Human Heart (Symbol)
When Juliette sends Okwe up to investigate a clogged toilet in the hotel, he is very disturbed to find a human heart in the toilet when he tries to unclog it. The toilet fills with blood, much to his chagrin. The image of Okwe pulling a human heart out of the toilet represents the fact that there are some horrible secrets that he has yet to unveil in the hotel, things that are hidden below the surface. The fact that it is a human heart also suggests that these secrets are dangerous and intense, that there is violence occurring in the hotel.
Guo Yi cutting off buttons (Symbol)
Guo Yi works at a crematorium and must regularly prepare dead bodies for incineration. At one point, he is dealing with the body of a man whose religion he does not know. He says to Okwe, "I cut off his buttons so his spirit can escape. I'm sewing up his pockets so he can't take his bad luck with him to the spirit world." Either way, he is going through a symbolic ritual to make sure that the man has a peaceful journey into the afterlife, whatever it may be. While he is working in the medical profession, he imbues his work with spiritual symbolism in order to usher the dead to their final resting place.
Ivan as Pylades (Allegory)
At the end, Guo Yi again refers to the spiritual world when he tells Ivan that he is Pylades, the ferryman in the underworld, shepherding people to Hades in the afterlife. Ivan is a bellboy at the hotel, but in Guo Yi's symbolic imagination, he is actually a stand-in for this mythical figure.
Chess (Symbol)
Okwe and Guo Yi regularly play chess together. Okwe is far superior at chess, but later in the film, Guo Yi says that proficiency at chess has an inverse relationship to proficiency in real life. He tells Okwe that he is good at chess but bad at life. In this way, chess symbolizes the faults that Guo Yi perceives in Okwe, the fact that he strategizes about ways to succeed in life, but sometimes ignores the things that are right in front of him.
Sneaky's Kidney (Symbol)
In the end, Senay does not donate a kidney to leave London, and Okwe extracts Sneaky's kidney instead. This unplanned surgery, and Sneaky's kidney, becomes symbolic of Okwe's taking matters into his own hands, a symbol of retribution and revenge against the villainous mastermind, Sneaky.
