Gi-hun bets 'everything he has' that someone will stop to help the man, believing that at least someone will care enough to help. He asks Gi-hun to bet on the fate of a man who has passed out in the winter night below, saying that the man will die of cold because no one will stop to help him. Il-nam has also summoned Gi-hun for another small game. He entered this year's Game because he actually is dying of a brain tumor, and he wanted to experience it as a player before he died. Il-nam says that his obscene wealth meant that there was no excitement in his life, until he began betting on the players. In a long death-bed explanation, Il-nam tells Gi-hun that he and his uber-rich friends created the Game in the 80s, as a form of entertainment. It turns out that, not only did Il-nam survive the Game, he's actually one of its founders. He wallows in his grief all that time, until one day, he receives an invitation to a meeting at a high rise with his gganbu, a nickname said by the old man he had befriended in the Game, Oh Il-nam. For a year, Gi-hun lives as a beggar, after discovering that his elderly mother had died while he was in the Game. Sang-woo stabs himself in the neck instead, and Gi-hun, the last player alive, wins the prize money. Gi-hun ends up overpowering Sang-woo, but he offers his friend the chance to end the Game and forfeit the money rather than dying. The real-life Korean game is the most physical (and was show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk's favorite as a child), and both Gi-hun and Sang-woo receive knives beforehand, making the round a fight to the death. The final round of the Game is the show's titular Squid Game, played between childhood friends turned opponents Seong Gi-hun and Cho Sang-woo.

Over the course of the show, we're slowly fed details about how the Game works and when it started, with the finale revealing its origin story. The intense K-drama follows an action-packed Game a la Battle Royale or Alice in Borderland, where players carrying tons of debt volunteer to play deadly versions of kid's games for the chance to win 45.6 billion won (about $38 million).

Netflix's international mega-hit has taken the world by storm since it premiered on September 17, rising to top of the streamer's ratings in over 90 countries.

Happy game explained