The Saw franchise is full of memorably horrific moments that stick in your brain long after the shock of the latest plot switcheroo has faded away. The needle pit in Saw II. The scalping chair in Saw IV. That part in the original Saw when Cary Elwes says the name "Ali" like a newborn babe discovering the joys of human speech. All harrowing. All unforgettable. And yet there remains one particular Saw moment that still haunts me above all others, one that has, in the years since, become my own twisted Jigsaw game, both a test of willpower and reminder to cherish life at all costs. I speak, of course, of the scene in Saw 3D in which John Kramer (Tobin Bell) arrives dressed like the fourth member of Blink-182 for no discernable reason. It is Bell's only scene in the entire film and someone decided he should look like Fred Durst's grandfather desperately trying to fit in at a Limp Bizkit concert. It is mesmerizing. It is confounding. It has not left my thoughts for eleven years, and I am burdened by the knowledge that for the entire 95-minute runtime of Spiral: From the Book of Saw my mind will be elsewhere, with Aggressively Casual Jigsaw.
You'd think this is one of those things that's funnier without context, but I can assure anyone who has not seen Saw 3D that it is actually the context of Casual Jigsaw that gives him his undeniable power. (It's not like a 78-year-old man isn't allowed to rock a Zumiez sweatshirt with a backward hat. Flexing on em has no age limit.) Let me set this scene: Between the events of Saw and Saw II, self-help guru Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flanery) garnered fame by coming forward with his story of surviving a Jigsaw Killer game. He wrote a book about it, "S.U.R.V.I.V.E.: My Story of Overcoming Jigsaw." The problem? It's all a lie. A swindle. At a book signing, Jigsaw himself confronts Dagen, and as previously mentioned he does so while dressed like he just lost a rap battle behind a 7/11. So the absolute #1 most important thing you need to understand is that this is John Kramer trying to blend in with the crowd. Incognito. This man who has strung dozens of people up to unthinkably complex torture devices, this wanted serial killer, this master manipulator, felt he needed a low profile and borrowed the outfit Eminem wore to celebrate ten years of the song "Lose Yourself." No human being has ever had a higher profile than John Kramer in this moment. It would have been more subtle to slowly pedal into the room on the puppet tricycle.
But is it equally possible that this one scene illustrates the inner workings of John Kramer's mind better than anything else in the franchise? This is not the character's first questionable style decision. The poor guy reacted to his inoperable cancer diagnosis by literally getting "Down with the Sickness." Flashbacks in both Saw VI and Jigsaw confirmed he was casually rocking the brand of soul patch exclusive to thrash metal rhythm guitarists. By the time the law caught up with him in Saw II, he had worked in the red-velvet-lined hood preferred by Norwegian bands named after H.P. Lovecraft characters.
The point being, beyond the traps the story of Saw is synonymous with the tragedy of John Kramer, and you can almost chart the stages of his (ahem) spiral by how ill-advised his outfit has become. The constant, of course, is that the "cooler" the outfit, the sadder it looks on Kramer's dwindling frame. But we're seeing John Kramer as he sees himself; avenging angel, benevolent savior, metal af death god. The reason it also often looks so wrong is that when John emerged from the suicide attempt shown in Saw II, a large chunk of his humanity is gone, a missing puzzle piece he mistakes for a deep understanding of what makes humanity tick. His punishment = salvation thesis is the mark of a man who is no longer tuned in to the moral grey areas that separate people from animals. The antenna is bent, the frequency just scrambled enough to sound a little sane. And that, my friends, is why John Kramer shows up in Saw 3D dressed like the kid who sells weed at a Catholic high school. That is the outfit of a person who genuinely needs to take a second to ask themself: "What would a normal human male wear to fit in?" My dude probably even Googled it.
Or maybe Tobin Bell, a deeply talented performer who basically carried this franchise on his back for more than a decade, just felt like dressing down that day. Impossible to say. The only certainty when it comes to Aggressively Casual Jigsaw is that there is no understanding Aggressively Casual Jigsaw. It is the experience that matters. It's a test. It's not just that the Jigsaw Killer showed up in Saw 3D dressed like your mom's new boyfriend who keeps trying to sell you old Playboys. It's what the image tells you about yourself. Are you going to accept it as an odd costuming choice in a movie from 2010 and move on? Or are you going to write a truly unhinged amount of words about it for a pop culture website eleven years later? Make your choice.