Directed by: David Hackl
Starring: Tobin Bell, Betsy Russell, Costas Mandylor, Scott Gordon-Patterson
Continuity mistake: When Strahm looks at his phone while locked in the sick room, the signal bar is on the right and the battery signal on the left. When Hoffman plants Strahm's phone in his hideout to frame Strahm, the signal bar is now on the left and the battery on the right. (00:06:40)
Suggested correction: Battery is always on the right, signal is always on the left.
Visible crew/equipment: In the crushing room at the end of the film, Strahm is trying to open the box where Hoffman is. As it's descending into the ground, on the side of the box you can see the feet of a crew member with white sneakers moving around. It is not Strahm's feet: he's wearing black boots. No slow-mo is required.
Jigsaw: Hello Seth, I want to play a game. Right now, you are feeling helpless. This is the same helplessness you bestowed onto others. But now, it's unto you. Some would call this karma, I call it justice. Now you served five years of what should have been a life sentence, for murder. A technicality gave you freedom, but it inhibited you from understanding the impact of taking a life. Today, I offer you true freedom. In thirty seconds, the pendulum will drop far enough to touch your body. Within sixty seconds, it will cut you in half. To avoid the pendulum, all you have to do is destroy the things that have killed... Your hands. You must insert your hands and push the buttons to start the devices before you. Your bones will be crushed to dust. Will you destroy the things that have taken life in order to save one, Seth? Make your choice.
Trivia: Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the writers of both "Saw IV" and "Saw V", have a cameo in the flashback of Hoffman being kidnapped and meeting Jigsaw for the first time. When Hoffman is about to get on the elevator right before getting kidnapped, Dunstan is the second man to exit the elevator (he is in black and has a beard), right after the snobbish woman. Melton is the tall man who exits the elevator last before Hoffman enters.
Question: It's explained that Hoffman wanted to be the hero and that he expected that no one would make it out alive in the building after Rigg's game. How in the world could he have expected or even decided this? He had no control over others who won their game in the building, so therefore how on earth could he predict that Strahm would kill Jeff in the previous film? And was the water cube intended to kill Strahm as he was warned not to proceed?
Answer: The games of Jigsaw and his followers were always intended to be extremely difficult, but with a small chance for survival based on the actions of the player. Hoffman probably wouldn't have cared either day if anyone else survived, but likely anticipated that most of the others would die. (Strahm's line about everyone being supposed to die with Hoffman being the soul survivor was more conjecture than anything.) In terms of killing Jeff- both Jeff and Strahm were emotional hot-heads, so in all likelihood one or both was going to die if they encountered each other. Strahm's water cube was intended to be an execution tool for breaking the rules. That's why Hoffman seemed so shocked that he miraculously survived.
Answer: Best guess is the person in the mask at the end of the tunnel would've killed Jeff and kept Strahm for the water trap? We could also assume that Hoffman has the same characteristics as Amanda and made the water trap "unwinnable" and just forgot to take Strahm's pen out of his pocket. And if Strahm never proceeded in the operating room, he would've died of suffocation?