Skull Island

Skull Island is an uncharted island located somewhere in the Pacific ocean, whose location is known only to those who possess a map of it, where moviemaker Carl Denham sought to shoot his Beauty and the Beast picture starring Ann Darrow. It is home to a tribe of primitive natives who worship King Kong, a giant gorilla, as a god, and regularly make sacrifices of women to him.

King Kong (1930s)

Denham obtained the map from Lars Helstrom, who made it after speaking to a dying native. Skull Island derives its name from the fact its most prominent landmark, Skull Mountain, is shaped like an enormous skull visible from the sea. Nothing is known about the ancestors of the natives, but they built the giant stone wall to keep Kong (and the dinosaurs) out of their village. Somewhere on the island there is a temple with a treasure of diamonds, presumably also left there by the ancestors of the natives.

Besides Skull Mountain, the wall and the temple, the island's most memorable natural feature was a deep chasm bridged by a fallen log (called Devil's Chasm in the comics). Skull Island was ultimately destroyed by a natural disaster that seemed to be half hurricane, half earthquake, which killed the natives as well as all of the dinosaurs that inhabited the isle, and Kong's offspring, Kiko. Denham, Hilda Peterson, Captain Englehorn and Charlie managed to get the treasure though.

King Kong (2005)

It is not said where Carl Denham got the map of Skull Island, but both Ben Hayes and Lumpy the cook both know about the island's existence because they spoke to a survivor of a ship that wrecked on its shores. As before, nothing is known about the natives (who are much more hostile than they are in the original film). The wall is present, but not the temple (that we know of), and there are more ruins scattered throughout the island interior as well as the chasm bridged by the log. Unlike previously, Skull Mountain is not present, and instead the island gets its name from a huge skull-shaped rock on its shores.