In the wake of the Battle of San Francisco, two half-siblings set out to uncover their father’s secret history with the Titans and the titular organization. The series premiered on Apple TV+ November 17, 2023. A second season and an unknown number of MonsterVerse spinoffs are currently in the works.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters contains examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The "present day" story is set in 2015, while the series began airing in 2023.
- Abandoned Area: In 1959, Lee Shaw, Bill Randa and Keiko Miura-Randa investigate Titan activity at a remote, derelict nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan which went into a meltdown, discovering a clutch of glowing Endoswarmer eggs in the reactor site which have consumed the radiation — before the eggs promptly hatch and swarm after them. In 2015, the main cast and Monarch head to the still-abandoned plant decades later, discovering there's a rift to the Hollow Earth in the former reactor area, and that the Endoswarmers have long since molted into their giant adult form, the Endopede.
- Abandoned Camp Ruins: In Episode 3-4, the 2015 main cast come across Hiroshi's downed plane and his long-abandoned research tent in the remote Alaskan highlands where his plane went down.
- Acid-Trip Dimension: The Hollow Earth area called Axis Mundi is in some ways even more alien than the realm seen in Godzilla vs. Kong. Despite the Earth-like forestry and crags, which Keiko explains as being the result of pieces of the surface world falling into Axis Mundi over time; there are unearthly beams of faint, multicoloured light, the realm has a rippling alien sky; the portals into and out of this realm are far more akin to outright wormholes and teleportation, manifesting when active as gigantic pillars of light which just teleport anything that comes into contact with them; the portals' activation causes an unearthly electrical discharge where currents of visible lightning run through the ground to specific spots where deadly lightning then strikes; and, most strikingly, time runs much slower due to an intense gravitational distortion creating a time dilation akin to approaching a black hole, to the point where a day in Axis Mundi is roughly equivalent to a year or two on Earth. Lee Shaw even comments that Axis Mundi probably isn't really in the same dimension as Earth at all and might be located in another reality.
- Adaptational Backstory Change: The series' depiction of Monarch's early history and Lee Shaw's role in it are markedly different from, and thereby retcon out of MonsterVerse canon, the original depiction in the Godzilla (2014) supplementary graphic novel Awakening (which was written as a prequel to Godzilla (2014) before the MonsterVerse was established).
- Instead of Monarch spending most of the years between 1946 and 1954 hunting Shinomura before the Castle Bravo nuclear test attempted to kill Shinomura and Godzilla, Monarch implicitly only really took off with military funding after the aforementioned nuclear test blasted Godzilla alone. Additionally, whereas the Awakening version of Monarch had at least nine founding operatives, the series implies that Lee, Keiko and Bill were the sole founders of Monarch in the early 1950s.
- Instead of being aware of Titans' existence and a member of Monarch since 1946, Shaw was an ordinary Army lieutenant who didn't encounter a Titan until 1952. And although Shaw is present at the attempt to kill Godzilla with the Castle Bravo atomic test in both versions, the specifics of his location and role at the time of the blast markedly don't line up with the Awakening version.
- Adaptational Friendship: Colonel Lee Shaw is adapted from the Godzilla (2014) tie-in graphic novel Godzilla: Awakening, which the series otherwise unambiguously renders Canon Discontinuity. Unlike Shaw's Awakening portrayal, who had no known connection to Bill Randa from Kong: Skull Island, Shaw and Randa in the show's version were explicitly close-knit friends who built up Monarch together.
- Alien Sky: Axis Mundi has a rippling sky with unearthly lights.
- All for Nothing: May's laptop gets frozen by the Frost Vark after May had downloaded all of Bill Randa's files, and dumped all of the tapes that contained them into the Sea of Japan. May actually backed the files into her tablet.
- Alternate History: Courtesy of the source movie's events, and this direct sequel which was released nine years later in Real Life being set relatively 20 Minutes into the Past. In the 2015 depicted in this series, the existence of Godzilla who is still alive has been exposed to the world for the last year, and the effects on international politics and everyday life include the mounting of ballistic missiles in Tokyo, compulsory biohazard cleans on public aircraft, the integration of hard siren and cell network Titan warning sirens, and designated public evacuation routes in the event of a Titan attack.
- Anachronic Order: The flashback portions tend to take place during Monarch's early years from the '50s and '60s, but it doesn't go in any specific order.
- And Starring: Due to the nature of the part, Wyatt Russell is credited with an "And Wyatt Russell in the Role of Lee Shaw," with his name changing to Kurt Russell after a few seconds.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Monarch is a secret government agency that investigates giant monsters who seem to appear and disappear at will. However, it is determined to dismiss any suggestions of the existence of Hollow Earth and that the monsters might be traveling through inter-dimensional portals. When their top experts like Lee Shaw or the Randas suggest the possibility, they are sidelined and eventually deemed crazy. In the present, this has caused many Monarch agents to become disillusioned and willing to go rogue.
- Asian and Nerdy: The protagonists are a half-Japanese, half-American former schoolteacher, and a Japanese intuitive former artist that are half-siblings through their father; Hiroshi Randa, who is secretly working for Monarch like his parents and Honorary Uncle used to.
- Bad "Bad Acting": When Cate, Kentaro, and Tim arrives to May's house, her mother asks how they met. When Cate and Tim clumsily mentions that they briefly saw her, and were part of the manga fan club in "Will the Real May Please Stand Up?". May's sister doesn't buy it, and could easily see through their bullshit.
- Behemoth Battle: In episode 10, Godzilla battles the Ion Dragon. Needless to say is a very one-sided battle, as Godzilla tears apart the Ion Dragon immediately.
- The Bermuda Triangle: The isolated Alaskan mountain range where the Frost Vark lurks is portrayed as a subarctic highly-elevated Bermuda Triangle. In addition to the resident hostile Titan cryptid, it appears to be shielded by an uncharted perpetual storm which threatens to bring down any planes that pass the wrong way over it, it's host to Hiroshi's abandoned camp ruins and a long-abandoned radio station straight out of a horror movie. It's also home to a glowing Vile Vortex which can be glimpsed from a distance as an unearthly light. When the cast end up Going in Circles in the mountains, they wonder if it's down to their lack of navigation or if something in the area is screwing with spacetime.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: There are new Titan and sub-titan species of insects that begin crawling out of the wetwork since Godzilla's appearance in 2014.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- In Shaw, Keiko and Bill's chronological first appearance in the 1952 flashbacks of "Departure"; Shaw ditches Keiko and Bill when the former teams up with the latter despite his complaints, but he comes back in time to dramatically save the pair amid the Ion Dragon attacking them.
- In "Parallels and Interiors", after Kentaro snaps out of his hallucination, half-hypothermic in a derelict cabin with a radio; the very next time we see him is when he slides open the door on one of the helicopters that are coming to his friends' rescue to reveal himself already onboard, having successfully called in help using the cabin's radio.
- At the end of "Axis Mundi", Keiko in the 2015 storyline makes a Dynamic Entry saving Cate when the latter is being attacked by a Brambleboar.
- Once again, Godzilla arrives in Axis Mundi just as Lee, Cate, Keiko, and May are being threaten by the Ion Dragon. It seems he won't not do this again.
- Big "NO!":
- In the series premiere's flashbacks, Cate screams several no's at the top of her voice when the majority of her schoolkids fall to their deaths on the Golden Gate Bridge. She screams an even more desperate no in her father's face when she learns the latter is going to leave her and her mother behind while Cate is freshly traumatized.
- In the season finale, Keiko screams "No" when Shaw makes a Heroic Sacrifice enabling her and the others to escape Axis Mundi alive.
- Big "YES!":
- In "Secrets and Lies", Bill Randa shouts out a loud yes in joy when the 1950s trio believe that they've gotten the U.S. military's support to bait Godzilla out with uranium for study.
- In "Will the Real May Please Stand Up?", Shaw shouts yes at the top of his lungs when he sees that his explosives have successfully destroyed the Vile Vortex in Alaska.
- Blue Means Cold: Not so much the daytime scenes, but the nighttime scenes in Alaska have a deep blue tint to them, befitting the icy and dangerous landscape.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: In a series where Titans have biological light, this is to be expected. Godzilla included.
- Bookends:
- The first scene in Season 1 is a flashback years before the main story on Skull Island with a shot of Kong, and the last scene in Season 1 is again on Skull Island, with a Time Skip two years after the main story and with a shot of Kong.
- The penultimate two episodes see Shaw and the 2015 cast go to the same abandoned Kazakhstan power plant where the 1950s Monarch trio lost Keiko at the end of the first episode. At the end of Episode 8, history rhymes when Cate ends up dangling over the plant's Hollow Earth portal with Old Shaw trying to grab her hand, much like what happened between her grandmother and Young Shaw in that same place in the first episode.
- The first episode ends with Keiko falling into the Hollow Earth in 1959. The first season finale ends with Keiko returning to the surface world after a 56-year absence inside the time dilation.
- Furthermore, whereas the first episode ended with Shaw trying to grab Keiko's hand to save her before she's seemingly killed, the season finale ends with the same happening between them again but with the roles swapped.
- Broad Strokes:
- Bill Randa in the 1950s in this series is a Wide-Eyed Idealist who is awed by Godzilla, a contrast to how his original Kong: Skull Island portrayal believed all the Titans to be mindless forces of mass destruction until he started seeing Kong's intelligence. Whilst it's not impossible that Bill losing both Keiko and Lee could have caused a change in perspective on the Titans, the series doesn't really address why he switched from one view on the Titans to another diametric view before Kong: Skull Island.
- Although the series explicitly states multiple times that Monarch was still founded in the 1940s, per earlier MonsterVerse supplementary materials stating it was founded in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing (which is itself a Broad Stroke to the original Godzilla (2014) which claimed Monarch was founded in 1954), it comes across as an Informed Attribute. No other Monarch operatives outside of Lee, Bill and Keiko (who join in 1952) are seen or referenced, and they're not shown joining a pre-existing Monarch: in 1952, they meet each-other and have their first Titan encounter, and then in 1954, they're the sole three members of a Project Monarch which is still getting off the ground.
- Although Word of God claims that the events of the Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) tie-in graphic novel Aftershock are still canon, the sole reference to those events (which occurred in 2014) is that Godzilla's dorsal spines in this series have switched from their distinctive 2014 design (which is reused in the series' 1950s and 2014 flashbacks), to their traditional maple leaf-shaped design from King of the Monsters onwards by the series' 2015 time framenote . Apart from that, it's entirely as if Godzilla's re-emergence alongside Jinshin-Mushi didn't happen at all, with Monarch not making any reference to Godzilla's post-G-Day reappearance in Aftershock and speaking as if G-Day was the last time before 2015 that Godzilla or any Titan was seen.
- Once again, the pocket of the Hollow Earth portrayed in this series is completely different from the regions which have previously been portrayed. Unlike in Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong, the Axis Mundi in this series is located inside a black hole-like time dilation, and instead of being accessed through indirect passages which threaten to damage or rip apart any human craft, surface portals to the Axis Mundi (which Monarch are aware of) can transport unprotected humans fully intact without killing them (the difficulty of sending humans into the Hollow Earth in Godzilla vs. Kong without them being ripped apart despite past efforts by Monarch was a key plot-point in that movie).
- Broken Tears:
- Downplayed in "Aftermath", when Cate's eyes are brimming with tears as she recalls the painful last time that she saw Hiroshi alive on G-Day.
- Played very straight in the finale when Old Shaw reunites with Keiko in Axis Mundi, the former realizing that she was alive down there all along and the latter realizing how much time has really passed her by as well as learning the fate of her husband.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Lee Shaw, a character who first appeared in the Godzilla (2014) prequel graphic novel Awakening, reappears as a major character nine years and several MonsterVerse installments after his debut.
- Bill Randa returns as a major character in the 1950s plot-line, marking his first appearance in the franchise since Kong: Skull Island in 2017.
- Canon Discontinuity: U.S. Army officer and mid-20th century Monarch operative Lee Shaw first debuted in the Godzilla: Awakening prequel graphic novel, which was published in 2014 to tie into the Godzilla movie's release before Kong: Skull Island officially established a MonsterVerse. Although Monarch: Legacy of Monsters establishes Shaw as a canon character, his background doesn't line up with the graphic novel's story — instead of being part of Monarch when it was first founded in 1945, and being involved in tracking Shinomura and Godzilla and recruiting Dr. Serizawa's father; the show's version of Shaw appears to have been an ordinary military officer who wasn't aware of Titans' existence until his Philippines Titan encounter in 1952. Indeed, we're shown the actual nuking of Godzilla in greater detail and the events leading up to it; aside from Lee Shaw's existence, basically no part of Awakening is still canon.
- Character Tic: Similar to his father Bill, Hiroshi would sharpen his pencils down to its nubs, and leaves the shavings behind. This tic tips Cate and Kentaro off that he's alive, and had been visiting outposts.
- Connected All Along:
- In their original appearances in Kong: Skull Island and the graphic novel Godzilla: Awakening respectively, Lee Shaw and Bill Randa had absolutely no known connection to each-other beyond that they both worked for Monarch during the 20th century. This series' take on them, however, portrays them as old friends who worked closely together in the 1950s, they got the fledgling Monarch off the ground together with Keiko, and Bill incorrectly believing Shaw dead was a major factor in Bill's tragic transformation into the cynical Manipulative Bastard that he was in Kong: Skull Island.
- Duvall reveals in Episode 6 that events depicted in Godzilla (2014) played a major role in her backstory. She's in fact the sister of Sandra Brody who died at Janjira in 1999, which also makes her Joe Brody's sister-in-law, and the 2014 movie protagonist Ford Brody's aunt.
- Episode 7 reveals that May's past has a major connection to Godzilla vs. Kong. The corrupt tech corporation she worked for under Brenda Holland, whom she subsequently went on the run to escape from after she'd crashed their database, is in fact the Apex Cybernetics precursor, and May's research before she sabotaged them was being used to develop the Brain/Computer Interface technology that will eventually be used to control Mechagodzilla.
- Episode 8 reveals that Emiko, though a civilian in the present day, was previously a nurse working for Monarch in 1982, and she was one of the staff tending to Lee Shaw after he emerged from Axis Mundi.
- Continuity Nod:
- In the opening of the first episode, Bill Randa is seen running for his life on Skull Island from Mother Longlegs.
- Bill mentions having been the Sole Survivor of his ship when it was unexpectedly attacked by an unknown monster. We actually see the remains of the ship, and Bill shows Keiko his Monarchs cap.
- We get a flashback scene of Godzilla in 1954, and many of the military personnel using the first H-Bomb to kill him with it. As the audience knows, he survives the blast.
- We get a grim flashback on the Golden Gate Bridge where the navy, out of panic, starts attacking Godzilla, and it caused him to accidentally break through it, and Cate was there as a school teacher when it happens.
- When calling out Monarch's poor handling of the events leading up to the attack on San Francisco, Lee recites Serizawa's "Let them fight" remark.
- Continuity Snarl:
- The promotional timeline for Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) establishes that Monarch was formed in 1946. Here, the series shows that it's been formed in 1954 when the US military tried to kill Godzilla with the Castle Bravo H-Bomb.
- Because the series can't make up its mind with Godzilla's appearance before and after 2014, the 1954-55 and 2014 film's flashback segments shows Godzilla's dorsal spines with their jagged appearance from Godzilla while the 2015 segments shows his spines as the original 1954 Godzilla's spines like in King of the Monsters. Problem is, Godzilla's appearance was already changed in King of the Monsters' opening prologue flashback sequence, which used the updated model rather than recycling the 2014 design for one minor scene. It doesn't help that Godzilla: Aftershock isn't referenced at all in this show, since the comic explained that he fought Muto Prime, and she destroys his original dorsal plates, and Emma Russel surmises that his spines will eventually grow back with new shapes.
- The series introduces the idea that Hollow Earth portals involve time distortion with time moving much slower in Axis Mundi than it does on the surface. While it introduces a fun idea into the Monsterverse, the issue is that in Godzilla Vs Kong the portals have no time element, with events in the Hollow Earth moving at the same pace as above. It might be explainable by saying that the distortion only occurs in Axis Mundi, a mid-point between the surface and the main Hollow Earth and the H.E.A.V's are designed to repel the effects, but it raises an unnecessary continuity issue.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: In the final episode, though the Ion Dragon gets a few good hits in against Godzilla - attacking his head and biting his neck, spraying acid in his face - once the Big G gets his claws on it the battle is over in seconds.
- Death of a Child: After Godzilla accidentally broke through the Golden Gate Bridge on G-Day Minus One, Cate, in one second of distraction, tried to get her schoolkids out of her school bus as fast as she could. Only three made it out, and the bus plummeted to its doom, sealing the fate of the rest of the kids in the bus. This event traumatized Cate badly: the children's deaths are a significant part of her G-Day PTSD, and Episode 5 reveals that the deaths of Cate's students caused her to shut down for a year until she went to Japan.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: In the 1950s storyline, the male military characters are often surprised by meeting Keiko for the first time and learning she's a woman with a doctorate, and she often gets subtly addressed last after her two male colleagues. She also faces anti-Japanese racism, with General Puckett's best attempt at defending her against Lieutenant Hatch being to call her "one of the good ones".
- Dramatic Irony:
- Though she had no way of knowing Godzilla would survive it, Keiko reacts very badly that the US military intends to use the H-Bomb on Godzilla in 1954. This is the only instance of a Godzilla story where a character realizes Godzilla is a victim of nuclear weapons. Toho films such as Godzilla (1954) has the film's doctor, Dr. Yamane, heavily implied it was the case. Here, it's shown in great detail, and Keiko's reaction has understandable complications.
- The Randa siblings being completely unaware of their father's double life as a family man and a Monarch agent. As much as they begin to learn more about him, they begin to resent him despite their father deeply caring about them. This is exactly the kind of relationship Hiroshi has with his own father, Bill, who died on Skull Island, and Bill is sadly aware of it.
- Empty Promise:
- On G-Day Minus One, Cate told the schoolkids on her evacuating bus that it would be okay when they got stuck in the midst of the military firing on Godzilla. Moments later, all but a couple of the kids died right in front of Cate.
- Hiroshi is bitter that his parents and his uncle Lee Shaw all promised him that they would come back to him, before their respective deaths and disappearances across 1959, 1962 and 1973. Lee made it back to Hiroshi twenty years late after he was caught up in Axis Mundi, while Keiko is revealed to be alive and returns to Hiroshi decades later. Bill Randa, however, really is dead, and so can never fulfil his promise to Hiroshi.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Neither of Hiroshi Randa's surviving children nor (one of his) widows Emiko are feeling particularly happy with him when they find out about his double family life. For Cate, this goes back even further to her father always being away throughout her life, and, most painfully of all, only contacting her to say goodbye to her the last time she saw him alive when freshly traumatized by G-Day.
- Fire-Forged Friends: At the start, biological half-siblings Cate and Kentaro reasonably aren't keen on having anything to do with each-other after they become aware of each-other's existence, and their distant shared father's deep double life is exposed — likewise, May is bitter at Kentaro and is mostly just out for herself in the long-term when she joins them. After the group endures going on the run from Monarch, trekking around the world together, and several Titan-related life-or-death situations together, they become a lot closer-knit. By the last few episodes, May is unwilling to do anything to betray the Randa siblings again, and she has some significant Ship Tease with Cate; while Cate and Kentaro have become close friends and they're comfortable referring to each-other as their respective sibling.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Some conspiracy theorists are insisting a year after G-Day that the disaster and the kaiju were all faked using CGI as part of an elaborate conspiracy to fuel the military-industrial complex. This includes a taxi driver in Tokyo, who drives by anti-Titan ballistic rocket launchers that are being installed all across his city's urban areas.
- Foreshadowing: In "The Way Out", the camera focuses on Duvall staring with narrowed eyes after Shaw's speech about how Monarch is broken and is wasting time not focusing on the Titan threat. This foreshadows her Hazy-Feel Turn over to Shaw's side in the following episode.
- Gilded Cage: It's revealed that Monarch has a "retirement home" for high-risk retired personnel. It looks on the surface like a completely mundane and comfortable retirement home, but it's dotted with veiled surveillance that monitors the residents' every step for every minute of every day, and the residents are even forced to wear electronic tracker anklets, essentially acting as a cushy badass can. In the 2015 storyline, Lee Shaw has been stuck in this retirement home for 33 years after he was forcibly retired from Monarch.
- Good Lips, Evil Jaws: Conversely to the ultimately-defensive Titans Godzilla and Kong reappearing for this series, there isn't a single hostile creature in the series who doesn't have exposed, lipless sharp teeth: the Endoswarmers and Endopede, the Ion Dragon, the Frost Vark and the Brambleboar.
- Good Versus Good: The Randas and May want to find out the truth about Hiroshi, and they perceive Monarch, whom are hunting and trying to capture them, as a sinister conspiracy, while Monarch are just trying to contain the security breach that the Randas' possession of Monarch files represents. Lee Shaw disagrees with Monarch's non-active stance on Titan events so much that he establishes a Renegade Splinter Faction with the aim of attempting to seal off Hollow Earth by force.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Monarch truly mean well, and there are lines they won't cross, but they're still portrayed in a shady light in this series: having initially continued to keep the world in the dark about their own existence despite G-Day, and overall their head honchos come across as hyper-focusing on human security breaches and controlling secrecy at the expense of being dangerously passive to the Titan threats which they're supposed to be countering, causing many of the main characters in 2015 to lose faith in Monarch if they had any to begin with. The human antagonists of a significant chunk of the 2015 storyline are a Renegade Splinter Faction formed by Lee Shaw in response to Monarch's perceived shortcomings — they never stoop so low as consciously endangering innocent human lives, but they instead resort to criminal and much more radical actions to try and head off a future Titan disaster from happening, hijacking and raiding Monarch outposts with the threat (keyword) of armed assault.
- Hair-Contrast Duo: Played With. In the 50s Monarch trio, the light-haired Lee's belligerent and weary personality contrasts the dark-haired Bill and Keiko's more personable and scientifically-awed personalities.
- Hates Their Parent:
- At the 2015 storyline's start, Cate Randa has... issues with her presumed-dead father for his absence and neglect, and for abandoning her and her mother when they were traumatized. Finding out about Hiroshi's other wife and her half-brother by said wife over at Hiroshi's Tokyo workplace only lowers Cate's opinion of him even further.
- Tragically, Hiroshi himself previously had the same attitude to his own father (stepfather), Bill Randa, after the latter neglected him throughout his childhood, before Hiro ended up taking after him in that respect with his own children.
- Hazmat Suit: In the first episode, Cate sees authorities dressed head-to-toe in hazmat suits spraying the interior of the plane she's on for any Titan radiation contamination. In the eighth episode, after Young Shaw comes back from the failure of Operation Hourglass, Monarch personnel in hazmat suits keep him under quarantine inside a domed tent.
- Hero Antagonist: Tim and Duvall, while well-meaning, are being aggressive towards Cate, Kentaro, and Emiko when they meet them. They're only in Japan to ask about Bill Randa's files, but their methods doesn't help their case in the slightest, and Tim gets reprimanded for it by his boss, who even pointed out he was Secretly Selfish, and should had contacted the higher-ups, such as Ishiro Serizawa, first before bullrushing to Japan to get the files.
- Heroic Lineage: The Randa half-siblings are descended from Keiko Miura and Bill Randa, the two key scientists of Monarch, and their mutual friend Lee Shaw was a US army soldier who often accompanies them.
- Heroic Neutral: The Randa half-siblings, Emiko Randa and May Olowe-Hewitt aren't out to save the world: they're at first just looking into Hiroshi's secrets because it's a very personal family matter (the Randas) and out of scientific curiosity (May). Discovering that the Randa ancestors were involved with Monarch, combined with Monarch — whom the group think are a sinister conspiracy — coming after all of them to contain the security breach and forcing them on the run, just drives the group even further down the rabbit hole.
- Hiding Behind the Language Barrier:
- In "Aftermath", Kentaro assumes that his American half-sister doesn't speak Japanese and insults her in his mother-tongue while she's in the room — which backfires when Cate subsequently casually reveals that she does speak Japanese. On the other hand, Kentaro's mother Emiko apparently doesn't speak English, which Cate uses to make a few rude comments in her presence without her realizing during the episode.
- Implied in May and Kentaro's first meeting when May remarks in English that the name of Kentaro's art show "sounds pretentious", before Kentaro reveals that he speaks English.
- Holding Hands:
- Cate and May grab and hold each-other's hands a lot as they grow close, emphasizing the Ship Tease occurring between them. The flashbacks in "The Way Out" to before G-Day also feature Cate and her then-girlfriend in San Francisco doing a lot of hand-holding.
- In the 50s segments of "Birthright", Bill and Keiko hold each-other's hands atop Bill's knee after Bill learns about her son, and when Bill confesses his feelings to Keiko, leading into them becoming married by 1959.
- In "Beyond Logic", Shaw and Keiko hold each-other's hands when they're preparing to escape the Hollow Earth. At the episode's climax, Cate grips Keiko and May's hands on either side of her as their pod is hurtling towards the Hollow Earth rift in their last-ditch effort to escape.
- Hourglass Plot: At the series' start, Cate is the Randa sibling who thinks the worst of Hiroshi's actions, and Kentaro's the one who wants to be more optimistic and defensive of their father. After the series' midway point, starting in "Will the Real May Please Stand Up?", their stances on their father have completely reversed in light of the events in Algeria.
- If I Do Not Return:
- Hiroshi's last exchange with Cate on G-Day saw him ask her to tell Caroline that he loved them both before he left on Monarch work, and he was presumed killed in a plane crash not long after he left.
- In Episode 4, May, suffering from hypothermia while the group are stranded in the Frost Vark's subarctic territory, tries to tell Cate to contact her sister if May doesn't survive.
- Ignored Expert: In a twist of irony, Lee became this despite being part of the military, and tried to warn Monarch for years. His warnings ends up being ignored until 2014. When Duvall asks, he states "because I'm crazy".
- Interquel: The series takes place between the movies Godzilla (2014) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). It also takes place a year after Godzilla's fight with the MUTOs in San Francisco, with the year taking place in 2015. The flashback segments also take place between the 1950's to 1960's when Bill Randa is on an expedition in Kong: Skull Island. Flashbacks show Godzilla with the spinier dorsal plates of the 2014 movie, while his appearance in the present day has him with the craggier plates of the 2019 movie.
- Inter-Service Rivalry: As a US Army officer and direct subordinate to Puckett, Shaw's presence means Monarch falls under the Army's jurisdiction initially. The Navy's attempts to gain control over Monarch provide much drama in the later episodes.
- Played for laughs when an exasperated Puckett laments that Shaw couldn't have picked a Marine or sailor on an island full of them for his big bar brawl.
- I Will Find You: When Cate and Kentaro realizes their father disappeared somewhere in Alaska, they went with Lee Shaw who could help find him. To their surprise their Disappeared Dad is still alive.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Shaw is pretty abrasive with Monarch while in their custody but he does make a good point in saying that the “Let them fight” option was a dangerously risky move that could have resulted in disaster if the MUTOs had actually managed to kill Godzilla (which they did come close to if not for Ford intervening).
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: In the 2015 setting, Cate Randa is a traumatized ex-schoolteacher coming to grips with her experiences on G-Day and her presumed-dead father's actions, and she wears either light clothing, or clothes which mix colors (Light Feminine). Duvall is a cold, iron-hard Monarch operative dressed all in black, and she projects the air of a spook and attempts to effectively kidnap Cate (Dark Feminine).
- Long-Lost Relative: Half-siblings. Cate and Kentaro are mutually surprised (and hurt) that their shared father's dual families double life went this deep, remarking on how he was cucking one of their mothers massively. Cate at first wants nothing more to do with Kentaro or Emiko at the revelation, although circumstances force the half-siblings together when their paternal forefathers' secrets put them on the run from Monarch.
- Love Triangle:
- It's heavily implied that Keiko, Bill, and Shaw have this going on. While the first episode shows Keiko ending up with Bill and Hiroshi is their son, Lee himself has developed feelings for Keiko and she reciprocates on the sixth episode. However, his choice to ditch the military conference that would have secured funding for Monarch so he can keep her safe in Japan causes a rift between them, as it ends up ceding control of Monarch to the military and raising the spectre of using nukes on Titans again, and even getting Monarch shut down. Bill and Keiko grow closer after this, with Lee accepting it as stoically as he can.
- A similar situation occurs with the 2015 trio. Kentaro and May dated for an unknown length of time after May first moved to Tokyo two years earlier, but by the time Cate meets them May has become a little sour about the relationship. Then, over the course of their travels Cate and May get closer, eventually holding hands frequently and at one point Cate casually spending an entire car ride sitting in May's lap. All of this more or less right in front of Kentaro, who seems a fair bit less stoic about it than Shaw had been.
- Monumental Damage: Episodes 1 and 5 have shots of the Golden Gate Bridge, still split in half from Godzilla tearing through it as he arrived.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Young Shaw, Keiko Miura and Bill Randa, the latter two especially, are horrified when them bringing Godzilla's existence to the U.S. military's attention, and subsequently requesting 150 pounds of uranium which they intend to use to bait Godzilla out of hiding for study, leads the military to build the Castle Bravo atomic bomb in an attempt to kill Godzilla first and ask questions about him later. Subverted, as the audience knows that the bomb will at most fail to kill Godzilla or at least will end up making him even stronger with its radiation, plus General Puckett is persuaded by fear of creatures like Godzilla existing to give the fledgling Monarch a blank cheque in government funding.
- Later in the series, Young Shaw blows off an important meeting so that he can join Bill and Keiko in the field, much to Keiko's consternation. This poor decision prevents General Puckett from giving Shaw full jurisdiction over Monarch to run it as he sees fit, and instead, Puckett is forced to put Lieutenant Hatch in charge. Hatch proceeds to gut Monarch's funding and tries to get it shut down for his own ends.
- Shaw doesn't realize that his sealing off the Vile Vortices on Earth's surface in an attempt to prevent future Titan emergences is increasing the radioactive pressure on the remaining rifts, meaning that if he seals enough vortices, he'll likely at best trigger a global wave of Titan incursions from the Hollow Earth or will at worst cause an outright Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The Monarch trio in the 50s plot. Bill Randa, despite what he will later become, was ironically the sweetest and friendliest member of the bunch (Nice); Lee Shaw was a sardonic and confrontational Jerk with a Heart of Gold (Mean); and Dr. Keiko was more of a people person than Lee, but more standoffish and passive-aggressive than Bill, particularly where feelings that she was being judged on her gender were concerned (Inbetween).
- Nuke 'em: We actually see the Castle Bravo nuclear strike on the younger Godzilla. In 1954, Godzilla arrives at the Bikini Atoll, and sees a hydrogen bomb out of curiosity before it literally blows up on his face. Anyone who knows their Godzilla would know the 15 megaton H-Bomb didn't kill him, but made him stronger.
- Older Than They Look: It's noted several times in-universe that Lee Shaw looks younger than his age of 93 (actor Kurt Russel is only 72), with Tim mentioning rumors that a classified past mission has something to do with it. Turns out that in a mission to the Hollow Earth gone wrong, Shaw was missing for twenty years and returned having not aged a day due to the nature of the Hollow Earth.
- Origins Episode: The 50s storyline describes Monarch's early history, and Lee Shaw and Bill Randa's introductions to the organization and Titans, in detail.
- Pillar of Light: The Vile Vortex in Alaska produces a rainbow-coloured skyway beam of light, which is distantly sighted by Lee Shaw, May and the Randa half-siblings after their landing.
- Plot Armor: The main and supporting characters in the 2015 story survive violent disasters and Titan encounters which kill any and all red shirts and mooks surrounding them. Probably the most egregious example is Godzilla's emergence in Algeria, which kills the main cast's and Duvall's unnamed ex-Monarch escorts but leaves the prominent characters unharmed, and which leaves Tim the sole survivor of a helicopter crash which kills a group of armed and trained Monarch personnel.
- Plot Parallel: The 50s Monarch trio's story chronologically has an analogous beginning and progression to that of the 2015 main cast, wherein a group of three young people who at first want little to do with each-other and don't get along grow closer, travel around the world looking for Titan-related subjects, and implicitly end up forming a love triangle.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Bill Randa's rucksack and the Monarch files inside them (which were built in the 70s) were lost at sea for precisely four decades, and after they're dredged up in 2013 and brought to the Randa half-siblings' attention in 2015, not only are the casings still intact and the files still wholly readable to a computer, but the only real damage the rucksack has sustained from all that time in seawater is that it permanently "smells like fish", with even the Monarch logo emblazoned on the rucksack still clearly visible and undamaged.
- Red Shirt: Lee's friend Du-Ho joins the team in "Secrets and Lies" and dies in the episode's cliffhanger ending to introduce the Frost Vark.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: In 2015, Shaw and Duvall organize a group of likeminded Monarch operatives into going rogue against what they see as the organization's Head-in-the-Sand Management, taking the proactive step of bombing the portals to Hollow Earth in order to keep any more Titans from emerging, but ignoring the fact that doing so risks provoking another attack regardless.
- Rewatch Bonus:
- Watching the first episode after seeing the rest of the first season makes it much easier to see that Keiko Randa's death is surprisingly bloodless.
- Look carefully at the name "Applied Experimental Tech". You'll probably realize on a rewatch that the first two letters of "Applied" and "Experimental" respectively spell "Apex", as in Apex Cybernetics.
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Gender-Inverted by Monarch operative duo Tim and Duvall. Tim is an eccentric, socially-awkward passionate and impulsive but big-hearted man, who goes cowboying to Tokyo without authorization at the series' start, and quits Monarch in angry protest over Verdugo's leadership at the series' end. Michelle Duvall is a cold, calculating, quieter professional Monarch spook, who saves Tim from facing worse repercussions for his cowboying via smooth talking and cunning, is much more analytical when she deduces May is using a fake identity, but Duvall is just ruthless enough to side with Lee Shaw's faction in essentially committing terrorism against Monarch when persuaded that they can save more people.
- Scientist vs. Soldier: In the 1950s storyline, the Monarch scientists (Keiko and Bill) tend to be more wide-eyed and idealistic than the military (Shaw, Puckett and Hatch), especially when it comes to the Titans. When Godzilla's existence is first discovered in 1954, the military is horrified and, instead of simply trying to lure Godzilla out for study as Monarch requested, they try to kill Godzilla with the Castle Bravo bomb, despite Bill being disgusted and despite Keiko being so distressed that she tries unsuccessfully to sabotage the detonation. Young Shaw, being a military man who's inside Monarch, is much more on the fence about Godzilla and the Titans, but he gives his colleagues the benefit of the doubt. Lieutenant Hatch is dismissive of the threat that Titans pose because he, having never seen one and unaware of Godzilla's survival, thinks his "great nation" can just nuke them all to kingdom come if any more do turn up. Later, the Internal Reveal of Godzilla's survival is precisely what persuades General Puckett to renew government support for Monarch and implicitly throw Hatch out of the organization on his face, because he's that terrified of the threat Titans can pose to humanity, although he reasonably never tries killing a Titan with a WMD again after the military's first attempt fails.
- Secret Other Family: The story in 2015 is kicked off when Cate travels to Tokyo to her late father's Japanese apartment, only to discover he was cheating on her mother and had another wife and a son close to Cate's age in Japan, who were equally clueless to his trans-Pacific double life.
- Shared Family Quirks: Shaw remarks that Kentaro and Cate are like their dad Hiroshi and his mother who were impeccable in their pursuits. A version that's Played for Laughs is when Kentaro protests letting him drive, and Shaw responds with "Oh God, you are his son".
- Shout-Out:
- The scene of the bat-fish Titan flying over the trees, as seen from below through a gap in the canopy, is heavily reminiscent of the Gyaos’s reveal in Gamera: Guardian of the Universe.
- "Secrets and Lies" has one to We Need to Talk About Kevin, when Shaw jokingly reassures Kentaro that there was no Troubling Unchildlike Behavior to indicate Hiroshi was a budding monster when Shaw watched him growing up, listing things that the titular child sociopath of the movie did: "He didn't torture small animals, no issues potty training."
- "No Way Out" dubs the day before G-Day "G-Day Minus One".
- Sibling Team: Cate and Kentaro are half-siblings who band together to find out their father's secret history with Monarch.
- Slimeball:
- In the 1950s storyline, Lieutenant Hatch is a smug bigot who oozes condescension, he quite crudely insults the female Japanese doctor Keiko to her face, and upon being granted control of Project Monarch by General Puckett, he actively tries to sabotage the organization and get it shut down with a negatively-biased and damning report to Puckett so that he can repurpose its funding toward his own Red Scare tactics. His attitude and behavior leads to the Monarch trio not telling him anything of value and ultimately leads to Shaw pulling out all stops to get him ousted.
- In the 2015 storyline, Brenda Holland is a Rare Female Example. She's a corrupt corporate executive in Walter Simmons' employ, who sounds like she's talking down at you even when she's pretending to be your friend, she's smug, and she spends her entire debut attempting to manipulate others to her company's benefit.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Godzilla has less than ten minutes of screentime between the past and present, but Lee uses his surviving the nuke to regain a semblance of control over Monarch in the past, Cate's severe PTSD and Monarch's/Shaw's fear of another monster attack and their varied responses to it all stem from his actions in the 2014 film, and his arrival in Axis Mundi is what allows Cate,May and Keiko to get back to our world.
- Snow Means Death: Hiroshi Randa is presumed dead after his plane crashed in the Alaskan mountains between Barrow and Nome, although it's ultimately revealed that he survived the crash. When the main cast of the 2015 storyline find the crash site high in the snow-capped mountains, they're attacked by the local Frost Vark, which proceeds to kill Du-Ho.
- Spotting the Thread:
- Duvall appears to be a Monarch-trained professional at this. In Episode 5, Duvall can tell from the manner in which May previously swept her Tokyo apartment before going on the run that it's not the first time May has had to disappear and that she's good at it.
- In Episode 5, after it turns out that the canvas in Hiroshi's San Francisco office isn't a concealing canvas hiding a wall safe like the one at his Tokyo office was, Cate notices that the squiggly lines on the canvas itself are similar to lines that she previously saw Hiroshi mapping, and she realizes that the canvas itself is holding his secret data in this case.
- In Episode 6, although May, the Randas and the canvas are long gone by the time Tim and Verdugo have followed their trail to the office, Tim is still able to piece together almost exactly what it is they took by how Hiroshi's chair in the office is facing away from the view of the city skyline, towards a now-blank stretch of wall where there are several tac-holes that once held up a canvas on the wall and which also correspond to the locations of Monarch interest on a world map. Even Verdugo is impressed enough to give Tim a very small praise.
- Stock Footage: Footage from Godzilla (2014) is reused for a couple shots of Cate's flashbacks to the Golden Gate Bridge disaster, and also for circulating videos of Godzilla and Hokmuto's encounter at Hawaii.
- A Storm Is Coming: In the 2015 story, Old Shaw is fully convinced that a second Titan emergence on par with G-Day is coming, and that Monarch aren't going to do anything about it. Others including Duvall come to agree with him, and the audience knows from the events of MonsterVerse movies set later on the timeline like Godzilla: King of the Monsters that Shaw is very right about how an even worse Titan emergence is on the horizon.
- Swirly Energy Thingy: The pillar-shaped portals out of Axis Mundi form swirling vortexes on their surface when something is about to be sucked into them, at which point they're teleported back to Earth's surface through the ground.
- Take My Hand!:
- In the series premiere, Shaw in 1959 tries to take Keiko's hand and pull her to safety when she's hanging by a tether over an underground pit with a human ladder of Endoswarmers crawling towards her. Keiko falls before she can reach his hand and apparently dies, haunting Shaw for decades.
- His Story Repeats Itself when Cate nearly falls in the exact same spot as her grandmother in 2015, and Shaw manages to grab her hand just in time where he failed to grab Keiko's.
- Then in the season finale, Shaw and Keiko's roles are reversed in the Hollow Earth when Keiko reaches out to take Shaw's hand as the pod she's in is being pulled towards the exit back to Earth. Shaw manages to take her hand, but he deliberately pries his hand loose in a Heroic Sacrifice when he realizes his weight will stop the pod making it out of the Hollow Earth.
- Take That!: The show really has it out for conspiracists who deny when a disaster happens and think everything is a hoax created by governments and secret societies for profit and to brainwash the people.
- In the first episode, Cate Randa meets a Japanese taxi driver who thinks that the battle of San Francisco is a hoax created with CGI by the American government for profit, which makes Cate roll her eyes, given that she saw everything with her own eyes.
- In episode 5, Kentaro sees the ruins of the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time and comments how can anyone deny what happened in San Francisco. Cate responds that those people often suffer from Selective Obliviousness because it's easier to deny they could be next one day. Cate herself originally dismissed recorded footage of the battle of Honolulu as made up with CGI before the San Francisco attack, since it's such an outlandish occurrence at that point in the story, until it becomes clear to her that the authorities do believe it's real.
- Tick Tock Tune: There is an ominous ticking underlying the score for the trailer.
- Time-Shifted Actor: Lee Shaw is played by Kurt Russell in the modern day — in flashbacks, he is played by Kurt's real son Wyatt Russell. Likewise, John Goodman returns to the role of Bill Randa in the 1973 opening, while Anders Holm plays a younger and more idealistic Bill Randa in the 50s storyline. Unlike the other two, Mari Yamamoto gets to play Keiko in both.
- Time Skip: Due to the time-warping effects of the Axis Mundi, when Cate, May, and Keiko manage to escape back to the surface in the last episode, they discover that two years have passed, even though they were only there for a few hours.
- Too Dumb to Live: You'd think that after all their experiences, Keiko and Bill would know better than to approach a nest of monsters especially after an earthquake just destabilized the ground they were on.
- Tracking Device: May unlocking Bill Randa's old tape files via her computer causes markers in the file to ping the present day Monarch via the internet, remotely alerting Tim to the data breach and its location. At the Monarch retirement home where the 2015 cast find Old Shaw, him and the other residents are forced to wear electronic anklets which keep track of them at all times.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Lee Shaw, Bill Randa and Keiko in the 50s flashbacks.
- Uncertain Doom:
- It's unknown if either the Mantleclaw or the Mother Longlegs survive their battle in the distant prologue after they fall into the ocean together and neither creature resurfaces.
- The season finale has two.
- Godzilla rips off the Ion Dragon's tail spikes, and moreso he rips its entire wing and arm off before throwing it into the Axis Mundi rift. It's unknown whether or not the Ion Dragon would survive such a grievous injury after being teleported away by the rift.
- Shaw apparently commits a Heroic Sacrifice in Axis Mundi, by prying his hand out of Keiko's and falling behind the Hourglass pod as the rift sucks the pod in. Shaw's death after falling behind is uncomfirmed. On one hand, everyone who's fallen into the Vile Vortices to Axis Mundi, Old Shaw included, has by default survived a greater fall unscathed; on the other hand, the terrain surrounding Shaw and the pod is being violently ripped apart by the activated rift's powerful suction.
- The Unmasqued World: In the 2015 time frame, the world is naturally aware of the existence of Godzilla and the MUTOs that he fought after the events of Godzilla (2014), with Tokyo paying to have anti-Godzilla rocket launchers mounted across their infrastructure, with a Titan cellphone warning system being implemented in Japan and the U.S., and with the ruins of San Francisco remaining cordoned off by the military and left derelict. However, Monarch remains unknown to the public until 2/3 through the series.
- Urban Ruins: San Francisco is shown during and after Godzilla's battle with the MUTOs, having been deemed a quarantine zone thanks to the vast structural damage leaving it unsuitable for human habitation, and soldiers roaming through what's left to prevent looting.
- Wham Shot: The end of the last episode of Season 1 has Cate, May, and Keiko emerging to the surface again, reuniting with Kentaro and Hiroshi. Then they hear something stomping off in the distance, and the camera pans over to the logo on the side of a nearby building: "APEX Skull Island Research Station" - just as Kong himself arrives.
- Where It All Began:
- It occurs midway through the series instead of at the end, but a major stepping stone in Cate working through her unresolved PTSD from G-Day occurs while she's returning to the abandoned ruins of San Francisco for the first time since G-Day.
- In-Universe, Young Bill Randa ends his pre-Monarch journey at the same place he began it: the USS Lawton, which he was the sole survivor of when it was lost at sea amid a Titan attack, triggering his pursuit of cryptids as a cryptozoologist. Bill reunites with the Lawton as a Saharan Shipwreck in the Philippines, finding other people who know for a fact that kaiju exist and share his passion for them, which marks his entry into the fledgling Monarch.
- Lampshaded by the heroes in the 2015 storyline when they deduce that Shaw is returning to the Kazakh power plant where Keiko fell to her apparent death in 1959 at the first episode's end, and the heroes confront him there, leading to Lee's entrapment in the Hollow Earth after His Story Repeats Itself with Cate, and leading to his seeming death.
- World of Snark: Virtually every English-speaking characters' dialogue consists of full snark. Even Shaw's dialogues comprises of this.
- Year Outside, Hour Inside: Lee's expedition into Axis Mundi lasted only about a week, but once he's sucked back to the surface, he finds out that twenty years have passed. For Keiko, it's even worse; she's been in Axis Mundi for 57 days, which equates to 58 years.
