Highlights
- Some traps in the Saw franchise are relatively easy to escape if the victims use teamwork and think logically.
- The traps often require sacrifice, but compared to others, some traps involve less self-harm and are simpler to overcome.
- Victims could have found easier solutions to certain traps if they had taken the time to plan and think strategically.
The Saw franchise is a gruesome one, twelve films long now and constantly challenging viewers with the gross and gory traps that victims of Jigsaw are locked inside. Usually, victims awaken in a trap with no time to prepare, are told what the puzzle is, and are given an extremely brutal time limit in which to try escaping, often with a hefty cost attached.
Though awakening suddenly without any time to plan makes these traps even more difficult, there are some traps that, with careful planning time, viewers have been able to see easy ways around. Difficult though they might initially appear, some Saw traps are fairly simple to escape, though the ones in the newest entry Saw 10 have proven popular and less easy than some.
6 Reverse Bear Trap
Saw
- Easy Because: It Involves No Self-Harm
As the franchise continued, the primary theme of most Jigsaw traps was that they required some form of sacrifice, the gruesome level of them was more common in 2000’s horror movies. Many of the victims were people that Jigsaw felt needed to redeem themselves to continue living, by showing what they were willing to do to continue receiving the gift of life.
This trap, used on multiple occasions but first on drug addict Amanda, can be unlocked with a key. For Amanda, the key had to be cut out of the abdomen of another person. While this is a gruesome thing to be forced into, it is not nearly as challenging as performing similarly harmful acts upon one’s own body and then trying to escape. Compared to most Jigsaw traps, this was one simple. The ending of Saw showed the kinds of sacrifices Jigsaw demanded of people.
5 The Neck Tie Trap
Saw 5
- Easy Because: They Just Needed Teamwork
Five people awaken in a house filled with traps and are told they will have to work together to survive. Even these terrible people, realizing what was going on, could have made it through every trap together. Instead, the traps got progressively harder throughout because there were fewer people left to help. Jigsaw always claimed to never be a killer, and these traps made it feel more the fault of the victims at times.
The first trap was the easiest of all though, because they awoke knowing who Jigsaw was and convinced it must be him that had put them here, and he appeared on the screen to make it quite obvious they had to work together. Not only did they waste a huge amount of time arguing and fighting against each other, but still four of the five got their keys in time to save themselves. With less time spent fighting, they could all have made it. Not to mention, the keys are revealed to all be the same, they could have passed them along. This trap was amazingly simple, but these terrible people panicked and acted selfishly.
4 The Needle Pit
Saw 2
- Easy Because: Safety Was Right There
Amanda went through a lot of pain before becoming the apprentice of Jigsaw, and this was one of the most memorable traps for sheer brutality in the whole franchise. However, there was a bed with sheets in the room, which really could have mitigated most of the damage that anyone had to go through with this very singular trap.
If the group had stopped to think even just momentarily, they would have realized covering themselves in the sheets of the bed would have allowed someone to get in with minimal damage, or at least rip it up to cover their arms, so they could search through the needles. Instead, Xavier pushed Amanda in immediately, causing her far more pain than was necessary. This is just one of the many examples where teamwork could have easily helped deal with a trap.
3 The Pig Vat
Saw 3
- Easy Because: The solution Was Immediate
There are some hefty physical tolls that the victims are asked to take to survive Jigsaw’s traps throughout the series. However, it isn’t so common that they are asked to take an emotional toll instead. In Saw 3, the tasks set by Jigsaw are for Jeff. He walks through different traps, each containing a person partially responsible, as far as he is concerned, for the death of his son.
Saving the judge who gave a light sentence to the drunk driver who killed his son was an easy one. All Jeff had to do was burn some of his son’s old belongings, quickly, before the judge was drowned in pig blood. With a man’s life at stake, Jeff stands paralyzed for a ridiculous length of time in dealing with a simple and quick trap.
2 The Final Step
Saw 4
- Easy Because: He Just Had To Wait
The situation in Saw 4 is similar to Saw 3, they even take place concurrently in the confused timeline. Both follow one man, in this case Detective Rigg, as Jigsaw puts him through various tests to teach him about letting people save themselves. After a variety of successes and failures at learning this lesson, Rigg seems to be catching on.
However, in the final step, with his opportunity to wait until the timer runs out on his friends or rush in, attempting to save them, making the same mistake he’s been warned many times not to make, he still rushes in. Of course, the traps were set so that if anyone entered the room before the timer was up, his friends would die. This one simple lesson that Rigg had to live by throughout his tests, which he’d learned earlier, was completely thrown out the window. If he’d thought about it at all, he would have realized he didn’t need to save them, that the point of all his tests was not to save them.
1 The Ceiling Jars
Saw 5
- Easy Because: There Was Plenty Of Room
Most of the traps in Saw 5 feel silly after you realize the point is to work together. Despite being horrible, almost all the five victims have high-paying jobs and aren’t stupid, so the fact that they never realize they can work together is ridiculous. The tunnels they are meant to hide in are big enough to fit more than one person in each.
Despite this, the four people assume only three of them can survive and they attack each other. With any sort of cooperation, even the most basic shred of human decency or unselfishness, they would have realized that two of them could fit in the tunnels. The point of the traps was that everyone could have survived, yet nobody wondered what was meant to happen if all five of them had made it that far.
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