Blood, gore, nudity, incest, torture… A few years ago people would say this is some sort of sick porn, but today, it’s just HBO. Of course, I’m talking about the revolutionary plot-twisting, gut-wrenching, killing-your-favorite-character series – The Game of Thrones.
But I’m not here to tell you what you already know about the show, instead let’s take a look behind the scenes of G.R.R. Martin’s baby and learn some new fascinating facts about it!
1. Did you know that 1 episode costs HBO on average $6 million to make? That’s partly because it’s filmed on three continents and in six countries. BTW, apparently the production of ‘Game of Thrones’ has brought Northern Ireland more than $100 million to their economy.
2. How did Benioff and Weiss convince G.R.R. Martin to let them adapt the books? Easy, by answering a simple question, who Jon Snow’s mother really is. And by now you probably know the answer to that too. If you don’t, I‘m not gonna spoil it either.
3. Also G.R.R. Martin has already revealed the ending of the book series to both D.B. Weiss and David Benioff in case he won’t be able to finish the books.
4. More than 150 babies were named “Khaleesi” in 2012 alone. And “Arya” is the fastest-growing baby name in the US.
5. Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark), adopted the dog (named Zunni) that played her direwolf Lady in the show. And she’s also great friends with Maisie Williams, who plays Arya.
6. Peter Dinklage is actually a vegetarian and the “meat” that he eats on the show isn’t real.
7. The actor who played Jojen Reed (Bran’s 13-year-old companion) is 23 years old in real life.
8. The Dothraki language was created specifically for the show and contains over 3,000 words. That’s quite the vocabulary.
9. A lot of the actors refused to read the books because they were afraid that spoiling their future would influence their acting.
10. After his first episode Jack Gleeson, who played Joffrey, received a letter from George Martin himself that read, “Congratulations, everyone hates you!” But now we have Ramsay. Well, HAD. So who’s next?
11. Probably the most “unexpected” fact on this list is that the cast is full of actual or ex-porn stars. I mean, who else would agree to star in those brothel scenes? To name just a few, for research purposes, we have Jessica Jenson, Samantha Bentley, Australian amateur actress Aeryn Walker, and Sibel Kekilli, who played Shae since season one.
12. Did you know there’s a real-life equivalent to Valyrian steel? It’s a real-life alloy known as Damascus steel, developed in India and the Middle East, known for its strong, extremely sharp qualities, and for its cool rippled texture just like Valyrian steel.
13. The Iron Throne you see in the show is way smaller than it should be. It is described as: “Ugly. Asymmetric. It’s a throne made by blacksmiths hammering together half-melted, broken, twisted swords, wrenched from the hands of dead men or yielded up by defeated foes. And there are thousands of swords in it, not just a few.”
14. Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world. In 2012, public BitTorrent trackers registered that 1 episode was torrented about 4,300,000 times.
15. Iwan Rheon, who played Ramsay Bolton in the show, had previously auditioned for the part of Jon Snow.
