All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Read on or go back — make your choice.
The Saw franchise has plenty of Asshole Victims. To speak generally, most of the protagonists are fundamentally flawed people selected to overcome their shortcomings; as the series progressed, many of the lesser victims just became full-on assholes such as drug dealers and rapists.
Saw:
- Zep was perfectly willing to kill Gordon's wife and daughter, so him getting his head smashed by Adam with a toilet lid was very satisfying to watch. Although he was forced to do what he did to stay alive, Word of God is that he enjoyed every second of it.
Saw II:
- Downplayed with Eric. While he's a deeply corrupt cop who has ruined lives to further his career or out of pettiness, the level of emotional and physical turmoil he undergoes after failing his game is far too much for a man who was only trying to stop Jigsaw and save his son.
- Given Obi helped kidnap the other victims and displayed a sadistic streak, it's hard to pity his Cruel and Unusual Death.
- Being a murderous drug dealer and complete asshole, Xavier is easily the least sympathetic of the victims of the Nerve Gas House next to Obi, and his death at Daniel's hands is very karmic.
Saw III:
- Troy is potentially this, as he's a known repeat offending criminal, though exactly what his crimes were is never elaborated on, so it's unclear how bad he was.
- Subverted and deconstructed with the victims in Jeff's trial. All of them are shown to be complex people with regrets and sympathetic qualities despite being involved with the accidental death of a child. The very idea of Jigsaw putting them into these death traps for honest mistakes in life calls into question how much of a sham his philosophy is throughout the movie.
- Downplayed with Amanda. She may be perverting John's philosophy with inescapable traps, but this film thoroughly explores Amanda as a deeply troubled person who suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, making her desperate for John's approval. Hoffman preyed on her emotional instability to sabotage John's last test for her, as revealed in Saw VI, leading to Jeff shooting her in the throat. The subsequent moment where she bleeds out is played out as pitifully tragic rather than satisfying. Although, considering everything she did throughout the movie, especially killing Kerry, it might just be satisfying for many.
- When Jigsaw finally does bite the dust, no one mourns him, sans perhaps Jill, and given the depraved nutcase he was, it's not hard to see why. That said, nobody's celebrating either, as his twisted games are still being carried out long after his death.
Saw IV:
- Brenda was a pimp who made women into her slaves. No one would miss her after she was thrown into a mirror.
- Ivan is not only guilty of multiple counts of rape, but he's kept photos and videos of the acts, just so he can get off to them. While his death is probably one of the most horrific in the series, it can be said karma caught up to him.
- Rex is such a case of this that the game where he's put into is solely Morgan's; the spikes impaling Morgan are non-lethal even if she removes them, but Rex has been impaled in such a way that removing his spikes would kill him.
- Subverted with Art Blank. He did defend the aforementioned characters from their serious crimes, yes — but he also supported John's Urban Renewal Group, a foundation dedicated to property development for needy people. Not to mention, he wasn't a willing pawn like Zep in the first movie.
- Being a mugger responsible for the miscarriage of a baby in one of his muggings makes Cecil deserve everything coming to him. Even though it was later revealed he was pressured into robbing the clinic by Amanda and was very uncomfortable doing so because Jill had been nice to him, Cecil quickly returned to his crooked way of life with no lasting remorse.
Saw V:
- Seth brutally murdered his girlfriend and received nowhere near the adequate punishment for it; that is, until Hoffman gets to him. While subtle enough to be missed by most viewers, since the movie doesn't draw attention to it, Seth's tattoos also feature white supremacy symbols, implying that he was affiliated to a racist group too.
- Charles is a smug asshole who repeatedly prioritizes his own survival over the rest, namely Mallick. Later, he outright tries to kill Mallick and boasts of the test being "the survival of the fittest" before Luba helps Mallick and leaves Charles to die instead.
Saw VI:
- Generally averted by William's trial. All of the victims, including William, were completely innocent of anything resembling a crime — they were only present to emotionally torture William or because John felt that them working in the insurance business made them corrupt, regardless of how many people they helped by providing coverage. 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.
- Played straight, though, with most of the Shotgun Carousel victims, as they were not just random workers around the facility but the heart of it, ruthlessly analyzing cases to deny as many insurances as possible.
- Debbie the lawyer is arguably another straight example. After William risks his well-being to guide her out of the steam maze, he and Debbie find out that the key to her harness is in his stomach, and that if he doesn't free her in time a speargun that's attached to said harness will activate and kill her. She goes to attack him to save herself, despite the fact that William (who now has to fight her off) was attempting to save her. In the end, her ensuring death was no one else's fault but her own.
- Simone lent money and put people into serious debt for her selfish gain. While she survives her game and expresses a burning hatred for Jigsaw, she's not a sympathetic survivor, to say the least. That being said, Eddie is even worse. Not only is he a predatory lender, but he blames everything on Simone and tells her "I'm not dying for you, bitch!"
Saw 3D:
- Dina played her boyfriends against each other and got them to steal things for her to try and impress her. In the trap, she doesn't hesitate to try and get both of her boyfriends to kill the other so her own life can be saved. This eventually backfires on her as Brad and Ryan take notice of it and decide to sacrifice her instead.
- The skinheads from the Horsepower Trap undoubtedly qualify, being white supremacists after all.
- Bobby is one by proxy. While he himself lives by the end of the film (albeit injured), his best friend, staff, and wife are killed due to him failing to save them. His best friend and staff themselves also count, being complicit in his false story, but Joyce was the only one kept in the dark about Bobby's lies and was only presented as a good person.
- No tears were shed when Lawrence left Hoffman in an inescapable scenario to die of starvation or dehydration.
Jigsaw:
All of the victims in this film count as assholes to varying degrees, though some are significantly worse than others. Two of them in particular count as karmic deaths and/or Death by Irony.- Ryan is arguably the least terrible, despite being an absolute dick. When Ryan was a teenager, he got drunk while riding in a car with his friends and distracted them, leading to a car crash that killed them and another person. Ryan only survived because he fell out of the car and placed all of the blame on the driver, causing his family a lot of pain and suffering (according to John). As if this wasn't enough, he committed other crimes afterwards, like selling credits that could not be paid, selling cocaine, not paying state taxes, and cheating on his two wives. He is the only one to act in any way that can be considered heroic, though; chopping off his leg to save Anna and Mitch, never even thinking of shooting Anna, and even trying to warn her about the shotgun trap when she wanted to kill him, arguably pushing him into Jerk with a Heart of Gold territory. He dies of dehydration or blood loss, alone in one of Jigsaw's rooms.
- Mitch, despite passing himself off as a Nice Guy, knowingly sold a bike with faulty brakes to a young man who just so happened to be Jigsaw's nephew, and covered it up in order to get full price for it, directly leading to the man's death in an accident. He ends up being sliced apart in a blender-like trap powered by a motorbike that had the exact engine from the original bike that he sold.
- Carly is a purse snatcher who stole from an asthmatic woman, leading to the woman having an attack and dying. Carly could have helped her but chose to run away with $3.53. She refuses to risk her life for the other players despite the fact that all of them will die if she doesn't, and gets acid injected into her throat, dying an incredibly painful death.
- Anna, despite being styled as a typical protagonist with the only genuinely sympathetic backstory, turns out to be one of the most vile characters in the entire franchise. To wit, she asphyxiated her baby in a fit of rage and tricked her husband into thinking he did it, which ended with him being taken to an insane asylum where he hung himself. She constantly denies that she's done anything wrong to be put in this situation and doesn't show any remorse or sadness over what she's done, even when John directly confronts her with it. When trapped in the final room, she tries to kill Ryan to save herself, only for the rigged shotgun to backfire.
- While he was working at a hospital, Logan carelessly mislabeled two X-Rays, leading to John's brain tumor not being found until it was too late. Kramer accidentally overdoses him before he puts him in the buzzsaw trap, meaning he'll be unable to survive it. However, he lasts long enough that John, not wanting to kill someone without giving them a chance, and realizing Logan made an honest mistake, has a change of heart, sparing his life and making him his first apprentice.
- Halloran is a Dirty Cop and Glory Hound of the highest order, not to mention a perverted Jerkass to boot. When trapped with Logan in a dual trap, he goads him into thinking they'll work together, then activates Logan's trap first so he'll have a better chance of surviving. Keep in mind, as far as he knows, Logan is an innocent veteran with a daughter to take care of. As it turns out, Logan was a short-tenured Jigsaw apprentice, and goads Halloran into confessing to being dirty before he slices his head apart with lasers.note
Spiral:
Everyone targeted by the copycat killer are corrupt cops. These include commanders who would lie and cover up for other cops like Marcus and Angie did, and other cops who straight up killed people, such as Pete and Fitch.- Despite being one of the only cops who were nice to Zeke, Marv Bozwick was still a corrupt cop whose false testimonies put innocent people in prison.
- Fitch is the biggest one in the whole movie. He was a sociopathic monster who once murdered a man for flipping him off when ordered to raise his hands. He also treated Zeke with nothing but contempt and once nearly left him to die out of spite. It's telling that of all the cops that die in the movie, Zeke feels absolutely nothing for Fitch upon discovering his remains.
- Downplayed with Angie. While she was deeply complicit in a conspiracy to allow police corruption to run rampant, she is one of the less malevolent of the bunch. Her absolutely horrific death was fairly disproportionate, to say the least.
- Pete's death at the hands of the Spiral Killer is horrifying, but he previously murdered Charlie Emmerson to prevent him from testifying against a fellow officer. And for all his gestures at atonement, Pete still remained a bitter asshole to Zeke and never realized he was in the right in testifying against him. This is even lampshaded by Schenk, expressing Pete had it coming for ruining not only his life but Zeke's as well.
- While Marcus isn't as openly horrible as some of the other cops in the precinct, he was a deeply corrupt police chief who enabled the corruption of other officers like Fitch and Pete. He also had no qualms about engaging in Police Brutality himself. However, his death is painted in a somber light. Having made the selfless choice of sending Zeke after catching the fleeing killer over attending to him, Marcus consequently dies and Zeke is completely distraught over his death.
Saw X:
- All the victims in the movie are willing participants in conning deathly ill cancer patients out of their money while lying about curing them, so they're naturally deserving of some punishment. That said, the nature of their punishment at Jigsaw's hands is much too extreme and some do display varying degrees of guilt or sympathy –- except Cecilia, who is this trope and then some.
- Played With in the case of Gabriela. Amanda takes pity on her, being a recovering drug addict herself, and briefly questions John. Later, John was willing to let her walk and get medical help, as she passed her test, and he was saddened when Cecilia murdered her. She may have been in on the con, but she earned some genuine sympathy from her captors.
