Everyone loves Game of Thrones it seems. Midget slap fights, Sean Bean doing what he does best and that whole medieval hook have really made the series one of the biggest successes that the HBO channel has ever experienced.
The show has many fans, which includes a few celebrities, as well as a former head of the United States presidency as well. Literally, it seems.
Back in 2011, the first season finale included a gory scene of several heads on pikes. Rest assured, those are all prop heads, but as one eagle-eyed Reddit user spotted, George W Bush appears to be amongst the noggins on display.
It seems that the former US president must have gotten lost from his security detail, winding up in the show as a prop, something which producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss confirmed in the directors commentary.
The last head on the left is George Bush. George Bush’s head appears in a couple of beheading scenes. It’s not a choice, it’s not a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had around.
The producers behind Game of Thrones and HBO apoligized, pulling the episode from their online streaming service and iTunes, while cancelling all current shipments of the season one DVDs and Blu-Ray discs.
The network issued the following 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 careless mistake.
We condemn it in the strongest possible terms and have halted all future shipments of the DVDs, removed it from our digital platforms and will edit the scene for all future airings on any distribution domestic or international.
As harmless as the scene was, in a culture that idolizes their presidents, feathers were bound to be ruffled. What’s truly funny though, is that the head was a prop, meaning that it must have been used in other scenes or productions as well.
Time to start digging.
Last Updated: June 18, 2012
