We’re back to talk more about everyone’s new favorite series; Squid Game.
It hardly needs an introduction at this point.
Not only is it the best performing show on Netflix, it’s actually one of the best performing
topics on our channel as well.
There’s just something about it that keeps it front and center on everyone’s mind.
If you’re like us over in the writer’s room you’ve seen it a few times, watched
a ton of video breakdowns, read some interviews, and watched it again.
It seems that the internet can’t get enough of the show.
But are there any parts that we don’t like seeing over and over?
We would argue, yes.
Hi, I’m ________ from WickedBinge, and today we will be ranking moments of Squid Game from
Gruesome to Most Gruesome.
RULES
Like any good game, we have to start with the rules.
A moment doesn’t have to be fatal to be gruesome enough for our list.
We’ll be ranking moments into three categories moving from injuries all the way up to prolonged
deaths.
We’ll be taking three main factors into consideration.
How painful the moment was for the character.
How hard it was for us, as the audience, to look at.
And how much of an impression it left afterwards.
That means that not all of our picks necessarily have to be gory.
Just gruesome.
With that said, prepare yourselves.
This is a list to make even
the VIPs cringe.
First off are the unpleasant injuries.
These are things that we don’t exactly want to see, but they’re easily survivable for
the characters who endure them.
Our least gruesome, but still unpleasant moment, is Recruitment (aka, the Ddakji Game.)
This is one of the more fun moments on our list to watch.
(Hence its low ranking.)
It’s framed as being exciting, and even a touch comedic.
The many, MANY slaps endured in the train station by Gi-Hun seem worth it at the end
when he finally wins and his whole face lights up.
He dances and cries in joy and we share in that exhilaration with him.
But did you see just how bruised his face was after?
Every time they show him that night you have to wonder how much it hurts to smile or speak.
He looks awful, and we’re not surprised.
The recruiter slaps hard.
Next up is Episode 3’s Needle to the Mask.
This is one of those moments that has you flinching right after it happens because it
takes your brain a minute to register what you’ve just seen.
When one of the unfortunate men with the umbrella shape in the Honeycomb challenge snaps, he
surprised us all by jamming his needle right into the mask of one of the staff members.
It isn’t until the staff member has stumbled back that we even realize what just happened.
This probably would have been a lot higher on the list had he not been wearing that mask.
It didn’t shield him from the needle to what we think was his general eye area, but
it did shield us from having to see it go in.
For that, we are truly grateful.
Following that is Coffee to the Face.
A lot of face injuries in this tier, huh?
In Episode 2 we see Sang-byeok throw a cup of steaming coffee into the face of the man
charging her for her mother’s rescue.
This isn’t even a part of the threat she’s making, it’s just how she gets his attention.
Luckily for him (and us) the coffee wasn’t McDonald’s hot -- that is to say it didn’t
cause any serious burns or disfigurement.
His face is just a little red for the rest of the scene.
But for anyone who has ever burned their tongue or the roof of their mouth with their favorite
morning beverage, this scene was more than enough to rekindle that pain.
And all over his whole face!
Our next entry is Episode 5’s Rope Burn.
Episode 4 left us on the massive Tug of War cliffhanger.
(Literally hanging, for one team.)
It was such a relief to see Gi-hun and his team pull through at the beginning of episode
5.
What wasn’t a relief was seeing his hands after the game.
You can see the deep rope burns on his palms from where he was hanging onto that rope for
dear life, and it is none too pleasant.
We don’t know if any of the other players got it this bad, but it makes the idea of
playing marbles less fun than it already was in the following episode.
Jumping ahead in the season, we move now to our next moment; Sang-Byeok and Sang-Woo get
cut.
We’ve mostly tried to go one injury at a time, but these two just felt like a pair.
In Episode 7 we watch the 3 finalists complete Glass Stepping Stones.
They all succeed in making it safely from one side to the other, but were unprepared
for the explosive end to the countdown.
When the bridge blows up behind them, Sang-byeok and Sang-woo both take cuts to the face.
Sang-woo’s facial cut is worse by far.
It leaves his cheek open and bloody going into the final round.
But Sang-byeok’s glass to the cheek is displayed in the more brutal-looking slow motion.
Not only do you see the glass grazing her, you see the small burst of blood as the camera
moves back to show how the other competitors are faring.
Now we move back to Deok-su’s Stitches.
It’s hard to feel sorry for Deok-su in this scene.
He’s gotten injured in a riot that he basically started.
When his leg is opened up, he really has only himself to blame.
That being said, we wouldn’t want to trade places with him, either.
While he might have done better than the many deceased players who are carried out in black
boxes, he is left to have the doctor in the family stitch him up.
Without proper sterilization or any kind of pain management, we doubt this felt too good.
And it wasn’t exactly fun to watch, either.
Speaking of things we didn’t like watching, our next moment is Blood Ink.
In the pilot episode, even before being recruited for the games, Gi-hun signs away his physical
rights.
He does this because he is several million won in debt and the loan sharks are none too
pleased with him, giving him just one more month to square it all away.
They need his signature and his fingerprint, but when he asks for ink they have him do
it with his own blood.
Although his nose was already bleeding, they got enough for him to use via a metal instrument
to the nostril.
We were not at all assured to hear the little speech about how easy it is for noses to bleed.
It still looked painful and unpleasant.
But… more bearable than our next entry.
Speaking of which, we are rounding out the tier with Knife to the Hand.
This was not a good tier for Gi-hun, was it?
In the finale of the show Gi-hun and Sang-woo face off in the titular Squid Game.
Of course, with only two players left, it turns out to be less of a game and more of
a fight to the death.
Gi-hun walks away the winner, but not before he takes another serious beating.
In a way, it brings the games (and our tier) full circle, since his recruitment also involved
him being hurt.
We think you’ll agree that this one was far more serious than just some hard slaps
to the face, however.
Although there were a lot of lacerations and bruises to choose from, the injury we felt
was most brutal was when he blocks one of Sang-woo’s attacks by putting his hand up,
only to have his palm pierced with the blade.
This is followed by a shot of his own blood dripping down with the rain onto his face
as he continues to struggle through the combat.
The second tier is where we’ll be putting quick deaths.
These, while often bloody, come and go in a flash.
Often the character doesn’t know what hit them, and we don’t have to look at it for
too long.
First up is when Deok-Su Murders a Friend.
Friend might not be the right word, considering Deok-su doesn’t have to think very hard
about murdering him.
But the two seem pretty chummy right up until his acquaintance reveals that he’s now working
with the casino owners who are after Deok-Su.
The murder is bloody and messy, but it seems to go pretty quick.
In fact, it happens so fast that we barely get to see what happens before the friend
is dead, they’re both out of the car, and Deok-su is goading the other thugs.
Our second entry into this tier is for anyone who watched the subs over the dubs; [Bones
Cracking]
So, this one is bad in both, we’re not going to lie.
It comes from episode 4, and we feel it’s the best representation of the deaths during
the riot scene.
With the flashing lights that were present during the fight, we are spared from seeing
much of the violence that goes on.
This is an episode that’s more about the aftermath than the actual killing.
Though there are many quick deaths that we see glimpses of in this scene, we have chosen
the neck breaking.
You don’t get to see it well, but you do get to hear it.
For those of us who did watch the subs, we were even treated to how they highlighted
the death with a casual [Bones Cracking] line.
Perfect.
From this we’d like to move into what we’d consider a majority of the section; Shootings.
Since Red Light, Green Light, Honeycomb, and Marbles victims all technically die by gunshot,
it’s no surprise that shootings make up most of the deaths on the show.
If we covered each of them, this video may actually run longer than the entire series.
Virtually any of those deaths would qualify for this category, but we’ve chosen a few
that stand out to us as the most memorable and the most gruesome.
Player 250’s Death
Player 250 is actually the first player killed in the games.
He doesn’t stop in time for the Red Light and is shot.
That was shocking, of course, but the gruesome part comes into play when his friend catches
up and tells him he can “stop playing.”
That’s when player 250 coughs up a mouthful of blood onto the playground, signifying the
seriousness of their situation.
Player 309’s Death
In a similar, but different note, we are following this up with player 309’s death.
He is shot during the game of Honeycomb.
Even though the death is quick, the shot of his body as it slumps back to the playground,
bleeding, is not.
Jun-ho’s Death
If you’ve seen our Squid Game Theories: Bullsh*t to Truth Bombs video, you know fans
have some ideas about whether or not this was actually a fatal shooting.
But, playing along for a moment, this was one of the stand out gun-related deaths on
the show.
Not only was it someone we had been rooting for, but it wasn’t a player or a staff member
in the games.
The fact that it happens outside of the game arena puts it in contrast to the others, and
makes it feel more real.
It’s also worth mentioning that it had a decent amount of blood as well.
It just wasn’t as gory as our final shooting consideration.
Player 362’s Death
This was probably one of the goriest shots of the entire show.
It features a closeup of the headshot that kills player 362 during the opening game of
Red Light Green Light.
We’ll never hear ‘Fly me to the Moon’ the same way again.
We will be rounding out the gun deaths, and the tier, with one particularly haunting moment
from the show; The Red Light Green Light Entrances
We’ve already spoken about the amount of deaths in the first game.
456 players go into Red Light Green Light and 255 of them are eliminated.
It’s one thing to know the numbers, which are explicitly laid out for the audience in
episode 2 before the money starts raining down.
It’s another thing entirely to see the carnage with your own eyes.
Though we already saw the shocking montage of deaths in the episode, it was still a grim
reminder of the loss of life when the camera pans out to the entrances.
Each of the doors leading to the arena is just stacked with mounds of bodies, people
who tried and failed to escape when they saw the challenge for what it truly was.
This one was as heartbreaking as it was gruesome, and it set the tone for upcoming episodes
spectacularly.
And at last we move into the hauntingly horrific.
These are the longer deaths, serious maimings, and concepts too disturbing to be placed anywhere
else.
First up is the Finger Press.
This was probably our most shocking from the list.
It came out of absolutely nowhere.
Which, to be fair, is how most accidents happen.
In Episode 2, we see Ali confront his boss.
What we didn’t see coming was the boss getting his hand stuck in a press that crushes his
fingers.
This is made even worse by the sudden switching of the camera angle to really capture that
explosion of blood that comes from between the two rollers.
This is the only spot in our third tier that is not confirmed to be fatal.
We know Ali survived a similar accident (at least, we know he lost fingers working in
the same factory, even if we don’t technically know how it happened.)
This implies that it’s not a fatal wound, but on the other hand, the boss loses a lot
of blood to this.
We know because we saw it up close and personal.
Following that is a more subtle, but impactful moment; Nail in the Coffin
This was a moment for anyone that had doubts about how dark the show was going to get.
After the absolute bloodbath of a pilot, episode 2 starts with showing us the crematorium filled
with black boxes and their festive pink ribbons.
One of the bodies isn’t dead, however.
We see the hand pushing up the lid of the coffin, grasping at the side in a feeble attempt
to escape.
There’s a bit of hope that is completely squashed when a member of the staff shoves
the hand back in and uses a nail gun to seal the coffin before it’s moved to the oven.
Not only was this a terrifying moment for us, but it was a death painful enough to make
the other Red Light Green Light casualties look lucky.
Thank goodness we just see the box, and not the man burning inside.
Following that is a moment of the already deceased; Crabs on a Corpse
When The Front Man is looking for the disturbance, some of his staff members start turning up
dead.
This includes one diver who is left on the shore of the facility, his face scratched
up and his body covered quite literally in creepy crawlies.
Not only did the wounds look deep and realistic, but there was something none too pleasant
about watching the crabs have free reign of the body like that.
It’s not the only moment to feature an already deceased character, however.
Next up is; Organ Harvesting.
This rivals the close up of the gunshot for goriest moment.
The fact that it’s an autopsy puts a clinical divider between us and the victim that makes
this scene more palatable than the headshot in some ways..
That is not to say it’s for the faint of heart.
This scene from episode 4 shows a close up of an eyeball that has been removed from the
corpse on the table, which is lying bloody and open as the backdrop for the shot.
We do have one more post-mortem entry to talk about; The Zombie
This is a unique entry on the list because we never even see the corpse that the characters
are talking about here.
The Zombie is a story that the staff is relaying while the doctor harvests body parts from
a contestant.
It involves another player whom they thought was dead but ended up sitting up at the table
with their eye dangling out.
We’re not going to relay the entire tale here (or the horrific information we learn
about what else the poor player was subjected to) but even without the visuals it’s enough
to have us squirming.
But for now, we will get back to the on-screen moments.
Up next is; Glass Stepping Stones.
One thing that we can say in favor of crossing this bridge as opposed to playing Tug of War
is that all of these deaths looked definitive.
Not all of the players died immediately from the impact of the Tug of War bridge, but we
have a tough time thinking any of them were alive in their coffins after this one.
We know that because there’s much more close up footage from the aftermath of these eliminations.
And still, they’re not what we would consider painless deaths.
The two moments that we feel best indicate the pain of all the bridge’s victims are
Player 96’s death, which shows the fall in excruciating detail, and player 21’s
body, which features a close-up of his exposed brain on the ground.
We think if the players had gotten the same angle of the bodies that we did, they might
have taken a bullet rather than risk jumping on the non-tempered glass.
Creeping up into the penultimate spot is Sang-woo’s Death.
This was not as outright bloody as many of the bodies that we’ve seen.
But it struck differently because we get to see the entire death, from the time he stabs
himself to the time he has finished bleeding out.
Watching pulse after pulse of his blood run off the knife and stain his shirt collar made
for a prolonged and unpleasant experience.
And if it hurt for us to watch, we can only imagine how much it hurt to experience.
But there was one worse.
Our most Gruesome Moment goes to Sang-Byeok Treating Her Glass Wound.
The way Sang-Byeok gets impaled with the giant shard of glass is probably the single most
painful moment of the show.
There was blood leading up to the big reveal, just as there was blood to mark when the wound
finally began to kill her.
While this wasn’t technically what did her in, we have no doubt that the wound was anything
but fatal.
Without treatment, she would have died that night either way.
Does that mean we forgive Sang-woo for killing her?
Absolutely not.
But he does have a point that she was suffering.
The moment when we see the glass was jaw-dropping, but the way that she braces herself against
the sink and drips blood all over the tiles below left us with a sickness in our stomachs.
It was hard to watch.
And she lived with that pain for hours as she slowly bled out into her tuxedo.
In comparison to the quick deaths suffered by the other players, this one was excruciating.
WRAP UP
And that's it, our list of Squid Game Moments ranked from Gruesome to Most Gruesome.
Which of these moments made you cringe the most?
Let us know in the comments down below.
While you’re there, don’t forget to like and subscribe, and as always, Stay Wicked.