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Flashbacks from Saw IV
reveal the earliest 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 baby due to
the unwitting actions of a drug addict named Cecil, who fled the scene.
John grieved over the loss of his child and distanced himself from his
friends and his wife.
John and Jill eventually drifted
apart and divorced. After this turn of events, John
found himself trapped by his own complacency, until he was diagnosed
with inoperable cancer. Extremely bitter
over his squandered life, John began observing the lives of others and
became even more depressed as he saw those around him squandering the
gift of life that he had just been denied. After surviving a suicide
attempt where he drove his car off a cliff, John was "reborn", and
nurtured the idea that the only way for someone to change is for them
to change themselves. He designed a test for Cecil and decided to use
the rest of his existence to design more of these "tests" as a form of
"rehabilitation" that would change the world "one person at a time".
John was soon given the name "Jigsaw Killer" (or "Jigsaw"), so named
because he removed a puzzle-piece-shaped chunk of flesh from those who
do not escape his traps. John himself states that this name was given
to him by the media, and that the cut piece of flesh was meant to
represent that these victims were each missing something, what he
called the "survival instinct".
Few of Jigsaw's victims are able to
survive his brutal tests, which are often ironically symbolic
representations of the problems in the victim's life and require them
to undergo severe physical or psychological torture to escape.
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