Lara Croft

Toby Gard, the lead graphic artist for the original Tomb Raider, is credited with designing Lara Croft. His initial concept was for essentially a male Indiana Jones clone, but after going through several iterations, Gard was inspired when he noticed that many of his male coworkers would choose to play as the female characters in Virtua Fighter, so he decided to make the “leading man” a woman instead. She was planned as a South American named Laura Cruz, but this was later changed to a British woman whose name was selected from a phone book.

Lara Croft is an intelligent, highly athletic adventurer and archaeologist who travels the world in search of hidden treasures, frequently facing off against dinosaurs, mercenaries, grave robbers, and other dangers. She is always presented as the daughter of an English noble family; however, three similar but slightly contradictory versions of Lara’s youth have been presented over the course of the series.

Lara Croft is one of the more popular video game characters, and in addition to the game series, has appeared in comic books, feature-length movies, animated shorts, and novels. She has been listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “most successful human video game heroine”. Because of her popularity, her portrayal both in the games and in media campaigns has come under scrutiny.