~♥ XO ♥~

I just finished my marathon for the Saw franchise. My interests in serial killers was again put on the notch.

The thing about Jigsaw, which I like, is that he is not a murderer. He just gives or he just lets other people appreciate whatever it is they have.

But what made Saw popular were the traps. So I thought I would share the traps (gadgets and all) to you guys.

Let's start with Jigsaw's trademark. He cuts out his player's flesh in the form of a jigsaw shape. These are the players who were not successful in their game. Hence, the name of the film, Saw.


Okay, on to the movies.

A. RAZOR WIRE MAZE

Paul Stallberg woke up partially naked inside a fenced-in area of a basement, and was told that the only means of escape was a door that was set to lock closed in two hours. Between him and the door was a gauntlet of densely strung together barbed tape through which he was instructed to navigate to survive. According to Jigsaw, the irony of his situation was the fact that he had slit his wrists, presumably for attention, a month ago, and that if he really wanted to die, he needed simply stay where he was (as the door to freedom would close, trapping him in), but if he wanted to live, he would have to "cut himself again". Footage from the movie showed him frantically tearing through the maze, although he eventually died on the wires.


B. FLAMMABLE JELLY

Mark Rodriguez, a man who had committed worker's comp fraud, was tested on his "illness" and placed in a dark room, with a candle and a box of matches serving as his only light source. Broken glass completely covered the floor, hundreds of numbers were written on the walls, and a safe was placed in the middle of the room. From a tape recorder resting on a small metal platform suspended from the ceiling, Mark, who h ad been stripped naked, was informed that he was covered with a flammable substance and that there was a slow-acting poison in his system that would kill him in roughly two hours.The combination to the safe, which held the antidote, was written on the walls amidst the myriad of other possibilities. While looking for the combination, Mark drew too close to the candle and went up in flames.


C. JAW SPLITTER

The wrists of a heroin addict named Amanda Young were bound with duct tape to the armrests of a chair, and a heavy metal apparatus was hooked up into her maxilla and mandible. Jigsaw, through his puppet on the tape recording, revealed to Amanda that she would have one minute to remove the contraption before it snapped open, much like "a reverse bear trap" (the term "Reverse Bear Trap", referenced in Amanda's instructions, gained fame as a fan name for the trap). The mechanism would rip her jaws open in the process, killing her. To emphasize the point, a demonstration was shown to Amanda, who watched as the device went off on a mannequin head. Jigsaw told her that the key needed to unlock the contraption was in the stomach of the dead man lying across the room from her.

As the tape ended, Amanda wriggled her arms free from the duct tape, at which point she stood up, pulling and snapping a trigger wire that set off the one-minute timer on the back of the contraption on her head. She quickly raced over to her cell mate, whereupon she had to cut into his stomach and retrieve the key, even after discovering that he was not actually dead as suggested, but in an opiate-induced state of paralysis, unable to move or feel pain. As she was about to cut him open, he woke up. After stabbing him multiple times, Amanda sifted through his stomach and retrieved the key. She then managed to remove the device just in time, throwing it onto the floor just as it snapped open.

D. DRILL CHAIR

Jeff's neck was shackled into a metal brace, keeping him trapped in a chair, attached the sides of which were two power drills. The drills were designed to inch toward his head, reaching and killing him in twenty seconds. The trap was activated when Jigsaw decided to test detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing, to see whether they prioritized saving a man's life over arresting him. After ripping apart the circuitry to prevent the detectives from stopping the drills with the button that started them, Jigsaw told Sing to find the key to release Jeff in a box near the chair. Inside the box were countless keys, and, rather than sift through them, Sing instead shot at both drills, deactivating them moments before they reached Jeff's head.


E. QUADRUPLE SHOTGUN HALLWAY

This trap was used by Jigsaw for security reasons instead of having a test for the victim. Four double-barreled shotguns were suspended from a ceiling in a hallway, each connected by a tripwire strung across the hallway below. When the victim stepped across the tripwire, which was hidden among cobwebs, it would pull the triggers of the shotguns. The four shotguns would go off simultaneously, firing at the victim and shooting them down. In this case, the victim was Detective Steven Sing, who was chasing Jigsaw through his warehouse in an attempt to capture him.


F. BATHROOM TRAP

The setting for the majority of the first film, this test placed two victims, Adam Faulkner and Dr. Lawrence Gordon in a grimy industrial washroom. Both were shackled at the ankle to pipes at opposite corners of the room. The pipes were connected to a remote electrical source, which could conduct through the metal chains and shackles to shock the captives. In the middle of the bathroom lay Jigsaw, posing as the corpse of a previous victim, sprawled face down in a pool of poisoned blood, holding an empty pistol in one hand and an empty tape player in the other, just out of reach of Adam and Lawrence. Adam and Lawrence found envelopes with tapes to play to learn their rules, while Lawrence also received a bullet. Following clues from their tapes, Adam found a garbage bag filled with photos he had taken of Lawrence while stalking him under hire, as well as a pair of hacksaws that were not intended to cut through the chains, but were rather meant for the victims to use to cut off their feet in order to escape. Lawrence was told to kill Adam in eight hours, under the threat of death for his wife and child. Adam was simply told to escape, with the only apparent means being the hacksaw, which he broke trying to cut through his chain, and a key that went down the drain of the bathtub that Adam had unknowingly drained after waking up in the water. Saw III revealed that Amanda had tied the chain to the bathtub stopper to Adam's ankle without being told to by Jigsaw.

Michael, a police informant, woke up with a harness similar to an iron maiden placed on his chest. Attached to the harness were two masks, opposite from each other and angled down from his head. Each mask had several nails protruding inwards from the interior. A timer was connected to the device, and, if the harness was not removed in one minute, the two masks would clamp together on his head like a Venus Flytrap, driving the nails through his skull. Michael soon learned, from an X-ray of his skull, that the key had been surgically implanted behind his right eye, and that he would have to give up "the thing that his life depended on" to survive.

After inadvertently pulling the chord tab attached to the timer on the device, setting it off, Michael grabbed a scalpel on the floor and, using a mirror, raised the scalpel to his eye. However, he was ultimately unwilling to cut it out, instead throwing the scalpel away and screaming for help. The timer went off and the masks snapped shut on his head, killing him.

B. ELECTRIFIED STAIRCASE

This guard mechanism served as protection from intruders in Jigsaw's lair, victimizing three SWAT officers in the second movie. It consisted of a staircase with a rigged step, surrounded by a chain-link cage. While observing Jigsaw's laughing puppet at the top of the staircase, one officer stepped on a weight-sensitive step that activated the rigged step above it. The rigged step sprang forward and broke the shins of the first SWAT officer. The cage door swung shut behind the last two officers, trapping the victims in the cage. The cage then became charged with an electric current, giving the last two officers lethal shocks as they fell backwards to catch the first officer.


C. NERVE GAS HOUSE

This large-scale trap placed multiple victims in an abandoned house riddled with traps, containing one for each person, though not all of the people were able to locate their personal trap. The front door was rigged to open in three hours, though the victims were given only two hours to live, as they were breathing in a deadly nerve agent through the air ducts. Each trap contained means to acquire an antidote. Several weapons were also found in the house, including a single-edged blade and a bat with several nails driven through it.


D. ANTIDOTE SAFE

In the room that the players woke up in was a large safe. The welcoming tape that was played for them revealed that one antidote was locked away in the safe, and that the combination to open it was in the "back of their minds", "over the rainbow". This hinted at the fact that colored numbers had been written on the backs of their necks (save for Amanda), which, when placed in the order of a rainbow, would reveal the combination. From what was seen in the movie, the combination would have been 2-?-16-11-9-25-8.

This trap was meant as a small test to preface the actual tests of the house and cajole the players into following instructions. There was only one door leading out of the room that the eight players woke up in, and a key was provided for them, though a note explicitly warned them not to unlock the door. Unknown to them, a Colt Python revolver was behind the door, attached to the other side of the peephole and connected by a pulley and chain. The gun was set to go off when the door was opened with the key. The door, on a timer, was set to open up on its own.

This trap, located in the basement, was built like a furnace for cremating bodies. Obi was told to crawl inside, being told that there were two antidotes inside, though he was warned that "one would come with a price". The second antidote, when taken, would pull a chain that would close the door to the furnace and ignite the flames. The only way to turn off the gas was by twisting a knob on the other side of the furnace, an act which would force Obi to crawl through the fire. The knob had a painting of a devil pointing to it with the caption "TWIST". Jigsaw had warned Obi earlier, in his tape, that once in Hell, only the devil could help him out.

Obi attempted to grab both antidotes, thus turning on the gas and starting the fire. He was then unwilling to crawl through the flames and attempted to break out of the other end of the furnace but he was too large to fit through the opening and he, as well as the antidotes, burned up halfway out.

This trap involved a pit in the middle of a room, filled with thousands of filthy, used syringes.  A locked door in the room held an antidote, but was set on a three-minute timer. If the timer expired, the door would remain locked forever. This trap was meant for Xavier, a drug dealer, who would have to jump into the pit of needles to find the key, attached to a glow stick, to the door. This trap, unlike many of Jigsaw's other traps, would not directly kill the victim if they failed the task, but was more of a punishment.

Instead of going in himself, Xavier picked Amanda up and threw her in to find the key. Although she found the key in time, Xavier fumbled with it, and placed the key in the lock just after time expired.

This trap consisted of a glass container which was suspended from the ceiling by numerous chains. Inside the box was an antidote which was accessible by two holes underneath the box that were big enough to fit one's arms through. Two cylinders extending down from the box hid a series of blades that covered the entrance to the box. Once the victim put his arms through, the blades would bend up and dig into his arms if he tried to pull them out. It was revealed on a special feature on the construction of the trap for the set that if the victim were to walk to the other side of the box, he would see a lock with a key sticking out of it, which in turn would have unlocked the box and allowed him to access the antidote without harm.

This trap was intended for Gus, evidently as a punishment for embezzlement, but Addison fell victim to it. At first, she only inserted one hand, but the plunger to the needle was stuck to the bottom of the box. When she pulled the needle up, the antidote inside spilled out. Panicking, she reached her other hand inside to grab it, trapping herself. As she tried to pull out her arms the blades began to cut up her arms. While it is never shown on-screen, it is assumed Addison died, either from blood loss or from the nerve agent that had already killed Laura.

Troy, a man who had led a life of crime despite the advantages given him, found himself in an empty school classroom, with eleven chains hooked into his flesh in various places, including his shoulders, arms, abdominal external oblique muscles, legs, Achilles tendons and mandible. A television screen nearby featured Jigsaw, speaking through Jigsaw's puppet, telling Troy that, if he wished to live, he would have to "break free" of his chains. He then turned his attention to a bomb sitting next to a jar of nails, set on a ninety-second timer.

Detective Allison Kerry awoke suspended from the ceiling in a contraption which consisted of a leather harness, hung from the ceiling by several chains, with two sets of metal pins along each side of her torso, piercing into her ribcage. Each array of pins was attached to one of two metal arches behind her that, for the time being, remained folded. Hanging next to her was a jar suspended by chains filled with acid, into which a key was dropped as she woke up. The video recording described Allison as being desensitized to death and "dead on the inside". Jigsaw also implied that the device was set to rip her ribcage open in one minute.

Allison, after trying unsuccessfully to tip the jar over, plunged her hand into the acid and severely burned it, but failed to get the key. Screaming in pain, she plunged her hand in a second time and successfully grasped the key. She pulled out her bloodied, severely corroded hand, and opened the padlock on her harness. Upon removing the padlock, however, she found that she was unable to remove the harness itself, as a second lock, located at the back of the device, held her in place. Amanda sauntered into the room, revealing herself as the inventor. With that revelation, Kerry raised her arms and clenched the chains she was hanging from, bracing herself as the two arms attached to the harness arched upwards like a pair of wings (hence the name of the trap), and pulled each side of the harness with them, causing the pins embedded in her torso to rip both sides of her ribcage out in opposite directions. She collapsed and died in the leather straps, causing some of her organs to spill out.


C. SHOTGUN COLLAR

Amanda placed a collar equipped with five loaded shotgun shells onto Dr. Lynn Deldon. The hammers behind each shell were clicked back, and the collar responded with Jigsaw's heart rate. If he flat lined, or if Lynn moved out of range, or if the collar was removed incorrectly (as Amanda noted that "the slightest knock in the wrong place could trigger it"), the shells would explode, killing her. Lynn was forced to operate on Jigsaw to keep him alive long enough for Jeff to complete his series of tests in the warehouse. When he did, Jigsaw ordered Amanda to remove the collar from Lynn, as she had completed her task. However, Amanda refused, arming herself with a gun. After a showdown in the makeshift hospital room with Amanda and Jigsaw, Lynn was shot in the back by Amanda as Jeff arrived on the scene. Jeff was left with a final choice to kill Jigsaw or forgive him, not knowing that his death would lead to Lynn's due to the collar. Jeff ultimately chose to slash Jigsaw's neck with a circular power-saw, causing his heart rate monitor to activate the collar on Lynn, which began beeping. Lynn had desperately tried to warn Jeff about the collar, but was wheezing from the gunshot. As Jigsaw flat lined, the collar fired the shells, blowing apart Lynn's head.


D. FREEZER ROOM

Walking around the abandoned factory, Jeff came to a door that had the words "FACE YOUR FEARS" scrawled in red on it. Upon opening it, he found himself in a large walk-in freezer. The door slammed shut behind him, and he was left to face Danica Scott, who was suspended by her wrists in the middle of the walk-in freezer, where her naked body was systematically sprayed by freezing water from twelve hoses, linked along two vertical poles at her sides. Jeff was forced to decide whether or not to help her. Danica was the one witness to the death of Jeff's son, and she fled the scene, giving Jeff the choice to save her or let her freeze to death. Jeff's task was to retrieve the key that would unlock Danica's bindings, as well as the door to the next room to escape the freezer room. The key was suspended behind a wall of icy cold pipes, just out of Jeff's reach. The only way he was able to get the key was by leaning just far enough that his face pressed against one of the pipes, causing the flesh of his cheek to stick to it. Grabbing the key, Jeff pulled back, tearing away part of the flesh on his cheek. Not only were the chains to free Danica frozen solid by the time Jeff attempted to save her, but Danica had frozen as well in an encasement of ice. Jeff left the room distressed as more water sprayed, building up the ice on her further.


E. PIG VAT

Jeff found himself standing above a large silo in the middle of the room, in which Judge Halden, who presided over Jeff's son's murder trial, lay shackled to the bottom of the silo by a metal brace around his neck. As he screamed for help, Jeff found a tape recorder and played it to learn the rules. In order to save the judge and leave the room, Jeff had to retrieve the key, which was hidden among his son's possessions (dolls, photos, etc.), locked in an incinerator on the lower level. He had to activate the incinerator, which would burn up the mementos, leaving only the key remaining (thus "cleansing" him of his obsession). As the tape ended, a series of large, interlocking saws in an adjoining chute began to spin to life. Hanging from a conveyor-like bar came out a maggot-ridden and rotten pig corpse. The pig was dropped into the saw blades and ground up, leaving a large amount of thick grey liquefied remains to pour down the chute into the silo with the judge, hitting him in the face and gradually filling the silo. More dead pigs were pulled in on the bar and dropped, one after the other, into the saws. Soon, enough pigs had been liquefied to fill the silo nearly enough to drown the judge.


F. RACK TRAP

Jeff stumbled upon this trap after saving the judge from the Pig Vat. Together, they found a door marked "HERE'S YOUR CHANCE" in red. Entering the room, Jeff and the judge found Timothy Young, the victim in the trap, who turned out to be the man responsible for the death of Jeff's son. His head was held in place by a rotating lock, while the arms and legs were held in place by spikes driven through the hands and feet. Each section began rotating around 180 degrees, one by one, taking his arms, legs, and head along with it and breaking the bones. The only way to free Tim would be to obtain a key that was attached to a shotgun's trigger by a cord; if the key was taken, the shotgun would go off and shoot Jeff. The key was also needed to leave the room and continue through to the next room. The shotgun and key were kept suspended in a glass box that Judge Halden attempted to break without success. Tim's arms and legs were rotated one by one, and the bones broke, some jabbing straight through his flesh in the process. As the judge watched Tim's bones slowly break one by one, Jeff managed to untie the key, holding onto the string long enough to move his own body out of the line of fire. As he let go, the gun fired. The judge had inadvertently backed up into the line of fire and was shot in the head. Jeff rushed over to Tim just as his head began to rotate. However, he failed to locate the key hole in time, and Tim's neck was fatally broken. The gears slowed down after Tim's head twisted around 180 degrees.

A. KNIFE CHAIR

A man named Cecil Adams was trapped in what was referred to first in an interview as the Knife Chair, later revealed to be Jigsaw's first created trap. He woke up with his arms bound to the armrests of a wooden chair, with blades jutting upwards into his forearms. A panel level with Cecil's face was connected to the arm restraints. Pushing it forward would release the restraints and free him. Jigsaw, who was present in the room, applied a large apparatus to the chair, consisting of eight blades enclosed around Cecil's head. Jigsaw then instructed Cecil in what to do, telling him that to release himself from the chair, he had to force his face through the blades to push the panel, matching his "internal ugliness" by scarring his face. Cecil, after sitting and screaming for help, began pushing his face through while Jigsaw watched.


B. MAUSOLEUM TRAP

A man, Trevor, woke up on the floor of a mausoleum with a locked collar around his neck, attached to a chain. He began to panic when he realized that his eyes had been sewn shut, rendering him blind. He started pulling on the chain to try to release himself, waking up a second man, Art Blank, on the other side of the room. Art realized he was shackled by a similar collar to the opposite end of the same chain. Art's mouth had been sewn shut, rendering him mute. Between the two of them was a winding drum, with a trigger-tab in place inside a large cylinder that the chain passed through.

During the ensuing struggle, Trevor knocked over a chair with multiple instruments on it, including a hammer, an ax, and some meat-hooks. As he began pulling on the chain, drawing Art closer to the machine, the tab was pulled out, activating the device. The cylinder began to rotate, slowly reeling in the chain and pulling both men closer together. They both pulled back and forth on the chain, each getting closer to the machine, though the lack of communication made it impossible for them to work together on solving the puzzle. Art spotted a key on the back of Trevor's collar and realized that it might open the one around his own neck. As he made his way over, he armed himself with the ax to protect himself before the two men started fighting. Trevor swung a hook wildly, eventually stabbing Art in the leg. Art, however, still managed to get the key from the back of Trevor's collar after stabbing the hook into his shoulder. As Art attempted to unlock his collar, Trevor attacked again, and Art was forced to kill him by smashing his head in with the hammer. Finally, Art fumbled to try to open the lock on his collar. He managed to remove it, and screamed, ripping the stitching open.

C. HAIR TRAP

A woman named Brenda wore a red cloak and a pig mask, chained and seated on a device with numerous gears and a dial, sitting atop a dolly. A tape recorder was duct-taped to the palm of her left hand, and her long hair was twisted though a metal ring and wound up along an axle connected to the gears. She was stuck in a room in Rigg's apartment with numerous photos of herself pimping young girls, posted and hung up around the room, with the words, "SEE WHAT I SEE" scribbled above a bookcase beside her. Rigg entered the room, setting off the timer which began counting down from 90:00, and found Brenda panicking, trying to escape her chains. A TV in front of her turned on, and Rigg was told that she was a criminal. Jigsaw advised him to just walk away from the situation and let Brenda die instead of giving into his obsession of saving everybody. Rigg pulled the pig mask and cloak off of the woman, pulling a trigger-pin that was attached by a cord to the mask, activating the machine. A one-minute timer began counting down as the gears on the device began turning, arching Brenda's head back as her hair was yanked and wound along an axle. After having her gag removed, Brenda screamed for help, telling Rigg to hurry, and that the combination for the dial was hidden in the gears. She continued to scream for help while Rigg scrambled around looking for something to stop the device. Upon opening a drawer, he found a card that read "Time is wasting." Brenda's hairline ripped and began to spurt blood before Rigg returned and tried shooting the machine with his handgun, merely slowing the machine down for a few seconds before it continued to tear Brenda's scalp from her head. Rigg began reading numbers on the cogs twisting her hair and programmed the code, 6-4-7, into the dial on the machine. Brenda was released, although half of her scalp had been torn from her head.


D. BEDROOM TRAP

The next test began as Rigg entered room 261 of the Alexander Motel. The victim was the motel clerk, Ivan Landsness. In the room, Rigg found a box with a picture of his wife, Tracy sitting atop it. The back of the photo had a note for Rigg that read, "SHE NEEDED YOU". Looking at the box, Rigg noticed some long strands of hair sticking out of it. Opening it, he found the infamous pig mask used by Jigsaw and Amanda Young, a tape recorder, and a photo of Ivan. The tape told Rigg that he would need to grab Ivan, but to do so, would have to conceal his identity from the motel cameras. He put the mask on long enough to pass by the cameras, then lured Ivan's dog upstairs. When Ivan followed, he found the discarded mask lying outside room 261. As the door opened, Ivan was pulled into the room by Rigg.

Rigg forced Ivan at gunpoint to unlock a communicating door, which had "FEEL WHAT I FEEL" scrawled across it. In the next room were several pictures of various murdered women and a bed with four shackles connected to large posts, described as "hydraulic gear-shifts", standing upwards from the corners of the bed, each equipped with numerous chains and gears. Flashbacks later showed that a "G" was marked on one of the shackles. It was revealed by a video tape in the corner of the room that Ivan was a serial rapist, responsible for raping and torturing unfortunate women. Acting on instructions from a second tape recorder, Rigg ordered Ivan to strap himself in on the bed so that a vise could clamp onto his head.

Rigg, after reading a card that said, "Hand him the tools that will save his life," supplied Ivan with two trigger buttons, one for each hand. Activating either one would case a scythe-like arm on that side of the vise to swing down and pierce his eye, punishment for being a voyeur. Activating both of them would blind Ivan, but would deactivate the rest of the device.

An abusive husband, Rex, and his wife, Morgan were trapped in a classroom of an abandoned school (the same school in which Troyhad died in an earlier trap), where the words "SAVE AS I SAVE" were seen written on a chalkboard for Rigg. Rex and Morgan were strapped to a column with eight rods impaled through the both of them, holding them together, next to an overhead projector sitting atop a trolley. An image of the human vascular systeprojected onto a screen, showing major veins and arteries, while numerous X-rays hung from the ceiling showed broken bones inflicted from Rex. A sign scrawled on the wall, only viewable by Rex, read, "YOUR LIFE IS IN HER HANDS".

To escape, Morgan had to pull the rods from herself, but a tape chained to her wrist revealed that removing the rods would cause Rex to bleed to death, as the rods were pierced through major arteries in his body, punishment for the abuse he inflicted on his wife and others, including his daughter. The rods, however, would only leave minor wounds in Morgan's body if she removed them, as none of her arteries were harmed. However, if she failed to remove them, or remained inactive, she would eventually bleed to death. She began pulling them out of her as her husband weakly attempted to stop them from exiting his wounds, but ultimately failed and bled to death through the multiple wounds.