Pacific-Panthalassa plate tectonics back to Jurassic times are recognized as the most challenging on Earth to reconstruct, due partly to a large (>9000 km length) unconstrained area between the Pacific and Laurasia (now NE Asia) during the Early Jurassic. We built four contrasted NW Pacific-Panthalassa global plate reconstructions and assimilated their velocity fields into global geodynamic models. We compare our predicted mantle structure, synthetic geoid and dynamic topography to Earth observations. P-wave tomographic filtering of predicted mantle structures allowed for more explicit comparisons to global tomography. Plate reconstructions that include intra-oceanic subduction in NW Pacific-Panthalassa fit better to the observed geoid and residual topography, challenging the Andean-style subduction along East Asia. Our geodynamic models predict significant SE-ward lateral slab advections within the NW Pacific basin lower mantle (~2500 km from Mesozoic times to present), which can confound “vertical slab sinking”-style restorations of past subduction zone locations.