Film / Godzilla Vs Kong N To Z

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N

• Named by the Adaptation: In the novelization, the chamber where Ghidorah's skull is held by Apex is called the Skull Room.
• Narrow Annihilation Escape: This occurs in the Hollow Earth when the temple built by Kong's ancestors is destroyed. As the cavern collapses, the three core members of Team Kong plus Kong himself just manage to escape being crushed by the collapse via a tunnel, but the area they left behind, and all the meaningful history and long-passed ultraterrestrial culture it held, is gone; much to Kong's ire.
• Nature vs. Technology:
  • Godzilla, Kong and most of the Titans have been established previously throughout the MonsterVerse to be eons-old embodiments of natural forces and Gaia's Vengeance, with Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) particularly establishing that despite both sides' destructive capacities, Titans and humanity can coexist together in harmony if they so choose to. The human antagonists of this movie, Apex Cybernetics, are a remarkably hi-tech corporation whom are obsessed with rampant technological advancement in the name of dominating or subjugating nature (the Titans) to establish humanity as the supreme lifeform on Earth, embodying Ozymandian hubris and greed. Apex are secretly creating Mechagodzilla with the aim of killing and usurping Godzilla as the supreme Alpha Titan, uncaring that Godzilla is the chief reason why humanity hasn't already been destroyed, but using Ghidorah's undead skull and Green Rocks as the remote piloting brain and the fuel source respectively leads to the Mecha breaking free of Apex's control and turning against them, and it poses an active threat to all humans and Godzilla. Mechagodzilla comes close to killing Godzilla (albeit only because the latter was only at half strength when fighting it), but it's ultimately overwhelmed and destroyed by Godzilla and Kong.
  • Although Apex's Corporate Conspiracy themselves represent the worst in human overuse of technology, high technological advancement in itself isn't presented as necessarily being a bad thing. The HEAVs which Apex give to Team Kong are essential in breaching the Hollow Earth and finding Kong a new home down there, and they're also vital in saving Kong from expiring of heart arrhythmia — had Kong not been saved, Mechagodzilla would have surely killed Godzilla and been victorious with no remaining Alpha Titans able to defend humanity against it. And after Apex and Mechagodzilla's respective downfalls, Monarch apparently continue to use the new technology to establish a permanent settlement in the Hollow Earth so they can monitor Kong.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: APEX, a rival organization to MONARCH that Ren, son of Dr. Ishirō Serizawa, is employed to. They plan to usurp Godzilla's position as Earth's apex predator using a Titan of their own invention, Mechagodzilla.
• Nerd Glasses: Both Ben (a Monarch operative studying Kong) and Josh (who by the way is a movie piracy hacker) have chunky browline glasses.
• Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight: Kong's axe severely evens the odds against Godzilla's Atomic Breath, thanks to its ability to block and absorb it. Kong consistently does better with the axe than without, and if he'd held on to it more successfully, the victor may well have changed.
• Never Bring A Knife To A Fistfight: An axe in this case, but although it evens the playing field for Kong a little, Godzilla, who is only armed with his natural defences, still eventually emerges victorious.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The film is set five years after the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), putting it in 2024. The novelization, conversely, is set a little over three years after the events of the previous novel, putting it in 2022.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Mark Russel is quick to assume there's no reason for Godzilla's attack and discount Maddison's objections to that. Thus instead of investigating that, Monarch is busy trying to stop Godzilla, allowing Mechagodzilla to be completed under their noses and Ghidorah to resurrect through it. He seems to realize this when Mechagodzilla emerges and starts leveling Hong Kong. In the novelization he begins to realize it earlier when Monarch detects the Ghidorah signal in Hong Kong and he pieces together Maddison may have been right, and instantly suggests Monarch start investigating Apex.
  • Kong activating the energy source in the Hollow Earth with his ax allows Apex to get their hands on it to power up Mechagodzilla, allowing Ghidorah to come all the way back to life.
  • Godzilla attacking the source of the activating energy provokes Kong into challenging him to a fight, leading to them both being weakened targets for Mechagodzilla.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Godzilla is the Roguish Male this time, with Kong as the Noble Male. Kong is more benign to those whom he comes into contact with unless they've demonstrated that their intentions are clearly hostile, he explicitly looks out for humans whom he considers his allies (such as when he promptly comes to Nathan, Lind and Jia's defence in response to Maia and her goons pointing guns at them), he has a very explicit and profound protectorate bond with Jia, and he has an intelligent brain as a primate Titan; but Kong is also more inexperienced than Godzilla and is oblivious to the bigger picture. Godzilla meanwhile is much older and more learned, but he acts outright ruthless and callous with the sheer death and destruction he inflicts on thousands of people several times across the movie (and not all of it is accidental this time, even if his end-goals are justified); and he shows no signs of caring about any individual humans in this movie, instead only caring about the world at large.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • In their final bout, after Kong finally deals a real blow to Godzilla, this finally sends Godzilla over the edge and he foregoes any illusion of a balanced fight to savagely lay into, beat down and borderline maul Kong, finishing with a crushing stomp to the chest and roaring in his face to decisively declare the ape as done getting in his way. It's telling that Godzilla doesn't even bother using his atomic breath during this comeback.
  • In glorious karmic fashion, Godzilla soon finds himself in one of these courtesy of Mechagodzilla, he tries to put up a fight, but due to his wounds with his fight with Kong and having tired himself out, he gets a salvo of missiles when he tries rushing against Mechagodzilla followed by two energized punches against his gills and getting dragged through the ground and flung around buildings like a ragdoll, almost getting killed the same way he did to the MUTOs for it when Mechagodzilla prepares to give him his own version of the "Kiss of Death". He only gets to live because Jia convinced Kong to do so but otherwise was entirely at Mechagodzilla's mercy the whole time.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Warbats aren't bats but cobra-like snakes, and the Hellhawks aren't hawks, but bats (although the Warbats have membranous wings and the Hellhawks have bird-like bodies and heads).
• Not Drawn to Scale: As usual for the franchise. Specifically, Hong Kong has four thousand buildings that at 100 meters + height are at least as tall as Godzilla's stated stats (120m) unless he is fully reared back.
  • Mechagodzilla also appears to be of varible size as even a big Skullcrawler is nowhere near Godzilla's proportions and Mechagodzilla extends its own (more humanoid) arms to near-maximum span to hold said Skullcrawler at its max extension. That skullcrawler also looks far smaller a moment earlier when lunging for a human. When fighting Godzilla, Mecha is the same size and in some ways bigger (see arms).
• Not Himself: The human characters are puzzled by Godzilla's sudden shift towards uncharacteristic aggression and seemingly unprovoked attacks on human settlements.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The Perpetual Storm system which once shielded Skull Island has closed in and enveloped the island before the film's start due to Camazotz's actions in Kingdom Kong, wiping out the natives and seemingly most animal life outside of Kong's bio-dome. The novelization explicitly notes that Skull Island's entire ecosystem is invariably rotting and dying, and it furthermore reveals that Jia and Andrews specifically feel this when Monarch are forced to destroy the bio-dome (and with it the last intact pocket of Skull Island) in the process of removing Kong from the dome.
• Not Quite Dead: Ghidorah's upper skull forms the cockpit for Mechagodzilla with the rest of it interfaced with the robot itself. The skull makes audible calls and growls when Ren is using it, suggesting that even when reduced to bone and neural tissue, the evil Titan is still very much alive. Once Mechagodzilla gains a lasting power source, whatever's left of Ghidorah's consciousness in the skull proceeds to hijack the Mecha, making it start to Kill All Humans and try to kill Godzilla.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Apex Cybernetics claim to be enacting their Corporate Conspiracy to kill and usurp Godzilla, and then enslave or kill the other Titans, with a humanistic end-goal of protecting humanity against future Titan attacks and giving mankind control of its own destiny. But their excuses ring completely hollow when looking at: (1) their callous willingness to put millions of people in mortal danger just for the sake of garnering good publicity for themselves, (2) the fact they're targeting Godzilla first and foremost after everything that happened in Godzilla: King of the Monsters; on top of (3) the fact that the movie heavily implies (and the art book outright confirms) that Apex would have actually brought about an era of dystopic corporate world domination instead of making the world a better place for anyone if they won. Apex's mastermind Walter Simmons is particularly shown to be a self-absorbed, empathy-devoid, delusional Knight Templar whose core motivation for orchestrating Apex's plan is to feed his own obscenely-oversized ego by making sure he's the person who surpasses the Alpha Titans in power.
• No Waterproofing in the Future: After being locked out of the computer, Josh is able to shut down the satellite link providing energy to Mecha-Godzilla by pouring Bernie's flask of whiskey into the control panel, shorting it out. Granted, it's pointedly made clear he poured the whiskey into the exit port for the computer's cooling fan, which probably wouldn't be waterproofed to avoid a cooling malfunction.

O

• Obfuscating Stupidity: Bernie exaggerates his conspiracy theorist-ness to annoy a security guard into leaving his terminal.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Apex Cybernetics. Borders on Organization with Unlimited Funding when it’s revealed that they somehow built an underground maglev tunnel from Florida to Hong Kong without anyone knowing.
• Off with His Head!: Kong's preferred way of ending a fight. In the Hollow Earth he does this to a Warbat after beating it to death...and then proceeds to eat the decapitated head. And it's also Kong's finishing move on Mechagodzilla, even brandishing his severed head Predator-style as a final coup de grace.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Kong has an expression that screams this multiple times during his first encounter with Godzilla, both because he recognizes to some degree how powerful Godzilla is, how disadvantaged he is with nothing but a few boats as footholds, and that Jia will be in great danger during the fight. It's notably the most frightened we've ever seen him look.
  • Godzilla ends up with a similar expression as he realizes Mechagodzilla is about to kill him and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
  • Maia is visibly wide-eyed in horror when she realizes she donked up and Kong is about to kill her, spending her final seconds screaming a Rapid-Fire "No!" before she goes up in flames.
  • Team Kong follow Kong out of the Hollow Earth...and react completely naturally to being right in the middle of the final fight between Godzilla and Kong and having to frantically dodge both of them.
  • Ren is visibly looking around in correct worry when his psionic uplink to the Hollow Earth energy-empowered Mechagodzilla is severed due to Ghidorah's remnant consciousness taking control for itself.
  • Played for laughs as Simmons starts monologuing his motivations to Team Godzilla - as the now Ghidorah-controlled Mechagodzilla activates in the background and starts advancing on them. Madison, Bernie and Josh can only back away from the window in terror as Simmons gradually twigs something is wrong, just before Mechagodzilla swats him into oblivion.
    Simmons: ...oh, shit.
  • In the fight in Hong Kong, Kong is visibly afraid when Godzilla rapidly fires his atomic breath, and all he can do is run.
• Older Than They Look: Madison Russell hasn't aged much in the five In-Universe years since King of the Monsters, given the films were shot only 1.5 years apart.
• Omnicidal Maniac: While implied in the film due to being a resurrected/reincarnated King Ghidorah, Madison in the novel points out if Mechagodzilla kills Godzilla and Kong, it can, and most likely will, retake command of the Titans to resume destroying the earth.
• One Myth to Explain Them All: The novelization has several chapter-opening passages referring to myths and legends of people originally coming out of the earth, and suggests that all of them are rooted in the Titans and the Iwi having originally come from the Hollow Earth. The novel also suggests that the Hollow Earth is the real origin point of all life on Earth, and it's where Earth's biosphere recovered and re-sprouted after every extinction event.
• Only Evil Can Die: One of the signs of just how Lighter and Softer this film is than the previous MonsterVerse is that with the exceptions of Mooks, a few nameless civilians in the Crowd Panics, and a couple Rock Critters being eaten by their natural predators; none of the heroes ultimately die, and all of the relevant character deaths are antagonists: the core members of Apex, the Warbats, and Mechagodzilla.
• Only Sane by Comparison:
  • Ren Serizawa is the only one in the Apex Mechagodzilla team's control hub who protests when Simmons impulsively wants the Hollow Earth energy formula uploaded to the Mecha immediately without proper testing, pointing out to Simmons they have no idea without basic testing what side-effects the formula will have on the Mecha. That being said, Ren was still stupid and arrogant enough to think using Ghidorah's Not Quite Dead alien skull as the brain for a nigh-unstoppable Mecha wasn't likely to backfire on them, not to mention Ren's motivation for joining Apex and building Mechagodzilla is getting revenge on Godzilla for a lifetime of daddy issues of all things.
  • Played With among Team Godzilla. Madison and Josh have some traits which make them go back and forth on this. Josh is the team's token Cowardly Lion who will futilely advocate caution when the other two head in a direction that has a lot of ominous signs around it, while Madison comes off as the most mature of the three despite being younger than Bernie and she doesn't show Bernie and Josh's respective Plucky Comic Relief.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: A lot of the film's posters and promos, and ultimately the film's opening sequence, tend to invoke this contrast by directly aligning the titular Titans with either color palette, creating a clear contrast in images which feature both Titans. Godzilla is aligned with a greenish-blue palette reflecting his aquatic elemental alignment, and Kong is aligned with a reddish-orange (or alternatively earthy-brown) palette, reflecting his earthy elemental alignment. The color alignments furthermore reflect that in this film, Kong is the more human-aligned Titan who's more focused on what's in front of him, whereas Godzilla is the more ruthless Titan who's ultimately more focused on the bigger picture.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Godzilla is attacking people directly, something noted In-Universe as being out of character and making it clear something is very wrong. And indeed, it isn't Godzilla to blame: he's attacking Apex headquarters because he can sense Ghidorah's continued presence—from Ghidorah's surviving skull which is being used as MechaGodzilla's neural pathways—meaning that they're all but deliberately provoking him.
  • Jia has one in the novelization — Andrews sees her crying for the first time ever when the bio-dome, and with it the last living vestige of Skull Island's ecosystem, is destroyed to make way to transport Kong.
• Out of the Frying Pan: Towards the end of the film, Team Kong narrowly escape a swarm of man-eating Hellhawks in the Hollow Earth via the new passage blasted through the Earth by Godzilla, and they emerge straight into Kong and Godzilla's fight in Hong Kong.
• Outside-Context Problem: Only Team Godzilla know Mechagodzilla exists for most of the film (even Godzilla, who only knows Ghidorah is still alive somehow), and even then they only learn that halfway through. What even Apex didn't know is that King Ghidorah is still alive inside his neurons and the moment Mechagodzilla is complete, he hijacks it leaving everyone shocked when he bursts out of their base and begins leveling Hong Kong.

P

• Past Experience Nightmare: In the novelization, Nathan frequently dreams back to the day that his and David's mission went horribly wrong and his brother died. The novel also states that Mark Russell still has recurring dreams of the moment he found Madison near-dead in the rubble of Boston during Godzilla and Ghidorah's battle.
• Perpetual Storm: Skull Island has become covered in one which has wiped out the Iwi and seemingly also most of the island's animal and planimal life, and has forced Monarch to build a containment dome around Kong to save his life. Whilst there are still living trees amid the raging winds, rain and darkness outside the dome, it's explicitly confirmed in the novelization that all life on Skull Island has been surely dying off at varying rates in the years since the storm closed over the island.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Despite all-round being a snooty, stuck-up Rich Bitch who won't hesitate to betray Team Kong and threaten their lives if they deviate from Apex's plan, Maia is notably the first person to run to Jia's aid immediately when the latter and Dr. Andrews almost drown during the naval battle.
  • Implied with Godzilla, who is a lot more anti-heroic and aggressive in this movie than he was in his last two MonsterVerse appearances, amidst his fight with Kong. After Godzilla completely savages Kong to the point of almost killing him, Godzilla doesn't kill the defeated primate when the latter still defiantly refuses to submit to Godzilla's authority – instead, Godzilla just leaves Kong lying where he is (albeit with mortal injuries) and Godzilla re-focuses his attention on destroying Mechagodzilla.
• Plagued by Nightmares: The novelization states David has a recurring nightmare almost every night, where he's back at his and David's disastrous attempt to access the Hollow Earth and he tries to change it at the last minute. Also in the novel, Mark's own recurring Past Experience Nightmare of Madison's Near-Death Experience in Boston highlights his overprotectiveness of Madison since the incident and his inability to move past any of his trauma.
• Planetary Core Manipulation: Lind's goal is to make it to Hollow Earth and gain access to the immense power source there, hoping it will give them an edge over Godzilla. When Maia's team extracts a sample to analyze and synthesize it, Godzilla immediately senses it and uses his atomic breath to blast a hole straight from China directly into Hollow Earth in attempt to stop them.
• Playing Possum: Realizing they don't have much chance fighting Godzilla in the middle of the ocean, the surviving ships carrying Kong completely power down to make Godzilla think they've been destroyed (or the very least, that they're admitting defeat). Kong, already exhausted by his initial battle with Godzilla, is in no position to disagree, but does flash Godzilla a Death Glare as he swims away. Of course, now that they're "dead" they can't move or else Godzilla will realize they were just pretending and return, so they switch to carrying Kong by air.
• Plot Parallel:
  • Team Godzilla and Team Kong never directly meet until the very penultimate scene, and their stories are largely separate from one-another: either team consists of a ragtag gang supporting one of the two Alpha Titans as the hero the world needs, one member of either team is prominently holding onto a tragic keepsake from a lost loved one (Bernie/Nathan), and at least one member of either team is a young girl whose capabilities are initially underestimated by their parental figures (Madison/Jia). Both teams are looking to save the world in the ways they think it needs to be saved, yet they completely fail to stop the early stages of Apex's plans from activating: after Mechagodzilla becomes possessed by Ghidorah and attempts to murder Godzilla and Kong, either team contributes in a small but critical manner to aiding the benevolent Alphas and averting Mechagodzilla's victory.
  • The novelization has a recurring theme of tested and troubled relationships between parents and children: here, Madison's issues with Mark, who refuses to listen to her and is in denial about the merits she earned with her heroism during the previous movie, are paralleled by Jia's issues with Dr. Andrews, who doesn't quite listen to nor understand the girl and underestimates Jia's keener awareness concerning Kong. Both girls also have a negative counterpart on Apex who is present in either of their plotlines: for Jia, it's Walter Simmons' "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl Maia, for Madison it's Ishirō Serizawa's vindictive and wayward son Ren.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Inverted. Both Josh the Cowardly Lion nerd and Hayes the slightly-manic Conspiracy Theorist end up being this on Team Godzilla, making Madison the Only Sane Woman on the three-man team.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • What's got Godzilla literally burning mad is that he can detect King Ghidorah still on the planet somewhere. The trouble is, he can only get a clear reading every time Mechagodzilla and thereby the remaining brain is activated. Beyond that, all he can do is seek out for another Alpha Titan, and it just so happens that Kong's getting escorted across the sea...
  • Godzilla and Kong's species have a blood feud dating back eons, which is why Godzilla views Kong as a threat. However, Kong, having been born in the modern day, has no clue about this and the humans, who do know about it, don't seem to keen on informing him of why even after Kong reveals he can talk via sign language.
  • Kong has no interest in any Alpha fight for dominance, preferring to find a new place to call home. But he doesn't realize he's been used to find an energy source to power up Mechagodzilla which inadvertently provokes Godzilla into firing his atomic breath straight into the Hollow Earth, destroying Kong's newly discovered ancestral home. This sends Kong into a furious state and he travels to Hong Kong to personally end Godzilla for these unprovoked attacks. Which in turn significantly delays Godzilla long enough for Ghidorah to hijack Mechagodzilla and the fight itself tires Godzilla out enough for Mechagodzilla to have an easy victory.
  • In general, Godzilla's entire rampages are to stop Mechagodzilla/King Ghidorah, but because he sent all other Titans undergound and Mothra isn't around there isn't any party around to help clarify and his assaults against Kong due to mistaking him for the threat end up causing more conflict than necessary that nearly results in his death.
• Precious Photo: On Team Godzilla, Bernie shows Josh and Madison a photo of his late wife Sara. On Team Kong, Nathan keeps a photo of himself and his late brother David. Both deceased loved ones are part of either character's respective Death by Origin Story.
• Precursors: It's revealed that Kong's ancestors apparently had a whole civilization in Hollow Earth, building the citadel where Kong finds his Titanus gojira-fin axe.
• Pride: Apex mix this with a giant bubbling pot of blasphemy. Both Walter Simmons and Ren Serizawa respectively have a big case of It's All About Me to their respective motivations. Not only did they create Mechagodzilla with the intention of usurping Godzilla as the sole Alpha Titan and then exterminating or enslaving all the other Titans, but they were actually stupid enough to use Ghidorah's not-completely-dead remains as their nigh-unstoppable weapon's 'BRAIN and not expect it to liably backfire on them. Even the U.S. military and the Eco-Terrorists in the previous MonsterVerse films were never quite as stupid as Apex are.
• Primate Versus Reptile: The title says it all. In addition, Kong also ends up fighting Warbats - flying Titan snakes - when he gets to the Hollow Earth.
• Properly Paranoid: After APEX gets the energy source from Hollow Earth, Simmons tells Ren to prepare to activate Mechagodzilla, but Ren cautions him that they don't know what effects the energy will have on the mecha, only for Walter to tell him to "get in the damn chair". Turns out Ren was right, as Simmons' refusal to listen to him cost them both their lives.
• Protectorate: Ilene Andrews explains that both she and Kong have formed a protective relationship with a young Iwi girl named Jia, who can communicate with Kong via sign-language.
• Psychopathic Manchild:
  • Walter Simmons doesn't exactly act like a grown man when the benevolent mask is off, while he's overseeing the Mechagodzilla project into which he's poured his pride and dreams. He looks like a giddy child when the test run of his Secret Weapon is about to start, and he shouts like one too when Godzilla blasting Hong Kong with his Atomic Breath makes Simmons realize that Maia has found the Unobtainium. When Ren protests to Simmons' impulsive, impractical decision to skip over basic testing and integrate the energy source into their weapon immediately, Simmons' entire demeanor screams of an eight-year-old who's eager to open his Christmas present and annoyed at an elder interrupting him. Underneath the superficial charm, Simmons is basically an evil kid who sees the whole world and everything in it as his own personal playground, which makes the fact that the Ghidorah skull he's using came from the Psychopathic Manchild left head quite poetic.
  • It's subdued, but Ren Serizawa shows shades of this in the novelization; regarding the psionic uplink as "not only his invention, but also his new favorite toy", and overall exhibiting a notably childlike glee in his thoughts throughout the test run where he savagely butchers a Skullcrawler, on top of his father issues which he's allowed to define the rest of his life. The novel version of Ren's death further shows this childish side of Ren when he sees his father's face in his dying thoughts. Overall, Ren at his heart is implied to be a child who never truly grew up and is still screaming for his father's attention.
• Purple Is Powerful: Apex have a purple color theme, with red and blue lighting in their facilities, and Simmons' control hub has true purple lights, fitting with their desire to dominate all the Titans and become the most powerful force on Earth. This true purple lighting is also in the Skull Room where Ghidorah's severed skull is controlling Mechagodzilla. Overall, it emphasizes how Simmons thinks he's going to be on top of everything and how Ghidorah is the one who's really on top.

R

• Rage Breaking Point: The first time Godzilla attacks Kong unprovoked, Kong lets it go. The second time, Kong does not.
  • Godzilla reaches his during round three of his and Kong's battle, starting with flinging Kong by the arm several city blocks away, going full crocodile mode and clawing up Kong's chest, then finishing with crushing Kong's chest underfoot almost to the breaking point.
• Rapid-Fire "No!":
  • Bernie utters this when he returns with Josh and Madison to the ruins of the Apex base in Pensacola only to find that the giant cybernetic eyeball he saw has disappeared.
  • Maia Simmons's last words.
• Really Moves Around: The novelization reveals Mark and Madison have been moving around a lot due to Monarch work in the years since King of the Monsters before settling in Pensacola where Mark's sister lives.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Admiral Wilcox listens to Team Kong during the mission and looks to them for advice and Titan expertise, but he still doesn't just blindly do what they say without them providing a proper reasoning behind it (although it should be noted that the novelization explicitly specifies he reports to Monarch during the mission rather than the other way round). He also seems to be relatively aware of the power discrepancy between human and Titan, understanding that the most the Navy can do against a Titan is distract or confuse it; which is more than can be said for the U.S. military leaders and officers in the previous MonsterVerse movies.
  • Zig-Zagged by Mark Russell, who dismisses every single thing Madison says when she approaches him no matter how full of common sense it is because he doesn't want to have to worry about her and thinks she's Just a Kid, but he's at least sensible enough to understand that Monarch should be prioritizing getting as many civilians as possible out of Godzilla's warpath rather than making vain efforts to engage him. In the novelization, he catches onto Apex being somehow involved in causing Godzilla's rampage a while before Mechagodzilla emerges, and begrudgingly admits to himself that Madison might've been right.
  • Monarch's director Guillerman is completely calm and quite alacritous during Godzilla's attack on Hong Kong, and has ordered a citywide evacuation. In the novelization, he straight-up demands Mark join him to advise him because Mark was the one who predicted Godzilla's first attack, and he distrusts Apex from the beginning but he refuses to jump to conclusions without any evidence.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • After learning of Walter's motives, Maddie calls him out on how his greed to make humans the apex predator again has destroyed what was essentially a peaceful coexistence between Titans and humans.
    "Godzilla left us in peace! You provoked him into war!"
  • In the novelization, the scene at the refugee camp isn't the only time Mark receives Calling the Old Man Out from Madison for his questionable behavior and how he's treating her, and she at one point hits him with this:
    "You're blackmailing me. With your fear. I'm supposed to cower at home for the rest of my life because you're afraid something might happen to me?"
• Reconstruction: Mechagodzilla has been tweaked so that he's overall more believable as a weapon to kill Godzilla. His arms have clawed hands that allow him to grasp Godzilla, and he's received boosters that massively increase his mobility, allowing him to run circles around his opponent, so he can get in tons of hits before Godzilla can strike back. His tail is drill-tipped, giving him a way around Godzilla's tough hide. All of his weapons are explicitly meant to take down Kaiju and work very well. His atomic breath equivalent is a continuous weapon and thus can overpower Godzilla's by simply pushing the latter until he has to breathe. Even the logistics behind him are addressed - there might not be any existing human-derived power source that can sustain him, but such a power source easily exists in a world filled with
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Mechagodzilla's eyes glow with a sinister red light.
  • Godzilla's eyes glow a searing crimson following both encounters with Kong.
• Red Is Violent: Mechagodzilla produces a crimson light from his internal power core which emanates from his eyes, mouth and between his exoskeleton's struts, and he's designed to be a pure killing machine even before he gets hijacked by an Omnicidal Maniac's subconsciousness. The Skullcrawler used in a test run also has an unusual red coloration to its skin, and its no less driven by man-eating Horror Hunger than others of its kind.
• Riddle for the Ages: A couple in the novelization.
  • Alan Jonah is selling two Ghidorah skulls to a prospective buyer. One Ghidorah skull he obtained in the end of the last film, but how he acquired a second skull is left completely unexplained.
  • The novel notes that the Antarctica Vile Vortex is no more than a few miles away from where Ghidorah was frozen, and apparently Monarch can only theorize about whether Ghidorah was headed for the vortex when he was beaten and frozen or he'd just emerged from the vortex — the fact that the ice around the vortex is over thirty-million years old while the ice that Ghidorah was frozen in was a lot younger supports the former interpretation.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: There's a moment in the novelisation where Monarch register a signal in Hong Kong as Mechagodzilla slaughters the Skullcrawler. Looking it over, Mark guesses that someone's producing a mechanical version of Ghidorah's call using an ORCA. He's halfway right - it's coming from an actual mechanical version of Ghidorah, as Mechagodzilla.
• Roar Before Beating: Multiple instances from multiple creatures. Godzilla and Kong both unmistakably exchange roars with each-other the second before they start fighting. In the Hollow Earth, a Warbat directs a more subdued roar at Kong before it lunges and tries to kill him. Godzilla and Mechagodzilla's battle starts with either of them roaring and then charging straight towards each-other with the aim to kill.
• Robotic Psychopath: Mechagodzilla's first act after breaking out of the Apex base is to level half of Hong Kong For the Evulz and then laugh about it before trying to brutally beat Godzilla to death. Given he's King Ghidorah, this is logical.
• Robot Me: Mechagodzilla features as the film's Big Bad, able to outmatch Godzilla with all of Godzilla's signature moves but more powerful.
• Rock Beats Laser: Super-charged axe meets laser-beam and missile robot. Axe wins.
• Roswell That Ends Well: When Team Godzilla discover Apex's maglev platform, the intercom voice mentions one of the trains is destined for Roswell. At the end of the film, Bernie starts badgering Mark Russell with questions about an alleged Monarch base in Roswell.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Apex's main headquarters in Hong Kong where Mechagodzilla is being completed is shaped like a pyramid and looks like a ziggurat, fitting since Apex have the same kind of arrogance that Percy Shelley's Ozymandias criticized the long-gone titular pharaoh for.
  • Mechagodzilla is introduced being risen out of the ground on a pedestal in a room dubbed a "sacrificial chamber", is presented as humanity's replacement for Godzilla (who stands in for God) while being incarnate of their hubris and lack of faith, and is ultimately the avatar for Ghidorah (Satan) to sow destruction. When it emerges in Hong Kong, it does so bursting out of a pyramid-shaped mountain with the sun and moon above it, like an evil pagan god. Mechagodzilla is essentially a false idol.
  • Kong's harnessing of Hollow Earth energy activates a giant Godzilla-like symbol on the ground as if a grim reminder that abuse of power always bring about Godzilla's wrath. That's even more true when Godzilla fires upon Kong.
  • King Kong's defeat of Mechagodzilla (who is basically housing Ghidorah's consciousness), where he used his axe powered by Godzilla's Atomic Breath,is a good symbolism of a Warrior King (Kong in this case) channeling the power of God(zilla) to defeat the Devil (Ghidorah).
• Running on All Fours:
  • Godzilla utilizes this to terrifying effect when he really loses his temper against Kong and goes all out, attacking Kong with such speed and ferocity that the King of the Apes simply can't keep up.
  • Kong himself walks upright most of the time but knuckle-walks like a typical ape when running in the Hollow Earth.

S

• Sadist: Ren Serizawa seems to enjoy having the power of a god (specifically power of life and death) over a Skullcrawler during Mechagodzilla's test run, flashing a Cheshire Cat Grin as his creation kills the creature. It might have something to do with the fact he's basically Drifting with Ghidorah while controlling the Mecha. Later, the sentient Mechagodzilla shows an excessive streak of this a lot like King Ghidorah before it did, which makes sense since it's Ghidorah's consciousness remnants that have granted the Mecha a sentient mind.
• Scrap Heap Hero:
  • Mark Russell, who in the previous film was a jaded, emotional wreck who'd resigned from official Monarch duty for five years, has rejoined Monarch after the previous film saw him come around to processing his grief. That being said, he hasn't internalized much from his mistakes and his worst impulses haven't gone away at all: in fact, they directly interfere with his job when he gets emotional over Godzilla's attack, rendering him useless to stopping Apex.
  • At the movie's start, Dr. Nathan Lind is resigned from Monarch and he's a washout from the scientific community with a dead-end job at Denham University, not least because of the grief and guilt over getting his brother and several other people killed with his failed attempt to pioneer manned travel to the Hollow Earth. Once Walter Simmons and Ren Serizawa convince him that he can succeed where he failed before and he can help to stop Godzilla's rampage, Nathan shaves his beard and rejoins Monarch to co-lead Team Kong on their expedition.
• Secret Weapon: Walter Simmons hints that his company has such a weapon to use against Godzilla in the aftermath of the Pensacola attack, stating on national TV that Apex has a plan to permanently destroy the now-vilified Godzilla without specifying to the world (or to Nathan Lind) exactly what that weapon is. It's revealed that Apex's secret weapon is Mechagodzilla, which they've been creating in advance of Godzilla's attacks with the aim to kill and replace him, and that the Mecha's creation is actually the entire reason why Godzilla has been attacking in the first place.
• Sequel Non-Entity: Barring Mark Russell, none of the surviving members of The Team in Godzilla: King of the Monsters return. Even in the novelization, only a few of them get so much as a name-drop.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • It's hinted in the film, and confirmed in the novelization, that the public are still treating the Hollow Earth as if its existence wasn't confirmed during the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), with this film's novelization hinting that Monarch kept silent about their discovery in the previous film. This directly contradicts an In-Universe publicized article in the Creative Closing Credits of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which addresses the topic of the Hollow Earth and its connection to the Titans as if its existence was verified to the public alongside the formerly-secret files that Monarch have decided to release.
  • Nathan Lind outright states in his first scene that human travel to the Hollow Earth is impossible after his and his brother's first attempt failed. This ignores that in the directly-preceding film to this one, Monarch successfully travelled into Godzilla's Hollow Earth lair more or less by accident, in a military submarine which not only survived the turbulent entry but was still seaworthy afterwards (if not after the equally-turbulent exit). Of course, Nathan could be referring specifically to the spherical area of the Hollow Earth seen in this film rather than the underwater cavern that was accessed in the previous film.
  • Downplayed, as the characters in question could simply be referring to the city in its former glory, but the use of the phrase "could light up Las Vegas for a week" comes off as this when King of the Monsters showed Vegas is irradiated, abandoned and overgrown with vegetation following the MUTO's attack in Godzilla.
  • Number 10 (which has a notably different coloration from the Skullcrawlers previously seen on Skull Island) bleeds bright-green blood and viscera, whereas in Kong: Skull Island, the Skullcrawler in the boneyard scene bled pink blood. The B-Roll footage shows that Number 10's remains originally would have been a lifelike crimson, more or less preserving series continuity, but this was apparently changed at some point before the movie was released.
• Shooting Superman:
  • Of course. When Godzilla attacks the Apex building in Florida, a few jet fighters try shooting him. When he shows up again to attack Kong, the fleet of ships makes the mistake of shooting Godzilla, which naturally leads to him destroying them. A couple other ships fire at Godzilla but he's so focused on Kong that he ignores them. When he's about to roast Kong, a long jet fighter fires off a few shots which while it does no damage but does distract Godzilla long enough for Kong to push him off the aircraft carrier. When he attempts to drown Kong, the humans fire explosives at Godzilla, though this was simply done with the intent to stun him long enough enough for Kong to escape his grip and swim back to the surface, and wasn't expected to harm either of them.
  • Maia tries to shoot at Kong when he blocks the way the surface. The guns on her HEAV have no effect on him and he crushes it with her still in it after making sure Jia's not inside it.
• Shout-Out:
  • The entire first fight between Godzilla and Kong is a whole scene shout out to Neon Genesis Evangelion, which did the same exact scene 26 years earlier. And later on, when Ren questions how the injection of the Hollow Earth energy into "the mecha" might negatively affect it, Simmons just tells him to "get in the goddamn chair".
  • During the first confrontation between the two Titans, Godzilla, after plowing through one of the escort ships, gets the anchor of one half caught on his tail, causing him to drag it behind him. As he approaches the ship carrying Kong, the only indication of his (underwater) presence is the ship being dragged on the surface, much like the shark dragging the barrels in Jaws.
  • One of the HEAVs unleashing a massive volley of missiles against a Warbat attempting to eat Kong is an homage to the Itano Circus from Macross.
    • In the same scene, the director commented that he hadn't seen anyone pick up on the shout-out to the holo-deck murder scene in Jason X.
  • This wouldn't be the first time a Legendary film saw a human-created mecha controlled using a kaiju brain going rogue and creating havoc, as Pacific Rim: Uprising featured a kaiju/Jaeger hybrid called Obsidian Fury.
  • Kong fixing his dislocated shoulder by slamming it into a building is an homage to Lethal Weapon 2, in keeping with Kong's portrayal being styled after an 80s action hero.
  • Mechagodzilla's tail drill is reminiscent of the Dragonzord's/Dragon Caesar's from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers / Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, which itself had been inspired by Showa-Era Mechagodzilla.
  • Kong rips Mechagodzilla's head off, brandishing it with a dangling spinal column and roaring in a shot reminiscent of Predator (specifically, Predator 2, the City Hunter with Jerry Lambert's skull). Kong's roar at this moment even sounds a bit like a Predator's victory howl.
• Sickening "Crunch!"!: Kong punches Godzilla in the leg he stabbed his axe with, there is an audible loud crunch and Godzilla roars in pain.
• Sistine Steal:
  • A young Iwi girl named Jia points at Kong with her finger, and the creature reaches to her with his gigantic finger in response, with both fingers touching.
  • One of the landmarks in the Hollow Earth a massive rock that's shaped like a pointing hand. While floating through the air of the ecosystem, Kong reaches out towards the large hand and grabs one of its fingers to anchor himself.
• Slasher Smile: Godzilla shows a blood chilling one against Kong in the Hong Kong battle after landing an Atomic Breath on Kong's back.
  • Mechagodzilla pulls off one as well as a machine possibly could when he finally has Godzilla at his mercy.
• Smart Animal, Inconvenient Instincts: This is the real problem with Godzilla. His hunt for Ghidorah's remains is hampered by his instincts, which drove him to seek out Kong after he lost the signal Ghidorah was emitting. Kong did nothing to provoke Godzilla, he just had the misfortune to be born an Alpha-level Titan of a species that once went to war with Godzilla's own, and who also happened to be the only living Titan on Earth that had yet to formally submit to him. Without Ghidorah to focus on, Godzilla was driven by his instincts to seek out the only other challenger to his title instead, inadvertently starting a feud that weakened him enough for a Ghidorah-infused Mechagodzilla to start manhandling him once the Final Battle started.
• Smug Snake:
  • Walter Simmons very much, and he has a glass of alcohol in all his control room scenes where his Bitch in Sheep's Clothing mask is down in order to accentuate it. He's a narcissistic utter egotist who is bubbling to the brim with hubris, and he sees himself as the next visionary who will lead humanity into a bold new era of domination over the Titans, but he's possibly the most Too Dumb to Live character in the history of the MonsterVerse with how he uses King Ghidorah's still-telepathic and little-understood extraterrestrial remains as the damned brain for something that he'd been designing to be unstoppable to every other force man and Titan on the planet! The eco-terrorists in King of the Monsters at least could claim they didn't know until after they released Ghidorah that he was a complete Omnicidal Maniac who could wipe out all complex life on Earth; Simmons has no such excuse for his stupidity after Ghidorah's global Titan-rampage five years ago.
  • The novelization reveals that Simmons' Dragon Ren Serizawa isn't really any better: besides being equally a part of the spoiler-y thing above, he thinks he's a mental god born into an inadequate human body, and he has the hubris to compare himself and Godzilla like they're equals. He's also sure he'll be the foe to succeed in killing Godzilla, but the novelization suggested that Ren's creation would've lost in a fair fight against Godzilla where the latter wasn't weakened and Wingard suggested that Godzilla wouldn't have lost the Beam-O-War had he been fresh, though whether Godzilla would have beaten Mechagodzilla if he had been at his best shape or lost but put up more of a fight is not stated, however.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Kong fights a group of winged serpentine Titans variously called Nozuki and Warbats by their official merchandise, which notes they are predators that can easily rip through armored vehicles with their fangs. The Skullcrawlers also make a reappearance in this film.
• Social Media Before Reason: When Godzilla makes landfall in Hong Kong, a crowd of bystanders can be seen taking out their phones to photograph or record him. Granted, he's moving away from said bystanders' position, but considering that as far as humanity knows at this point Godzilla has become hostile to humans...
• The Sociopath: Walter Simmons shows many signs of a high-functioning narcissistic sociopath: Lack of Empathy, superficial charm to mask said lack of empathy, and putting millions of innocent people in danger all to feed his already-gigantic ego. Meanwhile, Mechagodzilla gets hijacked by Ghidorah's subconsciousness (the same Ghidorah who was an Omnicidal Maniac of fundamentally-different behavior to the non-alien Titans) and essentially becomes Ghidorah reincarnated.
• Soft Reboot: This movie is practically a reset to the previous MonsterVerse films including Godzilla: King of the Monsters in its own right, despite being made back-to-back with King of the Monsters and released only a couple years afterward^note And even then, the film was slated to be released even earlier, before the COVID-19 Pandemic delayed it. Although the Hollow Earth is explored in full in this film, it's a completely-different aspect and portrayal of the realm compared to the cavern featured in the previous film. With the exceptions of Madison and Mark Russell, none of the other human characters from Godzilla: King of the Monsters nor the first two movies return in any form (and Mark is Demoted to Extra in the finished film to boot) — even Alan Jonah is absent, leaving it practically unexplained in the film version how Ghidorah's skull made its way from his custody into Apex Cybernetics'. On the Kaiju side of things, Godzilla, Kong, and Ghidorah's undead remains are the only Titans to return for this film: all the Titans that were awakened in Godzilla: King of the Monsters are absent because they apparently went back into hibernation sometime after the previous film's Creative Closing Credits (subverting the Dawn of an Era portrayal of the Titans' awakening in that film and minimizing the film's ramifications on the bigger MonsterVerse); Skull Island has been effectively destroyed and most of its wildlife wiped out before this film's start, so it can no longer be Kong's home; and many of the other plot threads and storylines that Godzilla: King of the Monsters' aforementioned closing set up^note Titans converging on Skull Island, a hint that Mechagodzilla was being built on the island instead of in Florida and Hong Kong, Monarch going public about their findings including the Hollow Earth's existence, etc. are dismissed, forgotten about or even outright contradicted by this film. Even Maia Simmons' plot-relevant remark about how the HEAVs' power can light up Las Vegas for a week seems slightly out of place, since the previous film established that Las Vegas has remained in ruins and become overgrown since its devastation ten years earlier in the MonsterVerse in-universe timeline.
• Sole Survivor:
  • After Camazotz caused the hurricane surrounding Skull Island to close in on it, all of the Iwi except Jia were wiped out in the ensuing floods. Furthermore, all of the fauna aside from a few Skullcrawlers were wiped out as well.
  • Kong and Godzilla are the last known surviving members of their species, though it's speculated that others may exist in the Hollow Earth.
• So Much for Stealth: This trope occurs on a big scale with the naval journey to transport Kong across the planet: the naval escort carrying Kong actively steers clear of Godzilla's territorial routes to avoid a confrontation which could spell theirs and Kong's doom, but Godzilla finds them anyway and attacks. The fallout is so bad that the humans have to airlift Kong the rest of the way to Antarctica, knowing that Godzilla will attack again the moment the remaining naval ships start moving.
• Soul Fragment: Based on the novelization's expansion, this works a couple ways with Mechagodzilla. In both versions of the story, the Mecha becomes sentient due to Ghidorah's subconsciousness in the three-headed monster's skull hijacking the Mecha once it's empowered, with Word of God indicating that Ghidorah's consciousness merged with the Mecha's artificial intelligence to form a new personality. In the novelization, Ren Serizawa's mind is trapped inside the Mecha and overwritten when its sentient mind forms, and it's hinted (with the novel specifying that Mechagodzilla's new mind has no memory of its past life as part of Ghidorah) that the Mecha's fixation on killing Godzilla probably comes from Ren's mind being digested into its personality.
• Spanner in the Works: Team Godzilla. Unlike Team Kong, whose actions are essential in moving the plot forward, Team Godzilla's only role up until the Final Battle against Mechagodzilla is discovering the conspiracy behind Apex. While important for the audience's sake, it's technically inconsequential in the grand scheme of things — until they manage to sabotage Mechagodzilla's remote control panel at a pivotal moment, giving Kong and Godzilla enough breathing room to finish it off. If they hadn't been there, Mechagodzilla would've killed both Godzilla and Kong before going on to destroy what was left of Hong Kong and likely the rest of the world.
• Spiritual Antithesis: To the preceding movie, Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). One is a Godzilla-focused movie with heroes and antagonists oriented around nature, Godzilla is in an extremely heroic role, and the conflict starts with the human antagonists championing the Titans conquering humanity; while the other is a Kong-centric movie with heroes and antagonists oriented around technology, Godzilla is in a more antagonistic role, and the conflict starts with the human contrasting sequel antagonists championing humanity conquering the Titans.
• Stuff Blowing Up: We've got Godzilla's Atomic Breath blowing up stuff at Apex Cybernetics, Pensacola, and we've got the naval battle scene where lots of jets and an entire naval carrier get turned into fireballs on account of Godzilla and Kong's fighting.
• Super-Empowering: Godzilla grants Kong the ability to destroy Mechagodzilla by focusing his atomic breath onto Kong's axe, granting the weapon increased lethal strength.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: Moreso compared to previous entries in the MonsterVerse. Even though Kong ultimately loses his fight against Godzilla (and almost dies from his wounds thanks to him), he's able to save the reptilian Titan from being killed by Mechagodzilla at the last moment; this forces the two heroic kaijus to team up in order to brutally decimate Mecha. As a result, Godzilla spares Kong and — with Mechagodzilla no longer a factor — goes back to being a largely benevolent protector of the Earth as its dominant Titan, while Kong is allowed to roam free in his new home in the Hollow Earth.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • Dr. Lind's state at the start of the film — having quit Monarch due to a tragedy in which he lost family, and being reluctant to confront that situation again — is very similar to Mark's position at the start of King of the Monsters.
  • Ren Serizawa is similar to Aaron Brooks (the son of Houston Brooks) from The Birth of Kong comic, in that both their fathers are major Monarch operatives who respectively revere one of the two heroic Alpha Titans of this film, and in both Ren and Aaron's cases they disagree with their fathers' views and think humanity should be actively trying to wipe the creatures out. However, whereas Aaron experiences Character Development and becomes a much wiser person who comes to understand his father's viewpoint, Ren does not.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Apex has terrible security, with Team Godzilla having little trouble sneaking through their facilities. Of course, given Apex's supreme hubris, this is completely in character.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain:
  • Exaggerated with the two main Titan antagonists, Godzilla (who's decidedly the more antagonistic Titan in the titular conflict despite still being a force of good), and Mechagodzilla.
    • Godzilla (Sympathetic) is more ruthless and aggressive than his previous MonsterVerse appearances, not hesitating to massacre humans in his way, plus going out of his way to seek a conflict with Kong, but he's ultimately still a protector of the Earth. He's only acting up because he's trying to find and destroy Mechagodzilla, since he can sense its signal and identifies it as a serious rival to his dominance, and it's also implied that Godzilla knows Mechagodzilla's human creators are unwittingly reanimating Ghidorah via the Mecha (and after everything that happened in the previous movie, with humanity and Godzilla having worked together to stop Ghidorah destroying their world after humans tried to control Ghidorah, no less); making Godzilla's rage and belligerence understandable.
    • Mechagodzilla (Despicable) is initially under the control of Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremists whom are happily manipulating Godzilla into decimating the densely-populated Hong Kong so that said extremists can Take Over the World. And then once Ghidorah's subconsciousness corrupts the Mecha's A.I. and makes it autonomous of said controllers, the Mecha begins to kill all humans on sight, and it attempts to kill Godzilla and steal his kingship over the other monsters; just as Ghidorah previously did.
  • Highly downplayed with the novelization versions of Walter Simmons and Ren Serizawa. They're both equally complicit in a Corporate Conspiracy which deliberately puts millions of innocent people in a rampaging Alpha Titan's warpath and seeks to murder Godzilla, and both villains have very selfish motivations and are treated as completely inexcusable. However, the novel goes into detail on Ren's Freudian Excuse, revealing that he's a troubled former "Well Done, Son" Guy who mainly wants to kill Godzilla out of a sense of revenge and grief that Godzilla's existence robbed him of a relationship with his father up to the latter's Heroic Sacrifice (Sympathetic); whereas Simmons is a sociopathic narcissist who commits his crimes purely to fuel his own ego, and he has no hidden depths nor Freudian Excuse (Despicable).

T

• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: With regards to the three Kaiju present in the film. Kong lacks both the raw destructive force to overcome Godzilla's regeneration and the combat experience to deliver a decisive blow with his weapon. Godzilla has no answer for Mechagodzilla's anti-Kaiju weaponry or raw speed, which is backed up by Ghidorah's experience in combating the King of the Monsters. Finally, Mechagodzilla has no combat knowledge with regards to Kong, who has the speed and agility to keep up with it, but no regeneration to counter any damage done. That last one is downplayed, as Kong's axe holds no charge at first, but the ape lands several strikes in succession on Mechagodzilla, including sweeping its legs out from under it, that would have crippled it had the axe been charged. Once charged, Kong repeats the process with much better results.
• Tail Slap:
  • Godzilla uses his tail to knock fighter jets out of the sky during his first battle with Kong. In the Hong Kong battle, Godzilla swiftly flicks his tail with enough force to topple Kong.
  • Like Godzilla, the Kaiju Big Bad can use its tail to slap powerful Titans away. Mechagodzilla uses its tail to smack Kong clean off of its shoulders with brute strength, and later when the Mecha is on the ground, it swipes at Kong with its tail again to unbalance the latter and give the Mecha time to get back up.
• Terminator Impersonator: With his glowing red eyes, skull-like face, partially-organic circuitry and single-minded mission to exterminate all Titans, Mechagodzilla is essentially a kaiju version of the Terminator in all but name.
• There Can Be Only One: Discussed by the humans. Dr. Andrews believes that Godzilla will hunt Kong down and fight him to the death the moment Kong steps out of his original territory's borders and into Godzilla's global territory, saying that two Alpha Titans can't coexist with each-other in the same place. Walter Simmons, with his monstrously warped notion of humanism, uses this ideology to justify creating Mechagodzilla and planning to get rid of the Alpha Titans, saying there can only be one reigning alpha species and he intends for it to be a monster that's under complete HUMAN control (which isn't as good a thing as it sounds in this setting). Both Andrews and Simmons are ultimately proven wrong in the end, when Godzilla and Kong not only put their animosity aside to destroy Mechagodzilla once Ghidorah's subconsciousness has possessed it, but afterwards the two Alphas opt to bury the hatchet with each-other and peacefully go their separate ways, with Kong reigning in the Hollow Earth whilst Godzilla maintains his dominance on the surface world.
• Throat Light: Godzilla, as always, when his Atomic Breath is charging up – as a matter of fact, it seems to show up a lot more frequently in this film than in his previous MonsterVerse appearances even when the jet of atomic fire isn't coming out, hinting that Godzilla has grown stronger. His Evil Knockoff Mechagodzilla analogously has a red-colored, lazer disc-based Throat Light when it's charging up its own Breath Weapon.
• Throwing the Distraction: At one point during the final duel, Kong tricks Godzilla into turning the opposite direction by throwing a crane and making it hit a building, and then leaping on Godzilla as he's looking away from him.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Despite the prior movies showing Godzilla choosing to avoid harming humans when he could, this film has him consciously attacking and destroying them. Madison notes that something the humans are doing seems to be provoking him, but she can't figure out what. Turns out he's not attacking humans, he's chasing Ghidorah. Or rather the signal being sent from Ghidorah's remains as they are integrated into Mechagodzilla. He's lashing out at a potentially world ending threat...that is housed in the centre of human populated areas. That said, he does act very aggressive with Kong (due to an ancient blood feud between their species), despite the ape having no interest in his challenge and MONARCH avoiding his waters, even taking sadistic glee at brutalizing him and leaving him to die of his injuries, though after Kong saved his life this might change.
• Too Dumb to Live: While the military was wise enough avoid directly combating the Titans, the stupidity is instead landed on the villains:
  • There have been a lot of cases of this on individual and organizational levels in the MonsterVerse's history... but all of the previous films' examples pale in comparison to this particular count of Apex Cybernetics' sheer stupidity. They incorporate Ghidorah's telepathic remains as the neural network for a mech which Apex specifically designed to be unstoppable against any Titan on the planet including an Alpha-level Titan; in blatant disregard for the facts Ghidorah has Bizarre Alien Biology that humans haven't made the first step to understanding and which could enable Ghidorah to cheat death for all they know, that Ghidorah's bones retaining their cognitive telepathy opens the door for the possibility that some of Ghidorah's actual consciousness could still be in there with it (which turns out to be the case), and the fact Ghidorah has established itself as a complete Omnicidal Maniac with an active homicidal hatred of humanity since it was alive. Notably, the skull is shown to produce Ghostly Wails even before it takes over Mechagodzilla's system, which are audible In-Universe to the characters based on how Madison finds the Skull Room, yet Apex don't think this is a red flag. Emma Russell at least could say she didn't know until she released Ghidorah that it was an invasive omnicidal alien — Apex have no such excuse for their stupidity. And lo and behold, all of this comes back to haunt them when Ghidorah's mind is reawakened after Mechagodzilla is super-charged with hollow earth energy. He subsequently hijacks the machine, killing both Simmons and Ren, and goes on a tear through Hong Kong to murder Godzilla.
    • During Godzilla's Pensacola attack, two Apex guards who catch Bernie running up a restricted corridor immediately stop him to demand he show them his clearance credentials (this when Bernie was just about to go back the way he came). Bernie promptly lampshades the trope by calling the guards out on how they're putting that at the top of their immediate priorities while Godzilla himself is rampaging in the area — the guards don't take Bernie's point, and guess whose Breath Weapon turns the guards into collateral damage five. Seconds. Later.
  • Maia's true goal was to enter Hollow Earth and collect energy there. As Godzilla literally blows a hole through the ground and into the surface of Hollow Earth, she tries to escape. Seeing Kong in the way, tells her mooks to shoot at him as opposed to just going around. She gets fatally crushed for her folly.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Trailers more or less put Mechagodzilla in the title. Many of the trailers also showed numerous shots from the very end of the movie. They also spoil the fact Kong knows sign language, which is a big reveal in the film. Most notably, the shots of Kong in the Hollow Earth at the last shots of the film, and the shot of Kong dropping his axe while Godzilla roars in the sunrise mist, after the two make amends, are all shown in the first trailer.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • In Team Kong's plotline, Nathan holds onto a toy figurine which belonged to his late brother before the latter died in their original effort to enter the Hollow Earth. Nathan is seen holding and contemplating it amidst his effort to succeed where his brother originally failed.
  • In Team Godzilla's plotline, Bernie holds onto a whiskey-filled flask (also a Memento Macguffin at the end) which was given to him by his late wife – the novelization reveals that Bernie's wife died in a car collision that was implicitly arranged by Apex, which is what motivates Bernie's investigation into the company. Bernie says that the day the flask runs empty is the day that he's given up.
• Truer to the Text: Mechagodzilla is finally back to being a villain after being heroic or anti-heroic in every appearance post Showa (even anime, who never got to the 'be used as an invasion tool' step and even as MechaGodzilla City it was largely on the heroes side and its threat was unintentional) appearance. Further more, while built by humans, it ultimately ends up being used as a weapon against humanity by an alien (King Ghidorah in this case).
• Trust Password: Conspiracy Theorist Bernie Hayes seeks like-minded individuals with the question "Tap or no tap?" based on his belief that the reason the government puts fluoride in tap water is to make people docile. The proper response is "No tap." Of course, one could point out that it's really a 50/50 chance, but unless people know his theories and understand the question in the first place, their response anyway would most likely be "Huh?"
• Turned Against Their Masters: Mechagodzilla was created by Apex to be a weapon against Godzilla and the other Titans, using the brain of Ghidorah's remaining head as a piloting system. However, after being enhanced by the power source from the center of the Earth, Ghidorah's conscious resurfaces, and takes control, annihilating the Apex facility.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The story is split into two main halves involving the human characters; Monarch attempting to reach the Hollow Earth with Kong's help, and Bernie, Madison, and Josh working to uncover the APEX conspiracy involving Godzilla. They don't end up meeting up until the very end (the stories, that is. The respective casts of each plot only ever share one single clip on-screen together).

U

• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: After three movies worth of build up — Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters — Godzilla and Kong finally throw-down with each other.
• Underestimating Badassery:
  • Zig-Zagged with Dr. Andrews. She somewhat underestimates the extent of Kong's intelligence, but she also recognizes (unlike Lind) that they can't truly control Kong if they try, and at most can only sort of bargain with or manipulate him. She's also certain that if Kong and Godzilla ever clash, it'll mean Kong's certain defeat and death — she's ultimately proven half-right.
  • Despite the remarkable amount of independence, good thinking, competence and Wise Beyond Their Years strength of character that Madison displayed in the previous film which was ultimately critical to securing King Ghidorah's downfall and minimizing civilian casualties, Mark is extremely patronizing towards her in this film, treating her like she's Just a Kid who doesn't have a clue what she's talking about regarding the Titans, even though she's the only person besides Bernie who has the common sense to realize that Apex are a Devil in Plain Sight and that people should be asking why Godzilla is rampaging first. In the novelization; pretty much everyone else in Monarch who Madison contacts about Godzilla's rampage regards her similarly, although they're a bit more polite than Mark is about it, and Mark has been in outright denial since the previous film that Madison is anything other than a normal, naive kid who doesn't know anything about what she wants.
• Underground City: In the Hollow Earth, Kong and the HEAVs discover a colossal temple surrounded by stone ape sculptures, built on a scale that's enormous even to Kong, and carved into a mountain infused with the strange energy of the Earth's core.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Apex overall. They don't care that Godzilla is the chief reason why all of humanity including Apex's troublemaking worthless asses weren't all killed by King Ghidorah or the MUTOs previously; to them, Godzilla's in the way of their plan to take over the Titans for themselves by usurping Godzilla with Mechagodzilla as the reigning alpha. To Ren Serizawa, Godzilla deserves to die because of Ren's daddy issues and because of all the casualties of Godzilla's previous battles against hostile Titans (no matter how many people Apex murders and sacrifices to achieve their goals). Likewise, Maia's actions over the film after the ocean battle don't show a lot of gratitude towards Kong for being the reason why Godzilla didn't sink them all.
• The Unishment: Kong is defeated by Godzilla and is essentially "exiled" to the Hollow Earth while Godzilla remains Alpha of the surface world... but given the state of Skull Island, the Hollow Earth is a far more lush and fertile home for Kong to rule over, and is the ancestral home of his kind.
• Unknown Rival:
  • Godzilla sees Kong as a threat to his sovereignty. For his part, Kong doesn't particularly care about Godzilla, if he's even aware of him. It takes two unprovoked attempts on his life from Godzilla and the temple of his ancestors' home being destroyed for Kong to decide enough is enough and take the initiative to fight Godzilla.
  • Ren Serizawa can also be considered this to Godzilla. Whilst Godzilla knows that some of the humans (specifically Apex) are building Mechagodzilla as a threat to his dominance, and the novelization all but confirms that Godzilla is indeed reacting so drastically because he can also sense that part of Ghidorah is still alive in the Mecha; not only does Godzilla as an animal likely have no idea of Ren's relation to the human who saved Godzilla's life in the previous film let alone Ren's motivations, but Ren also dies when Mechagodzilla becomes sentient before Ren ever gets the chance to fight the King of the Monsters with it.
• Unnecessarily Creepy Robot: This movie's version of Mechagodzilla is the evil looking version ever designed, with bright red eyes and a thin skeleton like body and uses a literal skull for its cockpit. It's like Apex wanted it to turn evil.
• Unobtainium: Apex believe based on satellite scanning that the Green Rocks in the Hollow Earth which are apparently the original source of Godzilla's bio-atomic powers can be harnessed as a completely-unparalleled energy source; which is something Apex need to get their Secret Weapon working, because there's literally no manmade power source available on Earth which can fully charge it up. To this end, Apex develop the Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicles with the aim of achieving human entry to and exit from the Hollow Earth without being crushed by the gravity inversion. The synthetic version of the energy source which Apex duplicate does just what they wanted it to, but it also does more, thanks in no small part to a lack of basic testing and Apex being stupid enough to connect a psychopathic Draconic Abomination's undead, haunted skull to their weapon.
• Unstoppable Rage: While Godzilla is known for being nigh-on unstoppable when he's good and pissed, it takes on an entire new level here in that he's locked himself into a state of constant, burning and uncontrollable fury due to King Ghidorah being saved by APEX. This reaches its logical conclusion when Kong actually wounds Godzilla with his ancestral axe and unintentionally gets in the way of his search for Ghidorah's remains, causing Godzilla to hit his Rage Breaking Point and go outright feral on him.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • Team Kong, in particular Nathan (who persuaded the others to join the mission to transport Kong to the Hollow Earth after Simmons and Ren first approached him with the idea to reach the Hollow Earth), are this to Apex, who are using them to reach the Hollow Earth's primordial energy source so they can use it to lastingly power Mechagodzilla for their Evil Plan.
  • According to the novelization, Walter is this to Ren, as Ren's real reason for creating Mechagodzilla was to use it to become an artificial god and kill Godzilla for personal reasons, and planned to kill Walter the moment he no longer needed him.
  • While how much is ambiguous, at best everything Apex does only served to resurrect King Ghidorah as Mechagodzilla, and at worst Ghidorah was playing them from the very beginning by intentionally signaling Godzilla through Mechagodzilla.
  • It's implied that Godzilla and Kong both end up as unwitting pawns of Ghidorah and APEX, respectively. Ghidorah's skulls was activating the signals near civilization that made Godzilla look like he had gone rogue and began attacking cities for no reason. And Kong's ability to fight off the Hollow Earth Titans and find his ancestor's temple where they harnessed the energy of Hollow Earth plays right into their plans of activating Mechagodzilla with a power source that can let it run with no limit.
• Use Your Head: Godzilla unexpectedly rams Kong from below an aircraft carrier, head first. Shortly after, as Kong is struggling with Godzilla underwater, he breaks free from the tussle from head-butting Godzilla.

V

• Versus Title: Godzilla vs. Kong. This is actually the first Godzilla film to explicitly feature "vs." in the title since Godzilla vs. Megaguirus in 2000.
  • Though, the Japanese titles of Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. are "Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla" and "Godzilla vs. Mothra vs. Mechagodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S." respectively.
• Viler New Villain:
  • Apex Cybernetics, for all their prattle about serving humanity's best interests, ultimately value human life just as little as the eco-terrorists from the previous movie did; but whereas the previous movie's story portrayed the eco-terrorists as having some valid points about humanity destroying their own ecosystem and the Titans' emergence being a chance to save it in the long run, and also about Monarch's passiveness; Apex are not cast in such a light by this movie at all. Instead, they're nothing more than delusional, ambitious corporate megalomaniacs who have refused to learn anything at all from the previous movies' apocalyptic events, and have entirely set off a needless conflict against their own species' savior for their own self-aggrandizement.
    • Furthermore, Apex's leader Walter Simmons completely lacks any of the tragic backstory and trauma which defined the eco-terrorist leader Alan Jonah's all-consuming misanthropy, and instead he's a textbook narcissistic sociopath who looks like he's never toiled with his hands for a day in his life and has been motivated to commit his crimes purely to feed his own ego.
    • Simmons' accomplice Ren Serizawa, though cast in a much more tragic light than Simmons in the novelization expansion, still lacks any living link to humanity of his own to redeem him, unlike Jonah's accomplice Emma Russell in the previous movie. Ren dies completely unrepentant of his crimes, in contrast to Emma's Heel Realization and dying attempt to right some of her wrongs.
  • Implied with Mechagodzilla. As sadistic and evil as its past incarnation Ghidorah was in the previous movie, Ghidorah, being an invasive alien species to Earth, was theorized by the characters to be actively destroying the Earth because he needed to adapt to a planet that he didn't belong on (and might not have voluntarily fallen to) via xenoforming it to his own liking. Mechagodzilla doesn't have such an excuse: it seems to solely care about sowing death, chaos, world domination, and possibly also morally myopic revenge on Godzilla for their own sakes. On the other hand, Ghidorah was explicitly an Omnicidal Maniac whose actions threatened to globally kill all non-Titan life on Earth, whereas any omnicidal intentions that Mechagodzilla had for the Earth at large after killing Godzilla and wrecking Hong Kong are at most only implied.
• Villainous Rescue: Ren, when controlling Mechagodzilla, accidentally saves Madison from being eaten by the Skullcrawler that the mecha was being tested on when he grabs it mid-pounce — with how close its jaws got to her and the speed it was moving at, that definitely would've been the end of Maddie if not for him. Not only was the rescue completely unintended, but Ren evidently never notices even after the act that he committed it.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: Godzilla is presumed to have made a Face–Heel Turn as he begins attacking human-inhabited locations, which is seemingly partly what motivates Apex Cybernetics to get Dr. Lind to transport Kong off of Skull Island (so he can lead Team Kong and Apex to the Hollow Earth's energy source, so Apex can harness it to defeat Godzilla). In actuality, Godzilla's rampage is more or less Good All Along, as the reason Godzilla is attacking is because Apex have been causing Ghidorah's telepathic alien neurology to reactivate in the process of using Ghidorah's remains to create Mechagodzilla for Apex's genocidal purposes, and Godzilla can sense his Arch-Enemy is not entirely dead and may yet pose an impending threat again.
  • That said, the trope is played straight in regards to the titular kaiju. In terms of the overall film story, Godzilla is not the villain, but in terms of his rivalry with Kong, Godzilla is the one to instigate all of their interactions, prompting Kong, who otherwise shows no interest in Godzilla, to fight back.
• Virtual Ghost: King Ghidorah is essentially brought Back from the Dead via possessing Mechagodzilla.
• Visual Pun: Godzilla only backs down for good once Kong drops his axe - in other words, Kong buries the hatchet with Godzilla.

W

• Walking Spoiler: Mechagodzilla. Just knowing about this character's existence at all reveals a big surprise of the third act, and any discussion of how he got that way gives away a major Plot Twist. (Of course, that didn't stop them from featuring him in the merch...)
• Waterfall Shower: Kong takes a shower under a waterfall as part of his morning routine during the opening scenes.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Mechagodzilla has both Kong and Godzilla dead to rights... and what turns the tides is a short-circuit that stalls Mechagodzilla (caused by a flask of alcohol, no less), giving Godzilla time to supercharge Kong's axe and allow him to deal the final blow.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy:
  • The movie implies that Maia is one, as she's representing her father's company on the life-threatening mission to the Hollow Earth, and she betrays and threatens Team Kong to ensure, in her own words, that "[her] father gets what he wants" in the form of the energy source that will enable him to activate Mechagodzilla. The novelization however implies that Maia is somewhat resentful of Walter and is just waiting until the day she'll inherit his corporate empire from him, or at least that's how Maia is rationalizing it to herself.
  • Played Straight in the novelization's account of Ren Serizawa's backstory. It's revealed here that when Ren was growing up, he studied hard and developed his engineering skills in the hopes that Dr. Serizawa (who was a distant and absent father) "would someday understand him – or at least take note of him". Although Ren at first looked up to his father, as things between them soured ever further and after his father finally died, Ren's desire to garner his father's attention became twisted into an unhealthy fixation, leading to Ren seeking Godzilla's death as revenge for the latter robbing him of his father's love and attention and as Ren's own horrific way of surpassing his father.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Godzilla is this as his entire crusade is to destroy the remaining Ghidorah pieces before his archenemy somehow resurrects himself and resumes his destruction, too bad his aggressivity leaves him with no allies in the final battle that can assist him against Mechagodzilla as MONARCH spends their time trying to figure out why he's rampaging and all his Titan subordinates are slumbering on his orders. Apex Cybernetics' shady secret project, on the other hand, are Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremists, whom paint their plan as them giving humanity a fighting chance against the Titans, but are really just driven by obscene ego and power-hunger whilst being way, way Too Dumb to Live.
• Wham Line:
  • In this case, it's not what is being said, but rather who is saying it. During a storm chained on the boat, Kong signs the word "home", revealing he had secretly learned to talk and understand human language, indicating he's even more intelligent than anyone at Monarch thought.
  • Not even any spoken words, but when the now self-sustaining Mechagodzilla turns towards his counterpart after blasting away at Hong Kong and sounds off with a certain someone's Signature Laugh.
• Wham Shot:
  • Mechagodzilla shuts down due to lack of power, eyes going dark. then after Ren and Walter discuss the Hollow Earth power source to complete Mechagodzilla. Cue the robot's eye lighting up and emitting an ORCA-like tone that seemingly attracts Godzilla.
  • Team Godzilla finding Mechagodzilla's cockpit is made from King Ghidorah's skull.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • The film leaves it unexplained what happened to the other Titans besides Godzilla, with a news report in the beginning mentioning that there's been zero Titan activity for over three years, and the opening title sequence lists the previous films' Titans besides Godzilla and Kong as "Defeated" but doesn't elaborate on what it means by that. The tie-in comic Godzilla Dominion has Godzilla instructing the Titans to return to hibernation shortly after the events of King of the Monsters.
  • Likewise, Alan Jonah from the previous film isn't seen or at all mentioned, but the skull of the severed Ghidorah head he obtained has now made its way into Apex Cybernetics' possession. The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization features a prologue scene where a man heavily implied to be Jonah sells two Ghidorah skulls to Walter Simmons.
  • It's unclear at the end of the film what'll happen to Apex Cybernetics following the destruction of Mechagodzilla and the deaths of Ren and both Simmons', but it can be safely presumed they'll be facing scrutiny followed by a tidal wave of criminal charges and prosecutions once the extent of their machinations is revealed and they'll most likely be completely run out of business.
• What Is Going On?: During the Final Battle, Nathan asks Andrews this question when rushing onto the scene, prompting Dr. Andrews to explain that Kong is dying. In the novelization, the evening of Godzilla's attack on Pensacola, Madison asks Mark this question over the phone when he (having noticed Godzilla's approach) tells her to get ready for an overnight stay with a Monarch operative.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Mark gets one from Madison early in the film for just assuming Godzilla has made a Face–Heel Turn and refusing to listen to reason. In the novelization, Jia gives Dr. Andrews a civil-seeming one for thinking she and Monarch know what's best for Kong and for only feeding his distrust of them by drugging and chaining him.
• What You Are in the Dark: It's never commented on, but the fact that Kong has understood sign language for quite a long time means that he was long able to understand what Ilene Andrews was signing long before she knew he did. His visible reaction to her claiming that she wants to help him (in sign language) by taking him to a new home is a hint of this.
• The Worf Effect: MechaGodzilla's first establishing act is to utterly decimate a giant Skullcrawler, one of the baddies of Kong: Skull Island, effortlessly cleaving it in two with his Proton Scream.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • The first round fight between Kong and Godzilla takes place on top of some boats in the middle of the ocean. Given that Godzilla is amphibious and Kong is not, Godzilla has a major terrain advantage.
  • Godzilla and Kong are both exhausted and injured from fighting each other when Mechagodzilla finally shows himself, and thus are already at a disadvantage even discounting how powerful the robot is in the first place. Wingard would confirm this is the case, and suggested Godzilla wouldn't have lost the Beam-O-War had he been fresh. Whether Godzilla would have beaten Mechagodzilla if he had been at his best shape or lost but put up more of a fight is not stated, however.
• Working with the Ex: Implied between Ilene and Nathan. Before meeting with Nathan Jia points out Ilene is nervous. Another clue is Nathan is visibly further cleaned up when he meets her and Ilene is more annoyed than creeped out when he kisses her cheek when she agrees to his plan with Kong.
• Worthy Opponent: Though initially, in the ultimate battle, Godzilla triumphs over Kong and leaves him to die. Kong seems to finally earn his respect when he saves him from certain death at Mechagodzilla's hands, and Godzilla acknowledges him as an equal after Kong drops his axe showing that he not only never had an interest in a fight, but is willing to leave in peace if left alone.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Kong does some flying wrestling moves on Godzilla, at one point even using an elbow drop on his neck to snuff out a blast of atomic breath. Mechagodzilla does this more effectively on Godzilla, employing left and right hooks to hit his gills and Kong himself employs them against Mechagodzilla in the final battle.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The novelization suffers this. Whereas the film is presumed to take place five years after Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) (Simmons states in this film that Godzilla's battle with the MUTOs was ten years ago, and King of the Monsters explicitly took place five years after the MUTO incident which it said took place in 2014); the novelization explicitly claims to take place three years after King of the Monsters, but it has self-contradictory chronological dating. It explicitly says that the MUTO incident still occurred in the year 2014 and the events of King of the Monsters in the year 2019, which should place the novel's chronological year at 2022 in relation to the three-year gap; but the novel still says more than once that "ten years" have passed since the 2014 crisis instead of amending it to "eight years" or amending the MUTO crisis' date to 2012.

Y

• You Are Number 6: The Skullcrawlers used as test subjects by Apex Cybernetics are referred to by number, with their gates marked appropriately. The one killed by Mechagodzilla in the film was No. 10.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Due to the Perpetual Storm closing in around it, Skull Island cannot support Kong for much longer. Almost the entire fleet was destroyed getting him to Antarctica, meaning they couldn't return to Skull Island even if it was still habitable, so the only option was getting him down the tunnel into Hollow Earth. Once there, it's shown that Hollow Earth is an ancestral home for Kong's species that can support him.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Sort of. Despite Team Godzilla's efforts to stop Apex, the corporate villains' plot to harvest and replicate the Hollow Earth element and use it to fully power up Mechagodzilla succeeds, with Team Kong playing right into Apex's hands until it's too late for them to do anything. However, at this point, Ghidorah's subconsciousness takes control of Mechagodzilla, and it immediately and utterly supplants Apex as the true threat and the final villain of the film for the climax, with the Mecha looking to destroy Godzilla, Kong and any humans in sight on Ghidorah's terms instead of Apex's (and coming VERY close to victory a couple times).
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Implied amongst the villains, and in the novelization it comes from more than one angle. In both versions of the story; because Evil Is Not a Toy, Walter Simmons is killed by Mechagodzilla and Ren Serizawa is killed by a system malfunction as soon as they've fully charged their Secret Weapon and this has enabled the Ghidorah skull's lingering consciousness to override the system and possess the Mecha as its new form. It's uncertain how cognizant Ghidorah's skull was before this point, given its state, but there are some hints it might have been aware and biding its time all along until Apex gave it a fully-charged Mechagodzilla as a new body. In the novel, Ren is just using Simmons to achieve his own ends: he hates working with a person whom he views as a small-minded egotist, and it's made clear that Ren will at best leave Simmons in the dust or at worst will kill him outright once their partnership has served its purpose. But Ren's death occurs before his partnership with Simmons has reached that stage.

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