5. Wildfire Was Inspired By An Actual Greek Weapon
Without Wildfire, the series would have taken a very drastic shift fairly early on. The substance is used by Tyrion Lannister in order to substantially curb Stannis' invasion of King's Landing. In the television series, these green pyrotechnics are seen in the penultimate episode of Season 2. It's undoubtedly one of the show's first truly F-Yeah moments, but it's hard not to consider it just a little bit of a Deus Ex Machina. Magic fire that somehow manages to significantly damage a massive fleet... surely that can't be realistic, right? Maybe the magic part isn't, and you should probably disregard the colour green, but Wildfire is a lot closer to an actual Greek weapon than you'd think. Greek fire was an incendiary weapon that was developed around 672AD. It was used by the Byzantine Empire and was extremely powerful when used during naval battles, as the fire continued to burn despite floating on water. Greek fire was so effective that it was actually responsible for securing the victories of many Byzantine battles, including defending Constantinople from two Arab sieges.
