Winter Is Coming — Pristine template image of Ned Stark holding microphone with serious expression against light background.

Winter Is Coming

2011

Published March 10, 2026

Brace Yourselves, Winter is Coming, also known as Imminent Ned, is an image macro meme featuring the character Eddard " Ned" Stark (played by actor Sean Bean) from the HBO series Game of Thrones, a...

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Overview

Brace Yourselves, Winter is Coming, also known as Imminent Ned, is an image macro meme featuring the character Eddard " Ned" Stark (played by actor Sean Bean) from the HBO series Game of Thrones, a television adaption of George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire. Itsphrasal template" Brace Yourselves, X is Coming" can be versatilely used to forewarn or proclaim the impending arrival of a highly anticipated event, a product or an internetmeme.

How It Spread

Throughout 2011,Game of Thronescontinued to climb in viewership and ratings and so did the prevalence of theimage macro series on Reddit, where the subredditfor the show had gained a large following of 20,128 subscribers by early October 2011. On Quickmeme, numerous entries dedicated to the series emerged in August 2011, most notably Imminent Ned, Winter is Coming and Ned Star Winter is Coming. Outside of Reddit, there is a fan site for the TV series under the domain Winter Is Coming.net and similar image macro s can be found on Memebaseunder the tag " Winter is Coming" and Tumblrunder the tag " Imminent Ned." On November 2nd, 2018,Donald Trumptweeted an image of himself with the words " Sanctions are coming" in the Game of Throneslogo superimposed over him.