Tropes S to Z / Saw

Saw Trope Examples
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Sadistic Choice: Jigsaw's games tend to involve this.
- In III and IV, the respective protagonists (Jeff and Rigg) have to choose whether to save the victim in each trap or let them die.
- VI plays this to the hilt, with William having to choose who lives and dies out of the employees whom he comes across each of the separate traps. At the end, the family of a terminally ill man he refused to give a loan to is given the choice to kill him. The wife wants to see him die, but is too squeamish to actually push the button that will kill him. Her son has no such reservations however, and happily activates the trap.
Sampling: Two soundtracks, "Pig Juicer Intro" from Saw III and "Cycle Trap" from Jigsaw, use Slayer's "Eyes of the Insane" as a source sample.
Saw Blades of Death:
- At the end of Saw III, Jeff kills Jigsaw by slitting his throat with a hand-held circular saw.
- In the Steam Maze from Saw VI, William and Debbie are given a similar hand-held saw to cut out the key inside William's body, which is necessary for Debbie to free herself from the harpoon contraption she has attached. William tells Debbie that he's willing to cut himself, but Debbie immediately tries to use the saw to try to kill William instead, making her lose all the time they could have used until the harpoon kills her.
- The main components of the Public Execution Trap from Saw 3D are a pair of circular saws, one within the range of injuring and potentially killing Brad and Ryan on the table they're on opposites sides of, and another pointing at Dina, which will rise to her if Brad and Ryan don't move their saw to fight each other. Although Brad and Ryan initially fight (with Ryan landing a brief hit on Brad), they ultimately let Dina die instead once she exposes her infidelity to the two of them.
- Played with in the Bucket Room from Jigsaw, where the victims are in front of a wall of circular saws closing on them. Although the saws are harmful, making the slightest contact with them is necessary to pass the trap (meaning they'd only need a small finger slit at minimum), as Jigsaw exactly instructs by referring to this act as a "blood sacrifice".
Scare Chord: The films have plenty of them, but the most memorable is "Hello Zepp" (and all variants thereof), the track that plays during the climax of every film.
The Scourge of God: Seemingly invoked by Jigsaw, who puts people through his trials for even the smallest vices.
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: Occasionally this is the consequence of not getting out, though there's usually some mechanism to destroy yourself in a much more gruesome way while trying to escape.
Seamless Scenery: There are so many examples of this in the series, mostly in the films Darren Lynn Bousman directed.
- In Saw II:
  - Eric walks out of his bedroom... and right into the crime scene where the opening trap took place.
  - And that scene also ends this way, with the camera panning over the message left for Eric, over a beam, and then down into the precinct, where Kerry is analyzing Jigsaw's tape.
  - After Xavier discovers the number on the back of Gus' neck, the camera pans from that... to Daniel and Amanda running down a hallway, as if the floor was part of the wall they're running past.
- In Saw III:
  - The camera follows Troy's body before panning to a rug in Kerry's apartment.
  - And after Kerry is killed in a trap, the camera pans from that to Lynn's bedroom.
  - In another scene, Amanda walks through the factory floor, passing the crate Jeff is trapped in... which is actually in another part of the building.
- In Saw IV:
  - Rigg literally throws Brenda through a mirror and into the next scene.
  - In another scene, Hoffman turns to leave the precinct... and then Rigg walks right past him, putting a shirt on, which leads into the next scene.
- Surprisingly enough, it happens throughout Saw 3D (which wasn't directed by Bousman) as well.
  - Exaggerated when the camera constantly pans between Bobby pulling his teeth and Gibson's squad raiding the asylum where Bobby's game is taking place.
  - It also happens when Gibson finds the back room of the garage, which pans to Bobby finally reaching Joyce.
Self-Harm:
- After leaving her drug addiction from her test in the first film, Amanda began cutting herself, which is what lands her in another trap in Saw II (actually, that was her part in the game's plan as a watchperson to John, but she did still harm herself). She's seen cutting one of her legs in Saw III, laying out all the tools before she starts (in an attempt to gain control over her situation), and later tightly grips a knife until she begins to bleed onto the floor (because she's starting to lose control, in comparison to the previous scenes).
- Paul Leahy, a victim in the first film, had run a straight razor across his wrists twice (either to gain attention or to kill himself, as John asks via tape).
Self-Surgery:
- Jigsaw often requires his victims to perform grievous injuries to themselves in order to pass his tests and trials. More often than not, they're given appropriate equipment (be it surgical or non-surgical) for the task. For example, one scene in the first film involves a man chopping his foot off with a hacksaw in order to escape. Interestingly, the man in question, Lawrence Gordon, is actually a trained surgeon, one of the only few such people in the series.
- At the beginning of Saw 3D, Hoffman stitches the tear that the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 left on his right cheek to stop the immense bleeding. By the time it's fully healed, it gives his face the appearance of a half-Glasgow Grin, in addition to the five-o-clock shadow he grew in the meantime.
- Taken more literally with the Brain Surgery Trap from Saw X, wherein the victim has to perform brain surgery on himself in order to free himself from his restraints.
Sentimental Homemade Toy: As Saw IV establishes, this is the origin of Billy the Puppet's design, in the form of a harlequin doll known as Bobby the Puppet, which John had made for his unborn son Gideon. He became very possessive of it during his depression after Jill's miscarriage. In one flashback, John is seen softly touching Bobby after putting it back on a table from which Art accidentally knocked the doll over. Bobby was later seen in the background of Saw V and Saw 3D.
Sequel Escalation: The movies after the first one saw the traps and "games" becoming increasingly elaborate, and the violence much more explicit. Curiously, the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot structure was also escalated by the sequels, to the point that trying to synopsize the franchise's timeline is a challenging task indeed.
Sequencing Deception: Used several times as a form of The Reveal.
- In Saw II, there are two plot lines: the victims in the Nerve Gas House, and the police watching them on closed-circuit TV. It later turns out that the TV footage is recorded, and Eric's son is in fact in the same building in which he's watching the recordings. It's an interesting example since the characters have the same mistaken impression as the viewer — to tragic effect.
- Saw IV plays a similar trick. The first scene is chronologically the last; everything else takes place during the previous film.
- Jigsaw goes even further — the barn game takes place over ten years before the rest of the movie's events.
Serial Killer: Although Jigsaw would vehemently deny being this, this is what he and his disciples are. Amanda in particular doesn't even make any pretenses about not being one.
Series Continuity Error: The franchise's timeline was already very complex, so much that even dedicated fans can get frustrated getting a grasp on the sequence of events, especially since some movies happen out of chronological order or even during another; however, the timeline was still carefully constructed, and could be understood clearly when put in order. Then along came Jigsaw, which dropped a bomb on everyone by revealing that Logan, a new character who debuted in the film, was the first Jigsaw apprentice, not the previously-introduced Hoffman. Fans were baffled at this reveal, since it disrupted the timeline the previous films had, and when the issue was brought up to the film's writers, they admitted that they did such a reveal because knowing the complete timeline didn't make any sense for it (since the film was released and is set years after the previous ones), and they were hoping that nobody would notice the error.
Shoot the Shaggy Dog:
- THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE. No main character has had anything resembling a clear-cut victory over Jigsaw in the movies or the games, and there's always someone ready to take over the serial killer's mantle.
- Smaller cases occur whenever someone conquers the grueling conditions of a Jigsaw game through great suffering or sacrifice, only for the trap to turn out to be inescapable by design or for there to be interference from another person or time running out that prevents the victim from completing the final step that will actually free them.
- William in Saw VI may well be the biggest example of this in the series. In order, he had to hold his breath for a painful duration so that another guy will trigger a trap and get himself killed; choose whether to save an old, diabetic mother or a perfectly healthy loner; suffer severe steam burns while trying to help his company's lawyer escape a maze and then nearly get hacked open when she tries to find the key necessary to save her life; and then choose which two of his insurance analysts will live, condemning the other four to death. Eventually, it turns out that he was never really in control of his own fate, and he dies at the hands of an angry, vengeful teenager.
Shout-Out:
- Billy the Puppet was directly inspired by a similar creepy puppet in Dario Argento's Giallo film Deep Red.
- The premise of the first film was partly inspired by the ending of Mad Max, where Max handcuffs the last gang member to a car that he's rigged to explode and leaves him with a hacksaw, telling him that it'd take ten minutes to cut through the handcuffs and escape, but five minutes to cut through his ankle. Not coincidentally, James Wan and Leigh Whannell are both Australian.
- At one point in Saw II, Jigsaw notes that his house is The Last House on the Left.
- The Bedroom Trap scene in Saw IV is very similar to the cover art of Sodom's album Get What You Deserve with the bedroom location, the intense red lightning, the playing of a sex tape on a TV screen, and Ivan looking similar to the man on the cover (as well as befitting the cover's aesthetic by being a Serial Rapist).
- The original short film's opening title uses a sound effect from Nine Inch Nails' "Screaming Slave" (a remix of their song "Happiness in Slavery").^note
Simultaneous Arcs: The events of Saw III and Saw IV are revealed at the end of the latter to have been occurring simultaneously.
Sin Eater: While he doesn't outright claim to be one, Jigsaw can be seen as a metaphorical Sin Eater of sorts, given his MO regarding targets, his method of "rehabilitation" for said targets, and the prominent references to "sinning" that he makes.
Sinister Swine: The Jigsaw killers and their copycats have pigs as a recurring motif.
- The original idea for the motif among the Jigsaw killers came from John, who, as an Eastern Zodiac believer who began his killings in the Year of the Pig, used pigs to represent a rotting world. He made scary pig masks to wear as disguises (after the first, more mundane-looking pair of masks that he got at a festival), and several of the traps he planned use actual pig corpses or draw parallels to them (including a pig farm for testing field that was previously owned by his ex-wife's family). While later killers and accomplices still used the pig masks, none of them had pigs as a regular symbol like John, with Hoffman only using them (and following John's MO most of the time) in order to cover up his drastically different manners until he's publicly exposed in Saw 3D.
- As well as borrowing the pig mask from the Jigsaw killers, the Spiral Killer from Spiral has a creepy-looking Police Pig puppet known as "Mr. Snuggles".
Sink or Swim Mentor: Jigsaw's motivation. He wants to make people who take life for granted appreciate their lives using... controversial methods, to say the least, which he also secretly uses on his various apprentices to see if they're qualified to succeed him and carry his planned schemes afterwards.
Sir Swears-a-Lot: Pretty much every relevant (and non-relevant with enough dialogue) character has a very colorful language. The one who swears the least is Jigsaw himself, and any time he does swear is meant to hit hard.
Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Jigsaw did target people who did him wrong or he believed were wasting their lives, but his reasons (speaking of himself and not his apprentices who sought to sabotage his philosophy) became pettier over time.
- In general, his first victims were previously patients in Jill's drug recovery clinic, which fitted with the point of his tests being a form of rehabilitation. By contrast, his later victims either pretended to be him or have some connection to him, denied him health insurance, or were callous when they told him he had inoperable cancer.
- The earliest sign of this was in the first movie, when he forced Amanda to fish out the key to the Reverse Bear Trap from Donnie Greco's stomach, not telling her that he was still alive and she killed him in a frantic attempt to get the key.
- Further onward, he chose a janitor in VI for smoking so he could punish William Easton for denying him insurance, and he chose various victims throughout the series for simply lying; the only justified case was Bobby Dagen in 3D, since his lies were about surviving Jigsaw just to gain money and fame. Even still, he brutally sacrifices Bobby's wife by burning her alive just to further punish him (even though she did nothing to deserve it).
The Sociopath:
- Jigsaw and some of his apprentices show signs of sociopathic behavior.
  - Other than a sliver of affection for Jill, his apprentices (excluding Hoffman) and a few other people, John doesn't seem to be capable of empathy. This is lampshaded by one of his victims, Anna, who while no saint by any means, calls him out for his lack of compassion. While corrupting Hoffman early on in their relationship, he even explicitly states that purging feelings of empathy or remorse are necessary to do what he does.
  - Averted by Amanda. It's made clear that while villainous, she's a deeply troubled person, and demonstrates remorse and emotional instability far too great for a sociopath.
  - Hoffman seriously surpasses John in how many lines he's willing to cross. While John had a moral lesson in mind with his doings and gave his victims a chance to survive, Hoffman makes half his traps inescapable in the belief that murderers can't redeem themselves, being hypocritical in that statement while claiming so, while the other half force their victims into making sadistic choices, where one can live only at the expense of another's death. He horrifyingly blackmailed Amanda simply because he didn't like her. He's also willing to murder people whom he worked with for over 20 years just to get away, as well as putting Strahm in an inescapable trap and framing him for the murder he himself committed in Saw V. He fully crosses the line when he murders John's ex-wife with the Reverse Bear Trap in Saw 3D.
- Anna from Jigsaw could qualify as a high-functioning one, as she murdered her baby and framed her husband for it, which led to him being Driven to Suicide, while showing no remorse or regret for what she has done. Her empathy towards the other test subjects could've been pragmatic Bait the Dog attempts to get them to trust her and help her escape. When she turns the gun on Ryan to save herself, she appears to be an Apologetic Attacker towards him, but her weeping as she aims the shotgun at Ryan were likely just Crocodile Tears for her to pass herself as a victim, rather than the self-centered and heartless witch she is at heart.
Soundtrack Dissonance: A staple in the trailers of the more recent films.
- The first trailer of Jigsaw shows the kind of imagery associated with the franchise as "Running Scared" by Roy Orbison plays in the background.
- Midway through Saw X's trailer, The Hollies' "The Air that I Breathe" plays as background music to what we see of the victims suffering and/or struggling inside their traps.
Splatter Horror: The first few movies explored the psychological aspects of splatter horror, as Jigsaw forces his victims to make sadistic decisions and often mutilate themselves or others to escape. As the series progressed, however, the emphasis shifted more and more towards the typical gruesome set-pieces associated with the genre.
The Starscream: A flashback in Saw VI reveals that Hoffman blackmailed Amanda into failing her test in III, setting off the chain of events that led to the deaths of both her and John in quick succession. Jill later caught onto this deception, and angrily tries to sabotage Hoffman's test.
Stealth Mentor: Jigsaw sees himself as this, more so for some individuals than others. It almost never works, and, with few exceptions, he doesn't feel any remorse or disappointment when they fail and die.
Stockholm Syndrome:
- Amanda, one of the few survivors of Jigsaw's traps, develops an obsessional love for him; Hoffman kills his sister's murderer with a Jigsaw-esque death trap, then is recruited by Jigsaw himself. This apparently seems to be Jigsaw's preferred method of recruiting apprentices and accomplices, going furthermore by the end of Saw 3D and the second video game.
- Subverted with Simone. In Saw VI, Hoffman meets with her to clear some internal doubts he has about John's philosophy. While she initially seems to be suffering from this, when Hoffman actually asks if she learned anything from her ordeal, she furiously lashes out at him and angrily demands to know what good could possibly come from John's logic. Even in 3D, an incredibly bitter Simone calls out other survivors at their meetups for claiming Jigsaw made them positively re-evaluate their lives in some way.
Stopped Numbering Sequels:
- Zig-zagged with the film titles. The films from Saw II to Saw VI all have roman numerals in their titles matching their correspondent entry number. The next film after Saw VI is instead titled Saw 3D (or Saw: The Final Chapter in its home video release). The two following films, Jigsaw and Spiral, followed this "format" suit with the use of completely different titles (with "Saw" being relegated to a subtitle for the latter film: From the Book of Saw). Lastly, the tenth film, Saw X, returned to the roman numerals.
- Inverted with the series of soundtrack songs derived from the first film's "Hello Zepp". The ones from Saw II to IV had different unnumbered names ("Hello Eric", "Final Test", "Let Go"); starting with Saw V, they're titled "Zepp Five", "Zepp Six", "Zepp Seven", and so on.
Strapped to an Operating Table: Repeatedly. Subverted with Amanda's trap in the first film; she's (loosely) strapped to a chair.
Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome:
- II revealed that Adam, one of the main characters from the first movie, had died, showing us his corpse. III not only showed his death scene (in a flashback), but in its early part also killed off Kerry, who had been investigating the Jigsaw case since the beginning.
- David Tapp, whose fate was unclear at the end of the first movie, is confirmed to be dead in V. A similar fate for Tapp is shown in the canonical ending of the first video game.
- Rigg was shot at the end of IV, but was otherwise alive. He is declared dead at the beginning of V.
- Strahm was first introduced in IV, and died at the end of V.
Swallow the Key:
- Apparently forced on one of Jigsaw's captives in the first film, so that Amanda, could be required to cut it out of his body to stop her own rapidly-approaching demise. Contrary to what she'd been told, the key-swallower was not dead when she started cutting, just unconscious.
- In the Silence Circle from Saw 3D, Bobby has to free Nina with a key in her stomach, which he has to pick with a fishhook. Due to this, he has to be careful when pulling it out, as the hook can tear her apart from the inside.
Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: The sympathetic/despicable dynamic often comes into play between the Jigsaw killers, who are usually sympathetic, and certain antagonistic victims of theirs, who are despicable. While the killers tend to be the main threat, said victims are usually tested for doing acts the killers find despicable, and some actively seek to cross more lines in the games than they are forced to.
Synchronous Episodes: Saw III and the bulk of 'Saw IV'' are revealed at the end of the latter to have been taking place at the same time, when Rigg and Strahm enter the Gideon Meatpacking Plant, with the latter witnessing Jeff's trial.

Technology Porn: All of the traps are technically working devices, though of course, with lots of safeties in place.
Terminally-Ill Criminal: John's colon cancer is part of his motivation for putting ruined people through the wringer as Jigsaw. Being forced to confront his own mortality, he became obsessed with helping society and forces people to appreciate their lives by torturing them. Given his occasional moments where he defies this reasoning, though, it's implied that his frontal lobe tumor from the cancer clouded his judgment and made him unable to grasp morality anymore up until his death.
Thanatos Gambit:
- At the end of Saw III, a bedridden Jigsaw gives Jeff the chance of forgiving him or killing him. Jeff takes the latter option. In doing so, not only does Jigsaw's death set off a trap that kills Jeff's wife (as she had been placed in a device that correlates with Jigsaw's heart rate monitor), but Jigsaw plays a tape (or drops it with Jeff playing it instead in the movie's Director's Cut version) in which he reveals that Jeff's daughter has been trapped in a location that only he knows about.
- After Saw III, all of the games Jigsaw planned and were run by Hoffman are this, but it isn't until Saw 3D when his actual plans are pulled off.
That Liar Lies:
- Lawrence in the first film, after being told by his wife that Adam is lying. "Stop the lies! You're a liar!"
- In Saw VI:
  - In the Shotgun Carousel, a tirade of these rolls around between Josh and Shelby when Gena tries to convince William to save her by saying she's pregnant.
    Gena: Umm... I- I'm pregnant! I'm- I am pregnant!
    Josh: No, she's not! She's lying! She's fucking lying! Mr. Easton, she's lying!
    Shelby: Mr. Easton, she's lying!
    Gena: Fuck you!
    Josh: Mr. Easton, she's lying!
    Gena: I'm pregnant!
    Josh: She's lying!
    Gena: (as the carousel stops with her in front of the shotgun) No! No, fuck! I'm pregnant!
    Josh: No, she's lying! She's fucking lying!
    Shelby: Mr. Easton, it's not true!
    Gena: Please! Please! (the shotgun begins to arm) Fuck! Push the thing! PUSH THE THING!
    Josh: She's lying!
    Gena: No, Mr. Easton! Push it, push the thing!
  - Hoffman says this to Perez as he's stabbing her to death.
    Hoffman: Who else knows about me? Who else fucking knows about me?
    Perez: E-Everyone...
    Hoffman: You lie... You're fucking lying...
- Ryan in Jigsaw, when Carly hesitates to tell the truth about what she did. "YOU'RE LYING! YOU'RE LYING!"
Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: Aside from every film after the first one featuring a remix of said film's "Hello Zepp" as a climactic Leitmotif, much of the soundtrack across installments (especially in tense scenes) involves the constant recycling of compositions and specific sounds to create new music.
Theme Serial Killer: Jigsaw is mostly a simple Poetic Serial Killer whose motives for each of his victims, while all sharing the status as a form of punishment on Jigsaw's behalf, tend to vary drastically. However, plenty of the scenarios he plans for multiple victims, particularly the longer ones such as the Nerve Gas House in Saw II, the Fatal Five's Trial in Saw V and the Murderers' Trial in Jigsaw, tend to have people whom Jigsaw targets for a specific type of reason or otherwise share something in common with one another. Many of his traps are also based on or resemble historical execution devices that fit together within his theme of justice.
Time Bomb: The essence of almost all of Jigsaw's traps is that in period of time X, bad thing Y (usually death) will happen unless thing Z (usually escaping/beating the trap) happens first. Literal time bombs are sometimes involved in bad thing Y's borderline inevitable occurrence (such as in the Fatal Five's trial in Saw V).
Toilet Horror: The iconic Bathroom, which is the main location of the first film and is later seen in II, III, 3D and X.
Tom the Dark Lord: Jigsaw, the Evil Genius Serial Killer who later becomes a borderline Dark Messiah, is an unassuming old man named John. Ditto for his notorious successor who racked a much larger body count than him; he goes by the plain name of Mark.
Too Dumb to Live: Most of Jigsaw's victims spend a large part of the allotted time struggling, swearing and screaming incoherently over the very recording that is telling them how to survive, and are usually just starting to get themselves out when they're murderised. In some cases, all but lampshaded by Jigsaw, usually when the character he's speaking to has failed to interpret a riddle in the most literal manner possible.
Torture Cellar: Most of the locales used by Jigsaw and his apprentices are ordinary places that have simply been abandoned.
Torture Porn: The franchise made the genre popular again in the 2000's, along with the Hostel series.
Torture Technician: Jigsaw was a talented engineer, and used his creative mind to create horrific death traps. He eventually passed his expertise on to his apprentices.
To the Pain: Such a large point that Jigsaw actually made a ventriloquist puppet, records a video using it to tell people what scenario they're in and what they'll have to do to escape it, puts a TV in the room of the trap and inserts the video. Before you think this is a bit off-topic, there is a reason: Jigsaw maintains he's never killed anyone and uses the video to justify this, wherein he tells the victim what sin they've committed to warrant being in the trap, as well as what they'll have to do to escape.
Tragic Keepsake:
- Bobby the Puppet, the harlequin doll from which Billy was inspired, is this for John. It's all but stated that John has kept Bobby around as a reminder of his lost child.
- Similarly, John has owned a Chinese soldier figure to remind him of the incident, which was originally stolen by Cecil at a market in a Year of the Pig festival (where John had abducted him).
Trap Master: Jigsaw and his apprentices engineer mechanical death traps combined with mind games. Jigsaw and Hoffman have also armed various lairs and test places with booby traps to dispatch any interference from the police.
Treasure Chest Cavity: Used in numerous traps where keys are implanted inside victims, either to force them to perform Self-Surgery or to force others to attack them. The two most particular examples for each reason, respectively, are Michael Marks in Saw II and William Easton in Saw VI (though his case was only relevant for one test).
Trilogy Creep: The franchise is easily one of the largest examples of this trope. To put it through: Saw was originally intended to be a standalone film. Because of its astounding success, the creators decided to make the first two sequels in order to finish with a trilogy. Due to invokedExecutive Meddling after the larger success of those movies, they came back after the third one and just decided to flesh out a story and keep writing until they came up with the perfect ending. They came up with an additional 5 movies, but due to further meddling they had to condense the last two into Saw 3D, which would have originally ended the franchise in 2010. However, it was revived in 2017, with the additions of an eighth and ninth entry.
- According to Darren Lynn Bousman, there are currently five more movies in development, which include two direct follow-ups to 3D (with the Working Titles Saw IX and X), a direct sequel to Jigsaw, and two sequels to Spiral, which is also set to get its own TV series.
Two Lines, No Waiting: All of the installments after the first movie fit this plot structure. The A-storyline tends to focus on the plot (including the aftermath of most of the games featured), while the B one is usually centered around the movie's main game. The movie jumps to Line A whenever something Gorn tastic happens in Line B, and to Line B after some plot development happens in Line A. Some of the movies spend more time in Line A (V, 3D and Spiral), and others spend more in Line B (II, III, IV, VI and Jigsaw), which often relates to how gory a given installment is. Most of these plots meet up in some fashion at the end.^Details
Two-Part Trilogy: At least, that's how it was intended when it still was a trilogy. Then came the Trilogy Creep (see above). Interestingly, the sequels (and prequels) hasn't stopped the series from suffering a lot of the typical problems of a Two-Part Trilogy.

Übermensch: Jigsaw is completely convinced that his tests are helping people learn to value their lives, in spite of how most people see him as a murderer. It helps that Jigsaw's character takes some influence from Gilles Deleuze's philosophy, who was himself inspired by Nietzsche.
Unbuilt Trope: The franchise popularized the Torture Porn genre in the 2000s. However, its first film was surprisingly bloodless for the immense Gorn that's usually associated with the franchise. The most brutal Death Trap that the viewer is shown (and the one most in line with typical traps of the series), the Reverse Bear Trap, is one that its intended victim escapes unharmed, and for the others, the viewer is mostly told what they did to their victims as opposed to shown. Most of the serious gore only came in the sequels. What's more, Jigsaw wasn't much of a Torture Technician, instead forcing his victims into situations where they have to mutilate themselves in order to survive, and most of the traps weren't the complex clockwork machinery of later films, instead being comparatively simple things like crawling through razor wire, walking barefoot over broken glass, having to read messages on a wall by candlelight to solve a puzzle while coated in flammable jelly, or being chained to a pipe and given a hacksaw that can't cut through the chain but can cut through the foot it's attached to. Today, people watching the first film expecting non-stop carnage would probably be disappointed when they get a low-key detective thriller instead.
Uncertain Doom:
- After the first film, Lawrence's fate was left hanging and never made clear until Saw 3D.
- Whether Hoffman perished from Lawrence imprisoning him is currently left in the air. Although Word of God in Saw 3D's DVD commentary indicated he died, his actor was asked to reprise his role, but this was put on hold with changes to developmental plans for future installments in the series. Since the release of Spiral, Darren Lynn Bousman claimed that there are currently discussions to bring back Hoffman for a later movie.
- What became of Logan after the events of Jigsaw is unclear. By the time of Spiral, the police have recognized that his killings were the result of a copycat killer and not John Kramer returned from the dead, but whether or not Halloran was successfully framed or if they uncovered the ruse is never mentioned.
- In The Scott Tibbs Documentary, Scott's fate in his trap is left unknown, as the outcome isn't seen due to his bandmates taking the camera and leaving the room he's in before the trap's timer runs out. He does panic and yell at the bandmates just before the timer ends, though, so his chance of survival isn't probably good.
Unreveal Angle:
- In the first movie, during the flashback to Tapp and Sing raiding Jigsaw's lair, Jigsaw's face is always obscured by numerous scenery details, be it his robe, pieces of furniture or simply the camera angle.
- In III, Amanda reads a note moments before shooting Lynn, but what she's reading isn't shown at all. The actual text isn't revealed until a flashback in VI.
Unwinnable by Design: Several of the traps certainly qualify, but most notably Amanda's traps are unwinnable because she believes people cannot change their ways.
- From a more psychological perspective, most of Jigsaw's "main" tests follow a similar formula up until the fifth film: they all blatantly rely on their victims behaving a certain way, often without even hinting at the alternative philosophy/behavior necessary for them to survive, then killing or, in Jeff and Riggs' case, mocking and killing them for either not learning anything, or misinterpreting the point of their test, respectively.
- Saw V is the first instance where an alternative (work together... and for the love of god, take Jigsaw and his accomplice's threats seriously, Strahm!) is clearly implied; the traps are clearly meant for more than just killing them one by one, and the victims of said trial almost fail because they flat-out ignore the It's All About Me purpose of their test.
- There's also the Shotgun Keys trap in Jigsaw, which is a mind game pretty much engineered for the "failure" result, due to the huge leaps of logic required to understand John's very literal hint to surviving and escaping.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
- Cecil is the reason why John is dead-set on testing people's lives.
- In a similar vein, if William had insured John on his experimental treatment instead of denying his coverage, then he'd still live and not kill anyone...
- ...which he wouldn't have needed to do if Logan hadn't accidentally mislabeled John's cranial X-ray, preventing his cancer from being caught earlier.
- If one were to look at the bigger picture of the franchise and its timeline, they would see that if Eric hadn't sent Amanda to jail for a crime she didn't commit, she wouldn't have become a heroin addict while inside; thus she would never have told Cecil to rob Jill's clinic, which was the first incident for Jigsaw's Start of Darkness. So if you think about it, if Eric hadn't been such a corrupt piece of shit, most of the franchise's events may have never happened.
- A deleted scene of Saw 3D shows that Cale was the one who suggested Bobby to pretend to be a Jigsaw survivor, thus kickstarting the movie's main game.
- Edgar's murder of Logan's wife is a main motivating factor to why Logan decides to take up the then-dormant mantle of Jigsaw in Jigsaw.
- Schenk would never have become a serial killer and killed Pete if Pete himself hadn't murdered Schenk's father in front of him.
Unwitting Pawn: More than a few people have unknowingly helped Jigsaw and his apprentices advance with their acts, but the most egregious case is Strahm at the end of V.

Video Wills:
- Upon his death, John leaves a tape to Jill in Saw V, where he explains the importance of the box their executor Bernie Feldman gave her. This sets the gears in motion for John's posthumous plans that affect the plot of the series up to Saw 3D.
- Another tape John left for Dr. Gordon (part of said box's contents), in which he instructs about the final task he gives to the latter, is first seen in VI, then explicitly shown in a flashback in 3D.
Vigilante Man: The various Jigsaw killers and their copycats put those who previously committed crimes without receiving any punishment for it into Death Traps, though their manners vary a lot beyond that.
- John was the one who had the original idea of Jigsaw: rehabilitating people through death traps in order to teach them different lessons, including the general one of appreciating their lives. This is deconstructed in that his traps did nothing good for his surviving victims, often facing a downward spiral afterwards or defying his methods (the latter being the case for most of his apprentices, as listed below). Plus, it's shown in Saw III that the only solution John has to this is testing the victims over and over until they either "truly rehabilitate" or die.
- Amanda went along with John's philosophy at first, but began doubting it by the events of Saw III, when she begins rigging traps to be inescapable in the belief that people can't change. This is the reason why John secretly tests her later on, and when she realizes it, she completely disregards his philosophy just before her death.
- Hoffman originally set up an inescapable Jigsaw copycat trap to avenge his dead sister when her murderer was released from prison. Then John practically forced him to become a disciple of his, so Hoffman never trusted his methods at least once; he only ran whatever "games" John had left planned to cover up that he was adhered to his philosophy. By that point, the only victims Hoffman put in a trap of his own were a group of skinheads whose leader had to do a painfully difficult task to survive. He wasn't above meddling his crimes either, as he directly killed numerous law enforcement officers (even attempting to frame one of them as a killer in his place) just to avoid getting caught or carry out his schemes.
- Logan was the first person indoctrinated into John's philosophy, and while he remained mostly faithful to it, he parted ways with John at some point before the latter got his other apprentices, only becoming a full-time killer long after all of them died. He's more motivated to make his victims confess their sins rather than rehabilitate themselves, and even still he didn't go through that method in his first scheme seen, where he sought to get revenge against Halloran and his informants when one of the latter murdered his wife. Much like Hoffman, he tries to cover himself up behind John's philosophy, though rather by attempting to convince people that John is still alive and getting Halloran framed in case that doesn't work.
- Schenk is arguably the closest one to a typical vigilante overall, only using the Jigsaw methods to murder Dirty Cops, who comprise a large part of the Metropolitan Police Department, and trying to get out of the way once his identity is going to be exposed. He was first motivated into doing this when one of said cops murdered his father to prevent him from testifying against another cop.
Viler New Villain: While he's not necessarily introduced as such, Hoffman is progressively shown to be a much more immoral and dangerous Big Bad than the original Jigsaw, as well as later killers and copycats, being one of the very few who directly murders people without using death traps. He eventually becomes an absolute sociopath with his Villainous Breakdown throughout Saw 3D.
Villain-Based Franchise: Jigsaw serves as the franchise's driver for the first three movies, then his apprentices and a copycat take his place.
Villain Has a Point: A recurring theme throughout the series. As brutal and thoroughly inhumane as John's methods are, they really have made most of the people who were put through his deadly games and survived to the end (or at least survived long enough to have some Character Development) appreciate their lives and untapped potential and desire to clean up their acts, even if only for a while. That being said, Saw II and III show that John's philosophy doesn't work for everyone (namely Amanda, who's been tested twice and never fully loses her self-loathing and self-destructive streak, to the point she's convinced herself that John's tests don't really change anyone), and that John's only solution to this inefficiency is to keep re-testing the people who don't change until they eventually die. Saw VI and 3D also feature Simone, a Jigsaw survivor who angrily calls out on fellow survivors for saying that their experience in a Jigsaw game have changed them.
Villain of Another Story: Most of Jigsaw's victims who qualify as assholes are established criminal threats. The most heinous and powerful ones could have held their own as a Big Bad in another work if they weren't in a horror Villain-Based Franchise.
Villainous Breakdown:
- In the first film, when he's outwitted and restrained by Tapp and Sing, John descends into an uncharacteristically angry motive rant before slitting Tapp's throat and practically killing Sing. Keep in mind: these are two perfectly normal and hardworking police officers only interested in saving lives.
  John: Yes, I'm sick, officer. Sick from the disease eating away at me inside. Sick of people who don't appreciate their blessings. Sick of those who scoff at the suffering of others. I'm sick of it all!
- We see Amanda methodically commit self-harm early on in Saw III. Towards the end, she does it again, but this time without the ritual, just cutting herself quickly. When she shoots Lynn and realizes what a sham John's philosophy is, she's almost sobbing, and angrily calls John out with a long string of arguments.
- After escaping the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 in Saw VI, Hoffman drops all his pretense of the Jigsaw philosophy and leans fully into an Ax-Crazy psychopath over the course of 3D. This outcome triggers John's plan to enlist Dr. Gordon to put him down for good.
- In Saw X, Cecilia remains remarkably calm and collected throughout the whole game up to her own trap... until she realizes that she's been Out-Gambitted and panics. While chemical gas spreads in the room she's trapped in, she frantically fights for her survival and murders Parker in order to poke her head through a make-shift hole out of the room to avoid suffocating. As John, Amanda, and Carlos leave, she frantically screams out for John as she's left to rot in the gas-filled room.
Villainous Legacy:
- Jigsaw is killed in Saw III, but the series is continued by his apprentices and the plans he's left for them to follow. In the aforementioned movie, he's genuinely disappointed that one of them (Amanda) turned out to be a Misanthrope Supreme who didn't even bother with his philosophy, and built part of the plot around the consequences for her lack of mercy.
- Spiral shows that, years after the presumed downfall of all of his apprentices, Jigsaw managed to inspire even more successors without having personally trained them, as the movie's titular copycat killer adapts his techniques to fulfill his own mission and agenda.
Visionary Villain:
- After suffering a Trauma Conga Line that culminated in him attempting suicide, John developed a new outlook on life, feeling that most people are wasting their lives. He kidnaps criminals or assorted jerkasses and puts them through "games" where they must make a Life-or-Limb Decision or kill someone else and, if they survive, hopefully come away from it with a new appreciation for their lives. He's essentially a self-help guru whose idea of "self-help" involves a severed limb or two. It goes to show that he thinks the person who caused his ex-wife to have a miscarriage should be given a second chance.
- Knowing that he doesn't have long to live, John had recruited apprentices and accomplices (mostly people who survived his traps and adopted his worldview) to help him build his traps and procure new people to "test", as well as spread his message far and wide and take up the Jigsaw mantle after his death. Of all the accomplices, however, only Dr. Gordon (who presumably couldn't succeed him due to not being an actual apprentice) can truly be said to have internalized his philosophy. Amanda simply murdered people outright with inescapable traps, viewing most of her victims as irredeemable, Hoffman (John's first successor) never believed in his philosophy and simply followed it most of the time to cover himself, and Logan (a former apprentice who wasn't active until years after John and the other accomplices either died or were left with their fates hanging) went with his own idea of Jigsaw to enact revenge against those who wronged him.
- Schenk, the copycat killer from Spiral, uses the Jigsaw killers' traps but has his own agenda, seeking to purge the Metropolitan Police Department of all its corrupt officers.

Well-Intentioned Extremist: What Jigsaw believed he was, but spectacularly deconstructed in that his actions, noble intentions or not, did nothing good for anybody. He and his apprentices have differing ideas on this trope as well.
- John wanted each victim to gain a "new outlook on life", and feels they can only do that by forcing them to survive a gruesome near-death experience. All John accomplished was cultivating murderous followers through Stockholm Syndrome or leaving people with PTSD for the rest of their lives.
- Amanda deconstructs this by being murderously insane as a result of surviving John's game. She believes people can't be reformed, and puts her victims into inescapable death traps to ironically spare them the pain of PTSD from what John would put them through if they survived.
- Hoffman was loyal to John's philosophy enough to follow his will to the very end, producing all the games John instructed him to create long after he died. It's subverted, however, in that Hoffman simply loved the carnage and wasn't above murdering other people indiscriminately along the way to cover his tracks.
- Logan is a mix of Amanda and Hoffman. While he's loyal to John's philosophy enough to recreate his Barn game, he's not above taking personal revenge on certain people through inescapable scenarios. Logan, however, explicitly states he makes sure all of his victims have it coming, making him different from the more murderous Hoffman and Amanda.
We Used to Be Friends:
- One of John's many victims is Art Blank, his former friend and business partner.
- Brad and Ryan's friendship was fractured by Dina's deception towards both of them, but they reconcile after their test in Saw 3D.
Wham Episode: The climax of each movie is usually one, but Saw III definitely gets the cake for involving Jigsaw's death.
Wham Line:
- In the first film, after the whole situation is seemingly resolved, Adam tries to look for the key for his shackle on the body of the apparent Jigsaw, Zep, only to find a tape recorder on Zep's person, which he plays. "Hello, Mr. Hindle", says Jigsaw, revealing Zep was in fact another victim trapped in another one of his games. Then comes the Wham Shot after the tape ends...
- In Saw II:
  - Kerry delivers one when she realizes that the Nerve Gas House's footage was pre-recorded. "It's not live."
  - At the end, when Eric pushes the play button on the tape recorder in his hand, instead of Jigsaw's voice, it's Amanda's, who says "Hello, Eric..."
- In Saw VI:
  - Not so much the line as the one who delivers it once the voice on Seth Baxter's tape is decoded in front of Perez and Erickson.
    Hoffman: Right now, you're feeling helpless.
  - The reveal of what Amanda read on that letter.
    Hoffman: Amanda— you were with Cecil the night Jill lost Gideon. You killed their child. You know it, and I know it. So do exactly as I say; kill Lynn Denlon, or I will tell John what you did.
Wham Shot:
- The first film provides one of the most iconic examples of this trope in modern horror. As Adam plays Jigsaw's final tape, recorded for Zep, we see the supposedly dead man in the middle of the bathroom slowly rise in the background, rip the fake wound off his head, and reveal himself as Jigsaw.
- In Saw II, when they finally find the Nerve Gas House, the SWAT team enters a room with several monitors and DVRs, one of which says "PLAY." When they press pause, both the footage in the house and at Jigsaw's workshop freezes.
- In Saw IV, Rigg's recklessness ends up killing everyone in his final test, supposedly including Hoffman, who was strapped to an electrified chair that would electrocute him with the water from the melting ice block that Eric was on top off before his death. Immediately after Rigg plays Art's tape, Hoffman is seen standing up and walking from the background behind Rigg, without any signs of having been actually electrocuted.
  - In the film's theatrical cut, this moment is changed to an additional shot exclusive to this version, in which Hoffman is seen untying the chair's fake restraints.
- Saw VI doubles this with a Wham Line (via voiceover) during one of the reveals, as we finally see what exactly was written in the letter in Saw III that caused Amanda's Villainous Breakdown; it was a blackmail note, written by Hoffman.
- In Jigsaw:
  - Near the climax of the film, Anna and Ryan are chained up in a room with Jigsaw, dressed in his iconic red hood. He eventually removes it to reveal that he's John, alive and well... at that particular moment.
  - In the Laser Collars scene with Logan and Halloran, Logan goes first and is apparently killed. Halloran goes next, and watches the lasers shooting upwards and burning into the ceiling until his confessions make them stop. In his relief, he stares up at the ceiling... then to the ceiling above Logan, with no burn marks. A couple shots later, Logan gets up.
- In Saw X, when Cecilia and Parker appear to have defeated Jigsaw in his own game, Cecilia walks over to grab the bag in the control room... which triggers a tripwire and reveals a 10-minute countdown timer, activating their actual trap.
What Happened to the Mouse?:
- Rigg's wife after the beginning of IV. However, this is said to be a case of Executive Meddling. She was supposed to be in the final trap of IV with Art and Hoffman until Donnie Wahlberg agreed, at the last minute, to reprise his role as Eric.
- Neither Jigsaw nor Spiral address anything about Saw 3D's reveal of Lawrence as a secret accomplice of John, or the aftermath of Bobby's game. According to Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan in the DVD commentary of Saw 3D, and early version of the ending had Bobby being taken to the hospital, where he would meet Lawrence.
- Logan's fate is not seen or mentioned in Spiral, leaving to imagination what end took his crusade in continuing Jigsaw's work.
Where It All Began: Happens a ridiculous amount of times throughout the franchise.
- The first film features detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing attempting to arrest Jigsaw at his hideout, which is where the now-solo Tapp (after Sing died in the first attempt) pursues Jigsaw to again in the climax.
- Saw II drops the bombshell that the movie's main game took place in the same building as the first movie, and that the Bathroom (the first film's centerpiece) is merely one of its many rooms.
- After being absent since the first movie, Lawrence makes a return in Saw 3D, and the climax reveals that the reason for his survival was because he was nursed back to health by Jigsaw to aid him as an accomplice (though not an official apprentice). His final task was to lock Hoffman, an apprentice who went out of his way to continue Jigsaw's legacy with his own ideals, in the same aforementioned Bathroom.
Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The franchise is set in an unnamed American city (and its police department is known simply as the "Metropolitan Police Department"), with the only clear hint to the location being the TV network WNKW, implying that it's east of the Mississippi River. Darren Lynn Bousman said that the producers deliberately keep the location ambiguous to the point of not even permitting driving shots.
- In the first film, Tapp and Sing are seen using a map with the layout of Washington, D.C.. Also, Gordon's medical degree is from Indiana State University, implying that the city could be within the Rust Belt (if Gordon didn't move from Indiana to another state outside the belt), a statistical region defined by high economic depression and vacant industrial properties, similar to the Crapsack World status the city is implied to be in; additionally, both Illinois and Ohio (which are part of the belt) are two of the eight US states with the most serial killers.
- Jigsaw further establishes that the series doesn't take place in Cleveland, as Eleanor is offered the position of medical examiner in that city.
- That said, most fans believe that the films take place somewhere on the East Coast, specifically around Philadelphia, as that city's skyline was used in establishing shots of Spiral, and while the license plates seen in the films leave off the name of the state, their style resembles that of New Jersey plates (which is right across the Delaware River from Philly, implying a South Jersey location specifically).
White Shirt of Death:
- Saw:
  - Adam wears a white T-shirt for the entire movie, which ends up drenched in his and Zep's blood. Played with in that he ends up dying in a bloodless way, as shown in a later flashback in Saw III (namely, Amanda asphyxiating him as a Mercy Kill when he's Locked Up and Left Behind).
  - Averted with Lawrence, who wears a white T-shirt identical to Adam's in the Bathroom, but never gets covered in blood and survives the game.
- Saw II:
  - Xavier wears a white tank top that gets progressively covered in the blood of the other Nerve Gas House victims (including the ones he directly murders). His own blood eventually gets to the tank top when he cuts out part of his nape's skin and Daniel then slashes his throat.
  - Gus dies when his left eye is shot by the Magnum Eyehole, with the ensuing blood getting his white shirt drenched in the process.
- Saw III: Lynn wears a white shirt when she's abducted and tested, and receives a bloody shot from the back by Amanda in the climax. The Shotgun Collar then seals her fate with Ludicrous Gibs when John flatlines.
- Saw IV: Rigg wears a white T-shirt during his trial, which gets a good amount of blood stains, though it mostly receives dirt-related ones. While he doesn't die onscreen at the end of the film (he only gets a shot from Eric attempting to prevent him from entering the Ice Block Trap's room), he's declared dead at the beginning of the next one.
- Saw V: Subverted and inverted with Strahm.
  - The subversion happens at the beginning of the film when Strahm gets abducted by Hoffman and is put in a trap meant to be inescapable. His white shirt at the time gets stained in blood, but he survives the trap long enough to be rescued afterwards.
  - The inversion happens at the end of the film, where Strahm, with the black T-shirt that he wore for most of the movie, suffers one of the series' most gruesome deaths in the Glass Coffin's room.
- Saw VI:
  - William wears a white shirt during his trial, which is stained in blood from the beginning due to him having had a key surgically placed inside him. He's eventually killed in the Acid Room.
  - Allen is always seen wearing a white shirt, and is hanged bloodily in the Gallows.
  - Inverted with Sachi, who wears a black shirt in the only scene where she appears, and dies when she's gunned to death by Perez while Hoffman uses her as a meat shield towards the latter, leaving a visible trail of blood when Hoffman drops her into a wall.
- Jigsaw: Subverted with Logan. He's wearing a white shirt when Halloran seemingly gets him killed in the Laser Collars, but it quickly turns out that his collar was actually harmless, with his shirt drenched in fake blood.
- Spiral: Zeke wears a white shirt when he's abducted by the Spiral Killer for a trial of his own. He doesn't die, but his shirt gets stained with blood from his wounds and other victims throughout the trial.
World of Jerkass: With a few exceptions, nearly every single person across the franchise is either repugnant to be around, has done something illegal, or is at minimum a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, which is precisely why Jigsaw targets most of his victims.
Wrap It Up: Saw 3D was originally drafted by invokedExecutive Meddling to wrap up the series after Saw VI underperformed at the box office, namely by condensing two planned films into one. However, more films were released years later.
Wretched Hive: The unnamed city in which the events of most films take place in seems to be absolutely teeming with Asshole Victims and Jerkasses.

Xanatos Gambit: The plan Hoffman enacts against Strahm in Saw V. The outcome is what he had hoped for, with Strahm getting himself killed and the FBI believing him to be the wanted Jigsaw apprentice, throwing them off the scent of Hoffman himself. However, even if Strahm had followed his instructions and survived the final trap, the FBI would have still thought he was the apprentice in question, meaning he would have been either arrested, forced into hiding, or possibly even Hoffman being able to blackmail him into actually becoming an accomplice. And if things had somehow gone really wrong and resulted in Hoffman being killed by the trap, then it would have looked as if Strahm had killed him to cover up his identity, making him doubly screwed.
Xanatos Speed Chess: Hoffman is a master at playing lightning rounds of this. When things fall apart, he'll think on his feet. For example, in Saw VI, Hoffman is called by Erickson and Perez to go to the local FBI headquarters' audio lab with them, where an audio technician is analyzing the Pendulum Trap's tape. The analysis reveals that Hoffman's the true second wanted apprentice, so his plan to frame Strahm fails. Hoffman pulls an insane move in response: he murders the technician, Erickson and Perez with only a knife and a cup of coffee. Afterwards, he plants Strahm's fingerprints all over the lab, and then burns the place down.
"X" Marks the Spot:
- Invoked by Jigsaw in the Bathroom and Nerve Gas House games in the first two films, with an "X" symbol that indicates a certain location with useful items that the victims can pick up.
- Jigsaw has two of them.
  - Mitch's specified test begins when he sets off a tractor's engine marked with a red "X".
  - Also used as a subtle Foreshadowing with a painted "X" that Edgar stands in front of. It gives away the aiming range of the shot Edgar had received.

Yank the Dog's Chain: Nearly every film has a certain point at the end where it looks like the protagonist has won, only to have the rug pulled out from them.
You All Meet in a Cell: Happens whenever there's a trial or test involving multiple victims.
- In the first film, Adam and Lawrence wake up chained to opposing walls in a dingy bathroom. Besides for a hidden key for Adam to escape his shackle, their only means of escape are a pair of hacksaws that aren't enough to cut through their chains, but are enough to cut through the ankles those chains are attached to.
- In Saw II, a group of eight people wake up in a house (of which the first film's Bathroom is part of) that's slowly filling with poison gas, and have to pass various "trials" to escape with their lives. While six of them are actual victims, one (Amanda) is a Jigsaw apprentice sent in as a watchperson, and another (Daniel) is a teenager who's kept inside the house (and secured by Amanda) as part of preparations for a later test (which is also a partial purpose for the victims).
- Saw IV's opening trap has two men, one with his eyes sewn shut (Trevor) and the other with his mouth having the same treatment (Art), chained to a winch in a mausoleum that will pull them in and eventually break their necks. Since they can't effectively communicate to free themselves, they have to fight to the death in order to get a key for their collars.
- The so-called "Fatal Five" in Saw V, who were all involved in an arson case in which eight people died, are tested in a catacomb place for their selfishness. While they were meant to work together through various hints, only two of them survive at the end because they were determined to fight each other.
- Jigsaw has two cases:
  - The first trial involves another group of five people who are tested in a barn, the common denominator among them being that they're all either murderers or otherwise got people killed or condemned to death.
  - The second is a direct recreation of the first, this time involving four people who are informants of Halloran and most of whom bear some resemblance to those of the first. Its existence isn't made clear until a Sequencing Deception regarding the first trial.
You Wake Up in a Room: Jigsaw's modus operandi. Nearly every victim of his is tranquilized and then wakes up in a room. The punishment for failure, when it's not an immediate death, is usually turning said room into a Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere.

Zodiac Motifs: The pig motifs of the Jigsaw killers and their copycats originated from John's belief in the Eastern Zodiac. While he specifically chose pigs as a representation of a rotten society, the Year of the Pig was when John committed his first murder, and was the period where his unborn son's date of birth was expected.

Saw / Tropes S to Z

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