All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Read on or go back — make your choice.
Given most of the characters in the Saw franchise go through horrible physical and psychological torture, usually leading to incredibly painful and unceremonious ends for themselves, their friends, or family, it's easier to list the ones who don't qualify. But this page will include the more particular exmaples.
Normal Woobies:
- Laura Hunter, who the deleted scenes of Saw II reveal was merely a shoplifter, is terrified and seems like a genuine Nice Girl. At one point she talks about all the things she'd hoped to do later in life, and says "this can't be it". Then she dies because of the nerve agent.
- Allison Kerry in Saw III. She's wracked with depression and guilt over Eric Matthews' disappearance, to the point where she suffers hallucinations of him and is drifting from her family. Jigsaw and Amanda put her in one of the worst traps in the entire series for supposedly being "dead inside" and she melts her hand in acid to free herself, only to discover the trap is inescapable, leading to her ribcage being torn apart. There's a very good reason fans felt that Kerry was treated poorly by the film.
- Lynn Denlon. She does everything that is asked of her, and ends up dying anyway due to a combination of Jeff's anger and Amanda rebelling against John at the worst possible moment.
- Don't forget Jeff and Lynn's daughter Corbett Denlon. As mentioned below with Jeff, she was neglected by her parents due to their grief over the death of her brother Dylan. Her mother eventually leaves, and her father yells at her at one point for touching Dylan's things, even though she was looking for something else to sleep with. And if that wasn't enough, she and her family are then captured by Jigsaw as part of Jeff's test. Her mother winds up dying due to her father's refusal to show forgiveness, and she's trapped in a space with limited air. Then in Saw IV, while she's rescued by Hoffman, the man who had captured her family in the first place, Jeff is killed by Strahm. And when we see her after her so-called "rescue", she's asking the paramedic that's treating her where her parents are, having no idea that they're already dead. So yeah; not only had she lost her brother, but by the end of one traumatic night, she's lost both parents, and is now completely alone. Someone give this poor girl a hug...
- Hank, Addy and Allen in Saw VI are probably the biggest victims of Disproportionate Retribution in the whole franchise. Hank is guilty of being heavy smoker despite his health issues, which in no way justifies him being slowly crushed to death by a trap he had no way to escape from. Addy and Allen are trapped only to fuel William's guilt (they had no control on his decisions whatsoever), with Allen being a young but lonely man and Addy a frail woman with a loving family. In the end, Allen suffers a painful, bloody death by hanging while Addy survives, but the whole ordeal and the knowledge that she's alive thanks to Allen's death are a huge trauma to deal with. When she reappears in Saw 3D as a part of the survivors' self-help group, she's still shaken.
- William Easton, especially by the end of Saw VI. Imagine being kidnapped, being forced to choose which of your employees live or die, enduring pain to help them all, and having genuinely changed your ways... only to be painfully and slowly killed by the vengeful son of a man who you denied coverage for, rendering everything you went through All for Nothing.
- Joyce Dagen is arguably the biggest Woobie in the entire franchise, right up there with Corbett. She gets burned alive in an inescapable trap, simply for being married to Bobby.
- It's hard not to feel sorry for Jill Tuck as she struggles and fails to escape the Reverse Bear Trap in the climax of Saw 3D, with her happier times with John flashing before her eyes.
Jerkass Woobies:
- Eric Matthews was a Dirty Cop responsible for a lot of bad deeds but man, does he have it rough. His son is kidnapped and placed in a trap while he's Forced to Watch. When he tries to go save his son, he ends up falling into another trap and gets locked in the bathroom. Despite a valiant (and painful) escape attempt, he becomes a prisoner of Jigsaw before being forced into yet another game, having become a suicidal shell of a man. He ultimately dies never having seen his son again.
- If you know Addison Corday's backstory from official sources, you can understand why she's not the nicest person. She was a prostitute busted for having sex with Eric (which resulted in him getting a demotion), and he incarcerated her out of spite. Her death is also quite horrific, even if it happened on behalf of her being Too Dumb to Live.
- Jeff Denlon was severely broken by the death of his son, which made him more short-tempered and rude in the process. All he does is sit in his son's old room, debating with himself over whether he can bring himself to kill the driver who hit him. When he's coerced to burn some of the kid's old possessions, he goes from rage to tears pretty quickly.
- He is, however, still a jerk for not being there emotionally for his daughter, berating her for taking a stuffed animal out of her dead brother's room, mostly taking his anger out on the people involved in the accident rather than helping them out of their traps (or rather mostly attempting to do so too late), and not having the foresight or patience to "forgive" John and killing him without heeding his warning of grave consequences.
- Seth Baxter is an Asshole Victim for murdering Hoffman's sister and only serving five years in prison. However, the fact that he was given false hope and ended up crushing his hands for nothing can make you feel sorry for him. Some fans agreed with Jigsaw when he scolds Hoffman for making the Pendulum Trap inescapable, saying that everyone deserves a fair chance.
- Bobby Dagen, never more so than when he fails his final test. It was bad enough seeing him lose all of his friends and co-workers; seeing him lose his wife — in one of the franchise's most disturbing death scenes — was just the icing on the Woobie portion of his cake.
- At the same time, he's still a jerkass. Granted, he couldn't have foreseen where his lies would lead to, but his deception and smug attitude caused doom for his loved ones.
- Zeke Banks is a rude, uncooperative and extremely cynical cop, but knowing his backstory, it's not hard to see why.
- Let's see: he became a pariah of the police force when he turned his crooked partner in, he was shot in the back when his coworkers ignored his calls for backup, he found out his wife was cheating on him, they got divorced, and now he barely gets to see his kid.
- In Spiral proper, things only get worse: the only friend he has in the precinct gets brutally murdered, as do several of his colleagues. His rookie partner, whom he was slowly building a rapport with, is (seemingly) flayed alive, and then his boss dies from being burnt and suffocated. Then Zeke gets knocked out, handcuffed to a pipe, and covered in glass shards when he tries (and fails) to save the partner he sent to jail. Finally, the killer manages to escape, and Zeke's forced to watch his father get brutally gunned down in front of him. Poor guy!
- Of all of The Pederson Project's members, Gabriela is the most sympathetic one to both Amanda and John from the word go, and after John discovers the scam's true nature, it's immediately clear why: she's a hopeless drug addict who was likely roped into the job by her dealer, Mateo. During the game, Amanda easily relates to her as she used to be a drug addict herself, and John clearly had some level of empathy for her too. They're clearly happy to have Gabriela taken to a hospital after she passes her test... and Amanda has one visceral reaction when Cecilia kills her.
- Even though she appears to be somewhat apathetic as one of the scammers of The Pederson Project, Valentina has garnered some sympathy for the horrific circumstances that led to her death, which started with her being abducted shortly after a near-rape encounter with a prostitution client. Then she's placed in a trap that requires her to cut off her leg with a Gigli saw and extract the bone marrow through a surgical vacuum to stop the timer. Her having endured her trap, only to end up failing at the last second just because her bone marrow was too slow to fill up the container in time, seems downright unfair to plenty of viewers.
