The meme. [[labelnote:Explanation]]The explanation behind the meme, if necessary.[[/labelnote]] Explanation Like this.
Further mutations and successor memes, if there are any.
The giant doll in the "Red Light, Green Light" episode has been subjected to numerous memes by the audience. Netflix Philippines even sent the doll to Manila as a promotional stunt.
Ali catching Gi-hun during "Red Light, Green Light" gets used often as a way to represent someone narrowly avoiding doing something stupid.
Mistaking the show for something related to PlayStation due to the prominent use of circle, square and triangle imagery. Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator of the series, even explicitly said they were inspired by the PlayStation logos, and did not use the "X" because he felt the symbol is too common in other consoles.
Jun-ho was playing Among Us while everybody else was playing Squid Game.Explanation Jun-ho sneaking around the island disguising himself as one of the guards and causing commotion on the island during the series is compared to an Impostor going around sabotaging and killing the Crewmates in Among Us. To top it off, he actually does kill a few of the real guards in the process of his investigation, making this analogy even more fitting.
"Would you survive Squid Game?"Explanation Some online quizzes related to Squid Game popped up to see if their partakers could emerge from the Squid Games alive if they ever get caught into one. Many of them had this question.
"We're all on Twitter, none of you are surviving Squid Game."Explanation Twitter users have developed an unfortunate reputation of being vitriolic towards each other implying that their survival rate would be lowered by their lack of cooperation
It is pretty common to see parodies of the second round's honeycomb carving game, with the shapes in the honeycomb replaced with something silly or extremely difficult to carve out successfully, and in Gi-hun's case, something that he couldn't resist licking the hell out of.
Related to the above, there is a real-life trending "challenge" to try and replicate the second round's game in Tik Tok and other platforms, usually by adding some kind of twist by having the player fail the challenge completely or them showing genuine skill in carving out the shape. While some other rounds of the game have also been replicated, the second is the most widespread due to how easy it is to replicate in real life.
A number of people had also took to cosplaying The Salesman and challenging their friends or random people to a game of ddakji in public.
Did you know that Sang-woo is a genius who studied at SNU Business School? Better mention it a few thousand times to make sure you know!Explanation Gi-hun is apparently very proud of his friend and will not stop bringing this fact up to random people. Fans have memed the heck out of it.
"Squid Game star reveals... [insert thing they didn't actually say here]." See this for examples.Explanation Squid Game is on track to being Netflix's most-watched show ever. Being the current hottest piece of media, of course people would start to promote their faves using the Squid Game cast members. Jung Ho-yeon is the most popular subject of this meme, with thousands of "Squid Game star Jung Ho-yeon says she likes X thing" fake news posts circulating and being created as we speak.
They're not dead, they're on Jeju Island enjoying mojitos!Explanation Fans who shipped Jin-yeong and Sae-byeok state this in response to both girls dying in the end as it related to Sae-byeok's dream to go there if she won the game.
Jun-ho's unlimited cellphone battery.Explanation Detective Jun-ho is carrying his mobile phone with him during his infiltration on the island, which he uses regularly to take notes and record videos to be used as proofs. The fact that his phone still doesn't run out of battery over the course of at least four days is pointed out many times by viewers in a tongue-in-cheek way.
The English dub.Explanation The show's English voiceovers are considered verynarmy and inferior to the original performances by many viewers due to lines of dialogue being written and enunciated unnaturally for Lip Lock reasons, as well as some characters having ridiculous voices, such as the salesman sounding like Connor from Detroit: Become Human, the broker from episode 2 sounding like someone poorly imitating Louis Armstrong and Jung Min-tae sounding like Kermit the frog. Plenty of people have expressed their reaction to it online by recreating a scene re-dubbed with exaggeratedly worse voice acting and lip syncing (for example, dubbing a character constantly moving their mouth with a long, constant moan, though it never actually gets that bad).
Oh Il-nam/Player 001 has become some sort of a Fountain of Memes, with several screencaps of him being used as meme templates. This includes but not limited to:
His joyful childish reaction when playing through "Red Light, Green Light".
The moment when he contemplates which button to press in the 'Stay/leave' voting scene in Episode 2.
Him sitting all alone in the corner prior to the beginning of Round 4 in Episode 6. This has commonly been combined with his joyful expression in the game of "Red Light, Green Light" to create a drake-esque meme format.
I can't believe I wasted tears for this man.Explanation A common fan reaction for Il-nam when it's later revealed that not only did he fake his death, but he's also the creator of the games.
Il-nam has been compared to John Kramer from the Saw movies in numerous memes, due to the similarity of both being elderlyBig Bads with brain tumors who are the creators of Deadly Games.
"Why are you here? I thought you were financially stable."Explanation Gi-hun says this to Sang-woo upon seeing him in the games, since Gi-hun believed that he was a successful businessman in the United States. The meme is often followed by a picture of a rather expensive hobby. Following a major crash in cryptocurrencies in May 2022, an especially common variant featured Sang-woo having been heavily invested in "Bored Ape" NFTs.
Your next task is X.Explanation X stands for any action or activity that sounds easy and mundane on paper but it's actually too difficult and frustrating to do in practice. Alternatively, it could be an incredibly easy action that benefits everybody a certain group of people, like a fanbase, never does. This is followed by a picture of a distressed looking Park Ju-un/player 369.
SQUID GAMES !!Explanation An ironic meme, similar to Amogus, that pokes fun at the show's oversaturated presence online.
right as the system is taking his photo for the games have been the subject of many, many edits.