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Fridge Brilliance
- The series' prominent use of Anachronic Order with Sequencing Deceptions, Flashbacks, and Once More, with Clarity scenes seems like an odd stylistic choice, until you realize that the story is basically a jigsaw puzzle, and you have to put the pieces together yourself.
- Billy the freakish little puppet can seem oddly out of place in a series full of torture machinery and gritty, realistic violence. But consider what the core of the franchise really is: manipulation. Jigsaw is The Chessmaster through and through, and almost everyone, victim or villain, has been at one point a pawn in his long running game, from apprentices like Amanda and Hoffman to hapless hostages like Lynn or Adam. John runs everything behind the scenes all the way to his death, like a gruesome puppet show. Billy is the mascot because he symbolizes the games as a whole, and the mechanical nature of Jigsaw's puppetry.
- And speaking of Billy, ever wonder why he's the Mascot Villain of the franchise (Ala Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, etc.) rather than any of the Jigsaw killers, even John Kramer himself? Because he represents Jigsaw as a concept, and Jigsaw isn't one character. Even in the first film Kramer is mostly hidden in the background, while Billy is used to represent his evil presence. And then the man kicks the bucket in Saw III, but Billy continues to show up. Similar to Ghostface from Scream, the puppet embodies how the ever-changing identity is the focus rather than the original mastermind.
- The reveal of Amanda, Hoffman and Logan as Jigsaw's apprentices were twists in and of themselves. What makes them Fridge Brilliance, however, is when you realize that they revealed themselves exactly the same way that John did back in the original Saw: they were presented as mere victims in their traps, only to reveal to their ultimate victims that they were the ones manipulating the traps. Even Schenk, a mere Jigsaw copycat, did this.
- It makes one wonder, aside from the fact that he was justifiably angry with being blamed for Seth's murder and framed/threatened him into being his apprentice, what John saw in Hoffman and how a clever and resourceful man like himself could be so wrong about the guy. You then have to remember that John had terminal cancer that was gradually getting worse and while he was still rather brilliant in most aspects (obviously enough to build traps, make sure they worked, train his apprentices, overpower his victims, etc.), at the same time he isn't a mind reader and probably never even predicted that Hoffman would someday kill his wife.
- Or at the beginning, at the very least. John must have realized that should Hoffman find a way to survive his test, then Jill will be in great danger, which is why he arranged for Dr. Gordon to execute Hoffman just before his death. As Saw VI implies, John knew Hoffman's sociopathy makes him unfit to continue his legacy.
Fridge Horror
- If Amanda was broken down emotionally even before Hoffman's letter to her, what happened to the other people who lived from the traps? How emotionally miserable would they have become?
- Think of some of the traps, and what would happen if they somehow went wrong. For instance, the Death Mask from the beginning of Saw II. Imagine what would happen if Michael was in the middle of cutting his eye when the mask closed. His arms would get entangled and would smash into his face, leaving him in immense pain of his broken arms and of having several spikes in his head until he eventually died of blood loss.
- Something like this wouldn't matter in the slightest to Jigsaw; all it would mean is Michael not escaping the trap in time, therefore not possessing the will to survive.
Fridge Sadness
- The ending of Saw III is a lot, but the sorrow of it is amplified in IV and V when you ask: what happened to Corbett, the young girl who initially lost her brother, and has now lost both of her parents?
