All the Squid Game games are dark and twisted spins on a number of classic children’s pastimes, both Korean and international, and each one has a deeper layer of meaning than appears at first glance. The games with the titular Squid Game, which is explained in the show’s opening scene, but there are many other innocent-turned-deadly games that thin the crowd first.

Notably, Gi-hun survived all his first games in order to win a huge sum of cash. Squid Game season 2 brings back some of the same games, but it also introduces some new ones. Once again, Gi-hun ended the games with a round of the titular Squid Game, but with a unique twist that contributed to an impactful ending in season 3.

There’s a reason the Squid Game games became such a talking point. In Squid Game season 1, a big part of the terror conveyed to the audience is the dissonance between how the games look and feel and what they actually are. Like the bright pink and green colors of the show’s costumes, every Squid Game game is meant to be disturbingly joyful.

Ddakji

Season 1, Recruitment Round

Ddakji is the first of all the Squid Games games in order. Before Squid Game‘s gameshow begins, players are first tested by the organization’s recruiters, people who seek out those deeply in debt and prey on their desperation through the promise of reward for playing a simple game. In the show, the recruitment game Gi-hun plays is ddakji, also called ttakji.

The Squid Game game’s origins come from a traditional Korean game similar in many ways to the popular 1990s game known as Pogs. The goal of Ddakji is for each player to flip their opponent’s tile on the ground by striking it with their own tile, made of folded paper.

Ddakji is arguably the most unfair of all the Squid Game games, and that is seen when it returns in season 2. In many ways, this dynamic mirrors the capitalist corruption that Squid Game critiques. Indeed, at its very core, Squid Game is really about a society in which the poor have no real way to rise to an equal station as the rich, despite the illusion of fairness.

Red Light, Green Light

Season 1 & 2, Round 1

This Squid Game game’s origins come from a beloved playground game. Red Light, Green Light is known by many names, including Statues, Grandmother’s Footsteps, and, in Korea, “Mugunghwa kkochi pieotseumnida.” The Korean name is also the song sung by the creepy killer doll in Squid Game, which roughly translates to “The Mugunghwa flower has bloomed.”

Symbolically, Red Light, Green Light makes a lot of sense as the first of the Squid Games, as it shows the contestants in a truly traumatic fashion that if they step out of line even a little bit, they will die. It reinforces the theme of control that pervades the game, and it’s a sickeningly perfect game to whittle down the playing field.

Red Light, Green Light may also be the most memorable and influential of all the Squid Game games. It, of course, makes a return in the second season, though perhaps in not as shocking a fashion since the audience already knows what to expect.

Dalgona/Ppopgi

Season 1, Round 2

The second of the Squid Game games in order sees the contestants play in a competition involving ppopgi, also called dalgona. Squid Game‘s honeycomb toffee candy was once a popular Korean street food. Traditionally, if the person buying the dalgona managed to eat around the shape in the middle without breaking it, they would receive a second, free candy.

That’s the challenge given to the players in Squid Game, but the reward for successful eating is survival, and the punishment for failure is death. The terrifying delicacy and fragility of the game are well reflective of the Squid Game players’ state of mind at the time, after seeing so many being killed during Red Light, Green Light. Like the candy, they hang delicately in the balance.

Tug Of War

Season 1, Round 3

In round 3, the competition becomes team-based in Squid Games’ tug of war. This Squid Game game’s origins hold deep cultural significance in Korea, where variations of tug of war have been played in festivals and community celebrations for many years, especially in agricultural areas.

Called juldarigi in Korea, tug-of-war-type games are often played between the east and west sides of villages, with the winners supposedly earning a superior harvest that season. The winners of this Squid Game obviously earn a different sort of good fortune. Thematically, the tug-of-war round marks a turning point in Squid Game.

Tug-of-war makes the competition directly between the players, rather than between the players and the organization. That shift sets up the factionalism and backstabbing that pervade the later episodes of the show. Indeed, after each of the Squid Game games, the players’ very morals and internal emotions are in an increasingly unpredictable tug of war.

Marbles

Season 1, Round 4

Round 4 is Marbles, which different players choose to play in different ways. Contestants match up in pairs, like Gi-hun and the old man Oh Il-nam, and one must win all the other player’s marbles before the time given expires. The contestant without any marbles at the end of the game dies.

This Squid Game’s origins are some of the most ancient and longstanding in known history, dating back thousands of years to ancient civilizations like the Roman Empire. As shown in Squid Game episode 6, marbles can be played in a wide variety of different ways.

This Squid Game is primarily used as an opportunity to slow down the frantic pace of the action and give character relationships a chance to really develop in a high-pressure situation. It also forces the remaining players to take part in the violence of the games by effectively choosing for themselves which Squid Game contestants will die and which ones will live.

Marbles creates the most heartbreaking character deaths in Squid Game. Abdul Ali and Sang-woo pair up for this game, for example. When the players are told to pick partners, many of them choose someone they trust, and the game subverts their expectations.

Glass Stepping Stones

Season 1, Round 5

The only game of Squid Game season 1 that doesn’t explicitly have real-world origins is round 5, which sees the contestants making their way across a treacherous path of unpredictably safe and unsafe glass platforms. Still, this Squid Game is inspired by hopscotch and other similar hopping games, and its origins date back centuries to ancient India and Rome.

In the show, the game is used to represent how severely the competition is rigged against the players, as the Squid Game Front Man quickly turns out the lights when he sees one contestant who can tell the difference between tempered and untempered glass.

Unlike all the other Squid Game games, the glass tile game is notably different for being designed like a full-blown, high-budget game show. However, this has a similar purpose of inducing horror through familiar elements from childhood, as audiences and players alike watched game shows on TV growing up.

In addition, the spectacle of the penultimate death game serves as a tease to the final event. The particular level of gameplay also encourages something that happens between games — for the players to kill one another. While players might fall because of splintering glass, some players choose to fall from the platform, and some take others down with them.

Squid Game

Season 1, Final Round

The series gets its title from the final Squid Game game, in which Gi-hun and Sang-woo battle for the ultimate prize. The Squid Game’s origins are similar to tag, but with more complicated rules. There are two teams — the offense, which must ultimately reach a specified space at the end of the playing field, and the defense, whose job is to stop that from happening.

The game was very popular in Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, when many of the main Squid Game cast of characters would have been children. Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has said in interviews that he chose the Squid Game as the final challenge and the title of the series because of its inherent violence.

As Squid Game’s Front Man explained in the show, this best represented the aspects of modern society that he wanted to focus on. Indeed, this is the key difference that the final event has with the rest of the Squid Game games, none of which are as inherently physically confrontational as Squid Game itself.

Bread And Lottery

Season 2, Recruitment Round

Bread and Lottery makes its debut in the first episode of the second season. Much like Ddakji, it’s a game that serves to recruit new players for the Squid Games. While it does not have an exact real-world analog, it’s much like games of chance provided by wealthy benefactors to those in low-income areas.

The Salesman buys 100 lottery tickets and 100 pastries, offering them to seemingly random people on the street. Given the way the Squid Games are typically structured, it’s likely the Salesman either knows which neighborhoods or which people to target. Many of the people he offers the food or the lottery ticket to appear to be unhoused.

Here, the point made by the Salesman appears to be that people should accept the “sure thing” of the pastry instead of gambling on the potential of a lottery ticket win. When people choose a lottery ticket and scratch it in hopes of getting a prize, but win nothing, they step on the pastry they could have had instead right in front of them. It’s a relatively cruel form of recruitment.

Jokenpô

Season 2, Recruiter Challenge

The English translation of Jokenpô is Rock Paper Scissors. This is a game used all over the world, though it is known by many different names, and it has ancient origins. The first recorded mention of the game dates to the Han Dynasty in China, according to Chinese writer Xie Zhaaozhe. From China, the game made its way to Japan before spreading across the rest of the world.

Squid Game creates a deadly variation of the game in the season two premiere as the Salesman forces two people to play the game – with both hands – to determine which one of them will live. The game, however, is not part of the Squid Games themselves, but instead, is used to intimidate and kill the people who are following the Salesman.

Russian Roulette

Season 2, Recruiter Challenge

Image via Netflix

A big change for season 2 of Squid Game is that so many of the early games in the season are not inspired by children’s games. This game, in particular, is already deadly without Squid Game even needing to put its own spin on it.

Russian Roulette is traditionally played with a revolver. A single bullet is loaded into the chamber, which is then spun, and those playing take turns pulling the trigger – usually while pointing the gun at themselves. Gi-hun and the Salesman play the game, and it is the Salesman who ends up losing his life as Gi-hun is able to get back to the Squid Game.

There is no hidden meaning here as both the Salesman and Gi-hun play the game straight. The game largely shows that neither character puts much stock in their own lives.

There is some debate on the origins of the game. Its first written use is in Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov’s 1840 novel A Hero of Our Time. Rumor has it that the murderous game got its origins in Russian prisons, with guards forcing their prisoners to play the game.