GOT Is Teaching Other Shows How To Kill Off Beloved Characters

Game of Thrones is constantly finding new ways to rip your heart out. With every character's death, it's hard to know whether to be shocked or exhausted. Well, pretty soon, that feeling will be coming to other shows you watch, starting with new Star Trek: Discovery.

The show runners for the addition to the sci-fi franchise recently told Entertainment Weekly that they want their character deaths to be just as gut-wrenching as those on GOT.

“Game of Thrones changed television,” Gretchen J. Berg, one of the show runners said. “They almost made it difficult to fall in love with people because you didn’t know if they were going to be taken away from you."

Since season one, fans have been saying that Game of Thrones will go down in history, and Berg firmly agrees. She told EW that GOT has "had an influence on all TV dramas that have come after it,” especially her own.

Her co-producer Aaron Harberts added "Death isn’t treated gratuitously on [Star Trek: Discovery]. It’s not for shock value. But when it happens we want to make sure that people really feel it."

That's one thing Game of Thrones has down. When beloved character Hodor died, it seemed like all of the internet was in mourning. In fact, people are still not over it. Replies to a recent GOT tweet featuring the character are just variations of his name and a crying emoji.

Same.

If you're looking for this kind of emotional investment, maybe Star Trek: Discovery is for you. If not, there's always Stranger Things. That sci-fi whirlwind also took a page out of GOT's book. Instead of learning how to kill characters (you can breathe a sigh of relief), the Stranger Things producers learned how to keep spoilers under the radar.

Needless to say, Game of Thrones is leaving its mark on television one way or another.