Squid Game/YMMV

These things about  are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.


 * Anvilicious: While the obvious anvil is that capitalism is bad, that an unregulated system that allows the rich to prey on the poor will lead to tragedy, it is a necessary lesson. Part of the reason that Gi-hun descended into a gambling addictions is that he lost his job as a car laborer due to downsizing, and when he joined a strike to save his job, riot police assaulted the employees with tear gas and killed his coworker friend in front of him. Gi-hun still has PTSD from this, as shown when he stands watch after the third game.
 * Crazy Awesome: The old man is the first to resume moving during Red Light, Green Light, smiling as he freezes. He inadvertently saves the surviving scared players by encouraging them to move towards the finish line before the timer runs out, including Sang-woo. Later, he admits to Gi-hun that nearly dying made him felt alive.
 * Paranoia Fuel:
 * If a man in a business suit approaches you in a train station and offers to play a game, run! The thought of someone knowing your financial history and using it to recruit you for a job is downright terrifying.
 * A family member is known for being unreliable and a drifter, later going missing for a few days. Alternatively, he or she told you about a new job opportunity. They come back with a shaken expression, unable to talk about what happened. Yeah, you may be looking at them funny for a while.
 * Visual Effects of Awesome: You want to know how dedicated the television crew was to bring this idea to life? Nearly all the sets and iconic pieces like the Red Light, Green Light, doll were real. They wanted to merge the idea of Willy Wonka and the Hunger Games, while showing that each game and compound area is designed with purpose. There was minimal CGI for important moments, albeit with shorter drops for stunts and wires attached to actors that had to be filmed falling. You can see snippets of the behind the scenes here.
 * The Woobie: Given the circumstances of the games, most of the players count as this. There are some exceptions like Deok-su, but a few highlights really tug at the heart:
 * Gi-hun starts out as a Jerkass Woobie. He's a gambling addict that steals from his elderly mother to bet on horses, while aware that he's a failure and a loser given his inability to provide his daughter a decent meal on her birthday. There is a reason that his mother is disappointed in him, and that his ex-wife forbids him near her new family. He also thinks he can convince the courts if he gets a good enough job that he can parent Ga-yeong, which is how the games recruit him. The Jerkass part goes away the longer he plays in the game, befriending the old man, Ali, and Sae-byeok. One moment of his Character Development is when he admits to Sae-byeok at night after the fifth game that he doesn't want custody of Ga-yeong anymore, knowing she's in better hands with his wife and her new husband. He wants is a second chance to be a good father to her and a dutiful son to his mother, to make up for his past misdeeds.
 * Sang-woo is also a Jerkass Woobie. At first, we feel bad for him when the Square Guard reveals his losses on the stock market, as well as his embezzlements; even Gi-hun thinks that was a bit beyond the pale to reveal these secrets if shocked that his childhood friend is in the same spot as he is. Sang-woo also still cares about his mother, as he checks on her discreetly while lying that he's on a business trip over the phone. He admits to Gi-hun that he would file for bankruptcy, but he used his mother's restaurant as collateral and if he is arrested, she'll be tossed onto the streets. During the first game, he warns Gi-hun to get moving and looks anguished when it seems that Gi-hun won't beat the timer or will fall in time to get killed. Yet Sang-woo is coldly pragmatic at certain parts in the games, while Gi-hun still sees him as the genius boy that played Squid Game with him as a kid to the extent of painful obliviousness..
 * Sae-byeok is a thief and a pickpocket, who votes to continue the games because she isn't attached to anyone there, and as far as she knows, everyone who plays by the rules has a chance of surviving. She and her little brother are North Korean refugees, with their father and grandmother died and her mother MIA; her little brother is in an orphanage so that he gets decent meals and a place to sleep, while Sae-byeok drifts on the streets and slices wallets for their cash. The reason why she stole from Gi-hun and Deok-su was to pay her broker enough to smuggle her mother out of North Korea, only to find out the smugglers ran off with the money. Logically, she knows she won't see her mother again given odds are likely that she got deported to North Korea, and has been sent to a labor camp. Emotionally, she tells her brother that they will reunite as a family, and she's going to buy a house where they can start a new life..
 * Ali is a straight-up Woobie. By far he is the nicest and most innocent of the players; given his lack of familiarity with Korean games, his rounds with the Salesman must not have been fun. He joined because he has a wife and a baby, and his employer has refused to pay him the wages that he needs to support a family. When he realizes the games are a deathmatch and does not even have a version of Red Light, Green Light as a point of reference, Ali's reaction when seeing a stranger fall is to grab him, and hold him still without moving a muscle. Later, he says that Gi-hun owes him nothing, he's glad the "sir" is alive. It's implied that he rejoins not for the money, but to stay off the grid after maiming his boss by accident and stealing his wages, ordering his wife to go to Pakistan with the baby but leave him behind..
 * Player 62's actor claims that the guy isn't nice, according to interviews. Regardless, a math teacher ended up recruited for the games, and a really smart guy to boot. He seems decent enough, genuinely warning Gi-hun to partner up for the fourth game because they have an odd number of players and the guards have been pretty trigger-happy..
 * Player 69 is a devoted husband to his wife 70, who was also recruited. It's never explained how they both ended up in the same place, only they were desperate enough to return. He does what he can to keep her alive, refusing to get on a team for game three unless she joins him. They survive that...