JigSaw
JigSaw (born John Kramer) is a famous player of practical jokes, similar in style to Michael Myers, but far more creative and genius. Rather than running around groups of teenagers and stabbing them and yelling "I stabbed you LOL", he kidnaps them and knocks them unconscious until they finally wake up inside one of his elaborate pranks. JigSaw has often asserted that "most people are so ungrateful towards the art of practical jokes. I intend to change that, one person at a time."
JigSaw's career as a player of jokes began when a most cruel joke was played on his wife. She was just hanging out behind a door when some asshole slammed it open and smashed her on the nose. There was blood all over her face, but in the spirit of being a good sport, she forced a good hearty laugh at the obvious humor of the situation. This joke infuriated JigSaw, so he devised a joke to that was even better than slamming a door in someone's face. He snuck up on the guy and injected him with rat piss, knocking him out cold for several hours, during which JigSaw set up the first of his pranks. He strapped the unconscious victim down to a chair with duct tape and rigged up a bunch of sharp knives in front of his face. When the man came to, he saw the ingenuity of the prank and began laughing hysterically until JigSaw slapped him in the mouth to shut him up. It was explained to the man that if he shoved his face into the knives hard enough, he would be allowed to leave the chair. After only a couple seconds of hesitation, the man shoved his entire face through the knives, far more than the prank required. They both had a good laugh, and then JigSaw unexpectedly slapped him in the mouth so hard that he fell into a pile of barbed wire and was killed.
Saw I
The prank with the knives and the chair never gained much media attention until JigSaw became popular for other pranks. The first widely published prank was when JigSaw gathered two guys off the streets and chained them to the walls of a dirty old bathroom. To save money on expensive recording equipment, JigSaw simply made himself look like a bloody dead guy and laid on the floor in the middle of the room, where he could observe the test subjects. At first, the two men were dazed and confused when they woke up in the dingy restroom, but eventually they just became bored and wanted to go back home to play some more Doom. They grabbed the pair of dice that was left for them, and played a few good games of Yahtzee to pass the time. This became boring after a few hours, so they decided to start cutting off each other's feet with the provided saws. Once they had each cut off a foot, they realized that removing the other foot (the one that was chained to the wall) would allow them to slip out of the shackles and leave the room. So they did.
Realizing that they no longer had any feet to leave the room with, they both screamed "FUCK" at the exact same time, after which JigSaw jumped up from the middle of the bathroom and yelled "APRIL FOOLS" and began laughing hysterically and jumping up and down. The film adaptation of these events begins playing some really intense music at this point in the story, and flashes back to when the two guys were captured and how they were just two normal guys who fell victim to a really nasty prank, reminding the viewers of things they knew all along but might have forgotten during all the excitement of the pranks.
Saw II
This time JigSaw gathered a few more test subjects including a drug addict, a really muscular guy, a smart black guy, and an asshole whom JigSaw knew the others would immediately dislike. They all woke up in a room together, which had only one exit. The door was obviously rigged with some sort of practical joke, but once again, in the spirit of good humor, one of the subjects turned the doorknob and took a bullet to the face. The others all laughed hysterically at this obviously well crafted joke, and shared the four beers provided by JigSaw for the remaining survivors at that point.
The remaining four look around the rest of the house for a bit and make small talk. The story becomes interesting again when they find themselves in the basement next to a wood stove. The guy that nobody likes immediately dives into the woodstove, while the other guy starts up the fire with the help from the man inside. After he is burned to a crisp and the laughters dies down, the others start to realize that it might not have been such a good idea for him to jump in the stove like that, but it is too late.
One of the test subjects leaves the group to be alone and think things through. While away from the others, the woman finds a room with a glass box hanging from the ceiling, with a hot dog inside. She wants it so badly that she completely disregards the razor sharp blades that will slice off her arms upon reaching for the hot dog. The woman quickly bleeds out her arms and the movie focuses back on the remaining 2. Or was it 3? These two discover a baseball bat with nails sticking out the end, and use it to play a game with.
In similar style to the first film, the intense music is played and flashbacks are shown.
Saw III
JigSaw injects himself with Cancer cells and has a captured auto mechanic perform brain surgery on him. If the brain surgery fails, the necklace of hand grenades around the mechanic's neck will detonate and kill him. The mechanic is excited at the opportunity to show his expertise at fixing things, and dives right into the brain surgery. He completely botches the job though, and JigSaw dies without even having the chance to laugh at his own joke. In his old age, JigSaw had forgotten to rig the grenades to actually explode in the event of his death, but the mechanic, who has a deep appreciation for a good joke, pulls the pins out of the 'nades himself.
Because the joke ended prematurely, the producers of the film needed something else to occupy the remaining hour of the movie, and so they rigged up a joke of their own, which was far inferior to the ingenious pranks of JigSaw. It consisted of a cheaply made wood crate that was easily broken out of, followed by a room with a frozen naked girl, and then by another room with a giant blender into which pigs were thrown. The test subject finds none of this funny, so he travels through time to Saw IV and kindly asks a detective named Strahm to shoot him in the face.
Saw IV
Saw IV is actually the best prank of all, because the film itself is the joke. Besides a few little traps throughout the movie, it bears no resemblance to the rest of the movies in the series. Instead, it is an A&E biography both which is about JigSaw and about a detective named Rigg who turns to the dark side of the force after watching one of his friends smash his own head between two giant blocks of ice. This is so hilarious because the viewer thought he was being shown another film in a great series of horror movies, when in fact he had just been coerced into watching a bad documentary. LOL!
Saw V
JigSaw is actually dead at this point because he died at the end of Saw III. Remember? So now it is up to somebody else to continue the legacy. Feeling the call of duty, an FBI detective named Hoffman picks up the torch and sets up a new prank that is more elaborate than any of the ones set up by his predecessor. He finds five people who are well known for being complete assholes, and who won't be missed in the event of their untimely death. The joke consists of five adjacent rooms, each of which will teach the test subjects a valuable lesson about life.
In the first room, the five captives wake up and find themselves collared and tied to devices that will cut their heads off if the cable is pulled. After taking a minute to observe the sheer genius of the situation, they all begin chewing through their collars. The blonde girl on the far right finds herself in a jam because she doesn't have any teeth, and so when the time runs out, the cable is pulled and her head is chopped off. The obvious lesson learned by the others is that it is important to have good dental hygiene, or you just might get your head chopped off.
The next room has a few bombs, and a few steel drums that can be used for shelter from the bombs. The subjects realize that in order to avoid the bombs and survive to see the rest of the hilarious set of practical jokes, they must climb into the barrels and shut the lids. However, one of the contestants is morbidly obese and can't fit inside the fucking barrel, and so he is left out in the room. In an effort to make the explosion more comfortable for the people in the barrels, he swallows the nail bombs whole and absorbs the explosion inside his body, thus preventing the people inside the barrels from hearing or feeling any explosion. The three skinny people spend the rest of their lives sitting in the barrels and waiting for the explosion, which never comes. No lesson is learned from this situation because the joke was manipulated by the clever test subject.
The fat man laughs at the way in which he reversed the situation, and then proceeds to the next room, which simply contains a tub of dirty bath-water rigged up to have 1000 Volts of electricity flowing through it. Appreciating the humor of the situation, he jumps into the bathwater and takes a good bath, thus preparing himself for the challenges of the next room...
Now, there is a beaker that must be filled with fluid in order to raise a floating ball and open the door. Naturally, his first instinct is to split his arm down the middle with the huge table saw that is provided and fill the beaker with his own blood. But right before he is about to eagerly do this, he realizes that he could just as easily piss out all the water that he'd drank earlier that day, and then throw up he contents of his stomach if the water wasn't enough. This worked like a charm, and he escaped the room with time to spare.
Detective Hoffman was pissed off that the stupid fat bastard had messed up the joke, so he slapped him in the mouth a few times and tied him to a table where he was cut in half by a swinging sharpened pendulum.
Saw VI
Saw VI begins with Tanedra Howard and Marty Moreau placed in head harnesses with screws poised to drill into their skulls. Tanedra had won the reality TV show Scream Queens[1], and Jigsaw decided to give his own tapes credibility by having Tanedra star in them. Marty on the other hand, starred as the Easter Bunny in the telemovie Santa Who?[2], and Jigsaw is rumoured to have been greatly displeased when he realised the Easter Bunny was a lie. The person who cuts off more weight in body parts in 60 seconds will live, while the other will be screwed. The overweight Eddie performs liposuction, but Simone simply detaches her prosthetic arm to tip the scale in her favor and save herself.
Dan Erickson heads up the FBI’s investigation into Eddie’s death, with fingerprints of Peter Strahm being found at the scene. He shares this information with Lt. Mark Hoffman and also reveals that Lindsey Perez – thought to have been killed by the exploding Billy doll – is alive and still on the case. Erickson apparently lied about her death to keep her safe. Hoffman pretends to be offended at having been lied to, but is secretly satisfied since Hoffman lied about Jigsaw's death to keep him safe (which explains why Jigsaw keeps releasing tapes more often than Osama bin Laden). He also secretly meets with Jill Tuck, who hands him five envelopes from the box given to her by John Kramer’s lawyer, and he takes control of a Jigsaw game the two have been planning.
Erickson and Perez continue their investigation and obtain the videotape from the death of Seth Baxter causing Hoffman to grow increasingly nervous that his secret is about to be revealed. Erickson and Perez tell Hoffman that after testing Strahm's fingerprints they found that they were from a right hand, meaning it was not from Strahm since he was left-handed. Right after they reveal this, the tech finishes unscrambling Hoffman’s distorted voice. Hoffman slices Erickson's throat and offers a coffee to Perez, distracting her. Hoffman uses the lab tech as a shield against Perez's shots. He then stabs her repeatedly and asked who know about him. She replies "Everyone." Hoffman says, "You lie." (Hoffman would later issue a statement that: "This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to Special Agent Perez’s remarks regarding the coverage of accomplices in the Jigsaw saga. While I disagree with the agent's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to Special Agent Perez for this lack of civility.") He then turns the knife, killing her. Next, he plants Strahm’s prints (though still with the wrong hand) in the room and sets it on fire.
Returning to his observation room in the zoo, Hoffman is attacked by Jill, to whom Pamela gave a copy of the letter from him to Amanda (as seen in Saw III). He knew about her responsibility for the clinic robbery in which Jill's pet piglet was stolen, and he would tell John about it unless Amanda killed Lynn Denlon. Jill straps Hoffman to a chair and places an updated “Reverse Bear Trap” device on his head, telling him that John’s last request – in an envelope she did not give him – was to capture him, as punishment for Hoffman not paying attention to the number of Jigsaw cases so far: he should have realised that there would be six envelopes in the sixth installment. After she leaves, Hoffman uses the trap’s weight to detach his prosthetic hand so he can get out of the straps, then jams the front portion into the door’s window frame. When the timer runs out, the trap springs slightly apart, caught in the bars; Hoffman slips out, screaming toward the ceiling with one side of his mouth ripped open.
Saw VII 3D The Final Chapter: The Taglines have Arrived
Saw 3D involves a guy who had recently released a practical joke book that blatantly ripped-off from Hoffman's pranks. To add insult to injury, he claimed that JigSaw was the "inspiration" for his books, even though he'd never even met him! Infuriated by this gross act of plagiarism, Hoffman decides to pull a fast one on the "author" in order to show him how a real practical joke works.
To do this, Hoffman abducts both the author and his wife, telling the author to survive his series of "tests" if he wants his wife to live. Of course, he also meets a couple of friends along the way, all of them trapped in various fatal situations that he fails to save them from.
However, once he's cleared Hoffman's "obstacle course" he realizes that the REAL test was the very prank he'd ripped-off from Hoffman in his book! It involved digging a bunch of hooks into your pectoral muscles in the hope that you'll be able to rappel up these hooks to safety. Obviously, pulling off such a stunt is impossible! Realizing the same once the hooks begin slicing through his entire body, the author laughs and screams "Good one!" before falling to his death. His wife is also fried to death when Hoffman invites her to a "frying" room. Little does she know that by "frying room", Hoffman means "it's a trap that fries humans and not French fries". But she is blown away by the ingenuity of the prank, and for the sake of good humor, allows herself to be locked in and fried.
Of course, the cops get wind of Hoffman's deadly pranks, thanks to the assistance given by fellow prankster Jill. They break into his control room only to realize that it wasn't a control room at all! A recorded message plays "Hahaha! Did you all actually think I'd be waiting for you all to find me? I was actually the dead body you all stepped over at that junkyard! LOL!". The cops have a hearty laugh after hearing the message, and before being sprayed with an automatic turret gun.
With the investigators dead, Hoffman decides to search for the rival prankster who he just knew had led the cops to him. Of course, reaching her isn't that hard, given how he impersonates a dead body, kills the cop that approaches the dead body, and then impersonates that cop's dead body until all the cops die as a result of his ingenious joke. He then approaches Jill, and hands her a new pair of dental braces as a "generous gift". Since Jill is obviously unaware of all the cops he has killed, she accepts his gift, only to realize it's actually a reverse bear trap that will rip her mouth open! "HAHAHA! Gotcha!" laughs Hoffman, as he leaves the police station.
However, just as he's about to go back home, he's ambushed by a bunch of men wearing pig-headed masks. The leader reveals himself to be the blond dude who was chained to the bathroom in Saw I. Unlike the other guy who simply failed to walk out of the place, however, the blond dude had managed to find a steam pipe which helped him cauterize his wounds. JigSaw found him, but instead of playing another practical joke on him, he offered him the chance to be his partner in crime. The blond dude accepted his offer.
Realizing that the entire film's screenplay was actually just a big fat joke played on him, Hoffman says "Good one!" to the scriptwriters, who then inform him that now he'll be the one chained to the bathroom, without any saw to cut his foot off, thus being effectively left to die.
Other Works
Researchers believe that John Kramer is behind many other pranks beyond those depicted in the Saw films. There is even evidence that JigSaw is responsible for the design of the gigantic cube pranks that are depicted in the three Cube movies. He also made a Video Game about his jokes, and also a Television series.
See Also
References
