
Deok-su grabs the pickpocket as Gi-hun slips and is caught
A grudge resurfaces mid-game, a trembling player is told he will die if caught, and Gi-hun pleads for help as someone holds him up.

Every Squid Game moment featuring Ali Abdul, in story order. Played by Anupam Tripathi.
26 moments · 38 min · by Favseen

A grudge resurfaces mid-game, a trembling player is told he will die if caught, and Gi-hun pleads for help as someone holds him up.

Sang-woo stops Ali outside the convenience store and hands him money for the ride to Ansan, asking only that he stop calling him sir.

Ali demands his unpaid pay, his boss refuses and swings at him, and the struggle ends with the boss's hand caught in the machine.

Ali hands his wife money, tells her to buy the earliest flight home with their baby, and promises to follow once his job is done.

Sang-woo and Ali rejoin Gi-hun, Ali thanks him for the bus fare, and the group recruits Il-nam as the old major of their training-camp team.

Over cold lunch boxes Gi-hun and Il-nam reminisce about briquette stoves, then rattle off every old kids' game Ali has never heard of.

Il-nam asks for chocolate milk and guesses Gi-hun was spanked as a boy; across the table Sang-woo hands Ali his meal and Gi-hun follows suit.

With no idea what the game is, Sang-woo argues the team should split across the shapes; Ali and Gi-hun vouch for the SNU prodigy.

Ali takes the circle he calls Dayira, Gi-hun picks the umbrella for a childhood memory, and Sang-woo stops short of saying what he wanted to.

Sang-woo admits Gi-hun got him through the honeycomb round, Ali and Il-nam rejoin, and the announcer tallies 79 dead and a 34.8 billion won pot.

The lights go out on a countdown and the dorm erupts in a brawl. Gi-hun and Sang-woo fight back to back, then realise Il-nam is missing.

Gi-hun faces down Deok-su to protect his teammate, then Il-nam climbs up and screams that everyone will die, and the masked soldiers finally intervene.

Gi-hun, Ali, Sang-woo and Sae-byeok introduce themselves properly; when the old man is asked, he stalls and Gi-hun covers for him.

The third game is announced as a team game and Gi-hun's group debates which playground game it could be and who to recruit in ten minutes.

Sae-byeok brings a girl instead of a man, the count stops at nine, and the rejected Mi-nyeo invites herself in as the tenth with a boast.

Facing an all-male team, the old man lays out his childhood method: a strong leader, alternating sides, rope under the armpits, lean back ten seconds.

The team holds for ten seconds, starts losing anyway, and Sang-woo orders everyone to step towards the edge on a count of three.

Cold open: losing badly, Gi-hun orders the team to step forward on his signal, the rope goes slack and the other side topples.

Giddy survivors replay the lean-back and the three-steps call, compare it to a bullet-dodging movie, and tease the one who cried about the edge.

Mi-nyeo suggests ditching the foreigner, asks who the captain is, explodes at being called grandma, and insists she left Deok-su's gang by choice.

Ali offers the milk he saved from supper, Sang-woo tells him to drop the 'mister', and Ali talks about his wife, baby and family back in Pakistan.

Sang-woo quietly chooses Ali as his partner, leaving Gi-hun to step aside and look after the old man instead.

The announcement reveals that partners must play each other for all ten marbles, and the pairs realise what winning means for the loser.

Down to his last marbles, Sang-woo pleads with Ali, reminding him of the bus fare and tug-of-war, and promises a way for both of them to live.

Sang-woo lays out a plan to scout the other teams and persuades Ali to hand over his marble pouch so it does not get stolen.

Ali runs through the alleys calling for Sang-woo as the eliminations are announced, and Ji-yeong tells Sae-byeok she is honored to have been her partner.