Game Of Thrones

2011TV series memeclassic

Game of Thrones is an HBO medieval fantasy series that premiered on April 17, 2011 and drove a decade of internet memes around shocking deaths, dragons, and the fight for the Iron Throne1. Character-swap Tumblrs, Red Wedding reaction videos, Reddit spoiler drama, and cameo mockery of Ed Sheeran's Season 7 appearance kept the show in the meme cycle through the end of its eighth and final season6.

game of thrones memestv show memesfandom discourse memesreaction memesearly 2010s memes

Overview

Game of Thrones is HBO's medieval fantasy drama adapted from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels, set in the fictional Seven Kingdoms of Westeros where rival noble houses fight for the Iron Throne3. The show ran for eight seasons starting in April 2011, and its mix of political scheming, dragons, beheadings, and explicit content turned every episode into a Monday-morning meme event across Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter1.

Most of the meme output is character-driven, with fans repurposing King Joffrey Baratheon's smug face, Tyrion's slap of Joffrey, Cersei's shame walk, Jon Snow's brooding stares, and Ned Stark's 'Brace Yourselves, Winter Is Coming' pose4. Critics fixated on the show's 'sexposition,' where naked bodies at Littlefinger's brothel filled the frame during heavy dialogue dumps, a running joke big enough to earn a Saturday Night Live parody starring a fictional horny thirteen-year-old consultant2. Urban Dictionary entries piled on, defining the show around 'politics, royal intrigues, incest, murder, warfare, violence and sex' plus repeat mentions of the sex9.

How It Spread

By 2012 and 2013, meme energy was fueled by shock-death episodes like Season 3's 'The Rains of Castamere,' which delivered the Red Wedding and produced a wave of reaction-video compilations of unspoiled viewers screaming at their TVs1. April 2013 saw the launch of the Tumblr blog 'Joffrey Bieber,' which swapped scenes of Joffrey Baratheon with matching stills of Justin Bieber and quipped that 'his face has Lannister written all over it,' one of the earliest character-swap Tumblrs to catch fire4.

The brothel scenes and the 'King's Landing Strip' joke about uniformly waxed Westerosi pubic hair became recurring critical talking points, cited in a widely shared io9 piece asking whether the gratuitous sex was worse than the gratuitous violence2. Reddit spoiler culture peaked in November 2016 when user 'awayforthelads' posted the alleged full Season 7 plot, including Jon and Daenerys hooking up, the Night King killing Viserion and using its body to burn down the Wall, and Arya executing Littlefinger, then deleted the account6. HuffPost later tracked how those spoilers turned out to be accurate, feeding an inside-job theory floated by actor Alexander Siddig, who played Prince Doran on the show, that HBO leaked material on purpose to build hype7.

The Season 7 premiere in July 2017 delivered the show's most-mocked cameo when Ed Sheeran appeared as a Lannister soldier singing a 'new one' around a campfire as Arya Stark walked up, prompting write-ups from NPR, The Independent, and The Guardian about how out of place the moment felt5. Recap listicles like BuzzFeed's 'Steps to Get Over Your Game of Thrones Sadness,' which prescribed GIFs of Tyrion walking a dog captioned 'Tyrion walking a dog always works. Always,' were peak Sunday-night meme content during those years8.

How to Use This Meme

Common conventions include pairing 'Brace Yourselves' image macros with Ned Stark for any incoming bad news, using Tyrion's slap of Joffrey as a reaction GIF, dropping 'You know nothing, Jon Snow' when calling out ignorance, and captioning any tense wedding scene with a Red Wedding reference8. Character-swap Tumblrs like Joffrey Bieber set the template for later face-mashup blogs, where fans pick a real celebrity whose expressions match a Westeros character and re-caption stills accordingly4. Urban Dictionary also documents a drinking-game usage where 'Game of Thrones' names a bar contest of hunting public restrooms in one hour and tallying the toilets used9.

Frequently Asked Questions

Game Of Thrones

2011TV series memeclassic

Game of Thrones is an HBO medieval fantasy series that premiered on April 17, 2011 and drove a decade of internet memes around shocking deaths, dragons, and the fight for the Iron Throne1. Character-swap Tumblrs, Red Wedding reaction videos, Reddit spoiler drama, and cameo mockery of Ed Sheeran's Season 7 appearance kept the show in the meme cycle through the end of its eighth and final season6.

game of thrones memes tv show memes fandom discourse memes reaction memes early 2010s memes

Overview

Game of Thrones is HBO's medieval fantasy drama adapted from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels, set in the fictional Seven Kingdoms of Westeros where rival noble houses fight for the Iron Throne3. The show ran for eight seasons starting in April 2011, and its mix of political scheming, dragons, beheadings, and explicit content turned every episode into a Monday-morning meme event across Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter1.

Most of the meme output is character-driven, with fans repurposing King Joffrey Baratheon's smug face, Tyrion's slap of Joffrey, Cersei's shame walk, Jon Snow's brooding stares, and Ned Stark's 'Brace Yourselves, Winter Is Coming' pose4. Critics fixated on the show's 'sexposition,' where naked bodies at Littlefinger's brothel filled the frame during heavy dialogue dumps, a running joke big enough to earn a Saturday Night Live parody starring a fictional horny thirteen-year-old consultant2. Urban Dictionary entries piled on, defining the show around 'politics, royal intrigues, incest, murder, warfare, violence and sex' plus repeat mentions of the sex9.

How It Spread

By 2012 and 2013, meme energy was fueled by shock-death episodes like Season 3's 'The Rains of Castamere,' which delivered the Red Wedding and produced a wave of reaction-video compilations of unspoiled viewers screaming at their TVs1. April 2013 saw the launch of the Tumblr blog 'Joffrey Bieber,' which swapped scenes of Joffrey Baratheon with matching stills of Justin Bieber and quipped that 'his face has Lannister written all over it,' one of the earliest character-swap Tumblrs to catch fire4.

The brothel scenes and the 'King's Landing Strip' joke about uniformly waxed Westerosi pubic hair became recurring critical talking points, cited in a widely shared io9 piece asking whether the gratuitous sex was worse than the gratuitous violence2. Reddit spoiler culture peaked in November 2016 when user 'awayforthelads' posted the alleged full Season 7 plot, including Jon and Daenerys hooking up, the Night King killing Viserion and using its body to burn down the Wall, and Arya executing Littlefinger, then deleted the account6. HuffPost later tracked how those spoilers turned out to be accurate, feeding an inside-job theory floated by actor Alexander Siddig, who played Prince Doran on the show, that HBO leaked material on purpose to build hype7.

The Season 7 premiere in July 2017 delivered the show's most-mocked cameo when Ed Sheeran appeared as a Lannister soldier singing a 'new one' around a campfire as Arya Stark walked up, prompting write-ups from NPR, The Independent, and The Guardian about how out of place the moment felt5. Recap listicles like BuzzFeed's 'Steps to Get Over Your Game of Thrones Sadness,' which prescribed GIFs of Tyrion walking a dog captioned 'Tyrion walking a dog always works. Always,' were peak Sunday-night meme content during those years8.

How to Use This Meme

Common conventions include pairing 'Brace Yourselves' image macros with Ned Stark for any incoming bad news, using Tyrion's slap of Joffrey as a reaction GIF, dropping 'You know nothing, Jon Snow' when calling out ignorance, and captioning any tense wedding scene with a Red Wedding reference8. Character-swap Tumblrs like Joffrey Bieber set the template for later face-mashup blogs, where fans pick a real celebrity whose expressions match a Westeros character and re-caption stills accordingly4. Urban Dictionary also documents a drinking-game usage where 'Game of Thrones' names a bar contest of hunting public restrooms in one hour and tallying the toilets used9.

Frequently Asked Questions