As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Brok: (Upon seeing Kratos deal with a Wulver) Welp, that'll haunt my dreams!
God of War Ragnarök finally lets you explore all nine realms of Norse mythology...and with that comes so very many different varieties of horrors and threats.
Main game
- The sheer rage in Freya's voice during the opening sequence is unnerving. Took a Level in Badass is putting it mildly — the way Kratos and Atreus talk about Freya, she's become an Implacable Woman. Even after managing to knock her away and ride through the protection stave, Freya screaming "KRATOS!!!" at the top of her lungs, echoing through the air, is a testament to the sheer level of hatred she has. A far cry from the Actual Pacifist that she used to be. And going by what Kratos and Atreus say both during and after the encounter, this is far from the only time she's attacked them in the three years since Baldur's death.
- Odin himself by abilities alone is terrifying, requiring Freya and Atreus to help Kratos beat him as the final boss. What makes Odin a nightmare is that much of his behavior — verbal abuse, gaslighting, never accepting responsibility for his actions — is hidden behind the veneer of a kind and bumbling grandfather figure, something that many victims of abuse can testify is Truth in Television.
- When Atreus tries to leave Jötunheim and go back to Sindri's house, he accidentally goes back to his old home in the wildwoods of Midgard instead, which, without the circle of protection, has been infested by Hel-Walkers. When Atreus tries to go to the right home this time, a hel-walker suddenly thrusts a sword through the door and another attacks Atreus through the ceiling. Even if he managed to beat them on his own, the scene still shows that even relatively weaker enemies would still be terrifying to encounter for mortals, who without Kratos' and Atreus' divine abilities, would have an ever tougher time surviving in a freezing world infested by the undead.
- During Atreus’ journeys to Muspelheim to complete the Mask, he is accompanied by Thor, who seems terse but willing to work with him at Odin's behest...until he suddenly pins Mjolnir against Atreus's neck while the latter is precariously close to a lava pit and makes it very clear that the only reason the boy's skull has not been reduced to chunky salsa is because he is still useful to the All-Father's plans.
- A bit later, Atreus convinces Thor to go enjoy the Trials Of Surtr, which the God Of Thunder accepts. This gives him a bit of time to investigate Surtr's shrine, with Thor seemingly none the wiser as he clears the Brutal Bonus Level by himself, leaving behind mountains of corpses. That is, until they are called back by Odin...Thor: Alright, let's get out of here. Oh... Loki, don't try to play me again. You are an okay kid, but you are still a Giant. And I'll revel in killing you too.
- After Atreus's first outing in Asgard, Kratos questions Freya about finding the Norns. Tyr overhears the conversation and approaches slowly, silhouetted by the house's skylight. His shape is pretty easy to recognize even in the dark, but seeing nothing but his glowing golden eyes surrounded by complete blackness is still pretty unnerving. Especially when you remember that this "Tyr" is Odin.
- Heimdall's death at Kratos' hands is fairly tame by the standards of what he's done to other gods, but is a quite harrowing experience when compared to the more restrained way he killed Magni and Baldur before, getting close to how Kratos used to perform over-the-top executions of his enemies before. Kratos is visibly simmering with anger throughout their fight because of his opponent's smug taunting nature as well as Heimdall's fated murder of Atreus, holding himself back mainly because he wants to Screw Destiny and go against the prophecy of him killing Heimdall, no matter how tempting he makes that prospect. Kratos' anger visibly increases when his attempts to spare Heimdall only cements the smug god's animosity towards him, making it clear that he will kill Atreus painfully for Kratos' attempted mercy on him, refusing to back down even after Kratos blows his right arm off. Finally, after further fighting, Kratos reaches his Rage Breaking Point, violently beats Heimdall to the ground, covering him in his own blood, and then starts strangling him slowly to death, the camera lingering on Heimdall's bloodied and darkened face as the light slowly leaves his eyes. Heimdall's last words are to call Kratos a 'monster' as he passes away looking into Kratos' eyes, recalling how Thor got him to back down from antagonising him by letting him read his mind to see what would happen if he pushed his luck. As violent and bloody as Heimdall's death is, his last words imply that Kratos wanted to do much worse to him (as he did with the Greek pantheon) and was barely holding himself back from that.
- The camera angle hovering close to Kratos' head and Heimdall's lack of visible pupils give another aspect to the scene — without a direct line of sight, it almost looks like Heimdall is looking at you, the player, his powers letting him see into your head and see how much enjoyment and satisfaction you're gaining from his demise. In that regard, his last words are as equally directed at the player as much as Kratos, calling them out for wanting him dead so badly, and underlying that no matter how deserving, every death has long-lasting consequences in the Norse saga.
- Look closely and you'll notice Heimdall's makeshift Bifrost arm is fading from existence at the same rate the light is fading from his eyes. He couldn't even hold Kratos off of him at this point if he wanted to.
- Listen closely and you'll hearing some sort of grinding noise. Is it the leather from Kratos' gloves straining or the bones in Heimdall's neck breaking?
- Something that a fellow Youtuber pointed out: Heimdall's eyes allow him to see people's memories. It's very possible that, in his last moments, Heimdall got a good look at some of Kratos's blood-riddled past, including his one-man massacre of the gods. Gives new perspective to Heimdall's last word to Kratos.
- Mimir falls off of Kratos' belt as he moves in to finish Heimdall off. While Mimir may have known the legends of Kratos' past the way he lands gives him a front row seat to a fleeting moment in which the Ghost of Sparta returns and he's very much distressed by it. And even after that he can only sit there staring at Heimdall's corpse as Kratos begins to come down from his battle rage.Mimir: Brother! BROTHER!!! This isn't who you want to be...!
[.....]
Mimir: [with restrained horror] Kratos... That was—
Kratos: [Wearily growls as he picks Mimir up]
Mimir: I don't know if we're breaking fate... or fate's breaking us.
- The Raven Tree. A location in Niflheim that houses the souls of every spectral raven Kratos has destroyed throughout this game and the last one, already half-populated by his prior efforts, and the ravens speaking to him in a Voice of the Legion that sounds like a chorus of children rhyming in unison. Though unsettling, they're still beneficial to the heroes and reward them for every group of ravens destroyed, speaking of their enslavement under Odin's command by the Raven Keeper, his most devoted disciple. The real horror however, comes when they finally reveal what they used to be. They sound like children because they are. The ravens are the souls of children, hanged painfully by the neck until death by their fanatical parents in Odin's name, so their souls could be pulled from the afterlife and made to tell him the secrets of what lay beyond, before being re-fashioned into ghostly spies to serve him. Even Mimir and Freya, who are no strangers to Odin's cruelty, are shaken upon hearing this. Kratos himself, an aggressively stoic figure even after he's learned to open up more, for once can barely emote properly not from keeping his emotions controlled, but by being too shocked to fully process this revelation. Having killed one child by accident and hating himself for it for years afterwards, and fearful for Atreus' well-being throughout both games, he can barely comprehend the mindset that would have lead the parents of these poor souls to knowingly murder them out of fanatical devotion to a mad god, who had ordered this just to sate his curiosity of what lies beyond the veil of death without actually crossing it himself. Calliope's death was mercifully quick, done in an instant — these children were hanged, and they — at least a hundred of these ravens over both games — make it clear that their demise was a drawn-out affair for each one of them. Needless to say, the player will become as equally driven as Kratos to find and destroy every last Raven after learning this, but even then, their suffering is not finished. Kratos and Mimir's conversation after finally killing the Raven Keeper implied that the transformed nature of the Ravens' existence might have resulted in them being Barred from the Afterlife, meaning all Kratos' party can do for them is free them from their spectral shackles and kill their long-time tormentors, yet still unable to truly grant them a peaceful existence after what was inflicted upon them. It tells how horrible the Raven Keeper is when this of all villains is one of the very few who manage to qualify as a Complete Monster in a setting rife with Jerkass Gods and Kratos being a mass murderer himself despite being just a minor NPC and far from being apocalyptic, because she's just that vile.Voice of the Ravens: We are of one mind / United by pain / Longing for a world / We shall not see again.
Voice of the Ravens: Mummy and Daddy / Tied the Noose tight / To send us to Odin / To bask in his light. - The death of Odin. The man spent centuries on a tireless, destructive quest to find answers, specifically the answer to a question that's probably haunted him his whole life: What comes after he dies? What comes next? In this quest he ruined the lives of his loved ones, his family, and pretty much everyone he crossed paths with. As he lays bloody and beaten, he's still obsessed with the need to know, and swears that he will never stop. Atreus, unwilling to kill him but still determined to stop him, traps his soul in a marble. After Freya refuses to destroy the marble, saying it will not make her whole... Sindri snatches it out of Atreus' hand, and before anyone can even think to raise an objection, he smashes the marble, rendering the All-Father well and truly Deader than Dead. He had earned that fate, but the sheer abruptness of it is a shock, especially when Sindri glares down at what remains of Odin:Sindri, voice tight with rage: That's what comes next.
- On that note, the end result of Sindri's mental breakdown after Brok is rendered Deader than Dead. By the end of the game, he's completely transformed into a terrifying mirror of Kratos's old self. He's stopped caring about being clean and now has blood and grime all over his body, just like Kratos's ash-infused skin. He becomes inconsolably bitter towards his former friends, rejecting any and all attempts at reaching out to him and making it very clear that he now hates all of them equally, seeing them only as allies of convenience because in his eyes that's how they all saw him, little more than a tool to be used and discarded. And discard them he does both during and after the war finally ends. He spitefully goes against their orders against killing innocents just because it will give him even the slightest bit of pleasure knowing he's destroying what Odin has created. Finally when all is said and done, he cruelly snatches Odin's Soul Jar out of Atreus's hands and destroys it with his hammer, turning to everyone present in a manner that looks like he's about to attack them next before vanishing. And they do nothing in response because they know that everything he just did and what he could have done then and there is justified in comparison to their past mistakes, especially when those mistakes are what made him this way in the first place. They all must now live with the fact that their actions not only cost them a friend, but turned them into a monster of revenge.
- The Rift. All throughout the series, everything has been firmly rooted in and solely dealt with preexisting mythologies. Then in comes the Rift, a tear in the very fabric of reality itself. It calls to people, seemingly contains infinite knowledge, and can (possibly) seriously injure those who try to peer into it unprepared, even gods. And it's not just a random occurrence as the existence of the Mask shows that there is, or was, some form of intelligence connected to it, either from an ancient civilization who discovered it prior to Odin or whatever is on the other side of the Rift. In all, while God of War is set in a fairly standard world of gods and myths, the Rift implies something far worse.
- Arguably everything about Garm. (pictured above) Let's see:
- A gargantuan-sized wolf with soulless eyes, blood-soaked fur, can tear holes through dimensions, and able to eat abstract concepts (such as a now nonexistent fifth season and term once to describe being so hungry you aren't hungry anymore). The fact that he has no soul meant that no matter how many times he's defeated within Helheim, he'll just keep coming back.
- Garm actually forces Kratos and Atreus to run for their lives in an intense chase sequence featuring him bursting through the structures they’re running in after father and son think they've taken care of the issue, making the two godly heroes feel like rats chased by a cat. Worse yet, it first shows it's not dead by hitting Kratos with its now unfastened chain - the only thing that was still slowing him down.Kratos: [seeing Garm, very much alive, snarling and glaring at him] How?
- Both sides of the conflict see its rampage as a fuck-up of colossal proportions for everyone, on Atreus' part, just to convey the sheer terror that Garm generates, thus giving a very good reason for his imprisonment in Helheim. It's a very good thing that loyal Fenrir's soul ended up occupying this otherwise empty husk of a beast.
- After the reveal of "Tyr" actually being Odin in disguise during the main story, we later find a prison in Nifilheim where Odin keeps the actual people he impersonates as. While the real Tyr is thankfully still alive, the rest of the imprisoned were not so lucky; a dwarf, a Midgardian, and a pair of Elves are shown to have died in their cells from their attempts to escape or simply survive the cold, harsh conditions.
- If one looks closely at the scene where Atreus escapes back to the treehouse before he gets attacked by Thor, it shows that Ingrid blocked Thor's strike just before he got sent back. Which may mean that if it wasn't for Ingrid Atreus might have died and would have been sent back to his father as a corpse—and so soon after he'd promised to come back safe.
- Most of Kratos' enemy executions in this game are, while still fairly brutal, quick and efficient affairs compared to the gratuitous overkill common in the original trilogy. Even the more extreme kills normally don't go beyond Kratos picking a mook up and quickly ripping them in half horizontally. This makes the few exceptions all the more startling.
- When executing a wulver Kratos will beat it down before grabbing it by the snout and forcibly tearing its mouth open breaking its jaws, and then keeps ripping its mouth further apart instead of having the lower jaw come off by itself due to the sheer force applied. This ends up tearing off the wulver's entire chest along with its bottom jaw, exposing its organs and ribcage like some grotesque meat banana. Worst of all, this is the kill that manages to horrify and intimidate the otherwise nigh-unflappable Brok, should he happen to behold it during the group's journey through Vanaheim.
- While tame compared to the original series, they are noticeably more brutal than in the last game, especially since he’s now more commonly performing them on living monsters or more recognizably human enemies. The majority of Einherjar kills involve bisection, and those are the more pleasant ones. It subtly adds to Kratos’s fear that he’s slipping into his old ways.
- In one conversation, Kratos casually lists the methods that were used to make children into Spartans - and it's nothing short of monstrous. Abuse, parental abandonment, and constant threats of death all wrapped up into a The Social Darwinist mentality. In some ways, Kratos is more like Thor than he realizes - made into a monster, yes... and brainwashed into revering the very people responsible for making monsters while blaming the gods instead.note
- While also rather impressive, Atreus proves to be just as terrifying as Kratos when using his Spartan Rage, if not moreso - Kratos "merely" lets out all of his strength to break foes with his bare hands, but Atreus taps into his Jotnar shapeshifting to maul enemies as a wolf or bear. His two favored executions in wolf form? Knocking an enemy on its back and ripping their head off with a powerful bite, or clamping his jaws around the enemy's waist and thrashing them against the ground until the repeated impacts rip them in half, the latter being a legitimate kill tactic real wolves can use on smaller prey. And unlike Kratos, Atreus does these executions automatically, ignoring the victim's stun bar completely. As a bear... we only see "Bjorn" fight three times in-game, once as a boss against Kratos, once during the final QTE against the vakyries Hrist and Mist, and a final, fully-controllable moment against several Einherjar during Ragnarok itself. But these battles all give us some insights into how Atreus fights - sledgehammer paw blows, savage bites, using his bulk in relentless bull-rush charges, and he executes Mist by following his father's example and removing her wings, literally chewing them off at the shoulder joints, even as Kratos himself goes for the (comparatively) kinder Neck Snap on Hrist.
- It's worse than that, if one looks closely at Mist's death, it's visible that Atreus is actually ripping her in half horizontally with nothing but his teeth and claws. Like Father, Like Son indeed.
- In many ways, Gryla is pretty tame by the standards of many of the monsters in the God of War series; despite being a giant, she's not that big compared to the others we see, nor is she anywhere near as powerful, vicious or hideous as some of the other enemies we've beaten. However, Atreus and Angrboda sneaking through her house and the giant-sized objects is such a fairy-tale scenario that it does an excellent job of reminding you of being a little kid, enthralled and scared at the thought that "fee fi fo fum" might echo through the giant house at any moment.
- There is also the Realism-Induced Horror of her addiction to consuming the souls of animals. The depression that led her into the addiction (her grief and fury at her son being, as she sees it, guided to go down a suicidal path/"accept his fate" by his wife rather than even try to survive), her inability to care about anything beyond temporarily satiating the craving with fake pleasure, miserable self-justification and self-pity, desperation at the thought of being denied, and finally the sheer hateful spite she unleashes on the family member who has succeeded in forcing her to go cold turkey are all played deadly seriously and make her appearance (a huge, but otherwise completely normal human) more frightening than many of the monstrous beasts we've seen throughout the series.
Valhalla DLC
- Near the start of the Valhalla DLC, Mimir vanishes and is replaced by none other than Helios. Soon enough, the landscape warps into the room in the original game where Kratos had to sacrifice a soldier in a cage in an incinerator, classic Greek enemies and all. Kratos gets the idea to put Helios's head into the cage in order to progress as Helios taunts him about how this is a bad idea. When Kratos turns away to turn on the incinerator he looks back and Helios is switched with Mimir again with Kratos struggling to get him out of the cage before the incinerator fires. Mimir and Kratos end up falling through a void with Mimir saying that Kratos apparently broke reality and they're going to die for real this time. If not for Sigrun showing up and saving them, the two would've died, and it would've been Kratos' fault.
- At the end of Valhalla, we finally get to see young Kratos in all his HD glory, and he’s every bit as scary as you’d expect. There’s something indescribably terrifying about the way he silently sits atop the throne of Ares, glaring back at his older self with soulless, snake-like eyes. He may not have any lines of dialogue, but his body language does all the talking for him. When older Kratos starts throwing accusations at him, all he does is raise his head from his hand and sit up straight, as if he’s saying: “I didn’t do those things. We did.”
