History Film / Saw

[[quoteright:321:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/61nl7n2yc7l_8488.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:321:''Hello. I want to play a game.'']]

-->[[AC:[[SelfDemonstrating/{{Saw}} PLAY ME]]]]

The ''Saw'' franchise -- comprised chiefly of a series of horror films -- centers around a PoeticSerialKiller, dubbed "The Jigsaw Killer" (or just "Jigsaw") by the press, who places people in {{Death Trap}}s and gives them a chance to escape before death claims them. Jigsaw designs each trap to serve as a violent form of poetic justice by reflecting what Jigsaw sees as the vital flaw of its victim (or victims). To escape these traps -- or "[[DeadlyGame games"]] -- the victims must usually harm themselves (or others) in some horrific way to escape their impending (and likely horrific) death. The films' storylines center around the victims' efforts to escape their traps, Jigsaw's life, and his connection to the films' other characters.

The films and their dates of release are, in order:

* ''Film/SawI'' (2004)
* ''Film/SawII'' (2005)
* ''Film/SawIII'' (2006)
* ''Film/SawIV'' (2007)
* ''Film/SawV'' (2008)
* ''Film/SawVI'' (2009)
* ''Film/Saw3D'' (2010)

Lions Gate Entertainment released all seven films in the franchise on the week prior to Halloween for seven years in a row, from 2004 to 2010. The seventh (and, according to WordOfGod, final) installment, titled ''Saw 3D'', ended up renamed as ''Saw: The Final Chapter'' on home video.

These films (especially the first) [[FollowTheLeader inspired many imitations]], though some argue that ''Saw'' ''itself'' serves as an imitation of ''Film/{{Se7en}}''. Both films focus on elaborate, grisly murders carried out by a man trying to send a message to society, but ''Film/{{Se7en}}'' portrays John Doe as vain and interested in showing the world a lesson through murder, while Jigsaw focuses on a more 'individualized' message with his "game". Indeed, the concept of a moralistic serial killer playing God to a society he deems morally corrupt didn't even originate with ''Film/{{Se7en}}''. (According to Word Of God, though, a short film of the same name inspired the first ''Saw' film'.)

The series managed to spawn two video game adaptations. The first -- ''Saw: The Video Game'' -- takes place after the events of the first film: Detective Tapp (thought dead after Zepp shot him) ends up forced into one of Jigsaw's games and has to play to survive. The sequel, ''Saw II: Flesh and Blood'', takes place between the events of the second and third films as Detective Tapp's son, Michael, becomes Jigsaw's newest target. Konami has also expressed an interest in turning the games into a franchise series.

This franchise now has a [[{{Characters/Saw}} character sheet]] (that needs more love), as well as its own [[http://sawfilms.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page wikia]].

!!! WARNING: This page contains no small number of spoilers, but many of the trope examples below will assume you know the spoilers revealed by the endings of the first four films -- and as such, those spoilers frequently go untagged. Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.
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!!Oh yes... there will be tropes.

* AllThereInTheManual: Several examples involving WordOfGod.
** You have to play the video games to find out the exact fates of David Tapp and Jeff Thomas Ridenhour from the first film.
** The DVD commentary for ''Saw II'' reveals that the razor box was meant for Gus and that Addison's trap would have involved a waffle iron to her face.
** The shooting script for ''Saw III'' has Amanda tying the drain stopper to Adam's leg, revealing that she messed up his game and doomed him.
** An early draft of ''Saw IV'' that would have been a direct sequel to ''Saw III'' would have shown Jeff's game to which John Kramer alludes at the end of ''Saw III.'' It would have had him dying in the blender trap, along with Chris, the man with whom Jeff's wife had an affair. Even though neither this scene nor the trap made it to the film, it still explains what game John wanted Jeff to play to find his daughter.
** An interview with Patrick Melton on Demon FM [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-5uvdJG_fY]] reveals that Brit [[spoiler: survived]] in ''Saw V.''
** The script for ''Saw VII'' reveals that John and Lawrence were in the crowd watching the public execution trap, thus revealing that it took place prior to ''Saw II'' and that it was the first trap to which Lawrence contributed.
** The commentary for '"Saw VII'' reveals that Lawrence did see his family again, but that his wife divorced him due to his unstable mindset. It also reveals that his two accomplices wearing pig masks are Brad and Ryan from the public execution trap.
** This interview with Patrick Melton [[http://www.sawfreaks.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1968]], co-writer of ''Saw IV-VII,'' reveals many things that were not explained in the movies, listed below.
*** Hoffman and Amanda knew that Gordon survived, but they did not know that he helped out with some traps.
*** Hoffman did want Rigg to survive his test in ''Saw IV.''
*** Hoffman was given no rules for the Reverse Bear Trap Jill put on him because he was supposed to die since it was Jill's "way out."
*** John Kramer knew about Amanda's involvement in his unborn child's death, but he forgave her. (This still does not explain what John had meant to leave for Amanda in the drawer in ''Saw III''.)
*** The house that Mallick from ''Saw V'' had burned is not the nerve gas house from ''Saw II.''
*** Hoffman wanted to carry on Jigsaw's legacy but make it more his legacy.
*** John met William Easton from ''Saw VI'' after his suicide attempt.
*** Lawrence did not rescue Adam because he was dead by the time Lawrence was able to leave.
* AnachronicOrder: Especially prevalent in the fifth and sixth film, where it's used to show [[spoiler:how Hoffman fits into the plots of the other films]] and [[spoiler:John's StartOfDarkness]], respectively. Shades of this trope show up in the other movies, too, but it's not nearly as prevalent.
* AnyoneCanDie: These movies take this trope to the extreme; it's rare for a major character to ''not'' die. If they don't, they're likely to be declared dead in a sequel or turn up again to be offed in some spectacular manner. Almost fifty characters died in the first six films; that's about eight every film.
* AscendedExtra: Some supporting characters get larger roles in later movies.
** Allison Kerry appears briefly at crime scenes in ''Saw'' and then becomes a main character in ''Saw II.''
** Amanda Young appears in one scene in ''Saw'' and then becomes a main character in ''Saw II.''
** Adam mentions a best friend named Scott Tibbs, who stabbed him with a rusty nail on his fourth birthday. He becomes the central character in a "documentary" on the uncut edition of ''Saw II,'' in which he mentions that Adam is probably dead and that he loves Jigsaw's traps. He is also a member of a band called Wrath of the God's, the name of which appears on Daniel Matthews' shirt in ''Saw II'' and a flyer Adam gives to Amanda in a scene deleted from ''Saw III.''
** Oswald McGillicutty's name is on a newspaper clipping in David Tapp's apartment in ''Saw.'' He appears in the first video game.
** Jeff Thomas Ridenhour is put in a trap in ''Saw'' and has muffled lines because his mouth is gagged. He speaks and appears in another trap in the first video game.
** Carla Song does not have much screen time in ''Saw.'' She is put in a trap in the video game ''Saw II: Flesh & Blood.''
** Eric Matthews appears briefly in ''Full Disclosure Report: Piecing Together Jigsaw,'' a "documentary" on the uncut edition DVD of the first film. He then becomes a main protagonist in ''Saw II.''
** Mark Hoffman is just a forensic at the scene of Troy's trap in ''Saw III'' and then becomes a major character starting with ''Saw IV.''
** Jill Tuck appears briefly in non-canonical content within the comic prequel ''Saw: Rebirth'' and then appears briefly in a flashback with no lines in ''Saw III.'' Starting with ''Saw IV,'' she becomes a main character.
** Pamela Jenkins is a reporter who only appears at a police conference in ''Saw V.'' She gets a larger role in ''Saw VI,'' and her attempt to write a book is alluded to via various notes in the video game.
* AssholeVictim: Too many to list. Most of the protagonists are fundamentally flawed people selected by Jigsaw to overcome their shortcomings ([[spoiler:none of them succeed]]). As the series progressed, many of the lesser victims just became full-on assholes such as drug dealers and rapists. Unfortunately, also as the series progressed, many of the various 'crimes' the victims were guilty of became less and less severe, some of which (like a cop who apparently values human life too much) are flat-out absurd.
** That's not even including the victims in Easton's tests, most of whom were completely innocent of anything resembling a crime, even by Jigsaw's standards. Apparently their lives were less important than the irony factor of making a health insurance executive literally choose which of them will live or die.
* TheBadGuyWins: Every film thus far ends with Jigsaw (be it the original or one of his apprentices) getting the last laugh. Even when the real Jigsaw was killed in ''Saw III'', he still managed to gain the upper hand posthumously. ''Saw VI'' [[spoiler:has come the closest to giving a villain -- in this case, Hoffman -- his comeuppance while not setting up anyone as an obvious successor to Jigsaw; the man who played "Jigsaw's" game dies, though.]]
* BastardUnderstudy:
** [[spoiler:Amanda]], a rare survivor of a Jigsaw trap, is later revealed to be his chief aide. Unfortunately, [[spoiler:she]] gets his message wrong...
** [[spoiler:Detective Hoffman also counts.]]
* BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil: This series loves this trope. [[spoiler:Amanda and Gordon are the most clear cut examples. Hoffman's conversion from standard villain to a monster after his encounter with the RBT 2.0 probably counts as well.]]
* BigBad: Jigsaw in the first three films, [[spoiler:Detective Hoffman]] in the latter four.
* BlackAndGrayMorality: Jigsaw sincerely believes that all people, even murderers, deserve a second chance at life. Though he puts people in mortal peril to get that chance, he's far better than his apprentices [[spoiler:Amanda and Hoffman]], who both create inescapable traps in the belief that their victims cannot be rehabilitated.
* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Averted - none of the films has a black character die first.
* BlondGuysAreEvil: Jigsaw/John Kramer himself.
* BookEnds: [[spoiler:The series 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 ''Saw 3D''.
** ''3D'' begins with a flashback to Lawrence sawing off his foot. [[spoiler: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.]]
* CallingCard: Each Jigsaw utilizes a different general style when designing traps.
** John Kramer was responsible for the original blueprint of what traps should be: his involved inflicting physical pain with a heavy focus on self-mutilation to survive, but also placed an emphasis on following and interpreting instructions. That said, he was not above making use of [[spoiler: Amanda's]] style ([[spoiler: The Cube Trap in ''V'' was intended to kill Strahm, and was quite amusingly the only "inescapable trap" that ''was'' escaped]]) or [[spoiler: Hoffman's]] ([[spoiler: The Reverse Bear Trap in the first movie would by design result in either the death of Amanda or her cellmate]]).
** [[spoiler: Amanda Young]] favored traps in which FailureIsTheOnlyOption, focusing on physically torturing and killing the victims rather than rehabilitating them, as [[spoiler: she]] believed at that point in the narrative that Jigsaw's victims were beyond redemption and deserved to die.
** [[spoiler: Mark Hoffman]] preferred traps that focused on a SadisticChoice, and involved victims competing to survive, or another person choosing who to save, rather than giving the victim a fighting chance. This is most evident in the final two movies, where most of the traps would result in at least one person's death by design.
* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: 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.
* CatchPhrase
** 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.'''
* CanonDiscontinuity A comic book called ''Saw: Rebirth'' was published in correlation with ''Saw II'' and was accepted by canon by the fans as well as the original writers. The comic explored Jigsaw's past and the events that lead to him becoming Jigsaw. When ''Saw IV'' came out, the new writers completely ignored the events of the comic. Example: In ''Rebirth'', Jill is John's ''girlfriend'', who leaves John because of his lack of commitment to their relationship. In ''IV'', Jill is John's ''wife'', and the two separate after Jill has a miscarriage.
* ChekhovsGun: Jigsaw sets up quite a few of these in his games. Notable ones though are the wax tape from ''Saw III'' and the Glass Box Trap from ''Saw IV''.
** The box John left Jill in his will at the beginning of ''Saw V'', which we didn't figure out the contents of until ''Saw VI''.
** Don't forget the note left for Amanda in ''Saw III''. We don't find out what was in it until [[spoiler:three movies later.]]
** 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 [[spoiler:it was from Dr. Gordon]].
** In ''Saw V,'' when John is talking to Hoffman after kidnapping him from the elevator, John mentions that Hoffman's pendulum was made of inferior steel, and that tempered steel makes a cleaner cut. [[spoiler:In ''Saw VI,'' Perez and Erickson find that the jigsaw piece cut from Eddy (the corrupt lending banker) was cut with a serrated knife, and not Jigsaw's usual tempered scalpel. This turns out to be the [[PullTheThread thread]] that begins to unravel Hoffman's attempts to cover his tracks.]]
** And, of course, the note that Jill brought to the hospital in ''Saw VI'', revealed to be for [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon]] in Saw 3D.
* ChekhovsGunman: There are quite a few. Lieutenant Rigg, Lieutenant Hoffman, Zepp Hindle, but none of them meets the extreme of Jigsaw himself in the extremely notorious twist ending of the original movie. He gets bonus points for being in a scene in the middle of the film for all of five seconds as a dying cancer patient '''''and''''' for playing possum in the bathroom throughout the entire movie. [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon is the clear winner though, having reappeared '''''six movies''''' after he was last seen, and playing a crucial role in the grand finale.]]
* ClockPunk: Most of the {{Death Trap}}s are gear-based.
* ContinuityNod: Too much to list.
* ContinuityPorn: Much of the later films had flashbacks that explained 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.
** In particular the "reverse bear trap", first appears on Amanda's head in the first film, then in the background in ''III'' and ''IV'', then plans can be seen for it in ''V'', then on [[spoiler:Hoffman]] at the end of ''VI'' and finally on [[spoiler:Jill]] in ''VII'' where [[spoiler:it finally goes off as John intended, and it looks awesome]]. Of course, [[spoiler:John never ''intended'' for it to go off at all.]]
** ''Saw 3D'' starts with a flashback to [[spoiler:Gordon escaping the bathroom]] in the film and gets progressively more referential from there on out. The SURVIVE group, the aforementioned reverse bear trap and the [[spoiler:final bathroom scene]] just cinch it.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: We have traps which rip open your jaw, rip out the bones of your ribcage, twist your limbs, have walls close in on you, forcing you to hurt yourself (usually for the cost of a limb). [[FromBadToWorse And that's not even all of them.]]
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Nearly every major character has one.
* DeathTrap: 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.
* DeceasedFallGuyGambit: Hoffman kills [[spoiler: Strahm]] and posthumously frames him as being Jigsaw's successor. [[spoiler: It doesn't work.]]
* DeceptiveDisciple: Amanda and Hoffman work against Jigsaw's "higher" aims by making a number of his death traps, which are supposed to be fair, truly inescapable. The fact that several of his own 'traps' had no explained escape method (the guy in the chair with the drills, the guy with the key in his stomach, the booby trap left for the cops) or even blatantly set up to result in absolutely certain death for at least one of the victims is handwaved.
* DemonicDummy: "Billy", used by Jigsaw to communicate with his victims. Billy has become so iconic, many people mistake him for the real Jigsaw.
* DisproportionateRetribution: The whole series runs on it. Maybe when Jigsaw puts murderers and rapists through his trials it seems deserved, but the problem is that basically anyone who is guilty of just being depressed deserves to be put thorugh the trials in his mind. This often extends to relatively petty "crimes" such as being a drug addict, a sex worker, an adulterer, being generally sleazy, or just having depression in general.
* DoorClosesEnding: Several of the films, three times using the same room.
* DownerEnding: Every film in the series[[spoiler:, with the ''possible'' exception of ''Saw 3D'' and "Saw 2" since the boy does survive.]].
* EvenEvilHasStandards: John Kramer to EVERY SINGLE OTHER VILLAIN IN THE SERIES. He's a twisted bastard, but whenever he comes into conflict with another villain, he has the moral high ground.
* TheFaceless: Jigsaw
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: Sure, you might get out of your trap, but series' precedent is you'll either end up dead before the end of the movie or in another trap in a sequel, and you'll probably be subjected to an ironic lecture by a puppet first.
* FatalFlaw
* {{Flashback}}: Extremely prevalent throughout the films, especially ''V'' and ''VI''.
* FromBadToWorse: Eric's storyline.
* GambitRoulette: 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 are still driving the entire series long after he's killed off.
* {{Gorn}}: It practically spawned/popularized the modern resurgence of the "TorturePorn" genre of film by itself, despite the first movie featuring very little explicit gore.
* GreaterScopeVillain: The Jigsaw Killer is the BigBad in the first three ''Film/{{Saw}}'' 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: [[spoiler:Amanda (who dies before Jigsaw himself), Detective Hoffman, and Doctor Gordon]]. Plans he deliberately set into motion before his death still have far-reaching effects long after he died.
* HandInTheHole: Always a prelude to something horrible happening to the hand / wrist in question.
* HandWave: 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.
* HannibalLecture: Jigsaw's fond of these.
* HappyFlashback
* HollywoodAcid: As seen in ''III'' and ''VI''.
* HolierThanThou: Amanda managed to survive a Jigsaw trap and became his apprentice. 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. [[spoiler:This pisses Kramer off so much that he sics Hoffman on her, because she has ''completely'' missed the point.]]
* {{Irony}}: In ''Saw I'', Dr. Lawrence Gordon is questioned by the police because he's suspected of being the Jigsaw killer. In ''Saw 3D'' [[spoiler: he ''is''.]] Also, [[spoiler:Bobby]] in ''Saw 3D''; at the beginning of the movie he 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 by traps.
* ImperiledInPregnancy: In ''IV'' we learn that Jigsaw's StartOfDarkness was losing his unborn son due to a door violently smashed against the mother's belly.
* ImpossibleTask: 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 [[spoiler:Amanda]] (who thinks people are irredeemable and thus deserve to die) or [[spoiler:Hoffman]] (who is more concerned with keeping the cops off his tail).
* InfantImmortality:
** The only kid who died in this series was Jeff's son, Dylan. He died in an accident off-screen.
** Jigsaw and Jill lost their son Gideon to a miscarriage Jill suffered while her health clinic was being robbed.
* JawBreaker: The "reverse beartrap".
* KarmicDeath: Many of the death traps have some kind of relevance to [[TheScourgeOfGod their victims' sins]]. An informant must cut out his eye (the thing he uses to spy on others) to survive, HMO executives who denied people coverage based on pre-existing conditions (choosing who would live or die) have their lives put in the hands of a man who can only save two of them (choosing which of them lives or dies), etc.
** [[spoiler:Hoffman at the end of ''Saw 3D''. That ''was'' satisfying.]]
* KillEmAll: Not one character has survived through all seven movies. Not even [[spoiler:Jigsaw]]. [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon]] is the one exception, but [[spoiler:he didn't appear after the first movie until the last movie, so he only appeared in two films, anyways.]]
* KnightTemplar: Jigsaw actually thinks he's ''helping'' people by putting them into deathtraps.
* {{Leitmotif}}:
** "Hello Zepp" (subsequently remixed for every film in the series) has become synonymous with the ''Saw'' films, since the tune is commonly associated with the climax of the films. Even when the tune 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, the theme was used in the trailer for ''Film/DejaVu''. Passable on its own, except it was played in theaters immediately before screenings of ''Saw III''.
* LegacyCharacter: Jigsaw, of course.
* LifeOrLimbDecision: Lots of them throughout the series.
* LockedUpAndLeftBehind: If a trap doesn't kill you outright, it will do this instead.
* MadScientist: Well, mad engineer, but roughly the same principle.
* MadeOfPlasticine: The human body, apparently.
* MeaningfulName: Jigsaw. A Jigsaw is made of many pieces [[spoiler: and by ''Saw 3D'', Jigsaw has ceased to be a single indvidual or apprentice, and become a full fledged '''movement''', shown when the doctor takes down Hoffman, helped by two other people in pig masks, who are strongly implied to be other survivors of Jigsaw traps. Each of these apprentices could be thought of as Jigsaw pieces.]]
* MistakenForBadass: 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.
* MonsterClown: Billy the Puppet, whom Jigsaw uses to deliver his [[ToThePain prologues to his victims.]] See below.
* MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning: Pretty much the crux of any of the films after the third.
--> ''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.''
** [[spoiler: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.]]
* MythArc: The fate of Dr. Lawrence Gordon, who is referenced in every film.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: 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, [[spoiler: the deaths of an entire ''police precinct.'']]
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler: Hoffman, after killing Strahm,]] uses the severed hand left from the trap to [[DeceasedFallGuyGambit plant fingerprints at the next "game"]]. Unfortunately for him, forensic data from the hand actually proves that [[spoiler: Strahm]] ''was not'' the killer, and serves to be one of the big pieces of [[spoiler: Hoffman's]] downfall.
* NoodleIncident: In Jigsaw's workshop, you see plans for traps that never appear in any of the movies and they were possibly all used offstage. Also, as some Jigsaw survivors recount how their experiences changed them, their traps are never explained in full detail.
* OddlyNamedSequel2ElectricBoogaloo: 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 were not going with sequel names like ''Saw 2: Hacksaw'' or ''[[Letters2Numbers S4w]]'' to avoid this. This lasted until the seventh film, which instead of being ''Saw VII'' is ''Saw 3D''. The DVD release has renamed it ''Saw: The Final Chapter''.
* OffscreenVillainDarkmatter: Jigsaw has no shortage of industrial spec components for his traps, despite the fact that he used to work in a ''toy factory'' and [[spoiler:his successors are a junkie and a corrupt police detective]]. The [[spoiler:[[TheWallsAreClosingIn crushing walls trap]]]] from the end of the fifth movie takes this to ludicrous levels. ''Saw IV'' which showed that before becoming a serial killer, he was a rich engineer who owned a lot of abandoned property (which he was planning on redeveloping).
* OneSteveLimit: No single movie contains two people 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 on ''Saw V''. Also it reveals Kerry's first name to be Allison, which is the same name as Dr. Gordon's wife, and they both appeared in ''Saw''. But then again, neither Rigg nor Kerry's first names are revealed until ''Saw V''. There are also some names that are shared between movies. Despite John being a very common name in RealLife, John Kramer seems to be the only John in this universe.
* OntologicalMystery: The first movie especially, but all of them have some hints of this.
* PassingTheTorch:
** 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.
** [[spoiler: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.]]
* PayEvilUntoEvil: Jigsaw's philosophy, again. Also, Hoffman's murder of Baxter, who killed his sister.
* PoeticSerialKiller: Every DeathTrap Jigsaw inflicts on his victims is a reflection of their supposed sin, and - as a nod to his self-assumed label of KnightTemplar - only by admitting their guilt and overcoming their sin can they escape. A crucial plot point in ''Saw III'' had an altogether different Jigsaw killer ([[spoiler:Amanda]]) being chided by the original for using inescapable Death Traps on their victims, as well as forcing the original to admit his disappointment that none of the surviving victims (including [[spoiler:Amanda]]) "learned their lesson" and reformed, as he always intended them to.
* PosthumousCharacter: After being killed in ''III'', Jigsaw spends the rest of the series in flashback. Also [[spoiler:Amanda]] in ''Saw VI''.
* RashomonStyle: The later movies recall scenes from the earlier films, but adding more details unknown to the audience in the original reference.
* RabidCop: Tapp from part one, Matthews in part two.
** 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. [[spoiler:Fat lot of good it does him, or her for that matter.]]
* ReallyDeadMontage: Amanda, Jigsaw, [[spoiler: William]] and [[spoiler: Jill]], though it's inverted somewhat in that they happen while the characters are dying rather than afterwards. [[spoiler: Subverted]] at the end of ''Saw VI'', when [[spoiler: 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.]]
* RealityEnsues: Generally played straight over the course of the series, but otherwise subverted in most cases.
* RedemptionEqualsLife: Jigsaw has this point in mind when making his traps... [[spoiler: except for the ones in VI.]] and it worked for [[spoiler: Brit and Mallick]].
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: an awful lot of them, but most specifically [[spoiler: William Easton]].
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: The essence of Hoffman. He builds an inescapable trap for the man who killed his sister. In ''Saw 3D'', Hoffman's motivation is revenge against Jill.
* RoboticTortureDevice: Most of the traps, really, though not so much torture devices death-dealing devices.
* RoomFullOfCrazy: And Jigsaw isn't even the only one...
* RubeGoldbergHatesYourGuts: 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.
* SadisticChoice: Jigsaw's games almost always involve this. In the third and fourth films, the protagonist has to choose whether to save a life or let the victim die; the sixth film plays this to the hilt, with the protagonist having to choose who lives and dies out of a group of people when he comes across each of the separate traps. At the end of the sixth film, [[spoiler:the family of a terminally ill man he refused to give a loan to is given the choice to kill him. The wife wants to see him die, but is too squeamish to actually push the button that will kill him. Her son has no such reservations however, and happily activates the trap]].
* ScareChord: The films have plenty of them, but the most memorable is "Hello Zepp" (and all variants thereof), which is essentially "the ''Saw'' theme" and plays during the final scenes of every film.
* TheScourgeOfGod: Seemingly invoked by Jigsaw, who puts people through his trials for even the smallest vices.
* SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: Occasionally this is the consequence of not getting out, though there's usually some mechanism to destroy yourself in a much more gruesome way while trying to escape.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: [[spoiler:The ENTIRE FRANCHISE. No main character has had anything resembling a clear-cut victory over Jigsaw in the movies or the game, and there's always someone ready to take over the serial killer's mantle.]]
* ShoutOut: The creepy puppet Jigsaw uses in his videos was directly inspired by a similar creepy puppet in Creator/DarioArgento's {{Giallo}} film ''Deep Red''.
* SirSwearsALot: Pretty much every relevant (and non-relevant) character has a very colorful language. The one who swears ''the least'' is Jigsaw himself, John Kramer (although he has sworn too.)
* StockholmSyndrome: Amanda, one of the few survivors of Jigsaw's traps, develops an obsessional love for him; Hoffman kills his sister's murderer with a Jigsaw-esque death trap, then is recruited by Jigsaw himself.
** This seems to be Jigsaw's preferred method of recruitment, going by the end of ''Saw 3D'' and the second video game.
* StrappedToAnOperatingTable: Repeatedly. Subverted with Amanda's trap in the first film; she's (loosely) strapped to a chair.
* SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome: ''{{Saw}} II'' revealed that Adam, one of the main characters from the original, had died, showing us his corpse. In ''{{Saw}} III'' not only showed his death scene (in a flashback) but it also killed off Amanda (a former test subject, [[InLoveWithYourCarnage then apprentice]]), Detective Kerry, who had been investigating the Jigsaw case since the beginning and ''Jigsaw himself''. ''{{Saw}} IV'' saw the death of two characters who were introduced in ''{{Saw}} II'', [[CorruptCop Det. Eric Matthews]] and Agent Daniel Rigg. The main character of ''III'', Jeff Denlon, was also quickly dispatched. Special Agents Peter Strahm and Lindsay Perez were introduced in ''IV'' and died in the second ''{{Saw}}'' film they appeared, respectively ''V'' and ''VI'', the second one ''after having been declared dead in V'', in which also their boss, Agent Erickson, who first appears in ''V'', ended up dying. Detective David Tapp, whose fate is unclear in ''I'', is revealed to be dead in ''V'' and his fate is shown in the canonical ending of TheVideoGame, while the saga averts the trope with the return of one of the lone survivors of ''I'', Dr. Lawrence Gordon, for the last sequel, ''VII'', and playing it straight with the return of some survivors of other movies who are in ''VII.''
* ThanatosGambit: At the end of ''Saw III'', a bedridden Jigsaw gives Jeff the chance of forgiving him or killing him. Jeff takes the latter option. In doing so, not only does Jigsaw's death set off a trap that kills Jeff's wife (as she had been placed in a device that correlates with Jigsaw's heart rate monitor), but Jigsaw plays a tape that posthumously reveals that Jeff's daughter has been placed in a location that only ''he'' knows about.
* TechnologyPorn
* TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse: Jigsaw.
* TimeBomb: The essence of almost all of Jigsaw's traps is that in period of time X, bad thing Y (usually death) will happen unless thing Z (usually escaping/beating the trap) happens first. Literal time bombs are sometimes involved in bad thing Y's borderline inevitable occurrence (specifically, in ''Saw V'').
* TomatoSurprise
* TooDumbToLive: Most of Jigsaw's victims spend a large part of the allotted time struggling, swearing and screaming incoherently, and are usually just ''starting'' to get themselves out when they're murderised. In some cases, all but lampshaded by Jigsaw, usually when the character he's speaking to has failed to interpret a riddle in the most literal manner possible.
* TortureCellar: Most of the locales used by Jigsaw and his apprentices are ordinary places that have simply been abandoned.
* TorturePorn: Made the genre popular again in the 2000's, along with the {{Hostel}} series.
* ToThePain: Such a large point that Jigsaw actually made a puppet, records a video using it as a ventriloquist's puppet telling people what scenario they're in and what they'll have to do to escape it, puts a TV in the room of the trap and inserts the video. Before you think this is a bit off-topic, there is a reason: Jigsaw maintains he's never killed anyone and uses the video to justify this, and tells the victim what sin they've committed to warrant this, as well as what they'll have to do to escape.
* TrilogyCreep: Supposed to end at three, but due to ExecutiveMeddling, it was expanded to ''seven''.
* TwoLinesNoWaiting: All of the sequels fit this structure. Line A is mostly about the plot/suspense, while Line B is more about horror/{{Gorn}}. The movie jumps to Line A whenever something {{Gorn}}[[{{Crunchtastic}} tastic]] happens in Line B. It jumps to Line B after some plot development resolves in Line A. Some of the movies spend more time in Line A (''Saw V'') and some spend more time in Line B (''Saw III''), which directly relates to how gorey a given installment is. These plots always meet up in some fashion at the end. [[labelnote:Details]]''Saw II'' - Line A: Matthews and Jigsaw, Line B: The house of traps. ''Saw III'' - Line A: Lynn, Amanda and Jigsaw, Line B: Jeff. ''Saw IV'' - Line A: Jigsaw's Past, Line B: Rigg. ''Saw V'' - Line A: Hoffman and Strahm, Line B: The Fatal Five. ''Saw VI'' - Line A: Hoffman and Ericson, Line B: William. ''Saw 3D'' - Line A: Hoffman and Jill, Line B: Bobby[[/labelnote]]
* TwoPartTrilogy: At least, that's how it was intended when it still was a trilogy. Then came the TrilogyCreep (see above). Interestingly, the absurd amount of sequels haven't stopped the series from suffering a lot of the problems of a TwoPartTrilogy.
* UnwinnableByDesign [[UnwinnableByMistake and Mistake]]: Several of the traps certainly qualify, but most notably Amanda's traps are unwinnable because she believes people cannot change their ways.
* UnwittingPawn: More than a few people, but the most {{egregious}} example is [[spoiler:Peter Strahm at the end of the fifth movie]].
* UpToEleven: The creators boasted that the seventh film has a trap that was "so bloody, so disgusting, and so disturbing, the producers wouldn’t allow them to put it in any of the [previous] ''Saw'' films – until now". This was, according to IMDB, the garage trap.
* VillainBasedFranchise
* VillainousBreakdown:
** Amanda has one in ''Saw III''.
** [[spoiler: John himself was supposed to get one there, too, as he realized his folly while on his deathbed, helpless to prevent any more people from dying.]]
** [[spoiler: Hoffman's]] breakdown happens over the course of VI [[spoiler: after being told that his plan to have Strahm take the fall for his crime didn't work]] and then it really flies off the hinges in VII.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
** Daniel Matthews. He doesn't even appear in [[ContinuityCavalcade The SURVIVE meeting]] in ''Saw 3D''.
** Likewise, Rigg's wife. However, this is said to be a case of ExecutiveMeddling. She was supposed to be in the final trap of ''IV'' with Art and Hoffman until Donnie Wahlberg agreed, at the last minute, to reprise his role. [[invoked]]
** Detective Fisk! He worked in the homicide department with Hoffman and was shown working on the case in IV and V. Even though pretty much every authority shown (FBI and cop) die in the series, Fisk just disappears.
* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: The films all take place in an unnamed city, with the only hint as to the location being the TV network WNKW, implying a location east of the Mississippi River. The license plates seen in the movies deliberately leave off the name of the state, although the style of the plates resembles that of [[{{Joisey}} New Jersey]] license plates.
* WellIntentionedExtremist
* WretchedHive: The city in which the events of the films take place in seem to be absolutely teeming with AssholeVictims and {{Jerkass}}es.
* XanatosSpeedChess: Hoffman is a master at this. When things fall apart, he'll think on his feet. [[spoiler:In ''Saw VI'', when he and his colleagues are analysing a tape in the audio lab, the tape reveals that the true killer is Hoffman and Hoffman's plan to frame Strahm fails. Hoffman pulls an insane move: he murders three armed police officers using a small blade and a cup of coffee. He plants Strahm's fingerprints all over the lab and then ''burns the place down''.]]
* YankTheDogsChain: Nearly every film has a certain point at the end where it looks like the protagonist has won, only to have the rug pulled out from them.

!!The games
* DecoyProtagonist: In the sequel ''Saw II: Flesh and Blood'', the first level has you play as a character named Campbell. After the first level, however, your perspective switches to Michael Tapp, the son of David Tapp (the protagonist from the first ''Saw'' video game, and the cop from the first movie) for the rest of the game.
* DummiedOut: In the final two chapters of the first game, you see some sewing kits. It looks like they would be tools to help make traps, but none of the ones you can make require them. It's likely there were more traps that didn't make it to the full game. Notably, you can't actually pick up the sewing kits except for one near the end which does nothing.
* EverythingTryingToKillYou: You ''are'' in Jigsaw's little game, after all. And everyone wants to kill you because you have the key to the front door sewn into your chest.
** In ''Saw II: Flesh and Blood'' the occupants of Jigsaw's game were supposedly all criminals that Michael Tapp's father had put in jail, and therefore didn't like you very much.
* FirstPersonGhost: In the video game sequel, there is a brief first person section near the beginning which utilizes this technique. Also when interacting with puzzles and traps, your view switches to a first person perspective. While in this perspective you don't see your body interacting with the pieces of the puzzle.
* ForegoneConclusion: Since it takes place after the first film, we all know Jigsaw will still be at large by the end of the game. [[spoiler:And if you've seen SAW ''IV'', you would know that Tapp had died]].
** Ditto with the sequel which takes place soon after the first game.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: The [[spoiler:Truth]] ending.
* InLoveWithYourCarnage: It's revealed that Obi from ''Saw II'' actually wanted Jigsaw to put him in a test. He was saved by Tapp, much to his disappointment, so he got himself recaptured.
* LateToTheTragedy: You come across a few rooms of others that were playing Jigsaw's games. The blood splatters on the wall should tell you how they fared.
* NintendoHard: Some of the puzzles are extremely frustrating.
* MultipleEndings
** In the first game, there's two - one canon and one alternative. In the last room of the game, you are tasked with choosing one of two doors; one is marked "Truth", and one is marked "Freedom". Jigsaw explains that "Freedom" will allow Tapp to leave the asylum alive, while "Truth" will satisfy his obsession with catching Jigaw (but will also cost him dearly).
*** '''Freedom:''' [[spoiler:Tapp leaves the asylum alive, and is hailed as a hero by those he saves, but his obsession with catching Jigsaw eventually overtakes him and he commits suicide; due to Tapp being shown as dead during ''Saw V'', and the plot of the sequel, this is the canon ending.]]
*** '''Truth:''' [[spoiler:Tapp's pursuit of a cloaked figure he believes to be Jigsaw ends with the person dying from a Jigsaw trap; the person was actually Melissa Sing, the wife of Tapp's deceased partner and one of the victims he saves earlier in the game - she had been tasked by Jigsaw to keep Tapp playing the game in order to have a chance of seeing her son alive again. As a result of her death, Tapp suffers a complete mental breakdown and is placed in another asylum, still believing he is playing Jigsaw's game]].
** ''Saw II: Flesh and Blood'' has multiple endings as well, depending on [[spoiler:whether or not DecoyProtagonist Campbell survives his final test]].
*** [[spoiler:If Campbell makes it through the SpikesOfDoom and enters the elevator, he shows up at the end when Michael makes it to the end of his own SpikesOfDoom room, preventing Michael's escape and ensuring his death (since the elevator is occupied and cannot be opened). Jigsaw then congratulates Campbell, tells him that his son is fine (he claimed to have kidnapped him earlier) and allows him to leave. Campbell, traumatized by everything he went through, tries to attack Jigsaw - and falls prey to a trap.]]
*** [[spoiler:If Campbell dies, he's obviously not in the elevator, thus allowing Michael to enter the elevator and escape. At the end of his ride, Jigsaw presents him with two doors, just like Tapp was shown. One door has the evidence Michael needs to put Jigsaw away for good, while the other has the pigman costume - implying that Jigsaw is offering Michael a chance to become his apprentice. The screen cuts out before we see Michael's choice.]]
* SpikesOfDoom: Used several times in the sequel.
* UngratefulBastard: All the people Tapp has to save blame ''him'' for being kidnapped by Jigsaw and will quickly let you know it once you free them from their traps.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: C'mon, you know full well you wanna see how many ways you can eviscerate Tapp and how the people he's supposed to save eat it.
* TheWallsAreClosingIn: Used a lot in the sequel, adding spikes into the mix.
* WhyAmITicking: Halfway into the game, Tapp gets a shotgun collar put on him. Which will start beeping when he comes within distance of a certain enemy. After a few second unless the enemy is felled or you pull back, boom. Likewise a few enemies have the same collar or the venus flytrap one (from part two). After you kill them and walk away, you can hear the traps going off. There is actually an [[CosmeticAward achievement]] tied to avoiding one of these enemies until their trap activates; instantly killing him for you.
* {{Understatement}}: One of the loading screen blurbs warns against activating tripwires, as they generally cause "unpleasant surprises". [[spoiler:Tripwires are always connected to a nearby shotgun trap, so the unpleasant surprise will be Tapp's head being blown apart]].

----
->[[AC:[[TheEndOrIsIt You think it's over?]] [[ItHasOnlyJustBegun The games are just beginning]].]]
----

The '''''Saw''''' franchise -- comprised chiefly of a series of horror films -- centers around a PoeticSerialKiller, dubbed "The Jigsaw Killer" (or just "Jigsaw") by the press, who places people in {{Death Trap}}s and gives them a chance to escape before death claims them. Jigsaw designs each trap to serve as a violent form of poetic justice by reflecting what Jigsaw sees as the vital flaw of its victim (or victims). To escape these traps -- or "[[DeadlyGame games"]] -- the victims must usually harm themselves (or others) in some horrific way to escape their impending (and likely horrific) death. The films' storylines center around the victims' efforts to escape their traps, Jigsaw's life, and his connection to the films' other characters.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:In General / Multiple films]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Saw]]
* AlmightyJanitor: [[spoiler:A last-minute subversion in Zep in the original ''Saw'']]. He is still [[spoiler:surprisingly resourceful]] all the same.
* BadBadActing: Adam's pathetic attempt to fool Jigsaw into thinking he was poisoned.
* BoobyTrap: A ceiling-mounted shotgun left behind for the police. One of the few things Jigsaw has ever constructed that fits a rational definition of the word 'trap.'
* BloodlessCarnage: This installment to a degree, oddly enough, considering the massive gore-fest that the sequels become.
* {{Cameo}}: Subverted. Tobin Bell shows up for a few seconds as one of Lawrence's patients, and the audience (assuming they recognize him at all) is probably thinking HeyItsThatGuy. Turns out [[spoiler: he's behind the whole thing]].
* [[DeadHandShot Dead Foot Shot]]: The poster for the first film.
* TheDogWasTheMastermind: The [[spoiler:"dead man" in the middle of the room]] was the mastermind. Oh yeah, he also happened to be [[spoiler:an unconscious 1-scene patient of Dr. Gordon's]]
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first film, while having its moments, is really more of a suspense film than {{Gorn}}.
* ElectricTorture: Used for various purposes; the chains around Adam's and Gordon's legs are wired up to conduct current.
* ExtremeMeleeRevenge After being captured, persuaded to saw off his foot to escape, and subjected to [[UpToEleven intense]] psychological torture, Adam [[spoiler:screams his head off while bashing in his apparent captor's head with a toilet lid]].
* {{Foreshadowing}}: As Dr. Gordon is loading the cartridge into the corpse's revolver to shoot Adam, the camera briefly shows all six chambers of the cylinder to be empty. [[spoiler:Revolvers don't eject spent cartridges and yet the guy on the floor was supposed to have shot himself. What looked to be a simple prop error is actually a subtle foreshadowing to the twist ending.]]
* GoryDiscretionShot: Ironically, the most violent acts in the first film - [[spoiler:Gordon sawing off his own foot and Adam caving in Zepp's skull]] - aren't even shown, even in the extended cut. [[spoiler:Gordon's]] detached foot and [[spoiler:Zepp's]] body aren't actually seen until the end of ''Saw II''.
* HeadbuttOfLove: Gordon and Adam get one at the end of the film, Gordon using it to help calm down the justifiably hysterical Adam.
* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: Detective Tapp and Zepp fire multiple magazines at each other without managing to hit anything. For Zepp, this is somewhat understandable, since he's just a hospital orderly. However, Tapp is a detective, who should have multiple hours of marksmanship training in the police force. Though it is somewhat justified that he's been discharged from the force for quite a while and also driven mad.
** Sadly TruthInTelevision as national accuracy rates for police are truly abysmal and average mid-30 percent.
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:Zepp isn't Jigsaw; the man lying on the ground in the room isn't dead, and he IS Jigsaw.]]
* RewindReplayRepeat: Dr. Gordon replays the part in his HannibalLecture-via tape that he has received from Jigsaw where Jigsaw says that "Allison and Diana will die, and I'll leave you in this room to rot." Turning the volume all the way up allows him to hear the nearly inaudible "follow your heart" clue in the static at the end of the tape.
** Tapp is shown doing this with a video Jigsaw made, which is about the only piece of evidence he has on the guy.
* SoleSurvivor: Amanda Young is the only victim who survived a Jigsaw trap.
* SwallowTheKey: Apparently ''forced'' on one of Jigsaw's captives, so that another prisoner would be required to cut it out of his body to stop her own rapidly-approaching demise. [[spoiler: No, contrary to what she'd been told, the key-swallower was not dead when she started cutting.]]
* WhiteMaskOfDoom: Jigsaw's.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Saw II]]
* BigNo
** Addison, shortly after [[spoiler:Xavier leaves her to bleed to death in her glass box trap]].
** Eric, shortly after [[spoiler:he fails his test and is left to die in the basement Dr. Gordon and Adam were in]].
* BoobyTrap: Poor [[EliteMooks SWAT team members one through four]] early on.
* ClutchingHandTrap: The movies typically go the HandInTheHole route, but this one has a more seriously played version. In one room, a glass box hanging from the ceiling contains a syringe of antidote for the nerve gas that was slowly killing the characters. One character finds the box, reaches in through holes in the bottom, and finds out too late that the holes are fitted with folding razors that slice into her arms when she tries to pull them out. She is left to die of either blood loss or gas exposure.
* CutApart: Near the end of the film, three separate groups (a SWAT team, a police detective, and one house victim chasing two others) look like they're about to meet. It's soon revealed that none of them are in position to meet each other.
* EyeScream: The first five minutes.
* FinalGirl: Subverted. [[spoiler:Amanda Young appears to fulfill this role best, but then it's revealed at the end that she was working with Jigsaw all along.]]
* GasChamber: There's a '''building''' slowly filling with gas, with the victims searching for hidden antidotes in order to survive.
* HideYourPregnancy: Averted with Shawnee Smith. She didn't have the figure of a woman who was pregnant yet, so WordOfGod stated that they didn't need to hide her pregnancy.
* MurderByCremation: Obi in has to climb inside a furnace to retrieve one of the keys, but inadvertently activates the trap, locking himself until he's burned to death.
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:Amanda is actually Jigsaw's accomplice. And the events in the house are not taking place at the same time as the cops are watching it.]]
* SecretTestOfCharacter: Not necessarily as secret as others, but the entire point of the movie is testing whether Eric has changed, and seeing if he can sit and wait instead of resorting to violence.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Saw III]]
* BigNo: Jeff, right after [[spoiler:he fails his test and gets his ex-wife Lynn killed]].
* CrucifiedHeroShot:
** When [[spoiler:Lynn]] is shot by Amanda, and her arms stretch out as she falls into Jeff's arms.
** Timothy on The Rack is a particularly gruesome example.
* DecoyProtagonist: [[spoiler:Detective Kerry.]]
* DrowningPit: There's a really disgusting version of this trope involving [[spoiler: liquified rotting pig corpses]].
* FanDisservice: Danica in the Freezer Room trap; one movie critic once said that her scene may be the most un-erotic scene featuring a naked woman in all of horror movie history. She was originally going to be wearing just a shirt and panties, but the director thought it would be too erotic for her to be wearing a tight t-shirt and getting wet, so he just stripped her completely.
* {{Hypocrite}}: The judge tells Jeff he will be an accomplice to murder if he doesn't take a bullet to save one of Jigsaw's victims. He could easily grab the key and take the bullet himself but instead just screams at Jeff to do it.
* IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim: The judge's way of reasoning with Jeff to not let him die.
* LockedInAFreezer: One of the traps in ''Saw III'' saw this happen to Jeff and Danica (the bystander who saw Jeff's son die in a car accident); Jeff is tasked with saving her while trying to get a key that will open the door to the freezer, all while a naked Danica is sprayed with freezing cold water.
* OnceMoreWithClarity: Jigsaw explains the rules of the game to Lynn as she is brought into his room. In the climactic flashback of the film, we learn that [[spoiler:the explanation, as well as the entire central game was Amanda's.]]
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:Lynn and Jeff are married, and Jigsaw kept this information from Amanda to test her. And Jigsaw is responsible for the loss of Jeff's ''other'' child.]]
* SecretTestOfCharacter: Jigsaw does this to Amanda by asking her to let Lynn go free if she could keep him alive for the duration of his last "game". [[spoiler:She refuses and kills Lynn, but it's eventually revealed in ''Saw VI'' that she did so intentionally because Hoffman threatened to reveal that it was technically her fault that Jigsaw's wife had her miscarriage if she didn't kill Lynn.]]
* StrappedToABomb: Amanda locks a collar onto Lynn's neck that will discharge five shotgun shells into her head if John dies.
* SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome: [[spoiler: Kerry]]
* TooDumbToLive: The Judge survives his trap, only to get shot in the face by another trap, that he has no reason to be near, completely by accident.
* TongueOnTheFlagpole: Jeff freezes his cheek onto a set of pipes while reaching for a key to free a woman being sprayed with freezing water.
* YouHaveFailedMe: Essentially the point of the "Shotgun Collar" trap. Jeff's wife, Lynn Denlon, was kidnapped, put in the collar, and made to operate on Jigsaw. If Jigsaw died, then the five shotguns on the collar would go off, killing Lynn.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Saw IV]]
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: The [=MPAA=] gave this film an "R" rating for "sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture throughout, and for language."
* BigDamnHeroes: Subverted by Rigg in the beginning and done right by him in the end, much to Eric Matthew's and Art Blank's disappointment.
* BigNo: Rigg, right when [[spoiler:he fails his test and gets Eric killed]]. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Notice a pattern here?]]
* DisposableSexWorker: Addison [[spoiler:who dies in the "Hand Trap" in Saw II]] and Brenda, a pimp and the woman in the Hair Trap, [[spoiler:who Daniel Rigg is told not to save, but saves anyway only to have her attempt to kill him as part of her "test" from Jigsaw]] but [[spoiler:Rigg ends up killing her in the ensuing fight.]]
* DomesticAbuser: One of the [[AssholeVictim Asshole Victims]] in this installment. He and his wife are strapped back to back, with spikes going through both of their bodies in such a way that they pierce his major arteries but not hers. Jigsaw means for the wife, who has suffered physical abuse at his hands, to yank the spikes out herself, killing her abuser and enabling her own escape. [[spoiler:She does.]]
* DroppedABridgeOnHim: After being the main protagonist of ''Saw III'', killing both Amanda and Jigsaw, watching his wife's head explode, and learning that he has to play a new game in order to save his daughter, Jeff shows up for only a few seconds before being unceremoniously shot and killed by Strahm.
* EyeScream: One trap forces the victim to gouge out their eyes or be dismembered. The victim in question manages to successfully get one done before getting torn apart.
* FlayedAlive: Rigg's first test involves a woman strapped to a machine that slowly tears her scalp from her head.
* MouthStitchedShut: Art Blank, the survivor of the mausoleum trap. Once it's over, he screams and the stitches rip out.
* OnceMoreWithClarity: [[BookEnds The first and last scenes are the same]]. [[spoiler:It's in its proper chronological order the second time around.]]
* PrecisionFStrike: While his [[strike:victims]] test subjects swear heavily, Jigsaw never used any foul language before. While still reeling from the death of his son Gideon, John says "Get the fuck out of here" to a guy who was asking him if he was sure about cutting off his funding for Jill's drug-rehabilitation clinic.
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:The film's events take place at roughly the same time as the events of the previous film; Hoffman is Jigsaw's second apprentice.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Saw V]]
* DecoyProtagonist: [[spoiler:Strahm survives the previous film and becomes the protagonist here, leading the viewer to believe that he might be the hero of the second trilogy and be the one to bring down Hoffman. Instead, he gets brutally offed at the end.]]
* DrowningPit: Strahm has a locked, watertight box placed on his head that fills with water and will eventually drown him. [[spoiler: He only escapes by giving himself an emergency tracheotomy with a ball-point pen.]]
* ElectricTorture: The third room involved a bath tub in the middle and five electrodes that needed to be connected, but the wires they were on were too short to just be placed in the water. [[spoiler:Brit kills Luba and uses her body to connect the electrodes, but at the end, she figures out that if they had worked together, they could have each taken an electrode and put one foot in the tub. It certainly would have given them a shock, but it wouldn't have killed them.]]
* InstantDramaJustAddTracheotomy: Strahm gets his head locked up in a presumably inescapable trap that fills up with water in order to drown him. What does he do? He digs out a pen from his pocket and (while most likely not having any skill in advanced medical practice,) performs a tracheotomy with it. ''[[SugarWiki/AwesomeMoments A fucking pen]].''
** Justified. A tracheotomy's not a complicated procedure. Sure, it'd be difficult and painful to do to yourself, especially in that circumstance, but the method can be taught reliably in less than a minute. It's simply something that's supposed to be a last-ditch effort over more advanced techniques (the Heimlich maneuver most famously), because it causes permanent damage, has a high risk of infection, and is useless if the airway's blocked lower than the cutting point.
* LighterAndSofter: After the excruciating violence displayed in ''Saw III'' and ''Saw IV'', ''Saw V'' noticeably dials back the gore a few notches. Many of the deaths are dished out in mere seconds rather than dragged out to a cringe-inducing snail's pace, reducing the graphic violence to the level of ''Saw'' and ''Saw II''. Even the bloodiest sequences [[GoryDiscretionShot don't keep the camera panned on the grim details for too long]]. This decision may have been inspired by the MoralGuardians decrying the series as TorturePorn a few installments earlier, but after ''Saw V'', the violence unapologetically spikes back up again.
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:Jigsaw recruited Hoffman after Hoffman killed his sister's murderer with an inescapable Jigsaw trap.]]
* ShownTheirWork: Before filming the third room (the conductor room) in the sewer trap, the crew did check out the physics involved to make sure the electrical engineering involved in the trap would actually work.
* TheWallsAreClosingIn: The final trap. [[spoiler: Not only does Strahm fail to escape it, but it rather graphically shows the perils of trying to "brace yourself" to stop the walls as the bones splinter out of his limbs.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Saw VI]]
* BigNo: Simone immediately before [[spoiler:she chops off her arm]], as well as Pamela [[spoiler:shortly after William Easton dies]].
* BulletproofHumanShield: Hoffman uses the sound engineer as one while Perez is emptying her magazine on him. [[RuleOfCool As usual, it works.]]
* DyingMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler: Josh]]
--> [[spoiler: '''Josh:''' Aww, well that's it isn't it? It's over! You MOTHERFUCKER! You spinless, 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!!''']]
* FakePregnancy: One of the six victims on the carousel falsely claims to be pregnant, hoping that William will spare her life.
* FanDisservice: Debbie in the steam maze. The steam causes her blouse to stick to her body rather tightly, but this is never focused on by the camera, and she dies in a rather gruesome manner before the scene can become true fanservice material.
* FlashBackEcho: At the end of the sixth film, after [[spoiler: Hoffman's Reverse BearTrap 2.0 has gone off, and just before the shot of him kneeling on the floor with his face torn off]], we get a rapid showing of every shot of someone closing the door on someone else at the end of the other films. In order, [[spoiler:John closing the bathroom door on Adam]] at the end of ''Saw'', [[spoiler:Amanda closing the bathroom door on Detective Matthews]] at the end of ''Saw II'', [[spoiler:Hoffman closing the door on Rigg in the meat-packing plant]] at the end of ''Saw IV'', [[spoiler:Jill closing the control-room door on Hoffman]] [[ViewersAreGoldfish just a minute before]] in ''Saw VI''.
* GlasgowGrin: [[spoiler: Hoffman receives half a grin after escaping the reverse beartrap at the end of ''Saw VI''.]]
* MoodDissonance: "Piranha!"
* OnceMoreWithClarity: William is told via video tape that if he fails he will "never see his family again". In the finale, we learn that [[spoiler:the mother and son are in fact the real test subjects, and that Pamela is his sister/"family".]]
* PrecisionFStrike: The only other time Jigsaw drops an F-bomb is when he's talking to William and says, "Healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and their patients, not by the government. Well, now I know they're not made by doctors and their patients or the government. They're made by the fucking insurance companies."
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:Hoffman and Amanda both knew of each other's work as Jigsaw's apprentice; Amanda killed Lynn in the third film because she was being blackmailed by Hoffman; Amanda was the person who sent Cecil into the clinic, where he accidentally caused Jill Tuck to have a miscarriage; the box Jill received in the previous film contained instructions on how to carry out Jigsaw's final wishes, including Hoffman's test.]]
* SecretTestOfCharacter: Jigsaw's final test was [[spoiler:to test Hoffman himself with a game, which was set up by his wife, who was carrying out John's final request. Hoffman managed to beat the trap and live.]]
* ShootTheShaggyDog: [[spoiler:William]] may well be the biggest example of this. In order, he has to [[spoiler:hold his breath for a painful duration so that another guy will trigger a trap and get himself killed; choose whether to save an old, diabetic mother or a perfectly healthy loner; suffer severe steam burns while trying to help his lawyer escape a maze and then nearly get hacked open when the lawyer tries to find the key necessary to save her life (she fails); and then choose which two of his staff will live, condemning the other four to death.]] Finally, it turns out that he was never ''really'' in control of his own fate, and he dies at the hands of [[spoiler:an angry, vengeful teenager and his equally angry, but not so vengeful mother.]]
* SmokingIsCool: Averted. Try lighting up a cigarette after watching William and the janitor's first test.
* SpaceWhaleAesop: If you want someone to quit smoking, don't buy them a nicotine patch. Just force them to watch the scene where a poor janitor [[DisproportionateRetribution has his chest crushed in a Jigsaw trap just because he was a smoker with bad lungs]]. They'll never pick up a cigarette again.
** The whole movie can be seen as one for public healthcare.
* StartOfDarkness: One of the three intertwined plots is John's StartOfDarkness, shown through Jill's and William's [[{{Flashback}} flashbacks]].
* StrappedToABomb: Four bombs are strapped to William's arms and legs, set to explode in 60 minutes unless he completes his tests and gets the keys to remove them.
* TookALevelInBadass:
** Hoffman, twice, and both at times when it seems like he's going down in defeat. The first: as his attempt to frame Strahm for being Jigsaw's second accomplice pitifully falls apart in front of him, Hoffman ''successfully'' pulls off a move only a desperate idiot would normally attempt - he murders two gun-carrying police officers (and fairly major characters) using only a knife, a cup of coffee and a one-shot (well, [[IncrediblyLamePun three-shot]]) character as a human shield; Hoffman then works to reestablish Strahm as the Jigsaw accomplice by planting his fingerprints all over the crime lab, then setting it aflame...with a still-breathing-but-rapidly-dying Agent Erickson left behind. Just minutes later, [[spoiler:Hoffman is on the wrong end of the infamous "Reverse Bear Trap" deathtrap thanks to Jill Tuck, who reveals that this is part of John's will; as she exits the room (after delivering the obligatory "Game over" line), Hoffman ''bashes his way out of his restraints by using the trap, prevents the trap from opening fully, and finally rips the thing off, ripping apart the right side of his mouth in the process.'']]
** At first, Jill seems to be an innocent victim of John's schemes due to her implicit involvement as his wife. At the end, she knocks out Hoffman with an electrocuted chair and puts him in the reverse bear trap, all without a hint of remorse in her face.
* UnresolvedSexualTension: The scene with Hoffman and Amanda. Oh boy. Mind you, it's the only scene they share in the entire franchise.
* YouKilledMyFather: [[spoiler: Brent at the end, when he flips the switch for William's trap to the "die" side after his mother is unable to bring herself to do so.]] He even says it as he does it: "You killed my father, you [[SevenDirtyWords motherfucker]]! Now you burn in hell."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Saw [=3D=]]]
* AllJustADream: [[spoiler:Jill's death.]] [[spoiler:Her first death, at least.]]
* AxCrazy: Hoffman.
* TheBadGuyWins: Subverted. [[spoiler:Hoffman wins as effortlessly as always - and ''then'' gets captured and left to die by Dr. Gordon, of all people. Given that he's yet another Jigsaw [[strike:apprentice]] accomplice, he's technically also a bad guy, but he still comes off way more sympathetic than Hoffman.]]
* BigNo: Hoffman at the end of the film when [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon leaves him chained up to die in the same basement he was in]].
* BoobyTrap: Hoffman, having completely abandoned even Jigsaw's twisted concept of morality, begins to use these again.
* BrickJoke: [[spoiler: The reverse bear-trap. The most iconic trap of the franchise. Eventually it was going to go off. And it looked ''awesome''. Hoffman even makes it a point to use the ''original'' Reverse Bear Trap used on Amanda, and not the newer-looking model that Jill used on him.]]
* BystanderSyndrome: Taken UpToEleven with the Public Execution Trap, where dozens of pedestrians stand around the display window and none of them makes any serious attempt to save the woman that gets lowered onto a chainsaw. Some are even filming it.
* ChainedToARailway: Kind of. The trailer for ''Saw 3D'' shows a woman ([[spoiler:Jill]]) tied such that she is suspended in the air, with a vehicle with a giant blade on the front coming toward her. Unlike most examples of this DeadHorseTrope, it looks like it might actually be terrifying. [[spoiler:It was, though this particular trap was AllJustADream.]]
* CharacterBlog: New main character Bobby Dagen has [[http://twitter.com/bobbydagen a Twitter page]], [[http://www.bobbydagen.com/ a website]] and [[http://www.facebook.com/bobbydagen a Facebook page]]. The S.U.R.V.I.V.E group that Bobby Dagen leads has [[http://www.facebook.com/pages/SURVIVE/158786210807319#!/pages/SURVIVE/158786210807319?v=wall a Facebook page]] and [[http://survivorsofjigsaw.blogspot.com/ a blog]].
* ContinuityCavalcade: The SURVIVE meeting.
* CrucifiedHeroShot: Jill in the train trap in the trailer appears to be doing one of these.
* DeathByRacism: Evan and the others in his trap.
* EyeScream: [[spoiler:Pierced eyes and mouth.]]
* FanDisservice: The girl in the opening is probably the biggest fanservice material in the whole franchise. That is, until her intestines shoot out...
* FinalGirl: Subverted. [[spoiler:Jill Tuck has an inevitable showdown with Hoffman at the police station, but she dies when he puts her in the reverse bear trap.]]
* FlashBackEcho: ''Saw 3D'' gives us [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon closing the bathroom door on Hoffman, leaving him to die]].
* FlayedAlive: One of the four victims in the Horsepower Trap is superglued into the driver's seat of a car. In order to save himself and the others, he has to pull himself loose, ripping off the skin from his arms and back.
* GasChamber: There's a BoobyTrap gas chamber for the SWAT team.
* HealItWithFire: [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon does this with a hot metal pipe to his recently made stump.]]
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler:Bobby's final test is his own made-up trap from his get-rich-quick scheme. Doesn't work as well when he has to do it for real though.]]
* IronicEcho: Bobby pretends to be a survivor of Jigsaw's games and creates an acronym (S.U.R.V.I.V.E.) that supposedly the lessons that he learned in this experience. [[spoiler:When he actually takes part in his trap, the phrases his acronym stands for are scrawled all over the walls, partially because they embody the values Jigsaw tries to instill in his victims.]]
* KickTheSonOfABitch: By the end of the film, [[spoiler: Dr. Gordon does this to Hoffman himself, by leaving him to die in the bathroom. It would be cruel, but Hoffman is a murderous asshole.]]
* MurderByCremation: [[spoiler: Bobby's wife, Joyce,]] is burned alive in a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull Brazen bull]] when Bobby fails his final trap.
* MurderTheHypotenuse: Invoked and then subverted in the opening trap. Brad and Ryan, the men in the trap, can either fight to the death over the woman they both love or let her die instead. Realizing that she only wants to save herself and doesn't care which one of them dies, they agree to kill her together so both of them can survive, because in Ryan's words, "she's not worth it."
* NoOneCouldSurviveThat: The ending, in which [[spoiler:Hoffman]] is left chained up in the bathroom from the first film with no readily apparent means of escape, acts as if that's a guaranteed death sentence -- ignoring the fact that [[spoiler:Eric Matthews]] was ''also'' trapped in that situation at the end of the second film, and still managed to free himself. Then again, [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon]] may have known about this, and taken more care to make sure the room was inescapable this time - including throwing the one unbroken hacksaw out of the room.
** Confirmed by WordOfGod.
* OnceMoreWithClarity: [[spoiler:Jigsaw had ''one more'' apprentice, a surgeon, and the only one he completely trusted; that was Dr. Gordon. This reveal is accompanied by several shots of various victims being set up in such a way that Jigsaw (a mechanical engineer) wouldn't be able to, but a Doctor could. These include the "key behind the eye" in ''Saw II'' and the "eyes sewn shut" of IV.]]
* PreviewsPulse: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBCSASJrB6I Used in this trailer for]] ''The Final Chapter''.
* PunctuatedForEmphasis: Hoffman, while [[spoiler: bashing Jill's forehead against a table]]:
--> '''Hoffman''': "You. ''Fucking.'' '''''CUNT!'''''"
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon was alive all along, having cauterized his wound with the help of a hot pipe after escaping the bathroom. When Jigsaw discovers this, he takes Gordon in and places a prosthetic leg on him...on the condition that Gordon assist him with his work. Gordon becomes Jigsaw's true apprentice - the only one he trusted with the details of all the games - and willingly helps him with his schemes; he is shown placing the key behind the eye of Michael from ''Saw II'', sewing shut the eyes of Trevor from ''Saw IV'', and telling Jigsaw about Lynn from ''Saw III''. It is also revealed that the letter Jill delivered to the medical office in ''Saw VI'' was addressed to Gordon, which contained a tape of Jigsaw telling Gordon to act against Hoffman should anything happen to Jill.]]
* SarcasticClapping: [[spoiler: Dr. Gordon]] does it to the survivor meeting.
* SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: [[spoiler:This is Hoffman's fate at the end. Dr. Gordon chains him to a pipe in the same bathroom where the events of the original ''Saw'' occurred, and removed his only means of escape (the saw). WordOfGod confirms that he dies there.]] [[invoked]]
* SpaceWhaleAesop: In the last one - Always tell the truth and don't make up lies to get attention, especially if it's about having survived a serial killer's deadly trap when you actually didn't [[spoiler:or else said serial killer will kidnap your wife and friends, put them in lethal deathtraps, and put you in not one, but two deathtraps yourself, including the kind of trap that you lied about surviving. And then all you'll get for your troubles are physical and psychological scars from having tried to save your friends and wife, only to watch them die]]
* SpikesOfDoom: [[spoiler:Bobby]] wakes up suspended over said spikes in a cage, the bottom of which flips open after he pulls a chain above him.
* TooDumbToLive: Bobby Dagen claimed to be a Jigsaw survivor, without ever having actually been in a Jigsaw trap. This wouldn't be so bad, except he started doing this well before the events of 3, and Jigsaw was still at large. He knew the man was out there, did he really think he would just let it slide?
* TheToothHurts: Bobby learns that the combination to get through a door has been etched on two of his teeth. He must extract them with a pair of locking pliers in order to proceed.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The games]]

[[/folder]]

* ConspicuousCG: In the 6th movie when Simone is questioned by Hoffman, you can tell that her nub of an arm was made on a computer.

* AnyoneCanDie: The ''Saw'' franchise takes this trope to the extreme; it's rare for a major character to ''not'' die. If they don't, they're likely to be declared dead in a sequel ([[spoiler:Agent Perez]]) or turn up again to be offed in some spectacular manner ([[spoiler:Eric Matthews and Perez again]]). And despite more random characters being introduced in the sixth film, by the end of ''Saw V'', all but two well-established characters have been killed off, those two [[spoiler:Jill Tuck and Detective Hoffman; there are also two survivors from the group of five to play Hoffman's game, but they were left in dubious straits.]] Almost fifty characters died in the first six films; that's about eight every film. ''Saw 3D'' took this trope even further, with at least fifteen people dying on screen. Damn.
** [[spoiler:Jigsaw himself dies in the third movie; he only appears in the later movies in flashbacks and voiceovers.]]
** By the end of the seventh, and the last, film, the only main characters to survive are [[spoiler: Gordon, Bobby Dagen, Daniel Matthews, Brit & Mallick. There were a few other minor characters to survive, like the women saved in William's tests, and Simone (the survivor of the opening trap in ''Saw VI''), but every other main character who was put in a trap, on the police force or in league with Jigsaw was killed off. Hoffman's death is not shown on-screen, but WordOfGod confirmed it.]]

** [[spoiler:''Saw 3D'' is a subversion. Hoffman wins as effortlessly as always - and ''then'' gets captured and left to die by Dr. Gordon, of all people. Given that he's yet another Jigsaw [[strike:apprentice]] accomplice, he's technically also a bad guy, but he still comes off way more sympathetic than Hoffman.]]
** [[spoiler:In some sense subverted for most of the series, because while John's games go off without a hitch and the police can't touch him, all of his major games except for Dr. Gordon's game and the game in ''Saw V'' (albeit too late for 3/5ths of the players) ends in either the death of the primary player and/or their complete failure to learn anything. The death of Amanda is possibly his biggest failure since she was the original poster child for his method of rehabilitation and the person he felt that came the closest to fully understanding him and carrying on his legacy. Then on the other hand there is his reliance on Hoffman who continually undermines John's work and eventually goes [[AxCrazy axe crazy]] and kills Jill, the single person that John cared about most in the world. Overall his success rate at "saving" anyone is shockingly low and it isn't until ''Saw 3D'' that it is even clear that he'll have any lasting impact at all.]]
*** [[spoiler: He gets a little credit back as he realized that something was up with both Amanda and Hoffman and designed games to test them. If Hoffman hadn't planted the note for Amanda, she would most likely not have killed Lynn. If Strahm had followed the rules of the glass box test, he would have survived and had the chance to keep pursuing Hoffman. Even after that, Jigsaw had other backups in place to stop Hoffman - first Jill, then Dr. Gordon and his two fellow accomplices.]]
* BastardUnderstudy: [[spoiler:Amanda]], a rare survivor of a Jigsaw trap, is later revealed to be his chief aide. Unfortunately, [[spoiler:she]] gets his message wrong...

* BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil: This series loves this trope. [[spoiler:Amanda and Gordon are the most clear cut examples. Hoffman's conversion from standard villain to a monster after his encounter with the RBT 2.0 probably counts as well. Xavior could also count, as he was a drug dealer before the events of ''Saw II'', but didn't turn into a psychotic murderer until he'd been through an hour or so of hell.]]

* BigNo: Let's go through the list, shall we?
** ''Saw II'' has Addison, shortly after [[spoiler:Xavier leaves her to bleed to death in her glass box trap]].
** The second film also has Eric, shortly after [[spoiler:he fails his test and is left to die in the basement Dr. Gordon and Adam were in]].
** ''Saw III'' has Jeff, right after [[spoiler:he fails his test and gets his ex-wife Lynn killed]].
** ''Saw IV'' has Rigg, right when [[spoiler:he fails his test and gets Eric killed]]. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Notice a pattern here?]]
** ''Saw VI'' has Simone [[spoiler:immediately before she chops off her arm]], as well as Pamela [[spoiler:shortly after William Easton dies]].
** Lastly, ''Saw 3D'' has Hoffman at the end of the film when [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon leaves him chained up to die in the same basement he was in]].

* BoobyTrap: Left behind for the police in ''Saw I''. One of the few things Jigsaw has ever constructed that fits a rational definition of the word 'trap.'
** The trap that Agent Perez falls into in ''Saw IV'' could fit as well.
** And let's not forget poor [[EliteMooks SWAT team members one through four]] early on in ''Saw II''.
** Hoffman in ''Saw 3D'', having completely abandoned even Jigsaw's twisted concept of morality, begins to use these again.

* BrickJoke: [[spoiler: The reverse bear-trap. The most iconic trap of the franchise. Eventually it was going to go off. And it looked ''awesome''.]]
** [[spoiler: Hoffman even makes it a point to use the ''original'' Reverse Bear Trap used on Amanda, and not the newer-looking model that Jill used on him.]]

*** "Game over" was said by a villain in all but one of the film endings. [[spoiler:It was said by Jigsaw in Saw and Saw III, Amanda in Saw II, Hoffman in Saw IV, Jill in Saw VI, and Dr. Gordon in Saw 3D.]]

* CrapsackWorld/ WretchedHive: The city in which the events of the films take place in seem to be absolutely teeming with AssholeVictims and {{Jerkasses}}, and not to mention the disgusting places actually live up to the name of ''Crap''sack World, though this part is {{Downplayed}} more in the later films while the former detail is more focused on.
* CrucifiedHeroShot: ''Saw III'' had one when [[spoiler:Lynn is shot by Amanda, and her arms stretch out as she falls into Jeff's arms.]]
** Timothy on The Rack in ''Saw III'' is a particularly gruesome example.
** Jill in the train trap in the trailer for ''Saw 3D'' appears to be doing one of these.

* DeadAllAlong: Inverted at the end of the first film.
** Also at the end of ''[[spoiler: Saw II]]'' where [[spoiler: the "live feed" is revealed to be a tape, but then the boy is revealed to have been Alive All Along,]] with no risk of him dying without warning (and thus spoiling the trap) in the first place.

* [[spoiler:DecoyProtagonist]]: [[spoiler:Strahm survives ''Saw IV'' and becomes the protagonist of ''V'', leading the viewer to believe that he might be the hero of the second trilogy and be the one to bring down Hoffman. Instead, he gets brutally offed at the end of ''V''.]]
** [[spoiler: Detective Kerry in III.]]
* DemonicDummy / PerversePuppet: "Billy", used by Jigsaw to communicate with his victims.
** Billy has become so iconic, many people mistake him for the real Jigsaw.
* DisposableSexWorker: Addison [[spoiler:who dies in the "Hand Trap" in Saw II]] and Brenda, a pimp and the woman in the Hair Trap, [[spoiler:who Daniel Rigg is told not to save, but saves anyway only to have her attempt to kill him as part of her "test" from Jigsaw]] but [[spoiler:Rigg ends up killing her in the ensuing fight.]]

* DownerEnding: Every film in the series[[spoiler:, with the ''possible'' exception of ''Saw 3D'' and "Saw 2" since the boy does survive.]]. Though if you hate [[spoiler:Hoffman, the sixth film]] isn't a downer at all. [[spoiler:He does survive, but with half his face torn off. Not that it slows him down much... Of course, that [[EsotericHappyEnding "non downer-ending"]] ignores the fact that the once amoral insurance agent who had grown to be more and more sympathetic, learning his lesson throughout the film was just ''[[ProtagonistCenteredMorality melted with acid]]'' seconds before]]
* DrowningPit: The third film has a really disgusting version of this trope involving [[spoiler: liquified rotting pig corpses]]. It's also done in the fifth movie as well, with Strahm having a locked, watertight box placed on his head that filled with water and would eventually drown him. [[spoiler: He only escapes by giving himself an emergency tracheotomy with a ball-point pen.]]
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first film, while having its moments, is really more of a suspense film than {{Gorn}}.

* ElectricTorture: Used for various purposes in first film; the chains around Adam's and Gordon's legs are wired up to conduct current. Also, in the fifth film, the third room involved a bath tub in the middle and five electrodes that needed to be connected, but the wires they were on were too short to just be placed in the water. [[spoiler:Brit kills Luba and uses her body to connect the electrodes, but at the end, she figures out that if they had worked together, they could have each taken an electrode and put one foot in the tub. It certainly would have given them a shock, but it wouldn't have killed them.]]
* TheEndingChangesEverything: See TheReveal below.
* ExtremeMeleeRevenge After being captured, persuaded to saw off his foot to escape, and subjected to [[UpToEleven intense]] psychological torture, Adam [[spoiler:screams his head off while bashing in his apparent captor's head with a toilet lid]].
** Averted in ''Saw II'', when [[spoiler:Detective Matthews]] beats up the already-suffering [[spoiler:Jigsaw]], but [[spoiler:Jigsaw]] still has the last laugh.
* TheExtremistWasRight: Somewhat hinted in the final film with those surviving Jigsaw's 'games' gaining newfound appreciation for their lives and bettering themselves. Subverted with Amanda.
** Left open. The same film suggests that the survivors have all been deeply mentally disturbed by the trauma they endured and that feeling it gave them a new lease on life might just be a coping mechanism and a way of trying to rationalise what happened to them. The only person who really is shown to make a better life for himself after a trap and not suffer psychological damage [[spoiler: turned out to be lying about being a survivor.]]
* EyeScream: The first five minutes of ''Saw II''. One trap in ''Saw IV'' forces the victim to gouge out their eyes or be dismembered. The victim in question manages to successfully get one done before getting torn apart.
** The eye/mouth sutures come to mind, as well.
** [[spoiler:Pierced eyes and mouth in ''Saw 3D''.]]

* {{Fanservice}}: Subverted with Danica in the Freezer Room trap in ''Saw III''; one movie critic once said that her scene may be the most un-erotic scene featuring a naked woman in all of horror movie history. This is actually a case of a DefiedTrope in the meta sense; Danica was originally going to be wearing just a shirt and panties, but the director thought it would be too erotic for her to be wearing a tight t-shirt and getting wet, so he just stripped her completely. Counter-intuitively, it did in fact make the scene less erotic. Of course, as with all {{Fanservice}} (subverted or not), [[{{YMMV/Saw}} Your Mileage May Vary]].
** Almost played straight with Debbie in ''Saw VI'' in the steam maze. The steam causes her blouse to stick to her body rather tightly, but this is never focused on by the camera, and [[spoiler:she dies in a rather gruesome manner]] before the scene can become true fanservice material.
** The girl in the opening of ''Saw 3D'' is probably the biggest {{Fanservice}} material in the whole franchise. That is, until [[FanDisservice her intestines shoot out]]...

* FlashBackEcho: At the end of the sixth film, after [[spoiler: Hoffman's Reverse BearTrap 2.0 has gone off, and just before the shot of him kneeling on the floor with his face torn off]], we get a rapid showing of every shot of someone closing the door on someone else at the end of the other films. In order, [[spoiler:John closing the bathroom door on Adam]] at the end of ''Saw'', [[spoiler:Amanda closing the bathroom door on Detective Matthews]] at the end of ''Saw II'', [[spoiler:Hoffman closing the door on Rigg in the meat-packing plant]] at the end of ''Saw IV'', [[spoiler:Jill closing the control-room door on Hoffman]] [[ViewersAreGoldfish just a minute before]] in ''Saw VI'', and ''Saw 3D'' gives us [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon closing the bathroom door on Hoffman, leaving him to die]].

* FlayedAlive: Involved in a couple of traps. Rigg's first test in ''Saw IV'' involves a woman strapped to a machine that slowly tears her scalp from her head. In ''Saw 3D'', one of the four victims in the Horsepower Trap is superglued into the driver's seat of a car. In order to save himself and the others, he has to pull himself loose, ripping off the skin from his arms and back.

* GambitRoulette: 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 are still driving the entire series what? Three movies after he's killed off? To be fair, those three movies only take place over the course of a few days, probably less than a week.
** It's noted in the commentary for ''Saw II'' that not every victim of the nerve gas house fell into the trap intended for them. The trap that killed Addison, for example, was intended for another person who had already died. Xavier also threw Amanda into the trap meant for him.
* GasChamber: ''Saw II'' featured a '''building''' slowly filling with gas, with the victims searching for hidden antidotes in order to survive.
** ''Saw 3D'' had a BoobyTrap GasChamber for the SWAT team.

** Well, except for the DisgustingPublicToilet.

** The ''Saw'' series has a habit of using hand waves as plot points for later films. ''Saws II'' and ''IV'' set up John Kramer's apprentices, [[spoiler: respectively, Amanda and Hoffman]]. However, by ''Saw 3D'', it is strongly implied that Jigsaw is no longer a single individual or apprentice - he's become an '''idea'''; hence when [[spoiler: the doctor from the first film subjugates Hoffman, he has two other people in pig masks helping him. The implication is strongly made that these are the individuals from the "Jigsaw survivor group", who have been "enlightened" by the trauma inflicted upon them by Kramer. Amanda even spells this out at the end of ''Saw II'': Kramer seeks immortality through sharing his beliefs. Ultimately, Hoffman and Amanda's mistake is to assume that '''they''' are Jigsaw, when Jigsaw has become bigger than just one or two people. Hence why ''Saw 3D'' can start with a trap open and in full public view - there's at least '''seven''' "Jigsaws" now: Kramer's goal of immortality is achieved.]]
*** WordOfGod says that the two men in pig masks with Dr. Gordon at the end of Saw 3D are Brad and Ryan from the public trap earlier in the movie. [[invoked]]

* ImpossibleTask: Several 'traps' have simply been designed to kill their occupants without bothering with the whole escape thing. Somewhat justified as most of those types of traps were designed by [[spoiler:Amanda (who thinks people are irredeemable and thus deserve to die) or Hoffman (who is more concerned with keeping the cops off his tail).]]
** In the case of [[spoiler: Hoffman's dispatching of Strahm at the end of ''Saw V'', it was actually an ingenious trick playing on human behavior and psychology: all Strahm had to do was trust Hoffman and get into the glass-filled "coffin" to avoid being crushed; but Hoffman, having been taught to predict human behavior by Jigsaw, knew Strahm would never do it, and thus Strahm got crushed.]]
*** Well, yes, he would [[spoiler:avoid being crushed]], but [[spoiler:since he knew about Hoffman's identity, Hoffman would have probably killed him anyway if he did. If he had just arrested or killed Hoffman instead of deciding (for some reason) to put HIM in the trap, he would have killed the franchise right there and then]].
** Mark's trap from the first film is a borderline case of this. ''Technically'' it was possible to escape from the trap, but the odds of being able to find the correct safe combination out of literally thousands on the wall (written in such a way that you can't tell where one combination stops and the next one starts) '''and''' avoiding setting fire to yourself within a few hours are minuscule, to say the least. Arguably justified, since the creators stated that Jigsaw designs his traps to be harder for those he particularly disapproves of, and he ''really'' hates welfare fraud, apparently.
* InfantImmortality: The only kid who died in this series was Jeff's son, Dylan. He died in an accident off-screen.

*** Not necessarily [[spoiler: He's one of only two men to be told "Game Over," and then find a way out. I'm not counting him out of the game just yet.]]
*** {{Jossed}}. WordOfGod says that [[spoiler:Hoffman did indeed die in that bathroom.]] [[invoked]]
** Debatably [[spoiler:William]] at the end of Saw VI.

* MayDecemberRomance: We don't know the exact ages of John Kramer and Jill Tuck, but it's quite obvious that John was significantly older than Jill (in real-life, Tobin Bell is 21 years older than Betsy Russell).
** John was 52 when he died, and Betsy Russell ranged from 42 to 46 while she played Jill, and considering the flashbacks in ''Saw IV'' are a few years before the "present" timeframe, it may fall just shy of being an example.

* MenAreTheExpendableGender: It really doesn't pay to be a man caught in Jigsaw's traps. So far, [[spoiler:Daniel Matthews]] has been the only long-term male survivor of Jigsaw's traps, and he was probably never ''really'' meant to be in danger to begin with. The mortality rate for women is still pretty high, but your chances are still much better, which is exemplified by the fact that [[spoiler:''every'' trap survivor in ''Saw VI'' is female, barring Hoffman who still gets his face ripped up something fierce]].
** This trope shows up again in the first scene in ''Saw 3D''. [[spoiler:This time, however, it's a subversion. Not only does the woman die, but Jigsaw introduces the game by telling the men that they have a choice between killing the other for the woman they think they love, or letting her die and "finally see her for what she truly is." In other words, she's the expendable one. Guess the producers were looking for something more gender balanced after ''Saw VI.'']]
*** Another inversion is Bobby's final trap, in which [[spoiler:he must recreate the trap he falsely claimed he was put in to save his wife. He fails and she dies.]]
**** It becomes Fridge Brilliance when you think about it. [[spoiler: Hoffman is pissed at Jill for trying to kill him, and hence his traps give the impression that the women in them are stand-ins for her.]]
** Also [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon]] from ''Saw'' and [[spoiler:Bobby Dagen]] from ''Saw 3D''.

* MotiveDecay: A potential glaring example in ''Saw 3D'' with [[spoiler: Bobby's final test]], which flies straight in the face of John's philosophy by effectively [[spoiler: murdering Joyce through an impossible test]].
** It wasn't impossible at all. Bobby was simply holding a major IdiotBall - if he'd pulled himself up just a bit higher, he would have easily been able to connect the cords. Instead he leaves himself at a height that requires him to reach far above his head in a position that puts ALL of that stress directly on the muscles that the hooks are holding on to.
** In addition, that trap would have been easy to [[SequenceBreaking sequence break]] if he had been half intelligent. You have 2 chains with hooks on the end. Wrap the chains around your legs at the groin or around your torso under the armpits, [[IncrediblyLamePun hook the hooks]] into each other, and PRESTO, you lift yourself without having to stab yourself with the hooks. I thought that one was actually the easiest trap that Jigsaw has ever thrown at somebody - [[FridgeBrilliance because it WASN'T a Jigsaw trap]].
** Considering his motives are all about teaching people to save themselves, there are a remarkably high number of candidates who seemingly are never given this opportunity, with their lives depending entirely on the decisions of other people or with them being intended murder victims. These include Gordon's wife and daughter (who escape by luck), the man Amanda kills to escape the reverse bear trap, Jeff's tests in ''Saw III'' although they might be able to talk their way out which could technically be an exception, and half the deaths in ''Saw VI'' and ''Saw VII'' and several others. They get no opportunity to 'save themselves' and they're all entirely there as part of other people's tests, to teach them a lesson. If their lives simply don't matter as much, that goes completely against everything Jigsaw said about valuing life and despising people who don't value it. We should also add Jigsaw attacking Tapp and his partner in the first movie, leading to the direct murder of a completely innocent man who was never intended to learn anything. In short, a lot of his actions don't fit into his alleged motives, which points to the idea that a lot of this was all just twisted rationalisation.
* MurderByCremation:
** Obi in ''Saw II'' has to climb inside a furnace to retrieve one of the keys, but inadvertently activates the trap, locking himself until he's burned to death.
** [[spoiler: Bobby's wife, Joyce, is burned alive in a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull Brazen bull]] when Bobby fails his final trap.]]

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: 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. But most of all, nice job making things worse for everyone in the first place, Jigsaw (though he's not a "hero").
** Gibson's is arguably the biggest clusterfuck out of all of these: it leads to, among other things, [[spoiler: the deaths of an entire ''police precinct.'']]
** The entire series would have ended at ''Saw II'' if Eric had just sat at the table, waited and listened instead of beating up Jigsaw and demanding he take him to the house.
** Actually in Saw ll even if they did arrest Jigsaw [[spoiler: Amanda, Hoffman and Dr Gordan were still out there]].

* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup ...and yet time and again the bizarre Rube Goldberg devices will function ''exactly'' as they were designed to.
** If you watch closely, his "workshops" are littered with scrapped ideas and protoype versions of various traps. Then again, if things keep going the way they have been, we may find out they were ALL used...
*** Due to the plot outline of ''Saw 3D'', they probably ''have'' been all used.
*** Technically, the 'trap' designed by Jigsaw for [[spoiler:the man who accidentally 'aborted' Jigsaw's baby]] broke before serious damage could be done...but he managed to fall into a prototype of the Barb Wire Maze Trap, where Jigsaw left him to die.

* OffscreenVillainDarkmatter: Jigsaw has no shortage of industrial spec components for his traps, despite the fact that he used to work in a ''toy factory'' and [[spoiler:his successors are a junkie and a corrupt police detective]]. The [[spoiler:[[TheWallsAreClosingIn crushing walls trap]]]] from the end of the fifth movie takes this to ludicrous levels. Somewhat justified in ''Saw IV'', which showed that before becoming a serial killer, he was a rich engineer who owned a lot of abandoned property (which he was planning on redeveloping).
* OnceMoreWithClarity: Nearly every climax throughout the series includes a flashback to a previous scene with a completely new meaning.
** ''Saw III'': Jigsaw explains the rules of the game to Lynn as she is brought into his room. In the climactic flashback of the film, we learn that [[spoiler:the explanation, as well as the entire central game was Amanda's.]]
** ''Saw IV'': [[BookEnds The first and last scenes are the same]]. [[spoiler:It's in its proper chronological order the second time around.]]
** ''Saw VI'': William is told via video tape that if he fails he will "never see his family again". In the finale, we learn that [[spoiler:the mother and son are in fact the real test subjects, and that Pamela is his sister/"family".]]
** ''Saw 3D'': [[spoiler:Jigsaw had ''one more'' apprentice, a surgeon, and the only one he completely trusted; that was Dr. Gordon. This reveal is accompanied by several shots of various victims being set up in such a way that Jigsaw (a mechanical engineer) wouldn't be able to, but a Doctor could. These include the "key behind the eye" in ''Saw II'' and the "eyes sewn shut" of IV.]]
*** Of course, this was an attempt to seal up a plot hole that people have been complaining about for a while. It doesn't completely fix the problem though since he only worked with John Kramer, John is dead by part VI, and William has a key embedded in his abdomen that got there... somehow...
* OneSteveLimit: No single movie contains two people 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 on ''Saw V''. Also it reveals Kerry's first name to be Allison, which is the same name as Dr. Gordon's wife, and they both appeared in ''Saw''. But then again, neither Rigg nor Kerry's first names are revealed until ''Saw V''. There are also some names that are shared between movies.
** Despite John being a very common name in RealLife, John Kramer seems to be the only John in this universe.
** It is worth mentioning that both Amanda and Timothy, the rack victim in ''Saw III'', share the last name Young. WordOfGod says they aren't related, and Amanda's last name isn't even mentioned until ''Saw IV''. [[invoked]]
** It is also worth mentioning that Dan Erickson's name brings to mind Daniel and Eric Matthews. ("Daniel, Eric's son?" [[IncrediblyLamePun]] Get it?)

* PassingTheTorch: 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.

* PrecisionFStrike: While his [[strike:victims]] test subjects swear heavily, Jigsaw never uses any foul language until ''IV''. While still reeling from the death of his son Gideon, John says "Get the fuck out of here" to a guy who was asking him if he was sure about cutting off his funding for Jill's drug-rehabilitation clinic.
** The only other time Jigsaw drops an F-bomb is when he's talking to William in Saw VI and says, "Healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and their patients, not by the government. Well, now I know they're not made by doctors and their patients or the government. They're made by the fucking insurance companies."
* PreviewsPulse: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBCSASJrB6I Used in this trailer for]] ''The Final Chapter''.

* TheReveal: There's at least one in every film, with many of the really big questions being answered in the sixth film:
** ''Saw I'': [[spoiler:Zepp isn't Jigsaw; the man lying on the ground in the room isn't dead, and he IS Jigsaw.]]
** ''Saw II'': [[spoiler:Amanda is actually Jigsaw's accomplice. And the events in the house are not taking place at the same time as the cops are watching it.]]
** ''Saw III'': [[spoiler:Lynn and Jeff are married, and Jigsaw kept this information from Amanda to test her. And Jigsaw is responsible for the loss of Jeff's ''other'' child.]]
** ''Saw IV'': [[spoiler:The film's events take place at roughly the same time as the events of the previous film; Hoffman is Jigsaw's second apprentice.]]
** ''Saw V'': [[spoiler:Jigsaw recruited Hoffman after Hoffman killed his sister's murderer with an inescapable Jigsaw trap.]]
*** This is probably the weakest reveal of all, especially considering that it took place in the middle of the movie, rather than as a twist ending like all the others. The actual finale merely had [[spoiler:Hoffman's plan to frame Strahm as Jigsaw fall into place, which had of course been openly played out throughout the entire film.]]
** ''Saw VI'': [[spoiler:Hoffman and Amanda both knew of each other's work as Jigsaw's apprentice; Amanda killed Lynn in the third film because she was being blackmailed by Hoffman; Amanda was the person who sent Cecil into the clinic, where he accidentally caused Jill Tuck to have a miscarriage; the box Jill received in the previous film contained instructions on how to carry out Jigsaw's final wishes, including Hoffman's test.]]
*** [[spoiler:The mother and son we see trapped in the cell watching Easton go through his trials aren't his wife and son. They're the wife and son of a man Easton had denied medical insurance to, who died from the illness he couldn't afford to get treatment for, and now it's up to the two of them to decide whether Easton lives or dies. [[YouKilledMyFather The son makes up his mind pretty quick]].]]
** ''Saw 3D'': [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon was alive all along, having cauterized his wound with the help of a hot pipe after escaping the bathroom. When Jigsaw discovers this, he takes Gordon in and places a prosthetic leg on him...on the condition that Gordon assist him with his work. Gordon becomes Jigsaw's true apprentice - the only one he trusted with the details of all the games - and willingly helps him with his schemes; he is shown placing the key behind the eye of Michael from ''Saw II'', sewing shut the eyes of Trevor from ''Saw IV'', and telling Jigsaw about Lynn from ''Saw III''. It is also revealed that the letter Jill delivered to the medical office in ''Saw VI'' was addressed to Gordon, which contained a tape of Jigsaw telling Gordon to act against Hoffman should anything happen to Jill.]]

** [[spoiler:This is Hoffman's fate at the end of ''Saw 3D''. Dr. Gordon chains him to a pipe in the same bathroom where the events of the original ''Saw'' occurred, and removed his only means of escape (the saw). WordOfGod confirms that he dies there.]] [[invoked]]
* SecretTestOfCharacter: Jigsaw does this to Amanda in ''Saw III'' by asking her to let Lynn go free if she could keep him alive for the duration of his last "game". [[spoiler:She refuses and kills Lynn, but it's eventually revealed in ''Saw VI'' that she did so intentionally because Hoffman threatened to reveal that it was technically her fault that Jigsaw's wife had her miscarriage if she didn't kill Lynn.]]
** Jigsaw's final test was [[spoiler:to test Hoffman himself with a game, which was set up by his wife, who was carrying out John's final request. Hoffman managed to beat the trap and live, though after hunting down and killing Jill in ''Saw 3D'', he is locked away by Jigsaw's true apprentice, Dr. Gordon.]]
** ''Saw II''. Not necessarily as secret as others, but the entire point of the movie is testing whether Eric has changed, and seeing if he can sit and wait instead of resorting to violence.

** [[spoiler:William in ''Saw VI'']] may well be the biggest example of this. In order, he has to [[spoiler:hold his breath for a painful duration so that another guy will trigger a trap and get himself killed; choose whether to save an old, diabetic mother or a perfectly healthy loner; suffer severe steam burns while trying to help his lawyer escape a maze and then nearly get hacked open when the lawyer tries to find the key necessary to save her life (she fails); and then choose which two of his staff will live, condemning the other four to death.]] Finally, it turns out that he was never ''really'' in control of his own fate, and he dies at the hands of [[spoiler:an angry, vengeful teenager and his equally angry, but not so vengeful mother.]]
*** [[spoiler: Not to mention [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking getting kicked in the groin by previously mentioned lawyer.]]]]

** The "Billy" puppet also makes cameo appearances in other horror films handled by Lionsgate.

* SpikesOfDoom: A small example would be the spikes in The Venus Flytrap in the second film. ''Saw 3D'', however, shows proper Spikes of Doom with [[spoiler:Bobby]] waking up suspended over said spikes in a cage, the bottom of which flips open after he pulls a chain above him.

* StrappedToABomb: Happens occasionally in the films. In ''Saw III'', Amanda locks a collar onto Lynn's neck that will discharge five shotgun shells into her head if John dies. In ''Saw VI'', four bombs are strapped to William's arms and legs, set to explode in 60 minutes unless he completes his tests and gets the keys to remove them.

** [[spoiler:In the fifth film, it's revealed that Hoffman knows where Jeff's daughter is, too; he uses the knowledge after the traps of III and IV have played out to come out of the warehouse as a hero for surviving Jigsaw's trap and saving the girl.]]
*** [[spoiler: Let's not forget the rather interesting clip in the Director's Cut of VI that plays after the credits.]]

** In many cases, however, this is perfectly understandable when you understand that the second of the five stages of grief is '''anger'''. I mean, if you came to realize that you were going to die within mere minutes by someone else's hand, and the only way for you to live would be to do something as horrific as cut into your own eye or crush your own hands, wouldn't '''you''' be a little pissed?
*** Especially since those last two things are fatal, considering how badly you (and exemplified by the guy with the eye-cutting task) would be shaking, the poor quality tools, and the dinky-ass location you'd be doing it in, the shock of the injury alone could cause them to pass out or outright die. No sterilized material, nothing to bite into or anything, those people were pretty much dead before they even started.
** [[spoiler:Congratulations Brent. You got your revenge on the man who "killed" your father. Too bad you murdered him in cold blood ''in front of his innocent sister'' thus guaranteeing that you'll be sent to jail for life and leave your mother all alone. Way to go.]]
** Also Addison is Part II. Hmmm... putting my hand in that hole got my wrist sliced open and my hand stuck by razor blades. I'm sure the other hole will work out better.
*** The creators say that if you look closely, you can see that the box easily opens from the top.
*** She has the excuse of being completely loopy from the effects of the nerve gas. It's obvious from her facial expressions she's not thinking clearly at all.
** Special mention goes to the judge in Part III. He survives his trap, only to get shot in the face by another trap, that he has no reason to be near, completely by accident.
** The victims of Part V, It was made perfectly clear from the get-go that they need to work together to survive...instead they let each other die thus making the final trap impossible to survive.
** Bobby Dagen in 3D, the man who claimed to be a Jigsaw survivor, without ever having actually been in a Jigsaw trap. This wouldn't be so bad, except he started doing this well before the events of 3, and Jigsaw was still at large. He knew the man was out there, did he really think he would just let it slide?
** [[spoiler: Not to mention Jill; She is attacked by Hoffman in the jail cell, she wounds him. Does she continue to attack him? No. Does she attempt to lock him in the cell? No. Does she pick up the loaded gun sitting on a table right in front of her that she watched Hoffman sat down? No. Does she pull the standard "Run around frantically while the killer composes himself and returns to the hunt? Of course.. Now for a normal character I'd give this a resounding "Maybe" but after all she's witnessed and been through one would hope she'd be a bit better at dealing with this situation.]]
*** [[spoiler: Add Gibson and the entire police force to this. The Jigsaw case has killed pretty much every single detective and FBI agent within a ten mile radius. Figure you might have wanted to use a little caution when you went on a manhunt?]]
* TookALevelInBadass: Hoffman in ''Saw VI'', [[spoiler:twice, and both at times when it seems like he's going down in defeat. The first: as his attempt to frame Strahm for being Jigsaw's second accomplice pitifully falls apart in front of him, Hoffman ''successfully'' pulls off a move only a desperate idiot would normally attempt - he murders two gun-carrying police officers (and fairly major characters) using only a knife, a cup of coffee and a one-shot (well, [[IncrediblyLamePun three-shot]]) character as a human shield; Hoffman then works to reestablish Strahm as the Jigsaw accomplice by planting his fingerprints all over the crime lab, then setting it aflame...with a still-breathing-but-rapidly-dying Agent Erickson left behind. Just minutes later, Hoffman is on the wrong end of the infamous "Reverse Bear Trap" deathtrap thanks to Jill Tuck, who reveals that this is part of John's will; as she exits the room (after delivering the obligatory "Game over" line), Hoffman ''bashes his way out of his restraints by using the trap, prevents the trap from opening fully, and finally rips the thing off, ripping apart the right side of his mouth in the process.'']]
** Jill also fits the trope in ''Saw VI''. [[spoiler:At first, she seems to be an innocent victim of John's schemes due to her implicit involvement as his wife. At the end, she knocks out Hoffman with an electrocuted chair and puts him in the reverse bear trap, all without a hint of remorse in her face.]]
** The puppet, referred to as "Billy" by the creators (though never officially named in the films), is actually a puppet that Jigsaw was working on as a gift to his wife, Jill... then she had a miscarriage, and the puppet -- quite altered in appearance from its less-creepy "prototype" look after John Kramer's suicide attempt and transformation into Jigsaw -- became a reminder of the life he never had.

** Which made it all the more glaring when he personally appeared to [[spoiler: Easton, the insurance agent who had denied his cancer treatment]]. Perhaps that one *was* personal...
*** Possibly justified, as getting [[spoiler: Easton]] to see health-care patients as ''people'' rather than numbers -- or anonymous puppets -- was a major part of that character's "game".

* UpToEleven: The creators boasted that the seventh film has a trap that was "so bloody, so disgusting, and so disturbing, the producers wouldn’t allow them to put it in any of the [previous] ''Saw'' films – until now". This was, according to IMDB, the garage trap. YMMV on whether it was as gross as advertised.
* UnresolvedSexualTension: The scene with Hoffman and Amanda in ''Saw VI''. Oh boy. Mind you, it's the only scene they share in the entire franchise.

* VillainousBreakdown: Amanda has one in ''Saw III''.

*** [[spoiler: Hoffman's]] breakdown happens over the course of VI [[spoiler: after being told that his plan to have Strahm take the fall for his crime didn't work]] and then it really flies off the hinges in VII.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Daniel Matthews. He doesn't even appear in [[ContinuityCavalcade The SURVIVE meeting]] in ''Saw 3D''.
** Likewise, Rigg's wife. However, this is said to be a case of ExecutiveMeddling. She was supposed to be in the final trap of ''IV'' with Art and Hoffman until Donnie Wahlberg agreed, at the last minute, to reprise his role. [[invkoed]]

*** Considering what happens to every other officer in the series, he probably just got wise and took an extended vacation to Cancun.

** The picture of Daniel and Detective Matthews from ''Saw II'' has Madison Square Garden in the background IIRC.
** The map that the detectives use to pinpoint the warehouse in ''Saw'' is of Washington DC.
** In ''Full Disclosure Repart: Piecing Together Jigsaw,'' an in-universe documentary that is a special feature on the uncut edition of the firs film, Zep Hindle's cell phone number is shown to have a 310 area code, which suggests that the films take place in Los Angeles. The first video game also has a report written by Oswald McGillicutty, in which he states that video game journalists will be gathered in Los Angeles to see a video game Jigsaw wants them to see.

* WouldHitAGirl: William in ''VI'' has no qualms about hitting [[spoiler:Debbie when she comes after him with a portable saw.]]
** And Eric Matthews in '''III''' in his fight with [[spoiler:Amanda.]]

* YouHaveFailedMe: Essentially the point of the "Shotgun Collar" trap. [[spoiler: Jeff's wife, Lynn Denlon, was kidnapped, put in the collar, and made to operate on Jigsaw. If Jigsaw died, then the five shotguns on the collar would go off, killing Lynn.]]
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Once Hoffman finishes Jigsaw's final test, Jigsaw has it set up (posthumously) that Jill would put him in a trap, although it could have been a way for Hoffman to really understand what it means to be in a jigsaw trap.
** [[SubvertedTrope However]], WordOfGod is that Jill, according to Jigsaw instructions, was ''supposed'' to leave a key so that Hoffman could escape and learn his lesson. By making the trap into what she thought to be inescapable, Jill sealed her own fate: both by betraying Jigsaw's 'morals' and by guaranteeing Hoffman's RoaringRampageOfRevenge. [[invoked]]

* ClutchingHandTrap: The movies typically go the HandInTheHole route, but ''Saw II'' has a more seriously played version. In one room, a glass box hanging from the ceiling contains a syringe of antidote for the nerve gas that was slowly killing the characters. One character finds the box, reaches in through holes in the bottom, and finds out too late that the holes are fitted with folding razors that slice into her arms when she tries to pull them out. She is left to die of either blood loss or gas exposure.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: After Xavier leaves Addison in the Glass Box Trap, we never see or hear from her again. But considering that she was stuck and the police officers didn't find her on time (on-screen), she presumably died from the poison, or alternatively of blood loss.

* Hypocrite: The judge tells Jeff he will be an accomplice to murder if he doesn't take a bullet to save one of Jigsaws victims. He could easily grab the key and take the bullet himself but instead just screams at Jeff to do it.

* [[BigDamnHeroes Big Damn Hero]]: Subverted by Rigg in the beginning and done right by him in the end, much to Eric Matthew's and Art Blank's disappointment.

* DroppedABridgeOnHim: After being the main protagonist of ''Saw III'', killing both Amanda and Jigsaw, watching his wife's head explode, and learning that he has to play a new game in order to save his daughter, Jeff shows up for only a few seconds before being unceremoniously shot and killed by Strahm.
** And the kicker? This happened literally seconds (chronologically, anyways) after Jeff had done those things.

* InstantDramaJustAddTracheotomy: In ''Saw V'', Strahm gets his head locked up in a presumably inescapable trap that fills up with water in order to drown him. What does he do? He digs out a pen from his pocket and (while most likely not having any skill in advanced medical practice,) performs a tracheotomy with it. ''[[SugarWiki/AwesomeMoments A fucking pen]].''

* FakePregnancy: One of the six victims on the carousel falsely claims to be pregnant, hoping that William will spare her life.

** Possibly foreshadowing for ''Saw 3D'', too.

* StartOfDarkness: One of the three intertwined plots of ''Saw VI'' is John's StartOfDarkness, shown through Jill's and William's [[{{Flashback}} flashbacks]].

[[folder:Saw [=3D=]]]

* ContinuityCavalcade: The SURVIVE meeting in 'Saw 3D'.
* DeathByRacism: Evan and the others in his trap in ''Saw 3D''.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler:Bobby of ''Saw 3D''. His final test is his own made-up trap from his get-rich-quick scheme. Doesn't work as well when he has to do it for real though.]]
* IronicEcho: In "Saw 3D", Bobby pretends to be a survivor of Jigsaw's games and creates an acronym (S.U.R.V.I.V.E.) that supposedly the lessons that he learned in this experience. [[spoiler:When he actually takes part in his trap, the phrases his acronym stands for are scrawled all over the walls, partially because they embody the values Jigsaw tries to instill in his victims.]]

* NoOneCouldSurviveThat: The ending of ''Saw The Final Chapter'', in which [[spoiler:Hoffman]] is left chained up in the bathroom from the first film with no readily apparent means of escape, acts as if that's a guaranteed death sentence -- ignoring the fact that [[spoiler:Eric Matthews]] was ''also'' trapped in that situation at the end of the second film, and still managed to free himself. Then again, [[spoiler:Dr. Gordon]] may have known about this, and taken more care to make sure the room was inescapable this time - including throwing the one unbroken hacksaw out of the room.

* BerserkButton: Hoffman asking Simone whether she "learned" when he sees the aftermath of her LifeOrLimbDecision.
--> '''Simone:''' He wanted us to learn.
--> '''Hoffman:''' And did you?
--> '''Simone:''' ...[[PunctuatedForEmphasis Look. at. me.]] Look at my goddamn arm! What the fuck am I supposed to learn from this, huh? Look at my arm!! What? What am I supposed to learn from this? Look at me!!!

* HarpoDoesSomethingFunny: According to DVD Commentary, Tobin Bell wrote large parts of his character's dialogue while they filmed the movies, to the point that scripts from some of the movies would simply feature "Insert Tobin Bell dialogue" in several scenes that featured Tobin.

* AscendedFanon: For years, it had been a theory that the man limping and putting the key behind Michael's eye in the video shown in ''Saw II'' was Lawrence Gordon. Fans also seemed convinced that he assisted in other traps that required medical knowledge. In ''Saw VII,'' this became canon (despite director Kevin Greutert's original desire to get revenge against Jigsaw and his accomplices).

* OnlyAFleshWound: In the first film, Dr. Gordon is able to saw his own foot off. In reality, nobody who didn't have superhuman strength would be able to saw through their own leg (particularly the bones of the leg) without passing out from blood loss or shock. Nevertheless, he's able to remain conscious and crawl out of the room, though the film is ambiguous as to whether or not he survived for very long. [[spoiler:The very first scene of ''Saw 3D'' has him cauterizing the wound, and he is eventually revealed to be Jigsaw's true apprentice.]]
** That is to say, it'd be a bit difficult to have so much adrenaline that the man could part his damn foot from his leg in what, minutes?

* KillItWithFire: [[spoiler:Obi's death in Saw II]] and [[spoiler:Detective Hoffman's way of dealing with the equipment used to divulge his identity as the Jigsaw Killer in Saw VI]]
** Also [[spoiler: Joyce]] in ''Saw 3D''.

* MurderByCremation: Obi in ''Saw II''.
** [[spoiler:Joyce in ''Saw 3D''. Notably, her death scene was much more graphic than Obi's (he had a surprisingly tame one), and she was one of the most sympathetic characters to boot. Poor Joyce.]]

* KillItWithFire: [[spoiler: Bobby's wife, Joyce, is burned alive in a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull Brazen bull]] when Bobby fails his final trap.]]

* BodyHorror: Multiple examples.

* BlatantLies: The tapes for two of the traps contain these. This become Fridge Brilliance, though, when you realize that [[spoiler:both traps were designed to be inescapable, so the fact that one minor detail was a blatant lie is forshadowing for the promise of escaping the trap to be a blatant lie.]]
** "The acid will dissolve the key in a matter of seconds." Not only was this statement made after the key had been in the acid for a minute and a half, but the key could still unlock the lock after being in the acid for more than two and a half minutes.
** "Your bones will be crushed to dust." And yet, when he grabbed at his collar after crushing them his hands, they were anything but a mass of boneless flesh.
*** Interesting point: Since this particular trap was [[spoiler:created by Hoffman to do away with his sister's killer while placing the blame on Jigsaw]], perhaps stating that his bones would be "crushed to dust" was an exaggeration intended to make him feel fear and bewilderment, [[spoiler:much like his sister must have felt before being murdered.]]
** Jigsaw's insistence that he "despises murderers" and that his deathtraps are designed to give people a chance to live, and the general idea of him never technically killing anyone. This ignores the fact that some of his traps actually require the victim to commit a murder to survive, most notably and hypocritically Amanda's even though he gets into her later for her traps being inescapable. For the main trap in the first one he expicitly told Doctor Gordon to kill Adam and told Zepp to kill Gordon's (completely innocent) wife and ''daughter'' if he didn't; the only apparent other way out was for them to saw their own feet off (hence the title) and it's not clear that this would have saved them- and they would probably bleed to death. In the end [[spoiler: Jigsaw leaves Adam to die]]. There are also traps he sets up that kill instantly once they are triggered even though the victim is not aware of them, such as the one that killed Tapp's partner, or the gun in the keyhole in the second movie. So he designed multiple traps that required someone's death, or made it ''extremely'' unlikely no-one would die.
*** In all fairness to the series, Jigsaw is recurringly identified as a psychopath and, true to his pathology, he doesn't see anything wrong in what he does. A perverse sense of morality that is often inconsistent with the subject's actions is a common occurrence in psychopaths, so Jigsaw killing people despite his insistence that he never does so is just a reaffirmation of his demented nature.
** The death of [[spoiler: Tapp's partner]] deserves a special notice here. [[spoiler: Unlike Tapp himself, the partner never loses sight of doing the right thing. His primary focus is on saving the victim they stumble across, THEN stopping the killer. Jigsaw's trap doesn't simply kill an innocent, it kills someone who was already leading the life Jigsaw was trying to force on people, and at further corrupts Tapp.]] This may be an attempted aversion whose point was lost in the sequels. [[spoiler: The idea being that Jigsaw is fundamentally a hypocrite, and is in no moral position to judge others.]]
** Perhaps the earliest example in the series: Amanda being told where to find the key to her trap. "It's in the stomach of your [[OnlyMostlyDead dead]] cellmate." [[spoiler:He's certainly dead by the time she finishes with him.]]

* GenreSavvy: The victims of the sewer trap in ''Saw V'' show a surprising amount of genre savvyness for the series. Examples:
** Spotting the wire that starts the countdown of the first trap.
** Knowing that closing the door between the last room and their current one starts the tape and the timer for the next room. At a few points they avoid closing a door so that they have more time to plan.
** Mallick is the only character in the entire series to offer an alternate solution to a trap. He suggests dumping the water from the tub into the handsplitter. He is quickly shot down, but it's nice to see someone actually make the effort.
** Also, Brit collects the keys from the first room in case they are needed later. Again, it turns out that they aren't, but if William in VI had made the same effort with the circular saw he may have saved himself a lot of trouble.

* BiggerBad: The Jigsaw Killer is the BigBad in the first three ''Film/{{Saw}}'' 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: [[spoiler:Amanda (who dies before Jigsaw himself), Detective Hoffman, and Doctor Gordon]]. Plans he deliberately set into motion before his death still have far-reaching effects long after he died.

* GambitRoulette: 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 are still driving the entire series what? Three movies after he's killed off?
** To be fair, those three movies only take place over the course of a few days, probably less than a week.

* GasChamber: ''Saw II'' featured an '''entire building''' slowly filling with gas, with the victims searching for hidden antidotes in order to survive.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: 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. But most of all, nice job making things worse for everyone in the first place, Jigsaw.

* ScourgeOfGod: Seemingly invoked by Jigsaw, who puts people through his trials for even the smallest vices.

* {{Leitmotif}}: "Hello Zepp" (subsequently remixed for every film in the series) has become synonymous with the ''Saw'' films, since the tune is commonly associated with the climax of the films. Even when the tune is played elsewhere (like, say, on ''Sportscenter'' - and yes, that '''has''' happened), one likely immediately identifies it as the "''Saw'' theme".

* SoleSurvivor: Amanda Young is the only victim who survived a Jigsaw trap.

* SoleSurvivor: Amanda Young is the only victim who survived Jigsaw's trap.

* BillingDisplacement: Tobin Bell is always top-billed in the later sequels, despite being dead in the "present" and only appearing in a handful of flashbacks and tapes. The displacement is taken to ridiculous lengths in the final film, where Bell is top-billed in spite of being in the film for '''TWO MINUTES'''; Cary Elwes appears in three scenes, has four lines of dialogue, and yet he is billed above {{Sean Patrick Flanery}}, who, at fifth billing, has the most screentime of anyone in the film and is essentially the main "hero" character; Chad Donella, who appears throughout the film and is the lead cop in the movie, doesn't even make the top five or the posters; Costas Mandylor and Betsy Russell get second and third billing, respectively, even though the former is barely seen until the end, and the latter, while having more screentime that Mandylor, doesn't do a heck of a lot - their billing can be pinned on their being staples of the series, having appeared in every film since ''Saw III'', rather than their roles in the plot.

** The commentary for '"Saw VII'' reveals that Lawrence did see his family again, but that his wife divorced him due to his unstable mindset.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Many examples of original concepts that never made it to film.
** ''Saw'''
*** According to an interview with Leigh Whannell, Adam and Lawrence were originally going to be trapped in an elevator or a basement instead of the Bathroom.
** ''Saw II''
*** Eric Matthews' name was originally Eric Mason.
** ''Saw III''
*** According to the DVD commentary for ''Saw VII,'' Lawrence Gordon was meant to be the main character, trying to save his wife from Jigsaw and Amanda and eventually killing them. This ended up being Jeff's role in the film itself. It is unknown whether or not Elwes was asked to return for the film or if he declined in the aftermath of his lawsuit following the first film.

** This [[interview with Patrick Melton http://www.sawfreaks.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1968]], co-writer of ''Saw IV-VII,'' reveals many things that were not explained in the movies, listed below.