 Saw, like its film predecessors, is set in the fictional Saw universe in an unnamed urban American city. The overlying storyline follows that of a man named John Kramer. According to the backstory in the film Saw IV, John encountered a series of events, including the loss of his unborn child and being diagnosed with cancer, that caused him to begin testing other people's will to live. These tests, which ironically killed many of his victims, and the fact that he symbolically carved a puzzle piece out of the flesh of his victims, soon earned him the alias "The Jigsaw Killer" from newspaper reporter Oswald McGullicuty. Due to the chronology of Saw, Jigsaw is still alive and his apprentice Amanda is still assumed to be a victim rather than an accomplice.
