Squid Game: The Challenge Has A Gross Moment Viewers Won't Be Able To Unsee

Fans who remember the 2021 South Korean drama "Squid Game" remember just how horrifying the Dalgona candy game is. The second major game in a competition stacked with impoverished people fighting to the death for a massive cash prize features Dalgona candy — popular in South Korea — with shapes carved into them that players had to neatly remove. If the shape remains intact, they live. If it doesn't? Well, you get it.

Players in Netflix's reality competition series "Squid Game: The Challenge" also attempt this feat, and one particular player, Spencer (No. 299), fails in the grossest way possible. Spencer doesn't start things off particularly well, to be honest. Other players identify him as weak, and in a confessional, he admits that he's very close with his mother, is afraid of most things, and even talks about wetting the bed. (It's a bit much.) When he has to choose a desired candy shape for his entire team, Spencer disappoints them all by ending up with the umbrella — the hardest shape to flawlessly carve by a long shot. Things get a lot worse when Spencer gets to carving, though, because he starts gagging and seems to visibly swallow his own vomit multiple times.

We told you it was gross. That's right — Spencer seems unable to stop himself from gagging as a reflexive reaction to the intense stress he's under, but he also pretty obviously chokes back some chunks in the process. Viewers with emetophobia (the fear of vomiting) may want to fast-forward through this episode.

So what happens to Spencer? Thanks to his poor leadership skills, obvious fear, and probably all that puke hanging out in his mouth, he breaks his candy and is eliminated from the game. The poor guy curls into the fetal position and simply waits for his fate ... specifically, for the squib indicating that he's been eliminated from the game and the "shot" to explode on his chest.

One has to wonder why a soul as clearly sensitive as Spencer would sign up for a reality show based on a series where if you break your Dalgona candy, you are executed on the spot. That part's a mystery. What isn't a mystery at this point is that this eliminated contestant went on a streaming show broadcast around the world and ended up freaking out viewers by swallowing back some impending barfs.

The first five episodes of "Squid Game: The Challenge" are available on Netflix now.

Let's be honest about one thing, though — and let poor Spencer off the hook just a little bit. The entire Dalgona candy game — both in the original "Squid Game" and in the Netflix reality show — is absolutely repulsive. In order to even start carving their shapes, whether they've got something simpler like a circle or a seemingly impossible shape like an umbrella, the players have to spend an inordinate amount of time licking the candy. Forget emetophobia — anyone with misophonia, meaning people with aversions to certain sounds like eating, will just hate this episode outright.

Back to Spencer for a moment. Besides the fact that he keeps choking back a little bit of barf out of sheer anxiety, he's also just flat-out drooling into the tin containing his candy (although he's actually not alone in that). Watching this challenge — in several close-ups, no less — was a pretty harrowing experience for even the most hardened of viewers. The point is that while everything that physically happens to Spencer is extremely hard to watch, the whole challenge is a stomach-churning exercise, for both the players on-screen and anybody (queasily) watching at home.