In Squid Game, the South Korean series that continues to be the most viewed on Netflix in Italy and in much of the world, there are a couple of scenes (one of which is even in the very first seconds of the trailer) in which you see an eight-digit phone number. In Squid Game is the number to call to participate in the deadly games at the center of the series. In the real world, calling that number ended up calling a real person who had nothing to do with pretending to be. Squid Game.
The production of the series, he wrote Kotaku, he did not think that this could have happened because the number was missing the three digits of the prefix, only that even without those digits the call still left.
Given the problem, Netflix decided that will modify the scenes showing the phone, so as to prevent the number from being visible. Even if the damage has now been done, given, among other things, the many articles that talk about the issue.
Who owns the phone whose number is the same as the one shown in Squid Game there is not much clarity. The Wall Street Journal he wrote which belongs to a South Korean man in his forties, who says he also received a few thousand calls a day. Other sites, including for example BBC, resume Korean sites and they write that the phone belongs to a woman. The misunderstanding could be related to the fact that even owners of similar but not quite the same numbers as shown in Squid Game they said, in several interviews, that they received calls because of the series.
In the many and often quite confusing articles on this small matter, phone owners also typically offer a number of reasons why it is difficult for them to think they can turn off the phone or switch numbers: someone said for example that they have to keep it on because wait for a possible job offer, someone else claims it is a job number and that if you change it you will lose customers. There is also little information on any claims made by these people to Netflix.
– Read also: “Squid Game” hadn’t been foreseen by anyone
Generally, in cinema and TV, you try not to show a whole phone number, or if you do, you use a non-existent one. According to Wall Street Journal the problem may be due to the fact that in South Korea there are fairly clear rules that movies cannot use real phone numbers, while similar rules are lacking for TV series.
Other countries also have similar rules, both for cinema and television: in the United States, for example, a series of numbers starting with “555”, Specially reserved for these purposes. The number, however, is so associated with the fiction of cinema and TV that there are even those who now choose not to use it, fearing that it may take away the illusion of reality.
