Kicking off the hit franchise in 2004 withSaw,which was surprisingly tame in comparison to how gruesome the series eventually gets, the series instantly became known for its over-the-top and brutal traps. The series essentially created an entire sub-genre of horror, dubbed torture porn, and from 2004 to 2011, theSawmovies became annual Halloween season events at the theater.
Update August 23, 2025: Following the release ofSaw Xin theaters, this article has been updated with even more brutal kills from the franchise.
The franchise wanned in popularity and took a small hiatus. After two failed attempts to relaunch the series in 2017 and 2021, the latest entry in the franchiseSaw Xhit theaters in 2023 andreceived the best reviews in the franchise’s history. The series is back and better than ever, and audiences have been revisiting the original films with the over-the-top kills. So, let’s look at some of the best deaths in theSawfranchise.
13Peter Strahm’s Crushing Defeat -Saw V
In trueSawfashion, we are left with ashocking and unexpected twist, with horrifying visuals and the horrific sound effects of bones breaking and blood splattering. Like everySawmovie,Saw Vblasts the tense but, at the same time, exciting Zepp Nine theme, resulting in a death scene with a heck of a lot of shock value.
Better known as the glass coffin trap, this shocking scene sees Special Agent Peter Strahm as he comes face-to-face with a glass coffin, which he and the audience assume is a trap for him. It isn’t long before Hoffman tries to sneak behind him; Strahm sees this in the reflection of the box and grabs Jigsaw’s disciple before throwing him into the glass coffin. Strahm begins to boast of his victory, but the glass coffin begins to lower into the ground as we quickly learn that the glass coffin wasn’t actually the trap, and was instead the only way he would have survived. The walls begin to enclose, leading Strahm to climb and shoot his way out, before being horrifically crushed by the walls.
12Motor Cyclone -Jigsaw
Bloody deaths with organs flying everywhere is nothing new in theSawfranchise, but Mitch’s gory death in a special trap created by John Kramer himself is a treat from the movieJigsaw. It is revealed to us before Mitch’s death that he was the person who knowingly sold a faulty motorbike to Kramer’s nephew, which became the cause of his death.
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After that, Mitch was hanged upside down into a trap where sharp spinning blades powered by a motorcycle engine could tear him apart at any second. Mitch’s friend tries to help him and succeeds momentarily, but the faulty engine starts up again and immediately kills Mitch in a gruesome way, with his blood splattering everywhere.
11The Execution of Seth Baxter -Saw V
More commonly known as the pendulum trap, this death scene is filled with blood, guts, and horrific screams as convicted murderer Seth Baxter sees his demise in this inescapable trap. The Pendulum Trap was loosely inspired byEdgar Allan Poe’s 1842 short storyThe Pit and The Pendulum.This gruesome death scene results in one of the goriest traps in the entire franchise, especially in the unrated director’s cut.
Created by Mark Hoffman, as revenge for his sister’s murder, the scene sees Seth Baxter shackled to a table with a bladed pendulum swinging above him. To escape, he must crush his hands with the weights next to him as the pendulum swings closer and closer. Unlike many other victims ofJigsaw (Tobin Bell), Seth Baxter actually succeeds and crushes his hands, leading us to believe he has escaped the trap, but the pendulum doesn’t stop swinging and soon slices Seth in half, splattering his guts all over the walls.
10The Hot Wax Trap for Angie Garza -Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Probably one of the most painful traps in the franchise was used against police captain Angie Garza. Garza is kidnapped and placed into a trap by the Jigsaw copycat killer inSpiral: From the Book of Saw. The trap she is in is lethal either way because she has to sever her own spinal cord on the blade on a table if she wants to stop the downpour of boiling hot wax from dripping on her face and burning her skin.
The scene is really torturous and unfortunate. Captain Garza fails to slice through her own spinal cord and ultimately dies from her injuries, her team is only a few moments too late to save her life. The trap remains as one of the most painful ones in the franchise to this day.
9Into The Furnace 2.0 -Saw 3D
This scene takes inspiration from the sadistic medieval torture device, the brazen bull. Resulting in a truly haunting and devastating death scene, as Bobby is forced to watch his innocent girlfriend burn to a crisp as we hear her spine-chilling and torturous screams. As the final test of Bobby’s game, he is forced to save his girlfriend, who is strapped on her hands and knees on a metal podium.
Bobby is tasked with piercing his pectoral muscles with two meat hooks to lift himself up and connect two electrical wires together, all in under one minute. Bobby nearly completes the test with seconds left to spare, but at the last second, his pectoral muscles rip, causing him to fall and fail the final task. This leads to a giant metal pig-like mechanism forming around his girlfriend before heating up, creating a sort of furnace. Bobby is forced to watch as his girlfriend is burned alive without being able to save her, and Bobby must endure hearing her haunting screams and cries for help.
8A Sadistic Brain Surgery -Saw X
Saw Xis the most recent addition to theSawfranchise and also one of the most popular ones right now, as Tobin Bell returned as his beloved character of Jigsaw in this movie. The film did not disappoint and set right after the firstSawmovie, it brought back a lot of memories and some really gruesome traps, one of which is brain surgery.
The people who deceived John Kramer about his cancer treatment are all captured and tortured in different wicked ways. One of these people, a man named Mateo, is forced into a trap where he has to remove parts of his own brain tissue to retrieve the key to his freedom. The task, unfortunately, was not completed by him, and a heated mask falls onto his face and melts his face off, killing him. Despite having someone severing her leg with a Gigli saw, which reminded us of the first movie, the brain surgery trap was the most complicated and effective one in the movie.
7Speak No Evil -Saw 3D
While not the goriest death scene in the franchise, this scene is still, nonetheless, among the most terrifying and horrific deaths in the series. As opposed to the tortured screams and intense music that theSawfranchise is best known for, the scene is filled with an intense and haunting silence. Matched with the slow editing, this scene is among the most intense scenes in the franchise.
Bobby Dagen, the main protagonist ofSaw 3D, is introduced to his second test, where he is met with his publicist Nina, who is strapped down to a chair with four sharp, metal rods aiming at her throat, with a piece of string falling out of her mouth. Bobby is tasked with pulling the string out of Nina’s stomach, which is attached to a fishhook. While having your insides skewered by a fishhook is bad enough, the real catch is that if Nina makes any noise, the metal rods will come closer and closer to her throat before eventually piercing her and killing her. Understandably, Nina couldn’t stay silent, resulting in her death.
6The Bathroom -Saw
The bathroom scene from the firstSawmovie is the reason behind the movie and the franchise’s name. The trap in itself is actually really simple, but it is effectiveness and mind-bending nature are what make it so cruel. Oncologist Dr. Lawrence Gordon and a photographer named Adam wake up in a filthy bathroom where their legs have been chained to strong pipes and a dead body with a gun lies in the middle of the bathroom between them. Their job seems easy: to cut through the chains with the saws to escape. But when the saw breaks in an attempt to do so, they realize that the weapons were not meant for their chains but for their legs instead.
Add to that the element of terror when Gordon sees his family is being held hostage and can be killed at any minute, and you have one of the most sadistic traps of all time. Similar traps have made appearances throughout theSawfranchise, but the first-ever instance still remains the most iconic, thanks to the impeccable acting of all the characters.
5The Angel of Death -Saw III
This scene helms one of the most diabolical andvicious traps of the franchise. The blood and gore in the scene had to be censored in the theatrical cut. As always with theSawmovies, the scene is filled with fast editing and intense music, adding a layer of tension to the already horrifically tense and gruesome death scene.
Known as the angel trap, we see Detective Alison Kerry as she is hanging from the ceiling with a harness and contraption that is attached to her ribs. Alison must stick her hand into a jar of acid, to grab the key that lies flat at the bottom of the jar, to release her from the contraption. She manages to retrieve the key on her second attempt. With the flesh of her hand burnt off, she tries to unlock the harness, but she soon discovers that the key to the lock doesn’t fit, and the trap was made to be inescapable. The scene ends on a devilishly great shot, as the contraption pulls Allison’s ribs apart, showing us some gory imagery of her ribs looking like wings, hence the name: the angel trap.
4A Barbaric Tongue Twister -Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Known popularly as ‘cat Got Your Tongue?’ this extremely sadistic trap appeared basically in the opening scene of the movieSpiraland sent a chill down everyone’s smile. A police officer is trapped by his tongue while standing on a very flimsy tool in an active train tunnel. An eerie voice gives him very simple instructions: either he has to jump and rip out his own tongue in the process to save his life, or he dies after the onslaught train collides with him.
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The man dies, plain and simple, because he could not rip out his tongue in time. But even though it’s not one of the most gory deaths of the series, it is truly a sadistic one because of how effective it is. Even if the officer had lived, he would have to live his entire life without a tongue, which would cause him great pain. In the end, he did not survive, but in his last moments, he was truly helpless even when he could see his impending doom running towards him face first.
