Saw/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• When I saw Saw II, I was annoyed at how the ending cut off so suddenly. Sure, Amanda's Face Heel Turn/backstory reveal was cool even though I already knew who she'd be (although I thought she turned between the second and third films and was wondering "If he's there [in the safe], where's Amanda!?" so it wasn't a complete waste of a good twist ending), but it seemed a little hollow. A while later I realized: The house wasn't Jigsaw's game, and Amanda's game for Matthews wasn't for him to escape before the tape ran out, the whole film was the game she had set up for him! The Game Over was much more satisfying once I realized that Jigsaw's game hadn't led him to Amanda's trap, but it was entirely Amanda's trap and he'd already failed! I really like this movie now!
  • To add to that, what made the twist of Amanda being Jigsaw's accomplice really work was the realization afterward that you should not have been remotely surprised if you actually thought about it for a moment. She claims that she's being punished for being 'naughty', with a flashback scene of her cutting herself. But as is revealed at the end of the film, with the same scene shown but with a wider shot showing Jigsaw rooting her on, a man whose entire philosophy is based on proving through bloodshed that you value life would hardly have condemned her for such an act.
    • I saw that as her giving herself the scars to make her story convincing. After all, Paul was placed in the Razor Wire Maze because he cut himself (although he only did it for attention).
    • Also, as noted in the Director Commentary, not once during the entirety of the gas house did Amanda show symptoms of the gas such as the coughing everyone else did.
  • The twist in the original Saw was definitely cool, but after the adrenaline wore off logic tried to reassert itself. How did John stay so still? How did they not hear him breathing? When you rewatch the film, it gives you the answers: presumably he took the same nerve agent that kept the man from whom Amanda had to retrieve the key to her trap immobile, and his breath would naturally be rather weak given that he had cancer.
    • Saw III confirmed what was mentioned in the above spoiler.
  • Saw IV - while being a clusterfuck example of fragmented narrative, to say the least - had one part that seemed illogical at first, but made sense later (like a year later). When Rigg freed the Paris Hilton look-a-like from that hair pulling contraption, and then she later pulled out a knife stored in a cabinet, it brings out a curious question. How come she didn't tell him it was there, so he could free her from the device by cutting her hair instead of a slow reveal of the combination? It certainly would've eliminated any risk and/or extreme pain? Later, it became apparent that the test was a double entendre, based off Jigsaw's lesson in Saw IV: the only way people can be saved is to save themselves. If the blonde woman really valued her life, she would've told Rigg about the knife, but her selfishness became her undoing
    • Actually, the reason she doesn't tell Rigg about it is that she doesn't know it's a knife. The tape tells her there is something in the cabinet to help her deal with her Rigg problem, but the tape doesn't say what it is.
    • Huh. I must've misremembered that part. But if that's true, Jigsaw's intentions make even less sense. Even though Jigsaw knew Rigg wouldn't let her die, he wanted Rigg to know that saving everyone is a toxic idea. If Rigg followed that philosophy from the beginning, there's no way the blonde would've had any chance of saving herself besides telling Rigg about the hidden weapon (which could've been anything) and hope it'll help remove her from the device besides the official, painful way. Compared to the other victims, her's isn't as clear cut, and does nothing to help save the blonde either way. Then again, considering how hypocritical Jigsaw is...
    • The reveal as Hoffman & Amanda as Jigsaw's apprentices were twists in and of themselves. What makes them Fridge Brilliance, however, is when you realize that they revealed themselves exactly the same way that John did back in the original Saw: They were presented as mere victims in their traps, only to reveal to their ultimate victims that they were the ones manipulating the traps.
  • Saw VI- Most people seem to complain that the people in the various traps really didn't deserve to die; the insurance man was the real bad guy in the like. So what's the point of their deaths? Well, like always, Jigsaw says "live or die, make your choice" to his true victim, in this case Mr. Insurance. Playing off the themes of one life vs. another, think about what would've happened if the Insurance guy had decided that the janitor's life was more important than his and committed suicide by hyperventilating. Would the merry-go-round or any of the other traps ever have activated? Ultimately, by not seeing the intrinsic value of a lowly but clean janitor's life against his own tainted life, the blood is all on his hands for his initial selfish decision.
    • Also, William may have deserved his death simply because when he chose who deserved to live, he let ALL his male employees die, the same way he had let both Jigsaw and Harold die, thus showing he hadn't learned his lesson - he dismissed a gender as a whole - and failing the test. Also, the Carousel Trap seems to be programmed to keep the worst people alive as long as possible (notice that Emily is 2nd while Shelby is 5th) similar to the method used by the killer in And Then There Were None, openly suggesting William to save the first two (Aaron and Emily).
    • What many people- and apparently Jigsaw- failed to consider was that the insurance people are just middlemen. The real culprits of Harold's death would be the doctors who refused to treat him unless they got paid.
• It has always been unclear to me why Dr. Gordon's wife and daughter were also a part of the trap in the first Saw, when they weren't shown to do anything even remotely bad. I think now Jigsaw knew Zep wouldn't kill them. Zep did have a sadistic streak and enjoyed the power he suddenly had, thus the gun waving and smug comments to the video feed from Bathroom Trap. On the other hand, he was quite clearly a coward (and scared shitless when he suddenly had to fight Tapp, or even when Dr. Gordon discovered his identity), and as Jigsaw knew him before, presumably he knew Zep wouldn't be able to murder a defenseless woman and girl in cold blood even under death threat. Especially since it seems that his primary goal was to kill Dr. Gordon rather than them. Of course that assumes that Jigsaw could predict all that, but you pretty much have to accept that he's omniscient to take these movies seriously anyway.
  • Another possibility: Zep was never supposed to kill Dr. Gordon's wife and daughter in first place, just Dr. Gordon himself. That explains his gun-waving nicely; he had only to scare them (to put pressure on Dr. Gordon), and did exactly that (in a clumsy manner fully expected from someone who doesn't do this sort of thing on a regular basis). Notice how when the time runs out he doesn't tell them "now I'll kill you", he says "Dr. Gordon made a mistake and I'll do what I have to do". Dr. Gordon's wife's sudden attack and Tapp's intervention prevented him from executing his original plan, but notice also when he stuns Tapp with a vase for some seconds, he doesn't go after her; rather, he declares "now I'll kill your husband" and goes off to do exactly that. The only thing that contradicts this theory is Zep's tape, which says "Will you murder a mother and her child to save yourself?". However Adam didn't play that tape to the end; maybe the actual rules clarified that he needed only to threaten them with murder. A weak point, I know, but it makes everything else much more understandable.
• Many people have taken issue with the fact that despite Bobby Dagen being the one who is being tested, his wife dies despite his trying his hardest to save her and his friends. Then it occurred to me: In V, Jigsaw mentions that he finds taking credit for someone else's work to be distasteful, especially when that work is inferior to his own. He was referring to Hoffman at the time, but the same basic principle can be applied to Bobby: Bobby was posing as a Jigsaw victim, thus imitating the other victims. He made up a poorly-conceived trap, when it's fairly obvious to anyone with medical knowledge (such as Doctor Gordon) that the pectoral muscles aren't strong enough to support the weight of the human body. Thus, it would make sense that Bobby is punished the harshest by having to watch his friends and wife die. It's no less inexcusable, but it makes more sense.
  • Not exactly. Body modifiers have actually done the body suspension and succeeded doing so. Bobby just needed to put them in deeper to succeed. Of curse, he didn't have to impale them into himself; he could've used them as stirrups or put them under his armpits.

Fridge Horror

• If Amanda was able to emotionally breakdown even before the letter, what happens to the other people who lived from the traps? How emotionally miserable would they become?
• Fridge Horror: If John could predict human behavior, then he knew that, at the end of the sixth film's main game, Brent would kill William. This means that he knew William would die, even if he had redeemed himself and learned his lesson, which, considering all he went through and who he chose to let live, he certainly did. This means that William's game was no more of a test than Amanda's traps; it was only a death trap. Yes, that means Jigsaw is guilty of using one of his games as revenge, rather than trying to teach someone a lesson. The fact that this game was part of his "final wish" says something about his priorities.
  • John could also predict that William was going to save only the women, which could also have been planned to enrage Brent further, because in his imbalanced state, the kid could easily be swayed to believe William's decision of refusing to cover his dad was based partly on gender.
  • Think of some of the traps, and what would happen if they somehow went wrong. For instance, the Venus Fly Trap from the beginning of Saw II. Imagine what would happen if Michael was in the middle of cutting his eye when the mask closed. His arms would get entangled and would smash into his face, leaving him in immense pain of his broken arms and of having several spikes in his head until he eventually died of blood loss.