Squid Game: 10 lesser-known facts that might leave you uncomfortable ahead of Netflix's Season 3 release

Indian Express

5 hours ago

Squid Game remains Netflix's unbeatable king in the most-watched series history, with the first season of the South Korean thriller exploding in popularity overnight when it dropped in 2021. Director Hwang Dong Hyuk, who faced multiple rejections from studios, eventually scored an OTT deal for what was originally meant to be a movie, based on South Korea's survival gaming culture, but with a brutal twist and eerie details no one saw coming. Now, what started as a one-off show has blown up into a massive franchise, with its third and final season gearing up for release on Netflix this June 27. But before that, here are 10 lesser-known facts that might leave you seriously unsettled—from the real-life Red Light, Green Light doll to the organ harvesting subplot, and even spin-offs that stirred major controversy.
Also read: Squid Game 3 spin-off is happening: Lee Byung Hun drops major spoilers about finale ending, says, 'Netflix asked me to keep this a secret…'
While it's widely known that the show's concept is inspired by harmless kids' games that exist in South Korea, the creator has said he drew from Japanese manga and anime, denying any real-life replication. He did, however, admit that some events were influenced by his own life. In Season 1, when Gi Hun is fired from his job at Dragon Motors after 16 years and joins a strike, director Hwang told AFP, 'Through the reference to the SsangYong Motor layoffs, I wanted to show that any ordinary middle-class person today can hit rock bottom overnight.' He was pointing to the 2009 mass layoff where 2,600 workers, 43% of the total workforce, were let go.
Just like the island in the show, there was a real place, Brother's Home, an internment camp on the island of Busan during the 1970s and '80s. The facility ran nearly 20 factories. CNN once called it the site of South Korea's worst human rights abuses, while Korean media described it as the country's own Auschwitz. The series of kidnappings began under the authoritarian regime's so-called mission to 'purify the streets', a PR move to make South Korea look free of poverty and vagrants. In Squid Game, the players are financially wrecked and choose to compete. In Brother's Home, the people, mostly poor, were dragged there by force. One of the few survivors, Hahn John Son, told Al Jazeera how men in blue tracksuits shoved him and his sister into a truck. In the series, too, masked men in pink tracksuits abduct players into a van.
The story was possibly one of the reasons why Squid Game was rejected multiple times (over a decade), because of its eerie similarity to how inmates were treated at Brother's home. Some old photos show them sitting on bunk beds in dorms that look just like the ones in the show. At the camp, the inmates were given blue training suits, rubber shoes, and nylon underwear. In the show, players wear green tracksuits and white sneakers. There were even reports that platoon leaders ran drills called 'games' similar to 'The Motor Vehicle Game,' such games reportedly led to many deaths.
The games are pure fiction, but some elements during filming were meant to trigger real fear in the actors. 'The set was about one meter (3 feet) above the ground. We put real tempered glass there and ran around on it,' Jung Ho-yeon said in an interview. For the director, the goal was to pull out real emotion, not just reactions. 'The glass made them nervous,' he said. 'It felt like jumping off a high bridge. The game was fake—but the fear, their bodies, that was real.'
The grotesque subplot in Squid Game, where guards harvest organs from dead players to sell on the black market in exchange for inside info on the next game, isn't just fiction. It is inspired from real-life news reports and spotlights the ground reality of how human bodies get commodified and how desperation can push people into brutal, underground trades like black market organ trafficking, still common in parts of the world.
Since the whole series is rooted in the economic gap between the upper and lower classes, and how Korea's been bleeding because of it for decades, the director didn't bother with assumptions. To show the real picture, he used an actual news report in the final episode of Season 1. The anchor is seen saying, 'In this country, household debt is on the rise, topping the global average. It's the biggest increase in the world besides China due to lifted government restrictions on financial loans.'
Player 001, Il-Nam aka O Yeong Su, was handed an eight-month suspended prison sentence after being accused of sexually assaulting a woman twice in 2022. The incident dated back five years. The controversy saw him dropped from an upcoming South Korean film, despite his Golden Globe win for the same role.
Apparently, all key players of Squid Game were somehow linked to past controversies that made fans question the casting choices and the lack of background checks. Actor Lee Byung Hun to Lee Jung Jae, Lee Jin Wook, and more, these actors were embroiled in multiple assault cases ranging from sexual harassment to DUI, cheating on partners, and so on. They only managed a comeback because of the popularity of the game that catapulted them to the top.
The creepy-looking doll that stands tall as survivors take on the challenge actually exists in real life and is kept in a museum in Jincheon County, South Korea. Young-hee is based on a character from Korean school textbooks of the 1970s and '80s. The doll was returned to the village after filming. Visitors can still see the doll, which is kept in the village, 2-hour ride from Seoul.
In the show, contestants go to extreme lengths trying to figure out clues for the next game some even risking their lives. Little did they know, it was right in front of them the whole time. As the game progressed and players dropped, beds were cleared from the dormitory, slowly revealing murals on the walls. What once looked like scribbles or childish doodles turned out to be pictograms of every single game in the competition. If only the players had been more observant, they could've seen it all coming.