9 timestamped notes explaining the Korean cultural context in this episode — customs, idioms, food, honorifics, and history, at the moment each appears on screen. These notes discuss events across the whole episode. To see them revealed scene-by-scene as you watch, use the episode page to find an airing.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, temperature screening at the entrance to any public gathering — clubs, restaurants, offices — was legally required in South Korea. The guard with the thermometer gun is not unusual security; he's standard pandemic protocol that every Korean viewer lived through.
Cha-young is name-dropping Brarlo (브랄로), a fictional ultra-luxury Milan bespoke tailor used throughout the show as shorthand for eye-wateringly expensive taste. Calling it out by name signals that she is the kind of lawyer who knows exactly what a suit like that costs — and that Vincenzo's daily outfit changes are an unmistakable flex.
The monk Chae-shin says '관세음보살' (Gwanse-eum-bosal), the standard Buddhist devotional phrase invoking the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Toto, the Italian pizza chef, instinctively replies 'Amen' — a Catholic response. Hong-shik immediately points out the mismatch, and Toto's awkward laugh sells the gag: South Korea is home to both large Buddhist and Christian populations, and the two traditions bumping into each other is a familiar comic moment.
Ki-seok waxes poetic about the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo) in Florence and the port of Naples — two of Italy's most iconic landmarks — to convince Toto his pizza was transcendent. For a Korean audience this is knowingly over-the-top flattery; Italians are stereotyped in Korean pop culture as passionate and romantic, and invoking these landmarks is peak sycophantic mode.
Vincenzo references the real American opioid epidemic, where legally prescribed painkillers like OxyContin created millions of addicts and fuelled a sharp rise in heroin use. Korean viewers in 2021 would have been familiar with this through news coverage; the show uses it to make the threat of Babel's drug feel immediately concrete and not science-fictional.
Cha-young's party trick is mimicking her own boss — the terrifying Choi Myung-hee — doing her signature workout breathing ('허, 허, 허, 죽이네!'). The audience erupts because everyone in the room has been on the receiving end of that exact routine earlier in the episode. In Korean office culture, poking fun at a superior only works when the superior is present enough to make it dangerous; doing it without her in the room is a release valve.
Vincenzo mentions a 실비집 (silbi-jip), literally a 'cost-price house' — a humble neighbourhood bar where drinks are cheap and the food is homestyle Korean. The dishes he names, 두부김치 (tofu with stir-fried kimchi) and 모둠 전 (assorted savoury pancakes), are the classic pairing with 소주 at exactly this type of low-key spot. For Cha-young, the invite is less about the food and more about the unspoken suggestion to reconcile with her father.
Attorney Hong describes Jackie Chan (성룡, Seongnyong in Korean) not as a fighter who wins because he is strongest, but as someone who keeps getting up no matter how many takes it requires. Jackie Chan's films — famous for real stunt injuries and countless NG (no-good) retakes shown in the end credits — are beloved in Korea, and this analogy is Hong's playful, self-deprecating way of explaining his own stubbornness against impossible odds.
Hong Yoo-chan recites the Italian proverb 'Il diavolo scaccia il diavolo' — 'the devil drives out the devil' — meaning it sometimes takes a monster to fight a monster. He admits he can't be that monster himself, then wonders aloud whether Vincenzo could be. It is the episode's thematic punchline, landing right before the cliffhanger, and it reframes everything Vincenzo has done this episode as potentially purposeful rather than random.