Never has there been a main character more anti-hero than Kratos from God of War. The character hasn’t even left his position be ambiguous; instead, we can easily say he’s not supposed to be a good guy. Time and again, Kratos has demonstrated tropes found in villains, and it is only because he’s the player character that people don’t see him that way.
We’re here to present you those instances where there can be no argument that Kratos was the bad guy. These 10 times show Kratos at his worst and prove he was supposed to be the true villain of the God of War series.
10 Abandoning The World (God Of War: Chains Of Olympus)
When Kratos figured out he could live with Calliope in Elysium forever, he decided to forego his mission and stay there. Despite knowing that staying in Elysium would mean all the humans would be without the sun, Kratos had no care for that.
He would’ve been content with the gods perishing had Persephone not pointed out that Elysium would also be destroyed. This meant he only stopped Persephone out of his selfish love for his daughter, not because that was the right thing to do. Had Elysium been spared, then the entire world would’ve died seeing as Kratos had decided to abandon everyone.
9 Slaughtering Most Of Greece (God Of War)
The story began with Kratos being a full-on bad guy. In the first game, we got flashbacks to how Kratos used to be, which was a bloody tyrant who only wanted to kill and maim his opponents. You’d think this would have been removed from his list of guilty actions, but we saw later that Kratos never actually regretted this.
His guilt and nightmares were only about killing his family, not of the countless lives he’d taken. Had his wife and daughter not been slain, then Kratos would have merrily continued killing people left and right with no conscience troubling him at all.
8 Taking An Innocent Life (God Of War)
This was meant to be a test by the gods to see who had the utmost will to get to Pandora’s Box, but it was Kratos’ enjoyment of the occasion that made him a sick man. In Asian and European versions of God of War, Kratos was shown with a smile on his face when he realized he needed to burn a man alive to progress further.
Near the end of the maze, there was a corpse of a man who had killed himself because he couldn’t sacrifice his humanity to take an innocent’s life; but for Kratos, this was merely a point of amusement.
7 Starting A War (God Of War II)
You might sympathize with Kratos at the end of God of War, where the gods refused to take his nightmares away, turning him into a bitter individual; however, that was still no excuse to start a global war in contempt of the gods.
When God of War II began, Kratos was shown to be an even worse god than Ares had been, and this forced Zeus’ hand in betraying Kratos. If you think about it, Zeus was right in trying to kill Kratos, seeing as the latter was openly waging war on the world and slaughtering thousands of innocents.
6 Killing Athena And Not Caring About It (God Of War II)
At the end of God of War II, we saw for the first time where Kratos was distraught at having killed someone when he accidentally took Athena’s life. And yet, when Athena’s spirit came back to him in God of War III, Kratos didn’t even initially give her the time of day.
Instead, he simply told her to be quick with her words and that he wasn’t going to apologize for killing her since he wasn’t aiming for her. This showed that Kratos really didn’t care about anyone other than his thirst for vengeance, and even an ally was of no importance to him.
5 Wanting To Kill Pandora (God Of War III)
Initially, Kratos straight up ignored Pandora when the latter asked for his help in freeing her; after he found out she was needed to get the box, Kratos began looking for her. One would’ve thought Kratos really did care for her, but once he had Pandora with him, Kratos openly told her he had no intention of freeing her.
This meant that his initial plan was to throw Pandora in the Flame of Olympus. We’re talking about burning a child alive here, in case you don’t get the severity of the moment! It was only when he found Pandora to be reminiscent of his own daughter that Kratos didn’t want to kill her, not because she was a child in general.
4 Sacrificing The Spartan Warrior (God Of War II)
When Kratos was on his way over to the Sisters of Fate, he came across a dead end where he needed the Golden Fleece to progress further. He found its location but didn’t know exactly where it was. It was here he found a wounded Spartan soldier, whom he picked up under the guise of assisting him.
It was in a couple of moments we realized Kratos intended to use this poor man as the crank of sorts to hold a lever in place while he scrambled into the door that partially opened. The poor man was brutally crushed to a pulp, all because Kratos wanted a way forward.
3 Destroying Time (God Of War II)
The Sisters of Fate constantly told Kratos he was going on a destructive path by trying to alter time, but the big guy had no care for their words and ended up killing all three of them. As it happened, the sisters were right, as Kratos seriously messed up the timelines by taking the Titans with him to the future.
Not only that, with the death of the sisters, all of time was up in shambles seeing as there was no one left to take care of it. This meant that Kratos had effectively destroyed time itself just so he could go in the past for a fight with his dad.
2 Destroying The World (God Of War III)
Even if there were no consequences in taking the lives of the sisters, Kratos did just about end the Greek world by the conclusion of God of War III. He didn’t care what effect it would have on the world, as Poseidon’s death meant everything was underwater; Hades’ death meant that all the souls were flying aimlessly; Zeus’ death resulted in the skies themselves being scorched.
And what did Kratos do in order to make up for it? He simply up and went over to the Nordic mythology world. All in all, Kratos cast the world in absolute ruin, then hitched a ride to another world in order to escape from his own mess.
1 Starting Ragnarok (God Of War)
He was more sedate and responsible in PS4’ God of War, but even here Kratos began Ragnarok, the end of all gods. To be fair, it wasn’t his intention this time to go out and cause the end of days, but does anyone care about motive when apocalypse has arrived?
This cemented to us that, wherever Kratos went, only death and calamity followed. Just by having another child, Kratos effectively began a chain of events that will see his son bringing down all the Norse gods, making him the overall antagonist of the series whether he wanted to be or not.