Run BTS Rewatch Episode 24: Zooming with Zombies

BTS vs 좀비, BTS vs Zombie

Is everyone ready for this one? Strap yourselves in, because we’re making a total 180 from dogs and into the realm of horror. This has to be one of the most clipped and montaged episodes of Run BTS, and it’s definitely one of the most watched on the re-posted Youtube playlist, and as I rewatched it became very clear as to why. These are (mostly) not brave men, and the producers had entirely too much fun exposing that fact to the world. As Jungkook would say, let’s get it.

Setup:

There are two setups this time! One is the fake setup, in which BTS is going on a nighttime safari bus tour at a local amusement park / resort. The second is the real setup, in which they are going to be interacting with zombies for several hours without having any real way to escape. Hell yeah.

In the second setup, BTS have to play three games against the zombies to try to win free tickets to Everland for lucky ARMY. Making the reward something for the fans is clearly to guilt them into actually trying even though they’re scared and is a masterstroke by the Run BTS team.

The Moments of Pure Love:

1. There’s no barbershop intro this time - is it weird to say I now kind of miss it?

2. The boys have moved up in the world by getting to shoot at Everland, a big theme park in Korea, and you can clearly sense the corporate synergy as the production team gets in some glamour shots of the place

   1. Sidenote: In looking this place up I learned they have a park second called “American Adventure” and I’m now desperate to go and see what this is all about

3. The producers straight up lie to Bangtan and say that the theme of this episode is “Find BTS’s childhood innocence” by going to a zoo at night in a special Everland tour

4. Jin is particularly smug that they’ve been granted this honor

5. Jimin asks if they’re all on one team this time, and the producers say that the audience mostly watches for the bloodsport, so they’ve created a way to divide them into teams revealed later

6. They get into a bus that’s decorated to look like a tiger as they happily anticipate their night safari full of nice animals

   1. I honestly can’t tell in this part if they all know that they’re being completely lied to or not; I think most of them suspect, but they’re pretty good actors if so

7. Yoongi tries to take down the Good Vibe Space by pointing out that tigers are actually nocturnal

8. They all notice that the lights in the bus are red, which means scary, except for Jungkook who is waving cheerfully out the window to the production team like he’s going off to the first day of school

9. Jin and Hoseok also wave, while Yoongi presses himself pathetically against a bus window like he’s being sent to his doom

10. As the tour leader announces that the night safari will begin with a visit to the tiger enclosure, they all start realizing it’s too dark to see a tiger

11. Hoseok is realizing that he’s fucking terrified of tigers and doesn’t want to be in one in the middle of the night

12. The tour leader suddenly shouts and stands up and 2seok shit their pants

13. Yoongi sees the zombies out the window and the look on his face is the look of a man who realizes he’s about to do some serious midnight cardio without getting to carb up

14. Zombies get closer to the bus and Hoseok’s soul has already exited his body

15. The tour operators have zeroed in on his terror and force him to go outside with one of the actors for a mission

16. Hoseok protests the entire way, in vain, as the rest of BTS laugh at him (except for Taehyung, who seems disappointed about the tigers)

17. In this scenario there are a lot of sleeping zombies around and Hoseok is supposed to help the guy quietly move a barricade; Hoseok speaks at full volume as he begs for mercy, then screams at the top of his lungs at each zombie

18. The zombies wake up when they’re finished and Hoseok absolutely loses his shit as the operator runs him all around the bus

19. The rest of BTS in the bus isn’t doing much better, particularly Yoongi whose aggression is spiking hard at the sight of the zombies getting closer

20. The noise level is fantastic, and only rises when a zombie gets on the bus with them

    1. Yoongi leans back in his seat and gets his feet in kicking position

    2. Namjoon, in the back, has zipped up his jacket all the way up and tucked his chin inside it for protection

    3. Jin screams and tries to shield himself with Hoseok

    4. Hoseok falls into a seat on top of Taehyung and rabbit punches at the zombie

    5. Taehyung is simply being crushed by 2seok and has no chance of survival

    6. Jimin is trying to silently phase through a bus window in the hopes they won’t notice him

    7. Jungkook is delighted!

21. Hoseok reveals his shoe flew off when he was running away, but there’s no way he’s going back out to get it

22. Sadly they all have to get out and walk, under heavy protest, and begin the first game, which has zombies milling about with letters stuck to their clothing that they have to grab; the ones who grab the same letters are on the same team

23. It’s unclear how much of this they’ve absorbed in their terrified state, as the zombies come after them right away

24. Yoongi squares up to fight the first couple like he’s Floyd Mayweather except he is actually Min Yoongi, a tiny guy in a beanie cap

25. Hoseok is like a pinball bouncing between the spaces where zombies are; Taehyung takes advantage of his distracting screams of terror to get a letter and run away

26. Jin screams at a zombie to give him one as he grabs at it with all his strength

27. Yoongi closes his eyes and reaches out blindly to grab another one, yelling all the while

28. Jimin once again tries to stealth his way through them by saying nothing and moving as few limbs as possible

29. Namjoon is quite calm up unto the point he gets a letter, at which point he starts running by picking his knees up really high like he’s stepping on burning coals

30. Namjoon got two letters because he didn’t understand the rules, while Hoseok got no letters because someone running at the speed of sound can’t touch other humans, so Namjoon gives Hoseok one of his

31. Team A: Namjoon, Taehyung, Jungkook; Team B: Jin, Yoongi; Team C: Hoseok, Jimin; we can already see some future problems forming

32. They’re already exhausted and in fight or flight mode, but Jin proudly produces a hammer prop that he stole from one of the zombies

33. Game 2 is a puzzle hunt inside of a maze building where all of the free tickets are hidden; for reference it looks sort of like the set of a hospital with a lot of corridors with small rooms branching off of them

    1. I’m going to be honest that I never fully grasped what they were supposed to do, but I think there are hidden clues to three puzzle doors they need to use to escape (each team has to solve one), but also hidden free tickets that they can pick up as end prizes

34. Namjoon and Taehyung remind them all that they only really love us if they find a lot of tickets

35. Jin, who is jump scared while still in the entrance room, is seriously considering if he actually loves us at all

36. Yoongi moans that he doesn’t even watch scary movies, and Jin links arms with him as they march to their fate

37. Each team gets a tablet to help them navigate the maze and the biggest scare of this episode is when I imagined all of them breaking them as they ran away in terror

38. Yoonjin find a ticket by fucking around with the decorations

39. Namtaekook can’t even figure out where to start their journey

40. Taehyung, totally unphased by any of this through the power of self-determination, kindly thanks a zombie who tries to scare him when he’s going for a clue

41. Jin hides behind Yoongi as they go, Yoongi complaining that he’s scared too

42. Yoonjin see a zombie up ahead and yell at it not to do anything scary; when the zombie doesn’t answer they make Jihope go first

43. Jimin also tries yelling at it in a high-pitched whining voice but it has limited effect, and Jihope decide to go another way

44. Yoonjin realize that these zombies are foreigners so the problem must be that he simply can’t understand them

45. Jin busts out his English and asks if he has a ticket, but when the zombie just growls at them they are stumped

46. Jihope are on their side path when a zombie crawls out of a room at them and Hoseok vanishes in a cloud of dust like a cartoon character to hide behind both Jin and Yoongi

47. Jimin starts doing some martial arts poses as Hoseok screams his way back down the hall towards him, ending up at “Wow wow wow”

48. Namtaekook have found a puzzle room with a very tall lady zombie, so Jungkook politely leans through the curtain and says “Excuse me?” in Korean

49. When she rushes them they all take a step back, but Jungkook then apologizes as he goes into the room to start looking for his clues

50. He finds some, then says “Thank you thank you!” in English as he goes to exit

51. The zombie taunts him with a ticket she’s holding, and Jungkook crouches down to maximum politeness and says “Please give me that” in Korean before snatching it out of her hand

52. Yoonjin have not progressed down the hallway towards their foreign zombie by even a step, so they simply leave, but then the crawling zombie is back and they simply cannot contend with this

53. Yoongi hurdles over her legs, totally abandoning a suddenly worried Jin, and then hides within a recesses in one of the hallways

54. This proves to be a mistake, as the camera crew rounds the corner to try to find him and scares the ever-loving shit out of him; he collapses to his knees with his hand over his heart, almost past speech

55. Jin is still calling for him, but Yoongi has decided the only way forward is to blend in with the zombie and is crawling on the floor gibbering

56. Jihope, the intrepid adventurers, have finally found the path to their mission but there’s a zombie standing in it so they realize they have no choice but to give up

57. Jimin finds a little side room with some clues / tickets in it and pockets them

    1. As he’s going in Hoseok, hilariously, tries to warn him off in case there’s danger

58. Namtaekook check out the clue Jungkook got, it has some kind of puzzle thing that I don’t understand and trust me, neither do they

59. At this point I need to say that anytime they’re showing anyone on screen you can hear Hoseok or Yoongi in the distance screaming

60. Namtaekook go back to their original zombie lady room, and Namjoon peers in from outside the curtain and directs Jungkook what interesting things to go get for him

61. They realize the portraits hanging on the walls of the room have QR codes they need to scan, so Jungkook heads back in singing the tune to “I’ve Been Working On the Railroad” for reasons passing understanding

62. Taehyung has found a letter written in English and begins reading it out loud before handing it off to Namjoon in the hallway

63. The zombie is doing her best to be weird but they’re fully over it as even Namjoon is caught up in the throes of an intellectual challenge and makes his way past her to figure things out

64. Yoonjin have not even found which way they’re supposed to go yet

65. Jin’s new plan is to sprint past the foreign zombie they’re afraid of, and this works pretty well until they stop in a stairwell and the camera crew follows them and scares them shitless again

66. Jin tries to convince the camera to go first around the next corner to capture the shot, but they’re not moved

67. Yoonjin realize they’ve gone too far and come back, and Jin grabs a clue off of the floor while Yoongi keeps a low profile by screaming “there he is!” at the zombie

68. They cannot decipher the clues

69. Jihope are bravely sobbing their way through the same hallway that Yoonjin went through and end up in the same crowded stairwell with them

70. All four of them try to push the three others into going first and end up in a sort of ouroboros situation

71. Namtaekook are solving things as the zombie hangs out with them, putting QR codes in order and looking at surgery charts and the contrast between them and the other teams trapped in a stairway trying not to go first is hysterical

72. Jihope have ended up back at the path they were at before, but the zombie is still there so once again this seems to be an impossible situation

73. When Jimin tries to leave after unsuccessfully asking the zombie to move, Hoseok points out that the sign says the letter of their team, C

74. Jimin peers at it more closely and gets severely jump-scared by the zombie, and they leave along with Yoonjin

75. They incautiously go back down the original Yoonjin hallway and get jump-scared, in succession, by the foreign zombie, the zombie crawling on the floor, and then a new zombie flocking to Hoseok’s high pitched screams

76. Hoseok pushes open an emergency door in his panic and a run director has to shove him back in and close it

77. Namtaekook are still solving, but Namjoon isn’t secure enough in his English understanding to know if he got it so they move on, but Taehyung takes a surgery chart

78. Jimin has graduated from trying to be as quiet as possible to singing loud belting notes every time he walks past a zombie, until he finally gets close enough to read the sign that tells them where their clue is

79. The crawling zombie gets them AGAIN as they’re trying to solve their puzzle

80. Jihope slowly realize they have some of their clues, but also took some clues that other teams needed because they were so panicked

81. Yoongi is trying to lean on the nostalgia of their past interactions to convince a zombie to let them pass before he just yells at them and goes for it

82. Flush with success, Yoonjin decide to cosplay as zombies more fully, soYoongi wraps bandages around his head like a mummy

83. Namtaekook find an exit gate and try to solve it before realizing this is Team B’s gate and they’re Team A

84. Jihope are trying to solve their puzzle crouched in a hallway while a zombie menaces them until Jimin suddenly yells in frustration that this is all impossible and goes back to the room where he found the first clues to search

85. He leaves a bunch of clues on the floor and Hoseok gets so focused on cleaning them up that he forgets about the zombies and gets jump scared AGAIN

86. Hoseok follows Jimin into the room and tries desperately to figure out this puzzle; while their backs are turned a zombie enters and Hoseok collapses onto a table in exhausted terror

87. Yoongi has donned a bloody doctor’s coat and Jin some scrubs (along with a fake severed arm) as they stagger out into the hallway and pretend to be zombies by grunting “ehhh ehhhh” over and over again

88. The foreign zombie they were with before, quite sweetly, goes along with it, but the others don’t know what to think

89. Zombie Yoonjin pass Jihope on their journey, and Jimin just stares at them in mute confusion

90. Yoonjin have left all their clues and tickets behind in the room they cosplayed in, and they have to go back in shame

91. They compliment one of the zombies on her method acting as they pass

92. Namtaekook pass Zombie Yoonjin on their way out of the wrong door (Yoonjin are team B), and once again they just sort of blankly accept this as-is

93. Yoonjin now realize that they need to unlock the door and find the clue Namtaekook throw on the floor, but sadly Jin fails at counting the English alphabet without realizing it and they give up

94. I need to point out that it’s incredible that Yoonjin spent the entire time arguing with zombies then becoming zombies and still were only one number off of escaping first while Namtaekook were solving bilingual picture puzzles with a zombie

95. Namtaekook find the Jihope puzzle solving room and they start talking about how no one has the right clues anymore

96. Apparently Jungkook has also hit something wrong on the tablet which is further confusing the entire situation

97. At this point the production team realizes that they didn’t actually intend for BTS to live inside of a zombie maze at Everland for the rest of their careers and huddle them up at the center to explain to them that they did the whole thing wrong

98. Jimin says that it’s because they were so dedicated to getting free tickets for us that they couldn’t live by the producers’ rules, which is some great verbal jujitsu

99. Taehyung is having fun making friends with the zombies

100. They now have to escape through a hallway full of lasers, like a heist movie where they have to get through without setting them off

     1. Taehyung, confident, heads right on in and almost immediately fails; he takes advantage of all of the lasers going off during a failure to pick a free ticket up off of the floor

     2. Jimin zips up all of his loose clothing and picks is way through the lasers very very gracefully while they all praise him, but he gets caught at the very end

     3. Everyone else is humming the James Bond theme as they watch

     4. Jungkook first wonders if he can simply jump through them all, then realizes that he can just army crawl underneath everything then let them all out at the end

     5. Jin is still carrying his fake severed leg along with a lecturer’s rod

101. They count up their tickets, and Yoonjin got 4, Jihope got 0 (thanks to running away so much), and Namtaekook got 5

102. They’re disappointed that they only got 9, but the last game is freeze tag with zombies which has more available

103. In this game if a zombie touches them they’re frozen in jail, but if another member slaps them with an unfreeze sticker (with their name on it) they can move again; each unfreeze sticker used is a free ticket, to incentivize them to help each other out

104. Like total nerds, they immediately want to assign party roles like an RPG, with Jungkook being nominated as the healer for being so fast

105. The zombie actors stagger up behind them to get ready, creating an immense psychological weight that BTS can barely stand

106. Eventually they start running, and it goes pretty much as you’d expect

     1. Jimin runs around swiftly, looking for tickets everywhere so intently that he can’t help but be caught

     2. Yoongi runs around whimpering, still bandaged, and when he gets too tired he simply lays on the ground

     3. Jin is like a little stealth wizard, finding tickets everywhere he goes even in places others have already looked

     4. Jungkook is so fast and runs so much

     5. Taehyung is having the time of his life in this pulled from the movies scenario

     6. Namjoon uses his frozen opportunities to look for tickets

     7. Hoseok scampers around so quickly and does a lot of unfreezing but never gets less scared

107. At one point Taehyung asks his camera operator to turn off the light so the zombies can’t find him and tries to stealth; it doesn’t work, and Jimin yells at him for luring zombies towards him

108. This is a theme, as Namjoon later drags other zombies towards him on accident and gets him caught

109. Taehyung, tired and put out that he hasn’t found any, asks one of the zombies to just hold on a fucking moment, and the zombie nicely passes him by, but he later gets caught

110. Jimin also uses a frozen opportunity to edge towards some tickets he sees; they allow it and he gets so excited to have a lot of tickets

111. Jin uses weird running and distraction to free Jimin and escape unscathed, and it’s honestly very impressive

112. Yoongi, Namjoon, and Jungkook are all panting in the jail zone (mostly Namgi), and Namkook take the opportunity to have a philosophical conversation about the fact that if zombies were real humans would be dead so fast

113. Jin flirts with one of the female stickers and gives her one of his worldwide handsome stickers, then congratulates himself for his Jimin save and forces Jimin to flatly acknowledge it

114. They all agree that humans are no match for zombies because zombies are murder machines and they are just seven men who are very tired

115. Final ticket count

     1. Hoseok - 1

     2. Jimin - 3 (he makes speech about how pleased he is that he can give us tickets)

     3. Taehyung - 0 (too much roleplaying)

     4. Namjoon - 2

     5. Yoongi - 0, but he’s taken the opportunity while they were standing around to put a dozen of his stickers on Jungkook’s back and calls himself “the healer”; none of them buy it

     6. Jungkook - 0

     7. Jin - 6, and he points out specifically that he got very sweaty in this effort in a manner that suggests we should be fucking grateful

116. In total they got 34 free tickets, and the staff declares Jin the MVP and he is very gracious and humble about the way he holds his arms out and praises himself for his great work

117. They all agree that everyone but Jin will pay for another ticket to bring it up to a round 40

118. They also give Jin a zombie-themed drink for winning, which looks sort of like colored lemonade, and Jungkook plucks it out of his hand to try it himself

119. They end the episode walking towards the camera like zombies with all of the staff, and we’re out!

The Finish Line:

Well this is officially the longest rewatch list I’ve ever done, and definitely the one where I used the word “scream” the most! But I don’t regret it at all, because this one is perhaps the peak of Run BTS lore. I can’t remember which Run episode was the first one I watched, but this might have been it. At the very least it was near the beginning, and so it’s as scarred into my memories as it is for BTS themselves.

Between Namtaekook puzzle solving while the rest of them screamed and screamed and screamed, to Jihope’s willingness to give up at a single zombie, to Yoonjin’s cosplay out of nowhere that the rest of them basically ignored, Bangtan being scared, confused, and not understanding the rules of the game will always been a potent combination. The only thing I would like more is for them to do this again when they come back and see how time has changed, or not, their reactions. Ideas for the producers, right?

Thanks for reading this massive tome, and I’ll try to make them shorter again in the future…