Squid Emoji

A pinkish-orange giant squid with a slender, arrow-shaped body and tentacles raised at its sides. Emojipedia notes it's "generally depicted as a pinkish-orange giant squid" and should not be confused with 🐙 Octopus, though their applications overlap.

Before September 2021, 🦑 was a niche marine life emoji. Then Netflix's Squid Game premiered and everything changed. The show attracted 111 million households in its first 28 days and accumulated 1.65 billion hours of viewing, making it Netflix's most-watched show of all time. The show's title comes from ojingeo (오징어), a real Korean children's game) from the 1970s-80s named after the squid-shaped playing field drawn on the ground.

🦑 became the show's de facto emoji. Google Trends shows a clear spike in Q4 2021 when Season 1 launched, and an even bigger one in Q1 2025 following Season 2 (December 26, 2024). The emoji went from marine biology to global pop culture overnight.

🦑 now lives a double life. For marine enthusiasts, it's the cephalopod emoji: squid sightings, calamari dishes, ocean biology. In Japanese food culture, squid (ika) is central to dishes like ikameshi (rice-stuffed squid) and ika sashimi.

For everyone else, it's the Squid Game emoji. The show's cultural impact was staggering: Vans slip-on sales increased 8,000%, Duolingo saw a 40% increase in Korean language learners, and Google reported Squid Game was the most-searched TV show of 2021. The circle-triangle-square symbols (○△□) from the show became globally recognized iconography.

Squids also carry metaphorical weight: their unusual appearance makes 🦑 shorthand for something strange or otherworldly, and because cephalopods are known for intelligence and camouflage, the emoji can signal cleverness or being hard to pin down.

The squid emoji arrived in 2016 as a straightforward marine animal. Its cultural transformation began five years later.

On September 17, 2021, Squid Game premiered on Netflix. Within 28 days, it had been watched by 111 million households for 1.65 billion hours, making it Netflix's most popular show ever, at 2.6x the viewership of the next biggest (Bridgerton). It topped charts in all 83 countries where Netflix operates.

The show's name comes from ojingeo (오징어), a real Korean children's game) popular in the 1970s and 80s. Players drew a squid-shaped court on the ground and played an attack-and-defense game requiring hopping on one foot. The game's origins may trace back to the Three Kingdoms period, with a variation from Haenam said to symbolize territorial disputes.

Season 2 dropped December 26, 2024, and Season 3 (the final season) arrives June 27, 2025. Each season release creates a visible spike in 🦑 search interest.

Approved in Unicode 9.0 (2016) as U+1F991U+1F991 SQUID. Added to Emoji 3.0 in 2016. Platforms vary: Microsoft and WhatsApp show the squid facing forward, while most others show it angled left. Samsung's version was originally gray before being updated to pinkish-orange.

In Korean culture, squid (ojingeo) is a common street food and snack. Dried squid is sold everywhere. The children's game ojingeo was named after the shape of the playing field, not the animal itself. Western audiences learned the word through Netflix.

In Japanese cuisine, squid (ika) is a staple: ikameshi (rice-stuffed squid) is a famous ekiben (train station boxed lunch) from Hokkaido, and ika sashimi is prized for its silky texture.

In Mediterranean cultures, calamari (fried squid rings) is the most common preparation, making 🦑 a food emoji in Italian, Spanish, and Greek contexts.

• •Squid Game was the most-searched TV show on Google in 2021 and the most-tweeted about show of the year. It generated 1.65 billion viewing hours in 28 days, more than 2.6x the next biggest Netflix show (Bridgerton).
• •The circle-triangle-square symbols (○△□) from Squid Game's guards became globally recognized iconography, appearing on merchandise, Halloween costumes, and viral memes. These symbols predate the show in Korean culture but were largely unknown outside Korea before 2021.
• •In Japan, squid (ika) is the basis for ikameshi, a famous Hokkaido train station boxed lunch where a whole squid is stuffed with sticky rice and simmered in a sweet soy broth.
• •Google Trends shows 🦑 nearly tripling in search interest (7→19) in Q1 2025 following Squid Game Season 2's December 2024 premiere. Each season creates a measurable emoji spike.

• •Netflix's Squid Game (premiered September 17, 2021) became the platform's most-watched show ever with 1.65 billion viewing hours in 28 days. It topped charts in all 83 Netflix countries, was Google's most-searched TV show of 2021, and Twitter's most-tweeted show. Season 2 premiered December 2024 and Season 3 (final) arrives June 2025.
• •The show's impact beyond streaming: Duolingo reported a 40% increase in Korean learners, Vans slip-on sales rose 8,000%, and Squid Game's circle-triangle-square guard masks became the #1 Halloween costume search in 2021.

• •🦑 is U+1F991U+1F991. Unicode name: SQUID. CLDR: "squid." Common shortcodes: :squid::squid: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
• •No skin tone variants (animal emoji). Note: most platforms render only 6 arms despite real squids having 10. Platform orientations vary (forward-facing on Microsoft/WhatsApp, angled left on Apple/Google).

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