• Note: Since season two has come out and Jossed some theories that season one inspired, the season one WMGs are ones that haven't been Confirmed or Jossed yet.

General

The South Korean police have been paid off to not look into the Games

It would make sense considering how much Jun-ho's boss's bosses absolutely refuse to believe that he uncovered a conspiracy. Jun-ho does have proof that the Games are real with Woo-seuk's intel and his car being blown up at the Night Club, but they insist that he is insane and has to go to therapy. Jun-ho's boss isn't in on it, which is why he tells Jun-ho that he believes his subordinate but also that Jun-ho did a very reckless thing by going "rogue" with a gun and nearly getting killed for it with no evidence to present. (And he's right, considering Jun-ho survived because In-ho paid a fisherman to rescue him from the ocean.) Remember, this police force is the same one that uncovered the Burning Sun scandal in real life.

Then there's Gi-hun's report. Sure, Gi-hun as a gambling addict rambling to the cops about Red Light Green Light is one thing, but he couldn't have been the only one to go to the police at the nearest opportunity. The games were going on for several decades, meaning that more than one surviving player ought to have done the same thing. Sure, maybe the reports aren't centralized and you'd need a determined cop to put two and two together, but still! Someone should have spotted a pattern year after year. So one explanation: the Game Makers pay off the upper-level cops and government to look the other way.

This is why Gi-hun going to his former loan shark was much more effective in getting answers. Kim Jeong-rae needed the money and he agreed logically that something was making his debtors disappear far more than usual. With his self-interest and Villainous Valor, Gi-hun made far more headway even if it took two more years to find the Salesman.

Season One

Kang No-eul was the one who witnessed Ji-yeong's and Sae-byeok's Marbles game and allowed Ji-yeong to say farewell before shooting her.

It's not confirmed or denied who was behind that mask, but it would make sense. Like Sae-byeok, No-eul is a North Korean refugee who defected and had to leave family behind. Her baby daughter has no chance of crossing over, but Sae-byeok's mother does if the Broker can find her. She would have been touched to see Ji-yeong's Heroic Sacrifice and insistence that Sae-byeok had something to live for, since no one ever did that for No-eul. Ji-yeong also choosing to lose meant that she wasn't a loser. So No-eul gave her a dignifying exit befitting that Heroic Sacrifice.

Season Two

Kang No-eul was a guard during the 2020 Squid Games... and she quit afterward because of the organ donor operation

She recognizes Gi-hun when passing him to meet the Broker, and the Masked Guard is familiar with her. It's also shown that she hasn't worked for the Games for a while, with her drawing the ire of the other Triangle Guards by making sure the "eliminated" players are dead. Why did she leave even if she needed the money, as shown by her homeless situation? Because the Masked Guard was continuing the organ operations on the "losers". No-eul is established to have lines that she won't cross, and enabling involuntary organ donations is one of them.

Kang No-eul is actually the Token Good Teammate of the Triangle Guards, not the most ruthless one

While she is a crackshot and eliminates players with efficiency, even those begging for help while in coffins, it's noted she's doing it to prevent them from being vivisected alive. Why? Because she said she was recruited to give "losers" a Mercy Kill. The Masked Guard offered her a cut and in to earn from the organs being sold, but she refuses and defies him by asking to be excused from their midnight chat. That she had to be beaten and threatened with losing her fingers before backing off shows how principled she is.

Compare that to the Salesman, who also revealed he was a Triangle Guard. He took great pleasure in shooting his father when the latter was a player and begging for mercy. And this ruthlessness led to him being promoted to a recruiter, where he's wealthy enough to own a nice apartment. He also torments homeless people while off the clock.

In contrast, Kang No-eul loves working in an amusement park and making children happy. She always works honestly whether as a mascot or as a Triangle Guard. For her, a job must be well-done and not hurt people unnecessarily.

The Front Man set up a Batman Gambit and planned all along for Gi-hun to reenter the Games

It's too much of a coincidence that the 2023 games have recruited Jung-bae, Gi-hun's gambling buddy and military friend as well as an old lady with her slacker son that resembles Gi-hun before his Character Development, a sharky businessman that defaulted on his loan, a snarky pregnant lady revealed to have a vulnerable side, and a young entrepreneur that has been accused of defrauding his followers. Season one reveals that all the players are profiled down to the smallest detail. So In-ho chose people that would deliberately break Gi-hun by reminding him of his mother, Sae-byeok, and Sang-woo. He luckily didn't have anyone that would match Ali's profile, since that would just be rubbing it in.

The COVID pandemic happened in early 2022 rather than 2020, wiping out potential players for Games all around the world.

And this is why the Game makers in 2023 had to recruit a YouTuber and a rapper, both with relatively large followings. While South Korea did much better with COVID than other countries, there were casualties and more lockdowns, meaning fewer opportunities for the Salesman to do his shtick. He'd have gotten arrested for trying the bread and lottery trick in the swing of the pandemic.

Il-nam revealed an awful truth to In-ho in 2015 the way he did to Gi-hun after the 2020 Games, only it made In-ho pull a Face Heel Turn

Season two reveals that In-ho is adopted and he mentions that he can't drink plain milk. Il-nam also revealed that his son couldn't drink plain milk either. Also, In-ho was so loyal to Il-nam, the maker of his torment, that he became the Front Man and the Number Two to the organization. He also faked Il-nam's death during the Marbles game, and he's in the apartment where Il-nam takes his last breath, taking care to close the old man's eyes.

What was this Awful Truth? Il-nam is In-ho's biological father, who pushed his family away with his loan shark business. How did Il-nam figure it out? He had his crew follow the paper trail after In-ho won.

A normal, emotionally healthy person would have told Il-nam to fuck off after hearing this. And maybe In-ho did initially. But winning the games and losing his wife changed In-ho for the worse; he couldn't handle the strain of sacrificing about 455 other people only to lose his wife and baby anyway. Telling Jun-ho and his mother about it would be no good, because Jun-ho's reaction would have been Storming the Castle as he does in season one. Jun-ho has a strong sense of morals and would have wanted to stop the games immediately. So In-ho let himself sink and be complicit in the murders of others before shooting at rogue players and guards.

• • Not confirmed or jossed, but the Front Man does reveal that Il-nam gave him a Secret Test of Character: kill the remaining players in their sleep and avoid the sixth game entirely or let them live and play fairly. In-ho chose to kill everyone, only for it to be All for Nothing since his wife and unborn baby died while he was playing his Games. With that said, it's revealed this is why In-ho keeps trying to keep Gi-hun alive until there's no way to avoid either his or the baby's death in the sixth game.

Despite all the foreshadowing that hints otherwise, Dae-ho was a Marine...

He just wasn't a very good one. We see that Dae-ho is fast, athletic, and skilled with his hands. That makes him a perfect candidate to join the army. But he also reveals that he was a Momma's Boy who was only allowed to play with his sisters growing up, and he says it was his dad's idea to become a Marine. Jung-bae's joke about how hard it must have been to convince his mother makes Dae-ho uncomfortable. We'll find out that because Dae-ho had no life experience thanks to his mother's overprotectiveness, he washed out of active duty and developed bad PTSD, which explains how he doesn't know how to fire a gun and has a panic attack in the season 2 finale. At least according to this Reddit thread, the South Korean army will keep any conscript employed as long as they don't have three "instances" of medical attention, a terminal illness, or life-threatening injury. Dae-ho was shunted to idiot-proof work but still spiraled downward, which is how he ended up in the Games. The reason why he clings to his Marine identity is that he and Jung-bae bond over their tattoos, and he realized that sticking with Gi-hun's team was the smartest decision to survive. He's terrified of showing any weakness or explaining how he ended up here.

• • Sadly, Jossed. Before Gi-hun kills him, Dae-ho confesses that he got a fake Marine tattoo and has never held a gun. He lied to get an in with Gi-hun's group after Gi-hun saved them during Red Light, Green Light.