Trivia / Destroy All Monsters

• Accidentally Correct Zoology: Rodan is shown diving into the water to catch dolphins, at the time when pterosaurs were thought to avoid getting themselves wet or else it would render them unable to fly. Recent fossil evidence seems to indicate that real Pteranodons would hunt this way as well.
• Acting for Two: Haruo Nakajima plays both Godzilla and Baragon.
  • And an officer at the self-defense forces!
• Bad Export for You: The ADV release has no menus or chapter stops. That has thankfully been fixed with Media Blasters giving the film a proper Blu-Ray and DVD release.
• Deleted Scene: There is an infamous scene with Godzilla fighting Manda in the middle of Tokyo that they are rampaging in. However it was later revealed that the scene was due to Hauro Nakajima and the cast having fun on the set.
• Dueling Dubs: The movie has both an international Hong Kong Dub commissioned by Toho, and an official english dub created by AIP for its U.S. release.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Media Blasters' DVD and Blu-Ray releases of this movie contained special features that weren't approved by Toho, resulting in said releases going out of print. This has also unfortunately affected Media Blasters' DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Godzilla vs. Megalon as well.
  • To this day, the only way to get the film with the original AIP dub is through the first run Media Blasters Blu-ray & DVD, as the second run releases, as well as the the Showa-Era set only have Toho’s International dub.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: For a long time, it was thought that Baragon was originally going to be the one to destroy the Arc de Triomphe in this film, but was replaced by Gorosaurus due to the suit being in bad condition after having been modified several times in Ultraman. However, storyboard images show that Gorosaurus was going to be the one to attack Paris the whole time. While Baragon was briefly considered (in fact, the original plan was to have Baragon destroy the Arc de Triomphe as it was in the film's early script drafts before the new storyboard images showing Gorosaurus surfaced), he was scrapped. Not because the suit was in bad condition (the suit had been repaired sometime prior to filming) but because the suit's ears made it difficult to film Baragon emerging from underground.
• Recycled Script: in many ways Destroy All Monsters is a repeat of Invasion of Astro-Monster. Human Aliens from the outer solar system with a specific and well-hidden Achilles' Heel secretly establish a base in Japan and use their advanced technology to control a group of monsters, which they send to destroy major human cities (though unlike in Astro Monster, we actually get to witness major world cities getting destroyed). The protagonists are astronauts and scientists who use their own technology combined with some quick thinking to exploit the aliens' weakness and break the control over the monsters, allowing the whole thing to be settled in a kaiju brawl. In both cases, the aliens' ultimate weapon whom the other monsters team up against in the climax is King Ghidorah. Much of the structure of both these films would be recycled again decades later in Godzilla: Final Wars.
• What Could Have Been: The monster selection of the film was intended to be far larger than in the final film. Originally the original plan was to show all of Toho's monsters in one film together. Kaiju such as Maguma and Ebirah were to be in the film, and Maguma and Baragon were to act as guardians to the Kilaaks in fending off the SDF. However, due to the frail conditions of the suits owing to constant modifications and use in Ultraman, Anguirus, Gorosaurus, and Minya were substituted instead. Baragon did appear several times in the movie, but Maguma was cut altogether.
  • Maguma was ultimately removed, not because of suit condition (which was still in surprisingly good condition), but because in his film of origin, Gorath, the moon is destroyed in 1980, the year the story is set. However, in this film set in 1999, the moon plays a prominent part of the story so the writers removed him from the lineup after being reminded of this fact.
  • Varan was also supposed to play a far larger role in the film where he would have attacked San Francisco and possibly destroy the Golden Gate Bridge and later on he was to tag team King Ghidorah with Rodan's help in the Final Battle, but his suit was so long gone and there was no time to build a new one and only two miniature models from his original film were still extant so he only appeared in a handful of scenes as the motionless models, this is also the reason why Rodan leaves the fight early as he was meant to aid Varan.
  • King Kong was in early drafts of the film, but ended up getting cut as the expiration of Toho's license to use the character was coming too close to production time for comfort. Just imagine seeing Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, Anguirus, Kumonga and the Eighth Wonder of the World himself (including the very Kaiju Kong himself beat in his last film in Gorosaurus), all fighting against King Ghidorah together, also Mechani-Kong was planned to appear as well likely as a possible guard on Monsterland and later on under the Kilaak's control, but was also cut for the same reasons as King Kong (despite the fact Toho actually owns Mechani-Kong's rights, the same rights issue would also keep him out of what ended up being Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah).
  • Dogora was also in the early planning stages to appear, likely as one of the Kilaak's Kaiju. (Despite the fact it's normally a peaceful Kaiju when not provoked.)
  • The Gargantuas, Sanda and Gaira were also intended to be included in the film, but were cut as well, even their father Frankenstein was also intended to show up at some point, no doubt a sorely missed opportunity.
  • In addition to the above monsters, Toho was also going to include hybrid Kaiju as well (such as a Godzilla-Mothra hybrid, and many others), likely as a result of inbreeding amongst the populace. This idea was quickly dropped due to the Squick factor of seeing such actions between Kaiju, not to mention the countless amounts of new suits the company would have to make.
  • Destroy All Monsters was intended to be the Grand Finale to the Godzilla series (hench why Toho wanted every Kaiju that they had owned up to this point to appear), with plans to keep the franchise alive via an animated series (Toho would write it, while He-Man studio Filmation would handle the rest of the work). The huge box office failure of Latitude Zero, however, caused Toho to panic and put the series back into production, starting with All Monsters Attack.
  • Haruo Nakajima originally pitched for Godzilla to do his iconic dance from Invasion of Astro-Monster as his victory dance after killing off King Ghidorah but Ishiro Honda rejected it.

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