Headscratchers / Saw

All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Read on or go back — make your choice.

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Subpages by movie:

• Saw
• Saw II
• Saw III
• Saw IV
• Saw V
• Saw VI
• Saw 3D
• Jigsaw
• Spiral
• Saw X

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Other headscratchers:

General franchise:

Jigsaw's philosophy

• I don't mean to sound dismissive of the entire series, but...doesn't Jigsaw realize just how hypocritical he is? Now, I know he's dying from inoperable brain cancer (which somehow was created through colon cancer...huh? What, did he literally have his head up his ass to contract it?), and his psychosis may not allow him to see it, and there is that deleted scene in the third movie where he realizes on his death bed that maybe he isn't the savior of humanity he thought he was, but...for someone who's trying to make people "live their life to their potential" and force them to realize how they're wasting it through their perceived vices (including social and personal stagnation), he's surprisingly blind by those same vices developing in him via his own obsession with his "games". Considering he was already a skilled craftsman, and he learned several other skills during his run as a killer, he surely could've done something better with his life. Has there been a canonical point in his past story where he looked at his work, stepped back, and went "Wow, I have issues. Maybe this isn't such a good idea, after all..."?
  • He's just the guy from Se7en with the serial numbers filed off. He really is a hypocrite, and his problem is envy. He wants what others have, the potential to live a normal life, but he can't so he gives them the choice of dying or living how he thinks they should.
  • Minor point, but if a cancer has major access to a patient's bloodstream, it can spread practically anywhere with a little luck. Getting brain cancer as a secondary from an internal organ cancer isn't unheard of.
    • To go with this; colon cancer is one of the cancers that sends secondaries to brains quite (relatively) commonly. Cancer doesn't have to spread by direct contact with the primary.
  • He claims he want to make people "live their life to their potential"... by placing most of them in inescapable death traps. Do you have any doubt the guy is a hypocrite?
  • Glad I'm not the only one to see how stupid this character is. I mean, if he gave them more chances, maybe even put them in non-lethal (just seemingly from a stand point) situations, he'd be more sympathetic. Otherwise, he's just a murderer who doesn't directly kill his victims.
    • Well, basic psychology is one of Jiggy's subroutines, after all.
    • Really, the answer is in the first troper's assessment. He has an inoperable frontal lobe tumor eating away at his brain. His morality center is likely swiss cheese. He doesn't think like a normal human being, and is in fact lucky he even got that moment of rationality in Saw III's deleted scene. The series makes a lot more sense that while he may have incredible fortune when it comes to remaining high-functioning, John Kramer is completely, irreversibly insane.
  • His personal epiphany came when he nearly killed himself, so his cancer-fucked brain decided other people needed that brush with death to figure it out. As to the "inescapable" label, enough people survived his traps to form a support group by the final film. It's more likely that his being an engineer and not a doctor meant that he simply didn't quite realize exactly how fragile humans can be.
    • For that matter, given how many painkillers he's been on during his cancer treatments and how much his tumor had damaged his brain, he may have lost sight of just how crippling pain can be to an undrugged, neurologically-sound human being.
    • It's actually really simple: He is that cartoon villain who tie people under a closing buzzsaw and wait to see if they can make it, his ramblings are as deep as Zsasz because yes he is just a toy maker turned serial killer after losing his baby, getting cancer and surviving a car crash. You're not supposed to root for him.
• Jigsaw's whole philosophy that separates him from his apprentices is that he abhors killing, and doesn't see the devices he places his victims in as murder. Yet he slashes Tapp's throat in a fashion that clearly should have been fatal and leaves a disguised row of mounted shotguns to cover his tracks. Is this just because he's an insane Hypocrite, or is it a legitimate plot hole?
  • Jigsaw, for all intents and purposes, is a psychopath who's simply found a way to 'justify' his actions. Note that he also says he's not a murderer despite the fact that he puts people in the situations that kill them.
  • Everyone who discusses the matter (specifically Lawrence in the first movie) knows/assumes John means this in a purely technical sense; he doesn't kill anyone himself, his traps do... never mind the fact that he built them (initially, anyway), he (and his accomplices) abducted the victims, he (and accomplices) set them up in the traps and he did this knowing full-well that they'd die if they failed to complete their "test". With that said, he (maybe intentionally) didn't cut Tapp deep enough to do any serious damage, something Tapp himself notices, which is why he chases after Sing to begin with.
  • It could be that since he thinks that what he's doing shouldn't be illegal, that assaulting people trying to capture him morally counts as self-defense.
• So why exactly does Jigsaw make all these traps where it is literally required for another person to die for the other to survive? If the purpose of his games are to test people's merit and worthiness of survival then making tests where people aren't given a chance, such as William's parasol trap where he has to choose who the shotgun kills and who it doesn't, contradicts everything Jigsaw claims to stand for. He is a hypocrite regardless because putting people in deadly situations is still murder, but it gets into hypocrite of the freaking century territory when you consider this part too.
  • Well, I wondered the same thing until I realized that most of these traps were actually designed by his apprentices, so it could be explained by them not understanding Jigsaw's goal (especially when you consider the inescapable traps Amanda created), but then again, in Saw V, he appears in person to explain the rules of such games, implying he approves of them (though one could argue he decides not to interfere with his apprentices' games and only appears to do his bit without giving his opinion). I also had another theory that this is Fridge Brilliance. That the makers of these movies do NOT want the viewers to like Jigsaw and that they intentionally made him gradually more hypocritical when they realized many people thought his message (enjoy life or don't live at all) made sense. Or you could Take a Third Option and say that Jigsaw is a freaking psychopath, and as such he is nuts and completely unreliable.
  • Or there's always the WMG option: that at least some of the designated victims in such death-required traps had also been put through one of Jigsaw's ordeals, and the price of failing in their own individual games was to become cannon-fodder in somebody else's.
    • Hold up, isn't the price of failure usually death?!
    • Yes, but we know that sometimes death can mean sitting in a room starving to death. It doesn't always end in a direct trap kill. Such people have already lost, so Jigsaw would have no issues with knocking them out and using them as part of someone else's test. He might even consider it an act of mercy, since he's basically giving them a small chance of living after all, if the new test subject spares them. Then again, Jigsaw might just keep right on using them in test after test until a new testy kills them.
  • Only we've met plenty of people who were in traps that required someone to die -either they had to compete with someone else, or someone else controlled their fate- and it's all but explicit that the tests they went through were their only ones (Simone and arguably Adam), or that they were chosen for their relation to the person who'd control their lives (everyone in Jeff's game.) Jigsaw likely just doesn't consider himself a murderer so long as everyone has a chance to live, even if there's no chance that everyone does, or that "I've never killed anyone in particular."
  • There's also the element of Franchise Original Sin to consider with this question; the first trap that definitively required someone to die was Amanda's in the first film. Such traps don't really match his philosophy, but the first film was more about the victims, so the writer's might've overlooked that, and the killer in a film like this being a hypocrite wasn't unprecedented. As the series progressed, more and more emphasis was placed on John and the importance of his philosophy, but future writers continued to make traps that required someone to die on the understanding that, since they were in the first film, they were okay, making the disconnect between John's philosophy and actions more obvious and undermining the idea of him as honorable and well-intentioned.
• Does John realize that when people are under pressure, they make mistakes? His games are unfair. It is HIS fault some victims fail the tests and die. If Jigsaw is really so smart, shouldn't he know that putting selfish employees in a game will not end well for them? He did background checks on these people, so it should not be a surprise they would double cross each other to save their own butts. Also, he expect his victims who are scared and confused to solve puzzles in under 1-5 minutes? He expect confused and angry criminals and sleazy employees to work together and cooperate?!
  • Jigsaw is both a hypocrite and a complete ass with brain cancer. So, he's not remotely sane. I doubt any of that occurred to him.
  • Most of Jigsaw's "main" tests follow a similar formula up until the fifth film: they all blatantly rely on their victims behaving a certain way, often without even hinting at the alternative philosophy/behavior necessary for them to survive (accepting that you can't save everyone, learning how to forgive, keeping someone alive, admitting that you lied, simply being patient and even just minding your surroundings), then killing or, in Jeff and Riggs' case, mocking and killing them for either not learning anything (Jeff), or not even understanding the point of their test (Riggs). Saw V is the first instance where an alternative (work together... and for the love of god, take Jigsaw and his accomplice's threats seriously, Strahm!) is clearly implied, the traps are clearly meant for more than just killing them one by one and the survivors almost fail (and almost certainly die regardless) because they flat-out ignore the purpose of their test.
• What was the point of the "game" part of the tests, back when they were still arranged by John? John learned to appreciate the life he had when his suicide attempt failed, and learned the importance of the will to live when he had to ignore the immense amount of pain from extracting the metal from his wound in order to save himself. Duplicating that for his test subjects doesn't require making it into anything like a game. Plus what he did to save his life didn't require fast or smart thinking while under a considerable amount of stress, nor did it require applying concentration and fine motor skills while under stress and a short time limit (like having to use blood slick hands to unlock a padlock at the back of your head).
  • Presumably for John, a challenge is a challenge, whether physical, emotional, or intellectual. Double hypocrisy; John is not a doctor, and likely had no way of knowing pulling that metal out of his body wouldn't cause him to bleed out faster; the exact sort of dangerous, instinctive move he likes to use to trick his victims into killing themselves.
• Are only adults forced by Jigsaw to play his games, or could minors be tested as well? What about bullies who like to torment other children or emo teens with suicidal tendencies?
  • He puts minors in mortal danger in the first three films, so he clearly doesn't have a moral problem with hurting or killing them. But none of them are really tested (Jeff's son had Amanda who took him out despite him not solving all the puzzles). Children would probably be easier to find some serious character flaw with or kidnap, but presumably even John has enough sense to realize A. children aren't wholly responsible for their character flaws, B. there's no way children could win his games C. they're even less likely than adults to to appreciate his games even if they win.
• Jigsaw is never characterized as insane or sadistic; on the contrary, the films portray him as a wise, highly intelligent, sympathetic, honorable man, in contrast to his sadistic (Hoffman) and dishonorable (Amanda) apprentices. And the series shows you definitely don't have to be insane to believe his philosophy, as plenty of people without brain cancer joined him, including his ex-wife, who's presented as the Only Sane Woman. The creators have affirmed multiple times that John is a true believer in what he does. Whether or not any major creators agree with his philosophy is up in the air, but we do know some of them see him as a "vigilante" and a "scientist" as opposed to a serial killer or villain. All his apparent hypocrisies in his actions can likely be chalked up to either writing oversights and/or the many different minds behind the scripts, or the fact that, however honorable and well-intentioned John is supposed to be, he's human, and human philosophies have contradictions and blindspots.

Crime definitions

• Exactly why does everyone in the movie (and some fans) believe that Jigsaw can't be punished because he "never kills anyone"? He designs the death traps (which, considering how many times each of his hideouts have been ransacked by the police, those designs should be in the authorities' hands by now), kidnaps his targets, and even videotapes them while talking to them through the video feed. Seriously, does no one seem to understand how the concept of premeditated murder works in a court of law?
  • For reals. Jigsaw more or less puts a gun to people's heads and tells them to jump off of a cliff. Murder, kidnapping, assault, battery, reckless endangerment, conspiracy to commit murder (once Amanda comes into the picture), etc.
  • Do any of the characters actually say this? Even Jigsaw, who thinks he shouldn't be culpable, surely isn't dumb enough to think he really isn't. And Eric Matthews makes no bones about it in Saw II: "Putting a gun to someone's head and forcing them to pull the trigger is still murder."
    • In Saw, Lawrence says that Jigsaw is not "technically" a murderer. Especially ironic since later in the movie, we see one of the cops die, as a result of one of Jigsaw's traps. If somebody dies as a result of you trying to protect your home, you're a killer. Plain and simple.
    • In fairness, he was referring to the tabloid's moniker 'Jigsaw Killer' rather than whether he was actually a murderer or not.
    • Well, we didn't exactly get to see Jigsaw put to trial. After all, TECHNICALLY Ed Gein wasn't a serial killer - a serial killer needs to have killed three or more people in a period of more than thirty days, Gein was only officially found to have killed two people.
    • It's more them being pedantic about it.
• Just a legal point: Jigsaw says at least once that he's not a murderer, because he gives all his subjects a chance (however slim) to escape. However, there's definitely a crapload of crimes he could be charged with (kidnapping, unlawful detention, etc). Is his statement that he's not a murderer technically correct, or is he just that far out off-plumb?
  • I'm no law expert (especially not US law since I'm European), but I assume he could still be condemned for endangering other people's lives by putting them in the traps, at least second-degree murder, and definitely for torture. His association with Amanda also makes him an accomplice of a murderer. But either way, I think what he means is that he doesn't consider himself to be a murderer, regardless of what the law says.
  • Best case scenario, he gets off on "only" a huge numbers of counts of manslaughter. However, he's designing things that are intended to kill people, and leaving them to die unless they do something horrible/self-destructive. I'm pretty sure that American courts would say murder in the 1st degree is an acceptable sentence.
    • Simple. Jigsaw is insane, and not a lawyer. Aside from that, the first answer is probably correct: He wasn't talking in legal terms, but in how he saw himself.
  • Well, if he had lived past the first three movies, then he probably would've been caught and tried for all those counts but seeing as how he's insane, he could be put in an insane asylum or under medical care for his cancer or something like that.
  • Lawrence, Jigsaw and some of the cops say that Jigsaw isn't "technically" a murderer. These people are wrong. Murder, as defined in most U.S. states, is "knowingly causing the death of another human being". Jigsaw knowingly put his victims into situations that would result in their deaths if they failed to escape. He put them there, and he thereby caused their deaths. If they fail to escape, it's murder. If they escape, it's attempted murder.
  • Moreover, every death in a fixed-location trap rates as felony murder, because they're the direct consequence of a felony (kidnapping).

Other ways to solve traps

• Some, if not most of the death traps could be solved in other than the intended ways. E.g., if there are easily accessible cogs, stuffing something like a shoe or your clothing in there should stop and/or destroy the machine. Yet, all characters seem to be obsessed about solving the puzzles exactly in the "official" way.
  • Remember that the victims have only minutes, sometimes seconds to do what Jigsaw instructs. If they try something else and it fails, they won't have enough time left.
  • Some of the traps have no time limit until the person tries to brute-force their way out of it and trigger the timer, like the Reverse Bear Traps. And some of the traps, like the Razor Box in Saw II and the Angel Trap in Saw III, have an incredibly obvious solution that the person avoids in favor of something that will hurt, a lot, and will most likely make it impossible to solve. The Razor Box had Addison put her other hand through the other trapdoor when her first hand got caught, instead of trying to free her first hand or using one hand to hold the door open and the other to grab the syringe (she was shown to be an idiot, though, and the "Sarin gas" could be an excuse for the freakout), and even if Kerry could see the pour spout on the opposite side of the beaker, the first thing I thought was "Chains... The acid can be poured out away from her" (she even lifts and tips it slightly to get a better vantage point, after running her hands over where the chains are linked to the beaker, so it's not like it couldn't be moved). It makes sense that you can't think of something when you have ten seconds to cut a key out of your skull, but when you're sitting in a chair with a large bladed object strapped to your face, the key phrase would be "careful, planned movements" (not "jump up before you understand your surroundings"), and some of the victims' actions are far from the most intelligent thing I could see, and really, in many cases probably the most dangerous thing possible short of jamming or scraping a key or scalpel or whatever into the carotid artery.
    • Many of the traps tie into Jigsaw's philosophy of requiring a critical piece in order to make it out alive. Too many people assume it to be a brute force solution of jamming your limbs and body into harmful places, which is actually self destructive and the antithesis to Jigsaw's ideas. If they had remained calm and hadn't panicked, hard as it is in their predicament, they might have seen the third option that avoids injury and death, with calm being an oft repeated requirement for survival. His victims don't see this and automatically take the most dangerous and nihilistic option imaginable. This is why they are Jigsaw's victims.
    • The Razor Box trap was explicitly designed to be avoidable altogether, since there's a padlock with a key in it on the other side. The filmmakers basically showed that Addison could have safely retrieved the antidote by just looking at the scene instead of immediately putting her hands in. Kerry's trap was ultimately designed to be inescapable, though, so even if she had poured the acid out, she wouldn't have survived.

How can Jigsaw make his traps like that?

• I can't believe no one asked this question yet but, Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys? Seriously, those death traps didn't build themselves out of nothing. Jigsaw was merely a civil engineer in his past life so he wasn't exactly Bruce Wayne in terms of wealth.
  • Actually, the movies do state he is rather wealthy. He even owns several abandoned buildings (which are presumably where the "games" take place). It's also not unlikely that Amanda and Hoffman help him financially.
    • Of course, him being wealthy undercuts his backstory, which was that he was denied insurance coverage for an experimental treatment. He certainly had enough wealth to have paid for the treatment in cash, all the more so since the treatment did not involve surgery, which is generally more expensive than pure drug treatments. (It was stated that his cancer could not be treated by surgery.)
    • Kramer explicitly stated he could pay for it (which is confirmed in Saw X, where he literally does so, flying to Mexico to undergo the treatment on his own dime), but he was more angry with the principle of not getting the coverage.
    • Possibly his insurance plan considered the treatment so experimental that buying it outright would've obviated the rest of his coverage, meaning they'd quit paying for his already-ongoing hospital care if he did so.
    • This one's confirmed as of Saw VI. He tried to argue his case but was told that they wouldn't cover it and if he did go out of his way to fund it himself, his policy would be terminated.
  • A lot of the traps' equipment consists of re-purposed materials from his properties, like machinery from old factories. That stuff wouldn't have cost him anything, if it was abandoned along with the sites.
  • Amanda the junkie and Hoffman the (admittedly often-promoted) cop? Eh, maybe... Lawrence was a doctor, so there's also that.
• Given most of the Saw devices would require hours or days to assemble and then have to tested before being deployed, when would a man dying of cancer find the time to gather so many victims and "test" them? Even with assistance?
  • Well, some of the simpler traps probably could be tested rather easily with a dummy, but given that his apprentices helped make some of them and expected multiple people to die anyway, it's not impossible they just slapped them together and said "what's the worst that can happen if it goes wrong? They die anyway?"
• In Saw and Saw II, Jigsaw uses poisons... And estimates, with a fair bit of accuracy, the speed at which they would react (assuming that the characters didn't fall for the other traps)... Which is problematic, because each person should have more variation on how much time it takes for them to succumb to poisoning. They (the writers) should've factored in weight, fat in the person's body, etc., and secondary symptoms of the poisons. So how does Jigsaw accurately guess that (assuming that he didn't have access to medical records)?
  • Either it's a poison which attacks specific parts of the body which don't vary much between people (brains, for example) or the time he stated was a minimum or rough estimate. Or he lied.
  • This isn't really true though... except in Saw III:
    • Saw - Zep is told it's a "slow acting poison" and to get the antidote he needs to play the game. He is told he will live long enough to finish the game (6 o'clock). There is no indication that he will drop dead at 6:01.
    • Saw II - There is no explicit time given for how long the gas will take to kill people. The timer throughout the movie is meant to look like that's what it is doing, but it is actually timing something very different. In fact, the different effects on different people aspect is shown with Laura, who dies of the poison well before anyone else, and before she even finds her trap.
    • Saw III - no poison, but there is the ice shower which has a similar problem. This is the only time that Jigsaw has amazing timing skills in the entire series. How exactly Jigsaw knew exactly when Danica would freeze to death, and that she wouldn't already be dead when Jeff got there, is anyone's guess.
    • I'm guessing a person can survive rather longer when they're merely exposed to subzero temperatures while naked, so Jigsaw only had to know that much. Danica wasn't subjected to sprays of water until Jeff actually arrived on the scene, and said sprays of water were what actually killed her, and fast, because she was very cold already. Still pretty impressive.
    • I'm no doctor, but her skin was blue when Jeff first walked into the room. If that doesn't indicate a serious medical condition, I don't know what does. There is no explanation given for how Jigsaw knew her obvious hypothermia wouldn't kill her before Jeff ever walked in.
    • The whole scene is blue.
    • Agreed. That said, look at this image (SFW, nudity is cropped out), from before the water sprays start (I think). Compare her to Jeff, standing in the background, and try to tell me that she doesn't need to be in a hospital for acute hypothermia... like... now...
    • For all we know, the hoses could've been periodically dousing her with warm water to keep her alive until Jeff broke out of his box.
    • Which would be worse for her than no water at all since whenever the hoses weren't dousing her she'd be soaking wet and in a freezer, which certainly wouldn't keep her alive longer than leaving her dry in the freezer. The constant alternating between warm and freezing cold would probably kill her from shock, and she'd be in agony every time the water hit (have you ever run your hands under even the most lukewarm tap after being out in the cold? It's agony even without hypothermia involved).
    • Maybe she hadn't been naked until Jeff broke out of his box, but was wrapped in a thick blanket that was attached to a cable in the ceiling. When Jeff busted loose, the tipping of the box tripped a winch that automatically withdrew the blanket, leaving Danica exposed for only a matter of minutes before he found her.
    • Saw IV - Still no poison, but the timer seems to be timing how long it will take the ice block to thaw under Matthew's feet, which Jiggy couldn't possibly know. Of course, that isn't what it's timing at all, so there is no issue.
    • Actually, ice melts at a fairly consistent rate for a given temperature and pressure.
    • Saw V and VI have no relevant examples that I can think of.
    • Jigsaw addresses this somewhat, with one of the victims in the barn game's first trap waking up from his sedative too late.
    • And in the first movie, Jigsaw is surprised when he comes back to his workshop and the man in the Drill Chair has already woken up.
• If John is wealthy enough to own several large warehouses (with previous plans to redevelop them), buy expensive medical equipment, buy the materials and equipment to build all of his traps, why did he not put that money toward treating his cancer? Yes, medical treatment for chronic diseases is expensive, but it can't be more expensive than everything else he buys, can it?
  • Could be a matter of what John finds to be worth the money. For John Kramer, what's more important: prolonging a life that's inevitably going to end no matter what he does, or using it to "help" as many people as he can in the time he has left? John's not afraid of death following his suicide, so lengthening his life isn't particularly vital to him. Especially once he has Amanda & Hoffman to carry on his work.
  • In VI, Kramer tells the insurance agent who turned down, "Don't talk to me about money; I have money. It's about principle." Earlier in the movie he's shown bald in a flashback, obviously due to chemotherapy. So my guess is he did put money towards treating his cancer, but when he knew his death was inevitable, the games began.
  • The first movie shows him getting treatment in a hospital, it just that money won't stop him from dying and he became insane over it.
  • Saw X will actually cover this. He went for an experimental program but got scammed by its operators, by which time it was too late to do anything.
• Did Jigsaw ever wonder if his traps would have the opposite effect on the victim's psyche if they survived? For example, plenty of soldiers get into horrifying situations during wartime and many usually suffer PTSD symptoms even when there is no danger around. Same goes for POWs. While a few people did come out a little happier with their lives (Amanda being one of them, although that's YMMV), just as much people may come out of it learning absolutely nothing but the fact that they were part of a crazy torturer's mind games and were somehow lucky to survive. Misery does not always build character you know.
  • See Simone. She rejects John's idea of rehabilitation, asking (not verbatim), "What am I supposed to have learned from being forced to cut off my own arm?" She even calls out other survivors who seem to have bought into it, questioning their supposed lack of effort to get their life together that lead them to a place where they were placed into a trap.
• What if in the time between Kramer recording the tape and the victim being put in the trap they have gotten a condition that somehow makes it impossible for them to get out, like they're blind or otherwise physically disabled? What if they're deaf and can't hear the tape?
  • Presumably, the test is either canceled (because the victim's psychological profile has probably changed enough to invalidate its "lesson") or re-designed to take their impairment into account. If it's canceled, the traps designed for them can be re-purposed for somebody else, same as the Reverse Bear Trap wound up being used repeatedly throughout the series.
• The obvious timing errors in some trap sequences is one thing, but what confuses me even more is how the timers even start on their own, especially by a separate device.
  • From about the third film onward, most of the traps activate because; 1) A victim pulls the tripwire just before/after the video/tape is played, in the former case, the trap is often timed to activate after the victim has had ample time to hear the rules. 2) Someone is observing the game and activating the traps/timers accordingly by themselves. Before then, most of the traps are fairly basic anyway and, therefore, either they weren't timed anyway, or they were timed to leave the victim a couple of hours.
• Hoffman has always bugged me. One of the complaints about the first movie when it came out was "How can Jigsaw do all of this by himself?" In order to answer that question, he was given apprentices. However, Hoffman was never given helpers, and yet he manages to set up traps that are far more elaborate than anything Jigsaw ever did on his own. The main trial in Saw VI is a great example. First of all, we are supposed to believe that he built everything shown in that movie (the carousel, the breathing thing, and, especially, the steam maze) all by himself. We are also supposed to believe that he kidnapped, what, 14 people? In one night? Really?
  • The only explanation I can come up with is that Hoffman is magical.
  • Perhaps Jigsaw himself acquired the parts and made the blueprints for the traps before his death, or even started construction on them, and Hoffman merely got them finished and utilized them.
  • In VI, at least, Hoffman is shown setting up the Rack, and it seems like Jigsaw was teaching both him and Amanda how to build traps on the job.
  • The logistics example of gathering all the victims with Saw VI mentioned as a point of complaint is valid. In fact it was parodied in a recent (as of July, 2023) post on Reddit which simply showed an image of a bus which, yeah, he'd need a large vehicle like that to gather everyone up in one sweep through the city. However, if he kidnapped them all on one night and made sure that nobody would miss them quite yet, he could also then just leave them dosed under while he rested the following day and then enacted the trials the following night.

Jigsaw's apprentices

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

Charges to victims

• Could the survivors of a Jigsaw trap be charged with homicide if the means of their escape was dependent upon killing a co-victim?
  • Apparently not in the Saw universe. See Tapp's treatment of Amanda in Saw for an example. In the real world, it probably depends on the jurisdiction.
    • Their lawyer, hopefully current with ethical theory, would immediately point out that a forced action is automatically morally neutral and secure their acquittal.
    • There's actually a name for this: The Plank of Carneades, a thought experiment that questions if a murder in such a situation wouldn't be considered self-defense as it's a case of do-or-die.
    • I'm Brazilian and I would think most places would have exceptions for what Brazilian law calls "state of necessity", meaning you violate someone else's right (s) because it's the only way to protect a right of your own. The person would still be prosecuted, but proving state of necessity would either make the case get thrown out before it gets to a jury, or it would go to a jury, and the person would be acquitted (well, techically, it would be decided that their act wasn't a crime) if the jurors decided the act was commited in "state of necessity".
    • In Amanda's case, one could also argue that she believed Jigsaw's tape that said the guy was already dead when she'd started cutting.
    • I think the court would take the circumstances into consideration, having woken up in a room, completely disoriented and having been drugged, you might not even be charged with a crime.
    • In the case of the Acid Room, Brent would almost certainly be charged with something for what he did. He had no incentive to pull the lever and kill William- had he not pulled it they would have all been rescued. It was done purely out of revenge and was cold-blooded murder (in one of the most gruesome ways possible). He also has no deniability- it was laid out for him in pretty certain terms what would happen if he pulled the "Life or Death" lever.
  • Individuals coerced into assisting with Jigsaw's traps might be subject to prosecution, depending on how far they went into criminality. Zep and Art Blank both did some pretty dreadful things to people who posed no threat to them, rather than seek outside help in neutralizing their own imminent doom. But neither of them survived to be charged with anything, making it a moot point to wonder if they'd have been acquitted due to their "state of necessity", i.e. being poisoned or having a "spine cutter" strapped to their back.
    • Actually, Art is far less culpable than Zep, who went out of his way to torture Gordon's family. In the mausoleum trap, Art was only ever trying to get the key from his opponent. He only killed his opponent when the winch pulled them too close together for Art to avoid him. The aftermath also implies that Art was starting his own game, which is probably how he got fitted with the spine-cutter. It's also never stated that he did anything beyond assembling the trap in the hotel, and overseeing the game with Eric and Hoffman. He even stops Eric from killing himself, and potentially killing Hoffman (as far as he knows), and it's later shown that the spine-cutter he's wearing isn't connected to the either the scale, or the door. So, really, he saved Eric because he's just not a dick. If he'd lived, it's likely he could have been acquitted.
  • Wouldn't they be covered under duress? It's a direct threat with very reasonable fear that it'll happen right now with no other options. Sounds like a pretty solid, clear-cut defense.

The Jigsaw symbology

• Saw IV shows the origin of Billy the Puppet: John was making a smaller version of him (Bobby the Puppet) for the child his wife Jill was pregnant with at the time (and subsequently miscarried due to accidental harm from one of her drug clinic patients). While it hadn't yet achieved Creepy Doll status in-universe, it still looks pretty demented. What sort of sane father would plan to give that sort of thing to his own kid?!
  • The sort of sane person who would put people in death traps.
  • Alternatively, maybe John just screwed up while making the doll for whatever reason and decided "what the heck, it's already creepy, let's just go with that." Their child wouldn't be the first kid in the world whose parents gave them a creepy doll.
• What's with Jigsaw's obsession with pigs? His "volunteers" wear pig masks, the Pig Vat from Saw III involves pig carcasses, and one of the places he set up his games in was a pig farm. Even the brazen bull-like contraption at the end of Saw 3D is shaped like a giant pig.
  • In Saw IV, John is shown to kidnap his first victim Cecil (the druggie that caused Jill to miscarry) at a Chinese Year of the Pig Festival. He does so by stealing two plastic pig masks from one of the stands: one to conceal his identity, and the other with a rag of chloroform inside to use on Cecil. I'm going to assume he just kinda decided to stick with the motif while also making it a morbid tribute to Gideon, who would have been born in the Year of the Pig. Also, as he explains in Jigsaw, pigs are remarkably compassionate animals, showing distress whenever they see another animal, including humans, in pain. I guess he wished we could be more like them.

The FBI

• Are we to believe the FBI just flat-out gave up after Saw VI? Saw 3D has an Internal Affairs division of all people trampling onto what had become a federal investigation. A mass murderer who had just killed multiple local cops and FBI agents doesn't seem like something that would be shrugged off and ignored, especially after Hoffman was outed; that evidence should have been immediately turned over to the FBI instead of the locals charging in and screwing up massively.
  • Maybe they were trying to tread lightly, seeing as two of their top agents were killed.
  • Considering it'd appeared for a while as if one of their own agents was an accomplice in the murders, and how they'd gone to some lengths to fake Perez's death only to have her die mere hours after bringing her out of hiding, it's entirely possible that the local police withdrew their request for FBI assistance. As feds didn't start getting killed until after John died, it's questionable whether the FBI would still have jurisdiction over the Jigsaw killings as a whole; they can hunt Hoffman all they like, but have to cede the ongoing investigation into John's past doings to the locals.

Not giving people enough time to process things

• Doesn't this seem unfair? Realistically, wouldn't most people panic if you tell them to cut off their own limbs under 3 or 5 minutes? They are going to waste time freaking out. In Jigsaw, John even makes two victims solve a riddle under a short time limit, which is not possible in real life for most people, especially drug addicts and thieves.
  • Yes it is. This is John's entire thing, putting people through unrealistic scenarios and justifying any deaths as "lacking the will to live."
  • This gets into the Alternate Character Interpretation surrounding John; he claims to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, at least some of the creators have affirmed this, and the films stopped challenging his philosophy after the third film if they ever did at all, but most of his actions only make sense if he does indeed just enjoy torturing people to death. The traps also may not be meant to be as hard as they are, since victims often do better than they have any realistic right to; notably, multiple characters lose whole limbs and are alright for minutes to hours without medical attention, and John himself gets put in, and succeeds in a trap in the tenth film, which may be meant to show he isn't a hypocrite and will is all you need to beat them.

Other media:

Short film

• Why is the original short film called Saw also? It doesn't have any saws in it, just the Reverse Bear Trap scenario. Is it a reference to the little peephole that opens in the wall during the final shot, implying that the culprit saw exactly what David did? Or were the creators already hoping to use the Bathroom Trap idea in a full-length feature when they filmed and titled the short?
  • The short film was based on a scene from the script they already had, to try and convince studios to pick it up. So they most likely just gave it the name they had already planned.
  • You've picked up on how the title for the original movie has multiple contexts, from the voyeurism committed by many of the characters in the first movie, to the actual tool used. As for the title as used in the short, it's like the other person said.

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