As an in-joke, the insults thrown at Daenerys and her army by the Meereneese champion are based on the taunts thrown at King Arthur and his men by the French soldiers in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), but translated into Valyrian. Although most is obscured with other dialogue, not subtitled and translated differently, this is what the champion says:
- I fart in your general direction, son of a window-dresser! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries (Missandei translates it as "You are an army of men without men-parts").
- Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person! (Missandei claims it means "You are no woman at all, just a man who hides his c##k inside his own a##hole).
- I wave my private parts at your aunties!
- I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed, animal food-trough wiper!
- I blow my nose at you, so-called Dragon Queen! You and all your silly Westerosi kaniggets (the Meereenese champion even mispronounces the word "knights").
The first time that Sam's nickname "the Slayer" is mentioned.
According to Pedro Pascal, during the brothel scene, one of the actresses playing a prostitute wouldn't put her robes back on between takes. This is not uncommon, since many actresses find the act of constantly disrobing in front of the crew to be actually more uncomfortable than being nude per se. However, what Pascal found most surprising was that this scene took a very long time to shoot, and the actress never put on any clothing, not even during longer breaks; at one point, he found her completely naked in the green room, playing Words with Friends on her phone with showrunner David Benioff, sitting next to a slightly embarrassed Charles Dance who didn't know where to look.
Jaime having forced sex with Cersei in the Great Sept drew particularly harsh criticism for the recurrent depiction of rape in the series, especially since in the books, the sex was consensual. It led one female critic to say that she stopped watching the show as she got "exhausted by the triumph of men at the expense of women as a narrative device". In the novels, Jaime is still on his way to King's Landing when Joffrey dies; he immediately proceeds to the Great Sept when he returns, which is where he sees Cersei again for the first time and why they cannot contain themselves, while on the show, Cersei seems to have lost interest in Jaime, causing him to force her into it. George R.R. Martin has defended these scenes, stating that his books are based on history, and "rape and sexual violence have been a part of every war ever fought, from the ancient Sumerians to our present day. To omit them from a narrative centered on war and power would have been fundamentally false and dishonest, and would have undermined one of the themes of the books: that the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves." Concerning the particular scene, Martin said that Cersei was merely protesting the inappropriateness of the setting and the time; although she fears getting caught, "she is as hungry for Jaime as he is for her", as she is kissing him back in the end. Martin did express his regret that the scene disturbed people for the wrong reasons. The cast, director Alex Graves and the showrunners withheld commentary for a long time, though they eventually stated that the scene was never scripted or played out as a rape, but as an expression of their grief; however, it may have unintentionally appeared as rape because shots of Cersei embracing Jaime, wrapping her legs around him and passionately kissing him back were not clearly shot or edited out. Graves, who was also the editor, didn't return as director after season 4, although it has never been confirmed that this controversy had anything to do with it.
Last appearance of Jack Gleeson as Joffrey. The scene of his corpse lying in state was actually filmed before his death scene in the previous episode, and Gleeson described it as "wonderful", since it involved him being paid to take a nap for a full day of filming. Gleeson largely swore off acting after the show, having made only a few appearances in movies and series since.