King Ghidorah
[Height]
Showa Ghidorah: 100 meters
Heisei Ghidorah: 60–150 meters
Millennium Ghidorah: 49 meters
Monsterverse Ghidorah: 158.8 meters
Reiwa Ghidorah: Unknown
[Length]
Reiwa Ghidorah: 20 kilometers
[Weight]
Showa Ghidorah: 30,000 metric tons
Heisei Ghidorah: 50,000–70,000 metric tons
Millennium Ghidorah: 25,000 metric tons
Monsterverse Ghidorah: 141,056 metric tons
Reiwa Ghidorah: Unknown
King Ghidorah is the three-headed dragon kaiju that debuted in 1964's Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. He's widely considered Godzilla's greatest rival, and for good reason—the two have clashed repeatedly across multiple film series.
In his original appearance, King Ghidorah arrived on Earth via meteor, threatening total annihilation just as he'd supposedly destroyed Venus millennia before. It took Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra teaming up to drive him off. He kept coming back, though. Invasion of Astro-Monster saw him brainwashed by the Xiliens alongside Godzilla and Rodan, only to be freed and sent packing into space again. He showed up once more under alien control in Godzilla vs. Gigan, lost to Godzilla and Anguirus, and finally met his end during the Showa era in Destroy All Monsters, where the combined forces of Earth's monsters took him down for good.
The Heisei series reimagined him entirely. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah introduced a new origin: three creatures called Dorats fused together by a hydrogen bomb explosion, weaponized by time-traveling terrorists. Godzilla wrecked him badly enough that he ended up revived as the cyborg Mecha-King Ghidorah. He also turned up in Rebirth of Mothra III as a parasitic space monster, nearly defeating Mothra Leo before Leo powered up into his ultimate Armor form and destroyed him once and for all.
The Millennium series gave him one shot in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, flipping the script entirely—here he was actually a Guardian Monster defending Japan from Godzilla. More recently, the anime trilogy teased him before making him the central villain of GODZILLA: The Planet Eater, and he's become a major player in Legendary Pictures' MonsterVerse, serving as the main antagonist in Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
