Characters / MonsterVerse - King Kong

Main Character IndexKaijuGodzilla | 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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"King" Kong

"He's king around here. He's god to these people."

^{Click here to see him in Kong: Skull Island}

^{Click here to see his animated appearance in Skull Island (2023)}

Portrayed By: Terry Notary (motion capture, Kong: Skull Island), Toby Kebbell (facial animation, Kong: Skull Island), Eric Petey (motion capture and facial animation, Godzilla vs. Kong)

Appears In: Kong: Skull Island | Skull Island: The Birth of Kong (tie-in comics) | Godzilla: King of the Monsters (footage cameo) | Kingdom Kong (tie-in comic) | Godzilla vs. Kong | Skull Island | Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong | Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (cameo) | Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted | Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Species: Giant prehistoric ape | "Titanus Kong"

"Kong's a pretty good king. Keeps to himself, mostly. This is his home. We're just guests here. But you don't go into someone's house and start dropping bombs, unless you're picking a fight."

— Hank Marlow

The last known living member of a species of gigantic primates that inhabited Skull Island. He is a (once thought) mythical giant ape worshiped by the natives of Skull Island like a god and a king.

In 1973, an expedition to Skull Island ended up on the receiving end of an adolescent Kong's rage when the intruding humans tried to map the uncharted land by dropping bombs, inadvertently waking the Skullcrawlers, the island's invasive species responsible for wiping out Kong's family. A number of the survivors eventually saw Kong for the benevolent king he is, saved him from a renegade colonel, and helped him assert his rightful place as the True King of Skull Island by aiding him in the battle against the largest Skullcrawler, the Skull Devil.

Half a century later, after maturing into a full-grown adult, Kong found himself facing many new challenges, both deep in the Hollow Earth and on the surface - none more taxing than the King of the Monsters himself, Godzilla.

For the previous versions of King Kong, see here.

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#-H

• 11th-Hour Ranger: In Skull Island: The Birth of Kong, he arrives just in time to prevent a pack of Mother Longlegs from massacring the Iwi.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Although this version of Kong doesn't die in an unfamiliar urban city far from his home like in the mainstream King Kong narrative, his survival comes at the cost of a lot of extra angst for him. As is the case in other continuities' supplementary materials, Kong is the Last of His Kind who likely watched his parents being ripped apart by predators, and he's consequently very lonely and yearns for social interaction — unlike in more mainstream King Kong narratives, this version of Kong goes on to live through the death of his Beauty, and he gets to live through and witness the destruction of his island home which also eradicates the humans and planimals that he spent his life protecting and caring for.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Kong's always been a badass, but in both the original movie and the Peter Jackson remake, he was taken out by biplanes. In Kong: Skull Island, he easily takes on a squadron of attack helicopters, largely because this incarnation of Kong is a lot bigger than almost any previous version — and that's before he's even reached his adult size.
  • By Godzilla vs. Kong, we see him fully grown and he dwarfs his Toho incarnation. That said, he does not have any lightning powers and is thoroughly beaten by Godzilla twice, whereas his Toho version defeated the Big G in their first and only outing. That also being said, Kong is the one who destroys Mechagodzilla — who, for reference, is controlled by the surviving consciousness of King Ghidorah — at the end, tearing the Mechanical Abomination to pieces with his atomic breath-empowered axe.
• Adaptational Heroism: Kong is rarely portrayed as an outright hero, and even in this incarnation he outright kills or attempts to kill human beings with little to no restraint once they've attacked him or have otherwise grossly crossed him. However, this version of Kong is rightfully considered by the natives to be a protector, and it should be noted that the humans he does kill have always committed some direct affront against him to warrant it. So long as humans don't do anything to warrant his anger, Kong tends to help or protect them from the island's more dangerous or actively malicious denizens, going far out of his way to protect the likes of Weaver, Jia, and the Island Girl, Dog and Annie. By the time of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire his heroism is cranked up several notches, with him going on a quest to not only stop the Skar King from taking over the surface world but also free his fellow ape titans from his tyranny, even showing anger whenever the Skar King enforces his cruel regime and wishing to avenge his victims.
• Adaptational Intelligence: While past incarnations of Kong are hardly dumb, this version has shown intelligence closer to a human level. He is able to make makeshift weapons, knows when certain individual humans aren't being a threat or trying to be one, and as revealed in Godzilla vs. Kong, can use Human Sign Language. The last one is very important as it's revealed that he learned it from observing Jia and Ilene communicating with each other this way when the latter was trying to find a way to communicate with him but deliberately kept it to himself.
• Adaptational Wimp: Unlike the Toho King Kong from the original King Kong vs. Godzilla, this one doesn't have any electrical powers, and although he does gain a dorsal-plate axe that is capable of countering the Big G's atomic breath, he ultimately loses two fights against Godzilla, and likewise only manages to beat Mechagodzilla by having said atomic breath empower his axe.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: He's a composite of his former incarnations. The bipedal stance and shape of the 1976 version, scars of the 2005 version, facial build and coloration resembling the 1933 original version, and the kaiju-sized scaling of the Toho versions^note Also like the Toho Kong, this version exists within the same universe as Godzilla. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire finally gives him electrical powers like his Toho counterpart via his new B.E.A.S.T. Glove.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Unlike his past incarnations (but like that of the film King Kong Lives), this version of Kong has virtually no interest in keeping the main human female character as his companion/pet. While Kong may share a few tender moments with Weaver in the movie, he does little more than make sure she's safe but otherwise leaves her be and doesn't take it any further. Word of God describes Kong's desire not solely about female companionship, but rather companionship akin to that of a family. We see this on display in Godzilla vs. Kong when he's convinced to enter the Hollow Earth when Jia says he might find his family, and in the Skull Island animated series where he shares a very personal friendship with the Island Girl and is crushed by hers and her village's murders at the Kraken's tentacles. Ultimately, Kong does achieve his desire again after his Family of Choice in Jia, Ilene, and Nathan decide to move with him to Hollow Earth at the end of Godzilla vs. Kong.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In most media, Kong is equal parts feared and revered by the natives of Skull Island, who attempt to placate him with ritual sacrifices. Here, his species are worshiped by the Iwi as benevolent guardian deities and their stalwart protectors; Kong likewise is fully aware of the Iwi and goes out of his way to protect them if they are threatened, but leads a solitary life and never enters their village. In the Skull Island series, Kong had an even more personable and amicable relationship with an unrelated group of Skull Island natives that were under his protection, before they were tragically murdered by the Kraken.
• Age-Appropriate Angst: Considering this Kong is technically a teenager by his species' standards in Kong: Skull Island, his reactions are pretty much justified. When he was even younger, Kong lost his parents as well as any other relatives to the Skullcrawlers. In the tie-in comic Skull Island: The Birth of Kong, Riccio's visions (which may or may not be real) state Kong's parents were mauled to death just after he was born, and he watched it with his own eyes after having already imprinted on them, so anger and solemn angst are obviously present.
• Age Lift: As mentioned elsewhere, this Kong is much, much younger than the other versions of the character, which are described as being prehistoric. While his species of ape has been around for that long in this continuity, as evidenced by ancient cave paintings in King of the Monsters showing a battle between his and Godzilla's species, Kong himself is only a teenager in The '70s and is still growing. Word of God even compares Kong to a 14-year-old human.
• All There in the Manual: The novelization of Godzilla: King of the Monsters explains that Kong didn't participate in the film's events because he doesn't care about or follow whoever is in charge; his only concerns are being alone and keeping Skull Island safe. The Skullcrawlers waking up and getting active due to King Ghidorah's summons, and his subsequent attempts to hold them back on Skull Island, gets him angry and ready for some fighting, though.
• The Aloner: In his POV chapter in the novelization of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, it states the reason he remained on Skull Island during the events of the movie was that he doesn't care what happens to the world beyond his island so long as the island is left alone, and he doesn't want to associate with the other Titans.
• 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 Kong the Batman. Both are Badass Normal (relatively speaking) heroes who don't possess any extra powers but still manage to come out on top with their wits, brawn and use of gadgets, both watched their parents die at a young age and both are generally grim and stoic. Kong even ends up adopting a small, red-coloured protege!
• Animal Facial Hair: For his Art Evolution shown in Godzilla vs. Kong, the very bottom of his chin has long grown hairs which resembles something to that of a lumberjack's beard. While this is technically seen as a visual indication of his reached adulthood, this trait is practically Truth in Television as there are some species of primates that are able to grow human-like tufts of beards beneath their chins.
• Animals Lack Attributes: Kong has no nipples, and even more so with the bits below. He does have prominent human-like buttocks though. It could be handwaved as him being a Titan, and therefore a completely different form of life to anything on Earth's surface which only happens to look and act like a species of ape. Subverted Kong actually does have nipples, they just happen to be very and blend in with the rest of his skin.
• Animals Respect Nature: He's a major keystone species on Skull Island, holding back the invasive Skullcrawler hordes whenever they emerge; he feeds on the island's carnivores without hunting them into extinction, and exhibits clear signs of compassion for the island's herbivores and the Iwis when any of them are injured or in distress. In Kong: Skull Island, Kong attacks and decimates the Sky Devils when they start dropping explosive and ecologically-destructive seismic charges on the island (not on him, on the island, as the Sky Devils aren't even aware of him until he launches the first retaliatory strike). With all this and with Kong's human-like levels of intelligence in mind, it's easy to conclude that he's conscious of his territory's overall health and continuation – his perspective in the Godzilla: King of the Monsters novelization further supports this.
• Anti-Hero: He's as classically heroic as a destructive kaiju can get, but he still causes a fair bit of collateral damage and is downright brutal to his enemies, who he always inflicts a Cruel and Unusual Death on and occasionally eats.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • To the Skullcrawlers and their alpha, the Skull Devil. They are the creatures responsible for killing Kong's parents and leaving him as the last of his kind.
  • He's also a downplayed one to Godzilla. It's indicated that his race and the Big G's have a very old rivalry, with both being Alpha Titans competing for dominance over the other Titans, and the novelization explains that Godzilla's kind drove Kong's (as well as their Iwi worshippers) out of the Hollow Earth. However, since Kong is a natural member of the Earth's order, Godzilla does not have the intense personal grudge against him as he does against Ghidorah, which leads to Godzilla simply leaving him to die of his injuries instead of finishing him off. Likewise, Kong has no real interest in the rivalry and only fights Godzilla to either defend himself or after being aggravated one time too many, in fact once Mechagodzilla is defeated, he only takes up his axe when Godzilla approaches him but drops it soon to show he's no threat, and later returning to the Hollow Earth to rule as Alpha there.
  • He gets a definitive one in the Skar King, the cruel ape's regime invokes his wrath and he pulls no stops in stopping him and his mad ambitions.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: As an attempt to critically damage Godzilla in the second round, Kong, as shocking as it sounds, gets through Godzilla's defenses by using his energy-stored battle axe to slice into his nearly-impervious scales by cutting into his thigh, to which Godzilla throws Kong off as he quickly flings it away. Kong's axe itself creates behind an open wound, which can potentially leave him open to attack that can legitimately harm him. Even when Kong is getting clobbered to near-death by his opponent, he aggressively strikes the location of the injury he created earlier as the result causes Godzilla to yowl in genuine discomfort before he slams his foot onto his ribs.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: He's shown eating a squid in his debut movie (while also implicitly eating a human soldier), he slurps out the innards of a Warbat's head in Godzilla vs. Kong, and he eats a grass cat in the Skull Island series. Real gorillas are almost exclusively herbivores; they occasionally eat termites to aid with diarrhea, but that's it. Subverted that, while a giant ape, Kong is clearly not a giant gorilla, like the 2005 version (for example, he's primarily bipedal and lacks the pot-belly gorillas have for digesting rough plant matter).
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The Iwi worship Kong as their god since he is the largest and the most powerful creature on Skull Island, and uses his Alpha Titan status to protect the Iwi from its ferocious predators and other formidable threats.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In previous movies, Kong was just big enough to hold an entire human in his hand; Kong: Skull Island makes him 104 feet (31 meters) tall, so large that he can hold an entire human in his palm — and since he's only a teenager at that point, he's still growing. Fifty years later, in Godzilla vs. Kong, the adult Kong stands 334 feet (102 meters) tall, making him almost the same height as Godzilla himself when fully erect, and able to carry a person on his fingernail alone. Since this version was planned from the very beginning to butt heads with the Big G at some point, it makes sense.
• Attack the Injury: One final attack he delivers to Godzilla using his only good arm was by throwing one nasty punch to the horrific split-open gash across his thigh that his trusty battle axe left behind, which in turn, made Godzilla actually experience a moment of anguish from the giant gorilla's strength that caused him to scream. After that, he loses horribly to the King of the Monsters.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: In the Hollow Earth in Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong sitting on a massive stone structure resembling a throne, his new axe held like a regal scepter (or barbarian king's weapon) is framed to evoke this trope, as Kong claims the right to be called King Kong.
• Badass and Child Duo: The King of the Primates has taken in the last, orphaned Iwi Jia under his personal guard since the rest of her tribe perished amid Skull Island's destruction. With Kong having lost his homeland and Jia her people amid Skull Island's destruction, Kong is personally protective of Jia, and he can even mutually communicate with her through sign language, though he initially hides the latter fact from other humans out of distrust.
• Badass in Distress:
  • During his fight with the Skull Devil in Kong: Skull Island, he gets tangled in chains, and would have been an easy kill for the giant Skullcrawler had it not been for the expedition distracting it with turret fire.
  • In the graphic novel Kingdom Kong, Camazotz manages to subdue him by lifting him up and dropping him from the air several times. The bat Titan would have feasted on Kong's blood if he had not been disoriented by the sonic boom produced by Audrey Burns' fighter jet.
  • Several times in Godzilla vs. Kong. He gets nearly drowned by Godzilla during his first fight, he is almost suffocated to death by a Warbat in the Hollow Earth, he would have died from cardiac arrest after his second fight with Godzilla and he was inches away from being impaled by Mechagodzilla's tail. And he was saved from certain death through the efforts of the human characters.
  • Subverted in the 2023 series Skull Island. During the Final Battle, although the Kraken drags him down to the sea floor and holds him there to drown him (which is a major problem for Kong), Kong manages to break free, stun the Kraken, and get back above the water surface all on his own without any outside assistance.
• Badass Normal: By Titan standards — he lacks a Breath Weapon or elemental powers like Godzilla, Rodan, or Mothra, fighting with just his strength, agility, and skill at making improvised weapons (though it is also noted his healing capacity is greater than a normal creature). He is able to match up well enough to be considered an Alpha Titan, a rank shared with few others.
• Bad with the Bone: The gigantic red bone that's forged from a deceased Titan was created as the handle to make up his axe, along with having various wrapping around the dorsal fin from Godzilla's ancestor that functions as a cutting blade.
• Barbarian Hero: He's a classic example in every regard except for being a skyscraper-sized gorilla - a straightforward-but-cunning Genius Bruiser from an ancient Heroic Lineage with an impressive Heroic Build and Beard of Barbarism who wields his Ancestral Weapon Barbaric Battleaxe in defence of a civilisation he has extremely ambiguous feelings towards.
• Bash Brothers: In Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla and Kong become this when they finally work together to fight Mechagodzilla after Jia convinces Kong that Godzilla is not the enemy. Godzilla seems to realize the alliance as well: empowering Kong's axe to allow him to defeat Mechagodzilla, having no further animosity with him afterward, and departing peacefully, allowing both to be kings of their own respective worlds.
• Beard of Barbarism: By the time of Kingdom Kong and Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong has grown a beard. And he definitely has a barbarian air about him, especially after he obtains his ancestors' axe; being a ferocious warrior of a primate who eats the flesh of his slain foes.
• Beast and Beauty: In King Kong tradition, he takes an immediate interest in Weaver, nearly losing an arm protecting her from the Skull Devil. Keeping with his role as Skull Island's protector, it's not looks that draw him to her, but the kindness she shows to the island's animals when trying to push a fallen helicopter off a trapped Sker Buffalo.
• Benevolent Monsters: This Kong is more active than his previous incarnations when it comes to protecting humans who do not antagonize him.
• Berserk Button: Due to his past he's got a few.
  • He absolutely hates Skullcrawlers as they endanger the land of the natives and just naturally piss him off due to them being the ones that killed his parents.
  • Endangering those he cares for, as the Skullcrawlers, Packard, and Maia Simmons find out you do not threaten Kong's friends or family of choice and expect to come out alive when he retaliates.
• Better the Devil You Know: After Kong destroys every single helicopter sent out by Monarch to investigate the island, Packard tries to persuade everyone to join him in a counterattack. Conrad and Marlow both state that this is a terrible idea because Kong is the only thing on the island capable enough to hold back the Skullcrawlers.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Kong is not by nature malicious, and more than that he's a surprisingly philanthropic, genial and compassionate being by the standards of Titans — as shown by his relationships with Jia and the Island Girl, and his compassion towards Dog and Annie despite their earlier offence against him;, Kong has more explicitly strong emotional connections to humans than Godzilla does, and he's practically second only to Mothra in the Benevolent Monsters department. However, Kong is still an Alpha Titan, taking his role as guardian of Skull Island's inhabitants and the application of the kill-or-be-killed laws of nature to himself very seriously. If you threaten him or his home in any way, or if you grossly offend him by destroying his ancestors' temple or stealing his Tragic Keepsake right in front of him, then Kong is a force to be reckoned with and woe is you.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Skull Island: The Birth of Kong has him rescuing the main characters from dangerous predators several times.
  • In the final battle in Godzilla vs. Kong, when Mechagodzilla is inches away from firing his Proton Scream down Godzilla's throat to finish him off, a recovered Kong jumps in at the last moment, yanking Mechagodzilla's head upward and redirecting his beam into the sky.
  • He makes his first physical appearance in the Skull Island animated series when he intervenes in the Croc Monster's pursuit of Mike and Charlie, picking the creature up out of the water and eating it when it was seconds away from eating the two humans.
• Big Eater: Has to eat something as large as he is to bulk up. After killing the Mire Squid he digs in by taking a bite and messily slurps up one of its tentacles. He even goes out of his way to casually drag the corpse out of the lake to feast on it somewhere else while said tentacle is hanging out of his mouth. During his transportation to the Tasman Sea, he scoops up a handful of fish and feasts on them by crunching all of them with his fangs. From the way he smiles afterwards, he's clearly enjoyed the snack given to him.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Even though Kong is clearly meant to be an ape-Titan, he has a very noticeable resemblance to depictions of Sasquatch thanks to a primarily bipedal stance,
• Big Good: Whereas Godzilla is the main Kaiju defender of the world at large, Kong is the main Kaiju defender of Skull Island's creatures and the Iwis. Revered by the Iwis as a god and far surpassing any of his human allies in physical power, Kong is the force which directly challenges and holds back invasive threats to the island, maintaining the ecological balance (a fact which is made all the more poetic by the reveal that Kong is himself a non-indigenous species, yet he takes on the role of Skull Island's keystone species instead of an Introduced Species Calamity). As with Godzilla, it's also made clear with Kong that if he outlives his charges, they will be invariably screwed.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Downplayed, but the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization indicates that his brain has quite a different arrangement to human brains despite him being a primate.
• Blade Brake: He exits his ancestors temple by jumping right into the very hole that Godzilla created after blasting his Atomic Breath into the Hollow Earth, with Kong making use of his newly discovered axe by diving through the pit by scraping the walls around himself.
  • He performs this action again for the first trailer of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, where he's seen jumping into a cavern by sinking his axe as a way to basically carve his way down to make the trip far more easier for him to traverse through.
• Blood from the Mouth: After going through a senseless clobbering from Godzilla in Hong Kong, he brings his colossal foot down with a Finishing Stomp right onto Kong's chest so hard, that the next shot shows Kong with a small layer of blood that's pouring out of his mouth and around his bottom lip.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: In Godzilla vs. Kong, during the Final Battle, Kong gets drenched in his opponent's blood (more specifically oily Machine Blood), as he savagely hacks Mechagodzilla to pieces before delivering the final blow.
• Bloody Handprint: From an earlier scuffle with the choppers one of the propellers sliced his palm. He probably unintentionally left behind a large one at the side of a plateau that was spotted by Packard and his men.
• Born Winner: It's implied (much like Godzilla is for his species) that Kong is abnormally strong and powerful for his kind. This is best shown by his parents' skeletons compared to him: when nowhere close to fully grown, he's already as large as his parents were when they died and come Godzilla vs. Kong, he dwarfs them, being about three times their size. Even when Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire reveals the rest of the Great Apes in the Hollow Earth are closer to his size, he's shown to be a cut above the rest, as individually Skar King is the only one that can actually match Kong one on one. The others only pose a threat to him if they outnumber him significantly.
• Brain Food: After tearing off a Warbat's head, he takes the time to slurp out its brains.
• Breaking the Bonds:
  • During his battle with the Skull Devil, he gets tossed into a nearby wrecked ship, that just so happens to have him dangled in its chains. When the Skull Devil gets distracted by an unexpected onslaught by the remaining expedition team, Kong, (slowly but successfully) breaks out of the chains around him while also getting the idea to use the ship's propeller as a potential weapon against the giant Skullcrawler.
  • As Godzilla approaches Kong while destroying most of the ships transporting him, Kong obviously uncomfortable with the metal collar, tears it off with all of his might as he prepares to face Godzilla for a duel. Subverted with his wrist restraints, but this can be Justified as it's shown that he's been shot full of sedatives beforehand and is most likely lacking his full strength. As a result he almost ends up drowning when Godzilla flips the ship and ended up having to be released manually.
• Bring It: Right before the onset of his second battle with Godzilla, Kong responds to Godzilla's Bring It by smashing the ground in front of himself with his axe and fists.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: In Godzilla vs. Kong, any time he lands a significant blow on Godzilla, the tables quickly turn against him. He pushes Godzilla off the aircraft carrier they were fighting on? Godzilla destroys the carrier and would have drowned Kong if the humans hadn't fired depth charges to knock him free of Godzilla's grip. In the second fight, Kong landed a heavy blow with his axe that seemed to weaken Godzilla, but once he jumped on Godzilla's back to attack him, it turns all he did was cause Godzilla to get serious. He promptly throws Kong off and wrecks him.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: He's a massive ape who gets into merciless brawls to the death with other giant monsters. However, he has a soft spot for the humans he protects: aside from protecting them generally from Skull Island's wildlife, he goes out of his way to save and protect Weaver during his fight with the "Big One" Skullcrawler, he forms a human-Titan Badass and Child Duo with Jia where he's very protective of her, and he was very personally friendly with the Island Girl and her village, and was devastated by their destruction.
• Building Swing: Takes proper advantage of his natural agility by using the buildings in Hong Kong to steer away from Godzilla's Atomic Breath in the second round by climbing over them and has even swung underneath one of them.
• The Cameo: In King of the Monsters, we are shown a quick shot from his back. The novelization includes a brief chapter from his perspective, showing him sensing King Ghidorah's summons but ignoring it due to not caring about the world outside Skull Island. When the Skullcrawlers start emerging to heed Ghidorah, however, Kong moves to fight them.
• Classical Anti-Hero: He's not malicious towards anything that doesn't seek to harm him or Skull Island's native creatures, even going so far as to willingly defend the island's human natives. But the moment you pose a threat in any way, shape, or form to his home, he won't hold back. Justified, as he is just an animal, and all of Skull Island's pretty much his territory. In the King of the Monsters novelization, it's revealed he doesn't care about what happens beyond Skull Island; even if he wasn't occupied battling the Skullcrawlers from answering Ghidorah's summons, he wouldn't have come to Godzilla's aid anyway.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong he spends most of the film being dragged against his will into a fight with Godzilla that he has no interest in. Instead, he's desperate to find a new home after Skull Island is destroyed by Ghidorah's storm. That said, when push comes to shove and when prompted into it by Jia, he shows he's gotten better about this and helps Godzilla defeat Mechagodzilla, even being the one to personally cut the mecha into pieces with help from Godzilla.
• Close to Home: After Skar King cruelly murders Suko's caretaker as the young ape watches on in horror, Kong, already in a state of Tranquil Fury over the vile tyrant's practices, finally snaps and attacks him with intent to kill, his own experiences with being an orphan heavily implied to be feeding his own fury towards his deranged simian foe.
• Combat Parkour: During his second battle with Godzilla, Kong is able to use the skyscrapers of Hong Kong to his advantage by continuously climbing and jumping onto them to avoid and outmaneuver Godzilla's attacks.
• Composite Character: In Godzilla vs. Kong, he takes the role of King Caesar, a mammalian ally of Godzilla who helped in bringing down Mechagodzilla.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Or, Contrasting Prequel Main Character when he debuts in the MonsterVerse's second film (chronologically the first). Although Kong and Godzilla are similar in the fact that they're gigantic, destructive beasts that nonetheless possess a modicum of intelligence, and both act as counterbalances to far worse threats, they are still quite different from each-other. Where Godzilla, although not actively destructive, doesn't really care about the well-being of humans, Kong is explicitly the defender of Skull Island's human natives and he exhibits a significant instinct to protect human life. Conversely, whilst Godzilla is usually apathetic to humans even when they're attacking him, Kong is much more deliberate when he slaughters the military envoy and kills Maia Simmons for attacking him. Although both Godzilla and Kong are described as being the last of their respective species, Godzilla is a millions-of-years-old sea beast with the personality of a Grumpy Old Man to match; meanwhile, Kong is a teenager to young adult by his species' standards, and has presumably been active ever since he was born. Godzilla may not necessarily intend to fight his opponents to the death, and may choose to let them live if they back down and submit to his authority, while Kong always fights his opponents with lethal intent, going for the killing blow as quickly as possible. Kong is also willing to make use of tools and resources in his surroundings such as improvised weapons to give him the edge in a fight, which is something Godzilla almost never does in his fights. Finally, Godzilla is a semi-aquatic reptile and Kong is a strictly land-dwelling primate.
• Cooldown Hug: Upon meeting Weaver a second time (as well as seeing Conrad on a cliffside) he doesn't show any aggression towards them, but Weaver walks up and reaches out her hand to pet Kong's face, the ape feeling literally touched by her compassion. Kong begins to realize that they're more friends than foes.
• Covered in Scars: Since their last battle in Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong's chest is covered in scars from when Godzilla raked his claws over his chest repeatedly.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He is introduced demolishing the helicopters of the expedition to Skull Island, and later kills a pair of Skullcrawlers with no difficulty.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Throughout the second round in Godzilla vs. Kong, the simian Titan does really well facing off against the King of the Monsters by delivering a lot of good strikes and since they were on land, there's a lot of terrain and areas where Kong can deploy a lot of agile maneuvers and sneak attacks. The third round is where Godzilla takes the champion's belt after he dislocates Kong's shoulder, gives him nasty gashes from his claws, and pins him underfoot. Even after taking a hell of a beatdown, with the last of his strength, Kong punches Godzilla's wounded thigh so hard that it makes the Big G bellow in pain.
• Dark and Troubled Past: He's lost all his kin to the Skullcrawler horde and been left the last one standing against the creatures when he's only an adolescent. If Riccio's Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane visions in Skull Island: The Birth of Kong are real, then Kong's parents were mauled to death right in front of him when he was only minutes old, leaving him traumatized from birth and with a lifelong rage kindled in him. And it didn't stop there. Some years before the main time frame of the Skull Island animated series, Kong lost an entire village of people that were under his protection, including a girl whom he'd personally formed a close friendship with, to the Kraken while him and the girl were having a brief falling out.
• David vs. Goliath: His fight with Godzilla has him as the David to Godzilla's Goliath. Godzilla is bigger, stronger, and has his Breath Weapon, which Kong has no way of defending against. When the two square off in close quarters on the aircraft carrier, Godzilla knocks Kong on his back and is only stopped from blasting him by a jet hitting him, which gave Kong the chance to push him off the carrier. When the two fight in Hong Kong, Kong now having his axe, Godzilla again proves the more powerful one with Kong flat out running when Godzilla resorts to his Beam Spam. And it turns out Godzilla was going easy on Kong because when he has enough he nearly beats him to death.
• Deadly Dodging: At one point in Kong: Skull Island, when two helicopters attack him from each direction, Kong leaps out of the way, causing them to shoot each other down.
• Death Glare: There are moments where Kong gives other characters a stare of bloodthirsty hate right before he moves to kill them, especially the Skullcrawlers, and also Packard when he wakes up from the latter's attempt to burn him to death. He gives a nastier one to Godzilla when he demolishes his ancestors' temple, furious at having his home taken by forces outside his control once again and prompting him to finally take on Godzilla's challenge willingly.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Riccio's Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane visions in Skull Island: The Birth of Kong indicate as much. In the vision, both of Kong's parents were killed by a massive army of Skullcrawlers, all while they hid a newborn Kong to protect him.
• Defiant to the End: A non-fatal version in Godzilla vs. Kong. After being defeated, and finding himself pinned by Godzilla, the latter roars to assert his dominance, only for Kong to roar right back at him. Godzilla, as if impressed by that, spares him.
• Deuteragonist: If Godzilla is The Protagonist of the Monster Verse, then Kong is the second most important character in the franchise. He's appeared in three out of the five films and in the animated television series, and is firmly identified as being humanity's protector in contrast to Godzilla's role as protector of the world itself.
• Didn't Think This Through: He becomes consciously aware that he may need Godzilla's assistance even if he's been upgraded with the B.E.A.S.T. Glove, it may not be enough to thwart Skar King's army. While Godzilla is indeed the best option they've got to counter the situation, what Kong didn't count for is that Godzilla will still attack him if he crosses him if he's anywhere near his territorial grounds, he's been heavily strengthened from his evolution, and from Godzilla's perspective, he sees Kong as an opposing challenger instead of not being able to listen to him. Kong's mistake nearly costed him his life again, had it not been for Mothra to step in and straighten out Godzilla's hostility. Godzilla now realizes that both him and Kong are willing to stop the invasion that Skar King is trying to accomplish, as the 2 Alpha Titans join forces once again.
• Disney Death: In Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong is defeated by Godzilla fair and square: essentially, making Godzilla the clear winner. However, Mechagodzilla then attacks and overpowers Godzilla, so with the humans' help they manage to resuscitate Kong and bring him back to the fight to even the odds.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Kong himself is this to Godzilla when they clash in Hong Kong. Although he puts up a good fight, Godzilla still defeats him fair and square, but their climactic battle was merely the prelude to the true Final Boss, Mechagodzilla.
  • Alternatively, Godzilla is this to Kong as Kong is ultimately the Titan who manages to defeat Mechagodzilla.
• Doomed Hometown: It's revealed in Godzilla vs. Kong that Skull Island has been rendered dead and inhospitable in 2024. Thanks to Camazotz, the Perpetual Storm system closed in on the island, making conditions hostile enough that Monarch felt they had to build a dome-protected artificial environment to save Kong's life, which sets off the plot of Lind wanting to get Kong to relocate to the Hollow Earth and Kong being taken off the island.
• The Dreaded: Although Kong is generally docile and is worshipped by the Iwi as a benevolent protector, it is still best to not get him on his bad side.
• Due to the Dead:
  • The ship that Marlow showed to the group has many hieroglyphs painted by the Iwi. One of them is a saddened Kong kneeling in front of his parents' skeletal remains. In the scene where he's sitting down staring at the Aurora Borealis, one could interpret that he's probably thinking about them as he watches forlornly.
  • In Skull Island (2023), he personally buries his dear friend the Island Girl after she dies.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Loses his parents in infancy and has to grow up alone while fighting for his life almost daily. Then Skull Island is ravaged by Ghidorah's superstorm, forcing him to leave his home, narrowly survives a battle with the King of the Monsters, and defeating a global threat in the form of Mechagodzilla, Kong settles down in the Hollow Earth, his new home and kingdom but is still deeply lonely. Years on, he finally finds a tribe of fellow great ape Titans, but they're ruled over by the cruel Skar King and Kong is almost killed in the ensuing battle and escape, before teaming up with Godzilla to overthrow the despotic tyrant and his court. Finally, Kong returns back to the now freed tribe, having at last found a place to belong.
• Ear Notch: It's extremely easy to miss to see that a small piece of his right ear is missing.
• Empowered Badass Normal: After journeying to the Hollow Earth, Kong recovers an axe made by one of his ancestors from the bone and dorsal spine of one of Godzilla's. The axe has the ability to absorb energy such as Godzilla's atomic breath and then release it in a burst of destructive force. He gains an even more effective one in Godzilla x Kong in the form of the B.E.A.S.T. glove, a high-tech gauntlet that not only amps up his already powerful punches, but also lets him channel surrounding electricity for an Elemental Punch.
• Enemy Mine: Godzilla and Kong end up double-teaming against Mechagodzilla, as while Mechagodzilla ends up having an upper hand over Godzilla, it's Kong who turns the tides.
• Energy Absorption: The axe Kong discovers in Hollow Earth is made from the dorsal fin of a Titanus Gojira. It can absorb Godzilla's Atomic Breath to give itself greater cutting power or the ability to release a burst of energy on impact. It only works with Godzilla's Atomic Breath, as Kong learned the hard way when he tried to block Shimo's Breath Weapon with it.
• Epic Flail: During his fight against the Alpha Skullcrawler, Kong improvises a ball-and-chain flail with a ship propeller attached to a chain.
• "Eureka!" Moment: While trying to escape from the wrecked ship Ramarak knocked him into, Kong notices the ship propeller and the chain it's gotten tangled in. He promptly uses it to gain the upper-hand on Ramarak and weaken him enough to finish him off.
• Expy: In later films, given his lumberjack-like beard, his wielding of an axe which can glow blue, his viciousness and lethality in battle, how he becomes part of a Badass and Child Duo and how he fights someone whose name means "god incarnate" and later an evil empire, Kong brings to mind Kratos.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: After spending much of the Skull Island series bearing witness to the Kraken's psychotic depravity and being unable to do anything about it, Kong finally battles and eventually kills the beast by beating it to a pulp, then ripping it in two when it (barely) survives that.
• Eye Awaken:
  • In Kong: Skull Island, after the giant Skullcrawler appears and all the humans except Packard run away, the unconscious Kong opens his eyes.
  • In Skull Island, there's a close-up on Kong's eye snapping open when he's awakened by hearing the Island Girl's scream for help during the Kraken's first attack.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong has a dramatic one after being airlifted over Antarctica once the pulleys that were airlifting him snap after he's lowered to the ground.
• Faking the Dead: Whereas in the film he and Godzilla seem to exchange Death Glares at the end of their first battle, the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization states Kong is playing dead when the Navy fleet do likewise.
• Family of Choice: Having lost his parents and seemingly all others of his kind to the Skullcrawlers, Kong's greatest desire is to have a family. As he is the last of his kind, it's effectively impossible to have one the traditional way, so he instead forms an adoptive one with the Island Girl, then later with Jia, her adoptive mother Ilene, and eventually Nathan.
• Fingore: Kong's right hand is critically injured due to severe frostbite from Shimo's Breath Weapon, which necessitates the B.E.A.S.T. Glove to repair the damage.
• Finishing Move: He performs one near the end of Godzilla vs. Kong. After hacking off all but one of Mechagodzilla's limbs and slicing into its neck to destroy its Breath Weapon, Kong then finishes the prone Mecha off by jumping atop it, tearing its head off in a spray of oil, and performing a Decapitation Presentation whilst roaring and pounding his chest.
• Finishing Stomp: In Kong: Skull Island, he appears to finish off one of the tag-team Skullcrawlers via stomping on its head.
• Fragile Speedster: Downplayed, as he is fast enough to avoid Godzilla's atomic breath, and can take a grazing shot from it, but in comparison to Godzilla, he isn’t that physically tough. Once Godzilla manages to get in close and land a few punches of his own, he has a hard time recovering. A good example is during the Tasman Sea battle, where he is forced to stand on an aircraft carrier and tank the shots from Godzilla instead of dodging them, a slap from the atomic lizard sends Kong flying onto his back.
• Friend to All Children: He forms a Badass and Child Duo with the human girl Jia in Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. He also cared for the Hawk Monster when it was a juvenile in Skull Island (2023), as shown in the Whole Episode Flashback. Furthermore, in Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted, Kong actively defends a pair of defenceless Spineprowler cubs (a species he isn't normally on good terms with) against Raymond Martin's efforts to slaughter them.
• Friend to All Living Things: As long as you don't do anything fishy around Skull Island, like dropping bombs around the place.
• Full Moon Silhouette: In Kong: Skull Island, his head is silhouetted with the full moon behind him when he glares down Packard furiously.
• Fun with Acronyms: The mechanized gauntlet that covers his left forearm in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is referred to as the B.E.A.S.T. Glove, which stands for Bio Enhanced Anatomech Seismic Thunder.
• Future Primitive: Believe it or not, but Kong turns out to be this in regards to his ancestors, who were intelligent enough to craft statues, a colossal temple/fortress, and even weapons that can harness Hollow Earth energy. Contrast this to Kong, who can make Improvised Weapons on the fly but otherwise shows no creative capabilities.
• Game-Breaking Injury:
  • In the Behemoth Battle between Kong and the Alpha Skullcrawler, Kong would be the favorite, but he is weakened by the burning he received earlier, which brings the two to eye level.
  • The third round of his fight with Godzilla is fairly even...until Godzilla manages to dislocate his shoulder. This effectively ends the fight, as with one arm completely out of commission, Kong can no longer grapple Godzilla or maneuver nearly as effectively, and can only try to drag himself away with one good arm as Godzilla relentlessly comes after him. He gets it fixed when he goes to confront Mechagodzilla, however.
• Generation Xerox: Kong continued the legacy of his parents and that of his species in protecting Skull Island from the Skullcrawlers and other potential threats. Decades later, he continues the feud between his species and that of Godzilla.
• Genetic Memory: In Godzilla vs. Kong, it's theorized that he and all Titans have an evolutionary impulse to return to where their respective species originally came from, and it's strongly suggested that this is guiding Kong when he travels across the Hollow Earth to his ancestors' gigantic ancient temple. The novelization also suggests that this is guiding Kong's actions during his first fight with Godzilla in the ocean.
• Genius Bruiser: Kong is a Lightning Bruiser who incredibly strong, even for a Titan, easily overpowering the multitude of smaller Skullcrawlers and other creatures that challenge him on Skull Island. He's also one of the most intelligent Titans of all; frequently making use of improvised weapons from his surroundings in combat — from using trees as javelins to using bones and a shipwreck as stabbing weapons to using a rusted ship's propeller and chain together as a flail — and using skyscrapers as cover from Godzilla in Hong Kong, and throwing a crane to distract Godzilla and get the jump on him. He's even learned sign language as of Godzilla vs. Kong, making him the first Titan capable of directly communicating with humanity.
• Gentle Giant:
  • He protects Skull Island's human residents from the more hostile wildlife, keeps peaceful animals out of danger, and is generally pretty mellow unless you mess with his island or its inhabitants — at which point he'll remind you that he's an ape the size of a building who can throw helicopters around like toys. Marlow describes it best:
    Marlow: Kong's a pretty good king. Keeps to himself, mostly. This is his home. We're just guests here. But you don't go into someone's house and start dropping bombs unless you're picking a fight.
  • There's the touching Sistine Steal moment in Godzilla vs. Kong where his gigantic finger pacifically reaches the finger of Jia, a little girl who's tiny even by human standards.
• Gentle Gorilla: Kong is benign to individuals who are compassionate towards him.
• Get It Over With: He suffers a brutal defeat by Godzilla and starts getting angrily roared at by the King of the Monsters as a way of making him forfeit the conflict between them. Kong, despite being heavily injured from his might, does not submit. His act of being defeated is carried over differently in the novelization where instead of roaring back, the gigantic primate actually dares Godzilla to outright dispose of him, now that he's got him where he wanted him, which, in turn, personally shocks Godzilla and actually spares because of it.
• Giant Equals Invincible: Played With in Kong: Skull Island. He's extremely powerful and auto-machine guns are largely just an irritant to him, but he's noticeably injured by the soldiers several times (sliced his hand and arm in the helicopter fight, burned and knocked out by napalm). Played straight in Godzilla Vs. Kong where he is now a fully mature Alpha Titan, is over 300 feet tall and has but on thousands of tonnes in weight. Anything short of a Titan in the same league as Godzilla is no major threat to him.
• Giant Eye of Doom:
  • In Kong: Skull Island, at the beginning of Kong's attack on the Sky Devils, the first (and last) glimpse that the soldier he seemingly eats gets of him is his eye glaring into the chopper at him.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, after Maia Simmons' betrayal, Kong grabs the HEAV the woman is inside, and he fittingly brings his eye very close in order to peer into the vehicle. Cue Maia's Rapid-Fire "No!" as Kong destroys the HEAV and kills her.
• Glass Cannon: Fairly downplayed foremost. He can match Godzilla in combat, and he can surely pack a wallop while also having superior speed. With his energy-infused axe, he can certainly carve into his flesh and dismember Mechagodzilla. When it comes to durability, he's capable of receiving Godzilla's physical blows and surprisingly his Atomic Breath, but Kong, overall, lacks Super-Toughness, which is definitely one of the G Man's best assets since he can shrug off practically everything the ape can throw at him.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Conrad and Mason spot him walking through the mist at the dead of night. At a distance, both of his orange eyes are seen slightly glimmering until he fully sees them in frontal view.
• Godzilla Threshold: One of the few examples that literally involves Big G — Kong normally refuses to actually bite his opponents, but during the carrier battle in Godzilla vs. Kong, he sinks his teeth into Godzilla's gills. Godzilla is just that dangerous.
• Good Is Not Soft: He's as close to a Nice Guy as a giant monster can get, but he will kill you if you earn his ire or pose a threat to anyone or anything he's protecting.
• The Good King: Whether it's Skull Island or the Hollow Earth, Kong is a benevolent ruler who personally defends his home. After he vanquishes the Skar King and liberates the other apes from his oppressive rule, they unhesitatingly accept Kong as their new king, knowing he'll treat them much better than his tyrannical bully of a predecessor.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has three diagonal scars from his chest to torso ratio. Since it takes two years for scars to fade it's safe to assume that he got into a battle with a Skullcrawler or some other predator prior to the events of the movie beforehand. In Godzilla vs. Kong, it looks like he'll have a few new ones from the blows that Godzilla's claws dealt him.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: During his fight with the two small Skullcrawlers which tag-team him in Kong: Skull Island, Kong tries to throw one of the Crawlers into the other to bowl them over, unsuccessfully. On the second try, he succeeds at headbutting them against each-other and the earth.
• Grin of Audacity:
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla strategically uses his Atomic Breath to enhance the power of Kong's axe when Mechagodzilla has him cornered and defenseless. As soon as the axe was powered up, his expression went from frightened to a brief smile of immense confidence since he realized that he possessed the means to destroy the mech for good.
  • In the Whole Episode Flashback of Skull Island (2023), Kong flashes a grin that's radiating smugness right before he jumps into battle against the giant chameleons.
• Ground Punch:
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, for the start of his rematch with Godzilla, both Titans display their ferocity to one another. Kong responds by pounding the streets of Hong Kong with his fists likely as a way of "telling" Godzilla that he's not holding back this time.
  • In the Skull Island series' Season Finale, Kong attempts to cut off his targets' escape via rope bridge by pounding the ground hard enough that a shockwave ripples through the bridge and flings them into the air, then when he catches up to them at the shoreline, his fists (and feet) slamming to the ground in the shallows create enough of a mini-tsunami to stop and stagger them.
• Healing Factor: While not on par with Godzilla's (let alone Ghidorah's), and not of particular importance in his fights, Kong is noted in one of the info screens at the start of Godzilla vs. Kong to possess enhanced recuperative abilities compared to a regular creature. Notably despite having received mortal injuries from Godzilla, he ends up recovering quickly once his heart is re-started and even fixes his own dislocated shoulder.
• Heartbroken Badass: His deceased mother and father still linger in his mind, he changed that sadness into anger that made him a formidable fighter in the first place. The Skull Island animated series also reveals that at some point in the twenty years between Kong: Skull Island and the series' main time frame, he made a close friendship with a Spanish-speaking island girl, only to tragically lose her to the Kraken — years on, although he still maintains his territory and keeps the island's balance, he still mourns her death when he's alone.
• Held Gaze:
  • With Packard multiple times (Antagonistic), and with Weaver (Platonic).
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong and Jia have a tendency to personally lock eyes with each-other when Kong leans down to look at her. The novelization states this is Kong's way of telling her that he, as gigantic as he is, can see her and is glad of her presence.
  • He also shares a tentative gaze with the Island Girl when she's dying in his hand and she reconciles with him in the Skull Island series.
• Helicopter Flyswatter: Several helicopters fall prey to Kong in Kong: Skull Island.
• Hero Antagonist: In the first act of his debut movie, Kong attacks the helicopters and kills many of the soldiers in retaliation for their bombings. Averted for the rest of the movie, after Packard goes into full villain territory and the Skullcrawlers emerge.
• Heroic Build: He's one of the most conventionally heroic kaiju in the world, and is built like the gorilla equivalent of a bodybuilder, with broad shoulders, heavy, visible muscle, and a (relatively) narrow waist. It turns out that he’s got this even compared to the rest of his species when they show up with Scar King - Kong is the tallest and buffest among them.
• Hero of Another Story: The Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) novelization reveals he actively ignored Ghidorah's summoning, and instead spent the events of the film battling and keeping the Skullcrawlers from heeding it and joining in Ghidorah's worldwide rampage.
• Heroic Lineage: In the Birth of Kong comic, Riccio's Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane visions indicate that before Kong was even born his ancestors as well as his parents fought tooth and nail defending the Iwi from the Skullcrawlers' reign on Skull Island. Now that Kong is the only remaining ape capable of dispatching his parents' killers, he carries out their duty to keep his territory in check.
• Holding Your Shoulder Means Injury:
  • The last battle between Godzilla and Kong ends painfully for the latter with Kong getting wildly thrown onto a building with such force that it misplaced his shoulder as he grasps it for a few seconds before Godzilla continues his to deliver his beatdown. When he quickly gets his heart restarted by the very last HEAV, Kong gets back onto his feet without any difficulty, although he's seen clenching his broken shoulder once he's up. But luckily for him, he was slams it into a building to snap it back into place and gets ready to take on assist Godzilla after Jia informed him that Mechagodzilla is the true enemy that Godzilla was rightfully seeking after.
  • After getting his right arm frozen from Shimo, Kong cradles his frostbitten arm as he escapes from the Skar King's court. His injury means he can't afford a direct fight but he still manages to take out several of his foes by luring them into his territory where he can set off pre-made traps he'd prepared to catch food.
• Homefield Advantage:
  • In his second fight against Godzilla, Kong has a slight advantage due to all the buildings around him that he can climb on to evade Godzilla's Atomic Breath attacks and get close enough to use his newfound axe on Godzilla directly. This allows him to knock Godzilla down for the first time. Unfortunately for him, Godzilla decides to stop playing around after that and attacks Kong ferociously and rapidly, not letting Kong off his sight and using the buildings as covers anymore and breaking his arm to reduce his mobility. It ends with Godzilla being the definitive winner of the fight.
  • In Skull Island (2023), the cast conclude that the reason why Kong and the Kraken haven't come to direct blows is because Kong recognizes that he'll be at a disadvantage if he faces the Kraken on its own turf in the sea, while the Kraken recognizes the same will be true for itself if it faces Kong on his own turf on land, and thus they're at a stalemate where both Titans refuse to give the other the homefield advantage by crossing into its domain.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • In all of the fights we’ve seen him in, he's never once bitten his opponent. This may be a small thing, but it shows he's not willing to use especially dirty tactics even against hated enemies like the Skullcrawlers, preferring using improvised weapons or his raw strength to win. Very notable in his fight with Godzilla, as the Alpha Titan is more than willing to bite and claw at Kong at every turn, but he refuses to respond in kind, despite possessing giant teeth and a, no doubt, incredible bite-force. Conversely, it may be a matter of pragmatism. Given Kong's more humanoid in shape compared to his opponents, getting his head that close to an enemy is often an unnecessary risk when his limbs are powerful and versatile enough in most instances. In either case, it's a clear contrast to the more bestial Titans. This is actually Truth in Television for gorillas (which Kong takes the most inspiration from), as they generally will do just about anything to avoid biting opponents — preferring to hit, drag, throw, or use improvised weapons — mainly because their pronounced teeth are for intimidation purposes.
  • In a blink and you'll miss it moment when Kong and Godzilla grapple underwater after the aircraft carrier is destroyed, he grabs Godzilla with both arms in a headlock and does bites at his gills. The King of the Monsters proceeds to bite down on Kong's arms in retaliation and push him into the sinking carrier by placing a hand on Kong's chest and pushing him off.
• Hot Blade: What his axe gradually becomes after being fully energized from absorbing the power of Godzilla's Atomic Breath, which increases the strength of the dorsal blade to cut right into Godzilla's hardened scales. The heated axe is what lead to the destruction of Mechagodzilla, whereafter Kong was getting held back against a building from the former, Godzilla fires his ray at the blade to give Kong a fighting chance. With the axe now glowing neon blue, Kong brutally hacks Mechagodzilla apart until the murderous robot was nothing but mostly a torso, one-legged, and a head. Kong then uses one final strike with the glowing axe to fracture the neck to loosen it by tearing it clean off.
• Howl of Sorrow: After the Island Girl dies, he glances at the bay where the Kraken which killed her is lurking, and, panting in visible turmoil, he roars loudly enough to be clearly heard for miles around. And then he collapses to his knees in grief.

I-P

• I Got Bigger: By Godzilla vs. Kong, he's now fully grown and is almost equal to Godzilla's size, compared to in Kong: Skull Island where he was still essentially a teenager.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: In Episode 7 of Skull Island (2023), it's revealed that Kong had once befriended a Spanish-speaking island girl and formed a bond with her, until the two eventually had a falling out after a battle with monsters nearly got him, her, and his hawk killed. Later, the sea monster attacked the girl's village, fatally wounding her in the process, and when Kong brought her to his home, she later died in his arms, calling him her king, before burying her outside. The necklace from her is a Tragic Keepsake for Kong.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: Kong is a lot more agile than anything his size has any right to be, and the Skullcrawlers are a lot worse — nothing that unbalanced should be anywhere close to that fast. Skull Island and Godzilla vs. Kong take it even further: the Titans in general become unnaturally faster and move agile in their movements than they were in the first few MonsterVerse instalments, and Kong in the former two later instalments furthermore ends up fighting his Titan opponents underwater: real-life gorillas cannot swim, and with Kong's size, should have plummeted to the bottom like a rock, yet he was able to keep from sinking and swim back up to the aircraft carrier.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In Kong: Skull Island, Kong's first attack against the soldiers is to hurl a tree straight through the front windows before the soldiers even see him. Compared to Kong, the tree would have been somewhere between a throwing knife and a hatchet in size comparison.
• Improvised Weapon: Like apes in the wild, he makes use of tools. In his battles with both the choppers and the Skullcrawlers, he uses a whole palm tree to impale a helicopter, a boulder to bash the Skull Devil over the head and strips a tree to use as a club. He also makes use of a chain and steel boat propeller as a choke rope and improvised blade. This skill makes him stand out among monsters in the Shared Universe, as he's the only one that uses weapons of any kind.
• In a Single Bound: Seeing him leap across vast distances is a sight to see.
• Informed Attribute: Downplayed; Kong being an Alpha Titan implies he’s one of the more powerful titans. Despite getting easily overpowered by lesser titans like the Titan Skullcrawler, Camazotz, and Warbats. Justified since Kong is inexperienced with fighting larger creatures. Arguably subverted in Skull Island, where Kong defeats and kills the Titan-sized Kraken on his own without requiring any human intervention, something that both he and Godzilla required against other Big Bads.
• Injured Self-Drag: After angering Godzilla for getting the best of him in their third fight, Kong takes painful damage by getting forcefully thrown into the side of a building and dislodged one of his shoulders. The result of this physical trauma was so severe that it even hindered his mobility, that as soon as Godzilla approached Kong in a vulnerable state, he was basically forced to quickly drag himself away from his oncoming wrath, who's inching his way closer to the overwhelmed primate with nothing but unbridled fury on all fours. All of that dragging to safety got him nowhere when Godzilla continued to assault him until he immobilized Kong with only a stomp to keep him still.
• Introduced Species Calamity: Inverted, then discussed. Godzilla vs. Kong and the tie-in prequel Kingdom Kong reveal that Kong (and by extension his dead ancestors) aren't an indigenous species to Skull Island, but rather they retreated there after being forced out of their previous home in the Hollow Earth; making it quite ironic that Kong has been actively and successfully maintaining Skull Island's ecological equilibrium all this time instead of disrupting it like the Skullcrawlers. However, in Kingdom Kong, Dr. Brooks wonders if Skull Island's ecosystem simply won't be able to keep sustaining Kong once he grows past a certain size, although Camazotz' Hostile Terraforming destroys the island's ecosystem before anyone can find out.
• Irony: The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization states when describing Kong's P.O.V. that he always used to wish in his youth that he might one day hit the sun or the moon by throwing a spear far enough. Inside Monarch's gigantic bio-dome after the Perpetual Storm ruins Skull Island, he finally hits the sun on the Artificial Outdoors Display.
• It Can Think: He makes use of several improvised weapons, seems to feel lonely as a result of being the last of his kind, and starts to harbor protective instincts towards humans. The novelization gives more examples of Kong's intelligence such as using dirt to put out the fires made by the helicopter battle and triggering a rockslide to bury a Skullcrawler. He also learns sign language from Jia in Godzilla vs. Kong, making him to date the only Titan capable of actively communicating with humans.
• It's Personal:
  • It's implied his whole grudge against the Skullcrawlers is motivated by them killing the rest of his kind and the Big One/Skull Devil specifically killing Kong's parents. In The Birth of Kong, Riccio's Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane visions depict a newborn Kong watching the Skullcrawlers kill his parents just after he'd imprinted on them.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong reaches his Rage Breaking Point when Godzilla blasts his atomic breath through the ground into the Hollow Earth, disturbing Kong's ancestral home, driving the ape to fight Godzilla.
  • In the Skull Island animated series; if it wasn't enough that the Kraken is a rival creature challenging Kong as alpha of Skull Island, the Kraken also murdered an entire village of people that Kong was protecting on the island and left their bodies for Kong to find, then seemingly taunted him with its tentacles from a distance; plus, among the murdered people was a young woman who'd personally befriended Kong and whose death still weighs on Kong throughout the series. This earns Kong's personal hatred for this beast, especially as it continues taunting and challenging him by tossing innocent marine animals at his home, and it's theorized by the humans that the only reason Kong hasn't already sought out a fight with the Kraken is because he knows the Kraken has a major Homefield Advantage in the water and the Kraken refuses to leave the water for this reason, putting them at a stalemate.
• Javelin Thrower: He's highly proficient when it comes to tossing weaponized trees. Even before he shows himself again in Kong: Skull Island, he takes out a UH-1 Iroquois with a thrown tree that manages to skewer through the entirety of the helicopter. In the opening Morning Routine to Godzilla vs. Kong, he fashions himself a makeshift improvised javelin by nonchalantly uprooting a tree, sheds offs all of its leaves, and removes the bottom — after locking eyes with his friend Jia, he then chucks his javelin-esque weapon high enough to shatter the "sun", which, in fact, is actually revealed to be an Artificial Outdoors Display housed within the containment area at Skull Island. In the Skull Island 2023 series, Kong throws a pair of ribs he'd made improvised weapons out of at a giant chameleon that was running up a cliff face, both strikes just barely missing the chameleon as it skirts around the points of impact.
• Jawbreaker: True to this being past incarnations' Signature Move, he twice attempts to dispatch his foes — the Skull Devil in Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong — this way, but both times it fails due to said Titans being too physically strong. In Skull Island: The Birth of Kong, he apparently successfully performs this move on a Sirenjaw he kills offscreen.
• Karmic Jackpot: Him saving and helping Godzilla defeat Mechagodzilla earns him Godzilla's respect and also gains a new home in the Hollow Earth as its ruler.
• Kid Hero: While you understandbly wouldn't be able to tell at first glance, Kong is only his species equivalent of teenager when we first meet him in Kong: Skull Island. His Mo-cap actor even admitted to playing him as if he were a 14-year-old human.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: By Godzilla vs Kong However he has very clearly grown into an adult with the body, strength, and a beard on top of all that to match it.
• Killer Gorilla: Only if you agitate him first or happen to be a Skullcrawler.
• Last of His Kind: The Skullcrawlers had killed all the giant apes on the island, including Kong's parents, leaving Kong the only survivor of his species. He eventually finds more of his kind deep within the Hollow Earth.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Went toe-to-toe with Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong.
• Lightning Bruiser: Extremely strong, but also deceptively fast and agile for his size.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Downplayed regarding napalm. In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, it's explained that he was briefly brought down by Packard's napalm in Kong: Skull Island because it sucks out the oxygen in the air, and Kong needs a lot of oxygen due to his size — but Kong quickly recovered due to his blood being highly-enriched when he's active.
  • He has another in Godzilla vs. Kong. It's established later in the film that he's not built to survive in Antarctica's ice desert and will likely soon die if he remains there, which makes sense since he's lived in a tropical climate on Skull Island all his life.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong and the Skull Island series both show that as an ape, Kong is not adept at swimming, which puts him at a severe disadvantage if an aquatic rival Titan (Godzilla in the former work, the Kraken in the latter work) drags him into the ocean. In fact, in the series, it's speculated by the humans that this is part of why Kong doesn't dare fight the Kraken so long as it remains in the sea. In Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong requires human intervention to break free when Godzilla has him underwater in a chokehold, and otherwise might have lost the battle there and then. In Skull Island, though it's a close call, Kong manages to break free of the Kraken's hold and swim back to the surface on his own once he finds an improvised weapon on the sea floor.
• Made of Iron: Remarkably doesn't die from a napalm explosion set up by Packard. Parts of his fur get singed, and the fire hardly even affects him at all, but he collapses from the dangerous fumes. His sturdiness is even more impressive Godzilla vs. Kong where during his second fight with Godzilla in Hong Kong, he's forced to go into evasive action mode via using his agility when Godzilla dislodges his axe into a building and unleashes his Atomic Breath against him. When the blast actually reached him in mid-air, it only managed to singe the fur off of his back and was able to recover from his attack rather quickly. Later in the match, he loses to Godzilla. As in loses, he goes through a graphic beating from his enemy by getting his shoulder dislocated after getting tossed into a building, battered by a sideways tail whip, had his left foot bitten into, received freshly made claw slashes on his abdomen, and almost had a Godzilla-sized footprint implanted into his chest. Right before he fully goes down from his near-death injuries, he was able to muster the strength to actually roar back at Godzilla's face, showing an air of visible defiance and determination that he'll never bow to an alpha like him.
• Makes Us Even: After Mechagodzilla is dealt with, it at first looks like Godzilla and Kong are going to rumble again, only for Kong to throw down his axe and Godzilla to then leave peacefully, likely as a sign of gratitude to Kong for saving his life.
• Mammal Monsters Are More Heroic: This giant ape is the Big Good on Skull Island, and he's quite a humanized Nice Guy by Titan standards, whereas the hostile rival monsters he fights against that threaten his territory and charges are mostly non-mammalian creatures; from giant serpents to giant bugs to killer reptiles to giant cephalopods, or a Humongous Mecha made in a reptilian image. In Godzilla vs. Kong, although both Godzilla and Kong are out to defend themselves and their respective charges against a threat, Kong is definitively the most humanized and sympathetic of the two, whereas Godzilla is more a Well-Intentioned Extremist with the sheer aggression and ruthlessness he displays in this movie.
• Manly Tears: The first time he's ever shown utter sadness is when Weaver comfortably pets him, it's probably been so long that he's felt a non-violent touch from something as small as a human.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: His relationship with Jia has shades of this. While she can communicate with him via sign language, Jia seems to inherently know what Kong is thinking, but it's unclear whether or not it's knowing him that well or something more mystical. This is especially the case during their first meeting in the novelization, where Kong doesn't seem to notice Jia...until she silently says an Iwi prayer to him, and then he instantly seems to notice her. It's unclear whether or not this is a coincidence.
• Meaningful Look: At the end of Kong: Skull Island, Kong shares one with Conrad and Weaver before he walks off back into the jungle. According to Jordan Vogt-Roberts, it's meant to symbolize the notion of gods and humans having to remain separate.
• Mech vs. Beast:
  • During the climax of Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong goes up against Mechagodzilla in order to save Godzilla. The two Alpha Titans then join forces to fight the rampaging robot, and Kong manages to cut it limb from limb, ending with its head.
  • In Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted'', Kong battles a mech known as Titan Hunter handled by a man named Raymond Martin.
  • Kong also fights Batman's giant mech and a robot created by the Green Lanterns in Issue 6 of the comic Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong.
• Megaton Punch: To show that Kong has gotten Stronger with Age sources have explained that his punches are estimated to be on the same level as 4.2 magnitude earthquakes. His strikes were definitely powerful enough to make Godzilla flinch when he briefly punched his wounded leg (where he used his axe on earlier).
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: His size alone can make anyone uneasy and he looks almost incredibly aloof, but he's not. He's shown to look out for any living thing in danger, such as when he removed the copter wreckage off of a Sker Buffalo in Kong: Skull Island, and he seems genuinely saddened when another Sker Buffalo is killed moments after he saved it in Kingdom Kong. He's only really violent when he gets provoked.
• Monster Delay:
  • When he makes his first dramatic appearance in the opening of Kong: Skull Island, his facial features and his body below the shoulders are obscured. His full appearance isn't seen until the expedition in the present day has their first encounter with him, where he massacres their choppers.
  • This also applies to his animated appearance in the Skull Island series. For the first half of the series, whenever he appears, he's either in silhouette, or largely offscreen except for his arm. It isn't until near the end of Episode 5 that we see him in full. This reflects the Dramatic Irony that the series' human cast is under: just like the cast of Kong: Skull Island and the audiences of that movie were, the cast of this series is unaware until the first season's end that Kong is Good All Along.
• Morning Routine: Godzilla vs. Kong opens with a rather humorous sequence showing Kong waking with a yawn, taking a leisurely stroll through his (at this point danger-free) territory, washing his head in a waterfall with a relaxed groan — hearing "Over the Mountain (Across the Sea)" by Bobby Vinton further sells it. And then we see Kong fashioning a tree into a spear and hurling it at the containment dome's fake sky in anger, with a later scene in the film showing he's made several more identical impacts during the time skip.
• Mythical Motifs: In Godzilla vs. Kong, his decapitation of the Ghidorah-controlled Mechagodzilla after its system is short-circuited by alcohol matches the story of Susanoo-no-Mikoto.
• Martial Pacifist: Kong is perhaps one of the most peaceable Titans in the Monsterverse bar Mothra, in that he never starts a fight without serious provocation. But once that line has been crossed, the offending party is as good as dead.
• Neck Lift: During his skirmish with a pair of Warbats in Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong with just one hand lifts the second Warbat's entire body above his head by its neck. In Skull Island, he's on the receiving end of a neck lift from the Kraken's pincer in the Final Battle.
• Nice Guy: He's certainly one by Titan standards. Though he can't be called psychologically well-balanced with how his Dark and Troubled Past fuels his grudge against the Skullcrawlers and with how much he's continued to lose as an adult, Kong is a mellow, peaceful ape, so long as you don't threaten the island and its inhabitants he's sworn to protect (in which case, your head will roll); much like how real gorillas behave. Considerably more protective and kind towards humans on a personal level than the more impersonally or indirectly protective Godzilla, Kong's image among the Iwi as a benevolent protector god precedes him; going out of his way to personally protect Mason Weaver in his fight with the Sky Devil, befriending a Spanish-speaking girl on Skull Island so closely that he was dismayed at their falling out and was completely devastated at her death, and personally taking the last of the Iwi in as his protectorate after Camazotz causes Skull Island's destruction. It says a lot about Kong's character that, even minutes after Annie and Dog incensed him by stealing his Tragic Keepsake and deliberately baited him into a fight against the Kraken, seeing their care for one-another was enough to move Kong to help them and spare them the grief of losing a loved one that he endured. Kong also initially wasn't interested in answering Godzilla's challenge after the latter's first attack on him, and after the two worked together to destroy Mechagodzilla, Kong made the first move to making peace between them.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Very downplayed in Godzilla vs. Kong. He does fight Godzilla when the latter's trying to track down Ghidorah's remains and leaves him injured enough that Mechagodzilla curbstomps and nearly kills him, almost allowing the reborn Ghidorah to take over as the Alpha Titan to continue his original plans of terraforming Earth, however, this only happened because Kong kept getting dragged into the fight by Godzilla despite not having any interest in it and ultimately only snapping when his species' ancestral home is blasted apart by Godzilla. Kong quickly makes up for this when he observes the current situation and aids Godzilla in taking Mechagodzilla down, preventing Godzilla's certain death when Mechagodzilla attempts to fire his proton scream down Godzilla's throat and is ultimately the one to destroy Mechagodzilla with Godzilla's assistance.
  • In the Whole Episode Flashback of Skull Island (2023), Kong kills the rampant chameleon creatures, but the cocky way he goes about doing so puts himself and his closest companions in grave danger and leads to him sustaining several wounds, much to the Island Girl's chagrin. Where the real Breaking part comes in is that Kong had to wash his wounds in the water of an inlet; one which unfortunately was hosting the hibernating Kraken until Kong's blood woke it up, leading the monster to kill many of Kong's charges and other humans and animals.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: He's the Noble Male to Godzilla's Roguish Male in Godzilla vs. Kong. Compared to Godzilla during this movie, Kong is a lot more compassionate and protective of humans (particularly Jia), and whilst he's perfectly willing to kill in self-defence or when someone has clearly crossed him, he doesn't go to the aggressive and ruthless extremes that Godzilla does in the name of maintaining balance and dominance. Team Kong follows Kong around and looks to him to save them, and Kong is concerned about defending them in turn; whereas Godzilla appears more concerned about the world at large than any specific human groups, and his protectiveness of humans is more implicit than explicit. Both times Godzilla and Kong fight, it's Godzilla who seeks out Kong first, while Kong on the other hand seems content to just steer around the King of the Monsters' presence until he's forced into a confrontation.
• Nominal Hero: Downplayed. Kong is a caring Gentle Giant who is generally docile when left to his own devices, but all he wants is to be left alone. He's driven to action only when provoked, and only helps defeat Mechagodzilla as a favor to Jia.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The adolescent Kong is arguably the largest creature and certainly the strongest on Skull Island with his only challenge being the Skull Devil. But in a world where kaiju reach heights of over 100 meters and can weigh up to 100,000 tonnes, on a global scale he's vastly outclassed. Downplayed as an adult, where he's not only of comparable size to Godzilla, but shares his status as an Alpha Titan. And while he lacks any innate powers such as Godzilla's atomic breath or the MUTO's EMP pulse, his sheer intelligence and full-blown sentience compensates via strategic thinking and improvised weaponry.
• No-Sell: The novelization clarifies that due to his own status as an Alpha Titan, Kong was immune to King Ghidorah's ability to control other Titans. The reason he didn't show up to help Godzilla and Mothra was that he couldn't care less about what happens to the world outside Skull Island, and because Ghidorah woke up the Skullcrawlers and he wanted to stop them from joining the global rampage.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • In Skull Island: The Birth of Kong, he has an offscreen battle against a Sirenjaw, with the human cast only arriving in time to find the aftermath.
  • Assuming that the novelization of King of the Monsters is canon, then the reason why he doesn't appear in the film is that Kong was busy on Skull Island keeping the Skullcrawlers from following Ghidorah's summons, having ignored the call himself.
• Oh, Crap!: Kong is a fairly stoic character, with only rage or sadness (when he's by himself) showing through. So when even he's visibly afraid, you know shit is about to go down.
  • Godzilla's oncoming approach put Kong in a state of panic, especially when he's chained and is unable to defend himself from a potential onslaught.
  • During the Hong Kong confrontation, Godzilla manages to toss him a good distance away and Kong appears to recognize that, with Godzilla's range advantage and being separated from his weapon that blocks said range attack, he's now in a very bad position and he shows an expression of sheer dread when he looks back towards Godzilla. And sure enough Godzilla launches a Beam Spam at the distant Kong, who wears a stressed expression as he desperately attempts to avoid the beam, by jumping from building to building.
  • Right as soon as he was starting to get the upper hand against Mechagodzilla by flooring the machine with multiple swings of his axe, the gorilla immediately gets overbalanced by a quick swoop of his tail, followed by a brief kick to the chest that pummels him into a nearby building, and begins to activate the tip of his metallic tail that rotates into a drill-like weapon as Kong is doing his absolute best trying not to get drilled in the skull, all while displaying a highly justified look of shock. Even after the mecha was briefly disabled with a dosage of vodka being poured into the control panel, Kong attempting to desperately shake off Mechagodzilla by nudging him with his axe still isn't enough to slice into the durable armor... that is until Godzilla's Atomic Breath evened the odds.
  • He makes another astonished expression when he sees Godzilla is outright bolting towards him in Egypt and is not slowing down after trying to "tell" him about the portal to Hollow Earth. Right as soon as Godzilla has closed the gap and reaches him, Kong is quickly putting his hands out in a non-threatening manner while looking surprised as a means trying not to incur his wrath like he did the last they've fought.
  • Kong looks upon Shimo with pure, unadulterated fear.
• Old Hero, New Pals: He's one of the two primary kaiju and heroes of the MonsterVerse alongside Godzilla, rotating through a new set of allies with every movie and comic appearance. In the main time frame of Skull Island: The Birth of Kong, all of Kong's surviving non-islander allies from the original Kong: Skull Island roster are absent, with the closest thing Kong has to a substitute being Aaron Brooks' team (and even then, they're more hesitant than the original team to trust Kong). In Kingdom Kong, Dr. Houston Brooks from the original movie returns to Kong's side (and is the only one of the original set to reappear thus far), while Kong's support in the field consists of a Monarch aerial fighter squadron. Come Godzilla vs. Kong, and every last one of Kong's previous allies are absent, and he has a completely-fresh set of allies with Team Kong. The only supporters of Kong whom are an exception to this rule are the Iwis as a people and culture – and they more or less stop being the exception once they're killed off inbetween instalments and Kong's Iwi protectorate Jia is the Last of Her Kind.
• Out of the Inferno: An epic moment in his debut movie when Kong emerges from the sea of napalm flames. However, he doesn't make it far before passing out due to the severe burns inflicted.
• Papa Wolf: To the natives and the creatures of Skull Island, so long as the latter aren't threatening him or the island's ecosystem (in which case, he will mercilessly use deadly force on them to restore balance). Oh, and Weaver. In Godzilla vs. Kong, he's formed a protective relationship with Jia, an orphaned Iwi girl, and the last one left. In The New Empire, he takes Suko, a young Kong, under his wing, and when Skar King tries to kill him in revenge for destroying the crystal and freeing Shimo, Kong beats him to a pulp alongside Godzilla, then has Shimo freeze him solid before smashing the deposed tyrant to pieces.
• Parental Abandonment: Both his parents died long ago, killed by the Skullcrawlers. According to Riccio's visions in Skull Island: The Birth of Kong — visions which might have been the actual past or might have simply been hallucinations brought on by Riccio's over-consumption of the Iwi's medicine — Kong's parents died right after he was born, and Kong had just enough time to imprint on them before their deaths, leaving him devastated.
• Parental Substitute: While he and Suko initially get off to a very rocky start, Kong ends up becoming a father figure to the younger ape after consistently showing him kindness that he never received from the Skar King.
• Past Experience Nightmare: Downplayed. The King of the Monsters novelization says that the Skullcrawlers Kong has fought so many times throughout his life haunt his dreams.
• Perpetual Frowner: Get used to that prominent scowl throughout the film, since he sports that expression a lot. The only other emotions he'll display are anger or sorrow. He does begin to emote more in subsequent appearances, showing a lot more satisfaction, happiness, confusion, sadness, grief and horror in his expressions.
• Physical God: He's not actually a god, but he is Skull Island's stalwart guardian, and the island natives worship him as such. The film's developers have even stated that his bipedal stance was to make Kong feel like he was this trope.
• Powered Armor: For Kong's upgrade in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, he's shown to be styled with an amber colored mechanical brace-like gauntlet that completely covers and protects his right arm entirely.
• Power Fist: The B.E.A.S.T. Glove given to Kong in Godzilla x Kong augments his physical strength and generates electricity to give Kong an Elemental Punch with the equivalent force of a meteor impact.
• The Power of Hate: Skull Island: The Birth of Kong heavily implies this is what drives Kong in a fight: his whole motive for fighting is purely driven by rage and hatred ever since he was a young child after witnessing his parents get brutally murdered by the Skullcrawlers.
• Prehistoric Monster: Kong himself and almost everything else on Skull Island qualifies, with Packard describing the former as "a monster from some bygone era". However, Kong himself is much younger than the other Titans, only being roughly a century old by the time of Godzilla vs. Kong.
• Primal Chest-Pound: Being Kong, this is as much a given for him as Atomic Breath is for Godzilla. He tends to pound his chest and roar as an intimidation display before going into a fight against another monster (or in Mechagodzilla's and the Kraken's cases he does so after finishing the fight).
• Primal Stance: Averted. His stature, proportions, and movements are definitely the most humanoid compared to the other Titans. Because of that, his fighting style, in general, is more akin to how a human fights despite being an animal. In Godzilla vs. Kong and the Skull Island series, he switches between the fully bipedal stance and a gorilla-like quadrupedal stance.
• Primate Versus Reptile: This is often Kong's main dynamic: from his perpetual feud with the Skullcrawlers seeking to fight them back before Skull Island's storm system closed in, to his fights against Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong. And later against Mechagodzilla (a reborn King Ghidorah).

R-Z

• Rage Breaking Point:
  • Throughout much of Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong only reacts to Godzilla's first attack on him purely out of self defense, but when Godzilla blows a hole into the Hollow Earth and destroys his ancestral home in the process, Kong finally has enough, grabs his new axe and confronts the King Of The Monsters head-on, intent on settling their score once and for all.
  • When Kong meets Skar King for the first time in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, he is clearly unhappy with the conditions Skar King has put the other Great Apes in and is very annoyed when Skar King laughs at his prosthetic tooth, but doesn't do anything other than glare angrily at the simian dictator, but when Skar King kills Suko's guardian for the very minor and insignificant crime of Suko not laughing hard enough for his liking, Kong finally decides he's had enough and roars an angry challenge at Skar King.
• Red Baron:
  • The Mountain Who Thunders Death.
  • On Rodan's Monarch profile Kong's secondary title is known as King of the Primates.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: He has reddish-brown eyes that appear to glow red when he smashes a helicopter to the ground in front of Packard and looks at the soldier through the flames.
• Reluctant Warrior: Kong rarely attacks unprovoked, but once provoked, he goes for the throat. To date, across both films, he makes the first move only on the Skull Devil, which he has a grudge against, and on the Mire Squid, which he proceeded to eat afterward. In his debut movie, he stops the helicopters that were dropping bombs, but when more show up, he doesn't make a move until they attack him, even giving them time to stop before finally deciding to fight back. In Godzilla vs Kong, he only fights to defend himself the first time Godzilla attacks, and only goes after Godzilla the second time when Godzilla destroys his ancestral home, which incidentally also puts Jia in severe danger. He also only attacks Mechagodzilla because Jia pleads with him to save Godzilla. After defeating Mechagodzilla and seeing Godzilla approaching, Kong makes it clear that he is prepared to defend himself, he is visibly exhausted and clearly has no real desire to fight any further, when it’s clear Godzilla isn’t going to attack he is prepared to immediately drop his weapon as a sign of peace.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Kong is an Alpha Titan and he does not relinquish his title as the "King of Skull Island" without a fight.
• Running on All Fours: Kong himself walks upright most of the time, but knuckle-walks like a typical ape when running in the Hollow Earth. He resourcefully adapts to using this quadrupedal posture a second time when he attempts to avoid being blasted by Godzilla's beam. He also walks and runs on his knuckles a couple times in the Skull Island Netflix series.
• Scars Are Forever: He has a set of three scars that run from his left shoulder down to his right hip across all his appearances, and in Godzilla X Kong he has a network of scars on his chest from when Godzilla went feral and slashed him into submission in the previous movie.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: He's become this in Godzilla vs. Kong, with the Perpetual Storm system enveloping Skull Island forcing Monarch to enclose Kong inside a gigantic bio-dome with an Artificial Outdoors Display (which doesn't fool Kong in the slightest) to keep him alive. Ultimately, partly due to Kong being too confined in the bio-dome, Monarch ends up removing him from the island so they can transport him towards an entrance to the Hollow Earth, which leads to Godzilla sensing and targeting Kong as a rival Alpha.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Subverted. The Godzilla vs. Kong trailers gave the impression Kong was being taken by the humans off of Skull Island specifically so he could fight Godzilla after the latter seemingly makes a Face–Heel Turn. In the actual film, Team Kong is actively trying to avoid crossing paths with Godzilla while transporting Kong, not that they succeed as Godzilla hunts down Kong to kill him anyway.
• Shock and Awe: His new B.E.A.S.T. Glove in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire allows him to channel electricity through it for an Elemental Punch.
• Shooting Superman: In Godzilla vs. Kong, Maia Simmons in a blind panic orders her HEAV's pilots to shoot at Kong's back to get him out of their way so they can flee the Hollow Earth. This, coupled with Maia's goons threatening Jia only moments earlier, only leads to Kong grabbing the villains' HEAV and swiftly killing them.
• Shoulders of Doom: His updated design in Godzilla vs. Kong vastly increases the muscularity of his shoulders as they're visibly a lot more broadened and hulking, giving him an even stronger and imposing look. It also makes him resemble a herculean gorilla that blends in with his sturdy Heroic Build. Ironically, he gets one of his shoulders dislocated by Godzilla when he gets overpowered by his Rage Breaking Point via Curb-Stomp Battle in the third round, but luckily for Kong, after he was resuscitated by a jumpstarted HEAV, he quickly repairs the injury by slamming it into a building and rearranges his shoulder back into place with no negative effects whatsoever.
• Signature Move: As with prior iterations, Kong's is a Jawbreaker. Here, however, he's never quite able to pull it off.
  • When he first tries it on the Skull Devil, Kong isn't strong enough to do so and eventually gives up.
  • He later tries to do one on Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong, only for Big G to use his atomic breath to burn Kong's hands and force the ape to release him.
• The Silent Bob: Being a giant ape, he can't speak to us, but he clearly has near-human if not fully human levels of intelligence and sentience, and his complex facial emoting almost always makes it clear what he's thinking or feeling when he looks at you. This trope somewhat diminishes in Godzilla vs. Kong, where Kong demonstrates that he can communicate basic words through sign language, although he reserves this for Jia.
• Sinister Silhouettes:
  • He appears a second time in Kong: Skull Island after destroying one of the copters. By standing front and center of the glaring sun behind him, his full body is seen, although most of his features are heavily obscured as he's viewed as a hulking and menacing shadowy figure and the entirety of the expedition team are able to witness Kong's presence as they're flying towards him.
  • He gets noticed again around nightfall when Conrad and Mason begin to hear his footsteps... By then, his murky form is highly visible as he trudges through the cold mist that's surrounding him, which causes the two to become understandably anxious the very second he completely emerges out of the mist and shows himself into view. This quickly becomes a much more tender moment when Mason's hand gently touches his face however.
  • Packard and the remainder of his men use napalm explosions to get Kong's attention in order to lure him to his death. As soon as he arrives, the giant gorilla's body is looked upon from a distance, where the explosion itself reveals him that's just simply standing there, being displayed as an enraged shadowy beast.
• Smarter Than They Look: True for most Titans, but he remains a standout example. Yes, the giant gorilla is a cunning and level-headed Genius Bruiser equalling or exceeding any Barbarian Hero of human folklore and legend, and the more you understand and respect that, the better things will go for you.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Unlike most other Kongs, this one survives his debut film. And although he still gets taken away from Skull Island to an unfamiliar urban city on one of the continents, he (barely) avoids dying there compared to his more mainstream-aligned incarnations' life stories.
• Stab the Scorpion: When Chapman encounters Kong in an inlet after the helicopter massacre, Kong, while drinking, appears to see Chapman and turn aggressive, lunging forward... and pulling a giant Mire Squid that was lying in wait out of the water near Chapman's position, proceeding to make a meal out of the creature.
• Stargazing Scene:
  • In Kong: Skull Island, he's shown at night sitting alone on a mountain, looking in peaceful awe up at the aurora in Skull Island's night sky, which is ironically juxtaposed to Packard's narration insisting that Kong is an enemy, showing that Packard is the one who has it wrong.
  • An early scene in the Whole Episode Flashback of Skull Island has Kong and the island girl he personally befriended sitting on a mountain side-by-side, gazing up at the stars together while the island girl gets philosophical in her musings about what technological advancements the outside world could be capable of after the events of the Kong: Skull Island movie.
• Stealthy Colossus: There are times when, despite his immense size and weight, he's able to sneak onto the scene silently and unnoticed, such as when he approaches Weaver and the pinned Sker Buffalo's location without making a sound up until he lifts the crashed helicopter.
• Stronger with Age: In his debut movie, Kong is only an adolescent with still more room to grow.
• Suddenly Voiced: Played With. In Godzilla vs. Kong, it's revealed Kong learned how to communicate with sign language from his interactions with Jia, making him the only kaiju to canonically talk.
• Superior Successor: Zig-Zagged. The Skullcrawlers killed his parents. He's capable of killing the little ones easily, as well as fighting and eventually killing the Skull Devil, implying he's this to his mother and father, especially since Marlow stated in the film that the Skull Devil is the same Skullcrawler specimen that killed Kong's parents. However, if Riccio's visions in Skull Island: The Birth of Kong are really Magic, then Kong's parents were overrun and severely weakened by a horde of Skullcrawlers before they met their ends. In any case, by the time of Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong has become superior in that he's grown to be much larger than the skeletons of his parents.
• Super-Senses:
  • It's suggested in Godzilla vs. Kong and outright confirmed in the novelization that Kong can tell after he first wakes up inside Monarch's bio-dome that it isn't natural despite the Artificial Outdoors Display.
    And he felt wrong. Slow. Everything slow, and not bright enough. Nothing exactly the right color, and the smells all wrong. [...] the sky was clear, the jungle green and alive, as he remembered it. But small, somehow. Not the way it had been. And the colors, the smells...
  • He also displays this when he starts roaring and pulling at his chains during the boat trip over the Tasman Sea as Godzilla closes in on him. Considering that Godzilla was swimming underwater several miles away and had just shown up on the human's radar system, it is implied that the only way Kong could have known Godzilla was nearby was from his heightened senses.
• Sword and Fist: Thanks to his discovery of the axe that his ancestors crafted, he actually fairs better with it in his second battle with Godzilla. Because of that, the axe is now his most useful weapon and he's fully capable of mixing up his combat style of battling Titan opponents, even if his weapon is out of reach he'll still resort to using his powerful punches (and sometimes kicks).
• Symbolic Weapon Discarding: After Mechagodzilla's destruction in Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong's decision to sue for peace with Godzilla — thereby ending the ancient feud that Kong's ancestors held with Godzilla — is marked by Kong glancing at his ancestors' axe in hand and letting it drop to the ground, the atomic light in the axe's Titanus Gojira fin-blade fading once it lands.
• Talk to the Fist: One of Skar King's enforcers angrily walks up to Kong and furiously growls directly at his face just for helping out one of the slaves. After hearing enough of him, his immediate response is socking him with a well-deserved punch that floors the fool to the ground just to shut him up.
• Terse Talker: Of a sign language variant. While Kong does learn to communicate with sign language, he "says" very little, even to Jia, and Jia notes he would have preferred no one else even knew he could sign at all (as he did not trust the Monarch researchers to actually have his best interests at heart).
• Throwing the Distraction: At one point during his final duel with Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong tricks the former into turning in the opposite direction by throwing a crane and making it hit a building, and then leaping on Godzilla as he's looking away from Kong's position.
• Time-Passage Beard: In the trailers for the The New Empire movie, Kong is shown he has grown his beard and fur longer and greyer since the events of the last movie.
• The Tooth Hurts: In the first act of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Monarch finds that Kong is suffering from an infected upper canine, which requires Trapper to remove the 'problem' tooth before providing Kong a replacement metal one.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In "The New Empire", Kong appears to have grown far more considerate of his opponent's and human lives. He has become cooperative with Monarch, trusting them enough to help him with a tooth infection. During his fight with Skar King's soldiers, he helps one of the apes up off the edge, and only kicks him off the cliff when the ape tries to kill him again. He refuses to kill Suko even after the young ape had lied to him and nearly got him killed. When returning to the surface to enlist the help of Godzilla in Egypt, he looks back in concern at the human city, showing he's more considerate of fighting in areas populated with humans and doesn't want them to get caught in the cross-fire if he can help it.
• To Serve Man: Kong implicitly eats a soldier who falls into his mouth during his attack on the helicopter squadron.
• Tragic Keepsake: In Skull Island (2023), Kong spends time at his lair somberly mulling over a human-sized necklace. This necklace actually belonged to an island girl he personally befriended many years earlier, and it's all he has left of her after she was murdered by the Kraken during a period where the pair had had a brief falling-out. Kong values this necklace so much that he goes well out of his way to get it back when Annie and Dog steal it.
• Trap Master: In The New Empire, Kong has filled his personal hunting grounds with elaborate traps like pit traps into sharpened stakes or tripwires to trigger a rockslide.
• Tranquil Fury: Kong's default state of mind as he holds a permanent Death Glare that shows how terrifyingly angry he is when he's not fighting. His reaction as he's crushing Maia Simmons and her goons to death for threatening Jia and shooting at him can best be described as grim disappointment.
• Tyrannicide: After countless millennia of The Skar King torturing and oppressing his people (and Shimo) into enacting his wars of conquest, Kong, with the help of a liberated Shimo, is the one who finally ends the mad ape's timeless reign once and for all.
• Underestimating Badassery: In their first fight in Godzilla vs. Kong in which Kong was out of his element and still dealing with lingering sedation effects Godzilla came to see Kong as little more then another Titan that needed to be put in his place. Kong makes him regret it later at round 2 in Hong Kong where he now not only has access to a weapon capable of absorbing Godzilla’s Atomic Breath but is also in a setting that better allows him to utilize his superior agility. Which allows him to not only get some good hits on the Alpha but even land a blow that knocks that Big G on his ass for short amount of time Godzilla still ultimately soundly beats him when he decides to now take the fight fully serious but Kong definitely made him work for it.
• Uncanny Valley: He may look like a giant gorilla, but there's some details about Kong that seem a little off. In spite of his gigantic mass he's able to walk upright instead of relying on his knuckles to carry his weight. His facial expressions also seem more exaggerated than a real gorilla's. It gives off the impression that we only see a giant gorilla because that's the closest thing our minds can interpret.
• Unknown Rival: To Godzilla. Unlike Ghidorah, Kong is a legitimate contender for the Alpha Titan position. It's indicated that his kind and Godzilla's warred in ancient times and the two of them are the only ones left. However, Kong doesn't really seem to give much of a damn about it until Godzilla attacks him one too many times and makes him reach his Rage Breaking Point by destroying his ancestors' home in the Hollow Earth.
• Unstoppable Rage: Basically anytime Kong starts fighting as he goes all out attacking violently and roaring in a berserker-like state. Especially when he's at war with the Skullcrawlers as they were responsible for the death of his race. In Skull Island (2023), upon gaining the upper hand against the Kraken, Kong lets it all loose and tears the beast apart as it tries in vain to fight back, unleashing all of his pent-up rage onto the monster for its endless provocations and for murdering those dearest to him.
• Use Your Head: In Godzilla and Kong's very first clash, within Godzilla's Home Field Advantage he attempts to hold Kong in his grasp. The ape responds by rearing his head back and slamming it into Godzilla's face.
• Victorious Roar: He lets out such a roar coupled with a Primal Chest-Pound near the end of Godzilla vs. Kong, when he's destroyed Mechagodzilla and is holding up its severed head like a trophy; marking Kong's victory over the Ghidorah-possessed mechanical giant, and disproving Apex Cybernetics' chauvinist philosophy that mankind can conquer the Alpha Titans on their own. In Skull Island, Kong climbs atop a boulder and roars his victory to the sky while pounding his chest after he's seemingly killed the Kraken in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown — although the Kraken is actually Not Quite Dead at this point.
• Villain Killer: He has a pretty damn high body count of Titan foes, in part because his specific territory is an entire island of kaiju until Skull Island's destruction, compared to how Godzilla patrols the Earth and keeps the peace on a more global scale in addition to Godzilla being willing to spare Titans who submit to his dominance. Kong has killed Skullcrawlers, Packard, Maia Simmons and her pilot, a Spirit Tiger, Mother Longlegs, the Kraken and Mechagodzilla, among other things.
• Vine Swing: After being "told" by Jia that his family is possibly dwelling within the Hollow Earth, he goes through the gateway door and starts swinging from pipe-to-pipe from the hanging pipes that are built around the ceiling tunnels as if they were vines as he's traveling towards the entry way. In the last scene of the film, he's seen swinging on a singular curved vine structure from a mountainous cliffside in the Hollow Earth before perching himself on top of a rocky cliff.
• Vocal Evolution: His roar sounds almost entirely different in Godzilla vs. Kong, with noticeably more bass to the actual sound effect, as well as a different "pattern" of roar. Puberty has done his Titan vocal cords wonders.
• Waterfall Puke: He almost drowned beneath the waves of the Tasman Sea, and depth charges had to be used to force Godzilla to release him from his grasp in hopes that Kong can finally reach the surface. When he does make his way out of the ocean, Kong starts to upchuck a saltwater version of this trope and slumps over from exhaustion.
• Waterfall Shower: Literally the very first thing he does after waking up in Skull Island is to leisurely saunter across the river that leads to a waterfall just so he can jump down to take a soothing shower from underneath while putting his mind at ease and comfort.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • In full effect in Godzilla vs. Kong. Though Kong may be of comparable size to Godzilla, he lacks the latter's sheer bulk and amazing powers, being essentially a titanic gorilla. However, he makes up for it in agility, ingenuity, and intelligence. He's fully capable of using weapons, which is a big boost. He EVEN manages to briefly knock the big lizard on his ass for a few minutes! Though he ultimately loses, he still leaves Godzilla worked up enough that Mechagodzilla is able to trounce the King of the Monsters with little effort.
  • Shown to a much greater degree in Kong: Skull Island as well, though Kong is more of a Lightning Bruiser relative to everything else there. When he decimates the helicopter squadron bombing Skull Island, every move Kong makes shows precision, including tricking two copters into shooting and ramming into each other, and even when he swipes across the ground to send a soldier flying, the body impacts a helicopter dead center. It serves as an excellent showcase that even though Kong has the physical power to simply overwhelm the soldiers, Kong knows how to fight smart.
• Worthy Opponent: Ultimately becomes this to Godzilla, who initially left Kong to die after defeating him. But after the two work together to destroy Mechagodzilla, the two peacefully part ways on even terms.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Kong does some flying wrestling moves in Godzilla vs. Kong against both Godzilla and Mechagodzilla.
• Would Hit a Girl: "Hitting" a woman would be an putting it extremely lightly when outright ending the life of someone such as Maia Simmons, where after stealing a sample of the Hollow Earth's energy (within Kong's ancestral home no less) she planned to have Nathan, Ilene, and most importantly, Jia at gunpoint right in front of his face. Retreating within in her own HEAV proved to be futile as soon as he catches the vehicle, the ape carefully inspects to see her inside, and unhesitatingly decides to crush it like a soda can.
• Would Hurt a Child: Godzilla x Kong has an example that's played completely for laughs. When Suko and a bunch of other apes try to attack him in an ambush, Kong grabs hold Suko and starts using him as a club to smack the other apes away from him, before tossing him aside. With that much having been said, while Kong is perfectly willing to fight Suko off to defend himself, he's not going to hurt the younger ape if he doesn't have to, and he won't stand for other people abusing him either, since he steps in to save Suko from being killed by the Skar King later in the movie.
• You Can Talk?: Downplayed; Jia reveals that Kong can communicate with her in American Sign Language, which shocks the other humans present. Perhaps a case of Shown Their Work: in real life, scientists have actually managed to teach gorillas basic sign language - they are capable of "human-level communication"...but that of a three-year-old human. They're capable of a basic You No Take Candle level of signing about a thousand words. In the movie, Kong himself only signs "home", though he's shown to understand basic sentences humans sign to/around him ("Godzilla not enemy"; "We think your family might be in there", "We want to help him" etc.). And if you listen closely, Kong's groaning sounds like he's saying "Home".
• You Killed My Father: Kong, still a teenager by his species' standards during Kong: Skull Island, fights the Skullcrawlers in part because they killed entire family. Marlow states the Skull Devil, the Big Bad of Kong: Skull Island, is the Skullcrawler that killed both of Kong's parents.
• Younger Than They Look: During the events of Skull Island, he's only a teenager in spite of appearing as old as any previous iteration of Kong (who are said to be much older). As such, he isn't fully grown in spite of being the biggest American incarnation of the character to date.
• You Will Not Evade Me: In Kong: Skull Island, Kong uses a ship propeller and anchor chain by throwing the propeller into the Alpha Skullcrawler's back, then dragging it back to him with the chain.

Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong crossover

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• Brainwashed and Crazy: As expected, Grodd's worship of Kong was not exactly genuine. He mentally controls Kong to attack the Justice League in Metropolis.
• Empowered Badass Normal: An Alpha Titan who can fight on even footing with the King of the Monsters is temporarily given the power of a Green Lantern ring.
• Help Mistaken for Attack: Kong saves Green Arrow from a warbat, but Supergirl mistakes it as him attacking Green Arrow, and proceeds to punch poor Kong who is very confused on why is he the one being attacked by Kara.
• Hero Antagonist: Alongside Godzilla, Kong is set up against the entire Justice League in the comicbook.
• Dynamic Entry: He makes his entrance by landing on a Skullcrawler and killing it.
• God Guise: He is mistaken as a god by Gorilla Grodd simply for being a giant ape. Grodd bows to him out of nowhere confusing even Kong, which is something coming from a Killer Gorilla with quite the God Complex. In issue 5, Grodd brings an entire army of apes to bow to Kong.

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"Home."