Fridge / Squid Game

All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned!

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Fridge Brilliance

• For the game in episode 7, the players are asked to take their shoes off before they jump onto the glass panels. In some Asian countries, before people commit suicide, they take their shoes off first (as the man who hangs himself does).
  • More practically, having the players take off their shoes means that they can't throw them at the pane of glass ahead of them to test whether the glass is tempered or not. Technically, they were only told to take off their shoes, not leave them behind, but it doesn't seem to have occurred to any of them that they could take their shoes off and carry them.
• Many of the deaths of the named contestants are actually foreshadowed in episode 2 after everyone returns to their normal lives.
  • Sang-woo is seen soaking himself in a bathtub with a charcoal briquette burning, seemingly attempting suicide. He ends his own life in the final round while drenched from rain water.
  • Ali discovers his boss has been withholding his wages from him; Sang-woo later tricks him into giving him all his marbles, which leads to him losing the fourth game.
  • Deok-su jumps off a bridge to escape a gang. He plummets to his death from the glass bridge with Mi-nyeo in the fifth game.
  • Sae-byeok threatens to cut the throat of her broker. Sang-woo murders her by slitting her throat.
• The incidents that happen to Gi-hun in Episode 1 demonstrate Gi-hun's Born Lucky nature. He guesses the PIN numbers of his mother's credit card wrong until he finally gets it right in the last attempt. He bets on the wrong horse at first before getting it right the next time and winning big. He loses the claw machine time and time again until a kind kid helps him win a prize for his daughter's birthday. And he loses to the Salesman multiple times in the ddakji game before he finally wins. This shows how even though Gi-hun often finds himself in pretty rough spots, his luck eventually helps him turn the situation around at the very end, which is what happens to him multiple times over the course of the Deadly Game.
  • It should be mentioned that most of these lucky moments get turned on him. His winnings from the horse race gets stolen before he could use them to pay his creditors. The claw machine prize turns out to be a very convincing toy gun. The win in ddakji leads to the Trauma Conga Line over the course of the games. This also kinda describes the outcome of the games: He gets lucky and wins, but becomes so depressed he can't enjoy it.
• Why is the Front Man so dedicated to his role as overseer of the Squid Games despite being a winner of a previous Squid Game (and thus more than aware of the sheer brutality involved)? If Squid Game is taken as social commentary, then the Front Man represents the rare individual who managed to defy the odds and rise to a higher social class. His dedication to running the Squid Game makes sense - he's helping uphold the status quo that he now benefits from.
  • His being revealed as a former winner also puts his status as a Fair-Play Villain in a new light: he is probably deeply invested in the idea he 'deserved' to win, and any unfairness in the running of the games jeopardizes that narrative.
  • Alternatively, some have suggested that the Front Man's obsession with keeping the games as fair as possible could be due to trauma from his Squid Game. What if his Squid Game involves highly unfair games or games that heavily relied on luck/whether or not the V.I.P.s liked a player?
• With the revelation that the Front Man is a former winner heavily implied to be incredibly traumatized by his experiences, in retrospect, him pouring himself a drink and playing music in his control center as he oversees the games feels less like a sadistic man casually enjoying the fruits of his labor and more like someone trying to drown out the worst parts of the atrocities he officiates through both sound and alcohol.
• After the first game, it's put to a vote to either continue the game or leave and stop playing. Ultimately Il-nam ends up being the tie breaker and votes to end the game. But it turns out he was behind it the whole time. Aside from mercy, Il-nam might have had a pragmatic reason; had he voted Remain, the contestants who voted Leave might have later killed him in revenge for preventing them from escaping.
  • It goes beyond that. Il-nam believes that humans beings, especially the poor, are inherently evil, selfish and greedy, so when the players inevitably return, he can claim that he gave them the chance to leave and keep their lives. But they chose to return, preferring to risk their lives (and potentially end other people's lives as well) for the slim chance of winning a lot of money. The first time the players really didn't know what they were getting into; they no longer had such an excuse the second time.
• There's a scene where the players are given breakfast, which is fairly basic fare. Il-nam quite enjoys it, even likening it to school breakfasts. This might not make sense in light of his being the creator of the Squid Games, considering his wealth means that he most definitely can acquire luxurious foods of far greater quality. But when one considers his motivation for taking part in the games, his enjoyment of the food is cast in a whole new light. He's playing both for the thrill of it and to experience the Squid Game from a player's perspective - of course this extends to moments outside of the rounds.
  • In addition, his stated motivation for creating the Squid Games was due to boredom. Eating 'commoner' food - the same food that those poor people he looks down on eat - must be quite the novel experience for him. Or a nostalgic experience, considering his past.
  • To the above, it is likely both. A man of Il-nam's generation experienced Japanese rule, WWII, the Korean War, the post-war economic poverty, then the rapid rise of the South Korean economy under the military dictatorship. Il-nam says several times that he is trying to relive his youth. Il-nam saying he enjoyed Gi-hun's company can be quite sad when you consider that Il-nam is talking about playing and being able to lose oneself in leisure and enjoyment, things he said he lost so much on the way to becoming rich that he created the games with his 'friends.' But only in participating in the games did he get to actually find some kind of connecting friendship. His soft spot for Gi-hun is that even though Gi-hun was desperate to survive, he still tried to do the right thing as much as possible, showing Gi-hun valued Il-nam's company and his life, not any money he might have.
  • Adding onto the above, Il-nam living through such turbulent eras also puts an interesting light on his reaction to the death and chaos around him throughout the games, where he's simply acting as if he's having fun playing while people die around him (which the audience likely chalks up to his apparent senility). Considering that military service is mandatory for men in Korea at the age of 30, it's quite likely that he was drafted during active wartime. Perhaps part of why he's so invested in the games and thinks Humans Are Bastards is because he's had people die around him before, and that humans are naturally awful.
• In a tragic explanation, it makes sense for Game 4 to be the choice of the Wham Episode. Four is considered an unlucky number in a variety of Asian countries, and Game 4 is where most of the heart-wrenching moments of the show occur. Ji-yeong's sacrifice, Sae-byeok's time in North Korea revealed, Sang-woo betraying Ali, Il-nam's (false) dementia getting worse resulting in his (fabricated) death, and Player 069 losing his wife. The fourth game is the moment where tragedy stands out.
• Despite holding on to her ideal of never trusting anyone until the end, Sae-byeok may have sealed her fate very early on by working with Mi-nyeo to spy through the vents. Mi-nyeo, unable to keep her mouth shut, lets Sang-woo overhear her asking what Sae-byeok saw, and when she tells them both on the following day, he's the only one able to make enough sense of the clue to choose the triangle.
  • Before she tells Sang-woo what she saw, you see her holding and looking at the sweet bread. It's possible she thought that she just saw them making the bread the night before so telling Sang-Woo makes no difference since she believed it had nothing to do with the game after seeing the bread.
• Throughout all of their interactions, Il-Nam always remarks how Seong Gi-hun reminds him of his son. While people may come to conclude that these two are related somehow, remember that the people who run the games know everything about the players. So it's not too far a stretch to think Il-Nam could have done some research on the players beforehand. Especially when he sought out Seong Gi-hun after everyone voted to end the games the first time, likely piquing his interest.
• After winning the contest, why didn't Gi-hun try and see a therapist? Aside from the trauma probably being something no amount of therapy can solve and the possibility of therapists thinking he's insane and reporting him to authorities, the organizers behind the Squid Game will not be amused by him telling others about his trauma and are likely to kill him or, worse, recruit him for more games.
  • Plus, Gi-hun talking to a therapist about the contest would get said therapist killed, and he knows it.
  • Korea still has a lot of stigmatization around dealing with mental health, and talking openly about your emotions is taboo. It's why South Korea has the world's second highest suicide rate. For someone of Gi-hun's demographic, talking to a therapist is a non-option.
• It was a wise decision for Oh Il-nam to bow out in the Marble game, seeing that Glass Stepping Stones is entirely random chance and assuming by some miracle he survived that, there is little chance he'll survive a knife fight.
  • In addition, the free-for-all fight was the only time where he wasn't in control, so of course he would protect himself by leaving before then.
  • The other advantage of the placement of the Marble game is that Il-nam, by losing, essentially gives a free victory in the round (minus the heartwrenching aspect) to either his outright favorite contestant, or at least to someone who was willing to partner up with him and thus deserving to move on to the next round.
  • The Glass Stepping Stones require some degree of balance, which most of the contestants have enough of, being in the range of young adult to late adult. An old man like Il-nam probably wouldn't be able to balance as well, even if he could tell the glass panels apart.
  • Theoretically, if he wanted to participate in the Glass Stepping Stones game, he could have memorized which stones were which, but, not only would this take the stakes out of the game and be incredibly dangerous for him, it would also give the players an unfair advantage, since much of this game relies on people communicating with each other, and having one player know how to navigate would leave them with more players than they would need.
• Mi-nyeo gets to sit out the fourth round because she doesn't have a partner, showing that the game organizers are being Fair-Play Villain. The Brilliance sets in when you realize that had Player 111 not gotten himself killed for cheating the night before, there would be enough players to pair everyone together. By killing him, there is one player short, so it wouldn't be fair to punish someone else for not having a partner just because of something out of their control.
  • If not for Gi-hun, chances were high that Il-nam would have been the player left out instead of Mi-nyeo. And unlike Mi-nyeo, Il-nam might have used it as his chance to drop out of the games since no player would have questioned it. Given Il-nam's view of humanity, he probably expected this outcome until Gi-hun proved him wrong. Mi-nyeo survived one more round thanks to Gi-hun's kindness.
• During the meal in episode 8, it seems strange that Sae-byeok doesn't at least eat her steak. Then you realize that the meal is arranged so that there are multiple pieces of cutlery, a common occurrence at high-class meals that Sae-byeok probably isn't familiar with; while she may not have been hungry, it's also possible that in her delirious state she simply didn't understand which knife and fork to choose.
  • There was also her being severely wounded, which might have ruined her appetite or weakened her so that she couldn't properly cut the steak. When we do see her cut and eat some steak, her motions seem strained. Though she could have still eaten it with her hands, it's not like she cares about how the men perceives her table manners. But she likely knew she was going to die very soon, so she just didn't bother eating at all, with or without utensils.
• Having the VIPs come observing the fifth game themselves makes sense, as theoretically, the fifth game has a chance of killing off every remaining contestant due to its nature (players could fall off the platforms without making any progress until there's not enough players to get to the end, they could break even the reinforced glass and prevent everyone else from continuing, the remaining players could not get to the end in time before the time runs out, etc.). In such a case, the fifth game would be the deciding match, and the VIPs would want to be there to see it themselves.
• The large VIP wearing the panther mask is pretty much a literal fat cat.
• Some fans have questioned why, when Gi-hun was banging on the door and pleading for help in episode 8, Sang-woo chose to kill Sae-byeok instead of him, seeing that Gi-hun was a much more formidable opponent and Sae-byeok would have made an easy target. Aside from Gi-hun possibly spotting Sang-woo and fighting and killing him, in the likely case that Sae-byeok bled out, Sang-woo might have been sent home empty-handed for not completing all 6 games.
  • There's also the fact that Sang-woo exhibits suicidal behaviour (see the Foreshadowing before he is called back to the Squid Game). Part of him might have still had a death wish and thus killing Sae-byeok so he can face Gi-hun could keep that route open (and ultimately, he takes his own life).
  • Sang-woo was also childhood friends with Gi-hun and may not have been comfortable with killing him at that moment or at least in such an underhanded way. If he had to kill Gi-hun, it should at least be in an official match with no further trickery or lying. Sang-woo had no prior friendship with Sae-byeok and might have seen her as an opportunistic selfish Jerkass (like himself), so he had less compunctions with killing her.
• In their final fight, Gi-hun engages Sang-woo in hand-to-hand combat rather than just running through the gap and tapping on the circle to win the game. But seeing how he gave up his chance to kill him and asked to vote to leave, it's likely Gi-hun subconsciously never wanted to kill Sang-woo.
• There's an important parallel between Ali and Jun-ho, specifically how they die. Ali gets eliminated from the fourth game after being deceived by Sang-woo, whom he saw as a surrogate older brother (and even referred to him as such), right when he was on the verge of winning. Jun-ho was shot by his actual older brother, In-ho, after nearly being able to expose the games to the police. Both of them felt shocked, horrified, and betrayed right before their deaths.
• Why do the games let the contestants who wish to go leave alive with no strings attached outside of not blabbing about them, unlike most other death games where this is usually a false promise that gets them killed afterwards? Think about why the contestants are competing in the first place. If they leave, they are essentially going back to their wretched lives, ensuring a slow death living in the slums or prison. The organizers aren't worried about suddenly having no "horses" because they know that the majority will choose to stay. This is also why their targets mainly consist of criminals and/or the poor, instead of, say, the average citizen with no money problems that wouldn't sign up for these games in the first place.
  • And like the Front Man and Il-Nam pointed out, it gives the organizers the excuse that they willingly came back to the games after leaving the first time, in spite of knowing what the consequences of losing will be. Just in case anyone accuses the organizers of being evil sociopaths.
  • Targeting the poor and criminals also means that, if any of their victims do go to the authorities, they are less likely to be believed. Nor would they have a reason to, with a lot more to lose if they tried.
  • For a bit of Fridge Horror the news report being read at the end points out that household debt in South Korea is almost equal to GDP. That means most average South Korean citizens have money problems like the contestants in the game. Not as acute to be sure, but nonetheless there. It means that there are always plenty of potential recruits for the games.
• It makes sense that Il-nam shares his strategy for winning the tug-o-war, because it's probably the only game where he's really at risk of dying. As other people have pointed out, he seemed to be treated with leniency in the Red Light, Green Light and Honeycomb challenges. However, if his team lost the tug-of-war, there would really be no way the Front Man or any of the guards could help him without blowing his cover.
  • It also makes sense that he knows the exact way to win the game when outmatched by strength - he picked the games to begin with.
• The ddakji game that the Salesman plays with potential recruits like Gi-hun has the former dangle a 100,000 won reward if the latter wins, and a slap to the face if he loses. Gi-hun then receives slap after slap as he keeps losing, and he keeps requesting more rounds just because he really wants to win the money. This makes ddakji the perfect game to screen and lure in players desperate enough to commit to the games, since the people who are willing to endure repeated pain, physical abuse, and humiliation just to win this meager amount will also be willing to take greater risks for more money.
• In episode 5, "A Fair World", Gi-hun reveals to Il-nam that he was involved in a massive strike at a car factory many years earlier. Il-nam casually comments that Gi-hun's story reminds him of a major news story around the same time, concluding after some reflection that they must be the same event. Il-nam, we later learn, is the Host: he has certainly read all the players' profiles and is therefore well aware of Gi-hun's past at the car factory. Indeed, he probably has money riding on the games, just like the VIPs: knowing Gi-hun has a strong sense of solidarity, is capable of working in a team, and can keep his head when others around him are being killed, did Il-nam have his eyes on him to win the whole time?
• Once people died in the first game, everybody stood still, too shocked to move. Only Oh Il-nam saunters forward, having the time of his life. Of course he wasn't surprised by the deaths, he orchestrated them.
  • Also given some of his implied backstory, he likely experienced so much death when he was younger it just doesn't faze him anymore.
  • Another thing: watch carefully, and it seems like he always stops in the exact instant before the robot turns around. It's possible he's just that good at the game - or he could have the timing down because he's seen others play it so often.
• The guards noticeably don't bring up Clause 3 when confronting the contestants after the first game, and are only forced to go through with it when Sang-woo brings it up. It's clear they don't want to risk letting the contestants go and possibly reporting them to the police, like Gi-hun did, or just not returning to the game and ending the game prematurely.
• During the riot in Episode 4, the guards cause the lights to flash on and off in increasingly shorter intervals. This was done to prevent the players' eyes from adjusting to the dark and potentially avoid being killed.
• While stalling for time so Sae-byeok could do some spying, Mi-nyeo complains that the stalls had run out of toilet paper. Yet when the guard arrives and sees Sae-byeok holding a roll of toilet paper in the stall with Mi-nyeo, he doesn't question either of them. Aside from being distracted and embarrassed after seeing Mi-nyeo on the toilet, he could have figured that Mi-nyeo was lying only to stall for more time to take a dump, or that Sae-byeok had managed to find some.
• The Front Man lives in a tiny room with week-to-week rent, even though he won a previous game. On his desk are philosophy books about wants, needs, and desires. He likes his life simply and not wasteful.
  • Or alternatively, it could be a manifestation of his trauma from the games - he touches as little of his winnings as he can because it reminds him of all the horrors he endured to win them - just like Gi-hun.
  • Another option is that the room is kept as a decoy residence, as his brother does not know about his winnings, and would have questions if he was suddenly able to afford a more expensive place.
• As the prize money would be redistributed to the bereaved families of the victims, Gi-hun attempting to quit could be an attempted atonement for all of the deaths he witnessed and indirectly caused.
• As much as the immediate rewards for Sang-woo killing Sae-byeok were, it also makes sense to understand what benefits going into the penultimate game would be for Sang-woo doing so: if the theory that Sang-woo had learned the games beforehand were to hold true, then the reason he chose Sae-byeok to target can be to provoke Gi-hun into being angry and choose to be on the offensive. Why? The attacker will have to pass through the defender twice without leaving the border of the game to win, while the defender simply needs to shove them out.
• Why was Gi-hun the only one to realize there was a surefire way to win the honeycomb game? If it works so well, why don't kids do it all the time? Because they're not playing for life or death. Outside this very specific context, it's just a less fun way to play, and would probably make eating the candy afterwards more unpleasant since it's now covered in saliva.
  • That and whoever is running the game would just tell the kids they're not allowed to lick the candy.
• Oh Il-nam makes a bet with Gi-hun that nobody is going to help a freezing homeless person. Gi-hun stands in the window and watches the man to see if he dies. Two episodes earlier, we had a similar shot with the VIPs, standing in a window and looking at the playground people will die on. Oh Il-nam didn't care about the bet, he wanted to push Gi-hun into the position of a VIP.
• Il-nam died pretty conveniently. Or did he? He removed his oxygen mask at the beginning of the conversation and was talking a lot. He must've noticed himself getting weaker and needing more oxygen. He died on purpose.
• Oh Il-nam was sitting at the site when everybody partnered up for the marble game and didn't even try to find a partner. If Gi-hun wouldn't have taken pity on him, he would have been taken away by the guards and never seen again - which is most likely what he had planned to exit the games and get behind the scenes again.
• After the tug of war, Mi-nyeo says "[she] never felt as powerful as when she was leaning back." She kills Deok-su by hugging him and leaning back, falling with him.
• The players voting whether to terminate the games or not in episode 2:
  • Gi-hun voting to terminate the games. He may be a gambler, but he doesn't think it's worth life-or-death for him and/or other people for money.
  • Sang-woo voting to continue the games. As he will do whatever to save himself and his mother from debts, even if it costs other people's lives. Gi-hun even gave him a shocked stare after he casted his vote.
  • Mi-nyeo voting to continue, even after saying that she has a newly born child waiting at home, hinting her Compulsive Liar nature.
  • Ali voting to terminate the games. Similarly to Gi-hun, he won't risk other people's lives for his own benefit.
  • Surprisingly, Deok-su actually voted to terminate the games. Although, this is less to do with Even Evil Has Standards and more to do with him fearing about his own death. And may actually be a strategic move on his part as he did discuss with a fellow gang member later in the episode about breaking into the island to steal the prize money.
  • Sae-byeok voting to continue. She's a pickpocket and works alone, so other people's lives and well-being aren't much of a concern for her.
  • Il-nam casting the final vote and choosing to terminate. He's the creator of the games, where fairness is the top rule. If he voted to continue, it would be unfair for the players to not be allowed to leave because the staff won't allow it.
• When Il-nam is sent out when the majority chooses to leave after the first game, he tells Gi-hun that he is going to Yeouido to meet up with a friend. That is a MAJOR red flag to anyone who knows what kind of place Yeouido is. The area includes the National Assembly Building, major broadcasting stations, and is the main financial district in Seoul. One would question why someone so "poor" would go to a place with a lot of influence in Korean society.

Fridge Horror

• In the later episodes where there are fewer (most easily seen when there are just 3) beds, if you look at the walls surrounding the sleeping area, not only are all of the games that they have to play printed on the walls, but they're in the order they play them in, too. It's even worse when, looking back at the earlier episodes, you realize that they were there all along...
• As far as friends and family know, their loved one just up and disappeared without a trace. Multiply that by several hundred times since this seems to be a yearly event with hundreds of participants each time. This also means that there have been possibly thousands of Korean citizens that have gone missing, large groups of them at the same time, and it doesn't raise the suspicions of any law enforcement agency.
  • Ali Abdul mentions having a wife and a 1 year old son. The only person who knows about this is Sang-woo, who is dead and never told Gi-hun about this. At least Sae-byeok managed to tell him she had a brother moments before Sang-woo killed her.
    • Ali Abdul also didn't say where his hometown was in Pakistan, only that the circle reminded him of the full moon back in his village, and there are a lot of people named Ali Abdul in the world if you do a perfunctory Google search. Even if Gi-hun wanted to track down Ali's family In Pakistan to see if they needed his help, it would be pretty difficult.
  • For added horror, one of the VIPs says that the contest in Korea was the best. How many other countries have a version of this contest every year?
• Most, if not all, players have crippling debts, with most of them having signed their bodies forfeit to the loan sharks. In the final episode, Oh Il-nam reveals that he made it big by lending money. It is very possible that the network of loan sharks is created or controlled by him so that he can get enough contestants for his games.
• Some people noted in the first game that some people didn't look like they were moving but were still shot. The guns are likely machine automated. So while it can track movement efficiently, it might not always be so accurate. But it makes for a more interesting game when lots of players get killed off early on to weed out the weaker ones. It also shows multiple times that not every gun shoots accurately, as it either takes two shots to fully kill a player or wait for them to move again.
• Gi-hun tried to kill Sang-woo when he fell asleep before the final round, but Sae-byeok stops him from doing so. Thing is, even if Gi-hun succeeds in killing Sang-woo ahead of the game, it wouldn't have changed anything. He will still have to face Sae-byeok in the final round (if she even manages to live that long) and he either has to kill her for the ultimate prize money, throw the game, or invoke the third clause to stop the game and leaving both of them going home empty-handed.
• A Redditor placed Oh Il-nam's birthdate around the late 1930s, during the Japanese occupation of Korea, meaning he grew up during that and then The Korean War. This has some disturbing implications:
  • He is Conditioned to Accept Horror due to the sheer amount of death and destruction seen in his youth. Seeing as he is one of the game's creators, he doesn't see much wrong in people dying, especially for a prize. It also explains why he seems to be blissfully unaware of the carnage in the first game.
  • It also puts his comment about the fourth game hall in a different light: does all the death and betrayal caused by the game remind him of his younger years?
  • In regards to the final episode, he likely saw many people living in poverty and starving back then. No wonder why he bets on the homeless man not getting any help from anyone. People simply did not have the resources to help someone like him, only enough to ensure their own survival.
  • Incidentally, Il-nam's actor O Yeong-su lost his father and brother to North Korean forces when he was young. Il-nam himself may have went through something similar.
• The guard Jun-ho questions states all the helpers raped a woman they thought was dead, but who later woke up again. How many corpses had the same fate? The ones with a clean death like Ji-yeong whose body was still intact probably ended up with the guards before being organ trafficked and cremated.
• Some contestants don't die immediately and the guards move forward with them, anyways. How many were cremated while still being conscious?
• If you think about it, a lot of the winners either were very fortunate and clever like Gi-hun or were cold and calculating to come out on top. And seeing how the two winners in the show, Gi-hun and In-ho, are presented, there's likely two outcomes for the winners of all these annual games. They either devote themselves to upholding the system they benefited from, or become a broken shell of themselves without spending a drop of the winnings. How many winners came out broken?
• Most of the contestants are poor people in desperate need to pay debts. Considering how poor people struggle to escape poverty due to mismanaging their finances, and given the number of reckless gamblers (especially how this is Squid Game's method of choosing), it is likely that many winners of the past blew their winnings and ended up back where they started. And considering how broken the winners could end up, it's also possible many fell into drugs and alcoholism and possibly died from overdose (whether by mistake or by choice).
  • It's possible that this explains the theory of why In-ho would go back to the Games to become The Front Man despite having earned the prize money back in 2015, he blew through his winnings. Or worse, that Il-nam mentored him after he won, making In-ho the Evil Counterpart to Gi-hun, who received the same guidance but decided to fight back rather than join the system.
• More of a Fridge Squick than anything, but at least to the viewer's knowledge, none of the contestants ever bathed or washed their clothes, and likely spent days being drenched in sweat and their clothes having bloodstains without ever getting the chance to clean up (although a possible exception might be when Sang-woo, Gi-hun and Sae-byeok change from their sweatclothes to tuxedos between the fifth and sixth game.)
  • This could also raise the possibility of someone getting sick during the games due to the lack of hygiene care. And since the guards mostly do nothing as players kill each other outside of the games, this might be another Batman Gambit to weed out the weaker players.
• If you think about it, you're also a VIP who were watching what the other players were doing, during or outside the games. And you were there before the show's VIPs even came.
  • Speaking of which, Episode 4 features the tug-of-war round. You're obviously rooting for Gi-hun's team to win, but their opponents are not a Jerkass group; they're a bunch of scared men fighting for their life. And you may have cheered when they finally fall in Episode 5.
• In Episode 3, a losing contestant snaps and holds a commander at gunpoint, and when he tells the commander to remove his mask, he’s shocked to see someone so young involved in such horrific activities. When a worker’s face is revealed or they break any rules, they are killed on the spot just like any contestant. Given the nature of the show’s commentary, it’s quite likely that the games staff and guards are all equally as desperate and jaded as the contestants, only they’ve resigned themselves to much more gruesome activity to get by. If anything, the workers could be what the contestants would become if they’d turned to more distasteful ways to survive. There's even a theory that they are the players of the Salesman's game that chose Red instead of Blue.
  • Also, why was that commander so emotionless, despite being held at gunpoint? Is he Conditioned to Accept Horror and just going along with it? Was he simply sick of bloodshed and okay with dying? Did he realize he was doomed the second he took off his mask, and didn’t care what that guy would do?
  • The theory that masked guards are players of the Salesman's game who chose Red instead of Blue was Jossed, since a compilation of the Players playing ddakji shows that some of them chose Red. Not to mention the massive amount of training required to make highly competent guards. But yes, it's plausible they're similarly recruited among the desperate and jaded, if through a different procedure.
• In Episode 3, Jun-ho (disguised as guard #29) is told by a square guard that his assignment was to carry eliminated contestants out and that therefore he wasn't where he was supposed to be. But what if his assignment had been to shoot and kill the eliminated contestants instead? He would've had a serious dilemma as he could either refuse to shoot the eliminated contestants and blow his cover or he could shoot the contestants and be guilty of murdering an innocent person, a situation which would've put him deeply and inescapably between a rock and a hard place.
  • Heck, he was Forced to Watch a bunch of innocent people being killed for several days onward, with some of the guards nearby doing it nonchalantly. One could only imagine the guilt that his detective instinct would be to save them while knowing it would be very stupid.
• Related to this, Jun-ho is obviously fearing the worst during his investigation. You realize that he's scared his big brother was coerced into joining the games this year and either is in a coffin, burned to ash, or dissected for his organs. As a result, when he recognizes Gi-hun, he feels unable to help him owing to the fact that the guards are watched liked hawks, with the cameras and their superiors. The Irony is they could have helped each other — Gi-hun to help Jun-ho find out what happened to his brother, Jun-ho to help Gi-hun survive the games — but if they had been caught it would have been instant death for both, considering what happened with Byeong-gi.
• Of all the players who had reasons to return, Ali technically didn't have to do that, since what happened at the workplace was a genuine accident. It's not explicitly stated if he's The Illegal who was paid under the table or someone whose work visa didn't offer wage protection. He got the money his family needed and was able to send his wife and son back to Pakistan, reassuring her that he would join them once he finished a job. With the inevitable arrest warrant, however, it's highly possible that he thought competing for the money would keep him off the grid until the cops stopped searching for him, and that if he aimed to survive rather than win (with a team of people he could trust) he could fly back home with anything he did receive and reunite with his family. And he would never achieve that Humble Goal. Some viewers may have been screaming for him to fly to Pakistan and save himself because South Korea doesn't have extradition treaties with Pakistan.
• From the language that the VIPs toss around, they're used to fondling the masked caterers and demanding their way with them, which is implied to be both sexual assault and rape given that VIP No. 4 wants a blowjob from who he thinks is a pretty boy caterer. If they don't comply, they die, but if they take off their masks, the Front Man will shoot them. Their only hope is to get the VIPs to a private room, do the deed, and pray it was good enough. Jun-ho's fear is real as VIP No. 4 has an iron grip on him and demands him to remove his mask, in a room with the same man that ostensibly orchestrated his brother's 2015 game and victory.

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