History Film / GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019

Followed by ''Film/GodzillaVsKong'' and ''Film/GodzillaXKongTheNewEmpire''.

->''"Long live the King."''

Followed by ''Film/GodzillaVsKong''.

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* EleventhHourSuperpower: [[spoiler:Mothra's sacrifice allows Godzilla to become Burning Godzilla and use a supercharged version of his Nuclear Pulse to obliterate Ghidorah.]]
* ActionGirl: Madison Russell among the humans due to receiving survival training from her mother, and Mothra among the kaiju.
* ActionizedSequel: The previous movie had three kaiju who only truly fought onscreen towards the end (with one scuffle only briefly shown earlier). This movie ups the ante considerably, not only offering multiple Titan battles between the four main kaiju ([[spoiler:three rounds of Godzilla vs. Ghidorah including the climactic battle, Ghidorah vs. Rodan and Mothra vs. Rodan at various stages]]) but having them start considerably earlier in the film's running time.
* ActorAllusion:
** After King Ghidorah dominates the other Titans, Charles Dance quotes, "[[Series/GameOfThrones Long live the King]]."
* AdaptationalBadass: All the leads get this treatment, harkening back to the Showa Era depictions.
** Rodan is capable of lasting two minutes alone with Ghidorah, and has a long drag out fight with Mothra, making him considerably stronger than [[AdaptationalWimp his Heisei and Millennium incarnations]] (who were largely manhandled by their opponents in short order) and the strongest incarnation since the Showa Era.
** Mothra is also more in line with her Showa counterpart where she rivaled Godzilla in power, rather than later versions who often needed help to do the same. She's even referred to as the "Queen of the Monsters." Notably, advertising refers to her as an 'Alpha', a term also used to describe Ghidorah and Godzilla. [[spoiler:She's capable of defeating Rodan one on one, finishing the fight by ''impaling him'' with her stinger.]]
** King Ghidorah was a badass already, but this version is capable of generating a cataclysmic storm simply by ''being awake'' and is the largest Ghidorah in live action film. [[spoiler:He has an ''incredible'' HealingFactor to the point it takes being completely atomized to kill him, and even that may not have been enough if the post-credits scene is any indication.]] Also, whereas every Ghidorah since the original except the ''Rebirth'' incarnation has been TheDragon to someone else, this Ghidorah is [[BigBad the one giving the orders to other monsters]].
* AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: The [[spoiler:fishermen who shows Ghidorah's severed head to Jonah in TheStinger]] makes one in the novelization.
* AdaptationalExpansion: The accompanying novelization goes into greater detail about the surrounding events and the character/backstory of the Titans (including the background ones), includes references to both the ''Godzilla: Awakening'' and ''Godzilla: Aftershock'' comics, begins with a prologue from Godzilla's point of view, has a segment on Skull Island from Kong's point of view during the story, and appearances from Titans that were only briefly mentioned by name in the film. It also expands on the [[spoiler:Rodan vs Mothra fight and shows more of it.]]
* AdaptationalExplanation: The novelization provides quite a bit:
** The film doesn't really explains how the rumors that more Titans besides Godzilla and the dead [=MUTOs=] are being secretly housed by Monarch sprung up, but the novelization states investigative reporters and intel agencies are responsible.
** In the novelization, Jonah obtains up-to-date information on the locations of the other Monarch outposts from Outpost 61's computer before heading to Outpost 32.
** It's explained in the novelization that Godzilla chooses to focus on threatening Castle Bravo when he's intimidated by [[spoiler:sensing the ORCA's signal in Antarctica]] because he sensed Castle Bravo drawing their maser cannons on him.
** In the film, the soldiers in Antarctica stopping and firing on Ghidorah seems like a real case of TooDumbToLive. But in the novelization, it's made clear it's actually a HeroicSacrifice where the soldiers are trying to keep Ghidorah's attention on them so that the Monarch brass, Mark and the rest of the G-Team in the Osprey have a chance of escaping.
** Depending on how long Mark was out cold after Antarctica (implied by the conversation on the Argo's bridge to be not that long), Emma and Jonah seem to proceed to awakening Rodan next surprisingly quickly after they've only just awakened Ghidorah, against their intent to release the Titans somewhat gradually. The novelization indicates Emma is speeding up her plans because after Ghidorah's escape in Antarctica, the government will quickly mobilize to take control from Monarch and enact their kill-all-Titans plan.
** In the film, it seems pretty implausible after the audience sees the devastation Rodan's sonic winds cause to Isla de Mara that once Rodan has passed, the G-Team who were on the island have a (semi-)functional Osprey with which to leave the island. The novelization describes how the Osprey survived the winds.
** Madison staying put at Fenway Park after activating the ORCA despite knowing [[AxCrazy Ghidorah]] will be coming for the ORCA seems in the film like a real IdiotBall. The novelization explains Madison's reasoning for not trying to leave the stadium.
** For those viewers to whom it wasn't obvious when watching the film, the novelization explicitly spells out that the reason Emma [[spoiler:pulls her HeroicSacrifice]] instead of just leaving the ORCA where it is and gets on the Osprey (something [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K730Df36p1k HISHE]] poked fun at) is because she rightfully realizes that if someone doesn't draw out Ghidorah's pursuit for as long as possible while the Osprey carrying Madison and the others is taking off, then Ghidorah will chase the Osprey down effortlessly and kill everyone on it.
* AdaptationInducedPlotHole: The novelization describes [[spoiler:Ghidorah's decapitated head at the end]] as being covered with barnacles, a detail which seems to be absent in the film. Wasn't the Oxygen Destroyer supposed to wipe out all life in the affected area of the sea?
* AdaptationalIntelligence: While King Ghidorah has never been exactly stupid, previous versions' plans amounted to 'kill everything by spamming it with gravity beams' (with the ''Rebirth'' version adding a mass kidnapping to that plan) or are the minion of alien invaders. This version is the mastermind [[spoiler:leading the invasion]], has a more complex plan ([[spoiler:use Earth's Kaiju to raze the planet, ostensibly remaking it in his own image]]), and shows more complex strategic thinking in combat than his previous counterparts (such as [[spoiler:keeping Rodan close so he has back up if he needs it or absorbing the entirety of Boston's power supply to power himself up to get the upperhand on Godzilla]]).
* AdaptationalMundanity:
** [[spoiler:The Shobihin]] are re-adapted into Drs. Ilene and Ling Chen respectively. [[spoiler:Instead of explicitly being supernatural fairies, the Chens are notably human twin sisters who have an apparently-hereditary PsychicLink to Mothra, and a preternatural family history of producing identical twin sisters in every generation]].
** The [[EcoTerrorist Eco-Terrorists]] also appear to do this for the Xiliens and other such {{Human Alien}}s from the old Toho movies, serving the same role of attempting to control the Titans' actions for their own ends by using a bioacoustics device. However, true to the Franchise/MonsterVerse[='s=] aesop change (adapting the Kaiju from an allegory for nuclear weapons as they were in the old movies, to an allegory for forces of nature in this film) and perhaps also as a TakeThat at earlier King Ghidorah incarnations' VillainDecay, the Eco-Terrorists are ultimately a BigBadWannabe at most who suffer EvilIsNotAToy in regards to the Titans (particularly [[BigBad Ghidorah]]).
** {{Downplayed}} with Mothra, who is still very much a powerful kaiju, but some of her seemingly-supernatural abilities here get DoingInTheWizard explanation which changes her status as a supernatural goddess to a case of MaybeMagicMaybeMundane. Her magical energy rays are re-interpreted as bioluminescence, her connection with Godzilla is explained as a "symbiotic relationship", and the iconic Shobijin [[spoiler:are instead the Chens, who are presented as humans with an uncanny family history of identical twin girls]].
* AdmiringTheAbomination: The Titans generally evoke this reaction in humans, and the trope has a bigger influence on the human characters' actions and the story than in the 2014 film. Monarch operatives notably go out of their way (against their own protocols) to avoid making termination attempts against the captive Titans. Seemingly {{averted}} with [[TheDreaded King Ghidorah]], who seemingly induces nothing but fear and later hatred in the humans. During the senate hearing scene, Senator Williams questions Serizawa's apparent admiration for the Titans, and he replies "I admire all forms of life."
* AdvancedAncientAcropolis: The Monarch submarine finds itself in one of these beneath the ocean [[spoiler:in the Hollow Earth, with frescos and carvings depicting its populace worshiping Titans like Godzilla and having architectural styles older than most of the other civilizations that have similar architecture]]. This is also where Godzilla has made his nest.
* AdvancedAncientHumans: The [[spoiler:AdvancedAncientAcropolis]] suggests the civilization who built it was this, and Mike Dougherty [[https://www.instagram.com/p/B_jZi9BgJqm/c/17853392014967093/r/17856857530935325/ confirmed it]] on his Instagram account. [[spoiler:The Titans were once worshiped by a widespread semi-subterranian civilization that existed roughly 20 000 years ago and possessed technology comparable to the Romans; implied to have been annihilated when the Titans lashed out against tribes who sought to use them for war]]. It's also indicated this civilization is the precursor of all other civilizations and cultures due to containing elements of other prehistoric cultures -- Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Mayan, etc. While this is only briefly discussed in the film, the novelization and [[spoiler:redacted text in the end credits]] go into more detail about it.
* AnAesop: As stupid as humans can be when it comes to interfering in nature, that doesn't mean we aren't responsible for being the ones to clean up the mess, nor does it mean we should step back and let giant monsters take care of everything for us. [[spoiler:Serizawa's direct intervention]] was crucial to cleaning up the mess humans made in [[spoiler:injuring Godzilla and leaving the Alpha position up-for-grabs to Ghidorah]]. And had it not been for the Russells' direct intervention in Boston -- [[spoiler:the ORCA disrupting Ghidorah's control over the other Titans, and later all three of the family using the ORCA to stop Ghidorah from VampiricDraining a downed Godzilla]] -- Ghidorah would've almost certainly won for all the benevolent Titans' efforts to stop him.
-->'''Mark Russell''': "''This time we ''join'' the fight!''"
* AirborneAircraftCarrier: The ''USS Argo'', a massive delta-wing aircraft which serves as a mobile base of operations and a helipad for smaller, VTOL aircraft.
* AlienBlood: Ghidorah's blood is a deep purplish-black, while Rodan's has the appearance of molten lava.
* AlienInvasion: It turns out that [[spoiler:King Ghidorah is an alien who arrived on Earth and is attempting to perform HostileTerraforming to convert it to his liking]].
* AliensInCardiff: Admit it, you wouldn't expect that frickin' ''{{UsefulNotes/Boston}}'', of all places, would be the final battleground of the four legendary Japanese kaijus, would you?
* AllFlyersAreBirds: Rodan has many features more akin to birds of prey than to pterosaurs (at one point in the concept art he was even supposed to have feathers [[note]]Fossil evidence shows that a majority of pterosaurs had fluffy coats on them for warmth, but these coats weren't made of feathers but actually pycnofibers.[[/note]]).
* AllMythsAreTrue: All but stated, and it's explored a lot more in the novelization. It's also implied that Ghidorah in particular and possibly other Titans are cases this trope overlapping with OneMythToExplainThemAll. Several of the Titans are named after, or might actually be the basis of, legendary deities. Of particular note are Leviathan, an unseen Titan which emerges from the [[StockNessMonster Loch Ness]], the Mokele-Mbembe (described in the novelization as having a mammoth-like trunk, glowing horn, and very large tail), and elephant-like Behemoth (which may or may not be the actual Behemoth). In the tie-in comic prequel ''Godzilla: Aftershock'', the dead member of Godzilla's species in the previous film was known as Dagon by ancient Phoenicians ([[SadlyMythtaken although the interpretation of Dagon as a sea god is questioned nowadays]]). It's also hinted in the novelization that [[spoiler:the Hollow Earth]] influenced the lore of the ''Popul Vuh'' and Olympus in Greek myth. [[spoiler:Chen says this almost word-for-word after seeing the ancient, underwater reliefs depicting Godzilla, Ghidorah, and other kaiju.]]
* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs:
** Alan Jonah stages an assault on the Monarch outpost 61 that contains Mothra. He succeeds in killing every outpost guard and conquers the base, before taking Madison and Emma hostage.
** King Ghidorah takes over Washington D.C. (the capital of United States) and reforms the area as his own base of operations. [[spoiler:His Titan army is mentioned as attacking capitals all over the world as well.]]
* AlphaAndBetaWolves: Mark Russell perpetuates the [[ArtisticLicenseBiology outdated]] theory that wolf packs in the wild are dominated by an Alpha, who earns the position through fighting and physical intimidation. As it turns out, Titans follow that same dynamic. Godzilla is the Titan pack's rightful Alpha (with Mothra as another Alpha in a symbiotic relationship with him). Ghidorah is a rival Alpha, who does command the other Titans' loyalty after [[spoiler:Godzilla is apparently killed]].
* AlternativeForeignThemeSong: ''"Pray"'' by the Japanese rock band ''[ALEXANDROS]'' will serve as the main theme of the movie in Japan.
* AlwaysIdenticalTwins: Dr. Ilene Chen and her twin sister Ling are descendants of a lineage of twin priestesses who worshipped Mothra as a goddess and [[spoiler:may have possessed telepathic powers, if the redacted text from the credits is any indication]].
* AnachronismStew: It may be minor, but the Katakana characters written on the wall of the ancient megalithic city looks out of place. The said writing did not come to the world until 794 - 1185 A.D. nor did the Japanese people in ancient history ever travel to the Atlantic Ocean and build a city there. Then again, an advanced civilization "much older" than Egypt on the other side of the world in and of itself is already an extreme example of deliberate anachronism, so the writing on the walls of the city are the least of its issues.
* AncientEvil: King Ghidorah. As hinted at in ''Film/KongSkullIsland'', he's been around a long time - enough that his existence is noted in the mythologies of all the world's oldest civilizations, but in hushed terms, as if they were actively trying to forget him. He's also genuinely evil and malevolent.
* AnimalsRespectNature: This movie particularly explores the concept that not only [[DestructiveSavior Godzilla]] but the continued existence of Titans ''generally'' is essential to maintaining the world. The eco-terrorists believe that if all Titans are set loose, their FertileFeet will replenish the ecosphere. However, it turns out that with the exceptions of [[BigGood Godzilla]] and [[BenevolentMonsters Mothra]], the majority of Titans only care about the natural balance insofar whichever Alpha they're currently answering to cares. When Ghidorah – [[spoiler:an extraterrestrial OmnicidalManiac]] who couldn't care ''less'' about the balance of nature – is in charge of them, the Titans help him do even worse global damage to the ecosphere than humanity could have. [[spoiler:However, the CreativeClosingCredits reveal that Godzilla's reign after Ghidorah's death has calmed the other Titans down and enabled ecosystems worldwide to regenerate under their influence. Furthermore, it's indicated that Godzilla is actively commanding the Titans to leave humanity's cities alone now, lending a lot of credence to the idea that Godzilla (if not the subordinate Titans) is ''[[PlayedStraight consciously]]'' [[PlayedStraight enforcing the balance of nature]]]].
* AntagonistTitle: [[spoiler:Part way through the film, Ghidorah usurps Godzilla's throne, and thus the title [[DoubleMeaningTitle also refers to him.]]]]
* AnyoneCanDie: In order to show how high the stakes have been considerably ramped up by the presence of Ghidorah, [[spoiler:Dr. Graham]] is eaten alive by Ghidorah and later both [[spoiler:Dr. Serizawa and Mothra]] sacrifice themselves to save Godzilla.
* ApocalypseHow:
** Upon taking control of the other Titans, King Ghidorah promptly begins a global apocalypse, which Dr. Stanton speculates [[spoiler:based on Ghidorah's true nature as a [[CosmicHorrorStory hostile]] [[AliennInvasion alien]]]] might be a HostileTerraforming process. Spreading [[PerpetualStorm massive storms]] over the planet[[note]]The novelization notes this alone could create the practical effect of an [[TheNightThatNeverEnds impact winter]] if it keeps up[[/note]], and commanding the other Titans to actively KillAllHumans and create a global NaturalDisasterCascade, Ghidorah firmly establishes himself as an OmnicidalManiac. Emma Russell notes that the end result if Ghidorah continues the destruction will be nothing short of an [[ApocalypseHow/Class4 extinction event]]. The {{novelization}}s of both this movie and [[Film/GodzillaVsKong the sequel]] explicitly state that the likeliest end result of Ghidorah's reign of terror continuing would be [[ApocalypseHow/Class5 the extinction of everything except for Ghidorah and some adaptable bacteria]] within a few years max; with Serizawa observing that Ghidorah's anti-human behavior means it's likely no amount of human ingenuity will permanently stop the Titans from finding and killing all of the last human survivors. Serizawa also speculates that once Ghidorah is done cleansing the Earth's surface, he'll repeat the destruction on the HollowEarth[='s=] inhabitants.
** Although Ghidorah is stopped before his campaign of global destruction can go too far, he still causes multiple ApocalypseHow/Class0[='s=] around the world, with the likely overall fallout approaching a ApocalypseHow/Class1. The novelization outright states that [[spoiler:even with the subordinate Titans' FertileFeet]], the cataclysm managed to wipe away several ecosystems ''completely'', and the sequel's novelization likewise supports this; indicating Ghidorah succeeded in causing a very mild Class 4 to the overall biosphere.
* ArchEnemy: Godzilla and Ghidorah, as ever. The film explains that this is because Godzilla is the rightful Alpha of the Titans, with Ghidorah being an alien outside their natural order challenging him for the role. This shows heavily in their body language and interactions: the two ''loathe'' one another and every scene the two are in together is spent trying to murder each other as brutally as they possibly can.
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: [[spoiler:When things escalate out of control after Ghidorah wakens the other Titans, Emma tries to claim to Madison she can fix this. In response, Madison queries that she thought she was doing it all for Andrew's memory--would he have wanted any of this? It renders Emma totally silent as her daughter storms off.]]
* ArmorPiercingResponse: When [[spoiler:Emma]] calls up Monarch to explain [[MotiveRant why she's doing what she's doing]], she and Mark exchange two armor-piercing responses with each-other. The later one from Mark renders [[spoiler:Emma]] silent, and visibly fazes a listening Madison.
-->'''Mark:''' It's not all math, [[spoiler:Emma]]. There's some things you can't control!\\
'''[[spoiler:Emma]]:''' And there's some things that you can't run from!\\
''[beat]''\\
'''Mark:''' This won't bring [[spoiler:him [Andrew]]] back to us.\\
''[longer beat]''
* ArtEvolution: Godzilla's dorsal fins have been slightly redesigned to resemble the classic maple leaf shape from previous incarnations. His tail tip also shortened, and his feet now have larger claws.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology:
** The concept of "Alpha of the Titans" relies on the theory of "Alphas" in wolf packs, with the Monarch scientists explicitly referencing said theory, despite it being debunked about 20 years before the film's release (by the same scientist that originally proposed it, no less!). That said, the idea could still work in terms of the Titans, since the old idea of "Alphas" can form amongst unrelated individuals forced into a pack, which is basically what is happening here (although a scientist referencing this idea straight still falls under artistic license).
** Social animals rarely, if ever, form packs with members of other species (in the case of wolves, packs are pretty much exclusively members of the same family), so the idea that all the wildly different Kaiju are forming a pack is a pretty big stretch. It's implied Ghidorah has some unique ability to make the Kaiju obey him, but the human characters are still using faulty logic when they unironically use the "pack" analogy.
** The idea that radiation can generate new growth in barren landscapes or lead to a resurgence in the populations of endangered species. While it is true that radiation can spur the evolutionary process by increasing DNA mutation rates, this is only feasible at fairly low rates of continuous exposure (such as a small percentage increase in UV rays due to ozone depletion). The kind of radiation that Godzilla and the other Titans pump out would only serve to give most ecosystems harmful acute radiation exposure. (That said, given that biological processes that run on radiation is dubious at best, it makes more sense to HandWave it as the Titans absorbing "bad" radiation, processing it in their systems and excreting it as "helpful" waste radiation). It's also specifically stated that their radiation helps the growth of ''vegetation'', so ''[[WildMassGuessing maybe]]'' these happen to be flora species that are adapted to the activities and radiation of the Titans.
** Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and the other Titans are classified under the genus "Titanus". In reality, the genus is reserved for a group of ''very'' closely related species (think lions, tigers and leopards), so seeing arthropods, reptiles, mammals and cephalopods all lumped together into such a specific group makes no sense. Even stranger is King Ghidorah is also classified under Titanus, despite being [[spoiler:an alien from another planet with completely different biology.]] You could possibly choose to interpret it as a codename and not as a strict scientific name to make sense of it.
*** Alternately, since all the Titans are functionally a SingleSpecimenSpecies, one could postulate "Titanus" is a Phylum, and Godzilla's "proper" scientific name is "''Titanus gojira gojira gojira gojira gojira''," being the single extant specimen of his Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. This still requires some extreme massaging of scientific nomenclature to work.
** Mothra is able to grow up and lay an egg within the span of two days. While one could argue she had grown within the egg due to how long she was in it, this doesn't excuse how long it took her to create an egg within a day. Potentially justified by [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane Mothra being implied to be an actual supernatural goddess rather than a giant animal.]]
* ArtisticLicenseGeography: Although the film keeps very good continuity in general during the climactic battle in Boston, it did take a few liberties for the sake of spectacle:
** As shown in his grand entrance and in several aerial and long-distance shots, Godzilla makes landfall from the Charles River. But one in-between shot shows him stepping out of the Boston Bay at the Financial District, several miles East, with the Monarch fleet in tow. (There's also the issue of Godzilla having to take a circuitous route to navigate the Charles, which is too shallow to accommodate a creature of his girth, instead of just stomping into town directly from the ocean.)
** At one point, Maddie runs from Fenway all the way to the northeast end of the Boston Common in less time than it would take a professional marathoner.
** Additionally, the fictional Isla de Mara, geographically placed at the border between Texas and Tamaulipas, is too far North to exhibit the kind of tightly-packed, colonial Spanish architecture shown in the film. This type of urban layout and construction is more appropriate to colonial towns in Central and Southern Mexico. (To wit, street-level scenes were in fact shot in the preserved historical district of Santo Domingo in Mexico City.)
** The oil derrick-covered dusty plains that Scylla emerges from are stated as being in Sedona, Arizona, despite, more closely resembling west Texas than the oil-free red rock mountains [[https://visit-sedona.s3.amazonaws.com/CMS/2214/view_from_airport_mesa_at_sunrise__medium.jpg actually found there]].
** The location of Skull Island shown on Monarch's big map (somewhere far south and somewhat east of Hawaii) makes absolutely no sense considering a dogfight happened there between an American and a Japanese pilot in 1944.
* AsYouKnow: Invoked by Sam when he starts explaining to Mark what the ORCA is. Mark immediately lampshades it.
-->'''Mark:''' I know what it does, I helped build the prototype!
* AssholeVictim: Jonah and Asher mention in the {{novelization}} that they once targeted big game hunters in the Democratic Republic of Congo. You'd have to be a piece of work to argue those particular victims didn't have it coming.
* AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: A big part of the rivalry between Godzilla and Ghidorah: the other Titans bow down to whoever is the strongest at the time, and will obey the Alpha's will regardless of how benign (Godzilla) or destructive (Ghidorah) it is. Ghidorah claims the title by [[CurbStompBattle beating Rodan into submission]] (with an unwitting assist from the military, who accidentally [[spoiler:take out Godzilla with the Oxygen Destroyer missile]]) while Godzilla later gets it back by [[spoiler:incinerating his three-headed rival]].
* TheAtoner: Honestly, this should be the Russells' family motto...
* AuthorityInNameOnly: Notably subverted: while Godzilla has always been called King of the Monsters, it's normally only a symbolic title. In this movie, he's the Alpha of the Titans and thus ''literally'' their King. Mothra's title of Queen of the Monsters likewise signifies her status as his symbiotic counterpart and another Alpha. Likewise, King Ghidorah's title signifies he's also an Alpha Titan [[spoiler:and becomes the King of the Monsters after defeating Godzilla.]]
* AwesomeMomentOfCrowning:[[spoiler: The final scene is of the newly awakened Titans, Rodan included, surrounding Godzilla and bowing before him, as he roars triumphantly into the sky.]]
* AxCrazy: Ghidorah, mixed with a good dose of {{Sadist}}. He tries to destroy the retreating Argo with an entire city's population on board unprovoked, is happy to cause [[spoiler:humanity's extinction with the other Titans]] and later would have blasted the tiny, defenseless Madison to ashes with all three of his gravity beams despite her not having the Orca any more. The novelization explicitly states that unlike any other animal Mark has encountered, Ghidorah lives for killing, and at another point speculates on Ghidorah's nature thusly:
--> ''Maybe he was a god - but there was nothing that said a god had to be sane.''
* BadassInCharge: As the Alpha Titan, Godzilla is this pretty much by default as the most powerful kaiju in the movie - as is [[spoiler:King Ghidorah when he usurps the title]]. On the human side of things, Colonel Foster has no hesistation personally leading her men into battle during the Antarctic battle, and also pilots the Argo well enough to (just) stay ahead of Rodan while leading him to [[spoiler:Monster Zero]].
* BattleAmongstTheFlames: During the FinalBattle, most of the city's ruins are gradually and increasingly set alight by the battling Titans' fallout, creating together with the storm-blackened sky a very effective, hellish-apocalyptic landscape for Godzilla and Ghidorah's final showdown for the fate of the world.
* BattleInTheRain: Every battle with King Ghidorah is this. Though this is justified as he can manipulate storms.
* BaldOfEvil: With Alan Jonah the trope is {{downplayed}}, as he has a balding spot on his head courtesy of being played by Creator/CharlesDance and is one of the most evil human characters in the Franchise/MonsterVerse. A notable bald woman is among Jonah's {{Mook}}s who is seen in the background throughout the film, and the Mook who talks in the scene where Jonah's men hack into Outpost 56's systems is shown in other scenes over the film to have a bald scalp underneath the beret if one looks out for him.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Mark spends most of the early part of the film repeatedly advocating that Godzilla be killed due to his continuing rage over his son's death. Thanks to the military and [[spoiler:the Oxygen Destroyer]] he (seemingly) gets his wish - and soon discovers that life without Godzilla, with [[spoiler:Ghidorah taking his place as the Titans' Alpha and their ensuing attempted annihilation of human life]], is a far, far worse alternative. Serizawa even lampshades it for him.
* BeingEvilSucks: Guilty over countless deaths, second-guessed and belittled by a second-in-command who wants to go further than simply restoring balance to the Earth, and called a monster by her own daughter, Dr. Russell doesn't have a swell time for much of the movie. When Maddie escapes the bunker, she catches a glimpse of her mother sitting by herself and crying in an empty cafeteria.
* BerserkButton: Ghidorah's regarding the ORCA signal as this becomes a major plot point by the end; [[spoiler:every time it's used on him, Ghidorah hears it as the cry of another Alpha and immediately goes ballistic, intent on wiping out the threat to his control of the other Titans. It's not only used to lure him to Boston and break his hold over the other Titans, but Emma uses it at the end to distract him when he's moments away from killing Godzilla, giving him time to recover and leading to Ghidorah's demise]].
* BigBad: While he initially shares the role, upon his introduction King Ghidorah immediately proceeds to outclass Jonah and Emma in every regard, taking control of the other Titans and having them begin inflicting a global extinction event. Emma quickly has a HeelFaceTurn, while Jonah is content to sit back and let him wipe out humanity.
* BigBadDuumvirate: A pair of them (see BigBadEnsemble). Alan Jonah is the BigBad of the human antagonists, with Emma Russel as his reluctant EvilGenius. For the bulk of the film, Ghidorah is the BigBad on the monster side of things (and the film's overall BigBad) with [[spoiler:Rodan]] as TheDragon.
* BigBadEnsemble: The film initially has [[BigBadDuumvirate Alan Jonah and Emma Russel]] who free King Ghidorah to serve as their agent in bringing balance back to the world's ecosystem. But then Ghidorah turns out to have his own plans, and wakes all the Titans at once to wipe out humanity - by the end of the film he's the only active threat (aside from [[spoiler: Rodan who serves as his TheDragon]]), with Emma [[spoiler: having a HeelRealization and Jonah content to passively let Ghidorah annihilate everything without doing anything by himself.]]
* BigDamnHeroes: There are multiple instances in the movie where someone is in danger, whether that be the humans or even Godzilla himself from Ghidorah, only for the latter to have his plans foiled from someone else's interventions.
* BigRedButton: Outpost 61 which contains Mothra at the start of the film has one for use in an attempt to kill her in an emergency. Dr. Mancini almost uses it when she gets provoked into attacking, but Emma narrowly stops him pressing it so she can try calming Mothra with the ORCA. The novelization explains that most if not all Monarch containment sites have a "kill switch" for use in the event the contained Titans attempt to breach containment, but there's no guarantee that the Titan-killing mechanisms at any of these outposts will do anything more than piss the Titans off.
* BioluminescenceIsCool: Godzilla's glowing fins and Mothra's glowing wings are used in multiple scenes to demonstrate their majesty and [[PowerGlows power]].
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The films ends with Ghidorah dead, Godzilla as Alpha once more and the other Titans submitting to him, helping the Earth rebuild its ecosystems. However, both Serizawa and Mothra sacrificed themselves to save Godzilla, many people died during Ghidorah's rampages, numerous cities were devastated by monster attacks/Ghidorah's natural disasters, and the Russell family is now further shattered by Emma's death. Worse still, [[KarmaHoudini Jonah is still at large and has claimed one of Ghidorah's severed heads for use later]]]].
* BodyHorror: [[spoiler: Ghidorah regenerating his severed head is not a pretty sight. The stump of the neck basically sprouts a cancerous-looking mass at its end, and while the other two heads tear off the membranous sac enclosing it the first organ to develop in the growing mass is its ''tongue.'' Then jaws form around it, followed by a skull, and finally fleshy tendrils wrap all around it to fully reconstruct the head. Oh, and the head starts regenerating ''upside-down'' before snapping around into place.]]
* BombThrowingAnarchists: Jonah's organization, overlapping with WesternTerrorists. They're ultra-radical eco-terrorists who want to commit acts of mass genocide and destruction in order to alleviate the strain that humanity is putting on the environment; releasing the Titans is their plan to achieve this end.
* BookEnds:
** The film begins with a flashback to 2014 with the Russells standing in the ruins of San Francisco as Mark screams out the name of one of his children that he's trying to find among the chaos. Close to the end he finds himself in a similar situation, screaming for Madison as Ghidorah and Godzilla battle in the background.
** During Ghidorah and Godzilla's first battle, Maddie is in a helicopter with her mother, flying away from her father who is on the ground. In their last battle, she is yet again on a chopper, this time flying with her father and watching her mother.
** [[spoiler: The ending credits for the movie mimic the opening credits for the [[Film/Godzilla2014 previous movie]], including the white-out of various words that obscure the credits and scientific journal articles with photographs and headlines about the Kaiju.]]
* BothSidesHaveAPoint: Serizawa and [[spoiler:Emma]] butting heads over the latter's radical scheme proves to be this over the course of the film. [[spoiler:Emma royally screws up by freeing a rival Alpha Titan she didn't fully understand (a danger Serizawa warned her of), who subsequently turns out to be a hostile [[AlienInvasion Alien Invader]] who does the opposite of restoring balance to the planet, and of course she wasn't expecting things to go out of her control like Serizawa forewarned]]. Serizawa continues advocating non-interference in the face of [[spoiler:Emma]]'s plot, despite the potential risks involved if the government who clearly don't feel the same way succeed in shutting down Monarch to try euthanizing the Titans (see BrokenAesop) -- and ultimately, the military go ahead with [[spoiler:utilizing the Oxygen Destroyer on Godzilla, and Serizawa and his colleagues are forced to personally intervene to heal Godzilla so he can stop Ghidorah]].
-->'''Serizawa:''' This is a dangerous path! You are meddling with forces beyond our comprehension, gambling with the lives of ''billions''!\\
'''[[spoiler:Emma]]''': And what are ''you'' gambling with, Serizawa? Monarch is broken. It's on the verge of being shut down by a government who's only objective is to eradicate the creatures; and if ''that'' happens, what will our chances be?!
* BottomlessBladder: Mothra and Behemoth — neither Titan's feeding habits are observed nor are they revealed by their respective Kaiju profiles in supplementary material. This is particularly notable in Mothra's case, since she goes from an egg to a larva to her much-larger adult form over the course of the movie. Mothra's raptorial forelimbs and stinger indicate that she was a predator when she originally evolved, but Word of God said these traits were actually evolved as a form of defense against other creatures in such a time.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: PlayedWith when Ghidorah takes over Godzilla's position as Alpha Titan and directs the other Titans to aid him in destroying the very planet they're meant to protect.
* BreakingOldTrends: [[spoiler:This film is the first time where humanity decides to ally with Godzilla on a large scale, with Monarch sending in ''The Argo'', multiple aircraft, and a small fleet to back up Big G against Ghidorah. While humanity has aided Godzilla before, they've never done so on this scale]].
* BrokenAesop: The intended message is that humans are not meant to tamper with nature (namely the Titans) for good or for ill intentions, as doing so always leads to calamitous consequences. However, at the end of the film, [[spoiler:the awakened Titans' presence on the planet is healing dying ecosystems, causing endangered species to bounce back and providing humanity with new resources -- and the Titans are awake because Ghidorah, a hostile alien who explicitly exists outside of nature as terrestrial lifeforms know it, forcefully woke all the Titans up at once whereas before their awakenings were slow and gradual]]. Ghidorah in turn was awakened by a [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well-Intentioned]] EcoTerrorist who wanted the Titans awakened precisely to achieve the end results that occur at the film's end. This is somewhat downplayed, in that while the ending implies the future is now brighter for humans and the planet alike after the Titans' awakening, in the present, humanity specifically have suffered massive devastation and loss of life due to Ghidorah's actions.
** What really breaks the aesop is that at the film's start, Monarch is inching towards being taken over by the government and military, who either don't see or don't care for the Titans' ecological value, and only want the monsters all killed off while they're sleeping. And based on the military's rude response to the Mexico crisis which made it clear how little faith they had in Monarch's intervention, the takeover of Monarch would've probably become a certainty after Rodan's awakening if not for Ghidorah's rampage. It's unknown how the military would've achieved their aim of exterminating the Titans, but if they'd succeeded, it would've likely had devastating future ecological consequences, on top of flouting GenocideDilemma and ridding the world of numerous admittedly majestic creatures forever. And if the military's extermination attempts failed or didn't get every waking Titan (like how Monarch's attempt to kill the male [=MUTO=] in its cocoon in the first film spectacularly failed), it could very well lead to the Titans retaliating against humanity, and most of them retaining negative or at least neutral relations with the surviving humans afterward (this last point is especially relevant if you're among the viewers who believe Godzilla is keeping Titans away from human cities at the end [[spoiler:precisely because of Serizawa's sacrifice]]). So in summary, the WellIntentionedExtremist meddling with nature set off a chain of events that brought about the best possible future for everyone overall, ''after'' nearly causing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt (it's ''this'' messy).
* BrokeYourArmPunchingOutCthulhu: PlayedWith. It's implied the military designed the Oxygen Destroyer specifically so they'd have a method of killing any Titans. Them firing it at Godzilla and Ghidorah in an attempt to kill the latter and Rodan manages to cripple Godzilla (though it doesn't kill him), but Ghidorah is completely unaffected due to [[spoiler:his literal BizarreAlienBiology]], and Ghidorah immediately proves that without a benevolent Alpha Titan like Godzilla to keep him in check, there's absolutely nothing defending humanity and the world from the likes of Ghidorah inflicting an extinction event (especially bad in Ghidorah's case, since he's distinctly the worst of the worst among malevolent Titans and he's [[spoiler:an invasive alien who's liable to wipe out all non-Titan multicellular life]]). As for Godzilla, [[spoiler:the human race are lucky once he's healed that he seems to be letting the military's act with the Oxygen Destroyer go for the time being]], and that Mothra has no interest in vengeance.
* CallBack: The scene where Ghidorah awakens in Antarctica is filmed very similarly to the male MUTO's awakening in Janjira in the previous film. Both feature a wide shot of fleeing people in the foreground while the monster climbs out of its prison in the background, and both scenes end with a primary human character fading into unconsciousness as the monster takes flight.
** During the senate hearing, Dr. Graham references the fable of "The Lion and the Mouse" as an example of man living in peace with the Titans. In ''Kong: Skull Island'', the fable is also mentioned, by Cole who was told the story wrong and thought the mouse kills the lion with the thorn.
** Just before the final battle:
--->'''Dr Stanton:''' I love it. A little Serizawa "let them fight" action. I used to love it when he said that.
** Joe Brody's studies in bio-acoustics from the first film get taken to the logical next level in this film with Dr. Emma Russel creating the Orca, which communicates with the Titans by mimicking their communication frequencies. Predictably,it works [[GoneHorriblyRight a little too well]] for humanity's comfort.
* CallingTheOldManOut: Madison does this with [[spoiler: Emma, after the latter's plan goes horribly wrong but she STILL thinks it will all work out. Combined with an ArmorPiercingQuestion, this is what finally gets Emma to realize just how far she's fallen]]
* CameFromTheSky: [[spoiler:It's eventually revealed that King Ghidorah is an alien, with myths stating that he 'fell from the stars.']]
* TheCameo: Word of God confirms that what looks in the finished film like normal-sized birds flying amid the freshly-blasted ruins of Boston at the film's end are actually the Leafwings from ''Film/KongSkullIsland''. Kong also makes a cameo in video footage, as do the [=MUTOs=].
* CelebrityParadox: Downplayed, but according to a dossier on the [[AllThereInTheManual Monarch Sciences website]], and [[Film/Godzilla2014 posters seen in Ford Brody's childhood bedroom in the last movie]], monster movies are a real film genre in this universe that predates public knowledge of kaiju. Of course Kong and Godzilla, undisputed two of the most influential characters of the genre in real life, actually exist in this universe, so it really makes you wonder what the genre is like in this universe if many of the most iconic monster movies don't exist.
* CentralTheme:
** Bearing grudges can carry long-term effects. Mark Russell has a very personal vendetta against Godzilla after his son's death in the San Francisco battle, and his inability to see the Titans as anything other than bringers of death has driven Emma away by the start of the film. Mark eventually lets it go upon realizing Godzilla is humanity's only hope of standing a chance against King Ghidorah. Serizawa says it best when they go to locate Godzilla:
--->'''Serizawa''': Sometimes, in order to heal our wounds, we must make peace with the demons who created them.
** An [[Film/Godzilla1954 old]] [[Film/ShinGodzilla theme]] makes its return: Tragedy bears consequences, and consequences bear tragedy. Emma Russell is stricken with grief at the death of her son Andrew, and [[spoiler:she makes a deal with Alan Jonah to wake every dormant Titan on Earth]]. The consequence? A murderous three-headed monster threatens to decimate all life on Earth, and does not give a damn if humans die. The tragedy that follows consequence? [[spoiler:Dr. Serizawa is forced to give his life in a HeroicSacrifice, and millions of others around the world, eventually including Emma herself, lose their lives to Ghidorah's rampage before it's killed]].
* CharacterAsHimself: The credits listed Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Rodan, and Mothra as "him/herself".
* ChekhovsGun: Godzilla rips off one of Ghidorah's heads during their fight in Mexico, [[spoiler:TheStinger reveals that the head was fished out of the water and purchased by Jonah]].
* TheChosenOne: Godzilla. The film makes clear that he's the rightful Alpha of Earth's Titans, and that Ghidorah only challenges that Alpha status because (as an alien) he stands totally separate from the natural order Godzilla represents.
* CitywideEvacuation:
** More of an Islandwide Evacuation, but Monarch attempt this at Isla de Mara when they realize Emma is going to likely awaken the local Titan. The evacuation is only completed ''after'' Rodan breaks free and razes the island with many people still there.
** After things go FromBadToWorse, with the whole world turned into a DeathWorld as Ghidorah begins wreaking his ApocalypseHow, the US President imposes martial law and the US Army direct a mass exodus of everyone in Boston. Which means the city is fortunately empty except for the main cast once the FinalBattle razes it to the ground.
* ClimateChangeAllegory
** Monarch are talking to the United States senate about how humanity's current course of action is unsustainable, and for the sake of their own species' survival they must change their ways to coexist with the Titans instead of trying to destroy or dominate them; yet every serious argument they're making for Titan coexistence is clearly just going in one ear and out the other ear in the senate. Political attitude to GlobalWarming, anyone?
** Ghidorah, the one Titan who actively threatens to destroy humanity and render the world inhospitable for most other complex life, is not only released from Antarctica as a consequence of the ice fields being destroyed, he also seeks to destroy the world by creating a global NaturalDisasterCascade which includes tsunamis, wildfires and Ghidorah's own spreading storm systems -- all of which are RealLife escalating symptoms of manmade climate change which ultimately threaten to make the Earth inhospitable to both humanity and most other existing life. In fact, the novelization specifically states that Ghidorah's apocalypse is essentially the same as the Global Warming process that humanity was already causing but ''massively'' sped up.
** Additionally, the fact that attempts to use technology as a quick fix to stop the outbreak either by controlling nature/Titans (the ORCA) or by simply destroying them (the [[spoiler:Oxygen Destroyer]]) only succeed in making things worse. Hope only comes when the protagonists strengthen Godzilla – Earth's natural defense system.
** A news article in the CreativeClosingCredits mentions there's a minority among the population who remain fimly entrenched in their anti-Titan sentiments despite evidence of the Titans' relationship with the Earth's ecology now being "insurmountable" and refuse to believe it, now being called "Titan-deniers" after public opinion on the Titans has shifted towards the positive; just like RealLife climate change denialists who remain ignorant of the increasingly irrefutable evidence that Global Warming is both real and a serious problem.
* CloseOnTitle: The title appears right before its CreativeClosingCredits.
* TheCloudCuckoolanderWasRight: [[spoiler: Despite the rather sketchy nature of Dr. Serizawa's claims, it turns out that he was actually ''right'' that awakening the Titans would be good for the world; the epilogue credits depicts a number of news articles explaining how the radioactive emanations of the Titans has had massive ecological restorative effects on the world - ranging from deforested and depopulated areas bouncing back with endangered species, the Saharan desert turning into a lush jungle, and extremely durable and plentiful 'superfoods' appearing in areas where monsters passed through.]]
* ColorCodedElements: The headliner kaiju form a FourElementEnsemble explained [[https://twitter.com/GodzillaMovie/status/1253483600118312963?s=20 here]], and each is associated with a specific color in the movie's pallet (as well as on some of the posters): Godzilla is blue/water, Ghidorah is gold/air, Rodan is orange/fire, and Mothra is teal/earth.
* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: All four monsters appear to be associated with certain colors.
** Godzilla is associated with blue. Thanks in large part of living in the ocean and his atomic breath being blue.
** Rodan is associated with red. Being a creature of fire and was living in a volcano.
** Mothra’s varies a bit, but the bioluminescent green seems to define her the most. This color showcases how much of a spectacle she is and gives a very warm presence.
** King Ghidorah’s main color is golden yellow. But he is also fittingly associated with the darkness/black to suit his status as the dreaded BigBad.
* CombatPragmatist: The Titans display this variously: Godzilla jumps Ghidorah while he's distracted going for the Argo and drags him into an underwater fight the larger Titan (a massive flyer) has serious trouble with. Mothra [[spoiler:attacks Ghidorah from behind while he's distracted by Godzilla when she's making her big entrance - and Rodan later attacks her this way]]. And however powerful he may be, Ghidorah has no trouble calling in other Titans for a numbers advantage when he's in trouble. Ghidorah's middle head shows shades of this, using a power generator as an ImprovisedWeapon to charge up a powerful lightning attack, and it's also implied this trope might be why San didn't attack Godzilla with the other heads in Antarctica.
* CompositeCharacter:
** While Scylla has arachnid like legs resembling Kumonga, her body and head resemble [[Film/EbirahHorrorOfTheDeep Ebirah]] -- though it's actually a nautilus-like shell with crab-legs.
** Both Rodan and Methuselah contain traits of the monster Obsidius, a living bipedal volcano, from the game ''Godzilla Unleashed'': Rodan has the "internal system is molten magma with glowing fissures on his body" aspect, while Methuselah has the "living moving mountain" aspect.
** King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan are all composites of various aspects of their versions throughout the franchise, explained in detail in their character pages.
* ContemptCrossfire: [[spoiler:Emma]] gets it from both sides when [[spoiler:she's still hesitating to activate the ORCA,]] Maddie trying to get her to not kill billions of humans and Alan ripping into her for letting Maddie think it would be a painless process resulting in human-Titan harmony. BothSidesHaveAPoint.
* ContinuityNod:
** The first shot of the film is Ford Brody and the other Special Forces descending on San Francisco during the events of Film/Godzilla2014.
** Monarch, and the world at large, is very aware of the possibility of Kaijus coming together for more... intimate purposes and this is discussed briefly several times throughout the movie.
** In ''Film/KongSkullIsland'', Randa complains that Monarch is ignored and riduculed like "those people trying to prove aliens exist". [[spoiler:And they do, in the form of three-headed golden dragons.]]
** The female MUTO's decapitated head is seen on display at the Monarch's oceanic base. [[spoiler:In the ending, after Godzilla dethroned King Ghidorah as King of the Monsters, one of the Titans that are seen bowing to him is a MUTO.]]
** [[Film/KongSkullIsland Houston Brooks' "Hollow Earth"]] theory is proven true when the Monarch submarine finds an undersea trench that leads deep into the planet which is the route Godzilla used to travel across the globe and avoid human detection.
** Godzilla once more [[spoiler: finishes off his opponent by firing his atomic breath through their throat.]] Although this time it's going the other direction.
* ContinuitySnarl: The prequel comic ''Godzilla: Aftermath'' explained at least on why Godzilla's dorsal spines looked different, being heavily damaged by Muto Prime which causes the Big G to overload his radiation levels. It was surmised that his dorsal spines eventurally grew back but with a different shape. The film however ignores this by having Godzilla's dorsal spines already changed in 2014.
* ContrastingSequelAntagonist:
** Amongst the Kaiju: whereas the [=MUTOs=] and Skullcrawlers of the [[Film/Godzilla2014 previous]] [[Film/KongSkullIsland films]] were ultimately just animals seeking to live out a life cycle that incidentally threatens humanity and the world's natural order and they were ancient prehistoric monsters that evolved millions of years ago; Ghidorah is actively malicious and takes more pleasure than it does sustenance in killing any humans it encounters, and Ghidorah [[spoiler:is actually an alien lifeform of unknown origin that came to Earth long ago]].
** As for the human antagonists: Packard in ''Kong: Skull Island'' excused his madness by claiming he's doing his duty to keep humanity safe from the creatures on the island, and he held a vendetta against Kong specifically. Alan Jonah and [[spoiler:Emma Russell]] are pro-Titan [[EcoTerrorist Eco-Terrorists]] with a [[MaddenIntoMisanthropy misanthropic]] streak, and they're more concerned with the bigger picture of the planet than they are with any one Titan or enemy.
* ConvectionSchmonvection: Zig-zagged. There's Rodan, whose internal temperature is so extreme ''he'' melts rock into lava and is therefore impervious to it. [[spoiler:His heat does heavily injure Mothra during their fight, visibly burning her.]] Then there's [[spoiler:Dr. Serizawa, who goes into the massive heat and radiation of Godzilla's home, protected only by a radiation suit of unspecified grade, but doesn't burn up when he removes his gloves or helmet.]] And ''then'' there's [[spoiler:Burning Godzilla, whose core temperature is so high he melts buildings, metal scaffolding, and even the pavement from dozens of meters away.]]
* CoolVsAwesome: A clash between Godzilla and three other {{Kaiju}}, this time all named.
* CoolPlane: Monarch's signature plane and secondary headquarters; ''Argo'', continues the proud Heisei tradition of a Godzilla-centered organization using super-technology to create sci-fi planes. It's a massive flying wing capable of supersonic flight, vertical takeoff/landing, armed to the teeth, and also doubles as an AirborneAircraftCarrier with other, smaller cool Osprey VTOL planes.
* CosmicHorrorStory: The general premise which, compared to the last movie, is now more prominent than ever. Ancient, impossibly powerful monsters are awakening everywhere, with the living cataclysm King Ghidorah front and center. Humanity is so outclassed that their ''only'' recourse is to ally, hopefully, with the benevolent ones. The redacted text in the credits even outright refers to the Titans as "Old Ones" a la the ''Cthulhu Mythos''. In the novelization, Mark speculates that the Titans are either alien in nature or the last remnants of a primordial form of life that evolved during the Hadean period, when Earth was a radiation-rich volcanic wasteland. [[spoiler:Then it's revealed Ghidorah is a hostile, ''actual'' alien horror with biology that defies science as we know it, seeking to raze the entire planet with an extinction event for his own desires]]. Underlined at the senate hearing at the start of the movie.
-->'''Senator Williams:''' So, you'd want to make Godzilla our ''pet?''\\
'''Serizawa:''' No. We would be his.
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: Brought up early in the film instead of at the end by Dr. Mark Russell, who claims the entire plot could've been avoided if Emma never recreated the [=ORCA=] (which he and Emma destroyed several years ago), or if Monarch killed all the Titans whilst they were dormant (which Monarch have been actively avoiding). Ultimately {{averted}}, as killing the Titans would be extremely difficult and attempts would likely only wake up and enrage them; and even without Monarch's losing battle to prevent the government taking over and trying to kill the Titans (which has a shitload of [[Fridge/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019 Fridge Horror]] attached), Ghidorah is imprisoned in ice in Antarctica. Which is, you know, already slowly melting precisely ''because'' of human activity and the absence of [[AnIcePerson Ice Person]] Titans. The facts that te Titans would be difficult to kill, and that attempts to kill [[BizarreAlienBiology Ghidorah]] especially would likely only free it, get explicit attention drawn to them in the novelization.
* CreativeClosingCredits: In a similar style to the [[Film/Godzilla2014 2014 film]]'s opening credits.
* CreditsGag: At one point of the main credits, after the newsreel, the four main kaiju are listed as playing themselves.
* CreepyHighPitchedVoice: Ghidorah and Rodan's shrill roars are pretty terrifying.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: King Ghidorah possesses a biology that makes him nearly impossible to kill, regenerating rapidly from any damage and no-selling a weapon that almost one-shot Godzilla. His center head in particular seems as if it is nigh immortal, to the extent that [[spoiler:even when Godzilla destroys the whole rest of his body, that head is still alive, intact and snarling. So what does Godzilla do when he at last has the opportunity to put an end to his ages old rival? Grab that still-living center head by the neck-stump in his mouth, and then incinerate it with a final blast of atomic fire fired ''through'' its neck, ensuring there will be nothing left of it to regenerate]].
* TheCuckoolanderWasRight:
** Serizawa's preachings back in the 2014 movie that Godzilla is the embodiment of nature's ability to re-balance itself could be pretty hard to take seriously InUniverse as well as out, especially given how esoteric it sounds coming from a scientist; and he hasn't let up at the start of this movie with his arguments that human civilization can coexist with Titans if the right decisions are made. Few people outside of Monarch take Serizawa's pro-Titan arguments seriously, including the government who are [[MurderIsTheBestSolution just itching for an excuse to try exterminating the Titans]], but at the end, Serizawa is proven right: [[spoiler:not only does Godzilla end the extinction-level threat of [[OmnicidalManiac King Ghidorah]], he also ensures that the other awakened Titans rejuvenate the world's damaged ecosystems and stay away from humanity's population centers]].
** Dr. Rick Stanton is regarded as a little bit of a loon [[AgentMulder even among Monarch]] for openly advocating [[Film/KongSkullIsland Dr. Brooks]]' theory [[spoiler:that the HollowEarth is real]], but he's proven right all along [[spoiler:when Mothra leads a submarine carrying him, Serizawa, Mark and Chen to a Vile Vortex]].
* CueTheSun:
** PlayedWith. At the film's DarkestHour, when it seems [[spoiler:Godzilla has died, and with him humanity's only hope against Ghidorah]], a small shaft of sunlight pierces the clouds. It grows brighter and brighter, until the glow is revealed to be not the sun, but Mothra...who with a mighty flap of her wings dispels the storm clouds and brings the true rays of the sun shining on our human heroes.
** [[spoiler:After Godzilla finally annihilates King Ghidorah, his hurricane dissipates and the sun finally cuts through as the Titans bow to him and he roars triumphantly.]]
* CurbStompBattle:
** At Outpost 32, the military didn't even stand a chance against Alan Jonah and his goons.
** The U.S. Air Force vs. Rodan and Ghidorah. Rodan knocks his opponents out by rolling around swatting them all with his wings as while Ghidorah launches an electric storm flapping his wings to destroy all Air Force fighters.
** [[spoiler: After Rodan is lured into King Ghidorah by the humans, King Ghidorah quickly overpowers Rodan in battle, making the latter submit to his newfound tyrant and [[TheDragon aid him]] in warding off Mothra.]]
** [[spoiler:Once Godzilla fully ascends to his atomic form, the final battle is basically already over. His first blast burns off Ghidorah's wings, preventing the space dragon from possibly escaping, he [[NoSell completely and utterly ignores]] a triple gravity blast to the chest from point-blank range, his second blast vaporises two of Ghidorah's heads, and the final blast disintegrates his body, leaving only his final head, which a cooled-down Godzilla then picks up in his mouth and annihilates with one last blast of atomic breath. Ghidorah had ''no'' chance at all against Godzilla and Mothra's full combined power unleashed.]]
* CurseCutShort:
** Hendricks manages an "Oh, shi-" just before Ghidorah's gravity beams reduce him to ashes.
** When they learn that Ghidorah is homing in on Rodan's location, Mark notes that in nature two solitary predators coming together usually only happens for one of three reasons: "for food, a fight or a f... Something more intimate."
* CuttingTheKnot: How Mark deals with a stuck cargo door on the Argo. It won't open, the alternative might not work and there's a shuttle full of civilians that needs to land ASAP. There happens to be a few docked shuttles above the door so Mark simply releases one that tears off the cargo doors.
* TheCynic: Mark Russell is the worst one in the film, and to a lesser extent Dr. Stanton. Both are skeptical of or outright rebuff the idea that Titans can coexist with humans (they also both lose this attitude over the film) and are rather jaded.
* DarkerAndEdgier: The film one-ups the previous film's tone, and maybe even ''Film/ShinGodzilla'' and [[Anime/GodzillaPlanetOfTheMonsters the]] [[Anime/GodzillaCityOnTheEdgeOfBattle anime]] [[Anime/GodzillaThePlanetEater trilogy]]. Alan Jonah's endgame is to revive King Ghidorah, who is an alpha rival to Godzilla and his literal worst enemy compared to the [=MUTO=]s. Plus, there are far more casualties, and AnyoneCanDie. Godzilla himself ''almost dies'', and had to be resuscitated in order to save the world.
* DarkestHour: After the Mexico battle, [[spoiler:Godzilla is believed dead, Ghidorah has usurped the title of King of the Monsters and is driving the Titans to rapidly destroy the planet. It's discovered Ghidorah is an alien invader, meaning even the human villains won't be getting the outcome they desired and the most powerful weapons the military has available are completely worthless against King Ghidorah and his army. It isn't until Mothra arrives at Castle Bravo that things begin to turn around.]]
* DavidVsGoliath: Relatively speaking, Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan are all significantly smaller in size to King Ghidorah, and this especially seems to backfire against Rodan when he engages Ghidorah in aerial combat, [[CurbStompBattle with the latter of whom easily overpowering the former.]]
* DawnOfAnEra: At the end of the film, [[spoiler:the formerly-hibernating Titans around the world remain awakened but are now being kept in check by Godzilla; they're restoring ecosystems decimated by human activity, and producing new, clean fuels for humans]]. A fisherman in the post-credits scene says, "It's a brave new world".
* DeadpanSnarker: Mark Russell, Alan Jonah and Rick Stanton all have moments.
* DeadlyEscapeMechanism: One scene has a fighter pilot ejecting from his aircraft... [[EatenAlive straight into the jaws of Rodan]].
* DeathGlare:
** Ghidorah and Rodan both hand out at least one of these each, and Chen gives Mark Russell a more minor one for making another one of his angry anti-Titan snips which she doesn't have a retort for.
** Godzilla levels one at the Monarch submarine crew [[spoiler:after they nuke his lair to revive him from the Oxygen Destroyer, causing them all to flinch in fear; though he leaves after determining they're not a threat]].
** At the end of the film, [[spoiler:Godzilla levels one at the other Titans once they arrive in Boston, as though daring them to challenge his reign. Rodan is initially defiant but bows first, followed by the others]].
* DeathWorld:
** A mild case, but the entire surface of the Earth is effectively turned into one when Ghidorah takes over as Alpha and commands the other Titans to begin destroying all other life on the planet, with Titans rampaging all around the globe and actively unleashing extinction-level natural disasters. The {{novelization}} notes that pretty much nowhere on the planet short of a reinforced shelter is truly safe for human habitation at this point, and that the global conditions are forcing Monarch and the military forces to be selective with finding safe places to regroup or refuel. [[spoiler:Fortunately, it gets undone once Ghidorah is killed and the Titans submit to Godzilla]].
** Godzilla's temple in [[spoiler:an air pocket in the Hollow Earth]] is so highly radioactive that even protective gear isn't enough to protect one from radiation poisoning, never mind the deathly-high volcanic heat. This poses a problem when Monarch head to the temple looking to [[spoiler:revive Godzilla, forcing one of them to make a HeroicSuicide]].
* DeconReconSwitch: This movie tries to portray the elements of the Toho Godzilla franchise through a realistic lens. Many of the Fridge Horror elements of the Japanese films are addressed and [[AscendedFridgeHorror used to show]] what would happen if giant mythical beasts decided to fight over the fate of the world. That said it also tries to realistically incorporate the more positive aspects of the Japanese films to show what giant monsters that aren't automatically AlwaysChaoticEvil but rather run a gamut of various emotions and dispositions would be like and humanity's reaction to a fantastic new world beginning to dawn.
** [[{{Deconstruction}} The Decon]]
*** In the original Toho films, while the audience did see buildings destroyed, cities leveled, and deaths of innocent bystanders, it is never shown (either through design or simply due to lacking the special effects needed) just how horrific it would be for the humans when giant monsters decide put on their dance shoes and hit the town. The results are terrifying with people being consumed by gale force winds, swallowed up by the earth splitting, and burned alive by nuclear fire.
*** Doesn't matter that Mothra and Godzilla are basically on our side and trying to protect the world, they are still giant monsters and manage to cause mass damage simply by moving nevemind when they start fighting. Their opponent is also an ancient [[spoiler:alien]] three headed DraconicAbomination that wants to level the earth which means that they can't be caught up in limiting the damage by holding back when the entire fate of the world is at stake.
** [[{{Reconstruction}} The Recon]]
*** Human weapons can do nothing to most if not all of the Kaiju. While Mothra and Godzilla may be destructive saviors humans are damn lucky to have them looking out for and protecting the world because if Ghidorah rose unchallenged, humanity would have been wiped out in the space of a month.
*** Just because the Kaiju are giant creatures that humans have never seen before and have the power to wipe out civilization, doesn't mean that they will. It also doesn't mean that they are automatically aggressive or hostile to humans either. Humans are so small to the Kaiju that they may as well be ants and tigers don't go around killing ants for fun. Going further with the tiger analogy, even dangerous beast won't attack people unless they have a reason to.
* DerelictGraveyard:[[spoiler: The Hollow Earth]] has one, [[spoiler:consisting of various ships dating from various centuries, implied to have gotten there by being sucked into the same vortex that takes Monarch's submarine down there]].
* DestructiveSavior: Godzilla, as usual - he's quite happy to use the surrounding property to his advantage in battle, smashing Ghidorah through a skyscraper at one point. [[spoiler:Then he hits his Fire stage - his mere presence is enough to cause the surrounding city to either melt or explode into fire]]. By the film's end Boston has been smashed on a scale that makes the last movie's San Francisco battle look small by comparison. However, this is by far preferable to [[OmnicidalManiac what happens if King Ghidorah isn't stopped.]]
* DestroyTheProductPlacement: King Ghidorah lands and knocks over a helpless Dunkin Donuts billboard.
* DetrimentalDetermination:
** NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist Alan Jonah is hellbent on seeing the Titans decimate humanity at any cost because he's ''that'' pissed off at mankind, justifying it as [[EcoTerrorist saving the rest of Earth's species]], and he eggs his partner [[spoiler:Emma]] on to stick to their plan whenever she starts having her doubts. He's ''so'' obsessed with seeing the Titans level humanity that when [[spoiler:Emma]] warns him [[OmnicidalManiac one of the Alpha Titans they've unleashed]] is going to eradicate humanity ''entirely'' as well as cause much worse devastation to the biosphere than we ever could, Jonah doesn't care, and he goes out of his way to make sure Emma can't try to stop Ghidorah herself. All that matters to Jonah is Titans killing off as much of humanity as possible (the more the better), and he doesn't seem to care (or in the novelization honestly doesn't ''realize'') that Ghidorah's reign of terror will eventually kill him and his men too.
** To a lesser extent, Emma Russell, [[spoiler:albeit not without encouragement from Jonah]]. As an indirect result of [[PlotTriggeringDeath her son's death]] five years ago, Emma is obsessed with saving humanity and the world's ecology from a manmade ecological collapse, even if she has to take the fate of the world into her own hands [[spoiler:and cause ''millions'' of deaths]] due to [[HeadInTheSandManagement Monarch's shortcomings]] on the issue. [[spoiler:Emma goes so far as leaving several of her colleagues, friends, and also ''her daughter's father'' to die, while '''said daughter is helplessly watching beside her''', so that she can pursue her goal]]. Aside from unwittingly setting loose the aforementioned Ghidorah in her recklessness (thereby putting the world under threat of [[ApocalypseHow/Class5 the exact opposite]] of [[WellIntentionedExtremist what she was aiming for]]); Emma's [[spoiler:willingness to sacrifice lives by the thousands or even millions, and her]] direct refusal of her daughter's impassioned pleas [[spoiler:to the contrary,]] utterly destroy her relationships with everyone who cared about her: her colleagues, her ex-husband, even her child ([[spoiler:the only person whose life [[VillainousParentalInstinct she really cared enough about to put ahead of her plan]]]]).

* DidntThinkThisThrough:
** Whilst [[spoiler:TheExtremistWasRight that releasing the Titans will bring balance to the world and create many more solutions than problems for humanity]], the eco-terrorists release Ghidorah who is a Titan that Monarch still knows relatively little about, partly due to it being a new discovery; and they furthermore [[spoiler:intend to indiscriminately release all the Titans without first verifying their respective temperaments and which ones might actually be hostile to humans and incapable of coexistence]]. As a result, they don't count on Ghidorah turning out to be [[spoiler:an invasive extraterrestrial with no ties to maintaining Earth's ecosphere and]] an OmnicidalManiac who actively seeks to bring much, ''much'' worse destruction to the planet than the terrorists intended.
*** Would-be "alpha" animals in many species ''do'' fight for dominance. The ORCA controls the Titans by assuming the role of an alpha. It is not a magic switch and doesn't follow that a Titan of the order of Gidorah [[spoiler:even absent the malicious intelligence]] would submit to it. Turns out all it means to him is extreme hatred and he can't be given orders even if Jonah would like to. [[spoiler:He isn't an "animal" in intelligence either.]]
** The military launch their [[spoiler:prototype Oxygen Destroyer]] in a [[NukeEm seemingly rushed and panicked move]] in an attempt to kill Ghidorah and Rodan, without bothering to first hear from Monarch what precisely is going on or even consult them. As a result, their weapon ends up [[spoiler:near-fatally injuring]] Godzilla while he was in the middle of subduing Ghidorah, and with Godzilla out of the fight, there's nothing on the planet able to stand against Ghidorah, who promptly begins enacting the ApocalypseHow. Furthermore, [[spoiler:TheStinger]] seems to indicate the military's untested prototype weapon has caused ''a lot more'' ecological damage in Isla de Mara's waters than just a two-mile radius.
** This hits Madison when she uses the ORCA to [[spoiler:disrupt Ghidorah's control over the Titans around the world and lure Ghidorah himself to Boston]]. Instead of getting the hell out of dodge with an AxCrazy, 500-foot PsychoElectro on his way, she actually stays put and looks out for any sign of him approaching, without unplugging the ORCA. As a result, she's trapped in the stadium when Ghidorah comes, hunting for the source of the ORCA signal. This gets some AdaptationalExplanation in the novelization.
** And then when Madison unplugs the ORCA from the stadium's speaker system, but doesn't turn the device itself off, Ghidorah is instantly able to zero in on her exact location and realize what she's done. [[spoiler:She's only saved from being obliterated by Godzilla's timely arrival]].
* DigitalDestruction: ''Thankfully'' averted. Warner Bros. learned from their [[Film/Godzilla2014 past mistake on the 2014 film’s Blu-ray]] and gave this film a proper home video released with a bright color pallet and equal level contrast.
* DisappointedByTheMotive: Mark Russell and the Monarch operatives all react this way to [[spoiler:Emma Russell]]'s MotiveRant, deeming her plan reckless, insane and evil, and the Ranter in question cracks and reveals theirself as someone NotSoStoic under the pressure of Mark's accusations.
* DisneyVillainDeath: Attempted [[spoiler: but ultimately {{Subverted| Trope}}]]. During the climatic battle, King Ghidorah uses his heads to lift Godzilla thousands of feet in the air and drop him. [[FrictionBurn He even catches fire from atmospheric re-entry]]! [[spoiler: It would've killed Godzilla too, had [[HeroicSacrifice a dying Mothra]] not stepped in to give him a power boost.]]
* DisproportionateRetribution: It's implied Emma's motive for destroying humanity is to seek revenge for the death of her son. Mark himself outright tells her that destroying the world won't bring their son back.
* DoABarrelRoll: [[spoiler:Rodan wipes out the remnants of Gold Squadron with an aileron roll that demolishes the tight formation of the fighters.]]
* DoingResearch: As King Ghidorah begins leading the Titans towards a global apocalypse, Mark and Ilene are left to do this onboard the ''Argo'' on the way back to Castle Bravo. Mark analyzes the ORCA's alpha signal attempting to work out what frequency Emma created it with, whilst Ilene continues consulting myths about Ghidorah for answers and she ends up piecing together that [[spoiler:Ghidorah is an alien who acts like an invasive species on Earth]].
* DoNotTouchTheFunnelCloud: Ghidorah's hurricane, even after it evolves into a ''Category 6'' and ''produces offshoot tornadoes and water-spouts'', is on its own pretty much harmless to humans on the ground, just hitting them with a lot of rain and only a small wind which batters their hair and clothes, and making some atmospheric fog. Even a Category 1 hurricane should threaten to blow people off their feet and tear buildings apart and send debris flying through the air. Worse, even flying ''inside the cloud'' is relatively harmless, to the point that thousands of aircraft can safely fly right under the hurricane with minimal turbulence, and even the crazy-high amounts of lightning in the clouds barely ever strike them.
* DoubleMeaningTitle: [[spoiler: Ghidorah and Godzilla are both the king of the monsters at different points of the film.]]
* TheDragon: [[spoiler: Rodan is the first Titan to bow to Ghidorah when he seemingly defeats Godzilla, and actively fights at his side against Godzilla and Mothra in the final battle of the film.]]
* DragonTheirFeet: {{Subverted}}. [[spoiler:In the immediate aftermath of King Ghidorah's death, Godzilla looks around to see the other awakened Titans who followed Ghidorah have arrived a little too late to assist their former master as they surround him. Godzilla intimidates them with but a DeathGlare, and they all bow to Godzilla as the new King of the Monsters]].
* TheDreaded: Ghidorah, naturally. Godzilla somehow senses something going on at the Antarctica site that immediately sends him into an intimidation display even with his nemesis thousands of miles away and not even awake yet. On Monarch's end, Mark's deduction Godzilla's heading to Antarctica immediately reduces the room to dead silence. Later in the film Dr. Chen notes she had trouble finding anything more than vague information on Ghidorah in myths and legends, as if humanity wanted to forget he ever existed.
* DynamicEntry:
** Godzilla makes himself known in Mexico by erupting from the water and dragging King Ghidorah underwater like a giant crocodile. Then in Boston, [[spoiler:the very first sign of his entry is his Atomic Breath blasting into Ghidorah's chest seemingly from out of nowhere, catching the evil hydra off-guard]].
** Mothra enters the Battle of Boston by dive bombing King Ghidorah and gluing his heads to a building with her webbing. Rodan then makes his entrance by divebombing ''her'' shortly there after.
* EcoTerrorist: [[spoiler:Emma]] and Jonah and his mercs' mission is restoring the natural balance by forcibly awakening and releasing all the Titans, and they're fine with committing mass slaughter of Monarch personnel, to say nothing of the global human death toll their actions entail.
* EerieArcticResearchStation: PlayedWith. The Monarch outpost that houses the evilest and most destructive known Titan of all is located in the Antarctic wilderness. Not only does the barren, solitary landscape reflect [[OmnicidalManiac what kind of Titan the dormant creature inside really is]] comparative to [[FertileFeet the others]], the sheer geographical isolation of the facility certainly doesn't make it easy for the outpost's staff to detect the eco-terrorists' inbound presence in advance nor raise the alarm. But beyond that, there isn't particularly much horror or tension drawn from the outpost's isolated location nor the inhospitable outdoor conditions in and of themselves until ''after'' the facility is destroyed.
* EldritchOceanAbyss: The film has a sequence in the UnderwaterRuins of [[spoiler:an ancient, Godzilla-worshiping city within the Hollow Earth. The ruins are infused with radiation from the Earth's core, making it Godzilla's preferred place to rest and heal after a fight]].
* ElementalPowers: Rodan, Mothra, and Ghidorah are all cited as having at least one:
** Rodan is [[MagmaMan lava-based]].
** Mothra has [[LightEmUp bioluminescent abilities she can weaponize into beams of deadly energy.]]
** King Ghidorah has [[ShockAndAwe electrical powers]] and can [[BlowYouAway generate hurricane force winds with his wings]]. Combining both powers allows him to [[WeatherManipulation generate cataclysmic storms.]]
* EpicFail: The military desperately attempt to kill both Ghidorah and Rodan by firing their [[spoiler:prototype Oxygen Destroyer]] at Isla de Mara. [[spoiler:The missile hits after Ghidorah has subdued Rodan when Godzilla is in the middle of defeating Ghidorah. It not only fails to have any effect on Ghidorah due to his alien biology, but it cripples Godzilla to the point of near-death; and without Godzilla to keep Ghidorah in check, the latter monster promptly awakens all of the dormant Titans around the world and commands them to begin razing the human race and all other life on the planet into the ground]].
* EnemyMine: {{Downplayed}}, seeing as Godzilla's relationship with humanity isn't quite as hostile in the Franchise/MonsterVerse as in past continuities. At the film's start, the general public consensus and certainly the close-minded government's consensus is that the military should be exterminating all the Titans indiscriminately, and Monarch are trying to stop them as long as they can (this works two ways as it also creates a ScientistVsSoldier conflict to go alongside humanity's mixed feelings toward Godzilla). However, once Ghidorah usurps Godzilla's dominance over the other Titans and directs them to start creating an extinction event, it [[ConflictKiller kills Monarch and the military's conflict]] and it leads to Monarch and all four branches of the U.S. military working together with Godzilla and Mothra to take their planet back from Ghidorah.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Though it's only revealed through the credits, the soldier killed by Colonel Foster in Antarctica is named Asher Jonah. Based on Alan Jonah's reaction, it was likely his son. This may have influenced his speech on "human nature" later in the film, and his acceptance of Ghidorah's plan to destroy the world.
* EveryoneHasStandards: Despite their reverence for the Titans and belief that they're essential to the world, all of the Monarch key brass are universally horrified by [[spoiler:Emma and]] Jonah's plan to forcibly awaken all of them and let them decimate humanity.
* EvilerThanThou:
** Emma and Jonah awaken King Ghidorah to act as their agent to restore balance to the world. It's only a short time before Ghidorah completely flies OffTheRails and begins his own, far more cataclysmic plans.
** [[spoiler:Jonah proves this to Emma, as while she near instantly has a MyGodWhatHaveIDone upon realizing King Ghidorah is far more destructive and dangerous than she ever expected, Jonah is perfectly fine letting the space dragon kill everyone.]]
** King Ghidorah becomes this against Rodan, who is completely unstoppable until Ghidorah defeats him in about one minute.
* EvilIsBigger: Ghidorah is over 500 feet tall, weighs 141,000 tons and is the largest creature yet seen in the Monsterverse. He's also genuinely malevolent [[spoiler:and an alien invader seeking to terraform Earth to his liking.]]
* EvilIsNotAToy: Emma Russell and Jonah awaken Ghidorah in hopes that he'll restore balance as part of their plans. Unfortunately, Ghidorah has far bigger and deadlier plans than they had in mind. [[spoiler:PlayedWith with Jonah, who is fine to let Ghidorah have his way.]]
* EvilVersusEvil: This is what Monarch's plan is regarding luring Rodan into the path of Ghidorah in hopes of them just taking each other out. [[spoiler: While they do engage in battle, Rodan doesn't die but does submit to Ghidorah as his Alpha.]]
* EvilVersusOblivion: {{Defied}} by Alan Jonah and his mooks. His partner [[spoiler:Emma Russell]] is ready to make a HeelFaceTurn once she realizes King Ghidorah isn't just bringing GaiasVengeance but is instead liable to [[OmnicidalManiac wipe the Earth clean of all life as we know it]], and Emma Russell tries to warn Jonah that the eco-terrorists have fucked up by awakening Ghidorah. However, Jonah hates humanity ''so much'' that he refuses to lift a finger to try and stop Ghidorah, instead hiding himself and his mercs away whilst the apocalypse is escalating. In the novelization, Jonah goes even further out of his way to stop Emma from trying to hinder Ghidorah's rampage. Ultimately, Jonah and his mercenaries are the only human party in the movie who don't come to Godzilla and Mothra's side against Ghidorah and his Titan army at all, staying out of the conflict.
* ExactTimeToFailure: Rick counting down how long before [[spoiler:Godzilla explodes like an A-bomb, having been overdosed with radiation.]]
* ExcessiveMourning: Both Mark and Emma Russell, although the latter is better at hiding it, after their son's death five years ago. Both parents come to regret their actions once the child they still have is in mortal danger.
** Mark divorced Emma and ran away to the Colorado mountains attempting to escape his problems. At the start of the film's main time frame, he acts as if his son's death was no more than five months ago even though half a decade has passed, and he acts as if he's the only one who lost a child even though there were thousands of casualties of the same event that day. Whilst he's not exactly a menace per se, he is an obnoxious piece of work who holds a hatred of all Titans (Godzilla in particular) for his loss, and who frequently directs his anger at his former colleagues regardless of the fact they're only trying to help him. He gets better over the film via MovingBeyondBereavement, not least with the help of a few words from Serizawa about making peace with the Titan which caused Mark's pain.
** Emma appears to have overall moved on since her son's death and continued working for Monarch, even if she is still a bit haunted at times. [[spoiler:In actuality, this is a MaskOfSanity, as she's experienced significant SanitySlippage; making a FaceHeelTurn and plotting to indiscriminately release the Titans on the world as part of a UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans plan. She's operating under an InsaneTrollLogic that engineering global repeats of her son's death will ensure his death wasn't "in vain", and it's implied that whereas Mark blames the Titans for their son's death Emma instead blames humanity for causing the Titans' awakening which led to said death in the first place. Mark, Madison and everyone at Monarch call Emma out on her atrocities, with Mark criticizing her for trying to control the Titans without understanding them and Madison calling her out for thinking Andrew would want what she's done]].
* {{Expy}}: Dr. Rick Stanton, a snarky alcoholic Monarch scientist, is based on [[Franchise/RickAndMorty Rick Sanchez]].
* TheExtremistWasRight: In the ending, [[spoiler:Emma's argument that releasing the Titans would restore balance to the planet and repair the ecosystem, and that humans could peaceably coexist with the Titans, was proven right.]] However, the plan was incompletely correct: [[spoiler: Waking Monster Zero was ''not'' a good idea, because King Ghidorah isn't one of the Earth's Titans and has no intention of restoring the balance in any way that Earth life can survive.]]
* FaceDeathWithDignity:
** Cornered by King Ghidorah, as the giant alien dragon charges up power in all three of its necks, [[spoiler:Madison [[DefiantToTheEnd screams in sheer defiance at it]]... only to be echoed by Godzilla's own roar and a blast of Atomic Fire at Ghidorah's body, saving her.]]
** Minutes later, faced with a similar situation, [[spoiler:her mother Emma lies injured at Ghidorah's mercy and growls her own defiant "[[FacingTheBulletsOneLiner Long live the king]]" instants before Godzilla comes back in his [[SuperMode Burning]] form. We do not see her actual death, but given she was at ground zero of successive nuclear pulses, those became her last words]].
* FantasticNuke: The [[spoiler:Oxygen Destroyer is a military prototype weapon for killing Titans which is designed to exterminate any and all terrestrial life within a two-mile radius]]. It gets used by the military in a NukeEm move.
* FantasticRacism: The government and the majority of the public want Monarch to kill all the Titans instead of containing them at the start of the film following the events of the first film, and the senators at the start of the film are notably devoid of Admiral Stenz's [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure reasonableness]]. Mark Russell outright rebuffs the notion the Titans are anything other than rampaging monsters due to blaming them for his son's death.
* FatalFlaw: For Emma Russell, it's {{Pride}}: once she's committed to something and she's gotten it into her head that she's right about it, she can be ''very'' unmoving about it. For Mark, it's running away from his problems and letting them fester instead of confronting them head-on and dealing with them in a more healthy manner. The film also seems to have cast aside any doubt from the first film that small-mindedness is Admiral Stenz's Fatal Flaw. Even Ghidorah gets some of this trope, as his sadistic need to go out of his way to attack humans with overkill or just draw out their deaths by a few moments ''thrice'' enables Godzilla to take him by surprise.
* FearlessFool:
** {{Downplayed}} with Rodan, when he charges into a fight against Ghidorah after initially banking away in an OhCrap.
** PlayedStraight by ''one of Ghidorah's heads'' when Ni (the right head) attempts to strike at a charging Godzilla on his own while the other two heads are incapacitated.
** This is also a serious flaw of Emma Russell who doesn't have the best sense of self-prservation when pursuing a solution she perceives to a problem, something which is explored more in the ''Godzilla Aftershock'' prequel graphic novel.
* FinalBattle: After Monarch have successfully [[spoiler:revived]] Godzilla so he can take his kingship back from King Ghidorah and end the latter's global apocalypse, Godzilla meets Ghidorah in the evacuated Boston accompanied by the combined military forces of Monarch and what's left of the U.S. Army's four branches, whilst either Alpha Titan's respective vanguards Mothra and Rodan duel each-other.
* FisherKing: In multiple ways, and it's often {{justified}} by how the Titans' PhysicalGod powers affect the environment around them.
** The climate of multiple places ''around the world'' reflects on the nature of the current Alpha Titan who, by holding dominance over the other Titans, is essentially king of the planet.
*** Ghidorah is constantly accompanied by a lightning-filled PerpetualStorm that his powers generate, but when King Ghidorah is the ruling Alpha and is actively enacting an ApocalypseHow on the planet, almost every location on the planet's surface that's visited is being pelted by mighty storms, which are actually being spread over the planet by Ghidorah. It signifies Ghidorah's fundamental and radical upset of the global natural order and also his purely-destructive nature as an OmnicidalManiac.
*** Later in the film, Mothra in her imago form disperses Ghidorah's spreading storms from the sky above the Yunnan Rainforest and at Castle Bravo, signifying both her refusal to accept King Ghidorah's rule and her active attempts to restore the natural balance which Ghidorah is trying to obliterate.
*** When Godzilla reclaims his dominance, he and the Titans are surrounded by destruction but the sky is clear and red with a dawning/setting sun, symbolizing Godzilla's nature as a DestructiveSaviour who brings both destruction and renewal to the world, and also the DawnOfAnEra.
** Early in the film, the temple where Mothra's egg has waited for millennia is positively ''teeming'' with plant and insect life and is furthermore located deep in a rainforest; fitting with how Mothra is both the most benevolent Titan and the one who is most aligned with life.
** Isla de Mara's sky is [[RedSkyTakeWarning a hot reddish-orange]] when Rodan is about to rise, and Rodan's emergence furthermore triggers a massive volcanic eruption; hinting at Rodan's HotBlooded nature, that he's not the most benevolent Titan towards humans, and also how he's easily provoked to wrath.
* FiveRoundsRapid: [[GiantEqualsInvincible As expected]], small arms fire isn't even felt by the Titans, but it's still the first response of any Monarch soldier that ends up in their path (as opposed to, say, running like hell). The only handheld arm to get a reaction was a high-powered taser against a relatively tiny Titan, and even that only pissed off the Mothra larva rather than have any real effect. However, while Titans ''do'' feel missile bombardment, it still annoys them more than actually hurt them in any way.
** Most noticeable during Ghidorah's awakening, wherein one of his heads ducks down to peer at the soldiers below, allowing dozens of rifles to unload point-blank on his eyes, nose, and mouth with absolutely no reaction besides casual curiosity. One gets the distinct impression that the central head's decision to unleash their BreathWeapon was nothing more than making a point.
* {{Flashback}}: The film opens by revisiting the devastation caused to San Francisco by Godzilla's battle with the [=MUTOs=], this time from the perspective of the Russells, as they happened to be there and searched for their son Andrew.
* FlippingTheBird: Madison has a moment where she flips off Alan Jonah while they're both in the elevator. He's simply amused by this.
* ForeignLanguageTitle: The Japanese version uses the title's characters as "キング・オブ・モンスターズ" (transliteration of ''King of the Monsters'') instead of "怪獣王" (''Monster King'') to distance itself from the 1957 release of ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters1956'', though both mean the same thing.
* ForTheEvulz: While King Ghidorah does attack people who shoot at him [[spoiler:or are challenging him with the Orca]], he also repeatedly attacks and kills people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time [[spoiler:such as gobbling up Vivienne and trying to destroy the Argo after defeating Rodan, even though it was running ''away'' from him.]] Tellingly, [[spoiler:he also tries to atomize Madison ''after'' she's thrown the Orca away and much closer to him, damaging and shutting it off in the process.]] He also several times does a SlasherSmile when about to do so, implying he genuinely enjoys it. The novelization takes it a step further by explicitly stating he ''enjoys'' killing and practically ''lives'' for it.
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** The truth about [[spoiler:Emma's plan and the fact Madison was already on board when we first meet her]] is hinted at several times in the opening act. Madison nervously asks her mother if her father will be safe, Emma seemingly nonchalantly asks her co-worker if he wants to take the morning off (on the day their Titan is being born). [[spoiler:Subtle hints that with hindsight tie into her involvement in what's to come]].
** Furthermore, Madison's emails besides the one from her father are mostly environmental ones pertaining to fears of a mass extinction.
** In a more subtle example, the opening logos are stylized to look like ancient stone carvings, and depict the unawakened Titans on either side of them.
** After the prologue, Mark is first shown taking pictures of wolves eating a carcass. Later, [[spoiler:he's the first to notice the Titans are moving "like a pack" in response to an Alpha.]]
** Ghidorah's HarmlessFreezing isn't just a huge instance of ArtisticLicenseBiology -- it hints that [[spoiler:this incarnation is actually as much an alien has the original incarnation, with literal BizarreAlienBiology]], and the fact Ghidorah can survive in that frozen state foreshadows the Oxygen Destroyer's complete failure despite its name to have any asphyxiating effect on Ghidorah.
** Mothra arrives later to the FinalBattle despite being last seen around Godzilla's location and being capable of flight. The credits reveal [[spoiler:at some point she laid an egg before joining the final battle. This was confirmed by Dougherty on Twitter to be the case.]]
* FourPhilosophyEnsemble: Alan Jonah and the three Russells arguably form one regarding their stances on the Titans.
** Mark is the Cynic -- he's a DeadpanSnarker who for the first quarter of the film acts hostile to almost everyone around him, but he's quite logical, he puts reason ahead of revenge despite his biased tendencies and attitude towards Godzilla, and he overall proves himself a JerkWithAHeartOfGold. He's also at first in denial of the notion that Titans can coexist with humans and is a TragicBigot who rants that they should all be killed because of his own grief.
** Emma is the Optimist -- she's unflappable when she's gotten it into her head that she's on the correct course of action no matter what others tell her, she fails to entirely think through her plan to [[spoiler:release all the dormant Titans indiscriminately (leading to her unwittingly unleashing an alien "living extinction event" that if left alone will cause cataclysmically worse destruction than she intended)]], and she's optimistic about the Titans as creatures which can coexist with humanity whilst healing the world of manmade damage, but she foolishly [[spoiler:underestimates and misjudges her DragonInChief, Jonah]]. She also [[spoiler:is committing her EvilPlan out of grief at her son's death without fully realizing it, and she puts her daughter's welfare ahead of the "bigger picture" she originally committed to]]. She even [[spoiler:attempts a HeroicSacrifice to save the world at the end]].
** Madison is the Realist. She mediates her parents' positive traits whilst lacking their major flaws, she has a connection to and high opinion of the Titans but is more concerned than her mother about their destructive potential, and she decisively and rebelliously [[spoiler:takes the ORCA from Jonah's paramilitary and escapes from them and her mother]] to help save the world from Ghidorah.
** Jonah is the Apathetic. Calling him cold would be an understatement, and he's more enigmatic than Emma realizes when he proves (in complete contradiction of his original EcoTerrorist goal to let the Titans cull humanity for the good of the planet's biodiversity) that he's fine with letting King Ghidorah create an extinction event if as many human lives as possible are eradicated to sate Jonah's extreme misanthropy, and to his credit he also refuses to get involved even when Madison and Emma respectively intervene to try and stop Ghidorah. He's compared to Emma in the novelization, and it's explicitly noted there that Jonah is too far gone and too divorced from humanity to be redeemed.
* FreezeFrameBonus:
** As a film with non-speaking sentient Kaiju, there's a few opportunities to decipher the Titans' thoughts and personalities from their actions and facial expressions. Ghidorah gets special attention for its MultipleHeadCase, when two or all three of its heads are in the same shot and are responding differently to the same thing.
** You'd literally need to hit the 'Pause' button to see it: in the shot where Serizawa falls to his knees on witnessing [[spoiler:Graham's death]], you can also see Coleman, Griffin and Ilene's reactions to it behind his shoulders.
** The redacted text of the closing credits tells the story of the ancient civilization that existed in Hollow Earth and their relationship with the Titans.
** A news article in the closing credits also states that [[spoiler: Monarch may be building a "mechanized giant". Between this and the post-credits scene, it implies 2020's ''Godzilla vs Kong'' will feature [[Film/GodzillaVsKingGhidorah Mecha-King Ghidorah]]]].
** When Mark is being shown the many Titans the Orca was built using samples of, the last one is of an [[https://imgur.com/a/hKpiXRZ/ familiar ape.]]
* FreudianExcuse:
** The EcoTerrorist [[spoiler:Emma Russell]] is motivated to release all the Titans indiscriminately as part of her UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans plan because she lost her son in a past Titan battle and wants to ensure his death wasn't in vain. Despite being a genuine WellIntentionedExtremist about it who believes she's saving the world and despite [[VillainHasAPoint making some valid points]], it doesn't seem to occur to her how bemusingly [[{{Hypocrite}} hypocritical]] it is to try and make her son's death "matter" by engineering over a dozen repeats of the incident around the world which will no doubt cause millions of innocent families to experience the same loss.
** Alan Jonah is a NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist driven by an [[MisanthropeSupreme all-consuming desire to make as much of humanity as possible suffer]]. He reveals to Emma that he became the way he is [[MaddenIntoMisanthropy as a result of seeing the very worst of human nature first-hand over decades of serving his country in one war after another, leading him to believe that human nature invariably gets progressively worse with time]]. The novelization also reveals that the "tipping point" of his descent into madness was [[spoiler:after his daughter was gruesomely murdered while Jonah was away on military service, by a perpetrator who never got caught]].
* FriendlyRivalry: Ilene Chen and Rick seem to have the optimist-versus-pessimist variety.
* FromBadToWorse: An even graver case than in the first film, which again the U.S. military are directly responsible for instigating. After the incident in Antarctica, Godzilla's {{Kaiju}} rival Ghidorah (who turns out in his EstablishingCharacterMoment to be nightmarishly AxCrazy and {{sadist}}ic) is loose, and Jonah and Emma are set on releasing all the dormant Titans one-by-one so they'll inflict GaiasVengeance. Surely it can't get any worse? [[spoiler:The military drop the Oxygen Destroyer on Godzilla and Ghidorah in an attempt to kill them, but it only cripples Godzilla, while Ghidorah is revealed to be an alien who has no ties to maintaining Earth's biosphere; and with Godzilla inert, Ghidorah promptly forcibly awakens and takes control of all the planet's kaiju and uses them to start inflicting a Class 4-6 ApocalypseHow]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:G-M]]
* GaiasVengeance: Jonah and [[spoiler:Emma]] think they're [[GaiasVengeance Gaia's Avenger]], seeking to reawaken the Titans using the ORCA so that they can put a stop to humanity's ecologically destructive ways and retake their dominance of the planet as TheOldGods, restoring the natural balance. [[spoiler:In practice it's not that simple, as they screw up royally by awakening Ghidorah first - an Alpha Titan not of Earth, whose rule turns out to be a total disruption of the natural balance that Godzilla normally maintains.]]
* GentleGiant: PlayedWith by Godzilla, played very straight by Mothra, in their respective interactions with humans.
* TheGhost: of the seventeen known Titans on Earth, eight are mentioned but never actually shown onscreen (Leviathan, Baphomet, Abaddon, Typhon, Tiamat, Mokele Mbembe, Sargon, and Bunyip). Mokele-Mbembe and Kraken however both make appearances in the novelization.
* GiantFlyer: Other than Godzilla himself, all the other monsters are skyscraper-sized beasts that are somehow able to still soar through the sky.
* GodzillaThreshold: Because it wouldn't be a proper Godzilla film if this didn't get crossed at least once, the film crosses it ''twice''. First with the military's NukeEm move, and then with Monarch committing a NuclearOption. All TropeNamer reference aside, the latter counts as this trope due to the film lampshading the possibility Godzilla might turn on the humans in anger for their actions.
* GoneHorriblyRight: In Sam Coleman's own words, the plan to [[spoiler:jump-start Godzilla's HealingFactor by giving him an exploding nuke to absorb]] "Worked a little too well." [[spoiler:Godzilla's now on a countdown to meltdown, and perhaps only Mothra's HeroicSacrifice saved him from going the same way as Burning Godzilla in ''Film/GodzillaVsDestoroyah''.]]
* GoneHorriblyWrong: [[spoiler:Emma and]] Jonah's plan is to bring balance back to the world by forcibly awakening the Titans and letting them essentially knock humanity off the top of the animal kingdom, and to wake the Titans one at a time so the destruction they cause isn't too severe. The problem being, they didn't account for Ghidorah being [[spoiler:a hostile extraterrestrial whose goal is destroying the Earth and making it his own]], so once Godzilla is taken out of the picture, Ghidorah takes events totally out of the [[EcoTerrorist Eco-Terrorists]]' control by awakening the Titans and begins its own ApocalypseHow.
* GoodAngelBadAngel: Madison and Jonah have this dynamic with [[spoiler:Emma Russell]] when the latter is about to release Rodan. Madison is the Good Angel trying to convince [[spoiler:Emma]] that the latter should reconsider the whole EvilPlan or at the very least give the Isla de Mara villagers more time to flee to safety, whilst Jonah is the Bad Angel egging [[spoiler:Emma]] on to go through with it before they run out of time and trying to undermine Madison's conscientious pleas. Driving it home is how the camerawork focuses on Madison and Jonah respectively from opposite angles, and how Madison is positioned in the scene on [[spoiler:Emma]]'s right shoulder and Jonah on [[spoiler:Emma]]'s left shoulder. The Bad Angel wins [[spoiler:Emma]] over.
* GoodWingsEvilWings: Of the flight capable Titans, the benevolent Mothra has pretty and glowing butterfly wings, the highly volatile but not outright evil Rodan has pterosaur-like HotWings, and the OmnicidalManiac Ghidorah has bat-like dragon wings commonly associated with demons.
* GreenAesop: Humanity's relationship with the Titans (sans Ghidorah) is like our RealLife relationship with nature: mankind are attempting to dominate or destroy the Titans to suit themselves, but they and most life on Earth cannot live without these creatures, and it's better if humanity instead seek a balanced coexistence with the Titans ([[spoiler:which the ending proves we're very much capable of]]). Ghidorah on the other hand represents GlobalWarming: he's released and he gains global power due to human action and hubris, and whilst ostensibly reshaping the planet into a more comfortable form (for himself) he creates storms and global natural disasters which threaten man and nature alike.
* GreyAndGrayMorality: The film makes clear that EcoTerrorist Alan Jonah's views of humanity -- with [[HumansKillWantonly all the wars, death, and destruction people bring about]] -- aren't entirely wrong, and that he can earnestly add stupidity (his and Emma's own as much as the military's) to the list of human flaws. In fact, It's his response to it all - letting the AxCrazy alien invader Ghidorah use the Titans to flatly obliterate humanity - that is presented as wrong, not the actions of humanity that left him so disillusioned in the first place.
* GriefInducedSplit: After losing their son Andrew as a result of the 2014 San Francisco kaiju attack, Mark and Emma Russell started drifting apart, with Emma moving to China with their surviving daughter Madison while resuming her work as a MONARCH researcher.
* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: Late in the film, [[spoiler:Jonah's men who are guarding the ORCA all conveniently take a break all at once, leaving the device unguarded and allowing Madison to easily snatch it and waltz out the front door with nobody to stop her. Better yet, nobody discovers that the device was stolen until Jonah sees a news broadcast about the monsters ceasing their attacks, which alerts him that Madison stole the device and used it. {{Downplayed}} in the novelization, which reveals they ''do'' leave someone behind to guard the ORCA, but Madison dispatches said guard when she's caught]].
* HandshakeRefusal: When they first meet, Dr. Sam Coleman offers a handshake to Mark Russell. Mark ignores him, so Sam puts his hand down.
* HappyEndingOverride: At the end of ''Film/Godzilla2014'', the hostile [=MUTOs=] have been killed before they could reproduce and devastate humanity, San Francisco has been saved from being obliterated by a nuclear warhead, and Godzilla peacefully returns to the sea whilst being hailed by the survivors of San Francisco's destruction as their savior for his actions. Five years later; more Kaiju with varying moral alignments are discovered to exist in hibernation and are slowly waking up all over the world, public opinion has turned around since Godzilla's departure to demands that the hibernating Kaiju be killed off indiscriminately by the military, manmade efforts to track down Godzilla are causing mass die-offs in the ocean, San Francisco has been abandoned and is in overgrown ruins (implicitly due to Godzilla and the [=MUTOs'=] unique radiation), and Monarch is facing major government scrutiny and public backlash for not exterminating the Kaiju they found as was their original purpose.
* HarmlessFreezing: King Ghidorah was frozen in Antarctic ice sometime in the past, yet it appears to have done nothing to slow him down once he escapes. [[spoiler:Justified, as he has an insane HealingFactor, as well as not needing oxygen to survive, being a space creature.]]
* HauledBeforeASenateSubCommittee: Coleman and Dr. Serizawa are summoned for a Senate meeting on the issue of the Titans and where the creatures' loyalties lie. The head senator believes Coleman is suggesting that humanity should make Godzilla their pet. However, Serizawa corrects her and says humanity would be ''Godzilla's'' pet if such a concept existed in his head.
* HeartbeatSoundtrack: PlayedWith. The track which plays at Outpost 32 directly before [[spoiler:the explosives detonate to free Ghidorah from the ice]] sound eerily like some vast heartbeat to indicate Monster Zero is waking up inside the glacier. A slower, more ominous one plays a couple minutes later when the ORCA completes Ghidorah's awakening in the pit.
* HeelRealization:
** [[spoiler:Emma]] has this once Ghidorah takes over as the new Alpha, realizing that while [[HumansKillWantonly humanity]] has done a lot of damage to the Earth over the years, if Ghidorah remains in charge of the other Titans then it will do ''[[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt far worse]]'' to the planet than anything humanity has achieved in its existence.
** [[spoiler:Madison]] has her own realization when listening to [[spoiler:Emma]] dismiss Mark and Serizawa's arguments with contempt and disdain, and when [[spoiler:Emma]] subsequently awakens Rodan in callous disregard for the lives of the hundreds of fleeing evacuees on Isla de Mara. Although she was aware of [[spoiler:her mother's plan and had been manipulated into believing her mother was in the right]], it's made clear she did not know the full extent of the eco-terrorists' methods, a fact that Jonah mocks her for. Any uncertainty [[spoiler:Madison]] still has at this point about whether or not she's on the wrong side is put to rest once King Ghidorah usurps dominance of the other Titans and uses them to begin slaughtering the entire planet.
* HellIsThatNoise:
** Ghidorah's roar. It sounds like a mix of his Showa chirps, his Heisei screeches, and his Millenium roars rolled into one and made more sinister.
** Rodan's cries are just as dissonant and terrifying, mixing his Showa roars with bird-like calls and some disturbingly human-sounding screams.
* HeroicBSOD:
** Serizawa seemingly slips into one when [[spoiler:Godzilla is seemingly killed]]. He's scarcely seen directly helping out or contributing much to discussions, save to (justifiably) inform the Monarch-military meeting at Castle Bravo that Godzilla was indeed the Earth's sole line of defence against Ghidorah, until [[spoiler:Mothra arrives and Monarch discover that Godzilla is still alive]].
** Madison hits this during the FinalBattle with the Titans' battle raging around and threatening to crush or vapourize her, driving her to on unthinking instinct flee to [[spoiler:her family's old house in Boston]] in search of safety.
* HeroicSacrifice:
** According to the novelization, the G-Team's TooDumbToLive move in Antarctica was actually this (see AdaptationalExplanation).
** [[spoiler:Dr. Graham]]'s death in Antarctica occurs due to them staying behind briefly to save Mark Russell's life, which made them vulnerable to Ghidorah who [[spoiler:ate Dr. Graham alive]].
** On account of the submarine's weapons systems being offline, [[spoiler:Dr. Serizawa volunteers to manually detonate a nuclear weapon close to Godzilla in order to [[FeedItWithFire speed up his healing process]]. This decision is especially notable in that Serizawa is a survivor of [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Little Boy's detonation over Hiroshima]], and so is well aware of what he is getting into.]]
** [[spoiler:As a badly-injured Godzilla lies weakened after being dropped from the sky by Ghidorah, Mothra, herself severely wounded by Rodan, makes one final attempt to defend Godzilla before being vaporized by Ghidorah's gravity beams. However, as she dies, she releases a radioactive cloud that settles upon Godzilla, reviving him and granting him his Fire Form.]]
** [[spoiler: Emma pulls one off luring Ghidorah away from her family with the Orca which gets her killed.]]
* HeroWithBadPublicity:
** Although Godzilla has saved humanity from the [=MUTO=]s five years ago and is working to rid the world of King Ghidorah, he is still deemed a threat by the United States. Even Mark Russell, the human protagonist, wants Godzilla dead because his son was collateral damage during Godzilla's fight in San Francisco. Only Serizawa and Monarch appear to be on Godzilla's side. Thankfully by the end of the movie this seems to be going away, as multiple newspapers report about how Godzilla is keeping other Titans away from cities once the Titans accept and revere Godzilla as their king.
** Monarch themselves are also getting this at the start of the film, due to the majority of the public blaming them for the San Francisco incident and the government subjecting them to intensifying scrutiny because they won't cooperate with their plan to kill every Titan. It's implied the backlash is further influenced by Monarch's refusal to reveal what they know about the Titans or how many more there are; but more than that, the government and most of the public just want to try killing all the Titans indiscriminately, and don't care for Monarch's arguments that that isn't a good idea.
* HollowWorld: More evidence of Houston Brooks' Hollow Earth theory from ''Film/KongSkullIsland'' comes up. Godzilla uses the extensive network of undersea caves to [[TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot get places faster than should be possible]]. And the Monarch submarine follows Godzilla into one of these tunnels to find his nest.
* HomefieldAdvantage: Godzilla and Ghidorah's second fight takes place underwater and Godzilla has a notable advantage where he ends up curb stomping the dragon, ripping off its left head. Everything goes well [[spoiler:until the humans fire the Oxygen Destroyer.]]
* HopeSpot:
** Mark finally gets to Antarctica to rescue his daughter from Alan Jonah and his eco-terrorist group. Madison walks to him...only for Emma to tell her to come back and she obliges.
** Monarch makes it to Antarctica to stop Alan Jonah from freeing Monster Zero and manage to have him cornered with even Mark holding him up at gunpoint...[[spoiler:and then Emma releases Ghidorah to the world, later revealing that she's been working for him all along.]]
* HostageSituation: Mother and daughter Emma and Madison Russell are kidnapped by a mysterious organization, and it's up to Emma's estranged husband Mark Russell to save them. [[spoiler:Subverted on Emma's end, as being caught and brought to Ghidorah's [[SealedEvilInACan can]] was part of her and Alan's plan all along.]]
* HotBlooded: Both Rodan and Ghidorah's right head (Ni) seem to have this personality type, while Mark Russell is quite heated about his hatred for Godzilla and is a LeeroyJenkins.
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: Runs two ways here.
** First, according to Dr. Emma Russell, humans are an "infection" who have decimated the Earth's ecosphere and triggered their own extinction event, thus necessitating the (re)appearance of the Titans in order to set things back into balance...
** ...and it's furthermore shown by the senate scene and the Oxygen Destroyer's launch that [[CommanderContrarian Admiral Stenz]] was basically the OnlySaneMan among a government who only care about exterminating the Titans and are ignorant to arguments to the contrary.
** On the other side of the fence, Emma and Alan Jonah decide to manually awaken the Titans, starting with the two ''most destructive'' ones on the list. Everything goes [[FromBadToWorse downhill]] from there and Madison rightly blames her mother for it, calling her a [[YouMonster monster]] in doing so. This [[HeelRealization hits home hard]].
** In a more literal example of the trope, [[spoiler:it turns out the hidden acoustic that is able to awaken the Titans is a human voice. The Titans apparently view mankind collectively as one of their own, to the point that Ghidorah immediately abandons his fight with Godzilla to destroy the ORCA when it's turned on in the middle of their battle]].
* HumansAreSpecial: [[spoiler:The secret tone used to get the attention of Titans? It's a human voice. The Titans apparently consider humanity as a whole a single alpha predator comparable to themselves to the point that they will accept challenges from the voice]].
* HumanPet: Dr. Serizawa states that when this is over, the best fate humanity can hope for is to become Godzilla's pet. The worst fate would be both Godzilla and humankind perishing at the hands of a worse Kaiju.
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** Dr. Emma Russell claims one of her main motivations is ensuring her son's death didn't occur for nothing, yet [[spoiler:she seems completely ignorant of the fact her plan calls for causing millions of families to go through the same pain of losing loved ones as she did instead of preventing it]]. Adding to this trope, she's [[ItsAllAboutMe not so willing to let someone die]] when that someone happens to be ''her'' child instead of someone else's (in contradiction to her previous claim that things are bigger than her and Madison). In another point, she [[JerkassHasAPoint gets rightfully called out by Jonah]] for [[spoiler:telling him to leave Madison out of their argument when she's already pulled her daughter into an ''eco-terrorist paramilitary organization's radical plot'' some time ago]].
** Mark Russell at two points angrily scorns Serizawa for "kidding himself" with the belief Titans are capable of being benevolent, and Emma for putting something before her family and her own wellbeing; in ignorance of the fact he himself as an animal behavior expert is kidding himself with his {{Tragic Bigot}}ry towards the Titans, and he descended into alcoholism and then distanced himself from his surviving family when they most needed him to be strong before the film.
** Emma considers Serizawa a hypocrite for daring to chide her over making an extremely dangerous gamble [[spoiler:by planning to forcibly awaken all the Titans and manipulate them with the ORCA]], retorting that the game she's currently playing with the fate of the world didn't begin with her: it began when {{the government}} and the public started putting mounting pressure on Monarch while demanding that the Titans be exterminated in their sleep. It's an issue which Serizawa was reacting much less seriously to during the earlier senate scene, despite how Monarch are clearly losing the legal battle and despite how, as Emma observes, the consequences of the government getting what they want could actually do just as much harm to the world as Serizawa is criticizing Emma for risking.
** PlayedWith by Alan Jonah. He tries to shoot down Emma's attempt to go rescue Madison by stating humanity doesn't control the laws of nature -- which is pretty rich coming from him, considering his mission is all about forcibly manipulating nature to achieve his EcoTerrorist goals (although he's happy to let Ghidorah do what it wants when it takes things out of the eco-terrorists' control). He also says one human life doesn't matter, but submits to Emma's wishes when she aims a gun at him instead of risking his own life.
* IdenticalGrandson: [[spoiler:The Chen twins, their mother and her twin, and their twin grandmothers are all identical.]]
* IdenticalTwinIDTag: Dr. Ilene Chen has a short pixie cut, whilst her twin Dr. Ling wears her hair in a MotherlySidePlait.
* IfItSwimsItFlies: Monarch has drones that can transition from submersible to aerial.
* InsaneTrollLogic:
** [[spoiler:Emma Russell]] comes to the conclusion that the best way to honor [[spoiler:her son Andrew]]'s memory after his death in a {{Kaiju}} battle and save everyone else from following him to the grave is by repeating the tragedy a thousand-fold on the rest of humanity so that those who survive the destruction will expectantly enter an ecologically-sustainable coexistence with the Titans. Whilst [[spoiler:Emma has a point in the end about the Titans' positive effects and capacity to coexist with humans]], all things considered, is it any wonder Madison calls [[spoiler:Emma]] out for thinking [[spoiler:Andrew]] would be anything other than ''horrified'' beyond compale at what [[spoiler:she]]'s become if he could see her now.
** Jonah's own justifications for letting King Ghidorah do what it wants to the planet basically descend into this when Emma realizes Ghidorah is destroying the planet's biosphere instead of healing it, as he rants that humanity is too despicable to be redeemed, and he treats Ghidorah's actions more like it's an unexpected bend in the road than the opposite of what their plan was about; proving Jonah is a NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist who just wants to see humanity suffer and will sacrifice his original EcoTerrorist agenda when something better comes along to see his desires through.
* InSeriesNickname: King Ghidorah is known by Monarch as [[MythologyGag Monster Zero]]. He's called this for the first half of the film until they find out his name from what few myths they can find.
* InstantFishKill: Happens when the [[spoiler:Oxygen Destroyer (which is designed to exterminate all life in a two-mile radius)]] detonates off the coast of Isla de Mara. TheStinger also has a local fisherman say that the O.D. exterminated all of the local fauna and fishing has become impossible.
* InterspeciesRomance: Joked about twice in the film, when Mark states that Ghidorah is going to Isla de Mara to eat, fight, or mate with Rodan; and when Barnes asks if Godzilla and Mothra are mates despite one being a giant reptile and the other being a giant insect.
* IronicEcho: "Long live the king." [[spoiler:The first time it's said as a sarcastic quip by Alan Jonah, as they realize waking Ghidorah has upset their plans to wake the other Titans slowly, one at a time, since Ghidorah is waking them all up and summoning them (not that Jonah particularly minds). The second time, it's said as a FacingTheBulletsOneLiner by Emma Russel before getting killed by Ghidorah, after she's bought enough time for Godzilla to get his HeroicSecondWind and activate his SuperMode, allowing him to destroy Ghidorah.]]
* {{Irony}}: When justifying the release of Ghidorah, [[spoiler:Emma]] compares humans to an infection, with the Earth being the body they're spreading through and harming, and the Titans acting as antibodies to maintain the planet's balance. It turns out that Ghidorah [[spoiler:is a quite-''literal'' infection to the Earth in the sense that he's an [[AncientAstronauts Alien]] [[AlienInvasion Invader]] who actively tries to destroy the planet's biosphere by inflicting rapid mass extinction]].
* ItCanThink:
** As per usual, this is the case. This is especially played up with Ghidorah, who quickly establishes that he's genuinely evil and not only aware of humanity, but actively wants them dead. [[spoiler:When Madison unplugs the ORCA from the speakers in Boston, he not only zeroes in on her in seconds, but Ichi's eyes narrowing as it looks through the window at her implies he's worked out he's being tricked by this tiny human - something reinforced by his [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill preparing to obliterate her with all three of his gravity beams]] even after the ORCA is smashed.]]
** In the novelization, a cephalopod-like Titan called the Kraken [[spoiler:tricks Monarch into thinking it's died, then destroys the facility monitoring it with remarkable cunning and efficiency]].
** Mothra shows this by [[spoiler:being the first Titan to flat out try to communicate with humans, alerting Monarch to the fact Godzilla's still alive and actively leading them to help him. The novelization seems to have her telepathically contact Madison and save her.]] This plays into the ambigiousity of whether [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane she's just a huge prehistoric animal worshipped as a deity or a genuinely supernatural goddess.]]
* ItHasBeenAnHonor: {{Inverted}} when Rick Stanton says this to [[spoiler:Serizawa]] before the latter departs to perform his HeroicSacrifice. A deleted scene depicting the death of Admiral Stenz has him attempt to say this to Colonel Foster before he's KilledMidSentence by an explosion.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Unsurprisingly, Ghidorah could be seen as this. Whether he's xenoforming the planet for himself or simply hates all life that isn't him, his aim is razing the entire Earth to the ground in order to benefit no-one but himself. Emma and Mark Russell can also be accused of this: it's implied [[spoiler:Emma's plan is ultimately her way of lashing out at the world over her son's death in her SanitySlippage]], and Mark Russell seems to think his own suffering and the fates of his family specifically are what the world revolves around whilst the rest of Monarch are more concerned about the threat of Ghidorah and the other Titans to all life on the planet. Meanwhile, NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist Jonah has an extra moment in the film's novelization that explicitly confirms this about his misanthropic goals.
* IWarnedYou: [[spoiler:Monarch tries to warn Stenz that not allowing Godzilla to deal with the situation is going to end badly. He doesn't listen, and [[NiceJobBreakingItHero it causes things to go]] FromBadToWorse. At the meeting at Castle Bravo, while mentioning that Godzilla's the only Titan with any chance of matching Ghidorah, Martinez emphasizes the point they (seemingly) killed the best and only chance they had of beating Ghidorah.]]
* JerkToNiceGuyPlot: Probably semi-unintentional on the writers' part, but the human protagonist Mark Russell goes from a self-isolating [[TragicBigot Titan-hater]] who's obnoxious to his former colleagues, to [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor getting his wish and wishing he hadn't]], and he's more respectful for the later half of the film as well as succeeding in getting his daughter back.
* JerkassHasAPoint:
** Mark, though out of line in his rants that Monarch should kill all the Titans because Godzilla unintentionally killed his son, isn't wrong that even the benevolent Titans can unintentionally cause destruction to humans, and was completely right that recreating the ORCA would do more harm than good.
** Jonah is very annoyed that Emma kinda omitted the "genocide against the human infection" part of the plan from whatever she explained to Maddie over the preceding ''years''.
* JumpScare: Quite effectively, considering it's being pulled by ''Godzilla''. Castle Bravo is watching Godzilla's threat display under water, his spines glowing rythmically before he apparently decides to stop. Beats go by, with just the dark water pressing around them... then Godzilla is ''right there'' in front of the window, swimming past at a truly alarming rate.
* {{Kaiju}}: Very obviously, though in addition to creating original giant monsters for Godzilla to fight like its predecessor, this film also brings in kaiju from the Toho films. In-universe, they were initially dubbed [=MUTO=]s by Monarch, but are now called Titans (Sam's use of the [=MUTO=] term in the courtroom scene implies it's now used exclusively for the kaiju type seen in the first film).
* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Alan Jonah is still alive and well in the end, and [[SequelHook is shown collecting one of Ghidorah's heads]].]]
* KillAllHumans: When King Ghidorah takes control of the Titans; while Ghidorah does lead them towards inflicting an extinction event on the planet's ecosystems, the Titans seem to rampage in major human cities specifically. Ghidorah himself meanwhile ravages Washington DC and makes it a roost for himself, and that's not even going into how much he ''loves'' killing humans.
* KillItWithFire: [[spoiler:Godzilla in his superpowered Fire mode finishes off Ghidorah with his nuclear pulses, literally roasting his wings and two side heads off, before unleashing a concentrated blast to his chest that finally kills him.]]
* KirkSummation: ''All'' the semi-major characters from Monarch give one towards [[spoiler:Emma Russell]] when the latter exposits about their EvilPlan, pointing out they're risking severe damage to the world, meddling with forces beyond comprehension or control, gambling with the lives of billions of people and most of all, [[spoiler:even if the plan works, it won't bring her son back]].
* KnightOfCerebus: Ghidorah itself. Godzilla and the [=MUTO=]s were living natural disasters, but Ghidorah? Its a living ''extinction event''. While not exactly light beforehand, the moment he appears onscreen everything takes a much darker turn and he [[spoiler:kills a named character within minutes of being released]]. Whereas the [=MUTO=]s ''may'' have been capable of sending humanity back to the Stone Age, Ghidorah actively ''desires'' humanity's destruction and is ''definitely'' capable of carrying that desire out.
* LastNoteNightmare: The Comic-Con reveal trailer uses a rendition of Claude Debussy's calm and majestic "Claire de Lune" that serves as SoundtrackDissonance for the carnage it plays over. But it suddenly takes a more appropriately distorted and ominous turn when the freed Ghidorah is shown.
* {{Leitmotif}}: The classic themes for Godzilla and Mothra have been brought back, with new themes being composed for Ghidorah and Rodan. Keeping with a "Monster Opera" theme, each theme has different vocal characteristics.
** Godzilla has the Akira Ifukube theme accompanied by powerful kakegoe chanting provided by a taiko group from Tokyo
** Mothra's Song is performed by an ethereal female choir.
** Rodan's theme is brassy and loud, pushing the French horn section into piercing screams, emulating the monster's calls
** Ghidorah's theme is built around three-note phrases and groups while featuring ominous chanting from Japanese Buddhist monks.
** In addition to the four kaiju themes, there is a general "Ancients" theme heard throughout the film, with an Ancient Babylonian poem about the days when humans worshiped monsters being chanted throughout.
* LethallyStupid: The military, as usual. At the beginning of the film, they're implicitly supporting the government's plan to attempt indiscriminately killing all the hibernating Titans regardless of their moral alignment in ignorance of Monarch's findings indicating that that, if successful, could cause humanity to perish in an extinction-level ecological collapse. Midway through the film, they rashly fire the [[spoiler:prototype Oxygen Destroyer]] at Ghidorah in an attempt to kill him and Rodan, and Godzilla is caught in the blast [[spoiler:and crippled]]: with Godzilla unable to keep Ghidorah in check, the three-headed Titan usurps dominance of the Earth's other Titans and forcibly awakens them to begin enacting a severe extinction event. It can be argued that the military are directly responsible for things going FromBadToWorse and for the deaths of millions around the world, which could have been avoided had they not fired the Oxygen Destroyer and let Godzilla finish Ghidorah off.
* LetsYouAndHimFight: Serizawa, Monarch and even Titan-hater Mark Russell espouse this. This time around, when the military doesn't listen, the whole of humanity suffers the consequences in the form of Ghidorah leading the other Titans in rapidly decimating the planet. Ultimately, [[spoiler:Monarch revive Godzilla so he can fight off King Ghidorah and restore balance]], and when Ghidorah is {{Life Drain}}ing Godzilla during the FinalBattle, the Russells use the ORCA to distract Ghidorah long enough for Godzilla to recover.
* LightFlickerTeleportation:
** Godzilla does this, slowly approaching the underwater window of an offshore platform deep enough that the only source of light is the intermittent flashing of his dorsal plates.
** Ghidorah also does this when the ''Argo'' flies into his hurricane, with nothing but darkness in front of the plane until spasmic flashes of lightning reveal Ghidorah's ''gigantic'' silhouette is flying right there in front of them amid the darkness.
* LightLiegeDarkDefender: {{Inverted}} by Godzilla and Mothra. Mothra is the wise but delicate [[TheHighQueen High Queen]] who is literally associated with light and Godzilla is the GrumpyOldMan earth guardian, but ''Mothra'' consistently seems to be the one trying to protect ''Godzilla''.
* LogoJoke: Both the Creator/WarnerBros and Creator/LegendaryPictures logos in the opening, which are stylized to have a more roughened texture like millennia-old excavated artefacts, and are imposed against a {{Mayincatec}} hieroglyph background depicting some of the film's Kaiju with a grim, dark-red apocalyptic palette.
* LosingYourHead: [[spoiler:Ghidorah's center head is still alive, even after Burning Godzilla had incinerated the other two heads and the rest of his body. Godzilla essentially has to light up the still-living head with his atomic breath to make sure that the space invader is gone for good.]]
* MadeOfIron: This trope ends up applying to [[spoiler: Serizawa when he brings the warhead to a severely weakened Godzilla in his temple; even though it's basically a suicide mission and the extremely high radioactivity visibly affects him, Serizawa, in reality, should have been killed soon after he exited his mini-sub, even before he took off his glove and helmet.]]
* MaleMightFemaleFinesse: ZigZagged with Godzilla and Mothra. Mothra is actually a front-line combatant like Godzilla, but doesn't have the same level of SuperToughness as Godzilla when it comes to taking a lot of physical punishment from a fight with Rodan. Mothra consequently uses more FragileSpeedster tactics against Ghidorah or Rodan.
* MamaBear: Emma proves to be one when Madison escapes Jonah's custody with the ORCA and ends up at ground zero of the Titans' FinalBattle. PlayedWith by Mothra, who doesn't react kindly to Monarch's containment field killing the flying insects in her temple.
* MassOhCrap:
** The entire Monarch crew on the ''Argo'' has this reaction when they realize that Jonah and the ORCA are in Antarctica, and thus with the only other kaiju on Earth in Godzilla's weight class.
** Everyone -- Monarch and the soldiers who are at ground zero, even the very person who sets off Ghidorah's awakening, have this reaction when Ghidorah awakens.
** Virtually everyone on the sub shits bricks when, after the newly supercharged Godzilla surfaces and blasts his atomic breath into the sky in a PillarOfLight, the big guy then notices them for the first time...
* MauveShirt: [[spoiler:Two of the Monarch soldiers, Barnes and Griffin,]] have quite a bit of screen time, a decent amount of lines between them, and actually survive the whole film despite being in the thick of virtually every single battle and disaster that happens. [[spoiler:Griffin]] also averts being a DisposablePilot while she's at it.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: [[spoiler:There's a hint in the film that seems to suggest the Chen twins have some kind of [[PsychicLink telepathic connection]] to Mothra, and their family descended from ancient Mothra-worshipping priestesses has a peculiar history of identical twin sisters in every recent generation]]. The novelization hints that Madison also forms a PsychicLink to Mothra during a near-death experience. Whilst the film leaves it ambiguous whether or not Mothra is really a supernatural goddess, either way the director has confirmed she possesses BornAgainImmortality.
* {{Mayincatec}}:
** The map of the Monarch facilities around the world shows that the one in Peru is underneath [[LandmarkOfLore Machu Picchu]] and that the Titan contained there is Quetzalcoatl. The only problem with this is that Machu Picchu is the most well known ''Inca'' ruin, while Quetzalcoatl is a deity from Myth/AztecMythology (although some other Titans with names of mythological entities are also in random places, such as the Greek Typhon in Cambodia, the Babylonian Tiamat in the state of Georgia, and the Hebrew Behemoth in Brazil).
** The temple that enshrines Mothra's egg is a classical Mayan step-pyramid--it would be a picture-perfect example of Tikal architecture if it didn't lack the castle at the top of the structure. The fact that it's in the middle of ''China'' is the movie's first hint that an ancient, far-reaching civilization from antiquity once lived in symbiosis with the Titans.
* MeaningfulName:
** Near the end of the movie, you'll know exactly why Godzilla means "God incarnate": [[spoiler:After Mothra supercharges and balances Godzilla's internal radiation properties, he becomes ''Burning Godzilla'' and NoSell Ghidorah's Gravity Beams and dominates the evil space dragon, and finally finishes him off by destroying his still-living head]]. Truly a god incarnate indeed.
** According to the novelization, Mothra's species name, Mosura, means "giver of life" in the language on this universe's version of Infant Island. Given her benevolent and protective nature, she lives up to it.
** King Ghidorah [[spoiler:genuinely becomes the King of the Monsters after Godzilla's apparent death and thus makes his name fitting.]] His title, the One Who Is Many, is also meaningful, given his three heads [[spoiler:and being an Alpha Titan, able to make the rest of the world's Titans act as extensions of his will.]]
** Monarch's underwater HQ, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo Castle Bravo]], is named after the codename for the first in the original series of atom bomb tests in the Bikini Atoll. In the film continuity, these tests were intended to kill Godzilla, but didn't even faze him.
* MilitariesAreUseless:
** As with the last movie, when it comes to dealing with the Titans, the best that military can do is to annoy them with their weapons as both Ghidorah and Rodan shrug off their attacks. [[spoiler:It gets even worse as the military eventually comes up with the Oxygen Destroyer, a weapon that could lethally damage the Titans, but then end up using it at the most inopportune time as they launch it at both Godzilla and Ghidorah during their second fight. The resulting fallout leaves Godzilla in a near death state, whereas Ghidorah was able to NoSell it due to his alien origin. In other words, even if they didn't know about it until it was too late, the military basically ''assisted'' Ghidorah.]]
** [[spoiler:Subverted in the third act: once the plan becomes to resurrect Godzilla to defeat Ghidorah, the military keeps Rodan and Ghidorah busy to allow the operation to take place. During the final battle, they also back up Godzilla against Ghidorah, marking a rare moment in the franchise where the military and Godzilla are genuinely fighting on the same side.]]
* AMillionIsAStatistic: The film definitely has a case of this. The escalating deaths of God-knows-how-many people around the world when the Titans are actively razing the planet on King Ghidorah's orders is mainly used as a background tool to create atmosphere for the second half of the film during Ghidorah's NearVillainVictory more than anything else, whilst the deaths of individuals among the film's main cast are treated with significantly more tragedy. [[spoiler:Dr. Serizawa]]'s HeroicSacrifice is arguably one of the biggest {{TearJerker}}s in the movie if not ''the'' biggest. This trope also occurs with the three Russells, whom it's fairly evident in the finished film the filmmakers wanted us to sympathize with and care about the fates of (whether or not they succeeded on that count is up to the audience). We're expected to feel for Mark over the tragic death of his son and how it's affected him; even though it's indicated that thousands InUniverse have gone through the exact same thing as Mark and yet Mark never makes any effort to reach out to any of these other people who know how he's feeling, and he furthermore usually carries himself as if he's the only one in the world whose suffering matters. Much worse with Emma, we're actually expected to sympathize with her and still consider her redeemable when she's concerned about her own daughter's life, [[spoiler:even though she has consciously and deliberately condemned ''billions'' of other parents to lose their children as part of her EvilPlan, making her caring about her daughter seem selfish and hypocritical]].
* MisplacedRetribution: Mark blames Godzilla for the death of his son Andrew in the incidents of the last movie, even though the [=MUTO=]s were to blame for the destruction of San Francisco and Godzilla was actually the very one who ''stopped'' them. It's also implied, particularly in the novelization, that whether or not they're aware of it, [[spoiler:Emma Russell]]'s motivation for deciding to unleash the Titans is wanting the whole human race to suffer because they blame humanity for triggering the Titans' awakening via DugTooDeep in the first place which led to [[spoiler:her son's death]].
* MissingStepsPlan: The government wants to have the Titans wiped out while sleeping, but, as made explicit in the novelization, has no real clue ''how'' that would be done. Most of the Titans would only be made ''stronger'' by nuclear weapons and any other weapon humans have would only serve to make them angry, meaning the most likely result would be waking the Titans and making them mad, as happened with the male MUTO. [[spoiler:While the Oxygen Destroyer ''might'' work, at least on some of them, it's also shown to have catastrophic ecological effects that would probably do more damage than the Titans would.]]
* MissionBriefing:
** Dr. Graham and Colonel Foster give Mark, the G-Team and the Monarch brass a briefing at Castle Bravo, going over Jonah's raid on Outpost 61 and giving us a basic exposition on who Jonah is and Mothra's current whereabouts. This briefing was meant to be for a joint operation to Yunnan to prevent Jonah's mercs capturing Mothra, but Mark interrupts the briefing and guesses (correctly it turns out) that Jonah is expecting Monarch to remain distracted focusing on Mothra whilst he and his mercs move on to their next target.
** During the third act, Colonel Foster gives the rest of the G-Team a fast-paced run-down explaining King Ghidorah's presence in Washington DC and that all four branches of the military will work together to keep Ghidorah occupied as a decoy.
* MistakenForRomance: When Mothra appears at Castle Bravo, Jackson Barnes asks if she is Godzilla's mate and is squicked out even after it's clarified that their relationship is likely symbiotic.
* MixAndMatchCritters:
** Rather than resembling an actual moth, Mothra combines features of wasps and praying mantises, giving her a more intimidating appearance than previous incarnations.
** Rodan also combines aspects of birds of prey to go with his pterosaur-based look.
** Behavior-wise Ghidorah displays a mix of various animals as well: his twin tails rattle like a rattlesnake, his wing-spreading posture is a threat display of many birds of prey, and the dominant and submissive behavior of his three heads is similar to pack behavior in wolves.
** One of the new Titans, named Behemoth, resembles a cross between a woolly mammoth, a sloth, and an ape.
** Another of the new Titans, Scylla, resembles a cross between a spider and a crab with a squid-like face.
* MonumentalDamage:
** According to the military, the Titans responding to King Ghidorah's call are explicitly attacking capital cities--Washington, Moscow, Berlin, etc. While the military believes these attacks to be random and wild, the pattern is ''not'' lost on Monarch's scientists.
** Washington D.C. is completely wrecked, due to [[spoiler: Ghidorah using it as a base of operations]]. One of the last wide shots we get to see of it shows only the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building standing as far as the eye can see, and the latter has chunks of it missing or on fire. Oh...and it's so completely flooded that ''battleships'' can run up close enough to fire on Ghidorah.
** In the FinalBattle in Boston, Fenway Park is instantly flattened as it becomes ground zero for the festivities. Then [[spoiler:Mothra webs up Ghidorah to the 200 Clarendon skyscraper (formerly John Hancock Tower) and Godzilla tackles him through it, miraculously leaving the iconic Prudential Tower unscathed... at least until the entire city is leveled by Godzilla's final Nuclear Pulse.]] At one point, the city's famous Paul Revere statue is flung all the way from the North End to somewhere in the Theater District. It's also implied that, by making landfall in Boston via the Charles, all of the city's iconic bridges must have been torn to bits by Big G.
* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: Downplayed with Ghidorah – if one looks closely, he has a few odd, displaced, smaller, vestigial-looking second teeth poking out of his gums around the main teeth. PlayedStraight with Mokele-Mbembe: in the novelization, he shows during his rampage that he has "thousands of teeth" inside his maw.
* {{Mordor}}: King Ghidorah quickly destroys Washington D.C. and turns it into his personal roost (with Rodan stationed beside him as his vanguard), whilst commanding the other Titans to continue wrecking the planet. The city is flooded in waters so deep that a Navy ''battleship'' can sail through it, the buildings emerging above the water are half-scorched, tornadoes and water spouts from Ghidorah's hurricane are dotted about the place, and only a bleak-looking amount of sunlight gets through at the horizon with Ghidorah's lightning-filled storm darkening the sky.
* MovingBeyondBereavement: Basically the point of the Russells' character arc in the film. Mark is a reclusive, bitter, self-pitying wreck of a man with a hatred for all Titans five years after Andrew's death, and the crux of his CharacterDevelopment is learning to make peace with Godzilla and let go of his grief. Emma, though she's become aloof and {{Workaholic}} and is clearly still hurting over the loss at times, seems like she's moved forward in a healthy and productive manner, [[spoiler:until it turns out she if anything has taken their son's death even worse than Mark in the ensuing half a decade; deciding in evident SanitySlippage that the way to honor her son's death is by releasing all the Titans indiscriminately to ravage humanity and restore an ancient coexistence whilst betraying all her friends and colleagues, and deciding she has the right to decide the fates of billions, and her actions unwittingly release an even worse threat on the planet in the form of Ghidorah]].
* MultipleHeadCase: As always, King Ghidorah is a three-headed dragon, as confirmed by the cave painting at the end of ''Kong: Skull Island'' and viral marketing with the Monarch profile implying that each of his heads have their own independent personalities. In the film itself the center head is the dominant one; the left one (Ghidorah's left) seems to be the most curious (judging by its coming down to lick the dead humans and having to be badgered back into reality by the center head), while the right head is the most HotBlooded. The center head is also seemingly the source of Ghidorah's life-force or HealingFactor, since [[spoiler:not even disintegrating the body could kill it, whereas the left head that was severed earlier is dead as a doornail. (Presumably.)]]
* MurderIsTheBestSolution: At the start of the film, the government and most of the public are advocating that the military take over Monarch and try to kill the Titans, instead of following Monarch's arguments that the Titans are ecologically essential and that seeking coexistence with them is a better option. The world gets extra points for all the Fridge Horror ([[Fridge/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019 see here]]) that attempting to off the Titans would entail. The military seem to think the GodzillaThreshold has been crossed when Ghidorah and Rodan are released, but they have ''[[ApocalypseHow no idea]]''.
* MysteriousAntarctica: Monarch found King Ghidorah frozen in ice there.
* MythologyGag: [[MythologyGag/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019 Enough for its own page.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:N-Z]]
* NamedByTheAdaptation: Several characters and Rodan's volcano (El Nido del Demonio or The Demon's Nest) get this in the novelization.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Besides the above example with Rodan's volcano, this is lampshaded with Rodan's RedBaron, which he proves in the film is a name he earns:
-->'''Ilene Chen:''' Local legends call it Rodan, the Fire Demon.\\
'''Mark Russell:''' [[SarcasmMode That's comforting(!)]]
* NaturalDisasterCascade: When [[OmnicidalManiac King Ghidorah]] usurps Godzilla's position as the ruling alpha of Earth's Titans, he leads the Titans to inflict this all around the world, threatening to cause an extinction event. We don't see much of the global destruction beyond brief glimpses on video feeds and Ghidorah's spreading WeatherManipulation causing stormy weather around the world, but Admiral Stenz reports the Titans are causing "earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis, and disasters we don't even have names for yet." The novelization goes into further detail, explicitly noting that if Ghidorah remains unopposed, the global destruction is liable to wipe out all multicellular life except the Titans.
* NearVillainVictory: Rodan comes close to finishing off Mothra during their fight, and Ghidorah almost wins and dooms the Earth ''twice''.
* NeverTrustATrailer:
** The trailer makes it seem Jonah's line "Long live the king" is referring to Godzilla and is some kind of badass one-liner or quip. [[spoiler:He's actually referring to Ghidorah, and it's actually a moment of wistful realization that the EvilPlan is officially OffTheRails.]]
** Several shots in the trailers also seem to set Rodan up as the hero we know from the Toho films. [[spoiler:While he's not exactly an outright villain, he's also a destructive sadist who spends a decent chunk of the film as Ghidorah's [[TheDragon Dragon]].]]
** The second trailer shows a scene of Emma contacting Monarch urging them to free Godzilla as it's their only chance, painting her in a heroic light. In the film itself, [[spoiler: not only does she never once advocating freeing Godzilla to stop Ghidorah, as this happens after Godzilla is presumed dead due to the Oxygen Destroyer and Ghidorah awakening the Titans, this is where she fully reveals her InsaneTrollLogic, her utter hypocrisy, and her increasingly feeble attempt to claim the moral high ground in front of Monarch and her husband, even it's already pretty clear at this point she's just full of it]].
* NiceJobBreakingItHero:
** The heroes decide to lure Rodan away from mainland Mexico, a plan that somehow involves baiting the monster into flying right over the nearby, heavily populated city—with predictable results for the unfortunate city.
** The heroes lead Rodan to King Ghidorah in hopes that they'll kill each other. [[spoiler:After Ghidorah beats him up badly, Rodan ends up becoming TheDragon to Ghidorah [[FromBadToWorse as a result]], which allows Ghidorah to summon him to counter Mothra's interference]]. Had they not done so, it's likely Mothra and Godzilla may have defeated Ghidorah in much quicker time during the FinalBattle.
** Admiral Stenz and the military, just like the last time that the former got involved. [[spoiler: As Godzilla and Ghidorah are fighting off the coast of Mexico, the military deploys an Oxygen Destroyer in hopes that it'll kill both of them. Not only does Ghidorah completely NoSell it (presumably because of his alien nature), but it severely weakens, and almost kills Godzilla, the only one capable of challenging Ghidorah. Even more so given Godzilla had the HomefieldAdvantage on Ghidorah underwater and potentially could have won then and there.]] Martinez lampshades the stupidity of this.
*** Not only that, but removing the sole threat to King Ghidorah's reign, even temporarily, results in him awakening the remaining Titans, the very thing everyone was trying their hardest to avoid. Sure, [[spoiler: Godzilla wins in the end]] but it's not like they're all going to just go back underground.
*** Additionally, it's indicated the Oxygen Destroyer's fallout is responsible for crippling the island fishermen's livelihoods, which in turn leads them to [[spoiler:selling Ghidorah's dredged-up severed head to Alan Jonah]].
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: After [[spoiler:Ghidorah is completely destroyed, the numerous Titans he awoke remain awake, now answering to Godzilla as their new alpha, and are healing the damage to Earth's ecosystems not only caused by Ghidorah but also by humanity beforehand]]. Bare in mind, before this, Monarch was on its last legs short of being shut down by the anti-Titan military and government, and with all the Titans awake and ready to defend themselves, delusions of the military euthanizing the Titans in their sleep (and likely screwing the Earth's future overall) are now a pipe dream. One could argue that TheExtremistWasRight and they just royally awoke the wrong Titan first.
* TheNightThatNeverEnds: The novelization confirms the film's suggestions that Ghidorah's spreading storms during the ApocalypseHow threaten to cause a form of this. Specifically, the decreased daylight reaching the planet's surface due to the storms perpetually covering the skies would've ''on its own'' been enough to have the effect of a nuclear winter, causing the majority of plant and animal life to die off.
* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Averted. Ghidorah's [[spoiler: nature as an extraterrestrial life form means that his biology defies all laws of known biology. Notably, being a space creature not requiring oxygen to survive and likely not even having any oxygen-containing compounds in his cells, he is rendered completely immune to the Oxygen Destroyer's effects.]]
* NobleMaleRoguishMale:
** Although they only interact with each-other briefly, Godzilla and Rodan play this dynamic off of each-other [[spoiler:when Rodan challenges Godzilla, before a threat from the latter makes Rodan back off]]. Godzilla is perfectly willing to fight if it's necessary, but he never does so without provocation if there's no threat to himself and Earth's natural order. Rodan is overly eager to pick a fight with anything, he doesn't always think as quickly as he acts, and he only cares about Earth's natural balance insofar as whichever Alpha Titan he's currently following cares about it.
** Amongst the human heroes, Serizawa and Mark frequently interact and they show contrasting personalities. Serizawa is sophisticated, stoic, compassionate, and one of the few people whom are well-aware of the Titans' importance in the bigger picture (the Noble Male). Mark is cynical, rude, HotBlooded, and [[ItsAllAboutMe self-absorbed in his own anger and anguish]], but also very conscious of the death and destruction that the Titans are capable of due to his first-hand experience of a Titan attack (the Roguish Male).
* NoBodyLeftBehind: Implied to be Emma's ultimate fate. Even if she didn't die of her mortal wounds, she may very well have been disintegrated by Burning Godzilla's first blast.
* NoSell:
** In the novelization, Kong senses King Ghidorah's call for the other Titans to join his army and ignores it. The Skullcrawlers, on the other hand, eagerly respond, so Kong fights them to stop them from leaving Skull Island.
** The Oxygen Destroyer, [[spoiler:while super-effective against Godzilla, has little to no effect whatsover on Ghidorah]]. In fact, it indirectly causes more harm than good, since it enables Ghidorah to start the film's ApocalypseHow.
** [[spoiler:When Godzilla achieves his Fire form, he effortlessly shrugs off Ghidorah's blasts.]]
* NotEnoughToBury: Naturally, this happens a lot with gigantic monsters, but special attention goes to Ghidorah who goes out of his way to blast humans to unrecognizable ashes with his heads' Gravity Beams instead of causing accidental collateral. [[spoiler:Mothra is reduced to radioactive ashes when she tanks all three of Ghidorah's Gravity Beams at once. Godzilla ultimately inflicts this trope on Ghidorah as a requirement due to the latter's HealingFactor, vaporizing his entire body piece by piece, although TheStinger reveals there's still a (seemingly-)dead leftover head that was decapitated earlier in the film]].
* NotQuiteDead:
** [[spoiler:A heroic example occurs with Godzilla, who flatlines and is presumed dead after being crippled by the Oxygen Destroyer, until Mothra makes the human cast aware that Godzilla is still alive]].
** Humorously subverted in the final battle in Boston. [[spoiler:Godzilla unleashes devastating nuclear pulses that vaporize most of Ghidorah's body. After the last pulse, the dust settles for a bit... and Ghidorah emerges from the ruins of a building, having apparently recovered already! Then more rubble falls away, revealing it's just Godzilla swinging Ghidorah's severed head around. That head ''is'' still alive somehow, but Godzilla finishes him off with no problem.]]
** [[spoiler:The end credits montage reveals that Mothra laid an egg sometime before her HeroicSacrifice, and the in-universe newspapers speculate that the offspring could be Mothra's reincarnation or something else[[note]]maybe Battra[[/note]].]]
* NotTheIntendedUse: It's proven in the ending that the Titans serve the purpose of maintaining and aiding the Earth's ecological balance, but Ghidorah [[spoiler:instead forces the Titans to aid it in destroying the very planet that they're meant to maintain]].
* NuclearOption: [[spoiler:Monarch deliver a nuclear warhead to Godzilla in the Hollow Earth and manually detonate it to massively speed up his HealingFactor so he can defeat King Ghidorah]].
* NukeEm: The military launching their prototype [[spoiler:Oxygen Destroyer]] in an attempt to kill Ghidorah and Rodan (and only notifying Monarch once the weapon is on its way, making the latter unable to do anything about it but flee to a safe distance) crosses straight into this territory, given that they were firing an untested prototype a few miles away from a populated island, and seemingly didn't bother to get a status update from Monarch on the situation's details before acting. It backfires horribly, [[spoiler:as Ghidorah is unaffected by the weapon due to his literal BizarreAlienBiology, whilst Godzilla is severely crippled and rendered near-dead by the Oxygen Destroyer]]; and without Godzilla to fight him off, Ghidorah is able to hijack control of all the other Titans and promptly begin destroying man and nature alike. TheStinger furthermore indicates that the weapon's use has wiped out all marine life around the island, which has furthermore destroyed the local fishermen's livelihoods. Martinez [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] how horribly wrong this has gone.
* OddFriendship: The relationship between Godzilla's species and Mothra's species. Monarch scientists theorize that the two may have a symbiotic relationship, [[spoiler: though judging by Mothra's willingness to sacrifice herself to protect Godzilla and Godzilla's RoaringRampageOfRevenge after Ghidorah kills her, it's visible how the two may actually genuinely care for each other beyond just mere biological symbiosis.]]
* OffWithHisHead: Ghidorah loses his left head to Godzilla in the Mexico battle. [[spoiler:However, given his powers of regeneration, it later grows back. Burning Godzilla's Nuclear Pulse incinerates his side heads and then his entire body, leaving his still living center head to be incinerated by Godzilla's Atomic Breath.]]
* OhCrap:
** Hendricks [[KilledMidSentence barely has time]] to get out "[[ProfaneLastWords Oh shi]]-" before Ghidorah's lightning blasts reduce him to ashes.
** Madison also has an "Oh shit!" moment as she realises Ghidorah is looking through the Fenway Stadium window ''right at her''.
** [[spoiler:When Ghidorah's middle head spies a power station in the middle of their battle, Godzilla of all characters has this reaction as his nemesis supercharges himself and blasts Godzilla back]].
** [[spoiler:Rodan has this reaction when Mothra impales him through the chest.]]
** [[spoiler:Look closely at Ghidorah's left head in the shot after Emma's LastWords, when Ghidorah senses Burning Godzilla's approach. Then when Godzilla obliterates both of Ghidorah's side heads, the middle head is becoming visibly terrified for the first time.]]
* TheOldGods: The Titans are given this air to them, and several times outright called 'the First Gods.'
* OminousLatinChanting: Most of the themes have Japanese chants in the background, but primary note to Ghidorah's, with the chanting being an actual Buddhist sutra (the Heart Sutra specifically) to represent his theme of annihilation.[[note]] As an added bonus, the ones who recorded the track were real Tibetan monks.[[/note]]
* OmnicidalManiac: King Ghidorah [[spoiler: wants to destroy a big part of the Earth so that he can make it more fitting for his own biology. The novelization also offers the alternative motive that in truth he simply hates everything that's not him and wants to destroy it out of a love of killing for the sake of it]].
* OneMythToExplainThemAll: Dr. Chen's notes in the novelization theorize that the Titans -- particularly Godzilla and Ghidorah -- are the originators of various mythological creatures.
** Godzilla and other members of his species inspired Dagon from Semitic mythology, Ryujin from Japanese mythology, the Mimlos-whale of Pacific Northwest mythology, etc.
** Ghidorah inspired the Lernaean Hydra from Greek mythology, the Zmey Gorynych from Slavic folklore, the Yamata-no-Orochi from Japanese mythology, the Thunderbird of indiginous North American cultures, etc.
* OneSteveLimit: In the novelization, there's another Rick besides Dr. Stanton working for Monarch, located at the outpost containing Scylla.
* OnlyICanKillHim: Godzilla is stated to be the only thing capable of defeating King Ghidorah. This is because Godzilla is the only kaiju strong enough to beat him [[spoiler:and humanity's strongest weapon amounts to a NoSell on Ghidorah. This leads to the DarkestHour when Godzilla is seemingly killed, leaving Ghidorah completely unopposed.]]
* OnlySaneByComparison:
** Remember what Admiral Stenz was like when we first saw him back in ''Film/Godzilla2014''? Well, when you put him next to the senators who represent the U.S. government in this film, he certainly comes off as this trope. Sure, he's narrow-minded and ultimately ignorant, and he continues to show a NukeEm tendency and a downplayed GeneralRipper tendency in ''King of the Monsters'', but he at least tries to be as reasonable as he's capable of being, and he actually recognizes Monarch as experts to be heard out. The U.S. senate by comparison laugh off the idea of coexisting with Godzilla as anything other than his zookeeper, and they and the government overall seem to have no higher priority on their mind than GottaKillEmAll to make humanity's existence feel more comfortable in the short term, practically turning a deaf ear to the statement that humanity need coexistence with the Titans for their own survival. Stenz himself seems to almost realize what a bunch of LethallyStupid idiots he's answering to when he looks shocked at the senators' laughter.
** Humorously enough, one of Ghidorah's [[MultipleHeadCase three heads]] gets this treatment. Whereas the side heads are a FearlessFool and a distractible GeniusDitz, Ichi (the middle head) seems to be the most intelligent and quick-acting of the three heads. But he's also apparently the most gleefully {{sadist}}ic of the three, based on his frequent {{Slasher Smile}}s, him making a meagre bean-sized snack out of [[spoiler:Dr. Graham]] while she was running away from him, and him being the head who's leading the trio as they seek to create an extinction event (with [[https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-godzilla-director-ghidorah-mothra-rodan-20190602-story.html Word of God]] supporting the notion that at least San/Kevin the left head would probably not be so interested in world domination if he was separate of Ichi).
* OurCryptidsAreMoreMysterious: The Film/MonsterVerse[='s=] trend continues. Bunyip and Mokele-Mbembe are among the seventeen known Titans, and the novelization links Behemoth to the South American cryptid Mapinguary.
* OurDragonsAreDifferent:
** Ghidorah, of course; a three-headed [[AncientAstronauts alien kaiju that crashed on Earth during the last Age of the Titans]]. He has three heads, two tails, PsychoElectro powers, the ability to generate enormous super-storms, and a HealingFactor more powerful than any earthly Titan's.
** Discussed by Dr. Chen and Mark, the former mentioning that the iteration of dragons as destructive monstrosities was mainly a western concept, whereas in eastern cultures dragons were sacred and revered as much more benevolent entities -- highlighting the contrast between Ghidorah and Godzilla.
---> '''Mark Russel:''' I don't suppose your family has any tips on slaying dragons, do they?\\
'''Ilene Chen:''' "Slaying dragons" is a western concept. In the East, they are sacred. Divine creatures who brought wisdom, strength, even redemption.
* OurMonstersAreWeird: The new titans are pretty bizarre-looking, [[spoiler: namely Scylla, resembling a cross between a crustacean, a spider, and a squid, Behemoth, who combines features of mammoths, gorillas and sloths, and Methuselah, who is essentially a walking mountain.]]
* OurTitansAreDifferent: The monsters are now referred to as Titans.
* OutsideContextProblem: InUniverse, Monarch is puzzled by Ghidorah's uncharacteristic malice, and his unusual powers such as his HealingFactor, which they describe in-film as "biologically impossible". When they find legends that claim [[spoiler:Ghidorah is a "great dragon who fell from the stars", they deduce he must be some kind of extraterrestrial lifeform]], which is why he's so different to the other Titans on Earth. [[spoiler: It's also what derails Emma's plan. Even though she's got a point about the Earth's Titans "restoring the balance," Ghidorah is ''not'' part of that balance, and his awakening is not a good thing for the Earth.]]
* OverpopulationCrisis: EcoTerrorist [[spoiler:Emma Russell]] brings this up in their MotiveRant projecting the Earth's future if humanity remains dominant instead of the Titans; explaining that their motive behind releasing all the Titans is so they'll restore the natural balance and force what humans aren't killed during the mass awakening back into an ecologically-sustainable coexistence with the Titans.
* ParallelConflictSequence: A minor case during the FinalBattle: whilst Godzilla and Ghidorah are duking it out, their respective sidekicks Rodan and Mothra engages in their own battle across Boston, although it's shorter-lived than the main battle.
* PersonOfMassDestruction: Rodan and ''especially'' Ghidorah very much, and Godzilla still causes some unintentional or necessary mass destruction during his fights.
* PetTheDog:
** As evil as he is, Jonah has a couple moments, such as attempting to amuse Madison in the elevator and possibly also (depending on Alternative Character Interpretation) when he [[spoiler:lets Emma go with one of his people's Hummvees]].
** [[spoiler:Emma has a subtle RewatchBonus one early in the film, where she attempts to convince a Monarch scientist to go take a break shortly before Jonah's assault arrives]].
* PillarOfLight: Godzilla makes one with his atomic breath as a "call to arms".
* PlotArmor: The number of main character deaths that take place in this film can be counted on one hand, with fingers left over. This is despite the fact that every main character remains squarely in the center of whatever action is being depicted throughout the course of the story, while [[RedShirt literally all of the others who are not main characters]] are being picked off like flies.
** There's also King Ghidorah stopping to momentarily glare at [[spoiler:Emma]] and [[spoiler:Madison]] respectively when he located either of them in Boston, in contrast to the way he killed [[spoiler:Vivienne Graham]] in Antarctica. Probably {{justified}} by Ghidorah being personally pissed at either of them for using the ORCA against him.
* PlotTriggeringDeath: The ''entire plot of the movie'' begins with the [[DeathOfAChild death of Andrew Russell]]. Mark Russell divorces himself from his family and hates Godzilla for the death of his son, while Emma goes out of her way to communicate with monsters in order to keep them in line, but [[spoiler:she also makes a deal with Alan Jonah to raid every Monarch facility to awaken every Titan on Earth, including King Ghidorah, to "cleanse the Earth"]]. Madison points out unleashing the monsters is ''not'' something Andrew wanted.
* PluckyComicRelief: Dr. Rick Stanton among the Monarch key brass, and Barnes among Monarch's military G-Team, are either team's token source of mood-lightening jokes.
* PostApocalypticTrafficJam: One brief shot in the film shows that Boston has one when Ghidorah is commanding the Titans to help it raze the planet, and it's also mentioned in the novelization.
* PosthumousVillainVictory: A positive case since TheExtremistWasRight. The eco-terrorist [[spoiler:Emma Russell]] (the only eco-terrorist to have a HeelRealization once their actions in awakening Ghidorah lead to the latter threatening all complex life on Earth) dies pulling a RedemptionEqualsDeath, distracting King Ghidorah until the three-headed monster fatally injures them. After [[spoiler:Emma]]'s death, the very goal they set out to achieve has been reached: the awakened Titans around the world regenerating the ecosphere, whilst humans and Titans are at a peaceful coexistence. Note that [[spoiler:Emma]]'s goal is only achieved ''after'' their death, when Ghidorah is slain by Godzilla, since it's only under Godzilla's direction that the Titans stay away from population centers while renewing the ecosphere whereas Ghidorah was forcing the Titans to purely destroy everything.
* PowerGlows: A recurring theme with the Titans. When Godzilla charges his atomic breath, his back spines glow blue. When Mothra uses her "god rays," her wings glow with blinding white light. And, in a new twist, Ghidorah's necks visibly glow with yellow light as he charges up his gravity beams. [[spoiler:Godzilla's blue glow gets more and more pronounced as the final fight with Ghidorah progresses, with Rick counting down ExactTimeToFailure before Godzilla goes nuclear thanks to the excess energy of the nuke used to jump-start his regeneration. When this combined with Mothra's HeroicSacrifice causes him to enter Fire mode, his whole body glows red with firey atomic heat.]]
* PowerTrio:
** {{Subverted}} in that [[spoiler:Rodan is loyal to Ghidorah until Godzilla kills him]], so out of the original heroic trio from ''Film/GhidorahTheThreeHeadedMonster'', [[spoiler:Godzilla and Mothra are the only ones fighting against Ghidorah]]. That being said, [[spoiler:by the end of the movie Rodan has sworn his allegiance to Godzilla and a new Mothra egg has been discovered/created, so it's possible a future film will see the PowerTrio together again.]]
** PlayedStraight by Ghidorah's three independent-minded heads, who form a TerribleTrio and FreudianTrio.
* PrecisionFStrike: Barnes gets the film's single allotted F when he sees Ghidorah first emerge from the Antarctic Ice:
--> ''You gotta be fucking kidding me.''
* {{Pride}}: "The arrogance of man" is still very much in play, from the [[EcoTerrorist Eco-Terrorists]]' plan to forcibly awaken all the Titans and belief they can control them with the ORCA, to the government and military's SuicidalOverconfidence about killing off the Titans, both of which enable Ghidorah to jump-start the ApocalypseHow.
* ProperlyParanoid: Now that the world is aware that giant creatures exist among them, this serves as ParanoiaFuel for people to speculate whether there are more out there, whether there are Titans that aim to protect humans, and whether there are those that mean to threaten mankind. Cue King Ghidorah, Rodan, and several other kaiju. There's also the question of how many Titans there are, where they are sleeping, and what might wake them up. Imagine your city is built on the back of a giant monster, and what will happen to your house if said giant monster decides to start moving again. On the other side, [[spoiler:the military's use of the Oxygen Destroyer]] makes the eco-terrorists look Properly Paranoid in their concerns that the military could actually succeed in killing the Titans if they tried.
* PunchPunchPunchUhOh: [[spoiler:During the FinalBattle, after his wings are incinerated, Ghidorah desperately attempts to fend an approaching Burning Godzilla off by blasting all three heads' Gravity Beams at him in close range. Burning Godzilla No-Sells it, and what's more he almost seems to give Ghidorah a SlasherSmile in response; before he delivers the next three phases of Ghidorah's RasputinianDeath]].
* RasputinianDeath: [[spoiler:Burning Godzilla kills Ghidorah by blasting him with his Nuclear Pulse over and over, the first incinerating his wings, then his side heads, and then finally his entire body in an explosion that levels a huge radius. This still isn't enough, as his severed center head is still alive, so Godzilla bites down on its neck stump and fires his Atomic Breath point blank until he's nothing but atoms. Justified, as Ghidorah's HealingFactor practically ''requires'' his death to be this.]]
* ReadingsAreOffTheScale: It's stated later in the film during a military briefing that Ghidorah's typhoon has evolved into a Category 6. In reality, there's no such thing as a Category 6 storm, since Category 5 encompasses all possible readings above Category 4.
* ReclaimedByNature: Due to the Titans' {{terraform}}ing effect, it's revealed that this has happened at a rapid rate to the ruins of Las Vegas and San Francisco where Godzilla and the [=MUTOs=] rampaged after the first film's events. [[spoiler:It can be safely presumed it'll probably also happen in Boston and perhaps other destroyed cities after this film's ending]].
* RecycledTitle: The movie shares its name with the [[Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters1956 Americanized version]] of the original ''Godzilla'' from [[Film/Godzilla1954 1954]].
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler:Emma can't possibly atone for the treason, terrorism and megadeaths stemming from both the intended plan and the Ghidorah miscalculation. She does realize she needs to at least fix the latter though and also draws the dragon away from her family to her own certain death. Even if her injuries were not enough to kill her, Burning Godzilla appearing to fight Ghidorah causing the buildings around him to melt meant she definitely didn't make it out.]]
* RedIsViolent: Rodan is a Titan with a violent temperament who's a red-colored MagmaMan, and even his introductory scene has a RedSkyTakeWarning. [[spoiler:And then there's Burning Godzilla, who levels Boston with thermonuclear pulses in the process of obliterating Ghidorah]].
* RedShirtArmy: Soldiers from all branches and nations drop like flies wherever the Titans show up, and sometimes even when there's just humans around. [[DisposablePilot Fighter pilots]] seem to get the worst of it though, mainly because the two primary antagonistic kaiju are {{Giant Flyer}}s that go through fighter wings like tissue paper.
* RescueArc: After his estranged wife and daughter are kidnapped by a mysterious organization with its own plans for the giant monsters, Mark joins a rescue mission with Emma's Monarch colleagues, Drs. Graham and Serizawa.
* {{Revision}}: The novelization does this for the [[Film/Godzilla2014 first film]]'s exposition about Godzilla and the [=MUTOs'=] origin; stating that Monarch's account that they were the surviving remnants of a Permian ecosystem is just the mainstream theory out of several for the Titans origins, and mentioning other theories which effectively give the Titans a MultipleChoicePast.
* {{Rewrite}}: Instead of a Polynesian island in the Pacific, in this continuity Mothra was found inside a temple hidden in the rainforest mountains of China's Yunnan Province (though Dr. Chen's talk with Mark about her family history with Monarch confirms Infant Island exists in this continuity and the novelization states Mothra is worshiped there).
* RewatchBonus: [[spoiler:Emma's plan and Madison being on board with it]] is neatly hinted at in the opening act, with Madison nervously asking if her father is going to be safe. When Mothra first hatches, [[spoiler:Emma seemingly nonchalantly tells one of her coworkers if he wanted to take the morning off, as she knows Jonah and his terrorists will be arriving soon and will kill all the Monarch staff.]]
* RightfulKingReturns: [[spoiler:After fighting with Godzilla a second time, Ghidorah usurps the position of King of the Monsters, with Serizawa even scornfully referring to him as a "false king". The humans then spend their energy trying to revive Godzilla so he can challenge Ghidorah again. It takes a few false starts, but eventually Godzilla incinerates Ghidorah for good and reclaims his crown.]]
* RuinsForRuinsSake: Godzilla's lair is an ancient city that was part of a prehistoric kaiju-worshiping civilization, now reduced to UnderwaterRuins.
* RuleOfSymbolism: In order to firmly establish Ghidorah as synonymous with the Devil, one scene shows him rearing triumphantly on an erupting volcano under a burning sky while the cross atop a ruined steeple takes up the other half of the screen.
* SadlyMythtaken: The mythology-inspired names of the other Titans are quite fitting, but it's rather strange that the name "Scylla" would be given to a spider-like desert creature, since in mythology Scylla was a six-headed serpentine sea monster that was once a beautiful sea nymph cursed by a sorceress. That said, TheStinger has a newspaper headline stating that the Titan Scylla is Greek in origin.
* SceneryGorn: Washington D.C. gets flooded and generally trashed when Ghidorah decides to nest there. Boston later gets utterly demolished by the battle between Godzilla and King Ghidorah.
* ScientistVsSoldier: More minor or in the background than in the first film, but still very much present. This film very much leans more towards the Scientist side of the equation: the scientists are advocating coexistence with the Titans as they are ecologically essential to the planet, and while some Titans are hostile to humans others are indeed benevolent, and a benevolent Alpha Titans can potentially get all the others in line; the government and military meanwhile ignore and care little for Monarch's arguments, and are just trying to use any good excuse to take over and try killing all the Titans indiscriminately with a short-sighted lack of regard for the consequences or how that might backfire. The military even [[spoiler:unleash an ''untested prototype'' weapon of mass destruction trying to accomplish their goal]], and are arguably responsible for enabling Ghidorah's NearVillainVictory that takes up the second half of the film when they try taking matters into their own hands.
* SealedBadassInACan: Monarch have discovered and contained seventeen ("and counting") new Titans besides Godzilla since the first film's events.
* SealedEvilInACan: King Ghidorah is frozen in the ice Antarctica. The film makes clear that Monarch knows that, even frozen and dormant, Ghidorah is NOT anything good - just witness the way [[TheDreaded the whole room goes silent when Mark asks what's actually in Antarctica]]. Sure enough, once he's woken things go to hell very quickly.
* SequelEscalation: The first ''Godzilla'' film featured two types of kaiju, Godzilla himself as well as two [=MUTOs=] of the same species. This one has ''four'' main kaju, with four more making on-screen cameos. How many {{Kaiju}} are there total?
-->'''Dr. Serizawa''': Seventeen... and counting.
** Furthermore, the death count in this film is implied by the end to be not just in the thousands but in the millions or possibly even ''billions'', and King Ghidorah is a much more actively malicious antagonist that the [=MUTOs=] or even the [[Film/KongSkullIsland Skullcrawlers]] were.
* SequelHook: So nice, they did it twice.
** [[spoiler:A montage during the end credits discusses the possibilities of rivalries and grudge matches between the Titans, mentions that several Titans are moving towards Skull Island, and ends with cave paintings depicting [[Film/GodzillaVsKong a fated showdown between God and King]].]]
** [[spoiler: Godzilla has defeated Ghidorah and is now the new King of the Monsters, but TheStinger reveals Jonah, having survived the events of the film, collecting Ghidorah's head from a fisherman for reasons unknown. The novelization even has a character posit that Ghidorah could regenerate a new body from dismembered pieces, leaving it possible that he could return.]]
** [[spoiler:The ending montage also, if one pays attention to the text being blocked out, reveals not all the slumbering Titans actually listened to Ghidorah and many more are still dormant, allowing for other kaiju to show up in the future besides the announced ones. Even without this, only a handful of the 17 Titans are actually shown.]]
** [[spoiler:One of the articles in the final montage mentions plans for an expedition into the Hollow Earth.]]
* SharedFamilyQuirks: Madison is a NatureLover with a strong connection to the Titans like her father -- specifically, Madison seems to have the most intimate connection with Mothra while Mark has one with Godzilla. Madison also has none of her father's faults like his [[ItsAllAboutMe self-absorption]], judgmentalism, tendency to let his emotions run away with him or his tendency to run and hide from his problems instead of confronting them.
* SharedUniverse: Part of the Film/MonsterVerse, preceded by ''Film/{{Godzilla 2014}}'' (chronologically) and ''Film/KongSkullIsland'' (in terms of release), and set to be followed by ''Film/GodzillaVsKong''.
* ShownTheirWork:
** Rodan simply flying releases devastating shockwaves on a city below, due to the raw force of having to keep such a monster airborne.
*** Rodan also has wings with rounded tips, unlike the common, implausible pointed tipped wings that most pterosaurs in media are depicted with.
** Mothra's design is based on a mix of several different insects, with large eyespots like owl moths, a color scheme similar to a monarch butterfly, a body resembling a wasp and mantis-like forelimbs.
** Both Rodan and Ghidorah use their winged forelimbs in to aid walking and running in a manner similar to vampire bats and pterosaurs.
* SicklyGreenGlow: The Oxygen Destroyer's blast produces a pale-green bright light, and it eradicates every lifeform except [[spoiler:the alien Ghidorah, and Godzilla (who's grievously injured by it)]] within the blast radius.
* SleepDeprivation: Monarch scientist Dr. Mancini is apparently due for some sleep when Mothra's egg is about to hatch early in the day, but he postpones it rather than miss the Queen's hatching [[spoiler:(which ultimately gets him killed)]]. The novelization mentions he isn't the only person in his line of work who tend to skip sleep: one of the doctors monitoring Kraken has been unable to sleep for twenty-four hours, and Emma is confirmed in the novel to be a [[DownplayedTrope low-grade]] [[TheInsomniac insomniac]]. Additionally, [[FromCamouflageToCriminal Jonah]] in the novelization has apparently been awake for an un-enviable ''forty-eight hours'' when he and his men are drilling into the glacier holding Ghidorah, before he gets some brief shut-eye during the wait.
* SnowMeansDeath: Ghidorah, the single most malevolent {{Kaiju}} and the only one who actively threatens to destroy the entire Earth, has Antarctica as his [[SealedEvilInACan Evil-Sealing Can]] and the site of his BigEntrance when he's freed. Word of God confirms Antarctica was chosen because its lifeless, barren environment reflects Ghidorah's OmnicidalManiac true nature.
* SolidGoldPoop: In the end credits, one newspaper article notes the possible use of kaiju excrement as a fertilizer.
* SouthOfTheBorder: Rodan wakens in Isla de Mara, Mexico [[spoiler:thanks to Emma]]. Between that and [[spoiler:the military hitting its coast with the oxygen destroyer missile]], it's in pretty sorry shape by the end of the film.
* SoundtrackDissonance: The third TV spot plays "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" amidst the carnage and destruction inflicted by the various Titans.
* SparedByTheAdaptation: Godzilla himself in regards to the Oxygen Destroyer, which in this version renders him OnlyMostlyDead as opposed to the original ''Gojira'', where it left him DeaderThanDead.
* SpiritualSuccessor:
** The film is more or less a remake of ''Film/GhidorahTheThreeHeadedMonster'' as far as the cast of monsters go.
** With several monsters rampaging across the planet, it is also one to ''Film/DestroyAllMonsters'' and ''Film/GodzillaFinalWars''.
* SpreadingDisasterMapGraphic: The film makes frequent use of Monarch's digital global maps. After Ghidorah is freed in Antarctica and escapes, the hurricane he quickly forms around himself (which is shown on Monarch's maps to be roughly the size of ''Central America'') which is represented with bright red-and-yellow color, stands out starkly against the map's blue colors. After Ghidorah awakens all the Titans and commands them to begin ravaging man and nature alike, Monarch's world maps are dotted with over a dozen red indicators all around the world indicating the Titans, and most of the maps are also now indicating fast-moving orange swell lines coating the oceans and continents (the official novelization confirms the swell lines represent Ghidorah's WeatherManipulation spreading storms all over the planet).
* SquashedFlat: At least one or two G-Team soldiers get instantly crushed by falling boulders of ice when Ghidorah rises in Antarctica.
* TheStarscream: Subverted with Rodan. He shows no loyalties and basically switches sides based on whoever's winning, but he shows no direct attempt to turn on Ghidorah. According to the mo-cap actors, Ni is a Starscream who wishes he was Ghidorah's leader head instead of Ichi.
* StealthPun: When Godzilla arrives at Fenway Stadium, he appears from the side of the left field wall, which means he's approaching from [[https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Green_Monster the Green Monster]].
* TheStinger: [[spoiler:Alan Jonah is shown at the end collecting one of Ghidorah's heads, planning to use it for his own goals]].
* StockFootage: Some of the BRoll used in various scenes such as Emma's MotiveRant, the Senate subcommittee meeting and the end credits is footage taken from the 2014 movie's Comic-Con teaser trailer, the 2014 movie itself (including a joke where the footage of the [=MUTO=]s’ courtship is [[{{Pixellation}} pixellated]]) and even ''Film/KongSkullIsland'' (the brief visual of Kong’s face is taken from Randa seeing him through his camera lens).
* StockSoundEffect: Godzilla's roar now includes elements of his Showa roars, as do Mothra and Rodan's.
* TheStoic: Jonah is constantly calm and collected despite whatever chaos is surrounding him. Emma Russell tries to be TheUnfettered, but is repeatedly proven to be NotSoStoic.
* TheStormbringer: Once [[Characters/MonsterVerseKingGhidorah Ghidorah]] is awoken, he generates a perpetual hurricane filled with yellow lightning around himself which follows him wherever he goes and gets more powerful the longer he's active. And when Ghidorah takes over as the ruling alpha from Godzilla and leads the Titans toward creating an extinction event, his WeatherManipulation begins spreading offshoot storms around the globe, and it's overall suggested that if Ghidorah hadn't been stopped he would've enveloped the entire planet in endless storms. Only [[spoiler:his death at the hands (and [[WaveMotionGun mouth]]) of Godzilla brings the storm to an end]].
* AStormIsComing: King Ghidorah's powers allow him to generate a gigantic electrical storm via his mere presence.
* StuffBlowingUp: Compared to ''Film/Godzilla2014'', which was minimal on the {{Kaiju}} action and pyrotechnics, this movie features more frequent explosions and cavernous buildings collapsing. Beyond the frequent exchanges of gunfire and exploding craft between the military and Titans, Rodan causes a volcano's top to explode, and the FinalBattle between [[Film/GhidorahTheThreeHeadedMonster Godzilla, Ghidorah, Rodan and Mothra]] tears Boston down with fire and lightning whilst the human cast are running or driving for their lives. [[spoiler:The crowning jewel in terms of Awesome, however, has to be Burning Godzilla's thermonuclear pulses]].
* SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome: [[spoiler:Dr. Vivienne Graham is eaten by Ghidorah and later on, Serizawa sacrifices himself to fire up the nuclear warhead that can revive Godzilla from the effects of the Oxygen Destroyer]].
* SummonBiggerFish: When Ghidorah poses a threat to all of humanity after [[spoiler:usurping Godzilla as Alpha of the planet's Titans]], the humans' solution is to revive a near-dead Godzilla, knowing he's the only Titan capable of defeating Ghidorah and restoring balance.
* SurprisinglySuddenDeath: [[spoiler:Dr. Vivienne Graham]]'s death is so quick that even if you were paying attention you might not have been sure what happened or who it happened to. [[spoiler: Ghidorah, seeing a group of less than a dozen humans running for their lives, arbitrarily targets her out of the crowd, and in a flash devours the ice upon which she was standing whole. A few minutes later Serizawa is shown sitting in front of a monitor listing her as deceased, just to make sure the audience knows it was her that died.]]
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Ilene seems to take over Dr. Graham's role as the intelligent MsExposition after [[spoiler:Graham is killed by Ghidorah]], while Mark and Emma both have similarities and contrasts to Joe Brody from the first film, and Mark has similarities and contrasts to [[Film/KongSkullIsland Preston Packard]] and [[Anime/GodzillaPlanetOfTheMonsters Haruo Sakaki]].
* SwallowedWhole: [[spoiler:Dr. Graham]] is eaten this way by Ghidorah's middle head in Antarctica, and one of the Raptor pilots duelling Rodan is swallowed whole ''while ejecting''.
* SwissCheeseSecurity: Jonah's bunker outside of the Boston metro area. The security presence is so poor that Madison is able to [[spoiler:snatch the ORCA from the control room, exit the bunker, hike all the way to the control room in Fenway Stadium, and set it running before Jonah and Emma even realize it's gone. In the novelization she ''is'' caught by one guard, but shocks him into unconsciousness with a stun gun before he can stop her.]]
* TailSlap: During the Boston battle, Godzilla at one point uses the same move he used to defeat Hokmuto in the previous movie to stagger Ghidorah: revolving on the spot and slamming his tail into Ghidorah's shin. In the novelization's extra scenes, Mokele-Mbembe has a tail that makes up two-thirds the length of its body, which it uses as a devastating weapon, slicing apart an Osprey and ''a pyramid'' each in a single blow.
* TakeThat:
** Stone Mountain, a major Confederate monument, is briefly mentioned as one of the sites a Titan emerged from (and presumably leveled).
** Jackson Barnes asks if Mothra and Godzilla "have a thing" and refers to the symbiotic relationship between them as being "messed up", perhaps a subtle jab at the "Mothzilla" shipping.
** An organization of human-looking antagonists attempt to MindControl the {{kaiju}}, including chiefly King Ghidorah, using technology -- [[MythologyGag sound familiar]]? Except in this movie, King Ghidorah quickly proves to be EvilerThanThou and is impossible to control from the get-go, and it usurps control of the other Kaiju from the humanoids for its own purposes.
* TalkingIsAFreeAction: {{Averted}} in the Humvee scene. If you listen closely when Barnes says he'd run away like Madison if he had parents like hers, Emma and Mark's voices are squabbling indistinctly in the background, and it's hilarious.
* TheTeam: The key Monarch brass have this dynamic with each-other, tackling the world-threatening problems together for the most part. Although all of them except Foster are scientists, they for the most part specialize in different areas of research and expertise (mythology for Dr. Chen, zoology for Emma Russell, bio-acoustics detection for Dr. Stanton, etc.).
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: While humanity and Godzilla have battled in the past, both instinctively realize their best chance to survive is to fight together against the hostile Titans. It's also confirmed in the novelization that Emma Russell feels this way about working with Alan Jonah.
* {{Terraform}}ing: It's revealed in this film that the Titans do this on a regional scale wherever they go, with Godzilla and the [=MUTOs'=] presence in [[Film/Godzilla2014 the previous film]] having caused vegetation ecosystems to flourish in the ruined cities, and with [[spoiler:the awakened Titans' global presence at the film's end causing a recovery in declining ecosystems and endangered species, reversing the ice caps' melting, and even causing a new rainforest to bloom in the Sahara]]. It's also speculated by Dr. Stanton that King Ghidorah -- the exception to this rule as [[spoiler:an invasive alien who's not from Earth]] -- is creating an extinction event because he's [[HostileTerraforming xenoforming]] the planet to make it more to his own liking.
* ThanatosGambit: [[spoiler:Mothra's HeroicSacrifice against King Ghidorah also gives Godzilla a necessary power-up. The dust from her destroyed body settles on Godzilla, awakening his Burning Godzilla form, which enables him to finally defeat Ghidorah.]]
* ThemeMusicPowerUp: [[spoiler:The 'Rebirth' track that plays during Godzilla's rising from the depths in his powered up state contains a version of his theme.]]
* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: Ghidorah makes a consistent habit of using his Gravity Beams, an attack that throws Godzilla around, to attack humans directly. Most of note is when he tries to use ''all three'' to atomize Madison, a tiny human girl, because he was pissed at her. Directly before that, he proceeds to level the stadium she's in and much of the surrounding area solely trying to get her.
* ThisCannotBe: A couple heroic cases.
** Dr. Stanton says it's impossible when Coleman says the storm which Ghidorah disappeared inside has changed direction and is headed towards Rodan at unnaturally fast speed, at which point Chen and Coleman realize that Ghidorah is ''generating the storm himself''.
** Commander Crane just says, "That can't be" when informed that the underwater vortex has carried the submarine to a place where instruments say it's suddenly [[spoiler:several-hundred extra miles from Castle Bravo (because the sub has entered the HollowEarth]]).
* ThoseTwoGuys: Barnes and Martinez serve as this throughout the majority of the movie after the death of Hendricks.
* TimeShiftedActor: Creator/JoeMorton appears in the scene [[spoiler:where Mothra comes out of her cocoon]] as the present day version of [[Film/KongSkullIsland Houston Brooks]].
* TooDumbToLive: [[MilitariesAreUseless The series' tradition continues]]:
** After King Ghidorah awakens, the first thing the G-Force team does is open fire ''at a three-headed draconic monster that can easily annihilate them without trying''. And [[CurbstompBattle proceeds to do so]]. This gets AdaptationalExplanation in the novelization.
** Monarch attempts to lure Rodan towards King Ghidorah's current position by drawing his attention to them. Their jet escort continues to open fire on him when it's clear their weapons are no match for him.
** The military pull a truly apocalyptic one, overlapping with LethallyStupid (see above). As an indirect result, an entire fleet composed of all four branches is thoroughly annihilated by Ghidorah and Rodan at Washington D.C..
** As the ''Argo'' is fleeing Rodan, one of the fighter pilots who's being threatened by him decides to eject. Rodan is ''right behind him'', and when the pilot ejects he flies upward, right into Rodan's maw.
* ToServeMan: Rodan and Ghidorah are fine with making snacks out of humans.
* TragicBigot: Mark Russell, who for the first half of the film hates Godzilla and to a lesser extent all Titans because of his son's death. It's also hinted early in the film (and furthermore in the novelization) that Mark is far from the only one who feels this way and that this trope is a major source of FantasticRacism towards the Titans: many people want the government to try indiscriminately exterminating the Titans because of the deaths of thousands of people who had loved ones during the first film's events.
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: Much like with the merchandise, the trailers have made little effort to hide that Godzilla will [[spoiler: transform into Burning Godzilla]] during the final battle with Ghidorah, with him unleashing a Nuclear Pulse as he does so.
** [[spoiler: Plot-wise, the TV spots have done a ''terrible'' job at keeping any important things under wraps, notably Ghidorah missing a head as he flies from the ocean, Mothra being killed by Ghidorah's gravity beams in her HeroicSacrifice, Emma dying as she’s says “Long live the king”, and finally, Godzilla's nuclear pulse that vaporizes Ghidorah.]]
* TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot: Godzilla cuts down on a lot of traveling by taking shortcuts through the Hollow Earth tunnels. Making it much easier for him to come to the rescue several times.
** [[spoiler: Averted with the rest of the Titans summoned by Ghidorah, they take so long to travel to Boston that by the time they arrive Godzilla has already killed Ghidorah, and they submit to Godzilla willingly.]]
* TriumphantReprise: As the Argo encounters him in the storm, we see King Ghidorah forcefully flaring his wings while silhouetted in smoke and fog with lightning flashing behind him - and soon enough the film's DarkestHour takes place, with [[spoiler:Godzilla taken out by the military and Ghidorah in charge of the Titans]]. Later, once she emerges from her cocoon, we see Mothra elegantly unfurling her own wings with beautiful glowing patterns on them, symbolizing the return of hope.
* TruerToTheText: This version of King Ghidorah is the most faithful to the original incarnation in his debut film, being a sadistic, nigh unstoppable killing machine [[spoiler:of extraterrestrial origin]] who destroys the world not because he's ordered to, but [[ForTheEvulz because he enjoys doing so]].
* TyrantTakesTheHelm: [[spoiler:King Ghidorah becomes the new King of the Monsters, replacing the HeroicNeutral Godzilla with an AxCrazy OmnicidalManiac and alien invader as the Alpha of the Titans.]]
* UnderwaterRuins: Midway through the film it's revealed that [[spoiler:Godzilla's lair is in a temple built inside an active volcano, next to the ruins of a sunken Cyclopean city in the Hollow Earth]].
* TheUnmasquedWorld: After the relief that Godzilla was able to save what was left of San Fransisco came the global populace's horrified realization that there are more monsters as big as Godzilla is. As such, humanity has been on high-alert for the five years following ''Godzilla'', even though no significant Titan activity has occurred between then and this movie. And Monarch, previously a secret organization that researched the Titans, has since gone public and publicized their mission, to the point that the viral marketing website for the movie involves them actively recruiting civilian operatives.
* UnnecessarilyLargeInterior: The interior of the ''Argo'' was clearly shot inside a regular building set full of lavishly-sized corridors, rooms and ceilings. Its bridge alone is larger than your average apartment. It's unlikely that any RealLife utilitarian aircraft, and military ones in particular, would waste so much space on creature comforts.
* UnplannedManualDetonation: Monarch plans to shoot a nuclear torpedo at the resting Godzilla in order to speed up his recuperation. However, the submarine's torpedo tubes get damaged in transit, making it impossible to fire anything. [[spoiler:So Dr. Serizawa volunteers to take the warhead to Godzilla and set it off himself.]]
* UnreadablyFastText: Saying where in the film it is would be potentially spoiling a deliberately-hidden EasterEgg.
* UnstoppableRage: [[spoiler:Mothra's death sends Godzilla into one after he transforms into Burning Godzilla. He then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie brutally reducing Ghidorah to atoms in RoaringRampageOfRevenge.]]
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: PlayedStraight by the U.S. Army when they unexpectedly intervene in the {{Kaiju}} battle at Isla de Mara by [[spoiler:firing the Oxygen Destroyer]]. The weapon's use makes the military directly responsible for [[spoiler:seemingly killing]] Godzilla, and enabling Ghidorah to start unleashing its ApocalypseHow on the planet. Especially relevant when considering the director's suggestion that Godzilla would've beaten Ghidorah there and then if not for the military intervention.
* TheUsurper: [[spoiler:Thanks to unintentional aid from the military, King Ghidorah defeats Godzilla and usurps his throne as King of the Monsters. This allows him to let loose all the Titans at once and command them to begin destroying all other life on the planet. Humanity has no choice but to help Godzilla regain his throne before Ghidorah kills everyone.]]
* VilerNewVillain: Ghidorah and Alan Jonah respectively are much more unsympathetically evil than the previous two films' {{Kaiju}} and human {{Big Bad}}s, respectively.
* VillainBall: For some odd reason. Jonah allows Madison unsupervised free reign of his base. Which leads to [[spoiler: Madison being able to steal the ORCA -- the device Jonah and his cohorts have been using to awaken the Titans -- when they leave it in a insecure room]].
* VillainHasAPoint: [[spoiler:Besides how TheExtremistWasRight (see above), Emma also was not wrong that Monarch was in a pretty sorry state at the start of the film before she kicked off her plot, being in a losing legal battle against the not-so-reasonable government's and the public's calls for attempts to kill the Titans (which, had the government's plan been enacted, likely would not have had any positive outcomes, as described [[Fridge/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019 under Fridge Horror]]). She's also got a point about how, even if her plan is more reckless and radicalist than how Serizawa and Monarch are handling the Titans, they're both gambling with billions of people's lives whichever path they take]].
* VillainsActHeroesReact:
** On the human side, Alan Jonah [[spoiler:and Emma Russell]] plan to forcibly awaken all the Titans so they can inflict GaiasVengeance and [[WellIntentionedExtremist restore ecological balance to the planet]], before the government and military (who are pushing along with most of the public for a military takeover of Monarch) have a chance to attempt killing all the Titans off. Monarch, though they're aware of the Titans' ecological importance and are under worsening fire from the anti-Titan government, are more interested in maintaining the status quo, caging what Titans they find at containment sites and putting precautions in place to (attempt) killing them if they can't be contained, and Monarch take action to try and stop the human antagonists' plan once they become aware of it (specifically once the antagonists fire the first shot in the film with their attack on a Monarch outpost).
** On the kaiju side, Godzilla acts to defend his position as the dominant Titan once Ghidorah is awakened by human intervention and challenges it again. When Ghidorah successfully takes over the planet's Titans from Godzilla and begins inflicting his ApocalypseHow, that's when Mothra steps in to help stop Ghidorah.
* TheVillainWins: [[spoiler:Emma's plan brings about the deaths of millions worldwide. But her plan works. The Titans at the end restore the environment. Even though she is ultimately crushed under debris, she dies knowing that she left the world a "better" place for her daughter.]]
* WaistDeepOcean: Midway through the film, the 119-meter-tall Godzilla stands upright next to a submarine in the open ocean -- in water he was previously fully submerged in -- before diving back underwater and swimming away.
* WalkingWasteland: All the Titans have the potential to be [[PersonOfMassDestruction Persons of Mass Destruction]], but Rodan causes devastating supersonic winds that can pretty much annihilate whatever's beneath him just by ''flying over it'', Ghidorah produces a lightning-filled typhoon around himself with evolves into a ''Category 6 hurricane'', and Godzilla... Godzilla at the film's climax.
* WeaponizedLandmark: The 200 Clarendon building in Boston--the city's most prominent and distinctive tower--becomes a very handy wall for [[spoiler:Mothra to ensnare two of Ghidorah's heads with her silk, and the alien dragon barely has time to react before Godzilla puts him through it.]]
* WeaponStomp: King Ghidorah [[spoiler: [[FearsomeFoot lovetaps the ORCA with his foot]] when Madison throws it at him.]]
* WeaksauceWeakness: Ghidorah is very agile for a creature his size both on the ground and in the air. [[spoiler: Unfortunately for him, he can't swim, which becomes a problem when he fights the aquatic Godzilla in his home turf.]]
* WeatherManipulation: Ghidorah, who generates a massive, lightning-filled typhoon around himself merely by ''being active'', and it grows more and more powerful over time. Furthermore, upon taking over as the Alpha Titan, Ghidorah's Weather Manipulation begins spreading offshoot storm around the globe. Mothra also has this power in that once her metamorphosis is complete, she disperses Ghidorah's storms wherever she goes.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: [[spoiler:Emma goes along with the plan to awaken the Titans because she believes that they will 'just' cause enough destruction to let Earth rebuild afterwards... and more shockingly, if it hadn't been for the X-factor of Ghidorah operating outside the 'natural order', that plan might have worked out]]. Jonah meanwhile, proves to be a NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist who just wants to see humanity suffer.
* WhamLine: One is dropped shortly after King Ghidorah [[spoiler:survives the Oxygen Destroyer]], revealing [[spoiler:that he's an alien rather than another natural Titan.]]
--> '''Dr. Chen:''' [[spoiler:It tells of a great dragon who fell from the stars. A hydra whose storm swallowed both men and gods alike.]]
--> '''Mark''': [[spoiler:You mean an alien?]]
* WhyWeCantHaveNiceThings: [[spoiler:The city in the Hollow Earth]]. It's the historical and archaeological find of the ''millennium'', but Godzilla needs to be healed in order to fight King Ghidorah ''right now'', and the only way to do that is to set off a nuke in his face. For mankind to survive, the city ''has'' to be destroyed.
* WonderTwinPowers: [[spoiler:According to Mike Dougherty, Godzilla's Fire Form is part of his and Mothra's symbiotic relationship, and thus requires both of them to do. It's unknown if it can happen without Mothra dying, however.]]
* TheWorfBarrage: The [[spoiler:Oxygen Destroyer]] is this. It's fired on Ghidorah in an attempt to kill him and Godzilla. Its impact leaves an InstantFishKill, and after several seconds of waiting on baited breath to see the aftermath, [[spoiler:Ghidorah emerges ''[[NoSell completely unscathed]]'' by the blast]]. Ghidorah's No-Sell of it is part of what promptly makes the humans realize that [[spoiler:Ghidorah is actually an alien, and not a creature native to Earth like the other Titans are]].
* TheWorfEffect: The four main Titans in this film are implied to be more intelligent than the [=MUTOs=] in the 2014 film, and this film features "a rival Alpha to Godzilla" for the first time.
* WreathedInFlames:
** Rodan's internal temperature runs so hot, the natural "cracks" in his skin (and wounds incurred in battle) seep out a bright red glow that makes him look like he's on fire, particularly when he takes to the sky.
** In the final battle, [[spoiler:Mothra empowers Godzilla, causing him to enter his Burning Godzilla SuperMode -- which as the name suggests has magmatic-looking scales and radiates such intense heat that Godzilla ignites and melts everything around him]].
* YellowLightningBlueLightning: During the final battle, the lightning bolts around Godzilla and Ghidorah have the color associated with them and their breath weapons. Three guesses for who fits in each category.
* YouCantThwartStageOne: A little downplayed, given the implications about how much worse things would've gotten if Ghidorah won in the end. Despite Monarch's efforts to stop them, the [[EcoTerrorist Eco-Terrorists]]' plot to see ''all'' the Titans around the world awakened and released on the planet actually succeeds; when Monarch's efforts to stop them releasing Ghidorah fail, and later when Ghidorah proves itself EvilerThanThou and seizes control of all the Titans for its own agenda. (With the exception of Ghidorah who is an OmnicidalManiac, it turns out TheExtremistWasRight here.) And despite Godzilla's initial efforts to put Ghidorah down again, Ghidorah actually succeeds in usurping Godzilla as King of the Monsters and starting his own ApocalypseHow, leading to the FinalBattle in Boston where Godzilla and Mothra seek to end Ghidorah and his control over the other Titans.
* YouHaveGotToBeKiddingMe: Barnes gets the movie's only PrecisionFStrike when he first sees Ghidorah in Antarctica while saying this.
* YouMonster: After Emma makes the call to [[spoiler:awake Rodan]] in spite of Madison's protests, which escalates into [[spoiler:Ghidorah forcing Rodan into submission, Godzilla accidentally being taken out by the military's Oxygen Destroyer missile and the other Titans awakening to go on the rampage at Ghidorah's command]], she gets hit with this from her daughter Madison, deeply affecting her.
[[/folder]]

* AnimalsRespectNature: This movie particularly explores the concept that not only [[DestructiveSavior Godzilla]] but the continued existence of Titans ''generally'' is essential to maintaining the world. The eco-terrorists believe that if all Titans are set loose, their FertileFeet will replenish the ecosphere. However, it turns out that with the exceptions of [[BigGood Godzilla]] and [[BenevolentMonsters Mothra]], the majority of Titans only care about the natural balance insofar whichever Alpha they're currently answering to cares. When Ghidorah – [[spoiler:an extraterrestrial OmnicidalManiac]] who couldn't care ''less'' about the balance of nature – is in charge of them, the Titans help him do even worse global damage to the ecosphere than humanity could have. [[spoiler:However, the CreativeClosingCredits reveal that Godzilla's reign after Ghidorah's death has calmed the other Titans down and enabled ecosystems worldwide to regenerate under their influence. Furthermore, it's indicated that Godzilla is actively commanding the Titans to leave humanity's cities alone now, lending a lot of credence to the idea that Godzilla (if not any of the subordinate Titans) is ''[[PlayedStraight consciously]]'' [[PlayedStraight enforcing the balance of nature]]]].

** Upon taking control of the other Titans, King Ghidorah promptly begins a global apocalypse, which Dr. Stanton speculates [[spoiler:based on Ghidorah's true nature as a [[CosmicHorrorStory hostile]] [[AliennInvasion alien]]]] might be a HostileTerraforming process: spreading [[PerpetualStorm massive storms]] over the planet[[note]]The novelization notes this alone could create the practical effect of an [[TheNightThatNeverEnds impact winter]] if it keeps up[[/note]], and commanding the other Titans to actively KillAllHumans and create a global NaturalDisasterCascade, Ghidorah firmly establishes himself as an OmnicidalManiac. Emma Russell notes that the end result if Ghidorah continues the destruction will be nothing short of an [[ApocalypseHow/Class4 extinction event]]. The {{novelization}}s of both this movie and [[Film/GodzillaVsKong the sequel]] explicitly state that the likeliest end result of Ghidorah's reign of terror continuing would be [[ApocalypseHow/Class5 the extinction of everything except for Ghidorah and some adaptable bacteria]] within a few years max; with Serizawa observing that Ghidorah's anti-human behavior means it's likely no amount of human ingenuity will permanently stop the Titans from finding and killing all of the last human survivors. Serizawa also speculates that once Ghidorah is done cleansing the Earth's surface, he'll repeat the destruction on the HollowEarth[='s=] inhabitants.

** Serizawa's preachings back in the 2014 movie that Godzilla is the embodiment of nature's ability to re-balance itself could be pretty hard to take seriously InUniverse as well as out, especially given how esoteric it sounds coming from a scientist; and he hasn't let up at the start of this movie with his arguments that human civilization can coexist with Titans if the right decisions are made. Few people outside of Monarch take Serizawa's pro-Titan arguments seriously, including the government who are just itching for an excuse to try exterminating the Titans, but at the end, Serizawa is proven right: [[spoiler:not only does Godzilla end the extinction-level threat of [[OmnicidalManiac King Ghidorah]], he also ensures that the other awakened Titans rejuvenate the world's damaged ecosystems and stay away from humanity's population centers]].

** NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist Alan Jonah is hellbent on seeing the Titans decimate humanity at any cost because he's ''that'' pissed off at mankind, justifying it as [[EcoTerrorist saving the rest of Earth's species]], and he eggs his partner [[spoiler:Emma]] on to stick to their plan whenever she starts having her doubts. He's ''so'' obsessed with seeing the Titans level humanity that when [[spoiler:Emma]] warns him [[OmnicidalManiac one of the Alpha Titans they've unleashed]] is going to eradicate humanity ''entirely'' as well as cause much worse devastation to the biosphere than we ever could, Jonah doesn't care, and he goes out of his way to make sure Emma can't try to stop Ghidorah herself. All that matters to Jonah is Titans killing off as much of humanity as possible (the more the better), and he doesn't seem to care (or in the novelization honestly doesn't ''realize'') that Ghidorah will kill him and his men too.
** To a lesser extent, Emma Russell herself ends up being this, [[spoiler:albeit not without encouragement from Jonah]]. As an indirect response to her son's PlotTriggeringDeath five years ago, she's ''obsessed'' with saving humanity and the world's ecology from mankind triggering their own extinction event, even if she has to take the fate of the world into her own hands due to [[HeadInTheSandManagement Monarch's shortcomings]], and even if [[spoiler:she has to cause ''millions'' of deaths]]. She even goes as far as [[spoiler:leaving several of her colleagues and friends and also ''her daughter's father'' to die, while '''said daughter helplessly watches''', so she can pursue her goal]]. Aside from unwittingly setting loose [[spoiler:the aforementioned Ghidorah]] in her recklessness [[spoiler:(thereby putting the world under threat of [[ApocalypseHow/Class5 the exact opposite]] of [[WellIntentionedExtremist what she was aiming for]])]]; Emma's aforementioned Determinating when it comes to [[spoiler:sacrificing human lives]], and also her directly refuting her daughter's pleas [[spoiler:not to slaughter any more people by proxy (although she only refutes this after some needling from Jonah)]]; utterly destroy her relationships with ''everyone'' who cared about her: her colleagues, her ex-husband, even her child ([[spoiler:the only person whose life [[VillainousParentalInstinct she really cared enough about to put ahead of her plan]]]]).

* EerieArcticResearchStation: PlayedWith. The Monarch outpost that houses the evilest and most destructive known Titan of all is located in the Antarctic wilderness. Not only does the barren, solitary landscape reflect [[OmnicidalManiac what kind of Titan the dormant creature inside really is]] comparative to [[FertileFeet the others]], the sheer geographical isolation of the facility certainly doesn't make it easy for the outpost's staff to detect the eco-terrorists' presence and raise the alarm. But beyond that, there isn't particularly much horror or tension drawn from the outpost's isolated location nor the inhospitable outdoor conditions in and of themselves, until ''after'' the facility is destroyed.

** Emma considers Serizawa a hypocrite for daring to chide her over making an extremely dangerous gamble [[spoiler:by planning to forcibly awaken all the Titans and manipulate them with the ORCA]], as she retorts that the game she's currently playing with the fate of the world didn't begin with her: it began when {{the government}} and the public started putting mounting pressure on Monarch while demanding that the Titans be exterminated in their sleep. It's an issue which Serizawa was reacting much less seriously to during the earlier senate scene, despite how Monarch are clearly losing the legal battle and despite how, as Emma observes, the consequences of the government getting what they want could ultimately do just as much harm to the world as Serizawa is criticizing Emma for risking.

** Although they only interact with each-other briefly, Godzilla and Rodan play this dynamic off of each-other [[spoiler:when Rodan challenges Godzilla, before a threat from the latter makes Rodan back off]]. Godzilla is perfectly willing to fight if it's necessary, but he never does so without provocation if there's no threat to himself and Earth's natural order. Rodan is overly eager to pick a fight with anything and he doesn't always think as quickly as he acts, and he only cares about Earth's greater natural balance insofar as whichever Alpha Titan he's currently following cares about it.
** Amongst the human heroes, Serizawa and Mark frequently interact, showing contrasting personalities. Serizawa is sophisticated, stoic, compassionate, and one of the few people whom are well-aware of the Titans' importance in the bigger picture (the Noble Male). Mark is cynical, rude, HotBlooded, and [[ItsAllAboutMe self-absorbed in his own anger and anguish]], but also very conscious of the death and destruction the Titans are capable of due to his first-hand experience of a Titan attack (the Roguish Male).

* SleepDeprivation: Monarch scientist Dr. Mancini is apparently due for some sleep when Mothra's egg is about to hatch early in the day, but he postpones it rather than miss the Queen's hatching [[spoiler:(which ultimately gets him killed)]]. The novelization mentions he isn't the only person in his line of work who does this: one of the doctors monitoring Kraken has been unable to sleep for twenty-four hours, and Emma is confirmed to be a [[DownplayedTrope low-grade]] [[TheInsomniac insomniac]]. [[FromCamouflageToCriminal Jonah]] too, in the novel, has apparently been awake for an un-enviable ''forty-eight hours'' when he and his men are in the process of awakening Ghidorah before he gets some brief shut-eye during the wait.

** Upon taking over control of the Earth's Titans, King Ghidorah (who is described as a "living extinction event") actively attempts to inflict a ApocalypseHow/Class4-[[ApocalypseHow/Class6 6]] via engulfing the planet in a NaturalDisasterCascade and spreading his storm-generating WeatherManipulation, which Dr. Stanton speculates might be a form of HostileTerraforming on the three-headed [[spoiler:alien]] monster's part. The {{novelization}}s of the film and [[Film/GodzillaVsKong its sequel]] state Ghidorah would specifically cause a ApocalypseHow/Class5. What's worse, Serizawa speculates in the novelization that once Ghidorah has finished destroying the Earth's surface he'll turn his attention to repeating the process in the Hollow Earth.
** Although the above Apocalypse How [[spoiler:is ultimately derailed]], it does cause [[spoiler:multiple ApocalypseHow/Class0[='s=] around the world (likely reaching ApocalypseHow/Class1)]]. Cities around the world such as Washington D.C. and Boston are damaged or completely destroyed, the death toll is likely ''at least'' in the millions, and [[spoiler:the Titans remain permanently awakened but are coexisting with humans in the DawnOfAnEra (until the sequel resets that)]].

** Hendricks [[CurseCutShort barely has time]] to get out "Oh shi-" before Ghidorah's lightning blasts reduce him to ashes.

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: A big part of the rivalry between Godzilla and Ghidorah: the other Titans bow down to whoever is the strongest at the time, and will obey the Alpha's will regardless of how benign (Godzilla) or destructive (Ghidorah) it is. Ghidorah claims the title by [[CurbStompBattle beating Rodan into submission]] (with an unwitting assist from the military, who accidentally [[spoiler:take out Godzilla with the Oxygen Destroyer missile]]) while Godzilla later gets it back by [[spoiler:incinerating his three-headed rival]].