As we barrel toward the final season of Game of Thrones, one can't help but look back fondly on the shock, awe, theorizing, and passion the HBO show's best episodes have inspired in viewers over the years. Well, not everyone remembers GoT fondly: The full range of those emotions are on display in the complaints people have lodged against the series to the Federal Communications Commission, the government agency responsible for regulating broadcast TV and other types of communication.

"This television program is a scourge and a menace, and is actively degrading every aspect of discourse, morality, and culture for all of us," one individual complained to the government agency in May 2016, according to 65 pages of documents obtained by Thrillist through a Freedom of Information Act request filed January 28. Some of the anonymized complaints read like amateur reviews of Thrones' artistic decisions, and unrelated comments that mention the show by name run the gamut -- either flagging concerns about accessibility issues in its broadcast, or comparing it to other series. One entry, strangely, references LeBron James' penis.

Thrillist's request captured complaints filed between January 1, 2014, and February 1, 2019, due to the FCC's policy of purging records that linger for more than three years after the case is closed. (We're not the first to do this. MuckRock put in a similar request more than three years ago, and some of our findings overlap.) The FCC sent us the documents with its standard disclaimer that "a complaint or comment does not necessarily indicate any wrongdoing." Also, though these complaints were made to the FCC, it doesn't really have the authority to crack down on HBO or other cable channels for the content of Game of Thrones, which means a lot of these complaints amount to piss in the ocean and are, for the more ridiculous of them, pretty funny.

We've presented some of the most entertaining complaints lodged to the government agency below, all of which are [sic]. You can read the full trove in PDF form here.