I haven't seen the episode in question yet. It's awesome how the new default feature for the forum just makes posts show up you may be trying to avoid.

Mike, I get your point about blood effects and there is a fine line. Sometimes realism doesn't convey the event. So a director, or creator, or showrunner, will increase an effect to fully communicate that there is no coming back from a point. Often you have two options, a voice-****ing over that tells the audience that x has happened. Or you amplify an effect to communicate that yes this person is dead, this person will not be saved.

There are famous stories about folks not picking up deaths in pre-screening, readings of scripts, etc. and over the top concessions having to be made in order to communicate that yes, idiots, these people are dead. So now, in the event of someone dying, but not getting a final monologue, or bond-villian like talking to, or a pithy comment upon being murdered (like "say hello to your mother in hell!") then they will drive the death home with a slightly non-realistic effect. Because **** like this isn't just for the well educated or the pedants or the fans.

If the death or gore in question was actually Kill-Bill, or Django-esque (where the gore is amped beyond 11), then I doubt the communicating to the audience is the case and that would have been a directorial decision. However I have not seen much in GoT to date to suggest that. As such effects decisions would be in the show's Bible, and would be unlikely to be a one off.

Most deaths in this show that scream permanence involve a clear communication of permanence (a decapitation, a lingering scene of a hanged and bolt-ridden prostitute, etc.) this is a world when people can come back to life, we've seen it. You have to show the audience that this will not happen.

I'll revisit this upon seeing the episode, but this is the reason that good films or series dabble in unrealistic effects on occasion.