Jigsaw and Accomplices (John Kramer) | Other Antagonists | Law Enforcement (Metropolitan Police Department) | Other Characters (I-III, IV-VI, 3D-X)
WARNING: All spoilers in this character subpage are unmarked. Read on or go back — make your choice.
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Saw II antagonists:
Xavier Chavez
Xavier Chavez
"It's just me, and that's the way I like it."
Played By: Frankie G
Appearances: Saw II
A drug dealer captured by Jigsaw and forced into the Nerve Gas House of Saw II with a half dozen other "subjects". While Xavier is reluctantly cooperative at the start of the game, he progressively becomes more antagonistic until it culminates with him trying to murder the rest of the victims to save himself.
- Asshole Victim: Being a murderous drug dealer and complete asshole, he's easily the least sympathetic of the victims kidnapped in Saw II next to Obi.
- Ax-Crazy: When he realizes how to get the combination to the safe, Xavier goes on a rampage, killing Jonas with his nail-studded bat, leaving Addison to bleed out in a trap, and trying to kill Amanda and Daniel.
- Berserk Button: He doesn't take the realization that Daniel is Eric Matthews' son very well at all.
- Brooklyn Rage: He may or may not be a New Yorker, but he fits the bill.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Shares this role with Jigsaw in Saw II specifically, given he's the most devious and actively malicious participant in the house, even if he wasn't the one who caused them all to be there.
- Dirty Coward: He throws Amanda into the trap intended for him. That being said, he later proves to have enough Villainous Valor to cut the back skin of his neck off when Amanda tells him she wouldn't tell him what the code on it is.
- Dumb Muscle: He really doesn't seem terribly bright, and rather than work with the others to find the code for the safe, he just brutally kills them or leaves them to die after finding their pieces of the code.
- Even Evil Has Standards: He appears just as horrified as everyone else when Gus is killed by the gun behind the door, likely because it was his idea to disregard the warning.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: As he's about to slip into killing others for his sake, Jonas tries to make Xavier sympathize with him, saying that they have to cooperate in order to be able to escape the house and return to protect their loved ones outside. Xavier coldly rebuffs him in response, saying that he only lives for himself and doesn't care whether others live or die.
- Evil Counterpart: He's compared and contrasted against Jonas as a repeat offender with a long rep sheet. But Jonas is a compassionate person who acknowledges his screw-ups, would be all too happy to turn his life around if he believed he could, and tries to keep the group in the Nerve Gas House together; whereas Xavier is an unrepentant sociopath who shirks responsibility onto others, and who is out for no-one but himself and admits he's fine that way.
- Expy: Acts as pretty much a ramped-up version of Quentin from Cube.
- Hate Sink: Xavier is one of the most despicable characters and victims in the whole franchise. He throws Amanda in a dirty needle pit and forces her to look for the key to the game that was meant for him. He also murders Jonas, neglects to help Addison when she gets her hands trapped and tries to murder Amanda and Daniel. His comeuppance at Daniel's hands is seen as very well-deserved.
- The Heavy: He acts as the single biggest threat to the players in Saw II, who are already racing against the clock in Jigsaw's test.
- Hot-Blooded: Always angry and violent, even before he starts killing everyone.
- It's All About Me: The only thing on his mind is self-preservation, and he refuses to so much as get a dirty needle stuck in himself.Xavier: It's just me and that's the way I like it.
- It's Personal: At first, he's just after one of the antidotes stashed around the house to save himself, and any of his fellow victims he hurts or leaves behind are just collateral damage to him. That is, until he finds the family photo and realizes that Daniel, who he's pursuing to obtain one of the numbers to the safe antidote, is actually the son of the crooked cop who put Xavier away...
- Jerk Jock: He's an overly aggressive meathead who alternates between bullying the other captives and trying to solve every problem with his muscles.
- Karmic Death: After killing one of his fellow victims whom was much more altruistic than himself, leaving another to certain death, and threatening to kill Daniel and Amanda too, Daniel kills Xavier in self-defence.
- Pet the Dog: He's initially just as protective and understanding about Laura as the rest of the group, even trying to console her when she freaks out after Gus dies. This goes away later, though.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: If his response to Addison for objecting to the "macho bullshit approach" he's using to try and break through a door is any indication. It could be more directed to the fact that she's a prostitute, however.Xavier: Look who's talking! The only door you know how to open is between your legs!
- Poor Communication Kills: As lampshaded by Xavier himself near the end, he doesn't need to murder anyone to get the number codes behind their necks. He could have just asked politely...
- Psychopathic Manchild: When Xavier fails to reach his antidote in time after Amanda (whom he forced to do the dirty work for him) gives him the key, he starts sobbing and flipping out like a little kid. He also blames her for his own inability to get the key into the lock in time (even dropping it once), and moves threateningly to hurt her before Jonas stops him.
- Redemption Rejection: He rejects any and all efforts by Jonas to reach out to and bond with him as a fellow crook who's done a lot of bad things that have cost him dearly, instead declaring that he's happy to be on his own against everyone else.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: He antagonised Amanda and holded antipathy for her the most. Unknowingly to him she is co-responsible for his and the others anguish episode
- Slashed Throat: Courtesy of Daniel in self-defense, this is how Xavier dies in the end.
- Symbolic Mutilation: As a drug dealer, he was meant to search around a giant pit of used needles to get the key to an antidote safe. However, he forces Amanda to do the task instead.
- White Shirt of Death: Xavier wears a white tank top that gets progressively covered in the blood of the other Nerve Gas House victims (including the ones he directly murders). His own blood eventually gets to the tank top when he cuts out part of his nape's skin and Daniel then slashes his throat.
Jigsaw antagonists:
Brad Halloran
Brad Halloran
"People died because of me! Innocent people died because of me! I did it!"
Played By: Callum Keith Rennie
Appearances: Jigsaw
The chief detective investigating the new Jigsaw murders in Jigsaw. His leads eventually point to Logan and Eleanor being the prime suspects, leading to a deadly game of cat and mouse.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Downplayed, but as he is about to be killed he frantically tells Logan that he is supposed to get a chance. It doesn't work.
- Ambiguous Situation: He technically won his game as presented, although he did so by lying and trying to kill Logan in his place, failing his Secret Test of Character. As he is about to die, he also tells Logan that Jigsaw is supposed to give his victims a choice. Whether he is right, he should be simply freed because he won, or he had already lost the game depends on the viewer's interpretation.
- Arch-Enemy: To Logan. Halloran lets Edgar kill Logan's wife while covering the crime up for him. The present storyline of Jigsaw revolves around Logan killing Edgar and several other informants of Halloran via recreations of previous Jigsaw works, which he attempts to frame Halloran for after murdering him as well.
- Asshole Victim: An interesting variation. While Halloran definitely deserves public humiliation and an arrest following his confession, he does not deserve to die in line with John's philosophy, as he passed his test. Logan murdering him anyway goes directly against John's vision, something Halloran angrily lampshades as purely unfair before dying. That said, he had cheated on his game just before, lying to Logan and to try and sacrifice him in his place, which could be seen as another circumstance for him to lose the game; whether Logan would have let him live if he hadn't, though, is still questionable.
- Big Bad: While he isn't the new Jigsaw killer, his constant antagonizing of Logan and Eleanor, as well as his corruption and enabling of criminals like Edgar that led to the new killer's rise, makes him the main antagonist of Jigsaw to Logan's Villain Protagonist.
- Cowboy Cop: Rolls up to an active crime scene in a Chevrolet SS while smoking a cigarette and not wearing a bulletproof vest, unlike his partner.
- Defiant to the End: When he realizes Logan isn't giving him a chance to survive, he tries to take a huge swing at him and doesn't cave into his taunt to scream.
- Dirty Cop: He is guilty of tampering with evidence, putting innocent people in jail, taking bribes, and letting his criminal informants go, one of whom ended up killing Logan's wife.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: His first name is never said in the movie nor is mentioned in the credits, but can be seen for a moment in his name tag.
- Jerkass: Halloran is a sleazy bastard with a penchant for violence.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Even if you think that his death is justified by him having lost the Secret Test of Character, Logan still diverted from John's philosophy by actually lying about the nature of the game, something Kramer was firmly against. Halloran had no Exact Words or secret clues to go on, it was just a straight-up lie.
- Off with His Head!: An odd yet disturbing subversion: after Logan activates Halloran's real laser collar (after he set off his own fake one to trick him into confessing and taking the blame for the crimes), he's killed by his head being sliced into multiple pieces.
- Rabid Cop: According to Logan, he has a tendency to rough up suspects.
- Smoking Is Cool: Is seen smoking a cigarette several times to emphasize his somewhat reckless and laid-back attitude.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Being a violent and corrupt cop on the trail of a dangerous Serial Killer, Halloran bears an uncanny resemblance to Eric Matthews. However, he's presented as much more of a malicious person than the deeply troubled, sympathetic Eric.
- Villains Want Mercy: In the end, despite being a corrupt cop and forcing Logan to go first in the laser collar trap, which would have killed him had his part of the trap not been fake, he begs for his life when Logan makes it clear he plans to kill him anyway, pointing out that he won his game and John Kramer always gave his victims a fair chance to win and a choice. Logan isn't swayed:Logan: You have a choice: scream... or don't.
Anna
Anna
"It was my husband's fault. Why am I being punished for something that he did?"
Played By: Laura Vandervoort
Appearances: Jigsaw
One of the test subjects of the barn game in Jigsaw. A woman who previously asphyxiated her infant child (whose name nor gender are never stated) and tricked her husband Matthew into thinking he did it, Anna is utterly confused by the situation she's put in, repeatedly claiming she's done nothing wrong for Jigsaw to do this to her. Nevertheless, she does try to be the most morally supportive of the group in an attempt to escape from the game herself.
- Abusive Mom: Technically averted, yet actually worse. She doesn't mistreat her child in any visible way... she just goes from zero to killing them in one step. And then frames her husband for good measure.
- Accidental Child-Killer Backstory: Subverted. Just before the second trap of the barn game begins, Anna tells the other victims that she and her husband simply lost their child, but it's revealed near the end that she actually asphyxiated the baby intentionally and tricked her husband into thinking he did it accidentally, which drove him to suicide.
- Asshole Victim: She's revealed to have framed her husband after murdering their child, and barely batted an eye when he killed himself over the guilt. No one will miss her after finding out all of that.
- Awful Wedded Life: Implied. In the flashbacks where she's seen talking to Matthew, they're almost always seen arguing, suggesting she wasn't on good terms with him. This gives her a possible reason for making Matthew blame himself after asphyxiating their child.
- Ax-Crazy: She murdered her baby in a fit of rage as she was already unpleasant to begin with due to her escalating arguments with her husband. Then, she framed said husband for it which led to his suicide. Lastly, she tries to kill Ryan (who rightfully calls her a "psycho-bitch") to save herself. These murderous actions reveal her to be quite unhinged and twisted next to being selfish and manipulative. Quite really says a lot about how utterly screwed up she is mentally.
- Berserk Button: Her baby's crying is what set her into an Ax-Crazy one that prompted her to Vorpal Pillow it in a psychotic episode.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: From the beginning, she's nothing if not resourceful and a team player, going out of her way to help the other people in the game survive when she could have easily let them die. Everything about her screams "nice and helpful person" until John says that she smothered her baby to death and pinned it on her husband, leading to him killing himself in prison out of crippling guilt and while everyone else in the game admits to what they did to be put in the game, Anna insists to the end that she didn't do anything wrong until John explicitly says what she did.
- Boom, Headshot!: Self-inflicts this by accident due to a Backwards-Firing Gun in an attempt to kill Ryan, leaving her to bleed out on the floor.
- Dark Is Evil: She is dark-haired and wears a black jacket, a black top and black shoes, and even has toenails with black polish. Likely to foreshadow her Dark Secret.
- Decoy Protagonist: Despite appearing as a standard Final Girl, she instead turns out to be the most despicable victim in the game, and ends up killing herself in haste, leaving Ryan as the Sole Survivor, who eventually dies anyway because she screwed their chances of escaping.
- Dirty Coward: She framed her husband for their baby's death, letting him face an unjust punishment in order to avoid jail time. She also shoots at Ryan after he saves her life!
- Disproportionate Retribution: In response to her escalating argument with her husband, she kills their child and then frames her husband for said murder, which leads to him committing suicide out of guilt.
- Distaff Counterpart: She's basically a female version of Xavier Chavez from Saw II, albeit more secretive about her intentions.
- Evil Redhead: Has dark red hair and is a totally rotten and repulsive human at her core.
- Final Girl: Played With. Anna shows all the traits of a traditional final girl early on: She is a resourceful and intelligent Action Survivor who comes across as kind, compassionate, and level-headed in comparison to the other players. But much of this is an act, so she eventually suffers a well-deserved Karmic Death. This leaves Ryan as the last man standing... but then he dies. The film then reveals that Logan, the first victim of the Barn, both survived his "death"—making him the Final Boy and sole survivor of the Barn—and later became the new Jigsaw.
- Foil: To Xavier Chavez from the second film. Both characters are Ax-Crazy Hate Sinks, but while Xavier was a vile douchebag the whole time and uses physical force and threats to save himself, Anna was smart enough as a Manipulative Bitch to hide her true nature with a mask of being an empathetic Final Girl, so she could get the other victims to trust her and help her escape.
- Foreshadowing: She says she didn't do anything to deserve being put in the barn game, yet John and his apprentices don't target most of their victims unless they did something to deserve it. This foreshadows that Anna is truly more reprehensible than she can admit to being.
- Hate Sink: One of the most detestable characters in the entire series, as she murdered her own baby and framed her husband, leading to him to committing suicide. She doesn't even care about her atrocious misdeed or other people.
- It's All About Me: The only thing on her mind is self-preservation, and she refuses to so much as admit to smothering her baby.
- Lack of Empathy: She views herself as an upstanding individual who didn't do anything wrong, despite having knowingly killed her own baby, made her husband (whom she implicitly hated, based on the arguments they had in flashbacks) blame himself, and eventually drove him to insanity and suicide.
- Manipulative Bitch: She really is despicable but plays the other survivors like a fiddle by showing empathy and being level-headed to get them to trust her out of pragmatism to save herself with their help.
- Mask of Sanity: She starts out appearing to be a traditional Final Girl, everything about her screaming "nice and helpful person"... but beneath this mask is an Ax-Crazy sociopath who stooped so low as to murder her own baby in a fit of rage and frame her husband for it without a flicker of remorse. When outed by Jigsaw, Anna drops the act and unhesitatingly tries to murder Ryan to save her hide.
- Moral Event Horizon: She crosses it at least twice: not only did she kill her baby in cold blood and then frames her husband for it, but instead of trying to give him some support for what, however horrific, still was supposedly an accident, but leaves them riddled with guilt until he takes his own life.
- Never My Fault: Even as she and the others end up facing doom on multiple occasions unless they confess their sins, she is reluctant to do so. It goes as far as to when Jigsaw himself admits to her that he knows the truth about how her baby really died and how she blamed her husband for the death she still refuses to accept responsibility for her actions.
- No Full Name Given: Like most of the other barn game victims, her surname is never stated.
- Pragmatic Villainy: She relies on cooperating with the other victims and presenting herself as an empathic, innocent victim to get them to trust her in order to escape the game alive. Ironically, the one time she's directly tested, her pragmatism turns out to be her downfall, as she just takes the more simple route without thinking it through and failing to notice John's Exact Words in play.
- The Sociopath: A high-functioning example. From the get-go, she's nothing if not resourceful and a team player, going out of her way to help the other people in the game survive when she could have easily let them die... but then it's revealed that most of this was an act to get the other victims to trust her and help her escape, and she's one of the most vile characters in the entire franchise. To wit, she smothered her own baby in a fit of rage and then made it look like her husband had accidentally rolled on top of and thus suffocated the baby, leading to him killing himself in prison out of guilt. Anna never once shows any remorse or sadness over the mess and refuses to accept responsibility for her actions, even when John directly confronts her with it, and when outed and left in the final room, she drops the act completely and doesn't hesitate to try to kill Ryan, the only other survivor, to save herself.
- Ungrateful Bitch: Tries to kill Ryan (and successfully dooms him with her own death) despite him saving her life twice before.
- Villain Has a Point: She calls out John for his lack of compassion. She's in no place to talk given her own callous deed, but she's not wrong given John arguably becomes a bigger monster than her with his many atrocious plans.
- Villains Want Mercy: Downplayed. After The Reveal, when John picks up his mask and muses about how pigs are highly compassionate animals, she coldly asks where John's compassion is.
- Vorpal Pillow: How she killed her baby.
- Walking Spoiler: The Reveal is pretty much her defining trait.
- Would Hurt a Child: Would kill her own baby, actually.
Edgar Munsen
Edgar Munsen
"I gotta choose who dies. Them or me."
Played By: Josiah Black
Appearances: Jigsaw
A meth addict and criminal informant for Brad Halloran. He is introduced in the opening of the film in a delirious state claiming he must do what Jigsaw says or he'll die. Edgar is promptly sniped by an unknown figure and put into a coma for the rest of the film.
- Ambiguous Situation: Halloran does sincerely raise the possibility Edgar did not murder Logan's wife, but due to Logan's thirst for vengeance against the detective, he doesn't care.
- Asshole Victim: A meth addict and remorseless criminal who previously murdered Logan's wife and got away with it thanks to Halloran. Suffice to say, he deserves everything that happens to him. That said, Logan directly murdered him despite him doing what he was told is the antithesis of John's philosophy.
- Butt-Monkey: He's introduced as a delirious victim of Jigsaw, gets sniped into a coma, and is later murdered by Logan while unconscious.
- Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Logan makes it appear as though Halloran killed Edgar after murdering him. As Halloran is murdered by Logan not long after, he uses Halloran as a posthumous figure to cover his tracks while he continues Jigsaw's legacy.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His murder of Logan's wife is a main motivating factor to why Logan decides to take up the then-dormant mantle of Jigsaw.
Spiral antagonists:
The Spiral Killer
William Emmerson
"John Kramer was right. The spiral. A symbol of change, evolution, progress. But why limit to an individual when you can apply it to a whole system?"
Played By: Max Minghella (onscreen) | Maximus and Leonidas Castrounis (in flashbacks)
Appearances: Spiral
The copycat killer in Spiral using Jigsaw's M.O specifically targeting police officers. Emmerson was an ordinary kid whose father was killed by Pete Dunleavy for trying to testify against a corrupt cop. Witnessing that event caused him to spiral downwards until he began exacting his pound of flesh on the city's police department.
Taking on the false identity of William Schenk, Emmerson infiltrated his way into the department to better exact his revenge on those most personal. He also hoped to recruit Zeke as his partner in crime, believing him to be the ideal cop and themselves to be similar in regards to having their lives ruined by corrupt officers.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: He's one of (if not the) least evil killers in the Saw franchise, with his monstrous nature being relegated entirely to his extreme methods and the brutal death games he orchestrates (which was true for all Jigsaw killers). Much emphasis is given to his status as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, and he's always polite in spite of the stronger crimes he's willing to commit. To top it all off, his friendship with Zeke was completely genuine, and he wanted the latter to join him in his crusade, even if he's calculating enough to know how unlikely that is.
- Ambiguous Situation: While its purpose is made clear, the reason he decided to murder Benny is left ambiguous. It's unknown if it was because it was part of his scheme on the long run and Benny willingly allowed Emmerson to sacrifice him, or if it was a desperate move by Emmerson to cover himself.
- Animal Motifs: As per series standard, pigs. Whereas John used pigs to symbolize a rotting world, Emmerson's taunting use of pig imagery is in line with the metaphor for corrupt police officers being "pigs."
- Arch-Enemy: He eventually becomes a played-with version of this towards Zeke. Emmerson sought to recruit Zeke as an accomplice since he was a moral detective who was ostracized by the Dirty Cops he targeted. However, he correctly believes that Zeke is simply bluffing when he accepts the offer and retaliates by forcing him to see his own father get killed.
- At Least I Admit It: Unlike John (and like most of his apprentices), Emmerson freely admits that he's a murderer; his games may give his victims a chance to survive, but that outcome is exceedingly unlikely (if not impossible) and he doesn't pretend he isn't responsible for their deaths.
- Beneath Suspicion: He's never suspected by anyone to be Spiral Killer, even just before revealing himself at the climax. That said, it's easy for the audience to assume this when he's supposedly captured by the killer, because his game is never actually shown, unlike the other victims in the film and many more in the previous ones.
- Big Bad: Of Spiral.
- By-the-Book Cop: While in his infiltration, he behaves like this to Zeke's Cowboy Cop.
- Calling Card:
- He designs traps that are rigged to severely injure his victims, hampering their attempts to escape them. Justified in that his victims are corrupt cops, and he has no intention of letting any of them live.
- Outside of trap design, he also leaves badges and body parts of murdered officers at scenes marked with a spray-painted red spiral.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Logan Nelson from the previous movie. Both are Jigsaw copycats out for revenge against corrupt cops responsible for the deaths of their loved ones (Logan's wife, Emmerson's father), have accomplices to suit their needs before killing them and bend their own rules from John's philosophy more than once to achieve their goals. Whereas Logan used to be a legitimate Jigsaw apprentice and wanted his victims to confess their sins to survive instead of actually following John's philosophy, Emmerson has no actual connection to the original killers, and simply wants his victims to die in his traps for contributing to the police department's corruption, believing that John's philosophy can be better applied to fix a system. There's also the fact that Logan is the Villain Protagonist of his film, while Emmerson is the Big Bad.
- Cop Killer: Whereas John targeted people who he felt didn't appreciate their blessings in life, Emmerson is carrying out a personal vendetta against corrupt police officers and detectives.
- Death Trap: His M.O, this being a Saw movie after all.
- Evil All Along: In the final game that Zeke is put through, Emmerson reveals himself as the Spiral Killer, and attempts to offer him to become his accomplice.
- Evil Laugh: His puppet has a distinct laugh like John's Billy, but sounds more like a giggling child than an electronic toy.
- Exact Words:
- He claims that Marcus was "the reason for all this. He's why I wanted to do this in the first place." On the surface, it seems like he's just talking about how Marcus' work inspired him to become a cop. In actuality, he's talking about how the rampant corruption under Marcus' watch led to his vendetta against the police.
- See Sarcastic Confession below.
- Family Man: As part of his fake identity as Schenk, he claims that he has a wife and a newborn son (whom he gives the same name as his actual father, Charlie).
- Fatal Family Photo: Early on in the film, he shows Zeke a photo of his wife and newborn child, appearing to set this trope up. Later on,a dead body believed to be Schenk's is discovered, seemingly playing the trope straight. Then it's subverted; not only is Schenk alive, but his family never really existed. He has actually been the Spiral Killer all along.
- Faux Affably Evil: Even when compared to most Jigsaw killers and their accomplices, he's one of the nicest killers in the series, in spite of deliberately wanting to murder his victims through incredibly cruel death traps. He even remains friendly towards Zeke when the latter finds out about his identity as the Spiral Killer, and is genuinely disappointed that he doesn't share his beliefs. With that said, he designs his traps in such a way that no one who finds themselves in them is able to escape and was motivated to reap grim vengeance on the police department that the officer who killed his father belonged to, instead of the redemptive trial-by-fire games the original Jigsaw was infamous for.
- Flayed Alive: How his fake death is set up, using the corpse of his accomplice as a decoy.
- Friendly Enemy: How he views his relationship with Zeke. Emmerson has a lot of respect for Zeke since he considers him to be the ideal cop. When Zeke calls him a "disloyal piece of shit", Emmerson counters that he's always been loyal to him, and offers him a chance to work together.
- Hypocrite: Though he states that he's only going after Dirty Cops, he killed and then flayed his accomplice Benny to use him as a body double. He doesn't seem to reflect on how this puts him in a similar league to the officers he's targeting.
- Jack the Ripoff: He's directly inspired by John, and believes that his methods will suit his purposes. However, in a series first, there's no direct connection between them.
- Knight Templar: Unlike John, he has no delusions that he's not a murderer. He just believes that his victims deserved to die, and killing them was doing a service to society.
- Malevolent Masked Man: He recycles the pig mask from the Jigsaw killers.
- New Meat: Upon beginning his infiltration, he's considered as this in the Metropolitan Police Department. Zeke even refers to him as such. He later invokes the trope in a horrifyingly literal fashion when he fakes his death, making everyone think he was flayed and left on a meathook in a butcher shop.
- Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: The younger villain to Zeke's older hero, he was a child when Zeke was still a beat cop.
- Perverse Puppet: His puppet, Mr. Snuggles, is a monstrous-looking pig marionette dressed as a cop with a wicked-looking grin, demonic red eyes and a shrill, childish laugh. This just further establishes Emmerson as his own entity.
- Police Pig: As a Visual Pun in regards to his MO, he has a police pig puppet named "Mr. Snuggles."
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: His puppet has a pair of red eyes like Billy, but over white irises instead of black.
- Sarcastic Confession: When he and Zeke arrive at the crime scene of Bozwick's game, he gives the offhand remark, "I've been dreaming about this since I was twelve years old." Come the reveal of his true identity as the Spiral Killer, it's shown that the catalyst for his line of work was his father being killed by a corrupt police officer when he was twelve, after which he and Zeke had their first interaction.
- Sinister Swine: As well as borrowing the pig mask from the Jigsaw killers, he has a creepy-looking Police Pig puppet known as "Mr. Snuggles".
- Time-Shifted Actor: For the main part of the film, he's portrayed by Max Minghella, while Maximus and Leonidas Castrounis play him in the flashback where he's seen as a child.
- Vigilante Man: He's arguably the closest killer to a typical vigilante in the series, only using the Jigsaw methods to murder Dirty Cops, who comprise a large part of the Metropolitan Police Department, and trying to get out of the way once his identity is in danger of being exposed. He was first motivated to do this when one of said cops murdered his father to prevent him from testifying against another cop.
- Virtue Is Weakness: What makes him suspicious of Zeke in the final act. Shortly before The Reveal, he set up a game where Zeke can either try to save his former Dirty Cop partner Pete or leave him to die. Because Zeke tried to save Pete, he says Zeke failed the test and is therefore wary of how readily he seems to accept his We Can Rule Together offer. Of course, he's totally right to be suspicious.
- Visionary Villain: He seeks to purge the Metropolitan Police Department of all its corrupt officers.
- Visual Pun: "Pig" is a common slang for cops, and befitting that, we have a cop killer's persona with a police officer pig puppet.
- We Can Rule Together: He strongly desired to recruit Zeke as his number two, under the role of fetching the bad cops while Emmerson tested them.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He specifically targets corrupt police officers, believing he is bettering society by doing so.
Benny Wrights
Benny Wrights
Played By: Chad Camilleri
Appearances: Spiral
A homeless drug addict and an accomplice of William Emmerson, Benny Wrights was responsible for luring Marv Bozwick to Emmerson. Emmerson later kills Benny and uses his corpse to stage a fake death of his.
- All There in the Manual: His name and connection to Emmerson are only given in the film's credits and the external material surrounding it.
- Ambiguous Situation: While its purpose is made clear, the reason Emmerson decided to murder Benny is left ambiguous. It's unknown if it was because it was part of Emmerson's scheme on the long run and Benny willingly allowed Emmerson to sacrifice him, or if it was a desperate move by Emmerson to cover himself.
- Desecrating the Dead: Emmerson skins his corpse after killing him to fake his own death.
Saw X antagonists:
The Pederson Project In General
The Pederson Project
A group of scammers in Mexico headed by Dr. Cecilia Pederson, who claim to run a medical program for an experimental cancer treatment and let cancer patients go through a fake treatment experience so they can steal their money. Having racked 34 victims before meeting Jigsaw, they especially prey on vulnerable patients, leading Jigsaw to target and force them into his most personal game…
- Asshole Victim: They're all 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.
- Con Man: Most of them pretend to be doctors or past patients of the fake treatment as a major part of their scamming procedure (with Mateo getting an ironic mention for actually being a veterinarian). Cecilia in particular enjoys scamming vulnerable ill people out of their money.
- Dirty Coward: As soon as they're chained to traps by John and Amanda, they all try ratting each other while claiming to have had a minimal role in the scam or, in Cecilia's case, offering yet another faux medical treatment. The only one who doesn't try to blame his fellow associates is Henry, though that could be because he was abducted separately from and at a later time than the rest of the members, meaning he has no one to rat out.Mateo: We have nothing to do with this! We didn't know what was going on! (points his finger to Cecilia) It was all her! She planned the whole thing!
John: Mateo, I don’t even know if that's your real name. - Equal-Opportunity Evil: The group is made up of a European (Cecilia), four Mexicans (Gabriela, Valentina, Mateo and Diego), and two Americans (Parker and Henry, the latter also being African-American).
- Evil Counterpart: Three of the group's members prove to be quite interesting ones to John, Amanda and Hoffman.
- Cecilia is the Evil Counterpart to John. She's the Evil Genius Leader of her group, is adept at manipulating scam victims to her side, shows quite a knack for plans to manipulate events, has a sociopathic side that's similar to but goes beyond John at his worst, and even manages to outplay John at times.
- Gabriela is the counterpart to Amanda. Both are/were drug addicts whose addictions got them into plotting far beyond what they intended. Amanda is very much aware of their similarities, and begs John to spare her.
- Parker to Hoffman. They both either are or pretend to be workaholic detectives, track down their enemy groups, wear formal suits even while fighting, and in general are The Big Guy to their group, albeit with serious qualms and tinges of regret (like Hoffman has with Simone in Saw VI). Both, in the end, get betrayed, directly or indirectly, by their leader and killed. However, Hoffman only serves John because he was forced to, while Parker serves Cecilia because he's in love with her and presumably for the riches he'll get.
- Faux Affably Evil: All of them put up charming fronts to try and make their victims believe they have their best interests at heart — Diego, the security guards, Gabriela, Mateo, Valentina, Parker and Cecilia all do so at one point or another in their own ways. Some are more genuinely affable than others, though.
- Indirect Serial Killer: While they didn't do much more to their victims than just take their money, the Project had essentially doomed 34 people to the false hope of having their cancer cured only to die.
- It's Personal: While John had furiously lashed out at people who wronged him before, they are one of the few who get delivered trap instructions in person by John and Amanda, in part due to how furious both are with them. The only time John did something similar was with Cecil, the killer of his child, and Easton, who denied him healthcare and receives the honor of having tapes personally addressed to him with an undisguised John.
- Mugging the Monster: As Hoffman says, "Out of all the men to cheat, you picked John Kramer?"
- Snake Oil Salesman: They supposedly cure terminal diseases, but their treatments are actually phony.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- Their scam scheme might have been more successful had they simply claimed their drug was experimental rather than being suppressed by Big Pharma, though admittedly most of their patients are desperate enough to likely ignore this.
- They have their victims transported at gunpoint and in a blacked-out van, which only heightens what a bad idea it is to trust the group. In fact, pointing guns at frail cancer victims already under stress physically and mentally from their cancer may not be the best idea regardless, especially with how threatening their "security" leader is.
- Cecilia only has Diego wear a fake beard for his surgeon's disguise, albeit with a concealing surgical mask and skullcap. Just his voice is enough to make John, even drifting in and out of consciousness, suspect something is up.
- Despite Amanda being able to see the caller ID of the phone Cecilia uses, both Cecilia and Parker seem to seriously believe their plan to have Parker pretend to be a victim until he can rescue her will work.
- Similarly, using their actual names easily allows John, Amanda and Hoffman to track them down. In fact, John kidnaps Diego on his own with none of the physical or tracking skills the others have because of this.
- In their game, almost all of them either threaten to kill John and/or Amanda (earning absolutely no chance of mercy from them), or take way too long to start complying with their respective tests.Valentina: When I get out of here, I’m gonna kill both of you motherfuckers!
Amanda: That’s a good plan. You’re gonna wanna really listen carefully to the rules in order to pull that off.
Valentina: Fuck you!
Cecilia Pederson
Dr. Cecilia Pederson
"For a guy as smart as you are, John, you kind of overplayed your hand here, wouldn't you say?"
Played By: Synnøve Macody Lund
Appearances: Saw X
"God. Is that really all you've got left, John? When I realized who you really were... Jig-fucking-saw! I got a bit worried. God's honest. And now, the great John Kramer is gonna die in one of his own traps. There's some wicked irony. And the crazy thing is, that you could've just walked away! Acknowledge that you got beat. Got conned. But no... you just had to come back, didn't you?"
A Norwegian alleged doctor and the head of The Pederson Project.
- Back-Alley Doctor: Although she appears to have some actual medical knowledge, since she tries to explain to Mateo the tools he's offered for the Brain Surgery Trap, she's not a licensed doctor, just a con artist who runs a medical scam.
- Bad Boss: Even without mentioning how she kills a couple of her subordinates (either by outright murdering them herself or dooming them in their games) and using one of their corpses to her advantage, it's implied that she didn't treat them well and kept most of the money they stole for herself even before they were abducted, given how she appears to be rather wealthy whereas the other members (aside from Parker) seem to be in poor economic conditions, since most are working in other jobs they find dissatisfying, and Gabriela hasn't received any rehabilitation for her drug addiction. Adding to this is how she casually mentions in the middle of her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to John that Valentina and Mateo's deaths meant she had two people less to split the group's earnings with. On top of that, Cecilia knew beforehand that her newest scam victim was the Jigsaw Killer himself; she quite foolishly went ahead with thieving him without telling the others who he is, because she thought she could outsmart him, knowing and most likely not caring that this would put her and her employees into Jigsaw's sight.
- Beauty to Beast: She's played by the beautiful Synnøve Macody Lund, and while she survives her trap, the Deadly Gas she was attacked withnote leaves a nasty chemical scar on her right cheek. While we don't see what it did to the rest of her body, the damage it did to Parker's skin doesn't bode well for her.note
- Big Bad: Of Saw X, being the leader of The Pederson Project and the only scammer who actively tries to sabotage John's plans while also antagonizing the rest of her group.
- Bond One-Liner: She drops one after breaking Gabriela's neck."Unfortunately... I don't think she's gonna make it."
- Bullying a Dragon: She knew John was “Jig-fucking-saw” and yet she put her and her employees’ lives in danger by scamming him, with the arrogance that she could beat him at his own game. She was sorely mistaken.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: By the end, the wisest choice for her would be to just play her trap; the Bloodboarding Trap is the easiest, less physically harmful trap John set up for the scammers, with the highest chance of survival if she and Parker would’ve taken turns drowning themselves in blood until it ended. If she played through the trap and not try to get her money back, she would’ve been spared a slow, painful death.
- Distaff Counterpart: For being part of a corrupt offset of a public organization (albeit false) whilst being a massive Bad Boss to her cohorts with little to no care whatsoever, she's basically an even more unsympathetic Marcus Banks from Spiral. They both even perish via a hidden wire that reveals their respective traps' true function.
- Evil Genius: While appearing to be a genuine doctor, she shows to have the exact same grasp on psychology and thinking on her feet as John does. It's unfortunate for her that John being The Chessmaster always has one or two steps planned ahead after he correctly deduces Cecilia and her "victims" won't stop lying to him as it only took Cecilia's faux medical operation to make John stop listening to her completely.
- Eviler than Thou: She tries to pull this on John, revealing how depraved she is by killing one of her employees who survived their trap and then leaving John and Carlos to die in the trap meant for her and Parker. Unfortunately for her, John foresaw the possibility she would betray him, including putting him in his own trap, so he had another inescapable trap set up as punishment that would be activated when she tried to get her money.
- Evil Wears Black: She initially wears light-colored clothes, but when her true nature is revealed, she wears black pajamas that she’s stuck wearing for the rest of the film.
- Facial Horror: Not as bad as Gabriela, but by the end of her test, she has a big chemical burn on her face.
- Final Girl: Subverted. While she's the only one of the Con Artists aside from Diego to remain alive by the end of the movie, she ends up stuck in a room full of deadly gas, making her survival unlikely.
- Foil: To John. On basis, both of them are criminal masterminds who play on people's desire or hope to live, and neither is a saint in their own right. However, they're polar opposites regarding most of their further details.
- John is a terminally ill Serial Killer who, in his own twisted way, believes he helps healthy people improve their lives by putting them in deadly situations. Cecilia is a healthy con artist who exploits terminally ill people's hope for life to steal money from them, without outright killing or endangering them for the most part.
- Whereas John actively searches for victims and kidnaps them by force, Cecilia lures people with various means of "advertising" and offers them to be clients of her fake experimental treatment.
- John's murders are well-known among the public and he's generally hated for them, while Cecilia is a Villain with Good Publicity thanks to the carefully-made front for her scam as a revolutionary medical program that could kick off the regular elaboration of cancer treatments in the future.
- John treats his apprentices like good people unless they try to defy him, even having a family-like relationship with one of them. Cecilia, on the other hand, is a Bad Boss who doesn't care about her subordinates' well-being, implicitly giving them very small parts of her group's overall earnings and not hesitating to kill them if doing so gives her a personal advantage.
- Furthermore, in stark contrast to John's MO of helping people overcome some perceived vice with his games, Cecilia rigs the Bloodboarding Trap specifically to try and force John to abandon his principles.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Of Saw VI, as she was responsible in the long run for turning John against William because of her supposed program's experimental treatment, which William personally declined to finance, only for John to fall for her scam when he pays for the "treatment" himself.
- Greed: In her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to John, Cecilia tells him that when Mateo and Valentina each died, her thoughts were that there was one less person to split the money with. It also proves to be her fatal weakness. Had she cut her losses and just run out the door with Parker, she wouldn't have gotten trapped.
- Hate Sink: She's arguably the most detestable person in the franchise, and that's saying something given her rather stiff competition. She's not only a greedy con artist who targets the most vulnerable of society knowing they'll likely die before they can ever expose her, but she throws everyone around her, including her co-conspirators, under the bus to survive John's game. She even kills Gabriela just to keep her from talking, and forces an innocent child, Carlos, to suffer her Blood Boarding Trap for no other reason than to mentally torture John. She is so abominable that it makes John look good by comparison, even with audiences aware he is an Indirect Serial Killer himself.
- I Have a Family: Inverted. During the game, Cecilia snatches her phone and tries to call someone with it, only for Amanda to (violently) confiscate it from her. Cecilia then begs John that she has a father; however, she doesn't use her father's heart as her reason for mentioning him but instead, his medical expertise, which she claims could actually cure John's cancer. To push the point further, by the time of The Reveal, it turns out that Amanda read on the phone that Cecilia had called Parker so he could come to help her, not her father.
- I Shall Taunt You: Humorously enough, she mocks John by telling him to "do the scary voice" and viciously slaps Amanda. It quickly becomes less funny when she forces them to chain themselves into traps, and then does it to a child.Cecilia: New game! It's called "We Live, You Die, Fuck You". Simple enough.
- Lack of Empathy: Not only did she scam thousands of dollars from cancer patients, but when most of her subordinates end up killed in their game (in particular, she personally murders Gabriela despite the latter passing her test), she's actually grateful they're dead because now she has "less people to split the stolen money with", as she says herself.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After spending a good portion of scamming dying people of a cure for cancer, and betraying everyone she worked with for her own survival, Cecilia is left to die in a room filled with poison gas with no way out, while she has to watch as John, Amanda, and Carlos walk away with all of the money from their last con.
- No Honor Among Thieves: While she is the film's main invoker of this trope, she also gets bitten by it.
- Throughout the game it looked like she desperately cared for her cohorts actively encouraging them to play and win the games. When "freed" by Parker (in the sense she was only being led to a different trap), Cecilia boasts they were just employees of hers whom she would've had to pay wages and even offs Gabriela (who won her own game at the cost of severe burns) to keep her crimes discreet.
- Parker tells Cecilia "I'd die for you" and even shares a kiss with her. Then the two are thrown in a competition deathtrap, and the former lovers engage in a battle royal with Cecilia stabbing Parker and winning. It can be inferred that because Cecilia was able to realize and find the ventilation hole first in sticking her head out, she had a literal head start on the battle while Parker was left to absorb the poisonous gas and was thus far more weakened for their fight.
- Secretly Wealthy: She only accepts physical cash for her (faux) medical treatment, and by taking money from multiple wealthy people, she was able to buy a large multiple-story mansion by the time of Saw X's events. This doesn't last in the long run once she's abducted, as all her possessions (even up to her phone) are confiscated by Amanda.
- Smug Snake: It takes an outrageous amount of arrogance to deduce that one of your ailing cancer patients is a notorious murderer, yet you still try to scam him out of his money and assume you could outwit him easily. And once she seemingly has the upper hand against John, she takes a brief moment to gloat about how she outplayed and is smarter than him.
- The Sociopath: She is a realistic depiction, being adept at feigning deep connections with her scam victims and her fellow trap victims without actually caring for them. This was apparent in trailers the moment she was shown not desperately shaking her shackles or screaming, but instead angrily yelling at John; and even earlier by how she charmed John into believing she cured him when she did nothing of the sort.
- Too Dumb to Live: Out of all the scammers' mishaps, perhaps the greatest of all belongs to Cecilia herself; she actually figured out that John is the Jigsaw Killer, and despite this knowingly scams him afterward, probably because she was sure she could outsmart him once he targets her.
- Uncertain Doom: She was last seen stuck in a locked room with windows made of bulletproof glass, and lingering heavy amounts of poisonous gas without any clear way to for her to get out or call for help. Even if she makes it out, she's likely screwed by the fact that she's a wanted criminal whose money John stole to give away to Carlos.
- Unseen No More: She was first mentioned in passing in Saw VI as the head of the experimental cancer therapy John wanted to take with coverage from Umbrella Health, but didn't make a physical appearance until Saw X. Played with in that some passing dialogue in X retcons the mentioned person as being Cecilia's father Finn (who's implicitly said to be a genuinely benevolent doctor, but also a recluse who isn't accepting more patients) rather than herself.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: While John was already Jigsaw by the time she met him, her not helping him to cure his cancer likely prevented any chance for John to stop the Jigsaw killings prematurely.
- Villain with Good Publicity: As far as the world knows, she's a renowned pioneer in cancer research who heads a global outreach program to tend to desperate patients in need. Behind closed doors, though, she's a greedy, sociopathic quack.
- Villainous Breakdown: Cecilia remains remarkably calm and collected throughout the whole game up to her own trap... until she realizes that she's been Out-Gambitted and panics. While chemical gas spreads in the room she's trapped in, she frantically fights for her survival and murders Parker in order to poke her head through a makeshift hole out of the room to avoid suffocating. As John, Amanda, and Carlos leave, she frantically screams out for John as she's left to rot in the gas-filled room.
- Would Hurt a Child: She puts Carlos, an innocent young boy, into the Blood Boarding trap simply to spite John. Thanks to John's machinations, though, Carlos ends up alive without suffering too much.
Parker Sears
Parker Sears
Played By: Steven Brand
Appearances: Saw X
A man whom John sees being 'operated on' by Cecilia and her team. After John learns of Cecilia's true nature and captures her and her medical staff, he begins to put them through his games, only for Parker to burst in with a gun claiming to have also learned of Cecilia's scam and demanding his money back. However, the truth is that Parker is yet another member of Cecilia's team and is simply faking being a victim in order to put one over on John and Amanda. It seemed to work, only for John to turn the tables on him and his partner at the very last moment.
- The Dragon: Subverted at the last minute. He genuinely was planning to rescue Cecilia from the games, but when forced into a competition-based trap, he immediately fights Cecilia for his life. And this is after he told her, "I would die for you".
- Even Evil Has Standards: He is visibly horrified by Cecilia’s decision to place a child in a Jigsaw trap, and while it’s not as horrific as most, he decides to leave to get the money from the control room rather than watching the kid suffer and die. Though of course, he could’ve simply tried to let Carlos go instead.
- Foreshadowing: As he lays out to John while pretending to be a victim of the scam, he's a detective who is so obsessed with his work that he has neglected his family, arrives to the factory seeking revenge against Cecilia, and thinks money will be an acceptable gift for the neglect he showed to his family. This perfectly fits trap victims from previous movies, such as the workaholic Lawrence Gordon, the allegedly Jigsaw-obsessed detective Allison Kerry, and the revenge-obsessed, neglectful father Jeff Denlon. While he turns out to have been making the whole thing up, it's one of the first things that might make the viewer suspect he'll be placed in a trap as well.
- Irony: After the reveal that he was also part of the medical scam, he claims that he would die for his lover, Cecilia. Minutes later, when both of them are placed in a trap that requires one of them to die for the other's survival, Parker quickly turns on Cecilia and tries to kill her.
- Laser-Guided Karma: He helped Cecilia cruelly scam countless people by making people think she was a compassionate and self-sacrificing doctor. Then he was put in a situation where he could only live if Cecilia sacrificed herself, and he subsequently died when Cecilia treated him just like she'd treated all the victims he helped her con.
Gabriela
Gabriela
Played By: Renata Vaca
Appearances: Saw X
A drug-addicted woman who claims to have been cured by Cecilia, but is actually in on her scam.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Does this the most out of all the scammers, first trying to tell John that she meant no harm while sobbing, and then pleading Amanda to help her because she thinks John will simply kill everyone in the room in agonizing ways, including Amanda herself.
- All for Nothing: She wins her game and survives her trap, only to be murdered by Cecilia shortly thereafter.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: In-Universe. Amanda sees her as a relatively innocent person damaged by drug addiction and steered by it to act against her good nature, wrapped around Cecilia's finger to enact th edoctor's bidding and feed her habit. On the other hand, John insists that she made her choices like the rest of the group and that her trauma neither excuses her participation nor exempts her from being tested.Amanda: Sometimes, we get sucked into things that... are against our nature. Drugs are as vicious as they are powerful.
John: We all have free will. Gabriela had her own free will. And if you can't handle this, how will you handle the rest of our work? - Asshole Victim: Played With. Amanda takes pity on her, being a recovering drug addict herself, and briefly questions John. Later, John is willing to let her walk and get medical help as she passes her test and is saddened when Cecilia murdered her. She may have been in on the con, but she earned some genuine sympathy from her captors.
- Body Horror: She's forced to either break her hand and wrist with a small sledgehammer or have her face melted off with radiation -– and the machine remains on throughout the trap regardless; she survives but suffers both facial burning and broken bones, causing her to pass out and leaving her defenseless from a neck-breaking stomp from Cecilia.
- Chekhov's Gun: Averted. While it ends up being left in the open for someone else to pick up, the hammer she uses doesn't get used after her trap at all.
- Facial Horror: Her face is horribly melted by a combination of heat and radioactivity.
- Freudian Excuse: Cecilia got her to join the scam by preying on her addiction. The Jigsaws debate how valid this is. Amanda, a fellow addict, sympathizes with her since she understands how damaging drugs can be to someone. John believes she still had a choice.
- Morality Pet: Before knowing the program was a scam, John treated Gabriela nicely and intended to gift her a bottle of liquor. Even after the revelation, Amanda sympathizes with her as a fellow drug addict. After Gabriela passes her test, John and Amanda try to get her medical attention and are horrified when Cecilia kills her.
- Neck Snap: Cecilia kills her this way.
- No Full Name Given: Her surname is never stated.
- Not Quite Saved Enough: She survives her game and is set to be sent to a hospital, only to be killed anyway.
- The Quiet One: Outside of acting for the patients, she has a quiet, demure demeanor, even when her own life is being threatened and witnessing horrific mutilation; although she screams at the beginning and later breaks down and refuses to listen to her tape, even that is much quieter than the other victims.
- Symbolic Mutilation: She pretends to have been cured of cancer, so her trap is set up like a simulated cancer treatment, featuring loads of irradiation that end up burning her face.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Amanda felt some sympathy with Gabriela, having a past with drug addiction herself, so she delayed her test out of personal feelings and encouraged giving her medical attention when she passed. But when Cecilia callously murders her shortly after, Amanda is beyond horrified and calls her a sick bitch.
- You Remind Me of X: Amanda doesn't say it outright, but she empathizes with Gabriela as a fellow victim of drug addiction and speaks more kindly about her to John than the others. Evidently, she sees a lot of herself in the other woman.Amanda: Sometimes, we get sucked into things that... are against our nature. Drugs are as vicious as they are powerful.
Valentina
Valentina
Played By: Paulette Hernandez
Appearances: Saw X
A member of The Pederson Project who claims to be a surgeon, and is one of the most prominent members present during the "surgeries", alongside Mateo. Outside of the medical scam, Valentina is a prostitute.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: As John and Amanda set up her test, Valentina tries to act like she's Defiant to the End at first, only to break down into whimpering and begging when she's told that she has to amputate one of her legs.Valentina: Are you fucking crazy? What makes you think I’d fucking cut off my own leg?
John: Because if you don’t, the wire saw that’s wrapped around your neck will first cut into your skin, then your vertebral ligaments, and finally, it’ll sever your spinal cord.
Valentina: (whimpering) No!
Amanda: The CliffsNotes version? It’s gonna cut your head off.
Valentina: Please... Please don't do this. Please- Please help me! Please...
John: That's exactly what we are doing, Valentina. This is not retribution. It's a reawakening. - All for Nothing: Valentina amputates her own leg without any anesthesia and manages to extract bone marrow from her bleeding stump. She still dies because she can't collect enough bone marrow in the short time Jigsaw gave her.
- Attempted Rape: Just before she's abducted during one of her shifts as a prostitute, a client tries to rape her. Amanda saves her just in time, but given what happens next, Valentina probably wished she didn't.
- Body Horror: John forces Valentina to saw open her own leg and jam a funnel into the bone to drain its bone marrow — even if she had managed to collect enough bone marrow to survive the trap, her body would be left in a state that would barely allow her to survive afterwards: even if the instruments she used were sterilized, the room where she was in probably isn't, so even if Valentina survived her trap, death by blood loss or due to infection were very likely.
- Butt-Monkey: Valentina has an absurd amount of bad luck throughout the film: Amanda kidnaps her not even a minute after she fends off a rape attempt, is forced to amputate her own leg and collect bone marrow from it while in excruciating pain, and while she gets likely one or two seconds away from escaping the trap, Amanda and John let her die anyway.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Getting decapitated after spending one minute trying to collect bone marrow from a leg you just amputated yourself is a very gruesome way to go.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Valentina works as a prostitute outside of the scam group, is captured by Amanda after shooting a client who was trying to rape her in an unfortunate shift, and out of the five scammers tested in the factory, she is the first to die.
- Fan Disservice: She's a prostitute and was abducted while wearing a body-hugging mini-dress that exposes a lot of her bare legs... that she would have to sever as part of her test.
- Life-or-Limb Decision: Valentina is forced to amputate her own leg in order to survive. She still dies.
- No Full Name Given: We only learn her first name.
- Off with Her Head!: How she dies after she fails her test.
- Sinister Schnoz: Valentina has a long, pointy nose.
- Symbolic Mutilation: She pretends to be a surgeon so John forces her to amputate her own leg, testing her on a skill she doesn't actually have but falsely claims to.
- You Are Too Late: Valentina horribly mutilates herself and collects bone marrow in an attempt to stop her own trap from killing her, but she is unable to get enough bone marrow in time and still dies.
- Your Makeup Is Running: When she wakes up after being imprisoned by John and Amanda, she becomes a sobbing mess, which causes her makeup to run down her face.
Mateo
Mateo
Played By: Octavio Hinojosa
Appearances: Saw X
A member of The Pederson Project who claims to be a surgeon, alongside Valentina. Outside of the group, he is a janitor at a veterinarian clinic, as well as Gabriela's drug dealer.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: As soon as he wakes up with a foot chained to a wall, sees John and Amanda, and learns of the situation he's in, he's quick to beg John to spare him. Combined with Dirty Coward in that he tries to pin all of the group's blame on Cecilia to make himself look sympathetic.Mateo: Mr. Kramer, Mr. Kramer! Please, listen to me! I beg you! I beg you, please! Please!
- Big "WHY?!": He shouts one to John when he wakes up in the clinic, John enters the room, and he realizes that John has put him there.
- Body Horror: Mateo is forced to drill open his own scalp and pry a piece of his brain out, which is shown in graphic detail.
- Butt-Monkey: Mateo's fear gets used for comedy quite a bit, but it rapidly becomes clear that even scamming cancer patients didn't merit what he went through. Even after opening his own scalp and taking out a piece of his own brain, he still dies because the brain piece didn't dissolve fast enough for the trap to be stopped.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Mateo's failure to complete the Brain Surgery Trap in time leads to him getting a mechanical mask lined with heating coils closed onto his face, burning it off as he screams in agony.
- No Full Name Given: The audience only learns his first name.
- Symbolic Mutilation: Mateo pretended to be a surgeon, so John forces him to excise some of his own brain tissue. He's tested on skills he doesn't actually have but falsely claims to have. Mateo's test even has the bonus point of matching John's cancerous brain tumor (on top of being a Call-Forward to Dr. Lynn Denlon's test in Saw III).Mateo: I don't know what the fuck all of these things are! Medical supplies, I think, and... And there's a fucking bonecutter?!
- You Are Too Late: Mateo open his skull and is able to pluck out a piece of his brain, but once placed in acid, his brain matter takes too long to dissolve, which means that he is unable to get the key in time and is face is fried by the mechanical mask.
Diego Cortez
Diego Cortez
Played By: Joshua Okamoto
Appearances: Saw X
A scammer of The Pederson Project who pulls double duty, both bringing patients from the airport to the group's "clinic" and pretending to be a member of the medical staff named "Dr. Cortez."
- Body Horror: John forces him to carve through his own arms to remove bombs cabled through his flesh, or let them explode and kill him, albeit with a far more generous time than the other scammers.
- Chekhov's Gunman: He serves as one for both the trap victims and Amanda and John. John interrogates him to the extent of the scam and he reveals Parker Sears is on it too; the lack of his presence causes Pederson to begin to suspect that John had realized Parker would arrive as a contingency, but not completely until it’s too late.
- Determinator: Once he realizes the nature of his trap, Diego doesn't spend his time deliberating like many other Jigsaw victims but gets to cutting like a madman. Despite cringing and blubbering as he does so, he gets both pipe bombs out of his arms within the 3 minutes he was given without pause and becomes one of the few Jigsaw victims to pass a test and live.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The fake surgeon is forced to cut away his own flesh.
- Now That's Using Your Teeth!: With a minute and three-quarters to spare, having gotten rid of the first bomb, he grabs the second bomb with his teeth and yanks it out, throwing it far enough away to avoid getting blown up.
- Pet the Dog: After he survives his own trap, John gives him immediate medical attention; and it seems that Diego genuinely repented for his role in the scam: as he had the choice to throw the bombs toward John, or attack him with the scalpels taped to his hand, but didn't.
- Sole Survivor: He’s the only one of the scammers to survive their test, except for Gabriela, who won her game but got murdered by Cecilia.
- The Stool Pigeon: John gets him to confess that Parker and Henry are also part of the Pederson Project.
Henry Kessler
Henry Kessler
Played By: Michael Beach
Appearances: Saw X
An alleged member of a cancer support group and war veteran who claims that Cecilia cured him. He turns out to be another of her minions.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When John tells Henry about the situation he's in following his capture, Henry begs John to spare him out of fear that the latter seeks to kill him.Henry: Please... John, please. Please don't kill me!
John: That's the last thing that you should be worried about. Now... I want to play a game. - The Dog Was the Mastermind: When he first appears, he seems like a friendly cancer patient and a war veteran who wants to get John the same help he received. The mid-credits reveal he was in on the scam as a recruiter.
- Gutted Like a Fish: He’s last seen getting a device strapped to his stomach that looks like it’ll claw into his stomach or give him an actual war wound to show people.
- Honey Trap: Cecilia uses him to attract cancer patients.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: While it initially looks like he got away clean, in the mid-credits stinger, John has Hoffman track him down and put him in a trap on his stomach, which had the fabricated scars he showed John.
- Laser-Guided Karma: He lured people into the con by showing off false surgical scars on his chest. He ends getting put in a trap that will it severely scarred for real if he even survives.
- Phony Veteran: He called the so-called scars on his stomach his war wound. John and Hoffman decide to give him real ones after tracking him down.John: Where's your scar, Henry?
- Token Minority: The only African-American in the entire film.
- Villains Out Shopping: He buys a blueberry scone while being quite Nice to the Waiter before telling John about the Pederson Project.
