Godzilla: King of the Monsters was one of the biggest surprises of 2019. Not only did the film prove that a cultural balance is possible in a major Hollywood production, but it is also clearly the best outing of the MonsterVerse franchise. What fans loved the most about the film is how faithful it stuck to the origins of the Gojira legacy by borrowing influences and plot points from the Godzilla franchise which was born in the Eastern Kaiju culture.

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Throughout the film, there are multiple small details, flashbacks, recurring characters which fans have already witnessed in the Godzilla films produced by The Toho Co. Michael Dougherty’s King of the Monsters which is a sequel to the 2014 Godzilla essentially goes back to explore Godzilla’s legacy beyond the first world. Here are some of the most interesting things fans never knew about King of the Monsters.

A Focus on Monarch

Monarch, the secret collective of scientists was first featured on the 2014 Godzilla, and fans obviously had a lot of questions about its origins. Writer and director Michael Dougherty had revealed that he wanted King of the Monsters to have a focus on Monarch so as to help audiences identify them as a group of heroes and not just an inquisitive bunch of experimenters.

So, the sequence where Emma asks Monarch whether they would put their faith in humanity or Mother Nature is essentially supposed to make the audiences relate to the Titans as part of the nature, and to validate their existence.

Destroy All Monsters

Considering the world of Godzilla is a cult universe with its relevance spanning over decades, King of the Monsters obviously had some major retro references. Fans noticed one of the most striking throwbacks during the opening montage when the citizens of Washington DC are marching on the streets to protest against the rising Titan population and one protestor carries a placard saying ‘Destroy All Monsters.’

This is of course, a reference to the fan-favorite 1968 Japanese kaiju film Destroy All Monsters which featured a whopping eleven monsters and actually showed the three-headed Ghidorah challenging the other monsters.

‘God’ and the Dorsal Plates

Dougherty also revealed that he wanted the monsters to emit a godly presence because the film essentially addresses them as the ‘first gods,’ especially Godzilla. So, he didn’t just want them to look like fearsome predators which has been established already, but evoke something more significant.

The idea was to modernize the creature design but retaining some key elements which worked in the past; so he tweaked Godzilla's main design by adding maple-leaf shaped dorsal plates on the monster, just like Ishiro Honda’s 1954 Godzilla, which was also the very first movie of the Godzilla franchise.

Cheeky Monster Control

It’s only fitting that King of the Monsters film would pay homage to the first American monster blockbuster. In King of the Monsters, Dr. Emma Russell comes up with a device named Orca which can basically help in communication with the Titans and also engages their bioacoustics on a sonar level, hence emitting frequencies to change their behavior.

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The name Orca is an Easter egg and a reference to arguably the first Western monster film Jaws, where Quint’s shipping vessel was named Orca. Moreover, the command center in the film is named Argo which is a nod to the mythological fantasy film Jason and the Argonauts, where the ship of the Greeks was named Argo.

Mothra The Diva

Mothra is not just one of the most crucial monsters in the mix, but according to Dougherty, its creature design was the trickiest one to zero in on. The previous installments. especially the 1961 version, made Mothra look like a ‘blown-up moth’, and that’s exactly what Dougherty was trying to avoid because it obviously had some elements of a caricature.

But Dougherty did want the same color palette as the 1961 version and also decided to settle on the gigantic eye spots we see on her wings. They were made to resemble Godzilla’s eyes to establish their connection.

No Game of Thrones, Please

One of the most significant aspects of King of the Monsters is that a large part of creative detailing was meant as an homage to the east, where the myth of the Gojira was born.

So, when it came to King Ghidorah, the three-headed monster which resembled a dragon, the director, and creative heads were vigilant about not making him look like a western dragon, i.e something out of Game of Thrones. Since Ghidorah is an alpha, the creative team observed the scales of reptilian alphas like King Cobra to set his physicality apart from Godzilla or any other Titan.

Is The Mecha-King Ghedorah Coming Back?

King of the Monsters ends with Godzilla overpowering Ghidorah but this may not be the end of the king. In the movie’s post-credits scene, Alan Jonah purchases one of Ghidorah’s severed heads from Mexico.

This obviously has fans guessing that Jonah will use Ghidorah’s DNA to basically engineer another Ghidorah-like specimen in one of the next installments; fans are rooting for the new version to new version to be the Mecha-King Ghidorah the gigantic mechanically modified monster of Ghidorah made by Toho that made an appearance in 1991’s Godzilla vs King Ghidorah.

The Hollow Earth Theory

Remember in Kong: Skull Island when the Hollow Earth theory comes up and it actually explains the island’s origins and also explains how someone as ginormous as Godzilla would remain hidden and wasn’t detected by any technology.

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Skull Island and King of the Monsters are part of the same franchise and it makes sense for the makers to establish this connect; Bill Randa states that there are numerous deep pockets under the crust where these large creatures can live. Skull Island is obviously an entry point of these pockets, and so is Mariana Trench from where Godzilla re-emerges.

Dr Ilene a Mothra Fairy?

Gojira loyalists will remember the Mothra fairy twins from the 1961 film Mothra; the two human fairies were basically Mothra’s cheerleaders, summoning the Kaiju with a song whenever she was needed. King of the Monsters has a different take on the fairy concept; instead of singing fairies they introduce scientist twins Dr Ilene and Ling Chen who visibly share a deep connection to Mothra.

Not only have the Monarch scientists dedicated years of research to studying the titans, especially Mothra, but are also third-generation Monarch scientists. Yes, the film explains that their mother was also a twin and Ilene is mother to two girls so it’s safe to assume the Chen legacy will carry on in MonsterVerse.

The Loch Ness Nod

In a spectacular turn of events that just happen to fall in place in Kaiju-verse, when Monarch is searching all its outposts corresponding to locations where extra-terrestrial activity has been detected. The tracker seemed to mark a location right off Northern Scottish Highlands, which is obviously a hotspot for the Loch Ness Monster.

Interestingly, the long-necked monster has often been theorized as a plesiosaurus, a form of prehistoric marine reptile which feeds near the surface. Though this hasn’t been confirmed yet, considering how the Monster-verse loves bringing in major cult figures and forgotten relics, bringing in the Loch Ness Monster would be right up their alley.

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