1. Showing Us Charred Corpses at Dinnertime
Monday nights, eh? One minute you’re chortling at the parade of woolly jumpers on University Challenge, the next you’re having the image of two burnt-to-a-crisp bodies seared into your brain forever more. This particular act of brutality was at the hands of Theon Greyjoy in season two, although he did soon get his comeuppance. Speaking of which...
2. The Dewillyfication of Theon Greyjoy
Poor old Alfie Allen had a bit of a ’mare in season three. It was bad enough seeing his fingernails ripped off and his feet being given the DIY SOS treatment, but things got really grim when his supposed saviour turned out to be the sadistic “Bastard of Bolton” Ramsay Snow. The climax of Snow’s cruelty involved Greyjoy having his knob cut off and us not being able to eat a battered sausage for a few weeks after.
3. Inviting Us to the Baratheon Family Barbecue
Stannis Baratheon has made some questionable judgements throughout Game of Thrones, but more than a few eyebrows were raised (and probably scorched) when he decided to burn his daughter Shireen at the stake in season five. It was all just an innocent sacrifice to the gods, of course. Hopefully that should put your mind at rest and remove the screams of terror from your memory.
4. Killing Jon Snow (and Creating Monsters)
Although we don’t necessarily wish we could un-see the treacherous and untimely slaying of Jon Snow at the end of season five (it was perversely lyrical, right?), we do wish we could remove some of the face-slappingly stupid spoilers from our brains. You have to be a special kind of thicko to post “OMG RIP JON SNOW” on Facebook before most people had even got to the end of Hollyoaks. Dicks.
5. The Season Five Bloodbath
And on the subject of season five slayings, was anyone mentally prepared enough for the orgy of death and violence that was unleashed one Monday night last spring? There was that nasty hanging scene at the beginning, Stannis’s apparent decapitation at the hands of Brienne, a teenage girl carrying out a murder with added eye-gouging – and Princess Myrcella’s poisoning also left quite a sour taste too. We just wanted to sit with the big lights on and watch loads of repeats of Blackadder after that.
6. Making Us Have Nightmares About Gold
Hey, what’s a really horrible, unnecessarily extravagant way to kill someone? Oh yeah, with a big pot of molten gold – like some twisted version of a ChuckleVision prank. That’s how poor old Viserys met his maker at the hands of Drogo way back in season one.
7. Cersei’s Walk of Shame
The jeering! The nakedness! The flinging of the excrement! It was all going on, as the once-mighty Cersei was forced to endure a painful-to-watch shaming walk through the streets. The thought of Cersei’s numerous incestuous trysts already gave us a slightly sick feeling whenever she was onscreen, and these shenanigans sure as hell won’t help with that.
8. The Death of That Little Bastard
The purple-faced death itself was suitably rancid (although fairly unremarkable by HBO standards) – but we have other, more selfish reasons not to forgive the assassination of Joffrey. In a show full of complex characters, the psychotic king was just so straightforwardly nasty in every way that we still miss his psychopathic antics, and we get all misty-eyed about them whenever the title music starts up. Oh, what we’d give to see him attacking someone with a crossbow just one more time...
9. That Bloody Wedding
Yeah, yeah, we all know the Red Wedding was a real gut-puncher to watch – what with the big massacre and that. But the season three slaughterfest spawned something far more sickening, something truly unforgivable, something borderline twisted... YouTube videos of people’s reactions to it. Tantamount only to watching the Crazy Frog video at work circa 2003.
10. The Tickler’s Horrible Rat Torture Scene
“The Tickler sounds like a nice man, doesn’t he? Oh look, he's got a cute rat! Is that his pet? Oh, what’s he doing with that bucket...? And that man’s chest...? And that... oh dear lord, no... oh god, the fire... oh mercy me... oh Mary Poppins... Mummy, I don't want to meet The Tickler anymore.”
11. Hey, and Remember When Daenerys Ate That Heart?
Way back in season one, petite blonde dragon lady Daenerys was asked to eat a horse’s heart as part of a sadistic ritual. But rather than take a little nibble like a polite Come Dine With Me contestant who secretly doesn’t like fennel, she went at it with gusto. The scene was captivating and gross in equal measure, showing that the character who’s broken loads of hearts has an appetite for them too.
12. Squishy Head Time
No major telly series is complete without a grotesque scene involving someone’s head being crushed to oblivion – we still “fondly” recall Phil Leotardo’s head popping like a party balloon in The Sopranos. In season four of Thrones, it was Prince Oberyn’s handsome beardy head being treated like a “reduced to clear” melon by The Mountain. And it was unexpected. And disgusting. (And brilliant.)
