Kratos Falling

About

Kratos Falling, also known as Kratos Jumping Off a Cliff, is the opening scene from 2005's God of War where the character Kratos drops off a steep cliff, attempting suicide after explaining how the gods have abandoned him. As early as 2020, the scene became the subject of memes, particularly on YouTube, including image macros, where the scene is used to joke about people jumping into things.

Origin

In 2005, God of War was released on the PlayStation 2. In the video game's opening cinematic, Kratos attempts suicide by stepping off a cliff. He dives down the cliff headfirst into the rapids below (shown below).

On May 1st, 2020, YouTuber^[1] DanizinKGM posted an edit of the scene, adding crying emojis to the bottom of the screen and setting it to "Dusk Till Dawn" by Zayn and Sia, garnering over 114,000 views in two years (shown below). This is the earliest known edit of the scene.

Spread

The scene became the increased subject of memes over the following years, gaining particular prevalence in 2022. On July 7th, 2022, Redditor Psychological-Ice519 posted a meme using the clip to the /r/Chadposting^[2] subreddit captioned, "Unsupervised 2 year olds jumping into the 6ft pool," garnering over 2,300 upvotes in a month. The video was posted to YouTube^[3] the next day, garnering over 39,600 views in the same span of time (shown below).

On July 18th, YouTuber^[4] Thiccinator posted a version of the meme about testing for fall damage in a video game, garnering over 36,000 views in a month (shown below, left). On August 9th, YouTuber^[5] Sebito posted a version of the meme referencing Minecraft, garnering over 3,700 views in a week (shown below, right). On August 14th, YouTuber^[6] Lessons in Meme Culture posted a video explaining the meme, garnering over 110,000 views in a day.

Template / Green Screen

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References