Producers Dan Weiss and David Benioff say they didn't intentionally use a prosthetic head because it looked like Bush and they meant no disrespect to him.

The scene was shown last year and included again in a DVD release this March with no public notice.

But a story about it began circulating online this week – the same week that HBO is premiering a documentary on Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush.

The former president’s head appears near the end of Season 1 when the character King Joffrey takes Sansa Stark out to see the spiked heads of his enemies, including someone special to her.

“The last head on the left is George Bush,” says one of the creators. “George Bush’s head appears in a couple of beheading scenes,” says the other., reported CBS New York.

“It’s not a choice, it’s not a political statement, we just used whatever heads we had around.”

A statement from Benioff and Weiss said: “What happened was this: 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.

“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. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologise if anything we sad or did suggested otherwise.”