The Characters Everyone Forgets Game Of Thrones' Producers Played On Westworld
Everyone loves a good cameo — scene-stealing appearances from notable actors, musicians, or real-world figures in movies are a big wink for the audience. Truly, will anything top David Bowie showing up in "Zoolander" to judge an underground cat-walk competition? Possibly not. Meanwhile, every movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has featured an obligatory cameo from legendary creator Stan Lee before his death in 2019... but Guy Ritchie's "King Arthur" didn't quite stick the landing with its random, awkward appearance from footballer David Beckham.
But of course, great cameos aren't restricted to the big screen, and there's plenty of TV shows featuring some brilliant appearances — like when legendary rock star Prince appeared alongside Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson in "New Girl." Perfection. However, HBO saw a brilliant opportunity when working on "Westworld" to throw in a couple of guest stars to show up in a very meta-way. In "Westworld" Season 3, "Game of Thrones" producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had a small scene as a pair of techs working on one of the hosts for the Delos parks. But their cameos have a surprisingly bigger meaning.
Westworld went to Westeros during Season 3
In Season 3 Episode 2, "The Winter Line," the HBO series travels through Westworld itself, Warworld, and the behind-the-scenes of Park Four. Although it's not explicitly explained, it's clearly a medieval park, thanks to the various hosts seen with typical clothing and weapons of the era. Amidst all of this, the "Game of Thrones" showrunners briefly appeared as two Delos techs working on something fans will most likely recognize — Drogon, Daenerys' fire-breathing dragon.
The appearance stems from a popular fan-theory that suggests the world of Westeros in "Game of Thrones" is actually a narrative within another Delos park alongside "Westworld" (a theory that likely exists because they're both popular HBO series). The scene sees Benioff and Weiss talk about how they're going to chop Drogon up and take him to Costa Rica to help out with "some start-up." All told, it's a sneaky reference to Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park," which takes place off the coast of Costa Rica — and of course Crichton also wrote and directed the original "Westworld" movie back in 1973.
Jonathan Nolan opened up about the short scene to Insider in 2020, explaining that they wanted to find a way of referencing both "Game of Thrones" and "Jurassic Park" in one fell swoop — inviting Benioff and Weiss to star in the scene. "There were always two competing pitches, right? George R.R. Martin — who we also know, and is a lovely person — frequently pitched the crossover of a 'Westeros World' episode." Nolan continued. "And then Athena Wickham, our partner and one of the executive producers on the show, insisted that we find a reference to Crichton's other great 'theme park run amok' [story], 'Jurassic Park.'" Well, maybe one of the Delos executives is actually to blame for how "Game of Thrones" ended.