Here's Where 'Floor Is Lava' Players Really Go After They Fall

The Netflix game show, Floor Is Lava, is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a televised version of that free game we all played as children, where we pretended the ground was lava and tried to hop, skip, and jump on anything we could to keep from "falling in." Where do they go on Floor Is Lava when they fall in the "lava"?

The streaming platform's family game show watches teams navigate larger-than-life obstacle courses in a house's different "rooms," swinging from bars and hopping from chair to chair so as not to fall into the hot "lava," which a producer has revealed is red slime.

And the return of Season 3 has viewers ready to see which teams will come out victorious.

If your team manages to get through all of the rooms of the obstacle course — including a head-to-head challenge via a super-slippery volcano — there's a grand prize of $10,000 and lava lamp trophy. But every time a player loses and falls into the lava, they vanish, leaving the rest of their team horrified and aghast.

No one is more perplexed by where the contestants go when they fall into the lava lakes than viewers on Twitter.

"Where does the person go when they fall in," questioned one concerned person (in all caps), while another commended how convincingly the show was edited: "I really like how #FloorIsLava on Netflix is edited to make it look like people disappear forever once they enter the lava."

One thing is for sure: When a contestant falls into the lava, it's up to the rest of their team members to finish the level on their own, with the added pressure of avenging their fallen teammate and hoping they don't succumb to the same fiery fate.

Remaining players act like their teammate has drowned or died in the lava, and the show has remained impressively tight-lipped about where the losers go.

One theory that's been circulating the internet is that "some underwater scuba team" whisks players who have fallen into the lava away, or that contestants who fall are pulled into a lower room from below the set.

But that seems awfully intricate for a reality show in a sound stage.

This leads us to the Occam's razor ("the simplest solution is almost always the right one") theory of Floor Is Lava, which is that it's all a matter of editing. Viewers will notice the repeated playbacks of the fall and other cuts after a player succumbs to the lava, and many think that producers pull the person out of the red slime before continuing the game. 

Of course, viewers never see this behind-the-scenes moment and are left scratching their heads wondering if the lava is actually real and the players have been incinerated on contact.

Oh, the wonders of video editing! Floor Is Lava is now streaming on Netflix.