Everyone knows thatGodzillabegan as a living metaphor for the nuclear bomb. He gradually became less entangled with that theme over the years. The modern Monsterverse has something to say about nature and balance, but Godzilla is a far less straightforward metaphorical figure. Godzilla’s enemies vary between similar mythic figures and meaningless one-off monsters. Some of them seem to teleport in from the designer’s workshop, but others have more to them than visuals. Hedorah, for example, is the monstrous face of pollution.
The Monsterverse doesn’t seem especially interested in bringing back old kaiju characters. Godzilla and Kong stand out as the returning champions, butmost of the other monstersare relatively original.Godzilla: King of the Monsterstried to bring back three old favorites, and it became the worst-received entry in the franchise.Godzilla x Kong: The New Empireinvented several new Titans and raked in record profits. If Legendary takes that as a lesson, they may not feel the need to pack in callbacks. If they do decide to dredge up an old name or two, Hedorah would be a pretty great candidate to fit the new themes.
Yoshimitsu Banno, Yasuyuki Inoue, and Shinji Nishikawa
Kenpachi Satsuma, Kazuhiro Yoshida, and Hikaru Yoshida
First Appearance Date
May 16, 2025
Hedorah is the primary antagonist ofGodzilla vs. Hedorah, the eleventh film in the franchise. Yasuyuki Inoue designed the creature’s four distinct stages. Inoueworked on the originalGodzillaand several other projects in the franchise. As the film’s art director, Inoue imagined four phases of evolution for the creature. Its earliest phases look like tadpoles, but it quickly grows into a short, four-legged being. His third phase resembles a flying saucer or an avian manta ray. Finally, it attains its perfect stage and looks more like a traditional Godzilla monster. In every phase, Hedorah is gray and bizarre. Its body looks like a mess of damp seaweed or abandoned sludge. It’s often called the Smog Monster for several reasons, but it does look like living smog. Designer Yoshimitsu Banno once mentioned that Hedorah’s eyes somewhat resemble the human vagina. Anyone who looks at the creature might notice that the connection is tenuous at best, but the character’s eventual second appearance did feature titled eyes that completely removed the association.
Narratively, Hedorah is aminiscule alien being froma faraway nebula. It rode into Earth’s atmosphere on the back of a comet, likely traveling through the void of space for over 270 years. When the living matter reached Earth, it found various pollutants in the air, water, and soil. Over time, Hedorah evolved into something bigger and more powerful. It eats garbage from the ocean, chemicals in the dirt, and smoke from the air. When Godzilla encounters Hedorah, he finds it inhaling the pitch-black fumes from a smokestack like he’s hitting a massive bong. Hedorah’s makeup is unique. It’s mostly goo-based rather than thetraditionally solid monsters Godzilla fights.
What is Hedorah capable of?
Hedorah only appeared a couple of times, butit is a top-tier threat. Hedorah is very destructive, but its resilience might be its greatest asset. Any traditional weapons sink into Hedorah’s viscous form. Physical trauma, even from a force as great as Godzilla, passes through Hedorah without causing substantial damage. It can absorb and redistribute almost anything without issue. If anything does manage to hurt Hedorah, they must then avoid its horribly acidic blood. Most of Hedorah’s body is caustic enough to melt Godzilla’s flesh. Only its eyes are vulnerable. Hedorah can sling its acidic body as sludge or mist, attacking enemies from multiple fronts. It can burn, dissolve, and suffocate almost anything by wielding parts of its body. Hedorah can also fire a burning red beam from its eye. Hedorah is capable of immense destruction by concentrating human pollution into more harmful forms and its body can’t easily be destroyed. It onlyhas one notable weakness, which is being solidified and dried out via electrical current.
What happened to Hedorah?
Hedorah only appears in its debut feature andFinal Wars. Its run is short, but impactful. Hedorah drawsattention from Godzilla bydestroying populated areas to eat more of humanity’s pollutants. As is often the case with Godzilla monsters, Hedorah lost the first few rounds. Godzilla easily defeated Hedorah several times, but the Smog Monster repeatedly destroyed factories and grew larger. Eventually, it reached its perfect phase and posed a serious threat to the King of the Monsters. Hedorah briefly gained the upper hand with its toxins and eye lasers, but the JSDF joined the fight on Godzilla’s side. With a set of massive electrodes, the Japanese military managed to dry out part of Hedorah’s body. The machine broke during the bout, but Godzilla used a blast of his atomic breath to empower the electrodes again. This shattered Hedorah into dust, but a second, smaller Hedorah escaped from its disintegrated body and took to the sky. In a rare feat, Godzilla used his atomic breath to achieve liftoff and fly after Hedorah. Godzilla used the electrodes to reduce Hedorah to dust. A new version of the character emergedinGodzilla: Final Wars. This iteration was far less durable, as it and Ebirah died in a single prolonged burst of Godzilla’s atomic breath.
Hedorah is a solid representative of an issue that still remains critical to modern culture. It would be a perfect mascot forthe dangers of pollution today, just as it was in 1971. Imagine the Great Pacific Garbage Patch coming to life in the form of a towering monster for the next Monsterverse movie. Hedorah is dead, but its message lives on in the lessons we refused to learn.
