Game of Thrones easter egg: George W. Bush's head on a stick

I guess they happened to have a fake head of George Bush in the props department? Maybe that's where the Phil Dick android head is, too!

According to the creators of Game of Thrones' DVD commentary, the head of ex-POTUS George W. Bush made an appearance on a spike in the show's 10th episode from the first season.

Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss explain "it’s not a choice, it’s not a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had around."

Game of Thrones easter egg: George W. Bush's head on a stick

• [UncaScrooge]

  Oooh!  I wanna be the first butt-hurt Republican to point out how outraged the Commies would be if this were Obama’s head on a spike! What do I win?

  • [NelC]

     A desktop version of George Bush’s head on a pike?

  • [Petzl]

     Without a doubt, Hannity, Michelle Malkin or some other doddering idiot on Fox is going to bring this up.

    • [niktemadur]

      So a few angry rednecks in Mississippi and Arizona are going to find an enabling excuse to get angrier.
      Ignore ‘em, it’s better for your mental health.

      I don’t even watch Maddow and the like, they pay too much attention to whatever comes out the mouths of Murdoch’s meat puppets, and every time you hear, read or say something, you make another copy of it in your brain.  The last thing anyone needs is obscure, blathering mediocrities like Hannity, Malkin and Coulter yapping inside their heads.

• [Pedantic Douchebag]

  I feel compelled to point out that in the context of the show, having your decapitated head on Joffrey’s wall means you are were one of the good guys.

  • [Jim Saul]

    Or just a former head of state.

    What were his house words? 

    “I am the Decider”…?
    “Read My Lips”…?
    “Now watch this drive”…?

    • [Pedantic Douchebag]

      House Bush: “We Are Not Revengeful”

      • [Jim Saul]

        “Fool me twice… don’t get fooled again.”

        House Clinton: “I feel your pain.”

        House Gore: “I told you so.”

        House Nader: “Don’t blame me, I voted for Gore.”

        House Reagan: “Tear Down This Wall.”

        House Romney: “Corporations are people, my friend.”

        House Palin: “Lipstick.”

        House Cheney: “Go Fuck Yourself.”

        • [Pedantic Douchebag]

          House Obama: “Conservative SuperPACs Are Coming”

    • [niktemadur]

      “I’m a uniter not a divider”.

• [Ken At Popehat]

  You know, I told George W. Bush not to trust Littlefinger.

• [NelC]

  Phil Dick’s head is running the props department.

• [Art]

  ‘Been watching this one for days.  I’m still confused.

  Did the producers (themselves) actually admit that it was intentionally done to look like GWB?  If so, what’s with the “we used whatever heads we had around?

  • [TMWaH]

     It’s common for TV shows and movies to reuse props from other productions. It wasn’t purpose-built for Game of Thrones – it was made specifically for some other project and left lying around in the prop house. They were low on time, so they jammed it on a stick. There’s no agenda here, aside from cost-cutting.

  • [Marc Mielke]

    Why did they have the head of GWB just sitting about? 

    • [jgs]

      Where else would it be? Clearly he wasn’t using it.

    • [nowimnothing]

      Maybe created for the George HW documentary HBO was working on? But you have to figure if you need prosthetic heads for background shots, lighting tests, etc. the ones you will end up with the most of are the most popular, recognizable people.
      I imagine hollywood landfills overflowing with Bush heads form the 2000′s kind of like the infamous E.T. videogame cartridges.

• [CokePlusMentos]

  “uuhm…there’s this rumor… on the Internets”

• [BrotherPower]

  Wow, Joffrey really does hate competition, doesn’t he?

• [Ari B.]

  Satire or no, it *is* funny.  That said, I think I’d feel differently if they did something like that with a fake head of a sitting president (whether it were the current POTUS, who I rather like, or even if it were GWB during his tenure in office).

  Once someone’s an ex-president, I feel like it can’t be as easily construed as threatening or something. Maybe I’m overanalyzing.

  • [Drabula]

    No, I think you’re right. 

• [Phil Fot]

  I don’t know. I kind of like it.

• [Drabula]

  Since I’m anti death penalty I can’t support the spike but would thoroughly approve of life behind bars.

  • [Marc Mielke]

    Considering most of the other methods of execution in the series, head chopping is positively progressive. I would note that the most well-loved, honorable, and heroic of the noblemen in the series had made a point of doing the deed himself, a la Obama and his baseball card collection. 

  • [Kimmo]

     Well, we could wait till he dies, and then bung his head on the spike…

• [Dan Hibiki]

  John Romero was doing it before it was cool:
  http://images.wikia.com/doom/images/a/a0/Romero_head.PNG

• [stuck411]

  They reuse props all of the time as TMWaH pointed out. It’s one of the reasons why Kubrick had all of his props destroyed at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He didn’t want his work showing up in crappy shows. Remember Robby the Robot? He was cool when he first appeared in Forbidden Planet. Then the suit was used all over the place and he wound up being ‘meh’. Few movies & TV shows make everything from scratch.

  • [Jim Saul]

    That was the same outfit? Wow, I figured it was in homage.

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      There are some saloon girl dresses that are in literally dozens of musicals and westerns.

  • [The Life Of Bryan]

    I worked on a production of Jesus Christ Superstar that used the robes from Dune with the giant collars as the cloaks for the rabbis. We rented them from the costume shop at Screen Gems Studios.

• [SomeGuy]

  Mission accomplished……..

• [bigmike7]

  The ratty, Nigel Tuffnel/Neanderthal hair is a nice touch, yes?

• [dioptase]

  The head on a spike doesn’t phase me.  What cracks me up is the hair.  Long, VH1 Behind the Scene after a bender hair.

• [humanresource]

  It takes a usurper to deal with a usurper. Three cheers for King Joffrey!

• [pjcamp]

  We call that a Texas Corn Dog.

• [James ‘Jimbob’ Carter]

  Such a shame it isn’t real…