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Netflix viewers have been left almost speechless after the trailer for Squid Game: The Challenge saw one man lie through his teeth.
The gameshow, which is slated to begin its second season on November 4, 2025, is based on the fictional Netflix thriller series Squid Game, in which contestants risk their lives to win a huge cash prize.
Children’s playground games turn deadly in the Hwang Dong-hyuk series, which took the world by storm upon its release in 2021, inspiring Halloween costumes for the rest of time.
Netflix then wasted no time capitalising on the success of the original series, turning the concept into a real gameshow (only, of course, people aren’t killed this version).
However, while people don’t die in The Challenge, ugly sides of human beings are revealed as 456 contestants enter the game in a bid to win $4.56million (£3.4m).
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And one such example has left fans of the show stunned, with a trailer for the new season revealing that one contestant made up a fake baby in order to stay in the game.
Contestant 415 tells a group of his fellow game players that ‘back home, my girlfriend, we found out she was expecting [a child] about a month ago’.
The man receives a round of applause from the people surrounding him, as the players stand in the bunk bedroom unit that looks identical to the bed unit in Squid Game.
However, while doing his confessional afterwards, Contestant 415 looks right into the lens and simply says, with no hesitation, ‘This baby doesn’t exist’.
Commenting on YouTube, @AstralXVoids said their ‘jaw dropped’ while @Arisu-G5H called the moment ‘crazy’ in a reply to the original remark.
Despite being criticised in some quarters for arguably missing the point of the original series, which saw poor and desperate people risking their lives for people’s entertainment, The Challenge has become a huge hit.
Upon its release in 2023, it had 20.5million views on Netflix in its first week, 11.4m in its second, and 6.6m in its third, with a total of over 224m hours watched within the first 21 days.
The winner of the first season was Contestant 287, whose real name was Mai Whelan, and she won the competition after a tense game of rock, paper, scissors.
The Challenge was renewed for a third season earlier this year, but there is no word yet on when production will start, with fans wondering if the reality show will extend beyond the run of the original series.
Fans are also speculating over which playground games will be included in season two, with many fans hoping that jump rope in particular will make an appearance.
Squid Game came to an end earlier this year after three seasons, with season two and season three released within just six months of each other.
Watch Squid Game and Squid Game: The Challenge on Netflix.
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