10 WTF Horror Movie Scenes Inspired By Real Life

The broad concept of the Saw franchise - of a cancer-ridden man (Tobin Bell) putting people in creatively grisly traps to test their life appreciation - was inspired by writer Leigh Whannell's trip to the hospital, where he feared a migraine might in fact be a brain tumour.

But away from the gory traps, one of the film's creepier sequences involves Jigsaw's unwilling helper Zep (Michael Emerson) breaking into the home of Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes) and terrorising his wife and young daughter.

Particularly memorable is a scene in which Zep hides in the daughter's bedroom moments before taking the family hostage, a beat which was inspired by a news report director James Wan heard about in his college days.

The story was about a man who would break into houses and, rather than rob or kill, would simply tickle the children's feet. Better still, when the man was finally caught, he claimed that he was forced to do it by someone who sent him a jigsaw piece through the mail.

This served as the inspiration for the Zep character, his creepy game of hide-and-seek in the daughter's bedroom, and also the moniker Jigsaw itself, which in the series represents the "missing piece" (aka the survival instinct) of those victims who fail to escape traps..