10. Among the most shocking moments in television history, the Red Wedding was inspired by, among other events, two real-life massacres from Scotland as well as an ancient Japanese semi-historical legend
A critical turning point of the War of the Five Kings, the Red Wedding was a massacre organized by Lord Walder Frey in retribution against King Robb Stark for breaking a marriage pact with his house. Under the guise of a wedding between Lord Edmure Tully and Roslin Frey, the hospitable Freys butchered their approximately 15,000 guests, including the entire leadership of the Northern rebellion, and declared their allegiance for the Lannisters and King Joffrey. Whilst exaggerated in scale, the shocking twist is based upon multiple true events, most prominently the Massacre of Glencoe from 1691.
Failing to deliver their oaths to William of Orange on time, the freshly crowned king dispatched one-hundred-and-twenty men to the MacDonalds. Offered accommodations and respite from the cold, the king’s men murdered thirty-eight of their hosts in their sleep and forced a further forty to die from exposure in a blizzard. Equally brutal, the Black Dinner of 1440 saw the sixteen-year-old Earl of Douglas and his younger brother invited to dine with the ten-year-old James II. Fearing the Black Douglas clan were becoming too powerful, James had the pair dragged outside mid-meal and beheaded. More obscurely, parallels between the Red Wedding and the Japanese semi-historical Kojiki warrant consideration, with Emperor Jimmu ordering the massacre of all his rivals during a feast.