Even diehard Squid Game fans have to admit that, amidst the show's crazy twists and turns, there are some big-time plot holes and inconsistencies. From outright cheating to weird hair to contraband, here are some things we find baffling.
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00:00Even die-hard Squid Game fans have to admit that, amidst the show's crazy twists and turns,
00:05there are some big-time plot holes and inconsistencies.
00:08From outright cheating, to weird hair, to contraband, here are some things that we find
00:12baffling.
00:14In the Season 1 finale, Il-nam tells Gi-hun he played the game solely because he has a
00:18terminal illness and would prefer to die there rather than out in the real world.
00:23That's fair, but there's one problem.
00:31Il-nam could have easily died playing tug-of-war.
00:33What if his team didn't like his strategy?
00:35Or what if they simply weren't strong enough?
00:37The outcome of the game was a total crapshoot, and Il-nam's chances of falling to his death
00:41were at least 50-50.
00:43Why would he and the other people behind the games take that risk?
00:46Sure, the terminal illness was all too real, but that still doesn't really track, particularly
00:50because of the way Il-nam exits the game with his fake death after losing at marbles, not
00:54long after tug-of-war.
00:57The next game-up is marbles.
00:58Teams of two must team up and choose literally any game played with marbles, and based on
01:02all of the rest of Squid Game, you can probably guess what happens to the person who loses.
01:07Gi-hun partners with Il-nam when nobody else will.
01:09But this game of marbles comes with a particularly evil twist.
01:12A player who manages to take all ten marbles from their partner wins.
01:17The fact that the members of each team are playing against each other to the death is
01:20only disclosed after the friends team up.
01:22Throughout the game, Il-nam seems to be experiencing memory issues as he's suffering from some
01:26sort of ailment.
01:27Sir, he's not in his right mind, sir.
01:29I think he's got dementia.
01:31Ultimately, Gi-hun is forced to take advantage of Il-nam's confusion to win the game.
01:35Though Il-nam obviously isn't killed by the guards, he's shot offscreen and reappears
01:39to tell Gi-hun the truth in the season finale.
01:42His choice to let Gi-hun beat him is seriously confusing.
01:45What a great way to go.
01:48Really.
01:49Did Il-nam basically rig the game in that moment to ensure Gi-hun would win?
01:53Why?
01:54Was he just tired?
01:55Unclear!
01:56There's another surprise reveal at the end of Season 1, and it concerns Jun-ho, who infiltrates
02:01some massive compound where the game takes place to try and find his brother, whom he
02:05thinks may have been killed in a previous iteration of the competition.
02:09After masquerading as one of the guards, Jun-ho makes a genuinely shocking discovery.
02:13The frontman is his brother, In-ho, and In-ho actually won the game at one point.
02:17In-ho tries to get Jun-ho, who's a detective, involved with the sinister operation.
02:22But when Jun-ho refuses, In-ho shoots him in the shoulder and sends him tumbling off
02:26a cliff.
02:27Early in Season 2, we learn that Jun-ho spends months in a coma as a result.
02:30You need to show some evidence, Jun-ho.
02:33There was the round stuck in your shoulder, but we couldn't trace the bullet.
02:37That's all you had.
02:38So why does In-ho do this?
02:39Why would a former winner choose to run the whole sadistic enterprise?
02:43Not only does this not make a whole lot of sense, aside from the fact that it's a huge
02:46twist, but it only gets weirder in Season 2, when In-ho does exactly what Il-nam did
02:51and joins the game as Player One.
02:53There's no reason given as to why any of this happens at any point, which makes it all feel
02:57absurd.
02:59The whole reason that Gi-hun gets involved in the game in the first place is because
03:01of his crippling gambling debts.
03:03In order to evade the loan sharks hunting him down and protect his estranged wife and
03:07daughter, Gi-hun accepts the dubious invitation to participate in the game, with the potential
03:12to win 45.6 billion won.
03:14And for those wondering, this amounts to around 30 million American dollars.
03:17As we know, Gi-hun wins the game, and escapes with his life and the prize money.
03:22But we also learn that he doesn't do much with the cash.
03:24The money you see here is the price of the lives of all the people that were lost.
03:30When Gi-hun gets home, he learns his mother passed away while he was gone, and sinks into
03:34a deep depression, unable or unwilling to spend his winnings.
03:38Here's the problem.
03:39Does he need to pay off the loan sharks who were hunting him in the series premiere?
03:42When he checks his post-win ATM balance, we clearly see he's barely made a dent in the
03:46money.
03:47So what gives?
03:48Are the loan sharks even still after him, or did that problem merely disappear?
03:52When we get our final glimpse of Gi-hun at the end of season one, he's at the airport
03:56in Seoul, ready to board a plane to Los Angeles, hoping to reunite with his daughter.
04:00And though he doesn't end up getting on that plane, the most surprising part of the scene
04:04might be his new look.
04:05I guess Gi-hun makes a U-turn, undertaking a new mission to stop the games.
04:09You can hide all you want, but I swear I'll find you.
04:14That's all well and good, but what is up with Gi-hun's hair?
04:17For absolutely no reason, he's sporting a violently red hairdo, which was clearly recently
04:22dyed since we don't see any roots.
04:24And by the time we see Gi-hun again in season two, as he begins to execute his plan, his
04:28hair is back to normal, so to speak.
04:30So, uh, why go red in the first place?
04:33Actually, there's an answer to this one.
04:35During a Luca Comics event, series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk explained that the color was
04:39inspired by Hanamichi Sakuragi, a character from his favorite anime, Slam Dunk.
04:44But there's even more to it.
04:45As he explained,
04:46"...that's a symbol of not being normal anymore.
04:48He's not an ordinary man.
04:49He's been through those cruel games and experiences.
04:52He's lost a lot of friends and people, so he's trying to get back to normal life, but
04:56he cannot.
04:57That red hair is like a symbol of his abnormality."
05:00As to why he changes it back?
05:01Still a plot hole.
05:03Aren't South Korean police worried about the fact that, on an apparently annual basis,
05:07over 400 people simply vanished from society?
05:10"...so you're saying that your kidnappers rounded up hundreds of people and had them
05:15play a game?"
05:16One would think that, after some time, that kind of thing would raise some eyebrows.
05:20But aside from Jun-ho, who has a personal reason to investigate the games, nobody seems
05:24to notice anything amiss.
05:26This feels incredibly fishy, and you can't explain it away by saying that people desperate
05:30enough to participate in such dangerous games are loners, or no-goodniks, or anything like
05:34that.
05:35There are almost 500 people involved in each game, and presumably, at least some of them
05:39have families or loved ones who notice they're missing.
05:42It seems like maybe the South Korean authorities should look into this max-exodus of fully-formed
05:46adults from society on a yearly basis.
05:49Aside from the fact that thousands of people have simply vanished from South Korea for
05:53three decades, there's also the fact that we don't know where the games take place.
05:57The scale of the structures is enormous.
05:59Based on aerial shots, the competition happens on an island somewhere.
06:02But why hasn't anyone passed by and gone,
06:04"'Hey, I wonder what that huge warehouse is and what's inside?'
06:07Not only that, but the island has to be near South Korea, since the majority of the players
06:11are South Korean.
06:12So when Jun-ho spends all of season two fruitlessly looking for it, the whole enterprise feels
06:16absolutely absurd.
06:17"'Where the hell are you, mystery island?'
06:20How is it possible that Jun-ho and his allies could search for an entire season and not
06:23even glimpse the island from afar?
06:25How did the wealthy people behind the games find this island and build a massive structure
06:29without anyone noticing, or, again, notifying authorities?
06:33It just doesn't make sense."
06:35In season two, Gi-hun re-enters the games, presumably to try and destroy them from the
06:39inside, and meets a whole new cast of characters, including a famous South Korean rapper who
06:44calls himself Thanos, played in an inspired bit of casting by real South Korean rapper
06:48Choi Sung-hyun, who also goes by the name T.O.P.
06:52Thanos is, to be quite blunt, very annoying.
06:54"'I'll destroy anybody who dares stand in the way of my greatness.'"
06:58Thanos is hiding a huge secret.
06:59His enormous cross necklace is actually a secret container full of pills.
07:03This is absurd.
07:04In that very same game, Gi-hun discovers that the tracking device implanted in a false tooth,
07:09which would have helped Jun-ho locate the island and compound, is gone.
07:12Stranding him without any help, the false tooth was undoubtedly removed during the period
07:16of time between being gassed in the van and waking up in the dorm.
07:19So how is it even remotely possible that the guards preparing the players, redressing them
07:23in their uniforms, taking their belongings, and so on, would miss a necklace hiding a
07:27bunch of drugs?
07:29Towards the end of Season 2, a desperate Gi-hun decides to rally his fellow players and stage
07:33an uprising.
07:34The powers-that-be who control the game, including the frontman, strategically shut off lights
07:38at random periods in the dorm.
07:40"...Once the lights go out, the ones who want to stay are gonna try and come for us."
07:45Gi-hun suggests that he and a small group of fighters hide during the chaos and ambush
07:49the guards when they come in to clean up the bodies.
07:51"...Do we… stand a chance?"
07:54"...If we can manage an ambush, yes."
07:57His plan works to a point, especially because In-ho is part of it, while obviously working
08:02against it in his role as frontman.
08:04Because of that, and maybe its foolhardiness, considering the forces aligned against him,
08:08Gi-hun's plan is doomed to fail, and he ends up captured as the season comes to a close.
08:12Here's the problem.
08:13Gi-hun floats this plan, his allies agree, and then it just… sort of happens.
08:17And while this makes sense from a narrative perspective, in that the season needs to move
08:21along in a timely fashion, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
08:24Presumably, this would've been a bit harder to pull off, but thanks to their demands of
08:27the plot, it all goes off without a hitch, at least at first.
08:30Jun-ho and Gi-hun
08:31Early in Season 2, Jun-ho and Gi-hun come face-to-face, and though the two men initially
08:35mistrust each other, to put it mildly, they end up joining forces to take down the games.
08:40During this meeting, however, Jun-ho doesn't disclose that his brother In-ho is the frontman.
08:44"...Player 456, is there a man named Hwang In-ho here?"
08:49Before Jun-ho could be trying to protect his brother, if he really wanted to destroy
08:52the games, he should probably share this fact with Gi-hun, and maybe show him a picture
08:56of the guy or something.
08:58That would've negated In-ho's participation in the games as Player 1 as soon as Gi-hun
09:02saw his face.
09:03"...All of the guards call him the frontman.
09:05You know what he looks like?
09:07No, he…"
09:09Though some people likely chalk this up to Jun-ho still caring about his brother, despite
09:13the fact that In-ho tried to murder him, it doesn't really pass the smell test.