
• The Dark Horse Comics series initial issue was originally conceptualized with redesigned versions of Mothra (specifically made to resemble a sphinx moth), Anguirus (with a more turtle-like design and stinger tail), and King Ghidorah (having a somewhat more insectoid design), but only Godzilla himself ended up being licensed out, leading to lawyer-friendly expy kaiju being present instead.
  • Supposedly, the comic line was meant to end with a Destroy All Monsters-like finale, with reappearances by many of the original kaiju all at once, as hinted in an Imagine Spot in issue 12, but declining sales led to this being scrapped, and many of the original kaiju characters having rather anticlimactic exits as a result.
  • Dark Horse had also wanted to do their usual comic crossovers with Godzilla, proposing ones with The Terminator, Superman, and the Justice League. But Toho, infamously strict with the IP, vetoed all of them.
• Marc Cerasini's Godzilla novels:
  • Kumonga was supposed to appear in Seattle during the events of Godzilla 2000, but was cut due to it being seen as too repetitive after the Kamacuras arc.
  • The fifth novel, Godzilla and the Lost Continent, was announced but cancelled when the 1998 film bombed; it would feature the Earth itself (personified as a returned Biollante and an original stone/fire monster named Raijin, or an existing kaiju had Toho not agreed) striking back against mankind while undoing much of the environmental damage that mankind had done over the years. The titular "lost continent" would also be occupied by returning monsters Varan, Manda and Battra, the survivors of a long-lost civilization, and a "monstrous forest growth", creatures resembling the Triffids, which would appear around the world.
  • The sixth novel, had it gone beyond drafting stages, would have included The Mysterians in its continuity, with the title characters having invaded Earth but been repelled (as they were in the film), but returning in the present day with their Moguera to beg for help from Earth.
  • Cerasini also had plans for Titanosaurus and the Gargantuas (who would have had a non-Frankenstein based origin).
• In what can be considered a very tragically missed opportunity as of 1998, famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa was a big fan of the Godzilla franchise, and wanted to direct his own installment of the series. Unfortunately, Toho turned him down, fearing the enormous budget that his epic style of filmmaking would require.
• In the 1998 interactive video game Godzilla Movie Studio Tour (which is less of a game and more of a clip editor with Godzilla films, and including bonus collections of Godzilla-related images and short videos to browse through), there exists mention (in the form of a single concept artwork and multiple images of a model) of a kaiju known as "Dogolas" (or Dogoras), which vaguely resembles a purple Facehugger. It has never been mentioned in any other Godzilla media nor is it even alluded in the game itself to what it is (and in the Japanese version, its name is only mentioned in the game's code), leading to the huge question mark of where it originally came from or was originally intended for.
• Godzilla: The Series:
  • During conceptualization, there were numerous kaiju created that never ended up in the show, or only appeared in the intro, including many there were named after Toho kaiju, such as Gigan, Gabara, Biollante, Anguirus, and Moguera. However, Word of God has stated that these concepts were never meant to actually represent these monsters, since almost all of them were In Name Only anyway and it would have been too costly and time-consuming to license the rights to all the monsters from Toho.
  • There was originally planned to be an assortment of technology that would have allowed Nick to ride on and "pilot" Godzilla, which partly ended up being included in a retooled form in the episode "Vision", where Godzilla is outfitted with goggles that allow him to see the Monster of the Week.
  • The One-Shot Character monster Komodithrax was going to be a female Godzilla before the idea was abandoned in favour of having her a mutated Komodo dragon so that there was still only one surviving Godzilla.
  • A Trendmasters toy line (which has had a long history of licensing Godzilla toys, including having a short-lived line of merchandise for the 1998 film, the poor sales of which itself ended up having the second intended line to be scrapped) was intended to help promote the series, and several prototypes were even made, but the company went bankrupt shortly before they could be released.
• Pipeworks ''Godzilla'' Trilogy:
  • Save The Earth's story mode had an actual plot that was cut during development, with the green barriers being set up by the Vortaak and Vorticia posing as a reporter. The story had to be scrapped because Atari rushed the game so they could release it to coincide with Godzilla: Final Wars. Concept art also exists for an Arctic stage, a Las Vegas stage (showing Godzilla 90's wielding the guitar on the Hard Rock Hotel as a club), and a Rodan rail-shooter taking place in the desert. A handful of the challenges were originally developed for the original story mode, such as Undersea Battle.
  • Biollante was completed (several other kaiju were considered, including Battra, Super Mechagodzilla, and Titanosaurus, but Biollante was the only one that was actually completed) and to be playable, but was removed from the console versions due to Pipeworks not getting the green light from Toho (In 2014, though, hackers utilizing the PCSX2 emulator (a PlayStation 2 emulator for PC) actually managed to unlock her data, revealing that her entire moveset was recycled for Unleashed).
  • Hedorah was seriously considered for both Save The Earth and Unleashed, but his complex blob-like body was difficult to model and the inability for game engines at the time to handle the proposed in-game transformation between forms.
  • There was an IGN fan poll for Unleashed which had the option of four different original kaiju to be added into the game, the Fire Lion, the Visitor, the Lightning Bug, and Magmouth. Magmouth, later renamed Obsidius, ended up being the winning entry.
  • In an interview numerous other monsters were discussed for Unleashed, but stated by Word of God were only briefly considered early in development before being discarded for various reasons, including King Kong, Zilla, Clover, Gamera, Mechani-Kong, and Monster X.
• Godzilla: Rulers of Earth:
  • Ganimes was meant to appear but in the process of licensing out all the various kaiju, he was accidentally forgotten, wasn't deemed important enough to ask for again, and in the final story only appears as a cave painting (making him the only of the three Space Amoeba kaiju absent).
  • The Cryog and Devonians were originally meant to the be the Space Hunter Nebula M aliens and the Seatopians, respectively, but for whatever reason Toho didn't let IDW license out their humanoid characters for the series, so they were replaced with Suspiciously Similar Substitutes in the final product. In fact, the series was initially proposed as a Spiritual Sequel to Godzilla Legends featuring the various alien races of the Godzilla-verse, but legal red-tape prevented it.
  • The Canon Foreigner Trilopods were created due to Toho's mandate that none of their kaiju could explicitly die, but original monsters were fair game. One idea was an alien fauna menagerie, but it was streamlined to a single species so they wouldn't have to create many different designs for what were essentially one-shot characters made to be killed.
  • Because the writers weren't sure how long the series was going to go for, a few possible endings were considered; one where the kaiju ended up on "Monster Island" which turns out to be a gigantic dormant Biollante (which was presumably modified into issue 8) that they all fought together, another where Godzilla being buried at the bottom of the ocean, as seen in issue 12, and an unused ending where Godzilla fought a clone of himself (which ended up as an Aborted Arc because it was vetoed by Toho).^note This last one was what was responsible for a bit of Continuity Snarl, with Godzilla being buried at the bottom of the ocean and then in the next issue suddenly being frozen in an iceberg, because the Godzilla in the iceberg was originally intended to be the clone.

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