Spoilers for The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones below.
The Walking Dead is a pretty grim show, and it’s only been getting grimmer in recent years. Still, it comes as a bit of a surprise that a show that’s as much of a death-fest as Game of Thrones could be used to lighten anything. Nevertheless, the official Twitter account for The Walking Dead managed to use the new Game of Thrones poster of a bloody and grim Jon Snow to brighten the mood after all of the recent life-or-death shenanigans involving Glenn. Check it out!
For only casual viewers of The Walking Dead who aren't up on their Game of Thrones trivia, this little Twitter joke might not make too much sense. For those of us who have shaved years off of our lives from the stress of being invested The Walking Dead and/or Game of Thrones, however, this gag is hilarious. After season upon season of death and destruction of the zombie apocalypse variety, fans have learned to take our humor where we can find it.
And we have definitely been in need of some humor. The apparent yet not quite conclusive death of one of the longest surviving characters of The Walking Dead had fans of the AMC series on the edges of their seats for the better part of a month. The latest episode finally revealed that Glenn had survived his ordeal, but he’s not out of the woods just yet. With the midseason finale that often sees a major character biting the dust still to air, it’s terrifyingly possible that the show only let Glenn survive so that he could die even in an even worse way very soon.
So, yeah, we’ve needed a laugh or two, and The Walking Dead poking fun at the even grimmer Game of Thrones works. After all, waiting a month to find out if Glenn had died off-screen is nothing compared to waiting the better part of a year to find out if and how Jon Snow was ever going to recover from the assassination attempt of the Season 5 finale of Game of Thrones that looked awfully final. Glenn scooted under a dumpster; Jon Snow bled out in the snow as the life went out of his eyes. Most Game of Thrones fans have known better than to believe that Jon Snow was really going to be gone from the show forever, but it’s only thanks to recent spoilers and this new poster that we have concrete proof that the bastard of Winterfell will be coming back as something other than a wight.
It may seem heartless for Walking Dead viewers to laugh at a joke at the expense of Game of Thrones viewers, but the laughter comes from a place of understanding rather than mockery. We’re laughing with the Game of Thrones fans, not at them.
Sitcom fans are definitely laughing at all of us, though. They know nothing about any of the stuff and things that keep us awake at night.
The Walking Dead airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC. Game of Thrones returns to HBO in April 2016.
