Mark Hoffman

## Biography

### Early Life

Mark Hoffman was a young man and the loving brother of Angelina Acomb, who was his only family and therefore the person he cared about most. When he joined the Metropolitan Police Department, he did everything in his power to serve justice and over the years acquired a good and respected reputation. He acted loyal towards his colleagues and was even willing to break the law if he felt that it was necessary to protect his department.

On one of these occasions, he was called to an elementary school after a case of suspected child abuse had been reported to them. When he arrived at the school along with his colleague, Officer Daniel Rigg, he decided that the latter should talk to Jane, the girl affected by the abuse, while he himself went to the principal's office where he talked to Morgan, Jane's mother, and Rex, her father who was the key suspect in the case. After their discussion, Hoffman left the office with Morgan, when Rigg told him not to trust Rex, as it was obvious to him that Jane didn't want to talk to them out of fear of her violent father. However, as Hoffman had no evidence against him, there was nothing he could do. Therefore, he told Jane to go back to her class. Rex, who felt safe now, clapped Rigg on the shoulder and sarcastically commented that "sometimes these kids just get out of control." This, however, provoked Rigg even further to the point that he attacked Rex and struck him in the face, breaking his nose and cheekbone in the process. Hoffman then had to pull him back and angrily told him to leave immediately.

Following the incident, Rex tried to sue Rigg for the assault with the assistance of his lawyer, Art Blank. Additionally, the Internal Affairs Division started to investigate the case. Due to the severe accusations, Art Blank went to the police station, where he talked to Rigg and Hoffman and tried to convince the latter to suspend Rigg from office. Hoffman, however, made an incorrect statutory declaration in order to protect his colleague. This eventually caused the charge to be dismissed, and Rigg's career wasn't further damaged or endangered by this incident.

### Angelina's Death

Hoffman continued to build his reputation as a respected detective of the homicide department and was on active service for 15 years already when his whole life changed drastically. One night, his sister, Angelina, was brutally murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Seth Baxter, during a domestic dispute. When one of her colleagues found her and informed the police, Hoffman learned of her death shortly afterward and went to her apartment. When he arrived, he yelled at his colleagues who initially wanted to prevent him from entering the apartment. Upon seeing the dead body of his sister, he suffered a breakdown and started to cry.

### Mental Breakdown

Seth Baxter, who had tried to flee, was found and apprehended two days later. For the murder of Angelina, he was sentenced to life in prison. Following his arrest, Hoffman organized Angelina's funeral. However, he wasn't able to get over the loss and developed a serious drinking problem. Additionally, his severe depression caused him to become mentally unstable to the point where he started to lose his empathy and began to show traits of a sociopath.

On one occasion, he went to the abandoned Crossroads Manufactory, which was a known shelter for addicts and homeless people, due to an emergency call. At approximately the same time, another young patrol cop, Matt Gibson, arrived at the manufactory as well. While Gibson entered the run-down building with his gun at the ready, he was suddenly attacked and knocked down with a bottle from behind by a man. Gibson tried to fight the man off but had to surrender when the man grabbed his weapon and held him at gunpoint. However, before the man could shoot him, Mark Hoffman suddenly appeared behind him and told him to drop the weapon. Even though the unknown attacker obeyed immediately, Hoffman shot him in the back three times, killing him in the process. After that, he gave Gibson, who was shocked by the events, a leg-up and advised him that next time, he should shoot first. Before departing, he told Gibson that he owed him.

Despite the fact that Hoffman had saved his life, Gibson reported Hoffman to the Department for Internal Affairs. However, instead of being punished for the murder, Hoffman was promoted while Gibson was sidelined. Sometime later, he joined the IA Department himself and managed to convict three of Hoffman's friends. Angered by this, Hoffman swore revenge on him.

### The Jigsaw Case

Five years after his sister's death, Hoffman eventually got involved in the case of a serial killer who was nicknamed Jigsaw, as he used to cut a jigsaw piece from the skin of his dead victims. Jigsaw used to put them into deadly traps and forced them to mutilate themselves in order to survive. Hoffman investigated the case as part of a serial killer task force.

### The Pendulum Murder

Shortly afterward, Hoffman's life took another unexpected turn when Seth Baxter was acquitted on a technicality and had to be released from prison despite his life sentence. This filled Hoffman with frustration and anger and eventually, he decided to take revenge on the murderer of his sister. In order not to become a suspect on his own, Hoffman planned to make the murder look like another crime of Jigsaw. Therefore, he designed a deadly trap, but unlike Jigsaw, he didn't intend to give Seth any chance to survive. Additionally, he recorded a video of a mechanical ventriloquist puppet, which Jigsaw himself used to communicate with his victims, and distorted his voice beyond recognition.

The month after Seth's release from prison, Hoffman finally set up his trap in a big abandoned hall. After that, he abducted Seth and strapped his unconscious body to a metal table placed underneath a giant blade in the shape of a pendulum. Then, he went to the next room and watched Seth through a peephole in the door window. Shortly afterward, Seth woke up and immediately started to panic. Moments later, a TV turned on in front of him, showing the puppet which gave him his instructions. In order to free himself from his trap, he had to insert his hands in two vise-like contraptions next to him. Then, he had to push the buttons on the other side of the vises, which would cause them to crush his hands. If he refused to do so, the pendulum above him would cut him in half after 60 seconds. When the TV turned off, the pendulum started to swing back and forth. While initially hesitating, Seth ultimately decided to push the buttons as the blade further approached him throughout the game. However, moments after crushing his hands, the blade was lowered once more and started to cut his stomach, tossing his entrails all over the room. Eventually, Seth saw Hoffman's shadow behind the door window. Close to death, he muttered that he did what he had been supposed to do, only seconds before the pendulum was lowered one last time and sliced him in half. After witnessing his death, Hoffman averted his eyes, horrified by what he had done. Moments later, he finally left his hiding spot and cut a jigsaw piece from Seth's skin and took it with him as he left the building.

### Becoming Jigsaw's Apprentice

Not much later, Hoffman sat in his office at the police station when one of his colleagues, Fisk, told him that another possible victim of Jigsaw had been found and asked him if he wanted to take a look at it. Hoffman agreed and accompanied Fisk to the crime scene. Fisk told him that the victim was a convicted murderer who had been released from prison last month. Upon seeing the victim, Hoffman identified him as Seth Baxter, the ex-boyfriend of his sister. Fisk, who knew the story about the murder of Angelina, was surprised by this but stated that Seth had become what he deserved.

Due to Hoffman being potentially biased, the further investigation on Seth's death, which soon became known to the public as the "Pendulum Murder", was taken over by Detective Allison Kerry. However, Hoffman still asked Fisk to keep him informed, to which the latter agreed. Moments later, Hoffman returned to his office and was surprised when he found an envelope with his name lying on his desk. The envelope only contained a letter with one single sentence written on it: "I know who you are." Worried by this, he went home. Due to the letter, he was excessively nervous and almost even shot the dog of one of his neighbors. Eventually, he entered the elevator, where only one other man was waiting. On their way up, he looked at the elevator buttons and noticed that only his own floor was selected. At this moment, he realized that the other man seemed to hold something in his hand and asked him what floor he was going to while slowly reaching for his gun. However, before he could react, the man suddenly attacked him and injected him with an anesthetic, causing him to pass out.

When he woke up again in a workshop, he found himself strapped to a chair with a shotgun aiming at his head and saw his abductor, John Kramer, standing before him. John showed him a newspaper article about the Pendulum Murder, labeling it as a distasteful act of imitation and thereby revealing himself to be the actual Jigsaw Killer. Hoffman tried to free himself but stopped when John placed a mirror in front of him, showing him that his arm restraints were connected to the shotgun's trigger by a wire. They engaged in a discussion, during which John confronted him with Angelina's death, his drinking problem and his revenge on Seth. Hoffman claimed that Seth hadn't deserved a chance to survive, which angered John as he saw killing as something vicious and distasteful, claiming that he himself gave all of his victims a chance. When he put his finger on the trigger, Hoffman prepared to die. However, when John pulled the trigger, he realized that the shotgun wasn't loaded. Moments later, John ultimately freed him from his restraints and offered him a choice: Hoffman could either become his apprentice and help him set up his future games or John would publish the evidence against him and send it to the police. Hoffman said that he could also kill him as no one would believe John more than him, however, he remained calm and asked him if he really wanted to ruin his own life for the legal system that had released Seth Baxter from prison. After a short argument, Hoffman finally agreed to John's offer.

The first victim to be tested by them was Paul Leahy, a man who had unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide by slitting his wrists one month prior to his game and who was, in fact, a patient at the Homeward Bound Clinic, a recovery clinic for drug addicts run by John's ex-wife, Jill Tuck. When John and Hoffman followed him, they found him in his car, about to attempt suicide once more. However, he was interrupted when they attacked him with their faces covered with sinister pig masks. Paul tried to fight them off but was ultimately sedated by John. After that, they took Paul to the basement where he had to play his game, while his abductors were hiding next door and witnessed his game through a peephole. During the game, Hoffman stated to be surprised to feel remorse, to which John responded that he had to abandon all emotions during their work. While the game was going on, Hoffman warned John about Detective David Tapp, another cop who was after him. John gave Hoffman a penlight he had taken from his oncologist, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, and told him to lead his colleagues on the doctor's trail. When Paul died from blood loss in his trap, they left their hideout and cut a jigsaw piece from his skin.

### The Nerve Gas House

Along with Amanda, John and Hoffman continued their games for over a year. At this point, John targeted Eric Matthews, a corrupt detective who had innocently framed and arrested numerous people throughout his career, including Amanda. Therefore they set up a big game which was going to be directly connected to Eric's test. This game focused on seven people. The first one was Daniel Matthews, Eric's son who had become estranged from him after he had cheated on Daniel's mother with his former partner, Detective Kerry. The other persons tested throughout the game were Jonas Singer, his manager Gus Colyard, the prostitute Addison Corday, the drug dealer Xavier Chavez, Laura Hunter, and Obi Tate. All of them had been arrested by Eric as well for crimes they weren't responsible for. Additionally, Amanda participated in the game as well and played as another victim primarily to be able to observe the other prisoners' progress. In order to gain as many information about the test subjects as possible, Detective Hoffman provided John with their old investigation files.

To accelerate their proceedings, John hired Obi Tate to help him with the abduction of Daniel Matthews and the other five people while he prepared the traps for each one of them and placed numerous items and weapons all around an abandoned, run-down residential house. When all of them were abducted and brought to the Nerve Gas House, Hoffman abducted Obi as well and took him to the same location, making him the last test subject of the game. All of them were unconscious and lay on the floor of a room with a large safe, which stood on a hidden trapdoor leading to an underground tunnel network. John placed a tape recorder containing the instructions for the game behind a wall and helped Hoffman to set up and adjust a booby trap connected to the lock of the room's only door. Having finished all of their preparations, John and Hoffman left the room, locked the door and started to pass a deadly nerve agent into the room.

### FBI Assistance

Four days later, Hoffman accompanied a SWAT team led by Lieutenant Rigg and Officer Lamanna to the location of Kerry's death. They entered the area and found a chain-link door. When they discovered a device connected to the door, Hoffman ordered them to send in a tactical robot before entering. Rigg ordered Officer Pete Baker to cut a hole in the door and send the robot in. The robot slowly made its way through the lower floor and reached a corpse hanging from the ceiling. When the camera of the robot eventually captured the person's face, Rigg realized it was Kerry. Horrified by the discovery, Rigg broke through the door and ran to her, thinking he could still save her. However, when he finally reached her, he realized that she had been killed by one of Jigsaw's traps. Seconds later, the remaining SWAT officers entered the lower floor of the basement and called for the forensics, who arrived shortly afterwards.

After securing the crime scene, a depressed Rigg sat down and observed the work of the forensic team. He asked his partner, Officer Lamanna, to cut down Kerry's mutilated corpse. Lamanna replied that he couldn't do this, but Rigg repeated his plea, as he wanted to bestow at least some respect to her. He then left Lamanna alone when Hoffman approached him. Initially angry at him, Hoffman reminded Rigg that he should know not to go through an unsecured door, but calmed down when Rigg told him that he thought he could have saved Kerry. Depressed by the discovery of their partner, they talked about their work and how they could still go on. Hoffman then noticed a message written on the wall which said "Cherish your life." Rigg asked him how they could if this was their life, to which Hoffman merely responded that they chose it and told Rigg to go home.

He was then informed by one of his colleagues, that two FBI agents wanted to talk to him. Moments later, he made acquaintance with Special Agent Peter Strahm and Special Agent Lindsey Perez. Shortly before her death, Kerry, who was their contact person in the police department, had supposedly sent them a key and a message which merely said: "Open the door and you will find me." When they asked him about these things, Hoffman pretended to have no useful information for them. After that, he led the agents to the corpse of Detective Kerry. Upon doing so, Detective Fisk, who had arrived at the crime scene as well, informed him about the bullet shell which one of the police photographers had found at the corpse. Therefore, Hoffman ordered him to send it to the lab so it could be examined for fingerprints. When Agent Perez found the open lock of the trap she quickly came to the conclusion that this wasn't a Jigsaw trap. However when Hoffman said it was probably a trap by Amanda Young, Agent Strahm negated this as Kerry weighed approximately 130 pounds while Amanda Young weighed only 107 pounds according to her arrest report and therefore couldn't have placed Kerry in the trap on her own, leading to the conclusion that a third yet unknown person assisted her and John Kramer.

Following the discovery of Kerry, Rigg returned to the police station and watched some of the old interrogation recordings of Jill Tuck, as he was sure that she knew something about him and therefore maybe also about the whereabouts of Eric. Shortly afterwards, Hoffman and the agents entered the room. Rigg tried to convince Hoffman to let him continue his work, but Hoffman ordered him to go home once more and take some time off, stating that it was unlikely to find Eric alive after he had been missing for six months. Albeit Rigg initially refused to do so, he ultimately gave in and left the office. When the agents asked him what his problem was, Hoffman replied that everyone connected to Rigg seemed to die, which was the reason for his obsession with finding Eric.

### Final Preparations

After sending Rigg home, Hoffman went to the abandoned Gideon Meatpacking Plant, which was the first building designed by John during his career as a civil engineer and now served as his and Amanda's hideout. At this point, John was bedridden and close to death due to his cancer and therefore had spent the last weeks to plan his final games. One of these games focused on Jeff Denlon, a man who had lost his 8-year-old son, Dylan, during a car accident three years earlier. Since then, Jeff was obsessed with his desire of taking revenge and therefore neglected his family. Therefore, John had planned a series of tests for him in order to help him to overcome his obsession. During one of these tests, he should encounter Timothy Young, the drunk driver and killer of his son, so he could decide whether to forgive him or let him die. Therefore, Hoffman set up a vicious trap, which was simply called "The Rack" by John, at the Gideon Plant. This trap would slowly twist Timothy's limbs and finally his head unless Jeff would save him. After setting up the trap, Hoffman abducted Timothy, placed his unconscious body in a wheelbarrow and took him to the room where his trap was located.

Moments later, Amanda entered the room along with John, who sat in a wheelchair. When John saw that Hoffman switched the trap's gear ratio, he told him that he'd have to change the gear grease to match the increased friction and berated him for making these changes without asking him first, stating that he would do so next time. When Hoffman asked him how many next times there were going to be, John merely answered that their work would go on as long as necessary. Hoffman then recklessly dumped Timothy out of the wheelbarrow and was therefore berated by John for his brutal behavior, who reminded him that Timothy was still a human being after all. When he asked Hoffman if he liked this kind of brutality, Hoffman responded that John wanted to see Timothy suffer just as much as he did. This resulted in a short argument between Hoffman and Amanda who asked him when he was going to get tested on his own. Hoffman responded that this was unnecessary as he claimed he had always appreciated his life unlike her and showed her the scars she had inflicted on herself. Amanda mocked him, telling him he should get used to her as he wouldn't get rid of her anymore to which he responded that she shouldn't be so sure about it. When John interrupted them by saying it was time to go on, Amanda took him to his room and left Hoffman alone. As he was finally done with his work on the trap, he took Timothy's sweater off of him, placed him in the trap and hung a tape recorder, which contained the instructions for Jeff, around his neck. Then, he set up a long glass box which contained a shotgun, which aimed at whoever stood in front of it and connected the key to Timothy's trap to a mechanism which would pull the shotgun's trigger once the key was removed.

### Rigg's Final Test

At some point, however, Art started to become nervous when he saw the mechanism above Eric's head. This mechanism was connected to two large ice blocks attached to mechanical arms suspended from the ceiling. When he saw the chain which connected the mechanism with the door of the room, Art realized that the ice blocks would swing down and therefore crush Eric's head if the door was opened before a 90-minute timer went off. Therefore they had to prevent Rigg, who was on his way to the plant already, from entering the room before the clock expired.

As the timer was ticking down, Art, Hoffman, and Eric started to panic. Eric yelled at Art and demanded him to tell them who was coming. However, Art ignored them and just kept his eye on the surveillance monitors. When he took off his jacket he revealed one of Jigsaw's deadly contraptions, which was attached to his back and would crush his spine if he didn't follow Jigsaw's rules. Furthermore, he took out a button and told the detectives that it would free them once the time went off.

Only minutes later, Rigg finally arrived at the Gideon Meatpacking Plant and reached the room where his friends were trapped. Eric yelled at him not to open the door. However, Rigg ignored him and burst into the room. Out of desperation, Eric shot him in his chest but couldn't prevent him from entering. When Rigg bursted through the door with only one second left, Eric's trap was activated. Therefore the large ice blocks swung down and crushed his skull, causing his lifeless and mutilated body to fall off the ice. Following his friend and partner's death, Rigg angrily yelled at Art whom he believed to be Jigsaw's accomplice. Art tried to tell him that he was tested by Jigsaw and grabbed in his bag, causing Rigg, who thought that Art was grabbing a weapon, to shoot him in the head. However it turned out that it was no weapon but an audio tape. Upon listening to the recording, Rigg finally realized that his test wasn't to save Eric but to let him save himself.
When the tape ended, Hoffman eventually freed himself from his restraints and approached Rigg from behind. As Rigg noticed him, he finally realized that Hoffman was the secret accomplice and apprentice of Jigsaw. However, due to his gunshot wound, Rigg collapsed to the floor. As the game had come to an end, Hoffman used the button given to Art Blank to turn off the surveillance monitors and prepared to leave. He turned around one last time and ended Rigg's game with the words "Game Over" before he disappeared and left Rigg for dead.

### Peter Strahm's Test

After leaving Rigg behind, Hoffman returned to John's bedroom where he found Agent Strahm as well as the corpses of John, Amanda, Jeff and Lynn Denlon. Before Strahm could notice him, he closed and locked the door and turned off the lights inside the room. Then he went to the room located behind the hidden door. Shortly afterwards, Strahm found the door as well. A tape left for him told him to stay in the room until the reinforcements arrived. Strahm however ignored the warning and entered the hallway behind the door. Ultimately, he reached the room where Hoffman was waiting for him. Upon entering, he was attacked by a disguised Hoffman who injected him with an anesthetic. Moments later, Strahm passed out. Afterward, Hoffman put him in another trap in the same room, which was designed to kill him by drowning him without giving him any chance to survive. Hoffman then took everything that Strahm had in his pockets and placed it on a barrel before him. However, upon doing so, he forgot to remove a single pen from his pockets. Not noticing his mistake, Hoffman left the room, expecting Strahm to die shortly afterwards.

### Becoming a Hero

After putting Strahm in his trap, Hoffman got rid of his disguise and went to the cell where Corbett Denlon was still locked up. Pretending to be her savior, he took the little girl with him. When they finally reached the exit and left the building, they were already expected by the police who had been called to the plant by Strahm. While the paramedics took care of Corbett, Hoffman was greeted by Detective Fisk who asked him about the whereabouts of Daniel Rigg. Hoffman told him that Rigg had died while trying to help and also claimed that there were no other survivors. Therefore, he was unpleasantly surprised when another team of paramedics suddenly came out of the building with Strahm, who lay on a gurney, severely injured but nonetheless alive after he had performed a tracheotomy on himself by using his pen in order to survive his trap. Following the events at the meatpacking plant and the death of Jigsaw at the hands of Jeff Denlon, Hoffman was labeled as a hero by the press for his rescue of Corbett.

### Message from the Grave

After the Gideon Plant had been secured, all the dead victims, as well as the corpses of John and Amanda, were taken to the morgue, where Dr. Adam Heffner performed the autopsy on every single one of them. Upon the abduction of John Kramer, he found a wax-coated audiotape in his stomach and therefore ordered his colleague to call for the homicide division. Shortly afterward, Hoffman arrived at the morgue and ordered the pathologists to cut the tape from the wax. After doing so, they gave the tape to Hoffman. The recording contained a message for him, which warned him that the games had just begun and that he wouldn't get away untested.

### Promotion

Shortly afterward, the Chief of Police gave a speech to the police and the press during a memorial ceremony for Hoffman as well as his deceased colleagues and thereby proudly announced that the Jigsaw killings had come to an end. Additionally, he promoted Hoffman to the rank of a Detective Lieutenant and thereby handed him an honor plaque for his efforts in the case. Hoffman gave thanks to him for this honor and also gave a speech to the press as well, claiming that he and his colleagues had done their best to serve true justice.

### Identity Revealed

The group reached the lab soon afterward. When they came in, FBI technician Sachi was still working on the tape. As they had to wait some more time, Hoffman took a cup of coffee from the machine in the room. Noticing Hoffman's increasing nervousness, Perez tried to put him under pressure and began to discuss Strahm's motivation for helping Jigsaw and stated that she had never suspected him to be mentally unstable during the five years she had worked with him. Erickson then talked about the possibility that Strahm had killed Seth Baxter to throw suspicion on Hoffman. However there was still some detail that didn't fit the picture and therefore he finally revealed to Hoffman, that Strahm, judging by the analysis of his fingerprints, must have already been dead by the time he left his prints at the crime scene of Simone and Eddie's game. Seconds later, Sachi restored the tape, finally revealing the voice to be that of Mark Hoffman. However, before the agents could react, Hoffman quickly pulled out a knife from his pocket, slashed Erickson's jugular vein and threw the hot coffee in Perez' face. Then, he cut off the power and grabbed Sachi, who was shot in the back three times by Agent Perez as Hoffman used her as a human shield. Upon doing so, Hoffman was able to approach Perez and stabbed her multiple times in the abdomen with his knife. He then asked her who else knew about him, to which she responded with her dying breath that everyone knew about him. Calling it a lie, Hoffman stabbed her one final time, killing her in the process.

Following the massacre, Hoffman threw away his knife and ran out of the lab. Seconds later, he returned with the severed hand of Strahm, which he had kept in a cooling box in his car trunk, and a gas canister. He placed Strahm's fingerprints all around the room and also on Perez' gun as well as the screwdriver which he had used to cut off the power. Afterwards, he poured the gasoline all over the floor, the corpses and the technical instruments. When he approached Erickson, he briefly hesitated and smiled when he saw that the latter was still alive, before he poured the fuel over him as well. Then, Hoffman set the lab on fire before finally fleeing the scene.

### Killing Spree

As Dr. Adam Heffner opened the body bag, Hoffman caught him by surprise and stabbed him in the throat with a knife. After killing him, Hoffman left the bag and noticed that another coroner was about to enter the room. When he opened the door, Hoffman attacked and murdered him, before he left the morgue and went to the detention cells located in the basement. On his way, he came across an officer who wanted to enter the evidence room and killed him. After that, he locked the exit door and went on. Shortly afterwards, he reached a big office room where Officer Palmer tried to call Gibson, not knowing that he had been killed by the sentry gun at the junkyard. When Hoffman approached and grabbed her from behind, she panicked and they engaged in a brief struggle until Hoffman broke her neck. When she was dead, he went to the heavy metal door leading to the cells and looked through the eyehole. Behind the door was another guard who observed Jill through a one-way-mirror. Therefore, Hoffman dragged Palmer's corpse to the door, placed her body in front of the eye hole, and knocked on the door to attract the guard. When he saw Palmer through the eye hole, thinking she was still alive, he opened the door. Hoffman embraced his chance and threw the corpse away. When the guard unlocked the door, Hoffman dragged him back into the room and stabbed his throat. Afterward, he took the dead officer's gun. Now only Officer Rogers stood between him and Jill. As he couldn't see Hoffman through the mirror, the latter aimed at him unnoticed and fatally shot him in the eye.

When she saw him, Jill immediately panicked and backed away from him. Hoffman then took the key to her cell's door from Rogers' corpse, entered the room and calmly approached Jill. He violently grabbed her hair and forced her to look at his scar, asking her how he looked. Unnoticed by him, Jill had grabbed a nail file and stabbed it in his neck, enabling her to run away. Hoffman was briefly paralyzed, but pulled the file out shortly afterwards and took up his pursuit of Jill. As Hoffman had locked the exit doors, she was forced to go into hiding in the evidence room. Moments later, Hoffman entered the room and turned on the light. After searching the room, he initially thought that she was hiding elsewhere. However, as he was about to leave the room again, he heard a noise. Upon following it, he eventually found Jill who crouched behind a filing cabinet. As she wanted to flee again, he violently kicked her in the stomach and dragged her away. He placed a chair, the same to which she had strapped him at the zoo, in the middle of the room, when he saw that Jill was trying to stand up, he brutally smashed her head on a table and then strapped her arms to the chair. Then, he took the original bear trap formerly used on Amanda Young from one of the shelves and put it on Jill's head. When she woke up, Hoffman started the timer, causing Jill to panic immediately. However as she had no chance to escape, the timer eventually went off, which caused the trap to burst open and rip her jaws apart in front of Hoffman, who left the room and closed the door with the words "Game Over."

### Presumed Death

Following his attack on the police station and his successful revenge on Jill, Hoffman quickly returned to his hideout in the hangar. When he arrived, the news channels already reported the attack on the police station Jill's death. Furthermore, they instructed the public that the city was shut down and appealed to them to contact the police if they had any information leading to Mark Hoffman. Therefore, he knew that he had to prepare his flight quickly. He packed a duffel with a gun and a bunch of money. After that, he turned on some gas tanks kept in the hangar, poured a trail of gasoline on the floor leading from the tanks, and set the gasoline on fire, destroying all the evidence and the building in an explosion.

As Hoffman leaves behind the burning hangar, he was suddenly attacked by two pig-masked figures. As they grabbed him and held him up, a third masked man approached and injected him with an anesthetic, causing him to collapse. When he lay on the ground, the man revealed himself to be Dr. Lawrence Gordon, John's oncologist who had secretly become John's third apprentice after surviving one of his games on his own. Shocked by this reveal, Hoffman realized that it was Gordon who had written the second stalker letter, which he had assumed to be from Peter Strahm. Moments later, he passed out from the anesthetic.

While he was unconscious, the men took him to the dilapidated bathroom underneath the Nerve Gas House, where Gordon had overcome his test long ago, and chained him by the ankle to the pipe right next to the decomposed corpses of Adam Stanheight and Zep Hindle. When he woke up he immediately realized the situation he was in and tried to grab a hacksaw lying on the floor to free himself from his shackle. Unfortunately for him, Gordon, who was also walking toward it, pulled it away from him with his cane. Gordon then picked up the saw and threw it out of the room, preventing Hoffman from escaping the way he did. Ignoring Hoffman's angry and desperate yells, Gordon turned off the light and closed the door, leaving Hoffman to die with the words "Game Over."

## Personality

In his early life, Mark Hoffman was a honorable and responsible police officer, eager to bring justice to both, criminals and their victims. Therefore, he was also willing to break the law for the sake of protecting others if he felt that they were treated unfairly otherwise. He was also a loving brother, sharing a deep and emotional relationship with his sister, Angelina, who was his only family. Therefore, her death had a big impact on Hoffman's life and personality.

After Angelina was killed by Seth Baxter, Hoffman suffered a mental breakdown, resulting in severe depression as well as a drinking problem. As his mental state worsened over time, he began to show relatively obvious signs of sociopathy to the point that he even used lethal violence against suspects and criminals. Hoffman's personality became monotonous and apathetic to the suffering of others. He appeared to harden himself to the outside world, burying himself in his work and simply going through the motions rather than passionately fighting for others who had been wronged like he once had. Hoffman rarely talked to people about matters that were not related to work. Despite this, Hoffman still acted as a hard-working officer and lost nothing of his colleagues' respect for him.

Hoffman was also a very vengeful person, willing to go to great lengths in order to get his revenge, going as far as to build an elaborate mechanical trap for Seth Baxter and making it inescapable, framing Jigsaw for this. He went as far as to make his voice sound like the one of Jigsaw. In the case of Jill Tuck, he even killed numerous of his former colleagues without any hesitation. When taking revenge on someone, Hoffman used to do so by using brutal, symbolic, vicious and painful methods to kill the person or persons. His personality took another drastic turn when he was recruited by John Kramer to help him with his work. While Hoffman seemingly had no problem with killing criminals, he initially felt remorse for putting innocent people in John's gruesome traps. However, he eventually got used to this kind of work and at some point even began to take pleasure in torturing and killing others. After John's death, when he did not need to continue for fear of being exposed for what he did to Seth Baxter, Hoffman decided to continue it simply because he enjoyed it.

It should be noted that Hoffman was highly intelligent and was, therefore, able to plan and execute extremely complex operations. Hoffman was capable of designing his own mechanical traps and talking in riddles to police and test subjects. Despite this, Hoffman was capable of being confused and surprised. As shown when Lawrence Gordon was revealed to have been an accomplice to John ever since surviving his test and had been ordered to punish Hoffman if he took things too far. This shows that he did not think about the possibility of John having a plan to deal with him in the same way he did Amanda if he strayed from John's philosophy.