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Chapter 1 cover art. See more here.

"Within the head lies the seat of the soul. Despite all appearances, Dr. Graham didn't die that night. Ghidorah has plans for her, punishment for her efforts to contain him. He will remake her in his own image. And now Jonah has them both. But things rarely go according to plan, and the head left behind to keep her is too curious for his own good. Far too curious... and far too eager to learn."
— Official plot summary

Abraxas is a Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction written by Hrodvitnon, which is available to read on FanFiction.net and Archive Of Our Own (with extra author's notes).

Set after the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and diverging from the MonsterVerse continuity before Godzilla vs. Kong, the story's set-up in the first chapter is that not only does King Ghidorah's severed head still contain San's (also known among the fandom as "Kevin") living mind, but it’s also carrying Vivienne Graham's Only Mostly Dead body after she was Swallowed Whole by Ghidorah's central head during the film — San is reviving and regenerating her to form a new half-human, half-Ghidorah Kaiju chimera; with San and Vivienne's minds residing in separate heads on her transformed body as "brother and sister". Caged by Alan Jonah and his mercenaries in an unknown location after the duo's painful rebirth, Vivienne suffers from PTSD and warily makes a truce with San so they may escape to freedom. The story follows the fused siblings' building relationship and their struggle to avoid slipping to their pain and madness.

As of December 2021, the story has the fourth-highest hit count and the twenty-first highest Kudo count of any story in the Godzilla: King of the Monsters category on AO3.

Status: Completed as of October, 2021

The author announced she does not intend to write a sequel of the same length as the original fic, and instead she's encouraged readers to create their own Recursive Fanfiction for the AbraxasVerse. That being said, she has posted a timeline which describes significant events during the four years following the main story's ending, as well as various snippets both canon and non-canon; on her Tumblr. In May 2023, the author posted a collection of one-shot stories called Abraxas: Empty Fullness, which she says will include canon and non-canon works.

Recursive Fanfiction sequels that have been published as of May 2023 include a series of one-shots (an outdated original version and an updated "Second Edition") and Abraxas: The Clash of Silver (link), by SyfyGuy2. In April 2024, the author canonized The Clash of Silver.

Post-completion, the author has also posted a playlist for the story.

For tropes applying specifically to Abraxas: Empty Fullness and Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, see those individual pages.

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The main story contains examples of:

The AbraxasVerse Timeline specifically contains examples of:

  • Adaptation Origin Connection: The Timeline states Monarch operatives Nathan and David Lind are involved in the Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicles' construction, whereas in MonsterVerse canon, Nathan and Monarch were only introduced to the vehicles after their construction and David was dead by this time.
  • Giant Animal Worship: A modernized and sacrifice-free (as far as we know) example. According to the AbraxasVerse Timeline and further word from the author, by 2021, new Titan-worshipping cults have begun forming among the public for the first time since the Titans last ruled the Earth.
  • Rank Up: The Timeline chronicles two instances of established characters from the main fic getting promoted through the ranks of their respective organizations. Mark Russell, who ended the main fic planning to retake his old job at Monarch, has become co-director of Monarch four years later; while Ren Serizawa starts as a member of Apex Cybernetics' R&D, and he rises to become chief engineer.
  • Riddle for the Ages: The characters can only speculate on whether the Hollow Earth Citadel's builders were wiped out by Ghidorah, Godzilla or civil war.
  • Taking Up the Mantle: The AbraxasVerse Timeline reveals that by 2024, Mark Russell is the new co-director of Monarch, with Madison as his assistant and confidant; not unlike Serizawa and Vivienne's dynamic in Godzilla (2014).

Universal tropes:

    A 
  • Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Adaptational Badass:
    • Ghidorah, multiple-fold. Its backstory reveals that it was originally created by technologically-advanced humanoid beings to be a planet-sterilizing Bioweapon Beast like the Toho versions; but unlike the Showa and Heisei Ghidorah, AbraxasVerse Ghidorah turned against and completely eradicated its makers almost right after they set it loose for the first time. Ghidorah's telepathic and regenerative powers are a lot more demonstrably potent than in MonsterVerse canon; being able to regenerate itself and its individual minds entirely from a single severed appendage with time and energy, and retaining full-blown, long-range psychic links with its various pieces, offshoots and other creations.
    • Gigan has been a Psycho for Hire at most, or a plain puppet to human aliens since his inception in Godzilla vs. Gigan. Whilst the Abraxas version of Gigan is associated with non-kaiju advanced aliens, he's their master instead of vice versa.
  • Adaptational Friendship: Dr. Vivienne Graham has more explicitly close friendships with several of her Godzilla: King of the Monsters colleagues in Monarch's top brass than anything shown in MonsterVerse canon. She's shown to be friends with Drs. Chen, Stanton and Coleman and Colonel Diane Foster, whereas in the movie she never has any interactions to indicate they're especially close.
  • Adaptational Heroism:
    • Monster X (Vivienne and San) is benevolent, aligned with Earth's Titans, and comparatively goes further out of its way than most Titans do to avoid innocent human casualties; instead of being an evil invader.
    • Mandazawa is an innocent Protectorate to the heroic Titans and tries to be a Tagalong Kid in Chapter 17, whereas the original incarnation was an Anti-Villain and subsequent incarnations in movies have been Brainwashed and Crazy or straight-up monsters.
      • This extends to Manda's father the Lord of Dragons before him, who was on outright friendly terms with Godzilla when alive and isn't mentioned as having gone to any morally ambiguous lengths defending his territory.
    • The Abraxas version of Ren Serizawa, who was introduced before Godzilla vs. Kong came out, is a mostly heroic character who develops a respect for the Titans, rather than a callous Evil Genius with an anti-Godzilla agenda.
    • From what Word of God says, some of the lesser Earthborn Titans such as Scylla are consciously committed to doing their part to maintain Earth's natural balance, so long as they aren't enslaved to Ghidorah's will. MonsterVerse canon's post-King of the Monsters instalments instead implied that the subordinate Titans only maintain nature's balance so long as Godzilla is calling the shots, and many of them would much rather disrupt the global equilibrium by pursuing their own instincts and ambitions without caring how other species are affected, if left to their own devices.
      • Rodan and Scylla both fight for Godzilla against the Many; whereas in canon the closest either of them have come to acting heroically is when they submit to Godzilla's dominance, and they — particularly Scylla — have since been portrayed in later MonsterVerse instalments as some of the outright nastier Titans.
    • Subverted with Apex Cybernetics. They approach Monarch with plans for legitimate projects which could better prepare mankind to defend itself against Titan-level threats and make the Titans' job of defending the world somewhat easier for them, but the Timeline all but confirms that though their plan is a bit different in this continuity, their philosophy and end-goals are roughly the same.
      • Maia Simmons however eventually has a Heel Realization by 2024, and makes plans to side with Monarch against Apex if the latter loses control of Project Talos; compared to how the MonsterVerse version was loyal to Apex to the end.

  • Adaptational Intelligence: Both Mark Russell and Maia Simmons get this alongside Adaptational Nice Guy.
    • Mark becomes the emotional kind due to Character Development; growing into a more competent parent figure to Madison who overcomes the My Beloved Smother and Just a Kid pitfalls, and more of a reasonable authority figure, compared to his canon counterpart's failure at both those hurdles in Godzilla vs. Kong.
    • Maia is an Iron Lady who knows how to amicably get what she wants from people, and she also shows explicit awareness of her Psychopathic Manchild father's shortcomings. Compare that to the open book jerk in Godzilla vs. Kong who was little more than her father's lackey and who infamously shot at Kong.
  • Adaptational Nice Guy:
    • Mark Russell starts the story with the same temper issues and judgmentalism that he persistently displays in MonsterVerse canon, but he calms down and becomes more open to others' reasoning. The ending heavily implies this version of Mark will be more considerate and have a much better relationship with his daughter than the relationship strained by My Beloved Smother and Fantasy-Forbidding Father that they have in Godzilla vs. Kong.
    • This continuity's version of Maia Simmons is a lot more amicable than the smug, rich jerk from Godzilla vs. Kong, even if she is still complicit in some very illegal stuff.

  • Adaptational Secrecy Downgrade:
    • In Godzilla vs. Kong, Apex Cybernetics' project to perfect Mechagodzilla with the aim of murdering and usurping Godzilla in the name of Muggle Power and corporate hegemony was kept almost completely secret by Apex's corporate conspiracy, with Monarch and the public only knowing that Apex claimed to be working on a Godzilla-combating secret weapon and that they were seeking the Hollow Earth's Green Rocks as a power source; not realizing what the weapon was precisely or that it was already built. In the AbraxasVerse Timeline, Apex collaborate with Monarch openly to build the first Mechagodzilla, Kiryu, with Apex telling Monarch and the world that the mech's purpose is to provide the world with an extra, human-controlled Protector Titan against hostile threats — it's just the fact that Apex are piggybacking on the Kiryu project and are building a second, more advanced Mechagodzilla of their own in secret in order to kill and usurp Godzilla, that are being kept secret.
    • Due to the main Abraxas fic starting publishing before Godzilla vs. Kong came out, the verified existence of the Hollow Earth and its ties to the Titans are pretty much public knowledge. In MonsterVerse canon, the Hollow Earth's existence was revealed to the world at the end of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but Broad Strokes in Godzilla vs. Kong led to a Series Continuity Error where the Hollow Earth was still regarded as a quack theory by the world at large in that movie.

  • Adaptational Sympathy:
    • The film made San out to be goofier than Ghidorah's other two heads, and a doormat to the middle head, who literally pushes him around and yells (roars) at him. In this fic, the expansion on San's and Ghidorah's characterization and backstory gives San even more sympathetic traits and redeeming qualities, and the abuse he suffers is not Played for Laughs in this version. He's been under chronic physical and verbal abuse from his brother heads whilst having literally nobody else for billions of years, which has in turn made him dependent, severely love-starved, and prone to self-blame and self-loathing; to say nothing of what he went through before all that with the Makers. San also truly likes and cares for Vivienne, taking his new responsibility as her brother head to heart.
    • Sort of with Rodan. In the MonsterVerse canon, Rodan joined King Ghidorah, and is made out to be a Wild Card who has no fixed loyalties and an ambiguous morality. In this fic, it's made clear that Rodan only joined Ghidorah because the latter dominated and enthralled him, and he apparently didn't enjoy being slave to an Omnicidal Maniac one bit, to the point where he carries a grudge. He still has a temper and an attitude problem all on his own, though.
    • Downplayed with Ichi and Ni — though it isn't used in any way to make their present day selves seem any more redeemable, this version of Ghidorah has a very dark and compelling Freudian Excuse which neither the MonsterVerse version nor most of the other licensed iterations ever possessed. Long story short, Ghidorah was viciously experimented on and thoroughly tortured by Abusive Precursors, and after Ghidorah killed said Precursors, the lingering biological consequences of their experiments continued to torment Ghidorah into killing just in the hopes it could get some reprieves from the torture, and this drove Ghidorah insane over billions of years; moulding its heads' minds into the depraved, genocidal sadists they now are. "Damnatio Memoriae" recounts Ghidorah's emotionally excruciating Start of Darkness.
    • Word of God says that if Raymond Martin, the Big Bad of the MonsterVerse graphic novel Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted, is ever adapted into the AbraxasVerse, he'll still be a heinous and violent Titan-hater, but he'll also be portrayed as more of a pitiable and broken man with more emphasis on his backstory.

  • Adaptational Villainy:
    • Whilst Ghidorah's left head is a redeemable character, the middle and right heads (Ichi and Ni), on the other hand, are more explicitly vicious than Ghidorah's general portrayal in King of the Monsters was. Not content with just killing all humans for kicks and killing Godzilla while xenoforming the Earth into Ghidorah's new habitat, Ghidorah is a Card-Carrying Villain who already wiped out numerous other planets for the sakes of conquering and sterilizing them before Earth became its latest target. Ichi and Ni try to do almost anything within their twisted imaginations to put Vivienne through living hell, including but not limited to forcing her to watch them try to kill her loved ones, and planning to rape and impregnate her until her mind breaks; just because Vivienne unknowingly pissed Ichi off by pressing his Trauma Button previously, and because Ni lusts to see her turn into a metaphorical monster.
    • Walter Simmons is apparently no less evil and petty here than he was in Godzilla vs. Kong, and technically endangers even more lives as part of his Engineered Heroics than his canon self did. His plan to kill and usurp Godzilla is even more needless in the AbraxasVerse than in already was in MonsterVerse canon on account of Godzilla securing a more lasting human-Titan coexistence. According to Word of God, Simmons has also ordered his hitmen to assassinate his own daughter Maia if she becomes a security risk — the closest that the canon Simmons ever came to Offing the Offspring was sending Maia on a mission with a mortal occupational hazard, and he was apparently never aware that she'd died as a result of this before he followed her to the grave. The ascended Recursive Fanfiction Abraxas: The Clash of Silver explicitly shows this filicidal cotingency plan of Simmons', plus it also reveals his grizzly plans for the other Titans after killing Godzilla: lobotomizing them and using their bodies as giant living batteries, whereas canon was more ambiguous about what precisely Simmons' plans, if he had any, for "neutralizing" the other Titans were outside of it being something humanocentric.
  • Adaptation Name Change:
    • Downplayed with Monster X, which in this version lacks the Keizer Ghidorah name due to it being a Decomposite Character – instead, Monster X's other official name is Titanus Abraxas, or simply Abraxas.
    • The cloned Titanus Gojira Ladon is basically Godzilla Jr. in all but name, down to being locked up by humans at the start of his life.
  • Adaptation Personality Change:
    • Since Ren Serizawa was introduced in the fic before Godzilla vs. Kong was released (and before the first trailer hinting at Ren being a sinister character even aired), Ren's personality ends up being quite different from his movie counterpart. For starters, his father issues, though they ended up being quite similar in their cause, are nowhere near as bad on his end in Abraxas; and Ren does have a degree of respect and admiration for the Titans and nature overall (even if it isn't as profound as Ishirō's), which his movie counterpart absolutely lacked. Instead of a quiet, scheming Evil Genius who lacks empathy and practices no less than what his father preached against, Ren Serizawa in AbraxasVerse is a sarcastic Jerk with a Heart of Gold with clear morals who is slowly learning to fill his forebears' shoes as a borderline-mystical Titan naturalist.
    • Maia Simmons. Instead of being a haughty, unpersonable and rude Rich Bitch who panics to the point of suicidal stupidity and blindly goes along with her ruthless father's demands; this version is a polite, charming, affable and ruthlessly brilliant corporate Iron Lady who casually chides her father's faults and is gradually growing disillusioned with him.
  • Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Downplayed. Thanks to Mark's character development in the fic, by the time of the last couple chapters (which were published after Godzilla vs. Kong), Mark and Madison's relationship is considerably better than what they had in Godzilla vs. Kong, as lampshaded by the author in these posts.
  • Affectionate Gesture to the Head:
    • On account of the fact they share a single body below the necks, gestures to the other's head is the main way that Viv and San physically show affection towards each-other. They bump their heads together, twine their elongated necks around each-other in a protective gesture, and in Chapter 11, Vivienne teaches San what a kiss to the forehead is while recalling it's something that her mother did to her.
    • In Abraxas: Empty Fullness "Sermones ad Mortuos", Mothra pats Manda's head with one of her talons to placate him. Vivienne is also reminded of how her human mother would brush a hand through her hair.

  • Aliens Are Bastards: True to classic Godzilla form, the majority of alien lifeforms that have a notable impact on the story and/or are still alive in the main time frame, particularly alien Kaiju, are evil and hostile. The only exceptions to make a physical appearance are San, and later San-Who-Could-Have-Been, and even then, those are both Heel-Face Turns.
    • Ghidorah is a highly malicious, ancient Draconic Abomination from space who has extremely sadistic and cruel personalities, and it's an Omnicidal Maniac that moves from world to world, wiping out all life that it can on every one; especially if said life includes intelligent, human-sized aliens capable of making their own civilization. That being said, later chapters of the fic make it clear that Ghidorah's extreme malevolence is strictly down to a tragic and unnatural Freudian Excuse in its early backstory, rather than being down to its extraterrestrial origin.
    • Aside from Ghidorah, there's also the enigmatic alien civilization who created it and became the victims of its second ever planetary genocide. The Makers made Ghidorah what it now is, and it wasn't a pleasant process for Ghidorah, involving inhumane experimentation on wild animals which made them suffer unimaginably. "Damnatio Memoriae" furthermore confirms that the Makers created Ghidorah to commit total planet-wide genocide on another planet's civilization that had provoked the Makers by rejecting their alternative "offers", killing all visible life on the planet.
    • Word of God on Tumblr confirms that Gigan also exists in the AbraxasVerse, and that his sadism and depravity rivals or even supercedes that which Ghidorah displays during the main fic.
    • Furthermore, Gigan has a fleet of advanced spacefaring aliens as his heralds and servants, and they're nightmarish sense freaks who mar themselves in Cyborg conversions and Body Horror on top of supporting their vile lord's evil campaign across the stars (although these aliens might have been forcibly twisted into becoming the way they are now by Gigan).
  • All There in the Manual: The author has provided some extra pieces of information about the story's universe on her Tumblr account (not all under the same tag), and in the Archive Of Our Own author's notes and comments section.
  • Alternate Animal Affection: Godzilla and Mothra exchange some Type 2 with each-other, in the form of Mothra playfully jabbing with her Overly-Long Tongue and Godzilla's licking and nibbling, in Chapter 18. Drabbles by the author indicate that a grown Manda shows affection by slithering up the other Titan's limbs and booping heads.
  • Alternate Universe Fic: Continuation type. The fic began publishing in 2019, and the author originally wanted to match the fic's events within the frame of any future developments in the Canon continuity such as Godzilla vs. Kong before the film's release, but the fic has since become an Alternate Continuity. Major divergences from post-King of the Monsters canon include Ghidorah's decapitated head continuing to regenerate instead of decaying to an undead skull, and the Titans from the Mass Awakening remaining active yet keeping the peace with humanity's world. Many human characters, Titans and pieces of Hollow Earth lore which were introduced in post-King of the Monsters MonsterVerse installments are confirmed (within the main story, the Timeline or by Word of God) to also exist in the AbraxasVerse's canon in some shape or form, although there might be some differences in personality or backstory for some of the characters.
  • Ambiguously Bi: It's hinted in the story that Vivienne is bisexual, with Word of God further supporting this — the Abraxas: Empty Fullness one-shot "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" outright confirms that Vivienne is interested in both males and females. Word of God has also suggested Godzilla probably mated with males and females in his past.
  • Ambiguous Situation:
    • The author confirmed that Mothra is semi-telepathic, but she left it ambiguous whether Madison's seeming connection to Mothra is a sign that Maddie has formed a Psychic Link with Mothra, or is merely due to Madison's general Bone Singer Recessive Super Genes.
    • A lot is left ambiguous to the end and even into the AbraxasVerse Timeline about the Zmeyevich. Do they have any way of knowing what they are or about Ghidorah and its plans for them? Are they Always Chaotic Evil, will Defusing the Tyke-Bomb work on them, is it even crucial? Word of God and the invokedascended recursive fic Abraxas: The Clash of Silver have since shed much more light on the Zmeyevich.
    • Precisely who or what caused Mechagodzilla's "glitch". Was it caused by Abaddon and Megiddo, or other Zmeyevich, or Ghidorah, or the Many? Is this a sign that Mechagodzilla has tissue from the Many or Zmeyevich integrated into it? In the aforementioned Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, we get an answer.
  • Amicable Exes: There's some slight hints that Vivienne is bisexual, and Word of God has supported the suggestion that Vivienne and Dr. Ling were once in a relationship but ended it on good terms when Vivienne was still human. Abraxas: Empty Fullness does away with the ambiguity entirely.
  • Animal Jingoism: According to Word of God, several of the Titans have specific enmities with other Titans, which will often lead to a territorial fight if one of them (usually a Destroyer Titan, but a Protector Titan can also be the aggressor, especially if undergoing an aggression-heightening biological cycle) aggravates the other.
  • Animal Nemesis: Averted by Ren Serizawa before the story's events. Word of God says that despite the Titans being the reason why his father was seldom around, Ren felt that holding a grudge against them was as non-sensical as holding a grudge against a tornado or a tsunami.
  • Anthropomorphic Shift: Played With by the Titans, not in terms of physique but in terms of sentience. Though many of them in MonsterVerse canon are clearly highly intelligent animals, they're portrayed as being susceptible to Smart Animal, Inconvenient Instincts, and supplementary materials describing Godzilla's P.O.V. make him seem almost like an Eldritch Abomination clothed in an animal. In AbraxasVerse, though the Titans are still definitively animalistic and get Furry Reminder, they display basically human-like levels of self-awareness, communication, and even basic human body language cues like Godzilla gesturing to the heart when referring to one's emotional connections and grieving process.
  • Apocalypse How:
    • Besides the threat that a restored Ghidorah might try to pick up where it left off in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) (see the trope entry here for details), it's outright confirmed by San's memories and invokedWord of God (1, 2) that Ghidorah previously completed the same apocalypse on numerous alien worlds with intelligent life, furthermore making sure to render these conquered worlds as inhospitable to life as possible. When discussing what would have happened if Ghidorah had completed its original plan for Earth in King of the Monsters, the author agreed (1, 2) with the MonsterVerse novelizations' assessment that the fallout on Earth would be a Class 5, and she compared it to the fallout from "certain methods of Exterminatus"; with Ghidorah actively having humanity hunted into extinction, pelting the Earth with constant superstorms which would've killed off all non-Titan life, and the Earthborn Titans under Ghidorah's thrall would've also died shortly after.
      • The climax of "Damnatio Memoriae" depicts Ghidorah's first ever omnicide against a planet when it's still young and new to its capabilities, eradicating the local sapient civilization and reducing the world to a "graveyard" after the Makers (whom Ghidorah would go on to eradicate) released Ghidorah on the planet as a Final Solution.
    • Word of God heavily implies that Keizer Ghidorah's plan to devour the Zohar at the Earth's core in the present will cause a Class X if it succeeds.
  • Ascended Extra: San and Vivienne Graham, who were both technically minor or supporting characters in MonsterVerse canon and are considered Ensemble Dark Horses by the MonsterVerse fandom, are the two main protagonists of this story, and they respectively get further characterization and Character Development. Mariko, a one-scene character in the King of the Monsters novelization, is elevated to a supporting character in the fic.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Word of God says that this trope is how Titans become Alpha Titans. Any Titan can become an Alpha if they defeat a previously-established Alpha.
  • As the Good Book Says...:
    • The Many's dialogue makes clear references to the Bible at times, fitting with how their Hive Mind is a disturbing mix of Horror Hunger and fanaticism. It seems to be a kind of family trait: the Many, Ghidorah's heads and Mechagodzilla all respectively reference Genesis 3:5 in particular.
    • It's revealed that Apex Cybernetics secretly encoded verses from the Book of Samuel referring to David challenging Goliath into the Encephalon supercomputer, presumably to act as a villainous Morality Chip – the implication is that Apex see themselves (or rather their weapon, with Apex blasphemously painting themselves as the Israelites) as David, and they see Godzilla and his Titan allies as Goliath. Walter Simmons furthermore blasphemously quotes Isaiah 27:1 in Abraxas: The Clash of Silver.
      • In addition, Apex's corporate conspiracy leader Walter Simmons names two captive Zmeyevich after names from the Bible: Abaddon (which refers to an angel from the abyss or to a place of destruction connected to the realm of the dead), and Megiddo (which refers to the prophesized site of the final battle between good and evil in Armageddon).
  • Ax-Crazy:
    • Ghidorah's three heads (especially Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother) are no Adaptational Nice Guy here whatsoever, getting a kick out of tormenting and then killing with extreme prejudice anything that they consider to be an enemy or beneath them — except for Vivienne. The story also reveals how Ghidorah became this way, revealing it was a result of Being Tortured Makes You Evil followed by eons of death-demanding Terrible Ticking.
      • MaNi/Elder Brother takes this a bit further: unlike Ghidorah, who knows how to restrain itself when it's very pragmatic, MaNi only cares about playing with Monster X with some good old ultraviolence and he doesn't know when to stop. And he won't hesitate to attack any living thing that has Monster X's scent on them, if he thinks it'll provoke Monster X to fight him more fiercely.
    • Jonah has an uncharacteristic psychotic episode in Chapter 5, when he performs a particularly nasty experiment on Monster X that involves fire and he goes out of his way to try verbally ripping Vivienne to shreds for minimal reason, signifying his Sanity Slippage.
    • The author has made the AbraxasVerse version of Gigan out to be as deranged as ever in his evil, even comparing his AbraxasVerse brand of insanity to that of Albedo Piazzolla (1, 2), and revealing that he presides over a cult of self-torturing extraterrestrial sense freaks.

    B-D 
  • Badass Boast:
    • Ghidorah has this for a Bone Singer who communicated with it, in the past in Chapter 5:note 
      Ichi: WE ARE DEATHLESS
      Ni: WE ARE ETERNAL
      Ichi: WE ARE THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS
      Ni: CONSUMED EMPIRES OF FLESH AND BONE AND METAL
      San: we live forever cut off our heads and they will grow back
      Ichi: THE HEAD IS THE SEAT OF THE SOUL
      Ni: THE HEAD IS THE SEAT OF THE SOUL
      San: the head is the seat of the soul
    • Vivienne has this for Jonah when she and San are almost ready to escape containment:
      "Did you think us defeated? Broken down to be your tool? Did you think yourself like Odin, all-seeing and all-knowing? Binding us like Fenrir, foretold to bring about great destruction at the time of Ragnarök? For all his wisdom and insight and knowledge, did it ever occur to Odin that by binding the wolf he was only creating a self-fulfilling prophecy? Fenrir's sons will devour the sun and moon, Gleipnir will break, and Fenrir will have his vengeance on Odin. This fetter will break..."
    • And Monster X have this to say to Ichi in Chapter 17:
      Ichi: HA. YOU ARE MORE LIKE ME THAN YOU CARE TO ADMIT.
      Monster X (final form): Comes with the name. I am Abraxas. I can be good... and I can be a terrible, necessary evil.
    • Word of God says that Monster X saying "stock edgelord phrase" such as "YOUR DEATH COMES" or "YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH AWAITS" may sound corny to humans thanks to pop culture, but among Titans it sounds a lot more intimidating.

  • Bad People Abuse Animals:
    • The Makers, full stop. In order to create Ghidorah, they violently captured wild alien animals, and they tortured and fused them with violent experiments over years. After reading "Damnatio Memoriae", it's unsurprising that the young Ghidorah turned against and exterminated the Makers the first chance it got.
    • Abraxas: The Clash of Silver mentions that Don, one of the Zmeyevich antagonists, once squashed a spider just because it was there.
  • Became Their Own Antithesis:
    • In the main fic, San has gone from being the "youngest sibling" head of a planet-destroying, Earth-threatening, utterly misanthropic Titan Omnicidal Maniac that is aligned against Godzilla, and the least evil of the minds composing said Titan; to being the "elder sibling" head of a protective, Earth-defending, profoundly human-protecting Titan that is aligned with Godzilla, and San is the more pragmatic and unforgiving of the minds composing said Titan. San's relationships with his sibling heads in either Titan are also complete contrasts. As a part of Ghidorah, San was loathed, put down and abused by the other two heads; as part of Monster X, San is loved, encouraged, nurtured and protected by Vivienne.
    • The Abraxas: Empty Fullness Start of Darkness one-shot "Damnatio Memoriae" shows that Ghidorah's other two heads, Ichi and Ni, were a case of this during Ghidorah's backstory. Before they became the psychopathic, vicious and abusive assholes that they are now towards San, they were actually thoughtful, supportive and fiercely protective brothers towards him.

  • Been There, Shaped History:
  • Big Brother Instinct:
    • This runs both ways with Viv and San – anyone who actively and seriously messes with one of Monster X's heads is in for a world of agony and likely death from the other. Vivienne eventually also somewhat extends this to San-2/Youngest Brother during that Alternate Self's Redemption Equals Death.
    • "Damnatio Memoriae" reveals that Ghidorah's three heads (Ichi the "Eldest Brother", Ni the "Elder/Younger (Middle) Brother", and San the "Youngest Brother"); were originally very protective and loyal to each-other in the face of a threat to any one of their respective youngers at the beginning of Ghidorah's life. By the present day, those positive traits have long since gone, and now the body-sharing three heads' violent, abusive and codependent relationship with each-other is just a dark echo of the Sibling Team that they once were.

  • Big "SHUT UP!":
    • Deriding Vivienne's paternal relationship with Serizawa makes her snap and scream this a couple times.
    • Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother snap at San-2/Youngest Brother with this just for talking too much while they're in a bad mood. They also repeatedly scream for the Old Noise in their heads to shut up in "Damnatio Memoriae".
  • Bioluminescence Is Cool: Mothra and Godzilla return, plus Monster X's bio-electrical powers cause their body to release flashes of reddish bioluminescent light. Abraxas: Empty Fullness reveals that Manda can flash aqua bioluminescent light from his body when he's slightly older.
  • Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Downplayed with the Titanus Manda species. According to Word of God, females of Manda's species had horns, compared to the males who have antlers.
  • Blood Knight: Though San isn't an Omnicidal Maniac like his brothers and is less sadistic unless provoked, he genuinely enjoys a fight. San's Elder Brother Ni and by extension MaNi in particular favor fighting and killing for their own sakes. In fact, Word of God says that all three of Ghidorah's heads generally enjoy a good fight. Rodan is no fight-avoiding diplomat himself. Subverted by Godzilla, who draws the line between Tranquil Fury and The Berserker in Chapter 8.
  • Body Horror:
    • Monster X's first form is in a chronic state of agony, has ingrown extra fangs along the jaws, and a horrifically extreme case of Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva which is exacerbated by the Healing Factor's defect, making it very difficult for Viv and San to move certain joints without risking breaking their bones.
    • Then there's the Many, whose appearance was apparently partly inspired by bone cancer images (do a quick Google Images search, and you'll see why the author advised against doing just that). The Many's Fusion Dance splitting apart and fusing together infected bodies, and incorporating tumorous-looking smaller bodies in, only adds to the effect.
    • Word of God says that the fleet that worships Gigan modify themselves extensively with genetic tampering and cybernetics from utero to just before death with the aim of heightening sensations, pain included.
    • The Zmeyevich, as crude half-human, half-Ghidorah born hybrids, are apparently grossly disfigured by human standards. Abraxas: The Clash of Silver furthermore portrays them having distorted Ghidorah-like vestigial skulls in their chests which can come to life and puppeteer their bodies.
  • Boisterous Weakling: Word of God describes Amhuluk as a "hostile little shit", and states that he'll often try to cause trouble and encroach on other Titans' territory, but he can be easily scared off with certain harmonics or can be fought off by Monster X.
  • Broken Tears:
    • Both halves of Monster X. Vivienne, understandably, has tears lining down from her malformed face in the hours to days after she's reborn from the head of the monster she feared as a pain-wracked, Body Horror-laden monstrosity, held captive underground. San completely breaks down and sheds tears when he comes to understand Vivienne's feelings better and hits a Heel Realization.
    • In Ghidorah's origin story in Abraxas: Empty Fullness, Ichi broke down crying as a result of failing to protect his younger brothers and himself from being tortured by the Makers.
  • Cain and Abel:
    • San and his brothers (Ni and Ichi) are the Abel and the Cain respectively. Ichi and Ni viciously abused San for eons, and San has disowned them after fusing to Vivienne. Ichi and Ni would happily kill San, and he them, if they crossed paths again after San has become a shed skin.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, the Zmeyevich Aleksandra, having been raised right in Monarch, fights against her malevolent, long-lost Zmeyevich half-siblings, Abaddon and Megiddo.
  • Child by Rape: Nadezhda, Esfir and Lubyov have been artificially inseminated with Ghidorah-related Fetus Terribles, clearly without their consent. It's revealed in Chapter 16 that Ghidorah intends to invoke this on Vivienne as another way to torture her.
  • Classified Information: The abandoned Monarch outpost's existence is buried under this, as is Thor's existence according to Word of God, and Apex's reports on Mechagodzilla's test run are heavily redacted.
  • Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: The author has described what the voices of Godzilla and Ichi, Ni and San respectively sound like. She's also provided voices for Thor, Rodan, Mothra, Scylla and Methuselah, and she's toyed with what several minor humans' voices would sound like, and she's stated Monster X's voice in its first form sounds like the Gravemind's in Halo.
  • Contrived Coincidence:
    • A little bit. The abandoned Monarch outpost which Jonah's paramilitary take up residence in happens to be the one next to the odd Titan who rejected King Ghidorah's summons during the Mass Awakening, which results in said Titan remaining in the vicinity to respond when it hears Monster X's Howl of Sorrow.
    • The AbraxasVerse Timeline reveals that the Final Battle of the main story occurs precisely on the one-year anniversary of Ghidorah's awakening and Vivienne's death in Antarctica.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Maia Simmons and her father Walter Simmons, the heiress and director respectively of Apex Cybernetics. Maia is ultimately a downplayed case, as she illegally trafficks Abaddon and Megiddo to Apex and she has some involvement in Project Talos' secretive true purpose, but she slowly has a Heel Realization about her corporate cabal's evil. Walter Simmons however is a straighter example — part of the reason Maia has a Heel Realization is because of just how far the former is willing to go to get what he wants, and it's implied (outright confirmed in Abraxas: The Clash of Silver) that even without a Ghidorah skull, Simmons' Evil Plan here is not much, if at all, different from his plan in MonsterVerse canon.
  • Cryptic Background Reference:
    • It's revealed that the island of Yonaguni used to be the site of Mu, "the great sea-city of dragons" where Manda's father the Lord of Dragons lived as guardian, and the present day Yonaguni Monument and other rock formations of ambiguous origin on the island are actually the eroded remains of ancient structures from the time of Mu. We don't know how Mu declined and fell, or how the same happened to the Lord of Dragons and his entire species, but the body of the Lord of Dragons is entombed underwater in the Yonaguni Monument, while the fate of his mate (Manda's biological mother) is unknown. We also know that Mu/Yonaguni has subterranean tunnels which both the Lord of Dragons and the humans of Mu used to travel.
    • According to Rodan, the aforementioned Mu and Godzilla's underwater temple from King of the Monsters are just two of many forgotten prehistoric acropolises, necropolises and graveyards that are concealed by the earth and sea all over the world.
    • Active Bone Singers were more prevalent in the time when the Titans were last active before the Mass Awakening than they are today, and various Titans have had encounters with them in different parts of the prehistoric world. Thousands of years ago, a group of shamanistic-looking Bone Singers braved Antarctica's deadly conditions to approach the glacier where Ghidorah was trapped in suspended animation. Godzilla thinks upon smelling Monster X and learning what they are that Vivienne is a more northern breed of Bone Singer than the ones that Godzilla previously encountered. Thor had quite a close relationship with Bone Singers in his time (heavily implied to be Old Norse or a precursor to those people), recalling several songs and rituals that they performed, including a galdr that they sung over their dead to keep them from rising again.
    • Information on the Makers is kept vague and limited. It's made clear that they had a superficial resemblance to modern day humans, down to the use of hazmat suits, flamethrowers and shock sticks, but their science and technology were far beyond ours; having transformed Ghidorah into what it is now and transported it across space to another planet. In Abraxas: Empty Fullness, it's stated that the Makers made Ghidorah to commit total genocide against another sapient planet because, as the Makers state, "thrice [the Makers] have offered and thrice they [the Enemy] have refused," and it's also revealed that they viewed religion and spirituality as superstitions that their ancestors had long outgrown.
    • MaNi seems to have a slight Ignored Epiphany when Vivienne directs the right word at him in the right context, as he balks for a moment, and she thinks that she's caused a distant memory to momentarily resurge in him. Word of God specifies just what that distant memory was and why MaNi reacted that way.
    • Thor's recollections reveal that his kind and Methuselah's kind were peacefully affiliated when there was more of them around.

  • Cyborg:
    • In the AbraxasVerse Timeline, the Humongous Mecha Kiryu is secretly built around a deceased Titanus Gojira's bones which act as an endoskeleton, making him a Full-Conversion Cyborg. And it's also implied that the other Mechagodzilla being built has some organic element integrated into it, with .
    • Word of God confirms that Gigan in AbraxasVerse has cybernetics integrated into his body like he did in Godzilla: Final Wars, and that the aliens which follow him likewise modify their own bodies with mechanical implants throughout their lives in worship of Gigan.
  • Dark Is Evil: The underground and darkness are associated with the antagonists. When the Many and Keizer Ghidorah come to the surface, they darken the skies with their Ghidorah-derived Weather Manipulation. Inverted by Monster X once they gain dark-gray skin. Camazotz plays a minor role in the official timeline; darkening Skull Island with a storm before he's Weakened by the Light.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Besides Jonah and Stanton, Vivienne demonstrates a sharp tongue and a deadpan sense of humor a few times throughout the story. Chapter 15 shows it's a trait that Vivienne's mother Susan also possesses, when the latter is observing a news feed. Godzilla himself isn't above making an occasional snark while sounding dead-serious. Even Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother get in on this trope at the early onset of their Villainous Breakdown in Chapter 17. Word of God says that Kraken/Na Kika is "passive aggressive" when making their displeasure known.
  • Death by Irony:
    • Besides the Karmic Deaths, the fic lampshades that both Serizawa and Vivienne's respective deaths during King of the Monsters were this. Vivienne was killed by the very Titan whose containment she was in charge of before it broke free, while Serizawa was born at Hiroshima before the bomb dropped and he ultimately died in the blast of a nuclear bomb.
    • The Skullcrawlers, creatures which canonically are such a threat because they're extreme biological hypervores, get killed by an even more horrible Eldritch Abomination which is also driven by Horror Hunger to consume everything.
    • Abraxas: Empty Fullness reveals that the Makers basically invoked this trope on their enigmatic enemy, and the trope happened two-fold. Since the number three was a religious motif in the Enemy's culture, after they rejected the Makers' so-called "offers" for the third time, the Makers created a three-headed Bioweapon Beast which annihilated them... before said beast turned around and annihilated the Makers too.
  • Deep Sleep:
    • In the aftermath of their first Heroic RRoD, Monster X fall into such a sleep and possibly even a Near-Death Experience before their second Metamorphosis begins. They have a brief, deep and much more peaceful sleep after Keizer Ghidorah's death.
    • The Timeline reveals that after all the events of 2019 and 2020 which demanded his attention, Godzilla enters a rest period of dormancy for three years.

  • Defector from Decadence:
    • Mariko and Tejada both become increasingly disgusted and disillusioned with Jonah's actions as he loses his marbles, culminating in both of them ditching any remaining alliance to him in favor of joining up with the disposable vagrants looking to survive. They both later aid Monarch in trying to stop what Jonah's actions have unleashed, although it doesn't spare them from facing legal punishment for their crimes after the Final Battle has ended.
    • The AbraxasVerse Timeline reveals that after the Executive Maia Simmons discovers the depths of the Director's corruption and madness, she plans to defect to Monarch if the Collaborators lose control of their Humongous Mecha project. The invokedascended Recursive Fanfiction Abraxas: The Clash of Silver sees her go through with this defection.

  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • In the main fic; after Sam Coleman makes Vivienne aware that her mother is with him at Castle Bravo, they end up promptly bringing Susan to the control room to see Monster X. As lampshaded by Ling and by Vivienne herself, it was an impulse decision, and deciding to make Susan aware of her daughter's fate on pure impulse like this without thinking through how to ease her into the revelation was a bad idea.
    • "Damnatio Memoriae" reveals that the Makers performed inhumane experiments on Ghidorah to make it as powerful as it is, and they implanted an excruciating, constant mental noise into the three heads which could only be temporarily abated by killing everything within sight and reach in order to force Ghidorah to act as the Makers' weapon of global destruction against their enemies. However, the Makers didn't seem to realize that once Ghidorah had wiped out all life on the planet they sent it to and it didn't have anything left to kill there, it would use its new space-faring powers to leave the planet behind, and it would have every reason to return to the Makers and annihilate them next, after all the suffering they inflicted on it.

  • Disproportionate Retribution:
    • Ichi/Eldest Brother's response to Vivienne unknowingly setting off his bad memories while he was too frozen to physically lash out was to eat her alive, then have San bring her Back from the Dead transformed into something like the very three-headed dragon she feared, intended as a way of showing not even death will grant her quick release from Ghidorah's retribution.
    • Walter Simmons' response to Maia giving Ren one consolation about a highly-suspect project that Ren felt uncomfortable about is to cut her out of Project Talos under the justification that she's going soft. In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, he has an even nastier response to Ren punching him in front of his subordinates.
  • Distant Finale: Downplayed. Roughly midway through the main story's final chapter, there's a Time Skip of a couple months, and the Timeline covers events over the following four years.
  • Draconic Abomination: King Ghidorah is even more eldritch than it is in the MonsterVerse canon, being capable of assimilating other Titans into itself and infecting other beings with its biomass to mutate them into hybrid monstrosities. Even after being immolated by Godzilla, its Mind Hive remains active and resurrects Dr. Vivienne Graham as a Monstrous Humanoid amalgam of herself and San's (Ghidorah's left head's) severed head that eventually metamorphoses into Monster X. Alan Jonah's experiments splicing tissue samples from the severed head with corpses give rise to an Undead Abomination horde called the Many. Ni (Ghidorah's right head) is severed and regenerates using the Many into a nightmarish gestalt monster called MaNi; and Ghidorah creates a Humanoid Abomination servitor species called the Zmeyevich by impregnating human women with its mutagenic DNA.

    E-F 
  • Elemental Personalities:
    • As in canon, Godzilla is an aquatic monster who seeks to maintain the world's balance, Mothra's ability to create blinding flashes of light matches her protective nature, Methuselah is a rocky monster with a peaceful and passive disposition, and Rodan is a highly-aggressive pyrokinetic beast.
    • Ghidorah, as in canon, is a Psycho Electro. Monster X is a positive Electricity when they manage to activate their bio-electrical powers, with the Vivienne Graham half of them being a Reluctant Psycho who's unwilling to sit on the sidelines but is prone to Berserker rages for most of the story, while the San half of them is actively inquisitive; in contrast to Ghidorah's negative Electricity.
    • Scylla is Ice: Word of God confirms that she's responsible for reversing the ice caps' melting like in the King of the Monsters Creative Closing Credits; she makes a hard and pragmatic attempt to kill a Titan ally before said ally can turn and become a threat after he's been infected by the Many; and she apparently has destructive urges and a mean penchant for mischief such as causing the 2021 Suez Canal Incident.
    • Camazotz, though only appearing as a Continuity Cameo in the main story and on the Timeline, gets extra Darkness points beyond his MonsterVerse portrayal for apparently having gone into seclusion following the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), unlike the other awakened Titans.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Kiryu is Metal. He gains sentience and stubbornly resists any and all effort by his human creators to get him back under their control, sometimes with psychic or electrical violence.
  • Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Ford and Elle Brody apparently have only a very limited command of Japanese, which presents itself when they try to reassure a terrified nurse on Ishigaki in Chapter 18. According to Word of God, Monster X will probably try to teach Manda pieces of humans' languages in the future, but Manda will struggle to learn one language and only scraps will stick, due to his brain being more animal than human. In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, the intelligent Iron Lady Maia Simmons is portrayed as understanding basic sign language, although what she communicates with it sounds basic.
  • Every Scar Has a Story:
    • Although Mariko survived the destruction of Outpost 58 in the King of the Monsters novelization, she came out of it with bad facial scars which serve as a permanent physical reminder of her crime.
    • Abraxas: Empty Fullness "Damnatio Memoriae" reveals the origin of the permanent horn chip on Ghidorah's right head (Ni): it was damaged by the Makers in the process of capturing him, before they forcibly transformed Ichi, Ni and San into Ghidorah and caused the beginning of their spiral into madness and evil.
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • Monster X overall is a Good Counterpart to Ghidorah, having similar powers and a similar origin but remaining on the side of good. Vivienne particularly has an Evil Counterpart in Ichi/Eldest Brother, who is essentially what Vivienne could've become if she became hateful due to her traumas and abused San instead of forming a caring bond with him.
    • Vivienne also gains an Evil Counterpart in Alan Jonah to a degree. Like Vivienne after the latter finds out about Serizawa's death, Jonah in his backstory was driven to the brink of despair by the tragic and untimely death of someone he loved (his daughter instead of his Parental Substitute). Unlike Vivienne, who pulled through her grief-induced depression, Jonah never let go of his, which mangled him into the apathetic, misanthropic, nihilistic monster that he is today.
    • San in turn gains an Evil Counterpart in MaNi/Elder Brother, who remains loyal to Ghidorah and lusts to see Monster X's capacity for violence, in contrast to how San makes a Heel–Face Turn and genuinely loves Vivienne as a sister.
    • The Zmeyevich were intended by Ghidorah to be an Evil Counterpart Race to humanity, aiding Ghidorah analogously to how humans form symbiosis with the terrestrial Titans.
    • Abraxas: The Clash of Silver features a couple:
      • Mechagodzilla is a Humongous Mecha made by Project Talos, just like Kiryu is. But Kiryu was made partly by Monarch under the impression they'd be helping the world, and it develops an overall benevolent consciousness and helps to defend the world, whereas Mechagodzilla is an exclusively Apex-made machine which is possessed by Abaddon and Megiddo's malevolent consciousnesses, seeking to destroy the world and ensure Ghidorah's resurrection.
      • Abaddon and Megiddo (Don and Meg) become their biological half-sister Aleksandra's evil counterpart. Where Aleksandra was given a compassionate upbringing in Monarch custody with a loving carer in order to defuse the tyke-bomb, Don and Meg were instead raised in Apex Cybernetics captivity and exploited to fulfil their surrogate "father" Walter Simmons' twisted plan, and they were also psychically contacted by Ghidorah, leading Don and Meg to sadistically attempt to destroy humanity and aid Ghidorah's return. Don and Meg as Mechagodzilla can also be seen as an evil counterpart of Monster X who is slavishly devoted to Ghidorah's evil instead of going against it.
  • Evil, Inc.: Pharmaceutical companies and corporations including Bio-Major are apparently scrambling over each-other and willing to hire mercenaries to obtain Titan DNA samples (including the Ghidorah samples Jonah has obtained) for lucrative purposes. There's also Apex Cybernetics, who participate in a form of Human Trafficking and are overall implied to be just as bad here as in canon.
  • Evil Laugh: It's hinted in this main fic that some of the times when Ghidorah's heads produce their high-pitched roars (which Godzilla viewers have historically compared to deranged cackling), the heads really are cackling. In Ghidorah's backstory in "Damnatio Memoriae", both San and Ichi cackle darkly in their Kaiju Talk translations when musing on getting their revenge on the Makers.
  • Evil Takes a Nap: According to Word of God here, Camazotz has largely gone dormant underground after his failed attempt to conquer Skull Island. The author also said here that Ghidorah would have likely sent the Many into dormancy for a brief period while it worked on breaking Monster X if it had succeeded in taking Monster X into the Hollow Earth.
  • Evil Versus Evil: Word of God reveals that Ghidorah has encountered Gigan during its travels across space before it landed on ancient Earth, and that the two clashed and tried to kill each-other.
  • Expressive Hair: In Monster X's second form, San has fully-developed horns which droop or flare with his mood, just like when he was originally part of Ghidorah. Manda's beard-tendrils undulate to reflect his mood in certain ways, as shown in both the fic and this non-canon drabble.
  • Fantastic Romance: The Timeline reveals that in 2022, Monster X and Rodan are reportedly a mated pair (trio?), and the Abraxas: Empty Fullness one-shot "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" chronicles the relationship's beginning. For Rodan to become Monster X's mate, Vivienne had to get turned from a human into a Titan, and San had to get separated from Ghidorah and merge with Vivienne.
  • Fix Fic: The main fic started as one for the author, who is a Sally Hawkins fan and very much disapproves of her character's wasted potential and how they not-so-reverently Dropped a Bridge on Her in the MonsterVerse, hence this fic bringing Vivienne Back from the Dead after the movie's ending and using her as one of the two main protagonists. To a lesser extent, the fic later brings Dr. Serizawa back after a fashion (maybe) via amnesiac spiritual reincarnation in the newborn Manda. The last couple chapters and the AbraxasVerse Timeline fix a couple other problems that the author and other MonsterVerse fans had with Godzilla vs. Kong: keeping most of the Titans that were introduced in King of the Monsters awake lastingly, instead of sending them all back into hibernation between movies and rendering King of the Monsters' Nothing Is the Same Anymore Dawn of an Era ending entirely moot; rewriting Maia Simmons as a much more intelligent, mysterious and competent character whose redeeming qualities are explored a little more; and using Mark Russell's post-accusation character development during the main fic to make him grow into a more humbled and reasonable authority figure and a more open-minded and decent father to Madison than Mark's Godzilla vs. Kong portrayal (who the author found obnoxious and regarded as a disappointingly-aesop amnesiac "dunce" who was unworthy of his responsibilities).
  • Foil: Both Viv and San have several contrasts – besides Alan Jonah, they have Foils in Godzilla, Manda, Thor and Madison. They aren't the only ones either – Jonah and Ghidorah are Foils, and Mark Russell has Foils in Thor and Ren Serizawa. See the characters' respective folders on the character pages for more details.
  • Forced to Watch:
    • Viv and San get subjected a couple times in the main fic courtesy of Ghidorah's other remnants. MaNi nearly forces Vivienne to watch San get killed in front of her. The completed Monster X is later forced to watch Keizer Ghidorah attempt to violently assimilate Thor into the Many.
    • In "Damnatio Memoriae", Ghidorah was subjected to this trope in its backstory. Ichi and Ni had to watch helplessly as the Makers started cutting a screaming San open, before the Makers started doing the same to the other two one by one, with Ichi (the eldest who looked out for the other two) being last.
  • Foregone Conclusion:
    • Downplayed with Nadezhda in the main fic. She and her husband Zima end the story hoping that they'll get to live happily ever after raising their child, but Nadezhda's child is one of the Zmeyevich (which present serious health risks to their mothers), and it's heavily implied by Nadezhda's weakening health that she'll be among the unlucky fraction of Zmeyevich mothers who don't survive the childbirth. In the ascended recursive fic Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Nadezhda's Death by Childbirth is confirmed.
    • "Damnatio Memoriae" tells Ghidorah's origin story. The basic plot progression is already known from San's account in the main fic, it's just the extra details concerning Ghidorah's characterization, and the Makers and the Enemy, and precisely where the one-shot will cut off that are unknown to the reader in advance.

  • For the Evulz:
    • There's the Many leaving a security headcam message for the torch-and-bury op to find in Chapter 11. They seemingly had no reason to do that except to screw with them.
    • Discussed in Chapter 17. Barnes observes that Jonah and his paramilitary had nothing to really gain towards their cause by Playing with Syringes on San's original head, and he speculates they pretty much did it just because they could. Of course, Barnes doesn't know about Jonah's Love Makes You Evil motivation for his cruel experiments.
    • Word of God comments that Ghidorah, true to the character's proneness to this in MonsterVerse canon and previous licensed iterations, would sometimes personally wipe out species who hadn't challenged it just for fun during its conquests of alien worlds.

  • For Want Of A Nail: A few by the story's end in relation to post-King of the Monsters MonsterVerse installments:
    • A conversation with Dr. Brooks results in Mark Russell being talked out of enrolling Madison in a public school, and getting some further parenting advice against the canon Mark's questionable parenting methods in Godzilla vs. Kong. The Timeline reveals this leads to Madison becoming Mark's assistant in Monarch by 2024.
    • Due to his Adaptational Heroism personality, Ren is conducting corporate espionage on Monarch's behalf instead of being a willing part of Apex Cybernetics' agenda.
    • Due to San's old head continuing to regenerate instead of becoming an Undead Abomination skull, Apex Cybernetics have Abaddon and Megiddo instead of a Ghidorah skull in their custody.
    • Monster X intervenes to prevent Camazotz' Perpetual Storm permanently enveloping Skull Island, and most of the island's inhabitants are saved with the storm dispersed.
    • Skull Island's Vile Vortex is apparently completely caved in after the battle against Camazotz, rather than merely being de-stabilized as in Kingdom Kong. As a result, the Lind brothers' first attempt to enter the Realm Below takes place in Antarctica instead of Skull Island.
    • Because the Titans from the Mass Awakening remain awake in this continuity, they all join Godzilla in destroying Apex Cybernetics bases in 2024.
  • Freudian Excuse:
    • San, Ichi and Ni have one in their backstory. Billions of years ago, they were originally a benign-natured type of juvenile wild animal, but they were Kidnapped for Experimentation by humanoid aliens who brutally altered them. They were cruelly tortured to madness by the Old Noise for generations, and they subsequently spent literal eons wiping out entire planets per the Old Noise's standing instruction in desperate bids to rid themselves of the Noise, until all the mounting torments and the constant, never-ending omnicide warped them into the deranged, hyper-sadistic beasts that Ghidorah's heads are now.
    • Word of God says that Ladon isn't the most temperate Godzilla, even comparing him to a watered-down version of the Minus One Godzilla iteration, on account of him having spent his start to life locked up underground and being treated like a labrat at best.
    • When asked about Hokmuto and Femuto's self-awareness and thoughts in AbraxasVerse, the author commented that they were likely as bad as they were and as unwilling to bow to Godzilla to save their own lives because of their lifelong lack of guidance.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, the Zmeyevich Don and Meg are ruthless, cruel and completely genocidal creatures, on account of having been raised by Walter Simmons as his weapons while being psychically groomed by Ghidorah all their lives. They've grown into well-done son guys that are eager to please Ghidorah with global genocide and have no moral compass beyond that, in contrast to the moral Aleksandra who was "raised right" without any apparent influence from Ghidorah.
  • Friend to All Children: Vivienne used to babysit Ilene's twin daughters, who remember her fondly. Thor can be outraged to wrath when "young ones" he cares about are threatened. "Sermones ad Mortuos" reveals that when Vivienne was a child, she had an elderly neighbour called Mr. Tomlinson who gave her apples during visits and indulged her interest in dinosaurs with quizzes.
  • Fusion Dance:
    • The Many perform a lot of this with their biomasses, being partly The Assimilator in the style of The Thing (1982).
    • Monster X is Two Beings, One Body, but when it transforms into its single-headed final form, Viv and San experience a Mental Fusion.
    • Word of God says that after the AbraxasVerse Timeline's end-point, Dagon's old genetic memory, the A.I. in Kiryu's manmade supercomputer brain, and possibly other factors all fuse together to grant the Kiryu mech consciousness.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, a copy of Ren Serizawa's consciousness gets melded to that of Don and Meg when they body-jump into Mechagodzilla, and when they subsequently break out of the mech in an organic form.

    G-H 
  • Genetic Memory:
    • Whenever any of Ghidorah's three heads are lost and they have to be regenerated – either from Ghidorah's body, or from a previously-severed appendage if that's all that's left of Ghidorah after the body has been killed – the regrown head(s) have all the exact same pre-severing memories and personality as their severed counterparts fully backed up, resulting in clones of the same individual head's mind if a regrown head's severed counterpart is still intact and alive on its own.
    • Word of God (1, 2, 3) states that after the AbraxasVerse Timeline's end-point, the Kiryu MK I gains sentience, and its consciousness partly inherits fragments of Dagon's personality and memories that lingered in his bones after his death while still ultimately being a new and separate consciousness from him.
  • Gone Horribly Right:
    • Jonah having his goons try to provoke a reaction in Monster X in Chapter 4 works far too well, leading to the brutal deaths of at least three of his mercenaries.
    • It's revealed that Ghidorah was originally created by an advanced alien civilization billions of years ago to be a weapon of global destruction that would wipe out everything on a planet that Ghidorah's makers sent it to. Unfortunately for the Makers, not only did Ghidorah work just as well as they intended it to and then some, but once Ghidorah's targets were dead, it targeted and eradicated the Makers next, and it's been wiping out all life that it can find anywhere in the universe ever since, sterilizing entire worlds.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Apex have built an anti-Titan mecha of their own to be capable of matching the Titans' power level and potentially toppling them — which means that Apex are just as screwed as anyone else is, once the minds Apex have connected to the mecha to control it decide that they don't need Apex anymore.
  • Guile Hero: Both Ren Serizawa and Maia Simmons (after her Heel Realization) use their own wits and covert methods to aid the heroes amid their corporate environment.
  • Hazmat Suit: Mariko, and Jonah's Mooks, are wearing protective suits when approaching the Vivienne-San hybrid in the main fic. "Damnatio Memoriae" portrays the Makers via the Dorats' thoughts wearing full-body protective suits when they first capture the Dorats.
  • Head-in-the-Sand Management: Zig-Zagged by Monarch. Word of God says that if Vivienne was asked to address this wiki's Strawman Has a Point entry which describes Monarch's ineffectual handling of The Government in King of the Monsters (see here), Vivienne would admit that she and the rest of Monarch were indeed being highly indecisive and they defaulted to trying to stall the government long enough to reach a firm consensus on humanity's stance about the Titans.
  • Heel Realization:
    • San has a particularly brutal one in Chapter 5, when he's viewing Vivienne's memories and has a painful epiphany about just how what he and his brothers did to her has caused her so much misery and why she's been so wary of him.
    • Word of God confirms that San-2/Youngest Brother had his own Heel Realization during the events in Chapter 17, which in his case was likewise partly triggered by viewing another's memories of their lost loved one/s.
    • Maia Simmons slowly becomes concerned about Project Talos and her father's actions, and eventually she makes plans to pull a full Heel–Face Turn if Apex do lose control of Mechagodzilla and Kiryu.

  • Heroic Lineage:
    • From what we see of Ilene's twin daughters' interactions with Titans, Ilene's little girls are not going to pull a Ren Serizawa when they grow up: they're likely going to continue the Mothra-worshipping legacy of the Chen family, whom are further revealed by Word of God to be a bloodline of recurring specialized Bone Singers in their own right.
    • Speaking of Ren, this story's version of Serizawa's son is a Zig-Zagged case, instead of the outright villain from Godzilla vs. Kong. Ren has his differences with his late father, but he starts to form an understanding of why his father felt connected to the Titans, and he ends up becoming a hero aligned with Monarch.

  • Hidden Depths:
  • Hollow World: Titans can use tunnels cutting through the Earth's mantle to shorten global travel time, like in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but later chapters also hint that the real Hollow Earth ecosystem located at the planet's core (here referred to by Ghidorah as the Realm Below) is largely unexplored or untouched even by them.
  • Horrifying the Horror:
    • Remember the Skullcrawlers from Kong: Skull Island? Vicious, bloodthirsty, Horror Hunger-mad beasties that'll take Kong in a fight without hesitation? Well, what's lurking around the abandoned Monarch outpost following the Artificial Zombies' creation and the disappearance of San's old head is so terrible that Kong's old foes flee in terror when it's near them; in Chapter 11.
    • As much of a Blood Knight with a literal and figurative fiery streak as Rodan is, he's slightly unnerved and given pause when he sees Monster X tearing apart the Many in an insane rage, in Chapter 13.
    • Word of God says that two of the few elements of horror fiction that would genuinely disturb San are: liminal space (a la The Backrooms), and hospital horror.
    • The fleet which worship Gigan are horrific, Body Horror-ridden sense freaks who voluntarily allow themselves to be flayed alive before they die, but Word of God (1, 2) says that even they are terrified of Ghidorah, due to a past encounter between them which occurred many of the fleet's generations ago.
  • Humanity Is Insane: Downplayed, but San in the main fic and Rodan in "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" both think that humans are an odd bunch. San is bemused that humans make emotional relationships so complicated when Vivienne can't give him a straight answer to his question about whether or not her bond with Serizawa makes the latter's son Ren her brother. Rodan is befuddled that taking a raincheck to think over a courtship proposal instead of instantly accepting or declining it is a thing amongst humans.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Monster X in its first form and final form is a Monstrous Humanoid, and what makes it overlap with this trope is that half of Monster X is San (a former head of Ghidorah). The Zmeyevich once they're born have a Ghidorah-evocative Monstrous Humanoid appearance, and they apparently have some eldritch nature themselves.
  • Humans Are Flawed:
    • Discussed by Dr. Chen in Chapter 12. Indeed, after the Mass Awakening, the majority of the public have grown accepting of the Titans' power and natural authority and their ecological importance, though there's still a minority that advocates attempting to kill Titans such as the Ghidorah-like Monster X out of paranoia. Vivienne and human characters also deride the sheer reckless hubris of the military who deployed the Oxygen Destroyer, and the corporations who are utilizing Titan DNA.
    • Word of God describes the terrestrial Titans' varying opinions on humans' flaws. Most Titans are aware that humanity overall have both their faults and their redeeming qualities, and some of them can at least appreciate humans' creativity and sense of artistry when it comes to architecture.
  • Humans Need Aliens: The events of King of the Monsters have made the human race generally more conscious of the fact the world needs the Titans for survival; with the Titans' ecological crucialness and humanity's inability to effectively usurp them if they tried being brought up as much in this fic as they originally were in King of the Monsters, whereas post-King of the Monsters MonsterVerse installments such as Kingdom Kong and the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization have humans treating these things more like an afterthought. Even Maia Simmons at least acknowledges it's the Titans rather than humanity who are currently the world's real main line of defence.
  • Humble Pie: The author, when asked to postulate on post-Mass Awakening Abraxas politics, indicated that the government were left in a mortified position; after all their pre-Mass Awakening push for Titan extermination culminated in the Oxygen Destroyer's Epic Fail which almost ensured the end of humanity by King Ghidorah, and after overwhelming evidence that Monarch were right about most Earthborn Titans' Fertile Feet and capacity to coexist with humans came flooding in after Ghidorah's downfall. This left the government dragging their feet for some time and begrudgingly admitting that Monarch might have been right about coexisting with Titans after all.
  • Humongous Mecha: Project Talos is creating two mechs in Godzilla's image (namely Kiryu and Mechagodzilla), as part of the Muggle Power.
  • Hybrids Are a Crapshoot:
    • Subverted with Monster X. Viv and San's first hybridized form is unintentionally crippled and plagued by Body Horror, but with Mothra's aid this gets completely fixed to make them a fully-functional Titan.
    • Ultimately downplayed with the Zmeyevich: although they're born fully functional, appearance-wise they didn't inherit any of Ghidorah's good looks and they're quite conspicuous-looking.

    I-L 
  • The Idealist: Ilene Chen and the lepidoterran Titan her family worship have this in common. Ilene drops a couple glass-half-full arguments during the main story, and Word of God says Mothra sees humanity in a light not that far off from Good Cannot Comprehend Evil.
  • I'll Kill You!:
    • Both San and Vivienne have respectively screamed the latter two words at someone over and over when murderously incensed; whether saying the words out loud (as San does in Chapter 4) or saying them within their minds (as Vivienne seems to do multiple times).
    • Godzilla makes quite a chilling goad to the Many when he's hunting one of their constructs, in Chapter 14:
      "Come on out, so I may kill you."
    • In the Empty Fullness Ghidorah-centered one-shot "Damnatio Memoriae", Ichi bellows several times that he'll kill the Makers for horrifically torturing him and his brothers (who at this early point in his life Ichi still cares for).
  • Immortals Fear Death: San, who was formerly part of a biologically-immortal and self-regrowing three-headed dragon, and is chronologically billions of years old, becomes terrified by the thought of dying permanently in Chapter 5. Averted by Ghidorah: it isn't exactly unafraid of death, as shown by its Villainous Breakdowns in the movie and in this fic, but the knowledge that it will always come back from death gives the heads (particularly Ichi/Eldest Brother) some measure of well-founded confidence.
  • In Harmony with Nature: Downplayed, but most of humanity are now one step closer to proper coexistence with the Titans after the events of King of the Monsters (moreso than in MonsterVerse canon, where the events of that movie have been mostly reset and forgotten in later installments). Humanity have accepted that the Titans aren't going away anytime soon, and that at this point, humanity has to get used to cohabiting the world with them. Deification of the Titans is even making a comeback in some circles.
  • The Insomniac:
    • Vivienne is initially rendered insomniac in her and San's first hybridized form. In the Abraxas: Empty Fullness one-shot "Sermones ad Mortuos", Viv and San become insomniac again for several nights when they're in mourning.
    • It's also indicated that sleeplessness is one of the early symptoms of suffering Brown Note from long-term exposure to Ghidorah's telepathy.
    • Susan has evidently had sleepless nights since the Mass Awakening.

  • In Spite of a Nail: Despite the events of this story and the Alternate Universe Fic points, some things at the end remain the same as they are in MonsterVerse installments set after King of the Monsters:
    • In an In-Universe clone variation; though the circumstances leading up to San-Who-Could-Have-Been/Youngest Brother turning against his brothers in favor of aiding Vivienne are very different, and he never develops the main San's thanatophobia, the facial cues he cycles through when he hears Vivienne calling him "brother" are notably exactly the same as San's when he first heard the same. It's also heavily implied that like with San, the major turning point in San-Who-Could-Have-Been's Heel Realization was viewing another being's emotion-tinted memories of their lost loved ones.
    • Despite the Titans from the Mass Awakening remaining awake in this continuity, Camazotz still invades Skull Island as he did in Kingdom Kong.
    • Mark and Madison still move to Pensacola (albeit a year or three earlier than when the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization states they did), and Mark still rejoins Monarch and becomes co-director.
    • Ren Serizawa still takes a high-ranking job at Apex Cybernetics, albeit for very different reasons than in MonsterVerse canon.
    • Apex Cybernetics still obtain a remnant of Ghidorah via a black market dealing (though not a piece of the three-headed creature itself this time), and they obtain it just over a year after the events of King of the Monstersnote .
    • Despite the Iwi's and the Skull Island ecosystem's Spared by the Adaptation, Jia's parents are still killed in the chaos caused by Camazotz, and Kong still has to leave the island in 2024 due to growing too big for the ecosystem.
    • Skull Island's bio-dome from Godzilla vs. Kong is presumably never built, but Monarch and Apex do still build a giant protective dome elsewhere in 2021; namely atop Dagon's grave in the Philippines.
    • Apex Cybernetics have no Ghidorah skull, they approach Monarch with a collaborative proposal years earlier than in MonsterVerse canon, and their plan involves building two mechs in Godzilla's image instead of just one. But they're still illegally building Mechagodzilla in Hong Kong with completion still occurring in 2024, and the mech has shown signs of being possessed by something that's related to Ghidorah.
    • Maia Simmons still gets assigned by her father to join the efforts to man a Hollow Earth expedition, albeit a year earlier than in MonsterVerse canon and before the Linds' failed first attempt.
    • In a more meta sense, the AbraxasVerse Timeline confirms that in a world where Titans emerged in 2019 and several major cities have been completely levelled, the Suez Canal Incident of 2021 still occurs but the cause is an aquatic Titan.
    • See here for Abraxas: The Clash of Silver entries.

  • Interspecies Romance: It's heavily implied that Barnes got it right in King of the Monsters when he assumed Godzilla and Mothra have a thing going on. Rodan has some definite Belligerent Sexual Tension with a certain half-human, half-Ghidorah hybrid which blossoms into a relationship later on the timeline.
  • I Want Grandkids:
    • Downplayed with Susan Graham. She never strongarmed Vivienne into having kids, even when Vivienne hit her forties, but she's quite happy that her daughter has an adoptive child in Manda.
    • Played Straight with Ghidorah. It's considered the father of the Zmeyevich, and Word of God reveals that it deliberately designed them to have strong desires because Ghidorah wants them to procreate and proliferate as much as possible as part of Ghidorah's long game. To say nothing of when Ghidorah intended to impregnate the other part-human "child" that it created, and it intended to do the impregnating itself.
  • Jaw Drop:
    • Dr. Chen's jaw falls during the Final Battle when she's watching the benevolent Titans kick Keizer Ghidorah's ass.
    • In the Abraxas: Empty Fullness one-shot "Ain't That a Kick to the Head", Monster X's jaw, Monstrous Mandibles and all, falls slack when they realize that Rodan is courting them.
  • Jerkass:
    • Guard B-04 is an immature, cowardly shit who relentlessly bullies Vivienne in her and San's helpless state.
    • In one of the internet users commenting on Monster X news, username HumanityHellYeah, we have your standard Internet Jerk with a bit of pre-Mass Awakening kill-the-Titans sentiment.
    • What we know about Walter Simmons doesn't paint a picture of an Adaptational Nice Guy. He's a borderline taskmaster with his daughter, he'll swing from saying he's open-minded into Can't Take Criticism when you give him critique, and he's overall stated outside the main fic to be power-hungry and egotistical like his canon counterpart.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
    • Rodan is presented as Hot-Blooded, snarky and aggressive, but he truly adheres to his duty as Viv and San's mentor even though he was reluctant to take on this role to begin with, and he helps to rear Manda, among other Hidden Depths.
    • Ren Serizawa is frosty, aloof and somewhat sarcastic, but he'll still go out of his way to help out where and when he can if the opportunity presents itself.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • In-Universe; in an extra detail that wasn't mentioned in the King of the Monsters novelization, Jonah reveals that the culprit who murdered his schoolgirl-aged daughter and left her body stuffed in a storm drain was never caught.
    • Downplayed with Bio-Major. They're openly accused by Monarch of illegal activity which they are in fact guilty of, and they face severe backlash once the Zmeyevich created by the treatment they illegally obtained and marketed are born. However, nothing is mentioned of them ever being punished for illegally trafficking two recently-orphaned Zmeyevich.
    • Some of the Makers directly involved in Ghidorah's creation apparently lived out their natural lifespans and died before Ghidorah turned against them according to "Damnatio Memoriae", meaning that those members of the species were never punished for their role in Ghidorah's unpleasant creation with the intent to commit total genocide. Ni was particularly infuriated that he never got his revenge on them.
  • Karmic Death:
    • Guard B-04 and later Jonah are killed by Monster X, the two-headed Titan that they both respectively tormented in some deliberate way.
    • Also, the Makers received this. They forcibly did horrible and excruciating things to Ghidorah, and Word of God indicates the Makers weren't desperate nor operating on Blue-and-Orange Morality, but they really were sadistic assholes who enjoyed finding new ways to destroy things and torture animal lifeforms that they captured. Ghidorah ultimately turned against the Makers and made them all die "screaming", using the very Person of Mass Destruction powers which the Makers had granted it. For an extra flavor of karmic, Ghidorah was doing to the Makers precisely what they made and explicitly programmed Ghidorah to do to another civilization along with their entire planet.
    • MaNi/Elder Brother not only gets a Rasputinian Death from the same two-headed Titan whom he inflicted nightmarish Cold-Blooded Torture on and whose male half he attempted to fratricide — he also gets a Villainous Breakdown in his dying moments (fitting how he tried to psychologically destroy Vivienne), he gets turned into food by Monster X's Vampiric Draining (just like how MaNi tried to kill and make sustenance out of San), and his severed head is forced to helplessly watch his own death (just like he forced Vivienne to watch him almost kill San). However, Word of God indicates MaNi might be Only Mostly Dead, in which case the "death" part of this trope could be subverted.
    • Ghidorah is ultimately killed again by a combination of the two-headed Titan it's caused so, so much pain to, and nearly every other living Titan that it's wronged or dominated; including its own regenerated left head who's pulling a Redemption Equals Death against his brothers. Not to mention, Ghidorah's demise isn't a quick one at all.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Walter Simmons is killed by the very Zmeyevich who he groomed and arrogantly thought he controlled, using his own prized artificial Titan that he gave the Zmeyevich complete control over and that he was planning to use to endanger millions and conquer the Titans.

  • Kidnapped for Experimentation:
    • Alan Jonah's cronies eventually start quietly "disappearing" the disposable vagrants that they've been using as manual labor up to this point so that they can use them as test subjects for experimentation with Ghidorah's DNA. A few of the female kidnappees are impregnated with hybridized offspring. The rest are turned into Monstrous Humanoid zombies by the experiments done to them with Ghidorah's unrefined DNA samples.
    • This trope also occurred in Ghidorah's backstory from Abraxas: Empty Fullness. Before they were the Destroyer of Worlds; Ichi, Ni and San were kidnapped from their original home in an alien world's wilderness by Abusive Precursors who performed inhumane experiments which gave Ghidorah the world-ending powers that it now possesses, in an effort to make a Bioweapon Beast of mass destruction for themselves.
  • Kids Love Dinosaurs: Vivienne has had a lifelong passion for dinosaurs since early childhood: her MonsterVerse canon backstory of sneaking off in a museum as a child and falling asleep at the foot of a Brontosaurus skeleton is incorporated. This is a trait which the young Sam Brody also possesses.
  • Kraken and Leviathan: In addition to the whale-like, crocodilian Godzilla and the part-cephalopod, part-crustacean Scylla, there's a couple undersea Kaiju battles involving a giant Dracolich in the main story.
  • Kryptonite-Proof Suit: Apex Cybernetics are working on protective infantry gear designs designed for the new age of the Titans, and Ren thinks about how they can be insulated against the radiation that Titans feed on and produce so that humans can safely tread through Titan territory. The Timeline reveals this new gear is finalized in 2022. In the ascended recursive fic Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, this gear is being worn by the Hollow Earth expedition.
  • Left Hanging: Hrodvitnon wrapped up the main story whilst leaving several plot threads dangling. This pattern reappears in the Timeline, which doesn't specify what happens following the eve of the enigmatic Clash of Titans, leaving it up to Recursive Fanfiction to explore — one such recursive fic, Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, was eventually canonized by Hrodvitnon.
  • Lineage Comes from the Father: Manda's biological father was the Lord of Dragons, who protected Mu and was friendly with Godzilla, whereas next to nothing is known about Manda's biological mother. Gender-Inverted with Ilene's twin daughters Ziyi and Yong: like in MonsterVerse canon, their maternal family are a Heroic Lineage while nothing is mentioned of their father (although the author does toy with the question of who he is here and here).
  • Lobotomy:
    • "Damnatio Memoriae" reveals that San was at one point subjected to brain surgery, when the Makers cut into his brain to make him act as Ghidorah's sentry head.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Apex Cybernetics' plans for the other Titans after killing and usurping Godzilla involve lobotomizing them and inserting mind-control devices into their brains.
  • Lovecraft Lite: Moreso than the MonsterVerse in terms of both the Lovecraft and the Lite. The Titans, especially Ghidorah, can have a very Lovecraftian Brown Note effect on humans which can cause temporary bizarre behavior or permanent madness, plus there's the (fortunately long-dead) Abusive Precursors. Though the Titans were already heavily implied in the MonsterVerse to have human levels of intelligence and emotional sentience, in AbraxasVerse it's outright confirmed, although it's still not as wacky as the infamous Animal Talk translations in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. Godzilla is even known by Ghidorah's heads as "the Deep One".
  • Loud of War:
    • It's revealed that the ORCA can disorient Ghidorah not just because it sounds like a rival Alpha Titan's call, but also because the artificial noise brings back bad memories from Ghidorah's past and it causes the Old Noise in them to painfully stir up.
    • According to Word of God, Monarch have discovered thanks to a suggestion from Dr. Stanton that blasting loud music which sounds to a Titan like certain alpha frequencies is enough to scare Amhuluk away whenever the latter causes trouble.
  • Ludd Was Right: The author said she suspects that one reason why the majority of non-simian Titans don't build tools or technological civilizations despite having human-like levels of intelligence is because negative experiences involving Advanced Ancient Humans discouraged them from following humanity's example.

    M-N 
  • Maybe Ever After: Maia Simmons seems to catch Ren's eye, although she mostly keeps it ambiguous to her peers whether or not she reciprocates. The AbraxasVerse Timeline indicates they haven't yet gotten together by the Timeline's ending point.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Vivienne's name means "alive", which is relevant to her being Only Mostly Dead and coming Back from the Dead reborn after Ghidorah ate her, and it also reflects how she's at risk of becoming dead on the inside if she and San can't heal from their traumas and they give in to madness.
    • Monster X's name is a reference to Ghidorah's Monster Zero designation, and its Protagonist Title name is a reference to the Gnostic figure and concept.
    • Word of God suggests that there's an In-Universe justification for why San and his brothers' names correspond to their respective positions in Ghidorah's heads' pecking order: in this fic, Vivienne was the one who gave the heads their names, and Ghidorah while it was frozen was likely telepathically leaking details about itself such as those into her mind. Ghidorah's backstory also hints that Ghidorah based its name on the alien word "Ghee'haszhra", which it psionically heard the first ever alien civilization it attacked screaming as they perished — "Damnatio Memoriae" reveals that the Ghee'haszhra was a religious text saying "three times, but never four", and that the Makers based Ghidorah's three-headed, Three Beings, One Body design directly on it.
      • The shed skin of Ghidorah's right head, on top of retaining his Elder/Younger Brother designation among Monster X and Ghidorah, has the Production Nickname MaNi; which is a combination of the Ni (Two) name which Vivienne gave Ghidorah's right head (denoting him as the middle brother in terms of age and pecking order), and the Many's name (with MaNi having merged with the Many).
    • The Many's name refers both to their Hive Mind nature, and their genetic source, the One Who Is Many itself.
    • Meanwhile, one of Dr. Chen's Mothra-worshipping daughters is named Yong, meaning "perpetual"/"eternal" — pretty fitting considering their family's relationship with Mothra.
    • The names of two Russian refugees who get impregnated with hybrids have meaningful connotations. Nadezhda's name means "hope", and she's more optimistic than the other impregnated women are about Defusing the Tyke-Bomb; while Esfir's name means "star", reflecting how Ghidorah who is the genetic source of her hybrid baby and whom she develops delusions of religious affection for "came from the stars".
    • The Zmeyevich are appropriately named after the spawn of a multi-headed dragon by human women in Russian folk-tale In-Universe. In Real Life, Zmeyevich was one of the names of the malevolent dragon Tugarin, who in some versions of one of the tales about him slept with the king's wife. The individuals' names also leave a lot to the imagination about what might happen after the Timeline's end-point in Recursive Fanfiction timelines:
      • Abaddon and Megiddo are both named after biblical places of destruction, including what's believed to be the predestined site of the final battle between good and evil (fitting Simmons' perspective that he's taking the Earth back for humanity by having Mechagodzilla duel Godzilla — it also fits how Abraxas: The Clash of Silver later portrays Abaddon and Megiddo destroying Hong Kong, and engaging the benevolent Titans in a fight to the death for the fate of Earth there). Abaddon is also the name of an archangel of the abyss — sound like the Zmeyevich's fathers? Ivanna is named after Ivan the Terrible, who poetically had a Disappeared Dad during childhood, and became ruler very young (reflecting how the Zmeyevich are Younger Than They Look). Aleksandra's name means "defender of mankind", and The Clash of Silver depicts her as a benevolent being who supports Kiryu, built for Type I Muggle Power before going rogue, in defending the world and its inhabitants.
    • Apex and Monarch's collaboration on creating mechs for the Muggle Power described below is called Project Talos — in Greek mythology, Talos is the name of an automaton, considered by some the earliest conception of a robot, who guarded the island of Europa against invaders and outsiders. The mythical Talos was kept alive by the ichor of the gods in his body, fitting how Project Talos aims to power its mechs with the same borderline-divine energy source that gave Godzilla his dorsal spines' power, and one account of Talos' downfall claims he was driven mad by the spirits of the dead (fitting what ultimately comes of Dagon's skeleton being integrated into Kiryu, and fitting how Mechagodzilla in Abraxas: The Clash of Silver has an indirect connection to the temporarily-vanquished Ghidorah via its children permanently possessing the mecha). Talos was also the name of a mythical Greek inventor who made a saw out of a serpent's teeth (fitting with Apex's occupation, and the project's use of a Titan skeleton and Ghidorah's presumed-groomed children in either mech, respectively); and he was betrayed and murdered by his mentor who attempted to bury his body under the guise of burying a serpent, only for the same animal who inspired Talos' saw to expose the murderer.
    • Kiryu's supercomputer brain is named Encephalon, which is Latin for... you guessed it. "Brain"!
    • Apex's Godzilla clone is nicknamed Ladon, befitting its saurian nature. Ladon of myth was killed by Heracles as his penultimate labor, in his pursuit of golden apples, and well, considering the original headcanon about what Apex planned to do with the creature...
    • The Hollow Earth's energy source is temporarily named Zohar, meaning "radiance" or "splendour" in Hebrew – pretty fitting considering how the element is heavily implied to be no less borderline-divine and intrinsic to the planet in this continuity than it is in Godzilla vs. Kong, and it's coveted by a hubristic Corrupt Corporate Executive who implicitly wants to overpower everything that's "Physical Godly".

  • Mecha-Enabling Phlebotinum: In the Timeline, the Humongous Mecha Kiryu is built with Titan bones as an endoskeletal framework. Like in canon, Project Talos seeks to use the Zohar in the Hollow Earth as a power source for both mechas, although it's stated in the Timeline that they briefly considered using a mundane nuclear core for the mechas before dismissing that idea due to the risk of Titans actively seeking a nuclear core inside the mechas as a food source.
  • Mirror Character: As the story goes on, more parallels emerge between Monster X and other characters; namely Ghidorah, Godzilla, Thor, Manda, Susan Graham, Alan Jonah and Madison Russell. Likewise with Thor and Mark Russell, with Mark and Ren Serizawa, and with Madison Russell and Maia Simmons. See the characters' respective folders on the character pages for more details.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal:
    • The eons of abuse San received from his brothers mean that he doesn't have much of a crisis of loyalty when he fully realizes that he can turn his back on Ghidorah forever.
    • Downplayed with the Executive in the AbraxasVerse Timeline. It's revealed that in 2022, she sets Bernie Hayes on the path to investigating Apex as an act of spite against Walter Simmons for his earlier Disproportionate Retribution against her.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters:
  • Muggle Power: Monarch seek to achieve a completely-benevolent Type I by building Kiryu MK I as a human-piloted artificial Titan so they can contribute meaningfully to Godzilla and the benevolent Titans' future Behemoth Battles. Apex Cybernetics, however, have a far more insidious plan to establish humanity as the apex species via using the mechas to kill and usurp the benevolent Alpha Titans.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • In the main fic, San's realization of just how far from meaningless or minute Vivienne's original human life was, and that Ghidorah's middle head and him killing and transforming Vivienne respectively took all that away from her and mutilated her; is an absolute gut punch for him. All San wanted out of hybridizing Vivienne was a sister to nurture and be loved by in turn, and he's distraught at how much his actions have unintentionally twisted and tortured her.
    • The Abraxas: Empty Fullness one-shot "Damnatio Memoriae" reveals that Ghidorah was originally horrified the first ever time it wiped out all life on a planet billions of years ago, before eons of being tortured by the Old Noise and destroying even more worlds past the point of desensitization turned Ghidorah into the wilfully-vicious monster it is now.
  • My Greatest Failure: San isn't proud of his past as part of Ghidorah, but his greatest shame is the hurt that he unwittingly caused Vivienne by turning her into a Titan. As for Godzilla, we don't know the details, but the author says he has more than one profound regret in his past that he fears witnessing a repeat of.
  • Named by the Adaptation: The Timeline reveals the Hollow Earth's nameless energized material is temporarily named Zohar, and the temple built by Kong's and Thor's kindreds is dubbed the Citadel.
  • Nature Is Not Nice:
    • Downplayed with the Titans of Earth, but they do have a rather Darwinist way of life that's based on Asskicking Leads to Leadership.
    • In San and his brothers' Backstory, on their original alien homeworld, they hatched from eggs that were left to fend for themselves, and they had to flee from predators which devoured their newborn other siblings. "Damnatio Memoriae" also sees the brothers describe other dangers on their original homeworld:
      Ichi: HUNTERS WITH SNAPPING JAWS IN MUD. SILENT STINGERS AND MANY LEGS UP IN THE TREES.
      Ni: WINGED LIKE US BUT SHARP AND QUICK AND HUNT AT NIGHT. BIG CLUMSY STOMPING THINGS. THINGS WE NEVER SEE BUT THEY MAKE LOUD SCARY NOISES. THOSE OF OUR KIND FROM OTHER CLUTCHES.

  • Nightmare Fetishist:
    • Alan Jonah grows increasingly fascinated by Ghidorah and Monster X and by what their biologies can do. Which is partly justified by his Sanity Slippage which makes him believe that Ghidorah and Monster X's regenerative capabilities can bring back his dead daughter.
    • Word of God says that San would be a big fan of the stuff in humans' horror movies if he were exposed to them, even post-Heel–Face Turn; and to a lesser extent, he'd be fascinated by Christmas' upbeat chraracteristics and its more macabre and little-discussed historical lore (i.e., Krampus) in equal measure.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: Lieutenant Commander Pasternak, in charge of the Russian half of the military rescue team, refuses to leave one of his men behind. In "Damnatio Memoriae", the "eldest" brother who would one day become Ghidorah's middle head refuses to leave his paralyzed youngest brother behind when they're under attack by hostile creatures.
  • The Nose Knows: The Titans generally have heightened senses of smell which enable them to identify things about each-other and other creatures that humans wouldn't normally be able to detect the same way. Thor tracks Vivienne's Bone Singer scent on her and San from afar, Godzilla remembers Serizawa having some of the same scent on him that Viv and San's part-human physiology emits, Manda several times identifies a human or Titan stranger as the kith or kin of one he already knows by smelling them, Methuselah can smell second-hand traces of Monster X's scent on Thor's armor, and Monster X (who inherited heightened senses from Ghidorah) can smell radiation, fear, and can identify one by the smell of one's blood.

    O-P 
  • Offing the Offspring: The AbraxasVerse Timeline reveals Esfir attempted to strangle her Zmeyevich son to death. Word of God also reveals that Walter Simmons is willing to have his own daughter assassinated by hitmen in order to keep a corporate Dark Secret.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: A justified, Old Norse variation. Playing an Old Norse galdr recording during the fight against Keizer Ghidorah is enough to awaken Monster X, and it implicitly also helps Thor in the fight. It's later encoded in Kiryu MK. I's Encephalon computer.
  • O.C. Stand-in: The author confirmed here that Tejada, Travis and Kauffman are this to notable nameless Mooks in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Travis is also based on a named minor character in the movie novelization. Dr. Ling and her twin nieces Ziyi and Yong get some characterization in this story which they didn't have in their very-brief appearances in King of the Monsters, as do the Titans Scylla and Methuselah. Steve Martin meanwhile is based on a Mythology Gag name-drop in King of the Monsters' Creative Closing Credits. Ren Serizawa and Susan Graham are/were both The Ghost in MonsterVerse canon when the fic's incarnations were introduced. Abraxas: The Clash of Silver builds on Aleksandra, Abaddon and Megiddo's characters after they were newborns in the parent main fic and AbraxasVerse Timeline, and it names and develops the son of Admiral Stenz who was also briefly mentioned in the timeline.
  • Our Clones Are Different:
    • When a piece of Ghidorah's body like one of its three heads is severed, Ghidorah's Healing Factor will regrow a new appendage from the body, with pre-severing memories and personality fully backed up and intact if it's a head that's being grown back... And the old severed head, meanwhile, will also retain all of its pre-severing memories and personality fully intact, and it will also begin to regenerate the rest of Ghidorah's body from itself (albeit at a much slower rate) if it comes into contact with energy, backing up and restoring the other two heads' own minds and personalities as it does so; unless the severed head merges with another organism which permanently rewires its biology to form a new Kaiju body instead of re-forming the rest of Ghidorah (as MaNi does in the fic). Ghidorah's heads can also transfer complete copies of their minds onto another body or organism, via mutating a pre-existing organism into an Artificial Hybrid inside the head and forcing the hybrid to form an extra Ghidorah-like brain and head on itself which the Ghidorah head can upload a complete copy of its own mind into (as San does with Monster X). Although copies of a Ghidorah head which exist at the same time as each-other through any of the above means are separate entities, there's still a psychic link between them via their similar Ghidorah-derived biology.
    • In the AbraxasVerse Timeline, Apex Cybernetics are growing a clone of Godzilla from fragments of Godzilla's scales, dorsal spines and blood samples that he's shed over the years.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, a copy of Ren Serizawa's mind is apparently created inside Mechagodzilla/Don and Meg's neurology, when Ren is hooked up to Apex Cybernetics' psionic network while the twins' consciousnesses are in the process of overriding the system.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Besides Ghidorah; Monster X and Manda are considered draconic, and there's also MaNi/Elder Brother. Interestingly, all three of these new draconic creatures can be elementally aligned with lightning, water and undeath respectively. See their respective folders here, here and here for more details.
  • Outliving One's Offspring: Susan Graham has been little more than a shell since her daughter's apparent death in Antarctica, unaware that Vivienne is alive. The first one-shot in Abraxas: Empty Fullness reveals that Rodan has had chicks whom he's outlived, giving him an understanding of how difficult it can be for a victim of this trope to move past it. Word of God says that Mark Russell's worst fear is Madison dying or something especially horrible happening to her, having already lost his other child in San Francisco's destruction.
  • Out-of-Character Alert:
    • Vivienne notes Ghidorah's three voices are uncharacteristically calm after she rips one of the Many's constructs apart.
    • In Chapter 16, Vivienne realizes something is wrong when Ni/Elder Brother, known for being more of a raving killing machine than his brothers, halts his ferocious behaviour to examine her features, signifying how he's become even more deranged and obsessed with her as MaNi.
    • In "Sermones ad Mortuos", Monster X realizes that Rodan is responsible for Mothra coming to visit and soothe the hybrid's grief when they see that Rodan, usually Hot-Blooded and boastful, is currently acting hesitant and unsure of himself around them.

  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
    • Vivienne wasn't easily angered when she was human, and when she was it was terrifying, but after everything she's been through since Ghidorah ate her, she's changed likely forever while being no less fierce.
    • In Chapter 5, when San calls his sister Vivienne, it must be serious.
    • Dr. Chen of all people is reduced to furiously screaming at Ghidorah in a venomous fit when the Argo crew realize what Keizer Ghidorah has done to Monster X, in Chapter 17.
    • Implied when Martinez swears on Jesus upon seeing Keizer Ghidorah's visage. He's the Token Religious Teammate of the G-Team, something that got highlighted only a short while earlier.
    • In "Sermones ad Mortuos", Monster X's personalities become perpetually disjointed from each-other due to their grief over Susan's passing and San struggling to cope with it, alerting Rodan.

  • Parental Abandonment:
    • It's revealed in Chapter 10 that San and his brothers were originally born from a clutch of eggs with no biological sire involved in their early life, and Vivienne speculates their species laid the eggs and then left the young have to fend for themselves similar to sea turtles' eggs. As San's Character Development progresses, he becomes curious about and craves the experience of having a mother figure.
    • Downplayed with Godzilla. It's revealed in Chapter 18 that he hasn't seen his mother since he grew old enough to fend for himself, and his biological father had no direct role in his upbringing.
    • The Timeline reveals that Jia's parents are apparently killed amidst the battle against Camazotz despite Skull Island's Spared by the Adaptation.

  • Parental Substitute: The author really seems to like this trope:
    • Serizawa was this to Vivienne like in canon's Manual, and she has a severe BSoD after she learns of his death. She calls him "father" a few times in both Japanese and Kaiju Talk.
    • Vivienne in turn was this towards Madison. Madison sincerely admits a few times, including to Vivienne herself, that she wished Vivienne would've become her mother if things had happened differently, and in Chapter 9, Mark goes as far as stating Vivienne was more of a mother to Madison than her actual mother managed to be.
    • Vivienne can be seen as a form of this towards San, in contrast to his brothers who were the only kin he knew before bonding to Vivienne. He feels little sentiment for Ichi and Ni after being separated from Ghidorah, compared to how Vivienne eventually shows him affection and forms a strong brother-sister bond with him.
    • Mothra apparently considers San and Vivienne her children after Monster X's Emergency Transformation. In Chapter 9, Vivienne is involuntarily reminded of her human mother.
    • Inverted by Thor, who acts protective towards Vivienne due to the death of his own son long ago.
    • Word of God indicates that Rodan is officially regarded by Manda as the latter's adoptive father, after the former mated with Monster X.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Aleksandra has a Monarch-assigned female carer, Dr. Valentine, due to her mother's death while her father has been negligent.
  • Parent-Child Team: The Timeline reveals that by 2024, Mark and Madison are such a team within Monarch, with Mark now Monarch's co-director and Madison acting as his assistant.
  • Passive-Aggressive Kombat: According to Word of God, after Monster X helped to ruin Camazotz's conquest of Skull Island, Camazotz and Monster X are willing to interact civilly when neutralizing Many instances, but it's always full of barbs and snarks.
  • Patchwork Fic: Although it's a MonsterVerse fic, the fic's new lore and worldbuilding expansions take a lot of cues from and make mythology gags to other Godzilla continuities.
    • Several Toho kaiju who haven't yet been adapted to and aren't confirmed to exist in the MonsterVerse canon – Monster X, Manda (who has a Captain Ersatz in the MonsterVerse to replace him due to rights issues), Keizer Ghidorah, Kiryu and Gigan – all exist in the AbraxasVerse's canon, and most of them are the main or supporting characters.
      • The city of Mu from Manda's debut movie Atragon also exists within the AbraxasVerse setting, and it maintains its original connection to Manda as his species' protectorate.
    • Ghidorah has several more references to other licensed iterations of the character. It's a Planet Destroyer that has turned other inhabited planets into dead wastelands before it targeted Earth, like the original portrayal; it's associated with vaguely human-like advanced aliens who used it as a Bioweapon Beast, like the Showa incarnation's later appearances (with the difference being that in this version, Ghidorah turned against its former masters the first chance it got and it wiped them all out billions of years ago); Ghidorah used to be three separate, smaller creatures that were forcibly fused into their current form, like the Heisei incarnation in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah; its post-mortem severed appendage is hidden underground and has the potential to regenerate the rest of Ghidorah, like the Rebirth of Mothra 3 incarnation; it draws power from thousands of dead humans to restore itself, like the Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack! version; it turns into Keizer Ghidorah, a version of Ghidorah who appeared in Godzilla: Final Wars; and it's essentially worshipped by a human-derived cult who further its coming, like the Godzilla: The Planet Eater version.
    • After being freed from Ghidorah's control in the movie, Rodan has largely taken up his original Toho characterization; as a close ally to Godzilla who prefers to side with him and Mothra against threats like Ghidorah (though he's still a bit of a prick), and this is apparently Rodan's normal moral alignment in AbraxasVerse when he isn't forcibly enthralled by another Alpha Titan's domination abilities.
    • Godzilla is demonstrated to be capable of performing an attack that only the Heisei and GMK incarnations of the character have ever been shown to be capable of: the Spiral Heat Ray, although he requires Mothra's power to unlock it.
    • Bio-Major, an organization originating in the Heisei movie Godzilla vs. Biollante, exist within this fic, being recurringly mentioned by name and playing a significant role in the main fic's final chapter which has long-term ramifications for the AbraxasVerse.
    • The concept of an isolated base's monster-studying staff becoming increasingly erratic due to an alien intelligence's mental influence, before a military team comes to the base, is similar to the Showa Godzilla movie Invasion of Astro-Monster.
    • Like in the Millennium movie Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!, there's an Undead Abomination comprised of thousands of undead, formerly-human souls functioning as a major antagonistic force.
    • Steve Martin is based on the character from the Americanized version of the original Godzilla movie, who also reappeared in the first Heisei movie The Return of Godzilla.
    • Kiryu's role in Apex Cybernetics' plans in the AbraxasVerse Timeline – being created by human or humanoid villains under the public guise of being an entirely-heroic protector for humanity, when the mech's creators are really planning to use it for their own evil agenda – originates in the IDW comic book series Godzilla: Rulers of Earth; while a human reprogramming the mech to instead act heroically for real occurred in the comic series Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1977).
    • Ladon is based on Godzilla Jr. from the Heisei movies as a newborn member of Godzilla's species who spends the start of his life from birth in human captivity before he's freed and taken in by Godzilla. However, Word of God says that he also likely has physical traits of the Minus One Godzilla incarnation.

  • Plagued by Nightmares: Vivienne in the main fic, as part of her PTSD, initially suffers from nightmares amidst her Trauma Conga Line (some if not all of which include nightmares of when Ghidorah's middle head ate her). Like transformer like transformee, apparently, as Ghidorah in "Damnatio Memoriae", just after it (very traumatically) gained its iconic form, was suffering nightmares.
  • Playing with Syringes:
    • It's revealed in Chapter 6 that Jonah and his Basement Club have been dabbling in this, apparently with Evilutionary Biologist motives, using the Disposable Vagrants as unwilling test subjects; fusing Ghidorah's DNA to humans and creating Artificial Zombies.
    • Ghidorah themselves were on the "victim" end of this trope in their backstory, influencing the dragon's hatred of humanity. Vaguely human-like aliens called the Makers gave Ghidorah their powers, their current form and their immortality through brutal and inhumane experiments while trying to turn them into a Bioweapon Beast for themselves.
  • Poor Communication Kills: In 2024, when the Titans begin mysteriously attacking; with Monster X (the only creature who can currently communicate with both Titans and humans) unavailable, Monarch have to work out what's happening based on the physical evidence and they can't try talking the Titans into calming down.
  • Power Glows: Monster X's lightning powers can produce a Volcanic Veins effect merely by San or Vivienne feeling strong emotions, and there's how their powers are, well, Shock and Awe powers. It also turns out MaNi/Elder Brother can produce this effect as part of an intimidation display, similarly to Ghidorah and other Titans. "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" reveals that Rodan can make his chest glow like a furnace a la Jacksonverse Smaug. Mechagodzilla and Kiryu both glow with artificial light, although Mechagodzilla glows purple instead of red while Kiryu glows yellow.
  • Predatory Big Pharma: It's implied that pharmaceutical companies are among the parties who hired Private Military Contractors to try and steal any Titan DNA samples that might be in the disused Monarch outpost, without regard for the civilians who sent an urgent distress call. Later, several pharmaceutical companies including Bio-Major (who've been subject to scrutiny from Monarch before) acquire a new fertility treatment originally developed by Alan Jonah from Ghidorah's DNA and greedily sell it to the public for the sake of short-sighted profits — which backfires horribly when the part-Ghidorah treatment causes the various women it's used on to give birth to the Zmeyevich.
  • The Promise:
    • San promises Vivienne that he'll see they escape the place where Alan Jonah has imprisoned them, together. Vivienne promises San that she'll never leave him. Both those promises get tested and are ultimately kept, the latter in particular during the main fic's Darkest Hour chapter.
    • Towards the main fic's climax, Madison promises Mark that she'll be careful and stay close to him so that he won't risk outliving another child due to a Titan attack. She stays by his side on the Argo during the Final Battle, and the AbraxasVerse Timeline reveals that she's his direct assistant in Monarch by 2024.
    • "Damnatio Memoriae" reveals that Ichi before he and his brothers were corrupted promised San that he wouldn't let what they thought at the time was a monster (the Old Noise) get to them. Tragically, unlike the above instances, Ichi was making a promise that he didn't know was impossible to keep until the one-shot's ending, where San brings it up again when they realize the Old Noise has completely infected them.
  • Psychoactive Powers: Both Monster X and Ghidorah's electrical powers are fuelled by emotions, particularly negative ones like hatred or anger. So is Rodan's ability to influence volcanic eruptions, according to Abraxas: Empty Fullness.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: San can be quite Manchildish when things aren't serious, and though the Psychopathic part is downplayed (especially after his Character Development), he's still more nonchalant to violence than Vivienne is. San-Who-Could-Have-Been/Youngest Brother is naturally as childlike as San was at the story's beginning and lacks San's Heel–Face Turn. Remarks about Walter Simmons in the story imply he's a Psychopathic Manchild rather like in MonsterVerse canon.

    R-T 
  • Rage Breaking Point:
  • Rainbow Motif: Downplayed. The air in the irradiated ruins of Berezniki is colored like the rainbow by daylight refracting off the glassed ground when dawn breaks. Titanus Manda's bodies are stated by Word of God to shine with the colors of the rainbow when they catch the light of an aurora borealis. In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Kiryu's breath weapon is rainbow-colored, like the Toho incarnations of Mechagodzilla.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Godzilla among the Titans, Dr. Brooks and later Co-Directors Mark Russell and Guillerman among Monarch, and Colonel Foster among Monarch's G-Team.
  • Reluctant Psycho:
    • Unlike a certain comrade of his, Sergeant Travis is nothing short of tormented as he suffers an induced Sanity Slippage, wanting nothing more than to feel like himself again, and he's eventually Driven to Suicide.
    • Viv and San have issues with Vivienne's untreated PTSD when something triggers it. Furthermore, Monster X has inherited the same instinct for inflicting violence when experiencing intense feelings of fear or rage such as Ghidorah's biology was hard-wired to exhibit — fortunately, Viv and San have control of it.
    • It also turns out Ghidorah was once this eons ago in its Backstory, but Slowly Slipping Into Evil turned it into the malice-fuelled monster it now is.
  • The Resenter:
    • MaNi is a villain-to-villain case. He's subservient to Ghidorah, but Vivienne observes that he'd rather have her all to himself to torture instead of having to share her with his brothers now that he has an independent body.
    • Word of God says the Queen MUTO in AbraxasVerse is bitter that she can't sire children without endangering the world, especially after Godzilla, also an endling Titan like her (and hailing from her own species' natural enemy at that), gets to rear Titan children of his own in the future.
  • Rousseau Was Right: Downplayed. One notable theme permeating the fic is that no-one is born evil, not even Ghidorah. Monsters are very much made. Emma and Jonah's respective traumatic origin stories that drove them to evil in King of the Monsters and its supplementary materials are directly referenced in the fic. Although it doesn't detract from its present day evil, Ghidorah has a pretty compelling Freudian Excuse; and San's relationship with Vivienne and his character development show that even one of Ghidorah's heads isn't irredeemably lost (the same can't be said for the other two heads though). The Many are ultimately victims of an inhuman force driving them biologically and cognitively insane. The Zmeyevich, despite being Ghidorah's tyke-bombs, aren't inherently evil, and they can choose to be good or evil. The only exception to this trope thus far is Walter Simmons.
  • Rule of Three: Shows up multiple-fold with Ghidorah, and not just in the number of heads it has.
    • The main fic puts a lampshade on the fact the number three has important meaning in human cultures, and Ghidorah has three heads. Ghidorah itself becomes aware of this fact thanks to the Many's Hive Mind consisting of so many absorbed humans. It's also revealed that the left head, the only head who has any redeeming qualities left in him and who ultimately makes a Heel–Face Turn, is the youngest, as in the third in age and rank, of the three.
      • "Damnatio Memoriae" reveals that the Makers designed Ghidorah's creation and body in acknowledgement or mockery of one of their "Enemy's" religious texts which states "three times, but never four", and because the Enemy had thrice rejected three "offers" made by the Makers as an alternative to genocide.
    • The Many leave several scrawlings with a three/trinity theme, clearly in reference to their aforementioned three-headed genetic source whom they view religiously.
    • Precisely three missing female Russian disposable vagrants are found and rescued from Jonah's base later in the fic, all three having been medically impregnated and now carrying babies that implicitly aren't entirely human. They give birth to three babies in the AbraxasVerse Timeline.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Mechagodzilla's surviving remains have three consciousnesses inside of them, after Mechagodzilla attempted to resurrect Ghidorah.

  • Running on All Fours:
    • In Chapter 17, Godzilla charges out of the ground on all fours in a Godzilla vs. Kong reference.
    • In Abraxas: Empty Fullness, Rodan briefly charges on all fours along the ground after Monster X in "Ain't That a Kick in the Head".
  • The Sacred Darkness: Mothra believes that when one dies, one goes through a temporary Cessation of Existence which Mothra calls the Mother Darkness, before reincarnating. Mothra considers the Mother Darkness a benevolent being.
  • Sadist:
    • Ghidorah, naturally. At best, it takes delight in homicidally killing what's in front of it, and at worst, it takes delight in forcing what's in front of it to endure a nightmarish, unending Fate Worse than Death by its proverbial hand. The middle head, Ichi, is the most prominent case, being the head who's the most committed to putting his intelligence to work finding ways to make Ghidorah's prey and enemies suffer for fun, but all three of the heads take varying levels of glee in making anything that opposes them suffer.
      • Although Ni is more interested in fighting and killing than outright torturing compared to Ichi, Ghidorah's shed skin MaNi proves that when Ni is properly motivated, he can be just as vicious as Ichi. MaNi gleefully physically and psychologically tortures Monster X in a horrific fashion, to try and get Vivienne to snap and fight him.
    • Word of God has stated that Gigan in the AbraxasVerse lives for maiming and torturing others and seeing others tortured for his own pleasure, and it says that his sadism is probably worse than Ghidorah's in some ways.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Don and Meg delight in using Mechagodzilla's power to kill Skullcrawler cannon-fodder, Walter Simmons, and many other people when they destroy Hong Kong.
  • Scars Are Forever: In the main fic; Mariko is somewhat disfigured from the destruction of Outpost 58 with noticeable skin grafts on her face, and Rodan is mentioned in Chapter 10 as having a scar on his rocky skin where Mothra impaled him in the film. In "Damnatio Memoriae", it's revealed that Ni's damaged horn has been like that for billions of years, and it doesn't regenerate away implicitly because Ghidorah only gained its Healing Factor after the injury occurred.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: San and Rodan, whom have a little bit of a rivalry, have this dynamic with each-other. San is the Sensitive Guy: childlike, highly curious, and has a lot of tender moments with his sister. Rodan is the Manly Man: aggressive, strong (or at least that's how he likes to see himself), confrontational, and eager for a good fight.
  • Shipper on Deck:
    • Downplayed in Chapter 7 when Dr. Ling teases Ilene about the time that she held Mark's hand on the submarine during the events of King of the Monsters, prompting Ilene to shoot down the notion that she's interested in Mark in that way.
    • The Chens mention in the main fic and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" that some people in Monarch thought before the events of King of the Monsters that Vivienne and Mark would have become a couple if Mark had retained custody of Madison, partly because Vivienne was a good mother figure for Madison.
    • By the end of the main fic, multiple internet forumers are shipping Monster X with Rodan, and even Susan thinks Monster X has something with Godzilla and/or Rodan.
  • Ship Tease:
    • It's been heavily implied that Godzilla and Mothra's symbiotic and emotional relationship is probably also romantic. Fitting since the author is a shipper.
    • There's been a couple humorous moments where other characters (namely Rodan and Lieutenant Brody) have poked fun at Vivienne's attitude towards and interactions with Godzilla both before and after her fusion with San.
    • Ren shows signs of being interested in the Femme Fatale Executive towards the end of the main story. The AbraxasVerse Timeline hints that she in turn has been developing a soft spot for Ren after they became work colleagues, setting them up for a Maybe Ever After.

  • Sibling Fusion:
    • Viv and San are considered brother and sister after San merges with Vivienne to create Two Beings, One Body, since that's Ghidorah's definition of siblinghood. Furthermore, in their final form, Viv and San have just one head instead of two.
    • It’s revealed in Chapter 10 that Ghidorah went through such a fusion in the past. Ghidorah was originally three single-headed brothers, which were forcibly transformed into a single three-headed body. The Abraxas: Empty Fullness one-shot "Damnatio Memoriae" goes into some unpleasant detail on the fusion.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Don and Meg, a pair of Zmeyevich twins, turn into a single-bodied being when they transfer both their consciousnesses into Mechagodzilla. They also accidentally absorb a clone of Ren Serizawa's consciousness, which they call their brother after the fact.
  • Sibling Team: Vivienne and San are considered brother and sister after their fusion in the same way that Ghidorah's three heads are regarded as brothers, and though it takes time, character development and a lot of trauma, San and Vivienne learn to work together as one and look out for each-other loyally. Ghidorah is a much darker case: its Start of Darkness reveals that its heads used to be a loyal, loving and caring team, but nowadays the brothers are just a team who hate and resent each-other.
  • Silence of Sadness:
    • Monster X has several instances. In the early part of the main fic, Vivienne, who is extremely traumatized and being abused by Jonah's mercenaries, is very quiet around humans when she's not speaking to San. Later, San is silent towards Vivienne out of shame and self-loathing after triggering her Trauma Button sends him into a Heroic BSoD. Finally, in "Sermones ad Mortuos", Monster X is very quiet when they're mourning Susan's death (especially the San half, who is more troubled than Vivienne about how to address this loss).
    • Drs. Ilene and Ling Chen have a conversation that ends with the former admitting that she misses their friend (and Ling's implied amicable ex) Vivienne, after which the two sit in silence for a while.
    • Thor goes quiet, and his body language is clearly mournful, when Vivienne tells him in Chapter 12 that she and humanity don't fully remember or understand the old language and songs which Thor's ancient worshippers used to communicate with Titans.
    • After Susan Graham learns of Monster X and the truth about her daughter's fate, several times she's either silent or struggles to get words out of her throat.

  • Sleep Deprivation:
    • On a mundane level; a passing remark by Mariko indicates the disposable vagrants in Jonah's employ have been losing sleep due to their growing fears of what their employers might do to them.
    • Madison is barely able to sleep the night before Monster X fully metamorphosises into their second form.
    • After Viv and San are first reborn as a new Titan, a traumatized Vivienne is initially insomniac, whilst San notably goes without sleep so he can keep watch for Vivienne. Both of them have sleeping problems even after the insomnia has passed, due to episodes of Mind Rape that Ghidorah inflicts on them via Psychic Link.
    • In the Abraxas: Empty Fullness one-shot "Damnatio Memoriae"; after the Old Noise is implanted into their biology and neurology, the captive Ichi, Ni and San are unable to sleep because of the Noise constantly screaming and hurting their heads, and Ichi becomes Plagued by Nightmares which make him reluctant to sleep even if he could catch some.
    • In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Aleksandra the Zmeyevich apparently only ever needs five hours of sleep a night.

  • Small Name, Big Ego:
    • MaNi/Elder Brother insists that he's still a part of Ghidorah and therefore still part of the Satanic Archetype, even though it's made very clear that by Ghidorah's standards, MaNi has become an Expendable Clone by forming a single-headed creature autonomous from his brothers. This is made even more glaring by the fact MaNi/Elder Brother derides San as a shed skin yet refuses to admit he is exactly the same.
    • According to the author here, Rodan is in the same weight class as the other subservient Titans, but he thinks himself better than them because he interacts more frequently with Godzilla and Mothra and Monster X (all of whom think Rodan needs a routine proverbial or literal smack to the head to keep his ego in line).
  • Small Parent, Huge Child: The author's artwork shows Vivienne was taller than her mother Susan even when human, nevermind after Vivienne's been turned into a 100-foot Titan. This trope extends to San after Susan acknowledges him as adoptive family.
  • The Sociopath:
    • Played Straight by Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother, averted by San and San-2/Youngest Brother: the former two heads have absolutely no empathy or conscience, they have little to no meaningful emotional attachment towards each-other or their Youngest Brother or anything else, they make their entire purpose in life to be sadistically killing or repurposing any and all living things they encounter for the sakes of their own joy and bringing more destruction, they have a pretty big ego, and they make up for their Cannot Tell a Lie with cunning psychological manipulation.
    • Walter Simmons is implied to be a mid- to high-functioning sociopath like in canon. He displays cunning and manipulative streaks, he doesn't like being critcized, and he's willing to have his own daughter murdered just to keep a secret; on top of the hints he's committing many of the same crimes he committed in MonsterVerse canon, which are completely confirmed in Abraxas: The Clash of Silver.
  • Soul Fragment: According to Word of God (1, 2, 3). Dagon may be long-dead and fossilized, but his bones likely have some pieces of his psyche recorded in their matter via Genetic Memory, which will form one of the multiple foundations of Kiryu's consciousness once Kiryu gains sentience. Although Dagon and Kiryu are ultimately separate entities, this will likely cause Kiryu to inherit one or two of Dagon's tics and personality traits.
  • Spared by the Adaptation: The AbraxasVerse Timeline reveals Skull Island's ecosystem and (most of) the Iwi survive after the battle against Camazotz instead of being wiped out by a Perpetual Storm, implicitly due to Monster X's intervention. In the ascended recursive fic The Clash of Silver, Ren Serizawa and Maia Simmons both avoid their canon deaths and are still alive at the end. Word of God following the release of the Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire movie says that Scylla and Tiamat in the AbraxasVerse avoid their canon deaths.
  • Targeted to Hurt the Hero: MaNi/Elder Brother harms San purely to torture and enrage the Vivienne half of Monster X, in Chapter 16. Word of God says that Rodan, much as he'll hide it, fears he'll be on the receiving end of this trope if he ever grows too attached to another creature.
  • Technopath: Played With a couple times:
    • Implied in the AbraxasVerse Timeline. The incomplete Mechagodzilla's computers suffer a seeming glitch, and the tech team see an ominous message appear to them on the screens, implying that something sentient, malevolent and Ghidorah-related is possessing the technology. In Abraxas: The Clash of Silver, Mechagodzilla is possessed by the Zmeyevich Don and Meg, who are also able to use the possessed network to control several of Apex Cybernetics' China-based facilities' systems including their ORCA 2.0 network, Apex Hong Kong's machinery and an EMP generator.
    • Word of God has suggested that Monster X can likely tune into and listen to radio channels via their EVP ability.
  • Telepathy:
    • San and Vivienne have direct Twin Telepathy due to a shared nervous system following their hybridization, and Ghidorah's heads can also communicate with them via Psychic Link (the author has described what each of their voices sound like here). Ghidorah can also telepathically communicate with the Many's Hive Mind as their Hive Queen, the half-Ghidorah Zmeyevich are also portrayed as telepathically attuned to their three-headed father and each-other, and it's implied Esfir through her unborn Zmeyevich child and possibly also her broken mind has a link of her own to Keizer Ghidorah.
    • San's internal thoughts in Chapter 9 explicitly indicate that the nature of Bone Singers' ability to communicate with Titans is at least partly telepathic.
    • Word of God has also confirmed that Mothra is telepathic, although in her case it's limited to select humans.
  • Terrible Ticking: The main fic reveals that Monster X and Ghidorah don't like hearing the ORCA's signal because it causes a painfully nasty mental "noise", known to Ghidorah as the Old Noise, to stir inside them. In fact, Word of God and "Damnatio Memoriae" reveal that the Old Noise is originally what drove Ghidorah to become the cruel and deranged monster we know it as, and it used to be even worse in Ghidorah's heads than it is in the present.
  • Truer to the Text:
    • Whereas Rodan in MonsterVerse canon is a Wild Card with no fixed loyalties who spends the majority of his appearance aligned with Ghidorah instead of Godzilla and Mothra, Rodan in this fic has reverted to his Toho roots of being one of Godzilla and Mothra's most immediate allies against Ghidorah and its monsters, after Ghidorah's death at Boston freed him from its control.
    • Ghidorah's MonsterVerse portrayal has a completely mysterious past before it fell from the stars to Earth, with no human aliens controlling it, and its motives for destroying the world are assumed to be xenoforming the planet into a more suitable home for itself. The AbraxasVerse backstory makes Ghidorah a serial Planet Destroyer for whom Earth is just the latest in a long line of planets that it attacked to wipe clean of all life for the fun of it, just like in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. Furthermore, the backstory reveals that Ghidorah is originally an aggressive alien civilization's bioweapon beast like the original Showa incarnation's reappearances, except that this version of Ghidorah turned against and exterminated its makers billions of years ago and has been operating under its own power ever since.
  • Tsundere: According to Word of God, Vivienne will "go full Tsundere mode" if someone points out that she and a certain someone have Belligerent Sexual Tension. Said someone, Rodan, will have the exact same reaction, putting this mood on full display after he gets Mothra to comfort Vivienne in "Sermone ad Mortuos".

    U-W 
  • Uncertain Doom:
    • Rada, one of the disposable vagrants, isn't heard of again after Chapter 6, leaving it unknown whether she was among the survivors or fell victim to the Many.
    • In Chapter 9, Vivienne is unsure whether her mother is still alive, has died of old age since the Mass Awakening, or died in Ghidorah's global Titan chaos. Subverted when Susan's fate is finally revealed in Chapter 11.
    • Somewhat inverted with MaNi/Elder Brother. Word of God reveals that he was likely rendered Only Mostly Dead, and if his remains were left intact, then he could be revived, but it's unknown whether or not Monster X disposed of his remains in a way which renders them permanently dead after the last we saw of him.
    • At the story's end, it's uncertain whether all of the Many died at the Final Battle or remnants of them are still on the loose.
    • It's unknown if Nadezhda died in childbirth as the main story implies. The Timeline reveals that she and Zima at least agreed to a name for her child. Abraxas: The Clash of Silver confirms her death by childbirth.
  • Unwitting Pawn:
    • Jonah seems to have been the accidental kind who blunders into helping rather than being actively manipulated, due to the long-term repercussions of him selling Ghidorah's DNA from San's old head on to other parties.
    • It's later implied in the story that Bio-Major, who are apparently one of Jonah's buyers, are unwittingly aiding Ghidorah's long-term plan by using Ghidorah's DNA for fertility treatments.
    • The Timeline heavily implies that Mechagodzilla is possessed by or connected to a Ghidorah-derived entity, and that Apex Cybernetics are too arrogant to recognize the red flag that they're being used. Abraxas: The Clah of Silver states that the Zmeyevich Don and Meg whom Apex thought they'd groomed, and Ghidorah acting through them, were using Apex until Mechagodzilla was completed, at which point Don and Meg use it for Ghidorah's purposes.
    • Word of God comments that ill-meaning Titans generally can manipulate active Bone Singers into becoming their pawns due to said Bone Singers' increased sensitivity to their brown notes.
  • The 'Verse: The AbraxasVerse.
  • Villainous Legacy:
    • The lasting consequences of Emma Russell's actions in King of the Monsters – the Titans returning to the world, and the emotional impact of her betrayal on the people left behind – are visible throughout the story. The former consequence is in fact even more visible here than in MonsterVerse canon instalments, since the Titans remain awake following the Mass Awakening in this continuity.
    • Alan Jonah dies roughly 2/3 into the main story, but the Many which he created remain a major threat for the story's remainder, and the Zmeyevich which he also helped create live on as part of Ghidorah's long game and will continue to have a presence in the AbraxasVerse. To say nothing of how Word of God hints it was Jonah's mind that gave Ghidorah the whole Paradise Lost idea that it planned for Vivienne beyond Jonah's death...
  • Virtue Is Weakness: Jonah doesn't have a high opinion of heroic sacrifices, in Chapter 6. Word of God comments that Ni/Elder Brother associates goodness and love with weakness, and MaNi's behavior towards San-Who-Could-Have-Been/Youngest Brother shows this in Chapter 16. Walter Simmons declares Maia has lost her edge after she gives Ren some words of comfort, in the Timeline.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds:
    • The author likes to think Rodan doesn't exactly get along peacefully with his fellow Earth-native Titans – and indeed there are hints of this statement in the story with some of Rodan's interactions with Godzilla – but they will still watch Rodan's back when the chips are down.
    • Vivienne and Lauren Griffin apparently had this kind of dynamic before the events in Antarctica. They considered each-other a nerd and a jarhead respectively, yet Vivienne finds in Chapter 14 that she's very much missed their banter.
  • Weather Manipulation: Besides Ghidorah's ability to generate lightning-filled tempests, the Many seem to have inherited its ability to cause stormy weather wherever they go. Monster X can influence pre-existing stormy weather with their abilities and presence, and Word of God says they can form storms of their own.
  • White Sheep: San has always been less actively malicious than his brothers, and after fusing with Vivienne, he makes a genuine Heel–Face Turn and is on the heroes' side. Downplayed with San-2/Youngest Brother due to him having the same personality as San before the latter's Character Development, then Played Straight when San-2 turns on Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother.
  • World of Snark: Somewhat downplayed, but aside from the returning King of the Monsters chronic snarkers like Dr. Stanton and Mark, almost every other character – Jonah, the Chen twins, Ford Brody, Ren Serizawa – and new characters like Martin have something witty or snarky to say, even if only occasionally depending on the character. It's mostly the humans and Vivienne who snark, but San starts to make a few snarks as his Character Development since attaching to Vivienne progresses and he picks up more cues from her, as do his evil elder brothers after they use the Many's human-absorbing Hive Mind. Plus, it turns out that even the other natural-born Earth Titans have at least some concept of snarking (especially Rodan), though the snarks from most of them are rare and muted.

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