Saw / Tropes A to F

Saw Trope Examples
A - F | G - R | S - Z

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A

• Abandoned Hospital: The setting of Saw 3D's main game is an abandoned mental institution known as the Clear Dawn Mental Facility.
• Abandoned Warehouse: Most of the "games" take place in abandoned warehouses and similar buildings, usually ones that John had bought and originally sought to restore before becoming Jigsaw.
• Accidental Child-Killer Backstory:
  • Saw III: Timothy Young was driving drunk when he struck and killed Jeff's son Dylan. He felt horrible about the accident, but that didn't stop Jigsaw from putting him in a Death Trap to test Jeff's capacity for forgiveness. Despite his efforts, Jeff fails to save Timothy, who dies gruesomely.
  • Subverted with Anna in Jigsaw. Just before the second trap of the barn game begins, Anna tells the other victims that she and her husband simply lost their child, but it's revealed near the end that she actually asphyxiated the baby intentionally and tricked her husband into thinking he did it accidentally, which drove him to suicide.
• Advertised Extra: To say nothing of keeping Tobin Bell in the top billing, plenty of the promotional posters between Saw IV and 3D depict a presentation of John's face in one way or another, despite him only appearing in flashbacks and tapes in those movies, not to mention the fact that Hoffman is the Big Bad rather than him. Saw 3D receives a special mention for the fact that John only has two minutes of screentime in the actual movie.
• Agony of the Feet:
  • In the first movie, Mark Wilson's test was hindered by glass shards spread all around the room to trip his bare feet.
  • In Saw III, Eric Matthews cannot work up the will to saw off his foot when he's chained up in the bathroom; instead, he breaks it with a toilet lid and further snaps it down to slip it out. He then has to walk out of the room and ends up getting in a fight with Amanda with his foot essentially pointing the opposite direction, which is about as unpleasant as you'd imagine.
• All for Nothing:
  • By the time of Spiral, the only thing Jigsaw had left behind is a murderous legacy that is the antithesis of everything he claimed it to be. All but one of his accomplices go wayward with murderously malicious or self-serving intentions, and the closest candidate to succeeding him has seemingly put his villainous life behind him. A new criminal also emerges copying his methods for his own ends rather than following his philosophy.
  • In Saw VI:
    • William manages to guide Debbie out of the steam maze, incurring serious burns from hot air in the process, upon which they realize that the key to her freedom is sewn within William's side. As he tries to get it himself, Debbie begins swinging a nearby circular saw at him, escalating things into a fight for no substantial reason. Unsurprisingly, Debbie's time runs out as a result, and she is killed.
    • William's death could very much be considered this. After going through a series of demanding traps, which leads to him realizing the error of his ways and the value of the lives of the clients he had indirectly killed by denying coverage, William gets killed by the son of one of said rejected clients, ultimately making his redemption completely meaningless.
• Anachronic Order/Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The story told by the series is not shown linearly. Flashbacks (including the Once More, with Clarity variety) are used frequently, with Flash Forwards occasionally happening too. In Saw IV, Jill Tuck says "John's life defies chronology, linear description." The story itself is like a jigsaw puzzle, which is fitting, considering most of the killers are dubbed "the Jigsaw Killer".
• Animal Motifs: The various antagonists have pigs as a motif.
  • 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.
  • In contrast, the Spiral Killer's taunting use of pig imagery is in line with the metaphor for corrupt police officers being "pigs."
• Anyone Can Die:
  • These movies take this trope to the extreme; it's rare for a character who gets a major role to not die in their debut movie. If they don't, they're likely to be declared dead in the following one or turn up again to be offed in some spectacular manner. Almost 50 characters died in the first six films; that's about 8 per film.
  • Jigsaw himself dies at the end of the third film, with his corpse being last seen in the fourth one, although he still appears in the following movies via flashbacks. It's not until the Interquel Saw X that he returns to being physically present in one of the movies.
• Arch-Enemy: Most of the series' killers have had at least one hero (whether it be legitimate or nominal) 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 has had three of them:
    • 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.
  • 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.
  • Zeke eventually becomes a played with version towards Schenk. Schenk infiltrated as a rookie detective in the Metropolitan Police Department in order to target various Dirty Cops while having some covering, and sought to recruit Zeke as an accomplice since he was a moral detective who was ostracized by said corrupt officers. However, Zeke immediately rivalizes him when he finds out his identity as the Spiral Killer, and refuses to help him in continue killing cops, especially after Schenk sets up a trap to get his father killed.
• Artifact Title: The series' Leitmotif of "Hello Zepp" is named after the first words from Zep's tape, which plays in the climax of the first film (with the addition of a pun on the name of jazz band Zapp, hence the second "p" letter in "Zepp"). The various renditions played from Saw II to IV had different titles ("Hello Eric", "Final Test", "Let Go") in accordance to something that happens or is said in the respective endings where they play, but the ones from Saw V onwards are simply named "Zepp (film number)" in spite of the climaxes/endings lacking any relation to Zep or his tape.
• Artistic License – Biology: With the increase in Gorn from Saw III onwards, this is bound to happen from time to time, sometimes overlapping with Artistic License – Medicine.
  • Saw IV:
    • During John's autopsy, his brain is easily removed from the skull, apparently with no connection to the brain stem or spinal cord. In reality, a ton of dissection is needed to remove the brain.
    • Speaking of the autopsy, John somehow managed to swallow a tape coated in wax, which also worked perfectly after it was removed from his corpse.
    • Brenda's trap wouldn't tear her scalp in real life. The hair would be ripped and torn out before the scalp would. Hair might be strong, but it's not that strong.
  • Saw 3D: At least one of the numbers on Bobby's wisdom teeth for the Wisdom Teeth Combination was etched onto said tooth's root, which is impossible to do without extracting it beforehand.
  • Spiral:
    • In real life, it would be impossible to rip off one's tongue with the restraining bolt used in the Subway Trap's vice, due to both the strength of the tongue's base fixture and the bolt's small size. At worst, Boz would only have had part of his tongue split between the bolt, with the resulting injury being quite easy to heal afterwards and not giving him any serious inability to speak.
    • A new tattoo made several minutes ago doesn't look the same as a years-old one, so there is no way that Schenk could have made a perfect replica of his tattoo on somebody else in a matter of minutes. Furthermore, cutting off that piece of skin immediately after tattooing it would probably completely ruin the tattoo.
  • Saw X: Valentina would have no chance of cutting off her leg like she did using a Gigli saw in the Bone Marrow Trap. Not only is the femur stronger than concrete, but right next to it is the femoral artery, one of the human body's most vital blood vessels. Even if she managed to cut it off within the time limit, tourniquet or not, severing that artery would guarantee she'd bleed to death either way.

B

• Badass Longcoat:
  • Jigsaw is frequently seen in a hooded black robe with a red interior.
  • Whenever Amanda wears a pig mask, it's combined with a red robe (a color inversion of Jigsaw's). She otherwise doesn't wear it in the testing field.
  • Pighead and Pighead II from the video games sport a red robe similar to Amanda's.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Every film thus far ends with Jigsaw, be it the original or one of his apprentices/copycats, getting the last laugh. Even when the original Jigsaw was killed in Saw III, he still managed to gain the upper hand posthumously.
• Back for the Finale: Lawrence Gordon comes back for Saw 3D, which was planned to be the series' original finale. Up until this point, he hasn't been seen since the first film, six movies ago.
• Bastard Understudy: Every major apprentice/accomplice of Jigsaw except Lawrence screws up his philosophy or code of conduct one way or another.
  • Amanda was the first person to ever survive one of Jigsaw's traps, and she develops Stockholm Syndrome towards John as he takes her under his wing. But she soon starts making inescapable traps in the belief that nobody can truly change, and that they're better off dead and not in any pain instead of alive and suffering, as well as letting her emotions get the better of her. This makes John give her a second test during Jeff and Lynn's games in III, which she ends up failing.
  • Hoffman tried to pass off his first murder as Jigsaw's work, and was subsequently blackmailed by John into becoming an apprentice. He firmly took part in the philosophy, but didn't actually care about changing people. After John and Amanda's deaths, he brings the Jigsaw name for a joyride and kills 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. Fortunately, John anticipated this, and tasked Lawrence with being a fail-safe in the case that Hoffman killed Jill. He does, and Lawrence goes ahead with locking him in the original bathroom to die.
  • Logan seems to be doing fine with reviving the Jigsaw name at first, following the rules of fairness and recreating the barn game to the letter in a warehouse. But he goes off the rails when he reveals all this to Halloran right as he's about to activate the lasers that will kill him while he's completely helpless to stop it. Halloran points out to him that Jigsaw gave his victims a chance to survive, but Logan doesn't care, since he sees Halloran and the future people he's going to test (rapists, murderers) as too subhuman to give a fighting chance.
• Batman Gambit:
  • Every single one of Jigsaw's plans is this to varying degrees, some even predicting extremely convoluted and unexpected things. He sums it up with his reasoning in Saw V:
    "If you're good at anticipating the human mind, it leaves nothing to chance."
  • 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.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: An interesting case with the series' Leitmotif. Different spelling aside, the actual sentence "Hello Zepp" is never said in the series. The first film's tape from which the leitmotif's name derives actually says "Hello, Mr. Hindle, or as they called you around the hospital, Zep". It gets closer later in the Flashback-Montage Realization, when we hear Jigsaw's voice saying "Hello" followed by the names of everyone who got a tape, actually ending with "Zep" rather than "Mr. Hindle", but there are still quite a few names in-between.
• Bear Trap: The Reverse Bear Trap is, as its name implies, a device resembling a bear trap that snaps open instead of closed, and is hooked onto the victim's jaws, prying them apart with great force once the snap happens. Due to its simple nature in comparison to the series' other traps, everyone who got put in the Reverse Bear Trap managed to escape it (as long as they weren't in inescapable circumstances, which was the case with Jill in Saw 3D).
• Being Evil Sucks: It's made profoundly obvious that the Jigsaw games do nothing to better people's lives, and those perpetrating them usually end up becoming sociopathic shells of human beings. By the end, nearly every Jigsaw killer, including John himself, goes beyond redemption and suffers a grisly demise in the games they carried out.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: How most of Jigsaw's apprentices and accomplices are recruited. Amanda and Gordon are the most clear cut examples.
• Beneath Suspicion: This is a common pattern in the revelations of Jigsaw killers and copycats, often involving them playing as victims in some way.
  • Saw: Nobody, not even the audience, ever thinks at any point that the "dead" body in the bathroom where Adam and Lawrence are trapped in is just Playing Possum and is, in fact, the mastermind. At best, they'll think that the mastermind is Zep (one of the victims in the main game) before The Reveal at the end, due to him having been provided plenty of "mastermind equipment" like cameras.
  • Saw II: Downplayed with Amanda, one of the supposed victims in the Nerve Gas House. 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.
  • Saw IV sets up a twist ending 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.
  • Saw 3D: Lawrence is 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.
  • Jigsaw: Logan is another variant. At first, he's seemingly set up to be an innocent who's accussed 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 Collars.
  • Spiral: Schenk is never suspected by anyone to be Spiral Killer, even just before revealing himself at the climax. That said, it's easy for the audience to assume this when he's supposedly captured by the killer, because his game is never actually shown, unlike the other victims in the film and many more in the previous ones.
• Beta Outfit: While the point at which he switched to the iconic sinister pig mask (alongside the implementation of the red and black robes) seems to have been very early, if Jigsaw is any indication, Jigsaw wore a cheerful-looking Chinese Year of the Pig mask for his first abduction, as seen in a flashback from Saw IV.
• Big Bad:
  • John in the first movie, Saw II, and III.
  • Hoffman in Saw IV, V, VI and 3D.
  • Halloran in Jigsaw, with John retaining his role in the barn game and Logan being a Villain Protagonist.
  • Schenk in Spiral.
  • Saw X has John in the position of Villain Protagonist, with the Big Bad being Cecilia, who turns out to be much worse than him.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Jigsaw sincerely believes that all people, even murderers, deserve a second chance at life. Though he puts them in mortal peril to get that chance, he's far better than his apprentices Amanda and Hoffman, who both create inescapable traps in the belief that their victims cannot be rehabilitated.
• Blood from Every Orifice:
  • Discussed in Saw II when John tells Eric that his son and the rest of the victims in the Nerve Gas House are doomed to this fate. Eventually averted, however, as the only victim who actually dies from the gas, Laura, only gets Blood from the Mouth.
  • In Jigsaw, this is how Carly dies when Ryan injects the three syringes of the Chain Hangers into her.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The series increases the level of blood, gruesome death, and blood expelled via gruesome death with each subsequent film.
  • To be specific, Saw and Saw II were relatively light on the gore, using the anticipation of it to build fear more than the actual act of it, which in the first film's case was fairly tame when it did happen (two of the most violent acts in the film, Lawrence hacking his chained foot off and Adam beating Zep to death with a toilet lid, happen almost entirely offscreen). Saw III and beyond throw this idea completely to the wind and include scenes involving people putting their hands through buzzsaws, a head being crushed between two ice blocks, a man getting vivisected by a swinging blade, a woman having her ribcage ripped open (after being forced to put her hand in a container of acid), a person getting crushed by a room with walls that move inward, a man getting impaled by spikes that inject acid into him until he melts into a pile of guts, and more.
  • Saw III included brain surgery as a plot point and Saw IV opened with an autopsy. Neither situation contains any horror elements, but the gorn evidently merited their inclusion.
  • Saw 3D takes the gore to new heights. As well as finally showing what happens when the Reverse Bear Trap opens fully without the victim escaping, the film also contains the Horsepower Trap, which couldn't be included in any of the previous entries due to its sheer gruesomeness. The result of said trap is that a woman tied down with barbed wire has her head crushed under the wheels of a car, a man has his arms and jaw ripped off, another man is run over by the same car and the man in the front seat is sent flying through the windshield when the car crashes (and since he was glued into the seat, this causes a huge chunk of his skin to be ripped off).
• Book Ends:
  • Saw 3D, being the former Grand Finale, has several of these.
    • The series from the first movie to 3D begins and ends in that Bathroom.
    • A more subtle one: the first time we ever see Jigsaw is the establishing shot of him posing as a corpse on the bathroom floor - which also happens to be the last shot we ever see of him in 3D.
    • 3D begins with a flashback to Lawrence sawing off his foot. At the end, one of the last things Hoffman sees before the lights go out is that same foot, badly decayed and still resting in its shackle.
  • Jigsaw has a variant that has more to do with the movie's timeline than its actual opening and ending. The trap that Anna and Ryan go through for the last time is in the same room as Logan and Halloran's trap.
• Boom, Headshot!: Many of the movies feature at least one case of this, including:
  • Sing by the Quadruple Shotgun Hallway in the first movie.
  • Gus by the Magnum Eyehole in II.
  • Halden by the Rack's shotgun in III.
  • Art Blank by Rigg in IV.
  • Debbie by the harpoon in the harness she had in VI.
  • Rogers by Hoffman in 3D.
  • Anna by the Backwards-Firing Gun in her and Ryan's final test in Jigsaw.
• Bottle Episode: About half of the first film solely takes place in the bathroom Adam and Lawrence are trapped in, partly due to the fact that James Wan and Leigh Whannell were just two guys fresh out of film school with not much in the way of a budget, and only had 18 days to film the movie.

C

• Calling Card: Each Jigsaw killer and copycat has a different general style for trap design.
  • John Kramer conceived the original blueprint of what traps should be: his involve inflicting physical pain with a heavy focus on self-mutilation to survive, but also place an emphasis on following and interpreting instructions. That said, he was not above making use of other styles similar to Amanda's (the Water Cube in Saw V, which he designed with Hoffman, was intended to kill Strahm if he attempted to enter the room where it was located, and was quite amusingly the only "inescapable trap" that was escaped) or Hoffman's (the Reverse Bear Trap in the first movie would by design result in either the death of Amanda or her cellmate).
  • Amanda Young 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.
  • Mark Hoffman 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.
  • Logan Nelson 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.
  • William Schenk has two Calling Cards:
    • He designs traps that are rigged to severely injure his victims, hampering their attempts to escape them. Justified in that his victims are corrupt cops, and he has no intention of letting any of them live.
    • Outside of trap design, he also leaves badges and body parts of murdered officers at scenes marked with a spray-painted red spiral.
• The Can Kicked Him:
  • In the first film, Adam kills Zep in the series' infamous Bathroom. Then in a flashback in the third film, Amanda gives Adam a Mercy Kill to prevent him from suffering from starvation upon getting locked up in the Bathroom.
  • Several other characters, such as Xavier, Eric and Hoffman, later end up facing their fate in the Bathroom with different outcomes, be it dying, escaping or their death simply being left ambiguous.
• Canon Discontinuity: A comic book titled Saw: Rebirth was published in correlation with Saw II, and was accepted into canonicity by the original writers. The comic explored John's past and the events that led to him becoming Jigsaw. When Saw IV came out, the new series' writers at the time completely ignored the events of the comic, and decided to make a different version of John's backstory for the movies. The most notable differences are:
  • In Rebirth, John was a toymaker who lived a dull and insecure life without any goals of his own, until he was diagnosed with cancer. In the movies, John was a successful civil engineer who also supported the real estate and healthcare industries, and had a happy life overall before a series of tragic events that led to his Start of Darkness.
  • In Rebirth, Jill is John's girlfriend, who leaves him because of his lack of commitment to their relationship. In the movies, Jill is John's wife, and the two separate after Jill has a miscarriage.
  • According to Rebirth, Billy the Puppet was made in the toy factory where John worked at long before he began his crusade as Jigsaw. In the movies, John 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.
• Canon Marches On: The franchise received a prequel comic book titled Saw: Rebirth to tie into the release of Saw II, which detailed John's backstory and was considered canon by the films' writers at the time. Saw IV, which brought a new writing team to the franchise, rendered the comic incompatible with the film canon due to the new writers making a drastically different version of John's backstory as one of the film's main storylines. This new backstory would be further built upon in later films. Ironically, it didn't stop Rebirth from being featured as a invokedBonus Material in certain home video releases of Saw IV.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Even the smallest flaw leads to Jigsaw "choosing" somebody. It's entirely possible he could look into virtually anybody's background and justify a reason to put them through his trials.
• Carrying the Antidote: Jigsaw tends to carry or leave an antidote for the poison he frequently uses on his victims. For example, according to Zep's tape from the first film: "There's a slow-acting poison coursing through your bloodstream, which only I have the antidote for..."
• Catchphrase/Arc Words:
  • "I want to play a game."
  • "Live or die, make your choice."
  • "Let the game begin."
  • "How much blood will you shed to stay alive?"
  • "Game over."
  • Specifically for Hoffman: "Right now, you are feeling helpless."
  • Jigsaw has "I/We speak for the dead."
• Central Theme:
  • There are several of them for the series in general:
    • Overcome your Fatal Flaw. Your life might depend on it.
    • Torture does not make people change for the better. It only makes things worse.
    • Cherish your life, and don't squander it for any reason.
  • Saw 3D: Lying is bad, and it will have harsher consequences if it persists.
  • Jigsaw: The truth will set you free.
• Chainsaw Good: The series seems to prefer circular saws to chainsaws.
  • Jigsaw is killed by Jeff with one in Saw III.
  • William is attacked by Debbie with one in Saw VI
  • The Public Execution Trap from Saw 3D has two circular saws.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • At the beginning of the first film, we can see a key get sucked down the drain of the tub that Adam awakens in. At the end of the movie, we learn that this was the key to the shackle he was in.
  • Jigsaw sets up quite a few of these. Notable ones include the wax tape from Saw III (whose purpose is shown in Saw IV) and the Glass Coffin from Saw IV (which is used by Hoffman in Saw V).
  • Don't forget the note that Amanda read in Saw III. We don't find out what was in it until Saw VI.
  • The black box John left Jill in his will at the beginning of Saw V, which we aren't shown the contents of until Saw VI.
  • In Saw V, when John is talking to Hoffman after kidnapping him from the elevator, he mentions that Hoffman's pendulum was made of inferior steel, and that tempered steel makes a cleaner cut. In Saw VI, Perez and Erickson find that Eddie's jigsaw piece was cut with a serrated knife, and not Jigsaw's usual tempered scalpel. This is the thread that begins to unravel Hoffman's attempts to cover his tracks.
  • The note to Hoffman saying "I know who you are" in Saw V. At that point, it looks like it's from Jill; Saw 3D reveals it was from Dr. Gordon.
  • And, of course, the note that Jill brought to an office at the St. Eustace Hospital in Saw VI, revealed to be for Dr. Gordon in Saw 3D.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • There are plenty of them. Zep Hindle, Daniel Rigg, Mark Hoffman, Dan from the Horsepower Trap, etc....
  • ...But none of them meets the extreme of Jigsaw himself in the notorious twist ending of the first movie. He gets bonus points for being seen as a cancer patient in a flashback scene in the middle of the film and for Playing Possum in the bathroom throughout the entire movie.
  • Dr. Gordon is the clear winner, though, having reappeared six movies after he was last seen, and playing a crucial role in the former grand finale.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Daniel Matthews doesn't make any more major appearances after his debut in Saw II, only being mentioned again in the film's DVD short The Scott Tibbs Documentary, where Scott attempts to interview Daniel in a hospital before a security guard kicks him out. Word of God is that Daniel was meant to appear in the Jigsaw Survivor Group meeting in Saw 3D, but he couldn't be included due to scheduling issues with his actor Erik Knudsen.
  • Detective Fisk! He worked in the homicide division with Hoffman and was shown working on the case in IV and V. Even though pretty much every significant law enforcement officer (cops and FBI agents alike) dies at some point in the series, Fisk just disappears.
• Cigarette of Anxiety:
  • In the first film, Adam and Lawrence manage to find a box hidden in one of the Bathroom's walls, which has a cigarette and a note from Jigsaw inside. Lawrence proposes a plan — Adam will smoke the cigarette and pretend to die, since the note implies that it's laced with poison. Although the plan doesn't work, Adam is clearly elated to see the cigarette, and savors it while he smokes it, fluttering his eyelashes, dropping his shoulders and even smiling after he takes a drag.
  • Eric is seen smoking at least four times in Saw II, once during his argument with Daniel after the latter was busted for shoplifting, and another while calling Daniel to apologize for the aforementioned event.
• Classic Villain: Jigsaw is one of the Envy and Pride vices. He's so convinced that his philosophy is correct and he's genuinely helping people whom he can't conceive of the opposite. Also, his viciousness stems from resentment towards people wasting the gift of life that he's being denied.
• Climactic Music: Each of the movies plays a rendition of the series' Leitmotif, "Hello Zepp", during the climax, which usually lasts until the ending.
• Clock Punk: Most of the Death Traps are gear-based.
• Closed Circle: Most of the "games" are held in closed locations that are unknown to the public.
• The Coconut Effect: The Death Traps tend to feature digital timers. These timers make an audible beep every second, but it's not actually the case for most real-life digital timers, such as the ones in microwaves.
• Collective Identity: The Jigsaw killer. While John Kramer is the original mastermind, much of the heavy lifting after his first few murders (particularly building the traps and abducting targets) is done by his twisted group of "apprentices" and various other accomplices, who reveal themselves as such every few films. 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 various killers coercing someone into taking their place of surveying a game while they hide in plain sight as just another captive victim.
• Conscience Makes You Go Back:
  • In a flashback in Saw III, Amanda 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 Saw III 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.
  • In Jigsaw:
    • In the past, Carly robbed an asthmatic woman of her purse. Upon discovering her inhaler in the bag, she felt guilt over it and tried to return it to her. Unfortunately, she came back to find the woman already died of stress. This didn't stop Carly from keeping her money afterwards, which is probably one of the main reasons John tested her.
    • When Ryan is faced with the dilemma of losing his leg to save Anna and Mitch from the Grain Silo Trap, he adamantly refuses at first. After hearing enough of their desperate pleas, however, Ryan caves and gives up his leg.
• Continuity Cavalcade:
  • At the police ceremony in Saw V, the Chief of Police mentions the Metropolitan Police Department's officers who died in the previous films as honor for their involvement in the Jigsaw killings.
  • Saw 3D has two of them.
    • The Jigsaw Survivor Group, formed by Jigsaw survivors from the previous films.
    • The evidence room where Hoffman brings Jill to before killing her is full of sets and pieces from past traps, including those that were never used or were only seen in the background.
• Continuity Porn:
  • Much of the later films have flashbacks that explain details from previous films, such as how Jigsaw and his apprentices set up their "games". A large chunk of Saw V had this as it tried to retroactively fit Hoffman into the previous installments.
  • The Reverse Bear Trap first appears on Amanda in the first film, then in the background in Saw III and IV, then plans for it can be seen in V, then a newer model is used on Hoffman at the end of VI, and the original one is seen once again on Jill in 3D, where it finally goes off as John intended, and it looks awesome (of course, John never intended for it to go off at all). Its last appearance is a minor one at the end of Jigsaw, where it's shown that Logan had assisted John in building the original trap.
  • Saw 3D is by far the movie with the largest amount of Coninuity Porn. It starts with a flashback to Gordon escaping the Bathroom in the first film, and gets progressively more referential from there on out. The Jigsaw Survivor Group, the aforementioned Reverse Bear Trap and the final Bathroom scene just cinch it.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • John is the Big Bad of the first three films in the series, who pursues the "rehabilitation" of people who committed crimes through death traps and wants his "methods" to remain relevant after his death via the recruitment of apprentices and the execution of posthumous schemes (the latter mainly due to his terminal disease). He's a middle-aged man close to elder age and is fairly polite and approachable, but usually shows no mercy and has always succeeded in causing pain and suffering to numerous people over his lifetime, as well as several times after his death. That said, his death was caused by one of his victims, and he ultimately fails to leave a Villainous Legacy that's entirely loyal to his ideals.
  • Also in the first three films is Amanda, John's first known apprentice and a young woman who's physically stronger than him, but still rather weak in comparison to most other characters. While she was initially loyal to John, Amanda eventually becomes much more motivated by revenge, killing people out of outright malice or under her opinion that they couldn't be rehabilitated at all.
  • The Big Bad of Saw IV to Saw 3D is Hoffman, another Jigsaw apprentice who contrasts both John and Amanda. Whereas John and Amanda were considerably average civilians within their society, Hoffman is a Dirty Cop. He was never actually loyal to John due to the latter basically forcing him into becoming an apprentice after setting a frame-up for him in his first murder, and is motivated to leave a Jigsaw legacy in which he's the most important figure, kicking John and Amanda away. Hoffman is also much stronger than John and Amanda, and is just as smart as the former.
  • Halloran from Jigsaw is the first Big Bad in the series who's not a Jigsaw killer or copycat, instead being a straightforward corrupt police detective. The Jigsaw killer role in the film instead goes to the protagonist Logan, who seeks to get revenge on him after one of his informants murdered his wife.
  • The Spiral Killer from Spiral is a Jigsaw copycat who seeks to "clean" the Metropolitan Police Department by murdering corrupt police officers, recycling the typical Jigsaw traps in order to shock the department. Unlike John, who treated his accomplices well unless they defied him, the Spiral Killer outright murders an accomplice to stage a fake death. He's also the first antagonist to have a direct connection to one of the protagonists.
• Cop Killer:
  • Amanda leaves Eric, a police detective, 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 his fellow detective Kerry in the cruelly-designed Angel Trap, which is inescapable and does kill her.
  • Hoffman is both a Cop Killer and a Killer Cop, in that 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.
  • The Spiral Killer exclusively targets the police, specifically Dirty Cops.
• The Coroner:
  • The first seven films have Dr. Adam Heffner. While he first appeared in IV and doesn't get much screentime to know his personality well, he was the one who examined the cause of death of all the victims in the Jigsaw killings found by the police from the first movie to 3D (where he ends up getting killed by Hoffman).
  • Logan and Eleanor are the two medical examiners who are involved in the case of the new Jigsaw killing spree in Jigsaw.
• Crapsack World: The unnamed American city the series takes place in, whose status is more and more detailed upon as the series goes on.
  • As seen early on, it's apparently full of criminals, from thieves and voyeurs in the shadows to corrupt executives who judge human lives based on equations and engage in arson as part of real estate schemes. The police department isn't much better, being full of corrupt cops who plant evidence and engage in Police Brutality seemingly on a regular basis. Drugs also seem to be a major problem, as plenty of the participants in Jigsaw's games are drug dealers or addicts. All of this eventually gave rise to a Serial Killer who grew disgusted of the society around him and wanted people to change their ways via the most extreme methods imaginable.
  • At one point, Jigsaw lists off some statistics, one of them being that 67.5% of criminals within the city are back in prison within three years. This isn't too unusual as a national average for the United States, but for one city? Yikes.
    • Jigsaw may have been referring to the national average, which is indeed 60%.
  • The city is also seemingly full of abandoned buildings, from houses to factories to schools to an entire zoo. While they're Jigsaw's convenient places to hold games, it suggests that the city's economic situation is pretty terrible.
  • Spiral shows that, thanks to Jigsaw's influence, a police-related law known as "Article 8" was passed, which granted unchecked power to the police. This was done on the grounds that "citizens were dying" and it was the only way to get things under control, but it ultimately just allowed corruption in the Metropolitan Police Department to fester even worse than before. It got to the point that officers got off for acts as minor as shooting someone for flipping them off. The greatest irony, though, is that this law's passing led to the emergence of a Jigsaw copycat.
• Crucified Hero Shot:
  • In III:
    • When Lynn is shot by Amanda, her arms stretch out as she falls into Jeff's arms.
    • Timothy is restrained on the Rack in a crucified position.
  • In 3D, while chained up in the Pain Train, Jill appears to be doing one of these.
• Cruel Twist Ending: This kind of ending has happened in several movies.
  • In the first film, Zep, the presumed Jigsaw killer, has been killed, and Gordon has escaped to seek help for himself and Adam... only for the dead body that's been in the room the entire time to get up, reveal he was Jigsaw all along, and leave Adam to rot.
  • In Saw II, when it looks like Eric, the SWAT team, and Amanda and Daniel are going to meet, it's revealed that they're all actually in different places; Eric was in the Nerve Gas House, but Amanda and Daniel (as well as Xavier) weren't there at the same time, with Daniel being shown to be in Jigsaw's lair, and the SWAT team had just entered a decoy building of the house where they can't find any of the dead victims nor Eric. Not only that, but it turns out that Amanda is an apprentice of Jigsaw, and she locks up Eric in the Bathroom from the first movie as he loses contact with the rest of the police.
  • Saw IV had Rigg charge in to save the day, which ends up resulting in the death of Eric, the electrocution of Hoffman, and Art and Rigg himself both being fatally shot. Bad enough by itself, but that's when Hoffman disconnects himself from his own trap and reveals himself to be another apprentice of Jigsaw.
  • In Saw VI, William manages to make his way through his tests alive and having learned the lesson he had been meant to learn about respecting life... only for the son of a man who died because of his past decisions as an insurance agent to kill him when given the choice between that or forgiveness.
• Cult of Personality: Jigsaw 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.
• Cut Apart:
  • Near the end of Saw II, three separate groups (a SWAT team, Eric, and Xavier chasing Daniel and Amanda) look like they're about to meet. It's soon revealed that none of them are in position to meet each other.
  • Downplayed in Saw IV. Rigg and Strahm run into the Gideon Meatpacking Plant, where it's revealed that the film is taking place at the same time as Saw III, yet it seems that Strahm is still going after Rigg after witnessing what previously happened during his trial. However, Strahm actually follows Jeff's path instead, witnessing the events of the previous film's climax in the process.
  • Jigsaw takes it further, convincing the viewer that a group of Jigsaw victims who were tested more than a decade ago are the same ones whose freshly-mutilated bodies are turning up all over town.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: An example where the problem regards both earning and spending the cash. The first movie's twist ending established that Jigsaw is John Kramer, a man who once faced with terminal cancer and decided to test people's will to live by putting them in simple Death Traps. As the following films went on to feature increasingly bigger, deadlier, and more elaborate traps, one wonders if all that was spent in gathering those resources wouldn't be better employed financing John's own cancer treatment or at least in John using his impressive engineering skills to raise the necessary money. This is even compounded in Saw VI, where it's shown that he tried applying for life insurance while saying he had the money for the treatment!

D

• Danger Takes a Backseat:
  • The first film has a variant. Gordon isn't attacked in his car immediately, but when he steps out of it momentarily to use a phone, you see the back door slowly opening...
  • In a flashback in Saw II, this is how Obi kidnapped Laura for the Nerve Gas House game.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Nearly every major character has one.
• Darker and Edgier: The series' tone gets progressively darker with every few films.
  • Downplayed with Saw II in comparison to the first film. While the overall tone and aesthetic don't change much, police corruption is addressed with Eric's backstory, the tension and psychological torture among characters is more intense, and Daniel (a minor) is put in more dangerous situations than fellow minor Diana Gordon from the first film.
  • Saw III ups the ante further from the previous two films. Not only is it Bloodier and Gorier, but the overall storyline is far more bleak, featuring the first Death of a Child in the series with Dylan Denlon, and some characters like Jeff and Amanda are shown to be put through constant psychological torment. Plus, it gives a worse outcome to Saw II's relatively light ending.
  • Saw IV is even gorier than Saw III, and features some very heinous victims, including a pimp, a serial rapist and a domestic abuser. As if the Death of a Child from Saw III wasn't enough, this film explicitly depicts the miscarriage of an unborn baby in a flashback. Saw V and VI would then tone down the violence greatly, but still keep the same vile victims and bleak flashbacks, while Saw 3D manages to be as gory (if not even more) than Saw IV.
  • Jigsaw features a military veteran among the cast, who, while not showing any significant mental issues, has had a very traumatic experience in Fallujah. Some of the victims' backstories also involve pretty tragic incidents, including a car crash after which the survivors suffered and the fall of a family after one parent deliberately murders the only child and places the blame on the other.
  • Spiral is somewhat Denser and Wackier due to the comedic presence of actors like Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, but it's a lot more focused on police corruption and brutality and the dark criminal world beneath it than the previous films, with the general setting (which is the same as in previous films) becoming far more dangerous and bleak overall.
• Dead-Hand Shot: The first film has promotional posters featuring both a severed hand and a severed foot, with corresponding taglines ("Every piece has a puzzle." and "Every puzzle has its pieces."). Later films have posters with similar depictions focused on other body parts, such as two severed fingers for Saw II, three teeth for III, and John's severed head on a pound for IV. VI brings back the severed hands and feet with a leather stitching.
• Deadly Game: Jigsaw refers to all of his death traps, tests and trials as "games" for his victims to play.
• Dead Man Writing: John leaves multiple messages to different people for his death in Saw III, which are progressively revealed in the following films.
  • In Saw IV, it's revealed that during Saw III, John went to an insane length to make sure nobody could find one of the messages until after dying: he coated a tape with wax and swallowed it. It's only discovered while his body's being autopsied, and it turns out that the message was for Hoffman, as a warning that his death won't outright allow him to become his successor without a test.
  • At the beginning of Saw V, Jill receives a box John requested by their executor, which, as well as including a video tape where he gives a farewell message to her, contains a new Reverse Bear Trap meant for Hoffman's test, which is revealed and used in Saw VI.
  • The ending twist of Saw 3D gives the box another video tape for Dr. Gordon, where John instructs him about the final task he gave to him.
• Death Course: While the first film was reasonably constrained with the Jigsaw Killer forcing his victims into a single Death Trap each, the sequels added more and more traps and made the Abandoned Warehouses larger and larger until the labyrinth Death Course became the default.
• Death of a Child:
  • The first kid who died in the series was Jeff Denlon's son, Dylan. He died in an accident offscreen prior to III.
  • IV shows that Jigsaw and Jill lost their son Gideon to a miscarriage Jill suffered while her health clinic was being robbed.
  • Jigsaw has the death of Anna's newborn child. She killed it herself and framed her husband for it.
• Death Trap: The core trope of the films; pretty much every significant character in the series (save for Jigsaw himself) has either been put in one or forced to try and stop one from killing someone else.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit:
  • Hoffman gets Strahm killed and attempts to posthumously frame him as being Jigsaw's successor. It doesn't work.
  • Logan does it with two people, setting up evidence implicating both Halloran and John as possible suspects. It remains yet to be seen if this will work.
• Deceptive Disciple: Amanda and Hoffman work against Jigsaw's "higher" aims by making a number of traps, which are supposed to be fair, truly inescapable. The fact that several of John's own traps had no explained escape method^{Such as}The Drill Chair in which Jeff Ridenhour was put and Donnie Greco (the guy with the key in his stomach) in Amanda's test from the first movie., or were even blatantly set up to result in absolutely certain death for at least one of the victims, is handwaved.
• Deck of Wild Cards: Oh boy. Just about every Jigsaw 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 keep 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 cause.
• 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 anesthetized and locked by Amanda, who reveals herself as Jigsaw's protége at the house.
  • 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 clarifying that he was the one in control of the room, not Art.
• Demonic Dummy: Billy the Puppet, used by Jigsaw to communicate with his victims. Billy has become so iconic to the point that many people who don't know the movies tend to mistake him for the real Jigsaw.
• Detective Mole: Dirty Cop Hoffman presumably had this role for Jigsaw, as he's implied to have had the major role of finding crimes for victims, and in a flashback from Saw V he warns him that Tapp could be a potential threat.
• Diabolus ex Machina: The series is chock-full of Diabolus ex Machina moments, some coming within seconds of the protagonist thinking they've found a way out of the nightmare.
  • Saw III is particularly sadistic when it comes to this, but actually gives an explanation for it. The traps in the movie weren't actually designed by Jigsaw, but his now Ax-Crazy apprentice Amanda, who deviated from Jigsaw's philosophy in that she thought her victims were irredeemable and explicitly deserved an unpleasant death. She catches a bullet to the throat from Jeff's pistol.
  • The ending of Saw VI also counts. William has been put through utter hell and has apparently learned his lesson about the true implications of deciding who lives and who dies based on greed, and advances to the final test, where he finds himself face to face with the wife and son of a man who died because William cancelled his coverage. And it's their game, not his. Cue the son flipping a switch that injects William with gallons of acid.
• Dirty Cop:
  • Mark Hoffman, who's arguably the most ruthless Big Bad in the franchise, worked as one of Jigsaw's apprentices and eventually became his successor during the first spree of Jigsaw killings. His former colleague Matt Gibson was demoted after trying to convince their boss to enact some kind of punishment on Hoffman for unnecessarily shooting a homeless man to death after he tried to shoot Gibson but quickly dropped the gun and surrendered, which put Gibson on Hoffman's hit list for future reference. And this was all before he put his dead sister's abusive boyfriend in a trap that was designed to be unwinnable, as punishment for killing her and getting out of prison due to a technicality. He has zero concern for any kind of human life or suffering, only cares about himself, and goes to ridiculously convoluted and violent lengths of exacting pain unto others for the sake of his own power and survival, including taking over the Jigsaw legacy and trying to make it his own.
  • Eric Matthews had a history of brutality with suspects and reporters, and planted evidence and deliberately framed people in order to get false convictions. In II, Jigsaw's test for him is to talk with him helplessly while watching his son trapped in the Nerve Gas House with all those he got wrongly sent to prison.
  • Halloran is guilty of tampering with evidence, putting innocent people in jail, taking bribes, and letting his criminal informants go, one of whom ended up killing Logan's wife.
  • All of the victims targeted by the titular copycat killer in Spiral are cops who are guilty of crimes such as lying under oath, shooting unarmed suspects, killing people who are willing to expose other dirty cops, and enabling all these actions by covering them up. That being said, the killer is revealed to have snuck into the department to carry out his murders, so he's not much better.
• Disease Bleach: Due to his terminal cancer, John has white hair at a relatively young age (canonically in his early 50s upon his death in Saw III). He still has the hair color in the flashbacks that take place long before his cancer diagnosis though, owed to his actor being considerably older and not receiving hair cosmetics.
• Disgusting Public Toilet: The setting for most of the first movie is a dilapidated industrial bathroom, though it appears to be cleaner than most other examples of this trope. In Saw II, it's shown that the bathroom is part of an abandoned house, and it makes further appearances in Saw III and 3D.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • The whole series runs on it. Nearly all of Jigsaw's followers are hypocrites who believe just about everyone is guilty in their eyes and deserves to be put through their trials. Unfortunately, Jigsaw himself is not above this either, as seen in the traps of William's trial in VI.
  • Spiral features two non-Jigsaw cases:
    • Fitch is revealed to have killed a random citizen just for flipping him off.
    • Armed assailant or not, there's no excuse for the level of firepower the SWAT team uses on Marcus at the end.
• Dissimile: The commentary tracks for some of the movies' home video releases involve a Running Gag among the crew, wherein when someone describes something that isn't true or foolishly naive, they'll remark "That's a great idea. If by 'great', you mean 'the stupidest fucking thing ever', then yeah, it's 'great'.", or some variation thereof.
• Documentary Episode: The two short films featured as invokedBonus Material in respective DVD releases of the first two feature films. It's an unique example in that the shorts follow up on the events of their respecive films, rather than taking place during them. The Scott Tibbs Documentary is also filmed in a Found Footage manner.
• Door-Closes Ending:
  • Happens in several of the films, three times using the same room.
  • Inverted by Saw X, which ends with John, Amanda and Carlos opening a pair of double doors leading to the bright, sunny outdoors as dawn approaches.
• Downer Ending: Every film and video game in the franchise has one. The only possible exceptions are Saw II, since Daniel Matthews does survive, Saw 3D, where Hoffman is given a Karmic Death, Jigsaw, in which Logan finishes off the Dirty Cop who previously ruined his life, and the second video game, where the two possible endings come out with different destinations for Michael Tapp and Campbell.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Some of Jigsaw's numerous apprentices and accomplices (who are more or less treated equally asides from how much they're involved in Jigsaw's schemes), including the most notorious ones, have goals and ideals differing from his own.
  • While Amanda 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.
  • Hoffman never really subscribed to Jigsaw's twisted philosophy. A test of character he has with Simone, a furious maimed survivor, has him further doubt it amounted to anything positive.
  • Although nowhere near as rebellious as other disciples, Word of God suggested that even after his Face–Heel Turn, Lawrence was going to go back and free Adam. Sadly, Amanda already got to him by then.
• Drowning My Sorrows: One of the flashbacks in Saw V features Hoffman drinking alcoholic drinks at a bar to emphasize his depression at the moment. It's implied in flashbacks taking place at similar points in the whole franchise that this ended up boiling into alcoholism, hence Hoffman's unusual open violence towards others outside of his typical killing job.

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: The very first movie sped up most of the traps instead of showing in detail what the victims did.
• Easy Logistics: It's never explained where Jigsaw and his apprentices get the money and resources needed to create the elaborate Death Traps that their victims are placed in. As one review of the first film points out, they would have to be "[a] detective, an engineer, a wood- and metalworker, an electrician, an audio-visual technician, a pharmacist, a puppeteer, an acute student of human behavior if not actually a credentialed psychologist, a master of special effects makeup, and above all else the world's greatest and luckiest location scout. He'd also need to be rich as fuck and able to pay cash for everything, and he'd have to have absolutely no demands on his time other than those related to planning and executing his crimes."
• Even Evil Has Standards: As brutal, horrific, and painful as they may be; traps built by Jigsaw himself are always survivable. The traps made by most of his apprentices are usually impossible to survive.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending/Characters Dropping Like Flies: Almost no major or supporting character has survived throughout all the nine movies, not even Jigsaw himself. Lawrence is one of the few exceptions, but he didn't appear after the first movie until the seventh one, so he only appeared in two films anyway.
• Evidence Dungeon: Jigsaw's various lairs are where he crafts his traps, the scenes of several crimes and absolute mountains of evidence. Justified in that being discovered tends to be part of Jigsaw's plans to evade the police.
• 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.
  • At the end of Saw IV, it turns out that Hoffman, who was set up as a major ally of Rigg throughout the movie, is another Jigsaw apprentice.
  • Jigsaw has a variant in that the revealed character in question, while still technically "evil", is pursuing a relatively heroic cause. At the climax, combined with a Sequencing Deception, it's revealed that Logan was a former Jigsaw apprentice and the perpetrator of the second Jigsaw killing spree, specifically to get revenge against Halloran and his informants.
  • In the final game of Spiral that Zeke is put through, Schenk, the rookie detective who was assigned as his partner for the Spiral Killer's case, reveals himself as said killer, and attempts to offer him to become his accomplice.
• Evil Old Folks: As revealed during his autopsy in IV, Jigsaw was 52 at the time of his death.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Jigsaw isn't a scientist, but an engineer, which still fits the trope well; instead of participating in scientific experimentation, he uses the applied science of engineering to build Death Traps. Similarly, his concerns are social rather than biological or genetic — he's disgusted with the indolence and sloth he sees surrounding him; without the "will to live", humanity would face extinction. His preferred solution is to force people in Deadly Games where they have to mutilate themselves or kill someone else.
• Extremely Short Timespan: A significant chunk of the franchise takes place over what is, in-universe, just a few days. Saw III and Saw IV take place simultaneously, Saw V starts during the events of Saw IV, Saw VI starts just minutes after the events of Saw V, and Saw 3D starts during the events of Saw VI. While there are time jumps in these films, they are only a few hours at most, not days or weeks.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge:
  • Saw: After being captured, told he must dismember himself to escape, being subjected to intense psychological torture, and watching Lawrence cut his own foot off, Adam screams his head off while bashing in Zep's head with a toilet lid.
  • Subverted in Saw II, when Eric beats up the already-suffering Jigsaw, but Jigsaw gets the last laugh.
• Eye Scream:
  • In Saw II:
    • The opening trap, the Death Mask, involves a contrapted mask full of pointy nails that would snap shut unless it was unlocked in time. The catch? The key had been surgically inserted behind one of the luckless victim's eyes. Either cut your own eye out and plunge your fingers in to get the key, or suffer a horribly painful death.
    • Gus Colyard is shot through the eye while looking through the peephole of a magnum booby trap.
  • In Saw IV:
    • In the opening trap, the Mausoleum Trap, two victims are put into a strangulation device, and the keys to each other's chains are taped into their collars. One had his eyes sewn shut and the other his mouth to prevent any kind of communication between them.
    • The Bedroom Trap: either use this diabolical device to gouge your own eyes out, or get torn limb from limb.
  • Saw 3D has the Impalement Wheel, which involves three rods that would not only penetrate the victim's eyes, but also their mouth. If any scene in the Saw franchise wanted viewers to see first-hand what being in a Jigsaw trap is actually like, watching that trap in 3D (as the film had intended) is it.
  • Averted in Jigsaw. This is hinted at in one of the movie's trailers when one of the participants in the Barn game falls dangerously close to a set of outstretched spikes, but it never happens.
  • The Eye Vacuum Trap from Saw X involves a man with two plastic pipes connected to a vacuum machine funnelling into his eyes, who has to break all the restrained fingers on his right hand with a triggering dial on his left to avoid the machine from sucking his eyes out.

F

• Face Death with Despair:
  • At the end of the first film, Adam is shell-shocked when Jigsaw reveals himself before him. After being electrocuted by Jigsaw and watching him shut the bathroom lights and walk out, Adam breaks down screaming in despair as Jigsaw seals the door and leaves him to die.
    Adam: DON'T! DON'T! NOOO! (incoherent screaming)
  • In the opening scene of Saw II, Michael gets terrified and can only let out Rapid-Fire "No!" just before the Death Mask kills him.
• Facial Horror:
  • The Reverse Bear Trap does this to any victim who doesn't break out of it, ripping their lower jaw off completely. Although it's seen repeatedly on various characters, it's not until Saw 3D when the actual result of someone dying with it on is shown.
  • In Saw IV, Cecil's face ends up being caked in blood after going through the Knife Chair, a trap that requires its victim to press their face against a contraption of multiple knifes.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Sure, you might be able to easily get out of a trap if you were put in one, but the series' precedent is that you'll either end up dead before the end of the movie or in another trap in the following one, and you'll probably be subjected to an ironic lecture by a puppet first.
• Fatal Family Photo:
  • Notably averted with Gordon, who shows Adam a picture of his family in the first movie, and yet he's still alive in the seventh one. Considering the series' ludicrously high mortality rate, his survival would be impressive even if he didn't tempt fate with this trope.
  • Early on in Spiral, Schenk shows Zeke a photo of his wife and newborn child, appearing to set the trope up. Later on, a dead body believed to be Schenk's is discovered, seemingly playing the trope straight. Then it's subverted; not only is Schenk alive, but his family never really existed. He has actually been the Spiral Killer all along.
• Fatal Flaw: Jigsaw's method of operation involves the victim having to overcome their flaws or be killed by a Death Trap.
• FBI Agent: From Saw IV to Saw VI, there are various FBI agents and personnel involved in the Jigsaw case.
• Females Are More Innocent: Zig-zagged. The "original" villains before Jigsaw are John and Hoffman, who are both male. The only woman who can seriously be counted as a villain is Amanda, who only became a Jigsaw apprentice because she was "rehabilitated" by John and sincerely believed that the experience "helped" her, but later deviates from John's philosophy and kills people via inescapable traps for her own motives. On the other hand, many of the female victims are assholes, including an apathetic thief, a Loan Shark, a pimp who forced younger girls into prostitution, and several con artists who enjoy stealing money from the victims they scam.
• Filibuster Freefall: Saw VI has a plot that's oddly more political than the rest of the series, including following films. The opening trap has a pair of Loan Sharks as its victims, and the plot's series-typical origin storyline (which serves as the base for the film's main game) is about how John was outraged that his health insurance company denied him access to a potentially lifesaving treatment and destroyed his life; this matches the United States' healthcare situation in 2009 (the year the film was released), when the foreclosure crisis and healthcare reform were at the top of the American political agenda. One scene even has John rant about how politicians who claim that healthcare decisions should be in the hands of doctors and their patients are dishonest because it's actually the insurance companies who make all the decisions.
• Fingore:
  • Saw II:
    • A common depiction in the movie's posters is a pair of severed fingers with a decayed appearance, taking place of the "II" in the film's title.
    • In the film itself, Eric breaks one of John's fingers to force him into telling Daniel's location.
  • Fitch's trap in Spiral requires him to hold down a mechanism with his teeth that will slowly tear his fingers off, which he has to do fast enough to escape before the rising water hits an exposed cable and electrocutes him to death. Though he makes a valiant effort and loses a few fingers, his screams cause just enough of a delay to doom him. To add insult to injury, the current causes his mouth to clamp down, ripping off his remaining fingers anyway.
  • The teaser poster for Saw X shows a man with a mask-like contraption that has hoses stemming into his eyes. As seen in the film's trailer, the man has to twist and break his fingers one by one to avoid the hoses from sucking his eyes out.
• First-Episode Twist:
  • At the end of the first film, Jigsaw turns out to be the guy lying in the middle of the Bathroom, assumed to be dead. He's also the cancer patient who appears in flashbacks to the hospital where Lawrence worked in at the time. Saw II and Saw III are up-front about him as the Big Bad, and he becomes the Greater-Scope Villain from Saw IV onwards.
  • At the end of Saw II, Amanda, one of the victims from the first film who returns here, 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.
  • To a lesser extent, 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.
• Flanderization: The first movie was essentially a psychological thriller with minimal gore and only a few particularly deadly traps. As the series went on, the franchise quickly ended up becoming Torture Porn, with the traps becoming a gimmick and an excuse to throw in as much gore as possible.
• Flashback: Extremely prevalent throughout the films, especially Saw V, VI, Jigsaw and Spiral.
• Flashback-Montage Realization: It wouldn't be a Saw movie without a huge flashback montage at the end of almost every single one, which only makes sense given the extremely complex overarching storyline, not to mention that some movies happen literally at the exact same time as another one or take place out of chronological order.
• Flashback Within a Flashback:
  • In the first film, a flashback occurs when Lawrence recalls being taken in for questioning by the police. While in the station, he watches Amanda, the only known survivor of one of Jigsaw's traps, tell the police about her kidnapping and torture. This in turn leads to a flashback from her perspective, after which we return to Lawrence in the present.
  • In Saw V, the second flashback montage spawned from Strahm's solo investigation on Hoffman (specifically, during the Shotgun Chair scene) is juxtaposed with a series of brief scenes that visually detail how Hoffman's period of depression and Seth's murder went down (including a flashback from the previous montage).
• Fond Memories That Could Have Been:
  • Saw II, while subverting the trope with the broken family straits between Eric and Daniel (because both survive at the end), gets this quote from John in to lampshade it:
    John: Seems to me that the knowledge of your son's impending death is causing you to act... Why is that we're only willing to do that, when a life is at stake?
  • In the hindsight of Saw IV, said father–son relationship ultimately plays the trope painfully straight, even though Daniel isn't present in the film, as Eric ends up dying before he could get out of the confinement that John and Hoffman have had kept him in for months and meet Daniel once again.
• From Bad to Worse: Eric Matthews' whole storyline revolves around this trope. Every time we see him in each of three movies where he appears, he's in worse shape than the last time we left him.
• From Nobody to Nightmare:
  • Jigsaw was once just a mild-mannered civil engineer. Then his pregnant wife had a miscarriage, and shortly after that he found out he had incurable cancer. He then attempted to commit suicide, and when that failed, he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to "teaching" people to appreciate their lives. The rest, as they say, is history.
  • 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.

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