Saw | Saw II | Saw III | Saw IV | Saw V | Saw VI | Saw 3D | Jigsaw | Spiral | Saw X
- Awesome Music: Helmet’s “Monochrome” is, as with “Forget To Remember” in the previous film, a kickass Alternative Metal way to end the movie. The video even has Billy The Puppet singing the track!
- Captain Obvious Reveal: Amanda being the one behind the rigged traps can come out as very blatant in the hindsight of the large number of films in the series that follow this one, not only due to the fact that she's the only known killer connected to Jigsaw at the time, but also because she clearly shows her testing field outfit in the brief shot when Kerry sees her.
- Foe Yay Shipping: Despite Lynn being married to Jeff and Amanda being very confrontational towards her, many fans like to ship Lynn and Amanda together.
- It Was His Sled: Not as infamous as the first movie's twist ending, but many new viewers come to the franchise knowing that Jigsaw dies in this movie.
- Memetic Loser: Jeff. Ever since Dead Meat's kill count video for Saw III coined the nickname, quite a few people within the fanbase have referred to him as "Slow-Ass Motherfuckin' Jeff" for making dumb decision after dumb decision and seeming lack of urgency in a life and death situation, like taking way too much time to decide whether to save the people in the traps or let them die, killing John and causing Lynn's death, and even pointing his gun at an armed FBI agent and getting himself killed in the next movie.
- Moral Event Horizon: Amanda abducting Kerry, whose only "crime" was being overly focused with her work to the point that she appeared "dead on the inside", putting her in an inescapable trap, and coming in to taunt her just before her death. This is the moment that establishes that she has gone completely off the deep end and abandoned even John's twisted sense of morality. It also removes all liability from her. While she claims that she rigged her tests to be inescapable because she viewed them as mercy killings, her actions with this particular trap tell a different story.
- Nausea Fuel:
- The Pig Vat, which involves drowning in liquified rotten pig carcasses. 'Nuff said.
- The scenes where Lynn performs brain surgery on John. Good god, the brain surgery scenes!
- What’s left of Lynn in the Shotgun Collar when it activates. Eurgh!
- One-Scene Wonder: Mark Hoffman only briefly shows up at the beginning of the film, but this moment can draw attention for some as he later becomes one of the main characters in the next few movies.
- The Scrappy: Even before Dead Meat made him a further joke by coining the Fan Nickname "Slow-Ass Motherfucking Jeff", Jeff was very disliked for taking way too much time to do literally anything and for screwing things up once he eventually got down to doing them, resulting in the deaths of six people including his own wife.
- Shocking Moments: Kerry's kidnapping and death comes out of nowhere and remains very shocking either way, as she was seemingly being set up to be the main cop in this film by the earlier introductory scenes, not to mention that she was already a fan favorite character by then.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: And that is really saying something given this series, which just makes the film all the more divisive (granted, it was originally meant to close the series before Executive Meddling turned it around). Jeff is a stubborn, mopey jerk who never appears to learn his lesson, likable characters like Kerry and Lynn are killed off horribly, Amanda becomes a full on sadistic monster, and John per usual is a psychopathic hypocrite. There are so little people to root for here it's almost a relief when we reach the predictable Downer Ending.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Amanda's death appears to be intended to invoke Alas, Poor Villain, as she had suffered many tribulations throughout her life, Saw VI reveals that she didn't actually want to kill Lynn at the end because she was being blackmailed by Hoffman, and she dies in agony knowing that she disappointed John. However, the fact remains that she was a complete jerk to Lynn throughout the movie even before the point in time of her being blackmailed, and there is no guarantee that she wouldn't have still refused to let Lynn go even without the blackmailing, seeing how she has been rigging tests for a while at this point, and a deleted scene even has Lynn obtain the key from Amanda only to find that it doesn't fit the lock on the collar, suggesting it indeed was rigged. Furthermore, even if she had been willing to let Lynn go, many viewers will never forgive her for what she did to Kerry. For said viewers, instead of a sympathetic death, this was nothing but her getting her well-deserved comeuppance for rigging tests to be inescapable and harassing Lynn throughout the movie.
- Wangst: Jeff suffers from this badly. Understandably, he is still grieving the death of his young son two years after the accident that caused it happened, but to the point that he can't function properly, ignores his still-living daughter and isn't able to complete any of his tasks by himself, which results in getting several people killed, including his wife. He also directly kills John, believing that he actually did some good as a means to an end. He eventually gets his from Strahm in Saw IV.
