Trivia / Game of Thrones S6E9: "Battle of the Bastards"

• Real Life Writes the Plot: Ghost was going to feature much more in the battle but of course budget concerns resulted in his role being reduced. Ultimately it was a choice between including Ghost or Wun-Wun, and they chose the giant for Rule of Cool.
• Throw It In!:
  • The scene of Jon nearly being buried by the pile of corpses wasn't in the original script and was thought up right there on set at the end of the shoot.
  • Kit Harrington accidentally hit Iwan Rheon for real a couple of times during their duel, which made it into the episode.
• Troubled Production: Filming the battle was not easy.
  • The entire sequence took twenty-five days to film, and resetting after a take would last half an hour while crew had to erase all the horse prints and reapply fake snow.
  • In making this, they discovered that it was illegal for horses to collide on set - requiring lots of camera tricks and CGI to make it look like horses were impacting on the battlefield.
  • Kristofer Hivju said that because everyone was so closely packed together and fighting chaotically in mud and snow, one wrong move could result in serious injury.
  • They had only twelve days to use the location, when forty-eight was the original plan. Eventually they stretched it to twenty-five.
  • The muddy terrain caused many of the actors and extras to wear half as much intended armor so that choreography would go unimpeded as much as possible.