Bathroom Trap

The **Bathroom Trap** is a recurring trap/location in the Saw franchise, as well as the primary set piece used in the first film.

## History

### Preparation of the Trap

Several months after starting his series of murder series, John Kramer, better known as the Jigsaw Killer, used an dilapidated underground bathroom for one of his deadly games. *(NOTE:* *The actual origin of the bathroom itself and who made it is unknown.)* With the help of his accomplice Amanda Young, John abducted his oncologist, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, as well as photographer Adam Faulkner-Stanheight, who had been hired by the former homicide detective David Tapp to observe Gordon over the course of several days as he was convinced that Gordon was the Jigsaw Killer.

After Kramer and Young knocked the two victims unconscious, Gordon was chained to a pipe in the corner of the bathroom, while Adam was shackled to a pipe in the back corner of the room by his left leg, where Amanda heaved him into a bathtub filled with water and threw the key to his chains onto his stomach. Meanwhile, John applied makeup and fake blood to his head, poured a bucket of more fake blood on the floor in the middle of the room, and injected himself with a medicament that slowed his heart rate and relaxed his muscles. Amanda then left the room, turned off the lights and shut the door behind her, but Kramer stayed in the room and lay down in the puddle of blood with a tape recorder in one hand and a revolver in the other, making it look like he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. *(Saw, Saw III)*

### **The Game**

Shortly afterwards, Adam woke up and gasped for breath, having completely sunken into the water while he was unconscious. When he scrambled from the bathtub, he inadvertently pulled the plug and didn't notice how the key, which Amanda had left in the bathtub, went down the drain. He immediately started to panic and screamed for help, when he suddenly heard Gordon's voice in the darkness. Gordon eventually found a switch and turned on the light, but Adam pretended not to recognize his cellmate. Instead, he further panicked when he saw the body of John Kramer. Gordon, however, managed to calm him down. After introducing himself, he asked Adam whether he knew the dead man or remembered how he ended up in the bathroom, which he denied. Despite his fear and distrust, he finally told Gordon his name as well. Meanwhile, the latter pointed out that their abductor could have killed them already and concluded that the abductor wanted something from them. As he further examined the room, he noticed a clock on the wall, which was factory-fresh, as opposed to the dirty environment, and the two started theorizing that it was somehow important.

Later, Adam finds a white envelope in his pocket, which is addressed to him. The envelope contains a cassette with the message "Play me" written on it. Gordon also finds an envelope in his pocket, which contains another cassette, but also contains a key as well as a single bullet. The two immedintly try to free themselves with the key, but fail. Moments later, Adam noticed the tape recorder in John's hand. However, as it was out of reach, he tried to use his shirt to get possession of it. When this didn't work, he eventually tied the plug from the bathtub to one of the sleeves. After some more attempts, he finally managed to obtain the recorder when the plug got caught up in a loop attached to it.

Adam uses the recorder to play his tape, where he hears Kramer's distorted voice confronting him with his voyeurism and his work, which basically consisted of spying on other people, and asking Adam whether he would watch himself die, or do something about it. Once the tape was over, Gordon asks him for the recorder so he could listen to his own recording. Worried that he could destroy the recorder by throwing it across the room, however, Adam refused and demanded the tape from Gordon, which Gordon eventually threw to him after briefly protesting against it. Gordon's tape confronts him with the fact that he gave people the news of their impending death on every day of his working life, and that now it was his task to cause the death of another human himself. The voice says that if Gordon doesn't kill Adam by 6:00, his daughter, Diana, and his wife, Alison, will be killed, and Gordon himself will be left to die in the bathroom. Furthermore, the voice told him that there were numerous clues and useful tools hidden in the bathroom, which could help him escape. One of these clues was a cryptic message, according to which an "X marked the spot for the treasure." Additionally, the voice told him about the seemingly dead John Kramer, claiming that Kramer shot himself because he had been poisoned as part of a separate trap.

Once the recording ended, Gordon once again demanded the recorder from Adam, which the latter now gave him without hesitation. Upon repeatedly winding the tape back and forwards, he discovered one final clue. At the end of the recording, he heard the voice whispering the words "Follow your heart." Seconds later, he noticed a heart drawn on the water tank of a toilet right next to Adam. Despite his disgust, Adam searched the dirty toilet bowl, but didn't seem to find anything at first. Upon searching the toilet tank, however, he found a black plastic bag inside, which contained two hacksaws as well as Adam's photos of Gordon. Adam immediately tried to saw through his chain, while he threw the other saw to the doctor. Unnoticed by Gordon, Adam also threw the bag with the photos into the empty bathtub. Both guys fail to saw through their chains, and Adam angrily throws his towards one of the mirrors on the wall, causing a single shard to break out. Gordon realizes that the saws weren't meant to cut through their chains, but rather to cut off their feet. Thereby, he realizes that they had been abducted by the Jigsaw Killer and tells Adam how Jigsaw had tried to frame him for one of his murders when he had left Gordon's penlight at a crime scene five months earlier.

Despite being shocked by the things Gordon told him about Jigsaw, Adam's distrust of Gordon grows further, and in a fit of rage, he grabs the shard from the mirror and threatens to kill Gordon if he didn't tell him what was going on around them. However, he stops when he realizes that the shard belongs to a one-way mirror. With pieces from broken tiles, he smashed the mirror, causing the glass to break entirely. In doing so, he discovers a camera, which was positioned behind the mirror. To his anger, it was protected by a second, shatterproof glass pane. Gordon tried to convince him to calm down and concentrate on Jigsaw's clues instead of becoming exasperated with the camera. When Adam subsequently asked him whether he even thought about the things Jigsaw could do to his family in the meantime, Gordon told him about the final conversation with Diana at the night of his abduction.

Thereby, he managed to put oil on troubled waters and told Adam about his family. Adam asked him whether he wanted more children, Gordon denied this as it was already hard enough for him and his wife to do justice to Diana. During their conversation, Gordon threw his wallet to Adam so he could take a look at some photos of Diana. However, when Adam searched the wallet for a picture of Gordon's wife, he made an unnerving discovery. Instead of the photo he was looking for, he found another picture, which was signed with the word "Regards" and a drawn jigsaw piece. The photo showed Gordon's family, who were gagged and tied up in the bedroom of apartment. As he didn't want to worry him, Adam didn't tell him about the picture and instead gave him the wallet back, claiming that the photo of his wife wasn't there. While the confused doctor searched the wallet, Adam unobtrusively took another look at the picture. On the back side of it, Jigsaw had written the message "X marks the spot. Sometimes you see more with your eyes shut."

When Adam's uncooperative attitude caused another argument between him and Gordon, he finally asked him to turn off the light, which Gordon did, despite being skeptical. Upon doing so, they spotted glowing "X" painted on the wall, which hadn't been visible in the light, and wasn't glowing earlier since the paint hadn't charged yet. leading Adam to the conclusion that it had been drawn with a special fluorescent paint. By using his saw, Gordon smashed the marked part of the wall and thereby discovered a hollow space with a small box hidden inside. Gordon managed to open it with the key he had found in his envelope at the beginning of his game. It contained a mobile, a lighter, two cigarettes as well as a written message, which told Gordon that the cigarettes were harmless, that he didn't need a gun to kill Adam and that "smoking was only poisonous when it ended in bloodshed." When Adam, who didn't notice any of this, asked him for a cigarette, Gordon denied his wish and instead tried to call the police. To his disappointment, the mobile couldn't be used to make calls, but only to receive them. However, this caused him to remember the night of his abduction, where something similar had happened to him in a parking garage, before he was attacked and subdued by a person with a pig mask.

After telling him about this, Gordon suddenly asked him how he knew that they had to turn off the light. When Adam claimed it was due to his instinct and obviously tried to avoid the question, the men began to argue once again until Adam finally revealed the photo of Gordon's abducted family to him. Prompted by his fear for Diana and Alison, Gordon thought about another way out and came up with a plan. Unnoticed by Adam, he dipped one of the cigarettes into the blood of the lifeless body of John Kramer, which, according to Jigsaw's clues, had to be poisoned. Afterwards, he turned off the lights and told Adam about his plan, which required him to fake his death. When he turned the lights on again, he threw the second, harmless cigarette and the lighter to Adam. Moments later, Adam pretended to collapse due to the poison. However, their plan failed when Adam received an electric shock from his shackle, which caused him to panic once again, while Gordon was angry and blamed him for the failure of their plan. The shock, however, caused Adam to remember his own abduction.

After he told Gordon about his abduction from his apartment, the phone rang. When Gordon answered the call, his frightened daughter begged him to save her and her mother. Afterwards, he also spoke with Alison, who warned him not to trust Adam as he had known him long before their game began. When Gordon confronted him with that warning, Adam finally admitted that he had observed and photographed him throughout the previous days and showed him the photos, which he had found in the bag with the hacksaws. This resulted in an argument, during which Adam revealed that he had followed Gordon to rendezvous with his student and mistress, Carla, at the Hotel Barfly. Angered by this, Gordon asked him who hired him, as he was convinced that Adam's client was also their abductor. However, when Adam described the man as a "tall black guy with a scar around his neck", Gordon realized that it was Detective Tapp, who was convinced that Gordon was the Jigsaw Killer and blamed him for the death of his partner, Detective Steven Sing, five months earlier.

When the two of them lapsed into silence again, Adam suddenly noticed that one of the photos wasn't from him. It showed a man standing at the window of Gordon's bedroom, but Gordon claimed that, besides Diana and Alison, nobody had been in their apartment the night before. Therefore, Adam showed him the picture, causing the shocked doctor to recognize the man as Zep Hindle, an orderly at the Angel of Mercy Hospital, where Gordon worked as well. Seconds later, Adam realized that it was 6:00, and the time of their game was over. Shortly afterwards, the mobile rang again. To Gordon's surprise, he heard his wife's voice, who had managed to free herself from the sadistic orderly. However, only moments later, he also heard several gunshots and the desperate screams of his daughter, who, thankfully, manage to escape unharmed. Incorrectly assuming his family to be dead, however, Gordon started to cry, but suddenly lost his consciousness when he received an electric shock from his shackle.

Adam immediately tried to wake him up and was afraid that Gordon was dead, when the latter regained his consciousness. However, due to the events, Gordon suffered a breakdown, which became even worse when the phone rang again but was beyond his reach, as he had inadvertently thrown it away when he was electrocuted. In a last desperate attempt to save his family, he used his shirt to stanch his leg and, despite Adam's attempts to calm him down, began to cut off his foot. After he had managed to free himself from his chain, he crawled to the middle of the room and took the revolver from Kramer's hand. Then, he used the bullet from his envelope and shot the frightened Adam, who collapsed immediately. Shocked by what he had done, Gordon screamed at the camera and begged for the life of his family.

Moments later, the door was opened and Zep Hindle entered the bathroom. Gordon frantically tried to shoot him, even though he had no more bullets. Unimpressed by this, Zep aimed his gun at him and wanted to kill him as he didn't finish his task in time. However, before he could do it, he was attacked by the still-living Adam as the bullet had only injured his shoulder. As the two of them lay on the floor and fought with each other, Adam managed to disarm his enemy and smashed his head in with the lid of the toilet tank. When Gordon finally convinced him to stop, Adam started to cry due to his pain. Gordon told him that he'd bleed to death if he stayed with him and promised to get help. Despite Adam's desperate attempts to hold him back, the severely injured doctor crawled out of the room.

When he was alone, Adam searched Zep's body for a key to his shackle. To his surprise, he found another tape recorder in his jacket pocket, which contained a message for Zep. The latter had been poisoned by Jigsaw and was forced to abduct Gordon's family and kill them if he failed his test, in order to obtain the antidote. Therefore, Adam realized that Zep was also just another victim of Jigsaw, when the actual killer, John Kramer, got up from the floor and removed his mask. Then, he told Adam that the key to his chain was in the bathtub. As Adam realized that the key had gone down the drain, he aimed Zep's gun at John, who incapacitated him with another electric shock. While Adam lay on the floor shivering, John turned off the light, closed the door and left the screaming young man with the words "Game Over."

As shown through a flashback in Saw III, Adam is later killed by Amanda when she suffocates him with a plastic bag out of guilt.

## Trivia

* James gave this trap the Rusty Mousetrap award, specifically when it came to Adam's perspective, since he found it underwhelming that Adam's goal was simply to stop the key from going down the drain.
* This is the first trap to be given the Rusty Mousetrap award.