Characters / Squid Game: Gi-hun's Team

Squid Game Main Character Index
Players (Gi-hun's Team) | Game Staff | Other Characters

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In General

• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn:
  • A rare male example with Ali, Sang-woo and Gi-hun, who lead the team in the middle set of the games. Ali, the physically strongest and capable, is brawn; calculating and educated Sang-woo is the brains; the sociable Gi-hun, who emerges as the group leader, is the beauty/heart.
  • With players outside the team, there's also a more straightforward female example with Sae-byeok, Ji-yeong and Mi-nyeo. Ji-yeong is the beauty, being open and kind to those who warm up to her, and even sacrifices her life for Sae-byeok so she can continue living. Sae-byeok is the brains, able to hold her breath to avoid being gassed, smartly sneaks a weapon inside the games, and comes up with strategies to achieve a goal. Mi-nyeo, while thinking that she's a combination brains and beauty, is actually brawn, being aggressive, overbearing and threatening when she doesn't get her way.
• Cast Speciation: The final trio are essentially a live-action version of Combat, Diplomacy, Stealth. Sang-woo is the talker of the three - he was even able to use diplomacy and understanding the rules to get everyone out of the Squid Game the first time with some of the people being saved from a violent death. Sae-byeok is clearly the thief and stealth specialist being able to spy on the workers for the Honeycomb game. While all three are capable in a fight, once Gi-hun's courage is rallied - he becomes the combatant of the team. He was the one to stand up and get in Deok-Su's face before the night brawl and ultimately he's the triumphant one in the final game which descended into a knife fight.
• Family of Choice: Deconstructed. It's clear that some of them form familial attachments to each other. Sang-woo sees Gi-hun as a brother, Ali calls Sang-woo "hyung" ("older brother"), and Gi-hun reminds Il-nam of his son. But given that this is a game where they literally have to either murder each other or get executed until only one player is left, none of these family-like relationships end well.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • The people-oriented, fun-loving, but reckless Gi-hun (Sanguine)
  • His cold, calculating, childhood friend Sang-woo and the aloof, introverted Sae-byeok (Melancholic)
  • The calm, patient, easygoing going Il-nam and the quiet, self sacrificing Ji-yeong(Phlegmatic)
  • The bold, brash and overbearing Han Mi-nyeo (Choleric)
  • Ali (Luekine)
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: A divorced and gambling-addicted chauffeur, an elderly man with a brain tumor, a wanted businessman, a Pakistani labor worker, a North Korean pickpocket, and a con seductress all participating for survival in a Deadly Game.
• The Team: They form the main heroic team in the series. Seong Gi-hun is the one who gathered them and acts as their face, best emphasized when he's chosen to stand at the front in the tug-of-war game. Kang Sae-byeok has an aloof personality, and starts off hostile to the rest, only to warm up over time. Cho Sang-woo is a clever businessman who comes up with most of the team's strategies. Ali Abdul is a tough but kind factory worker with a tremendous amount of physical strength. Ji-yeong is a strange but compassionate girl who helps Sae-byeok to open up. Oh Il-nam's age and experience helps the team through several challenges. Finally, there are Han Mi-nyeo and players 196, 244 and 276. The former inserted herself into the group after Deok-su kicked her out of his team for the tug-of-war game, and the latter three were just around to fill up the missing space.
• Town Girls: Within the three named female players, Ji-yeong, compassionate and selfless, is the femme, Mi-nyeo, the (attempted) Femme Fatale, is the neither, and Sae-byeok, the stone-hearted pickpocket, is the butch.
• Weak, but Skilled: During the Tug-of-war game. Due to the game generally favoring raw brute strength to win, and Gi-hun's team consisting of those lacking it, they have to come up with a strategy to beat the much stronger opposing group. Which actually works.

Leader:

Player 456 (Seong Gi-hun)

"It will take a whole lot more killing Gi-hun!"

Played by: Lee Jung-jae ^{Other Languages} Greg Chun (English dub), Víctor Ugarte (Latin American Spanish dub), Takayaki Sakazume (Japanese dub), Marcelo Garcia (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

A down-on-his-luck chauffeur and gambling addict living with his mother, estranged from his ex-wife and daughter, and trapped by debts to the mob, specifically 400 million Won^note approximately $340,000 US Dollars.

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• Action Survivor: Doesn't have outstanding combat skills or strength, but manages to come out on top of the series of deadly games through a combination of quick thinking, luck, and empathy.
• All for Nothing:
  • His main motivation for returning to the games was to procure funds to cure his mother's diabetes. After he finally returns from the games, however, she is long dead.
  • At the end of the series, this also rears its ugly head. Wanting nothing to do with the dirty money he had won, he makes a final All or Nothing bet with Il-nam based on their differing philosophies: if anyone helped a drunken man they spotted on the streets by midnight, Il-nam would have to take back all the prize money. Despite Gi-hun winning the bet, Il-nam had silently passed away on the dot, preventing the latter from acknowledging his loss and leaving Gi-hun stuck with the money. It ultimately becomes subverted, as this event also convinces Gi-hun to accept and use the money for good.
• Anti-Hero: Type I, as he is something of a loser who begins the story making all the wrong decisions in his life. He turns out to be a very moral person in the end though and ends up developing a backbone as the story goes on. By the end, he's the last man standing and determined to end the games for good.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • He does this to Deok-su in Episode 5 when the latter comes over to intimidate him prior to light-out. Gi-hun observes that Deok-su is probably the most dangerous opponent in here, which is why his posse teamed up with him, then asks what will happen when his men realize that they'll be better off if they take him out of the running. This convinces Deok-su not to start another nighttime riot.
  • He does another to Sang-woo that doubles as an Armor-Piercing Response. In Episode 8, he's given a "The Reason You Suck" Speech by Sang-Woo about how he's in the games because of his own terrible choices and irresponsible behaviors and a mooch who lives off his elderly sick mother. Gi-hun admits that all of this is true... and then throws it back at Sang-woo, pointing out that he was the golden child of their neighborhood, admired by everyone as The One Who Made It Out, graduated from Seoul University and became a successful businessman.
    "So, why are you here too?"(sub)/"Is it my fault you're here?"(dub)
• Basement-Dweller: Started the series off as this even well into his 40s, and he'd even steal his own mother's money behind her back while still begging her for more while promising to pay her back. At the end, he's forced into independence after his mother dies from complications related to her diabetes.
• Beard of Sorrow: He grows one a full year after beating the game, indicating that he's still traumatized by all of the death he's witnessed.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Gi-hun is an immature man-child, but his understanding of people and how to effectively ally makes him a far more effective player than most. When angered he is also capable of fighting brutally and even killing, and may well have killed Sang-woo or Il-nam if he hadn't been stopped.
• Big Brother Mentor: Sang-woo sees him as one, initially. The Japanese dub emphasizes this by having the latter call him aniki, the Japanese word for "big brother".
• Born Lucky: His introduction foreshadows this quality (he guesses the PIN on his mother's card wrong but gets it right on the last try, loses at the races only to then win big, and has no luck at the claw machine but still gets a toy thanks to a random boy helping him). In the games themselves, he comes pretty close to dying multiple times but survives all of them thanks to sheer dumb luck.
  • He almost falls after he slips on someone's body in the first game and would've been killed if Ali didn't save him. Even if you argue that if he fell down and stayed down he wouldn't have been caught moving, he still wouldn't have made it to the finish line on time had Ali not caught him.
  • He picks the honeycomb with the most difficult shape in the second game, but figures out how to remove the shape more easily by licking it just before the time runs out.^note Though one could argue this one is more ingenuity than luck since other contestants such as Mi-nyeo resorted to similar outside-the-box tactics.
  • He ends up with the weakest team in the third game (tug-of-war), and only survives thanks to Il-nam and Sang-woo's good strategies.
  • He actually fails in the fourth game when he loses all his marbles, but thanks to Il-nam's memory problems (which he faked to allow Gi-hun to win), he manages to turn his loss into a win before the timer runs out.
    • Even picking Il-nam as a partner proved to be a fortunate decision over Player 62, the math teacher, who offered his partnership to Gi-hun since his math skills would've caused Gi-hun to easily lose the marbles game.
  • Before the fifth game begins, he is left with two numbered vests to pick: the first and the last numbers. He initially goes for the first vest, but gives it to another contestant who begs him for it, leaving him with the last vest - which actually turned out to be the best position to be in. If he had picked the first position, he would have most likely died in the glass bridge crossing, while the only disadvantage of being last to go was not having enough time remaining to finish the cross, which he makes Just in Time.
  • Finally, while he wins the fight with Sang-woo fair and square in the sixth game, he refuses to finish the game and win the prize money. Sang-woo decides to kill himself instead to let Gi-hun be the sole winner and win the ultimate prize.
  • While not a death game, Gi-hun wins his last game with Il-nam, where they bet on if a homeless man outside would receive help or not before midnight, at the last second when a passerby comes back to the homeless man with a police car to help him, proving Gi-hun right that the world isn’t as bad as Il-nam thinks it is before the old man passes away.
• Break the Cutie: Defied. Despite being put through a major Trauma Conga Line during the course of the games and experiencing senselessly gruesome deaths, the downward spirals of its participants, and the loss of old and new friendships, he still manages to hold onto his idealistic attitude and that people have the capacity to do good to each other. The one time during the games he genuinely considers killing someone, he's stopped because Sae-byeok points out that he's not that type of person, and when he gets the chance again, he holds onto his inherent goodness and would rather end the game than kill his backstabbing friend. Ultimately getting to walk away with the money didn’t heal him from a year-long depression; winning a final wager with Il-nam that reinforced his worldview did.
• Butt-Monkey: Let's just say that things aren't really going too well for Gi-hun: he's a slacker and gambler in severe debt and in danger of losing a kidney to loan sharks, and his ex-wife is leaving for America with their daughter, who will probably lose her connection with her father and Korean heritage. Once the Squid Games begin, he finds himself having to play against very stacked odds (getting the hardest dalgona shape to cut out, being partnered with the elderly Il-Nam and being in a life-or-death game of marbles, and being the last person to choose his number vest in the glass bridge game).
• Character Development: By the end of the season, Gi-hun has grown to be much more mature and responsible, while still maintaining his inherent goodness and vowing to take down the organization and the games.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Before the above character development.
• Combat Pragmatist: Uses such tactics as throwing sand into his opponent's eyes and biting hard enough to draw blood on their exposed heel in the final game against Sang-woo.
• Cynic–Idealist Duo: Between him and Sang-woo, he's the idealist. Gi-hun spends most of the games forming friendships and listening to others while Sang-woo betrays other players to benefit himself. One particular example of this is when Sae-byeok is revealed to be bleeding to death - Gi-hun rushes to try and get her medical help, while Sang-woo uses this chance to murder her while she's defenseless.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Between Game 3 and Game 4, Gi-hun reveals his past to Il-nam: he was once an employee of a car manufacturing plant who got unexpectedly laid off because of their mismanagement, so he and his colleagues went on strike which ended with a violent fatal riot. This caused Gi-hun to miss his own daughter's birth when he had to attend to one of his friends who was severely injured during the protest, which ended with the man's death anyway. This event left Gi-hun with PTSD and kicked off his downward spiral into a slacker working crappy jobs and developing a gambling addiction.
• Dark Horse Victory: In-universe. After winning the final round and thus winning the ultimate prize, the Front Man congratulates him personally, before remarking that no one ever expected Gi-hun to get as far as he did, let alone win.
• Disappeared Dad: Is worried that he will turn out like this for his daughter, especially once his ex-wife reveals that she is taking her to live in America.
• The Dog Bites Back: A pretty literal example with Sang-woo in the final game. Sang-woo gets the upper hand, but just as it seems that Gi-hun will die, he bites Sang-woo's leg. Gi-hun then proceeds to rough Sang-woo up, angrily telling the ruthless player that "you killed them, you killed everyone."
• Entitled Bastard: Gi-hun's Establishing Character Moment involves him needling his mom to lend him more money, ostensibly to buy his daughter something nice for her birthday but really just to go gambling. After stealing his mom's debit card, he's outraged to learn that she changed the PIN so it's no longer his birthday.
• Establishing Character Moment: At his introduction, he's deeply in debt to loan sharks, too broke to buy his daughter a birthday present, he steals money from his mother to gamble with. But he's also genuinely desperate to give his daughter a good birthday, he stops to help a woman he knocked over, even while running from criminals, and goes out of his way to feed a stray cat. This all establishes him as something of a loser, extremely short-sighted and with a serious gambling problem, but ultimately good-hearted and empathetic.
• "Eureka!" Moment: During the honeycomb game, Gi-hun discovers, from his sweat and some light, that the umbrella shape has a thin outline around it inside the honeycomb. He soon realizes that he can lick the backside of the honeycomb to get the shape out carefully and more easily, which he does in the last few seconds of the game. Other players notice this and start licking their shapes as well.
• Everyone Has Standards: While he did join the Squid Games for a chance to win big, Gi-hun can't vote for the games to continue, after so many people died in the first round alone. He tries this again at the very end when he's on the verge of winning against Sang-woo, not wanting his old friend to die for his victory.
• Extremely Protective Child: Zig-zagged. Gi-hun steals from his mother numerous times, but after learning that her diabetes will kill her, he enters the games to attempt to fund her surgery.
• Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: Gi-hun works as a chauffeur, which doesn't pay that well. He later explains in Episode 5 that he once worked for a car manufacturing company, but was fired since a decade ago.
• Final Guy: He ends up winning the grand prize money and is the only surviving main character from Season 1.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Sae-byeok, the woman who pickpocketed him in the first episode.
• The Gambling Addict: Gi-hun is deep in debt because he blows all his money betting on horse races. In the first episode, when he gets hold of a bit of money to buy a birthday gift for his daughter, he uses it to try to win her a gift from a claw machine instead of just buying something from a store.
• Go Through Me: During the night brawl, he, Sang-woo, and Ali form a wall in front of Sae-byeok to protect her against Deok-su and his goons.
• Guile Hero: Doubles with his Born Lucky trait, but Gi-hun manages to make it through each round by befriending the right allies and using his wits. He manages to even talk Deok-su out of his cullings by delivering an Armor-Piercing Question that makes Deok-su paranoid that his men will eventually turn on him.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He is quite shouty in the first episode, mostly due to the stress he's under.
• Healthcare Motivation: One of the reasons he joined the games again despite knowing how deadly they are is to hopefully use the prize money to get his mother proper medical care. However, all his efforts amounted to nothing as she died before Gi-hun could even use the money anyway, throwing him into a year-long Heroic BSoD.
• Heroic BSoD: Suffers this after winning the games. He may have won the prize money, but between the traumatic experiences he suffered from the games and the fact that his mother (whose health issues were a motivating factor behind his returning to the games in "Hell") died before he could use the money to help her, he spirals into utter despair, living like a bum while leaving the prize money he'd won completely untouched for a year. He eventually does recover.
• Hidden Depths: Initially he might come across as a deeply unsympathetic Manchild and a degenerate gambler, but he's also a very empathetic person who genuinely tries to be there for his daughter. The reason Gi-hun is a Basement-Dweller living with his mother and not his wife and daughter is not so much because of any immaturity on his part but because the plant he used to work at was shut down, putting him out of a job and causing his wife to divorce him. When push comes to shove, he grows out of it.
• I Owe You My Life: When we cut to the survivors of the first game, Gi-hun is huddled with Ali and Sang-woo. He thanks Ali for saving his life. Ali modestly says Think Nothing of It, that he's just glad the man is alive.
• Important Haircut: In the final episode, he gets his hair cut and dyed bright red after pulling himself out of his year-long depression. According to the creator himself, Hwang Dong-Hyuk, it's meant to symbolize Gi-hun's inner rage coming out.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: He wavers a bit by cheating in the marbles game (after Il-nam intentionally hands him an opportunity on a platter as a test), but ultimately, Gi-hun proves to be this trope. Even after everything Sang-woo has done, Gi-hun turns away from the prize and offers him a chance to leave together. A year after the games, Il-nam comes to him to try to shake his faith in humanity's inherent goodness, but fails. The series ends with Gi-hun deciding to hunt down the people behind the games and bring them to justice.
• Inseries Nickname: Deok-su refer to him as "Ssangmun-dong", his hometown, due to not knowing his name. Ali briefly picks up on this after hearing Deok-su use it, thinking it's his actual name.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Il-nam and Sae-byeok. The first is an old man while the second is a young woman in her twenties.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Starts outs as one in the beginning as a slacker who shamelessly steals his mother's money to gamble on horseracing while also having a short temper, but best of all, he still cares about his own family, particularly his mother and daughter. Upon being entered into the games and witnessing the atrocities of lives being taken away, the "jerk" part eventually goes away.
• Karmic Jackpot: His compassion and empathy for others during the games other than dumb luck is what led to him being the winner of the games. However, this is subverted when he refuses to use the money he won for a year until the last meeting with Oh Il-nam.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: As seen when he shares some of the fish he bought for dinner with a hungry stray cat near his house.
• Loser Protagonist: Our hero starts the series off as a basement-dweller living off of his elderly mom after his wife divorced him and took his child away, suffering from a gambling addiction while also not appearing to be particularly bright. He gets better over time.
• Manchild: Gi-hun is one of these at the beginning of the series, still living with his mother, blowing all his (and his mother's) money on gambling, and refusing to take responsibility for his life. Growing out of this is part of his Character Development.
• Morality Pet: In the Season 1 Finale, he finds out that he's a particularly twisted version of this to the Host and creator of the games himself, revealed to be Oh Il-nam. For all his disdain for the poor, Il-nam genuinely did grow fond of Gi-hun like a second son and decided to help him out while playing the games. He even tells Gi-hun to let go of his Survivor's Guilt and take advantage of his newfound wealth (albeit in his own caustic way).
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Breaks down sobbing when he realizes him terminating his mother's health insurance policy for some extra money to gamble has led to her Type 2 diabetes worsening and them unable to afford treatment.
  • Has another in the fourth game after Il-nam reveals he was faking his dementia and was aware Gi-hun is trying to exploit it to win. Gi-hun is driven to tears upon realizing what he's been doing to the man he's spent a lot of time looking after.
• My Greatest Second Chance: It was his fault his mother died, because he cancelled her health insurance policy for gambling money, and he's unable to dissuade Sang-woo from entering round two because they both need the money. He arrives several days too late to pay for her surgery after winning the prize money. In his last scene of Season 1, Gi-hun's about to go fly to visit Ga-yeong, pay child support maybe, and repair their relationship...but he sees the Salesman suckering another potential player for the game, and saves them by stealing the business card and ordering them not to dial the number.
• Nice Guy: Despite his flaws, Gi-hun is a pleasant and friendly person, and easily makes friends in the game.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His habit of stealing from his mother and emptying her bank account in the first episode leads to his mother being forced to give up medical treatment to take care of her diabetes, ending up costing her life and dying alone when he returns home with the Squid Game prize money to get her medical treatment.
• Numerological Motif: Gi-hun is numbered 456, indicating he's the last of the 456 players to be recruited into the game and the last one standing by the end of it. Additionally, he dons Player 001's jacket after Il-Nam was eliminated to highlight his protagonist status and how he's declared the winner of the 2020 Squid Games.
• Oh, Crap!: He has this reaction when he picks out the umbrella honeycomb, the hardest shape to cut out.
  Internally: "I'm screwed."
• Older Than They Look: Especially at the start of the show, his styling and general demeanor (especially in his interactions with his mother) can make him read younger than a man who is pushing 50 years old.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: For much of the game, Gi-hun never plays to kill anyone, and he heavily regrets every death he caused by winning against them because of the rules, which makes it all the more impactful when he decides to go Offense against Sang-woo in the final round's Squid Game after Sang-woo murdered Sae-byeok the night before. It was the only time Gi-hun is playing to kill. He snaps out of it at the very last second, though, and decides to spare Sang-woo's life after he finally got him down.
  • Gi-hun also has an earlier dark moment. When he sees a sleeping Sang-woo drop his knife, Gi-hun intends to murder Sang-woo so that Sae-byeok and him can be safe. Gi-hun only stops when a tearful Sae-byeok tells him not to as that's not the type of person he is.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Gi-hun initially considers winning the Squid Game to be this. His mother died days before he returned home with the prize money, and the trauma he'd undergone to win it all in the first place makes him feel guilty about even using it, until he recovers from his Heroic BSoD.
• Rags to Riches: Gi-hun goes from an indebted slacker to a millionaire after winning the games. Once we check in with him a year later, however, he hasn't touched his fortune and still lives as he did, until a "chance" encounter...
• Sadistic Choice: The decision of whether to continue or call off the games comes down to what scares the players more: risking life and limb, of themselves and the other players, for a chance at a massive cash prize; or leaving the games, only to return to lives that were so miserable, it drove them to compete in the games in the first place. In Gi-hun's case, leaving the games means returning to a dead-end job, continuing to be hounded by loan sharks, losing contact with his daughter, and living with his seriously ill mother who cannot afford the treatment that would save her life.
• Seriously Scruffy: Pictures of Gi-hun from when he still had his life on track show him as clean-shaven and well-kempt. At the time in his life we meet him, he is disheveled, sports Perma-Stubble, and his clothes are ragged, and this point he has had to watch his life circle down the drain for years as he got laid off from his well-paying job due to cutbacks, his attempts at starting his own businesses all failed, and his debts piled up. After winning the games and becoming naturally traumatized by it, he sports a full Beard of Sorrow and longer and messier hair.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: After winning the games, he essentially behaves like one of these, being emotionally despondent and unresponsive to others, shouldering a great deal of Survivor's Guilt, and always having a blank Thousand-Yard Stare expression on his face.
• Sole Survivor: Aside from the few who survived the first game then chose not to come back, Gi-hun is the only survivor of the 2020 games by the end of the last episode. Il-nam survived initially because he is the creator of the game, but he dies of his brain tumor a year later.
• Spanner in the Works: We find out he was this unwittingly to Il-nam's plan to play the game before the tumor would grab him. Il-nam was planning to see his social experiment up close and confirm his views that Humans Are Bastards, while enjoying a bit of playtime. But then Gi-hun approached who he thought was a frail old man counting by himself, and asking about his well-being, why he's in a place like this. That little act of kindness convinced Il-nam that not everyone in the game deserved a Cruel and Unusual Death, and that Gi-hun is not beyond redemption. Gi-hun later accepts Il-nam as part of his team, and defers to his judgment during the tug-of-war. Indeed, a viewer can interpret the last conversation they have as Il-nam encouraging Gi-hun to live and take down the system he created if they wish, or at least to keep proving that humans can be saved from their worst actions.
• Survivor's Guilt: After the games, he's so broken from his guilt to the point that he feels too ashamed to even touch any of the money he'd won and lives as an aimless drifter for a year. It takes meeting Il-nam again and beating him at one last game before Gi-hun starts to move past his guilt and start using the prize money to turn his life around and fulfill some promises.
• Tears of Remorse: When Il-nam confronts him about using his dementia to trick him out of his marbles to come out of their paired game alive, but then gently allows him to have his last marble and hugs him to tell Gi-hun that what's about to happen is not really his fault. Gi-hun breaks down sobbing.
• This Is Unforgivable!: In the last scene of the final episode, he tells the Front Man on the phone that he isn't forgiving them for their actions, treating him and others as horses.
• Tragic Keepsake: Il-nam's jacket and the marble given to him before he was eliminated. Unfortunately, he loses both by the next episode.
• Tranquil Fury: He's clearly vengeful at the organization for their cruelty and angry that they're continuing the games that will potentially kill more innocent people even after Il-nam's death as shown when he's talking to Front Man on the phone without ever raising his voice and makes a vow to take them down.
  Gi-hun: Listen carefully. I'm not a horse. I'm a person. That's why I want to know... who you people are... and how you can commit such atrocities against people. That's why... I can't forgive you for everything you're doing.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: He owes a Loan Shark a large sum from his horse racing gambling.
• Troubled Backstory Flashback: While he's standing watch one night, he has a flashback of the automobile plant union crackdown that killed his friend. Losing his job there is what precipitated his downward financial spiral.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • He first comes to this realization after witnessing Sang-woo kill Player 017 to save his ass and ensure he moves on to the final game. Yet despite that, he still tries to save Sang-woo, and is devastated when Sang-woo kills himself to let him be the winner.
  • He has it again when he finds out that Il-nam is the Host of the games. It gets to the point that he even threatens to kill the dying man on the bed upon being told of it.
• You Monster!: Gi-hun delivers this as he proceeds to beat up Sang-woo in the final game, telling him that "you murdered them".

Other Core Members:

Player 001 (Oh Il-nam)

"Gganbu always share everything with each other, no matter what."

Played by: Oh Yeong-su ^{Other Languages}Hideo Kimura (English dub), Arturo Mercado (Latin American Spanish dub), Kazuaki Ito (Japanese dub), Carlos Silveira (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

An elderly man dying of a brain tumor who joined the games to relive the joy of being alive.

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• Cavalier Competitor: He only has a very limited time to live, so he participates in the games so he can enjoy his final moments of life. He even has a smile during the games despite them putting his life at risk.
• Cool Old Guy: A genuinely kind old man, with his friendly and helpful attitude and a great degree of familiarity with the games that he participates in.
• Death by Irony: Gi-hun takes him on as his partner for the fourth game, fearful he'll be executed if he's the one left by himself (as no one else is willing to take him on due to his age and infirmity). However, this is the game that presents each group of two with a Sadistic Choice — one member of the team will inevitably die, and Il-nam ultimately throws the game so Gi-hun can proceed. As Gi-hun soon learns, the leftover contestant wasn't actually executed, meaning he brought Il-nam into the game for nothing.
• Decided by One Vote: He’s the deciding vote during the voting on whether the other contestants should leave or not. This is subverted upon rewatching the series and learning one of the rules is that of the game is that everyone is equal, and every gets to choose how they participate. Seeing as how Il-nam was the one who made the rules in the first place, there was only one way for him to vote.
• Dissonant Serenity: During the first game of "Red Light, Green Light" while everyone else is cowering in fear for their lives, he's the only one that goes on playing, smiling happily as he continues on with the game and even getting a decent head start of the others. For most of the other games, he can be seen with a grin on his face as the others struggle to survive. It makes sense given his motivation for joining the games in the first place, to feel the joy of living again.
• Establishing Character Moment: During the "Red Light, Green Light" game, while all the other contestants are frozen stiff once they realize it's a literal life and death game, he's the first to move and the only one to do so with a cheerful smile on his face. And the smile never leaves his face even as other players are getting shot around him.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Unlike the other named characters, his elimination is not shown onscreen after the fourth game.
• The Last Dance: His reason for participating in the games is that he doesn't have much longer to live, and might as well participate in something dangerous to feel alive one last time. He also doesn't have family who would worry about him.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: In the tug of war, he becomes uncharacteristically serious. As his team prepares to go to the platform, the old man has valuable knowledge on how tug-of-war can be won with brains, such as how to hold the rope, where to place your feet, and who should be in the lead and the rear.
• The Load: Downplayed. He did offer valuable strategy on the strength-based Tug-of-War, but being a frail old man, no one wanted him on their team in the game, except for Gi-hun.
• Meaningful Name: His first name, Il-nam (Hanja: 一男) means "the first boy", representing his place as player number 1 in the games.
• Name Amnesia: At one point some of the players are introducing themselves and he can't remember his name due to his brain tumor. He remembers it just before being killed.
• Nice Guy: A very friendly and charismatic guy who generously offers Gi-hun ramen noodles when the latter couldn't able to buy to feed for himself after they quit the Squid Games at first and even during the Marbles game, he lets Gi-hun keep the last marble for himself even at the cost of his life when he already knew he tried to scam the last marble out of him.
• Non-Action Guy: He's a frail old guy, so it's to be expected. During the nighttime brawl, he hides above a bunch of bunk beds, and is pleading for the madness to stop.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Although he legitimately has a brain tumor, he fakes having dementia to avoid giving details about his life. He pretends to have a severe case of it during the marbles game to test Gi-hun, though this ends up being because he genuinely likes him and wants him to pass.
• Numerological Motif: Il-nam is 001, being the first to participate and is the eldest of the participants.
• Potty Failure: He wets himself after a particularly stressful evening, likely as a result of the klaxons indicating an emergency among the facility's staff going off.
• Punny Name: Probably unintentional, but his name sounds very similar to the phrase "old ill man" in English.
• Sacrificial Lion: Gi-hun has to let him die in the fourth game in order to advance, which he seems to be at peace with since he doesn't have long to live anyway.
• Scatterbrained Senior: In addition to his brain tumor, he has a very severe case of dementia, which proves detrimental to Gi-hun during the marbles game. Though it's revealed to be fake; aside from Il-nam outright stating he intentionally let Gi-hun manipulate into losing, Il-nam's last moment before being eliminated is him telling Gi-Hun his name, Oh Il-nam.
• Underestimating Badassery: Gi-hun is worried about the old man explaining he has a brain tumor and dementia. He asks why the man is in this place, well before they both learn the true stakes of the game. Then when they learn those who are "eliminated" are shot and left to bleed out on the field, the old man is the first to resume the game, sauntering happily during "green light". Dementia or not, that is pretty brave.
• Weak, but Skilled: He has the physical condition of what can be expected of someone his age, but he is very good at playing games.

Player 067 (Kang Sae-byeok)

"I don’t trust people. And that’s twice as true for anyone who’d end up in here. Got it?"

Played by: Jung Ho-yeon ^{Other Languages}Vivian Lu (English dub), Cassandra Valtier (Latin American Spanish dub), Sachi Kokuryu (Japanese dub), Fernanda Bullara (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

A defector from North Korea, struggling to find money to get her mother to South Korea and her brother out of a children’s home.

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• Action Girl: She's probably one of the most combat-capable in the main cast, which helps in the nighttime brawl. She's also smart enough to not inhale the gas when she re-enters the games, which allows her to plant and then pick-pocket her knife from one of the guards while she's being changed and pretending to be unconscious.
• Big Sister Instinct: The reason she's going through the games is to help her little brother who has to stay in an orphanage while she tries to get money to bring the rest of their family to South Korea.
• Birds of a Feather: She is drawn to Ji-yeong, another Emotionless Girl, after spotting her sitting alone, away from the crowd during the third game. They have initial friction, but their conversation in the marble game creates a pretty strong bond between them.
• Dark and Troubled Past: One of the most troubled out of all the major characters. She grew up in North Korea before defecting and has been living a criminal life in South Korea to make enough money to bring the rest of her family over.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Zig-zagged. She is initially not very expressive and dissuades Gi-hun and the others from trusting her. Even though she was the one who sought out Ji-yeong to join Gi-hun's team for the tug-of-war game, she's rather dismissive of her when she tries to spark a conversation. But during the fourth game, when she's partnered up with Ji-yeong, the two engage into a heart-to-heart talk, revealing her backstory and hopes for the future. When Ji-yeong purposefully loses the game, Sae-byeok snaps at her and walks away in tears after she gets executed. After that, she's still not that much talkative, even hiding the fact she's bleeding to death until the final night where she asks Gi-hun to look after her young brother before Sang-woo kills her.
• Dramatic Irony: Her brother got into a fight with the other kids at the orphanage who said his sister abandoned him. Sae-byeok ends up dying during the games and unable to bring the rest of her family to South Korea, essentially leaving her brother orphaned.
• Emotionless Girl: She rarely ever emotes.
• Extremely Protective Child: Despite having escaped to South Korea, she's determined to find a way to bring her mother in from North Korea, despite it being extremely unlikely as she was already caught once.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Gi-hun, who had nothing but contempt for her early on due to the fact she pickpocketed him. But after the marbles game, she starts to be more empathetic towards him, even helping him out during the glass bridge game where she reminds him what panels to step on.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Sae-byeok gets impaled by a large shard of glass after completing the fifth game, leaving her with an Agonizing Stomach Wound that prevents her from eating the final meal of the game and causes her to slowly die of internal bleeding during the night cycle.
• Hidden Weapons: She carries a pocketknife that she manages to sneak in during the re-entry process. Unfortunately, it gets lost and later confiscated after the night brawl.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: It is implied during her conversation with Jang Deok-su in episode 1 that she's a prostitute, with Sae-byeok claiming that he took everything from her and she's playing the games in the hopes of winning money to care for her family.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: In episode 8, Sae-byeok stops Gi-hun from murdering Sang-woo when he finds the chance, since she still believes Gi-hun is a good man at heart. Gi-hun points this out towards Sang-woo in the final game after the latter murders Sae-byeok to avoid the majority vote that could've stopped the game.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Gi-hun, as she's in her twenties while he is forty-seven.
• I Work Alone: She's rather distrusting of other people, and even warns her teammates not to trust her either.
• Last Request: Sae-byeok's dying wish to Gi-hun is to take care of her little brother who's still in an orphanage waiting for her.
• Meaningful Name: Her name means "Dawn". She opens up over time thanks to Gi-hun and Ji-yeong's compassion towards her. It's also the name of the track that plays when she dies on the final night.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Sae-byeok dissuades Gi-hun from killing Sang-woo in his sleep, reminding him that he's a good person at heart. Sang-woo thanks her for her integrity and mercy by slashing her throat open when Gi-hun's back is turned.
• Not So Stoic: Sae-byeok is usually stoic, non-emoting, and often distrusting even towards her own team. However, she did make exceptions as the game progressed.
  • During the marbles game, she gets into a heart-to-heart talk with Ji-yeong and as a result gets genuinely angry at her for deliberately throwing the win and visibly struggles to not break into a sob when she gets executed.
  • She is visibly shocked when Sang-woo coldly pushes the glassmaker to his death.
• Percussive Pickpocket: She's a very efficient pick-pocket. Her first introduction shows her running into Gi-hun who's attempting to escape from loan sharks and she falls to the floor. However, when Gi-hun checks his coat for the money he just won from the races, his pocket has been slashed. She also does this to the man who she's paying to help bring the rest of her family over after he makes it clear he's just milking her for money. She can be more stealthy as she easily first plants and then pretends to be unconscious while planting her knife in guard's pocket and take it back while they're being changed into uniform so she can bring it into the game.
• Precision F-Strike: Sae-byeok doesn't usually swear or emote, so when Ji-yeong deliberately throws the game of marbles, knowing it will mean her own death and acts nonchalant about it, Sae-byeok snaps and says, "Ji-yeong, this is bullshit! Stop acting cool and do a real throw!"
• The Promise:
  • As she slowly dies from her wounds, she begs Gi-hun to look after her brother for her.
  • When she visits her little brother, she promises him she will never abandon him and that she will bring their whole family with them to South Korea. She, unfortunately, ends up dying during the games, leaving her brother orphaned until Gi-hun finds him and has Sang-woo's mother look after him.
• Promotion to Parent: She gets promoted to a parental figure after she and her younger brother escape from North Korea while her mother gets caught and imprisoned.
• Secretly Dying: The aforementioned Agonizing Stomach Wound listed on Game-Breaking Injury. Although Sang-woo fatally stabs her before the wounds take her life, in what he considers both a Mercy Kill for her and a taunt to Gi-hun for caring too much about her.
• Statuesque Stunner: Her actress is 176 cm (5'9"), making her one of the tallest women in the show. This is most noticeable when she stands next to Ji-yeong.
• The Stoic: She hardly expresses emotion.
• Ungrateful Bitch: After they are dropped off tied up in the middle of the street after the first game, Gi-hun helps her escape from her bounds. After getting freed and clothed, Sae-byeok prepares to ditch him without freeing him, saying he'll pester her about the money she stole from him. Sure enough, when she cuts his hands loose when Gi-hun promises not to talk about it, he immediately hops at her demanding his money back.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Gi-hun originally gets caught up in the Squid Game because Sae-byeok pick-pocketed him of his horse race winnings in the first episode. This led to the chain of events of him signing over a body part to the mob if he can't make his next month's payments and then being desperate enough to take the salesman up on his offer. On the flipside, Gi-hun was already a compulsive gambler in so much debt that he had already been scouted out, so all Sae-Byeok ultimately did was speed up the inevitable. Gi-hun also ultimately wins the game and the cash prize, so in a roundabout way Sae-byeok accidentally ended up helping him.
• Youthful Freckles: One of the defining features of the character is her freckles. Appropriate as she's the youngest of the main characters. Even the Funko version of her has the freckles on prominent display. In real life, Ho-yeon Jung doesn't have freckles and they were added cosmetically.

Player 199 (Ali Abdul)

"Now that I'm working with you, I feel like we could win!"

Played by: Anupam Tripathi^{Other Languages}Rama Vallury (English dub), Luis Fernando Orozco (Latin American Spanish dub), Setsuji Sato (Japanese dub), Yuri Chesman (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

A Pakistani immigrant struggling to provide for his wife and infant.

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• Alliterative Name: Ali Abdul.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason why he trusts Sang-woo so much is because the latter lent him money and helped him out after the first game, and even allowed him to call him hyung (which is a big deal considering his status in Korean society). Sang-woo then directly weaponizes this after Ali beats him in their first marble game, guilt-tripping him into another game where he gets swindled out of his marbles.
• Beware the Nice Ones: In the second episode, his crooked boss pushes him to the brink by, once again, refusing to pay him because business isn't going well. Once Ali discovers he actually has money, both men get into a fistfight that ends with the boss seriously injuring his hand on the machinery and Ali running away with the boss' cash.
• The Big Guy: He is the strongest member of Gi-hun's group of allies. In the tug-of-war, he stands at the back of the group as an anchor. When picking teams for the fourth game, Sang-woo goes right to him, reasoning that they can be a Brains and Brawn pair and be well-prepared for any challenge.
• Born Lucky: In the fourth game against Sang-woo. Despite having just learned the minigame of Odd or Even from the latter, he manages to make all his guesses right out of sheer dumb luck, to the point that Sang-woo, accusing him of cheating, decides to swindle all the marbles off him instead without any violence.
• Character Catchphrase: "Thank you!" Justified in that as an immigrant to South Korea, he's essentially lived a life of constant obedience to his Korean-native bosses and co-workers to fully establish his place in a racially homogenous country.
• Commonality Connection: When he and his allies split up to recruit five further teammates for the Tug-of-War challenge, Ali likely knows that his status as a Pakistani immigrant and obvious outsider reduce his chances of engaging other competitors. In the end, however, he manages to seek out and recruit one other competitor (number 276) who is also brown-skinned (his actor is Filipino), likely out of mutual solidarity.
• Establishing Character Moment: Saving Gi-hun in the first game by grabbing and holding the back of his shirt mid-fall immediately establishes that Ali is physically strong, dependable, and willing to risk his life to save others.
• Ethnic Menial Labor: He even works for a business run by a jerkass who exploits cheap migrant workers.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Sang-woo tricks him during the marbles game, swapping his marbles for a bag of gravel. Ali realizes the betrayal seconds before he is executed and is visibly devastated.
• Fatal Flaw: His kindness and trusting nature. He agrees to Sang-woo's plan in the fourth game without a shadow of a doubt, and only realizes that he has been betrayed moments before being killed.
• Fish out of Water: Owing to his Token Minority status as the lone Pakistani player in a Korean death game, he sometimes doesn't understand the games being played.
• Funny Afro: Ali has a messy, dishevelled afro.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Ali’s death is mainly only indicated with a gunshot, as he's too far out of focus. However, this is subverted in the next episode, which opens with the sight of his corpse.
• Handicapped Badass: Downplayed in that it is not much of a liability, but he has lost two fingers off his left hand due to what's implied to have been a work-related accident. Nevertheless, he fulfills his role as The Big Guy in Gi-hun's team, although Sang-woo does advise him to hide his disfigured hand so the other players won't look down on him.
• The Illegal: Mi-nyeo accuses him of being one, and it's heavily implied she may be right.
• Improvisational Ingenuity: Not being from Korea, he often doesn't know the games, and has to figure them out as he goes. This is evident during the second game, Honeycomb, where he doesn't use the needle, but instead breaks off the edges bit by bit until only the shape is left. The fact that his circle is one of the easier shapes, allows him to still pass the game despite using such an unorthodox method.
• Morality Pet: Sang-woo, despite being fairly cold and aloof even to his Childhood Friend, develops legitimate camaraderie with Ali, giving the younger man money to get home, cracking the rare genuine smile around him, and even letting Ali call him hyung. When Ali is betrayed by Sang-woo during the marbles game, it becomes clear there's nothing the latter won't do to win.
• Nice Guy: Among the characters with a name, he is easily the coolest as he is altruistic and is never motivated by ulterior motives. This doesn't end well for him. His altruism and gratitude to Sang-woo make him easy to manipulate in the fourth game. Sang-Woo betrays him and it ends with Ali dead.
• Not So Above It All: He's generally one of the kindest and most polite players, but even he can't resist taking the piss out of Mi-nyeo for her Inelegant Blubbering during the Tug-of-War game.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Sang-woo angrily accuses him of this after he repeatedly beats him at marbles despite claiming not to know how to play.
• Rule of Symbolism: The Ambiguously Muslim Ali is number 199. According to Islamic Hadith 199, it goes, "There are three signs of a hypocrite: When he speaks, he lies; when he makes a promise, he breaks it; and when he is trusted, he betrays his trust." This foreshadows how Ali will be betrayed by Sang-woo.
• Sacrificial Lion: His death is not only an indicator that even the main characters are not safe, but also to show Sang-woo's true colors as a ruthless backstabber.
• Skilled, but Naive: He's a fast enough learner to beat Sang-woo, noted genius who has actually played the game growing up, at a game he's never played before. However, being a migrant worker in an unfamiliar country poses problems for him. His naïvete and kindness to a fault also lead to his death.
• Stunned Silence: After discovering that Sang-woo has tricked him out of his marbles, he can only look towards him in devastation, unable to say a word, and with tears streaking down his face as a guard raises their gun to his head.
• Token Minority: The only non-Korean main character, which is reflected in his backstory (a migrant worker lower on the social ladder than the others, who are already poor people deep in debt), relationships (his deferential attitude to the others), and the ways he approaches the challenges (since he isn't familiar with the childhood games).
• Too Dumb to Live: It's not fair to call him 'dumb', but as a low-status immigrant, he often seems confused and deferential. He's also kind and trusting, to the point of being naive, which ultimately costs him his life when he falls for a very obvious swindle during a game.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: As established in his first scene, Ali is a kind and caring man who is willing to do anything to help others or those he cares for. So of course, during the marble games, he gets manipulated by Sang-woo, who steals his marbles, and ends up paying with his life.

Player 218 (Cho Sang-woo)

"I'm alive right now because I tried damn hard to stay alive."

Played by: Park Hae-soo^{Other Languages}Stephen Fu (English dub), Oscar Flores (Latin American Spanish dub), Keiichi Nakagawa (Japanese dub), Márcio Araújo (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

A childhood friend of Gi-hun's who became a successful businessman but is now wanted by the law for stealing from his clients.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Ali wins the marbles game, Sang-woo drops to his knees and begs for a second game, which Ali foolishly agrees to.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Even after the atrocities Sang-woo has committed to further himself in the games, Gi-hun, instead of either killing him or taking the final step to finish the game (which would result in Sang-woo being executed), asks the guard to end the game so the both of them can still live. However, Sang-woo instead takes his own life so Gi-hun can keep the money and be the ultimate winner, asking him to care for his mother with his final breaths. With the somber piano motif that plays and the image of a screaming Gi-hun cradling Sang-woo's body and sobbing, a man who had proven that there was absolutely no line he was unwilling to cross to get ahead goes out on an incredibly bittersweet note.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: He even accuses Gi-hun of this, claiming he could only maintain a moral high ground because he lets others do the killing so he doesn't have to. This goes all the way to the final game, where he offs himself so Gi-hun can claim the prize money instead of accepting his proposal to vote to end the games and leave both of them with nothing.
• Big Brother Mentor: He encourages Ali to call him "hyung" (형, a word for one's older brother in Korean). This makes Ali's death after being betrayed by Sang-woo even more tragic because Ali calls out "hyung" while trying to find him right beforehand. However, this detail is not included at all in the English dub or subs.
• Broken Ace: An extremely gifted student who became his town's golden boy after getting into Seoul National University and enjoying success in business. The thing is, he got rich mostly by embezzlement, and he is wanted by the law at the time he enters the games.
• Cold Equation: Frequently, the games demand some people die and others live, and Sang-woo becomes increasingly willing to trade lives to protect his own. For example, he argues that pushing the glassmaker to his death was necessary, because if he'd run out the clock, all four of them would have died.
• Cynic–Idealist Duo: Between him and Gi-hun, he's the cynic. Gi-hun spends most of the games forming friendships and listening to others while Sang-woo betrayed other players to benefit himself. One particular example of this is at the final night when Sae-byeok is revealed to be bleeding to death - Gi-hun rushes to try and get her medical help while Sang-woo uses this chance to murder her while she's defenseless.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: He dies in Gi-hun's arms after stabbing himself in the neck.
• Do Wrong, Right: He whispers to Gi-hun that they have to play the game, or Gi-hun is dead, during the first round. When Gi-hun is frozen in fear, Sang-woo whispers at him to get moving, and hide behind the bigger players.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": Sang-woo gets embarrassed as Ali calls him sir, and tells him it's not necessary.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Attempted in "Hell", where he can be seen in his bathtub with a charcoal briquette burning in an enclosed space, a tragically common way for South Koreans to commit suicide by fume inhalation. He's stopped before he can go through with it by a knock on the door from the game's recruiters.
  • He ultimately drives his knife through the side of his throat to finish himself off and end the final game so Gi-hun will be able to collect the prize money.
• Elite School Means Elite Brain: He's a graduate of Seoul National University (specifically SNU Business School), one of the most elite universities in South Korea, and went on to become a successful businessman. His childhood friend Gi-hun is very proud of him for this and loves to mention it to others practically every chance he gets. Of course, Sang-woo's first attempts at business are revealed to have failed, and his current "success" comes from him embezzling his clients' money. This gets him into trouble and leads to him playing the titular Deadly Game hoping to win the cash prize at the end. However, he proves to be one of the craftiest and deadliest competitors, outmaneuvering nearly everyone and ending up as a finalist, only losing in the final round.
• Establishing Character Moment: One of his first actions is teaching Gi-hun the tactic of hiding behind someone else in the first game. This establishes that a) he's analytical and cunning, even under pressure b) he cares about his old friend, and c) he's willing to risk the lives of others to protect himself.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Despite his fall from grace and eventual descent into villainy during the games, his main motivation is firmly about trying to keep his legal troubles from hurting his financially-struggling mother. His last words before dying is to ask Gi-hun to take care of his mother with the prize money he won.
• Every Man Has His Price: He's the one who brought up the loophole in the agreement that everyone signed, that the players could vote to go home. Then he sees the amount of money in the piggy bank, and changes his tune.
• Everyone Has Standards: Sang-woo wants the games to continue. He also knows, however, that the guards are threatening to shoot everyone who wants out. When it seems another massacre will occur, he stands and reminds the guards that per their own contract, the third clause states that the players can vote to stay or leave. At the least he wants to give people a fair chance to vote, even if he doesn't agree with the majority.
• Extremely Protective Child: He enters the games in order to stop shaming his mother by going to prison, and because he put her shop up as collateral.
• Face–Heel Turn: As the games go on and become more intense, his willingness to sacrifice other people to save his own life becomes apparent in the marble game, where he manipulates Ali into giving him all his marbles and sends him off on a wild goose chase with some "marbles" in his hand — which turn out to be useless old pebbles. While he appears momentarily remorseful at Ali's death, it proves to be the push that leads to him remorselessly killing Player 017 and Sae-byeok to keep himself in the game.
• False Friend: While he's never outright malevolent over it, he gradually becomes more and more willing to betray and mislead his friends if it keeps him in the game, even when it results in their deaths. Gi-hun doesn't catch on until the fifth game after he shoves Player 017 to his death.
• Final Boss: Being the last contestant alongside Gi-hun, the sixth game is mostly a brawl between two childhood friends.
• Foil: To Gi-hun. Both of them hailed from the Ssangmun-dong neighborhood in Seoul and are even childhood friends. While Gi-hun is a slacker who wastes his life in dead-end jobs and gambling, Sang-woo is The Ace who got himself enrolled into the prestigious Seoul National University, though both of them eventually end up in rough places financially. Gi-hun is mostly friendly to others while Sang-woo is aloof and calculating. While Gi-hun is willing to walk away from the ultimate prize as the game becomes more and more brutal, Sang-woo is willing to do whatever it takes to get the prize money, even if it means he has to screw other players over. Also, despite their other negative qualities, both of them do love their mothers.
• Foreshadowing: Following the aforementioned Establishing Character Moment, the players of the Squid Game are given the option to vote if they want to quit the game or continue to the next round. Sang-woo votes to continue the game, knowing full well that he would be putting everyone else's lives at risk. While the prior moment could be rationalized as Sang-woo making a call in the heat of the moment to save his life, this moment drives the nail in that he is really prioritizing the money over the lives of everyone else.
• Heel Realization: Seems to realize the sacrifice Gi-hun is willing to make before plunging the knife into his own neck and allowing Gi-hun to win. He also asks Gi-hun to take care of his mother before succumbing to his self-inflicted wound.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Played with. Is adamantly, and oftentimes irrationally against the idea of having women on his team, though he sometimes has a point as he was expecting more games that ostensibly require size and strength and concerned about his chances following his team's near-defeat in the tug-of-war.
• Hero Killer: He's directly responsible for Ali's death and personally murders Sae-byeok.
• Interrupted Suicide: After the majority of players decide to quit after the first game and go back to the outside world, he attempts to kill himself by burning a charcoal briquette. He only stops when he hears the doorbell ring and finds another Squid Game card slipped under the door.
• It Gets Easier: Sang-woo grows increasingly more callous as the game goes on. It's after he directly allows Ali to die to save himself that he finally loses any remaining qualms about killing personally.
• I've Come Too Far: This mindset seems to drive his increasing ruthlessness. By the time he betrays Ali, he's openly arguing that they can't stop, because too many people have died already to let it be for nothing.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • When Player 069 begs for the other players to quit the game after losing his wife, Sang-woo shows No Sympathy towards him, but he is not wrong when he says a) they all chose to come back to the game, knowing that most of them were going to die and b) after watching hundreds of people die, no one was going to quit over one death. They'd come too far and risked too much to leave with nothing.
  • While Sang-woo's decision to push Player 017 to his death during the fifth game was morally reprehensible, he is right to point out that if he didn't push him out of the way, Player 017 likely would've caused them all to be eliminated by running out the clock with his indecisiveness.
  • He's also right that Gi-hun brought much of his misery on himself through his poor choices. Gi-hun agrees, then points out that as talented as Sang-woo is, he ended up in the same situation as he is.
• Kick the Dog: He does this regularly after "Gganbu", which includes inducing Player 069 to kill himself, pushing Player 017 to his death, stabbing Sae-byeok, and making a Hidden Disdain Reveal to Gi-hun.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Sang-woo was nicest to Ali of all of the participants, which makes his tricking him out of his marbles and getting him killed all the more shocking.
• Last Request: After losing in the final game, he kills himself to allow Gi-hun to receive the prize money and simply requests that he look after his mother once he's gone.
• Meaningful Name: The Korean word for his number, 218, sounds very similar to the Korean word 'ssibal,' a profanity which roughly translates to 'fuck' or 'fucker.' He accordingly becomes a villain who cruelly kills several other characters just to increase the odds that he'll get a huge payout.
• Mercy Kill: Sang-woo claims that he killed Sae-Byeok out of mercy - until he later reveals that he wanted to stop both Gi-hun and Sae-byeok from casting a majority vote.
• Odd Friendship: He, a well-educated and apparently successful businessman, has long been friends with Gi-hun, who's down on his luck and lives with his mother, and becomes friends with Ali, a Pakistani immigrant and blue-collar worker. He ends up betraying Ali and causing his death, and end up in a fight to the death with Gi-hun.
• The One Who Made It Out: Deconstructed and played for tragedy - Sang-woo was the "golden boy of Ssangmun-dong" who went to a prestigious university and became a successful businessman, only to get into financial trouble when he made some bad investments and engaged in white collar crimes, leaving him in worse financial straits than Gi-hun, a perpetually broke slacker with a gambling addiction.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He saves Gi-hun during the first game by whispering to him to snap out of his Deer in the Headlights mode before the timer runs out. Sang-woo also gives Gi-hun advice to hide behind the bigger players to get a Human Shield. In the final episode, he chooses to kill himself so that Gi-hun gets the prize money rather than vote to end the games and leave them both with nothing, knowing that Gi-hun will take care of his mother.
  • Zigzagged when Sang-woo is the one who brings up the third clause in the loophole that the players can vote to go home. Then he votes for the games to continue, something that Gi-hun can't believe.
  • Despite also being in the red, he buys Ali a cellphone, noodles, and bus fare after they are dropped off together after the first game. He later brings this up when trying to con Ali out of his marbles in the fourth game.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: At the start of Episode 8, Sang-woo gives one to Gi-hun, accurately pointing out that his dire financial situation was his own fault. Sang-woo himself is on the receiving end of one immediately afterward, with Gi-hun calling out the fact that the "golden child of Ssangmun-dong" is here with him playing the same game.
• Riches to Rags: Attended a top-tier university and got a great-paying job, but lost it all to bad investments and is now wanted for embezzlement and White-Collar Crime. Gi-hun is dumbfounded that the childhood friend who had so much going for him is in even deeper debt than himself.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Sang-woo going shirtless underneath his jacket (as he ripped off part of his shirt to create a makeshift lanyard for Ali's pouch of "marbles") coincides with his turn to the dark side.
• The Smart Guy: He's the cleverest player in Gi-hun's group of allies. His strategy helps their team win the tug-of-war. When picking partners for the fourth game, he immediately goes to Ali, reasoning that they can be a Brains and Brawn team and be well-prepared for whatever the challenge is.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: He starts to resort to ever more deplorable means to survive, failing to warn Gi-hun in Game 2 to choose an easier shape despite having an idea of what the game would be, tricking Ali in Game 4 so he can steal his marbles and get him killed, throwing a guy in front of him to his death in Game 5 because he was taking too long, and viciously murdering Sae-byeok before the final round just so she and Gi-hun won't vote to quit.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: As the resident smart guy of Gi-hun's team, he often wears a pair of spectacles. By the end of the series, he crosses into Four Eyes, Zero Soul territory.
• Sore Loser: Upon losing the marbles game to Ali, Sang-woo furiously accuses him of cheating and grabs and shakes him until a guard stops him.
• Spell My Name With An S: Certain media romanises his name as Jo Sang-woo.
• The Strategist: He plays each game strategically, which allows him to reach the final round.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Sang-woo is at first a cooperative friend worth having for Gi-hun and the others but as they advance through the games, while Sang-woo still remains intelligent and rational, he becomes more ruthless and pragmatic by resorting to manipulating and backstabbing even his own friends like Ali and Sae-byeok sending them to their deaths, the latter by stabbing her to death to make sure he survives and win and Gi-hun gets pissed off with him after realizing how many despicable actions Sang-woo made. Although he never takes pleasure from it because if he chooses to withdraw from the games, he will be arrested for embezzling his client's money to pay for the 6 billion Won debt and worse of all even if he's dead, his mother's fish store will be taken as financial collateral leaving her in poverty.
• Token Evil Teammate: Despite being a part of Gi-Hun's team, he grows increasingly more ruthless and manipulative as the game progresses and doesn't hesitate to kill his own team-mates.
• Tragic Villain: By the end, he has become completely ruthless in pursuit of victory, but he takes no pleasure in what he's doing and only resorts to betrayal and murder because the alternative to victory is death or crippling debt for himself and his family.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Takes advantage of Ali and (unknowingly) Saee-byeok's kindness and hesitation to kill him to kill them.
• Villain's Dying Grace: After being beaten in the final game, he kills himself so that Gi-hun can leave with the money and give some to his mother, instead of taking Gi-hun's offer to leave together and get nothing.

Temporary Allies:

Player 196

"Offense is the best form of defense. Let's attack first."

Played by: Kim Dong-hyun

A paranoid contestant who joins Gi-hun's team during the tug-of-war.

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• Boom, Headshot!: His body is shown with a bullet hole through his skull.
• Deadpan Snarker: His response to Il-nam when the latter says that tug-of-war requires more than just strength.
  "Well then, what's it about, huh? We just go out and speak to them?"
• The Eeyore: Generally dismissive and pessimistic during his brief appearance.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Most of his lines are him insulting Gi-hun's team, but he has good reasons. He argues that Il-nam should save his strength and doesn't trust him to stay awake all night. He also tells the girls that it wouldn't be very wise to team up, since most challenges rely on strength rather than agility. Finally, he also agrees with 244 to attack the other teams; since they're in a Deadly Game, it wouldn't be a dumb idea to take out the competition.
• Killed Offscreen: While his elimination is never stated by the announcer, 196 teaming up with 244 in the marbles game, combined with 244's presence in the following glass bridge game, indicates 196 met some unfortunate fate in the marbles round, while 244 got to advance. His body is briefly shown when Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong begin to play their game.
• Properly Paranoid: Being in a Deadly Game where players are free to kill each other outside of the rounds, and it's not safe to even sleep, Player 196 is constantly on the lookout.
• Those Two Guys: He and 244 get along pretty well.

Player 240 (Ji-yeong)

"I'll make sure you win. Whatever it takes."

Played by: Lee Yoo-Mi^{Other Languages}Yuuki Luna (English Dub), Yurika Kubo (Japanese dub), Pamella Rodrigues (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

A mysterious young woman who strikes up an unlikely bond with Sae-byeok.

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• Abusive Parents: She was the victim of this at the hands of her father, physically and sexually.
• Berserk Button: Fairly downplayed since she doesn't get very emotional, but it's clear that she hates the mention of religion and lashes out at the pastor for praying during the Tug-of-War game. That's because her father was a pastor who would pray for forgiveness after abusing Ji-yeong and her mother.
• Birds of a Feather: She forms a genuine bond with Sae-byeok, another Emotionless Girl with a traumatic past.
• Broken Bird: She doesn't even care whether she lives or dies in the game. Most played during the fourth game, where Ji-yeong willingly loses since she believes Sae-byeok has someone to live for, while she has nothing.
• Crime of Self-Defense: She killed her father as revenge for abusing her and murdering her mother, which got her arrested and all of her father's debts going onto her, which leed to her into the games in the first place.
• Emotionless Girl: Comparable to Sae-byeok in this regard, which is likely what draws them to each other.
• Evil Stole My Faith: In Episode 5, Ji-yeong mocks a pastor who prays to God after the Tug-of-War game. It is then revealed in the next episode that her father was a pastor who abused Ji-yeong and her mother, only to then immediately pray for forgiveness as if that made it okay. Ji-yeong murdered her father and ended up becoming one of the contestants after getting out of prison.
• Exact Words: She promised to Sae-byeok that she will help her win at any cost if she partners up with her in the fourth game... even if it costs her her life.
• Face Death with Dignity: She dies smiling, thanking Sae-byeok for playing with her.
• Go Out with a Smile: She spends her last moments saying goodbye to Sae-byeok with a tearful one.
• Heroic Sacrifice: During the Marbles game, she gets into a heart to heart talk with Kang Sae-Byeok and decides to give her a chance to live since Sae-Byeok has someone to live for.
• It Has Been an Honor: Ji-yeong's final words to Sae-byeok right before she's shot is thanking the girl for playing with her and that she was honored to have met her.
• Jerkass to One: Most of the time, she's rather aloof, but she mocks and lashes out at Player 244 specifically for using religion to justify his behavior, most likely since he reminds her of her father.
• Only One Name: Only her forename is given.
• Patricide: She murdered her own father as revenge for abusing her and her mother, the latter of whom he had killed.
• The Promise: Subverted. When she and Sae-byeok talk to one another during the marbles game, she asks what Sae-byeok's plans were if she were to win. When Sae-byeok says she wants to go to Jeju Island, Ji-yeong chides her and asks her to "dream bigger" like going to Hawaii. She even says they should plan a girls night together... before remembering where they were and knowing that only one of them could leave.
• Rape as Backstory: Implied. She reveals to Sae-byeok that, after murdering her mother, her father "did things to her" and would then ask God for forgiveness.
• Shed the Family Name: Implied to be the case. When she and Sae-byeok introduce each other, Ji-yeong doesn't mention what her family name is, prompting Sae-byeok to ask, to which Ji-yeong replies that she doesn't have a family name.
• Throwing the Fight: During the marbles game against Sae-byeok she intentionally drops her marble so it doesn't go near the wall where Sae-byeok tossed her marble, letting her win.
• Trying Not to Cry: As she is about to be executed for losing the Marbles game, Ji-yeong briefly struggles to contain her composure and not cry when thanking Sae-byeok for being her partner.

Player 244

"You poor lost lamb. Can't you hear the cries of those who were nailed to the cross today?"

Played by: Kim Si-hyun^{Other Languages} Edward Hong (English dub)

A pastor who joins Gi-hun's team during the tug-of-war game.

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• As the Good Book Says...: Relies on the Story of Creation when picking numbers for the fifth game.
• Asshole Victim: Not as big as the other examples, but he's a sexist hypocrite and murderer whose death is completely his own doing.
• Badass Preacher: By virtue of the fact he survived until the fifth game.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor guy isn't treated well by his peers. Ji-yeong mocks him for his religious tendencies and he gets killed in the fifth game by being shoved into a false glass panel.
• Egocentrically Religious: He prays for other players to die and attempts to convince Gi-hun and the others to kill the weaker teams, saying everyone’s hands are already dirty, implying he killed several people during the nighttime brawl.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Seems to be this thanks to his religious rants that keep all the players awake, his constant hypocrisy and sexist comments. The only one who tolerates him is 196, but that didn’t last very long.
• Hate Sink: Not as bad as the other characters, but he's a sexist hypocrite who does little to help his teammates and only comes up with terrible ideas. His death is Played for Laughs and well-deserved.
• He-Man Woman Hater: He seems to be the most sexist out of the team, since 196 and Sang-woo act out of pragmatism and self-preservation, but 244 actually uses quotes from the bible for his reasoning and even tells the girls that God made men the superior gender.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the fifth game, while he's praying to God while holding everybody up, the player behind him tries to forcefully make him proceed, but 244 ends up pushing the man onto a panel that shatters, dropping the player to his death. He then visibly gets the idea of continuing to hold the others up by praying until someone approaches him so he can eliminate them while determining which panel is safe to stand on... however, he doesn't get the chance to put this plan to practice as the next player behind him quickly shoves 244 to his death.
• Hypocrite: Despite being a pastor, he is heavily implied to have killed people before the tug-of-war game and is openly sexist. He also prays for God to kill other players instead of praying for his own survival.
• Lack of Empathy: If his behaviour in the fifth game demonstrates anything. He also suggests attacking the other teams, which disturbs most of his fellow teammates, who would rather not want anymore blood on their hands then necessary.
• Laser-Guided Karma: During the glass bridge game, he begins to stall by beginning to pray even though there is a time limit. This frustrates the players behind him who try to hurry him up. After getting into a struggle he manages to throw one of the players into the glass ahead of him. Getting the idea to repeat this process to determine which panels are safe, he begins praying again, but the player behind him is not having any of it, so he shoves him into the glass almost immediately.
• The Load: He takes his sweet time praying to God atop the glass panel he's on in the fifth game, wasting precious seconds in the time limit and blocking everyone else's progress.
• Mauve Shirt: Receives a decent amount of focus, is given a bit of personality and a memorable death. He makes it to the fifth round, which is where nearly every player still alive at that point dies.
• Straw Misogynist: In one of his religious rants, he says that God made men the superior sex.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: He is killed immediately after thanking God for saving him.
• Tempting Fate: See above.
• Those Two Guys: He and 196 get along pretty well.
• Token Religious Teammate: His most defining trait is him being a religious man who’s constantly praying. No other character is seen doing so.
• Too Dumb to Live: He decides to waste time by praying whilst in the middle of a life-or-death game with a timer. After someone tries to kill him, he decides to try the same thing again until someone catches him off guard and pushes him.

Player 276

Played by: Christian Lagahit

Another contestant who joins Gi-hun's team during the tug-of-war.

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• Commonality Connection: With Ali, being that they're the only non-Koreans among the players.
• Killed Offscreen: He sticks with Gi-hun's team until the beginning of round 4. He is last seen walking into the arena with his partner, Player 021, as Mi-nyeo goes into hysterics. While he isn't shown getting shot, 276's elimination is announced at the same time Sang-woo opens Ali's bag of marbles — With his death reinforced by the appearance of Player 021 in the bridge game.
• Token Minority: The most significant role he plays is being the only other migrant worker alongside Ali. In the tug-of-war game, Ali even approaches him for his team, as if in a show of solidarity. 276 is also brown-skinned, something that stands out in the tug-of-war lineup next to the much fairer-skinned Korean characters' skin tones. His actor Christian Lagahit is Filipino, and fascinatingly, two Filipino actors were considered for the role of Ali. It makes sense that 276's greatest role is solidarity with Ali.
• The Voiceless: While Guest-Star Party Member Player 196 and 244 got several lines during the tug-of-war game, Player 276 remained quiet all throughout his appearances. Even when recruited by Ali for game 3, Player 276 only managed a salute.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Receives even less screentime than the other minor characters on the tug-of-war team like 244 and 196. While 244 and 196 have dialogue where they advocate preemptively attacking the other participants, and 244 outright makes it to the second-last round of the game, we receive no dialogue from 276 and he ends up losing to Player 021 in the marbles game.

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