Squid Game Scenes That Were Left On The Cutting Room Floor

"Squid Game" has enraptured the world with its pitch-dark character dynamics and pulse-pounding action. But not everything conceived by series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk in his original drafts ended up onscreen. It turns out there are a number of scenes from Season 1 of "Squid Game" that didn't make it to the filming stage. There were even a few scenes that managed to make it before the lens, only to be cut for production-related reasons. The end result are hidden treasures for fans of the show to pluck up, some of which leave them with questions unanswered by Season 2.

There are small but interesting variety of scenes that ended up being omitted from the series. From a phone number that caused real-life problems to a preview of a major character which resulted in an emergency nip-tuck, there's a smattering of different twists to be found. Here are all of the scenes that didn't make it into "Squid Game" and why they've been left idling on the cutting room floor. 

One of the biggest bloopers to make it past editors during Season 1 of "Squid Game" was the inclusion of a phone number in Episode 1 that belonged to an actual South Korean businesswoman. While the number was supposed to be fake, adding an 010 mobile code — a common prefix for Korean mobile phones — resulted in a whole lot of misery for one person.

"This is a number that I've been using for more than 10 years, so I'm quite taken aback. There are more than 4,000 numbers that I've had to delete from my phone," the unfortunate but anonymous woman told South Korean newspaper Money Today (via The Guardian). She had no idea why she was the sudden victim of so many prank calls until her friend explained her number had been included on the show. In an even worse twist, she told Money Today that changing her phone number was an impossibility due to the fact that her long-held business contacts use it.

Netflix released a statement asking audience members to refrain from calling the woman, then clipped the number from the archived version of the episode, changing it to a six-digit number that was not in service. By then the damage had already been done. The woman allegedly rejected an offer of five million won from the streamer (an amount that Netflix did not confirm), while an even juicer payout offer came from South Korean presidential candidate Huh Kyung-young, who claimed he would pony up 100 million won for the rights to the number. There's no word on if she accepted.

The first time fans got a glimpse at Front Man Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun) was originally slated to play out in an entirely different way from how it aired during Season 1 of "Squid Game," but producers decided to hold that juicy bit of information back for the finale.

The only deleted scene officially released by Netflix thus far from Season 1 sees the Front Man, without his mask, carry a goldfish into an apartment. He deposits it into a bowl, then watches it swim. Meanwhile, an unnamed person watches him through a window. It reads like a commentary on the Squid Game itself, and its voyeuristic worship of human misery. 

There's never been an explanation as to why the scene wasn't a part of Season 1. But Hwang Dong-hyuk told Tudum that when he thinks about what ought to end up in his finished product, he considers his audience's credulity: "How would the audience take this? Would they think of it as nonsense? Wouldn't they find it ridiculous?" While the clip may not stretch anyone's suspension of disbelief, it definitely would have changed the impact of the heartbreaking Episode 8 scene where Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) learns that his own long-lost brother has been the Front Man all along.

That memorable moment where Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) decides against going on with his normal life and visiting his daughter at the end of the first season of "Squid Game" almost didn't happen, per Hwang Dong-hyuk. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, he explained that he almost went with a much happier ending of having his protagonist escape to the safer environs of California. But then he realized that the franchise — and all of the questions left unanswered by Season 1 — would be incomplete if he went with this much more permanent finale.

"We came to the conclusion that the question that we wanted to propose cannot be done if he left on the plane," explained Dong-hyuk. "The question that we want to answer — why has the world come to what it is now? — can only be answered or can only be proposed if Gi-hun turned back and walked towards the camera." Fans instead ended up with a cliffhanger — just as they did during Season 2.

There may be an even greater source for deleted scenes out there, but rabid "Squid Games" fans might never end up seeing it. The series began life as a movie treatment, which means there could be all sorts of scenes related to the series that are yet to be filmed.

"I wrote the script for it as a feature film in 2009 in the beginning, and that took about eight or nine months for me back then," explained Hwang Dong-hyuk to ScreenRant. He then turned the screenplay into nine hour-long episodes during 2019. The series sold soon afterward, becoming a huge hit in 2021.

Naturally, audiences don't know what scenes were chopped out of the movie treatment — if any — as it evolved into the much longer "Squid Game" series. It opens up a lot of possible "what ifs." The movie may have been different in tone or contained characters who will never see the light of day. With a show so heavy on foreshadowing — to the point of Season 1 looking completely different now after watching Season 2 — it's impossible to know. And, barring release of the movie treatment's script, viewers never will. It's worth noting that Hwang has also been working on a feature film called "K.O. Club," based on the Umberto Eco novel "Killing Old People Club."

One final scene was actually meant to be clipped out of the series but landed a spot in the show after all. When Seong Gi-hun accidentally knocks over fellow "Squid Game" participant Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon) during Episode 1 of Season 1, "Red Light, Green Light," Lee Jung-jae ad-libbed the moment in which he returns her coffee to her. Because Ho-yeon breaks up laughing during the take, it was meant to be removed from the series. But the show's braintrust thought it was far too telling of Seong Gi-hun's character to erase from the product.

"This scene was an outtake but we still kept it because it was too good to go to waste," Hwang Dong-hyuk explained to Mashable. "It's a small detail but it clearly shows the heroic side of the protagonist," agreed Jung-jae, speaking about the kindness of his tortured character. Time will tell what other small scenes and even smaller details make their way into the public sphere, with "Squid Game" Season 2 now streaming on Netflix.