8 Smartest Decisions Made By Saw Characters

In order for a lot of horror movies to work, the main characters have to be a little bit on the dim side, to put it nicely.

After all, when audiences watch one of these flicks, they expect to see a bit of blood, a few guts, and a lot of death, which is why we get moron protagonists that stroll into abandoned buildings at night, have sex in the middle of the woods (also at night), and wander off on their own when they're being chased by serial killers.

The Saw series is no exception here, and across its nearly 20-year history, there have been plenty of dumb moments that left fans scratching their heads. But every so often, certain characters exhibit moments of genuine wit and quick thinking, putting their noggins to good use to outsmart deadly situations, or devise cunning plans.

Now sure, some of these characters ended up dying later on - not surprising, considering the franchise they're in - but regardless, we shall fondly remember these moments as being some of the smarter decisions made within the Saw universe.

The moment in the original Saw movie where Lawrence Gordon chops off his foot in order to escape his shackles is one of the most iconic scenes in horror movie history - but that wasn't the best way for him to deal with his rather sticky situation.

The best way was demonstrated a couple of movies later by Eric Matthews, who, at the end of Saw II, finds himself shackled up just like Gordon was. Skip ahead to Saw III, and Matthews is seen trying to set himself free: he kicks at the pipe that he's attached to, and uses a hacksaw to try and cut through his chains, but to no avail.

Coming to the conclusion that he's going to have to hurt himself in order to escape, Matthews initially thinks about 'pulling a Gordon' by chopping off his foot, before realising that there's a smarter way for him to go about things. Grabbing a nearby toilet tank lid, he breaks his foot by smashing it several times, which makes it flexible enough (for lack of a better term) to pull from the shackles.

Sure, chopping off your foot or smashing it to bits are probably on equal levels in terms of pain, but at least Matthews' method allowed him to keep all of his limbs attached to his body and not risk quickly bleeding out.