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Exact Words is a recurring theme throughout the Saw franchise, as almost every movie features some kind of cryptic message whose take is imperative to the characters' success and often enough, survival.
Saw:
- The first instance of Exact Words in the series doesn't belong to Jigsaw or an accomplice, but rather Adam, and they're actually the very first words uttered in the film: when Adam asks Lawrence who he is. Later in the movie, it turns out that Lawrence isn't a complete stranger to Adam, as he admits he was hired by Tapp to take pictures of the former. When Lawrence confronts him about it, he clarifies that he actually didn't know his name or identity, only his face, so the curiosity was genuine and not feigning ignorance.
- Zep has a couple, befitting a Jigsaw accomplice (and the man we are led to believe is Jigsaw):
- When we first see him watching Adam and Lawrence through the cameras, he says that it's useless and he can't help them. He's not being coy; he actually can't because he isn't running the game.
- As he is about to shoot Lawrence, he says that he is doing it because "it's the rules". Not long afterward, we find out that he wasn't referring to Lawrence's rules, but his own, as Adam finds a tape in his dead body's pocket.
Saw II:
- John tells Eric that if they talk long enough, Eric will find Daniel in "a safe and secure place." At the end of the movie, it's revealed that Daniel was locked in a literal safe in John's hideout, just a few feet away from Eric the whole time, and quite literally all he needed to do was sit and talk to John.
- The tape that introduces the victims in the Nerve Gas House to their game has John tell them that the numbers to the safe in the starting room are "in the back of your minds." As Xavier finds out late in the game, each of the numbers in question is written on one of the victims' napes.
- Obi's tape ends with John saying "When you're in Hell, only the Devil can help you out." On one of the Furnace's internal walls, there's a devil-like figure drawn next to a valve that would turn off the gas. Despite him getting close enough for the drawing and valve to be clearly in his view, Obi doesn't seem to notice them, however.
- After being beaten, John agrees to take Eric to the house, which he does. However, he says nothing about it being where Daniel is.
Saw III:
- The big one is John's iconic "I want to play a game". First-time viewers will expect he's saying this in reference to Lynn, but eagle-eyed ones or those who were paying attention carefully might notice he's actually addressing Amanda. Those who are aware he only says this line to the person he's testing could put things together and realize that he's ultimately testing Amanda and not Lynn. Amanda's failure to notice this and follow his subsequent warnings results in her death.
- The details he initially gives are this as well: all he says is that the rules are simple, breaking them will result in death, and it's about giving "the gift of life", never specifying the name of the target, or who has to be kept alive.
- At the start of Jeff's trial, John promises him that should he complete his tests, he will come face-to-face with "the man responsible for the loss of his child". Jeff naturally assumes the man in question is the drunk driver who killed his son in an accident. However, John never exactly said which man or child (Jeff has two children) was he speaking of; only after Jeff kills him does he reveal in a tape that he is the person "responsible for the loss of his child", as only he knew where Jeff's daughter is.
- Non-Jigsaw example: we are first introduced to Lynn as she just got out of bed with a man named Chris, who complains about how hastily she's leaving and how little they communicate, so Lynn asks what he wants and he answers "a divorce". On a first watch, it looks like he's asking her to divorce him. In hindsight of the later reveal, he's actually asking her to divorce Jeff so they could be together.
Saw V:
- This time, John's message is more cryptic, with him telling the victims of the Fatal Five "Today, five will become one with the common goal of survival. [...] ..., your natural instincts will tell you to do one thing, but I implore you to do the opposite". It's only at the final trap that Brit and Mallick figure it out; as they all used underhanded means to get by in life, the victims were meant to do the opposite and cooperate in order to survive together, instead of killing one another in hopes of survival. Oddly enough, this is one of the few times that the characters put the message together early enough to make a difference, as Brit and Mallick agree to cooperate in hopes of both of them surviving the final test and manage to live through it.
Saw VI:
- William is told he'll never see his family again if he fails, and the audience sees Tara, Brent and Pamela trapped elsewhere between each of his tests. Tara also tells Brent that the reason they're trapped is "because of your father". The reveal is that Pamela is William's sister, and Tara and Brent are the family of Harold Abbott, a man William had denied coverage to and ended up dying, whom he had mentioned to Debbie at the beginning of the film.
Saw 3D:
- Saw 3D features a retroactive example with a previous film, specifically Saw IV. In the latter film, John tells Hoffman in his farewell tape to him that "you're probably the last man standing." He didn't explicitly say that Hoffman was the only living Jigsaw accomplice by then, and as it turns out in 3D, he did have another active accomplice aside from Hoffman, even if they weren't necessarily an apprentice by his standards regarding disciples.
Jigsaw:
- In Jigsaw, after recapturing Anna and Ryan, John shows them a shotgun shell which he loads into a shotgun, telling them that the shell is their "key to freedom" and that they've been doing everything "backwards" and need to "reverse their thinking", leading to Anna and Ryan believe that he intends for them to kill one another to survive. Unfortunately, Ryan figures out too late that wasn't the meaning and Anna fires the shotgun, which kills her because of its Backwards-Firing Gun functionality and destroys the keys hidden in the shotgun shell; instead of trying to do what seemed obvious, they were to examine the shotgun and find the keys.
Spiral:
- Schenk claims that Marcus was "the reason for all this. He's why I wanted to do this in the first place." On the surface, it seems like he's talking about how Marcus' work inspired him to become a cop. In actuality, he's referring to how the rampant corruption under Marcus' watch lead to his vendetta against the police.
- Likewise, when Schenk and Zeke arrive at the crime scene of Bozwick's game, the former gives the offhand remark, "I've been dreaming about this since I was twelve years old." Come the reveal of his true identity as the Spiral Killer, it's shown that the catalyst for his line of work was his father being killed when he was twelve, after which he and Zeke had their first interaction.
Saw X:
- As soon as Diego wakes up in his trap and spots John observing, he screams that he "told [John] what [he] wanted to know". While it initially seems like he was pleading to John that he had already explained to him The Pederson Project's cancer treatment before the latter found out it was fake, the Flashback-Montage Realization at the climax reveals that he ratted out Cecilia and Parker to John.
- In a more humorous example than usual, when Cecilia asks John what he does for a living, he replies that he helps people work out their emotional problems.
