HBO and the creators of the Game of Thrones TV series have apologized for using a model of President George W. Bush’s head in a scene in Season 1 in which King Joffrey shows Sansa Stark the heads of men he’s beheaded along with her father.  The showrunners mentioned the use of the former president’s likeness in the DVD commentary on the Season 1 set (see "DVD Round Up—'Game of Thrones'").  Nobody apparently noticed until this week, when it blew up on the Web.  HBO and the showrunners both apologized. 

"We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste," the HBO statement said.  "We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake.  We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production."

Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss issued their own apology, and an explanation.  "We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc.," their statement said.  "We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk.  After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush.  In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have.  We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise."