The gore here is jaw-dropping.
Thanks to the Saw franchise's infamous reputation as a Torture Porn series, the immense presence of the Cruel and Unusual Death trope is kind of a given.
Saw:
- Paul Leahy, the very first dead victim seen in the series, is already a qualifier. He was forced to carefully crawl through razor wire in the Razor Wire Maze, but wasn't able to properly make it through and just got shredded by the razors.
- Mark Wilson had to find the combination to a safe out of hundreds written on the walls while using only a candle for light in the pitch-black room, naked and covered in flammable jelly. Predictably, he ended up fumbling the candle and burning to death.
- Three words: Reverse Bear Trap. It had become a signature icon of the series for a good reason. When activated, the victim wearing this device will get their jaw ripped open, leaving a gaping, bloody maw. While the first film gives us a glimpse with it destroying a mannequin head, we don't get to see such a process in action on an actual person until Saw 3D, where as revenge for attempting to use a newer model on him in the previous film, Mark Hoffman kills Jill Tuck using the original version of the trap. And as the page image shows, the results were NOT pretty.
Saw II:
- Obi Tate is cooked alive in the Furnace as he attempts to get the pair of antidotes inside it.
- Addison Corday bleeds to death while trying to get an antidote in the Razor Box, by getting both of her wrists trapped inside blades and cut up. She's left to die by Xavier once he examines the number on her nape.
Saw III:
- The Classroom Trap had chains pierced through Troy's body, who was forced to remove them before he ended up getting blown up with a nail bomb.
- The Angel Trap requires Allison Kerry to fish a key out of a jar of acid with her hand (which doesn't work, thanks to Amanda rigging the trap), and then rips her ribs apart.
- Danica Scott is left naked and tied up in a freezer room. She dies frozen by a series of cold water streams, which Jeff fails to save her from in time.
- Judge Halden was set to drown in the gore of rotting pig carcasses ground up above him, but it's subverted when Jeff saves his life. He later dies a comparatively much less horrific death of taking a shotgun blast to the side of his face.
- Timothy Young, the prime object of Jeff's obsession for vengeance, gets the worst of the victims in Jeff's trial. He's put into a device known as "The Rack" that will twist all his limbs apart before his neck undergoes the same fate unless Jeff chooses to save him. Jeff fails to do so despite trying his hardest.
Saw IV:
- Subverted with Brenda. Her trap, the Scalping Seat, would've ripped off her scalp, but Rigg is able to stop it. She ends up dying by getting thrown through a mirror while trying to kill Rigg instead.
- In the Bedroom Trap, Ivan Landsness is forced to gouge out both his eyes under a timer. Once the timer ends, Ivan had only gouged one of them, to which his limbs are torn off his body in quick succession.
Saw V:
- The Pendulum Trap required Seth Baxter to crush his hands in a pair of vices to supposedly escape. However, Hoffman (the one who set up the trap) didn't install a trigger to respond to that, and thus Seth ended up getting his body split in half by a swinging blade with his organs getting flung out.
- Peter Strahm is slowly Squashed Flat by the walls in the Glass Coffin's room closing in on him. Among the details we get to see is the bones in his left arm snapping out of their surrounding muscle and skin.
Saw VI:
- Dan Erickson gets a rare non-trap example. He has his jugular vein cut out by Hoffman and is left writhing on the floor for a while. Then Hoffman comes back to douse him with gasoline and burn him alongside the whole FBI research lab.
- William Easton ends up dying by a wall of needles injecting him with hydrofluoric acid, melting his body in an incredibly gruesome way.
Saw 3D:
- The Skinheads, as a result of their leader Evan failing to win his game on time, nearly all die horrifically. Kara gets her face disintegrated by a moving tire, Dan's arms and jaw are torn off when the car Evan is in goes out of control, and Evan himself is sent flying out a windshield with the skin glued on his back forcibly torn off his body, bleeding to death. Averted with Jake, who is simply run over by the car.
- In Bobby Dagen's trial:
- Nina gets her throat pierced by metal rods.
- Suzanne's face is impaled by metal spikes.
- Joyce Dagen gets brutally burned alive by a brazen bull for Bobby's failure in his final test, which is particularly horrifying for someone who did nothing wrong in comparison to the other victims.
- While it's an uncertain death that doesn't happen onscreen, the last we see of Hoffman is him getting locked in the Bathroom by Dr. Lawrence Gordon, who leaves him to die a slow death from dehydration or starvation.
Jigsaw:
- 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 that died from her thieving. She refuses to do so, and to save the group, Ryan injects her with all three. The result is that Carly is literally melted from the inside out by acid, with a face bleeding from every orifice.
- Mitch is sent tumbling into the coils of the Cycle Trap when Anna tries to help him get through it, and gets Flayed Alive before being spat out as a mutilated corpse.
Spiral:
- The opening Subway Trap has Marv Bozwick forced to tear off his tongue to escape the trap's restraint and subsequently an incoming subway train. As to be expected from an opening trap, he fails and gets ripped apart by the train.
- The Finger Trap requires Fitch to tear off his fingers to get out of a water-filled basin that would electrocute him otherwise. While he accomplishes the task, he did it at a point when the water reaches the torn copper wire, and his electrocution goes on for a considerable time.
- In the Wax Trap, as Angie Garza struggles to sever her spinal cord and the time runs out, she's not only burned to death by most of the wax, but a good part of it also pours on her face, suffocating her at the same time.
Saw X
- 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.
