Three-Headed Dragon

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Part of a series on Godzilla: King of the Monsters. [View Related Entries]

About

Three-Headed Dragon refers to a humorous drawing of a film monster King Ghidorah by artist Michael J. Larsen. Online, the image has been circulated as an exploitable, primarily used in object-labeling memes.

Origin

On May 31st, 2019, monster film Godzilla: King of the Monsters premiered in the United States.^[1] On June 2nd, artist Michael J. Larson posted a humorous fan art of monster King Ghidorah titled "King Ghidorah in a Nutshell" in his DeviantArt profile^[2] and social media accounts (shown below).^[3]^[4] On Twitter, the post gained over 4,300 retweets and 9,600 likes in two weeks.

Spread

On June 3rd, 2019, King Ghidorah motion capture actor Richard Dorton tweeted the image, receiving 500 retweets and 1,500 likes in two weeks.^[5]

On June 8th, 2019, Redditor MGHQ_YT posted the first known meme based on the image to /r/gaming subreddit, where it gained over 1,500 upvotes (shown below, left).^[6] On June 10th, 2019, Redditor Yagisaki reposted another meme created by an unknown author to /r/HistoryMemes subreddit, with the post receiving over 7,200 upvotes in three days (shown below, right).^[7]

In the following days, the format received moderate spread on the platform, with notable examples posted in /r/dankmemes^[8] and /r/freefolk ^[9] subreddits.