10 TV Plot Twists That Were Hiding In Plain Sight

Though they would both play a major role in setting the Westeros stage over the course of HBO's first season of the eventual global juggernaut that was Game of Thrones, Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon would both ultimately meet their maker by the time said first outing had reached its end.

But this passing of the torch from one generation to another wasn't actually as entirely surprising to those who hadn't read George R. R. Martin's books as first expected, if you were really paying attention to one of the earliest sequences the show brought to life, that is.

With Ned taking his lads out for a spot of ranging around the North, the Stark's soon stumble upon a dead stag and recently deceased dire wolf. As it goes, within this fictional world, the former animal is the sigil of House Baratheon while the latter belongs to House Stark.

In the end, both men would succumb to a similar fate before too long, but the show definitely went out of its way to warn us that those precious Stark children were, like the dire wolf pups they retrieved on their travels, eventually going to be left without at least one of their parental figures.