A deserted island which is not-so deserted. Somewhere on the island is a horrific giant beast. The telltale signs that it's there are usually giant footprints in the sand along the beach, the rumbling of footsteps or the clattering of trees being knocked down, and of course, a horrifying roar.
Usually, these types of creatures are the island's dominant species or ruler, lording over the place because they are the biggest and strongest. In some cases though, they are guardians protecting something residing on the island. Of course, there's also the possibility that the creature is trapped on the island, being surrounded by water on all sides makes it a good prison, in the event the creature cannot swim or is weak against water.
The type of creature that is usually the island's inhabitant can range from creatures from prehistoric times to everyday animals of the giant variety, especially crabs, spiders, and insects. Eldritch or Animalistic Abominations are not excluded from this. In some cases, the island can even be a domain of Mechanical Monsters. Of course, the visitor of the island might not even see what the beast is, due to perhaps being an Invisible Monster or perhaps just to invoke Nothing Is Scarier.
Can be an Island of Mystery if those that land are unaware of the creature residing on it at first. Usually used in a Trapped-with-Monster Plot, especially if the island's visitors are marooned. Different from Turtle Island, which is where an island is a creature, although it is not impossible that the moving island has a beast imprisoned on it. Similar to Beast in the Maze where a creature resides in a labyrinth instead of an island. If there is more than just one giant beast on the island, a Behemoth Battle is likely to happen between them. If the creature has a large stash of treasure, that is a Dragon Hoard. For a wider variety of monster dwellings, see Home of Monsters. Usually a kind of Lost World.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Island of Giant Insects has giant insects.
- Kaiju Girl Caramelise has the "Kaiju Island" that Manatsu brings Kuroe and Rairi to in an attempt to summon Harugon. She says that there are local legends about a Kaiju that ate all the islanders. Turns out the island is home to Malicious Monitor Lizards the size of the extinct Megalania that try to eat the girls when they wander too far into the interior. It later turns out that there was a species of kaiju that lived there and have mostly died out. Not only is Kuroe one such specimen who was brought to Tokyo as an egg by Rinko Akaishi and mutated to have a humanlike form most of the time, there's also a second egg from the same nest that hatches into the flying monster Akae.
- Rusukaina, an island in the world of One Piece, contains many enormous beasts that the main protagonist Monkey D. Luffy must battle and survive against in order to get stronger. Some of these beasts include a giant gorilla not unlike King Kong, and a gargantuan elephant.
- Pokémon: The Original Series:
- After surviving the sinking of the St. Anne, Ash's party and Team Rocket end up stuck on an island made up of malfunctioning giant animatronic Pokémon, separated from their Pokémon.
- Another episode during the Orange Islands season has Meowth and Pikachu tied together in the middle of Fairchild Island, an island containing giant Rhydon and Pidgeot who attack anyone that comes near.
Comic Books
- The Centre from DC: The New Frontier, a Hive Mind of prehistoric beasts.
- Marvvel Universe: First appearing in Fantastic Four, Monster Isle is near Japan in the Okhotsk Sea of the North Pacific. The network of tunnels that run beneath it lead to the Earth’s core. The monsters of Monster Isle were mutate creatures created by Kro, warlord of the subterranean Deviant race.
- Dark Horse brings us Monsters, a compilation containing one story of an isle of giant horrors. The island's fauna make quick work of the explorers who have landed there, but one of them manages to escape, although he's pursued by the island itself, which looks rather hungry...
- An issue of Planetary that's a homage to the Godzilla films has the team exploring an island somewhere in the vicinity of Japan that is home to a variety of giant prehistoric monsters, all of which have supposedly died out. Emphasis on supposedly.
Fan Works
- The Bridge has Solgell Island and the rest of the Mu Archipelago as this continuity’s equivalent of Monster Island, with the exception that the Kaiju choose to live there. The islands serve as the Home Base of the Terran Defender faction, and are home to several other neutrally-aligned kaiju. Furthermore, Infant Island, Skull Island, Odo Island, and New Birth Island are mentioned and important in the lore.
- Mossflower Odyssey 3 takes place on an island inhabited by giant snakes, deadly natives, and is guarded by a Ghost Ship.
Film — Live-Action
- The island of Colossa from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which is populated by cyclopes, rocs, and dragons.
- At the end of Deep Rising, the remaining survivors have escaped to a beautiful sunlit island, only to hear a terrifying monster roar. The camera pulls back to reveal the island is host to an erupting volcano and something tearing down trees as it makes a beeline for the beach where the protagonists are. Cut to credits as the hero asks with exasperation, "NOW what?"
- In Jason and the Argonauts, while on the Isle of Bronze, Hercules inadvertently awakens the Living Statue of Talos when he steals from the crypt he was guarding. Though the Argonauts manage to defeat Talos, Hercules' best friend Hylas is killed during the battle.
- Jules Verne's Mystery on Monster Island: It's an island of monsters. Not really. The hero's uncle manufactured them to give his nephew an adventure.
- Jurassic Park is an abandoned dinosaur theme park on a tropical island, inhabited by cloned dinosaurs.
- The MTV Made-for-TV Movie Monster Island takes place on an island in the middle of The Bermuda Triangle, populated by ants the size of cars, mantises that can hold their own against bulldozers, spiders big enough to eat humans and a humanoid fish monster named Bruce.
- The similarly named Asylum movie Monster Island (2019). The titular island is home to one Kaiju, who battles another kaiju that comes out of the sea.
- Mysterious Island is about a group of castaways who find an island populated by giant animals like crabs, chickens and bees. They were all the work of Captain Nemo as a solution to world hunger.
- Sweetheart has a shipwrecked woman on a Deserted Island, which turns out to be in the territory of a huge, bipedal shark-like creature. A variation in that the amphibious monster doesn't actually live on the island, but in an Eldritch Ocean Abyss nearby.
Franchises
- The famous Godzilla film series gives us Monster Island, which as its name suggests, is home to many of the kaiju that appear in the films, including the titular King of the Monsters.
- In the original Godzilla (1954), the title character seems to make his home around remote Odo Island, though he quickly moves to the Japanese mainland.
- Most portrayals of Mothra - including her debut film - have her living on a remote island where she is worshiped like a god by the native people.
- In one episode of Hanna-Barbera's cartoon adaption of of The Godzilla Power Hour, appropriately titled "The Horror of Forgotten Island", the crew of the Calico found themselves on an island surrounded by a force field which imprisoned a mutant cyclops that could turn invisible.
- In Godzilla: The Series, Monster Island is where the military keeps all monsters that have been captured over the course of the series (barring those that need a Tailor-Made Prison instead).
- King Kong: Skull Island is an island teaming with horrific beasts and dinosaurs, with the titular giant ape reigning as king of them.
- In the island's and Kong's MonsterVerse debut, Kong: Skull Island, it's revealed that Skull Island is actually located on top of a rip in the Earth's crust where giant monsters (such as the reptilian "Skullcrawlers"), are able to emerge from the Hollow Earth.
- In the MonsterVerse animated series Skull Island (2023), it's revealed that there's another monster island approximately twenty miles away from Skull Island. This second island is where the giant, ferocious, pitbull-like Dog came from, and where Annie (who named it Annie's Island) was cast away for ten years.
- In the island's and Kong's MonsterVerse debut, Kong: Skull Island, it's revealed that Skull Island is actually located on top of a rip in the Earth's crust where giant monsters (such as the reptilian "Skullcrawlers"), are able to emerge from the Hollow Earth.
Literature
- Fragment: Henders Island is a remnant of an ancient supercontinent from the Precambrian era, where everything has been evolving separately for 570 million years and the inherent savagery of life has been turned up to eleven; an orgy of violence where the food chain is thrown out the window and everything eats everything - the dominant lifeform being a land-going species of mantis shrimp
capable of single-hand(claw?)edly shredding and devouring tanks.
- In The Island of the Skog, the mice who land on the island assume that the Skog is a terrifying monster, and it seems they were right, until it turns out to have been a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax by the actual Skog, which is the same size as them.
- Played with in Lord of the Flies. Most of the boys think there is a physical beast and by the end of the book start to almost worship it, but there is no "real" beast. The idea of the beast is actually used to represent of humanity's innate evil.
- The Ur-Example is The Odyssey, where Odysseus and his crew dock on an island inhabited by a Cyclops named Polyphemus, who imprisons them in his cave and eats them two by two. They defeat the monster by stabbing his eye out with a stick.
- In "The Quest for Blank Claveringi", a blood-curdling short story by Patricia Highsmith, biologist Avery Clavering is in search of a new species to make his reputation. He hears about a remote tropical island supposedly inhabited by an unknown species of giant snail, so he travels there in hopes of killing or capturing one. Unfortunately, the "giant snails" turn out to be really giant, with shells taller than he is. They're also quite willing to eat anything that crosses their path, including a biology professor foolish enough to land alone on an unknown island. Then it gets worse: Clavering finds that while he can easily walk away from the voracious snails, he has to rest... but the snails don't.
- The title character of Sinbad the Sailor often ends up on one of these during his travels, including one where a Roc bird nests, and another inhabited by a man-eating giant (who's basically an Expy of Polyphemus from The Odyssey and gets defeated in a similar manner).
- The Voyage of Máel Dúin:
- Exploring island no. 5, the voyagers discover a large plain with many hoof marks, and each mark is "as large as the sail of a ship". They also see nut shells of unusual size and a lot of "plunder". They become scared and go back to their ship; as they sail away, they observe a crowd of gigantic people approaching the island over the sea, who proceed to put on a horse-race (with equally gigantic horses) on the island. There is no explanation for these happenings, except that the voyagers feel sure that the giants are demons, and accordingly make off as fast as they can.
- The voyagers refrain from landing on several islands they discover because the islands are occupied by large monsters whose behavior suggests that they want to eat the voyagers. On island no. 4, there is a huge creature looking like a horse with claws; on island no. 8, there is a bizarre "twisting beast" fenced in by a stone wall going around the island; both of these monsters hurl stones at the voyagers as they are leaving. There is also an island with hungry giant ants, and one with hostile giants who forge iron, and who try to sink them with a mass of glowing iron.
- In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the first uncharted island the ship visits is inhabited by a dragon.
Live-Action TV
- The Ultra Series has featured a couple over the years.
- One of the first and best-known episodes of the original Ultraman was "The Lawless Monster Zone", in which the Science Patrol visits an island populated by various giant monsters like the dinosaur-like Red King, the bat-like Chandler, and a giant burrowing reptile called Magular. Another one appeared in their Multi-Part Episode, this time home to relic dinosaur and Ensemble Dark Horse of the franchise Gomora.
- In Ultraman 80, UGM finds an abandoned island resort where an evil alien monster called Gimyra has hypnotized everyone on the island to drink their blood and turn them into its giant monster minions.
- In one episode of Ultraman Dyna, Super GUTS visits an island populated by several monsters they have previously met. It soon turns out that the creatures are clones being used as practice targets for a Mad Scientist-made monster called Neosaurus.
- Subverted with the Kapuya Islands of Ultraman Cosmos. While the archipelago hosts a variety of kaiju, the place is meant to be a sanctuary for them, having been created by EYES as a home for monsters subdued by Cosmos. Besides, most of the creatures on the island are Gentle Giants like the Giant Flyer Lidorias, the mole-like Mogrudon, and the energy-eating reptile Bolgils.
- Ultraman Max homaged the original example in a two-part episode featuring Red King, as well as two new monsters — a giant newt called Salamandon and a gliding reptile called Paragler. It's later revealed that the island is actually a dimension-hopping prison for Red King built by Atlantis, and the other two monsters are its guards.
- Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle exaggerates this with Bolis, an entire planet of giant horrors. Naturally, the story is that the main characters are stranded on the world in a space expedition and have to survive all the kaiju (all pulled from previous series) that do nothing but attack anything they see.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons module WG6 Isle of the Ape. As a Shout-Out to King Kong, the title island is home to a giant (30 feet tall) ape with gargantuan stats (288 Hit Points, can do up to 104 Hit Points of damage with his attacks).
- Long before that, module X1: Isle Of Dread features a Lost World island a la Skull Island, complete with a massive wall built by natives to keep the giant monsters out of their village.
Video Games
- Both Breath of Fire I and Breath of Fire II feature an island at the northern end of the map that has giant versions of common enemies which are much tougher to defeat.
- Final Fantasy VI has an island with dinosaurs as random encounters.
- In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, in the Shandor Island level, there is a huge Sloar which is not only the source of all of Shandor's experiments, but also the final node guardian, making it the Boss Battle.
- The fourth world of Super Mario Bros. 3 is an island with giant versions of regular enemies.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: In "Mysterious Island", the island is full of giant version of various animals, most of which are hostile.
- In one episode of Nelvana's Babar animated series titled "Conga the Terrible", as a Shout-Out to King Kong, the young elephant king and his friends get shipwrecked on an island that's home of a giant Killer Gorilla that dwarfs even the elephants. In a subversion, the gorilla turns out to be quite friendly once they get on his good side.
- In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Raiders of the Lost Harp", when Scrooge discovers the lost city of Troy and the eponymous harp, the Minotaur statue that was guarding it comes to life and follows Scrooge all the way to Duckberg to get it back.
- In the 2017 reboot series, the Bombie is imprisoned on an island named Falcon Island. When Louie takes over Scrooge's company, he shuts down the magical defenses of the island, unwittingly letting the monster loose.
- Several appeared in Jonny Quest, with the beasts that inhabited them usually the result of a Mad Scientist.
- Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor: Sindbad lives on a Turtle Island where he keeps many dangerous beasts as pets, such as lions, tigers, snakes, apes, dragons, a roc bird and a two-headed giant.
- There is a Monster Island in The Powerpuff Girls (1998), source of all the Kaiju that attack Townsville from time to time. Turns out they do it for the honor of fighting the Girls.
- The Simpsons:
- Played with in "Treehouse of Horror III"'s "King Homer", where Mr. Burns plans to go to Ape Island to capture King Homer. His employees would rather go to Candy Apple Island, which also has apes, they're just not as big.
- The episode "Lisa On Ice" subverted this. When Lisa is told she's failing gym, she has an Imagine Spot in which it costs her the presidency and she's sent to "Monster Island". She's told "It's just a name", but ends up getting chased by monsters anyway.
Lisa: He said it was just a name!
Man: What he meant is that Monster Island is actually a peninsula.
- Steven Universe: Mask Island is not only the home of the beastly Invisible Gem Monster, but was also the battlefield for Malachite.
Real Life
- Island Gigantism, as Wikipedia states, is "a biological phenomenon in which the size of animals isolated on an island increases dramatically in comparison to their mainland relatives." Results in things like the Madagascar Elephant Bird (a flightless bird twice the size of an ostrich) and the Giant Tortoise of the Galápagos. Komodo Dragons were originally believed to be a result of this, but recently discovered fossils revealed that the species originally evolved in Australia and spread through Indonesia several million years ago, with Komodo and its neighboring islands instead being merely the final refuge of a once-widespread species.
- Inverted with insular dwarfism, in which large animals become smaller due to the limited resources available. This has occurred with elephants, hippopotamuses, dinosaurs, and even a species of prehistoric human. Such creatures can often be found in the same environment as examples of the phenomenon's opposite.
