Useless but essential pop culture tidbits and trivia from the worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror that just might prove useful the next time you play Trivial Pursuit.
Surely every Science Fiction and Fantasy fan knows Godzilla, the radio-active fire breathing reptile that has ravaged Tokyo across dozens of movies (and New York once, but why bring that up?). And many fans are certainly familiar with Syfy’s never ending slate of ridiculous critters-run-among Saturday night films that have lately taken on absurd titles like Sharktopus, Dinocroc vs. Supergator, and Mega Python vs. Gatoriod. But did you know that Godzilla, who first appeared in his self-titled debut film in 1954, actually pre-dated those beasties by more than half a century in receiving a hybrid name combining multiple animals? In Japan, the infamous lizard is known as Gojira, pronounced godzira thus leading to the anglicized Godzilla. Gojira, though, is the combination of two Japanese words: gorira meaning gorilla and kujira meaning whale. Thus Gojira, or Godzilla as we know and love him, is really a Gorilla-Whale! Just think of what the folks at Syfy could do with that. Or better yet, let’s try not to think about it. Of course Godzilla was never intended to be an actual hybrid of those two animals, the name just alludes to his large size and strength as well as his affinity for the ocean. The Japanese, fortunately, did not try to take the name quite as literally as some of those artistically-challenged films mentioned above! Perhaps we should keep this under wraps, though, lest we get Sharktopus vs. Gorilla-Whale vs. Hamster-Croc hitting the schedule on an upcoming Saturday night.
Buy the Original Godzilla Movies on DVD from Amazon.com:
