Haruo Nakajima wore a Godzilla suit that weighed roughly two hundred and twenty pounds during the filming of the original 1954 movie, frequently passing out from heat exhaustion in a puddle of his own sweat.

A closer look

Haruo Nakajima wore a Godzilla suit that weighed roughly two hundred and twenty pounds during the filming of the original 1954 movie, frequently passing out from heat exhaustion in a puddle of his own sweat. To create the illusion of a terrifying radioactive monster destroying Tokyo, the studio essentially trapped a poor actor inside a suffocating, unventilated rubber prison made from ready-mixed concrete and bamboo, because lightweight foam polyurethane had not been invented yet. Movie magic back then was less about computer graphics and more about seeing how much physical torture a Japanese stuntman could endure before losing consciousness while stepping on miniature cardboard buildings. If you ever feel bad about your terrible corporate job, just remember you are not dragging a hundred kilograms of scorching hot rubber across a soundstage while a director screams at you to act like a nuclear metaphor