John Kramer has appeared in Horror RPG Series 3, Season 1.
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- Special Note: The events of the first five Saw films, as well as sections of the Saw: Rebirth comic and the flashbacks that were shown in Saw VI, are canon in this continuity while we are slightly remaking Saw VI for Series 3, as Saw VI was not out at the time this RPG was done. Some creative liberties have also been taken for storytelling purposes and to fill in some gaps. It is VERY VERY STRONGLY advised that you see all five of the Saw films before reading this wiki if you haven't, since this wiki contains major spoilers for all of the films. Proceed at your own risk.
John Kramer is the main and central character from the Saw film series and controlled by Jigsaw.
Character History[]
"Those who don't appreciate life do not deserve life." - John "Jigsaw" Kramer
Early Life[]
John Kramer was born on September 3rd, 1954 to a middle-class family somewhere in Boston, Massachusetts, John having been an only child. He did very well in school and was particularly skilled in arts and crafts. He excelled academically well into high school, graduating early. After graduating from college with degrees in engineering and design, Kramer moved to Los Angeles, California, where he lived his adult life as a successful civil engineer and toy designer for Standard Engineering Limited, in which he designed and created some of their most popular toys, along with numerous buildings and homes. His career as a civil engineer made him very successful in the real estate market, and he even authored a bestselling book on the career, entitled The Journal Of Civil Engineering.
John with his ex-wife Jill Tuck, sometime before she became pregnant with their son, Gideon.
At an unspecified date in the early 2000s, John became engaged to a woman named Jill Tuck, who ran a drug rehabilitation clinic for people with drug and substance abuse problems. Sometime during the Spring of 2003, Jill became pregnant from John was their first child, a boy they named Gideon, after the first building John owned that he also designed. Things were looking very optimistic for the Kramer Family, though John sometimes felt that Jill needed to be stronger at her job at the drug rehabilitation clinic she ran.
John showing Jill a clock with a 300-year old mechanism inside it inside his private workshop. He believes that time is just an illusion.
Tragedy[]
John waiting for Jill outside her clinic, completely unaware of the life-altering and tragic events that are about to unfold.
On a Fall night in 2003, John waited outside Jill's clinic, Homeward Bound, Jill wrapping up for the night. Jill by now was seven months pregnant with Gideon. As John waited, he encountered a prostitute trying to solicit him for sex, which he promptly declined and he advised her to go home, as she had a good life ahead of her. John continued to wait inside his car for Jill, when a commotion inside the clinic caught his attention.
A horrified John finding an injured Jill in her clinic's entryway.
John rushing the wounded Jill into the Angel Of Mercy hospital for emergency treatment, after her abdomen was crushed by Cecil Adams during a botched robbery of her clinic.
John found Jill injured in the entryway of her clinic, after being held up by Cecil Adams, a drug user and thief with a long history of disturbances and disruptions at Homeward Bound. Cecil had held Jill at knifepoint then rummaged through the clinic looking for drugs to use for himself, but as he escaped, he accidentally slammed a door onto the pregnant Jill, crushing and killing the unborn Gideon Kramer.
John providing comfort to a wounded and heartbroken Jill after the death of their unborn son.
John immediately rushed to get Jill delivered to the nearest hospital, which was Angel Of Mercy. Doctors rushed to treat her, but were unable to save Gideon. The death of Gideon caused John to withdraw into a deep depression and he became increasingly distant from Jill, becoming an emotionally numb and hollow shell of a man.
Sometime after Jill recovered from her injuries, John became more isolated and lonely. Jill would track John down to his workshop along with Art Blanc, John's lawyer and business associate who was his associate with the sales and rentals of homes John designed for low-income families in the Los Angeles area. John was so wracked with disgust and depression over the death of Gideon and Cecil's actions that he shunned both Art and Jill away, and refused to do anymore business with Art.
He later regretted his actions and went to Jill's apartment to speak with her, but Jill was so distraught and upset with John's emotional distance that she left him, sending John into an even deeper depression and making him hate the life he lived. He resumed his job at Standard Engineering Limited, designing toys and buildings, but he was never the same.
Rebirth[]
In March of 2004, began to feel extremely weak and ill, and eventually felt so sick he checked himself into Angel Of Mercy on March 16th, where Dr. Lawrence Gordon diagnosed him with a virulent strain of cancer which included an inoperable frontal lobe tumor. Kramer was informed that he had very little time left to live and that there was virtually nothing that could be done to save him. Feeling more depressed and hopeless than ever, Kramer stayed at the hospital, waiting for the inevitable. Until he met Zep Hindle.
Hindle worked as an orderly at the hospital, and Kramer befriended him, feeling comfort. Hindle then told Kramer of how wasteful a lot of people were with their lives that were at the hospital, and Hindle showed Kramer some people at the hospital. Kramer saw a con artist named Mark W. Rodriguez who pretended to be ill, a drug addict named Amanda Young who overdosed on heroin, not long after she had been framed and arrested by corrupt city detective Eric Matthews for a false drug charge and began using heroin after her prison term, and what really infuriated Kramer, Paul L. Stallberg, one of Kramer's co-workers with a successful career and family life but also a severe drinking problem, who slashed his wrists simply for attention. Furthermore, Kramer learned that Dr. Gordon was unfaithful to his wife, oblivious to his young daughter and valued his job more than his family.
John during his meeting with William Easton, being denied his healthcare coverage for his cancer.
Disgusted by what he saw, Kramer discharged himself from the hospital. He attempted to get himself some medical coverage from the Umbrella Insurance company, from a top executive there named William Easton, who had also been a sponsor at Jill's clinic. However, he was turned down due to William believing that it wasn't worth the time and money to pay for John's coverage due to the malignancy of his cancer. More disgusted and hopeless than ever with the way things were in his life, John attempted to commit suicide by crashing his car off of a cliff, which he miraculously survived, considering the magnitude of his wounds which included a large piece of shrapnel that pierced through one side of his abdomen. Kramer was amazed he survived such a close brush with death, and it was after surviving this incident that he felt reborn, and felt he had a mission to complete before his death: to teach ungrateful and spiteful people to appreciate and value their lives while they were still alive. He always held a belief that it was only when faced with death that someone realized how valuable life was, and this was a belief that was strengthened to an extreme and psychotic degree after his narrow survival of the car wreck.
"Live or die... make your choice."[]
John preparing his instructional tape for Cecil Adams, his first test subject and the murderer of his unborn son, Gideon.
After he underwent treatment for his injuries from the car wreck, Kramer went into hiding. Using his life insurance money from his job as both a toymaker and civil engineer he, obtained various supplies and began to construct gruesome contraptions that he would use to entrap his subjects to test them, to give them some sort of life-threatening challenge with a means of escape or success and given a limited time to complete their task, and in the event they survived, he hoped they would appreciate their lives more.
His strange puppet Billy was also given a new lease on life as Kramer's avatar. Billy evolved from an innocent doll design John designed for Gideon, but the design evolved into something far more sinister-looking. At one point while he still worked for SEL following Gideon's death and the break-up with Jill, John tried to convince SEL executives that Billy would be a good toy for children, but he was rejected by SEL for being "too scary" for children.
Using and combining his experience as a toymaker and with his self-education in physics and engineering, combined with extensive studying of torture devices, Kramer created his contraptions, making them ironic in some way so that the subject's trap and test mirrored the subject's flaws, and after spending the remainder of 2004 perfecting his craft, he was ready to embark on his mission. His first test subject would be the man who was the cause of John and Jill's misery in their lives: Cecil Adams.
John on the prowl for Cecil Adams at a Chinese New Year celebration.
On February 9th of 2005, John traced the whereabouts of Cecil to a Chinese New Year Festival, which was celebrating the Year Of The Rooster, but also had sections for the other animals of the Chinese Zodiac, and Cecil happened to stumble into the section for the Year Of The Pig, an animal that symbolically meant a lot to John. John kept his cover low as he tracked Cecil, having chloroform ready for the murderous deviant.
A disguised John rendering Cecil unconscious and hauling him away to his workshop.
John, wearing a pig mask for a disguise he found at the festival and using a spare pig mask to conceal the chloroform-soaked gauze to subdue Cecil, located Cecil and didn't hesitate in tranquilizing him. After doing so, John, admist a crowd that managed to overlook his very obvious criminal activities in broad daylight, hauled Cecil to his secret workshop and prepared him for his test.
Cecil in his Knife Chair trap, being addressed by John.
Cecil awoke to find himself bound to a wooden chair with metal and bladed restraints cutting into his wrists and causing him to lose large quantities of blood. Cecil, horrified at the pain and situation he was in and realizing who John was, apologized for killing Gideon and begged to be let go.
John forgave Cecil for his actions, feeling that vengeance was a waste of emotions and would corrupt one's soul, but he refused to let Cecil go, believing he would learn nothing if he were simply released. A rebellious Cecil didn't hide his contempt for John, but it didn't spare him from what John was about to do.
John setting the knife-rigged headgear for Cecil's test.
John set the Knife Chair's headgear in place, the headgear being a device that operated on the pressure that was applied to it, and rigged to the pressure beams were a series of sharp butcher knives. The headgear itself was also connected to Cecil's bladed wrist restraints. To escape, Cecil would have to press his face hard against the knives and apply enough pressure to release himself from his arm and leg restraints. The metaphor of the trap was to match the ugliness and corruption of Cecil's soul from the inside and scar it onto the outside.
Cecil, enduring much agony and blood loss, tried to pass his test, but the chair broke before he could properly pass it. Enraged, a wounded Cecil charged at John, only to be caught in a nearby entanglement of razor wire that caused him to bleed to death. Cecil's demise in the Razor Wire gave him inspiration for a future contraption he would ultimately employ for Paul Stallberg.
"What's happened to me?"[]
John confronted by an alarmed Jill about Cecil's disappearance.
Sometime not overly long after Cecil's demise (which was unknown by the authorities for a long time), Jill returned to John's workshop, feeling bad for having cursed John out and wanting to make amends with him. She was horrified to discover photographs of Cecil Adams in his workshop along with what looked like contraptions and torture devices.
John, in a fit of rage, destroying his clock with a 300-year old mechanism.
John claimed that had taught Cecil not to take life for granted, which made Jill even more suspicious. When asked what happened to him following the car wreck, John exploded in a fit of rage and destroyed his clock with a 300-year old mechanism. He warned Jill never to come back, as he felt he had more important obligations for his future in the short time he had left to live.
Perfecting The Craft[]
John had disposed of Cecil's body after his demise along with some discarded instructional tapes he made for Cecil's game that he never got around to using, including one using his Billy puppet for the first time. John was somewhat dissatisfied with the results of the first Billy tape and didn't use it for that time, but it wouldn't be much longer before he improved Billy's mechanics and perfected him.
John, feeling that the lack of a will to survive the life-threatening situations he thrusted his subjects into was a missing piece of what he believed to be a human puzzle, had also carved out a jigsaw-shaped piece of flesh from Cecil's corpse. The murder made headlines after Cecil's corpse and the tapes were discovered, and it was during this time that the police and the media coined the nickname "Jigsaw," for the jigsaw piece. Little did John know that his work would catch the attention of a corrupt Los Angeles detective who would use John's MO for all the wrong reasons.
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."[]
John read in the newspapers that someone had employed his MO and used it to brutally murder a recently-released murderer named Seth Baxter, responsible for the murder of the sister of LAPD Forensic Detective Mark Hoffman. Baxter was killed by a pendulum device that swung down and killed him by cleaving him apart through his mid-section. Baxter was killed, even though he did what his trap required him to do, which was to crush his hands to stop the pendulum from reaching him.
John, suspecting Hoffman had copied his MO, spent some time tracing the crooked detective, and it wasn't long before he found him. John traced Hoffman to an old Downtown L.A. apartment building, and with a sedative ready, he rendered the detective unconscious inside an elevator and hauled him to his workshop, where he was restrained to a chair. John awaited his awakening to address him.
"Everybody deserves a chance!"[]
Hoffman awoke to find himself confronted by a very displeased John over the copying of his MO for Seth Baxter's torture-murder, accusing Hoffman of not fully understanding John's philosophy and intentions with his work. Hoffman believed Baxter didn't deserve a chance for what he did to his sister, but John insisted that everybody deserved a chance at life, and that there was a better and more efficient way to help people to improve.
John threatened to expose Hoffman to the LAPD if he refused to co-operate, and Hoffman, knowing he was being blackmailed, reluctantly agreed to help John, who viewed the situation not as blackmail, but redemption for the error of Hoffman's way. As the Spring of 2005 approached, John took Hoffman under his wing and had his assistance for his next tests. John, spending a number of weeks monitoring Amanda Young, Paul Stallberg and Mark Rodriguez, as well as designing and constructing their contraptions, would first have assistance from Hoffman with Paul Stallberg's test. Disguised in their pig masks and black clothing, the duo traced Stallberg's whereabouts to a seedy part of Downtown Los Angeles, where they found him inside his car drinking and attempting to mutilate his wrists with broken glass from the bottle he drank out of.
Paul saw the suspicious activity near his car and got out to fight with the pig-masked John and Hoffman, the duo eventually subduing him after he had put up a good fight. John and Hoffman hauled Paul's body off to a nearby abandoned industrial building with a basement where the two had already set up Paul's trap a few days earlier, a cage full of long lines and entanglements of razor wire, John having been inspired by Cecil's demise for the trap.
John setting the timer for three hours for Paul Stallberg's test.
Paul's test required him to tunnel his way through the razor wire within three hours. If he failed to do so by then, the door to the basement would slam shut and he would have no means of escape. After setting the unconscious Paul inside his trap and setting the timer that was also connected to the basement door, John went to a nearby room in the basement with Hoffman to watch Paul's ultimately unsuccessful escape attempt; he later died of massive blood loss from being entangled in the razor wire.
John discussing his philosophy and views on rehabilitation with Hoffman, as they watch Paul Stallberg's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to survive his trap in a room connected to the basement.
John and Hoffman's next subject would be Mark Rodriguez, a software analyst and part-time con artist whom John had seen at Angel Of Mercy during his stay when he'd been diagnosed. John and Hoffman abducted Rodriguez, injected him with a toxin and placed him in his trap, a dank room with broken glass strewn all over the floors and a locked safe, the antitode to cure him inside the safe and the combination written on the wall somewhere that had countless numbers written all over it. Rodriguez too would fail his test, having burned to death after the candle he was given to help him locate the combination came into contact with the flammable gel substance smeared over his naked body.
Jigsaw painting his new Billy puppet, shortly before Amanda's first test.
At the scene of Rodriguez's death, Hoffman planted a penlight that John had swiped from Angel Of Mercy during his stay, Hoffman given the penlight during Paul's test. John had plans to eventually test Dr. Lawrence Gordon, the doctor to whom the penlight belonged to, and the penlight was to implicate him. John was growing frustrated with his subjects, who so far, had all failed to pass their tests. It wasn't until his next subject that John not only had a survivor, but another follower and disciple.
Amanda Young[]
Jigsaw setting Amanda in the Jaw Splitter.
John learned that Amanda was continuing to abuse drugs, despite a long stint in rehab after overdosing on heroin. With help from Hoffman, he traced Amanda to an alleyway, where she was paying her heroin dealer some money for a batch of fresh heroin. John and Hoffman both moved in to kidnap Amanda and her heroin dealer, using chloroform to render them both unconscious.
Another view of Jigsaw setting Amanda in the Jaw Splitter.
John and Hoffman brought Amanda and her heroin dealer to a nearby and abandoned apartment complex, inside one of the lower storage rooms. John got to work on his new Billy puppet, his older one having fallen apart, while Hoffman bound Amanda's wrists to an armchair inside the storage room and set the lights and television set for her, and he also set her heroin dealer in place. He then injected the dealer with an overdose of opium, which would make him unable to move or feel anything, and give the illusion of being dead to Amanda.
Jigsaw painting a large black question mark onto the abdomen of Amanda's unconscious heroin dealer for her first test, her dealer with her trap's key to free her inside his stomach.
Kramer fitted a lethal head contraption called the Jaw Splitter around Amanda's head, the Jaw Splitter's look a bizarre fusion of headphones and a bear trap, and the Jaw Splitter even functioned like a reverse bear trap, violently springing backwards to shred apart the jaws and mouth of whoever is wearing it.
Jigsaw checking to see the Jaw Splitter hooked properly to Amanda's jaws before her first test.
Amanda eventually awoke and learned of her predicament from a nearby television set, where Billy informed Amanda of her task and that once she was free of her restraints, the timer on the Jaw Splitter would activate and she'd only have a minute to retrieve the key to unlock the device from the stomach of her "dead cell mate," her heroin dealer. Using a scalpel nearby the man's body, Amanda began to hack and slice into his abdomen, too late to stop when he awoke from the opium as she began to cut into him, digging through his innards and eventually finding the key in his stomach, unlocking the Jaw Splitter in the nick of time as it went off. Amanda was terrified and traumatized by her ordeal, and almost immediately after she barely survived, Billy rode into the room on his tricycle, Kramer using Billy to congratulate Amanda on her survival and how grateful she was to still be alive.
John and Hoffman had watched Amanda's ordeal from a nearby room, and after she fled the scene, they collected the Jaw Splitter, John's work materials, Billy and his tricycle, not wanting to leave any evidence behind. They had both watched the ordeal from a nearby room, and John had been impressed with Amanda's willpower to live, Amanda being the first to pass any of his tests. He saw something in her, and had a feeling she would make a worthy disciple.
The New Apprentice[]
Jigsaw caught by Tapp and Sing.
Amanda left the place she was held captive in, and then gave her testimony to Detective David Tapp, who was heading the investigation into the series of murders by the then-unknown Kramer Amanda gave her emotional testimony, telling Detective Tapp how Jigsaw helped her to survive with the information his puppet had given her. After her testimony, Amanda met with Kramer for the first time in person, Kramer having traced her apartment after Hoffman found it for him. Kramer used his expert mind control to convince Amanda to be his disciple, assisting him with his work and being the one to succeed him when he eventually died from his cancer. She cut her hair shorter and accepted her duty.
Jigsaw in his corpse garb before the start of the bathroom trap.
Amanda proved to be a tending and caring person, caring for John after an unauthorized raid on his warehouse hideout at 213 Stygian Street from Detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing nearly exposed John and also wounded him with a shotgun blast in the leg. The Jigsaw Trio relocated to an old and inoperational steel mill in Downtown L.A.'s industrial district to continue their plans after John recovered from his gunshot leg. Despite his seperation from Jill, the two secretly kept in touch overtime, Jill always disapproving of John's methods, but understanding him and seeing him on occasion out of her love for him.
Over next five months, Amanda assisted both John and Hoffman in in setting up a game, which finally occurred towards the end of October 2005. abducting a nosy amateur photographer named Adam Faulkner while Hoffman abducted Dr. Lawrence Gordon in an underground hotel parking lot. Amanda brought Adam over to a decrepit bathroom deep in the city sewers, where Gordon had already been brought over by Hoffman earlier.
Jigsaw pouring a puddle of poisoned stage blood in the center of the bathroom, shortly before the start of the bathroom trap.
Gordon and Faulkner were chained via manacles on opposite sides of the room and Kramer would pose as a corpse with a gunshot wound to the head, using a muscle relaxant to help him remain dead-still on a puddle of poisoned blood.
Jigsaw giving himself a muscle relaxant before the start of the bathroom trap.
Let The Game Begin[]
Shortly after Amanda left the bathroom and killed the lights, Adam and Dr. Gordon both awoke, learning of their predicaments from cassette tapes given to them. The game was primarily Gordon's, who's aim was to kill Adam by six on the clock to save his family, otherwise Gordon's family would die.
The main method to accomplish this was for Gordon to saw his foot off using one of his two hacksaws Faulkner found in the toilet tank to saw off his foot, then retrieve a .357 Magnum from the "corpse's" hand and load it with a bullet Gordon had been given in his envelope, shooting Adam dead. Gordon eventually did this upon running out of time and after the two failed to find non-lethal alternatives.
Around this time, Zep Hindle, the hospital orderly that had befriended Kramer, had now been put through a test of his own to see if he appreciated his own life, when Hoffman went for him during the same time Amanda went for Adam.
Jigsaw posing as a corpse during the bathroom trap.
His task was to hold Gordon's wife and daughter captive, and monitor the game's progress from a hidden camera installed in a two-way mirror in the bathroom, the mirror eventually broken. Hindle had been injected with a poison, and if Gordon failed to complete his task, Hindle would be required to kill Gordon's family to save himself.
Around this time Detective Tapp came to the rescue of Gordon's family, Tapp having suspected Gordon of being Jigsaw after the doctor's penlight was found at the murder scene of Mark Rodriguez, Hoffman having planted the penlight. Gordon was present at Amanda's testimony and he was let free after his alibi held up, but Tapp was still suspicious of Gordon, obsessively spying on him from across the Gordon Family's apartment across the street.
He was somehow convinced Gordon was Jigsaw and determined to prove it after Tapp's partner, Steven Sing, was killed after the detectives intruded into Jigsaw's lair, Sing unwittingly walking into a Shotgun Rig trap that killed him instantly after he gave chase to Jigsaw, who had wounded Tapp during a confrontation.
"GAME OVER!"[]
As Zep was ready to kill Gordon's family after Gordon failed to kill Adam in time, he gave Gordon's wife Alison a cell phone to speak with her husband, who also had a cell phone he found in the bathroom inside a metal box hidden in a crevice. After telling Gordon he failed at Zep's request, Alison broke free of her bonds and attacked Zep, holding him at gunpoint with his own gun, as she spoke to Gordon and tried to pinpoint his location, but Zep soon began to fight with Alison and gunshots, getting Detective Tapp's attention as he rushed over to the Gordon residence and chased Hindle into the sewers, the injured Zep limping to the sewer bathroom when he fought with Tapp some more, eventually killing him with a gunshot.
Zep made his way to the bathroom, seeing Gordon with his self-amputated foot, ready to finish off Gordon, who was enraged upon learning Zep held his family hostage after identifying him from photographs Adam had taken that were placed inside a trash bag inside the toilet tank with the hacksaws. As Zep was ready to shoot Gordon dead, Adam suddenly sprung up and pounced on Zep, Adam only wounded by Gordon's gunshot, as he beat Zep to death with a toilet tank lid.
Gordon crawled out of the bathroom and assured Adam he would return to get him help, and after Gordon crawled out of the bathroom into the sewer tunnels, Adam searched Hindle's corpse for the key to unlock his manacle restraint, and found a tape player. Puzzled, he played the tape and learned that Zep was a pawn of Jigsaw, who they thought Zep was. Suddenly, the "corpse" in the room rose up, revealing the true Jigsaw, John Kramer leaving Adam to die in the bathroom after he closed him in when Adam tried to grab Hindle's gun and shoot Kramer/Jigsaw. Gordon would never get Adam help, for police had been unable to locate the bathroom after finding an unconscious and nearly-dead Gordon in the streets when he crawled out of a manhole.
Shortly after Kramer left Adam to die, Amanda felt terrible about having to abduct Adam and how Kramer had left him to die of starvation, Adam having done nothing wrong in her mind to deserve his fate, and she entered the bathroom. Adam remained there, bleeding from his gunshot wound and in pain, the only key to unlock his manacle having gone down the bathtub's drain. Amanda then tightly wrapped a clear sheet of plastic wrap over his face and suffocated him to death, crying with guilt and remorse as he died but not wanting him to suffer. Adam eventually expired and Amanda left the bathroom, ready to continue serving Kramer and Hoffman.
The Games Continue[]
Several months later in April 2006, Kramer, Amanda and Hoffman went to work again when Detective Eric Matthews was in the news for his unlawful conduct and abuse of power. Hoffman had suggested to test Eric, following charges of disorderly conduct and evidence-tampering for the once-decorated detective. Amanda carried a deep hatred and vendetta against Matthews for him framing and arresting her for a drug charge she wasn't guilty of and her losing so much of her life in prison because of his ignorance. Kramer understood Amanda's pain and knew Matthews needed to be taught a lesson.
Kramer, Amanda and Hoffman hatched a plan to kidnap all of the people Matthews had framed and wrongfully imprisoned, and would get Matthews to play the game by abducting his teenage son Daniel, who had problems of his own as he had recently been caught stealing. Amanda would abduct Daniel, while Hoffman got the other males and one of the test subjects, Obadiah "Obi" Tate, would kidnap the females. Amanda would also go along with the plan by pretending to be a player/victim of Jigsaw's game once again, and all of the players would have to play Jigsaw's games in a derelict and decrepit house that had been under John's ownership. One of the subjects had been a stripper and prostitute named Addison Corday, whom John had seen shortly before the death of Gideon, trying to solicit him for sex.
John present inside the Traphouse's starting room, having a tremendous amount of help from Amanda and Hoffman in staging the traps and games inside the old house.
The house, nicknamed the Traphouse by the trio, was rigged with more deadly traps, ranging from furnaces, pits filled with syringes, gun rigs mounted to door eyeholes and glass boxes fitted with razor-streaked arm slits. Amanda, Hoffman and Obi returned with the subjects, but Obi had been unable to identify either Amanda or Hoffman, both of whom were disguised in their pig masks. After applying a few finishing touches, the plan was set, everything was perfect, they just needed to get the attention of Matthews.
They would get his attention after Matthews was called in to identify Jigsaw's latest victim, an informant named Michael, who had been an informant for Matthews, helping him to frame and arrest his "enemies." Michael had been killed with a hideous head contraption known as a Venus Flytrap Death Mask, with a crude mask fitted with rusty spikes on the inside, and if Michael failed to extract the key from his eye (where it was hidden), the mask would close in on his head, killing him. Michael failed to retrieve the key and was killed. At the crime scene, Matthews was called in to identify Michael, and did so by noting a tattoo on Michael's leg. A message had been left for Matthews at the crime scene as well; Look closer, Detective Matthews...
"I want to play a game..."[]
John during his apprehension and during Eric Matthews' test.
Enraged by his son's life being endangered, Matthews angrily confronted Jigsaw. Jigsaw told Matthews that if he wanted Daniel to survive, he'd have to give him some of his time and play a game. The rules were simple: all he had to do was sit and talk with Jigsaw and after two hours he would find Daniel in a "safe and secure state." Jigsaw introduced himself by his real name, John, and told Matthews of how he viewed most people as being ungrateful and unappreciative of life and how most people don't have the will to survive. He also stated how he felt that it was his mission to test people to help them appreciate their lives more. Kramer frequently mentally tormented Matthews by reflecting on his crooked, troublesome past and his less-than-stable relationship with Daniel, who had left to be with Matthews' divorced wife after an argument following Daniel's release from custody after he stole some materials.
As Kramer went on with his twisted philosophy, more of the prisoners in the house began dying in gruesome ways. After some time, Matthews had had enough and began going mad, destroying Kramer's work and threatening him with violence if Daniel suffered any harm. As time was running out, Matthews lost all control and reasoning and began to violently beat Kramer, already terribly weak from the cancer eating away at him inside. Kramer finally agreed to take Matthews to the house, in fear of his life after Matthews viciously broke his finger and delivered some fierce blows to him. Matthews took Kramer prisoner and using a crew van, drove to the house.
Race Against Time[]
As Matthews desperately drove to the house, hoping Daniel would be alive, Daniel struggled to survive with the help of Amanda as they fled from Xavier, a drug dealer with a violent, confrontational temper who had already killed one other player and left another to die, and nearly killed Amanda when he threw her into his trap: a pit filled with thousands of syringes. Desperate to get the combination to a safe containing one of the antitodes to help counter the nerve agent by getting numbers written on the back on each player's neck, Xavier pursued Amanda and Daniel into the sewers, where they eventually found refuge in the bathroom where John had imprisoned Adam and Dr. Gordon. The decomposed corpses of Adam and Zep were inside the bathroom along with the severed foot of Dr. Gordon.
Xavier eventually found the bathroom, and in a desperate attempt, sliced a piece of skin off from the back of his neck with his number, and as he was about to kill Amanda, Daniel arose from the ground, slumping after nearly passing out from the nerve agent. Using the hacksaw Dr. Gordon used to saw his foot off, Daniel sliced Xavier across the throat, and Xavier soon expired. Daniel had killed a man in a desperate final attempt to survive, he simply couldn't believe it.
As Matthews had finally made his way into the house and followed a trail he hoped would lead him to Daniel, alive and well, Kerry and the rest of the crew at Kramer's lair learned the horrifying truth: the footage on the video monitors wasn't live but in fact had been pre-recorded hours earlier. The SWAT operatives who had stormed into a derelict house learned this as well when they realized they were in the wrong house. At the same time, the time on the clock finally ran out and a safe box in John's lair slowly creaked open... revealing Daniel Matthews, bound and wearing an oxygen mask to help him breathe. If only Matthews had been patient and played the game like he was supposed to...
"We both know the sort of person you are..."[]
Matthews eventually came across the bathroom, now darkened, with the freshly slain corpse of his one-time "nemesis" Xavier Chavez drenched in blood from his throat wound and the decayed corpses of Adam and Zep. As he approached the bathtub in the foul-smelling bathroom, a figure wearing a hideous pig mask stabbed Matthews in the leg with a syringe and injected him with a sedative. Matthews went unconscious, and later awoke, and with a tape player left for him, learned that Amanda had been in on the game all along and was Kramer's disciple and would continue his work after he eventually died from the cancer. Amanda slid the bathroom door shut as Matthews screamed in terror and frustration, as he would be left to rot. As Matthews struggled to escape, he located the toilet tank lid and started to smash his foot. After he broke the bones in his ankle then his twisted and broke his ankle, Matthews escaped from his chain and he fought with Amanda in one of the tunnels before he was abandoned by her.
After leaving Matthews, Amanda located the badly battered and wounded Kramer, left in the van Matthews drove on his way to the house. Amanda, claiming that Matthews was inside the bathroom, drove the van and made her way to another hideout she, Kramer and Hoffman had made at Kramer's old Gideon Meat Packing Plant, filled with more of their contraptions and designs. Using the medical equipment in the warehouse, Amanda treated Kramer's injuries. As Kramer recovered, Amanda assist John and Hoffman more with their work. Amanda didn't do her work quite like Kramer had hoped however, when Hoffman reported finding a battered Eric Matthews alive in the sewer tunnels, contrary to what Amanda told Kramer before. Furthermore, Amanda's unstable emotional nature continuously affected her judgment and decisions as she assisted both John and Hoffman. John, still believing in her, gave her another chance, much to the dismay of Hoffman, who never kept his disliking of her a secret.
In the months between April 2006 and October 2006, John spent much time planning out two seperate games with Amanda and Hoffman respectively, with one of the games being kept a very careful secret from Amanda, as John was beginning to question her reliability in being his successor. John had gone over with Hoffman games to test his former lawyer Art Blanc as well as SWAT Commander Daniel Robert Rigg, with Eric Matthews being a pawn in Rigg's game. John and Hoffman kept Art and Rigg's test a secret from Amanda, as they wanted to see how she'd fare on her own as an apprentice. Unfortunately, she didn't quite meet John's expectations, when just two weeks after Art's test, she carried out two tests of her own. John had been told by Hoffman that used her traps to get revenge on enemies of her's, instead of using them to help her subjects appreciate life more.
Her victims were Troy LaRose, a repeat prison offender who had brutally raped her after she refused to pay him for drugs, not long before Eric had her arrested and framed; and Detective Allison Kerry, who helped Eric get away with his misconduct after he had her framed. Hoffman claimed that Amanda made both Troy and Kerry's traps excruciatingly painful and made them unwinnable, even if they did what their tasks required. Both Troy and Kerry died horrible deaths in their traps. Upon learning of Amanda's vengeance, John decided to secretly re-test her.
"This was your test, your game."[]
Jigsaw on his death bed.
John's test for Amanda would involve a divorced couple, Jeffrey and Lynn Denlon. Jeff and Lynn had divorced sometime after Jeff's son Dylan had been killed in an automobile accident. The person responsible for the death of his son, Timothy Young (unrelated to Amanda), had gotten off scot-free and was found not guilty at his trial, which enraged Jeff. Jeff became obsessed with getting revenge against Timothy and Judge Barry Halden, the judge who had let Timothy get away. Jeff's obsession with vengeance hurt his relationship with Lynn, the two divorcing. Jeff retained custody of their one remaining child, their daughter Corbett.
Jeff would be tested, his test involving him having to forgive the three people connected with his son's death, and Jeff having the choice whether to forgive his enemies and free them from their traps, or hate them and let them die horrible deaths. The subjects for Jeff's test included Danica Scott, a passing motorist who witnessed Dylan's death but didn't come forward to help Jeff at the trial; Danica's trap involved her being stripped completely naked and chained inside a freezer room with sprinklers spraying cold water all over her. Judge Halden would also be tested, his trap being a meat grinding silo with dozens of rotted pig carcasses. To free Judge Halden, Jeff would have to incinerate Dylan's toys inside a furnace to get the key to free the judge, drowning in liquefied pig innards. The third and last subject would be Timothy Young, strapped to a large device that was John's personal favorite, The Rack. The Rack resembled a crucifix and would slowly twist Timothy's limbs before twisting his head to death. It was during the set-up of The Rack trap that John began to worry about Hoffman being trustworthy, seeing his careless handling of Timothy and seemingly intentionally getting the device's gears wrong during the set-up, prompting him to question Hoffman and if he liked how brutality felt against a human being. After the set-up of The Rack, John met with Jill at Gideon for the final time, providing her with a key for a box with very important materials inside it that John had in mind for another game of his, what was perhaps his most grand one, yet.
Hoffman had abducted Jeff, Corbett and Jeff's three enemies just the day before, and John had also carefully gone over the details of Rigg's test with Hoffman. Rigg's test would be extremely complex, testing the SWAT Commander's urgency to rush into situations to save as many people as he could against his better judgment. It would also involve an FBI Agent named Peter Strahm, who had a tendency to be extremely pushy and abrasive with his methods. The tests would all intertwine in an extremely complex fashion, and they were planned out very carefully to ensure Amanda didn't know of them, which in turn would also lead her to learn about Eric Matthews' status.
After the details had been finalized, the game was almost set to begin. John left behind some additional clue cards for both Jeff and Rigg, and also recorded a goodbye tape for Jill that included his last will and testament for her, inside the same box with various items intended for her. John, closer to death than ever and now on his death bed, had also written a letter for Amanda that he forgot to put in a desk for her to find, and he asked Hoffman to do it for him, which Hoffman agreed to. The letter told Amanda that John loved her like a daughter and offered her a chance to stop assisting him and Hoffman with their work if she wanted, after Jeff and Lynn's tests were finished. Hoffman would be a decoy in the trap he would "share" with Eric in an entirely different section of Gideon, while Amanda would be occupied keeping a close eye on Jeff and Lynn's progress, ensuring that she wouldn't stumble onto Rigg's test, as well as find out about the plans to test Agent Strahm.
Jeff's test was set, and John had been careful to keep Jeff and Lynn's relations a secret from Amanda. Amanda had kidnapped Lynn and rigged a trap around her neck, the Shotgun Collar, a metal collar fitted with shotgun shells around it. The Shotgun Collar was an electronic-operating device, linked to John's heart rate and if Lynn stepped out of the thirty-foot range programmed into the collar or if John's heart rate flatlined, the collar would activate and the shells would obliterate her head. Lynn would have to keep John alive, but little did Amanda know was that the test was to see if she could keep Lynn alive and prove herself as being worthy of being John's successor. Amanda's boiling feelings of anger and vengeance, as well as her unstable emotional nature that frequently interfered with her judgment with her work, prompted John to test her once more to see if she would pass.
Backdoor Brain Surgery[]
Jigsaw convulsing and nearly flatlining.
While the tests all went into motion on the night of October 21st, 2006, John had become so gravely ill that he needed to undergo an emergency brain surgery, after suffering a severe seizure. Amanda flatly refused to bring John into any hospitals for fear of both of them getting caught and Hoffman's cover being blown, so Dr. Denlon had no choice but to use the tools available to her to operate on John for his brain surgery.
Lynn preparing to perform a makeshift brain operation on Jigsaw.
John still had all of the tests on his mind as he was prepared to undergo the brain operation, but he felt the strongest and closest emotional connection to Amanda, something he felt he was lacking with the more reliable and understanding Hoffman. Over time, Amanda became like a daughter to him, the child he never had after losing Gideon. It was quite a nerve-wracking experience for both John and Amanda, as the brain surgery finally went underway, with John conscious during the entire procedure, though unable to feel pain due to the anesthetic Lynn had given him.
Lynn ready to perform a makeshift brain operation on Jigsaw.
Jigsaw having a part of his skull removed by Dr. Denlon during a makeshift brain surgery to relieve pressure on his skull from his tumor.
John nearly passed out at one point from the brain surgery, sending Amanda into a panic. As Lynn tried to revive him, he had a vision of Jill, being reminded of much happier times in his currently miserable life. He became so indulged in the vision that he blurted out "I love you" as he grabbed onto Lynn, prompting Amanda to think he favored Lynn over her.
"I wanted you to succeed... but you couldn't."[]
After recovering from the brain surgery, John continued to mentally push Amanda to see how well she could cope independently under emotional stress and if she could follow his rules. Amanda showed no signs of improvement and grew gradually more unstable and volatile as the tests went on. Before pushing Amanda further to the brink of her emotional edge, John also did a fair bit of mental and emotional toying with Lynn, and it was shortly before his last conversation with Amanda that he swallowed a tape he had in mind for Hoffman to find later, since John knew he himself wouldn't last long and was anticipating his own demise.
John covering his tape for Hoffman in candle wax. He swallowed the tape immediately afterwards.
Amanda had felt guilty for the physical and emotional agony Jeff was enduring and that his daughter was also endangered, locked her up inside a room in Gideon with a limited supply of oxygen. Amanda hated that an innocent child was in danger, but she felt too powerless to stand up to John. She had been hoping that Jeff would succeed and pass his tests, but it was terribly evident that he wouldn't; Danica had frozen to death, Judge Halden had been freed from the Pig Vat trap but was killed by a shotgun rig in Timothy's trap room, and Timothy had been twisted to death in The Rack. Jeff's failure to pass his test and change for the better, combined with Lynn being seemingly ungrateful for her own life and not always being attentive to her job, pushed Amanda's emotions over the deep end. And having seen Xavier Chavez become an even worse individual during the Traphouse ordeal and Eric Matthews being the same angry and violent person that he always was, Amanda was beginning to feel that John's tests didn't help anyone and didn't change anyone for the better.
When John asked Amanda to remove Lynn's collar as Jeff nearly completed his tests, she flatly refused, toting a pistol and holding the terrified Lynn at gunpoint. Amanda exploded into a violent and confrontational rage with both Lynn and John, the latter of whom she felt had been ungrateful for what she had been doing for him and only cared for her for what she could do for him. John warned Amanda to keep herself in check, but Amanda was too unstable by this point.
Amanda shot Lynn in the back, when Jeff suddenly entered the scene. Amanda was in utter shock and horror as the man she sympathized with and hoped would pass his test so she could re-unite him with his daughter was shot in the left side of her neck with a pistol John had left for him, much blood spilling out. Amanda was in so much shock and pain she couldn't even speak coherently. It was then that John revealed to her that she was being tested all along, her will to follow rules and keep someone alive being tested. Amanda was shocked, but before she could do anything, she passed out from the pain and blood loss. "Game Over." John said, Amanda's body falling unconscious, seemingly dead. Unknown to John, Jeff and Lynn however, Amanda just fell unconscious from the shock and pain, her body struggling to stay alive.
"I was your final test of forgiveness..."[]
Jeff raising a skilsaw to slash John's throat - completely unaware of what's in store after the fact.
Jeff saw his beloved Lynn, having seen her wound. He tried to console her, then confronted John, who encouraged him to forgive him instead of seeking vengeance. Jeff instead took a hold of a nearby skilsaw and sawed John's throat wide open, much blood spraying and spilling out. "I forgive you." Jeff hissed at John, when a nearby heart monitor flatlined. A small silver tape player then fell out of John's grasp for Jeff to play, right before John finished flatlining.
The doors in the meat plant hideout John and Amanda had used as their base of operations slammed shut and trapped Jeff inside, the signal linked to John's heart rate. Lynn's Shotgun Collar trap had activated, a thunderous blast of shotgun shells completely decimating her head. Jeff started going mental upon witnessing Lynn's gruesome demise right in front of him. He gathered bits and fragments of what little was left of her head, and played John's "insurance policy" tape for him;
"Hello, Jeff. I made this tape as an insurance policy, if you will. And if you're listening to it, then it's time to collect. I was your final test of forgiveness and if you're listening to this, then you've failed. Now you must pay the price. The price for holding onto to all that anger, the price of driving your own wife away from you, the price of living for nothing but vengeance. Now I will give you something to live for. I told you that you couldn't kill me, Jeff, but I didn't tell you why. The answer is simple: *I* am the person responsible for the loss of your child. I am the only person who knows where your daughter is. She only has a limited supply of air, Jeff, and if you want to get her back... you'll have to play a game."
John's toe tag, with his date of death.
Jeff screamed and wailed upon realizing the terrible mistake he had made, realizing Corbett's fate was in jeopardy due to his decisions. Shortly after Jeff heard his message, Agent Strahm found his way to the infirmary and entered. Strahm shot Jeff dead upon seeing him frantically toting a pistol, and as Strahm surveyed the scene, he was locked inside the infirmary, with the corpses of John, Jeff and Lynn, as well as Amanda's unconscious body.
The Game Isn't Over[]
Agent Strahm hearing Jigsaw's warning message for him, inside the infirmary with Jigsaw's corpse.
Strahm tried to futilely find a way out of the infirmary, with no luck. He failed to get a signal on his cell phone, but he then uncovered a hidden door inside the infirmary, and found a tape player with a tape for him. The tape informed him that he would die in the room if he made the wrong choice, but he disregarded the message and continued down the passageway.
John's corpse inside the Los Angeles County Morgue, awaiting an autopsy.
From there, John could only presume that Hoffman went along with setting up Strahm in his trap like the plan was in the event the outcome for Jeff wasn't positive. Sometime later, the LAPD arrived at Gideon and cleared it of the corpses that littered it, and John's corpse was hauled off to the Los Angeles County Morgue inside the Angel Of Mercy Hospital, and two days later, was set for an autopsy.
"I promise that my work will continue..."[]
The coroners at the L.A. County Morgue got to work on performing the autopsy on John's body, going about with the usual procedure. As the autopsy went on, the lead pathologist, Dr. Heffner, uncovered something shocking upon checking John's stomach contents: a wax-encased micro-cassette tape. The very same tape John swallowed just moments before his demise.
John's corpse being dissected by the lead coroner, Dr. Heffner.
Hoffman called to the scene to hear the tape found in John's stomach - a tape with a subtle warning message directed against Hoffman himself.
Detective Hoffman, having survived his ordeal in Gideon, was called in to listen to the tape after the wax was broken loose from it. A shocked Hoffman learned from the tape that John's work would continue and the games had just begun, even though he was dead. Hoffman knew in his heart that the tape's message had been for him, warning him that he wouldn't walk away untested, John not having fully trusted him to carry on his life's work.
Role in Horror RPG Series 3, Season One[]
Second Rebirth[]
John awoke a few days after his demise to find himself somehow alive again and while still feeling ill, not feeling it quite as badly as he did in the previous months, feeling more mobile and physically proactive. John found himself inside a lab and realized he somehow had been cloned. He escaped from the lab and headed for the industrial district of Downtown Los Angeles, where he found the old and derelict sewage treatment plant where the underground tunnels leading to the underground bathroom were nearby. John went down below into the tunnels and eventually settled on a generator room as his new hideout and residence. Ever so convicted in his beliefs and his work, John wasted no time in not only getting back to his tests, but gaining an entirely new apprentice to help continue his legacy.
Daniel Matthews[]
John set his sights on Daniel Matthews as his next apprentice, John impressed with Daniel's resilience and willpower during the Traphouse ordeal. John prepared an induction tape for Daniel for Daniel to follow when he received it. John made his way to Daniel's home in a Los Angeles suburb where he left the tape in the mailbox and then headed back to the generator room, where he laid low and awaited to see if Daniel would follow the directions he was given. John left a warning on the tape for Daniel not to tell the police of the tape's contents.
Sure enough, Daniel later found his way to the generator room hideout. Daniel was suspicious of John and reluctant to assist him (as well as shocked to see the confirmed dead John still alive). John assured Daniel his reward for helping him with his work would be to learn the truth behind his father's demise and to close that chapter of his life. John entrusted Daniel to be the one to test Hoffman to ensure he was a loyal apprentice all along.
John Doe[]
Shortly after Daniel reluctantly agreed to assist John and the two began to bond, a string of gruesome killings identical to those of The John Doe Killer, who employed the Seven Deadly Sins as his MO, made headlines in Los Angeles. The killings caught the attention of John not only due to their nature but also because the deceased but re-animated Doe had targeted several people connected with John's past test subjects. After Doe escaped from LAPD custody and taunted the authorities by posing as John making threatening phone calls, John devoted his spare time to planning out a series of tests for Doe with help from Daniel, with a painstaking amount of time and effort on both of their parts being invested. From November 2006 to July 2007, John and Daniel spent their time finalizing everything for John Doe's tests.
Face Your Sins[]
After John and Daniel got Doe's tests set into motion in July 2007, they managed to procure Doe himself after he wandered by the old sewage plant above John's underground hideout. Doe was set for his tests, as John and Daniel both watched the progress unfold on the monitors. Doe eventually made it through all of his tests and made it to the final one, which would test his Wrath; if he was vengeful enough to want to kill John for the pain Doe had endured throughout his tests. The two killers eventually faced, with John discussing his philosophy with Doe and doing what he could to mentally break him down. John fully expected Doe to shoot him with the .357 Magnum revolver that had been left for him, but Doe instead chose not to; he passed his tests completely. After Doe left, John found out that the Magnum was never loaded, Doe never intending to kill John in the first place.
After Doe's test, John remained hiding in his hideout following a zombie outbreak across Los Angeles, and while hiding, he read over all of the news articles that he could over Amanda's latest exploits, learning that she employed the help of mass murderer Jason Voorhees for her own games. John felt Amanda hadn't learned her lesson, and already felt something resembling a new test was warranted for her.
Angel Claremont[]
In August 2007, John Kramer, still suffering from his cancer, maintained contact with Daniel, showing him more of the craft for the young Matthews to improve at his work. While visiting Gideon one day, he noticed Daniel in there with someone else and someone he let his secret in on. Feeling Daniel needed reprimanding for his mistake, he sedated and abducted both Angel and Daniel, and managed to bring them to his underground lair on his own. He had them tied to chairs and when Daniel awoke, he wasted no time in letting Daniel know how upset he was about this and that getting too personal with a subject and letting out such important information was unacceptable. For Daniel to prove himself to be worthy and to give Angel a fair test, John forced Daniel into putting Angel through an elaborate test involving a series of mirrors in a nearby room, like a mirror maze, and to find a key in time to unlock a spring-loaded blade collar around her neck to escape.
After Angel passed her test, John allowed Daniel to tend to her wounds and stay with her to provide comfort. Shortly after, seeing that both Daniel and Angel's methods for testing needed work after they procured and tested stalkerish rocker Scott Tibbs (whom had harassed Daniel several times), he agreed to let Angel come along with him and Daniel to show them how to improve, with the next subjects they both had in mind: Mandy Lane and Dante Ryder.
Showing The Ropes[]
John helped both of his new followers to plan out the test for Dante and Mandy, at an old incineration plant. The trap was to have a Dante's Inferno theme to it with Dante having to rescue Mandy from one of the incinerator units inside the plant before time ran out.
John, after helping both Angel and Daniel to procure both Dante and Mandy for the test, watched the results of their work out of sight inside the incineration plant, with Dante ultimately failing to save Mandy in time and suffering severe burns in the process. Despite the results, John was pleased to see both of his new disciples abiding to his principles and improving with their methods. He had strong faith that both Daniel and Angel would be worthy successors to his legacy.
As John spent time resting in his lair while Angel and Daniel went about with their lives, he would later get help from them staging and conducting an elaborate game for William Easton, John feeling his former health insurance provider was in need of a test to make him see the error of his insurance policies. Over the span of a few weeks, John had help from Angel and Daniel putting together Easton's test before finally setting it into motion. The end result satisfied John, with William passing his test and surviving.
Shortly after Easton's test, he would later receive some alarming news from them both regarding Hoffman, learning that he had ties with organized crime and even a torture and murder-for-hire organization. Realizing Hoffman was now a true threat and someone who needed to be taken care of, he discussed aspects of his plan with both Daniel and Angel, and after learning that Amanda was back in town, he requested to see her. Reluctantly, Amanda agreed after receiving a call from Angel.
A Difficult Reunion[]
Amanda made her way to the underground sewer lair hideout with her own team that included Jason Voorhees and Dylan Christy, and right away the reunion she had with her mentor was far from an easy one. Despite John's own disappointment with the choices Amanda made and her not living up to his expectations, he expressed his fatherly love to her and how he was sorry for things taking the turn they did. Amanda didn't keep her resentment and feelings of betrayal towards John a secret, but she confessed to him a dark secret she held for so long: that she had been the one responsible for Gideon's death.
John, taking this in for the first time and shocked, but not feeling Amanda truly caused the actions that led to his son's death, forgave Amanda, much to her surprise. After being told of the possibility that Hoffman may have rigged Amanda's traps for Troy LaRose and Allison Kerry to be unwinnable and learning that Hoffman blackmailed her into killing Lynn Denlon with his letter rather than giving her the letter John himself wrote for her as encouragement to pass her test, John offered his help to Amanda as a means of earning her forgiveness, help to uncover the truth behind what Hoffman may have been accountable for.
Capture[]
Shortly after his difficult and not-yet-resolved reunion with his former follower, an LAPD SWAT team led to the lair hideout by Hoffman stormed the hideout and used tear gas to disorient those inside the workshop. The others fled through a hidden door inside the workshop leading to another sewer route for escape, but John wouldn't make it in time before being captured and arrested by the LAPD SWAT. He was detained and taken to the LAPD precinct following his capture, but little did anyone know of the trick the brilliant Jigsaw Killer had up his sleeve for his upcoming trial in March of 2008.
Trial[]
After spending the remainder of 2007 incarcerated at one of the LAPD's precincts and under special care and watch, John, now more ill and dependent on medical equipment for his lifespan to be prolonged for as long as it naturally could, took the stand at the Los Angeles County Courthouse in March of 2008. Many involved with the Jigsaw Killer case were present at the trial along with many of John's past acquaintances and associates, including ex-wife Jill Tuck and lawyer friend Art Blanc, who had been re-animated following his death in October of 2006.
Hoffman had also been present at the trial, giving his slightly inaccurate testimony, but John knew better. After being found guilty by a unanimous juror vote, John had one final surprise in store for everyone; Daniel had sent a disc with a statement by John that he recorded days before his death on October 21st of 2006, where he revealed Hoffman had been helping him with his work, exposing the corrupt detective's double life. Even more incriminating and even surprising to John was a disc where "Hoffman" confessed to being an accomplice and rigging Amanda's traps to be execution traps.
John was saved unexpectedly by Dylan Christy and Peyton Westlake following the explosive revelation about Hoffman. With the usage of smoke grenades and disguises, Dylan and Westlake got John out of the courthouse and into their escape van. Dylan helped drive John to safety while Westlake took the heat off of them following a pursuit from Robert G. Durant's henchmen when they came to the aid of the exposed Hoffman.
Final Preparations[]
After re-uniting with his group following his procurement, John reconciled with Amanda and became on better terms with her following Hoffman's capture, forming a close and loving parent and child-like bond with her once again; Amanda had forgiven him and tended to him everyday. He also grew close to what became a surrogate family of sorts for him. He had been present for the weddings of Amanda and Jason, as well as Daniel, Angel and Carmen. He had been there for Amanda's birth of her son as well. Between the months of March through October 2008, as John got closer to his new family, he also planned for what would be his final set of tests, for none other than Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
John had had help planning out Lecter's game, which was to be staged at Gideon. John fell more ill and weak as the months went by and by the time October rolled, John was on his deathbed again and close to death. Still, he had just enough life left in him to see that Lecter, who had been consulted for the profiling and capture of John and the others, would be tested.
On Halloween Eve, after Amanda and others with her had set up various traps for Lecter inside some sections of Gideon, John had been transported to his old meat plant and placed back inside the infirmary, the very same one where Jeff Denlon originally killed him. As the tests went underway following Lecter's capture, John suffered a severe seizure at one point and nearly flatlined, and his headaches became worse, prompting yet another emergency brain surgery from a surgeon Dylan helped abduct from Angel Of Mercy.
Before John underwent his surgery though, he was about to face his grandest psychological challenge yet: a one on one with Hannibal Lecter, who passed all of his tests and had one final challenge, to speak with John.
Meeting Of The Minds[]
John and Lecter conversed for the next two hours following Lecter passing his first series of tests, with the two brilliant killers learning more about each other and the tragedies of their lives and discussing appreciation of life. John discussed his philosophy a good deal throughout the conversation and continued to deny being a murderer despite Lecter's accusations, but John knew deep down inside that Lecter was truthful and honest.
Following an emergency brain surgery to relieve pressure on his brain and then resuming his talk with Lecter, he gave Lecter one final challenge to see if he could forgive him for the pain he had suffered during his tests. Lecter instead chose not to, and thus he successfully completed his game. John gave him an "insurance policy" tape as his reward, congratulating him for his efforts, and even offering him the opportunity to continue his line of work if he chose to following John's passing.
Dead Again[]
Shortly after Lecter completed his game, the power to Gideon went out following a SWAT raid. With Amanda and the others escaping, and John having given Amanda a final message on a tape he made for her as assurance he cared for her, John awaited the inevitable. Following a brief confrontation with Eric and Rigg, he was about to be apprehended by SWAT, when after his life support was disconnected, a trap involving hidden and timed shrapnel bombs inside the infirmary was unwittingly activated.
John was killed along with several trapped SWAT operatives inside the infirmary in a massive explosion, but he died with many racing emotions going through his mind; what would become of his legacy, if it was in good hands, if his work had been worth anything and if it truly helped anyone, how much he cared for Amanda and those who helped him, and accepting the fact that all along, inspite of his best intentions, he truly was a murderer.
Regular Appearance[]
John stands six feet one inch tall and weighs one-hundred seventy-five pounds. He has blue eyes and slightly wavy blondish-white hair, but sometimes has his head shaved, and sometimes sports a blonde goatee strip on his chin when his head is shaved. His body type is very lean and thin. His skin complexion is usually pale and sick, and he has a distinctive curvy forehead with a slightly pointy nose. These two particular features make his face look somewhat bird-like when viewed from the sides.
John often wears a gothic black robe with red trimlines and a hood, and occasionally wears casual clothes. He seldom wears a grotesque pig mask, meant to symbolically reflect his disgust with human greed and selfishness.
Trademark Gear[]
John's trademark equipment are his unique death traps, which are ironic in that they mirror the crimes of his test subjects. His traps, though often very brutal and capable of inflicting barbaric physical pain and even death, have a means of escape, usually by having the subject do something painful to themself or someone else. Of all of his traps, his personal favorite is The Rack, a large industrial machine that resembles a crucifix and slowly twists the limbs of whoever's strapped into it.
John also often has a spring-loaded wrist blade equipped for self-defense, which he keeps hidden in his robe's wrist sleeve. John's other gear includes a voice changer to distort his voice on the tapes for his subjects, making his voice sound very deep and Demonic, with an electronic pitch. He also has many tools that he uses to construct his traps.
Billy[]
John's avatar, Billy, whom he uses to communicate with his test subjects on the instructional video tapes he makes for many of them.
John has his unique puppet, named Billy. Billy functions like a ventriloquist's dummy and has a white clown-type face with red spiral swirly circles on the cheeks, red lips that pull back into a sinister smile, black eyes with red pupils and wavy sliced-back black hair. Billy also wears a black tuxedo with a red bowtie, white gloves, a red handkerchief inside his front left suit chest pocket and red shoes. He's often seen riding a red tricycle. Billy operates with a remote control and John frequently uses the puppet to communicate with his test subjects using video tapes.
Billy is an evolved design from a more "cute" looking version of the doll he made for Gideon, before he died. John evolved the design into something more sinister. It is likely that Billy to some extent represents Gideon and the injustice he suffered before he was even born, injustices being something that John feels exist and occur too frequently in the world.
