There are two types of people in the world; people who love Game Of Thrones and those who haven't got around to watching it yet. It's addictive TV at its absolute finest, turning medieval fantasy into one of the coolest things around and kick-starting the careers of countless future-superstars. George R.R. Martin's source novels, massive works juggling as many characters as they do descriptions of food, were so dense many of the most devout fans of A Song Of Ice And Fire deemed a faithful adaptation impossible, but HBO have proven them wrong. Game Of Thrones (the title of the first book-cum-overarching show name) is an incredibly constructed, always unpredictable show that manages to challenge the very conventions of television without ever losing the audience's attention. Also there's blood and tits. But while forty hours in Westeros has trained most people to pay attention to every little event within the show (it's bound to come back later), there's still lots of more obscure trivia that the regular viewer doesn't know. Come along and look at twenty awesome facts about everyone's favourite TV show. This article contains spoilers up to the Season 4 finale, but not beyond - non-book fans should be fine in here.
20. Jack Gleeson Based King Joffrey On Emperor Commodus
Joffrey is so fun to hate that his death at the start of Season 4 was worrying - could the show deliver something as entertainingly bad as the tyrannical Lannister? Jack Gleeson really had done a great job with the character, proving so convincing as the psycho King that to see him so humble and rationally intelligent in real life is a genuine shock. When getting into the role, Gleeson looked to another tyrannical screen ruler for inspiration, Emperor Commodus, as played by Joachim Phoenix in Gladiator. There's some interesting parallels between the two characters (they're both in a position of power through devious means), although it's fair to say Gleeson managed to out-evil the Oscar-nominated performance.
