The Time A Stolen Godzilla Suit Washed Up On Japan's Beaches

Imagine that you're taking a leisurely stroll on the beach, minding your own business, when you see what looks like a 13-foot-long lizard monster corpse washed up on the shore. Upon further examination, it's no dead sea monster, but rather a water-logged Godzilla costume. That's exactly what happened to an elderly Japanese woman out for her morning walk in the town of Lake Okutama, near Tokyo, one day in 1992. While it's pretty hard to picture just how surreal it would be to find an actual, screen-used Godzilla costume washed up on the shore of a beach, the woman thankfully managed to keep her composure and notify authorities so that Toho Studios could retrieve the missing suit, which was due to be used in a then upcoming film.

There are more questions than answers when it comes to the Godzilla costume heist and its eventual recovery, which makes it kind of an intriguing mystery. Who stole the suit? What were they planning to do with it? Why did they toss it into the ocean? Let's take a look at what we do know about this wild situation and speculate on some of the rest.

According to an American news report from the time, the suit was stolen from a warehouse by unknown thieves who had somehow managed to move the massive costume — which weighed over 130 pounds! — without anyone noticing. The suit was worth around $39,000 at the time of the theft, which would be approximately $86,000 in 2024 when adjusted for inflation. The suit was due to be used in filming "Godzilla vs. Mothra," as the other, newer suit for that film didn't have the same capabilities as the stolen suit, which was designated as "Godzilla 1991 B" but was known to fans for being of the "GhidoGoji" design, as the suit was used in "Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah" in 1991. (The name is a combination of Ghidorah's name and Godzilla's Japanese name, Gojira.)

Thankfully, the suit washed up on shore about a week later, though it did sustain some damage from the heist and time in the water, much to the chagrin of the special effects artists who had to try and repair it in time for filming. The suit ended up appearing in several sequences in "Godzilla vs. Mothra," so everything turned out alright in the end.

The thieves were never caught, possibly because the suit was recovered so quickly that authorities didn't really have a reason to dedicate major time and effort to hunting them down. We may never know why they stole the suit or what they planned to do with it (hold it for ransom? Create their own Godzilla movie?), but they probably dumped it in the ocean once they realized just how much trouble they could be in if they got caught. Besides, it can't be easy keeping a suit that massive and heavy hidden for too long — it's not like you can just throw a sheet over it!

Contemporary Godzilla suits are probably impossible to steal, as they've gotten bigger and heavier with time, with more complicated animatronics (plus security has likely gotten tighter with time too). Maybe one day we'll get a movie about the Great Kaiju Heist of 1992, but until then, we'll just have to imagine it.