25 Interesting Facts About Game of Thrones – Part 3 (Spoilers)

Here is part 3 of Interesting Facts About Game of Thrones. For part 1, click here. For part 2, click here.

1-5 Interesting Facts About GoT

1. After Jon Snow’s apparent death in the season five finale of Game of Thrones, Kit Harrington said that the only person he told the character’s fate to was a police officer in order to get out of a speeding ticket.

2. After filming Ned Stark’s death scene for Game of Thrones, Sean Bean played football with the replica of his decapitated head.

3. The creators of Game of Thrones admitted that they thought the show’s original pilot was a disaster, and 90% of the episode had to be reshot.

4. A replica of Glamdring, Gandalf’s sword from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is one of the blades used to create the Iron Throne on Game of Thrones.

5. Actresses trying out for parts on Game of Thrones have been asked to pretend to masturbate a male character sitting beside them as part of their audition. – Source

6-10 Interesting Facts About GoT

6. Kristian Nairn, the actor who plays “Hodor” in Game of Thrones is also a progressive house DJ and used to be the resident DJ for a gay club in Belfast. He also went on a US tour called “Rave of Thrones.” – Source

7. Bethesda Softworks was actually offered to make an official open world Game of Thrones game in 2011, but turned it down in order to make Skyrim.

8. A bunch of physicists wrote an academic paper explaining why the Westeros winter is so long and unpredictable in Game of Thrones. It concluded that the world of ASOIAF orbits a binary star system.

9. According to estimates from the government of Northern Ireland, the filming of Game of Thrones scenes there has benefited the Northern Ireland economy by £65 million.

10. For dragon screams, Game of Thrones uses the sounds of two tortoises mating.

11-15 Interesting Facts About GoT

11. Charles Dance dressed an actual stag carcass on-camera for Tywin Lannister’s first scene. Dance was shown the procedure the previous day by a butcher.

12. The showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss said the production of the show is a massive undertaking. The production lasts the entire year and they shoot the show like a 10-hour movie. Season 5 alone was shot in 5 countries, on 151 sets, for 240 days, having 166 cast members, over 1,000 crew members and over 5,000 extras.

13. George R.R. Martin was inspired to write the novel series “A Song of Ice and Fire” after years of writing for restrictive television budgets, and deliberately wrote the series to be nearly unfilmable. After the success of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) Martin was approached to license the novels into a series of films, one project was proposed using only Daenerys’ story line, and another project proposed only including the conflict between the Starks and Lannisters.

14. With winning a total of 12 Emmys in 2015, the show took home more Emmys in a single year than any other show, surpassing The West Wing (1999) (9).

15. Author George R.R. Martin was asked if he had a resolution or ending to the seemingly endless conflict. He jokingly replied that the next book would just be a description of a cloud of dust or snow being driven by the wind across a vast graveyard full of tombstones.

16-20 Interesting Facts About GoT

16. Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson was the third actor to take on the role of Gregor Clegane (aka “The Mountain”), a role previously played by Conan Stevens in the first season, and Ian Whyte in the second season. Whyte had a brief appearance in the third season premiere, though as a different character.

17. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss stated when the show began they set a rule of “no prophecies, dreams, or flashbacks”. All three rules were eventually broken, with the inclusion of Bran’s dreams of the three-eyed raven, a prophecy from Quaithe for Daenerys, and a flashback scene to Cersei’s childhood.

18. The first season used Northern Inuit dogs, a type specifically bred for wolf-like appearance, to stand in for the direwolves (the Stark’s house sigil). However, since direwolves are known to be much larger than normal wolves, real wolves were digitally composited into scenes for season 2. This strained the budget and the schedule, hence why there are only a handful of scenes with Grey Wind (Robb Stark’s wolf), Summer (Bran Stark’s wolf) and Shaggydog (Rickon Stark’s wolf); Ghost, who belongs to Jon Snow, is shown in brief glimpses.

19. While the first two seasons roughly cover the novels “A Game of Thrones” and “A Clash of Kings” respectively, the third season covers about two-thirds of the third novel “A Storm of Swords.” The fourth season covers the rest of “A Storm of Swords” and chapters from the fourth and fifth novels “A Feast for Crows” and “A Dance with Dragons”. Finally, the fifth season covers almost entirely “A Feast for Crows”, “A Dance With Dragons”, and even early events of the unreleased sixth novel “The Winds of Winter”.

20. In the series, Charles Dance’s character, Tywin Lannister, was previously married to a woman named Joanna before her death, and had three children by her. In real life, Dance was previously married to a woman who was also named Joanna before their divorce, and has three children.

21-25 Interesting Facts About GoT

21. Jorah Mormont is often referred to as “Jorah the Andal” despite the fact that House Mormont is a house from northern Westeros meaning they are descended from the First Men, not the Andals.

22. On April 2016, a new channel launched in Israel called the “Game of Thrones Channel”. The channel aired only things related to Game of Thrones through the day, such as the episodes, interviews, behind the scene videos, special features from the Blu-Ray, etc as preparation to the sixth season. It was the first time in Israeli Television’s history that a complete channel was dedicated to only one show.

23. The average cost of production per episode of the show, up to season 6, was around $6,000,000 with the most expensive episode being season 2: episode 9, ‘Blackwater’ which cost a reported $8,000,000. However, HBO decided to set a budget of $100,000,000 for season 6 which means each episode of the season will have average production cost of $10,000,000. This puts the show on par with ‘Friends’ (1994 – 2004) as the most expensive TV show of all time.

24. In the pilot episode as the three boys are preparing for the king’s welcome, Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy), Richard Madden (Rob Stark), and Kit Harrington (Jon Snow) were all trying to one up each other in their shirtless scene by flexing and doing pushups right before they went on camera.

25. George R.R. Martin has stated that the infamous “Red Wedding” was the hardest chapter for him to write in “A Storm of Swords.” He was so emotionally attached to the characters that he actually wrote the rest of the book first, and then that chapter last. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, upon reading it, declared it was one of the major reasons they decided to option the books for a television series. Their dramatization differs from the book in a few details. Most notably, Robb’s wife is not present at the wedding, nor is she killed. Whether she is pregnant is unknown.