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WWE News: Vince McMahon’s ‘Game Of Thrones’ Fandom Inspired Lana Storylines

By Kris Holt
Published on: 03:48 PST, Feb 15, 2017

Throughout its history, WWE has borrowed liberally from other realms of pop culture to create its characters. Razor Ramon, for instance, was rooted in Scott Hall’s love of Scarface; Goldust borrowed one of his facepaint looks from Darth Maul; WWE Champion Bray Wyatt drew inspiration from Cape Fear; and Triple H has more than once had a hint of Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator about him.

For all the criticism Vince McMahon gets about being out of touch, one character who has been featured a ton on WWE TV over the last few years is actually based on perhaps the most popular TV show in the world.

During an appearance on AfterBuzz TV’s The Tomorrow Show with Keven Undergaro (as pointed out by With Spandex), Lana revealed the surprising influence behind her character: the fandom of both Vince McMahon and the late Dusty Rhodes for Game of Thrones.

Lana and Sean Waltman (aka X-Pac) noted that even though Vince doesn’t typically have time to stay in tune with current movies and TV shows, instead relying on people around him to keep tabs on pop culture and borrow from it when necessary, both he and Dusty were big fans of Game of Thrones. Lana noted that it’s important to watch a lot of things because you can draw inspiration from all manner of sources.

Lana said that Dusty came up with the idea of her controlling “the brute” — in this case, Rusev, her real-life husband. Rhodes apparently used Daenerys Targaryen as his inspiration, since she has dragons to carry out destruction at her bidding. Apparently, Dusty foresaw many of the storylines Lana and Rusev have been involved with on WWE TV.

“He was like, ‘You are going to control the brute. Control him, control him, but at one point, if you push him too far, he will turn on you.’ And that’s exactly what we ended up doing. I was always the intense one, and then at one point, I pushed him too far, and he tried to kick me back to Russia. And that’s what brought up Dolph.”

That’s a reference to the pair’s 2015 storyline with Dolph Ziggler, with whom Lana was romantically tangled during a love quadrangle storyline also involving Summer Rae. That storyline was also drawn from Game of Thrones and, in particular, the conniving outlook of Cersei Lannister, as noticed by Vince McMahon.

“[The Dolph storyline] was so much fun. Vince got that whole idea from [Cersei Lannister]. I remember having that whole conversation with him and saying, ‘What about [Cersei], being conniving?’ He was like, ‘Yes!’ And that whole Dolph Ziggler story came from [Cersei] from Game of Thrones!”

Lana apparently questioned the idea, wondering how Cersei’s villainous, “conniving” ways would play into her new babyface character.

The reveal that McMahon is such a big Game of Thrones fan and used characters from the show as inspiration for his own product could point to some ways forward for the future of WWE’s gimmicks. Perhaps we’ll see TJ Perkins get an upgrade to become a full-fledged Overwatch character.

There’s some other Game of Thrones parallels visible in current WWE characters. Bayley is almost an Arya Stark, an immensely likable, skilled, intelligent underdog. Enzo Amore is akin to a mouthy Tyrion Lannister, a character full of quips and smarts who relies on bigger men like Bronn (Big Cass) to protect him.

Then again, McMahon possibly sees Roman Reigns as his virtuous, unkillable WWE version of Jon Snow, so perhaps his pop culture inspirations aren’t too on point. Thankfully, he has avoided having Stephanie and Shane McMahon replicate the Cersei and Jaime Lannister relationship that kicked off many of the Game of Thrones events.

[Featured Image by WWE]

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