When Toby Gard designed the settings for tomb Raider he initially imagined a male lead character with a whip and a hat. Core Design founder Jeremy Heath Smith characterized the design as derivative of Indiana Jones, and asked for more originality. Knowing his male co-workers' preference for female game characters in Virtual Fighter, he recast the personality as a South Yank girl, Laura Cruz, who evolved into Lara Croft after Core Design requested a more "UK friendly" name ; the name was chosen from similar-sounding English names found in an English telephone directory.
