Saw

Saw turned a grim two-men-chained-in-a-bathroom premise into one of horror's defining modern franchises. The 2004 original introduced Jigsaw, a killer who does not murder so much as design elaborate traps that force victims to maim themselves to survive, framed as twisted tests of how much they want to live. Its low budget and nasty ingenuity launched a wave of imitators.

The series runs across eleven films and a 2009 game, threading a surprisingly tangled timeline of flashbacks and successors that keeps Jigsaw's influence alive long after the character's own arc ends. Saw X notably circled back to flesh out the man himself. The traps and twists are the draw, and the better entries care as much about their convoluted plotting as their gore.

The Saw franchise spans 1 games, 11 movies in the CrossBinge catalog.