Jigsaw

### Goals

Teach his victims a lesson to appreciate, treasure and value their lives and those of others

### Type of Villain

Delusional Psyhopath

**John Kramer**, aka **Jigsaw**, is the main antagonist of *Saw franchise*. He is a former civil engineer dying from an inoperable frontal lobe tumor that had developed from colon cancer.

He is portrayed by Tobin Bell

## Roles

He is the main antagonist of *Saw*, *Saw II*, *Saw III*, and *Saw IV*, the overarching antagonist of *Saw V*, *Saw VI*, and *Saw 3D*, and the main protagonist of *Saw X*. He is also the main antagonist ot *Saw* video games.

## Movies

John Kramer believes that human beings have an instinctual will to live in the face of death and that years of evolution have caused their survival instinct to dull and now, people are unable to appreciate their lives. After losing his unborn child and getting diagnosed with cancer, he unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide, which, as he claimed, opened his eyes about the human race. Now a changed man, he vowed to test everyone's will to live for the greater good. As Jigsaw, Kramer targets those he considers to be ungrateful to live, including criminals and people with extreme personal issues.

Though the nature of his tests are incredibly brutal, Kramer shows no enjoyment in the suffering of his victims. Instead, he believes that it will help them re-evaluate themselves, as most of his victims have already hit the rock-bottom in their lives. He is deeply sympathetic to surviving test subjects such as Lawrence Gordon after he amputated his leg to escape and roots that they live. This sympathy was also shown when he was saddened by Cecilia killing Gabriella, despite Gabriella having passed her test and his wish for her to be taken to the hospital.

However, Kramer takes a small amount of enjoyment in his tests as he smiled when hearing the screams of the imprisoned detective Matthews (who previously beat Kramer to near-death, so maybe he was happy to hear him screaming for assaulting him) and targeting the corrupt William Easton for his apprentice Mark Hoffman to test after his death when he refused to treat his cancer despite just claims his mission could never be personal (though it might not have been and he simply wanted to break Easton's biased philosophy, as John wasn't the only victim of William's policy). John also targeted the Pederson Group after they had scammed him, to prevent them from targeting anyone else, though the consequences of this game did seem to reinforce his views on the Games never being personal.

Kramer is also deeply distasteful for killing as he does not consider himself a murderer due to always giving his victims a chance to escape their fate. On a technicality, Kramer became too weak to even put test subjects in their tests and relied on his apprentices to do most manual labor for him such as abducting and implicating victims, so he rarely participated in even second-degree murder.

## Trivia

* There's a popular, humorous theory since 2014 that John Kramer is an older Kevin McCallister, the main protagonist of the *Home Alone* films.

* *Spiral* is so far the only film in the series where John doesn't appear, but he is mentioned several times and a photo of his autopsy from *Saw IV* is seen
* Jigsaw is mentioned in the 2018 horror film *Blood Fest*.
* He is considered one of the best villains in cinema, along with Joker, Darth Vader, Thanos, Anton Chigurh, Agent Smith, Magneto, Davy Jones and Freddy Krueger.