1969's All Monsters Attack is a very strange movie, and kind of sits apart from the rest of the series. It's the only entry where Godzilla never actually appears, all of the monster sequences happen inside Ichiro's head. And if you want to get real weird with it - something I definitely encourage - you can come up with all sorts of ideas on how Gabara is real and some sort of psychic monster, or this stuff is actually happening and Ichiro somehow is astrally projecting, or whatever. But the film itself seems pretty clear in its intention that its meant to take place in our world, where Godzilla is just a monster movie, and Gabara is a creation of Ichiro's mind based on his bully from school. So... that's fine, but what to do with that information when you're making a neocities website with timelines covering all of the films? Well... I guess you just have to make a timeline that features real world events!
The rationale of what gets included here is basically, if it happened for real, and there's a fictional version of it relevant to the timeline of any of the Godzilla movies, I'll include the real historical version of those events here. Outside of that, because if the events of the 10th Godzilla film were both real and were dramatized in a film... that would be a little weird. As a consequence of that, this timeline will only present real world information about the films up to that point.
Key
Superscript = These are the number of the film in the series where the information comes from, with 1 being Godzilla, 2 being Godzilla Raids Again, etc. Additional superscripts will indicate supplementary sources not present in the films themselves, which will be explained at the bottom of the page.
Bold = Below the year heading, dates and times in bold are ones that taken directly from the films. These are anchoring points used to figure out when the rest of the events take place.
251,939,051 to 251,878,051bce
The formation of the Siberian Traps lead to the deadliest animal mass extinction event in the entire history of Earth, the Great Dying. Among the victims of this extinction are the trilobites.*
226,998,051 to 201,398,051bce
An animal who's remains will later be identified as Gojirasaurus quayi dies. It is probably a very large Coelophysis mixed in with the remains of a Shuvosaurus.**
1954
March 1st, 6:45 - The US nuclear test Castle Bravo is detonated at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The blast is more than twice as large as predicted at 15 megatonnes, making it the largest nuclear detonation ever unleashed by the country, and was the largest in history at the time. Fallout from the explosion fell for miles around, well outside the predicted range, causing contamination of fish and people living in nearby islands. The Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5 was among the victims, killing one of the crew, and sparking renewed anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan.
November 3rd - Theatrical premiere of the 1st Godzilla film, Godzilla.
1955
April 24th - Theatrical premiere of the 2nd Godzilla film, Godzilla's Counterattack.
1956
April 27th - The 1st Godzilla film is heavily edited and dubbed in English, and released theatrically in the US as Godzilla, King of the Monsters. It features newly filmed footage starring Raymond Burr as the reporter Steve Martin.
1959
May 21st - The 2nd Godzilla film is picked up for US distribution, and heavily edited and dubbed in English. New footage is inserted from... somewhere??? It is truly, truly, truly baffling. More baffling is the decision of the US distributors to remove Godzilla's name from the title and dialogue, trying to pass it off as a new, unrelated monster, for... reasons??? This version is titled Gigantis, the Fire Monster.
1962
August 11th - Theatrical premiere of the 3rd Godzilla film, King Kong versus Godzilla.
1963
June 26th - The 3rd Godzilla is heavily edited and dubbed in English, and released theatrically in the US as King Kong vs. Godzilla. It features new inserted footage by horrendously terrible actors calling Godzilla stupid.
1964
April 29th - Theatrical premiere of the 4th Godzilla film, Mothra versus Godzilla.
November 25th - The 4th Godzilla film is edited and dubbed in English, and released theatrically in the US as Godzilla vs. the Thing. It features an exclusive special effects sequence filmed by Toho with the frontier missile cruisers.
December 20th - Theatrical premiere of the 5th Godzilla film, Three Giant Monsters: Earth's Greatest Battle.
1965
September 13th - The 5th Godzilla film is edited and dubbedin English, and released theatrically in the US as Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster. The edit fixes some of the continuity issues of the original, but the dub changes Princess Salno's alien ancestry to Mars rather than Venus. Among the audiences of this run is my mom.
December 19th - Theatrical premiere of the 6th Godzilla film, The Great Monster War.
1966
June - The 6th Godzilla film is edited and dubbedin English, aside from Nick Adams, but will will not see wide release in the US until over 4 years later. The reason for this may have been because of the distributor's lack of faith in the film.
December 17th - Theatrical premiere of the 7th Godzilla film, Godzilla • Ebirah • Mothra: Great Duel in the South Seas.
1967
February - Toho commissions an English dub of the 7th Godzilla film, which is retitled Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, to have ready to give international distributors.7*
December 16th - Theatrical premiere of the 8th Godzilla film, Battle of Monster Island: Son of Godzilla.
1968
February - Toho commissions an English dub of the 8th Godzilla film, simply titled Son of Godzilla, to have ready to give international distributors.8*
July - Rather than use the existing English dub, US distributors of the 7th Godzilla film choose to commission a new dub with a few minor edits. This version is released directly to television as Godzilla versus the Sea Monster.
August 1st - Theatrical premiere of the 9th Godzilla film, Total Monster March.
October - Toho commissions an English dub of the 9th Godzilla film, which is retitled Destroy All Monsters, to have ready to give international distributors.9*
1969
May 28th - Rather than use the existing English dub, the US distributors of the 9th Godzilla film choose to commission a new dub with a few minor edits. This version is released theatrically retaining the international title Destroy All Monsters.
August - The 7th and 8th Godzilla films are theatrically released in the UK on a double bill. Both are the international export dubs commissioned by Toho, with the 7th film being retitled Ebirah, Terror of the Deep, and some minor edits made to Son of Godzilla.
September - Rather than use the existing English dub, US distributors of the 8th Godzilla film choose to commission a new dub with a few minor edits. This version is released directly to television as Son of Godzilla.8*
December 20th - All Monsters Attack.
1970
March 13th - The edited and English dubbed version of the sixth Godzilla film begins showings at various continental US military bases as Invasion of the Astros.
July 29th - The edited and English dubbed version of the sixth Godzilla film finally recieves a public US theatrical release as Monster Zero.
December 16th - Theatrical premiere of Son of Godzilla.
1977
April 25th - The remains of a basking shark are dredged up by the Japanese fishing vessel Zuiyo Maru off the east coast of New Zealand. Unable to recognize the remains for what they are in their badly decomposed state, the crew reports that they've found the body of a plesiosaur, which the press calls "New Nessie."
July 28th - An article in the magazine New Scientist goes over why it's just the remains of a basking shark. This, of course, goes ignored by the public.
1980 to 1983
The edited and English dubbed versions of the 4th and 6th Godzilla films show on US television and later VHS with a new title cards under the names Godzilla vs. Mothra and Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, respectively.††
1987
A baffling version of the US television version of the 7th Godzilla film is released on VHS with the opening and end titles clipped off and replaced with posterized clips from Son of Godzilla giving it the title Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. This version is predicated on the false notion of the film being in the public domain, as well some bizarre rational behind it being a "clip." But that's a whole different story.
1989
The heavily edited and English dubbed version of the 2nd Godzilla film gets a new video generated title card calling it Godzilla Raids Again for its VHS release.
1991
February 2nd - Episode 13 of the 2nd season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 features the falsely assumed public domain VHS release of Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster.
December 26th - The USSR officially dissolves into 15 independent states.
December 30th - The Japanese asset bubble bursts, leading to the lost decades.
1992
May 5th - The edited English dub of the 6th Godzilla film is synced up to the uncut original version and released on VHS in the UK as Invasion of the Astro-Monsters, alongside the uncut international dubs of the 7th, 8th, and 9th films.†
2005
February 8th - The international export dub of the 7th Godzilla film is released on DVD in the US with a new title card calling it Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster.
Sources
All otherwise unsourced deep time years are taken from the ICS timescale as of June 2023. I didn't use the ICS colors on this page because this covers both prehistoric and historical times, and it would throw off the 90's Godzilla webzone aesthetic if all the ce events were pale yellow. I'm not providing sources here for real world historical events because it's rather pointless, since they're objective facts, all viable sources about them will have the same data for the date. Anything outside of the facts is my own editorializing which I don't need a source for.
Most release dates of the films are well known with solid records of them so you can get the same information basically anywhere, and I have the original Japanese release dates of them all memorized anwyas, but if you want a source you can see them all at a glance on this wikipedia page. The weird thing about it is that it lists the live action and animated movies separately, so Godzilla Zero is 第30作 (work no. 30) instead of 33 or 0 like from the marketing countdown, which is baffling to me.
Other dates for the releases of the various Americanizations and dubs are a little less ubituitous but I usually trust Wikizilla for those, and regular Wikipedia if they don't have good info. UK releases are sourced from the article Monsters from an Unknown Culture Part 2, which covers all of the English versions of the films that are unique to that market. MST3K episode air dates from the MST3K wiki, obviously. Dates more obscure than those I'll leave a specific source for.
7* - I've seen the US TV version's release be anywhere from 1967 to 1969. I go with 1968 here because it's the most frequently used. The month of release is completely a guess, I just assumed summer as this is one of the south seas films, it seemed appropriate. As for the international export dub, the months are estimations based on the release schedules of other films. The anime trilogy premiered on Netflix exactly two months after the theatrical releases, and if you think it's unfair to compare dubs in the 60's and 70's to ones done in the 2010's, keep in mind that some of the West German dubs of the Champion Festival films, which are based on the international dubs, came out less than six months later.
8* - Basically everything that applies for the previous film applies here, except that 1969 is the most frequently used year for it's TV debut. As for the month, I don't know that there's a causal connection here - in fact there probably isn't - but the fact that the UK theatrical release of this film used the international dub rather than the TV dub aired in the US kind of makes me think that the TV dub didn't exist yet. Thinking about that for like 5 seconds brings you to the obvious question as to why, if the TV version of Sea Monster was released in 1968, why the hell didn't they use that? And the answer to that is... I don't know? Listen, the format of this timeline requires me to at least nail down a month, and this is the best that I've got.
9* - Two month production time of the international dub an assumption, see 7*.
* - Burgess, Seth D et al. “High-precision timeline for Earth's most severe extinction.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America vol. 111,9 (2014): 3316-21. doi:10.1073/pnas.1317692111
** - Carpenter, Kenneth. "A giant coelophysoid (Ceratosauria) theropod from the Upper Triassic of New Mexico, USA." Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie-Abhandlungen (1997): 189-208.
I found it here but it's one of those fucking pay sites, so have fun spending €29 on that I guess. The genus is contested, and its diagnostic features have been variably described as being material from a Shuvosaurus or indistinguishable from Coelophysis outside of its large size. This later opinion comes from Mickey Mortimer, who is a personal hero of mine because she's so damn thorough when it comes to phylogenetic testing. You can read her assessment of the material here on her website the Therapod Database (which is really incredible and I used to get lost in it for hours back in the day, though I don't know how much she's kept up with it now).
† - The release dates for the UK VHS tapes used to be recorded on Amazon some years ago. They aren't there any longer, but I recorded them while they were. The PolyGram tapes being released on May 5th, 1992, and the Carlton tapes on July 13th, 1998.
†† - These dates of these video retitles are a little confused. Wikizilla says they started airing on TV in 1980 for Monster Zero and "the 1980's" for Mothra, and basically every source says the VHS tapes are from 1986. But... this is wrong, high quality scans of the VHS covers clearly give the copyright year as 1983 on the Monster Zero tape. Therefore, my assumption is that these versions started airing on television in 1980 and the VHS tapes are from '83, and the reason some covers say 1986 is just because they're a second run.
