Game of Thrones has brought us thrills, spills and brutal bloodshed since 2011 – with Season 7 yet to conclude and another 6 increasingly frenzied episodes confirmed to be heading our way in season 8.
But what of the killer moments that the show's macabre masterminds never actually got to the screen? HBO's hit famously scrapped an entire pilot episode before it ever made it to our tellies – and as you'll see, that's just the tip of the icy North's secrets…
1. Tyrion's war ('Baelor', Season 1, Episode 9)
In George RR Martin's original novel A Game of Thrones, "half-man" Tyrion led an army against Stark forces commanded by Roose Bolton. And GoT showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss planned a spectacular visualisation for their show's first big battle.
"Tyrion Lannister followed The Mountain into combat – and we were really excited," said Benioff. "We were going to have the camera at Peter Dinklage's eye level and have him follow this giant, The Mountain, into battle and just see everything."
Ultimately, though, budget limitations forced them to scrap the epic sequence. Tyrion instead sustained a blow to the head early on in the rumpus, knocking him out cold. Much more economic.
2. The Red Viper's even more gruesome death ('The Mountain and the Viper', Season 4, Episode 8)
The showrunners also somehow managed to shoot an even grislier version of Oberyn Martell's head-splitting demise at the hands of Ser Gregor Clegane, but have never broadcast or released said snuff flick in any form.
Ben Crompton, who plays unsung hero of the Night's Watch Eddison 'Edd' Tollett, revealed earlier this year that he'd once seen the uncut sequence in all its gruesome glory.
"They showed an edit where he puts the fingers in and he just pulls his face apart," Crompton said. "But instead of cutting like it does in the show, he just pulls his face apart.
"I just said, 'Oh my God, they are never going to be able to show that on telly,' and they didn't! But the effects were brilliant."
3. Most of Ser Denys Mallister's scenes (Season 5 onwards)
An aged knight of House Mallister and member of the Night's Watch, Denys first appears in the flesh in GRRM's A Storm of Swords as a rival to Jon Snow who desires to become Lord Commander.
The character was dropped from the TV series, though, following the death of actor JJ Murphy, who passed away four days after filming his first scenes. Benioff and Weiss opted not to recast the part and so his scenes were either rewritten or dropped entirely.
4. Hodor's horrific on-screen demise ('The Door', Season 6, episode 5)
The last we saw of gentle giant Hodor (Kristian Nairn) on Thrones, he was fighting to hold back an army of Wight Walkers. In a departure from the show's standard savagery, his death was merely implied, rather than portrayed on camera.
It could have all been very different, though, as 'The Door' director Jack Bender had planned to show his offing in grim detail, only for Benioff and Weiss to talk him round.
"They said something to me that really stuck, which was, 'If it's too horrific, we're not going to feel the loss of Hodor'," Bender told the Observer, "and that was my compass the entire time, to make us really care at the end.
"I still wanted to make it scary enough, see Hodor surrounded and engulfed by these skeletal arms and long fingers, that were eventually going to smother and kill and rip him apart, or whatever they were going to do that we didn't see.
"But [the idea was] to not let the horror of it overwhelm the emotion of losing that character and making it really land on the idea that he was sacrificing himself so his friends could get away."
5. A very different battle for Winterfell ('Battle of the Bastards', Season 6, episode 9)
Jon Snow's clash with the ever-repulsive Ramsay Bolton was one of the standout moments of the sixth season, but it played out quite differently in the original script.
That sequence where Snow's forces are surrounded by Ramsay's men? Originally, they were to be encircled by horses – only for the animals' diva behaviour to necessitate a rewrite.
"Originally, we were gonna have a lot of horses," revealed director Miguel Sapochnik. "They were gonna charge... and then actually surround the allied troops and crush them with the horses.
"The trouble is, if you run horses at people, they don't like it. So the decision was, we weren't gonna run horses at people, we were going to run people at people."
Then there's the incredible scene in which Jon is almost smothered by the bodies of his own men – a last-minute addition invented by Sapochnik when he ran out of time to shoot a more elaborate sequence.
"We just could not complete the sequence as planned," Sapochnik explained. "[But] I think that this section of the fight – in which Jon is almost buried alive – turned out as one of my favourite little moments."
6. Septa Unella's horrific fate ('The Winds of Winter', Season 6, episode 10)
It's probably for the best we never got to see the original scripted version of this one. Cersei's shame-shame-shameful tormentor Septa Unella was captured, incarcerated and her fate at the hands of zombie Mountain left implied rather than shown. Yet the scene was apparently "meant to be worse".
"This is like the tame version," revealed Cersei's alter ego Lena Headey. "The scene was meant to be worse, but they couldn't do it. It's still pretty bad, though."
It just goes to show – there are limits to what even Game of Thrones will dare to air.
