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Brody Family
Joe Brody
"This is what caused everything in the first place! Don't you see that?! And it is gonna send us back to the Stone Age! You have no idea what's coming."
"You keep telling everybody that this place is a death zone, but it's not. You're lying… because what's really happening is that you're hiding something out there. I'm right, aren't I? My wife died here! Something killed my wife, and I have a right to know! I deserve answers!"
Portrayed By: Bryan Cranston
Appeared In: Godzilla
The American head of the Janjira nuclear plant that melted down in 1999, who is obsessed with discovering what really happened during the plant's meltdown.
- Action Survivor: He's an ordinary nuclear power plant engineer who survives the plant's destruction. Downplayed in the novelization, where Joe is revealed to be ex-Navy. Ultimately subverted in both versions of the story when he dies at the movie's midpoint.
- Advertised Extra: Trailers for the film heavily featured him. His character is set up as one of the main protagonists, but he dies 1/3 of the way into the movie.
- As You Know: When the Janjira reactor collapses and starts venting radioactive gas into the structure, Joe gets so worried he feels the need to remind his wife that she has to hurry out of there or she "won't last five minutes, with or without the suits", which serves as a way of expositing the deadly risk to the audience; nevermind that Sandra's one of the (if not the) lead technicians at the plant and is probably more aware of the risks than he is.
- Bilingual Bonus: Joe communicates in Japanese a few times over the film, including a snap at a Japanese Monarch security troop.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: The Janjira incident that resulted in his wife's death and traumatized Joe for the next fifteen years occurred on his birthday.
- Brainy Brunette: He has brown hair (although he's visibly graying in the present after the Distant Prologue). Before the loss of his wife, he was a certified nuclear power plant chief engineer, and afterwards, he's smart enough to slowly but surely work out on his own that Monarch are hiding a biological creature and to work out long before Monarch do that the MUTO has an EMP ability, as well as that it's communicating with another of its kind.
- Broken Tears: He is, understandably, utterly in tears when he's forced to seal his own wife inside a nuclear reactor with a lethal dose of radiation to save thousands, not helped by the knowledge that she was only down there in the first place at his earlier suggestion. A decade and a half later, and Joe still isn't over his wife's death at all.
- Burial at Sea: In the novelization, he receives this kind of burial on the USS Saratoga in true Navy tradition (the novel reveals that Joe was ex-Navy).
- Conspiracy Theorist: After his wife, Sandra, was among the deaths at the Janjira nuclear power plant when it was abruptly destroyed, he's convinced that whatever caused the disaster was a bit less "natural" than the official reports claimed (not least because he personally saw the data on the seismic disturbances and knew that tectonics couldn't be the source). He spends the next 15 years trying to piece together the truth behind the tragedy, becoming convinced along the way that Monarch's presence around the quarantine zone is a sign that the government is covering up something they don't want the world to know about, whilst newspaper clippings in Joe's apartment show he took an interest in the 1954 Bikini Atoll coverup along the way. Joe is unsurprisingly miffed with Monarch after learning he's right.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: His obsession with his wife's death has left him more than a little nutty and he's regarded as a Cloudcuckoolander by his son, but he's right about the cover-up and he gets it completely right that Monarch was hiding something which uses bio-acoustics.
- Cynicism Catalyst: The death of his wife, which he knows he is partly responsible for.
- Dad the Veteran: The novelization reveals that he served in the Navy when he was younger – like father, like son. This could also explain Joe's skills during his years-spanning investigation into what really happened in Janjira and what Monarch are hiding.
- Dead Star Walking: Played by Bryan Cranston, the biggest name actor in the film, he doesn't make it past the first third.
- Death Wail: He screams quite impressively at the top of his lungs just before he forces himself to seal his fatally-contaminated wife in the reactor area to die.
- Decoy Protagonist: Though he is given a lot of development early on in the film, his son is The Hero of the story as far as human characters go.
- Determinator: Even 15 years after the incident, he hasn't given up on finding the truth about what really killed his wife.
- Disappeared Dad: Downplayed. His relationship with his son has apparently been distant since the Janjira collapse, not helped by Ford distancing himself from the man due to what Ford perceives as toxic mania on Joe's part. He's also more or less a Disappeared Granddad, having rarely if ever seen his grandson.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: The film sets him up as a major protagonist with an integral role in the story. Minutes after the male MUTO gets released, he literally gets a bridge dropped on him and dies with little warning.
- Excessive Mourning: Even fifteen years after his wife's death, he's completely obsessed with finding out the truth about what killed her, he's living in a low-income apartment, his relationship with Ford is strained (tragically failing to live up to his wife's last wish that he take care of Ford in the midst of his grief-fueled fixation), he's barely if ever seen his daughter-in-law and his four-year-old grandson, and he still acts as if his grief is as raw as the day Sandra died a decade and a half ago. Ford actually calls him out on his inability to move on.
- Fatal Family Photo: He finds an intact photo of his family in their old house, and he dies roughly 20 minutes later in the movie's runtime.
- Foil: He's one to Dr. Serizawa, which is lampshaded when the latter gives him a sympathetic stare through the two-way mirror upon hearing of his wife's death. They both are (were in Joe's case) Reasonable Authority Figures in charge, and both of them were set on their current path partly because of a nuclear tragedy of some kind in which their loved one was caught up (for Serizawa it's his father's firsthand experience of the Hiroshima bombing, for Joe it's the Janjira meltdown which caused his wife's death). They're also both brilliant men, who happen to be regarded by peers (his son Ford for Joe, Admiral Stenz for Serizawa) as Cloudcuckoolanders but in the end are both proven to be right; Serizawa's expertise is in what the Kaiju's emergence means and their role in nature, whereas Joe's is in the effects of their powers and how to detect them. However, whereas Serizawa actively tries to maintain the Masquerade, Brody seeks to break it through; Serizawa was responsible for defending and building up Monarch as a key figurehead, whereas Joe became a lonely recluse taking teaching jobs after the nuclear plant's destruction; Serizawa is The Stoic whereas Joe is driven by Mangst to uncover the truth. Interestingly, Joe is estranged from his son and it's hinted Serizawa likewise isn't necessarily close to his sonnote ; but Serizawa has a Number Two who's Like a Daughter to Me, and Ford and Joe briefly team-up during the film; Ford doesn't outlive his son, while Serizawa outlives Vivienne Graham by a short time.
- Forgot Their Own Birthday: At the beginning of the film, he has to be reminded by his wife that it's his birthday. Neither his wife nor his son are surprised that he forgot it.
- Held Gaze: His first onscreen interaction with Ford when the latter is an adult has him locking eyes with Ford, and nervously flashing a smile which Ford doesn't return, establishing the present nature of their relationship.
- Hope Spot: He has a rather horrible one during the Janjira meltdown. He rushes to the reactor area's emergency bulkhead and expects Sandra to run through in time for him to seal it manually and contain the radiation leakage. Then Sandra contacts him over the radio and reveals she's already been fatally contaminated.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: His motivation for obsessively looking into the conspiracy surrounding the Janjira meltdown in the present day (which leads to him making useful discoveries about the MUTOs that Monarch haven't found out even with direct access to a specimen) is that he feels responsible for Sandra dying of severe radiation poisoning and/or the plant's collapse during the meltdown. Not least because it was Joe himself who unwittingly put her in harm's way in the first place by convincing her to go down to the reactor, and because he was personally forced to close the blast doors on her and her team after they were lethally contaminated in order to save the rest of the city's populace.
- It's Personal: For fifteen years since Sandra's death, Joe in his unresolved grief has been hellbent on uncovering the truth behind what killed her, which he knows is being covered up and hidden from the world.
- Last Request: Just before he loses consciousness, he, apparently knowing he might die, tells Ford to go home to Elle and Sam and to do whatever it takes to protect them. Joe doesn't recover.
- Meaningful Look: He shares a brief look of regret with Ford when they realize the catwalk Joe is on is about to collapse, which causes injuries that later kill Joe.
- Mr. Exposition: During the Distant Prologue, he provides a lot of plot-relevant exposition concerning the MUTO's approach and the Janjira meltdown as they respectively happen. In the present time, he provides more exposition about the MUTO's and Monarch's presence in Janjira, and about the MUTOs' EMP ability.
- My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction to Sandra being sealed inside to die says it all. His obsession is also fueled by guilt over his role in her death.
- Papa Wolf: After getting arrested again, before he even demands answers, the first thing he demands is to see his son Ford, who they also captured. Just by the tone of his voice, he's both scared and mad at the thought of losing him too.
- Parental Neglect: Even before the incident at the power plant turned him into an obsessive conspiracy theorist, Joe was already unintentionally dismissive of his family, all but forgetting to greet his son in the morning.
- Parents as People: Although him and Ford love each-other, he hasn't been the best father. Before the Janjira meltdown he was an inattentive workaholic, then afterwards he was so caught up in his grief and obsession with unraveling the truth that his efforts to pull Ford in over the years have driven the latter away from him, and Joe has barely if ever seen his grandson Sam.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: As head engineer of the Janjira nuclear power plant before the death of his wife. He pushes for an emergency meeting because he's concerned about unexplained seismic readings near the nuclear power plant's vicinity. When the quakes reach the plant before the meeting can happen, he rightfully orders the staff to take the plant offline without hesitation. Lastly, there's his tragic Shoot the Dog.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: At first. Joe knew there was a cover-up going on surrounding the Janjira site, but he initially thought it was either a design flaw or a military mistake that was being hidden. It wasn't until later, after studying some zoology and utilizing buoys which picked up the MUTOs' bio-acoustics, that Joe caught onto the real nature of the secret.
- Room Full of Crazy: He has an apartment covered with newspaper clippings and other documents relating to his search for the truth behind the collapse of the Janjira plant that led to his wife's death. His son is understandably taken aback at all this; his father simply replies, "I don't get too many visitors".
- Sacrificial Lion: Gets the most development early on but is killed when the first MUTO awakens. His death heightens the tension in Ford's quest to reunite his family alive during the movie's remainder.
- Say My Name: Joe roars his son's name when he sees the latter in peril from afar amid the carnage caused by Hokmuto's emergence at the Janjira Black Site.
- Shoot the Dog: He's reluctantly forced to seal his wife and several other co-workers inside the power plant's reactor area to die (albeit after they failed to outrun the radioactive leakage and were fatally exposed) to prevent the leakage from getting out and potentially killing millions.
- Silence of Sadness: When he sees Sandra through the viewing port after she's been lethally poisoned, he can't bring himself to utter a single word for the rest of the scene, simply nodding his head and whimpering quietly as she says goodbye.
- Spotting the Thread: After breaking back into old Janjira after it was quarantined due to a reactor meltdown, Joe Brody realizes the place isn't radioactive when he spots three dogs chasing each other when they should be dead from radiation. A quick check of his Geiger counter confirms his suspicions.
- Technology Levels: Mentioned poetically by him for dramatic effect when he screams that the EMP coming from Janjira NPP's ruins will "send us back to the Stone Age".
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He dies roughly 40 minutes into the film after sustaining injuries from the male MUTO awakening in Janjira.
- "Well Done, Dad!" Guy: As a result of Sandra's death at Janjira and his subsequent development into a Conspiracy Theorist investigating what caused the plant to collapse, he has become estranged from his son Ford, who thinks all his dad's crazy-sounding theories are just a pathetic attempt to keep from moving on from that grief as he has. The fact that the first time in years Ford meets up with Joe is to retrieve him after he got arrested trying to sneak into the Janjira quarantine zone doesn't help.
- Window Love: He does this with Sandra across the window of the door behind which he had to lock her to keep irradiated steam from leaking into the rest of the Janjira plant, even holding his hand to the window as they exchange last words.
- Workaholic: He was very much this as head of the nuclear power plant – the morning preceding the meltdown, he was distracted worrying over the phone about how seismic waves approaching the plant could affect the facility to a point where he didn't see Ford before the latter left for school and he completely forgot it was his own birthday until Sandra reminded him. In the present, this facet of Joe's personality still shows in his obsessive zeal to discover what caused the Janjira meltdown.
- Zipping Up the Bodybag: The last we see of him is his body being zipped up into a bag after he died en route to the USS Saratoga.
Sandra Brody (née Duvall)
Portrayed By: Juliette Binoche
Appeared In: Godzilla
Joe's wife, Ford's mother, and one of the engineers at the nuclear plant where Joe works in Janjira, Japan. She's also the sister of Michelle Duvall, implying that Duvall is her maiden name.
- Death by Origin Story:
- She's shown with Joe and a young Ford Brody in the Distant Prologue, and she dies shortly afterward. Fifteen years later, discovering the truth about what killed her is what has motivated Joe as a Conspiracy Theorist to find out the truth about the male MUTO for the last several years, and it's implied that stopping her death from happening to anyone else is what motivated the grown-up Ford to become an Explosive Ordinance Disposal specialist.
- It's also revealed in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters that her sister, Michelle Duvall, became a Monarch operative because of her death.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Justified. She tells her husband to shut the blast doors, trapping her and her team to die, in order to prevent the radiation cloud from leaking out and exposing the whole city; and the way she words it makes it clear she and her team have no realistic chance of making it out alive and heavily implies they've already been lethally irradiated.
- The Lost Lenore: Joe is still raw over her death even a decade-and-a-half later, and it's what motivates his obsessive crusade to uncover the truth about what caused the Janjira meltdown.
- Missing Mom: She died in the Janjira reactor breach when Ford was a kid.
- Outrun the Fireball: A variation. She and other inspectors try to outrun the gas ball representing the leaked radiation at the power plant. They don't make it.
- Sacrificial Lamb: She gets somewhat fleshed out in regard to her relationships with her family, and then dies, all in the first 15 minutes of the film.
- Take Care of the Kids: Her last request to her husband after she's fatally poisoned and has moments left is that Joe take care of Ford.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: She and the scientists stuck on the wrong side of the breach doors are the first characters (barring the miners who fell into the Philippines cavern offscreen) to die, all within the first 20 minutes of the movie.
- Window Love: Sealed inside the nuclear plant's reactor area, she spends a precious couple moments locking eyes and exchanging last words with her husband, before the window-less secondary bulkhead closes and cuts them off.
(*Spoiler Character*)
Michelle Duvall
Ford Brody
"Let me take you home. Come home with me. I got a little boy who's desperate to see his grandpa."
"Look, this is what I do. This is my job."
Portrayed By: Aaron Taylor-Johnson & CJ Adams (Young)
Appeared In: Godzilla
The only child of Joe and Sandra Brody. The primary human protagonist of the 2014 Godzilla film, he is a Navy bomb tech on leave when the events of the movie began.
- 1-Dimensional Thinking: Double Subverted when he jumps off the railway bridge into the river. The fall might kill him but being hit by a burning runaway train will kill him.
- Action Survivor: Dealing with giant Kaiju is probably a bit more than even a returning war vet is trained for. With the MUTOs and Godzilla, the best you can do is stay out of their way and hope for the best.
- Androcles' Lion: Downplayed but still present as Ford distracts the MUTOs long enough for Godzilla to gather himself and take them down. Godzilla even stops the female MUTO from killing Ford in a Big Damn Heroes moment. This may have just been good timing but given how Godzilla's intelligence is revealed and by the end he's totally aware if not fully sentient, this could have been intentional.
- Big Damn Heroes: To Godzilla, ironically enough. When both MUTOs are pummeling Godzilla within an inch of his life, the explosion that Ford causes to destroy all the MUTO eggs draws their attention, saving Godzilla.
- Bomb Disposal: His job in the Army is Explosive Ordnance Disposal, essentially defusing bombs in environments with a military presence. He joins the HALO team sent into San Francisco so he can disable the nuclear warhead in the city, but he ultimately can't get the casing open to even try to defuse it.
- Chekhov's Skill: Stealthily played straight and outright subverted.
- During the MUTO's emergence at Janjira, Ford grabs and dons a gas mask in only a few seconds - something the average person would fumble for ten seconds or more to do. However, the Marines are drilled hard on rapid deployment of masks, so for Ford that action is ingrained in him as deeply as breathing.
- Subverted in that despite repeatedly establishing Ford's EOD tech abilities, the bomb is too damaged to be defused and goes off, though out of range.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: He is completely absent throughout Godzilla: King of the Monsters, despite surviving the events of the 2014 movie.
- Correlation/Causation Gag: At the climax, Ford, with absolutely nothing else he can do, points his sidearm at the female MUTO as she's approaching him, clearly about to kill him. She suddenly stops and Ford looks puzzled for a second until the next shot shows that Big G has appeared out of nowhere and clamped down on the back of her neck.
- Deep Breath Reveals Tension: In the novelization, he has to take a deep breath to steady himself after his phone call to Elle amid the MUTOs' cross-U.S. rampage.
- Deuteragonist: He plays the other role of the protagonist while Godzilla is the lead. This is alluded to when Ford faints at the same time Godzilla collapses after defeating the MUTOs.
- Doom Magnet: He must have rolled in uranium dust or something, given he seems to attract Kaiju wherever he goes.
- Dull Surprise: Justified in-universe (see below) thanks to Ford's EOD background. He keeps his cool at all times when the stakes are high.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: He’s an EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) officer in the United States Navy. While they don’t get much love in pop culture, Navy EOD personnel are considered the elite among the U.S. military’s EOD community; their initial training is over a year long and they often deploy alongside special operations units such as the SEALs and Delta Force.
- Fatal Family Photo: Subverted. He brings out a photo of his wife and son and has a close call soon after, but ultimately he lives to the movie's end.
- Foil: Downplayed, his core motivation is the same as Hokmuto: to protect his family.
- Freudian Excuse: A heroic rather than villainous case. It's implied in the film and further suggested in the novelization that his EOD career is influenced by his mother's death in the Janjira meltdown; preventing disastrous explosions involving hazardous materials from claiming other people's lives the same way the Janjira plant's supposed failure claimed his mother's life.
- Held Gaze: In an extra scene in the novelization, Ford's first reunion with Sam after the Golden Gate Bridge disaster isn't in the stadium at the end, but before the HALO jump: the novel says that they lock eyes and "truly see[…] each other for perhaps the first time."
- Heroic Lineage: Not only do Ford and his father both contribute in some meaningful way to saving lives and stopping the MUTOs, but in the novelization, it's confirmed that Joe used to be in the Navy just like Ford. It's also revealed in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters that Ford's aunt Michelle Duvall is a Monarch operative as a result of Sandra's death.
- Hope Spot: He has a particularly cruel one at the Janjira containment site. He sees his father get caught in a large bridge collapse that's likely to severely injure or just kill – then Ford discovers his father has survived the collapse (with the novelization explicitly describing Ford's desperate search for Joe among the injured and fear of finding him dead the next morning), only for Joe to go into atrial fibrillation and die en route to the Saratoga.
- Idiot Ball: Ford and his team on the railroad bridge in the dark and foggy Sierras radio ahead to their advance scouts to ask if the tracks are clear. The scouts reply with frantic full-automatic fire and screaming. What do Ford and his team make of this? "Let's move up on foot and check it out." They start to take a hint when the MUTO throws a flaming M1 Abrams tank at them.
- Interspecies Friendship: Downplayed. With Godzilla, to a minor extent.
- The Jinx: Every time he is with a group of people, he tends to be one of the few if not the sole survivor.
- Karmic Jackpot: Albeit with both parties unaware of the fact. Right when Godzilla is being pinned down by the MUTOs, Brody sets fire to the nest and draws the female's attention, giving Big G an opening to stand up and regroup. His assistance is rewarded when, just as the female MUTO is about to kill him, Godzilla appears out of nowhere to bite on the MUTO's neck and let Brody get away.
- Last Stand: When the actively pissed-off Femuto corners him on a boat in the San Francisco Bay; with a nuclear warhead ticking away on said boat, with everyone else in Ford's military team dead and with no hope of saving himself from certain death, Ford just coolly takes out his side-arm and gets ready to shoot.
- Late to the Realization: In the novelization, he seems to be slower than the reader or Joe to realize what the hell's going on at the Black Site in Janjira before the MUTO breaks free.
- Made of Iron: Averted. Being flung through the air when he Outruns the Fireball leaves him with a broken leg and, in the novelization, internal bleeding.
- Mangst: He mostly appears to have moved on from his mother's death, but not completely. Despite his stoic demeanor for most of the movie, the pained look on Ford's face when he's arguing with Joe hints that the latter has a point when he accuses Ford of running away from his mom's death all this time, and Ford's subsequent decision to accompany Joe into the Janjira quarantine zone if he can't dissuade him seems to further suggest Joe might have been right. The movie makes it clear Ford is deeply crushed when Joe dies (not least because it happened just after Ford discovered Joe was right all along and he never got to properly reconcile with him), all without the EOD veteran shedding a single tear. The novelization manages to do more to describe Ford's emotions and fears for his family's wellbeing.
- Meaningful Look: He has a look of wide-eyed horror and his father a look of regret when they both realize the catwalk Joe is on is about to collapse while locking eyes with each-other. Later, Ford and Godzilla appear to lock eyes at one point when the latter is at ground level, with Ford visibly seeing Godzilla as more than just a monster in this moment.
- A Minor Kidroduction: He first appears in the movie's Distant Prologue as a child. His room is shown to be littered with army toys and a NASA rocket (foreshadowing his future profession in America), and a couple dinosaur toys and a kaiju movie poster (foreshadowing his sense of connection to the dinosaurian kaiju Godzilla later in the movie). He's also all but ignored by his distracted workaholic father from the moment he gets up to when he's left for school, in contrast to how he and his mother are shown quietly conspiring to make a birthday surprise for Joe, showing that Ford felt closer to Sandra and foreshadowing his future relationship with Joe once the latter becomes obsessed with finding the truth. Ford is even the focus during the time-skip from the tail-end of the Distant Prologue to the start of the movie's main time frame.
- Nerves of Steel: It takes brass balls to stay calm when the MUTOs starts their rampage. Fully justified, considering his job is disarming bombs in war zones. Of course, he would develop such a front.
- Nice Guy: He's a loving father and spouse and is very patient with his more-than-a-little crazy dad. The moment he hears that Joe has been arrested in Japan he rushes to his side and tries to convince him to come home with him.
- Not So Stoic: When he sees his father's dead body, Ford tears up.
- Outrun the Fireball: He causes a fuel leak in the MUTOs' not-exactly-flame-free nest in San Francisco Chinatown and makes a run for it, barely escaping the resulting explosion, which throws him forward hard enough to leave him badly injured and battered.
- Plot Armor: Our hero survives no less than four catastrophes, two of which he is the only survivor.
- Primal Fear: The HALO jump scene has Ford Brody and the other soldiers jumping out of a plane at such a high altitude that they're practically in space. The jump requires them to dive through a massive, thundering storm cloud all the way down into a ruined San Francisco that the eponymous creature is still marauding through. Some of the soldiers even drop right past Godzilla as they get closer to the ground.
- The Promise: In the novelization, he promises Sam the night that he comes home that he'll take Sam shopping the next morning and get him a toy Navy man. He naturally fails to keep the first half of that promise when he heads to Janjira and the MUTOs start running rampant, but he does keep the latter half of the promise by handing the Navy toyman from Janjira to Sam once Ford has made his way back to San Francisco with the aim of saving his family amid the catastrophe.
- Returning War Vet: As the main narrative begins, he is on leave from his job of disarming bombs for the U.S. military.
- Sleep Deprivation: In the novelization, Ford has apparently been going more than 24 hours without sleep the night after he returns home on military leave.
- Sole Survivor: Becomes this several times to the units he joins along the way to saving his family.
- So Proud of You: In the novelization, he feels a swell of pride in his son for the latter's strength of character when Sam understands the situation and keeps it together after Sam and Elle have been separated.
- Steel Ear Drums: He's completely unfazed by being close to Godzilla when the latter is roaring at the top of his lungs, not even covering his ears. Bear in mind, MonsterVerse Godzilla's roar is estimated
to be clearly audible over at least three miles. - The Stoic: Fully justified. Soldiers are trained to keep their cool during intense moments. Furthermore, his specific role job is disarming bombs in military zones, meaning he is expected to have an even higher tolerance of stress than the average military man. He does openly show emotion like joy and affection when he is off the clock with his family. The Stoic front only breaks once and that's when he realizes his dad has died.
- Taught by Experience: Ford invokes this to convince the master sergeant handling the nuclear warhead to give him a ride on the freight train to San Francisco, bringing up his EOD experience."When was the last time you let one of your guys put their fingers in a live bomb? Look, this is what I do. This is my job."
- Time-Shifted Actor: CJ Adams plays Ford as a kid.
- Tempting Fate: Almost. Early in the film, after returning home from war service before the MUTO crisis kicks off, he assures Sam that he'll stick around.
- Unluckily Lucky: You can count how many times he survives with his encounters with the MUTO, the same one he keeps encountering. 5 times, the last 2 due to Godzilla's Big Damn Heroes moments.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: He starts the movie thinking he's in a family drama, and his father is a deranged crackpot who's gone mad from losing his wife in a nuclear accident and can't face reality. Boy, Ford is in for a surprise when men with guns take him and his father into custody for trespassing in the restricted area his father was obsessing over, and a gigantic bug-thing rises out of the ruins of the desolate power plant where his father believed some kind of creature was being hidden.
Elle Brody
"You know you're only gonna be gone for a few days, right? And then you are gonna come back to me. It's not the end of the world."
"It's not the end of the world."
Portrayed By: Elizabeth Olsen
Appeared In: Godzilla
Ford's wife and Sam's mother, who works as a nurse in San Francisco.
- Deadpan Snarker: Before Ford leaves for Japan to bail out his father, Elle is trying to tell him that Joe is a good man who just needs some help after he lost everything the day Janjira turned into a nuclear hotspot. Ford responds he lost everything too but got over it leading Elle to respond, "I can see that."
- Damsel in Distress: Her role is basically to be in danger from the Kaiju and motivate Ford to risk his life to save her.
- Foil: Downplayed. Her core motivation is the same as Femuto’s: to keep her family safe.
- Hope Spot: During the monsters' arrival at San Francisco, she sees a trooper parachuting in, looking as if help is on the way… until it turns out that the "trooper" was a pilot who had ejected from his fighter, as planes start dropping out of the sky.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Averted with her and her father-in-law. She has more sympathy towards Joe's antics than her husband does at the movie's start, and she actively encourages Ford to treat him better, and Joe is on good enough terms with her to ask after her."Well, he is your family."
- Tempting Fate: When Ford has to go to Japan to pick up his father just after returning home from military service, Elle assures him the trip will just be a few days. "It's not the end of the world." Zig-Zagged – Ford does make it back to Elle and Sam after just a few days, but he does so amidst a world-changing rampage by Kaiju across the Pacific that nearly claims all and any one of the Brodys' lives.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: It's brief, but when she enters the stadium after barely surviving a Kaiju battle, covered in dust from getting buried alive under a building, she has the far-off stare of a shell-shocked soldier before she spots her family.
- Work Hard, Play Hard: Played With. The novelization shows she's a serious and committed nurse when she's on-the-clock, yet off-the-clock she manages to make time for fun involving cake with her son and her Returning War Vet husband.
Sam Brody
"Mommy, look! Dinosaurs!"
Portrayed By: Carson Bolde
Appeared In: Godzilla
Ford and Ellie's four-year-old son.
- Children Are Innocent: A straight example as Sam is clearly one of the most innocent characters both in the film and the series next to Jia.
- Held Gaze: In an extra scene in the novelization, Sam's first reunion with his father after the Golden Gate Bridge disaster isn't in the stadium at the end, but before the HALO jump: the novel says that they lock eyes and "truly see[...] each other for perhaps the first time."
- Innocent Inaccurate: He clearly doesn't grasp how much of a game changer both Godzilla and the MUTOs' appearances are, instead he just thinks they are cool "dinosaurs". It's clear when Godzilla's fight with the male Muto is on the news, he is smiling and enjoying it while his mother is clearly shocked at what she is seen.
- Kids Love Dinosaurs: He excitedly calls Godzilla and Hokmuto "dinosaurs" when he sees the first news footage of them on the TV.
- Nightmare Fetishist: When he and the other child evacuees on the schoolbus witness Godzilla's arrival at the Golden Gate Bridge, Sam appears to be smiling as if he thinks the sight is cool, in contrast to how the other kids are rightly screaming in terror once the military starts bombarding Godzilla.
Hayes Family
Bernie Hayes
Portrayed By: Brian Tyree Henry
Appeared In: Godzilla vs. Kong | Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted (tie-in comic) | Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
A Conspiracy Theorist who is using his maintenance job at Apex to investigate them due to their shady activities. He aids Madison and Josh in investigating the cause of Godzilla's rampage.
- Agent Mulder: Apart from being entirely Properly Paranoid about Apex Cybernetics' secrets, he takes pretty much every conspiracy theory seriously, from Marilyn Monroe to elves at the North Pole (we're not joking). He believes in lizard people, Restart the World plots, and doesn't trust anyone who drinks florinated water.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's a crazy conspiracy theorist… but he's still smart enough to infiltrate Apex for years, actively exploit his eccentric demeanor to fool others, and had Godzilla not attacked then he would've successfully hacked and downloaded data to prove how evil Apex really are. He's also smart enough to theorize what Apex is using Ghidorah's skull for.
- Cassandra Truth: He tries to warn everyone that Apex is plotting something sinister and did something to attract Godzilla. Justified, because he spouts a myriad of other conspiracy theories that are just plain wrong, so almost nobody outside the usual conspiracy-nut niche takes him seriously.
- Chekhov's Gun: His flask of alcohol from his late wife, which Josh uses to turn the tide of the final battle. He even keeps the flask in a shoulder holster.
- Conspiracy Theorist: He is a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist, complete with running a conspiracy theory podcast that Madison listens to, and he's out to expose a Corporate Conspiracy in Apex Cybernetics which he happens to be right about.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: He's a total crackpot with a ton of outlandish conspiracy theories. Even though he's right about Apex doing something to attract Godzilla, all of his other theories about the company are way off the mark.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Almost all his conspiracy theories are way off the mark, including his immediate speculations about Apex's maglev trains when he sees them. But he was 100% right in his conspiracy theory podcast (a podcast which unfortunately no-one but Madison took seriously) that Apex did something to provoke Godzilla's Pensacola attack
- Drowning My Sorrows: The novelization mentions he did this for the first two weeks after his wife Sara died.
- Fat Comic Relief: He's the biggest guy among Team Godzilla, and overall he's one of the silliest and most comedic humans in the film.
- Foil: To Madison Russell. They've both lost people close to them under tragic circumstances, but Madison still has her father after losing her brother and mother, whereas Bernie apparently had no-one after his wife died. Madison is on the receiving end of Underestimating Badassery after the events of King of the Monsters, while Bernie is a Cloudcuckoolander who uses Obfuscating Stupidity to make others underestimate him, and both of them prove to be quite skilled at wiling their ways around security and sinister organizations to get what they want. Bernie is quite a silly and goofy-seeming grown man though not quite a Manchild, while Madison is a teenager who's Wise Beyond Her Years. Madison is somewhat Famed In-Story as Mark and Emma Russell's daughter in Godzilla vs. Kong, while Bernie is an unassuming Apex employee in real-life and a somewhat well-known anonymous podcaster on the internet.
- Hidden Depths: The novelization implies he's aware at least some of the conspiracy theories he follows will likely turn out to be bogus if someone ever gets definitive answers on them, but he treats them seriously anyway just to make sure no stone is left unturned in the search for the truth.
- It's Personal: The novelization reveals that Bernie wants to expose the true colors of Apex Cybernetics (Walter Simmons in particular) to the world because he believes that they arranged the car crash which killed his wife Sara in order to silence her, shortly after she learned of Apex's top-secret plans to help build the Oxygen Destroyer.
- It Was a Gift: He reveals that the flask he carries in a gun holster – which later ends up being critical to saving Godzilla and Kong's lives and stopping Mechagodzilla – was gifted to him by Sara. The novelization further reveals that the circumstances surrounding Sara's death are a big factor in why Bernie wants to expose Apex.
- The Meddling Kids Are Useless: Subverted. He, Madison and Josh spent most of their half of the film's story gradually working out why Godzilla is rampaging, and uncovering Apex Cybernetics' secrets, but they don't have any impact on the plot itself – it's only once they've learned everything important about Apex's corporate conspiracy that they make an effort to try and sabotage Apex, and it fails. However, Bernie and Josh being in Apex's HQ at the control room is ultimately integral to Godzilla and Kong's victory over Mechagodzilla: when Bernie is about to throw in the towel and down his flask, this gives Josh the immediate idea to grab his flask's contents and use it to short out Mechagodzilla's computer, narrowly preventing Kong's death and the now Ghidorah-possessed Mecha's certain victory.
- Memento Macguffin: The flask he holds onto to remember his wife by is critical to the plot later on. When Mechagodzilla possessed by Ghidorah's subconsciousness is about to kill Kong and then a weakened Godzilla, Bernie is about to down his flask's contents, which promptly gives Josh the idea to grab the flask and pour its contents into the vent of Apex's Mechagodzilla-controlling mainframe – causing the Mecha to briefly stall due to its satellite uplink being disrupted, and giving Kong and Godzilla the opening they need to turn the tide and destroy the Mecha. If not for Bernie and Josh's presence, Mechagodzilla would very likely have won.
- No Sense of Personal Space: He does Exactly What It Says on the Tin when trying to keep an Apex employee occupied under the guise of striking up conversation, to the employee's visible ire. Implicitly exploited by Bernie to get the employee to leave.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: It's implied during his initial infiltration at Apex that while he is a Cloud Cuckoolander, he deliberately exaggerates his mannerisms to get people to underestimate him. Notably, his first scene with his coworker has him warn the latter about eating a GMO apple, but Bernie has no issue eating it himself after tricking said coworker into leaving him.
- Oblivious to His Own Description: Played for Laughs in the novelization. He thinks it's a good thing that he's not paranoid. Anyone who remembers the scene where Madison and Josh approach him at his apartment, or the subsequent questions from Bernie that lead to Josh getting his "Tap Water" nickname, will know Bernie isn't giving himself enough credit.
- Oh, Crap!: He's horrified to the point of going soft-spoken when Team Godzilla discovers Ghidorah's wired-up skull and Bernie realizes that Apex are using Ghidorah's neurology to achieve Mechagodzilla's psionic uplink. After expositing on what the trio are most likely looking at, he says:"Oh, Apex, what have you done…"
- The Paranoiac: He's a Conspiracy Theorist and a Cloudcuckoolander, who believes tapwater is being used to dumb down the population, and he has a homemade security camera watching over his apartment's front door. Hilariously, in the novelization, he believes he and the Apex employees at the Pensacola office are going to be gassed during the evacuation drill.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Inverted. He and Josh are both in their own ways quite goofy and sources of humor, although Bernie still comes across as the nuttier of the two, while Madison is about the only wholly serious member of Team Godzilla.
- Properly Paranoid: Zig-Zagged. A lot of his ramblings seem a bit ludicrous even to the end (such as believing the government is trying to cover up the existence of Santa's workshop at the North Pole in the novelization), but the Corporate Conspiracy he suspects Apex of is very much real. He correctly deduces after Godzilla's Pensacola attack that Apex did something which provoked him, but everyone except Madison ignores his podcast.
- Rapid-Fire "No!": When he, Josh, and Madison return to the trashed Pensacola Apex headquarters and find the cybernetic eyeball which Bernie found has disappeared.
- Reptilian Conspiracy: He thinks that Apex's malevolent Corporate Conspiracy with the underground maglev tunnels and Mechagodzilla (which is real) is directly linked to the classic lizard-people conspiracy (which isn't real), passingly claiming that he can navigate the trio through Apex's headquarters because lizard-people build all their facilities the same way.
- Shadow Archetype: To Joe Brody. Both of them are Conspiracy Theorists who lost their respective wives in terrible accidents, which drove them to isolate themselves chasing what they believe is the truth. Unlike Joe, who saw what happened directly and had actual hard evidence to back up his claims, Bernie just happens to be right about the one plot-relevant conspiracy involving Mecha Godzilla.
- Spanner in the Works: His, Madison, and Josh's only role up until the Final Battle is discovering the conspiracy behind Apex without any real impact on events. But once Mechagodzilla goes on a rampage due to the effects of Ghidorah's remains, Josh uses Bernie's flask to save the day; narrowly preventing Mechagodzilla from likely succeeding in killing Kong, then Godzilla, and becoming an unstoppable threat to the world.
- Token Adult: He's the sole adult on the three-man Team Godzilla led by the teenaged Madison Russell, who recruits him for the aid he can provide in investigating Apex. Although he's definitely not the most mature-acting member of the team, which is quite the achievement when both his teammates are literally high school aged.
- Tragic Keepsake: Has a booklet with a picture of his late wife and a flask he got from her he keeps in a shoulder holster. He says that if the flask is ever empty, then he's given up.
Sara Hayes (*Unmarked Spoilers*)
See here.
Randa-Miura Family
William "Bill" Randa
See here.
Cate Randa
"These monsters and Monarch have taken everything from me. No more."
Portrayed By: Anna Sawai
Appeared In: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
Late Monarch operatives Bill and Keiko Randa's paternal granddaughter, Hiroshi's daughter, and Kentaro's previously-unknown paternal half-sister. Living in the United States, she's a former schoolteacher who was present at the destruction of San Francisco on G-Day, and in the aftermath, she's driven to discover the truth of what happened to her father after she stumbles across his and her grandparents' Monarch secrets.
- But Not Too Foreign: She is half-Japanese and half-American, since her father is full-blood Japanese by his mother Keiko Miura.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: To Ford Brody from Godzilla (2014). Both characters have suffered the apparent loss of a parent before the start of their native story's main time frame, both learn shocking truths about their fathers in relation to the Titans, and both characters' driving goals are seeking out the family members they've been separated from (wife and child for Ford, father for Cate). They were also both caught up in the Titan-caused destruction of the city where they lived in their respective backstories (Janjira for Ford, San Francisco for Cate). But whereas Ford was an overall well-adjusted, veteran male soldier, Cate is a female civilian grappling with PTSD from San Fran's destruction which causes panic attacks. Although both are primarily motivated by their families, Ford is overall idealistic and is happy to serve his country and the whole of civilization in the process of getting back to his family, whereas Cate is cynical and just wants Monarch and the Titans to leave her alone. Whereas Ford is forced apart from his beloved wife and child at the start of his story, Cate at the start of hers is forced towards relatives she never knew she had. Ford is in a happy and loving marriage, and he has healthy relationships with all of his family except for his father; whereas Cate before G-Day was cheating on her girlfriend, and after G-Day she has strained or terse relationships with all of her known relatives, even if her father is the one who (on justifiable grounds) gets it the worst.
- Cool Teacher: Until 2014, she led a fairly normal life as a school teacher, and from the little it was shown, she was someone respected by her students and she was fiercely protective of them in return. Her Survivor Guilt in present comes from watching them die on the Golden Gate Bridge and being completely powerless to save them.
- Cynicism Catalyst: A lifetime of neglect by her secretive father including when she needed him most, and witnessing Godzilla's destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge up close and the deaths of most of her young charges in front of her eyes, have understandably done a lot to leave her jaded and bitter and make her think the worst of her Disappeared Dad. Finding out about the Secret Other Family certainly didn't do anything to rebuild her opinion of him.
- Determinator: She and her half-brother refuse to give up their search for Hiroshi even when they run afoul of Monarch and the Frost Vark, which is enough to convince Monarch to "put them on a long leash".
- Excessive Mourning: Before the series' main time frame kicks off, Cate's grief over losing all but a couple of her schoolkids on the Golden Gate Bridge and the trauma of Hiroshi abandoning her in the aftermath shut her down to such a point that she locked herself in her room for a year and refused to reach out to any support groups, until finding her father's secret other family gave her something else to focus on.
- Fire-Forged Friends: She at first wants little to nothing to do with Kentaro (her hated father's secret other child who she's only just met) or with May beyond getting her life back, but after they've endured multiple kidnappings and life-or-death brushes together, she's a lot more loyal to them in the first season's last few episodes, and she grows comfortable accepting Kentaro as her brother. She especially grows affectionate towards May, who was originally the member of the group that Cate had the least connection to.
- Holding Hands:
- Cate and May hold hands at the end of Episode 4, relieved that they both made it out alive, and May thanks Cate for not leaving her behind. Cate and May also pointedly hold each-other's hands quite a lot throughout the final episode, by which time they've grown close to Ship Tease levels.
- Episode 5 isn't at all subtle about trying to visually emphasize that Cate and her colleague in the flashbacks are girlfriends even after they unambiguously kiss.
- In the season finale, Cate makes a point of grasping both Keiko and May's hands on either side of her in comfort as they're hurtling inside the pod towards the rift out of the Axis Mundi.
- I Will Find You: She wants to find her father after he's gone missing near Alaska.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Is revealed to be gay, and her partner was also a teacher at the school she worked at.
- Long-Lost Relative: To her half-brother Kentaro, due to their Disappeared Dad's deep double life which only comes to light when the both of them are young adults.
- Parting-Words Regret: In "Terrifying Miracles", she's furious upon learning that May spied on her and Kentaro for Duvall and angrily tells May to go to hell. In the next episode, Cate regrets these words when May is kidnapped by AET just before Cate can apologize.
- Psychological Projection: Episode 5 reveals this is part of the reason why she's as bitter as she is at her father once she finds out about his secret other family. Similarly to how Hiroshi was cheating on Caroline for decades, Cate herself before G-Day was cheating on her loving girlfriend, and she projects her own self-loathing onto Hiroshi upon learning he was committing the same betrayal on a very different level.
- Queer Establishing Moment: Episode 5 reveals that she's sexually and romantically interested in women via the flashbacks to before G-Day, which show that she was in a relationship with another female teacher and was cheating on her with another woman.
- Replacement Goldfish: It's hinted that Shaw sees her this way in relation to her grandmother Keiko - not in a romantic way given that he's over 50 years her senior, but in that their shared adventures clearly remind him of the good times he had with Keiko and Bill Randa.
- Shared Family Quirks:
- Episode 5 reveals that in 2014, she cheated on her then lover with another woman, much like her father and his two secret families. And she wasn't even aware of her father cheating nature back then. She even lampshades this by saying she is someone who lets everyone down, just her father did to everyone around him.
- In "Axis Mundi", she delivers a speech which reminds Shaw of her grandmother:Cate: You still have work to do up there. And we need you. Now let’s move our asses and get out of here.
Shaw: She's [Keiko's] granddaughter.
- Ship Tease: As the series goes on, she becomes increasingly affectionate towards one of the other main characters above all others: May.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: She dresses more effeminately in long dresses in the flashback to before G-Day Minus One, compared to her preference for pants and less effeminate clothing in the present; signifying that she's happier and not yet traumatized by the San Francisco attacks and the deaths of her schoolkids in that time period.
- Tautological Templar: In "The Way Out", Tim disparages her, Kentaro and May for thinking they were "on some righteous crusade to uncover the truth", telling them in no uncertain terms that they stuck their noses in things they didn't understand and almost got themselves killed for it.
- Trauma Button: She's juggling clear PTSD from her experiences on G-Day, and she's shown several triggers which can at best trigger a traumatic flashback or at worst cause a full-blown panic attack. Triggers include gas masks, Monarch, any reminder of Godzilla, darkness, and the post-2014 ruins of San Francisco.
- Trauma Conga Line: She had a very bad couple of days during G-Day. Her relationship with her loving girlfriend ended amid the panic and chaos of the attack (though by her own admission, that was her own fault); she was at ground zero when Godzilla's clash with the U.S. military destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge, which also caused all but two of her beloved school students whose safety she was charged with to fall screaming to their deaths right in front of her; and the next morning, her estranged father approached her at the refugee camp for no other reason than to hand her tickets that would get her and her mother out of the quarantine zone, before he left her effective very immediately on an enigmatic job, which he subsequently never came back from before being declared killed in a plane crash. It's no wonder she's so jaded and depressed at the series' start.
- Troubled Backstory Flashback: Over the course of the series, she has several flashbacks to G-Day Minus One, G-Day, and the events leading up to them which establish the several sources of her present day attitude and PTSD. Most of these flashbacks occur when she has a PTSD episode.
Kentaro Randa
Portrayed By: Ren Watabe
Appeared In: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
The son of Hiroshi and Emiko, Cate's paternal half-brother, and the paternal grandson of deceased Monarch operatives Bill and Keiko Randa. He's a former aspiring artist who lives in Tokyo with his mother, and an acquaintance and ex-boyfriend of May Olowe-Hewitt. He joins the half-sister that he didn't know he had in investigating their father's secrets and disappearance, which puts them under Monarch's scrutiny.
- Asian and Nerdy: He's a young Japanese man descended from a Monarch scientist, a gifted (if washout) artist, and he has the practical intelligence to work out Hiroshi's secret map in his San Francisco office.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: He's a gifted artist, but he was unable to work out how to explain his artistic choices professionally even when his tutor gave him months to mull what they mean over for himself, and he chose to go out with a girl he met (May) the night before his public art show instead of committing his remaining time to working it out.
- Calling the Old Man Out:
- When he's hypothermic in Alaska, he hallucinates Hiroshi, and he vents at the latter for falsely reassuring him that his art work (which he failed to get off the ground) was good enough, saying that Hiroshi wasn't engaged enough in his son's life to judge it well enough.
- He calls out his father for real, for having a secret family, and for setting off the chain of events that led Kentaro's half-sister to her supposed death just because Hiroshi couldn't be a good father. Hiroshi falls to his knees when he realizes how much he destroyed his family. Kentaro calls him out once more in the following episode, straight-up telling him that he's destroyed their family and briefly all but disowning him.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: He wants to be an artist, but after skipping out on his art viewing to spend time with May, and getting rejected by the famous artist Kimi left him jaded.
- Determinator: He and his half-sister refuse to give up their search for Hiroshi even when they run afoul of Monarch and the Frost Vark, which is enough to convince Monarch to "put them on a long leash".
- Fire-Forged Friends: He starts the series on distant terms with his ex-girlfriend May, and he wants almost nothing to do with the half-sister that he never knew he had. This changes as the group endure a couple abductions, going on the run, and multiple near-death experiences with Godzilla and the Frost Vark. Towards the first season's end, Kentaro acknowledges Cate as his sister, and he's utterly distraught when he believes that all the group sans him have died.
- Gratuitous English: Averted. He's a Japanese native, but he speaks a good amount of English in the show while his mother spoke exclusively in Japanese. It has to do with his own father, whose parents is his mother Keiko and American stepfather and knew both languages.
- It's All My Fault: When he believes Cate and May and Lee to be dead, he blames himself as much as Hiroshi and suffers from Survivor Guilt.
- I Will Find You: Like Cate, he wants to find his Disappeared Dad Hiroshi.
- Jaded Washout: He was a promising art student being tutored by an art celebrity named Kimi, but she dropped him when she found him lacking and after he blew off his art viewing, leaving him living with his mother, working a white-collar office job, and a little bitter when Cate first meets him.
- Long-Lost Relative: To his half-sister Cate, due to their Disappeared Dad's deep double life which only comes to light when the both of them are young adults.
- Rebellious Spirit: His mother comments positively that he's never really done what he's been told. Indeed, throughout the series, he and his half-sister consistently break the rules to get what they're after, whether it's defying Monarch to find their father or sneaking into a powerful corporation's office to save May. It seems to be a paternal family trait.
- Shared Family Quirks:
- Like his half-sister Cate, he starts to resent his father. Which is sadly hereditary when Hiroshi himself does not have the best relationship with his own father, and the latter is regrettably aware of this.
- When he protests to Lee driving a rental car that isn't his as being against the rules while they're running to escape the Monarch retirement home, Lee snarks, "God, you are your father's son."
- Survivor Guilt: In Episode 9, he's distraught that he survived with non-fatal injuries while people he cared about died in the Vile Vortex collapse in Kazakhstan; blaming himself for not saving Cate, May and Lee when he thinks they all died, and wishing he was with them in death.
- Tautological Templar: In "The Way Out", Tim disparages Kentaro, Cate and May for thinking they were "on some righteous crusade to uncover the truth", telling them in no uncertain terms that they stuck their noses in things they didn't understand and almost got themselves killed for it.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: He admits in Episode 4 that a big part of why he apprenticed under Kimi as a professional artist was because he didn't want to disappoint Hiroshi when the latter told him it was a "big opportunity" and encouraged him to embrace it.
Hiroshi Randa
Portrayed By: Takehiro Hira
Appeared In: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
The distant, estranged father of half-siblings Cate and Kentaro Randa, and the husband of Emiko and another unnamed woman as a result of him leading a double life in the U.S. and Japan. He's the son of early Monarch operatives Bill and Dr. Keiko Randa, both of whom died when he was younger. Hiroshi is believed by his families to be dead, having departed on work immediately after G-Day, with his plane later disappearing in a storm over Alaska.
- Anti-Hero Substitute: He fills a very similar role in Cate's character arc in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters to that which Joe Brody plays in Ford's arc in Godzilla (2014); as the protagonist's neglectful and absent workaholic father who's obsessed with tracking the monsters due to a previous family tragedy, puts his work ahead of his relationship with his remaining family, doesn't trust Monarch to help him, and is the source of the protagonist's daddy issues. However, Hiroshi is a lot more morally dubious than Joe ever was. Unlike Joe who accidentally pushed his son away with his obsessiveness over the years, Hiroshi consciously cut all contact with his daughter, when she was freshly and severely traumatized on G-Day no less, and he furthermore doesn't bother to inform her or any of his family in any way that he's been declared dead erroneously. Hiroshi also harbors a secret double life with two wives and children whom barely ever see him, and he was responsible for cruelly dismissing his honorary uncle Lee and having him locked away in a Gilded Cage for 33 years, and he deliberately instigates a Titan awakening (albeit in an unpopulated area, but still not that far away from civilization at all) to try and vindicate a theory; all of which are lines that Joe Brody never crossed.
- The Atoner: In the finale, he tells Kentaro that he's been trying to open a rift and find the Hollow Earth to prove his parents were right and that G-Day would never have happened if Monarch hadn't dismissed them as lunatics. Given that his conversation with a time-displaced Lee the prior episode shows he was firmly in this camp, it gives his quest strong shades of this trope.
- The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Lee Shaw comments that Hiroshi was branded insane by Monarch after 1982, implicitly because he started defending and trying to vindicate his late father's beliefs, and he thinks it was done purely because he disagreed with Monarch.
- Determinator: He zig-zags between this and Detrimental Determination. His loved ones comment more than once that he never gives up on his work. He broke apart from Monarch to prove that his parents were right about the Hollow Earth on his own, and he deliberately rouses a Titan that turns out to be Godzilla in the Algerian Desert in an attempt to find a Vile Vortex to that end. However, his prioritization of his work above all else like this has severely impacted his relations with both his families, and it indirectly puts both his children in mortal danger when they go looking for him because he never even bothered to reveal that he wasn't really killed in Alaska.
- Disappeared Dad: He's missing and presumed to be dead after his plane vanished in a storm over Alaska, leaving behind two children who seldom saw much of him. His own biological father isn't in the picture, with Keiko being a widower who had to raise him on her own with some help from her mother until Bill came into their lives. Sadly, Bill would become a neglectful father to Hiro by the time of Kong: Skull Island.
- Et Tu, Brute?: He's on the "tu" end of this trope from Emiko and both his children, after his secret double life with two families is exposed to them. In his daughter Cate's case, it goes back further because he was away on "work", and he neglected her to go away on such again when she was traumatized immediately after G-Day.
- Has a Type: Both his wives are maternal and charitable souls whom are considerate about their respective children's emotional wellbeing.
- Hates Their Parent: His relationship with his father was apparently on the rocks by the time Bill died in 1973. Far enough on the rocks that Bill feared during the last couple days of his life that his son wouldn't even be all that broken-up about him dying.
- If I Do Not Return: The last words he spoke to his daughter were asking her to tell her mother that he loved her before he departed on the pursuit which he never came back from.
- Leitmotif: He's associated with the track "Homecoming" — an utterly melancholic yet hopeful music track, which plays when Hiro's children and Shaw see him alive in the Algerian Desert, and when he's reunited with Cate and Keiko in 2017.
- Like a Son to Me: His Honorary Uncle Lee Shaw knows him well, and outright says that he sees Hiroshi as more like a son than a nephew. Shaw being in a love triangle with Hiroshi's late mother Keiko after the latter had Hiroshi might have had a lot to do with these feelings towards her son.
- Like Father, Like Son: It's implied that his relationship with Bill collapsed because Bill's obsession with proving his theories about monsters and the Hollow Earth led to him becoming obsessive and distant. Fast forward to the present, and Hiroshi's obsession with the same thing after G-Day has led him down the same route with both his children, leading to Cate's discovery of his two families.
- Manly Tears: After he reunites with Cate, he then sees Keiko alive. The first thing he says to her is "Mama?" and goes up to her and gives her a hug. The reunion becomes tearful for the both of them after being separated for 59 years.
- Married to the Job: As far as either of his kids knew, the times where he was away from them on work for Monarch outweighed the times when he saw them throughout their lives. Near the end of the series, Kentaro calls him out for putting his work ahead of his family.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Kentaro spells it out for him that he found out Cate is his half sister, and that she died when the Kazakhstan nuclear power plant collapsed. Hiroshi collapses on his knees when he realizes that his bloated secrets and his familial negligence have apparently gotten his little girl killed. He even shouts "Oh God!" in English, and "What have I done?" in Japanese when he doesn't take the news well.
- Never Found the Body: His plane is presumed to have gone down after it vanished in a storm, but the wreckage was never found, much less a body. It's later confirmed that he survived.
- Papa Wolf: While he was searching for Godzilla, his own children were shouting for him. While this does get his attention, Lee notices that he's trying to get them away as soon as possible.
- Parental Abandonment: He was a small child when his mother supposedly died, and he would've been in his twenties at the most when his father — who he had a very fractured relationship with by this time — died on Skull Island.
- Parental Neglect: Cate is very resentful because he was away from home so much. Just after G-Day, he sought his traumatized daughter out in the ruins of San Francisco only to apologetically tell her that he was leaving her and her mother behind to go away on "work" again effective immediately, giving her tickets to leave the ruins before he left Cate standing there.
- The Promise: His Honorary Uncle and Parental Substitute Lee, and both his parents, promised him they would come back before their respective fateful presumed deaths. Bill was killed for real on Skull Island, but Lee and Keiko did eventually come back to him... they were just several decades late due to being caught in the Axis Mundi's black hole-esque time distortion.
- Raised by Grandparents: Slightly downplayed. He was cared for by Keiko's mother in Japan for the first several years of his life until his mother could afford to bring him over to the U.S. to live with her. After Keiko apparently died in 1959, Bill often left Hiroshi to be babysat by his grandmother while he focused on his work.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: His children discover in "Secrets and Lies" that he survived his supposed death in Alaska nearly a year prior, and he's still alive in the present.
- Secret Other Family: Unbeknownst to both of his children, he was living a double life with a family in both the US and Japan.
- Shared Family Quirks: Multiple-fold.
- Lee says that Hiroshi took after Keiko in that he "went after whatever he wanted, and he never let anything get in his way." On the other side, Hiroshi apparently shares Bill's tendency to wear his pencils down to nubs.
- He also takes a lot after his stepfather, Bill. When Kentaro protests to Lee driving a rental car that isn't his as being against the rules while they're running to escape the Monarch retirement home, Lee snarks, "God, you are your father's son." He also picks up Bill's tendency to shave down his pencils with a knife to sharpen them, which ends up being a Chekhov's Gun as his children see the shavings in a tent in Alaska and realize he survived the plane crash. In a tragic way, Hiroshi followed in Bill's footsteps of never giving up on proving the Randas weren't crazy to the detriment of his relationship with his children whom he neglects in the face of such a mission.
- Spy Satellites: He was exiled from Monarch because he was repeatedly re-targeting deep space-observing satellites to scour the Earth for gamma-rays coming from portals to the Hollow Earth, without government authorization.
- They Called Me Mad!: An indirect case. He admits in "Beyond Logic" that part of why he was trying to prove the Vile Vortexes' existence was to clear his parents' name and prove that they were right, thinking that if Monarch had listened to them then G-Day might have been prevented.
- Tragic Keepsake: His honorary uncle Lee, who was implicitly already a parental substitute to Hiro at this time, gave him a pocket knife just before Lee's fateful disappearance when Operation Hourglass went wrong and he was presumed killed. Hiroshi held onto it for twenty years while he believed Lee to be dead, then he returned the knife to Lee when the latter returned and Hiroshi was unable to accept the Cassandra Truth that his parents were right all along about the Hollow Earth.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: He seldom saw his daughter due to being away on "work", which is heavily implied to be related to Titans and his father's Monarch work.
- Workaholic: Cate thought he was this, since his job in America involved satellites. She was actually half-right when it's revealed that he's an active Monarch searcher, and he was using the satellites to track radiation spikes in certain areas.
Emiko Randa (née Matsumoto)
Portrayed By: Qyoko Kuro
Appeared In: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
The mother of Kentaro, who lives with her son in Tokyo. Her presumed dead husband was leading a double life with another wife and child, as she discovers when Cate Randa turns up in her apartment one day.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Stalls Duvall and Tim to give Kentaro time to escape...by setting up Kentaro with Duvall.Emiko (to Duvall): I wish he would meet someone. You are very pretty. Are you single?
- Connected All Along: The ninth episode reveals that she was secretly an ex-Monarch nurse all along before her son's birth, and that she was involved in treating Lee after he escaped from Axis Mundi in 1982, which in turn led to her and Hiroshi noticing each-other.
- Et Tu, Brute?: She doesn't show as much anger or resentment as her husband's children do about it, but she still hints when tearing up Hiroshi's photos to make Kentaro feel a little better that just because she doesn't show it doesn't mean her husband's lies don't affect her.
- Good Parents: Despite finding out her own husband had a wife on the other side of the Pacific, she doesn't hold it against Cate, and even comforts her while she was having an episode of her PTSD. She even secretly hands Kentaro a photo of his grandfather and tells him to run when Duvall and Tim come to their apartment.
- Good Stepmother: She has nothing against Cate once she gets to know her, and even comforts her during her panic episode.
- Nice Girl: She's a kind and compassionate soul to a T. The day that she finds out about her missing husband's secret other child from America in a surprising way, she, though quietly furious at Hiroshi, doesn't hold it against Cate: in fact, she comforts her husband's secret daughter when the latter has a PTSD-induced panic attack, and is eager to have her over for tea and hear all about her life in the U.S.. When Emiko was working as a Monarch nurse while Lee was under quarantine, she snuck a cookie in for Lee (who was refusing food), and even when Lee used that opportunity to take her hostage, she didn't hold it against him afterwards and expressed understanding of why a hurt and bewildered person in Lee's position would lash out and resort to such an extreme.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: When she's working as a nurse at Monarch in 1982, she sneaks a cookie in for the hunger-striking Lee out of simple kindness, and Lee seizes the opportunity to sneak-attack her and take her hostage so that he can force answers out of his host. Lee himself is briefly apologetic to her about it. Then again, not only is Emiko completely understanding of what drove Lee to such desperate measures after the incident and holds no hard feelings, but this incident is the catalyst for her and Hiroshi catching each-other's eye, leading to their marriage and her son's eventual birth. On the other hand, since this was Hiroshi she was marrying, it might have been more of a double subversion for her in the long run barring her son's birth...
- Returning the Wedding Ring: When Hiroshi returns to the apartment for his things, she takes off her wedding ring and puts it in the box he's carrying.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Giving Kentaro Lee's photo ends up the catalyst that involved the entire trip from Alaska to the Sahara because the siblings were looking for their father, and Lee Shaw's personal mission to help Godzilla by sealing Hollow Earth portals. Godzilla, who was minding his own business, and the Ion Dragon in the Axis Mundi had nothing to do with her.
- Tranquil Fury: It's clear that while she doesn't show it, she begins to resent her husband for having a secret family in the States. As such, she begins tearing photos of him to show how well she was taking it: not well. After they finally reunite, Emiko, at the end of it, acknowledges that their son deserves a relationship with his father whatever the latter's faults... before she instructs him to tell Kentaro, and only Kentaro, where he's staying once he finds a new residence, Returning the Wedding Ring while she says it; making it clear with complete calmness that she herself wants nothing to do with Hiroshi anymore.
Caroline Randa
Portrayed By: Tamlyn Tomita
Appeared In: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
The mother of Cate who lives in the United States, and the husband of Hiroshi. She has a strained relationship with her daughter since Hiroshi disappeared in the wake of G-Day.
- Disaster Scavengers: Played With. She and James legally work in scavenging people's lost personal items from the San Francisco ruins.
- Misdirected Outburst: After she finds out who Kentaro is and what it means about her husband, she tries to keep being gracious, but she loses her grip on a box when Kentaro tries to help her with it, and then she can't stop herself from shouting at him when he moves to help her pick up the mess.
- Parents as People: Although she loves her daughter, Caroline struggled for a year to comfort her and to get an inconsolable Cate to stand back on her feet after G-Day, all while Caroline herself is still a frazzled stepford smiler who is struggling with her own trauma. Caroline also apologetically admits that before G-Day, Cate didn't deserve to have a part-time father just because Caroline felt comfortable enough having a part-time husband to not verify her suspicions that he was seeing someone else.
- Second Love: By the time Cate shows up in California, she notices Caroline is dating another guy, since she thinks she's widowed, unaware that Hiroshi is very much alive.
- Stepford Smiler: She smiles a lot when she shows up in the flesh for the first time, and it's clear that she's putting it on to try and cope in contrast to her daughter's depression. When she's introduced to Kentaro and finds out the truth about her husband's Secret Other Family, she initially tries to distract herself with small talk and being a gracious host instead of dealing with the emotional turmoil immediately, although that doesn't last.
- Stunned Silence: She's rendered speechless when her daughter informs her who Kentaro is and she realizes what it means.
Dr. Keiko Randa (née Miura)
See here.
Other Families
Serizawa Family
Brooks Family
See here.
Russell Family
See here.
Chen Family
See here.
Simmons Family
See here.
