Characters / MonsterVerse - Godzilla

Main Character IndexKaiju Godzilla | King Ghidorah | King Kong | Mechagodzilla | Mothra | MUTO | Rodan | Skull Island Kaiju & Other Creatures
Humans Families (Russell Family) | Monarch (Dr. Ishirō Serizawa) | U.S. Government & Military | Skull Island Expeditions | Eco-Terrorists | Apex Cybernetics

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Godzilla (ゴジラ, Gojira)

"The top of the primordial ecosystem. A god, for all intents and purposes."

^{Click here to see him in Godzilla (2014)}

^{Click here to see him in Godzilla x Kong}

Portrayed By: T.J. Storm (motion capture), Andy Serkis (additional motion capture, uncredited)

Appears In: Godzilla: Awakening (tie-in comic) | Godzilla | Kong: Skull Island (cameo) | Godzilla: Aftershock (tie-in comic) | Godzilla: King of the Monsters | Godzilla Dominion (tie-in comic) | Godzilla vs. Kong | Godzilla: Fight or Flight (tie-in comic) | Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong | Monarch: Legacy of Monsters | Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted (tie-in comic) Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Species: Giant prehistoric amphibious reptile | "Titanus Gojira"

"Gojira may be the answer. I believe he's here to restore balance. He can defeat them."

— Dr. Ishiro Serizawa

The last known living member of a species of gigantic amphibious beasts that roamed the Earth back when the planet was being bombarded by radiation during the Permian period. The military found out about the creature in 1954, and tried to cover up his existence with several nuclear strikes that were reported as tests - but these failed to have any effect on the monster. He eventually re-emerged in 2014, having a score to settle with the MUTOs.

In 2019, the humans find him at the bottom of the ocean wanting to be left alone... until he is called to battle against his greatest nemesis, Ghidorah.

After reclaiming his title of King of the Monsters, Godzilla found himself putting down all kinds of rival challengers to throne, both from within the Hollow Earth and on the surface - none more challenging than the Lord of all Primates: Kong.

In regards to the merchandise for the series as a whole, this version of the Big G is known as "Legendary Godzilla" to differentiate him from other versions of the character (named after the company producing the MonsterVerse films, Legendary Pictures).

For the Toho versions of Godzilla, go here.

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#-D

• 11th-Hour Superpower: At the very end of the Final Battle of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) (literally no more than four minutes before the credits roll) he unlocks his Burning Godzilla mode due to Mothra's ashes raining on him. In this mode, he unleashes a string of Nuclear Pulses which level Boston and thoroughly vaporize the nigh-unstoppable King Ghidorah.
• Accidental Hero: In each and every installment that involves him has him doing this thus far:
  • In Godzilla (2014), he does battle with his natural enemies the MUTOs when the latter creatures invade Oahu and San Francisco, looking to destroy the threat to himself. After the MUTOs — which pose far more of a threat to humanity than Godzilla and could have become a civilization-shattering global epidemic — are destroyed in the latter city, and this indirectly helps to save the city from being obliterated by a nuke, most humans at the very least don't mind Godzilla's contributions. The people of San Francisco seem to have embraced Godzilla as the "savior of [their] city", if their loud cheers and the live news bulletin during Godzilla's post-battle departure from San Francisco are any indication.
  • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla saves Monarch and Mark Russell from Ghidorah's attacks multiple times with his timely arrivals to combat the three-headed dragon, looking to put down the omnicidal threat to his dominance and restore his global territory's natural balance; to a point where it looks to the audience as if it's not-so-accidental on Godzilla's part. The novelization outright states that this causes Mark to go from spiting Godzilla's guts to begrudgingly cheering him on before his Vengeance Feels Empty moment, and the Isla de Mara villages outright cheer Godzilla during one of these saves in the novel version.
    • In Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla's actions against King Ghidorah during the previous movie are one of the main reasons why Madison insists there must be a justifiable reason why he's suddenly acting aggressive at population centers, declaring that Godzilla was saving them and all of humanity. As much as Mark was indeed being an incompetent fuckwit with his biased insistence that Godzilla has made a Face–Heel Turn without even looking for any objective evidence, it's likely that at the least, Godzilla's duel against King Ghidorah was just as much about preserving the world's overall biodiversity and balance as it was about saving humanity specifically, and that Godzilla specifically saving Madison from being deliberately blasted by Ghidorah (which is implicitly what Madison herself is partly alluding to in this movie) was an accidental save.
  • In Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, the Ion Dragon menaces Lee, Keiko, Cate, and May and as Lee tries to reconnect the Monarch device and his ship, Godzilla exits the Hollow Earth tunnel, and fights the Ion Dragon as the others escape. And he actually notices that they were trying to leave, and leaves the women alone (Lee pulls a Heroic Sacrifice so they could leave).
• Achilles' Heel: Godzilla's neck generally seems to be a weak point on his body, being vulnerable to strangulation, and also more vulnerable to strikes than the rest of his body (not least because his gills are located there whereas the rest of his body is heavily armored).
  • Godzilla: He yelps in pain when missiles (which he otherwise barely registers) strike his gills, agitating him to the point that he smashes through the Golden Gate Bridge seemingly just to make them stop. The MUTOs specifically target his head and neck when fighting and overpowering him.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters: Ghidorah chokes Godzilla out by constricting his neck like an anaconda during the Boston battle. It's also worth noting, the Oxygen Destroyer (which in its original incarnation did exactly what the name implies) manages to cripple Godzilla to the point of near-death, forcing him to enter a healing process that would've likely taken years to finish if he hadn't had an external factor to speed it up.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong: Kong frequently gains the upper hand in close-quarters combat because his longer arms allow him to hold and attack Godzilla's neck. Mechagodzilla, likewise, dominates the fight almost immediately by grabbing Godzilla by the neck and smashing him around.
  • Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Godzilla's fight with the Ion Dragon only lasts as long as it does because the latter manages to suprise Godzilla and bite his neck, diorienting the big lizard. Once Godzilla gets his claws on the smaller titan, the fight ends in seconds.
• Acrofatic:
  • Across his movie appearances, Godzilla is very fast and agile when in water. In Godzilla (2014), he swims from Hawaii to California in a couple of hours, and he easily outpaces his military escort. In Godzilla King of the Monsters, he heavily outmatches Ghidorah when he gets the latter underwater.
  • Contrary to his very bulky appearance and typical lumbering gait, Godzilla: King of the Monsters shows that when he wants to, Godzilla is more than capable of moving quickly; actually running across a city to confront Ghidorah. Godzilla vs. Kong continues this during Godzilla's first and second fights with the titular ape. He overwhelms Kong in the first fight in the middle of the ocean (to the point of almost managing to drown Kong before the military intervene). And during the second fight in the heart of metropolitan Hong Kong, after neutralizing Kong's advantages of his Gojira-fin axe and the tall buildings, Godzilla proceeds to ram into Kong repeatedly with alternating tail swipes and claw strikes until he gets his foe on the ground.
  • Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire takes this even higher, as even before evolving, Godzilla is shown sprinting, jumping, and even performing a variation of his infamous two footed flying drop kick, and later outpacing Kong when first confronting Shimo and Skar King.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: Most versions of Godzilla is often depicted as a victim of humanity's ignorance. He on the other hand is much more grounded since he doesn't have as much animosity as the Toho incarnations. Most of the Toho incarnations retaliate against humanity just for taking a walk while he doesn't seem to care (or notice) if humans attack him. On the other hand, he will only attack humans if they did something really stupid like using Ghidorah's head as a neural network, which proved to be Apex's undoing once Ghidorah takes control of Mechagodzilla.
• Adaptational Badass: Unlike the original Godzilla, who was killed by the Oxygen Destroyer, and the Heisei Godzilla, whose Burning Godzilla form was a sign of his Superpower Meltdown, this Godzilla survives both with his Burning Godzilla mode ultimately just being a Super Mode — and he survived both in the same movie whereas the other two happened in two different movies with two different creatures. He also uses the Nuclear Pulse, an ability that was basically a glorified stun gun, to kill King Ghidorah, much like how the Godzilla of Godzilla 2000 similarly used it in a case of this trope to deal the death blow to Orga. In general, he is easily the strongest western incarnation of Godzilla to date, having survived falling a great height from the stratosphere, and bored a hole from the surface to the Hollow Earth with his Atomic Breath.
• Adaptational Heroism: Unlike most versions of the character, who are usually antagonistic (especially the original incarnation, who was a Tragic Monster); this incarnation of Godzilla isn't actively hostile toward humanity at all, nor does he rampage without a heroic cause. Despite his actions in Hawaii (where his arrival causes a tsunami to swamp Waikiki beach, the most densely-populated area at that time of night), Godzilla avoids attacking humans as much as he can, and he's only invading human settlements due to pursuing and seeking to destroy the MUTOs (who pose a deadly threat to himself, human civilization, and nature as a whole); maintaining his Destructive Saviour status. He's at his most heroic in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where he pulls a Big Damn Heroes that saves the human characters multiple times when he's taking the fight to Ghidorah, and after his Arch-Enemy is slain, Godzilla actively commands the other awakened Kaiju to stay away from human population centers and to use their Fertile Feet to regenerate the global ecosphere peacefully. When Godzilla does start attacking human settlements in Godzilla vs. Kong, it's only because he can sense that Apex Cybernetics have created Mechagodzilla as a rival intended to murder and replace him, and he's trying to hunt it down and destroy it by tracking its signal to various population centers; with Apex actively exploiting Godzilla's tracking method to intentionally lure him to population centers, essentially turning Godzilla's hunt into a giant False Flag Operation against him. Even then, Godzilla notably focuses his rage mainly on the Apex buildings where the signal is emanating from, not that humanity at large puts two and two together. What's more, it's implied in the movie, and confirmed by the novelization, that Godzilla can sense the Mecha specifically because Ghidorah's not-completely-dead parts have been integrated into it and are producing a Ghidorah-like signal, making Godzilla's extreme agitation very understandable.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Godzilla's intellect can vary depending on the series, but this incarnation is exceptionally smart, showing intellect on par with an above-average human. He is capable of tactical thinking, baiting the MUTO to get into range of a collapsing building trap he had planned out in Godzilla (2014). He also shows complex reasoning skills — when he notices Monarch on the submarine after being healed by a nuke Serizawa gave him, he examines these humans carefully before leaving them in peace, implicitly because he recognizes that these humans are with the human who gave their life healing him; and he acknowledges and accepts Kong's sue for peace after they've both killed Mechagodzilla.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: As of King of the Monsters, Godzilla now contains references to nearly every incarnation before him. He was hit by an Oxygen Destroyer just like the '54 Goji, and he lived. Like the Showa Godzilla, he's a benevolent if Destructive Savior that fights other, far worse monsters up close and personal and is willing to team up with other monsters like Mothra. He's still a force of nature like the Heisei Godzilla, but he's not the Big Bad and is more like an anti-hero at worst — he also has a Super Mode resembling the Heisei Godzilla's Burning form, but it won't kill him. Like most of the Millennium Godzillas, he has sharp, bladed spines that can be weaponized^note When he hits the male MUTO with a Tail Slap, one of the latter's legs comes off due to being sliced by the spines on Godzilla's tail; and he has utilized his tail as an extra limb to grab a hold of Titan opponents, such as when he gropes his tail around Kong's torso while trying to drown him. And, like Final Wars Godzilla, he's also the most powerful monster on Earth, only beaten by a monster that isn't from Earth.
• Advertised Extra:
  • Despite what the trailers suggested, Godzilla is not the main threat of Godzilla (2014), and only has a few minutes of screen-time.
  • Although he's one of the two titular characters of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Godzilla only appears for a few scenes and has much less plot-importance than Kong.
• Age Lift: Godzilla was already gargantuan before he got nuked in this continuity, which was the inciting incident for him becoming massive in the Toho continuity. Furthermore, the shape of his feet indicates that his species, stated in the (now non-canon) Awakening comic to be an amphibious reptile from the Permian, came from an earlier period of time than the Toho version.
• Allegorical Character: As with the original Godzilla carries an allegorical interpretation. This time around rather then an allegory for atomic weapons specifically Godzilla is an allegory for all nuclear forces in general. Incredibly ancient, harmless if left alone, potentially very useful if handled in a respectful manner, and incredibly dangerous if abused or provoked.
• All Myths Are True: The Titans generally have this, and Godzilla, as the King of the Monsters, is no exception. The Godzilla: King of the Monsters novelization hints that Godzilla inspired such mythical figures as Humbaba, the Mimlos-whale which battles the Thunderbird, Cronus, Atum, Cipactli, and possibly Mount Mashu, Zeus and Anu.
• Always a Bigger Fish: He's generally the Bigger Fish, being an apex predator Kaiju who fights against other Kaiju that might threaten his dominance, and by proxy saves humanity (whom he acts indifferent towards until King of the Monsters) from the greater threat that his rivals pose. In the first movie, Serizawa outright proposes that Godzilla killing the rampant MUTOs is humanity's only hope of getting rid of the civilization-threatening monsters whilst expressing the belief that Godzilla is here to restore natural balance. The trope becomes even more justified in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where Godzilla is at his most heroic: he indirectly saves many people multiple times from the actively-malevolent and far more dangerous Ghidorah, and after he kills Ghidorah for good, Serizawa's aforementioned belief that Godzilla restores balance to nature is fully proven, when Godzilla commands the Titans to stay away from humanity's cities and reverse the damage done to the Earth's ecosystems.
• Alliance with an Abomination: Although many of the Titans used to have symbiotic relationships with ancient humans, and are demonstrably quite capable of re-forming those relationships in the present day if humanity learns from its mistakes (as shown in Godzilla: King of the Monsters), Godzilla in particular is consistently portrayed as humanity's ally across the MonsterVerse alongside Kong: Godzilla actively safeguards the world at large against hostile Titans that might threaten human civilization while disrupting the natural balance, ensuring the world overall remains in a state in which human civilization can still survive and more or less function. It's also heavily implied in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla: Dominion and the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization that Godzilla is a lot more pathic of humans than his Destructive Saviour status lets on, due to his history with ancient humans such as the Hollow Earth civilization, in whose Advanced Ancient Acropolis he made his lair. Notably, after Godzilla and Mothra fight alongside Monarch and the U.S. military against King Ghidorah, Godzilla goes out of his way to make sure the Titans under his command steer clear of human population centers.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: Well, Alternate Franchise Equivalent in this case, seeing as how both franchises are owned by Warner Bros. but if Godzilla, Kong and Mothra form the Monsterverse "holy trinity" then that makes Godzilla the Superman (in function if not in personality). Both are the strongest heroes of their respective canons, both are considered the protectors of earth, both are the last of their kind and both receive their great powers from radioactivity (Superman from the yellow sun, Godzilla from atomic energy).
• Animal Jingoism: He's an overall reptilian-looking Titan, who has an enmity with insectoid-shaped monsters called the MUTOs which drives him to hunt and kill them, with Serizawa and Graham even comparing Godzilla to a predator of the MUTOs. Insects are one of the primary prey of reptiles in the animal kingdom, although unlike real-life examples, the relationship between Godzilla's kind and the MUTOs is much more complex and paradoxical than just that: the MUTOs aren't just prey to Godzilla's kind, they also use Titanus Gojira specimens as hosts for their young if they best them in combat after fighting back. It's downplayed by King of the Monsters, where a remnant MUTO called Barb or the MUTO Queen bows down to Godzilla as the King of the Monsters, and he in turn has no problem accepting her as a subject.
• Animal Nemesis: To Mark Russell and Ren Serizawa respectively. In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Mark has spent years despising Godzilla and raging at the thought of him, because his son was among the casualties of Godzilla and the MUTOs' battle and Mark has been unable to move through his grief. It's implied in Godzilla vs. Kong that Ren has a personal reason for wanting Godzilla dead and participating in the Mechagodzilla project to achieve that end as the Mecha's direct pilot, while the novelization explicitly confirms that Ren sees himself and Godzilla as Cain and Abel, blaming the Titan for his lifetime of Parental Neglect and for the late Ishirō Serizawa's Heroic Sacrifice to save Godzilla permanently dashing Ren's hopes of reconciling with his father. Mark learns during the former movie to let go of his grudge against Godzilla, whereas Ren does not.
• Animals Respect Nature: Whenever Godzilla has emerged to battle a rival Titan that threatens him, his presence has consistently worked in the best interests of man and nature, whom Godzilla does not harm on a grand scale; particularly in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where Godzilla commands the awakened Titans to behave peacefully whilst their Fertile Feet regenerate the world's ecosystems. Supplementary materials such as Godzilla: Dominion confirm that Godzilla is consciously aware of and places priority on the ecological balance, maintenance and regeneration that he causes.
• Anti-Hero:
  • In the 2014 movie, it's not clear whether he hunts the MUTOs because he wants to stop their destruction, or simply because their two species are natural enemies; the MUTOs are parasites while Godzilla is an apex predator. Ultimately his goals end up being in humanity's favor, and he seems to actually be defending Ford Brody on purpose, though this isn't clear. Anyone familiar with older Godzilla movies would have expected a far bigger number of humans and buildings that fell prey to him. However, this can merely be attributed to the fact that he is essentially made out to be more realistic in this movie than in most of the Toho films (for example, even a real-life creature of his size would most likely go around buildings rather than through them if they had a choice, which is what he does). At the end of the film, he is seen by one of the main characters as having his usual sentience, making him a hardcore anti-hero.
  • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, he spends a lot of time saving the main characters (albeit apparently by accident) during his scraps with Ghidorah. Once he becomes the new ruler of the Titans after defeating Ghidorah, he proves even more benevolent, guiding the Titans to repair ecological damage to the planet and steer clear of human settlements.
• Anti-Villain: In Godzilla vs. Kong, it's revealed that he's been targeting and destroying Apex facilities (and naturally causing damage to the civilian-inhabited population centers where they're based) not because he's turned against humanity, but rather because he can sense Mechagodzilla's components at those locations emitting a signal which he recognizes as a rival alpha and/or because he can sense Ghidorah's remains are still partly alive; and he's actively trying to hunt and eliminate this threat. Considering the nature of this threat, and the fact Apex Cybernetics were obscenely stupid and ungrateful enough to do such a thing after all the events of King of the Monsters, it's very understandable why Godzilla is so pissed (if anything, it's impressive that he doesn't get more pissed at humanity than he is). The novelization states that Godzilla himself doesn’t even realize that humanity now sees him as an enemy until after Kong's naval escort tries to hold him back.
• Art Evolution: As per tradition, the Big G gets a makeover for almost every film:
  • Godzilla's design was updated for the 2014 film. The most noticeable changes are gills on his neck, round, sauropod-like feet, and a much longer tail with a pointed tip. The film crew also spent quite a while tweaking his face:
    Edwards: Trying to get the face right was the main thing... I guess he's got more of a bear's face, or a dog's. We also used eagle. There's a lot of nobility in an eagle. It made him feel very majestic and noble.
  • For Godzilla: King of the Monsters his design was updated again, possessing larger dorsal plates as a homage to the original 1954 Godzilla, larger feet with clawed toes, and a shorter tail with a rounded tip. He's also taller, standing around 119 meters tall. He retains this design in Godzilla vs. Kong.
  • Monarch: Legacy of Monsters uses both the 2014 and 2019 designs for Godzilla, but also includes a smaller, slimmer, green-tinted version of the former prior to him being hit by the Castle Bravo nuke.
  • For Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Godzilla metamorphoses into a slimmer "Evolved" form with elbow spikes, jagged crimson/magenta dorsal plates, and thagomizers.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Gets his title "King of the Monsters" through defeating the MUTOs. He regains his status as the Alpha Titan after defeating the usurper Alpha, King Ghidorah. Given that Kong in this continuity has never been directly called "King Kong" and he goes to live back in the Hollow Earth after helping Godzilla defeat Mechagodzilla, it's safe to assume he won't have to worry about a further challenge.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Besides being skilled at doing this to his enemies (getting around Femuto's armor, creating an aquatic Homefield Advantage against Ghidorah and Kong), Godzilla is often on the receiving end when the gills on his neck are targeted, as they are quite sensitive and seem to be his most vulnerable area. In the 2014 movie, he doesn't even acknowledge the military's artillery firing at him, until some of the missiles catch his gills, at which point he becomes disoriented with pain; and the MUTOs manage to brutalize him by slashing at his scales when they're tag-teaming him. In King of the Monsters, notably, if one looks closely when Ghidorah is Vampiric Draining Godzilla; it's specifically when the San/Kevin head is renewing his bite on Godzilla's neck that Godzilla suddenly wails in agony, not when the other two heads are biting into Godzilla's body.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: He's viewed by Serizawa as the embodiment of nature's ability to restore balance to itself when that balance is disrupted, and he's furthermore described by Gareth Edwards as only ever emerging to make things right when the world's natural balance goes wrong. Although he seemingly doesn't fight directly on humanity's behalf, whenever he shows up, he shifts the balance so that humanity's efforts against hostile Kaiju are no longer borderline-futile, becoming a crucial ally by proxy.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning:
  • After his triumph against the MUTOs, the American media bestows the well-earned title of "King of the Monsters" upon him.
  • Gets another one after defeating Ghidorah, with all the Titans gathering around him and bowing to him as one.
  • Shares one with his opponent Kong during the eponymous Godzilla vs. Kong when he tries to intimidate the ape at the end of their second fight by roaring in his face, only for Kong to fire back with his own roar to show that he will never submit. Not even to the King of the Monsters.
• Bad Vibrations:
  • Inverted in Godzilla: King of the Monsters when his footfalls indicate his arrival at Boston for the Final Battle, and the return of hope against King Ghidorah.
  • Played Straight in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, where his footfalls precede his destructive arrival at Pensacola.
• Badass in Distress:
  • In Godzilla (2014), he's visibly losing the fight against the two MUTOs once they start tag-teaming against him, until Ford Brody blowing up the MUTOs' nest causes the female to abandon fighting Godzilla, enabling Godzilla to solely face down the male MUTO with a regained advantage.
  • In the graphic novel Godzilla: Aftershock, Jinshin-Mushi weakens Godzilla, unleashing a sonic roar which shatters some of Godzilla's dorsal plates, and it would have finished him off if not for the ORCA's makeshift prototype distracting it.
  • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), the tide of the Final Battle gradually turns against him due to an implicit combination of Ghidorah empowering itself using the Boston power grid and Godzilla's Phlebotinum Overdose beginning to weaken him. It leads to Ghidorah killing Mothra and quickly wearing Godzilla down to the point that Godzilla is helpless when Ghidorah begins painfully draining all his energy. This forces the Russell family to use the ORCA's alpha frequency to distract Ghidorah and make it abandon Godzilla to pursue the signal, giving Godzilla ample time to reach his Super Mode before Ghidorah could have fully drained him.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, he ends up faring poorly during the Final Battle against Mechagodzilla, due to his previous battle against Kong and him blasting a tunnel halfway through the planet to the Hollow Earth both severely weakening him. Mechagodzilla nearly brings Godzilla to death's door, and Godzilla is saved from execution by Kong's intervention at the last second.
• Bash Brothers: With Kong in Godzilla vs. Kong. By the end, the two earn each other's respects, put aside their rivalry, and while weakened and tired, they absolutely thrash Mechagodzilla.
• Battle Couple: With Mothra (since they are both the King and Queen of the Monsters) against Ghidorah in King of the Monsters.
• Beam Spam: He rarely uses his Atomic Breath, preferably ending his fights at melee range and resorting to his breath when he needs to weaken or finish off his opponent. The only time he spams his Atomic Breath is when Ghidorah awakens. Considering how dangerous Ghidorah is, he has a reason to use it multiple times. Played much straighter in Godzilla vs. Kong where he is much more beam happy.
• Bears Are Bad News: His stance, design, and fighting style are based on those of bears quite a bit. This is a case of Shown Their Work, as Gojira's original suit actor based his movement on that of bears after studying them in zoos. This truly gets emphasized in Godzilla vs. Kong when Godzilla gets serious: he lowers himself onto his arms and legs, charges at his foe like a bear, and proceeds to absolutely massacre Kong in the fight that follows.
• Been There, Shaped History: The various nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific Proving Grounds during The '50s were actually secret attempts to kill Godzilla with increasingly more powerful bombs.
• Behind the Black: Godzilla manages to pull this off several times despite his enormous size. For instance, during the Honolulu airport attack, a helicopter shoots at the male MUTO only to suddenly have to dodge Godzilla's dorsal plates. The MUTO itself doesn't notice Godzilla until he stomps down just a few dozen feet away from him.
• Benevolent Monsters: This incarnation is notably like a real animal in that he's more likely to navigate around manmade obstacles like skyscrapers than he is to just smash through them, and he seems truly indifferent to humans at large in the 2014 movie. Gareth Edwards even invoked this, saying humans are like ants to Godzilla and humans don't go out of their way to squash every ant they see. The Creative Closing Credits in King of the Monsters indicate Godzilla is now taking this a step further by actively safeguarding human cities against the other newly-awakened Kaiju, possibly due to Serizawa's Heroic Sacrifice to him and due to humanity's active contributions on Godzilla and Mothra's side in the Boston battle against King Ghidorah.
• Berserk Button: As a territorial and competitive apex predator who considers the planet's entire surface (sans Skull Island) to be his territory; if Godzilla senses that there's a challenger Titan within his territory, he cannot ignore nor tolerate it.
  • Unlike most other Titans he's fought, whom Godzilla treats as nothing more than natural enemies or rowdy upstarts to be dealt with; Ghidorah is something that genuinely pisses Godzilla off. In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Monarch has noted that during Godzilla's approach on Castle Bravo (which was implicitly caused by Godzilla sensing the ORCA's bio-acoustic signal coming from right next to Ghidorah's Evil Can) that aggravated behavior as if he feels threatened is uncharacteristically excessive for him.
    • In Godzilla vs. Kong, it's revealed that the reason Godzilla invaded Pensacola and destroyed the local Apex facility whilst flashing an intimidation display is because he can hear the signal Mechagodzilla is producing, and he recognizes it as a new rival Alpha Titan. It's also explicitly stated in the novelization that the signal is specifically an Alpha Call, and it's implied there that Godzilla can tell that the signal is part-Ghidorah. Is it any wonder Godzilla is so upset?
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla sensing the Hollow Earth energy being tampered with enrages him to the point of firing a really powerful Atomic Breath right at the Earth's core. This is likely due to Godzilla remembering how Kong's species used the energy to war against his species in ancient times.
  • Given how vicious he was against Kong and the Ion Dragon before ultimately killing them in their respective fights (although Kong got better), attacking Godzilla from behind seems to really set him off.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: The blunt end of his tail has now grown a plethora of pink/red colored thagomizers in his Evolved Form in The New Empire, something that is likely to make his Tail Slap attacks even more powerful and lethal.
• Beyond the Impossible: Several Toho Godzillas have done feats no other monster in kaiju history is capable of doing as much as they do. This Godzilla literally shoots a hole into the surface of the Hollow Earth from Hong Kong of all places while seeking Mechagodzilla.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • The MUTOs seem unstoppable until he pimps into town to show them who's boss. The big reveal in the Honolulu airport suggests this trope, but really it's the final showdown in the San Francisco Bay that best captures it. After Ford blows up the MUTOs' nest, the very-upset female takes notice of him. Cue atomic breath, allowing Ford to escape. Then later, when Ford is on the boat with the nuclear warhead, the female MUTO tries to kill him, but Godzilla sneaks up from behind and pulls her back.
  • In King of the Monsters, he darn near abuses this trope. His ability to track down Ghidorah and to take shortcuts through tunnels in the Hollow Earth means he repeatedly arrives just in time to save human characters from annihilation (not that saving said humans is necessarily his goal each time, he just wants to stop Ghidorah from rampaging in general).
  • In the final episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, he arrives in Axis Mundi just in time to distract the Ion Dragon from killing Lee Shaw.
• Big Entrance: He pulls this off with his Feet-First Introduction in the 2014 film. A MUTO at an airport causes a long chain reaction of exploding aircraft, and the last explosion dissipates, revealing a giant foot that manages to dwarf the entire MUTO.
• Big Good: In a very loose way, he is seen as this by Dr. Serizawa, who notes that the creature is humanity's best chance at survival. In King of the Monsters, it's noted that his unique rivalry with Ghidorah makes him the only Titan on Earth capable of stopping the three-headed Omnicidal Maniac.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: His dorsal plates light up blue when he's charging his atomic powers, when he's overloaded or when he's just using bioluminescent flashes to communicate; just like they do in the Toho films, but from the tail up, a la Godzilla: The Series. Furthermore, rather than the plates glowing a solid blue, whorls and lines are what emit the blue glow.
• Bitch Slap: Rather hilariously, this is his response to Kong's haymaker during their first fight at sea. Even more hilarious is that whilst Godzilla was able to tank Kong's attack and still remain on his feet, Godzilla's retaliatory strike causes Kong to fall flat on his back.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: His stronger Evolved form after his metamorphosis grants him a pair of glowing red spicules protruding out of his forearms.
• Blood Knight: Godzilla relishes a good fight, and can even be seen smiling at certain times, such as when he first shows up at the Honolulu airport, when he activates his Burning Godzilla form against King Ghidorah, and, most notably when he manages to tag Kong with his atomic breath grinning in satisfaction. He only ever loses this streak when his opponent manages to piss him off (like Kong), or when he's fighting Ghidorah (who he holds in special contempt); becoming a deathly no-nonsense force of nature.
• Blue Is Calm: Absolutely inverted. This giant marine alpha predator produces a blue light when he's activating his bio-atomic powers, and he only activates his bio-atomic powers whenever he's out for blood.
• Blue Is Heroic: Godzilla's dorsal plates and eyes glow blue when he is about to fire his Atomic Breath, and he protects the Earth from anything that poses a threat to the natural order.
• Born Winner: Godzilla doesn't just seem to be the last of his kind, but abnormally powerful for his kind. While he needs help to actually kill it, the MUTO Prime easily killed another member of his species, Dagon, but has to run away from him and repeatedly hit and run him to wear him down before actually being willing to face him in a straight fight.
• Breath Weapon: Godzilla has his atomic breath, true to his original incarnation. Unlike the laser appearance from Toho's Heisei and Millennium eras, this incarnation's atomic breath is similar to the superheated vapor appearance from the Showa era, with the 2014 film's novelization describing it as essentially being composed of flammable gas which Godzilla ignites with a bio-electric spark — though this is retconned by the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization to it being an unknown form of energy originating from the Hollow Earth. Godzilla uses it as the coup de grâce against the female MUTO three times, but thanks to her thick armor, it's only when he force-feeds it to her that it has any real effect. It's also hinted in the movie and stated by the novelization that the MUTOs' EMP ability was weakening the atomic breath's effectiveness, possibly explaining why it regains the thick laser appearance in King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong.
• Bring It: In Godzilla vs. Kong, right before fighting Kong for a second time in Hong Kong, Godzilla confidently smashes his tail on the ground as a display of intimidation, and it becomes clear as the fight goes on that Godzilla is for the most part anything but unconfident about taking Kong on.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The grumpy, belligerent Brooding Boy to Mothra's pacifistic, healing Gentle Girl.
• But Now I Must Go: This incarnation of Godzilla is (whether he's conscious of it or not) devoted to maintaining and upholding the natural order by destroying rival Titans who threaten it, but not only is his mere presence a threat to human life if he sticks around, Godzilla Dominion also confirms that he suffers from The Chains of Commanding. In most of his appearances (sans King of the Monsters), once whatever hostile Titan threatening the world has been killed, Godzilla returns to the sea and implicitly doesn't approach humanity again until a new threat surfaces.
• The Cameo: Makes one via cave painting in the post-credits scene of Kong: Skull Island.
• The Chains of Commanding: At least as much as a giant kaiju can be allowed. The graphic novel Dominion completely follows Godzilla's point of view. While he's not leading a monster army he is keeping monsters from doing harm, like Scylla wanting to open a nuclear submarine, or watching a battle between Behemoth and Amhuluk. It is noted it is tiring and not helping was that his home had to be destroyed in King of the Monsters.
• Character Development: Surprisingly for a giant prehistoric lizard. His first appearance depicts him as utterly uncaring for human safety in the wake of gargantuan battles against other Titans. But after the Heroic Sacrifice of Dr. Serizawa, Godzilla exhibits some sense of protectiveness towards humanity as a whole, actively directing the Titans under his command away from human civilization; although the Hollow Earth civilization's reverence of Godzilla, and Godzilla's memories lingering on it in Godzilla: Dominion, indicate that Godzilla always had some fond regard for humanity.
• Charged Attack: While the Showa and Heisei incarnations of Godzilla blast their Atomic Breaths almost instantly, and the Millennium incarnations only had about several seconds more or less to fully let out their beams, it takes this version around 18 seconds to fully power up his Breath Weapon. A variant occurs in Godzilla vs. Kong, when he supercharges a blast in order to penetrate the planet's crust to reach Hollow Earth.
• The Chosen One: It's emphasized that Godzilla is the rightful ruler of the Titans since Ghidorah is an alien whose very presence violates the natural order Godzilla keeps in check.
• Civilization Destroyer: It's strongly hinted in Godzilla vs. Kong that Godzilla, if not others of his kind, caused the downfall of the original Titanus Kong civilization in the Hollow Earth amid a conflict between the two Alpha Titan species. In the novelization, the Iwi legend of Kong's and the Iwis' Hollow Earth roots, if accurate, implies that Godzilla drove the T. Kong and the ancient Iwis out of the Hollow Earth to Skull Island, forcing them to abandon the impressive civilization they'd constructed there; which led to the Iwis regressing to a primitive people while the Titanus Kong where whittled down by the Skullcrawlers until only Kong remained as the Last of His Kind.
• Close-Range Combatant: Rather Zig-Zagged. In most battle scenes throughout the films, he likely insists on engaging within a closer distance by getting towards most of his enemies and takes the major advantage of his strength to overwhelm them with a lot of damage just like the Showa version. But similar to the Heisei and Millennium versions, he doesn't mind alternating this tactic to make use of his Atomic Breath if he's far away or if his foe is way too agile for him, and will even go into Beam Spam mode as a way to "chase" the enemy down until it connects, such as when Kong tries his best to avoid his beam but eventually gets torched by a well-aimed shot.
• Cold-Blooded Whatever: Instead of being a dinosaur, this incarnation is re-imagined as an aquatic Sauropsida dating back to at least the Permian period, who possesses both lungs and gills.
• Cool Crown: While he may be known as King of the Monsters, he (obviously) isn't outfitted with any royal headwear, but Michael Dougherty has stated in one interview that he's envisioned the style and look of Godzilla's dorsal fins as his organically built "crown". He's even stated that whenever Godzilla is seen swimming in vast waters where his spines are angled from a frontal viewpoint, they even seem to convey the imagery of a crown.
• Combat Pragmatism: While it can be difficult to see, he does adapt to his opponents based on their strengths and weaknesses. It's also how he kills them most effectively.
  • In King of the Monsters, Godzilla ambushes Ghidorah in the ocean and drags the dragon under the water, at one point biting Ghidorah's left head off. All indications are he has a decided advantage against Ghidorah under the sea, thanks to how ill-equipped Ghidorah is to fight there compared to Godzilla. If the Oxygen Destroyer hadn't hit, then Godzilla could have beaten the other monster himself there and then.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, he displays this when fighting Kong. The two Titans meet at sea and the ape is still chained to a ship. Rather than get on the ship and face Kong, Godzilla flips it over and tries to drown him. After Kong pushes Godzilla off the aircraft carrier, Godzilla destroys the carrier and attempts to drag Kong deep underwater. Later, in their fight in Hong Kong, Godzilla will fight literally tooth and nail to win, in contrast to Kong’s seeming refusal to use dirty tactics.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Averted. Despite rumors that Godzilla would not be referred to as such in this film, Dr. Serizawa introduces him during the briefing as "Gojira" and the military uses the name Godzilla as a code name for the beast. News broadcasts even dub him "King of the Monsters." The promotional material for the next movie clarifies that Gojira is his species, with this particular Gojira being named Godzilla.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: In comparison to the previous Godzillas, he does not go out of his way to destroy everything in sight. Some of the damage he causes seems to be accidental instead of intentional. He does not even bear a grudge against the humans who nuked him in 1954, in stark contrast to his original incarnation who hates humans for what he has become. While he's similar to Heisei Godzilla in personality (as in an aggressive fighter), he does not even attack the humans who fire at him because he's more focused on defeating the MUTOs. Previous incarnations will annihilate tank and ship units if they inconvenience him. This guy? He dives under ship units and does not bother attacking the tank units on the Golden Gate Bridge. And let's not get into details about Shin Godzilla. It also extends to his Meaningful Name, "God Incarnate". Every Godzilla before and after him bears the title of God of Destruction. He surprisingly doesn't, as despite the destruction he causes, whether intentional or not, he is Gaia's God incarnate, set to restore balance, whether against the MUTOs, Ghidorah, or Apex being arrogant enough to use Ghidorah to make Mechagodzilla.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: At the climax of Godzilla (2014), he recovers in time to catch the female MUTO by surprise from behind just when she was about to kill a cornered Ford Brody, and he promptly finishes her off.
• Covered with Scars: He is covered in old battle scars, highlighting not only his age but also showing that he's been "maintaining the balance" for quite a while.
• Cumbersome Claws: The 2014 movie's special effects team encountered a meta example when designing Godzilla: they found that the length of his feet and talons made it surprisingly tricky to animate his walk cycle. To compensate, they redesigned him with short, almost elephant-like digits that wouldn't get "snagged" on stuff. This design choice has remained mostly unchanged in later MonsterVerse entries.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: His fight against the Ion Dragon lasts all of two minutes, and even then the smaller Kaiju only lasted as long as it did because it surprised Godzilla when he was exiting out of the Hollow Earth Rift, was surprisingly resilient against his Atomic Breath, and briefly blinded him with its own venomous spit. The first time Godzilla got his hands on the Ion Dragon, he easily kept it pinned to the ground while delivering some devastating blows before hurling the Dragon into a nearby mountain. Then the second time he did it, he killed the Ion Dragon by ripping its arm and wing off at the shoulder.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: After Ghidorah's mind controls Mechagodzilla as he emerges from Apex in Hong Kong and briefly does collateral damage, Godzilla challenges him to a fight when he finally locates him. When both of them collide, the Big G manages to actually stagger his doppelgänger with a charging tackle, which is basically one of the only two clean hits he does to him while the latter outright beats him to a pulp. The secondary hit is when Kong comes to assist him, as both Titans grab ahold of the machine's arms and use their combined strength to plow him through a building but was still unable to land any other hit regardless. Granted, if Godzilla hadn't wasted most of his energy fighting Kong earlier, his fight with Mechagodzilla would've been completely different.
• Cutlass Between the Teeth: He momentarily shoves Kong away just so he can pull out the jagged dorsal fin blade of Kong's axe that's deeply wedged into his thigh by grabbing the bony handle with his teeth, and tosses it away into the roof of a skyscraper to separate it from Kong to leave him utterly defenseless.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The descriptions for the tie-in toys refer to Godzilla's Atomic Breath as being a powerful last resort weapon due to it draining his internal radiation supplies. The 2014 video game illustrates this by only giving him two charges and a longer recharge time. This is largely dropped in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where he's quite happy to throw it out as an opening gambit, though that could be because he's now facing Ghidorah; and in Godzilla vs. Kong, he outright Beam Spams it almost like an armed Cowboy Cop.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The color of Godzilla's scales is charcoal grey, and he protects both the Earth and the natural order from those who seek to bring imbalance, in stark contrast to Ghidorah and Mechagodzilla's Bright Is Not Good and Light Is Not Good.
• David Versus Goliath:
  • Godzilla may be Godzilla, but in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Ghidorah is actually big and powerful enough to be the Goliath to Godzilla's David. Godzilla is actually significantly smaller than Ghidorah, who is equipped with a Super Power Lottery and is familiar with Godzilla's fighting style, demonstrating that the Death Song of Three Storms is "a rival Alpha to Godzilla" for a reason.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, the role is reversed during Godzilla's fights with Kong: Godzilla is now seemingly a villain (actually a Hero Antagonist all along), and he's larger than Kong (though the size difference isn't as stark as that between Godzilla and Ghidorah), and his Atomic Breath among other factors make it clear throughout their fights that Godzilla is the more powerful combatant. Kong, for his part, uses wits, agility and his climbing ability to compensate. Unlike your standard David vs. Goliath tale, though Kong delivers some impressive and noteworthy blows to Godzilla, it turns out during their final fight that Godzilla was going easy on Kong the entire time — instead of the Goliath's lack of seriousness toward the David being his downfall, it means that once Godzilla takes the gloves off, he quickly and savagely trounces Kong.
  • Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire He’s the David to Shimo’s Goliath. The latter is bigger than Godzilla while on all fours. Godzilla is still able to throw her around and hit back enough to harm her, with her brief freezing him solid the only thing being able to impede him, and even then Godzilla is able to break out easily.
• Deadly Upgrade: In King of the Monsters, absorbing the full power of a nuclear warhead point-blank to accelerate his recuperation essentially puts Godzilla on atomic steroids: he has a massive power boost to the point that he's nigh-constantly glowing with excess energy, but he's also on a countdown to let loose an atomic bomb-level nuclear explosion; and as the juiced-up Godzilla's battle against King Ghidorah wears on, he rapidly tires and weakens as if he's crashing. Subverted in that after receiving Bequeathed Power from Mothra, Godzilla attains his Super Mode and burns off enough excess thermonuclear energy to level Boston, without dying.
• Death Flight: In King of the Monsters, Ghidorah at one point lifts Godzilla into the stratosphere and then drops him, sending him plummeting back to earth almost like a falling asteroid (which, according to the commentary, was how Ghidorah killed others of Godzilla's kind in the past). The impact doesn't kill Godzilla, but it does severely weaken him.
• Death Glare:
  • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), after he's been re-energized by a nuke and fires his Atomic Breath into the sky, Godzilla sets his sights on the nearby submarine and the humans, sporting a stern, no-nonsense expression. Which might have something to do with the fact he's slightly wary of humans at this point, after they almost killed him when he was subduing Ghidorah and in doing so they've enabled his mortal Arch-Enemy to hijack and begin destroying Godzilla's entire kingdom, and also after they just blew up his home and he's unsure whether they were deliberately helping him or were just trying to finish him off. Either way, Godzilla drops the look after he seemingly locks eyes with Mark and/or after scenting the group.
  • After he kills King Ghidorah, Godzilla shoots down Rodan's threatening display with a glare and a snort. This immediately wipes Rodan's bluster right off his face, and he promptly bows down to his new Alpha. The other Titans who formerly submitted to Ghidorah wisely follow Rodan's example when Godzilla wheels his glare over the rest of them.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, at the end of his first battle with Kong, Godzilla shoots the tired and defiant King of the Primates a particularly intimidating and unmistakable glare from in the distance — Kong returns the look in kind.
• Dented Iron: He's absolutely ancient, and shows it at times, especially after the beating he takes in the final fight. After killing the male MUTO, he pauses to catch his breath, and once the female's dead he outright collapses.
• Despair Event Horizon: He hits the edge of it in the second film according to Word Of God. Apparently, he came to the Hollow Earth after being severely crippled by the Oxygen Destroyer not to heal, but to die.
• Destroyer Deity: The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire establish Godzilla is known to the Iwi tribe as Zo-Zla-Halawa, the Monster Who Ate a Star, a wrathful god of destruction responsible for their and Kong's ancestors' exile from the Long Ago Below. While the Iwi tribe of Skull Island believed that Godzilla and his kind are evil, their Hollow Earth counterparts hold that he had a good reason for warring against the Great Ape Titans—stopping the Skar King's conquest of Hollow Earth and keeping him from reaching the surface world.
• Destructive Savior: Although Godzilla's continued survival and victories are firmly in the best interests of humanity and of the Earth's ecosphere at large, he still leaves substantial amounts of destruction in his wake. In this Godzilla incarnation's case, he doesn't intentionally destroy stuff: it's mostly just a case of him passing through and being that big comparative to mankind and all that we've built, and he's less callous and reckless than the MUTOs or Rodan are when passing through humans' territories. In King of the Monsters, it's revealed that although Godzilla's actions in the previous movie saved the 100,000 civilians whom were trapped in San Francisco with the MUTOs and an armed nuke, the city has still been abandoned, implicitly due to the sheer rapid overgrowth that his radiation as well as the MUTOs' caused (which will likely also be the fate of any major cities Godzilla does battle in from then on). And during the Final Battle against King Ghidorah, Godzilla's use of Nuclear Pulses completely nukes Boston three times over (fortunately, unlike San Francisco, Boston was empty at the time due to a Citywide Evacuation). However, the fallout of Godzilla's battles described above is much, much preferable to the alternatives, if he isn't around to police the world's natural order and keep the other Titans in check: most of Godzilla's Titan foes, if unchecked, are capable of spelling the doom of human civilization or (in the case of Ghidorah) the complete eradication of all life as we know it.
• Determinator: Once Godzilla sets his eyes on a target, he simply will not stop until they are taken down. He's chased the MUTOs relentlessly for miles and when he finally catches up to them, continues fighting even as he was being mauled by the two at once while constantly getting back up no matter how severely he's beaten down. Even a skyscraper collapsing on him only slowed him down for a few minutes. He pursued King Ghidorah for days in order to take down his hated rival. And went from his confrontation with Kong—already a bout that pushed him to the limit—into engaging with a fully powered MechaGodzilla only moments later. Basically, once Godzilla sets his eyes on a target, he will not rest until it is taken down.
• Detrimental Determination: In Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla is (rightly) laser-focused on hunting the source of his provocation (Mechagodzilla's signal) around the world, ruthlessly pinpointing the specific manmade structures where the provocation is emanating from and attacking them. However, this course of action leads the rest of humanity, whom have no idea why Godzilla is attacking these places, to assume Godzilla has gone bad and turn against him. More than that, Godzilla is instinctively intolerant of any other Alpha Titan encroaching on his global territory, to a point where beyond his hunt for Mechagodzilla, he goes out of his way to antagonize and battle Kong despite the latter's benignity once Kong has left Skull Island, and he has an even more extreme reaction to Kong tapping the Green Rocks which Kong's ancestors once weaponized against Godzilla-like Titans. This behaviour leads Godzilla to expend much of his reserved strength subduing Kong, which in turn leaves Godzilla at a deadly disadvantage once Mechagodzilla emerges to kill him; with Godzilla's strength expended and with a near-death Kong initially unable to do anything.
• Disney Death:
  • Downplayed with his disappearance in the Bikini Atoll nuclear explosion in 1954. Most people who knew of him In-Universe presumed that he died in the explosion along with Shinomura, but as revealed in Godzilla: Awakening, Dr. Serizawa's father Eiji was certain that "nothing in our power ever could" destroy Godzilla. It isn't until sixty years later, during the main time frame of the 2014 movie, that Godzilla returns none worse for wear.
  • In the 2014 movie, after his exhausting fight to kill the MUTOs, Godzilla has a Post-Victory Collapse. The next day, he's still lying there, unmoving, as people sift through the rubble near him — then, he wakes up.
  • In King of the Monsters, his vital readings decrease and flatline after he's blasted by the Oxygen Destroyer thanks to the US military, leading the human cast to presume he's dead. It turns out Godzilla actually survived (just barely) and he retreated into the Hollow Earth to slowly heal at his ancient hideout, although he's severely weakened and unlikely to live long enough to fully heal with Ghidorah rampaging freely, until Serizawa revives him.
• Diving Save: When the USS Argo and everyone on it is at an approaching Ghidorah's mercy and the ship is unable to change course, Godzilla horizontally pounces out of the ocean and rams into a distracted Ghidorah, enabling the Argo to escape. In the novelization version (unlike in the movie), this causes everyone in the Argo's hangar to cheer, even Mark.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Seemingly somewhat downplayed in his case. His species' scientific name as of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) is Titanus Gojira, but Serizawa is the only one who calls this individual Gojira while everyone else instead calls him Godzilla. The other Titanus Gojira specimen whose skeleton appeared in the opening of Godzilla (2014) is never referred to by the name Godzilla, and is instead described in Godzilla: Aftershock as a "Godzilla-type" or "Godzilla-like".
• Dragons Are Divine: Discussed in King of the Monsters: Dr. Chen subtly compares Godzilla to an archetypal eastern dragon (a creature of "wisdom, strength, even redemption"), to contrast with Ghidorah who is closer to the western archetype of dragons as evil creatures. Indeed, Dr. Graham's description of Godzilla as "a god, for all intents and purposes" in this continuity is not far off the mark — although he admittedly looks more dinosaurian than the wyvern/hydra-like Ghidorah, Godzilla is an atomic fire-breathing Animalistic Abomination from the ocean depths, who fights to bring balance to nature and enable humanity to continue living in the world.
• The Dreaded: Godzilla might not be actively hostile towards humans, but that still doesn't mean he isn't feared. Ilene feared having Kong leave Skull Island, even though he was growing too large for his habitat because Godzilla will come after Kong and try to defeat and/or kill him. Her concern is well-founded because Godzilla nearly kills Kong in both encounters. After Godzilla appears hostile, the ships transporting Kong make a point of avoiding any of the waters Godzilla is known to travel through, which still isn't enough because Godzilla actively hunts Kong down the moment he senses Kong in the wild.
  • In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, he has this reputation with the Skar King. It is later revealed that he single-handedly banished the Skar King and his followers to the depths of the Hollow Earth. One reason why the Skar King enslaved Shimo, besides using her to control his subjects, is to even the odds should he ever face Godzilla again. During the final battle, he runs for his life once the Atomic Lizard sets his sights on him.
• Dynamic Entry: In King of the Monsters, Godzilla literally comes out of fucking nowhere during his Diving Save attack on Ghidorah above the Pacific Ocean. Later in the film, the first trace of Godzilla's arrival at Boston is his Atomic Breath suddenly blasting into Ghidorah out of nowhere, just in time to stop the three-headed monster atomizing Madison.

E-I

• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: His design has changed in each successive film after Godzilla (2014) (see Art Evolution). He originally had jagged, stalagmite-like dorsal spines, but from Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) onward, his design has featured maple leaf-like dorsal plates more like classical depictions of Godzilla, and it wasn't until King of the Monsters that Godzilla's eyes started glowing whenever he used his Atomic Breath.
• Easily Condemned: Despite the air around Godzilla's name mostly being cleared when he saved the world from King Ghidorah in Godzilla: King of the Monsters and made the other Titans stay away from cities; in Godzilla vs. Kong, the media and every human hero except for the three-man Team Godzilla assumes that Godzilla has turned into mankind's enemy after he charges into Pensacola and destroys a local Apex factory (and more or less only the factory). The news report explicitly notes that Godzilla only focused his destruction on the Apex facility, yet no-one except for Team Godzilla seriously questions why this is, and Monarch even ally with Apex against Godzilla with barely a second thought about the corporation's motives.
• Emerging from the Shadows: He has a variation in King of the Monsters during the intimidation display scene (which is Godzilla's first direct appearance in the movie outside of the opening flashback): when Castle Bravo's shields open, there is complete darkness in the water outside, save for the slow, rhythmic flashes of Godzilla's dorsal spines lighting up. As Godzilla slowly draws closer to the facility, more of his features become visible. Slightly downplayed in that he withdraws before becoming fully visible.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Sort-of. Humanity at large initially view him as being just as much of a threat as his earlier incarnations and the Titans he fights off, to the point that the military fire just as profusely on him as on the MUTOs (the actual threat to the world) in the 2014 movie, and the U.N. and government are incapable of viewing Godzilla as anything other than a living catastrophe to a point which goes beyond common sense in Godzilla: Aftershock and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Whereas MonsterVerse Godzilla, for his part, is largely benignly-indifferent towards humans, regarding us as (not inaccurately) being little to no threat to him when the military does fire on him. However, when the military screw up and create a disaster which gives Godzilla's Titan enemies the advantage in the 2014 movie and King of the Monsters (especially in the latter movie); humans and Godzilla end up working together to bring down the MUTOs or King Ghidorah, which each pose a far greater threat to humanity, and afterwards, man and Godzilla tend to mutually leave each-other in peace. It's implied that the events of the latter movie in particular forge a stronger positive relationship between Godzilla and humanity, with military aircraft flying around Godzilla at the Final Battle, and with the Creative Closing Credits indicating that Godzilla is now something of a wild animal celebrity, whilst Godzilla in turn is actively commanding the awakened Titans to stay away from human population centers; although the events of Godzilla vs. Kong see this positive relationship shaken and put to the test.
  • Godzilla apparently has a competitive and violent history with Kong's kind, and him and Kong continue that rivalry for most of Godzilla vs. Kong: Godzilla seeks out and attacks Kong for essentially invading Godzilla's global territory by leaving Skull Island and then for tampering with the Hollow Earth element, whilst Kong responds in self-defence and later in outrage for the destruction of his ancestors' temple by Godzilla. However, once Mechagodzilla comes on the scene and begins overwhelming Godzilla, Kong comes to Godzilla's rescue due to realizing that the Mecha is a far greater threat than the Big G is, and the duo end up working together to destroy the Mecha. Afterward, though Godzilla and Kong are both visibly ready to resume their feud if it comes down to it, they part on peaceful terms once Kong sues for peace and Godzilla accepts.
• Energy Absorption: He feeds on radiation like all Titans, and King of the Monsters confirms he can absorb the blasts of nuclear warheads at point-blank range (although this causes a Phlebotinum Overdose).
  • One power that was listed for Godzilla's introductory bio during the opening credits for Godzilla vs. Kong was that he's able to absorb and withdraw energy from other Titans.
• Era-Specific Personality: The film once again makes him the terrifying force of nature he was in his earliest films but also continues the Heisei/Millennium portrayal of him being an unintentional defender of humans from other monsters.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: Not used or invoked in the film itself, but Gareth Edwards has said that if this incarnation of Godzilla were a human, he would be "the last samurai".
  Gareth Edwards: He's an ancient warrior who's the last of his kind, and his kind has long since died out. He lives a very solitary lonely existence and he's very happy to keep away from everyone, but we keep doing things to force him to return and put things right.
• Evil-Detecting Dog:
  • "Wrath-Detecting Dog" in Mark Russell's case. It's implied that while performing his intimidation display, Godzilla was picking up on Mark's hostility towards him. When he's restored to full health, Godzilla spots Mark and stares him down. It's only when Mark makes it clear he's not looking for trouble that Godzilla decides to let him go.
  • Activating Mechagodzilla or tapping into Hollow Earth energy sets him off regardless of geography.
• Evil Laugh: Downplayed in Godzilla vs. Kong. After blasting Kong with his Atomic Breath at one point, Godzilla pulls a Slasher Smile and makes a low trill.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: While facing Mechagodzilla alongside Kong, instead of taking a clean shot at the mecha, Godzilla instead fires his atomic breath at Kong's axe, charging it up so that Kong can take the mecha down.
• Eye Awaken:
  • Downplayed at the end of Godzilla (2014): Godzilla's collapse is revealed to be a Disney Death, when the apparently-inert beast snorts and he tiredly opens his eyes.
  • Downplayed again in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). When Serizawa approaches a crippled Godzilla in his lethally-radioactive lair with a nuke to revive him, Godzilla weakly opens his eyes as the human approaches him.
• Eye Color Change: His Supernatural Gold Eyes were changed to a reddish-orange sclera that goes along with his Art Evolution in King of the Monsters. In Godzilla x Kong, his eyes glow red following his metamorphosis.
• Eye Scream: Both of his corneas have been burned by Tiamat's expelled acidic toxins during their oceanic battle in Godzilla Dominion. He eventually regains his eyesight with no negative effects after defeating her.
• Faster Than They Look:
  • The Big G may look overly bulky, slow, and massive overall. In Godzilla (2014) he kept getting pounced by the Male MUTO numerous times and was highly mobile and evasive for him to get a good hit directly. Out of irritation Godzilla instantly takes him out with a strike of his tail into a building so quickly, that not even the winged beast was able to dodge his attack in time.
  • When he returns to challenge King Ghidorah in the finale, he takes his time walking at a slow pace by letting the military open fire at him. Immediately after that, he suddenly breaks into an earth-shaking sprint by charging at his nemesis without even stopping at all.
  • He once again demonstrates surprising signs of rapid movements in Godzilla vs. Kong, regardless of what his hefty outward form may convey throughout the second and third rounds of his duel with Kong. While Kong is overall much more agile, Godzilla can still keep up with him to a degree (whenever Kong is distracted) such as bulldozing into him with his mass as if he was a ramming bull, angrily charges towards him by hunching down and lowering his body to the ground on his 4 limbs to catch up to him, and even outright pounces onto Kong like a predatory beast catching its doomed prey. It's gradually more than likely that Godzilla's speed becomes more exponentially increased whenever he's sincerely livid.
• Fearsome Foot: His arrival at Honolulu airport is announced by his enormous foot slamming down in front of the terminal window, turning what had been a loud, chaotic scene into shocked silence. Ladies and gentlemen, the King has reclaimed his throne.
• Feeling Their Age: He's definitely been around for eons no doubt. There are two signs of it in the movie displaying his age. After impaling the male MUTO with building debris, he hunches down a little to recuperate from presumably hours of tireless fighting. Near the end of the movie where civilians are being rescued, everyone including Serizawa and Vivienne assumed that he's dead but in reality, he was just sleeping albeit motionless which is Truth in Television. The way how elderly people take naps almost gives off the implication that they're dead but thankfully aren't.
• Feet-First Introduction: Done to truly awe-inspiring effect in the 2014 film, when in the midst of the chaotic airport scene, the camera pans from the male MUTO past a line of exploding planes before a truly enormous scaly foot slams down into the frame, instantly shocking everyone in the airport into silence. It also serves to emphasize Godzilla's size by showing how big his foot alone is compared to the massive MUTO.
• Finishing Stomp: This appears to be one of his favorite ways of defeating his opponents, either by stomping on the face or the chest.
  • In the first movie, he appears to win at first against the female MUTO by stomping on her chest. Then she calls the male MUTO, who tackles Godzilla long enough for her to get up.
  • In Aftershock, he finishes the MUTO Prime off by crushing its head with a stomp while it's stunned by his Nuclear Pulse.
  • In King of the Monsters, after Burning Godzilla's first thermonuclear blasts obliterate King Ghidorah's wings and side-heads, Godzilla delivers the final, largest blast which obliterates Ghidorah's entire body except for the middle head by crushing Ghidorah's chest under his foot.
  • In Dominion, Godzilla defeats Tiamat with a stomp on the face, but unlike with the MUTO Prime, Godzilla only pins her down. He lifts up his foot and she roars, only for him to roar back at her face as a warning, and allows her to live.
  • Repeats this during his final battle with Kong in Godzilla vs. Kong, this time on the chest. Like with Tiamat, Godzilla only pins Kong down, and after roaring in his face, lets him live.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Godzilla went from Kong's aggressive opponent to his reliable ally in Godzilla vs. Kong. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire shows both Godzilla and Kong running together to face a new threat.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: In keeping with Gareth Edwards' stated "Man vs. Nature" theme, and to emphasize just how small and helpless the humans are, one scene in the 2014 film shows soldiers firing off tiny-looking flares in front of the massive Godzilla, who is still dripping with many gallons of seawater. He's also depicted this way in the non-canon Godzilla: Awakening in relation to Shinomura: Godzilla retreated into the ocean's depths to feed on geothermal vents, while Shinomura instead fell into the Earth's mantle through a volcanic vent and fed there.
• Foil: To Ghidorah, his Evil Counterpart. They're both massive Alpha Titans, but whereas Godzilla is ultimately a guardian of the Earth (if not the humans on it) who represents nature and maintains its order, Ghidorah is an Omnicidal Maniac who represents the certain destruction of Earth's natural order as an allegory for Global Warming. Ghidorah has not just the capacity to annihilate human civilization, but the intent to. Godzilla is an amphibious walker while Ghidorah's wings allow him to fly. They both have light-like beam attacks at their disposal, but Godzilla's are blue, while Ghidorah's are yellow. They have Healing Factors, but Ghidorah's is much faster. Both are passingly identified with religious idols, but Godzilla is compared with God, while Ghidorah is compared to the other guy.
• Gaia's Vengeance: Serizawa believes in the 2014 movie that nature herself sends Godzilla to restore balance to the world by wiping out the MUTOs, with the movie's director further supporting this^note "Godzilla is definitely a representation of the wrath of nature. The theme is man versus nature and Godzilla is certainly the nature side of it. You can't win that fight. Nature's always going to win and that's what the subtext of our movie is about. He's the punishment we deserve.", and subsequent movies further confirm this; making Godzilla a middle ground between Gaia's Vengeance proper and Gaia's Avenger. If Godzilla isn't answering a challenge to his own dominance, then he's solely surfacing from the depths because another Titan is posing a threat to Earth's natural order: the MUTOs are parasites that could have caused mass extinction, Ghidorah is an Omnicidal Maniac that could thoroughly wipe out all multicellular life on Earth, and the Titans Ghidorah awakened would promptly disregard the natural order in favor of satisfying their own wants without Godzilla to keep them in line, whilst the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization addresses the possibility that Godzilla could one day turn on mankind wholly if human beings continue abusing the Earth's ecosphere for short-term self-indulgence and continue refusing to learn from their mistakes.
• Genius Bruiser: The King of the Monsters is no Dumb Muscle — for a gigantic Sauroposida, he can be rather crafty in combat, as much as he can be surprisingly fast if not even more so. In the 2014 movie, Godzilla gets past Hokmuto's Hit-and-Run Tactics which make it difficult to injure the latter by exposing himself, luring Hokmuto into the perfect position for a deadly Tail Slap; and Godzilla kills Femuto after his initial blast of Atomic Breath failed to get through her natural armor by instead firing his Atomic Breath down her jaws and neck once he has a hold of her. In Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla is smart enough to recall that Kong's axe can absorb and weaponize his Atomic Breath's energy, and he promptly fires his Atomic Breath at the axe instead of Mechagodzilla so that Kong can use the charged axe to destroy the resilient machine.
• Gentle Giant: Downplayed. He doesn't show any malicious intent toward humans and never attacks them even when they're the ones attacking him first, but he also doesn't concern himself with minimizing human casualties or collateral damages to their cities if they get caught up in the battles between him and his kaiju rivals. Gets played more straight in the second half of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, when after Serizawa sacrifices himself to save Godzilla's life and Monarch's forces fight alongside him in his final battle against Ghidorah, Godzilla uses his power as the Alpha of the Titans to not only to keep the Titans away from human settlements but also to seemingly establish a closer and more progressive relationship between both species. However, this only applies if he doesn't feel threatened. Angered enough, and he will be far less careful than usual about damaging human cities, to say nothing of potentially massive incidental loss of human lives from him simply moving around in a rush in populated areas.
• Giant Equals Invincible:
  • He shrugs off all bullets, tank rounds and sea-to-ground missiles. It is confirmed in the movie that he can survive point-blank nuclear explosions in the kiloton range, though they have no idea what megaton-level explosions will do. However, the nuclear initiation that the movie shows targeting him is known to us as the Castle Bravo test, which is famous not only for being one of the first multimegaton tests but for unfortunately exceeding expectations — the expected 4-8 megaton explosion was roughly 15 megatons. No nuke in the current arsenal is capable of that ^note This particular variation appears to be based on only fixating on what can be done with today's "cool DARPA technology" and not considering other factors; while the know-how exists, the political will doesn't.
  • The only weapon capable of hurting him is the Oxygen Destroyer. Instead of outright killing him, it severely weakens him to where he had to escape to his radioactive hideout to recover.
  • Mechagodzilla is the only other human weapon to be able to harm him, though Godzilla only does as poorly as he does because Kong wore him down first.
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: It only happens once in the entire MonsterVerse, but in his cinematic debut, MonsterVerse Godzilla displaces so much water, he causes a tsunami at Oahu during his arrival; resulting in a ton of property damage and washing away dozens if not hundreds of people.
• Glad He's On Our Side: "Good thing he's on our side," says Rick Stanton after Godzilla kills Ghidorah. The response from Dr. Chen? "For now."
• Glasgow Grin: He has a "born with it" variation, though it's only really visible when he opens his mouth to roar or use his atomic breath. Its design seems to be based on the similar "smiles" of many real-life reptiles.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: From King of the Monsters onwards, his eyes fill with blue light whenever he's charging up and using his Atomic Breath.
  • When he sensed the ORCA's sounds at Castle Bravo, Godzilla lights up not only his dorsal plates but also his eyes as a form of intimidation. Deep beneath the waves with those blue-glowing eyes, it makes him look like an unfathomable supernatural beast.
  • For his final Big Damn Heroes moment after firing his Atomic Breath at King Ghidorah, he lands in Boston with his eyes furiously glowing wanting to settle the score once again.
• God of Evil: The novelization of Godzilla vs. Kong sheds some light on the Iwi culture, which — as regaled by Jia — fears Godzilla and his species as an evil Draconic Abomination called the "Zo-zla-halawa" that drove the Kongs and Iwi out of the Long Ago Below (their word for the Hollow Earth).
• Godzilla Threshold: He seems to have one of his own — the signature Atomic Breath, which he only uses once in Awakening and three times in the 2014 film's climax, whilst the tie-in toys state Godzilla has to use his Atomic Breath sparingly because it massively drains his internal radiation stores. From Godzilla: King of the Monsters onward however, Godzilla starts employing it far more frequently, practically Beam Spamming in Godzilla vs. Kong.
• Good All Along: "Good" might be stretching it. But he certainly isn't humanity's enemy.
  • In his debut in Godzilla (2014), his morality is for most of the film understandably ambiguous to both the audience and most of the human cast, with promotional materials further suggesting he'd be an antagonistic force like the original incarnation and would be no less dangerous than the MUTOs. By the film's end, this Godzilla incarnation is more or less cemented as an Anti-Hero after he fights the MUTOs to the death per his nature when the military's attempt to kill the Kaiju has dramatically failed. He at one point almost seems to be deliberately saving Ford Brody from being killed by the MUTOs after they briefly noticed each-other during the battle, and he furthermore leaves the ruins of San Francisco and the city's survivors in peace while he returns to the sea at the film's end.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, most of humanity assumes Godzilla has made a Face–Heel Turn against them when he commits a series of patterned attacks upon Apex Cybernetics facilities and their surroundings. It turns out that the reason Godzilla is attacking those facilities is that he's looking to root out and destroy the remains of Ghidorah which Apex is using to create Mechagodzilla before his three-headed alien Arch-Enemy can rise again in a new form. Considering the massive threat Ghidorah posed in King of the Monsters, this revelation makes Godzilla's measures quite justified and his wrath against the humans very understandable.
• Good Is Not Soft: This incarnation is much more benevolent when compared to his predecessors, as he doesn't actively seek a fight with humans directly or deliberately — the closest he comes to doing so is in Godzilla vs. Kong. In fact, it's implied this Godzilla incarnation is capable of gratitude if his strengthened symbiotic relationship with humanity (described in the Godzilla: King of the Monsters Creative Closing Credits) following Serizawa's Heroic Sacrifice and the Enemy Mine against King Ghidorah, is any indication. That being said, Godzilla isn't merciful towards his foes: killing the MUTOs and Jinshin-Mushi brutally, burning Ghidorah to a crisp before chowing down on and vaporizing the alien dragon's surviving head, slaughtering Kong's human naval escort for daring to remove the rival Alpha from his biome and bringing him into Godzilla's global territory, and beating and savaging Kong to the point that the latter would have died without a makeshift Titan-defibrillation after Godzilla has decided Kong poses a serious threat with his axe. In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Godzilla summarily executes Scylla when she picks a fight with him in Rome, eats a nuclear power plant, and then carves Tiamut into sashimi so that he can gain access to the stockpile of solar radiation in her lair—all so that he can power up to fight the Skar King and Shimo.
• The Good King: After he defeats Ghidorah and reclaims his throne, he's indicated to now be actively directing the other Titans to act in ways beneficial to the world, while prohibiting them from attacking any human populations. Notably, humans come to view him as their savior as well. Dominion, which is entirely told from his POV, expands on this, showing him actively protecting humans from hostile Titans, as well as preventing the others from getting into destructive clashes with each other. This makes his killing of Scylla in Rome in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire more justifiable since she was not only invading his territory but attacking humans in said territory.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He is covered in big red scars. This calls to mind the original design philosophy Toho had, in that his skin was supposed to resemble the keloid scars that the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings developed.
• Graceful in Their Element: Subverted. He's very fast in the water, using this to his advantage during his second fight with Ghidorah when he drags him into the water, but he generally appears slow and lumbering on land. In actuality, he can be very fast and very brutal on land when he wants to be.
• Grin of Audacity: His Glasgow Grin tends to make him look like he's grinning, often unsettlingly, such as when he's facing down the male MUTO in Hawaii, or when he in his Burning mode is tanking all three of Ghidorah's Gravity Beams unfazed before he proceeds to prove his three-headed Arch-Enemy is done for. He has a much less ambiguous Slasher Smile just after he hits Kong in mid-air with his Atomic Breath, in Hong Kong.
• Grumpy Old Man: He's millions of years old — in fact, Godzilla: Awakening strongly implies that it's not just Godzilla's species that's millions of years old, but the individual Godzilla was born in the Permian if not earlier (although that account has been retconned from canon by Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) — and in many respects, Godzilla has an attitude that's more in line with this trope than his usual one. He more or less shambles through the world without much concern for the humans he steps over, and constantly displays irritation rather than anger at the people shooting at him with military-grade weapons. Facing off with Ghidorah is pretty much the only time Godzilla goes past this and is closer to his traditional Unstoppable Rage. Despite how ancient and belligerent he seems, Godzilla is committed to keeping his worldwide territory's balance of nature in check.
• Having a Blast:
  • Aftershock reveals he's capable of performing the Nuclear Pulse, which he uses to stun the MUTO Prime long enough to kill it with a Finishing Stomp.
  • When he becomes Burning Godzilla, his Nuclear Pulse is upgraded to the point of basically becoming a supercharged nuclear bomb, allowing him to incinerate Ghidorah and kill him once and for all.
  • In Godzilla x Kong, after effectively eating a French nuclear power plant he's attacked by the military and unleashes a nuclear pulse to obliterate the drones bombarding him with missiles.
• Headbutting Heroes: Of the Hero Antagonist variety. He's the one doing the headbutting and going out of his way to specifically target Kong in order to make him submit, with the latter being a rival Alpha Titan.
• Healing Factor: While not as strong as some incarnations of the character (near death damages can require years to recover from unless he is given a major boost of energy), this Godzilla does have strong regenerative abilities (in one instance getting his dorsal plates blasted off only to regrow them even larger than they were before). Furthermore, it is by healing he adapts to various changes in the environment, types of foes he faces, etc. enabling him to have outlived the rest of his species by an extreme amount and become the most powerful of the Earth Titans. He basically can evolve by healing.
• Heal It With Fire: A fantastic, feeding variation in King of the Monsters. After Godzilla is on death's door due to the Oxygen Destroyer's blast, he retreats to his subterranean volcanic lair to feed on the excess geothermal radiation, slowly regenerating him. Monarch speed it up when they decide that this isn't going to heal him fast enough, detonating a nuke point-blank to complete Godzilla's recovery (and then some more) in seconds.
• Heavy Sleeper: If the climax is anything to go by, so much so that when he gets tired and decides to take a nap after defeating the MUTOs, the military initially assumes him to be dead.
• Helicopter Flyswatter: In Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, he accidentally causes a Monarch helicopter to crash in the Algerian Desert just by standing up faster than the chopper can get itself clear of his rising dorsal spines — he doesn't even notice. During his Pensacola attack in Godzilla vs. Kong, a squadron of fighter jets fires on Godzilla, and Godzilla retaliates much more deliberately when he swipes one out of the air with his claw and fires his atomic breath at the others.
• The Hero: The main protagonist of the Godzilla movies who is Earth's savior when it's invaded by other Kaiju.
• Hero Antagonist: He becomes this in Godzilla vs. Kong, with Kong as the more protagonistic of the two Titans. Godzilla is out to maintain his global territory's balance like always, and he's actively trying to hunt down and destroy the Apex-made Mechagodzilla which has been made using Ghidorah's undead remains; but he can't stand any rival Alpha Titan to his dominance, and this (coupled implicitly with an antagonistic past with Kong's kind) brings Godzilla into conflict with Kong once the latter is removed from Skull Island. The feud escalates when Godzilla becomes enraged by Kong and his human allies disturbing the Hollow Earth element (which was utilized by Kong's ancestors against Godzilla's kindred) and he destroys the temple of Kong's ancestors. More to this trope, pretty much every human except Team Godzilla regards Godzilla as a villain during this story, because they have no idea why Godzilla is suddenly storming into human population centers, annihilating Apex's facilities and then leaving (and because all of them would rather jump to finding a solution to a problem whose cause they don't have even the remotest understanding of than address the crisis' core sensically).
• Hero on Hiatus: Gets hit by the Oxygen Destroyer, but it doesn't quite kill him in the second act of King of the Monsters—leading to him retreating to his temple to rest and recover. The main characters then decide to revive him with a nuke to bring him back into action.
• Heroic Build:
  • Because of his increased activity for the past 5 years after the MUTO incident, Godzilla doesn't seem to have that barrel-chested physique that he originally had in the last film, whereas in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) he's still considerably bulky but is a lot more able-bodied and is in greater physical shape, specifically around his chest region while having defined muscly forearms.
  • In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Godzilla undergoes a metamorphosis by gorging himself on the radiation from a nuclear power plant and then taking a power nap in Tiamat's arctic lair, which is located in an area that's continuously exposed to solar radiation. His Evolved form has longer, more muscular arms and a more-defined and burly chest, while also reducing most of the bulk around his abdomen.
• Heroic Second Wind:
  • In the 2014 movie, he grows visibly exhausted after killing Hokmuto and being forced to the ground by a skyscraper toppling on him, to the point where he looks ready to pass out when he locks eyes with Ford Brody at ground level. A few minutes later, he's managed to pick himself up and he uses his remaining strength to end the Final Battle by swiftly and brutally killing Femuto.
  • In King of the Monsters, he's singed, beaten down and weakened severely by King Ghidorah over the course of the final battle, to the point where he's too weak to do anything more than weakly lift his head when Ghidorah begins Vampiric Draining him (with the assured outcome if Ghidorah completes the drain being the Omnicidal Maniac's decisive victory over Earth's defenders). Thanks to the Russells' efforts drawing Ghidorah away before the drain is complete, Mothra's Bequeathed Power finishes unlocking Godzilla's Super Mode, and with renewed strength and then some, Godzilla promptly proceeds to annihilate Ghidorah in spectacular fashion.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: He's feared by humans for his huge size and potential for destruction, and because the humans don't know much to tell him apart from other monsters who actually are malicious and invasive in nature such as the MUTOs or Ghidorah.
  • In the first film, he arrives in San Francisco to battle the MUTOs. He carefully tries to pass through the Golden Gate Bridge without causing any human casualties, but all the humans see is a giant monster that could crush them like ants. When Godzilla's spikes move the boats, the U.S. Navy fire upon him even though Godzilla is clearly not attacking them, causing Godzilla to lash out when his vulnerable gills are struck and crash through the bridge, splitting it into two pieces.
  • In King of the Monsters, it's implied Godzilla is a more controversial figure in humanity's eyes than the first film's ending suggested; as on top of public opinion heavily demanding all the Titans be killed off, humans are apparently actively trying to locate and track Godzilla, and Mark Russell, in particular, wants Godzilla dead because of the damage in San Francisco. Once the Oxygen Destroyer fatally injuring Godzilla leaves Ghidorah free to rampage on human cities while enslaving other monsters to aid it in decimating the planet's biosphere, Monarch and all branches of the military ally as part of a joint effort to revive and aid Godzilla so he can take their planet back from Ghidorah. The Creative Closing Credits imply that Godzilla is now being viewed in a more positive light by humanity at large.
  • And in Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla is quickly labeled as having made a Face–Heel Turn when he commits a string of patterned attacks against Apex Cybernetics facilities, with no-one except the three-man Team Godzilla caring to actually find out what provoked Godzilla nor noticing the blatant pattern. As it turns out, the reason Godzilla is attacking is that he's tracking and trying to find and destroy the partly-conscious remnants of Ghidorah which Apex are using in MechaGodzilla's construction, which pretty much makes the measures Godzilla takes and his lack of softness for Apex highly justified.
  • The Godzilla vs. Kong spin-off comic Fight or Flight indicates that even before Godzilla's Pensacola attack, the majority of the populace still wasn't convinced that Godzilla is as protective as he is in the aftermath of his previous war to save the planet from King Ghidorah, with Tyler Nie's naval coworkers reacting with condescending amusement to the latter's recognition of Godzilla as a protector who only ever attacks with good reason.
  • In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire he causes the Italian government a great deal of consternation when he decides to take a nap in the Roman Colosseum, and earns the ire of the French government and military when he attacks a nuclear power plant to gorge himself on its radiation.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The one sheer advantage Kong has over Godzilla is his battle axe that contains a dorsal plate from a Titanus Gojira. The fin can be energized by Godzilla's Atomic Breath, which in turn fuels the weapon and gives it a major boost in slicing power, as Kong manages to use the empowered blade to strike Godzilla square in the face with his atomic power, knocking him further away into a building and briefly knocking him unconscious. Instead of weakening him, this breaks the camel's back and incurs Godzilla's true wrath upon Kong, holding nothing back whatsoever.
  • This situation almost happens a second time, practically within the same movie, as Mechagodzilla's finishing blow involves forcing the outmatched Godzilla's mouth to open with his claws while he starts charging up his Proton Scream, essentially pulling off his own Kiss of Death against Godzilla. Thankfully, Kong (revived by the last HEAV vehicle) prevents this sadistic course of action from occurring.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Whenever Big Daddy G manages to catch his enemy in the water, he immediately turns it into a Curb-Stomp Battle and nearly drowns them, but this of course would bring the movie to an anticlimactic and premature end, so there are always nearby humans who intervene for one reason or another.
• Homefield Advantage:
  • When he crosses paths with King Ghidorah a second time, he lunges and brings him into the ocean where he's likely comfortable fighting him in his domain. He has an easier time fighting his nemesis and even bites off Ghidorah's left head, seemingly winning... until the military's Oxygen Destroyer hits both monsters.
  • During his first fight with Kong at sea, Godzilla is at a clear advantage in the water and after the initial struggle, he opts to simply drag Kong underwater and drown him. If not for the military's depth charges, Godzilla would've probably killed the ape then and there.
• Hope Bringer: He's particularly this trope in King of the Monsters. He's the only Titan besides Mothra who's essentially on humanity's side, he actively opposes Ghidorah due to commitment to maintaining Earth's natural order, and he's the only force on Earth that stands a chance at stopping Ghidorah as a powerful Alpha Titan in his own right. After King Ghidorah begins a global apocalypse with nothing able to stop him, the moment Monarch and the military discover Godzilla is still alive is the moment their hopes of taking the planet back from Ghidorah are restored.
• Horrifying Hero: A gigantic, fearsome, ferocious, charcoal-black, fire-breathing atomic beast from the dawn of time; covered in battle scars and capable of wrecking entire city blocks without even trying, although he's usually a lot more careful to mitigate the damage than most Titans (and most Godzilla incarnations for that matter); that is, unless the threat is Mechagodzilla. Unsurprisingly, many people are initially leery at best to the idea of accepting that Godzilla acts as mankind's main line of defence against much more hostile Titans in the 2014 film, Aftershock and King of the Monsters.
• Humans Need Aliens: It's made quite clear in every film Godzilla appears in that despite being a bit of a regional Destructive Savior, he is the best and only effective line of defense that the human race has on their side against the more hostile Titans when they pose a threat. Whereas Kong specifically protects Skull Island's regional ecosystem, Godzilla protects the world on a global scale due to the entire planet being his territory. The consequences of the military crippling Godzilla in King of the Monsters are dire and almost spell the end of the world.
• Implacable Man: He proves to be this in his pursuit of whatever malevolent Kaiju has prompted him to emerge.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: In his second battle against Kong, Godzilla was actually holding back for much of it, but when the ape gets in a good hit with his ancestors' axe and establishes himself as a serious threat, the Big G goes all-out and shows just how vicious a giant fire-breathing lizard can be by beating Kong so badly, he leaves him near-death.
• I Owe You My Life: Implied twice.
  • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla clearly sees and acknowledges the human who gives his life revitalizing Godzilla so the latter can save the world from King Ghidorah, and after Godzilla rises, he unambiguously takes notice of and examines Mark and the Monarch brass nearby, before peacefully leaving them be. The Creative Closing Credits reveal that after Ghidorah's death, Godzilla is actively keeping the other Titans away from human population centers — quite different from how he originally seemed merely indifferent to humans.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, he clearly notices and looks astonished when Kong, whom Godzilla beat to near-death a short while earlier, intervenes to save Godzilla from Mechagodzilla. The two subsequently work together to destroy the Mecha, and in the aftermath, Godzilla looks ready to fight Kong again if the latter doesn't bury the hatchet, but once Kong does bury it, Godzilla seems quite happy to accept Kong's sue for peace and leave him unharmed; himself putting aside the fact Kong is a competitor Alpha Titan (a.k.a. one of Godzilla's walking Berserk Buttons).
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: Played with. He is a lumbering behemoth who causes a lot of damage just by walking through an area, but he is especially graceful in the water, capable of sneaking up on the MUTOs just fine, and seems to be trying to weave his way through the cities as much as he can to avoid too much damage, unlike the MUTOs. He's only walking fast to humans because his strides are so long in comparison.
• In a Single Bound: As Ghidorah sadistically flies after the USS Argo with numerous humans inside of it, Godzilla literally jumps at the chance by lunging out of the ocean (with his 99,634-ton body) and crashing into Ghidorah while the latter is airborne. Godzilla must've been swimming at ridiculous speeds to use both his mass and momentum, just to knock Ghidorah into the depths.
• Informed Ability: One of the designers explained that he's able to swing his tail around supersonic speeds. While it's never brought up by the characters In-Universe, that could partially explain why he's able to traverse through the oceans so rapidly.
• Intimidation Demonstration:
  • Whenever he flashes blue atomic light from his dorsal spines without discharging his atomic breath, he's performing a literal animalistic "intimidation display" which hints at the immense nuclear power inside of him, with Dr. Graham describing it as Godzilla's equivalent to a gorilla pounding its chest. He normally only displays his intimidation light when he's agitated by the presence of a particularly dangerous and powerful adversary that's above the MUTOs' threat level, such as Ghidorah or the part-Ghidorah Mechagodzilla.
  • Dr. Stanton is clearly cowed by Godzilla's spontaneous triple-leveling of Boston via a series of Nuclear Pulses and his brutal, multi-stage physical annihilation of King Ghidorah, with the implication that humanity at large will have the same reaction as Stanton (at least for a while), counting as the diplomatic version of this trope. Furthermore, the several awakened Titans who followed King Ghidorah and have arrived to the aftermath of his destruction are all too happy to bow to Godzilla without a fight.
• It Can Think: As is frequently the case, he very much gives the impression of being more intelligent than a simple animal. During his fights with the MUTOs he clearly baits the male in to get him into tail-slamming range. After he's knocked down a collapsing tower, he seems to pause and regard Brody. He also seems to have learned that his weakened atomic breath can't pierce the female's skin and instead shoots it straight down her throat. In King of the Monsters, he's constantly adjusting his methods to match Ghidorah and frequently reacts to events in an extremely human way. He also seems to have gained some respect for humans, regarding the Monarch team without incident and according to the credits, actively managing the kaiju so they avoid human settlements. By the time he's encountering Kong, he's very clearly demonstrating human levels of intelligence and expression (including smiling every now and then).
• It's Personal:
  • He seems to treat his feud with Ghidorah this way, especially when they charge at each-other. It certainly doesn't lessen in the slightest when Ghidorah kills Mothra, who is Godzilla's loyal ally. Godzilla gives a mournful roar when she dies, and he seems furious when he subsequently becomes Burning Godzilla to brutally annihilate Ghidorah.
  • In Godzilla X Kong, he becomes very pissed when Kong reluctantly heads to the surface in order to try and get his aid against Skar King and Shimo's forced alliance, despite having been powering himself up in preparation to face the ice-wielding titan. Kong having broken their tenuous agreement for peace since their last encounter has Godzilla make a beeline straight towards him the minute he senses the giant ape on the surface (sensing it when Kong seemingly roars a challenge to get his attention) a continent away. Kong's seeming breaking of their agreement and challenge to him puts him into such a blind rage that he pays no heed to any human structures upon arriving in Cairo. Kong clearly tries to explain the challenge was not genuine (rather frantically trying to make peaceful hand gestures and point to the Hollow Earth portal), but given the two have trouble communicating with each other at the best of times Godzilla is not deterred at all and attacks relentlessly. It takes Mothra showing up and literally smacking some sense into him to snap the King of the Monsters out of his anger against Kong.
• It's Raining Men: Downplayed in King of the Monsters when Ghidorah constricts and lifts Godzilla above the troposphere, then drops him into a Rocketless Reentry. While Godzilla does survive the fall, it's admittedly nothing short of astounding that anything (especially a creature as large as him) could survive a fall from that height.

J-P

• Jerkass Ball: Godzilla has never had as strong an empathetic connection to humans as Kong does. But in Godzilla 2014 and King of the Monsters, he would navigate around any giant manned vehicles or skyscrapers that were in his path to avoid needless destruction and wastage of energy. Conversely in the later Godzilla vs. Kong and the Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Godzilla callously ploughs straight through any vehicle-filled bridges that are in his path, possibly justified out of belligerence at humanity deliberately awakening Ghidorah and then reanimating it in Mechagodzilla instead of honoring their alliance to bring Ghidorah down and being on edge with Skar King and Shimo's invasion of the surface.
• Jerkass God: Downplayed. If the Titans are Physical Gods, then Godzilla as the reigning Alpha Titan of the world at large is the Top God, true to Dr. Graham's description of him as "a god for all intents and purposes". That being said, Godzilla is committed to protecting the natural balance of the world at large rather than protecting humanity specifically, even if he isn't entirely apathetic toward us. In Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla doesn't hesitate to strike down jets and even a naval carrier which get in his way, nor to callously destroy a bridge in Hong Kong that still has many cars on it with his back, when he's searching for Mechagodzilla in mankind's cities or when he finds Kong's naval escort which is essentially enabling Kong to interlope in Godzilla's territory.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He comes off as the Godzilla-lizard equivalent of a Grumpy Old Man and has no qualms about leveling a city he's fighting in. However, he's solely on the side of balance and will protect the Earth from any threat. He's also capable of being grateful and reasonable, such as when he makes peace with Kong after the latter helps him to defeat Mechagodzilla.
• The Juggernaut: As per usual, he is nearly indestructible, even surviving a nuclear blast before the events of the film. This is also his most heavily built incarnation to date. He's so powerful that Dr. Wates poetically makes him out to be a Physical God. Godzilla vs. Kong highlights just how terrifying he can be. When he attacks the ships carrying Kong, none of them can slow him down him, and since they are fighting at sea Kong has no chance against him. Godzilla only leaves because the humans make it look like they have given up. In the second fight, even though Kong has gained the axe his species used in their war with Godzilla's, Godzilla still emerges the winner when he gets serious and destroys Kong.
  • Escalated even further in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire where Godzilla effortlessly kills Scylla and Tiamat even before his evolution, and afterwards ploughs through the great pyramids like they're not even there, turns the tables on a power fist equipped Kong and had him dead to rights before Mothra's intervention, and proves physically superior to Shimo—whom he outmatches in nearly every contest of strength the two have despite her size advantage—while the Skar King and his apes never once land a serious blow on him while he bulldozes through them with ease in turn.
• Just Toying with Them: Throughout the majority of the battles in Godzilla vs. Kong, Adam Wingard has revealed that Godzilla wasn't even taking his duel with Kong seriously to begin with and has even seemed to be enjoying the confrontation. He even laughs when he fires his Atomic Breath at Kong's back. It was all fun and games for him until Kong manages to sink his axe into Godzilla's leg...
• Kaiju: The most famous giant monster of all.
• Klingon Promotion: How does he become alpha of the Titans? Killing the last one.
• Kraken and Leviathan: An ancient, prehistoric Sea Monster whose species evolved in the Permian period, who is considered a personification of nature's wrath and borders on an Eldritch Abomination at times. He's been seen by various ancient cultures, but he lay dormant for millennia until he was awakened in the mid-20th century (by the first submarine to reach the lower depths according to Godzilla (2014), by the 1945 atomic bombings according to Godzilla: Awakening), and even afterward he only emerges from the ocean depths to do battle on behalf of the Earth's natural order when another Kaiju threatens that order. It's even somewhat lampshaded in the 2014 film, where he's about the size of a Navy battleship, and the dorsal plates on his tail alone easily dwarf the gunships in the San Francisco bay. Interestingly, while Godzilla does have mortal enemies in other Kaiju, few of them so far have been marine like him. Also interesting to note, though he may have convergently influenced the folklore, there are two other marine Titans in the MonsterVerse who are called Kraken and Leviathan respectively.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Downplayed due to the circumstances of both Mechagodzilla and Godzilla's actions, but in Godzilla vs. Kong he goes out of his way to antagonize Kong and nearly kills him despite Kong not having an interest in the fight. Once Mechagodzilla awakens, Godzilla's injuries from his fight with Kong leave him vulnerable enough that he ends up beaten to near-death and is only saved by Kong getting convinced by Jia to do so.
• Last of His Kind: Like most Titans, he's believed to be this. There were once others of his kind living millions and even thousands of years ago, such as Dagon, some of whom were killed by the MUTOs using them as hosts (as revealed in Godzilla: Aftershock), and also by Ghidorah (according to the Godzilla: King of the Monsters director's commentary) — the war against Kong's ancestors might have also contributed to the decline of Godzilla's species if that giant, Godzilla-like skeleton with the Gojira-fin axe lodged in it in the Titanus Kong temple in Godzilla vs. Kong is any indication, with the revelation in Godzilla: Dominion that a Titanus Kong once successfully drove Godzilla out of a previous lair lending further credence to the possibility. Regardless, in the present, Godzilla is the dominant King of the Monsters, and one gets the subtle impression that personality-wise he's a very lonely and solitary creature.
• LEGO Genetics: According to the Godzilla x Kong novelization, Godzilla assimilated Tiamat's genetic material during their fight and used it to catalyze his metamorphosis into his Evolved form—hence why his spines and powered-up Heat Ray are a weird red-violet color matching her energy signature.
• Leitmotif: He has three. The original Godzilla March and theme by Akira Ifukube which are given a newer take by Bear McCreary, and his 2014 theme. Godzilla vs. Kong adds a new and much darker one which plays whenever he shows up to destroy.
• Let's Get Dangerous!:
  • Downplayed in Godzilla vs. Kong. Godzilla has always been a ferocious and powerful creature, repeatedly demonstrating that he's the King of the Monsters for a reason, and he really gets Kong on his toes throughout their engagements. Yet after Kong deals a serious blow to Godzilla with his ancestors' Titanus Gojira-fin axe, it becomes clear that Godzilla was actually holding back in their engagements up until this point. As noted by the filmmakers, from this point onward, Godzilla takes their fight completely seriously; ending the fight quickly as he beats and mauls Kong savagely to the point where the latter is mortally wounded.
  • In Godzilla X Kong, apparently sensing the ice-wielding Shimo's presence within Hollow Earth, Godzilla actively seeks out radioactive storage facilities around Earth to absorb the nuclear energy within them and heads to the lair of Tiamet, killing her in the process, so he can consolidate the energy inside to empower himself into a new, stronger form to combat Shimo. The Ice titan having caused the last Ice Age through her powers makes it damn clear she's no pushover, and several times throughout the clash between them, Godzilla survives getting hit with her ice Breath Weapon only because his own internal temperature is high enough to resist the sub-zero conditions for a few minutes. Thankfully with Kong's aid, the need for a destructive fight to the death between them is side-stepped.
• Light-Flicker Teleportation: He does this when approaching Castle Bravo, with the "intimidation display" flickering light from his dorsal plates providing the only source of illumination in the ocean's murky depths by which he can be seen. He appears to withdraw and the flashing stops, and then the light reappears with him suddenly much closer in a Jump Scare.
• Light Liege, Dark Defender: Inverted—he and Mothra are in the perfect position to be this, Mothra being the wise but delicate high queen who is literally associated with light and Godzilla being the Grumpy Old Man Earth guardian, but she consistently seems to be the one trying to protect him, up to the point of self-sacrifice.
• Lightning Bruiser: Godzilla is enormous, near-indestructible, and, as seen in his final battle with Ghidorah in Boston as he charges towards the latter, quite fast. According to one of the ORCA clips from the Monarch site, it's stated that his swimming speed is around 40 knots. In one of the animation tests for Godzilla: King of the Monsters his actual top speed on land was clocked in at around 424.6 MPH. It's unclear if that is his actual speed in the series.
• Logical Weakness:
  • His arms are relatively short compared to the rest of his body. The male MUTO took advantage of this a couple of times by jumping on his head and stabbing away at him with those long forelegs, with Godzilla having an extremely difficult time dislodging him since he could barely touch the top of his head. Not unlike a Tyrannosaurus rex, however, they are plenty strong — being connected to his massive pectoral muscles — and he uses them to fight the female MUTO quite effectively.
  • According to the 2014 movie's novelization (which was written before Godzilla vs. Kong retconned Godzilla's Breath Weapon so that it's derived from the Hollow Earth mineral), the express evolutionary function of the MUTOs' EMP is weakening Godzilla's ability to activate his Atomic Breath, since in the novel version, the Atomic Breath is produced via Godzilla belching flammable vapors and igniting them with a bio-electric spark.
  • Also, Godzilla's Atomic Breath requires him to actually breathe out the flames. This means that he's at a disadvantage against Mechagodzilla, as even without his power advantage over Godzilla, the machine doesn't have to breathe.
• Lord of the Ocean: He's a crocodile-like aquatic saurian alpha predator (and the first incarnation of Godzilla to possess visible gills) and a Top God, who seemingly dwells in the world's oceans when a threat to himself or nature's balance doesn't spur him to action. He's also of course capable of both contemplative calm and ferociously bringing down the wrath of a god on those who cross him. Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) in particular leans on this characterization, showing Godzilla making his lair in the Underwater Ruins of an Eldritch Ocean Abyss; and the four headliner kaiju of that movie form a loose Classical Elements Ensemble with Godzilla himself representing water. Godzilla Dominion shows that Godzilla essentially considers the natural elements around him an extension of himself.
• Made of Iron: Godzilla has shown time and again to be quite a tough, old lizard.
  • He survived being nuked multiple times, and it's implied that this made him stronger. First nuke he took? Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb. It did nothing to him. Artillery attacks, tank shells, and bullets, he doesn't even notice. Missiles? A mild nuisance. He even takes a skyscraper collapsing on him and manages to get back up. Only attacks from the MUTOs put him in any mortal danger. If you know your Godzilla, this is to be expected.
  • He survives the Oxygen Destroyer meant to kill him and Ghidorah, although it severely cripples him. It's implied he would have died if not for the thermal vents.
  • He survives being dropped by King Ghidorah from the upper stratosphere, falling dozens if not hundreds of times his own height back to earth, and he still has the energy to move his neck about post-impact. Godzilla's sheer mass and weight combined with Earth's gravity makes it all the more astounding that he survived this fall in any way. This instance also seems to somewhat be an In-Universe case, as according to the movie's commentary, what Ghidorah does to Godzilla here was Ghidorah's method of killing others of Godzilla's kind back in the day, meaning Godzilla survived what killed others of his brethren. All the same, he was unable to recover until after Mothra healed him with her Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Kong lodging an axe into Godzilla does little besides making him mad and prompt him to yank the axe out.
  • Despite the brutal pounding he receives from Mechagodzilla, he still has the strength and energy to aid Kong in destroying the mechanical monstrosity.
  • By the end of Godzilla vs. Kong, after his fight with Kong, the brutal beating he received from Mechagodzilla and clearly physically exhausted, Godzilla still has the energy to stand and regard Kong as an equal before returning to the sea. Quite a far cry from the ending of the first film where he collapsed from exhaustion after dealing with the MUTOs and spending several hours unconscious.
  • In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire he's frozen solid by a direct hit from Shimo's Frostbite Blast—which severely injured Kong's arm while he was blocking it with his axe—and bursts out of the ice no worse for wear.
• Making a Splash: For his grand entrance in Godzilla (2014) his landfall upon entering Hawaii caused an enormous flash flood likely killing thousands of civilians, as a result of his gigantic size.
• Male Might, Female Finesse: Played With in regards to his relationship with Mothra in King of the Monsters. They're both front-line combatants, but whereas Mothra relies somewhat on Hit-and-Run Tactics against Ghidorah due to being more nimble but more fragile, Godzilla is known for using a more up-close-and-personal, bear-like fighting style and often enduring quite a bit of physical punishment.
• Meaningful Look:
  • In the 2014 film, a skyscraper falls onto Godzilla after he's killed the male MUTO and he locks eyes with Ford. Godzilla gives the awestruck Ford an exhausted but calm look, as if he's thanking Ford for saving his life earlier and acknowledging that they have both been through a lot the past few days.
  • When he's crippled and near-dead in the Hollow Earth, Godzilla notices Serizawa approaching his head and gives him a direct meaningful look, before Serizawa perishes in a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • In Monarch: Legacy of Monsters he locks eyes with Cate Randa after waking up and emerging from the desert, leaving her awestruck.
• Meaningful Name: According to Shin Godzilla, Godzilla (or Gojira) officially means "God Incarnate". Considering how he was depicted as such by Serizawa and Graham, it makes perfect sense.
• Menacing Stroll: He wouldn't really be Godzilla without the iconic ominous, weighty walk.
  • In the 2014 film, Godzilla thunders forth at a frighteningly-slow pace, catching the undivided attention of Hokmuto (who up to this point has been portrayed as an invincible force of nature whilst solely opposed by the military). Amid Godzilla's Feet-First Introduction in the following shot, he stops moving and looses a Roar Before Beating.
  • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the opening flashback depicts Godzilla thundering through the ruins of San Francisco, striking awe more than anything into Emma and Madison Russell. Before the film's Final Battle, Godzilla has probably his most emphatic Menacing Stroll in this incarnation; spending several moments storming towards Ghidorah at a slow, thunderous pace, after he was as good as dead at the end of Ghidorah's last encounter with him.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla thunders on his feet through Victoria Harbor onto Hong Kong Island, although the pace seems a lot more even and less weighty than in his previous two film appearances due to the film's different style.
• Metamorphosis Monster: In between Godzilla and King of the Monsters Godzilla undergoes a metamorphosis—his body growing from 108 to 120 meters tall, his tail possessing a blunted tip, the claws on his hands and feet growing larger and sharper, and his dorsal plates becoming larger and more jagged. In Godzilla x Kong, he overloads himself on nuclear and cosmic radiation to undergo another metamorphosis—gaining thagomizers on his tail, even larger and more jagged purple-hued dorsal plates, longer arms with elbow spikes, and a leaner physique. This Evolved form is noted to also be significantly more powerful, with a greater molecular density and at least 20% greater energy capacity.
• Mighty Glacier: Downplayed. When he wants to, he can move fast enough in the water to outrun the U.S. Navy's high-priority escort tracking him. On land, however, he seems to keep true to the Big G's tradition of dishing out massive pain whilst lacking the speed of some previous Godzilla incarnations: to bring up his fighting style, when faced with Femuto (which almost matches his size), Godzilla's first offensive bout seems to focus on solely overpowering her with sheer brute strength and tenacity, then once he learns enough about his enemy, he starts aiming for weaknesses. Subverted in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where he can run at frightening speeds such as at the start of the Final Battle, and again in Godzilla vs. Kong, where Godzilla shows he can move much faster on land if he uses both his hands and feet; firmly establishing Godzilla as a Lightning Bruiser.
• Mighty Roar: A mighty and glorious one.
• Mistaken for Romance: In King of the Monsters, Barnes assumes Godzilla and Mothra's relationship is romantic and is squicked out, at which point Coleman clarifies that their relationship is most likely a cross-species symbiosis.
• Monster Delay: In the 2014 movie, his full appearance is obscured for a while, with all we see of him being his dorsal spines and the shape of his head in the water. Then we see his arms and his tail when he comes ashore on Oahu. Then we see Godzilla's Fearsome Foot at the airport, promptly followed by the Feet-First Introduction which unveils the King of the Monsters in all his majesty.
• Monster Lord: Ultimately the benevolent kind. He's an Alpha-class Titan, meaning he can control lesser Titans to a degree when he establishes his authority via kicking their asses. At the end of King of the Monsters, Godzilla replaces King Ghidorah as the reigning global Alpha over the other awakened Titans, and he uses his dominance to make the baseline Titans halt their global rampage, repair the world's ecosphere and steer clear of cities. Godzilla is one of the most powerful Titans in the setting if not the most powerful, and it's implied that the individual Godzilla we know alone is hundreds of millions of years old. Godzilla also has the downside of being regarded as something valuable to consume or usurp because of his apex position: Ghidorah and Apex Cybernetics respectively have both actively sought to usurp Godzilla's status as the apex predator by killing him, the latter intending to accomplish the job by creating an Evil Knockoff which runs on the same energy that Godzilla metabolizes.
• Morality Chain: Mothra is his closest ally and can instantly calm him down with her mere presence. All it takes for Godzilla to wholeheartedly accept Kong as his ally is Mothra showing up and asking him to.
• Mutual Kill: Subverted in the 2014 film. After sustaining a real beating from the MUTOs and killing them both, once the last one's dead, Godzilla collapses from exhaustion and is believed dead the next day. Then it turns out he's Not Quite Dead.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, Godzilla's nuclear-powered heart begins to give out to the point where burning, molten scars have formed all over his body. By the end of the film, he imbues the rest of his power upon his son, who takes over his father's place as King of the Monsters. In King of the Monsters, Mothra sacrifices herself in the fight against Ghidorah and imbues her power to Godzilla. He then takes on his "burning form" and uses his new Super Mode to decimate Ghidorah, cementing his place as the Alpha to the rest of the Titans. It also evokes both Rodan's sacrifice and giving Godzilla his spiral atomic breath in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II and Mothra Taking the Bullet for an ally from Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!, only with Mothra dying, Godzilla being the one protected, and Ghidorah as the one firing.
  • To save millions of lives, Dr. Serizawa makes a Heroic Sacrifice by locating Godzilla under the ocean, and detonates a man-made superweapon at his location. The difference is that in the original film, it was to defeat Godzilla with the Oxygen Destroyer. In King of the Monsters, it's to save him with a nuclear warhead.
  • At the beginning of the Boston battle when Ghidorah's right head was approaching him, the Big G actually did a parry that smacked him away similar to blocking an attack in boxing. This could also be seen as a throwback to the Showa Godzilla's method of hand-to-hand in the 70s movies since he practically fights by using his fists more often than not, unlike in the early 60s films where he would usually Beam Spam and Tail Slap his enemies.
  • His scutes light up from the tip of his tail traveling up his body to his head when preparing his Atomic Breath, and his eyes glow when he fires it, in a very similar way to Godzilla Junior in Godzilla: The Series.
  • Godzilla's Evolved form in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has larger, more pointed, reddish-pink dorsal plates evocative of "MireGoji" from Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. His similarly-tinged Atomic Breath is also at least 20x more powerful than it was previously
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: This version of Godzilla is partially modeled after a crocodile, and tends to act like one at his most sinister. His absolutely vicious assault on Kong during Godzilla vs. Kong has him crawl around like a cross between a crocodile and a bear once he gets sufficiently enraged at the giant ape.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Slightly Downplayed in Godzilla vs. Kong. When he tracks Ghidorah's signal to Hong Kong, him sensing the Hollow Earth's core energy being harvested prompts him to immediately blast open a passage straight to the Hollow Earth — this act enrages Kong into battling Godzilla, which not only gives Apex Cybernetics adequate time to activate Mechagodzilla with the Hollow Earth energy (which also causes Ghidorah's remnant consciousness to reawaken and hijack Mechagodzilla's psionic link), but it also leaves Kong unable to fight and Godzilla physically exhausted when the Ghidorah-controlled Mechagodzilla emerges. As it stands, had Godzilla focused entirely on finding Mechagodzilla instead of going out of his way to attack Kong even when the latter had no interest in fighting him, he could've likely destroyed Mechagodzilla before it could go online.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Downplayed and taken to new levels, at least with what is confirmed onscreen. In at least some films, most notably The Return of Godzilla, using nuclear weapons on Godzilla has been suggested but never carried out. In this continuity, the humans go through with nuking Godzilla more than once: the latest time in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, a severely-weakened Godzilla takes the blast of a nuclear warhead point-blank, and instead of destroying or even mutilating his body, the blast massively accelerates Godzilla's healing process and basically puts him on nuclear steroids, without so much as scratching his hide. That being said, it's fairly clear during Godzilla's Final Battles against the MUTOs, Ghidorah and Mechagodzilla respectively that he's not immortal, and he can be defeated and can die at the hands of another Titan.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, humanity has shown that they now have the means to kill him, albeit through the power of the Titans.
• No-Sell: Godzilla (2014) and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters showed that the Castle Bravo Test did not kill him, as he shows up in 1955 with no worse for wear. Seeing as Godzilla literally took a nuke to the face and King of the Monsters confirms that he literally eats nukes for breakfast, the Castle Bravo test is basically what happens if you threw a pie at someone's face and still be fine.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male:
  • Downplayed in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. At a certainty, Godzilla, who's highly established as an Alpha Titan, as well as being a dominant and powerful creature he can also show signs of being actually passive and is surprisingly forgiving towards mankind. The destruction he causes is either accidental or having battles with other beasts who carries a key position of keeping the entire Earth in a natural balance so things don't go awry. Rodan on the other hand is insatiably aggressive, reckless, and an absolutely Hot-Blooded Titan with an overall destructive behavior who will outright attack anyone or anything in his way unopposed. They briefly interact at the movie's end, when Rodan blusterously attempts to challenge Godzilla after Ghidorah's death, only for Godzilla to warn him off with a Death Glare.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, the dynamic is reversed: Godzilla is the Roguish Male to his titular rival's Noble Male; being the definitively more aggressive, destructive and ruthless of the two, being callous to the harm that his presence causes humans, and also being the one to start a fight with Kong twice whilst Kong is content to just steer around Godzilla. Overall, Godzilla in this movie is the more anti-heroic of the two Protector Alpha Titans, and whereas Kong has a primate's advanced brain, Godzilla has eons more experience than the comparatively-young King of the Primates.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Unleashes one to King Ghidorah in his Super Mode at the end of their final battle.
  • After Kong manages to land a few good hits on him, Godzilla counterattacks, and quickly and easily overpowers the ape, mauling him with his claws and teeth, and later pinning him underfoot. Unlike Ghidorah, though, Godzilla spares Kong.
  • On the receiving end of this from the activated Mechagodzilla while exhausted from fighting Kong. None of Godzilla's attacks can even dent the machine and he's nearly killed multiple times over and only survives because Jia convinces Kong to save him.
  • In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire he mercilessly mauls and executes Scylla for daring to attack him, and once Kong ventures to the surface he makes a beeline for the Great Ape intending to finish what he started in Hong Kong.
• Nominal Hero: This incarnation of Godzilla starts off disinterested in humanity, with much of his focus squarely on any Titan who would dare issue him a challenge. As such, he demonstrates throughout most of his introductory film that, while he doesn't go out of his way to cause rampant destruction to human cities, he isn't at all concerned if he does. This changes as of King of the Monsters, where Godzilla actively directs other Titans away from human territories. It's implied that Dr. Serizawa's Heroic Sacrifice led Godzilla to feel some sense of gratitude towards humanity as a whole. Godzilla X Kong however, has him get slightly careless with human safety when in a blind rage, plowing through several inhabited structures in a straight beeline towards Kong when the great ape reluctantly comes to the surface and intrigues upon his territory as a result, showing that he's still not absolutely benevolent towards humanity.
• Non-Malicious Monster: He's not particularly interested in fighting with humans and goes out of his way to not fight them even when they are opening fire on him. As Gareth said, humans are like ants to him. You don't go out of your way to stomp on every ant you see, do you? In Godzilla vs. Kong it's actually Averted with his rivalry with Kong, as Godzilla eventually shows a more sadistic side as he delivers a beatdown on his rival, despite being the one to start the fight and only spares him after dislocating his shoulder and leaving him with mortal injuries.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: He does this in Godzilla (2014) to the female MUTO — by forcing her jaws open and firing an Atomic Breath attack straight down her throat. Likewise, in the first season finale of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, he fires his Atomic Breath into the Ion Dragon's head and upper-body point blank to throw it off of him.
• No-Sell: For the most part, he simply doesn't even notice when humans are attacking him. In King of the Monsters, he no-sells Ghidorah's Gravity Beams after reaching his Fire Mode.
• Not Drawn to Scale: As is usually the case in the franchise, Godzilla's size is... flexible. He's officially listed in marketing materials as around 350 feet tall. In the first film, he is frequently 2-3x that against known objects, and in some shots and other marketing material including the poster more resembles a mountain. Notably, in King of the Monsters he's knowingly made larger than he was in the previous film.
• Not Quite Dead: A heroic example, twice.
  • In the first film, he collapses from exhaustion after killing both the MUTOs and appears to be dead among the ruins of San Francisco the next day. Then his nostrils move and the Eye Awaken comes, revealing he was merely sleeping to recuperate.
  • In King of the Monsters, his vitals fade and seemingly flatline after he's hit by the Oxygen Destroyer, which in turn enables Ghidorah to take over his position as King of the Monsters unopposed and begin instigating his apocalypse. When Mothra arrives and calls out to Godzilla, Monarch detects his bio-acoustics replying to her, confirming that he's seriously wounded but is still alive.
• Nuclear Mutant: Averted with this incarnation, as he existed long before the Pacific nuclear tests, which actually attempted to kill him. He is however a creature whose species naturally feeds on radiation due to ostensibly evolving in a time when the Earth's surface was much more radioactive.
• Nuke 'em: Godzilla has been nuked before in an attempt to kill him, but it's implied it made him stronger. He gets nuked again, but this time by Serizawa to revive him but it made him a bit too powerful to the point he nearly becomes a literal walking nuclear bomb. Mothra was able to contain his radiation levels and uses his full capacity on King Ghidorah.
• Odd Friendship:
  • His relationship with humanity as a whole can be seen as this, particularly following the revelations about his past with humans. Godzilla is a gigantic, ancient beast, the Top God, and the guardian and enforcer of nature's established order; humans by comparison are tiny, frail, arrogant little upstarts who wish they were the dominant species on Earth, whom are less than a fraction of Godzilla's age as a species, who tend to overestimate their capabilities and competence in the face of the Titans, and who have done anything but respect nature. Yet whilst Godzilla saving humanity when he takes down hostile Titans can be seen to be largely incidental, Godzilla: King of the Monsters heavily implies that it's more than this: Godzilla has made his home in an Advanced Ancient Acropolis left by a civilization which evidently worshipped him, Mothra and a Rodan-like Titan for fighting off Ghidorah long ago (and Godzilla: Dominion furthermore reveals that Godzilla remembers this civilization when it was in its prime), and after defeating Ghidorah, Godzilla goes out of his way to protect the humans' infrastructure and population centers from being harmed by the other awakened Titans.
  • It's hinted that he might have formed an Odd Friendship with Ford Brody at the San Francisco battle. He seems to notice Ford gazing at him when he's heavily weakened with his head near ground level, and later, he catches Femuto off-guard and kills her when she was just seconds away from killing Ford.
• Oh, Crap!: Even the King can be surprised.
  • In King of the Monsters, Godzilla does a visible double-take and takes a step back moments before Ghidorah performs a lightning-based Beam Spam after absorbing Boston's power.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, look closely during his Beam-O-War with Mechagodzilla, and you'll see Godzilla's eyes widening as Mechagodzilla's Proton Scream overpowers his Atomic Breath. After getting even more brutalized by Mechagodzilla for a while without getting in any fresh hits of his own, Godzilla's Reflective Eyes shot gives the viewer the impression that he's genuinely growing frightened for his life and is expecting to die here. And when Mechagodzilla starts prying his jaws apart with the intention of performing a Kiss of Death on him, Godzilla's facial language as he struggles gives the impression that he's panicking.
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: Half the time. Examples include the male and female MUTOs who are only fifteen years old when Godzilla kills them, and debatably Shinomura who regenerates From a Single Cell. Likely averted with Jinshin-Mushi and Ghidorah, who are implied to be roughly as old as Godzilla or potentially even older (particularly Ghidorah).
• Old Hero, New Pals: He's one of the two primary kaiju heroes of the MonsterVerse alongside Kong. When he makes his second movie appearance in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, only two of his human advocates from his debut movie (Drs. Serizawa and Graham) return, whilst Ford Brody is absent – in Brody's place, Serizawa and Graham have a whole new team of Monarch top brass plus Mark Russell, all of whom gradually join the doctors in rooting for Godzilla. In Godzilla vs. Kong, all of Godzilla's human and Titan allies from the previous movie are absent, save Madison and Mark Russell (and even then, Mark isn't on Godzilla's side anymore); and Madison gets two new characters to back Godzilla with her.
• Old Soldier: He's possibly the oldest incarnation of Godzilla seen on screen thus far—not just in chronological age, but in the way he acts. His scars tell the tale of many, many old battles, and at several points in the film, he just looks tired, like an old soldier dragged away from a nap. Several critics even compared him to John McClane.
• The Omniscient: Somewhat. Godzilla Dominion and the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization indicate that Mothra's Heroic Sacrifice which transferred her power to Godzilla in King of the Monsters has permanently given Godzilla a heightened awareness of the Earth and its elements all around him.
  "They were not the same recollections as those he had experienced himself; there were no colors or remembered shapes or even places, but instead a deep certainty. As his senses stretched to encompass the wind that blew from the heart of the planet and encircled the world above to meet the winds from the sun, as he could feel the slow rivers of molten rock flowing, colliding, swallowing land, giving birth to it, the cycle of hot rise and cold fall in the waters, the pumping heart of the oceans, everything that was now, so too did he feel what was, when the surface of the Earth was liquid rock, when waters came, when ice covered everything, when the green life came and clawed its way onto bare rock. When many of his kind lived, fighting always, and the New Ones came to try to claim dominance."
• One-Eyed Shot:
  • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the camera focuses on the wounded Godzilla's expressive eye when he watches Serizawa touching his snout — the first time in the entire Godzilla movie history that a human character has physically touched the King of the Monsters.
  • In Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, the camera focuses on Godzilla's eye in one shot when he meets Cate's gaze upon waking in the Algerian Desert.
• Our Hero Is Dead: At the end of the second act of King of the Monsters, he's seemingly killed by the Oxygen Destroyer (just when he was in the middle of subduing Ghidorah too), and this enables Ghidorah to immediately usurp his kingship over the Titans and trigger the movie's Halfway Plot Switch towards a global apocalypse. Fortunately, thanks to Mothra; Monarch and the military realize Godzilla is still alive in the Hollow Earth, albeit gravely weakened, and they set about restoring his strength.
• Out-of-Character Alert:
  • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Dr. Chen can instantly tell something is seriously wrong during Godzilla's intimidation display at Castle Bravo, as he's never gotten this close to the facility before.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, Madison can tell off the bat that Godzilla is not humanity's enemy, because he's consistently never attacked unless he senses a threat to himself (and even then, he's relatively careful to focus the worst of his destruction on that threat). Sadly, Madison and her team are the only ones who don't wilfully ignore a fairly blatant clue, with everyone else easily condemning Godzilla.
  • In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Monarch is clued in that something dangerous is coming when Godzilla attacks a French nuclear power plant without provocation to gorge himself on the radiation.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Dr. Chen notes that Godzilla has never before gotten as close to Castle Bravo as he does during the "intimidation display" scene, which Mark Russell surmises is a sign that Godzilla feels seriously threatened and agitated by something (it's implied this is because Godzilla can hear the ORCA's signal coming from right next to Ghidorah's icy prison). Later, when Godzilla faces off against Ghidorah minutes after the latter has been freed from the glacier, Godzilla is scowling in seething hate at the sight of the dragon (contrasting how Godzilla treats fighting most of his Titan opponents like it's little more than him doing a job, being rather calm in his pursuit of the MUTOs and only getting serious when confronting them directly, in the previous movie). All of this shows how much Godzilla fears and above all despises Ghidorah.
  • A massive plot point in Godzilla vs. Kong is Godzilla going on a massive destruction spree where he attacks population centers and razes Apex Cybernetics buildings seemingly without provocation — behavior vastly unbecoming of his portrayal in previous films in this series — all whilst flashing an intimidation display like he did in the previous movie (see above). Team Godzilla discover that Godzilla is behaving this way because he can sense a signal being given off by Mechagodzilla's parts and can identify it as a threat to his dominance, yet he can't find the source when he makes landfall expecting a fight — what's more, it's implied in the movie and especially in the novelization that Godzilla can tell from the call that Mechagodzilla is a close relative of Ghidorah (the same bastard who's mentioned above) due to Ghidorah's undead skull being incorporated into the Mecha.
• Papa Wolf: He starts to protect humans and other Titans from each other in Godzilla Dominion.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Very destructive — he didn't get his position as king of the other Titans (who are themselves this trope) by playing golf. Even though this incarnation of Godzilla doesn't really hold anything against humanity, he can still cause a lot of urban destruction just by walking around. In the 2014 movie, he causes a tsunami when he arrives at high velocity by sea at Oahu, and in King of the Monsters, when he becomes Burning Godzilla, he basically nukes Boston three times over with his supercharged Nuclear Pulses. This is one of the main reasons why so many people hate and/or fear him so much, and why those people (erroneously) think mankind would be better off with him dead (especially before the events of King of the Monsters), no matter how many times Godzilla saves us and then leaves peacefully.
• Pet the Dog: Implied in Godzilla vs. Kong. Having sought out a fight and tussled with Kong twice, Godzilla, upon physically dominating Kong in their last fight with each-other after Godzilla has started taking Kong dead-seriously as an opponent; refuses to finish Kong off once he's beaten the latter and made his point. Made especially meaningful by the fact the two Alpha Titans' exchange of roars at the end made it clear to the audience that Kong was defiantly refusing to submit to Godzilla, even at the end when Godzilla demanded it of him after beating him.
• Phlebotinum Battery: Godzilla vs. Kong reveals that Godzilla's Atomic Breath and nuclear abilities aren't actually based on conventional radiation: their radiation signature is near-identical to that of the "life force" Phlebotinum running through the Hollow Earth, and both have the exact same light-blue glow. This indicates that Godzilla's atomic powers are actually derived from exposure to this element (Iwi mythology supports this in the movie's novelization, saying Godzilla or one of his kind "ate a star" in the Hollow Earth which enabled the creature to "throw rays of the star out of his mouth and burn things"^note Sound familiar?); and that Godzilla can metabolize the conventional radiation and radioactive materials he consumes into the same kind of energy.
• Phlebotinum Overdose: In King of the Monsters, feeding him the full blast of a nuclear warhead to heal him works "a little too well" and puts him on an Exact Time to Failure before he "explodes like an atom bomb". Only Mothra's actions save him.
• Physical God: This marine, bestial Animalistic Abomination was outright worshiped as a god by ancient civilizations (although he's not the Gods Need Prayer Badly type), and he's exceptionally powerful even amongst the Titans. A Person of Mass Destruction who also produces life-giving radiation and actively maintains the global ecosphere's equilibrium, Serizawa considers Godzilla to be a god of natural order and balance. He's millions of years old, he's even harder to kill than most of the Titans are, and he has a radioactive element which might literally be the life blood of the planet running through him as his blood and the source of his powers.
• Post-Victory Collapse: After Godzilla incinerates the female MUTO's innards and rips her head off, he quickly falls into a power nap. The population of San Francisco think he's dead until he wakes up the following morning.
• Power Dyes Your Fins: After being submerged inside of a frozen chamber that's surrounded by some type of red energy in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, he goes through a powered-up evolutionary transformation where he bursts himself out of it with his Toho-esque row of dorsal fins, that he's previously had in the last 2 films, are not only longer and spikier but are now fully colored magenta, which is also extremely similar to how his jagged dorsal fins looked in Godzilla 2000.
• Power Gives You Wings: Downplayed in King of the Monsters. When Godzilla unlocks his Super Mode via Mothra's Bequeathed Power, if one looks closely, Mothra's wings clearly materialize inside some of the Nuclear Pulse blast-waves.
• Power Glows: Godzilla's dorsal plates (and also his eyes from King of the Monsters onward) light up with blue light when he's charging up his Atomic Breath. In the aforementioned movie, when Godzilla is overcharged from absorbing the full power of an exploding nuke, his dorsal plates are glowing near-constantly; and when he becomes Burning Godzilla, his entire body is glowing about as bright as a citywide fire with red-orange light.
  • The inner segments of his gills around the sides of his neck simultaneously illuminates the same vibrant glow along with his brightened eyes and dorsal plates in several shots in Godzilla vs. Kong. Hell, even the external brims of his rigid-looking eyebrows also generate a fuchsia colored glow in his Evolved Form in the exact same way his fins and Atomic Breath do in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
• Power Up Full Color Change: As a result of the Energy Donation from Mothra's power, aside from scorching everything in sight, his entire body glows a blazing red accompanied by Volcanic Veins.
  • Right after he's absorbed an unspecified carmine energy into himself from an iceberg, his growth in power is so heavily boosted that his row of dorsal fins are constantly glowing with a vivid neon reddish-pink coloration in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
• Prehensile Tail: Displays this ability in Godzilla vs. Kong when he wraps and immobilizes Kong with his tail in his attempt to drown the ape.
• Prehistoric Monster: He is an apex predator who originates from the Permian period.
• Primary-Color Champion: Red is the color of Godzilla's eyes while blue is the standard color of his Atomic Breath. Red is also the color of his burning form and Nuclear Pulses that give him the power to destroy Ghidorah.
• Primate Versus Reptile: He is a reptilian Kaiju and has been in conflict with giant apes since ancient times.
  • As revealed in the comic Godzilla Dominion, Godzilla fought a giant ape who defeated him and drove him out of his lair in the past.
  • As indicated by the title, Godzilla fights Kong on several occasions in Godzilla vs. Kong. The two later have a brief rematch in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
  • In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Godzilla is revealed to have been at war with Skar King and his tribe since ancient times.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: At the end of King of the Monsters, he in his Burning Godzilla form is the opponent and Ghidorah the participant. Ghidorah desperately attempts to fend him off by blasting him at close range with all three Gravity Beams — Burning Godzilla not only No-Sells it, but almost seems to give Ghidorah a Slasher Smile in response, before he delivers the next three phases of Ghidorah's Rasputinian Death.

R-Z

• Rage Breaking Point: Godzilla is no pushover on the best of days, but in Godzilla vs. Kong, he hits this point during his Hong Kong battle against Kong when Kong successfully deals a significant blow to him. It becomes evident for the rest of the battle that Godzilla was to some extent holding back previously and now all bets are off as he brutally curb-stomps Kong. Probably exacerbating the Rage-Breaking Point is the stress Godzilla is already likely under throughout the film, frantically pursuing Mechagodzilla/Ghidorah's signal all over the world and being unable to find and destroy it every time he gets close.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Godzilla’s latest and presumably most powerful form to date in 'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire'' sees the G-man, rather than his traditional blue, but instead with Magneta Dorsal spikes and atomic breath.
• Reconstruction:
  • Various elements of his design are updated to seem more plausible. His feet are rounder like a sauropod's to support his tremendous weight, he has gills on the side of his neck to explain how he can live underwater, his armored hide and arms now look crocodilian, and his body is hunched slightly forward as a bipedal dinosaur would to maintain balance. In general, he's bulkier, as an animal his size and shape probably would be to support its own weight. In King of the Monsters, he has a more muscular build than in the previous movie, which is to be expected for a creature that has taken on a much more active lifestyle after the MUTOs' awakening.
  • This version of Godzilla overall balances out the alternatively destructive and heroic nature of his original Japanese incarnations into a more cohesive whole. Like his more negative interpretations, Godzilla is still a force of destruction awakened by nuclear activity, driven by sheer instinct and causing massive destruction in his wake. But through his Adaptational Heroism, and his eagerness to combat any Titan seeking to challenge him, he comes to represent a natural balancing force that restores order through destruction. He becomes a more heroic figure towards humanity after Dr. Serizawa performs a Heroic Sacrifice to rejuvenate him for the third round against Ghidorah, reflecting how nature reacts kindly to people when they take care of it.
• Red Baron: After he kills the MUTOs, a news channel has the headline "King of the Monsters: Savior of Our City?" Which indicates the ambivalent attitude humans have toward his Destructive Saviour status. He's also called the King of Destruction on the Godzilla vs. Kong Japanese promotional website, and the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization reveals that the Iwi know him as Zo-zla-halawa (which roughly means in their language, "Great eternal enemy").
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Downplayed. From Godzilla: King of the Monsters onward, his eyes (which were golden-colored in the 2014 movie) are now a bloody-looking orange color, which makes him look a lot less tranquil and a lot more fierce and pissed-off. Whilst he isn't evil (frankly, this Godzilla is one of the more noble iterations of the character), he's a fearsome Anti-Hero with little in the way of mercy when it comes to other Kaiju. In Godzilla vs. Kong, humanity at large outright assume that he's made a Face–Heel Turn due to the extremes he goes to and not understanding why he's provoked. In Godzilla x Kong, his eyes glow red after his metamorphosis into a more powerful form.
• Red Herring: A meta example. Every trailer for Godzilla (2014) made him out to be the primary threat, but in fact, the MUTOs are the real bad guys.
• Red Is Heroic: Godzilla's burning form is fiery red in color, which allows him to unleash a series of Nuclear Pulses that successfully obliterate the malevolent Ghidorah. His Evolved form in Godzilla x Kong also has red dorsal plates, glowing red eyes, and a crimson Atomic Breath. Even his own claws in said Evolved form has a slight dosage of a red colorant.
• Red Is Violent: Apart from the above-mentioned Red Eyes, Take Warning; in his Super Mode in King of the Monsters, Burning Godzilla is burning with reddish-orange light and radiating intense enough heat to cause almost every manmade structure within a certain radius of him to melt. And the way he proceeds to annihilate King Ghidorah is nothing short of merciless, prompting a Glad He's On Our Side remark from a disturbed Dr. Stanton who watches from a safe distance.
• Reflective Eyes: The Godzilla vs. Kong trailers and the finished movie feature such a shot on Godzilla's eye, the reflection showing Mechagodzilla's silhouette looming above him and closing toward him. It's pretty effective at conveying Godzilla's fear and sense of despair as it looks like Mechagodzilla, who has severely trounced and weakened Godzilla and is now closing in for the kill, is about to kill him for good.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: As hinted in the 2014 film's opening, and explicitly confirmed in Godzilla: Awakening and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters; Godzilla was presumed by Monarch and the United States military to have been killed when he was nuked by the Castle Bravo atomic bomb and disappeared in the blast. They remain convinced that he's dead for a few years in the canon version.
• Riding into the Sunset:
  • Played With in the 2014 film's ending. Godzilla is described as something of a last samurai who exists to restore balance to nature when its more chaotic creatures get out of line. Upon recovering from his Post-Victory Collapse after killing the MUTOs, Godzilla leaves the ruins of San Francisco and returns to the sea; accompanied by a triumphant score and by the cheers of the survivors in San Francisco who hail him as their savior, albeit in full morning daylight rather than at dawn or dusk.
  • Happens again in Godzilla vs. Kong, where Big G returns to the ocean after making peace with Kong and acknowledging that Kong saved his life.
• Roar Before Beating: He gives two massive ones at separate points in the 2014 film, and the sound is so awesome that CinemaSins immediately knocked two sin points off for one of those scenes. Godzilla does this again before the start of each of his battles in subsequent movies more often than not.
• Rocketless Reentry: Ghidorah forcibly inflicts this on Godzilla by constricting him and lifting him into the upper atmosphere, then dropping him; turning Godzilla into a fireball which violently crashes back to Earth, with nothing but his body's Super-Toughness saving him from burning to death or going splat.
• Rogue Protagonist: After being the chief Kaiju hero of Godzilla (2014), and especially Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) where he's at his most heroic while saving the world from King Ghidorah, he seemingly becomes a hostile antagonist in Godzilla vs. Kong; attacking populated manmade structures for mysterious reasons, and driving Team Kong to try and reach the Hollow Earth in the hopes they can use its Unobtainium to neutralize him. Between the film's two titular kaiju, Kong is the more protagonistic and virtuous-seeming of the two, while Godzilla is a major obstacle to Kong. Subverted when it's revealed that Godzilla is specifically attacking Apex facilities because he can sense their experiments are reanimating Ghidorah's remains, and Apex have been actively taking advantage of this to frame Godzilla as a rabid menace; making Godzilla's ruthless measures against the humans whom are in his way very understandable, after everything him and humanity did side-by-side to stop Ghidorah exterminating everyone in the previous film. It culminates in Godzilla and Kong working together to destroy Mechagodzilla after Ghidorah's subconsciousness has possessed it.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: After reclaiming his position as the planet's Alpha from Ghidorah and cowing the other Titans into submission, Godzilla becomes much more proactive in the world. He's implied to act as a control over the Titans, not only encouraging them to behave as part of the ecosystem but also driving them away from human settlements.
• Running on All Fours: He does this during his second fight with Kong during Godzilla vs. Kong after taking a serious beating from his opponent.
• Save This Person, Save the World: Played Straight in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). He's considered the only force on Earth which can truly rival Ghidorah, and once he's taken out by the Oxygen Destroyer, nothing is able to stop Ghidorah from destroying the world unopposed, forcing the humans to locate and revitalize Godzilla so that all life on Earth as we know it stands a fighting chance against King Ghidorah's army. The Russells also have to intervene to save Godzilla again during the Final Battle, when Ghidorah almost beats him on his own.
• Scars Are Forever: He is covered in Keloid scars, a reference to the Hiroshima victims (Godzilla was of course inspired by the US nuclear bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
• Sensory Abuse: His roar was made to be very cacophonous and dissonant along with being loud.
• Serkis Folk: He's primarily portrayed by TJ Storm via motion capture. For certain pivotal scenes in Godzilla (2014), Gareth Edwards had Andy Serkis himself hired to control the motions of Godzilla.
• Shown Their Work: According to this news article,◊ Gareth Edwards and his crew prepared for the monster fights by studying footage of animals fighting, so Godzilla's fighting style is based on those of real-life animals such as bears and komodo dragons.
• Shrouded in Myth: It's mentioned in the non-canon Godzilla: Awakening graphic novel that before Monarch first became aware of the myths about him, Godzilla was known in legends on islands across the Pacific Ocean. Being who he is, he's as powerful as the stories make him out to be and then some.
• The Silent Bob: Excluding his famous roar, of course. Anyways, he's the most expressive Godzilla to date, displaying a lot of body language, and even makes facial expressions.
• Single Specimen Species: Averted in the 2014 film, where the Muto cocoons were found in the fossilized skeleton of another member of Godzilla's species, dubbed Dagon/Raijin by the Aftershocks comic. However, according to Adam Wingard, following King of the Monsters Toho issued stipulations that included a mandate that Godzilla could not be referred to as part of a species but was to be treated as a one-of-a-kind entity, forcing some details of Godzilla vs. Kong to be changed as a result and retconning other members of his species into members of a "Godzilla-like species".
• Sinister Silhouettes: In the 2014 movie, the next time he appears after the HALO jump scene, he's in ominous silhouette; wreathed in fog with lightning flashing behind him while an unsettling piano string plays, with the Chinatown buildings in front of him to scale, before he slowly emerges from the fog with a snarl. That being said, at this point in the movie, it's clear to the characters and to the audience that Godzilla is at worst the lesser of two evils comparative to the creatures he's fighting, although it isn't until later that it becomes apparent just how much better he is than the MUTOs.
• Slasher Smile:
  • Implied when he's No-Selling Ghidorah's Gravity Beams in his Burning mode. It looks like he's flashing a nasty smile at this point, right before he retaliates by unleashing the second Nuclear Pulse against his nemesis.
  • During his battle against Kong in Hong Kong, he sports a terrifyingly epic grin after sniping Kong mid-leap with his Atomic Breath.
• Smart Animal, Inconvenient Instincts: As becomes increasingly clear throughout the movies, Godzilla has human levels of intelligence but he's also strongly driven by instincts to maintain order above all else. This really doesn't become an issue (in fact the combo of being able to reason and possessing a strong built in need to reduce conflict is beneficial to all life on Earth, not just humans) until Godzilla vs. Kong, where his instincts drive him to seek out and attack Kong after the latter is moved off of Skull Island — as Kong is an Alpha-level Titan in his own right that has yet to formally submit to Godzilla like the other Titans, Godzilla instinctually views him as a threat to his sovereignty and views his presence on the surface outside of Skull Island as an invasion of Godzilla's global territory, even though Kong himself doesn't seek a fight with Godzilla. This leads to Godzilla starting a completely unnecessary feud with Kong, distracting him from his real goal of hunting down the source of Mechagodzilla's Ghidorah-derived signal and destroying it. That being said, Godzilla seems to overcome his instincts against Kong at the end after the latter directly saves his life and helps him to destroy Mechagodzilla, accepting Kong's sue for peace and leaving him peacefully.
• Spared by the Adaptation: The 2014 film sees him survive to the end. King of the Monsters sees him (barely) survive the Oxygen Destroyer, the same weapon that killed the original Gojira, and Burning Godzilla ends up merely being a Super Mode that he survives, not a symptom of a Superpower Meltdown that kills him like the Heisei Godzilla. Adding to the Adaptational Badassness of this Godzilla surviving both, this was one Godzilla who did so in the same movie.
• Sphere of Destruction: His souped-up Nuclear Pulses in his Burning Godzilla state enkindles an outward spherical burst of energy decorated with the patterns of Mothra's wings, with each blast being so powerful that they violently incinerate (mostly) ALL of King Ghidorah's body to literal atoms.
• Spikes of Doom: The biggest visual details from the aftermath of his metamorphosis is that multiple sections of his body became noticeably spikier with minuscule pink glowing spines erupting out of his eyebrows that trail across both sides of his head along with rigid segments that are located around his lower jaw. Even his iconic dorsal fins have been given a major boost in the spiky department and are seemingly a hybrid between his former 2014 narrower spikes, and the saw-edged ones that are primarily based on his 2000 design. Both of his arms possess sharpened crystal-like barbs jutting out from underneath, and the tip of his tail is equipped with thagomizers.
• Spiritual Antithesis: He is this with each Toho Godzilla:
  • The original Godzilla was a normal dinosaur living in deep-sea caverns when a 1954 hydrogen bomb test horribly scarred and mutated him, for which held a large grudge against humanity. MonsterVerse Godzilla holds no ambivalence towards humanity over the U.S. military's attempt to kill him with a nuke in 1954 – if anything, it's hinted he perceived this attempt on his life as an offering due to how radiation nourishes him.
  • The Showa Godzilla first became a Villain Protagonist in his debut film, where he first fought Anguirus and where humans realized that the only reason he attacks humans is because they always respond with unprovoked aggression to him (which is lent further credence in King Kong vs. Godzilla, where he's minding his own business) — Showa Godzilla eventually becomes a heroic character and chooses to save the planet by his own admission. MonsterVerse Goji is indifferent to humans when hunting the MUTOs, and he grows more protective of humans after they actively try to save his life, whether directly or indirectly — at the end of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, he goes out of his way to make sure none of the Earth-borne Titans do harm to any of humanity's cities.
  • Heisei Godzilla started as a villain in his debut film, where he was an antagonistic force with an unyielding rage against humanity. But once his adopted son became part of his life, he eventually let go of his hate and tried to live in peace with Godzilla Junior. MonsterVerse Goji doesn't have many Morality Pets, but he does recognize when someone is trying to save him – this comes to a head when his reign prevents other Titans from rampaging.
  • Shin Godzilla is portrayed as an unstoppable God Incarnate of destruction, created by man's mistakes, and he suffers perpetual agony from his mutation whilst being thrown into a world he does not recognize. MonsterVerse Godzilla was discovered by early humans and worshiped as a god incarnate that brings balance to the world, and he knows what humans are and knows their evolution.
  • Near the end of World War II, Minus One Godzilla was a very aggressive animal that regularly comes to the shores of Odo Island, and has a very hostile behavior towards humans, even attacking them directly once he arrives to Ginza and literally nukes the city. In the 50's, Monsterverse Godzilla had nothing against humanity, and was more than curious about the H-Bomb before it literally blew up in his face. Even after the attempt on his life, he doesn't hold it against them.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: He manages to pull this off multiple times; usually when underwater, though occasionally he uses smoke and debris clouds.
• Stealthy Colossus: For a titanic prehistoric monster, he can easily sneak up on his enemies undetected without making a sound. Looks like he got his stealth lessons from Rexy.
• Stock Monster Symbolism: The film gives him a Gaia's Vengeance characterization on top of being a consequence of the atom bomb.
• Stout Strength: He's more heavily built than other versions of the character, but it doesn't make him any less dangerous.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Though he mostly outmatches Kong (and by extension almost all of the foes Kong faces) by being on a higher power level, Godzilla nevertheless stays wholly out of Skull Island's affairs even when the island and its protector are endangered. Justified, as Kong and Godzilla, both being territorial and established Alpha Titans of separate species — with Skull Island being under Kong's sovereignty and the rest of the Earth's surface being Godzilla's territory — aren't built to share direct territory with each-other; to stay nothing of the history of bad blood Godzilla has with Kong's kind.
• Super Mode:
  • In King of the Monsters, he has two of a sort. After absorbing the radiation from a nuclear explosion that detonated a few meters from his head, not only is his regeneration from his crippling wounds massively accelerated, but Godzilla's dorsal plates are now constantly glowing, and he's empowered enough to fight King Ghidorah on even footing (at least until Ghidorah himself powers up with a whole city's worth of electricity). It's something of a double-edged sword however, as Godzilla is overloading from absorbing too much radiation and he's building toward a nuclear explosion, implying this might have ultimately been a Deadly Upgrade for him. After Mothra dies and Godzilla absorbs her ashes, Godzilla briefly transforms into Burning Godzilla: in this state, he's virtually invulnerable, radiating intense enough heat to smelt entire skyscrapers, and he's capable of ejecting Nuclear Pulses powerful enough to vaporize most of Ghidorah's body and level Boston, all whilst burning off the excess radiation from his aforementioned overload. According to Mike Dougherty, the Burning Godzilla mode is part of Godzilla and Mothra's symbiotic bond.
  • In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, after gorging himself on a nuclear power plant he enters a powered-up state where he's covered in glowing blue Tainted Veins and emitting so much intense radiation and heat that the water around him boils when he returns to the ocean. This combined with the energy from Tiamat's lair metamorphoses him into his Evolved form, a leaner and much stronger version of his standard body explicitly compared to the Kaio-ken by Wingard.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Justified. For the first time, Godzilla has gills on the sides of his neck, explaining how he can live underwater. The Toho Godzillas do have gills, but theirs are barely noticeable since theirs is at the base of their necks (a design choice by Toho so the suit actors can see through the neck). Here, this Godzilla's gills are visible on each side of his neck.
• Super-Persistent Predator: A slight variation in that Godzilla hunts threats to his dominance and/or his life rather than food. Godzilla has demonstrated multiple times that more often than not, once he's set his mind to eliminating a rival Titan, he won't stop until he's accomplished that goal or died trying: tracking the MUTOs from one side of the Pacific to the other, and likewise pursuing threats such as Jinshin-Mushi and Mechagodzilla's signal all over the planet. Godzilla also goes out of his way to seek a fight with Kong once the latter has essentially invaded Godzilla's domain by leaving Skull Island, with the characters noting Godzilla went out of his usual territorial routes to find them, and Godzilla furthermore did this when he already had finding the part-Ghidorah Mechagodzilla to focus on.
• Super-Senses: According to the King of the Monsters novelization, he navigates using sound when underwater and has even memorized his entire lair using just his hearing.
• Super Special Move: In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Godzilla's Atomic Breath/Heat Ray turns magenta and becomes more powerful due to being infused with Tiamat's power. In the novelization, he's able to supercharge it into a Spiral Heat Ray when attempting to blast the Skar King and putting an end to Shimo's Ice Age-causing blizzard.
• Super-Strength: One of his most significant natural powers, just like all of the previous incarnations before him. Godzilla is a dominant Titan of a powerhouse who tends to deal major damage to his enemies with impressive physical prowess, outside of using his Atomic Breath. He's sent Hokmuto packing immediately in Godzilla (2014), due to the noticeable size and strength advantage during their brief clash at the Honolulu airport, as well as partially destroying most of the buildings thereafter. Later in the film, he's powerful enough to outmuscle Femuto, who's capable of clawing herself out of Mount Yucca, by creating a gigantic hole within the mountain after hearing her mate's echolocation frequencies. Godzilla managed to stop her in her tracks effortlessly with using only one hand as he's biting into her neck ^note  Causing her to spit up blood on occasion. , effortlessly shoving her through skyscrapers, and pinned her to the ground with a mighty Finishing Stomp. Had it not been for the male to intervene, Godzilla would've clearly finished her off a lot sooner. After getting a read on the Hokmuto's pesky flying maneuvers, he readies himself by using his powerful tail to slam him into a building so hard, his body gets completely wedged into the rebar, via impaling him. In Godzilla: Aftershock, one of his claw slashes was able to visibly injure MUTO Prime by drawing blood from her, as well as carrying her gigantic body and mass onto his back long enough to use his Nuclear Pulse, and after doing so, he finally destroys the parasitic queen by crushing her head in with a brutal stomp.
  • He's also shown to be a match for King Ghidorah in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) as the 2 powerful Alpha Titans created enormous shockwaves whenever they charged into each other at least on 2 occasions in the film, especially during the second time in the climax where the Kung-Fu Sonic Boom was a lot more distinct and visible in Boston. His bites managed to get a pained shriek out of Ni (the right head) and used a violent chokeslam so hard, a power line was knocked over from the impact. One scene shows him using his his bulk, mass, and even agility by lunging towards King Ghidorah with a powerful diving tackle, hard enough to knock him out of the sky and into the depths and had him on the ropes with his Homefield Advantage by being able to sink his teeth into Kevin's jugular, using his jaw strength to freshly tear off his head with no issue. Several points during the battle in Boston displays him outright tossing around King Ghidorah, a Titan weighing 141,056 tons, into multiple skyscrapers and has even aggressively rammed him through one of them, which forcefully floored him to the ground after the latter was ensnared by Mothra's silk.
  • This is shown to wild effect in Godzilla vs. Kong when multiple times he's shown to be incredibly strong, being able to knock Kong flat on his back with a slap or throw him thousands of feet with his jaws. The impact of him flinging Kong away with his jaws was so brutal, it dislocated one of his shoulders and continues to beat him to near-death with overwhelming brute force. During his one-sided fight with Mechagodzilla, with the help of Kong, both monsters were able to use him as a metallic battering ram by bludgeoning him through a skyscraper as well as scraping him across smaller ones.
  • In Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, he's physically stronger than any of the other Titans bar Shimo who he's able to fight to a standstill in his Evolved form. Skar King with his full weight can't pry his whip out of Godzilla's mouth who promptly launches him across several city blocks, he's able to swing Scylla huge distances by her legs (after staggering her upwards with his shoulder) and can plough through the pyramids without slowing down.
• Super-Toughness: Conventional weapons do nothing but annoy him unless they're aimed at his gills, and he even survives being dropped from the edge of space by Ghidorah. In Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, a younger and slimmer Godzilla is shown taking the 15 megaton Castle Bravo nuke to the face... and as shown in Godzilla, it did nothing but make him stronger. This is repeated in Godzilla: King of the Monsters when Serizawa detonates a nuclear bomb in Godzilla's face to revitalize him when he's mortally wounded by the Oxygen Destroyer, and Godzilla is not only unharmed but supercharged.
• Superior Successor: There's a chance that he can be seen as this to Dagon: Serizawa mentions in the 2014 movie that Dagon was likely even older than Godzilla. With that in mind, Godzilla was able to put an end to MUTO Prime, where Dagon comparatively didn't last long and was easily defeated in front of his worshippers. Either the MUTO Prime was too powerful, or Dagon was just far too old to battle. Godzilla killing the male and female MUTO can also be seen as an act of vengeance.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: The massive, radioactive, eldritch King of the Monsters has golden eyes which provide some distinct Color Contrast against his charcoal grey hide. (At least in the 2014 movie and in all his graphic novel appearances — from Godzilla: King of the Monsters onward, Godzilla's eyes in the movie are orange.)
• Tail Slap:
  • How Godzilla kills the male MUTO, coupled with Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Godzilla's tail strike flattens the MUTO against a skyscraper, cutting off one of its legs and impaling it on rebar.
  • He also performs this against King Ghidorah, with surprising grace, almost pirouetting on his feet to whip the dragon.
  • In the middle of his oncoming attack upon the naval forces at the Tasman Sea, he swings his tail at an unsuspecting fighter jet whilst killing the pilot within it. In the third round, he lets out a rather fast flick of his tail that topples Kong over, lowering his footing.
  • He slams Skar King in a similar manner he did with the male MUTO, minus the Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.
• Tainted Veins:
  • Unleashing his powerful Nuclear Pulse that's erupting out of his back to incapacitate the stunned MUTO Prime in Aftershock seemed to have caused a multitude of stress from its sheer power to the point where most of his veins, that are painfully crackling from his skin, became visible, especially around the back of his body. It's highly implied that venting out that much destructive atomic energy from his blown up dorsal spines seemed to have become uncontrollable without the use of them.
  • In Godzilla x Kong, gorging himself on a nuclear power plant causes him to be covered in glowing blue vein-like markings.
• That's No Moon: In the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episode "Terrifying Miracles", the ridge in the Algerian Desert that Lee Shaw, May Olowe-Hewitt and the Randa half-siblings are standing near turns out to be Godzilla's rock- and dust-encrusted dorsal spines, as they're standing directly atop a spot where he's burrowed into the ground for hibernation.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Much like the Heisei and various Millennium series Godzillas, MonsterVerse Godzilla makes sure that his enemies (with the exception of Kong) stay dead. He kills Femuto by breathing Atomic Breath down her neck and into her guts until her neck melts, he crushes Jinshin-Mushi's head, and he completely vaporizes King Ghidorah to make sure the latter doesn't regenerate from any part of his body.
• Throat Light: Averted in the 2014 movie. Downplayed in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where Godzilla's mouth only ever flashes with light for a split-second if at all before his fiery atomic breath discharges, until the end when he's using his atomic breath to cook Ichi's severed head without fully discharging. Played Straight in Godzilla vs. Kong, where Godzilla's throat and eyes emit blue light multiple times when his atomic breath is charging, whilst he's constantly agitated throughout the movie. This progression is a possible sign that Godzilla is growing stronger with each film, especially after he got overcharged by a modern nuke during the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
• Time Abyss: Godzilla is suggested in Godzilla: Awakening to have survived the End-Permian Extinction and shifted between dormancy and active hunting across 250 million years, appearing at various points throughout human history; although that account is no longer necessarily canon after the release of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
• Tiny-Headed Behemoth: He quite noticeably has a stockier body and a proportionally smaller head than previous incarnations of the character — though this can be somewhat Hand Waved by the more realistic take on the design to make him more bottom-heavy — and the trait notably seems to increase with each redesign between movies.
• Token Flyer: Inverted in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), where he's the only one of the "Big Four" main monster characters in that movie who isn't a giant flyer and can't fly in any capacity, as pointed out by How It Should Have Ended.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In the first two movies, he went out of his way to avoid causing unnecessary destruction and human casualities. From Godzilla vs. Kong onwards, not so much.
• Top God: He's the King of the Gods type in relation to the other Titans on Earth, predicated mainly on Asskicking Leads to Leadership. Ghidorah — a rival in the same Alpha weight class as Godzilla, Mothra and Kong — actively challenges Godzilla for this kingship, successfully usurping it in King of the Monsters when Godzilla is crippled and brought to near-death by the Oxygen Destroyer, which forces Godzilla to fight King Ghidorah to reclaim the position.
• Truer to the Text: The intentional design choice made by the makers of the film is to portray him faithfully to his Toho portrayals while making him as realistic as possible; in contrast to his 1998 counterpart which could be felled by twelve missiles. He is more based on his Toho versions, but whereas those versions seek to punish humanity for their creation, MonsterVerse Godzilla is about as indifferent to people as people are to insects. He's easily the strongest incarnation of Godzilla created in the west to date.
• Unblockable Attack: Burning Godzilla's Nuclear Pulses. In King of the Monsters, just one pulse incinerates Ghidorah's protective wings all the way down to the bone and sends the dragon reeling whilst leveling the surrounding city. Ghidorah is completely helpless against Burning Godzilla's next two Nuclear Pulses, which incinerate all of Ghidorah except for a single head.
• Unknown Rival: Downplayed. As revealed in the novelizations, Kong has been aware of Godzilla's presence beyond Skull Island's shores for a long time, but he remains apathetic so long as Godzilla keeps his distance from Skull Island. Godzilla on the other hand views Kong as a potential rival to his dominance as the reigning Alpha, and he's quick to attack him once he leaves Skull Island (even when Godzilla already has another rival to deal with), but Kong still has no interest in usurping Godzilla's dominance on the surface world. It's only after Godzilla's attack in the Tasman Sea that Kong begins to acknowledge him as a threat, and even then he doesn't go after Godzilla for a rematch until the other Alpha destroys his ancestral home in Hollow Earth, provoking him.
• Unscrupulous Hero: He doesn't go out of his way to destroy everything in sight, and seems to actively avoid it most of the time. Even when humans fire at him or attack him with military-grade weapons in the 2014 movie, he just shrugs off their attacks and focuses on going for his natural enemy: the MUTOs. Though, he doesn't avoid it entirely, like at the Golden Gate bridge where he was clearly provoked. The tidal wave in Hawaii is the only time he hurt anyone without a good reason, and even then, it's not clear he realized that was going to happen.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He prefers to use brute strength and tenacity rather than skill (though he is quite capable of doing the opposite). Due to his large size, this is probably his most fitting style, as he's not really fast like Hokmuto or Rodan.
• Unstoppable Rage: Not as much as older versions of the monster but when he starts fighting the MUTOs he really starts to let loose by unleashing his primal rage and destructive power to kill his targets. Played Straight when he powers up and takes out Ghidorah.
• Vein-o-Vision: A rather unique ability that this incarnation of Godzilla possesses by using thermal vision alternatively to detect any organism's temperature if his eyes are incapacitated, which proved to be in great practical usage after he was painfully blinded by Tiamat's vapor.
• Victorious Roar: After killing both the MUTOs, after killing Jinshin-Mushi, and after killing King Ghidorah and becoming the new Alpha of the awakened Titans which were formerly under Ghidorah's control; Godzilla lets loose a skyward roar each time.
• Vocal Dissonance: Starting with King of the Monsters, he was given additional roars with his own. He has the deep bellows of the original 1954 incarnation, the high-pitched roars of the Showa and Heisei incarnations, and the pitch-scream of the 1998 Zilla.
• Volcanic Veins:
  • He seems to sport these in his Burning Godzilla form, with red-orange light leaking through the cracks between his scales.
  • His Evolved Form in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has pulsating vein-like glowing patterns within his newly serrated dorsal fins.
• Walking Wasteland: Under normal conditions, he's not much more of a walking disaster than the average Titan, but when he goes full-on Burning Godzilla, the immense heat his body exudes is enough to cause all nearby buildings to instantly start melting.
• Water Is Blue: He's a semi-aquatic, ocean-dwelling Kaiju whose bio-atomic powers produce blue light when he activates them, he's often shown swimming in blue oceans in later appearances after his debut, and he has a prominent blue theme in MonsterVerse marketing material from Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla: Aftershock onwards. In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the Big Four monsters all have distinct Color-Coded Elements, and in Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla has an Orange/Blue Contrast with the land-dwelling Kong.
• The Worf Effect: Highly Downplayed in Godzilla X Kong, but when the two titular Titans briefly clash in Cairo, Kong's new B.E.A.S.T. armament, worn to help him recover functionality in his arm after it got damaged by Shimo's Breath Weapon, proves capable of allowing him to contend against the King of the Monsters, even with his own Next Tier Power-Up to face the primordial Ice Titan. It allows Kong to defend himself against Godzilla's bites and claw attacks that overwhelmed him before and even briefly stuns him with a mean uppercut, followed by a rapid No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that temporarily renders him insensate. That said, Godzilla swiftly recovers and pins Kong down for a Finishing Move, demonstrating that he's still the superior fighter between them, but it's a markedly better showing than Kong got from the two losses the last time they faced each other.
• Worf Had the Flu: Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard has stated that Godzilla only did as poorly as he did against Mechagodzilla because he was exhausted from fighting Kong. If nothing else, he likely wouldn't have lost the Beam-O-War if he'd been at full power.
• World's Strongest Man: There's a reason why he's the King of the Monsters, which is a title any Kaiju must earn. He and Ghidorah are pretty even, all things considered, and external factors usually determine which battles either one wins, notwithstanding the fact Ghidorah is an alien, thus having abilities outside of the Earth-bound kaiju pool. In Godzilla X Kong, Shimo appears to be a strong rival to Godzilla for this position, as he needed to power himself up for their coming battle. What's notable however is that his resulting evolution does appear to be permanent, and with it, he was able to withstand her absolute zero ice breath, manhandle her on equal footing and dispel her ice age inducing storm, something which appears to leave even her in awe.
• Worm Sign: In Godzilla (2014), he creates a massive swell in the water as he swims, with his dorsal plates protruding from the top. The act of landfall is preceded by a tsunami (though this doesn't normally happen on such a scale when he comes onto land). And like the previous American incarnation, his vocal noises can be heard before his arrival.
• Wrestler in All of Us: This incarnation of Godzilla seems to be somewhat a grappler-esque brawler in certain ways. One example is when after biting Ghidorah's right head (Ni), he grabs the latter with both hands and does a chokeslam. He also does a one-handed variant of the move, by dunking one of the heads underwater when he's grappling with a disadvantaged Ghidorah in the ocean.
  • Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire: During their brief skirmish, Godzilla actually performs a suplex on Kong, of all people.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: In King of the Monsters, Godzilla in his overcharged state causes the lightning of Ghidorah's hurricane to flash blue instead of yellow around him during his arrival in Boston, contrasting with Ghidorah's unnatural yellow lightning just across the battlefield.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: How he reclaims control of Earth's other Titans from Ghidorah after the latter usurped him.
• You Will Not Evade Me: In King of the Monsters, Godzilla uses his Super Mode to incinerate King Ghidorah's wings down to the bone with a thermonuclear pulse, ensuring that Ghidorah can't fly away to escape like he previously did in Antarctica.

Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong crossover

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• Behemoth Battle: Between him, Tiamat and the Kraken of Atlantis at the end if issue 4 and for most of issue 5.
• Beam-O-War: Godzilla's Atomic Breath vs Superman's Heat Vision. There is no clear winner.
• Hero Antagonist: He goes against the entire Justice League on the comic book, and wants to take down Superman especially because Godzilla apparently has no idea he traveled to another universe, and he perceives Superman's existence as unnatural and a threat to preserving the natural order.
• Hero Killer: He apparently manages to kill Atom Smasher and the Man of Steel of all people with his atomic breath.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Many members of the Justice League notice how strong and tough Godzilla is. Superman's punches, Hawkgirl's spiked Nth metal mace, are less than effective.
  • Averted later on. Shazam's divine lightning strikes do cause him pain, and a double-uppercut by Shazam and Supergirl is enough to knock flat on his back.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Godzilla vs Superman. Godzilla wins, albeit due to Superman shielding Billy Batson. It's also evident that Superman was trying to minimize the damage in Metropolis and couldn't go all out.

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