King Ghidorah (Heisei)

King Ghidorah (キングギドラ Kingu Gidora) is a three-headed dragon kaiju that appeared in the 1991 Godzilla film, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. The centerpiece of a scheme by time-traveling terrorists from the year 2204 to bring Japan to its knees in the past before it could become a corrupt economic superpower, King Ghidorah was the result of three genetically engineered pets called Dorats being left behind by the Futurians on Lagos Island in 1944. In 1954, the Dorats were exposed to the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test conducted at nearby Bikini Atoll, fusing them together and transforming them into King Ghidorah. In the year 1992, the Futurians took control of King Ghidorah and unleashed him in Japan, demanding the nation surrender to their demands as the monster leveled Fukuoka and moved on to Hokkaido. Unable to defeat the three-headed monster, the Japanese government attempted to recreate Godzilla, whom they believed had been erased from history by the Futurians, by using a nuclear submarine to irradiate the Godzillasaurus they believed was lying dormant in the Bering Sea. Their plan only resulted in the already-mutated Godzilla becoming even larger and more powerful, and the now-revitalized King of the Monsters subsequently came ashore in Hokkaido. The Futurians ordered King Ghidorah to attack Godzilla, and as the two titans battled a defector from the Futurians, Emmy Kano, launched an assault on her comrades' ship with the aid of writer Kenichiro Terasawa and the android M11. The Futurians' control over King Ghidorah was severed, and Godzilla eventually took the upper hand in the battle, decapitating King Ghidorah's middle head. After Godzilla destroyed the Futurians' ship and ended their scheme for good, the wounded King Ghidorah attempted to escape, only for his wings to be blasted out by Godzilla's atomic breath, after which he plummeted into the ocean below. When it became clear that the powered-up Godzilla was now a greater threat to Japan than King Ghidorah, Emmy and M11 returned to 2204 to salvage King Ghidorah's preserved carcass from the ocean. They revived and enhanced the monster as the cyborg dubbed Mecha-King Ghidorah, then returned to 1992 to stop Godzilla from destroying Tokyo. Mecha-King Ghidorah succeeded in capturing Godzilla and carrying him out over the ocean before Godzilla knocked him out of commission with his atomic breath, with both monsters falling into the sea below. Mecha-King Ghidorah's wreckage would later be salvaged by the United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Center and used to build an even more advanced anti-Godzilla machine: Mechagodzilla.