Saw | Saw II | Saw III | Saw IV | Saw V | Saw VI | Saw 3D | Jigsaw | Spiral | Saw X
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Adam Stanheight is by far one of the most popular characters amongst fans of the series, so much so that many maintain that he's not actually dead, either jokingly or seriously, using prop-related inconsistencies and errors as evidence.
- Fan Nickname: Adam's surname is never stated in the film itself; it was Radford in the original script, Faulkner according to the film's producers later on, and eventually retconned to Stanheight in later Saw films. Due to this, he's often referred to by fans (and Archive of Our Own's tags) as "Adam Faulkner-Stanheight" or other variants.
- Fan-Preferred Couple: Lawrence is married to Alison, but next to no fans like their pairing. Instead, most ship Lawrence with Adam, mainly due to them being the only two people in most of the film, the two being forced to work together, and Adam being a fan favorite. Even after many sequels and Adam being long dead, Adam/Lawrence (also known as Chainshipping) remains the most popular pairing from the franchise as a whole. The official Saw account on Twitter acknowledged the ship on its Valentine's Day 2022 tweet
. - First Installment Wins: While the series' fans also enjoy the following films, with Saw II, Saw III, Saw VI and Saw X being sometimes regarded by them as Even Better Sequels, many people still point to the original film as the best one due to its focus on psycho-thriller elements instead of endless gore, and paving the way for films in this style to come.
- Ho Yay: Believe it or not, it's been suggested by many fans between Lawrence and Adam. A major scene that audiences point to is when they have a Headbutt of Love while Lawrence leaves to get help and promises to come back for Adam.
- It Was His Sled: Nowadays, the Twist Ending (namely the fact that Jigsaw isn't Zep but the man lying on the bathroom's floor who's supposed to be dead) is one of the most well-known parts of the movie.
- LGBT Fanbase: The first movie specifically is popular online among the LGBT+ community, due to Lawrence and Adam having a fair amount of Ho Yay between them, and being played by very conventionally attractive actors Leigh Whannell and Cary Elwes.
- Narm Charm:
- Billy the Puppet riding in on a tricycle after Amanda completed her test, with the bizarre, creepy nature of the image seeming to be the point.
- Leigh Whannell's hilariously bad performance of Adam attempting to act as if he was poisoned, though considering this is intentional Bad "Bad Acting", whether it's funny ironically or unironically varies on a person-to-person basis.
- Say what you will about his acting ability, but Whannell gives Adam's final screams everything he has. It's over the top and goes on for way too long, and yet it's also absolutely nightmare-inducing and heartbreaking, totally selling that Adam is utterly convinced he's going to be locked in the room forever and doomed to a slow, lonely death, so reduced to desperate begs for Jigsaw to free him. It helps that Whannell's screaming was so convincing and terrifying that it drove James Wan, the director of the film and Whannell's best friend, to tears, and he had to leave the room.
- Retroactive Recognition: The movie features Michael Emerson (Zep) and Ken Leung (Sing) a few years before they became more widely recognized for their roles in Lost.
- Shocking Moments: The ending is infamous for featuring a twist that almost nobody was able to see coming, starting with the Wham Shot of the actual Jigsaw getting up from the floor, and even without that it remained very surprising, with The Reveal that Jigsaw was actually Lawrence's innocuous cancer patient that neither he nor the audience ever paid attention to. Nowadays, though, given its status as a Signature Scene not only within the franchise but across the entirety of horror movie history, the shock factor would be drastically smaller for newer viewers than those who watched the film back when it was released.
- Special Effect Failure:
- Whenever someone is seen driving, they're quite clearly in a still or slowly-moving car, with the camera jerking around to make it seem like they're moving quickly.
- After Lawrence saws his chained foot off, it's mostly kept off-screen. When Zep comes in, however, it's painfully obvious that Lawrence's supposed severed foot is covered by his torn pants.
- At the end of the movie, during the final Jigsaw tape to Zep. The second half of the recording, starting from the line "Will you murder a mother and her child to save yourself?" is very clearly dubbed in later, rather than sounding like it was recorded and actually played on the tape recorder, having a different audio quality, being crisper and not having the echoing or distortion filters. To make it worse, Jigsaw's voice actually causes the mic to pop.
- Squick:
- While the movie mainly relies on Gory Discretion Shots for suspense (as opposed to its Bloodier and Gorier sequels), the scene of Amanda fishing the key for the reverse bear trap out of someone else's stomach shows her fumbling around inside the man's chest and pulling out bloody entrails. Bleughk!
- Adam digging his hand into a toilet filled with thick brown water to look for clues. When he pulls his hand out, it's completely covered with the liquid.
- Viewer Name Confusion: Zep is commonly mistakenly referred to as "Zepp" by viewers and fans due to his name being written as such in "Hello Zepp". Charlie Clouser, the composer for the film (and the rest of the series at that), deliberately spelled his name like that in the song's title as a Shout-Out Pun to the jazz band Zapp.
