Kratos Was Almost Accidentally Named After God of War 3's Director

The name "Kratos" has become synonymous with the God of War series since the Spartan hothead has been in every game, but he was almost known by a different name instead. It shouldn't be much of a surprise to hear that there was a list of potential names for Kratos that would've changed what players would call him for years, but what is surprising to hear is that he was almost named after someone who had worked on nearly every God of War game in the series. Stig Asmussen, the director of God of War 3, recently recalled the story of how Kratos was almost named "Stig."

"Stig" was one of several names being considered for Kratos – it just wasn't one that was supposed to be on the list, Asmussen told Game Informer. When working on the original God of War which was directed by David Jaffe, Asmussen said he and others involved with the development were asked to contribute ideas for the protagonist's name. When the marketing team narrowed the names down to just a few, "Stig" was among those being considered.

"We were trying to figure out Kratos' name, and we were working with marketing on that and Jaffe opened it up to the team," Asmussen told Game Informer. "[Kratos'] working name for a long time was Dominus, but marketing didn't like that. I don't know how many members of the team submitted names, but I submitted maybe a handful of them and they went to marketing and they came back with four, maybe five names for Kratos – Kratos was one of them … and Stig was one of them."

Asmussen said that he had submitted a list of possible names and signed his own name on it so that the recipient would know where it came from, but "Stig" was instead treated as an option. The name wasn't removed after that and was still in the running for being the character's name, but Kratos was ultimately the name chosen.

"Dominus" was another name that Kratos was almost known by, Asmussen said, since that was the working name for Kratos while the game was being worked on. The game itself was also almost called "Dark Odyssey" instead, but the God of War 3 director said marketing thought that might be too "highbrow" for people.

Whether he was known by Kratos or another name, another interesting story about the lead character from God of War 2018's director Cory Barlog revealed that Kratos was almost scrapped from the series' reboot entirely in place of another character.