44 Things You Didnt Know about Game of Thrones
1. More than 150 babies were named “Khaleesi” in 2012.
2. And “Arya” is the fastest-growing baby name in the United States.
3. Gwendoline Christie, who plays Brienne, does not know her birthday.
4. Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, adopted the dog that played her dire wolf in the show. The dog is named Zunni.
5. The “horse heart” Daenerys ate for Khol Drogo on the show was actually a three-pound mass of a gummy bear–like substance.
6. Peter Dinklage is vegetarian. All the “meat” he eats on the show isn’t real.
7. Game of Thrones is the first acting role ever for Maisie Williams (Arya).
8. Jerome Flynn, who plays Bronn, was in ’90s doo-wop duo called Robson and Jerome. They had three No. 1 singles in the U.K.
9. The woman who played Robb Stark’s wife on the show, Oona Chaplin, is the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin.
10. The man who played Daenerys’ brother Viserys, Harry Lloyd, is the great-great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens.
11. The actor who plays Theon, Alfie Allen, is the brother of Lily Allen. She even wrote this nice little song about him smoking weed all the time:
12. The actor who plays Bran’s 13-year-old companion Jojen Reed is actually 23 in real life.
13. He was also the voice of Ferb on the Disney Channel show Phineas and Ferb.
14. And he’s the kid from Love Actually.
15. Richard Madden, who plays Robb Stark, is dating the new Doctor Who companion Jenna Louise Coleman in real life.
16. Theon’s sister Yara is named “Asha” in the books.
17. The Dothraki language was created just for the show and contains more than 3,000 words.
18. Part of the language is named after and based on lines from The Office character Dwight Shrute. It’s called the Shrutean Compound.
19. The actresses who play Sansa and Arya are good friends in real life.
20. There is a Game of Thrones porn parody called “Game of Bones.”
21. The actor who plays Stannis Baratheon, Stephen Dillane, is the father of the actor who plays Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter movies.
22. Peter Dinklage was George R.R. Martin’s first choice for Tyrion.
23. Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey were friends before the show began, and Dinklage even helped get Headey the part of Cersei.
24. Jack Gleeson, aka Joffrey, played a little kid in Batman Begins.
25. Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys on the show, does not dye her hair blonde. She wears a wig instead.
26. The actress who plays Sansa is a natural blonde. She dyes her hair for the show.
27. George R.R. Martin revealed the ending of the book series to the television show’s producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff in case he does not live to finish the books.
28. A large number of the actors on the show have not read the books, some fearing it will affect their acting if they know what happens to their character.
29. The actor who plays Maester Aemon of the Night’s Watch is legally blind in real life, like the character he portrays in the television show.
30. The actor who played Robert Baratheon, Mark Addy, played the fat guy in The Full Monty.
31. He also played the dad on the show Still Standing.
32. After the first episode of the show aired, the actor who plays Joffrey, Jack Gleeson, received a letter from George R.R. Martin that read, “Congratulations, everyone hates you!”
33. After being covered in blood while filming a particularly gory scene, Emilia Clark, who plays Daenerys, got stuck on a toilet seat.
34. The show is credited with inventing the phrase “sexposition,” which basically means revealing important plot points of a story while tons of gratuitous sex is happening.
35. The Wall is based on Hadrian’s Wall of Roman Britain.
36. The actress who plays Tyrion’s mistress Shae began her career as a porn actress.
37. The severed head of George W. Bush appears in a couple of scenes of season one.
38. The dire wolves on the first season of the show were played by Northern Inuit dogs.
39. In newer seasons of the show, the wolves are real wolves that have been inserted digitally.
40. The guy who plays Grand Maester Pycelle, Julian Glover, played these two familiar faces in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:
41. The actress who plays Catelyn Stark, Michelle Fairley, played Mrs. Granger in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
42. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jamie Lannister, got his start in the movie Black Hawk Down.
43. Emelia Clark (Daenerys) voiced Dr. Zoidberg’s girlfriend on Futurama.
44. The original show pilot never aired