11 Perfect Sports and 'Game of Thrones' Mashups
On April 24, after 10 long months of tortuous waiting, the sixth season of Game of Thrones will finally begin. To commemorate the occasion, let's take a look back across the show's history and remember some of the best sports mashups it has influenced over the years.
Some talented folks at Bleacher Report (none of whom is this writer) produce the Emmy-nominated series Game of Zones, but what else is out there?
What else indeed. There are memes, promo videos and a fire-breathing LeBron James. Creative people are the best.
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For what it's worth, there are some pretty epic Game of Thrones and pop culture mashups out there right now as well. Dr. Seuss' Oh the Places You'll Go has become Oh the Places It'll Snow, Star Wars has its own GOT-inspired YouTube video, and HBO even produced a mashup starring Kit Harington himself.
All of the above are delightful, but as you'll see, the sports world can hang with the best of 'em.
Obligatory spoiler alert.
Crying Jordan on the Night's King is masterful. The only flaw is at this moment in the series, the Night's King was basically telling Jon Snow, "You're toast, bro." It was really more of a Michael Jordan beast-mode moment than a crying one, but still. Excellent stuff anyway.
As Twitter pointed out, Tom Brady's courtroom sketch would have also worked:
MLB Opening Day
April means two things in this world: the return of baseball and new GOT. MLB figured that out pretty quickly and, in 2012, put together an intro video for both. Check it out.
Mark Newman of MLB.com wrote, "Uneasy as always lies the head that wears the crown, in Game of Thrones and over 162 games of a regular season." Right on.
MLB The Show 14
In another fantastic combination of baseball and GOT, behold this mashup of the show's intro and MLB stadiums from the creators of MLB The Show.
Even better than the MLB The Show version is this video from Austrian TV promoting the 2014 NFL conference championship games. It'll get you almost as jazzed as the real intro does on Sunday nights. Enjoy.
Tim Howard Saves Ned Stark
In one of the first (of many) GOT megashockers, Stark patriarch and Season 1 protagonist Ned Stark was brutally beheaded in Episode 9. Could Tim Howard, star of the 2014 U.S. World Cup soccer team, have saved him with mad goalkeeping skills? The Internet says:
In June, some highly creative folks at former sports and pop culture site Grantland created a superb video to commemorate the NBA Finals.
Creators pulled from the culminating scene of Season 5, Episode 9, "The Dance of Dragons," in which Daenerys is saved from a rabid mob by her trusty Drogon. The cast of characters from the NBA Finals replaced Dany and crew with LeBron James as Drogon, the Golden State Warriors as those rude Sons of Harpy and David Blatt as the mother herself.
Drogon/LeBron swooped in to torch the enemies with a blaze of fire breath and flew Dany/Blatt to safety. It's not exactly a representation of how the actual Finals played out but a masterful video nonetheless.
(The video is no longer available on the Grantland Channel's YouTube account, but Sally S grabbed it before it was gone.)
Speaking of NBA hype, this video by Dion Greyjoy (coincidence?) could easily make a person want to sit around all day and superimpose the audio of GOT trailers over basketball highlights. "You're in the great game now, and the great game is terrifying."
Good luck not getting absolutely fired up as the video concludes with Stephen Curry's legendary 37-footer over the Oklahoma City Thunder.
World Cup Kits
During the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Spanish designer Nerea Palacios mocked up team kits inspired by the various GOT houses:
Per Anne T. Donahue of the Guardian, Palacios said, "I'm a big fan of Game of Thrones and of football. I had already designed all the World Cup kits, so I was looking for something fresh that hadn't been done before. So it allowed me some freedom."
House Sigils
Since the dawn of HBO's hit series in 2011, several creative folks have re-imagined professional team logos as house sigils.
According to Hemal Jhaveri of For the Win, illustrator Rachel Cohen took on the NHL teams:
In 2013, Redditor whats_hot_DJroomba introduced his own NFL versions:
There is even a World Cup Westeros Tumblr site with banners for each nation of the 2014 World Cup:
Sports cartoonist Dave Rappoccio went as far as to create an entire fictional Westeros football league:
Rappoccio himself explained on Kissing Suzy Kolber:
"The goal of the project was simple. Take the biggest and most important castles and invent a football team for them based around their book history. Then try to incorporate the major houses into logos and uniforms. I decided to go with 12 teams, and split the league into a Northern Conference and a Southern Conference.
"
The details are pretty elaborate, and the whole thing is ultra witty—enjoy that rabbit hole. Next step: somehow make this an actual fantasy league.
Game of Zones
Bleacher Report's own Game of Zones is a brilliant mashup of NBA and GOT storylines. (Again, having nothing to do with its production, this is simply the opinion of another fan who happens to also write for B/R.)
The series has covered the aging San Antonio Spurs, the Warriors' dominance and Kobe Bryant's retirement, all woven masterfully into an animated GOT world.
Season 6 is upon us, folks. And that will hopefully, inevitably mean more mashups—just one of the many perks Game of Thrones has brought into the lives of sports fans.
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