Squid Game — The symbolic meanings behind the colors, explored in depth 

In Squid Game, colors don’t just decorate the scene; they trap you inside it. Like invisible chains, every shade marks power, submission, and survival. From the teal and white tracksuits of the players to the magenta uniforms of the guards, and the golden masks of the VIPs, the show’s palette is more than just visual. It’s psychological warfare.

These colors reflect capitalism, manipulation, and greed, creating layers of control and desire. And Squid Game doesn’t stand alone. SUGA’s Haegeum MV mirrors these dynamics, showing how breaking free often means replicating the system. A former prey turns into a predator.

Add to that the tension between CMYK and RGB, representing old systems versus modern digital manipulation, and the colors become even more powerful.

Like Alice in Wonderland, the series lures its characters down a rabbit hole where rules make no sense, only to trap them in games of survival, echoing the brutal realities explored in Alice in Borderland. So what do these colors really mean? Let’s dive in depth.

Squid Game creator revealed that the coffin colors were inspired by BLACKPINK. Because why not take a symbol of glamour and fame and turn it into a death trap? The mix of black and pink is a perfect metaphor for the duality of the system: black screams death, sacrifice, and control, while pink tries to sell you innocence, beauty, and sensuality.

It’s the ultimate beauty-is-pain aesthetic, where the glamorous exterior hides a world of brutality and despair.

The mix of black and pink is also an intriguing blend of power and elegance, just like the group’s own aesthetic. Black represents mystery, sophistication, and the shadowy depths of the game, while pink brings in a touch of femininity, vitality, and glamour.

Together, these colors create a striking contrast that echoes the tension between beauty and brutality. Just like BLACKPINK, the combination of these colors evokes a sense of luxury and strength. However, Squid Game comes with an underlying darkness that’s hard to ignore.

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CMYK and RGB: Old systems versus modern control

In Squid Game, colors aren’t just decorations, they’re commands coded in ink and light. At the heart of this visual battlefield, a war rages between CMYK and RGB. While one is rooted in tradition, the other is rooted in modern manipulation. In this deadly game, however, neither offers escape.

CMYK, the system used for printing on paper, feels fixed, permanent, and outdated. This is perfect for a world built on rules, contracts, and unshakable hierarchies. Bureaucratic and bloodstain language. And these layers? They can’t be erased, only covered up.

Meanwhile, RGB thrives in light and screens, a symbol of fluidity and illusion. It's dynamic and controlled, projecting colors that change with a switch. Call it a digital-chained illusion of freedom.

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How do Squid Game's twisted dynamics affect this color scheme battle? Let's decode the palette:

Cyan (players): The teal and white tracksuits hide the players like prey in deep waters. Cyan is calm, yet calculated, symbolizing adaptation. It's not freedom, but survival through submission. The players wear hope-like armor, only to realize it’s painted on plastic.

Magenta (guards): A mix of red (violence) and pink (deception), magenta embodies power disguised as fragility. The guards look like predators, but their masks reveal fear. They’re just cogs in prettier packaging. Think wolves in Barbie’s clothing, enforcing the rules but never rewriting them.

Yellow (money): Bright and golden, yellow seduces with wealth and promises of freedom. However, this is more like cheese in a mousetrap. It glows, it tempts, and it poisons, pulling players deeper into corruption and betrayal. In this world, gold doesn’t glitter. It burns.

Black (Front Man): Black swallows light and identity (does a black hole ring a bell?). It serves also as a void of morality. It represents dominance, secrecy, and control, echoing shadows that watch without blinking. The Front Man doesn’t just hide in black; he becomes it, absorbing power and erasing his past.

These colors define roles while locking them in place. Like ink on paper, CMYK traps characters inside printed rules, leaving no room for editing or erasing.

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RGB: a digital illusion

But what about RGB, CMYK's modern counterpart, the system of screens and pixels? Unlike CMYK’s fixed layers, RGB feels lighter, faster, and more adaptable. It’s the illusion of movement, like images on a screen that disappear when the power’s cut.

Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black don’t just print their stories, they project them, trapping characters in broadcast signals while audiences watch like VIPs behind golden masks.

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The rabbit hole of illusions — Alices and Matrix

Like Alice in Wonderland, Squid Game forces its characters to choose colors. A real choice then? No, they are offered so only to discover the choices were illusions all along. The players’ world is painted in teal and magenta, but their journeys mimic Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole. And that Matrix connection? Red pill. Blue pill. Voting system. Does any of this ring a bell?

The red and blue potions in Alice in Wonderland become the colors of ddakji origami envelopes in Squid Game. These colors also echo the red and blue pills in The Matrix: symbols of choice and illusion that reveal truths or traps, depending on perspective.

The blue pill in The Matrix offers comfort through ignorance, much like the cyan uniforms that strip players of identity and agency, forcing them to blend into the system’s design. They survive by following orders, but survival doesn’t equal freedom.

The red pill promises truth and awakening, yet in Squid Game, magenta represents submission wrapped in power. The guards wear masks of dominance, but their roles are just layers of control, leaving them as pawns disguised as predators. This is a false rebellion against the system.

Like The Matrix, Squid Game doesn’t offer real freedom. What it offers is just new roles in a preprogrammed game, where colors define who serves and who pretends to rule. Both stories ask: Is knowledge power, or just another illusion?

In Alice in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts’ obsession with red mirrors the guards’ thirst for dominance, while the players echo Alice’s confusion, caught between rules that shift and break them.

Alice in Borderland, both inspired by Alice in Wonderland and inspiration for Squid Game, goes even further, turning cards into symbols of survival and rank. This is just like

Like Alice, the characters drink the color-coded potions, hoping for change but finding cycles. There are no exits, just new cages painted in different shades.

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Printed systems and shifting lights

In the end, the battle between CMYK and RGB mirrors the struggle between tradition and modernity. Whether printed in ink or pixels, the colors in Squid Game remind us that systems evolve, but oppression adapts. Just like the gold masks and cameras that trap players and viewers alike.

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Gold: luxury, power, and corruption in color scales

Gold shines like promises wrapped in chains. It represents power, riches, position, corruption, decay, and greed. Winners and kings wear it, yet its radiance conceals blood and sacrifice. Gold in Squid Game is a mirage that blinds players to the cage they're running toward.

From the VIPs’ masks to the golden-like cash prize, the show uses gold to expose how luxury masks brutality, turning suffering into entertainment and life into currency. Gold isn’t freedom. Golden is bait, drawing players deeper into a system designed to consume them whole.

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Gold as dominance and seduction

Gold has always been the color of kings, emperors, and gods, used to project divinity and authority. But its shine also reflects obsession and control. From Midas’ curse to the golden calf in the Bible, gold tempts and corrupts. It promises immortality, yet leaves its seekers hollow and enslaved by desire.

In Squid Game, the gold masks strip the VIPs of humanity, transforming them into predators disguised as gods, untouchable and all-seeing. They aren’t rulers, they’re spectators, feeding on violence and suffering while hiding behind wealth and anonymity.

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Gold as a cage

But gold doesn’t just symbolize power, it’s also a trap. The cash prize glows like light at the end of a tunnel, but it’s just another layer of chains. Players fight for it, and betray each other for it, but when they win, they’re still branded by the system, forever marked by the price they paid to survive.

This mirrors Alice in Borderland, where the king cards weaponize status, turning human life into a game of rank and survival. Gold becomes the currency of dominance, reducing people to pieces on a board, forced to compete for meaningless crowns.

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The science of gold — Illusion in color scales

Gold’s allure isn’t natural; it’s crafted and manipulated. Unlike true metals, digital gold is simulated light, making it a symbol of illusion. Gold is beautiful, but hollow.

This manipulation mirrors the VIPs’ gold masks, which reflect light but hide shadows. Illusions of grandeur that dissolve under scrutiny. The players chase this fabricated dream, only to discover it’s painted fool’s gold, leaving them trapped by their own desires.

Gold as sacrifice and betrayal

Gold’s brightness blinds, but it also burns. The golden glow in Squid Game is inseparable from violence and sacrifice. The blood spilled to make it shine. The VIPs’ masks become predatory trophies, signaling that power is bought with suffering.

This parallels SUGA’s Haegeum MV, where burning money rejects its false power, exposing it as empty and destructive. Like Squid Game, SUGA’s visuals question whether wealth frees us or just changes the chains we wear.

The golden masks also echo Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter, masking madness as elegance and cruelty as sophistication—turning life-and-death struggles into amusement for the elite.

Gold as decay — What’s left when the shine fades?

Beneath gold’s surface shine lies rot and emptiness. The VIPs wear gold to dazzle and dominate. However, their masks reveal soulless predators, feeding on fear and spectacle. Gold doesn’t set them free.Isolation traps them in cycles of avarice, where deterioration lurks beneath the surface of their polished maks.

Here, gold isn't a sign of triumph, just as the king cards in Alice in Borderland. It's a shining reminder that power always comes at a cost, often paid by those at the bottom of the system.

Unlike CMYK’s fixed layers, RGB exists in pixels and projections, reflecting movement and adaptability. But this illusion of freedom depends on the switch that powers it—once turned off, everything disappears, leaving only empty screens.

Each light-emitting pixel reflects manipulation, mimicking hope, and movement, but it’s flickering at the mercy of its source. Players, like pixels on display, are arranged for maximum impact, but they can’t escape the frame.

The glitch in the system — When reality cracks

RGB may feel modern, but it’s just camouflage for control, dressed in pixels and light. Like the illusion of transparency in glass, it fractures under pressure, revealing the system’s cracks, moments when the truth bleeds through the illusion.

The players’ desperation mirrors our own hunger for entertainment and catharsis, making us part of the system. The more we watch, the more we feed the machine.

Final reflections — Printed systems and shifting lights

Whether printed in ink or pixels, the colors in Squid Game remind us that systems evolve, but oppression adapts, just like the gold masks and cameras that trap players and viewers alike.

We aren’t just watching. We’re consuming. Like Alice staring through the looking glass, we see distorted reflections, mistaking spectacle for reality and participation for control. And, like Alice, we’re left wondering: Do we escape, or do we just find prettier prisons?