Saw | Saw II | Saw III | Saw IV | Saw V | Saw VI | Saw 3D | Jigsaw | Spiral | Saw X
Trope-based trivia:
- Absurdly Short Production Time: It took 27 days to shoot the film.
- Descended Creator/Written by Cast Member: Leigh Whannell, who co-wrote the previous two films and played Adam in the first one, reprises his role in this film, which he also wrote.
- Executive Meddling:
- Saw III was intended by the franchise's original creators to be the finale for the series. The executive producers wanted more sequels, and had the writers thus make changes to the film to leave room open for future installments. Many of these were fairly minor, such as a shot of John pouring wax over a tape that later played into Saw IV.
- The biggest change, however, was that of Eric's fate. In the original cut, Amanda was supposed to have stabbed him in the neck with a knife, solidifying her transition to a full-out murderer killing out of malice (she had previously asphyxiated Adam as a Mercy Kill). The producers forced director Darren Lynn Bousman to cut it out to leave room for Eric to return in a later film. Thus, the scene now ends abruptly with Amanda simply walking over towards Eric, and an ADR line of John later saying to Amanda that she had merely left him for dead was added. Keep in mind that Eric's actor Donnie Wahlberg only showed up for Saw III with the promise that Eric would be killed off, so he was pretty pissed off when they cut out the scene. Bousman had to beg him to come back for Saw IV.
- God Never Said That: An unusual variation. On IMDb prior to the film's release, Jeff's full name was listed as "Jeff Reinhardt", while Lynn was listed with her correct surname, Denlon. After the film was released, fans initially assumed that the producers had deliberately submitted an incorrect credit list so as to hide the twist of Jeff and Lynn's marital relationship, but Leigh Whannell later claimed that the cast list they submitted didn't include Jeff's surname at all, and that some unknown party made up "Reinhardt" as Jeff's surname and submitted it to the IMDb. The producers just decided to run with it, and didn't bother correcting the cast list until just before the release of Saw IV.
- Prop Recycling: In an example of Approval of God, the film used the Bathroom set made for Scary Movie 4.
- Recycled Set: To save money, the Bathroom set in the film was reused from the Saw parody in Scary Movie 4.
- Refitted for Sequel: The Denlon family's surname was taken from Amanda's original name of Amanda Denlon in early scripts of the first film.
- Throw It In!: Amanda lunging at Lynn was entirely improvised by her actress Shawnee Smith. The shocked reaction of Lynn's actress Bahar Soomekh was totally genuine due to her not expecting it at all, and Darren Lynn Bousman decided to keep the moment in the film for that reason.
Miscellaneous trivia:
- Saw III has enough deleted scenes that a cut with all of them would reach the three-hour mark (compared to the longest cut of the movie released so far, the Director's Cut, which has a runtime close to two hours). While the release of such a cut has never been discussed and no further information has been given about it so far, Darren Lynn Bousman expressed backlash for most (if not all) of the unreleased deleted scenes, stating that he considers the film to be "unwatchable" with them.
