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The Saw franchise does plenty of Foreshadowing, though how much of it was actually intended as foreshadowing and how much was simply small details that were later worked into the overarching storyline (mostly for cases between different installments) is debatable.
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Movies:
Saw:
- There are plenty of hints leading to the movie's iconic twist ending, although most of them are quite subtle:
- A line from Lawrence's tape is "when there's that much poison in your blood", and Zep is seen coughing strongly at times. These could be hints to Zep's own tape mentioning he had "a slow-acting poison in [his] veins".
- When Gordon introduces his students to his cancer patient, you can see two drawings on a desk near John: one for what appears to be a concept design of the Reverse Bear Trap, and another that depicts an "X" similar to the one in the Bathroom. If you manage to catch your eyes on them and compare them to the aforementioned objects (which are introduced later), you might be able to deduce who is the real Jigsaw.
- During Jigsaw's Motive Rant to Tapp and Sing, he mentions a "disease eating away at [him] from the inside". He's not being metaphorical; he does have a disease. And he just happens to be voiced by the same actor who plays Gordon's unremarkable cancer patient.
- As Lawrence is loading the cartridge into the corpse's revolver to shoot Adam, the camera briefly shows all six chambers of the cylinder to be empty. Revolvers don't eject spent cartridges, and yet the guy on the floor was supposed to have shot himself. What looked to be a simple prop error is actually a minor foreshadowing to the ending.
- When the time is up and his family manages to escape Zep, Lawrence gets electrocuted. Because Zep was busy first fighing against the family then running to the location, it wouldn't be possible for him to have time to press the button for electrocution, not to mention that he wasn't even watching Gordon at the moment. Yet another clue that he isn't the one pulling the strings.
Saw II:
- Amanda being an apprentice of Jigsaw is telegraphed several times throughout the movie.
- She immediately searches for a tape recorder upon waking up in the house, distressedly telling the others that it will explain everything about their situation, with the explanation that she's "played before". Anyone who remembers the first movie will know that her game had a video that played instantly, rather than having to find and play a tape.
- She's very insistent that Jigsaw is not a killer and wants them to survive, and that everyone needs to play by the rules.
- After Amanda shares the details of her arrest and conviction, when she's at the top of the stairs, and Daniel is talking about his father, she gives him a very notable glare in anticipation of him finishing "My father is a..." with "cop," before he says "hardass" instead. The look lingers for a moment, and hints that she knows about Eric.
- When she's thrown in the Needle Pit with under a minute to search for a key, she's visibly agonized and traumatized, but ends up finding the exact spot where the key is fairly quickly, implying that she may have assisted Jigsaw in the trap's creation.
- She's also the only member of the group who doesn't show any signs of succumbing to the toxin, such as Blood from the Mouth.
- One very quick moment in the climax is when Amanda and Daniel open the door to discover the Bathroom. Amanda immediately knows what side of the doorway the switch is on, and almost as immediately turns on the lights.
- Some of the props inside the Nerve Gas House (such as the Framed Clue with the photo of Eric and Daniel) can be seen in the background at the Wilson Steel Plant. This is likely a hint to the reveal that the events in the Nerve Gas House had already happened by then.
- John himself gives a significant clue early in the movie, when he tells Eric that he will find his son in a safe and secure place if he just listens. Twisted as his morals and concept of "killing people" may be, he is very well aware of the lethality of his own games, there is no way he can ensure the child's survival... unless, of course, the game already took place, and the boy already survived it.
- There's a double case of foreshadowing when Eric brings John with him to drive to the Nerve Gas House, again involving the latter's speech. First, John saying "game over" hints that it's taking Eric to the wrong place (also that Eric isn't as in control as he thinks); the second is him telling Eric that he's taking him to the house, not to his son.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Just before the Sequencing Deception is explicitly shown, when Eric comes to the Nerve Gas House, he finds Xavier's corpse with signs of decomposing, including a strong smell. A dead corpse's decomposition starts between one to three days after the person's death, which is much longer than the span of time shown between Xavier's death and Eric entering the house.
Saw III:
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: If you are knowledgeable, you may realize that removing the chain from his lower jaw would be impossible for Troy to do with his bare hands.note This is a hint that his test was rigged to be nearly impossible to escape. Unless he could free himself from the other chains and grab the bomb to disarm it or throw it out one of the windows, he would have no way to survive. Even then, he would be forced to stay with his jaw hooked until help arrived, assuming he didn't bleed to death first.
- A subtle one to Lynn and Jeff's relationship: in her locker at the hospital, Lynn has a drawing of a pig, which looks similar to the stuffed pig that Dylan was seen with in the Christmas photo and Corbett would later try to take to her room.
- John is briefly seen playing around with some melted wax in a quick shot that's easy to overlook. In the next movie, it's revealed during the autopsy of his corpse that he was using the wax to coat a tape, so he could store it in his stomach and leave a message to Hoffman. This is further explained in the related Saw IV entries below.
- Another Five-Second Foreshadowing is John asking Amanda to remove Lynn's collar. Being a Control Freak, John has no reason not to have a device to deactivate the collar himself, unless it's important for some reason that is Amanda to do it...
Saw IV:
- There are several hints towards the film's Sequencing Deception that most of its events take place at the same time as Saw III.
- A rendition of "Hello Zepp" can be heard pretty clearly in the opening autopsy when Hoffman listens to the tape. It would be odd for the movie to pull out the Climactic Music so early — as it turns out, this scene is chronologically the last one, hence the "Hello Zepp" music.
- Also, the fact that John specifically sent the tape to Hoffman — and any police officer he didn't test yet, for that matter — is rather odd in itself, not to mention that he also tells him that "you're probably the last man standing" when some of the returning officers here were known to be still alive before the events of this movie that led to their deaths. By the time the reveal turns in, we find out that what John was referring is that Hoffman was the only Jigsaw killer/accomplice who's still alive thus far (at least from what he and the audience knew at the time; the other killers and accomplices aren't revealed until later movies).
- Nothing is mentioned or visibly shown regarding the disappearances of the victims of Saw III or John and Amanda's deaths, including a set of photos purely from the Wilson Steel Plant at the police station and various articles (such as a magazine in Rigg's apartment) that only addresses Eric's disappearance, until Jeff explicitly appears going to his final test, with Strahm following him from behind.
- Furthermore, Hoffman points to Amanda as the suspect of being a Jigsaw accomplice and rigging Detective Allison Kerry's trap to be inescapable. In the previous three movies, the only cop who was shown to have known about her secret identity was Eric, who is still under Jigsaw's captivity. This piece of foreshadowing, taken out of context of the Sequencing Deception, shows that Hoffman has carefully influenced the police investigation to target her, supposedly due to his own skill as a detective but really only to screw her over and otherwise protect his own interests. And of course, as a Rewatch Bonus, indicating that he himself is an accomplice.
- In Hoffman's second visit to the police station, Fisk tells him that "another doctor went missing from the hospital." Presumably, the doctor in question is Lynn.
- Hoffman is seen carrying the teddy bear that Jeff's daughter Corbett was seen with in Saw III. Aside from being a subtle hint towards him being a Jigsaw apprentice, this also hints that he was going to eventually free Corbett, which doesn't happen until Saw V.
- In a very subtle example, at the school's hallway when Rigg comes in, crime scene tape can be seen at the doors of a classroom. It was confirmed that said classroom was where the Classroom Trap was set up, although the appearance of the crime scene isn't quite clear from the angles it's seen from.
- A rendition of "Hello Zepp" can be heard pretty clearly in the opening autopsy when Hoffman listens to the tape. It would be odd for the movie to pull out the Climactic Music so early — as it turns out, this scene is chronologically the last one, hence the "Hello Zepp" music.
- In the last shot of Hoffman before he's first seen in the Ice Block Trap, an almost-obscure pig mask can be seen hanging on a wall in the dark background. This is the same mask he wore while subduing Rigg in the previous scene beforehand, subtly giving away the identity of Rigg's abductor.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: When the water melting from the ice block Eric is standing upon reaches the electric chair that Hoffman is strapped to, a high-voltage sound is heard, but Hoffman isn't explicitly seen being electrocuted. For Saw IV being one of the goriest films in the series, it's strange that a more mundane death like electrocution would happen offscreen, and this is shortly before the Wham Shot with Hoffman standing out of the chair (or him untying the fake restraints in the case of the theatrical cut).
Saw VI:
- The reveal in this film that Hoffman was the one who wrote the letter Amanda read in Saw III was foreshadowed well back into Saw IV, where Hoffman is already seen putting the letter inside the corresponding drawer in the last scene before he first appears in the Ice Block Trap.
Saw 3D:
- To foreshadow the fact that Bobby's a liar (which isn't shown for quite a few minutes until his trial begins), his trap is nowhere to be actually seen in the flashback to it. Given how the series almost always shows traps in action, this is a clue that Bobby's made-up game never happened in reality.note
- Lawrence's Face–Heel Turn is revealed in this movie, but it was already hinted in previous ones:
- Perhaps an unintentional hint, the wall clock in Lawrence's house as seen in the first film vaguely resembles a row of machinery gears, and has jigsaw puzzle-like pieces between the numbers. There's also a number of other clocks present in the house, similarly to how John used to own a number of them from what is seen in flashbacks of Saw IV.
- The Body Horror of his handiwork is within an expertise John and his apprentices couldn't possibly be familiar enough with to perform well. What's more, the mysterious man depicted within the Death Mask's video tape in Saw II is walking with a severe limp; none of the Jigsaw killers displayed such physical handicaps.
- The fact that there were other living accomplices/apprentices (those who didn't do become such as part of their tests, specifically) besides Hoffman at the time is implied in John's aforementioned claim from the autopsy tape in Saw IV that he's probably the last one alive. He didn't explicitly say that Hoffman was the only living Jigsaw disciple after John and Amanda's deaths, even if he was still the only one seen throughout the next two movies.
Spiral:
- The first two victims end up doing what the tape messages asked them to, yet still die. The killer isn't actually trying to teach them a lesson; they're supposed to die, and the odds are stacked against them on purpose. The lack of fairness in the games also shows that the methods are simply a dress-up, and the killer shares nothing else with the original Jigsaw.
- A hint or allusion is made to each of most traps after the Subway Trap before they're explicitly seen:
- In the scene where Zeke and Schenk examine the Spiral Killer's first video message to the police, Zeke's own computer to the opposite side of the one they're using shows what appears to be an X-ray of a spinal cord alongside carved flesh. Angie is given the goal of severing her spinal cord in the Wax Trap.
- Later in the police station, after Zeke and Schenk come with Fitch and Kraus to the see the spray-painted spiral, an X-ray of a hand is present on Fitch's computer. The trap Fitch ends up in (the Finger Trap) specifically requires him to mutilate a part of his hands.
- At the church, when Zeke asks Pete if he's trying to get sober again, the latter replies: "Alcohol's not my problem. The glass and the bottle can kill." Later in Zeke's game, Pete appears in a trap involving broken glass from bottles (the Glass Grinder).
- In another of the killer's video messages, he manipulates his puppet Mr. Snuggles to aim a gun at the police watching the video. As it turns out at the end of the movie, this is the true function of Marcus' trap (complete with a flashback to the video to clarify it).
- Unlike all of the other victims throughout the film, Schenk is the only one who we explicitly don't get to see die in the killer's traps, indicating that he's not really dead. For that matter, his death doesn't fit the pattern, as he had done nothing wrong and the killer seemingly targeted him just to be a dick, unlike all the rest. The fact that this previously happened twice with other killers also makes it easy to figure out that Schenk is actually the Spiral Killer.
Saw X:
- During the capture montage, Amanda isn't explicitly shown as the Pig Mask on Cecilia's roof, possibly alluding to Hoffman's presence.
- As soon as Diego wakes up in his trap and spots John observing, he screams that he "told [John] what [he] wanted to know". The Flashback-Montage Realization at the climax reveals, he ratted out Cecilia and Parker.
- Parker lays out to John that he's a detective who is so obsessed with his work that he has neglected his family, arrives to the factory seeking revenge against Cecilia, and thinks money will be an acceptable gift for the neglect he showed to his family. This perfectly fits trap victims from previous movies, such as the workaholic Lawrence Gordon, the allegedly Jigsaw-obsessed detective Allison Kerry, and the revenge-obsessed, neglectful father Jeff Denlon. While he turns out to have made the whole thing up and is actually an accomplice of Cecilia, it's one of the first things that might make the viewer suspect he'll be placed in a trap as well.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: After leaving John and Carlos in the trap that was meant for Cecilia, Cecilia and Parker go into the control room to retrieve their money. While looking for the money, Parker wonders if Cecilia's trap was only meant for her, considering how the trap can hold two people. Once Cecilia finds the bag with the money and takes it off the shelf, it immediately activates the real trap for the duo, and it's subsequently revealed that John and Amanda knew about Parker's involvement with Cecilia.
Short films:
Full Disclosure Report:
- The short ends with the program zooming out to reveal that it's being played on several computer screens. These screens are the same ones used for the Nerve Gas House's camera recordings in Saw II, down to being in the same place as the short. It can be presumed that John was watching the documentary during the whole short.
