History Headscratchers / Saw

* The obvious timing errors in some trap sequences is one thing, but what confuses me even more is how the timers even start on their own, especially by a separate device.

* Hoffman has always bugged me. One of the complaints about the first movie when it came out was "How can Jigsaw do all of this by himself?" In order to answer that question, he was given apprentices. However, Hoffman was never given helpers, and yet he manages to set up traps that are far more elaborate than anything Jigsaw ever did. The main trap in ''Saw VI'' is a great example. First of all, we are supposed to believe that he built everything shown in that movie (the carousel, the breathing thing, and, especially, the steam maze) all by himself. We are also supposed to believe that he kidnapped, what, 14 people? In one night? Really?

*** Actually, Art Blank is ''far'' less culpable than Zep, who went out of his way to torture Gordon's family. In the mausoleum trap, Art was only ever trying to get the key from his opponent. He only killed his opponent when the winch pulled them too close together for Art to avoid him. The aftermath also implies that Art was starting his ''own'' game, which is probably how he got fitted with the spine-cutter. It's also never stated that he did anything beyond assembling the trap in the hotel, and overseeing the game with Matthews and Hoffman. He even stops Eric from killing himself, and potentially killing Hoffman (as far as he knows), and it's later shown that the spine-cutter he's wearing ''isn't'' connected to the either the scale, or the door. So, really, he saved Matthews because he's just not a dick. If he'd lived, it's likely he could have been acquitted.

** Hoffman's status seems to lie somewhere between an apprentice and a forced minion, like Zep or Art. He doesn't have poison in his blood or a spine-cutter on his back, but he's definitely ''coerced'' into working for John rather than recruited. Possibly John had originally had it in mind to arrange for a whole cadre of law enforcement "moles" - Hoffman and Rigg (if his test/recruitment in ''IV'' had worked out) as cops, and Logan in the forensics department - who would back up Amanda and Lawrence in setting up and running games, then concealing evidence and/or setting up others to take the blame.

* One of the later movies shows the origin of Billy the Puppet: John was making a smaller version of him (Bobby the Puppet) for the child his wife Jill was pregnant with at the time (and subsequently miscarried due to an attack by one of her drug clinic patients). While it hadn't yet achieved CreepyDoll status in-universe, it still looks pretty demented. What sort of sane father would plan to give that sort of thing to ''his own kid''?!

** In ''Saw IV'', John is shown to kidnap his first victim Cecil (the druggie that caused Jill to miscarry) at a Chinese Year of the Pig Festival. He does so by stealing 2 plastic pig masks from one of the stands: One to conceal his identity, and the other one with a rag of chloroform inside to use on Cecil. I'm going to assume he just kinda decided to stick with the motif while also making it a morbid tribute to his unborn son Gideon, who would have been born in the Year of the Pig. Also, as he explains in ''Jigsaw'', pigs are remarkably compassionate animals, showing distress whenever they see another animal, including humans, in pain. I guess he wished we could be more like them.

** [[WouldHurtAChild He puts minors in mortal danger in the first three films,]] so he clearly doesn't have a moral problem with hurting or killing them. But none of them are really tested (Jeff's son had Amanda who took him out despite him not solving all the puzzles). Children would probably be easier to find some serious character flaw with orr kidnap, but presumably, even John has enough sense to realize A. children aren't wholly responsible for their character flaws, B. there's no way children could win his games C. they're even less likely than adults to to appreciate his games even if they win.

** Most of Jigsaw's "main" tests follow a [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption similar formula]] up until [[Film/SawV the fifth film]]: they all blatantly rely on their victims behaving a certain way, often without even ''[[PoorCommunicationKills hinting]]'' at the alternative philosophy/behavior necessary for them to survive ([[Film/SawIV accepting that you can't save everyone]], [[Film/SawIII learning how to forgive, keeping someone alive]], [[Film/Saw3D admitting that you lied]], [[Film/SawII simply being patient and even just minding your]] [[Film/SawI surroundings]]), then killing or, in Jeff and Riggs' case, ''[[KickTheDog mocking]]'' and killing them for either not learning anything (Jeff), or not even understanding the point of their test (Riggs). ''[[Film/SawV Saw V]]'' is the first instance where an alternative (work together... and for the love of god, ''take Jigsaw and his accomplice's threats '''seriously''', Strahm!'') is ''clearly'' implied, the traps are ''clearly'' meant for more than just [[DwindlingParty killing them one by one]] and the survivors almost fail (and almost [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat certainly]] die regardless) because they flat-out [[WhatAnIdiot ignore]] the [[ItsAllAboutMe purpose]] of their test.

[[folder:Hoffman’s test in Saw VI]]
* I am a bit confused about this and hope I can get some clarification. If it is too obvious then I guess that is just me not being able to see it clearly. Hoffman’s test was an updated version of the Reverse Bear Trap and was supposed to be administered by Jill. However as John had said, everybody deserves a chance to survive which is one of the reasons he went after Hoffman in the first place. Because he blamed John for a trap he didn’t make and was inferior and didn’t give Seth Baxter a chance to live. In Hoffman’s test, Jill NEVER gave Hoffman a chance to survive and left him there to die. So I have two questions.

** 1) Did Jill rig the test because she realized that Hoffman had essentially blackmailed Amanda into failing her test with Lynn which lead to the deaths of Amanda and John (who seemed HAPPY when Jeff was about to slash his throat) and wanted Hoffman to pay? Or…

** 2) Was Hoffman’s test never a test and just an execution that Jill had to carry out (ala the Water Cube which was an execution method that Strahm managed to survive) because John knew that Hoffman would soon go off the rails and begin killing indiscriminately and becoming a much worse monster than Amanda was who only killed because she wanted her trap victims not to live with the trauma like she was and Hoffman only killed because he liked brutality? If it was an execution then with John’s knowledge of human psychology he would know that Hoffman would have the survival piece of the puzzle and go after Jill which is why he wanted Lawrence to seal Hoffman away when he killed her wouldn’t he have chosen a trap/execution method that he knew for sure that Hoffman WOULDN’T be able to beat like sealing him in the bathroom FIRST?[[/folder]]

1) Did Jill rig the test because she realized that Hoffman had essentially blackmailed Amanda into failing her test with Lynn which lead to the deaths of Amanda and John (who seemed HAPPY when Jeff was about to slash his throat) and wanted Hoffman to pay? Or…

2) Was Hoffman’s test never a test and just an execution that Jill had to carry out (ala the Water Cube which was an execution method that Strahm managed to survive) because John knew that Hoffman would soon go off the rails and begin killing indiscriminately and becoming a much worse monster than Amanda was who only killed because she wanted her trap victims not to live with the trauma like she was and Hoffman only killed because he liked brutality? If it was an execution then with John’s knowledge of human psychology he would know that Hoffman would have the survival piece of the puzzle and go after Jill which is why he wanted Lawrence to seal Hoffman away when he killed her wouldn’t he have chosen a trap/execution method that he knew for sure that Hoffman WOULDN’T be able to beat like sealing him in the bathroom FIRST?[[/folder]]

2) Was Hoffman’s test never a test and just an execution that Jill had to carry out (ala the Water Cube which was an execution method that Strahm managed to survive) because John knew that Hoffman would soon go off the rails and begin killing indiscriminately and becoming a much worse monster than Amanda was who only killed because she wanted her trap victims not to live with the trauma like she was and Hoffman only killed because he liked brutality? If it was an execution then with John’s knowledge of human psychology he would know that Hoffman would have the survival piece of the puzzle and go after Jill which is why he wanted Lawrence to seal Hoffman away when he killed her wouldn’t he have chosen a trap/execution method that he knew for sure that Hoffman WOULDN’T be able to beat like sealing him in the bathroom FIRST?[/folder]]

*** In the case of the Acid Needle trap, the teenage son would almost certainly be charged with something for what he did. He had no incentive to pull the lever and kill William- had he not pulled it they would have all been rescued. It was done purely out of revenge and was cold-blooded murder (in one of the most gruesome ways possible). He also has no deniability- it was laid out for him in pretty certain terms what would happen if he pulled the "Life or Death" lever.

** Considering it'd appeared for a while as if one of their own agents was an accomplice in the murders, and how they'd gone to some lengths to fake Perez's death only to have her die mere ''hours'' after bringing her out of hiding, it's entirely possible that the local police withdrew their request for FBI assistance. As feds didn't start getting killed until ''after'' John died, it's questionable whether the FBI would still have jurisdiction over the Jigsaw killings as a whole; they can hunt ''Hoffman'' all they like, but have to cede the ongoing investigation into John's past doings to the locals.

* Are we to believe the FBI just flat-out ''gave up'' after ''Saw VI''? The last film has Internal Affairs of all people trampling onto what had become a ''federal'' investigation. A mass murderer that had just killed multiple agents doesn't seem like something that would be shrugged off and ignored, ''especially'' after Hoffman was outed, that evidence should have been immediately turned over to the lead investigation instead of the locals charging in and screwing up massively.

** Considering it'd appeared for a while as if one of their own agents was an accomplice in the murders, and how they'd gone to some lengths to fake Perez's death only to have her die mere ''hours'' after bringing her out of hiding, it's entirely possible that the local police withdrew their request for FBI assistance. As feds didn't start getting killed until ''after'' John Kramer died, it's questionable whether the FBI would still have jurisdiction over the Jigsaw killings as a whole; they can hunt ''Hoffman'' all they like, but have to cede the ongoing investigation into Kramer's past doings to the locals.

** Popularity is the answer. Why do you think people raged about ''GTA San Andreas'' having the "sex scene" (through hacking and it was pretty lame anyway) when ''Indigo Prophecy'' had a sex scene you could control with the analog stick (and necrophilia in a cutscene)? GTA:SA was far more popular, that's why.

* This has nothing to do with the ''Saw'' films directly, but the public perception of the ''Saw'' series (i.e., from people who never watched it). I'm trying to figure out exactly why these people loathe the series to such a degree. Yeah, you can debate the films may not be fantastically produced, but since when did gratuitous violence single out an entire horror series as utterly deplorable torture porn (which doesn't accurately classify the series, since there's no real torture performed), and its viewers as sadistic perverts? Hollywood is built on showcasing graphic violence, especially these days, yet ''Saw'' gets singled out as THE point where it goes too far, and is an indication of the impending apocalypse? Hello?! Ever heard of Marquis De Sade, whose literature jump started the concept of sadism? Hell, before De Sade, public brutality (a la ''Gladiator'') was a staple of entertainment. Human brutality has always been around, and even with new technology, people have always discovered awful ways to kill each other. Even more ironic, when the ''Saw'' video games were released, hardcore gamers saw it as an abomination. To say nothing of the survival horror genre, ''Grand Theft Auto'', ''Gears of War'', and especially Rockstar's ''VideoGame/{{Manhunt}}'', which predated the first ''Saw'' movie, AND even made people who're used to violent video games ''very'' uncomfortable. So why single out the ''Saw'' series to this extent? It's one thing to dislike a film series, but to absolutely trash it for simply being malevolent comes off as absurd and hypocritical.

*** Actually, Art Blank is ''far'' less culpable than Zepp, who went out of his way to torture Gordon's family. In the mausoleum trap, Art was only ever trying to get the key from his opponent. He only killed his opponent when the winch pulled them too close together for Art to avoid him. The aftermath also implies that Art was starting his ''own'' game, which is probably how he got fitted with the spine-cutter. It's also never stated that he did anything beyond assembling the trap in the hotel, and overseeing the game with Matthews and Hoffman. He even stops Matthews from killing himself, and potentially killing Hoffman (as far as he knows), and it's later shown that the spine-cutter he's wearing ''isn't'' connected to the either the scale, or the door. So, really, he saved Matthews because he's just not a dick. If he'd lived, it's likely he could have been acquitted.

[[folder:Jigsaw's hypocrisy]]

[[folder:Jigsaw's use of poison]]

[[folder:Where does Jigsaw get all those wonderful toys?]]
* I can't believe no one asked this question yet but, WhereDoesHeGetAllThoseWonderfulToys Seriously, those death traps didn't build themselves out of nothing. Jigsaw was merely a civil engineer in his past life so he wasn't exactly [[Franchise/{{Batman}} Bruce Wayne]] in terms of wealth.
** Actually, the movies do state he is rather wealthy. He even owns several abandoned buildings (which are presumably where the "games" take place). It's also not unlikely that Amanda and Hoffman help him financially.
*** Of course, him being wealthy undercuts his backstory, which was that he was denied insurance coverage for an experimental treatment. He certainly had enough wealth to have paid for the treatment in cash, all the more so since the treatment did not involve surgery, which is generally more expensive than pure drug treatments. (It was stated that his cancer could ''not'' be treated by surgery.)
*** Kramer explicitly stated he could pay for it, but he was more angry with the principle of not getting the coverage.
*** Possibly his insurance plan considered the treatment ''so'' experimental that buying it outright would've obviated the rest of his coverage, meaning they'd quit paying for his already-ongoing hospital care if he did so.
** A lot of the traps' equipment consists of re-purposed materials from his properties, like machinery from old factories. That stuff wouldn't have cost him anything, if it was abandoned along with the sites.
** Amanda the junkie and Hoffman the (admittedly often-promoted) cop? Eh, maybe... Lawrence was a doctor, so there's also that.

* So why exactly does Jigsaw make all these traps where it is literally required for another person to die for the other to survive? If the purpose of his games are to test people's merit and worthiness of survival then making tests where people aren't given a chance, such as William's parasol trap where he has to choose who the shotgun kills and who it doesn't, contradicts everything Jigsaw claims to stand for. He is a hypocrite regardless because putting people in deadly situations is still murder, but it gets into hypocrite of the freaking century territory when you consider this part too.
** Well, I wondered the same thing until I realized that most of these traps were actually designed by his apprentices, so it could be explained by them not understanding Jigsaw's goal (especially when you consider the inescapable traps Amanda created), but then again, in ''Saw V'', he appears in person to explain the rules of such games, implying he approves of them (though one could argue he decides not to interfere with his apprentices' games and only appears to do his bit without giving his opinion). I also had another theory that this is FridgeBrilliance. That the makers of these movies do NOT want the viewers to like Jigsaw and that they intentionally made him gradually more hypocritical when they realized many people thought his message (enjoy life or don't live at all) made sense. Or you could TakeAThirdOption and say that Jigsaw is a freaking psychopath, and as such he is nuts and completely unreliable.
** Or there's always the WMG option: that at least some of the designated victims in such death-required traps had ''also'' been put through one of Jigsaw's ordeals, and the price of failing in their own individual games was to become cannon-fodder in somebody else's.
*** Hold up, isn't the price of failure usually ''death?!''
*** Yes, but we know that sometimes death can mean sitting in a room starving to death. It doesn't always end in a direct trap kill. Such people have already lost, so Jigsaw would have no issues with knocking them out and using them as part of someone else's test. He might even consider it an act of mercy, since he's basically giving them a small chance of living after all, if the new test subject spares them. Then again, Jigsaw might just keep right on using them in test after test until a new testy kills them.
* Given most of the ''Saw'' devices would require hours or days to assemble and then have to tested before being deployed, when would a man dying of cancer find the time to gather so many victims and "test" them? Even with assistance?
** Well, some of the simpler traps probably could be tested rather easily with a dummy, but given that his apprentices helped make some of them and expected multiple people to die anyway, it's not impossible they just slapped them together and said "what's the worst that can happen if it goes wrong? They die anyway?"
* This has nothing to do with the ''Saw'' films directly, but the public perception of the ''Saw'' series (i.e., from people who never watched it). I'm trying to figure out exactly why these people loathe the series to such a degree. Yeah, you can debate the films may not be fantastically produced, but since when did gratuitous violence single out an entire horror series as utterly deplorable torture porn (which doesn't accurately classify the series, since there's no real torture performed), and its viewers as sadistic perverts? Hollywood is built on showcasing graphic violence, especially these days, yet ''Saw'' gets singled out as THE point where it goes too far, and is an indication of the impending apocalypse? Hello?! Ever heard of Marquis De Sade, whose literature jump started the concept of sadism? Hell, before De Sade, public brutality (a la ''Gladiator'') was a staple of entertainment. Human brutality has always been around, and even with new technology, people have always discovered awful ways to kill each other. Even more ironic, when the ''Saw'' video games were released, hardcore gamers saw it as an abomination. To say nothing of the survival horror genre, ''Grand Theft Auto'', ''Gears of War'', and especially Rockstar's ''VideoGame/{{Manhunt}}'', which predated the first ''Saw'' movie, AND even made people who're used to violent video games ''very'' uncomfortable. So why single out the ''Saw'' series to this extent? It's one thing to dislike a film series, but to absolutely trash it for simply being malevolent comes off as absurd and hypocritical.
** It set a terrible trend in horror movies, that's all.
** ''Which doesn't accurately classify the series, since there's no real torture performed'': So people getting slowly crushed to death, injected with large amounts of acid, slowly getting cut in half by a pendulum, their limbs twisted and broken, and their scalps torn off for the sake of punishing them for crimes they have committed doesn't count as torture?
*** This is probably splitting hairs, but that depends on your definition of torture. Torture, to me at least, means slow and painful. With very few exceptions, most of the deaths in the films are actually quite quick, if gruesome. Most are under a second (RBT, Angel, Shotgun Collar, Garage, etc.), and almost all are under a minute. Granted, that is an extremely unpleasant minute (The Rack comes to mind...)
*** The time it takes has nothing to do with whether something is considered torture or not.
*** However, as implied above, there are exceptions. The Freezer (''III''), and starving in the bathroom (I) are definitely torture. Of course, neither is particularly gory, and neither is what people are talking about when the describe the series as [[{{Gorn}} Torture Porn]].
*** Original poster here. With few exceptions - like The Rack from ''III'' and Scalping Seat from ''IV'' - many of the gruesome deaths don't exactly seem like ''torture'' in the traditional sense. ''Film/{{Hostel}}'' does, but most of ''Saw's'' tests involve lots of self-mutilation and the occasional murder. While the victims were highly coerced to harm themselves, what with the threat of impending death, they still have some control instead of being bound, helpless, and getting tormented by some third party. This pretty much classifies every death in the first two movies, and most deaths within the entire series. Hell, even ''Film/ThePassionOfTheChrist'' fits the torture porn bill more accurately than ''Saw'' does.
*** There are plenty of forms of torture where the perpetrator never lays a finger on the victim. The United Nations Convention Against Torture defines torture as 'any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as...punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person'. So torture is the use of pain and injury, or fear of pain and injury, to force another person to behave in a certain way or perform a certain action (ie the self-mutilation in Jigsaw's traps), or punishing someone for a perceived crime through severe mental or physical suffering (Jigsaw's entire reason for his actions).
*** Also, saying that because the victims are merely "highly coerced to harm themselves" is ridiculous as in pretty much every trap the victims are FORCED to MUTILATE themselves, there's no other solution. The fact they're not tied up means nothing- they have no control, since the absolute only thing they can do to save their life is what their capturer wants.
** Popularity is the answer. Why do you think people raged about ''GTA San Andreas'' having the "sex scene" (through hacking and it was pretty lame anyway) when ''Indigo Prophecy'' had a sex scene you could control with the analog stick (and necrophilia in a cutscene)? GTA:SA was far more popular, that's why.
** People being killed quickly= okay-ish. People suffering for a minute or 2 before death= OH MY GOD THIS IS DEMON I CAN DEVIL AND IS THE END OF CINEMA!!!!!!!

* If John is wealthy enough to own several large warehouses (with previous plans to redevelop them), buy expensive medical equipment, buy the materials and equipment to build all of his traps, why did he not put that money toward treating his cancer? Yes, medical treatment for chronic diseases is expensive, but it can't be more expensive than everything else he buys, can it?
** Could be a matter of what John finds to be worth the money. For John Kramer, what's more important: prolonging a life that's inevitably going to end no matter ''what'' he does, or using it to "help" as many people as he can in the time he has left? John's not afraid of death following his suicide, so lengthening his life isn't particularly vital to him. Especially once he has Amanda & Hoffman to carry on his work.
** In ''VI'', Kramer tells the insurance agent who turned down, "Don't talk to me about money; I have money. It's about principle." Earlier in the movie he's shown bald in a flashback, obviously due to chemotherapy. So my guess is he ''did'' put money towards treating his cancer, but when he knew his death was inevitable, the games began.
** The first movie shows him getting treatment in a hospital, it just that money won't stop him from dying and he became insane over it.
* One of the later movies shows the origin of Billy the Puppet: John was making it for the child his wife Jill was pregnant with at the time (and subsequently miscarried due to an attack by one of her drug clinic patients). While it hadn't yet achieved CreepyDoll status in-universe, it still looks pretty demented. What sort of sane father would plan to give that sort of thing to ''his own kid''?!

* It bugs me that people constantly refer to Hoffman, Amanda and Lawrence with the term "apprentice". Throughout the series it was clear that the one that was being groomed to take over his work was Amanda; the other two were basically just tools he brought in (and in the former, brainwashed and possibly blackmailed) to help with the dirty work. Those two are more correctly "accomplices" than what everyone chooses to call them.
** Lawrence maybe, but Hoffman was a true apprentice. Jigsaw's goal from the start was to convert him -- teach him "a kind of rehabilitation that'll let you sleep at night". What's more, it worked. Unlike Amanda, Hoffman made real Jigsaw-style tests for victims like Strahm and the cops in ''3D''. He actually believed in John's method (remember him asking Simone if she'd learned anything?) however skewed his view on it eventually became. He intended to continue, insisting to Jill that he now "control[led] all aspects of the game". Once there was too much evidence to hide, he scorched the earth; his plan after that was probably to skip town and start the game over in another city. His one flaw as Jigsaw was his habit of indulging in personal revenge... and he was only defeated because John shared that flaw, arranging for Lawrence to avenge Jill if the need arose.
*** The latter seems unlikely with Hoffman's insistence that John's work "is almost finished". From the beginning he was only involved out of being blackmailed and wanted out, hence the GambitRoulette he pulled by tampering with Amanda's test rather than letting it play out the way it was supposed to. Strahm was less a test than an orchestrated murder due to Hoffman's ManipulativeBastard skills knowing ''exactly'' how he would act in that situation. All indications seemed to be that Hoffman was intending to finish off William's test and skip town and the Jigasw philosophy entirely, until he went completely AxCrazy in the final film.
** Hoffman's status seems to lie somewhere between an apprentice and a forced minion, like Zep or Art. He doesn't have poison in his blood or a spine-cutter on his back, but he's definitely ''coerced'' into working for John rather than recruited. Possibly John had originally had it in mind to arrange for a whole cadre of law enforcement "moles" - Hoffman and Rigg (if his test/recruitment in ''IV'' had worked out) as cops, and Logan in the forensics department - who would back up Amanda and Lawrence in setting up and running games, then concealing evidence and/or setting up others to take the blame.

* Did Jigsaw ever wonder if his traps would have the opposite effect on the victim's psyche if they survived? For example, plenty of soldiers get into horrifying situations during wartime and many usually suffer PTSD symptoms even when there is no danger around. Same goes for [=POWs=]. While a few people did come out a little happier with their lives (Amanda being one of them, although that's YMMV), just as much people may come out of it learning absolutely nothing but the fact that they were part of a crazy torturer's mind games and were somehow lucky to survive. [[MiseryBuildsCharacter Misery does not always build character]] you know.
** See Simone. She rejects John's idea of rehabilitation, asking (not verbatim), "What am I supposed to have learned from being forced to cut off my own arm?" She even calls out other survivors who seem to have bought into it, questioning their supposed lack of effort to get their life together that lead them to a place where they were placed into a trap.
* What if in the time between Kramer recording the tape and the victim being put in the trap they have gotten a condition that somehow makes it impossible for them to get out, like they're blind or otherwise physically disabled? What if they're deaf and can't hear the tape?
** Presumably, the test is either canceled (because the victim's psychological profile has probably changed enough to invalidate its "lesson") or re-designed to take their impairment into account. If it's canceled, the traps designed for them can be re-purposed for somebody else, same as the Reverse Bear-trap wound up being used repeatedly throughout the series.
* Hoffman has always bugged me. One of the complaints about the first movie when it came out was "How can Jigsaw do all of this by himself?" In order to answer that question, he was given apprentices. However, Hoffman was never given helpers, and yet he manages to set up traps that are far more elaborate than anything Jigsaw ever did. The main trap in ''Saw VI'' is a great example. First of all, we are supposed to believe that he built everything shown in that movie (the carousel, the breathing thing, and, especially, the steam maze) all by himself. We are also supposed to believe that he kidnapped, what, 14 people? In one night? Really?
** The only explanation I can come up with is that [[AWizardDidIt Hoffman is magical]].
** Perhaps Jigsaw himself acquired the parts and made the blueprints for the traps before his death, or even started construction on them, and Hoffman merely got them finished and utilized them.
** In ''VI'', at least, Hoffman is shown setting up the Rack, and it seems like Jigsaw was teaching both him and Amanda how to build traps on the job.
* How did Hoffman know that Amanda was with Cecil on the night of the miscarriage? Also, why did Amanda let Hoffman blackmail her? John was already on his death bed, so he might not have even lived long enough for Hoffman to tell him. There was also the possibility of Jeff killing John (which he did). Even if John had lived long enough for this, it would have been Hoffman's word against Amanda's.
** Because... Hoffman is a '''cop'''. It's perfectly feasible that he knew of Amanda's involvement, or figured it out from her or Cecil's known associates. Point is, if anyone would know, it would be him.
* Does John realize that when people are under pressure, they make mistakes? His games are unfair. It is HIS fault some victims fail the tests and die. If Jigsaw is really so smart, shouldn't he know that putting selfish employees in a game will not end well for them? He did background checks on these people, so it should not be a surprise they would double cross each other to save their own butts. Also, he expect his victims who are scared and confused to solve puzzles in under 1-5 minutes? He expect confused and angry criminals and sleazy employees to work together and cooperate?!
** Jigsaw is both a hypocrite and a complete ass with brain cancer. So, he's not remotely sane. I doubt any of that occurred to him.
** Most of Jigsaw's "main" tests follow a [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption similar formula]] up until [[Film/SawV the fifth film]]: they all blatantly rely on their victims behaving a certain way, often without even ''[[PoorCommunicationKills hinting]]'' at the alternative philosophy/behavior necessary for them to survive ([[Film/SawIV accepting that you can't save everyone]], [[Film/SawIII learning how to forgive, keeping someone alive]], [[Film/Saw3D admitting that you lied]], [[Film/SawII simply being patient and even just minding your]] [[Film/SawI surroundings]]), then killing or, in Jeff and Riggs' case, ''[[KickTheDog mocking]]'' and killing them for either not learning anything (Jeff), or not even understanding the point of their test (Riggs). ''[[Film/SawV Saw V]]'' is the first instance where an alternative (work together... and for the love of god, ''take Jigsaw and his accomplice's threats '''seriously''', Strahm!'') is ''clearly'' implied, the traps are ''clearly'' meant for more than just [[DwindlingParty killing them one by one]] and the survivors almost fail (and almost [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat certainly]] die regardless) because they flat-out [[WhatAnIdiot ignore]] the [[ItsAllAboutMe purpose]] of their test.
* The obvious timing errors in some trap sequences is one thing, but what confuses me even more is how the timers even start on their own, especially by a separate device.
** From about the [[Film/SawIII third film onward]], most of the traps activate because; 1) A victim pulls the tripwire just before/after the video/tape is played, in the former case, the trap is often timed to activate after the victim has had ample time to hear the rules. 2) Someone is observing the game and activating the traps/timers accordingly by themselves. Before then, most of the traps are fairly basic anyway and, therefore, either they weren't timed anyway, or they were timed to leave the victim a couple of ''hours''.
* In-universe, what's with Jigsaw's obsession with pigs? His "volunteers" wear pig masks. Even the brazen bull-like contraption at the end of ''Saw 3D'' is in the shape of a giant pig.
** In ''Saw IV'', John is shown to kidnap his first victim Cecil (the druggie that caused Jill to miscarry) at a Chinese Year of the Pig Festival. He does so by stealing 2 plastic pig masks from one of the stands: One to conceal his identity, and the other one with a rag of chloroform inside to use on Cecil. I'm going to assume he just kinda decided to stick with the motif while also making it a morbid tribute to his unborn son Gideon, who would have been born in the Year of the Pig. Also, as he explains in ''Jigsaw'', pigs are remarkably compassionate animals, showing distress whenever they see another animal, including humans, in pain. I guess he wished we could be more like them.
* What was the point of the "game" part of the tests, back when they were still arranged by John? John learned to appreciate the life he had when his suicide attempt failed, and learned the importance of the will to live when he had to ignore the immense amount of pain from extracting the metal from his wound in order to save himself. Duplicating that for his test subjects doesn't require making it into anything like a game. Plus what he did to save his life didn't require fast or smart thinking while under a considerable amount of stress, nor did it require applying concentration and fine motor skills while under stress and a short time limit (like having to use blood slick hands to unlock a padlock at the back of your head).

[[folder:General franchise]]

** He's just the guy from Seven with the serial numbers filed off. He really is a hypocrite, and his problem is envy. He wants what others have, the potential to live a normal life, but he can't so [[StopHavingFunGuys he gives them the choice of dying or living how he thinks they should]].

*** To go with this; Colon cancer is one of the cancers that sends secondaries to brains quite (relatively) commonly. Cancer doesn't have to spread by direct contact with the primary.

** Some of the traps have no time limit until the person tries to brute-force their way out of it and trigger the timer, like the reverse bear traps. And some of the traps, like the glass box in ''Saw II'' and the beaker of acid in ''Saw III'', have an incredibly obvious solution that the person avoids in favor of something that will hurt, a ''lot'', and will most likely make it impossible to solve. The glass box had the girl put her other hand through the other trapdoor when her first hand got caught, instead of trying to free her first hand or using one hand to hold the door open and the other to grab the syringe (she was shown to be an idiot, though, and the "Sarin gas" could be an excuse for the freakout), and even if the person in 3 could see the pour spout on the opposite side of the beaker, the ''first'' thing I thought was "Chains... The acid can be poured out away from her" (she even lifts and tips it slightly to get a better vantage point, after running her hands over where the chains are linked to the beaker, so it's not like it couldn't be moved). It makes sense that you can't think of something when you have ten seconds to cut a key out of your skull, but when you're sitting in a chair with a large bladed object strapped to your face, the key phrase would be "careful, planned movements" (not "jump up before you understand your surroundings"), and some of the victims' actions are far from the most intelligent thing I could see, and really, in many cases probably the most dangerous thing possible short of jamming or scraping a key or scalpel or whatever into the carotid artery.

* In ''Saw'' and ''Saw II'', Jigsaw uses poisons... And estimates, with a fair bit of accuracy, the speed at which they would react (assuming that the characters didn't fall for the other traps) ... Which is problematic, because each person should have more variation on how much time it takes for them to succumb to poisoning. They (the writers) should've factored in weight, fat in the person's body, etc., and secondary symptoms of the poisons. So how does Jigsaw accurately guess that (assuming that he didn't have access to medical records)?

*** And in the first movie, Jigsaw is surprised when he comes back to his workshop and the man in the drill trap has already woken up.

* Just a legal point: Jigsaw says at least once that he's not a murderer, because he gives all his subjects a chance (however slim) to escape. However, there's definitely a crapload of crimes he ''could'' be charged with (kidnapping, unlawful detention, etc). Is his statement that he's not a murderer technically correct, or is he just that far out off-plumb?
** I'm no law expert (especially not US law since I'm European), but I assume he could still be condemned for endangering other people's lives by putting them in the traps, at least second-degree murder, and definitely for torture. His association with Amanda also makes him an accomplice of a murderer. But either way, I think what he means is that he doesn't consider himself to be a murderer, regardless of what the law says.
** Best case scenario, he gets off on "only" a huge numbers of counts of manslaughter. However, he's designing things that are intended to kill people, and leaving them to die unless they do something horrible/self-destructive. I'm pretty sure that American courts would say murder in the 1st degree is an acceptable sentence.
*** Simple. Jigsaw is insane, and not a lawyer. Aside from that, the first answer is probably correct: He wasn't talking in legal terms, but in how he saw himself.
** Well, if he had lived past the first three movies, then he probably would've been caught and tried for all those counts but seeing as how he's insane, he could be put in an insane asylum or under medical care for his cancer or something like that.
** Lawrence, Jigsaw and some of the cops say that Jigsaw isn't "technically" a murderer. These people are wrong. Murder, as defined in most U.S. states, is "knowingly causing the death of another human being". Jigsaw knowingly put his victims into situations that would result in their deaths if they failed to escape. He put them there, and he thereby caused their deaths. If they fail to escape, it's murder. If they escape, it's attempted murder.
** Moreover, ''every'' death in a fixed-location trap rates as felony murder, because they're the direct consequence of a felony (kidnapping).

'''''All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned!'''''

[[folder:''Jigsaw'']]
* How exactly did Logan pull off a good portion of his whole stunt? How did he manage to get inside Eleanor's studio to plant that body in her closet, how did he get the hanging body up on the bridge without anyone seeing him (even if he did it in the dead of night, likely someone would notice a man hanging a dead human off a bridge) how and when did he dig up John's corpse and replace it with Edgar's, again, with nobody seeing them? Did he grave-dig and replace a body all by himself? It took a small crane to lift the casket out of the ground, how did he manage that? Did he find help in people like Brad and Ryan? If so, how? If he attended the support group, isn't that something his loved ones would have maybe known about?
** Not sure about a lot of these, but the body hung from the overpass might've been initially strapped to the side of the parapet and covered by a tarp, making it look like some minor repair to the bridge was in progress. Well after Logan had slipped away, a timer cut the straps and released the body to dangle from the rope. As for the switcheroo with the corpses, who says Logan removed the casket from the ground at all? He could've dug away the soil above the casket, opened the lid ''inside'' the grave, swapped out the bodies, then closed the lid and replaced the carefully-preserved turf.
* Additionally, what was Ryan's test supposed to be? John points out that the No Exit trap that Ryan got trapped in wasn't supposed to happen. So how was the game supposed to continue if that event hadn't happened?
** Not everyone has a personalized test in group games, and the elimination of two other participants would have gone the same way regardless of Ryan's actions. Even if nobody had tried to bust through that door and the last two had made it to the final room with two legs, it would've still come down to two players and a shotgun.
* In ''Jigsaw'', we see an apprentice we've never known about: Logan, who survived his test years ago and whom John took sympathy on and enlisted him. Who else besides the two of them knew about his apprenticeship? Did Amanda and Hoffman and Lawrence know about him? We know his test took place about 10 years ago, so was that before or after Amanda's, since we see him and John constructing what might be the ORIGINAL Reverse Bear Trap, if not one of them. Did he ever help out with other tests, or did he just lie in wait for 10 years?
** It's unclear whether Logan was originally an ''apprentice'' - i.e. someone Jigsaw was actually training and indoctrinating to continue his "work" indefinitely - so much as a tit-for-tat short-term ''partner''. Logan is into revenge, so he could understand John's wish to punish the others once he was told what each of them had done. Possibly Logan told Jigsaw that he wasn't able to absorb John's broader "appreciate your life" philosophy - his past captivity in the Middle East surely taught him that torture is '''not''' therapeutic - but he did agree to help construct ''one'' trap, to compensate for Jigsaw's belated act of mercy and to make amends for mixing up the X-rays in the first place. If his wife hadn't been murdered, Logan might never have had anything to do with the Jigsaw crimes again.
* In ''Jigsaw'', how did John know that Anna killed her baby? There was nobody else in the house that could have seen. Or that Mitch was unaware that the brakes didn't work on the motorcycle he sold? Or that Ryan's crash was quote-unquote "his fault?" Or that Carly was the purse-snatcher? Or that Logan's the one who messed up the x-rays? How does he know half of the things he knows that gives him justification to put these people in their traps?
** For Anna it's hinted he just put the pieces together from hearing her breaking down from across the street just before her baby's crying stopped. He mentions Mitch's victim was his nephew, so it's not inconceivable he was close at hand to get a look at the bike very soon after the crash, or knew the deal well enough to inspect the garage later, where he maybe found evidence. And it's not out of question that Logan's role in the X-ray mixup would come to his knowledge after the mishap was detected. Can't help with the other two.
** We see Mitch covering up the leaked brake fluid with his foot during the flashback to the sale. Possibly John saw the footprint left behind in the puddle, and knew it didn't match his nephew's footwear at the time. Suspicions roused, he inquired at nearby motorcycle mechanics' shops and learned that the brakes on Mitch's bike had been giving him trouble before, finally receiving an estimate for repairs that Mitch was unwilling to pay for.
* Our killer goes to the hospital where his pawn Edgar Munsen is comatose. He injects his IV with something milky white which immediately causes Munsen to wake up, despite the actual doctors believing it could take him years to recover. This magical-coma-fixer juice makes no sense. What is it, how did the killer get it, and why wouldn't medical professionals utilize this stuff on someone who's an important informant to an ongoing crime spree?
** Edgar’s coma was medically induced for his own safety due to the proximity of the bullet he’d been shot with to his heart, and therefore could be reversed at any time. The doctors were waiting for him to stabilise before doing anything further. Waking him from the coma was issuing a pretty-much-guaranteed death sentence, but since his purpose was to be buried in John’s grave anyway that didn’t matter. Logan probably wanted Edgar to wake up and see him as the killer so he’d know his fate was a result of having killed the guy’s wife.
* How did John Kramer know Ryan would be the one to fall into the wire trap? Ryan's name was on the tape recorder. What if Ryan had gotten killed by the saw blades at the beginning, and Mitch later falls into the wire trap? Heck, what if Anna had ended up in Mitch's trap instead of Mitch?
** The tape recorder only had "Play Me" written on it. The recording didn't specify any person's name.
* In the movie ''Jigsaw'', why did Nelson kill his victims in the same way the participants of Jigsaw's "game" died 10 years ago? No one found out about those deaths. So recreating them in the present serves no purpose. In fact, why did he even do anything related to Jigsaw at all? If his overall goal was just to frame a corrupt cop for murder and then kill him, wouldn't it have been easier to do so without making it look like Jigsaw was somehow involved?
** Well, there's the "Batman" line of thought; drawing upon ominous mythos of the Jigsaw Killer sends a message to other malefactors warning them to stop their bad behavior lest they incur his wrath yada yada yada.
** Did he want to frame the corrupt cop for murder or manipulate him into confessing to his wrongdoing? It might have been easier to lure the guy by his curiosity than to take him by force (he is a trained cop, after all). Especially if our new Jigsaw already formulated plans for the other five targets- kill two birds with one stone, as it were.
** Staging the same game ''he'd'' been intended to suffer may have been cathartic for him, or it may simply have been convenient since John had already set up practically everything except the laser collars. (The latter were probably Logan's effort to out-class his predecessor's primitive tech, as well as a necessary substitute for the shotgun if he was to pose as one of the last two victims.) If nothing else, he could be fairly confident of getting away with such a recreation, given that ''John'' already had.
* Did Logan outright miss the point of John's philosophy or should that be chalked up to a failure to provide any proper context to any of the present-day victims? We had Edgar being straight up ''executed'' in the hospital, with the scant bit of information we got he was tasked to survive by retrieving and activating the remote device, which he did. The replacement victims to duplicate the barn game seemed to only serve the purpose of deceiving the audience with matching dead bodies, a plan that would accomplish absolutely nothing if they "won". Halloran, despite being an outright dick in activating Logan's collar first, supposedly followed the "rules" of the tape to confess and was left to die regardless. He kept referring to the "game" but all we effectively saw was him sentencing people to death. Is Logan slipping into Hoffman territory of using the Jigsaw moniker to serve his own needs or did the screenplay just completely screw up in giving us a solid reason for any of the deaths outside of the barn game?
** Logan may have been using Jigsaw's methods to carry out several straight-out premeditated murders, while casting suspicion on a non-existent Jigsaw copycat. He doesn't actually ''want'' to "play a game", as evinced by his parting line to Halloran; he just wants to kill people in nasty ways in revenge for the dead, while dressing it up as another Jigsaw spree to throw off potential pursuers.
* How on earth did nobody discover the barn for ''ten years''? Did nobody in the Tuck family check their (apparently well-maintained) barn on their property, which we saw had never been scrubbed of evidence after the game? Jill herself wouldn't become a confidante to John's work until being introduced the "new" Amanda, which chronologically took place well ''after'' the barn test. One of the first things the FBI did after taking over the case in ''Saw IV'' was to go right after Jill as a suspect and, especially after turning herself in later on, did the thought never cross a single person's mind to investigate the property or follow up on a missing persons case that fell right into the later-well-known Jigsaw MO?
** We only know that the property was connected to Jill's family. It's possible that the connection was a fairly distant one, that didn't come to light until family-tree tracing services like Ancestry.com became more readily available.
** About the barn's well-maintained appearance: The farm may have been in ''much'' worse shape when Logan first came back to re-set the various traps. He might have done a load of repair-work before setting the events we see into motion. He'd need to make sure the new set of victims couldn't just kick their way out through the barn walls, after all.
* In the original barn game, Mitch and Carly both had individual traps to face, and the final trap was a face-off between two survivors over who'd do what with the shotgun: a confrontation which ended up pitting Anna and Ryan against each other. But, wait... wouldn't ''Logan himself'' have also been present at the conclusion, if John hadn't given him too much sedative? Having him unceremoniously taken out of the running by the buckethead trap was never part of the plan. So was there an additional trap designed for that game, that John cut out of the sequence when the candidates were whittled down to two early, by drugging Anna unconscious when she was on the brink of finding it?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:''Saw V'']]
* Why is the Razor Wire Maze still standing when Strahm visits the location in ''Saw V''? The body is removed, and as best as I can tell the blood has been cleaned off, but the trap itself is still there. Isn't "removing the razor wire" part of "cleaning the crime scene" in the ''Saw'' universe?
** On a similar note, why are the police not ''constantly'' monitoring that one house from the first film that Jigsaw keeps reusing?
*** The police don't know where it is until Hoffman leads Erickson there at the end of ''Saw V''. At the end of that movie the only 'non-psychos' that know about the place are Erickson, Brit, and Mallick. It's safe to assume other cops showed up shortly afterwards to assist with the investigation (between ''V'' and ''VI'').
*** The "five become one" game was in a completely different location from the house. Nobody besides Hoffman and Lawrence know where it is.
*** Hmm... in that case I guess it ''is'' possible that the house was never found, but only if Lawrence converted ''really'' fast so he wouldn't tell anyone. And Jigsaw has to have covered his tracks even better than we already knew; for example, didn't Eric Matthews drive his squad car to the house? Even if they moved or destroyed it, those cars are surely tracked from the station by GPS or something. (Also, I don't remember off the top of my head if any victims or traps from that house were mentioned by the police later, but the whole thing falls apart if so.)
*** Lawrence did convert pretty quickly, as shown in ''3D''. Since John nursed him back to health instead of taking him to a hospital, he had little contact with the outside world until he was able to actually move on his own again. By that point, he was firmly in John's corner.
** Replying to [=OP=], the ''structure'' (i.e. the fencing and the door) are still there, the ''wire'' was cleared out, it's not shown very well, but there's a shot that's clearly from behind one of the fences, and another with the fencing visible over Strahm's shoulder, and there isn't any wire there.
* If the house at the end of ''Saw V'' is the nerve gas house from ''Saw II'' and Erickson has alerted the authorities of its location, then why has the bathroom not been discovered and cleaned up by the time of ''Saw 3D''?
** The 5-Become-1 test takes place at a totally different location. The house shown in ''Saw II'', ''V'', & ''3D'' is never discovered by the authorities.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:''Saw IV'']]
* One of the series' traps involves two men bound to a winch. Guy A has his eyes sewn shut, and guy B his mouth, theoretically to "prevent communication". Did nobody consider that A could still ask yes/no questions and get meaningful responses from B? Are they really that shortsighted?
** Why would A ask yes or no questions? He doesn't know the other guy's mouth is sewn shut. He also has no idea what's going on around him - so no reason to ask or talk to begin with.
*** Me again. Does he have to have an idea what's going on? He should feel right away that he's being restrained, for one. Odds are that he'd be able to hear the other guy breathing, which in most people would cue "Who's there?" or the like. Any response from B would tip A off that B can't talk for some reason -- why doesn't matter.
*** That also bugged me. I was confused as to how A couldn't just say (once he had the general idea that B couldn't talk) "do some action that produces sound so many times for yes, so many times for no, and so many times for I dunno." Then they could work together to get out of there.
*** Well, look at it like this. If you were chained to something in a room with your eyes sewn shut, wouldn't you immediately think the other person is a threat, somehow, if not completely responsible?
*** Possibly, but exactly how else are you going to escape? Your only chance is assuming the other guy doesn't want to kill you.
*** Well they didnt even make any effort to communicate, and even if the other guy wasn't responding, you'd think if the response to your call was "mmf, mmf" coming from the other guy, you would suspect something is up.
*** So why didn't the ''other'' guy try going "mmf, mmf" in an S-O-S pattern, or otherwise signaling that he was just as much in need of help as the blinded one?
*** Well, don't know about you guys, but if I suddenly woke up unable to open my eyes, chained to something and with a complete stranger near me, I wouldn't be able to think much aside from "what is going on?". Some might have the nerve to calm down in extreme situations and think of something, others simply don't.
** It actually bugged me that the guy with his mouth shut didn't force his mouth open to speak and try to find a way out together. Yes, it would hurt like hell, but it would be a lot easier than the other guy forcing his ''eyelids'' open, it'd probably save them and ''he actually did it after he killed to other guy anyway''.
* In ''Saw IV'' what was up with all the MindScrew transfers between scenes? A guy breaks a window and suddenly it shatters into a door and suddenly we're in another area? My friends were getting frustrated by it and eventually screaming at the TV "Stop it!" They never did that in the first three movies. Why try something annoying and awkward like that now?
** I don't have a good answer for that, but in the earlier three movies they also tried to put plot above gore and TechnologyPorn. All of that went out the window in the fourth movie, and it only went downhill from there, so it's quite likely that they were just trying to be flashy and stylistic instead of producing anything of quality.
** Actually they used screwy scene transitions like that in the first couple of movies. In "Saw 2" Detective Matthews appeared to walk from his hotel room onto the first crime scene.
** There's solid logic to ''Saw IV's'' fragmented narrative. Like ''Saw II'', ''Saw IV'' splits into two separate chronologies, though it was less obvious in ''IV's'' case. When Rigg's test begins, the viewer watches him try to solve Jigsaw's puzzles. After each test, which results in the death of whoever Rigg tried to save, the narrative shifts to Detective Strahm and Agent Perez investigating those murders, and then back to Rigg again. Again, like ''Saw II'', near the movie's end, it begins to explain the chronology of the narrative shifts. Rigg's test starts around the same time as Jeff's final test (from ''Saw III'') after he killed Jigsaw. Not too confused yet, right? Okay, now when Strahm/Perez closed in on the same warehouse, some time had to pass before the investigation started (between several hours or even an entire day, though it's tough to guess with the movie's screwy chronology). Then, once viewers see Rigg fail the final test (which kills Detective Matthews with two ice blocks), we realize Detective Hoffman was behind Rigg's test. After that, the movie flashes back to ''Saw IV's'' opening scene with the autopsy done on Jigsaw's body, and Hoffman grabbing the tape from Jigsaw's stomach. Chronologically, that scene happened last, not first as viewers originally assumed.
*** On the one hand, this was a very brave, atypical approach to making more ''Saw'' sequels [[RetCon without severely damaging the mythology]]. On the other hand, this approach confused ''many'' viewers (especially non-fans), largely because of how subtle and non-distinctive these details are. It also doesn't help if you, like several others, [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132626/board/nest/166324389 couldn't tell Detectives Strahm and Hoffman apart]]. Even if you figured out everything above without help (rottentomatoes forums helped me out ''greatly''), it's impossible not to think the overall plan was [[GambitRoulette extremely convoluted]]. Think too hard about everything, and it makes your head hurt.
* Why does the hair trap in ''Saw IV'' have a timer? Was it really necessary?
** Yes, because it limited how much time Rigg had to search the room. This ensured he wouldn't find Brenda's tape and circumvent ''her'' test.
[[/folder]]