1962: "Eat Your Vegetables!"
2021: "Eat Your Ancestors!"
2021: "Eat Your Ancestors!"
Mythology Gags to the franchises involved in Godzilla vs. Kong.
- A few references to King Kong vs. Godzilla naturally occur.
- Kong once again shoves something down Godzilla’s throat during their battle, this time an axe handle rather than a tree.
- In King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla is portrayed as a big bully, clapping gleefully when he gets to put the hurt on Kong. Here, Godzilla instigates both fights against Kong, simply because he can't abide the presence of a potential rival and must bring Kong to heel or kill him. The initial fight in the Tasman Sea is Godzilla at the most villainous he's ever been portrayed in the Legendary Series, utterly brutal and merciless as he drags Kong underwater and tries to drown him. For his part, it seems Kong would be perfectly content for Godzilla to just leave him alone.
- Kong is initially transported tied down to a huge boat before being transported by air after he comes loose (although intentionally set loose this time), just like in the original film.
- Just like the original film, there are two encounters between Kong and Godzilla; the first one ends with Kong reluctantly forfeit, and the second one has with the victor swimming out to sea at the end (Kong in the original, Godzilla in this one).
- During the climactic duel, Kong is taken out of commission by Godzilla but revived and empowered by electricity again, although by a deliberate, man-made source (itself a nod to King Kong Lives) rather than a coincidental bolt of lightning this time.
- There's also a couple of references to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla:
- The overall plot of a normally benevolent Godzilla suddenly and inexplicably becoming destructive is taken right from the movie, and in both cases MechaGodzilla is the reason. Although that time it was an imposter wearing a Godzilla disguise, while this time, it's because Godzilla's enraged at MechaGodzilla being built and trying to stop it from happening.
- The scene of MechaGodzilla forcing open Godzilla's mouth to shoot the Proton Scream down his throat brings to mind MechaGodzilla breaking Anguirus' jaw.
- Godzilla and MechaGodzilla once again have a beam fight and the former gets overpowered easily as he did in their original clash.
- MechaGodzilla tears apart a minor kaiju character in his introductory appearance before he fights Godzilla, just like in his first film appearance (Anguirus there and a Skullcrawler here), although it's much more brutal here.
- MechaGodzilla first explodes out of a mountain and is finally defeated when he has his head twisted off, although Kong is the one to do it here, instead of Godzilla.
- Once again Godzilla has to team up with a mammalian kaiju to defeat MechaGodzilla, first with King Caesar and now with Kong.
- The Azumi Princess has a vision predicting MechaGodzilla, saying he'll trample on people who try to run away, and the vision uses King Ghidorah in place of MechaGodzilla. Not only is this MechaGodzilla literally King Ghidorah, he also does exactly that as he's charging at Godzilla. MechaGodzilla also emerges from a black mountain tall enough to be above the clouds, which was the omen of his arrival in the prophecy predicting him.
- Yet again, an alien menace trying to kill humanity is behind Mechagodzilla in a bid to take over the world and terraform it, albeit it's Ghidorah instead of humanoid aliens trying to colonise Earth.
- Mechagodzilla's design contains multiple references to previous incarnations:
- His rectangular dorsal spines are based on those of Mecha-Ghidorah in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (appropriate considering this Mechagodzilla iteration's direct relation to the MonsterVerse King Ghidorah In-Universe).
- The shoulder-mounted rocket-launchers in place of finger-based rockets was based on the Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II incarnation.
- This isn't the first time MechaGodzilla was created using the leftover severed head of a version of King Ghidorah — it also happened in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II — or using the remains of another monster.
- The film follows the Shogakukan manga adaptation
even more closely, where, just like here, the Ghidorah component of MechaGodzillanote overrides its programming and brutally savages Godzilla, Godzilla is only saved by the assistance of another kaiju (Fire Rodan there, Kong here), and MG continues to fight on after its initial objective had failed.
- The film follows the Shogakukan manga adaptation
- Godzilla giving an Energy Donation to Kong's axe to slice apart MechaGodzilla harkens back to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II where the dying Fire Rodan transfers his energy to a downed Godzilla, both reviving him and upgrading his blue Atomic Breath to the red Spiral Atomic Breath, allowing him to defeat MechaGodzilla.
- It also has similarities with the fact the two of them fight earlier in the film as enemies before one of them gains a power upgrade (Rodan becoming Fire Rodan and Kong gaining his axe) and then setting aside their differences to both fight Mechagodzilla at the end.
- MechaGodzilla is partly constructed from a kaiju's skeletal remains and ends up overcome by primal kaiju instincts, with eyes turning red to signify the change, and goes on a rampage, just like in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla.
- Another reference to Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla is seen when Mechagodzilla swings Godzilla by the tail in their final fight, just as Kiryu did to Godzilla in their second fight.
- When MechaGodzilla activates his jet engines and flies in to punch Godzilla, the duo briefly take on the same poses as the cover of Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla.
- During the fight in Hong Kong, Kong tosses a construction crane at Godzilla while hanging off the top of a skyscraper. This shot hearkens back to the iconic image of Kong gripping the top of the Empire State Building.
- A Mad Scientist has Kong transported from his island home to a polar region in order to uncover a powerful radioactive material hidden underground, Kong gets airlifted by helicopters, saves a hovercraft from a giant snake monster, and at the end Kong smashes apart a giant mecha in a major Asian city, with a happy ending for him. Are we talking about Godzilla vs. Kong or King Kong Escapes?
- It's mentioned briefly near the beginning and near the middle that Skull Island has been rendered more or less inhospitable by a powerful storm, just like at the end of The Son of Kong and like in the Manual materials for the universe of the 2005 film where a storm was partly what caused the island to sink beneath the waves.
- The institute in which Nathan Lind is employed at the beginning is Denham University, an obvious reference to Carl Denham, a major character in the original King Kong films.
- Kong's heart starts to fail after his brutal smackdown at the end, with emphasis on his fading heartbeats, just like the end of King Kong (1976) (and calling back to the use of recycling of the '76 sound-effect for Godzilla's spines charging up in the prior film).
- Another call back to that film would be the roar Kong makes when he enters his ancestral home in the hollow earth, which is very similar to the roar he had in the 76 movie.
- Another call back to that film would be the roar Kong makes when he enters his ancestral home in the hollow earth, which is very similar to the roar he had in the 76 movie
- Kong accidentally provokes a swarm of nesting bat-like flying predators that attack him en masse by roaring after the girl he's protecting is threatened, just like in King Kong (2005) (Terapusmordax there, Hellhawks here).
- The silvery, super-advanced hovercrafts invented by Apex Cybernetics, the HEAVs, bring to mind the similar superweapons which Godzilla has faced off against in the past, in particular the Super-X, or even the Hover Car from King Kong Escapes.
- The Nozuki/Warbat attempting to constrict Kong marks the fifth time a serpentine creature has wrapped itself around the great ape, after the plesiosaur in the original, the sea serpent in Toho's version, the giant python in the De Laurentiis film, and Ramarak from Kong: Skull Island.
- Additionally, Kong defeats the serpent in the same manner as he did in the De Laurentiis film, by breaking the head off from the body.
- They also bear a strong resemblance to the King Cobra from Godzilla: The Series, being a serpentine kaiju with a spiny cobra-like hood.
- During his second fight against Godzilla, Kong attempts to kill the King of the Monsters by breaking his jaw, much like how previous incarnations of Kong killed the Meat-Eater, Gorosaurus, the giant snake, and the Vastatosaurus rex, but is less-successful due to Godzilla's atomic breath making it extremely difficult for him to keep his hands near Godzilla's mouth for an extended period of time.
- MechaGodzilla, on the other hand did this Anguirus in his debut film and is far more successful employing it against Godzilla. Had Kong not stepped in when he did, the mech would have combined it with his Breath Weapon and obliterated the King of Monsters.
- The location of a Hollow Earth ecosystem populated by giant prehistoric monsters (already referenced in prior MonsterVerse movies, but shown in full here) was never a new concept for Godzilla. The unmade 1955 film, Bride of Godzilla, used this exact idea. And just like Bride of Godzilla, there are minor serpent, lizard, and avian/bat-like monsters that dwell there, plus a Humongous Mecha made to fight Godzilla is present.
- The first fight between Godzilla and Kong has strong parallels to a similar sequence in Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth. In both cases, a kaiju is taken from its tropical island and attacked by Godzilla midway through its voyage, and reluctantly set loose by the humans and then fights Godzilla in a rather one-sided battle where at one point they leap off a boat to avoid being hit by his atomic breath.
- The Monarch director played by Lance Reddicknote is named Guillermin, a reference to John Guillermin, the director for King Kong (1976) and King Kong Lives.
- MechaGodzilla is stored in Apex Cybernetics' Hong Kong facility on Sub Level 33, a probable allusion to the year the original King Kong movie came out. It's probably a call-back to the Monarch facility numbers using the same kind of gag in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and more so, as the next number up from 32 (the outpost where Ghidorah was contained), it probably references that on that level is Ghidorah's remains and Ghidorah's pseudo-successor.
- Godzilla seeking out MechaGodzilla because of the threat it actually poses brings to mind the second AniGoji continuity film Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle, where Godzilla Earth was trying to find Mechagodzilla City in order to destroy it because of its assimilation properties posing a Grey Goo apocalyptic threat. Here, Godzilla seeks out MechaGodzilla because it's been created using Ghidorah's remains and is directly exploiting Ghidorah's still-partly-living telepathic neurology to function, giving the three-headed destroyer's subconsciousness a chance to threaten the world again.
- Ghidorah (or rather its remains) going from being the Big Bad operating on Ghidorah's own agenda in the previous film to in this film being subjugated by the hi-tech human antagonists (or so they believe) to act as a Kaiju weapon, is akin to the Demoted to Dragon that the Toho movies' version of King Ghidorah suffered by Human Aliens after the dragon's original appearance. While Ghidorah's subconsciousness hijacking MechaGodzilla with minimal external aid and causing the Mecha to destroy its masters seems like a revamp to tie into the Humans Are Flawed aesop, and to avoid the Villain Decay which afflicted the Toho films' Ghidorah by maintaining Ghidorah is Eviler than Thou.
- After the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where seemingly no-one but Monarch was on Godzilla's side before that film's plot kicked off despite Godzilla's past heroism; this film seems to have cemented the MonsterVerse Godzilla and the human race as having the same on-off relationship of allying against bigger threats but being liable to butt heads when nothing bigger than Godzilla is around.
- A more amusing case is when as in the Tristar Godzilla film from 1998, one of the giant monster's appetites is sated by "a lot of fish." This time however, it's Kong.note
- Godzilla pulling a ship (or half a ship) underwater by its anchor is likely a reference to the sequence in the '98 Tristar film where Godzilla pulls the three fishing boats under by their net lines (notably, this was the only scene from Rossio and Elliot's original script that was kept in the final film).
- The logo◊ of Titan Truth Podcast looks rather similar to the home-video cover art◊ for the '98 Godzilla film.
- This isn't the first time that Kong is found to have learned to understand and speak sign language, after humans initially believing that he didn't understand; it also occurred in King Kong (2005).
- This isn't the first time a young girl 'spoke' for a monster, as the Godzilla series is full of young women who serve as the voice for the monsters; usually though it is psychic powers, not sign langauge.
- A little kid, who Kong has befriended, telling Kong to "be careful", before fighting a mechanical doppelganger of a kaiju happens both in this movie and an episode of The King Kong Show
- Kong's species is revealed to originate from the Hollow Earth, which is also where they came from in Kong: King of the Apes.
- The Audio Description track for the film identifies the otherwise unnamed giant lizard and crabs in Hollow Earth as being Foetodon and Arachno-claws from the 2005 film.
- Mechagodzilla being built from the remains of an organic Kaiju was done previously in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (although there, it was the remains of a previous Godzilla), except it goes even further when you look at it in a meta sense:
- Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla borrowed the idea from Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was created by Hideaki Anno. Anno then went on to direct Shin Godzilla in 2016, only 6 years before the release of Godzilla Vs. Kong, which then reused the idea of Mechagodzilla being made from the remains of another creature
