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00:00This is our story.
00:02No.
00:05This is your story.
00:07Welcome to Mojo Plays, and the lore of God of War goes much deeper than simply the games,
00:12and there are some important tidbits even the most diehard God of War fans might have overlooked
00:17during the journey from Greece to the Nine Realms.
00:20There is much about me I would not have him know.
00:24Huh?
00:25So you value your privacy more than your son?
00:29I'm going to cut off your head now.
00:31Fair enough.
00:32Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified
00:36about our latest videos.
00:40A Failed Prototype
00:43Your mind is troubled.
00:46Your skills are still without equal.
00:50Do you have business with me?
00:52Ares and Alecto wanted a son who could topple Zeus without them having to do the patricide
00:58themselves.
00:59So, they got Orkos.
01:00But he wasn't vicious enough, so they instead made him Oath Keeper and outsourced the actual
01:06job to a Spartan with a worse temper.
01:08That new title was not meaningless either.
01:11As long as Orkos lived, Kratos' contract with Ares always had a keeper on the books.
01:16When Orkos asks to die in Ascension, it plays like a mercy scene because the writing wants
01:22you to feel it.
01:23But underneath that, it is contract law.
01:25If Kratos kills the Keeper, then the Oath has nobody left to enforce it.
01:30The Prototype failed twice.
01:32Once as a weapon, and again as the last official witness to a deal Kratos was never going to
01:37honor without finding a loophole.
01:40That loophole just happened to be straight through Orkos' chest.
01:43I was never the warrior my father wanted me to be.
01:47But please, all I ask, give me an honorable death.
01:55Giant Names
01:56Look, she's arguing with a bunch of giants.
02:03She knew giants?
02:05The shrine mural at the end of the game names the boy Loki, which is the part that naturally
02:10gets all the attention.
02:11However, it also names his father as Cruel Striker, which is one of the old tags for Forbauti,
02:18Loki's father in the myths.
02:20The paint is spelling a family tree, not just a twist for Atreus.
02:25It also hides Fae's other name, Null, which means needle, and is the reason why the homestead
02:31is wrapped in marked trees and fallen leaves instead of a fancy giant monument.
02:36Those trees were a stave, a working ward she kept around the house, and cutting them down
02:42for her pyre was not only a funeral, it also dropped the protection on purpose so the hideout
02:47would stop being hidden once she was gone.
02:49The stave's broken there.
02:54Did you cut those down?
02:58She hand-marked the tree she wished used for her pyre.
03:01Colossus' Power Drain
03:15The opening of God of War II looks like Zeus showing up to humble a loud Spartan, but what
03:21he actually does is siphon Kratos' godhood out and pour it into the Colossus of Rhodes, then
03:27make him fight that power wearing the city's face. The statue isn't just a random mythological
03:33prop. It's Kratos' resume turned against him, utilizing the same stolen strength to let him sit
03:39on a throne, now swinging back in bronze. That's why the fight feels personal even before the Blade
03:45of Olympus comes out. Because Zeus isn't just taking the title, he's handing Kratos a mirror the size
03:50of a harbor and daring him to break it. When the Colossus finally falls, the Godhood doesn't just
03:56politely return the power Kratos so desperately craved, instead quite literally crushing Kratos'
04:02plans of returning to the throne.
04:04Do you see, gods of Olympus? Do you need more proof than this?
04:11Eyes of Mimir
04:12Interesting.
04:22Very interesting.
04:24Mimir wasn't always a fixture of Norse mythology with a clever mouth. The games treat him as
04:29a Celtic wise man who went native, and his Bifrost eyes were a giant gift rather than an
04:35Aesir Company perk, and Odin taking one is usually remembered as the price of wisdom at the well.
04:41The uglier version is that Mimir tricked him at their first meeting, so naturally the All-Father's
04:47ego collected interest later with a knife. This is why the talking head on the belt can
04:52see paths other people can't, because his eyes were never human to begin with, they were
04:57infrastructure. When Kratos and Atreus cart him around like a talking lantern, they are walking
05:02around with borrowed giant work that Odin tried to monopolize for himself, like he did with any
05:07power in the Nine Realms.
05:09And those few others the Giants trusted, and right under Odin's nose, ho ho ho!
05:16Deimos cameo
05:17And while Kratos escaped the fate of the weaker children, his brother was not so lucky.
05:23The two once inseparable were now alone.
05:27God of War on the PS2 already had a nod to Kratos' brother Deimos in it if you unlocked Birth
05:32of the Beast.
05:33The images are easy to file as bonus menu texture, a child, a mark, a kidnapping that explains why
05:39Kratos looks like that, but the PSP title Ghost of Sparta turned that concept art into the whole campaign,
05:46with the same scar and the same Ares habit of collecting Spartan Boys for a prophecy.
05:50The first game didn't need Deimos on the critical path, but it still planted him, which is why the PSP
05:57entry feels less like a spin-off, and more like somebody finally opened a file the original disc had
06:02been sitting on. The Beast was not only the tattoos and ashes, it was the hint of a brother who
06:07was
06:08supposed to be the marked one, but wasn't.
06:14You let this happen to me! You were supposed to protect me!
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06:30Vanaheim Crater
06:37This feels familiar! What don't matter!
06:42Out in Vanaheim hides a crater of frozen lightning and a village that has been erased from the map
06:47in the most literal way possible. The game lets you treat it as scenery on the way to another realm
06:52tear or a raven, but stand there long enough and it reads like a weapon test that nobody thought to
06:58put in the journal, and suddenly Thor's comments about familiarity carry a deeper meaning. Ragnarok
07:04is full of optional ground that still belongs to the war, and this is one of the biggest examples
07:09that doesn't go out of its way to advertise itself. Something hit this place hard enough to stop time
07:14in the air and delete the people under it, and the campaign is content to let you walk past as
07:20if
07:20that were normal countryside. It was Faye who fought Thor in this valley. It was more than just a fight.
07:26It sounds like mom was beating Thor. Spear of Destiny
07:29In God of War 2, the Spear of Destiny is easy to treat as another pickup on the way to
07:35a bigger blade,
07:36but on the page of the official game tie-in novel, it is a fate weapon, or the kind of
07:41tool that can cut
07:42threads the loom is supposed to keep tidy. That's a significant difference between a shiny staff and the
07:48thing that lets Kratos do what Destiny's tapestry should forbid. Gaia's warning about it sits in
07:53the same family as her later silence about the blade of Olympus, because she knows what a weapon
07:58like that is for, and she also knows who is pointing it at the fates. If the spear can nick
08:04a
08:04thread, then Kratos reaching the loom is not only rage and climbing, but also him carrying the right
08:10kind of scissors. A fallen god. After the fall of Olympus, Kratos tries to drown the blades of chaos like
08:16a
08:16man putting down a rabid dog that refuses to stay dead, and they just keep coming back. The official
08:22comics pick up with him in Egypt, already famous enough that village is empty when the ghost of
08:27Sparta walks in. Toth shows up in more than one face, and Athena is still in the business of giving
08:34instructions. They tell him to pick the weapons up, which he begrudgingly does, and that's the bridge
08:40the games never let us play. The long stretch between a ruined Greece and a boat heading towards Midgard.
08:46The blades in 2018 are the same chain he failed to retire, returned with divine paperwork attached,
08:52and proof that we can never truly outrun our past. A decade of rule.
08:57Kratos, the once mortal warrior, became the new god of war. However, Kratos soon found himself alone on Olympus,
09:08shunned by his fellow gods.
09:10God of War 2 is easy to remember as the next morning after the first game's ascension to the throne,
09:16but the gap is a lot uglier than that. Ghost of Sparta and Betrayal sit in a decade plus timeline
09:22of
09:22Kratos actually holding the job on Olympus, which means 2 is a failed reign rather than a quick sequel
09:29hook. He had time to be a god in public, time to be hated for it, and time for Zeus
09:34to decide the grand
09:35experiment was over. This is why the Colossus opening feels like an assassination more than a prologue,
09:41since the decade spanning throne years were easy to flatten into a montage. You don't just ambush a
09:47tourist that theatrically. You ambush a colleague who has been sitting in the chair long enough to make
09:52enemies, which is what makes Zeus' hatred feel so personal.
09:58It did not have to be this way, my son. This path is of your choosing.
10:05The Family Pet
10:08It's okay, boy. You're okay. I know. I missed you too.
10:15On the walk that opens the Norse era, Atreus talks about Yofi, Fae's grifalcon, and the only place she
10:22gets an actual proper introduction is not a big campfire cutscene, it's the official 2018 novel,
10:28early on while the house is still raw from the funeral. Chapter 3 has Atreus remembering the bird
10:34the way a kid remembers a parent's animal. Fae would call and Yofi would come, while when Atreus called,
10:39she would not. After Fae dies, the Falcon goes into hiding, and that's the whole character in a few
10:45lines, which sits right next to the hunt and homestead stretch the game opens with. The disc
10:50itself keeps her in the margins, while the book is where the name, the species, and the snub live on
10:56the page. You're a good boy. A brave boy. Gag Order
11:03How I have missed you, Kratos. What treachery is this? Another trick of the gods? No, my son.
11:14It is me. Callisto's refusal to tell Kratos and Deimos who their father was gets read as mystery box
11:21writing, while in the text it's instead a commandment. She wasn't allowed to name Zeus, which means the
11:27who is your dad plot is court policy rather than a writer forgetting to leave a footnote in the index.
11:33That gag order is the reason why the family tragedy keeps arriving as raids and marks and missing
11:39children instead of a dinner conversation, because Sparta can raise the boys, but it can't advertise
11:46the bloodline. Ares collects a son because the official story is incomplete even to the rest of
11:51Olympus. Zeus can stay a rumor in his own house because the secrecy is the point and why the later
11:57reveal lands as a contract fulfilled, not as a twist simply pulled from nowhere.
12:02Your father forbid me to tell you. My father? Who is my father?
12:11Tyr's Weapons
12:13What'd you find?
12:17Enough distraction. Do not forget why we are here.
12:22Tyr's Vault in 2018 was more than a room hidden inside a temple. It's where the
12:27reboot admits the Nine Realms aren't the world's whole map. Inside the collection is a kopesh that
12:32belongs on an Egyptian belt and a makrohuit that belongs in Mesoamerica, with the Nodachi
12:38later making the same point about Japan. Those are more than simple souvenir skins.
12:43Their travel hardware from the pantheons Kratos hasn't visited on screen yet, left behind by a god
12:49whose job was walking into other people's wars and trying to leave with a treaty instead of a throne.
12:55Fallen God had already put Egypt on paper, but it was this vault that hinted at the many pantheons
13:00that still existed years before Tyr gave Kratos a live demonstration of his weapons prowess in the
13:05depths of Valhalla. I brought something else to keep things interesting. You're not the only one with
13:10weapons from far off lands, you know. Game logic. Sony published a mobile god of war game that Santa
13:17Monica doesn't treat as canon, which would be easy to ignore if the thing were only a cheap side
13:22scroller. However, it also has Kratos roasting the logic of wave spawns and locked up women like he
13:28had somehow read his own design documents. That's the most interesting part of the game. A first party
13:34release was allowed to parody the series' worst habits out loud and then slip away almost completely
13:40out of the timeline. Somewhere in the catalog is an official Kratos who knows the camera is cheating
13:46and decided to say so. While the mainline games remain straight-faced, the forgotten phone game
13:51was most certainly not. Faye's defection. If she had a plan for us, I'd trust it. Whatever it is.
14:00The shrine in Jotunheim is missing its last panel because Frey smashed it knowing what the giants had
14:05painted for her family and decided a mural was not going to walk her husband and son into a death
14:11that
14:11had already been colored in. That's pure defection from her own people, not an interior decorating
14:17decision. Laufei spends the first Norse game as little more than ashes that carry real weight. But
14:23this was her as a political actor, breaking the giant scripture so the future could stay unwritten
14:29long enough for the two most important and stubborn people in her life to improvise. The remaining images
14:34on the wall are still a dire warning, but the absent one represents a choice. It's only when Atreus
14:41wants the full picture, it's revealed he's asking for the page she already refused to leave for him and
14:46Kratos. It's not right. That can't be what happens. No. No, no.
15:00This isn't real. Broken Hephaestus. Leave me be. I tell you, I have paid the price.
15:10Calm yourself, Smith God. After Kratos opened Pandora's box, Zeus didn't only panic about hope
15:17getting loose, he went straight to Hephaestus and beat the rest of the secret out of him,
15:21revealing Pandora was the key to the Flame of Olympus. That's the conversation that
15:26ruins the Smith, and by the time God of War III lets you walk into the workshop,
15:31his body has already paid the price for trying to keep a secret from the King of Olympus.
15:35Kratos thinks he is arriving as a customer looking for a weapon, while Hephaestus has been living
15:40with the answers Zeus extracted for years, which makes the latter betrayal hit harder once that order
15:46is clear. Zeus left him wrecked in the wake of the box opening, then left a frightened father
15:52sitting on that information until the ghost of Sparta showed up, asking for help he was never free to give.
16:11Lost pages of Mimir's vision. Before God of War 2018 launched, Sony put out companion text under the
16:18name Lost Pages of Norse Myth, and left them sitting next to the Call of the Wild's material.
16:24It's first party writing, not fanfic, and utilizes the same myth well Mimir later talks about once he's
16:30ahead on Kratos' belt. Most of it was marketing that disappeared when the campaign ended, which makes
16:36it feel unofficial even though Santa Monica signed off on the tone. The pages introduced the new setting
16:41as a place with history, grudges, and homework. Not just a snowy coat of paint over grease so that by
16:47the
16:47time the boat leaves the shore in the game, some of those names had already been public,
16:52meaning the reboot's lore clock starts much earlier than the first axe throw. Playing with Fate.
16:57There is no power greater than the Sisters of Fate. If you challenge us, you will die.
17:07The God of War 2 novel by William M. Vardman adds an important detail the game never states outright.
17:13The Sisters of Fate keep changing Kratos' thread for the simple reason that they think it's funny.
17:19Which means that Kratos reaching the loom is not just him fighting to change his destiny,
17:23but also the Fates getting bored and editing their own work badly. The disc treats them like some kind
17:29of unbreakable law, while the book treats them like sloppy showrunners. Once you have that version,
17:35Lachesis and Atropos look less like perfect destiny and more like two people who got overzealous in the
17:41editing room and are now left with the story missing its cohesive ending and a new fan-favorite
17:46character making edits in real time.
17:55In the Fallen God comic, Kratos doesn't pick a new boss fight with an Egyptian deity. Instead,
18:01he gets Toth, a judge who talks him into having a purpose after Olympus falls apart.
18:06This later becomes the official bridge between Greece and the eventual boat toward Midgard,
18:11and the games never let you play it. Later, Mamir says the Egyptian gods are not as simple as good
18:17or
18:17evil, and that line matches this comic. Toth is not there to bleed on a mosaic. He's simply there
18:23to sit Kratos down and tell him what he needs to hear. File Fallen God as extra art, and The
18:29Tired
18:29Man in the 2018 Woods comes out of nowhere if you like, but the comic dictated the posture Kratos
18:35gained before 2018, simply because somebody made him pick the blades back up and keep walking.
18:41Tyr's Valhalla technicality.
18:56Garm ripped Tyr's arm off, while another pantheon's underworld helped him get it back, and Valhalla
19:02still counted the whole incident as a death, which is how a living god ends up walking those halls on
19:08a technicality.
19:09Odin used the same place and treated it like a briefing he had already written, but Tyr used it
19:15like a loophole that cost him a limb and then filed the injury as a visit. That fine print is
19:20what Valhalla
19:21is built on, because the realm cares more about what the paperwork says happened more than whether the
19:27body got repaired somewhere else. The missing arm is not just a silhouette, it's the proof he already died
19:33on paper, which is also why the DLC can drop him in the maze without inventing a new excuse for
19:39the door
19:39to open. Each choice we make shapes our world.
19:45I see the truth of it.
19:47Killer First Date.
19:50Time is running out, my love, and there is much to do.
19:55Ragnarok never gives Fae and Kratos a proper meet-cute, and Mamir's version is that they ran into each other
20:02armed, blade against axe, and recognized a peer instead of a corpse. Their marriage starts there, not at a quiet
20:10dinner,
20:10which makes the Shroud and the Mountain of Ashes the second chapter rather than the whole story.
20:15It's easy to remember her only as the funeral and the spark that ignited the father and son journey,
20:21but the first meeting is two people with a body count deciding not to finish the fight. And that
20:26ceasefire is how you get a house in the woods and a kid instead of another body in the snow.
20:31Their
20:32romance was the real deal. It just began like a boss fight both sides were experienced enough to walk
20:38away from.
20:38You will always be a part of me. I will always be a part of you.
20:44And when you are gone, that part of me dies as well.
20:47What's your favorite piece of hidden lore in the God of War series you think everyone else overlooked?
20:53Share your findings in the comments.
20:55Did you enjoy this video? Check out these other clips for MojoPlays,
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