From the Icelandic band Sigur Rós to George W. Bush's head, Game of Thrones has been home to some pretty wild cameos over the years. The showrunners seem delighted by slipping in the occasional wild card from time to time, with comedy stars Rob McElhenny and Martin Starr the latest guests to to grace the dark and merciless land of Westeros.
Over the course of the series' eight seasons, Game of Thrones has hosted cameos from athletes, musicians, and in one particularly insane and controversial case, a super-realistic bust of President George W. Bush's head on a stake. (HBO later apologised for that one.) While some of these cameos are strikingly noticeable, like Ed Sheeran's memorable moment singing a tune in Season Seven, many of the cameos throughout the show's episodes are harder to spot. The band Mastodon, for example, showed up in the end of Season Seven in a huge group of extras, with only the most eagle-eyed metal heads being able to point them out on the screen.
Huge TV shows like Game of Thrones have a time-honoured tradition of pulling out some guest stars to surprise fans. Breaking Bad famously featured a cameo appearance by Danny Trejo, whose head ended up being carried across the screen by a turtle after a particularly gruesome meeting with the cartel. The Sopranos, too, brought in a number of surprise appearances, like Frank Sinatra Jr., Annette Bening, and in one very unforgettable episode, Sir Ben Kingsley.
Game of Thrones is on its final season, so there's little time left to deliver any more surprise guests to the operatic fantasy series. For those of us still holding out for that George R.R. Martin cameo, time will tell if they're able to squeeze a few more surprises in.
Dom Nero is a staff video editor at Esquire, where he also writes about film, television, tech, and video games.
