(Credits: Far Out / LionsGate Films)
Thu 30 October 2025 20:45, UK
Those five words, ‘based on a true story’, aren’t exactly what you want to read when you press play on a horror movie. It’s in that moment that you’re suddenly alerted to the fact that what you’re watching isn’t just some far-fetched storyline made for our twisted entertainment, it could actually happen. It already has.
Well, in the case of Saw, not quite. The true story that inspired the shocking 2004 movie, with its infamous scene in which Cary Elwes has to chop his foot off, wasn’t directly replicated by the filmmakers, but it was still unsettling enough to form the basis of Leigh Whannell and James Wan’s terrifying tale.
Saw was a huge success when it was released, grossing over $100million despite its budget only being $1m. That’s incredibly impressive, especially for a horror film. This was a time when the genre’s focus on really torturing its damn characters was particularly popular, with movies like Final Destination and Hostel making the rounds in all the sweatiest dens inhabited by horror fiends looking for their next fix.
Saw didn’t hold back, with its mysterious villain, Jigsaw, forcing hospital orderly Zep to kill on his behalf after injecting him with a poison. If he wanted the cure, Zep was going to have to do what he was told, even if that meant committing crimes more heinous than he could ever imagine.
This is where the true story comes in. Wan and Whannell were inspired by a bizarre foot tickling incident, which saw a man break into people’s homes to fondle their toes. There’s something even more sinister about this image than if someone broke in with the sole intention of committing an actual act of violence. To simply wake up and find a stranger tickling your feet, now that’s going to haunt you for the rest of your life.
Wan explained in the commentary for Saw II, “It was the creepiest thing I’d ever heard, I was so frightened. I remember after hearing that story, I slept for the next two, three nights with a hammer by my bedside.” The scariest part? The foot tickler wasn’t acting alone, doing it out of perverted sick pleasure – he was being forced to do it against his will.
You have to wonder how one ends up in a situation as strange as that. If someone told me to go and tickle a stranger’s feet or else, I’d ask if they were having me on. How can you possibly find yourself with no choice but to break into a stranger’s home and head straight for their toes? Well, this man apparently received a jigsaw puzzle in the post, which instructed him to do just that, so this became the inspiration for Jigsaw.
Wan and Whannell didn’t divulge any further details in regards to this foot tickler, but clearly it was enough to leave a lasting impression on them, inspiring both Jigsaw and the idea of blackmail that forms the plotline for Zep. Interestingly, there was a ‘Boston Tickler’ reported in 2014, who broke into homes and tickled feet. Maybe they were inspired by the story, too.
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