FAQ

With Special Agent Peter Strahm (Scott Patterson) dead, Detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) thinks he can carry out John Karmer/Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) final tests, targeting workers at a health insurance company, without fear of getting exposed. However, the FBI draws closer to the overconfident Hoffman, who seems to have been unable to completely cover his tracks. Also, the contents of the box that Jill (Betsy Russell) has in her possession and the message in the letter to Amanda (Shawnee Smith) are finally revealed.

Saw VI is the sixth film in the Saw series, all of which stem from a screenplay by Australian screenwriters Leigh Whannell and James Wan. Saw VI was co-written by screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan.

Detective Mark Hoffman plants Agent Peter Strahm's cellphone in the control room to be found by Erickson (Mark Rolston), implicating Strahm as the Jigsaw accomplice, so Erickson puts out an APB on Agent Strahm. Meanwhile, Agent Strahm listens to a tape from Hoffman telling him that, if he has learned to trust Hoffman, he will enter the box full of broken glass. When Detective Hoffman enters the room, Agent Strahm is hiding behind the door and, during the insuing fight Strahm knocks Hoffman into the box filled with broken glass. To Strahm's horror, Hoffman's box is then lowered safely into the floor, and the walls start to close in on Agent Strahm. It is revealed that if he had trusted Hoffman and climbed into the box, he would have survived. But he didn't, and will now die. He climbs to the top of the room, hoping to escape the walls but is crushed to death.

Immediately. The glass box enclosing Detective Hoffman is opened, and he gets out. Agent Strahm's mutilated remains are shown.

Opening Game: Simone (Tanedra Howard) and Eddie (Marty Moreau), two loan sharks, must pay back their ill-gotten fortunes with their own flesh. Each player has to remove flesh in order for the scale to be balanced in their favor. Whoever places the least flesh in the scales will have their skull fatally pierced by two bolts. Time limit: One minute.

Main Game: William Easton (Peter Outerbridge), vice-president of a health insurance company, and the person who developed a formula that gave coverage to the healthy and denied it to the sick, must use his formula for life and death in a series of five games. Each game completed successfully will release a key for a set of wrist and ankle shackles that will explode after one hour. Time limit: One hour.

• Game 1: William and his janitor (Gerry Mendicino), a smoker for countless years, are strapped into a vise around their torsos which gets tighter and tighter with each breath they take. The more air each inhales, the tighter the vice. No time limit. Survivor is released at once.

• Game 2: William must choose the life of either his file clerk Allen (Shawn Ahmed), a healthy 20-something, single male, or his secretary Addy (Janelle Hutchison), a middle-aged diabetic with a large family. To choose, William must simply let go of one pullcord handle. The doomed will be hung by the neck with barbed wire. The wires slowly pull the victims up, limiting the time as the cords give more tug.

• Game 3: The Steam Maze. William will have to help Debbie (Caroline Cave), the lawyer for his firm, transverse a maze. Debbie is attached to a trap that is set for 90 seconds. If they fail to unlock themselves, the trap will pierce Debbie's skull. William must choose to either allow Debbie to suffer or to relieve her while going through the maze and receiving some pain in form of hot steam. Unbeknownst to William, the key to the trap is hidden inside his body, and it must be removed for Debbie to survive. Time limit: 90 seconds.

• Game 4: The Carousel. Six of William's assistants, whose jobs require searching for loopholes in policies, are chained to a carousel. A shotgun is set up to discharge a round into the selected individual. William must choose to either allow two individuals live or let all six die. Each time he chooses to let one live by pressing a button to stop the gun from firing, his own hand will be pierced by a spike. There is approximately 30 seconds between shotgun blasts, and a 10-second interval where William can save a life.

• Game 5: Tara Abbott (Caroline Cave), widow of the man denied coverage by William's company, and her son Brent (Devon Bostick) are given the choice of whether William should live or die. If they choose "DIE", he will be injected with hydrofluoric acid; if they choose "LIVE", he will be freed.

Final Game: A murderer who believed he was untouchable has been caught and the Reverse Bear Trap will be his judge.

The box is shown to contain the set up for the next game, which Jill willingly gives to Hoffman to complete, proving that Jill knew more about her husband's plans than she let on to the FBI and that she is an accessory to his crimes.

It is a letter from Hoffman to Amanda that drops a huge bombshell to her. "Amanda. You were with Cecil the night Jill lost Gideon. You killed their child. You know it and I know it, so do exactly what I say. Kill Lynn Denlon, or I will tell John what you did." In Saw III, we were led to believe that Amanda shot Dr. Denlon because of jealousy and an unquenchable desire to punish people. However, in Saw VI, the true reason why she shot Dr. Denlon is revealed to be something else: if she didn't, Hoffman would tell Jigsaw about her involvement in the loss of Jill's child. The most probable reason for Hoffman doing this is because both he and Amanda were trying to get into John's favor, so he wanted Amanda out of the way. Hoffman knew that Lynn was Amanda's test, so no easier way to get rid of Amanda by letting her fail this test. In Saw III (2006), during the struggle between Jigsaw, Amanda, and Lynn Denlon, Jigsaw states that 'Lynn is "more important than you know" meaning that it was Amanda's test to keep her alive (unbeknownst to her), however Amanda saw this as the truth being let out, and shot Lynn to save herself.

Eddie, Security Guard (fate left open), Hank, Allen, Debbie, Aaron, Gena, Dave, Josh, Technician Sachi, Agent Lindsey Perez, Agent Dan Erickson, and William Easton.

So far, there are eight films in the Saw franchise. Prior to Saw VI, there was only Saw (2004), Saw II (2005), Saw III (2006), Saw IV (2007), and Saw V (2008). The sequel to Saw VI is Saw 3D (2010) which is followed by Jigsaw (2017).

John knew there was an envelope for Amanda (he even directs her to it in Saw III (2006)) but it seems safe to assume that he was unaware of Hoffman's note, or at the very least unaware of its content. John had every hope that Amanda would win her game by sparing Lynn, so if he had known that Hoffman was using the note to blackmail her into killing Lynn Denlon, John would most certainly have interfered. Also note that there is much more paper in the envelope than just Hoffman's note. It is possible that the envelope contains information on future games and victims, or ideas for traps put there by John, and Hoffman may just have slipped his own note in there as well.

This doesn't exclude the possibility that John somehow knew that Amanda was with Cecil on the night that Cecil threatened Jill at the clinic and killed her child. John only saw Cecil flee the scene, held him responsible and made him his first victim. It is unknown how Hoffman found out that Amanda was with Cecil (possibly through video surveillance footage), but he may have informed John about it later, although this seems unlikely. John was quick to put Cecil to the test for this; if John had known about Amanda, he would probably have made it a reason for Amanda's test as well, or confronted her with it at some point. But John only indicates that Amanda's test is because she failed to give her victims a way out.

When they first met, Jigsaw reproached Hoffman for the fact that he had effectively killed a man (Seth, his sister's murderer) without offering him a "way out". Jigsaw's philosophy is that he genuinely wants to help people, and therefore, everyone deserves a second chance to live; those who do not offer their victim a chance to survive, are no different from murderers in his vision. During their cooperation, Hoffman displayed a preference for particularly brutal and sadistic traps, leading Jigsaw to believe that Hoffman was in it primarily for hurting others rather than for helping people. That is why he created the tape found inside his stomach, which was directed at Hoffman, warning that he "would not walk away untested". Jigsaw posthumously enlisted Jill's help to set the trap for Hoffman, but then she learned of the letter that Hoffman had written to Amanda. This was proof that Hoffman knew about Amanda's involvement in the death of John and Jill's child. Not only had Hoffman kept this information from Jigsaw, he abused it to get rid of Amanda. This is probably the reason why Jill tried to make the test unwinnable: she straps Hoffman to the chair, giving him little chance to free himself in time. However, against her expectations, he breaks free and survives.

There is an extra scene of Amanda after the end credits where she tells Jeff's daughter, who is locked in the room, "not to trust the one who saves you". It then shows when Hoffman "takes out" Jeff's daughter while she is looking at the screen with a mysterious look. Apart from the new ending scene approximately 70 changes can be found in the unrated version throughout the movie. Most of these new scenes are very short, sometimes only a couple of frames long but there are also some longer story extensions.