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Franchise / Godzilla
aka: Godzilla 2 War Of The Monsters

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/japanese_godzilla_save_the_earth_art.png
SKREEEEEEEEEEEOOOOONK!!!!

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound,
He pulls the spitting high-tension wires down
Helpless people on subway trains
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them
He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town
Oh, no, they say he's got to go
Go, go, Godzilla!
Ooh no, there goes Tokyo
Go, go, Godzilla!
— Blue Öyster Cult, "Godzilla"

The legendary king of the monsters. The atomic dinosaur. Death, the destroyer of worlds. The invincible force of nature, and the key to all coexistence. Up from the depths, 30 stories high, breathing fire, his head in the sky, GODZILLA!!!

Along with the American-made King Kong, Godzilla is one of the most iconic giant monsters of modern fiction. As a Kaiju, time after time the mutated prehistoric reptile has risen from the deep, sometimes to destroy Tokyo, sometimes to save it.

The first film, released in 1954, begins with a series of mysterious shipwrecks. A reporter named Hagiwara is sent to investigate a remote island, whose natives blame the wrecks on a monster from their myths. He goes back a second time with some scientists, and the paleontologist Dr. Yamane finds gigantic radioactive footprints.

Yamane soon realises that the legendary monster is real. Godzilla is a gigantic prehistoric sea monster which somehow survived to the present, and has been released by the recent atomic blasts. Naturally, he is heading straight for Tokyo.

The military attempt to stop Godzilla, using tanks and a thirty-meter high electric fence, but they fail. Because Godzilla was created by radiation he cannot be killed by anything less deadly. Godzilla sets the city on fire with his atomic breath, killing millions and reducing Tokyo to smouldering rubble.

Fortunately, Yamane's daughter's fiance, Dr. Serizawa, has invented an Oxygen Destroyer, capable of killing Godzilla, but he has moral qualms about using it, since the military would use it as a weapon of mass destruction.

After seeing how much damage Godzilla has done, Serizawa does eventually decide to use his oxygen destroyer, but first he burns all his research notes. The navy take Serizawa to the middle of Tokyo bay, where he successfully uses his invention to kill both Godzilla and himself, a Heroic Sacrifice to prevent the oxygen destroyer being misused.

At the end of the film, Yamane says he doesn't believe Godzilla was unique. Another will inevitably appear.

Yamane was correct. The film launched a successful franchise, with several alternate continuities, in which Godzilla has veered from villain to hero to Anti-Hero. The King of the Monsters starred in two Western Animation series — The Godzilla Power Hour and Godzilla: The Series. Godzilla was even a Special Guest in the TV show Zone Fighter, along with King Ghidorah and Gigan. He also starred in a show called Godzilla Island, which used Bandai action figures filmed in stop-motion to portray its monster cast.

Toho's Godzilla films are traditionally categorized into eras, according to when they were made: Showa (1954-1975), Heisei (1984-1995)note , Millennium (1999-2004) and Reiwa (2016-). Each era has its own look-and-feel, particularly in its special effects but also in its plotlines, with the Showa series going from grim and serious to balls-off-the-walls goofy, the Heisei series having a more serious tone and an episodic continuity, and the Millennium series being an Anthology series of self-contained films (excepting the Mechagodzilla ones) that wavered between serious and campy. Shin Godzilla, released in 2016, was retroactively declared the first film of the Reiwa era, the latest era in the franchise, which technically began with the ascension of Naruhito to the Chrysanthemum Throne in 2019. Toho announced that they are looking forward to releasing new Godzilla movies every 1 or 2 years starting in 2021 with their "World of Godzilla" universe.

Legendary Pictures (The Dark Knight Trilogy, 300, Pacific Rim) released a new reboot of the series in 2014, which was promised to be closer to the original material. Following the success of the reboot, 2 more films by Legendary were scheduled, and a King Kong reboot was later added to turn the setting into a Shared Universe called the MonsterVerse. The new movies themselves are considered by some to be part of their own "era" succeeding the three preceeding eras of Toho films. Toho released their own Godzilla reboot in 2016, Shin Godzilla, separate from the Legendary series, which may possibly result in two running Godzilla series at once. The film is written and directed by Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno. An anime film trilogy headed by Gen Urobuchi, starting with Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters launching in 2017.

In 2010, IDW Publishing picked up the rights to the Godzilla franchise, producing a mix of standalone miniseries and an ongoing continuity that began with Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters co-written by Eric Powell and Tracy Marsh and drawn by Phil Hester. This continuity was followed by the singularly titled Godzilla and Godzilla: Rulers of Earth, which became the longest running comic book adaptation of the character.

The general interpretation of Godzilla in the original film was of more of a natural disaster, something powerful that can not be reasoned with, but ultimately a sympathetic character who was as much a victim of the atomic age as the Japanese he terrorized. Subsequent films set Godzilla as either a heroic ally to the humans or an evil creature that has to be killed. The 1998 American film portrayed Godzilla as a mostly innocent creature that just wanted to be left alone. The 2014 version of the character encompasses all of these things, but mostly the traits exhibited in the 1954 movie.

The premise is actually about a year Older Than They Think, because the movie's story is suspiciously similar to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a 1953 American movie where a nuclear explosion awakens a giant dinosaur that attacks Manhattan. Word of God has it the real inspiration for Godzilla was a far more famous monster movie, though a working title for the film was "The Beast from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", making it pretty obvious where they got the idea from.

Frequently cameos as a Rent-a-Zilla. An Expy of Godzilla is called a Not Zilla. May be the only reason you watch a movie, if you're Just Here for Godzilla. When you reach the point when only he can save you, you have crossed the Godzilla Threshold.

There's an extensive character sheet here that needs a bit of work.

(If you were looking for the band named after the franchise, see Gojira (Band).)

Godzilla media:

    open/close all folders 

    Feature films 
These are the titles of the official films. The names vary in regional release—A LOT. Those variations are listed under the appropriate film.

Showa series (1954-1975) note 

Heisei series (1984-1995)

TriStar Pictures film (1998)

  • The unmade Godzilla (1994) note 
  • Godzilla (1998)
  • The unmade GODZILLA 2 note 

Millennium series (1999-2004)

Legendary Pictures' MonsterVerse (2014-present)

Reiwa series (2016-present)

Reiwa-era Anime films

Related films

Related franchises

    Short Films 
  • Godzilla Appears at Godzilla Fest (2020)
  • Godzilla Vs Hedorah (2021)
  • Fest Godzilla 3: Gigan Attacks (2022)
  • Godzilla vs. Gigan Rex (2022)
  • Godzilla vs. Megalon (2023)
  • Fest Godzilla 4: Operation Jet Jaguar (2023)

    Novels 

    Children's books 

    Short Stories 

    Comics 

Japanese manganote 

American comics

    Television shows and cartoons 

    Video games 

    Rides 
  • Monster Planet of Godzilla (Sanrio Puroland)
  • Godzilla vs. Evangelion: The Real 4-D (crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Universal Studios Japan)
  • Godzilla Intercept Operation-National Godzilla Awajishima Research Center (Ninjigen no Mori on Awaji Island)
  • Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle (Seibeun Amusement Park)

    Pinball machines 

    Audio Dramas 

General tropes:

    open/close all folders 

    A-F 
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Kiryu is built around the original Godzilla's skeleton, and when it first hears Godzilla's roar, it remembers its past and goes rampaging. They quickly find out a way to fix it, though.
  • Actor Allusion
    • The Secretary General's line of once being called "Mr. One Shot" in Final Wars is a reference to an action film his actor Akira Takarada did years ago titled 100 Shot, 100 Killed.
    • The infamous leap Godzilla does in Godzilla vs. Megaguirus? A reference to Tsutomu Kitagawa's involvment in the Super Sentai series. With the exception of Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Kitagawa was the man in the Godzilla suit throughout the Millennium series.
    • In Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Godzilla crosses his arms in a "+ " position. This same pose was made famous by Ultraman, whenever he fires off his trademark Specium Beam to finish off monsters.. Godzilla's (then) suit actor, Haruo Nakajima, played several Monsters of the Week in the original Ultraman series (one of them, Jiras, was in fact based from an older Godzilla suit, except with a large frill).
    • Nakajima's protegé was Bin Furuya a.k.a. Ultraman.
    • Akihiko Hirata wears an eyepatch in Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, in allusion to his most famous role as the eyepatch-wearing Dr. Serizawa in the original Godzilla.
    • The mini subs used in GMK are named Satsuma, in reference to actor Kenpachiro Satsuma, who played Godzilla from 1984 to 1995.
    • The character played by Kumi Mizuno in Godzilla Final Wars is named Namikawa, in reference to her earlier role as Miss Namikawa in 1965's Invasion of Astro-Monster.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Godzilla, repeatedly in later films.
  • Alien Invasion: OF COURSE!
  • Aliens Are Bastards: Every alien race that visits Earth, minus the Venusians, plans to conquer it or destroy it. Every alien kaiju is an unrepentant villain who delights in killing everybody it can get its claws on.
  • All Just a Dream: All the monster sequences in All Monsters Attack. They only happened in the little boy's mind, and served as life lessons for how to deal with human bullies and bandits.
  • Almost Dead Guy
  • Alternate Continuity: Almost a dozen! Almost counts as Negative Continuity, actually.
  • Alternate Timeline:
    • The Millennium series (Sans Final Wars) all share the original movie as Backstory, but only two of them have any continuity with each other.
    • Godzilla vs. Megaguirus changes things up a bit, as while Godzilla did attack Tokyo in 1954, he then went back into the sea instead of being defeated.
    • The Mechagodzilla duology in the Millennium series (Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.) presented the idea of the original Godzilla's bones as having survived the Oxygen Destroyer blast while the original movie showed them being disintegrated with the rest of Godzilla.
    • Despite all the Showa kaiju appearing in Godzilla: Final Wars, they don't have the same exact origins as their debut movies. As such, Manda isn't the guardian of the Mu Empire, King Caesar isn't an ancient Okinawan deity, Gigan is from Planet X instead of Star Hunter Nebula M, and none of the monsters have probably ever encountered Godzilla before (with the possible exception of Minya). Anguirus seems to know Godzilla, they have a short conversation before the three-on-one battle starts. It could just be a nod to their Showa friendship, though.
    • Godzilla: Final Wars was originally written so that the eponymous monster was a grown-up Godzilla Junior, which would have tied it to the Heisei series. For unknown reasons, this concept was never used in the finished product, and Final Wars instead takes place in its own continuity.
    • The Marvel and Dark Horse comic books. The IDW comics tend to vary. Kingdom of Monsters and its sequel take place in a rebooted continuity where the monsters show up in modern times, Gangsters and Goliaths and Legends (aside from issue 4 involving Hedorah) already have the monsters established while Half-Century War starts out during the events of the first Godzilla movie and expands its own continuity.
  • Ambiguous Gender: In the Japanese films, all the monsters — even Mothra — are referred to with gender-neutral pronouns equivalent to "it". It's only in the Western releases that they're assigned definitive genders.
  • And I Must Scream:
    • Happens to Spacegodzilla. After getting defeated by Godzilla, he gets trapped in the form of tiny crystal particles floating through space for all eternity.
    • In Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth, Mothra punishes Battra by sealing him away for thousands of years. Godzilla would later suffer a similar fate at the end of the film.
  • Animated Adaptation: He has had three of them! There's also a trilogy of netflix anime movies, and a Netflix Anime Series.
  • Annual Title: Godzilla 2000 is this, although the film released in December 1999 to be exact.
  • Anti-Hero: Godzilla himself, Mechagodzilla, Rodan, Anguirus, Baragon, even an incarnation of King Ghidorah who is often potrayed as both Godzilla AND Humanity's biggest threat, have all received this treatment.
  • Archenemy: Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla, and the Japanese Self-Defence Force are the top qualifiers for the title of Godzilla's most perennial nemeses. Mothra too, as she's the only monster to always be good, and she has the most wins against Godzilla.
  • Artistic License – Physics: In Godzilla vs. Megalon, Jet Jaguar — a human-sized robot built by a human inventor in his spare bedroom — suddenly grows to over 50 meters tall. The inventor's comment? "He must have reprogrammed himself to change his size somehow!"
  • Artistic License – Paleontology
    • More often than not averted, as Toho NEVER tries to make Godzilla an actual dinosaur except for in the 1991 Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah.
    • However, the first (1954) Godzilla movie contained this gem, from a character who was supposedly a paleontologist himself:
      "It can be safely assumed that two million years ago, this Brontosaurus and other ancient reptiles roamed the earth. It was known as the Jurassic Age. During this period, there was another species which we may call the intermediary animal — a cross between the land-living animals and the sea-living animals."
    • Godzilla's Heisei origin as a mutated Godzillasaurus almost get it right. It is sometimes shown standing and walking with his tail lifted, though even then the body is held up at an angle rather than parallel to the ground. There are also times the tail is dragged along the ground. This might be at least in part due to the suit actor not being able to comfortably walk in a realistic stance. Additionally, its small head and double row of teeth are not from any real theropod, as well as the (even at the time) largely discredited "sacral" brain in its hip to control the legs. That's not getting into psychic powers.
    • The second film, Godzilla Raids Again, introduces Anguirus, who is stated to be an Ankylosaurus, despite only vaguely resembling one. The character that announces this also reads out a (fictional) report from a Polish scientist claiming that Ankylosaurs were carnivores, when they were in fact herbivores.
  • Asian Speekee Engrish: The English dubs by Titra Sound/Titan Productions fall prey to a thankfully much more subdued version of this, though the New York actors who worked on the dubs reportedly loathed putting on the fake accents after a while and often joked about them between sessions.
  • Asteroids Monster: Hedorah and Destoroyah.
  • Atrocious Arthropods: Arthropod-themed Kaiju appear throughout the films as antagonists.
    • Son of Godzilla: The Kamacuras are giant praying mantises who try to eat Godzilla's son, Minilla. There is also Kumonga, a Giant Spider that is much more dangerous than the Kamacuras.
    • Godzilla vs. Megaguirus: The titular Megaguirus is a Dreadful Dragonfly and the main antagonist of the film. She can siphon energy from her opponents and use their powers against them.
    • Godzilla vs. Megalon: Megalon is an insect Kaiju that seems to be a cross between a mole cricket and a rhino beetle.
    • Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth: Mothra averts this by being a heroic moth Kaiju. However, her dark counterpart Battra plays this straight, albeit as a Well-Intentioned Extremist. While he also protects the Earth, he is only concerned with the Earth, and any of its inhabitants who threaten the planet will also face his wrath, which happened to the Cosmos civilization when they created a weather control system. In the present day, he awakened to stop an asteroid headed for Earth, but was enraged by modern humanity's pollution and began attacking civilization as punishment.
    • Godzilla vs. Gigan: The main villains are a race of cockroach-like aliens who want to take over Earth after their own planet was destroyed by pollution.
    • Ebirah, Horror of the Deep: The titular Ebirah is a giant shrimp mutated by the nuclear waste of the terrorist organization Red Bamboo who use him to guard their island base.
    • The Return of Godzilla: Shockirus are giant sea lice which were mutated by feeding on Godzilla's radioactive blood. At five feet long, they were certainly large enough to be a threat to humans, even if not quite Kaiju-sized.
    • Godzilla (2014): The MUT Os are the villainous Kaiju of the movie and resemble giant insects. They are a somewhat sympathetic example: Their goal is merely to reunite with one another, have offspring, and ensure the resurgence of their species. Even with the amount of destruction they cause, they are at least sympathetic in this regard. In addition, they usually only cause destruction solely because they're so large and act more like actual animals.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Godzilla's own height has fluctuated from 50 to 120 meters throughout the different continuities.
  • Attack Reflector: King Caesar can absorb energy weapons into his eyes and fire them back.The Super X-2's Fire Mirror also counts, as does Mechagodzilla II's "Plasma Grenades", both off which turn Godzilla's breath weapon against him.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • Kiryu's ultimate weapon, the Absolute Zero Cannon. It was capable of obliterating anything in a single shot (in a rather cool aversion of the Harmless Freezing trope), but it was highly telegraphed and it could only be fired once per battle before having to reload it at the HQ.
    • Zone Fighter can grow into a giant daikaiju sized super hero to fight other monsters. However he has a time limit of only a few minutes and while he can dish out a lot of damage he has a glass jaw which makes him a Glass Cannon.
    • Destoroyah can emulate the Oxygen Destroyer, causing the target to be reduced to bones. Sounds cool right? The problem? He has to have them in a body of water and break up into a swarm of microbes for it to work. And even when he dropped Godzilla into the ocean he still couldn't use it because Godzilla's immanent meltdown was boiling the water and made it and him too hot to use this power. The only one to fall victim to this in the whole movie was an aquarium full of fish.
  • Badass Adorable: Mothra (especially Mothra Leo), Anguirus and Godzilla Junior. Zilla Junior can also count.
  • Badass Bookworm: Dr. Serizawa. You can count the number of things that actually managed to kill Godzilla on one hand. You can count the number of people that killed Godzilla on one finger.
    • Partially averted by the Americanized version of The Return of Godzilla which takes the scene of the skeleton of Godzilla vanishing as meaning that the creature seen in the movie is the same as the original, meaning that Serizawa didn't actually kill Godzilla, just put him out of action for some thirty-odd years.
    • If you want to take the ending of GMK as an idea, this can explain how Godzilla revived from the Oxygen Destroyer. Whether this is canon or "counts" of course is up to each viewer.
  • Badass Normal:
    • A few human characters most definitely fall under this. As for the monsters, Anguirus is one of the few monsters that doesn't have a breath weapon and he certainly cannot fly. All he's got going for him are his horns, teeth, claws,and the ability to roll into a spiky ball. And, yet, he's still considered to be Godzilla's greatest ally.
    • King Kong, the only Badass Normal monster to ever successfully beat Godzilla, although the King Kong that fought Godzilla is more Empowered Badass Normal. In order to make him suitable enough to actually fight Godzilla, they dramatically increased his size and gave him electrical powers.
    • Gorosaurus, your average run-of-the-mill giant dinosaur (though more specifically a generic carnosaur), freaking broke King Ghidorah's spine. Keep in mind Gorosaurus only has his teeth, claws, legs and tail as possible weapons, and you'll see why this is such a feat. Titanosaurus probably counts (he did go toe-to-toe with Godzilla in physical combat, after all, and even managed to lift Godzilla off the ground by his head.)
    • Dr. Serizawa.
    • Steve Martin, taking in account he's one of the very few, if not the only, American to be on a city that Godzilla destroyed and actually survive.
    • Colonel Gondo from "Biollante"? A Colonel Badass who makes a Bond One-Liner to a very angry Godzilla.
      "All this intravenous stuff's no good for you. Stick to smoking."
    • GMK has a particularly badass admiral who drives a submarine into Godzilla's mouth and then drills a hole out through his neck. When Godzilla next tries to use his breath weapon, it rips him apart.
    • Sergeant Steven Woods from the "Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters" comic series, who survives a Godzilla/Anguirus battle that destroys Hollywood, finds and cares for Allie, a young girl who survived a Godzilla attack, and kicks plenty of ass along the way.
  • Bad Vibrations: Often in the early part of a film, heralding the arrival of either Godzilla or one of his foes.
  • Bandaged Face: Yuri spends the second half of GMK with a bandage around her head.
  • Battle in the Rain:
    • There's one of these in Godzilla vs. Biollante.
    • Also in the opening of Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla.
  • Bat Out of Hell: Bagorah in Dark Horse Comics.
  • Beam Spam:
    • Showa Mechagodzilla's specialty.
    • This is the fighting strategy of almost every monster in the Heisei series, notorious for this.
    • Godzilla and Keiser Ghidorah's battle rapidly devolves to this for most of the fight's screentime (when Godzilla isn't being thrown around like a toy or getting his energy drained), at least untill Godzilla gets powered up by Keiser energy, beats the hell out of Keiser Ghidorah and makes him explode in the atmosphere.
  • Behemoth Battle: In nigh every movie after the first one:
  • Benevolent Monsters: Godzilla's various incarnations have fallen under this as have other monsters in the Toho universe.
    • After his Heel–Face Turn, the Showa (1954-1975) incarnation of Godzilla is a more heroic character that protects earth from various evil forces.
    • Both Minilla and Junior are Gentle Giant versions of the Godzilla species who live peacefully alongside humanity. Likewise for Godzooky and Zilla Junior on TV. Like the Showa Godzilla, they are all protectors of the earth.
    • Mothra is by far the most benevolent of the Toho monsters. She's often portrayed as a guardian deity of the fictional Infant Island and will only attack to defend her Shobijin companions from being captured or to save her larvae from being eaten by predators.
    • The film War of the Gargantuas features the two titular monsters. One of them, Gaira, is a horrific green giant who feeds on human flesh. The other, Sanda, is also a giant, but he's far more peaceful due to being raised by humans rather than eating them. Sanda even performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save mankind from his brother's voracious appetite by fighting him to the death.
    • The 2014 US version of Godzilla is capable of causing tsunamis just by walking out of the water. He doesn't mean to, of course. It's just that he's so huge he ends up causing destruction by accident. For the most part, he prefers to spend his time swimming peacefully in the oceans and feeding on Earth's natural radiation sources. The only reason he even showed up in civilization in the first place was to fight the comparatively more vicious MUTO. He even seems to go out of his way to avoid accidentally harming humans when not in direct conflict with the MUTOs, like diving under ships instead of smashing through them when they're between him and his destination and not responding to the nuclear attacks that were used against him in the 50s.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Mothra may be the most peaceful monster in the film series. But, harm/kidnap either her children or her fairy companions and she will unleash her rage upon you.
    • Though he already has a short temper, harming Godzilla's son is most definitely the very last thing you'll ever do. Kumonga, Kamacuras and Destoroyah each had to learn this the hard way.
      • Godzilla didn't actually kill Destoroyah himself, but he did mess him up pretty badly.
      • It is possible that Godzilla did (although maybe inadvertently) finish off Destroyah in the final cut when Godzilla melts down really close to Destroyah, therefore killing any last of the surviving micro-organisms. After all, Destroyah is a kaiju and freezing his wings and a great drop might not be enough to kill him, but leave him crippled too close to Godzilla's meltdown.
      • Though it should be noted that the original ending did have Godzilla kill off Destoroyah as he died. It was cut because it was thought it took away from the emotional impact of Godzilla's death.
  • Big Bad: Quite a few, although Ghidorah is the primary antagonist of the entire franchise as a whole.
  • Big Budget Beef-Up:
    • Godzilla: Final Wars.
    • King Kong vs. Godzilla to an extent, as it was Toho's 30th anniversary film. Both eponymous monsters appear for the first time in color, widescreen and stereo. Of course, a good chunk of the budget went to the ownership of King Kong's rights alone.
    • The 1984 film was a tremendous step up in budget from the notoriously cheap films of the 1970's that had come before it.
    • The 2014 remake has the highest budget of any Godzilla movie made so far.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies:
    • Mothra, obviously, but there's also Kumonga (a spider), Kamacuras (praying mantis), Megalon (beetle), Battra (another butterfly/moth) and Megaguirus (prehistoric dragonfly).
    • Not kaiju sized-but no less big creepy crawlies include: The Meganulons (which are like giant dragonfly nymphs) in Rodan and Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, the Shockirus (6ft long sea lice) in The Return of Godzilla and the human-sized versions of Destoroyah count as well.
    • The MUTOS in the 2014 film, though with a few reptilian/Gigan features added as well. They appear to resemble spiders or parasitic wasps, and like the latter exhibit Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism (the female being much bigger and lacking wings.)
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • Kiryu saving a nurse and child from a beam charging Godzilla by slamming into him just as he lands, sending Godzilla flying down several blocks.
    • Godzilla's first truly heroic act is rushing to protect the hopelessly outmatched Mothra when she tries to take King Ghidorah on alone in her larval phase in Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster. Bonus points for Godzilla insisting (through the Shobijin) he has no interest in fighting to protect humanity for all the bad blood between both forces up to that point; one could say he's still not willing to sit back and watch the equivalent of a child be beaten to death by a space demon.
    • In Final Wars, Mothra gets set on fire by Gigan. She decides being set on fire isn't that bad and flies into Gigan, killing them both. The Heroic Sacrifice trope is subverted, though, since she lived (as the post-credits scene shows).
    • Earlier, Godzilla was getting trounced by Gigan and Monster X when Mothra showed up and clotheslines them.
    • Godzilla tends to become this in many Showa-era films. Gorosaurus gets the role in Destroy All Monsters by way of knocking Ghidorah (who until this point had been doing rather well against every foe he had) onto the ground with a kangaroo-styled kick.
  • Bilingual Dialogue: Final Wars. In King Kong vs. Godzilla, all English speaking actors voices are retained and subtitled in Japanese. The reverse is true for Godzilla vs. Biollante, which is fortunate since English appears to not have been the actors' first language. In Godzilla: Tokyo SOS a rather bizarre scene involving Godzilla attacked an American nuclear sub is also redubbed, despite there really not being any cringe-worth dialogue in the Japanese cut. Shin Godzilla has a fair bit of English dialogue as well, both from American and Japanese actors.
  • Bowdlerise: In order to downplay or outright remove Godzilla's association with nuclear weapons, several spinoffs and pieces of merchandise refer to his Breath Weapon as a "Heat Ray" instead of the Atomic Breath.
  • Breath Weapon: Godzilla is famous for this, though he doesn't breathe "fire" as commonly thought, but rather an atomic heat beam — it varies between a kind of super-heated gas in the earlier films to a concentrated beam with explosive qualities in the later films. Many other monsters have a breath weapon of some form over the series, including Rodan (1956 and 1993), King Ghidorah, Baragon (1965), Mechagodzilla (in all versions), Biollante, Spacegodzilla, Destoroyah, Keizer Ghidorah, Zilla Junior, Godzilla Junior, Anguirus (in the games), Titanosaurus (also in the games), Varan (in the games, too), etc.
  • Broad Strokes: While the Showa and Heisei eras served as their own separate continuities, the Millennium era worked more along the lines of this. Each film more or less took place in its own separate universe (with the exception of Tokyo SOS, which was a sequel to Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla) using the original 1954 movie as a jumping off point, and borrowed various aspects from the previous eras to paint a general idea for the setting.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: If a way to stop Godzilla does occur, it's either done at a great cost, fails to stop him for long, or both.
  • Bungling Inventor: Tetsuo from Invasion of Astro-Monster is pretty bright but his invention is an overly noisy device. It then turns out to be an extremely effective weapon against the people of Planet X.
  • Butt-Monkey: Angurius. His roles tended to be a Curb-Stomp Battle against Godzilla (in his first and last appearances), a sidekick to Godzilla who gets utterly bashed, or a mere Worf Effect of bad luck. Even his vuvuzela-like roar seems to lament "Why me?".
  • Call-Back: Final Wars features many callbacks to the classic Toho sci-fi films of the 50s and 60s, including having the object plummeting towards Earth be Gorath from Suspicious Star Gorath, and having the vintage Tohoscope logo be shown at the beginning.
  • The Cameo: Godzilla appears in a brief daydream sequence in the Japanese film Always 2, doing what he does best and looking quite good in CGI.
  • Canon Discontinuity: The Godzilla series has multiple separate continuities within it: Showa (The films between 1954 and 1975) and Heisei (the films between 1984 and 1995) being the longest of them. Most films after that are their own individual continuity (But most still keep the original as canonical). This still doesn't prevent fans from picking and choosing amongst them. The fact that the first film's american version was actually re-dubbed in Japanese and shown in cinemas to a great success also adds some confusion to the Japanese fans as to what version was canon.
  • Canon Welding: Many of the monsters Godzilla faced, most notably Mothra and Rodan, originated in their own completely separate films.
  • Chainsaw Good: Gigan NEOS towards the end of Final Wars, and Dual Chainsaws at that! But then throughout all appearances, said monster also has a buzzsaw in his torso.
  • Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth: The aliens from Planet X are humanoid cockroaches, the only surviving life form on a planet wasted by pollution caused by the previous civilization.
  • Colony Drop: Final Wars. Godzilla takes it on point blank and LIVES.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: When Kiryu is possessed by the spirit of the original Godzilla, its eyes change from yellow to red.
  • Colossus Climb: What some scientists and G Force have attempted to do, in order to research and understand Godzilla better. This is wholly inadvisable due to the amount of radiation being emitted from his body.
  • Combat Tentacles: Biollante. And Ghidorah, kind of, though he's more Combat Necks than tentacles.
  • Combining Mecha: MOGERA and Super Mechagodzilla.
  • Comic-Book Adaptation:
    • One from Marvel Comics (in the '70s), another from Dark Horse Comics (in the '90s). Both suffered from being unable to use anyone but Godzilla.
    • A new series from IDW Publishing is currently in progress. And unlike Marvel and Dark Horse, they've got the rights to a bunch of Godzilla's foes.
  • Confusion Fu: In the Showa films monsters would sometimes have a hard time even getting close to King Ghidorah because he'd keep moving his heads around in wild ways so that it was hard to predict which volley of gravity beams would hit, which would miss, or if he would rake them across an enemy monster's body or readjust his aim if he missed or not and because there is no glowing or charge time he spammed these rays like no tommorow. It's because of this he'd hit any attacking monsters half the time and the other half miss. He wasn't a dangerous planet-killing monster just because of his strength but also because of how wild he was. He is chaos incarnate!
  • Continuity Reboot: The Heisei series is this to the Showa series while the Millennium series does this constantly. The IDW Godzilla continuity (Kingdom of Monsters and the Ongoing) is set up in an entirely different universe altogether.
  • Cool Boat: The Atragon/Gotengo.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Occasionally show up as human antagonists. Often show up in the Mothra films for some reason.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: King Ghidorah's background mentions that it has destroyed countless worlds with life.
  • Crapsack World: A relatively light example. A degree of the human populace is Too Dumb to Live, Jerkasses, or both, and monster attacks are a day-to-day occurrence.
  • Creepy Twins: Mothra's Fairies (the Shobijin/Cosmos/Elias).
  • Crossover:
    • Mothra, Rodan, King Kong, Gorosaurus, Manda, Varan, Baragon, Moguera/MOGERA, Kamoebas and Zilla all started in their own movies before being imported to the main series.
    • Godzilla, Gigan and Ghidorah showed up in Zone Fighter.
    • Banpresto, the company responsible for Super Robot Wars, also created a crossover of Godzilla series, Ultra Series, Kamen Rider series and Gundam series... in a soccer game, of all things. For that matter, Godzilla eventually appeared in Super Robot Wars as well.
    • His Hanna-Barbera incarnation also played soccer with Fred Flintstone in this bumper.
    • Godzilla is seen with Kure Kure Takora on a lot of official artwork and merchandise.
    • Godzilla and Mechagodzilla showed up in Ace Combat Infinity as a cross promotion for the PS3 game.
    • City Shrouded in Shadow has you trying to escape a city while Ultraman, Godzilla and an Eva unit duke it out.
  • Crowd Panic: Numerous examples throughout the series of Tokyo residents stampeding away from the Kaiju of the moment.
  • Crystal Spires and Togas: The Seatopians in Godzilla vs. Megalon.
  • Cultural Translation:
    • The first U.S. remake, complete with America Saves the Day, though there is a slight subversion in that the French are involved.
    • It goes back to the original, though, as Gojira had Raymond Burr (technically, a Canadian, but close enough) wedged in when it became Godzilla: King of the Monsters!.
    • Averted on the first one, since it didn't changed the movie as much as it ignored some themes that might have offended filmgoers from both America and Japan back in the day.
    • Played straight with the second film, Godzilla's Counterattack/Godzilla Raids Again/Gigantis the Fire Monster. Read all about it here and here
    • In an odd subversion, in all foreign releases of Mothra vs. Godzilla (including the otherwise awkward Godzilla vs. the Thing cut), Toho themselves add a scene in which the US Navy engages the re-awakened Godzilla, and seem to hold their own, before eventually running out of ammunition and being forced to withdraw. The scene gets bonus points for being one of the few times Toho themselves inserted scenes specifically for a cut of the film not intended for domestic viewing, one of the only times the military attacks Godzilla and isn't obliterated, and the only time the US engages Godzilla in the Japanese films and doesn't come off the worst; there's also the nice shot of the Stars and Stripes billowing in the breeze as the film's heroic theme plays in the background.
    • The 1998 remake pretty much remakes the entire original film into something akin to a Sy-Fi Channel remake of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, and it most certainly shows; the U.S military kill the giant monster with missiles. The film seems less like a remake of a Godzilla film and more like some kind of military propaganda film or a remake of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. It's also as close as we're ever likely to get to a remake of Varan, the Unbelievable.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: A few.
    • The fight against "Zilla" (his In Name Only American counterpart) in Final Wars, which doubles as one Crowning Moment of Take That!, though almost every other battle in the film was also a Curb-Stomp Battle. Anguirus, Rodan, and King Caesar are the only monsters other than the main antagonists who last more than a few seconds against Big G, and even then, that's only because there's three of them.
    • The fight between Baragon and Godzilla in Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah — it even involves actual curb stomping.
    • Gigan being killed by Zone Fighter and King Ghidorah beating Zone Fighter in round one.
    • Godzilla is utterly hopeless at beating Mechagodzilla in their first encounter—until he magnitizes himself, which allows him to finally get the upper hand.
    • Godzilla is overpowered almost immediately from the get-go in his battle against Keizer Ghidorah in Godzilla final wars, never even being able to mount an effective defense as he's ragdolled around, beaten up, and utterly trashed by Monster X's transformation. However, following his 11th-Hour Superpower power up he turns the tide and inflicts a curbstomp right back at Ghidorah.
    • Heisei Godzilla is utterly curbstomped three times by his robot duplicate in Godzilla VS Mechagodzilla; the first time is basically Godzilla being utterly dominated by Mechagodzilla's vast arsenal and superior defences, the second is much like the first time, just in a city instead of a grassy valley, and the third time is after Mechagodzilla combines with the Garuda to become Super Mechagodzilla. Mechagodzilla is curbed back by the revitalized, revived and pissed Godzilla; though notably the robotic Godzilla tanked more Spiral Rays than either of the following foes, Spacegodzilla and Destoroyah.
  • Cyber Cyclops: Gigan. His single eye can shoot out a cluster of laser beams. Although until his appearance in Final Wars this wasn't one of his abilities. Gigan was shown firing lasers on the boxart and posters of his movies but he never did it in them. In the Japan-only television series Godzilla Island he has the eye beam, so the ability is Older Than They Think.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • The Heisei and Millennium series. Even within the Millennium series, GMK showed up the previous two film's rather neutral, anti-hero portrayal with a Godzilla that was a much worse monster than even the original one.
    • Godzilla vs. Hedorah was a mild case of this. Sure, it had a kid in it, but it featured the largest body count since the original Godzilla and some pretty graphic violence in both combat and monster attack scenes. The goofy scene of Godzilla flying was intended to give any kids in the audience a break from all the people-melting terror. And keep in mind that this movie came right after All Monsters Attack, which was considered the point where the Godzilla films began aiming towards younger audiences.
    • Mothra vs. Godzilla was considerably bleaker than King Kong vs. Godzilla. Then there is Terror of Mechagodzilla, the sequel to the first MG film. Mechagodzilla seems to lampshade the film's darker nature by being dark and rusty (as opposed to the previous movie's shiny and reflective incarnation).
    • Godzilla (2014) is looking to be the darkest film since the original, fittingly going back to the horror roots of the first film and reverting Godzilla back to being a terrifying force of nature. Somewhat Subverted, in that while there is a grim tone, it's no where near as Dark as trailers initially made it to be. however...
    • Shin Gojira/ Godzilla Resurgence on the other hand, is touted by a Director Shinji Higuchi as being darker then every other film since the original, citing real world horrors, like the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the March 2011 Tsunami and earthquake that struck Japan, and the subsequent Fukushima power plant disaster as main influences on the films tone.
  • Dark Reprise: A non-musical version in GMK. The first two guardian monsters awaken, Baragon and Mothra. Both kill teenagers that were causing trouble and one group even preparing to drown a dog. Godzilla arrives on land by stomping down on a house containing better behaved teens.
  • David vs. Goliath: Any fight in the series where one opponent is bigger than the other.
  • Deadpan Snarker:
    • Some of the Promoted Fanboys who did the commentaries for the Classic Media DVDs tend to be 150% deadpan. ("This is a young Katsura, with her pig-tails, bright shirt and short skirt... raaaaarrr." — Terror of Mechagodzilla.)
    • The commentary for the American version of the second film, Godzilla Raids Again, is half informative commentary, half MST-styled brutal lampooning of the incompetent translation.
      "Ah, Banana oil!"
    • Quite a few moments in the IDW comics.
    • The crew over at Mystery Science Theater 3000 have commentated over a few Godzilla films, most notably Godzilla Vs. Megalon.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: After Godzilla kills Anguirus in the second movie, they're close allies throughout the rest of the Showa series. Whether the same Anguirus survived or the one that acts as Godzilla's ally is a different one has never been explained.
  • Defrosting the Ice Queen: Katsura in Terror of Mechagodzilla.
  • Deliberately Monochrome:
    • The opening of Godzilla vs. Megaguirus is a black and white recreation of Godzilla's 1954 attack on Tokyo, only using the then-current Godzilla design instead. They actually used footage from Gojira and integrated the modern suit into the film. And it's almost flawless.
    • In Godzilla vs. Hedorah, when it shows the anti-Hedorah party gathered on Mt. Fuji, the scene is in black and white. It switches to color when the leader kicks off the 70's funk!
  • The Determinator: Malmess the Selginian assassin in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. He pulls himself out of his crushed Mercedes after a rockslide and, bruised and bloody, immediately resumes his mission as if nothing happened.
  • Developing Doomed Characters: Pretty common in most Godzilla movies. Even some of the better movies in the series fall prey to this especially hard... in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Godzilla himself doesn't show up until an hour into the film while you're hit with a complicated time-travel plot from the humans (Although you do end up seeing the pre-mutation dinosaur and King Ghidorah, but still... this is supposed to be about Godzilla, right?)
    • Presumably this issue was the motivation behind the amped-up action and fast pace of Final Wars, though in escaping this trope it dashed headlong into another.
    • You can notice that most of the more recent Godzilla films tend to open up with some Godzilla action to hook the audience, then tend to proceed with the usual human story for some while before monster action typically resumes. Godzilla vs Destoroyah, Godzilla 2000, Godzilla vs Megaguirus, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla Final Wars all follow this pattern, and even GMK and Tokyo: SOS still have hints of Godzilla right at the start.
  • Digital Destruction: Not so bad with making flesh appear waxy but depending on factors wiring can be a lot more apparent. Such as King Ghidroah on Planet X during the first battle.
  • Disney Owns This Trope: What's scarier than Godzilla? His lawyers... In short, don't even think about even using that iconic roar, which Toho protects even more than the monster it belongs to.
  • Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Most kaiju based on prehistoric (or supposedly prehistoric) animals: Godzilla, Anguirus, Varan, Rodan, Baragon and Megaguirus. As well as Gorosaurus, Titanosaurus and Destoroyah.
  • Do-Anything Robot: Jet Jaguar, who doesn't display too many new abilities... but he somehow manages to program himself to grow into a giant.
  • Doomed Protagonist:
    • Godzilla, due to radiation overdose, in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah.
    • The Guardian Monsters also end up as this, as all three are eventually killed by Godzilla.
  • Downer Ending:
    • The ending for the original 1954 film has one of the main characters choose to die with Godzilla rather than risk having to use his weapon again. Not only that, but it's implied that Godzilla isn't the only one of his kind...
    • Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, the end of the Heisei era series. From the start of the film, it builds toward a climax in which the starring Godzilla dies, this time via a nuclear meltdown after losing his son to Destroyah and suffering a broken heart when he can't revive the younger monster. Then zigzagged when it's revealed that Junior's corpse absorbed all the radiation given off during his father's death, which resurrects him and mutates him into a fully-grown Godzilla.
  • The Dragon:
    • Literally, with King Ghidorah, who tends to serve various aliens.
    • Gigan is the Dragon to King Ghidorah, since they both seem to work very well together.
  • Eagleland: The Tri-Star "remake" is pretty big on Flavour #1; though the French are involved. Kinda.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Several of Godzilla's biggest foes can fit the bill, depending on the version used. Hedorah, King Ghidorah, Desstroyah and Space Godzilla being the most prominent.
  • Enemy Mine:
    • Rodan will occasionally team up with Godzilla to fight other monsters like King Ghidorah.
    • Likewise, there's Mothra who has teamed up with Godzilla at times despite the two being, originally, mortal enemies. In fact, it was Mothra who convinced Godzilla and Rodan to join forces with him (this Mothra was one of a pair of twins born in Godzilla vs. Mothra and yes, was male. The female twin seems to take over the role afterwards though from 1966 on) to fight against King Ghidorah in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster.
    • Godzilla has to "team up" (really, the Gotengo crew are leading Godzilla along a path because he wants them dead and they take advantage of that) with the very crew of humans who froze him in ice in Final Wars.
  • Energy Weapon: Most of the monsters, particularly in the Heisei era, fire off energy beams of some kind as attacks, from mouths (the Showa and Heisei Mechagodzillas, Mecha-King Ghidorah, Dagarha), antennae (Mothra, starting in the Heisei era, and her Rebirth incarnation's son Mothra Leo), eyes (Hedorah, M.O.G.U.E.R.A. and the Millennium Gigan) or other places (Orga — shoulder beam; Destroyah — chest, in a deleted scene). The aerial battleships like the Super-X and Garuda also fire lasers.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Bagan. Was considered (and passed on) for multiple films until finally appearing in the SNES game Super Godzilla. He was considered for Unleashed, but wouldn't actually appear again until a direct-to-DVD episode of the web series Godziban.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Averted in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. The car that falls down a cliff doesn't explode. That is, until Godzilla steps on it.
  • Evil Takes a Nap: This tends to be where Godzilla spends his time between movies, though it continues even when he starts on a good-to-neutral path. Many of his adversaries also appear after being awakened from a, say, centuries-old slumber.
  • Evil Twin: Subverted: Battra is more of a bad-tempered twin to Mothra. Not to mention all the clones of Godzilla; Mechagodzilla, Spacegodzilla...
  • Special Effects Evolution: For a film series more than sixty-years running, this is obviously the case. With a few specific exceptions, Godzilla was portrayed almost exclusively by People in Rubber Suits up until Godzilla (1998), in which he was primarily portrayed through Computer-Generated Images. After that point, CGI was increasingly common in the franchise, culminating with Shin Godzilla, the first Japanese-made Godzilla portrayed entirely through CGI.
  • Eye Beams: Sported by a number of monsters, including Hedorah, most versions of Mechagodzilla (except for Kiryu), King Caesar, Battra (both forms), M.O.G.U.E.R.A, Final Wars/Godzilla Ongoing Gigan, Monster X and the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla.
  • Eyepatch of Power:
    • Dr. Serizawa, the only man to kill Godzilla officially.
    • Captain Yamoto from Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, also portrayed by Akihiko Hirata.
  • Eye Scream:
    • One of the wounds Godzilla receives from Hedorah: His eye is burnt out. But Godzilla fully retaliates later.
    • Gigan suffers a blow to the visor in the ongoing Godzilla comic from Rodan.
    • In Godzilla Legends issue 4, Godzilla rips out one of Hedorah's eyes.
    • In Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla Akane manages to stun Godzilla by aiming the maser at one of his eyes.
    • The Godzilla Tower in Godzilla vs. Gigan is armed with a really painful-looking laser beam cannon in its mouth, which it uses to blast Godzilla in the eye. Twice. Gigan also attacks Godzilla in the eyes in the same movie.
    • Kumonga spits a stinger into Godzilla's eye in Son of Godzilla.
  • Family-Friendly Firearms:
    • Family friendly maser technology, especially in the 1990s series. Conventional guns still appear frequently, however. Justified, as bullets do not affect kaiju generally, necessitating more exotic weaponry.
    • In Godzilla vs. Megalon, the agents from Seatopia used knockout gas guns.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death: Quite a few of them including Godzilla's meltdown at the end of Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. Other qualifiers include Orga (freakin' explodes in a shower of gore), the first Godzilla (being disintegrated down to his very bones while still awake) and the first Showa Baragon [[getting his goddamn neck snapped by Frankenstein's Monster.)
  • Family-Unfriendly Violence: Anguirus getting his jaw overstretched by Mechagodzilla, the bloodletting in Godzilla vs. Gigan and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla... there's actually quite a bit in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and its direct sequel. It should be mentioned that this sort of violence is considered much more acceptable for Japanese children compared to American standards, so this is a bit of cultural differences. Just look at the Gamera series, which are loaded with such violence if not all the more. The Godzilla films in the 1970's started having similar gore most likely because of the Gamera films.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The franchise and its related films feature dinosaurs that have survived until the present day to be mutated by atomic testing, present-day animals mutated by atomic testing, nearly a dozen different intelligent alien races trying to conquer us with various monsters and Humongous Mecha, Time Travel, mystical creatures and gods of religions that don't really exist (in the form of a massive, almighty...butterfly?), a massive sentient plant made by mixing a rose's DNA with Godzilla's and giving the result a human soul, ghosts, a living pile of sludge, two unrelated subterranean civilizations, Frankenstein's Monster, King Kong, humans with powerful psychic powers, a force made of humans born with supernatural strength and agility, a gun that fires black holes, a giant magic gliding lizard whose very presence creates Dramatic Wind, a giant walrus(!), a jumbo shrimp(!!!), and all other manner of wacky shit. And that's what fans love about these films!
  • Fan Sequel: Godzilla: Daikaiju Battle Royale is a fan sequel to Godzilla: Monster of Monsters for the NES. The game is being constantly updated with new fighters and other features which can be followed here and here.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla and King Caesar in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Mothra and Battra in Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla and M.O.G.U.E.R.A in Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla.
  • Flying Firepower: Several monsters both fly and have energy attacks.
  • Foreign Correspondent: Raymond Burr's character in the American edit of the original film.
  • Freeze Ray:
    • Kiryu and the Gotengo's Absolute Zero Cannons, which are meant to disable monsters before a physical attack finishes them off.
    • Godzilla vs Destoroyah features several mecha with freezing beams, including the Super XIII and special maser tanks.
  • From a Single Cell: Godzilla 2000 explains Godzilla's healing factor as a result of the substance Organizer/Regenerator G-1, within his cells, and has the Millennian aliens try to absorb it for themselves. It results in their becoming the monster Orga.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare:
    • Godzilla was just your average run-of-the-mill dinosaur before being mutated into the radioactive badass we all know and love. Well, the Godzillasaurus as seen in Godzilla vs King Ghidorah was still gigantic, easily twice as large as real-life theropods such as Tyrannosaurus or Giganotosaurus, so this still would have been an exceptional dinosaur.
    • The Dorats turn from cuddly winged critters into Godzilla's greatest nemesis. Which isn't surprising, when you find out they're basically larval Ghidorah clones.
    • Titanosaurus was quite content to his oceanic den, untill aliens and a mad scientist decided it would be a good idea to use him against Godzilla. He puts up a heck of a fight before he's defeated and sent back into the oceans, though.

    G-L 
  • Gag Dub: Godzilla 2000 was given this, as an Affectionate Parody of the 70s Godzilla movie dubs.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: Battra, representing the Earth itself, who devastated the Cosmos' civilization in retaliation for their use of a weather control device.
  • Giant Enemy Crab:
    • Ebirah, a giant shrimp.
    • Ganimes, a pair of mutated rubble crabs from Space Amoeba.
    • The Lord Howe Monster, a giant humanoid crustacean created by a Mad Scientist in the Dark Horse Comics.
  • Giant Foot of Stomping: Describe this trope to someone. Then see what the first thing he thinks of is. (If he says Monty Python, give him a free pass.)
  • Giant Equals Invincible: The general rule of thumb seems to be that once an animal reaches a size around Godzilla's, it becomes practically impossible to kill, sometimes, as in King Ghidorah's case, to the point of actually being immortal. Usually the only thing that can bring down a kaiju is either some impossible weapon like the Oxygen Destroy or the Super-X, or another giant monster. So far, the military has beat Godzilla without any Applied Phlebotinum once, when they sealed him in ice in Godzilla Raids Again, but it didn't kill him.
    • Averted, however, with Rodan. At the end of their eponymous film debut both the male and female Rodan die by falling into a volcano as the JSDF bombs the area with an air strike. The male recovered and returned in Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster. So this may not be as much of an aversion as we think, unless this was intended to be a third Rodan not discovered in the original film.
    • Subverted in Godzilla vs. Destroyah. What ultimately kills Godzilla isn't high-tech weaponry or another monster, but rather an overdose of radiation that causes him to go into a nuclear meltdown.
    • Also subverted with King Ghidorah in Destroy All Monsters; though he was up against six other monsters.
  • Giant Flyer: Rodan, Varan, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Kamacuras, Hedorah, Gigan, Megalon, Jet Jaguar, the Mechagodzillas (except for Kiryu), Battra, SpaceGodzilla, MOGERA, Destoroyah and Megaguirus.
    • There's also the flying scene from "Godzilla vs. Hedorah". It's a classic representation of the kitsch and charm the series offers, made especially so because it fits the bizarre tone of the film and contrasts well with the darker bits. The scene at least manages to get away with it due to Rule of Cool.
    • Kiryu is still capable of at least some limited flight, as in the end of Tokyo SOS.
  • Gem Tissue: SpaceGodzilla and Krystalak.
  • Giant Spider:
  • Glass Cannon: The Masers are one of the few weapons that can actually hurt the giant monsters but they are frail so while they can dish out the damage they can't take it, either being crushed underfoot or blown up by death rays. Still they almost killed Gaira, slowed down Gigan, King Ghidorah and Megalon. They even made Godzilla back-peddle in Godzilla vs Biollante and Battra attacked them when he ignored jets firing at him. And they helped the Super-X3 kill Destoroyah and stop Godzilla's meltdown. The fact even bigger, stronger versions are used in the chest and mouth of more durable weapons like Moguera and Kiryu should be a testament to their power. For one of the more iconic weapons of the series, they are severally overlooked, they even starred in enough films to rival Mothra.
  • God Is Good:
    • Mothra is worshiped by the natives on Infant Island and turns out to be one of the relatively few good monsters in the series. This is however not until halfway through Mothra vs. Godzilla, where she avoids collateral damage. Before that she threatened or killed a fair amount of people in her debut movie, not because of evilness, but because the humans were in her path, and the only mission was to save the Fairies.
    • Godzilla inverts the trope.
  • A God Is You: In the games. Unleashed lets you play as up to five, seven if you count worshipped monsters.
  • Godzilla Threshold: Trope Namer. Final Wars is essentially a movie-long Lampshade Hanging of this. This is also an important plot point in Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, where the heroes also deliberately unleash a sleeping Godzilla as a last-ditch effort.
  • Golem: While not stated outright in either of his appearances, King Caesar is actually one of these.
  • The Good Captain: Captain Gordon, commander of the Gotengo in Godzilla: Final Wars.
  • Gory Deadly Overkill Title of Fatal Death:
    • Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
    • Some of the original titles for the Showa movies qualify: Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster is Three Giant Monsters: The Greatest Battle on Earth, Ebirah, Horror of the Deep is, Godzilla, Ebirah, Mothra: Big Duel in the South Seas, Earth Destruction Directive: Godzilla vs. Gigan, Monster Island's Decisive Battle: Godzilla's Son, etc etc.
  • Gratuitous English: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II and Godzilla: Final Wars
  • Guilty Pleasures: Doubly so for the American version.
  • Helicopter Flyswatter: Several monsters can be seen swatting attacking aircraft out of the sky, including Gigan and Megalon in their respective debut films.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Serizawa in the original and Mothra in almost every one of her appearances. Battra, too.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: Some pair/can see the oddly handed Gigan and Megalon like this. Also Showa Godzilla with Anguirus and Rodan.
  • Hong Kong Dub: These dubs were originally commissioned by Toho themselves for overseas export in Asian countries with a large English speaking populace (Singapore, Malaysia, etc). Commonly referred to as "International Dubs" by fans.
  • Hook Hand: Gigan, normally. As noted above, he did trade them in his second battle with Godzilla in Final Wars for chainsaws.
  • How We Got Here: The American version of Gojira opens with Tokyo destroyed and Steve Martin injured.
  • Human Aliens: The Mysterians, The Kilaaks from Destroy All Monsters, Black Hole Aliens from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and Terror of Mechagodzilla, the Xillians from Invasion of Astro-Monster and Godzilla: Final Wars and the Nebulans from Godzilla vs. Gigan.
    • Technically, the Black Hole Aliens are Killer Space Monkeys in disguise while the Nebulans are giant roaches. The Final Wars Xilians also simply use the human look as a disguise.
    • The Kilaaks were in disguise, too. Their true forms were weird little snake/slug/rock things. The Monster Zero Xilians are the only Godzilla aliens that didn't have alternate, non-human forms.
  • Humiliation Conga: Ghidorah in GMK, to the film's detriment.
  • Humongous Mecha:
    • Moguera, Mechanikong, Jet Jaguar, Mechagodzilla, Mecha-King Ghidorah and Kiryu.
    • Marvel's Godzilla comic had Red Ronin, a Shogun Warriors-inspired mech that often fought Godzilla, as well as any other monsters at the time. Even after the comic ended, it still continued to appear as a villain fighting the Avengers and other Marvel heroes.
  • Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball: Anguirus' Thunderball attack in Final Wars.
  • Immune to Bullets: Virtually all monsters.
    • Ebirah in Final Wars, however, is very susceptible to bullets. They're superpowered laser bullets, admittedly, but still.
    • Ganime in Space Amoeba is also hurt by bullets (the normal, non-laser variety). What is it about Toho crustaceans that their shells can't resist simple gun shots?
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How Kamacuras is killed in Godzilla: Final Wars.
  • Inconsistent Spelling:
    • In Japan, the big guy's name is "Gojira" (or using the Kunrei system, actually "Go-dzi-la"). That's the simplest of the problems... Throughout the Heisei era, one of the dub actors (the legendary Rik Thomas) repeatedly pronounces it "Godziller." This was also a common problem in some of the Showa dubs.
    • Deathghidorah being misspelled/mispronounced as "Desghidorah" (understandable due to Japanese pronunciation vagaries); the various different renderings of Destoroyah/Destroyer/Destroyah/Desutoroyah...
    • Ghidorah underwent some of this as well; was called "Ghidrah" in his debut movie (the title of which in the US is actually Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster), and pronounced as "Ghi-der-ah" in Monster Zero. The 1998 Tri-Star video release of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah also referred to him as "King Ghidora".
  • Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: The very reason for Mechagodzilla.
  • Interspecies Romance: Astronaut Glenn and Miss Namikawa of the Xillians in Invasion of Astro-Monster, who fall for one another in the course of the film.
  • Island of Mystery: Monster Island, where the giant monsters live.
  • Isle of Giant Horrors: The series gives us Monster Island, which as its name suggests, is home to many of the creatures that appear in the films, including the titular King of the Monsters.
  • I Will Fight Some More Forever: The Japanese Self-Defence Force just keeps trying to shoot Godzilla with conventional weapons. Granted, sometimes they wise up and invent Super Weapons and Humongous Mecha to fight him.
  • Joker Immunity: Godzilla had survived so much shit that it can be hard to remember that he actually died at the end of the first film. By this point the things Godzilla has survived include being impaled through the spine by Mechagodzilla with cables, getting blasted at point blank range with the Absolute Zero weapon (which turns anything it hits into vapor), and getting shot with a freaking black hole gun. The one time he was Killed Off for Real, a continuity reboot was used to bring him back anyways. Similarly King Ghidorah has survived pretty much anything, and if he does die than it's just an excuse to bring out Mecha King Ghidorah. Well, aside from Destroy All Monsters and GMK.
  • The Juggernaut: Pretty much every kaiju, not least Godzilla himself.
  • Kaiju: Of course! Every movie in the franchise has at least one!
  • Kick the Dog:
    • Destoroyah had several of these moments in goring Godzilla Junior in the chest, killing him by dropping him from up high just as Godzilla arrives in Tokyo to meet him, and dragging Godzilla by the throat while he's mourning his son.
    • Titanosaurus's story in Terror of Mechagodzilla, up to the point where Godzilla didn't know he was under mind control and (possibly) kills him.
    • The college Students in GMK try to drown a dog until Mothra comes and kills the students.
    • SpaceGodzilla being the Complete Monster he is imprisoning Little Godzilla
    • Godzilla flinging the Mothra larva off his tail in Battle for Earth. Causing a scene in which Masako Tezuka's mouth hangs open.
    • The disguised MechaGodzilla ripping Anguirus's jaw.
  • Kill Sat: The Dimension Tide in Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. Hilariously, despite being touted as the ultimate weapon against Godzilla, it fails utterly. twice. Though at least the second attempt does something to Godzilla, even if it only shoved him far underground.
  • The Klutz:
    • During his rampages and monster fights, particularly during the Showa era, Godzilla frequently loses his footing and tumbles to the ground (often knocking over a building or two in the process).
    • This was all too common in the actual filming of such scenes, particularly in the first movie; stunt actors would often topple over due to the awkwardness of the toe spread.
  • Large Ham:
    • Mr. Tako, head of Pacific Pharmaceuticals.
    • The Xilian leader in Final Wars. He was the cherry on top of the sundae for a film that is completely Ham and Cheese and embraces it.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Teenagers rob a store and try to drown the owner's dog in GMK. Cue Mothra rising out of the lake and killing them. Then a newsreport shows the the rescued dog being pet by two people.
  • Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: In issue #2 of the IDW comic, three children are seen in a town called El Paso, who very much resemble the main trio of Blue Beetle.
  • Lazy Dragon: In his mid-to-late-60s, becoming-more heroic film appearances, Godzilla often had to be convinced to bother saving the planet from the Monster of the Week.
  • Licensed Game: Dozens. Mostly for Nintendo consoles.
  • Lighter and Softer: Most of the Showa films after the original. Especially the Minya movies...
  • Lip Lock: Again, Glenn and Namikawa in Invasion of Astro-Monster.
  • Living Dinosaurs: Several of the Kaijus are said to be surviving prehistoric beasts. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah openly establishes Godzilla's pre-mutant life as a surviving dinosaur.
  • Living Statue: Gekido-jin from the Dark Horse Comics Godzilla Color Special.
  • Long Runner: Having been around for 60 years and counting, it's the longest running film franchise in history.
  • Lost World: Infant Island, Faro Island, Monster Island and Mondo Island.
  • Losing Your Head: King Ghidorah is decapitated by Godzilla's atomic breath in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. Of course, having three heads, he still manages to escape (and later gets a replacement robotic middle head after being rebuilt as Mecha-King Ghidorah.)

    M-S 
  • Macross Missile Massacre:
    • One of Kiryu's mode of attacks.
    • And Showa Mechagodzilla, combined with Beam Spam.
  • Mad Scientist: Several, complete with Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter. The one in Terror of Mechagodzilla turned his own daughter into a cyborg that could control Mechagodzilla.
  • Magma Man:
    • Obsidius in Godzilla: Unleashed.
    • Kumasogami from Yamato Takeru.
  • Make My Monster Grow:
    • Jet Jaguar and Minya (in All Monsters Attack and Final Wars).
    • The Mega Monsters (Rhiahn, Triax and Krollar) in the Marvel comics.
  • Mama Bear:
    • Do not try to harm Mothra's children. You will regret it.
    • From the Dark Horse Comics series we have Burtannus who happens to be a Expy of Anguirus but can shoot lightning from her horn. In her fight with Godzilla, she manages to fight him long enough all the while protecting her children.
  • Man-Eating Plant: Biollante doesn't actually eat anyone, but she's a rose bush that turns into a giant toothy monster and does bite down on Godzilla's head at least once.
  • Mars Needs Women: The eponymous race in The Mysterians.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Final Wars has 15 different monsters, most of whom originated from other kaiju series.
  • Mech vs. Beast: All 3 Mechagodzillas were built specifically to fight Godzilla, though the first one was evil and made by aliens, the latter two were built by humans as a means of defending Japan.
  • Metamorphosis Monster: Hedorah assumes multiple forms in his debut film. Destroyah later goes through much the same sequence of forms (aquatic, land-crawling, aerial and giant biped) in its debut film.
  • Militaries Are Useless: The army in pretty much any movie. The first time can be excused, but in every sequel Godzilla shows up and the army attacks doing nothing to him and actually causing just as much, if not more, collateral damage. Even the damage caused by Godzilla himself can be blamed largely on the army as the films have pointed out shooting Godzilla just makes him mad and causes him to advance and attack.
  • Milky White Eyes: Godzilla in GMK and in certain shots in Kingdom of Monsters.
  • Muck Monster:
    • Hedorah, who is an alien kaiju that both feeds off of and is made of sludge.
    • The eponymous A-bomb spawned mutants from The H-Man who disintegrate anyone they touch.
  • Mutants: It's full of 'em. Final Wars actually features human mutants, capable of flying leaps.
  • Mythology Gag: IDW's comics are full of them.
    • Godzilla using his radiation beam to fly out of a canyon ala vs Hedorah (he's even fighting Hedorah at the time).
    • In issue 4 of "Rulers of Earth", after Godzilla, Mothra, and her twin larvae send Destoroyah packing, one of the larva tries to bite the tip of Godzilla's tail, which happens in every movie that a Mothra larva appears with Godzilla. This time, though, Godzilla gives the larva a Death Glare before it bites and the larva sheepishly backs away.
  • Necromantic: In Godzilla vs. Biollante, Dr. Shiragami tries to resurrect his dead daughter, combining her cells with her favorite rosebush and later adding Godzilla DNA to grant it super-regeneration and near-indestructibility. Rather than making the plant merely Nigh-Invulnerable, he got a giant monster.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: While Godzilla's base power set is pretty incredible, in the Showa series he tends to develop new ones when facing new villains (and then never using them again). When fighting Hedorah, who can fly, Godzilla uses his atomic breath as a sort of jet engine (even though he never uses it against any other flying monsters). When fighting the metallic Mechagodzilla, he can make his body magnetic to keep MG from fleeing. And so forth.
  • Next Sunday A.D.: Starting with the Heisei series, a majority of the films, for some reason, were set one year after the year in which the movie was released. For example, Godzilla vs. Biollante was released in 1989 but the story is set in 1990.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Jet Jaguar suddenly programs himself to grow into a giant when needed to help Godzilla against Giga and Megalon.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Repeatedly in the Heisei series on humanity's part. Humanity's attempts to get rid of Godzilla don't just fail, but on 3 separate occasions they backfire spectacularly: Trying to get rid of Godzilla through time travel only created a bigger Godzilla, trying to kill him with Mechagodzilla only created a more powerful Godzilla, and luring him into a fight with Destoroyah using Junior only resulted in Junior becoming the new fully grown Godzilla they have to deal with...though Word of God states he's still more human-friendly than his adoptive father was.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
    • Mechagodzilla and SpaceGodzilla. Fire Rodan and Mecha-King Ghidorah also fit. Super Mechagodzilla is the worst offender of the series. But then in Mothra's spin-off trilogy, there are Rainbow Mothra, Armor Mothra, Aqua Mothra, Death Ghidorah, Grand King Ghidorah (a.k.a. Super Dragon King Ghidorah)...
    • Final Wars is essentially this trope in movie form, combining almost every monster that has ever appeared in Godzilla's movies with a storyline involving, among other things, alien invasion (again) mutants, and special-effects laden gun battles and martial arts sequences that almost seem to have been pulled directly out of The Matrix.
  • No Endor Holocaust: More often than not, but when it is not used, it's OBVIOUSLY not used.
  • Non-Indicative Name: Frankenstein Conquers The World. Dr. Frankenstein's not in it, and there's no conquering of any kind. Also Godzilla vs. The Thing, though you can be forgiven for expecting to hear "IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!" at some point.
  • Non-Malicious Monster: Most of the Kaiju are just like giant animals with no sentience. Averted in some cases like King Ghidorah who is actively evil.
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Justified, Serizawa is shown burning the notes before using it as it is part of his Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The original 1954 film shows that he's as much a victim of the atomic bomb as everyone else.
  • Not Zilla: Understandably many fans and critics alike feel this way about Tri-Star's 1998 "remake".
  • Nuclear Mutant: One of the Trope Makers, as Godzilla himself was a living dinosaur mutated into a nearly-indestructible monster.
  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Borderline Anvilicious sometimes; the earlier movies especially would bring up atomic bombs as a way to destroy Godzilla and the other monsters, but would always get shot down because no one was anxious to destroy Tokyo and a large chunk of Japan in the process. Some films speculated that the bomb would just make the creatures stronger.
  • Nuke 'em: Which just revived him.
    General: "The Air Force is standing by... with an atom bomb."
    Crow T. Robot: "Oh, great. Maybe they'll get larger."
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Final Wars Kamacuras destroyed the Ecleir, one of the EDF's flying warships. What a shame it was off-screen.
  • Off-the-Shelf FX: The model Type 61 tanks in Mothra vs. Godzilla were not custom made and could actually be found commonly in hobby shops of the day.
  • Ominous Floating Spaceship: The Xillien mothership in Godzilla: Final Wars, which suddenly appears over Tokyo just as the other monsters attacking the world disappear.
  • Only Sane Man: Mothra. While many other giant monsters prefer to destroy things and/or being pissed at the human race, she and her children (all of whom, even the males, share her name in whole or in part depending on the era.) prefer to save things and the human race from monsters like Godzilla and King Ghidorah.
  • Orochi:
    • King Ghidorah. In GMK Ghidorah is explicitly referred to as an Orochi who was woken before all his heads had developed.
    • The actual Orochi appears in Yamato Takeru as an alternate form of the moon god Tsukinowa.
  • Or Was It a Dream?: Happens to Godzilla in a Dark Horse comic, where he fights a dragon-like monster in the distant past. He wakes up in the same place where he was before the fight, but with a chunk of the dragon monster's tail in his hand.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: King Ghidorah, who is loosely based on the Yamata No Orochi. There's also Manda, who is essentially a Chinese Dragon. And Orochi itself, in Yamato Takeru.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: GMK Godzilla is essentially a zombie version of the 1954 Godzilla possessed by the souls of those who died in WWII.
  • Our Monsters Are Weird: A lot of the stranger Kaiju fall under this, including Biollante, Hedorah, Gigan and even freaking Mothra. Godzilla has had a few moments where he does some very weird things in the early films, but these tended to be more moments where we would see flavors of his personality. His ability to fly and turn himself into a living super-electromagnet on the other hand, while being examples of New Powers as the Plot Demands, still falls under this trope as well because of how completely out of left field they are, even for him.
  • Out of Focus:
    • In the first movie, Hagiwara is very important in the first half, but has a lot less to do toward the end. The American dub almost cuts him out altogether.
    • Also, Iwanaga (the security officer that escorts Steve Martin around) disappears completely once he informs Steve of the power line defense surrounding Tokyo. Perhaps the intention was he died in Godzilla's attack?
  • Overcrank:
    • Joins with People in Rubber Suits to form the special effects more often than not.
    • Inverted in Godzilla Raids Again, when the cameraman accidentally undercranked some of the monster footage. Director Motoyoshi Oda actually loved the ensuing effect, and ordered the rest of the movie's creature scenes filmed thusly. He did not direct any more Godzilla movies.
  • Papa Wolf: Only a complete moron would try to harm Godzilla's offspring.
  • People in Rubber Suits: Duh. Granted the American films (Godzilla (1998) and Godzilla (2014)) are full CGI and Shin Godzilla is a mix of rubber suit and CGI.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Godzilla is a prime example of this, especially in the original movie when he levels Tokyo to the ground.
  • Pit Trap: In King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla is lured to a giant pit filled with a large amount of explosives as way of killing him. Naturally, it doesn't work and he simply climbs out of it. What were you expecting from a Fifty-Meter Monster anyway!
  • P.O.V. Sequel: Godzilla: The Half-Century War starts out in the events of the first film but seen through the eyes of the main character Ota. It's confirmed when Godzilla is mentioned to be killed by the Oxygen Destroyer (which isn't explicitly mentioned by name).
  • Power Creep, Power Seep: King Kong vs. Godzilla.
  • Power Crystal: SpaceGodzilla has two huge ones, one on each shoulder, and can raise many more out of the ground. Giant "Power Surge Crystals" are also a main plot point in Godzilla: Unleashed, which also has a new monster named Krystalak, a creature born from evil crystals.
  • Prehistoric Animal Analogue: Most of the kaijus of the franchise take inspiration in prehistoric animals — especially dinosaurs —, depicting them as ancient and otherwordly beasts. This is often justified in-universe in some continuities due to the kaijus being mutated descendants or otherwise related to the animals they were based on.
    • Godzilla himself was originally visually inspired by several different dinosaurs depictions of the time and had origins as a surviving fictional species mutated by atomic radiation, possessing a bipedal position, long tail, erect tripodal posture like theropod dinosaurs were believed to have had at the time, back plates along his back and tail similar to the ones of stegosaurids, sharp teeth and reptilian skin. The art director of the original movie Akira Watanabe combined attributes of Tyrannosaurus rex , Iguanodon, Stegosaurus and alligators when making the character's design.
    • Godzilla's first opponent Anguirus is instead based on Ankylosaurus, while his head is inspired by ceratopsids such as Styracosaurus, with several horns on top of his head. He also has five brains across his body, possibly a reference to the outdated hypothesis of Stegosaurus and sauropods needing a second brain in order to coordinate their large bodies
    • Rodan is similarly based on how pterosaurs were portrayed at the time, as a giant beaked reptilian flyer with leathery wings and, in many appearances, a crest that resembles the one of the pterosaur Pteranodon. In fact, his original Japanese name "Radon" is derived from Pteranodon.
    • Like Godzilla, Titanosaurus from Terror Of Mecha Godzilla was also inspired by theropod dinosaurs. Curiously, he shares his name with a real sauropod dinosaur, although he shares most of his design with spinosaurids such as Spinosaurus due to his aquatic adaptations, relatively thin and crocodile-like snout and dorsal sail-like fin.
    • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Behemoth is a mammalian kaiju with the head of a wooly mammoth and the body similar to the one of a ground sloth.
  • Psychic Powers:
    • Miki Saegusa in the entire Heisei series, save for The Return of Godzilla. She is the only human to drive back Godzilla with only the power of her mind. In Godzilla vs. Biollante she drives back the Big G using her psionic powers, though she does collapse afterwards.
    • Mothra's fairies are the last surviving members of an ancient species with potent psychic powers.
    • To a lesser degree, Meru from Godzilla vs. Destoroyah.
    • SpaceGodzilla showed off some telekinetic powers, using them to toss around Godzilla and Little Godzilla.
    • Princess Salno from Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster.
  • Psycho for Hire:
    • Gigan and Ghidorah in the Showa era. Both are often under the control of various evil aliens and both seem to really enjoy city destruction and attacking Godzilla and/or any of his allies.
    • In Godzilla vs. Megalon, the Seatopians actually call Nebula M and ask to borrow Gigan to help Megalon against Godzilla. No interaction between the two races, no evidence that they are allies, no reason for them to help except maybe because they don't like Godzilla on general principles. They just phone up and ask to borrow their Kaiju, like he's a cup of sugar. At least give the Nebulans credit for being helpful.
  • Recurring Riff:
    • Godzilla's March, which made its debut in the original movie, has been remixed several times and is considered Godzilla's leitmotif.
    • The Main Theme of Mothra vs. Godzilla has been reused and remixed multiple times in both the Showa and Heisei continuities.
  • Recycled Title:
    • In Japan, The Return of Godzilla was "Gojira" just as the original film.
    • The series also has entries titled Mothra vs. Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla.
    • Both American films are simply titled Godzilla — although since the original's American title was Godzilla: The King of Monsters, the 1998 one averts this.
  • Redemption Equals Death: A handful of evil or semi-evil monsters wind up dying to deal with a worse threat. Examples include:
    • Mecha-King Ghidorah, who was evil until being rebuilt as a cyborg, and then died sending Godzilla to the bottom of the ocean; and MOGUERA (sort of) — it's not truly evil, but was built to kill Godzilla in response to several years of death and destruction caused by the monster. In the end though, it's sacrificed to help destroy Space Godzilla.
    • Kiryu, who just happens to a cyborg version of the 1954 Godzilla, and sacrifices itself to bury the current Godzilla at the bottom of the sea.
  • Redshirt Army: The ignorance of this trope is one of the many reasons the American Godzilla is so loathed by fans of the Japanese/canon Godzilla films.
  • Red Sky, Take Warning: Happens in Godzilla 1985/Return of Godzilla when a nuke goes off in the atmosphere. Also happens in the Super Godzilla game with Bagan's appearance and, though none of them are red except Seattle in the latter, the film Godzilla Final Wars and the game Godzilla:Unleashed has several cities with strange colored skies.
  • Recut: King Kong vs. Godzilla through Destroy All Monsters were diced up and served as 75 minute digest films during the long running Toho Champion Festival, at the expense of character development, and in the case of poor Kong, the uncut negative itself. They learned their lesson and made dupe copies to edit for the rest of the films that played at the festival.
  • Redubbing: Common.
  • Retool: The reason why Ishiro Honda opposed the Lighter and Softer approach in the series. The original film is his way of showing what would happen when a nuclear weapon is used: with disastrous results. He even opposed directing The Return of Godzilla because he wanted the series to rest when that film is everything he wanted to point out due to the use of nuclear weapons and the debate of the subject.
  • Reverse Cerebus Syndrome:
    • The franchise started off depicting the horrors of a nuclear holocaust. The first movie was very dark and even by today's standards, frightening. The series gradually went from a horror series to a children's movie series best known for goofy rubber suits and ridiculous plots. The title monster turned into a proud national icon and the source for cartoons, toys, video games, etc.
    • The Heisei series played out in a similar fashion, starting with a Cold War drama themed sequel to the original, each subsequent entry becoming increasingly ridiculous in their plot, characterizations, and opponents.
  • Riding into the Sunset: A very common trope whenever Godzilla's the good guy and swimming out to sea after saving the day, the sunrise version being very common.
  • The Rival: In a meta sense Godzilla's top rivals are King Kong, America's greatest monster vs. Japan's, and Gamera, top kaiju.
  • Robotic Reveal: Mechagodzilla debuts in disguise as Godzilla himself, until Anguirus tears off a patch of its skin exposing the metal underneath.
  • Rogues Gallery: The list of monsters Godzilla has fought is a long one indeed.
  • Rule of Cool: Final Wars has many attempts to use this trope; the scene with Captain Gordon and his katana definitely succeeds.
  • Rule of Funny: Obviously the only reason for Godzilla and King Caesar to use Anguirus as a soccer ball in Final Wars.
  • Sadly Mythtaken:
    • In GMK, Ghidorah is said to be a baby Orochi...even though Orochi has eight heads and Ghidorah only has three. Justified in that, in the film, Ghidorah hasn't matured enough to grow back all his heads yet.
    • Averted with the 1974 film Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. The character of King Caesar is very accurate to the portrayal of the Shisa of Okinawa folkore.
      • In fact, the song used to summon King Caesar basically translates into "Kill The Dragon! King Shisa!", which is what one Shisa does in a famous story of Okinawa myth and (basically) what King Caesar tries to do when he battles Mechagodzilla. Though, Mechagodzilla is a giant robotic dinosaur rather than a dragon.
      • Unfortunately for King Caesar, that is, because Mechagodzilla basically wrecks the Shisa good until Godzilla pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment and evens the odds a bit more. Granted, it's unlikely King Caesar had ever really faced something like Mechagodzilla before. Most Japanese dragons don't have eye lasers, chest lasers, missiles in their fingers, knees and toes, the abilities to rotate their head separate from their body, create an impenetrable force-field and fly with no wings, or are as upright as he is, after all.
      • Though to be fair Kig Caesar was doing pretty well agianst Mechagodzillia until he used his missle fingers. If he didn't have those its very possible King C. would have won.
  • The Scourge of God: A few kaiju (Varan, Mothra, King Kong, Manda, Megalon, King Caesar) are actually worshiped as Gods. As is Godzilla, in the original.
  • Sea Monster: A number of monsters originate from under the sea, including Godzilla, Manda, Ebirah, Titanosaurus, Maguma from Gorath, the Yog trio (Gezora, Ganime and Kamoeba) and Dagahra from Rebirth of Mothra II.
  • Serkis Folk: In the 2014 remake and its sequels, Godzilla is portrayed via motion capture; certain scenes were even overseen by the Trope Namer himself.
  • Shock and Awe: Several monsters have electrical powers, such as King Kong (from his hands), Gabara (likewise), Megalon (from his horn) and Heisei Mechagodzilla's Shock Anchors, which burrow into Godzilla's flesh and electrocute him. Kiryu also electrocutes Godzilla with a wrist blade at one point.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Dr. Serizawa sacrificed himself to make sure the Oxygen Destroyer was only used to kill Godzilla in the first film because he didn't want it to become a weapon like the hydrogen bomb that helped bring about Godzilla. Disregarding the fact Dr. Yamane was right when he said There Is Another and more Godzillas came for their turn to smash Tokyo, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah features a monster that is arguably worse than almost all the Godzillas and was created by the Oxygen Detroyer, just like how the hydrogen bomb created Godzilla.
  • Shooting Superman: Might well have been the Trope Namer if not for Superman, with all the times the military kept trying to shoot at Godzilla or other monsters (even in the Millennium series which are all set in different continuities, they tend to keep trying), even though it never worked. The worst cases are Godzilla vs Gigan, when the army tries stopping Gigan and King Ghidorah, even Ghidorah on his own has wiped the floor with them, and Godzilla vs Megaguirus, when they try using the dimensional tide on Godzilla a 2nd time, even though it didn't work the first time and only brought in Megaguruis from the past. Occasionally subverted and they don't even bother trying. Even the original film had some of this, with their being machine guns in place to stop Godzilla in addition to the tanks and artillery, even though if the artillery couldn't stop him there would no reason to assume that the machine guns would.
  • Simple Score of Sadness: "Requiem", which plays at the end of Godzilla VS Destroyah while Godzilla dies.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Pick any Godzilla movie post-1954 that isn't as cynical as the first film.
  • Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Pick any Godzilla movie. You have post-Destroy All Monsters on the silly scale and the first film, Godzilla Raids Again, Mothra vs. Godzilla, Terror of Mechagodzilla, all the Heisei films, GMK, and Godzilla (2014) and Godzilla Resurgence on the seriousness and everything else in between.
  • The Smurfette Principle: There's only a handful of female monsters: often Mothra, Biollante, the female Rodan, Megaguirus, and there's bound to have been one female Kamacurus. Sometimes fans lean towards making Destroyah female and mistaking Hedorah for female, due to Godzilla pulling its eyes out and looking like eggs. In terms of cast and crew Yukiko Takayama, writer of Terror of Mechagodzilla, is the only female writer. The first film to have a female protagonist was Kiriko Tsujimori in Godzilla X Megaguirus (Miki Saegusa from G Vs. Biollantte through Vs. Destroyah could also count if you were feeling generous). The Millennium series had a trio of female protagonists, after Tsujimori came reporter Yuri in GMK then Akane in Godzilla X Mechagodzilla.
  • Sociopathic Hero: If Godzilla legitimately gave a damn about humanity even when saving the day, he certainly doesn't show it too much, while in some films/versions, his ultimately helpful actions are coincidencial responses to what irritates him. He also seems to enjoy the thrill of battle.
  • The Soulless: In the third Millennium film, Godzilla comes back as an undead white eyed monster possessed by evil spirits of dead WW2 soldiers. Kananko explicitly said in interviews that the pure white eyes means either Godzilla had his soul exorcized by the evil spirits or he never had one to begin with.
  • Space Whale Aesop:
  • Special Guest: Godzilla, King Ghidorah, and Gigan all showed up in the show Zone Fighter at one point and have fought him. Godzilla even teamed up with Zone Fighter several times and Gigan was even killed by Zone Fighter!
  • The Speechless: The monsters make all kinds of noises, but not human speech... unless you watch the English dub of Godzilla VS. Gigan, that is. Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster makes it clear, however, that they speak their own language.
  • Spikes of Villainy: Used and averted, depending on whether Godzilla and the even spikier Anguirus are good guys at the moment. In the subverted department, there's King Ghidorah, who's not so spiky but is a villain (most of the time). In the played straight department, there's Gigan (Hooks for hands, a buzzsaw on his stomach and replaces the hooks with chainsaws in his second battle with Godzilla in Final Wars, spiky wings, spiky heads, and a beak with mandibles) and Destoroyah (who has spikes all over his body and claws on his feets, hands, and tail).
  • Stable Time Loop: This SciFi Japan article suggests this is what happened in Godzilla VS. King Ghidorah was that insteading of removing Godzilla, the time travel instead created the Heisi-era Godzilla. As the article mentions, there is evidence in the move to back this up: Miki still senses Godzilla, not the unmutated dinosaur; everyone remembering Godzilla despite the time travel; a nuclear submarine accident that happened where they put the dinosaur; and lastly, when the JSSF send a nuclear sub to power the dinosaur—and the dinosaur already being Godzilla before the sub gets there.
  • Story Reset: Five times over the course of the series. The first time was in The Return of Godzilla, which was set after the original film but disregarded all the others to establish a new continuity. Starting with Godzilla 2000, they released four movies in a row — Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack! , and Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla — as direct sequels to the original film before making a direct sequel to the last one. Godzilla: Final Wars would finally move away from the original film, and Shin Godzilla and Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters are updated origin stories for the character.
  • Stock Footage: Some of the older movies used a few old shots here and there, but it gets really bad and noticeable in All Monsters Attack and Godzilla vs. Megalon.
  • Stock Sound Effects: Godzilla's roar, despite being copyrighted by Toho, is one of the go-to sound effects for giant monsters.
  • Stop Motion:
    • Occasionally used for long shots in some of the earlier Showa films. The results can greatly vary from slightly noticeable (Long shots from Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster) to extremely jarring (Godzilla's drop-kick from King Kong vs. Godzilla).
    • The original film was meant to have Godzilla be fully stop-motion; but the movie's budget drove them into a cheaper solution, which was the full-body latex suit the final movie had.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Unsurprisingly, it's a franchise that is fond of explosions caused by the Big G and other kaiju.
  • Suddenly Speaking: Godzilla and Anguirus actually talk in the dubbed version of Godzilla vs. Gigan. Their original roars even begin warping in the same scene, and the Japanese version had manga-style speech bubbles.
    Godzilla: Hey Angilas!
    Anguirus: What do you want?
    Godzilla: Something funny going on! You better check!
    Anguirus: Okay.
    Godzilla: Hurry up!

    T-Z 
  • Take That!:
    • From Final Wars:
      • Toho's decision to pit the American and Japanese Godzilla against one another. The fight lasts about fifteen seconds. Guess who won.
      • A kid is seen playing with various kaiju action figures. He looks at his Squirtle figure, shouts "YOU LOSER!" at it, then throws it into the nearby fireplace. Might seem like an out-of-the-blue jab at Pokemon, but considering that Gamera is one of Godzilla's biggest rivals...
    • In GMK (2001), a character asks "Didn't Godzilla attack America a few years ago?" Someone responds with "That's what all the American scientists said, but our scientists here have doubts."
    • Zilla's very name is an example of Take That. Toho named him "Zilla" because, in their own words, the American film "Took the 'God' out of Godzilla."
    • In Godzilla 2000, one of the forms Orga takes is very reminiscent of the aliens from Devlin and Emmerich's Independence Day. It promptly gets its ass kicked by Godzilla.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
    • Often the case with Mothra teaming up with Godzilla and other chaotic monsters.
    • Quite often in the earlier Showa-era films, Godzilla would need to work with a monster he'd been battling before in order to overcome a much stronger threat. The first film in the series to do this was Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster (with Godzilla and Rodan).
  • This Is a Drill:
    • Megalon's hands, MOGERA's nose, Kiryu's hand in Tokyo SOS and the Gotengo's bow.
    • GMK has drilling warheads.
  • Time Travel: The 1990s version of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah involves humans from the future, who came back in time to stop Godzilla from destroying Japan (or so they claim), and go back to the 1940s to do so. Then one of them returns to an alternate future and comes back to the past a second time to stop Godzilla from destroying Japan for real.
  • Tokusatsu: The Godzilla films are perhaps the best-known example of this effects genre.
  • The Tokyo Fireball: Trope Maker. Even when Godzilla is trying to save Tokyo, the city tends to take an awful lot of punishment.
  • Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Complete with Big Applesauce in the American remake.
  • Tonight, Someone Dies: Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. Godzilla dies of nuclear meltdown. And, the JSDF manages to freeze Destoroyah to death.
  • Took a Level in Badass:
    • Probably the best examples would be the young Godzillas. Minya begins Son of Godzilla as a helpless baby, but by the end of the film, he aids Godzilla in battle against Kumonga and even helps to burn the giant spider along with Godzilla. Similarly, in Godzilla's Revenge, Minya is at first tormented by Gabara, but by the end of the film, and with some help from Ichiro, Minya is finally able to overcome Gabara.
    • Likewise, in the Heisei series, Baby Godzilla/Little Godzilla is at first quite helpless as seen in both Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II and Godzilla vs Spacegodzilla, but by Godzilla vs Destoroyah, Godzilla Junior is able to hold his own in battle against some of the earlier forms of Destoroyah.
  • Transformation Trauma: In several of the "mutant" films, the humans' mutations into new forms are portrayed as painful, and they often drive the victims mad.
  • Translation Nod: The big guy is known in his native Japan as Gojira, but is arguably better known globally by his Westernized name. This has been referenced in a few different films:
    • In Shin Godzilla, the man who discovers the monster gives it a name in English: Godzilla (supposedly on his native Odo Island, this means God Incarnate.) When transliterated into Japanese characters, it reads as Gojira instead. The other human characters note the irony of this, as this version of the character was first discovered and then covered up by the American government.
    • This is also Played With in both American entries:
      • In Godzilla (1998), The first people who encounter the monster are a Japanese fishing crew, the sole survivor of which is videotaped calling him Gojira. Later on, the American press gets ahold of the footage and mispronounces it on-air as Godzilla, which sticks.
      • In Godzilla (2014), he is likewise originally named Gojira by the Japanese scientist who studies him, but over the course of the film this mutates into Godzilla, and eventually that becomes his 'default' moniker. The Japanese characters continue to refer to him by his original name, however.
  • Tunnel King:
    • Baragon, Megalon, and Battra as a larva can all burrow incredibly fast.
    • Gorosaurus and Anguirus both have one scene where they burrow, the former in Destroy All Monsters and the latter in Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla.
    • Strangely, even King Ghidorah somehow displays the ability to do this in GMK, even though it seems to make no sense for him whatsoever.
    • Zilla, too, fits this trope, burrowing under Manhattan.
  • 20 Minutes into the Future: Destroy All Monsters (1968) is set in 1999.
  • The Unfettered: Malmess in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. To him, a giant, golden, lightning-spewing space dragon is a negligible inconvenience to his mission to kill a princess.
  • Unstoppable Rage: Godzilla is the king of this. If he's angry, it's safe to assume that at least one major city or enemy monster is going to be destroyed.
  • Urban Legends:
    • Quite a few people still believe the completely false rumor about King Kong vs. Godzilla having an alternate ending for both versions of the movie (IE: Godzilla winning in the Japanese version and King Kong winning in the American vesion). In all actuality, the ending for both versions of the film is ambiguous (though, Toho Studios has stated that Kong technically won in both versions).
    • Another urban legend states that the name "Gojira" was supposedly the nickname of an employee working for Toho. However, it should be noted that nobody working for Toho (at any point in the studio's history) has ever come out and stated that he is the person who originally had that nickname. Likewise, the real reason Godzilla is known as "Gojira" in Japan is that the word "Gojira" roughly translates into "Whale-Ape" (It's a Portmanteau of "Kujira" (Japanese for "Whale") and "Gorilla") and that the name is simply left-over from Toho's original plan for Godzilla to be a giant fire-breathing ape. The filmmakers simply liked the name...and the rest is history.
    • There is one about Toho wanting to bring Godzilla back in The '70s post-Terror of Mechagodzilla with "Godzilla vs. The Devil" to cash in on the contemporary trend of devil-themed horror movies like The Omen (1976). The fact that Toho Kingdom listed it as a fact contributed to its spread.
  • Vanilla Edition:
    • Most U.S. Godzilla DVD releases are pretty bland. The first set of Classic Media's discs had two "special features" to speak of: an ad for Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee on the Gamecube and a supposedly 5.1 surround sound track that's really just the mono track turned up with an echo effect added to it. Even worse is the ADV Destroy All Monsters disc, which doesn't have menus. You put it in and the movie plays, just like a VHS cassette. Tristar's discs usually have a handful of trailers for other unrelated movies. The second wave of Classic Media discs finally added some actual features. Though they sadly returned to their old ways on their Rodan / War of the Gargantuas set. While it comes with a neat documentary called Bringing Godzilla Down To Size, the movies themselves don't get any actual features. Which is rather bizarre anyway, since neither of those films are even actual Godzilla movies.
    • Sony released a three disc set a couple years back titled "Icons of Sci-Fi", containing the original 1961 Mothra, Battle In Outer Space, and The H-Man, which is nicely done at least with the Japanese and American versions of all films, and feature length commentaries for both Mothra and Battle In Outer Space.
    • This has gotten slightly better in recent years as DVD companies have finally caught on that Godzilla fans are demanding higher quality releases, and are happy to buy them. Criterion released a wonderful DVD and Blu Ray for the 1954 original Godzilla, in 2012, with a number of very nice bonus features and a gorgeous picture restoration.
    • Many of the vinyl toys tend to have the same basic articulation points; head, arms, legs and tail. Add wings if you happen to be a Ghidorah and remove legs if you are a Mothra. Rodan gets no (jointed) wing articulation in any of his vinyl releases, though. If you are a larval Mothra, remove all points (except possibly the head).
  • Victorious Roar: You'd be hard pressed to find any creature or character who has asserted their victories in battle by roaring as much as the King of the Monsters himself.
  • Video Game Long-Runners: Godzilla starred in his first game in 1983, making it one of the longest running video game franchises ever.
  • Villain Decay:
    • Hedorah is the worst offender of this trope. In his first appearance (Godzilla vs. Hedorah), he was one of Godzilla's most powerful foes. His next appearance? Final Wars in which he makes a ten-second cameo before being instantly killed by Godzilla. To be fair, Godzilla was swatting down kaiju like flies the whole time he was in the movie, but Hedorah got it among the worst.
    • Ghidorah suffers from this as well. In Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, he proves to be a challenge for Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra. In Destroy All Monsters, it takes the combined efforts of all the Monster Island monsters to kill him. But then in Godzilla vs. Gigan, he's easily dealt with by just Godzilla and Anguirus, and he's teamed up with Gigan. In more recent movies, he goes from Rebirth of Mothra III, in which Mothra has to turn into Armor Mothra to defeat him, to GMK: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, in which Godzilla easily thrashes him and Mothra at the same time. At least he managed to regain a bit of his former glory in Godzilla: Final Wars, where he not only was beating, but was absolutely trouncing what is arguably the most powerful Godzilla ever (who, as mentioned above, was swatting down other kaiju like flies throughout the movie). It took the Gotengo's intervention to finally defeat Ghidorah.
    • Mechagodzilla in Terror of Mechagodzilla. In the previous movie Mechagodzilla was a beast in both melee and ranged fighting and thoroughly thrashed Godzilla and King Caesar before Godzilla gained New Powers as the Plot Demands. In Terror, Mechagodzilla hangs back and lets Titanosaurus do the melee fighting, only fires on Godzilla a few times, and when Godzilla does get into melee range Mechagodzilla is helpless (though he was prepared for the head-ripping-off trick).
  • Vocal Dissonance:
    • Godzilla's roar is bizarrely high-pitched and squeaky for such a massive beast.
    • King Ghidorah's roar consists of ringing giggles. Made rather frightening when you see he destroys entire worlds For the Evulz and appears to enjoy doing so with childish glee.
  • Weather-Control Machine: The plot of Son of Godzilla revolves around testing one. It ends up making the Kamacuras grow from man-sized to kaiju-sized when the first test goes haywire.
  • We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill: Done a few times.
    • Invasion of Astro-Monster: Xilians from Planet X ask Earth for help in driving King Ghidorah off their planet by sending them Godzilla and Rodan, and in return they'll give us a drug that will cure all known Earth diseases. We send them Godzilla and Rodan, and everything seems just dandy... until the Xilians reveal that they have all three monsters under their control and unleash them on Tokyo.
    • Godzilla vs. Gigan: An awesome new amusement park called Children's Land opens in Japan, promoting peace for all mankind... until it's revealed that the staff of the park are really giant intergalactic cockroaches that want to rebuild their own civilization which was destroyed by the human-like species on their own planet, and they unleash Gigan and King Ghidorah on Tokyo.
    • Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah: A trio of humans arrive from the future and declare that, very soon, Godzilla will destroy all of Japan (even worse than he usually does), and that they must go back in time and make it so he is never created to make sure this never happens. Along with the main characters, they go back in time and prevent Godzilla's creation... only to secretly leave behind the Dorats, who end up merging and turning into King Ghidorah from the same radiation that created Godzilla. And the future people control Ghidorah.
    • Godzilla: Final Wars: When every monster ever starts attacking major cities around the globe at once, the Xilians (again) show up and teleport them all away, saying they only want peace between Earth and Planet X. But then it turns out they were planning on conquering the Earth (albeit through peaceful means). With their cover blown and the rash hot-head taking over command, all the monsters are released back on Earth, this time backed up by Gigan and the Xilians' numerous warships.
  • Where's the Fun in That?: As seen in Godzilla (1998)...
    Audrey Timmonds: If he's the first of his kind, how can he be pregnant? Doesn't he need a mate?
    Dr. Niko Tatopoulus: Not if he reproduces asexually.
    Audrey Timmonds: Where's the fun in that?
  • Whole-Plot Reference:
    • Final Wars' story was essentially a Millennium remake of Destroy All Monsters, with some Invasion of the Astro Monster thrown in.
    • In a more real-life sense, Gojira is a reference to the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as well as the Lucky Dragon 5 incident.
  • The Worf Effect: With one exception, maser cannons have never harmed Godzilla or any other kaiju in the franchise, ever. A maser in this universe is supposed to be an intimidating, gigantic Ray Gun, but its repeated ineffectiveness makes you wonder why the Defense Force ever bothers with them. That one exception was The War of the Gargantuas. There, masers actually hurt Gaira, driving him back; but in Godzilla vs. Gigan they still only serve to annoy King Ghidorah.
  • The Worm That Walks: Destoroyah, in all its forms, is composed of vast swarms of bizarre anaerobic microbes.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Captain Gordon in Final Wars. At one point he fights two Xiliens, one male, one female. He dispatches the male, then has a fight with the female. After he gets the upper hand, he has his fist pulled back ready to deck her, when she asks "you wouldn't hit a woman would you?". He then hesitates, opens his hand, smiles...then says "Yeah." and knocks her out with a karate chop to the neck!
  • Written Roar: "SKREEEOOONK!", or "EEEAAAAARRGGGGH!"? You decide!
    • However, it should be noted that Godzilla's roar is often onomatopoeia-ized as "GYAOON!" (ギャオーン) in Japanese.
  • Year X:
    • Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965) takes place in 196X.
    • Godzilla Vs Megalon (1973) takes place in 197X.
    • Godzilla: Final Wars is generally accepted to take place in the near future and within the 21st century, though an exact year is not specified.
History shows again and again
How nature points out the folly of man
Godzilla!

 
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Video Example(s):

Godzilla's Slide Kick

In a now infamous scene from Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla gathers speed and momentum to dropkick Megalon by sliding on his tail, no matter how much it defies physics.

Example of:
Artistic License – Physics

Gigan's Rotatin...

Godzilla Tower

There Will Alwa...

Battra Rescues ...

Mechagodzilla

Rodan Saves God...

Garuda to the R...

Super Mechagodz...

Godzilla's Infi...

Godzilla vs. De...

Destoroyah's Death

Godzilla and Ju...

Fake Godzilla v...

Godzilla's Magn...

Tap or No Tap

Godzilla vs Zilla

Zilla Jr

Godzilla vs Kin...

Alternative Title(s): Godzilla 2 War Of The Monsters, Godzilla Generations, Godzilla Monster War

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Godzilla's Slide Kick

In a now infamous scene from Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla gathers speed and momentum to dropkick Megalon by sliding on his tail, no matter how much it defies physics.

How well does it match the trope?

4.96 (27 votes)

Example of:

Main / ArtisticLicensePhysics

Media sources:

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Godzilla's Slid...

Gigan's Rotatin...

Godzilla Tower

There Will Alwa...

Battra Rescues ...

Mechagodzilla

Rodan Saves God...

Garuda to the R...

Super Mechagodz...

Godzilla's Infi...

Godzilla vs. De...

Destoroyah's Death

Godzilla and Ju...

Fake Godzilla v...

Godzilla's Magn...

Tap or No Tap

Godzilla vs Zilla

Zilla Jr

Godzilla vs Kin...