WARNING: AS ALWAYS, SPOILERS AHEAD.

While re-watching the Season 7 premiere of Game of Thrones, I had a Bran-like flashback.

There’s a scene in which we get a long look at the frozen undead army of White Walkers marching on, including a very large tall zombie that reminded me of poor Wun Wun, the giant who died during the battle against Ramsay Bolton.

It hit me that I’d heard Wun Wun’s name was a subtle NFL reference thanks to Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, who happens to be a huge football fan.

It came from a Martin interview I heard years ago on NPR’s Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! in which he told this story:

MARTIN: Well there’s this guy named Patrick St. Denis, who runs a fantasy website called Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist. And Pat is a big Dallas Cowboys fan. So we would have a standing bet for a number of years about whether the Dallas Cowboys or the New York Giants would do better. And I won the bet the first two years. But finally, in the third year the Cowboys finished ahead of the Giants. And what I had to do if he won the bet was to kill him horribly within the books. (LAUGHTER) MARTIN: So I invented a character called Ser Patrek of King’s Mountain and described his heraldry as looking somewhat like the heraldry of the Dallas Cowboys with the silver star on a white field. And then I had him ripped apart by a giant.

What was the name of that Giant? You guessed it: Wun Wun.

As many people over the years have pointed out, Wun Wun sounds like One One, which is the number 11. And what Giant was No. 11?

Phil Simms!