Fiction sometimes takes root in true-to-life stories, and most horror stories (especially those revolving around serial killers) are no different.
Considering John Kramer’s thirst and self-righteous attitude in wanting to prove that he could ‘cure’ human beings from their wrongful ways, he feels less like a character and closer to how an actual psychopath would think.
Here’s where we answer if the Saw franchise’s Jigsaw Killer is actually based on a true story or not.
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How the Saw Franchise Came Up with the Jigsaw Killer
The Jigsaw Killer began as a normal civil engineer who was expecting to have a baby with his wife, Jill Tuck.
After losing their baby in a miscarriage, and with John Kramer gaining a terminal illness afterward, this led the titular character to nearly ending his life. However, his failed suicide attempt brought him to a different perspective.
He wanted people to appreciate life, but to Kramer, his way of making people come to this realization was through surviving his sadistic and ingenious torturous traps.
According to Saw screenwriter Leigh Whannell back in a 2010 interview with The AV Club, he was 24 when the idea came to him. He revealed he was working on a job that led to migraines pretty much every single day of his life.
And in his words, ‘being the hypochondriac’ he was, he ‘carted’ himself off to get tests, to the point of getting MRI scans.
“I started to imagine this character who had been given a time limit, who’d been told that he had a year, two years to live, really, and that his condition would slowly kill him. Instead of a doctor telling you, ‘Make the best of it’, this guy would put people in a situation and say, ‘You have 10 minutes to live. How are you going to spend those 10 minutes? Are you going to get out of it?’”
This explains how the Saw franchise continues to be popular despite being a collection of slasher/horror films.
The metaphor used behind the traps set up specifically for victims to make them learn their lesson is what reels the audience and diehards in.
However, in spite of the franchise not being based on a real-life story, did you know there was an actual murderer whose alias was 'Jigsaw Killer'?
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An Actual ‘Jigsaw Killer’ Came To Life on the News
Although the titular serial killer wasn’t essentially based on a true-to-life story or person, there was a report that indicated an actual ‘Jigsaw Killer’ whose committed crimes were spreading the body parts he chopped up across two counties.
The Jigsaw Killer’s name is Stephen Marshall, who was a personal trainer from Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.
It was back in February 2010 when the murderer was imprisoned with a minimum sentence of 36 years for murdering Jeffrey Howe, his landlord.
Howe was murdered in March 2009 after being stabbed twice in the back, and it was only between March and April 2009 that the landlord’s body parts began showing up in their investigations.
It was only a matter of time before Marshall had been caught and imprisoned for his crime. Howe was not his only victim. In fact, there were four other men’s bodies Marshall had butchered brutally while working as a London nightclub doorman in the 1990s.
Given that John Kramer was never caught in the entire run of the Saw franchise is a bit concerning, especially since his apprentices took over his work after his death. Considering that Amanda Young's lead turned traps into inescapable nightmares, the mission and intention behind the 'games' changed.
Saw X shows how John Kramer had to suffer from con artists, only to turn the tables on them by setting up his traps with Amanda. Whether or not Saw XI will come to fruition will highly depend on the box-office success of the former.
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