Characters / Tomb Raider: Lara Croft

Main Character Index

---

Lara Croft

The many faces of Miss Croft

"I'm sorry. I only play for sport."

The Other Video Game Action Girl.

The Other Adventurer Archaeologist.

A British archaeologist who has a knack for descending into trap-riddled tombs and ruins, and loves every bit of it. Armed with her wits and her trusty dual pistols, Lara uncovers secrets across the globe stopping at nothing to get what she wants.

Two continuity reboots have led to three radically different Laras. Here are the tropes that each Lara generally possesses:

---

General Tropes

• The Ace: Lara is a fabulously wealthy English aristocrat, a peerless physical fighter (with firearms, with a bow and arrows, with her bare hands), a Badass Driver, acrobatic and graceful enough to shame a cat, highly intelligent and knowledgeable in many subjects from science to history, fluent in multiple languages, witty and humorous, and she's a symbol of sex appeal to boot. Lara has made gamers swoon and drool for generations.
• Action Girl: She, along with Samus Aran of Metroid fame, is practically the Trope Codifier for video game protagonists who fall under this trope. At the height of her popularity she was probably both the best recognized and the most popular video game character originating in the western hemisphere. Her gender has never really been a matter of suspicion which was a common problem in earlier, sprite-based characters. Given that all of her adventures have involved her shooting enormous amounts of ammunition at similarly enormous enemies, she's the Action Girl many would most readily identify.
• Action Survivor: Her most consistent origin story has her being stranded and having to survive in the wilderness. This is usually relegated to flashback sequences, but it is explored in more depth in Tomb Raider (2013) and Tomb Raider (2018).
• Adventurer Archaeologist: In fairness, when she gets into these kinds of situations, she's usually chasing far more powerful enemies seeking mystical artifacts. Both the movies and games occasionally had a Big Bad wanting to abuse some power the artifacts provided. In other words, Lara Croft isn't so concerned about preserving the ancient ruins because she's in a race against time to keep some villain from using a powerful artifact with horrendous consequences. Oh, and at least as far as lore of first two games was concerned, Lara isn't actually a trained archaeologist - just an enthusiast with artillery to back her actions.
• Badass Biker: The first game has her driving a motorcycle in Egypt, and it's such an enduring image the second game had promotional images of Lara in a bike even if it's not in the game. Legend upped this by adding driving sections. The movies also made sure to have Lara in a Cool Bike (the 2018 one even has her accepting to be the target in a motorized 'fox hunt' as a bet).
• Badass Bookworm: Knows dozen of dead languages, while being an accomplished acrobat and mountaineer; found few civilizations and archeological sites considered lost and fought against all sort of creatures, monsters and even a Physical God. Soft-spoken, well-educated and with posh accent, but cross her and she will fight back and kill you. Even in the 2013 reboot continuity, where she begins as a nerd, she still kicks ass while scoring few levels in badass throughout that continuity.
• Badass Normal: Lara is a normal Adventurer Archaeologist who regularly faces supernatural threats, such as oversized animals, dinosaurs, Irish ghosts, mutated humans, mummies, evil statues, undead samurai warriors, and outright gods. She has beaten them all often just using her regular firearms and acrobatic skills.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: The first two incarnations of the character often wore midriff-baring outfits as part of their Ms. Fanservice look. To take one of several examples... ◊
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: No matter how much damage she endures or what kind of dusty/slimy tombs she crawls through, Lara always comes out looking like she just got back from the stylist. Justified in the games by Core Design, who did not have the technological means for any such effects.
  • Slightly averted in both Legend and Anniversary, where Lara will get smudged if she rolls around a few too many times. Averted to a greater degree in Underworld.
  • The 2013 reboot averts this much harder, with Lara near permanently covered in dirt, mud and god knows what else, though the rain does seem to wash most of it off. An even more blatant aversion of this is the unlockable Hunter skin, which coats her in a thick layer of mud, allowing her to blend in with the environment easily.
• Blue Blood: During the first era, game manuals describe the character as the Wimbledon-born daughter of Lord Henshingly Croft (Lord Richard Croft in Legend and following entries). She was raised as an aristocrat and betrothed to the fictitious Earl of Farringdon. Lara attended the Scottish boarding school Gordonstoun and a Swiss finishing school.
• Bond One-Liner: Some examples:
  Mook: For some people, like yourself, we get a special bonus!
  Lara: I'm flattered.
  Mook: I mean, I could even retire early from you!
  Lara: Then you'd might like to mind the bell.
  Mook gets thrown off the rooftop from a swinging bell
  Lara: Happy retirement.
• Boots of Toughness: The pair of boots that Lara typically wears varies in terms of design between games but they are all essentially combat boots, which are practical since she is an Adventurer Archaeologist and an Action Girl.
• Bottomless Magazines: In almost all of the games, Lara's basic pistols have infinite ammo and never have to reload. Her other guns, while having limited ammo, never need fresh magazines except for single shot weapons such as her rocket launcher. Not to mention that all of her gun-wielding enemies have infinite ammo, too!
  • In Legend, the infinite-ammo pistols have a set magazine size but the slow-mo flip attack overrides this, allowing her to fire non-stop until she lands.
  • Averted in the 2013 reboot where she has ammo limits on all of her guns.
  • AoD gives all of her guns limited ammo and the need to reload.
• Braids of Action: She's an Adventurer Archaeologist with long hair that would get in her face during her adventures if she didn't keep it contained in a braided ponytail. This wasn't added in-game until Tomb Raider 2 because of graphical limitations, but was nonetheless part of her iconic image from the start.
• Brainy Brunette: She's a highly intelligent archeologist with long brown hair.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Lara being well-endowed is one of her most famous physical traits in almost every incarnation and one of the reasons she's regarded as so attractive even in-universe. This is more prominent in side and promotional material than in the actual games, though those still feature copious amounts of Male Gaze aimed at her chest.
• Byronic Hero: Eventually applies to all three incarnations (although the second reboot struggles with the whole sex-appeal and social dominance part). Lara fits all the aspects to a tee: high level of intelligence and perception; cunning and able to adapt; sophisticated and educated; self-critical and introspective; mysterious, magnetic, and charismatic; struggling with integrity (especially when she was stealing from others); powers of seduction and sexual attraction; social and sexual dominance; emotional conflicts, bipolar tendencies, or moodiness; a distaste for social institutions and norms; being an exile, outcast, or outlaw; disrespect for rank or privilege; a dark and troubled past; cynicism; arrogance; and self destructive behavior, along with her general anti-heroine traits. This was most prominent with the original Lara and her background as a disgraced aristocrat, but it was also apparent with the second Lara as well, who had a similar background, but found herself estranged from aristocratic life for very different reasons outside herself. And also eventually became part of the third Lara, as she's estranged from her previous life and engages in more and more dangerous and self-destructive situations for ever more selfish reasons.
• Cool Bike: Whenever Lara rides a motorcycle it is always something sporty and top-of-the-line.
• Cunning Linguist: As an Adventurer Archaeologist, she is fluent in/can read and understand several languages including ancient ones such as Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Tomb Raider: Legend has her speaking Japanese, and the films have her speaking Mandarin, Cambodian, and a Siberian dialect.
• Cutscene Incompetence: Lara gets knocked out or otherwise incapacitated in situations that would be no sweat during gameplay, such as getting knocked out by a mechanic in TR II (to be fair, she was taken by surprise in that situation) or failing a quad jump in TR III (that would be perfectly doable in-game).
• Deadpan Snarker: She has a wry sense of humor and is prone to make sarcastic remarks, quips, and one-liners. Although downplayed in the 2013 reboot.
• Determinator: She survived being Buried Alive in The Last Revelation and came out no worse for wear. In the 2013 reboot she is wounded several times, but keeps going because she thinks only she can help her friends and crew get away alive.
• Experienced Protagonist: The majority of works already feature Lara who is a highly experienced Adventurer Archaeologist right from the start, with her origins and past usually relegated to a few flashback sequences.
• Exposed to the Elements: It's a recurring thing for her to be wearing a tank top and shorts for any weather or location, even when highly impractical, such as climbing the Himalayas or exploring Tibet. This was most common in the earlier games and she does eventually start to change outfits to fit the location, but this doesn't always avert the trope, and from Legend on, the player can choose outfits (even if they're inappropriate) themselves. Even the Darker and Edgier reboot has her wandering around in a snowy area without so much as a coat and being unbothered by it.
• Female Fighter, Male Handler: She's an Action Girl who consistently has a male partner working as a handler or Mission Control for her.
• Guns Akimbo: Her signature weapon is a pair of akimbo pistols. In the first two titles she by default used to shoot them with remarkable timing such that the two shots sounded just like one, but could get desynchronized when aiming at multiple targets. In following titles of the series the two shots are slightly offset. She also automatically aims both weapons independently in target-rich environments.
• Iconic Outfit: Her most popular and iconic Adventurer Outfit is her sea green tank top, brown khaki shorts, calf-high boots with tall white socks, fingerless gloves, two gun holsters, and a small leather backpack, which is what she started with from the first game. It's an unlockable outfit in most of the Tomb Raider games and usually what she wears in crossovers and promotional material. Many of her other outfits are also variations on this look.
• It Amused Me: The first two Laras are doing the whole globetrotting adventuring solely for the thrill of it. The third explores it as a dramatic flaw, but it is ultimately played just as straight as with other iterations.
  Lara: I'm sorry, I only play for sport.
• Lady of Adventure: She's a high-class female aristocrat who would rather spend her time and wealth on her globe-trotting adventures and fill her Big Fancy House with mementos from them.
• Leg Focus: Her legs are often exposed and played for fanservice. Even Mooks in-universe comment about her habit of wearing hot pants.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: While the exact length varies, all her incarnations have long hair that is tied to a ponytail, highlighting her femininity despite her dangerous job.
• Made of Iron: She may be a tough Action Girl, but she's still a normal human being who somehow easily shrugs off being shot by Mooks, mauled by animals, or falling from great heights.
• Meaningful Name: "Croft" comes from a Middle English word for "Crypt" AKA a tomb.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Lara Croft is known as a fanservice machine by many video gamers and she is one of the earliest examples of a sex symbol in the video game industry. She embodies this trope with her tight adventuring outfits, nice legs and (in)famous breasts. Her alternate outfits play up this trope from a Little Black Dress to wet suits to bikinis. Coupled with this is the fact that she is mostly viewed from behind during the game. Plus, many magazine advertisements back in the day featured her partially nude, in bikinis or in revealing cocktail dresses.
  • Downplayed Trope significantly by the 2013 reboot. While Lara is certainly still quite a beautiful young woman she is much more modestly proportioned than in the previous installments. The Darker and Edgier tone also pushes things more into being Fan Disservice, since Lara is injured, dirty, and in a dire life-or-death situation.
• Non-Idle Rich: In fact, Lara being well-off is part of the reason why she's adventuring at all and also why she has zero interest in money or treasures as a means to become rich - she already is.
• One-Woman Army: She can consistently mow down several groups of Mooks all by herself with little difficulty.
• Parental Abandonment: Her parents disown her in the original continuity, and both of them go missing and are presumed dead in the second continuity. In the third, they are eventually revealed to be dead, with Lara's mother having died from fatal wounds sustained in a plane crash, and her father murdered by Trinity who made it look like suicide.
• Rich Boredom: Lara is a rich Blue Blood aristocrat who's a Thrill Seeker, and thus is bored and disinterested in leading an easy life or engaging with upper-class society. She chooses to become an Adventurer Archaeologist to satiate her need for adventure and excitement.
• She-Fu: She's a very acrobatic Action Girl who performs a lot of impractical jumps, rolls, and backflips while traversing dangerous terrain or fighting for her life.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Most of the outfits she wears during her adventures don't have sleeves and keep her arms bare, giving her a "tough adventurer" look.
• Stripperiffic: While she's had some modest outfits, most of Lara's outfits have always showed just a little too much skin to be practical. The first Lara had this in some promotional images but it was not as obvious in the games themselves since she mostly wore skimpy versions of otherwise normal outdoors gear. Second Lara, however, sports an evening gown with a Navel-Deep Neckline and later does an Action Dress Rip at the beginning of Tomb Raider: Legend.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: She is most frequently seen wearing tanktops when working as an Adventurer Archaeologis.
  • Her original outfit was more of a sleeveless muscle shirt but over the years it's become more like a tank top in design.
  • Third Lara wears a tank top in her premier game.
• Third-Person Seductress: Lara is both the Trope Maker and Trope Codifier, right down to providing the trope image. A combination of her quite skimpy Adventurer Outfit, impossible curves and then-revolutionary perspective instantly made her into an icon.
• Thrill Seeker: Her main drive in each continuity, even if it's not evident in all of them at first glance. She is almost always doing things for the kicks and nothing else. Even the second reboot eventually embraced this stance after the Origins Episode.
  (After being promised large payoff in the very first cutscene of Tomb Raider I)
  Lara: I'm sorry. I only play for sport.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: In Tomb Raider: Legend, she trades her iconic braid for a fashionable, yet practical ponytail.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Despite her tomboyish athleticism, hobbies, and wardrobe, she still embraces some of her feminine traits such as keeping her hair long and having a bit of a vanity streak.
• Walking Armory: She can carry an abundance of weapons as well as items, such as health packs. Even in the more realism-minded games, there's no logical explanation for how she can carry so many weapons and items on her person.

Original Timeline Lara

Voiced by: Shelley Blond (Tomb Raider), Judith Gibbins (II & III), Jonell Elliott (The Last Revelation, 'Chronicles, & The Angel of Darkness)

"I'm a dangerous girl, and right now I'm losing patience."

Core Design continuity (TR I, TR II, TR III, The Last Revelation, Chronicles and The Angel of Darkness)

---

• Anti-Hero: She's a hero overall, but she isn't exactly a noble person; In the first game (and the remake), Lara is willing to kill people who got in her way when she tried to claim the Scion pieces and slaughters animals (though they do attack her). In the second game, Lara kills even more animals, though every human she kills are a part of a dangerous Italian mafia. Game three has Lara appear incredibly selfish and greedy; she attacks a tribe and their leader for their artifact, breaks into a U.S. government facility to steal their artifact, attacks security guards in a museum when she broke in to steal an item for someone, and when she tries to escape from Antarctica, she runs into a helicopter pilot and gladly shoots him dead to steal his helicopter so she could escape. Granted, Lara does prevent the artifacts she hunts down from being misused by people who want to use the artifacts for a more evil purpose, but her methods are very immoral at best.
  • Fans began complaining about this after a while, especially in later games (and spin-off merchandise) that began to depict her more as a spy with a licence to kill than an archaeologist. For example, The Angel of Darkness actually requires that Lara kill security guards in order to proceed through a level, even though there is no indication of any of them actually being more than just employees of a legitimate organization. The novel The Bronze Man, told in first person, has Lara ruminating about all the men she has killed, including recalling one time killing someone while kissing him. She also attempts to kill the titular character for no apparent reason than he is seen looking at sexually explicit images.
  • Ah, the second game. If the supposed nude code and the example above does not tip you off Lara's more than a bit of a Jerkass then she straight out kills the player at the end of the game, showing she has no patience for perversion.
• Arranged Marriage: Managed to get out of one in her backstory - her parents hoped that she'd marry an earl. Obviously, things didn't go to plan.

• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Kurtis, especially when he disarms her in the Louvre.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She has a close circle of friends and is even civil to her enemies, for the most part. She will still seriously mess you up.
• Boisterous Bruiser: She gains such attitude from III' onward, quipping at her enemies and generally acting in a nonchalant way, while kicking a metric tonne of ass
• British Stuffiness: In II and III, mainly due to Judith Gibbins' voiceover.
• Broken Bird: In AoD. Being buried alive for an indeterminate amount of time and coming to believe that she was Left for Dead weren't kind to her, she does seem to regain her cool towards the end of the game and cut-dialogue implies this would have been more explicit.
• Clear My Name: In Angel of Darkness.
• Cool Shades: Part of her iconic image is a pair of pink teashades. Angel of Darkness replaced them with Matrix-inspired ones.
• Deadpan Snarker: Very eager to snark at people any given chance.
• Disney Death: She was presumed to be dead during the events of The Last Revelation and Chronicles but is revealed to be alive during the ending of Chronicles and reappears in The Angel of Darkness.
• Face Death with Dignity: "Good to see you again... Werner." Ultimately subverted, as she survives, but it takes a game for that to be revealed.
• Fantastically Indifferent: In just one example, as a teen, she barely bats an eyelid at encountering monstrous demons in Ireland, although she is somewhat fearful of the Hanging Demon.
  • She does, however, freak out a little when Bouchard dies in mysterious circumstances in Angel of Darkness.
  What the hell's going on around here?
• Girlish Pigtails: As a teenager.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sometimes going to direct Jerk with a Heart of Jerk - sure, she saved the world few times, but always for selfish goals. On the other hand, she tends to be genuinely nice to people not trying to kill her.
• Made of Iron: Capable of surviving attacks of varying degrees in-game, and, in-story, she survives being buried alive for who knows how long.
  • During her adventures in India, she twisted her ankle, only to continue her pursuit through jungle on a stolen quad. And then keep going on foot for another two kilometers once the quad was no longer capable of getting her any further.
• No One Could Survive That!: She ends up buried alive by tonnes of rubble in the end of The Last Revelation
• Omniglot: Reads few different ancient languages without much issues, while speaking few different modern ones, too. Short for third reboot, which introduced a sub-mechanic for that (and Lara being fresh from university, on top of that), she has zero issues with fluency.
• Parental Abandonment: Her parents disowned her when she went against their expectations of her and became an archaeologist. However, they still arrive at her estate to pay their respects in Chronicles, when she is thought to have died in Egypt. (This is not outright stated in the game, but a storyboard in the Special Features section confirms this).
• Rebellious Princess: Born to rich aristocracy in Britain and was even set up in an Arranged Marriage. She was always eager for something more than just end up as a trophy wife, and her parents grudgingly allowed her practice mountaineering in her late teens and early 20s. When she survived a plane crash in the Himalayas while returning from one of such hikes, the experience inspired her love of adventuring. Now thoroughly disinterested in her former aristocratic lifestyle, even breaking off her arranged marriage, her parents consequently disown her as she now desires to become an archaeologist against their wishes.
• The Quiet One: Lara speaks a grand total of 3 scenes in Tomb Raider II and they're very brief (not counting her voice used for the tutorial section). 90% of the game has her completely quiet.
• The Stoic: Mostly in TR II and III.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Due to what she went through between The Last Revelation and Angel of Darkness.
  • Lara's jerkass attitude is made much more apparent in Chronicles, to which her friends during the storytelling noted how Lara took a not so diplomatic approach to situations.
• Training from Hell: Under Von Croy's tutelage. Amongst other things, he makes her navigate her way through death traps at the age of 16. Lara seems to take it in stride, however.
• Unexplained Recovery: How she survived her apparent "death" at the end of Last Revelation is never explained or even mentioned in Angel of Darkness thanks to Executive Meddling. The series' overarching story essentially takes it for granted that Never Found the Body means She's Just Hiding.
  • It's explained in promotional material and an novel that she was rescued by an Egyptian Tribe, this was ment to be included in AOD but had to be cut due to time constraints.

• Vocal Evolution: Thanks to three different voice actresses, Lara went from a higher-pitched voice in the first game (Shelley Blond) to a lower, huskier one in II and III (Judith Gibbins), and finally reverting to higher for Last Revelation, Chronicles, and The Angel of Darkness (Jonell Elliott).

Legend Timeline Lara

Voiced by: Keeley Hawes

"Grand entrances are always impractical, that's what makes them grand."

Crystal Dynamics Continuity Reboot #1 (Legend, Anniversary, Underworld)

---

• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Her default outfit in Legend bared her midriff, and so did one of her jungle outfits in Underworld.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Probably best exemplified in Legend, where she goes from friendly and cordial to an improvised gunfight within a matter of seconds, trouncing the Yakuza goons sent after her.

• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: In Underworld, she runs into her old nemesis, Natla, who is the only person left alive that can open the gates to Avalon. Lara would absolutely love to kill her, but she also needs her to open the gate, so she lets her live with the stipulation that she will kill her if she ever steps out of line.
• Cool Sword: Reassembles and eventually wields Excalibur in Legend.
• Daddy's Girl: She was very close to both of her parents and having lost them relatively early on in life has made a lasting impact on her lifestyle and goals. Her father was an accomplished archaeologist and she follows his steps and besides, he simply lived longer than Lara's mother.
• Dark and Troubled Past: At the age of nine, Lara's mother was snatched from her by an otherworldly portal, leaving her to track back all the way to civilisation on her own. Years later, her father vanishes, courtesy of Natla, as we find out in Underworld with remains turning up that can not be identified. Despite all her snarking, this girl has gone through a lot.
• Exposed to the Elements: Averted and played straight in Legend. The first time around, Lara will dress in clothes appropriate for the location's weather. However, when replaying a level, it is possible to select any of the outfits you've unlocked. Which often leads to Lara exploring the Himalaya in a cocktail dress that's been ripped open. More or less averted in Underworld; the available outfits tend to be appropriate for her destinations most of the time, albeit swimming around in a skimpy swimsuit in the Arctic sea must've been rather... chilly.
• It Gets Easier: Implied. Killing just one person is a huge deal in Anniversary. By Legend, she's gunning down mercenary armies by the hundreds.
• Parental Abandonment: Richard Croft disappeared in Cambodia (later revealed to have been killed by Natla), while Amelia Croft got pulled into the Underworld and turned into a zombie.
• These Hands Have Killed: Present in Anniversary, where this becomes a brief theme at the end, when Lara is forced to kill Larson and cannot stop staring at her hands in guilt afterwards, complete with imaginary blood. At the end of the game, Lara more or less seems to have come to terms with this fact.
• Thinking Out Loud: Has a tendency to do this in Underworld.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Has this with Larson in spades in Anniversary.

Survivor Timeline Lara

Voiced by: Camilla Luddington (English), Yuko Kaida (Japanese), Polina Shcherbakova (Russian)

"I don't think I'm that kind of Croft..."

The version from the third continuity. (Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider)

Lara Croft is a young, British archaeologist that is searching for meaning and direction in her life after the disappearance of her parents. It was through her own suggestion and research (and her close relationship with the captain) that the Endurance and its crew sailed into the Dragon's Triangle in search of the lost kingdom of Yamatai... though it hardly turns out to be what they expected. After stranding on the island, Lara must adapt to its hostile environment quickly, in the process discovering a part of herself she never even knew was there.

---

• Action Girl: By the end of the game, Lara has grown into a badass heroine that is capable of taking out entire squads of heavily armed enemies by herself, braving everything the island throws at her to save her friends.
• Action Survivor: She's just a college graduate trapped on an island. This version doesn't even seem to be as much of a Deadpan Snarker to compensate for her terror.
• Adaptational Modesty: While Lara in the past has worn conservative clothing, she's always had a tank top and shorts, which get skimpier in some games. In the reboot series the fanservice is downplayed, and her clothing choices are much more practical and always conservative.
• Adaptational Weapon Swap: To match the Stealth-based turn this iteration of the series takes, this version of Lara trades her dual pistols for a bow and arrow.
• Anti-Hero: Lara grows through a few different types of anti-heroes over the course of her Character Development.
• Badass Adorable: Lara has always been cute, but the reboot puts emphasis on her youth, innocence, and overall inexperience.
• Badass Bookworm: Can both take on hundreds of battle-hardened thugs and centuries old undead Samurai as well as being a consummate expert on East Asian history, culture and languages despite barely being out of college. Sam's journals hint that Lara had at least a passing familiarity with many other regions and periods of history, too.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Downplayed. Throughout the game, she gets all manner of cuts and bruises, and her clothes get completely shredded. Furthermore, she spends quite a bit of time covered in blood and/or dirt. Her face remains largely untouched however. Strangely, no amount of flowing water or rain is capable of washing all that out.
• Beware the Nice Ones: If you piss Lara off, then run as fast as you can in the direction opposite to the one she is in... and hope that she does not have a weapon.

• Blood Knight: The tie-in comics raise the question whether Lara might be enjoying violence a bit too much. When she and another woman are mugged, her acquaintance notes afterwards that she was not so much scared of the robbers but of how Lara fought them off with a smile on her face.
  • Lara even references this in-game. When telling Roth that she had been forced to kill in order to escape, he comments that it must have been hard for her. Her reply? "It's frightening just how easy it was." And then there's that part where she gets her hands on a grenade launcher...
• Boring, but Practical: This reboot version of Lara eschews the more stylish, acrobatic Guns Akimbo Gun Fu combat style of the previous versions, for a much more practical and realistic combat style focusing on cover-based shooting, sniping from concealment, and the occasional MMA-style hand-to-hand.

• Break the Cutie:
  Ship Captain: Don't really know what happened to you on that island. An' judging from those wounds and that look in your eyes, I'm guessin' I don't wanna know.
• Broken Bird: Pretty much the end result of her time on the island. She's survived and found a new purpose, but she's been left a very psychologically battered woman by her experiences on the island. There's a reason Yahtzee dubbed it I Spit On Your Tomb.
• Broken Pedestal: A comment she makes on one of Dr. Whitman's documents states she's disgusted with herself for once admiring him. It's also implied she has sour feelings towards her father for going off and getting himself and her mother presumed dead though she rebuilds that particular pedestal by the end of the game when the experiences of the island give her a new outlook on her father's ambitions.
• Catchphrase: "I can do this."
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: She is fully prepared to risk her life to save the captain of a plane that was struck down by lightning in spite of Roth's insistence that they focus on their own. Sadly, she fails to reach him before the Solarii do.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Starts out as a scared 21-year-old Action Survivor.
• Clothing Damage: Lara's outfit gets more and more damaged as the game goes on. By the time she makes it back to the beach, it's beyond all hope of repair.
• Combat Pragmatist: Strangling or stabbing unaware enemies, throwing dirt in their eyes, stabbing them in the knees or the neck with arrows, caving in downed enemies' heads with rocks, tripping them and shooting them in the back with a shotgun... Lara's trying to survive, not fight fair. Interestingly, her combat pragmatism rises over the game - although she acquires her climbing axe relatively early, it takes her quite a while until she can unlock the skill to use it on enemies.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: This Lara's face was based off model Megan Farquhar and voiced by Camilla Luddington, though others have noted a striking resemblance to Odette Annable.
• Covered in Gunge: If she's not covered in blood, it's this.
• Covered in Mud: In Shadow, she can smear herself in mud to use as camouflage for stealth options.
• Covered with Scars: Each game she goes through, she ends up having a new collection of scars to add to future stories.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not as much as her previous incarnations, but it's there, such as her response to Reyes's Doom Magnet accusation.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: A variation of this trope; to escape her very first predicament, Lara sets the sack she's tied up in on fire.
• Dented Iron: At times, though she does recover, her wounds hinder her to the point of traversal being very difficult, if not impossible, until she can patch herself up in some way. Her final model in the last quarter of the game is littered with scars, and that hole from the beginning of the game never quite goes away. She also shows quite a bit of physical damage from her ordeal, and often holds a hand to her wounded side when things are quiet. Take note of any cut-scenes where she falls from a height and lands safely, her hands go straight to her wounded side every time. Furthermore, as the game progresses and she gets more banged up, you can regularly hear her hissing through clenched teeth and gasping in pain as the accumulated injuries she's suffered through the game cause her constant discomfort, even when she's just standing still.
• Desk Sweep of Rage: In Rise, when Jonah refuses to support her obsession with finding the city of Kitezh.
• Destructive Saviour: Wherever Lara goes, devastation follows in her wake. Be it natural formations that took aeons to form, Japanese WW-II-bunkers, Soviet installations or ancient ruins that have weathered the passage of countless centuries, ancient Mayan ruins, almost all of them will inevitably crumble into smoldering piles of rubble within minutes of her arrival on site. The amounts of infrastructure and irrecoverable historical legacy Lara routinely destroys on her adventures are staggering. Granted, much of it is caused by her enemies in their attempts to kill her, but another large chunk is definitely her own fault.
• Determinator: She is put through absolute hell, both physically and mentally, but she just keeps going. Lara may be a mere mortal, but she turns into a near Implacable Woman by the end of the game. A hail of gunfire, arrows, dynamite, hurricane winds, lightning storms, mad cultists, supernatural undead samurai, and a soul-stealing ritual all fail to stop her as she inexorably pushes forward.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father, Lord Richard Croft, committed suicide when she was but a child after being disgraced for his obsession with immortality. In reality, Trinity had him killed and staged it to look like a suicide.
• Doom Magnet: Gets called this by Reyes after Lara failed to save Alex aboard the Endurance.
  Reyes: Seems anyone caught with you has a pretty low survival rate.
  Lara: Better keep your distance then.
• The Dreaded:
  • Ironically, Lara herself becomes this to the mooks once she begins fighting back against them. Over time, enemy chatter both in and out of combat reveals that the mercs are actually scared shitless of her and hope they don't run in to her. They don't even know her name, but they start uniformly referring to her as "The Outsider". Not an outsider. The Outsider. Leads to an amusing moment later in the game, where one mook starts freaking out when his comrade wonders aloud where "she" has gotten too, only to reveal that he was actually talking about his pet pig which he'd let out of its pen.
  • As of Shadow, she's become this to Trinity; even seasoned Trinity veterans go Oh, Crap! upon being told that Lara was last seen in their vicinity, and even the ones that sound more confident seem more than a bit nervous about the prospect of facing Lara and their odds of making it out alive.
• Dual Wielding: Gets a brief moment of her trademark pistols Guns Akimbo at the very end of the first game - see the respective entry below. From Rise onwards, she begins to wield two climbing axes instead of just one, although the change doesn't have any noticeable impact on gameplay.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Cauterizing her wound with a heated arrowhead gives her the idea to create Flaming Arrows. Most of the times she acquires a new ability or piece of equipment are also presented as one, especially in Rise.
• Exposed to the Elements: The top doesn't really do much in protecting her against obstacles, gale-force winds and the freezing cold.
• Fragile Speedster: Lara cannot take much damage. To compensate, she's very light on her feet, with dodges and counterattacks against off-balance enemies encompassing a large part of her melee skills.
• Gadgeteer Genius: She certainly has shades of this, considering all the awesome stuff she can build from junk and scrap. See MacGyvering below for details.
• Game-Breaking Injury: The puncture side wound she gets at the beginning of the game. The wound getting irritated or worse impedes her progress more than once over the course of the game until she finds a way to patch it. In the second game, this same wound is apparently still giving her trouble, as she can often be seen holding this particular side after large tumbles or firefights.
• Glass Cannon: Lara can dish out ridiculous amounts of damage with the arsenal she carries, but she cannot take nearly as much herself.
• Good Is Not Soft: Not by the time she gets her hands on a grenade launcher, it isn't.
  Lara: That's right! Run, you bastards! I'M COMING FOR YOU ALL!
• Guns Akimbo: Steals Mathias' gun along with using Roth's own gun to finish him off. Although it's used more as a Mythology Gag than anything else. Albeit an awesome one at that.
• Harmful to Minors: She was the first person to discover her father's body after Trinity's staged suicide and she's only about 11 at the time. Still working through her emotions with regards to her mother's death, this did not do her any favors.
• Heal It With Fire: At one point, she cauterizes her side wound with a heated arrowhead. It's extremely painful, of course, but it works.
• Heroic BSoD: A brief one following Roth's death. She snaps out of it when she realizes that the key to escaping the island is whatever the Stormguard is protecting in the monastery.
• I Work Alone: By Rise, she's taken this attitude, in part due to being betrayed by her old friend Ana. She learns otherwise over the course of the game.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: After escaping from her first predicament, Lara falls on a piece of rebar, which goes straight through her side. And a lot of the possible deaths she might meet throughout her ordeal have this happen to her.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: The stealth kill animations show Lara using her bow as a makeshift Garrotte to choke out enemies. Who ever thought to use a bow in this manner?
• In the Hood: She wears a hooded parka while in Siberia in Rise of the Tomb Raider.
• It's All My Fault: This happens once a game, with increasing severity:
  • She blames herself for the predicament she got the crew and herself into in the first game, as it was her suggestion to take an alternate, off-the-beaten-path route to the island that winds up shipwrecking the Endurance. Though Roth and the others continually tell her they don't blame her for what's going on, considering they were headed to the island anyway.
  • In Rise, she blames herself for Trinity reaching the Valley and attacking the Remnants, as they only found the place after stealing her research confirming the location.
  • And in Shadows, she (more justifiably) blames herself for starting The Cleansing and subsequent loss of life, as it only started because she pulled the Key from its resting place to keep it from Trinity. Somewhat unsurprisingly, she's willing to die if it means stopping the Cleansing.
• It Gets Easier: The first time she kills a person, it's a horrifically traumatic event that signals the start of her development to becoming an Action Girl. She then proceeds to slaughter hundreds of people throughout the rest of the game. She even mentions that it is "scary" how easy it was to kill someone.
• It's Up to You: Hope you weren't expecting anyone to be actually useful to you for more than five minutes, Lara. She seems to become attuned to this, as, at the end of the game, Reyes and Jonah offer to come with her to the final showdown with Mathias, but Lara instructs them to stay behind to guard their escape route. They do so spectacularly.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: "That's right! Run, you bastards! I'M COMING FOR YOU ALL!"
• Lonely Rich Kid: Lara grew up with pretty much her parents not being around, causing her to find solace in books. This explains her introversion and going on adventures.
  • Shadow has a flashback level of a young Lara having an adventure inside her own house to "rescue the White Queen," which leads into her mother's studio.
• MacGyvering: In Rise she can learn to craft a whole bunch of weapons from resources she gathers during gameplay.
  • Examples of improvised equipment include turning gas canisters into devastating fire bombs, enemy radios into proximity mines, tin cans into smoke bombs or high-ex grenades, and dead Trinity mooks into lethal gas traps that silently kill anyone who tries to investigate the body.
  • On top of that, Lara can learn how to craft special ammunition like hollow-point bullets for her handguns, dragonfire shells for her shotguns as well as grenades for her assault rifles' under-barrel grenade launcher, plus of course her assortment of Trick Arrows, and all of that can be done on the fly without the need for tools or a campfire.
  • Last but not least, she's capable of assembling fully functional modern-day firearms from parts she finds in trunks that were left behind by the Soviets. These guns she then upgrades extensively with bits of scrap she salvages from wooden boxes that may date back as far as the 10th century.
• Made of Iron: Lara takes a lot of damage in this game, and it affects her sometimes, but for the most part she's still as physically capable as ever. For instance, she gets impaled in the first 10 minutes and STILL makes it through the entire game. Without any visible medical aid of any kind.
• Ms. Fanservice: Massively and intentionally downplayed. While still a beautiful woman, her sex appeal is toned down significantly in order to fit with the setting of the trilogy games.
• Nice Girl: From beginning to end, she's much nicer than the Lara of the previous two continuities. Needless to say, however, Good Is Not Soft. Even after cutting down an army of the Solarii and some of the Stormguard and commenting that it was so easy to kill people and that the ease of it genuinely frightened her, her dedication to and concern for her friends never wavers.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The plot of Shadow is kicked off when Lara takes an ancient dagger from a Mayan temple, and ends up triggering a Mayan Doomsday.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Is on the receiving end of a savage one midway through the game after slipping into the Solarii stronghold where Sam is due to be sacrificed to Himiko. After shooting the mook about to immolate her, Lara is thrown down and literally beaten to a bloody pulp by Dimitri and Nikolai in retribution for their brother's death; the two are only stopped from killing her outright by Mathias, and by then, she can't even lift her head by herself afterwards.
• Non-Idle Rich: After her parents are presumed dead and she inherits their vast fortune, she decides she doesn't even want to touch it and takes several jobs to pay her way through the University College of London (instead of utilizing the money to get easy instant enrollment in Cambridge). One of these jobs is in a seemingly rather rowdy pub. That's right, the Tomb Raider herself has been pulling pints.
  • Word of God states that some part of her feels that if she were to use the inheritance for herself, it would be like admitting her parents are really gone, so she leaves it tied up in trust funds and investments that prevent any kind of temptation on her part.
  • The one time she attempts to access her inheritance, in the comics, it is to fund a rescue attempt for Grimm, who then turns out to be Grimm's twin brother. Her uncle refuses to give her access, however, on the grounds that she is unstable from her time on the island. So it seems that even if she wanted the money it would be difficult to get to.
• Omniglot: Over the games, she's shown to be able to speak, as well as learn English, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Mayan, Aztec and Inca.
• One-Woman Army: Lara evolves into one as she makes her way across the island, and she takes the trope up to eleven in Rise of the Tomb Raider (cluster grenade arrows, anyone?). The Solarii even lampshades this;
  Solarii: C'mon, she's just one little girl!
  Second Solarii: Yeah? Well that "one little girl" is kicking our ass!
  • Over the course of Rise and Shadow, she's evolved into this, being able to take on Trinity soldiers, many of them recruited from special ops units.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: This continuity's Lara is noticeably smaller than virtually everyone else she comes into contact with. It's especially noticeable in the sequel where men in particular tend to tower over her, often by one head or more. Still doesn't prevent her from tearing all of them several new ones if need be, as mentioned above.
• Pragmatic Hero: Deconstructs what kind of trauma would turn a Classical Anti-Hero like Lara into the morally ambiguous Adventurer Archaeologist from the other Tomb Raider games.
• Properly Paranoid: She suspects that Whitman may betray the group, but is dismissed. After she is proven right when Whitman kidnaps Sam and hands her back over to Mathias, everyone, especially Reyes, apologizes for not heeding her warnings about him. She also is immediately suspicious of Mathias when she encounters him with Sam, posing another "survivor" of the Endurance. Unfortunately, sheer physical and mental exhaustion causes her to pass out before she can act upon her suspicions.
• Red Baron: Becomes frightfully known as "The Outsider" once the body count starts stacking up. It happens to the point where Lara even taunts the Solarii, after taking down a shield bearing Giant Mook.
  Mook: Oh, shit, she's still alive?! Run!
  Lara: Yes... still alive.
• Right Man in the Wrong Place: Even though it's Lara's theories about the location of Yamatai that leads to the Endurance being shipwrecked, it's ultimately just chance that the crew winds up stranded there. And between her pedigree and education, (and the fact that her mentor is just a narcissistic showman rather than a competent archaeologist) she's the only one that truly pieces together the centuries-old mystery of the island.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: For the majority of the game, Lara is on one of these for Sam, tearing her way through whole hordes of Solarii and countless Stormguard warriors who try in vain to stop her. The combination of rough terrain, supernatural storms and aforementioned enemies barely even manage to slow her down. Once, she also goes on a rescue rampage for Alex, but with more tragic results.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In Shadow, when Rourke gloats over the radio that he killed Jonah, Lara visibly snaps, grabs a machine gun, drops a Cluster F-Bomb and cuts a bloody swath through a platoon of Trinity mooks including a heavy attack helicopter.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: A crewman aboard the fishing boat which picks up the survivors takes note of Lara's Thousand-Yard Stare, and Word of God states that her drive to continue her adventures after escaping the island is partly to "keep running" and not have to come to terms with the things that happened to her.
• Shows Damage: Before the game reaches its climax, Lara visually has badly ripped clothes with cuts and bruises all over her body. The model viewer even has three different versions of Lara showing the three extreme states she can be in during her journey across the island, from "innocent" Lara used for flashback scenes on the Endurance, to "survivor" Lara which is the used model up to the very final cutscene.
• Spanner in the Works: Lara ends up as this for both the Solarii and Himiko in the first game. She then does it again magnificently to Trinity and the Deathless Ones in Rise.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: A bow and arrow is the first weapon Lara obtains, and despite finding several firearms later on, the bow and arrow remains very powerful as a stealth weapon.
• Survivor Guilt: Feels personally responsible for everyone who dies on the island, considering they arrived there on her suggestion. By the end of the game she's noticeably numb to any given What the Hell, Hero? she receives, with a Thousand-Yard Stare in the final scene to boot.
• Terror Hero: Lara's always been frightening to her enemies, but Shadow sees her weaponizing it. She uses hallucinogens to turn enemies against each other, leaves enemies hanging from trees to frighten others, and prefers to stealthily pick off soldiers one by one. She's very much The Dreaded to Trinity at this point, after taking out so many of their cells, and she's more than happy to exploit it.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Invokes this at the end the game just before going to rescue Sam. Lara tells Reyes and Jonah that they need to remain behind to guard the escape route. She tries to invoke this in the next game, but the Remnants and Jonah won't have any of that.
• Tomboy: Lara's pursuits—her books, learning wilderness survival with Roth, her love of archaeology, and preference for exploring ancient ruins over partying at clubs—are definitely not traditionally "feminine."
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Sam's girly girl. Sam is a bit boy-crazy, loves to go out clubbing, and obsesses over designer clothes, while Lara is a Bookworm who prefers her books and exploring ancient ruins. And of course, Lara completely dominates the scavengers on the island One-Woman Army style, with Sam acting as the Damsel in Distress to motivate her.

• Took a Level in Badass: Goes from a Naïve Newcomer just out of school at the start of the game to an Adventurer Archaeologist by the end. This even extends to the sequels where Lara is shown being bolder, more hypercompetent, and having moments of being one step ahead of her enemies when compared to how she was even in the later half of the first game.

• Tranquil Fury: In Shadow, when led to believe that Jonah is dead, Lara snaps and embarks on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge on Trinity, mowing mooks down with a machine gun while swearing in an eerily calm voice she's coming for Commander Rourke and going to kill him.
  Lara: You can't hide from me, Rourke. You are fucking dead.
• Trick Arrow: Though she seems to have to make them herself, she has at least a rope arrow (with a seemingly limitless amount of rope to make them) and a fire arrow (formed using a lighter and a normal arrow). In addition, with the right bow upgrades and enough XP, which most players won't get on an initial playthrough, you can create explosive arrows, napalm arrows, and a "penetrator" mod that punches through armor.
• Villain Killer: In this Darker and Edgier trilogy, Lara is a One-Woman Army that is almost completely unstoppable to anyone and anything that gets in her way. In her very first adventure, she takes down a Japanese sorceress queen with power over weather, her maniacal lackey, said lackey's army of fanatical murderers and an army of undead samurai warriors. In her second adventure, she faces off against an entire branch of the Ancient Conspiracy Trinity, killing all of them except for the leader herself. In her final conflict against Trinity, she eventually kills their leader while he possesses the power of a Mayan god. And all of that was in her first major conflict with a huge group.
• Virtual Paper Doll: Lara can change into alternative outfits at campsites. These will be worn in cut scenes.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: In Rise, she's driven to find the Divine Source by a desire to redeem her father's name and prove the existence of immortality, and in essence live up to him after his death.
• Worst Aid: When she gets stabbed through the gut straight through at the beginning of the game, Lara is seriously dumb enough at that moment to pull the spike out. Only Plot Armor or sheer dumb luck was what most likely prevented her from bleeding out right then and there. The wound getting aggravated or worse impedes her progress more than once over the course of the game. This same wound is apparently still giving her trouble in the second game, as she can often be seen holding this particular side after large tumbles or firefights.

---

"I can do this."