Lara Croft first appeared in 1996’s Tomb Raider from developer Core Design and publisher Eidos Interactive. The action-adventure game began its life on the Sega Saturn, but quickly moved to other platforms, as gamers fell in love with the freedom of movement, exceptional graphics, and, of course, the heroine protagonist. Tomb Raider topped the charts, and Eidos quickly turned it into a massive franchise. In the decades since, Lara Croft has been featured in dozens of sequel games, several film adaptations, and even won a few Guinness World Records. Even with her immense popularity, there are still a few things most players don’t know about Lara Croft. After all, she’s been around for more than 30 years. There’s bound to be a few fun facts that slipped through the fanbase’s cracks.
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Before we dive in, it’s important to dispel a long-standing rumor you might’ve heard about Lara. It’s been said that her original physique was created by accident. The original developers have since said that was simply a joke told during an interview and is not the truth. So don’t expect to see that factoid below. With that out of the way, here are three factoids most Tomb Raider fans never knew about Lara Croft.
1) Lara Croft’s Surprising Origins
Tomb Raider‘s protagonist went through several iterations before the team at Core Design settled on her final design. Lead graphic artist Toby Gard says he created five designs during development, which began with a male archaeologist who used a whip and wore a distinctive hat.
As you can probably guess, this looked and sounded a little too much like Indiana Jones, so the rest of the team asked for a more original design. They were partially worried about potential lawsuits, but this shift was also about giving the new series its own distinct identity. Gard then turned his focus to a female lead after seeing players gravitate toward the women in Virtua Fighter. Using influence from Swedish pop artist Neneh Cherry and comic book character Tank Girl, Gard settled on what’s been described as “a tough South American woman with a braid named Laura Cruz.”
Later, co-creator Paul Douglas decided to switch her first name to Lara, which is short for Larissa. Douglas said after consulting a baby names book, he noticed that Larissa means “citadel” in Greek, which was “apt for her personality.” Even later in development, scriptwriter Vicky Arnold changed her surname to Croft to incorporate her British origin.
Interestingly, the team got the Croft name from a local phonebook in Derby. That’s since come full circle as Derby decided to rename a city street Lara Croft Way in 2010. The name overwhelmingly won a public vote, with 89% of the residents voting in favor of naming the road after the character who was created in Derby.
2) Tomb Raider’s Combat is Based on a John Woo Classic
One of the most iconic aspects of Lara Croft is that she dual-wields pistols in most of her games. In creating her design, Gard was inspired by John Woo’s classic Hong Kong action movie Hard Boiled. Woo’s signature film uses a mix of martial arts and gunplay to create the “gun-foo” style.
Croft doesn’t quite go that far, but the original Tomb Raider games had fluid combat that gave her a much more acrobatic fighting style than many other games at the time. Even from the first game, you can feel that Hard Boiled influence in gameplay.
That said, Woo’s classic isn’t the only place Gard and the team took inspiration for Croft’s fighting style. There’s also a bit of the original Aeon Flux shorts mixed in there as well, helping give Lara a style that felt all her own.
3) Lara Croft’s Short-Lived Animated Series Featured Several Big Names
Most fans know about Lara Croft’s various film adaptations. Angelina Jolie starred in two movies in the early aughts, while Alicia Vikander took over in the 2018 reboot. Vikander was supposed to appear in a second movie, but it was cancelled.
There’s also the animated Netflix series called Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, and there is an upcoming Phoebe Waller-Bridge project at Amazon is set to star Sophie Turner. Heck, she even technically put out two music albums in France. Both CDs were flops, but it points to how popular Tomb Raider is as a franchise.
However, another animated series aired on GameTap in 2007. Revisioned: Tomb Raider was an anthology series featuring several big names in the comic book and animated worlds. Peter Chung, the creator and director of Aeon Flux, wrote and designed three of the episodes. Cully Hammer, who has worked on comic series like Green Lantern, Blue Beetle, and Detective Comics, designed two episodes that were written by long-time comic book writer Warren Ellis.
Other comic book veterans like Ivan Reis, Jim Lee, and Christos N. Gage also contributed to the project. To top it all off, Minnie Drive voiced Lara Croft for all ten episodes. Best of all, if you want to watch it, the full series is available on YouTube.
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