Imagine booting up God of War and hearing Atreus call out, “Dominus.” That’s the alternate gaming history we narrowly avoided — and it’s all because the team at Santa Monica Studio couldn’t stop cracking Domino’s Pizza jokes.
Kratos (Credits: Santa Monica Studio)
David Jaffe, director of the original God of War trilogy, recently released a video diving into the deep-dish origin story of gaming’s angriest Spartan. As it turns out, Sony’s biggest franchise hero almost went by a completely different name.
Why “Dominus” Became A Pizza Joke
Originally, the character was called “Dominus,” a name Jaffe loved because it made the hero sound dominant and strong. Unfortunately, it also made him sound like a certain pizza chain. “The people on the team started making Domino’s Pizza jokes,” Jaffe said. “Every single time someone said Dominus, someone inevitably would yell out, ’30 minutes or free,’ or, ‘Get the door, it’s Dominus.'”
After roughly the fiftieth pizza gag, Jaffe knew the name was doomed. “The writing was on the wall. Dominus was dead and we needed a new name for our hero.”
The Yellow Highlighter List That Missed Kratos
Someone at the studio printed out a big list of Ancient Greek baby names, and Jaffe went through it with a yellow highlighter marking the standouts. “The names that I highlighted were not great,” he admitted, pointing at contenders like Julius, Parthenius, and Maksym. Nothing felt quite right.
Eventually, marketing lead Susan Panico pitched the name Kratos — and the team loved it. The name stuck, and the rest is PlayStation history.
The twist? Jaffe found the original highlighted baby-name list among his old design documents last year. Hidden among the names, unhighlighted, there it was: Kratos. “We had Sony’s biggest franchise hero in our hands the entire time and we didn’t even know it,” he said. “Which I guess goes to show you how much of success in games is just luck, timing, and, in this case, marketing.”
Jaffe had previously mentioned the Dominus naming story in passing, but this is the first time he’s gone into full detail — including the pizza-chain comedy that killed it.
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Source: IGN — read the full story there.
