Jigsaw and Accomplices (John Kramer) | Other Antagonists | Law Enforcement (Metropolitan Police Department) | Other Characters (I-III, IV-VI, 3D-X)
open/close all folders
Saw 3D characters:
Bobby Dagen
Bobby Dagen
"I hadn't just survived. I was reborn. This was my life!"
Played By: Sean Patrick Flanery
Appearances: Saw 3D
The main character of Saw 3D. Bobby is a writer who realized that Jigsaw victims could make a lot of money by telling their story — if they weren't so traumatized by the experience. To this end, Bobby decides to lie about being a victim, publish a book about his "experience", and go on the talk show circuit to rake in the cash and fame. Jigsaw takes issue with this...
- Asshole Victim: By proxy. While he himself lives by the end of the film (albeit injured), his friends and wife are killed due to him failing to save them.
- Becoming the Boast: He falsely claims to have survived one of Jigsaw's death traps, in which he put two hooks through his pectoral muscles and climbed the chains attached to them in order to pull himself up to safety. Guess what his final test is when he's put through one of Jigsaw's trials for real, with his wife Joyce's life on the line? It's cruelly subverted as the pectoral muscles simply aren't strong enough to support Bobby's full weight, and the hooks tear right out of his chest as he tries to climb the chains. Thanks to his lie, Bobby is Forced to Watch as Joyce suffers one of the most brutal deaths in the entire series.
- Bullying a Dragon: Emphatically so. Impersonating a victim of a serial killer who victimizes frauds was only ever going to end one way.
- Determinator: Bobby is an asshole for lying, but he was fully willing to do what it took to keep his friends and wife alive, even if that meant ripping out his own back teeth and recreating the trap he described in the book that had gotten him there in the first place.
- Didn't Think This Through: While Bobby's plan to make money isn't exactly terrible at a glance, he didn't make sure that Jigsaw was either behind bars or dead before publishing his fake story. Even that would have been risky since Jigsaw's accomplices (none of whom were known or identified by the police at the time) would have taken notice of him too.
- Foreshadowing: To foreshadow the fact that Bobby's a liar (which isn't shown for quite a few minutes until his trial begins), his trap is nowhere to be actually seen in the flashback to it. Given how the series almost always shows traps in action, this is a clue that Bobby's made-up game never happened in reality.
- Fun with Acronyms: Invoked with the title of his book, "S.U.R.V.I.V.E.", which stands for each of the lessons he claims he learned from his fake Jigsaw trap experience: "Start your life anew", "Understand your problems", "Redefine your priorities", "Verify your self-worth through commitment", "Ignore your detractors", "Value your loved ones" and "Embrace every day as if it is your last". As an Ironic Echo, each of these phrases are written on walls, doors and even a staircase at his trial.
- Happily Married: After getting fame for his false survival story against Jigsaw, he has a happy marriage with the woman he loves. Too bad the "happy" part was short-lived after he and anyone associated with him gets captured for one of Jigsaw's games. Bobby ultimately fails at saving all of them.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: His final test involves recreating the trap he lied about surviving in the first place: hoisting himself up by chains hooked through his chest muscles to stop a trap from springing. His failure to recreate the trap as he described it cost him dearly. There were, however, several things he could have done instead that would have made the trap rather trivial to complete (for instance, the hooks were big enough for him to simply stand in), which was more than likely intentional on Jigsaw's part.
- Ironic Echo: He created an acronym title for the book about his fake story with Jigsaw (S.U.R.V.I.V.E.), which supposedly imparts the lessons he learned from the apparent experience. When he actually takes part in a Jigsaw game, the phrases the acronym was meant to stand for are scrawled over various walls, doors and a staircase that he passes through, partially because they embody the values Jigsaw tries to instill in his victims.
- It's for a Book: Inverted. After seeing people explaining their own experiences in Jigsaw traps, Bobby uses them to make up his own experience as the theme for a book, down to scarring his own pectorals like the scars of said victims to make it seem more real. The success of the book kickstarts the film's main game, where Bobby is put in an actual trial by Hoffman long after Jigsaw took notice of him.
- Karma Houdini: Subverted. Although he lied about being a survivor of one of Jigsaw's traps simply to become rich and famous, he survives his trial (which was the last one Hoffman ran) with only a few injuries. That being said, his incompetence at successfully completing most of the traps lead to the deaths of his staff, best friend and wife, and in all likelihood, his career as a writer would be over with him being exposed as a fraud.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After lying about surviving his own Jigsaw game, John posthumously gets even by making him actually experience the games, only not to save himself, but to save those close to him. Bobby ultimately proves incompetent with his challenges, as everyone he tried to save ends up dying grisly deaths, leaving him with nothing but guilt.
- Liar Revealed: While he survives his trial, it's likely that he was publicly exposed as a liar afterwards.
- Only in It for the Money: The reason why he published his false story about being a victim of Jigsaw. It would allow him to earn quick cash.
- Symbolic Mutilation: His final test is to recreate the trap he made up: piercing his pecs and hosting himself up to connect wires. It doesn't work when he does it exactly that way, but the hooks' size and design imply that he also had to think logically since he couldn't have known if the trap would have been actually possible in reality.
- Too Dumb to Live: Let's be honest, lying about being caught by a Serial Killer who specifically targets those who are guilty of something, including liars, is not a very smart move, especially while said criminal is active. Bobby should have known that his name would eventually come next, or have at least published the story after the events of the third movie when Jigsaw was already dead.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: While Saw 3D ends after his final test, Bobby's ultimate fate after his game is left unknown since he remained in the psychiatric hospital after the SWAT team who came to stop the game was killed. Neither Jigsaw nor Spiral add any information about his aftermath, although the script of one of the original drafted films from which 3D derived involved Bobby being taken to a hospital and meeting Gordon at the end.
Victims of Bobby's Trial
Victims of Bobby's Trial (Cale, Suzanne, Nina, Joyce Dagen)
Cale
Suzanne
Nina
Joyce Dagen
Played By: Dean Armstrong (Cale), Rebecca Marshall (Suzanne), Naomi Snieckus (Nina), Gina Holden (Joyce)
Appearances: Saw 3D
Bobby's best friend (Cale), lawyer (Suzanne), publicist (Nina) and wife (Joyce), kidnapped by Jigsaw for being complicit in his falsified story about surviving a Jigsaw game.
- Amoral Attorney: Since Suzanne was Bobby's lawyer during his scheme, handling the legal work, she counts as this as she knew she was defending his lies for money.
- Asshole Victim: All of them except Joyce, who was the only one kept in the dark about Bobby's lies and was only presented as a good person.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Nina gets her throat pierced by metal rods, Suzanne's face is impaled by metal spikes and Joyce gets burned alive by a brazen bull for Bobby's failures, which is horrifying for someone who did nothing wrong.
- It's fortunately averted for Cale, who simply gets hanged.
- Disproportionate Retribution: While Joyce enjoyed the money from Bobby's false story, she didn't know he was lying. As a result, apart from being his unwitting wife, she literally did nothing to warrant being a victim of Jigsaw.
- No Full Name Given: Joyce is the only one of the victims with a stated surname.
- Swallow the Key: In the Silence Circle, Bobby has to free Nina with a key in her stomach, which he has to pick with a fish hook. Due to this, he has to be careful when pulling it out, as the hook can tear her apart from the inside.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- In addition, Suzanne and Cale could also count, as they should have known taking part in this scheme would also make them targets of Jigsaw.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: A deleted scene shows that Cale was the one who suggested Bobby to pretend to be a Jigsaw survivor, thus kickstarting the movie's main game.
Brad and Ryan
Brad and Ryan
Brad
Ryan
Played By: Sebastian Pigott (Brad), Jon Cor (Ryan)
Appearances: Saw 3D
Two teenage victims of the opening trap in 3D, the Public Execution Trap. Deceived by a two-timing gold digger named Dina, they decide she's not worth it and let her die to save their lives instead.
- The Ace: Ryan is one of very few victims in one of Jigsaw's games to survive with no injuries whatsoever, and easily reconciles with Brad, who doesn't fare much worse.
- Cock Fight: They spend a good minute trying to kill each other, until they realize that Dina was a two-timing, backstabbing adulterer who was playing them both, causing them to put Bros Before Hoes and get her cut in half.
- Face–Heel Turn:
Word of God claims that they were the two pig-masked men who helped Lawrence in subduing Hoffman. - Love Triangle: They were both involved in relationships with Dina, so in the Public Execution Trap, Jigsaw gives them the choice to either attempt to kill each other with a table of saws in order to "prove who is the alpha male", or leave Dina to die. However, unlike most examples of this trope, the love triangle isn't resolved in favor of either "competitor", as when Dina's loyalty switches between whoever happens to be winning, both of them are convinced to call it a draw and allow Dina to be killed instead.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Invoked and then subverted. They can either fight to the death over the woman they both love or let her die instead. Realizing that she doesn't care which one of them dies so long as one of them saves her, they agree to let her die so both of them can survive.
- No Full Name Given: Their surnames are never stated.
- We Used to Be Friends: Brad and Ryan's friendship was fractured by Dina's deception, but they reconcile after their test.
Dina
Dina
Played By: Anne Lee Greene
Appearances: Saw 3D
The girlfriend of Brad and Ryan, who manipulated them into committing crimes for her and played them against each other.
- Asshole Victim: She 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.
- Fan Disservice: Dina is probably the biggest fanservice material in the whole franchise... until she's sawn in half and her intestines spill out, anyway.
- Liar Revealed: She essentially exposes through an Opinion Flip Flop that she's been playing both Brad and Ryan for money and comfort at the same time, thus cheating on both of them. Brad and Ryan decide to stop fighting in response, resulting in Dina's death.
- Manipulative Bitch: She manipulates Brad and Ryan to steal for her, and tries to get each of them to kill the other so her own life can be spared.
- No Full Name Given: Her surname is never stated.
- Opinion Flip Flop: When Brad starts to get the upper hand, Dina roots for him to kill Ryan. When Ryan starts to turn the tables, she starts rooting for Ryan. This gets them to see that she really doesn't love either of them, which prompts them to let her die.
- Saying Too Much: Dina makes a mistake that proves fatal to her: she first cheers for Brad when it looks like Brad might win, but then when Ryan starts winning she immediately switches and starts cheering for Ryan. The fact that Dina is willing to "love" whichever man kills the other causes Ryan to realize that she doesn't genuinely love either man (or she would have been cheering only for the one she loved), so he voluntarily gives up the struggle and convinces Brad to do the same, and Dina is killed instead.
- Too Dumb to Live: Had she not rooted for Brad and Ryan to kill each other, she may have lived.
The Skinheads
The Skinheads (Evan, Kara, Dan, Jake)
Evan
Kara
Dan
Jake
Played By: Chester Bennington (Evan), Gabby West (Kara), Dru Viergever (Dan), Benjamin Clost (Jake)
Appearances: Saw 3D
A gang of Neo-Nazi skinheads that Hoffman decides to test with a trap of his own while on the run from the law. They are the victims of the Horsepower Trap.
- An Arm and a Leg: Dan's arms (and jaw) are torn right off his body when Evan fails to deactivate the trap.
- Asshole Victim: Every last one of them.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: As a result of Evan failing to win his game on time, Kara gets her face disintegrated by a moving tire, Dan's arms and jaw are torn off when Evan's car goes out of control, and Evan himself is sent flying out a windshield with all the skin on his back forcibly torn off his body, bleeding to death. Averted with Jake, who is simply run over by the front of the car Evan is in.
- Dead Star Walking: Evan, played by Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington, is the leader of the group and the one given the main objective to get them out alive in the Horsepower Trap. He fails, and everyone is killed.
- Flayed Alive: In the Horsepower Trap, Evan is superglued into the driver's seat of a car. In order to save himself and the others, he has to pull himself loose by ripping off the skin from his arms and back.
- Hate Crimes Are a Special Kind of Evil: As a group of racists, Hoffman tests them for this reason.
- Head Crushing: Kara is killed by having a running car tire crush her head into bloody pieces.
- No Full Name Given: None of them have stated surnames.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Being white supremacist skinheads, this is a given.
- Symbolic Mutilation: They're put in a trap for being racists, in which Evan's competence is fundamental for the others' lives. His task? Peeling the skin off his back to reach the lever that will stop the trap.
Jigsaw characters:
Medical Staff
Logan Nelson
Logan Nelson
"I speak for the dead."
Played By: Matt Passmore
Appearances: Jigsaw
The main character of Jigsaw. Logan is a military veteran who served in Iraq, where he experienced trauma that led to his discharge and has remained with him up to the present. Currently, he's a medical examiner who works with the police.
- Action Dad: He has a daughter, and he can also hold his own in a fight as a veteran.
- Catchphrase: "I speak for the dead."
- The Coroner: He's the main medical examiner involved in the second Jigsaw killing spree.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Was tortured as a prisoner of war during his time as a military medic.
- Good Parents: Is a loving father to his daughter Melissa.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has several scars on his back, which he presumably acquired when he was tortured.
- My Greatest Failure: Accidentally mislabeled John's cranial X-ray, resulting in his cancer being found too late for treatment, becoming indirectly responsible for setting off the chain of events that led to John becoming Jigsaw to begin with.
- Recovered Addict: A Freeze-Frame Bonus when Halloran is going through Logan's military file noticably mentions a "relapse" in the aftermath of his wife's death. What precisely that "relapse" involved is never revealed, but it's pretty evident that it wasn't anything good.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: When he was still an intern, he accidentally mislabeled two x-rays, resulting in John's brain tumor not being found until it was too late.
Eleanor Bonneville
Eleanor Bonneville
"A girl's gotta have a hobby."
Played By: Hannah Emily Anderson
Appearances: Jigsaw
An assistant medical examiner assisting Logan in investigating the new Jigsaw murders, she is quickly made a suspect along with Logan for her fascination with the morbid.
- The Coroner: An assisting one to Logan, specifically.
- Hospital Hottie: An extremely attractive medical examiner.
- Nightmare Fetishist: She is absolutely obsessed with Jigsaw, to the point of trolling the dark web for sites and information on him and having an entire warehouse full of replicas of the various traps he built over the course of the series. But she is offended when Logan asks if she "gets off on this shit.''
- Red Herring: The viewers are led to believe that she's the new Jigsaw killer because she's a Fangirl of Jigsaw and has built replicas of many of his previous traps, but the real killer is Logan.
- Smoking Is Cool: Smokes a cigarette while Logan walks around and explores her studio.
- Stalker Shrine: She has one detailing most of Jigsaw's traps, including the Spiralizer.
The Murderers' Trial Victims
Ryan
Ryan
Played By: Paul Braunstein | Ryan Manning (young)
Appearances: Jigsaw
A victim of the Murderers' Trial and the tertiary protagonist of Jigsaw. While he's no saint, Ryan reluctantly takes a leadership role in the Murderers' Trial with the questionable mental states of his fellow victims.
- An Arm and a Leg: He gets caught in a booby trap that slices his leg into three pieces.
- And I Must Scream: His possible fate after Anna destroys the keys for his last test. However, not only is Ryan implied to have taken it in stride, he possibly bled to death before dehydration or starvation would do him in.
- Asshole Victim: Downplayed. Back in high school, his drunken, reckless behavior caused a car accident that killed two of his best friends and another driver, then he incriminated one of his said friends for it. 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. While pretty bad things, he's still one of the least reprehensible of the people in his game,* and none of that was really worthy of him bleeding out on a dirty barn floor.
- Call-Back: Him trying to break open a door with a shovel is similar to a scene in Saw II, where Xavier does the same with a studded baseball bat.
- Conscience Makes You Go Back: When he's faced with the dilemma of losing his leg to save Anna and Mitch from the Grain Silo Trap, he adamantly refuses at first. After hearing enough of their desperate pleas, however, Ryan caves and gives up his leg.
- Face Death with Dignity: When he realizes he's doomed, he sincerely apologizes for everything bad he's done in life and lies down quietly next to Anna's corpse. The fact his corpse is in the same position in the present implies he didn't try to escape his fate (not that he could).
- Fatal Flaw: His temper and impulsiveness. The first instance of this is when he ignores Anna and Mitch's suggestions to not go through a door that Jigsaw warned them not to open. He loses a leg for this. The second and fatal instance of this is when Anna decides to kill him, believing that's the answer to the riddle behind their final test. Rather than try to reason with her, he immediately begins to panic and calls her a "psycho bitch," provoking her to finalize her decision to kill him.
- Flipping the Bird: In the barn game's first trap, he does this towards the speaker from which the instructions are told, complete with a loud "FUCK YOU!".
- I Did What I Had to Do: Ryan kills Carly when she refuses to make a critical decision, which would kill everyone in the game. When Mitch and Anna chew him out for it, he points this out to justify himself.
- Jerkass: Ryan is a very unpleasant man who's easy to anger.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ryan is fairly abrasive, unfaithful to his two wives, reckless, and irresponsible. But unlike many of the other Barn victims, he is not nearly as self-absorbed or ill-intentioned. The deaths he caused are genuinely accidental, albeit brought on by his own recklessness. He also cuts off his leg to save Mitch and Anna, then refuses to shoot Anna at the end. He even tries to warn her at the last second what will happen if she fires the gun.
- No Full Name Given: Like most of the other barn game victims, his surname is never stated.
- That Liar Lies: When Carly hesitates to tell the truth about what she did. "YOU'RE LYING! YOU'RE LYING!"
- Villain Respect: Implied. At some point in the present, Ryan's decomposed corpse was covered with a blanket presumably from Logan, whereas Anna's is left untouched. In a way, this could represent how he was the only one who "won" the Barn game, as detailed in the Face Death with Dignity entry.
Mitch
Mitch
Played By: Mandela Van Peebles
Appearances: Jigsaw
A victim of the Murderers' Trial.
- Asshole Victim: Despite passing himself off as a Nice Guy, he 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.
- Flayed Alive: He's sent tumbling into the coils of the Cycle Trap when Anna tries to help him get through it and is spat out as a mutilated corpse.
- Foreshadowing: Mitch's attempt to just cut his finger in the first game, only to have the chain jerk him forward and spill much more blood, foreshadows his reticence to reach his hand out to pull the brake in his trap later on, which ultimately dooms him.
- Greed: He knowingly sold a defective bike to a man and could only look at the cash rather than think of the consequences.
- Karmic Death: The faulty engine fueling the Cycle Trap that mutilates Mitch belongs to the bike he sold to John's nephew.
- No Full Name Given: Like most of the other barn game victims, his surname is never stated.
- Too Dumb to Live: Anna's interference with Mitch's trap disables the coils for a few minutes. Rather than use the time to pick up the handbrake that would ensure the trap is permanently disabled, Mitch simply celebrates thinking he's in the clear.
Carly
Carly
"I was broke, okay? Yes, somebody died, but it wasn't my fault!"
Played By: Brittany Allen
Appearances: Jigsaw
A victim of the Murderers' Trial.
- Asshole Victim: She's 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.
- Blood from Every Orifice: This is how she dies when Ryan injects the three syringes of the Chain Hangers into her.
- Conscience Makes You Go Back: In the past, Carly robbed an asthmatic woman of her purse. Upon discovering her inhaler in the bag, she felt guilt over it and tried to return it to her. Unfortunately, she came back to find the woman already died of stress. This didn't stop Carly from keeping her money afterward, which is probably one of the main reasons John tested her.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Carly is forced into a decision where she must pick one of three syringes that will force her to confess how much money she stole from a woman who died from her thieving. She refuses to do so, and to save the group, Ryan injects her with all three. As a result, Carly is literally melted from the inside out by acid.
- The Ditherer: She's told that she was injected with poison, and has to choose between one of three needles to cure herself before all the victims end up being hanged: antidote, saline solution or acid. It's implied that she knows which one is the correct answer to not choose the one with a 3.53 number on it, but she's too frightened to do so. As the chains around her and the other subjects' necks begin to pull upwards, Ryan injects all three syringes into her. They are freed, but Carly painfully bleeds out and dies for her troubles.
- Never My Fault: Deconstructed. Unlike the rest of the group, Carly is adamant about not admitting any wrongdoing in the past, not even twisting a narrative to better suit her like with Anna. As this would kill all the victims, Ryan kills Carly to save them.
- No Full Name Given: Like most of the other barn game victims, her surname is never stated.
Saw X characters:
Carlos
Carlos
Played By: Jorge Briseno
Appearances: Saw X
A kid that John meets and bonds with during his trip to Mexico.
- Blood-Splattered Innocents: Carlos is drenched in blood in the Bloodboard Trap, even though John takes the most of it.
- Children Are Innocent: Carlos is just an ordinary kid, but that didn't stop Cecilia from putting him in a trap, not because he committed any crimes, but solely to spite Kramer. Even Kramer thought that's a low blow.
- Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: Amanda covers Carlos's eyes when they witness Cecilia and Parker fight each other for survival inside of the gas chamber trap.
- Language Barrier: Carlos only speaks Spanish, which John has very limited knowledge of. He would teach him how to say pull in Spanish when he fixed his bike. This would come back when he and John are put in the bloodboard trap and John instructs him "No jalar" before starting.
- Morality Pet: He serves to show John and Amanda haven't become completely heartless.
- Nice Guy: An anomaly in a movie franchise where almost every character is either a terrible person or has at least done terrible things, Carlos is a nice, normal kid who willingly waterboards himself with blood to protect a man he has met once, and is one of the only purely innocent people to be involved in Jigsaw's traps.
- Water Torture: Or, in this case, blood torture. Carlos was stuck in a trap in which he would be waterboarded with blood (or 'bloodboarded,' as Cecilia put it).
Custodian
Custodian
Played By: Isan Beomhyun Lee
Appearances: Saw X
An unnamed janitor at the hospital where John stays before coming to The Pederson Project's "clinic". When John sees him rifling through a patient's things and pocketing some valuables, he considers putting the janitor in a horrific trap. Fortunately, the janitor notices John and returns the goods.
- Advertised Extra: His appearance in the Eye Vacuum Trap is featured in the movie's teaser poster, despite him being a nameless minor character and the trap in question being only an Imagine Spot of John.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Jigsaw was going to have the janitor tested for petty theft had he gone through with it. Jigsaw has had janitors tested for less, you know.
- Eye Scream: His (imagined) trap would have involved him having two vacuum tubes strapped over his eyes. If he didn't win the game, his eyes would've been sucked out into the tubes.
- Fingore: His (imagined) game would have involved turning a dial to activate a mechanism that would break all five fingers on his right hand one at a time, as punishment for his petty theft.
- For Want Of A Nail: Taken to ridiculous extremes, as Kramer has an entire trap conceptualized for this guy the minute he sees him stealing, and the custodian putting the stuff back makes him forget the whole thing and saves the man's life.
- No Name Given: The first person Jigsaw considered in turning one of his victims not to be given a name. John not mentioning his name in the Eye Vacuum Trap's tape is a hint that the custodian's game isn't actually happening.
- Oh, Crap!: Panickingly puts the belongings he was stealing back once he finds John Kramer watching him. A good choice.
