The show also has also borrowed elements from a Japanese movie called Battle Royale where a group of ninth graders are taken to an island and pitted against each other and a British film (of which I was a producer) called The Tournament pits the world's top assassins against each other with the last one standing winning $10 million while a group of demented billionaires bet on the outcome. Perhaps it's fair to say that a plot device to bring out the worst in most humans is to pit them against one another in the highest stakes kind of game imaginable. Squid Game does it superlatively and is also a great example of how good Korean cinema is.