Game Of Thrones: 9 Things We Learned From The SXSW 2017 Panel

7. The On-Set Pranks

Filming Game of Thrones must be a hard slog. Sure, it's countered by the fact you're working on the biggest show on television, but nonetheless it has a gruelling shooting schedule.

To help keep things light, then, various pranks have been played on the cast members by Weiss and Benioff, who regaled the audience with a few of their favourites from the past few years.

One involved the moment Jon Snow has his hand burnt, except the script jokingly took it to another extreme for poor Kit Harington. "We wrote the script so that his upper lip would be all messed up and burnt off and we burned off all his hair. He’s got great hair and a great pout, so we described on the page exactly what his mangled face was going to look like forever. He was a good sport, but you could tell he was really sad,” Benioff said.

Another was convincing Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy) that he was actually going to die in Season 2. Weiss said: "We made the death call and we told him he was going to die, but we might bring him back as a wight. We told him, ‘And you’re going to be naked the whole season.’” Unfortunately for them, Allen was in Ibiza at the time, and apparently not "in a state where he was going to be shocked by anything."

They didn't have it all their own way however, revealing that Harington got them back, sending them a photo of him with a shaved head a week before filming started. HBO's lawyers even got involved, before it was revealed that it was an old photo and just a prank.