King Ghidorah (Japanese: キングギドラ, Hepburn: Kingu Gidora) is a giant dragon-like extraterrestrial monster, or kaiju, in Toho’s Godzilla media franchise. It first appeared in the 1964 film Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, directed by Ishirō Honda. The character was initially created by Tomoyuki Tanaka, Eiji Tsuburaya, and Shinichi Sekizawa as an homage to the eight-headed mythological Japanese dragon Yamata no Orochi. Although the name of the character is officially trademarked by Toho as "King Ghidorah", the character was initially referred to as Ghidrah in some English markets. Although King Ghidorah's design has remained largely consistent throughout its appearances (an armless, bipedal, golden and yellowish-scaled dragon with three heads, two fan-shaped wings, and two tails), its origin story has varied from being an extraterrestrial planet-destroying dragon, a genetically engineered monster from the future, a guardian monster of ancient Japan, or a god from another dimension. The character is usually portrayed as the archenemy of Godzilla and a foe of Mothra, though it has had one appearance as an ally of the latter. Despite rumors that Ghidorah was meant to represent the threat posed by China, which had at the time of the character's creation just developed nuclear weapons, director Ishirō Honda denied the connection and stated that Ghidorah was simply a modern take on the dragon Yamata no Orochi.
Overview
Development According to special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya's protégé Teruyoshi Nakano, the initial idea for Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, came from Tomoyuki Tanaka, who also created Godzilla. Tanaka's inspiration came from an illustration of the Lernaean Hydra in a book about Greek mythology and Orochi of Japanese folklore. Tanaka was enamored with the idea of Godzilla fighting a multi-headed serpent but considered seven or eight heads excessive; thus, the number of heads was reduced to three. The final version, designed by Akira Watanabe, was a three-headed dragon with large wings, two tails, and of extraterrestrial origin. Toho also drew inspiration from the three-headed dragon Zmey Gorynych or King Dragon キング・ドラゴン (Kingu Doragon) in the Japanese version of the 1956 Soviet film Ilya Muromets, which had been distributed theatrically in Japan by Shintoho in March 1959. King Ghidorah's name is composed of "King" (キング, Kingu) and "Ghidorah". The "Ghidorah" part of the name comes from the pronunciation of the word "hydra" (Гидра, ˈɡʲidrɐ) in Russian, written as ヒドラ (Hidora) in Japanese. Other sources of inspiration included mythological creatures such as the hydra, cerberus, unicorn, pegasus, and qilin.
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