God of War (series)



""The gods of Olympus have abandoned me.""

- Kratos

God of War is a popular video game series for the PlayStation line by Sony based in ancient Greece, but an ancient Greece where all those bizarre things you read about in Classical Mythology textbooks exist. One Spartan soldier, Kratos, has a personal relationship with the Gods that can best be described as complicated. A brutal, tormented man, Kratos begins the series as the sword of Olympus, fighting the enemies of the gods while trying to escape the horrors of his past.

God of War received ample praise in a number of forums: IGN named it the Greatest Game of All Time for the PlayStation 2, Electronic Gaming Monthly ordained it to be the best PS2 game of 2005 (and the second-best overall game of the same year), and Gamespot called it the best PS2 game of 2005. The pattern, if you haven't picked up on it, is that the game was very well-liked.

It featured a simple, intuitive combat interface that made fighting remarkably easy. Kratos's default weapons are the Blades of Chaos, which are swords on the ends of very long chains and are functional as both melee weapons and Whip Swords, or perhaps Sword Chucks. While each game gives you other weapons, many players found themselves content with these Awesome Yet Practical weapons, which allows Kratos to string together breath-taking and almost balletic combinations. (Some have complained about how this reduces the game to a button masher; others love it.) Two face buttons allow the player to switch between Weak and Strong attacks; the third enables jumping, and the fourth throws and Finishing Moves involving Action Commands. Many enemies and all boss battles have these finishers, turning the latter into highly cinematic Puzzle Bosses. Finally, besides dodging and rolling, Kratos gets access to magic spells. These typically include: a ranged attack; an area-of-effect attack; a ray that causes enemies to freeze somehow; and a swarm-of-souls attack that damages everything in sight.

It was also something of a "slash" game, and that's not just in reference to the bloody combat. Primarily in the action/adventure genre, God of War included platforming and puzzle aspects as well. These usually involved Kratos swinging over bottomless chasms, pushing blocks into position, and so forth.

There have been eight games in the series, with a ninth announced.
 * God of War was released for PlayStation 2 in 2005. Kratos begins by declaring that "The gods of Olympus have abandoned me" and flinging himself over the tallest cliff in Greece; the rest of the game details How We Got Here. In this extended flashback, Kratos is charged by Athena with the task of killing Ares, the God of War, who has declared war on Athens; to do this, he will have to dungeon-crawl through the Temple of Pandora and find Pandora's Box, which contains in it the power to kill a god. In return, Athena offers him absolution for his Dark and Troubled Past, in which he served Ares as a Blood Knight and was manipulated into slaying his beloved wife and daughter. After a long, arduous journey, including being killed but escaping from Hades, Kratos succeeds at his labor. Athena, unfortunately, was only speaking literally -- she forgives Kratos' sins, but she cannot take away his personal guilt or end his recurring nightmares. Kratos, despairing, re-enacts the game's opening scene. Athena does have a consolation prize, though: with Ares dead, there is an empty throne on Mt. Olympus...
 * God of War II was released for PlayStation 2 in 2007. Kratos, now the new god of war, leads his Spartans in a bloody conquest of Greece, heedless of the mutterings of other gods who think he's out of control. Zeus takes matters into his own hands by stripping Kratos of his godhood and slaying him. Kratos escapes Hades with the help of the titan Gaia, who tells him to travel to the Island of Creation, where The Hecate Sisters work the Loom of Fate and can change his destiny. After a game's worth of adventures, Kratos uses the Loom to travel back to the moment of his death and manages to escape with his life... but Athena gets involved in the resulting brawl, leading to her death. She reveals that Zeus will never stop trying to kill him, because of a recurring Greek prophecy that the current king-god will be overthrown by his son. Zeus did it to his father Cronos; Kratos might do it to Zeus. Kratos, now royally pissed off, changes his goal from "survive" to "kill my father," and uses the Loom to help the Titans stage a full-on invasion of Olympus. Cliff Hanger.
 * God of War: Betrayal was released for mobile phones in 2007. Taking place during Kratos's crusade as the new god of war, Kratos finds himself in hot water when he's framed for the murder of one of Hera's pet monstrosities. It also details Kratos's blood lust getting the better of him, leading him to Shoot the Messenger--in this case, Hermes' son Ceryx, who had come to warn him that the gods thought Kratos's blood lust was getting the better of him. Whoops. (This may be the only game that does not feature a visit to Hades, but so few people have played it that this is difficult to verify.)
 * God of War: Chains of Olympus was released for the PlayStation Portable in 2008. Taking place before the first game, it details the first time Kratos was used as a sort of celestial hit man. Morpheus, the god of sleep, is running rampant, because Helios, god of the sun, has gone missing. Athena has Kratos look into the matter, and he discovers that Persephone has masterminded the situation. Feeling betrayed by her Arranged Marriage to Hades, she has kidnapped Helios and given his power to the titan Atlas, who plans to destroy Olympus with it. Kratos must abandon his daughter Calliope and bring an end to Persephone's scheming... permanently.
 * God of War III was released for Play Station 3 in 2010. Picking up exactly where II left off, it details Kratos and the Titans' assault on Olympus. After killing Poseidon, Kratos is betrayed by Gaia and tossed into the underworld, but escapes and begins to climb Mount Olympus, killing all who stand in his path--Hades, Perses [sic], Helios, Hercules, Cronos, Hephaestus, Hera--and learning that Pandora's Box still exists, now deep in the Labyrinth and guarded by an eternal fire which can only be snuffed out if Pandora herself immolates herself on it. This proves troubling, because as Kratos escorts Pandora through the dungeon, he begins to think of her as a daughter. Kratos wants to kill Zeus, but he also wants his family back. Which one will he choose?... (Who are we kidding, it's a video game. But there's sufficient Character Development to make us believe that Kratos actually has qualm about killing Pandora, so, kudos there.) This is officially the end of the trilogy, but not the franchise.
 * God of War: Ghost of Sparta was released for PSP in 2010. It starts with a flashback to Kratos' childhood, in which he trains with his brother Deimos. Deimos is believed to be The Chosen One who will topple Olympus, and so he is kidnapped by the gods, particularly Ares. In "the present day" (some time between I and Betrayal) of gameplay proper, Kratos decides to find out what became of his brother...
 * God of War: Ascension, a prequel to the entire series, was released for PlayStation 3 in 2013.
 * God of War was announced for PlayStation 4 in 2016 and released in 2018, with PC release coming 2022. In addition to a shift in gameplay style, the game now involves an older Kratos, having dealt with the Greek pantheon and remarried, confronting Norse Mythology as he seeks to honour said second wife's final wish to have her ashes spread at the highest peak in the nine realms. The E3 2016 footage can be viewed here.
 * God of War: Ragnarok was announced for PlayStation 4 and 5 in 2020 with scheduled release in 2022. It is expected to focus on the events of Ragnarok as set up by the previous game.

The games don't change much from the original (which, considering the first game sold Eleventy-Zillion copies and won approximately the same number of awards, is unsurprising); the combat interface is almost completely unchanged, and while Kratos loses his magical powers at the beginning of the second game, the Magic granted to him throughout the game closely resembles the powers he earned in the first.

"Hera: (in Hera's Garden) Your brute strength may have bested Hercules, but your simple mind could never find the way out of here. I look forward to watching you die here, as an old man."
 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Sewers of Athens in the first God of War.
 * Action Commands: Used by Kratos to kill certain enemies in a different manner, resulting in orbs that increase his life and magic meters. Some enemies require action commands to be beaten. God of War is the father of Quick Time Events. It wasn't the first game series to feature them, but every single action command you see in games these days is because of how popular the series made them.
 * All Girls Want Bad Boys: In-game example. It would explain how Kratos can score threesomes so easily...
 * Always a Bigger Fish: In Chains of Olympus, one of the first things you do is try to open a door via Button Mashing tutorial... only for a Cyclops wielding a giant pillar to smash through immediately and teach you about Button Mashing and Press X to Not Die. As if that wasn't enough, then a Basilisk smashes in and devours the Cyclops whole.
 * Ancient Greece
 * And I Must Scream: is implied to be this,  . At least the screaming part is taken care of...
 * And Then John Was a Zombie: Kratos becomes
 * Anger Makes You Dumb: A possible explanation for Kratos's Plot Induced Stupidity throughout the series. Kratos is so intent on avenging his family's death (and later Zeus' betrayal) that he fails to see when Zeus (and ) are playing him like a harp. But Olympus help them when Kratos finds out about it...
 * Anti-Frustration Features: When you're killed, you continue from the last checkpoint you passed, with the same amount of health. This can get really annoying if you had low health and there are no orb chests between you and whatever killed you. However, continue from the same checkpoint enough times in a row and your health begins to increase slightly each time. You're also offered a chance to lower the difficulty.
 * Anti-Hero: In the first and third game Kratos is a Type V, while in the second game he is a Villain Protagonist.
 * Anyone Can Die: Kratos' mission in life is to put this trope to the test. He even gets himself killed a half-dozen times - not that they stick, but...
 * Arc Villain: Persephone for Chains of Olympus.
 * Ares in the first game.
 * Thanatos for Ghost of Sparta.
 * Artistic License Geography: How about all those sheer cliffs Athens seems to be built near?
 * Not to mention the adjacent desert.
 * One theory is that.
 * Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:.
 * Asteroids Monster: The green Cerberus-like creatures in the first game.
 * The Atoner: Subverted to a point. Kratos may be on a Redemption Quest in the first game, but it's only because he wants to be able to sleep at night without being assaulted by memories of the awful deeds he has committed in the past, including . He has no qualms about slaughtering just about everybody he encounters, either. By the start of the second game, he's stopped caring about redemption altogether, and just goes back to trying to help Sparta conquer the world.
 * Played straight in the 3rd game where.
 * Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Several enemies throughout the series are often large, especially boss fights such as minotaur in the Challenge of Hades in the first game, the Colossus of Rhodes and Clotho in the second are also really large. But in the 3rd game, the biggest enemy of all is Cronos, who is bigger than the SEARS TOWER! Not to mention the fact that he carries on his back the entire Temple of Pandora, which was the setting of the first game.
 * Actually, Poseidon may be the biggest boss out of everyone. The base of his body was at the base of Mount Olympus where the ocean is. The rest of his body was busy fighting Gaia and Kratos, at least halfway up the mountain.
 * Attack of the Monster Appendage: Scylla in Ghost of Sparta and later Poseidon himself in III. Both are type 2.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Rage of the Gods in the first game, it takes a long time to fill up for just a few seconds of invulnerability and extra damage, even when you do fill it up, it's best just to save it for the nearest boss fight, and once it's activated you can't make it stop, so if you use it at an inopportune moment, you'll have wasted it.
 * Awesomeness Meter: Rage of the Gods in I, Rage of the Titans in II, Rage of Sparta in III.
 * Badass: Over the course of four games, Kratos has killed . He also destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes and sunk the city of Atlantis. He seems to be working his way through a textbook on Ancient Greece. This, of course, does not count the scads of random villains he has cut down, maimed, or imprisoned . Nor does it count the handful of basically innocent people he's come across and killed... including one very unlucky ship's captain, who he kills off in a semi-comical manner not once, but three separate times.
 * Badass Beard: Kratos is the only man in the UNIVERSE who can pull of a goatee the way he does.
 * Badass Boast: A lot, but this one takes the cake:

""You challenge ME, mortal? A GOD of OLYMPUS?!""
 * Badass Normal: The Last Spartan who somehow survived the wave of energy Zeus unleashed with the Blade of Olympus that practically killed every other Spartan and Rhodes soldier within a thousand meters, then somehow manages to get back to Sparta, then somehow travels to the Isle of Creation and somehow makes more progress through the island than Kratos in lesser time.
 * Badass Grandpa: Zeus and Cronos.
 * Back from the Dead: Kratos has escaped from the Afterlife not once, not twice, not three times but four times. There's also the Barbarian King, whom Kratos killed before the first game began and who returned as a boss in the second.
 * While the first game was because of the Gravekeeper's help, after Ghost of Sparta it seems this is because
 * This is probably partly true. In God of War II, Kratos is saved by - but in III, Kratos might have survived his fall from Olympus for that exact reason, escaping Hell after he.
 * Bad Dreams
 * Bag of Spilling: Justified. At the end of the prequel, Athena and another god (believed to be Helios) relieve Kratos of his swag; likewise, he starts the second game with (some of) his gear from the first, only to be tricked by Zeus into discarding it.
 * Despite occurring minutes after GoW2, you only retain the Golden Fleece, Icarus Wings, and Poseidon's Trident at the beginning of GoW3. Most of your powers are soon stripped when you fall into the River Styx.
 * Completely unjustified in Ghost of Sparta.
 * Bald of Awesome: Easy to see. However...
 * Bald of Evil: Sure, he's the protagonist, but Kratos is not a nice guy.
 * Bald White Leader Guy: Kratos, to the Spartans.
 * Bash Brothers: . Well, once they stop bashing each other, that is.
 * Bastard Bastard:.
 * Beard of Barbarism: The Barbarian King is also the king of this trope.
 * Be Careful What You Wish For: Oh, Ares.
 * Being Evil Sucks: Kratos makes his own life a living hell.
 * Berserk Button: In Hera's final scene, Kratos actually tries to go around her, even though she tried to have him killed several times, until she calls Pandora a whore... And you have a over-the-shoulder view facing Kratos when she says it. From this vantage point, you just know that she's going to get it.
 * Occasionally when people remind him of his family and what happened to them. In the third game,
 * Probably Kratos' angriest moment in the series (which is really saying something), is when He really loses his shit.
 * Big Bad Ensemble: Kratos and Zeus are directly responsible for much of the conflict in this series.
 * Big Screwed-Up Family: Oh dear, where to start?
 * Bi the Way: In God of War III, Kratos walks in on Aphrodite having her way with two slave girls. She then invites him for sex.
 * BFS: The Blade of Olympus.
 * Black and Gray Morality: It's pretty hard to actually sympathize with Kratos.
 * Or rather, Black and Black Morality at large.
 * Bloodier and Gorier: By way of Values Dissonance, since Ancient Greek religion was violent, but those were accepted more in those days.
 * Ramping it up with III, to the point where the studio said some screenshots are so violent, they cannot be released on gaming news websites without being censored. They have an independent engine in place to animate enemies being ripped to pieces and having their organs fall out.
 * Some highlights: Kratos disemboweling a centaur, complete with falling organs; a much more graphic animation of Kratos ripping the eye off Cyclopes, with blood flooding out of the socket and sinew hanging from the eye and finally, Kratos ripping off Helios' head. Yes, that Helios.
 * ...And then using it as a flashlight.
 * Don't forget what he did to Hercules.
 * Think the gutting of centaurs is bad? Just wait till he guts Cronos.
 * Blood Knight: Kratos, obviously.
 * Ares, who's the freaking God of War himself....
 * Book Ends:.
 * Bottle Fairy: Hera spends most of her time drinking herself into a stupor while the rest of the Gods and Titans fight. Dionysus himself would probably tell her to lay off the wine and sleep it off. Although, seeing the devastation and gore caused by said battle, you can't blame her for wanting to drink hard.
 * Brother-Sister Incest:
 * Depends on who you ask. The sex minigame in God of War III is with Aphrodite - if you're of the "Aphrodite is Zeus' daughter" school of thought, then it counts. If you're of the "Aphrodite was born from the foam of Ouranos's severed testicle as it hit the seas" school, then it's averted: Aphrodite would technically be his great-aunt, rather than his sister.
 * Also Zeus and Hera, Aphrodite and Ares, Aphrodite and Hephaestus (both with the same snag as above)... really, Greek divinity just doesn't care.
 * Bullying a Dragon:
 * Butt Monkey: The ship captain. Also a borderline Yuppie Couple, seeing as Kratos has managed to kill him three times in two games. (Alas, he doesn't appear in the third, but you can read a note from him.)
 * Byronic Hero: As a guy who wants to kill all the Gods, this trope suits Kratos nicely.
 * Cain and Abel: Kratos and . Though they didn't know they were related at the time. Later, there's in III, and  in Ghost of Sparta.
 * Captain Ersatz: Sheer murderousness aside, Kratos has a few striking similarities with the Hercules of legend, including accidentally killing his own family in a fit of madness, as well as his habit of tearing apart monsters and using their body parts as armor or weapons (see Hercules skinning the nigh-invulnerable Nemean lion after he killed it and wearing the skin, and dipping his arrows in the poisonous blood of the Hydra). It becomes all the more amusing when Hercules finally shows up in God of War III and claims that Kratos is stealing his thunder. Considering that Kratos has already killed the Hydra, he may well be right.
 * The developers actually feared that Midway would view Kratos' design as this to the Mortal Kombat character Quan Chi and file a lawsuit. However, not only did Midway not care, but Boon actually liked the character enough to include him as a Guest Fighter in Mortal Kombat 9, complete with many of his signature moves and original voice actor.
 * Chain Lightning: The Nemesis Whip, a chain-whipe that produces lightning and doubles as a Visual Pun on this.
 * Chekhov's Gun: The giant sword that Kratos uses as a bridge immediately after saving the Oracle. In the final battle, . In the second game, the Fates use their time-travel powers to try and prevent this gun from being fired.
 * In God of War III, at one point you take a brief trip inside Gaia while trying to save her from one of bigform-Poseidon's crab-horse-claw-things. You pass by her very heart, the passageway to which was opened up by Poseidon's attacks..
 * Chekhov's Boomerang:.
 * Chewing the Scenery: You have no idea. Just one example: Kratos chatting it up with Atlas in the second game.
 * Clothing Damage: Happens to Kratos over the course of the series. His outfit in most of God of War II is the remains of his God armor from the beginning of the game, and there's even less of it left in God of War III.
 * Colossus Climb: Most notably, the minotaur fight in God Of War, as well as a platforming element that was important in the Hydra battle. In the sequels, the player climbs on and inside the Colossus of Rhodes, and faces Titans so massive their bodies often are the stage.
 * Combat Commentator: A drunken Hera provides a commentary to Kratos's fight with Hercules, starting with an almost-motherly "Now you boys play nice!"
 * Combat Sadomasochist: Some of Hades' taunts imply that he may be one of these.
 * Combat Tentacles: The Kraken has these, as does Ares. Scylla too.
 * Come Back to Bed, Honey: "Stay, Kratos. Just a bit longer."
 * Compilation Rerelease: The God of War Collection on PS3, which includes the two PS2 games, updated to run in 720p at 60 frames per second and with PS3 trophies.
 * It also included a code for unlocking an exclusive God Of War III demo (as did, of all things, the District 9 Blu-Ray).
 * Happening again with God of War Origins Collection, also on Play Station 3. This has both PSP games, updated to HD with optional stereoscopic 3D. The only game not on Playstation 3 is the mobile phone game Betrayal.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Dear God! In Ghost of Sparta Kratos walks around into an erupting volcano and has no trouble whatsoever. Also Scylla got a stream of magma poured on her and she barely flinched. Also with King Mydas later.
 * Cosmic Plaything: Kratos, duh. In his own words: "I am what the Gods have made me!" Hell, at first it's implied it's he's a literal case by the Sisters of Fate, but even after he kills them he's still one.
 * The Creepy Undertaker: The Gravedigger who turns out to be.
 * Cross Counter: Kratos and Hercules have one of these when . Zeus and Kratos has one of these in the end.
 * Crusading Widower: Kratos.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: Pretty much the final moments of any boss fight, but the ones in III are especially painful to watch (for some, at least). Even if you're into watching people getting their heads stomped on, you can't help but flinch a little...
 * There's also a Curb Stomp War early on in God of War III: the Gods manage to down a half dozen of the Titans climbing Mount Olympus within the first ten minutes of gameplay, and the rest more or less are beaten off-screen. Odds are, without Kratos on the Titan's side, the war would have been wrapped up in a half hour with the Gods being victorious.
 * This makes one wonder why the gods were so concerned about them in the first place.
 * Kratos even takes  out whilst working his way up the mountain.
 * Darker and Edgier: What the games claim to be in regards to their Classical Mythology source material. Like in Bloodier and Gorier above, Values Dissonance strikes again, since the Religion of Ancient Greece was quite dark and edgy to begin with. If anything, the games are Darker and Edgier than the Harryhausen Movies they are allegedly inspired from, if only because those were Lighter and Softer than the original stories.
 * The Odyssey was dark, but it didn't involve the known world getting completely devastated!!!
 * Dark Is Not Evil: Hades averts the usual stereotypes and has genuine reasons to hate Kratos,, except maybe greed, if the manuals are to be considered reliable (and thus adding Fridge Logic to his plans for Kratos). Arguably some of the titans as well, since Zeus was the one with the brilliant idea of punishing them forever for "the sins of just one".
 * Dark Messiah: Kratos in God of War III, by the time the game ends.
 * Deal with the Devil: Kratos' brilliant military career (as well as his life) was almost cut short when his army faced a numerically superior army of Barbarians, in a battle that only lasted a few hours. Kratos promised his soul to Ares in return for destroying the Barbarians, and Ares gladly obliged. This marked the beginning of Kratos' transformation into a Complete Monster.
 * Death by Irony: In ancient Greece, worshipers of Hades would so the god of the underworld would hear them.
 * Death by Sex: Inverted. . To be fair, Kratos consistently maintained that if the Gods would stay out of his way on the path to kill Zeus, he would leave them alone. Most of the gods did not oblige.
 * Originally though, if you tried to go for a second round with Aphrodite, she would pull a dagger on you, and Kratos would then have to kick her to Hades, although not actually kill her. This was done away with, possibly because it would have made no sense.
 * Death Is Cheap: Well, it is for Kratos anyway.
 * Also note that ultimately, death makes little sense. Kratos can leave the underworld if he's dead, but nobody else can seem to even if Hades wants them to.
 * Death of the Old Gods: Kratos doing his thing.
 * Decapitation Presentation: Kratos to Medusa, her sister and Helios in each respective game.
 * Defeat Equals Explosion: The giant lava minotaurs explode when defeated.
 * Degraded Boss: Gorgons. Medusa serves as the introduction to the enemy type as well as a demonstration of how to perform a special grab kill, but every Gorgon you meet from that point on is not only a standard enemy, but stronger than she was. Even the ones you meet just a few minutes later.
 * Dem Bones: Second game has them.
 * Depth Perplexion: An entire puzzle is made out of this in Hera's Garden in the third game. Basically, when you activate a switch, a green filter appears on the screen, the camera zooms away and stairways that are only adjacent by perspective become connected for real. You can thus get to the top of the garden through completely disconnected platforms, without having to perform a single jump.
 * Descending Ceiling/The Walls Are Closing In: Extremely common death traps in every game. In nearly every case, the only way to deactivate them is to endure the Multi Mook Melee that accompanies them.
 * Determinator: Kratos. Nothing will ever stand in his way for revenge. Whatever it's the barbarians, other Greek soldiers, nasty monsters, geographic difficulties, the fires of Hades, the gods or Death and Fate itself. All those who's stupid enough to do it anyway WILL be very sorry. Also The Barbarian King, who fought Hades just as hard as Kratos, and the Last Spartan soldier, who came just as far as Kratos in the temple of the Sisters of Fate, even though he was just a mere mortal.
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: During the beginning of God of War II, when, the save screen says " has given you the opportunity to save your progress". Later in the game, that named is changed to . In the third game, , there is no message.
 * Did You Just Punch Out The Entire Classical Mythos?
 * Disappointed in You: At the end of the third game, says this to Kratos when he
 * Disney Villain Death: Icarus in II. Specifically.
 * Disproportionate Retribution: The reason Gaia chooses to help Kratos in his fight against Zeus in the second game.
 * One could argue in Zeus's case it was necessary. Kronos would not tolerate Zeus and his siblings be free due to the threat they posed to his power. The Titans would aid Kronos against them. It was a situation where war was inevitable. Gaia could easily just be playing Kratos.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: The hilariously suggestive sex QTE in III certainly counts. Though given where the half-circle-up is, it does rather suggest Kratos takes an unholy amount of time getting out of the practically nothing he's usually almost wearing.
 * Downer Beginning: Most notably, the beginning stage of God Of War 2, where Kratos launches a brutal invasion of Rhodes and is subsequently punished and killed by Zeus. He also loses all the extra power he has gained from the previous game. He later manages to climb his way out of hell, though.
 * Driven to Suicide: Kratos tries this a few times.
 * Dude, Where's My Respect?: Most notably between the first two games. Part of the whole reason Kratos waged wars alongside the Spartans was because the gods didn't even accept him as the new God of War.
 * Dual-Wielding: Twin blades bound to Kratos' hands with chains. The first weapon to be used and arguably the most useful weapons in the entire game.
 * Hades as well.
 * Dying Alone:
 * Dying Moment of Awesome: When Helios' plea for his life ends in vain, he out of nowhere Doesn't stop him from losing his head.
 * Dynamic Loading: received a great deal of applause for this, hiding the loading behind long corridors and hiding those behind Scenery Porn, resulting in a game that is almost seamless. (A cheap & meaningless form of Sequence Breaking is to traverse those long corridors at faster-than-running speed—via Unnecessary Combat Rolls, for instance—to cause an actual Loading Screen to pop up.)
 * Easter Egg: There are two in the first game, one gotten through a secret code, and the other gotten through.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending: Arguably God of War III.
 * Elaborate Equals Effective: Can be applied to the Blades of Chaos, Blades of Athena and the Blade of Artemis. Also seen with enemy mooks.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Clotho from the second game, Poseidon in the third game.
 * Really, most of the Gods and Titans fit either this or Humanoid Abomination.
 * Elemental Powers: While Kratos doesn't have any individual control over the elements, he does gain magic spells that harness the power of the elements.
 * An Ice Person:.
 * Blow You Away: Typhon's Bane in 2.
 * Dishing Out Dirt: Atlas Quake in 2. Head of Euryale and Medusa's Gaze might also count, due to them turning people into stone.
 * Light'Em Up: Light of Dawn from Chains of Olympus, in 3.
 * Make Me Wanna Shout: Nemean Roar, the magic ability for the Cestus in 3.
 * Making a Splash: Divine Reckoning, the magic ability for the Blades of Athena at the beginning of 3.
 * Playing with Fire: The Efreet and Charon's Wrath from Chains of Olympus.
 * Power of the Void:
 * Shock and Awe: Poseidon's Rage and Zeus's Fury in 1, Cronos's Rage in 2, Eye of Atlantis in Ghost of Sparta, and Nemesis Rage, the magic ability of the Nemesis Whip in 3.
 * Enemy Mine: Theseus fighting with Minotaurs in his boss battle.
 * Soul Power: Army of Hades in 1 and as the magic ability of the Claws of Hades in 3.
 * Escort Mission: Cleverly, if brutally, twisted in these games. In the original, you need to push a cage containing an Athenian soldier up an enemy-infested ramp. Of course, you're only protecting him in order to burn him alive at the top of the ramp and move on in the temple. He pleads for his life the whole way up. And in the sequel, you have to protect a translator who can read a holy incantation and help you advance. The incantation indicates that a blood sacrifice is called for, so you slam his face repeatedly into the book...
 * Kratos does this again in God of War III, dragging "Poseidon's Princess", along with him in order to use her still living body to jam a gear mechanism so that he can make it through a door. She is very painfully crushed.
 * In God of War 2, he puts a wounded soldier on a Conveyor Belt of Doom to jam it.
 * Surprisingly averted with  in God of War III. While you help her get to , she only really is in dire need of protection from enemies maybe twice. She is quite competent at avoiding enemy attacks, which is great, due to the major enemy rushes that happen.
 * Essence Drop: Red orbs for experience, blue for magic and green for health. The red ones are heavily implied to be blood.
 * Establishing Character Moment: Kratos just beat down the Hydra single-handedly, marched into the throat of the great beast, and the ship captain is hanging at the precipice of his stomach. Kratos picks him up, grabs the key to the captain's quarters from him...and chucks the captain down into the belly of the dead hydra for no reason other than to be a dick.
 * Well actually, the captain is supposed to protect the crew and the guy tried to run away when the hydra stated biting chunks out of his ship. Kratos may have killed him for being a coward.
 * Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Kratos is shown to enter this trope. When Callisto turns into a monster, that Kratos had to kill, he shown to be very sad about it and than he takes her into his arms. Also, he does her will and looks for Deimos, his younger brother.
 * Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Due to No Name Given (a lot of them at that), this is natural. Even Pathos Verdes III, who's one of the very few NPCs with an actual name, he's more often called Pandora's Architect. Even with The Reveal of the Barbarian King's name and Kratos' Wife, there still addressed as such. Granted, this is probably because most people aren't even aware that they've been revealed, due to the names being revealed in the God of War miniseries of comics. Also, their names are in case you're wondering.
 * Evil Albino: Kratos, though technically he isn't an albino - he's permanently "covered in ashes" as a result of his curse.
 * Eviler Than Thou: Potentially the main redeeming factor for is whether you feel  or that.
 * Evil Gloating: Hercules' undoing..
 * Evil Laugh: Skeletons in the second game do it occasionally.
 * Evil Versus Evil: The gods actually invoke this trope by sending Kratos after monsters that more traditional Greek heroes could not even hope to survive against, much less defeat.
 * While the first and the third games were of the Black and Gray Morality category, it's played straight in the second game. It's Kratos, who's pretty much the main villain then, against Zeus, who's a paranoid dictator.
 * Exploding Barrels: There are exploding oil pots in God of War III that can be ignited by the Bow of Apollo.
 * Expy: Kratos bears a strong resemblance with Mighty Kongman from Tales of Destiny. The fact that both of them are voiced by the same voice actor in the Japanese version doesn't help either.
 * Extreme Melee Revenge:
 * Arguably done with some Boss Fights too.
 * Eye Scream: Kratos performs a Finishing Move against Cyclops enemies by ripping their eyes out, and stabs Typhon in one eye in order to gain a new power.
 * Also, in the sequence described below in Shaky POV Cam, Kratos gouges out his enemies eyes with his thumbs. No blades this time, just thumbs.
 * He does this one to HOLY SHIT.
 * Made funny when you realize the prompt to do so is pushing the thumb sticks.
 * At a few points during the battle with Cronos, Kratos is required to blind him by giving him a burst of sunlight from Helios' head.
 * Fan Service: Oh yeah.
 * Aphrodite, for starters, plus the gratuitous sex scenes throughout the series. Also, Persephone.
 * Fake Skill: The "New Game+" glitch in the 3rd game.
 * Fan Disservice: Euryale & Clotho in the second. * shudders*
 * Ironic, since Clotho was described as the most beautiful of the sisters in the old myths.
 * Fantastic Light Source: Kratos can rip off Helios' head and use it as a lantern.
 * Fat Bastard: Again, Eurayle & Clotho. The latter makes Jabba the Hutt looks like Michael Phelps.
 * Also, Cronos.
 * YMMV since he's just BIG. The amount of fat on him is more or less proportional to a human.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: Prometheus, who after giving fire to mortals was punished by being forced to eternally get his gut eaten by a bird, only to revive and suffer the same thing the next day and so on. Probably the only Mercy Kill Kratos has ever done.
 * As of Ghost of Sparta, it now isn't the only one. He also mercy kills.
 * Fighting Down Memory Lane: During your final confrontation with Ares, after direct combat has failed, he sucks you into some kind of mental plane, where he forces you to relieve your most defining moment - the day you unwittingly murdered your own family. Or at least, he tries - you have to fight off a horde of 'clone' Kratoses while protecting your family. Fail, and Kratos will simply collapse with a moan of "No... not again..."
 * During his final battle, Kratos goes through all of the evil he's committed over the course of the series, showing that Kratos really did feel guilt for what he did deep down.
 * Fingore: In 3, Kratos rips one of Kronos's fingernails off during the fight with him. The sheer crudeness of it makes even the toughest gamers cringe and shiver, but compared to what Kratos does to Kronos later on in the fight, that is pretty tame.
 * Fission Mailed: After a long quest to retrieve Pandora's box,  Of course, this doesn't stop him in the least.
 * Five-Bad Band: The gods in the third game definitely qualify.
 * Big Bad: Zeus, oh so very much.
 * The Dragon: Poseidon kills a Titan in one shot, holds back the rest, and would have killed Gaia if Kratos hadn't stopped him.
 * Helios as well, who would have killed Perses if Kratos had not intervened. In addition, he also seems quite determined to not let Kratos kill Zeus, despite his apparent cowardice.
 * The Brute: Hades relies more on hitting Kratos with his chain blade things than anything else, and his second form relies on NASTY physical attacks.
 * The Evil Genius: Hermes, who delivers a nasty Hannibal Lecture to Kratos, and is smart enough not to directly confront him...at first, anyway.
 * The Dark Chick: Hera, who never actually fights.
 * The Sixth Ranger: Hercules, who's not actually a god, but fights with his daddy Zeus anyway. Mostly because he wants to be a god, and also because he's terribly jealous of Kratos' success.
 * Fixed Camera
 * Foe-Tossing Charge: In "God of War III", Kratos can do this when he grabs an enemy, using their body as a battering ram as he dashes through enemies. After running for a while he'll simply toss the body or if he hits a wall he slams their head around.
 * Follow the Plotted Line: Dear lord, so much.
 * Foreshadowing:  Come the end of the third game, and...
 * Fragile Speedster: Hermes.
 * Full-Frontal Assault: You don't encounter any nude human enemies to speak of, but there's plenty of topless female monsters (mostly Gorgons and Harpies) who attack you on sight. Kratos is barely more than a loincloth away from this trope himself.
 * Gameplay and Story Segregation: Icarus' Wings alternate between Cutscene Incompetence and Cutscene Power to the Max in III. At the beginning of the game, Kratos doesn't think about using them before . But in several cutscenes afterwards he uses them to actually fly, while you can only glide in gameplay. You do get a couple of actual flying segments though, once by using a powerful updraft, and again by skydiving down the same tunnel.
 * Genius Bruiser: Kratos. He ain't just capable to tear monster 1000 times his size apart, but he's also capable of figure out the most difficult puzzles of Pandora's temple and other places.
 * Get Back Here Boss: The majority of your encounter with Hermes is simply chasing him down; since he's the speedy messenger of the gods, he delights in dashing about making fun of you. Once you manage to knock the wind out of him he barely puts up a fight to speak of--chasing him down was the real contest.
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: The Kraken. It just appears with no build up to fight Kratos and no reason as to why it is there is ever given. True, it could have been sent.
 * God Is Evil: Zeus..
 * Gorgeous Gorgon: Medusa. But not Euryale...
 * Gorn: What did you expect?
 * Especially since it's strongly hinted that the red Experience Orbs that you collect from dead enemies and Experience Chests throughout the three games are in-game representations of blood, for example in the second game the upgrade screen displays a Hoplite helmet that fills with blood as you collect more orbs, and which drains out once you go below 1k. If this is accurate, the Squick factor is upped exponentially, since that would mean you power up your weapons by (at higher levels) bathing them in the blood of roughly a thousand enemies.
 * This explanation causes a bit of Fridge Brilliance when you see how small the amount of experience you get from.
 * Gotterdammerung: The developers have said that God of War III will explain why Greek myths aren't around anymore. Guess Kratos is a one-man apocalypse/the "somebody" from the page quote.
 * Ground Pound: One of the moves available with the Blades of Chaos comes in ground and air versions of this trick.
 * Atlas Quake functions like this as well.
 * As well as the Efreet.
 * Hercules does this.
 * Guest Fighter: Kratos appears as one in Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, the Play Station 3 version of Mortal Kombat 9, and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.
 * Ham-to-Ham Combat: Roughly 95% of the dialogue.
 * Hannibal Lecture: In God Of War III, Hermes completely deconstructs Kratos in the path of the Caverns and he can only listen..
 * Harder Than Hard: God difficulty in the first game, Titan in the second, Chaos in the third.
 * Harryhausen Movie: David Jaffe (the game's creator) has admitted God of War was heavily inspired by Harryhausen Movies. Harry Hamlin even has a cameo in God of War 2, as his original character, and skeletons clearly inspired by Jason And The Argonauts show up as well.
 * Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: In the first game, the second phase of the final battle
 * Heart Is an Awesome Power:
 * Heel Face Turn:
 * Heroic BSOD: Kratos has a brief one in the second game after he ends up killing the only Spartan warrior that survived Zeus's massacre and was trying to change the past himself under Kratos's orders. This is actually one of the few times Kratos shows regret for killing an enemy, so much so that he nearly gives up the quest altogether.
 * Heroic Resolve: Kratos gets a genuine moment of heroism at the end of the first when Ares sends him into a Battle in the Center of the Mind.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: . This scene is also a bit of a Tear Jerker since it is one of the few times Kratos shows genuine remorse for killing someone.
 * Later, Also a Tear Jerker given how hard Kratos tries to stop it. The fact that  only worsens the blow.
 * Finally,
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: "Petard-hoister" is pretty much listed in Kratos's resume given that a ton of his patented O-button finishers involve using an enemy/boss's own weapon (or anatomy) to do him in.
 * In II,.
 * Homage: The Labyrinth in the third game reminds one of Cube.
 * Hopeless Boss Fight: Kratos' first encounter with Zeus in the sequel. The game doesn't even let you attack effectively.
 * The battle in question takes place right after your power is drained, and the hand of Colossus smashes Kratos. Thus, you can't roll or jump, your fastest attack takes about three seconds to perform, and you can only limp to where you want to go. Try and make Kratos jump here - he bends his legs, grunts, then straightens them again as if to say "Yeah, not gonna happen."
 * Something similar happens during the first few moments fighting the Kraken. When you press a button, Kratos merely screams out "I cannot change my fate!" or something to that effect until you get to a scripted point that gives him an ability upgrade and, of course, the will to fight on.
 * The prequel Chains of Olympus also has a scripted defeat against Charon, who cannot be beaten without Zeus' Gauntlet which you get from a statue of Zeus in the Tartarus (after Charon gleefully tosses your defeated ass down there).
 * This holds true even in bonus play, where having the gauntlet doesn't matter, because then Charon's pillars aren't actually destructible.
 * Hot Coffee Minigame: Described above. Amusingly, Kratos gets paid if you do it successfully. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?...
 * Kratos is just that good.
 * And those minigames included two twins, two daughters of Aphrodite, two matrons, Aphrodite herself and, in Ghost of Sparta, with EIGHT prostitutes at ONCE!!!.
 * How We Got Here: The first game begins with Kratos attempting to commit suicide, with the rest of the game leading up to why.
 * Hyperspace Arsenal: Kratos spends most of the games in naught but a kind of battle skirt. It's OK, he's buff, he can pull it off. But it's sort of hard to figure out where Kratos stores his secondary weapons (a massive sword in the first game, a huge hammer and large spear in the second) with such little apparent storage space. There are also a collection of smaller trinkets Kratos carries around (Gorgon eyes, phoenix feathers, etc.) without having to place them anywhere. The first game at least tries to justify the sword - when you switch weapons, Kratos slams his regular blades together to form them into the sword; after all, it's a god's weapon.
 * Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Kratos at the hands of Ares in the first game. He escapes the underworld, though, and gets him back for it in the final battle.
 * This actually happens a lot in cutscenes and action commands. Special mention to the Blade of Olympus, as most of the plot-relevant impalements happen on that.
 * Incoming Ham: Hermes in God of War III. That laugh. Just watch the boss fight in all its glory.
 * And Poseidon:
 * Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Kratos at the hands of Ares in the first game. He escapes the underworld, though, and gets him back for it in the final battle.
 * This actually happens a lot in cutscenes and action commands. Special mention to the Blade of Olympus, as most of the plot-relevant impalements happen on that.
 * Incoming Ham: Hermes in God of War III. That laugh. Just watch the boss fight in all its glory.
 * And Poseidon:

""WHO breaks my CHAINS OF TORMENT?!""
 * Atlas in God of War II:

"FEEL THE POWER OF THE SUN!!!"
 * Helios sounds like a Sunny Delight commercial:

"Athena: Your sins are forgiven. But we never promised to remove your nightmares. No man, no god, could ever forget the terrible things you have done."
 * Inescapable Ambush: Red barriers with a wolf's head appear to lock Kratos in to a certain area until he kills all the enemies.
 * Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Even Hades has chests full of health and magic power ups.
 * He was the god of wealth as well as the dead (all the gold and gems buried in the underworld were his).
 * The Insomniac: The whole reason Kratos agrees to serve the gods in the first place is because he believes it will rid him of the nightmares that started after he crossed the Moral Event Horizon by . After he kills Ares, he believes the gods will fulfill their end of the bargain. They don't.

"Zeus: Kratos! I created you..! And I shall be YOUR END!!!"
 * Insurmountable Waist High Fence: Given Kratos' immense strength and agility it can be quite noticeable when the Kratos is unable to get somewhere a normal human could reach or is blocked by a barrier that seems much more fragile than ones he's smashed though already.
 * Ironic Echo:
 * The ending of God of War III has a version of this.
 * Said at the start of God of War 2.
 * It Has Only Just Begun: "The End Begins".
 * It's All About Me: Kratos is selfish beyond belief. The world very nearly collapses as a result of his actions, it's nothing he cares about as long as he gets what he wants.
 * Jaw Breaker: Kratos finishes Cerberus this way, in order to steal the artifact held within its mouth.
 * Jerkass: Ostentatiously Kratos. The only thing he ever thinks about is "My vengeance, my vengeance!", he does nothing for no one and usually kills everyone around him, enemy or not. Every one of his actions usually makes things worse and for most the gods he's killed untold many died as a direct consequence. Can be even more jarring if you stop to think about it for a while and notice that, despite his enormous levels of jerkassery, Kratos is still labeled as ideal by some characters! This, too, is to be blamed on Values Dissonance, but Kratos takes it further.
 * Jerkass Gods: Many of the Greek gods, especially Ares and Zeus, are total asshats. To be fair, however, the games are actually pretty accurate as to how they acted in actual Greek myth.
 * Exceptions include Athena, Hephaestus, and Artemis.
 * Hades is a lesser example, at least where Kratos is concerned. Sure, his hatred for Kratos is justified - the man killed several of Hades's family, after all! - but he still . Persephone even hated him and the rest of the gods so much, she.
 * Kratos himself qualifies when he was the god of war.
 * Journey to the Center of the Mind:.
 * Just Eat Him: This is how Kronos attempted to prevent his own offspring from rising up against him: devouring them as infants - they survived because they're gods..
 * Karmic Death: Hermes, who boasts constantly about being faster than Kratos, gets rewarded by becoming a double-leg amputee.
 * Kick the Dog:
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential notwithstanding, Kratos does this a lot. There's even an attack in both games that lets you literally kick Cerberus pups; the third game requires you to do so in order to solve a puzzle.
 * Zeus gets one in the third game, when.
 * Kill'Em All: By the end of the trilogy, the only named characters left alive are The ending is still surprisingly hopeful.
 * Lady Drunk: Hera. It seems she never took Zeus' multiple meddlings of mortal affairs well.
 * GARGANTUAN HAM OF THE GODS: One theory is that Kratos is really being punished for stealing the secret of ham from the gods...
 * It seems like Kratos's script for God of War II in particular had the instruction "Yell every single line at the top of your voice" written on it. He frequently bellows his lines at characters even when he's RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM and they could probably hear him fine if he talked normally.
 * Late Arrival Spoiler: The trophy names in the Play Station 3 re-release make no attempt to hide the plot details of the first two games.
 * Late to the Party: Kratos can find several journal passages from the architect who constructed Pandora's Temple. They don't serve to forward the plot at all, but it's very interesting nonetheless to watch him design the temple, slowly go mad, kill his sons, turn their skulls into keys you use to unlock doors, and eventually pull a murder-suicide on his wife.
 * Lead the Target: Since Hermes is so fast, this is a good way to hit him.
 * Let's You and Him Fight: Very subverted in the second game, where . It should be noted that they only fought because Perseus was trying to invoke this trope.
 * Played straight late in the game when
 * Light Is Not Good: Helios, specially considering how fire is equated with light in the third game, and to a lesser extent Zeus, with his lightning bolts, and Hermes, who has his hair made of light in the third game (in the second he appears to have flaming hair; the character design hadn't settled by that time yet). Also.
 * Lightning Bruiser: Zeus, no pun intended, is insanely fast and strong. Not to mention Kratos himself.
 * Like a Badass Out of Hell: Kratos does this habitually. It almost isn't a God of War game without him getting sent to Hades somehow. He even lampshades this in God of War III.
 * Limit Break: Kratos has a meter which fills each time he deals damage. When it fills, it allows him to unleash the Rage of the Gods (Titans in the second game, Sparta in the third), which lets him attack quicker and stronger and unleash infinite magic attacks for as long as it lasts without draining his magic meter.
 * Luke, I Am Your Father:
 * Made of Iron: Even before he becomes a god, Kratos is able to fall from any height and land on his feet with no ill effects. He can take a Minotaur's axe to the face and still keep fighting. He's able to hold onto the Blades of Chaos even when the chains are on fire and not get burned. All of this is justified, however, when you learn in the second game (and the bonus features of the first) that . This also explains why he possesses the superhuman strength required to perform most of his attacks, especially impaling the Hydra on the mast of a ship.
 * Manipulative Bastard: Ares, Zeus,.
 * Mask of Power: Charon's golden mask in Chains of Olympus allows him and Kratos to use Charon's Wrath, a stunning and damaging green flame.
 * Meaningful Name: Kratos roughly translates as 'strength' or 'power'. In the classical Greek mythology, Kratos was the personification of aforementioned tributes as well as a servant of Zeus, sent to kill or otherwise disable anything that displeased the King of the Gods. He was responsible, for example, for Sisyphus and Haephestus' punishments.
 * It also roughly translates to "power with an impact".
 * Medusa
 * Melee a Trois:
 * More appropriately, fighting the Sisters of Fate in the second game - The last phase of the Lakhesis fight takes place with Atropos trying to snipe you from inside the mirrors.
 * Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Everytime you, something terrible happens to Greece. For example:.
 * Mighty Glacier: Hercules.
 * Moral Guardian: If you have played the Japanese localized version of God of War 1, you'll notice the naked breasts of Kratos' prostitutes and the sex moans have been censored.
 * Morality Pet: Calliope, Kratos' daughter in Chains of Olympus. Upon being reunited with her in the Elysium Fields, he soon had to part with her, including a button-mashing game to push her away.
 * The Spartans in God of War II are this to Kratos when . The destruction of Sparta by Zeus's hands is what make Kratos's grudge more personal.
 * Motive Rant: Hades gives a pretty impressive one before fighting Kratos. He hates the Spartan for . After all that, it's perfectly clear that he'll enjoy tormenting Kratos' soul a lot if he wins.
 * Multi Stage Battle: The battle with the Colossus of Rhodes in God of War II; the battle against Zeus in God of War III.
 * Mundane Utility: In a hilariously audacious example, Kratos uses Helios' severed and still screaming head as a flashlight.
 * My God, What Have I Done?: Probably what Kratos was thinking the moment he realized that two of the people he just murdered were.
 * He also does this in the second game, when he realizes that the unknown assailant he just killed was.
 * Done with quietly exquisite beauty in
 * A Mythology Is True: Guess which one!
 * Not only the Greek one though. In Chain of Olympus, the Persian King face you with the power of an Efreet, a creature from Arab Floklore... so it's plausible that there are other gods out there.
 * Narrator All Along: One-and-a-bit games are narrated before the narrator steps in, says "Oh, and by the way, I'm..." and joins the story proper.
 * Never Found the Body:
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
 * Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:.
 * Ninja Zombie Pirate Robot: Pandora's Guardian is a Giant Zombie Robot Demon Minotaur.
 * Nintendo Hard: Those damn trap levels! The Labyrinth in the the third game is especially frustrating.
 * No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Hera tried to convince Zeus to kill Kratos when he was a infant, but Zeus took pity on him and didn't kill him, and without Kratos.
 * No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Kratos is more the god of this trope than he is the God of War. Special mention goes to the.
 * The.
 * No Indoor Voice: Kratos is not a quiet person.
 * No Kill Like Overkill: Kratos' favorite method of dispatching his enemies.
 * No Name Given: With the exception Pathos Verdes III (Pandora's Architect) no character that wasn't originally from Greek Mythology has a name. . The Novel as well, where, for example it is stated that the two girls on Kratos' ship are daughters of Aphrodite.
 * Nonstandard Game Over: During the final battle in the first game, Kratos is hurled back to the moment he, only to find them alive... whereupon Ares conjures up an army of Kratos clones. The has their own health bar in the following battle; should it run out, a cutscene starts, showing Kratos collapsing in abject despair and sorrow, murmuring, "Not again..." The Kratos clones then gang up and chop him apart.
 * During one of the last battles in the second game, Kratos is hurled back to the moment that he defeated Ares. The boss, Atropos, was going to destroy the giant sword you originally used in the first game to slay the god of war, which would lead to your retroactive death. If you failed to defeat Atropos before she could destroy the sword, you get a cutscene of past Kratos kneeling in defeat and getting stabbed by Ares, which causes present Kratos to wretch in pain and fall over, dead.
 * In God Of War: Ghost Of Sparta, Kratos runs into King Midas, who lunges at him. Fail the Quick Time Event, and Midas will grab Kratos, turning him to solid gold.
 * Nothing Is Scarier: In a rare moment of spooky suspense during III, you have to turn a very slow crank while four Stone Talos statues surround you, who you've been fighting with quite some difficulty one-on-one until now, and you just know they're gonna ambush you.
 * Notice This
 * Odd Name Out: Most characters use Helenic names, except for Hercules.
 * Offing the Offspring: Played straight with Zeus and Kratos, but subverted so very, very hard by the latter and his daughter Calliope.
 * In God Of War: Ghost Of Sparta, Kratos runs into King Midas, who lunges at him. Fail the Quick Time Event, and Midas will grab Kratos, turning him to solid gold.
 * Nothing Is Scarier: In a rare moment of spooky suspense during III, you have to turn a very slow crank while four Stone Talos statues surround you, who you've been fighting with quite some difficulty one-on-one until now, and you just know they're gonna ambush you.
 * Notice This
 * Odd Name Out: Most characters use Helenic names, except for Hercules.
 * Offing the Offspring: Played straight with Zeus and Kratos, but subverted so very, very hard by the latter and his daughter Calliope.

"Narrator: But he would soon learn the true cost of such power. A cost too high even for Kratos to pay."
 * Off with His Head: Kratos has a tendency of ripping off certain enemies' heads and making good use of them. In the first two games he rips off the heads of Medusa and Euryale to freeze enemies in place while in the third he uses Helios' head as a lantern.
 * Ominous Greek Chanting
 * Omnicidal Maniac: Persephone. Oh God, Persephone. Chains of Olympus actually portrays her as fairly sympathetic.
 * Once an Episode: Kratos has, so far, been to Hades or some other land of the dead, and killed his way out in each game.
 * One-Woman Wail: Pandora's song.
 * Optional Sexual Encounter: Each game has one of these. You get a decent amount of red orbs for doing them, although this is useless in God of War 2 since you lose all your red orbs shortly after, before you have a chance to use them. However it could be worse - you could get blue orbs.
 * Order Versus Chaos: A very prominent theme in the franchise, with the Fates and Olympians representing Order and Kratos representing Chaos. Fitting, as this is also a prominent theme in all of the original Greek mythos. The Greek gods (especially, amusingly enough, Athena) represent order, while the various forces that fight against them (especially the Titans and monsters like Typhon) represent chaos.
 * Overly Long Gag:.
 * Parental Favoritism: Hercules accuses . This is debatable.
 * The reason why Ares attacked Athens, as Zeus favored Athena more than Ares, in keeping with the original mythology.
 * Papa Wolf: The closest Kratos ever gets to being heroic is when someone brings up the memory of his family.
 * Hephaestus, in regard to Pandora. He's the only one of the gods who . Kratos later lampshades it to Pandora when he tells her that Hephaestus did as a loving father would do.
 * Pegasus
 * Perpetual Frowner: Everyone, especially Kratos.
 * The Phoenix: One makes an appearance in the second game. Apparently, Kratos slew one of these in the Comic.
 * Physical God: Several of them, of course - the Olympic pantheon is one of the best-known examples of such characters.
 * Planet Heck: Appears in all four games. The River Styx in the first, Tartarus in the second, and the Elysian Fields in the prequel. You go to and from it in the third game, and the appearance of Kratos' brother Deimos in Ghost of Sparta all but guarantees that game will have such a level as well.
 * Actually averted:.
 * Please Don't Leave Me: In Chains of Olympus, . The game even twists the knife by making into a button-mashing minigame!
 * In the third game Kratos drags a woman around for a short section before using her body to jam a gear mechanism so that he can make it through a set of doors. She begs for her life, says this, he leaves her there anyway, and judging by the screams you hear she dies very painfully.
 * Plot Induced Stupidity: Apprently Kratos has forgotten the fact that he has the Icarus Wings inside his Hyperspace Arsenal when he.
 * There are also a lot of other places where those would have come in handy that Kratos doesn't.
 * Then there's the whole draining your godly power into the Blade of Olympus in the second game. Most obvious trap ever and you have to fall for it in order to continue the game.
 * Well, that or being flattened by a giant bronze colossus! At least you can wield it later!
 * The Pornomancer: It sure would explain why Kratos gains experience orbs after a sex minigame...
 * Power Fist: The Gauntlet of Zeus and Nemean Cestus.
 * Powerup Mount: The second game has Kratos riding Pegasus and a Phoenix, and forcing Cerberus, Cyclopse, and harpies to be your "rides" before killing them in third game.
 * Press X to Not Die: God of War may not have invented the Quick Time Event, but it's certainly a Trope Codifier.
 * The Problem with Fighting Death: Yeah, deicide is really not a good thing in hindsight, no matter how much they may have deserved it.
 * Production Throwback: The stylistic Precap and flashback scenes of God of War III were designed by Imaginary Forces, whose Word of God says they are an allusion to the ending credits of The Mummy Trilogy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, also designed by them.
 * Prophecy Twist:
 * Punched Across the Room: Hercules does this to Kratos every time he lands a blow.
 * Puzzle Pan
 * Rage Against the Heavens
 * Rated "M" for Manly
 * Reality Is Unrealistic: While designing the look of Kratos, and various other characters in the game, the art team was frustrated because they kept getting told that it "didn't look Greek enough". They were using actual Greek sources, and doing extensive research into Greek mythology in an effort to get everything correct. But eventually they came to realize that "Greek" should mean "Greek according to the general public", since that was the audience they were targeting.
 * This might also explain why so many think the series is Darker and Edgier than the myths, despite it actually being the other way around: so many people grow up with white-washed versions of the myths, and the games are certainly much darker and more brutal than the Harryhausen Movies.
 * One of the directors of the game justified the changes they made, explaining that the ancient writers were telling the stories in a way most appropriate to ancient Greece, while they're telling the myths in a way most appropriate to the 21st century.
 * Real Time Weapon Change: The weapons and spells are usually this.
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Every god in the third game has one to some degree, along with some Evil Gloating. The kicker? Their accusations of Kratos being a monster who seeks only destruction and vengeance are far from unfounded. Special mention to Zeus who mocks Kratos for failing everyone he's ever cared about.
 * Redemption Equals Death:
 * Redemption Quest: Kratos thought he was on such a quest in the first game, but didn't get the redemption he was aiming for.
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni:
 * Refuge in Audacity: All games utilize this, but a particular moment in 3 stands out. So, Kratos trapped in the Underworld, with a very pissed off Hades taunting him the whole way. He blocks his path with a statue of himself and tries to guilt trip Kratos into giving up by showing him the casket of his dead wife that Kratos murdered. So, what does he do?
 * Of course he then proceeds to kick several dogs in God of War III, returning to the tried and true tactic of sacrificing innocent bystanders in order to get through doors.
 * Retcon: It is mentioned at least twice in the first game that Kronos (who carries the Temple of Pandora) is the only living Titan, but since the plot of the second game revolves around Gaia and the Titans in general, this minor plot point was quietly ignored - although we don't actually see Gaia in person until the end, and the other Titans were inprisoned (with Atlas being stuck in the Underworld).
 * One could argue that since they were imprisoned in Tartarus, one of the lands of the dead, the other Titans were essentially dead by the standards of Greek mythology.
 * Revenge Before Reason: Kratos's entire life. He's willing to wreck the world for revenge on Zeus. Even.
 * Rewarding Vandalism: Kratos receives power ups in the form of red orbs for smashing anything that can be smashed, which is practically everything. And any time you see random human characters running around, they, too, can be murdered for health.
 * Subverted/Justified in the prequel where Kratos was given the choice of.
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Pretty much every single game. Complete with literal roaring.
 * Rule of Cool: Just about every last thing regarding these games.
 * Running Gag: In God of War II, Kratos develops quite a habit of yelling up at the gods (mainly Zeus) every time they effectively make his life hell. The result? Something happens to make things worse, . He seems to have learned in this department by the third game, though.
 * Also the boat captain who constantly has the bad luck of running into Kratos and not surviving. Even when already dead, he can't escape his wrath.
 * Sadistic Choice: Towards the end of the third game, Kratos has to decide whether to sacrifice Pandora, who has become like a daughter to him, or to save her but let Zeus go free. Avenge his family or save his family: pick one. (Zeus goads him into the former.)
 * Sadly Mythtaken: ** Pandora's Box partially averts this, though seemingly not at first..
 * Hera is the Goddess of Marriage..
 * The death of causes a plague. This does not make sense, because he had nothing to do with disease, and the god of disease was Apollo. Then again, the caduceus of Hermes is often misused as a health care symbol... Perhaps that finally came full circle?
 * The sirens in The Odyssey resided on jagged coastlines and tempted sailors to smash their ships on the rocks. So naturally God of War puts them in the desert just outside Athens.
 * Since when was Typhon a Titan? He was a horrifically powerful monster in actual Greek Mythology, created by Gaia to take revenge on the Olympians after the Titanomachy. Although it may be justified when you consider that anytime Kratos is sent to the Underworld, where Typhon lives, he isn't properly equipped to fight a monster that inspired fear in all the gods except Zeus. Zeus himself was soundly defeated when they first fought.
 * There's also the fact that in this game Kratos can kill the gods and titans, where as in the myths they were all immortal. Probably the weirdest part comes with kill characters while in the underworld. Just get much fridgelogic is in this, this seems to go by the fact that dead people go to the underworld when they die, and yet in this game characters can still die when in the underworld.
 * Say My Name / Skyward Scream: "ZEUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUS!!!!!!!!"
 * "AAAAAAAAAREEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!!!!"
 * "ATHENAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!"
 * "GAIAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!"
 * The list goes on.
 * Scary White Man: (although voiced by a black man.)
 * He looked the opposite prior to getting coated in white ash.
 * Played straight in GoW II with his "Dark Odissey" bonus costume.
 * Sea Monster: The Hydra, The Kraken, Leviathan/Hyppocami.
 * Scylla in Ghost of Sparta takes the cake: It looks like a hybrid of different sea creatures, including a shark, a squid, a crab and a narvhal.
 * Second-Person Attack: In the third game, one part of the Poseidon battle has you seeing Kratos' brutality through Poseidon's eyes.
 * Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Given the source material, it's no surprise that this one appears, most notably in the second game's plot. Kronos devoured his children to keep them from overthrowing him, thus providing Zeus with the motivation to do just that. Later on, when Zeus murders Kratos for the same exact reason, this gives Kratos an excuse to track down the Three Sisters of Fate and kill them in order to gain their power and reverse the event. Even the Fates themselves fall victim to this trope, as they were the ones who orchestrated all of these events to begin with. It turns out, even though they can control your circumstances, they can't do the same with your actions.
 * Serial Escalation: Pretty much everything Kratos does, starting with killing the Hydra and working from there. By the end of the series, you can be guaranteed that if there is anything from Greek myth still alive, it's only because Kratos hasn't met and killed it yet.
 * He met Aphrodite, but um... she was conquered in a completely different way.
 * Self-Made Orphan: . Ghost of Sparta takes it a step further and.
 * Senseless Sacrifice:.
 * Sequel Hook: The End Begins.
 * One of Poseidon's battle quotes is "Atlantis will be avenged!". In Ghost Of Sparta it is revealed that.
 * Sequence Breaking: Entire communities on GameFAQs and YouTube are devoted to finding new breaks, primarily for the three console games. For example, it's possible to beat the entire first game without collecting any magic or the Blade of Artemis. It's also possible, even without Bonus Play, to use an out-of-bounds swimming glitch to essentially warp from acquiring the Amulet of the Fates straight to Icarus (the downside being that you have to play the rest of the game without the Barbarian Hammer, Head of Euryale, Golden Fleece or Spear of Destiny.
 * An easier, more obvious non-glitch sequence break that most everyone will pull off on their New Game+ is releasing Prometheus from his chains and dropping him into the fires of Olympus without having to take on Typhon, as you start out with every magic spell, including Typhon's Bane.
 * Serrated Blade of Pain: Kratos' swords.
 * Sexy Discretion Shot: During a Hot Coffee Minigame Kratos has rough sex with two topless Greek ladies on his boat. As the "action" starts, the camera pulls to the side, and focuses on a large vase on the nightstand. Then the room starts shaking and loud moans fill the air; if the player is successful, and the vase falls and breaks. Surprisingly, no congressional hearings were called on this one. Nor were they called for the second game, where he does it again, and during a battle, no less. This time, the shot cuts to a "peeing" cherub fountain... Chains of Olympus also features one in the middle of a pitched battle with Persians, no less.
 * The third game subverts this: While Kratos has sex with Aphrodite (technically his great-aunt by strange shenanigans regarding Ouranus's genitals, or his half-sister depending on the version) the camera pans... to two of Aphrodite's slave girls feeling each other up while watching the whole thing. The two handmaidens murmur about how it's for mature audiences and parents shouldn't let their children watch it while fondling each others' naked breasts... Succeed, and there is another discretion shot, as the two maidens "go to the next step" and the camera pans back to Aphrodite.
 * Shaky POV Cam: BRUTALLY, and beautifully, subverted to the fullest in GoW III. When
 * Ship Tease: Quite a bit of it between Kratos and Athena, especially in God of War II. This gets subverted big time at the end of God of War III though when it turns out that
 * Shoo the Dog: Actually made into a QTE in Chains of Olympus, as Kratos.
 * Sinister Scimitar: Played straight by countless monsters and arguably Kratos himself. Even before getting the Blade of Chaos he used one in the comic book.
 * Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: Level 2.
 * Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: Oddly, they didn't do much damage if they slammed on the player.
 * Sociopathic Hero: Eerily on-point description of Kratos, though it can sometimes be humorous.
 * Stripperiffic: The Oracle in the first game with her see-through top (no, they didn't have bras in Ancient Greece). Kratos himself arguably qualifies as well.
 * Outdone by Aphrodite in III, whose outfit consists of a strip of cloth across her chest - which is so thin that it doesn't cover her breasts - and another covering her hips. It also seems to be her maidens' standard outfit.
 * Start of Darkness: Kratos' Deal with the Devil, in which he promised his soul to Ares in exchange for the latter agreeing to destroy his enemies. In return, he received the Blades of Chaos and the blessing of the God of War.
 * Stripperiffic: The Oracle in the first game with her see-through top (no, they didn't have bras in Ancient Greece). Kratos himself arguably qualifies as well.
 * Outdone by Aphrodite in III, whose outfit consists of a strip of cloth across her chest - which is so thin that it doesn't cover her breasts - and another covering her hips. It also seems to be her maidens' standard outfit.
 * Start of Darkness: Kratos' Deal with the Devil, in which he promised his soul to Ares in exchange for the latter agreeing to destroy his enemies. In return, he received the Blades of Chaos and the blessing of the God of War.


 * Stop Helping Me!: The tutorials pop-ups in the first game are very... thorough in their controls assistance. Made worse by their tendency to appear a significant period of time after the player already figured out whatever they're mentioning and the inability to skip past them for several seconds.
 * Strong as They Need to Be: GoW 2 provides a villain example..
 * The titans also qualify, since in God of War II they able to give Kratos powers, implying they have powers themselves, yet during God of War III they don't display any beyond their size.
 * Sub Boss
 * Super-Persistent Predator: Scylla. That beast will chase you from open sea through all Atlantis and right into a Flaming Volcano in order to stop Kratos. Not that it will work, mind you..
 * Taken for Granite: Medusa and her sister Eruyale can turn people to stone. You too, once you rip their heads off. King Midas has the "turns to gold" variety, of course.
 * Take Your Time: In the first game, an NPC is dangling from a rope at one point, and you need to rescue her before she falls. You need to solve a puzzle to be able to climb up to a certain platform, and then a Timed Mission starts in which you must navigate an obstacle course to reach her. However, you can Take Your Time in reaching that platform, despite her cries of agony.
 * Tempting Fate: Theseus doubts Kratos could even kill him, much less Zeus. Funnily enough, Theseus is literally a servant of the Fates.
 * Tennis Boss: Persephone.
 * Lakhesis also somewhat counts, and you can keep throwing her energy blasts back at her, and she'll often catch them and toss them right back a few times before you hit her with them.
 * Thirteen Is Unlucky: Hercules considers defeating Kratos a thirteenth Labour.
 * Something interesting to note here: In some versions of the myths, Hercules was originally supposed to only perform ten Labours, not twelve. He was made to do the other two because he was judged to have cheated in two of the original ten by having help in completing them. One of these two was his defeat of the Hydra, which is killed by Kratos in the first game. One wonders what Hercules was made to do instead, and how he cheated on that one, too...
 * Perhaps killing Poseidon flooded the Augean Stables?
 * In the Novel it's revealed that the Hydra fought by Kratos, was the one killed by Hercules in the past and brought back to life.
 * This Is Sparta: "I CANNOT CHANGE MY FATE!!! I - AM - CURSED!!!"
 * Timey-Wimey Ball: This series' approach to time travel is completely baffling. . Overall, there appears to be no causality whatsoever between time periods.
 * Not so. Gaia's foreknowledge is justified in dialogue, as she calls herself the "ever-present mother of Earth". Atlas is not seen in God of War III, either; by the time Zeus used the Blade of Olympus- which is when Kratos shows up- Atlas' soul had already been taken by Hades.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Kratos in every game apart from the first one.
 * Too Good for This Sinful Earth:.
 * Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Hades and Persephone. Hephaestus and Aphrodite. Kronos and Rhea. In all cases giant hideous monstrosity matched with attractive human looking women.
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change: The short Rhythm Game section near the middle of III.
 * The Unfettered: Absolutely nothing will stop Kratos when he's on a warpath (which is to say, all the time).
 * Unwitting Pawn: Kratos tends to be too easily manipulated by both the gods and the Titans. By the end of God of War III, Kratos has finally had enough and sees through.
 * Vapor Wear: The Oracle in the first game, with a translucent top and nothing underneath.
 * Also, Hercules in God of War III. A glitch reveals his bare behind here starting at about 0:57.
 * Variable-Length Chain: Kratos' standard weapons are two very large daggers that instantly attach to the chains welded to his wrists, allowing him to swing them about to slash stuff at a distance.
 * God of War III gives us dueling Variable Length Chains, when Kratos fights Hades, who has some very similar weapons.
 * Variable Mix
 * Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Kratos tends to steal weapons and artifacts from his defeated enemies.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: The game is not just full of delightfully malicious attacks, it even forces players to be Jerkasses.
 * Villain Ball:
 * Villain-Beating Artifact: Pandora's box, which contains the only thing that can kill a god. Kratos spends GoW1 to find and open the box, so he can kill Ares. In God of War 3, it's shown he needs the box again to defeat Zeus.
 * Villain Protagonist: Let's be honest here, Kratos starts off God of War 2 doing the exact same thing Ares did in the first game. He also willingly sacrifices others in order accomplish his goals.
 * Visual Pun:
 * Walking Shirtless Scene: Kratos is too Badass for his shirt.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: Gaia - and argurably, Ares.
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy: Hercules' motivation to defeat Kratos.
 * Ares has shades of this in the first game. His whole motivation for wiping out Athens was jealousy of Athena, Zeus' "favored" child.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Unintentional, to be sure, but when the same pounding, Wagnerian music overlayed with ominous chanting occurs whether Kratos is fighting a pitched battle against the hordes of the underworld, or just running around, it makes one wonder whether it also plays while he's doing his laundry (not that he has much of it).
 * Kratos does not do laundry. He shouts at his clothes till they clean themselves.
 * Also, boss fights (the final Hydra fight in particular) frequently end up with Action Command finishing moves with dramatic camera movements and deaths that could have been far less brutal. Rule of Cool, and all that.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: Lampshaded in the third game. There's a sex minigame that's played with Aphrodite as your partner. The camera then pans over to her two female concubines who provide reactions and commentary while you put in the action commands. One of the bits of commentary is as follows: "Wow, this really is for mature audiences only!" "Parents shouldn't let their kids watch this!"
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: Artemis, who was seen helping Kratos by giving him a weapon in the first game, was never seen again in any of the sequels.
 * Maybe she was smart enough not mess with Kratos.
 * Or maybe she was killed offscreen by a Titan?
 * We never really see what becomes of most of the other Titans assaulting Mount Olympus in God of War III, because Kratos is otherwise occupied for much of the game. We see at least one (Perses) about halfway through the game, but most of the rest apparently failed in their assault on the gods.
 * We see two of them get knocked off the mountain mid-climb, but their survival or demise is left ambiguous.
 * Apollo never once shows up. He's the only notable Olympian god never to, though you do get to use his bow in III.
 * At the end of III,
 * YMMV on that one.
 * What Have I Become?: Kratos says it verbatim in the Temple of Pandora.
 * What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Other than her creator, Hephaestus, the other gods shunned Pandora, as she is really a statue that had been given life. They tend to address her as "It" instead of "She". Ironic, considering.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: Averted. Oh sure, lots of people are disgusted with Kratos' actions, often calling him out (usually as he is butchering them or about to), but it's not like he can be considered a hero to begin with.
 * White-Haired Pretty Boy: Zeus was quite a looker when he was younger.
 * Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Kratos is what priceless antiquities have nightmares about when they go to sleep.
 * Womb Level: More like Womb Action Sequence. A few boss battles require you to go inside the boss to mess them up. There's the Hydra, the Colossus of Rhodes, There is also Atlas, though not a boss.
 * World of Ham: Considering that this game can't go five minutes without someone ravenously feasting on the scenery, it's to be expected.
 * You Bastard: In God Of War III, Kratos can find letters in Hades written about him. One is from his mother lamenting how everything around her son dies and that she failed as a mother, and another is from the boat captain damning Kratos to Hades.
 * You Can't Fight Fate: You really can't.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Kratos usually kills those who had helped him once they're no longer useful or if their death becomes useful. Karma kicks him in the ass when . It fails, of course.
 * Subverted in God of War III..
 * Your Soul Is Mine: Hades in III tries this on Kratos, even uttering the Trope Name in the pre-battle cutscene..
 * Your Soul Is Mine: Hades in III tries this on Kratos, even uttering the Trope Name in the pre-battle cutscene..

If you've got this far without Kratos killing you accidentally or deliberately, congratulations. You'll die in the sequel to this page. :(