Headscratchers / Saw VI

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All spoilers, including those from following movies, will be unmarked ahead. Read on or go back — make your choice.

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The Pound of Flesh

• So... the Pound of Flesh that opens the film. Never mind the scenario's lack of realism (few people have the nerve to amputate their limbs, let alone do it in under a minute to toss their body parts into a scale, and not kill them from blood loss/shock). Why didn't either of them consider throwing the tools down the chute or their shoes instead of their mutilated limbs/stripped fat? The scale wouldn't have known the difference.
  • a) If the tools are the same weight, then they'd get cancelled out by balancing perfectly. Presumably that means the same thing as if both of them had totally chickened out and refused to play = they both die. However, overriding that is b) in that if there's a camera on them, Hoffman can see they're cheating by not donating any flesh and so he can manually override the mechanisms and kill both of them at the end of the sixty seconds, if not before, as punishment.
• How did Simone win? A 300-lb heavy guy slices off the chunks of his belly, giving himself a huge advantage. She chops off her arm (which had very little body fat on it), drops it in the chute, and it doesn't even go all the way through! Most of it is still inside the chute, resting against the wall. Even if it did somehow outweigh three large chunks of fat, most of its weight was still being supported, and wouldn't have registered on the scale!!
  • My guess? The hand alone might have been enough with the bones' combined density. With the additional forearm, that only adds up to the total weight.
    • The above troper is correct. Fat is more voluminous than muscle. It takes approximately twice the volume of fat to match the equivalent weight of muscle. In other words, if you put a pound of fat and a pound of muscle side-by-side, the muscle will take up half as much space as the fat does; it will look as though there is more fat despite the fact that they weight the exact same amount. So while all those chunks of fat look like they'd be able to tip the scales in his favour, that's not necessarily the case. What is more irritating about the trap is that Simone specifically told Eddie not to lean forward so as not to activate it, and that is exactly what he immediately proceeds to do.
    • Fat floats, which is a good indicator of how lightweight it is.
  • Also, her actress played the winner of Scream Queens (2008), so it was pretty obvious she was going to survive.
    • The Scream Queens winner that was in Saw 3D didn't survive, and on top of that had less than a minute of screen time.
    • Her character was going to survive, but it was changed while filming.
  • I heard the director's cut (hardy har har) of the film was different but Simone severed her wrist instead of her arm (at the elbow)? That's crazy man!

About Simone

• Why doesn't Simone get her arm reattached? I mean, it was just resting on top of a scale largely intact. She must have gotten to a hospital before it would have become irrecoverable, or else she would have bled out.
  • Because William's company refused to cover the surgery under her medical plan, probably.

Hoffman's test

• Why was Hoffman "tested" at the end of this movie?
  • Because Jigsaw caught on the fact that Hoffman was a sadist ("Do you like how brutality feels, Mark?") and was just as keen on just plain murdering as Amanda ("Let's be honest. I want him to suffer just as much as you do."), so he gave orders to put him in a trap to make him realise how the victims feel. Also, it was supposed to be an escape route for Jill, in the case that Hoffman died.
  • Even so, if Jigsaw was so great at predicting human behaviour, he should've known that Jill might want Hoffman dead and use it as a simple death trap — and that if Hoffman survived, he'd be out for blood. It seems a careless thing to do if he was so worried about Jill's safety.
    • In fact, it was built in such a way so he would die... but I think Jigsaw didn't predict the window with the bars, which turned out to be the thing that helped Hoffman survive.
• I am a bit confused about this and hope I can get some clarification. If it is too obvious then I guess that is just me not being able to see it clearly. Hoffman's test was an updated version of the Reverse Bear Trap and was supposed to be administered by Jill. However as John had said, everybody deserves a chance to survive which is one of the reasons he went after Hoffman in the first place. Because he blamed John for a trap he didn’t make and which was inferior and it also didn’t give Seth Baxter a chance to live. In Hoffman’s test, Jill NEVER gave Hoffman a chance to survive and left him there to die. So I have two questions.
  • 1) Did Jill rig the test because she realised that Hoffman had essentially blackmailed Amanda into failing her test with Lynn which lead to the deaths of Amanda and John (who seemed HAPPY when Jeff was about to slash his throat) and wanted Hoffman to pay? Or...
  • 2) Was Hoffman's test never a test and just an execution that Jill had to carry out (ala the Water Cube which was an execution method that Strahm managed to survive) because John knew that Hoffman would soon go off the rails? And then begin killing indiscriminately and becoming a much worse monster than Amanda was who only killed because she wanted her trap victims not to live with the trauma like she had, and Hoffman only killed because he liked brutality? If it was an execution then with John’s knowledge of human psychology he would know that Hoffman would have the survival piece of the puzzle and go after Jill, which is why he wanted Lawrence to seal Hoffman away when he killed her. Wouldn't he have chosen a trap/execution method that he knew for sure that Hoffman WOULDN’T be able to beat like sealing him in the bathroom FIRST?

Hoffman's letter to Amanda

• Hoffman's letter to Amanda is something that has always bugged me about VI. I think the writers simply forgot that John told her to get the letter in III and thought she found it on her own, and didn't bother to go back and re-watch the scene while reusing some of the footage for VI. Or they hoped the Viewers Are Morons.
  • So, to clarify, Hoffman tells Amanda to kill Lynn, or else he will tell John what he knows. John already knows what Hoffman has to tell him, and Amanda knows that John already knows since he pointed her to the blackmail letter in the first place. So, she calls Hoffman on his bluff by... killing Lynn... what? I think Amanda's drug use really screwed up her short-term memory, since that's the only way this makes any sense.
  • Or, you know, John had written a letter for Amanda, but Hoffman switched it with his own.
    • Yeah, according to the Saw VI commentary, that is the official explanation. It would have been nice to see some indication of that in the movie itself though. It would have only taken up 10 seconds or less of screen time to show Hoffman pull a letter out of the desk and replace it with his own instead of just showing him putting his letter in the desk.
    • And now we have a photo of John's letter. Two links here.

The key inside William

• How, exactly, did the key get embedded in William's abdomen? Lawrence being in on it all along helps clear up the plot hole of how an engineer, John, could possibly know how to do the medical stuff shown throughout the series. However, by the time that William is captured, John is dead, and so Lawrence isn't helping anymore. So... who cut open William, buried a key in him, sewed him back up, and still had William alive/mobile enough to carry through with his game?
  • Not even just mobile enough to carry on, apparently unaware of the key implant even taking place. Maybe it was the same person who did the teeth thing in Saw 3D, and apparently did the job so well that Bobby didn't even realise his teeth has been extracted and replaced. Wish my dentist was that skilled with the pain avoidance...
  • Possibly the key's implant took place some weeks before, during an otherwise-unrelated operation? If William had needed his gallbladder removed or something, an accomplice at the hospital could've possibly slipped the key into a gauze-pack during the procedure. Maybe even Zepp could've arranged it, if Jigsaw put William on his "to-do" list long enough ago.
  • Given the fact that it was bleeding when he woke up, and that he reacted with surprise when he saw the scar, I don't think that it was implanted until then. It's possible that Hoffman had cut into William while he was unconscious, and stitched him back up once the key was put into him.
  • Hoffman can improvise some surgery, as we saw when he sewed his cheek back up, also who's say there is not more accomplices in on it? He could've just hired a shady back alley doctor for the drugs and surgeries.
  • Actually, William notices practically the moment he gets out of the trap, and he's clearly in a lot of pain from it throughout the movie (he's almost always limping or hunched over), the clamp pressing on his abdomen the whole time probably made it worse.
  • It's actually pretty sneaky, both in-Verse and on a meta level, how William's abdominal incision is masked by the nature of the first trap in his sequence: although the blood is immediately visible, both William and the audience are allowed to presume that the edge of the clamp on his left side just scratched him or something.

The Steam Maze

• In the Steam Maze, could Debbie have used the portable saw to cut the leather (?) straps holding the device to her and thus survive without having to use the key?
  • She could've done that, however, doing that would probably be risky for her and attacking Will with the saw, most likely seemed like a less risky alternative.
    • For a much less risky alternative, she could have just turned or tilted her head out of the way.

The Acid Room

• While the ending of this movie is one of my top two favourites in the series, part of it bugs me because I feel like William could have easily avoided his death. It's hard to tell from the camera angle but it looked as though the swinging wall of syringes wasn't as long as the room, so in theory if he'd moved back and stood against Pamela's cage he might have been all right (and wouldn't his instinct have been to move AWAY from the people debating on whether or not they're going to kill him?). Also, there is a very definite gap between the bottom of the wall and the floor - if he'd just dropped he would have been fine. Granted, this is assuming he even noticed the syringes in the first place - which, admittedly, isn't a guarantee - but still...
  • I rewatched the movie and when William stands on Pamela's side of the cage, you can hear a pressure plate when he steps on it. Once he goes to beg on the other side, you can hear the same noise as it shows him stepping on the other pressure plate. Maybe if he was with Pamela, the plate he was standing on might've kept him protected or perhaps even cause the switch to activate a separate way to kill Harold's family had they chosen to kill William.
    • As a light switches from red to green on the "Life or Death" lever when he steps onto the other pressure plate, it's likely it wouldn't have activated if William wasn't in front of it, or even until he stepped in front of it, probably to prevent Harold's family being sprayed with acid if it didn't hit him.
  • The answer is that the trap was a Batman Gambit by Hoffman in which he predicted exactly what William would do when placed in that situation. William definitely could have avoided the needles if he stood back or lay on the ground but, much like with Adam's bathtub trap, his human nature (moving close to the people he's pleading with) proved to be his undoing.
  • Dropping prone would've made him look like a weaselly coward afraid to face his accusers, which wouldn't have helped persuade Harold's family to spare him.
• What would've happened if "Live" was picked instead of "Die" at the end?
  • Presumably, their cages would have opened and they would have been able to escape.
• William gets to the end of his tests, only to find that he has no control whatsoever as to whether he lives or dies. So, what exactly was the point of him going through those tests? He was supposed to learn how his policy was flawed and hopefully be better (at least from Jigsaw's insane perspective), and yet, if Tara and the kid aren't feeling particularly merciful, he's not going to live to see it? What was the point?
  • The point is that John is a dick.
  • Presumably if William had shown enough remorse and struggled hard enough to try to save his co-workers, he might have earned some sympathy from the Abbotts. And in fact he did earn some... but only enough to earn mercy from Tara, not from Brent.
  • John's tapes never promised William that he would survive his trial, only that he'd see his family again and not have his limbs blown to pieces. If anything, William may have been playing for Pamela's life, not his own. And leaving William no power to control his fate may have been Jigsaw's way of confronting him with what he'd told the man face-to-face that his "formula" didn't account for: that who should live is an entirely separate issue from who will live.
  • That is the point. William made a living off of choosing who lives or dies, with the people in question having no say in the decision. Now, the tables have turned — William is the one who has to beg for his life in front of someone else who gets to decide if he lives or dies.
• William caused Harold's death by denying him coverage. As the final stage of William's game involved having the Abbots decide whether he lived or died, wouldn't it have made more sense for the final stage of the game to have the Abbots decide whether Pamela lives or dies, to put William in the same position he put them in?
  • Only if you think the Abbotts are horrible enough that they'd seriously consider murdering an innocent woman for her jerkass brother's actions.

William's kidnapping

• How did they get the kidnapping of William Easton to work so perfectly? They: 1) broke into the insurance building without raising any sort of alarm, 2) broke into the power supply room so as to shut off power to an entire floor of the building, 3) gotten such precise timing of that night guard's route that they could time the power outage to engineer a confrontation between William and the guard, 4) knew that William would come out on top of the confrontation, and 5) managed to sneak past any other guards both on the way up and the way down. And this was pulled off with just the resources of Hoffman and Gordon?
  • The guard was probably never intended to confront William, as having either (or both!) of them shoot the other before William has the chance to hear John's recorded message doesn't serve anyone's agenda. More likely, the fact that Hoffman was having to pull it all off alone made him cut things too close, and the guard headed into William's office before Hoffman could distract him, disable him, or perhaps abduct him too (see below).
  • Hoffman was established as being shocked that Gordon was a Jigsaw accomplice at the end of the following movie, so Gordon could not have assisted him to abduct the insurance company employees.
• If everybody in William's office was designated as a participant in his test, presumably on the grounds that they were complicit in his insurance company's cruel practices, then why was the security guard not intended to play a part in things? Yes, the man was mistakenly shot by William and therefore in no shape to participate when the time came, but neither John nor Hoffman could have anticipated that outcome. You'd think that if even the freaking janitor was deemed culpable enough to deserve to be cannon fodder in William's game, then the guy whose job it would be to toss enraged clients or their grieving relatives out of the building would be, too! Yet there's no sign of a trap for the guard having been removed or cut out of the sequence because William shot the guy.
  • Maybe he would have just been another participant in one of the early games (not the six person Shotgun Carousel) but he may have bled out from his gunshot wound regardless. Alternatively, the series' wiki has this on his character page: "The fact that the guard apologised to William after having been shot and his attempts to warn him of Hoffman suggest that Hoffman might have forced him to assist him in William's abduction by distracting him". Now, we know that Hoffman is prone to killing anyone once they're a liability to him, so with a gunshot wound and Hoffman having "better things" to do (i.e. transport the still-living employees to the torture rooms) he might have just stabbed the guy to finish him off and tossed him in a dumpster or something along those lines.

John giving up on treatment

• Upon finding out about an experimental cancer treatment therapy in Norway, John is unable to get Umbrella Health to bear the treatment costs, so he privately talks with William to convince him, but William destroys John's hopes by stating that the coverage is unfeasible for Umbrella due to John's age and slim chances of recovery, warning him that he will be completely dropped from coverage if he seeks out the treatment anyway. So John gives up and becomes Jigsaw... Why does John give up so easily? Couldn't he seek out the treatment on his own? What use would Umbrella's coverage be if he's dead anyway? Maybe he doesn’t have enough money to pay for the trip, but given that he’s beloved by the community for his contributions as the founder of the Urban Renewal Group, couldn't he ask them to gather money for his trip to Norway to see if he could still be cured? He has left the group and asks Jill to never see him again, but it’s understandable because of his depression following Gideon's death. John's friends and former co-workers and Jill's family would surely have wanted to save him.
  • Yes, John had sufficient means to pay for the treatment out of pocket. But he said it wasn't a question of money, but of principle. So his pride meant that he let the cancer progress and basically seal his fate. The fact that this goes in direct contradiction to his obsession with the human will for survival seems to point to his insanity and the cancer probably spreading to his brain and degrading his capacity for logic. Alternatively, maybe he justified this decision in that his wealth would be better off supporting his philanthropic projects (including continued investment in the whole Jigsaw project, and possibly what he willed to Jill) after his death, than gambling on an experimental treatment that the state should by all rights have covered.
  • As it turns out in Saw X, he didn't give up on the treatment and afforded it by himself. Thing is, the treatment was a scam and didn't cure anything.

About Addy

• Why is Addy kidnapped to participate in William's game? Her job at Umbrella Health was just to administrate all of William's working appointments, but she had nothing to do with dismissing the clients' coverage. Judging by her photos with her family, it seems that she even appreciates her life, because Jigsaw mentions that if she dies, her loss would be felt by her family and friends.
  • Jigsaw's judgement is all-encompassing and not very discriminating. Remember that he eventually, belatedly came to see that Lynn deserved to be set free in the third film, but it took one hell of an emotional persuasion from her for him to see that.

About Brent

• Is Brent gonna be sentenced to juvenile detention for murdering William? Yeah, he murdered William in cold blood to avenge his father, but he and Tara could lie by saying that they thought that killing William was necessary to pass the game, which is why most of the Jigsaw survivors were allowed to go free, as they were forced to kill to survive, and that they thought that if they chose to spare William, they would have been killed instead. Plus, the only other witness is Pamela, but it's one versus two.
  • The investigators would probably pull up the fact that his father was denied coverage by the firm and this would colour their notions of assumed guilt. Between that, Pamela as a witness, and analysis of their holding cell which would likely show that there was no trap or other mechanisms which forced them to kill him (plus there's really nothing to suggest the police couldn't replay the footage which had John posing the choice to them), the evidence begins to mount up. Perhaps the fact that we don't see him at the survivors group in the following movie, but we do see his mother (who didn't pull the lever) means that he was indeed brought up on charges. Note that in reality, the actor had scheduling conflicts, but the indications as presented lead to this conclusion in the movie.

John not targeting doctors

• During his last conversation with William, John remarks that in the Far East, patients only pay their doctors once they are healthy, but not when they are sick. Taking this into account, why doesn't John target doctors who refuse to treat terminally ill patients? As pointed in the franchise's Fridge page, insurance people are just middlemen throughout this situations. He did target Logan Nelson and Lawrence Gordon, but the former was tested for causing John's cancer not to be detected in time and the latter was tested because he was a Jerkass.
  • It's not as if the medicine to treat life-threatening illnesses is free or cheap.
  • Of course, someone has to pay the doctors, and money and resources are finite even for insurance companies, so they can't afford everything, that's why there are laws and policies regulating what they are and aren't allowed to deny to their customers. But this doesn't mean that there aren't people acting in bad faith, there can be a lot of lies and bullshit being sold in this industry, so it's assumed that William went against some rule that he wasn't allowed to, after all John paid for his insurance, even if he's not allowed to demand a billion dollar treatment, he's still allowed to demand what he hired William for. In the case of the kid's parent, he denied him treatment because he didn't tell the company about an oral surgery he had, which made him more vulnerable to heart diseases, so his company denied everything, not even giving him a penny, I'm skeptical if they are allowed to do that in this specific case, even if he purposefully ommited this condition, partial coverage would already be a great help. And obviously John is an insane psychopath, so nothing about his "philosophy" makes sense. If William deserved anything, it was a lawsuit, not Cold-Blooded Torture.

The Oxygen Crusher

• It's commonly assumed that Hank is placed in the Oxygen Crusher because, unlike any other Umbrella Health workers, he will inevitably breathe and be killed by the trap due to his refusal to give up smoking, allowing William, a much healthier person than him, to proceed with his game. But what if, maybe, perhaps due to a recently-contracted disease, William had lost the game? Then would Hank have survived, and been forced to proceed with William's game and decide who would live or die?
  • Maybe all the victims were also related to Hank in some way. Taking into account that all the video tapes just started abruptly without any explanation, it's possible that Hoffman was watching the game in a faraway place or by a peephole and controlled the TVs. If William wins, he would play the tapes meant for William. If Hank wins, he would play the tapes meant for Hank. For the Billy one, it might have been controlled as well.

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