The most dangerous game

The connection is mainly in the “human beings become prey in a controlled hunt” concept.

• Predator → prey: In The Most Dangerous Game, Zaroff hunts humans for sport. In The Long Walk, the walkers are effectively the prey of the regime: they are placed in a lethal competition where survival itself becomes the spectacle.
• Game with lethal rules: Both stories turn killing/survival into a structured game governed by rules rather than ordinary violence.
• Entertainment/sport: Zaroff treats the hunt as recreation. The Long Walk transforms that idea into a national spectacle, with spectators following the contestants.
• Psychological survival: Both ask what happens to ordinary people when survival becomes the central objective and other humans become obstacles or threats.

Connell wrote the premise every manhunt story since has used: a man is set loose and hunted by people for whom it is entertainment. King industrialises it. Zaroff hunts one castaway on a private island for his own amusement; the Games Network hunts Ben Richards on live television with a nation calling in sightings for a cash reward. The change is who the audience is, and it is the whole of what the later book is about.

The same ancestor, reaching Japan by a different route. Connell's island, its time limit, and its rule that survival is the only victory condition are the engine Takami runs on a class of fifteen-year-olds. What Takami adds is that the hunters are each other rather than a host: there is no Zaroff on the island, only the government that put them there and a map of expanding forbidden zones to keep them moving.