Saw is an American horror media franchise created by Australian filmmakers James Wan and Leigh Whannell, which began with the eponymous 2004 film and quickly became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon.

After numerous unsuccessful attempts to receive funding in their home country of Australia, Wan and Whannell traveled to the United States, after several producers expressed interest in the project.

Both Burg and Koules stated that the mid-credits scene of Saw X is intended to set up a future film which will again include the character Mark Hoffman.

[12] Another mockumentary short film, The Scott Tibbs Documentary, was released in 2006 as part of the Saw II: Unrated Special Edition DVD-release.

[13] Saw: Rebirth is originally a comic book released by IDW in 2005 and tells the story of the events that spurred the transformation of John Kramer into Jigsaw.

Flashbacks from Saw IV reveal the roots of the series, presenting John Kramer as a successful civil engineer and devoted husband to his wife Jill Tuck, who opened a rehab clinic for drug addicts.

Jill lost her unborn baby, Gideon, due to the unwitting actions of a drug addict named Cecil, who fled the scene.

Saw VI later showed that another drug addict, Amanda Young, had been with Cecil on the night that he unwittingly caused Gideon's death, unbeknownst to John or Jill.

John stated that this name was given to him by the media, and that the cut piece of flesh represented that the victims were missing what he called the "survival instinct".

The only survivor is Logan Nelson, the man who accidentally mislabeled John's x-rays, causing his cancer to go undiagnosed until it was too late.

In Saw, John chains the man who diagnosed his cancer, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, in a dilapidated industrial washroom with Adam Stanheight, a photographer who has been tailing the doctor, believing he is cheating on his wife.

It is later seen in Saw 3D that Lawrence found a steaming hot pipe and cauterized his wound, stopping the bleeding and ultimately surviving the trap.

Flashbacks from Saw III show that Amanda kidnapped Adam and later returned to suffocate him as an act of "mercy killing".

However, when the operation is proven to be a scam, John, with the help of Amanda and Hoffman, kidnaps those responsible and subjects them to his traps, ultimately ending with the death of all but Dr. Cecilia Pederson.

Eric is knocked unconscious by a masked figure and wakes up imprisoned in the bathroom from Saw, which is part of the house's foundation.

A flashback from Saw IV shows Hoffman later dragging Eric to a prison cell, keeping him alive for a future game.

A kidnapped doctor is forced to keep John alive while another test is performed on Jeff Denlon, a man obsessed with vengeance against the drunk driver who killed his son.

Saw IV, meanwhile, revolves around tests meant for Officer Daniel Rigg, which are overseen by Hoffman, who masquerades as a participant in the game.

Finding irregularities in previous murder scenes, Perez and Erickson discover Hoffman's identity, but he kills them before they can go public with it.

Hoffman travels back to the site of Easton's tests, where Jill attacks him to obey John's final request.

The present-day portion of Jigsaw takes place roughly ten years after John's death in Saw III.

Spiral takes place an unknown amount of time after John's death, as another Jigsaw copycat creates their own games to punish corrupt police officers and detectives.

According to James Wan, the original puppet's face for Saw involved clay, papier-mâché, and black ping-pong balls with the irises painted in for the eyes, but in later films more sophisticated construction included waterjet-cut foam for the body and remote-controlled animatronics.

)[18][19] As the series continued, the piece was reused in every film as a leitmotif, often being renamed and remixed to accommodate the changing situations and characters.

The most potentially dangerous item was a "water box" used in Saw V, in which one of the actors (Scott Patterson, as Peter Strahm) had to keep his head submerged as long as possible.

[26][31] In Saw V's opening weekend it placed second, being beat by High School Musical 3: Senior Year, and made $30.1 million.

[37] In the United States and Canada, Jigsaw was released alongside Thank You for Your Service and Suburbicon, and is projected to gross around $20 million from 2,941 theaters in its opening weekend.

[48] The box office numbers, unadjusted for inflation are as follows: On IGN's list of the top twenty-five film franchises of all time, the Saw series ranked as 25th.

[87] David Tapp and Amanda Young were released as part of the downloadable Saw Chapter for the video game Dead by Daylight.

[89][90][91][92] In October 2021, Twisted Productions co-founders Burg and Koules confirmed a third Saw video game was in development for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.