One of Game of Thrones’ biggest scandals ever was revealed by showrunners themselves in DVD commentary. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss pointed out that in the Season 1 finale when the camera pans past severed heads on pikes outside The Red Keep, one of them was a prosthetic likeness of former President George W. Bush. This off-handed comment actually led to a lot of backlash, and drove HBO to digitally alter the episode for subsequent releases and re-runs. This is one of those blunders that was chewed up in the fervor of the show’s run, but in hindsight, it’s the stuff of legend.
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As you may recall, King Robert Baratheon died not-so-heroically in the middle of Game of Thrones Season 1, and as his son Joffrey took power in King’s Landing, he did his best as an edgy teenager to project strength. That included publicly executing the previous hand of the king, Eddard Stark, along with several members of his household staff. Their severed heads were mounted on pikes outside the castle as a message to anyone who might think of crossing this boy king.
Ned’s death was the shocking climax of the season, coming at the end of Episode 9 as these moments usually did in Game of Thrones. Episode 10, “Fire and Blood,” then gave us a shot of the severed heads, including a prosthetic copy of Ned’s head and that of Septa Mordane. Joffrey, showing his true colors, even forced Sansa to come outside with him and observe these grisly ornaments, but she disappointed him by minimizing her reaction.
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TV fans know that DVD commentary can be hit or miss, but for this episode, it became headline news. “The last head on the left is George Bush,” Benioff and Weiss said as this scene played. “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 lying around.”
Viewers seemed to miss this “cameo” when it aired on cable, but after the showrunners pointed it out on the DVD, outrage on social media began to boil over quickly. HBO acted fast, temporarily removing the episode from digital platforms to alter it, and issuing a public apology.
“We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste,” the network said. “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.”
Benioff and Weis issued a statement at the time as well.
“We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc.,” they said. “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 [Bush] 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.”
Commenters were amused that the duo toned down their comparison from a prosthetic copy of Bush’s head to a piece that “looked like” the former president, but in general, this whole controversy didn’t hurt Benioff and Weiss’ reputation in any meaningful way. Of course, years later, the fandom would lash out at the pair and hole them primarily responsible for the show’s unpopular ending, but up until that point they were held in relatively high regard.
Bush himself never commented publicly on this little snafu, so its hard to tell if he took offense. We’ve also never determined which other scenes Benioff and Weiss were referring to in the commentary, but they’ve presumably been changed in the years since as well. It’s unclear why this likeness was among the prosthetic props on hand at this time — the mysteries go pretty deep.
In spite of this slip-up, Game of Thrones was a powerhouse show for the rest of that decade, helping to steer the course of the industry to this very day. It’s not done, either — a new spinoff series titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres sometime this year on HBO and Max, followed by House of the Dragon Season 3 sometime in 2026. In the meantime, you can stream Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon on Max, or find them on Blu-ray and DVD — perhaps you’ll discover some interesting tidbits in the commentary tracks. George R.R. Martin’s novels are available now in print, digital, and audiobook formats.
