History WMG / SAW

* Nah, the series has ended. [spoiler: Those two people are the two guys from the start of the movie. They did nothing but finally end the jigsaw killings. Gordon agreed with John, but both Amanda and Hoffman were simply psychopaths with no attempt to justify their behavior and so Gordon has no reason to continue the games]

Afterwards, the Jigsaw philosophy slowly gains recruits, eventually being a considerable cult and even taking over small villages. After a century, it's one of the most powerful forces in America and has outlets in other countries. A little while later, and soon there are Jigsaws EVERYWHERE (deverywhere, deverywhere). Every household in America gets tested (gets tested, gets tested). It becomes bigger than hula hoops (hula hoops, hula hoops). Eventually it is the leading cause of death in the world and not a single person goes through their life without undergoing a Jigsaw trap. Quality of life declines and people forget what they knew, as slowly the Jigsaw become a seperate, more powerful class than the Non-Jigsaw. They're worshipped as gods, and scientific knowledge shifts to being exclusively the domain of the Jigsaw, as the Jigsaw do research into new traps and execute the Non-Jigsaw scientists for stupid reasons. Eventually the Jigsaw create AIM from IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream, who kills the Jigsaw and most of the Non-Jigsaw, but still tries to perform his function...

** I didn't miss it, I considered and rejected it. First off, it makes John petty and dishonest, traits he's never shown before. Secondly, the fact that Dagen got so close to winning proves that it WASN'T impossible. There's no way John could have known for certain the exact instant at which his pectorals would rip, and had they done it a second later he would have won. So, either John screwed up on his trap intending it to work, or he ALMOST screwed up on a trap he intended NOT to work. I think the former works far better.

** I didn't miss it, I considered and rejected it. First off, it makes John petty and dishonest, traits he's never shown before. Secondly, the fact that Dagen got so close to winning proves that it WAS impossible. There's no way John could have known for certain the exact instant at which his pectorals would rip, and had they done it a second later he would have won. So, either John screwed up on his trap intending it to work, or he ALMOST screwed up on a trap he intended NOT to work. I think the former works far better.

* Ah, but you missed the cruel point of Dagen's final test. Jigsaw knew ''damn well'' that the pectorals weren't strong enough to support a grown man's weight for that long. He was punishing Dagen not just for lying about being in a trap, but for making him look sloppy by screwing up the details. So did his wife have a chance? I think so -- but Dagen had to think for himself and not just trust the tape (see IV and V, as well as the VI theory above). There are places he could've put the hooks that might have worked. By trusting in his lie, he doomed Joyce.

!!William didn't have to kill a single person in his game in ''Saw VI''

First off, I don't buy that [[spoiler: Hoffman dies, Jill left him in a much more desperate situation and he found an out]]. The reason I pick these three character is because each of them represents Jigsaw's failure. In the case of Hoffman and Gordon, both of them were underestimated. They found the will to live, even after a "Game Over!" Now, both of them want to be the new Jigsaw, and they will fight for that right. Bobby, however, is their opposite. Rather than pulling victory from the jaws of defeat, he lost the game because the trap failed. John was wrong, his pecks ripped, and his wife died even though he had, by any reasonable standard, won. So, where the games represent a way of rewarding strength to Hoffman and Gordon, to Dagen they are nothing but sadistic mind-fucks. For that reason, he will be determined to stop both of them at all costs, and become a counter jigsaw-killer, finding ways to fuck with the games from outside (one possibility is he finds a way to communicate the nature of a trap to a victim, so that they don't have to listen to the tape recorder, and thus can work without a timer), helping the victims, and eventually killing both Gordon and Hoffman.

First off, I don't buy that [[spoiler: Hoffman dies, Jill left him in a much more desperate situation and he found an out]]. The reason I pick these three character is because each of them represents Jigsaw's failure. In the case of Hoffman and Gordon, both of them were underestimated. They found the will to live, even after a "Game Over!" Now, both of them want to be the new Jigsaw, and they will fight for that right. Peter, however, is their opposite. Rather than pulling victory from the jaws of defeat, he lost the game because the trap failed. John was wrong, his pecks ripped, and his wife died even though he had, by any reasonable standard, won. So, where the games represent a way of rewarding strength to Hoffman and Gordon, to Dagen they are nothing but sadistic mind-fucks. For that reason, he will be determined to stop both of them at all costs, and become a counter jigsaw-killer, finding ways to fuck with the games from outside (one possibility is he finds a way to communicate the nature of a trap to a victim, so that they don't have to listen to the tape recorder, and thus can work without a timer), helping the victims, and eventually killing both Gordon and Hoffman.

[[WMG:Jigsaw is a [[DoctorWho Time Lord]], and [[DemonicDummy Billy]] is his TARDIS.]]
Because ''someone'' had to say it.

First off, I don't buy that [[spoiler: Hoffman dies, Jill left him in a much more desperate situation and he found an out]]. The reason I pick these three character is because each of them represents Jigsaw's failure. In the case of Hoffman and Gordon, both of them were underestimated. They found the will to live, even after a "Game Over!" Now, both of them want to be the new Jigsaw, and they will fight for that right. Peter, however, is their opposite. Rather than pulling victory from the jaws of defeat, he lost the game because the trap failed. John was wrong, his pecks ripped, and his wife died even though he had, by any reasonable standard, won. So, where the games represent a way of rewarding strength to Hoffman and Gordon, to Dagen they are nothing but sadistic mind-fucks. For that reason, he will be determined to stop both of them at all costs, and become a counter jigsaw-killer, finding ways to fuck with the games from outside, helping the victims, and eventually killing both Gordon and Hoffman.

[[WMG: William didn't have to kill a single person in his game in ''Saw VI'']]
This is a theory that has been floating around in my head for a while, and it has been in there long enough that I think I may have some proof for it. Basically, I don't think William had to choose between killing anyone during his game in Saw VI; I think there was a way for everyone involved in the traps to live.

First of all, look at Saw V: the people in the sewer trap thought they had to fight each other and that the trap was Survival of the Fittest, but it turned out in the end that they were supposed to work together. I don't think it's inconceivable for that kind of aesop change to happen in Saw VI, as well; William thinks he is being taught a lesson about the flaws in his perception about the relative worth of people's lives (for example, a healthy loner is not worth more than a sick grandmother), but it turns out he's really being encouraged to just drop those perceptions completely (rather than just correct them), and to give everyone a chance at life; in other words, to not try to assign life a value. After all, Jigsaw basically told William that his formula for deciding whether someone got coverage was BS because it didn't take into account the human will to live. If William was just being encouraged to rethink his perceptions on the relative worth of human life, then that would just mean modifying his formula, but I think Jigsaw would want him to just forget about his formula.

Now, I think there was a way for William to go about each each trap without killing anyone. I suspect that the Breathing Mask Trap was designed so that it wouldn't actually kill William. After all, without him, none of the other traps can go as planned, and thus Hoffman wouldn't have been able to carry Jigsaw's final will, and why make an innocent janitor go through everything that William had to go through? Thus, perhaps the trap would release them both if William were to simply breath enough to supposedly kill himself. This would have taught him that, though Hank was less healthy than him, that didn't mean Hank deserved to die.

With the Barbed-Wire Nooses, I think the responsibility was more on Allen's shoulder, but he could have survived. Watch the scene: his hands are released well before the noose tightened, meaning he could have grabbed the noose so that it wouldn't cut his neck when he fell. It certainly would have been painful, but considering the alternative (death), it's preferable. And why else would the director have included a scene of his hands have been released? He could have very well said, "Fuck you!" without his hands being released, so it couldn't have just been for storytelling purposes

The Steam Room is simpler to explain. Debbie could have just used to band-saw to cut the device off of herself. The x-rays were probably placed there to make her think she had to maim William to get the key (like the faux Survival of the Fittest theme in Saw V), even though she didn't.

Finally, in the Carousel Trap, what if there was no limit on the number of times William could have pushed the buttons to raise the shotgun? I can't think of any evidence to support this, but if it were the case, it would have sent the message that the limits on how many people should be allowed to live (a parallel to the idea that some people shouldn't be given insurance coverage) are all an illusion created by the higher-ups (in the case of the trap, the higher-up is Jigsaw; in the case of health insurance, it's William). I know it's a ConverseError to assume that since this moral makes sense, then the possibility that lead to it must be true, but I thought I'd bring it up anyways.

Most importantly, though, remember that Jigsaw said to William, "You think it is the living who will have ultimate judgment over you because the dead will have no claim to your soul, but you may be mistaken." However, at the end of the movie, it ''is'' the living (Brent and Tara) who have ultimate judgment over him. Thus, the only way this quote can be relevant is if it is the people who died in the traps (i.e. whom William killed) that are the dead that have a claim to his soul. In other words, had he not killed anyone, there would be no dead to claim his soul, and thus perhaps he would have been saved.

On a side note, since Jigsaw could predict human behavior, perhaps he designed the tape that played at the end of the film specifically to encourage Tara or Brent to kill William. If that's the case, he could have had two tapes ready to play when William made it to the end: one which he knew would cause Brent or Tara to pull the level, and one which would have encouraged them to spare him, or perhaps told William to not stand on the platform that activated the switch, and that one would have played if he had pressed the button in the Carousel trap more than twice, and/or Hank had survived, etc. In other words, maybe William's real test was to find a way to let everyone live, to give up his insurance-based view that some people must die for others to keep living, and he failed that test miserably, and thus his punishment was to die by Brent's hand.

* I really like this theory -- in fact, it improves ''VI'' quite a bit for me. Pity no one in the film figures it out.
* I like this theory as well and to add to it, not just the sewer trap but the entire setup of Saw V could have been fixed through teamwork instead of one person dying. Trap 1: The same key opens all collars. get the key and just pass it down. Trap 2: The explosion-safe spots can fit more than one person in them. Trap 3: All of them hold the cables. Trap 4: All of them should have been alive at that point, so 10 pints between 5 people isn't so horrible.
** When I said "the sewer trap", I ''was'' referring to all four of those traps collectively, since they all take place in a sewer.

** When I said "the sewer trap", I ''was'' referring to all four of those traps collectively, since they all take place in a sewer.

First of all, look at Saw V: the people in the sewer trap thought they had to fight each other and that the trap was Survival of the Fittest, but it turned out in the end that they were supposed to work together. I don't think it's inconceivable for that kind of aesop change to happen in Saw VI, as well; William thinks he is being taught a lesson about the flaws in his perception about the relative worth of people's lives (for example, a health loner is not worth more than a sick grandmother), but it turns out he's really being encouraged to just drop those perceptions completely (rather than just correct them), and to give everyone a chance at life; in other words, to not try to assign life a value. After all, Jigsaw basically told William that his formula for deciding whether someone got coverage was BS because it didn't take into account the human will to live. If William was just being encouraged to rethink his perceptions on the relative worth of human life, then that would just mean modifying his formula, but I think Jigsaw would want him to just forget about his formula.

* I like this theory as well and to add to it, not just the sewer trap but the entire setup of Saw V could have been fixed through teamwork instead of one person dying. Trap 1: The same key opens all collars. get the key and just pass it down. Trap 2: The explosion-safe spots can fit more than one person in them. Trap 3: All of them hold the cables. Trap 4: All of them should have been alive at that point, so 10 pints between 5 people isn't so horrible.

* I really like this theory -- in fact, it improves ''VI'' quite a bit for me. Pity no one in the film figures it out.