In 1996, Tomb Raider introduced the world to Lara Croft. She was a revolutionary force—a smart, capable, and undeniably female protagonist in a world of space marines and plumbers. The game was a smash hit, but it was the sequel, 1997’s Tomb Raider II, that truly detonated the “Lara-mania” bomb. This wasn’t just a sequel; it was a coronation.

Tomb Raider II took the solid foundation of the original and amplified it to a global scale. It was bigger, brasher, more action-packed, and, thanks to a relentless marketing machine, absolutely inescapable. Lara Croft didn’t just become a video game mascot; she became one of the most recognizable faces of 1990s “Cool Britannia” and a global pop culture phenomenon. But how? It wasn’t just one thing. It was a perfect storm of technical leaps, brilliant design, and savvy marketing that cemented her status as an icon.

Here are the top 10 ways Tomb Raider II (1997) made Lara Croft a permanent cultural icon.

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1. The Great Wall: A Blockbuster Opening Statement

The first Tomb Raider began in the snowy, claustrophobic caves of Peru. It was mysterious and isolating. Tomb Raider II rips up that playbook from the first frame. The game opens on The Great Wall of China. It’s a vast, sunlit, and iconic real-world landmark. This choice was a powerful statement of intent: this adventure would be a globetrotting, blockbuster affair.

Players guided Lara as she scaled the ancient wonder, a feat that felt massive in scale for 1997. The level taught players the new moves, like climbing ladders, but it was all a setup for one of the greatest “gotcha” moments in gaming history. After navigating traps and dispatching tigers, Lara drops into a seemingly quiet, misty valley. You round a corner, and suddenly, two Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaurs charge out of the fog.

It was shocking, completely unexpected, and utterly brilliant. It defied logic (a T-Rex in China?), but it didn’t matter. It was pure, unfiltered spectacle. This single moment, combining a real-world wonder with a prehistoric monster, set the new, over-the-top tone for the entire game and became an iconic, “you had to be there” gaming memory for millions.

2. The Venice Canals: Selling a Fantasy of Action and Glamour

If the Great Wall was the blockbuster opening, the Venice levels were the stylish, sophisticated second act that defined the new Lara. This sequence was a masterpiece of atmosphere. You weren’t just in a tomb; you were in Venice. You explored moonlit canals, grand opera houses, and submerged Italianate buildings.

But the real star of this segment was the speedboat. For the first time, Lara wasn’t just running and jumping; she was in command of a vehicle. Piloting that speedboat through the narrow canals, leaping over chained-off waterways, and engaging in running gun battles with armed mafia goons felt like stepping directly into a James Bond film.

This was a critical evolution of her character. She wasn’t just an archaeologist; she was an international action hero, equally at home in a dusty tomb or at the helm of a luxury vehicle. The blend of exotic glamour and high-octane action in the Venice levels created a powerful fantasy that became central to her iconic image.

3. The Ponytail: A Small Detail That Was a Huge Technical Leap

It sounds trivial today, but in 1997, Lara Croft’s ponytail was a technical marvel. In the first game, her hair was tied in a tight bun, a static object “glued” to her head. The polygon-based 3D graphics of the era simply couldn’t handle the complex physics of moving hair.

For Tomb Raider II, the developers at Core Design dedicated themselves to making her character model more dynamic and alive. The result was a free-flowing, articulated ponytail. It swayed when she ran, fanned out when she jumped, and floated weightlessly underwater.

This wasn’t just a cosmetic upgrade. It was a visible, tangible symbol of the sequel’s technical superiority. It made Lara feel less like a collection of polygons and more like a living, breathing person. This dynamic ponytail became so integral to her silhouette that it’s now impossible to imagine her without it. It was a small detail that had a massive impact on her believability and iconic look.

4. Croft Manor and the Butler: A Playground for Mischief

The original game featured Lara’s home as a tutorial level, but Tomb Raider II expanded it into a true playground. Croft Manor was now a sprawling English mansion complete with a hedge maze, a full gym, and an assault course. It was a brilliant way to let players practice Lara’s complex moves in a safe, quiet environment.

But the most famous addition was Winston, the aging, tea-tray-holding butler. He would follow Lara everywhere she went, his teacup rattling as he shuffled along behind her. He was slow, ever-present, and slightly creepy. Players, naturally, wanted to find a way to escape him.

In doing so, the community discovered one of the most famous secrets in the game: you could lead Winston into the manor’s giant walk-in freezer and then jump back out, locking him inside. Shutting the door on the poor, shivering butler became a universal, hilarious, and slightly sadistic rite of passage for every Tomb Raider II player. This small, emergent piece of gameplay gave Lara a mischievous personality and created a legendary gaming moment shared by fans worldwide.

5. The Maria Doria: A Masterclass in Horror and Atmosphere

While much of Tomb Raider II was high-octane action, the Maria Doria levels proved the developers could also craft world-class suspense. After being captured, Lara is stripped of all her weapons and thrown into a cell aboard an offshore rig. The first part of the escape is pure, tense survival.

But this gives way to the main event: a series of levels set in the capsized, sunken ocean liner, the Maria Doria. This was a profound shift in tone. The game became a full-blown survival horror experience. You were exploring a terrifying, upside-down world of flooded ballrooms and rusted-out cabins, all while the ship groaned under the pressure.

The enemies here weren’t tigers; they were giant barracudas, patrolling sharks, and menacing scuba divers whose first sign of approach was the terrifying, amplified sound of their own breathing. Armed with only a harpoon gun, players had to navigate this dark, claustrophobic, and predator-filled labyrinth. It was a masterful, and truly frightening, change of pace that showcased the game’s incredible range.

6. The Shift to Human Enemies: Becoming an Action Hero

The first Tomb Raider was largely a game of isolation. Lara’s main adversaries were animals: bats, wolves, bears, and dinosaurs. It was a person-versus-nature adventure. Tomb Raider II made a deliberate and dramatic shift by placing the focus on human enemies.

From the very first level, Lara was in a desperate race against a shadowy Italian cult, the Fiamma Nera. This meant that almost every level was populated with armed, intelligent human foes. She fought mafia thugs in Venice, rig workers, and heavily armed cult members in Tibet.

This had a profound effect on the gameplay and Lara’s character. The game became less about exploration and more about action, feeling closer to a third-person shooter. Lara was no longer just a clever explorer; she was a stone-cold killer, a two-fisted action hero who would dispatch dozens of enemies without a second thought. This “take no prisoners” attitude, combined with her new, deadlier arsenal (like the M-16 and Grenade Launcher), became a defining pillar of her ’90s icon status.

7. The Tibetan Foothills and the Snowmobile

Just as the speedboat defined the Venice levels, the snowmobile defined the Tibetan Foothills. After surviving the sunken ship, Lara travels to a remote monastery in the Himalayas. The levels opened up again, swapping claustrophobic hallways for vast, snowy canyons and ice caves.

The snowmobile was the key to navigating this new, massive environment. It was fast, thrilling, and, in a brilliant touch, some were even armed with machine guns. Players found themselves in high-speed chases, launching the vehicle over massive chasms in a way that felt impossibly epic.

Like the speedboat, the snowmobile reinforced the fantasy of Lara as the ultimate adventurer. She could pilot anything. She was at home in any environment. The image of Lara, in her bomber jacket, carving through the snow on her snowmobile is one of the most enduring marketing and in-game images from the entire classic Tomb Raider era.

8. The Face Magazine: Transcending the “Gaming Ghetto”

This is perhaps the single most important moment in Lara’s journey from game character to cultural icon. In June 1997, months before Tomb Raider II was even released, Lara Croft was the cover star of The Face.

This cannot be overstated. The Face was the absolute bible of ’90s style, music, and “Cool Britannia” culture. It wasn’t a gaming magazine; it was a high-fashion and pop culture institution. Placing a “virtual” person on its cover—treating her with the same cultural reverence as Blur, the Spice Girls, or Kate Moss—was a watershed moment.

It signaled that Lara Croft was no longer just for gamers. She was a fashion icon, a “girl power” symbol, and a legitimate celebrity in her own right. This single cover, and the “cyberbimbo vs. feminist icon” debate it sparked, moved her into the mainstream cultural conversation in a way no video game character had ever managed before.

9. The “Larazade” and Live-Action Model Marketing Blitz

The marketing for Tomb Raider II was a full-scale invasion. The publisher, Eidos, knew they had a star, and they put her everywhere. The most famous example was the crossover with the energy drink Lucozade, which temporarily rebranded as “Larazade”. This put her face in the hands of millions of people, in corner shops and supermarkets across the UK. She was also the star of high-budget TV commercials for the drink, showing her out-adventuring her rivals.

Eidos also doubled down on bringing Lara to life by hiring official live-action models. While the first game had a model, the promotion for Tomb Raider II was spearheaded by Rhona Mitra. Mitra adopted the accent, the attitude, and the gear, appearing at trade shows and for photoshoots. This brilliantly blurred the line between fantasy and reality. Was Lara Croft a game character, or was she a real person? This aggressive, transmedia marketing strategy made her a ubiquitous and inescapable presence in 1997.

10. The “Nude Code” Myth and the Developer’s Response

In the early days of the internet, few rumors were as persistent as the Tomb Raider “nude code.” The urban legend, which started with the first game, claimed that a secret button combination would remove Lara’s clothes. It was, of course, completely false, a fantasy born from a ’90s-era obsession with the character’s design.

The developers at Core Design were well aware of this rumor. Instead of simply ignoring it, they decided to have the last laugh in Tomb Raider II. They secretly included a code—a long, complex series of movements—that, when entered, would do the exact opposite of the rumor. It wouldn’t remove Lara’s clothes; it would make her instantly explode into a pile of polygons.

This was a brilliant, cheeky, and meta-response. It was the creators playfully poking fun at the obsession surrounding their character, a virtual “no” that cemented its own legendary status within the community. It perfectly captured the strange, uncharted territory of digital celebrity that Lara Croft was the first to navigate.

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Further Reading

For those who want to dive deeper into the history of Lara, 1990s gaming, and the cultural forces that created her, these books are a fantastic place to start:

1. Lara’s Book: Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider Phenomenon by Douglas Coupland
2. The Ultimate History of Video Games, Vol. 1 & 2 by Steven L. Kent
3. Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner
4. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier

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