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"...When you're in a Jaeger, suddenly, you can fight the hurricane. And you can win."
"Today... today. At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time — we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today, there's not a man nor woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today. Today, we face the monsters that are at our door — and bring the fight to them! Today, we are cancellin' the apocalypse!"
Marshal Stacker Pentecost

Pacific Rim (or marketed as Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures' Pacific Rim) is a 2013 Kaiju/Humongous Mecha film directed by Guillermo del Toro.

20 Minutes into the Future, giant alien monsters known as "Kaiju" arise from a dimensional rift in the Pacific Ocean and leave a trail of destruction in their wake. Humanity eventually holds its own against the gargantuan threats by creating Humongous Mecha known as Jaegers, but over the years, the Kaiju grow stronger and turn the tide of battle back to their side.

When the growing losses of the Jaegers cause the world's governments to cut the program's funding, Marshal Stacker Pentecost designs one final counterattack against the Kaiju threat: a Jaeger assault on the dimensional rift itself in the hopes that they can close the rift for good. To put his plan into motion, he recruits Raleigh Becket, a washed-up veteran Jaeger pilot who ended up traumatized by the death of his brother (who was also his co-pilot) during a Kaiju battle five years prior. Alongside Mako Mori, a talented rookie with a dangerous grudge against the Kaiju, Raleigh suits up to pilot a Jaeger once more in order to take the fight to the Kaiju before they overrun the world.

The film stars Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Burn Gorman, Ellen McLain (as the voice of the Jaeger AI), and Clifton Collins Jr.

The 2018 sequel is Pacific Rim: Uprising with John Boyega and Scott Eastwood taking over as lead characters. Del Toro passed on directing responsibilities to Steven S. DeKnight (showrunner on Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Daredevil) while remaining a producer. On November 8, 2018, Netflix announced an original animated series that will expand upon the story of the first two live-action movies, titled Pacific Rim: The Black.

    Other media includes: 

Comic Books

Literature

  • Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization (2013)
  • Pacific Rim Uprising: Ascension (2018)
  • Pacific Rim Uprising: PPDC Jaeger Pilot Dossier (2018) - In-Universe handbook.
  • Pacific Rim Uprising: Official Novelization (2018)
  • Pacific Rim Uprising: The Junior Novel (2018)

Tabletop Games

  • Pacific Rim Hero Clix: Mini-Game (2013)
  • Pacific Rim: Extinction (2018) - A miniature Wargame produced by River Horse.

Video Games

  • Pacific Rim: Kaiju Battle (2013) - A browser game by Qualcomm.
  • Pacific Rim: Jaeger Combat Simulator (2013) - A browser game by Qualcomm.
  • Pacific Rim: The Video Game (2013) - A Fighting Game developed and published by Yuke's for Xbox Live Arcade, Play Station Network, and PC.
  • Pacific Rim: The Mobile Game (2013) - A Fighting Game by Reliance Games for mobile devices.
  • Pacific Rim: Breach Wars (2018)

Webcomics

Characterization tropes for Humans, Jaegers and Kaijus go on the Characters Sheet.


Pacific Rim provides examples of:

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    Tropes A to E 
  • Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: In a scaled up (and serious) version: the Wall, the "viable alternative" the Jaeger program was scrapped in favor of. It breaks in less than an hour under the assault of a single Kaiju, and later on, we're introduced to a Kaiju that can fly and spit acid. At the end, Class-5 Kaijus which are twice as tall as the Class-4s start coming through, making the wall literally waist-high.
  • Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene:
    • After their first failed Drift, Raleigh and Mako share a moment in Gipsy's hangar, where he convinces her that it wasn't her fault she chased the RABIT and that their connection as co-pilots really is there.
    • Right before the battle starts, Herc tries to tell Chuck that for all the animosity between the two of them, he has always loved his son in his own way. Chuck, however, cuts him off, telling him that he's always known.
  • Action Prologue: The movie begins with an Opening Monologue about the invading Kaiju and a battle of Gipsy Danger against Knifehead.
  • Activation Sequence: The first time we see a Jaeger in action, it's shown activating the control area in the head, which is then attached to the main body, culminating in the neural drift that connects the two pilots and allows them to control the enormous robot. A variant is seen later as Raleigh and Mako are attempting to establish a drift.
  • Admiring the Abomination: Newt has a somewhat disturbing interest in Kaiju and their body parts. Gottlieb even calls him a "Kaiju groupie".
  • Advertised Extra: The Japanese Jaeger, Coyote Tango, only appears in Mako's flashback.
  • Alice Allusion: Don't go chasing the RABIT, right?
  • Alien Blood: The Kaiju have toxic blue, acidic blood. The art book Man, Machines, and Monsters implies that the color was a deliberate choice to make the film more kid-friendly.
  • Aliens Are Bastards: Played absolutely straight with the creators of the Kaiju, who send their creations to wipe out all life on a given planet so they can strip the place.
  • Alien Sky: The planet of the Precursors appears to have a black hole for a sun.
  • All There in the Manual: The graphic novel Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero is a series of flashbacks about some of the characters from the movie and how they came to be part of the Jaeger program. The official artbook also includes descriptions of several unseen Jaegers and several other bits of in-universe information, fleshing things out further. The official novelization also shows dossier information for the Shatterdome crew, giving details the movie left out.
  • Always Identical Twins: The Wei Brothers, pilots of Crimson Typhoon, are played by real-life identical triplets, the Luu Brothers. As well, the American pilots of Romeo Blue, Bruce and Trevin Gage, were identical twins. Justified, as twins — especially identical ones — are particularly well-suited to drifting.
  • America Saves the Day: Played With. The last Jaeger standing is American, but the other equally important Jaeger in the final battle is of Australian origin, with Australian and British pilots. The nuke supplied for the final mission comes from Russia, while the entire operation is led by a Brit. Furthermore, while Gypsy is American, one of its pilots is Japanese. The two remaining scientists on the project are German.
  • And Mission Control Rejoiced: Much celebration occurs in the Shatterdome after the battle of Hong Kong and after the closing of the Breach, although it's marred in both cases by the deaths of half of the Jaeger pilots deployed, including the new Marshal's son.
  • Animated Credits Opening: Two of them; the first is relatively simple, with the logos of each alliance's country on a gridlike pattern shaped like a map of the Earth, which give way for the title. The second one (the "Main-on-End" titles) features more elaborate dioramas of the Jeagers and Kaiju duking it out, closing off with the title on top of shadowed statues of Gipsy Danger, Striker Eureka and Crimson Typhoon.
  • Animesque: The film takes a great deal of cues from Super Robot Genre anime, as well as Toho Kaiju films. This was probably the idea behind the over-the-top characterization, including a hot-blooded rival.
  • Another Dimension: The Anteverse where the Kaiju come from, via the Breach. As Newt discovers, it's also inhabited by the Precursors, who are the masterminds behind everything the Kaiju have been doing.
  • Answer Cut: When Chuck Hansen asks who his co-pilot is supposed to be after his father gets injured, the camera pans over to Pentecost approaching from the hangar gate.
  • An Arm and a Leg: Numerous limbs are severed from both Kaiju and Jaeger. Gipsy Danger lost its left arm in the opening sequence, and lost its right arm in the climax. In one of the most brutal moments, Leatherback ends up losing its arm after repeated shots from Gipsy's plasma caster.
  • Armored Coffins: This feature is very prominent with the Mark I Jaegers. The ways that Mark I Jaegers stop working are basically "pilots dead", "lost reactor containment, which also killed the pilots", and "something important blew up, which also killed the pilots". Newer models of Jaegers have an escape mechanism, while Mark I Jaegers have none.
  • Artistic License – Biology:
    • There is simply no way a Kaiju-sized creature can survive Earth's gravity; the largest dinosaur to walk on land was about 85 tons, while the smallest Kaiju is 2,040 tons and the largest one, only seen underwater, is estimated at a whopping 6750 tons. Of course, being artificial creatures created by a species literally millions of years old who can travel between dimensions, there are some liberties.
    • The escape pods by which the surviving characters surface after the Breach battle ascend much, much too fast. An ascent from such extreme depth should have taken hours, to allow time for the pods' occupants to safely adjust to the decreasing pressure. By rights, the survivors should've succumbed to the bends long before they even got out of the Trench, let alone reached the surface. This is not the case if the escape pod is pressurized to atmospheric level, like in a submarine. Given, having something resisting such an ascent is clearly a wonderful feat of engineering. But again, we are speaking about a film where humans build skyscraper-sized fighting robots...
  • Artistic License – Engineering: The stated descriptions of Jaeger engineering don't make much sense in general, but in particular, Gipsy Danger is said to be invulnerable to Leatherback's EMP weapon because of being "analog", which would imply she uses mechanical computing of some sort rather than digital electronics. The fact is, she has just as much evident electronic circuitry as any other Jaeger; what would make a difference would be increased shielding. Also, analog circuitry requires longer circuit lengths than digital, which makes it more vulnerable to EMP.
  • Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: Gipsy Danger's nuclear reactor is re-purposed as a nuclear bomb to destroy the portal, complete with huge explosion. Usually, that can't happen. It's all but stated, however, that the reactor was deliberately tuned to be used for a nuclear self-destruct, since setting it off can be done fairly easily from the cockpit. Gipsy Danger's "heart" (as Mako calls it) is referred to as a "Nuclear Vortex Turbine", which has the functionality of a fission rocket hooked up to a turbine and generator. A rocket is just a slowed-down and directed explosion, so it's not too much of a stretch for it to be suddenly less controlled. This would also explain numerous other functions of the chest piece, such as a deceleration rocket or a short-range wave-motion gun.
  • Artistic License – Paleontology:
    • Newt at one point mentions Kaiju having a secondary brain like dinosaurs. Except dinosaurs didn't have secondary brains; the so-called "sacral brain" came from a misunderstanding as to the purpose of an expanded spinal canal over certain dinosaurs' hips. While there is still some question about what this expanded canal was for, it definitely wasn't another brain. Although, it's vaguely implied by ambiguous wording that dinosaurs were actually the Precursors' early attempt at creating Kaiju.
    • It's stated that the Precursors were not able to invade the Earth during the Mesozoic because the atmospheric composition of the planet wasn't suitable for their survival yet, and humans releasing pollutants into the sky and ocean allowed them to arrive in the present day. In reality, the carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas effects were much stronger during the age of dinosaurs than they are now, and there would've been far more pollutants in prehistoric times during events like mass volcanism or a certain asteroid impact than anything humans have yet caused.
  • Artistic License – Physics:
    • Radio waves don't travel well underwater. This would have made communication problematic during the final battle. Granted, the Jaegers in question were close to each other and not miles apart.
    • Guillermo del Toro and the effects artists admit that huge beings, robots or monsters alike, would move slowly (or simply collapse under their own weight altogether), but the Kaiju and Jaegers move quickly to make for fun scenes. Although they are quite slow compared to the giant robots featured in most other anime and movies.
    • Gipsy Danger using a civilian oil tanker as an Improvised Weapon is flatly impossible; it would have buckled under its own weight the minute they dragged it out of the water, let alone started swinging it around like a bat.
    • As it turns out eight CH-47s can't quite lift a Jaeger. You would need around 600, high temperature or wind conditions would render them useless, the failure of any one would bring down the whole net, and coordinating the flight would be a little tricky, especially in dark rainy conditions.
    • The idea of a winged creature of that size flying by flapping its wings pushes the limits a little. Flying up to 50,000 feet where there isn't as much air to flap on pushes that even further.
    • Least of all: when Gipsy Danger's fist is crashing through the building and lightly tapped a Newton's Cradle resting on someone's desk, a single ball starts swinging when in reality all of them would have swayed. A Newton's Cradle is started by picking up one ball on the end and dropping it, not by pushing the entire object. This was most likely done for comedic effect, however.
    • Tendo touts the construction of Gipsy Danger by stating that the hull is made out of solid iron, no alloys. There's a good reason why tanks, rifles, skyscrapers, etcetera use steel, not iron. Just a few scenes earlier, Pentecost does basically the same by proudly announcing that Crimson Typhoon's armor consists of pure titanium instead of alloys. Large-scale construction projects almost never incorporate pure metals precisely because alloys tend to be one hell of a lot stronger (and lighter!) than any of their individual components.
    • The escape pods' design is completely unsuitable to survive the pulverizing pressures around the Breach. The only manned vessels that have ever endured such conditions use a spherical design and much thicker hulls for their pilot chambers, and are accessed through airlocks that would put NASA to shame, not flimsy flip-up panels.
    • The last Kaiju is able to withstand a point-blank nuclear explosion, and the Jaeger can resist the pressure of said underwater nuclear explosion from a few dozen meters away. That's just not physically possible. Then, after enduring said explosion and still being alive and whole, the Kaiju can be sliced by an oversized sword. Nothing that could (impossibly) endure a nuke would even feel a thing at being bashed by a few tons of steel.
    • Friction and overheating from atmospheric reentry is a thing, but not from only 50,000 feet and not from simple free-fall acceleration.
    • The entire premise of the movie relies on the idea that punching the Kaiju with giant robot fists a lot being more effective than bombing and shooting the crap out of them, but in reality there's no reason a giant explosion would be any less damaging than a giant punch if the energy involved is the same (other than Rule of Cool, of course). Mutavore being killed by a few missiles shot by Striker Eureka makes this especially egregious; if missiles shot by a giant robot can quickly kill a Kaiju, why are they so durable against missiles fired by jets and tanks?
    • The masses given to the Jaegers and Kaiju are really way too low. Slattern is said to be nearly six-hundred feet tall and durable enough to survive a point-blank nuke at the bottom of the ocean, but official weight estimates give it a weight of under seven-thousand tons. For comparison, an aircraft carrier of similar length to Slattern's height weighs well over eleven-thousand tons, and they're designed to float in water.
  • Ass-Kicking Pose:
    • The first time we see Gipsy Danger in action, the Jaeger does the "punching the palm," ready-for-action pose.
    • During the battle against Otachi, Crimson Typhoon strikes a pose to highlight its deadly three arms.
    • Cherno Alpha's unspeakably badass fist punch.
  • Astronomic Zoom: It looks like the start of one at the very beginning of the film... and then it's subverted because the "stars" are actually underwater particles around the opening Rift at the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
  • As You Know: Newt and Hannibal Chau both know that the Kaiju require two brains, but Newt mentions it anyway for the audience's benefit.
  • Attack Its Weak Point:
    • Horrifyingly, the Kaiju start to do this. Starting with the first one we see in the Action Prologue, they specifically start targeting the pilots and power sources of the Jaegers.
    • The first thing Gipsy does against both Leatherback and Otachi is to neutralize their new weapons by physically yanking off the organs containing Leatherback's EMP device and Otachi's acid-spitting sacs.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: More like 500-Foot-Whatever — giant aliens suddenly appear from beneath the Pacific to destroy humanity.
  • Attack the Injury: While fighting Leatherback, Gipsy Danger gets around the monster's armor by blowing a hole in its armpit, then sticks its arm cannon in the wound and blasts deep into the Kaiju's chest cavity.
  • Audible Gleam:
    • Hannibal Chau's shoes when we're first introduced to him as well as after Chau gets eaten by Otachi Jr., leaving behind one shoe. When Newton picks it up, it goes ting!. Justified in that the metal jingles like spurs because overlapping metal plates make noise when moved.
    • Whenever Gipsy Danger deploys her sword. Justified in that the segments start disjointed and attach together, making a sound.
  • Audible Sharpness: Related to the Audible Gleam, every deployment of a blade weapon by any Jaeger is accompanied by a very satisfying sound. Funnily, this even extends to Otachi's prehensile claw tail; especially noticeable when it grapples with Gipsy in downtown Hong Kong.
  • Awesome Aussie: The Australian Striker Eureka is the most advanced and powerful Jaeger made and has the most confirmed Kaiju kills (11). The Striker Eureka pilots encompass this better than their Jaeger. They have the broadest (terrible) Australian accent imaginable, and when their Jaeger is disabled they climb outside and take potshots at a Kaiju with flare guns to keep it distracted and away from civilians. Basically, it's surprising they don't challenge Kaiju to games of knifey spooney.
    Herc: [grabbing the flare guns] Now, we have a choice here: either we sit and wait, or we take these flare guns and do something really stupid.
  • Awesome McCoolname: Ron Perlman is Hannibal Chau (justified in story that he picked the name himself). Idris Elba plays Stacker Pentecost, which is less justified.
    Hannibal Chau: Like the name? I got it from from my favorite historical character and my second-favorite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.
  • "Awkward Silence" Entrance: Happens after Raleigh and Mako's disastrous first drift. We first see Raleigh getting his food and seeing everybody look up as he comes down the stairs into the canteen, then look across to find Mako on the other end of the canteen, the rest also staring at her. They end up going off together to eat in Gipsy's hangar.
  • Badass Boast:
    • The most famous one, from the trailer:
      Pentecost: TODAY, WE ARE CANCELLIN' THE APOCALYPSE!
    • From Raleigh Becket's narration: "When you're in a Jaeger, suddenly, you can fight the hurricane. And you can win."
    • In a Defiant to the End sort of way, when Striker Eureka is disabled and Leatherback is playing with them, Herc prepares to go outside and annoy it. When Chuck opposes that plan, Herc says "You and I are the only things standing between that ugly bastard and a city of 10 million people. Now we have a choice here, we either sit and wait or we take these flare guns and do something really stupid."
  • Badass Family: In order to drift, pilots usually have to know one another quite well. Being related helps:
    • Yancy and Raleigh Becket are brothers. The Wei Triplets are brothers. The Kaidanovskys are married. The Hansens are father and son. They all pilot kickass Jaegers.
    • In an example from the graphic novel, Dr. Lightcap married the first successful Jaeger test pilot. They became the husband and wife team piloting Brawler Yukon.
    • The pilots of Romeo Blue, Bruce and Trevin Gage, were identical twins. The pilots of Chrome Brutus, Ilisapie Flint and Zeke Amarok, were cousins. The new pilots of Coyote Tango, Gunnar and Vic Tunari, were brothers. And the pilots of Tacit Ronin, Duc Jessop and Kaori Koyamada, were also married.
  • Badass in Distress: An EMP attack from Leatherback temporarily turns the pilots of Striker Eureka into sitting ducks.
  • Bash Brothers: Jaeger pilots are figuratively brothers due to the neural bridge connecting them. Sometimes they are also literally brothers. As Raleigh posits at the beginning of the film: "The deeper the bond, the better you fight." We don't see too much of the literal trope in the movie (Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon do tag team Otachi for a time) but it is stated that a number of Kaiju battles involved multiple Jaegers working together.
  • Battle Couple: One of the possible configurations to operate a Jaeger.
    • The Russian pilots of Cherno Alpha, Aleksis and Sasha Kaidonovsky, are a married couple.
    • As were the Japanese pilots of Tacit Ronin, Duc Jessop and Kaori Koyamada.
    • Raleigh and Mako spend a great deal of the movie flirting and having quiet moments together, and there's an Almost Kiss after the final battle that leaves a viewer to think if they hadn't cut to black quite so soon... Word of God says that there were takes of the scene with a kiss filmed, but del Toro decided to leave it open to audience interpretation during post-production. (The Big Damn Kiss is left intact in the novelization.)
  • Battle in the Rain: Most of the action takes place during storms.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Newt expresses a desire to see a Kaiju up close. He gets his wish when Otachi (and by extension, Otachi Jr.) specifically comes to Hong Kong to kill him. Raleigh even lampshades this.
  • Because I Said So: The initial reason Stacker Pentecost gives for not allowing Mako to try out to be Raleigh's partner is basically "I'm the boss and I said 'No'". It takes a while to wedge the truth from him: he doesn't want his adoptive daughter in direct danger.
  • Behemoth Battle: Giant extra-dimensional monsters fight giant robots.
    "To fight monsters, we created monsters of our own."
  • Behind the Black:
    • Any Kaiju or Jaeger underwater (i.e.: not on camera) is invisible. It actually gets interesting during the appearance of Leatherback and its surprise attack on Cherno Alpha. Cherno has water up to its knees. In the background, we can see that Striker Eureka also has water up to its knees. Yet somehow in that shallow water Leatherback was able to swim (without causing a visible wake and ripple) or showing any sign until it surfaced to attack.
    • Early in the movie, Gipsy does something similar, standing out to a full vertical position with water up to its knees, somehow having managed to swim in that little water with no trace on the surface, and somehow coming to a vertical stand like it's coming out of a squat (Implying it was always walking on the sea bed). During the same fight, Knifehead is able to completely vanish in that same amount of water (something it wasn't doing earlier when approaching the ship), flip from its back to its stomach unseen and thus catch Gipsy by surprise.
  • Berate and Switch: Marshal Pentecost's scolding about Becket's fighting maneuvers ends up being a compliment.
    Pentecost: [frowning] In all of my years fighting I've never... [smile appears on his face] ... seen anything like that. Well done.
  • Better Than New: The repaired and upgraded Gipsy Danger. This trope's exact name is also the title of a song in the soundtrack.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Leatherback and Otachi have easily dispatched Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon, Striker Eureka is immobilized, her pilots are facing down a Kaiju with their flare guns... and then Gipsy Danger arrives.
  • The Big Damn Kiss: Subverted; while it looks like Raleigh and Mako could do this at the end, and Raleigh does talk about "never thinking about the future until now" while looking at Mako, they have a Headbutt of Love instead. According to Charlie Hunnam, he thought that it was much more appropriate since it kept Mako's character as a strong female lead in her own right rather than turning her into Raleigh's love interest. In the novelization, however, this was played straight.
  • Big "NO!": Raleigh, when Yancy is killed.
  • Bilingual Backfire: Raleigh is fluent in Japanese, much to Mako's surprise. Luckily, all she said was that he was different than she expected. He playfully responds with "Better or worse?"
  • Bilingual Bonus: All important non-English dialogue is subtitled, minus one line: Mako's last words to Stacker, "Sensei, aishitemasu", meaning "I love you, teacher".
  • Bilingual Dialogue: Downplayed in the sense that there are bits of this in the movie, such as Mako talking to Pentecost in English and Pentecost replying to her in Japanese, or Raleigh talking to Mako in English and Mako replying in Japanese, but these are few and far between.
  • Bioluminescence Is Cool: The Kaiju have glowing eyes, mouths, and markings. Even their blood lights up.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Humans win the war against the Kaiju and Raleigh, Mako, and Herc live to see it but Pentecost, Chuck, the Wei triplets, and the Kaidanovskys are dead and all the Jaegers are destroyed. That's not even thinking about the environmental, economic, and societal consequences of the long-term war against the Kaiju, which are only briefly shown.
  • Blade Below the Shoulder:
    • Striker Eureka sports curved "Sting-Blades" attached to its forearms.
    • Gipsy Danger has "swords that whip out" in both arms.
    • Tacit Ronin also has a large pair of large, retractable blades below its wrists as shown in its shot in the intro.
    • Crimson Typhoon has triple buzzsaw hands.
  • Blade Brake: A damaged Gipsy Danger plants its sword in the ground during the final battle to avoid being knocked over by the shockwave of Striker Eureka's nuke detonating.
  • Blood Is Squicker in Water: Happens with some Kaiju, though the effect is downplayed due to having blue Alien Blood.
  • Body Horror:
    • Knifehead and Scunner each have a pair of arms that look as if the bones in them are splitting apart.
    • Mutavore's head design. Her eyes are on her lower jaw, she has blade-like growths pretty much everywhere on her body, and her mouth, located on her forehead, makes her appear mouthless when it's closed.
    • Raiju has a notably crocodile-like head. Except that that's actually just a hood for his real head — it's the toothy tongue-like appendage inside his triple-hinged "jaws" that is his genuine mug.
  • Bookcase Passage: Hannibal Chau's place can be entered through a secret door at the Chinese shop.
  • Bookends: Both the beginning and the end of the movie involve someone/something being Not Quite Dead.
  • Born from a Dead Woman: Several hours after the Kaiju Otachi is killed, it turns out to have been pregnant and an infant kaiju emerges from its mother's corpse. It's born premature and quickly suffocates, but it's no less vicious than any other kaiju for the minutes that it's alive.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • Gipsy Danger's fighting style boils down to a combination of Combat Pragmatist and Improvised Weapon from anything it can grab from the surroundings. Less flashy than the synchronized styles that the other Jaegers use, but it turns out to be the most effective. Its weaponry is also relatively tame compared to the others but its Blade Below the Shoulder and Plasma Caster turn out to be quite versatile.
    • The three Kaiju defending the Rift. Unlike the movie's two middle Kaiju, Slattern and the others don't have acid spitting or fancy EMP weapons. They do have toughness, while their claws, tails, and bodies make it very easy for them to swim in the deepest parts of the ocean.
  • Borrowed Biometric Bypass: The portal is keyed to open only to Kaiju, so in order to get past that restriction, Gipsy Danger tackles the final one and dives through the portal with it, killing it on the way down.
  • Breaching the Wall: The Humongous Mecha are set to be decommissioned after a huge wall is built around the Pacific Ocean to keep the giant alien monsters out. The completed wall doesn't last more than an hour against one of the monsters.
  • Break Out the Museum Piece: Considering the entire Jaeger program is being scrapped, all the existing Jaegers technically fall under this trope, even Striker Eureka, the newest and most advanced Jaeger. Cherno Alpha is the only Mark I Jaeger still operating and should have long been retired. Gipsy Danger was an obsolete and junked Mark III, but enough of it was intact that Pentecost had it retrieved and repaired using modern tech. This becomes plot-relevant when a Kaiju with an EMP shows up and shuts down all the remaining Jaegers — except Gipsy, whose older-model systems are resistant.
  • Brick Joke:
    • Gipsy Danger loses an arm twice, and both times, it's the hemisphere side that Raleigh's on.
    • Hannibal Chau's golden shoes are prominently displayed in his Feet-First Introduction, but he loses one when he gets eaten by the baby Kaiju. When Chau cuts his way out during The Stinger, the first thing he does is demand to know where his shoe went.
  • Broken Faceplate: At the end of the Action Prologue, Raleigh stumbles out of a collapsed Gipsy Danger with the faceplate over his helmet reduced to a few broken pieces around the edges and the right shoulder of his suit torn off, showing what he just went through.
  • Broken Pedestal: A mutual one between Newt and Hermann. According to the supplementary materials, the two got to know one another via long-distance correspondence and felt an immense kinship due to their shared interest in the Kaiju threat. After years of exchanging letters, they finally arranged to meet in person and within minutes of meeting face-to-face, gained an almost instantaneous dislike of one another. They also hate each other's theories. Also, Newt is a experimental researcher while Hermann is a theoretical one. The pedestals are rebuilt when they drift with each other to learn of the Kaiju's plans and when both of their theories are proven correct, earning them mutual respect for each other.
  • Brutish Bulls: The triple event has Scunner, a rather bull-like Kaiju with gouging horns. One shot of Gipsy even evokes a bullfight/rodeo.
  • Building Is Welding:
    • When we are introduced to Becket's workplace at the Wall of Life, the camera pan over the construction site is covered in showers of sparks from the welding going on.
    • Later when Becket sees the inside of the Shatterdome, there are welding sparks visible in the background, emphasizing the notion that this is a place where things are getting done.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Calling Marshal Pentecost's adopted daughter a bitch in front of her Drift compatible co-pilot that's been working heavy construction for five years and one of two people strong enough to single-handedly pilot a Jaeger is definitely not the brightest idea.
  • Bus Full of Innocents: A boat in the Action Prologue, as a crew of Alaskan fishermen are caught in the middle of the battle between Knifehead and Gipsy Danger.
  • Calling Your Attacks:
    • Gipsy's Elbow Rocket and the Typhoon's Thundercloud Formation. The former is justified as Raleigh telling Mako to activate it; the latter is more of an example of the triplets' coordination. Mostly it's just Rule of Cool and a Shout-Out to the film's inspirations.
    • Played With at the end of Gipsy Danger's fight with Otachi. Raleigh laments that they're out of options, and Mako replies they have something left, and hits a button on the console. Gipsy's computer then calmly announces "Sword deploying."
  • Casting Gag:
    • Instead of having Rinko Kikuchi dub over Mako's lines in the Japanese dub, Mako is instead voiced by Megumi Hayashibara. In other words, Rei Ayanami is playing the Rei Ayanami Expy.
    • That's not the only one, since Amuro Ray and Char are Dr. Newton Geiszler and Herc Hansen respectively.
    • In the Spanish dub, Pentecost was voiced by Juan Carlos Gustems, who voiced Gendo Ikari in the original Evangelion anime.
  • The Centerpiece Spectacular: The Hong Kong fight in the middle of the movie is the longest and most spectacular action scene, though the climax is close behind it.
  • Central Themes:
    • Family. All of the regular Jaeger pilot teams we see, barring Raleigh and Mako, are related in one way or another, and there's a recurring theme of surrogate family members. Even the Kaiju, in an odd sort of way, are related to each other, despite being genetically-engineered bioweapons. One is even pregnant.
    • Unity. All of the family teams are defeated. The final victory requires everyone to work together; people of different races and nationalities, people who love and hate each other, fighters, scientists, and even criminals have to contribute something to achieve the win.
    • Partnership, an elaboration on Unity above: Raleigh and Yancy, Mako and Pentecost, Newt and Hermann, Herc and Chuck. Due to the neural load being too much for only one person, Jaegers require two pilots drifting together to control the entire robot. Mako's unpaired shoe that she carries as a child the day Pentecost finds her is returned to symbolize he trusts her to carry out the mission. Conversely, the two characters who don't have any counterpart are Hannibal Chau who gets swallowed whole and Tendo Choi, whose one line of character development is about him going on a date with a taken woman (i.e. emphasizing his single status).
    • Hope. The hero of the movie refuses to trade ten lives in favor of improved odds for saving two million more, and instead resolves to save two million and ten lives. The entire Jaeger outfit at the end is still unhesitatingly going out to fight even when the war is visibly beyond the point of no return. The politicians who try to cut their losses and be pragmatic and play lifeboat are shown as taking the road of good intentions straight down to Hell. It's only the people who refuse to acknowledge 'hopeless' odds and instead persist in believing that they can score a clean victory rather than a mediated loss who end up achieving anything.
  • Chainsaw Good: Crimson Typhoon's hands can turn into giant buzzsaws.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • The close-up on Crimson Typhoon and its lightly-armored head, which Otachi ends up crushing and tearing off with relative ease.
    • Gipsy Danger is nuclear-powered, which means it can become a bomb in a pinch.
    • Chau uses his knife three times: once to intimidate Geiszler, once to check whether Otachi Jr. is dead, and once more to cut his way out of its stomach after it turns out not to be dead.
    • Though it's not explicitly noted, the fact that the Kaiju can tell Newt linked up with one of their brains from the far side of the rift indicates that it's possible for signals to pass through it. This is useful when mission control needs to keep monitoring Gipsy Danger's progress.
    • The PSA about the start of the Jaeger program mentions how much danger solo pilots faced, such as Pentecost.
    • Raleigh's ability to pilot a Jaeger solo. In fact, Herc tells Chuck to show Raleigh some respect because he managed to bring a Jaeger in safely solo. Herc mentions he's only ever heard of one other pilot doing it. Turns out it was Pentecost, whose partner was knocked out during the battle from Mako's memory.
  • Child Soldier:
    • Chuck Hansen can be viewed as both a precocious and tragic example of this. He was enlisted in the Jaeger Academy at twelve in 2015, was first deployed in Striker Eureka at 16 in 2019, and has the highest Kaiju kill count in history at 21 in 2025. However, it's also shown that Chuck has a Hair-Trigger Temper, terrible communication skills, and a double dose of Daddy Issues and Survivor's Guilt with regards to his father choosing to save him over his mother. Herc even admits that Chuck was "raised in the cockpit", which couldn't have been healthy for a young, traumatized boy.
      Rob Kazinsky: From a very, very young age, Chuck grew up trained to be a Jaeger pilot. Herc was never a father to him.
    • It's very likely that several other Jaeger pilots were reared from adolescence to fight the Kaiju as well. Sadly, if there were any other teenage or young pilots during the Golden Age of the Jaegers, they were almost certainly killed prior to the film in Kaiju battles.
  • Citywide Evacuation: Kaiju invasions have become commonplace enough that major cities on the Pacific coast have installed huge underground shelters for use during Kaiju attacks. Hong Kong's entire population is able to evacuate to the shelters in less than an hour—leaving a completely empty city for the big Jaeger-Kaiju brawl.
  • Combat Breakdown: After an EMP strike disables Striker Eureka, all the Jaeger's cool mech is rendered useless and its pilots are left with only flare guns to distract the Kaiju. Flare guns, as opposed to arm blades and chest nukes.
  • Combat Pragmatist:
    • All of the mechs to an extent, but Gipsy Danger stands out. Its pilots are more than willing to tear off body parts and make use of an Improvised Weapon.
    • The Kaiju are equally pragmatic. Leatherback and Otachi coordinate to take down Cherno Alpha, the former uses a crane in its fight with Gipsy Danger, and Slattern and Scunner work together to badly damage Striker Eureka after realizing it is the stronger opponent.
  • Combat Tentacles: Slattern's lower body consists of a mass of tentacles, three most pronounced and tipped with bladed spears.
  • Coming in Hot: Gipsy Danger falls out of the sky and Raleigh screams that they are coming in too fast. Cue the Ground-Shattering Landing in a sport arena.
  • Convection, Schmonvection:
    • On Striker Eureka's blueprints there's mention of the "Sting-Blades" channeling thermal energy, but it's unknown if it's this or outright case of Kill It with Fire.note 
    • This is averted in the Final Battle, where Gipsy Danger shoves a Kaiju's head into a volcanic vent and roasts its face in an attempt to kill it.
  • Cool Car: Briefly, there is a beauty shot of a silver Mazda RX-7 sports car during Mako's flashback. Del Toro has admitted to being a car nerd, so there's a good chance it was intentionally placed.
  • Cool Versus Awesome: All giant robots vs all giant monsters.
    Guillermo del Toro: It is my duty to commit to film the finest fucking monsters ever committed to screen and it is my duty to create the greatest fucking robots ever committed to screen.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: Were it not for the Jaegers, man would be less significant than mere bugs before the apocalyptic tsunami of mountainous bone and muscle that are the Kaiju.
  • Crapsack World: In addition to the giant monster attacks that are happening with alarming regularity, there are clues that society has slowly broken down. Simple things like bread are seen as a luxury, people are working dangerous jobs for food rations, and there is an implied social divide between the wealthy and the rest of society with the rich getting special treatment in wake of the monster attacks.
  • Creature-Hunter Organization: The Pan Pacific Defense Corps, with its Rangers being specially trained and equipped to fight Kaiju.
  • Crucified Hero Shot: Gipsy Danger floats in this pose just before it blows up the Breach. It is making a sacrifice to save others, after all.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • Brawler Yukon — a prototype Jaeger built in 2015 effortlessly dominates Karloff.
    • Striker Eureka versus Mutavore. The Kaiju doesn't land a single hit and the battle is finished in less than a minute.
    • Before Striker Eureka arrived to stop Mutavore, the Kaiju single-handedly destroyed Echo Saber and Vulcan Specter in the novel version.
    • In an Offscreen Moment of Awesome, Coyote Tango defeats Onibaba quickly.
    • Raiju, the fastest, most lethal Kaiju on record, manages but a single chomp on Gipsy's arm. His second attack had him split in two by Gipsy's sword. He gets a total of twelve seconds of screen time.
    • Similiar to Mutavore's case above — according to official data Nova Hyperion and Mammoth Apostle were both active around 20th December 2024 and already destroyed in 2025 — considering only one Kaiju attack occurred in that time both Jaegers were destroyed by one Kaiju.
    • Crimson Typhoon went down to Otachi in about 30 seconds. Cherno Alpha didn't do much better, but had the excuse of being an outdated model with a very dangerous design for the pilots while additionally being attacked by two Kaiju.
    • Striker Eureka had Otachi dead to rights only for Leatherback to use his EMP weapon in the nick of time.
    • Raleigh beats the shit out of Chuck when he insults Mako and most likely would have continued if Herc and Pentecost hadn't intervened. Chuck only landed hits a few times and even then was almost immediately put back on the defensive.
  • Curb Stomp Cushion: In the sequential destruction of Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha along with their pilots, neither are defeated without putting up an extensive fight against Otachi. Their defeats are more due to Otachi having unexpected features, such as a prehensile tail and acid spit than overwhelming them in direct combat. As it happens, Otachi proves to be the most versatile and problematic Kaiju faced in the film, even above the category five Slattern in the climax. Their deaths also aid Raleigh and Mako in Gipsy Danger when they come into the fight, who quickly neutralize those features early on.
  • Cut the Juice: The desperate resort needed during a trial run for two Jaeger pilots goes beyond a failsafe program and goes into literally pulling a plug.
  • Cynicism Catalyst:
    • Pentecost's sister, Luna, was one of the fighter jet pilots who lost her life during the first Kaiju attack. Her death was what caused her brother to work with the military to find the best way to combat the Kaiju.
    • Being drifted with his brother Yancy as he was killed is this for Raleigh.
    • Tendo Choi lost his grandfather to Kaiju blood in the prequel comic.
    • Herc's wife and Chuck's mother, Angela Hansen, was killed during Scissure's attack on downtown Sydney. As were Herc's parents and the rest of their family except for his younger brother, Scott.
  • Dare to Be Badass:
    • Played with when Pentecost dares Raleigh to become a Jaeger pilot again after his retirement.
      Pentecost: Where would you rather die? Here? Or in a Jaeger?
    • Part of Newt's justification when he says he wants to drift with a Kaiju.
      Newt: Fortune favors the brave, dude.
  • Darkest Hour: The Kaiju have been increasing in strength and regularity. The Jaeger program, which was really the only effective way of dealing with the Kaiju, has been shut down in light of diminishing success. The Pacific Wall — the "viable alternative" — is quickly shown to be totally ineffective against the stronger Kaiju, in part because one of them can shoot acid and fly. And there are only four operational Jaegers left in existence. Also, the Rift is building, and multiple and bigger Kaiju are able to cross over in increasing numbers with increasing frequency the more time passes.
  • Dead Guy on Display:
    • One photo shows the massive skull of Trespasser (a.k.a. Axe-Head), the first Kaiju, on public display in San Francisco.
    • The novelization states that Onibaba's head is currently decorating Fujiyama.
    • There's also a quick blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot in Manila of the people having built their buildings around and inside a Kaiju's skeleton.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Hannibal Chau.
    Newt: I can't believe what you did to me. I mean, I could have been eaten!
    Hannibal Chau: Well, that was definitely the plan...
  • Death by Adaptation: Getting eaten by Otachi Jr. is fatal to Hannibal in the novelization. Less so in The Stinger, though it's possible said stinger hadn't yet been filmed/scripted by the time the novelization was written.
  • Death by Cameo: Hannibal Chau's underling ("Wizened Man," according to the script) is the prolific Spanish actor/director Santiago Segura (see Trivia for more details). He appears in most movies by Guillermo del Toro and he dies messily in most of them. This one is no exception.
  • Death by Irony: Otachi's name translates into "great sword". It gets slain by the debut of Gipsy Danger's chainsaw sword.
  • Defiant to the End:
    • When Striker Eureka is disabled by Leatherback, the two pilots stand on the shoulders of the Jaeger, one of them yelling at the circling Kaiju to come at them while carrying a tiny flare gun in each hand. They make one shot, which caused the Kaiju to reel slightly in pain but otherwise had no effect.
    • Likewise the pilots of Cherno Alpha continued to land punches on the attacking Kaiju, even as their Jaeger was being destroyed.
  • Derelict Graveyard: Oblivion Bay, the Jaeger graveyard. It's located in Oakland, California, the exact location where Trespasser, the first Kaiju, was killed. The remains of all the destroyed Jaegers are taken here.
  • Destructive Savior: Gipsy Danger manages to take out two Kaiju near Hong Kong, but majorly trashes the city in the process.
  • Determinator:
    • Raleigh. He's able to handle his mech's neural load solo (it normally takes two people) long enough to kill the Kaiju attacking his mech after it had killed his brother (while they were still connected) and walk it to shore without guidance from mission control.
    • The Kaidonovskys. Cherno's being held underwater and they're drowning. Do they try to escape through the big hole in the hull? No, they keep on fighting.
  • Deus ex Nukina: The last-ditch effort to close the Breach is to toss a nuke into the "throat" and collapse it. It becomes a double-subversion. The initial planned Deus ex Nukina is a no-go and has to be detonated to deliver the real one, in the form of the overloading reactor of Gipsy Danger. As is often the case, the nuke must also be delivered by hand.
  • Developer's Foresight: An in-universe example, overlapping with Crazy-Prepared. The A.I. of Gipsy Danger, a Humongous Mecha designed to fight monsters from beneath the ocean, is apparently programmed to deal with orbital re-entry.
  • Dictionary Opening: The film showed translations for the Japanese word "Kaiju" and the German word "Jaeger", the names for the monsters and mechas respectively.
  • Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: After Striker Eureka is disabled, the Hansens weigh up their options, then continue the engagement with flare-guns. They do manage to torch one of Leatherback's eyes... even though that doesn't do much but piss him off.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Giant aliens come from beneath the depths to destroy us all, and yet humanity actually manages to push them back. Then they go through the rift and blow the ones who made them to kingdom come.
  • Disposable Woman: Angela Hansen died to cause both her husband and son much angst.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?:
    • After their first spar, Raleigh is more convinced than ever that he and Mako are meant for each other... as co-pilots. According to Word of God, the implications were intentional.
      Raleigh: We're compatible! You felt it too, right?
    • The Kaiju are ranked by category, from Category 1 (very defeatable) to Category 5 (virtually unstoppable). This is the same way that Real Life hurricanes and tornadoes are rated, playing up how Kaiju assaults are closer to natural disasters than animal attacks. This is lampshaded by Raleigh at the beginning of the movie:
      Raleigh: Some things you can't fight. Acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you have to get out of the way. But when you're in a Jaeger, suddenly, you can fight the hurricane. You can win.
  • Do Not Call Me "Paul":
    • Inverted. "Call me 'Newt', only my mother calls me 'Doctor'."
    • Played with for Dr. Gottlieb just moments before Newt's inversion — his first line in the movie is berating Newt for calling him "Hermann"... but only because it was in front of other people.
    • Played straight with the Hansens. Chuck only uses derisive variations on "Old Man", much to Herc's insistence otherwise.
  • Do Not Go Gentle:
    • The Kaiju or their creators were not expecting humanity to fight back as hard as they do against extinction.
    • Special mention goes to the Hansens who, when they have a disabled Jaeger and no other options, start telling Leatherback to basically "come get some" and fire flares that are about as effective as Spiteful Spit instead of giving up.
  • Double Tap: Raleigh blasts a dead Kaiju a few times just to make sure. Justified, considering that the last Kaiju he thought was dead got back up and killed his brother before it was put down.
  • Downer Beginning: The movie starts with Raleigh losing his brother, and Gipsy Danger being severely damaged in the fight with Knifehead, signifying a turn for the worse for all of mankind.
  • Drowning Pit: Downplayed. Aleksis and Sasha Kaidonovsky drown inside the cockpit of Cherno Alpha when the Jaeger drops into the sea. Although they may have lived just long enough to be killed when Leatherback crushes the cockpit, causing it to explode. Not sure which possibility is worse, really.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Pentecost and Chuck sacrifice themselves via nuclear explosion to give Raleigh and Mako enough time to detonate Gipsy Danger to destroy the Breach.
  • Dynamic Entry: Otachi, a three-handed Kaiju (two arms plus a prehensile tail) who appears grown specifically to deal with Crimson Typhoon, starts to get her ass handed to her by Cherno Alpha, when suddenly... Leatherback to the rescue!
  • Eating the Eye Candy: Mako spends a good amount of time staring out her door as Raleigh takes his shirt off. Once Raleigh notices, she immediately shuts the door... and goes on trying to watching through the peephole, at which point, he shuts the door.
    • Sort of subverted in the novelization, when Raleigh realizes that she isn't looking at him, per se; she's looking at his battle scars and wants some of her own.
  • E = MC Hammer: Gottlieb is shown writing difficult formulas on a huge blackboard.
  • Eiffel Tower Effect: The attack on Sydney shows the Kaiju breaking through the Wall near Sydney Opera House — which is on Sydney Harbour close to the Central Business District, nowhere near the harbour mouth, so it should be nowhere near a wall built across the harbour mouth.
  • Eldritch Location: The place the Kaiju are sent from is indeed weird. It has a sun that looks like an eyeball. Worse still, for all we know, it actually is an eyeball.
  • Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The Breach from which the monstrous Kaiju come from is located at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and there is an extended underwater fight scene as the PPDC tries to get near enough to close it for good.
  • Emergency Trainee Battle Deployment: Two examples, one offscreen in lore:
    • When the Jaeger neural interface was first tested and it was discovered a two-pilot system was required, Caitlin Lightcap, the scientist who created it, volunteered to be the second pilot alongside the actual trained soldier. Possibly justified because all prior test pilots had been killed due to the strain of using the interface alone.
    • When Leatherback disables Striker Eureka with its EMP, Mako has to go into battle, despite having completely failed to drift properly on her first attempt and nearly shooting up the base by subconsciously activating Gypsy Danger's plasma cannon.
  • EMP: Leatherback knocks Hong Kong off the power grid, along with disabling a Jaeger, with an electromagnetic pulse. It is generated by a bioluminescent organ on its back; the first thing Gypsy Danger does during their battle is to rip it off to avoid a repeat.
  • Empathic Environment: The weather is grey and nasty through the entire film and gets worse as things look worse for mankind, but once the good guys score a decisive victory, the next time we get a look up, the sky is blue.
  • End of an Age: Several, actually. 1) The prologue covers the end of the Kaiju-free Earth history. 2) After the title screen, it becomes the end of the Golden Age of Jaeger development; hence, only four left. Lastly... the film seemingly ends with the end of the Kaiju age.
  • The End... Or Is It?:
    • Spoofed with The Stinger when the flesh of the dead baby monster twitches ominously... only for Hannibal Chau to cut his way out, complaining about his missing shoe.
    • Played straight soon after. Once all the credits have rolled, a roaring noise can be heard suggesting that one/some of the Kaijus are still alive.
  • Enhanced Punch:
    • Gipsy Danger has rocket boosters on its elbows to give its punches extra power.
    • Cherno Alpha has pistons that extend its forearm upon impact in order to give it more force. Its fists are also infused with Tesla cells, which send at least 415kv into every single Kaiju they punch.
  • Establishing Character Moment:
    • One of the first things we see of Stacker is him ordering Gipsy Danger to guard Anchorage and ignore a fishing boat in the Kaiju's path. When the Beckets go to save the boat anyway, and he realizes the crap's about to hit the fan, he tells them to take the boat and leave. He's ostensibly concerned with the bigger picture, but clearly doesn't like anyone being sacrificed or hurt if he can help it.
    • We first see Chuck Hansen giving an interview after helping curbstomp a Kaiju, in which he quickly establishes himself as a cocky hotshot. Though it's not obvious until later, there's hints that he also really cares about protecting people. But mostly that he's a cocky hotshot.
  • Everyone Is Armed: When Hannibal Chau orders Newt to leave, all of his mooks draw a gun and point it at Newt's head.
  • Every Scar Has a Story: Hannibal Chau has one on the left side of his face shaped like the letter C. The only part of the story we (and Newton) get is that it happened in a public Kaiju shelter.
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • The Kaiju to the Jaegers. They are split into categories from one to five and are so large that they need two brains to fully operate. Whereas the Jaegers are created to defend humanity and its cities, the Kaiju are created to destroy everything in their path.
    • Each Jaeger is destroyed fighting the Kaiju it resembles the most:
      • Gipsy Danger and Knifehead wield sharp blades in combat, and use surprise and unorthodox fight styles.
      • Otachi and Crimson Typhoon are both versatile, agile, and have an extra limb (Otachi's tail has a grasping claw).
      • Cherno Alpha and Leatherback are big bulky bruisers, a bit on the slow side, but immensely strong and tough.
      • Slattern and Striker Eureka are both the latest "class five's" of their respective teams (Slattern is the first Category 5 Kaiju and Striker is the first Mark V Jaeger).
  • Evil Evolves: Each Kaiju that emerges is tougher, smarter, and with better abilities than the last. The sheer expense of the Jaeger program made them incapable of keeping up.
  • Exact Time to Failure: The A.I. gives a very accurate countdown to when Gipsy's nuclear meltdown would culminate in an explosion, and it's most likely designed that way.
  • Excuse Plot: Yeah, there's a story, but it's mostly just lip service to pad out the action sequences of giant robots beating the snot out of giant monsters, which the movie never wastes time getting to and provides plenty of.
  • The Exit Is That Way: Mako tries to evade questions from Raleigh by turning around and heading for her room. After some fiddling around with the key at the door Raleigh notes with a smile that she's trying to unlock his room.
  • Expy:
    • Leatherback (and the Kaiju designs in general) looks a lot like Sammael the hellhound. Not surprising since Hellboy was also a del Toro film.
    • The Precursors are a race of Planet Looters who move from planet to planet wiping out its inhabitants in order to milk it dry of its natural resources before they move on. Sound familiar?
  • Extreme Graphical Representation: Mission Control is full of 3D display gimmicks.
  • Eye Scream:
    • Hannibal Chau has a scar directly through his eye, the result of an incident in a public Anti-Kaiju Defense Shelter.
    • Leatherback also takes a flare to the eye, though since he's a Kaiju (and has six of them) it doesn't do much more than annoy him.
    • When Slattern drops down in front of Gipsy after taking a nuke to the face, we see half her face blown off and one of her left eyes missing.

    Tropes F to K 
  • Failsafe Failure: There are multiple occurrences, and the most prominent, Mako's first drift, where she gets lost in a memory and nearly blows a hole in the facility, is actually a subversion — a lot of failsafes fail, but Tendo and the Hansens do eventually manage to unplug the right socket and power the weapon down.
  • Fee Fi Faux Pas: When Newt is introducing himself and his work, he shows off his Kaiju tattoos and goes on about how cool Kaiju are. In front of Raleigh. Whose brother was killed by one.
    Newt: You know [Yamarashi] was one of the biggest Category 3s ever? It's 2,500 tons of awesome. [awkward silence from everyone else] Or awful, you know, whatever you wanna call it.
  • Fighter-Launching Sequence: The movie opens with the Becket brothers suiting up and deploying Gipsy Danger.
  • Final Battle: The battle at the breach, with Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka vs. Scunner, Raiju, and Slattern, for all the marbles. If the Jaegers win, the Breach is closed and no more attacks can come. If the Kaiju win, then there will be nothing left to stop them from crushing the rest of humanity.
  • Finishing Move: While not called as such, the Jaegers seem to have weapons that are normally used to finish off a Kaiju and end the fight, such as Gipsy Danger's Plasma Caster or Striker Eureka's Anti-Kaiju Missiles. A straighter example is Gipsy Danger's Nuclear Vortex Turbine, which sees one use in an actual fight and that's to kill Slattern. Considering the film is a gigantic homage to Tokusatsu and Super Robot anime, this is no surprise.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Dr. Newt Geiszler and Dr. Hermann Gottlieb initially have a none-too-friendly professional rivalry that borders on outright hatred. After being forced to work together instead of on parallel projects and sharing a Drift with a Kaiju brain, they shift into Vitriolic Best Buds.
  • First-Name Basis:
    • Herc always addresses Pentecost as "Stacker", given that they were contemporaries.
    • A glimpse into the true nature of Geiszler and Gottlieb's relationship is that they're on a first-name basis, which for Germans is reserved for family and very dear friends.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Otachi Jr. breaks out of its parent's corpse and chases after Newt, the camera lingers on its umbilical cord trailing behind. A few moments later, the cord wrapped around the baby Kaiju's neck strangles it to death.
  • Flash Freezing Coolant: Gypsy Danger's solution to being grappled by a particularly hardy Kaiju is to vent its coolant on it, freezing its whole tail, shattering it and softening the creature up for more attacks.
  • Flatline: There is a flatline sound at Mission Control when Cherno Alpha explodes.
  • Flawed Prototype: A double dose: first, the earliest Jaeger experimentation proved untenable with single pilots, necessitating the development of the neural bridge. Second, as a result of their rushed production, the Mark I Jaegers did not have proper radiation shielding or escape pods; the complications from radiation poisoning forced Pentecost to stop piloting and the lack of escape pods costs the Kaidonovskys very dearly later on in the film.
  • Foil:
    • Mako and Chuck's characterizations are interestingly aligned with each other. Both are young and exceptionally talented pilots and have varying father issues. When first introduced to Raleigh, Mako made a rude comment about him in Japanese, clearly not meaning for him to understand. Chuck was initially friendly (or as friendly Chuck could be) with Raleigh until he found out that Raleigh was building the Kaiju Wall, after which Chuck's attitude towards him became rude. But whereas Mako quickly learned from her mistake and was much friendlier and open to Raleigh afterwards, it takes Chuck longer plus being saved by Gipsy Danger before he changes his attitude towards Raleigh.
    • Chuck is also a foil for the Raleigh that we saw in the beginning. Raleigh was previously very eager to fight Kaiju and had a cocky attitude, similar to Chuck. If it wasn't for Yancy's death, Raleigh could have become who Chuck is.
  • Forced to Watch:
    • Raleigh witnessed his brother's death from inside his brother's head and was utterly helpless to stop it.
    • Herc's reaction as he says goodbye to Chuck. He should have been there fighting right next to his son but due to his broken arm, he can't.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Raleigh's fight against Chuck. Why? Because it displays Raleigh's no-holds-barred method of fighting. Not only does he take Chuck apart with only minor injuries, he does so in a brutally efficient manner. What's the next fight we see him in? In a Jaeger, taking apart the Kaiju he fights by removing their most effective attacks, before slugging it out with them, and winning.
    • Pentecost asks Raleigh whether he would want to die here (referring to the so-called "Wall of Life") or in a Jaeger. Pentecost later on pilots Striker Eureka, knowing the radiation would kill him and sacrificed himself to give Gipsy Danger a chance to destroy the portal.
    • Gipsy Danger's sword is suddenly revealed at the end of the fight with Otachi. We see it deployed again in the final battle outside the Breach, before another Kaiju rips the arm off. But the left arm had the sword in it the first time, and the second time, the right arm had the sword. Both arms have swords, and Gipsy is far from defenseless.
  • Four-Fingered Hands: Cherno Alpha, Crimson Typhoonnote  and a few of the Kaiju. They are robots and cloned monsters, so they're not going to have standard human features.
  • Free-Fall Fight: Gipsy Danger and Slattern continue duking it out while they plummet into the rift, ending with Gipsy Danger killing Slattern by frying it with its Chest Blaster.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: The Drift sequences often provide lightning-quick insights into the characters' pasts. Among the bonuses are images of Mako, Raleigh, and Yancy's parents, Gottlieb as a lonely Child Prodigy, Newt attending a political rally, and of course a better look at the Anteverse, including several scenes of Kaiju being built.
  • Freudian Trio: The Kaiju are the id; they come from the depths of our understanding, to wreak havoc by indulging basic desires, like aggression, anger, and hunger. The Jaegers are the superego, a human construct built to contain the id. The Jaeger pilot represents the ego, the active agent choosing the correct way to fight the id. Some choose cynicism, selfishness, or hubris as motivations and fail, others make selfless choices, and lead to our ultimate redemption.
  • Friendship Moment: Gottlieb helping Geiszler drift is the first time the two aren't acting like children or an old married couple. At the end Geiszler puts his arm around Gottlieb's shoulders and both smile.
  • Funny Background Event: As Gottlieb rattles off his prediction to Pentecost and Herc, Geiszler can be seen making "blah blah blah" motions with his hand.
  • Fun with Acronyms: "Chasing the RABIT", or Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers.
  • Genetic Memory: Newt's experiments reveal that Kaiju have extensive genetic memory passed down from generation-to-generation to prepare further invading forces against Earth's defenses.
  • Genre Throwback: It's basically a two-hour-long love letter to classic monster movies like the Godzilla franchise and Toku series involving giant Mecha.
  • Giant Flyer: As it turns out, Otachi's real distinguishing feature isn't its acid spit or its badass tail — it's its ginormous wings.
  • Godzilla Threshold: Fighting in the city is usually a last resort. Most of the Jaeger battles actually take place in the water, well away from the city that is under attack. The 10-miles-out line is referred to as the "miracle mile" and mostly they try to intercept the Kaiju before it crosses the line. However, if a Kaiju makes it to the city, the Jaeger will go ahead and fight them there. The Jaegers smash up a good chunk of public property while trying to kill the Kaiju, but considering the alternative it's unlikely that people will complain. The eventual fight in the city that does occur is a Homage to these kinds of battles.
  • Go for the Eye: After Striker Eureka is knocked out by an EMP blast, Chuck and Hercules Hansen climb outside and take potshots at Leatherback's eyes with Flare Guns because frankly that's the only option they've got left. The Kaiju has six eyes though, and getting hit in one only pisses the creature off.
  • Going Critical: Gipsy Danger, the only nuclear-powered Jaeger, does this as a replacement nuke in the climax.
  • Good News, Bad News: Bad news? Three people died on the top of the wall. Good news? Three new job openings on the top of the wall. Lampshaded when a worker specifically asks for the bad news first.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Raleigh has numerous neat scars over his chest and arms from his fight with Knifehead. Hannibal Chau has a horrible scar directly across one eye from an incident at an Anti-Kaiju shelter.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Humongous Mecha style, as Cherno Alpha's destruction and, by extension, the Kaidanovskys' demise is hidden beneath several dozen feet of shadowy water.
  • Green Aesop: Passed over rather quickly; Geizler mentions that the Kaiju creators's initial attempt to take over the planet failed owing to a lack of compatibility with the atmosphere, but now that humans have sufficiently polluted our planet, it's ripe for a batshit insane monster takeover. note 
  • Greeting Gesture Confusion: Newt and Gottlieb have a moment like this when Newt offers a Secret Handshake in friendship when Gottlieb offers to drift with him. Gottlieb is so uncool he has no idea how to do it.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be:
    • Raiju is sliced in half by a combination of Gipsy Danger's sword and its own momentum.
    • Otachi takes a diagonal variant in the space fight with Gipsy.
  • Handicapped Badass:
    • Gipsy Danger loses its left arm in the Action Prologue but that doesn't stop it from killing Knifehead.
    • And after being rebuilt, it loses her right arm in the final battle but manages to slice up Raiju and kill Slattern.
    • Pentecost is revealed to be suffering from radiation poisoning.
    • Hermann Gottlieb is partially disabled and must use a cane, but his brilliant mind is undamaged.
    • Newton Geiszler is neurodivergent (manic) and his brilliant mind is also undamaged. The two scientists finally working together is how humanity is able to beat the Breach.
  • Hands-Off Parenting: This was Herc's chosen parenting-style after Angela's death since he didn't know whether to "hug him or give him a kick in the ass". Apparently, he did neither.
  • Headbutt of Love: Raleigh and Mako knock their foreheads together affectionately and smile as they wait for rescue helicopters at the end of the movie.
  • Hellgate: Oh yes. It's called the Breach and the Kaiju come out of it.
  • Heroes Love Dogs: Chuck and Herc Hansen own an English bulldog named Max who they bring with them to the Hong Kong Shatterdome. The dog is also familiar with Mako, who is quite affectionate with him. The Striker Eureka tech team also wears a decal of Max on their uniforms, making him the Jaeger's official mascot.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: Gipsy Danger's "Sword" (no fancy names, just "Sword") is remarkably effective against a Category 4 Kaiju compared to other complicated weaponry. In the novelization, it's explained that Mako's biological father was a village swordsmith (they were only visiting Tokyo) and that she herself designed Gipsy Danger's sword. Raleigh even notes how some of the things it can do are downright impossible; making it a variant of Katanas Are Just Better and Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age.
  • Heroic BSoD:
    • After his brother's death, Raleigh stumbles out of Gipsy Danger, only able to look around dazedly and say Yancy's name.
    • "Chasing the RABITnote ", as it is called, where a pilot gets distracted by a memory and loses focus with reality. Mako almost vaporizes the entire facility when she gets attached to a traumatic childhood memory and raises her arm, therefore activating Gipsy's plasma cannon. By the time Raleigh gets her out, the only thing she can do is slump in his arms.
  • Heroic Build: The profile of many of the Jaegers is archetypically masculine, featuring broad shoulders and a narrow waist forming into an inverted triangle. Gipsy Danger was a deliberate cross between the Chrysler Building and a Champion Prize Fighter for maximum heroic appeal.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: As a last-ditch effort to clear a path for the Gipsy Danger, Pentecost and Chuck detonate the nuke strapped to Striker Eureka just as two Kaiju collide into it.
  • High-Tech Hexagons: Some Jaegers' cockpit bays, like Gipsy Danger or Striker Eureka's, are covered in yellow hexagons.
  • Hollywood Acid: Otachi can spit a corrosive blue acid that quickly dissolves whatever it hits. Cherno Alpha is disabled by this attack, which melts through its armor and breaches the reactor. While fighting Gipsy, a missed shot by Otachi ends up melting a huge chunk of a skyscraper.
  • Hollywood Darkness: In the climax, Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka plunge down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to try and seal the Breach once and for all. Despite being kilometres from the surface, the water is still light enough to keep everything reasonably visible, when in reality they would've been in complete blackness long before reaching the seafloor (it becomes almost totally dark only a few hundred metres down).
  • Hollywood Tactics:
    • The so-called Wall of Life. Fortifications are not necessarily a bad idea: a wall would be very useful for keeping Kaiju away from cities as long as possible, and can serve as a force multiplier for Jaegers as well. The problem is that the wall is essentially replacing the Jaeger program and is intended to become the sole line of defense against Kaiju once it is completed. Keep in mind that Kaiju have proven themselves able to eventually smash through any obstacle presented to them thus far, the sheer difficulty of defending a wall that is thousands of kilometers long, and the fact that Kaiju numbers will only grow over time.
    • F-22 Raptors are seen using their cannons to strafe Kaiju at suicidally close range... and get smashed against the Kaiju for their trouble. Even assuming the Raptors had expended all their other armament, their cannons have a range of about three miles.
  • Holy Backlight: Mako's first memory of Pentecost is him standing heroically on top of his Jaegar's cockpit with the sun illuminating him from behind. The memory may be subjective, as memories often are, and it shows how much she came to respect him.
  • Homage: The film is a love letter to Mecha anime and Kaiju films. A love letter that was responded in kind by its recipients. Mazinger Z creator Go Nagai, Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno, and a few other notable anime creators, thought del Toro did a damn good job on the film.
    del Toro: It is a beautiful poem to giant monsters and robots.
  • Hopeless War: The Kaiju keep getting bigger, and as a result of adapting at an alarming pace to the Jaegers, destroyed every single one until only four remained active. Not to mention the Pan Pacific Defense Corps was pulling funds away from creating and maintaining the Jaegers to focus on building the Kaiju Wall that claims to protect the surrounding countries from the Kaiju.
  • Hostile Terraforming: Inverted. The Kaiju never did this, instead colonizing other worlds in the 65 million years since their first attempt with the dinosaurs, when they found they were incompatible with Earth's environment. Humanity itself did it in 200 years of industrialization. A twist on this is the fact that the Kaiju, even when killed, are able to continue their job of "exterminating the vermin". Between the "Kaiju Blue" phenomenon and the fact that, prior to the Jaeger program, nukes were the only viable way to kill them, they did even more damage to the environment, and likely killed thousands more humans because of it.
  • Humans Are Warriors: The Kaiju sure picked the wrong planet to fuck with, even before they had Jaegers.
  • Humiliation Conga: First Newt's theory gets rejected in favor of his rival's, he's denied permission to try his Kaiju drifting experiment, but does it anyways, which ends up going both ways and alerting the Kaiju to him, causing two class 4s to attack Hong Kong. Afterwards, Hannibal Chau kicks him out of his private shelter, Otachi attacks him in the public shelter, and then he almost gets eaten by her baby. Fortunately, he ends up befriending his rival and helping to save the day.
  • Humongous Mecha: The Jaegers, skyscraper-sized humanoid machines built to fight giant monsters.
  • I Am Not Left-Handed:
    • So you thought that Gipsy Danger was all out of tricks, didn't you, Otachi? Cue reveal of an arm-mounted chainsaw sword.
    • Naturally, the next set of Kaiju targets the sword as soon as it's drawn. Turns out Gipsy is ambidextrous.
  • Ice Breaker: When Otachi grapples Gipsy Danger's arm with its tail, Gipsy vents coolant all over it to freeze it, then shatters the frozen appendage.
  • Idiot Ball:
    • The world council shuts down the only defense against Kaiju in favor of a giant brick-and-steel wall that took five years to complete and is heavily implied to have had a lot of fatalities in building... and they continue to insist on it after the one in Australia falls to one hour's worth of attack. Furthermore, Kaiju don't go away, and by that point, everyone is aware that they are arriving steadily stronger and more frequently, meaning that in a best-case scenario, the walls would end up with tons of Kaiju beating on them from the outside. And that's before we find out that some Kaiju can fly and spit acid. People protest this decision in-story, and it's a reaction that's well-deserved.
    • Though it can be somewhat justified by the fact that he is freaking out, it isn't really smart of Newton to say, out loud, to someone, that the Kaiju stomping around above the shelter is looking for him, which nearly gets him killed when everyone shoves him to the center of the room and backs away to let Otachi eat him.
  • Implied Love Interest: It is clear Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket are developing a close relationship, but the precise nature of the relationship (Battle Couple? Platonic Life-Partners? Like Brother and Sister?) remains ambiguous. On one hand, there's no The Big Damn Kiss at the end and only a Headbutt of Love, but on the other, there are Ship Tease moments like Mako Eating the Eye Candy of Raleigh's Shirtless Scene or the Interplay of Sex and Violence that was their sparring match. Rinko Kikuchi and Charlie Hunnam thought of their characters as having a romance.
  • Impossibly Graceful Giant: Guillermo del Toro avoided the use of motion capture because it would make the Jaegers look less like machines and more like this trope. It is still played somewhat straight due to artistic license, especially by Striker Eureka, but Striker Eureka is noted as being the fastest and most advanced of the Jaegers shown.
  • Improvised Weapon:
    • Team Gipsy Danger seems to have a preference for these, using a freighter as a club and smashing a pair of freight containers into the sides of a Kaiju's head. Foreshadowed by Mako's mention of Raleigh's unconventional way of fighting in an earlier scene.
    • Leatherback briefly uses a crane as a club against Gipsy Danger during their fight in Hong Kong, in yet another demonstration that Kaiju aren't just dumb animals.
  • Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress: The test pilot of the prototype Jaeger died because of either the seizure he got from neural overload or from the fall when his mecha fell over, possibly both.
  • Inertial Impalement: One fast swimming Kaiju plus one BFS equals two Kaiju halves neatly sliced apart.
  • Infallible Babble: Gottlieb predicted there to be three Kaijus at the bottom of the sea, but only two were detected. Of course, the information turns out to be true later when in fact a third Kaiju appears on the scanners.
  • Informed Flaw: According to the PPDC analysis, Aleksis is supposed to have issues with aggression, making him unpredictable and a concern in battle, yet we don't see anything of that in the film.
  • In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face: They're not in space, but the Jaeger pilots' helmets are illuminated on the inside with yellow lights.
  • Interplay of Sex and Violence: Guillmero del Toro intended for Raleigh and Mako's fight to feel like a dance of courtship. Raleigh himself says that it is supposed to be a "dialogue" and, when it is over, he insists that Mako become his new partner.
  • Invisible Writing: Newt tracks down Chau's Kaiju-part dealing business by spotting hidden symbols on Bone Slums signposts with a UV light.
  • Ironic Echo: There's a single red shoe in the wreckage of Tokyo. It turns out to be Mako's. The next time we see a single distinctive shoe, it's one of Hannibal Chau's gold-plated wing tips in the wreckage of Hong Kong. The Stinger reveals Hannibal survived and is quite pissed off at having lost one of his fancy shoes.
  • It Can Think:
    • Early in the movie some characters discuss this, as it's a major plot point that the Kaiju were getting smarter and stronger, overwhelming Jaegers faster than they can keep up. Newt is an Ignored Expert in his theories that every Kaiju are clones of each other, and suggests that they are not blind animals but intelligent creatures being sent for a purpose.
    • After Newt links with the Kaiju brain, he witnesses the creatures being built from the ground up under the design and control of aliens on the other side of the portal, and learns that the Kaiju are planned genocide and colonization tactics.
    • All this is further reinforced in the Battle of Hong Kong, where Otachi and Leatherback make intelligent use of teamwork, the environment, and their enemies' weaknesses. When Leatherback emits an EMP pulse (which completely shuts down Striker Eureka, the Shatterdome, and most of Hong Kong), it's pointed out that it's not a natural defense mechanism but a weapon. The last Kaiju encountered in the climax are intelligent enough to quickly figure out that Striker Eureka is the greater threat and swarms it two-on-one while sending one to keep Gipsy Danger away from the main fight.
  • It Has Been an Honor: Spoken by Chuck to Marshal Pentecost right before they have to make their Heroic Sacrifice.
  • It's a Small World, After All: The monster flies Gipsy Danger up to over 50,000 feet, yet Gipsy lands in a stadium in the town it just left.
  • It's Personal: When Otachi successfully kills Crimson Typhoon's pilots, you can just hear the anger in Sasha's voice when she says "Let's get this bastard." Justified, as the number of Jaeger pilots are now so few, they could fit in one Shatterdome, and most of them have probably known each other for some time.
  • It's the Only Way: The bold, courageous, and stupid plan for closing the dimensional portal is justified by every other option being eliminated.
  • Jawbreaker:
    • During their epic fight, Gipsy Danger smashes Leatherback's jaws with a bunch of shipping containers.
    • Later, Gipsy Danger rips off Otachi's glowing tongue-like organ from its mouth in order to prevent it from spewing more acid.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Despite his egotism, Chuck criticizes Raleigh and Mako not out of malice, but because he is concerned about their ability to do their jobs and not end up hurting the other Jaegers. Only a short time prior to his and Raleigh's fight, the inability of Raleigh and Mako to maintain the Drift had nearly blown up the Shatterdome and required Gipsy to be shut down manually, which Chuck and the others had done from right beside Gipsy's plasma cannon. So, although he doesn't handle or express it in the best way, Chuck does have every reason to bluntly question and criticize their competence in the field.
  • Jump Scare:
    • When Yancy is killed by being yanked out of the cockpit.
    • Also when Otachi Jr. wakes up and eats Hannibal Chau.
  • Just Plane Wrong: The F-22 Raptors are shown firing two machine guns, but the production craft only has one Vulcan cannon (on the right side). At least the tracer rounds are coming from the right spot.
  • Kaiju: The main enemies are giant monsters, and are even called "Kaiju" by humans. Hell, the very first thing you see when the movie starts is a dictionary entry for the word "Kaiju".
  • Kid Amid the Chaos: A flashback sequence shows Mako after she lost her parents in a Kaiju attack in Tokyo, wandering the streets alone and carrying her lost shoe. Understandably, she's crying about the situation, especially when the Kaiju starts chasing her.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence:
    • Played straight with Yancy in the Action Prologue when he is killed halfway through his final words to Raleigh.
    • Subverted when Hannibal Chau tempts fate by giving a long description of how the newborn Kaiju was doomed from the first, only to get swallowed mid-rant. The Stinger reveals that he was Swallowed Whole and is still alive and kicking.
  • Knockback Slide: At the Hong Kong harbor, Leatherback throws Gipsy Danger into a long backward skid, the giant robot finally stopping just short of a seagull.
  • Kraken and Leviathan: While the monsters are called Kaiju and the movie is a giant homage to Kaiju fiction, a lot of the creatures are closer thematically with this trope. For example: the first one we see is confused with an island while the last one has Combat Tentacles, both characteristics common in the Kraken mythos.

    Tropes L to P 
  • The Last Dance:
    • The Jaeger program has been officially scrapped by all the world's leaders; anyone still in the program is there for only as long as the funding lasts — eight months — and willing to fight until the last Jaeger stops functioning and the last human is dead.
    • Pentecost is dying of radiation-induced cancer, so him piloting Striker Eureka is his last hurrah since the strain would be too much for him to survive.
  • Last Stand: With everything on the line, humans unite to create the ultimate defense plan that gives them a fighting chance against a threat unlike anything they've ever faced before.
  • Leitmotif: The soundtrack makes good use of this. The Kaiju, Jaegers, and several human characters all have distinctive themes that show up when they appear. For example, the Kaiju have a dark, imposing fanfare set in 5/4 to add a level of unease, while Newt gets a jaunty little guitar piece. Throughout the entire soundtrack you get this nice driving riff most prominent in the main theme.
  • Light Equals Hope: This trope is shared with Cue the Sun and Empathic Environment. From the moment we see the Beckett brothers go into battle for the first time, the weather is inclement: snow, rain, monsoons, etc. Only after Raleigh and Mako score a decisive victory against the Kaiju does the sun finally come out — now that humanity has hope to survive.
    • In a flashback to Mako's childhood memories, Tokyo is a desolate, ashy landscape slowly being ravaged by Onibaba. When Coyote Tango defeats it, the lighting turns soft as the sun peeks through the clouds.
  • Literally Shattered Lives: Downplayed. While grappling with Otachi, its Prehensile Tail wraps around Gipsy Danger's left arm while also trying to snap at the cockpit. Their solution is to vent reactor coolant, which is located just under the armpit, and manage to freeze the tail. Gipsy Danger breaks it to free its arm. Otachi is still able to fight, but is pissed.
  • Literal Soapbox Speech: Before Striker Eureka and Gypsy Danger head out to seal the rift once and for all, Stacker Pentecost gives his "Canceling the Apocalypse" speech while standing on the remains of a fallen Jaeger.
  • Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: This happens twice in the film.
    • In Mako's flashback to her childhood, she remembers being a little girl alone in the ruins of Tokyo. One of her shoes isn't being worn; young Mako is carrying it instead. Either it's too crushed to be worn or Mako had hurt her foot too badly to wear it.
    • In the present, Hannibal Chau leaves only a shoe behind when he's eaten by a Kaiju. In the mid-credits scene, he cuts his way out of its dead body. His first words when out are "Where is my goddamn shoe?!"
  • Lovecraft Lite: Horrible monstrous abominations emerging from an interdimensional crack under the sea? Just throw a giant robot at them. Then nuke their bosses.
  • Make Sure He's Dead: After downing the Kaiju Leatherback, Raleigh "checks for a pulse" by unloading several rounds into the corpse to the point where its chest cracks open and starts disintegrating.
    Raleigh: "Yup, no pulse."
  • Manly Tears:
    • Both Chuck and Herc get teary (though no actual tears are shed) when they say their final goodbyes before the fight at the Breach.
    • Pentecost does the same (again, no actual tears) when he tells Mako she has to protect him on the mission, knowing full well he won't make it out alive.
  • Mass "Oh, Crap!": When Mako activates Gipsy Danger's plasma caster inside the hangar, everybody freaks out, because they are in its path. Well, everyone but the Kaidonovskys, who just saunter off without even batting an eyelash.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • "Otachi" is a corruption of "odachi", meaning "great sword". Three guesses how she dies. It's also Japanese slang for a masculine lesbian, and Otachi the kaiju is the only confirmed female monster in the film.
    • Knifehead... well, has a knife-shaped head.
    • Jaeger is the German word for hunter (which is pointed out at the start of the film).
    • "Scunner" is a Scottish word that basically means "scumbag".
    • "Raiju" were lightning spirits from Japanese folklore. The kaiju named after them is the fastest on record.
    • "Yamarashi" is mentioned as the name of a kaiju that previously attacked Los Angeles. It means "porcupine", and Newt's tattoo shows it with an impressive array of spines. However, it also sounds similar to "yama-arashi", Japanese for "mountain storm" which is a fitting name for any kaiju.
    • "Pentecost" is the feast celebrating the Holy Spirit coming to man.
    • "Cherno" as in "Chernobyl". As a Mark I, it's nuclear-powered. Alternatively, "Chernabog" is a Slavic deity, meaning something along the lines of "Black God". Bonus points since the Russian dub refers to Cherno Alpha as Cherniy Alfa (Black Alpha), basically because "Cherno" isn't a word in Russian.
    • "Mori" is a common Japanese surname (森) meaning "forest", but written with a different character (守り), it also means "guardian" or "to protect".
    • Part of the name "Gipsy Danger" appears to be a reference to the 1920's de Havilland engine and the "Gipsy Moth" planes that housed it.
    • Hannibal Chau (pronounced "chow") gets eaten.
  • A Mech by Any Other Name: Giant robots are called "Jaegers" here, which means "hunter" in German.
  • Mech vs. Beast: Might as well be the Trope Codifier. An entire (defunded) international corps of two-pilot mechs called "Jaegers" are puprosed to fight the alien Kaiju coming out of the Pacific ocean.
  • Mental Fusion: Of a fashion. The dual pilot system used by most of the Jaegers has both pilots neurally linked in order to heighten synchrony (also, as said by Guillermo himself, because the neural strain of directly controlling a body twenty-five stories tall would be too much for a single human). One pilot controls the left side, the other the right. The Chinese Jaeger Crimson Typhoon bucks the trend by using three pilots to control its three arms. Only two pilots in the world have ever managed to run one solo for any real amount of time and not be horribly brain-damaged.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: Pentecost, who is Mako's adopted father and mentor, dies in the final battle.
  • Merchandising the Monster: The Kaiju Hardship had shoes designed after it, advertised along with shoes designed after Romeo Blue, the Jaeger that fought and defeated it. The introduction to the movie also mentions as more Jaegers fought and killed Kaiju, toys were being made out of those Kaijus.
  • Mildly Military: Stacker's "last hurrah", by del Toro's design (he's a pacifist). Noticeably, he stops wearing a uniform and switches to a civilian suit, albeit one that looks a lot like his uniform. The closest thing they have to a command structure is him as "Marshal", then Mako and Herc in unranked secondary roles, and that's about it.
    Stacker: We're not an army anymore. We're the Resistance.
  • Missing Mom: Chuck Hansen's mother. It's a constant source of strain between father and son because Hercules had one hour to get in and out of Sydney. He chose to save his son, and his wife, Angela, died. The official report says she died in the Kaiju attack rather than the nuclear explosion.
  • Mission Control: The Shatterdomes. During the glory days, several of these massive home base/factories operated along the Pacific coastline — Gipsy Danger, for instance, was based off Anchorage. With the cancellation of the project, the surviving Jaegers have been moved under a single roof in Hong Kong.
  • Mistaken Death Confirmation: After Otachi Jr. bursts out of Otachi's womb and collapses in front of Newt, Hannibal Chau walks right up to it and lists numerous reasons why it couldn't have lived for more than a minute outside the womb—namely, the lungs were underdeveloped and it had its umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. He even stabs it in the nose and it doesn't flinch, which just further confirms his belief. It then gets back up and eats him.
  • Monochrome Casting: Averted, to the delight of many viewers. The main characters are from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The three leads are a white American man, a black Englishman, and a Japanese woman.
  • Monumental Damage: Almost totally subverted, believe it or not. We see brief destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge during the prologue, but that's about it. In fact, when the Mutavore shows up in Sydney, it walks right past the Opera House to go destroy some other thing. In fact, despite being a homage to Japanese monster movies, which (in)famously utilize so much miniature destruction, there is very little emphasis placed on destruction here. Rather, the emphasis is on the battles between the Jaegers and the Kaiju.
  • Mood Whiplash: Has some pretty wild ones.
    • In the beginning, Gipsy is celebrating that they've taken down Knifehead only for it to come back with a vengeance and tear Raleigh's brother out of the cockpit.
    • In the middle of the Hong Kong fight, Gipsy Danger's fist smashes into an office building and starts a Newton cradle when it stops short of smashing a desk. A little earlier, it smashes a car annoyingly screeching a car alarm.
    • While Marshal Stacker Pentecost is giving a congratulatory speech to the Jaeger pilots, his nose starts bleeding. When questioned about it, he admits he's slowly dying from radiation sickness.
  • Mr. Fanservice: Raleigh is really well built and often shirtless. The other men generally apply too. C'mon, Idris Elba, Rob Kazinsky, hell, even Charlie Day.
  • Mugging the Monster: Theorized by the humans. The Kaiju and their creators expected to crush humanity underfoot with ease. Humanity responded by creating Humongous Mecha capable of killing Kaiju in combat. Best shown by Brawler Yukon (the first deployed Jaeger) in the prequel comic, who utterly demolishes Karloff, showing the first Kaiju likely weren't intended to fight something on their level.
  • Multinational Team: With the fate of the planet at stake, the nations of the Pacific Rim formed the Pan Pacific Defence Corps to fight the Kaiju.note  The PPDC commands Jaegers from all over the Pacific. France also provided some of the science and Great Britain provided pilots. Several of the top scientists are German or Chinese.
  • Mundane Utility: After Kaiju attacks have become a fact of life, enterprising scavengers have adapted accordingly, learning to harvest Kaiju parts for public use. Just for starters, Kaiju excrement is said to possess enough phosphorous in one cubic meter to fertilize an entire field.
  • Narrating the Obvious: One of the construction workers watching the TV footage of a Kaiju breaking through the coastal wall with ease comments on the action with "That.. That thing went through the wall like it was nothing."
  • Natural Spotlight: Though not sunlight, del Toro was determined to keep the light sources diegetic in nature. Hence, the large number of helicopters flying around during battle scenes, and large lights on the Jaeger themselves. At one point, Raleigh asks a nearby chopper if it has a visual on the target Kaiju, which neatly explains what they're there for; aerial spotting.
  • Nerves of Steel: This is probably a requirement for any Jaeger pilot, given with what they have to face. One notable example was Aleksis and Sasha Kaidanovsky who calmly and unhurriedly walk away when Gipsy Danger's plasma caster activates while everyone else is panicking and running. When they are right in front of it point blank.
  • Never Recycle Your Schemes: The Kaiju are war beasts sent by a race of hostile aliens from another dimension. Despite the fact we see they have endless rows of identical Kaiju in their home dimension, and that the Kaiju can even reproduce, every single Kaiju they send to Earth after the previous one is defeated is radically different in appearance from the last and attacks a different place. No reason is given for this other than the Doylist explanation that it's cool.
  • Never Trust a Trailer:
    • The initial impression left by some of the earlier trailers was that there was only one monster.
    • Del Toro stated that, despite sounding exactly like GLaDOS in the trailer, Ellen McLain would provide a toned-down version for the final product and the trailer voice was simply done for fun, because he is a fan of Portal, and because he wanted people to know she was in the movie. But, no, her voice in the actual movie is basically GLaDOS' voice without her catty sociopathy. Except for one little hint of it, when Raleigh and Mako's first drift goes wrong:
      A.I.: Would you like to try again?
    • Some posters outright lie. Like this Japanese poster of Coyote Tango vs. Otachi. Coyote is seen only in a flashback, and it fights Onibaba, not Otachi.
    • The trailer has Ron Perlman delivering the exposition in voiceover. Much of this same material is in the film, but it's delivered by Charlie Hunnam. It's just that Ron Perlman has a really good voice for monologues about war in trailers.
  • Next Sunday A.D.: The film itself is set 20 Minutes into the Future, but the early timeline information indicates that the Kaiju first attacked in 2013. The Tales from Year Zero graphic novel specifically places this as August 11th, just over a month from the film's premiere. Likely a deliberately playful gesture, in the same spirit as Destroy All Monsters' depiction of the futuristic world that is 1999.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Newton drifts with a partial Kaiju brain, and learns that the Kaiju operate on a hive mind and are being engineered. Unfortunately, due to his rivalry with Hermann and his dismay at his project being denied, he forgot that the drift works both ways, meaning the Kaiju Hive Mind now know at least some of what he knows. Such as exactly where he is.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Otachi Junior gave Newt and Hermann a chance to drift and learn how to pass the breach. In the novel, The Precursors knew they were being spied on again, but didn't care due to thinking the "insects" would soon be extinct, new piece of intel or not.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Newton Geizler, as played by Charlie Day, appears to be a ringer for director J. J. Abrams, albeit with the addition of elaborate Kaiju tattoo sleeves. Abrams co-produced Cloverfield, a big part of the recent revival of devastating giant monster movies, such as Monsters, The Troll Hunter, Pacific Rim, and Godzilla (2014).
  • No Endor Holocaust: Averted. Although we never actually see any of the dead/mangled bodies from when the Kaiju make land, (it's a PG-13 movie, after all) the death count is talked about and they don't shy away from the destruction of the cities in the slightest.
  • No One Could Survive That!: Hannibal Chau says this when Otachi Jr. reaches the limit of its possible endurance, stating several ways that he knows it has to be dead. He should be right, but he isn't. Then he himself becomes an instance of this, surviving being eaten.
  • Nuclear Option: What attempts to seal the Rift have employed; strategic and judicious use of nuclear weapons. It's never worked before because the portal wasn't allowing anything that wasn't a Kaiju to pass through it. Without that crucial piece of data, they assumed that the weapons weren't getting through because the rift was unstable and closed up after Kaiju came through.
  • Nuke 'em: How the first few Kaiju were defeated. Jaegers were developed specifically because no-one liked the idea of having to do this repeatedly. In the end, it's their creator's turn.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Coyote Tango's battle against Onibaba is heard entirely from Mako's perspective as she hides in an alleyway. In a flashback, no less.
  • Oh, Crap!: Happens frequently throughout the film, on the part of the humans whenever a new Kaiju appears and on the part of the Kaiju's creators just as Gipsy Danger goes nuclear, complete with a close up of one of their faces as it blows. It's almost like Guillermo del Toro really likes making characters say "Oh crap" or something.
  • One-Woman Wail: On "Mako", beautiful wailing courtesy of singer-songwriter Priscilla Ahn.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
    • Pentecost's accent goes on and off depending on his tone of voice, indicating that his heroic front is, to some degree, a facade. He drops it entirely when he tells Raleigh about the radiation poisoning. The novelization clarifies that he is from a working-class part of England, and thus the more posh accent is an affectation. He drops it entirely in favor of his native one when he gives the rousing speech to the Shatterdome before the Battle of the Breach.
    • Charlie Hunnam's accent slips right from the opening monologue and is iffy from there.
    • Herc's (terrible) Australian accent repeatedly shifts to a variety of British accents, particularly when he displays emotion.
  • Opening Monologue: The prologue is narrated by the protagonist Raleigh Beckett, who explains about the war of Kaiju and Jaegers. He also briefly continues into the first action scene, to explain some key concepts like dual pilots and the Drift.
  • Orange/Blue Contrast:
    • Handily provided by Gipsy Danger in the posters and the film itself, with the orange of her head and chest reactor (and occasionally sparks/fire or similar caused by combat) contrasting with the saturated blue of the environment, such as the ocean.
    • Many Shatterdome scenes are colored yellow-orange and dark blue.
    • In the commentary, del Toro mentions giving signature colors to pilots. Raleigh's is a golden yellow-orange, Mako's is blue. Gipsy Danger is mostly blue but with a golden heart and faceplate.
  • Parallel Conflict Sequence:
    • Briefly seen during the Hong Kong Bay battle when Leatherback fights Cherno Alpha while Otachi fights Striker Eureka.
    • Seen intensely during the Final Battle when Gipsy fights Raiju and Scunner together while Striker is fighting Slattern.
  • Pastiche: The whole film is one giant love letter to classic Kaiju and mecha films and shows.
  • Pensieve Flashback: During their first test drive together of Gipsy Danger, Mako has a flashback and Raleigh is present in it thanks to the Drift allowing pilots to share memories. Mako relives Onibaba's attack on Tokyo that she experienced as a little girl and Raleigh is standing next to her while witnessing everything, and trying to convince her to come back.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • Literally. Chuck was generally shown as a cocky and rude Jerkass, even to his own father. Then he dotes on his beloved dog Max and eventually he shows that he cares for his father and fellow pilots.
    • Gipsy Danger during the first Kaiju vs. Jaeger fight. Both the mecha and the monster are equally terrifying to the sailors in the boat, but you know who the good guy is when the mecha reaches down to move the fishing boat out of harm's way.
  • Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: It's implied that either the Kaiju were the dinosaurs, or that the dinosaurs' extinction was the Kaijus' first attempt at invasionnote , but the atmosphere was too inhospitable for them to colonize back then. Now, millions of years later, human life has so polluted the world that it's just perfect for the invaders, and they're back.
  • Pietà Plagiarism: There is a scene where Raleigh helps lower Mako to the floor while cradling her.
  • The Place: The title refers to the Pacific Ocean, where the breach the Kaiju are coming from is located.
  • Plasma Cannon: Gipsy Danger is armed with a Plasma Caster. So is Crimson Typhoon, with an updated version of Gipsy's, at the cost of charging time.
  • Plot-Demanded Manual Mode: The Jaeger program's final plan is to Seal the Breach by delivering a nuclear bomb through the dimensional rift, killing the alien invaders in their own home. However, the nuke is destroyed before it can be delivered, so Raleigh and Mako decide to use their Humongous Mecha's nuclear power source as a makeshift bomb instead. Then, after piloting the mech through the rift, the auto-self-destruct function doesn't work, so Raleigh's forced to trigger the self-destruct manually; the process takes long enough, he barely reaches his escape pod in time.
  • Portal Door: The Rift/The Breach is what the Kaiju use to travel from their dimension to Earth.
  • The Power of Friendship: Drifting is necessary to pilot a Jaeger and it requires two people to be mentally linked so closely they'll be seeing each other's memories. They have to get along really well with no secrets; most pilot teams thus appear to involve close family or Battle Couples.
  • Practical Effects: The Jaeger cockpits are dominantly this, as shown in the "Oversized Giant Robots" featurette.
  • Precision F-Strike: "Guess who's back, you one-eyed bitch!"
  • Previews Pulse:
    • The first trailer had one, though it's much less loud and more high than most examples.
    • The sound can also be heard during the movie's opening fight scene.
  • Product Placement: Gipsy Danger's control panels sport a big QUALCOMM SNAPDRAGON legend towards the bottom. It's a mobile processor, sure...
  • Prohibited Hero Saves the Day: Mako, Raleigh, and Gipsy Danger are held back because Mako was not entirely prepared for the Drift. After the three other Jaegers get taken out of the fight, Gipsy Danger has no choice but to deploy, being the only one left and the only nuclear-powered one. Gipsy Danger and her crew single-handedly defeat all the Kaiju.
  • Prolonged Prologue: There are no opening credits, with the exception of the movie's title, which doesn't appear until seventeen minutes into the film, right after the first Kaiju fight.
  • Psychic Glimpse of Death: The film opens with Raleigh piloting Gypsy Danger with Yancy when Yancy is torn out of the Jaeger while they are still drifting, giving Raleigh a brief flash of his brother's moment of death.
  • Psychic Nosebleed: Using the mental link without a partner or on a Kaiju brain causes aneurysms, shown as this.
  • Punched Across the Room: Or in this case, thrown across the city. Sometimes it's a Kaiju getting thrown; once it is Gipsy Danger.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: Otachi and Leatherback are slain before they can destroy Hong Kong and make it further inland, but at ruinous cost to the humans. Two of the four remaining (and irreplaceable) Jaegers are destroyed along with their veteran pilots, not to mention another veteran, Herc Hansen, is sidelined from breaking his arm. The losses render humanity effectively incapable of holding off further Kaiju attacks, which will be coming more frequently and with escalating deadliness, unless they do something desperate to stop the problem at its source.

    Tropes Q to S 
  • Rasputinian Death:
    • Slattern: Cut open numerous times (including having its throat slashed and arms nearly sliced off), repeatedly stabbed, and takes a nuclear bomb to its face. It finally goes down for good when Gipsy Danger starts roasting it alive via the nuclear turbine on it's chest until the blast starts coming out of its back.
    • Cherno Alpha: Gets its reactor and cockpit pod melted and right arm munched by Otachi, before finally being literally jumped on and crushed to death by Leatherback. We're treated to a heartbreaking shot of Sasha and Aleksis yelling in anger as they drown to death, then—BOOM.
    • Otachi herself. After being slashed a few times in the chest by Crimson Typhoon, she gets her tail-claw frozen and shattered, her acid sacs ripped off her mouth, and is sliced in half by Gipsy Danger.
  • Real Robot Genre: For the most part, the Jaegers are real robots; but there are some Super Robot Genre elements. The Jaegers are Real Robots in that they're explicitly built by a military-industrial complex and time is given to the extreme amount of resources, logistics and support required to drive and maintain them. On the other hand, individual Jaegers are treated like Super Robots, what with their colorful and individual names and designs, being humanity's "only hope", and fight using common Super Robot tropes like rocket punches, wrestling moves, unique fighting styles between each robot, the "drift" and the Absurdly Sharp Blade of Gipsy Danger being its ultimate weapon.
  • Reconstruction: On several fronts:
    • While modern Kaiju films like Cloverfield and Monsters haven't been 100% Deconstruction, they have been increasingly focused on Cosmic Horror-style scenarios of civilians simply trying to survive as their world is ripped apart by creatures they cannot hope to defeat. Kaiju have also increasingly been portrayed as simple-minded beings, creatures simply attempting to survive in places that happen to be dangerous for humans. In this film, humans are indeed still fighting a losing battle against incredibly powerful and terrifying giant invaders, but have created the Jaeger, allowing heroes to combat the Kaiju. It also makes Kaiju cool again, rather than just terrifying — with the exception of the downright horrific Tokyo scene — and returns them to true villain status, single-mindedly seeking to Kill All Humans. This time, however, there are deeper justifications and motivations than "because nuclear testing" behind why a ginormous electricity-shooting monster is attacking Tokyo.
    • The Kaiju as a metaphor is also reconstructed to a point it arguably hasn't been since the original Godzilla. In this film, the Kaiju are an analogy for climate change, ranked by Category like hurricanes, threatening coastal regions like rising sea levels, and poisoning the earth with their toxic blood if messily killed. Newt comments that anthropomorphic climate change has made Earth more appealing for the Precursors to target for resources. The above-mentioned enforcement of the Kaiju as purely villainous only makes this message stronger.
    • The film also serves as a reconstruction of Humongous Mecha, as it addresses many of the problems pointed out by various deconstructions — like how to pilot the things at all (with or without multiple pilots); why one wouldn't devote the massive resources required to build and maintain a single giant robot to building tons of cheap fortifications instead; the fact that the pilots within the giant robots are not invincible; and even makes nods toward the Artistic License – Physics involved.note  — but ultimately uses carefully rationed amounts of Applied Phlebotinum and Hand-Waving to keep the focus on the personal stories of the human pilots... who pilot awesome Humongous Mecha to fight awesome Kaiju.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni:
    • Raleigh relies more on his intuition and excels at improvisation during a fight. Mako is cited as a perfectionist and is highly strategic (she can match Raleigh in a fight despite being smaller and younger). When they mind meld together, they combine their tactical sense and strategic thinking to outfight two Category 4 Kaiju, on their first sortie as a team.
    • Back when they were still a team, Raleigh was the more excitable and energetic one, while Yancy could barely get out of bed during a Kaiju invasion.
  • Regularly Scheduled Evil: A rare version with short (months-long) intervals. Kaiju attacks happen at a very reliable rate to the point that a mathematician can predict it precisely. However, they are also happening more and more frequently and eventually occur with stronger and more numerous Kaiju. It's explained by Gottlieb that this is due limitations of the portal; it was only able to transport relatively small Kaiju before but its strength has been increasing to allow it to transport greater masses.
  • Repeat Cut: In the Action Prologue, when Gipsy Danger shoots the Kaiju with his Arm Cannon, the sequence is shown three times in short succession.
  • Revenge Is Sweet: Mako Mori seeks to avenge her family, who were killed in a Kaiju attack, by becoming a Jaeger pilot and killing Kaiju in return. Her first attempt at piloting a Jaeger outside of a simulation causes her to be overwhelmed by trauma, which makes the leader of the Jaeger pilots Stacker afraid that a real mission would be too dangerous for her. However, when he's reluctantly forced to deploy her in a desperate moment, Mako more than excels at killing Kaiju with her own inventions, and brings catharsis to her own trauma as well that of her own co-pilot who had also relapsed from losing family to Kaiju.
  • Rival Science Teams: Admittedly each "team" consists of only one man, but boy do the stuffy German theoretician Hermann and the tatted-up, Kaiju-groupie experimentalist Newton have the "rival" part down.
  • Rock Beats Laser: When the Kaiju learn to generate EMP blasts, they disable Striker Eureka, which is the latest and most advanced Jaeger. However, Gipsy Danger, an older model Jaeger with better-shielded systems because of its own older-model reactor (analog instead of digital), is completely unaffected.
  • Rocket Punch:
    • Gipsy Danger literally has a giant thruster in its elbow, and it gives one hell of a sucker punch. Scientific American did a blog post in which the force behind Gipsy's rocket punch was estimated at roughly equivalent to being hit with a Boeing 747 at 60 MPH.
    • Cherno Alpha has Tesla-coil infused fists that give it electro-punches.
  • Rousing Speech: Pentecost gives the one quoted at the top of the page before the final attempt to close the Breach. In fact, he's rarely onscreen for any sequence without inspiring folks in some way or another. That's part of his role as "Marshall".
  • Rule of Cool: Guillermo del Toro helped to make this movie because he wanted to have awesome robots fighting awesome monsters, regardless of killjoys like the Square-Cube Law.
  • Running Gag: Cars being destroyed left and right (and their alarms going off).
  • Rushed Into Service: The Mark I Jaegers were thrown together in 14 months. Unfortunately, this meant that certain features were skimped, including radiation shielding for the pilots. As a result, Marshall Pentecost (a former Mk. I pilot) is Secretly Dying of radiation poisoning.
  • Sacrificial Lion: This is the case with both Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon who are destroyed during the battle of Hong Kong, and thus half the remaining strength of anti-Kaiju defenses.
  • Sadistic Choice: In the novelization, Herc Hansen only had enough time to either save his wife or his son. He chose his son. They both hate themselves/each other for it.
  • Sailor Earth: Create two characters, put them in a Jaeger, and you're good to go.
  • Same-Sex Triplets: The Wei Tang Triplets who pilot Crimson Typhoon. In real life, their actors are true identical triplets as well.
  • Scenery Gorn: We see the destruction of several cities left by the invading Kaiju, as well as several destroyed Jaegers.
  • Scenery Porn: There are some really lovely shots of Hong Kong during the nighttime.
  • Science Hero: Gottlieb and Newton make up the Kaiju research team and play with this trope: two scientists in different fields with opposite attitudes regarding the pursuit of knowledge. Neither is evil, both make accurate predictions that help the protagonist, and the "cool" scientist causes a problem by testing on himself. Together they're a more nuanced portrayal of science as a force for good than you'd expect from a film like this.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The given masses for both Jaegers and Kaiju are much too low for their sizes, especially given how often they function in deep water by walking on the bottom. Something with that low a density should float.
  • Scrapbook Story: The novelization combines prose with news articles, memos, blog posts, Jaeger/Ranger stat sheets, and other "non-fiction" snippets that add flavor to the story and expand a bit on the world outside the film proper.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
    • The Becket brothers decide to save a fishing trawler rather than guard a coastline against a Kaiju attack, defying orders. It doesn't end well.
    • Similarly, the Hansens deciding to preemptively intervene and assist Cherno Alpha during the Battle of Hong Kong, against Pentecost's orders. This gets their mecha fried and them nearly killed, as it is a feint by the Kaiju to lure them into an EMP blast.
    • For that matter, Pentecost is using the last of his Jaeger funding to close the Rift, which is not technically what it's been authorized for.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
    • Raleigh does this after Yancy's death against Knifehead five years prior to the film's main storyline. However, based on film and supplemental data, it's revealed that Raleigh is the only pilot to flat-out quit the Jaeger program. All other pilots have either been killed or reassigned (like Pentecost). It's the main reason why Chuck is so disgusted and hostile towards him.
    • When Mako accidentally activates Gipsy's Plasma Caster inside the Shatterdome, everyone very hurriedly evacuates the area... except for the Kaidonovskys, who casually stroll away.
  • Seal the Breach: The Breach is a wormhole deep in the Pacific Ocean where Kaiju enter Earth from. Humanity had been attempting to destroy it with nuclear weapons to no avail, and the main plot is a last-ditch effort to seal it. Later, it is discovered that The Breach has a way of determining what can go through it, which is the genetic material of a Kaiju. While the nuclear payload intended to destroy The Breach was used beforehand in an attempt to kill two kaiju, Gipsy Danger manages to get through the breach while fighting Slattern, killing it and self-destructing on the other side of the Breach to destroy both the Kaiju's homeworld and the breach.
  • Send in the Clones: After Newt's first experiment, it is revealed that Kaiju are genetically-engineered bio weapons, all made from the same template and modified to suit their needs, sent by a higher intelligence.
  • Sensor Suspense: The fisher boat's radar early on detects a rapidly approaching "island". Three miles off... one mile off... Kaiju!
  • Sharp-Dressed Man: Tendo Choi, Stacker Pentecost, and Hannibal Chau. Their outfits stand out in a Shatterdome filled with people wearing camo-colored clothing, Ranger suits, or-in Raleigh's case-a seemingly endless supply of knitted sweaters whenever he's off-duty.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Raleigh shows battle fatigue after his brother's death, which is why he quit the Jaeger program and why he was initially hesitant to resume piloting.
  • Shell-Shock Silence: Happens to Raleigh when he exits Gipsy Danger at the beach after the opening battle. Voices are drowned out and there is a ringing noise.
  • Shock and Awe: As mentioned above, Cherno Alpha apparently has Tesla-coil infused fists, which give their punches a 415kv kick.
  • Shown Their Work:
    • Detonating a nuclear bomb underwater results in a void being created by all the water being pushed away. The void bubble swiftly collapses and the water comes rushing back in a few seconds later. Scientific American mathed this out as part of a mini-series of Pacific Rim-themed blog posts.
    • Del Toro and visual effects supervisor John Knoll spent several weeks discussing the physics of the giant characters, and details such as how the air displacement from a Jaeger moving between skyscrapers would shake the building's windows.
  • Sibling Team: Sibling relationships are one possible foundation for co-pilots who work together well enough to operate the Jaegers. Sibling teams who appear in the film include Raleigh and Yancy Becket (the original pilots for Gipsy Danger) and the Wei Tang Triplets (who pilot Crimson Typhoon). In the opening montage, there's also a brief shot of Romeo Blue's pilots, Bruce and Trevin Gage, who appear to be identical twins.
  • Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Cherno Alpha and Scunner are mysteriously absent from the end credits animation, which features all the other Jaegers and Kaiju that had a prominent role.
  • The Smurfette Principle: The film has roughly nine major characters, only one of which — Mako — is female. She's more assertive and plot-relevant than most examples, has her own story arc, and isn't presented as a Love Interest despite some Ship Tease with Raleigh. Sasha could have made the movie an aversion if she'd had more screen time and if she hadn't been swiftly killed off via The Worf Effect.
  • Sniping the Cockpit: Kaiju frequently go straight for the head, being the easiest way to take out a Jaeger, though this tactic backfires with Cherno Alpha, which houses the cockpit inside its torso; the head is just a cooling tower for its nuclear reactor. Crimson Typhoon is taken out when a Kaiju rips off its head and tosses it aside.
  • Solid Gold Poop: A black market emerges around the harvesting of dead Kaiju bodies, since each part seems to have various purposes. A shifty salesman sells Kaiju bone powder as a male potency drug, and his boss claims that one cubic meter of Kaiju poop contains enough phosphorus to fertilize an entire field.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The first Kaiju were essentially hunting dogs sent to scout out Earth and disorganize its inhabitants. As humanity fought back successfully, the aliens responded by sending more advanced and larger Kaiju to deal with the Jaegers. After them, the second wave of even more deadly Kaiju would have come to exterminate humanity once and for all in massive (and more frequent) intervals. It's justified due to the limits of the Breach; it has to grow and expand, and simply isn't stable enough to send the biggest and baddest monsters first.
  • Space Age Stasis: The Precursors have been in existence for so long that they first arrived on Earth during the age of dinosaurs, but their technology and culture apparently did not change at all despite many millions of years passing by (unless we assume there's some inter-dimensional time distortion happening).
  • Space Whale Aesop: The reveal that the Kajiu invasion is happening now because Earth's CO₂ emissions have changed the atmosphere sufficiently to be habitable for their alien masters. This is obviously a rather more far-fetched consequence of CO₂ emissions than climate change. And it requires us to accept that the aliens with the technology to teleport custom-made Kaijus couldn't accomplish within 65 milion years a feat of geo-engineering that less advanced humans managed in one century by accident.
  • Spiritual Antithesis:
  • Stay in the Kitchen: Averted in regards to Pentecost and Mako, especially after the reveal that he is her adopted father. He didn't think she was weak or needed to be coddled, but since she was one of the last two living members of his family, he didn't want to lose her like he lost his sister or, like him, slowly die from radiation poisoning. However, early on in the film, he recognizes that Mako is no longer a child and allows her to step into a Jaeger.
  • Stealth Pun: When Raleigh sees the newly rebuilt Gipsy Danger with Mako, there is construction work causing sparks just behind them. You could say that sparks are literally flying between them.
  • The Stinger: In the post credits, Hannibal Chau cuts his way out of the baby Kaiju.
    Hannibal: Where's my goddamn shoe?!
  • The Stoic:
    • Marshal Pentecost is so calm and controlled he can Drift with Chuck Hansen on the first try, having figured out Chuck's mindset within minutes of meeting him (Chuck isn't exactly deep), and is completely capable of just not letting Chuck have to deal with any of his own memories.
    • When Gipsy Danger's Plasma Caster activates, the Russian pilots, who are standing right in front of it, calmly and unhurriedly walk away.
  • Stress Vomit: Gottlieb suffers from Psychic Nose Bleed and feels compelled to vomit after the extremely stressful mind melt with the Kaiju brain.
  • Suddenly Shouting: Marshal Pentecost to Raleigh when he tries arguing with him.
    Stacker: Do not let my calm demeanor fool you, RANGER!
  • Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Masters who, aside from being able to transition between dimensions, are able to build creatures of such physics-defying capability as the Kaiju.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: Onibaba wouldn't have gotten enough nutrition from Young Mako to justify crouching down and snapping her up, yet deliberately chases her down the street. It's shown multiple times that the Kaiju are on a mission to exterminate all humans, proving that their drive in wiping out even the most inconsequential of human targets is not because they're mindless creatures going on their instincts, but because they're intelligent killing machines acting on orders.
  • Surprisingly Sudden Death:
    • Subverted. Hannibal Chau tempts fate by giving a long description of how the newborn Kaiju was doomed from the first, only to get swallowed mid-rant. See The Stinger to learn how that went.
    • Yancy Becket, however, is killed halfway through his final words to his brother in the prologue.
  • Swallowed Whole: Happens to Hannibal Chau, complete with Otachi jr. forcing him down with throat muscles, because the infant doesn't have any teeth. He survives.
  • Sword Drag: Gipsy Danger pulls this off, only it's actually done with a very long and narrow freighter, but the visual is the same.
  • Synchronization: Part this, part Mental Fusion is required on the behalf of the pilots to move the Jaegars. It's called "The Drift".

    Tropes T to Z 
  • Take a Moment to Catch Your Death: After the mid-movie battle has finished and everybody is taking a deep breath, Hannibal Chau is suddenly Swallowed Whole by a Not Quite Dead baby Kaiju. It is subverted in The Stinger, when we see Chau having survived in the Kaiju belly.
  • Takes One to Kill One: "To fight monsters, we created monsters of our own."note 
  • Taking You with Me:
    • When the Kaiju decompose in death, they release an agent called "Kaiju Blue" which emits toxic vapors capable of leaving an entire city uninhabitable. This appears to be Alien Blood mixed with an aversion of No Biochemical Barriers instead of a deliberate attack. Of course, given that the Kaiju are engineered bioweapons...
    • With Striker Eureka disabled and the bomb release damaged, Pentecost and Chuck Hansen bait two Kaiju towards them and then detonate their nuke.
    • While its pilots escape, Gipsy Danger is sacrificed to blow up the rift and the Kaiju's creators.
  • The Taming of the Grue: In-universe example. Thanks to the success of the Jaegers, humanity begins to forget its fear of the Kaiju. This is demonstrated by a montage of aesthetically-softened Kaiju re-imagined as mascots, cartoons, and toys. It takes an escalation in Kaiju attacks to remind them of this fear.
  • Tattoo as Character Type: Newt shows that he has tattoo sleeves of his favorite Kaiju, reiterating that he is a "Kaiju groupie" with an unhealthy obsession with them. Seeing as Raleigh had previously fought and killed said Kaiju before, it's clear he isn't impressed with Newt's fanboy behavior.
  • Team Pet: The Australian father-son pilots of Striker Eureka have an adorable English bulldog named Max. He's well loved by almost everyone in the Shatterdome, absolutely adored by Chuck, and serves as the official mascot of Striker Eureka. A decal of Max with a bomb in his mouth can be found on the uniforms of Striker's tech team, the Hansens' drive suits, and the Jaeger itself.
  • Technology Porn: The Jaegers are truly beautiful pieces of sci-fi engineering, and any scene involving them is pure, unadulterated technology porn. Inside the cockpits, their assembly and maintenance, plus the way they fight, is a techhead's dream.
  • Tempting Fate:
    • One of the videos on the Pan Pacific Defense Corps page is a news report on a Kaiju attack ending with the reporter saying, "I can only pray that this is the end of it." This applies to all of humanity, really, when the PPDC seemed to be winning easily and Kaiju became the subject of toy lines and late-night talk show gags.
    • The "Wall of Life" is advertised as an unbreakable barrier that is a cost-effective alternative to the Jaeger program. During a new attack, a Kaiju breaks through it in less than an hour.
    • In his introductory scene, Newt says that he's fascinated by Kaiju and wishes to get to see one alive and up close. He gets his chance later, and doesn't enjoy it.
    • Hannibal Chau jams his butterfly knife into the baby Kaiju and boasts of how he knew it wouldn't live long outside of the womb. Next moment, he's swallowed into its gullet.
  • That Poor Car: It seems like the grand majority of cars in Hong Kong have car alarms, because they activate when debris rain on them.
  • That's No Moon: That's no island — because it's moving towards the boat, and fast.
    Fisherman #1: How far to the mainland?
    Fisherman #2: Seven miles off Anchorage, sir!
    Fisherman #3: We won't even make it past the shallows!
    Fisherman #1: Well, what about that island? Three miles east.
    Fisherman #2: It's two miles, sir... one mile, sir! It's getting closer!
    Fisherman #3: How the hell could it be getting closer?
    [radar starts beeping frantically while Fisherman #1 gets an Oh, Crap! look on his face]
    Fisherman #1: ... Kaiju.
  • Theme Music Power-Up: The majority of fight scenes have no background music at all... up until Gipsy Danger's Big Damn Heroes moment in Hong Kong, where the theme music plays through most of the fight as it beats the hell out of two Kaiju that were handing the rest of the Jaegers their collective asses.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Raleigh checks one Kaiju for a "pulse", with a plasma caster, several times. Justified as the last time he was complacent enough not to check, his brother died.
  • This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!:
    • Newt isn't such a big fan of Hannibal anymore after the Hong Kong attack.
      Newt: Guess who's back, you one-eyed bitch!
    • During the final battle, Raleigh calls the opposing Kaijus sons of bitches. Twice.
  • This Is My Side: Gottlieb complains about Newt leaving Kaiju parts on his side of the room, carefully pushing them across a yellow line on the floor.
  • Title In: The first give you the definitions of "Kaiju" and "Jaeger" respectively, but the rest are used for times and locations.
  • Together in Death: The Happily Married Kaidonovskys die together in their Jaeger.
  • The Tokyo Fireball: Tokyo is one of the cities destroyed by the Kaiju, with Mako being "the Tokyo Survivor".
  • Trailers Always Spoil: One trailer has a brief shot of Otachi flying.
  • Tron Lines: The Kaiju have a biological version of this trope on their bellies.
  • Troperiffic: One review says, "There's not a single original moment to be found in Pacific Rim's 130-minute running time, but that doesn't much matter."
  • Turns Red: It's only after Otachi has lost its acid spit and its lethal tail to Gipsy that it breaks out its most dangerous ability, the one that really sets it apart from every other Kaiju in history: it can fly, which instantly proves the already breached Wall of Life completely, utterly useless.
  • Typeset in the Future: The film uses Eurostile Extended and Bold Extended for its feature end credit sequence, and Bank Gothic for its main end credits crawl. It also features a Eurostile Extended-like font throughout the film's computer displays.
  • Underequipped Charge: When an EMP blast completely disables the mecha Striker Eureka, the pilots Herc and Chuck Hansen decide to keep fighting until the bitter end. They climb out of the cockpit and shoot at the kaiju Leatherback with flare guns.
  • Unreadably Fast Text: The news ticker during the news report of Striker Eureka's victory notes that Herc has piloted every single generation of Jaeger and is one of the most successful Jaeger pilots.
  • Unreliable Canon: It so far encompasses a movie, a novel, and a prequel comic, with other details found on places like the tumblrs of the writers, DVD, extras, or the official website. In Travis Beacham's case, who co-wrote the movie script and wrote the novelisation, many of the details he gives out conflicts with the events of the movie, details given in other places, and even things that the actors say about their characters. Guillermo Del Toro rarely addresses any of these inconsistencies, and now that Travis Beacham has left the franchise, it's unknown how much of the novel is still canon.
  • Urban Segregation:
    • The poor and downtrodden live along the coast, with the rich and wealthy moving inland, so that they can be protected from the Kaiju attacks. The massive defensive walls that were being built to protect the poor remain unfinished, complete with a hand-scrawled correction on a completion sign reading "Never!" Australia's wall is one of the few complete ones (or was, until a Kaiju broke it).
    • Whenever the Kaiju make landfall, the poor all huddle together inside of cramped Anti-Kaiju Defense Shelters, whereas the rich are secure behind walls of their own. In the case of Hannibal Chau, he has his own private Anti-Kaiju Defense Shelter, because of an incident that happened inside of a public shelter that resulted in a messed up eye. The public shelters are hardly foolproof; just like the wall, they won't stop a determined Kaiju.
  • Used Future: The future will have badass robots and neat holographic programs. The robots will always be beat up and shaggy while the holographic disks will be bigger than VHS cases. In the DVD extras, Guillermo notes that this was a very deliberate aesthetic choice. They call it "Goth-Tech" (Gothic+Tech).
  • Vertical Mecha Fins: Striker Eureka has them on its back, and Gipsy Danger has smaller projections that serve a similar purpose.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Newt and Hermann are very antagonistic against each other for most of the film. It isn't until Hermann offers to share the Drift with the baby Kaiju to take the neural strain off Newt that they become friendlier.
  • Volcanic Veins: Some of the Kaiju have blue glowing veins.
  • Waist-Deep Ocean:
    • Trespasser — the first Kaiju to emerge from the Breach — is shown ripping through the Golden Gate Bridge, despite the Kaiju only being 92.05 meters tall in contrast to the bridge's clearance of 67 meters and the water beneath the bridge having a depth of 115 meters.
    • The fight between Gipsy Danger and Knifehead is stated to take place on a shallow shelf seven miles off the coastline of Alaska, with Knifehead later pinning Gipsy Danger to a rock outcropping while ripping it apart. However, both the 79.25 meter-tall Jaeger and 96.01 meter-tall Kaiju were shown standing waist-to-knee-deep in water they'd both previously been completely submerged in.
    • Otachi and Leatherback are shown completely submerged in Hong Kong Bay until they pop up to ambush Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha, at which point the water barely comes up to their knees and elbows. Even when Otachi is thrown into deeper water by Crimson Typhoon, she isn't submerged until she dives to attack Striker Eureka.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: By the time the film starts, the Jaeger pilots have grown complacent with how decisively they win battles. Then, the Kaiju start adapting and manage to destroy or heavily damage them in return, starting with Gipsy Danger, showing how they are escalating the threat.
  • Walk, Don't Swim: All the Jaegers, on account of being way too heavy to swim even with humanoid design. In the final battle, they walk on the ocean floor to get to the Breach.
  • Water Is Air: The final battle undersea plays out as if the water was non-existing. Even the Audible Sharpness of Gipsy Danger's sword can be heard.
  • Weaponized Exhaust:
    • We're introduced to Gipsy Danger's chest-mounted nuclear vortex turbine by it being used to slow an orbital descent. It's later used as a point-blank-range weapon.
    • Cherno Alpha can also vent fuel from its reactor via the ports on its shoulders for a flame attack, though it never gets to use it in the film.
  • We Have Become Complacent: By 2020, the Jaegers have such an impressive track record fighting Kaiju that most of the pilots treat an attack as simply another chance to increase their kill count. Cue the Mass "Oh, Crap!" from everyone involved when they realize the Kaiju have begun to adapt to their defenses and strategies. A mere five years later, the program is on the verge of being shut down due to the Jaegers being destroyed faster than they can be built.
  • We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Granted the film is set 20 Minutes into the Future but still there is no sign of robots helping the humans to build the coastal wall.
  • Who Needs Their Whole Body?: The Kaiju battle on, even as the Jaegers tear pieces of them off. Taken to extremes with Slattern, who even after having her throat slit, her upper pair of arms sliced off by Striker, and getting half her face blown off, still aggressively engages Gipsy.
  • Whoosh in Front of the Camera: Happens in the final act, when the three remaining Jaeger are marching on the sea ground towards the breach and we see a silhouette of a Kaiju rushing by in the foreground.
  • Will They or Won't They?: Raleigh and Mako spend a lot of time gazing longingly at each other, but never act on it. In fact, it's made ambiguous whether their relationship is budding romance or the start of Platonic Life-Partners.
  • Womb Level: The inside of the Breach, which can best be described as a series of purple and blue sphincters pulsing with electricity.
  • The Worf Effect: When Crimson Typhoon is introduced, its impressive combat record is listed along with a description of its ace pilots. When Cherno Alpha is introduced, it's revealed that not only is it a Mark I Jaeger, making it the oldest still functioning, but it's the largest and heaviest Jaeger around. It's also stated that the perimeter it was assigned to went six years without being breached by a Kaiju attack. During the Hong Kong attack, both Alpha and Crimson get to show off some of their skills, but are completely destroyed by the two attacking Kaiju, effectively spelling out just how dangerous they must be to eliminate such powerful Jaegers with so little effort. Gipsy Danger's ability to defeat both by itself (albeit one at a time, after they had split up) illustrates just how powerful it is and how skilled the pilots are.
  • World of Badass: The film is set in a world where badass Rangers pilot a bunch of badass robots to fight a bunch of badass Kaiju whose corpses either are used by a badass black market man or studied by badass scientists.
  • The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): The Kaidonovsky couple and the Wei triplets are experts in kicking Kaiju asses but are quickly killed when Otachi and Leatherback show up. Both Kaiju are much stronger than anything they've previously faced, fight as a team, and have weapons neither set of pilots has ever encountered.
  • The Worm Guy: Early on we see a hapless scientist and his son walking around the beach looking for metal in the ground. Cue Gipsy Danger emerging from the sea.
  • Wrestler in All of Us: For all their advanced technology, many of the Jaegers' combat styles are based on grappling, holds, and throws. Gipsy holds Leatherback under its arms. Crimson Typhoon uses the fact that Otachi grabbed her hands to flip, turn, and throw her at Cherno, who promptly elbow-drops onto the Kaiju before wrapping it in an headlock so they can pummel it's ugly mug in easily.
    • Probably a bit of a meta-example, but the actor for one of Cherno's pilots, Robert Maillet, is a wrestler in real life, so it's pretty understandable why their Jaeger would have such moves.
  • Xanatos Gambit: Mentioned by Newt when recording his first Kaiju drift experiment.
    Newt: Unscientific aside: Hermann, if you're listening to this, well, I'm either alive, and I've proven what I've just done works, in which case, ha ha I won, or I'm dead, and I'd like you to know it's all your fault — it really is, you know, you drove me to this — in which case, ha, I also won. Sort of.
  • X Days Since: The time between Kaiju attacks is kept on a big clock at the Shatterdome to keep everyone focused.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: When a Jaeger loses a limb, the fighters inside also feel the pain due to the mental link.
  • You Shall Not Pass!:
    • A villainous example with Slattern, who guards the Breach.
    • This tends to be the main strategy of the heroes. If a Kaiju is heading towards a coastal city, they fly a Jaeger out into the water and drop it in the Kaiju's path. They even have the "miracle mile", the ten-mile line where they need to hold the Kaiju at, seeing as their battles tend to be destructive and Kaiju blood is extremely toxic—meaning every move must be either a blunt blow, as opposed to a faster stab wound.

Where is my goddamn shoe?!

 
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Alternative Title(s): Pacific Rim Aftermath

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There's no need to rush

You don't need to be flesh and blood to make use of this trope - even if you're a mecha, taking your time on the approach will ensure everyone knows you are fully capable of cracking skulls before the first blow connects.

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