We've got a new Godzilla film coming out and all signs point to it being as colon-stompingly awesome as we could possibly hope for. For me, this is a personal victory. The first film I ever remember both loving and being completely terrified of is Godzilla 1985, and then when I saw what was done with the franchise 13 years later I honestly felt bad for being American. Hopefully now some redemption for that heinous act is at hand.

With his long and varied history there are a lot of myths about the King of Monsters that have been bandied about over the years. Today we're here to shatter some of those myths.

Godzilla is Green To most Americans Godzilla is a big green wrecking machine, but that's purely something that we dreamed up. Despite all the animated, comic, and movie appearances that he's made in this country Godzilla has almost never been green in his original films in Japan. A few official video game appearances aside, that is.

The only Godzilla suit that was painted naturally green is the MireGoji suit used in Godzilla 2000: Millennium and Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. Otherwise, Godzilla is actually supposed to be charcoal black.

Godzilla is a Lizard It's not just the 1998 film that has fostered this myth. True, in that movie Godzilla is explicitly a mutated marine iguana, but even in other films he has been mistakenly identified as some sort of overgrown reptile. This is not accurate.

Officially, Godzilla is the result of atomic radiation mutating a Godzillasaurus, a large theropod that had survived the extinction of the dinosaurs on Lagos Island. Time travelers looking to prevent Godzilla from every being created dragged a wounded Godzillasaurus to the Bering Strait and dumped it into the see, where a nuclear submarine crash ultimate resulted in the monster they had sought to destroy.

Speaking of 1998's big lizard...

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