Kratos Might Not Have Been Quite So Hard.

You're in pursuit of Zeus and the Gods of Olympus. Gonna rip their heads off and stuff. Ahead of you, a legion of skeletal enemies approach you. You dip into the sack resting uneasily on your shoulder and... Lob pixie dust at them.

Well it could have happened, as the iconic design for Kratos nearly wasn't so... iconic.

One of Sony Santa Monica's artists, Ken Feldman, has told Official Playstation Magazine (via CVG) that, yo, Kratos nearly wasn't so cool. In fact one design pitched him as a monk with a baby.
[quote]
“I think it took us a year-and-a-half to come up with Kratos,” said Feldman. “That was the most difficult thing. Everything had to be based around this character – the story, the weapons. The first guy we came up with was a little elf character, he was hysterical. His animations looked like Disney.</blockquote>

If we remember correctly, there's a little segment on the design of Kratos included as an extra on the first God Of War game. If you want to know more, you might want to hit that up.