When Does "Godzilla" (1954) Take Place?
"Gojira" (often released to English-speaking audiences as "Godzilla") is an adventure horror (kaiju) film written by Takeo Murata with IshirÅ Honda and released November 3rd, 1954.
It takes place in the year:
We know this because in the third scene of the film, one of the two calendars behind Ogata Hideto and Yamane Emiko in their apartment has a big "8" on it and the week ends on a Tuesday, lining up with the real-world weeks in August (the 8th month) of 1954 AD.
These changes do not dramatically change the story's timeframe. The calendar open to August 1954 AD is still visible behind the young couple in their apartment.
1954 AD
We know this because in the third scene of the film, one of the two calendars behind Ogata Hideto and Yamane Emiko in their apartment has a big "8" on it and the week ends on a Tuesday, lining up with the real-world weeks in August (the 8th month) of 1954 AD.
Furthermore, hydrogen bomb tests are referenced over and over as potentially the simple single monumental shock (or the cause of a slow ecosystem devastation) that awakened Gojira from being able to survive peacefully in some undersea habitat far from humans. The first hydrogen bomb test was conducted in 1952 AD, so it must be after that.
More specifically, a woman train passenger says, "Atomic tuna, radioactive fallout, and now this Godzilla to top it off! ... I barely escaped the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and now this!"
The worry about "atomic tuna" is most likely referencing the famous and tragic Lucky Dragon #5 incident, in which a Japanese tuna fishing boat was contaminated by fallout from a United States nuclear bomb test on March 1st, 1954. Tuna caught by the ship's crew had to be thrown away when it too was discovered to contaminated with radiation.
It has been retroactively absorbed into the MonsterVerse Universe at a chronologically early spot (a first chronological film to feature Godzilla) and can be watched at its timeline point, as an extended flashback before "Godzilla vs. Kong" (2021) [with or without the "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" (2023) TV show], or entirely separately.
It was remade in 1998 and then in 2016 as "Shin Godzilla" and again in 2023 as "Godzilla Minus One".
Extra scenes were shot with American actor Raymond Burr (and references to the famous and tragic bombing of Nagasaki, hydrogen bomb tests, and the Lucky Dragon #5 incident were removed) for Western audiences and the film was released as "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!" April 27th, 1956. It is an entirely different version of the film.
(HOWEVER, in the Americanized cut of "The Return of Godzilla" (1984), "Godzilla 1985" (1985) a sequel to this cut, the attacks in this film are referred to as 1956 AD attacks.)
It has been retroactively absorbed into the MonsterVerse Universe at a chronologically early spot (a first chronological film to feature Godzilla).
