G-Series Appearances: 5, 6, 9, 12, 15 (stock footage), 18, 25, 28, 32
Other Appearances: Zone Fighter Ep. 5-6, Rebirth of Mothra I, Rebirth of Mothra III, Godzilla: Project Mechagodzilla, Godzilla vs. Evangelion, Godzilla the Ride
We don't know exactly where the homeworld of the Ghidorahs is, but we have a pretty damn good idea: the same planet in the M Space Hunter nebula where Hedorah, Gigan, and the Nebulans are from. If you need help figuring out why Hedorah is from that planet, check out that page, and keep it up with Gigan's page (currently under construction) to fill in the gaps if you haven't figured out why this planet in the Orion constellation is the most important of the Godzilla series outside of Earth itself. So, in that group of "space dinosaurs," the species Gigan was created from (for simplicity's sake and because we all know it's true, I'm just going to say "Gappa" from here on out) and the Ghidorahs, we have a few basal characteristics such as the meteor cocoons and scale-like integument. From there, it diverges pretty wildly. With Ghidorahs it seems like each individual is vastly different, with Death Ghidorah being said to be the son of King Ghidorah in places. The Gappas can vary too, the one in Project Mechagodzilla already had scythes for hands before being turned into a cyborg, but since we've never seen more than one organic Gigan inside the main series it's hard to tell there. Notably, the Riserian Ghidorah-Zord Ryuto only has two heads, which, along with Orochi, implies that the three-headed thing can be altered in both directions.
With all of that, getting a clear picture of what Ghidorahs are, their lifecycle, why they're all so different from each other, and so on is pretty difficult. But Ghidorah is also Toho's third most profitable monster, so it's not like we don't have clues. To start with, the absolute basics are that Ghidorahs are capable of space travel because of their innate anti-gravity powers which are the result of their control over magnetic fields. Electromagnetism pound for pound is a stronger force than gravity so this makes sense, which easily explains how they became a space faring group. However space is really, REALLY big, you just won't believe how absolutely mind-bogglingly huge it is, so from there Ghidorahs have developed a method of surviving where they spend vast periods of time - as in geological time - drifting between planets, and when they do arrive on one they'll start sucking the life out of it. What this means for each Ghidorah seems to vary, and it doesn't always mean that all life on the planet is sucked dry, but in some cases it absolutely does. Because of this they don't seem to be picky and it seems like they can absorb energy from anything, really, which suggests that energy from starlight might keep them going during the long stretches of hibernation. After devastating a planet by draining it of life, a Ghidorah will encase itself in a cocoon that acts like a meteor, a diaspora that launches back into space to take them to the next world.
So that's the basics, but it gets weirder from there. King Ghidorah and *the* Ghidorah are bipedal, but Death Ghidorah is quadrupedal, while Orochi and Kaiser Ghidorah have been both at different times. That some have been both implies the different stances are life stages. The logical leap here is that the four legged form is the later stage and the bipedal one is the juvenile condition. Orochi appeared 10,000 years before the time of Yamato Takeru, then again in Yamato's time (presumably 92ce), and the subtitle given to them as a Guadian Monster was "the 10,000 year dragon king Ghidorah." The reason they only have three heads is taken to be that it hasn't been 10,000 years since 92ce by the time of GMK, which makes it seem more like it's less an age thing and more a regnerative thing, that a single individual can grow to a quadrupedal form, but if severely injured it can revert back from even a single headed form back to full power and continue its physiological changes, kind of like a digimon or something. How the number of heads is determined is unknown but since Orochi is the only 8-headed one and that individual is very unconventional in every other way it's likely that truly is individual variation. The other oddity is Kaiser Ghiorah, who's bipedal form lacks wings and appears to be fossilized or... something. There are a few possibilities for why this is that are elaborated on further (or will be when I finish this page) in Kaiser Ghidorah's notes section, but the long and short of it is "Monster X" is most likely something like a "chrysalis" or transitional form between whatever they were before and what is probably the standard fully grown/healed form of a Ghidorah. The only issue with saying that for sure is that "void" Ghidorah, the extracosmic one who warped gravity so hard they live outside of our universe and followed a path of evolution that totally discarded a solid body in favor of one made of pure energy... has, as part of it's energetic form, only two legs. Now granted, those legs are completely vestigal, but if that Ghidorah was able to make the quantum leap to outer god while completely skipping the four legged form, is the four legged form even natural at all? It's weird to think aboot, but the fact that the AniGoji Ghidorah is so off the beaten path that they don't even live in our universe anymore definitely allows for wiggle room as far as the lack of "adult" physiology goes... if you can even call it physiology at that point.
The other open question is related to the part of their lifecycle, the "Ghidorite" stage. In Final Wars we learn that the Gorath in that film is just the Ghidorite cocoon of Kaiser Ghidorah, in Gransazers a Gorath prop is used to represent the same life stage for Cabreon, who lacks "Ghidorah" in their name but is clearly a related monster and may be a "stem Ghidorah" or missing link between Gappa and Ghidorah, and in Project Mechagodzilla Gorath is again given a form of self-preservation and although we never see it hatch characters in the novel conclude that it probably was a space monster. This is, to date, every single appearance of Gorath outside of the original film, and so there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think that the Showa Gorath is not also a Ghidorah cocoon. But that Gorath is way off the scales from anything that came after, and although Kaiser Ghidorah and Cabreon did hatch, the others didn't, which begs the question of if, once you reach a certain mass, does a Ghidorah even need to anymore? It's also worth nothing that the two monsters we do see emerge from Gorath, Kaiser Ghidorah and Cabreon, are both walking skeletons. Gorath, then, is probably a link between the physical, life-draining Ghidorahs, and the approach to a kind of singularity, a "Ghidorah ascension" where they discard their body and become something like the AniGoji Ghidorah. After all, if you keep up-scaling the powers of a Ghidorah, which are already based on manipulating gravitational fields, wouldn't you eventually get a singularity at some point? In that sense, the singularities formed by "the" Ghidorah in order to emerge into our world are at that point indistinguishable in function from Ghidorite cocoons or the Goraths of Final Wars and Cabreon. Which makes it look like the variety seen in Ghidorahs really is comparable to something like a digimon, their species is so adaptable and hard to completely kill that the circumstances you throw onto them only seem to change which digivolution path they go down.
Have old timey samurai gods chop their heads off? Take a few millennia off to grow new ones and become spiritually connected with the souls of that planet as a conduit for the life energy you originally came for. Drift through space without stumbling into a planet for so long that the cocoon and starlight become your primary mode of being? Grow your cocoon to the size of a planet and begin to discard your body and turn into a weird zombie Ghidorah, or become so dense you discard your body entirely and fold space in on itself and live outside this universe altogether. Keep bumping into planets with dinosaurs and civilizations on them every couple thousand or million years? Grow four legs and start to develop picky and sometimes spiteful food preferences. Keep wandering into the territories of different megalomaniacal space aliens? Spend four movies being a war horse before you get dog piled by ten Earth monsters at once. Well, maybe not that last one...
Taking into account that the Mothra trilogy matches up with the 1954 continuity family in a lot of ways, we could hypothesize that maybe it forms a branch of that family that splits off from Mothra's time travel shenanigans onwards, which works on at least one level because Godzilla is absent from that timeline, and causing a difference in how an extinction event plays out could very well have erased Godzilla's ancestors from history. That's critical because Cretaceous King Ghidorah is the oldest confirmed Ghidorah to exist, and it would be hard to trace their lineage within the Godzilla series if we couldn't make use of that. Now, in Mothra III Leo time travels and defeats CKG by dropping them into a volcano, but leaves a severed tail behind. Because the movie is poorly written, we're supposed to believe that CKG is the younger form of Grand King Ghidorah - as in the same individual - which caused an extinction event, left Earth, and then returned, and Mothra's actions somehow retroactively made that not be the past anymore, and instead Grand was Cretaceous's regenerated tail. The movie frames both the survival of the tail and the whole rest of CKG as equally leading to Grand, but that's not possible because cause comes before effect and the future that we see play out in that movie has Grand in it, meaning they can only be the regenerated tail. The next oldest Ghidorah is Death, which only exists in the Mothra trilogy, and word on the street they're KG's son... and if CKG died then "KG" in that continuity at that point would mean the regenerated tail, i.e. Grand King Ghidorah.
The next two oldest Ghidorahs are the bizarre and probably unique AniGoji "void" Ghidorah and Orochi/GMK Ghidorah. While just Ghidorah can be safely said to have no connections and be their own thing, Orochi is a little more complicated because appears on Earth. You can hear my thoughts on this in more detail in that Ghidorah's notes (when I finish them) but the quick version is that Orochi is in the same boat as Grand, a regenerated piece of a Ghidorah that came to Earth long before. This may or may not make it the 1954 continuity family equivalent to the Mothra trilogy's Grand KG. Another contender for that would be the 1st generation King Ghidorah, and here's where things get complicated and why there's no chart: King Ghidorah appears in 1999 in exactly two timelines, the Mothra Trilogy, and GMMG, and in both cases they are defeated by Mothra alone. The parallel is obvious and it may mean that the GMMG timeline is a third outcome where somehow Grand KG and Godzilla both exist. The physical similarities between Grand and 1st also draw a parallel between them and the thing is there's a lot of variety with Ghidorahs so this is far more important a detail than it would be for, say, a Mothra or Godzilla. But if CKG left Earth unharmed then there shouldn't be remains to regenerate in the first place, but if that was true there would be no Orochi, so CKG definitely left something behind. This might mean that unlike what happened due to Leo's time tomfoolery, both a severed tail or whatever and the main body of CKG survived, and the tail regenerated into Orochi while the rest of them went on to reproduce the 1st generation King Ghidorah somehow.
Another complication is, as long as we're looking at material that connects back to ther main series, the Ride Ghidorah, using a design inspired by, of all things, the Hollywood Ghidorah, looks a hell of a lot like Cretaceous, and again that's pretty significant when each individual is so strongly differentiated. That Ghidorah also has blue blood like an Angel, a trait which is shared with Shin Ghidorah, who visually is extremely different but seems to have powers developed to the same degree as Kaiser. The blood of Ghidorahs is another inconsistent aspect to the degree where it makes every similarity significant. So maybe Shin is related to Ride, and Ride is an alternate universe version of Cretaceous that never died? And what aboot Kaiser? Or the Showa Gorath? You see the problem with all of this is that when you have individual variation so pronounced it makes every single connection seem important, but at the same time, in any given timeline there's only one or two Ghidorahs max, so drawing connections to their lineage between the timelines is almost completely futile because no two continuities share enough Ghidorah history that we actually see in the series to get a better picture of the wider continuity family. So, that's the real reason there's no chart here: it's a puzzle that probably can't even BE solved. So, my idea at the moment here is, unless there is a very direct or obvious direct link, each Ghidorah is essentially its own individual that enters into the story out of pure astronomical coincidence.
Height: 100 meters
Wingspan: 150 meters
Weight: 30,000 tons
Abilities: Flight, Gravity Beams, Hurricane Winds, Magnetic Field, Ghidorite, Bioradar
History: A Ghidorah feared throughout the universe, it first entered the Solar System 5,000 years ago and destroyed an advanced civilization present on Venus. It then entered into a Ghidorite cocoon and traveled to Earth in 1965, it's coming foretold by a descendent of the Venusians who fled to Earth after Ghidorah's initial attack. Because of the threat posed to Earth and Mothra's (2nd B) inability to stop King Ghidorah on her own, she asked Godzilla (2nd) and Rodan (2nd) for help, but was refused, and attempted to fight King Ghidorah, failing miserably. This pushed Godzilla and Rodan to cooperate finally, and together the three Earth monsters managed to chase King Ghidorah back out into space. There it flew into the middle reaches of the Solar System and attempted to attack Planet X, but the civilization of Xiliens living there were able to control the monster using magnetic waves. Ghidorah became used as a ploy to get the Earthlings to lend them Godzilla and Rodan to supposedly help fight off King Ghidorah, which mankind agreed to. After gaining control of all three monsters, they were deployed to Earth as part of the Xilien's invasion force, with Ghidorah first being sent to destroy the United States. When the Xilien computers detected a flaw in their plans as the Earthlings worked to counter them, the plans changed and King Ghidorah joined Godzilla and Rodan in Japan, causing red dots to decrease and green dots to increase, which is a good thing for the Xiliens. The Earthlings were successful in breaking the magnetic control over the monsters regardless with the A-Cycle Light Ray Cars, causing them to revert to their natural states, with King Ghidorah again being chased back off into space by the combined efforts of Godzilla and Rodan.
King Ghidorah's whereabouts in space were unknown for around 5 years, but it was eventually found by the aliens of M Space Hunter Nebula back inside a Ghidorite cocoon, who utilized it as part of their invasion plan by controlling the monster with special action tapes, which presumably work similarly to the Xilien's magnetic wave technology. Working in tandem with Gigan (1st), the two space monsters attacked Earth and plowed through JSDF forces including the new type-70 Maser Cannons, before being confronted by Godzilla (II) and Anguirus (2nd). The space monsters seemed to be winning before the Nebulan base was destroyed, severing the control of the action tapes and reverting both back to their natural states. Ghidorah and Gigan continued to antagonize the Earth monsters afterwards, but both eventually saw the situation as not worth the trouble and flew back off into space. It was the Garoga who next used King Ghidorah as part of their invasion, a marked step up from their usual stable of monsters, although the means or extent of their control over the monster is unclear. The again cocooned Ghidorah was loaded into a terrorbeast missile and deployed in a scheme to destroy the Research Institute of Future Science and their Blue-Green system along with it. Ghidorah was intercepted by the Zone family, but used the power of the Dark Prism to drain solar energy and depower the giant Zone Fighter. Zone Great used his Bolt Thunder against King Ghidorah and caused enough damage to sever its control over the Dark Prism, allowing Zone Fighter to battle the monster and lure it into space by using the proton crystal at the Zone family's house. This left the house vulnerable and so the Garoga recalled Ghidorah back to Earth to resume the mission to destroy the institute. Zone Fighter again fought Ghidorah, failing to protect the building, although the specs for Blue-Green system survived off site. The Zone family then used the Pandora Capsule to reach Ghidorah in space, where Zone Fighter finally lured them to Venus, getting the Garoga to order Ghidorah to retreat as Zone Fighter appeared to be winning the battle. Zone Fighter chased Ghidorah but retreated as Ghidorah fled to the orbital Garoga Fortress.
After the invasion was thwarted, Ghidorah again entered their Ghidorite cocoon and their location remained unknown for over 20 years. It wasn't until the later invasion of the Kilaakians that the space monster was used as a weapon once more, this time as a failsafe to fight off the Earth monsters after the Kilaakian control over them was broken. Unfortunately, the combined forces of the ten Earth monsters that gathered at the Kilaak base at Mt. Fuji was overwhelming to Ghidorah, and the great space terror was finally killed by the army of Earth monsters led by Godzilla, Anguirus, and Gorosaurus (2nd), with additional assistance from Rodan (2nd), Minilla (1st), Mothra (3rd), and Kumonga (2nd). Let history remember that at the final defeat of the great space monster, Varan (2nd), Manda (2nd), and Baragon (2nd) were... also there.
Notes: Okay, so this is a fun one. It's explicit that Ghidorahs have some form of psychic ability - the Dorats are empathic, Grand just straight up mind controls Lora, Kaiser is a... well, Kaiser, etc. - but the specifics of it tend to vary as far as how they explain it off screen. On screen, of course, this weird aspect of Ghidorah physiology is never directly addressed outside of the Dorats. But the 1st generation never really displays anything like this. Princess Salno only has her premonitions because of her Venusian heritage, so that's not Ghidorah's doing, and all of the seeming telekinesis in Zone Fighter is explained away as either wind or anti-gravity. But one of the wikis has some details dug up from one of those goofy licensed books which actually has the explanation for it, and in this case it's called a "bioradar," which exists as a way for Ghidorahs to navigate through space, and the telepathy stuff is just a bonus feature. This actually is the best interpretation of the weird psychic abilities of Ghidorahs I've ever seen, because if you notice it's never something any Ghidorah actively attempts offensively in any kind of consistent way, and if Grand can use it for mind control then it's even more conspicuous that it doesn't happen more often. Like, why not control the other fairies? You get the impression that Ghidorahs don't even really understand this is even a thing they can do, like it has to be a learned behavior, right? And so obviously the places where you see it get the most plot relevance are when civilized species take addvantage of it to control Ghidorah. Humans tweaked the genes to make their Ghidorah pets receptive to empathic projections and we know at least one group of aliens takes advantage of their Ghidorah in the same way. So aside from Grand, it's actually something of a weakness for Ghidorahs, but still technically a cool ability worth noting.
Height: 100 meters
Wingspan: 150 meters
Weight: 30,000 tons
Abilities: Flight, Gravity Beams, Hurricane Winds, Magnetic Field, Ghidorite, Bioradar
History: The first known Ghidorah to enter the Solar System arrived on Planet Venus, where it successfully drained the life force of the planet and destroyed the civilization there. However, the Venusians were somehow able to stop King Ghidorah, managing to kill the monster even though they failed to survive its onslaught in the end. While no trace of the civilization remained, over 52 hundred years later in the early 23rd century, the corpse of the super space monster was discovered by humans still on Venus, and its genetic material was used to create designer pets known as Dorats.
Notes: It's speculative on my part to say the Venusian civilization still existed in the VS continuity subfamily, because there is of course the possibility that the civilization was founded by reverse ancient astronauts - people from the ancient civilization on Earth that predate the Infant Islanders and were destroyed by Battra in the VS timelines - along with any other random past divergences we may not be privy too. But the kicker here is that Ghidorahs are, like, the most powerful monsters outside of Godzillas, so you would never just find the corpse of one for no reason. Ghidorahs also live for millions of years, so it very much seems like violence is the only way to get rid of them. Hence, something killed that novelization Ghidorah, and Ghidorahs only prey on planets with life on them, so the only real answer to why this KG is dead in the first place has to be that something living on Venus killed it. At that point, to say it was anything but the Venusians is far more speculative, because the only other real option is some sort of Venusian guardian monster that we've never seen or heard of before. And hey, maybe that completely speculative monster does exist, but... that's not supported by the films. What the films say is that the VS timeline is made up of sequels that branch off the original continuity after the first film, and in the original continuity the Venusian Ghidorah encountered a civilization on Venus when they attacked there.
Height: 140 meters4
Wingspan: 175 meters
Weight: 70,000 tons
Abilities: Flight, Gravity Beams, Energy Bite, Hurricane Winds, Microwave Empathy
History (VS-1): Created by the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in 1954, the three Dorats left on Lagos Island in place of the Godzillasaurus mutate and fuse. Its whereabouts and activities after that are unknown.
History (VS-2): After being dormant for 38 years, time travelers from the VS-1 future of 2204 take control over the monster using the natural empathic abilities of the Dorats. King Ghidorah flew from Lagos Island to Kyushu, where it ravaged Fukuoka, Hiroshima, and other cities across the island. From there the Futurians sent it north into Hokkaido. Here it clashed with the newly revived Godzilla (3rd), now far larger and more powerful. King Ghidorah seemed to have the upper hand until the computer being used to control it onboard the time machine MOTHER was destroyed. Godzilla used his spiral heat ray to sever Ghidorah's middle head, causing Ghidorah to flee until it collapsed in the Sea of Okhotsk, where it remained all but dead for the next 212 years. There, the barely alive body of the monster is revived with 23rd century technology into a cyborg.
History (VS-3/4): After Ghidorah's defeat at the hands of Godzilla, and the subsequent time traveler alterations made by bringing the monster's cyborg future self into the past, the original two-headed organic Ghidorah remains at the bottom of the sea. Here, it either dies at some point after 2204, or is perhaps erased from reality if the Futurians weren't lying when they said two of the same individual can't be at the same place at the same time.
Notes: Books at the time went back and forth between calling the VS series KG and MKG 140 and 150 meters. The matter is settled in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla where it just straight up says MKG is 150m tall. So, why am I calling the non-cyborg Ghidorah 140m here? Two reasons:
