Early in the first episode of HBO's A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the Game of Thrones prequel's novice hero, Dunk (Peter Claffley), learns of a nearby tournament where he might make a name for himself. We hear the strings of Ramin Djawadi's iconic GoT theme song, and prepare ourselves for Dunk's journey towards triumph. Instead, the scene cuts to Dunk dealing with intestinal distress in the most graphic manner possible.
It's a very funny, if juvenile, gag. But it also serves an important purpose. Both Game of Thrones and its first prequel House of the Dragon are massive in scope, among the biggest and most expensive television shows ever made. The story of GoT took place across two continents and involved dozens of significant characters, plus three dragons and an army of frozen zombies. HotD mostly sticks to the confines of the seven kingdoms of Westeros, and focuses on members of the Targaryen royal family. But to make up for that, it features many more full-sized dragons, in battle on a scale that Thrones only approached at the very end of its run.
In using the famous GoT music to set up a bathroom joke, Knight is signaling that its aims are simpler and/or sillier. There isn't an opening credits sequence at all, versus the elaborate ones the other George R.R. Martin adaptations have used. Where House of the Dragon Season Two episodes usually clocked in at well over an hour, Knight episodes hover around 30 minutes. The only dragons we see are props in a puppet show. There's no hopping from locale to locale. The entire first season takes place in and around the tournament. And while Dunk meets many people as he tries to find glory, the series is primarily a two-hander buddy adventure about Dunk and his young squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). Other than Dunk himself — Claffey is 6'5", even taller than Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher — it's a deliberately small show.