LGBT+ Characters in Godzilla Stories
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VIDEOS
• The Godzilla Timeline
• Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah Time Travel
• Godzilla Misconceptions Vol. 1
• Inconsistent Stats Vol. 1
• Anime GODZILLA Timeline
• Zilla Name Controversy
• Anime GODZILLA Timeline Part 2
• History of Monarch (MonsterVerse Timeline)
• The Story of King Kong vs. Godzilla
• 2020 Kaiju Streaming & Home Video Guide
• Lost & Unreleased Kaiju Media
Godzilla 1954 • Titanosaurus
Showa King Ghidorah • Universal King Kong
Skeleturtle • Toho King Kong • Showa Mothra
Biollante • Kiryu • King Kong 2017
V-Rex • Gigan • SpaceGodzilla • Destoroyah
Hedorah • Monster X • Heisei Godzilla
Mechani-Kong • Godzilla 2017
Minilla • Gorosaurus • Fake Godzilla
Meat-Eater • Showa Mechagodzilla
Godzilla 1998 / Zilla • Baby Godzilla 1998
Godzilla (The Series) • Gezora
Showa Rodan • Anguirus • Anime Mechagodzilla
Orga • Frankenstein
Giant Octopus • Baragon • Sanda and Gaira
Anime King Ghidorah
Heisei King Ghidorah / Mecha-King Ghidorah
Strange, dead monster
Gamera (Heisei Trilogy) • The MUTOs
Mothra and King Ghidorah (Millennium)
Rodan (Heisei & Millennium) • Maguma
Other Titans of Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Jet Jaguar • Manda • Zone Fighter
Godzilla Earth • Giant Condor
Megalon • King Ghidorah/Mothra/Rodan (2019)
Mechagodzilla (RPO) • Heisei Mechagodzilla
Kamoebas & Ganimes • Dogzilla & Kat Kong
Skullcrawler • Mechagodzilla (2021)
Godzilla (2014-2021) • Charles Barkley
Kong (2017-2021) • Rebirth Trilogy Mothras
Gigan Miles & Gigan Rex • Ghogo
Space Beastman • King Caesar • Godzilla 2004
Megaguirus, Meganulon & Meganula • Wild Willie
Godzilla 2001 • Godzilla 2023 • Shinden
LGBT+ Characters in Godzilla Stories is the 13th episode of Wikizilla's Kaiju Facts video series. It was uploaded on July 11, 2025.
Video
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Transcript
"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy." This is how Ishiro Honda described the kaiju present in his films, and it's not hard to see why such creatures would resonate with LGBT+ people. Are kaiju too big for the world, or is the world too small—and small-minded—for them? The "Godzilla" series reboots itself almost compulsively, but whenever a single continuity lasts for long enough, humanity and kaiju tend to find ways to coexist, and Godzilla shifts from reviled beast to celebrated hero. It's an arc that can be both hopeful and aspirational to the queer community. It's also in line with the end of Honda's quote, which is usually omitted: "After several stories of this type, the public finds sympathy for the monsters; in reality, they favor the monsters." Of course, now that time has passed and things are… at least somewhat better, we don't need to just project onto the monsters. New installments in the franchise we've held dear have textually queer characters that we can latch onto… but don't get me wrong, we still definitely project onto the monsters. That's too much fun to give up.
Hey kaiju fans, I'm Humble_Squid, and I'm going to be chronicling all of the LGBT+ characters in the "Godzilla" franchise. Be warned — spoilers ahead for all stories discussed!
Confirmed Characters
i. Raymond Burr
(Godzilla Returns, 1996)
"Godzilla Returns," the first book in the Random House series written by Marc Cerasini, is set in a world where Godzilla first attacked Tokyo in 1954 and was never killed by Dr. Serizawa's Oxygen Destroyer. One character from the original film is mentioned, however—Steve Martin, the Chicago reporter spliced into the American version and the many other overseas cuts based on it. In this telling, he wrote a renowned book about his experiences titled "This Is Tokyo," which inspired the 1956 docudrama "Godzilla, King of the Monsters." Martin was played by Raymond Burr, who also portrayed him in our universe's version of the film, as well as "Godzilla 1985." Godzilla was something of a joke in '80s America, so Burr returning to the role was met with disbelief, but he took the character's message extremely seriously, and even rewrote his own ending monologue. Burr and his partner, Robert Benevides, were together for 33 years, although Burr never came out during his lifetime for the sake of his career. On the contrary, he invented two dead wives and went on staged dates with Natalie Wood to keep the public from finding out that he was gay.
Burr probably isn't the only queer celebrity to be referenced in a Godzilla story—in fact, if you count hacky parodies, we can be sure of it. But for the sake of our sanity, and in recognition of his seismic impact on the franchise, we'll let him represent them all.
ii. Hercules and Iceman
(Marvel's Godzilla, 1977)
In 1977, Marvel began publishing their own "Godzilla" comic, which featured the King of the Monsters crossing paths with superheroes from across Earth-616. In issue #3, when Godzilla makes landfall in San Francisco, he's opposed by the Champions. Many years later, two of the members of that team, Hercules and Bobby Drake, AKA Iceman, would be revealed as bi and gay, respectively. Both of them prove to be very effective against the monster king - Hercules toppling Godzilla and Iceman temporarily freezing him. However, thanks to S.H.I.E.L.D. continually getting in their way and vice versa, Godzilla still manages to leave the battle "without a scratch."
Hercules's orientation was first hinted at during his own funeral in 2010. (Don't worry, he got better. Comics are weird.) It took another decade - and some changes in management - for it to become official in the main Marvel universe. Iceman's coming out in 2015's "All-New X-Men" #40 was a bit controversial, since it was the result of Jean Gray reading his mind and confronting him. Now, since this Bobby is a time-displaced teenager—again, comics are weird—the team continues to think that the current timeline's Bobby Drake is straight until "Uncanny X-Men" #600 later that year. When the younger Bobby talks it out with the older Bobby, we learn that Bobby has actually been repressing this part of himself for some time. Funnily enough, in issue #2 of Marvel's "Infinity Voices" comic, Iceman returns to California… now to do battle with a giant moth creature. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Now, I'm predicting some people commenting about these characters' sexualities being retroactively changed—but I feel like both have enough in their history to justify these revelations. In 1994's "Uncanny X-Men" #319, the subtext of Bobby's subplot is essentially him asking Rogue to act as a beard when he visits his parents, so that he appears more presentable to his bigoted dad and might be accepted. And of course he's at the center of a very on-the-nose scene in "X2." ["Have you tried… not being a mutant?"] Let's see who wrote that movie… [show Michael Dougherty's credit] Oh! How 'bout that. And as for Hercules… Hercules is from Greek mythology… 'nuff said.
Godzilla made his triumphant return to Marvel earlier this year in a series of one-shots, encountering Black Cat (who subtly came out in 2021) in "Godzilla vs. Spider-Man." And with the King of the Monsters preparing to destroy the Marvel universe, he'll likely meet more queer characters from the House of Ideas. Over at the Distinguished Competition, Wonder Woman, Batwoman, Cheetah, Harley Quinn, and a few other queer metahumans all feature in "Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong" and/or its sequel. And beyond superheroes, Godzilla terrorizes Nick Carraway, the heavily queercoded narrator of "The Great Gatsby," in IDW's "Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre." We're skimming over these other crossover characters, because, well, they didn't originate in Godzilla/Toho stories. Iceman and Hercules, at least, have the distinction of being the first in line.
iii. Urv and Eduardo
(IDW's Godzilla, 2012)
If you've read any IDW comic, you probably know that the publisher loves the gays—and their "Godzilla" line is no exception. IDW's 2012-2013 series, copyrighted as "Godzilla" but called "Godzilla: History's Greatest Monster" in the omnibus collection, starts with a wedding between Irving "Urv" Jassim and Eduardo. Their perfect day is interrupted by Kumonga crashing through the church, killing Eduardo and the rest of Urv's family. Having given up his life of violence for Eduardo's love, a distraught Urv returns to form, attacking the spider monster with an improvised explosive, but to little effect. With numerous kaiju rampaging around the world, and conventional methods powerless to stop them, Urv joins a mercenary group called the Monster Kill Crew, led by his old friend Boxer. His skills in demolitions are key to them subduing Anguirus, Titanosaurus, and, to his great satisfaction, Kumonga.
Unfortunately, Urv doesn't survive the events of the comic either, as he gives his life saving the city of Vancouver from a volcanic eruption. He was originally going to set off the eruption himself to try and kill Godzilla, but some interlopers caused the beast to change direction at the last moment. He does seemingly reunite with his husband in the afterlife—so in a way, it's a happy ending. (Hopefully the rest of these have happier endings.)
With the way other mega-franchises have struggled behind the scenes to introduce their first queer characters, it's remarkable how easy it was for Godzilla. In an email exchange with us, series writer Duane Swierczynski recalled no difficulties with IDW editorial or Toho when it came to making Urv gay. Actually, he wasn't even aware he was making history; he was just trying to put together a cast of characters that reflected the real world; "writer-as-journalist", as he put it.
One more scene in the comic is worth noting. After an army of space monsters appears and a whole lot of political intrigue takes place, the Monster Kill Crew realizes they have to free the terrestrial monsters they helped capture. To distract the one-percenters overseeing Monster Island, pheromone expert Asuka Hikari spikes one of their drinks, causing Fletcher here to suddenly fall madly in love with Everett. Then she knocks them both out with a branch. Fun fact: in 1994, the same year 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' took effect, a U.S. Air Force R&D lab proposed a similar weapon. The gay aphrodisiac, I mean, not the branch.
iv. Lucy Casprell and Kristina Sumres
(Godzilla: Rulers of Earth, 2013-2015)
Chris Mowry and Matt Frank didn't plan on Godzilla: Rulers of Earth becoming the longest-running Godzilla comic ever—it just kept dodging cancellation. Frank did, however, push for making protagonist Lucy Casprell a lesbian from the start. A risk-taking megazoologist, she joins Professor Kenji Ando's Kaiju Watchers in the second issue. During their first mission in China, she saves fellow Watcher Kristina Sumres from Varan, and the two quickly become inseparable. The Kaiju Watchers disband after Godzilla's final battle with the Devonians, with Lucy and Kristina shifting to the team stationed at the Monster Islands. They continue running into Godzilla when he returns four years later, culminating in the Trilopod invasion. By the start of that final story arc, readers began suspecting they were more than friends, with Frank dropping increasingly obvious hints on social media. Though the biggest hint was probably the dream sequence where Lucy plays roller derby.
With IDW editorial stressing monster action, Lucy and Kristina never had a big coming-out moment, but the last page of the last issue shows Lucy typing next to their wedding photo, a ring on her finger. Extremely-online readers found out about their marriage a little early. The U.S. Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges right before the final issue was published, legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. Frank, who came out as queer himself a couple years ago, posted his lineart of the wedding photo on Facebook in celebration.
Lucy and Kristina returned in 2023 for "Thinking on Our Feet," a six-page comic written and illustrated by Frank for volume 1 of the Japan-only Godzilla: Rulers of Earth ReMonstered Edition. It's set mid-series, between issues #12 and #13, and tells the tale of how Varan interrupted their first vacation together. After chasing after the kaiju on a moped and advising Land Moguera how to KO him, the two share a kiss atop the mech. Frank is hopeful that the story can be republished in English—and has another Lucy and Kristina story planned for the second ReMonstered book.
v. Miharu Matsuhara and Yuki Kano
(City Shrouded in Shadow, 2017)
"City Shrouded in Shadow" is a survival game for the PlayStation 4 developed by Granzella and represents one of the most ambitious Godzilla crossovers to date. Players navigate through a metropolis besieged by characters from the Godzilla, Gamera, Ultraman, Evangelion, and Patlabor franchises, the titular shadows. It's inexplicably never been released outside of Japan, but I played it on stream for Wikizilla in 2022. When you create your character, you're asked what your relationship is with Yuki Kano, the woman who will accompany you throughout the game. Regardless of whether you're playing as Ken Misaki or Miharu Matsubara, one of the options is, "She is my lover." There's a way—involving Gyaos abduction—for you to make out with her after stage 10, but the cutscene is so uncomfortably long that you'll probably wish you hadn't. At the end of the game, you learn that she's an alien and the target of the hostile shadows, and she erases herself from your memory before leaving Earth. Bummer.
vi. Tam Nassar
(Kingdom Kong, 2021)
Captain Tam Nassar appears in "Kingdom Kong," one of the two "Godzilla vs. Kong" prequel comics. This isn't a Godzilla story by any stretch, but he's still present by way of cave painting, so we're counting it. Nassar is a pilot for Monarch's G-Team and close friend of this story's protagonist, Captain Audrey Burns. Nassar is also nonbinary—the first nonbinary character to appear in a Kong story, in fact. Camazotz took down their F-35 during the mass awakening of Titans in 2019, leaving them in a coma. Paralyzed by fear during that battle, Audrey blames herself for Tam's condition. Her guilt is at first debilitating, but by the end of the story motivates her to help Kong defeat Camazotz. Afterwards, Audrey finally works up the courage to visit Tam in the hospital, where they've awoken from their coma.
In email correspondence with us, "Kingdom Kong" author Marie Anello described Tam as a late addition to the story, with the basic idea of the character and their role in Audrey's backstory proposed by Legendary Comics editorial. Tam's they/them pronouns started out as placeholders, but as Anello explained, "as they developed I realized they reminded me a great deal of many of my trans and gender-nonconforming loved ones. My spouse is also nonbinary, and I'd be lying if I said that wasn't a factor, there's a lot of our relationship in the way Tam and Audrey tease one another. When it finally came time to write the script, it was obvious to me that Tam being nonbinary was integral to the character." Like Swierczynski, she didn't have any difficulty selling Legendary Comics on a queer character. Her script originally extended the final scene in the hospital, with Tam absolving Audrey, but she felt "it was obvious by the time that moment rolled around that it wasn't necessary, and it was more powerful to leave us with Audrey, finally opening that door."
vii. Dr. Carole Kincaid
(Godzilla Rivals: Rodan vs. Ebirah, 2023)
We return to IDW for Godzilla Rivals: Rodan vs Ebirah, set in the year 2030. Dr. Carole Kincaid is a crypto-botanist recruited by Dr. Ogbannaya to work with the unregulated, orbiting laboratory ParaSOL on their Biollante project. Kincaid introduces themself to fellow scientist Dr. Hazuki Oe with they/them pronouns.
No sooner has their tour of the station concluded than Rodan and Ebirah escape their containment units and plummet down a space elevator, reaching speeds that could result in the complete destruction of Japan upon impact. The station deploys Mothra silk and Biollante vines to ensnare and retrieve them, respectively—but the vines go rogue. Kincaid uses their experience singing to plant life (and total disregard for their own safety) to get the tendrils back on task. This plan works until Rodan decides to blast his way out of the cocoon, forcing Mechagodzilla to sortie and slow the pair's descent the remainder of the way. Kincaid dashingly presents Oe with one of Biollante's roses… which promptly sprouts fangs and tries to bite her.
Kincaid is both the first nonbinary character in the Godzilla series and the first queer Black character. Writer James F. Wright explained to us that "it was important to me to depict Black scientists in conversation in a comic, since we don't see that very often. Even less common in a Godzilla book." Kincaid was further inspired by "the Black nonbinary folks in my life who would get a kick out of seeing themselves represented within the pages of a Godzilla story." That included Jaz Joyner, the comic's main editor. Like Annello, they were braced for editorial pushback, but received none.
viii. Cate Randa and Dani
(Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, 2023-2024)
Cate Randa is one of the leads of the Apple TV+ Monsterverse series "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters." The show is extremely flashback-heavy, so I'm going to summarize her story chronologically for simplicity's sake. In 2014, she was a middle school science teacher living in San Francisco and dating one of her fellow teachers, Dani. The day after Godzilla fought the male MUTO in Honolulu, Dani offered Cate the key to her apartment, unaware that Cate had been sleeping around. As the Titans converged on their city, Dani stayed at the school with a group of students waiting for their parents to pick them up. Cate, unable to commit to the relationship, left on a bus with her students, most of whom Godzilla accidentally killed on the Golden Gate Bridge as he battled the military. Dani's fate isn't explicitly stated, but implied to be grim, and there was apparently a deleted scene that confirmed she died during Godzilla's confrontation with the MUTOs. Shortly after Godzilla returned to the sea, Cate's father Hiroshi disappeared in a plane over Alaska. She spent the next year in a fog of grief and guilt—until her mother Caroline sent her to Tokyo to investigate an apartment leased in Hiroshi's name.
Cate is astonished to find two people living in the apartment: Hiroshi's other family. But they weren't the only secret he kept from her: when she and her half-brother Kentaro visit his office, they discover files pertaining to Monarch, a secret organization that's been studying the Titans for decades. Throughout the season, they travel across the world—and beneath it—to unravel their family's long history with Monarch. Accompanying them are May Olowe-Hewitt, Kentaro's ex with her own skeletons in the closet, and Colonel Lee Shaw, a forcibly-retired Monarch operative who was once inseparable from Hiroshi's parents.
Cate and May start to click early in the adventure together, with Cate refusing to leave May's side as she battles frostbite in Alaska and May helping Cate through a panic attack in the ruins of San Francisco. They spent a lot of time holding hands and generally invading each other's personal space, sometimes even in front of poor Kentaro, but the season ends without them defining their relationship. That's understandable, as they spend it careening from one terrifying experience to another. Maybe they'll get together in the rapidly-approaching Season 2; Apple TV's social media accounts sure seem to be rooting for them, and the showrunners need to atone for this editing choice in episode 7. They'll also return in the prequel comic anthology "Monarch: The Lost Adventures", due next July, although we've been told nothing about the story which focuses on them.
One last fun fact: Kiersey Clemons, who plays May, is dating her own stunt double, in a romance that puts The Fall Guy to shame.
ix. Piper Simmons and Tam Sauveterre
(Godzilla: Valentine's Day Special, 2024)
When IDW found itself with a gap in its unrelenting Godzilla release schedule, editor David Mariotte proposed a Valentine's Day-themed one-shot to writer Zoe Tunnell. Marriotte's original idea was inspired by the Godzilla Girls Party Toho held to promote "Godzilla" (2014), which English fandom somehow mutated into a meeting of a "Women's Godzilla Association." [Tunnell: "It was playfully like, 'They're more into Godzilla than men.'] But she wanted a romance between two human characters, and hit upon a rivals-to-lovers story about a journalist and a soldier in an anti-kaiju organization, building on the conflict in films like "Godzilla 2000: Millennium". She decided to make the soldier French-Vietnamese, feeling that a world-spanning story should have a multicultural cast. Since a queer romance had never been so central to a Godzilla story before, she was prepared for Toho to turn her down, but as with past writers, they didn't stand in the way.
Piper Simmons is a daredevil reporter, having embraced a career change after Godzilla smashed her office and her company promptly downsized her. During a battle between Godzilla and Anguirus, Lieutenant Tam Sauveterre saves her from falling debris. The two quickly begin arguing about whether their Earth Defense Force is actually making the world a safer place. They arrest her and drop her off in Malaysia. Undeterred, Piper keeps chasing monsters, becoming increasingly savvy… and she keeps crossing paths with Tam, who eventually lets slip that they're going out of their way to keep her safe. Things come to a head during a clash between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla. Tam draws a stun pistol on Piper, determined to finally bring her in, only to be seriously injured by a stray explosion. Piper comes to their rescue, but turns down their offer to join the EDF, explaining that humanity's endless array of superweapons only make the kaiju problem worse. Instead, she recruits Tam. Three years later, they're happily wed and in charge of their own organization, dedicated to kaiju research, forecasting, and deterrence.
x. Wyn
(Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire - The Official Movie Novelization, 2024)
It's typical for film novelizations to include moments and even whole scenes that weren't in the source material, and the adaptation of "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" by Greg Keyes is no exception. After Dr. Ilene Andrews is called into her adoptive daughter Jia's school due to her psychic visions disrupting math class, she tries asking about her friends over dinner. She learns that Wyn, described as "the child of one of the Monarch engineers briefly stationed on Skull Island," has had no time for Jia since they found themself a partner.
xi. Unnamed nurse
(Godzilla: 70th Anniversary — "Aftermath," 2024)
The final story in IDW's Godzilla: 70th Anniversary anthology comic, "Aftermath" by Natasha Alterici, begins with a nurse pulling a photo of her slain family out of the rubble of their home. Her town's just been destroyed by Godzilla, who a reporter informs her was lured there by a company dumping radioactive waste offshore. She leads a mob to storm the company CEO's mansion, marching in Godzilla's shadow.
xii. Weezy
(Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp, 2024)
For "Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp", IDW's first original "Godzilla" graphic novel, writer Rosie Knight took a lot of cues from "All Monsters Attack." (This is a compliment.) An aspiring young cartoonist, Zelda, shows up at an art summer camp to find the place taken over by the jocks of More Inc. Looking for seclusion, she discovers a portal to Monster Island, where all the kaiju besides the friendly Minilla are on the warpath. Together with her cabinmates, Rumiko and Weezy, they work to find out what More, Inc. is doing to rile up the kaiju. Weezy, introduced next to a… they/them tactical backpack…? (That's sick as hell…) …is named after Louise "Weezie" Simonson, a prolific writer and editor for Marvel and DC. They also wear a prosthetic arm, specially calibrated to help them hold both paintbrushes and pens. When the camp counselors toss the trio into the Behemoth, a supposed training facility, Weezy fends off a trio of dodgeball cannons. Later, they find the blueprints for the Behemoth, which turns out to contain a fracking drill, and steal some diving suits with their friends to implore Godzilla to destroy it. Weezy also has some cute moments with the bookish Walter and at one point mentions their moms. Lastly, Morgan—the counselor who flips on More Inc. at the end—is referred to using they/them pronouns as well.
xiii. Giant woman
(Godzilla Versus Chicago, 2025)
Here's another unnamed but crucial character from an anthology comic, in this case the Chicago issue of "Godzilla vs. America." Caroline Cash's "Godzilla Versus Chicago" begins with Godzilla doing Godzilla things in the Windy City, while our protagonist stubbornly refuses to notice, believing that people are just freaking out over a tornado warning. On a whim, she samples a Giant Woman Energy Drink at a gas station, which, despite being on sale, works exactly as advertised. She wraps herself in the Chicago flag and, if you couldn't already tell she was a lesbian from the carabiner earlier, ponders her prospects at Nobody's Darling, a real gay bar in the city. Only then does she finally notice Godzilla. Worried that he's on the verge of wrecking "the parts of the city I like," she finishes the drink and, now towering over the King of the Monsters, picks him up and deposits him in Indiana. That's one of the cleanest victories ever against Godzilla by one of the tallest monsters in franchise history, all within a few panels. Queer excellence.
Word of God
i. Dr. Rick Stanton
(Godzilla: King of the Monsters, 2019)
Dr. Rick Stanton, played by Bradley Whitford, is either the funniest or most loathsome character in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," depending on your sense of humor. He's a cynical and sarcastic "crypto-sonographer" working for Monarch, first seen assigned to underwater surveillance at Castle Bravo, monitoring Godzilla. A three-time divorcee, his personnel file describes him as "married to the insanity of his job, and it's truly the happiest he's ever been in a relationship."
Though Stanton was seemingly not written as bi, Whitford decided to have him flirt with various background characters regardless of gender, which director Mike Dougherty encouraged. ["Yeah, I like it, Dr. Stanton's up for anything!"] As I hinted earlier, Dougherty himself is gay, so that's not surprising. While this sort of crumb-like queer representation in a Hollywood blockbuster usually makes headlines, "King of the Monsters" missed out. Perhaps to their credit, it didn't seem to be something anyone who made the movie wanted to be congratulated over. As best as we can tell, Stanton's exclusive gay moment isn't in the film, just referenced in the audio commentary, and you really have to be paying attention to spot him hitting on a female sailor aboard the USS Scorpion.
ii. Needles
(Godzilla Rivals: Biollante vs. Destoroyah, 2023)
Needles is another non-binary character from a "Godzilla Rivals" issue, a hacker who learns of a corporation's plot to evolve humanity with an addictive health drink called Bio-II. Biollante spores inside the drinks bloom after 300 days, turning their devotees into plant zombies who soon merge to form Biollante herself. After breaking into the lab that approved Bio-II, Needles runs into disgraced kaiju researcher Dr. Meena Shyam, who quickly devises a plan. She raises an army of Destoroyah to soften up Biollante, while Needles steals a drone fleet to spray the plant monster with chlorophyll annihilator, dissolving it and setting the people inside free. Yes, this is a comic where Destoroyah is the lesser of two evils; it had to happen eventually. Needles's pronouns are never stated in the comic itself, but they are mentioned in a zine writer Nick Marino gave out on Free Comic Book Day.
iii. Trapper Beasley and Bernie Hayes
(Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, 2024)
Bernie Hayes, the conspiracy podcaster first played by Brian Tyree Henry in "Godzilla vs. Kong", is a… controversial figure among Monsterverse fans, both for being an ample source of comic relief and for some of the non-Titan conspiracies he endorses throughout that film. [play clips] He returns in "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" with a chip on his shoulder, unable to prove to his listeners that he played a small but crucial role in Mechagodzilla's defeat. When Dr. Ilene Andrews comes calling, we get the distinct sense that he's not just flustered because of her high rank in Monarch. Shortly thereafter, Ilene reconnects with her old flame from college, Trapper, now a daredevil Titan vet also working for Monarch. When they all head to Hollow Earth on an urgent mission, the situation has all the makings of a love triangle—except that Bernie and Trapper turn out to be way more interested in each other. [play clips] Plenty of viewers picked up on these overtones, and Trapper's actor, Dan Stevens, screenshotted an article on the subject for his Instagram story. Stevens also brought up that bisexual lighting unprompted in an interview—but did not, unfortunately, respond to our request for comment. On a tangential note, "The New Empire" is also the first entry in the series to fly Pride flags; a few are visible in Rio de Janeiro right before the monsters come flying out of Hollow Earth.
Stevens' Instagram story is undeniably cryptic, and doesn't quite meet the standard of the other entries in this section. But… there's an undeniable double standard when it comes to "confirming" a character is queer. Ilene and Trapper never outright say they used to date in college, but the viewer is expected to pick up on the subtext. "I'm gonna kiss you on the mouth," however, would require an explicit creator statement, ideally signed by a notary public, for most to view it as anything besides another joke. In mass media, characters are still very much straight by default.
As you've probably noticed, most of the canonically queer characters in the "Godzilla" franchise hail from American comic books. In the almost-70-year-old film series, meanwhile, nobody gets to be out except in an audio commentary and (possibly) an Instagram story. By now we deserve a little more than that. Godzilla is, of course, a Japanese creation, and LGBT+ rights and visibility in Japan lag well behind the United States. But it's hardly difficult to find queer characters, or characters who are very strongly implied to be queer, in tokusatsu and tokusatsu-inspired anime. Some of them have even crossed over with Godzilla… although trying to explain Shinji Ikari and Kaworu Nagisa's relationship across "Neon Genesis Evangelion" continuities would double the length of this video. Anyway, apart from the good work being done by various comic scribes and the "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" team, the granddaddy of tokusatsu has fallen behind the times. Of course, fans will have their theories about characters from the film series no matter what, and this video wouldn't be complete without examining a few of them.
Headcanons Accepted
i. Goro Ibuki and Hiroshi Jinkawa
(Godzilla vs. Megalon, 1973)
Some fandoms practically revolve around sleuthing out queer subtext; the "Godzilla" fandom is decidedly not one of them. Still, one pairing has been widely accepted for decades: Goro Ibuki and Hiroshi Jinkawa in "Godzilla vs. Megalon." The movie isn't too interested in explaining their relationship—or having them interact with any women for plausible deniability—and so people just filled in the blanks themselves. It's not clear when exactly this became fandom orthodoxy, but it was already a well-known headcanon in 2004. It might go all the way back to the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" episode in 1991. ["You said it, my little hardbodied bachelor friend."] Sometimes a family can be an inventor, his dragracing boyfriend, his younger brother, and a size-changing robot.
ii. Shiro Miyasaka
(Godzilla 2000: Millennium, 1999) Back during "Godzilla 2000"'s American theatrical run, someone on the internet thought that Shiro Miyasaka, the nebbish scientist who stares into the abyss and acts all shocked when it stares back, was gay. Their reasoning was novel enough to make it into the film's audio commentary. ["I remember one guy on the newsgroups said he knew Miyasaka was gay by the way he held his coffee cup, you know. And you look at this and you think, My God. People must be lying awake nights thinking this stuff up."] Pretty much! Would you like to hear my frame-by-frame analysis of the hug he gives Shinoda towards the end?
iii. LittleGodzilla
(Coming Out, 2020)
In 2020, Cressa Maeve Áine (née Beer) created a ridiculously cute stop-motion short called "Coming Out," in which LittleGodzilla comes out to Godzilla as a trans girl. Áine described the film as "a combination of who I was and what I love," as well as a tribute to her late father, who she came out to in their final conversation. It quickly went viral, played at several film festivals, and was even reposted by the official English Godzilla Twitter (the account's sole acknowledgement of Pride to this day). That last feat was pretty shocking, since Toho rarely acknowledges fanworks outside of holding the occasional contest and issuing legal threats. As a result, the film has had a big impact on fanart—if you've ever seen LittleGodzilla drawn with a bow on her head, now you know why. Minilla, the original Son of Godzilla, has also been remarkably fluid in recent media. The character is referred to with they/them pronouns in "Godzilla: War for Humanity," "Brave Like Godzilla", and "Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp", and Chibi Minilla in "Chibi Godzilla Raids Again" is a girl, at least in the English translation. (Japanese pronouns are complicated.) Might be a coincidence, might not.
And with that, we've come full circle back to the monsters. "Coming Out" ends with a newly confident and supported LittleGodzilla ready to throw down with Baragon and cause billions of dollars in property damage. When kaiju dream, they dream of this. All the city-stomping in these stories can be cathartic for us humans too. Japanese audiences watching the original "Godzilla" in 1954 were observed to cheer during only one point of the movie: when he crashed through the National Diet Building, home to the Japanese parliament. Of course, it's even more satisfying watching government buildings crumble when the government has it out for you specifically.
Godzilla's saved fictional worlds countless times, but he can't do much about ours. Still, it's nice sometimes to see ourselves reflected in the characters of a franchise that occupies so much of our headspace, and which has staked a claim to profound insights about humanity and our relationship to the natural world.
Extra writing
- Shinji Ikari
Godzilla has crossed over with Neon Genesis Evangelion roughly ten million times since 2016, including in a Universal Studios Japan attraction, a few mobile games, a pachinko game, and… the Shinkalion movie, for some reason. Evangelion's reluctant protagonist, who appears in most of these crossovers, is 14-year-old Shinji Ikari. His distant father Gendo tasks him with piloting a giant "robot" called an Evangelion Unit to repel attacks on Japan by monsters called Angels. He quickly falls into a love triangle with two of the other pilots—but a dark horse emerges towards the end of the show. Kaworu Nagisa is introduced as a new pilot when Shinji's at one of his many emotional low points. They soon become extremely close, with Shinji blushing at, oh, about every other sentence Kaworu says. Hard to blame him, although Kaworu's flirtations infamously vary in intensity depending on which translation you're watching.
Kaworu turns out to be an Angel in disguise, and Shinji ultimately kills him at his own request, deepening the Third Child's despair. Their tragic relationship has played out many times since as the Evangelion franchise has expanded. Going off comments made by the cast and crew, the romantic overtones of this relationship in the show were unintentional, but spin-off media have often made them very intentional. As far as we're aware, this doesn't include any of the Godzilla crossovers, although Kaworu is in a few adorable pieces of merchandise and the pachinko game. Not much time for character interactions when the King of the Monsters is on the warpath.
Of the Heisei Godzilla, special effects director Koichi Kawakita said, "His purpose is not random destruction. He seeks out places where man has remodeled nature. Say a huge building goes up in your neighborhood. Paid for with your tax money. It's ugly and blocks your TV reception. You'd love to rip it to shreds, but you can't. That's where Godzilla comes in."
