10 Game Of Thrones Scenes WAY More Brutal In The Books
4. Theon's Torture
Theon's torture at the hands of Ramsay Bolton cemented the Bastard as the most hated villain on television.
The show was pretty accurate to the books, but deviated slightly on how they revealed Theon's torments. After he loses Winterfell at the end of the second book, we don't see anything of him for the next two; at one point it's mentioned he's being flayed alive, but later we're lead to believe he's long dead. It's not until A Dance With Dragons that we hear anything more of him.
The reader is presented with a mystery POV character. He's a crippled man, with white hair, few fingers and toes, and even less teeth. He's assumed to be some kind of old insane creature, chattering away to himself in a dungeon, as he catches rats to eat. The man's terrified internal monologue slowly reveals to the reader that this is in fact Theon. It's a shocking revelation. In the show we see him gradually change due to his trauma, in the book we're presented with a character who is so utterly wretched and unrecognisable as Theon, you can't imagine what must have been done to him.
Through Theon's crazed mutterings, the reader is able to piece together what happened: He was castrated; his teeth were shattered; and the flesh from his fingers and toes had been peeled away.