Was that a 'StarCraft' reference in last night's episode of 'Game of Thrones'?
Warning: Contains spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7, episode 4.
Sunday night's episode of Game of Thrones looked like it contained a reference to the classic computer game StarCraft, igniting speculation and discussion among fans of both properties about what it all could possibly mean.
In the episode "Spoils of War," Jon Snow led Daenerys Targaryen into the dragonglass cave beneath Dany's home in Dragonstone. The pair saw a handful of cave paintings scrawled across the cave walls, including images of White Walkers and symbols drawn by the Children of the Forest.
One of these symbols is also the symbol of the Zerg Swarm, a race of aliens from StarCraft.
StarCraft and Game of Thrones fan Joskrilla pointed out the familiar spiral on Reddit, opening to the door for theorists to sound off in the comments.
For those unfamiliar with the Zerg, they are a hivemind bent on genetic perfection, conquering whatever planets they can (usually with sheer force of numbers) and assimilating other alien races' genetics into their own. This is their symbol:
Some redditors (probably accurately) speculate that the spikey spiral in Game of Thrones was just a random design created by the art department for the show, at best suggesting there's a StarCraft fan hiding in the ranks. But the hopefuls in the thread prefer to think that the design was intentional and that, therefore, the universes are connected. One can dream.
So what if, for instance, the Zerg actually were a part of the Game of Thrones universe?
G_Morgan wistfully suggests that the Zerg Queen Kerrigan is going to come down to the Game of Thrones planet and eradicate the White Walkers. Kerrigan has been reborn in fire, in a way, so it's actually not too far off from the Game of Thrones prophecy.
G_Morgan goes on to explain how an invasion from the Zerg might actually be a good thing.
Redditor TarMil takes this theory a step further, painting a scene in which the Zerg take over and turn the Game of Thrones planet into the horrible homeworld of the Zerg: Char.
Meanwhile, Redditor Scytale_ drew comparisons of groups in Game of Thrones to alien races and characters in StarCraft. The ancient Children of the Forest could be similar to the similarly ancient, intelligent race of StarCraft aliens called the Protoss; The Others (a.k.a. White Walkers) could be either the Zerg or infested Terran (StarCraft's human race that have been infected just like the undead in GoT); and dragons could be Battlecruisers, powerful spaceship built by Terrans (honestly that last one is a bit of a stretch).
Though likely not actually a hint at an impending invasion of an alien race, or connected universes, we like to think the StarCraft reference was an intentional nod to StarCraft regardless.
That seems like the best case scenario answer for StarCraft/Game of Thrones fans. But can you imagine Westeros united against a Zerg rush? Surely even the white walkers can get behind that.
