Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator and director of the global phenomenon Squid Game, lost six of his actual teeth due to extreme stress while writing and developing the first season of the show over a period of ten years.

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Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator and director of the global phenomenon Squid Game, lost six of his actual teeth due to extreme stress while writing and developing the first season of the show over a period of ten years. He faced constant rejections from studios who deemed the concept too grotesque and unrealistic before Netflix finally greenlit the project, turning it into their most-watched series ever. It is profoundly poetic that a television show actively critiquing late-stage capitalism and the desperate lengths humans will go to for financial survival literally cost its creator parts of his own skeleton just to get it made, ensuring his dental bills were eventually covered by the exact same dystopian system he was brilliantly satirizing