Squid Game Director Confirms Battle Royale Connection

It seems like the entire world is currently enthralled with Squid Game and that means certain comparisons to other stories where people are forced to fight to the death for a prize. But don't dare compare the Netflix series to the Hunger Games. Director Hwang Dong-hyuk has just confirmed that the show actually has a connection to the equally brutal manga Battle Royale.

Squid Game is currently Netflix's biggest hit series as it intrigues people with its strange premise: some cash-strapped individuals join a mysterious survival game to win 45.6 billion Korean won. It's not a completely new idea and Hwang admitted to Variety that he actually got his inspiration from the manga based on Koushun Takami's 1999 novel.

"I freely admit that I've had great inspiration from Japanese comics and animation over the years," Hwang said. "When I started, I was in financial straits myself and spent much time in cafes reading comics including Battle Royale and Liar Game."

Hwang added that the games in both mangas were a little too complicated for him so he gave his own project its cool twist.

"I came to wonder how I'd feel if I took part in the games myself. But I found the games too complex, and for my own work focused instead on using kids' games," he said.

The Battle Royale connection should be a no-brainer. The manga (and the live-action movie adaptation) follows junior high school students who must fight each other to the death in a program run by a totalitarian Japanese government. In addition to that, Liar Game also makes sense since the manga is about a mysterious game where players try to steal money from each other.

Although Hwang didn't mention it, Squid Game has been repeatedly compared to one other manga. Fans have noted the similarities between Hwang's show and Alice in Borderland which got its own live-action series on Netflix last year.

The comparison was so great that Alice in Borderland trended on Twitter soon after Squid Game's release, causing confusion as fans thought there was an update on Alice Season 2.

Squid Game is currently streaming on Netflix.

Related: Alice In Borderland Season 2 Is Trending Because of Netflix's Squid Game