Game of Thrones/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• Jaqen H'ghar has no face in his robe and cloak! Of course it's done so they don't have to cast him until season 2, but damn, it's appropriate.
• In "You Win Or You Die," Cersei orders Ned to kneel before her near the end of the episode. Of course, Ned won't because his honor prevents it, but furthermore, his leg wound means he physically can't and Cersei probably realizes this.
• The show's use of 'sexposition', which is exposition via sex scenes. Seeing as how everyone seems to talk their heads off during sex, is it any surprise that Littlefinger, who runs the brothels in King's Landing, is also a bit of a Knowledge Broker?
• Jaime, as a member of the Kingsguard, is sworn to celibacy, so it makes sense that no one particularly notices that the woman he spends the most time with is his sister.
• The first scene with Jaime and Cersei in episode 1. Viewers will infer that the Lannisters were behind Jon Arryn's murder. ^[1] If you listen to their conversation, it's obvious they weren't the perpetrators - they were worried because they had no idea how much Jon Arryn knew, and what his actions were before his death! Before they had the chance to interrogate (and murder) Arryn, someone else had taken him out.
• Robert Baratheon mentions that he favoured wielding a warhammer in battle. It is perhaps no coincidence that his bastard son Gendry is first seen wielding the hammer of a blacksmith. In "What Is Dead, May Never Die", Gendry is seen wielding a hammer when fighting the Lannisters.
• In episode 6 "A Golden Crown," Ser Jorah Mormont stops Viserys from taking the eggs, says, "And yet here I stand." He's not just being badass - he's paraphrasing his house words ("Here We Stand").
• When asked about the strangest thing he's ever eaten, Tyrion asks if Dornish girls count. While this is obviously a joke about oral sex, it's also a reference to a song in the books, "The Dornishman's Wife", which refers to "tasting" the Dornishman's wife.
• Drogo kills Viserys by pouring molten gold on his head after promising him a golden crown. Of course, one of the reasons he does it is because Viserys has basically begged to be killed off but the Dothraki law forbids to shed blood within their capital city's limits. The other reason is that by doing this, Drogo is telling Viserys that he had already promised him Westeros' crown and he would had gotten it eventually if he wasn't a self-centered jackass with no patience. Indeed, Drogo departs to invade Westeros just a few days after that. Viserys died because he literally couldn't wait untill his "crown" had "cooled" enough for him to wear it safely. Drogo never betrayed his word.
• The first time we see Tywin, he's skinning a deer, the symbol of House Baratheon. Tywin's family undermines the Baratheon legacy from the inside through Joffrey, who's not really a Baratheon, and therefore a lion wearing a deer's skin.
• When Dany asks Mirri Maz Duur if anything can be done to save Drogo, Mirri very briefly and visibly glances at Dany's stomach. Probably not a detail you'd notice if you didn't know what was coming.
• At first watching it may seem out of character for Littlefinger to show his cards to Cersei so openly, and it looks like he'll suffer from it, but at the end the balance of power is exactly the opposite; Cersei demonstrates that while she can threaten Littlefinger as much as she wants, she needs him too much to kill him. She just showed him how far she can go -- and that she can go no further. Lord Baelish has nothing to fear from the Queen as long as he remains essential to the throne, and now he has yet another humiliation to take revenge on.
• Drogo's wound becomes infected in spite of Mirri Max Duur's treatment, but several episodes later she reveals that she hates the Dothraki and wants revenge on them. Certainly she botched the treatment on purpose in order to facilitate her ultimate betrayal.
• Sansa says, "I'll be a good wife to [Joffrey], you'll see. I'll be a queen just like you, I promise! I won't hatch anything!" This stands in contrast to a different queen, who does hatch something.
• Regarding Sansa and Lady, Robert tells Ned, "Direwolves are no pet. Get her a dog and she'll be happier for it." So far, Sandor Clegane, often referred to as "Dog," has done more to protect Sansa than Lady ever did.
• When Jon relates his tale of that night with Ros that never really was in the end, not wanting to father another bastard, Sam goes back to saying "so you didn't know where to put it." How do we know he wasn't thinking of anal?
• The parallels between Sansa and Arya's situations in "A Garden of Bones." Both endure torture at the hands of the Lannisters, and both are rescued by the Lords of the Lannisters. Tyrion compliments Sansa on her composure after being stripped and beaten and Tywin compliments Arya on her smarts for traveling as a boy. The ironic part is that Tywin is completely unaware of who Arya really is!
• The parallels between the personalities and fates of the direwolves and their Stark masters.
  • Grey Wind joins his master Robb in battle and sometimes even strikes the first blow, just as Robb leads from the front.
  • Ghost is different from the rest of his siblings and is discovered having separated himself from the rest of the litter, just as Jon Snow is a bastard and leaves Winterfell to join the Night's Watch.
  • Nymeria is abandoned and left to fend for herself, just as Arya is.
  • Lady is the gentlest of the direwolves, but is ordered to die on command of the Queen, just as Sansa is at the mercy of the Queen.
  • Rickon is irritable and confused while most of his family is away. Shaggydog is particularly aggressive when others confront them.
  • Summer seems to be pretty even-tempered and is only seen attacking out of defensive instinct. Bran is even-tempered and outspoken in his desire to protect his subjects.
• The melody sounding as The Purge of Robert's bastards goes on in the first episode of the second season is "The King's Coming". Indeed King's Landing, here comes your new king.
• In the opening, the model of Harrenhal just displays a damaged castle with nothing moving, reflecting the real one. However it looks like the model once was functional and had moving parts. It's not the model of a broken castle. It's a model of a castle that has been broken, and while other castles may be older they still at least function, while Harrenhal is basically just a husk of its former self, and has been passed around so much that its brokenness is its most defining feature.
• The deliberate parallel between John Snow and Theon Grejoy in "The Old Gods and the New" when they are holding prisoners at swordpoint and ready to kill them. Theon, driven by the need to prove himself to his harsh and brutal men, chooses to succumb to the pressure to do something he clearly doesn't want to and kills Rodrick. John, meanwhile, is alone with his prisoner, and no one would know if he took Ygritte's head or spared her. And in the end, John spares her. In the end, it does a great job showing the difference between the two unwanted bastards of the Stark household.
• Theon's Small Name, Big Ego mentality is demonstrated in a more subtle way when he takes off Ser Rodrik's head... or tries to, since it takes him several tries and in the end he's just hacking away. Compare this to Ned's one-stroke execution of the deserter in the very first episode, or even Ned's own execution, and shows the difference between them and Theon and how despite miming the actions Theon thinks he's supposed to take, in the end he's just not competent enough. Also works in that Ned's sword is a true executioner's sword, huge and heavy, while Theon does his execution with an ordinary broadsword, meaning Theon literally doesn't have the right tools for the job.
• Jorah's armor looks oddly familiar, doesn't it? It's Northerner armor, because Jorah was a knight of the North until he was exiled, and he would naturally bring along the armor he possessed before his exile.
• When Daxos is vouching for Dany and her people, the one among the Thirteen who nods first and most enthusiastically? Pyat Pree. Considering their arrangement, the foreshadowing is quite subtle but very deliberate.
• Sandor Clegane seems apt at hunting down people. He finds the fleeing butcher's boy in the countryside in "The Kingsroad" and rides him down. During the King's Landing riot in "The Old Gods and the New," he manages to find and rescue Sansa. In "Blackwater," it's unclear whether he knew that Sansa would return to her chambers, but he's waiting for her when she arrives. It's fitting that such a Scarily Competent Tracker is nicknamed "the Hound."
• Spoilers from the third book: Varys and Tyrion's little talk about the church bells in "Blackwater" holds a nice bit of foreshadowing. Varys says the bells always announces bad things, mentioning the death of the king (first season), and the attack at the city (second season). Tyrion sarcastically completes mentioning weddings, and Varys agrees, with a straight face. What's the one event that will change Tyrion's life for the worst in the next book/next couple of seasons? Joffrey's wedding. Not to mention the other weddings that bring bad stuff with them in the same book.
• In the discussion of wildfire, Bronn talking about 'old men wheeling around jars of pigshit'. Considering ANFO is made of fertilizer and fuel oil, the old men may not have been the frauds they were seen as. They may have had jars full of effective high explosives, and no-one gave them the time of day.
  • Bronn probably was quite aware of the genuine explosive potential of the mixtures. He just wasn't convinced with their effectiveness in combat due to the negative side-effects and poor distribution systems, which make all the fire-based weapons as dangerous to their users, as they are to their enemies. No-one has invented a cannon yet in Westeros.
• In his first meeting with Dany, Pyat Pree refers to Xaro's possessions as "baubles and trinkets" ie- worthless junk. At first, it looks like Pree's just trying to slander Xaro in much the same way that Xaro slanders him, and later it looks like Obfuscating Stupidity to cover up the bargain between the two of them; however, at the end the Quarth Arc, it turns out that Xaro's vault is empty and his possessions only look valuable. Pree was right all along!
• When Xaro makes his move against the other Thirteen he answers the Spice King's insults by describing the alliance of himself and Pree as "a charlatan and an upstart" with a smile on his face. At first, I thought the smile was simply because he knew he was about to kill them, but after "Valar Morghulis" I realised he might be making a private joke. The Spice King was obviously referring to Pree as a charlatan and Xaro as the upstart, but in fact it's the other way around; Xaro's empty vault shows him to be a charlatan, and Pree tells Dany in the House of the Undying that The Magic Came Back with the return of the dragons, which implies his magic has only become real very recently, making him an "upstart" in the field of genuine magic. This is further borne out by the Spice King's words; "like all upstarts, you overreach", which is exactly what Pree did when he tried to control the dragons.
• Game Of Thrones has often been called "The Sopranos in Middle Earth." It is therefore rather appropriate when Danys' dragons cut loose on Pyat Pree that the fireballs look less like flamethrowers and more like magical machinegun fire, thus being more like supernatural wiseguys gunning down the Don's enemies than mystical beasts. The sequence afterward where Daxos and Doreah get dumped in the vault and the house is ransacked further confirms that Westeros and Qarth are less you typical high fantasy setting and more of of a noir-ish drama where the bosses and their enforcers wield swords and rapid-dragonfire rather than garrotes and submachineguns.
• The contrast between Joffrey and Gendry. They're sort of the Goofus and Gallant of King Robert's sons. Gendry's a genuine son of the king, but is unaware of his heritage, while Joffrey believed himself to be the son of the king but is in fact the result of an incestuous affair between the queen and her brother. While both are bastards, Gendry's a Heroic Bastard while Joffrey's a Bastard Bastard. Gendry admires Arya for her courage and acted protective towards her even before he found out she was a girl and a lady besides, while Joffrey abuses Sansa and insults her constantly. Gendry is brave and goes into battle even when he's untrained, while Joffrey is a Dirty Coward who abandons his duties at the first excuse. The ironic part is that according to the standards of Medieval society, most people would expect the roles to be reversed!

Fridge Horror

• Meister Luwin thought that his last act would be to send the Stark boys to relative safety of the north, rather than the wars tearing up the south. Unfortunately by the looks of it, south would have been the better choice in spite of everything. Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse, kids!

1. ↑ In A Storm of Swords, it's revealed that they weren't.