Squid Game’s Hidden Commentary on Christianity

As raunchy as it is, Squid Game is a brilliant work of art infused with sociopolitical commentary, Christian symbolism, and commentary on Christianity.

Like much of the content Netflix produces, this show is pretty explicitly anti-Christian.

For example:

• The main character annoyingly dismisses the man in the subway because he thinks he’s a Christian evangelist.

• All the other players mock the one player who prays, telling him to shut up because prayer doesn’t do anything.

• One of the players tells a story about how her dad was a pastor who murdered his own wife.

At surface level, the show mostly seems to provide sociopolitical commentary on the rich and the poor, but I also see some Christian symbolism in the show as well as some commentary on Christianity.

Let me explain.

Sociopolitical commentary

Governments are incompetent

• At the police station, the cops are portrayed as goofballs. When the detective escapes the island and calls the police station, his boss doesn’t listen to him and just spouts incompetency. In the end, the frontman asks “when have the Korean police ever been quick to do anything?”

Money isn’t everything

• The main character saw lots of death and destruction throughout the course of the games and even caused much of it himself. By the time he won all the prize money, he felt too guilty and mortally responsible to even spend it.

• At the end, the old man says that having too much money is just as big of a problem as having too little. He says that his wealth sucked the joy and excitement right out of his own life as well as the lives of his wealthy clients.

• At the start of the games, the room was full of life and people. As people died, the room became noticeably emptier and emptier. It’s sad to see how empty the room gets as the show progresses. Even when the giant piggy bank is lowered to the floor, the main character grieves rather than celebrates. When the main character returns home with the prize money, he then finds his mom dead on the floor which further emphasizes his loneliness despite being rich. I think he would rather be poor with thriving relationships than rich and alone.

Is equality (socialism) really the answer?

• Everyone who joined the game lived in financial poverty. As crazy as the games were, their situations in real life were even worse. The episode titled “Hell” was the one where the players went back to their lives in the real world, and the old man said “Out here the torture is worse.” In real life they desperately wanted equality, yet when the game gave it to them in a sick and twisted way, they hated it.

How much is a human life worth?

• Whenever a player died, more money got added to the giant piggy bank in the air. The players were assigned numbers rather than names, because at the end of the day they were just worth more money in the prize bank.

• The main character’s motive for entering the game was to win money to pay his mother’s medical bills. Along the way, he saw hundreds of people die just so he could give his mother a shot at living. The lives of many were sacrificed so that one single person could benefit. What decides if someone is worth receiving expensive medical treatment or not? Unfortunately, someone’s wealth often seems to be the factor that decides if they will live or die.

Christian symbolism

The old man symbolizes God

• The old man is insanely rich yet he joins the game as one of the impoverished players (just like how Jesus left the riches of heaven to join humanity on earth, exposing himself to death).

• The old man purposely lost the game of marbles and accepted the penalty of death so that his partner could win. That’s what Jesus did for believers. Yet the old man ended up being alive in the end… just like how Jesus came back to life after dying.

• The main character meets the old man at 11pm on Christmas Eve which a Christian holiday celebrating Jesus’s birth. He finds the old man up on the 7th floor. That number is significant because in the Bible, the number 6 is thought of to represent man while the number 7 is thought of to represent God.

• The old man doesn’t share his name when everyone else on his team was sharing their names. Oftentimes after performing a miracle Jesus would tell the crowd to keep it a secret.

• Because the old man knows everything about the games he’s actually the most valuable asset, yet the rest of the players constantly dismiss him. This is similar to the way the Jesus was dismissed by many even though he was all-knowing.

The game symbolizes life on earth

• Everyone participating in the games had a lot of financial debt. The Bible often describes humanity as having a spiritual debt of sin that’s so large that we could never pay it off ourselves.

• The players who lose the game are “eliminated” and their bodies get cremated in the furnace. This parallels with the way that people receive death and burn in the fires of hell if they don’t receive salvation.

The prize money symbolizes salvation

• The game’s creators dangle the prize money over the players’ heads, getting them to jump through ridiculous hoops. I think many non-Christians look at heaven as something God dangles over our heads just to watch us jump through his ridiculous hoops for his own entertainment.

• At one point, one of the pink suits says “We’re not here to hurt you or collect your debt. We’re here to give you a chance. The players who got eliminated were simply eliminated for breaking the rules of the game. If you just follow the rules you can leave this place safely.”

Other small parallels

• In order for players to advance, other players had to die. Whenever one player died for another one, that remaining player seemed to live with a higher sense of purpose than before to honor the player who died on their behalf. As Christians we should live with that same sense of higher purpose knowing that Christ died on our behalf.

• During the marble game, the main character took advantage of the old man’s kindness just like how we sometimes take advantage of God’s kindness by continuing to live in sin.

• There are a couple times the show talks about going back to the “old way” of living in poverty and being chased by creditors versus embracing the “new way” of playing the game for a shot at riches. This reminds me of the way scripture talks about “taking off the old self” of sin and “putting on the new self” of living in the Spirit.

Christian commentary

Is human nature really sinful?

• The entire game seemed kind of like a social experiment designed by the old man to test humanity’s morality. Some morally detestable acts obviously took place within the game, but some morally admirable acts also took place. For example, the one player who hated God the most selflessly gave up her life by purposely dropping her marble and losing the game just so that her partner could advance. The writers of the show seem to be saying that you don’t need God in order to be a good person.

• In the final game, the main character wanted to give up the prize money and call it a draw so that his friend could live, but the friend selflessly took his own life so that the main character would receive the prize money and use it to help their mothers who desperately needed money. That’s another example of selfless sacrifice showing that humanity is capable of being morally good without God.

• Many of the characters face internal struggles between good and evil. At the end when the main character is about to kill his sleeping friend, the girl says “Don’t do it. That isn’t you. You’re a good person at heart.” That s prevents the main character from killing his friend. The writers of the show seem to be saying that humanity doesn’t need God to choose good over evil.

• On Christmas Eve the old man didn’t think that anyone would help the homeless drunk man in the streets below. This might represent the Christian belief that human nature is evil. Yet in the show, the incompetent cops come and help the homeless man. Even the cops (which were previously portrayed as incompetent) had some good within them. This good deed happened right at midnight as old man died, which might suggest that God doesn’t acknowledge the good deeds that humanity does.

Does God torture people for fun?

• On Christmas Eve the main character asks the old man “Why did you do this?” What was the point of torturing all those people? The old man’s answer basically said that he was bored and did it for entertainment. The writers of the show seem to be suggesting that God tortures people just for entertainment.

Is God unfair?

• At the end, the main character asks the old man “Why did I get to live and no one else?” This might represent the way some feel about salvation: why do some people get to win the prize money of heaven while others get sentenced to hell? The writers of the show might be suggesting that God is unfair.

• At the very end of the show as the main character is about to step onto the plane, he calls the game facility. He tells them “I’m a person. Not a horse. That’s why I can’t forgive you for everything that you’re doing.” I think this represents the way a lot of non-Christians might feel towards God. They see all the bad things that take place in this world and can’t forgive God for allowing them to happen.

Conclusion

In this article, I only exposed the commentary that the writers of Squid Game might be trying to communicate, but I didn’t offer any of my thoughts on the questions they pose. Each question is deep enough to be its own article, so I might have to address some of these questions in future articles and if I do that, I’ll be sure to link to them in this one.

What were your thoughts on Squid Games? I’d love hear about them in the comments!

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