Game of Thrones/YMMV

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• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • Viserys' death almost manages to provoke audience sympathy, due in large part to the actor's efforts during the character's final scene.
  • Doreah in the season 2 finale. It doesn't help that its unclear whether she was actually a willing participant in Xaro's plans.

• Alas, Poor Scrappy:
  • In "The Rains of Castamere", a heavily pregnant Talisa is killed through being stabbed in her stomach... repeatedly. Even her haters found her death absolutely traumatizing.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Renly, is he the Only Sane Man among the Baratheon brothers who won't let the fact that he's a younger brother stop him from doing what he believes is best for the realm, or just a weak and self-serving man who has being manipulated by the Tyrells into trying to take the throne from the rightful heir despite being too weak to hold it? The books portray him as somewhere in between.
• Anvilicious: In a world of war, incest, madness and moral ambiguity, human trafficking is considered the worst sin anyone in the Game of Thrones world can do.
  • The normally placid Ned Stark vows to kill Jorah Mormont for selling poachers to provide for his wife's lavish lifestyle.
  • Daenerys spends a great deal of time rooting out slavery in Slaver's Bay.
  • Gendry, after four seasons, still hasn't forgiven the Brotherhood without Banners for selling him to Melisandre.
• Base Breaker: Ros' status as a Canon Foreigner who takes screen time away from characters in the books makes her the The Scrappy to a lot of people (being the main participant in most of the sexposition scenes doesn't help), but plenty of critics and viewers find her snarky and charismatic enough to make it work (and then some appreciate her for...less mature reasons).
• Complete Monster:
  • Gregor Clegane. Within two minutes of being introduced, he's already murdered someone and been given a backstory in which he held his brother's face in a fire for playing with his toy. After this, and the incident following his joust with Ser Loras, we don't even need to be shown his sacking of the village to know exactly how brutal it would have been. There's also the fact that Gregor bashed Aegon's brains onto the wall (this is an INFANT we're talking about) and raped and killed his mother, whilst her son's brains is on his hands.. JESUS CHRIST.
  • Joffrey begins to embrace this fully once he becomes king. He executes Eddard Stark out of pure spite despite it being a horrifically stupid idea, politically; mentally and physically abuses Sansa; and gives a bard the choice of having his hands or tongue cut off for the crime of singing a song that made fun of Robert and Cersei. As of Season 2, he's forcing people to fight to the death for his amusement, threatening his own mother with execution, and concealing his parentage by ordering the slaughter of Robert's bastard children. Then to spite his uncle who was trying to placate him after he had Sansa publicly beaten and stripped by one of his Kingsguard, he has one of the whores severely hurt and possibly killed by the other. Bascially...he's going Beyond the Impossible in his evil compared to his book counterpart.
  • Walder Frey. He's clearly sexually perverse, married to a fifteen year old girl at the ripe old age of 100 and is offended when Robb Stark does not want to marry Frey's pre-pubescent daughter. He also stages the most horrific massacre in the series: the Red Wedding where Robb Stark and his pregnant wife are viciously stabbed to death. The thing is, Walder's too much of a Dirty Coward to have even gone through with it if Roose Bolton and Tywin Lannister didn't have his back.
  • Craster is a particularly vicious Wildling who copulates with his daughters and granddaughters when they attain the age of sixteen and sacrifices his sons to the White Walkers.
  • Karl Tanner is a ruthless, unrepentant, boastful serial killer and rapist who after killing Craster and usurping power over his tribe indulges his sadistic hedonism drinking blood from the skulls of his enemies and raping Craster's daughters who've already experienced enough rape for a life-time.
  • Ramsay Bolton. Just fucking Ramsay. He imprisons Theon, beats, humiliates, flays and castrates him for nothing but his own sadistic amusement and eventually psychologically breaks Theon to the point that he's able to brainwash him into being his personal slave. He hunts women with his dogs for pleasure and locks up and rapes Sansa Stark every night. Poor Sansa just can't get a break with her husbands. This fucking guy makes even the likes of Joffrey look tame.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Has its own page.
• Crowning Music of Awesome/Ear Worm:
  • The Main theme.
  • "The Rains of Castamere", as performed by the rockband The National for season 2.
• Creator's Pet: Ros, the Canon Foreigner prostitute who interacts with various characters for the purpose of "sexposition". The showrunners loved her so much that they increased her role for the second season. The fans were less than enthusiastic.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Syrio Forel, the badass and Large Ham fencing master.
  • Bronn, the blue-collar sellsword and consumpate Deadpan Snarker, often playing the foil to Tyrion.
  • Jorah gets a lot of love, as he seems to be considered the biggest example of Mr. Fanservice in the series and basically consider him the the Sensitive Guy to Drogo's Manly Man.
  • Jaqen H'ghar is popular for his mysterious, deadpan nature and awesome killing abilities.
  • Sandor Clegane aka "the Hound," what with his terrific battle sequences and brooding personality.
• Evil Is Sexy: Quite a lot of examples, particularly the Lannisters.
• Fantasy Ghetto:
  • Some of the early reviews are placing the series firmly in the ghetto, even so far as to claim Network Decay of HBO. Not only fantasy / SF blog io9 had a few things to say about that, but also both fans and other professional critics called them out on that outright bias. So much so Troy Patterson recused himself from reviewing the series from that point forward.
  • Combine this with fetish fuel. The second review linked above, by Gina Bellafante, claims that all fantasy is boy-oriented, and the sex was added to draw in a female audience (despite much of the sex also being in the source material). The same review claims that "we are in the universe of dwarfs, braids, wenches, loincloth," which seems to indicate that the reviewer didn't watch the show in the first place--or perhaps thinks Tyrion Lannister is supposed to be a Tolkien-style dwarf rather than a human with dwarfism, which goes well beyond Did Not Do the Research and really swings for the fences.
  • According to Liam Cunningham, "I think it's wrong to call this a fantasy series [...] it's a proper, magnificent drama show". Because a fantasy can't be a "proper, magnificent drama," right?
• Genius Bonus: In the third episode of the second season, Lord Varys tells Tyrion a riddle. Anyone with a background in political science (especially in international relations) will recognise Varys' answer as a down-and-dirty explanation of the constructivist school of thought. Xaro Xoan Daxos' empty vault is a second example of the illusory nature of power.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Before Jon leaves to join the Night's Watch, Ned promises to tell him about his mother the next time they meet. They never do. Ned dies before they can reunite. His uncle also promises to talk with him when he returns from a ranging mission. He disappears beyond the Wall.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In his review of The Station Agent Roger Ebert wrote that there was no reason why Peter Dinklage couldn't play Braveheart. Flash forward to "Blackwater" --- where he does.
• Hollywood Homely: Brienne of Tarth is called Brienne the Beauty as an Ironic Nickname because she's supposed to be ugly. Gwendoline Christie isn't uglied up much beyond a few facial scratches and men's clothing/armor. It's apparently a case of Adaptational Attractiveness, and the nickname has more to do with her being a woman.
• Ho Yay: A few scenes. Invoked by Varys: "Do you spend a lot of time wondering what's between my legs?"
• Huge Schoolgirl: Sansa Stark could be considered this. She’s played by Sophie Turner who was 14 years old when the first season was filmed and was at least 5'10 at the time. She's even roughly taller than Littlefinger.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Arya
  • Tyrion
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • The scene between Viserys and Jorah in Episode Six seemed to partially paint Viserys as such. Possibly subverted, as he proceeds to be a total ass and basically brings his death upon himself.
  • It is hard not to feel a little bit sorry for Lancel Lannister after all the abuse Robert gives him.
  • Theon, who's a bit of an asshole, but also takes hideous amounts of shit from all sides.
  • The fans that dislike Daenerys tend to see her as this. It's undeniable that her childhood and teenage years have not been nice, at all.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Sean Bean is all over the advertising, sitting on the iron throne as if anticipating events to come. He is by far the best known actor in the series, one of the noblest and most sympathetic characters, and by all appearances The Hero. When he is accused of treason and threatened with execution, no one is really fooled that he's in any danger; its all just a matter of what form The Cavalry will take. Which, of course, is entirely the point. Anyone Can Die, up to and including the top billed and most beloved characters, and now everyone knows it.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Petyr Baelish, a.k.a. Littlefinger.
  • Tywin Lannister.
  • Mirri Maz Duur, the witch, who got her revenge on Khal Drogo for his men sacking her village and raping her. Unfortunately for her, she pulled her scheme a little too well, and Dany learned a bit about Equivalent Exchange in the process.
  • The show adds several scenes in which Littlefinger and Varys are fully aware of their roles as the dueling Magnificent Bastards of Kings Landing, to a Friendly Enemy level.
  • Tyrion Lannister. The little guy can bend almost anyone to his will.
  • Xaro Xhoan Daxos, as of "A Man Without Honor." The man played everyone else in his entire storyline for chumps right from the start. Possibly subverted in that it gains him nothing in the end.
  • Margaery Tyrell has shown herself to be a Magnificent Bitch par excellence.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Khal Drogo. Jason himself is of the opinion that Drogo would win in a fight with Conan the Barbarian, one of literature's most famous memetic badasses, who he has also portrayed. Jason ended up playing Conan in the 2011 film.
  • Tywin Lannister can cure dyslexia through sheer persistence. He also gives bollockings to an Ax Crazy Complete Monster who's nearly a foot taller than him. In addition, he is pretty much singlehandedly waging a war with in-universe Memetic Badass Robb Stark.
  • Arya Stark can answer back and hold her own in a Death Glare contest with the aforementioned Tywin. She's twelve.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Just so," is slowly, but surely, becoming one.
  • "The war for Cersei's cunt" has become one on /tv/, and for whatever reason is usually accompanied by a picture of Saoirse Ronan.
  • The scene in which Tyrion bitchslaps Joffrey several times is very popular and has been made to play in a repeating loop, or set to music. And with Tyrion continuing to slap people, the act is now referred to as getting "Imp Slapped."
  • Hodor!
  • Ned's obsession with honor and the lack of Rickon in the show (especially joke theories about where he is instead of Westeros) have both been pretty big around Tumblr.
  • "THEY KILLED MAH n***a NED, MAN!"
  • The show's use of exposition via sex scenes has become infamous and a neologism, "sexposition," was created to describe it.
  • Robb Stark is a boss, though after his decisions in "Valar Morghulis" it's "Robb Stark is an idiot."
  • "THE KING IN THE NORTH!"
  • "Play with her arse!"
  • New for season 2: "Her vagina is dark and full of terrors" and "Joffrey likes to watch".
  • Substituting pronouns for "a man," like how Jaqen H'ghar speaks.
  • Whenever someone lists the entire Stark family line, they make sure to add Tony at the end.
  • Stannis the Mannis, with the common phrase of admiration being some variant of "First off the boats/on the beach, first on the ladders/walls, slaughtering Lannister bitches like a boss and last to leave."
  • "FIYAH AND BLUD!"
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • If Janos' betrayal of Ned didn't put him over the edge (he was only doing what he was paid for, after all), then leading a massacre of Robert's bastards, including personally killing a baby certainly did.
  • Joffrey crossed it when he has Ned executed. Especially since he first made it look like he was going to do the exact opposite. He also crosses it when he orders Slynt to kill all of Robert's bastards. And then again in the scene where he torments the prostitutes
  • Theon executing Rodrik Cassel in "The Old Gods and the New." His victim even informs him that he is now lost.
  • Theon displaying the hung corpes of two young boys, apparently Bran and Rickon, who have been burnt alive. Perhaps slightly eased in that he is quite palpably remorseful for it, particularly after Yara's blistering criticism of the decision after her arrival in Winterfell.
  • Dagmer killing Maester Luwin entirely for the hell of it.
• Rescued From the Scrappy Heap: Sansa, who begins to give Joffrey spirited answers that are often masked as innocent observsations. She also tries her hand at manipulating him, once managing to get him to spare a man, and once attempting to goad him into fighting in the Battle of the Blackwater.
  • Ros' severe Break the Cutie in season two is getting her a lot more sympathy.
  • A considerable number of viewers (mostly women, for some reason) disliked Shae in the beginning and considered her a Shallow Love Interest to Tyrion. After witnessing her newfound badassery in Season 2 and taking on a protective role over Sansa, the critics disappeared.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The golden crown. And the end result looks more like wax than metal.
  • The full-grown direwolves look less real than the dragons. CGI dragons are easy. CGI fur isn't, so they filmed real wolves in front of green screens, and insert (bigger versions of) them in the filmed shots. It shows.
  • When Ser Barristan is being relieved of his place on the Kingsguard, if you look closely you can see his helmet bending as he holds it, almost like it's made out of rubber or plastic.
  • Difficult to see unless you're specifically looking for it (and hidden by the lighting) but when Tyrion chops off the Baratheon captain's leg in "Blackwater," the blood that splatters his armor is obviously being thrown at him from offscreen.
• Squick:
  • Lysa Arryn breastfeeding her son Robin. In the book, he was about six when this scene happened, and in the show he looks even older.
  • Daenerys having to eat and keep down the entire raw heart of a horse. By the time she barely finishes it, her mouth and both her hands are soaked with blood. Still, that she does--while pregnant, no less--is something of a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • The description of what's going to happen to the man who tried to poison Dany. We only get to see the beginning of it, but it's still pretty gruesome.
  • The description of what Littlefinger's more demanding clientele want from his brothels: young boys, fresh corpses (of beautiful women)...It can also put the opening scene of episode 7 to new, unpleasant light, since the children being bathed outside his brothel may be his prostitutes, as well.
  • Khal Drogo fights a warrior who insulted Dany, and slashes a hole in his throat. Messy, but fair enough. Then he rips out the man's tongue through the hole.
  • "Garden of Bones." Just about half of the episode in one form or another. Within the first five minutes we have a man getting his leg amputated, and we can hear the bone being sawed through, and him screaming through the gag as Robb holds the poor bastard down.
  • The Tickler's dead body, with his head twisted completely around.
  • A priest getting literally torn apart by an angry mob, especially when it's implied that cannibalism ensues. The commoners of King's Landing are already going insane from hunger, and the Winter hasn't even started yet.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Inevitable when you're dealing with such a nerd-loved property. Though interestingly enough, George R.R. Martin himself denounces this view on the DVD commentary, saying that things like Syrio having hair and Ghost making noise just work better for the new medium.
• The Woobie:
  • Daenerys. The crap her brother puts her through just makes you want to hug her. And then the Finale happens...
  • Bran Stark goes from being a cheerful kid full of adventurous ideas to being crippled and wanting death for simply seeing something he shouldn't have.
  • Poor fat Sam. He doesn't even get the benefit of nerd rage.
  • Tyrion. He is certainly introduced as someone discriminated against and put upon, but seems to triumph over it with little emotional fallout. Then you meet Tywin. Then you learn some backstory. Then you want to hug him forever.
  • Jon never knew his mother, grew up with a stepmother who hated him and despite having siblings and a father that loved him, never felt like he belonged in his family. He then goes off to the Wall to live a life of celibacy and freezing cold. Then his brother goes to war, his father is killed and his sisters are taken captive, and he can do nothing but sit by as everything goes to hell around him.
  • And now as of "Fire and Blood", Sansa Stark. The shit Joffrey is starting to put her through amps up the sympathy ridiculously high, especially for a character who spent the entire first season being both stupidly naive and excessively haughty.
  • Also, Arya Stark, forced to run without knowing what's going on, spending several days without food, watching how her father is dragged and booed and hear how he's beheaded. And then forced to forsake her identity.
  • Even though some may consider her The Scrappy, Ros is having a really bad time in season 2, possibly qualifying as a victim of the Trauma Conga Line.
• Ugly Cute: Dany's dragons.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Bran and Lancel. In-universe, Arya is often mistaken for a boy. Tywin Lannister sees through her disguise pretty quickly, though.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Despite the limitations of a television budget, Game Of Thrones has some notably impressive visual effects.
  • The reveal of the dragons in 'Fire and Blood' is fantastic.
  • In 'Blackwater' the wildfire explosion is quite simply awe inspiring.
• What an Idiot!:
  • Okay. Viserys? Why did you think it was a brilliant idea to marry your sister off to Khal Drogo without any recourse for getting him to back up the vow to invade Westeros? And why did you assume that Daenerys would still be subservient and loyal forever after marrying Drogo, especially when you continue to mistreat her? And how can you be so apocalyptically stupid as to think you can break a holy city's laws with absolutely no backup? This all ends in pretty much the way you'd expect.
  • Robb chooses to break his marriage contract with the Freys and marry Talisa. In doing so, he's jilted the offspring of one of the most notoriously proud and touchy nobles in the whole of Westeros whose House has one of the largest armies in the Riverlands and controls one of the very few secure land-routes to the North, to marry a girl who, despite being from a noble family of Volantis was working as a nurse when he first met her. For the other side.
  • Apparently Pyat Pree forgot that dragons can breathe fire. He did remember that putting the mother close to the dragons made them stronger, but collating these two facts didn't occur to him until Dany uttered the "Dracarys" command.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Sandor Clegane

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