Trivia: When Agent Strahm is in his head box trap screaming, there is a lot of flash-cutting, including a shot of an outtake of the actor smiling with a towel in the cube and staff around him. Happens exactly at 9:52:370 into the movie, or frame 14203. VERY fast and easy to miss.
Trivia: (Spoiler) Strahm is killed by the walls of the final room crushing him. However, in the original script, rather than the walls crushing, the room was supposed to fill with water, thus mirroring that trap that nearly killed Strahm in the beginning of the movie. Due to practicality reasons, this idea was dropped, though it does explain the air-tubes coming of the glass box. (Which would have been for Strahm to breath.)
Trivia: Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the writers of both "Saw IV" and "Saw V", have a cameo in the flashback of Hoffman being kidnapped and meeting Jigsaw for the first time. When Hoffman is about to get on the elevator right before getting kidnapped, Dunstan is the second man to exit the elevator (he is in black and has a beard), right after the snobbish woman. Melton is the tall man who exits the elevator last before Hoffman enters.
Trivia: The coffin trap at the end of the movie, in which the walls move in, is based on a drawing done by director David Hackl's young son. (DVD extras)
Trivia: In the beginning of the movie, Seth's trap consists of a bladed pendulum swinging towards him. We are told Seth is also a criminal. Agent Strahm's trap consists of a room closing in towards him. These are elements of the story "The Pit & the Pendulum," written by Edgar Allan Poe, who is widely considered to be the father of the horror genre and detective genre, both of which are used heavily in the film. Another of Poe's stories, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," is also similar to the film. Ashley is decapitated, while a character in the story suffers near-decapitation. The characters in this story are also in a room locked from the inside.
Trivia: Much like "Saw IV" containing some subtle parallels to the original, this film contains several parallels to "Saw II", in an effort by the writers to create a second-trilogy that rhymed with the original. Parallels include: -Both films feature a lead officer-type protagonist who seals their own fate by refusing to listen to the rules and giving into aggression and personal hate. (Detective Matthews/Agent Strahm) -Both films contain a B-storyline about a group of characters whose refusal to work together leads to several dying. (The Nerve-Gas House/Five-Will-Become-One storyline) -Both films spend much of their time delving into the backstory of the lead antagonist and how they came to be. (Jigsaw/Detective Hoffman.) -Both films include a nod to the bathroom from the original. (It appears on-screen in "Saw II", and the door outside of it is visible briefly in "Saw V") -Both films end up down in the underground passageways beneath of the nerve-gas house/bathroom.
Trivia: Danny Glover (who appeared in the original film) was evidently interested in reprising his role of Detective Tapp for a flashback cameo after the production approached him, but he was unfortunately unable to follow-through due to a scheduling conflict with another film.
Trivia: Director David Hackl had been a production designed and second-unit director on the previous three films, and managed to secure the position directing this entry (his feature debut) due to his intimate knowledge of the series and its visual style.
Answer: The games of Jigsaw and his followers were always intended to be extremely difficult, but with a small chance for survival based on the actions of the player. Hoffman probably wouldn't have cared either day if anyone else survived, but likely anticipated that most of the others would die. (Strahm's line about everyone being supposed to die with Hoffman being the soul survivor was more conjecture than anything.) In terms of killing Jeff- both Jeff and Strahm were emotional hot-heads, so in all likelihood one or both was going to die if they encountered each other. Strahm's water cube was intended to be an execution tool for breaking the rules. That's why Hoffman seemed so shocked that he miraculously survived.