Did you know that the sword of the great wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) from Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is now but a fragment of the many swords that make up the intimidating Iron Thone in HBO’s Game of Thrones? Do not feel bad. No one did until recently!

A Reddit user recently noticed the sword, which inarguably looks an awful lot like Gandalf’s sword. Whether this was intended by the show’s makers or not, who knows. But it is hard to deny the resemblance.

Be sure to click on over to the other side now to check out a comparison image!

Most geeks have at one time or another quoted Gandalf the Grey’s (as played by Ian McKellen) most epic of lines from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, “You shall not pass!”

So it was only a matter of time before someone dressed like Gandalf and tried it out on the unsuspecting public. As part of their Movies in Real Life series, Improv Everywhere took over Bow Bridge in Central Park and got to the denying passage…without much luck.

You can check out the video below.

The large Israel bookstore chain Steimatzky Books have launched a brilliant ad campaign to promote their stores that features readers sleeping in bed beside popular literary characters, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, the wizard Gandalf from J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

Steimatzky teamed up with the Israeli advertising agency ACW Grey Tel-Aviv to create the ads, which all carry the slogan “The right book will always keep you company.” In the ads, the regular people are seen sleeping in a very IKEA bedroom-like setting with copies of the books that the characters appear in, while those characters lie sleeping beside them.

The Gandalf photo ad is here above, and you can watch its TV commercial here below. There’s also a few of the other ads here below.