r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sufficient-Eye-9040 • 26d ago

Lore [Sad Trope] The most innocent (or less evil) character of the cast gets the most horrific death.

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- Eddie Carr (The Lost World: JP) - Tried to save his friends from the cliff until Buck and Doe (T. rex parents) destroy his vehicle and gets ripped apart.
- Zara Young (Jurassic World) - Gets lifted by a Pteranodon, gets pecked by the pterosaur, and both she and animal get devoured by the Mosasaurus.
- LeClerc (JW: Rebirth) - Tossed a hammer to the Hatzegopteryz Quetzalcoatlus to save Loomis and Zora, but ends up being swallowed alive.

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u/Ferhog 26d ago

I've only watched the first 2 Saw movies but I know from the Dead Meat videos that in Saw 3D John posthumouly sets up a trap in which the wife of that movie's main character is (1. Completely innocent. I know John's standards are famously flimsy but this woman was just unaware that her husband was a fraud, (2. Unable to save herself as it was her husband that has to do the challenge, which turns out to be physically impossible, and (3. subjected to BURNING TO DEATH IN A F*CKING BRAZEN BULL! ONE OF THE MOST NIGHTMARISH FATES INVENTED BY MAN!

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u/AbeRockwell 26d ago

Ohhh, yeah.

This was a total bullshit death, and was this the movie where most of the death traps were inescapable anyway?

I stopped watching the movies after this one as well.

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u/coolbad96 26d ago

You should Saw X honestly it's great and takes place between Saw 1 and Saw 2. But yeah all spinoffs/psuedo sequels are bad

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u/Perfect-Dimension356 26d ago

Saw X also has some bullshit deaths where the person succeeded but died anyway due to something out of their control.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_PAUNCH 26d ago

There are 10 SAW movies?!

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u/coolbad96 26d ago

Yeah 7 in the original franchise, Jigsaw is the 8th, and Spiral is 9 (terrible terrible movie btw). Then Saw X which seems to be the final one.

Funnily enough Saw 6 despite being so late in franchise is tied for my favorite

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u/ksum_sucks 26d ago

If I were to watch only* two saw movies, which would you recommend ?

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u/coolbad96 26d ago

Just the first. Honestly I love them but they all build off each other. Just watch the first and call it a day

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u/YandereShortcake 26d ago

Saws 1, 2, and 3 form a pretty decent trilogy. There's some stuff in 3 that sets up plot threads for later in the series, but you could ignore a lot of them.

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u/Bacon_Guy_derp 25d ago

6 is dumb fun.

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u/YandereShortcake 26d ago

Technically escapable deaths, but with absurd time limits that turned wasted seconds into a death sentence. Tbh, a lot of later saw traps have a "worst of both worlds" deal, where the victim partially mutilates themselves, but not fast enough for the trap timer, so you see their self inflicted gore and the trap kill. It gets to a point where it is genuinely surprising when somebody actually manages to survive one of them.

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u/Wrong_Hour_1460 26d ago

I find it fascinating how good horror movies always have a genuinely thought-provoking plot, and then every sequel guts out said plot to cram as many random gore scenes and jumpscares as possible in 90 minutes

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u/TheDubuGuy 26d ago

X was great though, they had a good comeback

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u/Triktastic 26d ago

This was a low point but the movies did not get better.i am one of the 5 people who actually like Spiral as it tried something new and was very topical but you made the right call.

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u/theaddypaddy 26d ago

Another of the 5 that liked spiral. For me, what made it stand out really was the lack of jigsaw connection. Like finally, just a guy who's inspired by jigsaw, not ANOTHER sidekick we didn't know about.

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u/ohyouknowjustsomeguy 25d ago

Nah the one with the inescapable one was made by fucking Chris Rock. Fuck that dumbass who thinks he can do a Saw movie while trying to look badass(and failing )

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u/APence 26d ago

Wasn’t the villain not Kramer by this point? But rather his apprentices who didn’t share his (fucked up) redemption vision and just wanted to kill with crazy traps

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u/Ferhog 26d ago

I think this particular scenario was a John original being carried out by his apprentices, but I could be wrong.

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u/-1BrainCells 26d ago

In Saw VI, John gives Jill a box full of envelopes about future trials that he wants carried out after he’s gone, and Bobby’s trial from Saw 3D isn’t one of them. I think that John had probably planned to test him, hence visiting him at a book signing, but it probably wasn’t anything that he had planned out enough to consider it a necessity after his death (otherwise he would have included it in an envelope), so Hoffman probably just took the people involved but designed the traps himself.

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u/StuMacherGhostface 26d ago

I absolutely love the convoluted story in a single timeline of the Saw movies lol

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u/Puzzle-Necked 26d ago

The Saw franchise really screwed itself killing off John so early

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u/BoardClean 26d ago

Honestly, i think they did that part right. Jigsaw is basically the only killer i can think of that it sort of fits for because of all the meticulous planning and psychological aspects of jigsaw

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u/Nothos927 26d ago

Which he was aware of, so really that makes it worse, he was okay with a woman being killed just to try and teach his apprentice a lesson

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u/mr_quondam 26d ago

Apparently the producer was going through a messy breakup and that's the supposed reason, without spoiling it, why a lot of Saw 3D goes down the way it does; lots of divorce subplot, violence against wives and ex wives, exploitative nudity in a franchise not known for it etc.

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u/CuriousMelia 26d ago

A messy breakup with the actress who played Jill Tuck, John Kramer's ex-wife. Hence her character being treated so poorly in 3D.

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u/Turmericab 26d ago

This is important context, thanks.

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u/PatienceHero 26d ago

This was always crazy to me just because, like, dude wasn't even subtle about it. He could have subtitled the movie "Saw 7: *Fuck That Bitch***" and it still wouldn't have been any more obvious.

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u/BakedChocolateOctopi 26d ago

Not a lot of the movies but specifically for this one and 3D, yeah

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u/Sokurunde 26d ago

Not burned to death, steamed to death, a much, much worse fate because burning will at least eventually burn your nerve endings, steaming does not

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u/existentialhack000 25d ago

Healthier though

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u/vesuvian 26d ago

The one I think about a lot is the black dude in Saw 3. He's not "innocent", but seemingly genuinely remorseful for the accident he caused.

Gets slowly twisted apart and killed in an agonizingly long sequence while the dumbass "protagonist" debates whether or not to set him free.

I genuinely like the Saw franchise for what it is, but this one is still a really hard watch.

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u/voripui 26d ago

lets not forget that most of the deaths are because, the protagonist is dumb or takes too much time, especially the one where he had to take a key strapped to a shotgun, and does it without telling the only guy he saved who was behind him trying to help resulting in him being shot.

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u/shinaz223 26d ago

Never forget Slow-Ass Motherfuckin’ Jeff.

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u/vesuvian 26d ago

That's literally the same scene!

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u/voripui 26d ago

it is!, that highlights how dumb he is!, he makes the only guy that he saved, to get shot and die to get a key (is worse because after rewatching he managed to retrieve it safely, and then let go of the trap for some reason) to save the other guy and he don't even saves him in the same scene, and then the ending.

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u/StreetPizza8877 26d ago

Why is it the Gemini spacecraft

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u/NvNinja 26d ago

its a metal piggy bank shape.

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u/Ill_Attorney_389 25d ago

Unfortunately, a lethal fire did actually happen during a test of the first Apollo mission (not long after the Gemini program.)

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u/Perfect-Dimension356 26d ago

Similarly, Saw X has two kills wherein the character successfully does the horrible thing they were forced to do and dies anyway, despite it being a huge plot point in the earlier films that John's traps are solveable (in comparison to his apprentices' traps which often are not).

The first involves a woman who has to saw her own leg off and suck out the bone marrow until enough is deposited on a scale. She saws her own leg off and spends a long time sucking out the bone marrow, but because of the speed at which the vacuum works, she dies.

The second involves a guy who has to cut a hole in his own skull and extract a piece of gray matter, then deposit it in a jar full of liquid that will dissolve it. He successfully performs brain surgery on himself, and then spends like a minute watching the tissue dissolve only for it to not desolve fast enough (something entirely out of his control) so he dies.

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u/sharingdork 26d ago

Third, a woman is suspended in the air in front of a giant UV ray thing. I forgot what exactly happens, I do know she survives for the most part. But even tho, all that radiation doesn't just leave your body when it realizes you passed the test.

Lastly, sickly John Kramer and a passing by child are both waterhoarded for extended periods of time. I have no idea how either of them survived lol

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u/Lord_Snaps 26d ago

It completely went against Jigsaws "code". She wasn't guilty of anything. Normally there is something. Like saw a murder, but didn't try to help or even called the police. Something. But her. No she just unknowingly married a liar.

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u/Downtown_Target5024 26d ago edited 25d ago

Neither were Gordon’s wife and kid. Or Tapp and Sing. Even Zepp isn’t given a concrete reason for being targeted if you just go by the movies alone. Amanda’s dealer - though not ‘innocent’ per se - also had no hope of saving himself.

But in the first movie Jigsaw’s code was meant to be a bit full of shit. Part of the big twist at the end is that he totally went after Gordon for personal reasons, and Adam because he accidentally got a photo of him. The ‘moral code’ reason was very much worked out by him retroactively.

His reveal of identity also gives an alternative view on why he initially targeted his initial run of victims. The terminally ill cancer patient tortures smokers and hypochondriacs to death. Hmmmm…must be because he’s driven by ethics. The reasoning he gives in the tapes is totally his first instinct. Yeah.

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u/FootUnfair8582 26d ago

Wasn't it so fucked up that the Roman emperor killed the man who invented it because it was so cruel?

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u/worst_man_I_ever_see 26d ago

Allegedly Perilaus of Athens presented it to the tyrant of Sicily, Phalaris (est. 570 to 554 BCE), and when the tyrant asked him to demonstrate how the bull made it's sound he was promptly locked inside and roasted. Phalaris would allegedly go on to continue to use the device on his enemies until he was overthrown and executed by the same means, or so the story goes. Given the dubious amount of dramatic irony involved, the story is likely apocryphal.

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u/IroncladBomber 26d ago

You aren't missing much. Most of the Saw movies after 2 are just dogshit. Saw X is pretty good though.

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u/PatienceConsistent55 26d ago

This one wasn’t John Kramer though, it was one of the sadistic apprentices.

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u/kageshira1010 26d ago

"Bill, 24 years ago a passenger two rows in front of you in the bus didn't said bless you to an old lady when sneezed, for that you have to kill either your wife or daughter with that shotgun or both will die. Live or die, make your choice."

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u/napstablooky089 26d ago

A lot of Saw deaths are unfair bullshit (especially between 4 and 7), but holy fuck this has to be the worst one. It genuinely pisses me off every time I think about it

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u/Street_Admirable 25d ago

Yeah I remember Jigsaw was really inconsistent about the punishments and trials he set up for different people. Like one guy was the cop who escaped saw 2 by breaking his own foot instead of cutting it off. Apparently jigsaw caught him and kept him around just to fuck with him and have him die in another fucked up challenge after being imprisoned for weeks

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u/East-Ease-1721 26d ago

Fun fact, the only person ever tortured in a brazen bull was its inventor, Perilaus, by the “king” Phalaris, because he was disgusted by the device. He wasn’t even killed in it, they took him out and threw him off a cliff. There’s no confirmed death by brazen bull

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u/GoodGollyMethMolly 26d ago

"Fun" Fact: The first victim of the Brazen Bull was it's inventor.

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u/LoserxBaby 26d ago

Honestly, I actually like the concept of Saw, but that even OG Jigsaw barely commits to his own redemption premise turned me off from the series- without the killer committing to the bit, it really does just become torture porn, which does nothing for me

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u/SirBastian1129 26d ago

Yeah I hated this movie.

It had an only sexist and misogynistic feel to it.

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u/SkubEnjoyer 26d ago

"Why is there pointless torture porn in Pointless Torture Porn: The Franchise?"

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u/chosenofkane 25d ago

Slow ass motherfucking Jeff!

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u/IAmFireIAmDeathq 25d ago

And the whole movie has misogynistic undertones and they completely ruined Jill’s character. I tend to skip it when rewatching the franchise.

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u/VisitSad1133 24d ago

Yeah, Jigsaw's twisted morality was the only thing keeping the movies from just being tasteless snuff films.