On this day, 15 years ago (April 17, 2011), "Game of Thrones" premiered on HBO. These were the opening credits of the first episode.

15 years ago...Gods I was strong then.

Wild that this sequence still looks better than half the fantasy TV out now. Rewatching just the season 1 openings as a mini-tour of Westeros is weirdly satisfying.

Ramin Djawadi just casually pumping out the music for this and Person of Interest at the same time. Genius

I was confused by who half the people were in those first few episodes. I enjoyed them more on a rewatch where I recognized everyone and understood their relationships.

Still the best show ever through 4 seasons.  

The first time I watched it, I bailed  when the wolf got killed, and that little b**** Joffrey got away with it. Glad I gave it another chance a year later, even with the horrible ending, it's still one of the greatest shows ever.

15 years is crazy when you consider its the difference between the 80s and the mid 2000s. Culture really hasnt evolved that much, its just got shittier.

Loved those early episodes when there was so much mystery to the world of Westeros.

Best opening in TV history. I loved that sequence.

There's usually a song that plays for the opening credits, but all I keep hearing is "You turn 40 next month".

it’s actual crazy how fast time flies. i would have to be in my room because my parents and my older brothers were watching this in the living room. always was jealous; i was too young though but i could hear this playing from upstairs.

No no I'm sure game of thrones started just a couple of years ago....

Game of Thrones really took the world by storm by providing elite television in a grand, fantasy setting. We had LOTR half a decade before but LOTR were movies not weekly TV that you d discuss/watch with friends. My biggest regret is that the books will probably never be finished. The series has been ongoing since the 90s, I d hate to be a lifelong fan and be betrayed because the author got lazy/greedy.

Still one of the best openings and themes of all time

I was on holiday in the US in SanFrancisco at that time. They had a promotion in a park where you could sit on a plastic Iron Throne and have the pic sent to your email. In the hotel that evening I watched the first episode. Great times.

Dinklage Peter Dinklage Peter Dinklage Peter Dinklage

My favorite show. Now and always.

[deleted]

Begs the question…..is there a more engaging and totally suited opening to any TV series? To my mind I can’t think of anything that comes close.

Still crazy that HBO stuck with it after the failed pilot, I was a big asoiaf fan growing up and I thought for sure that GoT was dead in the water after the first attempt

That intro alone used to get me hyped every single episode.

Do we have even a few stills of the aborted pilot?

And i watched it in a train, with children next to me, unaware of what might come. It was Khal Drogo.

Really should get around to watching this show one day…

Huge memories. I visited Belfast during the filming of the pilot (I was a big fan of the books) and took a bunch of pictures, some of which have been used dozens of times for articles about the show, that was a bit weird. Chatting with Sophie and Maisie and their mums and telling them their character arcs because they hadn't been allowed to read the books and their mums hadn't read past the first book. George RR Martin spilling us some secrets on the next book in the series but getting interrupted by a friend to talk about American football (this was basically his blog posts in live action). GRRM presenting Richard Madden his "Best Dressed Man in Scotland Award" in absentia ("but you're not in Scotland!"). The vfx guys refusing to tell us how they were going to do the effects and then getting drunk and telling us how to they were going to do the effects (although their optimistic declaration about making the Targ eyes violet through CGI did not survive contact with the budget, apparently). I later watched the first two episodes at a special event at BAFTA HQ in London. Sean Bean and Harry Lloyd were two rows in front of me, so my first experience of the show had the back of real life Sean Bean's head in the bottom corner of it. Very strange, but also quite epic.

It's amazing how this show went from must watch television, where if you didn't watch that episode the night before, you either spoke to nobody the next day or you just accepted you're going to get spoilers because it'd be all people wanted to talk about the next day. You don't get that kind of experience on TV anymore.

Book readers must have been so excited to see all these places on their screen. I only read the books after the series started, but I can imagine many had been waiting since the 90s for an adaptation. 

Those first seasons in particular were phenomenal!

Honestly this was such a sensational show. So weird that it ended abruptly at Season 6...

If rewatching the early Harry Potter movies made you realize how young the characters used to be, then early GoT made you realize how *alive* most of the characters were.

It's a pity the writer thinks it's a good idea to graphically describe incestuous child sexual abuse. Utterly disgusting and he needs his hand drives checked.

Despite the bad quality of the last seasons those first seasons will always remain iconic. Especially the opening intro.

[Wiener, wiener weiner, wiener wiener wiener..... ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csOcHCDmMdE)

All that just to have a bad ending,

Just re-watching the first season, funny how many clues are actually in the "casual" conversations.

I will never forgive D&D for what they did to this show.

15 years ago and he's still not done with making the books

It's really too bad it that show never got a 7th season.

It was a pleasure to watch all 7 seasons with you all

IMO the first season was the best season. Shout out to Bobby B

I still find it interesting how I went into this show blind. At the time my parents had Sky TV and I'd see ads for the show featuring Sean Bean, so I figured why not give the premiere a try? Couldn't really tell what was going on and it seemed a bit like generic fantasy to me so I didn't give it my full attention as I watched it on TV but then it ended with that shocking scene of Bran witnessing Cersei and Jaime and the boy getting pushed out the window and I kind of wanted to know what happened next. One of the rare instances where I watched a popular show from when it first started airing.

Without a doubt, one of the best shows ever made. It is a shame that they never made the last season. We'll never know who won at the Game of Thrones and what happened with the dead army.

I will die on this hill, and apparently more people are starting to as well, that the ending was not nearly as bad as the insane fandom online would lead you to believe. Pretty much every plot point was fine, they just could have used more fleshing out/build up, but no one on that show wanted to work on it anymore which was obvious from the post series documentary. It was too big and too stressful and people were literally missing their children growing up because of working on this show. Even the later seasons are still fantastic, and some of the best episodes of the series are in the later seasons. People regularly post about the dragonfire explosion, the battle of the bastards, that first dragon fight north of the wall, hardhome, etc etc. And Ive noticed the online narrative switching back to people realizing the show was actually great, even the ending, as more and more people are re-watching it or watching it for the first time. The insane reaction initially was from years and years of people coming up with theories online and then being mad when they were wrong. When the Jon Snow reveal happens, so many people were just like "after years of talking about it it finally happens!!!",. People just watched the show to have their theories confirmed at some point, and when they werent they lost their shit. I even know people irl who never read the books but they also got obsessed with book reader fan theories online and that was the ONLY thing that hurt the show for them: not seeing these theories they were excited about come to pass. But even those people eventually realized the show was still great.

Such anniversary might have been a good day to release an official trailer (and the release date) for season 3 of House of the Dragon. But I guess, we won't get it today.

Cue the whinging.

Man ! how bad they ffed up the last season, today no one even remembers this show existed and was a phenomenon !

It's neat to see the sigils not really matching up until the next or later episodes.

Will never forget watching The Red Wedding for the first time.

Hearing this theme song for the first time, accompanied by this intricate opening credits, immediately got me hooked on the series

15 years?? Where is the time going?

When I watched the show I hadn't read any of the books and I remember seeing this opening and thinking "cool graphics, love how the buildings pop up with gears and whatnot." Now on rewatch I'm like, "oh there's a stag on Kings landing, right it was the Baratheans in charge, and ok Winterfell, this is before it was sacked, where next? right, the wall! And -- oh across to Essos to see what's going on with the last Targareans". It's amazing how much information those opening credits conveyed. I know the opening to House of the Dragon tries to do the same but I find it a lot more muddied and I have to go to the internet every time to get an explanation.

Thanks for the Ohrwurm in my head. EDIT: An Ohrwurm is a German word which is literally translated to ear worm. This word means that you have a song inside your head, which you have recently heard and you can not forget it, because your brain is now on auto repeat.

I wonder when the next piece of epic music will come out. We used to get iconic movie and soundtracks every year or so, but now it's been what ... well 15 years since the last piece of iconic music I guess.

Ahh back before there were 28 writers in a room to make sure everyones modern views. Were shoved into a fantasy show, then call everyone a bigot for calling anything out.

Only show I never skipped the opening credits for...

I appreciate how it's discretely a hard exposition and lore dump without the viewer realising. It shows them the entire map of the world, where the significant locations are in relation to each other, where our characters currently are, and the current status of those locations. All while just being a cool opening credits. Without it, characters saying they travelled from King's Landing to Winterfell would mean nothing, because you'd have no idea where they are. Or how far Dany actually is away from the main action.

Get fucked.

I was hooked after Episode 1. Immediately bought the book because I couldn't wait one week at at time to find out what happens.

I was so excited because of the novels. Sadly…

If only we knew

WOW! How time flies. I started watching one season one had finished.

Gods we were young

These suckered me into half the season before I concluded it wasnt all happening in an O'Neill cylindar.

First show intro which truly felt epic in itself, so much so that basically every fantasy/sci-fi show since has tried to copy it. I remember getting so hyped from the intro, and loved trying to spot the differences as seasons progressed.

Sad that they won’t let other Streaming Services pickup the older episodes.

Didn’t not expect that to hit so hard. Amazing. Truly a different time in my life. I love where I am. But it’s been a hell of a journey. Wild to think about.

This reminds me that, total newbie, I thought all those gears and mechanical things in the intro implied it was some kind of steampunk show, and I kept waiting for zeppelins over King's Landing, and some kinda mechanized overland transport, like tanks or steam locomotives, lol. I was glad to be wrong and enjoyed the medieval world, but I was just certain I'd decoded the intro right.

This feels like the last show that literally everybody was watching

Wiener, wiener, wiener, wienerparty. All bs aside this might be the best tv series of all time with the worst last season of all time

What a spectacular show. To this day when Drogon comes into the arena to save Daenerys from the attackers and she climbs on his back and she flies away- that's the coolest thing I think I've ever seen on television.

The day we came home from my first son being born, still remember watching it with him