Godzilla is a giant prehistoric reptile, woken and irradiated by hydrogen bomb tests, who walks out of the sea and burns Tokyo in the first film, made in Japan in 1954. Since then he has starred in some thirty Japanese films and a run of American ones, playing a walking warning about the bomb, a city-wrecking heel, Earth's defender and something close to a god. Fans split the Japanese films into four eras: Showa, Heisei, Millennium and Reiwa.
This covers those eras, the atomic breath, where the title King of the Monsters comes from, and his three best-known rivals and allies: King Ghidorah, Mothra and Mechagodzilla. Every design on the Godzilla shelf comes from somewhere in it. Where the films disagree, this says which one it means.
What Godzilla is
In the 1954 film, Godzilla is a creature from the age of the dinosaurs that has survived in the deep sea until hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific disturb it and soak it in radiation. The name comes from a legend on Odo Island, whose fishermen call a monster of the sea Gojira, a blend of the Japanese words for gorilla and whale.
He comes ashore, levels Tokyo and leaves its hospitals full of radiation victims. He is killed in Tokyo Bay by the Oxygen Destroyer, a weapon whose inventor burns his notes and dies with it so it can never be built again. The film closes on a warning: keep testing the bomb and another Godzilla may appear.
Later films either bring in a new Godzilla or carry on from that first one. Time and again he arrives the same way, rising from the sea.
Atomic breath and the dorsal plates
Atomic breath is Godzilla's signature weapon: a blast of radioactive energy fired from his mouth. In most films the jagged dorsal plates along his back light up first, which is the tell that it is coming. In 1954 it is a white, vapour-like heat ray that sets the city alight; later films turn it into a blue beam that brings down buildings and throws other monsters across the city.
Each era tweaks it. Some Heisei films add a red spiral version. In Shin Godzilla it turns purple and also fires from his back and tail. The MonsterVerse keeps it blue until Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, where he absorbs more radiation and it turns pink.
The four eras: Showa, Heisei, Millennium, Reiwa
Showa (1954 to 1975, 15 films). It starts as a horror film about the bomb. The sequels bring in more monsters, and through the 1960s Godzilla turns from menace into Earth's defender, gains a son, Minilla, and fights alien invaders. It ends with Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975).
Heisei (1984 to 1995, 7 films). The Return of Godzilla (1984) is a direct sequel to the 1954 film and ignores the rest of Showa. These films share one continuity and a darker tone. The last, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), ends with Godzilla's heart going into meltdown; he dies, and his son, Godzilla Junior, absorbs the radiation and rises as the new Godzilla.
Millennium (1999 to 2004, 6 films). From Godzilla 2000: Millennium to Godzilla: Final Wars, these are mostly standalone stories, many of which treat the 1954 attack as the only one that happened. The exception is the Mechagodzilla pair, which run as a two-part story.
Reiwa (2016 onwards). Shin Godzilla (2016) is a fresh start, with a creature that evolves through several forms in a matter of days. An animated trilogy set in the far future followed, then Godzilla Minus One (2023), set in Japan just after the Second World War. Shin Godzilla came out nearly three years before the Reiwa period of the Japanese calendar began, and The Return of Godzilla four years before Heisei: the eras follow runs of films, not dates.
The American films, one from 1998 and the MonsterVerse series that began in 2014, run alongside the four eras rather than inside them.
King of the Monsters and King Ghidorah
The title came from the 1956 American version of the first film, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, re-edited with new scenes shot for American cinemas. It stuck. The MonsterVerse takes it literally: in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) the giant creatures, called Titans, follow an alpha, and the film is the fight over who that is.
The challenger is King Ghidorah, Godzilla's best-known arch-enemy: a golden dragon with three heads, two tails and vast wings, firing gravity beams from its mouths. He first arrives from space in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964). The Heisei version (1991) is made by time travellers from the 23rd century and later rebuilt as Mecha-King Ghidorah. In 2019 he is an alien that the humans' files call Monster Zero; once Godzilla destroys him, the other Titans bow. King of the Monsters puts the two of them together.
Mothra, the queen of Infant Island
Mothra is a giant moth worshipped as a goddess on Infant Island in the Pacific, and she starred in her own film, Mothra (1961), before she ever met Godzilla. She speaks through the Shobijin, twin priestesses no more than a foot tall, who call her with a song. She goes through a moth's whole life on screen: egg, larva, cocoon and winged adult.
Unlike most of Godzilla's opponents she is a protector, not a destroyer. In Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) the adult dies fighting him, and two larvae hatch from her egg and wrap him in silk to beat him. In Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, a Mothra larva talks Godzilla and Rodan into joining her against King Ghidorah. The MonsterVerse films, from 2019 on, call her the Queen of the Monsters.
Mechagodzilla, and Mothra vs Mechagodzilla
Mechagodzilla is a robot Godzilla, and nearly every era has built its own:
- Showa (1974 and 1975): built by alien invaders from the Third Planet of the Black Hole, and first seen disguised as Godzilla under a fake skin.
- Heisei (1993): built by the United Nations' anti-Godzilla force, G-Force, from 23rd-century technology salvaged from Mecha-King Ghidorah. It can join with the flying warship Garuda to become Super Mechagodzilla.
- Millennium (2002 and 2003): Kiryu, built by Japan's defence forces around the skeleton of the original 1954 Godzilla, armed in its first film with the Absolute Zero cannon.
- MonsterVerse (2021): built in secret by the company Apex Cybernetics in Godzilla vs. Kong, and piloted through a link made from King Ghidorah's remains.
So, Mothra vs Mechagodzilla: on screen they meet in Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003), and not quite as enemies. Mothra's priestesses demand that Japan scrap Kiryu and return the old Godzilla's bones to the sea, and promise Mothra will defend Japan instead. When Godzilla attacks, the queen and the machine end up fighting him side by side. Mothra dies, her larvae cocoon Godzilla, and Kiryu, acting on its own, grabs him and carries them both down into the sea.
On the shelf
On the back of a tee
Godzilla and his rivals are on the Godzilla shelf, drawn from canon reference art, with the rest of the Sci-Fi & Monsters shelf beside them. Check the size guide before you pick a size.
Why it works on the back: a giant monster is designed to read in silhouette from a long way off, the plates, the three heads, the wingspan, so one figure fills a back the way it fills a film poster.
Read next: InGen, frog DNA and the raptors: Jurassic Park explained (more giant reptiles, made in a lab this time) and Xenomorph, Predator, T-800 and RoboCop explained.
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