WMG / God of War

The climax of God of War: Ascension is based on that of The Little Mermaid (1989)

Both movies share a powerful female villain with octopus traits who turns into a kraken-like creature, tries to subdue the protagonist with glamour spells, summons a maelstrom to kill them and meets her end by being speared with the prow of a ship (a trireme in the game, a shipwrecked sailing ship in the movie).

The destruction of the Pantheon started Christianity.

Poseidon's death caused a great flood and Hermes' death unleashed a plague. Yeah.

• And Kratos, being the only deity left, has become the Jewish/christian god.
  • Its also fitting to think of him as God of the old testament.
    • And Yahweh started out as the Cannanite God of War
    • Except Omnipotence is a key factor. Even Kratos can't do everything.

Kratos is the father of Yahweh.

Kratos had a son with Aphrodite, the only surviving Olympian. This son grew up and became the new Boss. Yahweh's son Jesus is Kratos' grandson.

• Jossed: He's Loki's father.

The Bible, and the entire history of Christianity, is the future of Classical Mythology and God of War. Kratos, or one of his descendants, used to be the Old Testament God, Yahweh, and Jesus killed him.

Kratos ends up killing all the Greek gods and he (or one of his sons) becomes Yahweh, who became as much of a tyrant as the Greek Gods, repeating the Oedipus Complex/Mandate of Heaven that plagues the Pantheon. Yahweh, in a hubristic attempt to rule forever, imprisons Lucifer, and any Prometheus-figures who want to give mankind knowledge, into Tartarus where they are tortured forever. This causes the the decline of the Roman Republic into the corrupt Roman Empire, and the ensuing Dark Ages and the tyranny of the Catholic Inquisition. However, he makes the mistake of Zeus-ing with a mortal woman and Jesus is born.

Jesus sympathizes with the plight of the imprisoned knowledge-bearers and tried diplomacy and compromise with the old Order. That didn't work, and in response, Yahweh brands Jesus a heretic, and hires the Jews and Romans to crucify him. After Jesus goes through his whole resurrection deal, he goes into heaven and kills Yahweh, and tried to take over the kingdom as the Christian God of the New Testament. However, Yahweh also possessed the Resurrection ability and returns to life again and continues being God in the Medieval Era without Jesus finding out, corrupting Jesus' reputation in the process. It would be until the Renaissance where Jesus finally seals Yahweh into Tartarus for good, allowing Europe an opportunity for a rebellion against the Catholic Church.

To break the Mandate of Heaven, he takes the mantle of Prometheus/Lucifer as the Bearer of Knowledge, and becomes the new God: Science. Jesus/Science then overthrows the rest of the tyrannical corrupt Old Gods in the world. With Science being the only God left, the Universe is in risk of being consumed back by the first and most powerful Protogenoi, Chaos, who is starting to manifest itself as Entropy. Thus, Science has to spend much of his time and intellect into maintaining the universe in logical order to protect it from Chaos, and that's why he has to allow for humans to think for themselves and exercise their own capacity for science, hence the rise of Deism and Democracy.

• So the next sequels will have Jesus as a playable character. Where does Mohammed PBUH come in?
  • He will appear as the star in the game that revealed him to be Jesus' half-brother.
    • If THAT doesn't start a war I don't know what will. And where does Scientology come in?
    • Kratos will fight Tom Cruise in a future game, also. Also, in the finale, Cthulhu eats everything.
    • Belive it or not, but its perfectly possible that after the war of the titans, this might happen. In God of War 2, we see three murals in the hall of time. The first one shows something reminiscent of the first game or the first half of the second game, can't remember, while the middle mural shows the aftermath of the Titan War, Kratos standing alone. Last mural? Three men off in the desert, following a star.
    • The Flying Spaghetti Monster will be the final boss.
    • No, that would be the Invisible Pink Unicorn, with perhaps Celestia and Luna.
    • I am now imagining a sequence wherein Jesus goes back in time to fight Moses as he parts the Red Sea. Sea monsters like mini-krakens strike out at Jesus (who wields the cross as a weapon) and he makes a pile out of their corpses to get up to the beachhead where Moses is. After some thrashing, Moses is dazed and a quick time event is triggered where Jesus smashes Moses' head against the tablets that list the Ten Commandments, and Moses turns his staff into a snake. Jesus punches him some more, then grabs the snake, wrings its head off, and ties it into a noose, hanging Moses over a rocky precipice. This will be the most awesome game of all time
• Actually, I think if Kratos does become Old Testament God and ends up having a mortal son, he'll manage to break the Oedipus Complex cycle because as we have seen, Kratos actually cares about his family. Considering that he has nightmares about murdering his family every time he sleeps, he had a Heroic BSoD when Ares murdered replicas of them while he was helpless to stop it, he gave up all his powers just to be with Calliope in Chains of Olympus, he was begging for forgiveness from Gaia when she appeared as his wife (before she revealed it was her)in GOW 2, and that the only times he ever actually acts heroic is when it concerns his family... I find it very hard to believe he'd mistreat Jesus. It would explain why God was ready to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge when Jesus was crucified before Christ convinced him. In fact, I'm gonna make a big guess here and say Jesus actually manages to MAKE Kratos a Defector from Decadence and into the New Testament God we know and many love. Yeah, i know it damn well isn't likely but you have to admit it would make for one helluva Heartwarming Moment.

Kratos is a walking metaphor for monotheism

Similar to above, but with more flexibility. After the events in Midgard its implied Kratos, or those with blood ties to him, will each bring the downfall of the polytheism. In an easy-to-miss comment, the talking head mentions a ‘vast desert, with many gods.’ This is implied to be Egypt / sequel hook. Kratos already wiped out the Greek gods. The body count for the Norse religion is rising, and heavily implied Kratos and son are going to bring about Ragnarok. The Egyptian gods are now cannon, and considering the ongoing theme, they’re going to be next for one reason or another.

On Apollon

We never once see the god of light in the entirity of the 6 installments, yet his treasures are relevant in both GOW 3 and Ascension, particularly the latter where it's pretty much framed as him being opposed to the Furies, as the most sacred locations and symbols of the god are used by Kratos against them.

Considering that, I think that he's pretty much incorporeal or otherwise "above" the other gods, which explains why the hell he isn't anywhere and how he helps Kratos in the latest prequel. That purple light on his statue? Probably him.

• In the God of War I novelization by Robert E. Vardeman, Athena mentions Apollo as if here just another Olympian, so this theory is probably false.

All dead gods DO become ghost-like beings

• Though none of them are shown, except for Athena (I believe Zeus's spirit form was just a trick), I have a feeling that all the gods really do becomes ghosts when they die. Think of it this way, what are the properties of those ghost-like forms? They have the ability to teleport (Or at least be invisible), they cannot fully interact with the physical world (In this case, Athena could've just teleported into the labyrinth and taken Pandora out herself), they're most likely invisible to humans (Judging from how they look. Only Pandora and Kratos interact with them and both aren't normal humans), and they have the ability to bestow small miracles upon people (Give Kratos his new weapons, stop him from touching the flames). To me, these properties seems like what later people view gods as, all-seeing since they can be anywhere, bestowing small miracles, and invisible to us. They're no longer physical beings on earth as the Greek Gods were. I'm guessing all the gods becames ghosts but none bothered following Kratos since they couldn't do anything to harm him. The only contradiction to this is Athena pulling the blade of olympus from Kratos and flying off with it in hand.
  • Since gods are supernatural representations of concepts both physical and abstract, it makes sense that they'd be ghost like at least at some point. Their current physical forms in the games are just flesh-suits.

Athena was behind everything

• because Kratos dumped her. Him and Athena were pretty close, and were possibly lovers once, however when Kratos met his future wife he left Athena who got very mad at him and caused Kratos' army to lose the war against the barbarians (she is the goddess of war) and Kratos gave his soul to Ares, who tricked him into killing his wife and child which was an act of revenge by Athena. She also punished Kratos worse by stripping him of his humanity and making him lose everything he had, setting the events of the first game and the second. In the end she wanted the Blade of Olympus to take control of the world so she can truly punish him, but he adverted it by killing himself, which spoiled her plans of making him suffer for a thousand infinities of mind destroying torture in the worst ways inconcievable.

Kratos is going to become Khorne

It's easy to notice the similarities. Originally, Khorne forbade his followers to kill non-combatants, while in the first game, Kratos had some semblance of heroism. Later on, Khorne allowed his followers to kill everything that moves; similarly, some fans simply cross the "hero" part off of Kratos's AntiHeroism during the second game. Additionally, according to this here website, three of the four gods of Chaos awoke by the end of the Middle Ages. It would seem like Kratos is getting a head start. In addition, come on, it's Kratos. Don't you think he'd like to have legions of like-minded blade-wielding zealots at his command, ready to kill and spill blood in his name? (Which would include all of the World Eaters, a good portion of the Word Bearers, and some of the Black Legion)

• And his signature weapon is a chain-axe. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
• Nah, you got it all wrong. Kratos is Immortal God Emperor of Mankind.
  • Hmm, that explains why the emperor is an atheist. I'd be an atheist too if I slaughtered the gods.
    • But how would you not believe in something you killed by your own hands?
    • Because he killed them?
    • Athiest in the sense that he is damn sure that God is Dead.
• Honestly, I think that Khorne is the one who revives Kratos at the end of 'III. Maybe he becomes Doombreed? After all, if there's a God who can tame Kratos, it would be Khorne.

Kratos is an alternate universe Achilles

Achilles' mother, Thetis, was prophecized that any son born to her would be far greater than his father. And so, he pawned her off on Pelus, Achilles' father, and she became the only woman even remotely associated with Zeus that he didn't sleep with. That was the only person to even make Zeus worry about his power getting eclipsed, so perhaps in God of War's world, he just couldn't keep his thunderbolt from striking.

Gaia is an evil bitch

• Everybody ELSE tends to be ridiculously evil. Plus, she is constantly directing Kratos to kill Zeus, and something about her motives just doesn't read true. AND the Titans are not exactly the nicest in the world...
  • Actually, compared to The Olympians, espescially Zeus (which any student of Classical Mythology will tell you isn't far off) and Kratos himself, they kind of are.
• I've always suspected Gaia was manipulating Kratos. Particuarly when he loses the will to fight after fatally wounded the last Spartan (during the Kraken fight). Check it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFkpdpIHhtU&feature=related, the scene in question starts at 6:28, at 8:02 she sounds very sinister, not to mention she takes the form of his wife. Now that I think about it, if true there would be a very powerful parallel/foreshawdowing. When Zeus gives the Blade of Olympus, Kratos asks why Zeus aids him now. Zeus says "it" is for the good of Olympus. Later in the game (and not much later) as Gaia is giving exposition, Kratos again queries why he is being helped.
  • Think about it for a moment. Kratos could have used the Loom Of The Fates to go further back in time and save his wife and daughter. But, as established at the beginning of the game, he's a schmuck and Gaia conveniently neglects to mention any uses of The Loom that don't involve Zeus' death.
    • Rookie time travel mistake. Saving his family in the past would deter him from seeking the sisters of faith in the first place ergo he would not be able to go back in time to save them. The game makers seem to adhere to this rule of time travel. Altering the past will retroactively effect the future (think of the sisters of fate trying to destroy the blade of the gods before Kratos can use it on Aries. So Kratos must use time travel wisely. See the next WMG
    • Alright...then in the same vein of rescuing his wife and daughter, why didn't he just ask for that as his boon for helping the gods? It's a common enough plot in Greek mythology. Instead, he demands that the gods make him stop feeling guilty. And during all those trips to Hades, did he not once think to try and save them himself, with or without the will of the gods?

    • It's not WMG anymore, it's the pure truth

Time Travel

Not so wild. But appearantly when we see Atlas recount the Great War and Zeus is using the Blade of Olympus the Titans are surrounded by a green glow. Later when Kratos goes to that time we see he is causing that green glow by moving all the titans forward in time. So the Blade of Olympus doesn't destroy the Titans they disappear into the future. Leaving the Olympians thinking the Titans have been obliterated. (I guess the blade of olympus isn't as powerful as everyone thinks) So in the final game, for any of this to make sense, Kratos will have to A) still have his time traveling power, and B) Take Gaia back in time so she can help Kratos as he searches for the sisters of faith.

• So what we have here is a Stable Time Loop. I'd like to add that, additionally, even the Sisters of Fate themselves don't have the power to change it. They believe they do, as evidenced by Atropos attempting to destroy the sword that killed Ares in the past, but it's probably never had to be tested before. The fact that she failed to do so suggests that she was wrong about having that ability. It's also the only way Kratos killing the Sisters of Fate makes any sense at all; the Sisters themselves are unable to defy their own destinies, and destiny commands they die there.

After killing the gods in the next game, Kratos will be betrayed by the Titans

• Tying into the above WMG, it follows the pattern of Kratos' life. Betrayed by boss -> someone else helps him kill said boss -> new boss betrays him -> and so on. And it would be badass. Every Titan fight would be like the last Colossus from Shadow of the Colossus.
  • God of War IV, V and VI confirmed?
    • Sadly, we can't WMG about that, as multiple people have confirmed that this will be the end. You can say that no company has ever stopped a wildly successful and beloved series at its peak before, but when was the last time we saw Legend of Dragoon, Medievil and Pa Rappa the Rapper?
    • None of those were a "wildly successful and beloved series at its peak". Legend Of Dragoon was one game. Medievil and Pa Rappa each had two games, unless I'm mistaken, and while they were good, they weren't quite as lofty as you described them (if they were, they'd have made more games).

    • It's not WMG anymore, it's the pure truth.

Kratos killing Helios will end up being a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero

Anyone else remember the beginning of the plot of Chains Of Olympus? Helios is incapacitated, letting Morpheus begin trying to take over the world. He might give it another shot after Kratos kills the sun god in the third game...then again, maybe he'll notice Kratos's rising body count, and keep quiet.

• Maybe Kratos kills Morpheus after chains of olympus but before the main trilogy
  • Or we finally fight him in God of War III.
  • Not in God of War III, but still a chance to fight him in Ghost of Sparta.
• Confirmed, but in a different way. Killing Helios eliminates sunlight from the world.
• Killing Morpheus, the shaper of dreams, should free Kratos from the nightmares of his past.

God of War III will feature a boss battle against Stheno, the third Gorgon

We fought Medusa in the first game and Euryale in the second, so why not let Kratos get the complete set?

• Jossed.

You really can't fight Fate

One of the murals in the Temple of Fates shows a lone warrior, presumably Kratos himself surveying the destruction he has caused. This mural is between one depicting the war of Gods vs. Titans (past) and one depicting the birth of Christ (future). The fates knew all along that Kratos was going to kill them and make war on the gods. But they're not going to go down without a fight.

Zeus will give Kratos' brother his chance at revenge

Maybe Kratos has to go to hell one more time to kill Hades because the Titans are being swarmed by an army of the undead that keeps respawning. At some point he reunites with his brother. And in a style befitting his entire life Kratos will have to kill his brother because he is left with no choice. Naturally Zeus (or possibly Hades) knows the brother will not have a real chance (after all he was cast out of Sparta for being to weak) but is simply another play thing of the gods like Kratos was.

• I'm gonna expand on this and connect it with the top theory that Kratos becomes God. Indeed, Zeus (or Hades, he does rule the Underworld after all) gives Kratos' brother the chance for revenge. Since the guy looks like a badass demon in the secret ending, we'll presume he can actually give his big bro a fight. Naturally Kratos doesn't want to fight him but he doesn't have much of choice. After an emotional and memorable boss battle, Kratos bests his brother but spares him before continuing to ransack Olympus. Naturally this only makes his brother hate him more, and when the war leaves the Olympians and (likely) Titans dead, Kratos the only deity left, his brother will rise up as The Rival and continue to battle him. So if Kratos becomes God, that means his brother becomes... Satan! (Again, just watch the secret ending and notice how much his brother looks like a devil.)
• Jossed. In Ghost of Sparta, Kratos goes to find his brother, Deimos, who is imprisoned in Thanatos' (Death, not Hades') domain after being incorrectly identified as the destroyer of Olympus. Many gods oppose Kratos' quest to find his brother along the way, such as Athena, Poseidon, and Zeus (indirectly). When Kratos frees his brother, Deimos does indeed try to kill him out of revenge for letting him be taken away by Ares to rot in Thanatos' domain, when they were children, but the brothers make up after Kratos saves Deimos from falling from a cliff. Thanatos kills Deimos in the ensuing battle, and Kratos is once more without a family.

Kratos stayed awake in Chains of Olympus because he is a chronic insomniac

Kratos being a chronic insomniac would hardly be a surprise, given that he has nightmares whenever he does sleep, and would explain his less than rational thought processes. More importantly, this would explain why he retained consciousness when even the gods were passing out.

Kratos reincarnates into Lelouch.

Kratos stabs himself with his own sword to suicide and give hope to the world, and The Stinger paves the way to Epileptic Trees about wheter he really died. Lelouch dies by assisted suicide by letting himself get stabbed by his own sword to give hope to the world, and the ending paves the way to Epileptic Trees about wheter he really died... until Word of Zeus came.

• Except that Kratos can shake buildings down, lift innumerable times his own body weight, break necks with a flick of his wrists, and combat roll indefinitely. Lelouch can barely climb stairs without getting winded.
  • One part got all the 'brains', the other got all the 'muscle'?

Eris engineered the whole thing.

It's fair to say that the Goddess of Strife and Discord is the only entity who might actually want Kratos to cut a bloody swathe through Gods, Titans, and mythical beasts alike. Tricking other people into causing the chaos she desires is pretty well established as her MO - see the Trojan War, for example - and as sister (or possibly daughter, the mythology isn't consistent) of Ares, she'd be well positioned to persuade him into setting the whole tragic affair on its course. As for why she doesn't make an on-screen appearence in any of the games? She's so genre-savvy she knows not to appear on screen at any point, because that would mean Kratos would end up killing her.

The destruction of the Pantheon is what destroyed the Mycenaeans.

The cause of the destruction of Mycenaean civilisation which would've occupied Greece at the time of the games is somewhat unknown. The chaos that occurs every time Kratos kills each of the Pantheon is likely how the Mycenaeans were wiped out. The survivors, in the aftermath, ended up forgetting how to record what went down, and their descendants went on to become the Greek city-states. The Dark Ages after the end of the Mycenaeans and the end of the Age of Heroes was started by Kratos' slaughter. Makes sense, whether the devs intended so or not, if they did, kudos to them.

The next God of War game will be based on a throwaway line from Poseidon.

Poseidon mentions that Kratos was responsible for the destruction of Atlantis. The Making of video of Go W 2 shows Atlantis as one of the levels cut from the final game. The developers are clearly interested in Atlantis, and the potential environments Kratos could explore there are as great as they were in God of War 3.

• Or in a DLC.
• Or it gets destroyed in Ghost of Sparta for PSP, which is a midquel.
• Confirmed. Atlantis is destroyed in Ghost of Sparta

Athena planed everything from the beginning

It seems to me that the events of the 3 games were one big Xanatos Gambit by Athena so she could be the last remaining god.

• Its a far fetched possibility, but it sounds plausible. Athena was the goddess of tactical warfare, and in Go W 3 her insight had transcended even that of the olympians. She wasnt bound to pandora's curse as by then she technically wasn't a goddess any longer.
• It would explain why she broke her nice act when Kratos released the power of Hope instead of giving it to her, all her years of planing went down the drain in a second. There also the fact that she was the one that picked Kratos to fight Ares.

Saint Seiya takes place in the same continuity as God of War

• In Saint Seiya, only a handful of gods are shown, and of them only one, Hades, still has a body that is naturally his, and being the god of the dead and remover of souls his hulking form we see in the games is one he acquired some other way. Athena and Poseidon must resort to reincarnation instead, seeing as how Kratos killed their physical bodies. The Saints of Athena, and in fact all mortals in question, are forbidden to wield weaponry with only a few exceptions, possibly due to the last time someone without much self-control was given weapons by the gods.
  • ...Which makes no sense, seeing as Hades got whacked, his body dumped into the River Styx and his soul was, you know, ABSORBED.

Kratos murdered Arkantos

And the story takes place in the same continuity as Age of Mythology, with Age of Mythology coming first. Its main character, Arkantos, is elevated to a minor god of titan-slaying for his actions in the story, so it's likely Kratos killed him off screen at some point in God Of War III.

Kratos is an agent for a rival pantheon

Some other gods want to wipe out the Olympians and take their place. The Norse gods sound like likely candidates - Kratos would be right at home in Norse mythology. God of War IV will feature Kratos going after the Titans. At the end, Mount Olympus itself will be destroyed, and Kratos will be congratulated by his real master, Odin. The God of War franchise will then continue with Norse mythology replacing Greek.

• Alternatively, he is an agent of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. His chains are a representation of His Noodly Appendage.
• While this theory is nearly dead, it should be noted that the... thing Athena turned into in the third game does not make any sense. Gods who die with their power intact are effectively Deader than Dead; every resurrection in the franchise requires the target to be significantly weaker than a full god, and Athena exploded with the force of a nuke like her brother, signifying what should have been her permadeath. Her agenda as a spirit does not fit her agenda as a goddess. In fact, her personality - her support and goading of Kratos' talents at genocide, a façade of kindness around children she wants to manipulate, and an outburst of temper when she can't control Kratos at the very end - is disturbingly familiar...

The Final Game will feature Romans

That is how the Greeks went under, after all.

Hades isn't that dead

Hades' soul is presumably still intact inside the Claws of Hades; after all, Kratos used it to pass through the Hyperion Gate. And while the catastrophes caused by the deaths of the other gods could pass with time (floodwaters recede, storms end, plagues burn out, plants grow back), having a total lack of anyone ruling the underworld could lead to dead souls just wandering in and out at all times. Thus, this troper believes that when Kratos kills himself, Hades emerges from the Claws and possesses his body, then starts putting his kingdom back together. Then again, this may just be because she likes Hades.

The Hercules from real world mythology is a Composite Character of Herc and Kratos

Hercules complains that despite both of them being sons of Zeus, Kratos is the one getting all the recognition that Hercules should. so why are there legends of Herc and no legends about Kratos? Because people telling the stories wound up conflating the two. Kratos brings certain elements such as mistakenly killing his wife and children, defeating the hydra, ascending to godhood, etc. Hercules brings the actual 12 Labors to the table, the reputation as a defender of Olympus and the gods, etc. It might also explain why so many of the lesser known stories about Hercules have Herc killing people forlittle to no reason.

Eris is responsible for everything.

Most of the Olympians dead and the whole world plunged into Chaos? This reeks of Eris' handiwork. No doubt she orchestrated all of this because she lost a game of Yahtzhee or something. She's probably watching the whole thing at a safe distance while joyously partaking of a hotdog.

Gods aren't particularly difficult to kill.

Kratos says it himself: "Olympians overestimate themselves." You've got a bunch of supposed "gods" getting ganked by being impaled, getting their eyes gouged out, having their heads ripped off, and generally getting the ever-loving crap beat out of them. It's almost like they're not even gods, but just really big people with magical powers. Maybe the hope bound up inside Kratos after opening Pandora's Box helped, but he killed his way up to Pandora's Box just fine. If a baseline human had a Giant Mecha, a Fantastic Nuke, the Colt, or even just sufficient dakka, they could kill a god too.

• It's possible that Kratos is responsible for the Olympians being as weak as they are due to belief, in a lot of stories about Greek Gods, they tend to be a case of Gods Need Prayer Badly, with Kratos going around actively defying the Gods, and killing their most prominent worshippers in his rampage (such as the destruction of Atlantis, Poseidon's patron city) it isn't that the Gods are overestimating themselves, it's that he has accidentally weakened them throughout the years, with a combination of most of their worshippers dead and that the few that remain are questioning their faith due to Kratos still existing, they don't have as much power as they once had.
• The Norse Saga reveals that while gods are generally stronger than any mortal can be, they all have one consistent glaring weakness: Power makes a god predictable. The reason why all those prophecies related to gods and demigods are so scarily accurate is because the number of potential outcomes where a god doesn't make a specific choice based on their specific personality is close to zero. Few prophecies bind mortals. Once the world's prostrating convinces a god that they are unstoppable, they will stop improving. This is both why Odin is revealed to be even stronger than the entire Greek pantheon combined, yet more doomed than they were; his sociopathic paranoia ensured he'd never stop improving, preparing, and stockpiling, yet at the same time, it also prevented him from trusting anyone or even caring about their lives. By the end, his other eight neighbors have banded together and started the apocalypse just to end one genocidal maniac, and true to his nature, he's still unaware that he could have avoided this if he didn't consistently backstab and slaughter everyone.

When Pandora's Box was opened, it affected all the gods and all the titans for all time. Even Kratos himself.

It doesn't seem that Zeus was particularly more of an asshole after Pandora's Box was opened. He betrays Gaia after she hid him from Cronus. He chained up Prometheus for giving fire to mortals. He stole Pandora from Hephaestus. And he gets a Spartan woman knocked up behind Hera's back. In fact, many of the gods seem to have been affected by the opening of Pandora's Box, even before it was officially opened! Ares was jealous of Athena's followers (or something like that). Athena planned this whole entire Pandora's Box thing. Cronus ate his own children. Rhea betrayed Cronus in his aforementioned efforts. The Fates denied the largely innocent titans victory in the Great War. And Kratos isn't exactly without asshole-ish tendencies himself. So why does it seem that Kratos is perpetually surrounded by assholes? Well...

Kratos absorbed powers from the other gods and become God of War again.

It would line up with the first game. It said he watched over wars and such and showed modern pictures. If he gets the power from these gods like in the first, then he could be a god again.

A New Sequel with Artemis as Main Character.

The gods who didn't appear in III will appear in a sequel with Artemis as main playable character looking for Kratos in order to fight back the last otherwordly threat (Eris, Tartaros, the Giants). This could be really interesting (Ok, honestly just because I'd love to see Aphrodite and Artemis in the recurring Hot Coffee Minigame.

Dante is Kratos' descendant

When he was, still, a god, he impregnated a mortal (one of the two at the beginning of GOW II, maybe?) that woman survived the disasters from the war between Kratos and the Olympians, and, with the baby, started a new life. That child, and his descendants, are the only thing from the god's era that remains. Thousands years later, Dante, Kratos' last descendant, follows his ancestor's path and started to kill everyone in hell.

• Another proof? Well...what about the fact that both are enough badass to be killed, but still being able to come back 10 minutes later?
• Then there is the fact of the above when people said that Kratos would start Christianity and all that, maybe Dante and Jesus are related?

Kratos lives, and traveled to the Mortal Kombat universe to slay the Elder Gods.

With Hades dead the underworld is no longer suitable to send the souls of the dead. But they have to go somewhere, and the next best place to send them is the Neatherrealm. Kratos went there after killing himself, but since the guy doesn't stay dead he fought his way out of the Neatherrealm and into Earthrealm. Mortal Kombat 9 begins and Kratos gets involved and brutally slays everyone that dares fight him, up to and including the Elder Gods.

Kratos is War

At the end of God of War III, Kratos is a God once more.

Rather than give Athena her power back, Kratos stabs himself with the Blade of Olympus, a noble sacrifice to give humanity a chance. Or is it? Kratos is clearly alive, per the after-credits scene, and the first games' ending suggests he's still kicking at least into the modern age. Stabbing himself with the Blade allowed him (perhaps by accident) to re-absorb all the power he'd transferred into it in Go W II. Zeus' impaling of Kratos didn't have the same effect because Zeus was wielding the Blade and its energies, same reason why no one got a booster shot from Kratos using it on them afterwards. Being mortal again, Kratos couldn't simply pull his power back out of the sword; he had to forcibly inject it back into himself. Note that the Blade loses its distinctive glow after Kratos stabs himself with it, whatever stored power it had being drained. Kratos isn't laughing at the end just because he's spoiled Athena's plans; he's laughing because he's just realized he's a God again! Only thing now is to figure out how he loses his power again for the next game...

• fighting the Persian gods?
• I always thought that it showed Kratos throwing himself off the cliff, bringing the series in a full circle.
• Confirmed. Kratos states that he is in fact a god... much to his own dismay.

Next game with have Kratos kill the Norse Gods.

Just so Kratos can fight Thor. That would be awesome.

• Bullshit. The Greek Gods were pushovers, sure, but the Norse Gods are badass and somewhat less dickish. And if such a thing ever happens, the soundtrack better be Viking Metal.
  • The greek gods were push overs? People who starts wars for shits and giggles, make hurricanes by being in a pissy mood, curse their own children and worshipers to terrible fates for minor disrespect, and incinerate mortals by EXISTING near them were PUSHOVERS to you?
    • Actually, the Aesir relied on magic apples to keep their youth. They CAN be killed relatively easily, see Ragnarok (and Baldur earlier on). Barring de-powering, Kratos would be able to take them on easily after the Greek gods.
    • Well, that part's jossed. The Aesir are exceptionally tough opponents, and Baldur is able to repeatedly fight Kratos to a standstill.
  • Half-confirmed. Kratos kills some Norse gods- Magni, Baldur, and Heimdall- but he's mellowed out on the genocide and befriends others, and Sindri is the one who gets the ultimate kill on Odin.

There was a reason for Kratos suicide at the end of GOW 3 other than finishing his vengeance.

• Kratos killed himself at the end of GOW 3 so he can be reunited with his family in the Asyilum Fields (If it still exists, that is.)
  • I'm pretty sure you mean "Elysian Fields", because Asylums still did not exist.

If there is a fourth game staring Kratos, it will still involve Olympians

Just because there were a lot of gods and goddesses unaccounted for throughout the franchise. Nemesis and Eris spring strongest to mind as others have pointed out, Artemis, Dionysus, and Demeter as well. But given everything Kratos has been through near the very end of the third game, he might have to suffer Aesop Amnesia for it to NOT feel like Character Derailment.

• Probably jossed, depending on how one counts the spectre/hallucination of Athena. She still doesn't have anything to do with the plot.

The entire series is a story within a story.

• All of the games take place in the head of a death metal singer (You gotta admit, he has the right rage, screaming power, and appearance for one) writing a concept album about Greek mythology (vikings became passe, or something) with a character loosely based on himself as the protagonist. As he starts feeling more and more insecure about his real life (perhaps real events mimicking the events of the games), Kratos becomes more and more powerful to compensate.

Captain Titus is a distant descendant of Kratos

• Similar to the Dante connection mentioned above, it could be possible that one of the two girls he had a threesome with gave birth to a child who was part man, part god, and over the thirty-eight thousand or so years they managed to keep the lineage together until finally the infant Titus was born in the 41st Millennium. Though his base abilities are nowhere near as great as his forefather (which can be explained that the higher up the tree you go, the less and less godliness you get) with the help of the Emperor's Space Marine program he gets back some of the God of War that he has had in his blood. This could also explain his resistance to the warp because of his divine lineage.

Somewhere, there are audio files labeled "Outtakes" consisting entirely of all the ferocious manly grunting the makers of the games couldn't use.

There has to be.

Kratos was always meant to be the villain till God of War 3

In God of War I, Kratos only sided with the gods against Ares out of revenge. He didn't care for anyone's well being, especially the humans he was supposed to be protecting. In the end, he doesn't ask for redemption. He wants his memory erased so he can forget he ever got married. When he doesn't get what he wants, Kratos essentially throws a tantrum and begins consuming the world in war. Zeus stole his powers and tried to kill him out of necessity. By that point in God of War II, besides Ares, the gods have not done anything bad other than destroy Sparta and that was only because they were ravaging the land under Kratos's orders. Only in God of War III did the writers realize that they made Kratos a villain and needed to redo the story to make him more like an anti-hero.

A future God of War game will have Kratos save humanity from the forces described in the Cthulhu Mythos

Kratos' preferred line of work seems to be brutally murdering gods, and the Great Old Ones have always been described as "Gods". I can't imagine Kratos would be phased much by seeing an Eldritch Abomination, seeing as he greets most everything with violence. And come on, you know it would be awesome to see Kratos go right past flipping off Cthulhu and go straight to ripping his tentacled-face off. As an added Bonus, we'll have him actually murder H. P. Lovecraft, and call it a day.

• Oh my Great Old Ones, MAKE THIS HAPPEN SONY!
• Killing the Gods would undo all of their work, as we've seen, so let's say the Titans were not the only war the Gods had. They had one with the mythos gods at some point and couldn't kill them either. So like the Titans, trapped them. With the Gods no longer in power, nature wasn't the only thing thrown out of balance. Now the Old ones are free....Kratos has to put them back in their cages and move the stars to do it.

Kratos actually did die at the end of 3, and the reason he wasn't on the cliff anymore was not because he survived and walked off, but because the Grave Digger found him.

Think about it. At the end of Ghost of Sparta, the Grave Digger buried Deimos and his mother. He reserved a grave that was empty and said "Now there's only one left". He was implying that Kratos be killed. GOS was the 3rd to last in the series chronologically, meaning that much of Kratos' events up until then were driving him to suicide for good. The Grave Digger knew that Kratos was close to cracking. Come the end of 3, two games later, and Kratos (finally) seems to actually be dead. This would mean that 3 is really the end of the story.

• But the grave digger was really Zeus, so this is unlikely.
• Completely Jossed, the reveal of the new installment reveals that he is indeed alive.

Theseus, Perseus and Icarus should still be alive

When Kratos went back in time to keep Zeus from killing him in God of War II, it also prevented his meetings with Theseus, Perseus and Icarus on the Island of Creation, the same as it did with the Last Spartan. So in a sense, Kratos did not tell what was the "truth" to Daedalus when he met him, failing to understand just how much he changed when he changed his Fate.

Athena's plan from the beginning was to overthrow Olympus, not a result of the Evils' corruption

At the end of God of War III, Athena's plan to cleanse the world in Chaos and rebuild it using hope indicates a rather dark side to the Goddess' motives. She sealed the power of Hope inside the Box, which in a roundabout way made the world vulnerable to the Evils when Pandora's Box was opened. Her tool for all of this was Kratos, the Marked Warrior. She wasn't 'sheltering' Kratos from Olympus to protect him, but to suit her own purpose.

The possibility also exists that SHE was the one who orchestrated for Calliope and Lysandra to be in that temple, so Kratos would kill them under Ares' influence. After all, it was Athena's temple, and Kratos thought he left his daughter and wife in Sparta. This will most likely be what the final God of War game's purpose will be: learning of Athena's manipulations.

• Or maybe when she put Hope into the box, it forced Greed out to make room and she'd been infected and trying to regain her power since? Either way, it's pretty unusual for a goddess to not be upset at someone defiling her temple, but Kratos gets off scot-free for it. She was with Ares when he came of the other Marked Warrior, Deimos, because she was in on his scheme. Between then and the first game, there was a falling out between the siblings, if Ares's death wasn't her plan all along. Her repeated attempts to restrain and calm Kratos over the course of the series are absolutely pathetic - unless she had been using reverse psychology to drive him to rage and madness the whole time. Jerking his chain for ten years while sending him repeatedly against the fiercest foes in the world - how better to mold a warrior to kill the gods?

If Kratos dukes it out with Yahweh, it will be based off the Caananite religion.

Realistically if Kratos were to go after the traditional, Christian vision of God he would get his ass handed to him. In order to both make the fight plausible, and to still tie it into the Abrahamic faiths, Yahweh will the War God portrayed in Hebrew Mythology. It would also serve as a precursor to Judaism, with Yahweh taking the position of entities like Gaea and becoming the I am That I am we know Him today.

• It this, he's assisted by two other angels who bail him out after each fight until he is an Exalted (a name I made up for a type of god). Sometime between one of the losses, the power of love or adoration or whatever is discovered that made him an Exalted. Then Kratos doesn't win after being given a chance to not continue and find release.

Athena doesn't actually make an appearance in III

It was Eris in disguise. The real Athena would never help Kratos kill her father. The world was burned to the ground, which she explicitly stated was part of her goal, and chaos reigned. Kratos giving mankind the power to overcome that chaos was the worst thing that could happen to her.

All Lahkesis wanted was to drink a cup of coffee with Kratos. If you know what I mean.

" It was I who deemed the Titans to lose the Great War, and I who have allowed you to come this far". Of course, it backfired.

Many of the enemies Kratos fights in God of War II and III are actually minor gods/goddesses/heroes/other mythological figures in generic form

This explanation could be used to Hand Wave the absence of any deity the series didn't already slaughter. For what it's worth, it's already implied the Dark Rider from Go WII is Bellerophon.

Kratos' Son in the new God of War is Loki

The theory hinges on the assumption that something will happen that will cause Kratos to go to war with the Norse gods. Seeing as the game is about fatherhood, it'll probably be his son being kidnapped/adopted by Odin. Now who is the most famous adopted son in Norsr mythology - Loki.

So the theory is that the son is Loki and his mother is Laufeywho, contrary to Marvel's interpretation, is Loki's mother in actual Norse mythology.

So in other words, Kratos hooked up with a Jotunn, which isn't too far-fetched since everyone was having kids with everyone in Norse myth (just like in Greek myth) and gods having relations with Jotunn isn't uncommon.

The other thing, the only elemental power we see in the demo is ice, via Kratos's axe. It could be postulated then that the axe is Jotunn related.

So basically, Kratos has a kid. Kid gets kidnapped at the end of the game (and Kratos "dies") while kid gets adopted by Odin. Interestingly enough, the Norse pantheon has two gods of war. While Tyr is nominally the god of war, Odin himself is also considered the god of war as well.

• Why would Odin adopt his foster brother?
• This apple didn't fall too far from its tree. Theory confirmed. On the other hand, Odin doesn't get to adopt Atreus- though it's pretty clear in hindsight that he's angling to make himself a replacement father figure.

Kratos in the new God of War is a Decoy Protagonist

During the E3 demo shown on stage at Sony's press conference, whenever Kratos' son does something you can see a notification pop-up saying things like "Tracking +25" and "Archery +50."

Why would Kratos be gaining those skills when his son is doing all the work? He isn't. His son is the one gaining skill and what we're seeing during the demo is a prologue/tutorial for what will be the main game. Said prologue could end with Kratos being killed by the Norse gods, thereby giving the rather gentle boy who cannot even bring himself to kill a deer a motive for revenge against the gods. The game proper begins years later with Kratos' son as a full-grown man, hell-bent on revenge for the death of his father.

• I agree as well. I have a feeling Kratos is not really the protagonist but his son. If i have to guess how the story goes, it goes something like this: After somehow surviving the events of God of War 3, Kratos left Greece and went to the land of the Vikings where he married a local woman and had a son with her. After his wife's death, Kratos tries to raise his son right, not wishing for his son to become just him as he realized after he got older how much of a jerk he was. And some point of the game, Kratos dies and the Norse Gods, who normally allow warriors like Kratos to Valhalla, refuses to allow him entry as they cannot forgive him for not only killing most of the Greek Gods but also almost ending world. Not wishing for his father to be sent to Hel for his past sins, Kratos son makes a deal with Odin that in exchange for his father to got to Valhalla, he has to do some major quests for Odin and the others. And Kratos son, like his father, has sex with lots of women including elves, Valkyries and even Goddesses.
• Extremely Jossed.

If anything from The Bible happens in future games, it will not be the direct focus of the story.

If there's an Egypt-based game, then the Red Sea will part in the background during a climactic fight, unconnected to the game's events-which will draw their attention and let Kratos/Loki deal the final blow.

• In general, things will be alluded to (A Caananite Deity becoming more prominent, weird shit happening around the Nile, et cetera) or be happening in the background, but Christianity will never directly be the center of the plot.

God of War's version of Greece is located in the Mediterranean Sea - or rather, the Mediterranean Basin

Even though Kratos' murder of the gods caused the seas to rise, you'll notice a distinct lack of note from the other pantheons about this particular 'annoyance'. The implication is that rather than all the world's oceans shooting up and sinking half the world, the local Mediterranean sea returned to its natural level, what it should be without god magic. Apparently, the Grecian pantheon intentionally or accidentally caused the seas to lower some time in the past (likely during the Titan War), and they decided they liked it because it meant all the mortals would fervently worship their 'efforts' to outright create new lands to inhabit. Centuries after Greece followed Atlantis, nobody remembered that what was once Greece was now literally seabed beneath any world map, and everyone falsely assumed that the country which the survivors of Rome created was close to the original Greece.

This would also factor into the gods' ego; by lowering the seas, they technically increased the height of Mount Olympus from sea level. By ensuring that their deaths would spell an age of apocalyptic ruin because of the balancing floods, they preened themselves as 'eternal unsung saviors' of a long-term problem they created. And of course, they could easily pressure mortals without exerting excess power by outright loosening their grip on the sea suppression magics and make a few coastal capitals suffer.

Kratos is the god of change.

Ever since the first game, Kratos has had the odd ability to change things so they work out for him. It also explains why in the earlier games we get to use Press X to Not Die and in Ragnarok change how he goes about doing things after visiting the Nord sisters. Not all change is good or bad, but things turn out very different no matter what he does.

Both Mimir and Odin's stories about how he lost the eye are true

Yes, Mimir's story is probably true, and it is in character for Odin to lie about something that meaningless, but that doesn't mean he has to be lying that specific time. Tyr proves that gods can regrow lost body parts, and if he's resourceful enough to do it, then Odin probably is too. So, the order of events goes something like this:

• Odin gets duped by Mimir and tears out one eye.
• Odin regenerates that eye.
• Odin decides it's a good idea to take a peek into the rift with said renewed eye, potentially getting overconfident because he regrew it the first time.
• The magic of the rift burns out Odin's eye, this time beyond his ability to heal.

The future of the series is Aztec, Japanese, and Egyptian.

Most fans have always hoped to see Egyptian mythology in the next saga, being the typical natural extension of any universe in which both Greek and Norse mythology are true. In the Valhalla DLC, the Host uses weapons from his travels: Egyptian khopeshes, an Aztec club, and a katana. If anything, this emphasizes the fact that every time Egyptian myth is hinted at throughout the Norse saga, Aztec and Japanese motifs are right there alongside it. I think what the Norse saga was trying to tell us all along is that the next saga, perhaps revolving around Atreus's travels to other realms, will consist of all three of those mythologies at once. Building on that, the "rise of Christianity" ending considered for the series since at least early development of God of War II and III might still be on the table: perhaps despite Atreus's best efforts, his family's travels through a pantheon's lands are always destined to end in that pantheon's destruction; taking out three at once would be a disaster characteristic of the mythical Loki.

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