The Lara Croft we all know and love wasn't always the woman Core Design envisioned when creating Tomb Raider. In fact, the original Tomb Raider protagonist was supposed to be a male Indiana Jones clone in the early stages of development. Fortunately for us, and Lara, the concept hit a little to close to the Lucasfilm character, and the team was forced to make some big changes to its action adventure game.

Over the course of the last twenty years, Lara Croft has established herself as not only one of the most iconic leading ladies in video games, but as one of the most memorable gaming protagonists of all time. But before Core Design ever thought to put a British aristocrat into an aqua tank top and hiking boots, the development team had quite a few different ideas for just how Lara should have been. None of those ideas ending up seeing the light of day, but clearly the decision to keep reworking Tomb Raider's protagonist into the woman we all know today was the right one.

It was a long strange journey to find the perfect protagonist, and we still can't quite believe just how randomly her name was decided, but sometimes it takes a little randomness and a little luck to find success.

Every week, we’ll bring you a new episode of #RealTrueFact, where we’ll examine some of gaming’s greatest questions, myths and mysteries to determine if they are indeed real, true facts.

Narrated by Rachel Edidin

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