Squid Game made history as the first foreign-language drama to take home top honors at Emmy Awards in 2022, but what happened behind the scenes of the dystopian series?

SPYSCAPE delves into the secrets of the life-and-death drama.

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Squid Games' terrifying glass steps

"Filming Glass Stepping Stones was actually terrifying," said Jung Ho-yeon, the actress who plays North Korean defector Kang Sae-byeok. “The set was about one meter (3 feet) above the ground. We put real tempered glass there and ran around on it." In fact, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk deliberately created a set that would instill fear in the actors. "The glass made them nervous,” he said. “It felt like really jumping off a high bridge. The game was real and they felt real fear. Their bodies showed that fear."

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Squid Games' creepy doll

Young-hee, the psycho robot doll, is a character who illustrated 1970’s children’s books in Korea, making her appearance even more distressing for some filmgoers. The series’ 10-foot doll was borrowed from the Jincheon County museum north of Seoul and returned with one hand missing (and no explanation), making her even creepier. A chilling Younghee replica doll has been erected at a shopping mall in Manila in the Philippines. Her eyes flash red if visitors jaywalk to enter the mall.
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Raw greed

The combination of innocent children’s games juxtaposed with the desperation of players was used to ramp up the emotional stakes for the audience. “I definitely think part of the appeal is the Korean children’s games. That can be very original, refreshing, and also shocking at the same time,” said Wi Ha-joon, who plays police officer Hwang Jun-ho. “I also feel we did a good job expressing the true human nature of raw greed.” 

Squid Game: Winning at all costs

Writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk liked the look of actor Hae-soo Park: "His face has an interesting charm that comes from falling neither on the side of good nor evil." Park said he was drawn to the emotional transformation his character underwent from entitled banker to a win-at-all-costs competitor. Oddly, Park didn’t feel any difference between his character and himself while working on Squid Game: “The choices grew easier as it felt I wasn’t acting, so it felt strange.”

Mystery setting

Much of Squid Game is set in a villainous lair dug into an island, with its location a mystery to the game’s participants. But where is the setting really? Conde Nast Traveller pinpointed the island of Seongapdo, a crab-claw-shaped volcanic outcrop off the west coast of Korea inhabited only by a few fishermen. It has no electricity and is so anonymous it does not appear under its own name on Google Maps, fueling the mystery and fans’ determination to find it.

Gangsters & games

Actor Heo Sung-tae, who plays gangster Deok-su, promised his wife several years ago that he wouldn’t do romantic scenes even if he was paid $1bn won ($850,000): “I promised my wife that I would never shoot a bed scene,” he said at the time. Sung-tae’s Squid Game performance has left fans wondering if he broke his word, or cashed in with an even bigger pay day.

Squid Game sets

While Squid Game sets are often candy-colored pastel stairwells and nostalgic schoolyards, the dorm is intentionally bleak. The series creator, Hwang, didn’t want the contestants to be treated like people, preferring to present them as objects piled on warehouse shelves. "Since modern society is [a] constant competition to climb the ladder, we thought about portraying that in the bed design," art director Chae Kyoung-Sun told Netflix Korea. 

Was the writing on the wall? 

Squid Game’s ‘doctor’ Byeong-gi (played by Yoo Sung-Joo) goes to gruesome lengths to obtain intelligence on upcoming games, yet it seems the writing was on the wall the entire time. The dorm walls reveal pictograms of the game secrets as beds are disassembled, so all of the diabolic deliberations and tactical decisions about teammates could have been avoided if the players had just focused on something besides themselves… 

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Squid Game's Emmy-winning actor

Actor Lee Jung-jae is anything but a debt-ridden criminal. He’s a former model and superstar actor dating an heiress. Even director Hwang Dong-hyuk was in awe of the celebrity and worried about asking Jung-jae to endlessly lick a honeycomb ‘dalgona’ while filming on a hot, sticky day. Jung-jae was game, however: “It was perfect for showing how desperate Gi-hun was, so I did my best.”

Ddakii paper tiles

The Ddakji paper tiles The Salesman (Gong Yoo) uses to lure Squid Game players seduces Seong Gi-hun into joining the game, but it doesn’t seem to matter whether Gi-hun chose the red or blue tile. Ddakji is linked to urban legends in Korea and Japan. As the story goes, a ghost appears in the bathroom and asks people to choose from red and blue toilet paper. No matter which color they chose, however, the spirit ends up killing them.