Overview
Flashbacks from Saw IV reveal the roots of the series, presenting John Kramer as a successful civil engineer and devoted husband to his wife Jill Tuck, who opened a rehab clinic for drug addicts. Jill lost her unborn baby, Gideon, due to the unwitting actions of a drug addict named Cecil, who fled the scene. Saw VI later showed that another drug addict, Amanda Young, also had an unintentional role in the death of Gideon. John grieved over the loss of his child, and distanced himself from his friends and his wife.
In the comic book Saw: Rebirth, John and Jill eventually drifted apart and divorced. After this turn of events, John found himself trapped by his own complacency, until he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Extremely bitter over his squandered life, John began observing the lives of others and became even more depressed as he saw those around him squandering the gift of life that he had just been denied. Flashbacks from Saw II show that, after surviving a suicide attempt where he drove his car off a cliff, John was "reborn", and nurtured the idea that the only way for someone to change is for them to change themselves. Then, in Saw IV flashbacks, he designed the first trap and test for Cecil and decided to use the rest of his existence to design more of these "tests" or "games" as a form of "instant rehabilitation" that would change the world, "one person at a time". John was soon given the name "The Jigsaw Killer" (or "Jigsaw"), because he removed a puzzle-piece-shaped chunk of flesh from those who did not escape his traps. John stated that this name was given to him by the media, and that the cut piece of flesh was meant to represent that these victims were each missing something — what he called the "survival instinct".
Few of Jigsaw's victims are able to survive his brutal mechanical traps, which are often ironically symbolic representations of the problems in the victim's life and require them to undergo severe physical or psychological torture to escape.
In Saw V, police lieutenant Mark Hoffman's ties with John are revealed in a series of flashbacks during the film. Hoffman's sister is murdered by her boyfriend, Seth Baxter. Seth is arrested; however, a technicality allowed him to be released, and Hoffman, feeling Seth had not served the full capacity of his sentence, kills him in an inescapable trap designed to look like one of Jigsaw's, laying the blame on him. Jigsaw then kidnaps Hoffman and blackmails him into becoming his apprentice in his "rehabilitation" methods, though eventually Hoffman would become a willing apprentice, helping set up John's tests from almost the beginning, starting with Paul's trap.
The first surviving victim, Amanda Young, views Jigsaw as a hero who ultimately changed her life for the better. Amanda, upon Jigsaw's request, agrees to become his protégée. After Amanda survives, John shows Jill her rehabilitation, and Jill then becomes knowledgeable of John's traps and becomes a willing accomplice as well.
In Saw, Jigsaw has chained the man who diagnosed his cancer, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, in a dilapidated industrial washroom with Adam Stanheight, a photographer who has been tailing the doctor due to a former police detective's suspicions that Gordon is Jigsaw. Lawrence has instructions to kill Adam by 6 o'clock, or else his wife and daughter will be killed. Flashbacks show detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing, who suspect Lawrence of being Jigsaw, following a trail of clues from other Jigsaw traps. Sing's death from a shotgun trap after saving a victim named Jeff causes Tapp to obsess over catching Jigsaw. Later on, he chases Zep Hindle, who monitors Adam and Lawrence's tests, and gets shot in the chest. Eventually, Lawrence saws his own foot off in order to escape, leaving Adam in the bathroom while Lawrence goes to try to save his family and get help for Adam. It is later seen in Saw 3D that Dr. Gordon found a steaming hot pipe and cauterized his wound, stopping the bleeding and ultimately surviving the trap. John catches up with Gordon and makes him his next apprentice, a fact which he hides from his other accomplices. Flashbacks from Saw III show that Amanda kidnapped Adam and later returned to suffocate him as an act of "mercy killing"; it would be the first time she deliberately intervened during a test and try to kill someone.
In Saw: The Video Game, Jigsaw nurses Detective Tapp back to health and places him in an asylum where he has to save six people. This includes Amanda, a CSI named Jennings Foster, Steven Sing's wife Melissa, a reporter named Oswald McGullicuty, an arsonist named Obi Tate, and Jeff the victim who Tapp and Sing saved. Throughout the game, Tapp is followed by a masked figure known as Pighead, who is eventually killed by him. At the end of the game, Tapp and the other victims escape with their lives but Tapp becomes fixated on finding Jigsaw. He then commits suicide due to depression.
Saw II: Flesh & Blood revolves around Michael, Tapp's son, who is kidnapped by Pighead II and forced to play Jigsaw's game to find out anything he can about his father's death. Along the way, he discovers a drug cartel that Tapp accidentally stumbled upon. Michael finds and rescues most of the members of the cartel, but they are soon killed by Pighead II. At the beginning of the game, Campbell Iman, who is playing a game to try and find his son, is given a choice to sacrifice himself, a drug-addict who is slowly dying of cancer, and save a "stranger" who has a long life ahead of him, or let the "stranger" die, resulting in his freedom. It is revealed that the "stranger" is Michael. If Campbell chooses to save himself, Michael dies and Jigsaw appears, telling him that his son completed his own test prior to the game. Jigsaw says that all he has to do is walk out the exit. Campbell comes to the conclusion that his son cannot live in a world with people like Jigsaw. Campbell attacks Jigsaw, only to be killed by a flying scythe. If Campbell chooses to sacrifice himself and save Michael, Campbell dies and Michael escapes in an elevator. Michael is then given a choice to either escape with the evidence found by his father to print the story of Jigsaw and the drug cartel, or to accept an offer to, "help people see the truth inside themselves", implying he can become another Jigsaw apprentice. The choice made is not revealed to the player.
Saw II begins with the police tracking a severely weakened Jigsaw to his lair. However, another test is in place, as he and Amanda have kidnapped the son of Detective Eric Matthews and trapped him and a group of seven convicts, previously framed by Matthews, in a house that is slowly being filled with sarin gas, with Amanda Young among them. He will trade Daniel Matthews' life for Detective Matthews' time, conversing with him until the game is concluded. Matthews loses his patience and assaults Jigsaw, forcing him to take them to the house, only to discover that the video feed from inside the house had been pre-recorded, the events actually taking place much earlier; Matthews' son was locked in a safe in Jigsaw's warehouse, being kept alive with an oxygen tank. Matthews is knocked unconscious by a masked figure and wakes up imprisoned in the bathroom from Saw, which is part of the foundation of the house. Amanda reveals herself to Eric as Jigsaw's protégée before leaving him to die. In a flashback from Saw III, Matthews manages to escape the bathroom by breaking his foot. He confronts and beats Amanda, demanding to know where his son is. Amanda fights him off and leaves him for dead. A flashback from Saw IV shows Hoffman later dragging Eric to a prison cell, keeping him alive for a future game.
The events of Saw III and IV occur concurrently. Saw III begins with Jigsaw, weakened and near death, confined to a makeshift hospital bed. Amanda has taken over his work, designing traps of her own; however, these traps are inescapable, as Amanda is convinced that Jigsaw's traps have no effect and that people don't change. A kidnapped doctor is forced to keep Jigsaw alive while another test is performed on Jeff, a man obsessed with vengeance against the drunk driver who killed his son. Jigsaw, unwilling to allow "a murderer" to continue his legacy, designs a test for Amanda as well; she ultimately fails, and it results in the deaths of both Jigsaw and Amanda. Saw IV, meanwhile, revolves around tests meant for Officer Rigg, which are overseen by Hoffman. Rigg fails his test, resulting in the death of Eric Matthews. Rigg is left to bleed to death by Hoffman, who later discovers the bodies of Jigsaw and Amanda. When an autopsy is performed on Jigsaw, a cassette tape coated in wax is found in his stomach; the tape informs Hoffman that he is wrong to think that it is all over just because Jigsaw is dead, and he should not expect to go untested.
The events of Saw V show one of Hoffman's first solo tests, five people connected together by different roles in a disastrous fire that killed several others are put into four interconnected tests of teamwork, killing off one person in each trap. The two remaining test subjects realize at the final trap that each previous trap was meant to be completed by each of the five people doing a small part, rather than killing one person per trap. With this, the two works together and barely manage to escape from the series of traps. They are found by Special Agent Erikson and are alive. Meanwhile, Hoffman has set up Peter Strahm to appear to be Jigsaw's accomplice, while Strahm pursues Hoffman and is eventually killed due to the inability to follow Hoffman's rules, leaving Hoffman free to continue Jigsaw's "work".
Saw VI begins with Hoffman setting up a game as per John's instructions left in a box for Jill during Saw V. This game centers on an insurance executive named William Easton who oversees a team responsible for rejecting two-thirds of all insurance claims. As William progresses through four tests, he saves as many people as he can and learns the error of his choice to reject so many policies, which inherently "kill" the rejected. His last test is revealed to be a test of forgiveness by the family of Harold Abbott who William rejected a policy to in the past, whose son ultimately chose to kill William using hydrofluoric acid. Meanwhile, Agent Erickson and the previously thought to be dead agent Perez search for Agent Strahm with the assistance of Hoffman. Upon finding irregularities in previous murder scenes, Perez and Erickson discover Hoffman's identity, but are killed by him before they can go public with his involvement. Hoffman travels back to the site of William's tests in which Jill attacks him to obey John's final request. She leaves Hoffman in a new Reverse Beartrap left behind by John where he is able to manipulate the trap and escape wounded. Hoffman is left in the area, screaming, with his face mangled by Jill's trap.
Saw 3D picks up with Jill and Hoffman battling for control of Jigsaw's legacy. As Jill enters protective custody and makes Hoffman's true identity public, Hoffman sets up a new game involving skinheads to find a way to Jill. Meanwhile, Bobby Dagen, a fraud who has written a book about escaping a Jigsaw trap he never experienced, is captured and forced to confront people around him who knew he lied about being in a trap. Three of Dagen's friends die and his trap conclude with him being forced to reenact the trap he claimed to have survived before. He fails, which results in the death of his wife. Meanwhile, Hoffman has posed as a corpse and killed several officers to infiltrate the police station. He finds and kills Jill using the Reverse Beartrap. Hoffman attempts to leave town but is captured by Lawrence Gordon and his accomplices, then placed in the bathroom from the first film. Revealing Jigsaw aided Gordon after his trap and Gordon helped with subsequent traps in return, Hoffman is then left shackled in the bathroom to die.
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