Saw | Saw II | Saw III | Saw IV | Saw V | Saw VI | Saw 3D | Jigsaw | Spiral | Saw X
General examples:
- Anvilicious: The message of the film is dead simple: Don't lie. Or you'll have your loved one roasted alive before your eyes.
- Awesome Music: The soundtrack of the film has some pretty decent tracks, and mixing compositions by Charlie Clouser and various rock ensembles, including songs such as Hageshisa to, Kono Mune no Naka de Karamitsuita Shakunetsu no Yami by Japanese Death Metal band Dir en grey. It also features music by Dead By Sunrise, Saliva, Boom Boom Satellites, Hinder, and Krokus.
- Badass Decay: Jill Tuck. In Saw VI, she Took a Level in Badass and placed an upgraded Reverse Bear Trap on Hoffman, leaving him to die without any sign of remorse. After her plan fails, her badassness immediately goes away in this movie, and she willingly puts herself under Witness Protection while spending most of the movie sitting at a safe house or in a jail cell. But the worst part was at the end, where she starts screaming and wailing for help at the top of her lungs when Hoffman finds her in her cell.
- Captain Obvious Reveal: Ever since Saw II, a progressively increasing number of viewers had thought (whether it be out of suspicion or as a suggested fan idea) that Lawrence might have survived and become an apprentice of Jigsaw, since his ambiguous fate from the first movie's events was referenced in some way in every following one as a sort of Myth Arc, starting with the figure who performed Michael's eye surgery on the Death Mask video tape from Saw II (initially meant to be John) having a notable limp (intended on part of Darren Lynn Bousman, who played the figure and wanted a flavored movement that showed the progression of John's cancer by the time of the film) comparable to Lawrence's self-amputated leg. Once it became Ascended Fanon as the final twist of Saw 3D (albeit with Lawrence being a more minor accomplice rather than a full-term apprentice), said viewers, in addition to many others, were able to see the reveal coming, not helped by the movie opening with Lawrence losing consciousness after attempting to treat his stump, then showing him midway through completely fine in the Jigsaw Survivor Group meeting, where he gives Bobby a mocking speech with a rather suspicious tone, followed by Cale referring to him as "the creepy man with the cane" when he talks to Bobby after the meeting.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- In the first film, Lawrence promises his daughter that he's not going to leave her. By the time this film rolls around, his wife's divorced him because of his mental instability and taken their daughter with her. Not to mention that he's now working with the same guy as the man who held her hostage, after telling her that "The Bad Man" didn't exist and wasn't hiding in her room.
- Chester Bennington playing a victim of Jigsaw's traps became this when he committed suicide on July 20, 2017, the same day that the first trailer for Jigsaw came out. It didn't help that the villainy of Chester's character (being a leader of a racist skinhead gang) is just mentioned instead of being depicted on-screen, and in real life, Chester was a nice guy with deep seated problems with depression.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: A month after the movie's release, the infamous pink blood became far funnier when Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc came out in Japan, which also depicts blood as bright pink, though it was for censorship reasons rather than a deliberate change to depict it as the correct color in specific viewing formats. Incidentally, the visual novel is also about a Deadly Game, and its developers have cited the Saw series as one of its inspirations.
- I Knew It!: In this film, it's revealed that Dr. Gordon survived the first film and had been disciple of Jigsaw working behind the scenes since then. Some fans theorized this originally based on a brief part of the video shown to Michael Marks in Saw II. A cloaked figure with a limp (assumed later to be Jigsaw) is seen next to an operating table. Saw 3D reveals that this WAS in fact Dr. Gordon.
- Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Bobby is an obnoxious writer who pretended to be a past victim of a Jigsaw trap in order to earn fame and money. While Hoffman (his abductor) is at his absolute worst in this film, he eventually got a direct comeuppance via an And I Must Scream fate. Bobby, on the other hand, only received punishment through proxy due to failing to rescue all of his loved ones and staff from the gruesome traps he should have been put into himself, and while injured, he survives in the end.
- Memetic Mutation:
- The Hoffmanator Explanation
- Quoting Linkin Park lyrics in the Horsepower Trap, because of their late lead vocalist Chester Bennington playing its lead victim Evan. "Crawling" and "In the End" are especially popular for this, the former due to the line "crawling in my skin, these wounds, they will not heal" (itself highly memetic in its own right) and the fact that the trap involves Evan having to rip the skin from his back, and the latter for the line "I tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end it doesn't even matter", which describes Evan's struggle pretty well.
- Dripsaw Explanation
- Nausea Fuel:
- The Silence Circle, where Bobby has to free Nina by trying to retrieve a key hanging on a fish hook inside her stomach. It doesn't help that he has to muffle Nina's screams while slowly pulling on the string tied to the hook, since the trap is connected to a sound meter, which in turn makes the whole scene excruciatingly long. It also doesn't help that, once he gets the hook out, apart from the key, there's a lump of flesh on it...
- Finally getting to see the Reverse Bear Trap in action. All that's left of Jill's face is her tongue, in a massive hole of flesh.
- Obvious Judas: As aforementioned, Lawrence. If him making his first appearance since the first movie didn't tick you off, his prominently mocking demeanor towards Bobby and Cale's comment of him as a "creepy man" will.
- Replacement Scrappy: Gibson, who replaced far more well-regarded law enforcement officers in the series like Kerry, Eric, Rigg, Strahm and Perez. Unlike the others, he doesn't even survive halfway through this film.
- The Scrappy: Gibson is often considered the worst cop protagonist in the series (with Zeke from Spiral being his only major contender), due to taking a role in Saw 3D that could have been given to Strahm, Perez or Fisk had they not been either killed or outright written off so unceremoniously, as well as his actor's narm-y performance. Adding to this is the fact that he dies halfway through this movie, whereas the rest of the cops at least survived their debut film or made it to its third act.
- Sequelitis: Saw 3D is the film in the franchise that receives the most hatred from the fanbase, mainly for its widespread use of 3D gimmicks (including numerous reminders to it with emphasis effects like slow motion), sacrificing of plot points in favor of more Gorn, and failing to do anything different with the formula that most of the sequels since Saw III had followed. Some see the film as falling straight into the Torture Porn nadir that the series used to mostly avert. The well-documented Executive Meddling during the film's Troubled Production didn't help things either.
- So Bad, It's Good: While Saw 3D is widely seen as the worst film in the series overall, plenty of people (especially in the years after the film's release) have come to consider it worth watching or rewatching due to many of its elements being arguably over-the-top and thus pretty entertaining. This includes (but is not limited to) the egregious nature of the traps, the large amount of narm-y moments, and Hoffman's "badassery" in his spree killing.
- Special Effect Failure:
- The much maligned "pink blood" is often described as this. Behind-the-scenes shots show that the blood actually did look pretty real, but was changed to a pinkish color in editing so that it could still appear red in 3D viewings.
- The Lawnmower Trap is mostly just a bad green screen.
- It's not easy to notice, but during the brain surgery flashback to III, a pair of fingers from a prop actor can be seen throwing blood on Lynn's face
◊. - In Jill's dream sequence, when she's sliced in half by the go-kart, both halves of her body are clearly a dummy full of fake gore.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Joyce’s death is one of the most frequently maligned parts of the film, as she was one of the most innocent characters in this franchise's Humans Are Bastards Crapsack World, who only believed her husband Bobby's made-up story and didn't commit any actual crimes or derogatory acts. Her death is made even worse by Bobby's survival, despite the fact that it was his story which got them into this mess to begin with. Many feel the film would have been better if it was Bobby who died at the end, leaving Joyce the last one standing.
