10 More Smartest Villain Plans In Movies

There are plenty of villains who have manipulated the people around them like pieces on a chessboard, but in Saw, the Jigsaw killer was different. He didn't just move the pieces, he created the entire game and made it so that there would only ever be one winner.

Prior to kidnapping Lawrence (Cary Elwes) and Adam (Leigh Whannell), and pitting them against each other with horrifying instructions and brutal mind games, John Kramer (Tobin Bell) dished out his brand of hideously ironic punishments, and did so while eluding capture by the police. He even created contingency plans so that if anyone did come sniffing around as Tapp (Danny Glover) and Sing (Ken Leung) did, he could lead them right into getting their head blown off their shoulders.

Jigsaw was described as thinking through every possible angle, and he was always multiple steps ahead. He trapped both Lawrence and Adam, forced them into doing exactly what he wanted, and even found a way to experience it all firsthand by posing as a corpse between his two shackled victims.

Arguably the smartest part of Jigsaw's plan was the fact that he kept himself clean, and manipulated others into doing the killing for him. He himself didn't kill a single person in the 2004 outing. Whether he wanted Lawrence to kill Adam, or Zep (Michael Emerson) to kill Lawrence's family if Adam remained alive, ultimately they had no choice but to obey. Even if he wanted his victim to do something so unthinkable as to saw off their own foot, they would eventually have to do it.