For such a gruesome saga, it's odd that the first alleged victim is not actually shown dying; the body appears later. It's a copycat, and the first victim had actually survived.
Why would Logan know Halloran had ordered the agents to point at Munsen's hand instead of his chest? He was there!
On a similar note, firearms savvy viewers might notice that the bullet recovered from the body couldn't have come from any of the handguns used by the police because it was a rifle round fired by Logan and swapped during the autopsy.
The killer seems to have turned his mind-reading up to eleven for this installment. It turns out he was actually watching them, that's how he knew who'd done what.
There's some, er technological inconsistency, regarding evidence found throughout the film. Dead bodies found outside the barn have flashdrives, whereas the games take place using good old cassette tapes. It makes sense, since those games are actually a flashback.
Speaking of technological inconsistency, some people complain about how the original set of victims (Ryan, Carly, etc) watch Billy the Puppet on flat-screen televisions. This does seem like a gaff... until one remembers how this film series has always used funky Cut Apart and Sequencing Deception tricks, and weird transitional cuts like someone walking out their front door directly into a (distant) crime scene, or into her office and straight into a flashback set in her office. The flat-screens aren't what the first set of victims were watching, it's what the second set were watching, inter-spliced with Reaction Shot views of the first group!
At the Grain Silo, though, the television and the first group's victims are clearly seen in the same frame on certain shots, so I doubt this.
Flat screens existed in some forms in the early late 90s- 2000’s.
Several of the traps carry similarities to others from earlier in the franchise; the bucket-head one in particular is similar to the first one the Fatal Five go through, and Ryan and Anna's final test is somewhat similar to the bathroom trap. And after the reveal that the movie is a prequel, they could be looked at as prototypes for what chronologically followed.
When choosing to kidnap Anna for his first game, John may not have only chosen her for causing the deaths of her baby and her husband. When testing Anna and Ryan, John mentions that the death of a child is one of life's greatest burdens. As shown in Saw IV, John suffered the loss of his unborn son Gideon when Cecil carelessly slammed a doorknob on Jill's stomach. John may have felt that it was really unfair that someone honest and good like him was denied being a parent whereas Anna, who had a nice house and family, threw all that away in a fit of rage.
When Anna and Ryan meet with John at the end of their game, Anna recognizes John, but somehow doesn't make any mention of him being dead or operating as Jigsaw. Why not? Because the Barn Game happened back when John was still alive and active and was starting his first games. This is just one more clue that the Barn Game actually happens in a flashback.
Logan appears to be a hypocrite for killing Halloran after he confessed his sins, and Halloran points out that Kramer gave his victims a choice. However, Logan gave him a choice: the chance to go first and confess his sins. He forfeited his chance when he pressed Logan's button and made him go first after saying he would do it. Logan also appeared to be at least somewhat willing before Halloran took a swing at him, making that two chances for redemption that he threw away.
Logan covers Ryan's body with the tarp and not Anna's, hammering home that Ryan, in some way, was ultimately rehabilitated by the game.
When Logan and Halloran are in the laser collars, Logan keeps grabbing at his collar like he's frantic to get out of it. If you watch closely, he does this just before "John's" voice sounds over the intercom, and when he collapses to the floor, his hands are still in contact with the thing. His collar isn't just a dummy to fool Halloran: it's housing for the remote control he uses to trigger the audio recordings and activate both sets of lasers!
John's original change of heart about Logan makes perfect sense: he put Logan into a trap because he blamed the man for a medical error, only to have his own medical error - giving Logan too strong a dose of sedative - prevent his captive from hearing the game rules or having any chance to make a choice. Realizing that he, himself, had made a comparable mistake to Logan's, John belatedly recognized that such errors (however tragic) are all too easy to make, and should not be grounds for punishing people.
Ryan's reluctance to pull the lever makes more sense if you know it's a flashback to before the Jigsaw Killings became public knowledge: he has no way of knowing that trap victims who do resort to self-injury aren't just put to still more rounds of torture. Indeed, he has no idea that the unseen trap-maker isn't just doing this out of pure, unadulterated sadism, or that the voice on the tape will make good on their offer to release the other two from the grain silo.
The version of Billy the Puppet in the barn game is bigger than the puppets from the other films and has glowing red eyes. Considering how cool as these features are, one wonders why Jigsaw downgraded Billy for his future tests.
One theory is because the puppet was too complicated to make. Considering that Jigsaw is a serial killer who meticulously plans things and has to use crude, scavenged materials for his traps and torture devices (either to avoid leaving a trail of evidence or because he can't afford to buy the things he needs), he probably realized that his equipment could get confiscated as evidence by the police after his games, including Billy; so to avoid extra costs while creating replacement puppets, he made subsequent puppets smaller and removed the scary eyes to save on material, as many manufacturers do.
It could be considered in-universe Early-Installment Weirdness. This being his first full-fledged series of traps, John is still figuring things out and trying. Maybe the more demonic puppet seemed a cool idea, but he found out a more subdued version was more his style.
Another theory is the symbolism behind Billy: the puppet is an upgraded version of a slightly less creepy toy John made for his miscarried son, which John started to treat like his actual, hypothetical son following his breakdown. Billy represents Gideon judging the people of the world that took his life and offering a chance to better themselves. So if Billy represents Gideon, why would John make the figurehead representing him even scarier?
Both Logan and Keith served in Iraq, where Logan was captured and subjected to brutal interrogation, leading to his discharge. While this would be a simple thing to accept, given that the American occupation of Iraq lasted eight years, Logan specifically says that he came out of the war a broken man "ten years ago," and that Jigsaw put his life together again. This suggests the two were part of the initial invasion, which actually matches up well with the real-world dates (The Invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, while the first Saw was released in October 2004), potentially justifying Logan and John crossing paths shortly after the former was discharged.
Logan was seen helping John construct the Reverse Beartrap in a flashback; the Laser Collars could be considered an updated version of the RBT, considering that both traps mutilate the victims head by tearing it apart.
Also, Logan had said that he wanted to see if he could live up to John’s skill, which is why he repeated the test of the barn game with Halloran’s informants (along the intention of using the corpses of the victims that failed to make the police think that the barn game was active); The Laser Collar is a more humane version of the RBT, as it kills the wearer quickly by destroying the brain, compared to the RBT‘s brutal ripping open of the victim’s head.
In the Chain Hangers, why didn't they just test the syringes on the ground? Surely the acid-filled one's reaction would have been obvious.
Depends how strong the acid is, and what the floor's actually made of in that room. At a minimum, though, they might at least have tested a single drop on someone's skin, to check if it stung, before shooting it into Carly's bloodstream... maybe even Carly's skin, since it was her life most at stake. Given that they'd already shown they had the nerve to touch a spinning saw blade, it can't even be argued that they feared the risk of a painful chemical burn too much to try.
