The Man with the Umbrella

As the vans carrying the players travel to their destination, Jun-ho follows them and hides, subduing a circle guard and stealing his clothes and mask in order to infiltrate the inner workings of the games.

After waking up in the dorms, the players are more prepared and start forming alliances. Gi-hun, Sang-woo, Player 001, and Ali team up, and note that most players returned, including Player 212, Han Mi-nyeo, who was the first to beg to leave. Sae-byeok sneaks into the vents and observes staff workers working with sugar in a kitchen. When Sang-woo learns what Sae-byeok saw, he is able to deduce the next game, but does not tell his teammates what the game will be. When the players go, they find themselves in an oversized playground set with four shapes on the wall—triangle, circle, star, and umbrella. They are asked to form lines behind the shape of their choice, and Gi-hun's team agrees to pick a different shape each. Sang-woo picks the triangle for himself and has a moment of hesitation, but ultimately allows Gi-hun to proceed with the choice of umbrella. Once the choices are made, it turns out the shapes are the figures stamped into dalgona, discs of Korean street-food sugar candy that taste similar to honeycomb, and the players are directed to complete the classic dalgona game—to extract the stamped shape from the rest of the brittle disc without at all breaking the shape. Any players who fail are to be shot by guards stationed throughout the room observing them. The shapes the players lined up behind are the shapes stamped into the dalgona they are given, and a needle is provided in each dalgona tin. Despite his poor odds, Gi-hun wins by licking the back of the candy to melt the thinner outline of the shape. Player 212 helps Deok-su complete the game with a smuggled lighter. A player takes a higher-ranked staff member hostage before killing himself; the staff member, a manager, is killed, and Jun-ho takes the new mask, allowing him to pose as a higher rank.

"The Man with the Umbrella" provides examples of:

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Some contestants who broke their figures beg the soldiers for another chance, only for their begging to fall on deaf ears, as they are eliminated.
• Air-Vent Passageway: Sae-byeok uses the ducts in the bathroom to spy on the staff as they're preparing the honeycombs for the second game.
• Boom, Headshot!: The punishment for the players if they break their shape or they run out of time. This is also the punishment the unmasked high-ranked staff member faces upon disobeying the rule of revealing himself to a participant.
• Chekhov's Gun: Mi-nyeo's lighter, which she used for her cigarettes, proves useful for the second game. She discreetly heats her needle to melt the outline of the honeycomb shape. After she passes, she smuggles it to Deok-su so he can make use of it.
• Cutting the Knot: Gi-hun figured out that he could easily remove the shape by weakening the lines of the dalgona by licking the back. Even the overseers were surprised by this as if to admit they never thought about it.
• Deathly Unmasking: The guard that Player 119 demands to unmask is shot in the face by the Front Man moments later, reinforcing his rule to the rest of the guards that their lives are forfeit as soon as players know of their identities.
• Delayed Until the Final Countdown: In the game of dalgona, players are given ten minutes to pick their chosen shape out of the dalgona without breaking it. Gi-hun makes the mistake of picking the umbrella, the trickiest shape of the bunch, and only ends up passing because he realizes that he can get the shape out by licking the dalgona from below - accidentally cluing in other players with difficult shapes and giving Player 001 the trick he needs to survive the game. However, even with this trick on Gi-hun's side, he only passes with a few seconds left on the clock, to the point that he's left practically sobbing in relief.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title can both refer to Gi-hun, who received the difficult umbrella shape, and Jun-ho, who was standing outside Gi-hun's house with an umbrella in the previous episode when he asked him about the games, which Jun-ho infiltrates as a guard.
• Double Take: In a light moment of levity, once Gi-hun begins licking his honeycomb to pop out the shape easier, we get treated to a shot of one of the Supervisors leaning forward in front of their monitor, as if in disbelief of what they're seeing.
• Driven to Suicide: Mixed a bit with Better to Die than Be Killed. Player 119 holds a staff member hostage and demands him to take off his mask. He obliges, revealing himself to be a normal young man, and the implication of such a regular person being assimilated into such a cruel system causes Player 119 to kill himself in despair — not that he had many options anyway, given he failed the game.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: While spying on the Pink Men melting pots of sugar in the vents, a rat crawls on Sae-byeok’s back and she struggles to react as quietly as possible.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Gi-hun discovers, from his sweat and some light, that the umbrella shape has a thin outline around it inside the honeycomb. He soon realizes that he can lick the backside of the honeycomb to get the shape out carefully and more easily, which he does in the last few seconds of the game. Other players notice this and start licking their shapes as well.
• Eye Scream: Player 119 lunges at the guard about to execute him and stabs him through the mask and in the eye with his dalgona pin.
• Failed a Spot Check: Somehow none of the guards notice Mi-nyeo and later Deok-su using a lighter to heat their pin up, which would surely be considered cheating.
• Foreshadowing:
  • After Sae-byeok relays seemingly useless information about melted sugar from her spying, Mi-nyeo angrily threatens to put her eyes out with cigarettes. Sae-byeok's eyes remain happily untouched, but an unfortunate guard loses one of his to a losing player wielding a dalgona pin.
  • When tiles on the scoreboard are seen deactivating as players die during dalgona, one of the players can be seen licking his honeycomb in the reflection of the scoreboard. Gi-Hun doesn't come up with this idea until later.
• Improvised Weapon: Player 119 uses his dalgona pin to stab a guard in the eye when he's about to be killed.
• Inevitably Broken Rule: One of the vital rules for staff members forbids any of them from removing their mask outside of their quarters. What happens when that rule is broken is shown in the end.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Sang-woo has this reaction when Gi-hun selects the umbrella, especially as he knew what game they were playing but chose not to tell anyone.
• Oh, Crap!: The first couple of players have this when they break their shape. They beg for another chance but are mercilessly shot.
• Red Herring: The needle included in the dalgona case sends the message that it is required to extract the shape, but it doesn't have to be. Ali gets his circle out by carefully breaking the perimeter of the candy (though this is a strategy that works because of the shape he chose) and Gi-hun realizes licking the back side to melt out the outline is a viable strategy, surprising the operators and causing other players to copy Gi-hun to their benefit. The needle's potential to be unnecessary is also hinted by the fact that the dalgona is identical to what children would eat, and most children wouldn't be playing with a needle.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Fourteen players who voted to leave refused to return to the games. The game staff still keeps tabs on them.
• Skewed Priorities: When walking back into a game where she knows her life will be constantly at risk, Mi-nyeo successfully manages to smuggle in a container, and instead of something to help her survive, she uses it to bring in cigarettes and a lighter. Subverted later when the lighter turns out to be very useful in the next challenge.
• This Is Gonna Suck: This is Gi-hun's internal reaction upon realizing he has picked the umbrella shape, the most difficult one of all four.
  Gi-hun: I'm screwed.
• Timed Mission: The players must perfectly remove the shapes stamped into the sugar honeycomb, intact, in ten minutes, or else they will be executed.
• Toilet Humor: While stalling for Sae-byeok in the bathroom, Mi-nyeo loudly proclaims how constipated she is. Then, when the guard tells her to come out, she claims that her stall doesn’t have any toilet paper and is washing herself in the sink.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The third game is revealed to be cutting stamped shapes out of dalgona, a brittle disc of sugar and baking soda, and breaking the shape at all is instant death. Meanwhile, Jun-ho infiltrates the games by incapacitating one of the guards and stealing their uniform.
• Underside Ride: Jun-ho makes it to the island where the games are held by riding on the underside of one of the transport vans.
• Vertigo Effect: The camera zooms in on Gi-hun in this manner to illustrate his shock when he realizes that he has picked the most difficult of the honeycomb shapes (the umbrella).
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Mi-nyeo is revealed to have smuggled a cigarette pack and a lighter to the games by stuffing them up her vagina.
• We Only Have One Chance: The players only have one chance to remove the shape from the honeycomb, and are killed if they break it or run out of time.
• Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Only a small handful of the 201 players do not return to the games. When the Front Man hears of this, he orders to keep an eye on them. We never know what becomes of them or what the staff plans to do.
• You Have Failed Me: The unmasked staff member is instantly shot dead by the Front Man after revealing himself to a player.