Saw / Tropes G to R

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

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G

• Gambit Roulette: Practically every one of Jigsaw's traps require an incredible amount of blind luck to work, and his plans often require that the victims do some very specific actions at very exact moments, and often independent of each other. To say nothing of the fact that his plans were still driving the series long after he's killed off until some point before the events of Jigsaw.
• Giallo: The first film plays out like an American take on the genre and invokes some of its tropes pretty directly. The repeated focus on Zep's black gloves is a classic Giallo shot, and Billy, the puppet Jigsaw uses to tell his victims of their predicament, is a direct Shout-Out to Deep Red.
• Glasgow Grin:
  • In Saw IV, Art is left with one after being put through a trap that involves his mouth and cheek being stitched shut, and — in the process of screaming in agony — opening his mouth wide enough to rip the sews.
  • Hoffman receives half of one after narrowly escaping the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 in Saw VI and stitching the resulting torn right cheek at the beginning of 3D.
• Gone Horribly Right: If John's philosophy was to get people to appreciate their lives and gain a new outlook, Hoffman can be said to be the ultimate culmination of his logic... for all the wrong reasons. His indomitable will to live makes him survive the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 (which Jill sabotaged to be inescapable) and go on to lose all pretenses of following John's philosophy, murdering anyone he fancies instead.
• Gorn: It practically spawned/popularized the modern resurgence of the "Torture Porn" genre of film by itself, despite the first movie featuring very little explicit gore.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Jigsaw is the Big Bad in the first three movies. After he dies at the end of the third one, he becomes a Bigger Bad posthumously, as his remaining legacy hovers over and still drives the actions of his various apprentices nominally trying to continue his work: Amanda (who dies before Jigsaw himself), Hoffman, Dr. Gordon and Logan; as well as the copycat Schenk. Plans he set into motion before his death still had far-reaching effects long after he died, up until the events of Jigsaw and Spiral.

H

• Half the Man He Used to Be: A favored fatality of the franchise, several victims throughout the movies are decapitated in this manner.
  • In the opening trap of V, Seth Baxter is strapped to a bench and dismembered by a pendulum-like blade.
  • In the Acid Room of VI, William Easton has his body split in half as an effect of the acid that was activated by Brent.
  • In the Public Execution Trap of 3D, Dina, the girl who's cheating on Brad and Ryan, is dropped forcefully upon a rotating saw blade when they agree that she is the one who should die in the trap.
• Hand in the Hole: Always a prelude to something horrible happening to the hand/wrist in question.
• Hand Wave: Jigsaw is supposedly an engineer, hence his knowledge of mechanisms. This is apparently supposed to explain how a frail cancer patient and an equally frail junkie can routinely construct Rube Goldberg devices with components that weigh tons, without anyone ever noticing. Continuously retconned as more and more strong male apprentices are added as the series progresses, from Hoffman the stout detective to ex-military Logan.
• Hannibal Lecture: Jigsaw's fond of these. This is most prominent in Saw II, where he talks to Eric as part of a "game", promising that he'll see his son again if he adheres to the rules.
• Happy Flashback:
  • There are numerous flashbacks to Jigsaw's comparatively joyful life before his Start of Darkness, the first one being hallucinated by him in Saw III.
  • In a more depressing example, Jill hallucinates a series of these (involving her times with John before their divorce) just before her death in Saw 3D.
• Heinousness Retcon: Zig-zagged with John. In the first three films, he was consistently depicted as a fearsome yet professional mastermind who abducted people who had done something "wrong" but relatively light in their life, taunted or showed notable sadism about their struggles and (almost always) incoming fates, and wasn't above putting victims' relatives and children in harm's way. What was described of his backstory did little to garner him sympathy. Starting with the flashbacks he appears in from Saw IV onwards, while his previous acts and events are still acknowledged from time to time, he's portrayed in a more sympathetic light, with extensions to his backstory that retcon supplementary details from the Rebirth comic, and him appearing to have more genuinely good intentions as he's said or shown to be more restricted to outright criminals for the most part. That said, the present plots clarify (likely unintentionally on the producers' part) that he's noticeably gotten even worse, having pettier targets and more Kick the Dog acts in his posthumous schemes.
• Hired to Hunt Yourself:
  • When the police and FBI begin looking for a wanted second Jigsaw apprentice, the crime scenes in which Hoffman is involved in the investigations of are traps and trials that he set up himself.
  • Logan works with the police to solve crimes, including the second spree of Jigsaw murders, for which he's personally responsible for.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the end, Jigsaw's actions result in the deaths of his own, his disciples who were qualified enough to succeed him, and his ex-wife. The only thing he leaves behind is his murderous legacy, which is the antithesis of everything he claimed it to be.
• Holier Than Thou: Amanda managed to survive a Jigsaw trap and became an apprentice of his. She then goes about making completely unwinnable games meant to kill the "subjects" because she believes people will never change even if they do survive despite surviving one herself, arrogantly believing herself to be the sole exception. This pisses John off so much that he (unknowingly to her) puts her through a second test during Jeff's trial, because she has completely missed the point.
• Hollywood Acid: As seen in Saw III and Saw VI.
• A House Divided:
  • In Saw II, this happens with the victims of the Nerve Gas House game, although not between all of them at once.
    • Everyone turns against Obi once they find out that he assisted Jigsaw in kidnapping most of them. Likewise, all of them except Amanda turn against Daniel when they realize that he's the son of Eric, who arrested them for numerous crimes they weren't responsible for.
    • Xavier gets progressively angrier with the other victims until he decides to leave them after the antidote in his game (which he had Amanda do for him) ends up locked. Once he finds out that each digit of the code to unlock the safe at the starting room is written on the back of each victim's neck (including himself), he tries to kill everyone in order to get the antidote for himself.
  • Inverted with the Fatal Five's Trial in Saw V, in which Jigsaw meant for the victims to work together through the hints he gave them as a lesson for their selfishness. Too bad the victims were so determined to act the trope out straight...
• Human Pincushion:
  • In Saw II, Xavier's test in the Nerve Gas House involves him entering a pit of used needles to retrieve the key needed to get an antidote out of a safe. Xavier refuses to do the task himself and instead throws Amanda into the pit. As painful and gruesome as the pit is, Amanda completes the task, only for Xavier to accidentally drop the key down a hole when she gives it to him.
  • Saw IV has Rex, a Domestic Abuser, and his wife Morgan strapped back to back in a column, with both having spikes impaling their bodies as punishment for Rex's abuse and Morgan becoming complicit in allowing him to abuse their young daughter as well. While the spikes went through Rex's major arteries, they didn't penetrate Morgan's, and she has the task of pulling out the spikes which will kill him, but allow her to escape and seek help for her and their daughter. While Morgan pulled out most of the spikes, she lost consciousness at some point before Rigg comes to the scene and pulls the last spike from her, ultimately leading to Morgan's survival.

I

• Idiosyncratic Cover Art: Every film between the first one and Jigsaw, plus Saw X, has at least one promotional poster with a physical depiction mimicking the roman numberal of their correspondent entry number.
• Idiosyncratic Wipes: Elaborate and often bizarre examples can be found in the movies, usually involving Seamless Scenery. For instance, in one case from Saw IV, the camera follows Brenda crashing through a mirror into a set at a police station.
• Idiosyncrazy: Jigsaw is compulsive about his sadistic torture games, which he becomes infamous for, and his whole life seems to have revolved around them ever since he began making them. In fact, a major plot point in the later movies is being able to tell Jigsaw's death traps from those of an apprentice or copycat by using this trope; he always has to give the victim a means of freeing themselves from the trap (as he firmly believes he's "helping" them appreciate life by facing their sins through the games), whereas the apprentices/copycats usually make the traps inescapable.
• Idiot Ball: Most of Jigsaw's victims tend to grab the Idiot Ball in regards to what they do in their traps. Justified in that people wouldn't mentally be at their best when they're about to die.
• I Have Your Wife:
  • The first film plays this pretty straight with Zep keeping Lawrence's family hostage.
  • Saw II has an interesting subversion. Eric's son Daniel is taken hostage, but, in order to get him back, John instructs Eric not to steal/kill/etc. but... to talk to him. Eric fails miserably when the climax comes, which is explicitly shown in the ending's twist.
• Immediate Sequel: While an amount of time ranging from months to years passes between the events of most films (with Saw IV being a P.O.V. Sequel to III), Saw III, Saw V, Saw VI and Saw 3D start off within seconds, minutes or hours after their respective preceding films.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: In Saw IV, we learn that Jigsaw's Start of Darkness was losing his unborn son due to a door being violently smashed against his wife's belly.
• Impossible Task: Several "traps" have simply been designed to kill their occupants without bothering with the whole escape thing. Most of those types of traps were designed by Amanda (who thinks people are irredeemable and thus deserve to die) and Hoffman (who's more concerned with keeping the cops off his tail).
• Impromptu Tracheotomy:
  • The chances of a character getting their throat harmed in some way (including the Slashed Throat type) is just as common as them dying in a trap. Specific examples include Tapp in the first movie, Xavier in II, Amanda and Jigsaw in III, Erickson in VI^note Although it was targeted to the jugular vein in this case. and Heffner in 3D, to name a few.
  • Saw V has a rare example of someone doing this to survive; Strahm quickly grabs the pen from his pocket as the cube his head is sealed in is quickly filling with water, and stabs himself in the throat with it and then disassembles it, creating a blowhole, allowing him to survive the intentionally unwinnable trap.
• Inadequate Inheritor: All of John's main apprentices twist his ideals by perverting them to serve their own cause. Amanda, Hoffman and Logan don't completely share his philosophy of making people change through suffering, instead either putting them into inescapable traps, forcing them into a Sadistic Choice or outright killing them directly. The only accomplice closest to John's idea of Jigsaw is Dr. Gordon.
• Inconsistent Dub: The Hungarian dubs of the movies shift back and forth between using "Kirakós" (jigsaw) or "Fűrész" (saw) to refer to Jigsaw. The Hungarian words for "jigsaw" and "saw" have no relation, so it comes out of nowhere when Jigsaw is called "Fűrész".
• Indirect Serial Killer: The Jigsaw killers and their copycats are notorious for kidnapping people and forcing them into life-or-death scenarios where they're forced to do a Life-or-Limb Decision or solve Criminal Mind Games in order to survive. In some (but not all) "games" involving multiple victims, one person has to kill the other (be it directly or indirectly) to win. Thus far, whereas most of the other Jigsaw killers almost exclusively followed this MO, Hoffman is the only one who has also committed direct murders regularly.
• Intercom Villainy: Jigsaw communicates with his victims exclusively via pre-recorded messages on different kinds of tapes. This prevents the victims from taking their anger out on him while allowing him to instruct them about his traps.
• Internal Affairs: Saw 3D has the Metropolitan Police Department's Internal Affairs Division take charge of the Jigsaw case when Hoffman is publicly identified as the wanted second Jigsaw apprentice. The three named members of the division seen in the film are Gibson (who had a backstory with Hoffman before being moved to the division), Palmer and Rogers.
• Interquel: Saw X, which is set between the first two films and puts more focus on John himself than his victims.
• Invincible Villain: In every film where he's involved, John has always won in some way, regardless if he gets actual karma or not. Even after his death in Saw III, he still got the upper hand with his posthumous schemes. His apprentices and copycats also won several times, but none of them got to the extent he reached.
• Irony:
  • From his time with Logan, John claims the work of Jigsaw must not come from anger or vengeance. Every major Jigsaw killer, however, undermines this belief in their way.
    • John's most significant victims after Cecil are people he has a history with, such as his former friend Art Blank and William Easton, who denied him health insurance. While John outwardly holds no strong feelings, it's shown that he's deeply resentful of them for perceived betrayals.
    • Amanda's first chosen victim is specifically Eric, a corrupt cop who ruined her life. While Eric has plenty of reasons to be targeted by Jigsaw, it's clear by Saw III that Amanda's reasoning for testing Eric was to exact her own revenge on him.
    • Hoffman chases after and murders Jill purely out of revenge.
    • Logan later uses John's philosophy as a cover to exact personal revenge on Edgar and Halloran by murdering them outright.
  • In the first film, Lawrence is questioned by Tapp because he suspects him of being the Jigsaw killer. In Saw 3D he is.
  • At the beginning of Saw 3D, Bobby Dagen falsely claims to be a Jigsaw survivor, and by the end he actually is, but his wife, best friend, publicist and lawyer were all killed due to him failing to save them.

J

• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
  • Rigg physically assaults at least one suspect, and in Saw II encourages Eric to beat the answers they want out of John, implying that this is a standard practice for the city's police department.
  • In Spiral, after a shootout with a gangbanger with possible connections to one of their leads on the Spiral Killer, Zeke douses his maimed leg with alcohol and beats him when the thug plays coy.
• Jawbreaker: The Reverse Bear Trap is one of the series' most iconic traps, even though we don't see it go off with someone still in it until Saw 3D.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Amanda makes Jigsaw look downright merciful by the third movie. Of course, this was the fault of Jigsaw himself, who made her another murderer in an attempt to "help her", much to his shame when he realizes this. It didn't help that Jigsaw's other major apprentice in the first seven films, Hoffman, was already far down the slope too, tugging on Amanda's leg at the time.
• Just in Time:
  • An unique subversion happens in Saw IV. Rigg reaches the room where Eric's trapped right when the timer is at one, only to find out that he was supposed to get there in over 90 minutes, and since he got there before the timer reached zero, Eric gets killed.
  • In Saw VI, William reaches his final test just when the timer is at one. The true game begins here.

K

• Karma Houdini:
  • The franchise features numerous subversions and aversions.
    • John has the goal of making his victims accountable for their misdeeds by putting them in life-threatening situations that require them to mutilate themselves or kill someone else in order to survive the traps they get put in. In other words, the games John makes have the purpose of preventing his victims (or "subjects", as he calls them) from becoming Karma Houdinis.
    • Ironically, John became a Karma Houdini himself for the first two films, as he has murdered, crippled and traumatized many people through his games, yet he was never brought to trial or convicted for his crimes. This is because he has baffled the police countless times, as he figured out numerous ways to outsmart them and lure them into his games. In Saw II, he deliberately allows the police to apprehend him in order to test his next victim Eric, who does beat him up badly when he sees his teenage son Daniel being endangered in the Nerve Gas House. Saw III is the film where full-on karma finally gets to John, namely by getting killed by his latest victim Jeff, even though this leads the latter to fail his first trial as the correct option was to "forgive" John. Played with in that John had already pulled numerous elaborate plans in motion that were meant to continue after his anticipating death, which affect the plot of the following films and succeed for the most part.
    • While the games Hoffman makes on his own almost always involve unsympathetic victims who have to do even more difficult tasks than those of John's, he runs the ones John had planned to exploit the Jigsaw legacy (which he took over after meddling Jeff's trial in Saw III by blackmailing Amanda Young, John's most favored apprentice at the time, into disappointing him), directly kills numerous police and FBI personnel, attempts to frame Peter Straham for his crimes, and even murders John's ex-wife Jill. The climax of Saw 3D makes it seem as if Hoffman was going to get away with all of his crimes at first, but in the end, John manages to outsmart Hoffman with the final task he gave to Lawrence: lock Hoffman in the Bathroom from the first three films and leave him there to die.
    • Although he lied about being a survivor of one of Jigsaw's traps simply to become rich and famous, Bobby survives his trial (which was the last one Hoffman ran) with only a few injuries in Saw 3D. That being said, his incompetence at successfully completing most of the traps lead to the deaths of his staff, best friend and wife, and in all likelihood his career as a writer would be over with him being exposed as a fraud.
  • However, it's currently played straight with the killers from the latest two films, Logan and Schenk, both of whom manage to succeed in their plans without relevant obstacles and get away with them for the screentime they had thus far. Of course, most of their targets were Asshole Victims who previously harmed them in some way and hadn't gotten their comeuppance until they killed them.
  • Also played straight with Brit and Mallick, two of the victims of the Fatal Five's trial from Saw V. Despite being involved in an arson and the fact that Hoffman left evidence of it at the scene for the FBI to find, both are walking free by the time of Saw 3D with no apparent legal punishment whatsoever.
• Karmic Death:
  • Many of the death traps have some kind of relevance to their victims' sins. An informant must cut out his eye (the thing he uses to spy on others) to survive, six health insurance inspectors who denied people coverage based on pre-existing conditions (choosing who would live or die) have their lives put in the hands of their boss, who can only save two of them (choosing which of them lives or dies), etc.
  • In Saw III:
    • Jigsaw himself is killed (with a saw no less) by one of his many victims. He even dies with a piece of him missing, like the puzzle pieces he took from his victims. His was in his head, perhaps symbolizing his sociopathy and lack of humanity.
    • Amanda shoots Lynn, then in turn gets shot in the neck by an enraged Jeff. As she slowly bleeds to death, Jigsaw can only voice his disappointment in her.
  • In Saw 3D, Gordon condemns Hoffman to painfully starve to death in the bathroom he was tested in. Before he leaves, he also tauntingly disposes of the hacksaw previously used by Adam within Hoffman's reach.
• Karmic Twist Ending: Saw 3D's ending is a notable departure from the franchise's typical use of Cruel Twist Endings. After the climax, Hoffman managed to win over the police in his final schemes before escaping the city, including finishing with Bobby's game and killing Jill. Just as he was going to the airport, Gordon, revealed to be Jigsaw's most entrusted accomplice with a plan to take out Hoffman, gets on his way (alongside Brad and Ryan, the survivors of the film's opening trap) and captures him, then locking him up to die in the bathroom where Gordon had previously been imprisoned in by Jigsaw during the first movie.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Has happened numerous times throughout the series, sometimes to the point where the overall morality of "self-defense" in the series' universe can become rather questionable.
  • Played with in the first film, in that it was to save someone else's life; Adam smashes Zep's skull in with a toilet tank lid before he can pull the trigger to kill Lawrence.
  • In Saw IV, Strahm shoots Jeff to death just as he's about to shoot him when he asks him about his daughter.
  • Exaggerated at the end of Spiral, where a SWAT team unload all of their guns on Marcus when his trap makes it look like he's about to shoot them with a single pistol.
• Knight Templar: Jigsaw genuinely believes that he's helping people by putting them in his death traps, despite all the clear evidence to the opposite. In Saw VI and 3D, Simone makes it very clear that it's not working, and angrily calls out victims who say that it helped them. That said, 3D shows that it did work for some people.
• Kudzu Plot:
  • When first film ended, only a few plot threads stuck around, but nothing worth hurting over. Once Lionsgate released the film theatrically after its premiere, the original creators decided to make two more films, with Saw II pulling off a Sequel Hook very well. However, during the development of Saw III, Executive Meddling hit hard, forcing the creators to leave another sequel hook that was somewhat cohesive. With the departure of the creators from writing, the executives wanted the writers who came afterwards to make an endless string of subplots and character histories to interconnect with the overall timeline, mainly to create one sequel hook after another (in order to make sense of the ensuing chaos, no matter how increasingly illogical it got). The new writers got crazy about this for the next four films; Saw IV was almost Lost-like with its Mind Screw chronology and the reveal that it's synchronous with III, and Saw V was largely a Whole Episode Flashback that went back as far as scenes from the first film (as well as before it) to explain how one character (Hoffman) was involved in past events. At least Saw VI neatly wrapped up most of the previous subplots from IV and V, and Saw 3D, the original Grand Finale, wrapped up almost everything in the timeline with its ending.
  • Later on, Jigsaw was released, which, while involving a Time Skip from 3D, adds more past events before and between the previous films that are left without much explanation. While its ending certainly involves a sequel hook, the film's events haven't been followed up yet, as the next film, Spiral, does another time skip without even leaving any small details as to what happened afterwards. Spiral doesn't build upon previous events any further, but it ends with another sequel hook.

L

• Late-Arrival Spoiler: These are an essential basis for the franchise's plot development. Each movie assumes that the audience already watched at least the previous one before it, and their promotional material tend to show events or details related to spoilers from past installments. For example, Jigsaw dies in Saw III, and the trailers and one of the posters (also the DVD boxart) for Saw IV show his body lying on an autopsy table (from the movie's opening scene) and his disembodied head being weighed on a scale, respectively.
• The Law of Conservation of Detail: Used by all of the movies, especially the first one (for instance, remember when Jigsaw mentioned having a disease?) and even between different films. The last minutes of each installment usually review such details, and make the audience feel proud or ashamed, depending on whether they'd realized it previously or not.
• Legacy Character: Jigsaw, of course.
• Leitmotif:
  • "Hello Zepp" (subsequently remixed for every film in the series) has become synonymous with the Saw series, since it's played throughout the climax and ending of each film. Even when the track is played elsewhere (like, say, on Sportscenter - and yes, that has happened), one likely immediately identifies it as the "Saw theme".
  • In an especially awkward example of the latter, "Hello Zepp" was used in the trailer for Déjà Vu (2006). Passable on its own, except it was played in theaters immediately before screenings of Saw III.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: Lots of them throughout the series.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Jigsaw to every other major villain in the series. He's a twisted bastard, but whenever he comes into conflict with another villain, he always has the moral high ground.
• Locked in a Room:
  • The first film is about two men waking up in a decrepit bathroom, chained to metal pipes on opposite ends of the room from each other, and they have to figure out why they're there, who put them there, and how to escape, while one of them is forced to kill the other to save his family from being shot.
  • Saw II has the main game's victims locked in the Nerve Gas House (of which the previous film's Bathroom is part of), expecting to work together to escape.
  • Saw IV has three victims trapped in a room inside the Gideon Meatpacking Plant. They're not necessarily locked in it, but if the room's door opens, two of them die. Rigg blows the trap and causes all but one of them (who was first implied to be a victim of the aforementioned two) to die.
  • Saw V provides an interesting example: each of the four traps in the main game is seemingly designed so that one person has to die for the others to move on, but all five could have survived to the end if they had worked together. "Five will become one" works on so many levels.
• Locked Up and Left Behind:
  • Any trap that doesn't kill you outright will do this to you instead, such as the iconic Bathroom.
  • In particular, this is done to Hoffman in Saw 3D - Dr. Gordon leaves Hoffman trapped in the Bathroom (specifically, he chains him to the same pipe he was chained to in the first film, and removes any means to escape from him), condeming him to a slow death. Word of God confirmed that Hoffman doesn't escape, but it's currently a case of Uncertain Doom due to discussions to bring him back in a later installment.

M

• Made of Plasticine: The human body, apparently, at least from the third movie onwards.
• Mad Scientist: Well, Jigsaw is more of a mad engineer, but it's roughly the same principle.
• Magic Countdown:
  • In the first film, the clock in the Bathroom passes through significantly more than a half-hour throughout the sequence where Lawrence and Adam focus on the mirror, which only lasts a few minutes.
  • In Saw II, after John explains his motivation to Eric for four minutes, the timer for everyone in the Nerve Gas House to die drops by 23 minutes from the last time it was seen (which was just before).
  • In Saw 3D, the 36 seconds that Bobby has to save Suzanne take about a minute and a half.
• Malevolent Masked Men:
  • Jigsaw and his apprentices (alongside some other accomplices) wear sinister-looking pig masks when abducting victims for their "games". Saw IV reveals that the first pair of pig masks used by John were cheery-looking ones from a Chinese New Year parade to symbolize rebirth, as in "the Year of the Pig." While he wore one of them, the other one was an improvised tool to abduct Cecil.
  • The Spiral Killer from Spiral, a Jigsaw copycat, recycles the pig mask from the Jigsaw killers.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: Jigsaw has a reputation as a dangerous murderer, but is actually a fairly weak man with colon cancer, only able to operate because of his manipulative skills.
• Mandatory Twist Ending: A twist at the end of each film is more or less expected, ever since the first one.
• Mascot Villain: Although not an actual character, Billy the Puppet is this for the franchise as a whole.
• Master Poisoner: Jigsaw appears to have a vague "slow-acting poison" to inject for any occasion, which he uses on Zep and Mark Wilson in the first film, and by Saw II he has set up a whole house that's slowly filling with nerve gas.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Jigsaw. A jigsaw puzzle is made of numerous pieces, and by Saw 3D, Jigsaw has ceased to be a single individual or apprentice and become a full-fledged movement, shown when Gordon takes down Hoffman, helped by two other people in pig masks, who were confirmed by invokedWord of God to be Brad and Ryan (the survivors of the trap seen in the movie's opening). Each of these individuals in the movement could be thought of as jigsaw pieces.
  • Jigsaw's real first name "John" is likely a reference to John the Baptist, a saint who washed away sins through baptism. In the movies, John believes he's baptizing people by installing new traumas through his traps.
• Memory Trigger: Used in several films to set up flashbacks, usually involving the characters that are remembering.
  • The main trials of Saw IV, Saw VI and Saw 3D have numerous clues left to the protagonists involved regarding past events in their life, either to make them figure where to continue with the game (e.g. one of the letter messages Rigg reads in Saw IV) or to simply remind them of what they did to be tested (the written text on William's skin under the bombs strapped to him in Saw VI, the environmental props and text Bobby comes across in Saw 3D).
  • Specific to Saw VI:
    • Hoffman telling Jill that he'll no longer see her once he's finished with all the tasks listed in the envelopes Jill left him makes the latter reminisce of the time John tried to show her that his "method of rehabilitation" works by showing Amanda (who had recently come out from her test back in the first movie) to her.
    • Hoffman himself gets a Memory Trigger when he enters the surveillance room for William's game and finds a blackmail letter (left there by Jill as part of her sneak attack on him) he had sent to Amanda back in Saw III, with the ensuing flashback montage revealing the sequence when Hoffman wrote it and Amanda read it using footage between Saw III and IV.
• Menacing Mask: The Jigsaw killers and their copycats wear sinister pig masks with blood and pus running from the eyes whenever capturing people. As a bonus point, a pig squeal-like screech usually plays during such scenes.
• Metaphorically True:
  • In the first film, Lawrence says that newspapers dubbing the Jigsaw Killer as such is inaccurate, because technically speaking, he never killed anyone directly; he just puts them in situations where death is very likely. The point is really moot, as almost any jurisdiction would consider putting someone in such a situation to be murder, combined with other possible crimes like kidnapping. Saw II does at least have the Jerkass detective Eric call Jigsaw out on this defense: "putting a gun to someone's head and forcing them to pull the trigger is still murder." Plus, that ignores one of the flashbacks to Lawrence's explanation of Jigsaw, in which the latter lures Sing into a booby trap, resulting in his death; this was in turn preceded by a very straightforward attempt to murder Tapp by slashing his throat.
  • In Saw II, like Lawrence, Amanda states that Jigsaw is not a killer for the same reasons, though this is pretty much a Foreshadowing to her being his apprentice, which is revealed at the end of the film.
• Minor Major Character:
  • Saw V introduces the unnamed chief of the Metropolitan Police Department at the time of the first seven films. It should go without saying that he must have given particular attention to the notorious Jigsaw killers, especially once they rack a good body count and show themselves to be competent enough to outsmart the police many times. However, he's only seen at the ceremony held to announce the supposed end of their killing spree in that film, not even returning in later installments once further games pop up or Hoffman is exposed as the killer who's been holding the games since that moment.
  • Averted with Marcus, another chief of the department, in Spiral. While he's retired at the time of the film's events, his acts back during his tenure are responsible for much of the plot's roots, and he gets a major role in the movie's late half.
• Misery Builds Character: Jigsaw's outlook and philosophy runs on this, putting people through traps that involve self-mutilation and psychological scarring in order to live and gain a new outlook on life. Jigsaw himself only started appreciating his own life after surviving a suicide attempt following his cancer diagnosis.
• Mistaken for Badass: Dr. Gordon in the first film. Rigg flirts with this trope in the fourth film, too, though it's justified since Jigsaw sets up his game to accomplish exactly that purpose.
• Moe Greene Special:
  • In Saw II, Gus looks through a peephole with a magnum pistol behind it, and gets this dealt to him for his trouble.
  • In Saw 3D, Hoffman kills Rogers by shooting him in the right eye.
• Monster Clown: Billy the Puppet, whom Jigsaw uses to deliver his prologues to his victims.
• Monster Munch: Most of the movies, save for the first and Jigsaw, have an opening victim whose entire purpose is to show the audience how one of the traps works, so as to get the crowd pumped for the murder and mayhem to follow. Many of these scenes are similar: the victim wakes up to find themselves trapped with a clockwork contraption poised to kill them, a tape plays in which Jigsaw outlines what the victim did to find themselves in their predicament, and then the game begins.
• Morton's Fork: While Jigsaw's philosophy ensures that every trap must have a chance, however gruesome or slim, of escaping it, the ones prepared by Amanda are all designed to be truly inescapable, leaving victims with the choice of simply dying horribly from the trap or suffering while trying to escape the trap with no option to survive.
• Motive Decay: In the first three films, Jigsaw claims that he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist who teaches his victims the value of life by putting them in traps in which they're forced to perform Self-Surgery or kill others just like them. However, his victims in later films tend to be nothing more than people who ruined his life in some way, with their tests seeming more like outright punishments. He even chooses some victims for petty reasons or simply to sacrifice them in order to teach others a lesson.
• Murder by Inaction: John adamantly insists he's never killed anyone in his role as Jigsaw; he merely puts them in Death Traps, and the traps kill his victims because they failed their tests. Of course, since he knows the traps are fatal to those he puts in, that doesn't make much of a difference. Eric puts it best in Saw II:
  Eric: I don't know what [the cure for cancer] is, but I know it's not killing and torturing people for your own sick fucking pleasure.
  John: I've never murdered anyone in my life. The decisions are up to them.
  Eric: Yeah, well, putting a gun to someone's head and forcing them to pull the trigger is still murder.
• Murderous Mask:
  • The Reverse Bear Trap is placed on a victim like a mask.
  • Saw II has the aptly-named Death Mask, although its structure goes beyond the face. In addition of a metal mask with a spiked interior, there's another panel of the same nature aimed towards the back of the head, which, alongside the harness in the neck and shoulder area, makes the trap function like an iron maiden.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning:
  • Pretty much the crux of any of the films after the third. To quote Jigsaw from his tape in IV:
    Jigsaw: I promise that my work will continue. You think it's over, just because I'm dead? It's not over. The games have just begun.
  • Jigsaw was dying of cancer, but from the perspective of society at large he was essentially a cancer cell, extremely destructive and always two steps ahead of the immune system (law enforcement). Eventually, after much destruction around him, he was killed but it was too late; he created more of himself, and those new cells similarly show every sign of recreating themselves.
• Myth Arc:
  • All of the movies either focus on Jigsaw's increasingly elaborate, and posthumous since his death in Saw III, master plan, or someone else related to it.
  • From the first film to Saw 3D, there's also the following:
    • The fate of Dr. Lawrence Gordon, who is referenced in most films after the first one before his second (and last so far) appearance in Saw 3D.
    • The games seen in the first three films, including the Bathroom, the Nerve Gas House, the Gideon Meatpacking Plant and several individual tests, are progressively given more details in the following ones, often in regards to plot twists. Saw IV and V in particular added more major events to the Gideon Meatpacking Plant when Rigg and Strahm enter it and witness his final test and Jeff's trial, respectively.

N

• Necessarily Evil: Jigsaw knows that torture isn't a good thing, but he believes it's necessary to teach people to value their own lives and better themselves. That is, if they survive.
• Never Sent Any Letters: A variant with an anonymous letter happens between Saw V and 3D. In the former film, Hoffman receives a letter in his office that only reads "I know who you are". Hoffman likely believes the letter came from Strahm (with Jill also being a potential suspect for the viewer), but it's revealed in the latter film that it was actually sent by Dr. Gordon.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The first movie came out in 2004, but it is eventually established that the Jigsaw killings began in the Chinese Year of the Pig, which would have to be 2007 to match all the outward indications of the time period. Further supporting this is that the 2008 recession factors into the story of Saw VI.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Nice job killing Jigsaw, Jeff.
  • And nice job saving Eric, Rigg.
  • Oh, by the way, nice job shoving Hoffman into a box filled with glass, Strahm.
  • And of course, nice job going on an all-out manhunt for Hoffman, Gibson. Gibson's is arguably the biggest clusterfuck out of all of these. It leads to, among other things, the deaths of an entire police precinct.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In Saw VI, Hoffman uses Strahm's severed hand left from the final trap in the previous film to plant his fingerprints at the next game. Unfortunately for him, forensic data from the hand's dead state actually proves that Strahm was not the "second apprentice", which serves to be one of the big pieces for Hoffman's downfall.
• No Full Name Given: Most of the characters in earlier films have full names, but characters with only a first name or surname become prominent in later movies. While many of them have minor or supporting roles, there are still major ones without a full name, such as most of the barn game victims from Jigsaw.
• Noodle Incident: In Jigsaw's various workshops, you can see plans for traps that never appear in any of the movies, but most of them were possibly used offstage, especially because of the large amount of background people seen in the Jigsaw Survivor Group meeting in Saw 3D. While some minor Jigsaw survivors (such as Joan from 3D, who was Bobby's inspiration to write his fake story about Jigsaw) recount how their experiences changed them, their traps are never explained in full detail.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Of the "Wait for it..." variant. Nine tenths of the scary in the movies come from the characters walking around in the abandoned, desolate locations where the games take place.
• Not The Illness That Killed Them: John was terminally ill with colon cancer. He's killed by getting his throat slashed open at the end of 'Saw III'', in an especially egregious time where his cancer had advanced enough to cause a brain tumor and put him in a bedridden condition.

O

• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Surprisingly averted for almost the entire run of the series; the movies were simply consistently numbered with successive roman numerals and no subtitles. The filmmakers explicitly noted that they weren't going with sequel names like Saw 2: Hacksaw or S4w to avoid this. This lasted until the seventh film, which instead of being Saw VII is Saw 3D. Various DVD releases before Jigsaw renamed it Saw: The Final Chapter.
• Offscreen Inertia:
  • Defied by Eric in Saw III. After Saw II ends with him chained to a pipe in the Bathroom by Amanda and presumably left to die exactly as Adam did in the first film, the opening awesomely plays against expectations, with Eric grabbing a broken toilet lid and breaking his foot with it in order to escape.
  • Played straight with Hoffman when he's captured by Lawrence, Brad and Ryan in Saw 3D. He's trapped inside the Bathroom (next to Adam's corpse, no less), but with all possible methods of escape removed. The film ends with him being left to stay there until he dies, though his fate remains ambiguous due to production-related issues.
• Offscreen Villain Darkmatter: Jigsaw and his apprentices don't appear to have any shortage of industrial spec components for their traps. The Glass Coffin from the end of Saw V takes this to ludicrous levels with its crushing walls. Somewhat justified by Saw IV, which shows that before becoming a serial killer, Jigsaw was a rich civil engineer who owned a lot of abandoned property (which he was planning on redeveloping).
• Once an Episode: Someone saying "Game over." and closing a door on the film's last victim, with the only film that doesn't have it being Saw V and Saw VI making another exception by having the victim survive in time instead. We get to see each one of these scenes in the Flashback Montage Realizations of Saw IV and VI.
• Once More, with Clarity: As well as some flashbacks that build up on previously-seen events, the series does this at just about the end of every film, usually to detail how Jigsaw or another villain has put one over on their opponents. When the "Hello Zepp" Leitmotif starts playing, you know things are going From Bad to Worse.
• One Degree of Separation:
  • Initially in the first film, Adam and Lawrence are apparent strangers. It turns out, however, that Adam was hired by a detective to spy on Lawrence, who was suspected of being Jigsaw, whose identity is in turn revealed to be that of John Kramer, a patient of Lawrence's with terminal cancer. This was all part of Jigsaw's plan, but Adam and Lawrence didn't know that when they found out.
  • Later films show that many of John's victims were patients at the drug recovery clinic ran by his ex-wife Jill Tuck, or people he knew beforehand. Those who aren't are likely to be connected to one of the various Jigsaw apprentices instead.
  • While the cast of Spiral has no connections with most of the previous films' characters, the plot progressively establishes most of them to either have different relationships with each other or that they've met each other at least once, including the Spiral killer themselves towards Zeke and Pete.
• One Dose Fits All: Played with. Jigsaw and his apprentices/accomplices drug their victims prior to kidnapping them, and in games with multiple victims, they may either wake up at different times or at the same time, but the dosage seems to be the same for all victims regardless of their differences.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • While there are characters who share names between movies (e.g. Mark Wilson in the first movie and Mark Hoffman from III to 3D^note Incidentally, Saw V reveals that Hoffman was the one who abducted Wilson, but Wilson is only mentioned in the movie without appearing in flashbacks, so it's still a case between movies.; and Brad and Ryan in 3D, who share their names with Brad Halloran and Ryan in Jigsaw^note The latter case is notably worse than others, since neither Ryan has a given surname to distinguish them.), no single movie contains two characters with the same first name, with two exceptions:
    • Daniel Matthews and Rigg both appear in Saw II, and Rigg's first name is revealed to be Daniel in Saw V.
    • Saw V also gives Kerry's first name as Allison, which is the same name as Gordon's wife (albeit with a different spelling, "Alison" in the latter's case), and they both appeared in the first movie.
  • Played straight series-wide with John Kramer. Despite John being a very common name in Real Life, John Kramer seems to be the only John in this universe.
• One-Word Title:
  • The franchise itself, the first film and its precedent short film all share the title of Saw.
  • Jigsaw and Spiral.
• Ontological Mystery: The plot of the first movie, but all of them have this trope apply In-Universe to specific groups of characters.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Shockingly averted. Throughout the series, the blood splatters are pretty realistic in size. Also, victims who survive massive blood loss without dying (e.g. Lawrence in the first film and Brit and Mallick in Saw V) visibly show common effects that are consequences of blood loss.

P

• Passing the Torch:
  • Jigsaw intended Amanda to follow his legacy after his death, but her refusal to accept his philosophy by setting up impossible-to-survive traps as well as Hoffman's meddling ruined that.
  • In Saw 3D, we discover that Dr. Gordon was Jigsaw's true successor, the one he shared all his secrets and entrusted Jill's life with.
  • Jigsaw reveals that he had another successor in mind: Logan, who was his apprentice years before he met Amanda and Hoffman. He eventually decides to restart Jigsaw's work over a decade after his and Hoffman's deaths.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Jigsaw's philosophy, again. Also, Hoffman's murder of Seth Baxter, who killed his sister.
• Perfect Poison:
  • Invoked by Adam in the first film when he pretends to pass out from the poisoned cigarette after taking a couple of drags from it. It doesn't fool anyone.
  • The main game of Saw II involves a nerve gas released into a Closed Circle that will kill the victims unless they discover antidotes for each of them in time. While one victim (Laura) simply dies from the poison itself, it affects everyone at the same time, with the main sign of the effects being Blood from the Mouth.
• Perverse Puppet:
  • Billy the Puppet, the mechanical puppet Jigsaw uses to communicate with his victims.
  • The Spiral Killer has Mr. Snuggles, a monstrous-looking pig marionette dressed as a cop with a wicked-looking grin, demonic red eyes and a shrill, childish laugh.
• Pig Man: While not actual Pig Men, Jigsaw and his apprentices do have rather disturbing pig masks, which they're mostly seen wearing alongside some sort of coat.
• Poetic Serial Killer: Every trap Jigsaw puts his victims into is meant to be a reflection of their supposed sins, and - as a nod to his self-assumed label of Knight Templar - they can only escape by admitting their guilt and overcoming their sins.
  • A crucial plot point in Saw III was Amanda being chided by Jigsaw for making the traps of the victims she abducts inescapable, as well as forcing him to admit his disappointment that none of his surviving victims (including Amanda) "learned their lesson" and reformed, as he always intended them to.
• Poison and Cure Gambit: Quite a few of the traps involve exposing victims to a slow-acting poison and then forcing them into a Life-or-Limb Decision to get the antidote. Saw II has likely the most notable example: the main game's victims are trapped in a house that's filling up with Deadly Gas, with multiple antidotes scattered throughout and locked behind various traps.
• Police Are Useless:
  • Played with most of the time. The Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI aren't necessarily incompetent and are always active in the Jigsaw case, but they never manage to capture any of the Jigsaw killers and accomplices they know about (only getting their corpses after being killed by someone else), or even discover certain Closed Circles like the Nerve Gas House (which includes the infamous Bathroom) and the barn (which somehow went unnoticed for over a decade).
  • Justified in Spiral, where it's shown that the department has had plenty of Dirty Cops and a long history of Police Brutality, especially after Zeke turned in Pete for murdering a witness. This not only worsens the department's efforts to capture the Spiral Killer, but also left many past crimes without resolution.
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: Jigsaw, his disciples and their copycats are generally Affably Evil criminals (be it genuine or faux) who normally refrain from behaving rudely and/or cursing unless they're angered or provoked. Their victims and the law enforcement officers/agents after them, on the other hand, are often impolite and prone to swearing a lot, even though they range from Nice Guys to Jerkasses.
• Posthumous Character:
  • After being killed in Saw III, Jigsaw spends the rest of the series in flashbacks.
  • Amanda also returns in two flashbacks in Saw VI, after her death in the aforementioned film.
• P.O.V. Sequel: The climax of Saw IV reveals that most of its events have been taking place at the same time as Saw III, but in different locations. This is only explicitly shown when Strahm runs into Jeff, the protagonist of III, in the Gideon Meatpacking Plant. Rigg, despite also entering the plant, doesn't witness anything related to the plot of III, with the exception of Kerry's corpse (which was outside the plant).
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
  • "Game over." While not said often, it's said by Jigsaw or someone affiliated to him in the climax of some movies before leaving someone to die.
  • A different one is said by Brent in Saw VI, as he seals William's fate.
    Brent: You killed my father, you motherfucker! (pulls lever to "DIE") Now you burn in hell!
  • Another one is said by Ryan in the Public Execution Trap in Saw 3D, after he realizes that Dina doesn't love either him or Brad, and convinces Brad to give up the struggle and let Dina die.
    Dina: WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES?!
    Ryan: I think we're breaking up with you, Dina.
• Primal Fear: The franchise is a double whammy of this in regards to Gorn. Gory death traps in which you inflict self-mutilation of various types? Check. Extra-disturbing items and substances like a pit full of dirty needles and a vat of liquefied pig guts? Check.
• Psycho Supporter: Most of Jigsaw's apprentices and major accomplices willingly follow him and support his cause as a Poetic Serial Killer. Amanda in particular came to embrace his twisted ideology and views him as a father figure. However, they usually end up screwing his philosophy in different ways.

R

• Rabid Cop:
  • Tapp's recklessness results in his partner killed, his throat slashed and him being dismissed from the police department. Plus, his subsequent obsession with trailing Gordon blinded him so thoroughly to alternative suspects that he actually saw Allison's and Diana's captor inside Gordon's house and did nothing about it.
  • Eric has a very nasty record of violence towards suspects, and near the end of the second film he beats John to a bloody pulp.
  • According to Logan, Halloran has a tendency to rough up suspects.
• "Rashomon"-Style: Later movies tend to recall scenes from the earlier films, revealing more details that were unknown to the audience in the original reference.
  • Averted with Gibson in 3D. Although a little suspicious of Jill's story, he still follows standard procedure to keep her safe and investigate Hoffman. Fat lot of good it does him, or her for that matter.
• Really Dead Montage: Amanda, Jigsaw, William Easton and Jill, though it's inverted somewhat in that they happen while the characters are dying rather than afterwards. Subverted at the end of Saw VI, when Hoffman appears to get one of these, going through all the things he's done and people he's killed in past films until the very last second, making him seem like a goner... then he ends up surviving.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • As he explains in Saw II, Jigsaw has a twisted logic that kind of made sense as to why he was carrying out those sadistic games.
  • Many of Jigsaw's victims listen to a tape or video that explains why they're horrible people and thus being subjected to one of his games before their timer starts.
  • Ironically, Jigsaw himself gets a couple too:
    • While on on his death bed in Saw III, he asks Lynn how people will remember his horrific story. Her response is short, but effective:
      John: Who am I?
      Lynn: A monster. A murderer.
    • Later in the climax of III, Amanda delivers an extended one to him not long after she snaps at seeing his growing closeness with Lynn, screaming about how his methods don't actually work in "reviving" people's appreciation of life and how she's even more miserable now that she works with him than she was as a drug addict.
    • Near the climax of Saw X, Cecilia delivers a speech calling him out for being just a psycho hiding behind a fake moral code.
  • Easily the most epic one is delivered by Josh, one of the victims of the Shotgun Carousel in Saw VI. Once his boss, who had spent his career sticking to a "probability formula" that decided who would get healthcare coverage and who wouldn't, decides not to save him in favor of two female employees, Josh lets him have it shortly before the shotgun blasts a hole in his chest.
    "Aww, well, that's it, isn't it? It's over! You MOTHERFUCKER! You spineless, pussy-whipped motherfucker! That's all it takes, eh? A bitch says one thing and it's all over! You know what, William? Your policy is bullshit! Fucking bullshit! Well, you listen to me, you son of a bitch. I did everything for you. LOOK AT ME! WHEN YOU'RE KILLING ME, YOU LOOK AT ME!
• Red and Black and Evil All Over:
  • When out in the testing field, Jigsaw usually wears a black cloak with a red interior drawn up.
  • Amanda wears a red cloak alongside a pig mask with black hair when capturing victims. She also dresses in a more casual red and black outfit in III.
  • Dr. Gordon is briefly seen with a cloak similar to Jigsaw's in the flashback from Saw 3D that reveals his identity as the mysterious figure from the video tape in the opening scene of Saw II.
  • Billy the Puppet has this for a color scheme, with a little white thrown in as well.
• Redemption Earns Life: Jigsaw has this point in mind when making his traps... except for the ones in VI. And it worked for Brit and Mallick.
• Redemption Equals Death: An awful lot of characters, but most specifically William Easton.
• Remember the New Guy?: Hoffman debuted in Saw III as a minor crime scene technician (with the credits referring to him as "Forensic Hoffman"). He then goes to being a detective in Saw IV, with Saw V explaining that he was one of the first officers involved in the Jigsaw case, in spite of him not being mentioned at all in the first two films.
• Resurrected Murderer: Discussed but ultimately subverted in Jigsaw with rumors about John having returned from the dead when a new spree of killings begins around a decade since the last one (wherein John was killed midway through) happened, which kickstarts the film's plot. Come The Reveal at the end, it's shown via a Flashback-Montage Realization that it was an Of Corpse He's Alive ruse made by a new killer.
• Revenge:
  • Vengeance is the essence of Hoffman whenever he's not being committed to his Jigsaw job. His setting stone for recruitment was an inescapable trap he built for the man who killed his sister. In Saw 3D, Hoffman's motivation is revenge against Jill for attempting to kill him in the previous film.
  • In Jigsaw, Logan specifically goes after Halloran and his informants for murdering his wife and ruining his life in general.
• Revenge Is Not Justice: John was a civil engineer who was obsessed with control until a series of tragedies put him on death's door. After surviving a suicide attempt, he decided to help people reform by putting them through various death traps that would make them "appreciate life". However, as the series goes on, the victims he targets aren't random, and they tend to be people who did him a great wrong (from denying him treatment for his cancer or denying him insurance that would support his wife when he dies). His reasoning becomes especially petty, since he starts sacrificing innocent people to prove a point to his victim (one such example being sacrificing a chain-smoking janitor in Saw VI to motivate William and make it easier for him to pass his first trap).
• Revision: From Saw III onwards, every film in the series' original seven-film runtime adds new information to events from the previous ones, mostly in the form of Once More, with Clarity flashbacks and plot twists. Jigsaw and Spiral, on the other hand, only include entirely fresh events from the past that have relation to their respective present storylines.
• Revisiting the Roots: Spiral is partly an attempt at bringing the franchise back to its roots, taking most of its cues from the first film in the series (which was a mystery/suspense thriller relatively light on gore) rather than the following installments (which progressively emphasized spectacle over suspense, and dialed up the violence considerably). Among other things, it has a more minimalistic presentation and a pair of detectives as the co-protagonists. Even the casting (which features Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson among the main characters) may have been intended as a throwback to the first film, which prominently featured Danny Glover and Cary Elwes (in contrast to the other films, which include very few big-name actors in their casts).
• Robotic Torture Device: Most of the traps, really, though not so much torture devices as death-dealing devices.
• Room Full of Crazy: Jigsaw has had several nasty-looking headquarters. In the first movie, Tapp also has a room covered with thousands of newspaper clippings about the Jigsaw case.
• Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: Kinda the whole point if you think about it. Notably, the first two films focused primarily on mind games and arguably escapable traps that a human being could, feasibly, set up, given enough money, time and ingenuity. From Saw III onward, the traps became increasingly — almost ludicrously — elaborate.

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