History Trivia / SquidGame

* ActingForTwo: In the French dub, Creator/EmmanuelCurtil voices both Hwang In-ho and the salesman.

*** [[spoiler:For ''Honeycomb'', players will not know which shape they had gotten until they have split into the four groups, since a lot of people here presumably watched the show and would know what the games are.]]
*** Everyone who made it past the first round won $2,000 regardless of whether they won or not.

*** [[spoiler:''Tug-of-war'']] here is much safer, with a foam pit for the losing team to fall into.
*** Rather than letting players choose their partner for [[spoiler:''Marbles'']], their partners have already been selected for them, pairing each player with one that they have gotten closest to up to that point, a.k.a. their "best friends". Again, this is because the players would likely know they'd be playing against whoever they partnered up with

*** The order for players to move in ''Glass Stepping Stones'' is completely random (unless a Player [[BilingualBonus is able to read numbers in Korean]] or hazard a guess based on the complexity of the Hangul symbols), and {{trap door}}s are used instead of glass panels. Similarly to [[spoiler:''tug-of-war'']], there is a foam pit below the bridge.

** Then Netflix ended up creating Series/SquidGameTheChallenge themselves due to the popularity of the original show.

* TheWikiRule: Like always, it has [[https://squid-game.fandom.com/wiki/Squid_Game_Wiki its own wiki]], which is unfortunately not indexed on Website/{{Google}}.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: A more subdued example, but [[WordOfSaintPaul Geoffrey Giuliano]] (the actor VIP #4) tried to insist to the writers to let him and the other American actors edit the scripts for the [=VIPs=], as their delivery and lines were presented as awkward and hollow because they were clearly written by people whose first language was not English. His request was rejected, and what we got ([[NarmCharm for better or worse]]) was the result.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: A more subdued example, but [[WordOfSaintPaul Geoffrey Giuliano]] (VIP #4) tried to insist to the writers to let him and the other American actors edit the scripts for the VIP characters, as their delivery and lines were presented as awkward and hollow because they were clearly written by people whose first language was not English. His request was rejected, and what we got [[NarmCharm (for better or worse)]] was the result.

** The most likely reason for the change is that the Brazilian Portuguese word for "squid" is "lula", a homonym of Lula da Silva, a former president and on his way to another presidential candidacy as of the show airing. Brazilian politics is heavily divided between haters and lovers of Lula, neither of which would like the literal translation "Lula game" (the latter for his association with such gore and violence, the former for their dislike of Lula da Silva in general).

** Anupam Tripathi was offered a mat for the climactic leap in the first episode during rehearsals and filming, so that he wouldn't get injured. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9PxZ1wQk9I As mentioned in this video]], he refused it for a few takes, wanting the actual feel of what it was like to crash to the ground while literally running for your life.

* IronyAsHeIsCast: Deok-su and his team curb-stomp the opposing team during the first round of [[spoiler:tug-of-war]]. Deok-su's actor mentioned throwing up several times while filming that scene, since they were pulling against an actual machine.

* NoStuntDouble: The cast had to perform their own stunts for the most part. That's why for some of the elderly cast members, they were allowed to sit out for them, like with Player 453.

** When Gi-hun crashes into Sae-byeok while trying to flee the loan sharks, the moment of him still quickly trying to salvage and return her spilled coffee was ad-libbed by Lee Jung-jae. Even though this scene was an outtake, the director thought it was too good not to use because it showed that Gi-hun is still a good person at heart. In that same scene when Sae-byeok has her head down, her actress Jung Ho-yeon is actually [[{{Corpsing}} trying to hide her laughter]].

** During the [[spoiler:Tug-of-War]] game, one person on the team opposing Gi-Hun's team had their shoe fall off when the team fell down after Sang-Woo's improvisational trick (you can see the discarded shoe and the person's bare foot), and it was kept in to show that the opposing team had been completely thrown off by this, leading to their deaths.

** [[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/your-next-task-is "Your next task is..."]] is never said in the series at all, but it's widely circulated as a meme.

** While many variety/game shows have taken inspiration from the games to make their own challenges, ''WebVideo/MrBeast'' takes it to the fullest by [[https://youtu.be/0e3GPea1Tyg replicating the entire tournament unscripted in real life]], albeit with a few differences:

** The [[spoiler:tug-of-war scene]] was filming with the players having to pull against a machine. Their struggling and grunting was real.
** The fifth game's [[spoiler:glass bridge is stationed 1.5 meters (that's 5 feet) above ground and contained real tempered glass panels that would actually fall off when the actor steps on it. Even if the fall is much shorter than what's shown in the final product, the actors were still terrified crossing the bridge.]]

* NoStuntDouble: The cast had to perform their own stunts for the most part. That's why, for some of the elderly cast members, they were allowed to either sit out for them, like with Player 453.

* SavedFromDevelopmentHell: Creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk first pitched the script ten years prior to the show's release. His pitch had been rejected for being "too grotesque and too unrealistic", and he believes that classist issues coming more to the forefront as time went on is what eventually led to Netflix greenlighting the show. Prior to the show being picked up, Hwang had been a StarvingArtist and at one point had to sell his $675 laptop to make ends meet.
* SerendipityWritesThePlot: Player 453 is KilledOffscreen during the Glass Stepping Stones game because filming the scene required the actors to legitimately fall 1.5 meters onto a crash pad. As Player 453 was played by an older actress, she could not safely perform the stunt.

** For Jung Ho-yeon as Kang Sae-byeok. Prior to this series, she only worked as a model. Instantly after the show gained popularity, she got more than 10 million new Instagram followers overnight. She was also made a global ambassador for Louis Vuitton.
** Anupam Tripathi's (Ali Abdul's actor) Instagram account went from 10,000 to over 2.5 million followers in the days after the series' release.

** "Squid Game" is the name of ''one'' of the games, not the entire competition - but people still often refer to it as "the Squid Games", plural.

** Downplayed with Geoffrey Giuliano, the actor of VIP 4. While he was already known by older generations in his home country for his biographies of Music/TheBeatles and being the first actor of Ronald [=McDonald=] in UsefulNotes/McDonalds advertisements, his role in the series has led to numerous younger viewers to discover him for the first time.

** The English-speaking Michael Davis (his exact nationality is unknown) plays the Chinese VIP No. 6 (the stag-masked VIP).

* FakeNationality: South Korean Jung Ho-yeon plays the North Korean Kang Sae-byeok, and Indian Anupham Tripati plays the Pakistani Ali Abdul.

* RealLifeRelative: In the Mexican Spanish dub, Creator/ArturoMercado voices Il-nam, while his son, Creator/ArturoMercadoJr, voices the Salesman. Meanwhile, real-life siblings Alejandro and Fernando Orozco voice detective Hwang Jun-Ho and Ali Abdul, respectively.

* ImageSource:
** DeathlyUnmasking ("The Man with the Umbrella")
** DecidedByOneVote ("Hell")
** [[FlippingTheBird/LiveActionTV Flipping the Bird.Live-Action TV]] ("VIPS")

* IronyAsHeIsCast: Deuk-so curbstomps the opposing team during the [[spoiler:tug-of-war]]. His actor mentioned throwing up several times while filming that scene since they were pulling against an [[spoiler:actual tug-of-war machine]].

** The tug-of-war scene was filming with the players having to pull against a machine. Their struggling and grunting was real.

* IronyAsHeIsCast: Deuk-so curbstomps the opposing team during the tug-of-war. His actor mentioned throwing up several times while filming that scene since they were pulling against an actual tug-of-war machine.

* EnforcedMethodActing: The fifth game's [[spoiler:glass bridge is stationed 1.5 meters (that's 5 feet) above ground and contained real tempered glass panels that would actually fall off when the actor steps on it. Even if the fall is much shorter than what's shown in the final product, the actors were still terrified crossing the bridge.]]

** During the [[spoiler:Tug-of-War]] game, one person on the team opposing Gi-Hun's team broke their shoe when the team fell down (you can see the broken shoe and the person's bare foot), and it was kept in to show that the opposing team was completely broken at this point and had no chance to recover, leading to their deaths.