Characters / Saw: Jigsaw and Accomplices

Saw Main Character Index
Jigsaw and Accomplices (John Kramer) | Other Antagonists | Law Enforcement (Metropolitan Police Department) | Other Characters (I-III, IV-VI, 3D-X)

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WARNING: All spoilers in this character subpage are unmarked. Read on or go back — make your choice.

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Jigsaw Killers and Apprentices:

In General

John Kramer himself admits that he never came up with the name "Jigsaw" or "Jigsaw Killer"; the press dubbed him so because of his penchant for carving a jigsaw-shaped piece of flesh from his dead victims — a reminder of the "missing piece" of the "human puzzle" those victims lacked, which he believes could have saved their lives: the apparent "survival instinct".

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• Animal Motifs: Pigs. John was a believer in the Eastern Zodiac, and his unborn son would have been born on the Year of the Pig. He twists this imagery to symbolize a decaying world, creating pig masks for both disciples and victims to wear, and building some traps with a correlation to pigs; for example, the Pig Vat from Saw III has a victim slowly drowning in liquefied pig parts, and the Brazen Bull from Saw 3D has its ouside structure shaped like a pig. The family of his ex-wife Jill also owned a pig farm, which he uses for one of his first games in Jigsaw.
• Arch-Enemy: Most of them have had at least one hero as an Arch-Enemy.
  • John had Eric and Jeff. Eric hates John for kidnapping his son Daniel, while Jeff gets his revenge on him for kidnapping his wife Lynn (though he was ultimately triggered by Amanda shooting her).
  • Hoffman had Strahm, the first law enforcement officer to figure that he's a Jigsaw apprentice and leaves the beginning of an unraveling thread to him, and Gibson, who hates him on a personal level due to their past history.
  • Logan had Halloran, who let Edgar kill his wife while covering the crime up for him. The present storyline of Jigsaw revolves around Logan killing Edgar and several other informants of Halloran via recreations of previous Jigsaw works, which he attempts to frame Halloran for after murdering him as well.
• Arc Villain: Most of the apprentices have a part of subsequent films in the series centered around each of them. This doesn't apply to John, since he becomes the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire series following his term as Big Bad from I to III (plus a Villain Protagonist role in X, on chronological terms).
  • Amanda's villainous journey and training to be the next Jigsaw makes up the main plot arc of Saw II and III, and is also briefly looked on in X. Her relevance to the franchise's story mostly evaporates after her death in III, since she doesn't influence people the way John does.
  • Hoffman for Saw IV to 3D. After John and Amanda's deaths, he becomes the Big Bad of the second half of the franchise's original run. For the most part, Hoffman is not present nor mentioned in the post-revival films that start with Jigsaw, which largely isolates him to those four films; it's not until Saw X when he makes a minor appearance in the post-revival movies.
  • Logan is the Villain Protagonist of Jigsaw and so far has only appeared in that one movie. Spiral establishes that he's no longer active in the present after he got his revenge on Halloran.
• Calling Card: John conceived the original blueprint of what traps should be: victims are inflicted with pain - with a heavy focus on self-mutilation - to emphasize survival, but there is also an emphasis on following and interpreting instructions. That said, each killer after him has a different general style for trap design.
  • Amanda favors traps in which Failure Is the Only Option, focusing on physically torturing and killing the victims rather than rehabilitating them, as she believed at that point in the timeline that the victims were beyond redemption and deserved to die. Though John disapproves of this train of thought, he is not above making use of a similar style: the Water Cube in Saw V, which he designed with Hoffman, was intended to kill Strahm, and was quite amusingly the only "inescapable trap" that was escaped.
  • Mark prefers traps that focus on a Sadistic Choice (including using those that John had originally planned), and involve victims competing to survive, or another person choosing who to save, rather than giving the victim a fighting chance. This is most evident in Saw VI and 3D, where most of the traps would result in at least one person's death by design. Though this approach worries John, John is not above making use of a similar style: the Reverse Bear Trap in the first movie would by design result in either the death of Amanda or her cellmate.
  • Logan remains mostly faithful to John's style, seeing as he scrupulously recreates an older Jigsaw game. However, he's more focused on getting his victims to confess their sins to stop the trap rather than fighting for their chance to live, and yet, in his unique trap at the end of Jigsaw, he still kills his victim with the trap out of a desire for vengeance, even after said victim confesses.
• Collective Identity: While John is the original mastermind, much of the heavy lifting after his first few murders (particularly building the traps and abducting targets) is done by the other killers and various other accomplices. It makes sense in a way, since John is a frail, elderly cancer patient, and couldn't possibly get all this stuff done on his own. There are also instances of the killers coercing someone into taking their place of surveying a game while they hide in plain sight as just another captive victim.
• Cult of Personality: John is an expert at emotional manipulation and predicting people's actions. Most of his apprentices and accomplices, barring Hoffman, are drawn to him through his incredible charisma and Stockholm Syndrome. He later passed his orating skills on to Lawrence, who was capable of swaying test survivors to his side.
• Deck of Wild Cards: Oh boy. Just about every apprentice or recruited accomplice aware of the others' existence has tried this at some point, whether it be out of jealousy (Amanda), a desire to take over the Jigsaw mantle entirely (Hoffman), or simple pragmatism in the face of someone violating John's code (Lawrence). Needless to say, this doesn't lend itself to much stability for the cause, and by the time of Spiral, everyone in John's original group of killers seems to have either died out or left the group entirely.
• Inadequate Inheritor: All of the apprentices twist John's ideals by perverting them to serve their own cause. Amanda, Hoffman and Logan don't completely share his philosophy of making people change through suffering, instead either putting them into inescapable traps, forcing them into a Sadistic Choice or outright killing them directly. The only accomplice closest to John's idea of Jigsaw is Dr. Gordon.
• Indirect Serial Killer: They're notorious for kidnapping people and forcing them into life-or-death scenarios where they're forced to do a Life-or-Limb Decision or solve Criminal Mind Games in order to survive. In some (but not all) "games" involving multiple victims, one person has to kill the other (be it directly or indirectly) to win. Thus far, whereas most of the other Jigsaw killers (plus their copycats) almost exclusively followed this MO, Hoffman is the only one who has also committed direct murders regularly.
• Irony: From his time with Logan, John claimed that the work of Jigsaw must not come from anger or vengeance. Every Jigsaw killer, however, undermines this belief in their own way.
  • John's most significant victims after Cecil are people he has a history with, such as his former friend Art Blank and William Easton, who denied him health insurance. Saw X even shows him taking extremely personal revenge on a group of people who scammed him out of a large amount of money by promising him a cure for his terminal brain cancer. While John outwardly holds no strong feelings, it's shown that he's deeply resentful of them for perceived betrayals.
  • Amanda's first chosen victim is specifically Eric, a corrupt cop who ruined her life. While Eric has plenty of reasons to be targeted by Jigsaw, it's clear by Saw III that Amanda's reasoning for testing Eric was to exact her own revenge on him.
  • Hoffman chases after and murders Jill purely out of spite, slaughtering an entire police precinct in order to do so, and prior to that had killed three FBI agents to avoid detection and rigged a trap for his sister's murderer out of a simple desire for revenge.
  • Logan later uses John's philosophy as a cover to exact personal revenge on Edgar and Halloran by murdering them outright.^note Although, in all fairness, Halloran cheated by claiming he and Logan are to work together and then betraying him, before learning his true identity, so he may have legitimately lost his game by that point.
• The Kindnapper: Each killer is a master of stealth. They use their skills to kidnap their victims to put in death traps, ostensibly to rehabilitate them.
• Malevolent Masked Men: They (alongside some other accomplices and copycats) wear sinister-looking pig masks when abducting victims for their "games". Saw IV reveals that the first pair of pig masks used by John were cheery-looking ones from a Chinese New Year parade to symbolize rebirth, as in "the year of the pig." While he wore one of them, the other one was an improvised tool to abduct Cecil.
• Meaningful Name: Jigsaw. A jigsaw puzzle is made of numerous pieces, and by Saw 3D, Jigsaw has ceased to be a single individual or apprentice and become a full-fledged movement, shown when Gordon takes down Hoffman, helped by two other people in pig masks, who were confirmed by invokedWord of God to be Brad and Ryan. Each of these individuals in the movement could be thought of as jigsaw pieces.
• Menacing Mask: They wear sinister pig masks with blood and pus running from the eyes whenever capturing people. As a bonus point, a pig squeal-like screech usually plays during such scenes.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: They can somehow obtain anything to up the ante of their death traps. This includes but not limited to nerve gas agents, poison, advanced laser technology, military-grade firearms...
• Pig Man: While not actual Pig Men, they do have rather disturbing pig masks, which they're mostly seen wearing alongside some sort of coat.
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: They're generally Affably Evil criminals (be it genuine or faux) who normally refrain from behaving rudely and/or cursing unless they're angered or provoked. This contrasts them from the attitude of their victims and the law enforcement officers/agents after them, who are often impolite and prone to swearing a lot, even though they range from Nice Guys to Jerkasses.
• Psycho Supporter: Most of the apprentices and major accomplices willingly follow John and support his cause as a Poetic Serial Killer. Amanda in particular came to embrace his twisted ideology and views him as a father figure. However, they usually end up screwing his philosophy in different ways.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Many of their victims listen to a tape or video that explains why they're horrible people and thus being subjected to a game before their timer starts.
• Recovered Addict: John seems to have a penchant for recruiting people who struggle with addiction issues to his cause (Amanda was addicted to heroin, Hoffman was getting blackout drunk at bars nearly every night to keep his guilt about his sister's death out of his mind, and a Freeze-Frame Bonus on Logan's military file in Jigsaw mentions a relapse of some kind after the death of his wife), presumably because it serves as yet another thing he can use to manipulate them to stay with his cause.
• Serial Killer: Although John would vehemently deny being this, this is what the Jigsaw killers are. Amanda in particular doesn't even make any pretenses about not being one, and a notable incident in VI involves Hoffman bitterly degrading John for trying to pretend that he doesn't take joy in killing the people that don't win his games.
• Sinister Swine: The original idea for the pig motif among the Jigsaw killers came from John, who, as an Eastern Zodiac believer who began his killings in the Year of the Pig, used pigs to represent a rotting world. He made scary pig masks to wear as disguises (after the first, more mundane-looking pair of masks that he got at a festival), and several of the traps he planned use actual pig corpses or draw parallels to them (including a pig farm for testing field that was previously owned by his ex-wife's family). While later killers and accomplices still used the pig masks, none of them had pigs as a regular symbol like John, with Hoffman only using them (and following John's MO most of the time) in order to cover up his drastically different manners until he's publicly exposed in Saw 3D.
• Torture Technician: John was a talented engineer, and used his creative mind to create horrific death traps. He eventually passed his expertise on to his apprentices.
• Vigilante Man: They put those who previously committed crimes without receiving any punishment for it into Death Traps, though their manners vary a lot beyond that.
  • John was the one who had the original idea of Jigsaw: rehabilitating people through death traps in order to teach them different lessons, including the general one of appreciating their lives. This is deconstructed in that his traps did nothing good for his surviving victims, often facing a downward spiral afterwards or defying his methods (the latter being the case for most of his apprentices, as listed below). Plus, it's shown in Saw III that the only solution John has to this is testing the victims over and over until they either "truly rehabilitate" or die.
  • Amanda went along with John's philosophy at first, but began doubting it by the events of Saw III, when she begins rigging traps to be inescapable in the belief that people can't change. This is the reason why John secretly tests her later on, and when she realizes it, she completely disregards his philosophy just before her death.
  • Hoffman originally set up an inescapable Jigsaw copycat trap to avenge his dead sister when her murderer was released from prison. Then John practically forced him to become a disciple of his, so Hoffman never trusted his methods at least once; he only ran whatever "games" John had left planned to cover up that he was adhered to his philosophy. By that point, the only victims Hoffman put in a trap of his own were a group of skinheads whose leader had to do a painfully difficult task to survive. He wasn't above meddling his crimes either, as he directly killed numerous law enforcement officers (even attempting to frame one of them as a killer in his place) just to avoid getting caught or carry out his schemes.
  • Logan was the first person indoctrinated into John's philosophy, and while he remained mostly faithful to it, he parted ways with John at some point before the latter got his other apprentices, only becoming a full-time killer long after all of them died. He's more motivated to make his victims confess their sins rather than rehabilitate themselves, and even still he didn't go through that method in his first scheme seen, where he sought to get revenge against Halloran and his informants when one of the latter murdered his wife. Much like Hoffman, he tries to cover himself up behind John's philosophy, though rather by attempting to convince people that John is still alive and getting Halloran framed in case that doesn't work.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: What John believed he was, but spectacularly deconstructed in that his actions, noble intentions or not, did nothing good for anybody. He and his apprentices have differing ideas on this trope as well.
  • John wanted each victim to gain a "new outlook on life", and feels they can only do that by forcing them to survive a gruesome near-death experience. All John accomplished was cultivating murderous followers through Stockholm Syndrome or leaving people with PTSD for the rest of their lives.
  • Amanda deconstructs this by being murderously insane as a result of surviving John's game. She believes people can't be reformed, and puts her victims into inescapable death traps to ironically spare them the pain of PTSD from what John would put them through if they survived.
  • Hoffman was loyal to John's philosophy enough to follow his will to the very end, producing all the games John instructed him to create long after he died. It's subverted, however, in that Hoffman simply loved the carnage and wasn't above murdering other people indiscriminately along the way to cover his tracks.
  • Logan is a mix of Amanda and Hoffman. While he's loyal to John's philosophy enough to recreate his Barn Game, he's not above taking personal revenge on certain people through inescapable scenarios. Logan, however, explicitly states he makes sure all of his victims have it coming, making him different from the more murderous Hoffman and Amanda.
• Zodiac Motifs: Their pig motifs originated John's belief in the Eastern Zodiac. While he specifically chose pigs as a representation of a rotten society, the Year of the Pig was when John committed his first murder and was the period when his unborn son's date of birth was expected.

John Kramer

Click to see his character page.

Logan Nelson

Logan Nelson

"I speak for the dead."

Portrayed By: Matt Passmore

Appearances: Jigsaw

"You have a choice: scream, or don't."

Jigsaw's first cohort aiding in his schemes. Logan served in the military for a tour in Iraq during the Iraq War, during which he was captured and traumatized. His mental instability leads to his discharge, and he later returned to medical school to pursue a career as a medical examiner. Selected as a victim in one of John's first games due to his negligence as an intern that led to John's inoperable cancer, John released Logan from the game when he realized he accidentally overdosed him, and made him unable to survive. After realizing Logan's mistake at the hospital was an honest mistake, he befriends and convinces him to his cause. Logan is the architect of the iconic Reverse Bear Trap's first model used to test Amanda, but was otherwise not actively involved with John, parting ways with him at some point before the first film. Long after John's demise, Logan ultimately decides to take up the mantle as his successor in Jigsaw, with the fate of the wayward Hoffman and indifference of the other major Jigsaw accomplice at the time.

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• Action Dad: He has a daughter and he can also hold his own in a fight when abducting victims for his games.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Unlike his mentor and many of his fellow apprentices (who targeted even those barely related to the crimes in question, those who just had some relatively harmless moral flaw, or just straight up innocent people who were only related or acquainted with the test subjects), he (so far) has only targeted those who are far worse than him. Specifically (from what he says), murderers and rapists who got away with their crimes due to bribing a Dirty Cop, as well as said Dirty Cop.
• Ambiguous Situation: Whether he follows Kramer's philosophy or is closer to Amanda's or Hoffman's MO, which isn't revealed by the end of Jigsaw. He seems to kill Edgar despite having completed the game he assigned him, (though it could have been that the way to win the game was to accept his fate and not condemn five other people to horrific deaths) and while Halloran points out that he is supposed to have a opportunity to win before being killed by the Lazer-Cutter Collar, it can be argued that he had already lost his game by betraying Logan in the beginning. Aside from being informants of Halloran, we don't know who the victims of his recreation of the barn game are supposed to be, either, besides Logan saying that they were "players just like the ones in the original game," which could be interpreted a variety of ways.
• Arch-Enemy: To Halloran, who let Edgar kill his wife while covering the crime up for him. The present storyline of Jigsaw revolves around Logan killing Edgar and several other informants of Halloran via recreations of previous Jigsaw works, which he attempts to frame Halloran for after murdering him as well.
• Bastard Understudy/Deceptive Disciple: While all his victims by comparison definitely have it coming, he perverts John's philosophy much like Amanda through inescapable games, believing such people cannot be reformed.
• Beneath Suspicion: A variant. At first, he's seemingly set up to be an innocent who's accused by Halloran of being the one behind the new Jigsaw killings, what with him trying to eliminate or otherwise block access to potential evidence that could point towards him with help of Eleanor. However, during the climax, Halloran proves himself right when it turns out that Logan was faking at being a victim in the Laser Collar trap, and proceeds to force a confession out of Halloran for his crimes before killing him outright.
• Catchphrase: "I speak for the dead." Appropriate because of his job as a medical examiner, his self-assigned task of avenging people whose deaths went unpunished, and his eventual decision of carrying out Jigsaw's work from beyond the grave.
• The Coroner: He studied and became a medical examiner before the events of Jigsaw, and remained in that position during the film's events. It's unknown if he left that occupation (presumably to continue his crusade more safely) by the time of Spiral.
• Dark and Troubled Past: He was tortured as a prisoner of war during his time as a military medic, wound up brutally injured and nearly killed in a Jigsaw game that even John thinks he went over the line in putting him in, and his wife Christine was brutally murdered with her presumed killer facing no legal justice for his crimes.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has a fairly dark sense of humor that he shares with his assistant Eleanor, likely as a coping method for his work as a medical examiner that involves quite a bit of exposure to brutal murder and various forms of gore.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: He does this with two people, setting up evidence implicating both Halloran and John as possible suspects. It remains yet to be seen if this will work.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He mistakenly mislabeled two X-rays as an intern, so John shoved him into a Cold-Blooded Torture game. John realizes this after he makes a similar mistake in accidentally over-sedating Logan, which gives him zero chance to survive the Bucket Room test, prompting John to remove him from the game completely.
• Evil All Along: At the climax, combined with a Sequencing Deception, it's revealed that he was a former Jigsaw apprentice and the perpetrator of the second Jigsaw killing spree, specifically to get revenge against Halloran and his informants.
• Expy: A military vet and family man whose wife was murdered, and sets out to enact bloody vengeance on the criminal underworld. Now, does that sound like Jigsaw, or The Punisher?
• Foreshadowing: Asides from Anna, Ryan, Mitch and Carly, there's a fifth victim in the main game who supposedly dies in the Bucket Room due to him not waking up. However, unlike all of the other victims, his "death" happens offscreen, with the camera simply panning to the next room just as he's about to get sliced by the saws. Plus, we don't get to know anything about him, other than the fact that he's apparently a man. Adding to the fact that this isn't the first time it happened in the series, since it was previously seen with Hoffman just before his reveal as an apprentice in Saw IV, you could figure out that he's going to turn out to be someone affiliated to Jigsaw, even if his identity as Logan isn't directly foreshadowed here.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Started out as an intern who made an honest, but significant mistake. Ended up being the most successful disciple of Jigsaw, completely avoiding capture or suspicion, setting up traps for a series of victims and not being offed by other people, with his fate being merely left open by the time of Spiral.^note Fellow accomplice Dr. Gordon wasn't a full-fledged disciple because he didn't design or set up traps, and while the copycat Schenk does make it away scot-free at the end of Spiral, his identity is known by Zeke and will presumably be shared with the rest of the city's police department, leaving him on the run.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has several scars on his back, which we are led to believe are from when he was tortured. They're actually from getting his back sliced up by the buzzsaws in the Bucket Room.
• Hired to Hunt Yourself: He works with the police to solve crimes, including the second spree of Jigsaw murders, for which he's personally responsible.
• Hypocrite: He's told by John "We can never come from anger, or from vengeance," as he learned from erroneously putting Logan into a trap. Ten years later, he kills Edgar and Halloran for their supposed role in his wife's death, after both of them passed the tests they were given. For the latter case, though, Halloran arguably failed when he attempted to get Logan killed in his. (And it's not as though John's ever abided by that rule all that consistently himself.)
• Legacy Character: He is ultimately the apprentice who succeeds John as Jigsaw.
• Mirror Character: To Mark Hoffman, surprisingly enough.
  • Hoffman and Logan are presented as some of John's first attempts at recruiting apprentices to his cause, have a background in government-associated defense (Logan as a medical examiner and former member of the US military, and Hoffman as a police officer), and act as The Heavy during their respective tenures under John, being physically-imposing men with fairly decent strength and a knowledge of self-defense and weapons usage.
  • Both lost a female relative important to their life (Hoffman's sister Angelina, and Logan's wife Christine) to a killer who escaped justice for their death, and then manipulated the Jigsaw philosophy as a means of getting that justice achieved on their own terms. If the mention of a relapse in a Freeze-Frame Bonus on his military file is of any indication, and much like Hoffman's explicitly-shown case, Logan also seems to have coped with the trauma of that death by turning to drugs or alcohol, only managing to get out of that situation by turning to work as an apprentice of John as a new coping mechanism.
  • Both take advantage of their positions as people involved with law enforcement or crime scene work to manipulate evidence, turn attention away from themselves, and frame other people for their crimes outright.
  • Each of them has a role in causing John's eventual death. John's inability to get his cancer treated was caused by Logan inadvertently mixing up John's head x-ray with another patient's while he was working as an intern of the Angel of Mercy Hospital, while Hoffman deliberately manipulated the events at the Gideon Meatpacking Plant across Saw III and IV to get both John and Amanda killed, so he would no longer be stuck under John's thumb.
• Not Proven: His motivation for putting Edgar Munsen in the game, and for ultimately killing him, is that Edgar murdered his wife. Halloran points out before he dies that it was never proven. Logan doesn't seem to particularly care, likely because Edgar is defintively guilty of a whole host of other crimes no matter what and because they both know full well by now that Halloran's word isn't worth jack-shit.
• Of Corpse He's Alive: What he tries to do with John's corpse. He dug up John's grave and took his body, placing Edgar's in its place so as to keep up rumors that the original Jigsaw Killer is still alive and out there.
• Opt Out: He was taken as an apprentice when John was more focused on punishing the guilty rather than testing if people had the will to live or not to advance the species. When John shifted to the latter ideology, Logan left him, not because he didn't believe in the initial ideology, but rather because he knew that John would likely attempt to correct him (test him again) if he tried to put his ideology into practice. Logan simply waited for him to die of cancer, and five extra years to be sure, before beginning his own run as Jigsaw.
• Poetic Serial Killer: As expected of a Jigsaw apprentice.
• Retired Monster: According to Spiral, there had been no new Jigsaw-type murders in years. It's pretty much a safe bet that like Dr. Gordon after the events of 3D, Logan detached himself from the philosophy or only followed it during the events of Jigsaw to enact revenge against Halloran.
• Revenge: Logan specifically goes after Halloran and his informants for murdering his wife and ruining his life in general.
• Small Role, Big Impact: In-universe when he was still an intern at the local hospital, as detailed below.
• Trauma Button: Seems to have issues with people approaching him or attempting to get his attention from behind; he noticably startles and has to calm himself down a bit after Eleanor does it to him twice, and when Halloran does the same and threatens to kill him at the pig farm, he visibly flinches, goes incredibly tense and still, and doesn't speak until he basically winds up forced to, a pretty stark contrast from his usual Deadpan Snarker personality. It's up to the viewer whether or not this specific response comes from his time and torture in the military or from the experience of being drugged and waking up to having his back sliced open by circular saws during his time in the Barn Game.
• Uncertain Doom: What became of Logan after the events of Jigsaw is unclear. By the time of Spiral, the police seem to have recognized that his killings were the result of a copycat killer and not John Kramer returned from the dead, but whether or not Halloran was successfully framed or if they uncovered the ruse is never mentioned.
• Villain Protagonist: The protagonist of Jigsaw as well as one of the Jigsaw killers.
• Villain Respect: Implied. Ryan's decomposed corpse is seen covered with a blanket in the present, whereas Anna's is left untouched. It's likely that Logan was the one who placed that blanket as an honor to how Ryan was the only person who "won" the Barn game.
• Walking Spoiler: To say that the protagonist being the new Jigsaw killer was a shocking twist would be an Understatement, though this may eventually die out with the release of the follow-up to Jigsaw that's currently planned among four other movies.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: His fate is not seen or mentioned in Spiral, leaving to imagination what end took his crusade in continuing Jigsaw's work.
• White Shirt of Death: Subverted. He's wearing a white shirt when Halloran seemingly gets him killed in the Laser Collars, but it quickly turns out that his collar was actually fake, with his shirt drenched in fake blood.
• Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: He's a well-intentioned forensic pathologist. He is also the new Jigsaw.

Mark Hoffman

Detective Lieutenant Mark Hoffman

"Right now, you're feeling helpless."

Portrayed By: Costas Mandylor

Appearances: Saw III | Saw IV | Saw V | Saw VI | Saw 3D | Saw X

"Do you like the way brutality feels, Mark?"

— John to Hoffman in Saw VI

Jigsaw's second canonical apprentice and the third full-term Jigsaw Killer (after Amanda Young). Mark Hoffman started out as a detective of the Metropolitan Police Department's Homicide Division simply assigned to the Jigsaw case. At some point before that, his sister Angelina Acomb, whom he himself states to have been his only family, was murdered by her abusive boyfriend Seth Baxter, and Hoffman had a depressive breakdown that lasted for an unknown time in the aftermath and eventually spiraled into full-on alcoholism, only ending when he began to work as an apprentice for John.

He was also a colleague of Matt Gibson an unknown time before the series' start. Not much of their past relationship is known, aside from an incident involving Hoffman saving Gibson from being shot and killed by a homeless man by killing the man himself. According to Gibson, Hoffman killed the man despite him willingly dropping his weapon and surrendering. Later, Gibson tried to report this incident to the department's leadership, which only led to Hoffman getting a promotion and Gibson being moved to the department's Internal Affairs division, leaving the latter with a major grudge against Hoffman that persists into Saw 3D.

By the time of the Jigsaw investigation, Hoffman used the knowledge he acquired of Jigsaw by virtue of following the case to murder Seth using Jigsaw's MO, after the latter was freed from his imprisonment after five years on a technicality. This frame job made it to the news and caught John Kramer's attention, who blackmails Hoffman into helping him under threat of revealing his involvement with Seth's murder if Hoffman were to at any time turn him in. Not long afterwards, Hoffman became John's first full-tenured apprentice (after the latter's initial attempt with Logan Nelson), doing a significant portion of the work and heavy lifting for the traps before Amanda (whom John made no attempt at pretending he didn't prefer and left Hoffman to compete against for John's praise) came into play.

Eventually, Hoffman began to care less and less about the people he was being made to test under John's command, and like Amanda, didn't particularly buy into the Jigsaw philosophy. After overthrowing John by deliberately causing his and Amanda's deaths in Saw III (the surrounding incident of which led to Hoffman being promoted to Detective Lieutenant in Saw V), Hoffman continued the Jigsaw work until Saw 3D, doing his best to avoid being exposed to the Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI (who were also involved in the case) and facing numerous people threatening his identity, the most active of which was John's ex-wife Jill Tuck, who was acting at a posthumous request from John. In the middle of a subsequent investigation for a "second accomplice" after the games set by him began to pop up, his true identity as Jigsaw's successor was first discovered by the FBI in Saw VI, but (due to him immediately destroying their found evidence and killing the investigators in response) was only revealed to the Metropolitan Police Department at large by Jill in Saw 3D, at which he decided to try and leave the city via airplane in order to get away unscathed, while fending off the prosecution on him led by Gibson.

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• And I Must Scream: His ultimate fate in 3D. Dr. Gordon drags him to the bathroom from the first film, chains him up, and disposes of the hacksaw, his only means of escape, before locking Hoffman inside and leaving him to die a slow and painful death from either dehydration or starvation.
• Arch-Enemy: He's had three of them so far.
  • Strahm, who was the first law enforcement officer to figure that he's a Jigsaw apprentice. While their fight lasts for little more than one film, with Hoffman being the winner by getting Strahm killed and framed for a while, Strahm's partner Perez and their superior Erickson eventually become suspicious of Hoffman too, and pursue him during the investigation of Strahm's death and the reopening of the case regarding Hoffman's first victim.
  • Jill, the most active person in trying to stop him, at John's posthumous request to her. While he had met her a few times initially, Hoffman wasn't aware what she was seeking against him until she attempts to get him killed with the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 in the climax of Saw VI, at which he becomes hellbent on murdering her in vengeance, especially after she exposes him as Jigsaw's successor to the Metropolitan Police Department at the beginning of Saw 3D.
  • Gibson has a personal disdain for him because of how he got away with deliberately killing an armed criminal who willingly raised his hands at him (even if he did it to defend Gibson) back when the two officers were colleagues in the Homicide Division. When Gibson tried to report Hoffman for breaking police protocol, the Metropolitan Police Department's leadership gave Hoffman a promotion while transferring Gibson to Internal Affairs. Once he's exposed as the new Jigsaw in Saw 3D and the Internal Affairs Division takes over the investigation, Gibson becomes relentlessly determined to detain Hoffman as the new lead detective in the case, regardless of the chaos and internal discord that may ensue.
• Arc Words: "Right now, you're feeling helpless." While not a Catchphrase of his, as he says it only once in the Pendulum Trap's tape, but it's particularly emphasized between Saw V and VI as Hoffman descends further and further into villainy; in the latter, it plays on a progressively ominous-sounding Broken Record basis during a voice recognition process at the FBI's tech lab during the climax, setting the tone for Hoffman's brutal Curb-Stomp Battle and subsequent slaughter of the agents once he's discovered.
• Ascended Extra: He first appeared briefly as a crime scene technician at the scene of Troy's trap in Saw III, being even credited as "Forensic Hoffman". Likely because every other Jigsaw killer and major cop at the time (besides Rigg and Eric) was killed off in the previous installments, Hoffman is suddenly a seasoned detective and Jigsaw apprentice from Saw IV onwards, and becomes the new Big Bad up to Saw 3D.
• Asshole Victim: No tears were shed when Lawrence left him in an inescapable scenario to die of starvation or dehydration.
• At Least I Admit It: Hoffman admits to enjoying seeing people suffer in their traps when he feels they deserve to be in them for what they've done, and in a flashback in Saw VI set shortly before the events of III, he bitterly snaps at John (who forced Hoffman to join him in his work) to stop pretending that he doesn't.
  John: (after seeing Hoffman uncaringly throw an unconscious Timothy out of a wheelbarrow) That's a human being. Do you like how brutality feels, Mark?
  Hoffman: Let's be honest. You want him to suffer just as much as I do.
• Ax-Crazy: In 3D. With his identity as a Serial Killer known to the public, he sees no reason not to become a raging psychopath, killing anyone who is in his way for the remainder of the film as sadistically as he can.
• Bastard Understudy: He took part in the Jigsaw philosophy when John was alive, having been forced into it under threat of death if he didn't comply, and predictably enough, didn't particularly care about changing people once John was no longer there to nip at his heels about it to make sure that he went along with it. After John dies, Hoffman continues the Jigsaw murders by his own standards whenever possible, only going by John's philosophy when he is carrying out plans that John already set in motion. He doesn't seem to rig his traps like Amanda had previously, but they tend to be far more difficult and far more brutal, primarily focused on eliminating people that violate his own code of ethics, and require much more luck on the subject's part to escape.
• Batman Gambit: A small part of Hoffman's plan to catch Jill in Saw 3D is a pretty extreme case of this, as it requires the explosion he sets off in the scrapyard to distract every single officer present for several minutes while he opens up a bodybag, removes the body from it, moves it two rooms over, poses it and then crawls back into the bodybag, all without anyone noticing.
• Beard of Evil: As a result of Jill disfiguring his face and the stress of being on the run from the entire city, Hoffman becomes disheveled by 3D and gains a notable five-o-clock shadow.
• Beneath Suspicion: Saw IV sets up a twist ending for Hoffman that's very similar to the example from the first film, down to having a fake suspect for the audience to assume as an apprentice. Just like Lawrence and Adam, Eric and Hoffman are trapped in a small room at the Gideon Meatpacking Plant with Art having them on hold while overseeing Rigg's game. Similarly to Adam with Zep, Rigg finds out that Art had an instruction tape with him, and Hoffman unties himself from his chair, matching John getting up in the first film.
• Big Bad: After John's death in Saw III, he became the Big Bad from Saw IV to 3D (totaling to four films, which was one more than the films where John had the role within the first seven movies before Saw X balanced the number with John regaining the role). However, it took a couple of films to solidify Hoffman as an actual threat, with Saw VI being commonly accepted as when he fully Took a Level in Badass.
• Big "NO!": His last words, at least on screen. He had a few days at most before he'd actually die of dehydration at the Bathroom.
• Birds of a Feather: Both Hoffman and John were ostensibly average joes until the death of a loved one changed them for the worse. Like John, Hoffman's first victim was the man responsible for said loved one's death.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Outwardly presents himself as a hard-working and caring cop, while hiding what a cold, manipulative, murderous, apathetic, asshole bastard he truly is as one of the Jigsaw Killers.
• Blue Is Heroic: Inverted. When out in the testing field, he wears a dark blue parka. One of his uniforms as a detective is also of different blue tones, with some others also having at least one blue-colored garment.
• Bodybag Trick: In Saw 3D, he hides inside a body bag (which was previously used to store Dan's corpse) so he can sneak into the police station where Jill is inside and catch her.
• Bond One-Liner: He turns the series' Signature Line "Game over" into one following the Reverse Bear Trap finally claiming a victim in Jill at the end of Saw 3D.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Averted in Saw 3D. Once he gets Jill into the Reverse Bear Trap, Hoffman stands there and watches until she dies, which she notably didn't do when she put him in the same situation in the previous movie.
• The Cameo: As confirmation of his much-teased return to the franchise since Saw 3D until then, Hoffman makes an appearance in The Stinger of Saw X, wherein he sets up Henry's trap (though it's also implied that he was the one who kidnapped Cecilia earlier in the film).
• Chekhov's Gunman: Much like Amanda between the first two movies, he first appeared in a small scene in Saw III, and was revealed to be another Jigsaw apprentice in the next movie, taking up the Jigsaw Killer reign after the deaths of John and Amanda.
• Co-Dragons: With Amanda before her death, though she didn't like his presence. The feeling seems to be very much mutual.
  Amanda: So when's your test, detective?
  Hoffman: I don't need one.
  Amanda: Oh, yeah?
  Hoffman: Yeah. (exposes a scarred cut on Amanda's wrist) Because I didn't take my life for granted.
  Amanda: You're still drawing your knuckles on the ground. What do you know about life? Get used to me, 'cause I'm not going anywhere.
  Hoffman: You're sure about that? [turns to John] Amanda will fail you.
  John: We'll see...
• Combat Pragmatist: During the voice interrogation scene in Saw VI whilst his tape is being decoded by Sachi under the supervision of Agents Erickson and Perez, Hoffman, visibly on edge, walks around the room, observing his surroundings as the other agents pay attention to Sachi's progress. After the tape is fully decoded to reveal him as a Jigsaw apprentice all along, Hoffman quickly uses the environment to his advantage, swiftly slitting Erickson's throat to cause chaos, throwing a hot coffee onto Perez's face before she can fire upon him, cutting the power to the outpost to turn out the lights and lessen his visibility, and using Sachi as a Human Shield by the time Perez recovers to use a pistol. Upon disposing of Sachi's corpse and taking advantage of Perez running out of ammo, Hoffman quickly lunges onto her, stabbing Perez viciously several times before she can shoot him.
• Cop Killer: He's a cop who has murdered many other cops, as well as several FBI agents, due to his actions as a Jigsaw killer. Come Saw VI and 3D, he decides to get all-personal when it comes to this, culminating in him going on a crazed massacre through an entire precinct to get to Jill at the latter film's climax.
• Cradle of Loneliness: The flashbacks to Angelina's death briefly show Hoffman cradling the hand of her corpse, and no one willing to pull him away.
• Crazy-Prepared: Not as much as John, as he relies more on acting than preparation, but he carries at least a hidden weapon in just about any scenerio where things have the potential to go awry. It pays off in Saw VI when he's almost apprehended at the FBI's local technical lab, and is able to slit Erickson's throat and slaughter the rest before they can do anything to stop him.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Downplayed. Whenever he's talking to others onscreen, he tends to come off as not the brightest bulb among the Jigsaw killers and investigators alike (whether he's using Obfuscating Stupidity or not is up to the viewer). However, he has an honored reputation within the Metropolitan Police Department for being a very successful officer, and he manages to accomplish numerous tasks nobody else was able to do throughout the movies. These include:
  • Implicitly eliminating both Jigsaw and Amanda just though careful planning and knowledge of their behavior.
  • Killing two FBI agents integral to the case with nothing more than a hidden knife, a cup of hot coffee and another employee as a Human Shield.
  • Escaping an improved version of the Reverse Bear Trap that was rigged by Jill to execute him, with only a broken hand and a wound on his cheek from a device designed to literally rip his head completely open.
  • The culminating point might be him slaughtering an entire police precinct in the span of minutes, simply to get revenge on Jill for her attempt on his life.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He is locked inside the Bathroom by Dr. Gordon at the end of Saw 3D, and is left to die a slow death from dehydration or starvation. Downplayed however, since it's still debatable whether or not he really died.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: He gets Strahm killed and attempts to posthumously frame him as being Jigsaw's successor. It doesn't work.
• Deceptive Disciple: Basically extorted into becoming an underling of Jigsaw, he wasn't interested in John's philosophy and tried to undermine his relationship with Amanda. Eventually, when John and Amanda die, he turns the Jigsaw name into his own joyride, killing either just because, to simply continue the games as he was ordered, to keep his double life secret, or to exact personal revenge on people whom he believes have wronged him.
• Decoy Damsel: In Saw IV, as Rigg is first instructed, Hoffman is apparently captured alongside Eric in a trap by Art that will kill both of them in quick succession if he doesn't come in a given time. While said thing does happen due to Rigg not getting that he had to wait during said time before being able to enter the room Eric and Hoffman were trapped in without problem, Hoffman takes off his restraints, with an accompanying flashback showing that he was the one who abducted Rigg in the first place.
• Destroy the Evidence:
  • In Saw VI, he burns down the FBI's technical lab to destroy the newfound evidence exposing his identity as the new Jigsaw, including the corpses of the agents and audio tech he killed after they got the evidence in front of him.
  • While he's already known as Jigsaw at the time of Saw 3D, he still destroys his lair full of his Jigsaw stuff using the same method as he makes his attempt at escaping the city, this time with explosive results.
• Detective Mole: He's implied to have had the major role of finding crimes for victims during the time John was alive, and a flashback from Saw V shows that he was the one who warned John about Tapp.
• Determinator:
  • In Saw VI, Jill knocks out Hoffman and straps an updated Reverse Bear Trap on him with no means of escape, as she had also strapped him to a chair before activating it. In desperation, Hoffman breaks his own hand to get it out of a strap to unstrap his other hand, then smashes the Reverse Bear Trap between bars to delay it from opening all the way in order to get it off. He manages to hack it, but still gets his right cheek ripped open.
  • In Saw 3D, despite being the most wanted criminal in the city, he decimates an entire police department and SWAT team simultaneously to get revenge on Jill. Even after Lawrence traps him in the end, Hoffman rushes for a hacksaw in reach to either attack Lawrence or immediately saw off his foot to escape his predicament.
• Didn't Think This Through: Being both a police officer and a Jigsaw Killer (which brings some inevitable medical knowledge he picked up along the way), Hoffman could have realized in his attempted Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit with Strahm's mutilated hand that a dead hand leaves different traces compared to a live one, and that any other possible track of the "second accomplice" would have been studied very carefully. At no point does he appear to acknowledge or care about this, even after his gambit fails.
• Dirty Cop: Besides becoming one of Jigsaw's apprentices and eventually succeeding him, Hoffman uses his knowledge of the legal system and due process to keep other cops off of his trail. Because of the latter, he was seen as a By-the-Book Cop by most of the department before he was exposed as Jigsaw's successor; in Gibson's flashbacks from Saw 3D, the department's leadership saw nothing wrong with him when Gibson reported him to them for killing a criminal who willingly raised his hands to him, and in a written message from Tapp in Saw II: Flesh & Blood, he mentions that he'd want to keep Hoffman out of his police activities, out of worry that Hoffman might not approve of his Cowboy Cop tendencies.
• Dirty Coward: Played with. As Seth gets chopped in half by his Pendulum Trap, Hoffman can't even look at Seth's gruesome death. He's then brought into Jigsaw's fold without going through a real game, and brazenly claims to Amanda he doesn't need one because he appreciates his life. When he is finally tested, however, he defeats his test without any real means to escape!
• Dragon Ascendant: After John and Amanda's deaths, he continues the Jigsaw killings.
• Dragon with an Agenda: He never really subscribed to John's twisted philosophy. A test of character he has with Simone, a furious maimed survivor, has him further doubt it amounted to anything positive.
• Drowning My Sorrows: One of the flashbacks in Saw V features him drinking alcoholic drinks at a bar to emphasize his depression at the moment, a detail commented by John at the same time on voice-over. It's implied in flashbacks taking place at similar points in Saw 3D that this ended up boiling into alcoholism, hence Hoffman's unusual open violence towards criminals while on his police job.
  John: You sit in bars until closing, you drink so you can sleep, you stagger to your car so you can start it all over again the next day...
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His first victim was a domestic abuser who murdered his sister.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He backed Rigg up after Rigg beat up a married domestic abuser about to get away with it, and assuming that he was the one who set up the trap said abuser is caught in during Saw IV's events, he makes sure his wife gets to effortlessly cause his death.
  • He seems disturbed, even emotional, when he sees Kerry's torn-apart corpse.
  • When Strahm is killed via The Walls Are Closing In, Hoffman looks away before the final impact, as if even he can't stand how horrific Strahm's death is. He does smile at the mutilated remains later, though.
    • Also, happy as he was of his Batman Gambit succeeding, Hoffman was playing fair, with his own life on the line. Unlike other examples (including Hoffman himself in IV) his survival wasn't guaranteed and wasn't even up to him.
  • He never talks about it, but he hates racist criminals. This is best shown with the targets he chooses on his own (that he isn't directed to target by John), the skinhead gang and his sister's murderous ex boyfriend, Seth (who has white supremacist tattoos). The Pendulum Trap was completely inescapable and The Horsepower Trap barely looks survivable at all, and Kara is tied up with barbed wire when chains would have been perfectly fine, as the rest of the skinheads had them as restraints that were just as effective.
• Evil All Along: After being set up as a major ally of Rigg throughout Saw IV, he's revealed to be another Jigsaw apprentice at the end.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: In The Stinger of Saw X, he rather cruelly tells Henry that he'd call his group's choice of scamming John "epic bad luck".
  "Out of all the men to cheat, you picked John Kramer? I mean... I'd call that... epic bad luck."
• Evil Sounds Deep: He speaks in a menacingly deep growl in comparison to John's soft-spoken tone.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: His default tone whenever he's not speaking with strong emotion is a raspy growl.
• Evil Wears Black: If he isn't wearing a blue-prominent outfit, he'll dress in a black suit most of the time, especially in scenes where he does something plot-relevant.
• False Friend: To Rigg. He defends Rigg from a brutality charge, and offers him some words of comfort when he expresses despair at Kerry's death. In truth, he's a Jigsaw apprentice, helped Amanda put Kerry in her trap, and coldly leaves Rigg to die after revealing his true colors at the end of Saw IV.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • His entire affable demeanor is pretty fooling at first, that is, until you witnessed his true colors under the Jigsaw persona is when you realize that his affable side is pretty much just an act to lower suspicions.
  • How he acts towards Rigg is a shining example. He treats Rigg like a good friend, having protected him from assault charges and sympathizing with his horror at the sight of Kerry's dead corpse. Then, he tells Rigg to go home so he can kidnap him and put him through a trial, and coldly leaves him to die once he gets wounded in his sight.
  • He also politely informs Strahm and Perez where the coffee machines in the local police precinct are, and is very welcoming towards the latter as he meets her more often, before dooming Strahm in a trap and later torturing Perez by twisting a knife in her until she dies.
• Fiery Cover Up: His preferred method of destroying evidence leading to him, using the trope's standard gas canister and match, and often involving entire rooms.
  • In Saw VI, after killing and/or severely injuring everyone there, he burns down the FBI's technical lab with gasoline spilled on evidence, equipment and the people's corpses (including the still-living Erickson, whom he particularly gives a sadistic gaze at when he notices him writhing).
  • At the end of Saw 3D, he leaves the storage building he used as his lair for the movie with a flame leading to a bunch of inflammable equipment, resulting in a burning explosion shortly after his exit.
• First-Episode Twist: To a lesser extent than usual. Hoffman is revealed to be an apprentice at the end of Saw IV, and takes up the mantle of Big Bad from Saw V to Saw 3D (a film more than John had in the first seven films, making him the longest-tenured Big Bad overall), comprising a "saga" of sorts dedicated to him.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In Saw IV, when the water melting from the ice block Eric is standing upon reaches the electric chair that Hoffman is strapped to, a voltage sound is heard, but Hoffman isn't explicitly seen being electrocuted. For Saw IV being one of the goriest films in the series, it's strange that a more mundane death like electrocution would happen offscreen, and this is shortly before the Wham Shot with Hoffman standing out of the chair.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At one point in Saw IV, Hoffman can be seen carrying the teddy bear that Jeff's daughter Corbett was seen with in Saw III. Asides from being a subtle hint towards him being a Jigsaw apprentice and the Sequencing Deception between the two films, this also hints that he was going to eventually free Corbett, which doesn't happen until Saw V.
  • In the same film, in the last shot of Hoffman before he's first seen in the Ice Block Trap, an almost-obscure pig mask can be seen hanging on a wall in the dark background. This is the same mask he wore while subduing Rigg in the previous scene beforehand, subtly giving away the identity of Rigg's abductor. Hoffman being "kidnapped" is him making a call and the camera focusing to the Pig Mask in the back, which at a glance makes it look like someone wearing the mask is standing in the dark, and followed by a frightening zoom editing effect on the mask. The audience never sees someone grab or jump Hoffman.
  • The reveal in Saw VI that Hoffman was the one who wrote the letter Amanda read in Saw III was also foreshadowed well back into Saw IV, where Hoffman is already seen putting the letter inside the correspondent drawer in the same scene as the above example.
  • During the capture montage of Saw X, Amanda isn't explicitly shown as the Pig Mask on Cecilia's roof, possibly alluding to Hoffman's presence before his revealing appearance in The Stinger.
• Freudian Excuse: His sister, who was his only remaining family, was brutally murdered by her boyfriend, Seth Baxter, who got off on a technicality and served barely any time in prison for it. After this, Hoffman degraded into an antisocial, drunken mess, until he was given purpose by his decision to murder Seth in revenge via a mock Jigsaw game. John took notice of this and blackmailed Hoffman into becoming his accomplice, leading Hoffman's life down a further downward spiral.
• Genius Bruiser: Hoffman's both as smart as John and much stronger than him.
• Glasgow Grin: He receives half of one after narrowly escaping the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 in Saw VI and stitching the resulting torn right cheek at the beginning of Saw 3D. When he grabs Jill, the first thing he tells her is to take attention to his stitched cheek, asking how he looks.
• Gone Horribly Right: If John's philosophy was to get people to appreciate their lives and gain a new outlook, Hoffman can be said to be the ultimate culmination of his logic... for all the wrong reasons. His indomitable will to live makes him survive the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 (which Jill sabotaged to be inescapable) and go on to lose all pretenses of following John's philosophy, murdering anyone he fancies instead.
• Hero Killer: He kills or causes the deaths of several heroic characters, such as Strahm, Perez, and Erickson.
• Hired to Hunt Yourself: When the police and FBI begin looking for a wanted second Jigsaw apprentice, the crime scenes in which he's involved in the investigations of are traps and trials that he set up himself.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His efforts to frame Strahm as the wanted second apprentice end up backfiring on him when the FBI's DNA testing on the fingerprints that he had planted over evidence proves that Strahm was already dead at the time. While he manages to avoid getting exposed for this by slaughtering the techs that made this discovery, it serves as the first major step in his eventual downfall.
• Human Shield: He was quick to use Sachi as one the moment his identity as a Jigsaw apprentice was revealed in Saw VI, specifically as a barrier between himself and Perez as the latter instinctively fires her pistol while blinded by the lab's lack of lightning after Hoffman cut the power, inadverently killing Sachi. It doesn't take long before Hoffman throws Sachi's corpse away and immediately stabs Perez several times.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Courtesy of his actor (who naturally has them), he has pale blue eyes that emphasize his bigger ruthlessness compared to the other Jigsaw killers.
• Impromptu Tracheotomy: If an opportunity presents itself, Hoffman won't hesitate to use any nearby sharp tool to attack someone by the throat. Most notably, he slashes Erickson's jugular vein when his identity is exposed in Saw VI, and he kickstarts his precinct massacre in 3D by stabbing Heffner's throat.
• Improvisational Ingenuity: Specializes in this. It's arguably the reason he lasts so long as an apprentice, despite having both outside forces and two of John's allies working against him for almost two entire movies.
• Jack the Ripoff: What originally drew attention from the real Jigsaw, who took offense that Hoffman would use his name and methods for revenge.
  John: Vengeance can change a person, make you into something you never thought you were capable of being. But unlike you, I've never killed anyone. I give people a chance.
• Karma Houdini: Subverted. While the games he makes on his own almost always involve unsympathetic victims who have to do even more difficult tasks than those of John's, he runs the ones John had planned to exploit the Jigsaw legacy (which he took over after meddling Jeff's trial in Saw III by blackmailing Amanda, John's most favored apprentice at the time, into disappointing him), directly kills numerous police and FBI personnel, attempts to frame Peter Straham for his crimes, and even murders John's ex-wife Jill. The climax of Saw 3D makes it seem as if Hoffman was going to get way with all of his crimes at first, but in the end, John manages to outsmart Hoffman with the final posthumous task he gave to Gordon: lock Hoffman in the Bathroom from the first three films and leave him there to die.
• Karmic Death: Hoffman is left to die alone in an inescapable trap by the hands of Gordon for killing Jill in the ending of 3D.
• Kick the Dog: Did this multiple times, including:
  • Replacing John's letter to Amanda with one of his own that threatened to reveal her secret.
  • Framing Strahm as the second Jigsaw apprentice the police and FBI were looking for in his place.
  • Consecutively murdering lab technician Sachi, Erickson and Perez to maintain his cover.
  • Killing nearly 20 police personnel (directly or otherwise) as part of his scheme to catch and murder Jill.
• Killer Cop: Having remained his position of detective long since he became a Jigsaw Killer, this goes without saying. He has also murdered several people while on the police job, with the bonus point coming for most of them being fellow cops or investigators.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: After his sister was killed by her boyfriend and when the latter was let off on a technicality, Hoffman avenged Angelina's death by killing Seth in such a way that it would appear to be another Jigsaw game.
• Last-Name Basis: He's referred to as Hoffman by almost everyone, and very rarely do people use his first name. One notable time he was referred to as Mark was when John asked him if he likes how brutality feels in a flashback from Saw VI.
• Meaningful Appearance: Unlike other Jigsaw apprentices and certain relevant accomplices, Hoffman never wore a red and black robe similar to John's whenever on the testing field, instead wearing the dark blue parka he first had when abducting Seth. This represents that he had never believed in John's philosophy once, even when compared to other apprentices who defied it like Amanda.
• Mirror Character: To Logan Nelson, surprisingly enough.
  • Hoffman and Logan are presented as some of John's first attempts at recruiting apprentices to his cause, have a background in government-associated defense (Logan as a medical examiner and former member of the US military, and Hoffman as a police officer), and act as The Heavy during their respective tenures under John, being physically-imposing men with fairly decent strength and a knowledge of self-defense and weapons usage.
  • Both lost a female relative important to their life (Hoffman's sister Angelina, and Logan's wife Christine) to a killer who escaped justice for their death, and then manipulated the Jigsaw philosophy as a means of getting that justice achieved on their own terms. If the mention of a relapse in a Freeze-Frame Bonus on his military file is of any indication, and much like Hoffman's explicitly-shown case, Logan also seems to have coped with the trauma of that death by turning to drugs or alcohol, only managing to get out of that situation by turning to work as an apprentice of John as a new coping mechanism.
  • Both take advantage of their positions as people involved with law enforcement or crime scene work to manipulate evidence, turn attention away from themselves, and frame other people for their crimes outright.
  • Each of them has a role in causing John's eventual death. John's inability to get his cancer treated was caused by Logan inadvertently mixing up John's head x-ray with another patient's while he was working as an intern of the Angel of Mercy Hospital, while Hoffman deliberately manipulated the events at the Gideon Meatpacking Plant across Saw III and IV to get both John and Amanda killed, so he would no longer be stuck under John's thumb.
• Mistaken for Related: A single-receptor variant involving multiple relatives in Saw IV. In his last meeting at the police station with Strahm and Perez before the film's main game begins, Hoffman shows up carrying Corbett Denlon's teddy bear. Looking at the teddy bear, Perez assumes that Hoffman has a wife and a child, which he dismisses as being a "short story".
  Perez: I didn't know you were married.
  Hoffman: I'm not. It's a short story, believe me.
• Moe Greene Special: In Saw 3D, he kills Rogers by shooting him in the right eye.
• Monster Brother, Cutie Sister: Implied to be the monster brother to Angelina's cutie sister. Though Angelina's screentime is limited, the articles posted about her death imply she was the kinder of the two of them. Hoffman needs no explanation...
• Near-Villain Victory: Just before the end of Saw 3D, and in Hoffman's perspective, everyone who had opposed him was dead, and there was nobody left to stop him. It looks as if Hoffman had won in the end... until Dr. Gordon, Brad and Ryan show up to immobilize him, something that Hoffman never knew, let alone suspected would happen.
• Neck Snap: He does this to Palmer during his rampage through the police precinct in Saw 3D.
• No One Could Survive That!: His fate at the end of 3D, in which he's left chained up in the Bathroom with no readily apparent means of escape, acts as if it's a guaranteed death sentence. If the fact that Eric previously managed to free himself bothers you, Word of God confirmed that Lawrence anticipated this and took more care to make things inescapable for Hoffman, aside from throwing the one unbroken hacksaw out of the Bathroom.
• Not So Stoic: Hoffman has had two emotional breakdowns that manage to break through his usual stoic, composed demeanor, and both eventually end in catastrophic consequences for the people around him.
  • It's strongly implied in the flashbacks from Saw V that Hoffman had a long-term breakdown after being informed of his sister's death and seeing her corpse in person, given that the scenes set after this show him as little more than a drunken mess and it's the thing that provokes his descent into misanthropy and vengeance-fueled killing.
  • His Villainous Breakdown that begins at the end of Saw VI upon his survival of the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 is a more explicit example. Although he doesn't lose any of his concentration and determination, he becomes a full-on Ax-Crazy sociopath and drops out all his composure with his following acts in Saw 3D, only expressing rage over Jill's attempt to kill him and whoever tries to stop him.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Zigzagged. Hoffman comes off at first as poorly spoken and unintelligent, almost a Clueless Detective in Saw IV compared to the much brighter Agent Strahm. Of course, the reveal that he's an accomplice does show he's quite capable of using police resources and covering his tracks, but as the movies go on, Hoffman's shown as ultimately not a schemer. His flawed methodology is taken apart on analysis by both John and Erickson and he gets by more with his willpower and brutality instead of his brains and planning.
• Offscreen Inertia: When he's captured by Lawrence, Brad and Ryan in Saw 3D, he's trapped inside the Bathroom (next to Adam's corpse, no less), but with all possible methods of escape removed. The film ends with him being left to stay there until he dies, though his fate remains ambiguous due to production-related issues.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Before becoming John's apprentice, he personally hunted down the man who had killed his sister Angelina. Given the vicious way Seth murdered her and the fact that he got away with it without remorse, Hoffman sealing him in an inescapable, particularly gruesome trap doesn't feel particularly undeserved.
  • While most of Hoffman's later victims were handpicked from John's will and for him to set up the respective games, one of the few he tests of his own accord is a gang of Neo-Nazi skinheads for his Horsepower Trap. Given how the trap appears barely survivable and the fact he later uses one of the skinheads' corpses as a decoy for a Bodybag Trick, it's strongly implied that he didn't mean to let any of them come out alive, and simply set up a trap as part of his grand scheme in Saw 3D.
• The Pen Is Mightier: Falls on the receiving end of this in 3D, when Jill stabs him in the neck with a pen in an attempt to escape from him. It doesn't hinder him at all.
• Pet the Dog: A downplayed if not subverted example. John clearly had something horrific planned for Jeff's daughter if he failed his final test as part of another game. Given Jeff gets killed shortly after learning about this game, Hoffman finds an opportunity by aborting that game and appearing to save her for good will.
• Psycho Knife Nut: His weapon of choice for direct fights/attacks as a Jigsaw Killer is a serrated knife, and it's really emphasized with his downturn into ax-craziness during the events of 3D.
• Punctuated Pounding: In Saw 3D, while bashing Jill's forehead against a table:
  Hoffman: You. Fucking. CUNT!
• The Quiet One: Not much of Hoffman's personal life is explored across the whole franchise, but Tapp describes him as preferring to work rather than speak in a written message from Tapp in Saw II: Flesh & Blood:
  "This guy is pretty quiet, sort of an introvert. Good for unpaid overtime hours, willing to do the busywork."
• Quizzical Tilt: In Saw V, he tilts his head mockingly towards Strahm after getting pushed into the glass coffin, fully aware that Strahm has just doomed himself to a grisly death with no means of escape.
• Rank Up: Thus far, he had two promotions as a police officer that happened or were mentioned in the films:
  • The first one chronologically is explained by Gibson in Saw 3D. When Gibson tried to report him for engaging in police misconduct, Hoffman received a promotion between unknown ranks because of a lack of evidence to be seen by the department (thus, they saw him as merely achieving worthy accomplishments), while Gibson was transferred to his present position at the Internal Affairs Division (much to Gibson's dismay).
  • Following his staged survival and achievements in the games at the Gideon Meatpacking Plant between Saw III and IV, Hoffman is promoted to the fictional rank of Detective Lieutenant (which could be parallel to the real-life Lieutenant Detective rank used in some American police departments) at the beginning of Saw V.
• Remember the New Guy?: He debuted in Saw III as a minor crime scene technician (with the credits referring to him as "Forensic Hoffman"). He then goes to being a detective in Saw IV, with Saw V explaining that he was one of the first officers involved in the Jigsaw case, in spite of him not being mentioned at all in the first two films.
• Revenge: Vengeance is the essence of Hoffman whenever he's not forced into following John's philosophy. The basis for John's forced recruitment of him was an inescapable trap he built for the man who killed his sister. In Saw 3D, Hoffman's sole motivation for almost all the havoc he wreaks throughout and all the people he slaughters is revenge against Jill for her attempt on his life.
• Sadist: He enjoys the carnage he causes and people suffering in the games, and openly admits as such to John.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: He tries to pull this off at the end of Saw 3D — key word being tries. He accomplished his goal of killing Jill, and with his identity known to the public, there was no reason for him to stick around. After packing a lot of cash, a gun and setting his lair on fire, he makes to leave. Whether he was planning to get a new identity and put his Jigsaw life behind him or just wait until the heat had died down will likely never be answered, since Lawrence intervened before either could occur.
• Serrated Blade of Pain: A serrated knife. It's the tool he uses to cut out jigsaw puzzle pieces from dead victims in the traps that he sets up (in contrast to John's more professional scalpel), and his primary weapon for direct murders. Dr. Adam Heffner takes notice of the former case in Saw VI because of the resulting skin abrasions around the pieces, in comparison to the neater borders of those cut with John's scalpel. It's also his hidden weapon.
  Heffner: The skin abrasions. They're indicative of a knife of a partially serrated edge.
  Hoffman: So?
  Heffner: So all the other cuts were made with a near-perfect blade of surgical quality.
• Serial Killer: Takes up John's mantle of this after his and Amanda's deaths.
• Skyward Scream: After escaping what was supposed to be his death through the inescapable Reverse Beartrap, he howls this in a way that signifies his complete descent into insanity.
• Slashed Throat: Does this to Erickson in Saw VI, although it was targeted more towards the latter's jugular vein rather than his actual throat.
• Smug Smiler: Makes the smuggest of grins when he sees Strahm flail around in vain from his inevitable death, though he quickly looks away the moment the latter begins to get Squashed Flat.
• The Sociopath: He seriously surpasses John in how many lines he's willing to cross. While John had a moral lesson in mind with his doings and gave his victims a chance to survive, Hoffman makes half his traps inescapable in the belief that murderers can't redeem themselves, being hypocritical in that statement while claiming so, while the other half force their victims into making sadistic choices, where one can live only at the expense of another's death. He horrifyingly blackmailed Amanda, a Broken Bird with standards, simply because he didn't like her. He's also willing to murder people whom he worked with for over 20 years just to get away, as well as putting Strahm in an inescapable trap and framing him for the murders and other crimes he himself committed in Saw V. He fully crosses the line when he murders John's ex-wife with the Reverse Bear Trap in Saw 3D.
• Spree Killer: Seeing as his cover as a Jigsaw Killer is blown, Hoffman decides to go all-out against the police force in Saw 3D, killing everyone he comes across with either his bare hands or any weapons he can get his hands on, eventually ending with him locking Jill in the original Reverse Bear Trap, which goes off successfully.
• The Starscream: A flashback in Saw VI reveals that he blackmailed Amanda into failing her test in Saw III, setting off the chain of events that led to the deaths of both her and John in quick succession. Hoffman takes this chance to take credit for saving Jeff's daughter and get a promotion. Jill later catches onto this deception, and angrily tries to sabotage Hoffman's test.
• Start of Darkness: Saw V explored his Start of Darkness in detail. To summarize it, he had a mental breakdown upon the death of his sister, and it was his Jigsaw-framed murder of her abusive boyfriend and killer what led John to forcibly recruit him into the Jigsaw mantle via blackmail.
• The Stoic: He's a very composed and usually inexpressive person, like John and unlike Amanda. However, this goes completely out the window twice, first when he broke down in tears upon seeing his sister's dead corpse, and later when Jill nearly kills him.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Despite being the most experienced and competent member of John's inner circle, Hoffman is never friendly or devoted to him the way that the other apprentices are.
  • John's interactions with Hoffman are never warm (like John's are with Amanda), and Hoffman never seems to forget that they only met and worked together because John kidnapped and blackmailed him. After deliberately causing John's death via indirect means during the events of Saw III and IV, he ultimately chooses to set up and execute John's remaining planned games for his own sadism, rather than because he believed in John's philosophy. Hoffman does appear to be respectful enough to closely follow the instructions John had posthumously left him for said games, though.
  • Hoffman and Amanda can barely stand to be around each other. It's strongly implied Amanda felt threatened by Hoffman as competition for John's approval and/or affection (something that Hoffman never seemed to seek out), and Hoffman merely saw Amanda as a pathetic self-harming junkie. This is probably a major reason why Hoffman sabotages Amanda's Secret Test of Character in III.
• That Liar Lies: In Saw VI, he says this to Perez as he's stabbing her to death.
  Hoffman: Who else knows about me? Who else fucking knows about me?
  Perez: E-Everyone...
  Hoffman: You lie... You're fucking lying...
• Tom the Dark Lord: The notorious successor of Jigsaw (already named John) who racked a much larger body count than him goes by the plain name of Mark.
• Took a Level in Badass: Over the course of Saw VI, twice, and both at times when it seems like he's going down in defeat. And then even moreso in 3D.
  • In the first time, as his attempt to frame Strahm as Jigsaw's second accomplice pitifully falls apart in front of him, Hoffman successfully pulls off a move that only a desperate idiot would normally attempt - he kills two gun-carrying FBI agents (and fairly major characters) using only a knife, a cup of coffee and a minor character as a Human Shield; Hoffman then works to re-establish Strahm as the Jigsaw accomplice by planting his fingerprints all over the crime lab, then setting it aflame... with a still-breathing but rapidly dying Erickson left behind.
  • Just minutes later, Hoffman is on the wrong end of a new Reverse Bear Trap model thanks to Jill, who reveals that this is part of John's will; as she exits the room, Hoffman bashes his way out of his restraints by using the trap, prevents the trap from opening fully, and finally rips the thing off, only getting his right cheek shred in the process.
  • This gets exaggerated in Saw 3D where Hoffman is on the run from police, finds time to set up traps, and performs very complex plans on his own. This culminates with him assaulting a police station and killing over a dozen police officers like he's The Terminator. He succeeds without getting meaningfully hurt and only gets captured later by Dr. Gordon. 3D turns him from a serial killer trying to keep his head down to a full-on supervillain, like the type seen in action thriller movies.
• Uncertain Doom: Whether Hoffman perished from Lawrence imprisoning him is currently left in the air. Although invokedWord of God in Saw 3D's DVD Commentary indicated he died (and that Gordon removed any means Hoffman could have taken advantage of to free himself, like the toilet lid Eric Matthews used to smash his foot in Saw III), Costas Mandylor was asked to reprise his role, but this was put on hold with changes to developmental plans for future installments in the series. After the release of Spiral, Darren Lynn Bousman claimed that there were discussions to bring back Hoffman for a later movie. Eventually, Hoffman made his first appearance since 3D in X, which is an Interquel.
• Viler New Villain: While he's not necessarily introduced as such, Hoffman is progressively shown to be a much more immoral and dangerous Big Bad than John (and even later killers and copycats), being one of the very few who directly murders people without using death traps. He eventually becomes an absolute sociopath with his Villainous Breakdown throughout Saw 3D.
• Villainous Breakdown: After escaping the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 in Saw VI, he drops all his pretense of the Jigsaw philosophy and leans fully into an Ax-Crazy psychopath over the course of Saw 3D. This outcome triggers John's plan to enlist Dr. Gordon to put him down for good, which only pushes Hoffman's breakdown further.
  "What do you think you're doing? What the fuck do you think you're doing?! Huh?! No! You can't fucking do this to me! Fuck you! No! NO!!"
• Villainous Valour: He's a murderous bastard, but escaping a Reverse Bear Trap without any readily apparent means to do so was pretty damn impressive.
• Villain with Good Publicity: He's a decorated and highly respected police lieutenant with over twenty years of experience (as he mentions in Saw V) and numerous promotions under his belt (a fact that's pointed out by Perez in Saw IV). He's also a violent Serial Killer who happens to be Jigsaw's longest-tenured accomplice and eventual successor. That all goes out the window come Saw 3D, when Jill outs him to his police department's Internal Affairs division, making him become the most wanted criminal in the city.
• Wham Line: Hoffman gets two of them in Saw VI:
  • Not so much the line as Hoffman being the one who delivers it once the voice on Seth Baxter's tape is decoded in front of Perez and Erickson.
    Hoffman: Right now, you're feeling helpless.
  • Just after the FBI tech lab scene, Hoffman finds the document Pamela had previously given to Jill in his watchroom's desk, at which we find out it was the letter Amanda read back in Saw III. The ensuing flashback montage has a voice-over of the letter's text in Hoffman's voice.
    "Amanda— you were with Cecil the night Jill lost Gideon. You killed their child. You know it, and I know it. So do exactly as I say; kill Lynn Denlon, or I will tell John what you did."
• Wham Shot: He provides a couple of them.
  • In the climax of Saw IV, Hoffman is seemingly electrocuted when the water from the melting ice block that Eric was standing on reaches the electrified chair Hoffman was restrained to. Immediately after Rigg plays Art's tape, Hoffman is seen standing up and walking from the background behind Rigg, without any signs of having been actually electrocuted.
    • In the film's theatrical cut, this moment is changed to an additional shot exclusive to this version, in which Hoffman is seen untying the chair's fake restraints.
  • Saw VI doubles this with a Wham Line (via voiceover). When Hoffman leaves the FBI's tech lab and returns to his watchroom for William Easton's trial, he's shocked to find the letter in Saw III that caused Amanda's Villainous Breakdown, at which we finally see what exactly was written in it; it was a blackmail note, written by Hoffman.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: In the flashback in Saw V preceding John's abduction of him, Hoffman gets randomly attacked by a dog to his surprise, but when he hears the dog's owner referring to it as "Peewee," he quickly switches to giving a short, displeased remark about it.
  "Peewee. Shit."
• Wife-Basher Basher: His first full-on murder victim (after he had killed at least one person more incidentally beforehand) was a Domestic Abuser who killed his sister.
• Would Hit a Girl: He personally kills Perez and Jill (and violently knocks out the latter) in the sixth and seventh movies, respectively.
• Xanatos Gambit: The plan he enacts against Strahm in Saw V. The outcome is what he had hoped for, with Strahm getting himself killed and the FBI believing him to be the wanted Jigsaw apprentice, throwing them off the scent of Hoffman himself. However, even if Strahm had followed his instructions and survived the final trap, the FBI would have still thought he was the apprentice in question, meaning he would have been either arrested, forced into hiding, or possibly even Hoffman being able to blackmail him into actually becoming an accomplice. And if things had somehow gone really wrong and resulted in Hoffman being killed by the trap, then it would have looked as if Strahm had killed him to cover up his identity, making him doubly screwed.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Hoffman is a master at playing lightning rounds of this. When things fall apart, he'll think on his feet. For example, in Saw VI, Hoffman is called by Erickson and Perez to go to the local FBI headquarters' audio lab with them, where an audio technician is analyzing the Pendulum Trap's tape. The analysis reveals that Hoffman's the true second wanted apprentice, so his plan to frame Strahm fails. Hoffman pulls an insane move in response: he murders the technician, Erickson and Perez with only a knife and a cup of coffee. Afterwards, he plants Strahm's fingerprints all over the lab, and then burns the place down.
• You Killed My Father: Back when they were dating, Seth was an active Domestic Abuser to Hoffman's sister Angelina, a cycle that eventually culminated in him murdering her; he was subsequently condemned to life imprisonment, but was freed about five years later due to a technicality. Hoffman's response to this liberation is putting Seth in an inescapable Jigsaw frame-up scenario as revenge for his sister's death.

Amanda Young

Amanda Young

"I found myself a father... a leader... a teacher."

Portrayed By: Shawnee Smith (movies)

Voiced By: Jen Taylor (video games)

Appearances: Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV (corpse), Saw VI (in flashbacks), Saw X, Saw: The Video Game (onscreen) | The Scott Tibbs Documentary (in a video clip)

"Sometimes, we get sucked into things that... are against our nature. Drugs are as vicious as they are powerful."

Jigsaw's third apprentice. Amanda is a junkie who was the first person to survive one of Jigsaw's tests, and was subsequently recruited by him as a disciple. She, like Hoffman, perverted Jigsaw's message by creating traps that were inescapable; she believed that Jigsaw's philosophy was flawed and is doing her victims a favor than suffer psychological scars for the rest of their lives. She also had an inadvertent hand in causing the miscarriage of Jigsaw's child.

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• Abusive Parents: Though deleted, in a line of an early Saw III script, Amanda states that when she was a child, her father kept her locked in a dark basement for hours.
• Alas, Poor Villain: In III, her death scene is dramatic and anguished, as she dies a slow and agonizing death from a gunshot wound to the neck. It doesn't forgive everything she's done, but with her being a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, there is a level of tragedy in it.
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed. Amanda may be perverting John's philosophy with inescapable traps, but the third film thoroughly explores Amanda as a deeply troubled person who suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, making her desperate for John's approval. Hoffman preyed on her emotional instability to sabotage John's last test for her, as revealed in Saw VI, leading to Jeff shooting her in the throat. The subsequent moment where she bleeds out is played out as pitifully tragic rather than satisfying.
• At Least I Admit It: Amanda is arguably worse than the original Jigsaw Killer, but she openly calls out how his philosophy is deeply, deeply hypocritical, claiming that while she's a murderer, he's a self-righteous prick who tortures and kills under the veneer of helping people, which as she demonstrates, doesn't usually work.
• Ax-Crazy: By the third film, Amanda has become a nihilistic Serial Killer, creating deliberately inescapable traps, and openly threatening to kill Lynn, which becomes her demise when the latter's husband takes revenge.
• Badass Adorable: Amanda's cute, timid demeanor on the outside can almost make you forget that she's lived through Jigsaw's tests multiple times, and is now as cunning and deadly a trap master as him.
• Badass Longcoat:
  • Whenever she wears a pig mask, it's often combined with a red robe (a color inversion of John's). She otherwise doesn't wear it in the testing field.
  • In Saw X, when capturing the members of The Pederson Project, she wears a black robe with red borders that's more identical to John's.
• Barefoot Captives: For whatever reason, Amanda spends her whole time in the Nerve Gas House lacking shoes or socks. Especially notable because she helped set the trial up, and doesn't bother taking shoes from the dying prisoners. In fairness, the first three victims are male, meaning their shoe size would be much larger than Amanda, and one of those three is killed by fire, rendering his shoes useless anyway. By the time a female captive dies, it would have looked a bit awkward having her pull said victim's shoes off after "comforting them" as they died. Amanda's choice may have also been deliberate. She sports fresh bandages from the work to save her after her "suicide attempt," and even lies to Daniel that she "wasn't taking care of herself," suggesting Jigsaw targeted her again because she attempted to kill herself rather than "appreciate the life Jigsaw gave her." The clothes she wears you would expect to find on someone confined to a mental institution, where she logically would have been taken if the suicide attempt were real. It also further adds to the deception that she's just another victim, as her clothes and lack of shoes and socks make her appear more defenseless than the rest of the captives, and makes it seem she was kidnapped from a mental institution and brought to the house.
• Bastard Understudy: Amanda is loyal to Jigsaw's philosophy, but takes it to a far more extreme degree.
• Being Evil Sucks: By the end, Amanda has realized how meaningless Jigsaw's path is, is wracked with remorse over her atrocious deeds, and ultimately dies a monstrous killer alongside her mentor.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: She was the only person to have ever survived one of Jigsaw's traps at the end of the first film. She eventually helped John continue his work.
• Beneath Suspicion: Downplayed in Saw II. While nobody ever suspects her as being a Jigsaw apprentice, there's a decent amount of Foreshadowing to it over the course of the film before her reveal at the end.
• Big Bad Friend: As revealed at the end of Saw II. She was in on the game to protect Daniel and to get back at his father.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Despite being John's preferred successor, Amanda shows a lack of mental strength and decisiveness, being very emotionally dependent on John as a father figure; John is visibly heartbroken when she fails his Secret Test of Character for her in III. Though dangerous on her own, she also shows herself to be far less deadly than John and Hoffman. Additionally, Hoffman having leverage over her with his knowledge about her role in John's Start of Darkness leaves her powerless against him.
• Bleed 'Em and Weep:
  • Did this after killing Donnie Greco, covered in blood no less.
  • She also cries heavily while performing a Mercy Kill on Adam.
• Boyish Short Hair: She sports different short hairstyles in Saw II and X, but later grows her hair again in III.
• Brainy Brunette: She designed some of the traps and devices herself. In particular, the shotgun collar that Lynn was forced to wear.
• Break the Cutie: Subverted in Saw II. After seeing her tear-filled breakdown in the first film from surviving her first test, and her Big "NO!" reaction to finding she's in another Jigsaw trap here, she almost immediately garners audience sympathy, even though she has a closed-off, loner personality throughout the film, opening up only to Daniel. However, we discover at the end that her presence wasn't further torture from Jigsaw, and that she was in on it all along.
• Broken Bird: She's been the victim of Abusive Parents, framed for a crime she didn't commit, sent to prison because of it and became addicted to heroin while inside, was very nearly killed in a death trap set up by a serial killer as well as being forced to kill a man in the process, basically developed Stockholm Syndrome towards said serial killer, was blackmailed by a rival apprentice into killing an innocent woman, and finally is shot to death. The image of her bleeding out on the floor, desperately trying to put pressure on her own wound, is hard to forget.
• Bungled Suicide: Implied, then subverted in Saw II. In a flashback, we see her cutting her wrists, and she spends the film with bandages over her wrists, indicating that she was discovered before she could die. Her attire (a plain T-shirt, sleep pants, and the fact that she's barefoot) also suggests that she may have been plucked out of some sort of psychiatric institution by Jigsaw to be put in the Nerve Gas House. At the end, we discover that Jigsaw was with her when she slit her wrists and encouraged her to do so to be "reborn," and is seen taking her from her apartment, likely to receive medical care.
• Chekhov's Gunman: She has a bit part in the first movie. She becomes much more important later in the following two.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: A non-romantic version towards John. Amanda is shown feeling threatened when John has someone close to him or expresses affection for him. When John (while delirious during surgery) mistakes Lynn for Jill and says he loves her, Amanda angrily leaves and self-harms. Amanda's dislike of Hoffman is heavily implied to be because she didn't like the competition for John's attention and legacy.
• Co-Dragons: With Hoffman, though she didn't like him being there. The feeling is mutual.
• Conscience Makes You Go Back:
  • In a flashback in Saw III, she goes back to deliver a Mercy Kill to Adam after John seals him in the Bathroom to die, because she feels immense guilt for bringing him there in the first place. She puts him out of his misery via suffocation, saying she's going to "free him" and sobbing the whole time while he tries to fight back.
  • Two deleted scenes of the film really help expound on why Amanda would feel this awful:
    • The first scene is of her in the lobby of Adam's apartment building, seemingly there to scope out the layout for when she comes back to abduct him. He walks down the stairs and sees her, and although he doesn't know her, he strikes up a conversation; he sweetly compliments her hair, invites her out to a Wrath of the Gods concert, and asks if he can take her picture, to which she genuinely smiles and says yes. Long story short, he went out of his way to be really friendly and kind to her, honestly hoping to "see her around," and she paid it back by abducting him for John.
    • The second is of her having a vivid nightmare of hearing something go bump in the night while she's the only one awake in the Nerve Gas House, and when she goes to investigate, she sees an apparition of Adam, who rushes her and speaks in a garbled moan, which, when played in reverse, is him asking her, "How could you do this to me?" She immediately bolts awake, breathing frantic and sweating.
• Cool Mask: A grody-looking pig mask with long black hair. While most of the Jigsaws don this, Amanda is the first confirmed "Pighead". It's so iconic that she has it as her default look in the Saw DLC for Dead by Daylight.
• Cop Killer: She leaves Eric Matthews for dead after trapping him in the Bathroom, where he probably would've died if not for Jigsaw needing him for another game. Later, she puts Allison Kerry in the cruelly-designed Angel Trap, which is inescapable and does kill her.
• Cute and Psycho: Amanda is a mousy, petite young woman who just so happens to be a murderous and vicious criminal engineer. Even throughout most of Saw III she acts like a cutesy teenage girl while she's holding Lynn hostage.
• Dark Action Girl: Downplayed. Amanda is clearly more physically capable and agile than John, as shown when she gets the drop on her targets in pig gear, but she's also rather small and untrained in combat. As such she barely survives attacks from Xavier and Eric Matthews.
• Deadline News: Downplayed. One of the video clips Scott shows in The Scott Tibbs Documentary features Amanda punching a news reporter who anticipated that she would cross by to make her give information about how she got out of the Nerve Gas House. The punch is strong enough to bring the reporter to the ground, and Amanda promptly runs away from her.
• Deceptive Disciple: She's not really interested in continuing John's work of "make people suffer so they'll appreciate life more." Amanda just thinks people are irredeemable, and kills them outright.
• Decoy Damsel: Combined with a Sequencing Deception in Saw II. Amanda is set up to be the Final Girl of the Nerve Gas House to Daniel's Final Boy, with Eric seemingly coming to find and rescue them. By the time Eric enters where Amanda and Daniel were last seen, however, it turns out that their presence was at different times, and Eric is promptly anaesthetised and locked up by Amanda, who reveals herself as Jigsaw's protége at the house.
• Determinator: Amanda really keeps herself in the game during her undercover deception in the second film.
• Dragon with an Agenda: While she did support Jigsaw's testing, the traps she made on her own were inescapable rather having a way for the victims to escape, believing that death would be more merciful and that nobody can really change after the tests.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • While her traps were inescapable, she believed that she was doing people a service by simply letting them die rather than leaving them to suffer after surviving as she did. A lot of her morality is shown through her actions with Adam; a deleted scene shows her having a guilt-ridden nightmare of his apparition asking her why she sent him to his death, and in Saw III, rather than letting him starve or dehydrate to death, she delivers a Mercy Kill, gently saying she was going to help and free him, and genuinely sobbing the whole time.
  • In Saw X, Amanda is as horrified by Cecilia's cold-blooded ruthlessness as John is, the only relevant difference being that she thinks Cecilia should straight-up die without a proper test. She gets deeply furious when Cecilia snaps Gabriela's neck as casually as if she were killing an insect, and is disturbed when Cecilia places Carlos (a child) to die in the Bloodboarding Trap simply out of spite towards John.
    John: Right now, Amanda, these people deserve to be tested.
    Amanda: That lady doctor? Deserves nothing.
    John: Everyone deserves a chance. An opportunity to redeem themselves. You should know that more than anyone.
• Evil All Along: Saw II's biggest twist is that Amanda is not only John's protege, but has been with him throughout all of the movie. Saw III later shows that she was also involved in the first movie's game centered on Lawrence and Adam.
• Eviler than Thou: She creates inescapable traps, unlike Jigsaw, who intends for his victims to survive. Played with in that she does this because she believes letting them live through the trauma they would have suffered afterwards would be a Fate Worse than Death.
• Fan Disservice: Amanda became more attractive in Saw III, and apart from her spending its whole runtime in a tight shirt, there's one scene where she pulls her pants down and exposes her underwear... promptly before running a large knife across her inner thigh, where scars are visible from prior cuts.
• Fanservice: Subverted with her outfit from Saw II. Her T-shirt is short enough that her midriff is often slightly exposed during the film, but Word of God stated that while she was slated to wear sexy attire (in a similar manner to Laura Hunter and Addison Corday), her actress Shawnee Smith pushed for the very basic attire of the T-shirt and sleep pants to avoid making her look sexy, and kept her makeup minimal.
• Final Girl: Subverted in Saw II when it's revealed she was working with Jigsaw the whole time.
• Fingore: In Saw II, while her fingers are not shown graphically, Amanda's adrenaline kicks in when Xavier throws her into the Needle Pit and she starts wildly digging through the piles of used needles in search for the key. This can be a rather tough scene to watch, especially as she treats it as though she's just digging through a pile of harmless sand.
• First-Episode Twist: At the end of Saw II, Amanda is the first Jigsaw apprentice revealed. While she only has a relevant role as The Dragon in Saw III, she gets a crucial role in flashbacks from Saw VI, especially in regards to her relationships with Cecil and Hoffman.
• Foreshadowing: Amanda being an apprentice of Jigsaw is telegraphed several times throughout Saw II before the reveal at the end.
  • She immediately searches for a tape recorder upon waking up in the house, distressedly telling the others that it will explain everything about their situation, with the explanation that she's "played before". Anyone who remembers the first movie will know that her game had a video that played instantly, rather than having to find and play a cassette.
  • She's very insistent that Jigsaw is not a killer and wants them to survive, and that everyone needs to play by the rules.
  • After Amanda shares the details of her arrest and conviction, when she's at the top of the stairs, and Daniel is talking about his father, she gives him a very notable glare in anticipation of him finishing "My father is a..." with "cop," before he says "hardass" instead. The look lingers for a moment, and hints that she knows about Eric.
  • When she's thrown in the Needle Pit with under a minute to search for a key, she's visibly agonized and traumatized, but ends up finding the exact spot where the key is fairly quickly, implying that she may have assisted Jigsaw in the trap's creation.
  • She's also the only member of the group (besides Daniel, who the killers had already deemed would survive the ordeal) who doesn't show any signs of succumbing to the toxin, such as Blood from the Mouth.
  • One very quick moment in the climax is when Amanda and Daniel open the door to discover the Bathroom. Amanda immediately knows what side of the doorway the switch is on, and almost as immediately turns on the lights.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Amanda was once a hopeless and desperate young woman who was put through a grueling test by Jigsaw. Ever since then, she found herself drawn to his insane methodology, to the point where she proved just as good at building death traps as him, and came close to surpassing him as the resident Jigsaw killer.
• Gone Horribly Right: Jigsaw is glad she's gone onto embrace his philosophy in appreciating life. What he's not happy about is that she's started outright killing people who don't do the same.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Amanda is apparently real quick to anger, which is not a very good situation if you ever find yourself under this woman's mercy, as shown in Saw III with Lynn and especially he who found out nearly too late, Matthews.
• The Heavy: In Saw III, Amanda is the one running the games and capturing victims, since John is literally on his deathbed from terminal cancer.
• Hero Killer: She personally kills Adam Stanheight (one of the two leads of the original Saw) by suffocating him to death with a plastic bag out of mercy. She later causes the death of Detective Allison Kerry (one of the most upstanding cops in the series) by placing her in an inescapable trap and watching as it rips her apart.
• Holier Than Thou: Amanda became Jigsaw's apprentice after successfully surviving a trap, but then perverts his philosophy by making inescapable traps designed to kill the victims as she believes they won't change if they do survive, while arrogantly believing herself to be the sole exception.
• Human Pincushion: In Saw II, she's the one whom Xavier tosses into the used hypodermic needle pit to retrieve one needle that has the key to the safe with one of that movie's antidotes. It is extremely traumatizing and excruciatingly painful, but she does retrieve the key, only for Xavier to drop it and fail to unlock the safe before it seals up, preventing them from getting the antidote. Daniel ends up literally having to help her pluck needles out of random areas of her body.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: She makes John look downright merciful by the third movie. Of course, this was the fault of John himself, who made her another murderer in an attempt to "help her", much to his shame when he realizes this. It didn't help that Hoffman was already far down the slope too, tugging on Amanda's leg at the time.
• Karmic Death: She shoots Lynn in the third film, then in turn gets shot in the neck by an enraged Jeff. As she slowly bleeds to death, Jigsaw can only voice his disappointment in her.
• Legacy Character: Amanda is the first revealed Jigsaw apprentice, and takes up the mantle full-time in Saw III when John has grown too weak to carry out the work.
• A Lighter Shade of Grey: Unlike Hoffman, it's made clear that while villainous, Amanda is a deeply troubled person, and demonstrates remorse and emotional instability far too great for a sociopath.
• Made of Iron: Amanda clearly isn't a fighter and is absolutely terrified when she realizes Eric escaped his And I Must Scream fate minutes after imprisonment. She then takes a similar Unstoppable Rage-fueled No-Holds-Barred Beatdown like John, but barely triumphs over Eric due to his crippled foot.
• Metaphorically True: In Saw II, like Lawrence in the first film, she states that Jigsaw is not a killer because he never killed anyone directly, though this is pretty much a Foreshadowing to her being his apprentice, which is revealed at the end of the film.
• More Deadly Than the Male: While not as cunning as John, Amanda is nonetheless much stronger and more agile, as well as more likely to flat-out kill her enemies.
• Morton's Fork: While John's philosophy ensures that every trap must have a chance, however gruesome or slim, of escaping it, the ones prepared by Amanda are all designed to be truly inescapable, leaving victims with the choice of simply dying horribly from the trap or suffering while trying to escape the trap with no option to survive.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Towards Lynn in Saw III, since she wants John for herself and is perceiving him as falling in love with Lynn. If she only knew Lynn was really Jeff's wife...
• Pet the Dog:
  • Regardless of the fact that she helped set up their situation, she still tries to help the other Nerve Gas House prisoners escape. Notably, Daniel Matthews, who Amanda could be forgiven to hate, as he's the son of the cop who ruined her life.
  • As a fellow addict, she empathizes with Gabriela and tries to arrange is so that she has a better chance at surviving.
• Predator Turned Protector: Though Amanda was sent into the Nerve Gas House as a set of eyes and ears for Jigsaw, she develops a sense of responsibility for Daniel, him being just a teenager and really only being in the house because of his father's actions. She speaks openly with him and the two of them cling to each other as they run from Xavier. She's genuinely heartbroken when she thinks Daniel succumbed to the poison and died, and clings to him when he's crying after he kills Xavier.
• Progressively Prettier: As noted above, she has a rather punkish, unkempt appearance in Saw II, but looks much more polished and well-dressed in Saw III.
• Psycho Supporter: She's a former victim of Jigsaw who came to embrace his twisted ideology and views him as a father figure. She goes far beyond that, however, and corrupts his philosophy to flat-out kill people with death traps.
• Recovered Addict: She's a former heroin addict.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Amanda usually wears a red cloak alongside a pig mask with black hair when capturing victims; in Saw X, she switches to a black cloak with red interior. She also dresses in a more casual red and black outfit in III.
• Red Is Violent: While going to work abducting people, she wears an all-red cloak along with her pig mask. In Saw III she wears a red form-fitting top, which highlights the blood she's drawn with her sadistic deeds.
• Samus Is a Girl: The third movie retroactively reveals that she's the eerie pig-masked figure who abducted Adam and Lawrence in the first film.
• Saved by Canon: In Saw X, due to taking place between I and II, she is never in danger of dying, even during the climax where Cecilia Pederson seems to gain the upper hand.
• Self-Harm: After leaving her drug addiction from her test in the first film, Amanda began cutting herself, which is what lands her in another trap in Saw II (actually, that was her part in the game's plan as a watchperson for John, but she did still harm herself). She's seen cutting one of her legs in Saw III, laying out all the tools before she starts (in an attempt to gain control over her situation), and later tightly grips a knife until she begins to bleed onto the floor (because she's starting to lose control, in comparison to the previous scenes).
• Serial Killer: She's more upfront about this than John, as she doesn't intend for her victims to live, since the traps she makes are inescapable. She doesn't even make any pretenses about not being a killer.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: In the first two films she just looks like any average young woman, albeit a little scruffy and punk-like, but when she becomes a full-blown Jigsaw Killer she wears a red and black outfit to go with Jigsaw's typical color scheme.
• Smug Snake: She antagonizes Lynn throughout the third film. In a flashback in the sixth film, Amanda acts arrogant around Hoffman when he's making adjustments on the Rack Trap, which probably contributed to his dislike of her.
• Symbolic Mutilation: In Saw II, while she wasn't meant to get into any of the Nerve Gas House's traps, she's thrown by Xavier into the Needle Pit, which is rather fitting for someone who happens to be a former heroin addict.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In III. She starts designing inescapable traps, and she antagonizes Lynn throughout her test.
• Unwinnable by Design: Her traps are some of the most brutal in the franchise, and she rigs them to be inescapable as she doesn't really share John's warped philosophy.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In VI, it was revealed she asked Cecil to steal drugs from Jill's clinic, therefore indirectly responsible for Jill's miscarriage and Jigsaw's Start of Darkness.
• Villainous Breakdown: We see her methodically commit self-harm early on in the third film. Towards the end, she does it again, but this time without the ritual, just cutting herself quickly. When she shoots Lynn and realizes what a sham John's philosophy is, she's almost sobbing, and angrily calls John out with a long string of arguments.
  Amanda: That's right. (referring to Eric) I'm a murderer. He took my life from me so I just returned the fucking favor.
  John: No, Amanda. That's what you thought. But I know differently. You left him for dead, didn't you?
  Amanda: Stop fucking with me.
  John: But I cleaned up your mistakes. I forgave you for them.
  Amanda: What you do is no different than murder. You torture people, you watch them die. But now you're begging me not to kill this worthless bitch on the grounds of some game?
  John: You're walking us toward a precipice, Amanda. Step back.
  Amanda: It's bullshit. Nobody changes. It's all a lie.
  John: If you fail in this, we all fail. Succeed, and we all succeed.
  Amanda: It's a lie, I'll tell you! She hasn't changed because nobody fucking changes. Nobody is reborn. It's all bullshit! It's all a fucking lie! And I am just a pawn in your stupid games. I don't mean anything to you.
  John: No, you mean everything to me.
  Amanda: Fuck you!
  John: Our fates are linked. I've tried to help you, Amanda.
  Amanda: So help me! Fix me! Fix me, you motherfucker! I'm standing right here!
• Villain Protagonist: While she isn't initially the focus, the original Saw trilogy is just as much about Amanda's journey from broken young woman to nihilistic serial killer as it is John's depraved crusade.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Make no mistake, Amanda's a cold-blooded, sadistic murderer. She's also a recovering drug addict who was framed for a crime she didn't commit by a crooked cop, put in jail where she became addicted to heroin, and was put in a death trap which traumatized her for life, not mentioning how she claims in an early script of Saw III that she was severely abused by her father as a child.

Lawrence Gordon

Dr. Lawrence Gordon

Portrayed By: Cary Elwes (movies)

Voiced By: Stan Kirsch (Saw: Rebirth)

Appearances: Saw | Saw 3D | Saw: Rebirth

After surviving his horrific game, Lawrence was nursed back to health by John and inducted into his cause. He would often assist John in searching for victims and lending his surgical expertise for some games. However, he designed no traps of his own and his existence was a mystery to Hoffman and Amanda, the former of which he was keeping a close eye on from the shadows. Lawrence ultimately took it to himself to end Hoffman's life after he committed a mass murder revenge spree that eventually culminated in Jill Tuck's death.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Given how occupied Hoffman is in Saw 3D evading police and hunting Jill (and unlike in V and VI, he's never seen directly overseeing the game), some viewers have interpreted the mastermind of Bobby's game to be Gordon, which is also in line with his clear disdain for Bobby when the latter visited the Jigsaw Survivor Group meeting.
• Artificial Limbs: He's given a prosthetic foot by Jigsaw, but it leaves him a limp that he needs to correct with a cane.
• Back for the Finale: He comes back for Saw 3D, which was planned to be the series' original finale. Up until that point, he hadn't been seen since the first film, six movies ago.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Of all of the people who continued John's work, he seemed to get it the closest.
• Beneath Suspicion: An interesting variant. The previous films where he was absent had various small hints to him having become an accomplice behind the scene, but this film has no foreshadowing to it at all before his reveal; the closest thing that gets to a hint is him sarcastically praising Bobby's claims in the Jigsaw Survivor Group meeting.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The best example in the series. While he does show up at the beginning of the film, his sudden reappearance at the end of Saw 3D is to stop Hoffman once and for all. It isn't seconds later when it's explained that John had inducted him into his philosophy.
• Deus ex Machina: He shows up at the end of Saw 3D to capture Hoffman, who had just succeeded in killing Jill and over a dozen police officers and was about to get away scot free. It's subsequently revealed that Gordon was John's most trusted apprentice, and his position was unknown to Hoffman and Amanda. Although he appears a couple times earlier in the movie, Gordon's role as John's ultimate posthumous ace-in-the-hole mostly serves to deal with Hoffman.
• The Dragon: More or less takes this role in Saw 3D to the posthumous Greater-Scope Villain John, and the movie reveals he was the actual most trusted apprentice, rather than Amanda or Hoffman.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Although nowhere near as rebellious as John's other disciples, Word of God suggested that even after his Face–Heel Turn, he was going to go back and free Adam. Sadly, Amanda already got to him by then.
• Dramatic Unmask: Does it upon himself in his sudden appearance shortly after the climax of 3D, which prompts the response from Hoffman "What the fuck?"
• Even Evil Has Standards: Being a survivor himself, and a Jigsaw accomplice, he knows that Bobby was never tested, and is appalled by his scheme to pretend that he was to get rich and famous from his book about "surviving" the ordeal.
• Evil Sounds Deep: When he makes his reappearance at the end of 3D, his voice deepens a few levels.
• Evil vs. Evil: He’s John’s secret accomplice, who is entrusted to avenge Jill and punish the rouge successor, Hoffman.
• Face–Heel Turn: He was indoctrinated offscreen into Jigsaw's philosophy after John nursed him back to health, between Saw and Saw II. He helped John on a few traps that required his medical expertise.
• Foreshadowing: His Face–Heel Turn is revealed in Saw 3D, but it was already hinted in previous movies:
  • Perhaps an unintentional hint, the wall clock in Lawrence's house as seen in the first film vaguely resembles a row of machinery gears, and has jigsaw puzzle-like pieces between the numbers. There's also a number of other clocks present in the house, similarly to how John used to own a number of them from what is seen in flashbacks of Saw IV.
  • The Body Horror of his handiwork is within an expertise John and his apprentices couldn't possibly be familiar enough with to perform well. What's more, the mysterious man depicted within the Death Mask's video tape in Saw II is walking with a severe limp; none of the Jigsaw killers displayed such physical handicaps.
  • The fact that there were other living accomplices/apprentices (those who didn't do become such as part of their tests, specifically) besides Hoffman at the time is implied in John's claim from the autopsy tape in Saw IV that he's probably the last one alive. He didn't explicitly say that Hoffman was the only living Jigsaw disciple after John and Amanda's deaths, even if he was still the only one seen throughout the next two movies.
• Irony: He was originally suspected by Tapp of being Jigsaw. He was innocent at the time, but after going through his test, he ended up becoming Jigsaw's most valued accomplice.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Despite being revealed as an accomplice, he’s one of the more moral ones of the group. He never creates a trap, he bows out after the events of the third and fourth films, and he’s the one who neutralizes Hoffman after the latter went nuts trying to kill Jill.
• Mad Doctor: After being brainwashed into Jigsaw's philosophy, he uses his surgical expertise for traps that require it. He also experienced a Sanity Slippage in the process, though he appears to be pretty sane by the time of 3D.
• Never Sent Any Letters: In a variant with an anonymous letter, he was to one who sent the "I know who you are" letter that Hoffman received in his office in Saw V, which the latter likely believed came from Strahm (with Jill also being a potential suspect for the viewer).
• Noble Demon: After his Face–Heel Turn. He's complicit when it comes to the games, mostly by assisting with medical procedures/surgeries to set up traps. Albeit, he seems to stick closer to John's moral code than Amanda or Hoffman, and seems to mostly have kept to himself and not really gone out of his way to be involved. He at least doesn't do anything evil in Saw 3D, and his only real contribution to the film is putting Hoffman in his place.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Noticeably in the first film. Cary Elwes had trouble doing an American accent. Especially in the more dramatic scenes where he is shouting, where his natural British accent tends to show up. He basically gives up on the effort entirely by the time of Saw 3D, mostly sounding like an Evil Brit.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Condemning Hoffman to painfully starve to death in the bathroom he was tested in. Before he leaves, he also tauntingly disposes of Adam's hacksaw within his reach.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Word of God confirms that his desire to go back and rescue Adam from where he'd left him in the bathroom trap was entirely genuine, and was only unable to because Amanda had already intervened and killed him herself by the time he was in any sort of position to manage it.
  • A Freeze-Frame Bonus in Saw V shows a file with Adam's name on it as Strahm goes through the folders of information on Jigsaw's victims. Given that none of the other apprentices ever cooperated with the police at any point and therefore never could have mentioned it, that John never seems to make any particular effort to have his kills acknowledged by law enforcement, and that the bathroom trap's existence seems to be entirely unknown to outsiders (Adam, Zep, and Xavier's bodies are all still there by the end of 3D), this would almost certainly mean that Lawrence, who would have been one of the only people aware that Adam was dead, took the risk of getting involved enough with the police to make sure that his death and disappearance would wind up acknowledged.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Cary Elwes got into a legal dispute with Lionsgate after the first movie over his claim of not being properly compensated for his work on that film, This took some time to get settled out of court. So, before 3D, there was many times where Dr. Gordon was referenced but never showed up, and the series had many other cameos from victim characters besides him. The directors behind the scenes mentioned that Elwes would decline to come back each movie when asked. Eventually he does come Back for the Finale for 3D, which was the original Grand Finale to the series.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: He's briefly seen wearing a black cloak with red interior similar to Jigsaw's in the flashback from Saw 3D that reveals his identity as the mysterious figure from the video tape in the opening scene of Saw II.
• Retcon: Gordon was not intended to be the hooded figure in Saw II. Director Darren Lynn Bousman played the figure as John and portrayed him with a limp to show the progression of his cancer. It being Gordon became a popular fan theory and 3D made it canon.
• Retired Monster: Implied by the time of Jigsaw. He is essentially the best candidate for John's successor and leads numerous acolytes, but until the time Logan decided to continue the work, no similar murders were said to be happening.
• Sanity Slippage: Word of God is that after being nursed back to health by John and released, he developed a severe mental instability that led to his wife divorcing him.
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: Goes from being another of John's many victims to one of his loyal disciples by the time of 3D.
• Unknown Rival: To Hoffman. Gordon is the person who wrote the threatening note ("I know who you are") to Hoffman in V, but Hoffman seems to think that Jill or Strahm wrote it. When Gordon kidnaps him at the end of Saw 3D, Hoffman reacts mostly with confusion. They don't have any significant dialogue, and Gordon never even tells Hoffman why he's trapping him in the bathroom to die.

Accomplices:

Zep Hindle

Shepherd "Zep" Hindle

Portrayed By: Michael Emerson (movies)

Voiced By: Jeff Shuter (Saw: Rebirth)

Appearances: Saw | Saw: Rebirth

An orderly who tended to John Kramer while he was being diagnosed with cancer. He formed a bond with him, which went horribly when John decided to include him in his rise to evil.

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• Asshole Victim: Although he was forced to do what he did to stay alive, Word of God is that he enjoyed every second of it.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He seen in a flashback scene before he's eventually shown as an antagonist in the present.
• Climactic Music: Zep is more known for the fact that the franchise's climax Leitmotif, "Hello Zepp", is named after him (though his name's spelling is altered as a Shout-Out to the band Zapp), rather than his actual role in the first movie. It ended up becoming an Artifact Title, as Saw V and the films thereafter stopped giving variations of "Hello Zepp" new names (e.g. "Hello Eric", "Final Test", "Let Go") and just go with "Zepp (the number of the movie)".
• Disc-One Final Boss: His death leads to the franchise's true villain being revealed.
• The Dragon: Jigsaw blackmails him into this position in the first film. Though later films show that John was already working with Amanda on that game and Hoffman on different games at that same time, which retroactively makes Zep's position just a normal pawn.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Is on the receiving end of this by Adam, who beats Zep to death with a toilet tank lid.
• Inconsistent Spelling: He's commonly mistakenly referred to as "Zepp" by viewers and fans due to his name being written as such in "Hello Zepp". Charlie Clouser deliberately spelled his name in the song's title like that as a Shout-Out Pun to the jazz band Zapp.
• Kick the Dog: Some of his actions while holding Alison and Diana hostage are needlessly cruel, like forcing Alison herself to tell her husband that he's failed.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Zep's attempt to connect with John in the hospital leads to him getting blackmailed into a Jigsaw game.
• Non-Action Guy: Played with. For a nervous hospital orderly, he is surprisingly efficient as muscle for Jigsaw. However, he gets easily overpowered a lot and relies on lucky breaks to get by.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: He's only ever referred to as Zep in the film itself, which information from earlier scripts gives out as a nickname; his actual first name is Shepherd.
• Orderlies are Creeps: He's a hospital orderly who kidnaps Lawrence's wife and daughter, then torments him with photos of them tied up and threats to murder them at a specified time. Granted, that was the test Jigsaw put him in, but considering Zep ends up dead anyway, he could have defied Jigsaw at the cost of his own life rather than terrorizing a helpless mom and little girl.
• Pet the Dog: He showed kindness to John, referring to him by name when Gordon simply referred to him as a patient. Gordon implied that Zep had a habit of forming bonds with patients.
• Punch-Clock Villain: A notable subversion. He kidnaps Lawrence's family so he can survive his own test, but he loves the pain he inflicts on them.
• Red Herring: Was the character who was seemingly set up to be Jigsaw before the reveal at the end of the first movie.
• Sadist: Scenes include him mockingly waving at Adam and Lawrence through the camera feed while saying "I see you", and menacing Alison and Diana with a gun while listening for their heartbeats to see how much they increase. On the commentary, it is stated that this was done to show that he enjoyed being given power over others.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: In Zep's tape, John claims that he's the only one with an antidote for Zep's poison, implying that it'd be fruitless for Zep to, say, go to the poison control center at the very hospital he works at. Though Zep acts as if John's telling the truth, the actual veracity of the claim is left ambiguous, especially given how Zep enjoyed the power trip Jigsaw's game gave him.
• Starter Villain: He may be a small fry in the long run, but Zep is the first revealed antagonist in the franchise (not counting Billy).
• Would Hit a Girl: He's perfectly willing to kill Dr. Gordon's wife...
• Would Hurt a Child: ...and daughter to save himself.

Obi Tate

Obi Tate

Portrayed By: Timothy Burd (Saw II)

Voiced By: Eric Carr (Saw: The Video Game)

Appearances: Saw II | Saw: The Video Game

An arsonist Jigsaw convinced to help kidnap other subjects for the main game in Saw II. Although we never find out in the film why he was willing to do so, the first video game sheds more light on Obi: he deeply admired John Kramer's work and wanted to be tested. John rewards him by not only making him a hapless victim in Tapp's game, but also a player in the Nerve Gas House.

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• Asshole Victim: Given Obi helped kidnap the other victims and displayed a sadistic streak, it's hard to pity his Cruel and Unusual Death.
• The Cameo: Makes a photo appearance in Spiral when Zeke investigates old documents about John.
• Dirty Coward: Ironically, an arsonist faced with simply burning his hand to turn off a valve to save his life is too terrified to do so. However, the way he is absolutely unfazed by Xavier's threats (detailed below) might imply that the fire was more of a personal phobia and his reaction to it an exception, rather than the rule.
• Death by Irony: Obi is an arsonist who burns to death.
• Failed a Spot Check: Obi's tape ends by saying "When you're in Hell, only the Devil can get you out." He didn't seem to notice the drawing of a devil-like figure on the furnace wall, next to a valve that would have turned off the gas in the Furnace, thus allowing him to escape.
• Genre Blind: To an astounding level: after going in the furnace he doesn't bother looking around and checking the surroundings before going for the syringes, and just takes them both being surprised when the second triggers the actual trap. Consider that there was no time limit or anything forcing his hand, he could talk with the others the whole time and a quick look would have shown the valve and saved him (although there was still a chance he would have ended up paralyzed by fear and died anyway). The issue is that, unlike other Jigsaw victims, he was a fan and actively wanted to be tested, and was put in a fairly easy game for Jigsaw's standards, so you would think a person like that would be a bit more prepared and familiar with the games, but no.
• Kill It with Fire: When trying to retrieve two antidotes from a furnace, Obi gets locked in and the furnace activates, which cooks him alive.
• Loony Fan: Of John Kramer. This is his characterization in the first game, which largely defines a character not developed in the films.
• Nerves of Steel: Xavier holds a knife to Obi's throat to threaten him into entering a trap to retrieve antidotes. Not only does Obi not do so much as flinch, he willingly reaches up and drags the knife across his own throat, remarking how if Xavier was gonna threaten him with a knife, "[he] may as well cut [Obi] a little". He then climbs into the trap without any further prompting.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Unlike Jigsaw's other accomplices, we know very little of Obi, namely why he aided Jigsaw. The video game rectifies this by giving him some more depth.

Art Blank

Art Blank

Portrayed By: Louis Ferreira

Appearances: Saw IV

A criminal defense lawyer and John Kramer's former friend and business partner. As his friend, Art supported his Urban Renewal Group, a foundation dedicated to property development for needy people under the motto "Four walls build a home." However, despite this social commitment, Art's work had a less honorable side, as he defended people for crimes they were guilty of. This and some lingering bitterness over Art trying to console him in the past got him targetted by John when he started the Jigsaw killings. Even after Art survived his game, he couldn't escape Jigsaw's grip, being forced into becoming an unwilling accomplice by the threat of death.

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• Amoral Attorney: He successfully defended a rapist, a pimp, and an abusive husband and father.
• Asshole Victim: Subverted. He did defend several criminals guilty of serious crimes, yes — but he also supported John's Urban Renewal Group, a foundation dedicated to property development for needy people. Not to mention, he wasn't a willing pawn like Zep in the first movie.
• Big "NO!": When Rigg bursts through the door at the last second before he can deactivate his trap along with Matthews' and supposedly Hoffman's.
• Boom, Headshot!: While pulling out a tape recorder to prove he's not one of Jigsaw's accomplices, Rigg mistakes the tape recorder for a weapon and shoots him through the head, the bullet exiting out the back of his skull and causing brain matter to shoot out with it.
• Defiant to the End: Knowing he's doomed anyway, Art doesn't cave to Rigg's delusional demands to raise his hands. Instead, he mocks Rigg for failing his game and repeatedly shouts he was being tested the whole time before Rigg shoots him dead.
• Foil: To Zep Hindle. Both men have a history with John and showed compassion and sympathy for his unfortunate situation, to which his response was to blackmail them into carrying out his nefarious schemes by the threat of death. However, whereas Zep was enthralled by the power he gained over others in his position and died fairly unsympathetic, Art is thoroughly an unwilling asset desperately wanting out of his situation.
• Glasgow Grin: He's left with one after being put through a trap that involves his mouth and cheek being stitched shut, and — in the process of screaming in agony — opening his mouth wide enough to rip the sews.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Art made a career defending horrible people. He's coerced into helping punish his former clients, made the pawn of an officer who previously opposed him in a domestic dispute, and eventually killed by another officer he tried to persecute in said dispute.
• Mouth Stitched Shut: He suffered this as part of a trap. After winning, he tore them open to scream.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Art runs at Rigg and gets shot in the left pectoral muscle. He collapses to the ground, but is otherwise okay. It's not until he's shot in the head by Rigg that he dies.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He's not even remotely evil, just decidedly amoral in his occupation and only trying to survive his ordeal with Jigsaw.
• Punny Name: A man who goes by the surname of Blank gets shot point blank in the head by Rigg.
• Reckless Gun Usage: He points a revolver at a restrained Hoffman to calm an also restrained Eric down... while keeping his finger on the trigger.
• Red Herring: Strahm suspects he's an accomplice of Jigsaw, and obviously so does Eric. Turns out he was only another victim.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Every other word he says is a swear and he's always on edge. Although, considering he survived a death trap and is being forced to moderate another test his survival hinges on, his temper is justified.
• We Used to Be Friends: Art was once John's good friend and business partner.

Jill Tuck

Jill Tuck

"I'm only carrying out John's final request."

Portrayed By: Betsy Russell (movies)

Voiced By: Whitney Anderson (Saw: Rebirth)

Appearances: Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D, Saw: Rebirth (onscreen) | Saw III (in flashbacks)

John Kramer's ex-wife. The founder of a drug rehabilitation clinic, Jill suffered a miscarriage when druggie Cecil Adams hastily broke in at night looking to score. With the downward spiral of her relationship with John after this and his cancer diagnosis, she divorced him. After John became the Jigsaw Killer, she was privy to his identity, machinations, and accomplices but did not want anything to do with him or turn him in. Despite this, following his death, John entrusted Jill to place the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 on Hoffman, as his successor was never properly tested.

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• Ascended Extra: She first appears in flashbacks in Saw III, only to become a more prominent character later.
• Avenging the Villain: She’s entrusted to test Hoffman with an upgraded Reverse Beartrap after John’s death, but she attempts to execute him with the device instead after learning that he blackmailed Amanda with knowledge in her role in Gideon’s death and forced her to sabotage John’s final game, which lead to her death, John’s, and the Denlons (sans Corbett), all so he could take control of the Jigsaw mantle.
• Chained to a Railway: Only in a dream, though, in Saw 3D.
• Damsel in Distress: In Saw 3D, she's under permanent police protection and surveillance from Hoffman. Justified in that Jill is a relatively normal civilian while Hoffman is a former elite detective and Serial Killer out for her blood.
• Death by Irony: In Saw VI, Jill intended to kill Hoffman in a newer version of the Reverse Bear Trap, but managed to survive. In Saw 3D, Hoffman ends up killing Jill by putting her in the original Reverse Bear Trap.
• Happy Flashback: In a more depressing example than the trope's typical depiction, she hallucinates a series of these (involving her times with John before their divorce) just before her death in Saw 3D.
• Hospital Hottie: She worked as a counselor at a drug rehabilitation center, and looks pretty attractive (at least when compared to John).
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: She lost her and John's unborn son when Cecil accidentally slammed a door to her belly.
• In-Series Nickname: Gibson repeatedly calls her "crazy" due to her involvement in the Jigsaw conspiracy.
• Light Is Not Good: Subverted. She was privy to everything with John and his accomplices, but was thoroughly repulsed by his villainy. It's implied that the sheer trauma of everything she went through with him rendered her incapable of turning them in, coupled with John's expertise at emotional manipulation.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: While Jill was reluctantly willing to place the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 on Hoffman per John's will, upon discovering his role in blackmailing Amanda and subsequently causing her and John's deaths, she rigs his game by making escape impossible.
• The Pen Is Mightier: When Hoffman finds her cell in 3D, she stabs him in the neck with a pen in an attempt to escape from him. It doesn't hinder Hoffman at all.
• Somber Backstory Revelation: One of the plot lines of Saw IV involves her being interrogated by the police and FBI. Over the course of the line, Jill reluctantly tells numerous tragic past events that led to John becoming Jigsaw, adding to John's own claims about his motivation in Saw II.
• Took a Level in Badass: At first, she seems to be an innocent victim of John's schemes due to her implicit involvement as his ex-wife. At the climax of Saw VI, she knocks out Hoffman with an electrocuted chair and puts him in the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0, all without a hint of remorse in her face.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: John is not really ugly-looking, but Jill looks way better for her age than John does his own.
• Your Head Asplode: The only complete victim of the Reverse Bear Trap.

Miscellaneous:

Billy the Puppet

Billy the Puppet

(High-pitched maniacal laughter)

Portrayed By: Himself (movies)

Voiced By: Tobin Bell

Appearances: Saw | Saw II | Saw III | Saw IV | Saw V | Saw VI | Saw 3D | Jigsaw | Saw X | Saw: The Video Game | Saw II: Flesh & Blood

"Congratulations, you are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive, but not you. Not anymore."

Not a living character, but possibly the franchise's most iconic face. Billy is a creepy puppet in a snappy suit, usually used by Jigsaw to deliver messages to his victims via video screen.

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• Advertised Extra: Despite his prevalence in marketing, he doesn't appear in most traps and has limited screentime.
• Assist Character: Given how closely tied to the franchise the little guy is, he appears in Dead by Daylight as part of the "Jigsaw Boxes" survivors need to solve in order to escape Amanda's Reverse Bear Traps. If the player fails, Billy laughs at them.
• Bald of Evil: He has a receding haircut that shows off his prominent brow.
• Canon Discontinuity: According to the Saw: Rebirth comic book released alongside Saw II, Billy was made in the toy factory where John worked at long before he began his crusade as Jigsaw. In John's backstory seen in Saw IV, he built Billy at some point after testing Cecil, though he did previously make a different doll (named Bobby) from which he took the idea for Billy's design.
• Cat Scare: He mostly just appears via a television broadcast or a taped message, but when he physically appears, he does so in ways to scare the victims:
  • He’s mostly appears being dramatically wheeled out of a hiding spot.
  • In the third movie, he’s placed toppled over in a hallway to imitate Jeff’s son’s after he was ran over.
  • Subverted in the following movie; Agents Strahm and Perez find him in an empty room, but Billy’s head explodes, maiming Perez.
  • In Saw VI, he’s hung by a noose and slammed into the window William is watching Addy and Allen from; he is then lifted off screen.
  • In Saw 3D, he’s placed in a little cage, reminiscent of the one Bobby started his game in, and thrown through a window to deliver the rules for Suzanne’s trap.
• Companion Cube: He's an iconic part of the Jigsaw brand, even after Hoffman takes over.
• Creepy Crossdresser: Downplayed. His shoes are a pair of red Mary Janes.
• Creepy Doll/Perverse Puppet: He's not designed to look snuggly, let's put it that way.
• Demoted to Extra: In Saw X, he appears on his tricycle to "deliver" Mateo's surgical equipment on a cart that the latter would need to use on himself for his test and once more to deliver Gabriela's tape and recorder to her, but that's it. He isn't removed afterwards and is visbly left behind when John, Amanda, and Carlos leave the factory; Billy wasn't even used to "speak" to the con-artists, though this may be justified in the sense that John's so enraged by them conning him that he isn't willing to screw around with Billy for this particular game, choosing instead to berate and instruct the victims in person and through a transparent window.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the original short film, he had a little bowler hat and a higher, raspier voice.
  • In the second film, he had a visible waistcoat, which disappeared in later films.
• Evil Counterpart: Of a nicer-looking harlequin doll John made for his unborn son, named Bobby the Puppet.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Invoked. His voice is the voice of whoever is controlling him, digitally altered to sound deep and menacing.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Likely to reflect the transformation of his owner, Billy was inspired by an innocent, even cute little doll created as a gift to a newborn baby. When said baby was stillborn, Billy was built from said puppet's design with a much less cuddlier appearance, and took on a horrifying role...
• Giggling Villain: Manic and shrill, but it ultimately makes him more horrifying.
• Goth Spirals: Red ones on his cheeks.
• Hidden Weapons: Part of his head explodes in Saw IV, launching shrapnel into Detective Perez's face.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: In Jigsaw, Billy has curly hair, glowing red eyes, and appears to be slightly larger than (chronologically) later versions of the puppet. Saw X brings him closer to his old appearance, as that film was set between the first and second movies.
• Mascot Villain: For the franchise as a whole.
• Mission Control: His purpose is to introduce the victims to their games or tests and explain to win. However, his advice is sometimes cryptic and requires rethinking the meaning of what he says.
• Monster Clown: His design, in an ironic contrast to the tone of the rest of the series.
• Mouth of Sauron: Jigsaw uses him to deliver remote messages, if he doesn't do it by tape.
• No Name Given: His name is never actually given in the films; it was originally a Production Nickname given to him by the producers before it became official.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Normally relegated to mascot, he gets a moment to shine in Saw IV when he takes down Perez with a cleverly-placed explosive in his head.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: He has this for a color scheme, with a little white thrown in as well.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Wouldn't be as terrifying without them.
  • A version of Billy in Jigsaw had glowing red eyes, but it appears that John dropped that feature for future puppets after the barn game.
• Sentimental Homemade Toy: As Saw IV establishes, this is the origin of Billy's design, in the form of a harlequin doll known as Bobby the Puppet, which John had made for his unborn son. He became very possessive of it during his depression after Jill's miscarriage. In one flashback, John is seen softly touching Bobby after putting it back on a table from which Art accidentally knocked the doll over. Bobby was later seen in the background of Saw V and Saw 3D.
• Tragic Keepsake: Bobby, the doll from which Billy was inspired, is this for John. It's all but stated that John has kept Bobby around as a reminder of his lost child.
• Uncertain Doom: All individual copies of Billy are incinerated when Hoffman blows up his lair in Saw 3D. Since it's not shown if Logan incorporates Billy in the recreated barn game, the doll is presumed to be retired.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: For a horrifying puppet from hell, he doesn't get many comments on his appearance. Finally averted in Jigsaw, when Ryan sarcastically comments that Billy's "not creepy at all".
• Vocal Dissonance: His deep, ominous "voice" is probably not how you'd expect a tiny clown doll to sound. Inversely, his laugh is high pitched and child-like.
• Waistcoat of Style: It's hard to see in most scenes, since it's black like his suit jacket, but it's there.

Video game-exclusive:

Pighead

Pighead

Appearances: Saw: The Video Game

A mysterious henchman of Jigsaw who appears in the first video game. Unlike most of the other Jigsaw killers and accomplices, we never learn his identity or why he's serving John. Like them though, his loyalty is dubious and he's violently homicidal. After his death in the game, he's replaced by Pighead II in Saw II: Flesh and Blood.

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• Ambiguous Situation: As his identity was never revealed, Tapp speculates whether he was a true apprentice or if Jigsaw blackmailed him into the fold à la Zep and Art. We'll never know for sure.
• Ax-Crazy: He flat-out murders several prisoners over the course of the game, and tries to kill Tapp despite it being against Jigsaw's code.
• Badass Longcoat: He sports a red robe similar to Amanda's.
• Canon Foreigner: While there were already two established Jigsaw disciples (Amanda and Hoffman) at the time of the game's release, Pighead is neither of them, and is exclusive to the game's loose continuity. Although, it was originally planned for him to be Lawrence in disguise before Lionsgate put that idea down, as they had plans to use him that way in Saw 3D.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Tapp defeats and kills him near the end, but he's not the true Jigsaw, who still has some surprises in store for him...
• Enigmatic Minion: Never speaks, has an unknown agenda, goes against John, and apparently has it in for Tapp. It's clear there's more to this guy than anyone knows.
• The Faceless: Unlike the other Jigsaw killers and accomplices, we never see him unmasked.
• The Heavy: For the Video Game. Jigsaw is the mastermind but he doesn't have a physical presence and Pighead is the one actively hunting Tapp and putting obstacles in his path.
• Implacable Man: He shrugs off several things that would kill any vanilla human, even some of the shotgun traps and it takes either a prolonged beating or electrocution to put him down.
• Legacy Character: He's a new apprentice who wears the same Jigsaw Pig getup as his predecessors and carries out creating fiendish death traps. In the second game there's also a second Pighead who serves virtually the same role.
• Malevolent Masked Man: Even more so than the other Jigsaw killers and accomplices, as he's never seen without that iconic freaky mask.
• Riddle for the Ages: His true identity is never revealed, and given the game's dubious canoncity, it's unlikely it ever will be.
• Silent Antagonist: Unlike his mentor, he never says a word, making him more like a conventional Slasher film villain than a Jigsaw.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Amanda and Hoffman in the films, being Jigsaw's more physically adept masked apprentice who helps him with his machines and proves to be unstable and murderous. Also to a lesser extent Zep Hindle, being a sadistic minion who observes the main test subject throughout their game and tries to kill them in the climax before being killed themselves.

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