Godzilla

Godzilla (Japanese: ゴジラ Hepburn: Gojira) is a monster originating from a series of Japanese films of the same name. The character first appeared in Ishirō Honda’s 1954 film Godzilla and became a worldwide pop culture icon, appearing in various media, including 31 films produced by Toho, three Hollywood films, and numerous video games, novels, comic books, television shows. It is often dubbed the “King of the Monsters”, a phrase first used in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, the Americanized version of the original film.

Godzilla is depicted as an enormous, destructive, prehistoric sea monster awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation. With the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Lucky Dragon 5 incident still fresh in the Japanese consciousness, Godzilla was conceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons. As the film series expanded, some stories took on less serious undertones, portraying Godzilla as an antihero, or a lesser threat who defends humanity. With the end of the Cold War, several post-1984 Godzilla films shifted the character's portrayal to themes including Japan's forgetfulness over its imperial past, natural disasters, and the human condition.