The most recent head-turning apology came from the creators of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which included the appearance of President George W. Bush’s severed head on a stake in one of its early episodes. HBO itself apologized earlier last week. Full statements from both HBO and the show producers are available here.

According to Reddit, show-runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss stated that they “…meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise.” They also apologized for calling attention to the issue in the first place by saying, “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.”

Additionally, and perhaps most amusingly, Benioff and Weiss also explained how the former President’s head ended up on the spike in the first place — why, budget issues, of course!

“We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. 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.” Is anyone else picturing what a bulk shipment of prosthetic Bush heads might look like cascading out of a trailer truck? Well, you are now. Sorry.