When George W. Bush's Severed Head Made a Controversial Appearance on Game of Thrones

While watching a show as complex as Game of Thrones, fans regularly keep their eyes peeled for Easter eggs that connect episodes to other parts of the series, or even sometimes to real life. All that careful watching has paid off, as viewers have discovered many clues that actually foreshadow what’s to come. But on at least one occasion, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail led to a controversy for the show's co-creators.

The epic series caught a lot of heat back in 2012 when it was revealed that former President George W. Bush’s severed head appeared on a stake in season one. If you revisit "Fire and Blood," the 10th episode in the first season, and fast-forward about 12 minutes in, you’ll get to the part where Joffrey brings Sansa to see her late father’s severed head, which is surrounded by several others ... including the noggin of the 43rd President.

In the Season 1 DVD commentary, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss confirmed that the head was indeed created in Bush's likeness,  explaining that, "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." That admission, of course, did not go unnoticed. HBO ultimately faced a ton of backlash because of it and issued an apology, which read:

“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. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production.”

In response, Benioff and Weiss released their own statement in which they declared that there was no ill intent intended:

"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 scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush. In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former president and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise."

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to admit to basically decapitating a former president, but other people might consider it an honor. A Song of Fire and Ice creator George RR Martin is dying to see his head on a stick before the series ends later this year. But the showrunners have clearly learned from their mistake; most of the heads you now see belong to members of the show's production team.