Game of Thrones is the most brutal show on television.
Not an episode goes by when someone's not being decapitated, mutilated or having their skull mercilessly popped by the barbaric behemoth Gregor 'The Mountain' Clegane.
The bloodthirsty savagery of Westeros and the increasingly gory ways that characters are killed off seemingly has no bounds.
That was until they planned the death of one of the show's most notorious figures - Ramsay Bolton.
The man was a truly evil bastard, flaying, murdering, torturing his way to power in the north.
He was universally hated and despised and fans were itching to see him get his comeuppance. So following his relentless campaign of physical, sexual and physiological abuse of Sansa Stark, it proved poetic that she was the one that instigated his most-savage of deaths.
Look away now if you're squeamish...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw_Ej0HkPCs
But the special effects wizards behind the harrowing scene, where Sansa fed Ramsay to his own pack of ravenous dogs after the infamous 'Battle of the Bastards', say it was supposed to be even more gruesome.
It was pretty tough to watch, but according to Image Engine we were given a watered-down version of Ramsay's horrific end.
The SFX company had planned for you to see him being ripped apart by his hounds in close-up details, but what they created was deemed too gory even for Game of Thrones.
The company said:
'They shot the scene with multiple takes. They did a pass of the dog on greenscreen, then Ramsay on greenscreen, and then we also had a background plate, which we put together.'Image Engine's artists also built a CG jaw and animated it to show the flesh ripping between Ramsay's skin and gums. The initial result was so gruesome that Image Engine slightly scaled back the gore 'We pulled back on the CG work and we eventually did a 2D composite instead, which worked out great.'
Call us grim and grisly, but we'd love to see the original scenes that were pulled from TV.
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