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A clever Easter egg was hidden in a smaller 'Game of Thrones' finale scene

sam oldtown citadel
Sam and Gilly finally made it to the Citadel at Oldtown. HBO

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for "Game of Thrones" season six.

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While the "Game of Thrones" season six finale was packed with major deaths, plot twists, and satisfying moments, there was one smaller detail that some eagle-eyed fans picked up on when Sam went to the Citadel in Oldtown.

After a whole season of traveling, Sam finally made it to the Citadel where he will train to become a maester to better serve Jon Snow as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. (Of course, Sam is working under some old intel that Jon is still Lord Commander and has no idea he was murdered and subsequently resurrected and now is in Winterfell as King in the North, but news travels slowly in Westeros.)

Despite a less-than-warm welcome at the Citadel, Sam is allowed to enter the library and it’s there, suspended from the ceiling, that viewers saw an elaborate, chandelier-looking contraption that looks exactly like the spinning mechanism from the opening credits.

Redditor Samurio noticed the similarities and uploaded screenshots to the /r/GameofThrones subreddit comparing the Oldtown contraption to the title sequence.

So what is this thing? From an old interview with Angus Wall, Creative Director at Elastic, the company that created the opening credits map intro, they call it an astrolabe.

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Astrolabes have historically been used by everyone from explorers and navigators to astronomers and even astrologers to locate and predict positions of the planets in order to provide local time, latitude, and more.

The astrolabe the team at Elastic created is much more complex than traditional astrolabes and has intricate rings around it telling the history of Westeros.

"One of the things that came out of our conversations were the bands on the astrolabe — they’re the bands that surround the sun," Wall told Art of the Title. "We show three close-ups of those bands that tell the pre-history of the world in relief-sculpture form. They tell about dragons attacking Westeros. They tell about how the different houses on Westeros got together and defeated those dragons, and how those houses, represented by their respective animals, bowed in allegiance to the Baretheon stag."

astrolabe
A planispheric astrolabe from the 16th century. Wikimedia Commons
got astrolabe
The astrolabe in the "Game of Thrones" opening credits. HBO

Wall goes on to explain that the astrolabe was a way to orient show watchers in the world on an elaborate map that could provide an idea of where all these fantastical locations are in relation to one another. Though it started simply enough, the developers ended up crafting an intricate map that was inspired by the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and was made out of contemporary materials.

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Best of all? They said they designed the map so all the working parts could literally translate to a physical object in real life.

"Imagine it’s in a medieval tower and monks are watching over it and it’s a living map and it’s shaped like a bowl that’s 30 feet in diameter and these guys watch over it," Wall said about the title sequence. "They’re the caretakers of this map."

So does this mean that the map in the credits could actually be a physical map kept inside the Citadel? Did Sam just step into the real-world title sequence? Are we watching "The Truman Show"?

While it could be possible that there’s a complex map of Westeros and Essos hidden somewhere in the Citadel, it’s more likely that the astrolabe is a symbol of the vast knowledge contained in the Citadel. With thousands of books documenting the history of the world, maesters of the Citadel have the globe at the their fingertips.

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Still, the fact that Sam is now finally in a maester-filled city that is largely considered to be the intellectual capital of Westeros, we will probably learn a lot more about magic, prophecies, and the future of the Seven Kingdoms in season seven.

Only 10 more months until we find out.

Game of Thrones HBO
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