From Seoul to Surrey, Squid Game"s tentacle-like reach around the planet has been unprecedented. In the last few years, there have been plenty of word-of-mouth small screen smashes that rose to become pop culture events: crime documentary series Tiger King sparked endless Zoom debates and theorising between friends during the first lockdown in 2020, for example. But not since Stranger Things or Game of Thrones has a show had this kind of pop cultural footprint.