Table of Contents
Section 1: The Unthinkable Act: Deconstructing the Tragedy in Athena’s Temple
The genesis of Kratos, the Ghost of Sparta, is not found in a grand battle or a divine prophecy, but in the smoldering ruins of a temple, amidst the screams of the innocent and the suffocating smell of burnt offerings.
To comprehend the two decades of rage that followed, one must first stand witness to the singular moment of horror that birthed it.
The act itself—a Spartan general slaughtering his own family—is the bedrock of the entire saga, an event so cataclysmic that its aftershocks carved the path of Kratos’s life, first toward vengeance and then, much later, toward a desperate, fumbling redemption.1
Kratos, at this point in his life, was the perfect instrument of war, a man whose ambition was as sharp and deadly as the blades chained to his arms.3
As the newest and most promising servant of Ares, the God of War, he led his Spartan armies in a tide of bloody conquest across Greece.4
His path led him to a small village, its people devout followers of the goddess Athena.
A local oracle, sensing the unnatural darkness clinging to Kratos, issued a dire warning: “Beware Kratos, the dangers in the temple are greater than you know”.3
But Kratos, deafened by his own ambition and the whispers of his divine master, would not be denied his victory.
In his mind, all who opposed him were simply obstacles to be annihilated.5
The choice of this specific village was no accident.
It was the first move in a sophisticated game of psychological warfare orchestrated by Ares.
By ordering the desecration of a temple dedicated to his chief rival, Athena—the goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare—Ares was making a brutal political statement on Olympus.
He was showcasing the power of his new weapon and simultaneously delivering a profound insult to his sister.
The personal tragedy of Kratos was, from the very beginning, a pawn in a larger, celestial conflict.
Fueled by a “bloodlust” and a “frenzied attack” spell cast by Ares, Kratos stormed the temple.4
He moved as a whirlwind of death, his Blades of Chaos a blur of motion, cutting down every soul within.
The game’s narrative depicts this not as a calculated slaughter, but as a dissociative rage, a state where consciousness is subsumed by pure, violent impulse.
The air grew thick with fire and smoke, a deliberate veil cast by Ares to conceal the nature of his final, cruel twist.7
When the rage subsided and the fires died down, Kratos saw the last of his victims.
Lying in pools of their own blood were the two people whose lives gave his own meaning: his wife, Lysandra, and his young daughter, Calliope.8
In that instant, the glory he reveled in turned to abject horror.5
The blood of his family stained his hands, a visceral and undeniable truth.8
It was an act so unthinkable, so profoundly monstrous, that it shattered his psyche.
He had been tricked, manipulated into destroying the very things he fought for.10
With that single, horrific act, his servitude to Ares was severed, and a new, all-consuming purpose was born: vengeance.
His first oath was broken, and a new one was sworn in the ashes of his family: “Ares! You will die for what you did that night!”.3
This moment of supreme agony was not an accident of war; it was the precise, intended outcome of a masterfully executed psychological operation.
Section 2: The Architect of Ruin: A Psychological Profile of Ares’s Grand Deception
To label Ares’s scheme as a mere “trick” is to fundamentally misunderstand its complexity and malice.
It was not a simple lie but a meticulously crafted psychological operation (PSYOP), designed with clinical precision to dismantle a man’s soul and reforge it into a tool of divine patricide.
Analyzing Ares’s strategy through the lens of military and psychological doctrine reveals a terrifyingly sophisticated architect of ruin.
2.1 The Motive: Forging the Perfect Weapon
Ares’s motivations were twofold, stemming from his own ambition and the rigid laws of Olympus.
His primary objective was the death of his father, Zeus.12
However, a divine edict forbade the gods from directly killing one another, creating a strategic impasse.12
Ares, ever the god of brutal, direct conflict, was stymied.
He needed a proxy, a weapon that could do what he could not.
He needed a mortal, or demigod, of unparalleled strength and rage.
He found his candidate in Kratos, a Spartan captain on the verge of annihilation at the hands of a barbarian horde.
In exchange for his life, Kratos pledged his eternal servitude to Ares.4
But Kratos, the man, was flawed.
He had attachments—a wife and daughter—that Ares perceived as a “detrimental” weakness, a tether to a mortal morality that could temper his rage.13
To create the “perfect warrior,” these tethers had to be severed in the most traumatic way imaginable.11
The goal was not just to kill Kratos’s family, but to use their deaths to “turn him into the perfect weapon” 12, a being of pure, untethered rage bound by a blood oath to his creator.1
2.2 The Method: A Masterclass in Psychological Warfare (PSYOPs)
Ares’s methodology was a textbook case of psychological manipulation, employing tactics that align with modern doctrines of psychological and military deception (MILDEC).
First, Ares performed a perfect vulnerability assessment.
He identified Kratos’s defining traits—his insatiable ambition and his terror of a dishonorable death—during their very first encounter on the battlefield.4
Like any skilled manipulator, he understood his target’s psychological weaknesses and knew precisely which levers to pull.14
He offered Kratos not just life, but power and glory, playing directly to his hubris.
Second, he employed coercion and concealed aggression.
The Blades of Chaos, “forged in the foulest depths of Hades,” were not just a gift of power; they were an instrument of control.
Seared and chained directly to Kratos’s flesh, they were a permanent, physical reminder of his pledge, making disobedience a psychological and physical impossibility.16
Ares presented this as a boon, concealing his aggressive intent to enslave Kratos behind a mask of patronage, a classic manipulative tactic.14
The attack on the village itself was a sophisticated form of strategic deception.
The stated mission—to destroy the village of Athena’s worshipers—was a feint, a military term for a diversionary attack designed to mislead an enemy about the true objective.17
The true objective was not the village; it was Kratos’s mind.
Ares created a false reality for his target, using an “optical trick” or illusion to disguise Lysandra and Calliope, ensuring Kratos would act on fatally flawed information.7
This was combined with psychological conditioning, pushing Kratos into a “frenzied” state of blind rage where logic and observation were impossible.4
Perhaps the most telling aspect of Ares’s strategy was its conclusion.
A simpler, more covert plan would have been to arrange an “accident” or to disguise himself, thereby hiding his involvement.13
Instead, Ares appeared before Kratos immediately after the slaughter to take credit, to explain that the act was necessary to make him a great warrior.13
This was not a mistake; it was the final, crucial step of the psychological operation.
This act of
self-incrimination was a high-risk, high-reward maneuver designed to achieve a specific psychological effect.
The goal was not to create a mindless berserker, but to perform a kind of psychological alchemy.
By revealing himself as the architect of Kratos’s pain, Ares intended to hijack that immense trauma and redirect it.
He aimed to replace Kratos’s love for his family with a focused, burning hatred for Ares’s enemies, primarily Zeus.
The pain had to have a source and a target.
In this, Ares was not just creating a blunt instrument; he was attempting to forge an ideologically motivated weapon, driven by a personal vendetta that now served a divine purpose.
The entire sequence, from the blood oath to the final, horrifying revelation, can be mapped as a clinical process of psychological dismantlement.
| Tactic Employed by Ares | Corresponding Psychological/Military Term | In-Game Example | Intended Effect on Kratos |
| The Blood Oath | Coercion; Responsibility Invocation 14 | Ares saves Kratos from the barbarians in exchange for a pledge of eternal servitude, binding him with the Blades of Chaos. 4 | Creates a binding obligation and a power dependency, making disobedience psychologically difficult while framing enslavement as salvation. |
| Escalating Violence | Conditioning; Desensitization | Ares sends Kratos on increasingly brutal campaigns, rewarding his savagery and encouraging his “bloodlust.” 1 | Normalizes extreme violence and lowers Kratos’s inhibition threshold, preparing him for the ultimate transgression. |
| Mission as a Feint | Strategic Deception (MILDEC); Feint 17 | The mission to destroy the Athena-worshipping village serves as a cover for the true objective: the murder of Kratos’s family. 4 | Focuses Kratos’s attention and aggression on a false target, preventing him from perceiving the real threat to his family. |
| Sensory Overload & Illusion | Gaslighting; Ambiguity-Increasing Deception 15 | Ares uses a magical illusion, combined with the fire and smoke of the temple, to disguise Lysandra and Calliope from Kratos. 7 | Creates a false reality and induces a “frenzied” state where Kratos cannot trust his own senses, leading him to commit the act. |
| Immediate Self-Incrimination | Psychological Priming; Shock and Awe 18 | Ares appears immediately after the murders to explain to Kratos why he did it—to sever his mortal ties and make him a true warrior. 13 | Prevents Kratos’s grief from becoming directionless despair. It deliberately channels his immense trauma into a focused rage, aimed at the divine, which Ares intended to control. |
Section 3: The Mark of a Monster: The Curse of the Ashes and the Forging of an Identity
In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, as Kratos stood gasping in horror, the final seal was placed upon his fate.
This was not a punishment delivered by Ares or any other Olympian, but a curse delivered by a mortal—the dying oracle of the village he had just annihilated.3
This distinction is crucial.
While the gods manipulated his actions, it was a human agent, a voice of the innocent dead, that defined his new, monstrous identity.
The oracle’s curse was one of terrible, poetic justice.
It did not inflict pain or madness; it inflicted memory.
With her dying breath, she used her magic to permanently bake the ashes of his dead wife and daughter onto his skin.4
His skin, once tanned by the Spartan sun, was bleached a ghastly, pale white.
From that moment forward, he would be known as the “Ghost of Sparta,” his very appearance a testament to his “terrible deed”.4
This physical transformation is one of the most powerful narrative devices in the series.
Kratos’s sin was no longer a private nightmare; it was made external, a permanent, visible brand for all the world to see.
He could never wash the ashes off, never change his clothes to hide his shame, never look at his own hands without being reminded of the blood they shed.
The curse ensured that his guilt would be his constant companion, a part of his very flesh.4
This marking represents a profound schism.
The curse, coming from a human, symbolizes Kratos’s final, violent break with humanity itself.
He is a “ghost” not only because of his pale visage but because his actions have fundamentally exiled him from the world of men.
He is no longer a husband, a father, or a general.
He is a monster, defined by the ashes of those he loved.
This reframes his entire subsequent journey.
The rage that consumes him is fueled by this inescapable, physical reminder of his failure.
The mark is the engine of his vengeance.
Decades later, in the Norse lands, it is noted that the ashes have begun to fade.
The in-universe explanation is that the magic binding them to his skin was tied to Olympus, and with the Greek pantheon destroyed, the curse is weakening.21
This serves as a potent metaphor for his psychological state.
As he slowly, painfully learns to control his rage and become a father again, the physical mark of his old identity begins to recede.
The fading of the ashes symbolizes the possibility of healing, the slow process of a ghost learning, once again, how to be a man.
His journey in the Norse saga is not just about atoning for his sins, but about reclaiming the fundamental humanity that was burned away in that temple and branded onto his skin by a mortal’s curse.
Section 4: Echoes of Myth: Kratos and the Agonizing Shadow of Heracles
Kratos’s story, for all its modern, digital brutality, is not a new one.
It is a visceral retelling of one of the most potent and tragic archetypes in Western mythology: the story of Heracles (or the Roman Hercules).
The parallels are so direct and numerous that they cannot be accidental; they are a deliberate framing device that elevates Kratos’s journey from a simple revenge plot into a dialogue with ancient tragedy.22
The core similarities are stark and foundational.
Both Kratos and Heracles are demigod sons of Zeus, born to mortal mothers.10
Both are figures of immense strength, caught in the crossfire of divine politics.
Most critically, both are driven to murder their own families in a fit of god-induced madness.
In the myth, the goddess Hera, jealous of Zeus’s infidelity, drives Heracles insane, causing him to kill his wife, Megara, and their children.22
In
God of War, Ares takes Hera’s role, tricking Kratos into his own familial slaughter.11
The aftermath of the transgression also follows a similar path, at least initially.
Wracked with guilt, both heroes embark on a quest for atonement.
Heracles must perform his famous Twelve Labors for King Eurystheus to be purified of his sin.
Kratos, seeking release from the nightmares of his deed, pledges ten years of service to the other gods of Olympus.23
In both narratives, this path to redemption involves epic adventures and directly antagonizing certain gods while receiving aid from others.22
However, it is in the divergence from this archetype that the God of War saga makes its most powerful statement.
While Heracles’s story is ultimately one of successful atonement—he completes his labors, is purified, and eventually ascends to Olympus to live as a god—Kratos’s journey is a story of failed redemption.
After his ten years of service, the gods refuse to grant him what he truly wants: peace from his memories.24
His reward for killing Ares is to be given the very title and role—God of War—that led to his ruin in the first place.1
This betrayal, followed by Zeus’s own paranoia and treachery, teaches Kratos a bitter lesson: in a pantheon this corrupt, redemption is a lie.
This thematic inversion culminates in God of War III when Kratos confronts Heracles himself.
His half-brother, jealous and resentful, stands in his Way. The battle that ensues is deeply symbolic.
As Kratos brutally pummels Heracles to death with his own Nemean Cestus, he is not just killing another god; he is destroying his own mythological blueprint.25
He is violently rejecting the Herculean path of service and atonement, choosing instead a path of nihilistic deicide.
The saga thus uses the Heracles myth as a foundation only to burn it to the ground.
It posits a world where the system of divine justice is so fundamentally broken that the traditional hero’s journey is impossible.
If the gods themselves are the source of suffering, then serving them for redemption is a fool’s errand.
The only rational response, the story argues, is not to seek atonement within the system, but to achieve liberation through the complete and utter annihilation of the system.
Kratos’s story is what happens when Heracles realizes the gods are not worthy of his labors.
| Narrative Beat | The Myth of Heracles | The Saga of Kratos |
| Divine Parentage | Son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene. | Son of Zeus and the mortal woman Callisto. 10 |
| The Transgression | Murders his wife Megara and their children. | Murders his wife Lysandra and daughter Calliope. 9 |
| The Catalyst God | Driven into a blind rage by the goddess Hera. 22 | Tricked and manipulated by the god Ares. 4 |
| The Path to Atonement | Performs the Twelve Labors as penance to be purified of his sin. | Serves the gods of Olympus for ten years to be freed from his nightmares. 23 |
| The Ultimate Fate | Is purified, completes his mortal life, and ascends to Mount Olympus as a full god, achieving peace. | Is betrayed by the gods, finds no peace, and systematically slaughters the entire Greek pantheon before exiling himself. 1 |
Section 5: The Anatomy of Rage: Charting the Psychological Wounds of a God
A persistent criticism leveled against the Kratos of the original Greek saga is that he is a one-dimensional character, a shallow avatar of pure rage.6
This reading, while understandable from a surface-level playthrough, mistakes the symptom for the disease.
Kratos’s rage is not a personality trait; it is the raw, unceasing scream of a profound psychological wound.23
His entire war against Olympus is not a simple quest for vengeance, but a violent, externalized manifestation of his own self-loathing.
To understand Greek-era Kratos is to see him as a man in the throes of unprocessed, cataclysmic trauma.
A useful analogy compares him to a wound: the Kratos of the Norse saga is an old, healed scar that aches with memory, while the Kratos of the Greek saga is a fresh, open wound—bleeding, throbbing, and perpetually infected.23
His rage is the pain of that wound made manifest.
He hates the gods with such totality because they are a mirror.
In their cruelty, their hubris, and their manipulative nature, he sees the monster he believes himself to be.
Every god he kills, every titan he fells, is a desperate, futile attempt to destroy the source of his pain, a source he cannot face is ultimately within himself.
This psychological depth is often overlooked but is present in key moments of vulnerability that shatter the “one-dimensional” caricature.
After fulfilling his initial quest and killing Ares, Kratos is not triumphant.
The gods grant him a seat on Olympus but deny him his true desire: release from the nightmares of his family’s murder.
Realizing his service has earned him nothing, his first act as a god-to-be is to cast himself from the highest mountain in Greece in a desperate attempt at suicide.1
This is not the action of a simple rage monster, but of a man broken by despair.
Perhaps the most poignant example of his hidden depth occurs in Chains of Olympus.
Kratos finds his deceased daughter, Calliope, in the Elysian Fields.
He is given a choice: remain with her in paradise and let the world be destroyed, or abandon her forever to save it.
To push her away, the game forces the player to repeatedly press the circle button—the same button used throughout the series to perform brutal executions.
The game’s mechanics brilliantly equate the act of leaving his daughter with the act of slaughtering his enemies; it takes as much strength and causes as much pain to push her away as it does to rip a god’s head from their shoulders.23
This is a man defined by loss, forced to relive his failure as a father in the most agonizing way possible.
His journey through the Greek pantheon can be seen as a kind of reverse-hierarchy of needs.
Instead of building himself up toward self-actualization, he systematically destroys every external source of power and validation in a misguided search for internal peace.
He seeks absolution from the gods; when that fails, he kills the God of War and takes his place.
When that power brings no solace, he seeks to kill the King of the Gods himself.
He is climbing the ladder of Olympus only to burn each rung behind him.
This is not the path of a simple brute.
It is a complex, albeit horrifically violent, psychological journey of disillusionment.
Kratos is relentlessly trying to solve an internal problem with external solutions and failing catastrophically every time.
This decade-long campaign of failure is precisely what sets the stage for his transformation in the Norse saga.
The Greek games are the story of Kratos learning, through deicide and apocalypse, that vengeance is a dead end and that the enemy he truly needs to conquer lies within.
Section 6: A Father’s Fear: How the Ghosts of Lysandra and Calliope Haunt the Father of Atreus
When Kratos reemerges in the Norse lands, he is a changed man, but one still profoundly shaped by the ghosts of his past.
His journey as a father to Atreus is not a clean slate; it is a direct, often painful, reaction to his catastrophic failures as a husband to Lysandra and a father to Calliope.2
His parenting style—initially defined by emotional distance, harsh discipline, and suffocating secrecy—is a fortress built from the bricks of his trauma, designed to protect his new son from the monster he fears he still Is.29
Kratos’s primary motivation as a parent is fear.
He is terrified that Atreus will become him.29
He sees the flashes of divine rage in his son and reacts with harsh suppression (“Control your anger,” “Do not be sorry, be better”).
His decision to hide Atreus’s godhood from him is born from his intimate, first-hand knowledge of how divine power corrupts and destroys.30
He lived the consequences of a god’s hubris, and his greatest fear is watching his son walk the same blood-soaked path.
His approach is an attempt to apply the only discipline he has ever truly known—that of a Spartan general—to the delicate art of fatherhood.
He treats Atreus less like a son and more like a recruit, focusing on survival skills, combat readiness, and unquestioning obedience.31
This strategy, however, is a catastrophic failure.
The emotional distance and harshness do not build discipline; they breed resentment.
When Atreus finally learns he is a god, he does not become humble; he becomes arrogant, cruel, and dismissive of mortals—a perfect miniature of the young, hubristic Kratos.29
The very methods Kratos used to prevent his son from becoming like him ironically catalyzed that exact transformation.
This forces Kratos to realize that the tactics for winning a war are the inverse of the tactics for building a family.
He must learn a new strategy: emotional vulnerability.
The act of finally telling Atreus the truth about his past as a god-killer is the turning point, the moment he abandons the failed strategy of the general and begins to adopt the terrifying, uncertain strategy of the father.
This fumbling attempt at fatherhood is also deeply informed by his specific regrets.
The Valhalla DLC reveals the depth of his self-recrimination regarding his first wife, Lysandra.
He confesses that long before Ares’s trickery, he was a “bad husband,” consumed by “hubris and ambition,” who never listened to her or considered her needs.32
His relationship with his second wife, Faye, was his attempt to correct this.
He learned to listen, to value his partner, and to build a life of peace.
His parenting of Atreus is a continuation of that effort, a constant struggle against his own worst instincts to not repeat the selfish mistakes that defined his first family.
The memory of Calliope is a constant, aching pain.
In Valhalla, he recounts the agony of finding her in Elysium only to have to push her away, stating he would have “traded the decades that followed for mere hours with her”.28
This profound regret manifests as the physical and emotional chasm between him and Atreus at the start of their journey.
He is afraid to get close to a child he might fail or lose again.
The entire quest to scatter Faye’s ashes is mirrored by Kratos’s internal quest to close that distance.
The journey ends with two symbolic acts: Kratos allowing Atreus to carry his mother’s ashes for the first time, and then, on the peak of the mountain, finally resting a comforting hand on his son’s shoulder.30
It is a quiet, monumental victory, the moment a father, haunted by the memory of pushing one child away, finally learns how to hold another one close.
Section 7: The Verdict of Valhalla: A Final Confrontation with the Past
The God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla DLC serves as the final chapter in the psychological autopsy of Kratos.
It is not a journey across realms, but a descent into his own mind, a therapeutic crucible where he is forced to confront his past not as a warrior seeking vengeance, but as a man seeking understanding.
Here, in the halls of self-reflection, Kratos finally moves beyond blame to achieve true accountability, completing a character arc that has spanned decades of real-world time and countless in-game tragedies.
The most critical moments of this journey are his candid dialogues about his first family.
For the first time, when speaking of the events that led to their deaths, the name of Ares is secondary.
The narrative of being “tricked” is replaced by a narrative of personal failure.
When reflecting on his wife, Lysandra, he does not blame the gods for what happened.
He blames himself, confessing, “She was a good wife.
And I was not a good husband”.32
He admits that his own “hubris and ambition” made him deaf to her wisdom and blind to her needs long before Ares set his final trap.33
This is a monumental shift.
The Kratos of the Greek saga saw himself as a victim of divine machinations; the Kratos of
Valhalla sees himself as a flawed man whose own character defects laid the groundwork for his destruction.
This self-realization goes deeper than the single, horrific act in the temple.
Kratos comes to understand that the murder of his family was not the start of his corruption, but the horrifying climax of a corruption that had already taken root.
His relentless pursuit of power and glory as a Spartan general, his ambition, his refusal to listen—these were the true original sins.
Ares did not create the monster; he simply unleashed a monster that Kratos himself had been building for years.
His articulation of regret over Calliope is similarly transformed.
He recounts the story of abandoning her in Elysium not with rage at the gods for forcing the choice, but with the deep, aching grief of a father who has had to live with an impossible decision.28
He states plainly he wishes he had made the choice differently, that he would have traded all the years that followed for just a few more hours with her.28
This is the voice of pure loss, stripped of the anger that once defined it.
By finally confronting his past without the shield of rage or the crutch of blame, Kratos is able to integrate his trauma.
He accepts the totality of his failures and, in doing so, frees himself from being defined by them.
This allows him to accept the new role offered to him at the DLC’s conclusion: to once again be a God of War, but this time, a god of hope, wisdom, and control, a leader to be revered, not feared.
His entire, blood-soaked journey has been a process of redefining the very concept of “strength.” In Greece, strength was the power to dominate.
In Valhalla, he finally understands that true strength is accountability, vulnerability, and the wisdom to control one’s power.
The tragedy in Athena’s temple was the ultimate, horrifying lesson in the failure of his first definition of strength.
His life since has been a painful, cataclysmic journey toward discovering the second.
This final epiphany is what makes his redemption not only complete, but earned.
Works cited
- God of War (franchise) – Wikipedia, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_War_(franchise)
- Kratos (God of War) – Wikipedia, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratos_(God_of_War)
- Kratos tells about his first family Lysandra and Calliope – God of War Valhalla + original scenes – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP4OcquwhXo
- God of War: Kratos’ Pale Skin Is Actually His Family’s Ashes – CBR, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.cbr.com/god-of-war-kratos-pale-skin-ashes-playstation/
- Kratos Kills His Family – God of War 1 – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FU2i1hBdBQ
- Kratos is one of the worst video game character ever created. – God of War – GameFAQs, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/667703-god-of-war-ascension/65689042
- About God of War, how exactly is Kratos tricked into killing his family? : r/AskGames – Reddit, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/AskGames/comments/2nsc5m/about_god_of_war_how_exactly_is_kratos_tricked/
- Kratos Remembers His First Wife Lysandra in God of War – TikTok, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.tiktok.com/@kronoxlol/video/7433175451398442271
- What happened with Kratos’ daughter Calliope and wife Lysandra? : r/GodofWar – Reddit, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWar/comments/18zlhit/what_happened_with_kratos_daughter_calliope_and/
- Kratos Kills His Wife & Daughter Scene 4K ULTRA HD – GOD OF WAR PS5 – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhH5o9sRrGg
- So… Kratos kills his family to avenge his family? | GamesRadar+, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.gamesradar.com/so-kratos-kills-his-family-to-avenge-his-family/
- Many people might not know this but it’s explained in the god of war …, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWar/comments/13fb5s6/many_people_might_not_know_this_but_its_explained/
- GOD OF WAR THEORY: Kratos is been manipulated : r/GodofWar – Reddit, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWar/comments/xexgs9/god_of_war_theory_kratos_is_been_manipulated/
- Manipulation (psychology) – Wikipedia, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manipulation_(psychology)
- Psychological manipulation | EBSCO Research Starters, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/health-and-medicine/psychological-manipulation
- God of War HD / Kratos Makes a Deal with Ares – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdGd4bYXL7A
- Military deception – Wikipedia, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_deception
- Psychological warfare – Wikipedia, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare
- HOW did KRATOS’s skin turn WHITE – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I66HTh1B-MU
- How Kratos Turned White CINEMATIC SCENE | GOW PS5 – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOlKL2ShnT8
- Why Kratos’ White Ashes on His Skin are Fading Theory Explained – (God of War Lore), accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfoTVVi2wQc
- Is Kratos’ story supposed to be based off of Hercules? : r/GodofWar, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWar/comments/10x2twz/is_kratos_story_supposed_to_be_based_off_of/
- Kratos used to be a one-dimensional character improved by the new games – Reddit, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/122q0dp/kratos_used_to_be_a_onedimensional_character/
- So I understand why Kratos killed Ares for what he made him do to his family. But why did he decide to go after the rest of the Greek pantheon? : r/GodofWar – Reddit, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWar/comments/ekhems/so_i_understand_why_kratos_killed_ares_for_what/
- Kratos Doesn’t Regret Killing Hercules – God of War: Ragnarok Valhalla – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zFXCB6dfDg
- Is Kratos from God of War One-Dimensional During the Greek Era? – Reddit, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterDevelopment/comments/zibg5p/is_kratos_from_god_of_war_onedimensional_during/
- God Of War and Loss: Kratos and the Hero’s Journey Through Grief, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://taggs.geektherapy.org/talks/god-of-war-and-loss-kratos-and-the-heros-journey-through-grief/
- Kratos talks about Calliope, his Daughter [ALL Dialogue] | GoW Ragnarok Valhalla DLC [4K 60ᶠᵖˢ ] – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hq-_SEAqq8
- Kratos, Making a Better Father – The Culture HUD, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://culturehud.wordpress.com/kratos-making-a-better-father/
- Fatherhood and Trust in God of War – GateCrashers, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://gatecrashers.fan/2022/01/03/fatherhood-and-trust-in-god-of-war/
- I’m somewhat puzzled by Kratos’s teachings and treatment of his son Atreus. – God of War, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/191627-god-of-war/79860672
- Kratos talks about Lysandra, his 1st Wife [ALL Dialogue] | GoW Ragnarok Valhalla DLC [4K 60ᶠᵖˢ ] – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6XeX5zBAfE
- Kratos Tells Mimir About Lysandra God of War Ragnarök Valhalla – YouTube, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJFek5nxoB0
- Kratos talks about Calliope, his Daughter (ALL Dialogue) | GoW Ragnarok Valhalla DLC, accessed on August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vd3dZLAUA0






