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- White and Brown were the only two of the group who were specifically asked to apply. White and Brown are also the main instigators of conflict, meaning they were chosen and invited specifically to cause tension which would give the applicants a chance to prove themselves.
- Whenever characters refer back to the rules, it always features a flashback to the Invigilator listing them off rather than the characters just quoting it, even if the same thing is brought up multiple times. This ensures that the audience knows nothing is being misremembered or paraphrased, since Exact Words are heavily in play, and it would greatly detract from the viewer's experience if they were busy wondering about the characters remembering the rules wrong.
- The guard's gun is revealed to only shoot a drug designed by the company that heals injuries. This ensures that any major injuries sustained, such as Black getting stabbed with the pencil or anyone potentially getting hurt by an all-out fight, could be quickly fixed by the guard "shooting" the injured person - either after the exam period is over, or, if it's an emergency, in the middle of it. The ending reveals that the company is genuinely benevolent and trying to help people, so naturally they wouldn't want applicants to get seriously hurt or killed.
- As for why the guard didn't shoot White when he was convulsing: the applicants note that the effects of the virus take hours to set in, so if the exam period ended and he was still convulsing, the guard could just shoot White to prevent any long-term effects.
- It also comes with a fingerprint ID scanner, ensuring that if someone were to grab the gun and try to use it, they wouldn't discover that it doesn't have real bullets. White found a workaround through using the security guard, though.
- Deaf crying and being easily intimidated into ripping and eating his own paper is certainly due to him not being good with people, but also likely because at that point he could tell things were going to go badly and it was a way for him to get out of there. That on top of being sort of a Wounded Gazelle Gambit so he could quickly mess with the clock without being suspected.
- Everyone is disqualified for reasons that would make them unfit to decide who gets an immortality drug and who doesn't. Chinese Girl is too impulsive, Deaf cannot communicate well, Brunette is too much of a risk taker, Dark is too empathetic, Brown turns violent when pushed, Black cannot handle abrasive behavior calmly, and White is a selfish narcissistic sociopath.
- By contrast, the victor, Blonde, demonstrates many qualities that clearly make her well-suited for the position, some of which led to her victory:
- She is kind and compassionate. She gives Dark the bandaid from her heel after Brown cuts her thigh open. Unlike Brown, White, and even Black, she never derives pleasure from another candidate's misfortune. And she is the only one to speak up when White bullies Deaf.
- She is pragmatic. While she is compassionate, she has the sense and restraint to know when she shouldn't bother trying to help, and doesn't act rashly or put herself in harm's way when there's no point. For example, she doesn't intervene in Brown's interrogation of Dark, despite clearly not agreeing with it. While one could argue this makes her an Accomplice by Inaction, the truth is there isn't anything she can realistically do. Brown mentions having served in the armed forces, and then he handily immobilizes Black when he tries to intervene. Blonde would obviously have no hope of winning against him, and so would only get herself hurt for nothing. Equally wisely, she also doesn't intervene when other characters get into physical fights.
- She is observant. She is the one who notices the secondary lights. At the end of the exam she also manages to figure out what the question was.
- She is resourceful. She has the idea to use high heels to break the glass on the secondary lights. She has the idea to use her bobby pin to fish White's pill out of the grate. She manages to convince Black and Brown not to disqualify the unconscious White by pushing him out of the room, by appealing to their self-interest and citing the Exact Words of the rules, after appeals to their humanity don't work. At the end, she foils White's plan by yelling "lights out", plunging him into darkness, and then stepping halfway out of the room, hiding from him without technically leaving.
- She keeps her cards close to her chest, and doesn't draw unnecessary attention to herself. She is easily the quietest candidate apart from Deaf, not speaking without a clear purpose; and she doesn't act unless she has a workable plan. This means she avoids the rash decisions and unwise statements that get the other candidates hurt or eliminated. It also makes her appear non-threatening — to the point that White claims she doesn't belong there — which means that she isn't targeted by the other candidates. It is telling that by the time Dark is eliminated, Blonde is the only remaining candidate who is physically unscathed — and she remains unscathed to the end. When White is slipping into a coma, she is able to retrieve his pill and administer it to him without being stopped by Black or Brown, because she does it silently while they're both distracted, rather than advertising what she's doing. They don't notice until she's already done it. Contrast with Dark, who ends up interrogated by Brown because she is too open with her knowledge about the inner workings of BiOrg, and is thus suspected of being a plant; with White, who constantly antagonizes the other candidates and turns them against him; with Brunette, who is aggressive, frequently takes the initiative, and spells out how important this position is to her, causing White to view her as a threat and get her eliminated.
- Unlike nearly every other candidate, by the end of the movie we actually don't know anything about Blonde that didn't happen in that room: why she applied for this job, what career she had before that, what her specialties or areas of expertise are, or anything else about her history before stepping into that room. By contrast, while we know nothing of White's career we know he's infected, and we know he was head-hunted for this exam; we know Black is infected, that he's religious, and that he has some knowledge about the chemistry of photo development; we know Brown is a professional gambler and served in the armed forces, and that he was head-hunted like White; we know Brunette has an infected partner and wants this job because treatment is discounted to employees; we know Dark works in another department at BiOrg, can understand at least some French, that she's studied psychology, and that she cuts herself; and we know Deaf speaks French, has unspecified mental health issues, and is secretly the CEO of BiOrg. The only candidate we know less about than Blonde is Chinese Girl, who was disqualified less than a minute after the exam started.
- She keeps track of her paper and doesn't draw attention to it. Before they activate the sprinkler system halfway through the film, she protects it by placing it on a chair which she slides under a desk, and it doesn't move from that spot until she and the unresponsive Black are the last candidates in the room, in the final minutes of the film. None of the other candidates can say the same. Contrast with Brunette, who didn't keep track of her paper and ended up eliminated by White's bait and switch; and with Black, who exposed his paper to the sprinklers and risked spoiling his paper (though fortunately he didn't).
- She is the only candidate who keeps calm through the entire ordeal, never once losing her temper or her composure. The closest she comes to losing her cool is when she hides from White during the final confrontation — he has a gun and may very well shoot her at any moment, so understandably she looks pretty tense and is breathing pretty heavily, but that's as far as it goes.
- She is the only candidate who doesn't show any clear sign of dysfunction, anxiety, or desperation in her introductory scene. Chinese Girl puts a hand to her chest and takes several deep breaths, showing her nerves; Dark hides the cuts on her arms, foreshadowing her self-harm; Brunette tries to reassure herself that "you deserve this"; White takes a pill, foreshadowing his illness; Brown flips a coin, foreshadowing his gambling habit; Black cleans some blood from his shirt cuff, foreshadowing his illness, and reassures himself with a Biblical quote. By contrast, Blonde touches up her lipstick, pins her bun up with a bobby pin, and puts a protective bandaid on her heel — all with the utmost poise, without any hurry or anxiety, and almost seeming to have the trace of a self-assured smile on her lips.
- She doesn't want this job so badly that she'll do anything to get it. White and Brown both show that there's almost nothing they won't do to win; and they, along with Brunette, almost certainly would have accepted the job unquestioningly if they had won. But when Blonde wins the position, she tells the Invigilator that she has some questions before she can accept, given what transpired during the exam that they set up and allowed to happen. This means that when she takes the job, it's for the right reasons — because she thinks she's right for the position and she thinks it's right for her — and not because she wants it really badly.
