Squid Game/Tear Jerker

WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware. Tear Jerkers in Squid Game include:

General

The fact that the competition exists, and keen viewers can see that they've dated all the way back to 1988. A group of the wealthiest men in the world bets on the poorest people in South Korea, those who are so desperate that they can willingly return to the games even after a group vote to end them. The Host reveals to Gi-hun that it's a test, to see if humanity can truly keep its fundamental goodness in desperate times. Only Gi-hun and his crew seemed to break the cycle.
Mi-nyeo is mainly a comic relief character, but her arc is tragic. She's introduced as a Drama Queen and a compulsive liar that smuggles in cigarettes, while allying with the strongest side. Yet, in each challenge, she pulls her weight, sometimes literally, and figures out ways to survive. It's hinted that her constantly switching sides and being a jerk to those not useful to her is a coping mechanism for how she survived with her debt. Mi-nyeo finds out that game four is in pairs, and no one wants to partner with her because of how disloyal she is. She's in tears and screaming as the guards drag her away, fully expecting to be executed. Yet the guards give her a Cruel Mercy; they dub her the "Weakest Link" and then escort her back to the barracks, where she can sleep the day away. Mi-nyeo is left with the realization that no one will love her or want her with how she's been acting, and it's all her fault.
Sang-woo as a character, being a Fallen Hero. The prologue shows that he used to be a nice kid, playing Squid Game with his friends, including Gi-hun. He was a prodigy, the golden boy of the neighborhood who graduated top of his class at business school and got a cushy job. Then thanks to a lot of embezzlement and bad stock decisions, he ends up mired in debt and investigated for white-collar crime. Sang-woo also put up his mother's restaurant for collateral, meaning that if he is arrested, she will end up homeless. We see his ruthless pragmatism come out more and more the different games progress, where he starts his darkness by betraying Ali rather than either accepting the loss or calculating if there is a loophole in the Marbles game. Gi-hun remains painfully oblivious that his best friend is not the same sweet boy he remembers until he witnesses Sang-woo pushing the glassmaker that was helping them navigate the last few panels.
Il-nam is another Tragic Villain. He is a monster and fully admits that he is one on his deathbed to Gi-hun while pointing out that everyone participated willingly. Yet, from what we know, he didn't lie about anything, merely hid details of the truth. So the timeline is this: he had a wife and a son, and they were so close that his wife would make their lunches, and he would play with his son in the streets. Either before or during, Il-nam became a loan shark, and started earning lots of money by ruining others' lives. This may have pushed away his family, as they are nowhere in sight in the present. Alone at the top, wealthy and bored, Il-nam created the games. Even this bit of entertainment didn't last when doctors found he had a terminal brain tumor. So Il-nam enters the games, and explains his motive was to relive his childhood for a little bit longer, and have some fun rather than spend his days receiving endless medical treatment.

Season One

Red Light, Green Light

Gi-hun at first doesn't come off as the nicest guy. He steals from his mother to bet on horses, albeit while promising to use the winnings to spoil his daughter rotten on her birthday. Then Gi-hun gets pickpocketed, the loan sharks make him sign a blood contract. and he's reduced to playing arcade games to win her a present and treating Ga-yeong to street food. You feel bad for him as Ga-yeong hides her dismay about receiving a gun-shaped cigarette lighter, saying that maybe her dad should keep it, but shouldn't use it.
Ga-yeong has a sad look on her face when Gi-hun says that he'll get her a real gift next year. He finds out later that his ex and her family are moving to the States within a few months, so he's unlikely to keep that promise. Gi-hun's mother urges him to find some work and prove that he can fight for custody of her. That's how he ends up calling the number on the business card...
Sang-woo's mother said that her son and Gi-hun's childhood friend was on a business trip. Gi-hun is shocked to find Sang-woo in the barracks, and clearly identified by the guards when he demands to know what the hell is going on and why were they kidnapped.
Player 250 and 324's deaths. They had just met that day and were ribbing each other, with both having fun at the photo booth and betting a million won to cross the finish line first. Then 324 can't stop in time during Red Light, Green Light, and we hear a gunshot. 250 cannot believe what he heard despite his Oh Crap look, and moves to check on 324 when he gets the green light. He panics when seeing 324 coughing up blood, trying to run for the exit.
The way that all the panicking people are mowed down by turret gunfire. They scream and bang at the doors, some not even making it that far. Their photos blink out in rapid succession on the giant screen. Gi-hun can only watch in horror, avoiding gunfire because he's too scared to move after a panicking player knocked him to the ground.
Sang-woo whispers advice for Gi-hun to get moving before the timer runs out, and hide behind bigger players. This motivates Gi-hun to break out of his Deer in the Headlights mode, and start moving. Soon Sang-woo has made it to the finish line, and he sees Gi-hun is inches away. When it seems that Gi-hun is going to trip over a dead body, Sang-woo watches with anguished helplessness. Thank you for saving Gi-hun, Ali!
Ali and Gi-hun make it, along with a few other players, before the timer runs out, but not everyone does. One man who had to freeze looks at the doll with a This Is Gonna Suck look. The gunfire resumes, and those left on the field are shot dead.

Hell

The survivors are in the barracks, huddled in groups. When the guards come and congratulate them for passing round one, Mi-nyeo gets on her knees and begs for her life, saying that she will pay her death and has learned her lesson. Several women follow suit, and the whole crowd minus a few people including Gi-hun and Ali start begging.
The sad look on Sang-woo's face as he looks at his mother discreetly, from a distance. Shortly after he leaves and lies on the phone that he's on a business trip, cops come by and tell her they have an arrest warrant for her son. She can't believe it, and insists there must be a mistake.
Gi-hun's mother ended up in the hospital because her diabetes got worse while Gi-hun was playing the first game. The doctors want to operate on her, but she checks herself out and goes back to work. Gi-hun asks her to go back, asking what happened to her health insurance policy. She reminds him, rather snappily, that he cancelled her health insurance and emptied her bank account to bet on horses. Her job is the only thing keeping their apartment, and she intends to provide that for as long as she can work. All Gi-hun can do is cry Tears of Remorse as it sinks in that his mother will die and it's his fault.
After Sang-woo and Gi-hun meet for morning coffee and cigarettes, Sang-woo explains his financial problems. He invested money that didn't belong to him in stocks and futures. Gi-hun is confused and asked if his best friend gambled his future away. While Sang-woo doesn't bother to clarify -- futures refer to investing in commodities, with the belief their values will go up-- his face indicates that's a pretty apt summary of the situation.
Sae-byeok visits her brother after the disastrous trip with the broker, trying to treat him to ice cream. He's mad at her because the other kids in the orphanage say that she's left him, and she won't ever get their mother across the border. She hugs him tightly, promising they'll be a family again.
The old man encounters Gi-hun drinking as he ponders how to save his mother. Turns out he has a big bag of ready-to-eat noodles, and shares it with Gi-hun who offers the alcohol. Gi-hun asks with worry if the old man should be drinking with his tumor. The old man replies it doesn't matter at this point, and talks about how he felt alive during the game.
Ali's last conversation with his wife. He gives her the money he took from his boss, and orders her to take their baby to Pakistan, but leave him behind. She knows something must have happened given the blood on the dollar bills, but Ali tells her No Time to Explain. He has one "last" job.
The ending soundtrack for the episode, that has a melancholic determination to it. Cars come to pick up, knock out, and prepare our cast for the games. From the extremely nice Ali, to the murderous Deok-su and those in-between them, they're all in the same boat: desperate for money to either save themselves or their loved ones. Gi-hun surrenders to the gas, feeling utterly useless. They have only one hope, that is Jun-ho following the truck that took Gi-hun, for the faintest hopes of finding his big brother In-ho.

The Man With The Umbrella

Jun-ho's face as he sees the convoy of trucks after following one to the docks. He decides to follow along, posing as a player before killing a guard and impersonating him. Consider this, however: he was trained to protect the innocent. Jun-ho knows the logical decision would be to take photos with his phone, text his boss, and start an investigation years into the making. Instead, he tells his boss he won't be in, and enters the unknown. Why? To find out what might have happened to In-ho.
Gi-hun frantically waking up the old man, worried the knockout gas killed him. He's relieved when the old man awakens.
Only 14 people refused to return for the games. Everyone else, including the main characters, returned. The old man and Gi-hun discuss this, that even the woman who claimed to have an unnamed baby came back for round two.
It's sad how a little mistake from breaking the dalgona leads to players begging for their lives before they're shot. One woman was so close but she got startled by gunfire.
The episode ends with one player killing a guard, and demanding the one he took hostage to remove his mask. When the guard does, he has a young face, with no emotion. Horrified he was pointing a gun at a youth who could be his son, the player shoots himself. Then the Front Man appears and shoots the unmasked guard for breaking the rules.

Stick To The Team

Four Is Death is very much in place. While the third game is yet to come, the Front Man plans a bonus round where limited food rations will cause a riot. The Guards, including an undercover Jun-ho, are ordered to stand by and do nothing until they receive a signal to stop the riot. Jun-ho visibly agonizes about this under the mask because his brother might be there in the barracks.
The death of the hungry man when he demands his ration back from Deok-su. When he's on the ground, Gi-hun demands that the guards do something. They do something...bring in a coffin and announce that he's been eliminated.
Who is the first casualty of the riot? A woman who tells the hungry man that Deok-su and his friends cut in front of her, and that's why there were people who got none. All she can do is lie in her bunk in terror before Deok-su makes her scream.
It's implied that Il-nam didn't know about this bonus round. He might have, given he gets on a bed high above the action and it's his words that end the riot, but several high beds topple down during the riot and he says the games are supposed to have an element of fun so it could have been him having dumb luck. Il-nam begs for the cameras for this to stop, saying that he's scared and that everyone is going to kill each other. The Front Man only then sends in the Guards to break up the massacre and count the dead.
- For there's of the night, Il-nam has a Thousand-Yard Stare as he looks at the corpses being collected, and the bloodstains splattered on people's clothes. Maybe, just maybe, he realized the implications of what he had created all those years ago when starting the games.
Jun-ho is horrified that he has to stand by and watch the contestants murder each other. As soon as he can, he checks up on Gi-hun while disguised, and asks if In-ho Hwang is there. Gi-hun responds, "We don't know each other's names."
Gi-hun's team gathers at their barracks. They're relieved the old man wasn't hurt, and Sang-woo says it was lucky none of them were injured, physically at least. Ali says that climbing that high is dangerous for a man Il-nam's age, and says they were worried he had gotten killed.
Gi-hun wakes up the next morning and learns that Il-nam didn't sleep the whole night. He asks why; the old man says he felt guilty about his helplessness during the riot, and felt keeping watch would make up for that.
There is something sad about Deok-su refusing to have Mi-nyeo on his team for the third game. Everyone knows that trusting him would be a bad idea after the riot, but Mi-nyeo thought that they had a connection. When she keeps begging, he tosses her to the ground.
Game three is tug-of-war. After the players form teams and choose ten members, they have to compete over a high platform, while handcuffed to the rope. The losing team is pulled off the platform, left to dangle, and falls when a guillotine slices the rope.
Deok-su's gang goes up against a team where a middle-aged bearded man is the leader, and there are several women. While they hold their ground at first, Deok-su delivers this Wham! Line: "Kill them!" His team proceeds to pull the others over the platform easily, and the leader is crying. Everyone on the ground goes Mass "Oh Crap"
- Know how bad this is? Even though Il-nam loves tug-of-war and says it was his favorite game as a kid, you can see him gasp in horror and close his eyes, waiting for the inevitable, before the guillotine slices the rope. That's right, even the Big Bad of the game is horrified by how ruthlessly Deok-su curbstomped his opponents and the design of the game.
Gi-hun's team has to go against an all-men group. They have three women, an old man, and at least one guy who's not athletic. When they enter the elevator, all of them have a look of resignation, that they're going to die. Then Il-nam speaks up; he says that it's not over yet. He knows how to play tug-of-war and can help them win.
Mi-nyeo's panicking during the opponents' second wind is not her usual brand of comedy. She's screaming for Gi-hun to do something before they're pulled to their deaths. When Sang-woo suggests his risky but effective plan -- walk three steps forward to throw off the other team's balance-- she splutters out, "I can't!" She sounds like a scared woman, not her usual Dirty Coward self.

A Fair World

Even though Sang-woo's move is risky, given Gi-hun dangles near the edge of the platform, it works. As Gi-hun's team pulls back and starts to win, the camera motion slows. Gi-hun stares into the faces of the men that he is killing, and his expression becomes more horrified.
- One of the opposing team members loses his shoe. He tries to pick it back up before being pulled away.
When the other team is pulled off their platform, their weight starts to drag down Gi-hun's team. There's a horrifying moment when you think everyone will die. Then the guillotine comes down. Gi-hun's team collapses, all with shaken expressions of what they were forced to do, sans the old man. Even Mi-nyeo has nothing comical to say at the moment.
More of a Cry for the Devil moment, but Gi-hun accurately points out that none of Deok-su's gang members are actually his friends, when Deok-su tries to intimidate him before the lights go out. Sure, he could stage a riot and take down the barricade that Gi-hun's group has mounted, but the gang will stab Deok-su in the back as soon as they get an opportunity. Deok-su actually lets it register that he's all alone and can trust no one.
While standing watch, different characters talk about their pasts:
- Gi-hun flashes back to the strike that cost him his friend's life, former relationship, and old job working in a car company. He talks with the old man about it, how hew as working hard to provide a better life for his family, and failed.
- Ali shares his ration of corn with Sang-woo. He mentions how he's here to support his family, a wife and baby son. Sang-woo says he's here for the same reason, to take care of his mother.
Byeong-gi's breakdown while doing more organ donations. It's implied that doing these donations is violating his Hippocratic Oath and he was shaken when a "zombie" woke on the operating table after he removed their eyes. The sleep deprivation and constant hunger don't help either. When the guards admit they don't know the next game, he snaps at them, attacks one with a scalpel, and runs in a panic.
One guard doing the organ donation busts Jun-ho as a fake, because the real 29 would have remembered what happened to the "zombie". He makes Jun-ho unmask at knifepoint, only to go Oh Crap when Jun-ho reveals that he has a gun. Jun-ho then starts to angrily rant that his brother donated a kidney to save his life, mistakenly believing that the zombie might have been In-ho. He's only mollified when the guard tearfully says that the "zombie" was a woman, not a man, because they raped her, but still shoots the guard.
The Front Man's dedication to fairness is not an act; he calls out the guards for helping the players cheat, saying that these games are supposed to be a second chance for those that society does not favor. He also looks like he pities Byeong-gi after executing him.
How the episode ends; Jun-ho hides in the Front Man's office. He finds a room of records, as the guard he killed told him. Jun-ho's first response is to look for In-ho in the 2020 records. In-ho's name isn't there, and the games date back to 1988. Jun-ho looks around in despair; there's no way that he can look for that many records with the limited time he has. Then a coffin ribbon box catches his eye; he opens it, and finds it's a binder record of the winners. In-ho won in 2015. Jun-ho rummages through the 2015 records, and finds a page of his brother. He whispers In-ho's name in the English dub, and says "brother" in the original Korean. Cue credits.

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