Game of Thrones is somewhat of a senior scholar to Stranger Things, paving the way for a big-budget fantasy series that not only made pop culture history but also millions. The two series collectively raised the bar of what serialized storytelling can achieve in the streaming era. The Duffer Brothers, the masterminds behind Stranger Things, have now made it public that they have taken a leaf out of Game of Thrones' playbook to delineate the principal aspects of their sci-fi horror universe.

Both shows exploded on screens with colossal ambition, vastness, and intense world-building; so much so that the similarities in their strategies are hard to ignore.

The Duffer Brothers employed Game of Thrones as a wrench in the gears of negotiations with Netflix. In a frank conversation with Variety, Matt and Ross Duffer confessed that they went on to compare their own case with that of Game of Thrones when thinking about the scope of Stranger Things. Matt Duffer spoke of wanting to make their series “scale up” with an evolved setting, more characters, and more visual spectacles as its audience grew gradually. 

Following the example of Dan Weiss and David Benioff, who "used the success [of Game of Thrones] to scale the show up and evolve it, and it snowballed. We would always take that example to Netflix," he recalled to Variety. They cited the HBO epic’s expanding world, detailed narratives, and a wide geography of multiple worlds to match the scale of its eventual success. They made the argument to the streaming titan that if Stranger Things became an enormous success in both quantity and quality, it would mean more influence, which is exactly what happened over the course of the decade. 

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Beyond strategies, they also emailed Weiss and Benioff to recruit the Night King's costume designer for Vecna, per Tudum. The result was a horror fantasy, equally impactful and monumental.

Since its 2016 premiere, Stranger Things has reportedly earned over $1 billion in revenue for Netflix. As per the report of TIME, by the end of 2020, the show had already attracted more than 2 million new subscribers to the streaming platform. Such returns are very similar to the ones obtained by the multibillion-dollar franchise of Game of Thrones. 

The epic saga of Westeros ushered in over 30 million viewers per episode to HBO, per The New York Times. What began with a budget of $6 million per episode expanded to $10 million by its sixth season, leading up to a total of $90 million for the final season. With the darker and grittier final season of Hawkins impending, one can expect Stranger Things to shatter more records beyond expectations. 

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