On Sunday night, we saw an old knight’s dick. It was the first dick I ever saw on television that startled me to the point of uncontrollable laughter. In a flashback sequence on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Ser Arlan of Pennytree steps outside and relieves himself, as our hero Dunk regales us about his old employer’s exploits. The good and gifted ser emerges from his dwelling, and the shot thus centers and lingers on his absurdly large, fully flaccid penis. It is so prominent, so huge, and so unserious that it demands attention.
And, in my case, further research.
HBO is known, in a mostly bad way, for gratuitous and often violent portrayals of female nudity, particularly on shows like Game of Thrones. But ever since HBO came into its current form in 1997, the basic cable network has also been unusually consistent with its male full-frontal nudity. Oz—HBO’s first one-hour scripted drama series—established a precedent for HBO’s prestige original shows that continues almost three decades later. The tradition of occasional, fleeting, full-frontal male genitalia has become as synonymous with HBO as Sunday nights, from Oz to The Righteous Gemstones.
And that phallic journey has apparently been one long—long—road to this point: Ser Arlan’s gigantic dong. Dunk may not be able to pin down his former mentor’s legacy, but allow me to say that it is this: Ser Arlan of Pennytree, in all his glory, inspired an investigation. A dickvestigation, if you will. He forced us to ask this question and find its answer: What is the biggest penis in HBO history?
Methodology: How Many Dicks Are We Talking About?
If an FBI agent—or anyone, really—were to see my recent search history, they would reasonably conclude that I have a flaccid prosthetic-penis addiction, with a hyper-fixation on men who have appeared nude on HBO dramas (including miniseries and excluding original movies and HBO Max content, which is or is not HBO depending on whom you ask and when). They would also notice, based on the spreadsheet documenting my data, that 87 penises have appeared on 28 HBO shows from the year 1997 to early 2026. This sounds low because I excluded the scene from Euphoria with 40 penises for two reasons: I didn’t want to, and background actors did not count in my database unless their nudity was heavily featured and/or had a function within the scene beyond shock value.
Scouring HBO’s entire programming slate was a daunting task. I have seen most HBO original series, but there have been some skips throughout my lifetime, such as John From Cincinnati. There have also been HBO shows that have faded from memory as if they were Netflix series. Did I watch Ballers? I do not recall. To save time and sanity, I took the easy way out: I googled “male full-frontal HBO” and other variations. After hours of browsing decades’ worth of rankings, think pieces, and weird websites—including a deceptive one promising Justin Theroux full-frontal in The Leftovers with weird pop-ups that possibly infected my aging MacBook Air—I stumbled on a website called Mr. Man. Mr. Man is a subsidiary of Mr. Skin, a website that documents female nudity in movies and TV shows and that is so prestigious that it was mentioned by name in Judd Apatow’s 2007 film, Knocked Up. Mr. Man is, obviously, the male counterpart to Mr. Skin, using that site’s “below the belt expertise to bring you all your favorite male celebrities nude and exposed,” according to Mr. Man’s About Us section. Stumbling on Mr. Man was promising, considering that the site’s home page featured Alexander Skarsgard as Eric Northman reading a book naked in True Blood. Hey, that's an HBO show! I said to myself. This is going to be easier than I thought.
But I was wrong. Mr. Man requires a subscription to use the search feature. I could have subscribed—with its winter sale, full access is only $6 a month—but I would have forgotten that I’d subscribed, only to realize, five or so years later, that I had sunk hundreds of dollars into a creepy penis-centric website. So my adventure continued until I found something even better: AZMen, the male-centric alternative to AZNude. On AZMen, I could search any HBO show and find screenshots and clips of nudity in it. These thorough screenshots and clips are broken down by character and actor. From there, I tried to find the year the penis aired. (In some cases, like with Oz, it was too hard and/or daunting to narrow a given penis down to its respective episode—because there were so many and because I have not seen Oz. In those cases, I logged the year the series debuted.) So if we trust AZMen—and why would you dare not to?—we can be confident that the full extent of HBO’s male nudity has been accounted for.
Of course, the question inspired by Ser Arlan is not a matter of overall volume but of maximum stature. So after assembling the HBO database of dicks, I had to appraise them in relation to our man from Pennytree. The greatest challenge here was measuring. How was I supposed to measure penises on a screen? Was I going to offend actors whom I love? I tried to make this method as mathematically and geometrically sound as possible. I learned that the average size of a male penis is just under 4 inches. I measured every penis “to scale,” which means that I took a measuring tape to my laptop screen, tilted my head several times, and decided how long it was. Since exact lengths were difficult to determine—even through this strenuous method—each penis was graded on a generous “HBO curve,” and every single one was placed into one of the following size categories: smol, average, satisfactory, exceeds expectations, absolute unit. Quickly, I began to question my grasp of the imperial measurement system, male anatomy, and reality. Simultaneously, I saw trends in penises as seen on HBO.
HBO Dickstory
Full-frontal male nudity on HBO coincides with the culture’s relationship to masculinity. Until quite recently, men were taken so seriously that they could not be objectified or parodied, meaning that the only appropriate usage of full-frontal nudity was as a signifier of serious realism. Oz premiered in 1997 (a very serious time for men). On this show about the lives of inmates and guards at a maximum-security prison, full-frontal male nudity is so frequent that it could be gratuitous out of context—especially if you search for it on AZMen dot com—but given the brutal setting and bleak tone of the show, it’s not. The nudity communicates realism, vulnerability, and power. Rome’s male nudity signifies a similar dynamic. In one scene, Tobias Menzies (whom I was delighted to add to my spreadsheet) as Brutus appears nude. He strips, slowly descends into a lake, and prays to be born again, cleansed. This pivotal, emotional, nude scene tracks for 2005.
But these dramatic, self-serious portrayals eventually evolved into comedic gags. This is mostly thanks to Danny McBride, a pioneer in the on-screen penis space. In 2013, a Season 4 episode of Eastbound & Down featured Sacha Baron Cohen with an absolute unit. McBride then continued building his legacy of absurd penises on The Righteous Gemstones (seven total), highlighted by a consistent display of Uncle Baby Billy’s (Walton Goggins) droopy, wrinkly, sun-damaged micropenis. But even a show like Game of Thrones employed full-frontal as a bit. While women who appeared nude on Game of Thrones were most frequently humiliated, raped, murdered, or worse, male characters bared all as comic relief. Think Hodor (Kristian Nairn) and his huge Hodor, or Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), whose all-talk-no-substance persona ran parallel with his very average broadsword.
Is HBO trying to correct a prior imbalance by flooding its airwaves with male nudity? Maybe. But truthfully, HBO is just showing more penises now, for objectification’s sake or not, and they’re getting bigger and smaller. Over time, the baseline has shifted from fleeting nudity to full, lingering display, with size becoming increasingly part of the joke or spectacle. On a chart, the dick-size line would slope upward over time, with a big jump in the 2010s. This escalation likely reflects not anatomy but production choices and the expanded use of prosthetics, which allow for exaggeration without exposing performers directly, and which costume and makeup departments are, without a doubt, having fun with.
The Mike White Method
On The White Lotus, Mike White mixes the old HBO with the new HBO when it comes to dicks. In the first season, Mark (Steve Zahn) is anxious that he has testicular cancer. He spread-eagles in front of his wife (Connie Britton) and asks her to determine whether his balls are bigger than usual. She does not know, much like how I do not know what inches are anymore, especially as they relate to male genitalia. The scene unfolds comedically but exists in an emotional, relatable vacuum; this is what marriage is, what aging is.
In Season 3, Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) accidentally exposes himself to his family when his robe opens up while he’s high on lorazepam. Although the circumstances are different, it echoes the Zahn scene in the first season. The nudity strips Tim of his power, but it’s written, performed, and perceived comedically—a tonal friction that makes the audience feel as uneasy as the characters.
Part of the joke within the male nudity on The White Lotus is how unfamiliar male vulnerability is on-screen. It feels absurd because we basically haven’t been allowed to watch men be soft in everyday circumstances (i.e., not in prison or ancient Rome).
Conversely, however, White does not shy away from a penis for penis’s sake. Take Vlad, a Russian who turns his penis into a helicopter before he jumps into a pool in Season 3. And there’s the second season, in which Harper (Aubrey Plaza) gets a tease of Cameron’s (Theo James) presumed absolute unit, which is both gratuitous and enticing: It puts the audience in Harper’s mind, helping us understand why she is so easily seduced by him.
A Surprising Lack of Dicks
Some of HBO’s flagship shows, like Entourage and The Sopranos, feature minimal full-frontal. OK, the word “surprising” is doing a lot of work here. Perhaps, given everything we know about Entourage—perhaps no show before or after objectified women quite like it—it’s entirely unsurprising that it featured absolutely no dicks. In fact, male masculinity was so fragile between 2004 and 2011 that the show didn’t even include a gag about Turtle being hung as a justification for his relationship with Jamie-Lynn Sigler or, like, Johnny Drama being shorter than a peanut and thinner than a pencil. Nay, in the fantasy world of Entourage, every man has a great dick.
The Sopranos, meanwhile, had no narrative reason to show a dick, yet it is still surprising and distressing for me on a personal level that it did not. The Sopranos is built on toxic masculinity, anxiety, and vulnerability. The show exists in a violent, sexual, and obsessive world, yet Tony Soprano’s penis is never on display and rarely mentioned. The absence is almost performative. On The Sopranos, the ultimate symbol of male dominance and fragility is missing. Instead, the penis is relegated to implication, left to the imagination, and thus it becomes even more of a haunting presence. The lack of an on-screen penis also underscores the strength of the writing. The Sopranos didn’t need to show anything because it was all implied.
A Surprising Surplus of Dicks
When I began this project, the first thing my husband said was “Well, there were definitely no dicks on The Wire.” He was so sure that his confidence made me feel stupid for even typing The Wire into the search bar on AZMen dot com. And lo and behold, there were dicks on The Wire.
Omar Little appears fully nude in a scene that, like any HBO series showing dongs in the late ’90s and early ’00s, communicates both power and vulnerability. In his full-frontal scene, the audience sees a gay man exude confidence in a world that will never fully accept him. He’s a man putting himself out there, literally and figuratively.
The other instance of male nudity on the show leans more comedic. Mayor Royce, for example, gets a BJ in his office. The only thing more surprising than dicks appearing on The Wire at all is that Royce’s dick lands squarely in the “satisfactory” category rather than “smol.”
But The Wire is far from the only “surprise” in HBO’s surplus collection. Big Love uses male nudity to underscore desire, secrecy, and tension among its polygamist households. And while Justin Theroux never goes full-frontal on The Leftovers, other dicks on display are central to the show’s intimacy and unease. Industry, of course, takes it even further, with nudity woven into its depiction of ambition, ego, and sexual power in finance. Meanwhile, on Six Feet Under, Theroux’s character’s member is the only penis ever shown.
The Biggest Dicks in HBO History
But again: Ser Arlan’s question. We must not lose sight—I just thought some historical and artistic context would help and add intrigue to the penis proceedings. So here we go. Yes, without a doubt, the biggest dick in HBO history is Ser Arlan Pennytree’s in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms—a distinction determined not by recency bias, but by science and math. Even from afar, the girth and the length are unmatched. Arlan is even outpunching another recent addition to the HBO dick canon: the Scrooge actor in the porno that Mike Santini watches at the end of Episode 5 of The Chair Company.
As for others fortunate enough to even be in the same ballpark as Ser Arlan: Hodor’s dick in Game of Thrones is another that pierced collective pop-culture memory, despite its quick appearance and lack of narrative consequence. The actor was frequently forced to reflect on it in interviews, which thoroughly clogged my SEO during research. Although Hodor’s moment was fleeting, it proves that impact doesn’t depend on screen time. When Hodor died in Season 6, the memory of his massive unit did not die with him. The actor who played Hodor, Kristian Nairn, recalled his prosthetic being “16 inches of hard, weird plastic that looks like a hollowed-out dildo.” This quote spurred my metric system crisis—because I measured Hodor’s penis as 10 inches, which I thought was quite generous.
And then there’s Hung. You’d assume that this show about a sex worker with a reputation for being, well, hung, would feature more dicks than a locker room in Euphoria, but that’s just your 2026 brain speaking. (Note: Euphoria does, however, feature an absolute unit from a character credited as “Super Hot Warrior Man.”) In the late aughts, it was actually pretty wild to put someone’s mushroom tip in the center frame. We get only a glimpse of Thomas Jane’s tip, but that’s enough for us to understand both the title and the premise. Finally, we should probably shout out one of Ser Arlan’s closest competitors, Industry’s Charles Hanani (Adam Levy). Apparently, upper-class men do have penises they occasionally use. And to his credit, among the absolute units on HBO, Charles’s looks the least prosthetic.
Notable Stats and Honorable Mentions
- Some dicks deserve their own special recognition. Skarsgard, for example, takes the crown for most dick per actor, with full-frontal performances in True Blood and Big Little Lies. For sheer volume, Oz remains unmatched, with 11 penises throughout the entire series. The Righteous Gemstones delivers the most gag-related penises—McBride understands the awkward, absurd, and vulnerable aspects of male nudity and uses them to make the audience squirm as much as laugh.
- A dick doesn’t always need to be shown on HBO for it to be etched on the brain. Theroux running in light gray sweatpants on The Leftovers proves that sometimes suggestion is enough.
- While the dicks on HBO get bigger, the prosthetics get more realistic, with more veins and weight than the 2010s. Sometimes you can’t tell what’s real or fake, and maybe that’s for the best?
- Two blue penises: Cal Abar (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Mr. Phillips (Tom Mison) on Watchmen.
- An honorable mention must go to the “Uncle Is Waiting” ad that kept popping up during my research. This so-called uncle exceeded expectations.
In the end, Ser Arlan of Pennytree proved a truth that any good researcher fears: HBO’s penises are never just penises. They are narrative devices, symbols, comedic tools, and occasionally, just a man simply taking a piss on Westerosi soil. After weeks of data collection, cross-referencing, and staring at dozens of flaccid dicks, my conclusion is simple. The biggest dick in HBO history was never about size. It was about audacity. On both metrics, Ser Arlan is the undisputed victor. Congratulations to him. Condolences to me.
