Saw Characters: Who Is Who Across the Series

The main Saw characters are John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer played by Tobin Bell, the apprentices who carry on his games, and the police who spend the series one step behind them. The twists and fates below are spoilers, so watch the films first or follow the saw movies in order guide if you are still deciding where to start.

John Kramer is Jigsaw, the man who builds the traps and records the tapes that explain the rules. In Saw (2004), directed by James Wan, he is the supposed corpse lying on the bathroom floor between Adam and Lawrence, and he stands up at the end to shock Adam through his chain and lock the door. Tobin Bell plays him, and Kramer is dying of cancer by Saw III, which is why the series keeps finding ways to bring him back through recordings, flashbacks and a prequel. Saw X, directed by Kevin Greutert, is set between the first two films and shows him chasing a cancer treatment that turns out to be a scam. For his full story, see John Kramer Saw.

The villains in Saw are Jigsaw and whoever is carrying out his games at the time, which is why the answer changes from film to film. John Kramer designs the tests, but the people who run them are usually apprentices, and some of them go further than he intended. The killer changes from film to film while the method stays the same.

• Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith): a survivor of one of Jigsaw's traps in Saw (2004) who becomes his accomplice in Saw II. In Saw III she rigs her traps so nobody can win, and Jeff shoots her dead. See Amanda Young Saw.
• Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor): a detective exposed as a second apprentice at the end of Saw IV. He frames Agent Strahm in Saw V and survives a reverse bear trap in Saw VI. See Mark Hoffman Saw.
• Zep Hindle (Michael Emerson): the hospital orderly who holds Lawrence's family captive in Saw (2004). A tape later shows he was also a victim, forced to obey Jigsaw to get an antidote to a slow poison.
• Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes): the doctor from the bathroom who returns in Saw 3D as Jigsaw's apprentice and locks Hoffman in the same room. See Dr Gordon Saw.
• Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore): the pathologist in Jigsaw (2017) who turns out to be the new Jigsaw, and who was spared by Kramer ten years earlier.

There are six killers across the ten films if you count the spinoff: John Kramer, Amanda Young, Mark Hoffman, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, Logan Nelson and William Schenk. Zep Hindle is the one name that does not fit neatly: he moves to murder Lawrence's family, but a tape shows he was forced to obey Jigsaw to get an antidote, and Adam beats him to death, so the series presents him as a pawn. Schenk, played by Max Minghella, is the killer in Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021), directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, and he is a copycat who targets corrupt police rather than a Kramer apprentice.

The detectives are the people who hunt Jigsaw, and several of them end up inside his games. Most are police, with a few FBI agents added from the fourth film on.

• David Tapp (Danny Glover) and Steven Sing (Ken Leung): the detectives who find Jigsaw's warehouse in Saw (2004). Jigsaw escapes after badly wounding Tapp, and Sing dies in a shotgun trap.
• Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg): the detective who arrests Kramer in Saw II while his son Daniel is among the eight captives in a house filling with nerve gas. See Eric Matthews Saw.
• Rigg (Lyriq Bent): the officer who cannot stop trying to save others, forced through the tests in Saw IV.
• Peter Strahm (Scott Patterson) and Perez (Athena Karkanis): the agents who dig into the case and, in Strahm's case, into Hoffman.
• Erickson (Mark Rolston): the FBI agent in Saw VI who notices odd details in Strahm's fingerprints.
• Matt Gibson (Chad Donella): the internal affairs detective who is offered a deal by Jill Tuck in Saw 3D.
• Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) and Hunt (Clé Bennett): the two detectives chasing Edgar Munsen at the start of Jigsaw (2017).
• Zeke Banks (Chris Rock): the lead of Spiral: From the Book of Saw, an outcast on the force who is paired with rookie William Schenk. See Zeke Banks Spiral.

Survivors and victims are the people the traps are built for, and the series treats each test as a reflection of something the person did. Adam (Leigh Whannell) is the photographer chained opposite Lawrence in the first film, and he is left to die behind a sealed door. He has his own page at Adam Saw. Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell) is Kramer's widow, who attacks Hoffman with a reverse bear trap in Saw VI and is killed by him in Saw 3D. In Saw III, Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) and Dr. Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) are pulled into a game built around grief and revenge. Saw X adds Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund) and Parker Sears (Steven Brand), the people behind the fake clinic.

The pig mask is worn by more than one character, so there is no single actor behind it. In Saw 3D, three pig masked figures capture Hoffman and the leader is Dr. Gordon, played by Cary Elwes. In Spiral: From the Book of Saw, a figure in a pig mask attacks Detective Marv Bozwick in a sewer, and the killer is later revealed as William Schenk, played by Max Minghella. A pig puppet also turns up in a box of evidence in that film. Billy the Puppet has his own page at Billy the Puppet, and the devices themselves are covered at Saw Traps.

The characters fit the timeline in release order for most films, with Saw X as the exception because it takes place between Saw (2004) and Saw II. That is why Amanda Young appears alongside Kramer in a film released in 2023. If the order of events matters to you, Saw Timeline Explained sets out where each character's story starts and ends, and the saw timeline page lists the events in sequence. For the actors behind each role, see the saw cast page, and for what comes next, see Saw 11, which is still in development.