Saw

Question: When Lawrence finds the note given to him by Jigsaw, what did the message mean that the cigarettes were harmless but smoking is poisonous only when it ends in bloodshed and that he didn't need a gun to kill Adam? Were the cigarettes really harmless and if they were, what did Jigsaw mean that Lawrence didn't need a gun to kill Adam?

Answer: The blood that jigsaw pours on the floor contains poison. By dipping the cigarette in there the poison is passed to Adam.

Ssiscool

Question: Re Amanda's Reverse Bear Trap 1.) What does the writing on the wall say behind her in the trap? 2.) The "dead body" Donnie Greco - her drug dealer - was alive and in the game getting his body sliced open and had no way out so surely that's against Jigsaw's philosophy as he couldn't win the game by leaving alive?

Answer: The writing on the wall is non related graffiti as can be found in many abandoned buildings. Jigsaw is shown to have little regard for people other than the subjects being tested. In Saw 6, there is the infamous carousel "6 ride the carousel but only 2 can get off alive. Their lives are in your hands" he also has to choose to save an apprentice or a secretary. In saw 4, there is the abusive couple chained together with spikes through his organs, to save herself she must remove the spikes killing him. In Saw 3D, the public trap explains 1 of the 3 must die, be it Brad, Ryan or Gina. So it's clear that Jigsaw and all his accomplices have no qualms in having extra people killed during a game.

Ssiscool

Answer: No.

Is David Tapp still alive?

In the film or video game?

Answer: No, his decomposed corpse is shown in the second film.

Answer: We don't find out in Saw, but Saw II shows his deceased corpse, and flashbacks in Saw III reveal that Amanda went to the bathroom to put him out of his misery, to spare him a long death.

Answer: No, he was suffocated by Amanda Young in a flashback in Saw III, sometime between the events of the end of Saw and the beginning of Saw II.

Answer: No he didn't survive however he was mercy killed by Amanda Young.

Ssiscool

"Mercy killed"? I don't get that part.

Death by dehydration or starvation is pure agony. Suffocation, while brutal and terrifying, is nowhere near as protracted. Hence, merciful.

Amanda, feeling sorry for Adam who is locked in the basement to die of his wound, hunger or thirst (whichever happens first), goes back to kill him by suffocating him. This is so he no longer has to suffer a long slow and painful death. She took mercy on his situation. Hence the phrase, mercy killing.

Ssiscool

Question: When Tapp and Sing arrive at Jigsaw's warehouse in their car, Sing can be heard loading his shotgun. It sounds a lot like the "reloading shotgun" sound effect from Half-Life 2. Is it?

EK8829

Answer: It is unlikely as Saw had its first release on January 14th 2004 at the Sundance film festival. Half Life 2 had its first commercial release on November 19th 2004.

Ssiscool

Question: At the end Jigsaw says Adam isn't ungrateful to be alive anymore, but why does he lock Adam in the bathroom and say "game over" instead of helping him?

Answer: He does help him technically. He tells him the key to the lock is in the bathtub (we saw it disappear down the plughole when Adam woke up at the beginning). In Jigsaw's sick, twisted mind he feels he is giving Adam a chance to prove he wants to live by getting the key. To prove he is grateful, he needs to find out how to get the key back. Which is technically impossible for Adam to do, leaving only one fate for him to remain.

The_Iceman

Getting the key back has nothing to do with how grateful he is or isn't, as the key wasn't meant to go down the drain.

Question: At the end when Dr. Gordon cuts his foot off, he tells Adam he'll go and get help when he escapes. So wouldn't Adam be able to escape as well once Dr. Gordon gets help? Or would Jigsaw catch up with Dr. Gordon and kill him?

Answer: Dr. Gordon is in Saw 7. Adam is killed by Amanda Young.

I also want to know why Dr Gordon never sent help back for Adam. They were fellow sufferers and even though Dr Gordon joined with jigsaw, he could have called 911 and sent help back for Adam.

I assume that Amanda came along and killed Adam before Dr. Gordon could do anything.

Answer: I assume that Amanda came along and killed Adam before Dr. Gordon could do anything.

Answer: There's still a lot about Dr. Gordon that's not clear. Knowing what we know by Saw 3D, the dialogue between Adam and Dr. Gordon in Saw I almost makes it seem that Dr. Gordon could have been in on the game. Then again, if he was, Jigsaw wouldn't have let Dr. Gordon saw off his own foot.

Answer: It's because the actor didn't want to come back. There are several ways Adam could have returned at this point. Several clues that could have brought him back. It was probably originally intended for both Adam and Dr Gordon to return at some point, even if there were no plans for a sequel.

It is also way too late to have Leigh Whannell come back as Adam in 2023, as the last time he was physically filming new footage was in Saw III back in 2006 - which was 17 years ago - and he's aged a lot since then. Especially considering Saw X will be post-Saw/pre-Saw II, it wouldn't make sense if Adam comes back and ages 17 years in the space of a couple of months, unless they de-aged him. If Adam appears in Saw X, it will most likely be a new recast actor or through archive footage.

Also, when you take into account that "Saw" was filmed in September/October 2003, meaning Leigh Whannell would have been 26 when the film was being made, and he is 47 years old now.

Answer: He might have tried to, because we don't know how long Lawrence was in John's care before he got released. By the time he was fully healed, Amanda already probably killed him.

As stated in another answer, the nerve gas house and bathroom underneath it is the one place Dr Gordon is never shown by Jigsaw until the events of Saw 3D. Dr Gordon is in the care of Jigsaw and simply cannot get help to Adam.

Ssiscool

Exactly. Also, with all that transpired, despite his "promise," Gordon had a lot of other stuff to worry about physically and mentally that he probably wasn't considering when he said he'd come back.

Answer: It's not until Saw 3D that Jigsaw tells Dr Gordon the location of the bathroom (assuming Lawrence passed out after cauterizing his leg after leaving the bathroom and never truly knew where it was)... (from SAW 3D) Hello Dr. Gordon. You are perhaps my greatest asset. Without you, my work over the last few years would not have been possible. That having been said I have a request. Watch over Jill, and should anything happen to her, I want you to act immediately on my behalf. In return for that, I will keep no more secrets from you. I've shown you a lot of places, but there is one that will be perhaps the most meaningful to you.

Question: What exactly was the purpose of the cigarettes? It seems like in order to kill Adam, Lawrence would have to give Adam a "blood soaked" cigarette. If this was how Lawrence was going to kill Adam, then what was the point of the saws and bullets? Also, wouldn't Lawrence be skeptical as a Doctor that something like a blood soaked cigarette would kill Adam while a normal unsoaked one wouldn't kill him? The whole part with the cigarette's leaves many unanswered questions.

Kelsey H.

Chosen answer: The killer knows that, in this early stage, Lawrence is unlikely to really try to kill Adam, and also that he is likely to try and pretend to do so to get out (hence the electrical shock administered to Adam). Thus, the saws and gun are for use later in the game, when things really heat up; the cigarette is there specifically for the ruse Lawrence attempts. Also, the deadly effect of the cigarette is not just the blood, but the fact that the blood is poisoned (or so they are led to believe); hence, if Adam put the poisoned blood in his system, it could very well have killed him if it really were poisoned. Smoking an unsoaked one might kill him with cancer, but that would have taken far too long to do Lawrence any good.

Question: When Tapp drops Dr. Gordon off at home, he says "We arrested a dentist last week who liked to play with kids a bit too much. He lived two blocks from here. The sewer lines also run under this neighborhood, too, doctor." I'm assuming this was a subtle insinuation that he was still suspicious of Dr. Gordon. But what did he exactly mean by saying that?

Answer: Hes letting Dr Gordon know that even though he is "well to do" that people of the upper class also have dark secrets and are not always innocent or better than anyone else.

Question: After Zep is killed and before Lawrence leaves the room to get help, why doesn't he take Zep's gun to shoot Adam's chains? They probably didn't know how many bullets were left on the gun, so it's possible that there would have been at least one bullet left?

Answer: Shooting at anything solid like chains or a wall with a gun is never a very good idea. First, it is very unlikely to work, and secondly, the bullet is bound to ricochet seriously injuring one or both of them while leaving the chains untouched.

Myridon

Question: What could possibly be the purpose of the photograph that was placed on the box in the wall? If it was there, then Lawrence was supposed to take it with the box together - but he fails to notice it. Was that their only chance to get out of there alive or what?

Answer: There was no photograph on or in the box on the wall. The contents were: A cell phone, 2 cigarettes, a lighter and a note. The picture was in Lawrence's wallet which told them to look for the X on the wall.

moviemogul

Question: If the police had tech teams (as shown in Saw II), then why didn't the tech teams locate the nerve gas house/bathroom via the security cameras that Zep was using to observe Adam and Lawrence in the latter's house? The brief shootout between Zep and Tapp didn't destroy the computers and monitors, and Zep didn't disable or shut them down before leaving, either.

Answer: They weren't in the nerve gas house. They were in Dr Gordon's house.

Ssiscool

Answer: Before Zep told Allison and Diana that Lawrence's time was up, he shut the cameras down.

Answer: I assume that Jigsaw would have disabled the camera in the bathroom so no signal would have been emitted for them to locate the bathroom/nerve gas house.

Question: When Danny Glover was taking pictures of Cary Elwes home, didn't he wonder who the stranger was peering out from the window? And since he didn't know who the man was, why didn't he follow up or call the police? Also, how could photos from Glover's camera be so quickly developed, and then somehow put into the toilet in the sewer room?

Answer: The pictures found in the toilet were taken by Adam. They were probably taken from his dark room (where he developed pictures) when he was kidnapped. Glover doesn't know Zep, but Glover says something along the lines of, "Does he know someone's at home with his wife?" Meaning he may have thought that she was having an affair.

Question: Has the director ever commented on how Mark was supposed to find the combination to the safe with so many numbers on the walls? Are there any theories in general on how to solve it?

Answer: It was pure trial and error - he had to try.

Ssiscool

Answer: I believe the light from the candle would illuminated the hidden numbers needed on the walls The fact that there was broken glass on the floor and flammible substances on his body didn't help much though.

What hidden numbers? All the numbers are in plain sight.

Ssiscool

Answer: He simply has to try and find the right numbers amongst the plethora of false numbers on the walls in a short period of time. Trial and error. Try to find the right combo of numbers from his options. Not sure where the other answer got the "hidden numbers" idea from, as absolutely nothing in the film suggests there are hidden numbers.

Question: How does Jigsaw make the puppet move and talk? And what did Zep do wrong to make Jigsaw put him in a game?

Answer: The puppet is an animatronic, so he programmed its mouth to move with the dialogue on the tapes. Zep is shown earlier in the film to get personally attached/involved with patients at the hospital, so the implication is that he is inserted into the game in a role where he is too personally involved with the dilemmas of strangers.

Phaneron

Answer: Found online: We don't know exactly what Zep has done wrong to call Jigsaw's wrath upon himself, only that he was an orderly at the same hospital where Dr Gordon works and he was an attendant to John Kramer. Dr Gordon hints to the fact that Zep shows too little professional detachment in forming "very special bonds with the patients." On Zep's tape, Jigsaw says "Will you murder a mother and her child to save yourself?" Perhaps this means Zep's sin is that he is always too involved in the lives of complete strangers, neglecting his own life. He has to put his own life over the lives of two strangers in order to win the game.

Ssiscool

Question: At the very beginning of the film, Adam was seen waking up in a bath full of water. How did he breathe when he was unconscious? If Adam hadn't woken up he would have drowned, but there would have been no way for Jigsaw to know exactly when Adam was going to wake up so that he could put him in the bath at the right time. Dr. Gordon's lack of hysteria suggests that he has been awake for some time, so wouldn't he have heard Jigsaw putting Adam in the bath and guessed where he was?

Answer: Jigsaw put Adam in there when everything else was set up, to revive him and get the game started. It is logical to assume that Jigsaw knew approximately how long Adam would be unconscious, and that the shock of cold water and drowning revived him quickly. True, Lawrence was probably awake at the time, but he would not hear much,other than the sounds of a body moving around, which he would later conclude had been Adam waking up and trying to move about.

Twotall

Answer: What I don't understand is that Adam was already submerged when Amanda closed the door, hence he would have awoken probably only seconds later. but Dr Gordon tells Adam that he'd already been screaming for help and what not, so you'd assume he would have been awake at least a couple minutes before Adam, which would mean he would have been screaming for help whilst Amanda was still present which we know wasn't the case. Just makes no sense to me.

He wasn't submerged when Amanda closed the door. Go back and watch the flashback in "Saw III." He's still above water. He slowly slipped under over time.

Question: One thing I have never understood through the entire series is Dr Gordon's test. To pass his test, Dr Gordon has to kill Adam by 6 if not his family is killed and he is left to rot. At 6 Zep calls saying he failed his test. He then cuts his foot off, shoots and wounds Adam. The film end with him having crawled to get help and jigsaw shutting the door on Adam. In Saw 7 we see Jigsaw helped him and he became an accomplice. Why did jigsaw not kill him or leave him to die as he failed his test.

Ssiscool

Answer: The movies don't directly address this. But in my personal opinion, even though he didn't do everything on time, Jigsaw recognized that Dr. Gordon ultimately was willing to make the sacrifices he had to in order to save his family. He also spent hours in the room listening to Gordon and Adam talking, and likely realised that Gordon was a good man despite his faults. So I personally believe that even though he didn't "pass his test" per se, Jigsaw had grown enough respect for Gordon that he saved him. (And indoctrinated him).

TedStixon

Is Hoffman dead or alive?

That's unknown at this point in time.

TedStixon

Question: Why doesn't Dr Gordon and Adam try to cut through the pipes that their chains are attached to?

Answer: There was originally a scene where Adam and Dr. Gordon would cut through their pipes and speak through them to come up with the plan of faking Adam's death, but James Wan didn't include it in the film as he thought it made no sense if they could cut through the pipes but not the chains.

Answer: They do. That's how Adam breaks the blade on his saw. There is even a mistake listed here where it switched from cutting the chain to cutting the lock.

Ssiscool

Question: So sawing through the thick chain would take too long. What about the padlock which is much thinner? Does flesh plus bone take less time than a thin padlock?

Answer: Nope. Wouldn't work. Per a quick Google search: Padlocks are typically made with hardened steel specifically to make them impenetrable by basic tools like hacksaws. That's why power-tools, bolt cutters or torches are often used to break padlocks... you can't just saw through them with a regular hacksaw.

TedStixon

Plus, the blades are old and appear to be rusty so most likely dull which will make it even harder to cut the metals and more painful to Adam and Dr. Gordon.

Ssiscool

Question: Let's say Adam did get the key and unlocked his shackle. What would he have been able to do? He could have gotten the tape recorder out of Jigsaw's hand and been able to retrieve some other stuff, but he did all of that when he was locked, so what was the point of him walking around? And the door was locked too, Dr. Gordon checked it.

Answer: He would have been able to get the tape recorder and the gun much easier and would've had free roam of the room. Adam was never meant to be locked up in his chains, else Jigsaw would've never gave him that type of power.

Answer: Any person confined in that way is going to do whatever they can to free himself. The first step would be getting the ankle shackle removed, then attempt other methods to escape. Even if he never got out of the room, it's still more comfortable and less cumbersome to not be chained to a pipe. Adam doesn't initially know the outcome, so he's not going to just lie there and wait for inevitable. Also, as he's being electrically shocked through the chain, removing it would prevent that.

raywest

Question: Would Zep have faced charges for his role in the game? If so, what charges would he be facing exactly?

EK8829

Answer: If you can show that you were forced to commit the crime under duress, then you may be able to form a defensive strategy. Even if this cannot get you acquitted, you may be able to plea down to lesser charges and receive a lesser sentence. When you are arguing for the duress defense, you must show that: you had a reasonable fear of death or serious harm; you did not have any way to escape the situation; you could not have contacted the police about this; you did not force this situation to occur.

Answer: It's possible he could get off due to the extraordinary circumstances of what transpired. But given his sadistic pleasure in the game, I would assume he might face some charges. Among possible charges: kidnapping, assault, battery, weapons possession, criminal conspiracy, child endangerment, attempted murder, among many others.

As a lawyer, I believe the law is clear that you will not be charged for crimes you were forced to commit under immediate distress - that your life or a loved one's is in imminent danger.

To be clear the danger must be imminent - if John had told Zap to do it or he'd be poisoned next week wouldn't count, for example. But since the poison was already in his bloodstream his threat of death was indeed imminent, thus preventing any charges should he have lived.

More mistakes in Saw

Jigsaw: Live or die. Make your choice. Let the game begin.

More quotes from Saw

Trivia: The actor playing Adam is actually a co-writer of Saw. The film was shot in 18 days and for under a million dollars, and it all took place in 2 warehouses. The writers/directors wanted to make a movie about people trapped inside a single room.

More trivia for Saw

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