Gods, thunder, marble and gold. The classical setting is among the most reused in the category, and it is worth asking what work it performs, because it is not decorative in the way it appears.
How to make a large number feel proportionate. A game whose stated ceiling runs to thousands of times the stake needs a frame in which such an outcome seems appropriate, and divine intervention supplies one more readily than a farmyard does.
The theme is therefore a calibration device. It sets an expectation about the scale of what might happen before any figure has been read.
Primes attention toward the top of the paytable. A player arriving through imagery of thunderbolts and descending gold is disposed to notice the maximum and to skim the ordinary tiers, which is the opposite of a useful reading order.
Read the table before playing a round. Opening the pay-anywhere grid and going straight to the lowest symbol at the lowest count band starts the assessment where the return actually lives, rather than where the artwork points.
It is a small reordering and it changes what gets remembered from the panel.
Because it is understood without explanation across every market a game is sold into, and it carries no licensing cost. A studio needing recognisable grandeur cheaply has a short list of options and this is at the top of it.
That the studio wanted an association with large rare outcomes, which is a weak signal about intended volatility and no signal at all about the actual configuration. It reflects a marketing decision that may or may not match what was built.
At the end, as a preference. Whether the setting appeals is a real consideration and worth honouring — but it belongs after the numbers rather than before them, because in front of the numbers it changes which ones get read.