Illinois

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its most populous city, and the third-most populous city in the U.S., is Chicago, and its capitol is Springfield. G-Fest, North America's preeminent kaiju convention, has been held in Chicago or its suburbs almost every year since 1994. The city is the site of the final battle in the 2018 film Rampage and also features Godzilla spinoff media such as the book Godzilla Discovers America, an episode of Godzilla: The Series, and the first issue of Godzilla vs. America.
History
- Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) [mentioned]
- Godzilla: The Series (TV 2000) [episode 30]
- King Kong (2005) [mentioned]
- 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) [mentioned]
- Kong: Skull Island (2017)
- Rampage (2018)
- Godzilla Singular Point (TV 2021) [mentioned in episode 6]
Showa era
Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
Steve Martin, a journalist for United World News in Chicago, takes a rest period in Tokyo, Japan to meet up with with old friend Daisuke Serizawa.
Godzilla: The Series
"Metamorphosis"

The metamorphosed Megapede headed toward Chicago, Illinois, where it landed atop the John Hancock Center Tower and began to create a mating call. The military tried to halt the beast but was only successful in angering it instead. Nick Tatopoulos attempted to use an electric net to capture the Megapede, but it ultimately failed. Godzilla arrived and attacked the Megapede, chasing it throughout Lake Michigan. Godzilla ultimately defeated the Megapede by drowning it.
King Kong (2005)
When Manny broke up with Ann Darrow, he told her that he was moving back to Chicago. Carl Denham's Bell & Howell camera which he took to Skull Island was made in Chicago.[1]
10 Cloverfield Lane
According to Howard Stambler's words, his wife took his daughter Megan away from him to Chicago. Later, there was an alien attack and they never saw each other again.
Monsterverse
Kong: Skull Island
After making it off of Skull Island despite the nearly 30 years he had been stranded there, Hank Marlow reunites with his wife in Chicago and finally meets his son.
Rampage

The Energyne company was located in the Willis Tower in Chicago. Following the destruction of the Athena-1 space station, Energyne CEO Claire Wyden and her brother Brett Wyden attempted to retrieve the samples of the Project Rampage pathogen which had crash landed on Earth across the United States. After discovering that the pathogen had already been administered to Ralph and George, Claire planned to use a transmitter atop the Willis Tower to send out a low frequency signal that the mutant animals would respond to; George, who was held in a plane by the Department of Homeland Security with Davis Okoye and Dr. Kate Caldwell in custody, would bring down the plane and kill Kate in the process; Ralph would be drawn to Chicago, killed by the military, and Energyne would extract the pathogen.
After the signal was activated, Ralph indeed advanced towards Chicago, and was later joined by George - who survived the plane crash - and the two arrived in the city. The U.S. military was unable to repel the two monsters, who were quickly overwhelming their forces. Not long after, the two mutants were joined by Lizzie, who was also drawn to the transmitter's signal and entered the city through the Chicago River. The military was unable to halt the three mutant's advance, and an airstrike with a Massive Ordnance Air Blast was called as a last resort.
Meanwhile, Davis Okoye and Kate Caldwell infiltrated the Willis Tower to get R-19 samples. They were able to get three of them before they were caught by Claire and Brett, who were preparing to evacuate. The Wyden siblings forced Davis and Kate to hand over the R-19 samples, before Claire shot Davis in order to coerce Kate to go with them to the top of Willis Tower as the three monsters began to ascend it. Before the Wyden siblings could get into their helicopter with Kate, intending for her to later reengineer the pathogen, George reached the top of the tower. Brett fled down the building, and George severely damaged the chopper before attacking the transmitter. Meanwhile, Davis - who had survived his wound as it did not hit any vital organs - reunited with Kate, and the two planned to administer an R-19 sample Kate pocketed to George. Claire once again held them at gun point, but Davis called George over while Kate slipped her R-19 sample into Claire's purse, which had the rest of the samples collected, and George devoured Claire and the R-19 samples by proxy. Meanwhile, Brett reached the ground floor of the Willis Tower, where he was caught by Russell, who let him go in exchange for him handing over the computer and a pet rat. But just as Brett exited the building, he was crushed by a large chunk of debris as the building began to collapse. Ralph reached the top, and Lizzie continued towards the top, while Davis and Kate got into the Wyden siblings' damaged helicopter, and used it to glide down just over the Willis Tower as it fell.
After the tower collapsed, George emerged from the rubble, the R-19 samples having successfully returned him to his normal disposition. Ralph and Lizzie emerged from the rubble themselves, and Kate left in a Humvee to try and get Russell to call off the air strike, while Davis and George stayed behind to fight the two mutants. George struck Lizzie with a chunk of metal, sending her rolling into a building back. Ralph then attacked George, and the two briefly fought before Ralph managed to get the upper hand. However, Davis fired on Ralph with a grenade launcher and tricked the wolf into flying right into an attacking Lizzie's jaws. Lizzie killed Ralph with a deathroll, decapitating him before turning her attention to George and Davis. Davis drew her attention with grenade launcher fire until he ran out of ammunition. Lizzie chased after Davis, destroying buildings around her and causing Davis to fall, dazing him. Lizzie prepared to kill Davis, before George attacked her from behind. George climbed onto her jaws, attacking at her head, but it did not seem to harm her significantly, and she flung him off, before overwhelming him. However, Davis flung a belt full of grenades into her gills, causing the mutant crocodile to collapse. However, Lizzie quickly got up, and attempted to crush Davis with her club tail, but George stopped it just in time. Lizzie flung George off her tail club and into a metal pole, which impaled him through the chest. Pressing her advantage, Lizzie once again overwhelmed George, biting his limbs and throwing him around. Davis quickly got into a fallen Apache helicopter and fired at Lizzie, drawing her attention away from George. Lizzie attacked Davis, attempting to kill him, when George leapt in and drove the metal spike he was previously impaled by into Lizzie's eye, piercing her brain and killing her. With the threats eliminated, the airstrike was called off.
George seemingly succumbed to his wounds but revealed that he was playing dead as a joke for Davis. George then helped rescue civilians who had still been trapped in the city.
Books
- "After King Kong Fell" (1973) [mentioned]
- Godzilla Discovers America (1988)
- Godzilla Returns (1996)
- Godzilla 2000 (1997)
- Godzilla vs. the Robot Monsters (1998) [mentioned]
- Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization (2017)
"After King Kong Fell"
While recounting the story of King Kong to his young granddaughter, Tim Howller recalled that he and his parents had traveled from their home in Busiris, Illinois to visit his Aunt Thea in New York, who had married a rich man and now lived in an apartment within the Empire State Building.
Godzilla Discovers America
Godzilla participates in a baseball game held in Chicago under the pseudonym Gary Godzi, helping the Lizards beat the Lions.
Godzilla Returns
Stephen Martin was a Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago reporter who witnessed Godzilla's destruction of Tokyo on November 3, 1954. The book he wrote about his experiences, This is Tokyo, became a classic of journalism. In the 1956 docudrama Godzilla, King of the Monsters, he was portrayed by Raymond Burr. He passed away in 1994, four years before Godzilla again attacked Japan. After initially scoffing at Martin's book, INN reporter Nick Gordon paid tribute to it in his broadcast following Godzilla's defeat.
Comics
- Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1 (2011) [store-exclusive variant cover]
- Godzilla #3 (2012)
- Godzilla vs. America: Chicago (2025)
- Godzilla #8–9 (2026) [mentioned in #9]
- Monarch: The Lost Adventures (2027) ["Keiko and the Brambleboar"]
Godzilla vs. America: Chicago
"Godzilla Does Chicago"
Fangoolie the Fan Man was once a paraglider renowned for dropping into sporting events with a giant fan strapped to his back. After the wind blew him into the path of the football that would have scored a game-winning field goal, costing Chicago's football team the NFC Championship Game, he became a outcast, and now works as a janitor. In a desperate bid to regain his social standing, he steals the keys to Mechagodzilla, which his employer has stored in an underground hanger to defend the Windy City against Godzilla. Fangoolie emerges at the helm of Mechagodzilla in downtown Chicago. As the machine is usually piloted by multiple people, he practices on its controls by obliterating the nursing home where his ex-girlfriend works and crushing his neighbor's beloved car. He then walks Mechagodzilla to the football stadium, where he plans to stage an attack which he will foil as the Fan Man using the machine's self-destruct. Just then, Godzilla emerges from Lake Michigan. He wastes little time pummeling Mechagodzilla as the football fans cheer. Fangoolie returns fire with Mechagodzilla's breath weapon, knocking a tooth out of Godzilla's mouth that crashes into the office of a dentist who killed his partner to secure the tallest practice in the world. Drunk on power, Fangoolie misses Godzilla with Mechagodzilla's eye laser and instead cleaves a building in half. Godzilla retaliates with his atomic breath, knocking off Mechagodzilla's head and leaving Fangoolie face-to-face with the King of the Monsters. He deploys a parachute to make his escape as the crowd jeers, announcing that he plans to save them from both giants. Before he can activate the self-destruct, however, Godzilla vaporizes his parachute, sending him crashing into the Lollapalooza. In the aftermath of the incident, he is arrested for the murder of thousands and the mayor bans all fans.
"Blue Line Sign"
A college student riding the Chicago "L" train, Jessie, tallies good omens as she works up the courage to ask out an art student Cameron Crowley, who she went to high school with. News reports from a fellow passenger's phone warn of seismic activity in Lake Michigan, a surge of radioactivity, and a military helicopter sortie. Just before she can open her mouth, the reporter hollers that Godzilla is attacking Chicago - and he's right outside the train. She tackles Cameron to the ground as his tail sheers off the top of the train car. They find that the emergency brake was tripped, but the driver was decapitated, and resolve to drive the train forward themselves. Godzilla, assailed with missiles, follows the train car to deter the helicopters from attacking. With her extensive knowledge of the line, Jessie determines that they won't return underground for another three stops. As Godzilla charges his atomic breath, she increases speed, determined to take more chances in life. As soon as the train disappears from sight, the helicopters fire, interrupting Godzilla's attack. Their fellow passengers celebrate; Cameron, recognizing her and caught up in the moment, asks her on a date. Jessie deems it a terrible sign that the first time they talked coincided with a Godzilla attack, then decides to discard her superstition and kiss him.
"Chi Godzilla"
After losing a battle in space to a giant amoeba, Godzilla crash-lands in rural Illinois and makes a beeline for Chicago, the closest major power center, to recharge for a rematch. At a community meeting on the crisis, Alderman Allan Gaines, representing Cottage Grove Heights, proposes luring Godzilla to his own ward with searchlights to avoid damage to downtown. When Terrence, one of his constituents, asks what will happen to Cottage Grove's residents, Gaines simply resolves to "rebuild even better." The plan is approved as Godzilla enters the city. Driving home, Terrence explains to his grandmother that Gaines plans to have Godzilla level the ward so he can sell the land to his developer friends, which he's been trying to do for years. Gaines himself doesn't live in the ward, instead residing in well-off Lake Forest. He arrives in Cottage Grove Heights to find his outraged neighbors preparing to evacuate. One neighbor is a snowplow driver who the city has called to help carry out Gaines's plan, giving Terrence an idea. As downtown Chicago shuts off its power, the snowplows deploy their searchlights and start driving - towards Lake Forest. Godzilla follows. Buses evacuate the residents, with Terrence personally seeing Gaines and his bickering allies to safety. As Godzilla trains his atomic breath on Gaines's house and surges with power, Terrence dryly tells him, "I'm sure you'll rebuild even better."
"Godzilla Versus Chicago"
Godzilla comes ashore in Chicago, to the delight of the city's #1 Godzilla fan and the terror of everyone else. Wrigley Field is leveled; Lori Lightfoot is missing; a hot dog stand closes early for the day. One woman, walking past an electronics store whose display TVs are all reporting on the crisis, remains oblivious. Bored, she wanders into an empty convenience store. The clerk explains there's an evacuation order, which she mistakes as a tornado warning. She asks to sample a Giant Woman Energy Drink on sale, which promptly turns her into a giant, bursting through the store's roof. She's amazed that the drink actually works as advertised - but she's also completely naked, so she wraps herself in a Chicago flag. Distracted by thoughts of her limitless prospects at a local lesbian bar, she suddenly finds herself standing next to Godzilla. He's confused, but soon resumes leveling Chicago. Realizing that the monster's rampage will destroy "not just the Loop, but also the parts of the city I like," she finishes the energy drink and surges to a even greater height than the King of the Monsters. She picks him up and carries him across Lake Michigan, leaving him to ravage Indiana.
Godzilla (2025)
Issue #8
Ursogar emerged from the midst of Chicago, being one of many kaiju that fall under May's control in her plan to cause a monster stampede across the United States.
Audio dramas
- Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1977) ["Godzilla vs. The Alien Invasion"]
Godzilla, King of the Monsters
"Godzilla vs. the Alien Invasion"
One night, after just passing through the locks from Lake Huron into Lake Michigan, the captain of a timber barge sees water bubbling in the middle of the lake. He and a sailor called Will watch as a gigantic lizard, at least 400 feet tall, arises from the water and begins heading for Wisconsin. They try to warn the mainland, but Will discovers their radio's vacuum tubes have all disintegrated, meaning that the creature is radioactive, and that they are a day's journey to the Wisconsin mainland. High above the western shore of Lake Michigan, 100 miles north of Chicago, an alien spacecraft led by Commander Bruton[a] lands to plant their species' birth pods in the shallows, as they have done many times before. With their own planet, the "World of Constant Sun", being too hot to properly hatch the pods, they chose Earth to be their new breeding ground. They try to act quickly to avoid being spotted as they plan to reveal themselves only after their numbers are great enough to enslave the human race. Elsewhere, two young Chicagoans named Billy and Linda drive up from Milwaukee to Port Washington, Wisconsin, where their associate Dr. Scott claimed to have seen UFOs off Wisconsin's Lake Michigan coast three times in the past year, and the two plan to camp out in hopes of seeing some for themselves. The three aliens hurriedly finish leaving their birth pods, and plan to return soon to become Earth's conquerors. Billy and Linda arrive at that same spot just in time to see the sunrise, but quickly notice that the morning star is moving, making it a UFO. Billy insists they get closer to it to take better photographs as a radio DJ claims that they are experiencing the hottest spring Wisconsin has seen in over 50 years. Despite this, two of the alien birth pods begin to hatch, and 200-foot-tall slimy green string-bean-like aliens emerge from the lake, prompting Billy and Linda's retreat. As they try to flee in their van, Linda sees another monster arise from the lake, the prehistoric lizard Godzilla. Billy begins photographing the ensuing battle. After killing the two mutant alien infants, Godzilla begins heading south. Fearful that he might attack Chicago, the two try to rush back to warn the city.
Aboard the alien spacecraft, they receive word that two of their pods have malfunctioned due to the state entering its warm season earlier than predicted. They fear that the eggs may suffer mutation if they hatch under these conditions, and Brutom hatches a plan to meet with his war fleet and launch the invasion ahead of schedule. When Billy and Linda return to Dr. Scott, they show him the photographs and he reveals to the youngsters that they have found the missing two-legged pleiosaur Godzilla, who had been missing since his last sighting in the Atlantic Ocean. Scott theorizes that Godzilla came inland via the St. Lawrence seaway and traveled through the Great Lakes before reaching Lake Michigan, attracted by the UFO activity. He goes on to explain that Godzilla is an "ancestral Tyrannosaurus" who was irradiated in the Sea of Japan. He is fundamentally friendly and good-natured, but is too big to exist peacefully with humans. They resolve to warn Chicago about Godzilla in hopes that they do not fire on him out of fear and mistrust. With the aliens only minutes away, and confident in their ability to control the mutants, the colonel stationed in the Chicago area refuses not to attack Godzilla on the off-chance that he is not actually friendly. Godzilla arrives in the city, and is quickly followed by alien warships and twenty of the giant mutants. Air support from the U.S. military finally arrives, but the alien ships are much faster. Godzilla quickly kills the mutants, and Dr. Scott asks the colonel to spare at least one for study. With their attack force depleted, the aliens retreat. Billy, Linda, and Dr. Scott celebrate their victory, but acknowledge Godzilla's starring role in the planet's defense. It is suspected that the aliens may try to conquer other, kaiju-less planets instead.
Trivia
- Illinois natives associated with the Godzilla franchise include producer Henry G. Saperstein, author Ed Godziszewski, and producer and dubber Riley Jackson.
- The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit which nearly levels Chicago in Rampage bears the fictitious and ironic name Spirit of Illinois.
- The first draft of 10 Cloverfield Lane, titled The Cellar, took place in or near Illinois, with Michelle living in Chicago and driving there after escaping Howard Stambler's bunker, only to find it in ruins. The film moved the setting to Louisiana.
- The 2014 feature-length fan film Godzilla: Battle Royale is set in Chicago and filmed extensively in and around the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont, then the host of G-Fest.
Notes
References
This is a list of references for Illinois. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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