Characters / God of War Series - Thor

God of War characters index
Protagonists: Kratos | Atreus
Greek Era: Gods (Zeus) | Titans | Mythology's Heroes | Other Beings | Normal Humans | Characters from Comics
Norse Era: Gods (Odin | Thor | Mimir | Baldur | Heimdall | Freya) | Jotnar | Other Characters (Sindri and Brok) | Monsters

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Thor

Voiced by: Ryan Hurst (English), Takanori Hoshino (Japanese)^{additional VAs}Gabriel Noya (Brazilian Portuguese)

"If this is the end, you’ll die FIRST!"'

^{Click here to see his appearance in God of War (2018)}

"You're not from here. We got a tradition called "blood payments". It means I get a piece of you, for what you took from my family. You'll pick it up."

Thor is the Norse Aesir God of thunder, lightning, storms, wrestling and strength. He is the son of Odin and Fjörgyn, husband of Sif, and half-brother Baldur. The father of Magni, Modi, Thrúd, step-father of Ullr and uncle of Forseti.

He is renowned across the Nine Realms for being the slayer of the Giant race, and the strongest of Odin's children. Thor serves as Odin's right-hand and primary enforcer, typically being sent as his envoy when intimidation is required. Following the onset of Fimbulwinter, Thor is tasked by Odin to negotiate with Kratos with the goal of preventing Ragnarök.

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A-F

• Abusive Parents: He's notable for being on both the giving end and the receiving end of this at the same time.
  • On the giving side: When Modi returns to him in failure, Thor blames him for leaving Magni to die and beats him bloody to the point that he cannot stand properly. Downplayed, as when he shows up for his initial boss fight in Ragnarök, he makes it clear he's avenging Modi too. It's also implied that him beating Modi bloody was a moment of weakness, and he's completely fallen into a self-destructive spiral over the deaths of his sons, so he does in fact love both of them. Mimir later clarifies that he and Sif were abusive towards Magni and Modi, but later came to regret it and realized their shortcomings after the deaths of Magni and Modi, pledging themselves to be better for the sake of their only surviving child Thrúd.
  • On the receiving side: Odin consistently uses Thor as his Dumb Muscle, even telling him not to think too hard about his orders and to just do them. Odin, also known for being a manipulator and liar, makes Thor subservient by playing on Thor's regrets and his bad habits. And when Thor appeared to be turning it all around, Odin's machinations and manipulations pushed Thor back into the same regrets he'd almost escaped from, causing Thor to fall off the wagon again and decide that he'd just stop trying to be a better person anymore. Just before the Final Boss fight against Odin, Kratos seems to have finally gotten through to Thor that he can choose to be better, especially for the sake of his children. Odin even tries telling Thor to kill Kratos, but Thor answers with a hard "no" to Odin's command. As a result, Thor can't act on this new development when Odin kills Thor.
• Acrofatic: His bulky build does little to slow him down in a fight.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Thor in mythology was known for a lot of things — an eager and talented warrior, protector of mortals, not very bright, quick to anger and a real party animal — and while these are normally considered positives in Viking culture, here these qualities are the cause and symptoms of a lot of psychological hangups. He's a warrior and is really good at killing, but beneath it all he believes that it's all he's good for, with implications that he and his wife are trying to dissuade their daughter Thrud from becoming another casualty in Odin's machinations. His father Odin sees him as nothing more than a dumb brute and never wastes a second to remind him of this. He's a hard-drinker and can be routinely found in Valhalla stuffing his face with mead, but Thrud's actions imply that his drinking has become a serious problem and he is prone to fits of violence when provoked in this state. While he is more than happy to kill Kratos to avenge his sons Magni and Móði, he decides to spare Kratos when the Ghost of Sparta manages to put of a good fight, implying that he is looking forward to Kratos putting him out of his misery.
  Thor: Let it be known the God of Thunder is good for TWO THINGS! Killing Giants... and pissing mead.
• Adaptational Curves: Thor was never really given a definitive description in Norse mythology as there are minimal hints to his physical appearance. In The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, he's described as handsome and possessing a red beard, whereas in the Poetic Edda, Thor is described as having long hair, a long beard, and fierce eyes. The idea of Thor being burly comes from his voracious appetite as Thor famously and unknowingly drank a third of the ocean in the Tale of Utgarda-Loki and in the Þrymskviða, Thor ferociously consumed an entire ox, eight salmon, an entire wedding cake, and three casks of mead during the wedding to Thrym.
• Adaptational Dumbass: Played With. Thor is more simple and straightforward than Odin or Loki in the myths, but he was still cunning, such as when he outwitted the dwarf Alvíss in the Poetic Edda, while in 2018 several Norse legends are retold by Mimir in a context that emphasizes how much of an oaf Thor can sometimes be — Thrym stealing Mjolnir away from Thor while he slept is treated as being just as much the Thunder God's own fault for his carelessness; similarly, Thor bashing in Hrungir's head left him vulnerable from the shock of stone debris lodging itself in his skull, and his Aesir family only roared with laughter while he was pinned down by the jötunn's falling corpse and gravely injured, not seeking help for some time. His appearance in Ragnarök, however, suggests that these stories may be somewhat overstated or biased, as Thor is certainly blunt and straightforward, but not outright stupid, using much more than brute force in his fight against Kratos and easily foreseeing an attempt of the Ghost of Sparta to knock down a pillar behind him, stating how cleverness isn't enough to beat him. However, he is often derided as such by Odin and has internalized the idea that he is nothing more than a dumb brute.
• Adaptational Ugliness: This is actually one of the more unflattering yet realistic physical depictions of the God of Thunder. In the Norse myths, Thor is simply described as handsome by Oddr Snorrason in The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason. In Ragnarök, he appears burly and muscular with a scar across his right eye and discoloring around the right side of his face after the incident with Hrungnir. His hair and facial hair appear unkempt and bushy, but he's not outright ugly and his physique is more that of a Strongman or Powerlifter than anything like that of an obese man's. With what is revealed about him in Ragnarök, it is possible he might have once been handsome, but he has since stopped caring about his appearance due to his alcoholic depression.
• Adaptational Villainy: Instead of being the protector of mankind and the force for good that he is in the legends, Thor is presented here as an Abusive Dad, a violent brute, and a boogeyman who killed the poor jötunn Thamur when the latter ran into him by accident with no concern for the collateral damage inflicted on humans. Since most of what we know of him is told from the point of view of Asgard's enemy, the perspective flip is understandable. In Ragnarök, it's ultimately played with and arguably subverted. He still did do a lot of terrible things, but Odin forced him to commit most of the atrocities, and the guilt has clearly eaten away at Thor to the extent that he's now only a shadow of his former self. In general, he's portrayed less as evil and more as a sad, traumatized man who made bad choices in his youth, lived to regret them, and has found himself trapped in a situation he can see no escape from.
• Addled Addict: In Ragnarök, Thor's physical appearance appears to have fallen behind after the deaths of Magni and Modi, as well as living with the guilt of having slaughtered so many Jotnar, and has fallen into alcoholism to numb his depression. For context, Viking males were very keen on personal grooming and always tried to look their best by bathing every Saturday and there are various pieces of evidence of them owning several cleaning instruments (Tweezers, ear cleaning implements, and even combs were considered a universal possession by Vikings). With that in mind, it really shows how beaten down and depressed Thor is since his hair is overgrown and uncombed, his beard is unkempt, his obesity was likely caused by drinking too much, and his sunken eyes imply he's been sleeping rough because of his drinking too.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite his brutality and reputation as the most vicious butcher of the Giant race, his death scene was portrayed as a tragic event, with him trying to reach out to Thrud one last time before dissolving to dust. Not only that, but Thor was killed just as he was starting to better himself on Kratos' advice.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: The most common descriptions of Thor in the first game are along the lines of "stupid", usually by Mimir and Brok; Ragnarok adds further context implying the situation is more this trope. Thor isn't outright dumb, but he's much more prone to screwing things up beyond repair and making a fool of himself when boozed out. Considering he was rarely sober in the time Mimir knew him, we can infer a lot of Thor's more embarrassing moments (getting crushed by Hrungnir's body, for one) were the result of this.
• The Alcoholic: Ragnarök reveals that Thor has a beer belly from constant drinking in Asgard. This is explored in further depth where Thor's alcoholism are portrayed as deeply self destructive, a result of his self loathing at being Odin's attack dog and more recently his grief at the death of his sons.
• Alcoholic Parent: He and Sif were alcoholic Troubled Abusers to Magni and Modi for much of their lives until their deaths at the hands of Atreus and Kratos. Thor and Sif vowed to go sober and do better with Thrud so they can have another chance at being good parents. Thor is shown to be struggling more than Sif but she and Thrud understand that he's genuinely trying to better himself for them.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Baldur — the villain of the last game — was a muscular, extremely fast and strong, and highly skilled fistfighter and wrestler. But Thor is about as fast, just as skilled, even stronger, and so much more grotesquely huge and muscled that he makes Baldur look like a kid. Kratos even states that Thor is much unlike Baldur, being fully focused on the fight, and he notably succeeds at fighting Kratos to a stalemate, whereas even his brother with his invulnerability never managed to reach that far.
• And This Is for...: During his first boss battle, he invokes the names of Baldur, Magni and Móði, in that order. He's furious when Kratos then calls him out on his favoritism.
  Kratos: You put him last, even in death!
  Thor: ...The FUCK you say?!
• Animal Motif: Goats, as Mjölnir is designed with goat imagery and the hilt is designed with a goat head. In Ragnarök, you briefly see a pair of goats as an insignia on his belt.
• Antagonist in Mourning: He's still mourning Baldur, Magni, and Modi. During the talk between Kratos, Odin, and Thor, he gets noticeably upset when Odin treats the deaths of his son and grandsons as lost assets rather than family. Odin treats Magni and Modi as something he could afford to lose and calls them "useless" to Thor's face, while also saying that Baldur "had value" because he was useful despite his mental illness.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In his first fight with Kratos, Thor mocks him by asking a rhetorical one:
  Thor: This is the god that murdered a pantheon 'cause they hurt his feelings?
• Avenging the Villain: He's out for blood after the deaths of Baldur and his sons.
• Ax-Crazy: From what stories that have been spoken of him, he's a violent maniac who is always two seconds away from killing someone. Ragnarök shows that he’s significantly more level-headed than described, suggesting he’s either mellowed out or some embellishment was taken.
• Badass Fingersnap: He usually calls Mjölnir to him by snapping his fingers, but some moments in the game show the hammer coming to Thor's hand even without the gesture. This implies the finger-snapping isn't mandatory but a personal touch of Thor's.
• Barbarian Long Hair: Thor has long dishevelled hair, accentuating his impulsive and unkempt appearance.
• Baritone of Strength: He speaks with an impressively deep, rumbling voice befitting of the God of Thunder, one that almost puts Kratos' own deep voice to shame.
• Beard of Evil: A very brief glimpse of his face shows that he has a beard, as expected from the Norse God of Thunder. In Ragnarök, his beard is quite unkempt.
• Being Evil Sucks: After being hyped up as a warmongering, half raving mad oaf, most of Thor's actual screentime shows him looking, sounding, and acting like he's just tired of living. Being emotionally abused and gaslighted by Odin into being his unthinking soldier would definitely do that.
• Beyond Redemption: Subverted. Thor hates himself so much that he believes there's no chance he can redeem himself after causing Modi's death and slaughtering the jötnar. However, Kratos and Atreus never give up in their efforts to have Thor get the message that he can always choose to be better. Towards the end of Ragnarök, Kratos manages to convince Thor that there is a chance to redeem himself through Thrud. However, he gets killed by Odin before he can put this into effect, so it ultimately goes nowhere.
• Big Eater: Implied. While taking advantage of his followers' hospitality, it got to a point he had to be begged to leave by the matriarch, who Thor then killed in a drunken rage.
• Blind Obedience: Follows Odin's orders without much question. Ragnarök reveals that Thor just craves Odin's approval and does what he tells him to try and gain his love, but it's obvious Thor doesn't agree with Odin's methods and ends up feeling guilty for a lot of what he's been ordered to do, such as his genocide against the Giants.
• Blood Knight: Mimir describes him as the "biggest butchering bastard in the Nine Realms" and believes that Thor jumped at the opportunity to kill the Jotnar out of sadism, not because they have role in Ragnarök. And during his first battle with Kratos, he is clearly having the time of his life, laughing and cracking jokes throughout the fight. Ultimately deconstructed, as it gradually becomes clear that while he does enjoy a good scrap, he doesn't like actually hurting and killing people. The wars and genocide that his father forces him to take part in just leave him horrified, disturbed, traumatized, and depressed. He was also purposefully raised by said abusive father as a weapon, and that upbringing has left deep scars on Thor, such as a self-loathing certainty that he's incapable of being anything more than a murderer and a brute. The journal, written from Kratos' point of view, cites this as the greatest difference between him and Baldur. Baldur enjoyed causing pain, but Thor likes to fight for its own sake, making his attacks far more purposeful as he's focused on winning instead of hurting his opponent.
  His bloodlust is for the fight itself, not for the suffering it inflicts.
• Boomerang Bigot: Despite his hatred of the Jötnar, Thor himself is half-Jötunn on his mother's (Fjörgyun) side and technically an sixteenth-Jötunn on his father's (Ymir, father of Búri and progenitor of all Aesir, being his great-great-grandfather), and sired his sons with two different women both implied to be Jötnar. With Ragnarök's release, Thor's hatred actually seems to be a case of misdirected anger and guilt over his genocide of the Giants, possibly as a coping mechanism.
• A Boy and His X: He had pet goats when he was younger, and requested Mjolnir have a goat motif in their honor.
• Braids of Barbarism: His beard is braided and the hair on the back of his head is also decorated with braids.
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Mimir tells Kratos and Atreus that Odin was a very abusive parent to Thor and forced discipline onto his son, where Thor then passed it onto Magni and Modi. After the deaths of his sons, Thor seems to have realized this (though isn't willing to admit it) and is desperately trying to become a better father for the sake of Thrud.
  Mimir: Imagine learning discipline by having it thrashed in into you again and again. That was Thor's approach; the same one Odin used on him. A poisonous notion of manhood, passed down through the generations. A grim inheritance, leaving all of them the poorer.
• Broken Ace: Thor is Asgard's strongest warrior, feared across all the realms for his strength and brutality. He's also no brute who relies on his strength alone, as his fights with Kratos show he's very adept at tactics and can easily counter whatever tricks his opponents use against him. He's also a man with serious psychological issues like self-loathing and guilt because of all the atrocities he has committed under Odin's name with the All Father piling on emotional abuse on top of this.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: A soft center that Odin has tried his level best to suppress and that Thor has mostly buried under drinking and depression, but despite Odin's abuse it's clear that Thor genuinely loves his family, even the less likeable ones like Baldur.
• The Brute: Befitting his role as the Aesir's heavyweight and foremost brawler, Thor is a huge man; when he first strides up to Kratos, it's clear that he stands at least eight feet to the Spartan's 6'4".
• The Butcher: He's regarded as the "biggest butchering bastard in all the nine realms" by Mimir. In the epilogue where he shows up in front of Kratos' door, the soundtrack actually refers to him as banamaður Þórr (Murderer Thor).
• Character Tics: When Thor is feeling ashamed or guilty, he will avoid eye contact and this is shown twice in the game.
  • After Heimdall's death, Thor relapses and starts drinking at a bar, resulting in a mass brawl where Atreus and Thrud have to carry him out. Once outside, Thrud scolds him for his actions but stops herself when she realizes that Thor is already feeling guilty and instead tells her father that she and Sif are there to support him and she's disappointed that he fell back into drinking. During the talk, Thor is so ashamed of himself that he refuses to look at her during the entire verbal lashing.
  • During a talk between Kratos, Thor, and Odin, Odin dismisses Magni and Modi's deaths and tells Thor they were "kinda useless" to his face. While anyone other than Odin would be outright killed for showing such disrespect, Thor just turns his head and says something out of earshot. Either cursing himself for outliving his sons or outright cursing Odin for insulting his sons.
• Co-Dragons: To Odin with Heimdall. Thor is explicitly mentioned as Odin's right hand, while Heimdall his left.
• The Cameo: At the very end of the first game, Atreus has a dream of him showing up at Kratos' door.
• Combat Pragmatist: In the boss battle with him, he's not above tossing Mjolnir and calling it back to trip up Kratos. He even commends him for taking a cheap shot when his back is turned.
  Thor: If you're not fighting dirty then you're not fighting, am I right?!
• Companion Cube: Thor treats Mjolnir as a living creature as shown by how he smears mead on it during the talk with Atreus and Kratos. According to Atreus, he talks to it and Atreus mistook it for an enchantment incantation but Mimir explains that Thor is just weird and there's nothing special about it. During the bar brawl in Asgard, Mjolnir can actually be seen dueling with Ingrid the divine sword seemingly without Thor being in control of it as he was busy brawling on the other side of the tavern. It's also worth noting that compared to Ingrid, Mjolnir does not "speak" or move around independently of Thor, implying he has some form of telepathy or the item has an empathetic link with Thor, where it would replicate his state of mind.
• Conditioned to Be Weak: Thor is the strongest of the Aesir and his only known weaknesses are his fear of Odin and his self-hatred. Odin is implied to be aware of Thor's power and has browbeaten him into following every order without question and treats his own son as nothing more than a living tool. In the end, after fighting Kratos, Thor does manage to stand up to Odin for the first time in his life but is quickly killed by Odin, who tries to convince himself that he had to do it despite Atreus telling him otherwise.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • When seeing Mimir's decapitated state, he notes Mimir's "lost some weight".
  • He also casually calls Kratos a dumbass when Kratos falls for the Summon to Hand trick with Mjolnir.
  • He can be pretty snarky during the segments where he accompanies Atreus.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Drunken Master. Thor was always imagined to be fond of drink and he famously (and unknowingly) drank a 3rd of the ocean in a contest against Utgard-Loki in Norse mythology. His drinking habits were written at that point to show that Thor is a man of the people who bonds with them by sharing stories and sharing a drink at the bar. In the game, however, Thor's love of alcohol is actually a sign of a major character flaw and it was just a way for Odin to keep Thor under his thumb as he drunkenly kills people whenever Odin orders him to. By the time of Ragnarok, it is shown that Thor is actually a deeply troubled man who's struggling to better himself for his wife and daughter after realizing how badly alcohol has dominated his life and how horrible a person he was when drunk. Thor now understands that his father sees him as nothing more than a vicious lapdog after enduring Odin's comments while sober, he abused his children, and Thor caused the death of Modi, his own son, by being violently drunk. After Thor slaughtered the giants, he reflected on his actions and realized that he killed them for no reason and chooses to blame himself instead of standing up to Odin. When he's shown drunkenly fighting in a bar brawl, it's all fun and games to him until he realizes how badly he's let down Thrud by relapsing into alcoholism after 3-4 years of sobriety.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Kratos convinces Thor to stand down after a beatdown during the Ragnarok invasion when Kratos brings up that Kratos's son and Thor's daughter consider each other friends. He convinces Thor to bury the hatchet because they both owe it to their children to stop fighting. It's sadly short-lived, though: despite Thor's momentarily subsequent defiance towards his father Odin to his face, Odin murders Thor in a fit of pique.
• Did Not Think This Through: He killed Hrungnir the Brawler by smashing his head to pieces, but didn't consider that pulverizing something that size made of stone would create shrapnel; a shard of stone went into his skull and briefly paralyzed him, leaving him unable to step out of the way when the corpse fell on top of him.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In Norse mythology, Thor dies after being poisoned by Jormungandr during Ragnarök. In the game, he survives their fight and is killed by Odin instead.
• The Dragon: Is Odin's, serving as his father's muscle and chief enforcer.
• The Dreaded: Everyone is terrified of Thor. And considering his insane arrival to Kratos's house in Ragnarök and the fact that he's able to fight the Spartan to a standstill (something that even Baldur couldn't do while he was still invulnerable), they have every right to be. Atreus never drops his guard around him, even trying to trick the Thunderer into going away so he can work on the task at hand without worrying about being smashed into paste.
  • It's notable that even Heimdall, an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy who's perfectly willing to take on Kratos & Freya at the same time, actively backs down from a fight with Thor.
• Drowning My Sorrows: An interview with Ryan Hurst implied that Thor's drinking habits have worsened after Magni and Modi were killed. In the game, Thor is suffering from alcoholism and depression due to the abuse from Odin, his massacre of the giants, the deaths of both his sons (one of which he's partially responsible for), and he's forced to work with Atreus at the All-Father's orders.
• Drunken Master: He was known to be a heavy drinker with Sif but they both decided to go sober after Thor beat Modi to a pulp in a combination of anger, drunkenness, and grief over Magni's death. Thor did relapse in a moment of weakness and successfully managed to survive a bar brawl.
• Dumb Muscle:
  • Other characters (Brok and Mimir in particular) seem contemptuous of Thor's intelligence and openly refer to him as "the big idiot".
  • Ragnarök shows that Thor isn't dumb per say, but he does perceive himself as dumb - in large part thanks to Odin's emotional abuse and his own self-loathing. He thus makes an effort to not think about it. To the point where "Don't think, it's better that way." is almost a catchphrase of his.
• Dying as Yourself: It's subtle, but considering that Thor's final action is to openly defy Odin by dropping Mjolnir on the ground, Calling the Old Man Out, and flat-out telling Odin "No", Thor (who seems to know this will get him killed) finally returns to being an honorable warrior standing up for himself and his family in his last moments.
• Establishing Character Moment: When we meet him in Ragnarök, he appears with a bottle of mead so that he and Kratos could parlay. Then after he pours them both drinks, Odin lets himself in afterward. From there, Odin calls his dead sons idiots to his face and drinks their mead. When Kratos and Atreus decline his peace offering, Thor attacks Kratos on Odin's say-so, the fighting ending in a draw. This establishes him as Odin's attack dog, but also as his personal stress toy, Asgard's Champion a troubled individual with a lot of the same toxic personality traits as Kratos.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Loved his son Magni, which is why he beat the crap out of his other son Modi when he died and he assumed Modi either killed him or abandoned him to die. He also at the very least trusts his brother Baldur.
  • He loves his daughter Thrúd, enough that she's the impetus for him to desire to change his ways. He also loves his wife Sif.
  • Despite his treatment of Modi, he did love Modi just as much as Magni. It's implied that Modi's death is one of the many sources of Thor's drinking, as he's guilt-ridden and hates himself for causing Modi's death.
    Thor: Listen, Modi had some problems, but he was my son. And the only reason you aren't mush right now is because of that broken piece of wood.
  • To an extent, he did love his half-brother Baldur, considering his life worth avenging by getting a blood debt from Kratos.
• Evil Counterpart: Thor and Kratos are fathers to divine children and are both The Dreaded of their respective pantheons. But Kratos is truly making strides in becoming a more decent person than the Psychopathic Manchild and divine slave he was in the Greek series... while Thor is by all accounts a maniacal Blood Knight willing to brutalize anybody who Odin commands, even if they're his own children.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: While the other Aesir laughed off Hrungnir's drunken threats and boasts, Thor was not amused in the slightest (either not understanding that the giant was harmless, or took his boasts at face value), and killed Hrungnir on the spot.
• Evil Is Bigger: He's the most straightforward Evil Counterpart to Kratos in the Norse era, and conveys an appropriate sense of menace by being one of the few people huge enough to make the hulking Ghost of Sparta look positively weedy.
• The Evil Prince: He's the son of Odin and a horrific mass murderer.
• Evil Redhead: As a more villainous version of Thor, he sports a mane of red hair and is quite bastardly.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Ryan Hurst gives Thor a noticeably low, gruff-sounding voice that adds to his menace.
• Extreme Doormat: Ironically. Beneath the "destroyer" act he puts on, Thor can't bring himself to stand up to his abusive, domineering father, and goes along with everything he says despite being constantly horrified and traumatized by Odin's orders. In fact, this is intentionally by Odin's design. It's only in the climax that he gains the will to finally stand up for himself. For all the good it did him.
• Fat Bastard: Both Mimir and Brok take note of Thor's weight, with the former referring to Thor as a "fat dobber" who's also a brutal slayer of the Jötnar. Promotional material for Ragnarök shows him to have a pudgy strongman look.
• Fat Slob: In one story, a family worshipped Thor and had a statue made in his honor when their patriarch died. Thor came to offer his condolences but quickly outstayed his welcome by gorging himself on their food and drink. The matriarch begged him to leave and Thor killed her in a drunken rage.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • In the first chapter of the Norse saga, Thor's main flaw is his wrath. A ghost claims that Thor offered his condolences after the death of father but got so drunk that he became murderously angry after the ghost's mother asked him to leave when he outstayed his welcome. After the death of Magni, he beats his surviving son, Modi, to a point where he can't stand or defend himself.
  • In Ragnarok, his main flaw is subservience. What Thor wants above all else is to have Odin say that he's proud of him and will do anything his father will tell him to. Unfortunately, after the deaths of Magni and Modi, he's now fully aware of the atrocities he's committed in Odin's name and has accepted that he'll never earn Odin's approval and that he's beyond redemption. Something Atreus, Kratos, Mimir, Sif, and Thrud try to convince isn't true and there's always a chance to do the right thing and he must start by standing up to Odin.
• Fiery Redhead: Has red hair as he did in the original Norse Mythology, and considering he's well known to be an incredibly violent blowhard, he's got the personality to match.
• Flight: He has this ability, using it to grab and drag Kratos around to different stages in their first battle and allowing him to compete against massive giants like Jormungandr and even Surtr who had turned into Ragnarök.
• Foil:
  • To Kratos. Much like Kratos, it is revealed Thor does sincerely love his entire family and it affected him enough to have settled down for a time and curb his worst traits as Sif recounts. Unlike Kratos who had difficulty opening his walls to Atreus before eventually accepting him in earnest, Thor was quick to embracing fatherhood and was heavily involved in Magni, Móði, and Thrúd's lives alongside Sif early on... until Odin's machinations and manipulations as an Abusive Parent bore down on him and turned him into much the same as he took his anger and depression out on them and led to him regressing back into the person he used to be to cope, especially upon both of his son's deaths.
  • He also serves as this to Heimdall. The two serve as Odin's top and most trusted enforcers, but while Heimdall has a huge ego and is just an insufferable snob who takes joy in antagonizing everyone and being an ass, Thor secretly hates who he is and desperately wants Odin's love and appreciation, regretting all the atrocities he's done in the name of his father.
• Freudian Excuse: He was raised by Odin and it's been said and shown multiple times that Odin only sees his children (especially Thor) as mere assets and treats them more like property than actual offspring. According to Mimir, Thor's abuse of his sons was part of a long cycle that was always passed from father to son.

G-L

• Gentle Giant: He wants to be one towards his family deep down and probably would be one if not for Odin's constant manipulation, abuse, and encouragement of his worst qualities.
• The Ghost: During the main story of the first game at least. Even when he's finally shown, he's in a hood, barely visible, for a few seconds with what facial traits being visible in the image above, is only for a split second to capture.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: When he pays Kratos a visit, a brief glimpse of his face shows that his eyes have an eerie blue glow. And during his final bout with Kratos, his eyes (alongside most of his body) are perpetually crackling with lightning to show how done he is with, at least from how he perceives it, Kratos and Atreus threatening his family.
• God Is Flawed: He's the God of thunder and a deeply flawed and troubled man who fell into a spiral of alcoholism and depression after the deaths of his sons, his guilt of failing to support Sif and Thrud, and his horrible relationship with Odin.
• God of Thunder: And just like the last God of Thunder Kratos met (Zeus), he's not a friendly individual.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Despite always being armed with Mjolnir, Thor often forgoes striking foes with his hammer in favor of just beating them with his bare hands and as he is strong enough to cause shockwaves just by clapping his hands or pounding the ground this is often all he really needs. He doesn't even bother drawing his hammer against Kratos for half of their first fight.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Odin partners Atreus with him for a few levels. Being bored and sullen, he's not a huge help in combat, and even spends the first portion of the Muspelheim mission standing back and watching Atreus do all the fighting. He starts pitching in later, but he doesn't attack very aggressively (though he does do enormous damage to any enemy he hits), and can also smash through obstructions and carry Atreus to higher or lower elevations.
• Hanlon's Razor: Up until his death, Modi genuinely believed that Thor hated him and favored Magni but in reality, Thor loved all his children. His favoritism was actually a result of drunkenness because he was rarely sober in Asgard and he was so drunk at the time of Hrungnir's death that he forgot to move out of the way and he only noticed Magni because of his shiny blond hair. One of Thor's biggest regrets is how he treated Modi and for causing his death because he was grief-stricken by Magni's sudden death and was violently drunk.
• Happily Married: Even though recents events have weighed heavy on them, it is crystal clear that there's a trust and comfort in Sif that Thor can find nowhere else in his life. Odin has actively tried to sabotage it by implying Thor is weak for "letting his wife think for him" because it's one of the ultimate stopgaps to Thor being the unstoppable, unthinking Destroyer Odin wants him to be.
• The Heavy: A backstory-only example — Thor did most of the heavy lifting in the genocide of the Jotnar, cutting down their best and brightest for the better part of fifty seasons.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: After their second battle, Kratos manages to convince Thor to stand down and become a better man for the sake of his wife and daughter. When Thor decides to walk away, Odin protests and tells Thor that "you kill who I tell you to kill". Thor refuses, and Odin immediately kills him, before Thor had any chance to act on his Heel Realization.
• Henpecked Husband: Odin implies that Thor is this with Sif. Though when Atreus overhears Thor and Sif talking, it's quite clearly not the case at all. Odin knows Sif loves Thor, and as such tries to beat his son down by making it seem like he's incapable of doing anything logical without his wife's help, which Sif herself sees and despises.
  Odin: Stop letting your wife think for you! She's clouding whatever's left of your brain.
• Hero Killer: To the Jotnar. Most of their great heroes (Starkadr the Mighty, Hrungnir the Brawler, Thrym, many unnamed Jotnar) died to Thor's hands and hammer prior to the game's events, along with pretty much every giant who didn't retreat back to Jotunheim.
  • During his and Kratos' first fight, Thor actually kills Kratos. Though, this doesn't seem to have been intentional on Thor's part as he resurrects Kratos after and it's established that Kratos was holding back and refraining from using his full power, so it's unclear which god is more powerful.
• Hidden Depths: Prior to Ragnarök, Thor is consistently portrayed as a bloodthirsty, arrogant, violent, and dangerous god who led a genocide against the Jotunn with no remorse for it, and who's arguably the biggest threat besides Odin himself. However, Ragnarök reveals while the aforementioned traits aren't necessarily wrong, Thor actually harbors a great deal of guilt over his previous actions towards the Giants and starts drinking heavily because of it, and only did so so he could try to appease and gain Odin's approval; the one thing he's desperately craved. Moreover, he's actually a very protective father to his children (though not perfect by any means) and feels guilty for outliving both Magni and Modi, and as such has become a Papa Wolf to Thrúd.
  • When Kratos convinces him that even the worst people can change for the better, Thor takes it to heart and resolves to be better for the sake of his beloved Thrúd, though he's unfortunately killed by Odin before he can truly act on it. That said, he does openly defy Odin for the first time by refusing to kill Kratos.
  • Despite his initial dislike and animosity towards Atreus, being his bodyguard while the boy finds the mask, he steadily warms up to him, finding him to be a 'good kid', appreciating (though with some confusion) his efforts to empathise with him and even enjoying Atreus finding travel by Mjolnir fun.
• Historical Beauty Update: In-universe. While the great statues of him across the Lake of Nine depict a lithe hero with rippling muscles and tight abs, Thor in person has exactly the sort of rough-hewn physique you'd expect from a hard-drinking brawler: big and wide, with a beer gut to match. Either they were constructed to flatter him, or he's let himself go a bit with age and grief. It's implied that he has deteriorated due to his alcoholic depression, so he likely was more conventionally attractive in his youth. When asked about it by Atreus, Mimir explains that an accurate statue of Thor was made by a sculptor, and shown to Thor himself. The next sculptor after him then wisely decided to go with the statues seen around the Lake of Nine.
• Hope Is Scary: During Ragnarok, he admits to Kratos that Atreus had given him hope that things could actually be better for him and is so furious now because he thinks it was all just a deception.
  Thor: Everything was fine before Loki showed up! He almost convinced me, had me thinking things could change!
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: His wife Sif is a Statuesque Stunner anywhere else in the game, but next to Thor? Her shoulder barely reaches his doughy waist due to him being eight foot something and probably thrice her weight.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: He's a half-Giant that kills Giants. It's not really clear whether Thor hates Jotunns or just considers smashing their skulls to be a job to do, but all indications is that he enjoys it.
• Hypocrite: Tries to chastise Kratos for saying that he only went against the Greek gods because they "hurt his feelings" but he wants revenge against Kratos and Atreus for killing his sons and brother in self-defense.
• I Am a Monster: Thor refers to himself as a "Destroyer", openly admitting to his violent and destructive nature, and taking pride in his status as a feared killer. This is an act, at least partially, while Thor is a Blood Knight who revels in a good fight he derives no joy in being a murderer.
  • It's the main reason he forces Kratos to fight him in the beginning—it doesn't make sense to Thor that someone like the infamous Ghost of Sparta can just choose to be a better person, so forcing Kratos to revert back to his old ways validates his own self-loathing and "proves" that destroyers can't change. In their final battle, Kratos has to tell Thor that they must change for the sake of their children before it finally gets through to him.
• Iconic Item: Mjolnir is so iconic that when Kratos asks who Thor is, he is able to answer the question for the audience by simply moving his cloak to reveal the hammer on his belt.
• Icy Blue Eyes: He possesses blue eyes along with an eerie glow to them.
• I Have No Son!: After failing to avenge Magni, Thor disowns Móði and beats him almost to death in a fit of grief and rage. However, the way Thor talks about him in Ragnarök indicates that it was just a moment of a weakness and that he still considers him his son. It's implied that his self-destructive alcoholism is partially caused by his guilt over having contributed to his death.
• In the Hood: His sole appearance in the game shows him wearing a hood obscuring his head completely. You'd only know he was Thor because he reveals his magic hammer Mjolnir at the closing moment of the story.
• I Meant to Do That: When he killed Thamur, the corpse landed on a village that was famous for worshipping Njörðr, a Vanir sea god. Rather than be horrified by the collateral damage, he laughed it off and proclaimed that he planned that to happen.
• Implausible Deniability: On some level, Thor is well aware that Odin is manipulative, abusive, selfish, and only uses his son as a tool as opposed to a living being, but ignores it because he just wants his father's approval. At the end of Ragnarök, after Kratos gets through to him about changing for the better, Thor realizes he's just been too afraid to admit that his father never loved him.
  Thor: Sif was right about you. I just didn't want to see it.
• Irony: Thor, probably the strongest man in all the realms and the literal god of strength, can never find the strength he needs to stand up to Odin and change his life for the better.
• I've Come Too Far: He is aware that his service to Odin has turned him into a monster, and loathes what he has become, but he continues to serve as Odin's butcher despite the misery it causes him because he believes it's too late for him to be anything else. Kratos eventually manages to get through to his better nature by imploring him to become a better person for the sake of his daughter, if not himself, unfortunately Odin kills him immediately after this.
• Kevlard: He's beefy and his armour emphasises his large stomach, but he's still Odin's right-hand man in the Jotnar genocide and he'a shown to have taken a lot of damage over the years. Kratos drives the Leviathan Axe into his belly at the beginning of the game, leaving a scar that lasts the rest of it, but Thor basically shrugs it off.
• Kick the Dog: Kratos can encounter a restless spirit who swears vengeance on Thor. In life, his family devoted their lives to worshipping the God of Thunder, and when the man's father passed, they built a statue of Thor to watch over his grave. To their surprise, Thor himself came to offer his condolences. At first, they were thrilled, but Thor soon took advantage of their hospitality, and when begged to leave, Thor killed the man's mother in a drunken rage. Upon Ragnarök revealing what he's actually like with his own family, a more tragic interpretation of events is that Thor genuinely liked the loving familial relationship he saw, and sought solace from his own abusive father figure with them for a while, only for his inability to control himself and tendency to drown his pain in alcohol leading to him lashing out in a moment of anger when they tried to get him to leave, and he afterwards regretted his actions, furthering his self-perception of himself as a 'Destroyer'.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While the event does have some elements that cut deeper, Thor is not exactly wrong that Kratos killed the Greek gods because they "hurt [his] feelings," given the vast majority of the events of 2 and 3 are spurned by them preventing him from becoming a conquering monster like Ares.
• Large and in Charge: He's the God of Thunder, the butcher of Jotnar, and an obese brawler.
• Left-Handed Mirror: Thor noticeably holds Mjolnir in his left hand, in contrast to how Kratos wields the Leviathan Axe in his right. Of course, the two are foils in more ways than this.
• Lightning Bruiser: Puns aside, he's very fast on his feet and in the air, managing to go toe-to-toe with the leaner Kratos, and occasionally faster.

M-R

• Magical Defibrillator: In the first fight with him, he actually manages to take down Kratos with a blow to the head with Mjolnir, complete with a loading screen. Thor then yells that it'll be over when he says it's over and uses Mjolnir's electricity to resuscitate Kratos.
• Messy Hair: Thor's hair is largely unkempt and shoulder-length, with braids on the back of his head. Lunda commented that he's likely never brushed it in the Cosplay Guide.
  Lunda: I don't think those have seen a brush!
• Mirror Character: To Kratos. Like Kratos, Thor is haunted by the atrocities he committed. And like Kratos in God of War (PS4) he does not believe he can change or improve and will forever be a monster. He also deeply loves his daughter. Kratos, who thanks to Atreus is moving past his own issues, tries to convince him that they can both change for the sake of their children. Thor takes it to heart, but Odin kills him before he gets a chance to do anything about his own life.
  • Thor also, in a sense, represents what Kratos may have become if Kratos had pledged his loyalty to Zeus. A son who became a monster in service to his father, a king of gods. Much of the killing that Thor has done was at Odin's command and has left him feeling broken at the horror has committed for the sake of honoring his father.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: Despite his rotund appearance, Thor's build is that of a powerlifter. As shown in Ragnarök, he's incredibly strong to the point of manhandling Kratos of all people and can devastate the landscape with a mighty swing of his hammer.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Thor seems to exist in a perpetual state of this. His guilt at killing the giants is the foundation for his depression and self-loathing, and it’s clear his only methods of coping are with booze and being the ferocious butcher everyone else sees him as (which incidentally leaves him with even more guilt).
  • Following the Bar Brawl in Ragnarök, Thrud drags him out and chews him out for relapsing back into alcoholism. Thor, clearly thinking this, is so ashamed of himself that he cannot even look at Thrud.
• Never My Fault: He blames Kratos and Atreus for the death of his sons and refused to acknowledge his own involvement or the fact that they attacked first. Especially in Modi's case where after he fled, Thor beat him up so bad to the point that he couldn't even try to dodge or block the knife that atreus stabbed him with. In his first battle with Kratos, when the God of War brought this up he shrugs it off before engaging him in a Blade Lock, and later when he pins Atreus during their brief team up he still solely blames him for Modi's death. This is actually downplayed, since Thor does feel immense guilt over what he's done, it's just that his mind was too clouded to make better judgement other than blaming and taking revenge on his sons killers.
• Noble Demon: He quite clearly wants Kratos dead and is The Brute, but he respects Sacred Hospitality and his Combat Pragmatist streak does not extend to surprise attacks, giving the man a chance to share a drink with him and prepare and possibly come to a ceasefire with Odin before his first boss fight. Despite self identifying himself as a "Destroyer" who revels in death and destruction it's revealed that Thor actually hates what he has become, and experiences a desperate desire to be a better person that's held back by a belief that it's simply too late for him to change, not too dissimilar from Kratos. He also does genuinely love his family, even Modi.
• No Body Left Behind: Shortly after Odin skewers him with Gungnir, Thor's body disintegrates to nothing but sparks and flickers of electricity that fade as quickly as they started while he desperately tries to reach out to Thrúd one last time. Unusually (especially of note as the Norse gods do not behave by the same rules as the Greek ones, who all suffered this save for Helios), Thor is the only one of the Aesir who succumbs to this fate upon death, which makes it a question of whether his half-Giant nature or whatever power Odin conjured through Gungnir to fatally wound him on the spot that caused this.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Thor inflicts this on Modi offscreen. The next time Kratos sees him, a noticeably battered Modi can barely stand.
• Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: Mimir claims that Thor is part-Aesir, part-Jötunn.
• Not Me This Time: He's killed a lot of Giants, but when it's said he was responsible for his mother's death, what's meant is that she suffered Death by Childbirth.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Odin tasked him with slaying every Jotunn he finds in order to prevent Ragnarök, but Mimir states that Thor doesn't care about Ragnarök as he's only interested in violence and killing. Odin's plan merely gave him an excuse for the number of atrocities he commits. It turns out this isn't entirely accurate either. Thor actually just carries out Odin's orders at first because he sought the approval of his abusive father, and later because he doesn't know how to be anything but the monster Odin made him.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: When Atreus and Thor visit Muspelheim they stumble upon the site of Surtr's Trials from the previous game, and Atreus convinces Thor to give it a try. We don't get to see it as Atreus sneaks away while Thor is preoccupied, but when he returns in a few minutes Thor is alredy done, seemingly having breezed through Surtr's Trials solo.
• Off the Wagon: After Heimdall's death, he falls back into drinking at the Asgardian tavern, despite trying to stay sober for Thrúd. The scene is played very tragically, and is a sign of Odin's abuse, which seems to have been heaped on him for the aforementioned death. When confronted by Thrud, all he can say is that he "fucked up".
• One Head Taller: Kratos is already one head taller than regular mortals, but Thor is one head taller than him.
• One-Man Army: He's the reason why the Jotnar are so few in number.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Both Magni and Modi are killed by Kratos and Atreus, which gets the protagonists on Thor's kill-on-sight list. However, Thor caused Modi's death when he blamed him for Magni's death and left him to die in Midgard after beating him until he couldn't stand. In the ending, Thor comes to Kratos' home for revenge for killing Magni and Modi.
• Overlord Jr.: Thor is the son of Odin and is his personal enforcer.
• Papa Wolf:
  • After learning of Magni's death; he beats the daylights out of Modi under the assumption that Modi was responsible for his death, and he wordlessly arrives at Kratos and Atreus' home to avenge his sons and half-brother.
  • He makes it very clear to Atreus that despite everything he did love his son Modi and the only reason he hasn't reduced the boy to a smear on the wall in vengeance for his death is because Odin won't let him.
  • He's extremely protective of his Daughter, Thrúd. The mere idea that Kratos and Atreus may be putting her at risk causes him to attack Kratos.
• Parents as People: While the 2018 entry implies that he's just a full-blown Abusive Parent, Ragnarök reveals that he's actually closer to this. He does genuinely love his wife and all of his children, even if he shows some favoritism towards Magni. However, he's also been driven into a horrible manic depression by the atrocities Odin has forced him to commit that leads him to lash out against his loved ones.
• Parental Favoritism: Favors Magni over Modi and was prepared to pass on his hammer to him. He even beats Modi to an inch of his life after accusing him of abandoning Magni as he fought to the death. That being said, Ragnarök reveals that he considers Modi's life just as worth avenging as Magni's.
• Passing the Torch: He wanted to appoint Magni as his successor and was prepared to bequeath Mjölnir to him.
• Penultimate Boss: Thor is the last obstacle Kratos must overcome before he and Atreus can fight Odin. When the God of Thunder is defeated and convinced by Kratos to stop fighting, the All-Father himself steps into the fray to fight the Greek God of War and his son.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Odin tasked him with slaying every Giant in Midgard, and would have succeeded had not the last survivors escaped to their own realm and sealed themselves in.
• Pet the Dog: According to one ghost, Thor did come to his house to offer his condolences after the death of his father. However, he got so drunk during his stay that he killed the ghost's mother after she begged him to leave.
• Physical God: Naturally. Thor's strength and power are nothing to sneeze at, as he's very clearly Kratos' equal at the start of the game and a very close second by the end. In the backstory he was Odin's ringer and chief weapon, the sole Aesir that could be counted on to kill Giants left and right.
• Psycho Electro: He's the god of thunder and the dreaded giant slayer of Jötunheim.
• Psychological Projection: What truly drives his initially confrontation with Kratos. While he is mad that Kratos killed his brother and sons, he's incensed that a monster like the Ghost of Sparta could settle down into the quiet life of being a husband and father because–in Thor's mind–destroyers are all gods like them can ever be. When Thor finally goads Kratos into punching him as hard as he could, he leaves satisfied because it validates his own view that he has no choice in being anything else beyond Odin's attack dog. It takes Kratos spelling it out to him that they can and must be better for their children's sake.
• Recovered Addict: According to Mimir, Sif and Thor were both severe alcoholics who abused their sons and were rarely sober around each other. After Thor beat up Modi and caused his death, Sif used his death as an ultimatum so they'd both be better parents for Thrud and spare her from their abuse. In the last 3 years ^note  the novelization of the 2018 game insists that Atreus is 11 years old and Fimbulwinter lasts 3 years , Thor has managed to stay sober despite Odin insulting Thor's sobriety by saying he is "no fun anymore". However, Heimdall's death causes Thor to fall off the wagon and is so ashamed of himself that he can't look at Thrud, who had to physically carry him out of the bar after a mass brawl.
• Redemption Equals Death: As Kratos finally gets through to him on how he can be a better man for the sake of his daughter, Thor is murdered by Odin for turning his back on him.
• Relative Button: According to Atreus' dream. Thor will come at a certain time to get revenge on Kratos for he did to his son and brother.
• Ride the Lightning: In their second fight Thor uses Mjölnir to evade and attack Kratos, briefly becoming lightning as he does.
• Revenge Myopia: During their first fight, Kratos makes it clear that Baldur attacked first, as did Magni and Modi. Thor bluntly tells him he doesn't care.

S-Z

• Sacred Hospitality: Mimir's stories paint Thor as a breaker of hospitality, but when he actually shows up at Kratos's house in Ragnarok (when he's trying to clean up his act), he proves to care about it a lot more than Odin; he asks for permission first, brings mead as a gift, and despite being furious at Kratos for killing his sons and brother, he doesn't attack until Odin tells him to.
• Sanity Has Advantages: He's actually more dangerous when he's sober. In the first battle, his attacks appear more disciplined and focused, to the point where he actually beats Kratos in a fight and leaves with satisfaction after Kratos loses his composure and punches him hard enough to knock out one of his teeth. When he fights Kratos during Ragnarok, his attacks are wilder and he relies more on overkill tactics because he's too angry to listen to Kratos. Kratos also notes that he has this in comparison to Baldur; while Baldur's fighting style was focused on inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible because of his insanity and desire for revenge, whereas, Thor is sane and simply enjoys combat, so his fighting style is focused on actually winning the fight.
• Saved for the Sequel: He's alluded to many times in the 2018 edition as the most powerful warrior of the Aesir, but doesn't make an appearance until the sequel.
• Scars Are Forever: It's said that Thor still has some shards of stone embedded in his skull after he killed Hrungnir the Brawler. The scars appear on the right side of his face, around his right eye. He later recieves a deep wound to the midsection courtesy of Kratos and his axe early in the game, and it never seems to properly heal over the course of Ragnarök.
• Semi-Divine: Thor is only half-Aesir, while his mother was a Jötunn. While the Jötnar were of divine stock, their actual godhood is a bit on the murky side.
• Shadow Archetype: Like Baldur, Thor is essentially part of the man Kratos used to be. While Baldur represents the side of Kratos that sought retribution against his parents at all costs, Thor is presented in the 2018 game as the side of Kratos that was a bloodthirsty butcher feared by all who know of him. The main difference is that Thor is even nastier (since Kratos at least cared for his family and ultimately saw the error of his ways whereas Thor is a psychopath who is willing to brutalize any who displeases him) and remained loyal to the gods. Ragnarök recontextualizes his character as being what Kratos could have been had he blindly followed the violent destiny put forth by the gods. Namely, he's tired and clearly derives no joy from the bloodshed he commits, but he doesn't believe he can be anything else other than the self-loathing monster he has become.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: While he puts on the façade of a "destroyer" and tells himself he is one out of self-loathing, it quickly becomes apparent that Thor actually hates the violence and war Odin forces him to engage in and suffers deeply from PTSD, depression, and alcoholism as a result of it.
• Shock and Awe: He is the God of Thunder, after all. His appearance during the secret ending shows him invoking lightning..
• Shockwave Clap: One of his attacks is this, even generating electricity when he does so.
• Shockwave Stomp: Can do this with his bare hands, being a powerful unblockable attack that must be dodged.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: His brother, Baldur, is lean, short-haired, claims to be more reasonable than Thor, and is regarded as Odin's best tracker. Thor, on the other hand, is long-haired, bulky, quick-tempered, and is universally regarded as Odin's deadliest warrior.
• Stealthy Colossus: Despite his large stature and build, he's able to sneak up on Odin himself when he wants to.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: After Atreus agrees to work with Odin, Odin calls for Thor to come down and accompany him on a mission to Muspelheim, only to be startled when Thor shows up mere inches behind him almost before he finishes speaking. Thor never does this again.
• Stout Strength: He possesses a heavyset built akin to a powerlifter, and is capable of killing mountain-sized Giants.
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: Downplayed; he's been given orders by Odin not to kill Kratos during their first fight, but is irritated that Kratos is similarly holding back, and keeps demanding that he "show" him the man that killed his brother and sons. It's only when he threatens Atreus that Kratos unleashes a punch that knocks a molar loose from Thor's head, and Thor is satisfied enough at that to let the fight end.
  "...There he is. There's the god of war."
• Strong and Skilled: In stark contrast to Magni and Modi, whose clear lack of skill and preference to rely on their godly power make them mere lackies compared to the higher Aesir, Thor is hailed as Odin's most valued enforcer for being both the physically strongest Aesir and Asgard's deadliest warrior. As displayed by both his fights with Kratos, he is not only strong enough to physically rival a the war god, but also has the combat skills needed to match Kratos's staunch fighting prowess, being the only one thus far who has been able to fight Kratos to a literal stalemate in their first fight and only narrowly losing their second match. It’s even strongly implied that Thor is one of the few people capable of hurting Heimdall, the God of Foresight whose M.O. is anticipating his opponent’s attacks and dodging them.
• Strong Family Resemblance: His appearance in Ragnarök shows clearly where Móði got his genes from, while his son Magni took after his giantess mother in more than just height. Like Modi, Thor has long red hair with a forktail beard. His daughter Thrúd also borrows heavily from him, with red hair and a similar heavy set build. In a moment of tragic irony, Thor's death is very similar to Modi's, both involved a father betraying them in a fit of anger and being stabbed in the neck.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Although he's rightfully hated for the role he played in slaying the giants, Atreus, Kratos and Mimir can't help but pity him; Atreus understands how Thor feels because he too has a father who's overbearing and overshadowing, Kratos understands Thor's guilt and shared his fear that he's irredeemable, and Mimir understands how Thor feels about wanting to better himself through the love of someone else and realizing that he was a bad person. In the end, Kratos is the one who gets through to Thor by sharing the experience of being a father and tells Thor that what Thor did in the past doesn't matter as long as he redeems himself now through his daughter.
• Tattooed Crook: He has faint chest tattoos and is the slayer of the Jotnar.
• The Teetotaler: Thor is actually a recovering alcoholic and has been trying to better himself with Sif for Thrud after their shared alcoholism caused them to abuse Magni and Modi, and eventually cause Modi's death after the latter reported Magni's death and was beaten by a violently drunk Thor in a moment of weakness.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: During Atreus' stay in Asgard, Odin orders Thor to work with him. He's clearly not happy about having to work with the killer of his sons but isn't about to defy his father. He makes his displeasure known several times when he openly threatens Atreus and eventually decides to make good on the threats at the behest of Sif.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: He insists he enjoyed slaughtering the giants (and that he'd thus enjoy killing Atreus due to him being half-giant). It becomes apparent it's part of Thor's unhealthy coping mechanism of adopting the persona of the monster everyone sees him as for Odin's approval. He actually deeply loathes what he's done in Odin's name. Kratos finally manages to get through to Thor during their last fight, but Odin kills Thor before he can act on it.
• This Means War!: He wants revenge for what Kratos has done to his son and brother.
• Thunder Hammer: While Thor definitely knows how to unleash lightning and throw a punch, his main weapon is Mjölnir, the legendary hammer Brok and Sindri crafted. It's powerful enough to stagger even Kratos, can be hurled great distances only to quickly return to Thor with just a snap of his fingers, and seemingly amplifies his God of Thunder powers. With it, Thor became famous as the greatest (and most feared) Giant-killer in all the Nine Realms.
• Tiger Versus Dragon: He's the tiger to Kratos's dragon. Although Thor doesn't solely rely on his strength, his main tactic is to bulldoze his way through his enemies and break through their defenses. Whereas, Kratos focuses on his target and is shown to still be in tune with his military training. This is best shown in how they restrain each other. Kratos stabs Thor through his hand so he can't recall his weapon, forcing him to hear Kratos's words. Thor, on the other hand, uses unrelenting attacks to eventually break through Kratos's defenses by breaking his shield and grabbing him by the neck to restrain him.
• Tragic Villain: Far from the dumb sadistic brute he's made out to be in the first game, Ragnarök instead shows Thor to be a very flawed figure, manipulated by a father who cares little for him, who shares many of Kratos' own traits and self-loathing over the destruction he's caused. He did love his children, even if he wasnt great at expressing it, and did want to do better for their sake, but failing to do so due to Odin, who ultimately kills him when Kratos convinces him to be better than he is, and the two stop fighting.
• Tranquil Fury: Thor is at his most intimidating when not yelling. When he negotiates with Kratos in the beginning, he's audibly seething with anger and clearly wants to drop all pretenses of rationality so he can kill Kratos for killing his sons and brother. Later on, he's able to intimidate Heimdall simply by telling him to look him in the eyes and see if he really wants to try him.
• Trapped in Villainy: He doesn't like doing the evil things Odin makes him do, but years of emotional and physical abuse from his domineering father has left him submissive and weak-willed, unwilling to stand up for himself and the people he cares about as he chases fruitlessly after Odin's approval.
• Travel to Projectile: Thor can bring himself to Mjlönir just as easily as he can recall it to him. He demonstrates so in his opening strike against Kratos, when he sends the former god of war flying across Midgard by his chin before catcheing up to him midflight, to growl to Kratos about the blood debt he owes him. Later Thor uses the same ability to traverse tall heights in Muspelheim and Niflheim alongside Atreus. He uses this ability more offensively against Kratos in their second fight, snapping across the arena to Mjlönir in an instant.
• Troubled Abuser: Thor is portrayed as an alcoholic father who beats his sons Magni and Modi and favours Magni over his brother — when Kratos kills Magni, Thor blames Modi for not being able to save him and leaves him severely injured. However, it is revealed that Thor himself was verbally and, according to Mimir, physically abused by Odin, who constantly belittles him as a mindless brute whose only purpose in life should be doing his dirty work by killing giants with no questions or objections, which left Thor with an alcohol abuse and a self-loathing belief that he could never change himself to stop being a monster. When Modi gets killed by Atreus as a result of being too weakened to defend himself, Thor and his wife Sif ultimately decide to stop drinking and become better parents for their remaining child, Thrud.
• Truer to the Text: Downplayed; this version of Thor is much more violent, bloodthirsty, and overall flawed than the protector of humanity and force of good from Norse myths ever was, but he is also quite closer to how Thor was described than the romanticized later versions seen in works such as Thor's Fight with the Giants and The Mighty Thor, in which Thor is clean-shaved, blonde, and more conventionally noble, handsome and heroic.
  • In the games, Thor is large, red-haired, and has long hair, fierce eyes, and a long beard, exactly like how he is described in the Eddas and in The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, as well as problems with alcoholism and a protuberant belly, referencing his large appetite and fondness for drinking seen in several myths, such as the Þrymskviða and in the tale of Utgarda-Loki.
  • His short-tempered and violent personality, while very exaggerated, also has plenty of basis in the myths, such as when he threatened to break all of Loki's bones in the Lokasenna if he didn't stop making insults, when he got angry with how the giantess Hyrrokkin shook the ground by shoving Baldr’s enormous funerary ship and would have immediately cracked her skull with Mjolnir if the other gods hadn’t stopped him, and when he kicked a dwarf, called Litr, into Baldur's funeral pyre out of anger and grief over his unexpected death in the Gylfaginning.
• Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: Mimir's concerns on a clash between Kratos and Thor feels a lot like this; with the power and strength both are feared for, knowing for sure who, or if anyone would walk away from the carnage afterwards is a highly debatable question.
• Unstoppable Rage: Emphasis on unstoppable, he's responsible for the deaths of countless giants. The secret ending pretty much spells this out as Thor is more than little upset about the killing of Magni and Baldur.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: As a result of Thor's drunkenness and anger, he's often caused mass death and trouble by sheer drunken accidents.
  • When he attacked Thamur, the giant was so big at the time of his death that he fell on a village killed a majority of its villagers, and then Thamur's last breath froze the survivors to death as well as caused an eternal winter. While Thor was likely horrified by what he had done and he would come to regret it, he told Odin and the other Asgardians that he did it on purpose.
  • When he became trapped under Hrungnir's corpse, he was freed by Magni and Modi but in his drunken state, he only saw Magni because of his blond hair and drunkenly gave Magni sole credit for the deed. This led to Modi developing an inferiority complex and an unnecessary rivalry with Magni that lasted into his adulthood. Thor even admits that Modi had "some problems" and his troubling behavior more than likely stemmed from Thor's drunkenness.
  • In Ragnarok, Thor was told by Sif that Odin isn't helping Asgard and he needs to stand up to his father but Thor misdirected his anger and instead attacked Atreus. However, he didn't know how important the mask was to Odin and he forced Atreus to retreat with it, which indirectly leads to Odin revealing himself as Tyr, Brok's death, and eventually the destruction of Asgard.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Downplayed. Thor is decidedly holding himself back during the fight with Kratos and slowly reveals that he's very skilled in hand-to-hand brawling, using Mjolnir as both a close-range and long range weapon and using its electrical abilities to augment his attacks and manoeuvrability despite his rotund figure, and these prove sufficient for him to overwhelm Kratos who can only fight with the Leviathan Axe, Guardian Shield and his fists. However, by the time of their second fight, Kratos has gained several more abilities and weapons to improve his combat strength, and whilst Thor demonstrates greater handling and usage of Mjolnir than before, Kratos' versatility enables him to gradually overcome him using several different fighting styles, with each round of their fight punctuated by Kratos and Thor brawling using a different weapon in Kratos' arsenal to counter Thor using the same fighting form.
• Villain Takes an Interest: A majority of their interactions show that although Thor hates Kratos for killing Magni and blames him for Modi's death, Thor does see a lot of himself in Kratos because they are both warriors who committed multiple atrocities. While Kratos is trying to better himself for Atreus, Thor cannot comprehend that a person as evil as he is can simply try to be better and is trying to convince himself that he can't change.
• Weapon Twirling: As if throwing it around wasn't enough, Thor has a combat animation where he quickly twirls Mjolnir a couple of times, flipping it between his fingers like it's a tiny dagger.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Thor, at the end of the day, just wishes for his father to love him and gain his approval.
• Worthy Opponent: He sees a lot of similarities between him and Kratos and wants Kratos to fight with everything he has so he can see the real Ghost of Sparta.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: After Thor takes a heavy shot to the gut from the Leviathan Axe during his first fight with Kratos he walks around for the rest of the game with the wound still in his stomach, still fresh and bleeding. It's very likely that the wound doesn't heal thanks to the eitr, or poison, that was imbued in the Leviathan Axe by Jormungandr.
• Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about Thor without mentioning the ending or key events of the game.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Similar to Baldur in the previous game, Thor presents a much tougher challenge to all of the mooks you've been fighting up to this point. He packs way more power and varied attacks than prior enemies, also forcing the use of parries and proper dodging.
• The Worf Effect: After the previous game hypes him up as Asgard's greatest warrior and the physically most powerful of the Aesir, his first appearance in Ragnarok has him repeatedly pressure Kratos, outmaneuvering and delivering powerful blows on the Ghost of Sparta numerous times, to where despite the fight ultimately ending in a stalemate, Thor actually seems to be the better one off, able to calmly fly away, while Kratos is visibly reeling from the fight, and while Kratos was not fighting to kill and physically weakened after hours of activity, Thor was also holding himself back as Odin didn't want Kratos dead yet. At the end of the game, Thor takes on both Jormungandr and Surtr as Ragnarok, while also having to contend with Freya and Freyr, and manages to send Freyr down towards Kratos before casually sending Jormugandr back in time with a single blow, and is seen with not even a single injury on him.
• You Killed My Father: Inverted, Kratos killed his sons, Magni and Modi, and his brother Baldur.

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