What is Coughing Varys?

It is a reaction image from Game of Thrones season eight showing the character Varys coughing seawater out of his lungs on a beach after surviving a shipwreck.

Where did Coughing Varys come from?

The still is from episode four of season eight, "The Last of the Starks," which aired on HBO on May 5, 2019.

What does Coughing Varys mean?

People use it to react to crushing or disappointing realizations, most often ones tied to the final season of Game of Thrones itself.

How do you use Coughing Varys?

Post the still under a setup about a letdown, or turn it into an exploitable by writing Varys's dialogue with coughs and wheezes cutting up the words.

Is Coughing Varys still popular?

It hit its peak on Reddit and 4chan in May 2019 during the show's final season and is now treated as a classic Game of Thrones reaction image.

Coughing Varys

2019reaction imageclassic

Published August 17, 2026

Coughing Varys is a reaction image pulled from Game of Thrones season eight, showing the character Varys hacking up seawater on a beach after a shipwreck. It took off on Reddit in May 2019 as both a reaction shot for disappointing realizations and an exploitable where Varys's dialogue is broken up by wheezing.

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Overview

Coughing Varys, also known as Heaving Varys, is a reaction image lifted from a scene in Game of Thrones season eight, in which the character Varys is shown flat on a beach coughing water out of his lungs after surviving a shipwreck1. The character is played by Conleth Hill, and the still crops tightly on his face mid-heave3.

Online, the shot works two ways. As a straight reaction image, people drop it under captions about crushing letdowns, usually pointed at the final season of the show itself2. As an exploitable, posters rewrite Varys's dialogue with coughs and wheezes cutting up the words, so the character sounds like they are trying to speak through a lungful of saltwater4.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

HBO (source scene) / Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

Redditor enterprise1

Date

2019

The image is a screengrab from episode four of Game of Thrones season eight, "The Last of the Starks," which premiered on HBO on May 5, 20191. During the scene, Varys, played by Conleth Hill, is washed up on a beach and shown coughing seawater out of his lungs after a shipwreck3.

How It Spread

One day after the episode aired, on May 6, 2019, Reddit user enterprise1 posted the still to /r/freefolk as a reaction image2. The post pulled in more than 51,200 upvotes within a week, according to Know Your Meme3.

Over the following days the shot spread further inside /r/freefolk and neighboring Game of Thrones subreddits, where users paired it with setups about various disappointing realizations tied to the show's final season2. It also picked up traction on the /tv/ board of 4chan, where a common convention emerged of writing out Varys's speech with the words interrupted by parenthetical coughing and wheezing4.

How to Use This Meme

Two conventions are common. In the reaction format, people post the still on its own under a caption describing a bleak or embarrassing realization, often about Game of Thrones season eight2. In the exploitable format, posters write a block of dialogue for Varys with the words typically broken up by coughs, hacks, and wheezes in parentheses, so the character sounds like they are choking through the sentence4.