Throughout the Saw franchise,
there have been many symbols and images
associated with Jigsaw,
from puzzle pieces, to spirals, to the pigs,
which are hidden in many of the crime scenes
in this ninth movie.
The very first victim is targeted at a carnival,
where you can spot this pig on the funhouse mural,
and a man holding a pig balloon.
The meaning behind the pig symbol
has changed a couple of times now.
It started as a reference to the Year of the Pig
in the Chinese Zodiac,
which was representative of the Eastern ideas
that Jigsaw incorporated into his teachings,
and at some point, it became a symbol of compassion
towards those in suffering.
JOHN: Did you know that pigs are highly compassionate animals?
They show distress if they see any other animal,
including humans, suffering.
- In Spiral, there's a new Jigsaw copycat,
who has a new context for the use of the pig symbol.
It's a reference to the derogatory term
that people sometimes use towards police officers.
The new killer is targeting dirty cops,
and so, he ironically uses the pig costume and symbol
to give them a taste of their own-
- Brutality!
- And that's why the puppet avatar
has been changed this time to a creepy pig.
Perhaps the dirtiest police officer, Detective Fitch,
even has a coffee mug decorated with pig imagery.
He discovers a pig mask shortly before going into his trap,
and a pig falls out of the car when the police discover
where the killer deposited Fitch's fingers.
Other less noticeable pig symbols
include the pig models displayed in the butcher shop
where one of the other victims is discovered,
including this adorable little pig chef,
and the pig mask hiding in the background
as Zeke enters the church to find Pete Dunleavy,
his number one suspect.
To learn how each trap in Spiral
evolved from one of John Kramer's traps
in the original Saw movies,
stick around to the end of this video.
This video is sponsored by Lionsgate.
Spiral is the newest chapter in the book of Saw,
and it's now available on digital, Blu-Ray and 4K.
If you watch my channel, you may remember
when I thought the Book of Saw
was going to be an actual book in the movie.
That didn't age too well.
The movie stars Chris Rock, Max Minghella,
Marisol Nichols and Samuel L. Jackson.
Darren Lynn Bousman, who directed Saw 2, 3 and 4,
is back to direct Spiral,
and I noticed some references to some of his other work
hidden in graffiti around the city.
In addition to making movies,
he's also done these immersive theatrical experiences.
Basically, expensive haunted houses where you sign a waiver,
but instead of the actors trying to scare you,
they just try to make you really uncomfortable.
His first one was in 2016 and called The Tension Experience,
and it's logo can be seen graffitied on a pillar
at the 12th Street Bridge.
The next year he followed that up with The Lust Experience,
whose logo is seen spray painted on a wall
at the courthouse.
These experiences have their own lore,
which is also referenced.
BOS stands for Brotherhood of Seraph,
a group inside The Tension Experience universe.
The parcel delivery company is OSDM, which stands for
Oracle Security and Data Management,
a fictional company featured in The Lust Experience.
As is par for the Saw franchise,
there are plenty of other references
and hidden secrets to uncover, so let's get into them.
The movie opens with the normal,
not-spooky Lionsgate logo.
I guess the new Saw films
are just not going to do that anymore.
How sad.
Detective Marv Bozwick is lured away
from the 4th of July carnival when he chases a purse thief.
Ironically, stealing a purse was a punishable offense
in the eyes of John Kramer in the previous movie, Jigsaw.
When Bozwick gets down into the subway tunnel,
he realizes he's been bamboozled
when his suspect has been replaced by a mannequin.
That could've been his first clue
that he was dealing with a Jigsaw copycat.
You may have remembered John's first ever workshop
in Saw 1 was in a mannequin factory.
We come to learn that the new copycat, Detective Schenk,
believes in John Kramer's philosophy,
but has his own ideas about who it should be applied to.
SCHENK: John Kramer was right. Spiral.
Symbol of change, evolution, progress.
But why limit that to an individual
when you can apply it to a whole system?
- So it makes sense that a lot of Schenk's traps
seem to be evolutions of the Jigsaw traps.
The subway trap is a lot like the classroom trap from Saw 3.
Each one requires the victim to tear something
out of their body to escape before time runs out.
There are also obvious parallels
to the trap from Jill's dream in Saw 7.
And yes, I prefer to call it Saw 7 instead of Saw 3D,
so get used to it.
But I'm not actually counting this one
as an inspiration for Schenk because it was just a dream,
we have no proof that it was ever a real trap.
It is interesting how it contains the Spiral logo, though.
There are a couple of red herrings that could be placed
to lead the audience into thinking that certain characters
are responsible for the subway trap.
Chief Banks seems to be a train fanatic,
and decorates his apartment with pictures of locomotives,
and the drug dealer has a 9 and 3/4 tattoo,
a reference to the famous magical train platform
in Harry Potter.
Boz is unable to escape the subway trap in time,
and the train that hits him as a big IX on the front.
The Saw films have always been labeled with Roman numerals,
and this is the numeral for the number nine.
Spiral is the ninth film in the franchise.
Then we meet Detective Zeke Banks,
who is working undercover with a gang of thieves,
who are in a heated discussion about the fate
of Forrest Gump.
- I ain't see no sequel. Where's Gump 2?
- It's almost like a statement to the fans
about Mark Hoffman.
Hoffman was Jigsaw's successor,
the main villain of movies 4 through 7,
who was assumed dead after being game over'd
in his last appearance.
He didn't appear in the next sequel, Jigsaw.
This isn't a perfect analogy, though.
For one, there is a sequel to Forrest Gump,
the novel just never got a movie adaptation
like the first one did.
And for two, Josh Stolberg,
the co-screenwriter of Jigsaw and Spiral,
who is probably the most likely candidate to write Saw 10,
has publicly tweeted about the issue,
stating that while he didn't write the last movie
to include Hoffman, he personally thinks that he is alive.
Speaking of Hoffman, you'll notice this isn't
the same police station that Hoffman annihilated in Saw 7.
That was the Metro PD 13th precinct,
while this is the South Metro Police Station.
So we're dealing with a different part of the same city,
but there is a nice reference to the 13th precinct
in this movie.
Perhaps both buildings were created by the same architect,
because the evidence room in Spiral
has a very similar layout to the evidence room from Saw 7.
Detective Banks gets the call to investigate
the train accident.
It's impossible to say for sure,
but is that Saw 1 director James Wan sitting by the window
on the train?
One interesting thing about Spiral is that
nearly every previous Saw director was involved in some way.
James Wan was an executive producer,
Darren Lynn Bousman directed it,
David Hackl was a visual consultant,
and Kevin Gruetert was an executive producer.
That leaves the Spierig brothers, who directed Jigsaw,
as the only Saw directors not to work on Spiral.
However, I did find a detail that may in fact
be a massive Jigsaw connection.
It comes when Zeke is interrogating Bozwick's wife.
Roll it.
ZEKE: In the last few weeks,
did you notice anything unusual?
KARA: There was one thing, there was a black SUV
parked outside
one night last week.
And he went out, and he walked up, and I don't know,
the next thing I know, he was yelling at somebody inside.
- This is never brought up again in the movie,
which I find a little strange.
Jigsaw also had unanswered questions like this.
For example, when the pathologist, Eleanor,
makes it out of the pig farm, she waves down a car,
then looks concerned as she sees who's driving it.
We can't really tell if it's black,
but it does look to be roughly the size of an SUV
Nelson also drives a gray SUV, it could look black at night.
Maybe a future sequel will provide the answer.
We never really get any follow-up
about Zeke's wife and kid, either,
just as Logan Nelson's kid
was a seemingly unfinished storyline in Jigsaw.
As the police realize they've got a Jigsaw copycat
on their hands, they study what they know about John Kramer,
including this screenshot from Saw 4,
mugshots of Obi Tate and Addison Corday from Saw 2,
magazine and newspaper articles from various movies,
primarily Saw 4,
this photo of John, which is from
the Journal of Civil Engineering, first seen in Saw 4,
and this screenshot of Billy the Puppet,
which is from the classroom trap in Saw 3.
In addition to all of that, the cork boards contain maps
and photos from the night of Detective Bozwick's death,
and photos of what appears to be another crime scene
involving a knife.
This may in fact be a leftover from a scene
that was cut from the movie.
Apparently this trap involved someone's face
getting cut off, and they had to submit the film to
the Motion Picture Association 11 times just to get it down
to an R-rating.
One thing I've always had fun pointing out
in my previous Saw franchise Things You Missed episodes
is the crew referenced easter eggs,
and this scene has a few of them.
The police search Twitter for photos taken
in Stewart's Point that night for anything
that might help them to identify the suspect.
Noel99 and NinaC aren't crew members,
but remember those names, I'll come back to them later.
The first one is Rafael Pacheco,
a visual effects coordinator.
In the corner, there's a prompt to follow a user
named Kiki Singh, who's probably related to Spiral's editor,
Dev Singh.
Just a side note, I love the idea that police work is done
by just Googling phrases related to the date of the crime.
He just has tabs open with searches for, "July 4 night",
"July 4 event", and "July 4 case",
as if somebody has already solved the case
and just posted the answers online.
We also get a little glimpse of his email inbox,
where he's had exchanges with Jon C,
which is likely visual effects supervisor Jon Campfens.
There are more names to spot on Detective Drury's tablet,
like Nina Campfens and Noel Campfens.
They aren't listed in the credits,
but they're probably related to VFX supervisor Jon Campfens.
You'll also see Beau Parsons.
Beau is another visual effects supervisor,
and Shawn Morris, special effects technician, no relation.
The next police officer to find himself in a trap
is Detective Fitch, who becomes the victim
of the finger trap.
- Help! Help me!
- If each trap is inspired by one of the original traps
created by John Kramer,
this one definitely draws from the electric bathtub
from Saw 5, with the source of the danger
being the combination of water and electricity.
It's possible that this was foreshadowed in the opening shot
of the movie, where one of the carnival games
offers Pokemon plushies as prizes.
Specifically, you can win Squirtle or Pikachu,
the water type and the electric type Pokemon, respectively.
The ferris wheel was even blue and yellow.
Amanda would be rocking out if she was still here.
The finger trap begins at the sound of the buzzer,
(BUZZ)
which sounds exactly like the buzzer from the pig vat trap
in Saw 3.
(BUZZ BUZZ)
We hear the sound again later on in the glass grinder trap,
where it's used to signal the beginning
of the flying glass shards.
The finger trap is designed to take away
Fitch's overactive trigger fingers.
It's interesting to see an actual Saw trap
that takes away your fingers,
because the poster for Saw 2 features
a pair of severed fingers,
but there's no finger-severing scene in the movie,
so I guess it was a long time coming.
The trap also takes place at a location called
the Nesbitt Brothers' Breads.
Michael Nesbitt is the movie's assistant art director.
Not having heard from his father,
Zeke goes to his apartment to check on him.
He comes across the old photo of him and his dad
at Constantine's Hobby Shop.
This is another crew reference easter egg.
Jason Constantine was one of Spiral's executive producers.
A new package containing another flash drive
is delivered to the police station the next day,
and we get a short glimpse of Zeke's computer screen
before he plugs it in.
It seems he's looking up an event from 11/11/2004,
where two males got into a fight in a parking lot.
I don't think this report is relevant to the story at all,
as these descriptions don't match
any important Saw characters, but I would note that
this would've been a matter of weeks after
the bathroom game in Saw 1.
The date 11/11 is also significant for the director
Darren Lynn Bousman, who directed a horror film titled
11/11/11, about strange events occurring on that date.
The clues lead Zeke and Schenk to investigate
this meth dealer who may have ties to their suspect.
SING: Think we have enough for a warrant, though?
TAPP: Who said anything about a warrant?
SCHENK: Don't we need a warrant for this?
ZEKE: What're you talking about?
- The whole scene is packed with easter eggs
from Saw 4 and 5.
You can tell we're about to get into a throwback
when they enter the grimy apartment building
with the green tinge, the signature aesthetic
of the first seven films.
I'm first reminded of Officer Rigg's foray
into the Alexander Motel in Saw 4,
where he blows by a morbidly obese man in a tank top
to go up the stairs.
Here, we see Zeke and Schenk do the same.
At the top of the stairs,
there's a room completely illuminated in red,
just like the room where Rigg finds the evidence
in the motel.
On the way up the stairs, Zeke is confronted
by an aggressive dog.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa! Shit! Get your dog!
Get your fucking dog!
- This is almost like a perfect reenactment of the scene
at Mark Hoffman's apartment in Saw 5.
- Heel! Heel, I said! Don't provoke him!
Asshole!
Jesus Christ, come on, Peewee. Come on!
- Another Saw trope brought back in Spiral is the idea
of the killer being disguised as a victim of the game.
In Saw 1 it was John, in Saw 2 it was Amanda,
in Saw 4 it was Hoffman, and in Jigsaw it was Nelson.
This time, Detective Schenk makes it appear as if
he's been killed, only to reveal that he did this
by leaving his tattoo on the real victim's arm.
There's also a nice detail in this scene, where they go
to interrogate Pete.
Pete is the one who shot Schenk's father,
and Schenk stays back behind his partner out of fear
of possibly being recognized, even though he was just a kid
when they last met.
The next victim is the police captain, Angie Garza.
She is trapped inside the evidence room by
the pig-masked Schenk.
It makes sense, because only a police officer would be able
to get into this room.
The door to the evidence room is secured
by Vincent and Jules Safe Company.
If that sounds familiar, it's because Vincent and Jules
are the two main characters in the 1994 crime movie,
Pulp Fiction.
Jules was played by actor Samuel L. Jackson,
who also plays Chief Marcus Banks in Spiral.
Marcus Banks is the father of Zeke Banks,
and the only character to call him by his full name.
- Ezekiel.
- This may be a reference to Pulp Fiction,
where one of the most famous scenes
features Samuel L. Jackson quoting a Bible verse
called Ezekiel 25:17.
Anyway, Captain Garza is put into the wax trap,
which will smother her face in hot wax
if she's unable to sever her spinal cord
with the blade under her neck.
It's not really clear how this trap works mechanically,
but there are a number of Jigsaw traps that share
the same concept of drowning or smothering the victim
if they can't complete their task on time,
from the pig vat in Saw 3, to the water cube in Saw 5,
to the silo in Jigsaw.
With those that he has deemed to be bad cops out of the way,
Schenk is ready for the finale of his plan and kidnaps Zeke,
who awakens chained to a pipe.
Obviously this is a callback to the beginning
of the first movie, so I'm not even going to count that
on the Things You Missed, but after escaping,
he discovers Pete, who is caught
in the last Jigsaw-inspired trap, the glass grinder.
This one is just like the freezer room from Saw 3.
The only difference is that instead of the victim
being sprayed with freezing water
while someone tries to find the key to set them free,
Pete is getting sliced apart by shards of glass.
Schenk's hideout is in an abandoned soap factory.
This is another common trait shared with Jigsaw,
who always used abandoned factories as his hideouts
and locations for his games.
It even has the obligatory sliding door,
although nobody says the iconic line, "Game over"
in this one.
The final trap is the puppet trap, where Chief Banks
is hung up on strings, and Zeke must decide
between saving him or killing Schenk.
This one isn't really inspired by a Jigsaw trap,
from what I can tell,
but the explanation of the trap is definitely familiar.
Roll it.
- You know there's 1.5 gallons of blood
in the human body, Zeke?
At the rate your old man's bleeding out,
in just three minutes, those jars will be full,
and your dad will be dead.
- The human body, for instance,
is an astoundingly durable creation.
It contains approximately 10 pints of blood,
yet it is still able to operate with just half of that.
- 10 pints is only equal to 1.25 gallons.
I looked it up, and I guess the average body has
1.2 to 1.5 gallons of blood, so they're kind of both right,
in a way.
This trap not only takes place behind this wall
graffitied with Jigsaw's spiral symbol,
but it's also located at the top of a spiral staircase.
Well, kind of.
After a classic Saw-style montage, Detective Schenk,
or if we're calling him by his real name, William Emerson,
slips away in an elevator, just as Jigsaw did way back
in Darren Lynn Bousman's first Saw movie, Saw 2.
I want to give a big thanks to Lionsgate
for sponsoring this video.
Check out the link in the description
to purchase your own copy of Spiral.
But to fully understand the world of Saw,
you'll need to click that playlist on the left
for Thing You Missed episodes on every single movie.
Remember, subscribe to CZsWorld for new horrors every week,
and ring that death bell for all notifications,
and I'll see you in the next one, assuming we both survive.