History Fridge / GameOfThrones

** When Melisandre talks with Arya in Winterfell, she implies that [[TheChessmaster the Many-Faced God is using the world as his chess board]] to put Arya (who's evidently the Queen) in the right place and the right moment to use her to kill the Night King. Everything abode? To put her in the way to the Faceless Men. Resurrecting Jon? Using him as a bait to make Arya travel to Winterfell. Jaquen's presence in Westeros and the fact that he met Arya, knowning her full name even when she never mentioned to him, is probably no coincidence and part of the Many-Faced God's plan.

* Arya's [[TextileWorkIsFeminine hatred of needlework]] has a bit of FridgeBrilliance when it's noted that [[TheSouthpaw Arya is left-handed.]] In the military, being left-handed gives you an advantage because opponents are often unused to attacks from the wrong side--but since daily tasks are ALSO geared towards right-handed people, they range from [[RealityEnsues annoying to downright impossible,]] which is why left-handers are historically portrayed as TheKlutz. In a fine-manipulation craft like sewing, Arya would have either been forced to use her right hand to follow instructions properly, or forced to reverse ''every single direction'' if she didn't.

** This is classic OneDialogueTwoConversations. On the surface Ned and Robert are talking about Daenerys, but secretly, Robert stating that Rhaegar did to Lyanna was unspeakable, was being actually accurate, and Ned replying "you can't get your hands on this one" is not referring to Daenerys, or Daenerys alone, but to Jon Snow, and he's more or less smugly smiling to his best friend, about how well he kept the secret of Aegon "Jon Snow" Targaryen right under his nose.

* The very first promotional picture for the show, the one depicting Ned Stark sitting on the Iron Throne, has two details that show that accurately foreshadow the ending of the entire series: [[spoiler: specifically, a Stark on the Iron Throne with a Three-Eyed Raven on the arm. Brandon '''Stark''', the current Three-Eyed Raven, ends the series on the Throne.]]

* The recasting of Dean-Charles Chapman from Martyn Lannister to Tommen Baratheon makes total sense in a way beyond convenience. Lannisters all seem to have StrongFamilyResemblance anyway, and Martyn is Tommen's first cousin once removed on [[Twincest both sides.]] (Never mind that his parents, who are twin siblings, are themselves the result of a union between two first cousins.) So for two members of this family to strongly resemble each other to that extent isn't actually that far-fetched. [[note]]In the books, for example, a Lannister cousin of Myrcella's is sent with her to Dorne specifically because the two resemble each other enough for the Lannister cousin to serve as Myrcella's body double. The two weren't even as closely related as Martyn and Tommen, as the Lannister girl came from a cadet branch of the family.[[/note]]

* In the opening sequence, the White Walkers' advance into the North is represented by the tiles of the game board flipping over blue. If the Game of Thrones is an RPG-style Tabletop Game, then this is the Expansion Pack clicking into place.

* The Sansa-Daenerys dynamic is given an extra dimension by the physicality of the actors. Sophie Turner is tall and statuesque, and Emilia Clarke is cherubic and petite. There's almost a foot of difference between them. It makes sense from Sansa's perspective that she's not going to intimidated in the slightest by this tiny blonde girl who's thinks she can come into her house and tell her what to do.

** Houses Lannister, Baratheon, and Arryn are reduced to a single person.

* When Brienne looks at Jaime Lannister's entry in the White Book, it has two different sets of handwriting. The early sentences are written in one hand, but the passages beginning with how he killed the Mad King are written in a different hand. This is because Arthur Dayne wrote the early passages, and Barristan Selmy took over when he replaced Dayne as Lord Commander. Brienne completes Jaime's entry in her own hand.
** Brienne's part of the entry portrays Jaime in a very positive light, either omitting his more questionable deeds or phrasing them euphemistically. While this is certainly heartwarming, one has to wonder if she really is the first Lord Commander to ever do this. Many members of the Kingsguard that the book describes as paragon examples of being a knight may have been quite more grey in reality. This can on one hand serve as motivation for later Kingsguard members to aspire to these virtues too, but on the other hand can also lead to frustration if they just can't meet the impossibly high standards their predecessors allegedly lived by...

** Brienne's part of the entry portrays Jaime in a very positive light, either omitting his more questionable deeds or phrasing them euphemistically. While this is certainly heartwarming, one has to wonder if she really is the first Lord Commander to ever do this. Many members of the Kingsguard that the book describes as paragon examples of being a knight may have been quite more grey in reality. This can on one hand serve as motivation for later Kingsguard members to aspire to these virtues too, but on the other hand can lead to frustration if they just can't meet the impossibly high standards their predecessors allegedly lived by...

** Brienne's part of the entry portrays Jaime in a very positive light, either omitting his more questionable deeds or phrasing them euphemistically. While this is certainly heartwarming, one has to wonder if she really is the first Lord Commander to ever do this. Many members of the Kingsguard that the book describes as paragon example of being a knight may have been quite more grey in reality. This can on one hand serve as motivation for later Kingsguard members to aspire to these virtues too, but on the other hand can lead to frustration if they just can't meet the impossibly high standards their predecessors allegedly lived by...

** Brienne's part of the entry portrays Jamie in a very positive light, either omitting his more questionable deeds or phrasing them euphemistically. While this is certainly heartwarming, one has to wonder if she really is the first Lord Commander to ever do this. Many members of the Kingsguard that the book describes as paragon example of being a knight may have been quite more grey in reality. This can on one hand serve as motivation for later Kingsguard members to aspire to these virtues too, but on the other hand can lead to frustration if they just can't meet the impossibly high standards their predecessors allegedly lived by...

** Brienne's part of the entry portrays Jamie in a very positive light, either omitting his more questionable deeds or phrasing them euphemistically. While this is certainly [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming heartwarming]], one has to wonder if she really is the first Lord Commander to ever do this. Many members of the Kingsguard that the book describes as paragon example of being a knight may have been quite more grey in reality. This can on one hand serve as motivation for later Kingsguard members to aspire to these virtues too, but on the other hand can lead to frustration if they just can't meet the impossibly high standards their predecessors allegedly lived by...

* Remember how in Season 7, Sansa wanted to execute Ned Umbar and Alys Karstark, but was overruled by Jon? She got her wish: both of them perished at the hand of wights. Alys specifically gave her life protecting Bran, just like Theon did - and unlike him, she doesn't even get a remembrance!

** Every Stark Robert touches in the above scene is dead as of season 8.

** Qyburn reveals to Cersei the secret weapon the Lannisters intend to use against Daenerys's dragons]]: a ballista. [[GeniusBonus Those that study a bit of history of weapons will take note of the fact that the ballista's general design was eventually shrunk down to hand-size, into a category of weapons we know as crossbows. You ''could'' say that the ballista was the "mother" of the crossbow. What was the one weapon Cersei's son, Joffrey, ever killed anyone with, again? This also highlights the fact that Joffrey, while he was certainly an ineffective ruler in addition to being an evil prick, still operated largely on a childish level. He was TheKidWithTheRemoteControl. And even that was severely limited after Tywin arrived. Joffrey will kick a few puppies (figurative and literal), threaten and try to order violence, and gets to kill one or two people from a distance, really doing what suits him with no rhyme or reason. Cersei typically has a plan -- or something in her head that sounds to her like a plan. Cersei is evil enough to blow up a several-city-block space and effectively carpet bomb a national monument with you and your associates inside for pissing her off a little bit. If you piss her off a lot, she'll strap you to a table in the lowest dungeon, waterboard you for a few minutes, and then have a silent-but-perpetually-pissed-off zombie-giant rape you over and over again until you're dead. Joffrey, as cruel (and sometimes as story-altering) as his few decisions proved to be, never pulled anything that extreme. This goes UpToEleven in season 8, by which time Cersei is (at least nominally) Queen Regnant over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and deploys ballistae in an ambush that kills a dragon.

** When Daenerys sees Jon in the ship at the end of the episode and sees him covered in wounds, it is very reminiscent of Khal Drogo. Throughout the season she was fixated on Davos's FreudianSlip about Jon taking a knife for his own people, something she remembered was Drogo's downfall when he let a knife wound untreated allowing it to fester and ruin him. She also tried to invoke a blood magic ritual to resurrect Drogo, and that failed leading her to revive dragons via HumanSacrifice of Miri Maaz Duur. So her attraction to Jon Snow stems partly from being handsome and sincere, and enigmatic but also as a ReplacementGoldfish in that he survived and returned to life in a manner just like her FirstLove failed to do so. Miri Maaz Duur said "Only death can pay for life".

* When Bran creeps out Littlefinger with the "chaos is a ladder" line, Littlefinger's apparent lack of reaction has been criticized... but what logical conclusion should he reach from this? Littlefinger being himself, with what he knows, would not deduce that Bran is all-knowing medium. He'd assume Bran to be in contact with the only other person who heard his "chaos is a ladder" speech: Varys. This should certainly raise his suspicions, and make him afraid that Bran could expose his true character, but it would not give him the whole picture. Now, at the trial, when Bran tells him word for word "I did warn you not to trust me", just as Baelish told Ned Stark back in season 1, that seals the deal. That's when Baelish does his actual "oh shit" face, because that line has not been heard by anyone besides Ned, and Ned has been dead for a long time.

** Bran's reasoning for giving Arya the Valerian dagger does make sense since it would "be useless on a cripple". But it is entirely possible that Bran saw that it was Arya who would kill the Night King, thus giving her the Valerian dagger would ensure the end of the Long Night.

** Ghost was symbolic in many ways of Jon's connection to the Starks (Ghost was the only albino of his litter to Jon's bastard status, which made each stick out from his other supposed blood siblings.) Now that this connection has been revealed to be not quite as Jon thought it was, the symbolism - one that Jon's character noticed and pointed out from the beginning - is no longer there.
* Cersei tried to rally the remaining lords and the people to her side, claiming that Dany's hordes of Dothraki, Unsullied armies, and dragons would destroy everything. Come The Bells, and she's proven absolutely right!

* The book series on which Series/GameofThrones is called ''Literature/ASongofIceandFire''. After watching thes episode, it finally becomes clear what that means: "Ice" stand for Night King with his ice powers, and "Fire" stands for Daenerys and her dragon(s). And both are equally destructive.

* Dany's growing respect for her deceased brother Viserys can tell us a lot about her SanitySlippage throughout the series. In the beginning, Dany displayed nothing but contempt towards him, [[SpeakIllOfTheDead calling him a weakling and a fool]]. However, in season 8, during Jamie's trial, Dany recalls her brother telling her a bedtime story about everything what they would do to a man who killed their father. In the final episode, she nostalgically tells Jon about how Viserys described to her what Iron Throne looked like.

* So, as of the finale, the Seven Kingdoms (or rather ''Six'' Kingdoms) are being ruled by Bran Stark, who is seen to be ideal because he doesn't desire power, wealth or anything like that and will rule impartially with the people's interests in mind. Except...Bran isn't really Bran anymore. He's the Three Eyed Raven; he says so himself. Exactly who or what the Three Eyed Raven is or wants to accomplish has never been made entirely clear, save for the fact he's known to be in league with the Children of the Forest, the same beings who created the White Walkers in a desperate attempt to destroy humanity (though by the events of the series they seemed to have been working with humans to save them from extinction). And when you think about it...Bran has the power to see anyone and anything, with little effort. He can take over the minds of animals and even people, if he wanted to. He could be anywhere, at any time, know everything about anyone and you might not even know. We'd better pray to both the old gods and the new that 'Bran' has no ulterior motives and uses his abilities for solely benevolent purposes, because the thought of someone abusing the kind of power the Three Eyed Raven possesses is ''terrifying''. [[ParanoiaFuel Nowhere would be safe and your private thoughts and conversations are no longer private, because]] BigBrotherIsWatching.

** House Martell.