For Millennials. By Millennials.
We all can agree that none of us were big fans of George W Bush. But, decapitating his head sounds a bit too extreme, doesn’t it? Well, as absurd as it sounds, HBO once showed his decapitated on Game of Thrones! And it led to a lot of awkward apologies,
Game of Thrones showed George W Bush’s head on a spike
None of us can forget that scene from episode ten of season one of Game of Thrones when Sansa was forced to see Ned Stark’s head on a spike on top of the walls of the Red Keep. Along with Ned, there were two other heads mounted. One was Septa Mordane, and the other was of someone whom we had seen before. Here, take a look. Does it remind you of anyone?
Well, some keen-eyed fans on Reddit deduced that it was a decapitated head of former US President George W Bush! We can’t see the face upfront, but the lips, chin, nose, and eyebrows looked exactly like Bush’s from the profile. And it wasn’t a coincidence either! In the Game of Thrones’ DVD commentary, show creators revealed that they used the head of the 43rd President on the pike. Here’s a comparison for you:
HBO immediately apologized
This is Game of Thrones we’re talking about, which was a phenomenal show back then. Therefore, this information went viral on the internet. Soon after, HBO quickly issued an apology through a statement.
We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful, and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent, careless mistake.
Moreover, HBO promised that the segment will be removed from any further Game of Thrones DVD production.
Furthermore, Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss also issued an apology. They admitted that it was Bush’s head, but admitted that they had no intension for making a political statement:
We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. … After the [George W Bush] scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W Bush. … We meant no disrespect to the former president and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise.
It’s in very bad taste to see George W Bush’s decapitated head on a spike. Sure, we can have political differences with the guy but decapitating him is going a bit too far. But, with this apology from Game of Thrones creators and HBO, I guess we can just laugh at this hilarious mistake now. Right? We don’t want Game of Thrones to get too real after all.